I had come over most of the Southern Saws, a mountain range tall and toothy, nearly impassible through high, chill passes of snow and other perils. I had made my way down a scree covered slope that shifted under my carefully placed feet, sending stones tumbling clattering away from me. Above I had come through a hellish ice-covered pass where wispy spirits of freezing death had clawed at my limbs and chattered loudly in my ringing ears. I was glad to be descending into the lower parts of the Saws away from such monstrosities, and was coming to one of several high, nearly barren plateaus found there between more weathered, passable mountains.
I scanned the horizon, finding only the empty plateau, some time past having been covered by crushing glacial frost, which left behind great stone boulders that stood as silent, irregular sentinels of the plain, whose only colour aside from grey was a shy shade of green from the hardy, scrubby grasses that grew there. My eyes quickly came to rest on some ancient, crumbling ruins, the lone piece of interest in the landscape, and towards them I headed.
I knew even as I began there that such ruins were of sinister repute, having been abandoned and forgotten many hundreds, if not thousands of years previous by whichever peoples built them after some great catastrophe that led to the fall of their civilization. The Saws were filled with such ruins, and all held the common reputation of evil, of some vague and sinister horror that befalls all those who venture too close. Of course, then I had waved such stories off as the tales of superstitious nomads and scary stories for the common townsfolk. Being the only place of secure shelter in the cold place where winds were already lashing at my cloak, it seemed the logical place to spend the night. The cold did not bother me so much as the wind.
As I drew nearer throughout the day, the features of the ruins became more clear. It seemed to have once been a small city of stone, with spires that had reached valiantly towards the sky, its stones obviously carted there from some distant quarry at the mountains, fitted together with metal and mortar. It was but a crumbling skeleton of a place when I saw it. The wind had weathered many of the stones smooth, and metal posts and bars, curiously unrusted, stood like bones, stark and deathly still. No greenery grew within a mile of the place, which had the look of a blast area, for scorch marks were still evident on the stones over which I picked my way. Even from such a distance I could hear the wind howling amongst the ruins, like some crazed and hungry beast.
Dusk was upon me as I came to the ruined outer wall and one of the arched entrances to that ancient and cursed place. Over that arch, carved into the stone by some other wanderers a message had been graven, its language lost, and the words too weathered to be readable save as scratchings from times before. Once within the ruin, I found the crumbling walls hung close and tall, looming over me in nearly silent rebuke.
I passed some distance into the place, ambling down streets lined with twisted and broken statues whose eroded features seeming only to guess at the human form in disturbing ways. I could hear the wind howling down empty streets, and clattering inside the structures whose paneless windows gaped at me as dark eyes. Green grass grew through cracks in the stonework of a great paved area, somehow seeming healthier than its kin some mile distant near the boulders, which I took to simply be contrast from the depressingly barren ruins around me. I found no evidence of travellers before me, as if I was the only one to have passed through that depressing and ancient place for quite some time. In truth, I found no actual evidence that anyone had actually lived there at all, as none of the buildings or structures seemed to be living establishments.
I made my way towards what looked to be the most intact building in the ruin, a tall, somewhat sunken and tipped spire near the center of the labyrinthine complex. In the square before it a faceless, armless statue of a creature that seemed half animal and half human stood as the centrepiece of a broken and dry fountain which admittedly, I did pass by rather quickly once having noticed its rather twisted features, as worn and weathered as they may have been. The building itself was tall, and some dark and brooding feeling still clung to its once ornate façade. I suppressed a shiver as I passed into it, and soon saw why the entire place seemed to have the gloom of death and evil about it.
The room I had entered was once a great hall that filled the entire base of the tipped spire, now some distance below the level surface of the ground. A great round window was opposite the entrance, some panes of red glass amazingly still held in place, spreading the bloody glow of the dying daylight that fell from that single window across the buckled floor with its dim pits into which I could faintly see as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom.
Skulls and bones lay there in those pits, heaped and piled, sockets watching sightlessly, bony features cracked and broken. Shards of bone were scattered across the uneven floor, and when I stooped to examine one, I saw the unmistakeable look of gnawing humanlike teeth upon the bone, and what warm and living part of my blood suddenly ran chill, for there was still flesh on the shard, rotting slowly.
