Fatima's Diary

reflections for the lost

61. To Dream, To Hunt

When the sun dips below the horizon, I often shiver thinking of the night ahead of me. I bathe, stretch, and then eat a light meal, sometimes pacing the halls, waiting for the time when I am to sleep. When I enter my bed for the night, my new companion slithers comfortably to rest upon my stomach or thigh, his head almost always pointing up at mine, resting on my chest.

It is when the Dream comes that I work my hardest. The memories of the Ever Peaceful Paradise, and the memories of the Choice, an ordeal that still now burns within my mind. I never suspected the Book of Fate to be speaking plain truth, I expected the tale it presented me to be a riddle to puzzle out, a Koan upon which to sharpen the edge of my mind.

Within the Dream, I died and entered the gardens of the Ever Paradise, and a celestial being presented to me a cloaked stranger. The voice that radiated from the deep cowl sank into my bones. He spoke words describing how in the absence of my Life, my friends and companions had become willing and unwilling subjects to a vile demonic cult, who masters and deeds were viler then the Abrantier and Awarn combined a thousand fold. He present me a Choice; return back into the Imperfect Mortal World again as flesh, to hunt down and destroy my loved ones, to prevent them from the eventually murdering of multitude of innocents, many of whom I had striven so dearly in my Mortal Life to save from their untimely deaths, or to remain within the Ever Paradise, enjoying my reward, as their deeds ravaged the lands of my birth and breathing.

I pleaded with the bone-white cloaked figure for an explanation of an alternative; some way to reach within the hearts of my loved ones and turn them away from the evil they had been trapped within. The cloaked stranger brooked no compromise; some of my friends had willingly sacrificed the Eternal Souls of my other friends, and now all their Souls were already Devoured by this threat from the Otherworld.

The Dream and the Choice constantly haunts my mind, waking and sleeping. How could I have chosen differently? How could I have spoken just the right word or phrase to have kept my honor and Soul untarnished, but spared my friends from my relentless Hunt? Even now, after examining every action a hundredfold times, I cannot discern any other path to choose. I returned to the Mortal World, once again cloaked in flesh and performed the duty that torments me in my waking hours. Sometimes I cannot keep the tears from coming to my eyes when I share dinner with a friend, when I play stone paper knife with Thea, or when I stroll along in a short but rambling evening walk with a half-distracted Malakon. Each morning I bathe and try to clean the memory from my skin. How Thea's pleading eyes glazed as she slumbered upon Anoriel's point. I do not wish to remember how I had to take her precious life, and send her into the Ever Paradise. And yet she did not deny the guilty evidence I presented to her.

Alial, who I once defended his cooling body from Manticores, tried to convince me to join their pact. Lobar shrugged and looked shocked as the poison took bite in his brain. Fighting Grayn in his woodlands was as terrifying as any childhood nightmare, many times over. I cannot bear to try to remember Malakon and Rihana. The memories are still to fresh. I will probably blot these lines from my diary, because I never wish to remember them, I never wish to record them.

After these events, to my surprise I awoke, asp upon my breast as is so common and familiar now. With horror I felt drops of blood on my cheek, where distinctly I remember they landed after I performed the last of my assassinations. I threw on my clothes and dashed down the hallway, only to be met by Bramblebeard and Sanantha walking down the hall, just arriving back from their journey to Khezek-Tor. The sigh I breathed released an immense burden from my shoulders, lightening my step as I danced to embrace them both and welcome them back to us.

Each night after this one I have spent in the Dream. Now I am referred to as an Initiate to the Hunt. And within the dream, I train harder and run with dancing steps faster then I ever conceived in the Waking World, bending and flexing the rules that govern the Mortal World to my will. Training of every fashion to destroy evil aberrations and other much-maligned creatures is provided by black, grey, or white cloaked, sometimes faceless and voiceless strangers. It is training by bone-white necromancers in the art of fashioning the Else to funnel along my blade and spiral into my enemy, to strike critical or deadly wounds, in which I have received most of my training.

The Dream takes me to libraries where I study until dawn the construction of Golems. The next night I attend a ceremony of creation, watching as the patterns of Else are bound within the construct to create a strange unlife. I practice striking these places of binding with an Else-empowered blade, and with time I am able to target these places and unmake these foul creations. The Dream takes me to explore hellish landscapes and observe undetected the shambling hordes of fiends. Fiends by which the next night I am taught their sensitive areas, those tiny weaknesses I can exploit.