Beyond The Conjured by Alexander Rivera

As day drew to dusk, the last remnants of light drew back like a salient sea brushing a brusque beach; fading into a quaint translucent invisibility as dark clouds formed in the ionosphere. Countless liquid needles fell to the grit of the ground, attempting to diffuse a held oil lamp’s pondering halo and the sub fuscous recess of darkness around it gaped with a homicidal malevolence as if the lofty spectacle of nature took pleasure in laying this false and sterile world to siege. The rain skimmed down as if a risen rapier signaled arrows of fire to descend upon the cloaked, moving figure.

Cleaving, clawing bolts of lightning grasped the blackness and tossed it aside like a deformed, rejected runt of a toy. Jabbing the quaking ground with murderous intent, a piercing electrical bolt whipped into nothingness and made something explode.

A dizzy collection of nerves and membranes in Savalath’s head seemed to shudder like a small prey facing the siege from the cold, deadened eyes of its predator. He noticed hungry fire burn a nearby, withered tree, just like those of his dreams as he faced ancient turrets weathered from erosion marked the rush of once rapid streams – all but a memory to Savalath. They had seen the world at the height of its prosperity down to its lowest depths, ever-hoping and waiting for a time when the fulfilled prophecies would carry them yet again to the breast of its mother earth–the reunion with the spirits.

Savalath trudged through a bouquet of dilapidated ruins and dreary gray bricks past a bombarded building sculpted artlessly by some ancient and malignant demon, and entered a hidden, shattered world through a learning stone archway of a seemingly vampyre like gothic crypt. 

A bare, dimming torch illuminated the path, as he drifting through the entrance away from the darkness of the stormy weather and into an even further ominous atmosphere, ridden with dread. Savalath pulled down his hood as he noted the savage array of weapons assembled randomly on the walls and spread across the dusty floors. A pointless and glassless window backed with bricks clang to the wall opposite him and a long swaying punch bag hang like a bloody corpse on an old blunted meat hook.

“A cloud is made from the ice of the mountain by the will of the sun, Savalath.” A lowly, majestic voice cooed and reverberated throughout the ancient ruins. High above the dilapidated canopy, above the staircase of the ruined tower, Savalath could see him quite clearly–the Gnostic Magus adorned with a thick fur coat thrown back over broad shoulders revealing a sparkling surcoat of emerald and jade.

Savalath stared in astonishment as what he had thought to be a pile of rocks became the shape of a sitting figure and his staff. White, red, blue and green prayer flags fluttered atop of the staff in the high breeze, coming from the large, gaping openings of the roof.

What he hadn’t seen, or been aware of, was the man who spoke poetic words. He rose up, from a crouched height of three feet, he became six, to the sight of the cloaked Savalath and continued, “Are you prepared for the invocation?”

Savalath’s eyes deadened to his wiles as he hesitantly asked, “…Yes, but why here? This is where those of the Black lodge have done their own works of ritual and sacrifice, Silvanius.”

Silvanius’ voice took a watt higher, “Did you know, underneath these ruined halls lie key furrows of the earthly grid? It is this key reason why they maintain such grotesque debauchery, attracting the fallen and the darkness to infuse their energy during their ‘The Rite to Open the Passage’. Yet it contains the same means to access other and preferable spheres of entity.”

The soaking and drenched traveler felt even more uneasy, sensing thick phlegm develop on the back of his throat and proceeding to swallow. His sable brown eyes were framed by high bronze cheeks and silken black hair that flashed more the same as lightening in the night sky, while his rotting brown leather and a corroded ankh was drenched in rain water.

Savalath was grave. At his master’s request, both of them meet to this remote ruin site, Silvanius insisting on secrecy, claiming he had something to reveal and channel. Savalath had obliged, and now hiked up the concrete hill of steps with his lord.

The flaming lamp provided some light to see Silvanius expression when Savalath produced a roll of vellum – a collection of paper scraps and epistles from the scriptorium. Scrawled across these pages, in the apprentice’s coarse handwriting, was a peculiar treatise. He was anxious. This was the first time he had revealed his secret labor.

