Hardest Choices

[Zonty 994]

 

🎶🎶🎶

 

!!!

This is NOT a prophecy, and is NOT known to most characters save for a few specific people that could feasibly glean this (You know who you are)

 

It is mostly just a display of inner struggle

 

 

 

Beneath a hushed canopy of mutilated stone, within a long-abandoned sanctuary where seldom any soul dared tread, a shadow stirred. Skulking through the gloom, passing along the rickety furniture that sagged beneath the weight of stupendous years it shouldered. Long-snuffed or eviscerated candles lounged in nooks and crevices, hiding away from any eye not keen enough, or not strong enough to penetrate the shade that clung to this sanctum. But, with each silent step of the sole creature that strode along the forlorn halls in utter defiance of its forsaken fate, it narrowed the distance to an untold mark, which only its twisted mind held cradled. 

 

Eventually, a vast expanse opened a distance ahead, peeling an insidious gleam from a yawning fissure in ancient stone. Here, pale light was rife. A strange agglomeration of sin, bound to Mundus and made manifest — a gleeful glint of primordial malice. Yet — the gait of a strange lurker never ceased, but borne it further. Closer with every breath drawn. With every beat of heart reverberated. The frame hid away from the unbenign glare of the sinister radiance that writhed about under a swathe of onyx darkness, scurrying on without pause. 

 

Finally, it encroached upon a jagged crack that gashed in floor like a calcified titan’s maw with jaws agape with spleen. Even here — even on the very fringe of this unmeasured fall where shadows dwelt at bottom, the figure evinced no hesitancy. No thought of safety or preservation. With a sharp slant, its form careened, plummeting into the unbeknownst depths.

 

By and by, and its fall faltered. Forces unseen and incomprehensible tugged at its carcass and sloughed its velocity, softly planting the visitor aground.

There — a morbid squelch rasped from the floor. A splayed carnage, of fresh or long eviscerated bodies — some, gnawed on and stripped of any nourishing substance — mourned beneath the figure’s steps.

Its glance peeled hither and thither, scattering across this pillaged butchery. 

Ivy and some other meagre verdancy clung to this afar asylum, so veritably away from any sane mortal. Even here, nature curdled and curled with its serene relentlessness. Sedate. But never yielding. 

 

There was something achingly enticing about this unhallowed space, wreathed in the stench of death and things yet worse. Perhaps not of any consolation to the ilk that wallowed in normalcy, but of great solace to the pressing figure that had come here. It was a memory. A soothing touch of long foregone ages. Cruel, perhaps. Agonizing — surely. But valuable. Meaningful. There were many an impetus that stoked this guest’s steps, but among them crooned a trivial facility. A simple pain. A cause that borne its wielder along both virtues and vices.

 

The figure drooped, shoulders sinking beneath the blanket of a whorling shadow. Slowly, the frame sunk into the gore, ichor weeping from the purulent amalgamations. Arms came to cradle the figure’s curled knees, and its shrouded head slumped downward. A heavy sentiment had clogged its throat. The thoughts and worries hardly capable of being put to words of any tongue. Its grip cinched, and silence stretched across the desolate bowels. 

 

Perhaps it were only minutes that had gone by. Perhaps hours or even days. It was too difficult to assess in the shelter unmoored from time. But with every beat of the heart, the weight only bore down weightier upon those harried shoulders. With every passing moment, the bile and blight only bulked at its sternum. Until finally — the hardship was too heavy a toll to endure silently. 

 

The figure reeled, its maw cast wide agape, and a wailing cry tore from its throat, reverberating across stones and plants, skulking through the halls and whispering at book-laden shelves. The carnage beneath quivered and flailed with new-wrought vigour, hissing and squealing under an enthroned frame. Shadows capered and pranced, swirling in images too twisted to have any sliver of revelation gleaned in their curves. But along with the penumbra that cavorted across ceiling and floors, something yet deeper unspooled from the pained, disconsolate shriek. An onyx haze that spun through the slouched cavern and smothered any semblance of light that still clung to its crevices. 

 

The haggard, rasping holler prevailed through a great measure of time, an ailing screech from which even the never-breathing stones almost bent away, tapped by this depthless despair even in their soulless marrows. But it was not the sound of eternity. Time bewearied the bellow — or perhaps merely mended the misery in which the figure had been embroiled.

The sound faltered and crumbled away. And when soonafter the darkness dispersed from the unbeknownst cavity, none remained there. As if the figure had been only an echo. A lash of timeless spirit that still remembered something about those deserted halls. 

 

The answer was ready.