| Tomes of Amaxathroth |
| Ink, Blood and Parchment
Tomes of Amaxathroth > Ink, Blood and Parchment |
| Slave Boats of Kresh |
Read well, you rare lettered sage: in Kresh, the wise seek death before slavery. Eat jungri root that grows beneath every tree, or fall upon the spears of Kreshi - who think themselves marked by a God and greater than all for their twelve fingers. Either fate will gladly take you, and this pestilent realm will be unburdened of your fear.
Black Spear Kreshi herd slaves upon the glass rock beaches, where the ugly jungles dip roots into the salt tides. You are well to avoid encampments by the screams that rise at night; a screaming slave is healthy for the next day. Silent ones, half-taken by death demons already, are amusement for thick-limbed Kreshi. The remains are left each morning for circling vagra and the stealthy yellow vine.
At the wide Nal river delta, the Kreshi mass their slaves to cross. Rare sage, I have sat amidst the fallen pillars of a city whose name is long forgotten, there to watch Kreshi bind and lash slaves into the form of boats for the crossing. The favored who scream loudest are set above the water, whilst the unlucky must learn to breath well through thick reeds.
I, too, sought a way across the Nal in that year - but the great and scaly krevakiles suffer neither raft nor swimmer. I have not sought to test my curse while rotted in pieces upon the inside of a water beast. I doubt not the power of the Demon-King, but doubt the nature of a krevakile's belly the less. So, rare sage, I came before the Kreshi with the sign of the Demon-King in my eyes and ten black ebon stones about my neck - and they were both greedy and fearful, for the Kreshi are weak amongst men.
The offal of slaves mixes quickly with blood in the fleshy sumps of Kreshi slave boats; the slaves who form the deck and prow implore, maddened by torment. The Kreshi laugh long - and reach for needles and hot coals to while away the hours afloat upon slave bodies.
Weak are Kreshi, but they know the way of the krevakile, as the same eyes are found in both faces. No more than ten slaves and twice as many limbs were torn away and consumed upon this crossing. The Kreshi thought that a good and great sign, and I a creature of luck, or sorceror in thrall to ebon stones. They plotted in their bestial way, as they pulled apart the dead and the living upon the swampy shore, but I had long left for the falling dusk and jungle trails.
Oh rare and lettered sage, choose the krevakile in my place, for the Kreshi will not treat you so kindly.
[ Posted by Reason on October 19, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Corpse of the World |
Men and women are but worms upon the corpse and rotten bones of this world - the last vestige of a death aeons past, unnoticed and uncared. How the mighty have fallen! The corpse moans yet for the relief of oblivion, but you vermin knaw on, fighting for the choicest putrescence. Flies came from the stars, long ago, but sparse few saw fit to leave eggs that fester into maggots deep within - you are the infestation upon that shunned even by the eaters of dung.
Build your cities of rot and corpse-strands, fight to eat the flesh of the world, mate in your piles like worms rubbing and squirming. There will come to be a void where once was a corpse world and its vermin - and might that be soon enough that I hear the cries of those torn to a thousand lonely dooms.
[ Posted by Reason on October 20, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Ancient Yorm |
The mongrel peoples who build cities of cruelty and filth about the summer-warm Meddin Sea believe that all men and women tell of ancient Yorm. Their sight is bound and blinded by their ignorance. I have crossed the great ocean of savage jungle isles to Aulstra, once by great vessel and once with serpent-riders terrified by stolen sorcery. The dark men of Aulstra have no knowledge nor care of Yorm, and butcher one another no less than any other vermin of this world. The sun itself might blink at what men will do for fleeting beauty, or women for fading coins.
Men of the Meddin Sea have buried the rigors of kindness and the laws of great civilization under the sands, alongside the ruined city that Yormites built. Yormite ghosts have become unwilling tomb guardians for virtues unseemly to cruel men, and graces spurned by murderesses. But think you the blood of Yorm any different in past aeons whilst the white pillars and halls still stood freshly raised? You struggling worms have made a sacrifice of the dead, the better to be rogues, catamites, whores and witches.
[ Posted by Reason on October 22, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Land of Cottages and Rogues |
A verdant, sparse land lies between the sorceries of spired Harumetha and the Road of Skulls, built in honor of a forgotten king. Once were skulls set atop shining poles every hundred paces, their height above the roadway stones indicating the level of the king's displeasure - and the torments visited upon that skull's owner in the last days of his time in this world. That was long past, long indeed, and none but I and scholars eager to please recall the truth of the name.
Rogues and practitioners of every violent calumny have picked the Road of Skulls clean of travelers. Not so tidy as the forgotten king, they leave skulls yet attached to the bodies of those few victims still foolish enough to present themselves. Once ten covens of ragged roarch flew about the Road, fed full and gluttonous upon the wastes of brigands - in these years, but one great roarch remains, broad and scale-feathered, foul-tempered for having consumed its sisters in these lean times.
Yet despite a stinking flood of rogues and thieves, the land I traveled in haste from Harumetha was scattered with peaceable cottages and the signs of carefree habitation. I bore the Thrice-Dagger of the Bone Priestesses, taken upon a whim after a night of drugged revelry and blessed murder amongst the living who wish to be dead - for who even within Harumetha can breach my curse? With sense and morning came the realization that jealous priestesses could take it upon themselves to outdo the years of torment I suffered in far Daathu. But the deed was done, and stone oubliettes lay beneath Harumetha's vaults and spires.
Peaceful cottages and tended gardens are enough to lull even the careful from notice - and so I was, until at a copse-edge there about me were twenty offal of the Road of Skulls, floated far from their cesspit. What they took me for, I know not, but I gave to laughter - here was I, Amaxathroth the Cursed, who has strode the world, known all, slain armies. Here was I, waylaid by thieves whilst a thief myself. Laugh I did, fit to burst and never stop; hysteria and the curse carried me through the pain of five mortal thrusts of blade. Bubbling blood, doubled up with what lies beyond mirth and sanity, I slew seven before one wrestled the Thrice-Dagger from me. All ran then, making the ward sign against sorceries, for yet still I laughed.
Amaxathroth the Cursed, robbed by vermin of the Road! Amaxathroth the Wanderer, messenger to the Gods, who moves trinkets about the world - how I laughed whilst my blood fed the grasses! In what bandit grave lies the Thrice-Dagger now, I wonder, and whose purpose does that serve?
In time, I laughed and bled no more - sustained by the Demon-King's misplaced wrath of so long ago. So I came down from the grass to the nearest stone-walled cottage in search of water to cleanse away filth and gore, and clothing free of rent and tear. Pushing my way inside, I was greeted not by simple farmers or craftsmen, but by the stench of alchemy. Ten crooked shelves covered each wall, piled to overflowing with vials and mummifications, each exuding a miasma more malodorous than the last.
Impkin cackled from the rafters, and the sorceror within thought not to inquire of the origin of the bloodstained wretch who had thrown open his door. He started upon a dark invocation of the Undergod Freth, and so I slew him, choking upon the vapors, whilst he wrested with the curse. Impkin fled into the fireplace while I threw open the windows and cast lids upon the open coffers. But there was no cleasing the ever-changing foul odors within, and that night I slept upon the thatch above.
A mystery, at least, I had put to rest - not all sorceries take place within the spires of Harumetha. Much like the rogues of the Road of Skulls, the worst and most truculent spill out across the land, and so were these seemingly peaceable cottages protected.
[ Posted by Reason on October 22, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Tall Men of the Mist Forests |
Where the Mountains of Andar slope to mere hills, mists from the sea make a white blanket of the forest. This was once the extent of the Yellow Pendant Priests, who ruled three great cities and shunned seafaring to turn mountains into gardens. Ruthless, they were, in cutting soldiers from the cloth of men and crushing concubines from the petals of women - and so the Tall Men of the mist and forest were kept thin in number, gaunt and hungry.
The Yellow Pendant cracked an age ago, and its God slid away to ooze beneath the earth. The people who once bowed before priests with clouded minds forsook the mountains, for demons stalked the slopes, cracking rocks upon the snow peaks and battling in anger fit to boil water in the valley streams. Men came instead to farm strange, long-necked cattle in the hills, and thin-lipped Lords of dung and wood built walls about these holdings.
The Tall Men are more broad than tall, and all they share with men is the need to take that most desired by another. Mist-colored, they lope in silence, hang from trees to sleep, and strip the flesh from an armored man in the time his heart has for a final spasm. If you must cross the mist forests beneath the Mountains of Andar, do so with a hundred trained men, and count upon ten gruesome deaths with each new day.
There is an art by which Tall Men might be hunted; the Yellow Pendant Priests knew it well. Long spears to watch around, short spears to watch above, and thin, silent climbers to catch the beasts at their sleep in early dawn light. With men who cannot flinch nor cry out in the spray of companion's blood, you might win glistening skulls at little cost - and that is the secret of the Yellow Pendant. Soldiers not so sorcerously pressed are but meat for the Tall Men, a delay in the demise of those whom they protect.
The hill towns of Caitub and Mastaca kept Tall Men beneath the mists with the promise of large, white sand pearls - a pouch shown to any wanderers brave enough to slay the Tall Men who tore the hindquarters from cattle. The Lord of Caitub would smile as he watched a new band depart in eagerness, and put away the pouch, for he would not see such useful fools again. The Tall Men throw the shattered skulls of men up upon Halaka's Rocks above the forest, where the mist laps at a platform once sacred to the Yellow Pendant Priests. The concubines of the Lord of Caitub cast these remains upon the fields, where the long-necked cattle shower their gratitude in the manner of cattle in any other land.
So too was I offered this chance amongst chances when I journeyed the hill paths beneath the Mountains of Andar. In a past age, I would have slain the Lord of Caitub and all but the most gentle of his leering concubines, but Amaxathroth the Murderer was made no more in Daathu - and what value to even the rarest sand pearls to one such as I? They were engraved most deftly with a writing of the Yellow Pendant Priests that will remain unread until the void claims this world. So be it; with all that has been lost, this little more will not tip the scales of the Gods.
[ Posted by Reason on October 23, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Certain Ward and Sign |
Two winters did I hunt the Whisper Witch in the web-choked, snowy forests of Tsibra, whilst maw spiders waited in frozen death for the thaw of spring and new prey. I sought high, upon ice-strewn hills above the storms; I sought low, where the stinking fens cast icy glissades into sinkholes that lead to the palaces of the Undergods.
In the summer of migrating, knife-footed hrale that followed the first futile winter, Blue Talia of Kol Kut cast the bones of a fresh-slain slave. She saw the Whisper Witch engrossed within her caverns, spinning silk from the eyes of venom-weakened youths. So it was the caverns I delved in the second futile Tsibra winter, for I sought a certain ward and sign that the witch of spiders had long known well.
[ Posted by Reason on October 25, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Venomous Lurthen |
If there is a lowest swamp to this world, it is broken-walled Lurthen in the cold highlands of Alben, where all the venoms of man and vitriols of woman pool to fester. Scarce a single bird, beast or slave remains in that desolate sea-bounded land, for the Lurthenac Arch-Poisoners have practiced their arts with exhuberance for many a lifetime. Red of hair and pale of skin, they breed sallow progeny and engage in slow dances of venomed murder with one another. Lurthen and its dangers stand along and isolated, for men of nearby lands slay any who bear the visage of the Poisoner.
