A Fevered Journey

Days of fruitless labour – days I cannot count, measuring at least a handful – days of fruitless labour without sleep. My pen scratching without cease. I know not when I last slept – the closing of my eyes brought only restless, relentless sensation, dancing lights in place of rightful dark, frantic energy in place of rightful calm. And so I would contort and thrash in my cot, the release of sleep evading me, ever beyond my grasp, until I rose once more to take up pen again and coax from it that which – my mind can conceive of it in its entirety but my faculty of letters has failed.

This until last night, in desperation, I broke my own custom. I sent for a flask of spiced brandy, and warmed it upon the brazier. To the coals I added a fistful of ngusk leaves – the sweet scented smoke and the warmth of the brandy together weighed down my limbs, covered my eyes, and softened my thoughts, and so to sleep I last withdrew.

But while my body rested, my mind did not. I felt myself lifted from my cot – taken by some external force from my chamber, from these towers, from this very city.

I took in all at once the entire sky – more vivid than through my lenses, sharper by far than any impression of mortal sight, and encompassing the breadth of Ycairn and the whole span of the night in a single glance.

All that followed I saw in a moment as brief as the space between drops of rain, that fleeting moment yet stretched to infinity within its span.

I withdrew from this planet, and the forests and peaks of Ycairn and its oceans and plains and deserts lay all at once beneath my gaze. I beheld the burning face of the sun and the spirits that dance in her valleys and rivers. The scorched wastes of Vasaath, the scarred shell of the Cradle, the desolate and haunted expanses of Neshda. I beheld all these, and diverse and nameless rocks and moons, some unknown to mortal science.

My mind was drawn by that terrible, irresistible force across Vasaath – here I saw figures, like humanity but not of humanity, plotting great evil in their mountain fastnesses. A sickly queen stood in a jeweled oasis, and her people know not the suffering that is to come. A mountain built neither by nature nor humanity stretched to the sky and teemed with life.

I was drawn next to The Cradle. I saw a vast continent – plains and mountains and jungles, all dominated by a great central plateau. Here a wicked king in the east warred upon the peoples of the continent. Legions of war beasts ponderously marched to battle as his men flattened the land in broad avenues snaking from horizon to horizon, having not the art of flight.

Mysterious figures of great power that yet seemed familiar stalked the central plateau, and to the south a wise benevolent king ruled a broad peaceful land, though behind him stood a cabal of shadowy figures. In his audience chamber I watched as the king presided over a great celebration, when one of the dark figures attending his side looked directly upon me – I was filled with a sudden awareness that just as I could see, I too could be seen, and I was filled with dread of these alien folk.

The man of shadow fixed his gaze in my direction, and I began to feel myself pulled two ways – a strange gravity summoning me to this dread wizard conflicted with the irresistible force drawing me through the cosmos. In that moment my terror surpassed my senses.

My next conscious thought found me in my cot, soaked with the sweat of my days’ labours and my night’s soporific travels. I took directly to my desk to pen this account lest it fade from my memory. What mysteries and horrors inhabit these sister worlds of ours? What powers unknown might the humanity of other planets wield? It is not for us to know.

Alega Karrith, citizen of Mirsvr