The apprentice blinked. Silvanius unrolled the tight bundle of pages, noticing the text was in rough, scrawled handwriting, but lucid prose and a poised tone hardly seemed the voice of a barbarian. “What is this? Did you write this?”

Savalath’s brow furrowed defensively. “Of course.”

He held it reverently in his gnarled fingers, stroking the cover, eyeing the sign warily. The rest of the cover was utterly black, as dark as darkness, and seemed to be trying to crawl away from the symbol on the front, as if it were painful to be near it. Each page was thick, made from pale calf-hide, dried in the sun on great racks many years ago. The words on every page were written in a fine, flowing script, all in dark red ink. The Magus skimmed through each page, expecting a rough example of barbarian wits struggling with elementary grammar, “Is this what you’ve been up to?” he grinned, like a patient father. That grin vanished as soon as he read the first lines.

With a slightly irritated tone, he went off, “These words are meant for gnosis…and yet you also copied down the sacred invocations of Enochian thaumaturgy,” Assuming that this was copied from something else, he asked, “Where have you read this from? You said you had the rites written down, but nothing with this caliber.”

“No,” the apprentice answered, baffling his friend. “These words are my own.”

“You wrote this yourself?” Silvanius was genuinely astounded. “Where did you learn to write like this?”

Savalath blushed and sunk into himself slightly. “I practice every day, but it is hard to master those tiny letters.”

“No, no,” Silvanius clarified. “Not your handwriting, your words. Where did you learn such refined language?”

This made Savalath brighten slightly. “Oh, that. I simply wrote in the style of the historians.”

The apprentice was even more confused. “The historians? This not your job…I took you to be a practitioner, an adept of the Magus, not scanty intellectual.”

Savalath shrugged, withdrawing slightly. “I know.”

“You mean this is what you’ve been doing instead of your studies?”

The prodigal apprentice fell silent and his features went slack.

“Savalath, is this, what you’ve been doing instead of your lessons?” Silvanius pressed.

“Sometimes,” Savalath mumbled.

“Well, you are obviously talented,” Silvanius pressed, trampling Savalath’s silence. “Few master scribes can write so well. So why aren’t you using those talents to master your lessons as easily as you’ve mastered language?”

“It was another interest of mine…besides you have your texts for your invocation. What is the problem?”

Silvanius beamed and went on, “Nothing, my neophyte, nothing at all. We are here for one reason–the Ascended One.”

“Who is this Ascended One that you speak of? Why do seek him so?”

Silvanius gave an ominous answer, “He is one of the patronages of passed on sages, transfiguring into one of the Nine known by many names, but we prefer to call him by Kenat Aun. Gaining new insights is always the way of the seeker of gnosis. Normally, this is done by triangle networks of mystic and Hecate practitioners to meditate and cause energy flow of the Hierarchy to enter and influence this mortal plane. But even through this book you’ve inscribed, we can pull it off.”

Savalath seemed taken aback by his answers, unsure of what his underlying wishes, as the wheels of his mind were set in motion, breaking into a cold sweat of possibilities flew through his mind. Stumbling onto a darkened, isolated chamber of an inner catacomb, eventually Silvanius led Savalath into a room of occultist design with a cold, biting lull of musty scent of what it seemed to be dried blood wafted through the gaunt, straining atmosphere of teasing silence while whispering noises disturbed that the silence–an ongoing derision of a crafty conscience.

“We can conceive our Kundalini, while the mundane and uninitiated can only see us as worshipers of the serpent. What we are about to do cannot be done by those of a weak and carnal heart or mind.” Silvanius warned while passing the book back to his apprentice while dropping his staff to the floor. From underneath his raggedy garments stained with sweat, he suede them off from him, revealing much darker apparel. Silvanius, in a black Tau robe with a hood displaying a six-pointed radiant eye of Horus, straddled over the larger eye, barefoot and star sigil interwoven on the floor.

Savalath studied Silvanius’ every move as he formed the Pentagram over the ancient design on the stone floor under him with the blood from a black lamb he had obtained from his frequent trips to voodoo huts and deranged shamans. He began to read out the first lines of a ritual which had hardly been performed. Today was the day, he would find his answers.

Touching his forehead he went ahead and chanted, “Geh,” then proceeded to his genital area, “Londoh,” then to the right shoulder, “Micaolz,” then his left shoulder, with a “Busd,” and finally he crossed his arms, announcing, “Gohed.”

