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PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 8:16 am 
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GSP Dancer
GSP Dancer

Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2006 2:00 pm
Posts: 284
Hugs CW You know I love the Halloween events ion Rubika and each year they get better and better. I was thinking how great it would be if these stories were recorded and told by various DJs in their voices and sound effects how great a great idea could truly become for next year, and there is plenty of time to perfect them till than.. of course with the Authors permission. Smiles and Thanks for all your hard work and imagination.


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 10:59 pm 
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GSP Dancer
GSP Dancer

Joined: Thu May 25, 2006 10:03 pm
Posts: 535
Location: UK
The Forbidden Grove

The residents of Borealis are often quick to boast of the stunning landscape that surrounds their fair city: a breathtaking prospect of lush forests, rolling hills, sparkling lakes broken by thunderous falls, and all of this framed by the towering mountain range, lofty peaks softened by distance into a misty curtain, that almost completely encircles the province.

Of course, cities such as Tir or Rome might also point to those wild open expanses starting on their very doorsteps.
Once enclosed within those sweaty city walls, however, one feels a million miles from clean air and verdant plains - an impression that can only be heightened by the long queues and rigorous gate checks one must undergo in order to exit the city, and walk amongst nature once more.
But in Borealis the countryside is as much a part of the city as the city is of the country, and locals and visitors alike are free to roam where they please, able to wander from wide market through-fares into cool leafy groves as the mood takes them.

And wander well they might, for there are few safer places on Rubi Ka, and certainly none that all can enjoy with equal ease.
The suppression gases are kept at a reasonable level to discourage violence and encourage trade, there are no roaming bands of partisan guards to worry about, and the local wildlife could hardly be considered a danger to even the most inexperienced of travellers.
In fact, as long as one avoids the Unicorn Guardians looming on the central hill, and ignores the occasional partisan scuffle in the high street, it is possible to forget that there is any conflict in the land at all!
Overall, the province is an ideal place to leave any cares behind, take a walk in the wilds, and commune with nature. Truly, Borealis is a rambler’s delight.

On the surface at least.

But there are some paths that are far older than they may appear, some roads that may lead the unwary traveller to destinations far beyond mortal ken, some journeys from which none may return unscathed.
And there are some faces of nature that are monstrous to behold, and ultimately maddening to even attempt to comprehend.

Our tale begins many years ago, with a young Nano Technician, strolling alone and carefree through the woods around Borealis.
Earlier that day had been searching for a place where he might practice his art while causing the minimal impact on the local wildlife.
For he was still learning to control the nano flow, and occasionally what should be a focussed power-burst would erupt with far more fury and explosive force than intended.

He had found a few high peaks near the great lake, within view of the city walls, that were barren and empty of fauna, and had spent much of the day training and refining his combat nano techniques, delighting in his own private fireworks display as the energies he released burned bright and colourful paths through the clear, crisp autumn air.
But way too soon the evening chills began to creep in, and as the skies began their slow shift towards to the purples and golds of Rubi Ka’s double sunset, the Nano Tech realised that many hours had passed by while he had been engrossed in his studies.

Now he was heading home but, braced by his successes and enraptured by the majesty of the prospect around him, bathed deep in sunset’s rich glow, he decided to descend the mountain on its furthest side, and take a long meandering route back to the city gates.
At first, striding briskly and purposefully through twilit woods, this seemed a most excellent decision, and he breathed deeply and inhaled the rich green dankness of trees and foliage seeping in the evening’s early dew.
As he headed eastwards, and the steep slopes of the stunted peaks dropped away to his right, he kept half an eye above the treeline, looking for this first glimpse of the city walls, ready to set a bearing homewards.

However, as the tiny range fell further and further behind him there was still no sight of the city, nor any passing sign of civilisation. His pace fastened, and he began to perspire lightly.
Sternly, he scolded himself that he had merely been taken further out of his way than he had first thought by his spontaneous diversion. He may curse his impetuousness, but there was no cause for alarm - he simply had more of a stroll ahead than he might have wished.

