Hi everyone,

While preparing the next part of our Dracula adventure for next week’s release (probably tomorrow), I realized I’d completely skipped a small, but significant portion of the introductory story. You see, the night after Circe and I had first visited the macrocosm for the first time, we went back in there the morning after to have some breakfast. Fair warning though, this is definitely a tale on the grittier side and not for the faint of heart. You’ve been warned, this is considered not safe for work and not safe for life.

Well then, it was morning as previously mentioned, and we both strode down from the upstairs bedrooms, wondering what the “house” would be serving.

Their breakfast was incredibly rustic, with some stale bread, leftover chicken, and some variant of a sauce that was black and bitter-tasting. (Think HP sauce, but somehow… worse!) The chicken itself was so greasy that even Circe remarked on its quality. (She’s had some pretty nasty stuff over the years that I almost wouldn’t call chicken.)

While we were eating, some old drunk in the corner woke up and headed over to the bar and demanded more beer. The tavern owner told him to get lost. And the old drunk goes “You have NO idea what kind of problems I have! NONE OF YOU!” as he looked around the empty tavern, searching for any support. But, there was nobody but us there, so his outburst seemed a bit out of place.

The barkeep, being an asshole went “Hahah, I know wot problems you have, getting yer next bottle of strongdrink!”

The old man stared at him and then at the two of us and just shot back, “be lucky you don’t know what truly goes on in the world.”

Becoming amused, I smiled at him and replied, “yeah so… what does go on in the world then?”

He gave me a sly smile as he cocked his head to the side, “I’ll tell you if you’ll give me something to wet my pipes with…”

The barkeep laughed as he said, “don’t ye fall for it good Sir, he’s just spinning ya yarns!”

I gazed at him steadily as I said, “barkeep, a bottle of your strongest drink, and three glasses. I want to see what you can offer here that passes for ‘strongdrink’ as you called it.”

Circe scoffed, “no way in hell I’m having something that strong for breakfast. I’ll pass.”

I shrugged, “two glasses then.”

The bartender muttered something under his breath about drunkards fleecing tourists as he went back and rummaged around. When he returned, he had a bottle that shone with the luster of faded gold. Obviously, it was something he’d saved up for a while. He nodded as he pulled out the big crystal stopper and put it onto the bar counter with a dull, glass-like sound.

Then he poured both me and the drunkard a couple of sizable shots and then after some deliberation, one for himself as well. He leaned over the counter towards the drunkard who had emptied his glass in record time. “So, let’s hear yer bloody story, I think it’ll just be bollocks is what I think.”

I sipped my glass and while the liquor was definitely rough, it had a strong floral honey taste to it, similar to some real-life Chinese liquor that a close friend of mine once treated me to. I raised my glass in a salute before I emptied it. The kick was absolutely undeniably strong and I nodded as I pushed over a coin to the barkeep who gracefully accepted it.

I grabbed the bottle and slowly poured us three more drinks as I said, “Well then good Sir, go on then, tell us your tale. We won’t interrupt.” And here I gave both Circe and the barkeep a glance that made it clear that I was deadly serious about that part.

So, after having downed his second drink like it was his last, he told us a story about how he’d been a stable boy in a village closer to the “cursed castle”. The tavern he’d been working in had a visit one late night from a group of bandits that had been passing through the area. Of course, being young, curious, and unafraid, he peeked inside and saw them all sitting at the tables, demanding food and drink from the tavern owner and his wife who were slaving away. At one point, they ran out of booze because this was a small village, poor, and not really fit for a 20+ band of bandits coming through.

In the end, they slit the throat of the owner in front of his wife, then the men in the band spent most of the evening taking turns in raping the wife in one of the upstairs rooms while the rest finished off whatever food and beverages there were. As they left, they found the stable boy and ordered him to get the horses in the stable ready, so they got a few horses and a donkey which they made him ride for their amusement.

It turned out that they’d heard a rumor that there was an abandoned cursed castle in the area with a legendary hoard. Naturally, the name of the cursed count Dracula came up, but they dismissed it as simply fairy tales. So off to the castle they all went, some of them died along the way to various things, because the further they got towards the castle, the worse the flora and fauna got.

Then the next evening, one of the men went to take a piss and just vanished. As the men got up to investigate, the stable boy said that beautiful pearly laughter echoed throughout the camp from the trees above. According to him, throughout the night, they’d all catch glimpses of hauntingly beautiful female faces, all deathly pale, staring down at them through the canopy of the trees.

Nobody slept until morning, after which they left the forest with as much speed as they could muster. They arrived at the castle which seemed to be abandoned, they sent in the stable boy first though to scout ahead. Carefully walking across the drawbridge, he found himself in a small courtyard that seemed to have been abandoned for decades, if not centuries. Walking around a bit (while praying to god under his breath) he wasn’t really attacked by anything.

