No Judgment Here
07 Jul 2019Today’s prompt: “Begin a letter: ‘I am telling you this story because you are the only person who will not judge me…’”
I am telling you this story because you are the only person who will not judge me. Most people would never sympathize with me because I serve the Old Ones coming to devour our plane. And my fellows in the Church of Starry Wisdom would condemn me for my utter incompetence, for setting the Order back 10 years in their progress toward summoning the Haunter of the Dark.
Only you will not judge me. You’re like the patron saint of cultist fuck-ups.
I recently translated the text of a newly uncovered summoning ritual. Only, I think I may have transposed a few letters, maybe conjugated a few words wrong. I should have figured something was wrong when the blood curdled, but the egg whites never formed stiff peaks.
It seemed at first like things were working right. We painted a pentagram on the floor, copied all the symbols from the book in each corner, put on our dark robes, slaughtered a goat, and held hands and chanted at midnight. And this tear started opening up in the fabric of reality. We saw glimpses of a surreal dimension beyond, with a sky like an acid trip. And the Haunter appeared at the opening portal. My heart skipped. I had done it!
But then everything started going wrong. The tear began shrinking, before it was ever large enough for the Haunter to come through. He bellowed, and then he reached out a shadowy hand and grabbed me, just as his arm was forced back into his home dimension.
I had about two seconds to take in the dimension before the Haunter swallowed me whole. The atmosphere felt like my skin was boiling. I’m still not sure if the air was filled with the screams of a thousand damned souls, or if that was just me.
I know I screwed up. I know it’s going to take another decade for the stars to align for the ritual again. But I take some solace in knowing that I’m here with you. At least, I assume that’s you.
The Church of Starry Wisdom has records of another cultist who tried a similar ritual decades ago, back in 2019. That’d be you. You found the Amulet of Nephren-Ka, called for in the Rites of the Shining Oculus. You translated the rites, gathered the ingredients, made a big potion in a cauldron, and once it was bubbling deep black bubbles, you dropped in the amulet. It immediately melted, and then the mixture boiled out of the cauldron onto the floor. A deep ring formed in the floor where the potion boiled out, and the Haunter’s hands and head reached through. But then the hole began to contract, and the Haunter of the Dark grabbed you as he was sucked back through into his own dimension. One of the priests looked over your work afterwards and noticed that you didn’t carry the one. I’m not trying to rub your nose in that or anything. I just feel so relieved I’m not the only one, and I’m sure you’d feel the same if you could still feel anything.
There’s no way you can read this letter, of course. But I felt like I had to tell this to someone, to get it off my chest. I’m just going to stick this over there in your ribcage.