At first wind, the summer brings the noisy whisking clouds drawing their attention to morrow skies and when this attention breaks, it is not theirs to give. For at the surface of the dark soil, near the darkened lake, watch the secret eyes of soldier mermaids by the dozens, relenting their unforboding rule to their sacred darkness of the water deep, in the open they are perfidiously hidden beneath their skin ready to drown any enemy of Shadow Lake. It is from here the wayfarers three will seek their water from the rain and the running rivers elsewhere, they reroute to remain their quest as they reenter the silent forest and the throes of perdition.
Autumn storms bring cold wind to dilute the nigh fading winds that warm them as they shun the season change with shawls and stoles for robe in all, they clothe in covenant tenant pleasantries, affected by binding contention. They wander forestry at the edge of this world, this realm of time not passed by mere mortals for an era in good stead, marked by craven inequity of the spirits and pernicious shadow dwellers this ever-silent repository fill, where innocuous humans take aversion to the afterlife. Crepuscular circumstances of which they lo, making inroad through aconite leaves and sheaves of shadows to escape their derivation by of course, the trees clear at the edge of an antiquated village farm, sewn and silent as the shallow puddles of gathering rain shatter by each falling drop the air cold just before freezing temperature.
An empty land of confusion from the far end of the town, where the trees do grow and the road ends a messenger of elite distinction, wearing the best that white can color with ash, blood, and mud heavily stained and washed by passing rain. A great deal far behind him, in time and distance prior by leagues of travel perhaps, the precious winter witch stood and watched as a king named Arawn and his court were attacked by feudal nomads and vagabonds in the night before fete, in happenstance all but remit to their old age as they were. As king Arawn laid failing, he begged the fates with cavil to avenge him at that dying moment. Had the day been a single cloud less warmer the rube churl may have returned to the earth’s final embrace, but in cad dereliction the icicle empress while perusing the wrath and carnage of the battle through slow or stopped time took her regards to make a pawn of the king. With her threadbare powers, she froze the soul of the dying king, keeping him beyond existence but before death. Not further a life his to own, rising in contract, the dower of the coldness countess.
Fires of black oil boasting black smoke above deadly barren fields of death and war had given haze and distribution. In order to glean a sky distraught and with visage of the poisonous sun the king, a strapping young old lad in a city boon of prosperity, where ample soldier quartered solely to defend the most suddenly recent midnight attack for the length of the day, is rife with desecration ready to conquer and seek bequest of necrotic filial piety. The winter children of the sunset moon will hide in shadows ridden with light behind their own eyes and follow the path to the druid realm of dreams. Silent and curious beseech of what wiles they shall, where they will stand upon ceremony with retribution for destruction, feigning intrigue to disguise their hunger for the slain, but they as yet wait for the end of fires and malignant desires over passion’s killing floor. A sleeping fire is the mystical connection of thoughts, in the darkness the source of rebirth soaks and washes the eternal flames as survivor soul intend to purge the clouds of angelic light. Stoic deities within divination to grant sight within belief, the omnipotence of fulfillment the rare possession of abundant simplicity and simple joys, found at the source vindicated by faith, highly disconcerting to the survivors whom are still fleeing to the ends of the earth.
An empty land of confusion from the far end of the town, where the trees do grow and the road ends a messenger of elite distinction, wearing the best that white can color with ash, blood, and mud heavily stained and washed by passing rain. A great deal far behind him, in time and distance prior by leagues of travel perhaps, the precious winter witch stood and watched as a king named Arawn and his court were attacked by feudal nomads and vagabonds in the night before fete, in happenstance all but remit to their old age as they were. As king Arawn laid failing, he begged the fates with cavil to avenge him at that dying moment. Had the day been a single cloud less warmer the rube churl may have returned to the earth’s final embrace, but in cad dereliction the icicle empress while perusing the wrath and carnage of the battle through slow or stopped time took her regards to make a pawn of the king. With her threadbare powers, she froze the soul of the dying king, keeping him beyond existence but before death. Not further a life his to own, rising in contract, the dower of the coldness countess.
