From: dementia@cwis.unomaha.edu (Diane Atkinson)
Subject: CASTLE--Elo: A Late-Autumn's Dawn's Nightmare
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 23:04:32 GMT


DISCLAIMER:  This is unconnected with the Nightmare subthread also
appearing in the Castle story.  Just thought ya might want to know.  :)
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	Springs in her couch squawked slightly as Elo stirred in her sleep.  
It was well past dawn, but she had only begun to slumber a couple of hours 
earlier.  All night she had tossed and turned, plagued by an ache that swirled
within her head.  She had finally just given up and tried to read, naturally
then beginning to doze on the couch.  In spite of her fatigue, her sleep was
far from peaceful....
	It was bright, painfully so, as if she were staring wide-eyed into
the center of the sun.  She seemed to be floating, sucked or dragged along by 
an unseen force.
	<What...what's happe-...h-hello...?>
	Not a soul breathed or thought, much less answered.  Panic welling in
her throat, she cried out, and this time even she made no sound.  Oh gods!  
She was doomed, doomed to die lost alone within the bright nothingness....
	"...Elotheria."
	A strange voice whispered across her mind and the whiteness was 
replaced by a close, dark, dank chamber.  Elo drifted like some sort of ghost
above a fine-boned elven man wearing heavy silk robes and a fine gold circlet.
He smiled softly, sickly.
	"At last we meet, Magetoki Elotheria."
	"Huh?  Wh-...."  At last we meet?  Magetoki?  What in hellsbells.... 
"What's going on?  Who...?"  Her eyes abruptly widened and she recoiled with
a sharp shreik.  Khardess!
	Raising a hand as if in greeting, Khardess Ehlyargho, reigning emporer
of Kandorr, smiled.  "At last you know us, Magetoki.  We worried you would 
not."
	Whimpering, she clawed away, fear pulsing through her body.  "Oh, gods!
Oh, godess no...!"  She broke off, coming to her senses a bit.  She wasn't, 
she couldn't be here with Khardess, it was impossible.  It...it was just a 
dream, a horrible dream of some sort.  That was it, a dream.  "A dream, just
a dream.  Just a dream..."
	"Unfortunately, no, you are not dreaming.  Nor are you hallucinating.
We called you here."
	Called her here?  Suddenly she remembered the dragging sensations she
had felt in the brightness.  Hellsbells and damnation, he had literally
sucked her out of her body!  Shivers rippled up and down her spine.  She
gulped.  "Called me here?  Why?"
	"We desired to extend our warmest wishes for your speedy return to 
Kandorr.  It has been so many years-...."
	"No!"  Even astral, her scream echoed off the dripping walls.  "No,
never!"  She wouldn't go back to Kandorr if her life depended on it.
	"Oh, dear.  We fear we have been misunderstood.  You are not allowed
the choice of refusal.  You must return."
	He had to be joking.  "No I *mustn't*,"  Elo growled.  "There's no
reason-..."
	"Ah, but again you are mistaken."  Khardess gestured, and the room
(or was it...a dungeon?) brightened slightly, revealing....
	"Mother!"  Oh, godess.  Her mother, her father, even her brother, and
some elfish woman--perhaps his wife?--holding a baby.  They huddled, 
terrified, in the corner of the dungeon cell.  "What's the meaning of this?"
	"We knew you wouldn't return without some...incentive."
	"Why's it so damned important I return to Kandorr?"
	"We know of you, Magetoki Elotheria, and we know of your magic."
	So that was it.  The Purges....  "Oh, I see.  You want me to come 
back so you can kill me."
	"You jump to conclusions.  Perhaps that is our purpose.  However,"
his smile grew eerily innocent, "perhaps that is not."  Elo blinked, 
realizing that, to the mother's wailing shock, Khardess now held the baby.  
"Enough of idle conversation.  Return to Kandorr.  Face your destiny-..."
	"And if I don't?"
	"Then the Purges will begin anew--ah, that is what you fear, is it 
not?  The Purges will begin anew, and your family will be the first to die."
	"But they don't even use magic!"
	"That is beside the point.  Return to Kandorr, Magetoki Elotheria, or
they and whomever else we so choose will die."
	"No!"  The strange sucking sensation seemed to return as the blinding
brightness crept into her field of vision.
	"Return or they will die."  Khardess brushed his hand along the 
shreiking elf-infant's cheek, a thin, razor-like cut trailing wherever his
finger touched.  "Return or all Kandorrians will die....  Return...."
	"NO!!" Flailing about frantically, Elo landed on the floor with a 
smacking thud.  She squinted against the bright daylight.  The Castle.  She
was in the Castle of ARC, not in Kandorr...Kandorr!  She cried out, grabbing
her head as it began to throb so hard her teeth rattled.  Sickening, twisted
images seared her eyes as she somehow struggled to her feet and stumbled into
the hall.
	...Khardess...the cracked, dripping stone walls of the windowless
dungeon...her family...she hadn't even seen them in years...a sister-in-law,
a helpless infant niece or nephew she hadn't even met...!
	Somehow she ended up outside Meghin's room.  Moaning, Elo pounded on
the door.
	...not their fault she was stubborn...why?...<oh goddess, what have
I...?>...so helpless,so innocent...their lives, the lives of all Kandorrians...
return...cradled within her hands...fragile as a thawing, threadlike
icicle....
	Abruptly the door swung inward and Elo pitched forward into the arms
of unconsciousness.
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heh heh heh, what have us elves gots up our sleeves?  ;)

-- 
*A part of you I'll always be       LA!    *                   Diane Atkinson*
*from now until                     /      *        dementia@cwis.unomaha.edu*
*Eternity                     ___^o^___    *       "No more turning away...."*

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