Woe to the traveling bird who comes to rest in Lurthen, for she will be netted and penned beneath stone for an Arch-Poisoner's experiments.
When Lurthen was rich with victims, and barges brought slaves and beasts from across the seas, Arch-Poisoners competed in the spasms and pain-wracked death they could induce. Women of cold Frena were thrown into the blackened river that slides beneath Lurthen's bridges, and wagers made on the breaths they would take. Now, each new victim is treated as though gold, poisoned a hundred times over, the right for their death bid upon with dusty goblets and forgotten gems.
There is wealth and sorcery in Lurthen, beneath broken towers and in deep vaults, but the Arch-Poisoners pay it no heed. Neither gold nor gem can match the twitch of the poisoned in its tug upon their venomous hearts. Go to Lurthen, foolish thieves - the Lurthenac will gladly indulge your presence for as many years as you yet suffer.
[ Posted by Reason on October 26, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Cask of Woman-Fat |
I know not what called me to first cross the great Lantac ocean to the strange lands of Emreca. The Demon-King's wrath burned yet bright within my eyes in that age of the Black Palace; all I knew had died; men were as maggots, women as flies. Yet still the world turned beneath the sun, as though to bring decay to each land and black-hearted King in equal measure.
I learned the reading of stars in exchange for rotten bread and feigned kindness given to those unfortunate apprentices cast up as unworthy from the deep caverns of Hambegh, forsaken by those below and those above. The apex star and Grecha's Seven Eyes guided me across the lands of men and lands of beast, and then beneath stolen sail to cross cold and stormy waters to Alben.
Serpents thick and thin churn those seas between lands in every age I have known. The beasts mate without cease, and will crush men heedlessly in their vile and scaly lust. The needy sailor lashes casks of blood and flesh to his deck as serpent-offerings, and prays to whatever Gods will listen. The wise sailor sails not; only sorcerors and the mad journey to Alben across the narrow sea. I, then, was Amaxathroth the Mad for a time. Upon the pebbled Alben shore, I came to rest with ten crystal teeth within my arm and ten bloody serpent heads yet snapping weakly at my feet.
In that age, there yet lived a scholar in Alben - in a tower built within a cavern, hollowed by unknown slaves beneath ruins of aeons past. This secret I wrested from forested Hambegh for a blind beggar's price - there is naught so pitiable as one who blackens his heart and slays joy for gain, only to be denied by greater powers. From the hidden scholar of Alben, I learned of the giants of the Green Isle, and of a way that a clever man with no fear of death might cross the Lantac ocean.
The city of Lurthen had yet to suck the bone of Alben clean of marrow, but its shadow was long upon the land. The villages of those fed to the Arch-Poisoners' contests stood fresh, as though waiting for the dead and tormented to return. Long after, the scholar's tower beneath the ruins became a tomb, sealed from within by an ancient and mighty ward, proof even against the blood of demons. How the red-haired Lurthenac cursed at the loss of a single victim for their sport! The scholar is forgotten in this age, as scholars are doomed to be, but the last word remains his - repeated again and again in the decay of those pale Lurthenac Poisoners and their crumbling city.
But in the years in which I followed the apex star, Arch-Poisoners yet held great festivals to make merry while the dying twitched for their entertainment. Bards amongst murderers, they strove for novelty and perfection, pouring endless failures - those poisons that merely slew their victims - into a river turned black and turgid. Only dark, strange fish were to be caught there; twisted things dried and mounted atop spiked blocks at every corner and vault entrance of Lurthen.
I entered Lurthen beneath great carven adrons upon an eve of sleet and hail, the fanged and fanciful stonework of the adron beasts coiled about the Angled Gate - and beyond a fane of the Undergods. The gates stood open and unguarded - for who would travel the snow-bound highlands of Alben to be the guest of Poisoners? None but Amaxathroth the Mad!
The snow did not rest upon the river bridges and runnels of Lurthen's ill-lit ways; there it steamed, burned by venoms discarded in the Arch-Poisoner's revelries. The split tower of the Arch-Poisoner Fenelth stood tall against the grey sky and beckoned me - for that was the way pointed by the outflung limbs of stiff corpses upon the streets, contorted in their final moments and grimacing beneath the the shimmer of frost. Lurthen was still as a field of graves when not at festival, its fearsome black barges at sea and far from the stone docks; the Lurthenac used slaves for darker purposes than to send abroad on winter errands, and they themselves ventured but rarely from their barred vaults and high towers.
This I learned from the hidden scholar: that giants who dwell upon the storm-lashed Lantac coast of the Green Isle beyond Alben tell one another tales of women. Men who live for an age without women grow sorcerously large - and weak of mind, for they tell tales of women as the most gentle of beasts, more so than even butterflies resting upon the rune-marked ancient stones set high upon Green Isle hills. Such an awakening would come could but the whores, witches and murderesses of any stinking city of the Meddin Sea descend upon the Isle!
But women amongst giants would not live beyond the night, broken and torn by clumsy lusts. The giants would sigh and turn crushed bodies inside-out for fat to grease their boats, for the sea is their true passion. Upon circle-boats hollowed from the rock of great boulders and paddles made of whole trees, they race from wavetop to wavetop, scarce touching the roiling waters. Were womankind to die, these giants would still tell their tales, but the sea is their blood. When the world gratefully leaves the last age of man behind, there will yet be a Green Isle and giants if there is yet a Lantac ocean.
When I passed once more beneath the Angled Gate of Lurthen, I bore a sealed cask of woman-fat upon my back, and the Green Isle was my destination. I had guided Fenelth, a soft beauty of silk and suppleness wrapped about a scorpion's heart, to understand my curse rendered me inviolate to any venom of Lurthen - rather than that I was the very philtre of immortality for their poison-lust; ever suffering but never unto death. I took great risks in that age of madness, the fury of the Demon-King but a few lifetimes past and yet burning in my blood. But torturers are ever weaker and more gullible than the tortured, and fair, insect-hearted Fenelth yearned for the exotic.
In bedding Fenelth, I earned the ire of the Arch-Poisoner Malcam - ire that was slowly creeping its way into the opulant, pillowed rooms of the split tower, intending to drown us in clever venoms. But the murder-dance of the Poisoners was slower in that age, distracted by the wealth of suffering and new victims brought upon black barges for each festival. Malcam yet brooded in his deep vaults of alchemy and bottled spiders from far Kresh when Lurthen's walls were far behind me.
The woman-fat I took from Lurthen lately belonged to Teathe, daughter of the Arch-Poisoner Emben, who had fallen afoul of Fenelth's lust to sting those who showed her kindness. Six years this daughter passed in a stone vault, fed to bloating enormity like a bird soon to be slaughtered, tormented drop by drop with venoms that paralyse and burn. A poison of strange provenance had come into Fenelth's collection, that caused its victims to shed fat in bloody rivulets from every pore and orifice. With this she had suddered in pleasure to bring a dire, thrashing end upon fattened, surly garuthe beasts that yet roamed the highlands in that age - but she saved the rest for Emben's daughter and the Festival of the Undergods.
In but a few moons after I entered Fenelth's tower, Teathe's newly skeletal, contorted body lay amidst her fat and blood upon Fenelth's vault-stones - save for that I carried away to the Green Isle. A year and a day of suffering I saved her, and no gratitude would I gain from any for such an act, blackened of heart like all men of this aeon of the world.
The first thaw brought me to the Green Isle's flowered hills, ruins and strange standing stones. Witches paint their skin red to dance naked in the deepest wooded valleys, and clawed demons dwell within the greatest rune-marked stones - but I sought the giants of the Lantac cliffs and shores.
It is the rare giant who hollows his own circle-boat of rock; it is a great labor, even for one whose arms are temple pillars and legs mighty trees. Instead, they choose from boats of the past that litter the shores like giant nutshells beneath the agui trees of Dramarak. In twilight, I watched giants gather before caves upon the rocky shore, there to light a blaze to roast serpents and greater sea-beasts; I listened to rumbling voices and tales of regard for women - and their flesh.
Many a time did I watch these giants until I settled upon the one called Treshal, who had made his own stone circle-boat of pride rather than seeking upon the shore, and who talked the longest and most longingly of women. When other giants were far, within their own caves, or out upon the Lantac to wrest serpents from the waters, I descended the cliffside to meet with Treshal.
Lies flow like water to the thirsty who wish to believe; Amaxathroth was a wonderous connoisseur of women - and the last was the most gentle of all creatures. Yet she succumbed to my forgetful nature, when in a careless moment I accidentally crushed her; so, I journeyed to meet her many sisters and cousins in search of my next partner. Treshal hung upon my every word, he of more bone and flesh than all a bard's audience in Undragar, yet half the sense of any one of them. As proof, I offered my cask of woman-fat in trade for a crossing of the great Lantac ocean - for the women I sought were upon the far shore.
In truth, in that age I did not know there was a far shore; the Lantac might stretch beyond even the endurance of a giant. But I was pulled onward, ever to follow the apex star. Treshal caressed the cask and Teathe's fat as through they were a living woman yet, and the deal was struck.
[ Posted by Reason on October 27, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Tower That Eats the Jungle |
Far beyond the tortures of sweltering Kresh, deeper into poisonous jungles that bear no one name, the four-tusked rathusk push down mighty trees to eat great blue worms that coil about the roots. When a rathusk's eyes burn orange, it will trample a man to pulp and blood upon the rotting vines, will run him down, will pull down the tree he climbs - unless that man makes the sign of three crossed branches. This ward is engraved upon an ancient temple of a past aeon, that stands broken upon a jungle hillside; it terrifies the great beasts, whose thick hide is otherwise proof to any curse or spear.
I have seen this ward twice more in all the ages. The once was upon a scorched and stolen tablet made by scribes of Lem, who print clay with sorcerous sigils as fast as any man might, lest they displease the grim, whispering demons who dig claws into their shoulders. The twice was upon The Tower That Eats the Jungle, an edifice to cast fear into the hearts of scarified MarMar hunters.
The MarMar look like other men of the great jungle, but are ants in thrall to their queens, the dark-skinned witches who chant and sing within huts forbidden to their men-slaves. They dance in circles about mud shaped to resemble The Tower and worship it as a God; the MarMar men crawl and shudder in fear before any witch's hut that contains such a hidden semblance.
I charmed the lithe witch Nukarum with a sorcery from the slave markets of Abekabar while she bathed alone beneath a waterfall. For ten crystal strands taken from the roots of far-off humra trees, she led me far through the vines and trees, to a cliff whereby I might see The Tower That Eats the Jungle. It stands within a great sinkhole floored by sands blown into desert dunes; nothing lives within, and even the crawling jungle vines wither upon the sinkhole cliffs. The Tower's black stone facade is broken by white signs, and the stench of demons carries upwards upon the wind.
I watched the Tower whilst Nakarum prostrated herself, but only the sands moved.
[ Posted by Reason on October 29, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The City of One Thousand Children |
Upon a warm shore facing the Lantac stands Rej Neroo, a city of nut-brown and lustful people. They build halls in the shadow of a great, crumbled statue of an ancient priest, standing upon a mountaintop. Ancient indeed is this place; spired ruins of cities that have come before spread far and about; fields of strange herbs grown by the men of Rej Neroo curve about fallen statues. The name of he who shadows the city - and that of the God he sacrificed to - are lost to a past aeon of the world; in the age I plied the concubines of Rej Neroo with heady nessen wine, they had long given heed only to the Undergod Bulsath.
