BrokenCircles/JustBeforeYouStartScreaming
A shaman pulls you from the river; later he pulls the River from you.
He has a kind gaze, and a reassuring smile; later you see his eye sockets are empty, but somehow he still seems kind.
He is your guide, leading you into the Labyrinth in a scream of torn air and howling shadows.
The Labyrinth is the dream of a dead god, or of several; so far beyond death it seems alive.
Passages shift and shake, sharp rocks become smooth stone, caves become crypts. A bridge of bone and dried sinews crosses a river of blood, maggots and rotten flesh.
Things lurk unseen in the darkness; you feel their hunger and their fear of you.
Green pyre flame drips from ancient teeth in the skull of the first dragon; light reflected in the shards of a mirror broken between its jaws.
Within the mirrors is a palace of black iron, amidst a thousand miles of empty hunting grounds. The war-cries of a thousand tribes echo across the land; the roars of unseen ghost-tigers hunting and shrieks of pyre hawks circling overhead punctuate their battles.
Within the palace of black iron are a thousand broken mirrors; within the broken mirrors a thousand reflections burn knowledge into your mind. In the knowledge is darkness, and a thousand hateful truths.
Others join you in the iron palace; they walk at your side in pride and anger and hate. Another broken mirror reflects a depthless well; stairs spiral down into darkness along its walls.
Whispers in your mind are echoed in the darkness; the Neverborn so close as to be audible. Into darkness you descend, the well vast beyond reckoning and deep beyond endings.
In the tomb of your goddess, in the place where she died, and always is dying, you meet her.
A scar blossoms across your mind and soul; an understanding is reached, and your Name seals the pact.
Seven days caged, a thousand blasphemies chanted for the one who devoured your Name; a dream of bindings on the soul and the end of hope entered willingly, but without choice.
And then it is done, and River is no more.
You serve the Deathlord entitled 'All That They Have Lost.' He has the appearance of an old, dark-skinned man, bedecked in feather tokens and hunting trophies as well as bone and ivory jewellery, lending him a decidedly tribal or shamanic appearance. He has no eyes, however, only empty sockets, and wears a set of soulsteel bracers with pouncing tigers engraved upon them.
He has a huge ghost-tiger companion that prowls the hallways of the palace of broken mirrors; if it has a name, it has never been spoken to you. There is a definite intelligence in its hungry eyes, and it does not move like a tiger should; a tiger strides through the world like a god, and this beast moves in shame, for it is a slave.
All That They Have Lost has three deathknight servants. First among them is Seven Whispered Maledictions, one of the Children of Ash, the Dusk caste. The flesh has withered from most of his body, leaving only the right half of his face and his sword arm untouched; the rest of his body is skeletal, and his left arm is a fearsome amalgam of black iron and carved bone, a prosthetic to replace a long-lost shield arm. Over soulsteel plate he wears the robes and veil of a Delzahn nomad, and his present duty is to lead their tribes back to war - but this time in the service of death.
Second is Litany at Sunset, one of the Children of Bone, the Daybreak caste. His skin is purest obsidian, and he appears more like a perfect and lifeless statue than a living being. Always he dresses in the finest Varangian silks, the tassles upon his cloak indicating a place in their engineer caste's top ranks. And like the Varang, he knows the stars and their secrets, and the magics of machinery. And like the Child of Bone he is, he knows command over the dead, and the power of necromancy is his. His duty is only to study, and to learn, for his time is yet to come, and the world will shake when it does.
Third and newest of all is the one called Screams Amidst a Godless Elegy, a Child of Dust, one of the Moonshadow caste.
Comments / Questions
Neat. - Quendalon
