The #Broken_Dagger Forum

She watched the two upon the roof in impending battle. The girl had yelled out and the scuffle heard from under the porch. The elf quickly rushed out after having been easedropping upon the two.

Lucian and Quincy were seen upon the roof and intent of battle. The elf would not stand to watch her friend downed by the warlock. Even weakened from her last encounter and spells casted the eve before, the elf yelled at the warlock to stop trying to hurt the girl. She was setting her fate then. She had made a deal with the devil himself that violet hues settled upon now. She would not however see him kill a friend.

The guards came but more of a hindrance than help.
She eyed the guards and muttered under her breath. Fools. Even weakened she had enough strength to cast some spell, but what would it cost her? The tongue of ancient elven heard. The elf started to chant and rather quickly. A hand raised and palm flat, aimed towards Lucian.

The battle continued and as the guards attempted to break things up, the elf managed to utter the words needed in whispered breath and casted a spell.

Ancient tongue of elven made and palm aimed at Lucian. She called upon the gods of planes to swiftly and attempts to take the warlock from his location and drop him off to the far side of Trae Kellsa. Sucessful or not however, the elf would then wobble upon her feet only to drop upon the ground in a heap. Swirls of darkness overtook the elf and she took a comatose state.

Quincy had teetered , feverishly at the back of the roof .. and suddenly... she fell.

As the elf fell where she was standing, Lucian moved to strike Quincy one last time before she fell, but before he could, he could feel his whole body shifting. " Damnit!" The Tremere screamed into the air before his molecules settled and he found himself within a strange place. It was still night, thank goodness, but he had to find out where he was. If he hadn't of blocked his focus of Aeri out, and used Auspex, perhaps he could have guarded against the magic with his rune tattoo. But instead, he was a shmuck, and he let the unsufferable elf transport him elsewhere via magic.

Luckily Quincy's fall was broken by one of the guards below. Neither were seriously hurt.

The elf found by the girl and carried into the tavern and then to a room since a strange man was seemingly attempting to kill the elf, or was he trying to help her? Quincy would not let him near her friend and rushed upstairs.

The elf was left to rest and within the rooms of warmth and perhaps solitude, the nightmares began. It fed off her sorrows held deep within her mind...

Some dreams bring solace. But tonight, Aeri is not so fortunate...
Running. Her child in her arms; the sounds of combat and torture at her back. The men; with their cruel faces and their dark clothes. Their cold, heartless blades.

Her dying husband's cries drawing her attention; if she had not looked back, would it have gone differently?

But she did look back.

Then they were upon her, and tore her child from her arms. Her little boy, thrown about in rough human hands, hurled to the ground. Their voices barked at him. "Run!" they said, amid their harsh laughter. With wild, terrified eyes, the elven child turned away and fled.

He doesn't get very far, when their bowstrings creak; a fatal knell. Cruel shafts fly and hiss; to Aeri's eyes the moment is so swift as to almost be lost in an eyeblink; but then her son lies on his belly, thick-feathered arrows lining his back. Dark pooling beneath him.

Cold. A sense of cold; something counteracting the bright glow invading the dream. Something that has been here all along... The trees close in, seeming as if their hollows and knotholes were sphincter-like openings to unseen eyes. Staring down at her from the dark. The nightmare becomes still more surreal; the men in their dark clothes stepping toward the fallen body of the child.

Their forms hunch over the little broken body; their shadows are cast long upon the earth. Their faces are still turned away from her, but their shadows seem to be moving of their own accord, tugging at the moorings that bind them to the feet of each man. The arrows sticking from the back of her child's body seem to be writhing slowly, as though they were becoming black, oily snakes; the pool beneath his body grows, and runs impossibly toward where Aeri's mind's-eye stands where she had stood before. Spreading, dark and rich, beneath her feet; a pale face gleaming in the reflective surface of the blood.

(Aeri`): Another silent scream that does not make it passed her lips made. The fist holding the locket within her plam tightens again causing the metal to dig into her flesh. Droplets of blood flow downward and stain the bedding she laid upon. Her brows knitted even in the comatose state she was in.

