Sorrow of the first moon: The masquerade
   Rain. Rain and darkness poured down from above. Through the cover of heavy, dark clouds, a moon could be seen, yellow and large like an infected eye. In the dim and sickly yellow light, a lone traveler could be discerned from the shadows of the surrounding woods. His black horse moved slowly as though exhausted from a long hard ride. On its back, a figure clad in heavy robes was hunched over the reins. Suddenly a bolt of lightning tore through the darkness behind them. The horse panicked and as though reinvigorated by the energy of the storm it fled and carried its rider deep into the woods. With a loud crack the straps of the saddle snapped and the rider was cast into the mud.
   When he raised his head, his golden locks of hair were drenched in filthy water. His eyes were caught by a light in the distance. A light that promised cover from the rain and perhaps a warm meal. Taking his horse by the reins, he started to walk towards the light. As he come closer, he saw that the light belonged to one of the towers of a castle. It reminded him of home, of Avalon. His father, Lord Plainsong, had a castle there. And a glorious castle it was. In the morning, the sun would shine just above the high walls. And when the townsfolk celebrated, the courtyard would be brimming with happy people and colorful decorations. All that was far away now. As the son of the lord he had to fulfill has duties, and one was to act as one of the knights that secured the lands by patrolling the borders and watching over the populace. Not only his bloodline bound him to uphold these duties but his honor would never let him fall from this path of justice.
   When he reached the castle he could see how great a castle it was. The towers were high and rank as the mighty oak trees of the Golden Forest. And certainly, the stones of the walls glistened like bark in the yellow light. Indeed, the castle looked alive, slimy in the night.
   "Only a relative of mine could possibly own such a castle", he thought to himself, "but being so remote it has to be some form of cousin." And with that, he hammered at the door. After a little while the door was opened by a pale figure in dark clothes of excellent quality.
   "Good evening. I seek shelter from the rain. I am Duncan of Plainsong. I suspect that the lord of this castle is a relative of mine and I would much like to acquaint myself with him."
   "You're wet."
   "Yes, it is raining outside. Could you also provide for my horse and perhaps procure a new saddle to replace the broken one."
   "Well, then you'd better come inside."
   Later that same evening Sir Duncan was putting on the dry clothes left in the room for him. The room was of an acceptable quality. A fire was burning; the bed was made with expensive silken sheets. The floor was covered with a thick, warm carpet. Overall, he was quite comfortable. Now that he was dry, he started wondering why he had not yet met his cousin. Impatient to meet his relative he decided to search for him himself. Thus, he went out into the corridor and towards the main hall. When he reached the main hall, he paused to ponder where to go next. As he did so he noticed how beautifully the hall was decorated with paintings depicting scenes of happiness. Actually, some of the women in the pictures were a bit too happy, their faces wreathed in ecstasy. Maybe a nipple showed through their clothes. But then again, he was tired and had been away from home for a long time.
   Music reached his ears. What was this? Where he would find the source of music he would certainly also find his cousin. Following the sound of music, he came to a double door. The music was loud now and he could hear people talking in joyous voices. Deciding to make his appearance notable, he took hold of the doorknobs and having prepared himself opened the doors wide and entered the room.
   "Good evening, good folk. I am Sir Duncan Plainsong. I seek my relative, the lord of the house!"
   What met his gaze was something quite unexpected: a room full of people wearing colorful costumes and stylized masks resembling human faces. What did not meet him, however, was any relative of his to welcome him. A woman, so it seemed, stepped up to him:
   "Welcome Sir. I know not who you are nor whom you seek, but you are welcome to enjoy our company."
   "Thank you, Lady..." But by then the music had started a new dance and she was swept away by a man with distastefully long and black nails almost like claws, which he tried to hide in the deep recesses of her dress. The room was now a swirl of colors; the only thing that did not seem almost hypnotizing was the dull white of the masks. When he tried to make out the faces and bodies they seemed...strange. A yellowish eye here, a strangely shaped foot there. Even when he caught a glimpse of a grin behind a mask, the teeth seemed sharp and elongated. The whole thing made him feel quite dizzy and when he forced his eyes away from the dance they landed upon the food. This was what he needed. Warm, roasted meat and hot spicy wine would do nice to fill his aching stomach. When he had satisfied his worst hunger with what tasted like chicken but of larger proportions, he decided to rest a bit and leaned against the wall.
   A shock came over him as a door swung open behind him. He fell backwards down a flight of stairs. When he landed, he heard the door close well above his head. He recovered himself from the shock and realized that this would be the servant's halls. Having decided that the dancing upstairs would not become him well he walked further down the hall to find some peace and quiet, and maybe a person who could tell him where to find his cousin. There were several doors down the corridor, but as he tried each one he found that, they were all locked. As he neared the last door on the left, before the corridor took a right turn, he thought he heard a small thump. The sound seemed to come from either behind the door or somewhere further down the corridor, and it continued almost in a rhythmic beat.
