Artemis wasn't given very much time to think. The shadow quickly warped the flesh of his leg, a mass of putrid rot spreading up towards his knee. Small blackish-yellow pustules formed in the space where muscle contracted and withered under the revealed flesh, popping as the muscle became too tight for them to withstand.
The pain was brutally agonising. It wasn't like when he had lost his arm, or his eye, or even when the monsters had attacked him while the strange black fog stole his concentration.
He felt like he was dying, or that he had already died, or both.
And that lifeless him was forced to watch helplessly as death spread over his body like a plague.
Artemis fell backwards from the shadow. Although he tried to catch himself, his legs quickly crumpled underneath him. His feet and lower legs had already succumbed to the rot.
He took a deep breath, shutting his eyes loosely as he thought calmly.
It's only a dream. I don't have to get overwhelmed.
Although the rot continued slowly traveling up his legs, the withering of his flesh and muscle causing him to let out soft, hushed groans, he kept a straight face and began to parse through what had been shown to him, trying to make sense of this strange dream.
Because what had become clear to him was that dreaming wasn't so simple in the Shadow.
Perhaps he wasn't really rotting, but there was a possibility that the revelations provided by the strange and sudden discernment of the Ebony Tree was related to something in the real world. After all, his ability didn't seem to work on anything else when he had tried it to confirm.
Although he had been hesitant to discern the Ebony Tree, it seemed it didn't matter anymore. He had done it by accident, and now the dream-him would die because of it. What a tragedy it was.
He had been able to locate and discern the Nightmare in that first dream. So it must be said that what he discerns can
Everything feels quite real...
Was this because of the Daemonic Trait's senses, which combined quite effectively with [Eyes of Discernment]?
In any case, discerning the Ebony Tree had brought up some seriously strange stuff.
There was the rambling it had done. Calling him Prince, then talking about Daemon, Dragon, and other strange characters...
But above all, it had described the Origin of Aspects!
Is this strange black tree really the Origin of Aspects? Gardner, Leon, August, even Nightmare all had these Aspects...
...but knowing something like this is too outlandish, isn't it? Is there anyone to confirm this as the absolute truth? Should I ask Leon about it? I would rather avoid asking Gardner, although that's obvious...
...if this is the truth, then isn't this story practically admitting August's abilities were meant as a joke?
That's a... very invigorating thought.
Because if that were indeed the case, then it could mean that Gardner's measurements were wrong. If the Witch-King Aspect wasn't equal to the others, then maybe a Spirit User, a Daemonic one, could beat him.
Maybe this travel to the Shadow wouldn't be for nothing!
Hadn't there been another point about the Ebony Tree he had been forgetting? Artemis crossed his collapsing feet over each other as he placed a hand on his chin, frowning. What was it that he was failing to remember?
Was it the rambling about an odd place? The strange names the Ebony Tree had mentioned? How he had been referred to as Prince?
A silhouette towered over him, staring down at him with furious eyes of bloodlust.
Ah.
It had been the point about the degenerative nature of the Ebony Tree.
There was a woman standing above him now, holding a dagger in her left hand. The skin of her cheeks had been carved outwards from the corner of her lips, all the way to the bottoms of her ears. Blood dripped down incessantly from her jawline, her eyes expressing a mixture of vengeance and utter sadness.
Was that sadness... or was it fear? For once, through the [Eyes of Discernment]'s traits, he couldn't quite tell.
She began to shriek at the top of her lungs. The grating sounds rang outwards into the depths of the now-enshadowed halls of the Guard's Wing. At the same time, a festering purple haze began to run up the stone walls of the interior, spreading across the floor at a rapid pace towards them.
No... it wasn't a haze. He had missed it when he had been distracted by the woman. Looking closer, it seemed to be some sort of flora, perhaps moss. But it was littered with spore runoff, a faint purple which blanketed the air above it.
And whatever its purpose was, they would soon find out once it reached them.
She had been gripping at her eyelids, now. The hilt of the knife was tucked between her teeth. Skin tore as her nails dug deep inwards. Her screams were brilliantly mad.
