Tales of a Shifter (P5) The White Mountain

Chapter 122 - Shattered Hope

Time didn't seem to pass and yet Brandon had the distinct feeling that time was passing and yet nothing had changed for him....he couldn't wake up. He floated in the darkness for untold hours or days. His own thoughts lake cavers that he couldn't seem to escape from.

Oh God...Why cant I wake up!

Brandon asked himself for what had to have been the millionth time, and because he couldn't get the answer from the darkness he went back to his endless puzzling about the dreams and memories and revelations that he had gotten before.

"A King?" Brandon blinked...and curled into a small ball floating in the recesses of his mind. He floated between sleep and wakefulness. He floated in the darkness of his own mind. His thoughts blurry but still clear enough that he did not realizes that he should have been alarmed. The dream was over...and yet still he seemed unable to awaken. Instead his mind was inundated with thoughts concerning the things he had seen, and dreamed and felt.

"Three King's and a Mountain? A beautiful land..." Brandon ruminated out loud. His voice muffled in the darkness of his sleeping mind. He pictured the Lands he had seen over and over, his heart breaking and filling over and over at the memory. "Somehow I know this place. It called to me...I knew that land. I knew it. What's that name Kail used....Ishtar? Man, it looked so beautiful. So familiar. God it felt like home. Jacob called it home...."

For a moment calm blanketed him and Brandon floated deep into the darkest recesses of his mind. He felt engulfed with too much. His mind a soggy slosh mess of thoughts and feeling and impressions and images and....memories that he couldn't seem to assimilate. Until once more he began to fantasize about Ishtar, particularly he imagined the giant symbols etched into the side of the mountain top. Symbols that....he could almost sort of read? He started to push himself to try harder to decipher the strange language when a voice snapped at him from all around.

"Ohhh no no no....this won't do Child....Thissss won't do at all...."

Hissed the coldest more terrifying voice that Brandon had ever heard. A voice that he never wanted to hear again and a voice that quickly sent him to the depths of bowel loosening panic.

We won't have you thinking of that vile place so sweetly ....sleep in ignorance. Despair in your guilt. We will have it no other way.....

"Who?" Brandon called into his mind in fear, even though he knew exactly what was happening. "Wh...Who is there?"

"Ignorant......ssssoo ignorant....."

Came a quiet hateful cackle from the darkness, it cascaded over his skin and mind like bile and warm oil, coating his entire being in goosebumps and nausea that he couldn't shake off or turn away.

"Oh god....oh god wake up! WAKE UP! "Brandon screamed at himself and slammed his fists into his head in unadulterated panic.

His flesh, his soul, and his heart all remembered instantly exactly who and what had made him feel like this before. The one being that beyond all his bravado and anger he truly and deeply feared to face in the flesh once again.

"How...!!? How are you here!? How are you in my mind!? Get OUT! GO AWAY!

WAKE UP! WAKE UP!" Brandons heart hammered and his fists slammed into the side of his head countless times, but the pain he inflicted did nothing to wipe the nightmare away, and with silken agression the Banes voice rose over him in a taunting chorus.

"Oh you wont be free so easily....You see, you have fallen too deeply into your own mind to simply awaken now...."

Confused Brandon shook and grabbed his head. "What are you talking about?" he whispered.