My name is Reynard Du'Loch. I suspect something impossible to be happening to me. I do not know if I am going mad or if the things I have seen and experienced have truly occured in some reality. And so as of the 20th of March 1932 I shall journal these... experiences as best I can. Because earlier today was the first time I could remember in full detail one of my experiences. As an old man I dread the waking hours. The aches and pains accompanying me were almost comforting in their familiarity. They followed me from my bedside to the train station on route to Bernardsville, the place of my work. The stubborn things held on to my knees and snuck between my knuckles, and by the time I found a cabin and seat I was glad to rest my aching back.

I had long grown tired of the job I held and had no focus on my way to it. Between the rumble of the train car, the rush of tunnel walls and my night-sleep cut short by vivid nightmares, I began to nod off on my commute while holding on to my messenger bag.

When I awoke it was in a caravan in the desert sands of the Roudahn. I sat in a carriage of sorts, padded in silken pillows, and smelling of incense.

I opened the carriage door as it plodded onwards and witnessed, with breath held, the vast expanse of the Red Sands.  

I covered my eyes before the sun to witness the great Roudahn Desert open outward, dunes uncountable rolled out to a greater sky. Meeting at a horizon oh, so far away. A desert wind smarted by, setting my clothes aflutter and cooling the sweat on my body. 

My God. 

In that moment, I had the distinct sensation of awakening from a long and vivid dream.

It is a most peculiar feeling. 

What manner of madness was this I wondered, in the face of a wind that felt too real to be à dream. As a matter of fact, how am I so familiar with it all? It felt all at once an old memory and an alien reality.

"Reynahar! '' a man called out, interrupting my musings. “How was your sleep?" He asked while riding on what was not a camel. No. It was a massive ant. Brown and red chitin covered its thorax and small abdomen. Its six legs moved in a mesmerizing rhythm. 

The man laughed, I might have had my jaws agape. "Did you dream again? Anything interesting?"

I could not answer, not when I could see the other carriages both behind and infront, all drawn by giant ants too! Each with a rider sitting on the thorax in saddle and bit.

My God! 

A parrot surprised me as it landed seemingly from nowhere and spoke. "Forman Inniad speaking, we are almost upon the Mesnian Oasis, we shall break camp under the shade of its trees." it fluffed its wings of reds and yellows and flew off. Presumably to repeat the message to the other caravans.

The rider of my carriage, Dalenelad, chuckled "We shall see then if this is your Blessed Oasis" he continued to laugh to himself in disbelief.

I remembered his name. I had hired him in the port city of Abaldeen, the only rider to humor my quest for the Blessed Oasis. Dalenelad. 

The breakaway! We can not follow them to the Mesnian Oasis, we must breakaway soon. I rushed into the shade of my carriage sorting through maps and parchment in my... messenger bag. My messenger bag is exactly the same brown one. It was a little more worn but by God, it was my bag. No, no, one thing at a time. The breakaway. I pulled the right map out and hung my bag over my shoulder. 

I peeked my head out of my carriage, trying to ignore the swaying of the carriage, and looked outwards. I held my hand over my eyes to block the glare of the sun and searched the horizon for the telltale brown bumps of the hidden Mesnian Outpost. Nothing. I climbed out onto the roof of the carriage, hoping we did not miss the breakaway point. Ah, you could not imagine my relief. There! In this tireless expanse of reds and browns , there was a break near the western horizon, a set of hills so small. "There Dalenelad, there are the hills where we will find our Oasis!"

The lurch of the ant turning almost threw me off the roof of the carriage, but not before it snapped me awake. Instinctively I held onto a stand of cold metal as the train lurched to the right as it curved leftwards. Blearily, still in the throes of sleep, I looked through the window pane at a dark tunnel rushing by. Not my station. I fell back asleep as the train cart righted. Instinctively grabbing onto the carriage sides as the ant and carriage lurched left as the ant righted. "Hey! , a warning mayhaps?" I asked Dalenelad, the formic-man only laughed. 

The sway of the carriage and the glare of the desert sun eventually convinced me to hide in the shade. It was not long till I had to ask " How much longer do you think Dalenelad?" 

