3. A dark past Part II

A dark past Part II

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    A Troubled Childhood

    A haze of darkness…memories of the past...

    Mintáros had finished his chores. He had been working on plowing the fields all day; his father in a bad mood, yelling at him and his brothers as they fought over a bottle of cider. His mother watching from the doorway with a shake of the head and a smile.

    It was his 13th year. After the farm-work had been done he went alone into the countryside, smug satisfaction of his victory, the bottle of cider in his hand. He went to lie under the tree next to a stream, a place he had often went to to get away from his thoughts and relax in the dusty haze of the summer sun. Contented and tired, he fell asleep.

    In his dreams he saw a star in the sky. It was the middle of the night...but the moons in the sky had disappeared, leaving only an expanse full of the bright light of stars. His gaze searched the sky in wonder and rested on a strange and ominous point in the nightsky...a baleful red star, dark and flaming strangely. Looking at that alien and frightful star a chill came over him; fear.

    He woke up suddenly in a cold sweat. He looked around wildly with frightened child eyes; it was very dark, he must have slept for hours. His parents would be angry. As he got up shivering to make his way to the house, he heard a noise in the bushes. He froze...the snapping of branches and rustle of leaves; whatever it was was coming closer. Before he backed away to leave something appeared out of the bushes across the stream bank; a dark shape he could not make out; it snorted and made an inhuman growling sound. The hair stood up on Mintaros neck, cold sweat dripping into his eyes; he could not move for the terror. As he stared frozen at the creature in the darkness, he could make out two points in the shadowy mass; the glowing red flames of two horrible, intense eyes. The creature lifted up its head and howled, the sound was no ordinary cry of a beast. It turned his blood to ice and before he even knew what he was doing he found himself running through the woods, screaming, tearing thru the underbrush in wide-eyed terror.

    He ran, ran with all his strength. He paid no attention to the thorns and branches tearing at his clothes, lashing at his skin as he ran in the blind terror of prey. The eyes of the beast were made of the same light...they were the same light as that red, baleful star in his dream. He was but a child, he did not know what the dream meant; but now as he ran he could hear the Beast pursuing him. Its not real...wake up, its only a dream. He said these words over in his head; the creatures breath was hot on his neck, the stench of its stagnant odor filling his nostrils. He choked and coughed on terror...even as a young boy he sensed the beast was no animal, no ordinary bear or wolf.

    Suddenly his foot caught on a root in the dark and he flew forward, landing on the ground and bloodying his knees at the fall. He slowly turned his head around; more out of blind instinct than any willful thought of his own. In the light of the stars and the moons he could see the Thing clearly. It was a wolf, a great and lumbering beast of a Wolf...perhaps twice the size of a full-grown bear. The hair on its hide was made of sharp bristles; they glinted as if they were made of dark steel; its red eyes flamed and glinted strangely. It stood and stared at him...he felt a presence on him; was it the power of the Beast? He felt an unbearable compulsion to look into the Beast's eyes; like a command word had been spoken and he had to obey. He stared into those flaming, baleful red eyes...they were made of the light of that Star...

    The eyes glinted madly; even though he knew it was not possible Mintáros saw a deep and bottomless intellect behind those wild and bestial eyes. He saw great wisdom...it was beyond the intelligence of a man; deep secrets seemed to swirl in the depths of the baleful red glow. The Beast was standing only a few feet from him, stark and silent and undisputedly real. It stared deep into him without moving even an inch; he heard its Voice, powerful and thunderous, echoing in his mind.

    "Are you afraid?"

    The Beast stood in front of him as it spoke without moving its enormous, jutting jaws. It seemed to be holding Mintáros paralyzed simply by its gaze; that horrible baleful gaze. Now he was weeping...wishing for his mother and his father, his child mind being devoured by terror. He blinked thru the sweat and the tears, not answering, only trying desperately to shut out his senses but being held fast.

    The Beast's eyes glinted dangerously; a strange mirth and amusement crossing over its eyes. It opened its gaping, elongated jaws and let out a strange sound. At first Mintáros thought it was about to vomit...it made a long, drawn out gurgling sound; it sounded as if it might be sneezing or snorting or both. He knew at once that it was chuckling. It closed its mouth after making that prolonged and agonizing sound and stared at him.

    "Do you know what I am?"

