Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: It was hard to pick out something that will let me post a matching pair this week. But here were are, the through-line between the two excerpts are things that directly damage a human mind. In this second text, we’ll take a look at leviathans, their mysterious and horrible nature and their ties to the Deep.
I sat upon the edge of a vast abyss, deep underwater. From my vantage, I could see the divide between the clear water surrounding me and the dark waters beneath. They rolled in waves, sometimes peaceful, sometimes turbulent. That day the waves were high and steep, crashing against the rock I sat upon. Lightning struck through the deep, as a storm was raging underneath under the dark waves. In the purple pulses of light, I saw THEM.
Their vast bodies moved in slow, titanic grace. Twisting and turning shapes I could barely make out. Covered in dim lights, that I knew to be their blazing eyes.
I have seen them before.
But this day would be different.
This day one of them emerged from between the deep, dark waves before me. And when the eyes of my soul met its gaze, for the first time, I felt that I too had been seen. And in this realisation, I felt like I was drowning. Burning in the water surrounding me, twisting and breaking apart.
There was no hatred in the gaze that so thoroughly captured mine. There was no malice I could see with my own eyes, as they bled.
No, what this thing had done to me, was to merely acknowledge my existence. And this simple act was anathema to my soul.
That day I awoke not knowing my name. Nor the woman who was my wife. I was filled with sorrow and regret. And to this day, from the bottom of my heart, Odalys, I am sorry.
But I must see them once again.
Deep, very deep, where the very fabric of our understanding comes undone. Where thoughts never thought and dreams never dreamt dwell, bubbling up from the mass of unreality resting at the root of all things. Where spires of black ice lay, submerged in inky darkness and illuminated by pulses of colours we cannot name. There, they dwell, their titanic bodies slowly and gracefully permeating through the Dreaming.
We came to call them Leviathans, as it is in our human nature to try to categorise and build taxonomies of all things.
In truth, we lack any comprehension of what they are. Our minds real back in terror at a mere glimpse of their forms, scrambling desperately to clad them in Masks or nightmarish foreboding. They express a primal fear of the Deep and that which stirs the water below us, the unseen things hidden under the surface. And so we render them in fins, scales, the chitinous shapes of that which crawls through the sea, and many tentacled appendages covered in barbs and gnashing maws. They are none of those things.
We can weave intricate theories about their nature.
That they are perhaps the nightmares of higher beings, that they are no different from our own dreams in all but their scale and intensity. Or that they are but the natural predators of the soul space. Devourers of errant thoughts and the cognitive detritus that falls into the deep. But they might as well be the stillborn corpses of nascent elder gods, ones that, were they alive, would herald a universe much different from our own.
Ultimately, does it matter?
They exist, and their mere presence burns memories, thoughts and emotions to cinders, scattering our torn souls to the raging currents of the lower depths.
Avoid them. By any cost, avoid them.
Among the things that dwell within the dream none emanate the same sense of unreality as the ominous, titanic entities encountered within the Thalassosphere. Due to the Masks they wore before us, we named them the Leviathans, in memory of the creatures spawned from our minds and populating the unseen corners of the World’s oceans.
The fear we feel standing upon the edge of vast, dark water – where was it born? Could it be that we recognise the water as some echo of the Deep? Could it be our primal soul itself fears the deep waters where souls submerge themselves to die?
As we shine, brighter than we ever could in this droll waking World, our light is like a lure to them. It draws them ever closer to the surface, much like a flock of sharks may circle a bleeding man.
Esoteric Musings... 