Hallways

Hallways

Long I have wandered the beautiful corridors here,
and often do they shine with this brilliant light.
It radiates out from these crystalline walls,
seemingly of its own volition. Sometimes though,
it leaves, vanishes, usually seeming stolen from me.

In that blackness, with the light absent, my home
is no longer a beautiful place. It is a horrible existence,
haunted by ghosts of the past and demons of doubt.
Also is that darkness stalked by beasts. Created,
like the ghosts and demons, by my self-imposed torment.

In my wanderings I have had many companions.
Some have been beautiful shining beings;
others dark and twisted, with insights to the darkness
that frequents the deep bowels of my home.
Most though, like myself, are amorphous; shifting
always between darkness and light, beauty and horror.

One is always there with me, even if only a specter
sometimes. My dearest friend and advisor. Glowing,
but not a blindingly brilliant shine. This one
has been with me to every room that I have entered.
Some rooms that even I have not visited has she explored.

All of my shining celestial companions have hidden
a darkness in themselves from me. Just as all of those
strange and twisted spawn of darkness have buried
a brilliant light so deep that it never shines. I find it sad,
to watch them repress their second part. Their balance.

Of late I have had a companion in my wanderings,
so brilliant I cannot bear to watch her sometimes.
Long have I known her, but rarely has she visited
before now. Her presence is a joy to me, and often
do we laugh together, or walk in quiet contentment.

Ever still is my advisor there, though never does she speak
to the iridescent being who walks with us. She is a specter
more often now than ever, and she is beginning to see
her darkness. I am sorry that my preoccupation with my
new companion has kept me from affording her aid.

I have seen not my beautiful companion for a time now.
It has truly been little time without her, but time has stretched
where she is involved. Upon her return I have discovered
that she is leaving. Once again shall she rarely, if ever, walk
with me through these halls. The light is dimming.

I turn to my advisor and friend for help, but she grapples
with her own darkness, increasingly obvious, and to burden her
further would be a crime. It seems the light will vanish once more.
And now am I stricken with fear, for the first glimpses of demons
and wights are to be soon found. There comes a stirring from the deeps.

A beast has awakened to stalk the halls of this place again.
I wonder which beast shall turn my sanctuary to a prison?
Shall it be the sly and quiet lurker? Easily ignored but never controlled.
Or shall it be the great and loud wyrm? Whose size is never constant.
Perhaps the one called green from which I have run, never confronted.
Or worst the false forerunner of light, that which seems my friend
yet ever whispers lies to me, that which I have tried to eliminate.

It is that who others have always called green.
I have never understood that it should be called green.
Why not red? Loud, angry, and obvious.
Or white? Fearful, slipping always between the cracks in my defense.
I have always seen it as gray. Ashen and sickly. Quiet. Sad.

And now that beast follows me, through these dark
twisted tunnels. Once so brightly lit, now despairing.
Always before have I outlasted it, or hidden until
the light returned and banished the beast back to its pit.
A pit that resides in the deepest part of the dark bowels of this place.

It has grown though, since last it rose. It has fed
on my excess joy. It has absorbed the doubts I ignored
in her presence, invited them to join in its being, to mock me.
I fear that it shall block the light, with its new found power,
keep that which it fears from returning on its own. Perhaps
the one who stole from me that beautiful luminescence could
return, and banish the beast back to its home, and return the light.

That return seems unlikely though, so I fear that I may have
to confront the beast this time, lest the light remain absent
and the beast thrive on my despair. Long it is dark, and more things
haunt this place. The other beasts may rise, or at least some.
So it seems I must face the beast, one of the Seven, though that
least thought of. Here in the twisted corridors, without the soft, warm light.

My advisor is here with me, and she is somehow stronger for all
her new found self doubt. She hides with me now, in the room
we frequent most often and we speak softly of our troubles. Ghosts
glide through this room un-noticing, and demons pass the door by.
The beast hunts through the lower levels as of now, searching for allies,
destroying those few glowing things of my own creation that remain,
without the light. And I am counseled not to go looking for it.

I have thought of what would happen should I face the beast,
for to draw my weapon and charge it, would strengthen it should I fail.
And to go in search of allies would leave me open to its attacks.
I have seen another of the beast roaming the halls, devouring everything
in its path, completely impartial. It is the wyrm, and it cares not whether
it devours demon or sprite. It is small at present but should it grow it
could fight the greater beast. Though it may also turn on me.

For the wyrm is also one of the Seven and could well destroy
its cousin. And I know that it can be controlled, for like the lurker
it will appear even during the light, and often have I pitted those
two against each other. For the lurker is the one which is the greatest
danger to me, and should it ever join with the chromatic beast I
shall be soon forgotten. As it is the lurker prefers solitude. So I hope
that it remain solitary, for even at its greatest the wyrm would not prevail.

So for now I take the counsel of my dearest friend, and wait.
I shall slowly and carefully feed the wyrm in hopes
that I may need not use it in this terrible darkness. I must
control it now though, while it is small, that I might control
it while it is large. For it could as easily destroy me as my enemy.
And so I reside in this room at this moment, watching for both
the liar and the lurker; sadly remembering my shining companion.