Journey To Xzorath JOURNEY TO XZORATH In a bizarre infinity, a Shaman spends His tainted, black-night seed To then commune with Xzorath Beginning with a scream The Pactow Wizard chanted black incantations to three full, golden-globe moons in a tongue already old when Maxpan itself was born. As he chanted, he climbed, clinging perilously to a stone cliff-face 800 feet above a bed of jagged rock. Dark-jade night-clouds occasionally eclipsed the cold, reflecting orbs, forcing the Shaman to pause until light returned. The palely illuminated stone, with it�s hellishly smooth surface, was testing even Sakar-Zeg, most powerful of the Pactow juju men. His lithe, lean, well-muscled form quivered with exertion as he steadily, carefully rose, and he knew without the enchanted potion he had consumed earlier, the climb would have surpassed his physical limits. �No mere mortal could survive here.� he thought, still unacquainted with Kore�s prowess. And from the ground Sakar scarce looked human, purple toga and like-hued skull-like cap lending a distinctly arachnid aspect, like some monstrous, four-legged spider. Now the jutting tip of the final crag marked the last, seemingly insurmountable obstacle of the mad, 1,000 foot ascent. He hung precariously below it by his fingertips, weighing the task at hand. He quickly concluded it was physically impossible to traverse the six feet of angled rock barring his path. �Fortunately, there are avenues beyond physicality.� No sooner was thought memory, than he began systematically closing his senses to standard reality; first, hearing�then smell�taste�vision�and finally, touch. DEEP he retreated into the labyrinth of the mind, opening doors which led to other planes�and communion with a dark, terrible God. �Xzorath yar sexuth anum matar.�, he hoarsely began, �Xzorath yar sexuth anum matar!� louder now, and higher pitched. Again and again he repeated the chant, voice growing progressively shriller until a tortured, high-pitched shriek ended the blasphemous spell. The Shaman felt/sensed/saw a silver door, gleaming with dazzling, self-generated light in the liquid-black infinity inside his head. As he moved toward the portal it opened, and he BECAME an ebon-wave flowing through into�MADNESS! Sakar became one with an infinity of filth/perversion/decay, encompassing the TOTALITY of it in his SOUL, and shuddering not. After an interminable time, during which he conversed with the living embodiment of disease, the silver door suddenly re-appeared, and again Sakar was liquid jet, splashing forth as a wave of night where�he now stood atop the cliff, facing the precipice and staring at the three full-moons in rapt fascination. Exactly how he arrived, NO-ONE could truly say. Absently, Sakar noted the night-orbs usually golden color now seemed a putrid, sickly yellow. Then his glazed gaze shifted, obliquely downward drifted, to the entrance of an underground cave, which lay between his feet and the grag�s jutting tip. Around the portal, carved in natural rock, were the blackest of perverse images; inhuman tortures, human sacrifices, sexual perversions, blasphemes beyond description�all cunningly wrought, as by genius destroying itself in a vortex of demonic lusts. Still Sakar shuddered not, for he was cold, frozen to normal human compassion. Far on the dark road had he already traveled; through timeless orgies and dark conclaves with gibbering, alien creatures in warped, distorted universes�gaining ghastly powers while growing forever apart by tasting the forbidden fruit of other planes. Without hesitation, the Wizard slipped through the opening, fear a mad monkey he learned to cage a long time ago. He descended on wide stairs, in a square-cut tunnel, both of which were cut out of solid, semi-precious stone. The jade quartz reflected opaque, greenish light which radiated from great, rounded, luminous jade gemstones set at intervals in the stone ceiling. Almost immediately, the Shaman felt a hot, incessant breeze blowing fetid in his face. Like the entranceway, the walls were worked with the most sordid of friezes. Eagerly past them went Zeg, drawn inexorably deeper by his own insane obsessions. Closer, closer, closer�to attaining great power while committing ultimate sin. The stairway abruptly ended, giving way to a small, circular room, still hewn from the same underground boulder. Again luminous-green jewels lent errie illumination to the tableau. Scanning his surroundings, Sakar immediately located the source of the incessant, burning-breeze which blew through chamber and tunnel; a large, perfectly round crawl-space, cut from the rounded wall, directly across from the stairwell. Between Wizard and opening, protruding seamlessly from the center floor, lay a small, square-cut altar. It�s sides were etched with further blasphemes from the same demonic-possessed genius as before, and a small, polished-sable square marked it�s center, contrasting with the main-stone. The jet-black square was so perfectly joined with the rock it seemed it had always been there. A small, round bowl, about the size of a songbirds egg, was centered therein. The thin tracing of some rough, verdant-hued, fluorescent material delineated the circumference of the depression, which itself was a part of the black square. The Shaman stepped to the carved table, left hand slipping into a fold at the hip of his silky, loose raiment. From the pocket he pulled a small, pewter urn, and a clear vial in which blood-red powder was visible. Setting the dull, silverish container on the green-granite, he quickly but carefully emptied the contents of the vial into it. �Now� thought Sakar, �comes the MEETING.