Venser's Coma
Villa De Karkaldwin, The Farmlands, Pryldahn, 1439 ATC
"Oh my love... When will you come back to us? Rowena... The... All of your children need their father.''
Tear after tear, Sanna wept over her lover's warm red blanket. Her face buried against the tear-stained sheets, unable to look at Venser's bruised face in his current state. His face once full of life and love was now stoic, cold, his eyelids clamped shut and mouth agape. His hair and beard had been trimmed and kept neat as his family could possibly keep it. days. His skin had turned dull and pale for the lack of proper nutrition and sunlight. His hands lay motionless on the sides of the bed, one flesh and blood and the other porcelain and metal, spreading forwards still. The porcelain, doll like hand forever a reminder of the defilement and experimentation the Luektorem had done to him.
Sanna still refused to accept it, her family refused to accept that he was going let the coma take him after days of wallowing distress. She prayed to her old gods of Krimeakhet and The Trinity of Pryldahn with all her might that he would wake up soon and come back to his family, that they would spend all the time in the world together and things would go back to the way they were as she stood up and went to Madalina's side as she wrapped an arm around the golden gypsy to comfort her.
Venser was dying, and the healers could do nothing to rouse him. After three days or longer in a coma, the coma usually claimed its victim. The thought of losing her husband and Rowena's father was unbearable.
His family awaited in fear and sorrow to hear what a local healer from the Chapel of The Trinity had to say. Sanna, Kari, and their children were broken down in tears. It was enough that Marvella and Alex had died in the battle when the Luektorem Foundry burst from the ground and floated over Vorland, only to be brought down by a spell bomb on the inside, and then the porcelain drones that emerged from the wreckage and wreaked havoc before being put down by the Vorland army, several mercenaries, and the God Queen and her sister.
The mighty warrior woman Madalina was doing her best not to cry in front of the room's occupants but her feelings were winning, letting the golden gypsy beside her lean against Maddy's warrior frame. Polina let out sobs every now and then and dried her tears with the bottom of her dress, while Sedna, apparently the one who was taking the situation the worst-sat down against a corner, her face hidden in her hands, quietly sobbing while her daughter Elanaea slept upstairs with her hals sister, Rowena, and half brother Asher, who with his very young age had no idea how to cope with the death of his mother. Maggie was in a similar posture, but she had his back turned on every one. Pondering the sadness that came with having a family and facing such devastation as this, placing a hand on her pregnant belly. The strange, pink humanoid dog Megumi sat at the side of the bed, her chin laid against the sheets as she watched Venser closely, waiting vigilantly for any hint of wakingness, letting out a soft whimper.
Sanna's intense green eyes showed more pain and hurt than those who were running out of tears. Everyone obviously worried about the man they had known to be a lover, a father, and a friend.
The door opened and everyone in the room was met by a surprising sight.
The redheaded God Queen herself, Y'vonne, who entered the room quietly and looked upon her friend with a grim expression on her face.
''Fate as dark as mine...''
Y'vonne was the God Queen of Pryldahn. With that title came many assorted duties and responsibilities, it was not all lounging around eating grapes and tea parties. Most were tied to local and international administration, others linked with holding court and many other mundane aspects of rulership. However, other objectives tied to her title were wed to her extraordinary abilities as a one of the last True Dragons and a powerful psionic. Vanquishing of nightmares that plagued her subject's dreams like a sickness, as well as extracting their secrets and knowledge.
Some dreams were innocuous enough, some easier to vanquish than others. Terrifying monsters. Awkward situations. Losing a loved one. Words of comfort or a simple erasure of the horror-in-question were enough to assuage the afflicted. One-offs were more simple to defeat than long-running phobias, but Y'vonne strove to help her subjects no matter how long it took. The God Queen practiced no greater devotion than that of protecting the citizens of Pryldahn from their own psyches. Yet, there was a new challenge she faced. Her dear friend, who had fallen into a deep slumber after a terrible ordeal.
''My Queen.'' Several of the women bowed with respect at the prescence of the True Dragon who entered the room and looked over them all, and the blonde woman with icy blue eyes and a large sun hat, Kari, beckoned for her twins to do the same.
''Are you here to wake daddy up?'' Asked Soarin, Venser's seven year old son.
''Please help him!'' Lucinda, Soarin's twin brother exclaimed.
''I am, and I will, young ones.'' Y'vonne said flashing the kindest smile to the little boy she could muster given the circumstances.
''How? Special medicine? A spell? I can't stand to see my husband... What if he dies? What if he's on the verge of death now?'' Sanna sobbed.
