Second Dream of Rai

(shared by Alayah and Kenzo in Session 52 (DuFr))

You are standing on a flat, dry, dusty plain. As far as you can see, there is just ash and dust stretching to the horizon, the only feature a dark shadow in front of you that stains the landscape, lingering despite the sun high in the sky.

You step forward and reach towards the shadow, concentrating as your hand solidifies. The weight of it still catches you off guard after all this time, and you have to strain to extend your arm, now solid jade. As always, you hear the laughing voice in your head, telling you, “Hey my dude, your arm is gone again!”. Briefly you imagine Dimitaur in Drankor, perched on your stone body, watching your statue-arm fade away.

You reach into the shadow now, feeling for the anchor that will close this portal, the low chanting of your companions behind you sustaining the effort this requires. There is heat, and intense waves of vicious hatred and inchoate anger from the shadow - this does not connect to the flat, emotionless landscape of the Shadowfolds, but someone worse, the Abyss perhaps. Still, if you can find the anchor and twist just right, the connection will sever no matter where it leads.

You probe deeper, finding what you are looking for, and start to twist. But suddenly something feels wrong. The strands of this other plane are deeply interwoven and entwined with the fabric of reality here, and your hand is caught. This is no ordinary portal, this is a corruption of the material plane itself, the Abyss or whatever dark place merged with the land itself. No wonder the corruption has spread so far!

Too late, you try to retreat, try to pull yourself away, but your hand is stuck. All you can do is squeeze, and pour as much energy as you can to try to break the bond that is holding you here before the dark energy of the Abyss, or wherever this leads, consumes you.

There is a loud crack, and you feel your hand shatter as tentacles of fire and shadow reach out of the land and lunge for the monks supporting you. In desperation, you grab at the nearest ley line and yank hard, channeling more energy than is safe, and fling the monks away as hard as you can. You sense them tumbling elsewhere, but now the tentacles are grasping at you. You can not tell whether the monks are simply far away on the material plane, or on another plane entirely.

Dimly, you see your hand separate and fly apart, pieces falling: one into the desert, another crashing into a massive tree in a great forest of redwoods, another landing in a crevasse in an icy glacier, another sinking beneath the ocean, and the final shard flying through a dense, lush rainforest. As blackness falls, you see the prison keeping the withered last emperor of Drankor trapped begin to unravel, and cracks form across your body.