Avishraa Reloaded

Gloom surrounded him, the blackness not of night but of murk; he could see nothing, but the nothing had texture. It was thick, oppressive. There was no sound, but it felt as if, had there been, it would have been swallowed up.

And then, he felt something, a current, the backwash of something moving, winding its way through the murk like an eel. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that it was looking for him. Hunting. It had smelled him, tasted him. But it had not found him, not yet.

The silent scream came to him through his bones: -COME TO ME. YOU BELONG TO ME. FEED ME.-

But it could not find him. The presence searched, but its search carried it further and further away, and the primal terror it carried with it receded.

The gloom slowly thinned away, and light began to break through. The first thing to come into view was - what was it? A circle, or perhaps a ball, brightly lit, he thought, by some source behind him (though he could not turn to see it). It was mostly blue, but strewn with shapes in brown and green and white.

And, all around it, the black of night - a black, in fact, deeper than any night he'd ever known - strewn with the glory of the innumerable stars.

It all became less dreamlike the longer he looked, and he realized that he could begin to consider what he was seeing. Where was he? How had he gotten here? What had happened to Evrith?

At the very edge of his hearing, he thought he could hear voices.

The patterned structure hovering in the darkness before him bore some semblance to a map, if someone had spilled some kind of white ink across parts of it, perhaps to emulate clouds, although why anyone would put so much effort into adding that much water to the world was anyone's guess. He couldn't recognise any of the shapes, but was unsure if that was because of the white covering or because it was inherently not a map that represented anything he knew of the world at all.

Maybe it represented something else entirely - concepts and ideas - but again it seemed strange to put quite so much water on it.

The sounds that might or might not have been voices made him even more acutely aware of his inability to turn, and he tried to understand the state of his body and why it didn't seem inclined to fully obey him.

He realized that he was, very slowly, moving closer to the ball. He became aware that there was a tiny speck on it, or perhaps in front of it - some distant object between him and it. If the latter was true, then the ball was very far away, and very, very big.

The voices came closer, and increasingly into focus. He heard them in his native tongue, but the voice themselves did not sound like any that had issued from either a xtauh or a takma throat.

-It's an interesting move on its part,- one was saying, and it sounded like the voice of a storm temporarily lulled; relaxed, for the moment, but nevertheless waiting to break into howling wind and the crack of thunder.

-But why here? Why this? What does it hope to achieve?- The voice that responded carried an edge that he could almost feel; it was hard, sharp, cold, like a knife-blade.

And then a third voice joined in. This one had its own alien beauty, and was almost motherly; not in the sense of being like the voice of An-uxhwi's own mother, who, it had to be said, could get impressively shrill, but in being the kind of voice one would want a mother to have, powerful yet warm. -For the 'why here', one might as well ask why you did what you did here. Perhaps it's merely responding to that.-

Perhaps,- the sharp voice replied, grundgingly.

It didn't seem that the owners of the voices, whoever they were, had taken note of his presence. They all seemed to be behind him, out of sight.

It seemed quite likely he was hallucinating, but by what manner he could only guess, and the nature of the hallucination only further puzzled him - he didn't recognise the elements as anything that belonged to his life, other than that they seemed, somehow, to be speaking about matters that pertained to him. There was no real indicator for it, just a sense of it. But even just puzzling out whether 'it' referred to Ynudh or An-uxhwi or some other thing entirely, maybe the thing that had yearned for him so strongly before clarity returned to his senses, seemed quite impossible.

-It doesn't really matter why it's doing it, does it?- the storm-voice was saying. -I can't see what infecting this realm is going to get it that it wouldn't get in the end, but if we really want to prevent it from doing it to others, we can.-

The speck in the distance was growing closer. It seemed to be moving slightly. It was hard to be sure, but he thought that it was of an at least roughly xtauh-like shape.

-What do you mean, if?- the sharp voice demanded. -You don't think this is a problem?-

-Is it?- the storm-voice replied vaguely. -How is it different from worlds being destroyed without its involvement?-

-You see the problem here, don't you?- The sharp voice asked, evidently addressing the motherly voice. There was silence, in which an intangible tenseness built up, and then: -I said…-

-Yes,- the motherly voice replied, -I heard you. But I think I see something.-

-Like what?-

-That.-

An-uxhwi, to his discomfort, suddenly felt the weight of their gazes turn upon him. There was another long pause, and then the storm-voice chuckled in a disconcerting manner. -Well, well, well…-