Overblown writing example:

"The Eye of Argon" was published in 1970 in OSFAN,
the journal of the Ozark SF Society, issue number 10. Photocopies — invariably
with the last page missing — circulated for decades, and it became a regular sf
convention challenge to read Jim Theis’s mangled prose with a straight face.
This HTML document is based on the standard ASCII
text of the story, widely available on line. In the January 2005 issue of
The New York Review of Science Fiction it was revealed that a complete
copy of OSFAN #10 had been unearthed in the Jack Williamson SF Library
at Eastern New Mexico University. Thanks to the collection administrator Gene
Bundy, the missing half-page of text appeared at last in NYRSF #198,
February 2005, and has been inserted below.

Jim Theis
himself, who was 16 when "The Eye of Argon" first appeared, reportedly
died circa 2001 at age 48. He will be long remembered in sf fandom.

The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the
baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof
prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust
splattered crust of earth. The tireless sun cast its parching rays of
incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Small
rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of
their dismal lives. Dust sprayed over three heaving mounts in blinding clouds,
while they bore the burdonsome cargoes of their struggling overseers.

"Prepare to embrace your creators in the stygian haunts of hell,
barbarian", gasped the first soldier.

"Only after you have kissed the fleeting stead of death, wretch!"
returned Grignr.

A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive barbarians hide
enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a steel shod
blade to the hilt into the soldiers vital organs. The disemboweled mercenary
crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched
dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.

The enthused barbarian swilveled about, his shock of fiery red hair tossing
robustly in the humid air currents as he faced the attack of the defeated
soldier’s fellow in arms.

"Damn you, barbarian" Shrieked the soldier as he observed his
comrade in death.

A gleaming scimitar smote a heavy blow against the renegade’s spiked helmet,
bringing a heavy cloud over the Ecordian’s misting brain. Shaking off the
effects of the pounding blow to his head, Grignr brought down his scarlet
streaked edge against the soldier’s crudely forged hauberk, clanging harmlessly
to the left side of his opponent. The soldier’s stead whinnied as he directed
the horse back from the driving blade of the barbarian. Grignr leashed his mount
forward as the hoarsely piercing battle cry of his wilderness bred race
resounded from his grinding lungs. A twirling blade bounced harmlessly from the
mighty thief’s buckler as his rolling right arm cleft upward, sending a foot of
blinding steel ripping through the Simarian’s exposed gullet. A gasping gurgle
from the soldier’s writhing mouth as he tumbled to the golden sand at his feet,
and wormed agonizingly in his death bed.

Grignr’s emerald green orbs glared lustfully at the wallowing soldier
struggling before his chestnut swirled mount. His scowling voice reverberated
over the dying form in a tone of mocking mirth. "You city bred dogs should
learn not to antagonize your better." Reining his weary mount ahead, grignr
resumed his journey to the Noregolian city of Gorzam, hoping to discover wine,
women, and adventure to boil the wild blood coarsing through his savage veins.

The trek to Gorzom was forced upon Grignr when the soldiers of Crin were
leashed upon him by a faithless concubine he had wooed. His scandalous
activities throughout the Simarian city had unleashed throngs of havoc and
uproar among it’s refined patricians, leading them to tack a heavy reward over
his head.

He had barely managed to escape through the back entrance of the inn he had
been guzzling in, as a squad of soldiers tounced upon him. After spilling a
spout of blood from the leader of the mercenaries as he dismembered one of the
officer’s arms, he retreated to his mount to make his way towards Gorzom,
rumoured to contain hoards of plunder, and many young wenches for any man who
has the backbone to wrest them away.

-2-

Arriving after dusk in Gorzom,grignr descended down a dismal alley, reining
his horse before a beaten tavern. The redhaired giant strode into the dimly lit
hostelry reeking of foul odors, and cheap wine. The air was heavy with chocking
fumes spewing from smolderingtorches encased within theden’s earthen packed
walls. Tables were clustered with groups of drunken thieves, and cutthroats,
tossing dice, or making love to willing prostitutes.

Eyeing a slender female crouched alone at a nearby bench, Grignr advanced
wishing to wholesomely occupy his time. The flickering torches cast weird shafts
of luminescence dancing over the half naked harlot of his choice, her stringy
orchid twines of hair swaying gracefully over the lithe opaque nose, as she
raised a half drained mug to her pale red lips.

Glancing upward, the alluring complexion noted the stalwart giant as he
rapidly approached. A faint glimmer sparked from the pair of deep blue ovals of
the amorous female as she motioned toward Grignr, enticing him to join her. The
barbarian seated himself upon a stool at the wenches side, exposing his body,
naked save for a loin cloth brandishing a long steel broad sword, an iron
spiraled battle helmet, and a thick leather sandals, to her unobstructed view.

"Thou hast need to occupy your time, barbarian",questioned the
female?

"Only if something worth offering is within my reach." Stated
Grignr,as his hands crept to embrace the tempting female, who welcomed them with
open willingness.

"From where do you come barbarian, and by what are you called?"
Gasped the complying wench, as Grignr smothered her lips with the blazing touch
of his flaming mouth.

The engrossed titan ignored the queries of the inquisitive female, pulling
her towards him and crushing her sagging nipples to his yearning chest. Without
struggle she gave in, winding her soft arms around the harshly bronzedhide of
Grignr corded shoulder blades, as his calloused hands caressed her firm
protruding busts.

"You make love well wench," Admitted Grignr as he reached for the
vessel of potent wine his charge had been quaffing.

A flying foot caught the mug Grignr had taken hold of, sending its blood red
contents sloshing over a flickering crescent; leashing tongues of bright orange
flame to the foot trodden floor.

"Remove yourself Sirrah, the wench belongs to me;" Blabbered a
drunken soldier, too far consumed by the influences of his virile brew to take
note of the superior size of his adversary.

Grignr lithly bounded from the startled female, his face lit up to an ashen
red ferocity, and eyes locked in a searing feral blaze toward the swaying
soldier.

"To hell with you, braggard!" Bellowed the angered Ecordian, as he
hefted his finely honed broad sword.

The staggering soldier clumsily reached towards the pommel of his dangling
sword, but before his hands ever touched the oaken hilt a silvered flash was
slicing the heavy air. The thews of the savages lashing right arm bulged from
the glistening bronzed hide as his blade bit deeply into the soldiers neck,
loping off the confused head of his senseless tormentor.

