Chapter 4: Whispers of the sleeping world

When I woke up I was standing on a rocky surface stretching as far as I could see, dotted with a hundred pillars of stone, reaching for an ink black sky with nothing in it. The pillars were tall, some only a mere 5 metres while a few must have been almost 20 metres tall. They had the same kind of runes engraved in them that the bowl had had, only bigger and they didn't glow. There was a single lightsource in the rocky field, a lantern hanging from a small iron pole a half metre of the ground. It had a ghostly green light and I could feel the magic being emitted from it. The place was surreal, but I had just had a rune carved into me and filled with some kind of blood, so I didn't try to convince myself that I knew what was going on. I looked down at the rune, it glowed with a soft orange glow, like that from a warm forge but more alive, pulsing in tact with my heartbeats. It consisted of three vertical lines, with dots over them, where the middle line was lowered a bit, and then a smooth curve were carved from one side of the rune to the other, crossing the three lines in the upper part. I didn't know the rune, but for some reason it felt familiar. I heard a faint sound from somewhere around me, a whisper breathing out words in a foreign language I'd never heard before. It seemed to come from the pillars and the earth and though I didn't exactly understand it I knew that it was trying to communicate with me. That was unnerving, but I didn't know what else to do than listen, so I did.

I stood on the field for a long time, trying to understand the whispers, before I finally realized that I actually were standing and not laying down. I could stand on my own again. Or maybe this was just a dream. I tried walking around a bit, which went fine, though I felt weak from having been sick for so long. Any other day I would have been ecstatic to find out, but now I was just calmly analyzing myself, trying different angels, running, climbing and throwing some loose rocks. My dexterity wasn't bad, it might actually be better than ever, which I didn't mind. After a while I realized that there were something out there in the darkness between the pillars, watching me. It hid itself well and didn't make any noise always staying in the corner of my eye, not getting closer, which I then thanked it for.

"Da'es shain tia asa, shan." The whispers stopped for approximately the same time it took my brain to restart itself. I froze, not knowing what to do. I had just talked in an unknown language, saying unknown things to an unknown being that I couldn't even see.

"Ye aven mia sedai tia mia souvra." The voice answered from the pillars in front of me, disappearing and reappearing gradually like it was blowing around amongst the pillars in a nonexistent wind. I understood that it was an invitation, but what kind.

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"Ye lyet tia a shan". I tried to answer it, and more of the whispers left my lips, leaving me terrified of myself. I didn't know where I was, what had happened to me, what the blood had done to me or anything else right now. I felt my knees giving in under me and I collapsed on the ground shaking. I sat there for a long time before I got my legs under control again and lifted myself up. I walked over and picked up the lantern. It was robust with a frame made of spiked metal and formed like a cage around something like a fairy light it was also kind of heavy, so I figured it could be used as a weapon. Lantern in hand I started following the whispers. As I got closer to them they'd disappear a bit further in, sometimes turning me sometimes making me go back, but I had nowhere else to go so I continued.

I walked for hours, many hours, maybe days. I felt no hunger, no thirst and I didn't sleep. I walked through canyons and over ridges, I left the pillar lands after maybe a days walking, maybe two, and reached a trail. It was fresh, the grey earth had just been dug up moments before I got there as the dust was still settling. The voice traveled along it so I had no choice but to follow. I didn't consciously understand what it was telling me, but somehow I knew. It was teaching me something, not just my subconscious, it might even be my body that understood on it's own, but It was there, the knowledge of whatever. I followed the trail for twice or trice as long as I had been walking between the pillars and slowly I began to understand words of what the voice whispered and I felt weirdly proud. I reached dunes of black sand and walked over them following the whisper, and only seeing the 2 metres in front of me that the light from my lantern could illuminate. I started understanding what the whispering meant, not in a crude 'words' way but in a truer way a more perfect understanding. Over the next few weeks through the dunes and the crater that followed that It taught me to summon the force of the sleeping world around me to burn and scorch and move things for me. It taught me to see and hear and smell and feel the sleeping world that no one saw and it taught me how to bend its horrors to my will. I came to call it 'Miere' and I was it's servant.

When we reached the ocean it was frozen and she was waiting for me, beautiful in her own terrifying form; she was an abomination; with a head crowned in freely flowing tentacles, a face that was only a mouth; her body was that of a snake without the flesh and skin, from it protruding spines that flowed like grass in a breeze; her limbs were frail to look at but agile and strong, joined together by tentacles as black as the night. Her tails swirled lazily around behind her, ready to strike and rake. In a split second she was around me, swirling and muddling the world around us with colors. My forehead burned as she carved it and I woke up.