Niraya dreamed.
[sblock=DREAM]She was standing in some kind of house made of smooth black stone. The house was HUGE though. Just the room she was standing in was big enough to fit a whole tribe into! There were holes in the walls at even intervals; flat on the bottom with tapering tops, that let a sullen red-tinted light in. The floor swept up towards the far end of the room, making a raised area upon which a large chair sat. The chair was made of gold as far as Niraya could tell...an insane amount of it, polished and gleaming, but enwrapped by black vines covered in thorns that made the chair unusable. The raised area near the chair was cracked as well, and more of the vines grew out of those cracks, making even approaching that large chair difficult and dangerous.
The air was warm, and she could hear a constant low rumbling, and felt vibrations in the floor on her bare feet.
"I was hoping you'd show up," came a familiar voice from behind her. Niraya spun around, fully expecting that the source of it would simply not be there...but it was.
It looked like her, if all the color had been stolen away from her, save a red color in her eyes. Even looking at it, Niraya felt a certain wrongness in its outline, and how it moved. It was as if it was just a very lifelike picture pasted over something else. Something different.
The Therion was smiling. "We have a lot to talk about."
Niraya looked around apprehensively and hugged herself. The surroundings were so alien, and the spectre before her so surreal. Even for a dream it seemed like it was too much. "Is this your world?"
It glanced idly around, then shrugged. "One of them. An old one. Old and nearly used up."
"Is it like this because of you?"
The Therion sighed and cast its scarlet eyes upward for a second. "That's a simple question with a complicated answer. Lets stick with the business at hand, shall we?"
"What business?" Niraya asked.
"Our pact." The Therion looked back at Niraya appraisingly. "The terms by which I loan you my power."
Niraya's stomach sank in her belly. You don't have to agree, she told herself. No matter what it says, you don't have to agree. "All right. What do you want?"
"That's the easy part. I want you to kill things."
Silence stretched, with only the distant rumbling under their feet.
"What?" Niraya finally asked.
"Kill things," the Therion repeated. Its eyes never left her. "I don't care what. Or how. Or why. Kill things using my power, and you'll fulfill your end of the agreement. Simple, yes?"
The young girl swallowed nervously. "A little too simple. So...I could kill orcs?"
It grinned at her. "I would love for you to kill orcs."
Niraya frowned. "You really don't care?"
The Therion shrugged and strolled away, up the room towards the thorn-choked throne. "Nope. Most entities you'd want to contract with like to put in clauses and traps and loopholes...but frankly I don't have the patience for it. I like to boil things down to their essence. Kill things for me, and I get stronger. I get stronger, you get stronger. The feedback loop is its own incentive. There's no need for anything else. And if you change your mind, well, stop calling on me. Built-in escape clause."
Most of the words sailed over Niraya's head, but she caught the basic gist of it. Even that much made her head spin. "Why does killing things make you stronger?"
And just like that, the Therion was in front of Niraya again, gleaming red eyes boring into her own.
"Don't try to understand me, Niraya," it said. "You can't. Your language doesn't even have the words for you to start to think about what I am." When Niraya squeaked in alarm and scrambled backwards, it sighed and rubbed its temple. "We've got to do something about your backbone, or lack therof."
Despite Niraya's fear and uncertainty, its words stung her. "All right then, I'll agree...but on one condition."
It raised an eyebrow. "Hm?"
"I want to know what you are. What...I am. What's happening to me. I know you know."
That little smile returned to the Therion's lips. A smile that Niraya had never had in her lifetime, stamped on a face unsettlingly like her own. "Are you sure? You can't unlearn something, you know."
Mouth and throat dry, Niraya nodded.
"Two out of three then. I'll tell you about yourself, and your powers."
"You too," insisted Niraya, though her voice was little more than a croak.
It shook its head. "First, it's impossible, as I've said. Second, I'm giving up as much as I'm willing to. You're not the only one, you know. There are other doors, other avenues, and I have all the time in all the worlds. Take it or leave it."
Niraya hesitated, but finally nodded. She needed to know. As it was, she was practically helpless, lost and adrift. Even if the Therion's information was incomplete, she could use it to find other sources. She needed this leg up though, a start. "All right," she said heavily. "Agreed."
The Therion went to her and pressed its thumb to her forehead. "Thus is the bargain struck," it said. A dull red heat sizzled in Niraya's forehead; not quite painful, but unsettling. "Thus is the pact made. Put your thumb here." The Therion lifted Niraya's hand to her forehead. When her thumb met that grey skin, a small circle bloomed there from where they touched. A mandala of flaming orange-red; a circle with a complex emblem within it.
"What is it?" she asked, awed and intimidated at the same time.
"It is the sigil of our bond. Now, as for the rest...it seems it will have to wait." The Therion took her hand away from Niraya...and Niraya realized her own hand was starting to become translucent.
"Wait!" she cried. "You still have to tell me everything! You promised!"
"In time," the Therion promised, stepping back smugly. "This isn't my doing anyway. You're just waking up is all."
Horrified, Niraya realized it was right. She could hear things now, people talking...smell the charcoal of the firepit...feel the chill in the air. "No! I want to learn! I want you to..."[/sblock]
Niraya suddenly sat up straight and shouted, "TELL ME!"
The aggrived expression on her face faded to one of embarrassment and confusion then. "Sorry."
