21 - The Stone Cocoon
Three thousand years back, this pasture presents a different aspect. Before the graves and the dying, the land is ruled by an uncounted number of kings - masters of a countless demon throng. Blood mattes the dust of this field, and paints the faces of those far mountains. They that live are slaves, not men.
Then; necromancy. Despair so fills the bones and the skins and the souls of the dying, that they do not die, but rise to hate and hate again.
“I shall come to the finger of my sire- “And my brother- “And my neighbor. “I, a ghost.”
Seven necromancer-gods were the first and greatest masters.
| The Thin Man Who from his cradle, brought wasting sickness down upon the demon. | The Old Man Below Who with a smiling whisper, made their hearts grow timid. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Scratcher Who dealt in curses. | The Mother of Worms Who, naked, looked on the hoard - and all their bones did rot. | ||
| Gallbladder Who summoned the hungry among the dead. | Lady Horsehair Who bought her power. | The Red King Who, with red conscience and nails, tore the throats from his peers. |
Seven necromancer-gods were the ones who left ruins of stone where once had been the palaces of the demon kings.
On this pasture now there is only one lonely hill. Smoke pours in an endless stream to the lake of the cloudy sky, from a hot spring below. The demon palace - of the demon king who once matted this plain - is gone from the hill. Only the bones of the king himself remain. They have continued to grow for Time upon Time after his death. The giant skeleton sits, half buried in the hill, leaning against it like a stump, with one tower demon-horn rising up over the plain like a black spire.
This pasture is barren. Little life dwells here. Yet in memory of its old masters, it has a habit of hallucinations. Dangerous, hateful visions. False visions. False desires.
These figments manifest during the snowstorms that shadow this land. The snow masses into huge hummocks, incongruous hummocks on the flat plain. It white-blinds and deceives the eye of any travelling pair misfortunate enough to wander over the ancient soil…
The Cocoon
A symbol of love on The Road of Graves in The Time of Dying.
“White like milk spilled on a porcelain dish. Somehow, though, almost t-t-translucent. “How my teeth ch-chatter. “I feel almost as if I see Her again. Her pale face, amidst all this blowing snow. “Oh knight, how glad I am that you are here. Beside me.”
This is a rare pleasure. To guide the Lady to whom you are sworn, through this ice storm, is a chance to fulfill your oath. Visions however - she seems ensorcelled by them today. YOU know the things she sees are not there. You are given the chance to be strong, for both of you, despite your cracked cup body. So why do you hesitate to take her hand? Listen though. There is speech in the wind. Doubtless it is another strange illusion. You know you should ignore it, yet there is something so familiar in the deep voice…
If you listen to the voice for too long, a wasting sickness will sink into your skin. Sage Chutes. These tiny fungal growths will rise from your pores in long tendrils that burn like molten lead against your skin.
The hallucinations are more dangerous to your Blue Lady than to you. Most of the sensory phenomena, you can only see in your visor’s corner, or catch at hearing’s brink.
The exception is a pair of separate sensations, manifesting simultaneously.
| Approach the Vision of Your Old Lord You lead your Lady deeper into the blinding, blowing whiteness. She cannot see your Lord, and it seems you never come closer, no matter how quickly you march. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Your sabatons crush a long path in the snow. Eventually, the vision disappears. You will die in the cold. | Follow the Smell of Old Wet Stones The snow seems pockmarked in places. You skirt wide of these depressions in the plain. |
|---|
Wandering, you may come across one enormous drift of snow. There is a vacant cavity in the side of the drift. It is not an illusion, but if you reach hesitantly inside, there is nothing to account for the strange hole. It seems as if the snow has piled around nothing.
The key is to close your eyes, then climb inside the hollow. You will find yourself in a long, warm, humid tunnel. It smells like the breath of a cow. If you crawl a little way along this passage, eyes-closed, you will find The Demon King’s Claymore. This weapon can return to stillness even the meanest of the dead. It is, of course, deeply cursed.
As the snow continues to whirl about you, you just catch your Lady’s tremulous voice.
“Why does each of them have her face? “Those marching girls, they cannot all be her. “It is s-s-so c-c-cold. How I wish we had brought our blankets through The Soulwood. Something to swaddle us, my knight. “A cocoon. “But look. Are those the shadows of some giant bones?”
CRUNCH.
CRUNCH.
CRUNCH.
Not your footsteps, but heavier, sound somewhere ahead in the blinding white sheets. You keep your Lady’s cold arm in the grip of your shield-hand, and draw your Polished Steel Longsword.
