shadows follow
He'd seen it a hundred times by now, but it never felt any less foreign: A valley edged with immense effigies carved into ancient sandstone. Wind howled through the impression, kicking up a haze of sediment over the path in front of him. It wound deep into a cavern where stony visages jutted from the walls, looking on indifferently, wearing the likenesses of legends and luminaries of ages past. He thought he should recognize them, but like the valley itself, he remained strangely ignorant to their identity.
Figures gathered in the darkness, chanting with grim rhythm. He did not join their ritual, instead bestowing them with something incomprehensible. A string of words, instructions, hardly interpreted even as they came from his own mouth. Yet, the recipients seemed satisfied. Their ritual continued, and an immense dread grew with it. The air itself seemed to vibrate, bending to their unknowable words; the words he had given them. An impossibly black cloud flooded the cavern. Self-satisfaction crept under the dread, knowing he had deceived them, but unable to grasp exactly how. Certainty and dazed ignorance whirled amongst one another, leaving him in a paradoxical state.
Then, he sensed them. The others. They came down the winding path, ninety-nine flashes of blue and green, determined to quench their wrath. This is what he wanted. A barrier manifested around him, conjured by a forceful manipulation of something he couldn't see. One figure clapped his hands, and in an instant, everything in the cavern was vaporized. Clothing, flesh, bone, even the stalagmites and stalagtites; now dust.
Morrow laughed... or was it someone else cackling in a frenzy? Then, the screams began. Wailing from a place beyond the living. Souls lamenting in eternal torment, unable to move on from the moment of their destruction. At first, he reveled in it. It was what he wanted. But then, they grew louder, reverberating in his head ceaselessly. Gratification became terror. The shrieking became louder and louder. It was unbearable. Desperate fingers tore the unfamiliar flesh from his face, revealing a bloody, recognizable visage.
An anguished breath rasped into Morrow's lungs as he sat up abruptly in his bunk. Wailing gave way to the incessant barking and howling, the black lothwolf spooked by his sudden rousing. Near-bloodshot eyes darted around the dark cabin fearfully, taking several sweeps of the cramped accommodation before he realized where he was. He twisted, grabbed a steel cup from the nightstand, and forcefully downed lukewarm water. It may as well have been ice cold, the way it soothed his sore, dry throat. It overflew at the corners of his mouth, running down his chin and neck. Another gasp filled his lungs as the cup thudded back onto the bedside table.
"Shut up!" Morrow shouted weakly over the creature's tantrum. He stood, wobbled sleepily toward the door, and slammed the side of his fist against the control panel. The door to the cabin hissed open, ushering in a cool breeze and dim light from the ship's corridor. "Get out!" he shouted again, harshly shoving the pup outside with the side of his foot. He was too tired to spare a thought as to how it had even managed to get inside. The door slid shut, muffling the dog's continued tantrum outside.
Morrow slunked back over and sat on the side of the bunk, burying his face in his hands with a low groan.
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