Some of you may have heard me raving about Lovecraft, so I tried a little exercise. I found an old post of mine (REALLY old, don't mind the horrid writing) on the Dark Age Legends RP, and re-wrote it trying to stay as close as possible to a style similar to that of the great writer H. P. Lovecraft. Well, here it is.
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ORIGINAL
Several hours passed. Armand finally found the sorcerer's hut, hidden deep in the forest next to Asgarnia. He carefully knocked on the door.
-"Who disturbes me? Show yourself, intruder!"
The door burst open, with no one behind it. Armand walked in, and just then he saw the Lilithian.
De Sade was sitting in a large armchair facing a hot fire. He was completely hidden by the chair, save for his hands, which were resting on the chair's armrests. From the look of the hands, de Sade had green leathery skin.
-"Archmage de Sade, the Sovereignty needs one last service. There is another Twilight Warrior, and he is wrecking all sorts of trouble in Asgarnia, a city we recently took over."
The sorcerer sighed heavily.
-"Again I am summoned to show insects the way to perfection."
De Sade finally stood up, and Armand nearly sat down. This guy didn't need magic to kill, his looks did the job perfectly. The Lilithian was dressed in black robes streaked with dark green lines, with a hood covering an inhuman face. His skin was very tight on his head, baring his teeth and giving it an overall appearance of a green skull. Though the eye sockets were there, the eyes were nowhere to be seen. The sorcerer also had a pair of small scaly wings, not large enough to be of any use. However, they seemed to have been cut from their original size.
De Sade seemed to look directly at Armand, and he felt a chilling cold creeping over his insides.
-"The Twilight Warrior is Alex. Barely enough for a decent challenge. Tell me, would a dragon swat a fly just because he could?"
Armand did not find the strength to answer.
-"Think about that. But now, the wind sings a strange melody... Someone is approaching."
The Archmage, nearly hovering over the ground, left the hut. Armand did not come up with anything more original nor useful other than to follow.
De Sade was right. There was a rebel walking through the forest. He did not appear to have sighted either de Sade, Armand, or the hut. Finally, Armand found strength within him to speak.
-"A-a-a-archmage, that there is a - a rebel, from the city we are occupying..."
-"His lesson today will be pain."
De Sade extended a razor-sharp talon towards the rebel, and the Asgarnian cringed, then fell down. There was a visible black pentagram on the ground around him, and it appeared to be drawing the rebel to it. Finally, the movements stilled.
-"But... but you didn't give him a chance! He didn't even see you!"
-"Sometimes, it is best preferable not to hear the serpent's rattle, young one. Now, Alex, was it?"
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REVISION
Your brow raises in a mildly surprised, yet mandatorily stoic manner as I slowly tear the third and final hopeful's application papers in half. A warranted expression; forcedly retching regurgitated praise at the Warlock's parlour-worthy demonstration, the other judges leave me the sole voice of dissent at this badly executed jest of an election. Some audaciously argue me to be a derelict relic of a past age, citing my thus-termed "unreachable" expectations as a result of senile dementia. Instead of fruitlessly attacking my yet age-unwarped mind, they should read about - nay, they should remember, for he is studied in all military schools - de Sade, the Lilithian Archmage. I had met him once, a long time ago. Had the other judges, they too would condemn this pathetic exercise in sardonic nepotism wallowing in the miry puddle of undeserved commendations.
Many years back, long before I had even planned on running the rat race of military promotions, I served as a humble scout to the human war machine of then-Sovereign Kronos. Much of the continent fell swiftly to his unstoppable armies' hell-march, plowing through the reinforced stone walls of feudal city-states with little meaningful resistance. The technocracy of Asgarnia, a haven built by brilliant scientific minds and exiled military leaders, was one of the very few exceptions that refused to submit to the tyranny of the Sovereign. His living-and-undead legions rolled over it like a river would over an insignificant rock... but holding it proved to be a wholly different story, mainly due its protection by Alex - the Twilight Warrior. Faced with continuous defeats by this aggravatingly resilient foe, my commanding officer Damien Roth ordered me to recruit the aid of de Sade.
