Phantammeron Book One Read online

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  Far away, in the shattered Realms of Oblivion, the Shade had flown alone, out across the barren fields of dark ice that bordered the bleak Lands of Midnight. On she flew through the foggy skies until she had come before a tall opening in the side of the mountains.

  Here lay the Corridors of Darkness whose decadent hallways descended into the depths beneath the Lands of Midnight. These had for many ages connected the lightless lands above with her father’s secretive realms below.

  A towering concourse stood before her, rising up from a vast gorge that lay beneath the barren cliffs. Its great vaulted ceiling lay cracked and open to the skies. For its massive stone roof had long ago been shattered by an ancient struggle. The last of the grim Angels of Night—those who had guarded the dark halls with their shining shields and spears of jet—had long ago fled away through its broken ceiling, never to return.

  As the Shade flew into the great hallway, she saw upon the vertiginous heights at every level countless dark doorways, which opened up into a nightmarish maze of endless balconies, chambers, bridges, and gateways. Beyond these lay even more doors leading into yet wider corridors, which penetrated even deeper into the rock of the mountain.

  Travelling down the massive corridor the Shade saw that the towering hall was now intersected at intervals with ever-widening highways and tunnels. These grim underworld corridors trailed off into the dreary depths in either direction, eventually merging with the misty Halls of Time into which many a lonely traveler had been lost. These eerie blue spaces stretched into the pitiless gloom of the forbidding underworld. The beating of the Shade’s wings could be heard echoing through their yawning spaces.

  Once bustling with the denizens of the Midnight realms, these great catacombs were now wrapped in a pitiless silence, abandoned, long forgotten, and empty of any spirit living or dead that might have crept there.

  On her feathery wings the Shade quietly drifted down the long gloomy corridors, descending ever deeper into the cold hollows of the mountain. The hall’s curved roof of stonework, supported by monumental buttresses of rock, had collapsed into the depths below. This had allowed the roof above to shatter in places, and the last of the feeble lights of Heaven to drift down through the rock, dropping their sad shadows in long shapes across the mottled walls and into the exposed depths below.

  Below her on either side stood ornate iron gateways, rising up in the shadows as wide cavernous openings in the rock. These had once led into her father’s secluded cities. Now broken by long-forgotten battles, these gloomy gates stood rusty and bent, their iron grating torn from their hinges by some horrific force.

  The remnant army of the Endless Night had once dwelt behind these latticed archways, standing guard before the many entrances to his underworld cities. Beyond these great entrances now lay the bones of giant sentinels long dead, rotting away in their sealed tombs. These great beings would never rise again, their heroic spirits long ago having fled their dried corpses, and disappearing into the haunted wasteland of Oblivion. For the heroic yet tragic age of night had come and gone.

  Yet hidden within the catacombs behind secret doors and walls, a few of the Endless Night’s surviving undead servants still crept about in the shadows. These sleepy and sad vampiric beings watched the lonesome traveler from afar. For they alone had remained to guard his realms and prey upon the wary. But they did not know if their lord would ever awaken again, to summon them to defend their lonely posts against some invading army.

  As the Shade drifted down the hallway, she looked up in awe and wonder at that which rose up before her. At the end the corridor stood a towering gate of iron and stone, monumental in height and width. This was one of the great Gates of Midnight that had guarded its many underworld realms.

  The Shade knew that no spell could open that door, nor giant’s hand break its bands. But high above in the darkness of an upper balcony, she saw a small opening whose shattered grate of iron would allow her to pass beyond its great door.

  The Shade quietly drifted on silent wings through the opening. But as she passed through the window she saw that she was but a tiny speck compared to the dizzying depths that opened up before her in the gloomy beyond.

  Stretching away in front of her lay a vast domed cavern, whose supporting walls disappeared into the unseen spaces below her. Giant carved buttresses of stone lay around the periphery of the vast chasm, rising up out of the empty gulf below to support the shadowed ceiling above. Countless colossal hallways opened up at intervals around its circumference. Their farthest walls were hidden by ghostly clouds, which poured around them from some unknown source in vast rivers of fog and steam.

  These were the lost entrances to the boundless Halls of Time, whose treacherous pathways stretched from this nexus of dire shadows, through the vaulted Corridors of Darkness, and into the ethereal infinity that lay past the Great Beyond. But their misty halls had also stretched into the frontiers of Phantaia, the inner realms, so that their secretive doorways could yet be found in the forbidden depths of that wood. And so could those children, who sought the dark lands by these mystical corridors, make their way eventually to the Lands of Midnight and the timeless spaces that lay beyond them.

