Kapitel 66: Arthur XXVII
293 ? AC
There was darkness, a yawning black chasm which seemed intent to swallow me whole as I tumbled down into its inky depths forever, time, space, nothing seemed to have meaning, as all I could precise was the eternal, limitless void.
'Am I… dead?' The question was an honest one, I had died before I thought, but whether it was like this I could not say. 'Perhaps I'll be reborn again somewhere else?' The thought was comforting somehow, that even death might not stop me truly. Though given I had seemingly traveled worlds upon my death who knew where I might end up.
Still, I would have thought the afterlife to have more stuff in it, looking about there was absolutely nothing here, at least nothing I could see, except for myself of course. I could see nothing, feel nothing beyond my own extremities, hear nothing, taste nothing. It was as if all of my senses were robbed from me in this place.
As terrifying as that might seem, at the time I only found it intensely boring.
I couldn't tell you quite how long I fell before I felt a cool, damp hand come to rest on my cheek, quite divorced from my perception of reality.
I could have sworn I felt long hair brush against my side, despite nothing being there, and a woman's sweet voice spoke in my ear. "Awaken, child of my blood."
And then the world wasn't a void anymore, and I had to blink the light out of my eyes as I was thrown from darkness into light.
The first Sense I regained was my smell, the ocean's salty breeze filling my nostrils like a comfortable blanket after the isolation of the void, but it was not alone, the thin smell of ozone also was carried with it, and as my eyes and body recovered from the shock of once more beginning to feel, I realized that while I was no longer in the void, I had not returned to the ship either. Bo, if anything I was now cast to the depths, the feeling of water covered my skin and mouth, but not oppressively, and I found I could turn my head without the pressure or drag which water conferred.
I was sitting collapsed, on what seemed to be the floor of a great marble chamber, the walls were lined with statues. Thousands of them, beasts and men, and creatures that were both, or neither, some I recognized, Giants, great sea dragons, even what might have been a child of the forest, clutching a great spear tipped with stone above his head in victory.
The whole thing seemed like a museum, or perhaps a tomb, I couldn't quite be sure.
At the center of the chamber, collapsed into the floor, was a great oxidized copper globe that seemed to depict the whole of the world. It must have long ago been suspended above the chamber, for its fall had split the stone beneath it, where crabs now scuttled forth through the ruined frame.
I took a long moment staring at it, it depicted many continents and islands I had no name for or knowledge of, a land far to the west of Westeros, across a great ocean, the shape of Sothoryos, and the other four continents which seemed to fill the southern hemisphere, the great conjoined shape of what I thought to be Ulthos and Essos which stretched halfway around the world.
I felt an urge to laugh to myself as I realized that even with all of my journeys I had likely only moved about ten degrees latitude, and I guessed the world was bigger than my old earth, though not by so great a margin.
I sighed, stepping, for I was able to step as if on land despite the water, away from the globe, and trying to commit its contents to memory. The Maesters would kill for that knowledge, but here I was without a notebook.
Starting to turn back I very nearly jumped out of my skin when a splintering, cracking sound echoed out over the chamber, somehow unmuffled by the water. I turned toward it, and the sight before my eyes transfixed me.
At the far end of the hall, a cloud of stone-dust rose from one of the creatures I had thought to be a statue. It was a titanic humanoid, but clearly inhuman, covered in scales, it's mouth hung wide, and long angler-fish like teeth sat on its bottom jaw, above a long and wispy beard and gills were clearly visible on its cheeks, it's hands and feet were webbed and clawed, and beneath its scales were visible more ribs than any human being should have. Golden jewelry hung at places all across its body, and all that remained of what had once been finery was a tattered and half-destroyed loincloth of some scaly fish-skin.
I had taken it for a statue, because its skin was coated in stone, making it appear not unlike the others here, but now one bulbous, and clearly living eye had blinked itself free of its Stoney cage with a crackle of electricity, and it was staring at me like a helpless minnow before a barracuda.
At that moment I could understand the fear of dragons. Being caught in the gaze of a predator far greater than me.
I shivered as the things jaws opened, four long and serpentine green tongues roving forth and probing the water in an unnatural display of dexterity, like a snake sniffing out prey as the stone fell off of them in crackling sheets, though it still seemed largely entombed, only it's eye and mouth being free.
Then it spoke, not through the water, but in my mind, and its voice felt like lightning crackling in my brain. It was not the common tongue, but I understood it nonetheless. I wasn't sure which was more frightening.
"Come. Mortal. Come, Child. Stand before me where I can see you better."
It wasn't a request, and a shiver ran down my spine as my legs began to move without my consent in the matter.
'This is above my paygrade.' I shuddered, but if the Lovecraftian horror before me had any response to that it did not show on his face. Indeed, it seemed that the stone which had covered its skin was already beginning to return, creeping in at the edges of its eye.
"..." the monstrosity sat, stone already beginning to form over its mouth.
"You will have to do." I gripped my head again as the creature's words were burnt into my brain by living lightning. My eyes feeling as if they would bulge from my head at the presence of the thing in my mind.
I felt a tingle run over my skin even as it was entombed once more, the stone creeping back over its features, the encrusted eye still staring at the place where I stood.
Then the chamber itself began to fall away, bit by bit, piece by piece, first at the edges, and then towards me, throwing me once again into a black void of darkness.
I was woken by a blast of noise, not thunder, but Cannon, as I sat up from my bed in the captain's Quarters aboard the sword. The windows were unshuttered and the light of the morning sun drifted through them pleasantly, but as I clutched at my heart I found that my skin was still tingling, a feeling that ran all the way up to the edge of the greyscale scars on my right shoulder. The sight of them now bringing new and horrifying urgency to my mind.
As I tried in vain to rub the feeling from my quivering body, I found that it wouldn't leave, and all I could do was stare in confusion at the retreating stone on my right shoulder, lightning crackling along its edge.
"What in the hells?"
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein