by A.E.D. Sideen
THE TRIUMPH OF THE WAR-CHIEF FROM THE SURFACE
A man clad in wolf furs and bronze armour hops into a chariot with a Druid clad in white and red with a crown of regal oak. In his hand he holds a spear that feels like a thunderbolt with which to smite his enemies in vengeance. Truly an awesome feeling. The horses start to move again, racing like the wind He notices that The Druid Tinumaros the Green-Eyed isn’t holding the reins. They run as if the strange man can talk to the animals themselves or simply has some type of an odd influence over their feeble animal minds. As he stands like a stoic statue armed with the spear, he wonders what this strange power could possibly be.
As it gets darker, it seems as if the warband has entered into a subterranean jungle. The black and purple jungle surrounds them with bizarre twisted trees. Bellovorix, their proud chieftain, notices the lack of animal sounds. One could tell he was a proud chieftain because of his spectacular angel-wing helm and brazen armour. His garb was that of a typical Celtic chieftain with tartans green as the virile spring and sun-golden armbands and rings over a blood-red tunic, which complemented his shoulder length fox-fur coloured hair. Why would they not inhabit this forsaken land? Perhaps only the most evil and twisted creatures of ink-black darkness of perverted heart live in this foul and cruel abode. In contrast, the chariots radiate solar light, the wheels like the glorious sun that never fails. No matter how dark it is, even obscured by clouds, it still keeps rising and shining bright everyday. Around them there are herb and berry bushes with leaves in the shapes of foul medieval torture weapons. It’s oddly a lush environment with all of the odd plants despite there not being any apparent water sources around from what the Chieftain can sense. The cavernous environment reminds Bellovorix of the buttery sweets and licorice from the surface world. But he takes suspicion as to why a dreary absurd cave smells so sweet. Perhaps something evil covers up its scent and seeks to lure and kill. There are small faerie lights that flash somewhat like stars in the void-forest. But the warband ignores them and races on like the very winds. They keep racing on but then, all of a sudden there appears to be a lake in front of them. Not a lovely lake with a Lady in it as the weird colour shifting light makes it appear a deep dark purple lake of sorts. The band starts to cautiously approach the lake slowly, though the rocks underfoot are very loud as they approach.
The beach rocks are like coloured glass and pretty gems. Perhaps their horses will have something pleasant to drink? They get closer to the lake to look at it These warriors have never seen anything like it during lives full of adventure. Bellovorix is unsure if this water is safe to drink although he senses its malevolence.. Drinking cave water is a bad idea. The water starts rippling as jelly fat on meat. The Chieftain races back over to the chariot and grabs the spear, as the warriors do the same. Certainly, this has to be some sort of evil creature from the depths of its heinous abyss. Filled with a cool fire of fear and excitement, he runs and throws the spear at the water. He can’t see where it went but it surely has not fallen.
All of a sudden, a beast of what appears like India ink and rotted blood starts to poke its disgusting horns or heads up out of the water. Like a gunshot, the warband starts screaming obscene insults and making hellish noises like vengeful cruel wolves drunk on blood of lambs. They start swimming in all their heavy brazen armour to kill the colossal brutish beast with their razor sharp swords of iron. They swim like dolphins not knowing how infernally deep it is, nor caring about drowning horribly, as they are beyond human and strong as Clydesdales. The Chieftain does the same even though he knows he lacks a sword.. But he has only a knife. And so he ran as fast as he could towards the water, almost as fast as a colt.Gaining the momentum before he hit the water, he triumphantly threw his spear at the creature. It seemingly disappeared. As his toes hit the water, he feels the warm and relaxing water. But he carries on the fight for this is no time to relax. The creature was near the middle of the lake, so he swam as fast as he could. Exhausted and tired, yet he carries on. The Chieftain certainly was no whipped dog. And then the spear hits it in what looks to be a mouth amongst its Tiamatian untellable form as it comes out of the water, finally. The form keeps screaming and doesn’t come out of the water and The Druid starts yelling various incantations, as furiously loud as a mad shepherd’s dog bays at rabid wolves and unscrupulous thieves slinking about through dark nights. The spears seem to make the creature get smaller and smaller, as a fire starts burning from the ancient spells of The Druid. The fires of The Druid burn, scorch, immolate, and smoulder the beast. The lake starts sizzling and gassing and evaporating before the warband which swims towards it, as the Druid raises his hands higher.
