Beasts of the Night

I have walked through many of the ages of men and done so in many different forms, but through out all of it I have witnessed things that even I cannot explain and there still remain mysteries.  There will always be evil festering in the night growing strong off mortal fear and preying on the flesh of the innocent.

Most insidious and most difficult to find are drinkers of men's blood, but I shall chill your bones with that tale another night...tonight's tale lies with the other beasts of the night.

Many times I have seen dark spots on the edge of my vision and felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck when walking down a lonely path at night...or heard distant laughing that lacked any warmth or joy: these are the "little ones of the beast".  Some call them the goblins, some call them the fiskies, but I know them as the Servants.  They deal in the subtle nuisances that ruin lives and play the tricks that take them.  Madness is their eventual goal, as they melt back into the night and underneath the bed from whence they came...until the host unwittingly invites them back again.  Some even steal children from unfaithful households and replace them with demons shaped in the child's form, only the evil that the child does in latter years and the long-life of the vile being distinguish it for what it is.  These devils of small deeds do have good sides or good cousins, but those of the light shall be told of on a night not so cold nor so barren.

Also kin to the beast--or its masters--are the eluvsive elves of the Karak Jungle: almost more savage than the cannibal tribes that lurk in its fetid darkness, the elves slide through the shadows behind them and dart in and out of the tales that they tell.  Beings of fatal beauty, but with emotions as cold as the corpses they move with typical elven randomness of motive to either raise the dead or slaughter the family of those that cross their paths.  There are rumors of an elven city, Monthereal, located in a hidden glade inside a mysterious valley beyond a great tree that speaks all the names of those that have lived, do live, and will yet live.  The truth of this I do not know, as such I place I am yet to find upon my endless wanderings.  Such a city is said to have a King of Sapphire that is always in contact with his people--as they are spread throughout the lands and even in the Imperial Kingdom and some in the Icy Wastes--and a Queen of Ruby that always in contact with their hearts; to hurt an elf is to hurt a race of beings older than myself and of a magick beyond the roots of common men.

While the beast drives its animals of dark and unnatural magick against the common man, the mortal spirit is strengthened and hardened by its toil until it is a fine object of light.  Sometimes, though, this spirit is tainted and twisted by evil and dark paths and demonic magicks until the light in it is completely extinguished.  My religion and path are not for men and those that die in this state are seeped with the taint of the world in a way that they cannot handle: wraiths and ghosts have and will always stalk old battlefields and lurk in places of great death and misery where evil deeds unpunished can flourish and corruption can seep its claws into life.  Although I have heard of good spirits walking these dreamscape lands, I have never encountered these.  On a number of occasions, though, twisted ethereal passions have moved through my tayle to chill, kill, and haunt those that they touch.

The Old King of the Hill is one of these poor tormented souls tied to some hills where some horrendous event happened of such magnitude that he shambles with his ancient soldiers around it in battle formation.  Some say his treasures are buried in those hills at the foot of the Daemon Mounts, others say that he is an old barbarian king's last stand against the Yellow Emperor...and others say even darker things.  Having walked with his otherworldly procession I believe this being to--in at least someway--have something connection with the Sleeping King...perhaps his guard or his executioner?

Half in this world and half in the other world is another being of dark design: the Black Dog.  Sometimes upon a lonely road late at night one will feel the presence before one hears the scrape of old cold claws across gravestones.  And turning around one will come face to face with darkness in dogs form with two red glowing eyes and a deathly silence.  Some it just follows until they reach their destination, while others...well...only those that tell of the encounter live to speak of it.  But, all have felt that their very soul was being judged upon that terrifying journey and even one false move would have cost them their lives.  The Hordes have tales of the Blaagt Houden--or Black Dog--trailing and, sometimes, walking amidst the tribes and the warrior during dark days when the sun sleeps and the gods paint the sky with the strange lights.  The Hordes view the Blaagt Houden as an ancestor taking form to walk with respect amongst his children: treat him with respect and learn, else die at his hands as other have before.

Speaking of the Hordes reminds me how I once met a barbarian that told me a tale of a creature of ice and darkness; the breath of Grâag he called the being.  He spoke of how an ice storm had blown around them and sucked the blood from all of those in its icy embrace until its very howling winds were tinted crimson...only he had survived by the power of the fire charm wrought into his axe.  Although I have never walked with the mist that kill...I have danced with the wyverns that nest upon the crofts at the top of the highest peaks in the Daemon Mounts and cast the bones of their victims to the lands below, I have gambled with the murky demons that are imprisoned in Crystal Palace on the Endless Wilds, and I have witnessed the great serpent that sleeps coiled around the roots of the most ancient tree that supports this world.

All of these are but a few of the beasts of the night that crawl the haunted hallways of old castles, creep past man's turned backs, and slither, flutter, crawl, and glide through man's nightmares and waking world.

Amongst all of this, is a curse that wrecks this simple wandering monk even worth mentioning?

--Anonymous Monk