Know then that I am the poet of the Great King who is fallen, and through a desolate wasteland I now wander endlessly. All the worlde appears to me as an infinite Abyss, void of life and happiness. Woe, for I am lost in this place with only myself for company here. Much sorrow fills me that I am so far gone from the rich and glorious days of long ago. Do I still remember those days of His youth? And what of my own? Now the stars have all turned from the earth, and all the earth is shrouded in a grey fog, pervading like a death shroud over the entire heavens. There is no more day, only a tyme when the dimness, terrible dimness! becomes so that the bleak horizon can be seen in the remote and impossible mounts that I now wander towards, and to there the only sound I have heard since the walls fell.

I can still hear them falling around me, like dry autumnal leaves, or like the roaring peal of thunder. Where am I to go now, tattered and ravaged by the elements and forsaken beyond existence where even the shadows are afeared to roam? How many aeons have I wandered now in this space, if space it may be called? Lo, even the great angel of Death has forgotten me here, for here is not a tyme, nor winds, nor light save that from the dismal and horrific castle overhead. Now there is nothing left of the greatest of all Kings and His greatest of all Kingdoms. No one is left to remember His life and His deeds; no one shall remember His sacrifice in the greatest tyme of need. Who was there to comfort Him whose name I cannot speak, He who rests in the shrine with the Father of the Abyss, the same Father feared in folly by a man who loved His craft.

O Great Father, why did you take Him and not me? O Great God, please speak my name and leave me not in the dusts of deathlessness! I can still hear the sound, though distantly, like a memory preserved in the blood, frozen in a land somewhere snow is falling. The entirety of my being is numb as I walk endlessly, never taking sustenance or drink, never pausing when the torches of the castle burn low for a tyme when dreams may overtake me. Stay back! A curse upon thee, Hypnos, for thine arts have frayed my senses beyond redemption! For in my nighttyme visions I can see Him, as I saw Him last, weeping empty eyes that bled from their sockets...

There is a sublime horror that fills me whenever I blink now, for I can hear the sound of my eyelids closing now over mine eyes, and yet my eyes have become so dried in my hopeless trek that as they close to blink, there is a sound not unlike that of rusted metal, or of smashing rocks... Is it still there? Is there still blood on my cloak? How many tears must I cry to purge this from my form? Out, damn spot, out! Was it not my doing that led Him to this? Should I not have seen the signs in the stars or the flights of birds? Should I not have read it in His eyes or in the entrails of sacrifice? Should I not have seen it in dream or sacred vision? What wretched evil then has blocked my sight, damned eyes! What infernal clamour then has blocked my hearing, damned ears! What foul stench then has blocked my smell, damned nose! What horrid vomit then has blocked my speech, damned tongue! What daemon touch then has blocked my fingers, damned hands! All of the five have cursed me to this of all most hideous of fates!

The very trees writhe at my presence, at the least I pray these that I pass are trees, though I sometymes have the notion that I can make out red shards like broken glass catching candlelight, and they sway with such unnatural malice! Deserted, and alone...lest I cast myself into the Abyss, if I could but find an Abyss in this nothingness to cast myself into. Alas, but that would bring me a hope, and then I could aspire towards an end to the madness in which Death has abandoned me. Father of the crypts, Lord of the Stars, O Great God whose name was known when men were but young and whose throne was upon the earth when She was young, hear my prayers that I might find some way out of here.

* * *

No longer do I have the strength or the sanity to curse and spit as I fall and stumble on my ascent to the top of this mount. The torches of the castle have all burned low and yet still I see a light, or mayhaps shadows, that are of a lesser grey than the treacherous heavens. It is here that I long towards, in the desire that it shall be my end, my release from this never-ending nightmare. All around me now the tree-things are shivering, gibbering to themselves in a language that sounds like snakes breeding and roots shifting, and I am filled with a fear I could not imagine possible at their movements. At tymes they brush me as I pass, and I feel something sharp reaching for me then, grasping for me, tearing at me with talon and claw.

And yet, too weary am I to run, too great my fears and shattered my sanity that instincts have failed me, there is nothing left for me from which to draw strength. Tall is the mount, and long has my ascent been, and every portion of my being is scratched and rubbed raw from the tree-things. Now as I stumble down the path, I feel as if their roots, or what I desperately pray are roots (though Gods tell me how roots can grasp!) attempt to fell me, and when I stumble, that these pseudo-roots endeavour to pull me into the very earth. Great is my despair, and ever greater now, but not so that I would wish to be devoured by some thing that wishes to drag me beneath the earth to consume my tortured flesh in particularly dreaded fashions.

What force pushes me on I know not, but there is a faint sound that comes to me, when the tree-things are not whispering in my head, a sound I had heard in a far-flung memory. How many ages and lives ago was it that I heard this perceivable noise from the other side of the mount, uncountable. So far gone is the memory that I cannot recall its name or nature. Mayhaps the Great Unrest has come for me now, mayhaps it has come tyme for me to pay my final debt, mayhaps the madness and fever has consumed my worthless soul! Insane, and without the senses which I had all cursed, I fled from the tree-things towards the top of the mount, much further distant than Arcturus and Osiris, or Draconis and Lucifer whose names are all written in the heavens beyond mortal touch. That I wish I could be like the light-bringer and fall from the grey far-off heavens to smash into oblivion upon the earth!

But nay, my only fate is to be the foodstuff of blasphemous pseudo-roots upon creatures unwrit in any book, tome, or unknown to any age! The same blasphemies that grow on the waters of the rivers that flow straight from the seventh and lowest hell, and deepest Abyss where even the darkness is swallowed and none may walk except the Nameless, accursed be He who dwellest therein! But lo! My great madness has uncovered the mystery! The sound I heard between the gruesome hissing of the wickedness about me, the memory I faintly could touch, the resonance I could hear behind the cacophony! Yes, now I knew that all was lost! Gone, best was it that I be slowly and unspeakably devoured by the tree-things than to look upon the Nameless. And yet, with that, I surmounted the ridge and simultaneously broke free from the clawing and ripping of the blasphemies. In great fear I closed my eyes, lest I behold His face!

But with tyme, they opened, and I beheld sight of the greatest joy of my existence:
...a granite-walled cathedral that rested upon the river of Charon, the Styx...
...throne of the King crowned in black thorns...