Of Fever Dreams and Screaming Nightmares

The passing night has been passable but sleep comes in fits and the weird dreams roll on. The frightful cough is diminished and long gone is the threat of having a scarred throat that I be able to speak with a voice the likes of somber tombs.

Visions have washed over me in torrents of blasphemy. The things which spoke to me that should remain unspoken of will remain part of my mind. Midnights of shuddering fright I will keep to myself as I hope to safeguard the lands of other’s slumber. I have tossed in fitful waking and decided to make a single piece of terrain. It will be The Fountain of Youth.

It was built atop a spring that was fed from far below, a circular cistern of hewn stone that acted as oversized well for the town of Keln. It had long been a place where Verrotmir had been praised for the clean water. Atop the wall in one area there had been a great fish where water flowed out and spilled over sculptures of children had been erected to bask in the sun and bathe in the water cascading from it. There then came The Day When the Bells Tolled and the waters slowly dried and refused to offer succor as they once did. It was then that the voice of the fountain called for life as it had provided so freely in the past without due. When the townspeople asked what the fount wanted, the voice spoke and demanded life to be given in trade.for the life they received. “Look to the statues below me as I usher forth the torrents from my mouth. Sate my hunger and I will quench your thirst.”

So it was that a lottery was drawn and select fresh faces were paraded before the town to fulfill the need of the many with becoming sustenance for the thing from the dark waters. The water flowed again as promised, but it began to becone fouled as the bodies were left within the cistern, unable to be retrieved under threat of stopping the flow altogether for what was given freely couldn’t be undone. Misery flows from this place. The Fountain of Youth drowns what happiness remained in Keln in the days of old. The spirits speak through the babbling brook and their dead laughter can be heard on the sculptures since their long lost breath of life left them in other’s hope of staying alive.