A Journey of Dreamers {Part I.}

The spires rise
Out of a pool of frozen fires
They beckon
Violent luminescence
Pulsing in the darkness.

The spires are conical
Like the hats of wizards
They glow with the lights of the wandering souls
That dwell within their many darkened chambers
Around the spires
A circling of planets
And strange hollow stones
Celtic stones
Covered in runes
Embedded in the core of each
A heart
All different in feature
But all together in symbiosis
The revolving of pure thoughts and ideals.

Deep within the forgotten dimension
Three old travelers
Make their way through the abyss
Towards the spire
Drifting slowly through the smoke
Silent
Their eyes set ahead
To the task at hand
None of them speak
They all know
That a single word could shatter everything
And break this fragile world of shadows
Into dust.

Slowly, slowly, they now ascend
A staircase of ashen stone
As all around them wax drips slowly
Down the sides of the ancient volcano
Inside of which you can make out
The carcasses of alien creatures
Those who were caught in the dawn’s rage.

At the top of the flight they come and behold
The spires afloat
In all their glory
And the icy fires beneath
Where the skeletons slave away.

The old mages come forward and come together
They know they are dreaming
But they don't care.

Each clutches the gnarled hand of the one beside him
And, slowly, they rise
With eyes clenched shut
They float through the fog
To the spire’s doorway.

Then the man with the mechanical spectacles
Of clockwork bronze and spider-web metal
Walks forward and from his cloak
Pulls out the strangest sort of contraption
A little hollow sphere
Fashioned out of the bones of Crows
Out of it he pulls
A growing sprout
Careworn
And tattered
But beautiful
It grows into a venus fly trap
That opens its great maw
And projects the ghostly images
Of all the keys in the universe
They revolve and revolve
Like the planets and stones
Every single key
Leaving a trail of phantasmagoria its wake.

And then,
After a moment of thought
The old man reaches in to the projection
And opens his hand
Waits
And suddenly clenches it shut
Brings out a small key
Of silver tones
That rings faintly with the music
Of the spheres
And he inserts it into the keyhole
Of the weathered old door.

It opens

And the man with the matchstick fingers
Whose eyes are dark as midnight
Leads the way
He runs each finger
Across the cold stone of the pillars
Ignites them
One by one
And the shadows hide in the corners
Obscuring their secrets
The wise men continue
Through the twisted halls
The silence has departed
Now, in its place
The whispers of the dwellers
The faint sliding of masks
Of wood and bronze
And strange vibrations
Somewhere in the distance
The moan of a crow
The scream of a little girl
And many dying voids.

The mages know
It is all an illusion
But sweat pools upon their foreheads
To hear such agony.

Yet still they continue

(TO BE CONTINUED...)