City Under the Sand (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun) by Jeff Mariotte

Author:Jeff Mariotte [Mariotte, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

XII

GLIMPSES IN THE DARK

1

Aric saw an Athas that surely had never been: a lush, forested world, where a gentle breeze could set a million leaves quivering. Birds flew over the forests in great flocks, and animals left the shelter of huge trees to drink at the shores of rushing rivers. Wildflowers of every color carpeted the valleys and the wild meadows beyond vast cultivated fields. Glorious cities gleamed in vivid, golden sunlight.

But as he watched—a tiny part of him protesting, aware that he was not truly present in those scenes, but viewing them as if from the back of a high-flying Athasian roc—the peaceful world before him was riven by strife. He could not determine the source of the unrest, but in its wake forests burned and rivers dried up. People in those cities stared toward the skies in horror, and then the cities crumbled. Finally, as deserts spread across the beautiful, serene world he had glimpsed so briefly, that brilliant yellow sun dulled, then turned to the dark red color so much more familiar to him.

And as if suddenly transported into Akrankhot itself, he saw a powerful, sun-bronzed man wielding a broadsword—I’m holding that sword, he thought, before the idea flitted away like a dried blade of grass in a heavy wind—battling what seemed to be an army of foul, depraved creatures. He slayed many but killed himself in the process.

Aric felt the loss as personally as if the big man had been a close friend, and tears dampened his eyes even as the visions continued. In place of the mighty-thewed warrior, he saw the citizens of Akrankhot, trembling in fear of the powerful forces sweeping their planet, terror of a conflict between beings for greater than themselves. And there was something else, something dark and horrible, with too many limbs and tentacles and teeth, and on its twin tongues Aric could taste the blood of innocents, and—

“Ungh …” Aric moaned and thrashed and blinked. Faces loomed around him, causing panic to well up in his chest. He tried to scrabble away, then saw that it was only Amoni and Ruhm, the closest things to friends he had.

He was in the cavern beneath Akrankhot, on the staircase landing, a heavy broadsword weighing upon his chest.

And something else was there, too; its psionic tendrils probing at Aric’s mind.

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