'Nother dream must be the coffee

This was a really odd dream. It was like I was reading an old book I had read a ton of times before, but it would cut in and out of movie to text sequence.

This story was more up my alley than the sci-fi-ish ones.

The kid with the headband is ... er... hm. Like I dream names. He's supposedly freakishly pretty, and is being summoned by an oracle of high standing. The town he came from is glad to be rid of him, because he weirds them out. His mother had died, and his next caretakers got weirded out by him and tried to leave him in the forest of demons. Instead of dying or getting eaten, he thrived magnificently and was practically raised by the demons in the forest. So from then on, people in the village would just leave his necessities at the edge of the forest and try to avoid him otherwise. He has kind of an attitude. Sass. Y'know.

The 3-eyed demon bird is one of the more powerful demons in the forest. The woman is its human form. When the story starts, the demons are getting restless because there is a huge "disturbance in the force," noticeable even though the forest and town are pretty secluded. When the kid gets the summons to the oracle, they elect this demon bird to go with him to figure out wth is going on.

At their journey's start, they have to go through a very deserted mountain pass ... or at least you would wish it were deserted. As they go through the demon bird points out a miasma that's been poisoning the world for a century or so now. While going through it, through some weird, possibly magical, foul play, the kid sinks into a coma and slips from the saddle and falls from the demon bird's back. The demon bird is in a stupor and fails to notice this.

When he does notice, the demon bird freaks out, and after some frantic searching, notices a caravan lead by the tall, out of proportion guy to the left. In human form, she hails them and begs (well, kind of demands) them to help her search. Luckily, despite his crew's grumbling, the leader is more or less a philanthropist and helps out.

Back to the kid. He has been kidnapped by some mountainous tribe of people who have been twisted by the miasma and by living under the mountain so long. The.... Tushka or tushk tushk or something. This is where, in my dream, I skipped ahead in the book because I'm squeamish and I knew that the chapters I had skipped contained some grotesque rituals (which is why it felt like I was reading a book I was very familiar with). Blood drinking, sacrifices, pretty horrific stuff that the Tushka did with people they kidnapped from the mountain pass.

The kid is going to be made a slave to the Tushka chief (though the slaves usually end up being sacrifices in the end anyway), because he's pretty. And because of a quality about him that makes miasma-touched, power-hungry creatures want to have him. He wakes up, and upon finding out his fate from a fellow captive (the girl kept alive because she can translate from Common to Tushka....nese?), he immediately sets about trying to figure out how to escape. More "how-to" than "oh-noes-I-need-to-run-away".

Somehow or other, the caravan and the demon bird are captured by the Tushka too. While the leader tries to use his wits to negotiate their release, it all goes to hell when the demon bird notices the kid's belongings and demands they return him. The whole lot of them are to be sacrificed to the Tushka's "god", a demon man spider (think a drider) that terrorizes the mountain. Which is why the pass isn't used a lot. It's about the size of a small submarine. It's name is Kiizke. I have no idea why I knew that name and only that one.

Anyway, the lot of them are taken to Kiizke's lair, and the demon bird notes that this is where the miasma is the thickest. The Tushka chief and the higher ups of whatever little authoritative order they have are gathered to watch the show. This was pretty gruesome. Jagged, larger stalagmites jut up and decaying bodies, some speared on the stalagmites, others just strewn about the ground, were so thick about that ... well, it's nauseating. With the chief was his new slave, the kid, who somehow recognizes that there is probably a way out and down the mountain through the lair.

As Kiizke begins to descend on the unfortunate caravan + demon bird, he pauses and suddenly looks up towards the balcony the Tushka are watching from. The kid has exploded the chain that held him, and leapt up onto the ledge before jumping. The demon bird is, understandably, rather alarmed and transforms back into her demon form (freaking everyone else out) to catch him. Kiizke is now obsessed with eating the kid, and the Tushka are dancing in frustration because they have no idea what to do.

The demon bird, instructed by the kid, flies diagonally down the only smooth rockface in the cave with Kiizke close behind. The kid drags his hand on the rock, and where he touched becomes red hot, until he breathes and Speaks something only the earth understands. From where he ran his hand down the rockface, pure water blasts out, straight into Kiizke. And we're talking like, Niagra Falls amount of water. The kid, bird, caravan, Kiizke, and the unfortunate translator girl who leaned out too far, are all caught up in the torrent.

Kiizke is somehow still alive and goes after the translator girl because she's closest. The kid sees the leader's sword and seizes it. He Speaks again, and it becomes a shard of light, completely bisecting Kiizke.

They somehow, miraculously, all survive this ordeal and are swept to the foot of the mountain. The leader's second-in-command complains about the huge loss they took and how it was all the kid and bird's fault they ended up in the mess. The leader contradicts him, saying that they would have been captured no matter what, because they apparently were doing something stupid by using the mountain pass just to make a bit of extra cash.

The kid wakes up and he and the demon bird bicker about whose fault it was, before deciding they were in sore need of cleansing. The kid has been decked out in finery during his very brief stint of slavery, and he irritably tosses them aside, which the caravan promptly takes in excitement cause it could make up for their losses. (Apparently the Tushka don't get the value of stuff and just put the shiny stuff on the pretty thing to make it prettier.)

The translator girl leads them to her town to resupply and stuff. It's an unfortunately dying town between a terribly treacherous mountain and a terribly treacherous swamp, cut off from all other civilization. The town is plagued by miasma twisted demons. Formerly, the town was known to befriend demons and was protected by them, but now they are continuously attacked. The caravan are a bit freaked out, now that they know the demon bird is a demon, but she gets pissed off and tells them that only weak demons who want power fast succumb to it. The kid is disappointed that he can't even begin to communicate with the demons, because they'd just basically want to kill rather than communicate.

The kid comments that people twisted by the miasma are far scarier than the demons. Even though Kiizke was probably malicious to begin with, it was the Tushka who taught it to enjoy killing even if it didn't want to eat and turned it, instead of of a god, into a demon king. The kid makes some cryptic sayings that he has been listening to the earth and heard its groanings under the pains of twisted human hands.

After some strangely Cowboy Western firefights and the kid showing off some more of his powers, the towns people reveal to them that the problems with the swamp were only recent, and that even the trees are known to attack and kill people. The kid and demon bird say that it's because the miasma has flowed from the mountain into the swamp, and that trees only turn after a long time.

Before they leave, the demon bird comments that the pure water that is now flowing continuously from the mountain will begin to purge the swamp. The townspeople are shocked and delighted that the river is pure again. Before it had been polluted by the putrid stench from Kiizke's lair.

Aaand that's all, other than the caravan leader wanting to escort the kid to the oracle, because he's curious as to what it will have in store for the world.

That was a LOT of text....