   He pushed the handle on the door to find that it was not locked. Silently he opened the door and entered. Everywhere large pots were boiling over roaring fire, and the smell of delicious food tickled his nostrils. At the far end of the room, he saw a door that stood slightly ajar. His instinctive curiosity took the better of him, and he walked across the room towards the door. He opened the door, which easily swung open. A naked human body greeted him as he entered. It hung on a large meat hook and a cleaver had been casually left in the cavity where the man's liver should have been. Beyond the man, several others apparently had suffered the same fate, and it was then that Duncan realized what kind of meat he had eaten at the party.
   As hardened a veteran as Duncan was, this was too much for him. He turned around and ran out into the corridor again. As panic-stricken as he was, he couldn't make a conscious effort to find the right way out of this nightmare place. All he could do was to run, run as fast as he could. He ran as if all the fiends of the hells were after him, and when he absolutely was not able to run anymore he collapsed on the floor.
   When he came to everything was dark. The servants had probably found him and put him back in his bed, because he could feel the weight of the blankets all over him. Then he remembered the bodies. Everything surged back into his memory and he leapt out of bed. Or he tried at least. He found that he could not move, and now that he was painfully awake, he could feel that he was not lying down as much as hanging up side down. Suddenly the pressure on his legs increased and he was pushed further down in the dark. After he had been pushed a long way by what felt like convulsions in the tunnel he could finally make out a weak light at the end. Just before the final push, it dawned on him that he would fall from the roof of a strange looking room.
   In the dim light, he could make out the form of the room. It looked almost like a cave. There were no angles, only curves. The walls were made of some sort of rock, but it glistened purplish and had a texture much like flesh. As he went further into the room, he noticed grooves in the walls, grooves that almost seemed to pulsate like the arteries of his body. In the middle of the room there seemed to be a mess of ropes hanging from the ceiling and walls, all of them joining in a big knot. Perhaps he could even make out a face somewhere between the dangling ropes. A face that seemed distorted somehow, though not a sound was to be heard. It was the face of a young woman and the expression was one he had only been told of. It was an expression found only through extreme pain. A pain so deep and pure that a scream would not suffice to express it, nor would anything but death suffice to erase the memory of it.
   He decided to act, to save the woman. This would be a great deed for a noble knight such as himself. Looking at the knot, he realized that it was not mere ropes. They pulsated as drops of a viscose fluid flowed from the woman into them. They were much more like some hellish mockery of umbilical cords, sucking nourishment from a fetus instead of feeding it. They were sucking the life out of this woman. He tried to pull one of the strings away from her body and, surprisingly, it came off easily, willingly. A drop of the fluid fell on his hand and he let out a scream as the fluid sunk into his skin. It made no mark, but the pain was so pure, so numbingly intense that what the young woman experienced had to be beyond any mortal comprehension. Suddenly her mouth quivered and her eyes opened to look upon him through the iron-curtain of pain. Her mouth slowly formed the start of a word:
   "...sss...save yourself..." She said with a voice that bore the marks of an age of futile screams.
   "L...eave...me...I am empty..."
   "Never. It is a knight's duty to save a fair lady." He removed more of the cords, but then something touched his neck, caressed him and probed the quality of his flesh. One of the cords he had removed from the woman moved towards him. Another followed quickly and before long, they had attached themselves to him. With awakening horror, he understood that either he replaced the woman or he would have to leave her. There was no easy way out, he would have to choose.
   The tunnel he had found in the back of the room was as strange as the room had been. Its walls were slippery without any marks. Luckily, there was only one way forward. The tunnel made many confusing turns, and he was sure that had he been able to walk directly to the end he would have covered no more than half a mile. However, as it was now the winding tunnel was wearing him down. He was driven on by the gnawing sense of failure in the back of his mind. He could not go back now; the things back there were too terrible to ponder. He did not know what fate had befallen the young woman after he had decided to leave her. He knew he should have saved her. It was in his code of honor, but his courage had failed him at the final, crucial moment. These thoughts were interrupted by what he saw on the floor. A puddle of rotting semi-dissolved flesh. A patch of skin was floating in it, it still had eyes, eyes that begged him to flee just like the eyes of the woman he had abandoned.
   His feet had borne him to the end of the tunnel without any conscious thought. The tunnel let him out into the courtyard. Oh blissful happiness: his horse was there. It had a new saddle and looked as eager to leave as he felt. He let all doubts about leaving his gear go, mounted his horse and galloped out of the courtyard and left the castle. When they were a hundred yards from the gates, his horse stopped and turned around. The castle looked different now. The towers were withered, the stones of the walls no longer glistened and it all looked old.
   "Perhaps he wasn't a relative of mine after all." Duncan said and rode off into to the new and hopeful dawn. The horse merely revealed its teeth in a wicked grin.