Height of Darkness
Six men met up every Wednesday evening. They all drove small cars, nothing fancy. None knew each other in any context other than the.... club that they all belonged to. Five of those men stood in a circle. The sixth was kneeling in the middle of them all, stripped to his waist. The five in the cicle were protected by the charms they wore, and the words they spoke. Usually, the only rituals they practiced were ones to bring misfortune, kill crops. Tonight, they had a darker, more sinister purpose.
Two weeks ago, their leader, the man in the circle, had discovered a book. To any passerby, the book was not the sort that would catch their eyes. In fact, the leader of the...group nearly missed it himself. He walked a few feet away from the shop he was looking at when he felt it reaching out to him. Dark tendrils of power probed his mind, leaving thoughts there that were not his own.... He liked what they were. Thoughts of blood, of passion. Most importantly, of power. He turned, and entered the shop
He found the book almost immeadiatly. It was calling out to him, pulling him into it's dark embrace. He saw the book then. It was small, very inconspicous. However, when he felt it, he knew that it contained power he would never acheive on his own. He bought the book straight away.
Tonight, Felix, their leader, would not leave the meeting alive. The 36 candles that burned around the room gave off an unnatural heat in the presence of the book, and Felix was starting to see shadows of things that were not in the room. He could see the book though. That was all that mattered. His associates were getting restless, but they knew their places, and kept chanting. When they had finished the 17 liturgies of Hyarkn-Stil the room grew very quiet.
Then, slowly, and quietly, Felix began to read from the book. The words that lay on the page burned into Felix's mind, and he began to speak louder and faster. Finally, before the end of the first sentence, he was shouting. The shadows on the wall began to move then. They moved in between the acolytes around Felix, and merged into a mass of darkness directly below him.
"Brothers!" He shouted, "Tonight, we have met for a purpose never before hea-"
His speach was cut short when the darkness below him exploded upwards, tearing his body to pieces as it went. His flesh was quickly removed from his bones, which dissapeared. Then, as the terrified acolytes watched onwards, the darkness began to take shape. In the center of the writhing mass of dark red shadows and blood, a mouth appeared.
"We move onward"
