Anon it came to pass in the final days of King Arthur, that Sir Gilead, the evil knight, did return to Britain, for he had heard rumor of the great strife and despite taking place there. He rode a wallop across the countryside, seeking his king that he might undo all that he had done. When he arrived upon the field of Camlann, the battle had already begun. And when Gilead rode unto the field of Camlann he was disguised, in order to hide his shame, and so each knight assumed Gilead was his enemy and justed to him with passing wroth. Sir Gilead fought greatly and would have won great worship had not he fought in disguise that day, for he smote on the left and on the right, and brought down many knights with his spear.
By adventure, Sir Gilead was unhorsed. And with his shield in the one hand and his sword in the other, Sir Gilead did great deeds of arms as he continued forward and onward unto the fray. Foot-hot and sore fatigued, Sir Gilead sought only one end: to find Arthur his sworn liege and make good what had been evil.
Anon, as Sir Gilead walked through blood and gristle, he saw him. Upon a hill, amidst the death and the slaughter, Arthur stood still ‘neath his banner. And afore him was Mordred, brother of Gareth, youngest of the sons of Lot, he who list to overthrow his uncle as rightful king. And even amidst the fray, it could be seen plain that the two of them fought as boars, rasing and foining and hurtling together with sword and spear and shield and harness, each bleeding from many wounds such that it seemed each man should fall and die forthwith from the bleeding.
Sir Gilead was overcome by tremendous dole at the sight of this, and was passing wroth at the traitor. He stopped amidst the slaying and, raising his sword to the sky, cried out, “Arthur!”
But as Sir Gilead held his blade skyward and was overcome, he was deaf and blind. Behind Sir Gilead came a knight on a horse, and he had abandoned chivalry, for never in all the world had there been a battle so ruthless and so ill-fought as was done upon the field of Camlann. This knight smote Gilead with his spear, and with the strength of his arm and the speed of his horse, the spear entered into Gilead at the center of the back, and passed through his harness, and exited through the front, spearing his heart.
Anon, Gilead fell, slain by dishonor and unchivalrousness. While sight faded, he saw the knight who had slain him, and beheld that that knight was Sir Beduvere, a passing good knight. Although he felt a great dole that he could not save his king, Sir Gilead was nonetheless at peace. He closed his eyes and embraced his perdition.
Gilead awoke amidst silence and stillness, wondering if this was the true form of Hell itself. There was no pain, that much was certain: the only tactile sensation he felt was a clingy, irritating dryness. But there was no light, only dark, and no motion or sound anywhere. This was nothing like what he had learned of heaven or of hell, nor even of purgatory; but Gilead decided that whatever afterlife this was, he could tolerate it.
He remained that way, in a dark and cool suspension of reality, for about a minute. Then Gilead realized that he still had to breathe. There was something trapping him, clinging to him, preventing his chest from taking in breath. Gilead panicked, thrashing and struggling against the hard shell. For a moment it seemed invulnerable against anything he could muster; then the stuff, as brittle as it was tough, shattered all at once.
Gilead was still in total darkness, though. He felt around, and found that he was confined to a rectangular box with stone walls. The box was about the right size to be a coffin. He’d awoken inside his own sarcophagus. Had he been in a better state of mind, Gilead might have wondered whether he deserved to be there, whether this was the punishment for his sin. But the animalistic urge to be free had subsumed his higher functions.
Gilead pressed and pressed against the stone above him with all his strength, but it would not budge. Had it been sealed somehow? Nonetheless he pressed until his arms were liable to break and his heart pounded. He felt light-headed: he’d used up too much air.
Then Gilead stopped. He had to think, to act like a man and not a trapped dog. Assuming the sarcophagus lid were not sealed—in which case he would be doomed no matter what he did—it was likely too heavy to be lifted vertically. How, then, might he remove the lid? The answer was simple: shift it slowly to the side, bit by bit, until gravity toppled it over and onto the floor.
It was a slow process. One, press up against the lid with both hands and all his strength, bracing his back and feet against the floor of the coffin. Two, twist his entire body, pressing one way with his legs and one way with his arms. Three, rest until he had the strength to repeat the process. The first few attempts didn’t work at all. It wasn’t until the fifth time he slipped against the smooth stone that Gilead switched limbs, bracing with his arms and pressing with his legs. That did it; the lid of the sarcophagus slipped microscopically to the right. It was a shock when, after several tiny slips, the interior of the sarcophagus was suddenly filled with unnatural light. A strange vermillion glow spilled in from the chamber beyond, illuminating Gilead’s struggles.