Fires of black oil boasting black smoke above deadly barren fields of death and war had given haze and distribution. In order to glean a sky distraught and with visage of the poisonous sun the king, a strapping young old lad in a city boon of prosperity, where ample soldier quartered solely to defend the most suddenly recent midnight attack for the length of the day, is rife with desecration ready to conquer and seek bequest of necrotic filial piety. The winter children of the sunset moon will hide in shadows ridden with light behind their own eyes and follow the path to the druid realm of dreams. Silent and curious beseech of what wiles they shall, where they will stand upon ceremony with retribution for destruction, feigning intrigue to disguise their hunger for the slain, but they as yet wait for the end of fires and malignant desires over passion’s killing floor. A sleeping fire is the mystical connection of thoughts, in the darkness the source of rebirth soaks and washes the eternal flames as survivor soul intend to purge the clouds of angelic light. Stoic deities within divination to grant sight within belief, the omnipotence of fulfillment the rare possession of abundant simplicity and simple joys, found at the source vindicated by faith, highly disconcerting to the survivors whom are still fleeing to the ends of the earth.
The unknown boundaries of enemy worlds in extreme the final intrigue and wisdom, annihilating thought a pure mind with wrath to leave naught but tortured souls, a war has plagued these woods upon many bloodthirsty blades. Before purgatory and after death the king stands of reincarnation, the silence of existence would only be broken with chosen execution, which in afterlife he intends to deliver resound, but as his sieging enemies fall in slaughter they first witness his undying resist, in terror they give their all to fell the final executioner. The king suffers of a manic dementia, upon slaying of his enemies his folly unjustly turns attack, massive thumping heavy steps in corrupt resolution wielding delirium to his allies, they relent him not their effort strive to sunder their traitorous king.
Dead King Arawn: “You can’t run forever, but you can die trying!”
Dead King Arawn: “You can’t run forever, but you can die trying!”
His scream was of deep malaise and anger. Joined by their enemies, congruently attacking the moribund king Arawn, the ice witch Halle watched besought by the fire sun, the dying blue blood of his veins runs thick and slow, unabated by the open air it turns not red whilst it slowly spilled from his arm to his fiercely strong hands. Of knuckles deathly white, on-to hilt to haft, across the bewitching blade and harsh into the stricken and opened wounds wrought by his threshing vane in the blood of others, a frenetic violent swing of swift anger, where the blood clears it catches the senescent light of the morrow on the blade of fury. The evil blood carries the plague of the afterlife and with it the hunger of wrath and lachrymal melancholy, soon rising the testament legions of the dead. A colony alive and awake under banner of malice proves their piety, knelt before the fatal fiend and dastardly fief now the new estate of a black flag.
Without missing a beat of his still and lifeless heart, he stood and pointed to the unknown, with voiceless command they ran to tear new wound in those that watched, and those that slept. With time, the control of their mercurial hunger unmakes and they become beasts of gluttony, not for the blood of the tears such as the vampire, nor as the cravings of the heart as lusted by the werewolf, but a distinct desire for suffering by the banal tropes of the dormant mind driving them to consume impudently at all costs. With dark red eyes and mulatto skin Arawn erected an affront to the boundaries of the living, full of gashes and gores, arrows and sores as he still stands surrounded by enemy and former ally embattled, reinforcement soon rose to allegiance with slayer deviance of the cold condition.
Heavy with disastrous evisceration hoping to invalidate the aspirations of neighboring armies with centralized carnalities, rationalizing eradication with each divaricated siege, their derivation of civility flourishes as they tarry toward each ascertained victim to lacerate and desecrate all that breath, murderous without weapons evoking gnarly malice, through each hamlet, village, and town for days on end. With stealth no longer than a bottled hourglass each confronted clan eradicated until at the precipice of darkness within the trees surrounding Shadow Lake, for the distance is no less than isolation as they tactically gather strength, but the curse takes all toll on their thoughts for as the longer they wait the more they become the meandering living dead. Sluggishly in their ravenous degradation trip, they shiftlessly torment those that intrude or the weak struggling survivors that cannot escape and infecting even the dead. Toward the highlands the hunters of the foothills make their collision with unwarranted brutality, even in their failing limiting the advance of terror toward the City of Anther whose king Hansel son of Johannes the Quinn, has sent a blatant patent of distress in each of both languages known to him of the known realm.
