The realm into which he fell had none of the warmth, of our own. Images of monstrosities beyond the human ken were to be found therein the darkness that he fell into. Some of the monsters had large arms with claws, some appeared to him as beasts, and these terrible figures slowly gave way to darkness.

  A realm of shadows that was colder than any other he had ever imagined, one in which the dead trod the world, without any hope for warmth, where hunger and pain were constant, and where sorrow unending was mistress. The darkness fell away as scales, to give him a glimpse of high mountainous figures. Of half-corpse half-living creatures that hungered for all the living possessed their gazes empty as the darkness that had bred them.

  Once again Cormac fell into a swoon, one he was more than keen to go to, at the sight of the terrible half-rotted giantess that he observed in a grand hall built from solid ice.

  *****

  This new realm he entered was darker, far less murky and infinitely warmer, it had little more good though. Creatures with bat-wings stalked the land, wyverns fluttered about devouring the flesh of men it was there that fourteen tombs embedded themselves into the still molten land as rivers of flame traversed the land around him. These immense iron tombs grew into thrones, ones in which several glowering skeletal figures seated themselves upon the thirteen lesser thrones.

  These skeletal figures were immense ones, who bore the appearance in life of magnificent near gods amongst men; he knew though he was not certain how he knew this. These spectral figures were dominated by two, the garland-crowned figure who seated himself upon the second largest of the thrones.

  Glaring at Cormac with unmitigated hatred, there was little benevolence in that man, his hauberk and cloak black as night and even more hostile than any night could ever be. He was not alone in his hatred, or in his bony-spectral nature with the second nearest to him in size a more feminine figure. One with a smaller if icier crown, one that bled as she devoured and tore into what appeared to Cormac’s eyes to be corpses that reminded him faintly of the images Daegan and Corin had painted in words, of their ancestors.

  The empty throne at the center though loomed over all.

  Cormac did not stare long at it, for he was in the next instant cast in flames by the eleven lesser figures, where he screamed an unending scream as every inch of him was burnt, torn asunder and melted into naught. Such was the agony he endured then that he would never forget this nightmare so long, as he lived.

  The more he struggled against the flames, the more they ate away at him, devouring and crushing him below their heel. Eventually the flames poured into the broken cracks of his skin so as to melt him from the inside out, devouring all within him before eating him from inside out. It was a terrible sensation, one that made him wish for death then.

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  There were other terrible, dark visions that were shown to him after this, monoliths of evil, sea-leviathans and flaming ones, along with further demonic figures of smoke and ice, of fire and cold and of unending darkness. But these visions and figures that tormented him through the molten period of flesh-melting and screaming agony were forgotten by him, as rapidly as they appeared to him. Such was the force of the agony that tortured his body and his spirit then.

  Darkness when it at last came was a comfort now, rather than something to be feared.

  *****

  “Wake up Cormac!” The cry when it emerged piercing through the darkness pulled him away from the flames, from the ice-cold giantesses from the sky-less, molten realm of the thirteen skeletal unliving kings. It pulled him into the light of day it seemed, though Cormac was not entirely certain this was for the better. For a time he had forgotten his own name, and it was but with the supreme-most effort that he recalled who he was.

  Opening his eyes gingerly, hopeful that he might not see more of those mad-visions and evil sights. He was however greeted not by glaring gaunt figures or ungodly monstrosities but a smiling, freckled green-eyed face that leant over him. It was a face that he knew far better than his own, one that he felt as though he had not seen in decades. “At last, you have returned to us.”

  Amazed to see her radiant, teary-eyed smile above him Cormac could almost feel tears well up within his own eyes. Unsure of what to say, not that he trusted his mouth to properly convey what lay in his heart at that moment. He was to with all the effort he could summon in his weary body that felt as though it had never rested, place his hand over hers. Resting on his chest, her small right hand was covered by his larger one, with the resultant warmth moving to him.

  For a time little was said, before she erupted into one of her relieved songs, as she always did after they spent some time apart from one another.

  “Flowers reaching for the suns,

  Skies cast in dusk,

  All dreams faded save ones

  The trees and my joy sunk,

  With each day that passed,

  That you remained trapped

  By sorrow-dreams,

  Now though the suns rise again,

  The songs of herons and wrens

  Echo as the fields grow brimful again,

  To see you awake, is as the sweetest of dreams,

  Joy blossoms in the land as in my heart once more.”

  Near the end of the song, Cormac relieved as he was could feel drawn once more to the realm of sleep. This time he resisted as best he could, so that it was only when Wiglaf appeared to the right of the green linen covered straw bed upon which the fisherman’s son slept in that he was offered protection from the darkness that lay in wait for him.

  “Rest well, Cormac we shall be here when you next awaken,” Wiglaf spoke with his usual confidence and warmth. His dark eyes so very hypnotic at that moment that Cormac could not help but fall back into his former slumber, Daegan’s hand still gripped in his own.

  In contradiction to his previous ‘slumber’ this one was peaceful in nature. It was accompanied though by the strangest feeling of lightness and of feathers like those of an eagle upon his brow.