Fjord (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
built_fjord_tough) wrote2019-02-19 06:51 am
built_fjord_tough) wrote2019-02-19 06:51 am
Entry tags:
Fjord and Fenris' Room at the Arms, Tuesday Morning
Last night, the island more quiet than Fjord had ever seen it, he'd gone to sleep, expecting the silence of a hopefully dreamness night to carry him through to the day. And, like most nights as he laid himself down in bed, his sense of body faded.
Unlike most nights, his mind, and the dark, lingered. Minutes, hours, days. Time losing real sense and meaning, consciousness remaining, maddeningly, in that split second or endless stretch of experience that he couldn't begin to comprehend. As the time passed, the air grew colder around him. The faint shimmer of shifting midnight blue, muted and distant, rippled until it began to show endless depth before him.
It was cold, and he struggled there in the shifting blue as his senses returned to him, cold biting in to him from all sides, but his limbs found resistance in his efforts to move. He was sluggish. There was force.
It wasn't air.
It was water.
And then, suddenly, the familiar burning pain in his lungs as his breath fought to escape him, but he held tight. His body seized and he swam in desperation, choosing any direction, but the shimmering blue was directionless. No up. No down. Only depth. Movement. Universal shadows dancing as one, right to left, and then, with a speed that pulled him along with the current, he felt himself being jostled. It shifted again, left to right, around him, behind him, sending him toppling head over end until eventually he came to rest again.
And again he was sent toppling. And again. And again, the darkness swallowing him, tightening around him as this dance, this shape, this endless coil spiraled and pulled and battered at him until he couldn't fight anymore. He coughed, and the freezing waters rushed into his body, the briny taste of saltwater stinging his insides. His wincing eyes opened with the pain that clutched the interior of his chest, only to see a gargantuan mass moving through the water around him, like a massive noose closing in.
The pain in his chest vanished. And as his breathing normalized - thicker than air but breathable all the same - it felt strange, yet weirdly familiar.
In that moment, yellow light burst before him in the shape of an enormous yellow eye. An impossibly low tone rumbled through the waters around him, shaking him to his core, like an organic war horn the size of a canyon. The eye narrowed, the tone grew stronger, and one thought entered Fjord's mind, a jumble of emotions that his brain attempted to make sense of until a word congealed into the center of his consciousness:
WATCHING.
The eye watched him. Waited, patiently.
"What..." Fjord's words came low and thick and in an accent that was reserved, these days, for dreams and island madness that stripped him of any idea that he ought to speak otherwise, "are you?"
WATCHING.
"Watching me?"
The eye opened a bit, leaned in closer to him, and Fjord's heartbeat in his ears was almost as deafening as the thoughts, the words, that the owner of the eye was giving to him.
POTENTIAL.
"My potential?" And a flicker of something, a memory, a dream, of struggling to swim, of consciousness in spite of certain death. Of-- Fjord pushed it aside and pulled in another breath of water to steady himself. "What are you asking of me?"
LEARN.
"Learn. What would you have me learn?"
LEARN. GROW. PROVOKE.
CONSUME.
"Learn, grow, provoke, consume." Fjord shook his head, dazed and confused. "I don’t understand."
REWARD.
"A reward for this? I’m listening."
PATIENCE.
And with that the eye closed, and the light was gone. Fjord could feel the darkness and the cold completely suffuse his entire world as the panic and solitude, the true quiet of his unconsciousness, began to take hold. At that moment he gasped for breath and his eyes opened, leaving him coughing and sputtering, shooting bolt upright in bed and trying to clear his lungs of the water that still lingered.
He'd had memories of drowning before, haunting him in the night.
None that left him choking to clear his lungs again in the morning.
And sitting against the wall across the room, unnoticed for the time being, sat an empty sheath that, only last night, had a falchion stored within.
[OOC: For the roomie if he so chooses! Cribbed and paraphrased and reworked to suit the different medium from Critical Role Campaign 2, Episode 5: The Open Road. Warlock boy can't get away with ignoring his patron forever, okay.]
Unlike most nights, his mind, and the dark, lingered. Minutes, hours, days. Time losing real sense and meaning, consciousness remaining, maddeningly, in that split second or endless stretch of experience that he couldn't begin to comprehend. As the time passed, the air grew colder around him. The faint shimmer of shifting midnight blue, muted and distant, rippled until it began to show endless depth before him.
It was cold, and he struggled there in the shifting blue as his senses returned to him, cold biting in to him from all sides, but his limbs found resistance in his efforts to move. He was sluggish. There was force.
It wasn't air.
It was water.
And then, suddenly, the familiar burning pain in his lungs as his breath fought to escape him, but he held tight. His body seized and he swam in desperation, choosing any direction, but the shimmering blue was directionless. No up. No down. Only depth. Movement. Universal shadows dancing as one, right to left, and then, with a speed that pulled him along with the current, he felt himself being jostled. It shifted again, left to right, around him, behind him, sending him toppling head over end until eventually he came to rest again.
And again he was sent toppling. And again. And again, the darkness swallowing him, tightening around him as this dance, this shape, this endless coil spiraled and pulled and battered at him until he couldn't fight anymore. He coughed, and the freezing waters rushed into his body, the briny taste of saltwater stinging his insides. His wincing eyes opened with the pain that clutched the interior of his chest, only to see a gargantuan mass moving through the water around him, like a massive noose closing in.
The pain in his chest vanished. And as his breathing normalized - thicker than air but breathable all the same - it felt strange, yet weirdly familiar.
In that moment, yellow light burst before him in the shape of an enormous yellow eye. An impossibly low tone rumbled through the waters around him, shaking him to his core, like an organic war horn the size of a canyon. The eye narrowed, the tone grew stronger, and one thought entered Fjord's mind, a jumble of emotions that his brain attempted to make sense of until a word congealed into the center of his consciousness:
The eye watched him. Waited, patiently.
"What..." Fjord's words came low and thick and in an accent that was reserved, these days, for dreams and island madness that stripped him of any idea that he ought to speak otherwise, "are you?"
"Watching me?"
The eye opened a bit, leaned in closer to him, and Fjord's heartbeat in his ears was almost as deafening as the thoughts, the words, that the owner of the eye was giving to him.
"My potential?" And a flicker of something, a memory, a dream, of struggling to swim, of consciousness in spite of certain death. Of-- Fjord pushed it aside and pulled in another breath of water to steady himself. "What are you asking of me?"
"Learn. What would you have me learn?"
CONSUME.
"Learn, grow, provoke, consume." Fjord shook his head, dazed and confused. "I don’t understand."
"A reward for this? I’m listening."
And with that the eye closed, and the light was gone. Fjord could feel the darkness and the cold completely suffuse his entire world as the panic and solitude, the true quiet of his unconsciousness, began to take hold. At that moment he gasped for breath and his eyes opened, leaving him coughing and sputtering, shooting bolt upright in bed and trying to clear his lungs of the water that still lingered.
He'd had memories of drowning before, haunting him in the night.
None that left him choking to clear his lungs again in the morning.
And sitting against the wall across the room, unnoticed for the time being, sat an empty sheath that, only last night, had a falchion stored within.
[OOC: For the roomie if he so chooses! Cribbed and paraphrased and reworked to suit the different medium from Critical Role Campaign 2, Episode 5: The Open Road. Warlock boy can't get away with ignoring his patron forever, okay.]