Conditioned Fear

by Outsider

Ch.4 Dreambound

Ch. 4 Dreambound

My mind drifted my subconscious, the memory of recent events floated slowly through my mind. The Pegasus in the field, the statue and the boy, the voice and the miracle, the beast and the castle, and the book and the ghosts, wait, the book... “The book” I whispered, lazily opening my eyes, hoping I had not lost the only thing that may contain information of my condition.

Except, there was no book, there wasn’t anything, I twisted my head frantically looking for anything. Nothing a soft voice panged in my head as I found myself adrift in a grey abyss.

The void was beautiful in a way, a dull grey sky, with no land in sight as I endlessly drifted through this world, countless black flecks of ash in the same circumstance as me. All attempts to move were futile; this world was without gravity or form, just... nothingness.

My aimless drifting continued for an eternity, the air becoming thick with ash the longer time flowed. Suddenly, the ash began to move, forming together with some force behind it clumping into a small flat island. I found myself slowly moving towards it.

I once again stood on solid ground. The pure black land almost cartoony looking in this pale world. The ash morphed once again, a warped pedestal began to form out of the flat island as more ash flowed into it.

The monotone sky began to darken, creating something more complex than the previous creations. The sky became its former deathly self as the onslaught of ash finally subsided, leaving before me a tome, as it lifelessly fell on to the pedestal that had come before it.

I found myself drawn to the book by some force that was not my own, as it flew open, rapidly flipping through the blank, pure black pages. I gazed with my jaw agape as the book finally stopped on a blank page, accompanied by the voice that seemed to save me in the past. “Gul thrak na tull, Aralyx” just as the voice finished deep red words seemed to seep into the page in perfect English ‘You had best hurry Aralyx’ “kol rax ful tal lod obv mer wark mioc archon” ‘The clock is ticking; you must bring me to them, those that hold the light and the dark.’ Unlike the first time, the voice filled me with a strange feeling, neither painful nor pleasant. The book began to write again, no longer accompanied by the voice.

As the book continued its scrawling, ashen walls began to form around me, but I was too concerned with the words that continued to appear in the book. ‘My gifts are many Aralyx; take this as a... reassurance of our pact.’ As I read the final word from the tome, it dispersed into the aimlessly floating ash once more as it flew off into the endless grey void above leaving me trapped in this ash prison below.

The black walls suddenly formed into some ungodly fluid that swiftly consumed me, coating every part of my body in an indescribable agony. My mind was unable to handle the sensory overload of the event and shut down, I had blacked out.

My eyes snapped open. The once excruciating pain was quickly fading away and I found myself in a new world. I stood on black ground; various blood red symbols dotted the featureless pitch black flatland. The black sky was dominated by a single, massive unmoving outline of an eye that shared the same twisted color as the symbols that dotted the earth it watched over.

I looked at myself for any trace of the fluid that had consumed me prior to my entry to this hellish place. I found it gathering in mass on my back forming... something. The strange, shiny blob on my back split in two equal segments that began to take some odd shape.

I stared, mesmerized by the graceful movements of the liquid on my back. The liquid dispersed, dissolving entirely the moment it made contact with the boiling ground beneath me.

My eyes quickly darted back to where the liquid once was, to behold something incredible: A pair of wings! The wings were the same deathly colour of the liquid and were like those of a bat, yet fitting with the rest of my current appearance. The wings quickly adopted the colour of their owner, as a massive grin became etched upon my face.

I looked to the sky, attempting to flex my new extremities with oddly swift success. I found myself quickly heading towards the dark sky, the still stared into nothing, dead.
I neared the painted eye, which continued its stare at the hellish world beneath it with contempt, an odd speck of white visible in its pupil. The white area grew more noticeable as I neared its orifice; the colours around it seemed to shirk away from contacting something that contrasted so much with the remainder of their polluted world.

I entered the white, to be met with strange feelings, like soft silks gently being run across my skin. Voices, not the dark, distorted ones that accompanied me in the depths below, but gentle sounds of concern, of happiness, and of sorrow. The brilliant white light was overpowering, I found myself closing my eyes in an attempt to save my sight, when everything faded to white.

I groggily opened my eyes, the pleasure I had felt in that wondrous dream now a quickly fading memory.

This new imprisonment I found myself in could be described simply as... pristine. Pure white paint coated the entire room, save for a soulless, wrought iron door which lay at the far side of the room. The remainder of the room was barren, with the exception of a bed I was lain upon.

"I...nk...ts...ke...w" a muffled voice emanated from behind the door, grabbing what little attention I could give in my drowsy state of mind. More noises persisted from whatever lay beyond the impenetrable barrier that was the door, and then a foreboding silence regained its place in the room.

The dreadful silence dragged on, almost deafening when accompanied by the oppressive mood of the room. The thin pane of silence was once again shattered by a loud metallic clang, followed by an unbearable scraping sound.

The impenetrable barrier that was the door slowly glided outward revealing beings that stared at me with a curiosity rivaled only by my own.

Comments

[.Tzeentch.]

i need more get to work on next chapter so i can get my fix