The blowing snow parts just ahead, a clear and empty pocket of plain. It is as if some giant, invisible bear slumbers in the space. The empty air lies adjacent to a lone, high hill. You can barely discern a pair of arcing, black rib-bones, gigantic as trees, looping like stitches in the snow on the hill.
A voice vibrates in the air.
“Hummmmmm-the king surely never dreamed how large his remains would loom. Not in those last hours. “He was handsome too, before all his blood was spilled, beneath this snow. “Now look at what remains. “Even the beloved worms have nothing to taste. “Just buried bones hugging round the ruins of his home.”
A moment later you spot a carpet of blackness against the hill’s blinding snow. Not a bone, though it lies under the toothed arch of a cracked jaw. It is a cave.
The cold is wet like a razor on the back of your neck. It seems to cut through your armor. Your Blue Lady still stands, but her face and hands now do homage to her epithet.
As you approach the cave you will see one of four hallucinations.
| The Grandmother Snake Its face is old and human. Its illusory poison can paralyze. | Sittingsmoking A harmless woodsman sits and puffs on his pipe. |
|---|---|
| Ruddy Living Bones A living bones covered in viscera. | The Spider Take care with the webs this one spins. |
As long as you discredit these deliria, they pose no threat. Your Steel evaporates each in a single cut.
An odor of sulfur breathes from the black spot. Snowflakes melt as they pass before the opening. You will need to climb a tract of ice to reach the cave.
Once, this space under the hill was a part of the demon king’s keep. Its undercroft. The upper keep is gone now. All that remains of the fortress are a few walls of loose stone and mortar, moldering in the fumes, beyond the black opening.
Still some of the demon blood must ferment beneath the ground. The fumes come from a hot spring somewhere deeper down. It is said, in the stories of the barren plain, that a lone warm grotto, surrounded by fangs of ice and frozen darkness, might give a traveler shelter from the storm.
If they can pass the visions.
How she clings to you… You must stop her - your armor is frozen from that storm, and her hands are already frozen. There. She has understood what your waving hand suggests. She looks so Blue there on the ground, blending with the ice. This reek has unsettled her mind, surely. Her weird fancies are only the cold and poisonous fumes. You must remain firm on both of your behalves. Cherish each Vow. And you must find a fire, fast. Pray that the reeking gases of this freezing cavern don’t- What now? That is no illusion.
A man in threadbare furs hobbles out of the fumigated deepness. The winter light of the entrance barely clarifies a pox marked, scarred, hairy face. Sewn to his collar is a worn symbol, which you nevertheless recognize. A Walker of Whiteeye.
“Hahahaha! Looking for shelter from the storm, eh? “Bad pick. “I’ve been wandering this cave all my life. Or, has it only been some days? “One loses track of time. “It’s the beasts of Whiteeye. They live here too, even though I thought only the Waste had such mutant horrors. “But what am I saying. Think you can fool me? Fool me?!”
The mad Walker of Whiteeye will pull a long, sturdy iron needle from within his rags. He attacks.
This fight is not too difficult. The mad Walker strikes with the fracturing speed of glass, but his body is rotten with starvation. Leap back from his initial lunge. Keep yourself between him and your Lady - he WILL attack her if you give him the chance, and his needle inflicts surprisingly-grave wounds. Don’t bother with ripostes or parries. Use your Pinecone Crest Shield to block his quick stabs. He will wear himself out in only a few minutes. You can then either kill him or knock him unconscious - it makes no difference in The Time of Dying.
As the walker’s body stiffens with a quick-set rigor mortis, you hear your Lady’s teeth clicking.
“Knight, ever and across this r-r-road, since we left the r-r-ruin of my home, you have k-k-kept me s-s-safe. “Are you not cold yourself? So- so let us warm one another. “I might repress these phantoms for a time if I fill my eyes with you. “Even my lord…”
On the icicle pillars that line this corridor of the cave, your kindled fire finally reflects. It rises like burning cathedrals in the icy glass. You pull your Lady near it. In a moment, she stops shaking.
You think it best not to leave the bloody body of the madman so near. You haven’t dragged him a hundred feet deeper into the tunnel when you feel something not ice, something soft, underfoot. You bend.
A carpet. Woven silk. Figuratively colored as well, it displays a river winding through a field of chrysanthemums.
You hear a shout, look up, see your Lady. She is running. Fleeing. Disappearing.
You run after.
For some moments you follow the echoes of your Lady’s footsteps. The light from your tiny fire seems to rebound ahead of you, dimly reflecting on the frozen cave walls.
The echoes however begin to writhe and crisscross, and other echoes mingle with your Lady’s soft feet. You are soon hopelessly lost.