Lightning rains down on the damned beast as if the sky was falling. Bellovorix continues swimming towards the middle of the lake, just because he wishes to stab it and rip it apart just like how the goddamn barbarians ripped apart his brother. “This is for you, Laurent!”, he cries. As he swims tirelessly, his knife cuts his shoulder, so he holds it in his mouth, on the verge of suffocation. He can’t breathe great this way but, possessed by smouldering rage, keeps swimming despite the water trying to calm him down. He brushes against a slimy surface and starts stabbing it like a killer. He drank the hot scalding blood and felt drunk on its power. Bellovorix stabs beneath the waters, exhausted yet tireless, knowing that it would take him an eternity to kill it. He sees his spear, and tries to climb the thing, but slips and falls into the water. Screaming out in anger, he starts stabbing it again. He stabs it in a way that he can slide his feet in it. He kicked his foot into the hole he just struck in it, and struck another in, and felt a rock. I look up, and it is what looks to be an evil eye. He grabs the knife and strikes it and it shatters like crystal glass.
The water starts steaming like water added to an oiled pan, revealing more and more of the burning form. Blackened like necrotic flesh, like death incarnate. The burnt flesh is tough and has plenty of ridges, which he tries to scramble up. The flames seem to not burn him somehow. He is a few metres from his spear. He grabs hold of it, and jumps out with it into the water. Blood, so much blood gushes out like water out of a trough. The blood splatters onto him as he
falls a good distance and hits the water like a falling bomb. He swam in bloodied waters that burned around him and he felt the flame licking his face but yet he was not burning. The water is about as high as a meagre pond he assumes, as he felt the ground and opened his eyes to see it before him.
Light of the sun slowly fills this evil jungle and the wicked plants become a forest of evergreen and wildflowers and Bellovorix hears the sound of kindred birdsong. But it reveals the form… one can only truly describe it as a perverse mass of evil carnivorous ancient eyes and forms upon three wicked bastard heads combined with a giant mass of millions of slimy snakes, being eaten by maggots. All of this, in the colours of ink and blood. Bellorix reaches for his knife, but there is no knife. It is now a beautiful iron sword with carvings of him killing the foul mass. Did it transform and he could not see it? Bellovorix sees the warband surrounding it, making sacrifices to the valiant and vengeful eternal gods of war, eating its grotesque flesh and immolating it in ripping sun-flames, then taking the bones and heads out of it to nail it to their chariots. Ecstatic from his revenge and feverish bloodlust he walked over and participated as well. He slashes the mighty iron sword through one of the heads and cuts into the thick armoured skull, tearing apart the disgusting mushy snake-like thing that must be brains. As the giant pile of flesh burns violently, the Chieftain cuts the head off of the body of the foul evil mass and it shrinks somehow after it is cut, he then thrusts it hard as if he is trying to kill it again onto one of the spikes on the chariot. All the while, he is jubilantly laughing like he’s quite drunk on vodka,hearing a great joke.
The Druid sings strange songs of ancient lore as the warband dances around the fire and keeps dismembering the dead corpse of the foul abomination. The stench of burning smells of house mould and sea winds. All he can see is golden flames of the sun and the red of bloodlust. Hours later, there is but a burning pyre of flesh and pillars with mysterious bloodied symbols made out of the giant bones.
The light of the sun has returned to this part of the earth. Nobody slept so elated they were in victory. And tomorrow, they will depart to find this kind of danger again.
They bring order to chaos and create the chaos to bring order to.
