Chapter III
Swallowed by the Paradigm
The man sat in the dim gloom of the wide, blue-stoned entrance hall, back against the high wall that seemed to disappear into the darkness above. He was reminded somewhat of the valley that he and his companion had crossed, for they were similar in that his eyes could not cut through that thick veil. The difference was that the darkness was above him this time, and indeed, he half-expected more of those sorry, incomplete creatures from the valley's chasm to claw their way downward at him again, crying their desperate, needy, tormented cries.
Instead, he got something worse: silence. Complete and utter silence. The atmosphere was so thick that it masked his breathing, and even the breathing of the wolf, who sat tentatively beside him, staring down the hall ahead of them. It disturbed him, made him feel as if he had crossed the thin line between life and death without even walking it first.
But at least one could see in here without the aid of torch light. There was nothing to illuminate it, yet somehow, the room seemed to react to the man and the wolf, granting them a thirty-foot line of lesser light in all directions. It was a grim one, but suitable, all the same.
The man would have found himself wondering exactly how tall the tower was, or even how high the ceilings of its rooms truly were had it not been for his dismal, almost blank expression as he stared at the ground, his chin brought low by the weight that was the irrevocable realization that his stomach was thoroughly empty and his mind was full to bursting: filled with dancing towers and smeared tapestries that mocked his ordinary perception of the world around him. Because of it, he had nearly strolled like an ignorant child into the teeth of one of the most legendary and deadliest creatures known to the world of man. The only reason that he had survived long enough to fly from an inescapably dooming maw and into the questionable, sinister, and dread-ridden jaws of another was because Lesrahýr had been quick to sense his companion's astounding foolishness, wrestle him down by the arm with his muzzle, and fling him out of the way.
This tower was not merely some object of arcane power that tainted the land around it; it was a sentient, conniving thing, perhaps possessed of a diseased spirit of some kind that carried a will.
A seductive will of a fiendishly pessimistic visage disguised as an optimistic doorway to an accomplished understanding of providence.
It would have made him laugh, had he not been slowly dying both from it and the way that his stomach twisted, churned, and turned inside-out. How many days had it been since his supplies and water had run out and they had begun their journey to this altogether damned place? Three? Four?
Either way, they did not have much time left. Lesrahýr was not showing it, but the man knew that he must have been suffering even more.
What he did know was that he could not afford to draw on the tower's aura again. He felt…tainted…almost halfway through the decomposition that a corpse would take. His muscles, though useable, were losing their feeling, as if his very nerves were dissolving. When he swallowed, the dissatisfying, viscous liquid went down a dull, scratchy throat made of rough branches encased in stone, and though he felt no unevenness in his bosom, his heart was, quite simply, beating slower. It was as if time had been isolated around him and slackened as part of some jest made in very, very poor taste.
He did not even want to think about his own mind.
He lifted his head and looked over at Lesrahýr, reached his hand out, and tentatively stroked his fur, which appeared to be black in this gloom. The wolf looked back at him blankly.
"I'm sorry, old friend," said the man, his voice weak, "I have been losing myself in this place."
The wolf made no sound, but stretched his neck to lick the man's face. The man smiled a fatigued smile, circles under his eyes. It disappeared when he stood up. Stepping to the middle of the hallway, he faced the void ahead.
"I don't know what awaits us," he said, sounding a bit more alive now; "I don't even know how we made it this far."
He looked down at the wolf, his expression serious; "But we will press on. The gods have willed us here for a reason."
Lesrahýr lowered his own head, brilliant, golden eyes like beacons in the gloom.
"But if anything untoward should happen to me, you must leave me, so that you can make it out alive."
The wolf growled, obviously and, predictably enough, disagreeing. The man knelt down beside him.
"I know, my friend," he said, stroking Lezrahýr's fur again; "I know."
The man said no more. He merely stared into the wolf's eyes, which blazed defiantly over bared teeth. Both were silent, and both felt their stomachs growl and ache with hunger. The man, though, was relentless. The wolf, though menacing, eventually buried his teeth behind his muzzle, and the fire in his eyes cooled.
