Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

Curious things happen to a mind left in the dark.

Minutes tend to nibble at the brain like hours.

All discomforts such as hunger, thirst, or the ringing of your ears becomes amplified. Like a snare upgraded to a bass drum. The traveller was aware of this, having spent a lifetime in empty tension.

Crawling on his stomach behind enemy lines covered in scrapes bruises and near-hits.

Poised with a dagger over his heart, pretending to sleep as imaginary footsteps crept by tent flaps.

Awareness made the thrum in his brain any less irritating.

Had to come down into the pit of infinite sorrows did we?

Had to poke at arcana without a safety line?

He finally gave in and burnt another bunch of rags

bare stone floor and eternal black on every side, on a lark he took a coin from his wallet and flicked it like a skipping-stone over the floor and listened to it clatter in the giant hall.

Cling

clang

cling

cling

 

 

cling

 

 

cling

And one, slow, dry, deliberate scrape.

A hollow thud

and a scrape

Instinctively he pressed himself flat against the stone floor, the cool silty surface pressed against his palms chest knees and cheek as the great thudding enigma stalked after the coin.

He was careful not to breathe.

Not to sneeze from the disturbed dirt.

Not to smell like meat and fear.

The footsteps had wandered off, and the lollygagging echo had faded.

He kept himself pressed.

Small.

Silent.

Contemplating the nature of the horror in this hall. It had ignored the light...

His skin shuddered at the thought of ancient sightless and empty orifices pawing for light, gaping maws of needley teeth, some wretch sniffing, shambling and shuffling after sound and scent, emaciated and hungering for more than dry bones and thirsting for the pulsating squiggling blood in him.

Blind, and it must not hear -that- well if it had missed him tripping over the deadpile.

... unless that's what had brought it here...

Perhaps it had just gotten overexcited at the prospect of the unweary intruder being so close and idiotic, thinking his dinner was skipping toward him on jingling spurs.

He may as well have doused himself in gravy.

Click

scrape

thud

The peculiar rhythm of its steps had returned, it must've decided the coin was an anamoly, and not prey.

The anamoly came from here... delicious gravy soaked moron must be nearby.

 

The traveller found himself suddenly very resentful of sight, and having lived so long with it, and having been so dependent upon it, when clearly it had become an unnecessary crutch.

Or perhaps that was just impending doom talking.

The footsteps were getting closer.

He took another coin from his wallet, staying flat against the ground and wiggling his wrist and working his fingers to pry the drawstrings open, and he produced a small sliver of metal and with a mighty sidearm, prone hurl- he flung it down the hall in a new direction.

The trodding click

scrape

thud

stopped.

 

And for one coy, calculated moment, he had convinced himself that the unknown horror would dash away after it.

Click

scrape

thud.

 

So close that he could feel the dust stirred from the steps dance against his face.

Click

scrape

thud.

Stop.

 

If you've ever heard thin veil dragged over cool, bare stone, one would love to have you describe.

One can only equate the sound to a shadow growing colder.

A leaf poised for escape.

The wretch was feeling for him, beckoning. A quiet song of emptiness crept into his mind, growing in urgency and drowning out all reason as it drew nearer.

 

So lonely.

 

So cold.

 

We hunger.

 

He found himself longing for the chill of the Mistress. The familiar mystique and wonder of her gaze and the baleful frost of her ire.

This was a sorrowful, bitter thing. A voice of damnation. A chorus of drowning in icy bereavement.

It was getting louder. The ringing in his ears had become an avalanche of pleas. This place wasn't just calling to him, it was lapping at him hungrilly with every tendril of its remorse.

Why?

Why had he descended so willingly into this pit?

Had something pulled him, willed him, begged him onto this path from the Mistress' anger?

But it wasn't clear.

He tried to stand. Tried to fight, lazilly pulling his sword from his back in a quarter speed snap.

But all the feeling had fallen out of his body as the wretch had drawn near.

He stood numb, trembling uncontrollably, shambling toward the outstretched open arms of the dark.

His sword fell slack in his wrist, and knicked dumbly against the floor

in a hollow

click

as his puppeteered foot lifted high and jostled the sword against his waist

 

scrape

as his foot came down and dragged body and blade

 

thud

as he stomped along to the call of the fell tower.

 

So cold.

So lonely.

We hunger.