The land falls quiet as dusk softly grasps our edge of the world. We wait. The silence that descends is unbearable, so is the urge to cover our ears, a useless gesture against the force we face tonight. The only sound is the wind as it sighs through the craggy boulders littering our encampment, the skeletal ruins of a once bustling town. Men stir at the soft sound as if it were a scream. Wary eyes look to the horizon, the last rays of light stretch lazily across the sky, before winking out. It begins soon.
The wind slackens for a time, then fades all together, yet a murmur remains to tickle our ears. Voices, just out of reach, like a whispered conversation on the edge of hearing. The voices seem desperate to be heard, calling, taunting - what do they want! Our commanders strong bellow, and with it promise of harsh discipline, snaps our minds back to conscious thought. Force the noise away. We busy ourselves with preparing for the long night ahead, many will pass out from shear weariness, the lucky ones. Meagre meals are cooked over dying fires, no time to gather timber from the forest a stone’s throw away.
Suddenly the rhythmic sound of distant pounding boots breaks the dread silence as nervous shouts arise from the forest nearest our camp. Our enemy no doubt. We exchange grim looks and climb the broken stones for a better vantage. Men emerge into the clearing surrounding the ruins at a lope; they hesitate as the sharpest of their eyes catch sight of our sentries on the highest walls. Gaunt dirty men in ragged lines, a reminder of what we must look like.
The whispering sound pulses, now grating, scratching at the back of our minds, pulling harder, tearing, screaming to be freed. We crush it down with practiced precision but it is a futile battle. A terrifying groan abruptly erupts all around us, from everywhere and nowhere at once. It comes. A scream pierces the night and drives the men in the clearing to a frantic sprint towards us. Their agitated leader tries to hold onto some form of order. Chaos reigns and he too is running. Our archers look to our commander but he shakes his head. It is too close. As if on cue a cacophony of sounds bursts all around us, demonic laughter, monstrous snarls, it is impossible to discern. Inexperienced men clap their hands to their ears with cries of terror. Incompetent fools.
A roiling mist can be glimpsed as if a mirage, appearing and disappearing around the wild eyed men thundering towards us. The fog roils and writhes and then is gone, only to reappear an instant later. Too late. A man in the middle of the pack screams and falls to the ground thrashing, as if caught in the jaws of some fiendish beast, he beats at the air as thick grey murk seems to force its way down his throat. Two more fall, tearing at their eyes and shrieking at the top of their lungs as blood streams from their ears and tremors wrack their bodies. A shadowy form suddenly materializes on the perimeter of our encampment, forming and reforming as if unsure of itself. Our men stumble backwards, moving deeper within the heart of the ruins.
A faint hum can be felt, sending a tingling shiver up our spines. A marking on the wall nearby suddenly sprays fourth a ray of light, and that dancing wavering light speeds through the destroyed encampment, spidering along the rough remnants of walls, until it consumes all the broken rock in a warm pulsing glow. The light then blasts upward in a brilliant blaze forming a breathtaking tower of light. The light mimics the rune covered walls of the once standing stronghold we occupy. Better late than never.
The shade at the edge of the camp disappears with the arrival of the ruins magic as does the roar of chaotic noise. Deafening silence descends once again, apart from the ever present buzzing whisper at the edge of our consciousness and the ragged breath of men who have lived too long in fear. Dropping arms from shaded eyes it takes a moment to realize some of the men from the clearing have now entered the ruins with us. Many sob as they cling to each other. Others, fear long since consumed by an iron will to live, stare at us eyes blazing, daring us to make a move. We won't. We wouldn't dare.
The blinding light recedes to a dim glow illuminating our nocturnal sanctuary. A thick black fog now consumes the night in every direction surrounding us. Terrible forms can be glimpsed in the shuddering mass that envelopes the ruins, a feral maw, snarling and snapping melds into a screaming face, disturbingly human. A sigh of relief spreads through the camp like wildfire. Sentries are posted, they face inward, towards the camp. At this point it is not the horrific force outside our magic prison that we need protection from. Through breaks in the thickening fog the bodies of our enemies which should have littered the clearing are nowhere to be seen.
This night will be long. With our enemies at our backs. A man of theirs won't stop crying, he is muttering to himself, snarling, raging, his wide eyes do not see his heavy hearted companions staring mournfully down at him. They silence him. Our commander nods in approval and we return to the dead ash of our fires. A long night indeed.
“Imagine - if you will, a writhing mass of dark fog which contains roiling, twisted shapes ever changing and reforming. Black endless darkness that plays tricks with your mind and has brought madness upon the most steadfast of men who have gazed too long into its depths. Rumours of deranged beasts have been reported to be seen lurking within the Void, malformed beings, strange and terrifying, with tortured hungry eyes. In a blink they are gone, but are they truly gone - as a movement at the corner of your eye has your heart racing and blood pumping. Could these beings, screaming, snarling, begging, be previous victims of the Void? Their souls torn from their bodies and feasted upon for an eternity, their energy powering the entity? Perhaps they are just echoes of the endless races the Void has devoured. Or could they be manifestations of the Void itself? It is too hard to make assumptions; the Void is beyond me – beyond any of us.”
