Unwelcome Dental Advice

So, like last week, I wanted to share something I’ve written before. This is the first chapter of a different book (but all part of the same overarching story), II-I: The Creeping Dark. Please, read it, eviscerate it, leave me feedback (you may have to sign up for an account to leave notes). Or DM me directly with any criticisms. It’s only my life.

Vargas crept forward in the black of the Hyllayan Observatory, the winking torch he held in his left hand was the only thing keeping him and his men from being swallowed by the darkness. Something definitely wasn’t right here, and it weighed heavily on the weathered soldier. He should be at home with his wife and child, but instead he’d been tasked by the Imperial Commandant at Easthold to escort a pair of alchemists back to Vekh’nath. Vargas sighed. The Observatory wasn’t meant to be a heavily guarded outpost, but there were supposed to be at least a dozen researchers studying various species of flora and fauna in the Vakaran Jungle, as well as about ten soldiers, and the two of them were supposed to be posted at the entrance. Yet they were nowhere to be found. Perhaps the soldiers had been taking liberties with their allotted mess time; Vargas would have to have words with truant guards. If he ever found them.

The Observatory had been established late in Emperor Justinius II’s reign and was mostly used as an alchemical lab for extracting medicines from the various species found in the jungle. The late Emperor Justinius II was known as a learned man, and possibly the most beloved of the Emperors in the Vekh line. This observatory was but one of his many legacies, and it was the last wild frontier in the once-expansive Imperial homeland. Justinius had been quite clear in his decree that the jungle itself be left “mostly” untouched. It was home to some of the world’s more voracious predators. There were creatures like the pyre archanid, a spider-like abomination with four legs covered in a heavy, chitinous armor that burst into a pillar of explosive flame when slain. Even more terrifying were the arghast, which were the apex predator of the jungle. There were cat-like creatures with six legs that were adept at sneaking. Arghasts had tentacles which secreted neurotoxins which could paralyze a man in seconds. Vargas worried, now, that perhaps a pack of arghasts had either infiltrated the compound, or some of them that had been caged within had escaped.

The Hyllayan Observatory was to be the only manned settlement for leagues in any direction, the nearest being Easthold, and so it had remained through the rule of two other emperors and now Empress Meredith. Many believed Justinius had something to hide. Why else would he forbid even hunters from entering the jungle, unless he had a hidden treasure trove or was conducting gruesome experiments there? It was common knowledge that the alchemists here were experimenting on the archanids, borghyl, and arghasts indigenous to the jungle. These experiments yielded many positive results, such as an antidote to the neurotoxins secreted by the arghast. There were also great strides made in taming borghyl, which were larger, more aggressive boars that were now found all over the Imperium. These didn’t sound like the types of things gossiped about by commoners when they spoke of Justinius II. Many good-seeming men had terrible secrets, but Commander Vargas didn’t know the late emperor’s secrets. Nor did he care.

Vargas Stansfield was a veteran of the Second War, the war where the Imperium lost its grip on its vast number of holdings and territories. It was only 14 seasons ago, yet it seemed like just yesterday that they were laying down their arms in surrender. He was a prideful man, tall and strong. Vargas was there when the armies of the Esterlands — now called the Northern Kingdoms — marched through the Dragonspire Pass and upon the Silver Keep, ancestral home of the mother of the Empire. He watched as the sky opened up and belched forth fire and brimstone upon them; he was there as the Imperium finally crumbled after decades of sustainable peace and control.

“Commander Stansfield,” a timid whisper came from his right. “Look!”

Vargas moved his torchlight in the direction of the voice, a young soldier named Benjamin. Ben was visibly shaken by something, but Vargas could hardly see what had broken the young man’s spirit in this accursed darkness. Benjamin was a good lad, a good soldier. The boy came from a common family and had faithfully served the Empress for seasons beyond counting. To see the man who had staved off borghyl and forest archanids so easily shaken made the Vargas’s heartbeat quicken. The commander inched closer, and now he could hear it: a wet, slimy sound coming from the darkness. It was the sound that he’d imagined a slug, or a snail might make as it lumbered along, leaving a trail of viscous slime in its wake. It was the sound of wet porridge being stirred all too much. It was the sound that he recalled that the guts of his soldiers made as they attempted to scoop them back into their bellies after nearly being cleaved in two. The commander’s skin crawled at these sounds.

The first traces of Corruption were visible four feet into the corridor. A pulsating, reddish-pink colored mass of organic tissue spanned the hallway, as though it were slowly reaching out toward him. It looked like sickly tree branches or vine growth with intestines or other entrails slowly spreading, stretching out across the wall at an imperceptible rate. He’d seen this before in the Twilight Marshlands. For nearly three seasons, now, a plague had befallen much of the countryside that had once been called the Everbloom. What used to be a dense and fertile expanse of forests and grasslands had become a muck-ridden quagmire filled with pulsating sores of plagued flesh and rot. Try as they might, the Imperial alchemists and mages hadn’t yet devised a way to stave off the Corruption. Fire could kill it, and those infected, but somehow it always seemed to come back. The Corruption, as they knew it, was dangerous. It infected living things and made them powerful and mad. It tainted the water and food, spreading quickly through the hamlets and villages of the Everbloom. As soon as his men realized what they were up against, they took several steps back.