For a few minutes, there was utter silence, save for both man’s breathing. Savalath reiterated while eyeing the omnibus of rituals for the reader to recite, “Thou art Kingdom, Power, Glory, Everlasting…”

“That is correct…this part is what is known as the Calvary cross–a mainstay in Enochian Pentagram rituals.”

Savalath formed a worried expression as he scanned his master’s angular, wrinkled face, inviting other worldly spirits to be summoned, asking, “Are you sure this is going to work? Calling upon a dead Gnostic sage?”

“Of course it is. Now please, try not to disturb the invocation process.” The Magus answered most assuredly. He knelt down to the floor and sat in a meditative position. He chanted, “Omnia in Unum, Unum in Omnia.”

Savalath took a few steps back, as a wave of apprehension ate at the foundation of his composure. His master inhaled and exhaled heavily while closing his eyes and entered an entranced state. He continued to chant, his voice gradually increasing in volume. The water began to tremble, the blood swirling in an inverse pattern. Soon, the massive hall was echoing with the sound of his deep voice, and accompanying it was a deafening roar, as if some gust of wind had blown into the temple. His chanting abruptly stopped, eventually continuing on ahead in stoic concentration.

Suddenly, he began to rattle back and forth, as if he were shaken by some invisible external entity like an abusive mother. Without a momentary notice, he stopped his flinching and opened his eyes. He noticed the man’s eyes change. The pupils faded to white, then, the plain white eyes shifted to pure jet black.

His mouth opened wide – too wide to be comfortable – and started making a ‘sucking’ sound. A high pitched shriek accompanied the sucking, growing louder in volume by the second. Those black eyes looked directly at Savalath, injecting the fear of God into the pit of his stomach.

“Dear God…” Savalath whispered, stepping back and knocking over a small altar.

The shrieking sound stopped abruptly and the mouth closed. Those vile black eyes remained open, and fixed themselves on Savalath’s gaze. He tried not to look at them, but couldn’t help it. Those dark pits of evil seemed to draw him in, to lock him rigid where he stood.

Something had taken over his master’s husk, enabled to enter this world as the intruder rose, searching inside Savalath’s face. The same words he uttered, “Dear God…” was repeated by his master. To his astonishment, Savalath heard his own voice, mimicked perfectly.

When the man spoke, it scared Savalath–it wasn’t what he said, but the way he said it: He spoke without moving his lips. Without moving his jaw, even. He kept his mouth wide open. Savalath noticed the man’s teeth were dark yellow, like those of a heavy smoker, only much worse. They were badly decayed, some of them jutted out at grotesque angles. A few of them seemed pointed.

Savalath felt goose bumps rising on his skin, the wispy hairs on his head stood upright as he stared into his gaping mouth, making boisterous freakish, shrieking sounds as his earlobes dissolved. He raised his hands to protect his exposed ear holes from the noise, attempting to evade the overtaken dark presence.

The Magus was clearly taken over by something–an astral demon or Archon perhaps; nothing like a soul of a long dead and Ascended Mystic sage. Had his master planned this the whole time–to be over-taken by something else? Savalath seemed stunned by how the creature could just manipulate its host like so. He drew out a twisted dagger, incase he would attack with utter ferocity.

Without any forewarning, the possessed Silvanius struck his pupil with his underhand, with added strength. Savalath fell straight to floor, horrified at what he witnessed. A cold shiver ran down the man’s spine as he gazed upon those mesmerizing, terrible eyes. Quickly he grabbed on to the fallen dagger, ready for anything as he crawled back from the walk-in.

He stood there, motionless for a few brief moments until he began to shake, almost violently. Tears of blood began to leak from his eyes as Silvanius’ flesh soon came away in bigger lumps; grape-sized dollops of fat and blood, as the hints of the horrid creature soon began to emerge from its human shell.

Immediately, Savalath grabbed the dagger and the transcribed yet incomplete grimoire, rose up and ran like a frightened fawn, escaping from a pack of salivating wolves. He scurried along the damp and splintered ruins of the haunting edifice of wood and stone. His mind reeled from the shock of his master being possessed and transformed into a reprobate blasphemous abomination that entered and ripped through Silvanius’ body.

