Fyg's inner out-of-body-experience
The battle rages all around you, but it seems peripheral. You are no stranger to spirits or trances, and the feeling you have right now seems to have a bit of both at the moment, overlaid with a palpably pounding heart reacting to the fear and existential dread of explosions and screams all around you. It fades quickly, though, and you notice something very strange...
Everything around you is moving much more quickly than you. In a flash of gargantuan chivalry, William(person:1124ecb2-ab8a-4228-b1bb-b000165387ac) has grasped the sword of his forebears and taken up arms against a kraken of the deep, who had been summoned to attack the city of @[Craysilt. Both of them moving at impossible speeds, the battle has its ups and downs on either side until King Billy finally dismembers the sea monster and stabs it in the heart. The gigantic creature suddenly swells with a burst of white energy flowing in a torrent from the gigantic king's sword. The same white energy that his eyes are aglow with.
With a mighty whump! of displaced air, the gargantuan menace explodes into a red and black mist.
Only a moment later, a few seconds tops, it seems as if another plague of bats has begun to pester the city. This time, however, the creatures are flying in a mighty circle upwards, out of a neighboring block of the city called Midtown. A cyclone of them, in reverse...
But, wait...those aren't bats...
They are the deadly and quasi undead Gwythaints that tales and stories of horror and despair are so wont to employ. They fly upwards for about a hundred feet, and begin to break off and boil over like a mushroom cloud of sparsely-haired naked birds. The cacophony, the noise, is inhumane. It is a soul destroying combination of every sound that is hard wired into you to associate with fight or flight. Fear and anger and revulsion and yes, a little empathy (this is Fyg we're talking about here) fight for prominence in Fyg's mind.
The mushroom cloud of cackling squawks comes shrieking down on the city like a hail of banshees, rending and tearing at the flesh of the soldiers defending the city. Quickly, they melt away under the ferocious and insatiable hunger of the Gwythaints. The brave men and women, consumed with fear, and then bodily, even after all they had done. All they had accomplished pushing back the kobolds, and the orcs...all for naught. Your companions are faring better against them than the guards-they have magical weapons and abilities, after all. But even they are tiring, and will fall to exhaustion sooner or later.
A voice...a deep contralto with an air of highborn education, sounds in your mind. She is arrogant, you can tell this just by the sound of her thoughts. She views you as a bug, no more than a gnat.
"You see what will happen, now, yes?" As the voice speaks, the scene around you freezes cold. Everything stops; arrows, mid flight. Flames, mid flicker. Old lady Henderson mid rant. A gull hangs in the air like some kind of child's mobile. The gwythaints are even frozen, mid squawk.
Mid bite. Mid rend...
Fyg focuses instead on the voice, on hearing and remembering her voice. Her words. The arrogant contralto continues, "It is preordained, 'Little Mouse'." She scoffs, somehow, telepathically. "What you are seeing here is your immediate future. Every living thing in the city will be consumed once my pets are released from The Dragonways. Can't you see it? Even one as simple as yourself must be able to grasp the subtle genius of my plan." If this voice were that of a bird, Fyg thinks, she would be preening herself and casually showing everyone how impressive her plumage was.
"It has all just been a ploy! Ahaha..." She goes off on a cackling spree that morphs from human-esque to more...draconic...and then back again. "My lovely pets will destroy your friends. They will destroy the city around you! And I will have them spare you for last, just for helping these...these Weavewalkers or whatever your word for these anomalies, these aberrations, is now. And you? A Fateweaver, haha! Such a grandiose word for such a pitiful little thing as yourself." The arrogance in the voice has shifted a scosche, revealing a madness beneath the smooth talking telepath's pristine exterior.
"It will be a grand day when my Lord Husband has been defeated! A banner day! And you, bug. If you make good decisions, my pet, you may yet live through what I have shown you..." Her voice has been rising in both pitch and volume, and was obviously ready to regale you with some fantastical diatribe, but it is suddenly, and mysteriously, silenced.
It is then that a strange and beatific calm settles over you, and a small woman with enormously compassionate eyes walks around the corner of the nearest blown out hulk of a building. She is rounding her shoulders a little, and ducking her head, as if she is too shy to impose upon you. Her smile is real, and the safety that you feel in her presence is that enjoyed by a babe in arms. Her long, blonde hair is oddly (yet fetchingly) frosted with even blonder tips. Even her eyes, which seem to smile right along with her lips, are blonde. Her skin is a ruddy white, however; as if she spends inordinate amounts of time in the bright, blazing sunlight. Indeed, she is dressed as if she is from the desert, with colorful scarves and skirts designed to swirl joyfully as she dances.
"Hello, Fyg! I'm sorry my sister in law has chosen to torment you today. I suppose it fits her sick sense of humor to try to bring chaos and mistrust to one with such a beautiful heart. And your heart is beautiful, Fyglet, even if you question yourself for needing to kill." You realize that you are in the presence of divinity, of some healing spirit from somewhere beyond your comprehension...
"My name is Vekhetmiradonalax-Myra . I believe you know my nephew, Vekhetstevyparalax-Stevie?" She smiles and nods encouragingly as you nod in acknowledgement, stunned at this creature of goodness and light's conversational tone; as if she were sorry about disturbing you in some way.
"Fyglet, I am sorry to say that my sister in law is correct. If the Gwythaints that she created in the deeps of time are allowed freedom here, on this Material Plane, the city of Craysilt will fall. Yes, it will be razed to the ground, and the Old Keep will be breached, and the last vestiges of humanity will be erased from Tellus to fuel The Galbrok Tamarinds that are even now pumping more and more human life force, human essence, into her nefarious plan.
"The good news, though, Little Mouse, is that Vekheteshaynaralax-Shayna is not the master of time. My brother, Vekhettebærdolax-Bayard, is. So her little stunt to try to scare you and your friends away...her stopping time so that she could taunt you with the future? That all has yet to happen. All of it. She was so looking forward to tormenting you that she did not pay attention to which timeline she was working with. A rookie mistake, if you will.
"The Gwythaints live only in the The Dragonways. So we know what her next move would be...which would be to release them, somehow, into this Prime Material Plane. There is only one way to do that; through the Gateways. There is only one Gateway in Craysilt.
"Fyg the Kind, this may seem very esoteric and complicated. Overly so, even." She chuckles lowly. "My kind has never been known for simplicity. But what I am trying to tell you, is that you and your excellent friends have time to stop the Kobolds Shayna has working to open that Gateway so that her acolyte can perform the ritual. It is not much time, mind you, but it is enough time to disrupt her plans entirely." Myra smiles at you, kindly, and offers you a single purple plum. "You should eat this as soon as you wake from this dream..."
Shayna's voice...for yes, it is the voice of the devil dragon herself...begins exactly where it had left off.
"...of your future!" Myra's kind smile is mesmerizing. It is so comforting, you barely hear Shayna's scream of fury at discovering Myra had infiltrated her infiltration of your dream. Rage and fury so great, anything within miles of the red dragon must have died. But it does not affect Fyg in the slightest....
The dream fades, leaving Fyg feeling refreshed in mind and spirit, and holding a bag of plums! One for you, and each of your companions, it would seem...
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