>>5137631>>5137183>>5137152You flop back down upon Felman’s bed. You have several hours before it is time to meet with him in the old, abandoned warehouse—well, more accurately, slaughterhouse, animal stable, and farmer’s market—where you have now twice performed occult rituals. This day shall be your third such enterprise there, but no less bloody. You have decided to permanently dispose of some of the extraneous puppets in your roster.
‘Good,’ Irinnile groans. ‘I don’t think I could do that trick with the ectoplasm much more today…’
You shush the succubus. ‘Rest,’ you advise her, ‘and you’ll feel better.’
‘Lispy… You know I don’t sleep, right?’
She might not, but you do—and right now, you are so in need of a good sleep that you are out before you can even respond to the demon.
Unfortunately, it is not a wholesome and dreamless Reptilian torpor that finds you. No, instead it is… Awful. You have dreamt as humans dream before, several times since arriving in Hawksong. This ne, as your last, is a good case against ever having such dreams again. You struggle to follow the contours of the narrative—one moment, you are leaving Hawksong, marching before a clumn of those you have slain, brainwashed, tricked, dominated, and liberated from human imprisonment your victories. The next, you are before the Serpent Priests and the Dark Gods themselves, feeling the weight of their stare. A crowd has gathered in the high, vaulted hall, beneath a ceiling studded with gemstones to emulate the constellations above, with candle and torchlight setting each false star ablaze with light: a thousand more eyes, staring down from above.
“Have I not done all that you asked?” you say to them. “Have I not done good by The Grand Design?”
They nod, and you are exalted!... But then, in the mass of dark, robes figures emerges one. They cast off their hood, revealing Alhazred.
