Beira floated in the darkness, although for how long she had been here, she could not tell. It felt strange, like she did not exist, although the fact that she could think about her existence meant that she was still sentient, and if sentient, then she was alive. Existent. She reached out her hand, or willed herself to do so. It was difficult to know if she had succeeded in moving any appendage of hers; Beira felt like the darkness that surrounded her: inert, formless, void. Beira clenched her fist… or did she actually clench? It was so difficult to put herself in perspective. She seemed to be nothing, yet at the same time as pervasive as the darkness around. She began to focus on her pervasiveness. If the dark was everywhere, and she was the darkness, she would find other things in it, and get more knowledgeable about her situation.
Beira didn’t know how long she searched; could have been an hour, could have been a month. Time seemed irrelevant here. But she found it. There was something else in the void. It was evasive, clandestine, and for a moment or a millennia (she could not tell) Beira sought to lay her hands on it. Then again, she wasn’t sure she had hands, so it was more like her will being stretched out, trying to apprehend this surreptitious presence. After some mental effort on her part, she was able to secure it. Initially, the strange presence wriggled and struggled to escape Beira’s mental grip, but when it saw it could not, it began to conflate and intensify, until a form, or at least the idea of a form, stood in the void. It was a mindflayer, though Beira sensed that it was much more powerful than any mindflayer to have ever existed.
Instinctively, Beira directed all the malevolence her mind could muster at the creature, willing pain, woe and devastation on it. She didn’t want it dead… yet. No, she willed that it suffer. The creature resisted for a moment, then spoke… or at least, it seemed to. Beira could understand its thoughts, although there were things which it sought to hide. It seemed to inform her that her strivings against it were futile, as it was a god, and she wasn’t. Beira, for her part, informed it, by means of attempting to direct her thoughts towards the creature, that humans had bodies. She did not, so she could scarcely be considered human. The monster, or at least its kind, was responsible for the destruction of her home, and she had no reason to be cordial with this one. It replied that both it and she had the same goal, which was getting out of the place in which they were, and working together would help them achieve it. Beira replied that she would not help it, until she knew why she was in the void with it, reminding it that it could not lie to her here.
”Take a seat, then,” replied the mindflayer, gesturing with its hand, and forming a strange round table, with two stranger-looking chairs, one facing the other across the table. But how would Beira take a seat, when she was the void? Attempting to imitate what the mindflayer had done, Beira attempted to pull her will from all the infinities to which it had been far spread, and slowly coalesced into a more physical form, which, interestingly she realized she could shape to her will. For now, she would be herself. The mindflayer looked at the short human female before it and gestured to the table. Beira did not move. The tentacled creature shrugged and seated itself, watching her through inky, beady eyes.
”How did I get here?” Beira asked.
”What do you last remember?”
Beira scowled. ”I remember your people and your elven servants, as well as giants, laying waste to Utgardr,” she replied. ”And you, in turn, laid waste to them,” said the tentacled abomination, most likely trying to put Beira on a similar moral level as the atrocities of the mindflayers. ”Oh right,” Beira shot back, ”I should have just laid down and asked the nearest one of you mistakes of creation to cut my throat, or worse, eat my brains.”
”The carnage was not entirely my intention. Our people were at war…”
”Yes, a war you started unprovoked. Now the queen of Utgardr is dead, and I fear what has happened to its people.”
”You sound as though you harbored no ill will towards your queen.”
”And you lie through your teeth when you say the war was not your intention. Somehow, this place reveals your thoughts to me. You may keep things from me, but you cannot lie outright; I will know. And for some reason I’m yet to discover, I know you’re scared of me. I know I can’t lie to you either, but then again, I sense I have much less, than you do, to hide. So I ask again, and don’t derail my question, how did I get here?”
The mindflayer threaded its fingers together. ”Firstly, introductions are in order. I am Uaggool, God of Forbidden Knowledge, patron deity of mindflayers...”
”You’ll soon be the god with an Utgardian girl’s foot lodged in your posterior if you ever divert my question again,” Beira interrupted. ”I don’t care about introductions. Get to the point.”
