Chains that Bite
The world is darkness. A plain, empty void as far as the eye can see. It's for and by this fact alone that Dolan knows that this is a dream. No night could be this utterly perfect in darkness. If this is an answer to the question he'd gone to sleep thinking of... it is not a terribly comforting one.
No. It's not. Dolan's dream-self is fully dressed, in adventuring gear, armor, greatsword and all, the vision on his right side the curiously altered view that the golden gem and its artifice magic offers him. He looks around him in the dark and the void, then changes the question.
What remains to be found in the Vast, amid the black roses?
The world shifts, drastically and dramatically. As if he were teleporting. Suddenly he's standing in the desert amid the black roses. Even as he watches the flowers which were once a mixture of blue and black, a black wolf pulls itself free of the roses and wanders away from the site of the flowers.
It takes a minute to digest that, the shift of time and place dizzying and disconcerting in its speed. Once Dolan has shaken the miasma of _movement_, and looked around, though - a black wolf? Moving away? Curious, he follows, quiet as he can, at a distance but always keeping the wolf in sight to the best of his ability. He does not speak, letting the inner inquisitor, the calculating voice within him, lead here.
There's not much distance between where the wolf is and where it is heading. Dolan quicky spots the edge of some foothills in the distance and something that might be the edge of a camp before the wolf simply disappears into the shadows and is gone. Leaving him in the dark once more.
_Inconclusive, but it's a reason to go back to the Vast,_ Dolan's inner inquisitor whispers. _I hope they've gone already. If not, I'll have to go myself._
That is _definitely_ not a comforting thought, but left in the dark again, Dolan files that away for further thought, and turns his attention instead to the matter of the totems in the camp, and focuses his attention on yet a third question. _Show me the location of one of the totems in the camp, and its holder._ This is a dangerous question, but Dolan firmly focuses his attention on the answer, and not on the risk.
Nothing changes. The world does not move as it did the first time, and the landscape remains a black oasis of shadows. A frustrating result to be sure.
Dolan stands in the void, frowning as the darkness refuses to budge. _A shield or a wall, concealing the other totems from his sight, then,_ he decides. _Let's find out if it's the camp that is hidden in the dream world, or the totems themselves._ He steadies himself, firmly pushing intrusive memories and ideas down that begin to swirl in his mind.
Show me what lies on the other side of _his_ curtains.
GAME: Dolan rolls will: (2)+10: 12 GAME: Dolan rolls will: (14)+10: 24
The world twists, teleports. Resolves into a small stone room. Not the outside of the cave he sought. The inside. The all-too-familiar inside, shrouded in near-darkness. A four-poster bed. A small dresser. A trunk. A wall of cloth - and chains. Chains bolted to the floor, hanging from the bloodstained stone walls.
Dolan looks up, and it's as if the chains come alive. Multiply. Expand, into a mass of a thousand writhing metal snakes, each with bloodied manacles. The inner inquisitor goes silent, leaving only the farmboy to stare in terror as the mass of chains shoots out from the wall, reaching, grabbing, restraining, suffocating. Sharp agony shoots through both of dream-Dolan's shoulders.
The chain-monster, without head or body, is inches from striking when the inner inquisitor finally gains control. _GET OUT!_ it screams, and Dolan snaps awake in his bed with a gasp, lone brown eye staring in shock at the ceiling.
-End