The dream devourer

Kamari lurched awake with a gasp, thrashing against bindings that were not truly there. Only emptiness enveloped him as he stared into the starry abyss overhead. Cold earth pressed against his bare back, cooling the thin sheen of sweat that coated his skin.

He had dreamt of that night again. The night when demons swallowed the light of his village.

Slowly, Kamari sat up and gazed around the shadowy forest clearing. All was still but for the soughing of leaves in the whisper wind. No sounds of life emanated from the treeline, yet he knew he was not alone. Their eyes watched him from the darkness, unseen but ever present.

A memory surfaced: his mother kneeling over a dying fire, singing a lullaby to soothe his restless spirit as the first fat raindrops splattered the packed earth outside. The warmth and cheer of that bygone home called to Kamari now, an echo seeking escape from this cursed solitude.

But there would be no rest this night, nor any night to come. His was an unending vigil, barred from crossing to the afterlife by the Mark branded on his flesh.

Moonlight spilled through the canopy in a milky cascade, illuminating the raised scar tissue nestled within the crook of Kamari's left elbow. Three interlocking spirals traced in scorched skin, pulsing with an eerie inner luminescence unlike any mortal wound. The source of his soul's damnation and this half-life that was no life at all.

He traced a finger along the sigil's edges, feeling the raised ridges through which some infernal power leeched into his body. Power he had come to understand possessed certain... gifts. And curses. Like the dreams.

Ever since that fateful night three seasons past, Kamari dreamt only of death. He witnessed horrors beyond imagination, bearing helpless witness to his family and neighbors being slaughtered and devoured by nightmares given flesh. Worst were the moments just before waking, when the demons turned their ravenous attentions on him.

Each nightmare ended the same - with Kamari dying over and over as phantom teeth and claws rent his mortal form. Only to awaken in this desolate clearing, forever trapped in a hellish purgatory. The Mark ensured his soul could not flee this half-life, remaining tethered to replay that night's butchery until the end of days.

When had the visions first begun? Kamari couldn't recall. Time had no meaning in this bleak existence, punctuated only by an endless cycle of sleeping and starving. He lived but did not live, wandering as a specter bound to relive past pains. 

Shaking off such morose musings, Kamari rose and gathered his scavenged garments: a tattered burlap loincloth and leather vest studded with polished tribal charms, remnants of his people's traditions. He tugged them on before venturing to the stream at the clearing's edge.

There, he splashed frigid water on his weary face, gasping at the shock. But its bracing touch washed away the clinging malaise of dreaming, readying him for the ordeal to come.

Kamari walked to the center of the clearing and sat with legs crossed, back straight as an egret's prowling stance. He closed his eyes and stilled his mind, casting outward with senses long grown keen.

Suddenly, images coalesced before Kamari's inner eye. Twisted glimpses into places and people unseen with mortal eyes. He witnessed a village to the southeast, where men huddled fearfully around a dwindling fire. Floating above the treetops there, wisps of malice gathered like a noxious miasma.

Demons. Come to feast again.

But this time, Kamari would join the hunt. No longer would he cower helpless - he had power of his own to wield now, if only he could master its brutal nature. And so each night he scryed and practiced the arts waking in his body, honing frightening new abilities until they became extensions of flesh and will.

Teleportation came first, followed by the ability to summon orbs of flaming essence. But the most fearsome magic involved bending the minds of lesser spirits to his command. A cruel gift perfect for confronting the wielders of darkness themselves, those who cursed him so long ago.

The Demon Kings.

Kamari's lip curled in a feral sneer at the thought of finally facing his makers. He would learn their secrets and purpose, then extract vengeance as only a dead thing could. His existence would know purpose at last.

Rising smoothly, Kamari disappeared in a puff of sulphurous smoke. Instantly, his essence flowed through the veil separating worlds, drawn towards the imperiled village like iron to a lodestone. He solidified amidst a scene from the lowest hells.

Chaos reigned as shadows swarmed between dilapidated huts, cutting down any who stood against them. Women and children screamed and fled the carnage, only to be brought low by jaws spewing vile sorceries or talons oozing poison. A few able-bodied men fought back with spears and axes, but their primitive weapons barely slowed the nightmares' advance.

Kamari materialized unseen behind one of the larger demons - an ox-sized beast resembling a hybrid of crawling insect and slavering hound. It had just hamstrung an axeman and moved in for the kill, spinning with preternatural speed to face this new threat.

Its fleshless muzzle peeled back in a mockery of a smile, revealing rows of serrated fangs dripping green ichor. Sensing something off about this intruder that felt so human yet not, it paused - and in that moment met Kamari's burning gaze.

His will slammed into the creature's primitive mind, seizing control with merciless force. The demon stiffened, claws curling and uncurling spasmodically as it fought his domination to no avail. Its yellow eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, conveying mute horror at being mentally enslaved.

Kamari smiled mirthlessly. "You and your kind will trouble these lands no more," he intoned, voice carrying an echoing quality betraying his unnatural nature. He sent mental commands through their psychic link, thrusting the creature back into the shadows to serve as his unwilling ally. 

His presence had drawn the attention of other demons converging on the village. A lithe quadrupedal monstrosity bearing the flayed hide and features of a woman noticed Kamari standing fearless amidst the carnage. Its maw split impossibly wide, vomiting an explosive torrent of acid aimed straight at his chest. 

