Dream Deferred

The Dream Deferred

Our interview requests that you, dear readers, take heed of this story. She does not know if she will survive, or they will survive, or if the city walls will stand. At the time of this writing, seven house planes have vanished. In this time of crisis, as dreamers prepare to face Tzayak's army, Nidus tells this tale to those seeking safety inside the walls of threshold.

"Alyndra and I were in Protectors of the Radiance, supervising a ritual to bring together the chaos runes. Maal had only the two from the Alliance, we gave them to the Radiance. He used copies of the other two, to substitute for the rest. I stormed or woke, I can't remember, but I entered the dream in OSM threshold, where dreamers were clamoring on about events unfolding at that time.

"The walls shook and items began to fall into Threshold. soul essences and Compendiums. The compendiums had notes on them, apparently from cloudsbreak. They even mentioned cloudsbreak and the mares coming up from the ground. Hastily written, they seemed otherwise unimportant, until Selika woke with them. The notes were prime artifacts. When Selika woke, they all dropped and were distributed about the room. I took one to The Alliance and placed it in our library, while we tried to understand what was going on. Then I headed back to the Radiance to supervise the ritual. When I entered Alyndra was still there. The ritual had been going on for a while. The runes were reacting strangely to one another. Darkness crept from the barrier they were placed into and sounds of war echoed about the room. The ritual continued but the runes ceased to react. I don't know why they did not continue, but it seemed obvious that they'd done all that they were going to that evening.

"Selika burst in. Selika informed us of other things unfolding down in the library. There were dreamers arguing, until a Dreamer named Katakarsis entered, who appeared to be a soulsphere. He was screaming, that they are coming. Crazy talk. Then he ran off to the middle basin. Dreamers quickly followed, catching up to him in intrigue's rest, where a half a dozen dreamers witnessed him being dreamstruck. What shocked most wasn't so much that he was Dreamstruck, but who did it. Witnesses reported that in fact, nobody Dreamstruck Katakarsis. He was struck by nothing, yet his soul essence remained.

"Shortly afterwards Tzayak, Sharque, Ra-zr and Epoth arrived. A long fight continued and eventually dreamers victored, the darkmares left. At this time, Menson and his followers possessed the Order's prime and were using it to get OSM to perform studies, and hoped to access the Alliance telescope, with the Order's help. The Alliance had many measures in place to prevent such intervention and so with a leash, gave Selika limited access to the telescope, for the purpose of identifying where these items that dropped into the dream came from. As expected, Menson and his followers intervened at a critical moment with the hopes of taking control of the telescope. The mechanisms we had in place worked, and we added a few more smoke and mirrors to confuse what they thought was actually happening. That night we saw one of tears into cloudsbreak forming while the telescope operated. The tear ripped across the sky like a star was falling, but it faded from view.

"The Alliance locked down the telescope then and shortly thereafter, the Order's prime was returned to them voluntarily by Menson, at the Gathering. A prophet appeared in the city, named Kelenrath. [His prophecy] spelled certain doom for many. Dreamers determined that the translated prophecy meant that each house would close in the order opposite that they opened. So it began...

"The darkmares attacked KOES first, led by Tzayak. He accused them of betraying his rightful leadership and stripped their crests one by one. Only one member of KOES was spared the demotion. Elspet, who professed her failure and requested punishment by Tzayak, directly.

"Tzayak transformed Elspet into a darkmare and left her to roam alone in the halls of the keepers where she would stay. prevent the mares from identifying who was still a member of the Shadow. Ultimately all members were demoted. KoES split into nearly nothing as it's remaining active members save perhaps two, ceased to dream A rumor started that the Shadow's prime had been destroyed and that was how the mares closed the house, but this was quickly discouraged when Bear Crusher, one of the final guardians, confirmed the prime was not destroyed. It was still in the house, in the rulers area in fact.

"The Alliance went to KoES to try to free Elspet. We had hoped to appeal for her release, but we failed. She wanted the punishment and we could not dissuade her.

"Dreamers determined the order in which the houses would be closed by the prophecy. That order was to be: KoES, UoC, GoE, The Alliance, PoR, OSM, DoL and or HC, HC and or DoL. The mares followed that pattern the entire time and headed straight to the Union, after KoES. The Union were trapped in their sanctuary. LadySilver waited for others of the allied houses to dream so she could hand the prime off to safety. She could not remain and so with no other choice LadySilver handed the heart of the covenant to the Light, where her brother was ruler.

"The Light did protect the prime from the darkmares. I remember going there a number of times to aid. We failed unfortunately, and the mares collapsed Tamarisk, who dropped the prime. The mares took the prime and one week later, the Union remained open...members still had crests... People were confused and had no idea how.

"Darby and Jalakura were hunting LadySilver at the time, for giving the prime away. Betraying UOC they said.

"The mares then turned their attention on The Alliance. We knew they were coming, but we had not the time or the resources to mount any defense that would not then break our tenets or cause more bloodshed. Marzera came to us on a Sunday evening, a week after the Union lost their prime. She wanted our help. Marzera told us that there was a tear in the chaos leading into cloudsbreak and she wanted our help to close the tear.

"Naturally we were skeptical, so we asked for an extension on her actual request. She wanted us to give her our prime to help close the tear.

"We informed all The Alliance leadership on a mandatory emergency meeting to discuss the events. We knew first hand that there was a tear. We saw it form...so it was determining Marzera's intentions, and whether it was in our best interests to aid, that we had to discuss. The next evening Marzera arrived. I was with Alyndra when she arrived and so we went to the guardian room to speak. Shortly after, Fin Marda arrived and took over.

