****
Jarrod watched the sword come out in slow motion, helpless as his body moved like it was made of granite. He slowly staggered back, crossbow bolt in his chest, strangely painless, although he remembered the first time it hurt like hell. He knew how this dream went, and yet every time he fought it. He waited as Ægon and Iryl fought their assailant, somehow detached as his friends fought for their lives, like watching a fixed arena match. Even as he watched he trembled in apprehensive fear, because this part terrified and yet enthralled him. Jarrod stopped watching the fight, as another form appeared, invisible to everyone else. This spectre walked towards Jarrod, its gaunt white skin contrasting with the black robes. In its hand it held a sword, and Jarrod noticed again, old but always noticing anew, that the hand was but bone. He looked up as the form threw back its hood, and saw a fearsome sight. The face was normal, but for two things. The first was the skin, pale and flawless like an albinos but this didn’t make Jarrod afraid. Rather it was the eyes. Jarrod saw everything, his own life, and the world in an instant. He saw his death, many deaths, his friends’ deaths, and many more other deaths. He knew all the answers, and yet no longer cared. He went mad, and yet somehow detached from this process he watched his own insanity flower and bloom, but suddenly it all fell away. There he was, with the apparition. The horror came back in full measure, the insights meant everything to him, and yet they disappeared like water flowing through his hands. One memory stayed with him, Ægon’s ice-sword failing him and Ægon’s death at John’s hands. “We’ll see about that.” John thought as he grabbed his sword, and threw it, at but through the apparition in front of it, screaming in his mind, but determined that he should stop Ægon’s death, or at least try to. Angry at the creature in front of him with the dread eyes of black infinity. More then infinity it was unfinity, bigger then the mind could even pretend to comprehend, the horror and insanity coming back as he even thought of them, but he knew that it was but a pale recollection, an imitation of the unfinity made by the mindlessness he was suffering from.
The grim reaper of souls in front of him vanished for a moment, and Jarrod’s mind uncomprehendingly was brought back to the battle. He mumbled encouragement to Ægon, who soon darted back onto the assault. The shadowy creature in the hood soon returned, the threat of what was behind the hood seeming the greater fear to Jarrod’s horrified mind. Gibbering Jarrod watched the fight, his eyes widening when another of the avatars of dearth approached, also watching the battle. The new creature was white bleached bone underneath the inky hood. A jawbone protruded from below the hood, devoid of flesh of skin. Teeth lingered in their places. This one carried a curved sickle of shining silver that gleamed as if under an unseen light. The first creature turned its head and seemed to speak, the jaw moving, yet no noise came from the rotten lips. Regardless Jarrod could sense the confusion from the creatures, as he watched the bright white jaw of the skeletal reaper move silently. Not even the clicking of bone on bone could be heard. The pair of unearthly creatures watched the battle, with seemingly detached amusement. Jarrod somehow knew they were betting on the outcome. Jarrod did not know how he could understand these creatures of death; he knew only that it was to do with the void eyes, and the confusion. He realised that he somehow knew these creatures were the harvesters of Morr, gatherers of dead souls. He knew that never before had they been seen by one who had lived. He knew that they were men who had upon death had a debt to Morr, and walked the many worlds claiming souls for him.
This realisation hit him with the speed of a ballista bolt, but with none of the impact. It was merely subsumed into his knowledge; instantaneously he knew it, but it was as if he had known it all his life. He watched the pair duelling, and hoped against hope that Ægon could win. He saw Iryl dispatched on the ground, bleeding from a dagger in his leg. The miniature man couldn’t join the fight with that injury without his magic. Jarrod watched acutely. Even as he watched however the world around him grew murky. ‘That’s it.’ Jarrod thought ‘I'm dying, and those things are going take me to the afterlife.’ His thoughts became incoherent, and he tried to follow the battle, as if by dying it might cause Ægon to loose. He couldn’t make Ægon out, but stubbornly resisted unconsciousness’s sweet embrace to the last moment.
****
He relived the panic as the world went dark, and he thought he was looking back into those eyes, the eyes of endless dark in all directions, Impossibly large, yet still fitting easily into the rotting face of the beast. His dream took him back, again to the eyes, and the madness incarnate of nothing in its truest and purest form. He saw everything in the depths of nothing, and recognised that same nothing in everything he saw. A sight such as this had changed him, imperceptivity yet essentially. It had left him the same in every way, yet totally different in those same ways. He still thought the same things, yet nothing in his thoughts was recognisable as his. He wondered if this was what it was like to go mad, and knew that he was sane.
****
He awoke, sweating from every pore in his body, the dread fading, yet still seaming to remain. Falling and shrinking at imperceptible speeds yet always more then his mind could encompass, so that it always seemed to not only be at, but to be overwhelming and too much for his mind to accept. A feeling of there being a message in those eyes, that he would be fine if he only dared to ponder those eyes a moment, yet he couldn’t think on them any more then his mind could help. He wanted to think about those eyes, as he knew it to be the cure for the battle inside him, but his mind refused, the terror welling up at even the thought of contemplating the eyes, as if the truth that would be revealed by finding their secret would be so dreadful, so atrocious that he would always hate himself for knowing it. He felt as he had saw it in the eyes, and his mind had refused to see it, but the glimpse he had caught was beyond even the worst his imagination could come up with, worse then oblivion, worse then death, worse then any dark fate could possibly await him, and yet it did. The unplaceable terror that filled him knowing that inside him laid the glimmering outline of this knowledge that would curse his life just by looking at it overwhelmed him.
Suddenly that terror disappeared and Jarrod found Vince in the room, his presence somehow calming him. The old priest dipped his balding head towards Jarrod, saying in an impossible soothing voice, “You will only move on once you have conquered your fear. This may prove to be an unconquerable fear, though I think that you can overcome it.” Vince’s smile was reassuring, everything about this priest somehow more calming then anything Jarrod could remember. “And the greater the fear you have faced and defeated, the more trivial any other fear will seam next to it. True braveness isn’t gained though dismissing fear, or being fearless. It is gained through defeating a great fear, a fear so great that any other fear that faces you is insignificant.”
Leaving the room, Jarrod saw the eyes in his mind, and assured by the simple yet effective speech by the ageing man stared into the eyes with his minds eye, willing a confrontation. The world ended and he faced oblivion. Jarrod looked into the well of end times, saw the death of every individual and forgot everything he saw. He saw a myriad of deaths facing everyone, and he saw just as one was cheated the next claimed the life in the blink of an eye. He saw those that had ruined Morr’s scales of death, the necromancers that had cheated or worked against his servants. He saw those who had ruined temples of Morr, those who had fought his servants and those that had unleashed death or life in such a grand manner that even the reckoning of Morr and Ani was interrupted. This he all saw absorbed and took into his mind, yet it passed through his mind like a gale, leaving with no traces. Jarrod went mad, and became for the first time truly sane.
Jarrod was at peace.
The young fighter collapsed on the soft bed beneath him and slept, dreamless and yet dreaming of the eyes that held many secrets, yet none from him. For he had conquered the fear of the eyes and unlocked the truth, and even if he did not know the truth, it was free, and could one day be reached when needed.
Read on? Chapter 4 is 'here'.
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