After leaving Thor, Sif, Loki, and [the boy], I thought that was the extent of my dreaming adventures last night.
It wasn’t.
A funny thing happened on the way back to the lair. I’ve spent the morning in thought, trying to reconstruct the clues left behind. I wasn’t going to say anything but the clues have advanced to the point I can’t ignore them.
Deep tissue bruises take time to make you appreciate them after all.
Something grabbed me by the left arm and swung me face-first into a very hard something else. Before I could recover my wits, I was hurled again but backwards. I felt my left shoulder pop out of joint. The jerk was enough for my assailant to lose their grip on my arm and I flailed wildly.
I landed on an unyielding surface on my back. A bone yielded to the stress. ~crack~ I cried out for the first time, in pain and anger. I tried to get up, but my left shoulder was useless. I started to roll to my right when my assailant grabbed my ankles and began the threshing movement again.
I fledged out into Nightmare Mode, but the assailant was too fast. Swung overhead by my ankles, I collided with the hard ground face first again.
I remember hearing myself gurgle through broken facial bones and stone-macerated flesh.
I remember hearing Horatio chuckle.
I remember yielding to my inner darkness with malicious glee.
I remember the feel of viscera on my hands.
I remember other shadows coming out of the impenetrable darkness to feed on the feast I’ve prepared for them.
I remember holding Horatio’s trinket and struggling very hard with myself not to destroy him on the spot.
“[He] volunteered to deal with you. I didn’t take up his offer because he was ill at the time. Last time I allow you to take advantage of my naïveté. Last. Fucking. Time.”
I was still fledged, and still wounded. I was blinded and deafened. My left arm hung useless. I felt other things surrounding me, but I couldn’t sense what they were. Only that they ranged from neutral to favorable towards me.
I put Horatio’s trinket away and tried to struggle to my feet. Both ankles had been crushed and I fell back to my knees. The other things around me suddenly surged me. I had no fight left in me to fling them off.
Small in form, great in number, they poured over me and my mind, numbing me and smothering my awareness. As fast as they drowned me, they receded.
They had taken me to a neutral place. I could sense a familiar landmark in the distance. Its presence told me I wasn’t far from the lair.
But I hurt. I ran out of Fuckitall juice and the downside to dream awareness was stealing my focus. My left shoulder joint was dislocated, and the blade was broken. My arms and chest were shredded. My face was crushed and my skull felt odd against the cold ground. My lower legs were shredded to the bone and my ankles were crushed and grinding.
If I was close enough to sense that place, then I was close enough to be heard by the Shamblings. I called out to them. The sound was a gurgle of pain. I felt the little things that brought me here suddenly flee in panic. The ground under me rumbled.
The forest debris under me rippled in sudden liquidation. Without question, the Shamblings pulled my mangled body into their grasp. They sealed all open wounds with their mud and forced their way into my lungs. Now having gripped me within and without, they pulled and pushed my bones into proper alignment before hardening themselves as a cast.
The mud muffled my screams.
The worst of the pain over, they vacated my lungs but kept me secure underground. I surrendered to my caretakers and released myself. It was some time before the pain released its grip on me, allowing me to fall into deeper sleep.
When I woke up, I remembered the storytime at Sif’s fields just fine. With complete clarity I was able to write of that. But my left shoulder was cramping and bruised. And my face was strangely sore. My ankles were screaming but I attributed that to the changing seasons. I had a brief memory of a physical altercation, but I had nothing concrete.
As the day went on, the sore shoulder bloomed into a deep tissue bruise. My back is tweaked. And sudden flashes of memory are placing clues in my hand.
After enough clues, I tested the summary and stepped sideways to see if there were other indicators.
I found where the Shamblings had found me. Blood. Ripped feathers. A lingering scent of pain.
I have work to do. I had my ass kicked so hard, I’m limping in the Waking. Horatio chuckled. I’ll be hanging a trinket on a certain spot. He volunteered. I’m taking him up on his offer.
Regardless if Horatio is returned to me, or destroyed with impunity, I will not allow my naïveté to be used against me again.