Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-24510587-20170621000455/@comment-24696651-20170628204043

22nd of Morning Star

The stairway continued some distance, becoming steadily darker and mustier. The crazed screeching grew louder and louder, reaching an unbearable, maddening crescendo. After a foreboding descent, the soldier finally saw dim, flickering light at the end of the stairway. Just before the soldier exited the stairway, a scream cut through the yippering. It was not the deranged howl of a lunatic, nor the agonized shriek of pain; it was the hideous scream of mortal terror, the desperate scream of horrific death.

As the soldier finally stepped out of the stairway, he saw not a cellar, but a large cavern. At the end of it was a huge, naked man, his muscles glistening with sweat, standing before a giant headless statue. In front of the man was a young woman, also naked, cowering in fear. Her hands were shackled, and her mouth gagged. The man was roaring in some guttural language, his tongue twisting in impossible fashions to produce unhuman, ungodly sounds. A crowd of several hundred was assembled before him – they were the men that had been defending the fort. Their naked flesh was stained with blood.

The man at the front continued his treacherous sermon, and the screeching became louder and higher pitched. The man picked his prisoner in one hand, and with his other punched the statue with a force which would surely break bones. But his hand was impossibly unscathed, as he ripped the shackles off the prisoner – the young woman’s hands were not so durable. He ripped the gag out of her mouth, dragging several teeth out with it. The young woman let out a pitiful moan of agony, but it was drowned out by the now deafening shrieking of the crowd. The man’s hand closed around the woman’s head, and but her scream was cut short. With inhuman force, the man ripped the woman’s head from her shoulders. A man rushed to collect the woman’s head, and her body was tossed to the crowd – the men rushed to feast upon it like vultures. Within a few minutes nothing was left but a grinning skeleton.

Another prisoner was dragged before the leader of this terrifying cult, from a long line of people with shackled hands and feet nailed to the floor. There were prisoners young and old, men and mer, male and female. The only common thread was the look of abject terror on their faces. The next in line was one of the scouts sent to observe Rye Castle.

The soldier snapped out of his petrified trance. Fighting a powerful urge to vomit, he turned round and scrambled up the stairs. He had seen enough.