Hi @naffeclipse I'm very normal about your fic. Have some frantic midnight sketches as extra kudos along with some tag rambling :)

In Lieu

It is in an armchair, settled in front of a roaring fire, where I now write these words, to be typed later. I sit shivering, not at the chill which creeps from behind and up my shoulders, but at that which I’ve read and come to accept as gospel in this, my bleakest hour. In my dreams I have seen the worlds of the endless beginning, and of the infinite end. These lands, which we can only now picture as mere manifestations of an overactive imagination, were real. They were real because we’ve seen them. Every moment your eyes are shut, every second your mind wonders, you are in that place between the known and the unknowable. Trapped are you in the universe’s grand clock, and you are but a particle of observatory dust, meant not to witness everything, and know nothing. Despite this scheme, our minds wonder and we witness these beautiful, vast things. This is because we refuse the reduction life grants us. It is in our nature to dream, to explore, to know. And as the gift of knowing grants peace of mind, some truths may drive you mad. As they have countless priors. The sand across the deserts of the world make haste, to cover the timeless treasures and the bloodied pasts beneath them. The seas rise to the heights of the mountains, and Everest melts with the rising of the sun, tearing down the civilizations of long ago, and banished cursed history to the watery depths, forgotten. I lie in a dreamy wake, torn by the troubles of today and the struggles of days to come. The trees around me fade with the seasons, as every year they take some of me with them. It is a soul-stirring proclamation that neither shakes the foundation of realization, or otherwise. It is a feeling beyond the sensation of warmth or cold. It is a moment, spanned for as long as you keep the thought in your head. This is mortality, only limitless limits, followed by an infinite blackness. There is nothing more beyond this, but hope, still holding on, like the twisted strings of a guitar, just barely severed after each pluck. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that nothingness is a substance, unseen by the human eye. A box exists, filled with nothingness, and yet this thing which we can name and establish, indeed, is something. Passing from the metaphorical to the physical, now imagine that this nothingness holds the capability to create, to give life. This nothingness, and all the many emptinesses that you see are now an endless force, fueled by our incomprehension to comprehend them. That is poetic mortality. The world seemed such a dark-dim place, and all those joys which once filled the limited hours of my day now were nowhere to be found. My days poured over into my nights as my eyes refused to shut. Sleep was impossible in this state, and those outer-forces I could feel looming in on my soul refused to let up. Perhaps this was my mid-life crisis, or perhaps the devils of hell really did require the solace of my spirit. These were my days. Endless exhaustion and the quantum zenith of all my fears come to bare fruit. Fears of death and the prolonged reality of non-existence. I pondered all the things that could possibly make up this life of mine. Was I insignificant? Did my life matter? Sorry, to my self to say, I never held myself in high regard for most of my life. I was a black sheep, but not the first of my immediate family. I had brothers casted out before me. Their riches and the promise of our family’s decay and wealth was swiped from them at an early age. I could only imagine the reasons why. Still, it seemed to be no surprise that such acts of thievery would come from my bastard of a father. That’s right! I said it! Do you hear me down there!? In Hell!? I hate you! I hate you! I never knew what became of my brothers. I never knew them well, and never knew them much after their disownment. I suspected he had them killed. I don’t doubt it. A small fee to pay from keeping your mistaken offspring from continuing to wander the earth, spreading the truths about your infidelity and malice. Oh, father couldn’t have that. And so… I believe he had them killed, my brothers. Oh, and so young they were too! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! I swore to never have children. Cause you see, father, the only reason you have them is to usher in your own death! Your children outlive you! They remind you of what you had and what you wasted! They flaunt youth and innocents and throw it back in your face! That’s what I did father! That’s what I did! And you died a broken fool, crying out on a bed and gasping, begging for god to give you more air; But I took that air, didn’t I daddy? I took your air and your years a long time ago. I was all you had. Your last continuation. Well I’ll be damned if I do as you wanted! I hope you turn in that grave! I hope you feel the maggots on your flesh and the pain in your bones! I’m happy you’re there! Better than being off, poisoning the world like the vile monster we all knew you to be!!