AC:DM CD Lore/Late Dereth Texts/The Abyss Sequence/Prelude: Thorns of the Hopeslayer

From the AC:DM CD Lore

Prelude: Thorns of the Hopeslayer

“Mommy, I'm scared,” Cortrima said, her eyes wide and shimmering with tears of panic.

“Shh,” her mother said, and wrapped her arms tighter around the girl. They were huddled in one corner of the room. Crude furniture barricaded the door and windows. Outside their little cabin, the howling grew louder, shriller. They had fled when the Spire first erupted from the ground. After a few weeks of inactivity, though, they had thought it safe to return.

The change had begun two days ago. The noise from the Spire had escalated, and the ground had quaked. Cortrima's father, a mage, had clutched his head in pain during the quakes, and finally run into the woods, screaming about shifting currents, about thorns in the flesh of the earth — things they did not understand. The black shape on the northern horizon appeared more frequently, leering down through bruise-colored overcast and blood-red sun.

Then the Shadows began to appear, their eyes burning with power. They now surrounded the house in numbers that grew by the hour, whispering in a way that set her hair on end. From the Spire itself, sick wet sounds could occasionally be heard — as if something were hatching in the bone protrusion at its apex.

“What do they want?” Cortrima's mother whispered, half to herself. “For the love of the Mothers, what do they want?”

Sibilant laughter washed over the house. The wind shivered the trees with dire news. A storm had been building over Dereth for a month. Soon it would break — a black rain would fall.