The absolute oneness of the porcelain shade must be admired before you can begin the stitching. The color can't be found anywhere else on this earth, and whatever other throughfare may exist. It’s pallor is not found in candles that have sat softening in sight of the sun. Not in the pulsing veins of marble found in sculpture. It is only found in the pigment of time, each day crafting blemishes to be admired. Every crack or line telling a story absent of words. If it’s done nothing else, it chroncicles the passage of time.

So many tales contained in such a small palette; stretched in front of me. It is time for the most delicate part. The stitching is made from tense fibers of silk and arteries, it is run through the tiny steel oval. And then it is used to seal away a cavern from the speechless decay of the room. The cavern closed up like a box at the altar. This will be the end of my art, it would be innapropriate to venture away from the point of good taste. Here in this barrow, and further above this lump of humus, it is against Holy laws to do much else.

Though in this moment it does not look so hallowed. Whatever God there is has never come to assess my work. The tradition of man is often found to be useless without some fear of holy wrath. These rituals that seem to survive are the ones that have a real purpose at their core. Such as the scented oils that are made to lend the illusion of cleanliness, even in the face of our greatest terror. Without these oils there can be no beauty found in my art. No matter how well I capture a fractal of time before degeneration.

The stitching complete, the oils applied, it is time to transport a completed work to its viewing room. This work would go beyond the castle wall, somewhere deserving of its perfection. The piece would have to wait however. As the scented salts within my horned mask were beginning to wear down. Walking out through the clay arch, the path to the loosely sealed door is made. Allowing for the scream of rusted joints I chanced a movement through the door. Loping up the stairway, or truly more of an upward trend of dirt, the sun peeks out over the city of Malumus.

Breathing in winter's chill, eyes above at the epicenter where a sprawling building thrusts into the edge of the sky. Now considering the structure, it truly lacked anything of architectural value. It appeared as if the stone mason had been charged to create the mausoleum for some wretched giant. It did not look to be a palace housing the city's capital building.

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Malumus was one giant slope, ridged roofs running ever downwards into a pattern on all sides. A city that inspired the thought of some monumental turtles back. Pointed homes echoing deeper until they faded into the ground where undesirables slept. The quality of masonry trickled and diminished the lower down the hill one reached. The opulence of the city could only be stretched so thin within its square miles. The buildings while excessive in scale or expense, were all the same clouded grey color. There was a lacking artist's sensibility in Malumus, anything akin to the vague or abstract was anathema. Luckily I found my work to be quite concrete, no one could say I moved out of line.

These gray houses eventually exhausted their space, and the flatlands became visible. Here there were structures that could be called homes; if you had never owned one in life. To many they would be nothing more than cobbles of dirt with a dreadful subterranean space. In this runnel of civilization, the barrows were sleeping, where I fashioned my priceless works. I enjoy living beyond sight. What inspired dread was glancing upwards at the portrait of gray-scaled slopes. This often reminded me of the rains in the summer. The winds turning the ground into a shifting palette, and the water mixing it into a rushing tide of sodden soil.

The onslaught of water and mud would fill the Barrows that lacked proper sealant without fail. And without fail, the old and the sick would have to be hauled out on beds of cloth, coiled up like a dying wyrm. Dens where mothers gave birth in darkness, would be swallowed up by the runoff of excess in a matter of minutes. But today it was still winter, and the holes were dry as could be hoped for. The small doorless shack that held my necessaries was standing begrudgingly against the breeze.

And with a prolonged stretch towards the upper tier, I reached for the salts. My hand fumbled and found nothing but herbs and rotted wood. The moist feeling of the shelf giving inward beneath my hand. At this moment there was the sound of a metallic clatter, such as an urn or meadery mug falling to the floor. Walking with an aged crack, back downwards through the entryway, there were shadows meandering from the firelight.

Rats gnawed away at the carefully laid stitching. The blood from the bloated corpse flowing out across the stone sluggishly in chunks of vivid color. The jaw of the gored taxidermist was hanging slack, with an accusatory glance in his goat-milk eyes. The vermin had made their way into the urn containing the discarded organs. They set upon it like a newly-made lord at his first feast. Taking in the scent without the salts dispelled any thought of continuing, and the Undertaker picked up a large bludgeon from the fireside.