How long Gilead was trapped in that sarcophagus, he did not know. His muscles and joints ached, and though the air was quite cool, it was so tepid that he still beaded with sweat. After untold hours of this, Gilead realized that he had already finished without realizing it: the lid, though still on top of the sarcophagus, had an open gap in it, large enough for Gilead to painfully cram himself through and into the red light beyond.
As soon as he’d climbed through, Gilead collapsed onto the floor, sucking down breath. Already he was thirsty and exhausted and sore, and he’d only made it a meter! He had the unaccountably pessimistic feeling that this was only the beginning of his suffering. But before he could ruminate much, Gilead looked up at the source of the vermillion light, and there was no more thinking to be done after that.
“Dindrane!”
Dindrane looked just like how he remembered her, with long and golden hair that fell like sweet water around her shoulders, a slender body that displayed grace in every action, eyes as deep and as shining as the sky at night. Gilead had always considered her the most beautiful woman in the world. All her colors, from her hair to her long robe, were distorted by the pure red coloration of the preternatural glow that emanated from the cup she held in front of her stomach. The Grail.
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“Is it thou in sooth?” Gilead sighed, shuffling toward her on his knees. “I’ve missed thee, I’ve missed thee more than anything, oh Dindrane…”
Gilead lurched forward on his knees, heedless of anything but his need to hold her once more. He wrapped his arms around her, unwilling to rise: Gilead’s head in Dindrane’s lap, just like always. This was the afterlife, then, this dark chamber of bare stone; but if it was an afterlife which he shared with Dindrane, then it was heaven to Gilead.
“Fallen Saint,” said Dindrane.
Gilead looked up at her, past the Grail, unwilling to relinquish his childlike grip. Her voice was ethereal, unnatural, bereft of emotion and yet heavy with command. Like she was relaying a vision, or had been possessed.
“Seek thy Pretension, Fallen Saint, and with it your power. With power, slay the Old Man, break his hold on this forsaken land.”
“Dindrane?” Gilead said weakly. “What are you talking about?”
“The Old Man in the Tower has ruled for too long. Slay him.”
“Tower? What tower?” Gilead took fistfuls of Dindrane’s robe. “What is this place?”
“This place is the tick, swollen on blood unjustly taken. It is a prison, and for too long have its gates been held shut. Seize thy Pretension, Fallen Saint, slay the Old Man, take the Tower as your own. I shall shadow thee, Fallen Saint, and when thou hast found thy Pretension, either shall see other again.”
And all of a sudden, Gilead was not merely holding onto Dindrane’s legs then, but he was holding onto her for the last time as the life drained from her. “No, no, I beg of thee, stay here, stay, I wend so far to find thee and now thou—”
Dindrane vanished, and with her the Grail, leaving the chamber so dark that Gilead could not see his own nose.
“—leavst me again.”
Gilead collapsed in on himself and sobbed until his eyes were dry. He was twenty again, watching Dindrane slip away from him, all the wounds that time and piety and slaughter had sealed opened up once again. He was a child, forced to confront horrors he could barely understand. He was a man, scrabbling in the dirt and realizing that he had done that which could not be undone, and would mark him forever.
Gilead realized then that he was naked, and with a jolt of terror his hands flew to his hips. He thanked God at what he found there: a belt. The belt. Woven from stiff golden fibers in a braided pattern, the belt was the only thing that could have brought him security in that moment. He took it in both hands, feeling its length for flaw or decay, and found none. Gilead had lost everything else; but not the belt.
With the security of the belt at hand, Gilead found it in himself to rise and, keeping one arm always on the wall, move out into the passageway beyond. No light was in evidence; Gilead may as well have had his eyes gouged out once the Grail had ceased to glow. But as he slowly explored, through touch and context, he learned exactly where he was: a catacomb. Long, narrow passages formed grid patterns in the cold, damp stone, interrupted every so often by doorways which led sometimes to side chambers and sometimes to yet more passageways. Many of the chambers were full of nooks for coffins, while others were like the one which Gilead had awoken in, empty aside from a single grandly-decorated sarcophagus.
What was this place? It seemed totally endless. A unique sort of hell, where each damned soul would wander eternally through the darkness, the hope of a passage back into the light always close at hand but never fulfilled. Perhaps these hallways were so thick with damned souls as to be choked with them, but each one was cursed to be unable to perceive his fellows, to languish in eternal solitude. Gilead’s body shivered and shook, and only a lack of further tears to shed prevented him from further tears.
Then there was a noise. A gentle padding of something soft striking the stone. Gilead stopped in place. Was it a footstep? Or had he merely heard the echo of his own movements and, deprived of sensory input, hallucinated that they were the fault of another?
