The Lost Children

One evening a strange sound rips through the air causing things to happen that are stranger still.

The Lost Children 

 

It was late in the evening when I heard the sound, the thunderous tremble from beneath the ground but shook nothing, a sound I had thought to be the result of one to many drinks at my favorite tavern Ahmok named after the ancient dead language, no doubt in an attempt to make it all the more popular among the false nobility in the inner reaches of the middle district of the city. I thought at first the roaring and shaking sound was a world quake but as I looked down at my tantalizingly intoxicating beverage I saw it didn't shake, I then thought it was coming from my own mind but before long I discovered that I wasn't alone in hearing the sound. The people around me seamed to scurry to their feet and out their doors in a frivolous attempt to discover the source of this ominous sound. Almost as if on que a military patrol rode down the street, one of them standing atop the horse drawn wagon and addressing the crowd to remain calm as the other solders, from what little I could see through the tinted glass walls of the tavern, were whispering amongst themselves, no doubt deliberating on what the sound could have possible been. Perhaps it was the golden mountain to the west finally collapsing after being dug out for the past era or perhaps it was the vengeful roar of the god beyond the wall cursing us for what we have become, no-one could say what it was and no-one dared to speak of the sound itself in public after what was discovered that night out of pure fear of it's unknown and inconceivable origin. 

I had just finished my drinking for the night and begun to head home through a dark alleyway as I drunkenly leaned against a wall as I shuffled myself along. Through the blurry haze of an alcohol fueled night I noticed a figure wondering towards me, I knew it wasn't anything threatening like a mugger as I was to close to the inner district wall for there to be any back ally crimes, after all crimes like that are exclusive to the poor outlying district of the city. Is I continued along this figure crept ever closer, hobbling along like a drunkard but walking in to straight a line for that to be the case. Are long I noticed it was a young woman with torn clothes, it looked like her top had been caught on something and torn by her moving away from it, I paused my drunken advance and looked at her body, she was thin to thin for it to be attractive. I had wondered if she was homeless but quickly shook off the thought, this was the middle district after all we have no such loiterers here, I then thought she had been attacked by an overly exited and drunk man, it has happened a few times before, I asked if she was okay but my slurred words fell short after seeing her dead expression, I asked if she wanted food or a place to stay and she simply nudged my shoulder as she walked past, never once even glancing at me. I grabbed her arm and turned her forcefully, I thought she was in shock of a traumatic event but upon seeing her eyes I let her go and she continued to walk down the alleyway and turned right down the main road, heading west. I hobbled down to look where she was going, wondering what it was I just witnessed and to my horror I saw another, a boy this time walking west not but a few paces ahead of the girl and further beyond him was another. My vision not being the most reliable due to my intoxicated state I counted anywhere between a dozen or so to a few hundred people all shuffling along in silence, all towards the west and all with those haunting white eyes, empty and dead. 

I knew not what I had witnessed when I awoke the next day in pain from my frivolous drinking the night before, the result of which caused me to doubt it happening entirely and so I went about my morning as any man would, eating getting dressed and walking out my door to earn a living. However as I walked down the alleyway I walk down every morning and every night I noticed to the right of my front door was a strip of torn white cloth, caught upon a small peace of metal jolting out of a brick wall due to hasty or poor construction. The cloth I pocketed was of no doubt belonging to that girl from the night before, only confirming something I feared was true and hoped was nothing more than a drunken dream. I retraced the steps that the girl took, walking down the alleyway to the Golden Road, leading from the imperial palace out of the city towards the gold mines in the legendary golden mountain of seemingly infinite plunder. I turned to my right to see a crowd of at least forty gathered, overhearing a few people as I approached I heard people talk of others being docile and seemingly corpse like for days up until the strange sound the night before causing their unnourished bodies to spring to life again and march west. This reason alone couldn't be the only reason for a crowd as vast as to block up a street so I pushed through until I saw the body of the boy from the night before, shot and next to him lay another corpse half covered with sheets and half ripped apart. Everyone made the connection, and the sound from the night before was rumored to be a curse from some force unknown to us simple humans. At the front of the crowd was a weeping older woman, she noticed me as I pushed my way forwards and pointed at the while cloth curiously poking out of my pocket. The woman moved closer to me, inquiring as to where the cloth originated and I told her the pain and simple truth of the events the happened in the back ally the night before. The clasped onto me, recognizing me by my voice as a retired private investigator from the city intercom system years prior when I assisted in many investigations for the emperor's advisor. Work that payed so well I retired but after years of hitting the bottle the dent in my savings has become significant so when she offered a hefty pay to find what had happened to her daughter and son in the days prior to his death and her disappearance, I couldn't say no. 