  As the Shade floated out across the underground chamber, she saw that she was in some great cavernous city of the dead, whose teetering black walls and bridges stood above the fogs that flowed below her. Ghoulish buildings and maddening streets of the undead stretched away into the darkness, as huge iron chains and tangled ropes draped down, torn and battered, from the ceiling of the great chamber into the haunted cityscape below. What was this macabre metropolis, thought the Shade? For by its gigantic machinations and structures, it appeared to have been built for the confinement and torture of giants in a dreadful and horrific age of titanic struggle long past.

  The Shade then heard a piercing cry. As she looked far below, she saw the winged forms of vile succubi and their many vampiric lovers fleeing away into the fog, like specters fleeing before the rising dawn. For they were frightened by the sudden appearance of the Child of Night that had come into their midst. Here the last vampires from the Lands of Midnight had hid from the many mouths of the Emptiness, who had sought their blue veiny flesh in the last age of the Primordial wars.

  Down she flew, into the heart of that underworld chasm. Here she knew she would find her father’s tomb—the fallen form of the Endless Night who had been hidden from the eyes of all others. For Agapor had shared with her the knowledge of her father’s secret crypt.

  The Shade could feel her father’s presence near her. As she descended into the impenetrable darkness, she saw in the rubble-strewn depths a monumental platform of rock rising up from the darkness. It appeared as a great pyramid, standing proudly above the tangled underworld city that had wrapped itself about the mountain of stone. There upon its summit stood a massive head of jet black rock thrusting up its blocky head into the heights of the cavern. Within its side was carved a great doorway leading into its interior. The Shade now sensed the dim shadow of her father’s spirit emanating from its opening.

  But unseen by the Shade, the servant of the Shadow, Anissa, had followed her deep into the Lands of Midnight. With her cat-like eyes aglow, she stood upon the crumbling heights of the tomb, looking down upon the tiny form of the Shade, as she descended. Anissa then looked up and smiled with an evil grin, as an ominous shape suddenly appeared from the shadows of the domed ceiling high above her.

  The Shade alighted upon the base of the steps, folding her long wings behind her. As she stood upon the stairs leading up to the opening, a cold waft of air drifted out from it. She thought she could faintly smell fresh blood. She then looked down at her feet and saw a wide pool of black blood had slowly dripped from the doorway down the dark steps below her.

  Reaching the summit, she walked through the strange opening in the rock. Its door was carved in bas-relief, revealing unusual runic scripts and strange imagery. There in its innermost chamber s
he saw a short rise of steps, upon whose wide pedestal sat a thick stone sarcophagus made of blackest basalt. But beside the crypt stood a majestic throne made of strange dark crystal. The Shade knelt before it, knowing it to be her father’s chair.

  The Shade then saw a black pool of blood beneath the seat of the throne. The Endless Night had bled there for many ages. For his brothers wielding cursed blades had inflicted many war-wounds upon his flesh, cuts that could not heal and which slowly drained his life from him. His living essence had gradually poured down and around the chair, and out of the tomb in great rivers. The Shade then paused, with tears in her eyes.

  As she climbed the last rise she saw that the lid of the tomb was shattered. Hesitant to face her father, she cautiously removed the broken lid. She then looked upon the aged and shriveled face of her father, the Endless Night, and wept. Many battle scars did he wear. Yet his dark eyes looked peaceful. Clad in his gothic armor, bloody and gored by endless wars, he had lain there alone for many ages. But it was the old wound, the hidden one she could not see that had hurt him most. For his mighty heart had remained shattered by the loss of those he loved.

  The Shade bent down to touch the wrinkled and bearded face of her father. For she only vaguely remembered it as a child. But by her cruel bondage to the black manacles had she been forbidden to return to him. Only the sad memory of their long separation had she known. And it weighed heavily upon her, feeding her own deep regret. Yet she felt no bitterness, only sorrow.

  As she touched his wrinkled face beneath his mighty helm, she heard behind her the thunderous sound of feet, shaking the very rock about her. As she turned, she saw her brother, the Shadow, standing in the doorway, his evil eyes looking down upon her with great hatred, and sinister delight.

  But before she could flee from him, he strode across the room, placing his long hands about her throat. As he began to strangle her, he looked down upon her pitiful form, saying, “You betrayed me, my sister, to the Child of Mist, our master and most-hated of enemies. And for this you must die.” The Shade gasped for air, as she looked upon the black face of her brother, grabbing at his long arms, trying desperately to free herself.

  But up from the crypt rose the body of the Endless Night. For he had not perished, but had remained in a dark sleep, awaiting his children whom he had somehow known would return to him. Seeing his daughter in the grips of death, he called out to his son, “Release her.”