… Oh, my. I lost myself for a moment, there. God, this heavy feeling in my head grows. I make my way outside. The night air is stale as I make my way through the foggy brush. That tint of white that fills the moonlit night fades ever so swiftly at my staggering nature. For I walk upon the cemetery atop the old dark hill, at that place past the mansion where I withered all those tormented dawns. That peak of luminescent blackness which echoes outward in a cold streaming wind. Wind which shivers the gates of this cemetery, vibrating the ground and all those deep-holes where the dead lie, resting eternal. For within the ground and surrounded by the promised keep of the dead is where I belong, in this moment. Each step I take, contemplating that chain of thoughts which has summoned me up from my study-chair and out my door, into the bitter night. Summer is upon this hill as the grasp of snow finally fades with the season’s passing breath. A breath I’ve heard and have made a point to call on during these last few weeks. Calling upon the aid of the doctor, I churned in my deathbed, calling out to the assistance of that healer. The man which fed my father serums, prayed my mother to rest and aided my siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins into their comfortable eternal sleeps. I called him to my side each and every day, because I knew the shadows were upon me. Those shadows, like big gloomy sheets of darkest void that stole my family’s riches and struck them down like ill-cattle. My home which suffered, ringing with the hauntings of memories dead and gone, still slept, in a quiet fest of gore. Those halls held silence and sound that could only be heard in limbo. But, the doctor could not help. Death was upon my house, upon my title. Upon my life. The doctor spoke of sicknesses within my head. He claimed it was all in my mind. These shivers that clutched me by candles, so warm, and these bruises which manifested in plight. The doctor, a charlatan, claimed these ill-happenings to be illusions in my head. All this pain, and the knowledge that the reaper glared through my window at night, he spoke of as if it were mere childish blather. So I ordered him away, to retreat from my side! An exile from my home, as I could not tolerate his foulest insinuations. I, a liar and over-worried dolt of the highest class of hypochondriac?! How dare he! This seed of the devil which weakened my heart shortened my breath with a reality that was all too true to not see. And so, when the wine from my cellar had run out and the maidens that once fainted at my doorstep ceased their arrival, I strummed up my inner most strength to pull my dying self from the old-home. I began my walk to the cemetery on that hill, where I now stand, leaning upon the stone-graves of my kin; Awaiting that ever-sweet silence which I know will break at dawn. It is unbearable! Have I not waited long enough!? I curse any god who would allow such suffering, as even the devil knows some eventual end to malice. In all the awaited absolutes that have tarnished my mortal flesh, the arrival of death is one so tedious as to bring about one’s final insanity! And now the sky appears blue as those crows upon the black trees which surround me begin to flock away. The night is lifting and the mist has taken it’s final bow. The air is cold again, but that lantern in the distances brings promise of another day. Be death a nightmare I have mistaken for truth? Be the bindings upon my flesh be the tricks of my mind laid to be boldly seen? This day brings light, a new, and envelopes me once again as I lean back on the grave of my father and witness the sun in it’s glorious ascension, forgetting the night and it’s dark promise. This sorrow moves from me, welcoming a worsened existence. So it is decided that I will live, by the contract of god and the devil, a torturous life, indeed. I step those same harrowing spaces which evil men and come before me. And so I join their ranks to share in their wickedness. To blasphemy and curse the lower birth, drinking the blood of infants and ravishing the untainted. A defiler, all the same, as any other, am I. Tonight is the meeting and my first glance into that world which my heritage has granted me access. The rich walk in hooded cloaks, like druids, stepping to the drumbeat of a low-key humming. Once a year, on a night like this and under the glorious eyes