Fable - Ask Those Who Dwell In the Dark

[Dahldaera]

There was no scowl in that moment he looked at her, but the sneer forming on her expression wasn't likely much friendlier to behold. The Smith's wariness of the Gods and their creatures be damned, he had a spark of spirit to him. She only hoped that spark would ignite and not wither at the first sign of danger.


An indeterminate length of time (hours? days? what was time to an eternal?) later found the boat gently rocking up against a blackened shore. Though the river continued on into the bleakness of the Rift their transport seemed keen on docking. Be it fate or just a curious bit of circumstance, a water-weary Dahldaera climbed inelegantly from the boat to plant her boots on soggy ground.

Where? she wondered as she willed the sensation of swaying from her body and turned to glimpse back into a looming void of black. The walls of stone were absolute, but where the boat had left them there was a crack in their foundation. A 'crack' was hardly doing what sat a distance away justice - the opening was large enough to permit the establishment of a small town or the passing of a ancient, eldritch creature.

She thought she heard a whisper of wind from its depths.

"Is this ... the entrance to the Whispering Stretch?" Dahl glanced to the Captain.

 

[Nasir]

Nasir stepped up besides the young woman, staring ahead at the massive crag.

A breath filled his lungs, and a small trickle of fear ran through his chest. It was not an emotion that he often felt, in fact he could hardly remember the last time it had entered his soul. Yet the sight of what was before them, the memories of what he had seen brought the emotion back to even him.

His fingers curled into a fist. "Yes."

Nasir said quietly as he slowly looked towards the Smith. Briefly he wondered if the man would would make it through, if Dahldaera would.

If he would.

The Captain's eyes slowly pulled away from his companions and slowly stepped forward. There was no point in waiting, no point in stalling their entrance to the horror that lay before. As he began to move his voice echoed out ahead.

"Remember what I said." He told the both of them. "Do not believe everything you see."

 

[Kalavan]

The smith lagged behind the others, only for a moment, to readjust himself to standing on solid ground. After smoothing the front of his shirt and tugging the leather strap across his chest, Kalavan caught up to the others with a small hop in his step.

"And lo, the unknown beckons us." he whispered, aureate gaze focusing on the opening in the distance.

As they took squelching steps forward, Kalavan's thoughts wandered. There seemed to have been no small amount of dangers between where they started and their destination- and they even took the portal stone. How long would it have taken them if not for that?

"I wonder if Malus Duun was lonely."

 

[Dahldaera]

It was hard not to look on in wonder at the entrance to the Stretch. Dahl's blue eyes cast a baleful glow as it roved slowly from the base of the opening to the edges of darkness where no light nor shape could be discerned. Oft'times it was hard to remember that there was an entirely separate world, high above the darkness. One of light and mortality. Here, standing before the gaping void of their fated futures, it felt as if they were worlds away from anything else.

This place did not even feel as though it were part of the Underdark, but an entrance to an entirely different realm. Who was to say that it wasn't.

For her part, Dahl was content to let Nasir take the lead. Though prideful to a fault, she was not so bloated to think his additional years of living and previous experience here did not automatically make him the best leader for the challenge. Her father, in his prime, would have taken the lead simply because he could. Because his title demanded it.

She was keen to survive, learn, and grow from this experience.

Daera followed after a short pause to wait for Kalavan. Wouldn't do to leave her Forgemaster behind.

"I wonder if Malus Duun was lonely..."

"I cannot imagine a time that he wasn't," she replied as they trudged across the blackened sands of the shoreline and into the maw of the crag, "to be truly great seems synonymous with being truly alone, even when surrounded perpetually by your people and allies."

Malus Duun had no equal, she recalled of his lore, and had likely been lonely until the day he died.

 

[Nasir]

Nasir did not comment on Malus Duun, did not speak on the tales of things long passed.

His attention on what lay before them, the eerie silence of the Stretch that loomed just ahead. Blue eyes fell upon the rocky crags, his lips thinning as he took in a deep breath. He remembered the scent of this place, the stench of death intermixed with ash.

It was familiar, and it sent goosebumps slowly rolling up his spine.

Five hundred years. Five hundred years he had walked this earth and faced a thousand different threats. No fear touched him even now, not truly, but a weariness set in upon his heart. Nasir knew that he did not want to walk this path, could feel his muscles ache with resistance as he came to a stop just before the entrance of the Stretch.

His face was an impassive mask as he looked towards the old broken stone that marked their way, a signpost that had long ago been torn to pieces by the beasts that lingered within the path ahead. His fingers tightened at his side, a breath pulling into his lungs.

He thought he could almost hear them, already, whispers of terror, of promise.

Slowly the Dark Elf drew himself together, and then without another comment to his companions he began to step forward.

Almost as soon as he moved into the Stretch, the second he stepped passed that signpost a haze fell upon him his vision. It was a bare mist, just present enough to obscure the earth around him. Beneath it, behind that thin veil were corpses.

Dozens upon dozens of them lay strewn at the side of the road, each a face familiar to him.

 

[Kalavan]

Kalavan quietly soaked up Dahldaera's response. Then as if he had never posed the question on her, the smith abruptly knelt and reached into his satchel to grab an empty vial. He scooped some of the blackened sand and watched it settle in the container. The Elf hurried to fall back in behind the Crowne Sovereign, stuffing the corked vial back into his pack.

He was the last to enter—the last to fall under the Illith'Drak's spell. As the trio stepped onward, the sooty ground beneath them merged into a brick trail. As Kalavan looked up, the Stretch had taken on an eerily familiar scene; that of the approach to his family's villa. It was the clearest the smith had ever seen anything.

The actual approach was a short one, yet in the Stretch, it appeared impossibly long to him. In the distance was his ancestral home, a blackened, vertical structure that almost threatened to break through the Stretch's ceiling. It hadn't always been so large... has it?

Kalavan had spent the better part of his life in his forge, far away from that bleak place. He'd done well to push its image from his mind up until this point. The smith nearly shrunk in on himself.

"Wait," the Smith stopped in his tracks, his fearful gaze settled far ahead, "Is there no other way?"