If my life was a dream, the beginning was a nightmare.
It started like all nightmares. Happy and colorful, until it wasn't. It became a vast cave filled with blistering heat. Then… cold, dark tunnels.
Endless tunnels.
Dangerous tunnels.
Or so I thought.
Days, weeks, months, I eventually emerged from the Darkness below the worlds and emerged to see the light for the first time. And from there, the nightmare grew worse.
Feared what I was. Hated for my needs. I only knew struggle.
Danger.
Years and years were spent alone. On the run or in hiding. Struggling between feeding myself and enduring starvation for the sake of basking in the warmth of a hateful society.
Day in and day out. Walking without rest or pause. Sometimes running.
Days. Weeks. Months.
Running. Fighting. Surviving.
Endlessly. Tirelessly.
And then I was found. Or rather, recovered. An old friend left the comfort of our home out of concern. She made the same journey I made out of love. She made another like us to help us in those foreign lands.
And things got better, for a time.
Then worse. Much, much worse.
Everything tripled. The hate. The loneliness. The shame.
I grew to resent it. I grew to resent it all. Myself. My life. My dream.
I just wanted it all to end.
I wanted my life to end. Until. Suddenly, I found myself wanting to live forever.
I needed to.
Fate.
Maybe it was fate that gave us the chance to start anew.
Or… destiny.
Maybe it was our destiny to hear tales of a fantastical place where all creatures were accepted.
Or… we were guided. By something, we were inspired to travel.
So we did.
More days. More weeks. More months. We traveled, we were tested, and eventually, we arrived.
And then, at long lost, I found it. I found him.
He was hope personified. Wonder manifest. Freedom incarnate. The Sovereign of my people. And much more.
I put faith in his acceptance of me and was blessed with a family.
I had faith that he would guide me and was blessed with a home.
I had faith that he could achieve his dreams and lead me- all of us, to achieving ours.
I had faith that he would keep us free in both life and death.
All along, I had faith. So when he asked me to pray to him, I knew I wasn't crazy. I was relieved. I had no choice but to believe what I knew deep down in my heart to be true.
Amun was my best friend. And much, much more. But above all, he was my God.
And my God was Eternal.
D.B.M.Q. Entry #1.
***
Controlled chaos.
If there was any way to describe the state of the Cap upon my return, that was it. Fear, curiosity, joy, and indignation filled the room as much as air did. The dragon was outside of everyone's concern for the moment. As was the case with Amun. In one way or another, each and every one of us was stunned to the core.
The former slave, Peter Boyd, was a monster with a mere Slush Well. And nearly everyone here thought I was the one responsible. But a few of us- Olga, Eiriol, Corym, Indra, and perhaps those affiliated with the light- knew who trained the monsters of Cooke Party.
But the truth was almost more than our eyes could believe.
I, for one, couldn't help but keep my gaze held on the transformed landscape. A true and true oasis.
But before I knew it, the screen switched again to reveal another monster.
Controlled chaos.
That was also Zakira. And she was the only one Amun seemed to have limitless patience for. Though he didn't view her as a lover as everyone thought. Nor as a sibling or even as a friend, strangely enough. She was just… there. And he accepted her presence without question.
What that did to her was my and everyone's guess, but it served to free her from whatever cocoon she formed around her. Now, she was going through a metamorphosis, and what would emerge would be something able to follow the Devil to the edge of the Mortal Plane and back.
That, I was sure.
"Ahem. Z-"
"Oh, Mani!" Zeff's introduction of the young vampire was interrupted by her shouting, pulling everyone's eyes to the nearest screen at once.
Zakira was dressed in a set of plated off-white armor with red accents. Her helmet was missing, exposing her bulbous crimson eyes that lovingly gazed up at a bottle of a silvery red liquid.
I felt my heart falter as her mace, held loosely at her left side, blurred with motion. And she cried again. "Oh, Mani!"
"Oh, dear," I muttered.
Corym and Indra may have well too. I knew what it was. They knew what it was. Many of the guilds within the Regni knew too. But what none of us knew was who or what this Mani she was calling out to was or what kind of ritual she was trying to perform.
As what could only have been unicorn blood spilled down her brow, Zakira let her arms fall to allow the magical blood to flow from her shoulders to her hands before she lifted them to clasp them in prayer.
"Oh, Mani!" She shouted to the heavens a third time. "I pray that you keep me free for the rest of my days! May you watch over me as I travel, spreading the glory that is your name! Grant me your strength so that I can make rainfall out of the blood of the tyrant! Bless me your knowledge so that I may liberate the oppressed!
"Oh, my glorious Mani!" She shouted with the full zeal of a Priestess or Cleric. "I ask for your love! Hear my prayer and grant me the blessings of the Blood Moon."
Unbridled chaos.