of a great wooden statue of our idol, we pray and celebrate. It is tradition that those whom possess the blood of the blessed are to remain forever wealthy, forever fit, forever sane. This world understands us not, and rather would they take torches to our holy positions and cast us out like self-entitled madmen. Jealously takes those less fortunate and the wooden idol to which we glorify tells us this in slumber. The idol speaks of the poor man’s inferiority and warns us of their treachery. To live in this world one must abide by those rules and traditions predetermined by the idol and one’s own ancestry. Or else one could just as easily fall to the will of the ‘lesser-man’. The beggar who weeps at our doorstep, pleading for bread or for shelter, to share in that which we have earned. Just so, when our guard has weakened, they may cut us down and reap our fruits. No, I nor not a single of my brothers whom stand beside me shall ever show mercy to that lesser-man. It is the rich who run this world and who decide it’s outcome. We alone hold the ability to pass righteous judgment and can distribute the correct laws of life to abide by. The lesser-man has no mind and no heart. We are the sacred, chosen from birth to shape this world as the sheep bend to the twirl of the shepherd’s stick. The stick we use to guide their empty minds. And we know they will not rise us, because they can only speak, in the dark holes and crevices they tuck away into at night. The poor will not challenge the rich. They will attack us with words, representatives, petitions and laws. We manipulate those words, we bribe those representatives, we cancel those petitions and we craft those laws. Our system is in place to aid only the truly gifted man. Something those below will never see. They stumble on whiskey and drunkenly beat down our names in the quiet of the street’s corner pub, while we sit amongst civil equals and sip our serums to the sound of a constant melody. That melody which keeps true to the betterment of the wealthy and the obliteration of the not. All praise be to the idol. The idol, do we praise. Drenched in the shame of my family name I can see no other way, than to go about my wretched ways and fulfill the bastardoues needs that are mine and my father’s before me. I am no different from them, the long line of vile sinners, resting deep in their graves in a dark unrest and malice. That place where, as I continue to rot, an end prances upon me. So it is god I turn my heart upon, and to the church I scatter. Mortality has deserted me, as the devil has only taken. And now I seek the pure-light given to all by one holy creator. For as far as I know, the devil hasn’t touched the church. The holy men slumber while I beg in their chambers. Begging for aid. So the father takes me in. I forget my estate with walls of sin and study under they eyes of the divine. Well-enough, I do. I turn away from this faith, as I had before and once again find my self at the mercy of wine, staggering amidst the rocky dirty before my family’s legacy home. That damnedest place! As I lie one night in a state of rape and tarnish by the hands of the paths I have walked, a priest comes to me. One of a large rank, convinces me to vacate my chambers and join him for a soul’s good cleansing. I’d need not much encouragement to join the priest, as it was better than slowly dying along the floor outside my cursed home. He led me past graves and the black gate of the cemetery. A feeling that emanated coldly, like the reaper leading me unto my death. Deep within the musty tombs of the cemetery’s mausoleum, the High Priest led me down, carrying a torch, unafraid of the beaconing blackness beneath us. I followed close behind, high and curious, as the webs surrounding the corridors of death took up my line of blurry vision. We trotted down and endless flight of stone steps, gazing into the nothings below us. As if descending amidst the depths of the Tower of Babel, this mausoleum could’ve stretched all the way to Hell and back. The endless empty sockets of the dead were fixed upon me, so did I also feel their presence. The absence of sight was a blessed gift in this home of the un-alive, warning me of the High Priest’s intentions. Invading my chamber, and luring me with a smokey substance which placed me in this trance. I knew not of what wicked scheme he had been planning, but I was soon to realize. When the steps came to a halt, we did as well. He fixed his index finger above my forehead and had me follow him through a row of thorny arches. This lead us to a blueish room of cobblestone walls, and an obelisk fixed above a grey slab. Before I could blink, I found myself upon the slab, facing upward at the dirt-ceiling and crying out in an aggravated