Post by Rezzy on Jul 22, 2008 13:30:49 GMT -5
Not for the weak stomached, I wrote this a few years ago and had it posted over at TO. Hope you like it! ^^
Enthralled
Heavy rain beat down on the sodden earth.
Dark clouds churned and broiled in the night sky, rolling over themselves and spewing forth great lightning streaks that forked and split through the sky like jagged blades. The savage crack that followed the intense flashes tore across the barren moor and illuminated the plains in a baleful light. Small streams of ruddy water ran through beaten tracks in a single dirt path that ran parrallel to a black, rusting fence.
A silhoutted figure stood in the downpour,
his feet slowly becoming swamped in the boggy terrain as he stumbled,
blinded by rain, along the winding path.
His once proud robes now hung in tattered ruin upon his slumped shoulders, the ragged edges plastered in crusted filth and congealed gore. His skin was drawn tightly over his pointed cheek bones and beneath his eyes it hung in dreary black bags, the eyeballs sunken into bony sockets. The mans grey lips were curled back in a crazed, distorted expression, baring his toothless bleeding gums and the gushing stump that was once his tongue.
The spouting blood exploded from his mouth and shot outwards in a spray of phlegm and plasma that flecked the palid flesh of his chin. He doubled over and fell into a fit of wracking, wet sobs and hacking coughs as his innards rose up into his throat and disgorged themselves onto the waterlogged soil. He fell to his knees, held up only by the bony hand of a fleshy skeletal mass of claws and blades. Its face sneered at him, glops of rotting tissue falling peversely from the base of its jaw. The man's terror-filled eyes rolled back in his head and the undead horror released his throat, the body hitting the floor with a sickening squelch. It stood watching from within empty sockets as the rapidly decomposing corpse sunk into and mixed with the filthy ground, maggots bursting from the man's gory orifices and splitting out through his skin from within his stomach.
Once little of the mans skin remained, and his organs had been reduced to mushy ruin, his bones began to take on a life of their own. The newly formed member of the undead placed its long thin bony fingers into the sorry pile of glopping tissue and muscle that it no longer had use for, and shakily but with a supernatural speed and strength, lifted itself to its feet. Its loosened jaw slowly knitting itself back onto the skull with a macarcbre cracking, grinding sound. The abomination reached for the rusty broken sword that still intruded into its ribcage, grasped it, and wrenched it free in one jerky movement. The snapped blade fell with a squelch into the torso of a half naked woman. Only her top half was visible above the deep mud and her prescious face was barely recognisable. She had loosely draped over her a dirty white garment that was completely saturated with mud, rain and dark blood. Cold eyes glared piercingly with whitened pupils in a terrifed petrification, her spine protruded from her back and had been brutally crushed beneath the hooves of an animated horse cadaver that persisted in tearing her hair from her head with its yellow teeth. Two other skeletons stood silently, vacantly gazing ahead towards what appeared to be a long forgotten cemetry. Atop the ghastly steed rode a hooded character. Beneath the hood, hidden in shadow, could be seen the outline of a fanged smile, one that I will never forget to this day.
The terrible group purposefully waded across the marsh-like mud track towards the long grass at the side of it, leaving the grisly evidence of the massacre behind them. I followed close behind, the freezing droplets of rain running down my back across welts caused by the beatings I had recieved from my new master. He rode ahead of me on his prescious beast that he had affectionately named 'Malady'. The four skeletal servants fell in line behind him, the tatty remains of their clothes thrashing from their bones in the howling wind.
Me and my Master had travelled for days across the moors, swamps and woods, stopping only when we encountered others. I don't know how I'm alive, I have not eaten since we left Nuln, my feet are covered in sores and my skin is raw from exposure to the harsh weather. I dare not stop to rest again after the viscious beating I had recieved the last time. He even threatened to set his servants upon me. My neck still aches where he bit me, but strangely the wound has seemingly healed already. I have also noted that my eyesight is far better than it has ever been, and I can hear things that would have been inaudiable to me before, but these things do little to comfort me. My name is Lucius, and I used to own a small tavern in the backstreets of Nuln. My skill with a knife was legendary, no one dared cross my path. I could take care of myself, and I knew people that would take care of others for me, for a price. But one night ... it was very quiet, and in Nuln, that is never a good sign.
I was cleaning out the ale barrels when someone knocked on the door of my tavern. I told them to come in, and that is something I will regret until my dying day, which, I fear, is not so far away. The stranger entered and bolted the door behind him, looking around to make sure that no one else was in the room. He put a finger to his shockingly red lips, the only part of his face visible under his cowl. I reached slowly behing me and felt the cool handle of my dagger.
"You wouldn't kill an old man in cold blood would you?" rasped the figure as he slowly dragged his feet to the bar.
"I'm going to hazard a guess you're not here for a drink old man," I said, sounding far more confident than I was, and feeling oddly uneasy. The character seemed to have a dark presense about him, and his moth-eaten garments stank of rank decay.
"My my, you're a quick one." The old man chuckled and proceeded to fall into a fit of coughs.
"State your buisness." I had had a long day, and wanted nothing more at that precise moment than to close the tavern, bid the stranger fare well, and go to bed. If only I had.
"I have a propostion for you" said the old man clearing his throat. As he did so a small glob of blood slattered on the bar. I gasped.
"Are you ill old man? Is that it...you need help?"
The stranger laughed. A deep, youthful, penetrating and powerfully haunting laugh.
"Ill?" The man spat more blood and spittle onto the bar as he spoke. "No! Quite the contrary, I have never felt better!"