Beira could sense the abomination was irritated, but it complied with her demand. ”You do know that the queen of Utgardr, Skadi, your sister, made a deal with the mindflayers to consolidate power for her by eliminating other members of her family who she felt had more power, or the potential to be more powerful, than her. So in her search for power with which to secure the kingdom for herself, she came in contact with me. I wanted an offspring of Hrim, for my own personal reasons, which I do not need to reveal, so I made a deal with her to help her secure her kingdom, in return for having a descendant of Hrim delivered to me. All went according to plan, but I overlooked something: dark elves.”
Beira frowned. The dark elves were subjugated by the mindflayers and forced to fight, or at least so Beira believed. Uaggool, sensing her thoughts, laughed, the tentacles on its mouth thrashing with glee and disgusting the Utgardian to no end. ”The greatest players in this act are the dark elves. I had thought my people had truly enslaved the elves. We didn’t know that the elves, though subservient to us, served another master, the dark elven god of death, Orcus, He Who Walks In Darkness. I can sense his power coursing through you even now. The priests of the dark elves used their spells to alter messages I sent to my priests, and so they carried out my bidding, but with the interests of Orcus in mind. It was the dark elven priests who instigated my own priests to perform the ritual on you that exposed you to the plane of death, which was why the Heart of Winter, which you Utgardians had placed so much trust in, withered and broke at your touch. Utgardr was simply a dark elven sacrifice to Orcus.”
Somehow, Beira knew that Uaggool was telling the truth. But that still did not explain what she was doing here, in this void. The mindflayer god explained the answer to her unasked question. ”This place is not a void. It is actually my plane of existence, the Librarium Obscuri, located within the Travectio Infinium, a crossroads of worlds, where dreams, nightmares and everything conceived by sentient beings reside. I managed to carve out a niche in this budding space, and I own it. Your mind was ripped out of your body and sent here, by one of my priests, although the sending spell fragmented your will into thousands of pieces. That you were able to draw the many fragments of your will back together eventually is a testament of how strong your mind is. I am glad that you are here.” Beira took a threatening step towards the mindflayer god. ”But what of my body? What has happened to my body? I swear by the unrelenting cold of Jotunheimr that if any harm has--”
”Your body is safe,” interjected the mindflayer impatiently. ”If it wasn’t, if your body died, your soul would not be here. It would have passed into the Depths of Eternity. I had my servants keep your body safe.” The mindflayer seemed to smile. ”Frankly, I wouldn’t have bothered to disturb you. I was actually more interested in Hodr, your brother.” Beira was now quite confused. She could sense that the mindflayer was expectant. ”What could you possibly have wanted with him?” she asked, to which the monster replied, ”you know the power of your bloodline: the ability to absorb energy from the environment and use it as magical energy. Well, the power is not limited to your body alone. Your mind has it too, which is why, even though it was your body that absorbed the dark energies of death in the Catacombs where my misguided priests performed their ritual, yet I can sense the shroud of corrupted energy in your mind. I wanted to fuse with Hodr’s mind, is all.”
”What actually do you want?” Beira insisted.
”To walk the physical planes,” came the reply. ”I am tired of being stuck here in the Librarium Obscuri. I want to see what the material planes are like, what the tangible worlds have to offer. To do that, I need a body. While I really was hoping it would have been Hodr that I got to possess, that dark elf wench, what was her name again… ah yes, Aelyd; she killed Hodr, and left me with you.”
”That’s impossible,” Beira gasped, disbelieving. After being captured by the dark elves, years ago, it was Aelyd that had first been most cordial with her. When she had been set free by the elves, and her sister had tried to assassinate her, Aelyd had saved her again, and had subsequently taught her a number of things, including medicine and dark elven forms of combat. To think that all this while, the same Aelyd, who told her that mindflayers had killed her brother, had been lying to her all along. The Utgardian girl shook her head vigorously. ”No! I refuse to believe it.”
”You cannot refuse!” Uagool gloated. ”You know I speak the truth!!”