Her son's face stares up at her from the reflection in his blood; his features pale and his eyes dark, filled with black; tears of crimson leak down his cheeks. He murmurs her name, and lifts his tiny hands to cover his face. The sanguine essence leaks between his fingers - while in the background the human forms lift and fall their arms over the body, striking at it; then one of them slowly turns; their harsh laughter has changed, becoming interspersed with gibbering, whooping pulses of sound...a terribly familiar sound.

(Aeri`): Finally a scream does escape her lips but only faintly. A form stiffens upon the image in her mind. The fist tightening even more so and her flesh feeling the bite of the metal in her hand. Her whole form trembles and a light sheen of sweat seen upon her brow.

The man - his eyes are inky black and glossy, as the man who had entered the tavern that foul night. His weathered skin is drained of colour, stretched over his features. It does not sit well upon them; it is as if it is a loose mask over some other horrible face beneath. His lips part - no, peel, wrinkling back over the spikes of translucent, broken crystal jutting from his black gums; interspersed with trails of translucent ooze.

Gums that strain against their bindings, distending slowly from his jaws. He twists his head, animalistic, back to the brutalised body on the ground. The reflection in the pool of blood shudders, reacting to each blow, crying out in elven - "Mother! They're taking me!"


(Aeri`): Screams of terror almost reach her lips but in her. The coverlets are grasped with free hand and tugged upon making the bed even more rumpled. She felt deaded upon the bed. Her form would not respond or move upon her own will. Another scream made but only forms into whispers escaping from her lips. Keth...NOOOOOOOOOOO!

The scene changes slowly; as if she were being lifted up away from the scene in the forest and into the sky; but the sky is a sea without water. An empty, dark void in which she might float; suspended in a thick nothingness, transparent and airless. And cold. Oh, so very cold... but she is not alone here. There are things moving in the dark; half-seen shapes like blind, slimy fish, black and squamous bodies woven of the ethereal fabrics of the Dark.


(Aeri`): Her form trembles and shivers with fear and coldness. Darkness still invades her mind.

And then there is another form; drifting slowly toward her. Long limbs coiled about itself in a foetal position; bedouin robes tattered and torn. Bloody but strange wounds like round suction-cups covering the reptile flesh where it is bared. The body twitches, spasms every so often, as though it were tormented by unseen bonds - a nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare.

Drops of acidic green blood leave his wounds, and float in round globules through the abyss.

So, this was Kobra's fate...trapped in the world behind the shadows. Imprisoned within his own Nightmare. The slimy forms of the Hidden swim and whoop and pulse just beyond him...

Their long, spidery black fingers slithering into his brain, ravaging his mind.


(Aeri`): The image of Kobra came to mind. Cold..she was so cold. A scream of terror made and again it's stuck in her throat. The blankets now held as if she was fighting off a unseen terror only she can see in her mind.

She can see them now, their bodies vaguely humanoid - but emaciated, elongated, their limbs froglike and clammy. Their skin inky- black but moist and slick with rancid ooze; their huge, round skulls, their bulbous eyes glowing as they drift in the dark. Swimming swiftly toward her, toward Kobra...desiring to feed from their nightmares, to rape their already tortured minds and supplant their memories with their own unhallowed seed.

But as they close, the eyes of the battered serpentman before her suddenly flare open. His limbs unfold, and with a desperate strength he grips her shoulders ..."We float...down here. Down here. Remember, the Triple Triangle!" Then with that cryptic piece of advice he seeks to -push- her away from him, to send her sailing toward a light glowing in the distance - the light of wakefulness....

While the Hidden horrors close in and coil about him like eels, to torment and torture him once more.

Pulling him down into the embrace of the infinite and sunless night.

(Aeri`): Again she screams. In her mind she attempts to free herself and looks upon Kobra. Wake..Wake up! Was she willing herself to wake up or both? Her form tosses restlessly upon the bed and coverlets. She fell, fell from the sky and back into her own world.

The raspy screams of the snake-creature and the gibbering pulses of his tormentors fade away in her mind as she awakens.
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