And then those hateful eyes fell upon me, those bloody red eyes, those eyes...
Enthralled
Heavy rain beat down on the sodden earth.
Dark clouds churned and broiled in the night sky, rolling over themselves and spewing forth great lightning streaks that forked and split through the sky like jagged blades. The savage crack that followed the intense flashes tore across the barren moor and illuminated the plains in a baleful light. Small streams of ruddy water ran through beaten tracks in a single dirt path that ran parrallel to a black, rusting fence.
A silhoutted figure stood in the downpour,
his feet slowly becoming swamped in the boggy terrain as he stumbled,
blinded by rain, along the winding path.
His once proud robes now hung in tattered ruin upon his slumped shoulders, the ragged edges plastered in crusted filth and congealed gore. His skin was drawn tightly over his pointed cheek bones and beneath his eyes it hung in dreary black bags, the eyeballs sunken into bony sockets. The mans grey lips were curled back in a crazed, distorted expression, baring his toothless bleeding gums and the gushing stump that was once his tongue.
The spouting blood exploded from his mouth and shot outwards in a spray of phlegm and plasma that flecked the palid flesh of his chin. He doubled over and fell into a fit of wracking, wet sobs and hacking coughs as his innards rose up into his throat and disgorged themselves onto the waterlogged soil. He fell to his knees, held up only by the bony hand of a fleshy skeletal mass of claws and blades. Its face sneered at him, glops of rotting tissue falling peversely from the base of its jaw. The man's terror-filled eyes rolled back in his head and the undead horror released his throat, the body hitting the floor with a sickening squelch. It stood watching from within empty sockets as the rapidly decomposing corpse sunk into and mixed with the filthy ground, maggots bursting from the man's gory orifices and splitting out through his skin from within his stomach.
Once little of the mans skin remained, and his organs had been reduced to mushy ruin, his bones began to take on a life of their own. The newly formed member of the undead placed its long thin bony fingers into the sorry pile of glopping tissue and muscle that it no longer had use for, and shakily but with a supernatural speed and strength, lifted itself to its feet. Its loosened jaw slowly knitting itself back onto the skull with a macarcbre cracking, grinding sound. The abomination reached for the rusty broken sword that still intruded into its ribcage, grasped it, and wrenched it free in one jerky movement. The snapped blade fell with a squelch into the torso of a half naked woman. Only her top half was visible above the deep mud and her prescious face was barely recognisable. She had loosely draped over her a dirty white garment that was completely saturated with mud, rain and dark blood. Cold eyes glared piercingly with whitened pupils in a terrifed petrification, her spine protruded from her back and had been brutally crushed beneath the hooves of an animated horse cadaver that persisted in tearing her hair from her head with its yellow teeth. Two other skeletons stood silently, vacantly gazing ahead towards what appeared to be a long forgotten cemetry. Atop the ghastly steed rode a hooded character. Beneath the hood, hidden in shadow, could be seen the outline of a fanged smile, one that I will never forget to this day.
The terrible group purposefully waded across the marsh-like mud track towards the long grass at the side of it, leaving the grisly evidence of the massacre behind them. I followed close behind, the freezing droplets of rain running down my back across welts caused by the beatings I had recieved from my new master. He rode ahead of me on his prescious beast that he had affectionately named 'Malady'. The four skeletal servants fell in line behind him, the tatty remains of their clothes thrashing from their bones in the howling wind.
Me and my Master had travelled for days across the moors, swamps and woods, stopping only when we encountered others. I don't know how I'm alive, I have not eaten since we left Nuln, my feet are covered in sores and my skin is raw from exposure to the harsh weather. I dare not stop to rest again after the viscious beating I had recieved the last time. He even threatened to set his servants upon me. My neck still aches where he bit me, but strangely the wound has seemingly healed already. I have also noted that my eyesight is far better than it has ever been, and I can hear things that would have been inaudiable to me before, but these things do little to comfort me. My name is Lucius, and I used to own a small tavern in the backstreets of Nuln. My skill with a knife was legendary, no one dared cross my path. I could take care of myself, and I knew people that would take care of others for me, for a price. But one night ... it was very quiet, and in Nuln, that is never a good sign.
I was cleaning out the ale barrels when someone knocked on the door of my tavern. I told them to come in, and that is something I will regret until my dying day, which, I fear, is not so far away. The stranger entered and bolted the door behind him, looking around to make sure that no one else was in the room. He put a finger to his shockingly red lips, the only part of his face visible under his cowl. I reached slowly behing me and felt the cool handle of my dagger.
"You wouldn't kill an old man in cold blood would you?" rasped the figure as he slowly dragged his feet to the bar.
"I'm going to hazard a guess you're not here for a drink old man," I said, sounding far more confident than I was, and feeling oddly uneasy. The character seemed to have a dark presense about him, and his moth-eaten garments stank of rank decay.
"My my, you're a quick one." The old man chuckled and proceeded to fall into a fit of coughs.
"State your buisness." I had had a long day, and wanted nothing more at that precise moment than to close the tavern, bid the stranger fare well, and go to bed. If only I had.
"I have a propostion for you" said the old man clearing his throat. As he did so a small glob of blood slattered on the bar. I gasped.
"Are you ill old man? Is that it...you need help?"
The stranger laughed. A deep, youthful, penetrating and powerfully haunting laugh.
"Ill?" The man spat more blood and spittle onto the bar as he spoke. "No! Quite the contrary, I have never felt better!"
And then those hateful eyes fell upon me, those bloody red eyes, those eyes...
.