Yha-nthlei had been a respected scholar, and a pious man. He had viewed his studies as a blessed calling, and the future as a place of hope and promise. Since the day the Privy Council had assigned him to that dry and frigid wasteland, however, he'd read the stars with growing dread. And as the fortress-city built itself up, he had tried to warn the inhabitants of their impending doom. But they would not listen. The mouthbreathers cared for nothing but war with other mouthbreathers, and the toad-men cared for nothing but their silly rituals and ridiculous sermons. When they did not ignore him, they mocked him, or warned him that his words were blasphemous.
The stars had grown clearer, and his nightmares had grown worse. Two seasons past, he foresaw something awful rising from the sea. When he'd spoken of it, the presiding priestess had very nearly staked him on the cliffs. He had never understood why. It seemed like she'd explained, but he couldn't remember. Perhaps she hadn't; it had grown harder to think clearly around that time. He'd taken to spending every night on the ramparts then, splitting his gaze between the stars far above and the waves far below. It was peaceful there, far from the noise of the teeming mouthbreathers inside and outside the walls, and the stink of the multitude of filthy shore-creatures that seemed to fill the fortress. As the months wore on, though, the mouthbreathers' clamor grew so great that it found him even there, as did the the toad-men's dirty pets. Perhaps the world outside the keep had grown so small that it could no longer hold all their noise, and the beasts so numerous that the stoney edifice could no longer hold all of them. He did not know, and he did not care. All he cared about were the stars, and the waves.
He descended once, to find the attending councilor in charge of the province. A great storm was coming - he could see it as plain as the moon and sun. The hulking brute stared at him with dead eyes, flared impatience, and waved him away without a sound. That was the last time he'd left the heights. He had grown gaunt, and his skin dry, but he would not go back down into that distant, hostile place. He had grown tired, but he could not sleep for his nightmares. And then the storm came.
For the first time in months, the stars were hidden. As a freezing rain soaked his aching body, Yha-nthlei had slept a dreamless sleep. Days had passed, and the storm raged on. Slowly, his reason returned to him. He understood once more what he had read in the stars. He remembered the glassy-eyed look that had crept over every Sister he had sought to explain it to. He understood what was happening. He knew. He knew. Beneath a stormy sky, he inscribed scroll after sharkskin scroll describing what had befallen the Atlantian nation; it took him days to outline everything. But the morning he had finished, the very moment he had prepared to return to the world below and warn them anew of their sneaking bane, the sun had crept out from behind the clouds. And IT had arrived.
He saw it arise from the sea. He saw it ooze up the cliffs and slither through the gates - gates thrown open by the welcoming throngs inside. He saw it, and he could not behold it, so he looked away. He saw from the corner of his eyes the most graceful and majestic being he could conceive, but when he focused on it once more, its shape twisted and bent at strange angles before simply dissolving into an endless mass of teeth, tentacles, and eyes. Eyes which stared unblinkingly up from the courtyard at him, and him alone.
He fled to the highest tower, then. He had abandoned all thoughts of going back down, and simply huddled behind a parapet waiting for IT to come for him. When night fell, the stars had mockingly looked down upon him once more, but they were joined by a field of twinkling lights stretching around the keep as far as the eye could see. In the hazy shadows, the last traces of his sanity had slipped away. When a shimmering form fluttered down from the sky on wings of darkness, the poor seer had laughed, and cried, and screamed out whatever words came into his shattered mind. As it fell upon a handful of the omnipresent curs, Yha-nthlei surrendered the last trace of hope within his heart, and cast himself over the battlements back into the unyielding embrace of the sea below.
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Topic: Dom3 Round 15 - Game in Progress (Read 51116 times)