silence. I moved my lips, yet no works could escape. The High Priest sat above me, as my arms and legs were held down by a force, invisible to the human eye. The High Priest’s white robes faded to a red hooded cloak, drenched in a scarlet ora. What followed was nonsense words, spouted in a deep voice, the High Priest grabbed hold of a dagger. With a curvy blade and a golden hilt, he raised the knife as he spoke again, making no more sense than he had before. My chest began to glow a greenish glow as the wall behind him lit up. He raised his arms as I began to ponder my situation. I was to be a sacrifice in the summoning of something otherworldly. This invisible force held me down and held me firm, as the ritual progressed, I cried out harder than ever before. The High Priest was a druid, indeed. As the thoughts of the dead had told me upon our descent. I could not break the chain, I could not dispel this evil. No amount of servitude to the church could free me from this fate now. As great jaws stretched out of the portal upon the wall, I found myself able to scream. The High Priest raised his hand, clutching the dagger and swung to spill blood. As I became covered in crimson liquid, I peered up to see that it was not my blood that the dagger had spilt. The High Priest had pierced his own heart! As he stood, shaking in pain, the mighty jaws swallowed him up. The creature within the wall came forth, in full malevolence, chewing him up. I stayed, spiritually and physically bonded to the slab, all while the hungry beast took up the room. His great jaws peered down upon me, the High Priest’s blood dripping from them. The High Priest was the sacrifice, meant to manifest the beast, fully in our world. I was merely an instrument of demonic fruition. And so my purpose had come to pass, as that famous contract between god and the devil comes too. Casted down into damnation, down where my soul has ceased all forms of being. Light reaches no further than that place beyond heaven’s wreath. Beyond that wreath I lie, lied to in lying and laid in distain, caught between this world and the world’s behind. The creature melted into mist with, what appeared to be it’s soul, attempting to form itself again. It came from my chest and flew about the tomb in a frantic speed. I faded into obscurity for a moment, coming back from the depths of a large scream which shook the foundation of the tomb. I notice not the flames of hell or the lights of heaven, but a star. A star far out among a cosmos I have never known. Out in a place I have never thought to look. Out there, past the night sky and the nebulas that spiral with carnage and chaos in tow; There was my purpose. A purpose beyond the satisfaction of mortal likings. A reason far greater than one’s own preservation. It was the open ceiling of the tomb which caught my eyes upon this star and revealed to me my grand purpose in the scheme of things. This world was not one of gods and devils. This world was a machine of arcane monstrosities and things beyond knowing or believing. I was to be a part of something bigger. The grand coming of another age, used in by things long locked away. I could feel this sentience pass through me, tearing me apart. So I laughed. Laughed at the insignificance of all those around me. The summoners, the druids, the warlocks and all those worshipers of these ‘things’ that were attempting to claim our world. They were all nothing. I was the portal for this sentience, to reap our realm. I was in a state above the worshipers. Directly responsible for these creatures’ manifestation. I heard the name of the summoned one as he passed through my chest. I was one with this being named ‘Thuhl’. This monstrosity of formless matter from beyond the valleys of unending time. From a place beyond concept and the very essence of what we call existence. And to this summoning I went unto, willingly; To serve in the kingdom of eldritch unrest. Even in this, I was not to be the instrument of creature we’d call gods! Because the moment in which I was to serve as birther to this being named Thuhl, a group of men, with guns and crosses and a large brown book, broke down the doors of the tomb, marched down the steps and began to destroy the ritual chamber. They knocked over candles and chanted words which made Thuhl hiss and churn. These men sent the creature into a frenzy as it drew itself backward; Back into the portal carved upon my chest! I was nothing now! Not even parent to the celestial beings who lurked above! These men… these bastards… took my purpose! I had nothing! They bleached the tomb with some kind of holy-waters and casted incantations upon strips of paper which they nailed to every wall. I leaped from my slab as the restraints of Thuhl no longer