A Most Unexpected Ambassador

“Word cannot leave this room; I'll have your Oath or I'll have your head when we're done.” Helix nodded solemnly and the Ringmaster went on, troubled. “You'll find no end of surprise to know that word comes from the Dunters, of all people. Their augurs, such as they may be, warn of something that hungers more than they...”

“My Lord?” The Elf's brows rose the slightest bit, conveying great surprise.

“Yes, I know, I know,” the Satyr responded with a quick, humorless smile. “Traditionally, the Dunters are foes of all class and civilization. They're mad as a riot and thrice as destructive.”

“However, they DO claim to have a class, an order to their ways, and while they may be crude to our eyes, their laws are taken very seriously. Their seers practice haruspicy, did you know that?”

Helix shook his head, his face pale.

“It's true. They read the entrails of their victims. A Dunter Haruspex is horrifyingly violent at the best of times, and at the worst... well... lets just say I doubt it's the Dunters' Mob Bosses who inspire the worst nightmares. Haruspices are feared by even the strongest Dunter Lords, as it's the Haruspices who decide when and where the mob hunts, fights and revels. They kill seemingly at random, and it's forbidden to punish them. For their art, a Mob Boss is as good as any Elven princess.”

His guest, white as a sheet, rose hurriedly. “My Lord, I appreciate the lecture and have naught but the deepest respect for those of the Red Caps...”

The Ringmaster waved at him to sit down. “I'm telling you this to make a point. You can imagine my surprise to find a Dunter of fearsome renown down on one knee before my throne three mornings past, e'en as I returned from my morning bread.”

Helix could only stare at his lord as the Satyr continued. “Before I could summon the guard, my visitor rose and turned to face me. The look on his face surprised me to silence, for it is most unusual to see a Dunter of any stature look grim. They revel in their carnage and the fear they inspire.”

“He introduced himself, in a surprisingly courtly fashion, as one Du'Ergath Soneater, a name I recognize from many documents of war with the Dunters; Du'Ergeth's appetite is for the sons of mortals, especially the firstborn and lastborn... which made his presence and demeanor all the more shocking. He bade me sit and stated ornately that he had grave news to share.”

“'Lord Du'Ergeth Soneater, your atrocities are known far and wide in these realms', I stated. He smiled only slightly, which was horrific enough in itself. 'I have made great efforts to educate myself in the manners of Court for the sake of your precious realms', he replied. 'You can call your guards and I will have no choice but to render more atrocities before my death, but I bid you tend my words before you do so.”

“I had no choice. His bearing was a marvel. He was in the mismatched mortalskin leathers Dunters are so fond of, but his were clean, and ornately tattooed. He wore a great deal of human bone jewelry, including spine bracers, but they were cleaned to smooth ivory. He threatened violence, but had taken the time to try and learn the manners of Court. What else could I do? I listened. We conversed at great length, and he continued to astound me with his bearing. In the end, I could do no less than take heed of his concerns, and even I had one of our realm's greatest villains at hand, I let him leave freely.”

“Their Haruspices see something coming, something hungry. More and more of them across the realms are getting the same premonition, and it's getting stronger every day.” His Lord turned to him, his ruddy Satyr face drained of blood. “The Red Caps embody the hungers of the world, you see. They ARE all the hungers of all the rest of us, dream and dreamer alike. Not the lusts, the desires, the pleasures, but the elemental hungers themselves. What they see doesn't hunger because of the world, it hungers for the world.”

Scion of the House

Taken from the personal journals of one E. A. Poe, sealed deep within the vaults of one of his literary peers and correspondents:

"The horrors visited upon poor Roderick and his wife cannot be attributed to anyone else.

What possessed them to research the realms of Fear as a weapon, I can only hope was an outside influence of Diabolic nature. To cast backwards and forwards in Time in search of primordial Fears, elemental designs of undoing meant by definition to be avoided, as a means to oppose the Triat, is to go in search of madness, to seek unhinging.

Indeed, in the end, I believe his final, frenetic castings with his guitar were not a further attempt to find Fear... I believe, rather, that they had discovered more than they had intended. It is my reluctant opinion that something had found them, and quite taken her by the time of my arrival; his fantastic castings were no longer in the vein of Seeking, but, instead, final desperate attempts to escape what sought him, using the only means he had, and the only instrument he did not yet fear.

