Cold and alone,
Winter cultivates inside me
Where she freezes my broken heart.
A desolate void,
Tendrils snaking outward
Silently rending my soul apart.
Emptiness.
Despair.
Wandering listlessly, afraid
Apathy seeded throughout me
Promising a fresh start.
The futility of it all,
A fleeting look at stolen dreams
And canvas devoid of art.
Loneliness.
Unfair.
Weak and trembling
I pray for succor
Guide me to the Holy Grail
That I may drink and be healed.
The effects of the magical enchantments threw off his battle senses. He could hear his breath and the subtle creaks from the padding beneath his armor, but no other sound emanated from him.
The enemy was all around him. He had yet to see his attackers, but he was able to discern that there was more than one based on the simple whistle-click system they used to communicate. Unlike his companions, their tactics had no effect on him. Decades of service under the order of King Altharak had tempered him to the ways of battle. He had faced armies of human invaders from the front lines. Atop his Gryphon mount, he’d engaged in aerial combat against dragons. His blade had spilled the blood of the living and the dead and he had the utmost confidence that it would do the same for the creatures flanking him.
For all his experience, however, Elladuer had spent very little time beneath the ground. Much like the noble creature he fought upon, his place was in the open sky. His heart longed for the icy winds of the north. His soul craved the view of the ocean as it sprawled endlessly beneath him, far to the west. Because his elfin blood gave him a greater resistance to the elements than the lesser races, he wasn’t happy unless he was pushing himself and his mount to their absolute limits.
In the few hours since leaving the open sky behind, he had found himself fighting a new kind of battle. With the walls so close and the darkness pressing against the meager light his enchanted armor gave off, his imagination created an enemy which he had never before faced; claustrophobia.
He stood in the center of a ‘y’ junction, with the tunnel he just exited yawning silently behind him. The chamber was thirty feet in diameter, giving the monsters just enough room to circle while under the cover of darkness, from which they were also allowing glimpses of themselves to peek.
They were toying with him, feeding off of his fears and becoming more frantic in their communications. Each whistle took only a couple of seconds to complete, but they began softly, quickly rising to a pitch that caused his delicate ears to ache. The change of volume had another effect as well. Combined with the echoes from the natural caverns, it gave the impression that there were many more of them than there actually were.
Though it wasn’t happening, his mind convinced him that the range of light was diminishing, allowing for the darkness to creep ever closer. He could feel the walls around him amplifying their shrill calls. They were pressing against him, narrowing his only means of escape from this room and threatening to crush him beneath their infinite weight.
His sword arm faltered.
“Get a grip Rider,” he muttered to himself, “you’ve faced worse than this.”
The sound of his voice was unconvincing. Much like his arm, his voice wavered and cracked. His mouth had suddenly gone dry, choking the words off as quickly as they were spoken.
A sudden shriek to his right startled him and he jerked his body in that direction, leading with his sword. For the first time since he was apprenticed to his king’s army, he found himself off balance and out of stance, and had he been facing a more intelligent being, he might have found a new piece of steel protruding form the opening where his shield should have been.
“Gods,” he sputtered in anger and disbelief. He knew that what he was experiencing was in his mind, but this was an enemy he had never before faced . It had grown so strong, so fast, and left him vulnerable to the real threat around him, which, for as far as he could tell, consisted of several dozen of these things.
The air tasted stale on his lips. It reeked of fungal growth, a hint of purification and other more sinister smells which he could not imagine. It was hot against his skin and stirred only with the breath of the one they had come to slay.
“Give me strength,” he pleaded, finishing his thought.
It was a useless prayer, one which fell from disbelieving lips and quickly faded into the darkness. He could now hear the soft clicking of the creature’s claws as they closed the distance to him, scratching and tapping on the stone floor with each pass.
“…Elladuer!”
As before, he turned ungracefully towards the source of the cry, again exposing himself for attack. This time, one of the Destrachan took the opening and attacked. He had only enough time to see the conical opening of its mouth as it appeared from the darkness before it released the attack.
One of his first battles under his king’s rule had been against a banshee. He had led a small group of soldiers against the creature and had felt first-hand the force behind its wail. With the banshee, the attack had spread over his body, attacking him all over. This creature’s attack was concentrated and it smashed into the buckles which fastened his shield to his shield-arm.
