However critiques still welcome and desired. I should only have one or two pieces after this.
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Dread and Despair
Experiments
I was not a blushing maiden any longer, nor was he my knight in shining armor. I didn?t dance anymore. Sometimes I thought back to that day in the rain, and wondered what life would have been like, had I turned and gone home, or if I?d returned to my dancing.
I hadn?t. And so I was here. I stood as a powerful mage; not the likes of Elminster of course, but I had power. And my knight, no, he wasn?t my knight. He never had been. Nor was this noble band of adventurers who I had expected.
The rogue, while not consumed by greed, certainly had no motivation to help others. He adventured for the thrill of putting his skills to test, and would do it in a dungeon of traps and monsters as easily as in the local tavern. The latter rarely ended well for those he ?tested? against. The ranger was not the gentle man of the land, a guide and such things, not at all. He lived off the land, but it wasn?t the land granting him blessings, he seemed more to have stolen them from it. Stolen nature?s blessings as he had stolen her creatures, and her peaceful places. The warrior wasn?t a brave and valorous servant of a god of justice or duty, but instead offered the occasional prayer to a god of war and battle, though he seemed to worship the battle itself over the god. And their cleric preached the doctrine of revenge over anything, debts and oaths.
Not terrible and cruel people save perhaps their ranger, but not the glorious men and women I?d expected. And I was becoming much the same. Though each day I would deny it, I would become it a little more. I began to care for nothing more than my power, and though my prayers had once gone to Eldath, I was soon giving only the rarest prayer to Mystra, as mistress of magic. Eldath was forgotten. As were the rains.
But that day as our warrior spoke of plans to leave Faerun behind, I remembered, and inside I wept. Once, so long ago, I had dreamt of using my magic to protect and rescue, but now I lived only for the power. And that day I determined to take all of us from Faerun, hoping to leave our world a better place for our loss.
We traveled for Candlekeep, for I demanded to study the planes heavily before I would consent to travel to them. And study I did. We brought some precious tome and in turn I gained weeks of study. I know not what my companions did during this time. Perhaps they sought to test their skills more, or make converts. Perhaps they left.
I would not, not with my sanity. They say knowledge is power, and that power corrupts. Perhaps that is what happened, knowledge tempted me. As I discovered more of the planes, and our means of accessing them, I grew to want to leave something behind, a revelation of the planes, something to be remembered by, as someone who had changed Faerun for the better. Perhaps I had never had the iron resolve I?d believed.
So I studied, and I tested. Spells to bring creatures of the planes to my realm and to bring me to theirs. But it had all been done before; I wanted something greater. I pushed and searched. Something pushed back. I was on the eve of success, a gift fit for such a world as ours. I would have a spell to leave behind, and Oghma?s priests would work with it on the morrow, so that even priests could cast such a spell.
Perhaps I was still naïve. You ask what spell I had created, you wish to know my gift for Faerun? My spell would be one of travel, and sight. It would allow one to view a plane and step to it as easily as one walks down a road. Perhaps I was naïve, but I was definitely proud. Such magic was beyond what Faerun had seen, since the fall of Netheril, and maybe it was meant to stay there.
And so that night, I prepared my components, my spells, myself. And I wove my magic. I wove my magic through me and around me. My spell succeeded, in some ways. I was given sight of the planes and more. I could see everywhere, the planes, Faerun, and other worlds. And I could see through times, to when the gods were born, to when they would die and the world plunged into darkness. Everywhere, and everywhen were opened to me. No, they were not opened; it was more than that. They were thrust upon me.
My spell had been designed to lock the person on the planes upon his leaving Faerun, to prevent us from ever returning to bring harm to our world. Because of it I have been trapped in this sight. And while I originally had some control over what I saw and could even see some semblance of our world with clarity, it faded quickly.
The next day I awoke to a demon standing above me, staring at the demon who lay where I lay, for I saw the claws, the battle they were having. I screamed, terror was overtaking me, for who knows if I was to be sucked into their realm along with my sight. But they vanished instantly.
As I ran from the library, I saw them. Demons, devas, planetars, devils, here there, and then I saw times. Again I saw god?s being born, dying. A dead man talking to skulls, a city that would come soon, where it was never winter. It was all madness, and my cries must have woken everyone in the keep. I fled to the temple, wishing that the divine would shelter me, but they didn?t, and no spell the priests cast as I huddled there would change what I saw.
My spell had been to lock a person to the planes, but I was not. For that day, I fled through planes of ice, fire, light, darkness, emptiness, and through Faerun once more, before again fleeing, through worlds this time. I was in Amn when I stopped running.
Instead I struck out with spells at my phantoms. Not a single fell, they didn?t even notice me, but someone did. Mages, robed in gray, came to me. I know not what they did, but I next remember? I remember so many things next. I saw the walls walking through me, and I was not sure where I was of what I saw. I heard later that I was in Spellhold, a prison, and I laughed. I was in a prison, but that prison was in my mind.
And so I sat as the walls changed, as demons came and went, as I saw cities and towns grow and crumble. And through all the places I saw, I could see no rain. And as I cried, I sent a prayer that Eldath would send back the rain.
Edited by Kellen, 24 May 2007 - 12:55 PM.
Cheers! And two horns up for metalheads all around the world!
