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DREAMS OF TORMENT
THE DOMAIN OF THE DREAMREAPER
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Annabelle stood in a field of ice. Her bare feet sunk in the snow and wind tugged on her stark white negligee. Tharia would have liked the see-through gown. Tharia. This wasn’t right. The moment her mind realized that the scene was odd, stark frost spread inside her body. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in the wind. Rumbling echoed through the ground and something pitch-black pushed through the snow. Feathered wings spread out, followed by a sleek reptile body three times her size. The Dreamreaper. A voice came from the world around her.
“Welcome, Godslayer”
The serpent coiled itself around Annabelle. Intense warmth emanated from the creature and intelligent eyes looked directly at the half-naked goddess.
“Why show me this shape?” Annabelle inquired. The world rumbled with a laugh from the serpent. Its answer came with a chuckle.
“Because it’s honest! Why hide your true nature? Bring it out”
She held her hand to the side and concentrated on the Scythe. Yet no gold light manifested into her hand. Her body was nigh naked and she was unarmed. The feeling of helplessness spread throughout. With a hand against her chest, she looked back up at the serpent.
“This is my true nature”, Annabelle said.
“Regretable.”
Faster than her eyes could see, the reptile had lunged towards her. Sharp teeth bit into her stomach and tore at her arms. Intense pain spread throughout her. She hammered her fists against the massive muzzle without effect. Her vision whipped about as the serpent threw her into the air. She felt the cold wind rush past her and the teeth bit down once more. Annabelle screamed in agony, her head hung out of the maw while the rest of her body was enveloped by a rough tongue.
Her stomach lurched. The Dreamreapers wings easily lifted them off the ground. It soared towards the sky until the clouds parted around them. There, the creature twisted its body and leaned into a dive. Half-way down, it snapped it’s neck to the side and then send Annabelle flying at ludicrous speed. She had barely enough time to process her fall when her body broke through the snow and cracked into the earth below. There was no time to scream, every bone broke inside of her and the Dreamreaper was back in range. It slammed a large claw down on her. The sharp end pierced right through her abdomen and nailed her to the ground.
“Sneaky liar”, the Dreamreaper said and then lifted her back off the ground. It flicked her away like a toy. Her broken body sailed through the air and smacked back first into a tree. She fell down, impaling herself on several of the branches until her body looked like a porcupine with blood dripping from it.
“Just admit it”, the world echoed.
Unimaginable pain pulsed through her, she crawled away from the reptile. One bit at a time. She had barely managed a hand’s width when something snatched her ankles and dangled her up into the air. Her broken body flailed about helplessly. With her vision blurry and her senses dulled, she swiped her empty hand at the serpent. Something large and white appeared out of nowhere and slapped the serpent from the side. The pressure on her ankles stopped and she plummeted into the snow.
“Yes! Embrace our primal self. We’re a force of nature, not meat sacks playing pretend human”, the serpent roared into the sky. Annabelle got back on her feet. Her vision now easily towered the trees around her. Hot breath broke from her muzzle and melted the snow underneath. Her vision had expanded in ways she didn’t think possible. She had the body of a large white fox. Crystals stuck out of her spine and folded into spirals reaching up. Strands of silver hair hung from her muzzle. Her head carried a crown made out of golden crystals, they shimmered with lightning circling within.
Two of her eyes were fixed on the serpent but the other two scanned over her own body. It was sleek, primal and primitive. White fur, bordering on gold, glinted with barely concealed power. Muscles rippled with every motion. She lunged forward, her jaw effortlessly snatched up the neck of the serpent. The taste of blood was divine and send warm shivers through her new body. Anticipation, bloodlust and perverse joy were her primal emotions. She snapped her jaw shut and felt the neck of the serpent break under her strong jaw. The Dreamreaper was tiny in comparison to her. Her paw pressed down on it, she let go of the tattered neck and suddenly spread the crystals on her back into a circular formation. Energy ran from one part of her spine to another, until it jumped up into the crown. Golden lightning rained down from the heavens high. It hesitated just above the ground before it jumped into the Dreamreaper and burned it to a crisp. She relished the joy of this brutal destruction and roared out her bloodlust into the world.