And so it was I found myself, like the many Husks that where once lively humans, heading west. I followed a small band of the mindless former humans westward, through the guard post and into the outer district and through the western split until we reached the golden mines at the base of the mountain that lay outside the city borders. I attempted entry into the fenced off and guarded mines alone to be turned away at the gate but upon watching from a less that comfortable bush I found that the guards simply ignored Husk's that where in groups larger than three. I assume out of fear of retaliation as through my observations I did hear idle chatter regarding the deaths of many people through the vast city I had come from by the hand of these Husks. I waited in that bush for what seamed like forever but in reality was but a few days or less, and before long a large cluster of Husk's came into view and I hastily followed behind them, hiding among the crowd to bypass the guards. Once I entered the mines I was astonished at my discovery, the walls, roof and floor of the tunnels leading into the mountain was made entirely of gold, the mountain itself not just having an excessive amount of gold veins but just beneath the surface the entire mountain was made entirely of gold. 

So in I went, deeper and deeper into oblivion, cautiously treading every step as it was impossible to know what lay beyond the ever expensing downward abyss that I trod. After long I found my environment change after waiting to allow the Husk's to go ahead, the walls once gold turned to a darkened substance that I could hardly see with what little light from scattered torches made it down this far into the caves. It was clear by the roughness of the ground in contrast to how smooth it was earlier that this cave I stood in now was not man made and the black material that surrounded me, entirely alien. A light then entered my view coming from around a bend and it was around that bend that I should have gone home, it was around that bend that everything I knew came into questions as it was around that bend leading not to another cave but instead to a spiraling staircase of eminence size leading down into the abyssal darkness below and curiosity got the better of me. 

 So down I went and before long the floor came into view. I found myself in a vast gargantuan underground opening that spanned forever until darkness forbade my eyes from seeing any more. I looked on in awe, interrupted by the sound of breathing, I could tell the sound was far off but that only means the source of the breathing had to be incredibly large and it was. I had stumbled onto a living myth, a wyrm-god, enormous winged beasts that where rumored to rule the lands above before the time of man came about some three thousand years ago, beings of such power that they can do things inconceivable to the minds of mortals and surrounding this grand being where naught but an army of strange hominoids, hunched over with darkened skin and feral aspects to them. These being are tied into the wyrm-god myths as the predictors to humans and being someone who was raised under the church of the seven saints what I was looking upon terrified me. Along with these beings of myth where the Husk's from the city, I dared not look for long but I believe they were being sacrificed to the wyrm-god as an offering to appease it and keep it docile or perhaps in an attempt to awaken the creature, again I did not look long and was quick to make my escape. Though as I neared the top of the stairs the horribly powerful beast bellow let out a tremendous roar that shook the ground around me and as chance would have it, it shook loose enough rock to block the path of my escape, and so here I sit. The rocks are made of far to dense a substance to be able to move alone thought the rocks did leave a tiny opening, one just big enough to fit my arm but just small enough that my hand wont fit without removing a thumb and some sizable chunk of my palm. So that brings me to the writing of this memoir, I am to push it through the hole and pray that it is found so that people may know the truth of what lay beneath their feet. As for myself, I plan to descend down the stairs once more to discover in full what is happening, if I do not return alive these papers will be found alone, if I however discover the meaning behind the sacrifices and return intact I will write about it with utmost haste but for now I entrust these letters to whomever finds them on the other side of this dark stone.