CWM: Hidden Shadows Within

[Authors' note: This comes after The Dragon Tree, certain character points might not make sense if you haven't read that yet. :) This is also a work in progress that I get to when I get to .. yes .. based on real dreams.]

                                  Contemplations of a Wondering Mind:
                                                  Hidden Shadows Within

In a pillar of light I appeared, and as it faded I looked around. The party had started without me, but it looked like I was just in time for the main event. The twenty something creatures all around me wore varying types of armor and weaponry from just about every time period and science fiction movie you've never seen, but I could tell in an instant we were all the same. We were knights, brought here for a mission just like on Alur, only this time our leader wasn't the spirit of some alien planet. He was one of us, though he looked like some kind of half man-half Doberman Pinscher wearing some kind of woven fabric armor, it made me wonder what type of rank hierarchy we had and what you had to do to be in charge of other people, but that was when the leader raised his hands up to silence the crowd. Like all good speakers he opened with a joke.
"It was good for all of you to come on time," he smiled and nodded at me. Someone from behind me lightly punched me in the arm while everyone else was chuckling.
"Seriously though," his tone changed, "something big has come to our world and I think it will require all of you, or maybe more, to vanquish it."
No one spoke out of turn, they waited for him to continue, but that was when I could feel the heat from my sword and the voice in my head speaking up
"Back up," the familiar command to kill the evil had been replaced with a simple command to go to the back of the room. So I quietly obliged, everyone I passed probably assumed I was a little embarrassed from being called out by the speaker but I had learned to listen to the sword.
"This power," the speaker continued as he walked toward the center of the room, "has changed me. It will change your world."
He stopped and placed his hand over a cloth draped over a small table, he paused and smiled and I'll never forget that moment. That last moment when I was among friends and colleagues lasted for an eternity as he pulled the fabric off the table and I drew my now fully glowing sword from the sheath.
A dark orb sat on the table, it flickered for a moment and then was gone.
"... the evil" My sword began to sing its familiar song in my head and I could feel my body igniting with the light of its power, as the room around me began to grow dark and the other inhabitants even darker. "KILL THE EVIL"
"So you knew all along, is that why you came late?" The speaker had regained his physical form but now looked terribly mutated and disfigured.
"Get him!" he commanded to the other figures in the still very dark room. As he said it, the other dark shadowy forms regained their physical form, but looked disfigured and mutated much like he did. My stomach turned at the sight of them and what I would have to do. As they began to pounce on me in the crowded party hall, I two handed gripped my sword and entered into the light so that I could move quickly.
"COME ON!" I shouted at them, though mostly I cried as I was forced to kill my friends. By the end of it all three had escaped to spread this evil, including the Doberman Pinscher with his dark orb of corruption. I stayed for several hours after that with each hero that had been slain to study what had happened, but mostly I stayed to send them home. They would never fight the good fight along my side again, but they deserved to wake up on the other side and lead what was left of their lives.
After the last body was sent back to the other side using the light pillar technique I geared up any food and drink that was left behind from the party, and I set out to follow the three that had gotten away and any others they would corrupt in their path.
And so it was that I traveled into the constant darkness of Oran, following the path of the orb of corruption.


More to come I promise .. but I'm out of time for right now.