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Dreams of the Aasimar Cleric
Horned Visitors step through a Crimson Portal

Horned Visitors step through a Crimson Portal

A dream:

As you peer around the desolate landscape of cracked earth and charred plants you start to pick out the remnants of what used to be buildings dotting the nearby field, you can see distinct rectangular and square sections of clear ground. There are also lines pressed into the ground between those clear sections denoting what was once roads. The ground under your feet is covered in a fine grey powder but the cracks in the surface are still discernible. The sky does not have its usual blue tint but instead lets out nothing but a dull red. You don’t see any clouds in the sky but instead as you look up it is almost as if through the red you can see the night sky, a deep black void staring down at you, just beyond a thin red veil. The area that you are in is marked off by rows of large stones forming irregular shapes like fieldmarkers. There are certainly no crops here, no sign of such not even remnants of furrows if there ever were such here. The flat plain that once held the buildings is almost completely clear. There are small piles of rubble, perhaps bits of brick or stone, timber framework too lies in ruin, nothing but the charred remnants of beams is left. A pair of winged creatures walk awkwardly from one pile of ruin to the next. They stop at one of them and begin to fling bits of it off to one side. Quickly one reaches into the pile and pulls something out, the other does the same at the same time and there is a quick struggle for whatever it is. One yanks hard and sends the other tumbling to the ground. The seeming victor takes wing and lands only a few yards away in the charred remains of a tree. He began to gnaw vigorously at the object. The other rights himself then begins digging through the remnants of the pile once again, it appears to be picking up small bits every now and then and throwing them into its mouth. The figures are smaller than you, not by too much, at least in the size of their body, their wings add large amounts of apparent volume to the creature, they seem to have sharp protrusions all along their arms, legs, off the back of their heads and on their wings. They have almost reptile looking skin, in tones of greys and blues. They have a wide jaw that narrows in the front, full of rows of pointed teeth. Their red eyes are clearly visible even at this distance. The one perched in the tree continues to knaw as he stops for a moment to dart his head quickly to one side to view the other you get a good look at what he has in its hands. It is a long bone of some kind 2 feet long maybe with a knob on one end with bits of off colored greenish-grey flesh hanging off of it. The creature quickly turns back to its meal and go back to picking the chunks of meat off the bone of whatever the creature used to be. It seems satisfied with the meal and almost relishes in the consumption of it. The other one the ground you now determine to be picking out whatever bits of flesh were scraped off the chunk when it was pulled free of the debris. When then the one on the charred black tree finished with the meat on the bone it began at one end of the bone and began biting into it, the cracking and crunching sound of the bone snapping against the creatures teeth reached you even as far off as you stood.

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Suddenly there was a loud crack like a crack of thunder, and a flash of light. Both the creatures took flight at the sound, flying away from the apparent source of the sound. A red ring of glowing light blinked into existence. The dust and ash covering the ground nearby started to swirl around it and lightning seemed to jump from the edges of the disk to the ground. It was a swirl of shades of red and crimson that made up the surface of the disk. First one then another then another creatures began stepping through what you realized is now a portal of some kind. Clad in black armor with horns protruding through gaps in their helms, shields in the same black metal on one arm and swords held in the other.. They stepped out one at a time and quickly began moving around each in its own direction. They seemed to be searching for something. After several moments of dedicated search they stopped and moved back towards the portal. They stood shoulder to shoulder in two rows at the portal 15 feet or so from each other, then all at once the portal started to spark again the same loud crack that you had heard before. The portal grew larger, several times larger, in response the armorclad creatures held their weapons over their heads halfway between vertical and pointed at the other row. The portal snapped and cracked as even more lightning jumped from it to the ground. Something else was coming through, something that held the reverence of the ones in armor, something larger, something much larger.

You wake.