Pale Death

 Prayer comes in muffled, panting words. If that pathetic excuse of a priest were still alive, smelling of tonics and disheveled in his sullen robes, he’d accuse Henrik of blasphemy for his terrible form. But the priest is dead. Devoured by the Devil itself. 

Henrik fights to keep his footing over jagged, black rock. Steam hisses, rumbles out from hideous looking pockmarks in the earth like this place is from an unfinished time in creation. The knight is boiling in his armor. Sweat stings his eyes. He must be careful now, a single incorrect step will snap his ankle or send him tumbling, and he will be lost in the domain of a vast nightmare. 

Step. Watch. Step. Henrik concretes hard and stares out into the primordial murk, fighting to discern if the roar-hum in his ears is his own heart, molten devilish ground, or the monster he’s come to slay. The Sun is hidden, refracted, throws hideous looking shadows in labyrinthine fog. He sees Death everywhere. Terror around every corner. Something small, something sinful, nags far down within him, makes study the broadsword in his hand. It seems so small, so pathetic and worn, the toy of tiny creatures trying to snuff out titans. Henrik babbles more prayer, thumps his gauntleted fist into his chest like he carries Gods will between his fingers and is trying to drive it into his very soul. 

The Earth trembles. 

It’s here. 

Henrik stops. Stands. Tremors run down him as if gale winds struck him. The shape steps out into oily, hushed light. Illuminated from below by so much red-hot rock. 

This is Hell, Henrik thinks, this is a place of death and sinners and nightmares. Dante was wrong. No poetry. No tragedy. Just teeth. 

It is a living terror. It is the envy and dream of every killer, every annihilator ever born; it is catastrophe given shape, pale and white as bone. Huge, muscular legs carry a behemoth trunk with an effortless gait. The head dwarfs the man in armor, heavy and reptilian, knobbed by chitinous looking scales. Pale as fresh snow. It’s nostrils flare, jaws yawning wide and Henrik sees the end of time at the bottom of its gullet, an ever present hunger that will never slack, never be sated. Giant fangs glint obsidian. They laugh at his imitation of a blade. Henrik stares up at boiling red eyes— the eyes of infernal damnation. 

The Pale Wyrm is real, and in that moment, the pious knight feels a hollow emptiness. This thing is alive, vast. It dwarfs his God, mocks the cathedrals and the crusades, it does not even pity the mislead droves— it devours them. Henrik has found the one true lord of creation. Worship, primordial and raw from bygone eras, nags at his very essence. He wants to pray to it.  Do it’s bidding. A far away clattering emerges, the broadsword tumbling from his hands but he ignores it, eyes welling with tears. Arms outstretched. 

Praise—- 

The Pale Death accepts in the only way it’s kind can for these pathetic inheritors of its earth, and Henrik smiles wide to the incoming night that descends upon him. A night ringed by huge, iron-black teeth.