Y'vonne examined his face vividly in his bed, surrounded by quietly crying loved ones. His bearded face blank and mouth slightly ajar, his eyes shut tight as his limbs were noodle-like around the sheets, a bandage around his head and chest. Venser wasn’t merely in a coma; he was trapped in a prison of his own mind, his own making. She had seen so much over the centuries, and in Cervisleep when she slept and recouped her power while wandering the Sea of Dreams, desensitised to the horrors of the mind. However, it left her almost completely unprepared for when she saw something so unnerving in the real world. What happened to Venser, his friends, and all of the mercenaries and Vorland soldiers who tore open a portal into a Luektorem Foundry. She couldn’t scrub the images from her mind when she flew over the wreckage of the flying cube that burst out of the ground and could have made its way to a much more populated area, which was part of the reason why she wanted to save her friend.
''I am a very powerful psionic, I can enter any mind, any dream, and I can fix them.''
And another part was despite that Venser was her dear friend, he had a family to care for, but she also had to scold him for causing an international incident with the neighboring country of Vorland, once part of the Pryldahnian Empire before the cataclysm. Recalling overseeing the clearing of the wreckage and the wounded and the dead being carted off, but Von's true focus was on Venser and the two women she recalled meeting at his New Years party once.
The two who lay off to the side in their own beds, pale and cold as the grave, already prepared for funeral rites.
The sun began to peer out from behind the clouds, letting a nice ray of sunshine into the room, illuminating the broken man.
"I know I'm not the one that caused this upon him, but... But I feel like a terrible wife... Trusting him to go off and adventure with the stirring fear he may never come home..." Sanna sobbed, having to sit down in a nearby chair now. The sun's rays disappeared behind another cloud, leaving the room dark, and very dreary.
"What happened in that flying temple, Ven?'' Von asked aloud. It was a rhetorical question, inspecting the porcelain and metal, doll like hand that had been grafted on by a race of ancient undead magical cyborgs that she knew all too well.
''He shook a hornet's nest... And look what happened.'' A high pitched female voice said walking in, the tall, long legged succubus Cierra Dusk.
''All because he wanted to bone an artificer named Nadine who ripped open a portal into their lair.'' The black haired succubus let out a sigh and shook her head.
''But, that can't have been the only reason! He was helping! The Luektorem are monsters who shouldn't exist!''
''He's still asleep...'' Still inspecting him, Y'vonne reached a slender hand out and touched his forehead.
''Can you hear me, old friend?''
No response, just barely audible breathing.
''What do you need, Queen Y'vonne? How can we help?'' Asked the brown eyed painter girl, Polina, Venser's newest lover whose own family already helped work on the land.
''All I require is some peace and quiet. This will take some time. It is not me simply placing my hands on his head and peering into his mind. It is projecting my own mental image into the Sea of Dreams, and then his mental world, before sorting everything out.''
A few of them nodded as Kari took Soarin and Lucinda's little hands.
''Come on kids...''
Everyone began to file out, Megumi let out a whimper as Y'vonne grabbed herself a few pillows and the chair Sanna had been sitting on previously, making herself comfortable.
''Will you need anything else? Sleep tea? A bottle of vodka to help you sleep, My Queen?'' Madalina asked, holding Sanna's hand for comfort.
''No thank you, but I appreciate the hospitality of the Karkaldwin family.'' Von's regal voice replied.
Cierra Dusk was the last to leave, burning orange eyes lingering on one of the most powerful beings on the planet, before Von gestured to the succubus that she required total privacy. Cierra nodded and turned around, closing the door behind her quietly.
Von had a strange feeling about Cierra, and it wasn't because she was a demon from below. From even deeper from where the slumbering Luektorem were buried.
The God Queen closed her slitted, electric blue eyes as she sat in a chair before Venser's bed as he lay there. Breathing in deeply through her nostrils as she centred the image of the bedroom squarely in her mind. Von pictured her body as it floated away in intricate detail. She could see every sinew, every honed muscle, every scale scattered about her body when she was in this humanoid form, her body toned, fit, and lanky. She could see the intricate, onyx crown that sat atop her head, the carved horns curving upward, framing a floating gemstone between them. She could see the broken man before her, covered by the silk blanket, his skull wrapped in bandages. Y'vonne relaxed, focused her psionic abilities, and reached out with her mind.
"Our minds... One, and together."
Y'vonne De Seraphim was mindful as she became dormant. Soon, she was pulled from her immaculate body, lapsing into a deep sleep…
And into the Sea of Dreams. A projection of her godly form as she began her mission.