Garen's Nightmare

“Garen?!

Why did you do it?

WHY?

Stop it…. Please….

Stop it….Make it stop. You have to.. . PLEASE…
GAREN…. WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

Olandra? Where are you?
Someone? Help me. Please… Garen--STOP.. STOP ……. _Why_?”

Garen startled from his thoughts, and looked around frantically. Nothing. Silent wood, a rough work bench, a small pile of carvings. Only his familiar quarters. The room was silent, but Cora’s cries echoed loudly in his core.

“Cora! I’m coming! WAIT!”

Garen leapt to the door, wrenching it open. Ahead of him, the deck of the airship grew into a mass of hair, with Cora tied between two stalk like growths. Before his eyes, he could see the Halfling writhing against her restraints, with smoke beginning to billow from the long cloak that she wore. Everything the cloak touched began to seethe and burn. “GAREN. WHY? YOU WERE MY FRIEND”. The cloak was his cloak, crafted to give great invisibility, and yet it ate at Cora, producing terrible burns where it blew against her. She gasped, and he rushed to her, desperate to help. Try as he would, he couldn’t move forward, and Cora hung screaming, a few steps away. Just out of reach. A large eye grew from one of the stalks, winking at him before the two stalks began to separate inexorably, methodically tearing Cora apart.

NOOOOO!!!! COORRRRAAAAA…..

Garen, desperate, tried to force himself through the doorway, but found himself unable to leave his room. Passing through the door lead him back into his own room, with his tortured friend ever just out of his reach. Frantic, Garen launched several fireballs toward the far side of the stalk, but no matter how he tried, the blast would always hit Cora.

“GAREN. STOP. PLEASE. STOP….”

The screams echoed throughout his very being, and Garen released his Axe, speaking the command to imbue it with dancing. Could he cut her free?

Where it dropped to the ground, a hole opened, and before it he could see Sadie and Merrin in the room below him. Where he expected to see crew quarters, instead he saw the Cathedral of the Silver Flame, with Sadie and Merrin each in the robes of the Archeirophant. They glared at him, with undisguised malice, before returning to a very public sex act. Garen cried out, terrified, “CORA. You have to help me help CORA.” Sadie turned to face Garen, a blank expression across her feral features. With a disdainful flick of her tail, she spoke to a gathering horde behind him. “Kill him.”

Garen wheeled, and watched as a legion of warforged approached. Reaching for his axe, Garen took a step back, only to find that he had stepped in a pool of bubbling acid. His axe was nowhere. Sadie and Merrin began to laugh happily, as the brigade of warforged mercenaries began to close in on him. He looked at them, and among them he could see Chainmouth, The Prophet, Cora as a Warforged, Ulfgar, Ulweis, all twisted metal versions of themselves. Where the forge mark shined on true forged, Garen could make out fleshy eyes, merged seamlessly into the gleaming steel of their heads. Thinking furiously, he stood still, healing himself, ready to launch a fireball into the throng, when he felt, rather than heard, a clang.

The cathedral was gone, and he was in a small outbuilding. Ahead of him, a warforged was systematically removing limbs from one who was immobile. The clang of an axe left a red pool as it severed an arm. He watched as the forged touched the detached limb. The steel twisted and disintegrated under the touch, and the eyes of the artificier met his own. They were his eyes, and yet not. Emotionless. Purposeful. Unforgiving.

He remembered the outbuilding, and glanced around him fearfully. Did they see him? Were any left to see him destroy “The Prophet”? Movement caught his eye. Who? Where? He rose, deliberately ignoring the warforged as he systematically destroyed the evidence of murder.

The room shifted to a wild angle, gnarled tree roots dripping from walls like unholy carvings. A large table stood before him, and the dead forms of his friends watched him balefully, tied together with a single length of rope. The rope was thin, and razor sharp. Where it bound the adventurers, small pools of metallic silver blood formed. He glanced around him, and a doorway with grasping hands reached towards him. Turning back to the table, he saw the figures of his friends vanish, to be replaced by the figure of a small child. The child began to distort, and multiply, until she occupied every chair. “You dream. Like me”. The figure became Thaspar, eyes blazing, as he grabbed Garen’s head and forced a potion down his throat. “Like me…”

The liquid burned down Garen, flowing from his mouth, and dribbling between plate and binding, Pineapple? Is this pineapple? The thought vanished as quickly. Hands began to tear at him, ripping away plates, severing the wood ligatures that held him together. He gasped, trying to wriggle away, as his armor was systematically stripped. Dumont held up a talisman, speaking slowly. “Do you know Mordekein? He was Cyran, you know.” A beam of disjunction flashed against Garen’s arm, changing it to pale flesh, which Sadie immediately took to carving it off with a small dagger. Garen screamed in pain, unable to move from his attackers.

And then he was surrounded, watching as one of many eyes, as his friends were brought in front of him. Deathbringer whipped Thaspar, leaving broad bloody trails, before attacking the sword brother’s defenseless form with the gleaming black sword. Cora was immolated, and made to dance wildly around the mangled body of Sadie. Dumont was being systematically flayed alive while reading tomes of arcane knowledge. The four of them saw Garen, and began to cry agony, writhing with pain. “WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US? YOU WERE OUR FRIEND…..”

The screams echoed around him, and were followed by a sudden, even more terrible silence. Garen stared in horror, as his friends died in front of him.

“DIE.”

The eyes were all around him now, the command a pure thought, bereft of language.

The room was silent, and a single door opened onto a black landscape. It was quiet there. Peaceful. Painless. He could see his friends waiting patiently for him.

The room swirled sickeningly, and he could just barely hear a young girl’s voice speaking a single word in his head. No. “Dream.”

Garen looked towards an eye.

And with a single motion, Garen threw his beloved axe at it.

Garen was standing in a featureless wooden room. His quarters? The knocking on the door startled him out of his thoughts, and he could hear Cora’s voice, scared, calling, “Garen. Please. Come Back.”