A dream:

The short figure stands up and away from the slab of stone, he is shaking slightly and the tips of his fingers where he had been pressing into the stone are a sheer white. He picks up the dagger with a quivering grip and restores it to its sheath. There is a sounds almost like the crackle of lightning as it slides closed. He hurriedly places it back inside the chest and once the chest is closed and locked again he leans hard back and lands seated. He seems exhausted, no doubt the work he has been doing requires great focus at the least and at most large amounts of magic and other resources. You do not notice his rich clothes moving as if he is breathing heavy, in fact his is nearly perfectly still just a slow sort of rocking and im rubbing the tips of his fingers vigorously against each other and the palms of his hands.

You point of view changes, you are in a similar room to the one you have seen before the same kind of walls made of some kind of cobbled together material it looks something like white, sticks and rocks, now stained yellow and brown by the smoke and dirt. You can hear someone breathing heavily and small whimpers or cries. An opening appears in the wall and the small figure you have been seeing enters through the gap. As he enters several lights illuminate around the room, candles as well as several braizers ignite one after another going around the room in both directions from where the figure entered. When all of them are ignited you can see the room is roughly circular, a series of pillars around the outside hold up the ceiling. All around the room you can see different being standing there. Several of the armor plate covered things from before, stand around the room making a rough circle, there are several dozen skeletons around the room as well, their eyes sockets seem to have flames burning in them. There is some other creatures that you do not recognize, something similar to other undead you have seen, except that where their eyes and mouth should be there is nothing but a kind of black void in each of the warped and stretched orifices where they should be. There is in the center of the room a single short pillar made of black stone, there is a chain attached to the top of it. The figure walks toward this pillar then motions his hand towards a far wall. Two of the void eyes creatures walk through the whole that forms in the wall and grab ahold of a young boy inside, one of these creatures on each of the boys arms. They pull him into the larger room. As they clear the now closing gap in the wall the boy kicks one of them in the leg causing it to lose its balance, he then pulls an arm free and punches the creature which then falls to the ground. All the plate armored things at once hands go for their swords. The other creature still holding the young man’s arm turns to him, the orifice that should be his mouth opens a bit wider and you can see as if something is coming out of it, rays of darkness as if beams of light if it were the opposite of light. The child's eyes go wide for a moment and the child opens his mouth as if to scream but no sound comes out but instead he goes limp. Gauntleted hands come off of sword hilts and the second of these creatures stands, then grabs the now limp body by the free arm and drags it over to the pillar. They secure the young man to the black stone pillar with the chains, his form hanging limply from it.

The rich clothes figure motions to the armor clad things and his knights in response all march together to the center of the room. One of them reaches into his cloak and pulls out a golden box. He moves forward and then presents the box to it’s leader. He opens the box and pulls out the gem still glowing green just as you had seen it when it was placed there. He holds it gingerly in his fingertips and moves over to the unconscious young man dangling from the chains. As he steps closer he stands eye to eye with the unconscious focus of his attention. He drops back the hood from the rich cloak and you can see him staring closely at the other. They are about the same height the one unconscious only shorter because his feet are not under him. They share the same shade of brown hair even their frame is similar neither looks to be more than 12 or 15. The one in the rich robes shifts his head back and forth inspecting the other. He mumbles something to himself before opening the young man’s mouth and placing the gem inside then forcing his jaw shut and clasping his hand over the boys mouth. You see the suspended young man struggle for a few moments contorting and shaking, he then comes to a stop.

A wave of the hand and an opening appears again in the wall four skeletons enter bearing a chest. They bring it to the center of the room along side the two. The young man places his hand on top and speaks and then undoes the latch, he then withdraws a bottle filled with a green black mixture and a familiar dagger. He takes the dagger and hooks it to his belt and then stops. After only a few seconds of waiting the eyes of the young man attached to the pillar open, and he starts to struggle violently against the chains. You can see the same shade of green that you had seen emanating out of the gem slowly start to build in the young man’s eyes. The struggling slowly becomes less and less until he hardly moves at all. The organizer of this whole thing then breaks the seal he had placed on the bottle and moves up to the now unmoving fellow. He places the bottle against the boy’s lips and tilts it up. One swallow then another you can see the bottle start to empty into the young man. At half way the bottle is pulled away and is once again stoppered. He hands it to one of the armor clad knights and then watches closely the reaction of the chained young man. The green glow of light coming from his eyes increases until you can almost see shadows being cast from it. The young man then takes the dagger from his belt,pulls the sheathe off as you can once again hear the crackle of lightning. He carefully takes the tip and places against the other’s chest right above the heart, taking care to place it between the ribs. All at once using the palm of the other hand he smacks into the pommel and it buries itself into the chest. The one in chains does not react to the wound only standing still. The rich clothed young man reaches out and takes the bottle from the armorclad servant. He takes the bottle, removes the stopper and holds the opening towards the blade, you can see out of the mouth of the skull carved into the bone pommel a small steady stream of blood begins to flow. He holds the bottle up to the small stream and you can see as the green and black start to mix in with the crimson of the blood there is some kind of reaction going on. It starts to shift and swirl in the bottle, a flurry of different colors and at one point you can see specks of light start to appear in the liquid. He fills it till the bottle is almost full. He then grabs the handle and pulls the blade free of the victim’s chest. There is a small stream of blood that splashes across the floor as the blade comes out however there is no trace or remnant left on his chest. No wound, no blood, it was just as if it had never been touched. He sheathes the dagger silently this time and observes the bottle. It swirls it gently in his hand just kind of watching all the colors mix. He turns and stands directly in front of the other young man. He pulls the cork and begins drinking the vile concoction, he seems to be chugging it down as quickly as he can without stopping. When the last of the contents are drained he recorks the bottle and hands it and the dagger to the waiting skeleton who then places it in the waiting container.

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The two figures just stand there for several moments, nothing happens, then the chained one one again starts to shake his eyes close and then reopen and the green glow is gone once again you see the whites of his eyes and the deep brown color of them. He starts to scream, not a scared scream but a scream of horrible pain, his fists clench and his muscles go taunt as he fights the chains that bind him. He screams till he is out of breath, then when it comes back you can hear sobbing, and pleas coming from the young man. You can see even through the young man’s shirt his stomach starts to shrink in and you can see his muscles start to shrink as well, he falls weakly as he continues to scream his legs don’t seem able to support him anymore. Tears stream down his cheeks as the screams grow weaker and weaker, until they stop.

Silence the room is filled with only silence not even the sound of a single breath in this room full of beings.

The rich clothed young man places his hand on the head of the now desiccated body of the victim of this foul ritual. The body crumbles to ash under the weight of his hand and the chains clatter as the fall free of the now powderlike corpse. The young man wipes his hand back and forth in the ash until he finds what he is looking for. He pulls out the gem. Same size and shape as it was before even the slightest hints of green still left inside. The young man takes it and places it in the golden box in the hands of the waiting heavily armored servant.

You hear a steady beat, smack, smack coming from a corner. A figure steps out into the light, black skin, black horns, with long dark stained fingernails, standing hunched, this figure claps it’s hands together slowly.

“Congratulations” it speaks in grizzled female voice, “You have done well, as a kind of celebration of your success in this, we offer a gift.”

She lifts her hand and several skeletons start to materialize near the edge of the room where she had appeared. They were carrying something, well many somethings, they near silently made there way around the room. They took from the armored servants their black shields and replaced them with new ones, bright shiny metal. Painted on the center of the shield was a large black skull taking up most of the height of the shield, the eyesockets of the skull filled with a green light, and crossed behind the skull, a pair of white flowers.

You wake