With a nauseating thud the severed oval toppled to the floor, as the
segregated torso of Grignr’s bovine antagonist swayed, then collapsed in a pool
of swirled crimson.

In the confusion the soldier’s fellows confronted Grignr with unsheathed
cutlasses, directed toward the latters scowling make-up.

"The slut should have picked his quarry more carefully!" Roared
the victor in a mocking baritone growl, as he wiped his dripping blade on the
prostrate form, and returned it to its scabbard.

"The fool should have shown more prudence, however you shall rue your
actions while rotting in the pits." Stated one of the sprawled soldier’s
comrades.

Grignr’s hand began to remove his blade from its leather housing, but
retarded the motion in face of the blades waving before his face.

"Dismiss your hand from the hilt, barbarbian, or you shall find a foot
of steel sheathed in your gizzard."

Grignr weighed his position observing his plight, where-upon he took the
soldier’s advice as the only logical choice. To attempt to hack his way from his
present predicament could only warrant certain death. He was of no mind to bring
upon his own demise if an alternate path presented itself. The will to
necessitate his life forced him to yield to the superior force in hopes of a
moment of carlessness later upon the part of his captors in which he could
effect a more plausible means of escape.

"You may steady your arms, I will go without a struggle."

"Your decision is a wise one, yet perhaps you would have been better
off had you forced death," the soldier’s mouth wrinkled to a sadistic grin
of knowing mirth as he prodded his prisoner on with his sword point.

After an indiscriminate period of marching through slinking alleyways and
dim moonlighted streets the procession confronted a massive seraglio. The palace
area was surrounded by an iron grating, with a lush garden upon all sides.

The group was admitted through the gilded gateway and Grignr was ledalong a
stone pathway bordered by plush vegitation lustfully enhanced by the moon’s
shimmering rays. Upon reaching the palace the group was granted entrance, and
after several minutes of explanation, led through several winding corridors to a
richly draped chamber.

Confronting the group was a short stocky man seated upona golden throne.
Tapestries of richly draped regal blue silk covered all walls of the chamber,
while the steps leading to the throne were plated with sparkling white ivory.
The man upon the throne had a naked wench seated at each of his arms, and a
trusted advisor seated in back of him. At each cornwr of the chamber a guard
stood at attention, with upraised pikes supported in their hands, golden
chainmail adorning their torso’s and barred helmets emitting scarlet plumes
enshrouding their heads. The man rose from his throne to the dias surrounding
it. His plush turquois robe dangled loosely from his chuncky frame.

The soldiers surrounding Grignr fell to their knees with heads bowed to the
stone masonry of the floor in fearful dignity to their sovereign, leige.

"Explain the purpose of this intrusion upon my chateau!"

"Your sirenity, resplendent in noble grandeur, we have brought this
yokel before you (the soldier gestured toward Grignr) for the redress or your
all knowing wisdon in judgement regarding his fate."

"Down on your knees, lout, and pay proper homage to your sovereign!"
commanded the pudgy noble of Grignr.

"By the surly beard of Mrifk, Grignr kneels to no man!" scowled
the massive barbarian.

"You dare to deal this blasphemous act to me! You are indeed brave
stranger, yet your valor smacks of foolishness."

"I find you to be the only fool, sitting upon your pompous throne,
enhancing the rolling flabs of your belly in the midst of your elaborate
luxuryand …" The soldier standing at Grignr’s side smote him heavily in
the face with the flat of his sword, cutting short the harsh words and knocking
his battered helmet to the masonry with an echo-ing clang.

The paunchy noble’s sagging round face flushed suddenly pale, then pastily
lit up to a lustrous cherry red radiance. His lips trembled with malicious rage,
while emitting a muffled sibilant gibberish. His sagging flabs rolled like a tub
of upset jelly, then compressed as he sucked in his gut in an attempt to conceal
his softness.

The prince regained his statue, then spoke to the soldiers surrounding
Grignr, his face conforming to an ugly expression of sadistic humor.

"Take this uncouth heathen to the vault of misery, and be sure that his
agonies are long and drawn out before death can release him."

"As you wish sire, your command shall be heeded immediately,"
answered the soldier on the right of Grignr as he stared into the barbarians
seemingly unaffected face.

The advisor seated in the back of the noble slowly rose and advanced to the
side of his master, motioning the wenches seated at his sides to remove
themselves. He lowered his head and whispered to the noble.

"Eminence, the punishment you have decreed will cause much misery to
this scum, yet it will last only a short time, then release him to a land beyond
the sufferings of the human body. Why not mellow him in one of the subterranean
vaults for a few days, then send him to life labor in one of your buried mines.
To one such as he, a life spent in the confinement of the stygian pits will be
an infinitely more appropiate and lasting torture."

The noble cupped his drooping double chin in the folds of his briming palm,
meditating for a moment upon the rationality of the councilor’s word’s, then
raised his shaggy brown eyebrows and turned toward the advisor, eyes aglow.

"…As always Agafnd, you speak with great wisdom. Your words ring of
great knowledge concerning the nature of one such as he ," sayeth , the
king. The noble turned toward the prisoner with a noticable shimmer reflecting
in his frog-like eyes, and his lips contorting to a greasy grin. "I have
decided to void my previous decree. The prisoner shall be removed to one of the
palaces underground vaults. There he shall stay until I have decided that he has
sufficiently simmered, whereupon he is to be allowed to spend the remainder of
his days at labor in one of my mines."

Upon hearing this, Grignr realized that his fate would be far less merciful
than death to one such as he, who is used to roaming the countryside at will. A
life of confinement would be more than his body and mind could stand up to. This
type of life would be immeasurably worse than death.

"I shall never understand the ways if your twisted civilization. I
simply defend my honor and am condemned to life confinement, by a pig who sits
on his royal ass wooing whores, and knows nothing of the affairs of the land he
imagines to rule!" Lectures Grignr ?

"Enough of this! Away with the slut before I loose my control!"

Seeing the peril of his position, Grignr searched for an opening. Crushing
prudence to the sward, he plowed into the soldier at his left arm taking hold of
his sword, and bounding to the dias supporting the prince before the startled
guards could regain their composure. Agafnd leaped Grignr and his sire, but
found a sword blade permeating the length of his ribs before he could loosed his
weapon.

