Thirty pieces of gold were tossed onto the pile that had accumulated over the past year. Altogether, there were now almost 600 pieces. Rubbing his hands together in glee, the Duke of Weselton stood back and admired his collection. He didn't spend too long gloating over his riches, though; as the sunlight from outside shone through the windows and into his vault, it reflected off of the precious metals, casting eerie patterns over the walls. The Duke felt a sense of foreshadowing, as though the gold itself was trying to remind him of something. He didn't like the feeling.
The Duke stepped out and shut the door behind him, turning the key in the lock. With his wealth secure, he took a moment to look out the window, not one facing the ocean, but rather, one facing towards the main village.
As he peered out, the Duke could see the telltale signs of his nation's decay. Most houses were now dilapidated, overgrown with foliage and encrusted with dirt. The Duke's own villa was one of the few buildings left that had not degraded since Arendelle's embargo, mostly due to his loyal (fearful) servant staff. Where the people of Weselton were once lively and healthy, their numbers had now dwindled, with many of them reduced to wandering in the streets, starving, searching in vain for scraps of food. The little marketplace, with its small rations, was nowhere near enough to supply everyone.
A kinder man would have felt deep sympathy for the people, but the Duke had no remorse. Why should he care? They were just commoners, mere peasants. He was a royal. The only reason he set aside any gold at all for them was so he wouldn't have to put up with a potential uprising. That, and he still needed to keep his staff and guards fed.
It was never good for a slaveholder, if all his slaves died off.
The Duke's elitist musings were interrupted when he heard light tapping coming from the window on the opposite end of the room. He wondered who would need to get his attention with such an unusual method. And then he wondered how it was possible for anyone to be making those noises.
He was on the fifth floor; there wasn't a single ladder in Weselton that reached that high. There were no trees that close to his villa, either. Whatever was on the outside of the window, was certainly not human.
The tapping sounds continued, almost like they were daring the Duke to look back. His blood ran cold. What horrible, gargantuan thing could have possibly been making those noises, hitting against the window with its deformed appendage?
The Duke steeled himself and took a big, deep breath as he quickly turned around, and saw...
A bird.
A damned harmless little bird. A pigeon, hitting its pink foot against the window every few seconds, a small cylindrical container strapped to its chest. Moving across the room, the Duke opened the window, taking the pigeon in one hand and unfastening the container with the other.
Weselton had not received a single letter in months. Who could have possibly been writing to him? Opening the container, he removed the object inside; a tiny letter, rolled up into a scroll. It was bound by a wax seal, and as the Duke looked at it, his eyes narrowed. Embedded into it was the symbol of a crocus, the official crest of Arendelle. He instantly knew who it was that had written the letter. He was disgusted, but at the same time, curiosity filled him. Breaking the seal, the Duke unfurled the letter; the paper was longer than it appeared when it was rolled up. He began to read the neat, cursive writing.
To His Grace the Duke of Weselton,
I am writing this letter to you, out of concern for your citizens. It has come to my attention that you are lacking essential goods, and there are currently zero countries which engage in commerce with Weselton.
I now realize that it is likely your local economy is in shambles, and your people are starving. I would like to send temporary relief to them, from Arendelle's food surplus.
In addition, I am willing to renegotiate a trade agreement with you. However, your actions in Arendelle were inexcusable and downright criminal, and so I ask that after the agreement is finalized, you step down from your position and appoint a new official to act as Duke.
I await your reply, and it is my hope that you will do the right thing, for your nation and for your people.
Sincerely,
Her Majesty Queen Elsa of Arendelle
The Duke ripped the letter to pieces, then crumpled it all in his hands. He moved to the window to toss it out, and noticed the carrier bird was still there. It must have been told to wait for him to attach his own message to it before flying back to Arendelle. Letting the pieces fall out the open window, he grabbed the pigeon and, before it could react, twisted its head around. It only had time to emit a small squawk before its neck broke.
The Duke wound back and threw the bird's corpse out the window, as far as he could. He was never very strong, and the carcass only traveled about 20 feet, landing somewhere in a patch of grass where it would no doubt be eaten later by a scavenging animal, or maybe even a lucky Weselton citizen who managed to sneak onto the estate without being caught.
Fuming, the Duke stood there for a moment, letting the breeze blow onto his face.
"How dare that icy bitch try and tell me to do anything? It's her fault Weselton's economy is like this, not mine," he muttered to himself.
Once more, the Duke looked out to the horizon, at the sea. His newer trading partners had enriched him far more than Arendelle ever had, and he was not about to end that agreement.
The Duke's mind wandered to thoughts of the little secret society he was a member of. Out of all the 12 members, he was the only one to have fully retained his humanity. The rest of them, through their constant dark rituals, had transformed, slowly beginning to resemble the thing from the sea that met with the Duke every so often.
He suddenly started to wonder why he was the only fully-human cultist in the organization. He suspected there was something his Lord was not telling him, something he was not privy to, but he knew better than to press the matter. In due time, he was sure everything would be explained.
The Duke of Weselton shut the window, then walked over to his closet. He opened it, viewing the cloak that hung inside.
Tonight's gathering was going to be very important.
If one had asked the young woman how she thought she would eventually die, she would have given two answers, based on a best-case scenario, and a worst-case.
In the best-case scenario, she would have died at a ripe old age, having had many children and grandchildren, surrounded by her loving family. In the worst-case scenario, her life would be cut short by an illness, or she would perhaps suffer from an accident.
The death that she never expected, though, was being tied to the ground, gagged, and ritualistically slaughtered by an ugly, inhuman thing wearing a robe.
Had there not been a gag masking the sound, the woman's scream would have carried through the whole forest. Instead, she could only make muffled cries of pain and terror as the high priest cut into her chest with the knife. Soon, her sounds were reduced to whimpers, and then, nothing; she had bled to death.
The priest peeled back the layer of skin from his victim's chest, revealing her internal organs. One by one, each cult member came up to the corpse and cut away an organ from the woman's exposed cavity. One disciple took the liver, another took the spleen, another took a kidney, another took a lung; the Duke was the last one up, taking the heart for himself. The cultists arranged themselves in a circle, around their leader.
Digging his razor-like nails into the woman's dead eyes, the high priest tore them from the sockets. He stood up and spread his arms wide, holding an eyeball in each open palm, looking up to the sky.
In unison, they chanted.
"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate, open the Way."
The Duke watched as the eyeballs, and his Lord's eyes, lit up. They glowed bright, with every known color flashing through them rapidly, as well as other colors, unsettling ones which did not seem to fit in with the regular spectrum. The Duke could not look at them for too long; it hurt his head to do so.
The high priest shut his eyes and stopped breathing, standing as still as he could. He looked as though he were trying to listen for something.
"I see. I see...all of it. The Way..."
His eyelids opened, and the colors faded from his eyes, along with the ones in his hands.
The Duke had seen this type of ritual done only once before, but he knew what would come next. He didn't want to do it, but he had to.
Collectively, the cult raised the woman's organs to their mouths and began to eat them. Most of them, with their large, mutated mouths, were able to consume their morbid meal with ease. But the Duke had to take his time, carefully biting off pieces of the heart and slowly chewing them, before suppressing his gag reflex and swallowing. He wanted to throw up.
When it was all finished, they raised their arms and recited one last twisted ode.
"The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, the Old Ones shall be!"
Thousands upon thousands of miles away, deep in the Pacific Ocean, something stirred.
