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[PK] "Come, oh pale death."


Callistus
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“Come, oh pale death.”

 

   Indeed, one may ascribe this man no mere figment of horrid madness

       For this man is still among the accursed, and his grave is still black marked.

     Death is a lying wench, but it bears a man’s name.

And in fact, his grave has long been marked. And of that matter the godly man knew very well.

 

    In the dim, moonlit fields of night, there became a melodious ensemble among the trees.

         A song, one might say, but this man might so beg to differ.

      For though a chant is oft a product of pure Man, this baleful chant was of no such origin.

 No man in-fact dared ever to utter its words, fearing rightly the wrath of divine damnation so ever wrought upon his accursed blood.

 

      But I truly ask, vir, what is damnation? Man is damned since his very first inception.

   The whole world, after all, is but a basin for the nameless damned.

         Even you, foul lectorem, whose name I dare not even utter of mere respect.

     And even that watchful corpse in its pitiful grave.

    Why, everyone ought to be damned, for they too were cast from the fields of heaven themselves.

         But the primeval debate yet stood, and there ever so rose the question from unproclaimed wiseful men; what, exactly, and at length; why?

     To that, there is shorn but a vestige of an answer.

  Let me recite to you here, dear vir, this ludicrous tale of one such damned

     A meek creature, or man if you so wish, and it’s wont to suffer death, time and time again.

               Enough death, little dear, to make a man mad.

 

  Madness ought to consume. And did I not thus forewarn?

 

    And so it goes, in the steps of rancid, entirely hideous beasts, who trod an unmarked woods and let off tired neighs.

            And there stood an oak that plainly watched, a curious sight (but it had no eyes!) laughing at the very matters these few men so spoke of.

        The cosm, after all, and the unmarked wood, and the wasteland, and the burial ground, so forth, are endless things in abbreviation, but they all connote a singular fate.

          Take your time, friend, and appraise this matter so well as your name.

 

      Onto the man’s q̇ueer tale, there came after his presence a most fearsome pack of brigands, to whom death was all a staked game!

        Their names, after all, coined themselves upon martyrs of their sword, and the pallor of their face so betrayed the truth of lustful sin.

 

       Is it not, after all, but Man’s great wont,

       To damn themselves in the lust for sin?

 

   One might even say their blades grew that same, wontful desire!

        Quaint, is it not? How death bonds all, of damned and accursed? 

             

      Thus marching still on steady course, there sounded amongst the men some saintly echo

  But fear not, it is but a mere small omen to the chantful ode of their mirth.

 

     By GOD, dear vir, do not make me laugh!

 

        Only a fool, a drunk madman, deep drowned in his righteous scruples ever denied the carnal pleasures that derive of cutting up an old, weak cripple, at tales of such lustrous coin. By GOD there still, who would not deign to prance and                       delight?!

 

A limb for a hundred marks, they so danc’d, that even the crows made rejoice.

 

  These damned, barking birds,

      even their song was hideous!

Their beaks defied the very abyss and wailing heavens, for it wept of cruel, white rain. 

 

     And these men so trod on geldings of ash, tongues starched.

   Intent, as told those little marks on their face, to savor each, hanging limb of the sickly vicar.

      A weakly thing.

     But the weak are made to be preyed upon. Is not death their carnal right?

Thus is their hateful fate.

 

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Silence! Haer, how the pillar of madness madly speak.

 

Why, even the heavens cried and croaked.

 

  We hence arrive near to the tale of so damned a man.

And yet as we bring forth our ears to hark,

  or hear tears of this broken thing’s fear,

    why, silence becomes.

 

Naught indeed, only the empty, curious ballads, shrill voices, dead muses, wrought from most hollow graves.

  One even comes to beckon the dubious wonder, is it truly blood that so lies steep in Man? 

 

But I acquit. Nothing lies there. For only ghosts dwell’d such silence, beneath such dark moonlight.

   Yes, vir, only poor death lie there. To mock the stray or passing soul.

  He, that death, was even said to smile; deep in sepulchure, scraping coffins, touching his new gifts.

     But do pray, sinful man, is there a thing that would not?

   Death feeds on all, and whom upon do you feed, worthless, filthy thing? Not even life. Not even dirt.

 

But q̇ueer lies, the rest of it all.

  For a basin of death may not speak; I digress, it merely cannot! It is all but humorous jests, cast from those black, serpentine tongues of elves.

Damn them all! Damn them with Leprosy, mayhaps, or the horrors of a vacuous mind!

 

 

  But see, death simply savors the old.

And striding there on emptiness was, quite simply, a savory old, old man.

   That damned, whoreson of a man of whom we prior spoke.

     And this man, in his hauntless crow feathers and black garbs, was not.

        He cursed every name. Why, he even cursed God

      For he was already damned, just like the rest of us all. And little ever mattered to this man.

For this man, fled, and seldom did he ever flee. 

    A droll thing, indifferent from those little, fleeing rats. Who with conviction also ran.

 

But foolish are they who so think to outrun the grave.

