Orathone held his breath counting down seconds in the void. It seemed utterly unreal that any sane person would bury another alive, punishment or not. The buck thought it had to be some type of bluff, an attempt to break him and keep him in line. However, it was clear enough that Razien had seen the inside of one of these boxes before. How long he actually had been kept inside the earth, it was hard to say, but he couldn’t imagine it was for terribly long. Yet, after counting the length of several minutes, Orathone found it entirely possible.
Panic set in the moment it was clear he wasn’t about to see sunlight anytime soon. Like a cub abandoned in the dark, Orathone immediately began to tantrum against his surroundings. He tried to pound his hooves against the floor of the coffin, to strike the ceiling with his palm, even slamming his head back and forth until snow pollen danced about his mind. It took only a few seconds to realize there was no way to break himself out of the casket, not from within. Orathone’s breathing grew quick and came with a sharp pang of anxiety. He reached through the earth for any root or weed he might manipulate. Yet, they were in the middle of the camp, far from anything but minuscule weeds that could do little more than bloom and dance their seeds across the land. And even if he could force the lid free, no plant could easily shovel clear the dirt. As the reality set in, the truth he was completely buried until those in the camp decided it was time to remove them from their tombs; Orathone laid back with a racking, terrified breath.
The infinite night of the tomb closed in around Orathone, and in the darkness, he felt the living shades watching him, caressing his flesh, waiting for just the right moment to sink vile jaws in and tear life out. However, after a time, it seemed such an attack was not forthcoming. Had the master of those devils lurking in and of the shadows known he was there, it appeared he cared not to take Orathone’s life just yet. The fear did not subside, the worry of what might come next, what the shaded lurker might have in store once Orathone was removed from the box, became his subsequent terror. If he were lucky enough to exit the grave, would he find himself in the paw of a mass of shadows like Imfay? Worse still, how certain could he be he would leave the box alive? Was there enough air? Might he not expire before the day’s end and be left below like so many dead? As these thoughts reverberated through his head, Orathone became numb, wholly paralyzed by his fear.
Still as stone, Orathone stared into the blackness surrounding him, and for a breath, it was as though he entered a dream. A melodic and calming voice drifted in from the soil, through the boards, breaking the shell of madness that had encased his better judgment. As her voice softened his temperament, Orathone knew he heard this call before, the siren song of the ancient god Casseda vur’Verillia.
“Earthweaver, breathe easy. In the soil, you are closer to my heart. You are safe,” she whispered as the deer began to hallucinate, “He who you would call Yerra Amirot, Darkstalker, the Lord of Shades, can not harm you in this place.”
The swarming blisters of color that waved before Orathone’s eyes solidified into the image of a desolate landscape bathed in a dark that was not night nor storm. This land had been set into a constant twilight in the day and a night so intense it looked to never end nor shine the moon’s brilliance upon the features of the deep, bowl-like valley. About the perimeter of the treeless plain stood ramshackle shacks long lost to time and the wear of weather. These fading memories of civility housed some of the residents, whereas others meandered the landscape, mad and decrepit.
Orathone could not think of any single soul he had seen that was in a worse condition than these pathetic excuses for mortals. They were not so befouled as to be the progeny of the Goredrinker or, like the former Yerra Maxinimus, afflicted by the vile blood. These folks, caribous each one, looked like the putrified remains of a bandit abandoned by a partner and even those lurking devils on the roadside. Their fur and flesh was coming away in parts, bones were broken but left untended, the body part still in use, and their features had gone gaunt to the point of being skeletal structures draped with a muddled and bloodied pelt. Though they went no further than the lip of the hill surrounding the valley, not one of these forgotten folk came any close to the obsidian monolith that stood erect and unphased by time in the center of the territory.
The cathedral was a vast and archaic monument to days long past. Those who had wrought such a marvel had to have been well and truly expunged from the earth, as so many such structures dotted the lands, but their architect was forever unknown. Beneath the black spires whose points faded to dull edges against the permanent cloud hung over the land, under the archways where the winding step into the main entrance terminated, stood the haggard and vulgar image of the only native to the land that appeared in any manner acceptable.
