Dark Verses

The strong and intimidating tower of Dunmor, looming tall atop the soaring mountain of Miranha, pierced the angry hoard of clouds that thundered upon the valleys around and gleamed in the slanting sunrays prior twilight. An omen of doom, some would have called this chancy setting. But none of them lived now, their age was long past.

An Eagle, terrified by the raging thunderstorm that had suddenly caught her, breached the clouds soaring and waved her wet wings in the hopeful sunshine. The lamb she had clutched from the ground, twitching, heavy now with the wetness, strained her claws and threatened to remove the power from her wings, which would keep her above the thunderstorm until she reached her hatchlings waiting inside the rocky hole in a peak yonder. The hatchlings would sustain the hunger for another night, she decided finally, but if she never reached them… The lamb descended. It travelled towards the doom of humans, the ones who had ceased to exist long ago would have said.

The Well of Spike, opening atop the tower of Dunmor like an eyeball, a pit that travelled the entire height of the tower and went deep until the centre of the Miranha Mountain, gobbled the shrieking animal. The lamb plunged down and down, crying madly, filling the chasm, pitch dark at this time, with the bloodcurdling echoes Finally, it hit the ground, a sword erected from the bottom of the pit rising through its chest, the spike after which the well was named. Blood spurted out of the flesh-hole and dribbled inside the thirsty foundation of the pit. The meeting of final condition, was what this was according to a hugle wizard who had died thousands of years ago.

A quake originated from beneath the bloodied sword and the mountain shook, the tower trembled and all went silent, but only for a moment. Then a crack ran across the bottom of the pit, guzzling in the sword and the lamb, and made a fissure through which smoke emerged in a thin wisp, followed by a green light that dispersed out and illuminated the bottom of the pit. Then came a claw-hand, its fingers long and rigidly bent, nails long and pointed.


The long deminished realm of hugles would have remembered the dark verses dreaded in their lands.

In the vault of a mountain sleeps the hugle king,
Evil is in his blood, and strength in his wing,

When the brightest one is eluded, and so is the raging god
When a slave of old, but reborn, pays tribute to his lord

The earth shall be shaken and the mountain shall shudder
The curse then shall be broken and the vault shall shatter

Rise then shall the king, the supreme emperor
To spread again his realm... of power and fear

The claw-hand seized the opening and gave a pull, the hugle emperor, the king of kings, of hugles and non hugles, of mountains and valleys, sprang out of the earth, and landed beside the crack. Its tall and slender body, keenly wrought, almost like a man, showed no signs of a nearly perpetual rest. Its long hands rose up and his fingers slid against each other feeling air for the first time in eight thousand years. A low growl escaped his blood-stained mouth and filled the pit; a long breath went in through his slender nose, which would have suited an attractive human. Then the head of the Hugle-supreme dropped behind and his sharp eyes, crimson as the rising sun, looked up. Light glimmered at the end of the pit, and beyond that loomed the sky.

The hugle bent his knees and sprang up. It’s long hair waved towards earth as its body rose up and up until the leap ended. The hugle clutched the rocks of the well with the fingers of its claw-hands and feet. That well had not been there before he was cursed and defeated. A snarl of irritation escaped its mouth and he leaped again.

He closed its eyes as sunlight caressed them and the wind stroked his forehead. The sounds of the thunderstorm aside rang upon his ears, and the wetness in the air tickled him. He cried to fill the sky. He was free again.

He landed atop of the tower and looked around. Another growl of irritation fumed out of his nostrils. He stood upon circular base that was circumvented with parapet walls, of which he knew nothing. He walked towards the wall and jumped upon it, then strolled in a circle. All that he could see around was an amassment of clouds.

He leapt into the haze and plunged towards the earth head-first, enjoying the wet touch inside the murky world. Dropping down, he broke out into a heavy shower, above a wet valley. Deep down, somewhere in that land of valleys, was the smell of food, his favourite smell of human flesh.

But that had to wait. He had other aims to be achieved before the feasts began. His hands spread aside and took form of large wings, with which he shifted into a glide and turned towards the distant peaks in his sight, where lay his minors, his hundreds of old hugle slaves, whom he was going to wake now.