Shen could not quite recall how he had gotten where he was. He thought he remembered fighting but it was all a blur. Thinking was hard somehow, like having to move his thoughts through thick mud and he didn't quite know the way. It was comparable to trying to explain the three Prices to Ashe while they were both four cups in, she had never asked sober. He looked around, moving was hard as well, and his sense of balance was off.
He was standing in a clearing of a forest. The grass had a grey-white colour and dark, twisted trees surrounded him in a vague circle. Their trunks were straight but the bark was black, oily, and it twisted in ugly, unnatural looking patterns. There were no leaves on the branches and Shen could see no fruit anywhere. The arms of the trees were long and each split many times into smaller branches, these interwove with the limbs of neighbouring trees in smooth patterns that seemed almost designed. Shen felt like they were trying to get closer to him, as though they were reaching to completely close off this clearing from the rest of the world. Above him in the space that the unnerving trees had not reached, Shen could see a black sky. There were no clouds but the only illumination came from what looked like a single constellation of nineteen stars.
More disturbing than the eerie environment was the state of Shen’s body. He was wearing what looked like a deer hide skirt around his waist and rough, cast iron manacles with the chains removed on his arms. Next he noticed that his hair was long, straight, and stark white in this dream, for it was surely a dream, his skin tone curiously was his own, darker than the Morenise tan but fairly typical in a Meldler like himself. Touching his face he thought it was the same, but it was hard to tell through the haze in his head.
“You… you are close… you have sacrificed your vitae too…”
The voice was deep, its inflection was strange, monotone and excited at once, and it seemed to come from everywhere around Shen, but he also felt the words bubble up in his mind moments before he heard them. He felt he was about to speak them and then the very air around him said them right before he would have. It was a profoundly disturbing sensation.
“Who..” Thinking was so hard, moving was so hard… “Who's talking to me? I… I do not see you.”
“A strong mind… you have potential… you might be able to see… to comprehend…”
Shen felt something brushing up against his body, like invisible fingers lightly touching his legs, then arms, then chest. Looking down he saw the grey white grass bending towards him.
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“Stop that… get away from me!” He could feel the invisible fingers more on him more strongly by the second, they started becoming more like dozens of small tentacles slowly wrapping around him. He felt cold, like they were trying to sap his warmth. “I said stop!” Shen's sluggish limbs tried to throw off the thing that was trying to get a hold of him, but there was nothing to throw off. He kept passing his hands over his skin where the Thing was touching him but he couldn't affect it. He desperately looked for anything he could use, but there was nothing. His Pricings were not here, he didn't have his Striker, or his knife, or his salt, there was nothing.
The Thing had stopped talking and Shen was getting desperate. He fell to his knees as his legs went numb from the cold. His vision was growing darker, but he thought he could see something long and sinuous circle the clearing, hiding behind the trees but slowly getting closer. “No… don't... come closer” Breathing was getting harder. His hands were on the ground as he was trying to support himself. When had he fallen to his hands? Tattoo like designs of chains had appeared there, starting from the iron manacles and wrapping up his arms, they were past his elbows and new links were forming.
Then suddenly the world became light. Shen gasped. He took several quick but deep breaths and opened his eyes, he hadn't felt himself closing them. The tattoos had turned golden and were disappearing much faster than they had first formed. A warmth fell over him, he first felt it on his shoulders but it quickly enveloped him concentrating over his stomach and abdomen. He looked upwards, where the warm light seemed to be coming from, and he saw that the singular constellation had been replaced by what looked like an amazingly complex design. It was created by a blinding sun in front of which hundreds upon hundreds of leaves flew, carried by a wind Shen could not feel.
It was a Pricing. Not carved on a disk instead the shadow cast by the leaves created a perfect circle with a smaller non concentric one forming around him, in the space between the two circles he could see the curves of a design formed by the, now vibrant green, grass falling and tangling itself into a sort of knotwork rope. Shen had never seen anything like this, it was reminiscent of a Sollic Hymn as it was formed by light, but there was no Harmony. Additionally the design of curving lines looked nothing like the prismatic designs the Sollic crystals created. At the same time he had never heard of someone using light and shadow as a Conductor and the Life needed to fuel a pricing of this size and complexity was mind boggling, multiple oxen worth at the very least. Of course there was another possibility. This could be some form of Wyrding, little was known of the Druidic power, but Shen knew one thing. If this was a Wyrding it had to be affecting a living thing, likely himself.
No sooner had the thought formed in his speedily clearing head than he felt an almost painful warmth on his abdominal muscles. There he could see that a pattern, identical to the one formed around him, had been imprinted on his body.
This was clearly not a simple dream, and Shen had the distinct impression that an unknowable fate had rested him from the claws of a different unknowable fate.