(Ursa) ~ The Endless Dark

Ursa found herself once again standing upon the battlements of the ancient mountain fortress looking outward across the vast unending void as flakes of ash and soot drifted slowly through the air, not all that unlike the winter snow in the mountains she had just been moments before.

There was no surprise in her discovery, nor need to wonder at where she now found herself. She had, after all, visited here often over the many years since her death in this place. The cursed fortress of Grey Haven but not that which now lay as all but forgotten ruins in the high mountains of Dalen but rather the one to be found in the realm she had come to know as the Endless Dark.

The realm of the dreaming dead as some in her order had come to call it.

The sound of mail and metal drew her gaze away from the darkness and to the others standing on the battlements with her. The ghostly vestige of the knights of Sarnia whom had recently died in this place and beyond them dozens if not hundreds of other that the Fortress had collected over time.

Unlike the haunted ruins to be found in the Dalen Alps the fortress that lay in the Endless Dark had and would always remain whole and intact. A massive seemingly unending fortress built from the memories of every brick and every stone that had ever been used in its construction. And not like the stones the memories of those whom had fought and died here as well.

The dead from every battle, every duel ever fought on this cursed earth. Collected in this place by powers beyond the understanding of even the most powerful Wizards in the whole of the lands. Even Ursa who had somehow survived her death here was still cursed by this place and doomed to return to it every night in her dreams.

…

Ursa abandoned the battlements and the ranks dead that remained there and wandered the corridors of the ancient fortress taking in the sights both familiar and unfamiliar in turn. Unseen or unnoticed by the dead and undead that roamed the corridors with her. It didn’t take long in fact for her to find her way back to the keep’s main feast hall.

Surprisingly the feast hall was seemingly more alive then it had ever been in Ursa’s memory with the sound of loud voices and the clatter of carelessly handled dishes and utensils reaching her ears before she even reached the balcony overlooking the long hall.

Even the stench of the putrid and decaying dishes that were being served were nearly overwhelming. The smell of rot and decay struck her like a blow to the face long before she was able to focus on the sight of it. The sight being one that Ursa elected to not enjoy, given that her memory of what had once lay in those dishes was often a horror unto itself.

Turning her gaze elsewhere Ursa was forced to wonder how she had come to be in this hellish place once again.

...