Part 111: The Eye of the Nameless One: Part 13

The Eye of the Nameless One: Part 13


Maze Entry 1

Trying to keep myself sane by writing down my thoughts. I have no idea how to count time while I'm in here, but I've been blocked from the world outside. The isolation and silence incubate my thoughts, and as the seconds scrape away it's become far too easy to turn within. The memories of the past are welling up and blending with my own, and the two streams of thought bloat the minutes into aeons.





Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
But thy sins, which are seventy times seven,
Seven ages would fail thee to purge in,
And then they would haunt thee in heaven:
Fierce midnights and famishing morrows,
And the loves that complete and control
All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
That wear out the soul.

O garment not golden but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory, but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable fire,
Our Lady of Pain!

~

Maze Entry 2

The maze has no barriers, only winding paths separated from one another by chasms of lightless depth. Narrow ways limit my movement, while the exposure of having no walls to protect me leaves me feeling vulnerable to whatever wights might attack.





Though I know there's nothing else here, now and again I look over my shoulder. I don't know why.

Don't know how deep they are maybe infinite void can't fall can't fall

~

Maze Entry 3

Damn I'm hungry.

Must be weeks down here. Stomach has bloated and withered and bloated again. Regenerating body keeps death at bay.

~

Maze Entry 4

ten sleepless nights ebb and flow insomniac's sharp, clear-glass gaze fogs over can't sleep

The ground is hard to sleep on, but lying down and resting is little comfort. The feeling of being out in the open makes it hard to rest, and even if I do manage to nod off vestigial dreams claw at my mind and leave me in a fitful half-sleep. I regret having my dreams restored sometimes.

I know I'm alone, but I can't help but feel like the eyes are on me.

O lips full of lust and of laughter,
Curled snakes that are fed from my breast,
Bite hard, lest remembrance come after
And press with new lips where you pressed.
For my heart too springs up at the pressure,
Mine eyelids too moisten and burn;
Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure,
Ere pain come in turn.

O garment not golden but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory, but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable fire,
Our Lady of Pain!









~

Maze Entry 5

They say that when the Lady mazes people, she leaves an exit in here somewhere, but it's so well-hidden that people go mad with desperation searching for it. I'm keeping it together pretty well, though. I'm sure I can find it.

I just wish the voice in my head would shut up.

~

Maze Entry 6

I'm still hungry.

Hunger pangs distracting. Must eat and clear mind if I am to escape. Conjured a little water and a touch of fire.

The process is painful, but access is easy with a little bending and a polished blade. Sliced harvested kidney into thin pieces and boiled for soup. Meaty. Tastes faintly of urine.

~

Maze Entry 7

Found some claw marks along the path and a little dried blood. Looks like someone went into a bit of frenzy here. Seems like a good sign though... I'm beginning to trace the path my previous incarnation took. He must've found a way to escape in the past. The memories haven't pointed the way yet though... most of it is just crazy gibberish.





For the crown of our life as it closes
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
And love is more cruel than lust.
Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and division
Make barren our lives.

And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
And satiate with comfortless hours;
And we know thee, how all men belie thee,
And we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
The passion that slays and recovers,
The pangs and the kisses that rain
On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
Our Lady of Pain.

~

Maze Entry 8

I found a piece of gar-bar root stuck in the bottom of my pack. Picked off the lint. It was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.

Regeneration too slow. I am running out of kidneys.

~

Maze Entry 9

Found a portal framed by an arch. I walked through it, but all it did was transport me to another part of the maze.





Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
In a lull of the fires of thy life,
Of the days without name, without number,
When thy will stung the world into strife;
When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion
Smote kings as they revelled in Rome;
And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,
Foam-white, from the foam?

When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
When the city lay red from thy rods,
And thine hands were as arrows to scatter
The children of change and their gods;
When the blood of thy foemen made fervent
A sand never moist from the main,
As one smote thm, their lord and thy servant,
Our Lady of Pain.

~

Maze Entry 10

Jackpot.

