An immense horde of naked women was dancing wildly in the night.
Huge fires had been lit all over the dull plain, surrounded by steep peaks of granite which projected high into the sky like the stone teeth of a ravenous beast, illuminating the obscure atmosphere of the night with an red, hellish glow.
The women were screaming ragingly, their bodies tossing and writhing in the wild fury of the dance, their bare feet obsessively stamping on the hard ground to the compulsive beat of the drums. Their naked flesh was flushed with excitement, their breath coming in ragged gasps as they twirled and spun, their long flowing hair whipping about their faces in a frenzy of erotic abandonment.
Their undeniable beauty held at the same time something threatening, primitive, savage. Black curly hair left growing wildly, dark skins covered in stripes of red and white paint as ceremonial colors of war, their only garments consisting in crude necklaces and circlets made of bone, stone, or animal teeth wrapped around their necks, wrists and ankles.
Some of the women were holding long wooden staves in their hands, decorated with large, multi-colored feathers taken from unnamed, ravenous flying beasts. Standing on the top of high rocks, they were seeming to guide their companions in that ritual, shouting commands at them with harsh, deep voices, inciting them to let themselves go more and more, to abandon themselves totally, to lose their minds in that infernal dance.
"M'laal Azul" they were chanting repetitively, obsessively, in a language that sounded dark, ancient and guttural "Shaag im'arath, M'laal Azul"
The atmosphere of the night was unnaturally warm and charged with a tangible tension. Losing themselves in the dances, their minds progressively regressed completely to a animalistic and primordial state. The air was thick with the heady scent of their arousal, a musky aroma that threatened to intoxicate the very atmosphere, an excitement that was growing stronger every passing minute, constantly fueled by the acts of that ceremony, by those mesmerizing chants, by the compelling beat of the drums, by the continuous grinding of their naked bodies as they abandoned themselves in the dances.
"M'laal Azul" the mesmerizing mantra continued, incessantly "Shaag im'arath, M'laal Azul"
In front of them, at the very centre of the desolated plain, were towering the imposing and titanic ruins of an immense manor, legacy of a remote and alien era, the name of who - or what - had built it forever lost in the meanders of the millennia. Its walls and towers were made of gigantic blocks of black granite, crossed by veins of some strange and unknown mineral which were emitting a slow, pulsating, greenish glow, giving to that horrible remaining of a fortress a even more menacing and ghostly aura.
"M'laal Azul" the chanting voices of the women had assumed a more urgent, almost pleading tone "Shaag im'arath, M'laal Azul"
The screams and the chants below the crumbling ramparts began to become intertwined with loud moans and sighs of pleasure, as more and more women started to lose themselves completely in the induced sexual frenzy, to succumb to the urgent, and primordial needs that was invading their minds and bodies. In many points of the plain, the dance was quickly turning into an immane orgy, as more and more of the enraptured savages began to throw themselves on each other to find satisfaction in that immense lust which was dominating them. Other sounds were now adding to the cries and sighs; soft, humid sounds, the sounds of kisses, of tongues, of wetnesses.
Suddenly, similar to a whisper brought by the nightly breeze, a sound was heard from one of the highest bastions of the fortress, a thin, barely audible breath, which however was perceived from one end to the other of the vast rocky plain. The sound of the drums stopped abruptly. In unison, the women ceased immediately any movement, turning their full attention to what was happening on the ramparts. In a single moment, a total, religious silence had descended all over the plain.
And then, they saw Him.
An incorporeal being, a sort of horrific and chilling skeletal shadow had manifested himself upon the castle walls. From the distance, it was impossible to distinguish the features of that being, wrapped as they were in a sort of light-grey fog. His face was totally invisible in the darkness; only a pair of bright green demonic lights could be spotted in correspondence of the eyes, shining like evil flames, pulsating with mesmerizing intensity.
More visible, at the edge of the thick walls in front of Him, was a solid rounded object. A kind of black meteoritic stone, about the size of a human skull, masterfully carved and engraved by unknown hands to resemble a gigantic and monstrous eyeball, which seemed to gaze the surrounding world with terrible fury and hatred.
All the gazes were now locked to that mysterious figure. Slowly, very slowly, the being on the ramparts grabbed the stone and raised high above his head, in an astonished silence. Enraptured by that sight, the women's eyes fixated themselves on that round, dark object as the heat and arousal in their bodies seemed to rise together with the slow ascending movement of the stone, reaching even more spasmodic levels of intensity, making their naked bodies to begin to stretch and tense like the string of a bow.
And then, the figure pronounced a single word, just a single, short, vibrating syllable, in the same obscure language being chanted by the women just short time ago. In a moment, the stone in his hands seemed to come to life, as it enlightened with a deep, inner, purplish glow.