The councilor slumped to his knees as Grignr slid his crimsoned blade from
Agfnd’s rib cage. The fat prince stood undulating in insurmountable fear before
the edge of the fiery maned comet, his flabs of jellied blubber pulsating to and
fro in ripples of flowing terror.

"Where is your wisdom and power now, your magjesty?" Growled
Grignr.

The prince went rigid as Grignr discerned him glazing over his shoulder. He
swlived to note the cause of the noble’s attention, raised his sword over his
head, and prepared to leash a vicious downward cleft, but fell short as the haft
of a steel rimed pike clashed against his unguarded skull. Then blackness and
solitude. Silence enshrouding and ever peaceful reind supreme.

"Before me, sirrah! Before me as always! Ha, Ha Ha, Haaaa…",
nobly cackled.

-3-

Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually
cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of
charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the
bleak abscense of sound.

Grignr’s muddled brain reeled from the shock of the blow he had recieved to
the base of his skull. The events leading to his predicament were slow to filter
back to him. He dickered with the notion that he was dead and had descended or
sunk, however it may be, to the shadowed land beyond the the aperature of the
grave, but rejected this hypothesis when his memory sifted back within his
grips. This was not the land of the dead, it was something infinitely more
precarious than anything the grave could offer. Death promised an infinity of
peace, not the finite misery of an inactive life of confined torture, forever
concealed from the life bearing shafts of the beloved rising sun. The orb that
had been before taken for granted, yet now cherished above all else. To be
forever refused further glimpses of the snow capped summits of the land of his
birth, never again to witness the thrill of plundering unexplored lands beyond
the crest of a bleeding horizon, and perhaps worst of all the denial to ever
again encompass the lustful excitement of caressing the naked curves of the body
of a trim yound wench.

This was indeed one of the buried chasms of Hell concealed within the inner
depths of the palace’s despised interior. A fearful ebony chamber devised to
drive to the brinks of insanity the minds of the unfortunately condemned,
through the inapt solitude of a limbo of listless dreary silence.

-3 1/2-

A tightly rung elliptical circle or torches cast their wavering shafts
prancing morbidly over the smooth surface of a rectangular, ridged alter.
Expertly chisled forms of grotesque gargoyles graced the oblique rim
protruberating the length of the grim orifice of death, staring forever ahead
into nothingness in complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in their
prescence. Brown flaking stains decorated the golden surface of the ridge
surrounding the alter, which banked to a small slit at the lower right hand
corner of the altar. The slit stood above a crudely pounded pail which had
several silver meshed chalices hanging at its sides. Dangling at the rimof
golden mallet, the handle of which was engraved with images of twisted faces and
groved at its far end with slots designed for a snug hand grip. The head of the
mallet was slightly larger than a clenched fist and shaped into a smooth oval
mass.

Encircling the marble altar was a congregation of leering shamen. Eerie
chants of a bygone age, originating unknown eons before the memory of man, were
being uttered from the buried recesses of the acolytes’ deep lings. Orange paint
was smeared in generous globules over the tops of thw Priests’ wrinkled shaven
scalps, while golden rings projected from the lobes of their pink ears. Ornate
robes of lusciour purple satin enclosed their bulging torsos, attached around
their waists with silvered silk lashes latched with ebony buckles in the shape
of morose mis-shaped skulls. Dangling around their necks were oval fashoned
medalions held by thin gold chains, featuring in their centers blood red rubys
which resembled crimson fetish eyeballs. Cushoning their bare feet were plush
red felt slippers with pointed golden spikes projecting from their tips.

Situated in front of the altar, and directly adjacent to the copper pail was
a massive jade idol; a misshaped, hideous bust of the shamens’ pagan diety. The
shimmering green idol was placed in a sitting posture on an ornately carved
golden throne raised upon a round, dvory plated dias; it bulging arms and webbed
hands resting on the padded arms of the seat. Its head was entwined in golden
snake-like coils hanging over its oblong ears, which tappered off to thin hollow
points. Its nose was a bulging triangular mass, sunken in at its sides with tow
gaping nostrils. Dramatic beneath the nostrils was a twisted, shaggy lipped
mouth, giving the impression of a slovering sadistic grimace.

At the foot of the heathen diety a slender, pale faced female, naked but for
a golden, jeweled harness enshrouding her huge outcropping breasts, supporting
long silver laces which extended to her thigh, stood before the pearl white
field with noticable shivers traveling up and down the length of her exquisitely
molded body. Her delicate lips trembled beneath soft narrow hands as she
attemped to conceal herself from the piercing stare of the ambivalent idol.

Glaring directly down towards her was the stoney, cycloptic face of the
bloated diety. Gaping from its single obling socket was scintillating, many
fauceted scarlet emerald, a brilliant gem seeming to possess a life all of its
own. A priceless gleaming stone, capable of domineering the wealth of conquering
empires…the eye of Argon.

-4-

All knowledge of measuring time had escaped Grignr. When a person is
deprived of the sun, moon, and stars, he looses all conception of time as he had
previously understood it. It seemed as if years had passed if time were being
measured by terms of misery and mental anguish, yet he estimated that his stay
had only been a few days in length. He has slept three times and had been fed
five times since his awakening in the crypt. However, when the actions of the
body are restricted its needs are also affected. The need for nourishmnet and
slumber are directly proportional to the functions the body has performed,
meaning that when free and active Grignr may become hungry every six hours and
witness the desire for sleep every fifteen hours, whereas in his present
condition he may encounter the need for food every ten hours, and the want for
rest every twenty hours. All methods he had before depended upon were extinct in
the dismal pit. Hence, he may have been imprisoned for ten minutes or ten years,
he did not know, resulting in a disheartened emotion deep within his being.

The food, if you can honor the moldering lumps of fetid mush to that extent,
was born to him by two guards who opened a portal at the top of his enclosure
and shoved it to him in wooden bowls, retrieving the food and water bowels from
his previous meal at the same time, after which they threw back the bolts on the
iron latch and returned to their other duties. Since deprived of all other means
of nourishment, Grignr was impelled to eat the tainted slop in order to ward off
the paings of starvation, though as he stuffed it into his mouth with his filthy
fingers and struggled to force it down his throat, he imagined it was that which
had been spurned by the hounds stationed at various segments of the palace.

