Dream of Death and Redemption

(Timeline : mid-August 07)

Screams of terror filled the night. The Priest thrashed and flailed on the ground, fighting some unseen foe, losing some unseen battle. His voice filled the island off of the Auberdine village, even reaching across the water, giving the residents of the inn there a frightful experience and a tale of a haunted spirit in torment.

Finally, he stops, breathing hard, with his hands over his head. Suddenly and swiftly, he retrieves a parchment and begins writing furiously, as one who might be writing a last will and testament seconds in advance of death.

"I have had a most unusual dream. And it was real to me. Like no other dream I have had."

"I dreamed I was Forsaken. My...art was still there, yet it was corrupted. I looked down, and I saw...death and decay, stench and smell, foulness and odor, bones and organs. And I realized, I was lost and my spirit was condemmed to eternal pain and suffering."

Aamien stops. Grabbing a hankerchief, he dabs the sweat from his head and drinks quickly from a flask. The he continues.

"And my existence was lonely and tormented. It is as if the dream spanned an entire lifetime. I saw others, but I could not speak to them, nor they to me. I wished to reach out...to touch...to embrace life, but all withered before me. It was as if I was the Death Knight coming to the Northern City again. Everywhere I walked, Death preceeded me, and Death followed me. Flowers wilted and grass grew brown. Life was repulsed by my very presence."

Aamien pauses again. His breathing has calmed down, and the haunted look, while still there, seems no longer to posess Aamien to the degree that he would seem...different.

He begins to write, then scribbes it out. He writes something else, and then rebukes the paper and scribbles again. Finally...

"Then, I saw her. Radiant. Powerful. In my dream, she was a fully trained Priestess, one more powerful than myself."

"She saw me, and she approached me. She...touched me. She called me by my name, and the fear which so often is in her eyes was completely absent. It was I who trembled."

"I looked into her strong eyes, and reached my arm...my arm of decaying flesh out...and then, I noticed that my arm was not decaying, nor was it full of death."

"I looked down, and I was whole. She had come to me, approached me without fear, and she had brought me from Death."

Aamien stops writing. He rests his head on his folded hands, motionless, for long hours, until the sun rises.