And at that moment, when Beira’s mind was overwhelmed with shock and grief over the betrayal of Aelyd, the dark elf who she had trusted the most, Beira realized too late Uaggool’s intention. For now, her will was weak, vulnerable. ”Now, Utgardian child, you are mine!” the abomination screamed with glee, as it suddenly burst int a thick cloud of inky black smoke. ”I will devour your mind!!!” Beira struggled as hard as she could, but she couldn’t fight back. Her mind was too disturbed to focus her will against the mindflayer god. She struggled, but felt herself being overwhelmed by the power of Uaggool, like when one fights in vain against sleep. She began slipping away into oblivion…
…then Uaggool connected with the darkness within her, and the tables turned. Like a plume of wildfire, the corrupted energies deep within Beira surged through the will of Uaggool, wracking its mental presence. The mindflayer god shrieked and tried to pull away, but Beira, now fully alert again, mentally willed against its escape. With a loud shriek, the mindflayer god burst into dark purple flames, and was gone. Beira was alone. To her surprise, everywhere that had seemed dark before now gained a strange unreal light. Eerie knowledge began flowing into her mind. Scared it would run her mad, she shut the stream off, and looked around. Beira was in an immense, otherworldly library. Books and papers flittered about, animated by themselves, and far off in the distance, Beira thought she could make out forms of majestic buildings, or were they ruins? Well, it didn’t matter. She had to leave here.
As soon as she thought along those lines, a white light appeared not too far off, between two bookshelves. Beira approached it, and all went white. She realized she was lying down in some sort of closed box. She punched through the lid, cast it away, and sat up, and there was an outcry all around her. Humans like herself, but in strange clothes, with strange equipment, and speaking strange languages fled from the sight of her. ”Where am I?” she asked. One of the humans screamed, pointing at her, evident hatred in his eyes. Two armored knights ran into the room, pointing their weapons at her. Instinctively, she brought her ice magic to bear, creating a small ice storm in the room, though she reduced the intensity of the storm so as not to get anyone hurt. It would surely blind everyone, giving her a chance to escape. Surprisingly, the soldiers were not deterred. Trying to get out of the box, Beira stumbled out and fell to the ground, her body not cooperating much with her, thanks to her not using it in a while. One of the soldiers was now standing over her. He raised his greatsword over her, and Beira was sure that one blow would cut her in two. Instinctively, she placed her hand on the ground, as some strange spell she was sure she didn’t know suddenly filtered into her mind.
”Precept 40: Ruptura!”
Blood red runes streaked out of her hand, onto the surrounding area, creating a rupture in the floor, through which both Beira and the advancing soldier fell. Due to the natural hardiness she possessed, she wasn’t all the worse for wear, but the soldier looked stunned. His helmet had fallen off his head, and he staggered to his feet, looking for his sword. Beira rose to her feet, and impulsively again, grabbed the knight’s head firmly but gently with both hands, and pressed her lips to his, before he could respond. Immediately, the knowledge of the strange language flooded her mind. She pushed the knight, and he stumbled backwards over debris, falling down with a clatter, though he wasn’t hurt further.
”Thank you very kindly, son of Pergrande,” the Utgardian said to the knight in his own tongue with a smile, as another snippet of information landed in her head. She held out her hand, and strange runes flowed forth through the air and assembled to form a large floating rectangle, with the inside of the rectangle shimmering with a strange light, just as Beira heard the sound of someone fiddling with something. Looking up, she saw the second knight holding a strange short arrow, trying to fit it onto something. It certainly wasn’t their way of greeting here. Not knowing where the strange portal before her led, she sprang through it, finding herself once again in the Librarium Obscuri. As the portal closed behind her, Uaggool’s form materialized before her. She took a battle-ready stance, but the apparition did not move.
”Congratulations, child,” it said. It sounded irritated. ”You have acquired control of the Librarium Obscuri, upon vanquishing me, or shall I say, upon the taint of Orcus vanquishing me. Well, I don’t have a choice but to see the world through your eyes. If you must know, you are in a dimension called Earthland, what your people knew as Midgard. Enjoy yourself there as long as you can, for until I can pull my will back together, which will eventually happen, you are the Lady of the Librarium Obscuri. You can control its esoteric energies and tread paths of wisdom and danger. Do not waste this gift. It is not yours to squander. Oh, and until we meet again more perfectly, I shall have my eyes on you.”
