Journal Entry 21.01 Dunger's Trip Through Coalescence

The story Dunger provides about his vision while the others were sent back in time. There is some hints this may be Dunger's true history.

What is this, where am I?
Dunger looks around, searching for his new companions. Wasn’t Graykar just in front of him? That search ends almost as soon as it starts when he realizes abruptly he isn’t looking over the temple plaza. He isn’t on the side looking out of the temple exit at all, he is in the middle of a field, wheat stalks up to his waist.
As controlled panic sets in, Dunger stoically clamps down on the sensation. Dwarves do not panic.
This strange environment suddenly feels very familiar. He hears a noise behind him, strange and unfamiliar, and yet as he turns it is the familiar bleating of one his sheep. Of course, he how could he forget Brazz. Brazz was also the noisiest of the herd – also the darkest of wool. And Jennea made the most subtle gray yarns from that wool. And from them, the prettiest blankets. Blankets almost as pretty as she was, he mused.
Who the forged hell is Jennea?
Oh, that’s her, over by their cottage returning from the pond, carrying a few fish and her pole. He smiles for she is starting to walk a little side to side now that she is heavy with child. Their child. Their first.
The wind is blowing in, a winter storm. It will be the first one of the season. He doesn’t know the time of year, but yet, then again he does. Winter will be arriving soon, he needs to get the sheep to his father’s so they can winter in his canyons.
How is it I know this place, she isn’t even dwarven? Am I a dwarf?
What’s a dwarf? He looks down at himself in confusion, was he just daydreaming? Trying to cling to the thought, it escapes him. What was he just thinking? Oh yeah, he must get the sheep moving. Jennea will have the fish scaled and cooking soon. While he is at his parents, he can pick up some onions if he is quick about it. Fish and onions is a favorite of his.
The wind is blowing in with a crisp shrill, then a loud clamor shakes everything. Like a gong, he sees double and a pain pierces his head, then it’s gone as fast as it occurred. Steadying himself, he looks back at his sheep, they are panicked, it wasn’t just him. They heard it too. Then louder, a bang like his ear was on the anvil as the hammer comes down beside it. He falls to his knees and manages to turn to see Jennea also on the ground.
The double vision returns, he sees two of everything, the vibrations shaking his sight. The ground must be quaking, and then it is gone again. The sheep are beginning to bolt. He tries to stand and quicker than the last interval, the gong sounds again, a third time, this time louder.
He again sees double, but this time, for a brief second, the double isn’t the same view. Instead of rolling hills with darkening fields expended from harvest, he sees mountains in the distance. Instead of the washed out blue sky representing the ending day, the sky turns the dark orange of a late summer eve. Then the visions stabilize back into the familiar view of hills covered in wheat.
Then another gong. This time during the interval where the gonging vibrates itself into silence, the view is that strange new world. And with it a great pressure. The pressure is not just in his skull, it is part of his very being. He feels as if he is being squeezed from both inside and out by a tremendous weight with equal pressures compressing every fiber of his being. And as the gong suddenly stops, he is back in his normal world.
His world has changed, the fences are torn apart around the chicken coop. The pond in the distance is dry and empty. Jennea is nowhere to be seen, his house is also gone. The sheep bleating has increased, yet there are fewer sheep sounds overall. As he turns, he sees about a third of the flock missing. Of those remaining, some are scattering, the others lying are dead.
The final gong rings, the final gong because it doesn’t go silent. And he sees the new world again, this time it is superimposed over his own existence, he can see it moving through his world, like two images trying to line up in focus, overlapping only for the briefest second, then coming out of focus again, almost as if the other world is falling through this world. Not literally, solid objects don’t fall through each other when occupying the same space, yet all the same, this is what is happening, this is what he perceives.
And suddenly he feels himself caught into the swell of the world collapsing through his own. Now he is following it and sees his new ride crashing into another world, punching through it, then another, then another. Each time on his chaotic ride, he sees the world ahead then also sees the broken devastation left behind as a pervaded world is left behind.
Not another mushroom trip, please not another mushroom trip. They told me they wouldn’t spike my drink again. Why do they keep doing this? Druids are so mean!
As he falls through world after world, he feels some of the world he is riding being left behind, yet as parts of him are also being ripped away and memories taken, those memories are being replaced. What of his children? When did he gain children? Oh, yeah, three worlds ago. And then there they go, left behind on this most recent world. Did he love them or love their memories? He feels he remembers loving them.
