Been meaning to write Silithus a re-entry post ever since I started playing him again, to bridge the gap between his previous Stories and the current ones. Enjoy!
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...rr-d6ywsw6.jpg

The Color of Life is Crimson:Part 1 - 'Waking'
All that was, was a dream. Silithus couldn't tell how long he had been dreaming, but it felt like an eternity. Time dilates or contracts, flows or stops according to the whims of his dreams and he found himself swimming the sea of emotions and images as easily as he once rode the currents of the sky. It was safe here, comforting. He spent his odd, oscillating time relentlessly building fanciful landscapes and unimaginable enemies with which to do battle with; nothing brought the Ancient crimson dragon more pleasure than the thrill of the hunt. Well, almost nothing - somewhere behind his antics he knew something was missing. The dreams were invigorating yes, but the people and the places he found were all shades constructed to appease him. Why was this dream lasting so long? He felt as if he should wake up, but couldn't. The closer he got to the world of reality, the more painful and grotesque his dreams became. They became hideous nightmares, a wall of black choking off his path to wakefulness. He knew there was something wrong, but in the haze of the dream world it was so difficult to focus his mind. This time it was different though. A voice was echoing across the dream-scape he inhabited and no matter what he built to wall it off the voice still reached him. At first he resisted it, because it wanted him to perform the painful and exhausting task of assembling the fragmented pieces of his consciousness. The voice didn't seem to actually articulate words so much as it was a swirl of intent and images, pleading and beckoning him to do something. To wake up..

TheRestingPlace.jpg

Deep within the Eastern Deadlands, something stirred. Usually in a place like the Deadlands that was a bad thing, as the blighted landscape seethed with creatures straight from nightmare. This creature was however, very much alive and quite different. He was an ancient dragon immense enough to tower over the roving bands of creatures nearby, with scales colored crimson and spotted with emerald that almost glowed in the emerald twilight of the blight-fires that the Aegis stirred for light. Azure blue eyes slowly opened, the serpentine pupils wide at first and sensitive to even the dimmest light - which hadn't seen light in what felt to the dragon like an eternity. Testing first his right wing and then his left, he stretched his impressive wingspan to its full length and reveled in the pleasure of popping wing joints and stiff muscles finally being stretched. He slowly began to rotate his muzzle and examine his surroundings, a bit of alarm beginning to creep into the haze that was his focus. The dead, blighted landscape was enemy territory and he had awoken quite vulnerable within it. A pulsating green light seemed to dance over him, and he realized that he was laying in some sort of contraption - it seemed to make him quite weary and tempted to sleep once again, but he knew that if he did there would be no waking. He tried to reach out into the ether and recall himself to the shrine at which he was bound, but ran into a brick wall of ethereal chains - his soul was bound to the spot it seems, and he would have to escape by other means. As Silithus plotted his escape, what he had originally thought of as just another Skull lying on the ground seemed to come to life - a soft light escaping from the empty eye sockets. The sudden animation of the Skull caught him by surprise, and Sil found himself gawking for a moment.

"Finally your awake!" The Skull spoke, it's voice a raspy disembodied thing. It seemed to be glaring at him.

"I.. suppose so." Silithus replied, his voice almost as raspy and difficult to use as the Skull's seemed to be.

"Good. I was made to wait here until you awoke, in order to.. Guide you. From what I was told, it sounded like you might have some difficulties with memory."

The Skull was right; his memory seemed just as coming and going as his dreams had been. He couldn't remember how he had ended up in this situation, and he was suspicious of the Skull. Especially since it might be a trick of the Withered Aegis. The Ancient Red dragon lay contemplating his situation for a long moment, and the Skull grew impatient.

"Look, if you want to get out of this Dream-trap your going to have to listen to me.. There's something nasty your going to have to do. The trap feeds on your life-force, as long as your alive the trap exists. So.. The only option is to kill you."

The Skull cackled as if this were the punchline of a great joke.

(To be continued...)