The man nodded once, and stood up again; "Whatever lies ahead"—he swallowed—"it for damned sure will not keep us from food and drink any longer!"
He looked back down at his companion, flashing a grin. The wolf barked enthusiastically, and the both of them began their trial through the stone abysm ahead.
Three triangles, in a triad, inverted and encircled.
Such was the carving on the stone slab that confronted her, defining the opposite edge of the flat mountaintop that she now stood upon.
Hours upon hours of climbing, and her hands and feet were finally free of those ash-ridden stairs.
Above swirled the angry vortex, like a sickly mouth. It vomited a fell air and its cloud skin broke out in endless violent streams of electricity, always striking at the mountain, like the smitten younger brother of two, beating at his elder for the substance that he himself did not have.
And she was the little sister caught right in the middle, yet she paid no attention to her 'siblings.' That crest on the slab was familiar…yet somehow, it was not…
The mountain shone its electrically brilliant shades of blue, casting white shadows all over her skin, and making it appear to possess even less of a complexion than already apparent. The torrent and the downpour persisted, and the wind blew what remained of her tattered and bisected shirt off of her shoulders. She hardly noticed.
She stepped curiously toward the slab, her expression mistrustful. It protruded from the mountain like a loose piece of necrotic flesh. The crest was perfectly and cleanly embedded into it, too smooth—almost as smooth as steel—to have been chiselled.
It was when she reached the centre of the plateau that the mountain shook like an angry rabid hound, as if the elder brother had finally tired of his younger's insubordination. Sure enough, the lightning calmed to a rest, the rain stopped, and the torrent faded away to nothing. And the young sister fell backward with hands clutching her hair in terror, having never seen this side of her elder protector before.
But she was drawn out again by the hot black light that licked its way like fire out of the slab's crest. From the crest beat a single thick pulse that sent a swift ocean wave through the air, distorting reality in all directions for as far as one could track it into the distance. Nervously, she stood up while the mountain rumbled again, though more softly this time. When she did, she noticed the dried bloodstain at the foot of the slab's crest for the first time. There was no contemplation. Just a brief second of uneasiness before her dead heart sunk even lower when the crest's black fire arose into the air and scattered into hundreds of the same red-eyed, ravenous bats that she remembered from those visions she had seen—those visions of unimaginable cruelty and death. They circled the mountaintop, their flapping, rustling, musical orchestra filling the toxic air.
She froze. It was all she could do on this plateau, with a closing wall of bats on the rise, a steep incline of ashen sword rock all around, and the gullet of the sky above.
Then, everything was flooded with the crimson veil, more prominent in her memories than even the bats. They converged in a sickeningly graceful spiral toward the space just short of the centre of the crest, and became something altogether different.
Instantly, she recalled the disfigured Wraith in the woods, and for one terrible half of a second, she thought it was coming for her now, materializing with her atop this mountain to separate her head from her body.
What came instead was not the Wraith, but certainly not relieving in the slightest: An oddly-shaped head atop a fluttering, tattered cloak, drooling acidic blood from a deformed mouth that was forcibly and permanently contorted into a cruel, sinister grin, just below a pair of purple pupils within pale, green, bulging wide-eyes contrasting with a golden orb caged inside a jail of bones floating two feet above the plateau.
The eyes morphed into her mind, where they and their native face turned red and peeled away into an ugly, bloody mess. The panic in her heart spiked, but left her face behind in a dumb, catatonic stupor, her own eyes half-opened and her body limp. She was only dimly aware of how her bones took on the feeling of course sand running into her bloodstream while she was savagely thrown by unknown means off of the side of the mountain. Her perception of passing sword rock, high cloud, and the black horizon blurred and ghosted into a grey mess as her body spun downward.
Then, her stomach changed places—from her throat to her waist—when her body slowed and halted its spinning and reversed its direction.
In a way, it was euphoric. The terror. The imprisoned scream that beat in her lungs to bursting. The sensation of somehow flying upward. The clearing of her vision while the desecrated air slammed into her face, making clear enough the gullet of the sky that was rapidly approaching her—or rather, that she was rapidly approaching.
