Beyond Horizon's Edge

by Broseph_Stalin

Nightmare’s Visit

Chapter II. – Nightmare’s Visit

Ento stopped at the top of a hill, as he reached what he feared would be an uneventful ending to his journey: the massive guard wall that jutted up in front of him, seeming to capture the moon that hung low in the sky. He sat down, putting his pack next to him, and pondered his options.

His travels for the past two days had been enjoyable, but not nearly what he had planned to do once he got past the wall into Unknown territory. From what he knew, the wall stretched for hundreds of miles across the northern face of the empire, one of three such great monuments to the accomplishments of the First Era; the West, South and North walls were all guarded constantly. As if to reaffirm his thought, he watched as a patrol of several soldiers marched in formation across the top of the wall from one cover to another, lances piercing the very sky itself.

How am I supposed to get past this monster? he thought with a determined frown. No luck getting over, he had no possible way to scale its sheer face. There were only three doors out of the kingdom in each wall, and the northern one had never been opened, since nothing existed in the north but untamed forest. His frown sunk deeper and deeper with every possibility ending in failure.

He sighed. Standing up, he grabbed his pack and headed west, feeling indirectly drawn by something, like a moth to a tavern lamp.

Eventually, he ambled upon a lone cottage in the distance, tucked up near a dilapidated section of towering wall. Greasy black smoke poured out of its cobbled chimney, and a light flickered in a stained-glass window. Ento headed in its direction, not particularly sure why, but deciding to trust where his hooves took him, as Fate had not allowed him very many other options to take.

Coming up to the door, he noticed that the sickly grey and patchy lawn looked like it had been neglected for years. The roof, where scores of bitter orange and chalky yellow moss had not taken over, was terribly worn-out and seemed as though it had been purposefully torn down in a section. Pondering silently, Ento could not for the life of him understand why anyone would want it that way. Smears of something sticky looked like red paint upon the ancient door. In large, blotchy letters there was scrawled the word: Kryte. Witch.

Ento stopped dead, completely doubting whether it was even safe to go near a place that looked like this. He had damned himself at his hesitation, though, and flinched as he heard the door click and swing open with the squeal of horribly dry hinges. A head stuck itself slowly out the old door.

The colt raised a startled eyebrow high as he saw a very, very old Ekina look directly towards him, smiling. The wiry strands of her long, grizzled mane stuck out in every direction around her sawdust-colored fur and stunted horns, and her prying eyes sat deep in her face like rotting fruit in mud.

“Come in please, Ento,” she slurred, and hacked repulsively.

Ento had been ready to run the second the old witch had stuck her head out the door, but his mind kept his hooves bolted to the earth when he had heard her use his name. Against what seemed to be the better judgment of the tiny, screaming, flailing voice of reason in his head, he followed her promptly inside, his eyes locked straight ahead. Gagging as the earthen smell of mushrooms hit his senses unexpectedly, he entered into the main room and was stunned at what he found.

Through the dancing, hazy light of several candles, he saw piles of roughly tanned animal skins in a corner, along with an equal amount of bones on wooden tables against the wall. They had been sorted by size, almost meticulously, it seemed. In the center of the room sat a large fire, which seemed to more so grab light greedily from the room rather than give it off. Indeed, unlike most pit fires he had seen, this one was thick and greasy, and seemed to burn with an eerie coolness. It certainly was not like the bright and cheery fires that he lit in his home. An uncontrollable shiver ran down his spine at the ethereal sensation he got from this place.

The old witch turned around to look at Ento. Upon closer inspection, the lanky colt realized with a shock that she was blind, her gaunt eyes greyed over and unmoving.

“Please, set down your pack, dear, and have a seat around the fire,” she said, and was attacked again by her coughing fit. It seemed she would keel over dead in any moment by the way she was hacking. Ento grimaced at the awful sound.

“Don’t be rude, colt. My illness is not something to make faces at,” she spat viciously. At her vile condemnation, Ento grimaced in shock.

“How did you see my face?” he questioned incredulously. “You are blind, aren’t you?” The old hag smiled, revealing a mouth of disgusting, broken teeth.

“Such an ignorant thing to think, that only ones eyes can see the physical world. Come, sit,” she said, motioning.

Ento did so, feeling more and more unnerved by the old Ekina’s disturbing mannerisms. He looked expectantly at the witch, who was gathering bones methodically in a worn-out clay bowl.

