SciFi and Fantasy Art: The Watcher

             In the northern country, where the hills begin to grow into mountains, on the road running from the distant capital to the coast, stood a small town with an ancient keep looking over it from a craggy hill. The castle, home to a knight whose family name was once better known than it has since become, was of an ancient build, with strangely-cut stones, thick walls and many gargoyles hewn of blue-grey rock guarding its ramparts.

           Travellers passing by would ask locals for tales of the lands, especially to pass the time during long winter evenings. There was no shortage of stories, form local gossip on the knight’s grandsons’ humorous misadventures during the harvest festival, to the accounts of battles fought here in days gone by or the legends of the strange creatures inhabiting the surrounding hills and forests, treasures resting at the bottom of still mountain lakes. Occasionally, when a good amount of ale was already drank and conversation turned closer to home, in hushed voices one of the older men would re-count the local legend of the Watcher of the Wind.

            It was said that one of the gargoyles on the keep wall was in fact alive and during nights when the half-moon was waning and there blew a strong north wind and every soul in the castle was asleep, the Watcher would wake, its eyes glowing red-hot from the dark grey stone. The legend held that one of the statues was at one time a human being, whose body was long ago twisted by magic or by a curse into its present horrible shape and tuned to stone. And stone it remained, at least most of the time…