Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon

expressing ideas and words that he had no knowledge of, but which he knew were crushingly true.
    Afterwards, it was the sounds that Zahariel feared the most.
    The ordinary sounds of the forest at night, noises that he had heard more than a thousand times in the past, were louder and more threatening than any sounds he had heard before. At times, he heard sounds he swore were the work of raptors, bears or even the much-feared Calibanite lion.
    The crack of every twig, every rustle of the leaves, every call and scream of the night: all these things sounded heavy with menace. Death lurked just behind him or at his elbow, and he wanted to run, to give up the ordeal. He wanted to go back to the settlement where he was born, to his friends and family, to his mother’s soothing words, to the warm place by the hearth. He wanted to give up on the Order. He wanted to forgo his knightly pretensions.
    He was seven years of age and he wanted to go home.
    As horrible and unearthly as the noises had been, it was the voices that were the worst part of the ordeal, the most loathsome invention of his nightmare.
    Between the roars and the snap of branches, a million susurrations emerged from the forest like a cabal of whispering voices. Whether anyone else could hear them, Zahariel did not know, for no one else reacted to the sounds that invaded his skull with promises of power, of flesh, of immortality.
    All could be his, if he would step from the snow-covered esplanade before the fortress and walk into the forest. Without the presence of the guards, Zahariel felt able to turn his head and look towards the tangled, vine choked edge of the forest.
    Though forests carpeted much of the surface of Caliban and his entire existence had been spent within sight of tall trees and swaying green canopies, this forest was unlike anything he had seen before. The trunks of the trees were leprous and green, their bark rotten and diseased. Darkness that was blacker than the deepest night lurked between them, and though the voices promised him that all would be well if he stepped into the forest, he knew that terrors undreamt of and nightmares beyond reckoning dwelt beneath its haunted arbours.
    As ridiculous as it seemed to Zahariel, he knew that this dream-shaped forest was no natural phenomenon, a region so unnatural that it existed beyond the mortal world, shaped by its dreams and nightmares, stirred by its desires and fears.
    What lurked within its depths was beyond fear and reason, madness and elemental power that seethed and roared in concert with the heaving tides of men and their dreadful lives.
    And yet…
    For all its dark, twisting, horrid power, there was an undeniable attraction.
    Power, no matter its source, could always be mastered, couldn’t it? Elemental energies could be harnessed and made to serve the will of one with the strength of purpose to master its complexities.
    The things that could be achieved with such power were limitless. The great beasts could be hunted to extinction and the other knightly brotherhoods brought to heel. All of Caliban would become the domain of the Order, and all would obey its masters or die by the swords of its terrible black angels of death.
    The thought made him smile as he thought of the glories to be won on the fields of battle. He pictured the slaughter and the debaucheries that would follow, the carrion birds and worms feasting, and the capering madmen that made merry in the ruin of a world.
    Zahariel cried out, the vision faded from his mind and he heard the voices for what they were: the whisper in the gloom, the hinting tone, the haunting laugh and the jealous vipers that cracked the panels of tombs and composed the platitudes of his epitaph.
    Even unmasked, the tempters of the dark realm of the wood would not leave him, and their blandishments continued to plague him throughout the night, until his feet were ready to carry him to willing damnation in the darkness.
    In the end, as it always was, it