Follow the lights

You find your feet beneath you and stand. It’s still cold but, curiously, you don’t notice it as much anymore. Some part of you guides your hand to the boat and draws the Saint’s sword from the bottom before your feet take you deeper into the cave.

You follow the dancing lights with your eyes as you walk, utterly entranced. They’re beautiful. You’ve never seen anything more so. They’re like the candles in the great hall during winter’s feast. The thought sends a wave of nostalgic warmth through you. A smile spreads across your face. It’s wonderful. It feels so good. You’re so glad you’re walking towards them. The glow is so warm. So pretty.

The light sways before you, fascinating, drawing you on. There’s something behind it now. It’s a little hard to focus on it. It’s not that important anyway.

“Closer little one,” a voice says, its every word a tingle in your mind. You smile and reach out for the dangling light. Your eyes fix on your hand. What’s in your hand? The sword of the saint touches the dangling light. Wrath like fire burns, the sword exploding with holy power. There’s a scream like claws scrabbling on stone. For an instant your mind is free. Your eyes widen as far as they’ll go when you see what lurked at the edge of the light.

A rubbery mass of flesh, faintly translucent, fills a whole corner of the cavern. It’s so obscenely massive you doubt it can even move from its place. It looks to be half teeth and lipless mouth, squatting in a corner. Huge webbed hands and feet clutch the stones, each digit ending in a rounded nub of flesh. Bulbous eyes stare out with black pupils that swim in the whites. The motes of light dangle from fleshy strands like a fisherman’s pole which grows from its head like the spikes of a crown, swaying through the air in slow bobbing motions about its hideous face.

You suck in a breath when you see Glenda. The elf’s eyes are lidded and distant. She is clinging to the wretched thing’s rubbery flesh with a look of utter bliss. The…thing! holds her against it with one webbed hand, its long fingers splayed across her back and legs, one of the obscenely long digits pressed between the cleft of her ass cheeks, slowly moving in and out. In response to the teasing Glenda grinds against the thing, moaning faintly.

At once you fall to a battle’s stance, gripping the sword with both hands and leveling it at the creature. The things burbles deep in its throat, a wet, smacking sound from behind its needle teeth. It moves its head in a sudden shake sending the globes of light prancing through the air. You find yourself caught in their motions. Your sword drops an inch as you watch them.

“You do not need to fight,” a voice says in your mind. “You don’t really want to. It’s cold out in the world. Why be cold when you can be warm? It wouldn’t be so bad,” the voice soothes, sending your nerves tingling. “Glenda looks happy. It wouldn’t be so bad to come closer. To get just a little closer.” The voice whispers, seductive in that way exhaustion can be, deadening your nerves, making it easier to give than fight on, a voice of the inevitable. You find yourself focusing on it, and realize the voice is your own.

“It wouldn’t be so bad,” the motes seem to sing in a chorus of your voice, tingling and laughing in blissful delight. “Come closer. Just a little closer. Put down the sword and come closer.”

Your sword drops another inch. The thing behind the lights has faded somewhat into something vague and unimportant. If you only take a few steps closer you’ll be close enough. Close enough. Close enough…for what?