“Is someone about? I hear your footsteps. Please, whoever you are, speak to me, I beg of you, I do not wish to be alone down here!”
Silence reigned. No response, not even in the form of another footstep. Gilead’s muscles ached with tension as he felt for any sign at all. The air moved subtly against Gilead’s back. Then there was a rushing sound, something large moving with incredible speed.
For a mere instant, a span of time no living man could have measured, adrenaline blessed Gilead with a preternatural speed of thought. He was under attack: something possessed of both great strength and terrible cunning sought to ambush him. In that instant of time, all fear, all terror, all the sadness and uncertainty that had threatened to strangle Gilead alive was banished. He was in battle: Gilead lived in battle.
Time resumed, and a heavy body slammed into Gilead’s back. He pivoted, legs straining to move the extra weight, and slammed his attacker into the wall of the corridor. It did not relinquish its grip, so he struck again, elbow into the ribs, once, twice, until he heard something snap and the creature’s grip finally faltered, allowing him to twist himself out of the grapple. Even then, whatever had attacked him made no noise of pain.
Gilead was most experienced with the lance and sword, but he was also a champion wrestler, and it was those wrestler’s instincts that were the sole thing which kept him alive. In the absence of light, the only thing he could rely on to allow him to know his enemy were the subtlest changes of force and pressure, conveyed not via the eye or the ear but via Gilead’s hands locked around the limbs of his opponent.He learned quickly that he was not fighting a man. It was too hunched over, too oddly shaped to be a human, and its jaws snapped at the air like a wolf or lion trying to bite out the throat of its prey. It was also monstrously, impossibly tough, with leathery skin that resisted any punch or lock Gilead could make against it. He did not have the same freedom, of course: the jaws and fangs of such an animal could kill with a single snap, shattering the spine or puncturing the vital arteries.
Still, Gilead avoided every killing blow, fighting through a dozen scratches that sent blood spilling down his chest. The head was the weakness, and so after many failed attempts at bringing the fight to an end, Gilead managed to thrust his fingers into its eye, stunning the beast for a crucial second. Then, even as it clawed at him, Gilead’s powerful hands circled around the monster’s throat and squeezed. Its clumsy, half-human claws could not find the proper grip, and slowly the animal suffocated, and stopped, and died.
Gilead was covered in blood, but his heart still beat. In the deathly calm that came after battle, he took a moment to examine himself for the first time since his awakening. He was wounded all across his body, but worst of all in the shoulder. If he had reacted an instant too late to the initial leap, the monster would have bitten down on his spine. One wound, however, was very notably missing: the place where Beduvere’s spear had pierced his back. Not even a scar remained there. All Gilead could feel was the echo of the pain. There was one other oddity as well, a crucifix hung around his neck. It must have been put there after his death, for he had worn no such thing.
In this newfound calm, Gilead also cast his thoughts back to what Dindrane had said to him. While much of it was still incomprehensible, he thought he understood her meaning: this was no place of repose, no afterlife. There was something out there, something about power and Pretensions and an old man, and he needed to find what that was.
Thus, when Gilead started moving again, it was with reckless speed, moving far faster than was safe on the slick stone floor. He hoped to put luck on his side in the race between his search for an escape and the beasts that dwelt in the dark.
Before he found a way out, though, Gilead’s foot struck something soft on the floor. He nearly pitched over, but then dropped onto his knees and examined what he’d found.
It was a dead man. His clothes had been shredded, and most of the flesh had been torn off of his body with dagger-like teeth. The blood hadn’t even fully dried. Gilead muttered a prayer, for although he had little faith of his own, he was nevertheless enough of a Christian that he wanted the dead man to go to heaven and not the other place. Then, he searched the corpse for anything useful. His clothes, for one. They were too damaged to be worn, but Gilead was able to tear off some strips of cloth to serve as bandages for his various injuries.
There were also two items which had fallen near to the body, neither of which Gilead could comprehend. The first was some kind of tool, one end being a long, thin metal rod, and the other end being a curved wooden piece. In the middle was a section of complex workings, including a cylindrical piece cleverly fitted so as to rotate smoothly while still attached to the remainder. All over the tool were levers and prongs and other such things that Gilead didn’t understand. The other object was much larger, and at first Gilead thought it was an art piece, because the biggest part of it was a huge central glass globe. But there was a metal frame around that globe, and at the top of the frame was a carrying handle, which implied it served some practical function.
(Someone born in the nineteenth century as opposed to the fifth would have recognized the two objects as an Old Tom’s Snuff-Me-Not Storm Lantern? and a Colt Army Model 1860 revolver.)