§
Nors:
“To each regent and subject alike, fighting armies of the dead spawn of an infectious evil legion stalking to the borders of the earth. This is the only message you must speak, thou canst survive unless ye sleep with open eyes to lo. Fortify and defend at all costs. An evil curse is on the world, do not trust the face of any wayfarer for the contagion consumes the soul and raises the fallen to new atrocities. You must survive to be the last alive.”
Englisc:
“To each regent and subject alike, fighting armies of the dead spawn of an infectious evil legion stalking to the borders of the earth. This is the only message you must speak, thou canst survive unless ye sleep with open eyes to lo. Fortify and defend at all costs. An evil curse is on the world, do not trust the face of any wayfarer for the contagion consumes the soul and raises the fallen to new atrocities. You must survive to be the last alive.”
§
The letter and the poison made its way to the city Coolspring where King Anders had read the message and waited unsuspecting as three infected ague soldiers broke his city’s barriers, who after guarded wounds reveal some vile corruption of spirit as they errantly attack a son of the city, until discovery by screams and incarcerated immediately. Thought to be stealing and murdering the boy witness, bound and lashed are they at which point to a fence dragged and draped then fastened to the dangerous walls of razorback cages with barbed wire, anguish and restraint. The tall King Anders approaches their captivity to perceive their presumed suicidal imbecility.
Anders: “Untie one of them…and make him watch.”
The soldier servants of the lastingly wise king Anders do as ordered, as he walks with heavy step and thickly soled boots through the slowly drying soil in midday. He takes several weapons fashionable to the butcher shop adjacent from the top of a tree cut into a tabletop solid through used as a butcher’s block, arrows clean and sharp to catch the glimmers of light as he moved to the other captives, confident in this day as of many others of his past much the same. Swift and fierce without batting an eye he put two skewers into the stomachs of the invading captives both.
Prisoner: “The eyes of wrath will find you.”
Anders walked with great stride across the unkempt corral his heels digging into the soil, but without a word, he soon towered over the coward murderer.
Anders: “This is what will happen to every swarthy invader until the end, tell this to your leader and do not of what happened here lie, or everyone you know will die by my hand. Do you understand?”
The prisoner shook his head to seem agreeably deceitful, still restless and fleeting through poison convention, contention, and comprehension.
Prisoner 2: “I do not understand!”
One of the two prisoners behind him had shouted his final words.
Anders: “They will die but you will live.”
The king then turned and took a spear to lodge its point into the flippant and defiant criminal, and from his waist a dagger thrown into the chest of the other.
Anders: “Take him to the gates and slit one of his ankles for the winter wolves.”
The country king did not know of the vulgarity created by the plague of the living dead as he let the vagrant go to tell the tale, outside the rocky walls of the highland city. With piercing deathblows to the heart of the anguished prisoners, they perished into the great beyond. The criminal emissary of poisoned death let free to report would slowly taste the nefarious hunger of unending death slowly turning to wretched wrath, but the other two before release from sharpened shackles to the crematoriums they sprang to life, tearing from their bonds and nine inch nails. Further fatal damage did not deal them death; victory comes to those that deliver decapitation, the twitching ended when the bodies were set afire. By this, the king was motivated to argue a new liberation.
Anders: “We must hunt the one that fled, quickly after him and return to barracks, tonight we hunt evil where it sleeps.”
King Anders bade farewell to his people and passionate betrothing adieu to the lovely Queen Moira and headed into obtuse battle. He carried with him, as did others, copied missives inked by scribes to save lives the same afore written, as the lowland defenses become the catalyst of a spreading plague, to warn his enemies and allies each, of the calamity forthcoming. His campaign would soon be lost when overwhelmed by the strength and numbers of eternal damnation and inhuman rampage, to three villages they are the victors, but in the fourth, they are lost, the king had taken his men to the stronghold of the black flag. Upon meeting his arch nemesis, an arrow flung so powerfully sliced him through at his side, narrowly missing his protective armor as he dealt a strike to a foe his own in combat, with fortuitous luck his evasion comes immediately thereafter with many other wounds enough to know the danger of a second guessing. The message firstly seemed hoodwinking, but soon enough by terrifying experience adjacent villages became isolationist survival strongholds and the forest trees soon became known to all as Black Forest. Soon mercenaries make errand in employ of kings to stop evil in tow, their payment the spoils of war and the great expanses of land unoccupied by the villages of the damned and abandonment.