As you wander you may enter several unique chambers.
| The Old Wall Room Some sort of paper or thin fabric fills the cracks between the crumbling brick walls. If you chip away some of the ice coating the walls, and pull on a piece of paper, it whispers in an unknown tongue. | The Glowbug Hive There are small bubbles in the ice-walls of this room. Glowbugs shine dimly from each bubble, frozen in light. |
|---|---|
| Emerald’s Your sabatons crunch over fragmented ice and glass in this long corridor. If you take the time to sift through the crystalline gravel, you can find an emerald with a soul trapped inside. | The Casting Chambers A cauldron for pouring metal hangs over your head, from two chains in the ceiling. Something sputters inside. |
You’ll have to fight your way through a variety of hallucinations as you search the frozen ruins and frozen caves for your Lady. The hallucinations have different strengths and weaknesses.
| Laminated Goblin Knight Attacks with spear. Destroyed by cracking the ice in which he scintillates. | Millingmist Grates away your armor and skin. Breathe deeply, and you realize it is only cold air. | Voidingmist Suffocates. Close your eyes and imagine a wide, sunny space; it will vanish. |
|---|---|---|
| The Knife Mother Stabs you. Stab her first. | Unshadowed Wraith A black ghost which surfaces in any source of light. Drains your life. Cannot survive in the dark. | Demonheads Disembodied deadheads with wing-ears. Their screams will deafen you. You can plug your ears with whispering cloth from The Old Wall Room. |
You find your Lady huddling in the transept of a small chapel. Strong granite walls, and a red-stained sky glass in the configuration of a rose - this illusion seems so vivid and real.
Of course you know the walls. Your Lady knows them too. She looks up and around with eyes slicked. She doesn’t see you, her gaze is on the three rows of stepped oak pews, the red reflection of the rose on the dust of the floor, the shadows under the architraves.
The two of you recognize home.
Then a ghost catches both your gazes. Your Blue Lady rises, stands straight, tenses. The ghost, She, the young woman with a kind of inner gloom behind her pale translucent face, mirrors the rigid posture, but quivers. She says no words; but in the compression of her lips and the pyre of her eyes, you and your Lady hear much.
Will this Daughter’s Ghost stand forever a silent accusation against your Blue Lady? That face doesn’t understand your Lady’s tears. It seems to lay on your Lady’s soul the sin of loving her golden sons and perfect Lord too well, of shunning and spurning the daughter she had in life. Where are those sons now? Gone. Not even ghosts. And this uncared-for daughter is the reason. You know this daughter summoned the Weige Family. She let them in. She ruined your noble house, all for your Blue Lady.
Now is a good chance for you to serve your Lady. You should banish these foreign impressions from your mind. Draw your Polished Steel and cut the daughter-ghost. Destroy it. Stop her torment of your Lady.
As the specter evaporates you see a last glimpse of its face. The mouth has finally parted for a grim flash of anger, and you see that her teeth are black. You do not linger. You pull your Lady between the illusory pews, through the clergyman’s door on your left.
“Stop! I see only the horrible dead in this dark cave. I- I thought that we had stood in our keep. Knight, how could you cut my daughter? “And yet, that look. “Love her less than my sons? How could I? But that is what her face seemed to say. “Is- is she really gone? “… “What is that squeaking underfoot?”
A light that is the color of the ocean ebbs around your legs. Your Lady is limned in Aegean blue. You find that you and your Lady have wandered into a coarse tunnel of stone, no ice. The floor is a mushroom rug, which brightens at every step.
The light shines in your Lady’s eye as she looks your way.
You see it shining further down the tunnel too. A reflection. The air seems to drift warmly from that direction. You set a hand on your Lady’s shoulder and continue along. Your Lady lets you guide her. She is silent now. You feel her eyes upon you. You try not to meet her eye, but you cannot help feeling the warmth of her fingers as they find your arm.
The blue jumps across the carpet before your feet. From fungus to fungus it leaps. Then all at once it spreads scintillatingly out in a fairie ring.
A pool. The mushroom carpet rounds a small pond, here in the depths of the cave. The water sputters and bubbles - not like a cauldron, but with small staticky bubbles like a hot spring.
Stringy, shimmering, webby fungi glisten with condensation across the walls and ceiling, dangling like strands, dripping with soft plink, plink, plink sounds back into the bubbles. The moisture in the air clings, warm and damp, beneath your armor.
Your Lady steps up to the pool. She looks at her reflection in the little ripples. Then, she turns to you and stares.
