IX. Instrument of the Locked Key

Dr. Ritalsin’s corruption is Osoyo’s longest hand. Through the intermediary a creature who replaced and wore the familiar human face of his manservant Otto, Ritalsin was guided back to serving alien purposes and the the whispers of the Blackfrost and exposure to Black sand. His missing memories restored fragment by fragment until he came to view his servitude not as violation but as honor. His journal, which I have read in its entirety and wish I had not, records the slow transformation of a brilliant mind into a willing instrument.

His own words, near the end:

“The Dream Eater’s liberation will herald not conquest but invitation, humanity’s opportunity to transcend the narrow confines of individual existence and join something magnificent.”

I knew Etward Ritalsin. He was a good scholar and a better man. That sentence is the most frightening thing I have ever read, because I can hear his voice in it, his real voice, the one that used to argue with me about methodology over coffee in the scholar’s lounge, and I can hear that he means it.

Others have reached for Osoyo’s power without its invitation. The Cult of the Evermind, led by the oracle Avamendus in the sands of Thuvia, seeks to create a psychic hivemind powerful enough to enter the Dreamlands and find a back door into Osoyo’s prison through Leng, to drink from the Blackfrost Whale’s dreams without rousing it.

Such is the nature of this entity: even bound, even starving, its mere existence attracts those who would climb into the mouth of the abyss and call it ascension.