The Cloid crawls through the crevices in the cliffs of the underworld, never getting out into open spaces, and avoiding the scarring green flames. Why would it go out, when aeons ago it discovered that these stones are so charged with the spiritual energy of the journeymen that sometimes they break through the dimensions and into the mortal realms? There nourishment exists in abundance!
I had escaped my dimensional experimentor’s captivity through that stupid accident that could’ve well ended my existence, but instead set me free. But I did not know what to do with my new-found freedom. The huge alien distorted manifold castle I was in had endless corridors mirroring backward into endless rooms each more strange than the previous. In one such room I found a long rotten corpse that looked almost humanoid as it was sitting on a surprisingly well maintained luxury soft leather couch, with some kind strange helmet on. In an unexplainable morbid curiosity I put it on, and I was instantly transported to something that I strangely knew to be one of the orbiting moon’s volcanic crater… which to my surprise seemed still active and steaming, and teaming with strange extraterrestrial insectoid life. It seamed to mean me no harm, but instead of safety, the sight of their hive mind-collective filled me with an overwhelming feeling of celestial loneliness mixed with fascination.
The Bnii Fyid skull had been passed on from great ruler to great ruler for millennia now, ever since ancient times since when it is rumored to have fallen burning out of the skies and the someone discovered it’s amazing one-to-many subconscious communication abilities. Many great wars of empires had, in fact, been fought solely for this ancient artifact, as regardless weather they were called cesars, pharaohs, sultans, kaisers, kings or presidents they all realized the great usefulness of playing with the fears of the masses, the value of instilling popular fears of other people/cultures/languages/civilizations, and how this allowed their own power to be increased on waves of fear. It is not a precise tool, it is is rather speculated it functions for the emotions of the masses like a prism for light: it breaks balanced ones into spectrums of intense separate sentiments which once separated can be distinctly channeled like rivers.
This ancient political knowledge that the fear of an (even imaginary) common enemy is possibly the greatest way to unite a people under a “great leader” may be commonly known, but the great use and even existence of the Bnii Fyid for this purpose is a secret sealed with ocean scale pools of blood, and not just that spilled by the many spies of different nations trying to find it again, and then their own as soon as they do. Those who know it, know why.
The warehouse smelled bad. No wonder, considering the piles of skin, flesh, torn scales and organs wrapped in fresh leather laying across the floor. Yet in the middle of it all the flesh-merger worked undisturbed by all this. Occasionally he would reach into a pile and take a required bit of tissue to add to his creation, as needed. This one had taken longer than expected due to the calibrations needed, but he was confident his next attempt of electrification would bring it to wonderful life. He worried for a moment of the unpredictable resultant mixture instincts it would have, but he shrugged it off in his scientific curiosity.
Gabriil was already 50 years old when he finally inherited his grand-Grandfather’s old mansion. The will had been convoluted to execute and full of more than peculiar conditions, but now he had fulfilled them all. Many ancient treasures awaited him in the old house, mysteries he’d probably spend the rest of his life to decipher, but now they were all unimportant as he rushed to the attic where he indeed found the tome he had been planning for all his adult life: “The Horrificus Magnus” !!! It was finally his to study!
Many of the paintings of Lucilian Bradley were controversial, some were even banned by the art community, but, in his morbid fascination with the unknown, he didn’t really care about that. However there was one in particular that he exposed that night at the new gallery that caused the outrage to explode into incendiary violence. In truth is, even having barely escaped the burning building and the furious mob, he was secretly happy IT was swallowed by the flames. The fact that his paintings were inspired not by imagination but by the demonic trance visions was his dark secret, one that he could live with, but what he saw when he painted that particular one traumatically opened his mind to the horror that some abominations can occasionally fuse, creating fresh new horrors.
However, a few weeks later, his secret relief shattered on the cliffs of reality as he received a large check with the post. Normally he would’ve celebrated the huge sum of money, fueling his expensive decadent lifestyle, but, to his unease, the check revealed that the secret collector who had been generously bidding at the exhibition auction somehow managed to save that painting and wanted to thank him. Lucilian wished at least he hadn’t known! From that day on he started praying for engulfing fires, seeing them as paths to salvation.
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Those dealing with mind travel and cosmic dream warping are always and forever at risk of their mind getting lost in the twisted beautiful dimensions. Without the palpable boring constraints of reality spirits tend to lose internal cohesion, to go in all directions first with excitement, then in hopelessness, becoming nothing, or at least no longer what we might call a person.
Such was now the fate of the Khalina’tr. Locked inSelf, possibly forever. His only chance of survival was to build himself a mental tower, to preserve and lock down the leftover bits of his sanity, to anchor them in prisons, to torment them into awareness.
The giant of the underworld crawls in slow motion through the burning sands of the infernal depths, for though he was once a frightening lord of great powers, he is now but a shell of his former might, a host and carrier of the burden that hatches upon his back, burrowing into it and reshaping it to it’s needs as it grows and multiplies.