The Isolation Years
Chapter I- The Isolation Years
This was a time for a new journey. The moon a light in a Scarlet haze, the snow was thin and the grass a light lime green, the long lost scent of the air was now apon us and so was that of the sea, I walked down the icy foreshore, along the beaten decking of the jetty, in to the unforgiving waves of the sea. I turned my back to see the village ablaze; large figures running in burning buildings and smothering villagers. I climbed down with in the braking waves of ice and concealed myself under the jetty. Clinging on in the waves, of which the cold needle like droplets washed down my spine.
The foul scent of the burned remains had lifted and all he screams had faded. I clambered up from beneath the jetty, walked back up to the smouldering embers of what was my past; soon they faded out in to the dust that was my home. I could hear the faint sounds of a horse galloping across the sands, I chose to ignore and stopped to remember the world I had just lost.
Suddenly I felt myself swept away from the earth, I turned my head to the figure, his body shrouded in black cloth and his flesh pallid and ghostly; hair black as night but spun with white flecks alike the stars, his eyes a creamy yellow, glazed thick with a sticky film. His grasp upon my waist, tight and hatefully constricting my breath.
Soon we were travelling down the moist chasm-like path that went deep into the rock. A small light at the end obscured by a huge vessel, the pathway opened out deep with in one of those hidden coves along this tattered coast. We came down on to the foreshore of the cove, he threw me to the ground and I was quickly grabbed by the throat and dragged into the water and up a rampart.
Now aboard the large black ark, another mail-clad figure pushed me through the hull, and I hit the hard wood floor cracking my knees on its surface. Then pushed to corner, tied to a frame, thrown on to a shelf, a breath or two passed, then a larger figure grabbed four chains and shackled me to these wretched racks of my torment.
Quickly it dawned upon me; I was trapped upon one of those slave ships that our foes had used to break the souls of our ancestors. The smell of vomit and blood diluted in excrement, burned in the back of my throat as the taste of the man above's sweat made my tongue bitter. My mind crushed with visions of what my future may bring; the pain of dying from the death that lurked amidst us in the bowels of the floating cage. The thick dead air slowly numbed the pain as I felt my eyes drop shut.
I slowly awake some time later, I know not, how long that was - my body now eaten alive by the ticks and flies that have gorged upon all of us. The taste of death now thick in the air as it crept within, causing her victims to grow pallid and their skin boil. Her invocation carried in the sound of each cough and each scream. Slowly people appeared to grow thin and the tissue fall from their bones as they crumbled into bone and leathered skin.
I awake some days later, many of the people appearing to nothing more than a few sticks. Three figures laden in mail clanked into the hull and unchained some people and dragged them to the surface. We thought maybe they we being freed but then the sound of a limp object hitting the water and that's where I realised they were now the food of gulls and over scavengers; for we were all passengers on this ship, bound for the shores of uncertainty and death. I suppose that this was the days the made me and probably destroyed me, too, after all, I could now feel a faint spatter from the occasional drips of liquid upon my parched and salted flesh.
Where I lay, I heard every movement of the vessel and none more than the sound of her whole being raked along the rough rocks of an alien shoreline. The bleak, baron and beaten coast, that smelt of salt and iron and yet the strong clench of sulphur burned the backs of our lungs.
Lit up by the purple light of the lightning and red tones of the moon, the sharp edges of the settlement's crude walls made of the razor like shards of slate from the nail like the penicels of rock that made the coastline. This coastline that sliced and punctured the crippled and dehydrated skin over our feet as we try to scramble in rust-coated iron chains, up to the angular stones of the road above, made worse by the jagged tangles of wood, this emphasised the dark mortality of the future, the dark wood highlighted in reds and purples of the sky above. Even when I closed my eyes, I was still reminded of the cruelty and pain that the future held for us; the clutches of the Dark Lord's bony, twisted fingers.
As the sound of the ravens call, and the morbid squawks of beasts that loomed in the dark shadows of the shore, the sulphuric air burned my nasal hair and the rotting wounds about my living corpse. I fall back into Unknown...
The foul scent of the burned remains had lifted and all he screams had faded. I clambered up from beneath the jetty, walked back up to the smouldering embers of what was my past; soon they faded out in to the dust that was my home. I could hear the faint sounds of a horse galloping across the sands, I chose to ignore and stopped to remember the world I had just lost.
Suddenly I felt myself swept away from the earth, I turned my head to the figure, his body shrouded in black cloth and his flesh pallid and ghostly; hair black as night but spun with white flecks alike the stars, his eyes a creamy yellow, glazed thick with a sticky film. His grasp upon my waist, tight and hatefully constricting my breath.
Soon we were travelling down the moist chasm-like path that went deep into the rock. A small light at the end obscured by a huge vessel, the pathway opened out deep with in one of those hidden coves along this tattered coast. We came down on to the foreshore of the cove, he threw me to the ground and I was quickly grabbed by the throat and dragged into the water and up a rampart.
Now aboard the large black ark, another mail-clad figure pushed me through the hull, and I hit the hard wood floor cracking my knees on its surface. Then pushed to corner, tied to a frame, thrown on to a shelf, a breath or two passed, then a larger figure grabbed four chains and shackled me to these wretched racks of my torment.
Quickly it dawned upon me; I was trapped upon one of those slave ships that our foes had used to break the souls of our ancestors. The smell of vomit and blood diluted in excrement, burned in the back of my throat as the taste of the man above's sweat made my tongue bitter. My mind crushed with visions of what my future may bring; the pain of dying from the death that lurked amidst us in the bowels of the floating cage. The thick dead air slowly numbed the pain as I felt my eyes drop shut.
I slowly awake some time later, I know not, how long that was - my body now eaten alive by the ticks and flies that have gorged upon all of us. The taste of death now thick in the air as it crept within, causing her victims to grow pallid and their skin boil. Her invocation carried in the sound of each cough and each scream. Slowly people appeared to grow thin and the tissue fall from their bones as they crumbled into bone and leathered skin.
I awake some days later, many of the people appearing to nothing more than a few sticks. Three figures laden in mail clanked into the hull and unchained some people and dragged them to the surface. We thought maybe they we being freed but then the sound of a limp object hitting the water and that's where I realised they were now the food of gulls and over scavengers; for we were all passengers on this ship, bound for the shores of uncertainty and death. I suppose that this was the days the made me and probably destroyed me, too, after all, I could now feel a faint spatter from the occasional drips of liquid upon my parched and salted flesh.
Where I lay, I heard every movement of the vessel and none more than the sound of her whole being raked along the rough rocks of an alien shoreline. The bleak, baron and beaten coast, that smelt of salt and iron and yet the strong clench of sulphur burned the backs of our lungs.
Lit up by the purple light of the lightning and red tones of the moon, the sharp edges of the settlement's crude walls made of the razor like shards of slate from the nail like the penicels of rock that made the coastline. This coastline that sliced and punctured the crippled and dehydrated skin over our feet as we try to scramble in rust-coated iron chains, up to the angular stones of the road above, made worse by the jagged tangles of wood, this emphasised the dark mortality of the future, the dark wood highlighted in reds and purples of the sky above. Even when I closed my eyes, I was still reminded of the cruelty and pain that the future held for us; the clutches of the Dark Lord's bony, twisted fingers.
As the sound of the ravens call, and the morbid squawks of beasts that loomed in the dark shadows of the shore, the sulphuric air burned my nasal hair and the rotting wounds about my living corpse. I fall back into Unknown...