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 Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 3:16 pm
That was until a few days ago when Jacob Lyall and a class from Mehnos Academy went on a field expedition into the research of the Isoquian Jewel. It seamed as a normal day would on Isoquia. The Birds of Paradise were squawking and singing; the wildlife was abundant and peaceful. The plants gave birth to flowers and the flowers gave birth to colour and new life. Tranquil.
Jacob Lyall and James Thorne and their respective classes had arrived over at one of the Sand Villages via a smallish boat from the Docks of the Academy. They carried along with them expedition equipment, books and research and rations. But nothing could beat the food of the Sand Tribes. The tribes caught fish from the sea, wildfowl from the forest and herbs from practically everywhere. They made their own charcoal and they made their own huts, self sustainable with the wildlife around them. They lived on stilted huts like you would see on mudflats. Quite high and built to last. Some of them were even centuries old and were passed down through each generation. To look at one is impressive; huts built off the ground, walkways that seam to float on mid air. It was almost a superstructure of natural engineering made entirely out of wood and fibre ropes.
It was already about seven in the evening and the tribe’s hospitality danced long into the night. Wondrous food, music and entertainment, and one of the best nights sleep in a long time. They would set out tomorrow, as that following night there was predicted an eclipse and supposedly the inscriptions on the ruins of the Temple Complex lit up with a bluish white light that supposedly helped regenerate the forest and keep the power of the jewel, and that had to be documented.
So the day came and the class left. They decided to bring along a local, Marhan, instead of their map. He knew the forest like the back of his hand; he alone would lead them through as the map would be no use as the lands had changed since it was last drawn up. It took a few good hours from dawn until they reached a complex. Its ruins were covered in inscriptions and the buildings were masterful to behold. What was strange though was that no animal was to be found. There were no birds flying overhead in the clearing. No animals scurrying about on the tree line and no insect underfoot. They shook it off to be consecrated ground and the powers of the Ascendants protected this site from the animals that could devastate it.
Underground the guardians awoke from a ravenous slumber, the steps of the class echoed in their ears as they trespassed on the temple ground. They scattered, leaving their nests and carcases for the fresh delivery of meat. Above, the class and the teacher were still discovering their surroundings. They had set up a small camp fire and waited.
The fire cracked and the embers glowed. The sounds of snapping twigs and branches were masked by the discussion of tonight’s event. The eyes were unnoticed by the children eating barbequed foul. The high pitched screeching was mistaken for an animal that was harmless. And the swaying of the trees was attributed to the unfelt wind, and the fire grew.
The night was falling, as the light was fading. The moon began to darken as the scriptures began to glow. Everyone fell silent as the show began. The carvings in the pillars of a temple started to glow first. It was a gentle glimmering but it was far from the bluish white that was expected. Rather a bloody blazon red. What seamed to be impossible began to happen; the other writings began to catch, like wildfire with the glow. Nobody knew what was happening but they were entranced by this mystery.
What then came was a screech that froze the blood in the children’s veins. Another that sent shivers up the spines of the innocent. And a final scream that echoed in ruins. The guide and the teacher urged the children to move into the temple structure away from the edge of the forest. This is what they wanted. Trees around the clearing began to sway and the cracking of trunks terrified the souls of the class. The light from the ruins began to glow fiercely, making it impossible to see out from the temple.
Figures as shadowy as the night snarled their way closer to the temple. A girl at the back screamed and everyone began to panic. Although she was only touched by a spider she still fainted. She was lucky. The figures began to circle them, their shape on eight legs. Matted hair and claws. The light from the ruins blinded the children James and Marhan as the guardians, swift and ferociously, tore into their soft flesh. It was over in a few seconds. The pain those children must have felt could never be described. Their blood now poured into the writings chiselled into the floor, flowing to a small crypt coffin made solely out of black marble. The blood still following the engravings flowing vertically up the sides of the coffin until every single inscription on it was filled with innocent blood. At the centre was a small design unremarkable yet so familiar filled with the remaining blood.
What happened with the presence of blood was quite extraordinary. The glow from the ruins was seemingly sucked back to the temple. You could see the lights under the blood seeping back to the design and the blood began to boil. When all the lights had disappeared back to whence they came, as the eclipse began to fade back out the blood began to be absorbed by the temple and the coffin. Its very foundations began to rumble and the stone began warm. Where the blood used to be there was a distinctive smell of smoke and burning flesh. Wisps of tainted smoke began to fill the air and envelope the whole of the crumbling the temple. The bodies of the dead were being dragged off back to the nests of the creatures.
Jacob knew the cold would kill him, but it would be better than being eaten alive. He had survived by stumbling over and falling into a small crevice and in the onslaught of terror was covered over by branches and debris. With the first light of the moon, refracted in the Isoquian Jewel, showering pure cold upon the rainforest, he ran as far and as fast as he could. Only to fail reaching near the end of the rainforest and froze. But the gods took pity on him, some say, and the next morning the villagers from the Sand Village found his body and brought him to a fire on the beach. Regardless his heart was still beating, slow, very slow, but alive. He was taken to Saint Hellions for treatment and later interviewed by Astri while on his bed. At the near end of the interview Jacob’s condition worsened, and a fever began to develop. His whole body rose in temperature rapidly. Nothing could be done. Astri had left as he had ‘pressing engagements’ but as his last footsteps left the reception of the hospital Jacob violently, with scream filled agony that would haunt some of the nursing staff till their graves, burst into chaotic flames. It was over in seconds, but what seemed like minutes for him. His suffering was over.
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Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 3:19 pm
“You mean to tell me my mother, my own mother, let Lonargh out of his cell?!” She yelled.
“No, Miss Castillo. It wasn’t her. She was careful. It was that man with her. Obviously washed up, I mean who wears that anymore? Well, from what I got told by this guy I know at the Hellion’s he moved the marble locks in the side of Lonargh’s coffin. Of course he would never have been able to open them, unless innocent blood had been spilt and in the way I heard the class die, there was a lot of blood.”
“And my mother? What happened to her?”
“Ah well, after the coffin opened a swarm of black orbs swallowed up the stranger and your mother looked onwards, tried to get a better look, but the wheel of her wheelchair got jammed and the whole thing tipped over. She then blacked out. But everything’s fine now. She’s in Hellion’s in the posh ward. Being looked after like royalty.”
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