For countless years, the powers toiled and sweated
And their efforts were not for naught.
For life had been created, the greatest gift of all
But there was a single flaw,
Evil.
For every soul and life that existed, there was an opposite
Life and Death. Love & Evil.
And the king of death smiled on the infinite worlds upon him
as their blessed agonies and sorrow filled his heart with joy
and he vowed to continue to do so. -The book of the true king Chapter 2

August 30th 2024

Dark. So dark. What is this place? It's covered in blood and rust. The wall. Our home? It hurts so much. Please, my king, save me! I pledge my mind, body and soul to

What the hell am I writing? Have they returned? No, no, no. Think! Now, where am I? A wall! No, it only looks like a wall, think! Is this the gateway? I'm a dead man. No! I can't think that way! The cult still lives, and they must face up to the horrors they have created.

A horrific feeling of foreboding grips us all. We have lived on a placid, miniscule island of ignorance and reality, and it is time for the infinite waves of chaos to take us all. –Terrence Somerset.

Frank hated the weapon that had been forced into his hands, as he always thought that guns were heavy and unpleasant, but nonetheless he held it tightly and took cover behind the bar, trying to conceal his unpleasantly exposed head. The desperate bangs and scratches from outside seemed to focus onto a single area directly behind Frank, and he assumed it to be the front door. He heard the sound of something long and heavy being dragged across the floor, and assumed that his mysterious ally was trying to barricade the entrance with a shelf.

He felt strangely detached to this, as if he was simply experiencing a very immersive horror movie, although this experience was the most disturbing and realistic thing he had ever seen. The sound of dozens of people desperately trying to break inside reminded him of the films he loved to see, where stupid zombies would wander around feasting on the marginally less intelligent living. Hell, he had even tried writing a few cheap novels about it, although no matter how hard he tried, he never managed to break free of the dreaded cliches or made it actually quite interesting.

He slowly breathed in and out, trying to channel the same calm, collected attitude that his heroes and heroines always had, but simply succeeded in making him even less enthusiastic about moving from his cover. The sounds were intensifying and getting as loud and obnoxious as a front-yard concert, and he could have sworn that he heard a window smash. He saw pale grey light peeking through the door, and knew that it wouldn't last for much longer. He couldn't hear Mark, and assumed that he was either hiding or had run off without telling him.

Finally, after endless minutes of tormented waiting, as Frank tried frantically to keep as quiet and still as possible, he heard the floorboards creak unpleasantly loud as what sounded like a band of strangers sneak in nervously. He could have sworn that he heard someone wince at the loud noise blowing their cover, and the sound of nervous shivering and quiet, shallow breaths echoed almost silently through the stale air of the abandoned building. Apparently, whoever had broke inside wasn't sure if there were people inside, and despite himself, he slowly got up without the gun and did his best to take a look at the intruders without bringing attention to himself. He had to cover his mouth when he actually saw what they looked like.

They sure didn't look normal, as their eyes were glazed and blankly staring out at the darkness, and they were standing quite awkwardly, as if they couldn't control themselves well. Their breathing seemed quite artificial and forced, as if they were merely doing it for the sake of it, seeing as a few of them had gaping, copiously bleeding holes in their chest, and a few looked as if they shouldn't have possibly been walking around under normal circumstances. The horrific wounds that the poor wretches exhibited ranged from small, almost invisible bloody holes in their pale skin, to missing limbs, gouged eyes, exposed rib-cages, and other disturbing injuries. He had the horrible feeling that all of them were dead.

They sure didn't seem to notice him, not at first, but they were clearly looking around for someone. They walked out slowly and awkwardly, often bumping into things or stumbling in the dark, yet still managing to look menacing and dangerous. Now he knew why zombies could be considered scary. Making sure to keep a healthy distance away, Frank slowly edged backwards, twitching nervously and fearing that he would bump into a hideous apparition or a deathly-pale corpse if he turned around. He always hated the dark, but now, having to be immersed in almost-complete darkness, hearing the shuffling and faint whispering of the corpses, gave him a new definition of fear. If he lived through this, he'd have some very inspiring material for a novel.

Frank was not happy, to make a huge understatement. His once-bright career of writing horror novels had spiralled down into a never-ending cycle of dreary, bleak existence in a place that resembled hell itself. His pathetic existence had gone even worse when it suddenly turned out that people he knew, hell, people he actually liked, had gone insane and killed anyone they could get their hands on, including themselves.

But now, having suffered a disturbingly vivid vision (no, he swore that whatever had happened to him was absolutely real, why else was it so convincing?) and found himself in an old, abandoned shack, surrounded by the stumbling, slow reanimated corpses of the dead, he began to simply not care. After all, as terrible as this catastrophe was, it was a great motivator for him, and he was determined to escape this hellhole or die trying.

The corpses had now fanned out and left enough space for Frank to make a bee-line for it, but he feared that any sudden movements would alert the walking dead to his presence. He shuffled slowly towards the door, trying to avoid making eye contact with a particularly putrid corpse, and was within arms-reach of the doorway when an unfamiliar voice barked at him.