  The Shadow looked in shock upon the strange form of his father, releasing his sister, who then fell to the floor. Seeing her father alive, the Shade cried out to him, “Father!” The Endless Night looked upon his precious daughter. And a single black tear fell from his eyes.

  The Endless Night climbed forth from his crypt. He looked down at his lost son, who now stood proudly before him. He walked with a weary gait, down the stairs, and gazed upon his beloved daughter’s face. And he smiled. The Endless Night then returned to his son, staring deep into his eyes. But the Shadow stood still and unmoving. The Endless Night then felt within his son a strange presence, the emptiness of something corrupted and evil he too had once known.

  But the Shadow glared at his father with hate in his eyes, saying, “Father, I do not know you. Nor do I care to know of you. For you abandoned me long ago, when I was but a young child.”

  The Endless Night then said, “My son, I sought you in the depths of the world for many weary ages. The Twilight Mist took you from me long ago, in the last of the ancient wars. Your own uncle did this cruel deed, so that I would suffer from the loss of my own children. Not knowing if you still lived or died, I roamed the farthest corners of that world seeking you, until I had given up all hope of ever seeing you alive again. Never had I stopped, my son, until by the cursed light of another my heart had finally broken. I then turned away from the world, returning here, uncertain if I would ever see your face or that of your daughter’s again. Yet had a vision come to me in my sleep that I would see you again at a chosen time. And so has that time come at last.” The Endless Night then smiled, reaching out to embrace his son. But the Shadow turned away.

  The Endless Night reached out his hand to his daughter, who ran to him and embraced her father, shedding many tears. The Endless Night then said, “At long last. We shall now be joined as father, son, and daughter once more, remaking the nighttime skies together as one, as it had been destined we should do by our Great Father. For this is now my one desire, which my troubled mind had not known until I saw your faces again. By your presence—given unto me by the grace and mercy of the Great Father—I now see our truer purpose.”

  The Endless Night then looked down at his daughter with joyous and peaceful eyes. Content and blissful he seemed to her. And she saw the true majesty and strength of her proud and fearless father.

  But the Shadow had turned away from him, walking out of the dark temple, and looking down upon the wreckage of his father’s city in the darkness below. He grimaced, seeing all that had been abandoned or destroyed, witnessing with a single glance the full decadence of the ruin, waste, and decay of his father’s once great city. And he thought about all that had been lost.

  He then returned to his father, saying, “All that you have fostered and fathered has failed. Can you not face this truth, even now, in your final triumphant revelations? Eons ago you failed to bind the minds of your brothers to your own shadow. From their final siege upon your cities was the dominion of darkness destroyed, and your own children ripped away from you and imprisoned.”

  “You ceded the powers of the night to your brothers. And your own children you willingly surrendered to the merciless hands of those same sadistic siblings. Even now, my sister and I remain tortured and enslaved to the magic iron that your brother hath made, bound to the weak will of his own bastard child. Your own daughter whores the last of herself to that vile enemy through her own self-loathing and pity for him. Is your own fallen daughter—long forgotten and yet most precious to you—not deserving of thy great and noble house? Has her own father forgotten his abandoned daughter and her plight so easily?” said the Shadow, grimacing at his father.

  The Endless Night looked down in shame. But before he could speak, his son came at him with great anger, saying, “Father, the length of your own shadow now shortens. It is fading quickly now. Yet you are brazen. For you have so easily forgiven yourself now, before your passing, releasing yourself from a lifetime of evil you have spawned, while your own children still live, only to suffer as a result of your sins, bent and bearing proudly upon their backs your burdens. You dare to dream of a better world, an idyllic world for yourself and that of your enemies’ children, while your own flesh and blood remain enslaved, bowing down in servitude to them.”

  The Shadow defiantly said, “But my sister and I will not suffer in vain for your sins, Father. For we have come here to defy you, we who are the ghosts of your troubled and failed past. It is our time now. And so we shall defy you and your will, and like our blessed father of ages past, defy the will of the world.”

  The Endless Night could only look upon his fallen son with weak and sorrowful eyes. But the Shadow turned to his father, his eyes ablaze with an angry red fire, saying, “Look at me, Father. Face me now. Surrender to me what gifts and powers of yours that yet remain. Grant to me, your only son, the right to the justice I deserve...we deserve. I am the Prince of Darkness now by my birthright, the Lord of thy Midnight Lands. I alone shall reclaim the shadows of this world for us, bathing it in my own, so that nevermore shall the living know the lights of Heaven, serving only darkness. Father, I alone shall take back from the Primordial Ones what was promised to us. The Limitless Void has already fallen, as shall the Twilight Mist who has imprisoned me. The time has come for you to relinquish your powers to me so that your remaining brothers may perish by my hand.”