Out from the ruins below angry, twilight skies, he lifted up his hood, concealed by an embrace of black. Onto the dewy, grassy knolls, leading into the dark opaque atmosphere of the woods, he heard the ugly whispers and sounds of the reborn monstrosity that now seemingly desired to feast for sustenance. He could still hear the harrowing, piercing shrieks of darkness incarnate coming from the ruins, as if it were a banshee in torturous heat.

The coattails of Savalath’s drenched black cloak followed with him as they journeyed along with his dagger and omnibus of inscription and rites. As the wind made a deep sigh throughout the gloom of the woods enshrouded with nightly shadow, he cursed his nerves and lack of courage: I should have gutted him! And the cursed nightmare would have ended then and there! Why didn’t the summoned demon just consume him?

The rain still poured down in torrents, with a horrifying inner flight, he saw pouring water become crimson. The hysterical clouds, sobbing with bloody anguish, gushed like a deep wound, onto the landscape with the moon’s vermilion poisonous glow; as if the dark rapturous Ragnarok had already dawned upon the earth.

Again, thunder rolled in the sky, shaking his dreary perceptions amidst the darkness enshrouded by whipped bare branches of the forsaken forest’s canopy. Frightened at the possibility the infernal one was quickly trailing behind him, terror injected him an adrenaline rush of speed. His heart palpitated and lungs rushed with damp, foggy air as he made way from the brush to what it looked like a small, vacant, secluded cabin in solitude.

The adjacent door to his direction was slightly open, as he suede from the rainy weather and into the vacant and gloomy cabin. Shadows spun like a spiders web through the cabin as Savalath quickly shut the door behind him and breathed a heavy sigh. Without warning, he felt a painful blow to the back of his head, rendering him unconscious, as the smallest hazes of light from the crashing lightening outside diffused into the enveloping darkness of his reality.

Eventually, he awoken to find himself sitting up with his knees pushed up to his chest, shaking fiercely with anxiety, surrounded only by the close darkness of the cabin, encasing him with a foreboding doom that he had taken the wrong choice in reaching this point. Only a single candle burnt above him, as he noticed some creaking footsteps marching on rotten, parched wood. The footsteps stopped and he could hear laboring breathing over his pounding heart, sending jabbing goose-bumps underneath his near golden, swarthy skin. The source of the sauntering breathing revealed himself, using his scepter to light another fresh candle.

Savalath heard tales of deranged Shaman or crazed witch doctors, but nothing could have prepared him for laying eyes upon the figure. He was tall, taller than he had expected him to be and a clear foot taller than the biggest man he had ever seen. The light from the candle lit up his face and head; the head of a gray wolf. Yellow eyes, black snout, raised ears and teeth that made the heart freeze. He was known in these parts as the Wolf Shaman.

“Are you the one,” growled the terrifying voice, “who invoked the demon?”

Savalath did not hear the question for a few moments, only the voice.

“What is your name?” He asked the young lad, prodding his scepter into his chest to emphasize every word. Savalath caught a glance of the shaman’s huge paws grasping the spiritual device and noted the retractable claws, easily as long as a man’s hand, resting under the gray fur.
 
“I…I am Savalath…” he finally whimpered. The Shaman stared at Savalath for several moments in the deep silence, as the rain poured heavily outside. Knowing by instinct that an escape attempt would avail him naught, Savalath gazed over and regarded his foe.

“But they know this,” the shaman growled lowly, “this act has angered the spirits and your soul is marked, the spirits hold you accountable for this act. You have brought the accursed devil to this world!”

Savalath protested, “It was him…the Magus…”

The Wolf Shaman interrupted, “What has happened here has angered the spirits, this act will weaken the barriers of the worlds, and in death the spirits will call upon your soul to reaffirm the fortification.”

His words crushed any remaining feeling of joy remaining in Savalath. He did not understand what the Shaman had told him but he could imagine a torturous hell realm of Charon’s fury, despite what the teachings had revealed thus far as a recent initiate.

“It is coming closer…” The Shaman declared.