Without death and war, there is no life and peace. That is the code of the barbarians and warriors.
PRELUDE: INITIATION INTO THE INNER-EARTH
The Chieftain stands on a hill above an orange burning city, burning with black and grey fumes of pure death. The reflection of the burning city reflects off of his brazen armour and in his winged helm. And by his side are the weapons of his conquest, yet the blood is not very visible on his bright red tunic and dark green tartan. The sun never sets in the inner earth making the fire look brighter than it is. Within the inner earth burn the fires of war that long have been simmering. A simple band of great power and ambition set out the last equinox to shake the colonies and hives of demons that brooded in their giant hives. The Chieftain was rumoured to be a man who came from the surface-earth, a place that was collapsing its own flames of greed and hatred. The hill on which they stood on was green and lush in tones of blues and greens with pink flowers here and there. The trees were much taller than anything on the surface earth, with alpine flowers beautiful as those from fairytales.
The bell-chiming of clear and shining streams was heard throughout the woods and there was a slight cool humidity. These were woods so dense that someone who wished to could simply disappear in these woods and never ever come back. The warband settles down onto some logs, detaching the horses from the chariots and finds their mead made with the summer’s finest herbs. The Chieftain thinks in his head that everyone looks like they came straight from a Wagnerian opera, with their shimmering hauberks and elaborate shields. He sits down and drinks an old draught of juniper and pine infused mead and starts to remember once again the journey of the Hollow Earth.
“Ah, my good friends and fellow warriors. It is time now for me to tell you of my voyage into the inner earth. Indeed did I come from that odd land far away and I plan to never return.”
The warriors set up a fireplace, gathering rocks and tinder. The Druid-man lights a fire with a simple spell. They start to feast on their stolen provisions of bread and meat and dried vegetables. The warband of 12 was looking at him with great feverish curiosity. For them, he was sent down by the three brothers of war to bring them glory. Perhaps he was. Even the wolves, Callam and Argyas look at him with great interest. Bellovorix said that who he was before he entered the inner earth was silly and unimportant and refused to reveal much except for his profession, his clan and some of the recent happenings of the Surface-World. It is the present that matters, it is what will be that matters, he said. From far off, the screams of the city echo as the giant longhouses filled with a cruel and perverse spider and her unintelligent, death-worshipping spider-spawn burned, forgotten by all. Across the unknown lands of Agartha,
there lives all manner of hives of cruel invertebrate and reptilian demon-men. They have legions of soldier-drones. Mindless and weak though they like to appear powerful in number.
As they drink the mead infused with the plants from the mountains and dry deserts of the haoma plant leaves given to them by their eastern raider friends, the warband starts to see in the burning fire the images of a forest akin to their own. The mighty jade and emerald greens of the oaks, cherries and hazels are illuminated with sunlight as the rain falls through the canopy of the forest. The bottom of the forest stands in contrast to it with the oranges and browns of the fallen leaves and red of the poison mushrooms and dark rotting wood where the little foxes sleep, to which the grey autumn sky contrasts. In the forest is a fox-fur headed peasant man whom the Chieftain once was. His clothes were his old uniform from the first world war and some old hand me downs with folk motifs on them. He carried not much except for a dream and higher purpose that burned within him. To find Agartha and escape the banality and growing wickedness on Earth and to find a place for his family to live in peace.
