Arkanum

In the stillness of night, he dreamt of grandeur — of angels and dazzling lights so pure. A world without shadow, where only beauty thrived, until reality beckoned and he opened his eyes. Amidst the haze of his pod’s failed engine, which had been spewing smoke since its crash over half a day prior, he struggled to anchor his consciousness, to discern his identity and location. The dreams, vivid as the midday sun, felt tangible, yet his grasp on truth remained elusive.

A name — he must possess one, he reasoned, for all beings are christened. Yet, this thought spiralled into the void, leaving no trace of memory, not of a voyage nor of a home left behind. Bound to the pod’s metallic embrace, he surveyed his surroundings: an alien terrain unfolded before him. A jungle painted in peculiar hues, with deep red grass blanketing the earth and towering trees cloaked in gradients of grey, there leaves a mosaic of purple and black.

The landscape whispered serenity, yet beneath its allure lurked a disquieting sense of deception, as if the tranquillity were but a mirage. His gaze descended, intent on freeing himself from the seatbelt’s clasp. A sharp intake of breath — the sight of glass embedded in his flesh, unnoticed until now, brought forth a delayed agony. A shattered window, its remnants strewn about, bore witness to his plight. With urgency overriding the pain, he extracted the glass shard and cast it aside, then hastily released himself from the chair’s confines.

The ground greeted him with a jarring impact as he stumbled from the pod, his features now marred by the dirt’s kiss. Summoning his resolve, he rose, limping toward a compartment. From within, he retrieved a medical kit, shed his helmet and suit’s upper layer, and tended to his wound with antiseptic diligence. Once cleansed, he secured a bandage around his torso, maintaining pressure on the injury.

Donning his suit once more, he pressed onward, the air seemingly benign. With one hand clasped over the bandage, he ventured deeper into the jungle’s embrace, seeking answers, guided solely by instinct amidst the struggle to reclaim lost memories. The flora teemed with bizarre insects, their presence a constant amidst the foliage.

“Where am I?” he murmured, enveloped by the jungle’s depths. Time’s passage felt distorted, minutes stretching into perceived hours since his departure from the pod. This realm operated on a temporal plane of its own — a realisation dawning upon him. As he voiced his solitude, whispers danced through the trees, prompting a vigilant search for their source, yet revealing none.

A path lay before him, flanked by shrubbery, leading to an expanse of red grass aglow with a bioluminescent hue. Crossing the field unscathed, he rounded a bend and beheld a sight both awe-inspiring and terrifying — a temple of monumental scale, its ancient stones whispering tales of epochs past.

Compelled by an invisible force, he advanced toward the temple, despite the unease simmering within. A testament to the brilliance of ancient architects, the temple’s grandeur was truly staggering. The sandy hues of the stone sparked a flicker of recognition — Valindour. The name resonated within him, though no further memories surfaced.

As he approached the temple’s gaping entrance, the whispers resumed their ghostly chorus, unintelligible yet insistent. He paused, scanning the vicinity for the source, but found only solitude. The temple’s walls bore inscriptions of geometric complexity, beautiful and indecipherable.

Stepping inside, the whispers ceased. The hall stretched before him, adorned with the same oblique patterns and depictions of contorted creatures and horned entities. Despite the ominous ambiance, retreat was not an option; his identity and purpose remained shrouded in mystery, and only forward lay the possibility of revelation.

At the hall’s terminus stood four statues, equidistant and featureless, their hooded cloaks cascading from silent sentinels. He bypassed the nearest figure, venturing through a narrow passage. To the left, a dead end; to the right, a claustrophobic path that exuded dread. 

Constricted by the tight space, panic clawed at his chest, breaths quickening. Yet, he pressed on, driven by the hope of an open expanse beyond. Midway, doubt assailed him. “What purpose does this journey serve?” he pondered, contemplating retreat. But as the thought took hold, darkness flickered and consumed the entrance’s light.

“It’s too soon for nightfall,” he whispered, disbelief edging his voice. The shadows deepened, the temple’s torches now the sole guardians against the encroaching dark. The whispers returned, louder, more menacing, paralysing him in a web of fear.

Silence fell, a harbinger of unseen terrors. His breaths, once loud in his ears, were drowned out by a chilling screech and a guttural roar emanating from the hall. Instinct screamed for escape. With frantic haste, he navigated the narrow corridor, emerging into a chamber grander yet more intimate than the hall he’d left behind.