-Mancer Onarux, Scholars, 72, 48, The Sagacity on Acumen
“Those who have survived since the Void first came to rest its apocalyptic touch upon our earth say it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. The beasts of our land were the first to show distress. Perhaps they could hear the voice of the Void before it fully broke through into our plain of existence. Herds of cattle would disappear, only to be tracked deep into the woods, to places the cattle would never have strayed, their fear of wolves and bears forgotten. Birds and small beasts of prey became scarce, often found huddled silently in trees with hundreds of their kind or burrowed deep within the earth wild eyed and prostrate with fear. Disappearances of our people began shortly after. Stories from hunters, gatherers, and muddy wide eyed travelers beating at village walls. One such story of a hunting party who heard a man screaming in the forest and came to find him face down in a stream, eyes bulging, nails red with blood from the rents he had gouged in his own face. A madman, later identified as a hermit but from all sources a kindly old man who would never harm a thing. The mans jaw was dislocated, likely from his screams. Rumours of other strange occurrences cropped up throughout the land. When we finally ruled out these occurrences as being random events and began to look at them more closely, fearing some kind of new sickness it was already too late. Not that we could have done anything if we had known the Void was seeping into our land. It must have been testing our world for suitable resources or maybe it needed victims of this world in order to fully wrench itself into our plain, in any case what it found must have been promising. As far as we can tell from those few survivors whose minds have stayed intact despite the destruction of their homes and deaths of their families - 20 years ago, the Void tore its way into our world, rushing across the land to consume all in its path. Perhaps this is the way it has consumed all worlds before us. We would surly have perished, our race snuffed from existence, crushed under the weightless Void, only our shells left behind. But something unpredictable happened which allows us to this day to survive against its tireless hunger. As the Void rushed across our land, seething with power, a force our world has never seen, wiping out villages and their inhabitants and storming towards out greater cities. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the great crystals of our world that we have dug from the depths of the earth and adorned our cities with, blazed in purifying intensity against the writhing void and blocked it, forcing it to roil over our greatest cities and scream and tear at our gates. The runes we have carved for centuries among the stones of our walls lit up with the crystals intensity and held our gates steady. For many, the awakening of the crystals and runes were the first they had ever seen of the siege of the Void. Running from their houses they looked to the sky, unable to find it under a swirling black mass kept at bay by the crystals power. Perhaps we are lucky, to have this second chance at life - perhaps not. For everyday we live, hearts gripped in fear, mouths dry and eyes darting. Anxious and on edge every second of every day and night, I sometimes wish we were not denied the option of a quick death.”
-Unknown, Year of the Fallen, 966, Mancer Histories
“It moves from existence to existence across space and time, consuming all sentient life in its path. The consciousness of the beings it touches are ripped from the real substance of their bodies and consumed entirely by the all encompassing void. The voids power is unknown and it dissipates for hours at a time before appearing again in full force. One would hypothesis that the void must originate from somewhere and thus must return for a time to regenerate itself before it can launch fourth, renewed through the complexities of matter and space to reach its hunting ground. Perhaps the consciousness, life force, if you will, that it consumes is slowly used up as a form of energy. It does not seem to have mass and yet, if caught in its thick black tendrils the air seems harder to breathe, the mist so thick and heavy it weighs on your shoulders and body. Like being submerged deep under water, amidst crushing black waves. As far as we know, it cannot communicate. It is a destructive force, unyielding and unforgiving. How such a force can exist is beyond me. It batters our city walls without respite, feeding on those who venture past the magic barrier. It is obvious the Void is beyond time, and it senses our flimsy life filled bodies are growing weak. We tried to fight it, but now we live with it, as if it has always been, and instead we fight each other.”
-Kalren Mancer of Uni'Noc, The Seventh Paradox
They came from the eastern villages, those bloody bastards - charging down three of my men before anyone could react. Young Jirad, my cousins son, was one of the first to fall. We thought we were safe after surviving a restless few hours locked down by the Void up at the ancient runes near the base of the Chur'yon Mountains. I knew a good many men in the Eastern villages, some of whom I was forced to kill today on this very field. None of them looked as if they were possessed by the madness, but for sure it was wild desperation that drove them. Peasants raiding a fully outfitted scouting party can only mean suicidal hard times. I am sorry for the families who we have left fatherless today, but we must provide for our own. Mostly I am fearful of our next orders once we reach home and tell of what has transpired here. The magistrate will not take this lightly.
-Torak Kian Dur, Celesty 7/20