It was about a week and a half now. The first few times had been indistinct, lost to the colds of waking. As he bolted up now, scattering the chair from under himself and the papers strewn to the air like startled birds, it occurred directly to his mind that this was not the first time. It was not the first sleep that had been haunted. All by the same images:

His heart had started slow, the sound and rhythm of the drum so huge it filled all the chamber of his mind. He would find himself coming through the door of his apartment, the room a sickly grey-green as oft happened before the worst of summer storms. The light was flickering along the arms of the plants, their faces gone dull- there was no more colour in the place. His plants, as he approached them, had gone stone. Petrified as they were on Thraen.

He turned on his heel, looking wide-eyed at the bed- Faust was there. No….no he wasn’t. Crossing to the bed, to the pillow where the massive cat arched his back with claws splayed and digging hard into the pillow. Thraen, he saw his hand was wrapped in foliage and flowers, hovered his hand a moment before stroking carefully along the stone-furred back. It should not be. Not you, Faust. What has happened? What was missed that Medusa’s own passing has found all life here? Where have I been?

The beat grew faster. The light flickered faster over the terror of the Mauvian, bringing out every fold of fur and whisker. Thraen looked over his shoulder at the unnatural light forms flickering faster and faster. There was a shadow growing out there, like a twister? He approached the window, the furniture inexplicably gone, or moved aside as was the wont of dreams. The little porch and glass portal was grown looming and huge, drowning out the rest of the apartment as the only escape. The rest was gone dark behind him. Trepidation did not hold his pace- the portal was opened and the stone of his boots scraped like nails on the concrete of the porch.

It was massive. The towering, pulsing black column that turned and reached with indifferent bursts like fire arched from malformed sun. All the reverse of the biblical pillar of flame. Black flame? It was too indistinct, indefinable a shape. Thraen leapt a course to the nearby tallest university building, needing the height. Needing the reconnaissance- he couldn’t feel anyone. There was such a gather of signatures as the power of the city died?

“Where are they all? “

He could see the still, stone forms of students on the malls. The buildings closer to the growing, breating dark were falling apart. He could see the broken panels of wall and tiles of roof. Strange though it may have been, the terror that had been building wilted, dead against the walls inside that had been built. Horror loses its power to frighten, repeated too often.

Thraen had seen too much already.
The cadence of the war drums beating in his ears, echoing across the streets, faded away to silence. There was nothing but the rush of air and the breaking apart of the world. He summoned his magic as it grew nearer, unsure how it could help, but willing to try anything. To know if the seconds of the vines and flowers could hold color, or some ruin back for a small radius of land. They had no colour, turned to stone and scattered before the tower.


He woke as the ruin reached him, fury and frustration lighting the fires of his eyes.
He woke as damnable Quenton, the darkness gone but not forgotten. Do I believe in Omen?
Why not. It isn’t worth taking chances. If it be so, some other may have come upon like threads strangling their sleeping hours.
...
One hell of a birthday present.