[WP-003] Murkcrow

[Tiarana]

Murkcrow slept.

In the dream he stood at the heart of an empty desert. Red sand stretched in every direction. He had dreamed of this red sandy desert once before, he remembered suddenly - the heat bore down on him, suffocating, and he recalled an oasis in the distance, today obscured by the dunes that rose around him. How could he have forgotten that dream - a dream so vivid he had even woken covered in sand?

But this time, the focus was the Obelisk. Like the others, it towered over the buck. And like the others, a group of kin stood around it, solving whatever strange puzzle it required.

This puzzle kind of made his head hurt. You probably had to be there to understand what was going on with the strange stones. The puzzle would be solved, the Obelisk would glow, everyone would disappear. He had seen this before. Murkcrow watched them for a while, then lay down in the sand. He was sick to death of dreams about mysterious towering pillars.

Murkcrow's eyes narrowed. "You know what? This is my dream."

Murkcrow looked down at the sand in front of him and focused. If he tried hard enough - oh! - he could see a tiny, darting lizard. His dream and the vision he was being shown seemed to fight a little for control. But it was enough. Murkcrow closed his eyes and focused.

"What kind of dream is this?" Stalker asked, suddenly standing next to him.

"A terrible one," Murkcrow assured her. He looked up at the Obelisk and the kin scrambling around at its base. "Stalker, do you think you could destroy that?"

Dream-Stalker looked up at it, and gave him a feral smile. "So you decided you've had enough of obelisks after all?"

She marched right up to it and delivered a savage kick that sent shards of the obelisk flying. The kin around it continued solving their puzzle as though nothing was happening. Another kick - and another - until the whole Obelisk toppled and shattered into pieces! A shimmering ghost outline remained where it stood. The kin around it apparently finished their puzzle, because the ghostly Obelisk started glowing no less brightly than if it hadn't been destroyed.

Murkcrow stood over the shattered Obelisk and gave it a perfunctory kick. "Stop haunting my dreams," he muttered.

- but this was the wrong action to take. Even broken, the Obelisk still held power, and the dream abruptly shifted. Murkcrow found himself in a deep fog.

"What is this?" A scent of decay drifted in the air and Murkcrow had an intense urge to run. His hooves scrabbled over unseen pebbles, and he felt like he was running in place. Shadows seemed to close in on the edge of his vision until suddenly a glowing Obelisk loomed in front of him.

The dream shifted again with a thunderclap and Murkcrow sat up in the Swamp, disoriented. He felt exhausted. An ominous buzzing filled the air.

- Murkcrow woke again. His fur stood on end. He had a very bad feeling about this.