However, as the sky steadily deepened into true night, his unease grew steadily. He shivered as he recalled overheard fragments of gossip and folklore, buried deep since childhood but resurfacing now.
Tales of strange lights seen far from the notum fields; of wild hunts with unnamed riders tracking an uncertain prey; of paths that could be found only at midnight, and what happened to those that strayed from them; of inhuman creatures that crept into cottages and townhouses silent and unwitnessed, to exchange human babies for their own exotic offspring.

Of course, many of these stories had their roots back far before the settlement of Rubi Ka, on distant homeworlds circling stars that were little more than a faint twinkle in ebony skies.
And of course, only the credulous or childish would believe them.
He was a man of science!

To be sure, his own pyrotechnical displays of searing energy and obliteration may cause fear and superstition in lesser minds, appearing to be the work of some sort of godlike mage.
But these were known phenomena, drawn from forces that flowed in the heart of the elemental notum sunk deep into the bones of this land, and saturating the very air itself. Rational, scientific, quantifiable, to be measured, studied, and ultimately channelled by himself and others of his noble profession.
For a Nano Technician to be spooked by tales of ghosts and goblins was unthinkable.

He shook his head, lifted his collar against the chill night air, and moved swiftly and determinedly onwards.

But memory had also dredged up other stories, heard not in childhood days of wild eyed innocence, but exchanged during those sweaty years of adolescence, whispered conversations thick with secrets and heavy with half understood knowledge.
Most of these concerned sex and other more sensual awakenings - or at least half fumbled imaginings thereof - but there were other subjects, covert political manoeuvrings, redacted histories, clandestine dealings and surreptitious alliances - anything that may enable teller and listener alike to feel wise beyond their peers, privy to the secret knowledge of the adult world, with all of its lies and hidden darkness.
And accounts too of things that fell somewhere between, whispered tales of the murky underbelly of the lands around Borealis, and what had been brought there aeons before by the very first settlers, and nurtured by their foul and perverse deeds.

There had been rooms in the city, the whispers had promised, forgotten basements and imperious ballrooms and tiny garrets and front rooms, afterwards wiped clean and fumigated, the sigils and obscene markings hidden by rugs and carpets, hangings and furnishings, but still there somewhere, underneath.
But for the eldest and most profane of the rituals, the city was too new, too modern, too sterile and clean. So the celebrants took themselves deep into the forests, to forbidden groves and hidden thickets, enacting ancient ceremonies that called to the bedrock beneath and the stars high above, entreating, summoning, begging, invoking the unthinkable and the unspeakable.
Rumours of sex and blood, of death and ritual, of sacrifice and far, far worse… all in the name of creatures first spoken of under far distant suns, but apparently still just as eager and ravenous on this world as any other.

Of course, that was all long ago, back when the world was less principled and more murky, a little less rational, a lot less sane.
But older wiser heads – and the younger ones that aped them – spoke sagely of how what has been summoned cannot always as easily be dismissed, and of how evil can linger, long after deeds have turned to dust.

Some even suggested that the present days might not be not quite as sanitised and rational as many would wish to believe, and that even now there were whisperings and ministrations, strange rites by unknown followers, keeping alive that which should have perished long before.
That the woods might be a fine place to stroll on an airy summer’s evening, but that as the nights drew in, other things, hideously at odds with the natural order, might stir, close to awakening, needing only the merest if invitations to bring them through the doorway.

Trotting faster now, almost breaking into a run, the young man darted between trees and amidst undergrowth, stumbling over low embankments and shallow troughs, vaguely aware that his path seemed to be taking him ever downwards.
Stumbling in his haste, he found himself pitching forwards into a bowl-like hollow in the forest floor, completely clear but for a few saplings, surrounded completely by dense pines and thick foliage, with only a few shadowy paths offering any kind of egress.
But any thoughts of progress were wiped completely from his mind, as he was stopped completely in his tracks by what laid within.

In many respects there was absolutely nothing wrong with the scene before him - no exotic alien presence, hideous creation nor supernatural apparition met his gaze.
Within the darkened grove were only to be seen those natural inhabitants of the local woods, the small, scampering furry leets and slow, egg bearing chirops, the lizards of all shapes and sizes, and the local fleas, vastly overgrown as was the norm in these parts, but otherwise quite harmelss.

Still, what lay before his eyes was a complete violation of every law of nature as he knew it, and drove the air from his lungs and the strength from his legs, leaving him on his knees, in the mud, gasping.