"Please, Run! Save yourself!!"

As much as he hated it, he turned around and found himself staring at the glassy eyes of a rather deathly pale young man. His head was unnaturally twisted, almost as if his neck had liquefied, and Frank guessed that the poor wretch had twisted his own neck.

"You have to help us. I can't stop it! You have to end our misery!" slurred the corpse, his jaws moving awkwardly and unfamiliarly. He sure seemed quite reluctant, as his body slowly stumbled towards Frank, looking as if his body was doing the opposite of what his mind wanted. As horrific as the thought of being forced to experience un-death was, there was no way Frank would ever bring himself to end a life, even a twisted perversion of one.

He ran away into the light, noticing strangely that a strange mist had appeared all over the place, making it almost impossible for Frank to see in front of him. Soon, he had lost all sense of direction and realised that he had stupidly trapped himself. The mist was unusual, in that it was thick and wispy, yet Frank could barely feel anything except for a deathly chill. He shivered and wrapped his coat tightly around himself, and slowly walked forward, hoping to find stumble on something, anything. He felt strangely at ease, as if he were reading one of his own dirt-cheap novels, and enjoyed this sense of detachment.

Frank trudged weakly on, his mind dulled and deadened by the infuriating onslaught of the elements. The mysterious, inexplicable mists had slowly given away to a full-on flurry of furious winds and biting cold. A blizzard of freezing white poured down all around, engulfing him in a chilling feeling of fear and futility. The only thing that encompassed his vision was pure, blinding white.

And then he fell into nothing. A primal, shrill scream forced itself out of Frank's body, filling the air with an incoherent, yet piercingly loud noise. The strange sound of what could only be described as the sound of the last, desperate gasp of a strangled man reached his ears, somehow arranging itself in a tune that almost made it seem like laughter. He drifted down in the endless seas of infinity, lost from the abstract grasp of time and space itself. His destiny would not meet him in this world.

He smashed down into what could have been a floor, feeling every nerve of his body writhe and explode with agonizing pain. His chest felt excruciatingly restricted, as if he was being smothered, but he couldn't summon enough strength to even scream. His mouth instead twisted itself into ungodly positions, expressing the unbearable agony he was feeling. The world felt so alien, so unreal, that he was unsure that he was even feeling it. He wondered vaguely, amongst an onslaught of depraved thoughts and insane degrees of pain, if he had died, and welcomed the release that would surely come.

No such release appeared yet. He writhed around like a dying snake, his limbs numb and useless. His actual body, or the little his frail mind could perceive of himself, did not appear to have any damage externally, and he concluded that whatever he was feeling was only in his mind. Darkness engulfed him, 'shifting' from ungodly shades of whom no sane man had ever seen before to hues that caused disgust and agony at a mere glance.

His body was yanked upwards, and Frank quivered in fear as his body hovered above the ground, swinging slowly and twitching his head painfully in a manner that would have suggested in a safer place that he was having a nightmare. But this 'hallucination' was too strong, and too horrific to have been constructed by his mind. As much as he would have loved to cling on to the delusion of control, his mind knew that he was completely out of control of the horror he was facing.

And he was now facing the tall man, the chalk-white, immaculately robed specter that had appeared to him during his torment in the 'beast.' Despite the maddened wave of questions and insults Frank desperately wanted to address to the monster, he was absolutely silent and the pale specter reciprocated. His cane rose up to Frank's face, exposing a cruelly carved and chiseled point on the end, covered in dried, decaying blood. It was clear that the stranger did not mean well.

Frank writhed uselessly in the grasp of his unseen tormentors, while the tall, face-less man raised his staff and ran him through. A wave of agony unlike anything Frank ever felt before poured into every pore of his body, filling every atom with excruciating pain and terror. He had become one with pain. This painful agony lasted for what could have been eternity, or perhaps an instant, but surely far too long for any sane man to bear.

His body finally gave up, and he released all control of himself, hoping that there would be an end to the pain. The tall man had disappeared, but had left in his place a pale, blank looking man, who was dressed in what he assumed to be his own clothes. Frank struggled painfully, but his body had been formed into the same blob that he had experienced before, and he couldn't do a thing except watch.

The body walked calmly and arrogantly to what barely remained of Frank, and touched him. He felt like his body was being torn asunder into vigincentighoullions of tiny shreds, and he was powerless to stop it. Soon, every physical piece of him had been obliterated, but he was still tormented with the fact that he could see everything that was happening.

The tall-man now tore his way out of the pitiful corpse's chest, leaving it in a crumpled, bloody heap in the floor. Strangely enough, although he had no possible means of moving, it felt like Frank's soul was gravitating to his broken shell. After a while, Frank could once again feel the pain increase a trillion-fold, but he could at least move himself around. He felt around in his pocket, finally coming up with a pile of white things in his hand.

Deus Ex Machina pills. Just what I need.

He swallowed them, and was consumed into darkness