She wanted to cry, but her eyes had gone dry; she wanted to speak her last words, but her throat had been choked out; she wanted to feel the last beat that her heart should have been able to make. Alas, this would be an unkind and silent, yet unquiet death lacking any measure of peace, deliverance, or even a true sense of finality save for the end of a displeasing muss of grievous memories that she could barely begin to understand.
She flew past the lips of the unnatural beast in the sky, and her sight—the last thing of any perceivable value that she had left—was taken away from her.
And the voice of the old woman, passionless and stern, delivered its verdict.
Three triangles, in a triad, encircled and familiar.
Such was the giant impression fitting the gloriously gargantuan door that confronted the man and his companion. The door bore an intricate metallic design not unlike winding vines. The man found it magnificently beautiful; the architect was long dead, he mused, but he nevertheless admired his or her skill in crafting it. That was, so long as that person would not have attempted to kill him on sight once he passed through it. Given the nature of this tower, it would not have surprised him. In fact, he was sure of it; nothing benevolent could construct a structure prone to such corruption, both of the surrounding land, and the spirit.
He reached out to touch the smooth, chilled surface. His hand moved over several deep gashes before trailing away to the charm under his shirt, resting against his chest as he stared up at the emblem in its centre. He pulled the charm out, its chain falling limp out of his collarless shirt; it was as if it were made specifically as a miniature replica of this very symbol to compliment it.
But this was an emblem of the Sacred Relic recognized throughout his country as holy; why did it adorn the door of a place as accursed as this?
More was amiss here than he had originally imagined—and he had imagined quite a bit by this point. He looked tentatively down at Lesrahýr, whose expression was neutral and patient.
The man's eyes returned sceptically to the door. No handles, levers, or other mechanisms via which it might have been opened. It may as well have been a wall. A pretty one, but a wall, all the same.
He dropped the charm back into his shirt and placed his hands on his hips. A loud growl emanated from his stomach and the burning in his eyes forced him to blink several times in quick succession, as if to magnify their predicament. Not that he had any expectation that food was waiting on the other side.
He touched the door again while Lesrahýr sat down.
"Troubling," the man muttered simply.
"Oh, indeed!"
The man whirled around, his crossbow in front of him in a flash. Lesrahýr was already on his flank, poised to strike at the source of that voice.
But there was nothing there but the man, the wolf, and a disturbing titter that echoed throughout the hallway.
"Yee hee hee!"
And then, all was silent again, and the man was suddenly highly discomforted with the gloom and how limited his line of sight was. They waited in their positions for a long time, beads of sweat running down the man's temples.
And then, the sound of bare feet upon stone. Faint, but becoming ever louder. It was too frequent per step for it to be someone walking, and it was coming from the way they had come.
Something was running at them.
The man tightened his grip on his crossbow, almost halfway pulling its trigger. His heart beat as fast as the platting footsteps, louder and louder.
Plat, plat, plat…
The sound was joined by a low, phlegmatic gurgle that only just passed for breathing.
In the next second, he could see it: the naked, grey-blue humanoid figure—a tall, heavily emaciated thing with freakishly long legs and arms bearing stretched, clawed hands, morphing out of the darkness. Atop its equally stretched, thin neck was an ovular head bearing three symmetrical pairs of small, orb-like red eyes and between them was a disproportionately large mouth. Through its two rows of three-inch pointed teeth came a high-pitched, tortured scream of rage that tore off that thick blanket of silence instantly as those frightening, superfluously-pumping limbs carried it toward whom it intended to bite and tear and make into its supper.
The man's eyes showed horrific anxiousness as he clenched his teeth and let fly with an arrow at it. It struck its narrow chest pointedly, and it screamed again, louder this time, its body recoiling at the point of impact. But it did not stop.
One second. The man cursed, dropped the crossbow, and drew his knife, all seemingly in one motion, but even that was not fast enough. The creature slammed into him shoulder-first, grabbing his throat and putting him into the door behind him. It screeched again as the man coughed, extending its neck to bite his nose off. Its teeth came but an inch short. It looked back and bellowed once again in outrage when it saw the wolf clamping down on its leg and pulling at its leg. It kicked at him violently, attempting to shake him off, but to no avail; Lesrahýr's jaw was too strong, and he was pulling it away from the man's face, which was turning slightly purple from the asphyxiation.
