Lost in the winding passages of the ancient crypt, the ax falls into the rotting flesh of the snarling ghoul. The chthonic scene, illuminated by the alien lights of the dangling glow worms and the cold patches of burning fungoid, knows no shadows, for the strange fires of that underworld are ever burning from angles above, below, and from every other corner of the map. If these lights offer no escape into the restful darkness of dream, neither do they give forth enough bounty to wake and see in their dim damnation.
Lost in the faint memory of an all but forgotten sepulcher where the scattered and ageless bones gleam like silver upon the rocky earth without names nor marker, a mortal struggle: the deathless growth of lifeless carcasses, pulled together by the yellow-burning ooze, is a crisscrossed meshwork of faces, limbs, and grasping hands desperately shuffling themselves into the vague imitation of what they were in life, the seams of their disparate parts alive with the golden glow of the flesh-starved fungus beneath.
The ax head cuts deep, and the ooze bleeds, dripping darkly onto the craggy floor. The many faces, some known, companions gone, some unknown, adventurers lost long before this doomed odyssey, scream with the stolen tongues lost to the shallow graves of sprinkled dust. He hears the voices of strangers and the voices of friends mixed together in wordless howls of pain.
His right hand letting go the weapon as his left is drawing the canteen from his belt, he searches his breast pocket for his lighter as he douses the glistening wound with kerosene. The pale, little flame, so welcome in the cavalcade of unreal light, bursts in his hand and eases his eyes of a strain he had forgotten after so long lost underground.
The blasphemous imitation of man erupts as he casts his lighter into the heart of the mismatched carrion, and Hell’s hot breath kisses his face as the fire rushes up into a column of black smoke and a swirling vortex of orange and yellow light—real light and real shadows, dancing, crazy shadows, and the dying cries of the stolen tongues.
Alone upon that underworld plateau where the spreading fungus glows with faint memories and the crawling worms seek death, and through death a rebirth, in their illimitable folds of starlit silk, the last of the explorers retrieves his discarded ax from the blackened ash-heap. Whatever they were seeking down here, he never knew. He was resigned to the fact that he would probably never know. Some things were forgotten, and some things lost, but he had no more reason to delve into such matters. His friends were at rest now, and he just wanted to find his way home.
He watched the soft flutterings of the ghostly light bugs, their swarm heading up and disappearing over the next rise, and he followed their light.
Tale Told 
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