Virtus Tenebris

a WIP lovecraft inspired dark fantasy, looking for feedback of any kind just be polite I'm fragile lol, nowhere close to being done but just looking for some kind of motivation or something

Metal boots clang on mossed stone, a pair twenty paces or so ahead from the rest. The crusader, holy knight sent from Western lands to spread the violent message of his god’s gospel which seemed to preach of peace. Ironclad is the young man, or perhaps old boy, with red drapes of cloth displaying the symbol of a dark yellow cross, fresh cloth untouched by the steel of an opponent or the conditions of a harsh environment. His pursuers are none other than the men he was supposed to conquer, he was promised glory and an easy journey, but now he is the only remaining soldier of his cohort. He takes off his helmet and wedges it under his shoulder, a desperate attempt to suck in as much air as possible to keep his mad dash to unpromised safety ongoing. He knows the steel he bears weighs him down far too much, so when he spots a flimsy wooden door barely on its latches he puts his shoulder not carrying the helmet first and crashes through, quickly catching his footing and continuing his sprint. The walls are lined with cold granite cobble and the path is lit only by the fleeting sunlight coming from the very door he burst through.
The crusader halts and thinks twice, perhaps these halls lead to no escape, but instead an even worse fate, one of torture or starvation. He looks back to see the battlefield he’s abandoned. His pursuers, having lost sight of him around a corner he rounded with impeccable agility for the iron mass he wears on his rather flimsy frame, were now fanning out in search of him. He peers to the right of the courtyard he stands in and spots one of his companions gasping for air, somehow still alive.
His fellow soldier sees not the crusader but is instead seen himself by one of the heathens. The heathen is wild-eyed and erratic, he moves in jolts and twitches rather than fluid movements, and stands at least a foot taller than the crusader. The heathen bears torn brown cloth and a sickle in his hand, his hair wild and unkempt. He approaches the soldier, crawling on the floor, begging not for mercy, but instead for a quick death. He wallows at the heathen’s bare feet, utter despair filling his pleas.
“Slay me in a way that my god will take me! Leave a clean cut and make it quick, please sir! Send me to my savior intact so I may sing in his holy choir!”
The heathen stares for a second, slowly, a grin snakes its way across his face. He removes the soldier’s helmet and looks into his eyes. Teary eyed, like a scared child the soldier whimpers and pouts, staring into what he knows to be his executioner’s face, all he can hope now is that the death is a swift and holy one. The heathen is silent, except for one word,
“Sing?”
The heathen raises his sickle to the sky, and brings it down upon the soldier’s neck, the hook catching deep into his flesh, with one motion the heathen swipes the sickle towards himself, eviscerating the soldier’s jugular. The soldier gargles on his own blood which sprays over the heathen in an upward shower of crimson red, elating the freakish man. He prances and jumps like a little girl in a rainstorm. The soldier puts a hand to his neck to staunch the overwhelming outburst of his own blood and slips a knife from the sheath strapped on to the heathen’s leg, impaling it deep into his heel. The madman falls to the floor, but not in pain of any sort, he is laughing. He’s doubled over with his hands on his stomach, rolling around with tears in his eyes screaming out in pure ecstasy. His ankle leaks blood, the knife having fallen out in the process of his collapse to the floor.
“Good! Goodness! Good man! Good knight! Good pain! So good!” pants the heathen in between revolting cackles of twisted glee. The soldier lay dead now, having bled out due to the laceration. A pool of deep red surrounds the heathen and the soldier, the only thing they seem to have in common is the blood leaking out of them.
In his fit of laughter, the heathen’s eyes catch on to the frightened crusader, crouched in the shadows of the doorframe, observing this display of pure manic brutality. The heathen’s cracked lips purse, and he lifts his bloodied fingers to his mouth, releasing an ear-piercing whistle. Footsteps slap and many more of the men gather to continue their pursuit of the young knight. The crusader puts a foot behind him, slinging his other forward and breaking off into an exhausted sprint, whatever doubts clouding his mind now overrun with visceral images of the fate he may meet at the band of grisly maniacs on his tail. He runs like an uncaged animal and pays no heedance to which corner he rounds and where he may end up, anywhere is better than in the hands of those sick madmen. Around him the cold stone halls grow darker and darker, he continues his run for what must have been fifteen minutes before his steel boot meets an obstruction that lay on the ground. He propels forward and slams into the stone floor beneath him, his helmet flying from under his arms and clanking down what must be a long staircase.
He lay on the floor, heaving manically, gasping for air. Slowly, his breath calms into a normal pattern and he is given a moment to think. Here lie the great crusader, bastion of everything good and pure, in the pitch dark, deep inside enemy territory. His squadron of men had fallen so quickly to the mad beasts that inhabit these very halls, and he was the last survivor, encompassed on all sides by potential danger.
He reaches into his satchel and procures a small piece of flint, which he strikes upon his chestplate to create a spark. Through this spark he sees a torch mounted on the wall above him, which he promptly rises to ignite. He pulls the torch near his greaves and swiftly strikes the flint again, the spark igniting the torch. He lifts above his head, the fire casting a warm glow on his face. The light flickers and dances around the room, causing the crusader to see shifting figures in the corner of his eyes. The hall he stands in is long and empty, with nothing remarkable, besides one oddity. Looking down the crusader spots the corpse of a mangy dog, average in size. The canine met a grisly fate, its ribs sticking out with dried blood leaking from its organs which had been ripped out in an animalistic manner, splayed far from the corpse and slowly withering to time.