Then as the bandits moved in and they’d all assembled in the courtyard, the portcullis slammed shut behind them, effectively trapping them as skeletons started emerging from the side doors. However, a short fight later, all the skeletons were shattered and they headed further into the castle. They did expect more such traps, but all they found were old musty hallways, tables set for dinner that hadn’t been eaten, and all evidence that the castle had been just… left.

Then they found the treasure chamber which was as legendary as was foretold. Well, chambers actually, as there were stairs leading down to even more hoards of loot. But as the leader walking down the stairs tossed a torch down into the darkness below, it never seemed to hit bottom. However, he did see a glitter of gems and other golden things being briefly illuminated as it passed by them on its way downward.

Everyone had stopped and joined him at this point. The stable boy said that when the leader turned around and said, “we’ll go back for this second hoard later!” Those of them who had stared down into that darkness felt a deep sense of relief that they wouldn’t be going down there.

Then, as he’d ordered them, they started looting the chamber thoroughly. One man got as many rings as he could, one on each finger, and showed everyone while laughing, saying he was the king of Carlomno. Some of the women found beautiful dresses that they put on along with sparkling gemmed rings, armbands, armlets, and earrings. Another couple of bandits, a man and a woman, found a box with an old diadem and a king’s crown. They put them on of course, loudly proclaiming themselves to be the king and queen of the castle as a joke. Others found beautiful weapons, halberds, magical staffs, swords, rapiers, and daggers that they armed themselves with, leaving their junky versions behind. Here, despite my earlier promise, I stopped him to ask if he’d seen any swords that had maybe a magical quality to them.

He started stammering out that he’d been sitting in a corner the whole time. As he was getting excitable, I poured him another drink which he slammed home before he calmed down again.

Eventually, they’d packed enough on the horses and in bags that they left the castle. The way back out into the wilderness was without incident and they were already making plans along the way to get back with carts to load up the rest, some even said they could turn the castle into their new base.

Then halfway to the nearest town, they set up camp and posted guards. In the middle of the night, the stable boy woke up to voices screaming. In front of him inside the tent, he saw one of the men who’d taken a necklace for himself. Except in the light from the fire, he saw that the necklace had turned into a jeweled snake that was biting the man who ran out of the tent screaming at the top of his lungs.

The stable boy said, “if I’d only stayed in the tent, that’d be the most horrible thing I’d seen, but I had to go outside, I curse the day I did!”

When he exited the tent, it was to a scene of complete pandemonium and horror, because all around him, the bandits were all screaming in terror as various horrifying things were being done to all of them. The man and women fancying themselves royalty? They were trying to tear off the diadem and crown which had NAILED themselves to their respective skulls.

The bandits that stole the weapons, some of them were fighting their weapons that had now started moving on their own. Another man was laughing demonically as he was methodically disemboweling himself with the beautiful dagger he’d taken hours earlier. Yet another two men were gleefully hacking each other to pieces with their swords that shone a bright crimson as the blood covered them. A woman, having taken a beautiful gemmed rapier, was moaning with lust as she was feverishly masturbating while she kept impaling herself with it over and over.

And speaking of women, those who were wearing the dresses were screaming as well. The dresses were now slowly undulating, half transparent as they clung to their skin and melted it off as if they’d been turned into sheets of acid-soaked fabric. The ones with earrings were bleeding from their ears where the earrings had become big black worms, that were now burrowing into their ear canals.

“The King of Shaeba” hadn’t fared any better either. He was sitting by the fire, howling in terror as his fingers lay on the ground in front of him, bitten off by the rings that were chewing their way up the stumps of his fingers. But he wouldn’t be the only amputee as the ones that had put on armlets and bracelets found themselves being attacked by their own severed limbs that were trying to strangle them after they’d been separated from their bodies.

As a backdrop to this insanity, all the bags of loot around the fire were open as all manner of horrible insects and creatures were emerging from them as well. The stable boy, seeing some of that horde coming his way, his last vestige of sanity faltered and he ran into the forest, babbling one holy prayer after another, pleading with the lord to save him.

Then the old drunkard fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop in the loud silence that followed that. We all just sat there speechless, the barkeep as well. I thanked the drunkard for sharing his story as I put down a small stack of coins on the counter and let the barkeep know that he’d have as much to drink as he could stomach.

The barkeep looked at the stack of coins and then to me and said, “Sir, that’s enough for a lifetime.”

I nodded, “Sounds about right.”

Circe moved closer to the drunkard, hung her silver crucifix over his shoulders, and told him that she would bless him as she actually did do so. Later on, she confessed to me that she’d mostly done it because she was convinced that he was a vampire. When he hugged her back and thanked her with a sobbing voice, she said that she’d never felt more guilty in her life.

When we retired to our rooms to return to our own worlds, we definitely had a lot to think about.

Now we had a feel for the mood that this macrocosm would be throwing at us. But were we ready for a challenge like this? Only time would tell.

As always, I’m your chronicler,

– Wondrous Fairy