“Robert,” Vargas called back. The soldier warily approached. “I want you to head back out and relay a message to Easthold. Tell them the Corruption has come to the observatory.” The young soldier looked to his commander, ready to receive more information, yet Vargas believed that what he had given him was more than sufficient to alarm Imperial Command and her highness. “Go now, boy. With haste!” With that, the young man ran in the opposite direction. “Now, men. Let us see if we can find any survivors. We are here for Bathas and Malgrin but be on the lookout for anyone who could have lived through this horror.”

What had begun as a routine escort job had quickly turned sour. Vargas and his men were here both to take Bathas and Malgrin – two of the Imperium’s most trusted alchemists – back to Vekh’nath and for a changing of the guard. Ten of his own company were to stay behind and replace the men and women who had been stationed here for the last eight months. It was said Bathas and Malgrin were on the verge of discovering a possible remedy for this accursed Corruption. Vargas could scarcely believe it himself. He believed this plague to be magical in nature, perhaps a punishment for the Imperium’s hubris in the face of the gods over these last 200 seasons. T’would have been fitting, he considered.

The darkness did little to urge the veteran soldier forward, yet Vargas steeled himself and commanded his soldiers, who cautiously followed, forward. It wasn’t long before they came upon the mess hall. Stansfield handed his torch to Benjamin, who began lighting the sconces around the hall. Shadows danced around the room as it illuminated a grisly scene. Men and women hung from chains, their chest cavities splayed, and their insides dangled loosely from their cadavers. The stench alone might have made one gag in repulsion, but the sight of their fellow countrymen treated so brutally made several of the more hardened soldiers – again, veterans of the last war – wretch their lunches upon the floor.

The slimy sound of the Corruption spreading, pulsating left a knot twisting in Vargas’s stomach, and suddenly, he yearned for home. Thoughts of his wife, Lana, and son, Raff, swirled around in his mind. A memory of taking Raff fishing along the Thornwind Coast and catching redfish made his heart grow heavy. Thoughts of Lana making oat bread and the sound of salted redfish sizzling in a nearby skillet gave him pause. The memories were followed by dark whispers clawing at the back of his mind.

Turn back, said one voice, sounding like Raff.

Your friends will betray you, another whispered.

The second voice pierced him like a hundred needles. It felt cold and left his skin covered in goosebumps. Some believed that the Corruption was an entity, and not just a disease. The voices now speaking to Vargas made him believe the same.

You’re all going to die down here.

Raff will grow up fatherless and resent you for it, a voice that sounded like Lana said in a sinister tone.

“Stop it,” he whispered, almost too loudly.

Benjamin, his second in command, must have heard him and turned. “Commander? Stop what, sir?”

“Nothing, soldier,” Vargas assured the skittish young man. “Carry on. Check under that table.” It made him wonder if none of the other soldiers heard the malicious whispers.

You. Will. Die.

Vargas Stansfield gritted his teeth, regained his bearing, and continued.

In the center of the room were the limbs of many of the researchers and guards, displayed in a circular shape and surrounding several symbols painted in their blood. Vargas had never seen these symbols before and knew not what they meant. The first of these symbols, located on the northwestern-most part of the circle, appeared to be similar to a backward “J” with an arrowhead on top and a strange looking “A” shape cutting through it sideways. Vargas did his best to scrawl the symbol onto his left vambrace with a nearby piece of coal, taking care not to smudge it. The next symbol, which was slightly northeast facing, looked to be a pair of incomplete half-circles that almost looked like an elaborate “H” in shape. The final sigil faced southeast and was the most complex of them. It looked like a circle with an elaborate backward “J” shape through it. On the right half, it appeared to have marks coming out of it that made it look like the Sun. The other half had a single line coming straight out of it horizontally, with two vertical lines breaking through the middle.

Vargas continued to scribble out the symbols on his forearm guard. He was no artist, but his written hand was very fine. When finished, he looked up to see a man in the northwest corner of the room – one of the guards, presumably – crouched over a throbbing mound of Corruption, and whispering unintelligibly to himself.

His heartbeat quickened, but Commander Vargas approached him slowly and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “You there,” he said sternly. “Tell me what happened here.”

Yet the soldier continued to whisper to himself. The man was naked and covered in blood. He appeared to be holding something, though Vargas couldn’t make it out. The man’s fingernails were cracked, and the undersides were caked in dirt. A tinge of fear twisted in the commander’s bowels.

Welcome to your oblivion, the pinprick voice whispered in his mind.

This time, Vargas pulled the man in his direction. Beneath the soldier, he discovered, was not a mound of Corruption. There, Bathas’s lifeless body lay, splayed open with medical tools, and in the soldier’s hand, the alchemist’s heart. “My Gods, man, what have you done?” Vargas shouted as he shoved the soldier away. He could see that the Corruption had taken him. The Commander drew his sword and sighed. “Nesperia, forgive me.”