Virtue and Vice: The Vessels

[Tentacle]

Winds moved through the room. A hot scouring spectre on the rise. Welcome to the Barrows. They live up to their name.

Across time and reality, there are beings beyond reason and understanding. Often, we give these entities titles. This assists the mind with comprehension. In this case, he was called a god. The Great One.

There is no record of his conception and dreamers did not know his true nature. Dreamers never thought twice when he offered them their dreams and unspoken desires. Dreamers were an integral part of his psychodrama. Without dreamers, he could not express his virtue. His virtue was power. With every act, both good and bad, he gorged himself. The love of dreamers; their hatred, it was so much psychic stew. Once he had a taste he desired more. His hunger became insatiable. Dreamers came to know his vice, greed. His name was Bashir.

Having grown to such power it could scarce be comprehended. He would rise to be a veritable eater of worlds. Because of his duality and unchecked hunger, there would be no stopping him. Not until those of his kind, though each bearing attachment to a different virtue and vice, would turn against one of their own.

You see, dreamers had increased in power. This is true. But they fell before him as so much chattel. In the great psionic war, several of his kind would fall before him, but not all of them. Amaranthine, Mother, a vessel of Love and Lust. Channelling the power of the remaining Vessels, she would be the one to gain power over Bashir and subdue him. She remained while a number of her kind, The Vessels, fled. Those that remained, would come to suffer the same fate she did.

For a time, reality knew peace. New dreamers found their way across the unforgiving sands. They thought nothing about The Barrows which they travelled over. Scouring winds would remove all trace of the names from the markers. The name Akvanat would be lost as was the location of its burial place. Gradually, the enormity of what had transpired would be guarded by the enigmatic Kai's. These secrets not unlike those buried beneath the hot sands of the Barrows.

In the depths, darkness was not so short of memory. There are some pangs of hunger that cannot be satiated. Deep within a prison of the mind darkness remembered. This darkness has only time and memory.

When you walk the sands and hear the haunting melodies of winds through stone, take a moment and pause. Are you hearing the simple sounds of nature crafted for your comfort? Or is it perhaps, the keening lament of something more? Something that knows you. Something, that watches.

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