The Admonition Warning

A peculiar animosity grew from the stone steeple that spit from the ground and raised itself like an obelisk into the sky. Disturbing statues of demons crouched on their perches, guarding the church walls. The church stood high on a hill that watched a lonely village closely. It would seem that the sun rose and fell behind the church like a pendulum. The church seemed to reverberate from its own accord, rising and falling in the night's purple twilight.

A man walked up the cobble-stoned road that led to the church. He wore a bright white cloak that hovered around his legs. A hood covered his face in a shadowy dampness. He quietly drifted from step to step. With his alien apparition, the citizens looked at him with idle curiosity. Children stopped playing their games to look at the oddly robed creature crawling through the marketplace. The man did not turn to look at the townspeople; his face still and unhindered. There was a repugnant air to him—something dark and un-human.

He passed the spectators and continued up to the base of the hill. On the hill's peak lay the church. He opened a gate and began to walk the curling trail that led up to the church doors. He opened the large wooden doors that creaked open like some loud requiem. The seats were empty. Robed people went about their daily tasks among the church walls. The man made his way down the marble floor way to the first bench. The man sat on the front bench, kneeling his head in recital.

A large statue of the savior, singed on the cross, stood above on the church wall. Christ watched the empty room with great intensity, burning away all unholy desires and sins. His body was painted, his eyes blue as the sky. His hair rose down around his left shoulder. The cross was twined in spiked metal, to symbolize the crown he wore. His body was painted a bright alabaster. There was one thing wrong with the statue—something that had not appeared there before. In the statue's eyes deep crimson and scarlet blood began to leak from the blue, falling to the ground below.

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Three hours later, the entire town gathered inside the church halls and sat among themselves. In the vigilant twilight of the candle glow, the town prayed in woe and regret. Hysteria grasped a man who stood at the podium, screaming at the sky in his native tongue.

The man in white continued to sit, his head slouched over. He was awake, and stared at his tan-colored boots while he fiddled with an ivory-colored wand. He pulled up the wand from its clothed sheath and unnoticed pointed it at the man. The man immediately changed his expression, becoming lethargic. The crowd didn't seem to notice, as they hung on his silence. The man in white moved his mouth—as did the man on the podium. In their native tongue, he spoke.

"You took what I held dear. You hid it from the entire world, fearing it to come back and destroy you. You did not destroy it, for it held information alien to you." He paused through the priest, watching the entire crowd through the priest's eyes. "The item that you have you will never understand. I'm here to warn. I am warning the holders of this book, who secretly listen among us. You have seen things that you cannot comprehend. Things that should've been buried long ago."

"You know not yet of what you have done to yourselves. You have doomed yourselves by taking what was prized. That what was prized was also damned. There can be nothing here except for ashes. As a warning of what will happen in the future. For those who can no longer hear, your blood will be wiped upon the book's pages!"

People in the crowd seemed to cry out, their prayers becoming louder to the omniscient force that they perceived to be listening.

"Your leaders have purposely held this information from you, so you would know nothing of its identity. Yet they study it—quite often—trying to acquire its knowledge. The world of the living cannot comprehend its ideas!" The man said once more. "Return it to the ashes. There can be nothing left."

"Priests of the High Church! Return the book to me and I will leave without regret. If you do not, your citizens will pay." With that, the priest fell to the floor behind the podium. His breathing became irregular as he thrashed on the ground on his own accord. The man in white got up from his seat and looked at the hushed hall. He then walked slowly to the podium and waited. Minutes passed within the horrified hall without any movement. In his vigil, he bowed to the denizens and leapt from the podium to the marble path. He walked briskly to the door and opened them to the rolling and piercing rainfall. He looked back once more at the crowd and smiled. He then leapt out the doors and slammed them shut behind him.

As he walked down the hill to the town, smoke began to rise from inside the church. He looked back on it without surprise. Suddenly the obelisk of stone and wood was engulfed in flame. It lit up the sky, a rolling plume of obsidian radiating off the flames into the sky. The sky lit up with lightning as the building became scorched and cindered by the raging inferno. The church began to collapse, one wall at a time, sending mountains of sparks flying into the midnight sky.

The building was destroyed. Not a pillar stood among the heaped and ruined rubble. The man descended down the hill to the town and walked among its now empty streets. He put his wand into his cloak. As he walked into the darkness it became impossible to tell what was the onyx of the night, or the man's cloak, which turned pitch-black, black as the world surrounding him.