"I took my stand guarding the front, watching as the house began to fill to the brim with dreamers looking for Marzera. Darby, at the head of the pack along with Menson, both leery of one another. One, because Darby was hunting Menson for what his group had been doing, and two, to feel out the situation. But, when I told Darby, we would not be telling Marzera to leave, she determined we were aiding her so she and Menson began opening fire on all The Alliance members.

"After a long discussion, it was determined we would give the prime to Marzera to aid in closing the tear. We made some provisions, aware of the dangers and summoned ninety power tokens from the prime, with the intentions of using those tokens to summon the prime back to us, using the ritual we originally used to summon it in the first place. Marzera teleported away to the rifts and returned the following day, followed by Tzayak, Ra-zr, sharque and Ssvatra.

"They attacked the Union directly as the entire city mounted an offense against them. I came to the Union to speak to Marzera. She agreed to keep us updated, so I was keeping tabs on them.

"Tzayak initially attacked me, but apologized, oddly enough, in Dreamer tongue. I was led to a corner where I stayed out of the way.

"I watched for hours as the fight continued, until all of the mares stood on the facade stairs alone. The city shook and I was forced awake. When I returned, The Union was no longer open and all members lost their crests. In turn, those members who were around faded away like those of KoES. Granted, there were few to begin with. The Alliance was now aware that Marzera had lied. (Not that we did not already suspect it).

"Next they attacked the Radiance. We did keep tabs on them, and we actively defended with non-offensive arts. The Radiance defended against the attacks for a week, keeping their prime safe. Meanwhile the Alliance had no prime, and saw no combat at the house. We had intended to peace aura dreamers if the mares attacked us directly to minimize the dreamstrike casualties we knew would occur. Menson had already been dreamstruck by Marzera.

"The Protectors were safe until one evening Kellad limped onto the valley from the house and stood there, for what seemed hours, in awe. Elissa, King Edward, Dreiko and I tried to get him to speak on what had happened, because we couldn't enter the Radiance. The house was nothing but rubble!

"Thunderman arrived shortly after, convinced something was wrong with Kellad. He seemed to think Kellad may be catatonic or possessed and swiped at him with his blade to usher some sort of a response. Kellad was in shock. Not from the swipe--something else. He told us what had happened and apologized to the Radiance. He said he was sorry that he'd failed them all.

"He explained in more detail: on his shard, the Darkmares attacked and destroyed everything. Moments before the shard in its entirety was destroyed, Kellad escaped into the dreamstate. In doing so, a shock wave from the explosion of his shard followed him and destroyed the Radiance completely.

"We couldn't enter the Radiance from the valley, but the portal into The Radiance from threshold still registered as the house portal. We thought we could get him to enter The Radiance from there and recover the soul for safekeeping. We struggled for a good half hour getting Kellad down the valley to threshold, but when he said he would return and he entered the Radiance from threshold, he did not return. He still possessed the crest so we didn't know if the house had closed. All we knew was the Radiance was nearly completely gone.

"After the Radiance fell, the Order was being actively defended. The darkmares attacked a number of times. Gilean concocted a plan to sever the house plane from the trinities to secure it from attacks. While in the midst of the ritual trying to sever the house from the trinities, a large incursion of dark mares headed by Marzera attacked. As soon as he was incoherent, he was dreamstruck. Samarina was devastated. In a blind rage she sought to defend him. She was struck only minutes later. Stalker333 witnessing it all was left in a state of shock.

"He was coaxed to the house where he and Elissa, Norkight, Catawatch, Dreiko, and Selika discussed a means to defend or escape the onslaught. They escaped the house with the prime by using the Dreamers Cup Arena and entering Threshold. Each day Norkight waited in house sanctuary holding the prime. For nearly a week this continued...!

"Then Tzayak entered OSM sanctuary one evening, seemingly unaffected by its aura. He evoked something on Norkight, collapsing him instantly. Norkight went from 98 dreamsoul, to nothing. He dropped the prime and the mares took it and left. Shortly after, the house closed.

"The houses were more tightly knit at this time, freesoul and illuminate, banishing and imprisoning... nobody cared. At this point it was a fight for survival. Only HC and the Light remained open. The Light initiated most of the Radiance, warriors under the Illuminate flag. HC initiated most of the freesouls. HC was being attacked relentlessly by the mares and it was nearly ensured the next target for closure."

Former House Calenture ruler Kelos interjects:

"Tipsy, SN!PER and myself were the only ones there [at House Calenture]. When we arrived, the mares [Ra-zr, Marzera, Tzayak, Ssvatra] were in guardians digging for our secret hiding place. The Orb had been taken and we three fought best we could. The stones keys we possessed were being carried by Tipsy in her pack. The keys to Tengs simply disappeared. The battle was short. The mares were invincible. Marzera came into the house thresh wanting more heads and harassed us. The plane fell after that, and it was over. We didn’t even have time to get our flag."

Nidus continues:

"I don't know what all transpired in the lost caves. Lord Xenus was there, intent on burying the mares under the rubble of the lost caves. He used dreamer’s help, crafting xenosian pipes to protect dreamers from the the ritual. The ritual was meant to bury the mares, while the dreamscape would simply envelope him. There was rubble all right, but it failed. One day later, all of the mares apparently buried had escaped, save for one. Tzayak has not been seen.

"Today we are left with all of the planes collapsing one by one. The last remaining refuge of the houses, DoL standing atop Illapse. This is the last stand against the Darkmares, closing the houses, and possibly the city itself collapsing beneath the rubble."

Reference

• http://onyxnightblade.byethost11.com/lyraul/studies/chpt43-46.php?i=2