Ridley Paradis: Awakening

"Daddy, am I going to be as strong as you someday?"

Darius picked up his son and spun him through the air, "My boy, I think someday you'll be STRONGER than your dad!" He tossed Ridley up onto his shoulders as they chattered and laughed the whole way back to camp. The pair was as happy as could be. But not everything was okay. Fate has a way of muddling with all that men see fair and fit, and nothing is ever as it seems.

Black feathers swirled about Ridley like a rushing tornado. The line between dreams and the real dissolved, and an old friend arrived with a greeting.

"Hello again, Ridley... what have you done to yourself now?"

Though the face had changed, the voice remained the same. It was a cold whisper that lightly clawed at your senses, testing your resolve, and tinkering with your courage. Kraven stepped out from the rush of feathers, smiling as if he knew something nobody else did. Ridley looked up to the necromancer, panting from exhaustion. He stood tall, and looked into Kraven's ghastly visage, "I am sorry Kraven. My mind has been... torn. I did not know which path to walk. I have reached my conclusion, however. The matter will raise no further issue. Again, I apologize."

"No... no. There is no need to... apologize." When Kraven said "apologize," he said it even more slowly, as if guessing at the meaning. "Do tell me, what exactly has... changed?"

Ridley smirked, all was clear now. He had found purpose. "Petty ideals such as good and evil will no longer stand in my way. I will complete my goals, and now nothing of my past can stop me."

A rictus smile spread wide across Kraven's face, this conversation was one of the first with Ridley to hold his full attention, "Excellent... and what are these goals you speak of?"

"The false gods we spoke of? Pelor, Kord, and the like. I want to free these people from their tyranny. Why should any man bend a knee to their haranguing? You want them gone too, and that's a cause worth assisting."

Kraven's smile could not go further. He let out a throttling laugh, and faded into the shroud of black feathers. Ridley lowered himself back down to his knees, and as he was closing his eyes, a solitary white feather fell upon his lap. A raven's feather. A white raven.

A solitary light, shining in the darkness. Capable of far more than it's peers, but able to still stand with them.

"I was to be a Scarlet Griffon. I almost fell at the hands of the vile Ruin. Now I am neither, and so much more. I am the White Raven, the light in the dark. The Tide will glisten in my brilliant incandescence..."

Ridley began to laugh, low and quiet at first, but building in it's structure. The laughing continued for some time, and it rose into a crescendo of sovereign laughter as Ridley threw his head back and held out his arms in his blessed lucidity. The feathers encompassed his form, and at last he awoke in the temple of Kraven, back to the world of the real.