quote:

Sleeping?

I stand, facing the oncoming threat. Darkness whistles its way up my spine. I look onward for a moment, and I feel the ice-cold amulet pulsate and constrict about my neck. I stroke it, and will it to calm, as something moist writhes about the corner of my mouth. I smile softly, and my back empties out in a fantastic explosion of blood and metal. Gleaming in the moonlight are a pair of clockwork wings, with flecks of my blood adding a sort of macabre beauty to them. Upon my head sits an ancient helmet, supposedly a relic of my ancient ancestors, but I know that it is much, much more. As is swing my scythe forward, feeling it pulsate and writhe in my hands, watching the red lightning race up and down my fingertips, slightly singing them as it does so, I can hear it whispering in some eldritch tounge into my ears, compelling me to do horrible things. I put down my scythe, and contemplate the reanimate corpse in front of me. I think about its hopes and dreams, it thoughts and beliefs, its family. I swing my scythe at the nearest warrior, who was until now attempting to hold off the invasion. "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!" His head falls onto the ground, and I lift it onto my shoulders, as if I am carrying a small child. I have truly gone mad. I screamed, and I felt the cacophany of voices rise in a malevolent creschendo, assaulting my eardrums with their eldritch whispers. I swung my scythe wildly, not caring who I struck down. Is I ran, trailing madness in my wake, I felt a firm hand upon my shoulder. The commander of the defense forces stared into my eyes. -----------, this is the town that you were swron to protect! You took an oath! Think of the citizens, their families! BEHOLD WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT! He gestured out onto the battlefield, where I observed the corpses of my friends, who had stood by me since the beginning. for a moment, I faltered, who was I to take them away from their families, to pry them away from their homes? Then I remembered. I remembered how they had done the same to the skeletons who stood before them. They thought that they were doing these creatures a great honor by destroying them, that they would finally be free or some such rubbish. They heard stories of the underworld, brought back by some insolent dragon girl, and assumed them to be true. I had been there. That wasn't death. That was only a sort of cosmic "waiting area." You lingered there until you were sure that you had nowhere else to go. You saw your oppertunities being eaten up by the sands of time until, eventually, not even your familiy cared any more, and you became a distant memory, lost but not forgotten. Well, mostly forgotten. When you were done, and you could suffer no more, you were taken to the abyss. The abyss has no space, no time, no reality. Once you are there, the electrical impulses that make up your "spirit" mean nothing. They lack all context. There could be an entire civilization there, entoumbed for ever within a never ending void. THAT is death. I looked at the commander. I stared directly into his eyes, and I saw only ignorence and unfeeling. Even if he knew, he couldn't care less. I won't go into the details of what happened. When the others foudn him, I had rendered him physically what he was mentally. His heart lay next to him on the floor. He hadn't really needed it. Finally, I sat crumpled in the corner of the tower, singing softly to my self, trying to figure out what it was that I had done.

"I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone... I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone... I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone...I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone... I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone... I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone... I don't want you to be alone down there to be alone down there to be alone..."

The guardians came upon me later, lying huddled there, blood trickling from the corner of my mouth, my hands singed where I had tried to pry the helmet off. they carried me off and laid me gently down, afraid of what I might do if they attempted to kill me in my sleep. I opened my eyes and looked about. I saw the room within the inn where I had rested the night before. At first I was sceptical, but everything was the same. Had it been a dream? If it wasn't, what was the difference anyway? It's not like we can tell which one is "real." Each are equally real as they occur. Pleased with myself, I returned to sleep. Later, they found my body, singed and broken, in the corner of the tower, dripping with blood. They said that I had wandered off, dazed, and fallen asleep there after meeting the commander. I never woke up.

-Question Mark? Lord of the Frozen