held me in place. I ran for the dagger that rested within the High Priest’s shredded corpse and ripped it out of his heart! As I turned to lunge at the men they pointed their guns at me. I saw the state I was in and took a moment to collect myself. I looked up at the twisted dagger and back down at my chest, carved up to high heaven. Then, it all hit me at once. This tired feeling. Brought on by the strain of having played mother to a child, or maybe it was the loss of blood which had me faint. Either way, I dropped the knife and fell to my knees. With one final cry of agony, I fainted. When I awoke I was in a hospital. I was beside about three other people in one of those wide open rooms. There were so many nurses. They got excited when I woke up. I tried not to talk, imagining that everything that had come before was a dream. I remained quiet and played dumb, up until I felt that I’d had a decent night’s rest. There was a clock to my right that helped me keep track of the days. I had no visitors and, in the state I was in, no one around me seemed to know who I was. I eventually had decided to ask one of the nurses where I was, as this hospital didn’t resemble the one I had always gone to as a child. She told me that I was in the Boston Medical Center and that a group of men had brought me in, claiming they had found me beaten and mugged in an alley. They told they hospital I was from out of town and had arranged something of an extended-stay for me at the facility until I had gotten my bearings. She was called away and I settled back into my bed. I faded into sleep. A scream broke blackness as I jumped out of bed to find the room in dismay. The patient on the tables beside me were torn open! Their insides were scooped out! I begged to just be in some damned nightmare. I ran to the window where an orange light was coming from and bashed it open with a fire extinguisher. I peered out past the light that shined in and past the orange sun I could see endless desserts. For miles there was nothing. Just the hospital, cut off from everything else. I could feel a presence moving about the building as it quaked and shook in demonic throes. I ran for the door as the bodies of the patients began to reanimate! Their torn-open bodies lifted their arms and began to stand on their broken legs. They wiggled and stumbled towards me like heaps of bloody bones, hung with black-ridden flesh! The door was broken off of it’s hinges and laying in the middle of the hall, so I jolted. It was as if the hospital was under attack! I heard voices singing in deep unisons and demonic screaming filled the walls of the building. The halls grew rotted and brown as jagged metal began to stick out from cracks and corners. The halls and rooms were empty with a patient or a nurse running here or there. I stumbled down a hall as a few people ran by me. I shielded my eyes in horror as overtime that monstrous roar was heard, their heads exploded!! Brains and chunks of skull flew everywhere, as if taken off by gunfire! I leered at the long corridor to see a thing made up of sharp teeth and eyeballs reaching out long alien-arms for me. The building felt as if it was collapsing. I heard “Tttthhhhuuuuhhhhllll…..” and knew exactly what was coming! The beast had found me. Was Thuhl free!?! I wanted nothing to do with the creature. I ran in the opposite direction to avoid the beast and came face to face with a row of four people. No, not people. Things. Half human, half undead. They wore suits of strange materials and stood against the coming beast with no fear. I crawled to the wall, too scared to stand. On one side there loomed Thuhl and on the other side stood these… beings. My hair ran white as their raised their right arms to the beast. Their palms glowed with a flurry of blue lightning as they shot beams of energy at Thuhl! They fired until the monstrosity fell, breathing it’s foul breath no more. It’s hundred-eyes went still and it’s arms stopped pulling it forward. The four beings then looked to me. I could tell they were not of this world. They opened their mouths and spoke. I heard infinite voices, all screaming at once. The beings spoke in unison and in words I could not understand. When they finished speaking I found I could not hear. I was deafened! I screamed and wailed while these beings looked down at me. They raised their arms as I cursed and damned them. As their hands rose. they snapped in unison and I could no longer taste or feel my tongue. They were stealing my senses! I ran for them, lunging with my arms ready to reach out and strangle them! They threw me backward and finally raised their left arms up to me, in unison. And in a flash of light they shot a beam of blue energy through my head. I saw nothing. I was blind.