The bloated, hair-wrapped body of Bulsath rumbles beneath the city in loathsome sleep, lulled only by machinations of priests of the Five Grey Temples - stern and unlaughing Lords within a city given over to pleasures of the sun, sea and flesh. Dour priests stalk the streets by day and night, in festival or drunken aftermath, and in fear the brown, lithe women of Rej Neroo obey their every whim. To hear the priests, it is the dreams of Bulsath that sustain their city - and prevent the Undergod from reaching out His long thorny hairs to spear the left eye and liver from every man and woman of Rej Neroo.
There are one thousand children within Rej Neroo, always and ever more; no more than five more nor five less than this number are permitted. It is the cries of children that lull Bulsath's pulsing organs and quiet his dire tendrils, the sounds given to Him down through earth and rock by great tubes and Grey Temple sorcery. Ever forth go the forbidding priests, with tablets marked for each child - and to order the fate of women, the better to calm the Undergod they serve, and steer His dreams to their end.
Woe to the trader children who are carried to Rej Neroo upon coastal ways in ignorance, for they will be slain and cast into the sea, lest Bulsath awaken to shake off the city from His back. Entwined bodies and drugged, laughing revels of the following day will be their only tomb marker. Woe to the nut-brown woman who is ravished and with child of her own choice and does not flee this laughing city and the worms within its core!
[ Posted by Reason on October 30, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Undergods Came From the Stars |
In an aeon past, foolish sorcerors built a way to the stars, and in doing so, brought Undergods and a plague of demons upon the world. Even now, these sorcerors scream within the gizzards of the greatest of Undergods, and may they suffer an aeon yet! It is upon their account that loathesome, gigantic maggots yet worm their way beneath plain and mountain, spawning demons of claw and fang to torment this fading age of man.
Only one torture-mad sorceror has ever found death, in an age in which the White Mountains of Emreca and the corpulent Undergod Hruzle beneath were cleft in two by a great movement of the earth. A full half of the Neglenda of the infested woods beyond the mountains were struck dead, those vicious men who once leashed shaggy crelt and carried darts to hunt bloodsucking flies the size of man's head. The remainder and their fattened women were swallowed by the waters of the Lantac, that rushed across the land to fill the great crevass.
In place of the Neglenda, a stench to slay men and the most vile demons wormed their way from the pits beneath the White Mountains. The fat of Hruzle became rancid, peeling away from the mountaintop that pierced and crushed the Undergod's gizzard; from this spawned most terrible, poisonous and angry demons. Men suffered and died in ways the Neglenda could only have dreamed of lustfully - but this was an age past.
When I climbed the White Mountains, men of an empire come from naught and gone to ruins had long ago slain the greatest of demons to roam this reach of Emreca. Their blood and rent flesh was shunned even in memory, but their seed had given to warring cities and a rule of cruel demon-blooded women - and in this there is little difference between Emreca and the lands of the Meddin Sea. What matter the sex of the murderer or the victim? To a demon, a worm is a worm, fit food for eggs and spawn.
Beyond the stone towers that mark the farthest reach of the Beast Uvea, hopeless captives are roped and herded into worn, demon-haunted ways that lead beneath the White Mountains. These are wretches the Beast has deemed unworthy; spared from her lustful, crushing attentions, they are instead doomed to the tearing embrace of black gesk, four-armed iryth, and more terrible spawn of rotted Hruzle. Death would be preferable to a tortured span as a demon's mate, amusement, or sack for eggs. The Beast's daughters stand watch upon cavern entrances with long, sharp spears to encourage those who hesitate in the pursuit of a fate ordained.
Gelded, face-scarred mistresses of the Beast Uvea's court claim that ten men have returned from beneath the White Mountains, and that each bore a portion of the Undergod Hruzle. The skin of each man is stuffed and set with bluestone for eyes about the Beast's bloodstained bedsheets - and she regards them most fondly whilst sporting with her newest plaything.
[ Posted by Reason on November 3, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Rotted Throne |
A demon of great antiquity once took upon the vague semblance of a man - but giant, warped and miscolored. It hung nerves deftly extracted from a hundred men of Yorm about its wattled neck, to better hear the thoughts that lead men to destruction. A great throne this demon built in a dank, cavernous space below the desolate lands, and there it crouched to be a man.
What this might have been, none may say, for the seeping Undergod Ruk lusts for nerves alive with pain and screaming. The oily, liquid Ruk oozed upon the demon of ages, distracted by its necklace of nerves and thoughts, and consumed it; the nerves hang yet in the Silent Web of Ruk, wherein pain greater than all the world's suffering plays sweetly for the Undergods. This much is etched by iron claw-knives upon the stone of the Acris Tablets, or so is believed by the few free scholars who dwell in filth in the sewers of Magak.
But the demon's throne remains, and I have seen it. Expelled from the deep earth, it stands canted, tall as ten men, foul and eternally rotting in the bone-strewn Vision Desert beyond Abekabar. Diseased beggars and women halved lengthways by the sorceror Bagad-Tul are stoned and cast from Abekabar; the throne sustains them in ways no man should see, and these weak grow strong in the desert that thirsts for blood and flesh. The dregs sport, lust and mock Bagad-Tul and greedy merchants in the shade of the rotted throne - and so none in Abekabar now dare the caravan path marked by tall black pylons that crosses the Vision Desert.
[ Posted by Reason on November 4, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Red-Eyed Apes of Jibaral |
The great rock Jibaral stands alone between roaring straits, where the Lantac pours into the Meddin. Serpents brave not these waters, but men and women of Malg and Cadaz risk all in tiny boats of fronds and bent askas wood. Mighty pillars stand amidst the waters, placed by kings of a past aeon, worn but yet strong; between hang great and rusting chains, each link the length of a woman's arm. From Malg come strong men, the chain-graspers; from Cadaz, lissom wise women, who know the sorcery that charms askas trees into boats.
The plain women of Malg are bitter and deceitful; the thin, swarthy men of Cadaz base and cowardly. Have naught to do with either, and beware their murderous plots and consummations, for they spread across that land, far from the walls of both cities.
At the foot of Jibaral, amidst spray-watered trees and lush fruit, are the Ape Temples. Furred and fanged, greater than their brethren, red-eyed apes climb down from the great rock to speak in the way of men. Many are those who come to Jibaral to seek the wisdom of the ape, ferried across the straits by men of Malg and women of Cadaz. The weak stay, for the hearts of weak men and hesitant women are no greater than the hearts of lesser apes; they will serve any who speak strongly.
This I learned from man-tongued apes who live as kings, served by men. I have faired well by this knowledge; it is a mighty sorcery indeed.
[ Posted by Reason on November 5, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Weeping Flowers of the Blue Philtre |
Oh sage of intellect - you who has correctly mispronounced the third protrusion of the Tongued Ward placed upon these iron-bound parchments - I, Amaxathroth the Wanderer, greet you. I might hope that the earnest endeavors of those lesser scholars who preceeded you will not be mourned; in truth, I value this most ancient ward of the first spire of Magak for its disregard of wear and years - not for its lust for the bones and marrow of the unlettered. By means of recompense, let me tell you of the source of the Blue Philtre - but do not thank me, for it will bring a doom upon many.
Blue Philtre is rare upon rare about the Meddin Sea; it comes from the lands of jade and tallow, of opulant citadels and sultry, olive-skinned women, far beyond the wastes where only demons and the outcast wander. No trader brings thin vials of Blue Philtre from afar - it travels by the trickery and rot of this age of men; from thief to murderer; from scheming witch to demon-blooded outcast; from roguish catamite to a King who rules over filth. None would trade Blue Philtre, yet many die to unwittingly bring it ten steps closer to its true owner - a fattened sensate who will sigh for the year of endless pleasure it will bring.
Of all men to touch upon Blue Philtre, only the black-clad Amaram of the rock deserts retain any semblance of strength, for they have sorcerously forsaken pleasure in service to an unnamed God. Vials the robed Amaram women gracefully pluck from bloodied bodies of the wicked are a ransom and surity against petty avarice of the Ten Oasis Kings, and jealousies of priests of Jerlasum upon the high mount. So are the Amaram temples, carved from the most remote wind-shaped rock, sustained and preserved.
Upon the forsaken road of the Vision Desert, marked by great pylons of a past aeon of man, I learned the secret of the Blue Philtre from a dying Amaram and his five loyal women; they told the tale in turn, a word apiece until his final breath. Whereupon, each woman took a different path into the wilderness, and his body was left for the sand vermin that clean bones whilst no man watches.
Beyond the demon wastes, where the gorg and hrale-eaters prowl, are steamy jungles of yet stranger beasts, thorn-vined and deadly. Beyond the jungles lie jade mines where starved slaves suffer under whip and knife to better please the concubines of plump overseers. Narrow-eyed Lords and their advisors stroke the jade carvings of crippled artisans, who work from birth to death caged amidst offal at the base of tall, many-layered citadels. The mists flow across terraced hills, and men die by the order of other men - so it is in every cruel land of this age, and so will it always be, until the void claims this world.
Beyond all these lands are the Hamal Yan mountains that touch the sky, and fierce, hag-toothed yellow men who wear only the furred skins of demons they have slain. Beyond the mountains lie lesser peaks, wild hills, fields of weeping flowers and Khaarnul, the fallen city of the Athgands - it is there you must go to find the source of the Blue Philtre.
The weeping flowers came from the stars in an age of sorcery, brought by fools who fled the coming of the Undergods. The vales of Athgand bloom with a strange glimmering in summer sun or winter storm, and each blue-tinted petal sheds silvery tears that poison the earth.
Athgand kings were once mighty, building both thick-walled towers and great hoards of precious stones. From rugged lands often conquered but never ruled, swarthy tribes turned back both armies and mighty sorcerors. Beauteous Athgandi women were in some ages warriors, in others a portion of the hoard, chained atop beds of rubies and emeralds in latticework prisons and fought over by bearded men bearing sharp, curved swords. Each Athgandi is descended from the blood of kings, and knows himself a prince in his heart - but in this age they are filth and vermin, fit only to be cursed and spat upon by demon hunters of the Hamal Yan mountains. In this, a wise traveler might see workings of baleful sorcery and weeping flowers.
Once-great Khaarnul is broken and ruined amidst the flower fields, mere huts of time-worn stone pulled from mosaic roadways built within the pillared halls of a past age - but men come yet in this age upon the Ten Mountain Roads, just as stinging night-moths to the flame. They are drawn by the Blue Philtre, for here the Ten Magasi gathered and made the great sorcery that draws pleasure from petals that have wept all they can. Long and hard did the Magasi labor in an age when the men of Khaarnul stood strong, but a traveler may buy the knowledge for rotted crusts of bread - for there is no food in Khaarnul.
Three kinds of men are found under the gaze of the fallen statue of the last Athgandi king. The first come in strength to steal or trade rot with the starving; a few leave while yet strong, with vials of Blue Philtre, destined for death at the hands of the next owner. The second are ensnared by the pleasure that flows from the petal, and is borne by the air from the great fields; these caged men grow thinner and more bestial with each passing moon. No forbidden act is taboo in Khaarnul, and all have debased themselves for but one drop of the sorcery of weeping flowers. The third are scarce men at all - the petal has consumed them. They slump against the pillars of Khaarnul, and are herded to pull blooms from the fields by those who yet seek their fate.
