1.09.5 - Shai'tan, Part 2

General Summary

As experienced by Cheni
When you are finally able to break away from the group, the dagger is practically thrumming with energy. You had noticed it when Sultana was speaking with you, but while at the time it had been nothing more than a faint, almost electrical buzz, the insistent energy reaching out from the blade is so strong you almost wonder if it is actually audible. As you draw the blade out of its sheath, a wave of psychic energy slams into your consciousness. Your vision flashes white and you are knocked to the floor. For the duration of the vision, you are incapacitated.
As your vision clears, a cold and damp breeze washes over you. You are in a relatively small cave, about fifteen by thirst feet across and eight feet high. Based on your experience, you are certain this is a part of the Lient'roc cave system, although it doesn’t look like any place you have seen before. There’s an unnerving stillness to the air, the distinct feeling that no person has been here in a very, very long time.
Your attention is drawn ahead of you, where the floor of the cave slopes into a milky pool of opaque water. The particulate in the water is the color of deep, golden orange honey, and emits a soft warm glow. You recognize the substance; it is moonmilk, a mineral-rich substance found in Lient’roc, used most often for its restorative powers. You have never seen so much of it in one place before.
From the back of the cave, you see a shape emerging from the water. It moves impossibly, causing not even the faintest ripple or current in the liquid. Long alabaster ears rise above a crown of dark reddish brown hair that spreads into the water like a drop of paint, the color of the dew wood trees in the forest. Finally, a set of intense, glowing amber eyes the unmistakable almond shape of the Chelu-kaan peer in your direction.
The eyes narrow and harden, piercing you in a way you have never before experienced. You feel as if someone is sifting through the sands of your very soul, weighing out your attributes like a jewel appraiser, looking directly in the heartwood of your essence, finding an oppressively accurate reflection of your faults, the weight of its eyes upon you somehow consuming your thoughts until there is nothing else -- and then, like a zephyr, the presence washes out of you, filling the space with a bracing chill which seems somehow comforting.
He stands before you now, his arms crossed, the golden water dripping from his form impossibly slowly, crystalline matrices of moonmilk glimmering across his pale warm skin. He opens his arms and you see the rent and broken cavity of his chest, evidence of some cataclysmic trauma. The rest of his body is seamless, smooth, like polished marble; the air seems to slide over him like water over a rock. There is no hardness in his gaze, only a look of curiosity combined with warm familiarity. He smiles and lifts his hand to touch your face. He seems to move with a disarming alacrity; before you are even able to realize what he is doing, his fingertips touch your cheek.
Like an arrow from a bow, you are instantly struck with the realization that had been in the back of your mind since you saw him, you know exactly who he is and where you are. As the thought coalesces in your mind, the word is pushed out in the cave without your volition -- Chelor.
The implications are rattling, but he silently gives you a look which almost forcibly stifles your questions. He smiles, at last cracking the porcelain mask of his smooth face in an expression that is as genuine as it is unsettling. He turns his palms upward, producing out of thin air the dagger -- or at least one exactly like it -- and balancing it between his hands, then dropping his hands away, leaving the blade hanging in midair.
“You have forged this blade with the iron of our enemies. As her body turned cold, I saw her through your eyes. As they, ever-scheming, invent more odious devices to destroy us, we give birth to a new age of revelation.”
As he speaks, the sound reverberates in the cavern, rippling the very air. He speaks with a very formal verbiage, his accent a bit off from the way the Chelu-kaan speak today. It reminds you of the old history books you read in the temple.
“The one who wielded Shai’tan before you disgraced its blade with the blood of the unworthy. There is no power in blood that holds no hate, that is only hated. You have the perspicacity to anoint it with only that which expands your goals. Do not let the wrong ones disgrace you again.” (In this section, when he says “you”, he is conjugating for 2nd person plural in the Chelu-kaan language.)
As he steps backwards into the pool, he folds his hands over his riven chest. “Do well, and you will continue to be rewarded.” He sinks into the water until once again, only his glowing amber eyes remain. They narrow slightly, and his chestnut brow turns upwards in what you think is meant to be a look of reassurance. His eyes flit closed, and all the light in the cave is extinguished at once.
You stand in the darkness for longer than you are entirely comfortable with before you realize that you don’t feel the cold anymore. Awareness of your physical body slowly creeps back into your consciousness. You open your eyes to see your room at the Lodge, flipped on its side. You push yourself off the floor, your shoulder feeling a bit stiff. With a start, you look out your window and see the first rays of morning light edging over the horizon. It seems you were out for quite a while. Luckily, you do feel refreshed and invigorated.

Report Date

23 Jan 2021