  The Endless Night then looked in horror at his son. The Shadow then held his great black fist before him, saying, “Father, give me the Wings of Night! Give them to me now. For only they m
ay shade the world from the scarring flame of the Sacred Light that has arisen in the farthest woods of the world to punish us. It has arisen, father, yet again, because you failed to extinguish it.”

  The Endless Night now saw the true terror of that which hid within his son. And he realized that the Nightmare Unending, which he himself had made, had filled his son’s corrupted heart with its lies. He saw that his son possessed within him the full wrath of that dire spirit, which had before dwelt as but a blight upon him. His son would soon seek to enslave the children of this world, as he was so enslaved. By those evil bonds would a fate worse than death be born within their spirits. With its powers would the Shadow now curse the living, planting not only terror within their weakened minds, but despair and hopelessness in their hearts, so that they would turn to evil, hate, and murder. And that cruel destiny was unconscionable to him.

  The Endless Night then said to his troubled son, “I shall never give that power to you, my son. For it was not made for evil purposes. It was created so that the lights of Heaven’s stars might shine forth from their dark celestial wings, and their music sing out in great harmony.”

  But the Shadow grabbed his frail father, throwing him to the ground. Then with his horrid strength, he reached down to rip the dark wings from his father’s back. But the Endless Night rose to his feet to face his son. He then drew his great jagged sword of jet, and swung its smoking blade to strike down his son.

  But his father was weak. For the Shadow caught the dark misty blade in his iron hand. And with his might, he wrested it from him. The Shadow cried out, “Then I shall cut them from you, Father, if I must.”

  He took the savage blade and slew his father with it so that the last of his dark blood poured from him. With the sinister sword the Shadow then chopped the black wings from his father’s back. These dark wings he placed into his own flesh, so that their black roots grew into his shoulders and back. He stretched forth their leathery sails, full and wide across the room. And they shimmered like dark satin sheets, casting strange shadows about the chamber walls.

  With those powers the Shadow grew in might and strength, so that he towered over his fallen father. And so that which his father once held was now his. The Shadow then looked upon his fallen father. And an evil grin grew upon his face.

  With a booming voice, the Shadow spoke to the Shade, “Rise up, my sister, and leave us. Go to Agapor and tell him the Wings of Night are now mine. I shall go to Phantaia and do all that I had vowed, and more.”

  The Shade then cried for her father, seeing his sad figure upon the floor. But she fled away in terror from her brother, out of the temple, flying in desperation to reach Agapor. For she knew what her vengeful brother would do.

  The Endless Night lay upon death’s doorway, sprawled upon the ground before his son. With burning red eyes of hate, the Shadow looked upon his father’s weakened form with great contempt.

  Hovering over his dying father, he said to him, “Father, in truth, I no longer care for this broken world. For it was destroyed long ago by the Primordial Ones, and doomed by their flawed designs upon it. With the Wings of Night, I shall now consume the world in darkness, then go before the evil that dwells in the Great Beyond and help them obliterate it back into dust. Its remains shall be blown away into the many mouths of the Emptiness. And the spirit of the dust consumed by the Nothingness. Then shall I alone dwell in the unending and black despair that remains. That is my only desire now. For in my mind and heart I hear their voices. I now know it was their servant who came into me as a boy, filling my heart with their whispers. And so, like the seductive servant that haunts my heart, shall their secret will and desire be completed through me.” And the Shadow looked down at the figure of his dying father with grim and resolute eyes.

  The Endless Night then looked with sadness upon his son, as his life force faded from him. The Shadow picked up his father’s limp body, and carried him to the edge of the stairs. He cast him into the darkness, down into an underground stream that flowed through the slimy sewers of the city. And he watched with fascination as the dark form of his father disappeared beneath the waves. But a pair of green eyes from high above had also watched that scene with malevolent interest.

  The Shadow climbed to the top of his father’s tomb, stretching his great black wings out over its apex. He then commanded the last of the servants of Midnight to come to him. From out of the deep holds and labyrinths beneath the Lands of Midnight they billowed forth, climbing up from the foggy depths, and circling about the great dome of the cavern. These were the last of the bat-winged creatures that had once darkened the world in its youth.

  The Shadow now gathered them together in a great host, commanding them to fly to Phantaia. Screeching and wailing with excitement, the winged beasts of Midnight flew out of the cavern through a huge hole in the ceiling, up into the misty skies, and over the black peaks of Midnight. They flowed forth in an endless stream, across the seas and through the Heavens, flying towards the misty shores of Phantaia. The Shadow then departed his father’s tomb, never to return. And so, with the wings of his father the Shadow had finally gained the power he had long sought.