In a nameless age, sometime after the birth of the first water molecule, wedged between civilizations of unspecified lineages, Goor the Undubbed journeyed westward. He was to meet his client before the sun touched the horizon’s rim.
His client was a secluded specimen, a reputable man of grace and regality, and said to be a known conjurer. His specialty was the conjuring of wind and air.
Goor had no knowledge of the conjurer’s location nor what it looked like. All that was known was the smattering of gold coins that were delivered to his feet by a single inhuman gust of wind on a calm afternoon. Imprinted on one of the coins was a message: OUT WEST, FOLLOW THE WIND, scrawled with charcoal. It ruined the coin.
His only guide was the wind, to which whenever he felt its push, he was to push against it, for they were undoubtedly sent his way by the conjurer himself. Goor was to do this until he could confidently pinpoint the old man’s location. He had been traveling for two hundred miles.
First, it was a broad mass of billows, inclined towards the West. Then it was a narrower set of sharp breezes through an otherwise deadened valley. After ceaseless bouts of reading the air, discerning wind from dust, Goor eventually tracked the gusts to what was likely their source, a massive uncaring pit in an unremarkable part of an empty terrain.
A thought of it all being a prank did prick at Goor’s head but ultimately buried by the fact that a prankster of such caliber, be them man or god, would be forsaking their own time as much as his. They might have more time and resources to spare than he could ever possess but all the more reason to seek them out. A monetary reward was promised and by sunset, Goor vowed that he would possess it one way or another, regardless of his fair client’s wishes. Just then, he could feel a shape beginning to form on his hand, a rune. It remained invisible whenever he was not called for a mission. Here it was now, glowing faintly in his right hand. He was getting close.
Resting his mount on the edge of the pit, Goor gazed downward and examined its curious content: a cluttered bundle of spires that if one were to squint, could be reasonably deemed a stronghold. It was an abandoned ruin that had either sunk into the earth or was swept down here by a celestial hand that grew embarrassed at its continued existence.
At the very heart of the ruins stood the tallest spire, the one with the sharpest head. Encircling it was a gray staircase, several of its steps missing but nevertheless forming a path to a door: a slab of brownish wood, nailed to a crumbling stone cylinder that used to be called a tower. On the rim of its faded tile roof, Goor spied the old man, absent-mindedly kicking his feet in the air, his scepter kept close at his side. It would only take a few zig-zagging trips along the shorter spires to reach him. Goor’s three-legged mount: his loyal tripede, stayed behind, feeding on the sand with its non-mouth. He slid down the steep incline, watching as the ruins ate away the clear sky and all that enveloped him was a labyrinth of stairways, twisting, toiling and spiraling around the structures like a senile snake.
During his trek to the ruins’ center, a high vantage point was his top priority. On no occasion shall he compromise it. His aim was going up and so he took the stairway that went up. If it did him the disservice of going down, he would simply leap to the nearest stairway, known for going up. All of them were thankfully accommodating of his weight.
The rooms, the arches, the granite – all of them were terribly old. As far as he could tell, this place used to belong to an ancient lineage of royals whom he couldn’t recognize and was only theorizing about to pass the time and so he perished the thought.
Eventually, he reached the conjurer’s tower with only one staircase between him and the old man. He made his remaining ascent swiftly. The rune was now pulsating uncomfortably on his hand like an ill-placed organ and Goor had made it a habit to not acknowledge it.
Then he felt something squelched underneath him. He lifted his foot and in great bewilderment, drew a step back at the sight of two hands with a vomit hue splayed on the stone step. He glanced up to find a pair of arms, stretched beyond human recognition, occupying the ascending steps leading to the landing above. Standing aloft on the landing, a dozen paces away from where he needed to be, was a beast of some kind. It was a kind that Goor was not at all familiar with: a greenish bipedal animal with stumpy legs and with what he could only assume to be a long tail with protruding bones. He couldn’t get a good look at it. Its most striking feature was its lack of mouth. Below its demonic snout was instead a faint fleshly trace of stitches.
“Halt,” the beast uttered, “Who goes there?” The sound was clearly not from its stitched mouth. Perhaps from an orifice that Goor had no view nor knowledge of.
“Out of my way creature,” Goor commanded, “I am only here for the conjurer. I have no business with you.”
“Ah,” it responded, “You wished council with the old fool, eh? Whatever for? If it is wind you seek, might I suggest a fall from this height? You would have plenty of wind on your way down.” The beast guffawed at its own voice. Goor stood with a grimace. The manner in which it swayed and shuffled alone caused great visual pain to his eyes.
“Tis a joke, man,” it said. He didn’t respond.
“That old bag never roamed these steps, you know?” It continued, “After a long day of wandering beyond this hole, he would return here, the grounds on which I prowl. He would leap from roof to roof until he reached his private studies at the top, barred by that hideous door. For so long, I could not hope to catch him, you see.”
“I neither care or sympathize,” Goor said, “Move out of my way.”
“No,” it said.
“What did you say?”
“I, for one, would like to move down. Why don’t you move, hm?”
Goor murmured a chain of insults as he stepped aside for it to walk past, his back to the wall. The beast instead did not move and laughed some more.
