A Demon's Tale

Chapter Four - Part I

- Transcendence -

A flower; ash-like petals glowing red and swirling together like flames.

It stood out peculiarly and elegantly in the middle of an open area, untouched by the other viler plants. I walked over to it to examine it. I kneeled down next to it. And right I was, it looked just like a rose with thorns and petals, but black in the middle, glowing with a red ember out towards the edges. Before I had time to reflect on it, I discovered another one a bit further ahead. I got up and walked over to it, but before I could examine it, I saw three new ones even further up ahead. They seemed to grow in a line meandering around the trees up the slope.

As I examined the discrepant environment, I noticed that my amulet was moving in a strange manner. It dangled back and forth as if it was being disturbed by some sort of magnetic field pulling it towards it. It moved in the direction of the roses. I followed the roses as I discovered more and more, and the further I got the clearer the pathway got. I came to a somewhat bigger root formation that had pulled up rocks and smaller threads of roots, moss, and dirt that were now blocking my way. As if the terrain was directing me, telling me to stay away, telling me it was the wrong way. 

I followed it along to come around. More and more the amulet started pulling towards a certain direction and the blue glow was getting brighter. Then I discovered what seemed to be steps followed by a walk of stone slabs. It meandered uphill a bit along a tree and the landscape made an elevation like a direct chute. The slabs were placed as if by design, yet in a strange way blending in with the chaotic nature, and every here and there, small red roses grew along the way, one had even managed to penetrate one of the stone plates. 

I carried on up the steps and onto the walk of stone plates. Even though I had no idea where it would take me it felt good to be walking on some form of a trail leading somewhere in the hopes of finding something. The walk led on through the forest, visited by small trees along the way reaching their branches out like claws. For some reason, I got a strange sense of recognition. As if I had been there before. Like a de' ja vu. I shook my head, there was no such thing. I carried on walking and more and more the feeling grew and for every step, it got more and more clear. Then the path straightened up and headed straight into what looked like a dead end. The trail got consumed by high fern-like vegetation and brushwood right between two trees overgrown with thicket. 

I stopped and examined my way upfront. My amulet was no longer dangling, it was now standing out from my chest, pointing straight towards the thicket. As I got closer, it looked like there was something behind the thicket and branches. I felt the necklace pull from the back of my neck. I grabbed ahold of the branches and began pushing myself through to the other side. And as the thorns and twigs let go of me, I was met with an extraordinary sight...

Before my eyes, a great enclosure opened up. The ground was filled with hundreds of luminous roses, black among red ones, glowing like embers within ash, covering the whole area. They lit up the ground like a bed of burning coal. It was like a garden overgrown with thorn-bushes and all kinds of different flowers, plants, and trees in bloom, with colors of such high contrast, everything seemed illuminating.

Odd objects that looked like metal or clay were scattered around. As if spears with horizontal spears like ribs had been raised and decorated with scrap-metal, craniums, and other weird things forming symbolic sculptures. There seemed to be bones sticking up from the ground and strange slabs like tombstones. Greenish-blue crystal-like objects were hanging as if from strings in the trees below the branches. White glowing stripes and symbols on the trees seemed to dazzle and move around.