As he drifted off to sleep Sir Morikhi whispered a prayer of thanks to his lady, content that things were as they should be: The armies of brettonia had far more relics than the heathens inhabiting this realm; peaceful dealings with the dwarves of the area had secured one of the realms borders; and most importanty fresh reinforcements seeking glory in battle arrived daily.
He awoke, lucidly, fully clad in his war regalia. "A battle dream. My favorite," he thought.
However, unlike the usual landscape of his homeland's fertile plains, he found himself in a realm of engulfing darkness. Morikhi instinctually drew his blade and from it radiated a holy beacon, creating a sphere five paces in all direction. A dozen misshapen denizens of the darkness were caught off guard and combusted in light. A sneer of irony melted to hatred as his presence attracted tens, then hundreds, then thousands of multilensed eyes reflecting light from just beyond his barrier. Thier incessant blinking, coordinated by an ancient mind which had devoted eons to the corruption of men, began to erode his concentration and with it his blades light wavered. Vertigo from standing on nothingness, nausea from the stench of the dredges of the pit, and fatigue from the omnipresent weight of the crushing darkness further diminished the holy barrier. So came the demons. Encroaching slowly, most were careful to stay just outside of the holy barrier, but the viscious few continually risked burning mutilation to claw from the darkness.
A meter-long beak, with crocodile teeth and a snakes tongue materialized within Morikhi's vision, 'SssSss I'm disssapointed to find your light ssso easssily dissspersssed, Morikhi.' The mindbending properties of the beak's voice rippled in frequencies devoted to the subconsious, dropping Morikhi to a knee as he dry heaved inside his helm.
'We arnt ssso different, you and I... I am but a ssshadowy reflection of you, and it would take but a nudge to bring you into the darknessssss,' The voice continued it's mental assault, and Morikhi felt gutteral emotions suppressed for generations welling inside him: desperation, fear, and self-pity. A cold sweat and cramping muscles caused his blade to slip slightly within his metal gauntlets, under the compounding weight of the darkness it's tip lowered, dimming it's protective light as it did.
Morikhi could feel the Beak's proximity as it hovered just above his crumpled form and he weakly muttered something between sickly heaves, "yfrgrtnthng."
'What wasss that?' The beak questioned as it floated before Morikhi, lording it's strength in front of the Knight's fraility.
Morikhi's voices rang loud as his quickly rose to his feet, "You forgot one thing, Skrillix," the utterance of the demon's true name binding it to the speaker's realm. As the demon's bulbos body materialized it began to smoke and sizzle in the building brightness of Morikhi's blade. With a sneer of holy contempt Morikhi charged the demon shouting, "I Am HONOR!" Skrillix exploded into a cloud of embers at the touch of Morikhi's holy blade, and hundreds of lesser demons, unable to escape the evergrowing light, flashboiled into nothingness as Morikhi's holy flame roared through the darkness.
Morikhi awoke, quickly donned his attire, and began to pray at his bedside shrine to The Lady. Somewhere deep in his id the seed of a voice had been planted. A tiny growth that whispered "perhapsss."
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