Tomb

The Beginning of the End

A bloodcurdling, throat-ripping scream rent the stale air within the tomb, reverberating off of the walls, growing and echoing to fill the entire crypt. The sound of his friend being brutally skinned alive was nearly enough to drive Aymar over the brink of sanity.

The shadows within the tomb, once harmless and merely dark, now swam and twisted, rippled and roiled. More screams began, but they were not screams of pain. They were the screams of infinite torment, of agonizing eternity spent in the depths of Hell. They were the screams of the damned, millions of the world shrieking in un-ending torment.

Eyes rimmed in white rolled within their sockets madly as Aymar tore out of the antechamber of the crypt. Ki's screams echoed upon themselves till they seemed inhuman, pain embodied within sound. 'How could this have all gone so wrong?!' Aymar frantically thought to himself, racking sobs heaving his chest, hot tears of blinding fear cascading down his face. Momentarily numb from fear, he thought back to the beginning...


***

Upon opening the door to the Black Moon Tavern, a wave of smells crested over him. Typical smells of the somewhat dingy bar but unpleasant nonetheless. Stale beer, stale sweat, a whiff of stale urine.

"Is anything is this place ever fresh?" Aymar mentally questioned as he purposefully strode into the bar, a man on a mission. Nothing was more important to him after a day of hard work than a nice, hopefully cold, frothy mug of Greten Ale.

"Hit me Rafe!" Aymar yelled, grabbing a stool next to his best mate Hubert.

"Howdy there, Aymar," Hubert said, words already a bit slurred.

Aymar just nodded towards Hubert and examined the room nonchalantly while waiting for his drink. Dingy oak-plank floors, tobacco smoke-filled air, a few sconces on the walls holding solitary torches throwing pale shadows, guttering in the drafts of the poorly ventilated place. It was still a bit early, and the tavern hadn't filled up yet, but a few loyal patrons milled about, chatting amiably about the days' work and the family.

Rafe, the rotund barkeep, slid a filthy glass filled with potent Greten Ale over to Aymar, who, nodding appreciatively, drained the entire mug in a single noisy gulp, finishing with a few lip-smackings. Aymar slid two gold pieces across the counter to Rafe, who stuck them in a pocket of his smeared and stained apron.

"Hey there! Aymar!" a loud voice called from the doorway. Aymar turned and saw another good friend of his, Ki, who was his coworker at the mines. "You have GOT to come see what I found at the mines!" Ki called, nearly sprinting over to where Aymar sat.

"What is it?" Aymar asked, glancing up from his mug. Ki had slicked his dirty blond hair back today, and his dark blue eyes always seemed to be excited or inquisitive about something.

"It's...it's...unreal!" Ki veritably gushed.

Slightly frustrated by not knowing what it was Ki was so enthused about, and slightly angry he wasn't going to be able to drink the night away at the tavern, Aymar exploded. "WHAT IS SO DAMN AMAZING?!"

Not to be put off by Aymar's anger, Ki cried, "I...I found a TOMB! By the mines! It has all these wierd markings and letters on the inside of the walls, and I saw...I saw..." He leaned over to Aymar's ear and whispered, "Gold...lots...of gold..."

That was all Aymar needed to hear.

***

"The entrance is over here!" Ki called over his shoulder, pointing off in some direction with his right hand.

"I...*huff* thought that...you said...*puff* it was close to...the mines." Aymar gasped out, unused to climbing the large rocky hills.

Ki didn't hear him though. "There! There it is! See!?" Ki gestured repeatedly towards a small cleft in the side of a large rock outcropping, jagged rocks sticking out from the edges.

"Ki, there's no way I'll fit through there! I'm fat!" Aymar said, gesturing to his muscular, stocky body. "Just try man! We're gonna be rich! Heeheee!" Ki called, giddy from excitement. "I got through, and I even snagged my hair on the rocks. You got no hair, so you don't have to worry about that Aymar! Just come on!" Ki called as he started to squeeze through the rather small opening. Ki vanished within the rock.

"Oh whatever..." sighed Aymar and he started pressing himself through the small crack. 'Damn good I'm not claustrophobic,' he thought as the rock squeezed his short body. Popping through the fissure, he heard a tearing sound. Glancing back at the wall behind him, he noticed a long strip of blue cloth hanging on an exposed rock. Glancing down at himself, he saw a long strip of blue cloth missing from his blue canvas shirt. "Just fantastic..." he muttered to himself as he followed Ki down the hall.

He met up with Ki a little farther down the hall, and in the guttering orange light thrown by the two torches, it was very clear Ki hadn't been lying. Gold glittered on all sides of them.

"Let's split it all evenly, ok Aymar?" Ki giddily called to him, while prodding a gilded sconce on the wall with his finger.

Aymar had different ideas.

A torch swished through the air and collided hard with the base of Ki's skull.

"I think...I'd rather have this for myself Ki. No hard feelings mate." Aymar said shakily as Ki's body slumped, unconscious, to the ground.

Seeing a large pedestal in the center of the antechamber, right in front of an odd doorway sealed with stone, Aymar picked Ki up and set him on top of it to rest while he began looting the relics within the tomb.

Suddely, a huge resounding boom echoed throughout the carved stone walls as the pedestal began to sink into the ground. Dust cascaded off of the walls as the entire tomb shook like an earthquake. Ki stirred; then fell unconscious once more.

After the pedestal sank down about a foot, barbed chains suddenly fell from the ceiling onto the pedestal, sinking deeply into Ki's flesh and pinning him to the surface. The first of several throat-tearing screams erupted from Ki as he awoke to the most excruciating pain he had ever felt.

"THE BLOOD HAS BEEN PAID! THE SEAL HAS BEEN BROKEN!" a rasping, echoing voice boomed from seemingly everywhere at once. The sound of Ki screaming and the voice made Aymar want to tear out his ears and eyes, the voice made of insanity itself.

The chains digging into Ki's flesh began to move but stayed just as taught, slowly cutting the top half-inch of his flesh away as they turned. The chains began swirling faster, until Ki's tortured howls of pain were all the evidence of his friend that were left that he could see. A red haze of blood stained the walls as Ki was slowly skinned and shredded alive by the chains. Blood so red it was black began oozing thickly across the floor.

***

"If only I hadn't knocked him out...my...my friend!" Heaves of sobbing continued anew from Aymar as he tried to squeeze from the fissure.

As he tried to get out, something grabbed his leg.

He turned slowly, desperately hoping it wasn't what he thought it was.

A figure of seemingly nothing but blood and muscle feebly clutched his leg, unseeing eye sockets weeping tears of blood and white gelatinous vitreous fluid from his ruined eyes. A hoarse unintelligible whisper issued from his mouth, and a convulsion racked Ki's ruined body. He then laid still, blood seeping from his exposed muscle as his heart beat its last.

Bolting out of the fissure, Aymar ran and ran.

***

Two days after Aymar was found with his eyes gouged out and skinned alive, a plague of shadows destroyed the land, and the only person who would've known that the portal to Hell had been opened again was nothing but dust in a moldering grave.