Eyes black, darker than darkness itself, gazed through the droves of trees. Their shape was a memory of what had once been: fox-sharp corners to track swift prey; heavy, graceful lashes to blend into the shadows. But long years had transformed the intensity of that gaze into the stillness of a corpse’s blind, frozen stare. The eyes, however, were neither blind nor dead. They hunted still, hunted because it was their nature, and watched everything and nothing as they waited for the long, long hunt to end.

The Wolf Shaman was not about to offer a meddlesome trespasser the freedom to leave, and yet the conjured darkness was searching for a host; timing was the essence as he placed the neophyte to his feet and whispered while placing a hand to Savalath’s mouth, “We must leave…”

He couldn’t believe it. From one guru to another, he jumped from to and froe as he grumbled with frustration while the Wolf Shaman tossed back the piles of wood, blocking entrance to the broken hole in the cabin. He noticed the Shaman carrying his omnibus of writings, in between his arm, while Savalath grabbed the golden dagger from the wooden table.

With no other choice, he stepped into the mud and began to follow him from the cabin and out under the rainy woods again. Following the Shaman, he ran through the woods, fleeing in fright from what he had helped unleashed.

“Where are we going?” Savalath asked, in agitation.

“To send it back…no Ancient One shall reign upon this land on my watch. I have seen it in my visions. Hurry!” The Shaman hissed back at him.

Turning their course toward the grandiose sized tree, Savalath began to feel a sense of relinquishing hope, while arriving at a massive oak tree–inviting them to climb and hide for an intermission, anticipating the sighting. The Wolf Shaman sniffed the midnight air, as he perched himself upon the large base of the tree branch, as Savalath did essentially the same; nestling himself against the large husk, with one leg swaying back and forth.

He asked, “Why are we here in this tree?”

“Shut your mouth…we mustn’t allow it to know where we are, if we are to expel it.” He spat in a heated whisper.

Savalath said nothing, eyed the canopy and back down to the forest floor, watching his demonic prey like an owl. Minutes passed until Savalath broke the stiffening silence with a whisper, “Where you waiting for me, in that cabin? It’s as if you knew I was going to be there.”

“I was given a forewarning…”

“By whom?” Savalath asked.

“When I communed with the spirits…”

“Oh…” He huffed, slightly rolling his eyes, away from the other’s sight. Quickly, the Wolf Shaman shunned any further remarks with a hiss between his teeth and rose from his sitting position. The sharpened scepter for a spear emerged from his long cloak made of wolf fur, sensing imminent danger. The sounds of wings flapping could be heard far away, even amidst the torrents of rain. Savalath’s heart raced at every sound made from each flap of massive wings, coming in their way.

Ignoring his own advice, the burly Wolf Shaman raised his voice over the rain and flapping wings, “There is Biblical legend about a man named Jacob who dreamt of a ladder set on the earth. It reached both heaven and hell; where the devils could renounce evil and become of light, as the angels could fall into darkness. This is your beloved master, who became a winged Ciakar!”

“A Ciakar…? That is impossible…no Archon can enter a man’s body…”

“They can, now…” He answered and went on, “From the legends of my people, these Ciakars are able to fracture one’s self, leaving them without identity or self.”

“What do you mean?”

“They steal thoughts, passions, emotions, desires from all their victims…as they consume the flowing blood.”

“I left everything, my town, my love, only to become the concubine of a monstrous devil, a goddamned vampyre…there is also another legend,” He went on to explain a long winded cosmology, “Long ago, there was a company of gods called Aeons, divinities who dwell in the core of the galaxy. One of these immortal powers, the Aeon Sophia departed in a reckless way from the core, producing havoc in the outer region of the galaxy, and then falling into a swoon. Sophia, in her shock and disorientation, gradually realized that she had precipitated an anomaly in the cosmos, giving rise to the Earth, embodied of her essence. Her fall gave rise to another set of creatures; the inorganic Archons, which lacked the spirit of truth.”

A bristling noise came from the lowland thicket below, as they tensed up as if they were ready to battle while forcing them to mute their laboring breathing and dialogue, which allowed Savalath to wonder just how this Shaman would repel the transformed Magus of this horrendous abomination. 