It has been explained to me that de Sade was but a well-chosen monicker - his true name utterable only by his kin, the magical reptile-men of Lilith. Fueled by a volatile cocktail of curiosity and fear for seeing a member of such a race, I sought the retired Archmage's dwelling in the tenebrous forests near Asgarnia. There was - I remember it clearly - a bitter rain that day, and the rest of that week, as if to make up for the droughts of yestermonth. As I ventured deeper into the forest, I made note of a subtle blight afflicting the trees. The arboreal plague progressively worsened with the depth of my penetration into the defiled heart of the woods. Distant ululations and deep bayings reached me through the incessant hammering of the rain on my helmet; this forest long ago found itself weaved into the local legendry as a lair of many unspeakable monsters. At times I fancied a shadow brushing just out of my sight, leaving behind a hostile aroma in the air and the dissipating sounds of fleshy wings flapping away and snapping the diseased branches. My knees weakened with each step in the grasping wet earth and my body shook with periodic tremors of anxiety; I grappled the hilt of my loaded speargun with white-knuckled terror. Mysterious encounters and curious sensations increased in frequency and vividity (though none came out to confront me), until the trees I passed degenerated to nothing more than gnarled skeletons clawing at the skies. At last the gray cloud-filtered sunlight dimly illuminated the place not meant to be beheld by human eyes: the shabby hermitage of the Archmage.
With an unsure posture, I approached the wind-rattled hut through legion of untended weeds. Furtive eyes spied me from beneath the cover of a makeshift cattle pen, and a strange thing for which I knew no name briefly slithered between the crude rock foundations of the shanty. As I reached for the door, the oppressive black serpent of Fear coiled about my throat. However, I knew that the proverbial serpent would grow infinitely bigger if I had returned to Roth without news of a successful alliance with de Sade; strengthening my resolve, I pushed the run-down door open.
A world of black arts revealed itself to me inside the deceptively small home. Wild-eyed, I observed wicked diagrams twisting on the floor and tattooing the walls; graveures of unspeakably violent scenes resting in a corner-laid stack; masses of ageless tomes collecting dust in an equally ancient bookcase. This unholy sanctuary was illuminated by the flickering glow of a wood fire on the other end of the room, the soft light of which was obscured by an imposing, though decrepit, leather armchair.
"Who..."
It was barely even speech - the sound was akin to some horrid abomination sucking air, as if awakening from an eternal sleep. A skeletal hand I did not note being there earlier slid off the rest, producing a sickening cracking of bone as it moved. I tried to reply, only to find Fear tightening its circles. What came out instead of my voice was an inane gasp.
"Speak, Sovereignty lackey."
His voice changed to a deep timbre boring into the core of my heart. Another tip gracefully shared with me prior to my trek was that the Archmage was not known for neither patience, nor calming an induced anger.
"Armand... Scout with the Sovereignty, Archmage," I finally managed to force out of myself. "The Sovereignty needs one last ser--"
"Alexander, the Twilight Warrior," the voice interrupted me. "Yes... I know of him... but he is not enough for anything in the semblance of a challenge. Would a dragon swat a fly just because he could?"
"Archmage, please! The Sovereignty needs you! Lord Damien hims--"
A sound which I can liken only to what a land-walking aspect of a whale would produce while breathing filled the room, shaking the various small vials and containers with questionable grasses and mushrooms.
"Roth..." The thunderous inhalation ceased. "It is strange to see him sacrifice his face before me for a worm like Alexander.... very well. I shall come to his aid."
More ear-grating sound of bone followed as I watched the hooded figure rise out of the armchair. His robes, themselves black as night, ran with faintly phosphorescent lines in similar forms to those of the wall-charted diagrams. The robes were sleeveless, giving them the appearance of a great hooded apron. True to his race's designation as magic reptile-men, his brownish-green skin occasionally sparked with an iridescent discharge to nearby objects. And then he turned to me.
My war-tempered eyes have seen much, but o, that monstrosity was branded into the gray matter of my brain for the rest of my life. His face - if I may brag to call it such - consisted of a queerly elongated human skull with a veil of green skin. I could see no eyes; only a swallowing darkness in the sockets. The lack of lips bared his teeth, giving him a perpetual morbid grin. Two opposing keratin growths protruded from his chin, much like the fierce talons twitching in agitation on his hands. Behind his back quivered what were once webbed wings, bearing terrible section scars of a devilish tool. Unable to stomach the blasphemous sight, I weakly fell upon my knee. He approached me, bones cracking at every step, rattling my sanity on its hinges.