“So,” she said, not turning from her bones, “you’re looking for a way through the wall, yes? Of course I knew that, Ento,” she replied with a cackle as Ento’s mouth opened to rebuke. She turned to the fire, and laid down gingerly on the ratty silk pillow that was opposite him. “And of course I know your name. I've known it and the many other names your eternal soul has called itself in the past.” She began to sort the bones neatly down in front of her, humming ominously as she did so. Ento tried to glance at her around the tall, ugly fire.

“Now,” she said finally, making Ento jump slightly, “I know exactly how to get you past the wall and out to where you need to go. But it’s going to cost you something.” A malicious smile painted her grotesque features.

“Well... what is it?” Ento asked, cautiously. Thoughts came to mind of evil spirits relieving highway adventurers of their soul in return for something of little real value, or losing an small fortune to roving bandits that wanted to make a quick buck with little effort.

“A piece of yourself.” Her smile turned enigmatic. “Not in the physical sense, such as blood, or hair, and not in the ethereal sense, it isn’t your soul I’m after… It is something much more valuable to me, and, ah, something you probably would not miss, if you even knew how to identify it.” Her cackle resounded throughout the small cottage. Ento’s face fell slightly at the witch's dodgy mannerism.

As long as I’m not giving her my soul, or my stomach or my heart, if it gets me over the wall then it’s fine by me, he decided.

“O-okay. I agree to your deal.”

“Excellent!” she squealed, an action and sound extremely unbecoming of such an ancient hag. Scooping them up slowly in a chipped hoof, she threw the bones in the fire, one by one. “Now we begin the ritual.” The haunting smile returned.

As the bones hit the fire, the flames crackled and hissed, spitting hot sparks into the air. Suddenly, a wind picked up from out of nowhere, and grabbed ash and soot from out of the fire. It whirled around the witch, who stood, chanting ominously:

“Throw sinewy bone across the fire, and let the flesh evaporate. Revel in thine sickening ecstasy, and open up the flood gates!”

Ento realized the hag’s voice had lost all the pain of age, and had instead become deep and foreboding. Her pearlescent eyes rolled about in their sockets, having been stained blue by some arcane magic. The colt stared, his mouth agape and eyes wide with mixed awe and horror as she chanted on. The boom of her voice seeming to shake the very foundation of the earth as the room was engulfed in the bitter storm of whirling ash.

“I shout loud your burning mantra, with the confidence of fools, and the unity of fear! It is Fate's decree that this body will break, so let it be me who sets you free! Ehmudenyer, Vakado, Hr, show me thy power! Tuni’Ro, guide me in the sage's guile that is the bane of the dead!”
Ento felt a queer sensation tug at the back of his mind, then as suddenly as it had started, the impression stopped. The witch’s body began to quiet, and her eyes glazed back over into blindness. She sat calm now on her pillow, taking up the guise of the old hag again. She smiled at his face of unbelieving shock.

“Ah, and thank you for that, my dear. I shall be using it quite well!" The broken smile cleaved its way across her face even further as she seemed to think up another brilliant idea. "For being such a good little colt, before you must depart, I shall enlighten you of your fortune.” Her smile turned to a cold sneer. “But be warned: while the prediction will be true, the way you may interpret it will be ever changing. Fear a wandering mind, colt.”

She threw another hoof-full of broken bones into the fire, and it snapped quickly into a cold, green blaze. The witch’s shadowy eyes seemed to look out beyond the plane of existence, her face contrasting grotesquely by the unnatural light of the fire. Aloud, she shouted:

“We are all joined to the universe, and fated to darkness! It is here we face each other, in the blackness of the night, and it is here we see each other, where only I can read your mind.

"Your future is so defined: Beware. You’ve crossed the line this time! Out there, are you so sure of what you’ll find? She will, in the end, be a victim of your life, and you, a witness to her own demise: a fool's unbridled love! It is a destiny brought on by eternity’s whim!

"Now as you stand before me, I can feel your craving, and the way that you behave. I can hear the thunder roll, and the bleeding of a million souls! It is only in the end that you will know: you’ve done this to yourself!

"From this point on, there’s nowhere else to turn. So ride!”

At this final utterance, Ento felt the world fall out from underneath him. The last thing he saw as midnight-ink engulfed his perception was the wicked smile of the witch. Everything fell out of existence in a single, swift motion.

Comments

[Arcanist Ascendant]

Awesome- I'm looking forwards to seeing where this goes.