Tes4Mod:Order of the Dragon/Nightmare at the Well

How easy it was to close his eyes when it was dark outside. As from afar you could hear the hum of the night, although she was so close. Quietly, she whispered in his ear, but he did not listen. His thoughts were filled with beauty. A grasshopper buzzed around his head. The discontinuous beating of its wings bothered him a little; he actually heard it until it sat down somewhere nearby and had come to rest. Did it also whisper in the night? How many languages did she speak?

With the night now came the cold that made him tremble, but Ayhamli paid it no attention. He pulled the jute blanket a little further over his face and returned to his thoughts back to the beauty that still prospered. He did not open his eyes, though he knew deep down that everything running rampant around him was also of beauty. Even the sand that stretched miles and miles in all directions and so thoroughly covered the land, as if to hide any flaw that might have perhaps hidden underneath.

By day he was so hot that he could barely stand it, but the night took away all the heat. Pity came over him - compassion for something that was not alive.

The well beside which he had pitched his camp was almost dried up. The few drops that he had managed to get from it were so polluted by sand as to be more mud than water. And since he had closed his eyes, strange gurgling noises came from its depths. The inner urge to be a little further away from the well was always indomitable, but he had vowed never to open his eyes at night. The dunes were not very high here and one could see for miles into the distance - enough places for demons, ghosts, hallucinations and other figments of numbing fear.

He pressed his eyelids With all his strength - as hard as he could. No sound would penetrate his thoughts, not a demon, nor a hurricane. They could not be closed if they had grown together. He conjured up the image of which he thought over and over again to scare back the night and taste the juice of life. The amazing thing was that it never worked. He could never see exactly what enchanted him there. It was as if time had pushed a glass wall in between him and the view that beauty was more and more faded. But just this blurry image of his dreams was enough to banish all darkness from his senses. And so even now.

Finally, however, the gurgling from the well paved its way into his consciousness and he heard with horror an inhuman voice, begging him.

'Great Sir, I am your humble servant. But please, look down at me. Bear with my sight and it will be worth your while.'

Ayhamli overcame the fear. In a panic, he hid under the threadbare jute cloth, which he used as a blanket, knowing that this would not help him out safely from the dangers there. But hot panic had reached him, and he wondered if this was indeed the night, there anew and with unheard-of vitality said to him.

'Great Lord, have no fear. I will do you no grief. See, I'm down here and you, Great Lord, are up there. Quite regardless of the shameful figure I must call my body. Please, look down at me.'

Now he mused. Ayhamli's thoughts were the words he had just heard. Whomever might include that voice, but if he did not ask her, he would find no sleep today. And, who knows, maybe it would talk to him forever?

Slowly he pushed himself from the shelter of his blanket out into the night. Immediately, he felt a slight breeze that was so icy cold that he instinctively reached for the jute cloth, but he was able to tame it and remained steadfast. His eyes, however, he kept closed. The grasshopper had resumed the erratic beating of their wings again; they must have settled right next to him.

'Great Lord,' the voice began again from the well, and now it seemed more flattering than any other sound he had ever heard. But at the same time lived something so abysmally cold inside it that Ayhamli stumbled back again.

'Have no fear, Great Lord. Just look into the fountain and you will see for yourself that there dwelleth no evil.' The last words were met by a suspicious purr that the voice had contained the whole time, but only now came to the foreground. 

He stood stiffly in the cold desert wind and fought with himself, but ultimately he lost and opened his eyes. The stars glittered in the firmament like millions of greedy pale eyes, drifting clouds on the horizon startled sand, and two antelopes chased across the flat plane. The words echoed from the well, suddenly became very loud.

'Come! Great Lord, come here!'

Ayhamli turned to the fountain and took a step toward it. Carefully, he leaned on the brick parapet and looked down. He could see nothing, only a black hole - deep and uncertain. Suddenly, however, an unmanageable feeling of tremendous fear came over him and he wanted to stagger back at this moment, but a match lit in the depths of the well and against hope he leaned a little further forward; right under him, a grimace peeled out from the dark and grinned at him with yellow eyes. The voice that escaped the gray mouth was undoubtedly the one that had spoken to him, but it sounded distorted in a bizarre way and the purring had now completely taken over.

'The Great Lord would not have to drink from this well. The night always comes here first. Anyone who engages here is delivered to me, because I rule here. And I'll eat anything that I rule.'

'Who are -' Ayhamli let out even as he was engulfed with skin and hair.