It was a creeping, smothering, all-consuming kind of horror, not cold and dead but alive and fantastically cruel. Those few echoes he'd felt of it while awake were nothing compared to this insidious, roaring dread and the searing fingers it wrapped around his heart.
It had a face. It had a name, though he couldn't remember it.
It was after him.
"Wait - "
The man couldn't have been a man at all; he towered twice as tall as any mortal and blistering smoke, stinking of sulfur and scorched earth, poured from between his mangled jaws with every bellow's breath that he took. Heat simmered around the molten cracks that opened up the cavity in his great chest, pouring torrid light across his surroundings, at times a baleful crimson, at others a pulsing, tainted gold, pale and painful as old scars. Every step he took shook the room; his eyes were wreathed in wicked fire.
If he had had the wherewithal to notice, he might have taken stock of his surroundings, the interiors of the temple awash with soothing blues and a misty, unsettling darkness. He might have noticed a figure to his right, standing outside of the center ring and more indistinct than the mist, shrouded in a brilliant light that obscured their features. He might even have realized that for the first time since his wakening, he was not only clothed but armed as well, a golden polearm engraved with ornate designs. He might have, and in a way he did, but only the most distant part of him really noticed or cared.
The monster that bled fire started toward him.
"Father."
[ ooc: A quick note! The Image of Deathwing, as I'm calling him, can't be defeated. The Mysterious Figure will heal grievous injuries and prevent death, but this is a match that can't be won. You can flee the temple, with the untouched dreamscape right outside, but, while delayed, the Image will pursue a certain dragon whelp to whatever other dream he enters or shares. ]
OTA!
He was terrified.
It was a creeping, smothering, all-consuming kind of horror, not cold and dead but alive and fantastically cruel. Those few echoes he'd felt of it while awake were nothing compared to this insidious, roaring dread and the searing fingers it wrapped around his heart.
It had a face. It had a name, though he couldn't remember it.
It was after him.
"Wait - "
The man couldn't have been a man at all; he towered twice as tall as any mortal and blistering smoke, stinking of sulfur and scorched earth, poured from between his mangled jaws with every bellow's breath that he took. Heat simmered around the molten cracks that opened up the cavity in his great chest, pouring torrid light across his surroundings, at times a baleful crimson, at others a pulsing, tainted gold, pale and painful as old scars. Every step he took shook the room; his eyes were wreathed in wicked fire.
If he had had the wherewithal to notice, he might have taken stock of his surroundings, the interiors of the temple awash with soothing blues and a misty, unsettling darkness. He might have noticed a figure to his right, standing outside of the center ring and more indistinct than the mist, shrouded in a brilliant light that obscured their features. He might even have realized that for the first time since his wakening, he was not only clothed but armed as well, a golden polearm engraved with ornate designs. He might have, and in a way he did, but only the most distant part of him really noticed or cared.
The monster that bled fire started toward him.
"Father."
[ ooc: A quick note! The Image of Deathwing, as I'm calling him, can't be defeated. The Mysterious Figure will heal grievous injuries and prevent death, but this is a match that can't be won. You can flee the temple, with the untouched dreamscape right outside, but, while delayed, the Image will pursue a certain dragon whelp to whatever other dream he enters or shares. ]