There was a chill on the air as consciousness became apparent, a dull deep throbbing at the front of his crest and a haze of fog that seemed to filter through his mind like waking from a half sleep. He stands, and slowly the realization dawns on him that he has been standing the whole time. Through half-lidded heavy eyes he gazes slowly left and right and finds his surroundings a dark claustrophobic void. Light, cast down on him from some hidden celestial point makes the emptiness all the more oppressive. The dread feeling of the encroaching darkness makes him dimly aware of how much he hopes the light will not extinguish. Each moment he became more conscious of his oddly empty surroundings, and less a part of a waking haze. Time had no meaning and crawled forward leaving him with a distant feeling of trepidation.
A faint noise echoed in front of him though he could not place exactly from where, loud enough to catch his attention but low enough for its source to be indistinguishable. His head tilted up in slow motion but there was nothing to see. The sound multiplied, echoing from all sides, louder; a chittering to his right called his attention but he could not turn his head fast enough to catch its source. A second came from behind him, and as he turned slowly in place his vision blurred and doubled. Nothing. Now multiple soft sounds chimed around him, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end. Some seemed impossibly close, some a distant echo, and try as he might he could not locate their source. A chilling sensation climbed between his shoulder blades to the base of his skull and heat rose along the outer edges of his ears. A knot rose from his stomach and settled deep in his throat, his mouth ran dry.
Slowly he came to the realization that the ground near him, and indeed all around him, began to shimmer and glint faintly in the light, as though he looked out upon a great field of stars. For the briefest of moments his fear abated and he swallowed hard as he attempted to clear the fog in his head. Panic washed over him again as the stars began slowly to shift in place, then drew nearer to him. Thousands and yet more glimmers picked up the light’s reflection, each closing in on him like grains of sand as though he were trapped in an hourglass. He recoiled in horror as the first neared him enough to clamber up his hoof and he realized that they were neither sand nor stars but a great wave of arachnids. Their jet black shiny carapaces perfectly reflected the light above him and at once he now wished that it would indeed extinguish and save him from this horror. Spiders of every size skittered at him, and he knew now that chattering was their legs against each other as they clambered over and around one another in a desperate race, it seemed, to find a home within his robes. As he began to feel the sharp pinpricks of their legs on the flesh of his shins and calves the daze he was in snapped away and he began feverishly swatting at them, slapping away dozens at a time. They too seemed to double their efforts and soon their noise was at a deafening pitch.
Despite his best efforts they soon swarmed his legs and moved up his torso, he began clawing at them desperately and found that they clung to his hands and fists as he struck and began making their way up his sleeves. He realized that his battle was hopeless and in a last ditch effort cast himself to the ground, rolling around madly in an attempt to crush them and be done with their attack. Even this proved a useless tactic and he sprang back to his hooves when they began pouring into his collar and up his neck. As he shook his arms free of those he did manage to kill it came upon him that he was a mage and certainly his mastery of the arcane would save him. In response a cacophony of loud hissing rose up from beyond his field of vision and he responded in kind with a burst of missiles from his fingertips which arced through the darkness not unlike fireworks cutting through thick fog. He was rewarded with screeches of pain and found himself empowered by the rain of chitinous limbs that each direct hit sent his way. For the first time since this began a smirk crept across his face; he was certain that he would turn this around.
He did not notice in his fervor to eliminate his attackers that his blasts also began to illuminate a much larger set of legs that moved slowly his way from just beyond his peripheral vision. Nor did he think that the slow abatement and withdrawal of the spiders was the result of anything other than the product of his own talent. It was too late for him to escape then, when a thick black spiked leg pierced the veil of darkness and cast its own shadow in his light. The mage faltered as he took notice and his eyes followed up towards a body of unspeakable horror. Before him, half in the darkness was a creature resembling a Fal’dorei, with the thorax and abdomen of a great spider, but to his horror instead of a tortured elf the top half was an all too familiar draenei. He recognized the familiar form of a long lost lover, now pallid and gaunt, it’s hair hung down in oily patches over its eyes and shoulders. It hunched forward, breath coming in erratic rasps that sent spasms along its torso and arms.
The mage’s hands dropped weakly to his side and he saw a grave wound in the creature’s top half, a shredded hole on its stomach scorched by arcane magic through which spiders poured out each time it exhaled. He found himself drawn to its eyes, once full of love and life, now lifeless and glazed over, its brow wrinkled as it stared through him. His former husband sneered at him and opened its mouth in a soundless scream.
“Why?” The words echoed from the monster’s direction, though it made not a sound and only ceaseless waves of arachnid’s issued forth from its lips, out from behind its tongue and over its teeth. Slowly its gaze broke from the mages and moved down its own body to the wound. Uselessly it covered the shredded flesh with a hand, though each breath continued to send forth its black army which crawled out between its fingers. The pure rage that had once spread across its faith soundlessly turned to a look of shock and pain and yet again as its cold dead eyes rose slowly, twitchingly up to meet the mage’s, its mouth still agape.
Unable to move, unable to do anything other than stare into his husband’s unearthly visage, the mage was filled with a swirl of emotions, loss, hurt, a deep sense of guilt all mingling with the dread caught in his throat. As he watched, something beneath his husband’s flesh moved, undulating unnaturally. A small spider clawed its way free from the corner of his lover’s eye. The creature raised its other hand slowly to the skin on his cheek which trembled and bubbled under his fingers. After a moment it pulled at its own flesh and a small flood of arachnids swarmed out of its eyelid from behind its eye. Elsewhere its spasms and trembling became more pronounced as its pale blue skin rippled and squirmed. More spiders began to stream from every orifice, and they swarmed the body as they fell to the floor. Through them the mage could see the flesh of the creature begin to rip and tear and great gashes laced its torso. Spindly legs burst force like an obscene pincushion as ever larger spiders tore themselves free.
The mage watched in abject terror as creature tore at its own face and head and though arachnids erupted from the wounds at a horrific pace he could see flashes of glinting white bone beneath them. It looked as if the great beast was melting slowly with each spider that exited and soon his lover’s body hollowed out and shrunk into a brittle husk as the inhabitants spilled toward the mage and fell upon him burying him alive in scores of their writhing mass.
Kri'zaan sat bolt upright in his bed, eyes wide a sense of fear still thick in his chest, sweat poured from his brow. He could still feel them crawling over him, his skin, his flesh, and he swatted at his arms and chest flailing as he sat trying to free himself of the sensation. His breath was quick for a few moments even after he realized there was nothing there. The perpetual feeling started to fade, though pricks and itches across his body made him feel like something might still be there and caused him twitch or jerk. It took longer still for the dread and sadness to begin to abate. Glancing out and noticing the sun-touched sky made him consider it was time to join the waking world and abandon this attempt at sleep.