"We will arrive with the setting sun, and call me Daleh"

He said it with a strange inflection I suspected I could not repeat and I wondered how to ask how without seeming a stranger in a strange world. But my words failed me and all I said was " I will"

Some time passed and I could not help but ask " So, Daleh, how did you come to find yourself here as a formic man?"

I could not see his face but I knew he smiled when he spoke, "It is a common enough craft out here in the Red Sands, I could ride and care for formics before I was tall enough to climb them without my father's help."

"What of you Reynard, what drove you to this edge of the world searching for immortality?" His words struck me as deeply 'knowing'. A question you would ask a child even though you knew the answer. In that moment I realized I could not trust Delah, in as much as this world was a mystery to me, so was he. 

“A flight of fancy I suppose, It's where my mind wandered as I dreaded the monotony of my existence, so why not seek the oasis that could make me anew?" Did I truly dread what my life had become? The words felt true as I spoke them, there was a subtle space to reflect I had here that I did not have in my waking. How did I never notice? For the first time in a long time I saw my hand and thought, 'gods!, when did I grow so old?. It was like a fog had lifted my from mind and my thoughts ran in ways that seemed both new and terribly old. It felt like waking up. 

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As I reveled in this newfound state of mind, my carriage bucked hard to the left and quickly began sliding left and down. I and everything inside slid and crashed into the left side of the cabin, which pushed the carriage into a roll down whatever it was we were falling.

Jaws like a crocodile's but five times bigger snapped my carriage in half with an earth shattering roar, a breath away from me, exposing me to the dark desert night. Tumbling unto moving sands I realized what hell I'd found myself within. A whirlpool, of sorts. All around me the sands funneled to a point that sat the head and jaw of a gargantuan beast. With pitch black beads for eyes that were each as large as my torso and jaws that were twice, nay thrice my height. Jaws that were crushing and eating the formic that had pulled my carriage, up above the lip of the whirlpool I heard "Du'Loch!" "I shouted back " I am here!!" as I struggled with increasing desperation to climb falling sands. "Catch!" Confused as I was I saw something wrapped in leather barely catching the moon's light flying towards me. I lunged to catch it , but missed as it struck my hands fell beside me, in cascading sands. Closer and closer to the demon below, when I grabbed, it was kukri but smaller, a dagger with a wicked curve. A new sort of fear cut through my mind as I suspected its purpose and Delah's intentions. I began to climb faster.

Dalenelad shouted down, clearer now "You cannot escape the trap of an anteater! You must kill it!" He was pointing back at the creature, all I could utter was disbelief "What?!" That cutting fear grew as I realized I could not out-climb the falling sands.

"Quick Du'Loch, before it eats the ant and turns on you!" With no other options I turned to the maw of the monster at the center of its trap, and gripped the blade. Under the jaws of the monster, the chitin of the formic cracked and shattered in ear-splitting snaps. The ant struggled for all it was worth, its mandibles open in a silent scream.

"The eyes Du'Loch! Slip the blade behind its eye!" I focused in one of those baleful eyes and I jumped. The funnel shape of the trap meant I caught the air for more than a moment , a third, maybe a fourth. I landed and slid into the head of the anteater, knife first. I missed the eyes and the blade struck its exoskeleton, I realized then what Delah meant. Its eye socket must be the only way to reach its vitals. With a ruthlessness that surprises me to this day, with my left I held onto its eyes and with my right I brought the dagger hard into and down. I cut deeper and deeper, the monster thrash with a madness I had never seen, in the haze of the ferocity inhabiting me the world was reduced to that particular motion. I stabbed in, stabbed down and out. Over and over again.