For rather than mindlessly wandering, foraging and snuffling, the beasts before him were all perfectly still.
It was not their lack of motion that caused the chill to grab hold of his heart however, rather it was how they had arranged themselves.
For all these disparate creatures were neatly seated in concentric rings, circles drawn as neatly as if plotted by a compass, and as evenly spaced as ripples from a stone dropped in a perfectly calm pond.

Not a single one so much as twitched, and all started intently at the very centre of the innermost circle, never once glancing away, barely even blinking.

None had started at his arrival, not one had even so much as acknowledged his entry into their little theatre.

They simply remained, immobile, focussed … and waiting?

Heart pounding, adrenaline flooded through his veins, the youth’s nerve endings were at once a-tingle, his senses heightened.
Through a rising fog of panic, he was struck suddenly by the realisation that in place of the soft, soothing susurrus of a forest settling in for the night, there was now only silence.
Not an emptiness, but the silence of anticipation, of nature holding its breath, of the hush before the storm.

And through that unnatural noiselessness, as if with organs other than his ears, he picked up a low, insistent throbbing - at first little more than a heavy vibration, but building gradually to a steady rise and fall, even and measured, as if voices were chanting a steady incantation, just on the cusp of hearing.
He could make out no words, only gutteral syllables, seeming to come from some unnatural direction, and speak of the unspeakable, sending his very mind lurching and spinning in purest dread.

He looked around wildly. None of the critters before him appeared to be producing any sound, not even those capable of mimicking human speech. The noise was spinning itself out of the very earth, trees, of the thickening air itself.

The half heard chant hung like a slow, thick pulse, heavy, almost physical.
He could feel the weight of the sound crawling over his skin, seeping in through every pore, infecting him.
Old words, unknown, but tasting of the forbidden, rose from some ancient pit deep in his brain and swarmed glutinously in his mind, rolling in his thorax, trying to form on his tongue. He whimpered as his throat spasmed and throbbed in time to the dull beat echoing throughout his bones.

Eyes drawn inexorably back to the central focus of that infernal circle of creatures, he saw to his overwhelming horror that the ground itself, previously a simple circle of grass, had begun to buckle and distort.
With a sharp retort, the ground split violently, a slim but rapidly stretching crevasse opening before him.
As he watched, the very bedrock seemed to groan and creak under the strain as more cracks radiated out, the original chasm growing wider by the second, as offshoots broke up the ground all around, he earth crumbling into the depths below.

The chant hanging in the air grew vastly louder and somehow sharper, as if it had previously been muffled by the ground beneath his – or more as if it’s source was somehow coming into sharper focus with each passing moment, gradually becoming more real.
And all the while what he understood must be the reciprocal words and phrases, more fully complete now, beat in his throat, hammered against his teeth, seeking release.

Drawing together every ounce of will, he clamped his jaws shut tight, biting down hard upon his traitorous tongue.
Pain exploded though his mind, releasing his limbs from their unnatural paralysis, and releasing also something else, some burning energy building in every cell of his body, growing, building, surging, arcing…

When he came to, he was flat out in the undergrowth, a light gash on his cheek and damp fronds clinging to his face.

Struggling groggily to his feet, he gazed around wildly, his mind reeling as he took in his surroundings.
He was mere yards from the scene of the uncanny gathering he had witnessed, but what a change!
Where the congregation of mismatched wildlife had been lined up in their eerily regular rows, there was now a random scattering of small, unmoving bodies, furred and feathered and scaled, showing neither signs of violence nor of life.

Steeling himself, he drew close enough to one small, bedraggled corpse to prod it briefly with a boot.
This crude investigation was enough to reveal that life was thoroughly extinguished.
But whether the creatures had fallen foul of his own innate destructive powers, instinctively released at full force in a moment of purest terror, or whether they had been somehow drained by something from beyond his comprehension, or even - please no, but maybe - from deep within his own ancestral consciousness… as to that, he felt ill qualified to make any judgement at all.

The ground itself within the grove was smooth, unmarked and unbroken.

There was no telling what it might have witnessed, but there and then, it told no tales at all.

Not even a whisper.


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