Chapter Text
Waking Dream
Out of Apex…
When last we journeyed with our hero, the Immortal, he had been summoned by the sorceress queen known only as the Matriarch, bound to retrieve her four sons for their pre-ordained roles in a dark ritual long prepared for. He ultimately succeeded at this task, though not without misgivings, returning the politician Virmorden, the arch-priest Belthagus, the general Kinvergol, and the renegade advisor Cirolik to the clutches of their mother. Promised freedom for his actions, he instead was met with betrayal, left in eternal servitude to the Matriarch’s will. So the Immortal returned to his dwelling, both prison and home, the mountain Apex, while the queen murdered her way to immortality.
Sons firmly in her control, neatly trussed up and prepared for the altar, the Matriarch enacted her long obscured plan, a twist in the ancient weave. Unbeknownst to her doomed children, even the once cherished advisor, the queen perverted the ritual, corrupting their souls and binding them to her will for eternity. Not dead, but not entirely alive, they straddled a purgatorial line somewhere between, horrible wraithlike entities occupying the bodies of men, bodies that would swiftly decay and require replacement. Yet one would not bind like the others, nor compel like they would. He would obey the queen’s commands, but he seemed an empty vessel, complying to the letter with neither indolence nor initiative. As if something had gone wrong, some lingering part of him left tied to the corporeal world, thought forever beyond her reach…
…Into the Abyss
Our tale begins within the sleeping mind of the Immortal, who rests deep in the heart of his mountain. Normally a source of respite and renewal, a place to nurse the wounds no bandage could hope to staunch, they have grown shadows. As the years pass, this only worsens, the eternal noontide driven inexplicably, inescapably toward darkness and all the horror it may bring. Yet within the darkness there is a light, one that seems always just out of reach. Closer and closer, little by little, he can feel its warmth. But when he finally reaches the beacon, it is not Awakening that greets him, at least, not yet…