Snippet #1995829

In the dimming light of twilight, the circle of hooded figures began to chant.

The constant outpour of words, a black language long since dead to the world, were dark and forbidding, escalating high into the stars just peeking from their hiding place during the day. As they winked and twinkled, the chanting grew fervent, the circle widening to let a lone figure, donned completely in red, into their midst.

The figure was tall; towering over the smaller men who surrounded him, their pitches rising so that they were screaming out the ancient tongue, letting it flow from their throats until it was ragged and bruised, ripping into the air rather than merely floating along it. While they continued their curdling cries, the red cloaked man walked in a slow circle, his eyes, bright and feverish in the rapidly dartkening day, met each of the black robed men’s, gazes kissing for a moment. It was this process that the men both feared and anticipated with an unabashed hunger.

The Choosing.

Round and round the red cloak went, the tails flaring from behind him, whipping through the still air. Higher and higher the voices spun, until the dark fabrics of their cowls were thrown back with their heads and they were crying to the darkening night, the ancient language promising despair, promising blood, promising a night that would never recede, darkness that never lessened.

They promised the moon would black, the stars would die, the earth would grow still.

They promised death.

Finally, amidst the howling and roaring, amidst this strange and convicted war-cry, the red cloak raised both of his hands; a red book held aloft in one, a black dagger held in another. He had stopped mere feet from a young man; seventeen at most, his cropped red hair swept from his face, eyes meeting the taller figure’s in a quiet challenge.

“Are you ready for the choosing?” the red cloak whispered, a reedy rasp that cut through the night like a knife through hot butter.

The boy nodded eagerly, and the rest of the black hoods screamed their assent, stomping feet and whistling through cracked lips and torn throats.

Taking one of the boy’s hands, the red cloak moved him into the center of the circling, where one of the black cloaks grabbed his clothing and pulled at it, revealing freckled skin, pale and nearly glowing in the moonlight. With quick and practiced hands, the boy was positioned; his arms crossed over his still maturing chest, sprouts of copper hair showing in the center of his rib cage. His scrawny, too-long legs widened, revealing and exposing him to the world. And his stubbled chin tilted back, to glint off of the weakened moonlight, eyes wide, mouth open.

Before him stood the red, the blood-crimson book spread open, its pages worn and stained from many, many nights like this. “Is the boy, now a man, ready to bleed black to his Lord? Is the boy, now a man, ready to give his soul to his Lord? Is the boy, now a man, ready to suffer and bow to his Lord?”

Trembling, partly because of the chill, partly due to fear, the boy nodded his head, his fiery red locks bouncing slightly in the midst of the circle, with every eye upon him. “The boy, now a man, is.”

The voice was still going through the trials of puberty; cracking and rolling like an old, wooden mine cart. Still, he stood, defiant, brave, in the face of it all. The red nodded in satisfaction, opened the book, and began to read in his thin, raspy voice.

“For the shepherds of black did not lead the flock; they left it where it stood. For eighty days they left it, exposed to the winds and the rains, the storms and the fires. And on the eighty-first day, the shepherds returned to the flock, and they beheld their God, standing on his tower of steel. And they saw that he was the true master.”

When the last word finished, one of the men stepped forwards with a thick wooden club, which he swung, viciously, at the boy’s right leg. The sickening crunch of bone and wood sounded in the clearing, and the boy fell to a knee, a mere whimper escaping him as his kneecap caved in. A second sudden strike on his left leg had him falling to the ground with a keening cry. The same treatment was done to each of his elbows, until his limbs all hung useless, dangling from his torso, shards of white marring the pale, smooth, freckled skin.

The boy was sobbing openly; his entire world becoming a fiery inferno of pain, suffering, and delusions.

“Go now,” the red figure said.

“Wait,” croaked the boy. “I am not-“

The black dagger plunged into the hollow of the boy’s throat, opening up a torrent of blood that seemed all to eager to leave the form that once imprisoned it. As the flow of red reached his chest, however, it seemed to thicken, becoming black as the night around him.

As it became black, it spread across his body, hardening into a shell that looked to be made of tar. The boy tried to scream, but the ooze slammed into his mouth, choking him beneath it’s weight. As the boy fell backwards, truly screaming now, the ooze overcame him, eating at his flesh until there was nothing but a pile of soot-covered bones, in the shape of a teenager.

It had taken mere moments.

Silence reigned in the circle as the figure in red bent to gaze at the former boy’s rib cage, reading small inscriptions there. Nodding and muttering to himself, he turned from his faithful followers, beginning to walk back to his dwelling. Obediently, the people in black followed.

“The Lord is displeased,” he said, quietly. “The babe lives.”