The cold coastal air of Brittany rushed through the old forest. Since the war ended, Bellovorix had become obsessed with Agartha, the Hollow Earth. Within the deep and forgotten forests are passages to what we can only call fairyland, to the land of advanced peoples and adventure. The fairies are no cute little spawn from the stories. They are human in appearance, but with mysterious and odd powers. Some are kind and god-like, whom once brought knowledge and technology to humanity, and some can only be described as the most malicious and sinister of demons. Bellovorix had learned that he was descended from the kind and god-like faeries, the children of Danu. As the wheels of time turn, the humans forgot their fantastic friends and foes from the Hollow Earth. They returned into the mist and in the mountains and the wildest places. Or they went under the earth into Agartha, or back to the silver isles of the north. Bellovorix could see all sorts of magical symbols and meanings in the things that others couldn’t. In the carvings of wood and in the lace-like patterns of lush undergrowth in the forest, in the guts of fish and deer and in the flight of the birds he could see magic messages. Those messages revealed to him after several years the way to Agartha. Symbols given to humanity in ancient ages, symbols one can see if they look at the patterns in nature, or in the timber houses. In the patterns of the stars and grand cycles of the planets, the vessels of the sun were found the secrets of the entrances to Agartha, the Hollow Earth.
And so, he saw the last glimpses of the surface-world as he approached a strange cave. The entrance was hidden by the giant roots of trees and lattices of plants. An entrance absent from the earth. Going down, descending was the path to the lost land of the ascended beings side the earth. Bellovorix thinks the entrance is far beyond me now. The golden caverns are far beyond me now. The surface is far beyond me now. The green and life covered entrance. The light and the waterfalls from the roots. The light from above is behind me. The voices of the people, once like me, are so muffled. But I chose this. This is my cold fate. There is no turning back now. The
truth is I don’t want to turn back, no matter how much my mortal fears scream at me lost in their pathetic doubts.
All around him are great and sharp stalagmites that look golden impaling torture stakes in the torchlight. As he walked further, the stalagmites seemed to disappear in the tunnel. In caves such as these, one seems to lose all perceptions of time and dimension. The tunnels are so waterless and dead. Only the most treacherous and vapid of horrors come to those who are lost in these tunnels. However, the Surfaceman was no weak minded man. In his heart there was a vision, a higher principle that guided him even in the depressing, unglamorous and disgusting tunnels. Within the tunnels there were no signs of any bats or tunnel creatures, no moss even. They smelled much akin to old dishwater and sweaty socks. In the tunnels, a crash and scream manifested along with the sound of hooves and clashing metal and harsh squeaking noises.
The fox-haired surfaceman turned his head and grabbed a hold of his trench-knife. Demons, he thought. Foul demons. And indeed, they were. The torchlight revealed them, stick-like rat men with red eyes and ink-fur with crude steel armour fighting amongst each other. They were ripping each other up with their claws continuously, as they were all weak. An orgy of blood and guts flying everywhere, staining all around them. The Surfaceman, even being shorter than the foul creatures, was much stronger than them despite them appearing to be strong, with all of their bones and spikes and red-hot-iron eyes decided to fight them. There were five of them all fighting each other all at the same time with axes made of bone and metal. The Surfaceman ran behind one of them and ripped its back tendons and stabbed the one next to it in the gut.
The Surfaceman released a blood-curdling scream, making it sound as inhuman as possible to scare the creatures. Then, he grabbed the axe from its dying hands, and suddenly hacked at one of them in the gut. The guts of the Rat-Man fell out completely from its body and the skin slid off of it. It had green and foul smelling blood. The remaining three rat people started charging at him. One of them kicked him hard, but the adrenaline was surging strong. Before they could rip him to shreds he ran behind them quickly and with the spiked knuckles of his trench knife he crudely ripped its head off with only its spine and the sinewy flesh behind it remaining. The head then slipped off of the tissue and flesh. The two creatures started fighting each other again, and so he hacked one of them in the back with an axe like one would hack at wood. One of them was remaining and it started to run away pathetically. The Surfaceman picked up a crude bone-spear and thrust it at the rat man with all of his might, like a thunderbolt. It utterly impaled the rat man as it ran away pathetically. The Surfaceman started laughing from ecstasy from his victory and prowess of battle. He was never trained in the ancient war arts but fought with his siblings and cousins as a child and was in the first world war, yet he was competent against the woe-wielding menaces of the Inner-Earth. He cut the head off of the biggest one of the rat-men and tied it by its greasy and stringy hair onto his belt. He resisted the strong feelings of wanting to rest boiling
inside of him. Perhaps he had been wandering for days in the cave and he’d be wandering a few days more.