As the form disappeared, Beira took in all that happened. By some strange twist of fate, she had managed to survive, and get conscious again, though how far she was from home, and how long ago the last battle she had fought had been, she could never tell. Willing herself somewhere random, as long as it was away from this strange place called Pergrande, where the strange men in iron clothes had attacked her, Beira saw a new light in the distance, and approached it, ready for her next adventure… as well as a good meal, if one could be found.
Word Count: 2754 words
Beira didn’t know how long she searched; could have been an hour, could have been a month. Time seemed irrelevant here. But she found it. There was something else in the void. It was evasive, clandestine, and for a moment or a millennia (she could not tell) Beira sought to lay her hands on it. Then again, she wasn’t sure she had hands, so it was more like her will being stretched out, trying to apprehend this surreptitious presence. After some mental effort on her part, she was able to secure it. Initially, the strange presence wriggled and struggled to escape Beira’s mental grip, but when it saw it could not, it began to conflate and intensify, until a form, or at least the idea of a form, stood in the void. It was a mindflayer, though Beira sensed that it was much more powerful than any mindflayer to have ever existed.
Instinctively, Beira directed all the malevolence her mind could muster at the creature, willing pain, woe and devastation on it. She didn’t want it dead… yet. No, she willed that it suffer. The creature resisted for a moment, then spoke… or at least, it seemed to. Beira could understand its thoughts, although there were things which it sought to hide. It seemed to inform her that her strivings against it were futile, as it was a god, and she wasn’t. Beira, for her part, informed it, by means of attempting to direct her thoughts towards the creature, that humans had bodies. She did not, so she could scarcely be considered human. The monster, or at least its kind, was responsible for the destruction of her home, and she had no reason to be cordial with this one. It replied that both it and she had the same goal, which was getting out of the place in which they were, and working together would help them achieve it. Beira replied that she would not help it, until she knew why she was in the void with it, reminding it that it could not lie to her here.
”Take a seat, then,” replied the mindflayer, gesturing with its hand, and forming a strange round table, with two stranger-looking chairs, one facing the other across the table. But how would Beira take a seat, when she was the void? Attempting to imitate what the mindflayer had done, Beira attempted to pull her will from all the infinities to which it had been far spread, and slowly coalesced into a more physical form, which, interestingly she realized she could shape to her will. For now, she would be herself. The mindflayer looked at the short human female before it and gestured to the table. Beira did not move. The tentacled creature shrugged and seated itself, watching her through inky, beady eyes.
”How did I get here?” Beira asked.
”What do you last remember?”
Beira scowled. ”I remember your people and your elven servants, as well as giants, laying waste to Utgardr,” she replied. ”And you, in turn, laid waste to them,” said the tentacled abomination, most likely trying to put Beira on a similar moral level as the atrocities of the mindflayers. ”Oh right,” Beira shot back, ”I should have just laid down and asked the nearest one of you mistakes of creation to cut my throat, or worse, eat my brains.”
”The carnage was not entirely my intention. Our people were at war…”
”Yes, a war you started unprovoked. Now the queen of Utgardr is dead, and I fear what has happened to its people.”
”You sound as though you harbored no ill will towards your queen.”
”And you lie through your teeth when you say the war was not your intention. Somehow, this place reveals your thoughts to me. You may keep things from me, but you cannot lie outright; I will know. And for some reason I’m yet to discover, I know you’re scared of me. I know I can’t lie to you either, but then again, I sense I have much less, than you do, to hide. So I ask again, and don’t derail my question, how did I get here?”
The mindflayer threaded its fingers together. ”Firstly, introductions are in order. I am Uaggool, God of Forbidden Knowledge, patron deity of mindflayers...”
”You’ll soon be the god with an Utgardian girl’s foot lodged in your posterior if you ever divert my question again,” Beira interrupted. ”I don’t care about introductions. Get to the point.”
Beira could sense the abomination was irritated, but it complied with her demand. ”You do know that the queen of Utgardr, Skadi, your sister, made a deal with the mindflayers to consolidate power for her by eliminating other members of her family who she felt had more power, or the potential to be more powerful, than her. So in her search for power with which to secure the kingdom for herself, she came in contact with me. I wanted an offspring of Hrim, for my own personal reasons, which I do not need to reveal, so I made a deal with her to help her secure her kingdom, in return for having a descendant of Hrim delivered to me. All went according to plan, but I overlooked something: dark elves.”
