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Wednesday 24 May 2017

The Shattered Oracle - II - An Astral Sojourn - Page 12


II

An Astral Sojourn


- Page Twelve -




The once immense volcanic island nation below her was completely devastated and shattered into several smaller islands. Many of the high peaks that encircled the central city of Neshran — itself resting on an island in the heart of an ancient caldera — had tumbled in on themselves. The great volcano, now exposed below, had not erupted. Thankfully it remained extinct as it had been many millennia earlier, but the energies tearing through the land below seemed to stir it almost to life once more. The northern waters of the Heartsblood Sea fell into steaming gashes in the earth's surface to meet with the magma pools of Gehemol — the forsaken and darkened land beneath the world-plane — far below. The once lush forests in the valleys and ravines of the island were aflame or already burned to cinders. The fires were caused by the thrown up boulders and embers of molten rock that still soared into the sky from the great gashes below. The forests were the same ones she had spent so many nights and relaxing days in with her siblings and her father on camping trips. Now nothing remained of them save for ashes.

The great city of Neshran had been completely torn apart and the damages seemed to be very old. Perhaps some of the city may have survived and sunken to the bottom of the great caldera lake at the center of the island, but most of the city had either fallen into the great burning chasms or been reduced to nothing more than rubble in the earthquakes that still shook the land to this day. The once glittering lights of the city had long ago faded away to nothing more than a distant memory. Only the distant lights of the port cities in Fyrrantha in the west and the coastal townships of the Hoelath Empire in the east shone any human-made light, below. Twinking lights, held at bay beneath the dark canopy of clouds that dwarfed out the day-time light. The island of Oerstav Caelii, now referred to many in the Hoelath Empire as the Shattered Oracle Islands, after the abomination that dwelled there, were dead of any human life at all.

Maenthrai felt herself beginning to panic, the mortal sensations of hyperventilating and blood draining from her extremities called to her separated consciousness. These mortal feelings echoed through the distances she had traveled from her mortal body back in Kalshuyr Azkholl, to her astral self here at her old home. The land below seemed almost entirely alien to her now, yet there were shards and pieces of painful familiarity in the devastation. Those shards pulled at her heart, filling her with a sickening unease, and weighing down her essence. The feelings of nostalgia mixed inside of her with feelings of sanity-shredding, mortal horror. Her thoughts tried to pull herself away from the disjointed memories and severe emotions of her past. One thought echoed in her mind more than all the rest; this entire astral sojourn had been a grave mistake.

A weight pulled at her ephemeral feet, tugging at her and distorting the astral echo of her mortal body. It had been a slow and persistent tug since she first arrived, but now that several moments — or what she thought might be moments; perhaps hours — had gone by, the pull was increasing. It felt like the depths of a great ocean pulling her down from the surface of the water. Using her will she kicked and floundered, trying to pull herself up, but the effort to keep aloft seemed to grow with each heartbeat that echoed through time and space from her mortal body. She couldn't feel a presence in the pulling, this partly because of the severe concentration she had to maintain to keep her astral essence from being discorporated or forcefully snapping back to her body. Her telepathic powers were useless in this state. 




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2 comments:

  1. Thanks for promoting my fiction on your site! The Undying Cultivator had a slight name change though, It's now called the Undying Prince.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Baron, I'll update the title ASAP. Keep up the good work on the Undying Prince.

    ReplyDelete