Yet a breath later, she sat in a wooden throne next to a fireplace. She was once more dressed in a thin white negligee. It barely concealed her bosom or legs. A second throne was placed right next to her, but the man sitting inside wasn’t tied down like she was. Annabelle was breathless, she still felt the scent of blood on her lips but smacking them, there was nothing on them but a bit of her own saliva. She looked at the man. He seemed unremarkable. It was just an average old man with a short stubble beard and greying hair. In his hands, he held a tiny doll that looked like herself.
“What was that?” Annabelle said. Her heart trembled. Now that it was over, she felt that this thing she had become was part of herself and that scared her. There was a mindless lust for violence in that thing.
The man sitting next to her raised up the doll, “We gods are grown in stages. Our first life matters not. Nothing of it will be left once we come into contact with the ascension.”
“And then?” Annabelle said. She tried her bindings and found them more than reasonable. The true bondage was her own body not listening to what she wanted to do. The goddess could muster no strength of her own for anything but frail and slow motions. He cleared his throat and continued.
“We are what comes out of gestation, a mindless beast of hunger. Reach into you, your true self is the source of your impulses. Everything else is a convenient lie, we drive a skin of meat like a... doll”
His hand pointed toward the doll on the ground. The small thing stood up on its own and wobbled up Annabelle’s bare legs. She felt small wooden hands reach around it and then the thing crawled up, sending shivers of disgust through her.
“Why show me this?” Annabelle asked.
She squirmed and struggled her leg from side to side, but the doll sound reached her lap. It then sat down with crossed legs and stared up at her. The dreamreaper’s voice came from the side.
“Experience. So many of us have forgotten what it means to be alive. We’re not parasites, we’re the apex predators. The first step of breaking your will to live is to show you what you really are. We’re not devoid of emotion, leeches that steal from humans, we’re creatures in denial of our true self”
“Why bring me back then?”
When her words left her mouth, the Dreamreaper suddenly stopped his motion. His eyes narrowed to a slit and his forehead wrinkled.
“You did that yourself, I only did you the courtesy of waking you from your dream”, he said.
“Then those urges?”
“All yours. Let us proceed, shall we?”
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It was a warm summer day. Annabelle came home from a long hunt. Her body was weary with exhaustion. She stretched her sunkissed arms and marveled at the soft tan on her skin. It felt good to be alive and even better to come home. A comfy wood cabin stood in a lush forest. She dismounted from her horse and enjoyed the thigh-high grass on her hands.
The door swung open and a beautiful woman walked out of the cabin. She was smaller and of an unusual beauty that Annabelle found ravishing. When Tharia smiled, so did Annabelle.
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“You look stunning with long hair”, said the goddess and ran her fingers through the long black locks. The first hint of grey showed therein and she loved every detail of it. Fine wrinkles had recently started showing on the face of her lover and they reminded her of the difference between their kinds.
“Have you hunted again? Did you bring me back a human to cook?” said Tharia with an innocent look on her face. Annabelle suddenly felt strange in her stomach. She turned around and dragged a large bag down from the horse. It slumped onto the ground and opened up to the face of a young boy. His eyes bulged white open and he pleaded through the gag.
“He’s still alive? Delicious. Fear always tenderizes the meat just right”, Tharia said and licked her lips. This was just wrong. Annabelle watched as her lover walked over towards the boy on the ground. Somehow, the Scythe had appeared in her hands. She took a step back, her mind clouded with emotions. The goddess swung her weapon with expertise, it easily cut into Tharia’s neck and tore off the head in one quick motion. Her body then knelt down next to the boy in the bag. She removed the gag from his mouth. He stammered words in panic.
“Goddess, you’re cruel”
Annabelle heard herself answer, “Obviously. But tell me, lustful one, if you were allowed to touch this body for twenty years, would you not accept an outcome such as this?”
“I wish for it”, the boy stuttered. Her mind reeled from what she saw. On some level, she recognized that these were not her actions. The heart trembled with pain at having killed her only love, even though she knew it wasn’t real. Everything around her froze in motion.