The engravings that riddled the walls were consistent with what he had encountered thus far: intricate geometric patterns and depictions of obscure creatures. As he approached the far-right wall, his fingers traced the cool stone, studying the etchings with a keen eye. A peculiar pillar, etched directly into the wall and crowned by an illustration of a pulsating sphere of energy, caught his attention. Above this sphere was an inscription, distinct from the rest. Unlike the cryptic creatures and shapes, this appeared to be a script, a language of sorts.

With its secrets veiled in a language unknown to him, the temple remained a mystery. The pilot found himself marooned on an alien world, where time twisted upon itself. The jungles glowed with unnatural hues, and unseen terrors growled from the black. Turning his back to the wall, his gaze settled on the room’s heart — a circular stone platform that lay in perfect alignment with the patterns that sprawled from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. Atop this platform stood a towering mirror, its oak frame etched with the same mysterious script he had seen moments before.

With a mix of trepidation and curiosity, he stepped towards the mirror. Bewildered, he noticed that his reflection was absent in the mirror, but the room behind him was flawlessly replicated. He waved his hand, half-expecting his image to materialise, but it was as if he ceased to exist. Silence enveloped him as he peered into the glass, his voice finally breaking the stillness. “Who am I?” No answer came, only the echo of his own words. “What is my name?” Again, silence. “What is this place?” He persisted; his gaze unwavering.

Suddenly, his reflection coalesced from a shadowy liquid, mirroring his every subtle movement. “Who are you?” he asked, his confusion deepening as the reflection’s lips remained still. “What are you?” After a moment’s pause, the figure in the glass cocked its head, an unsettling gesture. “I am you, as you are now,” it replied. “But who is that, precisely?” he pressed. “It’s inconsequential… nothing will alter the outcome.”

“What are you implying? I must know my identity, my purpose for being here…” he insisted. “The man you seek is not who you will become,” the reflection intoned cryptically. “Would you like a glimpse of your future?”

The smirk on the reflection’s face twisted into a sinister grin before it spun around, dissolving into the shadows once more. Circling to the mirror’s opposite side, he noticed the script on the oak frame had transformed. The shadows had already reassembled, his doppelgänger awaiting his arrival. “I appear unchanged,” he observed, meeting the gaze of his smirking counterpart. “Cease these riddles! Who will I become? Reveal it to me!” he demanded.

The figure in the mirror raised a hand slowly, pressing a finger to its lips, commanding silence with a single utterance. “Arkanum,” it whispered, the finger lingering over its sealed lips.

He remained motionless, his breath a silent whisper against the shifting darkness. The surrounding shadows twisted and writhed without form or purpose, like serpents lost in a void.

The reflection in the mirror held his gaze, its eyes a piercing challenge to his bewildered self. Moments later, those eyes dissolved, a viscous black ichor trailing down his face, staining his skin with dread. Blood seeped from his ears and nose as the whispers that had once been a murmur swelled into a cacophony of voices.

“What is this madness? What does ‘Arkanum’ mean?” he cried out, desperate for answers. Yet, the reflection remained silent, a sentinel to his unravelling.

As he bled, the shadows continued their macabre dance, and the dark ichor that had seeped from his eyes now pooled on the ground, not just within the mirror’s realm but spilling forth into reality, tainting the stone slab with its corruption. The whispers ceased abruptly, and he stumbled backward, his mind reeling from the horror before him. He yearned to flee, but the shriek that had once echoed distantly now resounded through the temple’s halls, drawing nearer.

He could not bring himself to glance back at the path he had travelled, instead turning from the mirror and sprinting in the opposite direction. He burst through an opening at the room’s end, emerging into a chamber adorned with shards of obsidian ice that clung to the walls and ceiling. The chamber, carved from the same sandy stone as the temple’s corridors, offered no inscriptions, no exits — a dead end.

The explorer’s heart raced; there had to be another way out, an escape from the lurking shadows. With a glimmer of hope, he scoured the chamber, stepping toward its heart. The sudden snap of chains jolted him, yet he stood firm — the floor gave way beneath him, and he plunged into the abyss below.

The descent was a harrowing twenty meters, yet miraculously, he emerged unscathed, his suit absorbing the brunt of the impact. Unconsciousness claimed him for a quarter of an hour until the whispers — those incessant murmurs — coaxed him back to the realm of the living. His vision, initially a blur, gradually cleared as he wiped the grogginess from his eyes, revealing an abyssal darkness punctuated only by a faint glow from the chasm above.

Summoning his remaining vigour, he rose from the stiff embrace of the ground and ventured forth into the enveloping shadows. The flashlight affixed to his chest had succumbed to the fall, but the one on his belt remained a steadfast beacon, albeit with a meagre reach. Nevertheless, it pierced the darkness as he delved deeper into the catacombs, his heart lurching at the sight of skeletal remains strewn about. The further he pressed on, the more recent the relics of death appeared.