The shrieking woman suddenly burst outwards into dozens of meticulously-carved square pieces, gurgles emanating from what was once her mouth as crimson spilled into a person-shaped puddle on the ground. The cubes coalesced into one mass resembling the woman, before thousands of razor-sharp daggers pierced outwards from her body. She took a sharp step forward and entered a tumble, rolling along the length of the walkway like a roaming boulder of death and violence.
That gurgling sound overlapped her voice as she began in a screechy-tone to preach, "Sin...! Sin! Sin of! MURDER! A SINNER!"
Another man joined in her cacophony, running around beside her without clothes on, seemingly without care that the woman next to her had just been cut up into pieces. He held a torch in one hand, and a glass of faint liquor in the other. He took a swig of the drink, pouring the rest onto his head, before continuing his dance and tossing the torch into the air.
When it touched the top of his head, wincing comedically as a 'bonk' echoed through the hall, he suddenly felt the torrent of fire engulf his body. Still, he danced.
The man of fire screamed at the top of his lungs as he wisped about, "Sin of Godliness! I Sinned! I AM A SINNER!"
Artemis could see what was floating behind these terrors, that had been what had shocked him most of all. Like little wisps of grass, but emaciated and made of flesh. They somehow supported a larger head, which had four eyes like black-dots. They wore a pointed purple cap on these heads, and their ears, as well as eight wings on their backs flitted about in a furious attempt to keep them airborne. Their tiny, lanky hands held illusory chains which fell down towards the tattered necks of these terrors, moving them around like hounds on a leash.
When the master creature above the Sin of Murder noticed that Artemis was staring directly at it, the four black-beaded eyes took on a familiar, swirling hue. His senses could contribute this colour to something he had felt long before under the control of the Shadow's Creator-- utter madness.
His gaze shook as the itch in his brain began to fester, that familiar drilling into his Mind that he couldn't rid himself of. But the stress over the matter had already overtaken his heart, and he had tried to scramble to his feet even though they had already decayed and gone away.
As he fell to the floor, he tried to gather himself.
It's just a dream. It's just a dream!
The dissected woman and the burning man were closing in on him now. So too was the purple moss.
It's just a dream! It's just a dream!
IT'S JUST A DREAM!
He grasped at his hair, clutching his head before burying it against his knees, sobbing incessantly as he repeated these same words over and over in his Mind.
Artemis knew it was a dream. But that didn't make the sights he saw any less horrific.
"Ah... that felt wonderful. I'm really quite rejuvenated."
Artemis glanced out of the corner of his eye beside him, his gaze still shaking madly. Cia stretched both arms high into the air, yawning before giving off a satisfied and serene look.
Gardner had also appeared beside her, both sitting down. It wasn't their strange return after their untimely transformations that shocked him most, it was that there was a third figure sitting beside them.
He couldn't quite make out the details of this person's face, but he could tell that they were likely a man. But there was something strange about the way he was dressed. The clothes that wrapped around his body would wisp periodically, like they weren't made of a solid substance.
His eyes widened.
No, that's not it!
The reason why he couldn't recognise the third figure wasn't because he couldn't see their face, it was that their face was changing rapidly! Every half a second, it seemed that this figure would swap their face, taking on the visage of a completely different person! At one time, it would be a woman with a stark expression, a man with a gaunt face, and then a young child with rosy cheeks. Never the same, never with a smile! Almost as if there was nothing to be happy about at all.
There was only one creature he knew of in the Shadow who could swap their forms at such a rapid speed...
He suddenly heard a large crash ring through the air, originating off in the distance past the Capital walls. The cavern ceiling above, which was usually littered with stars, was now coated in a veil of black fog. The fields past the Capital were covered in a black fog. Everything had become covered in the black fog.
And in its depths, he saw the terrible silhouette of a writhing serpent-like beast, spitting flames into the darkness without a care. It had obsidian scales that radiated bright, crimson flames, and orange eyes that seemed intent on death. Only violence was drawn out like writhing crimson paint in the sea of haze.
That was the moment he had come to the harrowing realisation.
It's not a dream... it's a Nightmare...
A silhouette arose from behind him, a long and curved edge with a menacing point deftly moving towards his neck.