The crusader scowls, he was never one for dogs and it seems the beast was simply bested in combat by another creature. He brushes it off as the circle of life, the heathens likely pay no mind to their hounds so they turn to eating their own kind in an attempt to fuel their self-preservation, natural selection clearly took this dog, hence why the man frets more for the loss of his helmet. Leaving your head unprotected in these walls spells certain doom for any perilous encounter the crusader may stumble upon. He turns to the looming staircase, it is a straight shot to his helmet, which faintly glistens at the very bottom. He takes a deep breath of rotting, musty air and begins his descent.
One step, two steps, three steps, four steps, a noise is heard from above. A light scampering which turns the crusader on his heels to inspect. He sees nothing at a glance and a crackle from his torch reminds him his light is limited and he must push onward with haste. Five steps, six steps, seven steps, eight steps, a burning gaze is felt on the crusader’s back, he knows the darkness is getting to him and he needs to continue. His helmet lay only eight more steps ahead of him and he had no time to waste. Nine steps, ten steps, eleven steps, and halfway to his twelfth a creak is heard, he rushes down now, skipping steps in a hurry to get back to a slightly more familiar part of this damp dungeon. His boots slam into the floor and he scoops up his helmet, he flips around and sees at the top of the stairs a dim outline barely visible. A dog peers down at him, unmoving. He thinks it must be the unfortunate animal’s slayer, and is wary of this potentially disease-ridden mutt. The dog glares coldly, and turns to its side, the same cracked ribs of the dead canine are faintly made out by the crusader. The dog trots out of sight from the crusader behind the heavy door to the staircase and in an instant the door is slammed shut with an unbelievable amount of force. The crusader stares, bewildered, before panic soon sets in. He rushes to the top of the stairs and bangs on the door, screaming, crying out for anyone to come rescue him, this endeavor is a hopeless one, and soon the crusader realizes this. He descends the stairs once more, his armor clanging with each step. At the bottom of the stairs holds an abyssal darkness that eats his torchlight like it was a starving beast. He can only see not more than a few meters in front of him. He steels himself and prepares for what might be ahead, unable to take his mind off the many possible grizzly fates that could be waiting for him in the corners of the consuming darkness ahead of him. He thinks of starvation, torture, insanity, and his mind can’t help but wander to old wives’ tales of monsters that rip young men like him into small pieces and eat even the bone of corpses. As irrational as he knows these thoughts are he can’t help but feel them in the recesses of his brain, and when he fails to rationalize himself those same thoughts start to poison his powers of reasoning.
He reaches a wooden door, through the cracks of the wood he sees a faint glimmer of light and cautiously pushes the door open with a loud creak. Sitting on the floor is a man who appears to be in his sixties, with wild silver hair down to his shoulders and a scraggly unkempt beard. He adorns the same cloth cross symbol that the crusader does. The man is slumped onto a wall with a half-melted candle placed next to him, barely illuminating the small and empty room they are in. The man is missing an arm and one look into his weary eyes reveals a hardened stare. The crusader approaches the man, filled with both hope and anxiety.
“Hello,” is all the crusader can manage to spit out. The man shifts his eyes to him and stares.
“I thought they stopped bringing in new blood,” says the man, he stays laying down with a relaxed demeanor.
“I was not brought, I escaped into this dungeon,” after the crusader says this the man lets a weary smile slip out.
“Escaped into here, that’s a first.”
“Who are you? Why are you down here?”
“I do not remember my name, I do not remember why I am here, I try not to remember anything down here, to remember is to relive and to relive is to suffer.”
“We need to get out, the grail waits for us and we need to signal to the king for reinforcements.”
“Ha! He speaks of the grail! There is no grail boy, there are no reinforcements, and down here the only king I know of is rat ones.”
“You sputter blasphemy! Does the cross on your chest mean nothing to you?”
“The cross on my chest would make a good tourniquet should I lose another limb, other than that it serves no purpose to me.”
“You’re no better than the heathens! You reject our savior yet are clothed with his mark!”
“Savior? I have no savior and neither do you seeing as you’re trapped in this pit with me! If there is a god his light doesn’t reach past that door you came through.”
“You’re out of your head! You sit at the very entrance of this place and you claim horror! What have you seen other than stone?”
“This place doesn’t follow the rules of above-ground. I’ve been here years, the walls shift around us as we speak, just yesterday I was in the very heart of this dungeon and now you claim that I am at the door, it’s impossible, everything here seems to be and soon you will come to accept that or you will go mad!”
The man’s voice is loud and his temper is high, beads of sweat drip down his forehead and his face is a blushed hue of red.

Author's Note

I'm always worried about my writing "sounding like a teen" if that makes sense, let me know if you think I do or if you even understand what I mean by that lol
(any spacing/indentation issues due to this being copy and pasted from my doc, apologies)