The Wolf Shaman readied himself, with a locked gaze upon the moving shadow within the brush. A noisy, almost wheezy breathing came from the shadow, as the long blades of leaves shook. Then, it emerged from anonymity. Savalath’s eyes swelled with trepidation, witnessing his master–now a dreadful winged Ciakar Archon was taller to a monster like countenance, while having a ridge going from the nose over the top of the head, conical horns midway between the brow and the top of the skull. With its avaricious jaw and long spermatic tail looked as if it were an aborted fetus yet had the characteristics of a serpentine humanoid. It had wings, flaps of skin supported by long ribs, folded back against the body.

Climbing through the clutter of dead branches that sprouted from the crest of the oak, the Shaman slid down one reaching over the lowest of branches. The drop wasn’t short, though he landed in a graceful arch; he had to steady himself with the large scepter. Savalath followed not a moment behind; venturing to swing down from one of the overhanging branches so the fall was less taxing. As soon as they were both up on their feet again within puddles of rain water, the Wolf Shaman started to run, and Savalath followed in utter dismay.

The Wolf Shaman ducked down, hiding amongst tall leaves of grass while fixated on the winged Archon, stalking it within the shadows. The creature sniffed and snarled at the midnight air for a pungent smell as the rain began to die down.

Savalath placed his hood over his head, as he drew the dagger, ready to possibly gut this creature that had overtaken Silvanius or perhaps was the beast, the whole time he knew him.

The Wolf Shaman propelled the spear and landed straight through the Archon’s torso and out from the back. It cried in agony, while extending his gargoyle like wings to the widest extent of its span.

Instantly, it grasped onto the spear, retracting it from the penetrated hole left within its solar plexus. With a great surge of bravado, the Wolf Shaman dashed while Savalath followed suit in the dim twilight, water gradually sliced past the dagger like a flurry of fallen angels clinging to the Achilles heel of the fiat of a master architect Creator lest they tumble into the abyss.

To his surprise, the spear had flung back to the Wolf Shaman, striking him with the butt of the weapon, against his chest. Savalath hopped forward; delivering the first attack; a prying jab meant only to size his opponent up, which the Archon blocked with laughable ease. It followed; a similar jab, similarly evaded by sheer reflex.

With a strike to his chest, Savalath flew some twenty odd feet away and landed on his back, loosing his dagger in the process. The Wolf Shaman got up again, whirling the scepter around him like a staff in the hands of a sedulous samurai; he backed off behind a clutter of broken wood which offered him a homely asylum. He waited for a few brief moments, until he pounced and flung the scepter again, only this time the winged Archon had dodged it, heading towards the ionosphere with its flapping wings. Drenched with muddy water, Savalath rose up, reeling from the attack and turned to the Shaman, wondering where the creature had run off to.

“Where did it go?” Savalath yelled.

Without an answer, the Wolf Shaman ran back the oak tree, leaving him to stand there, dazed and confused. From the dirt stained pages of the book, the Wolf Shaman’s eyes glowed with schemes with ghastly incantations and invocations. They were both under the eye of their storm, anticipating the resurgence of nature’s wrath.

There was a humid, sinister thickness to the atmosphere that refused to dissipate as Savalath could see nothing but fog, clouding the rows of bare trees and brush. He moved towards the Shaman, as he closed his eyes underneath the head of a dead mongrel as if he were communing with some invisible presence that Savalath was blinded to amidst this night of tribulation.

“We must hurry; the hour of convergence is upon us.” The Shaman proclaimed in his eleventh hourly, mystic trance.

“What are you talking about?” Savalath asked, loudly.

He scurried like a wolf away from the black woods as Savalath trailed after him, in a hurried manner. After an hour of rummaging through the forest floor, Savalath both came upon a clearing or Savannah like knoll. The Wolf Shaman ripped and took a leg of a slain deer and poured the flowing crimson blood down upon a large, flat rock and upon his face, whilst chanting a native tribal prayer to the spirits of the earth.

Watching him continue on with his indigenous macabre rite of invocation, Savalath anticipated the damned creature to appear at any moment. He witnessed the animal’s entrails spill over the massive slab of a rock, growing tenser under the rumbling night sky. Another flash of lightening caught him without warning, jolted with strained nerves. After the Wolf Shaman finished, he turned to him and said, “Now it is your turn, neophyte.”

