Episode 6: The Dreams Darken.

Episode 6: The Dreams Darken.

August Rencour blinked his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear the fog from his mind. The first thing that he noticed was the smell, not a specific smell he could recognise, but like a variety of fragrances and odours playing off each other to paint an olfactory landscape, despite his vision was still being unreliable, as his eyes tried in vain to adjust, he gathered from the rank musty odor that this place was dark and unpleasant, and something had definately died close by.

Listening for some evidence of where he was, or what had happened to him, all he could hear was a thumping that sounded like some grand machine or clockwork off in the distance, running slower and slower, and a slow steady dripping, which seemed to come from everywhere. Feeling around in the dark, Rencour felt a cold, thick and sticky wetness on the ground where he sat.

Suddenly overcome by a sense of terror, Rencour froze, trying to remember what had happened to him.

The last clear thought he could remember was that the Consortium, his principal business rivals had gone too far.

"Why had they gone too far? What had they done?"

He was trying to remember but his thoughts at the time must have been irrational. There was an image that came to him of a thin man clad in shadows. Had the thin man tried to hurt him?

"The thin man! He had been The Killer, hired by the Consortium... By Waukeen, he killed all those people! Left their bodies cleft and torn like discarded wheat husks! The blood, my god the blood!" He wept as the image returned.

August Rencour stood bolt upright as his vision cleared and he saw where he was.

Somehow the body of the young girl, who had been The Killer's last victim, had been expanded to gargantuan size, and he realized he stood in the very centre of her brutally exposed chest cavity, bathed in her blood as her lacerated and broken heart beat it's last.

August Rencour fell to his knees, hands slapping down wettly in the ichor that surrounded him. He threw his head back and a deep heartfelt scream, filled equally with remorse, anger and sadness, bellowed forth.

Talon woke with a start in the bedchamber of Lehtinan's appartment atop the Copper Coronet. The fine satin sheets where torn to shreds and soaked with sweat, the ermine lined blanket lie on the floor nearby where it had been hurled in his sleep.

Talon rubbed his face wearily as he got himself ready for the tasks ahead, cleaning himself up, shaving with Tooth, donning his leathers.

"I need a drink" he said to himself as he trudged downstairs to the bar.