The creature took to flailing in desperation, not only increasing the pressure on the man's neck, but shaking him around brutally in the process. His eyes rolled to the back of his head. But the creature could not shake Lesrahýr off. Its arms were long, but the wolf soon pulled the creature to their limit. When it finally let go, its claws left three cuts on both sides of the man's neck. He yelled out in pain, clutching at the wounds with his hands. His blood seeped through his fingers.
Lesrahýr, growling, dragged the creature, kicking and screaming with a feral madness, backward, planted his feet on the stone, and flung it ten feet to the side. It landed and rolled with a resounding thud, but it quickly rebounded and, without even completely regaining its footing, charged at Lesrahýr, sounding again its vicious shriek. The wolf met him head-on, and they rolled over the stone in a writhing heap. Lesrahýr had lunged perfectly, getting his mouth around the creature's head. Biting down as hard as he could, he withstood its unrelenting struggling and, paws planted firmly upon its shoulders, wrenched at its head several times until he ripped it clean off, black blood gushing in a tiny stream out of the neck.
He tossed the head aside with a grunt that almost seemed revolted. It landed on the stone with a fleshy thud, before rolling and hitting the wall, the crudely-hanging throat of it leaving little dabs of blood where it hit the ground. The body writhed for another second or two, before relaxing and accepting the death that had come to it. The other half of its throat drowned in the black pool that it had made.
Sitting and leaning against the door with an expression of barely-controlled agony was the man. The wolf trotted toward him, nudging his cheek with his muzzle. The man got up, clenching his teeth and favouring the left side of his neck. He stared at the carcass of the creature, such a bluish-grey hue that it almost blended into the stone that it rested upon. The man let out a few sharp exhales, eyeing the body as if it would reanimate itself. Why not? Everything else in this land was dead, so far as he could see.
But it would not be so: whatever this thing was, it appeared that it would stay dead, as it should, and not just because it was the natural order of things.
He turned around to face the door again, and as soon as he did so, the crest of the Holy Relic lit up in golden light. A crack appeared down the door's middle as it opened slowly inward with the sound of an unholy creak coupled with dragging stone upon stone. It suddenly occurred to the man that he did not want it to open at all, not even a little bit. He smelled a tomb ahead—the stench of wet, rotting bodies. Lesrahýr was no less repulsed.
The titter again—"Yee hee hee!"—as soon as the doors clunked against the walls. This time, the man was not as receptive: he merely tilted his head upward, looking thoroughly irritated.
"Who are you?" he called into the gloomy hallway ahead, "What do you want?"
No answer. Nothing but the titter: a rapid giggle that belonged only to madmen, echoing up and down the hall.
The man, resigned, softened his expression, but it would not last long: he was instantly unnerved when he looked back to see that the corpse had disappeared, head and all. Not even the blood remained. It was as if nothing had ever lain there.
A bead of sweat ran down the man's temple as he quickly scanned the hall. No sign of it. It was gone. Completely gone.
The man exhaled heavily, having held his breath. He wanted to close his eyes and collect himself, but he decided against it. What would be there when he opened them again? He did not dare to find out.
He turned to face the opened door again, looking gravely down at the wolf. Lesrahýr returned it. The man swallowed.
He forced himself to turn his eyes forward. Just barely, he saw the faint image of a face just at the edge of the gloomy light, looking at him with dead, empty eyes. In the less than a second, it was as gone as the corpse.
The bead reached his cheekbone, and he swallowed again.
He took the first step. Another, then another. Slow steps. Cautioned steps. Terrified steps.
Unwilling steps.
A huge crash, from behind. Both of them wheeled around again.
The doors had closed. The way out was shut.
They were trapped.
Five seconds. Then, forward again. Once more, the face, at the edge of the light. Once more, it disappeared before he could really see it—before he could confirm that it had actually been there.
Before he could confirm that his mind was still his.
The echoes of his footsteps became slower and slower as he went. In his mind, the titter sounded again, in a mocking tone.
"Have fun, stranger!But you'll never run fast enough! Yee hee hee!"