As he continued to walk, he noticed that the tunnel seemed to stop being a tunnel, and there was a ceiling high above him.The cave he had entered through was fairly large in size, but this was certainly another ordeal. Some civilization or old gods or foreign species must have dwelt in here. Could they have mined in here, and that is why it is so large? There is no water here, no sign of any animals. No sign of life. Only a void, where there has never been life or death. A realm of pure silence, neverending, never beginning, unknown, lifeless and deathless, but real. It is simply, eternity. The stone is pure grey and somewhat silvery as it was in my dreams and rigid, yet not sharp. It is like Notre Dame, but without any god or humanity. There are no holes within the jagged and cruel, intricate gothic rock formations.It is completely empty as there are no pillars or stalagmites. The Surfaceman decided to circle the cave. The stone shifts to a white, marble colour. He took his gloves off and felt the smooth and cold marble, which was completely flat. From the edges of the angry flames, he could see that the marble went up and formed two large door like formations. No handles, nothing that would make it look like a gate, but no gate like us humans have known. The marble-like vertical rock was the size of Chateaux de Brissac. Monolithic. It seemed to fade into the iron coloured rock.
He heard echoes within the cave, even though he had tried to be quiet. He did not fear, but rather seemed to wonder as he heard those bomb-like sounds scream throughout the lifeless cavern. He heard the scream, clear and awful screams now. But they are not human, no they were infernal inhuman screams. They are the screams of a snake, the mortal and poisonous enemy of man. The screams are repugnant lukewarm slime to his ears. The Surfaceman’s heart races like a propeller as his body is filled with the glacial scorching-hot juices of adrenaline. Yet he is not scared, because he embraces a fearless death as he senses his death coming soon. He grabs his knife, the trench knife already stained with green blood.
Shadows move and scream, but the flame he holds shines brighter. “You have no power!”, he yells at the phantoms. The yell reverberates throughout the cave as the shadow steps into his light for a minute and it.-It is batlike and it is horrible. It is death, it is pestilence, it is senility, it is the spirit of the wind and it is leviathan. The wings are outstretched and it screams and screams at the brave Surfaceman who runs towards it, without fear and ready to die. This moment, it is eternal as the Surfaceman accepts his deadly and cold fate. Rather than die running away from it in cowardice, he runs towards it in courage as his mortal fear and body grabs at him, but yet his higher instinct raced him on. What will happen to the brave Surfaceman may as well be beyond horrible and indescribable. But it will happen to the brave adventurer regardless so why not face it with honour? The foul and sublime demon starts whelping as it pathetically falls on itself. The light burns it alive. It returns to dust and the Surfaceman goes forward.
Perhaps this was a sort of initiatory test to prove if he was courageous enough and right in spirit to be able to find Agartha.