Before the acid impacted, Kamari vanished. He reappeared a heartbeat later behind the shrieking demon, conjuring an orb of scarlet flames twice the span of his outstretched hands. With nary a thought, he hurled it into the creature's scorched back, bathing it in hellfire.

Its sizzling flesh blackened and sloughed away, revealing nightmarish musculature and an endoskeleton that clattered to the earth. The demon crumpled with an unearthly keen - one of many that would sound this night.

All around, villagers gaped in awe and terror as the stranger wielded eldritch might against their attackers. Where he strode, demons fell before sorceries unknown to mortal experience. A whirlwind of kinetic force pulped a drooling slaver in a spray of gore, while shadow-tendrils ensnared others to be torn apart at leisure.

Kamari remained an indistinct blur, drawing on reserves no living body could contain. He had become more than living, more than dead - an avenging spirit let loose from its shackles to wreak divine judgement.

Within moments, all demons in the immediate vicinity lay vanquished. Their essences shrieked as they were forcibly dragged back to the nether realms, never to return. Only their leader, a hulking behemoth partially merged with the ruins of a large hut, remained standing defiantly amidst the carnage.

It sized Kamari up with eyes like melted gold, hefting a great axe carved from the spine of some sea monster. Black ichor dripping from its shark-mawed grin hinted at unfathomable power barely constrained. Clearly this was a general of the shadow legions, come to oversee this planned atrocity personally.

It bellowed a challenge that shook the treeline, ready to face off against this new thorn in its side. Kamari accepted silently, readying flames dancing eagerly around clenched fists. Their climactic clash was about to begin, with the survivors of this village as spectators to a battle between primordial forces of good and evil. For Kamari had embraced his role - he was the guardian spirit of this land, and all who defiled it would face his righteous wrath.

The Demon King charged with impossible speed, axe arcing towards Kamari's neck with lethal precision. He slipped past the blow with a sidestep, launching crackling arcs of energy from open palms. But the creature was immensely powerful, shrugging off attacks that'd reduce lesser demons to ash. It spun with a backhand that would pulp an ox's skull like a melon.

Again Kamari dodged, lashing out with tendrils of living nightmare seized from the depths of the abyss. They grabbed the Demon King in a crushing embrace, tugging and shredding with hook-like barbs as it thrashed in primal fury. A gargantuan shoulder crushed several huts as it struggled, peals of demented laughter booming across the plains at the spirit's gall to stand against it so boldly.

But Kamari was undeterred, continuing his agile evasion of strikes that rent the very earth. In those brief moments of contact, he blasted it with sorceries both dark and bright, slowly wearing away its substantial bulk. As it grew further enraged, the Demon King let loose a shockwave of telekinetic force, leveling what structures remained.

Kamari grunted as it slammed into his incorporeal form, sending him skidding through the dirt. But he rolled smoothly to his feet, summoning twin flaming scimitars to continue the deadly dance. Metal sang as they parried the axe's descending storm of blows, flickering blurs outlined in liquid flame.

With a teleport, Kamari appeared behind the lumbering behemoth, crossed swords scything across its hamstrings. It howled in agony, toppling forward onto palms that sunk halfway to the wrist in muck. Yet still it fought on, thrashing its massive tail to catch Kamari in a rib-shattering impact.

He recovered quickly, taking to the skies with a nimbus of eldritch force glowing around his feet. From above, Kamari rained hellfire and nightmare upon the flailing abomination, battering it without mercy. Its tough hide was peeled away in slabs, revealing pulsing organs and ichor-flooded veins.

With a herculean effort, the Demon King heaved itself upright one final time. Its ruined face was a mask of hatred and anguish, recognizing what was to come. It bellowed a wordless death knell that echoed across the miles before fixing Kamari with a burning golden glare.

"You... will pay for... this insult, mortal," it rasped from a mouth forever parted in a rictus grin. Black lightning coruscated along its bulging muscle cables, summoned from the nether depths in a final attempt to smite its executioner.

Kamari met its glare stoically. "I am no mortal. And you will trouble these lands no longer," he stated, pulling all ambient magical energies to him in a photonic maelstrom. It coalesced around clenched fists, which he thrust skyward to channel the wrath of the heavens upon this hellspawn.

A lance of pure silver-white light speared downwards, enveloping the Demon King in coruscating radiance that outshone the noonday sun. Its horrible cries rang out as flesh melted from bone, which themselves vaporized within the divine conflagration. When the radiance faded, nothing remained but a smoking crater quickly filling with rain.

Kamari descended to ground level once more, gazing impassively at the smoking scar he had left. All around, villagers emerged from hiding places to gawk at their savior and vanquisher of nightmares. None spoke, still processing what eldritch forces they had borne witness to this night.

A young girl with eyes like obsidian peered from behind her mother's skirts, fixing Kamari with an inquisitive stare. He held her gaze for a long moment before vanishing between one breath and the next, task completed. His quest had only just begun, and there were still deeper mysteries surrounding his curse left to unravel.

But for now, these people were spared their appointed slaughter. And Kamari had proved himself a match for the darkness, no longer powerless against the horrors that plagued his dreams. Vengeance would be his in time - he only needed grow still stronger. His immortality was little more than a prelude, a harbinger of the change yet to sweep these lands.