The Vision
588 Words
Nothingness
It burned and consumed.
Dalhannah felt the breath ripped violently from her lungs as she was pulled deep into the vision- a swirling maelstrom of feeling. Her heart raced as darkness enveloped her mind and for the first time, she experienced true fear, and so fear was born into the heart of elves. She tried to reach for something, anything, to steady her, but she was formless, yet her heart continued to pound.
Chaos. Pain. Fear.
She screamed, the sound lost in the feeling that was everything and nothing as it swallowed her. Then the nothingness returned her scream, and it was joined by another, and another, and another, until there were hundreds. Thousands. Millions.
Faces flashed through her mind, some she knew, many many more she didn't. Her husband, crying out in despair. An eyeless woman wailing. A metal clad man standing over a bloodied body. Her daughter, lost and afraid. Her son. Mothers. Children. Siblings. Friends.... fear and pain and despair and loss and sorrow and rage- all things she had never known, but she knew now....
Darkness.
An inky blackness that was more than just shadow. It was the absence of all, it was Corruption. Unholy desire. Greed. Wrath. Envy. Vanity. Betrayal. Hate.
Everything the void touched it consumed and corrupted, and the plague of wickedness was propagated.
War. Death.
Once verdant hillsides, strewn with the broken bodies of men. Women. Children.
The crystalline cities of the Fae, shattered. The Dwarven palaces, engulfed in stone. The Drakyer libraries, smoking ruins. The Mer temples, empty and forgotten. The Zrallen villages laid to waste. The Dragon wyrs engulfed molten stone. The Elven forest aflame....
Evil
She saw some embrace this new power. They sought to master it, but she watched as they became it's slaves. She saw them weilding death and pain, and watched them be taken by it. The nothingness overtook their hearts and minds and souls until they had nothing left but the urge and desire to propagate it. Empty hosts to the power that stripped them of their destinies.
Despair.
She saw those who retained their sanity cower and hide. They mourned. They fled. They suffered, and they watched those they love suffer. They watched them die. And she felt all hope begin to fade....
Hope.
She felt the coolness of the moonstone against her forehead. The blue glow enveloped her and stilled the frenetic beating of her heart. Calm and hope radiated from within it and flowed again through her.
Faith.
Seven stones floated before her and she could feel the power radiating from them. The moonstone glistened with a familiar energy, but the others were not unknown to her. Somehow she knew what they represented. The seven races of her world. The seven elements- Light, Shade, Spirit, Fire, Water, Air and Earth. The pure essence of the seven Gods.
They emanated concepts- love and power and... protection.
Protection. Guidance.
Images flashed before her, barely appearing long enough for her to register them.
A hooded figure, hiding a secret. An accident- a misfortune. An unknowing and unwilling slave. Golden eyes. Seven stones. Desire.
A young woman with raven hair. An altar. A knife.
Blood.
The Sky tearing open, green fire raining down. Horrific creatures rising. Falling. Consuming.
The earth shattering. Darkness rising. Corruption spreading.
The girl with raven hair.
Yellow eyes.
Fear..
The knife.
Blood.
The nothingness, consuming all.
Hope....
The Vision began to fade, but Dalhannah now knew what she was chosen to do.
But it would not be easy.
- Writer