There was little in the baren vault that could occupy his body or mind. He
had paced out the length and width of the enclosure time and time again and
tested every granite slab which consisted the walls of the prison in hopes of
finding a hidden passage to freedom, all of which was to no avail other than to
keep him busy and distract his mind from wandering to thoughts of what he
believed was his future. He had memorized the number of strides from one end to
the other of the cell, and knew the exact number of slabs which made up the
bleak dungeon. Numorous schemes were introduced and alternately discarded in
turn as they succored to unravel to him no means of escape which stood the
slightest chance of sucess.

Anguish continued to mount as his means of occupation were rapidly
exhausted. Suddenly without no tive, he wasrouted from his contemplations as he
detected a faint scratching sound at the end of the crypt opposite him. The
sound seemed to be caused by something trying to scrape away at the grantite
blocks the floor of the enclosure consisted of, the sandy scratching of
something like an animal’s claws.

Grignr gradually groped his way to the other end of the vault carefully
feeling his way along with his hands ahead of him. When a few inches from the
wall, a loud, penetrating squeal, and the scampering of small padded feet
reverberated from the walls of the roughly hewn chamber.

Grignr threw his hands up to shield his face, and flung himself backwards
upon his buttocks. A fuzzy form bounded to his hairy chest, burying its talons
in his flesh while gnashing toward his throat with its grinding white teeth;its
sour, fetid breath scortching the sqirming barbarians dilating nostrils. Grignr
grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan
brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its
beady grey organs of sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.

Taking hold of the rodent around its lean, growling stomach with both hands
Grignr pried it from his crimson rent breast, removing small patches of flayed
flesh from his chest in the motion between the squalid black claws of the
starving beast. Holding the rodent at arms length, he cupped his righthand over
its frothing face, contrcting his fingers into a vice-like fist over the
quivering head. Retaining his grips on the rat, grignr flexed his outstretched
arms while slowly twisting his right hand clockwise and his left hand counter
clockwise motion. The rodent let out a tortured squall, drawing scarlet as it
violently dug its foam flecked fangs into the barbarians sweating palm, causing
his face to contort to an ugly grimace as he cursed beneath his braeth.

With a loud crack the rodents head parted from its squirming torso, sending
out a sprinking shower of crimson gore, and trailing a slimy string of
disjointed vertebrae, snapped trachea, esophagus, and jugular, disjointed hyoid
bone, morose purpled stretched hide, and blood seared muscles.

Flinging the broken body to the floor, Grignr shook his blood streaked hands
and wiped them against his thigh until dry, then wiped the blood that had
showered his face and from his eyes. Again sitting himself upon the jagged
floor, he prepared to once more revamp his glum meditations. He told himself
that as long as he still breathed the gust of life through his lungs, hope was
not lost; he told himself this, but found it hard to comprehend in his gloomy
surroundings. Yet he was still alive, his bulging sinews at their peak of
marvel, his struggling mind floating in a miral of impressed excellence of
thought. Plot after plot sifted through his mind in energetic contemplations.

Then it hit him. Minutes may have passed in silent thought or days, he could
not tell, but he stumbled at last upon a plan that he considered as holding a
slight margin of plausibility.

He might die in the attempt, but he knew he would not submit without a final
bloody struggle. It was not a foolproof plan, yet it built up a store of renewed
vortexed energy in his overwroughtsoul, though he might perish in the execution
of the escape, he would still be escaping the life of infinite torture in store
forhim. Either way he would still cheat the gloating prince of the succored
revenge his sadistic mind craved so dearly.

The guards would soon come to bear him off to the prince’s buried mines of
dread, giving him the sought after opportunity to execute his newly formulated
plan. Groping his way along the rough floor Grignr finally found his tool in a
pool of congealed gore; the carcass of the decapitated rodent; the tool that the
very filth he had been sentenced too, spawned. When the time came for action he
would have to be prepared, so he set himself to rending the sticky hulk in grim
silence, searching by the touch of his fingertips for the lever to freedom.

-5-

"Up to the altar and be done with it wench;" ordered a fidgeting
shaman as he gave the female a grim stare accompanied by the wrinkling of his
lips to a mirthful grin of delight.

The girl burst into a slow steady whimper, stooping shakily to her knees and
cringing woefully from the priest with both arms wound snake-like around the
bulging jade jade shin rising before her scantily attired figure. Her face was
redly inflamed from the salty flow of tears spouting from her glassy dilated
eyeballs.

With short, heavy footfals the priest approached the female, his piercing
stare never wavering from her quivering young countenance. Halting before the
terrified girl he projected his arm outward and motioned her to arise with an
upward movement of his hand. the girl’s whimpering increased slightly and she
sunk closer to the floor rather than arising. The flickering torches outlined
her trim build with a weird ornate glow as it cast a ghostly shadow dancing in
horrid waves of splendor over smoothly worn whiteness of the marble hewn altar.

The shaman’s lips curled back farther, exposing a set of blackened, decaying
molars which transformed his slovenly grin into a wide greasy arc of sadistic
mirth and alternately interposed into the female a strong sensation of stomach
curdling nausea. "Have it as you will female;" gloated the enhanced
priest as he bent over at the waist, projecting his ape-like arms forward, and
clasped the female’s slender arms with his hairy round fists. With an inward
surge of of his biceps he harshly jerked the trembling girl to her feet and
smothered her salty wet cheeks with the moldy touch of his decrepid, dull red
lips.

The vile stench of the Shaman’s hot fetid breath over came the nauseated
female with a deep soul searing sickness, causing her to wrench her head
backwards and regurgitate a slimy, orangewhite stream of swelling gore over the
richly woven purple robe of the enthused acolyte.

The priest’s lips trembled with a malicious rage as he removed his callous
paws from the girl’s arms and replaced them with tightly around her undulating
neck, shaking her violently to and fro.

The girl gasped a tortured groan from her clamped lungs, her sea blue eyes
bulging forth from damp sockets. Cocking her right foot backwards, she leashed
it desperately outwards with the strength of a demon possessed, lodging her
sandled foot squarely between the shaman’s testicles.

