Seems like not much had changed since I left, there was a rather normal Beast Tide, it was logged, that the only creature that got past the walls was a single Dire Bear.
That goes pretty well along with what I thought about the whole event.
Question: what do I do now?
Got that confirmed, really all that's left is the waiting for that 'Gift', and the training with Allen…
There's also the stuff up with my mental space being completely inaccessible.
OH SHIT.
Miss Gurtrude's chicken coop!
In a flash, I dash out of the room, and down the road.
It takes little to no time at all, as I'm already in town, and Miss Gurtrude's isn't too far from the hunter's lodge.
I meet with her, quickly apologized for my tardiness, and got to work cleaning her coop out.
It was remarkably clean compared to other times I've done it.
The smell of that shit was, heady, brought back all too fresh memories of the dungeon, for a moment I…
Anyway, that's how my day went, mostly helping out those who I had promised my help to, meeting up with villagers I was on better terms with, didn't see Robert though, thank god, he'd probably just stare like usual.
After a long day of reaclimating to the town, I made my way home, but then remembered what had happened to it, and went to Allen's.
Sleep didn't come easy that night, but eventually, something changed.
I blinked, heavy and slow, and with the feeling of falling, I opened them, into something entirely new.
- - - -
The drip, of something liquid and viscous, hitting another liquid resounded and echoed like knives, cutting through the caustic silence of Shepard's half awake, bleary silence.
The acrid smell of old, dried blood, met her nose, it was far more familiar to Shepard then she would have ever wanted it to be.
What was slightly less familiar as of late, but still something that she had at least some experience with, was waking up in a hospital bed.
But beyond that thin string of familiarity at this point, she was left in a void of new things, in a room of ornate, yet old onnings made of stone, with wooden wardrobes, tables and books lining those same stone walls.
Before she could get too good a look at her surroundings, she finally noted how blurry her vision was, that her body, weakened with something strange and leaden feeling seemingly having invaded her very veins themselves, wasn't going away as she realized this, her head moved, as if through water and upon it's own accord, to the floor.
Blood.
All that was the floor, was blood.
If there was a part left in Shepard's mind to think it, the idea that there may have been something under the blood would have crossed her mind, but alas.
The pool on the floor was amorphous, somehow, it seemed to grow under her gaze, and with that growth, too- did something else bloom from it's depths.
A head, fur covered and matted in odd patches by the blood tingeing it, wolf like in nature, it climbed out of the puddle, a hulking beast appeared from the depths, head, then shoulders and arms then torso, each part monstrous, lithe yet Bulbus, in stranger patterns still, like the blood of the creature had come alive and turned into maggots, it's veins squirmed.
Unhurried, as if aware that Shepard could find no strength of her own to move away, to fight back at all, the werewolf approached the operating bed.
But as a single one of it's dagger like clawed fingers grazed Shepard, it miraculously burst into flames.
The process was near instant, the creature made no more then a slight squelching noise, as it seemed to simply collapse once more, into the blood.
Before Shepard could begin to process, in her hazy state of mind, what had just happened, pale beings, faces of only skin, some with teeth, others with gaping maws where nothing lived, all sallow and seemingly completely dried of anything but their bones, while also being nearly as amorphous as the blood itself, carcass-like and as small as toddlers, began to climb and clamber upwards, and onto her cot.
With boney hands, they began grabbing at her, hands and legs, then arms and torso, eventually they began moving to the face, and had they reach her neck and face, the world began to blurr all the more, until all that was, was nothing.
Waking with a start, Shepard noted how she felt mostly normal, no aches or that resounding, softly spoken pain that had laid itself within her joints since the dungeon.
Unfortunately, she was still in that same old place, on that operating bed, but with a sight far clearer than it had been, she was able to get a good look around as she moved off the bed.
There were books scattered about, and dark age esque medicinal equipment haphazardly askew, as if someone had needed space, and didn't care for the objects here.
The old, near black dark brown wood of the flooring, was cracked and shattered in places, as if a heavy weight had suddenly been placed on them, around the area her half frayed brain remembered that thing had come from the blood.
Speaking of such, there wasn't even the smell of it, in the air, instead, the smell of dust lined antiseptic, the kind that would have gotten this place shut down in the modern day.
