The Chained god

In the dusty room The Watcher languished as he always did. His face was ashen as ever, and his beard was the colour of snow. He sat upon a great ebony throne, which was engraved with no characters, but was set with several pale gems all around its mighty head. His robes were of a light grey, the same colour as his face and in his eyes flickered a strange fear. He shook, for he always trembled, and did nothing to staunch the cold sweat that glistened on his skin. He sweated and shivered so because of the fears and troubles those were forever buffeting his mind. He himself could not even tell whether or not he had gone mad. Perhaps his mind was above insanity, but perhaps not.

His mind was now feeling the woman in Shaz Khurichan who wept under the whips of her oppressors. He felt her raw terror, the searing pain of the whip on her back, and the blinding sun that dazzled her pale eyes and dulled her senses. The heat of the midday smothered her like a furnace and the sting of the whip enflamed her back even more.

He wept. He could not help her. He knew what would happen to her, for he had experienced the pain of millions of women in such circumstances before. She would be ravaged first, how many times he could probably tell, then discarded, to die in the gutter, or some disused catacomb, or a derelict alleyway somewhere in the masses of people. She was naught but a piece of meat, a filthy rat. None cared, it seemed, but one chained figure, miles from anywhere, and he could do nothing. He wept again, for he could do nothing. He knew the woman’s life story; from the moment she was born by the River Eskulan, to the murder she was forced to commit in order to preserve her life and virtue, to the long enslavement to the cruel fashir. Now she had been sold to the man Thalus Nagu, the Farseer of the West, and she was dying, dying, dying. He knew every detail of her life, from the small round stones that she played with by the riverbank as a child, to the crush that she had on one of her captor princes, where she was thrown down past her own station as a slave as a consequence. He knew of the smooth curls of her hair, and the scar on the side of her hip from a whip three years ago. Soon her life would be extinguished under the whim of a fat, cruel man, with nothing more in his life than the ear of a fashir.

All of this flashed across his scorching mind in an instant of mortal thought, for crowded into his sorrow were the sorrows of countless millions. He saw the woodsman of Helsor as he fell beneath the treacherous rocks of a snowy ravine, and he was at least glad that his end had been swift. He felt the heartbreak of men and women rejected by their lovers, for such was a common hurt. He felt the silent broodings of troubled men, unsure, uncertain, and still grieving. He glimpsed the unfathomable depths of the wiles of women, and wept with their own pain, and understood them, as only he could. He raged at the unmeant sorrow caused by either sex on their counterparts, and moaned as he perceived the confusion wrought by both sides. He saw the man in Nimil as he rode away from the great city of Argondale, not knowing whether his woman would even remember him when he returned. He felt the uncertainty in the man’s woman as she tried to hide her fears, and the pressure of other men, and her fear of betraying him.

He felt the terror of the sailor that crouched upon the deck of the ship Alesandros, which was being buffeted by a cruel wind and cold waves. He knew that the sailor would be dead within a half-hour, swept overboard by a clutching wave, and dragged to the bottom of the dark ocean, that Nameless Sea which had been loathed, but a vital part of the ship’s trade route. The Watcher wept for the sailor, and for his young wife and small girl that had been left at Cyrandar. She would need to find other ways to feed herself and the child, and though the men of The Galgost were for the most part virtuous, he knew that if her plight was desperate enough, she would seek other, less desirable places to ply what would become her disgusting trade, and he feared for what would become of her if she sought to establish herself in the immoral and evil cities of Xotolnan, Ehng-Shabuk, or Daatangor.

He felt then the shipwright of Mothmond who had fallen to an evil wolf-spirit in the wooded slopes of that country. The wolf would tear at his body in grim and revolting ways, as was wont of his disgusting race, and the man would suffer before his final breath. The wolf would feed, but leave a trail as its fat and bloated body would stop it from fleeing swiftly from the scene of its kill. The woodmen-shipwrights would find the remains of their comrade, and there would be much weeping in the Hidden Villages, for much skill would be wasted for no good reason, and the woodsmen able and willing would depart on the trail to track and slay the murderous beast. They would track the wolf to its lair, where it would attack them, strong after its feast, though the men would cut its head off, though not before it would wound a great many of them and even kill one of them. Thus would two lives be wasted needlessly.

The Watcher then felt the brave soldiers on the borders of Lochslodan, who fought against the wild Kurzhim on the outposts of the north-forests. He saw and heard the shouts of sorties, battles, and ambushes. He felt the agony of the young archer as he fell beneath the blows of the savage lion-men of the North, and the cruel strokes of their clawed limbs that tore his skin. He gasped, hanging onto life grimly, and fell, his severed torso bleeding, the pulsing veins slowly ebbing out, and then failing. His life had ended, and there was nothing else. The lion-men began to set to work among the line of archers, though they fell inexorably, and as they panted for breath the archers took the both of them down with many feathered shafts impaled on them. After they cried out in agony of their deaths, three more archers were dead at their feet, and the rest were badly shaken. Many of them had not encountered death at such a raw level, not in such close quarters. The Watcher knew that before the sun set; twelve more of their number would be dead.

This is a work in progress. I don't know if I will be able to finish it; for I don't know where it is going, for now. Apologies for the formatting, I have no idea how the heck it happened!

The Wind is a Cruel Master

Today my imprisonment continues as it always has. The wind howls outside the castle even as I write this, and I lie awake at night listening to it, imagining what monsters might lie out there, waiting for one such as I to foolishly venture out into its wastes.
The trolls keep me entertained as ever. We play chess, checkers, draughts, and backgammon in our spare recreation times, and I read in the quiet of the libraries. Such activities calm me, and take my mind off the reality of my incarceration. I eat roasted flesh in the huge eating-halls of the King, while the trolls feast upon the raw flesh of gargantuan beasts. With all the luxuries that are lavished upon me, I feel like a visiting prince, though it is always present in my mind that I am merely an inmate here.
Today I climbed to the peak of the south-battlement. Were it not for the window-glass, the wind and the snow and the cold would make being up there unbearable. All the land surrounding the castle is a bleak wasteland, fit only for the most savage and tough of creatures. There are many jagged mountains all around, and the ruins of towers and entire cities dot the landscape. It is wonderful and horrible at the same time how it seems that towns, even metropolises rise and fall with the whims of the wind. I wonder what towns they once were. I must ask Kaldugor, my friend in the courts.
The snow drives so heavily against the castle walls. I cannot see the gates from the battlement, for they are buried in the white. And the wind, oh the wind! It was all I could do to keep myself together, for the noise was almost unbearable. It shrieked like a dying woman, yet for all its crying, it did not die, but kept hammering against the stone and glass like a relentless tide.
I marvel at the design of the windows; for all the onslaught of the wind and the snow the windows do not crack nor chip.

As per usual, this is a work in progress. There's more that I will add later.