Campbells Soup

The world around them is in ruins. His people injured. Himself too. The portal opens with a crack; a great light seeping out onto the land. They are quick to flood in, away from the bird and the rot and the evil at their heels. But Campbell falters.

He has a life here. A child. Few others of the Foxrun can say that. Was he just meant to leave them? Evain had said...

It doesn’t matter. The bird makes the choice for him. He’s turning to regard Mozelle, still here with him, when Sparrowhawk launches itself towards the portal, one talon reaching out to rip him through with them. 

There’s a terrible pain and then, as quickly as it starts... Nothing. He feels... nothing. A cold and empty desolation swaddling him and pulling him through. And then, with a flash of blinding light, he feels everything.

Every pain and agony he has ever suffered suddenly multiplied tenfold, caving in on top of him one after the next after the next. His fears and wants and cravings and awful desires, seeping blood red fingers into his chest and pulling his essence from within; feeding on it. Gorging themselves full.

Campbell sees himself and all selves of him that might have ever existed, floating in the endless dark. Each of them tortured for sins he has never seen transpired. Campbell sees his wife and his child and his dog... Oh he never asked someone to take care of the dog... Hopefully the staff at the Hall will take care of her...

He closes his eyes. Breathes. And opens them again to warm light. Sun. Wind. The ground beneath him is soft. Lush. Endless rolling fields.

"What... where...where am I?" he groans, managing to sit up; his arm held against his chest. Still injured. "Captain?" he calls, struggling to his feet. "Lady Evain? Where..."

Campbell's cutoff at the sound of beating wings. Deafeningly loud but not painful. No. Reassuring. A great being, blue and shining and shimmering against the light; wings of white and gold.

accompanying music 

Campbell is asleep before his head hits the pillow. The Station Rot is taking its toll. It’s all he thinks about some days. The Rot and the death and the stench that never leaves; an ever-present burn in the back of his throat. It’s no wonder it follows him in his sleep.

When he was young, his father took him out on the ocean on a calm night. A lesson he can’t quite remember now; about getting lost in the black. On a calm night, there are no waves or swell or gentle undercurrent. There is just the water and the horizon and the starlit sky; merging together into one. A mirror that spans on forever.

At first, the dream reminds him of this. But there are no stars and the water is not quite water and the clouds are at his feet. Soup blinks. Breathes. Opens his eyes to the smell of salt and seaweed. To the Rot of trapped and dying fish. A lonely gull hovers overhead, crying and crying and crying until it plunges itself into the water that does not break and does not splash. 

He reaches, just a little, out and upward to clear away the fog, and finds his reflection staring back at him. Wrong somehow. Broken by ripples that should not exist. He was… standing. Yes. He was standing and now he is sitting; in a drifting boat, all alone, hand dragging against the cold wet murk of the water surface.

There’s bodies here. Bloated and Rotting. Fish and eel and a whale impossibly speared. His dog. His child. Himself, floating face down. His little boat, moving without oars, pushes them all aside, descending deeper and deeper into the endless fog that meets the sky that meets the water.

The voice of a son he never did have. Singsong. Come home. Come home. Come down here too.