Corpses, not yet fully claimed by decay, lay intermingled with the bones, their flesh a playground for alien vermin. Nausea threatened to overwhelm him, but he suppressed the urge and continued. This place was anathema to life, yet a perverse sense of belonging gnawed at him, a delirium akin to the madness that had claimed previous wanderers of these crypts.

The whispers ceased, for their meaning had unveiled itself to him. The inscriptions on the walls, once jargon, now spoke to him clearly. He read, transfixed and appalled, yet never questioning his newfound comprehension. It was as if the darkness itself granted him this knowledge, a presence assuring him he was not alone.

The script chronicled the denizens of the Nightmare World, tales of entities that defied time, and the fates of souls ensnared by the Guardian. Names like Odious and the Diligence were etched into the stone, but they meant nothing to him. Among the carvings, a grand depiction of the pillar and the hovering sphere above, identical to the one in the mirror chamber, demanded his attention.

As he pondered the image, a rustling from the depths snapped him to alertness. The guiding light from above had vanished, leaving only the dim beam from his belt to cut through the darkness. He scanned the shadows for the source of the noise. At first, nothing. Then, to his right, a chilling sight: a pair of elongated, luminescent eyes fixed upon him from the ceiling’s corner, compelling him to flee.

He refused to become another lifeless husk in this charnel house. Ignoring the creature that hunted him, he hastened towards the catacombs’ end. A formidable door loomed before him, sealed with a hefty wooden plank. With haste, he unlatched the four fastenings, cast aside the plank, and burst through the portal, never once glancing back. The door slammed shut behind him, and with trembling hands, he secured it with another plank; the latches clicking into place, a meagre barrier against the horrors he left behind.

Torches affixed to the walls faintly illuminated the chamber, yet he clung to the beam of his flashlight, wary of the consuming shadows. The floor was a plain expanse of grey stone, leading to a solitary pillar at the centre, cradling a sphere of swirling black and white energy. He had discovered Arkanum. Standing mere meters away, he could already sense its peculiar force, visions of a life once lived — of family, of war — flashing before him. His identity as an explorer, a seeker of truths, reaffirmed itself in his mind.

He approached the pillar, enveloped in silence, absorbing its presence. He was no longer just himself; rather an amalgam of every sentiment, every heartbeat, every fleeting moment. His gaze, inexorably drawn to the artefact, refused to waver. In reverence, he extended his hands, resting them upon the sphere where energy danced like forked lightning.

As his hands delved into the core, a dark ichor seeped from his eyes. Visions unfurled before him — the cosmos’s genesis and demise, the cessation of time, and the formless entities that lay beyond. He witnessed the ascent and decline of civilisations, the ebb and flow of conflict and serenity across species, and the boundless wisdom of the universe. The Nightmare World’s expanse, beings and tales that transcend time flooded his mind. Arkanum’s true nature was unveiled; it is a compendium of existence, a chronicle of every moment, life, and death.

Arkanum’s origins were otherworldly, beyond this universe, this dimension. The fluid trailing down his face was devoid of pain. Recollections of names etched in stone surfaced as the torchlight flickered, succumbing to the invading darkness, the writhing shadows reminiscent of those in the mirror. Paralysed, not by fear but by the allure of Arkanum’s secrets, he remained transfixed.

Blood dripped from his ears and nose as the energy he touched consumed his flesh, reducing it to ash upon the stone. A shriek pierced the air from behind, yet he stood motionless, overwhelmed by the totality of his visions, his sanity fraying. A smirk graced his lips until the Guardian’s shadowy appendage impaled him. Gazing down, he saw only the dark blade and the crimson flood from his wound.

Withdrawing its tail, the Guardian vanished into the darkness, leaving him to perish before the artefact that had driven countless others to madness. The Guardian’s motives remained a mystery — malevolent or merely a creature of an unfathomable realm. It was an enigma, a being of death, and life. As the torches reignited, the explorer lay dying, whispering, “I am Arkanum,” not for the first time.

In his slumber, he dreamt of celestial beings and overwhelming radiance. Darkness was absent, and all else was inconsequential — until consciousness returned. The smoke from his pod’s damaged engine lingered, the remnants of a crash from over half a day passed. His senses struggled to grasp his identity, his location. The dreams felt tangible, yet reality eluded him. In this realm, time obeyed different laws — a truth he would come to know, time and again.

Written by J.T. Barker

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