At that moment I became aware of a shadowy presence in the hall, and the itchy feel of predatory eyes upon me. I sought the presence in the gloom, and found only deep shadows. I moved back towards the entrance,
but found several shadowy figures had pressed in there, and were watching me with faintly glowing yellow eyes. I backed instead towards the center of that great and echoing hall, watched by a growing number of figures, sounds of their quiet, dark whispering reaching me as they talked amongst themselves of this intruder to their empty and bleak place.
As I backed away from the crowd, they began to descend down to the main floor, seeming to pour like liquid shadow down the stone to regather at a lower, more level place, rising from pooled darkness to semi human figure once more, and always watching me with those eyes. I jumped with a start as I backed into the great stone slab onto which the dim and viscerally coloured light from the darkening window fell. A hiss arose from the gathering crowd that had advanced towards me and encircled me there. I swallowed hard, knowing from the faint stains on the slab that my death was amongst that shadowy crowd of wraithlike figures.
They pressed themselves close, staying just outside of my arms reach. They were inky black, their limbs trailing away to wispy shadow, the only bright and defined parts of their bodies being their sinister yellow eyes that burned like bright golden coals in their darkness. It seemed to me also that all of them were smiling, grinning wickedly, as they watched me. Their whispering, dark speech passed between them like the howling chill wind outside what I had come to understand as a temple hall.
Soon one stepped forward, bearing in its formless limbs a dagger with a blade like fire, and a chalice containing some reeking black ichor. With a hollow rasping voice it spoke, the whispering gasp of its speech filling the hall without echo. the language was some ancient, fell language that I did not know, yet somehow understanding came to me as it spoke.
It spoke at length of damned places and damned beings. It spoke of its master, the Lord of Nightmares. It spoke of a choice I would have to make: to die, consumed, in that empty and bleak ruin, or to swear fealty to the Lord of Nightmares. It explained that greatness could be achieved through loyalty to an entity such as its cruel master. It explained that death is no escape from terror. It spoke of how one would go about swearing then to that creature, to drink the dark liquid from the chalice, and once done, to slice out ones own heart, and undying be taken as a vassal of its power. That then death would have no hold over such a being, for is not the Lord of Nightmares one of the great keepers of Death? I understood my choice was between two deaths, one near and terrible, and one far and dimly distant, but darker and more bitter still for its distance. I of course liked neither option.
It spoke at great length, its words taking on a mesmerizing quality, and it seemed soon that I was swaying in a trance to its words, as its fell brethren pressed close in to me, the shadows deep from nightfall, and the lone moon pale, bloody through the shards of stained glass in the great, eye window of the temple spire. The shadows swirled in my vision, and in my mind. As if of its own volition, my hand reached for the chalice soon being pressed into my hands, and lifted towards my lips. The crowd of shadowy creatures, the kin of the Nightmares, watched me in silence as I drank the putrid liquid.
My vision then went blurry and pale, and dizziness overcame me and I sat on the altar slab, the chill stone warming beneath my body as the dagger was pressed into my hands. The temple hall spun, and all the nightmarish, shadowy forms blurred into one. I screamed; the universe went dark.
I came to my senses just inside the ruined wall of the city that was not a city, to the sound of the howling wind running wildly down the streets and alleys, through the empty and gaping windows of that barren place. I was alone, and the sun was peeking over the Saws in the east, in start to the day. A curious layer of frost was over me, and as I moved, seemingly untouched by the cold, it fell away in glassy shards to shatter on the blasted bricks of the ruined street. I gasped for air, and my lungs burned, pained as if I had not breathed for a while.
I shuddered at the nightmare that I must have had, sleeping in the vaguely sinister place, and began the long walk towards the western mountains.
It would not be until later that memories of that nights events after my memory went dim would come to light. It would not be until later that I found the strange scar above my breast and that my blood turned to black sludge in air. It would not be until later that I learned the terrible price for my continued life.
[[Happy Hallowe'en!]]
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