Part 1: The Journey to Liemma
Chapter 1: Sorte Nostra Morte Corporale
This was the age of the mighty god, and it’s followers, the Fanatics, who clashed with the wise and great rulers of the Cianalites. Their terror and reign were marching on day by day, clashing constantly with all life. This god was like no other, with its grip on all things, and therefore its resources endless. Who knew where it had arisen from, or what it end was, if any. It promised safety from this evil world by being joined unto it, and it would enter you into a world of its imagining, one of constant bliss and peace. Without movement or strive, without any sort of stirring, an endless, painless dream state with all our chemical desires fulfilled. Many strange apparitions, horrors, and the devilish actions of the fanatics have made the vast majority of people seek for refuge, and most of them, seek it in the very dog that bit them. The endless Grid of grey blocks which housed all those poor souls seduced and plugged into this strange machine stretched to the ends of the country.
Yet, tucked away in the countryside, a weightless stone mass twirled up above the firmament of orange, yellow, and deep green, with its buttresses flying alongside the redwings of the golden hour sky. It was like an ancient Cathedral, being by far the tallest and most ornate of the buildings on campus, with massive arched windows with meticulously calculated patterns, along with a few fairytale-like towers and spires completing its facade. Down below the leaves, streams babbled under wooden decking as tired students in long brown coats and scarfs clopped along them. They were all headed to the dormitories from the central building, which contained the vast majority of classrooms and lecture halls. These dormitories were in unspectacular, but certainly not ugly, group of buildings, which could be compared to old ‘mansion blocks’ you see in old city centres. There were also small, romantic looking houses out-of-the-way, which were for professors and esteemed prefects.
One of these students was Bartholomew, a skinny young man with brown hair and a slightly crooked nose, in his second year of his university study. He, tripping over himself, shot out of the student lounge, pale yet sweating. The dread and anxiety which had been slowly building up within him the past few months now utterly filled him. Bartholomew’s chest was tight, and he could barely feel his shaky legs carrying him along. ‘She had to have been an apparition!‘ he thought frantically to himself, ‘It’s in my mind… I’m losing it!’ He clambered quickly down each of the half wood panelled, half blue wallpaper hallways, which were lit only by the faint evening light pushing its way through the tiny slit-windows and whirling whispers of smoke and dust. He was panting by the time he got to his dormitory. He fumbled the keys into the lock and burst in, then quickly slamming the door behind him, and locked it in jittery haste.
He took a breath, and collected himself.
Bartholomew accommodation was… well lived in. It was small, but not as small as most as he was on the ground floor, in one of the prefect dorms, despite only being second year. His desk was covered in empty mugs and a few stacks of books, with one in particular was open. Above his wooden writing desk was a more substantial window which was letting in a mix of the now pink sky and the rusty glow of the street lamps which has just turned on outside. The room was still incredibly dull though, so he lit a few candles and eventually flopped down onto a chair.
‘Well,’ he thought to himself, ‘everything seems ordinary in here, at least!’ Slightly calmed.
Sitting for a second idle, his eyes caught a book which was on his desk. The title on the spine was ‘Modern Apparitions and Manifestations,’ it had a strange symbol on the cover, and the author some ‘Dr. V. A.’ who is unknown to anyone in all of greater Siccumdry. It’s thought by some that the book was written by a mystic in an outer, fringe community, or even a Grid Hermit, while others believe that the author is a highly respected professor or public person writing anonymously. Although controversial, many Cianalites had a passion for investigating and researching cases of the new god’s physical involvement in the world. Some consider it a morbid, or even foolish interest, like one in the olden days obsessed with daemons or ghosts. Although, no one in this age denied the existence of these apparitions or could reasonably do so. Still, they were shrouded in such mystery that their purpose, beyond simply terrorising humanity, was unknown. If the new god with all its power wanted all of humanity to plug into itself, couldn’t it just take them by force?
Anyway, Bartholomew, who was gifted the book by one of those eccentric female friends who loved all this stuff, had no special interest in it himself. In fact, quite disliked the subject. But now, still with shaky hands, he thoroughly dug through it for some sort of diagnosis.