A well-prepared man may risk the fields of musk and silver tears, he might resist the call of pleasure for a time to gather petals, but the vile dromch that hide amidst the flowers will feast upon his flesh. The wall-paintings of Khaarnul once showed the hideous aspect of the dromch, but have long been pulled down by men driven mad by pleasure; no man might say what consumes the languid petal-gatherers. All that is seen are the rippling of tall flowers and sprays of blood; all that is to be heard are short screams and the crunch of bone. For this reason, those who live for the Blue Philter tie rope to the mindless they herd into the fields; lives are worth naught in comparison to sacks of silver-blue petals. Loud is the cursing when the stench of dromch venom and worthless blood spoils but one bloom!
Seek out Khaarnul, oh sage of great intellect - but scribe all that you feel you must in a lifetime before you set forth. Many are the men who have envisioned such a journey, and few indeed are those who survive the very first step.
[ Posted by Reason on November 9, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Jrel-Aluk, That Turned Men Inside Out |
When you say "scholar," speak the word in the manner of the Komu who dwell in the frozen wastes of Emreca, to mean "speaker of falsehoods." A wise man lies in ways that are both blown away by the wind and forgotten by women; a scholar presses lies upon clay for all the ages. As Amaxathroth the Wise, who bore parchments, I was met with laughter from the mighty-thewed Es-Komu. You - who has but a few score of years before the death demons hook claws into your flesh - would do well to recall this happenstance.
In all the tablets and parchments that tell of the sorceror Mazyar - he who built Harumetha in a single moonless night - there are but two matters the same. That his skin was the dead grey of fungus, and that he alone in all the world dared ask a question of the Jrel-Aluk. Both are lies.
In the age the tall, spindle-spined Jrel-Aluk stalked the Valley of Pillars, many were the men who screamed questions of that most dire of demonkind. Any answers will remain unknown, for each man was most carefully and precisely turned inside out. Women met a most different fate: pulped and powdered down to the very finest, spilt into a pile of dust and puddle of red slime. In the hearts of sorcerors, it seemed the Jrel-Aluk sought most carefully for something that lay within men and women yet foolish enough to risk the broadest of passages through the Grey Mountains.
Mazyar had within his spire a single crystal tablet, upon which twelve mysteries of ancient Yorm were etched. One such was a compelling of demons and men, a hook of sorcery laid within the nerves, by which feeling and action are made as those of a puppet. By this means were the sumptuous chambers of Mazyar populated by the most beauteous, pliant youths and maidens - mere decoration, no less so than the mosaics from far away lands and cloth of impossible colors, for the sorceror Mazyar had no interest in the pleasures of the flesh. Yet he would rather have been swallowed by the Undergod Ythugg and pierced for all time by a thousand stomach-tendrils than to appear less corrupt a sensate than the most debauched in Harumetha. It is a truth that all men - even sorcerors of great might - possess one strange, unseemly weakness that stands as a rock to cast spray in the river of their life.
It passed that Mazyar spoke ever less with the many cruel sorcerors and priestesses of ill-repute who occupied the spires and fanes of Harumetha, the better to cast their blacknesses upon that age. He took to believe scholars who spoke of a hidden sorcery within men and women, a great power diligently sought by the Jrel-Aluk. So Mazyar took his crystal tablet of Yorm and went forth to the Valley of Pillars to ask his question of the tall questing demon, and sorcerously compel an answer.
There, the tale ends, for scholars are little concerned with lies in the form and manner of bards. Of Mazyar, there was no more; the youths and maidens of his spire were taken away, one by one, as concubines and catamites, as sacrifices both straightforward and strange upon stained altars of the Bone Priestesses. Of the Jrel-Aluk, dread legends persist, but no more were the bloody remains of men stretched upon pillars of aeons past, nor the remains of women placed beneath.
So is the world of ages; it turns, and no man sees.
[ Posted by Reason on November 10, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Beauty of the Street of Leering Whores |
For a time, at the end of the age of the Black Palace, the fetid Street of Leering Whores in the port of Piryus held a certain attraction to men other than low born thieves, murderers and lesser vermin of the Meddin cities. For amidst toothless hags, cripples who dragged women upon chains and painted poisoners, within huts and ruins built upon middens, a beauty of true measure was hidden.
Tales were told about the Meddin shores, and even by the lustful, inventive sorcerors of Magak, they who would barely stoop to consort with man, woman or beast in any common manner. They spoke of the graceful, sweet-scented blossom who offered herself to all cravings upon the cribs of diseased harridans - yet always she had a beauty and nature to match the opal-necklaced maidens of far away Thaiy, and about her wrists and ankles were bracelets of gold. So came men of means to the Street of Leering Whores, and the thieves rejoiced. Many were the corpses stealthily placed by night upon the great midden that slumped into the Piryus harbor waters, their eyes and softened parts food for ragged crathegull and poisonous climbing spine-crabs.
Who, then, was this high courtesan amongst low whores? I am given to think it was the witch Arthymaste, who haunted ruins and forests upon the slopes of the mountain called Pentayl. Once, she bowed before the Demon-King and gave her heart in trade for sorceries - in return, the hearts of ten demons pulsed and bubbled within her slight frame, each one a fountain of wanton craving, strange thought, pain and cruel urges. How much more advantagous her position had she followed my path, cast the fortunes and carefully roused the Demon-King's ire! In the long years I followed the apex star and journeyed far from the Black Palace, Arthymaste screamed and leaped about the Pentayl, consuming, babbling and coupling as cackling demons so directed. Well deserved was the mountain's dire reputation in that age.
But wrists and ankles cased in gold were the sign of Arthymaste then, and even before her thrall to the spawn of the Demon-King. A women can tame any man, given but enough time and length of rope - perhaps even demons are not immune.
[ Posted by Reason on November 12, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Opal Skulls of Thaiy |
Few are the ancient, high prows of metal and strangely-cut sails that follow coasts about the Ocean of Isles. They are vessels of a past aeon, beyond the wear of sea and man, crewed again with each dark fate to befall those who tend decks and bulwarks. Sailors of far-off lands risk sudden, sorcerous storms, great sea-demons that leap and fly in search of men to torment, and serpent riders who claim all deep waters of the Ocean of Isles as their own - but even those foolish or cursed beneath a doom avoid the ruined harbors of Thaiy, glistening by day, and marked in darkness by lanterns set atop fallen statues of long forgotten kings.
The brown, elegant women of Thaiy are beautiful as in no other land, painted and patterned, numbering twenty for each thin, haunted man in the sun-drenched port city of Foon Khet. They slink and dance to the side of any traveler or ignorant seafarer, promising much with wide eyes and reddened lips. But it is not pleasure they seek, nor the face - a mere covering of flesh - they stare at so entranced.
For there is a deep shadow to Thaiy, well known to scholars even so far as Magak or Hambegh. The necromancer Kovat, who sleeps upon tightly laced thigh-bones and embraces the bundled ribs of his long-dead love, has built towers of opal-eyed skulls of men, engraved with signs of power and torment, within the jungles and upon the mountains. Villages that once laughed with life are silent ruins or long rotted into the trees and vines; great Thaiy is but the eyes of Foon Khet and the dead realm of Kovat in this age - and women are the means by which servants of the necromancer raise themselves yet closer to the sky.
Enjoy the few hours you have remaining in the arms and at the lips of beauty, unwary sailor, for long, heavy knives will soon be brought forth - and the bones of your neck will add another notch to their metal. You will spill your secrets to Kovat, and he will set your place in the world for the remaining ages before the void claims all.
[ Posted by Reason on November 14, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| And Lem Fell Beneath the Waves |
Two ages have passed since the Undergod Freth shuddered its third counterwise segment for a year without cease, and so cast the high cliffs of Lem beneath the waves. Twice in this time, I have journeyed from end to end the greatest mass of lands, and the greatest breadth of the seas. Of men and women of these lands I have learned much and nothing; hearts are sly, cankerous and greedy, urges base and murderous in every age.
Sorcerors have forgotten where carved city-caves and vaults of scribes slaved to demonkind once loomed above the roiling serpents of the Lantac. Well it is that Lem is so vanished, lest those who hunger for the doom that hides behind power build another path for the spawn of Freth - and thereby gift more sorceries upon the rotten flesh of this world. No more do thick-limbed ugret and lolling xamat climb the Staired Pit into the world of men; no more do horned swythern worm about pillar and shelf, twining long tongues through the living brains of scholars. If men were wise, and women possessed of self-knowledge, all would be glad this was so.
Tablets of Lem, cracked or burned, waterstained or bloodsoaked, are yet like flies in Magak and Harumetha, and as worms beneath Hambegh. Strange knifes are the sorceries and signs that drip from this clay of Lem, tools by which men and women become demons in their lust for inventive torments and knowledge beyond that of this world. So Freth casts lines and hooks across all lands, for a mash of blackened hearts steeped in the rot of ages is the sweetest maiden's flesh to the Undergod.
Witches and sorcerors are maggots of a different color to the spawn of the Undergods, but no less writhing members of the feast upon the dead flesh of the world, the spiral into the void that will end this last aeon of man. Freth, too, will be be claimed by the void, but the Undergod cares not.
[ Posted by Reason on November 17, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Black Blooms Twined About Bone |
Fools and slaves of the greedy have long sought hidden wealth and ancient sorcery in the unending jungles beyond Kresh. Demons and beasts of those lush and steaming lands have fed well upon pale flesh set forth from squalid, sandstrewn Abekabar to the mouth of the Nal, and there to venture into the jungle's poison maw.
Some are taken by laughing Kreshi torturers; some are envenomed into bloated man-mush by sliding yellow vine. Others momentarily sate the rathusk's lust for vengence against all who walk on two legs, or become shambling, moaning egg-sacks for verli-spiders and shiny blue rot flies as big as a woman's fist. Few return to Abekabar where once they mocked fools come to their senses, and slaves who hid amidst cripples and beggars of the bazaar.
Even sorcerors must be wary of the nameless jungle that presses close upon the Nal; the wise learn from heavy, thick-scaled krevakiles of that river, who stay far from the banks unless tender flesh presents itself for the taking. But the ruins of past aeons call softly, heard by those who know the teachings of Yorm and sorcerous droolings of the Undergod Freth - and the bones of a sorceror molder to feed jungle trees just as those of any lesser man. Ask you, scholar, who besides Amaxathroth has seen The Tower That Eats the Jungle? Who besides Amaxathroth has seen the Shore of Black Blooms? Precious few, and their names have not lived for so long as mine.
Scarred MarMar and vine-bound, tongueless Tuk cut apart and bury every last trace of dead fools and poisoned slaves from Meddin lands - and the spoor of stranger intruders besides. The dark men and their tempting women are of the jungle; they are no more nor less your foes than nurra worms that seek blindly for the beating hearts and warm blood of those who rest near their lair. Cut their limbs from their bodies, or show them the Sign of Unth if you dare. Like all men, in all lands, they can be tamed if the way is known.
So did I journey beyond Tuk villages and through the thickest swamp and jungle, ripe and wet as rotten fruit, infested by demons who trampled trees and lesser beasts unseen behind poison green of leaf and sickly yellow of vine. To this place the Tuk send captives and those too old to leap and spear mahuh gourds, to struggle through and die upon the Shore of Black Blooms beyond.
