Muskethulhu - Az Ehes Kastély

Muskethulhu

5) Az Ehes Kastély

Much of the fighting in the great war occurred in Magyarország. Some places within that vast kingdom have not recovered, may never recover. One such place is Az Ehes Kastely. This palace was built on the remains of an earlier castle, a dark and evil place once the home of an evil prince whose battle with the Persian and their Turkic nomad allies is renowned to this day for the terror and inhuman acts of both sides.

Unknown to all but the prince were the sunless caverns beneath the castle and the relics of a bygone age when hideous creatures slipped past the veil of creation from the cold empty spaces between the stars and crawled across the earth; Relics and shadows and things that only the dank and reeking corruptions of stone and fungus warped and tainted by the presence of these elder and unwholesome beings could succor. The prince's mind, drained of humanity, twisted by evil and mad beyond hope still balked at the very hint of that which lurked within the black void of these primordial depths, but at the last, when the walls of his great keep were crumbling from the fire the Persians lit about them and shattering from the great stones thrown from the massive siege engines which had broken the outer walls, the prince opened a small door within the caverns and within his mind and the Evők a Lélek were freed.

No Persian or Turk ever returned home from that siege. No Magyar warrior survived to tell the tale. Haunted dreams of the villagers who had fled to the stone jungle of the hills and ravines about the prince's castle gave a vivid picture of the empty husks of men that stumbled beneath the keep and among the siege line and tents of the invaders.

As the centuries passed first a Magyar clan-chief, then a royal lord returned to the site of the castle. The Persians had fallen back to ancient borders in their ancient home; their Turkic nomad allies now settled in a kingdom in its own right, the southern pass had become secluded and disused. The lord removed the crumbled stone, built a palace upon the foundations of the keep, dragged away the rubble of the outer walls to flatten the space for lawn and garden. And then the great war began. Once more Turkish horsemen discovered the old abandoned trails to the north and the roar of cannon and musket shattered the peace as assuredly as the stones of the past had shattered the walls. As the great armies clashed a door never fully closed opened within the caverns beneath the palace and the Evők a Lélek returned.

The starved and desiccated bodies of the dead, Magyar and Turk, were found throughout the area. The nightmares returned to the villagers in their old hideaways among the hills. In the years since few come to Az Ehes Kastély and it is said that even fewer return.