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Chapter Quick-Browse For Graven's Grotesque: A Gothic Epic

Chapter 1 Excerpt Teaser
Description: Lucifael Emerges From The Chinese Gatestone

Without the temple and about its grounds, the only sound was the gurgling of the placid stream. The thrush took sudden flight, chasing a bee through the garden flowers. As the beak of the songbird snapped the bee out of the air, there was an explosion, and instantly the dome of the temple shattered, sending stone shards hundreds of feet into the air. The concussion was so fierce that it stripped the nearest trees naked of their leaves and fragments of granite stone and human bone impaled their seared trunks. Enormous chunks of stone hailed down into the garden, snapping branches and pressing craters into the neatly raked earth. Billowing dust and ash raced over the grounds and rolled down the entire mountainside like a billowing pyroclastic tide.

What was left of the temple glowed with furious heat, cracking the stones left standing. And still, the temperature climbed, till the sides of the smooth pit at the epicentre of the temple liquefied like seeping sap. The seared trees surrounding the temple burst into flame. The unscathed Gatestone stood out from the centre of the crater. The hole at the heart of the stone turned thickly opaque with a bilious black fog, which began to roil and fume, spilling out of the Gatestone like a viscous caustic cloud dense as sulphurous gases.

The cloud rose from the crater and hugged the ground whilst it drifted beneath the lighter ash. It did not dissipate, yet remained collected as a single boiling mass, blighting the garden greenery in its wake. Then, in an unscathed clearing, it stopped and churned in place for a short space before rolling in upon itself and coalescing at its centre. Arcs of light resembling a thunderstorm in deep cumulus flashed through as, deep within the mass, a form took shape. A shadow at first, it evolved to gather density and structure, and finally, flesh-tones. The cloud thinned to expose a nude woman with sprawling membranous wings. Her waist-length hair was black as ebon onyx and fine as silk thread. Her eyes and nails were equally black and shimmering as the Gatestone face, which contrasted heavily with her almost translucent skin, as pale as Death. Her Angelic beauty stood unmatched even by Eve herself. She was unholy Lucifael, the Dragon, alluring Lilith, bright Morningstar, ancient Heylel, and Mother Succubus of Hell—a thousand thousand names since conveyed over the ages. The materialized spirit of Lucifael spat in a voice of many women, “One! Two remain,” she sighed, intently surveying the destruction.

About her, the dissipating brume revealed the landscape of a nightmare. The temple grounds were a smoking, corpse-ridden ruin. A field of blackness encircled the glowing remains of the temple, and the outer gardens lay flat and singed, dying of thirst. Steam lingered up from the stream, now black with soot and char itself. The bonsai trees crackled, burning and occasionally one and another fell to ash and cinder where they had stood.

Lucifael stepped forth and raked a dead pigeon from the ground. She caressed the bird as a caring soul. “Not yet, my dear,” she whispered. “Come.” The bird jolted to life, its head wobbling as though its neck were broken. She stroked it. “Indeed. Come back, little one.” Its eyes eased open and locked with hers. It fluttered and she clutched its neck. She brought the bird to her face, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a thick sulphurous cloud over the struggling bird. Its feathers glowed yellow.

Within the rancid plume, seeds of annihilation lay ahead for virtually every living thing on earth, for it bore a deadly germ vile enough to rot the face of Asia, and eventually, the greater part of Europe...

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