The startled priest released his crushing grip, crimping his body over at
the waist overlooking his recessed belly; wide open in a deep chasim. His face
flushed to a rose red shade of crimson, eyelids fluttering wide with eyeballs
protruding blindly outwards from their sockets to their outmost perimeters,
while his lips quivered wildly about allowing an agonized wallow to gust forth
as his breath billowed from burning lungs. His hands reached out clutching his
urinary gland as his knees wobbled rapidly about for a few seconds then buckled,
causing the ruptured shaman to collapse in an egg huddled mass to the granite
pavement, rolling helplessly about in his agony.

The pathetic screeches of the shaman groveling in dejected misery upon the
hand hewn granite laid pavement, worn smooth by countless hours of arduous sweat
and toil, a welter of ichor oozing through his clenched hands, attracted the
purturbed attention of his comrades from their foetid ulations. The actions of
this this rebellious wench bespoke the creedence of an unheard of sacrilige.
Never before in a lost maze of untold eons had a chosen one dared to demonstrate
such blasphemy in the face of the cult’s idolic diety.

The girl cowered in unreasoning terror, helpless in the face of the
emblazoned acolytes’ rage; her orchid tusseled face smothered betwixt her
bulging bosom as she shut her curled lashed tightly hoping to open them and find
herself awakening from a morbid nightmare. yet the hand of destiny decreed her
no such mercy, the antagonized pack of leering shaman converging tensely upon
her prostrate form were entangled all too lividly in the grim web of reality.

Shuddering from the clamy touch of the shaman as they grappled with her
supple form, hands wrenching at her slender arms and legs in all directions, her
bare body being molested in the midst of a labyrnth of orange smudges, purpled
satin, and mangled skulls, shadowed in an eerie crimson glow; her confused head
reeled then clouded in a mist of enshrouding ebony as she lapsed beneath the
protective sheet of unconsiousness to a land peach and resign.

-6-

"Take hold of this rope," said the first soldier, "and climb
out from your pit, slut. Your presence is requested in another far deeper hell
hole."

Grignr slipped his right hand to his thigh, concealing a small opaque object
beneath the folds of the g-string wrapped about his waist. Brine wells swelled
in Grignr’s cold, jade squinting eyes, which grown accustomed to the gloom of
the stygian pools of ebony engulfing him, were bedazzled and blinded by
flickerering radiance cast forth by the second soldiers’s resin torch.

Tightly gripped in the second soldier’s right hand, opposite the
intermittent torch, was a large double edged axe, a long leather wound oaken
handled transfixing the center of the weapon’s iron head. Adorning the torso’s
of both of the sentries were thin yet sturdy hauberks, the breatplates of which
were woven of tightly hemmed twines of reinforced silver braiding. Cupping the
soldiers’ feet were thick leather sandals, wound about their shins to two inches
below their knees. Wrapped about their waists were wide satin girdles, with
slender bladed poniards dangling loosely from them, the hilts of which featured
scarlet encrusted gems. Resting upon the manes of their heads, and reaching
midway to their brows were smooth copper morions. Spiraling the lower portion of
the helmet were short, up-curved silver spikes, while a golden hump spired from
the top of each basinet. Beneath their chins, wound around their necks, and
draping their clad shoulders dangled regal purple satin cloaks, which flowed
midway to the soldiers feet.

hand over hand, feet braced against the dank walls of the enclosure, huge
Grignr ascended from the moldering dephs of the forlorn abyss. His swelled
limbs, stiff due to the boredom of a timeless inactivity, compounded by the
musty atmosture and jagged granite protuberan against his body, craved for
action. The opportunity now presenting itself served the purpose of oiling his
rusty joints, and honing his dulled senses.

He braced himself, facing the second soldier. The sentry’s stature was was
wildly exaggerated in the glare of the flickering cresset cuppex in his right
fist. His eyes were wide open in a slightly slanted owlish glaze, enhanced in
their sinister intensity by the hawk-bill curve of his nose andpale yellow pique
of his cheeks.

"Place your hands behind your back," said the second soldier as he
raised his ax over his right shoulder blade and cast it a wavering glance. "We
must bind your wrists to parry any attempts at escape. Be sure to make the knot
a stout one, Broig, we wouldn’t want our guest to take leave of our guidance."

Broig grasped Grignr’s left wrist and reached for the barbarians’s right
wrist. Grignr wrenched his right arm free and swilveled to face Broig, reach-
beneath his loin cloth with his right hand. The sentry grappled at his girdle
for the sheathed dagger, but recoiled short of his intentions as Grignr’s right
arm swept to his gorge. The soldier went limp, his bobbing eyes rolling beneath
fluttering eyelids, a deep welt across his spouting gullet. Without lingering to
observe the result of his efforts, Grignr dropped to his knees. The second
soldier’s axe cleft over Grignr’s head in a blze of silvered ferocity, severing
several scarlet locks from his scalp. Coming to rest in his fellow’s stomach,
the iron head crashed through mail and flesh with splintering force, spilling a
pool of crimsoned entrails over the granite paving.

Before the sentry could wrench his axe free from his comrade’s carcass, he
found Grignr’s massive hands clasped about his throat, choking the life from his
clamped lungs. With a zealous grunt, the Ecordian flexed his tightly corded
biceps, forcing the grim faced soldier to one knee. The sentry plunged his right
fist into Grignr’s face, digging his grimy nails into the barbarians flesh.
Ejaculating a curse through rasping teeth, grignr surged the bulk of his weight
foreard, bowling the beseiged soldier over upon his back. The sentry’s arms
collapsed to his thigh, shuddering convulsively; his bulging eyes staring
blindly from a bloated ,cherry red face.

Rising to his feet, Grignr shook the bllod from his eyes, ruffling his surly
red mane as a brush fire swaying to the nightime breeze. Stooping over the spr
sprawled corpse of the first soldier, Grignr retrieved a small white object from
a pool of congealing gore. Snorting a gusty billow of mirth, he once more
concealed th e tiny object beneath his loin cloth; the tediously honed pelvis
bone of the broken rodent. Returning his attention toward the second soldier,
Grignr turned to the task of attiring his limbs. To move about freely through
the dim recesses of the castle would require the grotesque garb of its soldiery.

Utilizing the silence and stealth aquired in the untamed climbs of his
childhood, Grignr slink through twisting corridors, and winding stairways,
lighting his way with the confisticated torch of his dispatched guardian.
Knowing where his steps were leading to, Grignr meandered aimlessly in search of
an exit from the chateau’s dim confines. The wild blood coarsing through his
veins yearned for the undefiled freedom of the livid wilderness lands.

