Midnight RPG - Chapter 28.666

WHEN

This vision takes place in the seconds following Durgaz's "speach" to Eranon and Zal'Kazzir telling them of his vision of the "Witch King & Queen of the Erethor"... Then again it could happen at anytime really. Durgaz's mind seems fragile these days... heheh.

VISION

It is beneath the Elder Tree of great Caradul. The blossoms drop from the trees like the white bile flinging off the lip of a newly beaten foe. The white silks of pellets mix with pinks and yellows and blues - it is the most beautiful time of the year... It is spring. A new day. In a land that the horrors seemingly cannot touch.

She is undreamingly beautiful - the she of these visions first seeming as the Elder Tree with Queen Aradil looking down from her branches - yet there is another she that roams your dreams... She slinks in silks between and around the trees as a snake dancing around your heart... And with a whisp of her hair, a sparkle twitters in her eye... And a drape of blonde locks drops across her face. Mi'Shun. She is less the Captain of the young Arrows in dream...

She speaks... yet it is not with her voice completely... Aradil... the vile legate love of Zal'Kazzir... the crackle of the one that spawned you amoung the kurisach udureen... she speaks...
...her voice, peacefully calls to you as you drift deeper into her... their slumbering embrace... sleep...... dream...

“Eranon, my champion” she calls softly, her voice full of warmth and safety.
"You and your companions walk with my grace, but there is another who shivers in the cold, waiting for the light"
"You must seek out and reunite the woman beloved of your dark-skinned companion, who also walks my paths, though he does not know it."

The message seems sparse and directed... It does not waver, does not answer your question, yet it whispers again...

...she calls softly, her voice full of warmth and safety.
"You and your companions walk with my grace, but there is another who shivers in the cold, waiting for the light"
"You must seek out and reunite the woman beloved of your dark-skinned companion, who also walks my paths, though he does not know it."

The message is unbroken, your heart must determine the ways of your mind's eye...

While the sweetly acidic voices of love and sorrow whisper an ancient elven tune so somber and sad men have yet to learn the words of such melancoly... A MAN... Elf-Kind. Stands stark, beside you... watching this... Listening to the rapture of the speaking lady. His presense turns your stomach at the same time humbling you. You know this wilder-man... he is a seer... Galeck, Craigth Galeck. And he listens quietly in repose... as the whisper continues.

"He will save her, and she him, and together they walk with me, while apart their roads are uncertain"
"Show compassion and love, walk in my paths, and go with my blessings"
"Peace be with you Eranon, my child, and may your steps never falter."
You feel a warm lingering feeling of safety as the Great Lady departs, leaving you peaceful and once again beneath the Elder Tree as the plooms snowfall.

...again unbroken...

"He will save her, and she him, and together they walk with me, while apart their roads are uncertain"
"Show compassion and love, walk in my paths, and go with my blessings"

On the wind a phantom vulture call screams (echoing your recent encounter with the Vrok demon)... the sky turns ink black as you notice the rot infecting the tree, not from below but from within. Lord Galeck seems only to be waiting and thank the lady he's only watching the game -- someone other controlling it...

Yet with a last glance the elf - Lord Galeck... insane, even in this place of your mind stretches to extend his hand, formerly crossed in front of his shoulder hunched stance between the trees. Following his finger to an area beneath the Elder Tree, you see what he fears... what you have forsaw in times past of the future to be... Avatar eyes lay at the ground.
On the wind the Cult of the Witch laments a tune of forgiveness and at the same time hate for those corrupted. The tree of life does what it cannot do, it begins to rot. Every whispering tree in Erethor screaming. As giant, rotting roots of the Elder Tree tears the Temple of Truth in two.

"...shivering in the cold, waiting for the light..."

...unbroken once more, the only answer given...

"He will save her, and she him, and together they walk with me, while apart their roads are uncertain"

Yet... this... this is true of the many couples it would seem... as you find your seer mind repeating back the words that you spoke to Eranon and Zal'Kazzir - the words of the coming tide...

"...the newly crowned Witch King speaks before a might assemblage of orcs, ogre, and shadow-beasts spawned in the breeding pits. The Witch Queen then declares humanity's time on Eredane finished and explains her plan to hunt them to extinction..."