"Did she mispronounce that?" Someone from Stellaris shuddered out a gasp. "Or did my ears ring true?"
Meanwhile, someone from Graystone asked what many were thinking. "What's… a moon?"
Sinestro himself declared the answer many wished to keep hidden. "Amun?"
"Is she… praying to him?" The Purists asked as one.
"I've never heard of Mani." Someone from Rex Magica thought aloud before waving off one of her subordinates to find out "Is that a lesser god? Which pantheon is that?"
Meanwhile, Eiriol erupted in a fit of nefarious laughter. "Oh, this is becoming quite fascinating indeed!"
"Just what the hell is going on?" I muttered.
"Is that… unicorn blood?"
"Obviously!"
On and on and on the pandemonium continued until Zakira stepped through the portal with silken strings trailing after her, at which time a pervasive silence seemed to crawl into the room from the many screens found throughout before chaos ensued once again.
She was slated to face a ghast. But we or Zakira never even saw it. She only took a single step through the portal to hold her mace overhead and shouted to the heavens while the liters of unicorn blood gushed into her weapon. Then, with a blood-curdling scream, she struck the ground with enough force to make one think it truly contained the power of divinity.
The ground below her shattered in tune with a deafening explosion before a heart of red energy cascaded through the ground.
Into fissures and crevasse alike, the blood-infused mana forced its way into wherever it could to blow apart the ground and make way for the next wave to expand in a devastating wave of silver blood that upturned trees, rent the flesh of nearby creatures, and twisted the remains into a hellish web of meaty tendrils that lay strewn across the environment.
And from somewhere within the lingering fog and gut-wrenching webs of flesh, a ghoulish scream could be heard crying out before it fell to the same silence of the bloodied forest.
"Oh, Mani!" She… sobbed. Then stood to clasp her mace before her chest and sob again. "Thank you!"
So sobbing, she raised her weapon overhead a final time and the stomach-churning environment responded with a lurch in her direction before tiny strings began to detach from the mass.
Like streams dripping into a depression, the strings converged on her weapon and condensed into an opalescent heart of reds that ranged from silver to burgundy. As it grew larger and larger, the broken trees and loosed stone and the flesh and bones of various small animals clattered to the floor in an ever-expanding wave of destruction until eventually, Zakira was left holding a sphere of blood that was as big around as a barrel of ale.
Naturally, watching her drink the whole thing produced mixed levels of disgust from those of us watching. Some threw up. Others were horrified at the thought of a vampire drinking the blood of a unicorn. A few were in fear over how much power her meal had just given her.
Others, like me, were trying to either lie or come to terms with who she was praying to.
Mani.
"Is that what she's calling him now?" I laughed in disbelief.
They were all monsters. From Winston down to Urshure, all of Cooke Party was monstrous.
Even Slate and Elsgril. The latter was sent to the coast to fight a young dragon turtle and the first thing he did upon seeing it was laugh. Then he stored his claymore inside his bag of holding before charging with a manic scream.
He dove right into the beast's mouth as if he were diving into a pool. The scrying point on his clothes went dark at that point, but we listened on in horror as Slate's barbaric chuckling rose in tune with the squelching and slicing and squishing sounds echoing from within the thrashing creature until eventually, light.
From another perspective, we saw the beast swimming peacefully below the waves. At first. Then, it began thrashing. Swaying with wild abandon into the rocks and sea bed until a gray wedge appeared from within its belly and crawled across its scales to its neck.
And out from the disemboweled dragon turtle came a mana bolstered Slate, swimming frantically up to the surface before he drowned.
Elsgril, on the other hand, was sent into a cave to fight a giant spider but walked through the place as if he had the mind to carve the tunnels into a grand hall.
He didn't even pause when the webs started to coat the floors and walls. He only lit a torch and continued muttering to himself while swaying his head this way and that and tossing oil and dwarven whiskey flasks down the hall as he went.
The same tactics were employed once he reached the spider's den. His flasks were aimed at the hundreds of clusters of eggs and the mother herself while he threw torches and leather bags at the walls and support pillars.
Then he turned to run like an imp out of the Hells.
His sudden change in demeanor caused quite a commotion from the spectators, up until whatever it was that pouch he threw combusted.
Almost as if a giant was dancing on the ground above, the cave shook with tremendous force before the shockwave slammed into Elsgril's back. He was thrown meters down the hall and onto his face. But he picked himself up without pause and resumed sprinting as fast as he could to the exit before a wall of fire engulfed the screens.
We were left holding our breath for a few long moments after that. Staring at the whipping hands of fire as they slowly died down to smoke until the perspective shifted, at last, to reveal a soot-covered dwarf standing at the edge of a burning cave. A flask tilted up to his mouth while his beady eyes smiled at the canvas he so desperately wanted to work on.
'They're all crazy.'