Flipping though, he saw that it was full of illustrated pages of different, strange creatures, with mind warping abilities. Recently there had been cases of delirium among students when out among the woods of the campus, so he started there. ‘Psychgnats,’ he thought to himself, as he flipped to the page, ‘it’s a possibility… I think I would just need to sleep it off in that case!’ The entry in the book went on to say that these were somewhat common, the author speculated them to be tiny flying things which enter the mind through the nose, causing waking dreams states. Victims are often found walking around like zombies; many times have people been on walks or travelling, and have begun to feel a bit lightheaded, then, a grey fever dream they can’t quite remember, then, the next day, on the forest floor, miles out from where they were. Sleep, rest, and getting away from the area where the symptoms began is enough for recovery.
He was quick to conclude that he was lucid enough, and that his symptoms didn’t align. As he flipped through other entries, he couldn’t see much on humanoid Apparitions. So, as he had been for the last few months when he was troubled with something, skimmed through books until it was completely dark out. And, similar to all past attempts to soothe his anxiety, he only found disappointing non-answers.
Filled with a frustrated restlessness he eventually closed his books and got up, blowing out the candles on his desk in the process. His room was now dark, with a few dancing dots of rusty light coming through the window, from an old streetlamp behind a tree. As the adrenaline of his encounter wore off, he also realised how cold the room was. What he saw earlier now went around in his head. She was there, sat, just right there, yet no one paid her any attention, no one acknowledged her. She never spoke a word, just stared at him, and any time he dared look at her, he grew and grew in dread. ‘I’ve seen corpses with more colour,’ he said to himself again, that being the first thing he thought when he saw her.
Looking out of the window, he was suddenly, struck in the stomach and his bones were utterly filled with the same rotting despair which he was too used to by now. He felt heavy, slightly nauseous. He noticed again the tree outside, the one lit by the lamp post. It was completely dead. Pale and grey, of a horrifying shape and grandeur; he couldn’t tear his eyes from it.
Entirely numb, he stepped out into the corridor, and then, though he walked sluggishly with his eyes fixed on the floor, quickly found himself stepping out into the courtyard. The cold wind cut his cheeks and battered his coat which he clung around him. His completely dry throat swallowed uncontrollably as he went around the building block, into a wooded area. The wind calmed as he floated further and further in, his legs carrying him where they wished until they reached the back of the building, the side his window was on.
As he looked at the beauty of the main building of the university, he was, for a second, filled with sadness. What followed quickly was quite new: anger. As he continued on, he once again saw that horrendous sight, and, looking at them both, was brought to his knees in anguish and confusion. He continued on in this manner, he crawled towards that terrible tree in tears. Now off the path, struggling through the mud and leaves. Only a hint of that amber light lit the scene as he sat himself up, now at the trees hole-ridden trunk. He looked up into the sky at the entangled bone-like branches stretching miles and miles into the darkness. Looking down, he saw the roots stretch all around, distorting and cracking the ground as they went.
Suddenly, a woman’s voice filled his head, and not directly with conventional words, but purely with force and meaning.
He knew who’s voice it must be.
He tried to crawl, but his body must have been so cold and so indescribably overwhelmed with emotion that he continually tumbled over his own numb, useless, sacks of blood which he called arms and legs. Utterly tortured and hopeless, Bartholmew lay with his head in the leaves, weeping. The voice continued to thunder within him, but he had given up. At last he opened his eyes, and, below the withered tree branches and the old streetlamp, there she stood. The woman, dressed in all black, with impossibly long, black hair surrounding her like a robe. Her skin was completely white, but not in a pale sickly sense; it perfectly fit the rest of her features in a way. Everything about her was so unnatural and otherworldly, yet, she wasn’t completely freakish, but proportional in her own self.
She crouched down to his level. The voice whirling within him grew a bit softer, and possibly a bit more comprehensible. She then pushed him onto his back and then propped him back up onto the withered tree trunk. Her massive, irisless eyes stared at him with a furrowed brow. They were so big, in fact, that he could see his own reflection in them. Covered in dirt and tears, he looked at the now tiny image of the grand hall reflected behind him. As the woman stretched out a hand to him, this world became smaller and smaller, and he completely lost grip. Frail and tiny, it felt like the ground had disappeared below him, and he slipped into the darkness.
Chapter 2: