Once upon a time there lived two young boys who wanted nothing more than to explore and play in the woods. They would often sneak off from their wicked step mother while their father was off chopping wood, disappearing until the night had already set upon them. Occasionally they would sneak into town and play cruel tricks on the villagers who lived in peace and harmony together.
It was rumored there was a serial killer who picked off these innocent men and women but there he was not anyone they needed to be afraid of. It was not a prime season to be a villager, living life enveloped by fear for it was a semiprime season to be a wolf. The villagers made a tasty snack whenever the darkness would settle in for the night. The villagers were wary of them, well all of them save for these two mischievous boys.
On one such expedition of their, the boys stumbled across a mysterious cave. Carved upon the entrance was the phrase “What is and what should never be, here eternal lie the thing that should not be”. As they ventured into the cave, the light dissipated until they were engulfed in darkness, swallowing them completely whole. The two boys turned to leave but no matter which way they walked, the darkness only became more all-consuming.
As fear set in and hope start to disappear, a light finally appeared in the distance. The two boys scrambled towards it, stumbling over loose stones in their desperate pursuit. The light only seemed to get more distant as the pursued it, however, until once again they were shrouded in the bleak, unforgiving darkness. Out of the corner of their eyes, the two boys sensed something. Somehow, they sensed that a void of some sort as if the fabric of reality ceased to exist in this one spot and every part of them was drawn to this spot.
As they reached for this void, the ground seemed to give from under them and the two brothers fell. At least it seemed to them as if they were falling for there was no light to see and nothing to observe. They fell for seemingly hours until existence seemed to vanish into nothingness. They no longer felt like they were falling but they also didn’t feel like they had reached any sort of ground. One brother seemed to call out or at least he thought he did for his mouth seemed to produce no sound. The only thing they could sense was a creeping horror, slowly, agonizingly encroaching upon them. Their hearts raced, their bodies frozen, sweat poured over them, and death reached out to beckon them towards their true fate. There was no way to know if they were alive and dreaming or dead and remembering.
After an eternity, these feelings disappeared into nothing and their vision slowly returned, blurry at first and then clear as a magnificent city greeted them. It was a city filled with golden towers that appeared to stretch unto infinity. As the boys walked toward it, they sensed that everything felt off, as if the city had been built for some beings much larger than themselves. The towering gates, the spiral staircases with steps taller than they were, and the roads wide enough to fit a dozen carriages. Yet to their observation, the city was completely abandoned with no trace of whatever beings created it in the first place. The only sign that something had ever lived there was some writing on the gate entering the city. The language was nothing either boy could read and yet they still sensed the meaning of it. For it was the ancient city of Tical, where both mortals and angels feared to tread. It was a city known by all but spoken of by none. A city existing at all times and yet none at all.
They were drawn towards the center of the city, powerless to veer from this course. They didn’t even feel like they were walking towards it, their bodies merely moved toward the center as if they were floating, as if their legs no longer existed. Their hearts were embraced by a warm feeling of both fear and comfort, dread and desire, terror and peace. They were unable to gaze around and yet out of the corners or their eyes, they felt as if the city was shifting, building coming and going, contorting, growing, looming further and further over them. As they drew towards the heart of Tical, a hand reached out to finish pulling them in. It was nothing they could see, but it felt the distinctive touch of their mother in the way she would pull them against her bosom to guide them to sleep. In fact, a voice seemed to echo through their heads, humming a lullaby to ease them to sleep. They desperately needed to feel her warmth to keep the chill of death away. Their eyes felt heavy and they gave into the desire to close them and give in completely to the force pulling them forth.
Their eyes finally woke inside an apparently featureless building. The ground stretched infinitely in each direction yet they felt hopelessly closed in. Their eyes were drawn to something existing in the center of the building. Like the void before, this was merely something they sensed as the heart of the city, what was giving it life. They gazed upon it and it gazed unto them, a voice thundering through their head.
“BREAK THE SILENCE, DAMN THE DARK, DAMN THE LIGHT AND TOGETHER WE WILL LIVE FOREVER”
Inside them they are screaming and nobody pays any attention. In an instant, they’ve lost all feelings, as if they are now hollow husks with no limbs, no sight, no hearing, nothing but their thoughts ringing about and a silent scream with no mouth to emerge from. If they had arms, they could kill themselves. If they had legs, they could run away. If they had a voice, they could talk and be some kind of company for themselves. They could yell for help, but nobody would help them. A vision of their father appears from within and their beckons for help yield only a cold response of “each man faces death by himself, alone”.
A great beast whose shape is indescribable and whose name is unpronounceable rises from the nothing and towers over them. Its shriek is deafening as it pulls the boys to its mouth or at least some sort of gaping void that could best be described as such. The voice inside them calling for help fades with each plea as the unfathomable darkness envelops them one last time, the two troublemakers doomed to an eternity of indescribable terror as the light around them and within is permanently snuffed out.