“You truly are a lap dog, aren’t you? Taking orders from a stranger,” it said, “You should be ashamed of yourself. Stand ashamed! Stand ashamed!” It laughed again before performing an odd little jig to itself. Goor felt an indescribable emotion that rendered him speechless.
“In fact, for showing me such a pathetic display, I believe I am now too stunned to go anywhere else. I now declare that I shall formally stand here and there is nothing you can do to stop me.” Then it tittered. It tittered at him. Then it spoke again before he could even absorb every word.
“I was actually planning to devour you but you proved to be too sad to even be a prey. So why don’t you turn around and leave? Rethink your life’s trajectory, perhaps?”
In all his years of slaying countless enemies, Goor had never felt hatred at such an unfathomable frequency that it looped back to becoming the most ecstatic, jubilant sensation that had ever made contact with his dour heart. A rigorous and nigh-sensual state of mind that neither forgiveness or wisdom could ever hope to achieve. With great fury, Goor grabbed ahold of the beast’s fingers resting on the step, and snapped them, tearing them off of their bony hinges. Flesh lumps and nuggets littered the granite. The beast stopped laughing. Goor leapt to the landing with inhumane momentum and unleashing a long-buried war cry, proceeded to rend his opponent into pieces with his hands. When it was done, Goor could only stand still, shivering with lingering delight. And then the sensation was gone and his heart returned to its usual frequency.
It was then, with renewed awareness, did Goor notice that the chunks of his foe were moving in tandem, collectively flying off the stairway like a swarm of insects, congregating around an invisible point a few feet below him. With efficient ease, the pieces were quick to attach to one another, reformulating the exact visage that he had torn asunder mere seconds ago. The beast had regenerated and before Goor could even respond, had latched its long arms around his waist, intending to drag him down with it. Instinctively, Goor had his burning fingers clamped on the ledge.
“Pity,” the beast’s voice boomed, “I find your bloodlust most wanting. But of course, you could’ve reduced me to a single drop of blood and I would still be alive and well.”
Goor’s palms were loosening from the stone and breaking his vow to not look down, he came face to face with the beast. Its trail of stitches was gone. In its place, an impossibly enormous maw stretched and stretched, overtaking the whole frame of the creature itself and eventually, all that was in its immediate vicinity. From the sheer scale of its mouth, Goor expected a long winding chimney to the very pit of its stomach. However, what he didn’t expect to see was an abyss – not a gullet that was heavily shadowed by its arching lips but a genuine absence of light, steadily encroaching on its prey. By this point, the idea of there being a physical owner behind that black pit had ceased to be in Goor’s mind. Directly below him was an isolated rift in reality, giving way to a starless space to which no manner of sentience could escape it. With a single slip of his sweaty fingers and one garbled rattle, Goor fell and was claimed by eternity.
He fell until he felt like he was suspended in place. All around him was a perfect absence. A complete enrapture of darkness. He couldn’t see his own body. To prove that he was alive, he willed his hypothetical legs to bend and straighten. As they were made of aging metal, he would naturally hear a subtle creak or a whinge as he always did when he woke in the morning. He heard nothing.
The only clue to testify that he still existed was the lingering ashy grains of granite on his fingers. He rubbed them all over his bare arms, his elbows, his knuckles and his wrists to reclaim their texture. As a result, he felt just a little more tangible. After a while, however, the sensation had worn thin and he was once again tuned toward oblivion.
Goor made it his mission to think. He dreamt of vistas that so often accompanied him on his journeys that he never took the time to indulge in their beauty, of stiff beds in roadside inns that he imagined to be cozier than they were, of life-spanning prophecies in which he had failed to fulfill, of his own inability to keep thinking of more things to think about.
Then he felt a burn lashed against his back. And he found himself back on the staircase, a dozen paces away from the landing, his head resting between the hard uneven steps.
He sprang to his feet and took in his surroundings. The world was as it was before. Every whine and mewl of his old metal hips could be heard as his body whirled back and forth, his arms rearing for a grapple, his eyes in a state of manic frenzy, searching for his gaping assailant. There were no signs of any creature from anywhere and Goor was thus left with pools of unchanneled violence in his impotent muscles. Such impotence would soon be peppered with twinges of doubt as to what he was doing here in the first place, an apocalyptic fear that everything he had lived up to this point was all in service of some all-consuming dark to which he could neither punch or even wade himself out of. The blasted monster may be gone but he could feel its essence ever so slightly from his surroundings, gently goading him into keeping his eyes open or risk finding himself floating once more. The conjurer was still there on the roof, gazing at the impending evening.
Steadily, Goor climbed the steps until he reached the door. The conjurer leapt down to greet him.
“A tad late, are we?” He spoke, his voice marinated with ash and smoke.
“Is it this door?” Goor asked.
“Of course,” the conjurer answered.
“Alright,” Goor said before he placed his hand on the door handle. The rune on his hand glowed and the door clicked.
“It’s unlocked now,” Goor said.
“Thank you,” the conjurer dropped a bag of coins onto Goor’s glowing hand before heading inside. He picked up a small key from his kitchen table and vowed (to no one) that he would never leave his house again without double-checking that his house key was in his pocket.
“You have a good day, now,” he said and closed the door.
Goor stood there for a while, counted his coins and left.