046 [the full moon light burned bright as fire as fever gripped the crew] - dreamshare 1
God, it was hot.
It must have been July, or August, with a burning sun and a searing, dusty wind--every gust of air like hot sandpaper. Clothes are a tormenting devil and a blessing at once; they strangle and choke and cling, wet and disgusting with sweat, but the skin exposed is baking, so much so that it probably wouldn't have been unlikely that the blistering process could be watched with the naked eye.
The only sound is a man's heavy breathing and footsteps--then a whistling "breeze" blows some stray leaves into his--your--hair, long and white. Irritated, you yank the leaves out, but for some reason study them instead of discarding them. Instead of the rich, heavy green of deep summer foliage, these leaves are autumn leaves, brown and crisp and dead. They'd make for perfect kindling, and no sooner does the thought cross your mind than the leaf begins to smoke, fold in on itself--it glows, and then bursts into flame.
You look up, and all the world blazes.
There is motion--you, moving through smoke and ash, at once straining to see and blinded by the fire. Before you, a stout old man struggles from his house--bespectacled, with a fearsome beard and mane of white hair--he coughs and staggers, and somehow his thin and reedy voice is visible over the roaring of the flames. He is calling a name, a woman's name, but nothing more can you tell. You run to help him, to guide him from his house even as he tries to go back inside, but somehow he breaks free of your grasp, which is impossible, as he is an old man and a wizard besides, while you are a man in the prime of your life--anyhow, he rushes back inside, and before you can do a thing, a hail of burning rocks, a landslide of massive boulders, falls upon the house. Which now looks like nothing other than a volcano.
But what it spits out isn't lava and ash but beasts, amorphous creatures of fire, serpents, behemoths, gorillas, bats--their true aspect is impossible to tell, every moment or so they shift as though merely changing their mind. Though you are terrified, ready to fight or flee...you do nothing, and watch frozen as the first serpent bites through its own midsection. Then a turtle-ish beast throws off its shell and burns to death. A behemoth rips open its own belly, a dragon claws off its wing and plummets to its doom. You watch it all and through the horror rises inevitable sadness, because even if transformed, a person should never have to do that to themself.
But you're very aware, too, that if something doesn't change and soon, you're going to die. The heat cooks you, the flames sear your skin, the ash and smoke choke you, drown you, strangle you, you hang by your own crown around your neck--
Water.
Water pours down, extinguishing flames and soothing burns, and it lets you breathe once more. Gasping for breath, you search for the source, for your savior, and see two small children, a boy and girl, holding buckets from which the water still flows.
"Thank you!" Your voice sounds suspiciously like Paladin's, calling out to the children.
"No problem!" Says the boy, enthusiastic--so enthusiastic he should be jumping up and down, yet he doesn't...
"We have to go now," informs the girl cheerfully, as the grey stone creeps further up her legs. Before you can say another word, both are rock statues, which destabilize and crash down from their perch, breaking to pebbles.
You are woken by a sharp pain in your back and the realization that you are the last living being in the world.