Aedmorn walked the impossible garden, with colours vivid beyond understanding, and the heady scents that overwhelm the senses. He walked through the long, lush grass, surrounded by flowers and the butterflies, large and bedecked in resplendent raiments of all the colours of the world, and more besides. Trees grew mighty about, limbs strong and broad and the canopy above swaying gently as if a breeze blew, though none touched Aedmorn.
He breathed it in, rejoicing at it, soul exulting, worries and concerns sloughed away by its touch. He felt…home.
It was a peculiar feeling, but it felt right. Here was home, where he was meant to be, where he had been searching for, even if he did not realise it. It called to him, sang in his blood and his bones. He was part of it, and it was a part of him. He found a broad tree in the heart of the garden and there sat upon the grass beneath it, leaning back against its smooth trunk. The tree seemed to accept him, to shift to accommodate him so that it was as if he was in the embrace of the tree, its trunk and roots supporting him. Butterflies danced for him, performing their elaborate rituals.
He could see beyond the garden though, to where the darkness and the shadows still lingered, the realm beyond reality pressing in on his garden, threatening it still, and somewhere out there, the creature still lurked, waiting with the patience of a thing older than the aeons and creation.
The means to defeat it remained as elusive as it was, but at least there in the garden, and with the sword in hand, he was safe. Safe, but unable to venture forth, trapped in a cage of colour. He was still uncertain how it had come about, just what he had touched upon that had caused it. There had been another realm there, beyond understanding and reality that he had touched upon, somehow, through the sword. And the voice that had spoken as well, had come through the sword, from that realm, he was certain. Were they one like the shadow creature? That they had aided him did not mean necessarily that they were a friend, for things as ancient and unknowable as that had their own agendas that were beyond the ken of mortal men to understand. It was, he considered, likely that it was a rival to the shadow beast and had merely used him as a tool within that game that had extended back ages and would continue on until all had run to an ultimate end.
Aedmorn cared not for the reasons, only that aid had been given, help when he needed it. He sat there, resting the sword upon his lap and waited. There would be a moment of reckoning coming, of that he was certain, but for now, he could do naught else but wait.
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The moments slipped on eternal and in an instant, slipping one into the next. He let his mind go idle, with no thoughts to contend with, simply sitting, waiting.
A screech sounded from beyond the garden, from the shadows and the darkness, a scream of rage and hate and revulsion, a scream that tore the shadows and sent them tumbling before it. Here was anger, inchoate and ancient, directed towards the garden.
Aedmorn rose to his feet, holding the sword to the fore, and slipped towards the garden edge. There he caught sight of the wavering form of the shadow beast, ever-shifting, throwing itself at the borders of the forest, only to be repelled by it, dissipating and reforming once more. Time and again it did so, only for its rage and fury to grow greater yet as it was repelled, denied in the heart of its own realm, until wisps of smoke escaped from it, the shadowed form almost burning from within.
Aedmorn laughed, the sound of it ringing through the shadows and the darkness, clear and bright, full of life and love and hope. Full did the shadow beast recoil from the noise of it, arms raised as if to ward off the sound of it, for it was a thin alien and hateful to it.
“You,” it did say, and in those words it bore down with all the malice and enmity that he held, enough to burn a world to cinders and ash such was the potency of it. Should he have been met with it anywhere else and not within the life-infused grounds of the garden it would have blasted him, rent his mind to wrack and ruin, but there it washed over him as but a breath of warm wind, disturbing him not.
Aedmorn raised the sword and let the play of colour ripple across it, angling it towards that ancient being of shadows and hate. Once more it recoiled and threw up its arms to ward itself from the light, and the life that spilt forth.
“Fear,” spake Aedmorn, “Fear grips you cold, does it not? Aye, I can sense it. You fear this, a thing new where naugth new has ever been. And you hate it for being thus, for it is thy doom.”
“I am ceaseless and eternal,” the shadow hissed, voice as chill as the benighted dark. “I can not be undone, by this or ought else that you can imagine. Step forth if you think you can undo me.”
“Nay,” Aedmorn laughed. “You think I a fool to step beyond the bounds of this place? Here I am, and here I will stay.”
Once more the thing of shadows hissed and folded in on itself, disappearing into the darkness, leaving Aedmorn alone once more. He smiled and returned to the heart of the garden, to rest and to wait again.
Yet as he stepped into it, he perceived a change in the garden, for a light swirled within it, of deepest veridian, a glowing orb that had started no larger than his hand, yet as he watched, it grew in size until it was larger than he. And within it, indistinct, there appeared to be a figure, walking towards him.