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 Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 8:03 pm
Harland wasn't the first to hear the sound. He also wouldn't be the last.
It was a form of madness, and it had been polluting everyone in the Deus dorms and, as far as he knew, the rest of the world. The portals had gone down long ago, so he didn't really have a way of figuring it out for sure, but he had until that one day been immune to whatever mental disease was plaguing his dorm mates one by one.
Not everyone had heard the same thing... some had heard nails against the door, some had heard cats meowing in the walls, some had heard whispering at night but only if their eyes were shut.
For Harland, it was the sound of water bashing against the wall as though it was rocks breaking the tide. And no matter what he did, no matter where he went, it followed him.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 8:08 pm
Harland was familiar with Cthonian lore, and as he lay down in his bed that first night of waves and torment, he prayed in Irish that it wasn't the god of madness who gripped him tight now. Not a god, older than that: a force so ancient there was no escaping it in the end.
If the world's thin membrane tore, and let the Ancient ones through, they would all die.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 8:11 pm
Harland's suspicions were immediately confirmed. In his dreams he wandered through a labyrinth of unspeakable terrors, the crumbling walls dripping with black ooze and the sky a sick glow. None of the accounts he'd read could have prepared him for the absolute terror of living through it. He came to a coast line full of sharp grass, blades up to his neck. He didn't dare venture any closer; it looked like the kind that would slit his skin and let in the green slime and ooze.
Let it mingle with his blood, and taint him forever.
As he was turning away, he slipped on a stone hidden under the ooze, and plunged into it.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 8:14 pm
When he woke the next morning, Harland had a long, thin cut all down his arm. A greenish tint to his skin made him worry. He spent nearly an hour scrubbing at the wound with a cloth, and he couldn't make the water run clean.
No matter how much soap, how much hydrogen peroxide he used, rubbing alcohol, iodine-- it didn't matter, and he didn't even know what he was pouring into the wound at the end.
He was infected.
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Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 8:16 pm
Harland didn't last long in the throes of madness. He babbled to himself, rubbed at his arm, and only when he succumbed to fitful sleep were his horrors confirmed: a shapeless mass, tentacled and surrounded by the dark stars of the infinitely blackened sky shambled towards him.
Harland never woke from that dream; the stress of seeing it, seeing the creature that slumbered and waited to consume them all, snapped him.
It wouldn't matter, and couldn't; everyone else who was still alive, those few remaining, would become sick and die just like Harland had. No talismans, cures, prayers would stop them.
The only way out was death, death before you heard the sounds in the walls, before your dreams were infected like your body would be.
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