 

  He ran fast, and floundered faster, cowering beneath the crowns of pine-trees, shrinking from the bitter, fiery cold.

    He ran from rain, and ran from death itself.

      Wet, black boots crossed him from tree to tree, but the old man still shivered, still panted like a dog with dropsy, glancing fearfully behind himself, praying.

         He peered at the sky he so cursed

    At the tearing firmament he so foolishly left

   Staring, sitting, limping, merely waiting.

     And in waiting did he watch the laughing clearing, laugh.

     And clear.

 

    But it dare not stare back. Only the abyss did, they whispered him a silent, ever shallow gust of ash. 

       And hell pranced in its devious voice.

 

    “Nameless,” the voice dared speak, breaking in senile prayer.

      “Accursed, echt, arrashhe.. .

          Pity this low and  dying soul.

 

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                  And ever so damned was his wish, for death was old and deaf.

 

      The riders fast arrived upon their pale geldings, and resent still hailed in their vert eyes, with fleeting wraiths in a whist, cold barrow long old, yet danced.

       They set their eyes on, and about, and they grazed at bleak truth itself.

 

     Thus one, whom deathly gaze glimmered of cruel firn spurred his beast.

        And a blade so sung and swung, thirsting more than the man himself. This bashful, unkind thing, damn it too; it did not even spare the man his arm.

 

     Thus pain cruelly shot within that resigned, black pilgrim, and a shriek spurted from his very gullet, shoal, and weak. 

          But a sorry little thing, marked for harrowing death.

 

        He cradled the lost arm upon his breast, and ran, howling not much unlike a pitiful, rabid dog.

      And the carnal ravens flocked above the trees, awaiting patiently  the fall of this feeble, fragile little prey. 

     

         And true enough, he did not run very long

           for his leg buckled.

 

And poor, poor Emreis.. why, even his lungs gave in.

 

      He lived, at best, a hundred and twenty years of age, propped merely by the curse of patchwork sorcery, and some laughable, lesser breed of spells.

        A cruel, dread mark, yet carved on his wearing flesh, denotative of  sinful rebirth.                  Incarnation.

 

    But not even virgin’s blood, could sustain a man so bygone, drivelling, old and so festering.

 

        “Wretch!” he quoth,

  But, only imperious voices, and broken, foggy words croaked back.

 

        “Wretch!” the old pilgrim recited, and laughter, too, rang in his voice.

                  Crazed, at once perhaps thunderous.

 

             But merely laughter rang.

    He concocted in his mind a choir - why, he had not even a vocal chord - and lifted, with a single, bleeding hand, that relic.

      Of a bygone arm.

 

      He offered it to heaven. A shrill thing, that unsightly man, parading his own idle limb in so great a frenzy, curiously then laughing. 

 

    These devilish men descended their eunuchs, baring hard steel, sputtering sheer black mucus

     Cursing with vile perfidy that very man which spoke them.. oh, so, very wrong and deathly.

 

             “God is with me!” he crowed and cowered like a desperate child, form haggard, yet hunching down like that of a broken thing;

      “Look! See! The skies, even its empty sea.. And the left hand is with me!”

 

      But they regarded little this old, raving pilgrim, and his mad and spoken antics.

     They wrenched back his shawled head, and extended there a dagger to the throat, nearing to slit.

 

And he laughed quite viciously, if I may say, it so seemed he laughed not of his chords - for he had none - but of his heart.

 

          Yes, vir, his heart. It is prevalent that the heart itself speaks loudest, and loud it truly spoke.

     So loud indeed that said heart burst, where the man sat there drowning.

      Drowning, and bathing in his own choke, in his own blood.

         Not from the knife! Oh, no, no, but of his own heart, that burst and broken heart.

   Such dim, sickly blood in fact poured, drenching - or some might say blessing - the earth, with that old, viscous blood.

 

And yet eyes, oh, such bloodshot eyes stared alive, and the mouth, much contorting as if to so whisper vainly of great and forgotten things.

 

      But they could not hear what spilt of that heavenly chant.

        Hurriedly they diced his arms, and stole his watchful eyes. Poached this wrathful, imperious black tongue.

 

For soon, they would vanish.

 

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          But the pilgrim alone would not.

  He lived, in the words of men. 

      And the eyes of this maddened pilgrim, looked never far from the moon. As if drunk, or indeed aware of its pale light.

Ah. . that lavish thing of old moonlight.

    Like that of a starved, addled blood-freak.

 

        For there he stared; at that singular, dull, ashen eye of God,     ever hung from the old stars.

 

 

              Until the carnal crows lapped him clean.

 

 

Spoiler

This marks the death of a long abandoned blood-priest I once played, Emreis, whom I had never once dragged into player combat (despite multiple attempts pressed by the late “Llyrians” and their free-city ilk). At most, he dabbled in wretched rituals and rites that strove towards otherworldly purpose, or likewise reaching hands to the canonist God. I found no relevance in posting this here, but I thought it might as well serve an ode to a period of brief good time I enjoyed of Lotc.

 

 

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