A troop marauding with strong defenses made their way to the king of the dead and died they all but one, this Anders King of Coolspring, who is at this very moment hauling his backside as if threatened by infernal provocation toward Merlin and his banding family roam of the silent pass, carries that very missive the same toward them. Before hell near reprisal of death, he runs to Merlin leaping paces over steps from long ago abandoned plated metal armor, shed to give him faster escape, running only with sword and other blades and metal gauntlets across his arms to block strikes.
Anders: “Undead…turn aback, there is trouble in this tree!”
He runs to them in object permanence with hopes among vigor and vanity accords. With claim stake, they look into the depths of the forest seeing in shadows to surmise Anders on a quick step yet nothing else, not one creature in the twilight of day or night. Merlin and the others begin walking softly approaching the runner with aversion. He who brought fire to the dark inner workings of necromancy with a clean white face now full of blood carries a small crimpled missive, a dying message near falling from his hand. It rains as the fog rolls and he stands bent and catching his quivering breath with one foot in a puddle and the other on soil as could from both worlds, his hands are shaking and unclean by new blood and foreign soil that is not his.
Intrinsic to his indemnified reprisal he holds the note slightly crumpled in his calloused hand and urges them to read the cursed vexing letter, and as he begins to speak a mystery unites in their thoughts plotting the origin of the note, gaining curiosity to whom would read it.
Nick: “How horrible is it that chases you?”
Anders: “These woods are evil…”
Nick: “Who are you?”
Anders: “Anders, take this note and find a king from the west.”
Merlin: “Give me the note.”
Merlin snatches the note from Nick’s grasp and begins to read, his face dark and lifeless, the whites of his eyes rolling across the lines best literate, this was a letter of sanctimonious requital, bad news to those befit and witting its verity.
Ana: “The food of the mind evokes prophecy, tell us what you saw.”
The words echo of the mind to each traveller, enjoyed but not cherished, sullen tones haunt the bleak and raining sky following them.
Anders: “Needed for vision, but think me not mad, the dead are craven and curse, they have formed a necropolis no more than a league from here…have you not seen them?”
Ana: “It would do your calm some wellness to acclimate soldier.”
Anders: “If only I could milady.”
Nick: “How far is it then?”
Anders: “Two maybe three days a hunter’s pace, but turn back do not venture your fare.”
Merlin: “Less than that, the roaming corpses will find you first Nickolas.”
Nick: “What can I say that I haven’t said before?”
Nickolas unsheathes and wields two swords, spinning them in swift display of agility, Anders laughs and Nick wipes the water from the blades and holsters them.
Ana: “What does the letter tell?”
Merlin stares at Anders staunch and haunch and short of breath, trying to ascertain the damage of his open wounds caused by open tombs.
Merlin: “It regards what he has said, what do you know of the restless dead Nickolas?”
Nick: “They keep children keen on seeing the sunrise in their beds at night.”
Merlin: “Not today, they are the envenoming nightmare anatomy, without salvation.”
Nick: “Then we must save the innocent, what say you Ana love?”
Ana: “As long as there are not too many, I’ve not the strength or rest to taunt a flood of death.”
Anders is quite confused and cloud connected weak and wounded a man in horror darkly.
Nick: “We will send the dead packing, where said you they lurk?”
Anders: “But how came it to this, help me to retreat from these dead woods, we will come back with a regiment…hunt them out…?”
Merlin: “As I’ve said, their blood is a restless plague, they may rise as you do, but I cannot have you become such horror to humanity, I would have to kill you rather than let rampant an implacable terror on Midgard.”
Anders: “Now you’ve got something to die for…”
Nick: “We walk the straight line.”
Ana: “And stay close then.”
Merlin: “Get up and show us the way boy.”