"Candlelight" by John E. Fletcher

A small candle flickered and fought with the darkness that seemed to encroach on all sides, it’s efforts where naught but the vanity of a creature that in all it’s eons long life had never bid need of light or warmth. Never bid need of comfort or warmth but in some way felt it proper to be writing by the light of a candle and so the candle flickered on the only sound in the void around it the scraping of a quill across dried parchment. The hours passed and though neither light nor hourglass marked the time in this abyssal labyrinth the thing that wrote, cloaked in robes of black that swirled around him as some foul mist may cling to the distant moor or swamp and with a ancient pole that ended in the long and curved blade of a scythe at one end leaning casually against his shoulder, was keenly aware of time and the passing of it. As each second ticked by he knew of it and what passed with it, thoughts, memories perhaps even a life. It was this that concerned him the most. As a day rose then fell along the great march of time the scrabbling slowly quieted then silence again fell upon the place. It slowly entered the darkness outside the candles beacon light but somehow stood out, the robes casting a shadow within shadow a more profound black that is only seen by those who have crossed worlds and planes and seen beyond what mortal men were meant to see, he moved and crossed vaguely outlined walkways over pools of reflection that did not show it or the walkways but past into distant lands where men and elves laughed and lived, raised families and ultimately died. He came to the right pool after a walk that would took days or weeks but for one who existed so long the concept of time is a vague one at best and it’s rules easily broken. He looked down into the pool and onto a scene of mountainous reaches and freezing cold climate.

Standing starkly out in the centre of this view and quite apart from the terrain in which it was currently encompassed a crumbling city obviously built for warmer climates and from a building that towered above the rest, both in splendour and in decomposition, emerged a towering figure of inhuman proportions. Bedecked in blackened and spiked armour of some forgotten design but in the grand helm a skull rested with two points of flame burning where once there had been eyes and across the things horrid and decaying back sat a sword that radiated it’s own malice and spite which mingled and enhanced the dark aura of this risen warrior sending it to new heights of cruel and malignant power. The thing raised its head and from the depths of an age’s old pain and anguish rose a cry of summoning and to answer it more then a hundred more echoed in the air as the once peaceful dead of this city, of Hihbrect, rose from their eons long sleep and heeded their master’s call.

The robed figure shook it’s head underneath a heavy cowl and quietly began to walk away. Only one simple statement escaped the folds of material darkness that surrounded him as he walked, punctuated quietly by the tapping of the scythe against the walkway.
“So it has begun.” The words rang with quiet power and the authority of one who had seen the gods themselves rise and fall in the eternal power struggle they so enjoyed and soon the echoes of these words died away and the figure continued his walk occasionally dipping the scythe into a pool and performing a task that would take him beyond the end of gods and men and propel him forward through the eons.
Left alone and by itself the candle burned out and light fled gratefully from the home of death.