    Again Mintáros could not answer. He shut his eyes and sobbed quietly, the Beasts breath hot on his face as it drew inches from him. It sniffed loudly, as if taking in his scent. He felt its cold and disgusting snout sniff his boots, then lift up and snorted a blast of breath in his face. There was the smell of sulphur and burning flesh. He began to hear barely audible whispers and strange cries around him. The Beast closed its eyes, not like an animal would close its eyes, but like a man closing his eyes in prayer or meditation. For the first time it spoke, not in his mind but with actual vocal ability. It spoke in a language he did not understand; it sounded like a chant or a prayer. The sound was deafening in his ears and echoed in the woods. It opened its flaming red eyes suddenly and again he heard it speak to him in his mind.

    "Behold the knowledge of the Fallen, son of men."

    Mintáros stared at its face as it withdrew a few steps from him. He was terrified and shivering uncontrollably. The whispering cries around him began to change and grow louder...before him, the creature began to transform. It spasmed in what seemed like agony...its wolf-like face contorted with rage as it transformed. It bared its fangs and bellowed; the ground seemed to quake, horns sprouted from its head and wound upwards. Its long snout twisted and began to form the appearance of a human face. As Mintáros surroundings changed and darkness spread over his mind he watched as the transformation completed. The face of the Beast twisted, contorted, its slobber splattering on the ground with a sickening sizzle. The Beast changed and its aspect became the face of a man...the only thing that remained the same were those baleful red eyes. Before he passed out he saw the aspect of the demon...the face opened its mouth wide revealing a bottomless expanse filled with strange stars and runes. He felt himself drawn deeper, deeper into that bottomless depth; until he saw the face no more and he was consumed.

    In his dreams he beheld a sea of dead. He saw a sky of runes and swirling flames.....

    Strange Awakening

    ...through a haze of misery...

    He found himself standing in a barren field; the horizon reaching all around him on into infinity. In the distance he could hear the cries of many souls in torment...at first he heard the cries of a man, then a woman, then those of many children; before they mingled and joined into a cacophony of horrible sound. He closed his eyes...this is not real, wake up you fool, wake up! The voices had reached a crescendo, thousands upon countless thousands of them, millions, children wailing forgotten amidst the ruin of a battlefield, men screaming in pain, women wailing and weeping as they were tortured and mutilated...he did not see them but he knew them from their cries. The overbearing din changed pitch suddenly, as if the voices were bound by a will, they're myriad voices merged into a single form that wavered and transformed rapidly; the rapid transformations creating that constant din into a single Note. That note became the first note in a Song; as the first note hammered upon his ears all around him, another note emerged...a note that was born just as the first one had been, but from an entire other world of cries and screams of anguish; another world of Pain. As Mintáros in that place cowered into a ball, holding his hands over his ears trying to shut out the unbearable insanity around him; the Music, the Song of Misery, played on. He was compelled to look up from his cowering position into the sky. The sky was swirling, swirling madly, impossibly. Suddenly a voice spoke to him in his mind, clear and ringing like steel: The Notes of the Song are each worlds unto themselves; Each Note is the simultaneous manifestation of all the miseries the souls of that world have witnessed...Each Note is the manifestation of the Misery of a World. Mintáros laughed wildly as the voice spoke to him. He laughed without end, unable to stop, there was no order in this place, this was Insanity! It could not be real, could not Be....

    He looked up into that black and incomprehensible sky. Worlds swirled and flared in the void; the Song a Manifestation of the connection of the misery and anguish of each world. But the Song was all around him, it passed through him and with him; he was a part of this Music! He cackled and laughed until he was hoarse, his Mind bursting under the pressure of the surroundings of this madness. He wanted to stop, to shut his mouth, to stop the horrible laughter that came from him but could not possibly have come from him...for his laughter in itself was becoming a part of the Song and the Music; becoming a single cry that merged with all the other cries of his world into a terrible Note making up a small part of that incomprehensible and utterly insane Song. He laughed and laughed, until he thought he would die, the bones in his chest snapping and the sickening splattering sound of his insides being crushed against his ribcage. His Heart was thumping against his chest; in a terrible cry of mingled laughter and unbelievable agony his essence broke from his solar plexus, rising into the air, and his body slumped to the cold ground mangled and broken.

