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#Post#: 446--------------------------------------------------
Restless
By: Elinie Date: August 1, 2015, 12:17 pm
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Daniel Iddear awoke with a start. The room was cold – more so
than was usually dictated by his very presence. He stared at the
stained wood of the compromised wall, open to the soft haze of
Darrowshire’s plagued air. He didn’t know what he had expected.
Years, now, he had been plagued by nightmares in his sleep and
still he continued to try.
They were always different. Visions of his past haunting him.
Even before his memory had returned to him, the dreams played
like Gnomish cinema behind his eyelids, forced to re-watch his
mistakes reel by him one at a time. This attempt’s had been
particularly troubling. It was bad enough the thought of his
recent proposal to Caleb haunted his mind all his waking hours,
but seeing it replay in his dreams was a thousand times more
terrifying.
It started off just as the night had went. Caleb entered the
graveyard, morose. Id had heard the man’s silent screams of
Sila’s death. He consoled Caleb, and proposed. From this point
the dream began to twist. Caleb jerked the man from his feet,
crushing his neck and piercing his stomach through with Myriad.
Id felt his innards leak from him as Caleb left him in the
graveyard for the frost to fade from his body until rot
eventually set in.
Long had Id staved off the rot. It was a recurring theme in his
dreams. It always came for him in the end, just as he knew it
would. He knew it would come for him outside of his dreams, too.
He knew the rot was unavoidable, and he knew it would claim both
him and Caleb eventually. Fel-damn he knew it.
The last time he’d try to sleep, he’d dreamt his mother tucking
him and Abel into bed. Daniel had nearly gotten to sleep when
Abel called out to him. He rolled over in bed to see Abel’s
face, full of rot and maggots and rime. “When do you think we’ll
die?” he asked Daniel. Shrieking out of horror, Daniel clamored
from bed and knocked Abel away. Mary Iddear burst into the room,
seeing Abel on the floor, neck-bent awry and face full of rot.
She turned to look at Daniel, her face, too, full of rot and
maggots and rime. “Oh, Daniel.” She said, voice so sweet leaked
the ichor of honey. “We’ve had an accident, haven’t we?”
Of course, Id knew it hadn’t happened that way. Abel had been
infected with the plague and turned in the night. Mary had
hypothesized it was from the mushrooms growing on the outskirts
of town, the first of the plagued growths in Lordaeron. Id
hadn’t killed Abel. He had assured himself of this thousands of
times since the night that Gaius Kadmar had put the boy down
from his undeath. Yet still Id blamed himself for the death of
his twin. He knew he’d asked Abel to fetch the ball that rolled
down the hill while they were playing, and he knew that’s where
the mushrooms were. It wasn’t his fault, but at the same time he
was a catalyst. If he hadn’t been so lazy, he thought, he would
have hastened this all. If he had been the one to die, perhaps
Mary Iddear would still be alive right now.
He had tried. He thought sleeping would help him see into the
shadow planes to bring back Glory, but he knew it wouldn’t work.
Knowing his efforts would be fruitless without the help of the
lady Veshiron, he wasn’t even sure why he had tried this. His
effort were fruitless, and they would continue to be. Relying on
the help of others would defeat the purpose of the horse-dowry.
It, or more aptly, she, was a sign of Id’s unwavering faith in
Caleb. A sign that he, now truly, was Caleb’s and Caleb’s alone.
The death knight laid back down, eyes straining through the
haze of the Plaguelands. He saw the shape of Hierdorumu gusting
his way towards Darrowshire. Caleb was coming to see him.
Reluctantly, Id stood and began to dress himself in his armor.
Last he had heard from Caleb, he was departing for Silithus to
deal with a corrupt druid and the betrayal of Yumna Shatterhaze.
He wondered, for a moment, if Caleb had even thought of him
during the expedition. He dismissed the thought. A king had no
reason to fret over a sheathed sword.
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