The great demons who tread all underfoot are named as Falor Tal Unna upon a worn crystal wall of Yorm. They are the terrible servants to an empire of men that came before the jungle. For all their sorcery, mighty ruins have been consumed near-utterly by green ages, the names of their Gods and kings forgotten - only these aimless, crushing slaves remain. I have seen their footprints mashed across the trunks of fallen trees, a sight to spur madness and effort amidst the heated ooze and buzzing insects.
The Falor Tal Unna can be heard upon the Shore of Black Blooms, and the shaking of trees by their passage can be seen, but they do not approach. The jungle fades to pebbles and a sea of fresh water - here is very source of the Nal that sometimes roars and sometimes slides green through the jungles of Kresh. Everywhere are the bones of men, wrapped about by the Black Blooms that slew them. Musk hangs heavy in the air; the Blooms sway against the wind, back and forth, slow as the red-striped snakes that MarMar fear so greatly.
The Demon-King's curse of ages laughed at the murderous scent of the Black Blooms and waters poisoned by their roots; I gained much in years to come by the many Blooms I plucked, bleeding and twisting, from a corpse as yet only mummified upon the shore.
[ Posted by Reason on November 18, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Honest of Abekabar |
In life, Bagad-Tul gave voice to malign and inventive sorcery within the Folded Palace of Abekabar; in death, a long and lesser line of the worm-hearted have used his name and engraved ruby to raise fear enough to occupy the Palace. But rule? None had the true hatred of all men and women as still burns within the brittle bones of Bagad-Tul, cast into the Vision Desert and cursed mightily; no, even the Bagad-Tul who brought the stone tubes to the slave bazaar is but a shadow of the original.
Abekabar is a font of unthinking thieves, of base murderers who care not even for excellence in their craft, of nerveless whores and beggars who will not even look down to see the results of their mumbling. The sands have a madness in them, that weighs down men and women in the moment of the beast, without any vision of the heartbeat to come. They spawn and multiply like demons in the dust-choked alleys and brown shelters. Treat the diseased throngs of Abekabar as you would a pack of starving curcal; kick them, put them to the torch and blade, or feed them with flesh and wine - but expect neither understanding nor change.
The crumbling walls of Abekabar do little to mask this pit of vermin that walk on two legs; but such is fit for a place to which the Kreshi bring torture-maddened slaves, and is coveted not by the Ten Oasis Kings. Abekabar is a city of a hundred men afloat upon a sea of rats and lice - and those hundred are Bagad-Tul, a band of prideful murderers who guard the Palace, and avaricious merchants who trade and steal without care for any forbiddance of God, king or man.
Where then will you find men who are neither thieves nor murderers, women who have yet grace and will in Abekabar? There is one sure place. Those who push back and cry out, or call for honesty and guards against rogues, are thrust within the thin, hanging stone tubes of the slave bazaar, one apiece and behind great metal hinges, with but a thin carven notch to see that which so drove them to their own form of madness. Children of the slave bazaar slip angry spidrel and thrinlizards into the tubes most recently occupied, there to fight with black flies for choice flesh - but the laughter of rogues, slave masters and whores at the weak screams of the imprisoned is ever disinterested.
Not even cruelty rouses the sand-worn rabble; the present Bagad-Tul wishes it so, and it pleases him to watch the tubes through thin, high windows of the Folding Palace. The weighty stone tubes swing gently upon their great chains when the wind blows sand from the alleys, and every so often the bones of one unfit for Abekabar slip from the base-notch.
[ Posted by Reason on November 19, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Crossing the Demon Wastes |
If you must travel the infested and doleful wastes beyond the Grey Mountains, journey in a company of no fewer than twenty beasts and men, of whom five carry spears and a knowledge of gorg. The most ravenous and long-tongued of gorg will be left sated and distended by the swallowing whole of twenty live bodies; a doom cast upon passing companions is the only true surity for your safe passage, for horned gorg are long of limb, cunning and strong enough to tear men asunder.
I crossed the wastes in the first year of a journey from new spires raised upon the ruins of forested Hambegh to the tormented lands of jade and tallow - a long and arduous path of many forks; drear and emptiness picked clean of men by the spawn of the Undergods was but the first step. So in huddled, thick-walled Varzsova, beside a river of treacherous currents, where the rain falls blackened and men have but little thought and no will to pleasure, I tied my path to that of thirty color-strewn Rhym Ney and painted wagons.
I knew something of the Rhym Ney, for all their distain of clay and parchment, of trade with men of other races. Sharp knifes against the dull blades of Varzsova, quick thievery and smiling cruelties hid convictions of a king's prowess. They call themselves descendants of a empire of man once known as Rhym, in which a hundred Lords of equal might ruled all the world from a white city of seven hills. Sharp-toothed vermin who call themselves kings, the Rhym Ney journey to and from the secrets of deepest Rushka, bleeding towns and murdering the weak for their needs. Proud, boastful, they tell tales incautiously - and so I already knew their keys to their rotten hearts.
Yet of Rhym and a white city - and of sorcery to compel a hundred Lords to refrain from murder until there was but one remaining - I knew not further then, and know not further now. Before the fall of Yorm, before Undergods descended from the stars to set their eggs to hatch within the world, before the first sorcerous sigil pressed upon the most ancient of tablets, say the Rhym Ney. Are the words of scholars any more to be believed?
The dark-haired women of the Rhym Ney are hard and passionate in their youth; willing lures for the schemes of fathers, brothers and lovers. Were the shaggy wolves who stalk lone travelers possessed of human lusts, Rhym Ney women would lick their lips and dance naked in the wilds to bring forth fangs and fur from the thick forests to a hunt of spears.
I appeared as sorceror of secrets for the Rhym Ney - an easy guise for a man of uncounted years - and thereby another form of animal for the snaring, should the hunters come to think they understood the nature of the spoils. Caught I was, but by the elegance of the trap evaded, the glimmering of the net of lies and intent, for decay of the body is naught as colorful as what has become of the hearts of this age. Lush Red Talytha pressed herself against me not as lengthy prelude to the murder planned by Andryzeg, but as ardent inspiration for his jealousy - and then for her own greedy desire, for men grown wise see a mirror of waters in the ways of treacherous women. Words to charm and hooks to sink into a perfidious heart come ever easily for one such as I.
The cruel Rhym Ney laughed at Andryzeg when they thought I paid no attention, or when Red Talytha cried loud within her swirl-painted wagon and the gelded jureth in the traces grew restless. Soon, then, there would be knives, but the game demanded no less than to wait and step aside at the last moment - just as those who offend the strange priesthoods hidden in highest Espaga are given one chance, blindfolded, to face a spearing axar in the blooded pit. Perhaps this all was yet the snare set about my neck and legs, but the Demon-King's wrath shielded me from the sons and daughters of Rhym, as from any black-willed worm in this last aeon of the world.
Games of murder and lust are amongst the lineage of man, however, to be scattered and forgotten with the coming of demons. It was not sudden screams of jureth brought Red Talytha and I naked from heated bedding and into the cold rain of hilly wastes, but rather the choking cough of the gorg, the sound of a dying man horrified by the flux that pours from his mouth. Thrice as great as than any other I have heard tell of in all the ages, more pustulant toad than horned ox, this mighty gorg was set about with chains of copper. It stuffed a broken-necked jureth into its maw, while its dripping belly-hide flexed with the struggles of the Rhym Ney who preceeded it.
Gone was the bold bluster of Rhym Ney men, who cried sorcery, cowering or fleeing, save for two whose spears caught and broke within the copper chains. Three outer tongues had the gorg, one yet wrapped about the jureth's haunches, but two were enough to stretch its maw yet further with the flesh of foolish bravery. About the painted wagons bounded the gorg in spray and hunger, snatching up those who ran or cowered, smashing the panicked jureth to the wet ground.
Wisdom flees first, as had I, and Red Talytha behind me, naked in the rain. Gorg can neither climb nor fit their bulk within thin crevices, and the hills about were topped by great cairns and the remains of ancient pillars, set by giants of a past aeon. The powerful choking call of the gorg spurred us, chests heaving on the boulder-strewn slope and skin cut by long thorns. The curse of the Demon-King has turned back deaths by blade, venom and a hundred other violent betrayals, but never have I sought its test in the maw of demonkind.
Scattered Rhym Ney and all the jureth did not occupy the chain-bound gorg longer than for I and Red Talytha to mount but three fourths of the nearest hillside, and nor did their struggling flesh sate the demon. In all her youth, Red Talytha proved more fleet than I, and the gorg was scarce slowed by the living packed amongst the broken-boned dead within its bloated midsection. Upon the upper slopes were scattered stones of all sizes, cast off as chips before the awl when giants hurled rock upon rock, and broke down the pillars of ancient fanes. One I snatched and hurled to strike Red Talytha square amidst her rain-soaked hair - she fell, and scarce was I past and to the base of the great boulders when the gorg was upon her. A old and potent curse upon me she screamed, but the gorg's tongues broke her limbs with the sound of branches parting before the fifth word of power could seal the sorcery.
Thusly I scrambled, berefit of dignity and any tool of man, to the very apex of giant-piled rocks about a pillar of ages. Below, the gorg's tongues worked to pack Red Talytha, yet screaming weakly, amongst the rest of her kin and their beasts - united now with her Andryzeg in goals and fate. Then the great, copper-bound gorg squatted, glaring up at me with ire and hunger in its bulging eyes, and settled to wait. The rain fell colder, and the part of the broken mass within its belly that yet lived squirmed and twitched; gorg digest but slowly - and most painfully for their food. When the squirming became great, it rolled to punch at its turgid gut; more bones snapped and crushed, the sounds ugly and muffled by its hide.
A curse I knew besides, dire and of ancient Yorm, but of no more worth than that screamed by Red Talytha when matched against a gorg. What priest or sorceror had bound this demon about with chains and fed it to such prodigious size upon the flesh of man and beast? Such a guardian might have roamed the wastes for an age, eating all it found, so that no tale came to the cities of man.
An age might a gorg roam, but Amaxathroth the Wanderer has lived many ages of man - and eluded far greater dangers. What price might I put upon two moons of torture by unrelenting sun and rain, hunger and thirst fit to die, but that will not kill me? May the Demon-King have reveled in these days of torment, whatever has become of him and his Black Palace. I waited naked in the cold, above the patient gorg, for it to dissolve away the flesh of Rhym Ney, cough forth their bones, and hunger enough to seek other prey.
[ Posted by Reason on November 24, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Sigil That Is a Doom Upon Scribes |
Many ages past, proud kings ruled at the swampy mouth of the Nal; of their slaves and priests naught is to be told, even within the most ancient of bound tomes treasured by sorcerors of Magak and Harumetha. The many-pillared ruins and great, crumbling statues beside the Nal are given over to roosting vagra that await the scent of rotting flesh upon the wind, or toppled into the waters where krevakile lurk. So is the fate of all works of man; this I have seen.
From this kingdom of a long past age, swallowed by the poison jungle of Kresh, came the Sigil of Fifteen Points and a doom upon scribes. There is but one true path to form the Sigil, for each other leads, midway, to the formation of a lesser sorcery of anguish and destruction. Even the true path must be taken with haste and precision, lest the scribe linger for too long upon a certain Calling Sign; it will be many days before that unfortunate can know in certain surity that a plague of demons will not burrow upward from the palaces of the Undergods to place spikes through his organs and drag him down to an age-long flensing of flesh and bone.