When he had turned, he hadn’t kept his shield against his body as he should have, and the Destrachan had noticed. The straps shattered and his shield fell to the floor.
Now vulnerable on his front-left flank, Elladuer watched helplessly as the creature stepped fully into his circle of light and prayed that Joeshan could hold on long enough for him to face his own battles before getting there.
Disclaimer
The following is one of many installments for a story designed specifically for my blog. While it does step out of my usual genre, there are some things still not suitable for a younger audience. Violent/Graphic descriptions, strong language and sexual situations may be found through different sections. Each entry will tell a small portion of the story during different times and may not directly follow the one prior to it.
This story follows the direct interactions, as well as the deteriorating thoughts of a young man who is struggling not only with the relationships he has with those around him, but with the relationship he has with himself as well.
Finally, all work is strictly fiction and does not reflect the views of the author. Any resemblance to actual person(s) is only a coincidence.
If this isn’t your cup of tea, then avoid these excerpts and hopefully I’ll see you around my other posts and webseries!
———
His head throbbed painfully behind the temples, his veins full of blood and pulsing in time with his heart. It had been hours since the ‘other’ had forced him into the prison of his mind, and he was beginning to tire. The effort of controlling his body as if it were the puppet to his puppeteer had drained him of not only his physical energy, but his mental as well.
The ‘other’ allowed him to watch the outside through his own eyes, much like it must have done during its tenure in his mind, which is how he now knew he was at Lucy’s house. From somewhere far beneath him, there was a deep rumbling as his vocal cords were being utilized to speak. From the nether in which he floated, it felt as if the very cosmos was in the midst of the most hellacious storm he had ever known. The baritone waves, which would be formed into words once they reached his mouth, pummeled him with all the ferocity of the ocean’s fury at high tide.
If he’d had a physical form, his breath would have hitched with each tremendous sob that escaped him. His face would have dampened from the tears that leaked out of the corners of his eyes and each sound that he’d made would have sent him spiraling further into the overwhelming sadness now coursing through him. It pinched his soul within its vice-like fingers, crushing more and more of his breath from his lungs with each passing minute.
Twin beams of light poured through the portals of his eyes, chasing away the nightmarish images that his exhausted mind threw at him and pinned him against the shadowy void. It had been hours since he’d left the library, but from where the other now held him captive, it felt as if days had already passed.
How could this have happened? Was he possessed? The other had whispered to him for weeks, fueling his emotions and enhancing his dreams. It had promised him of its apathy, when he wondered if it would try to control him, and assured him that it did not want anything more than what it had already taken from him.
And yet, just several hours (days?) ago, he had been forced through the bottleneck of his consciousness and into the vast nothing beyond, where the vibrations from his vocal cords threatened to shake him apart with every word and the most horrific of nightmares skirted just beyond his range of vision.
“Are you listening to me?!”
Lucy’s voice originated from somewhere beyond the portals before him, out of the limited range of sight that the other afforded him, making it difficult for him to pinpoint.
“…yes,” came the answer, one which he didn’t speak.
“Dammit Scott, what am I going to do with you? I asked you over five minutes ago to get me a drink!”
“Why don’t you get off your ass and get it yourself,” came the booming retort.
He cringed inwardly at the enraged screech that followed, and suddenly her face rose into his line of sight. Her cheeks were red, covered in perspiration and the results of her efforts, and her eyes flared with rage.
“Scott Vali, how DARE talk to me like that?! And, after what I just did for you!”
Her meaty fist flew through the air, and before he could regain any amount of control over his limbs, it connected with the right side of his cheek. His head snapped to the left as it followed the course of her attack, and his eyes began to water. It didn’t take long for the images on the other side of the portals to waver, but just as quickly, her hands were on either side of his face as she frantically began to apologize.
“I’m going to take reeeal good care of her for that one, Scotty. You may have just beamed one up, but I’m going to set the phasers to fun, baby, oh yeah!”
“You son of a bitch, I’ll…”
“…you’ll what? Word me to death?”
The sound of the other’s laughter reverberated off the walls of his mind. They were chased soon after by screams of anguish which bellowed from the depths of a fractured soul which was was not only near empty, but had begun to drift from its tether.
Beneath The Headstone 