Beira frowned. The dark elves were subjugated by the mindflayers and forced to fight, or at least so Beira believed. Uaggool, sensing her thoughts, laughed, the tentacles on its mouth thrashing with glee and disgusting the Utgardian to no end. ”The greatest players in this act are the dark elves. I had thought my people had truly enslaved the elves. We didn’t know that the elves, though subservient to us, served another master, the dark elven god of death, Orcus, He Who Walks In Darkness. I can sense his power coursing through you even now. The priests of the dark elves used their spells to alter messages I sent to my priests, and so they carried out my bidding, but with the interests of Orcus in mind. It was the dark elven priests who instigated my own priests to perform the ritual on you that exposed you to the plane of death, which was why the Heart of Winter, which you Utgardians had placed so much trust in, withered and broke at your touch. Utgardr was simply a dark elven sacrifice to Orcus.”
Somehow, Beira knew that Uaggool was telling the truth. But that still did not explain what she was doing here, in this void. The mindflayer god explained the answer to her unasked question. ”This place is not a void. It is actually my plane of existence, the Librarium Obscuri, located within the Travectio Infinium, a crossroads of worlds, where dreams, nightmares and everything conceived by sentient beings reside. I managed to carve out a niche in this budding space, and I own it. Your mind was ripped out of your body and sent here, by one of my priests, although the sending spell fragmented your will into thousands of pieces. That you were able to draw the many fragments of your will back together eventually is a testament of how strong your mind is. I am glad that you are here.” Beira took a threatening step towards the mindflayer god. ”But what of my body? What has happened to my body? I swear by the unrelenting cold of Jotunheimr that if any harm has--”
”Your body is safe,” interjected the mindflayer impatiently. ”If it wasn’t, if your body died, your soul would not be here. It would have passed into the Depths of Eternity. I had my servants keep your body safe.” The mindflayer seemed to smile. ”Frankly, I wouldn’t have bothered to disturb you. I was actually more interested in Hodr, your brother.” Beira was now quite confused. She could sense that the mindflayer was expectant. ”What could you possibly have wanted with him?” she asked, to which the monster replied, ”you know the power of your bloodline: the ability to absorb energy from the environment and use it as magical energy. Well, the power is not limited to your body alone. Your mind has it too, which is why, even though it was your body that absorbed the dark energies of death in the Catacombs where my misguided priests performed their ritual, yet I can sense the shroud of corrupted energy in your mind. I wanted to fuse with Hodr’s mind, is all.”
”What actually do you want?” Beira insisted.
”To walk the physical planes,” came the reply. ”I am tired of being stuck here in the Librarium Obscuri. I want to see what the material planes are like, what the tangible worlds have to offer. To do that, I need a body. While I really was hoping it would have been Hodr that I got to possess, that dark elf wench, what was her name again… ah yes, Aelyd; she killed Hodr, and left me with you.”
”That’s impossible,” Beira gasped, disbelieving. After being captured by the dark elves, years ago, it was Aelyd that had first been most cordial with her. When she had been set free by the elves, and her sister had tried to assassinate her, Aelyd had saved her again, and had subsequently taught her a number of things, including medicine and dark elven forms of combat. To think that all this while, the same Aelyd, who told her that mindflayers had killed her brother, had been lying to her all along. The Utgardian girl shook her head vigorously. ”No! I refuse to believe it.”
”You cannot refuse!” Uagool gloated. ”You know I speak the truth!!”
