Thu 10th Aug 2023 11:25

The Maze 1: Dead Ends

by Davynn S. Pumtumn

Davynn lies awake most nights. Fighting the threat of sleep, and what horrors may come from it. Laying in wait to scare him, not in the scary way he liked. His eyes didn't need to be closed to see them though, like waking nightmares. His ears perk up. Hearing the same series of sounds that have plagued him every night. Sounds of creaking wood, then metal clanging on the ground, fallowed by a sharp whimpering. Then an eerie silence would hang over him. As well as the uneasy feeling of multiple presences of phantasms surrounding him. He sighs heavily before finally giving in and falling asleep... dead asleep.
Davynn stands in a familiar corn maze. Feeling compelled where to go, as if he instinctively knew the way, but was willingly trying to get lost.
As he walked, between the stalks of corn came ghostly whispers and spectral/skeletal arms reaching out for him. As if directing him. In order to reorientate him in the right direction, some even trying grasp and pull him into the stalks to join them. Davynn starts running to drown out the whispers and avoid the grasping until coming to his first "Dead End."
Absentmindedly, he hurls a Chaos Bolt to clear the way. Davynn then hears a loud blast and the harsh sound of wood splintering. "Hmmm...like blasting down the door, perhaps?" There then was a man, his body completely covered in splinters and fragments, impaled by planks of wood. One eye pierced by a plank the other red and blood shot, glaring at him and tearing up with blood. "Splinter..." The figure raised an arm to point at him. "No! I was just trying to get out! You weren't supposed to die! It was an accident!" Davynn shouted, before cowardly running the opposite way, out of the "Dead End." Hanging his head in shame has he ran from the figure behind him. While the whispers from the corn stalks became louder like curses. A skeletal hand suddenly grasping around his neck before two others griped his shoulders, forcing him to sit down.
Davynn was suddenly sitting upright at a table, recognizing his surroundings as the Yopparai Monastery. A tall women arranging silver ware very particularly in from of him. "Romnea Thine? Oh, you don't have to fuss over that..." Davynn gestures at the silverware before pausing, then quickly covering his nose. As the sudden odor of smoke and burned flesh invades his nostrils. Romnea's figure now a completely charred corpse standing over him. "Scorch..." The sharp metal clanging of the silverware hitting the floor shook Davynn out his shock, and he found himself in another "Dead End" of the Maze.
"Oh come now, why so guilty? She wasn't your fault. You were just there... Besides, much was learned that day. You yourself weld fire quiet well now..."
This strange voice kept interjecting telepathically into his mind. It sounded eerily familiar, but Davynn couldn't place it... or simply didn't want to recognize it.
"Real chatty huh?! Who the hell are you?!" Davynn shouted.
"Oh, you still don't know? Come to me! Reach the center of the Maze, and get to know me better! ...I know you know the way!"
The cacophony of ghostly voices all start to echo the voice from the corn stalks.
Davynn comes to a fork in the Maze, and against his instincts, ignores the direction he should go. Before once again coming to a "Dead End" Davynn sighs, but can't shake this foreboding feeling.
"You are not lost... you choose to be lost. You are wasting time...I am waiting. I am inevitable"
The ghostly voices echo these words again like a chilling chorus.
"Shut it" Davynn hisses, before hearing a snaring sound from the corn stalks.
A familiar Dire wolf prowls out and cuts off Davynn's escape. Trapped in the "Dead End"
"It doesn't end here for you, remember? Bite back..." Davynn hears "Bite back" being chanted from the stalks.
In a sudden motion, the Dire wolf lunges at Davynn before a skeletal hand launches from his amputated wrist: Chill Touch.
His shadow moves and replicates the shape of a Dire wolf, a dark Hound leaping out from the ground, fangs finding the Dire Wolf's throat.Replacing the grip of the Chill Touch with a set of strong canine jaws.
"...Strangle" a sharp whimpering sound escapes the Dire Wolf before the Hound crushes its windpipe.
The Hound of Ill Omen stands over the dead Dire wolf in a dominant pose. Before shifting back into the humanoid shadow of Fetch.
"Sully? ...Sullivain?" Davynn asks bewildered. Sully seeps back into the ground, retiring back as Davynn's shadow.
"I am still waiting... you better get runnin, Fleet" The Maze becomes instantly dark, like sudden night with but threatening storm clouds rumbling over head. Undead and apparitions file out of the corn stalks and rush at Davynn.
"Enough Dead Ends, find the Center, find me. You know the way! Your willful ignorance is becoming taxing!"