Condensed for convenience, here is all the writing I did live on stream in December. Check out the youtube channel to see how I did it!
1.
I walked down the gallery, observing more in my peripheral vision the perverse decorations of the palace, each painting a twisted carnal gesture toward the obscene, each statue a writhing moment of lust frozen in time. I must admit my gaze was at times drawn away from the end of the hallway that the slim, haunting figure led me toward, a place where my fate already was decided. The images to the sides were powerful, sickening, alluring, and I could feel my will to resist the power that awaited me weakening.
“Wait here,” the hooded man said as we reached a large set of oaken doors, carved in shapes that defied my fragile sense of reality, already diminished in the strange place. Of their own accord one of the doors swung silently inward.
I caught a glimpse of the room beyond and my heart quickened. A cool breeze escaped from the portal, and chilled the sweat that was collecting on my head and neck, which I had until that point been unaware of.
I could make out a circular space with a single, sickly green light source at its center, before the door closed. For a few moments, I considered running back down the gallery in some futile attempt to escape, but more by the will in the next room than my fear of the gargantuan inhuman guard, I stood still, waiting as the hooded man had bidden.
Again silently the door opened. My guide was gone and indeed I could not see who had opened the door. If they existed and were not a phantom, they were lost totally in the shadows that clung to the outer wall of the circular space.
There was nothing else to do but to walk forward, and so I did.
“How lightly you walk into the lion’s den.” The voice was stark and dry, high and brittle, and yet omnipresent. I knew that it came from the dais at the center of the immense structure, lit by those strange ochre lamps I had seen before, or perhaps it was a reflection from the dome high above the dais, which appeared to be clad in tarnished copper that, to my eyes, seemed putrescent.
I stepped forward and my eyes adjusted. Then it was indeed by his will, and not mine, that I moved, for I then beheld the horror that sat upon the throne springing up from the dais.
His eyes were human, or else were made wet and vital by some glamour beyond my ken, but the rest of him had the appearance of a rotting corpse. Or perhaps it was that he was so aged and so wizened by his magic that it impressed upon me the aura of death. Deep creases disturbed a face that ought to have been human, making it more like melted wax over something alien or demonic.
“I do as you bid, my lord.” The words came out sounding far less frightened than I felt.
“Good,” said the creature upon the throne. A great, gnarled hand clicked heavy golden rings as it reached down and opened a chest that sat in the dark lord’s lap. “You are wise to obey, Xander.”
I crept closer and looked into the chest Myrdrag held in his satin-covered lap. It was brimming with jewels and gold, but they covered something else that was sinister, something moving subtle beneath the riches.
“You know what this is, eh?” came the crackling voice. I looked up at his face and detected a sardonic smile.
“My payment?”
He nodded. “Enough to live well, for a man like you.”
“And what else?”
He laughed, and my blood ran cold. A bead of sweat fell from my nose and at that moment I noticed the smell, which matching the unholy light, was equally insalubrious. Whether it was from the dark lord or from the box, I did not know, though I guessed it was from both. On the one hand, the rot of the man who held the box, on the other, the thing inside.
“You know it, yes? Of course.”
I swallowed. “How?”
“I have many methods at my disposal. Many techniques both ancient and covert.”
“How does she live?”
He closed the box. “By the will of Diorgesh, and the rites that has given me. She lives, and will live if you do not fail, but the ritual will only hold for a fortnight. Go now, and I will trade this heart for the one that I desire.”
I stared at the closed box for a minute, in horror and wonder. I did not realize at first that Myrdrag had moved. He was now standing tall over me and held forth a sheathed knife with an ebon handle, glittering with copper details.
I took it and drew it out a finger width. The blade was no less black than the handle, and though it had the subtle sheen of malachite, I knew it would be deadly sharp and strong as normal steel.
I kneeled and held the blade to my chest.
“As you bid, I shall do.” A quaver had finally slipped into my voice. It seemed to amuse the dark lord, who chuckled softly in response, and it was like the creaking of old rafters in a storm, reverberating under the ancient and sickly dome.
He held forth a folded piece of paper, and I took it with trembling hands.
“I know you shall. Do not waste your time. Remember that even the strongest magic fades.”
I rose and turned, trying not run on my way back to the gallery of sin, lest I anger the horror behind me.
A heart for a heart. This man must die so that my precious Terilla.
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