Darklands - Continue
From Create Your Own Story
You awaken with a start.
You groggily sit up and rub your eyes - through lace curtains the first, ghostly rays of approaching dawn cast a pale light into your bedroom. You lay a hand over your pounding heart as you try to calm your breathing and organize your scattered thoughts. This is the fourth night this week you've had the same disturbing dream. The first time you had the nightmare it came as a terrible shock - you hadn't had one in years, since you listened to that traveling bard sing that awful song about the maiden and the schrat. As you listen to the soothing, familiar song of the cathedral bells, you think once again that your recurring nightmare must have a purpose - but what? You have meditated upon what you remember of it and prayed for guidance, but it remains as great a mystery to you as ever. It has only served to aggravate your anxieties about what the future has in store for you and those you love.
You are betrothed to marry a horrible prince upon your eighteenth birthday, nine months from now, and your dread grows with each passing day. Also, like all who prefer to listen rather than speak, you know much more of affairs in the Kingdom than you let on. Your servants endeavour to shield you from the harsh world outside the castle walls, but even so, you've heard of a diabolical new heresy, discussed in hushed whispers, that has induced many to blaspheme and turn against God, and even darker rumours of a Wild Hunt roaming the forests, led by savage demons from Hell. It's said that several cities in the east have fallen under this new spell of the Evil One, and have joined forces with the Antipope in Avignon against God, to take up arms against His Church.
You slip out of bed and pad over to a window, pulling aside the curtains to gaze out upon the sleeping city far below, and the vast darkness of the woods beyond the walls. You love your family, your friends, your home and the life God has blessed you with. Until recently, you have rarely known fear and anxiety, but now your chest tightens and you shiver as you ask yourself, for the thousandth time: are the people you love still safe, and will your heart ever again be light, happy and carefree?
