For those lucky enough to return from the Shroud of Death, it is never an easy path to anything that can be called normality. After falling into Death's shroud from the poison of an undead soul in a ruined City long ago Lost to the ages, now populated solely with those undead souls. Cera had lost something more. She spent the days after, holed up in Katya's tree under her blankets and bedding, muttering at herself for losing somany of Mojo's pieces, totally forgetting her duties around the Tree and around Camp.
Poor Elera had her hands full between Katya lost muc of the time in her horrifying visions of what wast to come and Cera disturbed worryingly so more than usual. Jeni running around with visions of her own, on top of that, Elra was probably the lynch pin that kept that household from flying totally apart. Mojo bless her for it.
Rarely and barely aware of anything beyond her blankets over her, Cera spent these days in and out of sleep, caught between self-destruvtive berratings she gave herself when awake and their own prophetic dreams of doom to come. The others did what they could for her. Once even Katya was able to rouse herself from her visions long eough to sit by Cera's side.
Holding Cera's hand, Katya stroked back the greenish blue bangs from Cera's eyes. With Jeni's help she tipped Cera's head back to pour the same potion that temporarily held her visions in check down Cera's throat to give her temporary reprieve from her inner demons. Cera' sputtered and her bright greene yes snapped open to find Katya's kind, tired and sad face gazing down on her. There was something in her long time mentor and grandmother figure's eyes she didn't wish to see and refused to recognize. Katya was saying good bye. Baba squeezed Cera's hand again, leaning down to place a kiss on her forehead.
Jeni was told to go help Elera. When the litle girl was gone, Katya gave a grim smile back down to Cera, "Shh… there's something I must tell you. We've both know...and when the time comes I want you to run to that Wind or Fog of yours and hide. You'll be safe there. Then, when when you can I want you to come back and get Jeni and Jonni and take them far away from here where they'll be safe. This does not have to be their fate too...or yours. They'll be in hiding."
Baba leanded over and whispered where to find the fissure they'll be hding in then placed a final kiss on Cera's forehead. Cera clutched at Baba and didn't want to let go, her green eyes already bleary with tears, but Baba could already feel the ffects of the potion keeping her visons away fading and she didn't wan to leave Cera with more of her terrifying babbling as her last impression.. Katya with tears in her own eyes squeezes Cera tight once ad held before she forced herself to peel away, patting Cera's hand, "You rest."
Cera flopped over into quiet sobbing as Katya turned to leave the room, not letting up til sleep claimed her again. It wasn't much of a refuge with the same terrifyingly real dreams plauged her yet again. Those gnarling sharp dog teeth coming to rip away the flesh of countless bodies that she couldn't make out who they were. Over and over she witnessed the beasts devour the the seemingly endless supply of corpses.
She awoke wit a terrified shriek! Those jaws in her dreams had turned to come for her. Only she awoke to find those jaws were quite real indeed. The most terrible gnolls she could remember stood over her bedding. The wards she and Katya had placed on the Tree to keep unwelcome guests out proved to be no match for the gnolls and their demon allies.
Through another shriek she bracd for the killing blow that was about to land down her way. Except when it came there was no Cera there to receive it. In her terror a buried survival instinct had kicked in and she had shifted herself to the Ethereal Plane in a shimmering that grew around her a split second ahead of the blow. The gnoll's axe went right through her, which she saw when she glanced to see if she was still alive. Her eyes had closed so tight as to block out all light in that same instant of planewalking to the Ethereal or the Fog as she called it.
The sight of an axe occupying the same space as her body and the gnolls overturning her blankets to see where she had gone was more than enough to send her screaming out through the far wall into the main room of the Tree. Lucky for her sight and sound from the Etherial did not carry over into the Material she had just fled.
Unfortunately for her sound and sight did carry over from the Material to the Ethereal as far the ethereal mists allowed. The mists also added a dreamy quality to what she saw and heard next. Jeni and Jonni were nowhere to be seen but there in front of her where she had come out of the wall, the gnolls had Baba and Elera in their mits. She wanted to help them so badly but she just...couldn't. It wasn't in her, Mojo was missing too many pieces. It is good thing she didn''t do anything or she would shared the fate of she was about to witness.
It was the same nightmares she had for weeks, but now she couldn't wake up and the bodies were all too recognizable and not quite corpses yet. The final mokments and screams of those she called Family burned into into her mind. The maggot covered gnolls were here. The maggots would never leave her again. If only there had been someone there to tear her away from the scene, but she was alone and frozen in place there in the Ethereal mists, just close enough to witness it all.
A miracle she ever moved again,a tiny voice amidsts all that were always in her head gently nudged her on once it was all over,. The voice reminded her of Katya's last words to her, Jeni and Jonni still needed her.. One last duty for her Baba to do. She moved without a will of her own through the mists, fleeing from her lng time home of the Tree a small fragment of or so faling from the ceiling falling through her on her way out.
It wasn't necessary but she still crept as quietly as possible through the carnage of the Camp once outside. She rcognnized all the bodies now, more revealed or hidden away as shemoved through the mists. Gnolls, always more gnolls and though it wasn't true it seemed to her that they ALL were crawling with maggots. No one else would have seen them but she did, real or not. The sight stole away all caution she had regained and she sprinted off to find the little girl and boy, running right through more than one gnoll.
She did not leave the relative safety of the Fog until she found Jeni and Jonni hiding. In her confusion she had sprinted far and wide when she knew theyre hiding within earshot of the Tree itself. Unable to fit into the fissure herself she bid Mojo from his 'sleep' and sent him in to lead the chidlren to safety. Cera herself returned to the Ethereal, the same shimmering in the air claiming her away to it. From the Fog she followed them and her feline best friend to her own physical safety but had she truly escaped?