And each world is different, some are verdant pastures like his original home, some are barren deserts of a soft metallic blue sand, some are molten, some are frigid. Some smell of flowers, others of sulfur, others carry the scent of burnt air after an electrical strike. In each world, he witnesses the destruction created by his falling world as it takes and gives of its essence. The next world encountered takes a building, then the one after that world surrenders a castle. One world takes a river, the next world leaves a mountain.
And in the distance, he sees the stars changing. And see the suns and moons always in different numbers and different locations.
I’ve done this before. Ride it out. Stay calm, don’t get lost, focus and enjoy it, ride it out Dunger, ride it out! The bad trip always ends. The sooner you realize it is a trip, the easier it goes.
He continues to ride this world as it falls through world after world. And then he begins to sense a dread. Something is approaching, something wicked, something waiting. Something hungry. Are they being drawn in? No! But they are heading toward something waiting. Something which devours worlds. Something eager for their arrival. The ominous feeling grows. How does he know this?
The world he is being pulled along with is quaking, it can’t take much more. Whatever the damage being done to the worlds it penetrates, could it be possible that worst is being done to this world?
And the world senses its own impending doom also. How does a world know feeling?
And then he sees it, not a world, but billions of worlds approaching. A hungry creature made of worlds, worlds acting like the cells of a being, all intent on one goal, the ravaging and absorption of this world, any world will do, for nutrients. For entertainment?
And collide they do. The essence of the starving worlds clings to the world he travels with, but they are moving to fast to remain in that ravenous maul. Much of what this world has picked up during its trek through the multitude of destroyed worlds is stripped away, and his world passes through them like an arrow through a thin target. Slowed down, yes. Stripped of its fletching, yes. But that malicious hunger is left behind, now yearning and reaching for their escaping meal.
As they pass beyond, their journey slows. A new destination lies ahead, the original destination. The destination always planned for. The ride is nearing its end. And where they shall stop should be empty, a vacuum of nothingness. A safe haven for the world which travels and has carried him along.
And as it slows, it slowly merges into the new universe to find that it will not be alone, a world exists here already. A world rich in life, a world of beauty, a world experiencing the nascent joy of being young and healthy.
But as all journeys must end, so does this journey. And if a world is there, then it will just have to accept the new world also. It has merged, fallen through, and separated from so many worlds already. What is one more?
They collide, but unlike all the other collisions he had experienced, this is the most painful. It is not a quick pain associated with passing through, it is the pain of birth as two living organisms, two fully whole worlds, are forced to be one. In a normal birth, a separation eventually occurs. This is backward, the pain comes and endures as two become one.
And he lives for what feels forever on this new world. As he watches, he sees that it slowly mends, two forests becoming one. Slowly parts of each world begin to form something new as they combine. At first, a few birds and animals from one world emerge, then a few from the other. As he watches, a spectator devoid of body and devoid of any sense of self, he merely absorbs the centuries as the two worlds continue their slow merge.
And then the long gong which has gone on for what could only be thousands of years, maybe even millions of years, changes tone. This new world, two worlds forced to cohabitate, each feeling as if they were raped by the other, unrelenting in their scorn toward each other, releases him.
And as soon as that grip is released, he feels he is being flung backward along his path at an increasing speed. This time the return journey, also feeling like a great fall, but a fall backward and upward, goes quicker. Where before he was subjected to the experience of each world as it was violated along on his journey, this time only brief flashes occur. He approaches the hungry beast made of worlds, still reaching out, and then just as quickly it is left behind. After a flicker of worlds flashing by, he finds he is back into his own world.
Rising up from the ground, he looks around and is horrified. The distant hills are no longer soft mounds covered in smooth vegetation, but jagged angles of bare rock. His house has collapsed, only the chimney half standing. Of Jennea he sees nothing. The only truly familiar thing for him is a familiar bleating behind him. Looking back, he sees most of his herd is gone. He sees a few are dead, most just are missing. However, Brazz is there, now calming down and investigating the strange new kind of grass at her feet. As the shock of his experience fades and movement and sanity return to his forethoughts, he begins running toward his house yelling for Jennea.
Finally. Everything is going dark. Um, maybe I don’t want it to end, why the darkness? I don’t want to die. Was that vision me dying? Was that a trip through my life I have to unravel the meaning of?
As everything fades to white, Dunger steps through and exits the air temple, bumping into a stopped Graykar. Graykar jumps and looks back at him, eyes wide, stunned himself.
Making the assumption Graykar just saw everything he saw, Dunger says, “Yeah, ok, that was trippy. I ever mention purple gilled morels to you, that’s the kind of trip you get. Every time. Nasty vile things they are.”