“How can you speak English?” Savalath out of nowhere, asked.

Ignoring his question he heeded, “You shall speak from your cursed book and call back the Ciakar. You brought him into this world, you shall send it back and cast it to the depths from whence it came and remain there until the end of infinity itself.”

His irises dissipated into the center apex of his eyes from the Shaman’s proclamation. It was up to the adept to slay his very own mentor, the one that had trained him within the Hermetic arts of clairaudience and inscribing. He took the omnibus of scripture and flipped each page with rapid frequency to a particular verse that still echoed within him. He chanted from the stained book, reciting each line after line and it began to suck the life out of him. Suddenly, he heard a flap of leathery wings until a mangled body dropped from the sky and onto where the slab of rock, sending Savalath and the Shaman with shock. The sound of bones cracking and blood splattering made the neophyte’s skin crawl, calling him to inspect the battered body. He was faceless,as if the Ciakar had consumed every feature of his face, save for his cleaned out skull.

A terrible shriek bellowed throughout the area as both men faced the abominable creature as if glided down below towards their direction. And then, it simply disappeared, seemingly into thin air.

“Where did it go?” Savalath asked.

Without warning, a large, slithering tail swiftly punctured through the Wolf Shaman’s shoulder, dripping with wretched secretion intermixed with blood, whilst moving in sweeping spasms.

He dropped to the ground, yelling in pain as the unsharpened tail, scurried back to its dark host.

“Go! Save yourself! It will now concentrate on me!”

Ignoring the Shaman’s command, Savalath dived to the ground and grabbed the scepter; he was damned if he were going to let this hideous inorganic monstrosity fly away unabashed without any ramifications.

It crawled about on all fours, pacing back and forth, grunting quietly as it did so. The creature stopped pacing and arched its back, the spinal column obscenely visible through its skin. It lifted its head into the air, screamed horribly and let its black eyes bulge in their sockets.

Just as Savalath was about to wage battle with his former master, a tail swiftly glided through the blades of grass, tripping him to the ground. A few brief moments passed as Savalath opened his eyes. Above him was the conjured, piercing into his eyes, with that ghastly face; hell within his vertical slits of serpentine eyes, shimmering with etched sickness, surrounded by leathery, scaly skin.

Blood continued to flow from the Shaman’s gaping wound, impaled by Savalath’s formerly benefic mentor. It opened its gaping mouth with a most terrible stench, reeking from the wretched void within. Those terrible, gawking screams clamored for thought, fear energy and consciousness to feed its hunger. Savalath felt something overtake him; invading his very pneumatic soul–like a ravenous, infectious disease swarming his imagination.

Previous thoughts suddenly flooded his mind before his seemingly, eventual demise…

“And you will eventually face them along with the death of your ego…” The adept, Silvanius retorted, whilst sitting still as if he were meditating. He faced his eager chela initiate and continued, “When you shall face one Archon, you shall declare to it, ‘I am the child of the source’ and it shall respond, ‘the source of what?’ It is then you shall answer sternly, ‘I came from the Pre-existent One so that I might behold those of my kind and those who are alien. The source I am of and I shall return too’ For this is the way of the seeker to the alignment with the Divine Mind. It then you who shall defeat and rule over them for they are blind and jealous.”

Another scathing screech bellowed from its mouth, so strong and foul enough to invoke vomit from Savalath’s esophagus and mouth. He almost could not stand it anymore, due to his weakening state, yet it didn’t prevent him from resisting against its ravenous hunger, prepared to consume his soul. The cacophony suddenly diminished and a glowing mass of glowing energy generated from large, gaping wound, ripped wide open by his dagger.

The Ciakar leaped back, reeling from the twinge. Savalath rose up, spitting and wiping off the last vestiges of vomit from his mouth. Blood seeped from the edge of his mouth as he watched the creature whirl in insanity. The wounded Wolf Shaman with a scepter in hand resounded with power against the creature as he pounced upon it and placed the staff against its throat in efforts to suffocate.

“We have bid the damned, now strike it down!” He commanded in a frenetic tone.

