Imbued with Fear

[Othman]

PROLOGUE

Stairway of the Hampered Midnight

Extracted from the personal notes of Arrigo Diana

Devoting myself once more to the elucidation of the impenetrable puzzle which my own position presented me, I now tried to meet the difficulty by investigating it from a plainly practical point of view. The events of the memorable night being still unintelligible to me, I looked a little farther back, and searched my memory of the earlier hours of the meeting for any incident which might prove of some assistance to me in finding the clue.

Salisbury Cathedral, 3 AM

It was midst of hollow darkness with a stirring doze of sordid odor, propagated by the saturated repository, where I was exposed to an unfathomable period elapsed in obliviousness. Neither waking up with a dead arm nor being impotent to breath uniformly was a comforming symptom.

Just as I managed to feel my fingers, a foul pile winded into a ball of rotten bones and greased human hair clasped my left shoulder, somehow prodding me to withstand this tragic swoon and my eyes slowly began to decline the shroud, I was irascibly confined with; which interpreted by the frantic realization, that I had been decayed on the same fleck in a stoic state and with a major amount of gore spread around my neck, but especially the lower body where the intimidating scene scored to hound me. Had the blazing dreams of hatred and desolation come true, I had no chance but to survive alone..

---

On the uncharted lagoons of anguish, I sail with a canoe made of my sins.

[Othman]

As inhaling started to be slightly less painful, I barely remember capturing a short glance at a black suited man with gorgeous long hair, a controversially dull face and lustered long Bosman greaves, swaggering toward me through a dusky and poorly decorated hall. At that moment, being in a forlorn crack of employing what was left of my injured arms to heave the pile off of my shoulder, I crawled beyond to recognize that the man had belayed the ramble after yet another peek of blues and there was an eccentric preaching going on...

Whilst the choir were thriving to be more substantial, I began to sense more and more people within the same block, somehow rendering me with a retrospect of various of them gathering around a statue. But the bizarre question that came to my attention was not likely to give up. Why would nobody care for an injured guy, stock-still on the ground in his own blood? Or were I simply deserted to death after all?

Before I could find an answer to this immensely comprehensive inquiry, an apparition advanced towards me out of a dark corner of the hall. A wan, wild, haggard girl with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce keenness in her eyes, came limping up on a crutch near the cryptic spot I was hardly creeping on, and looked at me as if I was an object of mingled interest and horror, which quite entranced her to see.

---

On the uncharted lagoons of anguish, I sail with a canoe made of my sins.

[Othman]

A tall young man with a rugged, dark brown robe was staring at me as the girl commenced some form of dialect which was impossible to comprehend.


"My dear Lauren, he might be still alive."


"He is intoxicated right now."


"Lord Eralis will not be pleased if we lose him."


"Is the channeling complete?"


"Evacuation will be initiated soon."


"His wounds must be healed."


"Aeldar! "

Both of them grew older with every word they spoke before becoming almost an apparition. I remember them undressed for a while. Then the choir..

---

On the uncharted lagoons of anguish, I sail with a canoe made of my sins.

[Othman]

A wailing siren..

I must have succumbed into an arcane lassitude shortly after the culmination of the uncanny discourse. It was out of the blue however, that how my status was rectified with no wounds left at all, myself on a chair this time next to a cairn stone and a cabal of people those I couldn't even see through the cadaverous semblance they were bearing.

The stone had the words ''Ethereal Delusion of the Eidolon'', carved on its front.

All of a sudden, a strong blast ripped the southern walls of the cathedral apart, opening a huge chasm as the blazing gunnery of a bulky warship came into view.

The strange dialect was being heard once again..

I could see a horde of armed marines rushing in from the southwest corner, which in fact made me believe that I would either die in this chaos or be arrested as a culprit.

The wild girl appeared near the stone for a second, without the crutch, told me to veil behind it and then cloaked back, leaving me with something beyond comprehension.

---

On the uncharted lagoons of anguish, I sail with a canoe made of my sins.