Coming upon a fork in the passage he treaked, voices accompanied by clinking
footfalls discerned to his sensitive ears from the left corridor. Wishing to
avoid contact, Grignr veered to the right passageway. If aquested as to the
purpose of his presence, his barbarous accent would reveal his identity, being
that his attire was not that of the castle’s mercenary troops.

In grim silence Grignr treaded down the dingily lit corridor; a stalking
panther creeping warily along on padded feet. After an interminable period of
wandering through the dull corridors; no gaps to break the monotony of the cold
gray walls, Grignr espied a small winding stairway. Descending the flight of
arced granite slabs to their posterior, Grignr was confronted by a short haalway
leading to a tall arched wooden doorway.

Halting before the teeming portal portal, Grignr restes his shaggy head
sideways against the barrier. Detecting no sounds from within, he grasped the
looped metel handle of the door; his arms surging with a tremendous effort of
bulging muscles, yet the door would not budge. Retrieving his ax from where he
had sheathed it beneath his girdle, he hefted it in his mighty hands with an
apiesed grunt, and wedging one of its blackened edges into the crack between the
portal and its iron rimed sill. Bracing his sandaled right foot against the
rougjly hewn wall, teeth tightly clenched, Grignr appilevered the oaken haft,
employing it as a lever whereby to pry open the barrier. The leather wound hilt
bending to its utmost limits of endurance, the massive portal swung open with a
grating of snapped latch and rusty iron hinges.

Glancing about the dust swirled room in the gloomily dancing glare of his
flickering cresset, Grignr eyed evidences of the enclosure being nothing more
than a forgotten storeroom. Miscellaneous articles required for the maintainance
of a castle were piled in disorganized heaps at infrequent intervals toward the
wall opposite the barbarian’s piercing stare. Utilizing long, bounding strides,
Grignr paced his way over to the mounds of supplies to discover if any articles
of value were contained within their midst.

Detecting a faint clinking sound, Grignr sprawed to his left side with the
speed of a striking cobra, landing harshly upon his back; torch and axe loudly
clattering to the floor in a morass of sparks and flame. A elmwoven board leaped
from collapsed flooring, clashing against the jagged flooring and spewing a
shower of orange and yellow sparks over Grignr’s startled face. Rising uneasily
to his feet, the half stunned Ecordian glared down at the grusome arm of death
he had unwittingly sprung. "Mrifk!"

If not for his keen auditory organs and lighting steeled reflexes, Grignr
would have been groping through the shadowed hell-pits of the Grim Reaper. He
had unknowingly stumbled upon an ancient, long forgotton booby trap; a mistake
which would have stunted the perusal of longevity of one less agile. A
mechanism, similar in type to that of a minature catapult was concealed beneath
two collapsable sections of granite flooring. The arm of the device was four
feet long, boasting razor like cleats at regular intervals along its face with
which it was to skewer the luckless body of its would be victim. Grignr had
stepped upon a concealed catch which relaesed a small metal latch beneath the
two granite sections, causing them to fall inward, and thereby loose the spiked
arm of death they precariously held in.

Partially out of curiosity and partially out of an inordinate fear of
becoming a pincushion for a possible second trap, Grignr plunged his torch into
the exposed gap in the floor. The floor of a second chamber stood out seven feet
below the glare. Tossing his torch through the aperature, Grignr grasped the
side of an adjoining tile, dropping down.

Glancing about the room, Grignr discovered that he had decended into the
palace’s mausoleum. Rectangular stone crypts cluttered the floor at evenly
placed intervals. The tops of the enclosures were plated with thick layers of
virgin gold, while the sides were plated with white ivory; at one time
sparkling, but now grown dingy through the passage of the rays of
allencompassing mother time. Featured at the head of each sarcophagus in
tarnished silver was an expugnisively carved likeness of its rotting inhabitant.

A dingy atmosphere pervaded the air of the chamber; which sealed in the
enclosure for an unknown period had grown thick and stale. Intermingling with
the curdled currents was the repugnant stench of slowly moldering flesh,
creeping ever slowly but surely through minute cracks in the numerous vaults.
Due to the embalming of the bodies, their flesh decayed at a much slower rate
than is normal, yet the nauseous oder was none the less repellant.

Towering over Grignr’s head was the trap he released. The mechanism of the
miniaturized catapolt was cluttered with mildew and cobwebs. Notwithstanding
these relics of antiquity, its efficiency remained unimpinged. To the right of
the trap wound a short stairway through a recess in the ceiling; a concealed
entrance leading to the mausoleum for which the catapult had obviously been
erected as a silent, relentless guardian.

Climbing up the side of the device, Grignr set to the task of resetting its
mechanism. In the e event that a search was organized, it would prove well to
leave no evidence of his presence open to wandering eyes. Besides, it might even
serve to dwindle the size of an opposing force.

Descending from his perch, Grignr was startled by a faintly muffled scream
of horrified desperation. His hair prickled yawkishly in disorganized clumps
along his scalp. As a cold danced along the length of his spinal cord. No
moral/mortal barrier, human or otherwise, was capable of arousing the numbing
sensation of fear inside of Grignr’s smoldering soul. However, he was
overwrought by the forces of the barbarians’ instinctive fear of the
supernatural. His mighty thews had always served to adequately conquer any
tangible foe., but the intangible was something distant and terrible. Dim
horrifying tales passed by word of mouth over glimmering camp fires and skins of
wine had more than once served the purpose of chilling the marrowed core of his
sturdy limbed bones.

Yet, the scream contained a strangely human quality, unlike that which
Grignr imagined would come from the lungs of a demon or spirit, making Grignr
take short nervous strides advancing to the sarcophagus from which the sound was
issuing. Clenching his teeth in an attempt to steel his jangled nerves, Grignr
slid the engraved slab from the vault with a sharp rasp of grinding stone.
Another long drawn cry of terror infested anguish met the barbarian, scoring
like the shrill piping of a demented banshee; piercing the inner fibres of his
superstitious brain with primitive dread dread and awe.

Stooping over to espy the tomb’s contents, the glittering Ecordians
nostrills were singed by the scorching aroma of a moldering corpse, long shut up
and fermenting; the same putrid scent which permeated the entire chamber, though
multiplied to a much more concentrated dosage. The shriveled, leathery packet of
crumbling bones and dried flacking flesh offered no resistance, but remained in
a fixed position of perpetual vigilance, watching over its dim abode from hollow
gaping sockets.