I had hoped to escape this encounter unscathed, relatively, and perhaps make this record unremarkable. Despite myself, however, I had to turn from my flight, back to those ancient and now purposeless catacombs. It is my damnation that my dreams have never been wrong, and, as a weak mewling and crying came to me from within, my wretched heart fell as I knew they had once again proven prophetic.

The child is small, underdeveloped. It was born premature, I expect, forced from it's terrified mother's belly at some point during her last convulsive revival. As we travel, everything seems to go awry, as though Fate herself has turned against us... and yet... nothing has harmed myself or the newborn. Any carriage offering transport has overturned, broken down, or, in one case, been taken by a desperate murderer, the weather would seem seem to herald Armageddon itself, paths disappear, wash out, or become untenable, and wolves... or worse... are ever just out of sight on each side. Nevertheless, the child is never ill, and, apart from a misery comparable to Damocles' own impending doom, I am, as yet, unscathed.

Still, the child radiates inestimable power. I am almost certain forces are hunting for it by now, and am really rather surprised no-one has claimed him as yet. To my distress, however, he seems intimately tied to the strings of Fate herself... and I have seen glimpses of my own through him.

I am not certain as to the nature of my end... but I know I shall be fortunate to see more than another ten years. I look forward to passing this burden to someone better able to carry it."

Enter The Cycle

The elder stared, wild-eyed, at the towering figure before him, completely without understanding. He searched the Lord's blank steel eyes, his empty steel face, his spined, eternally bloody armor, hoping for some clue, some sign as to what he did wrong, why the Lord had chosen to do this to him.
He looked down as the Lord drew the spines of his gauntlet from his chest. It seemed an eternity; he could feel the thin shafts withdrawing from his lungs, his heart, scraping against his ribs. The wounds were precise... and fatal, beyond doubt.
His Advocate buckled, and silver-blue light licked and flickered from the wounds, trying without hope to heal them. New flesh would not form, existing flesh would not regenerate. The wounds were irreparable, responding to neither the flow of life nor the restoration of order.
It was an instinctive reaction. He'd already known as much.
"My Lord Destroyer... why?"
The Lord looked down at him, passionlessly, as he slumped to the ground. Lesser warriors, he thought to himself, would have died to that gaze. Or to these wounds already, for that matter.
"You have much to do, Father," the figure intoned. The voice wracked his body; he could feel his physical shell deteriorate from it's implication. At this point, only force of will held him from the Great Wheel.
"Yes, the Wheel," the Lord said. "You are far from done, my child. You have a great deal yet to learn; more than this life alone could show you. You will return, Son, and life will begin to teach you again. You shall be strong despite yourself, and learn many crafts."
The figure kneeled next to him, his armor barely making a whisper. The spined gauntlet came to rest on his ruined chest, and a new agony cut through him. Not spines, but a feeling of being ripped apart from within. As though a vital piece of his existence were being ripped away. His Advocate screamed even as he did, a thin wail cut short as he choked on his own lifeblood.
"This, though," the Lord said, quietly. "This is what makes you my child. You will discover that this is your instrument, your source, your fate. You must learn to hold this before you, wield it even as it wields you. By the time you take it back into you, by the time you become one again, you will become the instrument I need. Time is short, and the Balance is dangerously askew."
The Lord rose again, a dim blue-grey shimmer fast fading around his hand. "The realms of Creation are closed to you, now, child. The forces of change, of fate and chance, are your tools from here forward. You have learned to use them well as tools of assassination for the sake of balance, this time, and had you never called me in the first place, I still may have noticed. You must learn to make them your life; live through them and let them live through you. To do this, you must be reborn, and this may come to be several times. Each life will be a Hell of sorts; each life will be a lesson. Learn well."
The towering, spined figure turned from him as his vision faded. From the engulfing blackness, he could hear his Lord Shiva's last words to him. "Even as you return to the Wheel, Ruiner, your beloved wife flees beyond the Voivode's wrath. A child, four days conceived, is within her, and it is without a soul. Her time is short, but she will reach Spain. Then, her time will end, and yours will begin again."

The Hungry Dark

Helix turned toward the man, wild-eyed with fear. “Your Magicks will do you no good here, Wizard,” he hissed. He flung an arm toward the vast, ruined hall. “What waits in the shadows here will not run. They will not give way to anything but the light; everything else, they devour whole.”

