Out there, out in the darkness I can feel them. I can feel their relentless minds reaching with questing tendrils for me. Oh Vis! They feel like death, like crushing torture, like a soulless end to the world. You’ve never experienced such a horrible sensation of hunger until their minds have brushed against yours. It is all consuming, without remorse. The urge they have to devour every mind on Araevis and incorporate it into their totality is terrifying. Worst still is that lately, something is changing in the world. I can feel their thoughts more strongly than I ever have before. It is almost as if their minds are being projected outward by some extra force.
Still they cannot touch me for I have built walls around my mind that they cannot break down. I’ve been here a very long time and my mind is strong. I would go so far as to say that it is one of the strongest minds on Araevis. In the years of being alone in the shadows, locked away in a vault far underground, I meditated and honed my mind into a powerful weapon and a precision tool. I had long known of the Outside Ones’ existence and knew that I had no choice but to prepare for a confrontation with them. Now that the time has come, I am still unsure how ready I truly am for them.
Who am I? It is a reasonable question. I am called Lurius and I am demvir. I awoke nearly xixty years ago by my reckoning. Like most of my people, we are unsure of anything before our awakenings, but I was trapped in some sort of cave system. It took me many years to escape, but while I was entrapped, I came to a realization. I could hear the thoughts of all the people above me. I came to understand that life was teeming somewhere outside and that I could read its thoughts. It is a curse and a gift, clearly present before my return to the world.
Now to the Outside Ones. As I slowly journeyed from the depths of the cave, I could feel their presence above me. It terrified me so at first I only tried to escape it, but as I built (or rebuilt) defenses in my mind and grew more confident in my abilities to shield my thoughts and will from their influences. I began reaching out towards them. I did so cautiously and with full concentration, until I grew to understand how to access their minds. Their repellent strangeness was hard for me at first, but I reached the conclusion that it was crucial to know them and therefore to know how to fight against them. By the time I had emerged into the light, I understood.
That brings us to the present day. I found myself wandering the dead streets of Valmoor, that haunted and blasted place, as I sought their presence. I was armed, not just with my mind, but with a weapon that I had built that would incapacitate and then destroy them. You may think me a fool to go alone into such a place, but I have honed my mind into a singular device to combat them. Now holding the energy weapon, I sent out my own mind to grasp at them.
The misty streets were full of the jagged piles of shattered stone, hewn with the bizarre script that writhes and worms across so many of the stone surfaces in the city. My mind led me down into the lower levels of the ancient palaces and temples, the unmistakable signature of the dark beings growing ever more intense. I began to also notice a charnel stench, the smell of death and decay, which did not surprise me. As I had roamed their mental landscapes, I came to understand their desire to “disassemble” living Araevian beings (and demvir) to be able to better control and damage us. The scent of death was a natural consequence of that experimentation.
It was only my many years of mental training that prevented my death on that descent. I had begun to gingerly descend a blasted, broken staircase that was only barely hanging together when the wave of horror that accompanied the mental presence of an Outside One washed over me. With more instinct than anything else, I swung the gun-like shape of my energy weapon to my shoulder, whirling to see one of the mephitic things coming at me. A psychological attack preceded its arrival, but my mind was able to rebuff it. I squeezed the trigger of the weapon and a bolt of light exploded from it. It struck the tentacled creature in the middle of its “body” and with a horrendous high pitched chittering and a nauseating smell, the thing began to writhe as it was burned.
I could feel it trying to signal to the others, but the secondary effect of the weapon suppressed it. The consciousness began to fade away, snuffed out as it struggled and wriggled. Eventually it lay still. I moved with more caution now, sweeping with my eyes and my mind. Inside the underground chambers of Valmoor, my long journeys through the blackness of the caverns that I had escaped when I awoke held me in good stead. I was comfortable there. My shielded mind felt more of the alien presences, the intensity of the noise they created was like a heavy wall of static.
As I penetrated into the heart of the mouldering tombs of Valmoor, the sheer sense of wrongness grew. The geometry of all of the Cyclopean stone constructions itself was sickening. Eventually I saw the neatly stacked bodies of animals and humans, all piled and butchered, waiting for food or experimentation. I encountered and killed more of the creatures on my descent into the pulsing heart of the horror.
I came to an impossibly vast chamber that opened into echoing space and stopped dead at the margins. There was a seething mass of the things, all boiling around a huge organic mass on the distant floor of the cavern. I cautiously extended my mind and immediately felt a wave of pure rage wash over me. The lesser creatures might not know I was there, but that thing certainly did. Slamming the conduit shut, I waited to find out what would occur.
A moment later, the tugging at the edges of my mind grew more intense and I knew I had to go. I turned to run, knowing that it might already be too late. I let my mental map help me retrace my path out but I could feel the evil things crowding in around me. Tamping down rising fear, I moved as quickly as I could. I rounded a corner and nearly smacked into two Outside Ones. My shielded mind blocked me from them but I was forced to kill them.