The tortured crys were not coming from the tomb but from some hidden depth
below! Pulling the reaking corpse from its resting place, Grignr tossed it to
the floor in a broken, mangled heap. Upon one side of the crypt’s bottom was
attached a series of tiny hinges while running parallel along the opposite side
of a convex railing like protruberance; laid so as to appear as a part of the
interior surface of the sarcophagus.

Raising the slab upon its bronze hinges, long removed from the gaze of human
eyes, Grignr percieved a scene which caused his blood to smolder not unlike
bubbling, molten lava. Directly below him a whimpering female lay stretched upon
a smooth surfaced marble altar. A pack of grasy faced shamen clustered around
her in a tight circular formation. Crouched over the girl was a tall, potbellied
priest; his face dominated by a disgusting, open mouthed grimace of sadistic
glee. Suspended from the acolyte’s clenched right hand was a carven oval faced
mallet, which he waved menacingly over the girl’s shadowed face; an incoherent
gibberish flowing from his grinning, thick lipped mouth.

In the face of the amorphos, broad breated female, stretched out aluringly
before his gaping eyes; the universal whim of nature filing a plea of despair
inside of his white hot soul; Grignr acted in the only manner he could perceive.
Giving vent to a hoarse, throat rending battle cry, Grignr plunged into the
midst of the startled shamen; torch simmering in his left hand andax twirling in
his right hand.

A gaunt skull faced priest standing at the far side of the altar clutched
desperately at his throat, coughing furiously in an attempt to catch his breath.
Lurching helplessly to and fro, the acolyte pitched headlong against the
gleaming base of a massive jade idol. Writhing agonizedly against the hideous
image, foam flecking his chalk white lips, the priest struggled helplessly – - -
the victim of an epileptic siezure.

Startled by the barbarians stunning appearance, the chronic fit of their
fellow, and the fear that Grignr might be the avantgarde of a conquering force
dedicated to the cause of destroying their degenerated cult, the saman
momentarily lost their composure. Giving vent to heedless pandemonium, the
priests fell easy prey to Grignr’s sweeping arc of crimsoned death and maiming
distruction.

The acolyte performing the sacrifice took a vicious blow to the stomach;
hands clutching vitals and severed spinal cord as he sprawled over the altar.
The disor anized priests lurched and staggered with split skulls, dismembered
limbs, and spewing entrails before the enraged Ecordian’s relentless onslaught.
The howles of the maimed and dying reverberated against the walls of the tiny
chamber; a chorus of hell frought despair; as the granite floor ran red with
blood. The entire chamber was encompassed in the heat of raw savage butchery as
Grignr luxuriated in the grips of a primitive, beastly blood lust.

Presently all went silenet save for the ebbing groans of the sinking shaman
and Grignr’s heaving breath accompanied by several gusty curses. The well had
run dry. No more lambs remained for the slaughter.

The rampaging stead of death having taken of Grignr for the moment, left the
barbarian free to the exploitation of his other perusials. Towering over his
head was the misshaped image of the cult’s hideous diety – - – Argon. The
fantastic size of the idol in consideration of its being of pure jade was enough
to cause the senses of any man to stagger and reel, yet thus was not the case
for the behemoth. he had paid only casual notice to this incredible fact, while
riviting the whole of his attention upon the jewel protruding from the idol’s
sole socket; its masterfully cut faucets emitting blinding rays of hypnotising
beauty. After all, a man cannot slink from a heavily guarded palace while
burdened down by the intense bulk of a squatting statue, providing of course
that the idol can even be hefted, which in fact was beyond the reaches of
Grignr’s coarsing stamina. On the other hand, the jewel, gigantic as it was,
would not present a hinderence of any mean concern.

"Help me … please … I can make it well worth your while,"
pleaded a soft, anguish strewn voice wafting over Grignr’s shoulders as he
plucked the dull red emerald from its roots. Turning, Grignr faced the female
that had lured him into this blood bath, but whom had become all but forgotten
in the heat of the battle.

"You"; ejaculated the Ecordian in a pleased tone. "I though
that I had seen the last of you at the tavern, but verilly I was mistaken."
Grignr advanced into the grips of the female’s entrancing stare, severing the
golden chains that held her captive upon the altars highly polished face of
ornamental limestone.

As Grignr lifted the girl from the altar, her arms wound dexterously about
his neck; soft and smooth against his harsh exterior. "Art thou pleased
that we have chanced to meet once again?" Grignr merely voiced an sighed
grunt, returning the damsels embrace while he smothered her trim, delicate lips
between the coarsing protrusions of his reeking maw.

"Let us take leave of this retched chamber." Stated Grignr as he
placed the female upon her feet. She swooned a moment, causing Grignr to giver
her support then regained her stance. "Art thou able to find your way
through the accursed passages of this castle? Mrifk! Every one of the corridors
of this damned place are identical."

"Aye; I was at one time a slave of prince Agaphim. His clammy touch
sent a sour swill through my belly, but my efforts reaped a harvest. I gained
the pig’s liking whereby he allowed me the freedom of the palace. It was through
this means that I eventually managed escape at the western gate. His trust found
him with a dagger thrust his ribs," the wench stated whimsicoracally.

"What were you doing at the tavern whence I discovered you?" asked
Grignr as he lifted the female through the opening into the mausoleum.

"I had sought to lay low from the palace’s guards as they conducted
their search for me. The tavern was seldom frequented by the palace guards and
my identity was unknown to the common soldiers. It was through the disturbance
that you caused that the palace guards were attracted to the tavern. I was
dragged away shortly after you were escorted to the palace."

"What are you called by female?"

"Carthena, daughter of Minkardos, Duke of Barwego, whose lands border
along the northwestern fringes of Gorzom. I was paid as homage to Agaphim upon
his thirty-eighth year," husked the femme!

"And I am called a barbarian!" Grunted Grignr in a disgusted tone!

"Aye! The ways of our civilization are in many ways warped and
distorted, but what is your calling," she queried, bustily?

"Grignr of Ecordia."

"Ah, I have heard vaguely of Ecordia. It is the hill country to the far
east of the Noregolean Empire. I have also heard Agaphim curse your land more
than once when his troops were routed in the unaccustomed mountains and gorges."
Sayeth she.