"He will save her, and she him, and together they walk with me, while apart their roads are uncertain"

What will you do...

“Eranon, my champion”

As the elven facade disolves in a pool of seepage drifting from the joint leaks spewing from "Orc Steel", you see it evaporate into the nostrels of your friends as they melt into goo themselves. The vision of such things to come staggers you. ... So much darkness, so much pain. Is it to be that the world will end this way?

You stand at the crack of doom... the scar... the point of the Sunder. Nothing but darkness and evil... as something unknowable haunts and screaches the skys...

Will you forever remain a creation of the Shadow. In the end, destroyed by Shadow, destroyed by your own inability to fight the tide... A tide forseen unto your chosen eyes only. The others before you fell to the grief. And you, "Durgaz - Son of Shadow" now stand in grief... But while there be breath in rage in your bones you must seek out the call and know...

who do you serve...?

For someday your scales will tip, the tide will turn and you can look back from the evil that you wrought - knowing the good will salvage your soul and save the savaged world.

You fight because it is what Shadow bore you to do, but

who do you serve...?

What now is the ember that was once the reason for being, for what is the reason one million of your kin pour out of the scar in the north... Will you be driven by rage, hatred and lust for vengeance.

who do you serve...?

Is salvation and resistance an illusion of vengeance and false hope seeded by that which bore you? Should the murderous hate be disguised as justice more still? What will you have?

who do you serve...?

Is the blood on your hand and tongue spilled for the pleasure of all or the piece of one within you? Will you slay the Enemy's generals and scatter his soldiers for grief and pain or will you do this because it must be done?

As the mighty vardatch at your back feels no joy in killing, so to will you be a tool for that which bore you or will you reap what has been sewn?

who do you serve...?

You, Durgaz - Son of Shadow have become the impenetrable shield, the killing blade, the cleansing torch, and in legend you willnot be slain... but

who do you serve...?

These men, your companions. They are flawed and imperfect, and some of them are weak.

"...another shivers in the cold, waiting for the light"
But they have the potential to succeed in places where you cannot, so it is your charge to protect them.

"...reunite the beloveds."
When you become a danger, in the end when you retake your mantle Son of Shadow, you will take your own life before endangering slavation, before failing hope...

"He will save her, and she him, and together they walk with me, while apart their roads are uncertain"

The war is more important than the soldiers, do not forgo the Enemy's failings and faulterings, do not resist using the Enemy's tools as Shadow has used you, for it is myth which drives them unlike no other and to know their fear you must sleep in darkness yet come out unsullied. Become that which you fear. Become that which they fear. Become as legend unlike no other and fight as ten thousand soldiers.

who do you serve...?

and along the deck planks of the Spear of Grief your eyes drift back into your head... The last heave of the soft-spoken Dorn, the boy... his chest sinks as the last of his life-blood spills and is drank by the hoof of "Umash's Metal"

"I must do what I can to protect those others who cannot protect themselves, the helpless and the weak who suffer and die every day for the Shadow's pleasure. They must be saved so that, when we are dead and forgotten, others can rise from their ranks to take up where we left off."

The day has come...

who do you serve...?

Answer and learn.

Answer and reap reward.

Answer and be "Son of Shadow", but still yet "the Redeemer" is yours to be found.

who do you serve...?

You must remember that you are a creature of Shadow; and until today you were living proof that one can turn back from the darkness. Yet with weakened resovle, you are a fool with false hope clouded in grief and Shadow.

Will you share the light that woke me from my nightmare? Will you bring this to your brothers? Free them from the Shadow's yoke and turn the Enemy's own armies against him.

who do you serve Durgaz? - asks the shadowed vissage of your Sarcosan friend... your elven friend... the dead at your side... all the dead to come...

This time.

This place.

It is a waypost in the stream.

Hold tightly to them, do not stumble.

For is so... you will be swept away serving nothing but a dead dream once had...

Gaakh! and let it be so.

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NOTE

The "Avatar Eyes" are literal... eyes! However "Avatar Eyes" refers to some others... Not the Night Kings or Aradil herself. Eye's that have been "plucked out" from the corrupted that may cause this...