Private Tales Wrapped in the Wyrms Coil

[Fieravene]

She recounted the last steps taken here with the trade caravan, en route to meet Medja with several gifts. The tree of life, a new servant, and a crown of green. It felt just yesterday, though by now it had been several years. What was several years to someone who lived as long as she? Such a short period of time.

In the gloom her crimson eyes cast a baleful glow. No torch was needed to guide her through the black and she may have very well become one with it were she not playing guide to another.

"Come," said her voice, once a few steps before him but now suddenly beside him, her hand finding his own and intertwining their fingers - her own far smaller and more delicate than his. "Can't have you wandering off in the darkness."

The pit of an Eldar God's belly was fathomless. Made for a good holiday, though.

"This way..." Fi tugged him on deeper into the dark until they found themselves in a long hallway where the floor dipped, yawed, and seemed to slowly sway beneath them.

"It has been some time since our last chat. What does a rudderless Vizier do with such doldrums?"

 

[Ashuanar]

He found himself, rather, quite content to follow after her, his hand in hers, his path quite clearly at her mercy. As one who led so many, it was a welcome reprieve from the weight of responsibility, regardless of the outcome.

He trusted Fieravene - that much was true. But what he trusted her to do? That was a little different.

Incur harm? No, or... not out of malevolence. But what real harm is there in that which only heals stronger?

This way she urged. He hadn't noticed his hesitation - but it did linger. Ashuanar was renowned for his ability to preserve himself. Not a coward, not terribly hesitant once committed, but shrewd. There was something about this place that ebbed at his very being. It urged him to turn, and make his way back out. But... something within him told him that, by now, it was far too late for this.

A rudderless Vizier? He found the phrase somewhat humourous, given his escapades of late.

"They lose their way, for a time..." he looked about the darkness, almost as though her perceived through it, "...but find that they are bound to a purpose. There is a choice, they must remain, or they must disappear."

 

[Fieravene]

They walked together, hand-in-hand, on and on. The ground beneath their feet undulating in a manner not unlike churning waves in a restless sea. Fieravene closed her eyes as he spoke, tall and pointed ears drinking in the sound of his voice, dark figure all but melding into the blackness that swallowed them.

"Hoist the anchor," she said, though the tone was not immediately apparent on whether it was a suggestion or a command. Her eyes opened once more as her footfalls came to an abrupt stop. Fiera's hand gave his a squeeze and her arm stiffened against the grip for him to follow suit.

"The sea will take you where you need to be."

Her other hand lifted to his bicep and informed pointed pressure to follow. Fieravene began to walk backwards, "Don't look back to where you've been. It's not there anymore."

 

[Ashuanar]

The poetry of her words were not lost to him. He'd lived them. Breathed them.

Salt in the air.

Listless crashing against a hardened hull.

Far from aimless.

Her gestures were confusing to him, and in the dark - as much as he wished it to be different - he was blind to what she knew, to what she saw. And yet backwards he stepped. That which was passed was no longer, its not there anymore.

So where then, did he travel so blindly into? The past was not, and yet into difference did he back himself into. The place whence he came no longer the same.

Nothing was the same.

"If it is not, then what is now?"

 

[Fieravene]

If he recalled the deep rumbling from earlier in the night that had echoed eerily across the dune landscape, he would experience it once more but this far much closer to home. Around them the hallway began to vibrate and shake as what felt to be an earthquake of tremendous magnitude overtook the area. Beyond just the heave of earth around them, a distant groaning shivered within the air and rattled the bones beneath flesh.

Fiera's steps had halted as she planted her feet to steady against the tremors, "Oblivion," she spoke loudly through the horrendous din of noise as the groaning shifted into a raucous roar, "paradise, eternity, the Dreamscape-" a final shudder nearly toppled the elf and she caught herself against the wall at the last minute.

The quaking settled as quickly as it had begun and the roar faded into a distant droning that had likely been heard all the way to Annuakat.

The dark elf loosed a sigh and straightened, dusting debris from the black of her ensemble, "Take your pick. I cannot begin to know what your desires will create here."

 

[Ashuanar]

Aside from the struggle of keeping himself upright, Ashuanar remained rather calm throughout the trembling ordeal. It the revelation that it was his own inner workings that had some measure of influence over what they were to experience, that perturbed him.

As of late, as confident a warrior and leader as he'd become, he had been far from sure of himself. What sort of calamity could that bring?

As he brushed himself off, he opened his mouth to say something, but his attention became piqued by something else for just a moment.

His eyes slid to the side.

"What if one's hopes and dreams are not alike?"

 

[Fieravene]

"Then we are in for a very interesting adventure indeed."

Her hand remained firmly locked in his during the tumult. When it was over, Fiera adjusted her grip and coiled her fingers over his knuckles with a squeeze. He might not be able to see her face, but the way the lower lids of her eyes curled upwards suggested the bright excitement at the prospect of danger she was so well known for.

"Once more, unto the abyss I go..."​

The dark elf resumed walking backwards, steps measured and grip of Ashuanar's hand secure.

"To a place where my mind shivers and my soul doth crow..."​

Marching along to the undulating sway of the hall, it threw the balance of thought into an uneasy spiral. Twisting and churning, unbalanced and swaying, until one couldn't tell if their feet was making contact with the ground at all.

"Caw caw, my back turned to thee..."​

Even now her voice had begun to warble, pitching and droning as it was lost into the fathoms. The walls around them yawned open.

"Caw caw,"​

Her right foot stepped back against nothingness. Fiera's voice dropped to a whisper, her hand gripping Ashu's so tight it threatened to break fingers.

"do not forget to breathe." ​

The pair of them began to fall back into a cavernous abyss. They dropped like stones through cold, dark air, and smashed against the surface of gloomy waters far below. There a weight pulled upon them, dragging their mortal forms down

down​

down...​

Fiera's red eyes lit a burst of scarlet as she gasped and loosed a chain of bubbles from her lungs until the waters took their place.

Her eyes went out.

Darkness folded in.

Her hand remained firmly in his.


Ashuanar would awaken on a beach of black sands with the waves lapping at his waterlogged body. In the distance stood a lone tower, its windows illuminated with torchlight.

 

[Ashuanar]

Again, they traversed with their backs toward where they went. It was so against everything Ashuanar knew when confronting the unknown. And again, that ebbing feeling returned, almost whispering to him to turn around. His instincts agreed, and the tension in him rose in the uncertainty.

And then she started to speak. It was as though she were reciting some prompting incantation, for her words seemed to rouse their surroundings.

The haze that had coated his senses grew thicker. He could see as everything around him that he knew to be real began to stray further and further from such.

Barely feeling his own weight upon his feet, and yet still he stepped.

And then it all spread open. One final footfall found nothing. And it was as though all went silent and still for but an instant.

"do not forget to breathe."
​

And he, even he, let out a noiseless cry as they fell back. Yet amid the listlessness, the droning dark, her hand in his grounded him. As quickly as his heart

beat in his chest, it found some measure of rhythm, certain that it would continue beating even after this.

And then the cold of the waters enveloped them, and all certainty became as distant as the lights that had faded into nothing.

---

Water washed upon the shore, up over him, and he perceived it.
​

He was up with a gasp, and his chest became full of life. He lifted one hand to see it, and then looked down upon the other, still grasped tightly by Fieravene's grip.

With a calm, yet laboured breath, he lingered there, ignoring the water that still licked at his boots, ignoring the drops that slid down his cheeks, dripped off his nose.

He lifted his head some, only some, and beheld the distant tower.

"What is this place," he whispered under his exhaustion, still reeling from the experience, still feeling the dull haze over his mind.