The Runes of Norien

In mulling over the disturbing dreams that flowed through his mind in his life of darkness and isolation, Wixelor had always been impressed not by the flights of wild imagination – end-of-the-world visions, horrendous monsters and suchlike – but by nightmares in which the dreamers saw that there was someone in their home, hiding in a closet or standing above them and staring at them silently while they were too paralyzed with fear to pull the sheet off their heads and find out if this were real or not. But even more puzzling was the fact that, despite the terror that gripped their sleeping minds, the intentions of those phantom trespassers was not at all clear: they weren’t thieves robbing the sleeper’s house (for if they were, why should they dawdle by their victim’s bed and risk being caught in the act?) nor vicious rapists or murderers, for rarely did one dream of one’s brutal violation or death without the mind jolting itself awake in self-defense. No, what so perplexed the lonesome Wixelor, who, like most inhabitants of Ienar Lin, would often crave the company of another, even a complete stranger, was the fact that humans, of all types and eras, seemed inherently, deeply afraid of their own kind.

  It was this precise pall of dread that the thin, rising wisp of smoke cast instantly upon the company, so overjoyed moments ago. Up to a point it was understandable, for the army of the Scavangers and the bands of cannibals they’d come across in the wastes of Erat Rin were still fresh in their memory. And yet this land they stood on, whose life they had just fed on, was supposedly a haven in this ravaged realm, populated by people who might be no different than themselves and whom, thus, they had no reason to be frightened of. It was he who stood out, the freak from another world.

  But while Wixelor wondered at this most peculiar trait of humankind, his wary companions – even Yonfi, held close by his brother – had taken cover behind him.