Found a crude encampment. A firepit had been burned into the stone floor, and two old ratty blankets served as a pallet. An assortment of charred human bones had been piled up on the side, disturbing and overly familiar. I don't approach them.





it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts

Digging around however, I uncovered a heavy warhammer and a journal. Cleverly constructed, the frame was made from human bones spliced together, with sheets of dried human skin stretched across them. The skins had healed together forming the the spine of the journal, and locked together other pages of skin between. The cover was of the same pallor as my flesh, and its scarred gray surface was reminiscent of a zombie's hide. It was pretty obvious what this had been made from.











A series of incomprehensible symbols had been written in blood across the cover. They had been scrawled with a crazed hand, and were written upside-down, right to left, and at odd angles that made my eyes hurt. I really wish I had that linguist on hand.

They say the ladies love a linguist. Who can turn down a master of many tongues?

Fantastic. Now I have Morte in my head too.

Despite the crudity of the writing, I had to admit that the design of the frame was actually quite intricate. The bones had been carved so that they snapped neatly together. It looked like they could be unhooked from each other, allowing it to be opened and read as a book.

I unlocked the bone frame, which unfolded with a neat snap. Opening the book and studying the pages yielded nothing. They were filled with the same strange series of symbols as on the exterior, and they didn't seem to make any sense.

~

Maze Entry 11

Tried again and again to puzzle out the symbols. They didn't seem to follow any pattern... at least, any pattern I could see. The angles and pictures displayed seemed to be completely arbitrary, but I wasn't absolutely sure. At the very least, it was nice to have some blankets again.





On sands by the storm never shaken,
Nor wet from the washing of tides;
Nor by foam of the waves overtaken,
Nor winds that the thunder bestrides;
But red from the print of thy paces,
Made smooth for the world and its lords,
Ringed round with a flame of fair faces,
And splendid with swords.

There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
Drew bitter and perilous breath;
There torments laid hold on the treasure
Of limbs too delicious for death;
When the gardens were lit with live torches;
When the world was a steed for thy rein;
When the nations lay prone in thy porches,
Our Lady of Pain.

~

Maze Entry 12

It hit me, like a flash of lightning piercing the sky.

Just as I had re-hooked the bone frame after another period of studying it (took a bunch of notes to find some pattern to decipher it... wasted a lot of blood) I was struck with a strange thought... what if the interior pages aren't supposed to make any sense? I... or whoever I was at the time... put the symbols there to deceive anyone looking to read the real contents, which were hidden somewhere else on the journal frame.

Powers above this one was paranoid.

With some fiddling I found one of the bones had a long hairline fracture around one of its ends. I put my hand over the edge and twisted off the top of the bone, revealing a hollow space. Inside was a small, rolled-up scrap of skin.

It was covered in writing, with words scrawled over and over it again until it was almost illegible. Nonetheless, I was able to make out some of the words and symbols...


"TRAPPed TraPped LADY'S WILL be done DODge her gaze... too MANY I KILL'd, too MANY strangle and kill and stop the BREATH in their throats... there's a WAY OUT I KNOW it then I'll give the BLADed one the laugh..."





"...ONE of the ARCHEZ holds way Out, ONE of them does, ONE has the way out, can't just keep GOING through them one at a time, maybe - maybe I should go through one, THEN walk back to the same portal without..."


The entry trailed off into indecipherable scrawls.

If this one had been mazed for killing too many, I wondered who it was that was mazed for praying to the Lady. How many incarnations had been trapped here? How many had died and reawakened in this pit of madness?

Actually, I didn't want to know.

~

Maze Entry 13

Mapped out all the arches. As suggested by the journal entry I took one, then returned to it once again after I was teleported. I think I found the right portal. I stepped through it once, and when I returned the destination it led to had changed. I was looking through one arch and saw another.







Yes. Now this arch... the portal's edges glittered with trails of silver dust, and through it I could see an unfamiliar gray-bricked street. The music of a performing group sounded through, shattering the silence that I'd been trapped in for so long.





I stepped through to deliverance.

What ails us to fear overmeasure,
To praise thee with timorous breath,
O mistress and mother of pleasure,
The one thing as certain as death?
We shall change as the things that we cherish,
Shall fade as they faded before,
As foam upon water shall perish,
As sand upon shore.

We shall know what the darkness discovers,
If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
Find out whether tares be not grain,
And the joys of the seventy times seven,
Our Lady of Pain.