A Jaded Life

I had just watered the nymph with the directly powered collar and was now moving on to the other nymph, this one with the collar she fueled herself. My first task was to bring her into the nearby bushes, so she could relieve herself, so I pulled her up and pushed her forward, following behind.

All of a sudden, the nymph keeled over, dropping to her knees and a shrill, piercing scream ripped out of her throat, surprising me. I would not have believed that any being could sound so utterly desperate, let alone one that should not have more cognitive functions than the average potted plant. But somehow she did and her voice was conveying a brutal mixture of pain, despair and dread. If I could bottle that sound and add it to a spell, I would have the ultimate ‘fear’-spell. It reminded me of the tales about banshees, mystical spirits, or maybe ghosts, that were able to bring death with their wail. The nymph was no banshee, but she was doing her very best to imitate one.

I moved around the nymph, trying to find out what was going on, kneeling down to be level with her when the world stumbled. There was no better way to describe it, it was not a physical sensation, but a psychological sensation, a shudder passing through the air, causing all the small hairs on my body to stand up.

Suddenly, the scream was cut off, not tapering off or choked off, no, it was more as if a faucet was closed, switching from bone-chilling screams to an eerie silence. But that was not all, the nymph was standing back up, moving in a wooden, unnatural manner, almost as if something had attached strings to her limp and moved her like a puppet.

I stood, wondering if someone was interfering with my collared nymph and in a bit for more information, I used Lenore’s magic sight, looking for more information, maybe some sort of hint what was going on. And a hint I did get. In hindsight, I wished I had never pulled back the veil to peek behind it. What I saw, could not be unseen and I knew that it would haunt me to the end of my days.

Throughout the ages, writers had written about fear of the unknown, about the instinctual fear people had from the dark, from beings hidden in the dark. I had never feared the dark, least of all since I came here, to Mundus, and learned to control it, to harness it. What I saw at that moment, was one of the reasons people feared the dark.

My mind was screaming, recoiling in horror from the thing that should not be, screaming to flee, to hide or madness would claim me, if I persisted to look at it. In a way, calling it the granddaddy of the Devourer of Tegi would not be inaccurate, but only insofar that calling a tiger and a kitten related would be accurate. It was so much more, so different that my mind did not want to classify it. There were tentacles, some with gaping maws and jagged teeth, others with strange suckers, as if it was an octopus or something similar. And it was huge, almost incomprehensibly so but it did not quite follow the rules of geometry as I knew them. There was a strange twisting of space, of reality around it, making even the most remote comparison moot, my mind was simply not equipped to handle a being like that. In the moment I peeked behind the veil, a single tentacle was holding the nymph’s head and it looked as if the rest of the being wanted to squeeze inside the nymph. I doubted that it would work, I prayed to all the gods that may or may not be out there that it would not work.

My peek only lasted a single instant, but that single instant caused Lenore to recoil in pain and her mental anguish echoed in my mind. Not that my own mind was doing much better, it was as if there were multiple tons pressing against my skull, trying to crack it open to make my brain squish out, like the filling in a piñata.

As one part of my mind was trying to reconcile the things I had just seen with the reality around me, another part was taking in the nymph with my mundane senses. The first thing I noted was that the collar around her neck, formerly a clean, silver-blue colour with reddish-dark inscriptions was now being tainted with a mottled grey-purple sludge, causing even the remote, insane idea to use the collar to suppress whatever it was to die the moment I had it. There was no way in this world, the next world or any world that I would link my mind to that collar.

My eyes were roaming further up, the nymphs mouth, her nose and then, her eyes. I had read once that the eyes were a window to the soul. If that was the case, I truly did not want to think about the things I saw there. The disorienting nausea I had felt around Nethersprites before was assaulting me, stronger than ever before, driving me to my knees and causing me to retch. In a way, it was lucky that I had not eaten breakfast, or I would have lost it.

But while my mind recoiled from the eyes that would haunt my nightmares, my eyes were unable to sever the connection, even as I was brought to my knees. I could not look away, could not break the gaze of the unreal entity before me.

The mouth of the being, formerly known as nymph, opened and sound came out. It was definitely not the the voice of the nymph, the voice sounding more like a mix between crushed gravel and breaking bones, deep and sombre.

“Y' ymg' mgr'luh. Y' ymg' kadishtu hai…” My ears heard the words but at the same time, my mind heard them, too. Maybe it was because of Lenore’s ability, maybe it was because the entity had a similar ability. But I knew the meaning of the words. ‘I see you. I know you now…’ With the sound, a feeling of hunger, the impulse to devour was creeping into my mind, a hunger that could never be sated, no matter what was devoured.

In my chest, the crystal that had formed when I crossed the first divide started to tremble, sending streams of chilling, calming energy into my flesh and into my mind, trying to reduce the strain I was under, thanks to the unbroken gaze of the being. Sadly, it was not enough, I could not even rise from my knees, let alone use magic or do anything at all to defend myself against it.

Just as the being started to raise it’s arm, maybe to touch me, maybe to do something else - I did not know and, in all honesty, I did not want to know what it had planned - when a line of cold silver flashed through my vision.

The connection between our eyes broke, allowing me to look away and what I saw made my heart soar. Sigmir stood behind the nymph, clad in her red aura, eyes flashing with the yellow of Ylva’s strengthening ability and her Lok’nar still moving fast, using the momentum of her first strike to strike again and again, reducing the possessed nymph to ground meat. Never before was I so glad to see someone being hacked to pieces, never before had violence looked that good. As Sigmir was hacking away, the pressure on my mind was slowly decreasing, giving me more mental breathing room, The crystal was still helping, healing my tortured mind from the strain it had been under.

Finally, I had regained enough strength to stand and take stock of my surroundings. Both nymphs were dead, one hacked to pieces by Sigmir, the other killed by Adra with a single stroke of her spear. It took me a moment to realise that I had stopped supplying the collar the moment I had peeked behind the veil, my mind too scrambled to keep the supply up and when the nymph had started to snap out of it, Adra had taken measures. I truly could not fault her, not when the second nymph was in the process of bringing some sort of eldritch abomination into the world. Sure, the thing had focused on me for some reason, but I had no doubt that both, Adra and Sigmir, had felt that something was seriously wrong.

A small, tiny, part of my mind was looking at the log, taking note that we had only gained exp for one of the nymphs and nothing for the other thing, no doubt because it did not die in any way. There was also another screen, telling me that my Defilement-trait had been strengthened causing me to shudder. If things like that could be brought forth with Blood Magic, I was not so sure if I wanted to continue the practise.