Cloud Zapper and the Gifted Crown Excerpt · 6:11pm Aug 23rd, 2017
(Warning, disturbing imagery)
The town was just as he remembered before going into the castle. The domed sky seemed to pulse with a darkness that was both distinct, and vague simultaneously; and all manner of destitute around them seemed ever more prominent in the gloom. Wood beams and framings of doorways that might, in the light of day, seem charming, now seemed gnarled. Each knot in the wood, each chip and crack seeming vivid and garish and almost offal in nature. A tree nearby had overgrown roots that seemed to have cracked the concrete below it, and in the dark light Cloud’s mind cast images of intestines and organs of the tree strewn upon the road like some obscene horror of disembowelment committed by some fiend. Intellectually, he knew they were just roots, he knew the wooden beams were just chipped, he knew the frame of the door was just cracked… but his imagination twisted them till his stomach could barely stand their sight. Instead, Cloud Zapper opted to stare at the ground as he walked, that or look right at the armoured flank of Sunride… which wasn’t an altogether unpleasant option, but probably not appropriate for the mission.
They reached the main square swiftly. In the centre was the town hall, and an array of abandoned shops and stalls around it. Cloud looked up at the building in the centre. The building was cracked in half, and seeping from the cracks were tendrils of an ethereal nature. They seemed to shift and pulse as Cloud looked at them, unable to focus on one specific detail or factor of their shape. The large double doors to the building were broken off, one of them hanging by only a hinge. Their surface seemed to be adorned with veins of purple pulsing that was almost analogous to the colourless darkness of the dome above them.
The inside of that doorway was dark.
But it was a different kind of dark. It wasn’t the pulsing dark, it wasn’t the ‘foreboding’ dark, and it wasn’t the ‘threatening’ dark. It was a ‘nothing’ dark. An ‘empty’ dark.
“We’re going in there aren’t we?” Cloud said, fearing he knew the answer before he’d finished asking the question.
Captain Sunride took a deep breath and nodded, “yup.”
For a moment they looked at each other, knowing that whatever happened in there, it may be something they wouldn’t be able to walk out of. Together, they looked back, and began moving forward into that darkness.
