The Blood Ring of Tytus: A Masters of the Universe Adventure

III - The Witch and the Skull

III

THE WITCH AND THE SKULL

THE corsairs of old who had been foolhardy enough to sail so far into the waters of the Sea of Blackness as to actually catch a glimpse of its infernal shores bequeathed to that accursed continent the only name that fit – the Shadow Lands. That name struck chords of purest terror in the hearts of even Eternia's bravest men, yet still managed to fall far short of the reality of the place.

The Shadow Lands seemed cursed from inception to be the ground, pillar, and capitol of all evil on Eternia. This was a realm already scarred and ruined, and blackened with char when the ancient race of the Snake Men arrived, bringing with them the foul Cult of Serpos, the oldest, blackest, and most wicked of the diverse brands of idolatry that had sprung up in the wake of the decline of the Old Pantheon. There, in the very heart of their evil continent, they labored for five generations of men to erect the monument to their demonic deity that, like a jagged shard of ebon obsidian, still stood, horrible in its magnificence, protruding obscenely into the crimson skies above:

Snake Mountain.

Shrouded in the mists of a sulfurous vapor and standing more than a mile high, Snake Mountain was no mountain at all, but a monstrous aggregation of spires, all piled, one upon another, each larger and more aggressively stacked than the last. And coiled tightly about the clustered spires and holding them in place like a fagot of sticks was the gigantic, masterfully realized stone idol of Serpos himself; his head perched atop the massive structure, surveying all of Eternia with contempt through his glittering ruby eyes; his great mouth agape, threatening the world with bared fangs of hardest, sharpest diamond. It was here in this monstrosity that was part temple, part city, and part fortress that the Snake Men committed the most darksome atrocities imaginable in service of the demon Serpos. The number of lives sacrificed to the snake-god was not and could not be reckoned. The magnitude of the horrors was testified to by no less vivid and grisly a witness than the churning, bubbling Sea of Blood that still pooled gruesomely at the base of the mountain.

In this, the grossest coagulation of horrors and hate and ugliness in a land comprised of naught but things horrible, hateful and ugly, there existed no reason whatever to expect even a morsel of comeliness... And yet, in a cavernous room deep within the bowels of Snake Mountain, stood the lone figure of a most achingly beautiful woman.

Not a lock of her hair was visible under the five-pointed, haloed diadem that sat magnificently on her lovely head. The diadem, like the tight-fitting bodice, partial gown and high-heeled boots beneath it, was of somber color – black with flashes of deep violet and dark blue. This made all the more striking the whiteness of the pale porcelain skin that shone from the woman's face, arms and thighs. The contours of her visage were delicate in their curves but most severe in their symmetry. Her full, glistening lips were painted a bluish black color, their dark, moist softness potent with glamour and sticky with sin. Her beauty was so extreme as to be intoxicating, but not unmarred by a faintly palpable toxicity. She was comely but unwholesome, and had about her the promise of ecstasies that could only be had at the cost of men's souls, like the deadliest venom coated in the sweetest honey. She would have had this dark stain upon her beauteous self even if the apex of her diadem were not adorned with the carved image of a leering skull.

Evil-Lyn's pale green eyes stared unblinkingly into the depths of the crystal ball atop her scepter. She had honed her skills in myriad black arts and magicks centuries before as high priestess of the Cult of the Death's Head. For sheer depth of wickedness, the Death's Head Cult was second only to the Worship of Serpos. Its adherents were men destroyed by life's sorrows, whose hearts had fallen into deepest despair. Evil-Lyn reigned over these pitiable wretches more as a queen – nay, a goddess – than as a high priestess. Nightly did she offer foul holocausts and wicked oblations to the ghastly crowned skull atop the altar of Temple Thanatox and, in return for her service, the fell demons of the darkest pits of Despondos rewarded Evil-Lyn with an increase of years far beyond her mortal expectancy and with the substantial beauties of her flesh intact. The hopeless fools who peopled her cult, however, received as recompense only the blackness of death itself, consumed by the grim entity to which they had debased themselves in worship.