Where was she? A green valley lush with life. She smiled to see its beauty.
The vision lasted but the length of a heartbeat.
Then they came.
At first they appeared to be a storm on the horizon, a dark squall rolling over the sky. Then, as they drew nearer, she saw they were ragged crows with their eyes sewn shut. As they swarmed into the glen, they attacked everything that lived, ripping out plants and stripping trees, tearing apart animals, devouring birds and the tiniest of insects. The silence of the slaughter was more terrifying than screams. A red fog of blood obscured the scene.
And when the demon birds departed, there was nothing left.
Dim shadows descended over the desolation. The earth lay barren without a single blade of grass. No bird sang. No creature stirred. A venomous wind wailed over the landscape, hot and dry and choked with dust.
She sensed the suffering of the land. It seeped into her body and withered her soul. Was this Dún Eadóchais? The Fort of Despair? Or was it Dún Scáith? The Fort of the Shades?
A deep dread crept over her. She grew aware of the ground beneath her bare feet. Deathly cold and slimed with oil, it yielded too readily. Each step she took sank further than the last. Generations have trod, have trod, have trod. With dawning horror, she realized she was not walking on solid earth, but over a cesspit of noxious substances. Foul draughts of air rose to assault her nostrils: the sweet, sickly scent of putrefaction.
And even as the nightmarish thought struck her, it began to happen. She felt herself sinking into a pit. The noisome mud gurgled around her, opening like a maw to gorge on her. She fought like a wild thing, twisting violently, clawing against the trap.
She screamed for help.
But her screams fell like stones into a bottomless well.
She screamed again.
And again.