The Unbeliever stared at his guide with renewed interest, as though noticing him for the first time today. His purple eyes burned into the Elf's for a moment, forcing him to glance away, before he spoke. “You make powerful claims, Elfish. However, my strengths aren't given to light, and here in the vast Unconsciousness of All, you know the darknesses better than I. Tell me, then... what are we facing?”

Helix met the wizard's eyes nervously. “Hobyahs.”

The Unbeliever's eyes narrowed. “Remember, Elf; I am here as your guest. Your Mysteries are largely unknown to me. Tell me, what are “Hobyahs'”?

Helix spoke hurriedly as he turned back to the hall. “Hobyahs! Grue. Langoliers. The Hungry Dark. They're a nightmare that ends nightmares. Everything that is forgotten, they devour, to make room for other phantasms. The problem is, they don't see it that way; they just know they're hungry. Always. So, rather: everything they devour is forgotten.

“They avoid the light, any light. In the light, they are seen as beings, small and furry, and can be killed easily. In the dark, as best anyone can tell, they're a sea of teeth; untouchable and all-consuming. The end of all things imagined.”

“Then I suppose,” the wizard muttered, gesturing towards Helix's witchlight, “that your toy is our salvation.” His voice hardened; “Elf, I suggest you keep a steady hand for both our sakes.” He swept his arm forward, indicating that they should proceed.

Helix stared into the hall, his eyes and ears straining as he tried to pick out the Hobyahs. The air whispered around them, an incomplete silence as the shadows waited anxiously for their prey. After seconds that seemed like hours, he stepped forward.

His conjured light shone forth weakly and his nerves stood on end, but everywhere he looked he saw only the debris of the concert hall, long moldered with time. What few seats remained were slashed and marked with graffiti. The retaining walls of the balconies above had long since collapsed... or been forced... to the floor below. Peeling paint and patches of mosaic tile covered the walls. Within the globe of his “toy's” light, a run-down, long-forgotten opera hall displayed it's last remaining treasures; the tatters of a building once bustling, fallen to time.

“Tell me, Elf, if they eat what is forgotten, but also what is forgotten out of hand, why is the world itself not consumed?”

The wizard's sudden question startled Helix out of his skin. He paused for breath as his skin crawled, swinging his light around to see what else might respond. After several long moments, he turned back to his guest and motioned him forward.

“I don't mind answering your questions, but we don't have time for a conference in the middle of a roomful of Hobyahs. If we can keep moving, I'll tell you what I know.” Upon seeing the wizard nod, he turned back and started moving forward.

“Hobyahs are a forgotten force; few things remember they exist, and as such they're largely stuck living in forgotten places. Most dreamers don't think of them except as the phenomenon that occurs after waking; that vivid dream gone grey, details that seem so important quickly forgotten. They also live in the echoes of dreams long forgotten, the kind of things dreamers used to dream about but not any longer, archaic ephemera such as night terrors of sabre-toothed tigers, bubonic plague or drowning while chained to dozens of others... “ the sound of his voice comforted him as he made his way through the debris.

“Hobyah!”

Helix almost leapt into his ward's arms at the sound. One tiny whisper, so slight he could almost convince himself he had imagined it, reached him from the far recesses of the hall. He froze for a moment and swept the witchlight around. The tattered furniture and faded walls answered him back. After one interminably long, tense moment, he continued forward.

“The line between the eating the forgotten and what they eat being forgotten is almost... well... quantum.” He flinched at exercising his scientific knowledge in Elfin guise. “They consume indiscriminately if you find them, and if they eat you, you are forgotten. However, it seems that most who are forgotten are generally the ones to encounter the Hobyahs and be eaten.”

Helix finished his nervous explanation with no response. Seconds crept on like minutes, minutes crept on like hours, as the pair crept through the theater. His nerves frayed as his ears strained; his eyes ached as he searched the shadows desperately. His willpower stretched thin as he searched for Hobyahs while willing the witchlight forward. He felt faint.

“Hobyah!”

The Elf froze solid. The Unbeliever stopped short, studying him with vague interest.

“Elf, I think I hear the hungry dark.”

The Wizard's voice barely registered. Helix could not move. His eyes ached as he scanned every inch of the shadows around them. He struggled to hear anything over his own racing heart.