    The Sea of Dead and the Sky of Madness

    Now he was looking down at his body on that plain of chaos. But his sight was not of his mortal eyes; he could see the Music that played around him and of which he was part. Looking down first he saw only the bloody mess of his shattered body; then on that endless field faces came into view. But they were dead...all of them, all the faces he saw were the faces of the dead, cold grey and pale. But he was rapidly moving upward, soon he lost sight of their faces and countless more came into view...the faces of men, elves, beings of intellect of all kinds. All dead and cold but letting out their cries of anguish and misery all the same. The clear and terribly strong voice ringed through his mind again :The ground you stood on...that was the foundation for the Music.

    As he ascended rapidly detail was obscured, the faces becoming only a mass making up a vast, everchanging landscape. It stretched from infinity on into infinity. Then all at once he found his sight looking upwards into the Sky. He tried to close his eyelids when he first saw that Sky...but his vision remained clear and undisturbed. He was forced to see; In the sky were countless stars marked by runes. A sea of impossibilities made manifest...At first he could not look, his mind to fragile and bound by the laws of his world to comprehend what he saw. Until slowly something allowed him to see. The sky was suddenly made comprehensible...it was filled with runes; symbols written in languages that could not be understood by a man nor an elf nor any mortal on earth. Runes; the Rune-sky, loomed above him, vast and eternal. Once again the Voice: Nothing but nothingness...nothingness without end. The Runes began to swirl and change colors...

    Suddenly the vision that was given to him concentrated on a single rune; a baleful red star...a single point in that infinite and insane sky. He had seen that star before. The Rune of the star swirled and changed, colors he had never seen before flashed before him; the Music far below him, now only a distant and near-forgotten whisper. Against his will he stared at the shape, the Rune. It changed rapidly; images of vistas beyond his understanding flashed before him...then he recognized its significance. It was the aspect of a being, an entity...at first the lines of his vision became blurred, indistinct, he saw nothing as he saw everything. Then at last his focus cleared and he saw a face. The face of some being that could not be named...no, for the uttering of its name would have destroyed him forever to be lost among the faces in the Sea of Dead. To speak its name would be to know the language those runes had been written in...and the Voice: No mind of the mortal world can endure that knowledge and live. The face contorted into endless mockeries of emotion...fear, joy, sadness, hate, anguish, love. At last it ceased...the face became utterly clear, standing out starkly amid the storm about him.

    It was a beautiful face...but adorned upon each of side of its head protruded a single, ridiculously long curved spike; two horns jutting upward from the temples. The face seemed normal at first...but gazing at it longer it became evident it was elongated, overly long; perhaps twice the length of the face of a human male. Suddenly the face's beautiful aspect had grown ugly, horrid and terrible to behold. A twisted and deformed aspect of a man...suddenly and without warning the Face opened its mouth wide. And his own voice speaking to him: No....NO! That thing is not real...it will devour you, wake up dammit you fool!... The instinct in Mintáros mind was operating on some level even in this realm. The mouth opened....revealing no teeth, not even gums or any semblance of the inside of a mouth...only the void; swirling and spinning with strange stars that had runes of their own. The sight was horrible, terrifying beyond imagining...it beat upon the gates of his sanity relentlessly until he thought he would lose his mind and his will forever in that place...until the mouth finally closed shut. At that the sound from the Face ceased, although it had not been heard or noticed before. The last part of that frightful aspect was the eyes...the eyes in that twisted, strangely beautiful face were red and burning with the flames of chaos and madness. They were terrifying to look at.

    Suddenly the images Mintáros had been witness to began to shrink...the face slowly withered and was gone...the runes in the sky stopped swirling and began to wink out of existence...the music of the Sea of Dead waned and died out.

    When Mintáros came to he was lying on the ground where the creature had left him. His clothes were damp and wet, soaked with cold sweat. He stood up shakily and with a burning sensation in his eyes. At his feet there was a pool of his own vomit. The creature was gone.

    He made his way back to his house, not knowing what was real. The house was quiet, his parents sleeping soundly; he crawled into his bed and curled up in a shivering ball, his eyes wide open and glinting with a strange light. The vision had broken his child's mind; his gaze flickered over his room at half-imagined shadows and phantoms in the dark. He had lost his sanity; his young mind could not bear what he had seen. He did not sleep that night.

    gamespy ID: Arkon-Blade
    Character Name: Mintáros


  • Already reviewed in part I, XP pending.