His robes looked as though an Eastern priestess had draped their own across a year-old sapling. The ruddy gold of the heavy cloak was sodden enough to pass as almost beige, and by its appearance, Orathone could smell the decay that stuck heavy in patches across it. The navy tulle that wrapped arms and legs and about the torso seemed better placed to meet the charcoal tone of the man’s fur. However, in sharp contrast to the living shade at the gate to his abode was the guest that came before him.
Making his way up the winding step was a Westerner, one of the many invaders; however, this not of Kammherit’s own blood. This messenger was of a diminutive height against the gaunt and tall skeletal caribou who watched him with a weighing stare. In the sandy, spotted paw of the foreigner was a metallic copper cylinder marked with scratches that initially appeared to be some ancient text only to reveal itself as simple wear. The leopard bowed and knelt before presenting the piece, which the caribou took but seemed hardly impressed. After a moment, the messenger indicated a simple motion that, once mimicked, opened the device, which spouted air as an open water skin would its contents.
After a time, the caribou’s lips moved, though no sound reached the buck so far beneath the earth. With it, he sealed the canister before withdrawing it into the sleeve of his robe with the rough paw that held it. The leopard rose and appeared to pose a question which was met with a grim shake of the head. With that, the messenger drew the hood up on his cloak and vanished from the facade of the cathedral. Moments later, the foreigner managed to disappear from the strange lands of the caribou, undoubtedly thankful he had not become one of its residents. The vision left Orathone with more questions than answers, but the voice had long faded, with no answers to come, only another hallucination.
Again the realm presented to Orathone was one bathed in dark, but not a manner even vaguely suggesting of that which shadowed the cathedral. This oppression was a world of pure night, never touched by sun, its aura staining the soul even at a glance. The landscape was not fixed with a grand cathedral, but the wastes of so many that must have been equally ancient. Discarded statues and monoliths, shattered or half-sunken in the boggy terrain dotted the land, but only barely. So many of them, depicting birds, presenting reptilian things, portraying forms Orathone could give no name to but felt an odd knowing over, were faded almost as much as the memory of those who wrought them. Their features were dull and layered with filth and the residue of age. Among these grave markers of unknown dead lurked a figure unfamiliar to the deer.
The shifting dark was lean and craven, his attire worn away like that of a beggar, and still those barely set about the figure as though he had intended to go on in only his underclothes. He glanced about as though expecting at any moment to be assailed by a lurking marauder that Orathone could not fault him for. Yet, as he came to a stop, the orange-eyed man came fully into form. He straightened and allowed his hood to fall away, revealing a race not wholly foreign to the deer.
The puma had paused before a crescent-shaped altar that erupted from the earth like a tremendous curved blade of silver. It alone shined like that of a newly forged rapier, deadly and hungry to spill blood. He set paws to the edge and slid the pads of his palm against it until a sheen of blood had painted a portion of the arc on either side, falling away from the zenith. Once it was done, he marked crude symbols with the blood across the face at the middle of the arc before flopping on his tail as though it were his last act.
The markings in crimson were not the last event to occur in the vision, as further on, the ground slowly and easily lifted. It was as though the world itself chose then to construct a cave as a portal leading into the earth. A stench came to Orathone then, one he was not sure belonged to this place or the grave he lay within. The stench of turned soil, decaying plant matter, and grave moss filled the buck’s lungs as the puma lifted himself from the ground and meandered sluggishly to the mouth of the cave. He did not halt before the entrance as Orathone thought he might if he were in the same position. Instead, the fur and the light-eating chasm became one, with the earth lazily collapsing once he was gone.
For the barest instance, as the hallucination faded and the percussions and vibrations of shifting earth grew to echoes in his ear, Orathone saw Imfay in his mind’s eye. The elk was no different or placed in such an odd location as the caribou or puma, but a queerness hung over him. There gleamed a strange element in his features as though overcome with the vile blood. However, the tell in the eyes of the afflicted did not mar the man’s image, though something lurked inside his gaze. Whatever it was jarred from Orathone’s thoughts as the dull copper of sunset flashed across the deer.
Trazor 
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