He who first formed the Sigil of Fifteen Points might be the most refined murderer of all the ages, and who can say in truth that each and every doom contained within the Sigil is known? I have scribed the Sigil but twice; the once to better know the character of its originator, and the twice in extremis and without other recourse. This, I say with the weight of knowledge: better that the Sigil was lost to the world, alongside the being to spawn it, but no torture is so exceedingly subtle and sadistic that a lord of men will forsake its use. No, if there is but one mark to distinguish the hearts of those who strive and die so as to rule, it is the lust for such. The world will crumble into the void, riddled to ash by the maggot-spawn of the Undergods, before men will set aside the Sigil.
A man might die the once, but ten thousand times, and in as many ways, might he scream and wish life to end. Without the fear of this and fates far worse, no lord, king, nor callous sorceror might have authority over even the weakest of men. This secret is in the heart of all men, and well known to women - yet each man is surprised by its utterance afresh, and thus do men so set their fate as slaves.
There was an age in which the Sigil was well known indeed amongst sorcerors and scholars about the Meddin Sea. Barbarous Emmegdio slew man, beast and demon alike, and wore the skin of all as proof of his prowess; upon driving out all other killers of man, he enslaved most harshly a thousand women to raise city walls within the mountains of Espaga. In time, no living man remained to dare challenge his rule, but the pleasures of enslaved flesh paled with the decrepitudes of age. Cruelty is ever as a river, hungering for any path to the sea; Emmegdio who called himself King became enamored of the power and suffering brought by sorcery. By dark chance, the Sigil of Fifteen Points came to Espaga, and the lives of Emmedgio's slaves were spent as water in the exploration of its manifold dooms. For year upon year, the city of the woman-slaver echoed to screams and the cackling of demons, and the stench of death grew ever thicker.
Strange and secretive priesthoods are all that now haunt the empty city of highest Espaga, but Sigils both true and false found their way far and wide in the age of Emmegdio; this lure to doom and enticement to torture is hidden within sorcerors' towers, sealed inside the vaults of kings, and set upon ancient parchments arrayed before the ignorant of the bazaar of Abekabar.
[ Posted by Reason on November 26, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Fitful Slumber of Rania |
Once an empire held sway over now-savage Emreca. Stern and rapacious priest-lords ruled forest, plain and mountain with the same iron grip held upon the hearts of their followers, and named both the Lantac and the Passac oceans that bounded their power. But the God of Emreca was an old and fading God, and the soil of Emreca has fed an aeon upon the buzzing of demon breath - it crawls to swallow even the ruins that might show what manner of men tamed this vast land.
Only words are left. There are women who serve a priesthood upon the slopes of Rania, a volcano that slumbers but fitfully upon the Passac coast. A man might journey years from Rania to find the Lantac, stalked each step by clawed and hooved demons, but yet these women know the ocean's name, and speak that name just as the Komo of the frozen ice, or scholars of Magak in Meddin lands. Mighty indeed is an empire that marks the tongue of man across ages - and remember well, rare scribe, what little comes of power if there is but an age to wait.
A mighty city of this long-past empire once stretched from the shores of the Passac to the very foot of Rania, as great as the crystal palaces of fallen Yorm, but volcanoes are angered by the acts of men and whims of women. The priests of Rania, who build shrines upon steaming rock and torment themselves with fire, tell that three times has their God woken in anger to bury all within sight of the peak temple beneath burning rock. This the fearsome demons of Emreca know, and little plagued is this land of forest and broken blackrock by spawn of the Undergods.
Women chant the ancient songs upon the slopes of Rania, that the God remain pleased and men might live to hunt lesser serpents in the bays and rivers. Little do the two meet, save but furtively. This is the way of Rania, taught by fire-scarred priests of an iron grip, who smile whilst setting chains and scalding rocks upon the screaming few who disobey their rule.
[ Posted by Reason on December 2, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Women Born of the Woods |
Beyond the White Mountains and the lands of the Beast Uvea are vast plains given to the snorting brathac, hooved demons of great weight and temper. Even the vermin that infest their scales and mange bear a loathing of men to match that of the Beast Uvea's daughters. Sorcerous means exist to cross these plains, including certain signs of ancient Yorm known about the Meddin Sea, but the unruly savages of Emreca rather set crude boats upon lake and river, when they risk such far journeys at all.
The touch of man falls but lightly upon the core of Emreca in this age. It is a land given to the Undergods and their spawn, where the very soil loathes the boot that presses upon it.
Bearding the farthest extent of the White Mountains against the gaze of stamping, fearsome brathac are certain woods, little known to the cowed slaves and cruel women of the Beast Uvea. In the heat of summer, women are born of the woods, lithe of limb, of great beauty and innocence; they wander from the trees to become meat for brathac, or for slinking black gesk come forth from mountain caverns should they live to see the sun set.
From two great stones set upright and soaked in blood by the demon-blooded mother of the Beast Uvea, I watched women of the woods tumble and break beneath the stone hooves of thundering brathac. A sorcery of great power lies hidden there, within the strange trees between demons of the mountains and demons of the plains, but it did not call to me as other than a net of chain and hooks for the incautious - may the fisher remain unknown.
[ Posted by Reason on December 3, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Rushing, Fetid Waters of the Years |
Change! You rare and lettered scribe, slave to a king or slave to your heart, clutching at this tome of blood and parchment that will bring misery to so many; yes, Amaxathroth the Wanderer has seen change. Change fit to burst a man asunder, or a woman to weep herself empty from hollowed eyes. The fetid waters of the ages rush yet in their hurry to be past my sight, filling my waterskin over and again with stench and poison. You are but a fly, your few years but a passing glimpse of a vast extent of rot and truth.
This, the Demon-King gave to me as his curse, and knowing full well I sought as much - such games are played by the maggots that consume this world, and so do those who believe they can chart the rivers that flow within the hearts of men. A bitter comfort this might be for those sorcerors who live yet, flensed and tortured for an aeon in return for granting passage from the stars. Men and women shudder and soil themselves, scream and flee in terror before demons set upon the world by the Undergods - but it is those spawn who should blind and consume themselves in what passes for a demon's fear, lest they learn that which they will never understand.
A demon may twist itself into a grotesque semblance of a man, may scrape nerves as twine from the living and form itself a heart for thinking, may torment and leer and rend the flesh of all about - but it cannot shape, cannot conceive, cannot understand the simple cruelty that is a man. Change, my companion, is a guiding, enclosing wall built of ruined hearts; hearts stabbed by women, hearts crushed by men, more inventive in their treachery than any dripping horror hatched from the burrows beneath the mountains. Long ages gone is the Black Palace, and I, Amaxathroth, am become the Demon-King's witness, from this time of dripping ink to the very end of this world.
Rare, lettered scholar, you slave of slaves, read not further the words of Amaxathroth! Be content with your place, your knowledge and your death, of however great a suffering and anguish it might be. Swim amongst the lesser fishes, and delve not into the dark depths where terrible beasts lurk, barnacled, pale and ancient.
[ Posted by Reason on December 9, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Penned Cattle of the Blood Witches |
The blood witches of the penisula Sef Asisca are of a beauty fit to ensnare men - but only when seen from afar in lascivious embraces with one another, fair and beckoning as lushly wooded hills upon the Passac coast of Emreca. But the witches are sharp-toothed and black of heart beneath lithe woman-flesh; they feed well upon the blood of slack-faced men kept as cattle in hidden, stinking pens.
The waters about Sef Asisca flow with an oleaginous and subtle poison, such that the great bay beneath the hills is calm and of a green taint, even when great winds blow fog and cloud from the Passac. Drink not from the streams of this land lest you burn with the desire to be meat for the witches table, or blood to paint their skins and slake their thirst. When the winds blow strong, the witches dance naked about their low, strange-shaped dwellings of stone and fitted wood, and consort with one another, with passion and sighing, beneath rows of dripping, fresh-slaughtered men.
It is upon a night of winds that a traveler - or thief, or foolish scholar - might journey the pensinula unnoticed, to enter within certain fallen temples and slumped fanes of a past age. These edifices are shunned by the blood witches, but the final, confirming sigil to many a potent charm might be found etched in worn stone within. Of those who seek such, few return. A sorcerous wealth lies within the darkened places of Sef Asisca, and its lure is the death of thieves and scholars, kept in their greed past the dawn and the dying of the winds.
Of the sorceries and secrets of the blood witches, I will say but this: they are not for men to know lest the blood of their very life already stains smiling lips and sharpened teeth. This will stand as truth until a coven of sorcerors and army of of sigil-marked shields razes all the woods and dwellings of Sef Asisca, and murders every last witch, uncaring of what is learned and what is consigned to flames and destruction.
But Emreca is not as the Meddin lands; the wilds empty of men are deep indeed. There is naught about the woods and poison bay of the blood witches but serpents of the Passac and tall, angry demons, nameless and spine-limbed, that stalk the inland wilds. No waiting army of barbarous men lies scattered and sleeping; no ancient sorceror of ill renown plots within his spire to enslave these witches. So has it has been for an age, for tales of the blood witches of Sef Asisca are told even so far as atop smoking Rania, amongst the Komo of the frozen wastes, and, enviously, by maimed mistresses of the court of the Beast Uvea.
[ Posted by Reason on December 16, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Sorceror Denas, Foul and Forgotten |
It is a pity that the gluttenous sorceror Denas is no longer known in this age, though the twisted stump of a tower built solid and thick to support his folds of flesh and sullen, demon-tainted blood yet stands upon the Meddin shore. Sorcerors and witches both are given to the indulgence of base desires, sated upon slaves, impkin and the compelled, but none since have so enslaved themselves to the hungers of the flesh. Naught but a corpulant beast was Denas, a mass of temper and vile hungers, no more restrained by thought than the most ravenous, gaunt of gorgs. In that, he was more true to his corruption than men and women more blackened by the whisper of hearts and nerves than by rotting, sorcerous gifts of the Undergod Freth.
Well for their sport and cruelty do the lascivious of Harumetha and murderous of Magak forget the might of foul Denas. It would weigh heavy upon their hearts that they stood but a tenth advanced upon a path unperceived, undesired, and yet inevitable upon the learning; malign sorceries would wilt, conspiracies become nerveless, murders aimless and seductions dried of vicious gratification. A pleasure I would take in such, but the vermin, filth and black sorceries of Meddin cities have a place within the doom that will come upon this world of men, and naught may stand to block that path.
The last ruins of the tower of Denas crumble upon the Meddin shore at a place once called Marsay. A port city stood there in a past aeon of man, gone to ruins, then mere grass-sands and the cries of the rerak, flocking to each new death upon the shore. Again rose a high-walled port and mighty merchant empire, only to crumble in the manner of all works of man. A third time was Marsay a port in the age of mighty, crystal-walled Yorm, host to a thousand marvels - but of this all, naught is left.
Atop the dust of three cities spread the ample flesh of Denas, and soon will the last of his tower join those remains. Yet a miasma shrouds the base-stones of Denas' tower upon windless days even in this age, ill remnant of a mark of death and doom once spread across the land and those unfortunate enough to be born beneath the sight of a sorceror of power and malign will.
