Visions of Terror

This note is found in the Dreeg Cult section of the Conclave of the Three. This place we have chosen for our vigil, this Conclave, it is a cursed land! The veil screams in agony. The whispers from beyond threaten to unravel reality.

Every night I've spent here, the visions of the other side came more frequently, and with greater clarity. What I first thought were images of darkness turned out to be much more. Within it were the screams of a million souls, crying out to me. Crying out for mercy. As my dreams solidified, I realized that the darkness moved. It writhed like a mass of tentacles endlessly searching for something. The sight of it filled me with terror beyond anything I've ever felt. I awoke gasping for breath and grasping for anything within reach that would remind me that I've left the dream, to the chagrin of my fellow seers sharing the tent.

Shaken and unable to sleep, I sought the wisdom of the Oracle. To my surprise, or perhaps I should have expected this, my master was already waiting for me inside his tent. Lanterns illuminated him in their flickering light as he sat cross-legged, without his usual regalia, on a rug with tea set out for us. As he stared ahead with his blank eyes, he gave me a tight-lipped smile and motioned for me to sit.

Before I could utter a word, he said: Yugol. I was taken aback and blinked. The Oracle continued by describing exactly what I had seen in my dreams, as if he had been there to share them with me. The Insatiable Night, he called it, the eternal darkness that exists in the beyond. It is primordial, unfathomable to the human mind. We see it as a mass of writhing tentacles, but what it truly is cannot be described in words. Yugol exists to consume everything, its endless pursuit halted only by the light of the celestial stars.

I was told that it is a gift and a burden to bear witness to the makings of reality. What I had seen cannot be unseen. When I started visibly shaking, the Oracle placed his palm upon my forehead and for a moment I could swear his eye tattoos were staring at me. Yet I found myself instantly calmed.

When I asked what he had done, he would not say, but he offered to teach me a technique to calm myself and banish the darkness from my nightmares. It is a lucid method by which I would conjure my own stars into the dream, brighter than the desert sun.

I thanked him for his wisdom and promised to return the next eve for my lesson. As I stood to leave, I glanced in his direction. He was staring ahead, as before, a somber expression on his face. His tea remained untouched. I said no more and closed the tent flap behind me.

It would seem my visions have disturbed the Oracle as well, but I trust that his judgment and foresight will carry us through whatever darkness looms on the horizon. I pray to Dreeg that the Oracle's teachings will spare me further nightmares.