September 2017 Writing Prompt

[grantuseyes]

He was never one to dwell on the particulars of the daytime. Never one to measure life by the coming and goings of the sun. The clock dictated the schedule of classes and lectures, the moon when research is conducted. Sleep happened when the body could endure not another waking moment regardless of the sky’s light. Mealtimes were when he could eat something with one hand and continue working or reading with the other.

But tonight, after so long of manic activity and endless preparation, Micolash pauses.

His office: scattered and disorganized, littered with specimen jars filled and otherwise, papers and books stacked high on every available surface, a chalkboard cluttered with white scrawls depicting equations, theories, notes, runes, drawings of eyes. And now, at this vital hour, bathed in orange light stretching long from the tall windows. Painting the entire room in stripes of baleful hue.

The headmaster of Mensis looks out one of these windows, watching the sun begin its descent; dousing its light to make way for its nocturnal counterpart. Watches as the red circle dips further behind the rooftops of Yahar’gul. The Unseen Village, much like the college that founded it, grows more active at night, the residents stirring and coming forth to toil and live beneath the softer glow of the moon and stars. And tonight, the streets are alive, villagers exiting and locking their homes, greeting their neighbours, walking in curious, chatty throngs towards the looming foundational school. They have all been invited. Some were even called, needing no reminder of the approaching ceremony. For they could hear it in the sound of water, feel it in the roots of of their eye teeth, sense it in the mounting presence of pale and slug-like phantasms glittering in the warm summer winds.

The orange light of sunset is briefly cut into angles and shards as a Lesser Amygdala crawls along the rooftops on its many spindling arms. Moving unseen alongside the travelling groups of villagers, watching with twitching, pus-coloured eyes set deep in its morel head, wiggling its facial tentacles in acute curiosity. Micolash watches as she goes. A good sign if the beings are stirred from their usual languid wall-clinging. A very good sign indeed.

There is no one left but Micolash on this floor, the rest of the faculty already departed and filing towards the prepared ceremony hall with the student body. The silence and the solitude affords him this moment’s pause. To watch the sunset one last time, to be taken by its melancholy glow for the first time in over two decades. A moment’s weakness, perhaps, for the fleeting but deceptive beauty of the waking world. The most deadly flora and fauna always have the brightest colours.

But as all sunsets do, this one at last vanishes, the red disc of the sun slipping fully behind the rooftops and disappearing. It would not be long before the full moon lifts, when the howls of beasts rise from Yharnam beyond their walls and their hunters rising with them.

Leave them to their charade of profane reality. Let the blind fumble in the dark without him. He is beyond that now, just as they are beyond help.

With the brief spectacle of one last late summer sunset concluded, Micolash turns to the iron cage resting on his desk chair. He’s well practiced now with stooping and hefting it up onto his head, positioning it on his shoulders where divots have formed from carrying it there.

One last time, he closes and locks his office door. One last time, he enters the elevator that lowers him to the ground floor. One last time, he crosses the grand vestibule. One last time, he passes the sound of anguished cries in the gaol below. And one last time, he approaches the ceremony hall where a chair positioned in the center awaits him with its seat and shackles.

Tonight, Micolash carries out the Mensis Ritual.