He starts to venture over to the other side of the lifeless uninhabited cave. The ground is very level and smooth. Perfectly flat and a bit slick, like that of the floors of a courthouse. Suddenly, bright lights start to phase into the Surfaceman’s mind. They appear like gems, beautiful glittering diamonds of snow and ice. The Surfaceman has never seen such enchanting beauty which steals his eyes and the beauty of the gems pry at his mortal soul. But, this must be some illustrious trap for this cavern has nothing to desire or pine for. Yet another weird test or trap. The lights start to shine brighter and brighter but the flame does not reach them. They appear closer and closer, but the Surfaceman does not run in the lusts of possession to unite with them. Simply, he stands out as a monolithic mountain or great statue, unmoved by such subversive and silly delusional temptations. If he pined for them he would die in an unspeakable and awful fate. The gems start to shift their colour into a beautiful orangish red with hints of azure blue, one of his favourite colours. It may be his favourite colour, but they are still viperous and twisted like black hearts of killers. They would have not given the surfaceman an unsettling and nervous feeling if they had good and true intentions. He wants to spit at them, but even reacting to them like that would give them power. Realising how silly and pathetic they are, he starts to laugh at them and smile knowing that they have no power over him. As he laughs, the laughter echoes like gunfire throughout the cave, and the gems’ light starts to fade and fade, returning to the darkness of the path of death from which they have spawned. The whole cavern is roaring, loud as the ripping roars of a violent and vengeful storm. The area near the holes starts to tremble and tremble. Swiftly, the Surfaceman raced over, with his bright torchlight. But alas, it is brighter than his torchlight. A mighty solar light mixes with the flames, and one of the holes, the eighth one in the horizontal thirteen holes, is full of the light, as tall as a human. The light is beyond colours, like looking at the light of the sun. The light fills the cave with a cool warmth. It was taller than a normal human. The Surfaceman was suddenly filled with joy and power, not an illusioned joy coming from mortal fading passions. The light is bright but it does not scald his eyes, but rather allow him to begin to see anew. He looks around and starts to see through all of the dark and the flame is put out. There are shadowy phantoms which would love to torment and subvert him, but they are all powerless illusions that fade. There is no smoke or water, the flame however merely ceases to burn.
And from the hole there was a man who materialised, dressed in iron-age Celtic garb. He wore a white cloak with red trimmings with odd images of animals on them over various animal pelts of creatures unknown to the surfacemen. His tunic was of red trim on ocean blue-green and he had various jewellery of gold and bronze that glowed like the sun and had on leather moccasin-like boots.
“I am Aelfrix, Chieftain of the Agartan Tuathi. You, Surfaceman, are worthy of entrance to Agartha. Your spirit is of the right character, superior to that of most of the surfacemen by the character of finding the way to Agartha.”
“I am honoured to hear your good words, Chieftain.” The hole that Aelfrix materialised from started to become larger and larger, and through it did The Surfaceman see the most lush and vibrant green forest.
“Come with me, Surfaceman.”
The Chieftain walks into the portal as the Surfaceman follows him. Suddenly they are in a lush and beautiful forest like that from fairytales. The grasses and various plants were like those of the mountains of earth, but even greater. The flowers resembled buttercups, indian paintbrush, lupin, wild roses, beargrass, trilliums, arnicas, forget-me-nots, edelweiss, thistles, and snowbells. The vibrant blossoms were the size of a fist, and the plants, the plants themselves at least a foot high and a metre long. The grass was up to the Surface-Man’s knees and was the colour of new evergreen needles. The sun was more vibrant than the one on earth, shining warm golden light upon everything it touched. The Surfaceman couldn’t help but smile as he looked upon the endless valleys and giant mountains of all sorts of goldens and greens and soft earth. There were some lakes as well, giant lakes and rivers the size of endless oceans. Untouched by human greed and pollution was the cedar ocean breeze and vanilla scented sweetness of the fresh air. Now, did the Surface-man see why Surfaceworlder aren’t allowed here and why the Agarthans have decided to close themselves.
The Chieftain turned and looked at the Surfaceman with his sky blue wolf-like eyes. He held his spear in his hand and stood proud and stoically like a Roman statue.
“Surfaceman, what is your name?”
“My name is not important. My old life means nothing. Who I was on the surface means nothing.”
“Wrong. Who were you and what did you do?”
“I was a farmer and a hunter, a man of the land. My name is Didier.”
“So I see. And what tribe are you from? You look like you’re from Ulster but your accent is strange. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s kind of like vulgar Latin but also somewhat Brythonic.”
“I am from Breton, in Gaul. I always heard strange legends about some of our ancestors being the fairy-folk. My Grandmother always looked like she was 19 or so, despite her being well into her 60s.” The wind whistles loudly hissing like a dragon. He looks above himself in awe, and a large eagle flies over. That’s a good sign for him, a sign of hope and strength. One of the feathers drifts swiftly and smoothly over his head eastward, to the shining mountains of pearl and silver.