[ Posted by Reason on December 22, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Toll of Flesh For the Raging Chasm |
Serpent-foaming Lantac and shard-laden waves of the Passac have eaten away at the rock of Emreca through the aeons; at the very narrows of that land runs a mighty, raging chasm of waters to link two oceans. Laid through earth and rock straight as a sword edge, here surged great sea vessels of metal and crystal banners in the last age of Yorm, bearing lords in search of sorcery within the deepest Passac.
The far sands of Meddin lands are the grave of Yorm and its age of wonderous rarities; it may be that crystal tablets yet lie buried, guarded by ghosts of demon-ridden scholars, upon which are written those secrets wrested from Passac waters so long ago. But what matter should they join the black mountain of secrets lost to men? No filthy, broken scribe who hides beneath the fanes of Magak will weep over that which he knows not exists. No masked, unwomaned mistress of the Beast Uvea's court will sigh at that tale of which she hears the name and no more.
I have stood upon hills of naked rock above the steaming jungle of Pan Ma, there to see distant Passac and distant Lantac in the same sweep of my eyes - and the chasm of white waters far below, that even the greatest and most ancient serpents will not brave. The man-large worms of that jungle are a sickly white, and beslime their way between close-pressed trunks, waiting and sliding with the patience of the nerveless until their prey must rest. Beware white-drenched leaves and wood soaked to poison mush, lest you might journey for days without end, without rest, stalked upon each step by worming, faceless demons. But Amaxathroth the Wanderer am I, cursed to live by the Demon-King of the Black Palace, and the charms of poison Kresh are known to me besides - there is naught of threat to one such as I in the worms of Pan Ma.
The chasm to link Lantac and Passac was once bridged by graceful spans, built in an age of priest-lords and mighty, high-walled cities in Emreca. Brave searfarers saw white waters as the floor of a giant's stone-walled temple fane, vaulted by bridges of gleaming white and a sky of blue above. The bridges are no more, many ages gone; eaten by the waters, just as the land has swallowed the cities and ruins of proud priest-lords.
There is but one way I know to cross the chasm, and that is upon the red boats of those who call themselves Marn, and dwell in villages upon the Passac coast where the jungle stands upon tall roots and drinks of the salt water. Scarred, bone-fingered Marn will trade only flesh for their attention and favor, for flesh is sacred to their god of buried, secret altars. Of great regard is the Marn women who weaves dried flesh from a hundred bloody trades, or the Marn man who skillfully steals living flesh from one left to live, bleed and scream in loss.
Ugly are the Marn, but secretive, for I had heard naught of their ways, nor even their very presence upon this world of poison and squalor, when first I descended from worm-ridden Pan Ma to the salt and silt-rooted jungle edge. Their red boats I saw in stone-formed lagoons, and passage I sought - but horrid indeed was my encounter with the flesh traders and their perfected braid of torment, woven of blindness brought by greed, murderous urges and tortures that collect, putrid, in the hearts of men.
Where the chasm rapids pour forth to roil the Passac, I bade my time to bleed from deep and ragged trade wounds into the waters, and then threw the dusky boatman from his red oar to the waves, there to feed sharp-beaked, many-eyed beasts with a taste for the blood of men. This murder and the boat for passage I considered poor indeed in trade for all I was made to learn of the Marn and their ways.
[ Posted by Reason on December 23, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| A Pestilent, Unending Mire |
Facing the Lantac, the land that is called Flada by the brutish daughters of Uvea lies mired like a broad and brooding toad - poisonous, slimed and submerged in muck, save for the most repulsive of protruberances. Great blue flies of stingers the length of a woman's forearm, venomous, slithering qualth and squalid heat are but half the year, the rest comprised of dire storms called up by demons of the Caraben Sea and urged on by sorcerors of the sweltering isles. The mighty winds and salt waves swirl to flatten any endeavor of men and wash away any track laid across these vile swamps.
A fool might journey moons to encompass each last rotting stench of Flada's murk, each subtle variance of swamp and poison vermin glad to feast upon living flesh - should he survive past the very first days. Of such fools, there have been too many to count across the ages, but no sign remains; even their very bones have become mush to feed the purple blooms of the mire. Yet still they would come, were there other than savages in Emreca - an aeon of glittering tales cry and beckon to the greedy hearts of men, and the schemes of women beneath.
Tales of wealth deep within Flada were told in every age that yet retains name and memory; great veins of gold, shining in the last light of sun upon the vile brown waters; ten squat towers of a sorcerous conclave, a library of unrivaled potency upon the upmost reach; the bloating flesh of a dead Undergod, sparkling with gems throughout. A dozen tales I have heard, in the holds of Emreca and farther places besides; cross the Lantac and Passac, and scholars argue over tales descended and embellished from a past age of cities and great vessels to cleave the oceans.
One such tale gave me to rue and laughter, and she who retold it to great regret - that in Flada stood ruined the Black Palace, wherein Amaxathroth the Impetuous won youth eternal in an age gone by. Youth eternal! How I laughed, angry and with the voice of the Demon-King; there is naught of youth in the curse of years, welcomed by Amaxathroth the Cursed or not, and far indeed from Flada once rose the Black Palace. Might you well as seek the heart of a women within the dripping flesh of the Undergod's spawn; beneath the like and outward casts and appurtenances of cruelty there is naught the same. Naught!
There is a truth to the tales of Flada, those that will not rouse my ire, but it is a hidden truth. Know this, scholar of forgotten tales, scribe of cracked tablets from bygone ages: Flada slimes itself in drooling anticipation for the flesh of the foolish, and the hearts of men lust for a fool's death. All else is the embellishment of those who will live, and a demon's hunger for the taste of those who will die.
[ Posted by Reason on December 27, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Spire of Salt, Thirst and Madness |
A line of broken black pylons leads from the bone-strewn and most desolate part of the Vision Desert to the Sea of Salt. Set by men of a past aeon, shimmering in the heat, glistening beneath cold stars, the pylons form a treacherous silken thread to beckon those cast from caravans, hunted by the keen blades of black-clad Amaram or maddened by thirst.
Strewn is the Vision Desert with worn remains of foolish lives from this and many former ages, but not so the broken shores of the Sea of Salt. Few of in this age can claim to have stood upon the crusted salt-sands, and the remains of those who stumble to fall, broken by thirst, at the very last pylon are vanished. No man might know their contortions upon the shallow waters that burn to the very touch, their thrashing upon the poison mud.
The crippled priestess Haneh, who lived three times the span of a man within dark caves beneath the high mount of Jerlasum, told me the why of this in trade for a diadem of her ancestor-god. Those who believe themselves chosen hunger for such trinkets; their hearts would be easily bought were such diadems and jewels not guarded closely and with fervor.
In a past and distant age, the sorceror Gidden long ruled over the people who would claim Jerlasum, and drank deep of the life of men and women to sustain his wasting flesh. He cast their rattling, withered corpses aside to molder beneath the harsh sun. Soon, the dust of the dead came to form a great desert, choking grass and palm, and swirling into the air to scour rock and flesh. What little blood dripped from Gidden's lips and sacrifical altars pooled to form a shallow salt sea amidst the dust.
The desert grew, and still the sorceries of Gidden drew new flesh to his call - to a mighty spire of salt blocks, set about with great and rusted chains, that rose within the shallow Sea of Salt. The thirst-mad and charmed by sorcery, too dry and burned to bleed from cracked skin, would wade into the sea, one by one, with cries and moans of anguish in the voice of circling vagra.
Yet the lives of strong men and lush women, broken upon the desert and consumed utterly, could not sustain Gidden an age. With a great and final sorcery, built upon the bones of a hundred children, he rebuilt his tower within the visions of the dying come to the Sea of Salt. Many-clawed Gidden even now reaches from the pitiful depths of thirst and pain to steal the very body and death of those who come to his domain. The barred cells of his vision-spire fill slowly with the croaking anguish of madmen who cannot die, with gaunt, eye-swollen women who babble in agony for age upon age. Their unending madness and sight into the burning sun are life to the sorceror Gidden.
So spoke the cripple Haneh, served by ten priests as though a queen. I have knelt in the anguish of thirst, sustained by the ancient curse that yet echoes in the halls of demonkind, upon the shores of the Sea of Salt. Yet I have seen no tall spire, heard no call of ancient sorcery. But of bones, ragged cloth and tarnished prizes, there are none past the fiftieth pylon to rise from the sands; all has been swallowed by the burning salt.
The life of Haneh was consigned to the catacombs of ruined, palm-shaded Jerlasum, watched for a year and a day by dour priests who believe their flesh to hold drops of godly blood. Her stone coffer and dry bones remain now, cracked and disheveled, but the diadem is mine once more, for the tale was worth no more than three lives of possession.
[ Posted by Reason on January 3, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
| A Tainted Grove, Born of Demonflesh |
In a deserted place of Espaga, near to the Meddin shores, grows a tainted grove of twisted trees, tall grass and glistening orange fruit - but underfoot is rot and the feel of bone beneath fallen leaves. A nameless lesser Undergod, as dead as alive, reaches up from a deep place beneath the lands of men, strands of ropy demonflesh twisted into every branch and each watery fruit. So the men and women who come here, lost and tempted, never leave.
A sorcery of vibration within the grove calls to the nerves of men, tugs upon the hearts of women, and the eating of demon fruit changes the lost utterly. The essence of the Undergod melts away that which makes the cruelty of man distinct from the cruelty of beasts, severs the screaming ghost from the corrupting flesh. Slavering in the manner of animals, but eyes crying for the ways of man soon lost, these unfortunates eat and eat, growing bloated in limb and torso as though shuddering, olive-skinned bladders of oil.
Finally unable to reach the calling fruit, mewling and blubbering, the most corpulant tear and puncture one another in hunger for the demonflesh, spilling stench and meat turned to liquid rot across the grass and coiling roots. Soon enough, nothing is left to warn away those who will come after - and the nameless Undergod twitches far below in the pleasures its flesh transmits.
Half an age ago, a witch of Malg set fifty of her scheming sisters upon my path to Cadaz, each bearing long needles and vicious sorceries to torment me in vengence for my refusal of the witch's plain and unremarkable favors. The first I drowned, as has been the tradition of ages in wild Espaga, but the others, and their weak-willed, ax-armed lovers of Cadaz, I led for days into the Undergod's grove.
Upon the hill of rocks above the grove, and beneath sun and cloud, I thought of the deserved death to come below, as newly swollen puppets of the Undergod moaned though a mash of fruit and demonflesh. How apt the diorama, the Meddin lands cast in a single expanse - the ever-greedy fattened to incapacity by their excess, given to prey upon one another for the pleasure of demons by a hunger that cannot be sated. In place of twisting trees, there might be the spires of Magak, the opulant halls of Calland - and the wormish sorcerors and fattened merchants who plunder one another's corrupt flesh.
I did not wait to see the fate of the witches and their lovers, for Cadaz, and thence a passage to Jibaral, called me onward.
[ Posted by Reason on January 21, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
| The Murderous Charm |
A second time have I come to bind the blood of a dead thief more tightly to this parchment, prisoning it with ink crushed of withered stems that grow upon the graves of Hambegh - the life of flowers looted from below in summer, as are the graves themselves when winter comes. Old and rotted is this thief's blood now, just as is what lies beneath Hambegh's forested ruins, in caverns once given to black-hearted sorcerors. A life of years has passed - enough to turn young hair white, dead and brittle, enough for Amaxathroth the Wanderer to span these bindings of reed and ink once forward and thence back again to the very beginning.
