hey ! First thing I post on this forum :) I hope you'll find it interesting . Please tell me if there is anything to improve.
You groggily open your eyes and see through the shutter that the sun rose a while ago. Something's weird. You feel like you have no nerves up your skin and only feel a light pressure on your back and sides. A feeling akin to what you imagine is like to be sinking into the mattress.
Your eyes fully open now you attempt to drive the growing uneasiness out by taking a deep breath, only to be met by a tightness in your chest, a lump in your throat.
Panic creeps in the corners of your mind and your heartbeat get faster as your breath shortens; the small thread of air going through your nose as your mouth remain sealed by some unseeable forces.
You try to move your arms, torso or even your legs but they won't budge an inch. They're glued to the mattress, every fiber of your being is pulled back, sewed to the fabric.
You hear a rasp noise, growing stronger than your heartbeat.
A cough? A laugh? Something in between, slow, cruel chuckle; Emanating from an impossibly evil being.
The shadow in the corner of your room crawls forward, tainting every wall with its ungodly darkness.
Your dizziness clouds your eyes, but you can see something approaching. It's nearly indistinguishable and yet you know that this thing is coming for you. The shape is an indescribable mockery to the human being, a wicked form smiling ravenously.
A twisted arm extends itself as barbed wire, and at its end the clawed hand is moving toward your face slowly. Fingers phase in and out of existence, materialising from the fog and disappearing as they move and twist in inhumane ways. One stays still, though, and its nail is pointing right to your left eye.
Your hands start to shake uncontrollably and your mind starts to tear through the membrane that forbade you to move.
Your right wrist bends as you try to push yourself out of the way, folding the sheets fruitlessly.
As the blade touch the cornea you lose sight completely. Your arm slowly sets into motion as the stench of blood fills your nostrils. The smells disappear, and soon every sound vanishes. “Too little too late,” you think. The partly ripped web engulf your mind, and a maddening pain erupts and crushes any coherent thought.
You suddenly find yourself standing up in a completely different place. There's a dense fog making the scenery featureless, nor hostile, nor welcoming. The cold grass is brushing against your feet at the rhythm of an imaginary breeze and you can feel the rich ground under your sole.
You raise your arms to look at them and sense the pain isn't really gone but you are somehow completely detached from your body.” An astral projection, perhaps?” You mull over these thoughts, fully appreciating being freed from your previous suffering.
You jump as you hear a deep voice behind you.
“Welcome, traveler.”
“Wha-Who are you?” You stutter, turning away to discover a man in a gray cloak, with a plain white mask on his face
“I don’t know,” he answers simply, “I just know I’m here to greet you.”
“Where are we and why am I here?” You say, backing away.
“I don’t know and you’re being invoked.”
“You don’t know much do you?”
“I know.”
You raise an eyebrow, wondering if the hooded figure is kidding you, almost expecting him to burst out laughing. You look at the featureless mask for a few seconds, and break the silence by asking what he knows and what he meant by “invoked”.
He starts a monotonous explanation after a short sigh, which might be purely theatrical because he doesn't seem to take breaks to breathe.
“The invocation is not finished yet,” he says, and the small inconvenience you just went through comes from the slightly annoying fact that your soul is being pulled away from your body”. “Some get used to it”, he notes, aside, and you shudder at the thought it can be something that can be repeated, that it can be usual, even.
“The ritual can be done in a selective manner or, if it’s poorly done, take a living being at random. If the caster or casters makes too many mistakes, one can rip through the spell with the sheer force of its mind. Some remarkably powerful things can also do that with ease, given that they’re stronger than most of the shamans, wizards, or whoever tries to invoke them from other plans.”
“A host’s body is sometimes provided. Living, dead, or even unanimated. It depends on the culture and resources of those who call for you. When none is offered, the soul painfully tries to create a host.”
“Painfully? Like the first part?”, you ask, nervous.
“Much more, according to the ones I saw multiple times. Some don’t manage to focus enough and their life ends as the soul is consumed entirely. Someone called it a meatball invocation.“
he pauses one instant, judging your reaction, then adds:
“I don’t know if that’s fitting, but she seemed proud of this description of a few words.
“Ugh. How do I escape that fate?
“You seem a bit weak. But if there’s nothing and your soul is trapped in some barriers, I suggest you find the core of your being. Don't be deceived by your eyes or the ones of the others.”
He then states that he knows nothing else useful and that you might want to meditate to prepare yourself.
Completely clueless about meditation, you try to sit comfortably and take slow and deep breaths. As you do, you soon enter some kind of trance, interrupted by a foreign pulsation.
You open your eyes and see the guardian animates and hastily walks to you, stopping just before his head touches yours, and wait, crouched.
As you're about to signal your uneasiness and ask why exactly he’s acting this way, he interrupts you.
"Bon voyage, traveller"
The air vibrates around you, saturated with pure energy and you see one crack appear on the guardian’s mask, whose voice resonate getting more feminine and feeble “help…free…me” as you disappear to a new world.