As Shepard's feet met with the wooden floor, she took note of the old clothing she had been garbed in.
A loose white long sleeved linen shirt, with a sleeveless darkred vestment covering the chest, the left sleeve was pulled up to the elbow, with bandages wrapped snuggly around where she surmised some kind of IV drip had been set into an arterie there, removed before she awoke.
A small unembroidered black mantle with a large neck, which appeared to come with a hood in the back, it fell down to the elbows, connected by two buttons and some string tied between them.
Going downward, a belt, seemingly with two more belts added onto it, to each hip, around black traveler's pants and somewhat out of place black leather dress shoes.
The attire had seemingly been tailored for Shepard's diminutive frame, everything made for a child, she felt it odd to be in something that could be worn in polite company without making too much of a statement.
But she still felt as she was, with grit under her tails, and dirt where there was dirt when she was, awake? She begins pondering the matter of if she is or is not dreaming.
Of course the language of her thoughts were mingled with far more then a few swears and acursed phrases.
The only light in the somber, grey stone on dark brown wood on greyish brownish furnitures room, is a lantern, blazing with a vibrant, yet somehow still drab yellow, next to the seeming only exit in the windowless room.
Walking towards it, Shepard didn't bother looking around more.
Finding, past the lantern, a small path of those lanterns, lighting up a dusty old door, with dull painted glass embedded into it's upper half.
The door was old, rusted, the handle rattled and groaned with the first contact, the hinges like stone, being forced back, something that Shepard found was taking all her attention to push forward, as she did so, dust and debris came loose, as if the door had not been moved for a very, very long time, and as it opened fully, it held no indication of closing back again.
Beyond the strangely heavy door, was a stairwell down, same decrepit wood, same dusty stone walls.
After walking as quietly as she could down the very squeaky stairs, she found herself in a room, far smaller then the last, although, between the broken wood paneling of the floor, there were lines, strange gouges of blood, written into constantly shifting words that marred the wood, like tombstones.
At the other end of the room, another door, already opened.
The room it led to was something like a public operating room, multiple cots, temporary medical sheet walling, the kinds used to give a sense of privacy to a large amount of patients, all crammed into one room.
All of it, the equipment, the walls, floors and beds, all was encrusted, with oderous, dried human blood, the kind of thing to make someone light headed, with how apparent and common the smell was, radiating from nearly everything in the room.
Nearing the other side of the actual stone walling, Shepard found herself pausing, at the sight of a familiar, hulking and very much, terribly, not a hallucination, wolf man beast.
Turned to the closed doors, and paying no heed to it's surroundings.
Perhaps it was on instinct, perhaps she was more affected by the musk of human death that lingered so deeply engrained in this place, but she did not hesitate for a moment more, and attacked the beast from behind, with her bare hands.
But as her fire made contact with it's back, she found herself slipping, as the expected connection, was far looser than she had been anticipating.
Before she knew it, she had fallen, directly into where the beast should have been, where in it's place, was now a pile of ash.
The thing did not growl in pain, nor did it react, The beast had gone. If it was once here, only now dust and blood remained.
Reminiscing on the creature, Shepard could not remember if the beast had moved at all, before she had struck.
Now thoroughly dirtied by the mix of blood and ash mixing like cement into the clothing, she stood, walked through the opening to an offshoot, walked up another set of stairs, and opened a door, rattled, confused, and very on edge.
The door was the same as the first, hard to open, but Shepard had other things on her mind as she pushed it open, what she found was not another room, but a small gated outside area, full of only more dead things, trees, bushes, grass, only death.
Beyond the little area, was the rest of this ghostly place, a sky stretching on into an infinity of cracked yellow sky, through the seams of which, something had been taken, showing now the dark hues of night, like a snowglobe, full of cracks from a fall, revealing something more than it seemed.
Islands, floating in the sky, appears everywhere, half of the gate was gone, giving a good view, whatever was here, was gone.
Where there should have been a bottom, there was a void that shifted the yellow into an orange, then as it got further and further down, the orange became darker and darker, until all that remained was a uncomfortably familiar shade of darkness.