With every ounce of his will, he drew the dagger forth aiming over to the restless beast and began to charge after it. Muscles and sinews tensed as he trampled over the dewy fields of grass over to the two power struggling instigators. The Shaman held onto dear life until the Ciakar threw him to the ground like a rag doll and decided to lunged on him just as Savalath was about to make way in for the kill. He ran in the moon light, his lungs embracing the thick, foggy air.

The flesh started to come away from the back of his head, flying swiftly into the creature’s mouth in small chunks. The nerves from Shaman’s spinal column ripped themselves free, darting through the air like kite strings, making a vile whipping sound as they left him. Finally, his internal organs squeezed themselves free through his ribcage, disintegrating as they went.

“No!” Savalath cried, lunging upon the it while stabbing repeatedly against the foul Ciakar.

It shrieked in agony, nearly regretting it had ever entered this mortal plane. Blackness began to ooze from its wounds, spilling and anointing all over the initiate’s face and body. It shook violently, shedding blood while its eyes remained dark and wide. The mouth, with its long, scaled tongue, locked itself open, revealing sharp yellow teeth. Its gargoyle like wings unfolded, flinging Savalath once again to the ground, as it reached out two bony arms with sharp, grubby claws before squealing like a piglet. Finally, it lay still.

Savalath, on all fours, crawled steadfast, amongst the misty green of the fields, until he got to the crumpled, steaming heap of the Shaman’s remains. The Shaman’s skin was sucked clear of his skull, the back of his head dissolved into the darkness behind him and his guts seeped into the air, squeezed between his ribs, dramatized by the silver moonlight shining down through the chestnut trees casting eerie shadows across the ground.

“The spirits have marked you first…” He whispered to the defiled corpse. He slowly sprang up again, walking towards the grotesque fallen angel that lay still. Unsure whether it was dead or still hanging onto the vestiges of any life left within the dark one, he picked up the Shaman’s scepter and followed the dark liquid trail to the still body.

The creature’s body lay decomposing on the ground, as it started to give off steam seeping into the ground beneath it. A rank, foul stench came from the liquid, like rotten eggs dipped in subterranean sulfur. Savalath used his cloak to cover his face from the dreadful scent.

He prodded the Archon with the staff to see if it would react and with a twitch and a grunt, the beast surely did, sending him back in defense mode. The next moment of this horrid night etched within Savalath’s memory a longer stroke, as a gash within empty space formed, while a seeping subdued burst of light ascended from the torn body to the twisted night sky. The light took a flaming blue form and then disappeared with a strange sound.

Savalath knelt down to the muddy earth, staff in hand and muttered to the dead carcass as if it were alive, “Master Silvanius…what were you?” He dropped his head in reverence over his Magus’ death.

A few hours had passed, and dawn was threatening to illuminate the darkness, despite the horde of overzealous clouds, threatening to smite the earth further with their wrath. Savalath sat under the same refuge of an oak tree, turning the stained pages of his work.

Calling upon Kenat Aun…such lies… He thought to himself with regret, rolling his eyes.

Page after page of words and letters, inspired by an other-worldly creature. Mulling over what he would do next, he suddenly stopped at one image that caught his eye. It was the same beast he had fought to the bitter end, except the fact it was crudely drawn. There was a caption underneath the image, that read: My Lord…

He could not recall when he had sketched the design but something within him resonated with irking fury. He dropped the book to the ground, while sensing contempt against his humanity, writhing within his shadow. Voices herded within his mind as white flashes engulfed his vision.

His eyes swelled with darkness, as his hands fidgeted with near epileptic energy. The dual primal draconic nature began emerge from his psychosis. The Wolf Shaman’s herald warnings echoed within him, as the spirits placed their collective cross-hair upon his now accursed soul.

Savalath shuttered with an invasion of dread, filling his void. The tips of demonic wings began to spur out from his back, opening the flood gates of blood to anoint over his transforming husk.

Identification causes fragmentation: without differentiation, everything is free, as nature prescribes. And, as he left this particular hidden alcove of contestable reality into the resounding dark fantasy land of his own scolding eye, the second side of the aforementioned duality continued to silently conspire to drag him like a medic pulling a heavily armored and severely wounded combatant out of no man’s land towards some inexplicable, inestimable destiny.