� Dropping to his knees, the Dark One began expertly drawing strange, arcane glyphs in the hellish air, one with each of the fingers of his left hand. The crimson powder, which consisted of the dried blood of a tortured, Mentarean Princess and certain extra-dimensional herbs, suddenly burst into hellish-green flame. Sakar raised his arms above him, crossed at the wrists in supplication and began bowing and chanting. He had spent years and risked much tracking down the slow, sensual spell which now contorted his classic Pactow features in ecstasy as it opened the seal to the realm of Xzorath. �Xzorath yar humn posum domo pan� he breathfully intoned, �Blod yar humn domo pan, dommun Xzorath spewmun elixit panum bestar, yar nenay�Xzorath!� Zeg�s left hand slipped through an open fold in his robe to grasp his sex as he continued, in a sibilant voice racked with emotion, �Simk salxest samar, exems simkus samar, sepent samar�Xzorath!� As the incarnation abruptly ended a jade mist, flecked with scintillate bursts of scarlet, began filling the green-rock niche. Simultaneously, a smell of fresh slaughter permeated the air. From his knees the Sorcerer fell unconscious to the floor, overcome by violent, unrelenting vertigo and more. Then the smoke began to quickly clear, crimson wisps disappearing like blood in clear water. Sakar-Zeg awoke with a start from a short, nightmare-haunted sleep. He was on his side, in a fetal position and completely disoriented. Rising with some difficulty to his knees, he surveyed new and terrible surroundings. Finally, the jaded Wizard blanched. For unlike the other distorted places he had been, THIS WAS HORROR MAN�S SENSES WERE NEVER INTENDED TO WITNESS! The very substance and geometry of the place was literally incomprehensible and Zeg recoiled, shaken by the maddening effect. With Herculean-effort and steel-like will, the Necromancer focused both inward and out, seeking a clue to the link he knew MUST be there. His trained mind sensed an altar, or what MIGHT be altar, so incomprehensible was it�s nature. Deliberately diffusing his eyes, he scanned the spot where he thought the (altar?) should be. Slowly his vision re-focused and in it THERE WAS A FAMILIAR SHAPE! The same black, polished-stone square which was centered in the rock niche he so recently departed. Instinctively, the Dark Traveler knew the sable stone to be the link. A sudden awareness of the hellish, unremitting breeze which had followed him or always been here (and there) brought thought, �There are worlds within worlds, within worlds, within worlds, without ending, without�� Sakar deliberately ended his brief reverie, calling upon his twisted genius to again transcend physical law. Still on his knees, the mad Shaman took a thin, razor-edged dagger from his sash and sliced deep into his left wrist, slitting flesh and causing blood to well and drip from the gaping wound. Standing, he squeezed his fist until claret flowed into the tiny, jade-rimmed bowl of the familiar, jet square, filling it. Then, with the lascivious caress of the unbearably hot wind singing sensitive skin, he quickly stripped and began detachedly masturbating. In a few minutes he was able to ejaculate a small amount of sperm-chunked semen into the blood-chalice before spending the rest on the maddening, alien (floor?). The final leg of a long, dark journey was now at hand. Again Sakar-Zeg retreated, via imagination, to the liquid-black infinity of his essence. There, he became/was/is a solid black ball, falling through a shining-silver door which lay below him, descending deep, deeper, deepest into the pressure-filled depths of an ebon ocean. The enormous compression crushed him/the ball incessantly, rendering a tighter, denser mass, which dropped through a second silver door now gleaming bright and beckoning below, then� Sakar re-entered the physical�on a trackless, glowing-green beach, before an ocean of warm, thick blood, it�s salt-smell overpowering. The visible sky was a jade vault, with no apparent light-source or ending. Out in the distance, luminous giants were swimming silvery in hot claret. Now and then one of the gorgeously glowing monsters would leap free of the viscous, red ocean, revealing it�s gleaming, rounded body and squirming tail which were huge even at distance. Zeg recognized his own sperm, romping in his own blood, and thought, �Perspective is everything..�. For a long moment he stood frozen, transfixed by the disturbing beauty of the scene. Gradually he became aware one of the frolicking multitude was now swimming toward him, closing vast distance effortlessly. Closer and closer it came, looming larger, and LARGER, AND LARGER, until�the Shaman finally realized how far away the glowing seed of his blasphemous loins had been. Blood splashed sensuously against Sakar�s feet, then knees, then hips as the huge sperm swam close, displacing tons of liquid before it. The true immensity of the creature was finally apparent. It towered over the Juju Man, head wide as a castle and taller than a tree. The close-gleam of translucent flesh was blinding, and a horrific, malefic visage was vaguely visible on it�s apparent face. Sakar was then subjected to a cruel, lascivious voice forcing itself violently into his mind-soul matrix . And as the bleak, horrific thoughts of Xzorath himself directly seeped, like putrid slime, through his mind, the once-fearless Shaman screamed, and screamed again�
Copyright © 1990 Steven K. Mitchell |