It was a poorly fated thief to snatch from Amaxathroth in a moment of distraction amidst the market of weaver-women and their rod-wielding masters upon the dockside of Callend, for in those years I wrestled mightily with the Murderous Charm. A gift it was, given unwillingly by the exiled crone Nehebal in her lair of rock and filth beyond Magak. The crone was a motionless plaything of squirming maggots even then, as the thief ran from me with his briefly-held prize, but her choking laughter formed an echo that would not fade. The Charm wrapped itself around the heart and nerves, a word and gesture of such simplicity and black intent so as to speak itself in an unguarded moment. It became a curse upon the cursed, a frustrated doom that locked claws with the will of the Demon-King, sorcery of the Black Palace an age past.
Scribe of letters, brave to risk my ink and words, do you know the fate of all who learn the Charm? It is a grim passage, to slay all around in moments of anger or loose thought, one by one, until naught is left but filth and gibbering in a lonely cave, and the heart is clenched tight about a single word and single gesture - until you cannot but refrain from shrieking it unto yourself, and thence be extinguished. This and many other gifts has the Undergod Freth inflicted upon men and women who deserved such and more.
The blood upon this parchment once heard the Murderous Charm, and was spilled, cast about with cries and screams by teeth of sorcery-maddened weaver-women. Such is the fate of thieves, and should but be the fate of all men, were women to work their true will upon this shriveled, faded world. Eager was the charm that day in its echo from the gilded walls of the Dockmaster Yallus; men who marked womanflesh with rod and whip were rent and broken by the shrieking mob, thrown bloodied into the water for many-eyed spine-crabs, a floating feast of fresh offal for the angry crathegulls.
I have left this blood a life of years in which to seep from these bindings and hide away in soil and sand - long enough, I would have claimed, but still I see the remains of thievery yet soil my work in yearning for punishment. So I recall the shape of the Murderous Charm once more, having wrestled it from my heart a lifetime past - and set it below in the obscuring manner of the crystal scribes of Yorm, as but the smallest barrier to a doom of your own devising. May the Charm bring you the fate your heart deserves.
[ Posted by Reason on February 3, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
| Scholars
Tomes of Amaxathroth > Scholars |
| Library of the Reddened King |
Beneath the palace of the Reddened King lies a library vault to hold his ten Tomes of Amaxathroth the Wanderer. The vault is rumored far and wide, well-hidden and guarded by the most savage bandsmen of the Edge-Walled City - those yellow-painted ones who wail and cut at one another, dancing about fires at the palace gates. Naked scholars, captive and tormented by the bandsmen, are bound in chains and carried downwards by torchlight with each new night. They must wring new secrets from the Tomes, or be cut at each limb and hurled four ways at once from the Scar Tower above the market of the starving bands.
The Reddened King is hungry for a knowledge of the farthest lands; bandsmen who prove their wiles in the Pointed Maze - and yet live - are sent away on direction of the Tomes and tortured scholars. The returned bear heads of the most wise and honored men of far cities, for the Reddened King dines only upon travel-dessicated brains, and in this grows ever more cruel and powerful with each passing year. Head-bearers are gifted with great rubies and pleasing slaves - or are slain by jealous and cruel-mouthed bands for the amusement of the powerful.
That which my master knows of Amaxathroth - wanderer, murderer, cursed man and scholar - came copied in blood, upon scraps hidden about the bodies of those long cut four ways and eagerly eaten. The words of Amaxathroth have a manner of seeping from the strictures placed about them by jealous Kings.
[ Posted by Reason on October 18, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Hidden Vale of Cultured Brutes |
The fat, pock-faced dockmasters of Calland greatly prize the blue-black horns of mountain jalsque. They grind the horns of that ill-tempered beast for philtres to ply upon Calland maidens, or as bribes for lustful sorcerors of Magak and Harumetha. Why, the great and reviled Massas had a horn to mount upon each and every torch bracket of her reception hall - until she was cut apart and burned by those captains whose labor filled her coin vault. This, I am sure you know already. Let me tell you a little more, however, for nearby lies an interesting tale.
Lulled from sense by Calland coins, the foolish have long traveled to the dolesome Grey Peaks, a wall of few doors that divides the lands of men. There, they seek the jalsque with spear and net. Most are caught and slowly consumed by winged demons, or crushed by the Garamek Worm that coils itself about an entire mountain. Yet there are some few who have made their names known by luck or skill in the hunt.
Torthen the Climber claimed the skulls of twenty jalsque in his years as hunter of the Grey Peaks, proof of his worth piled before his tumbledown tower outside the gates of Calland. Such was his renown, none sought to disturb his cobwebbed door in the year and day of a hunt.
It came to pass that Torthen followed a mighty red jalsque of great strength, far into the Grey Peaks, farther than any man of Callend had gone before. Steep and jagged were the mountainsides, lacking path and shelter - and the demons flew above, screaming to one another. For all his prowess with spear and slope, Torthen would have been carried away to torment by the winged horrors, but that a great storm of rain and sudden rivers came upon the mountains. In but a short time, the the treacherous rocks slid Torthen the Climber into a deep ravine, and pinned him there above a raging torrent.
Upon awakening as the storm had passed, Torthen found himself surrounded by misshapen brutes - shambling echoes of men, twisted of face and thick of limb, yet clad in well-made clothing after the fashion of craftsmen. They set upon him, binding him, and there was naught he could so ambushed and half-buried by rocks carried with his fall. The brutes carried him away, running like jalsque across slopes that no man of Callend could match, grunting to one another in a coarse tongue.
The brutes carried Torthen down and down into a green valley of grass and twining trees below the high peaks, and there he saw many more of their kind. Every tree was set precisely, and huts and halls of carefully-fitted stone formed a circle at the very center of it all. If not for the ill-shaped creatures before his eyes, Torthen might have thought himself within a sanctuary of those who built ancient Yorm, long before the sands overtook its well-formed streets.
Placed and barred within a hut, alone upon a well-crafted bed, it did not take Torthen long to slip his bonds. Was he not Torthen the Climber, who wrestled down his fifteenth jalsque and broke its neck across a high rock spur with his own hands? However well made and well tied, the ropes of half-men would be no obstacle.
Through barred and slatted window of finely waxed wood, then, Torthen saw a gathering of brutes from all across the vale. Such an array of faces and bodies - fit only for the drug-addled dreams of beggars in the spice markets of Alacran, or the waxen curse figurines that Magaken sorcerors melt to bring anguish upon their victims. Yet in form of the most peaceful and civilized people of ancient Yorm did these brutes consort themselves, gathering and speaking in turn as wise sages. About and through their ugly, polite throng passed a large and well-used book of leather, marked well upon its bindings by a blackened symbol I think you well know - yes, a tome of Amaxathroth.
Yet Torthen knew not then what he saw, more valued than all the jalsque horns of the Grey Peaks. Perhaps it is as well, for even had he escaped with the tome as well as his life - there are a thousand who would slay him for it. But escape Torthen did; whilst the brutes held council and debated in their gruntish tongue, he took stones from the far wall and slipped away, stealthy and unseen, as only a hunter can be.
I have heard like tales as this one. I have heard tell of Borok of the White Spears who sought to loot great red rubies from mines of the Reddened King in the mountains above the Edge-Walled City. Or of Nelphen the Sea Captain, run aground upon a fog-bound isle where the distant mountain-tops shone with gold. Yet there is always the hidden vale, and the brutes who act with a manner that is gone from the world of men - and there is always the tome of Amaxathroth.
More than this, I do not know. Perhaps there are those who do, but their price may be too high for one who desires to keep both limbs and blood.
[ Posted by Reason on October 21, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| Tomb of the Patient |
Amaxathroth has not wandered the world in an age; his tomes decay, his words stolen and hoarded yet by wizened sorcerors who cling to life like leeches in their towers. King and Lords, who would suffer a thousand torments to gain the curse of the nameless Demon-King, devise worse tortures for scholars who fail in finding the road to the Tomb of Amaxathroth.
Amaxathroth the Patient does not laugh at these fools, nor at us, for we are less than worms to his gaze. He waits for the world of men to end, or perhaps for the Demon-King to rise from an ancient, hidden coffer beneath the ruins of the Black Palace and forget his wrath. The dust covers Amaxathroth who has learned all that can be learned, seated upon the last of his Tomes, waiting.
The seeker who disturbs Amaxathroth will find wisdom not meant for those uncursed. He who finds and descends into the Tomb will ask one question, and give sanity in trade for an answer that might never be used. Amaxathroth has become a God, and we his priests, who sacrifice all we hold most valuable, the better to impale ourselves upon his words.
[ Posted by Reason on October 24, 2006 | Permanent Link ]
| The Mad Scribe and Limbs Torn From Scholars |
Of all the works laid at the restless feet of Amaxathroth, the Blue Tome is that most often found in the collections of the credulous, so called for the Blue Sigil upon the covering parchment. Its prevalence is the work of the Mad Scribe, who once held the four-faced spire of Magak as her own, and drove the scholars of that murderous city into the filth and darkness beneath to hide.
The Blue Tome was to be copied from the second binding of Amaxathroth the Cursed, inked a hundred times over by the dread construction of the Mad Scribe: yellow rope, aged wood, sorcery and fifty arms torn from the finest scholars of the Prime Fane; the teeth of impkin to gnaw and sharpen quills; two hearts of gorg to beat forth blood; the nerves of lesser demons to string the parts into one; the scaly wings of a roarch to beat the whole into motion.
Such a vile screaming the sorcerous creation made as it twisted the words and scratched great vituperations upon parchment that all of Magak fled - save for the Mad Scribe, who wrestled with her creation and screamed her own potent curses. For a night and a day, none dared enter the city, such were the shrieks and growls, the booming shouts and cackling of demons, such was the dire reputation of the Mad Scribe. When all was silent once more, lesser sorcerors and priests returned in trepitude to find naught remaining of either the Mad Scribe or her sorcerous construction - save for a great hole burst through the uppermost reach of the four-faced spire, and Blue Tomes scattered about the base.
Beware the Blue Tome! Many are the tales of sorcerors slain and scribes trapped by the demon-tainted words within, but I say there is little to choose between the cursed hand of Amaxathroth, and hatred given voice by Gorg blood pumped through the stolen limbs of scholars. Heed either at risk of your life given to eternal torment by demonkind.
Since the age of the Mad Scribe, always there is one in Magak who lusts after the same heights of sorcery, one to cull the scholars who live as rats in filth and ruins beneath the feet of sorcerors. The priest Thodar of the Fane of the Undergods has taken this place these past years, callous lord to a waxen-faced flock drained of their very will and life. The gold of his coffers calls diseased and starving brigands from cave and hill to creep across the broken walls of Magak by night, and sends them below the spires and fanes as limb-thieves. With great hooks and rusty axes, the rabble hunt skulking scholars of sewer and tunnel; each morning, a bloody pile of severed limbs brings Thodar closer to the mantle of the Mad Scribe - and his doom.
[ Posted by Reason on January 28, 2007 | Permanent Link ]
