FROM CHAPTER TWO: WYVERN

I realized that I had found the dwelling place of the horrible monster I had seen that night. Even now the thing had to be below my feet and my heart raced with a new lust to kill. But I had to find the well first, preferably not by falling into it. So I took an ancient lamp from the wall and checked it to see if it could be lit again. The condition of the ancient lamp proved good, and it only took a moment with my flint and steel to set the thickened oil alight. It smoked more than it lit up a room, but it would keep me from breaking my neck.

So I walked on two legs down the stairs, the smoking lamp in one hand and my drawn sword in the other. When I reached the bottom, the feeble light barely lit up an area bigger than I could swing my sword. Regardless, I found the mouth of the well with very little difficulty at all. I wondered what would be best now, to lower the lamp on a rope, or to extinguish it and sneak down silently, hoping that the bottom was not far, and that I could smell and hear the beast before it smelled and heard me. I put out the light, knowing that my best chance in defeating the perilous beast lay in trying to surprise it. Yet I knew not if it lay right before me, even now, watching with scorn and ready to kill me with a mocking laugh in its razor edged gullet. I lowered the rope and secured it in silence. Then I climbed down.

I measured my breaths with great labor, for my blood coursed high and my hair stood raised on end. I did not know if the rope had touched bottom. I did not know when I might come to the end of it, and fall into space. But I went down anyway, quietly climbing down, bit by bit, and pausing to guess how far I had gone in this utter darkness. I listened for signs that an alert Wyvern might be poised to attack.

It seemed like I had climbed forever, and yet I had not reached the bottom, nor the end of my rope. The blackness had been impenetrable for a long time now. As the blood coursed through me, I saw the twinkling of lights from the back of my eyes. The blood pulsed by and evoked that luminescence that so often lulls an ape or a man to sleep, when his eyes are closed. But sleep was not on my mind, nor would I be any less alert, as the inner light thrummed through my lively body. Suddenly I over-reached the end of my rope and had to let loose my sword in order to catch myself. It was to no avail... I missed the rope and fell downwards, suddenly in terror of a quick, but gruesome, death.

But the clatter of my sword hitting the ground came too soon, and almost before I realized it, I hit hard ground not many feet from the end of my rope, after all. I quickly righted myself and turned my head to follow the echoes of my sword’s clatter. I hoped, somehow, to find where it lay, but I could not. I cringed in the darkness, knowing that such a loud sound had surely been heard by the thing that dwelled in this eternal night.

Then like terrible lamps of doom they appeared-- those hateful yellow eyes that were not set in any living head, those large and glowering, alien and murderous images. As horrific as the vision was, I somehow forced my own eyes to look away and seek the sword that was my only hope, and yet no hope at all against the fiend which seemed to see me, and see through me to my very death.

I grasped the sword even as the eyes vanished. The vanishing brought a panic even worse than had the lighting of the eyes. I had seen those eyes do their diabolical work before, and I knew they only vanished when they were no longer needed and when their murderous aim had already been assured.

I braced myself and the attack came. Wings fluttered in the dark and the monstrous claw grasped me by one arm and lifted me. I hacked and hacked, but it seemed like trying to run in water... somehow the angle of my blow did not fall as I intended, and my blows could not be true. Then I realized I had been spinning around and the creature had stunned my senses and made me dizzy. The jaws dipped towards my chest and those long, horrid, white teeth plunged like many daggers into my flesh. A mind numbing, awful burning came with the bite as hideous venom dripped into the deep wounds.

For a confusing moment I gazed full on the visage of the monster, not understanding how I could see the thing in the darkness. Then I realized I had been taken into the sky, above the tower. The monster had snared me and blacked out much of my sensation and reason. I concentrated with all my might and found the will to thrust my sword between the creature’s talons and pry the grasp loose.

I fell to the ground, plummeting a long way this time, falling through space, not knowing if I could survive the tremendous plummet. Then there came the utter shock of my body blasting against the hard, bare earth, with no mercy or recourse, and the sensation of blood spattering, either inside of my body, or loose from some wound.

But I had not been killed, nor knocked cold, and I had yet some fight in me. So when the Wyvern made its first approach I managed to stand and sever dozens of the hateful tendrils, as their barbs set upon me, like a myriad scorpions. The thing lifted up again and made ready for another pass, this time to grab again with those talons. My only thought was to meet it with an equal blow from my sword, although I could barely stand and a grim pain spread through me that I knew would send me into utter submission or blackness-- neither of which I could hope to escape with my life. I would face my attacker squarely, none the less, and at least take from him his arm, before I died.

Then, for some reason, the light in the tower distracted me. I looked at the stone and a thought came to me. I held this thought and projected it outward like a command:

I thought to the Wyvern: “Go back to your well and sleep! You have done your work and killed the intruder! Go back and let the lepers and the venom finish him!”

And the Wyvern, controlled by the stone, obeyed the command of my mind! Suddenly, I knew what it was to be a Keeper! The monster descended back into the tower and down into the well.

Now I felt myself burning and I saw the hideous human shambles drawn out to see the source of such a tumult among them. In my present state I feared even them. I somehow managed to prop myself up on my left hand’s knuckles and, with bared teeth, I growled. I whipped my sword in the air, dismayed at the shrill pain that coursed through my veins with every move. To die at the hands of these derelicts was too much to bear. I became blind with rage and howled in my torment, swinging my sword and hobbling forth, with supreme effort. I swung, only dimly aware that I killed with each stroke, and my terrific muscles hewed feeble mongrels like matchwood. My awareness began to come in black waves, now. I was aware more of my will to fight than anything else now. I knew pain, a growing nausea, and the will to fight. I lost moments in time while yet on my feet, yet every time I came to, I found that I was still standing, somehow, and still fighting. I threw around these unworthy curs in what had become the grimmest fight of my life yet. I could not even remember how many times I blacked out and came to before I went out completely. But it surely happened, for at last I found myself in broad daylight, in clean sheets, in a room with a familiar smell and a tranquil atmosphere.

I felt deeply drugged and absolutely smashed to bits. I could never remember feeling so feeble and close to death, yet somehow I lived, and somehow I was in my friend’s home.