"The winds of the aether sing an... inculpating melody," he hissed. I dared to look up - the blackness of his eye sockets were pointed right at me. I felt my heart miss a beat, and the glow of the fire somehow darkened in my eyes. "Do they not teach stealth in the Sovereignty? You were followed."
With a creak but without a touch, the door swung. Indeed, there was one Asgarnian wandering near where I first entered, looking for me, fruitlessly. My body had exhausted its fuel for surprises, I think - I had only the strength to blink when the Asgarnian's glance met that of mine, to no effect. He continued hounding the area with dumb determination.
"The ability of a human to know its surroundings does not come without great sacrifice. The human relies heavily on its eyes, and the eye is the easiest organ to beguile."
One matter that I found myself contemplating was the manner of the soldier - why does the fool not advance into a hiding place as obvious as this hut? The Asgarnian did not leave me time to linger for an answer; as he passed yet another time by the forest clearing, I spied a strange machine, obstructed in an unfortunate way by the tall weeds. Just then, the Asgarnian picked something off the ground and affixed it to the thing, which, at that event, began to glow with a sinister violet luminescence.
What happened then proved me wrong with my estimation of the limits to which my mind could be surprised. I was utterly stupefied when, after a clap not unlike the thunder, the machine produced a glowing portal before the hermitage. The Sovereignty was always aware of Asgarnia's technological prowess, but this shattered every previous limit that was discovered about their scientific might. Soldiers... tens of soldiers gathered in front of the meager shanty, paying no heed to the rain or the twisted trees. They followed me here, and I allowed them to discover de Sade. But while bending light around oneself (and even a building) is something that every Archmage knows, this point is where similarities between the Lilithian's genius and the Warlock's amateur cease.
While I was contemplating the greatest last words a man may utter before being savagely torn apart by angry rebels, de Sade kept himself busy with, at a glance, inanely waving his talon in the air before him. Before I could inquire about his sanity, the talon dredged a trail in the very fabric of existence before him - a glowing green diagram (not dissimilar to those he had charted in his home) lit up, following the imagined trail, sparking, like a fuse. Seemingly satisfied, he eased his talon down, allowing the trail to mark itself. In the meantime, the soldiers continued to amass. Upon reaching a number of about two hundred, the portal flared a moribund flash - the cloak failed - and every speargun was aimed at the Lilithian.
This is where the details get blurry. If I recall correctly, I heard the result of a nervous soldier's early twitch - the singing of a single spear in flight. But even if I am right, the spear reached neither me nor de Sade. For once the diagram reached a satisfactory level of complexity (which happened, likely not by means of coincidence, right after the portal flash), the Lilithian spread his hands outward. And then there was light.
A light brighter than all I have seen. A light of a thousand suns, spreading across all the world, flooding every place where the darkness once lurked. A light which, despite my best attempts to shield myself with the metal of my gauntlet, still burnt with the same brilliance. Perhaps there was sound, too - but if there was, it was too loud to hear.
When I awoke, I awoke to a clear sky. Not a trace of rain. No puddle anywhere. Not much of anything anywhere, truth be told. A grand field of glass stretched before me - with the forest bordering at a precise angle, allowing for a conic shape culminating at the hermitage - to the place where the field's edge met the horizon. With but one spell, cast in moments relative to its destructive potency, de Sade not only took care of the attacking troops - he also obliterated their gathering reinforcements far behind the portal. Far - ten kilometers away. Yes, you raise your brow to the right moment this time.
What became of de Sade later I cannot pretend to know. The Asgarnian situation was dealt with rather instantly, as Alex's protection became moot after almost half of the capable population of the city-state was gone. The Lilithian Archmage did not allow himself to be found again. Many things I held true about the world and its limits were shattered on that day, but the greatest part of this tale is right now: de Sade was not the most powerful of his kind, and, in fact, many others like himself still live in Lilith. So - if the Sovereignty's military wishes to restore itself to its former glory by appointing a new Archmage - we should look beyond our own horizons.