“How warm and comfortable is this space, like a cocoon in the middle of the ice and the rocks. “I have almost forgotten the storm. “Forgotten the shades of the past. “Come closer to the pool, knight. It is warmer this way. We have walked the road together long enough, you and I. You needn’t keep away. Come. Remove your helmet and your gauntlets. “I will hold your hands.”
You can’t take those two white hands of hers in your own. You know what is happening. She is settling for you, a cracked and broken defender. Is it right for a lady to love a needle? An inkpot? An easel? An instrument? It’s these hallucinations. It’s that daughter who darkened her mind’s corner. She no longer believes herself a worthy lady, and no longer believes that she’ll find her lost stepson. Push her back. It is the right thing. Would you violate an oath sworn by The Road, The Time, The Seven? You would forfeit your little virtue, your promised epitaph, and the pneuma within your Polished Steel. Think of R the Killer. Would you follow his way?
In many ways this next moment will be your hardest battle thus far - greater than any living-death felled by your Polished Steel Longsword.
You must resist the warm touch of your Blue Lady.
Your only course is to push her back. No matter what you choose to do, you will gain no surety of the reasons for her sudden longing. If you choose to submit to her, you will sever the last thread of hope for your cracked soul. And hers. From then on you will live a doomed journey.
Now is the moment to follow that oath sworn over the Graves.
As she steps back from you, your Lady places her warm hands over her eyes. Her voice is husky and strange.
“Turn away. Look back toward that tunnel. “Turn away. “Perform your service if a servant is all that you will be. “I’m tired now. I’ll sleep beside this pool. “I’ve found no comfort in waking.”
For a long time your Lady stands at the lip of the hissing spring. She watches the faintly rippling glass of the water’s edge, limned in the fungal twilight.
After staring for a long moment, your Lady passes a hand over her eyes. Then she steps back from the pool, throws out her green cloak over the mushrooms, and lies down to sleep.
You watch as the changeless hours pass in the grotto. You need little sleep these days. The steam of the pool wraps you in its whirling. It seems sometimes to you that, in the nightlike glow, the mist takes the shape of a hundred eels. They wriggle in the air all around you as the hours slip.
As the hours slip, the pool ceases to hiss. As they slip, the water falls still. The air within the cave deadens to a chill like the first frost of autumn. Then, colder.
Your Lady wakes.
To escape The Stone Cocoon, you’ll need to navigate back through the ruins and tunnels. The visions will harass you no further - a new danger has replaced them.
Unless you’re very lucky in the corners you round, you’re eventually going to encounter one of the new Ice-Walls. A semi-transparent wall of fast-frozen vapor, this barrier is nonetheless dense. Your Steel shall not crack it. You must find another way.
Your escape from the tunnels is a battle against time. Each minute that passes, a new wall of ice forms in a random location. You’ll need to move quickly to escape. If you don’t you’ll be trapped in the tunnels, where the hallucinations will eventually drive you mad. As you run, keep an eye open for deep, black cracks in the floor. (It is a small wonder you never stumbled into these before).
The most efficient sequence of turns to escape the tunnels is: left, left, straight, left, straight, right, right, straight, up, left, exit.
There is the daylight. You have led your Lady from this darkness. Did you act rightly? She will not meet your eye. Her own seem flat and dull as you see them through this heavy helmet. Perhaps it had been better to forgo your oath; welcome her embrace. You have broken others. Are no tenets to be upheld? Is your soul to fill with cracks like your body?
You emerge from the freezing humidity of the cave. The fresh wind tastes sharp and clear beneath your helmet. All about, the land is a heavy, flat blanket of white snow. The sky is cloudy, but the storm is gone.
As you step from under the jaw-roof of the cave, you see better the black bones of the demon king. They stick partway from the snow-covered hill. The sockets of the skull are empty, beneath the lone horn, yet you think you sense an amused gleam in the twin hollows.
A small pack of spider-hounds has left tracks by the cave mouth. They are old tracks. The hounds never entered the cave itself. They must have smelled the grotto’s evil.
“Knight, that favor I asked, the bearing I showed in that grotto, hurts like a needle through my chest. I must hope that the Mother of Worms averted her eye. “Always you have served me, served as no lady could ever deserve. “I recall a glass orchid my lord once gave to me. I left it when we fled from home. A shame. I would like to look upon it now. “But all that is lost. All for my failure to love as a mother must. “What is there to hope for in the stepson I drove away?”
No matter which direction you take after leaving The Stone Cocoon, you will eventually come to a small shrine in the midst of the tundra. It is made of piled straw, held together by dried mud. The villages of the plains keep it. Embedded among the straw you will find bits of paper. Each bears the name of a village nearby where you might go for shelter.
Pick a village. Start walking in that direction. You will eventually return to the Road.