Imperial Literature

Grotesque was aptly named. His flesh was an unhealthy shade that resembled wax, or the putrefaction of death. Bone hooks jutted from his back and gangly limbs, punched through his skin as crude jewelry. His back was exaggeratedly hunched, and his eyes—small, beady things—seemed almost luminescent.

It was almost time, now. The light-moon was gone tonight, he knew. But it was almost time that the dark-moon, the strong-moon, was to rise up. This was the night of purification. The Great One had promised a feast beyond compare.

Well, no. The Great One intended to feast beyond compare, was the truth. But his emissary, the man-of-death, he had promised that the bevy of scraps remaining would be all for Grotesque and his brethren. There was nothing in all the world that could stand in the Great One’s way, either, and so this promise of meat was one that was sure to be fulfilled. Grotesque and his like kept out of the Great One’s way as much as possible—at least, they did so after several of them had graced His teeth.

There! There was the first finger of the green light of Morrslieb on the horizon.

He and his kin kept onward through the forest. Woodsmoke drifted faintly on the air, though it was only Grotesque’s bestial sense of smell that let him detect it. It fired his imagination to higher imaginations of the desecrations they would enact, and the marrow that they would suck from splintered bones…

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