Dance of the Dreamers

[Okor]

As the Demon traipsed down the ruins of the city he forged, every step shattering freshly-made stone beneath his feet, a change came upon the aether. The scent of steel and blood that Kuzuru naturally cultivated around himself began to fade, the stench of the aftermath starting to fill his nostrils: rotting offal and rusting iron, the buzzing flight of flies, the silent war of worms. Cracked spires began to crumble, gnarled roots writhing through the rubble, toxin-tipped thorns glistened beneath the sunless sky as they constricted the constructs of men, seeking to drag them into the earth from whence they once came.

Smoke, fire, and ash came on the plagued wings. Ethereal green flame burned across the astral realm, turning this twisted forest to cinders, wooden tendrils writhing and flailing, barbed lengths lashing out towards the warm flesh of the cursed Swordsman, desperately seeking to take root within this bloody soil. The Demon’s blade cleaved through them with ease, hungering floral fingers curling and shrinking on the cracked cobbles beneath his feet as they combusted, burning with banefire.

The ashes shifted with the wind, buoyed on smoke and the silent screams of scorched souls. They warped themselves into mouths and screaming faces, contorted in fear and pain as they whispered towards this trespasser.

He’s coming, breathlessly spoke a woman, eyes barely visible but for the memory of jewels adorning every inch of her face, a feathered headdress brushing past the Demon as her soul fled the coming conflagration.

Warrior of a thousand worlds, stated what was once a man, an over-large head marked with steel studs set into his brow, half his face left a charred ruin, blackened bone resting beneath the grievous wounds.

Prophet of Pox, gleefully cried out a rotting rabble of faces, buboes and boils deforming their festering flesh, but the eyes set within the diseased visages glimmered with joy, each eager to spread their cursed contagion.

Innumerable apparitions fled past the dreamer, each one whispering another snippet of warning, a seemingly unending susurrus screaming past him as mere memories sought to escape a doom that had already come upon them centuries past.

They were banished with a distant, echoing impact. And another. It was unmistakably real, a solid force in this ephemeral land of dreams, coming closer and closer with each step, the sound returning the ash-wraiths to particles as they gave out one final cry, of despair, of fear, of joy.

The source of the reality-shaking impacts arrived, without much further fanfare. Chipped ceramite armour, the scars of centuries and millennia of mutation having turned it into more of an ingrown carapace than mere war-plate covered the massive man, only an emaciated stomach and one mummified arm emerging from beneath the entropic aegis. A rusted blade rested over his pauldrons, three boils bursting forth from his shoulder-plate. A smouldering censer hung from his waist, a loincloth marked with dark sigils displayed with pride, alongside a bulky pistol and stockless rifle. A crimson, cyclopean eye looked out at this newcomer, its intents unreadable beneath a horned brow.

”And… another dreamer walks this realm,” he spoke in a deep half-growl, tumour-ridden throat struggling to speak in anything that could not be constituted as a threat.

A gauntlet slammed against his cancerous chestplate, a sickly, hollow impact resounding from the strike, fused ribs and festering organs lurking beneath leathery skin and corrupted carapace.

”I am Okor Paleblood. By now, I would hope that… My name has spread across the Smiling One’s prison. I would ask for your own title, Dreamer.”