The man came to as he was being drug by one foot by the creature along a dark, stone hallway. The thing had a torch in one hand as it shuffled, dragging him through different passages, leading ever downward. When they encountered stone steps, the thing would carry him under its armpit, before dropping him to the ground again and dragging him down passages. The old man coughed blood, feeling his teeth loosened or entirely missing. His jaw felt shattered, he couldn't close it properly, and he couldn't feel his right arm, as it dangled or dragged uselessly. The old man could barely breathe as he wheezed through the dirty, disgusting halls, but he sucked in as much air as he could, while his lungs still worked.
They eventually came to a large chamber, lit by various torches on walls and columns. Steps led down into the large room, covered in more marble, black glittering in the torchlight. At the bottom of the steps was a raised, circular dais in front of a massive, alien symbol. It looked like a needle point from the floor leading upwards. A large, circle starting two thirds of the way up the needle, its diameter meeting the top of the needle, the circle leading into branching thorns that carved and twisted into each other on the outside. The raised dais at the bottom of the steps was covered in blood. As the creature picked up the old man one more time, it stepped down the steps carefully, its massive feet thumping along the echoing hall.
The thing placed the man on the dais, then positioned him to his knees. The old man could barely move, so he just weakly stayed kneeling on the dais. The dais had braziers surrounding it, providing illumination to the dais, while the rest of the room was brightly lit around him from all of the torches on the walls. He could barely move his head, but he inched his head to the left and right, eye darting to every inch. He could see on each corner of the dais various humanoid figures.
The person he had seen from outside the castle was to his left, who was now obviously a woman in a white, high necked noble's mourning dress, her veil thick so he couldn't see past it at all. To his right, he could see a well dressed man in his 40's, pallid in face and hands, but with long, wavy hair and clean noble's clothing. His eyes made the man shiver in fear however, as they were a pure and deep black, the light in the room reflecting from them. He could just barely see behind him to his back right, and he could just see the figure of a younger woman, finely dressed and carrying what sounded like an infant in thick swaddling, but he couldn't see her features from the side of his swollen eye. Finally, looking to his back left he could see the creature that had brought him here taking the last position on the other corner.
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He moved his head back to the front, then drooped, blood dripping from his mouth onto the dais below. He could hear chanting in the room, first from the four surrounding him, and then slowly filling the room. It sounded like countless whispering, crying and wailing, the various voices tumultuous but incomprehensible. The old man's tears fell from his cheeks as he looked up toward the large, metallic sigil as a warping coalesced in front of it.
The warping grew larger, and chaotic, multicolored tears began to break into the air through it. Fingers seemed to grasp through the tearing, long, grey and knobby. A total of eight fingers spread the tearing apart, when another eight fingers broke from the backs of the ones already there, opening the other side, separating into two hands, with two more coming from deep in the chaotic mess and pulling the top and bottom of the warping. A single eye coalesced from the center, which separated into countless more eyes filling the center of the tear. The eyes were white with pits like deep orange and red swirling in the middle. They chaotically spun around to look at the entire room before settling on the old man.
He looked on in mute despair, no sounds coming from his deadened throat. He felt like he was shriveling from the thing on the inside, wanting nothing more but to run far, far away. His broken body refused his commands, until he could finally gather his fleeting sanity and throw himself backward, crawling toward the edge of the dais. His broken jaw hung down uselessly, dead arm drug along the stone. His eyes had widened completely, the fear inside him making them bulge and threaten to pop from the sockets, irises like pinpricks.
More hands separated and pulled and pushed more of the tearing away, then even more hands tore apart and reached quickly for the old man, what should be arms only different sized hands coalescing and separating forward. Just as he was about to pull himself off the dais, the thing's hands grasped his legs, then his arms, his torso, his neck, his head. They drug him back along the dais and pulled him toward the portal, before eventually enveloping him completely and pulling him through the warping. The thing's hands let go of the jagged tear and disappeared into the chaos, the tearing finally closing completely as the chanting stopped dead. The room was enveloped in complete darkness as all of the flames went out, only the wheezing, heavy breathing of the large creature audible in the darkness.