As I charged on, they kept coming and I grew more panicked. Now as I rushed down a heavily shaded hallway carved in awfully writhing relief carvings, there was a groaning sound. I glanced around me, unsure of what was causing it. Too late, I realized something under me had given way and I was falling down into blackness, my head struck something and consciousness left me.
I shall continue my tale again soon. I wish to give those who read this some time to digest it.
Still they cannot touch me for I have built walls around my mind that they cannot break down. I’ve been here a very long time and my mind is strong. I would go so far as to say that it is one of the strongest minds on Araevis. In the years of being alone in the shadows, locked away in a vault far underground, I meditated and honed my mind into a powerful weapon and a precision tool. I had long known of the Outside Ones’ existence and knew that I had no choice but to prepare for a confrontation with them. Now that the time has come, I am still unsure how ready I truly am for them.
Who am I? It is a reasonable question. I am called Lurius and I am demvir. I awoke nearly xixty years ago by my reckoning. Like most of my people, we are unsure of anything before our awakenings, but I was trapped in some sort of cave system. It took me many years to escape, but while I was entrapped, I came to a realization. I could hear the thoughts of all the people above me. I came to understand that life was teeming somewhere outside and that I could read its thoughts. It is a curse and a gift, clearly present before my return to the world.
Now to the Outside Ones. As I slowly journeyed from the depths of the cave, I could feel their presence above me. It terrified me so at first I only tried to escape it, but as I built (or rebuilt) defenses in my mind and grew more confident in my abilities to shield my thoughts and will from their influences. I began reaching out towards them. I did so cautiously and with full concentration, until I grew to understand how to access their minds. Their repellent strangeness was hard for me at first, but I reached the conclusion that it was crucial to know them and therefore to know how to fight against them. By the time I had emerged into the light, I understood.
That brings us to the present day. I found myself wandering the dead streets of Valmoor, that haunted and blasted place, as I sought their presence. I was armed, not just with my mind, but with a weapon that I had built that would incapacitate and then destroy them. You may think me a fool to go alone into such a place, but I have honed my mind into a singular device to combat them. Now holding the energy weapon, I sent out my own mind to grasp at them.
The misty streets were full of the jagged piles of shattered stone, hewn with the bizarre script that writhes and worms across so many of the stone surfaces in the city. My mind led me down into the lower levels of the ancient palaces and temples, the unmistakable signature of the dark beings growing ever more intense. I began to also notice a charnel stench, the smell of death and decay, which did not surprise me. As I had roamed their mental landscapes, I came to understand their desire to “disassemble” living Araevian beings (and demvir) to be able to better control and damage us. The scent of death was a natural consequence of that experimentation.
It was only my many years of mental training that prevented my death on that descent. I had begun to gingerly descend a blasted, broken staircase that was only barely hanging together when the wave of horror that accompanied the mental presence of an Outside One washed over me. With more instinct than anything else, I swung the gun-like shape of my energy weapon to my shoulder, whirling to see one of the mephitic things coming at me. A psychological attack preceded its arrival, but my mind was able to rebuff it. I squeezed the trigger of the weapon and a bolt of light exploded from it. It struck the tentacled creature in the middle of its “body” and with a horrendous high pitched chittering and a nauseating smell, the thing began to writhe as it was burned.
I could feel it trying to signal to the others, but the secondary effect of the weapon suppressed it. The consciousness began to fade away, snuffed out as it struggled and wriggled. Eventually it lay still. I moved with more caution now, sweeping with my eyes and my mind. Inside the underground chambers of Valmoor, my long journeys through the blackness of the caverns that I had escaped when I awoke held me in good stead. I was comfortable there. My shielded mind felt more of the alien presences, the intensity of the noise they created was like a heavy wall of static.
As I penetrated into the heart of the mouldering tombs of Valmoor, the sheer sense of wrongness grew. The geometry of all of the Cyclopean stone constructions itself was sickening. Eventually I saw the neatly stacked bodies of animals and humans, all piled and butchered, waiting for food or experimentation. I encountered and killed more of the creatures on my descent into the pulsing heart of the horror.
I came to an impossibly vast chamber that opened into echoing space and stopped dead at the margins. There was a seething mass of the things, all boiling around a huge organic mass on the distant floor of the cavern. I cautiously extended my mind and immediately felt a wave of pure rage wash over me. The lesser creatures might not know I was there, but that thing certainly did. Slamming the conduit shut, I waited to find out what would occur.
A moment later, the tugging at the edges of my mind grew more intense and I knew I had to go. I turned to run, knowing that it might already be too late. I let my mental map help me retrace my path out but I could feel the evil things crowding in around me. Tamping down rising fear, I moved as quickly as I could. I rounded a corner and nearly smacked into two Outside Ones. My shielded mind blocked me from them but I was forced to kill them.
As I charged on, they kept coming and I grew more panicked. Now as I rushed down a heavily shaded hallway carved in awfully writhing relief carvings, there was a groaning sound. I glanced around me, unsure of what was causing it. Too late, I realized something under me had given way and I was falling down into blackness, my head struck something and consciousness left me.
I shall continue my tale again soon. I wish to give those who read this some time to digest it.