From: bshsiung@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Bernard Hsiung) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [MG] Dariel takes the bait Summary: fifteen minutes inside Dariel's head Date: 2 Apr 93 18:53:06 GMT [ADMIN: Well, yes, Dariel's perceptions are a wee bit unusual...] The air is crisp and the sun bright as the doors of the Guild slide shut behind me. A piece of sky detaches itself and comes to me, landing on my outstretched hand as I greet myself with fluttering wings. I open myself to then and forever, moving the bird to my shoulder as the images flow through me. There is making and unmaking and change not so vast: sacrifice and binding and transference, distortion and release and blending. Life and death ebb and flow, as always. The echo of a calling scratches at the corner of my perceptions and I let my feet follow as I look and see the alonegod, built all crookedly, facing down the man-cat 'Raelf het ae 25 who is holding five keys. The keys are jangled and a foresaying is torn and the crooked mask vanishes down newly-learned pathways, leaving me mulling over the words as my focus floats back to now and here. My wings are fluttering, wanting to come out, but this is not the place. The bird, my agent, stretches and leaves me. In time, I walk past Tushar, who holds a sword and wears a turban. He looks straight at me but does not see me. The vibrations in the air that I know are the sound of my name strike me in time with the calling. I come to a courtyard, where there is a cart drawn by figments of horses, and here are Hork and Stimsen, who I see have become hollow men, shadow men, taller and then wider and shallower than men should be and shifting fitfully in the light. They are saying my name. And here is Amaan, also saying my name, and his thoughts are murky and greenish-brown like damp grass in the mud. The cart is bounded by a sifting of singularity and there is a [I am standing like Agni at the center of burning, and it covers me and the cart and the figments and the men. A message is given to me. The shadows of men are no longer saying my name but their god, their murdergod, is talking, talking to me.] package nestled within. They are linked, the burning and the package and the message. I pass through the sifter and my vision is real. The calling is ended, the cart and the men gone in an eyeblink. I have time to lay my hand upon the package and impress the remains of its message for later when the murdergod comes and stands behind me in the heart of the burning. Its hand tipped with jagged razors rises up and then falls upon my back. I catch it as I turn and break its wrist, then break the silence of the burning. <> Its voice is a knife in the dark, a wire jerked tightly around a throat, and it raises its other hand which ends in fingers spraying poison and acid. I take it and turn it back on itself and ask it again, It strives against my grip and says, <> <> I withdraw my support and it smoulders, then flames, the burning consuming its outermost layers. <> And then my wings do unfold to sweep circles in the air, scooping up the essence of burning and stripping away the power of the god. The only sound after their passage is the clattering of the crystal lattice at the god's core falling to the floor. I pick it up and look at it. It is a thing of twisted beauty, finely translucent lines curled upon one another and bound. I hold it by a corner and pass it through the air. A film of power coats its ragged edges, like the reverse of a child making soap bubbles. I wipe it off, drop it, and grind it into less-than-dust under my heel. Certainly the work of a Reaverschild. Amaan lies at my feet, peacefully resting, shielded from the burning by the one who left the calling. But he concerns me no longer. I turn my attention to unimpressing the message I was given and, again, images wash over me: a puzzlebox with five sides each the same size and shape, and on one side there is the Beacon, where the fires of my creation still dance. It opens and the name "Shining Mirror" is written there in runes of ice. Reflected in the letters I see myself, lighting the lamp on the top of a lighthouse, and I am looking down on it and measuring its age, age on ages past when its light was first cast, and the light of the lamp burning illuminates the dancing crystalline mirrorshape. The reflections of myself offer an exchange of information, assistance, warning, invitation. I look again and see myself, the mirror behind myself, then the mirror alone, and I know whom I must see. Unbidden, the lighthouse- knowledge of my agent-bird converges with the lighthouse-image, and I know where I must go. My wings tense, then fold, and I am gone. -- Comments, compliments, and complaints can be conveyed to: Bernie Hsiung (bshsiung@eecs.umich.edu)