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This is what Wenelia actually looks like.  On the physical plane it is shattered and chaos, in dream it is a glowing ring of burned out starstuff around a dead ring of starstuff, surrounded by a ring of fragments, worlds larger than some asteroids, but the largest maybe a twentieth the size of the moon.

While he broke through at Shattered Norns, this is where Upharsin made his stand and was shattered and where so many things come from yet.

It is also the source of the invasion into our dream realms.

When I saw Indigo I realized that I was not going to be able to just seek out and slay all of the creatures and demons that were flooding in. The way was blocked, somewhat, so the initial rush was a trickle, but it was not something I was going to solve myself with fang and claw.

As my head cleared more, I realized that just wasn't the way to solve this problem.

It turned out that the lightwalker was blocking the way against Dyaus-Pitar, but there were still issues. There was a link to our realm, cast into deep dream. What we needed to do was track that down and break it back in the real world, to sunder the spanning bridges. It would be one thing for the cess pool that was Wenelia to cast itself over the starpaths and through deepest space to journey to our world.  It was another for it to pour directly across.  Without the lightwalker and the sword of severance we would already have been overrun. As it was, we had only so much time before we were fighting a war against undead hordes whose numbers would swamp us.

My kidnapping was merely part of a pre-emptive strike aimed at the bitter king, looking for information, fools who would soon be pray.

Indigo had a plan for us and a hunt was on.


-- The Couranth rebelled and summoned Upharsin into the world.  He broke through and caused Shattered Norns.  Allied with Dyaus-Pitar, he reigned in the dark while the Wenelians spread their empire.

When Wakanda broke through, Upharsin was driven to Wenelia, where that sun was destroyed and the planets around it shattered. The undead dreaming realm is all that remains, populated by refuge Tiev, the blood portions of Upharsin (Dires:  Bones; Oni: heart; Incursis: bowels; Spiders: nerves) and the sentient fungus infected Wenelian slavers.

But the whole realm, all of Wenelia, is an undieing realm, fed by the death of slaves and of its inhabitants, sustained by Dyaus-Pitar, and that realm is failing.

So, the Wenelians tracked the fungi back, paired with their ancient allies the Shanella, and the hoofed lemon scented men of Leng, and established beach heads, centering in the wild fae realms of Finland, Siberia and independent strongholds such as Kiev and St. Petersburg.

Then, having stumbled across an ancient lost anchor, they wove the skein of worlds and then gave the anchor to a mortal, who was headed towards the deep realm of dreams.  As long as that mortal is dreaming, the skeins and webs connect the worlds. Only the lightwalker currently stops a flood, and only the bitter king is rallying forces to face that flood.  No one else believes that the peril is real.  They think of it as a hurricane that will miss.

Someone needs to track down the dreamer, retrieve the anchor, pull the anchor back to the waking world to unwind the skeins connecting the world, and destroy the anchor there.  Such an act may destroy the dreamer as well, but he or she must also be pulled back to the waking world along with the anchor.

The clock is running.  The skein is growing stronger.  The Seelie Court is divided.  The Ugard Trolls do not see the incursions on their west border as a threat and the wild djjiin of the Kayadiaa believe that any chaos will support their striving to bring about the end of the world. This is what the Wolf learned.  So there was a hunt, but not the hunt he anticipated. --



Copyright 2005 Stephen R. Marsh and Heather N. Marsh
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