At some point the anteater must have stilled , I remember stopping as well, with my shoulder aching something fierce. I realized the anteater had retreated into its burrow and taken me in its eye cavity with it. I reached into one of my coat's pockets and picked a light orb, I shook it fiercely and it emitted an amber glow. I shook it till it brightened to a golden glare that was hard to look at. The entire process felt like rote memory, as though I was acting out a memory I did not have. From the shadows the light cut out walls. At first the sight made no sense, walls? Then I could make out windows and doors, and a cobbled road, leading me to stairs. The anteater's body was like a giant centipede, its body coiled among the building supported it's head as it peeked up and outside this buried cavern. I looked around for anything that might have fallen into the anteater's burrow. There were dried corpses, bits of wood and other rubbish. Eventually I found my messenger bag sitting in the rubble. I found the dagger but not its sheath. I also found a broken crown, its central crystal unmarred but its half circle snapped in half. I found coins of silver and some of gold, or so they seemed. All went into various spots in my bag. Eventually I looked down those stairs, and knew that a settlement this close to the Blessed Oasis must be connected. So I forged ahead. 

When the orb began to dim I'd give it a good shake. The tunnel surrounding the stairs were adorned in markings that were eerily similar to nordic runes. I felt that they had meaning but had no idea what they meant. I tried to commit them to memory and moved on. I followed the stairs that seemed to spiral leftwards till I arrived at a level floor and an open door. At this point I was certain I was a mile or two under the sands. I could see a faint light behind the door as well as a faint hum. I covered the orb in both palms to hide its light and I saw true. There was some light coming through the door. I pocketed the orb and approached. 

That hum began to intensify and I realized I wasn't hearing it. It was more of a feeling. A tactile sense. A hum I could not hear with my ears but I could feel in my bones. I stepped through the door and into a small and bright cave. There at its bottom sat the Blessed Oasis. 

Almost in a trance I approached, the hum rising till I could make rhythms in its lulls and rises.Barely breathing and with shaking hands I reached into the bright blue waters of the oasis and drank. I swear it, I could feel my years fall away. My hair grew back black as sin, falling to my shoulders. I could hear the snaps and pops as my spine straightened and I stood without a hint of a hunch for the first time in a long time. I could barely make out my reflection in the pool. What I saw was a young man, just past his pubescent years. From my bag I brought out a vial, one of many. I filled it with the glowing blue waters of the oasis and carefully placed it in my bag. I brought a second vial to the oasis before Daleh appeared beside me. Now it is possible he simply snuck up beside me. But that is not what I recall. I starkly remember him appearing beside me with a soft wumph, with haste he struck the vial from my hand and pointed a strange pistol at me. 

Dalenelad stared at the oasis for sometime before he spoke. "Oasis or not, this was a mistake, you've been awake too long." He never raised his eyes from the pool. My eyes flitted to his face at his words but ultimately returned to the pistol's end, which never wavered from between my eyes.

"How did you do that?" I asked in hopes of stalling my eventual murder. "Hm? Oh, ha! I suppose you don't remember everything." He finally looked up at me. He began to whisper in a language I did not know, the whispers seemed to crowd out everything else, every sound, every thought was replaced by those whispers. When he spoke, his voice had gained an unnatural weight as though they were an absolute truth. "You will not remember this when you wake, you will never spare a thought for today. Understood?" I nodded, I did understand. 

Dalenelad sighed at that, it seemed sad, and true in a way that made all his other expressions of emotion seem false. "For me at least it will be sad to see you go, Raenear" 

I never heard the shot.

Yet I awoke to the melodic tones of a train conductor's announcement "Bernardsville Station, Arrived at Bernardsville Station". I awoke from what felt just like any other nap on the train, the details already vapor in my hands. I doff my bowler and put it on, glad the announcer had woken me at all.

I walked out of the train car, messenger bag slung over one shoulder with a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something. Something important. 

I stopped and weathered the tide of moving humanity departing and embarking the train. I checked my pockets for anything missing. I checked my bag and found a strange glass vial. In the dim recess of my bag, the vial glowed. At once, without conscious thought I grabbed the vial and drank it all. Immediately I could feel the changes, the changes I remembered from my dream! 

The dream that was not a dream. 

I looked at the vial in my hand as the implications of its existence ran through my mind. I rifled through my bag looking for anything else, I found the bloody dagger, some large gold coins and the broken crown. Then I remembered why the dream ended. "Dalenelad." I remembered what he called me. Raenear.