NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 109
The pale white strings of the moonlight crystal pull me upright into the air, bringing me back up onto my rotting feet and letting me stand tall once again amongst the crumbling, towering headstones that are aligned before me in broken rows. A cool night-wind gently blows through the world around me, through the strangely placed grove that is inside of the dungeon. Soft, swaying blades of long, blue grass shiver and lean away as I amble by, as if the ground itself were avoiding me, as if it were trying to stay as far away from the unnatural thing that I am as best as it could. The waving ocean, sparsely dotted with sickly, white flowers spans the room for as far as I can see. It stretches all the way towards the distant stone walls of the dungeon, which are hidden behind a line of shadowy trees. That wall in the distance seems more like a bleak azure horizon, rather than any barrier giving limit to this space. As if this underground chamber were boundless, as if these fields were boundless. These gravestones, this hallowed place of death. As if it just stretched on forever and ever.
Whispers fill me, flowing through me together with the dead-light. Together with the strings of the puppet-master that pull on me, that propel me to move forward, to go this way for purposes unknown. But the dead wind whispers and I listen. I listen and I follow. I follow the strings of the white, streaking light floating through the air like worms quivering beneath the surface of the black water. Swaying and wriggling outward as they touch and reach and permeate everything. The crystal calls to us, the dead-light calls to us all. It speaks in words we can not hear. But they are words we know in our dead hearts.
As my hollow eyes gaze up towards the heavy darkness looming above us like a divine hammer ready to fall down at any moment, I see the streaks of pale dead-light forming there, building up into a ball, into a tightly wound sphere as if it was remaking a moon. A single, meekly glowing circle that sits high above us all, filling the room with the softly radiating glow of the silver aura. For what purpose I can not say. The dead-light is in pursuit of its own wishes and we simply follow.
Ambling, shuffling feet lurch on behind me, around me, before me as more of the dead collect together. As we build a small group, then a swarm and then soon enough a hoard. An army of shambling, horrifically twitching corpses that leak viscera and bile. Mangled limbs and faces contorted with the pains of deaths long past. Jaggedly broken bones which ooze out black water, as if it were dripping marrow, penetrate our skin and jut out at horrible angles. Pale white tendrils, like worms, sleekly slide through our rotting flesh, acting as sutures, holding us together in one piece. Keeping our bodies intact as a whole. The dead-light burrows and worms through us, giving us a final purpose; one that is unknown to us for now. But an unknown purpose is a treasure for the dead, for those who have no such thing left. We don’t fight the dead-light. We all know what we are. Horrible monstrosities created by the unnatural, by the deathly presence that is the white crystal. But we have a purpose now. Something to live for. Finally.
A deep howl fills the air, originating from some far away cliff looking over the floor from the far reaches of the darkness. The wolfish cry mixes in with the sinister murmur of the cold breeze, the sounds coalescing into a single foreboding omen for all those who are alive to hear it; if any such thing is to be found here. But there is. It tells us there is. The crystal pulls us forward further, there is something here. Something it wants. Something it reaches out towards. There is a presence it hasn’t swallowed yet, an obstruction in its path. Some strange, living thing still in the graveyard that isn’t welcome here anymore. This is our home now. This place is for the dead alone.
Walking forward, we soon reach the tree-line. I expect the end of the floor to come. Is it here? Are they here? No. We still move. Further, deeper into the wood. Further away from the shallow holes we were hastily buried in. Further, then further still. I expect the walls of the dungeon to come soon, for the end of the floor to make itself seen. But it doesn’t. We plunge deeper into the forest. Gnarled trees with long limbs that extend outward in all directions, like our own so many reaching arms, make up the forest. It’s not like in the Spindlewood, in the spider forest. These trees are different. They are thick and knotted and old, the dark-hued bark taking on the same bluish purple hue of the midnight graveyard air, as if they were stained by it. Their many arms reaching out towards us. But if to stop us, or to show us the way, I can not say for sure.
The looming, persistent howl of the haunting wind accompanies our death march through the forest. The white, dead-light worms accompany us through the forest. Streaks of them billowing through the trees, flying around the tightly woven boughs like so many ribbons blown away after a festival has ended. There is something here, something forgotten. This place, this graveyard, it is the remnant of something happy. These ribbons that fly through the air, that fill us and propel us forward; they are whispers of an energy that no longer exists in this place. Fragments. Memories, corrupted by the price of living. The dead-light is everything that once was, now twisted and forgotten. Turned cold. It wants sleep, silence. Quiet. But it can’t have any. Not as long as there is noise. Not as long as there is something else, something still left alive on this floor. As long as that is so, none of us may sleep. None of us may have quiet. None of us may escape the dead-light.
How many are we in numbers now? I can’t say. Hundreds. More. The forest is filled with the groaning dead. More dead lay here in the forest than beneath the graves, more bones and meat scattered under those sheltering boughs of the trees and saplings than anywhere else, and now all of us are united as one. All of us have a single craving, to follow the call.
We stop all at once as we reach the edge of the wood and peer out through to the other side. Through and over the small clearing, up the small hill to the strange, small dark timber-framed house nested atop. A warm, yellow light glowing behind the glass windows. A smell in the air. A smell of warmth, of life. Of something that must be quiet so that we can sleep again.
But we wait. We wait. The dead-light has its own wishes, but there are rules. We can not begin until the event is triggered, we can not attack until they arrive. Until they come to escort the graveyard keeper through.
In a strange way, I smile knowing that the hero-party will have to suffer now too. Suffer as I always do. I smile knowing that they have to complete an escort quest through this graveyard in order to proceed.