“A clean cut”, the Dreamreaper suddenly said right next to her. He had appeared from out of nowhere. His hands gestured towards the boy that was frozen in a look of near orgasmic rapture at the sheer idea of getting to touch Annabelle.
“What you see in his eyes, is what gives you your strength. Did you know that in the entire history of our kind, there were but two gods that found a way to bypass the ultimate rule to not kill their own?” the Dreamreaper said.
“The first was a minor god of dreams by the name of Antescedante. I grew to be the Dreamreaper by driving gods into suicide with hand-crafted masterwork dreams”, the man said and walked around Annabelle. He then leaned close and tasted a whiff of her scent.
“Second was a minor goddess of need and lust by the name of Annabelle. This beautiful silver fox grew up to be the Godslayer, by unconsciously tempting humans to do her bidding. You made it so the gods could not retaliate for fear of hitting your body instead. You became their shield while they slaughtered the rest of us. This ended the entire pantheon save for you and me”
Annabelle listened to the words. They were a twisted version of what had really occurred. In the end, it still described the gist of it. The whole reason the gods died was that they could not strike back. Annabelle’s presence made sure of that. Sure, at the time she was nigh-dead but that mattered not. The humans could hack and slash the divine to their heart’s content. Was she really a goddess of lust? She had strong urges and people around her reacted to them too. There was more than one time when Tharia had suddenly sprung into lustful motion, even if it was highly inopportune.
“Why don’t I know these things?” Annabelle said with a shake of her head. The Dreamreaper reached for her chin. His eyes momentarily sparked with lust. Her influence really seemed to be based on carnal desire.
“Why indeed. You, out of many hundreds of gods, have become the first new old one in millennia. In the throes of death, you pieced together the arcane and divine. You’ve ascended twice”
Simmering range bubbled in her chest. She quickly lunged forward and punched her hand towards the Dreamreaper. Shortly before the impact, golden weapons appeared out of thin air. This time, however, she noticed an additional detail. They did not just appear, their shape came from thin strands of crystal coming from her back. The impression disappeared just as fast as they appeared.
All the weapons simultaneously drove deep into the Dreamreaper. He scowled and jumped back. The world around her fell apart. The carcass of Tharia turned into a doll and so did the lust-crazed boy. She stood on floating black islands inside a world of ambient skies. Chains locked the world together and despite the light, nothing showed more than its contours. The Dreamreaper lunged forward. His old man persona had withered visibly, it looked sickly and pale as it wrapped two hands around Annabelle. With eyes that had vertical pupils, he snarled a forked tongue at her.
“Back to the dream with you, a pupil does not best her master”
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“Thirty-four”, the Dreamreaper said with a self-satisfied smirk. He sat on a chair floating in the sky. Annabelle stood on a mountain of corpses. Her insides were all but burned away from emotion. In what felt like four hundred days, she had experienced lifetimes of joy with Tharia and each and every time, she had slaughtered her like an animal. The deaths had become increasingly more brutal too. This time, a skinned and flayed body dropped to the ground, Annabelle snarled up at the floating god in the sky.
“I will tear you from limb to limb”, she said. It sounded more like a growl than a voice.
“You can stop this any time you want. Either tell me how you ascended twice or chose to kill yourself. But instead, you relish the sensation of tearing the poor girl apart. You enjoy watching the life drain from those half-crazed eyes, it really gets you going.”
Annabelle shivered. Her body dripped with blood and viscera. She glared up at the Dreamreaper with murder in her eyes. He suddenly held up a hand.
“That number earlier, it’s the number of times you yourself have chosen to kill her. Sometimes for as little as denying fornication with you. Do you realize your true nature now? Embrace it. Rampage. Destroy. Break apart and show me”
The goddess heard a familiar voice behind her. Tharia again. The smaller girl walked up to her. This version looked quite a bit more rounded than the real one. Without even waiting for what she had to say, Annabelle turned around and punched her hand straight through the throat of the smaller girl.
