OOC [dream]
“Foul things lurk in forgotten places.”
A young girl’s voice woke him, though it took him more than a moment to discern that he’d woken at all. There was nothing but blackness, darkness, meeting his gaze, he stood waist-high in a pool thick with...with something, though there was no light, no way to tell what he was submerged in. When he put a hand in, he found the textures to be uneven: some dripped away as if it was fluid as water, while other parts of it stuck to his hand, thick and viscous. When he pulled his hand out, crinkled strands of something wrapped around his fingers and trailed below them, clumps of something rest atop his palm, clumps that break apart like blood clots.
Thoroughly unnerved, he slowly walked through the mire, and as he did, he learned yet more things, though none of them reassured him a lot. The first thing he discovered was that whatever it is he’s wearing is heavy, is made of iron, with hooks and protrusions that make extra drag in the foulness. The second thing he learned is that he treads on something too soft, too uniform and springy to be any kind of soil or loam he can recall. As he waded through, a moaning begins in the background, deep under his feet until the ground (if indeed that’s what it was) split apart, sending him face-first into the filth. He staggered to his feet, only to find that the repellent clods and tendrils and slime are now plastered all over him, heavy and disgusting, in his mouth and eyes and ears and nose, weighing him down. On and on he labored, falling to his knees under the weight of the grime until he half-crawled, half-swam in this morass.
“But the hour is late. No other road remains.”
This time, the voice was deep and resonant and he did not hear it so much as feel the sorrow it emanated bleeding from his heart, feel the warmth it radiated soothe his face. Once again, he slipped into the filth, but when he fell this time, under his hands was something cold and sharp and steel, it pulled out of the so-called earth below him with a hiss and as he shook it clean, the festering strips of what clung to it flew off and hit the stagnant pool with a dead-leaves crackling and rustling voice, a voice that tells him he holds Deathbringer.
Deep in his heart, he knew he should be happy with a weapon, a powerful one at that, but yet deeper still was a roiling disgust, a contempt for this...thing. Instinctively, he dropped it, as though it burned his hand, though when it fell he could hear the...liquid below part before the blade, and it landed once more in the...surface beneath them. The solid mass again parted, receiving the blade, but this time there was no accompanying moan but rather an accompanying howl, ripped from the void around them and piercing through his ears. He staggered and fell again-or maybe the earth below bucked-or maybe the “water” level was rising-in the roiling and rippling of the mess, it was hard to tell. Soon enough he felt himself begin to panic, as his feet had parted company from the soil and the foulness has risen well over his head. Thrashing in the mire, he found himself accidentally swallowing the filth, which tastes truly vile, whose fibers dangle in his throat and half out his mouth, which burns and freezes his stomach until it can take no more. In the dregs, he retched and heaved and as he did, something stuck in his throat, something he didn’t remember swallowing, impossibly long and hard. It finally fell into his hands and for the first time he can see: for what he has regurgitated is a golden sword, it glows even in the agitated decay around him, and fits in his hand like it belongs there.
His arm was not his own anymore, it swung the blade and in its wake came sweet, pure air, blasting his face and body until not even a hint of the darkness remained upon him. It swung the blade and from the arc it inscribed came light, rays of light that pierced and shattered the darkness, that exposed the dark walls and floor before it ripped them asunder, and the slicing went on beyond that, further beyond what he had even imagined. Somehow, his feet found solid ground-trustworthy solid ground, stone like a mountain-and he blinked to clear his eyes from the light the sword emitted. When he could see again, on his left was one half of a creature winged and clawed and fanged, a dragon. On his right was one half of a creature flippered and finned and fluked, a whale.
A third and final voice spoke: “You are a paladin!”