After long moments, he moved forward again. One step at a time, as he swept his light around; back and forth and back again. He inched yet again, another step, and his charge moved with him. Seconds turned to minutes as he stood there yet again, ears aching to hear something. Anything.

“Hobyah!”

Almost a whisper, a tiny, squeaky gremlin-voice came to them from somewhere toward the back of the theater. Before Helix could even start sweating, responses rolled back from all around them.

“Hobyah! Hobyah hobyah hobyah! Hobyah HOBYAH!!!”

The susurrus rose to a din in seconds. The Unbeliever pulled his coat tight around him as he looked around, while Helix cupped his hands around the witchlight, willing frantically on the edge of panic for it to be brighter. The light flickered.

Something flew past Helix's head, crashing behind the Wizard. Part of a theater seat. “Hobyah!” came to them from all around, an ocean of frenetic chattering that ran together like the ebb and tide of an ocean. Something else hit him square in the chest, knocking him to the floor. “They're trying to kill the light!” he yelled back. “If we have no light, we're finished!!!” The witchlight pulsed as his fear distracted him.

“ENOUGH!” The Unbeliever flung his coat open. Arcs of power stretched out into the shadows as far as Helix could see, like an afterimage of lightning in the darkness. Tittering erupted all throughout the theater, mad giggling from tiny creatures. The Elf's heart sank as the Wizard's efforts proved futile.

The Unbeliever pulled at the darkness as he stood, then swept his arms in and pointed directly at the witchlight. Nothing happened for long moments as the giggling and whispering continued. Helix began to wonder what is was like to be unmade as he got back to his feet.

Shadows crashed in around them without warning. The darkness of the theater coalesced into pitch blackness. Glowing grey arced back from the shadows into the Unbeliever and out of his fingers as he stared at the witchlight, which suddenly flared and pulsated with radiant grey-white. Helix looked around, confused, at what appeared to be a solid bubble of light, a stark delineation between the witchlight's glow and the complete blackness around them.

The giggling stopped. “Hobyah hobyah!” came back to them from the pitch blackness as their unseen foes whispered among themselves.

“Elf, I suggest we move while we can.”

Helix nodded nervously at the wizard's suggestion, and began to creep forward again. The doors of the old Sanctum seemed miles away as they inched across the theater. “Wizard, I thought light was beyond your power...” he muttered, the question apparent.

The Unbeliever chuckled distractedly. “It is cheating, Elf. I am not creating light, I'm simply directing all the ambient light from a certain distance around us back into your cantrip. Everything I'm using to protect us already exists.”

“So there's no actual bubble? No... force field? No shield?” Helix stared at the sharp difference between darkness and light around them as he moved forward. He put a finger out to poke at the demarcation.

“Helix, I would strongly recommend against that.” The Wizard stated flatly. “There is nothing there. If these things are as quick and as ravenous as you say, you could lose your finger as quickly as you put it out there.” With that, Helix pulled his hand back and began to look for the doors in earnest. Sweat dripped down his brow and he wiped it away.

Realizing that this had been the first time the Unbeliever had used his name, Helix felt bolstered. He moved forward nervously, but with renewed purpose. As if to offset the ebb and whisper around them, he continued lecturing his guest as he searched.

“There is literally no discernible body when they are in the darkness. You can hear them, whispering and giggling amongst themselves, but there is nothing to act against out there. Were you to enter the darkness, you would not merely be eaten; you would be torn apart. Destroyed. Yet, in rare instances throughout legend where Hobyahs face the light, they appear as tiny beings, a foot or so in height, with large mouths and eyes, and fur all over, standing upright. Details vary past that.

“Reports are exceedingly sparse throughout history even in the realms of dreams. However, it seems that many agree that the terror exists not in the individual, but in the many. Nor does it exist in the known, but in the unknown. A Hobyah unseen may as well be a tornado in the night, but nobody to my knowledge has seen a Hobyah alone. The strength of one is unknown...”

His eyes and ears strained against the darkness as he searched throughout the remains of the opera house. His nerves were frayed and he longed for nothing more than home, like some Halfling in the rain... but he could do nothing but move ahead in his task. His Oath had been given and, even were he better given to computers than cantrips, he would sooner die than give up. His chatter soothed his nerves in the quiet...

(Obviously, this is just a fragment. I'm yet to figure out how to get here, and I know what will happen next but I'm still working it how to tie it together.)