"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Howard Phillips Lovecraft Diether fell backwards. Mute with horror, he found himself at the feet of a creature whose beauty—both sublime and repulsive—revolted him. This was neither a memory nor a nightmare. The materiality of this vision was undeniable, and his senses, overwhelmed with information, inflicted terrible physical and mental pain upon him. The acrid smell of death and decomposition mingled with the heady, intoxicating perfume of lilies in this room of titanic dimensions assaulted his nostrils. The air was heavy, almost unbreathable. A vile caricature of an Archangel, with its grotesque imitations of wings, cadaverously pale hands and arms pierced through the back of a black-haired young woman, lasciviously encircling the face, torso and hips of this exposed naked body. Their flesh moved around her, upon her like hundreds of jealous and greedy serpents. Beneath the fingers masking her chest, a black heart pulsated, from which thick drops of sticky blood flowed. The floor had become gleaming and slimy with it, dark puddles slowly spreading across it. The deep violet-black lilies with velvety petals that he had smelled before seeing them drank from this odious corrupted liquid. These flowers had nothing chaste about them anymore. Sullied and tainted, they were just as corrupted as this creature enthroned above them. The macabre and oppressive silence of the place was profaned only by their breathing and the dull beating of this dying heart. Paralyzed with terror, Diether dared neither move nor speak for fear of attracting the attention of this abhorred thing. Did sin then have its own sacred places too? Thick eroded silver chains held this horror suspended in the middle of the room, a pagan idol: object of unhealthy veneration and visceral fear. The Mother of Darkness—it was she he had before his eyes, the source of all the corruption in this place. "We both know her," Archibald murmured in his ear, placing a hand on his shoulder. Diether turned his head toward him. Kneeling beside him, nose in the air, the dark-haired man stared at the creature with rare intensity. "She was in the trenches. With them. The French." The Leutnant's pale blue eyes settled on him. "You were there, the Feldschreiber. My Feldschreiber. The doctor, Kleinwald, he told you to take notes because… "It's historic! Write it down! Write everything down! We have a page of history before us!" snapped the excited voice of the young blond doctor while the Grabengeist finished strangling one of the soldiers with one hand before the French medic who trembled with fear. The blue face of the last victim collapsed into the dust when his executioner's hand opened. His heart in his throat, the Feldschreiber obediently complied. The tremulous scraping of pencil on paper was disturbed by nothing other than the sounds of breathing.