“Thirty-five. Wrong time, wrong place this round of death, eh? Your mind is growing thinner every time.”
There was something deeply scary about the situation to Annabelle. That silver-fox savored every moment of carnage. As did she. This was the truth of the matter, the crux at the core of her being. Not even Tharia had trusted her with the truth. She had tasted bloodlust before. The one person Annabelle wanted most to be there for her - had lied out of fear.
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THE BASEMENT OF THE DOLLS
THE DOMAIN OF THE DREAMREAPER
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“Tharia, you’ll want to hurry”, the staff in the small woman’s hand said, “I can feel Annabelle’s spirit fading. She’s counting numbers now. Two-hundred-something. Her mind is barely there anymore. We might even be too late”
Tharia nodded. She pushed open the double doors with both her hands. Intense heat made her sweat but a gust of cold air rushed past her. The fire nearly doubled in intensity as a result, luckily the air blew away from her. She pushed forward, using the staff to light her path ahead. The small sphere of the room she could see made it look like another exhibition room. Unfinished dolls were propped on tables within glass-shaped showcases. Their insides showed a complex construct of wooden gears and levers.
“To your left, you’ll find a large showcase. Move it aside”, Sisi recommended.
Tharia headed towards the showcase. It was easily twice as large as she was. Strange petrified organs were on display inside of it. Using her whole body weight, she pushed against it. Pain shot up from her lower half and with a sudden snap, the showcase moved on tiny rails. It rattled aside, opening up into a staircase below. Tharia blinked and leaned back in the last second.
“Hurry down”
There was no need to wait for that suggestion. The raging fire in her back left her little another choice. She stormed down the stairs as fast as her body allowed her. Soon all she saw was an eternal set of stairs only held in place by a sphere of light. It was crowned by the sight of hundreds of floating islands against a nondescript sky.
“We’re reaching the end of the staircase. I’m sorry, I think your friend has lost the battle”, Sisi said. Tharia clutched her hand around the staff and increased her speed. Each step was accompanied by throbbing spikes of pain in muscle and tissue. The end of the stairs came suddenly, yet Tharia didn’t stop. A wooden door blocked her path and was easily dislodged by the good old method of just ramming it open, after actually using the door handle first.
The small sphere of the basement she saw, reminded her of a torture chamber. Wooden dolls were propped up on metal stands. Dead human bodies hung above them and her mind blanked out the rest of the details. Fighting down her nausea, she walked deeper into the room.
“He is here. On a bed, just a few more steps ahead. Prepare to strike”
Tharia nodded. She brought up the staff and then continued forward. Each step was muffled by an old carpet underneath. Her pulse quickened. Could it really be this easy to kill a god?
“Halt, go back, now!” Sisi suddenly shouted, “He knew! It’s a...”
Something batted the staff from her hands. The sphere disappeared and she found herself on a large plain in the middle of nowhere. She saw the Dreamreaper lie on the ground, the black feathered serpent snapped its maw into the neck of a majestic looking creature. The large winged-serpent suddenly let go of the silver-fox and sneered with rows of crooked teeth showing in its muzzle.
“Two hundred and twenty-one", the creature said. The large fox-like creature lifted its head. Four eyes all fixed on Tharia. Frozen in place, she found herself unable to move. The girl was awestruck at the sheer size of these beasts. True, the false star was bigger but these had an air of primal royalty on them.
“Your tricks have grown stale”, the silver-fox said with a weary voice that vaguely sounded like Annabelle.
“I agree. This is the last one. What’s one more?” the serpent said with a mocking voice. It coiled itself around the silver-fox. Black feather wings wrapped around the strange crystal protrusions from the fox’s back. She wanted to run away but without Sisi, there was no way out of this realm. Tharia didn’t have time to consider other options. With a motion so fast her eyes couldn’t follow it at all, the giant fox lunged and suddenly appeared in front of her. Wind pressure forced Tharia to stumble back, she felt disgusting saliva drench down on her when two rows of razor-sharp teeth snapped shut.
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End: Nightmare's Thorn| Coming up: All paths end