This is an interesting question, and so I've been pondering this for some time. Here's what I came up with. The Dark World. That's what they see.
What is the Dark World? It is not merely the inverse of the Light World as if you flip a switch and see inverted colors. No, not that. Instead it is the world of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which themselves are a kind of inversion of normal (what to the living is normal, anyway) matter and energy. But what does this look like? What do they actually see?
Horror. Absolute, total and endless horror.
But what is that horror? What does it look like? I'm going to say that it looks like an inverse of what we normally see as reality. To us, the world seems "normal" as it is. Filled with living things, with flowers, trees, butterflies, animals, birds ... all busy with their daily efforts, joys and sorrows. The Dark World, however, is just the opposite.
But I still have yet to explain what it is that the Un-Life Ray reveals to the Undead. I will tell you. It reveals the infinite black shadow below the truth of all the living... its end.
So when a Skeleton looks out upon the land of the living, it sees past and through the illusions that life casts upon itself to hide from the terrible reality of the Dark World. These illusions are the fanciful notions, the playful, encouraging, optimistic, hopeful, and dreamlike ideas that the living use to enliven their past, present and future. Their joys and hopes and dreams. The Skeleton knows, with a depth truly inconceivable to the living, just how great an illusion the living cast upon themselves. And it will use this knowledge to its advantage. To satiate its endless craving. It will use this knowledge whenever possible to wear down, to break and destroy the Will To Life that the living possess. Because in the end, it is the despair of the Dead that is their true and ultimate weapon against the living. And once it has accomplished its horrific attack, the living fail... and so The Great Craving of the Undead is momentarily slated.
Thus, when a Skeleton happens upon a person, it will see their true nature. Is the man's spirit like that of a toad? Then the Skeleton will see a toad standing before him, dressed like a man, gesturing like a man, but with the body of a toad, not a man. And if he sees a lady who has caught the hint of a sniffle, the Skeleton will see the disease for what it is; the first hints of a plague that will grind her soul and decay her flesh, and destroy all her hope in life until that hope is all but a cold dead lump of decay.
Here is what the Skeleton sees with it's Unlife-Rays.
In addition, and ultimately, it sees a land filled with endless death... it sees the decay of flesh, the rotting away, the disintegration, the endless depth of despair. It knows, as nothing else can know, exactly what the illusion of life is, what the end of life is... and its horrible Un-Life Rays emit that knowledge and that vision with their Rays of Un-Life. And this is why Un-Life Rays cause 1) unease, 2) fear, 3) paralysis, 4) insanity, 5) curse, or 6) death.
As the Skeleton gazed with its black sockets at the Paladin, it's mouth creaked open and the air shimmered with the sounds of a rasping, ethereal voice.
"When you look at the night sky, what do you see?"
"The bright stars of the heavens!" stated the Paladin firmly.
"And between those stars, there is black space."
"This is true."
"If you took all of the lights in the night sky and pushed them together, how big an area would that take up?"
"I can not say, but I think it would take only small spot in the sky."
"And if you add the sun and the moon to that, you would have a ball the size of my head. The rest of the sky would be a black void."
"I can not say this is wrong."
"This, young fool, is the relative scale between your world of the living, and my world of the dead. All of that black space in the night is mine. Yours? Only a small orb, completely surrounded by the Un-Life of the Void. There is nothing you can do to stop us. The Darkness will overwhelm you soon. And in the end, whatever you do, no matter what it is, you will join us. And sooner than you would like to believe. And then, you will be like me. A dead memory, lifeless, emotionless, yet filled with an everlasting hunger for that which you possess... an everlasting hunger for the life that we perpetually crave. Soon enough, you too will be sharing this craving. Soon enough, you shall see as I see."
"What shall I see?" inquired the Paladin, shaken to the core.
"Horror. Endless, ceaseless horror... forever."
And at this, the young Paladin grew pale, and cold. His sword fell from his grasp as his fingers grew numb. No longer brave. No longer bold. The Paladin stooped down, and tripping on a root gashed his head, and soon was no more a man, but a corpse, all hope forgotten, all dreams relinquished. And soon thereafter, he joined the Skeleton on its everlasting haunt of the living.
The End
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1 comment:
Note that the example above gives us a scenario of the demise of a Paladin. However, a Paladin who had the intrinsic misfortune to accede to the claims of the Rune Skeleton. It need not have ended this way, and in other cases it would not have. The Paladin of true valor would have stood up against the Rune Skeleton. But to read more about this counter-example you must read the third entry of this series on the Rays of Un-Life.
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