And at that moment, when Beira’s mind was overwhelmed with shock and grief over the betrayal of Aelyd, the dark elf who she had trusted the most, Beira realized too late Uaggool’s intention. For now, her will was weak, vulnerable. ”Now, Utgardian child, you are mine!” the abomination screamed with glee, as it suddenly burst int a thick cloud of inky black smoke. ”I will devour your mind!!!” Beira struggled as hard as she could, but she couldn’t fight back. Her mind was too disturbed to focus her will against the mindflayer god. She struggled, but felt herself being overwhelmed by the power of Uaggool, like when one fights in vain against sleep. She began slipping away into oblivion…
…then Uaggool connected with the darkness within her, and the tables turned. Like a plume of wildfire, the corrupted energies deep within Beira surged through the will of Uaggool, wracking its mental presence. The mindflayer god shrieked and tried to pull away, but Beira, now fully alert again, mentally willed against its escape. With a loud shriek, the mindflayer god burst into dark purple flames, and was gone. Beira was alone. To her surprise, everywhere that had seemed dark before now gained a strange unreal light. Eerie knowledge began flowing into her mind. Scared it would run her mad, she shut the stream off, and looked around. Beira was in an immense, otherworldly library. Books and papers flittered about, animated by themselves, and far off in the distance, Beira thought she could make out forms of majestic buildings, or were they ruins? Well, it didn’t matter. She had to leave here.
As soon as she thought along those lines, a white light appeared not too far off, between two bookshelves. Beira approached it, and all went white. She realized she was lying down in some sort of closed box. She punched through the lid, cast it away, and sat up, and there was an outcry all around her. Humans like herself, but in strange clothes, with strange equipment, and speaking strange languages fled from the sight of her. ”Where am I?” she asked. One of the humans screamed, pointing at her, evident hatred in his eyes. Two armored knights ran into the room, pointing their weapons at her. Instinctively, she brought her ice magic to bear, creating a small ice storm in the room, though she reduced the intensity of the storm so as not to get anyone hurt. It would surely blind everyone, giving her a chance to escape. Surprisingly, the soldiers were not deterred. Trying to get out of the box, Beira stumbled out and fell to the ground, her body not cooperating much with her, thanks to her not using it in a while. One of the soldiers was now standing over her. He raised his greatsword over her, and Beira was sure that one blow would cut her in two. Instinctively, she placed her hand on the ground, as some strange spell she was sure she didn’t know suddenly filtered into her mind.
”Precept 40: Ruptura!”
Blood red runes streaked out of her hand, onto the surrounding area, creating a rupture in the floor, through which both Beira and the advancing soldier fell. Due to the natural hardiness she possessed, she wasn’t all the worse for wear, but the soldier looked stunned. His helmet had fallen off his head, and he staggered to his feet, looking for his sword. Beira rose to her feet, and impulsively again, grabbed the knight’s head firmly but gently with both hands, and pressed her lips to his, before he could respond. Immediately, the knowledge of the strange language flooded her mind. She pushed the knight, and he stumbled backwards over debris, falling down with a clatter, though he wasn’t hurt further.
”Thank you very kindly, son of Pergrande,” the Utgardian said to the knight in his own tongue with a smile, as another snippet of information landed in her head. She held out her hand, and strange runes flowed forth through the air and assembled to form a large floating rectangle, with the inside of the rectangle shimmering with a strange light, just as Beira heard the sound of someone fiddling with something. Looking up, she saw the second knight holding a strange short arrow, trying to fit it onto something. It certainly wasn’t their way of greeting here. Not knowing where the strange portal before her led, she sprang through it, finding herself once again in the Librarium Obscuri. As the portal closed behind her, Uaggool’s form materialized before her. She took a battle-ready stance, but the apparition did not move.
”Congratulations, child,” it said. It sounded irritated. ”You have acquired control of the Librarium Obscuri, upon vanquishing me, or shall I say, upon the taint of Orcus vanquishing me. Well, I don’t have a choice but to see the world through your eyes. If you must know, you are in a dimension called Earthland, what your people knew as Midgard. Enjoy yourself there as long as you can, for until I can pull my will back together, which will eventually happen, you are the Lady of the Librarium Obscuri. You can control its esoteric energies and tread paths of wisdom and danger. Do not waste this gift. It is not yours to squander. Oh, and until we meet again more perfectly, I shall have my eyes on you.”
As the form disappeared, Beira took in all that happened. By some strange twist of fate, she had managed to survive, and get conscious again, though how far she was from home, and how long ago the last battle she had fought had been, she could never tell. Willing herself somewhere random, as long as it was away from this strange place called Pergrande, where the strange men in iron clothes had attacked her, Beira saw a new light in the distance, and approached it, ready for her next adventure… as well as a good meal, if one could be found.
FIN
Word Count: 2754 words