"Aye. My people are not tarnished by petty luxuries and baubles. They
remain fierce and unconquerable in their native climes." After reaching the
hidden panel at the head of the stairway, Grignr was at a loss in regard to its
operation. His fiercest heaves were as pebbles against burnished armour!
Carthena depressed a small symbol included within the elaborate design upon the
panel whereopen it slowly slid into a cleft in the wall. "How did you come
to be the victim of those crazed shamen?" Quested Grignr as he escorted
Carthena through the piles of rummage on the left side of the trap.

"By Agaphim’s orders I was thrust into a secluded cell to await his
passing of sentence. By some means, the Priests of Argon acquired a set of keys
to the cell. They slew the guard placed over me and abducted me to the chamber
in which you chanced to come upon the scozsctic sacrifice. Their hell-spawned
cult demands a sacrifice once every three moons upon its full journey through
the heavens. They were startled by your unannounced appearance through the fear
that you had been sent by Agaphim. The prince would surely have submitted them
to the most ghastly of tortures if he had ever discovered their unfaithfulness
to Sargon, his bastard diety. Many of the partakers of the ritual were high
nobles and high trustees of the inner palace; Agaphim’s pittiless wrath would
have been unparalled."

"They have no more to fear of Agaphim now!" Bellowed Grignr in a
deep mirthful tome; a gleeful smirk upon his face. "I have seen that they
were delivered from his vengence."

Engrossed by Carthena’s graceful stride and conversation Grignr failed to
take note of the footfalls rapidly approaching behind him. As he swung aside the
arched portal linking the chamber with the corridors beyond, a maddened, blood
lusting screech reverberated from his ear drums. Seemingly utilizing the speed
of thought, Grignr swiveled to face his unknown foe. With gaping eyes and
widened jaws, Grignr raised his axe above his surly mein; but he was too late.

-7-

With wobbling knees and swimming head, the priest that had lapsed into an
epileptic siezure rose unsteadily to his feet. While enacting his choking fit in
writhing agony, the shaman was overlooked by Grignr. The barbarian had mistaken
the siezure for the death throes of the acolyte, allowing the priest to avoid
his stinging blade. The sight that met the priests inflamed eyes nearly served
to sprawl him upon the floor once more. The sacrificial sat it grim, blood
splattered silence all around him, broken only by the occasional yelps and
howles of his maimed and butchered fellows. Above his head rose the hideous
idol, its empty socket holding the shaman’s ifurbished infuriated gaze.

His eyes turned to a stoney glaze with the realization of the pillage and
blasphemy. Due to his high succeptibility following the siezure, the priest was
transformed into a raving maniac bent soley upon reaking vengeance. With lips
curled and quivering, a crust of foam dripping from them, the acolyte drew a
long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled
through the aperature in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial
jibberish.

-7 1/2-

A sweeping scimitar swung towards Grignr’s head in a shadowed blur of
motion. With Axe raised over his head, Grignr prepared to parry the blow, while
gaping wideeyed in open mouthed perplexity. Suddenly a sharp snap resounded
behind the frothing shaman. The scimitar, halfway through its fatal sweep,
dropped from a quivering nerveless hand, clattering harmlessly to the stoneage.
Cutting his screech short with a bubbling, red mouthed gurgle, the lacerated
acolyte staggered under the pressure of the released spring-board. After a
moment of hopeless struggling, the shaman buckled, sprawling face down in a
widening pool of bllod and entrails, his regal purple robe blending enhancingly
with the swirling streams of crimson.

"Mrifk! I thought I had killed the last of those dogs;" muttered
Grignr in a half apathetic state.

"Nay Grignr. You doubtless grew careless while giving vent to your
lusts. But let us not tarry any long lest we over tax the fates. The paths
leading to freedom will soon be barred.

The wretch’s crys must certainly have attracted unwanted attention,"
the wench mused.

"By what direction shall we pursue our flight?"

"Up that stair and down the corridor a short distance is the concealed
enterance to a tunnel seldom used by others than the prince, and known to few
others save the palace’s royalty. It is used mainly by the prince when he wishes
to take leave of the palace in secret. It is not always in the Prince’s best
interests to leave his chateau in public view. Even while under heavy guard he
is often assaulted by hurtling stones and rotting fruits. The commoners have
little love for him." lectured the nerelady!

"It is amazing that they would ever have left a pig like him become
their ruler. I should imagine that his people would rise up and crucify him like
the dog he is."

"Alas, Grignr, it is not as simple as all that. His soldiers are well
paid by him. So long as he keeps their wages up they will carry out his damned
wished. The crude impliments of the commonfolk would never stand up under an
onslaught of forged blades and protective armor; they would be going to their
own slaughter," stated Carthena to a confused, but angered Grignr as they
topped the stairway.

"Yet how can they bear to live under such oppression? I would sooner
die beneath the sword than live under such a dog’s command." added Grignr
as the pair stalked down the hall in the direction opposite that in which Grignr
had come.

"But all men are not of the same mold that you are born of, they choose
to live as they are so as to save their filthy necks from the chopping block."
Returned Carthena in a disgusted tone as she cast an appiesed glance towards the
stalwart figure at her side whose left arm was wound dextrously about her slim
waist; his slowly waning torch casting their images in intermingling wisps as it
dangled from his left hand.

Presently Carthena came upon the panel, concealed amonst the other granite
slabs and discernable only by the burned out cresset above it. "As I push
the cresset aside push the panel inwards." Catrhena motioned to the panel
she was refering to and twisted the cresset in a counterclockwise motion. Grignr
braced his right shoulder against the walling, concentrating the force of his
bulk against it. The slab gradually swung inward with a slight grating sound.
Carthena stooped beneath Grignr’s corded arms and crawled upon all fours into
the passage beyond. Grignr followed after easing the slab back into place.

Winding before the pair was a dark musty tunnel, exhibiting tangled spider
webs from it ceiling to wall and an oozing, sickly slime running lazily upon its
floor. Hanging from the chipped wall upon GrignR’s right side was a half
mouldered corpse, its grey flacking arms held in place by rusted iron manacles.
Carthena flinched back into Grignr’s arms at sight of the leering set in an ugly
distorted grimmace; staring horribly at her from hollow gaping sockets.

"This alcove must also be used by Agaphim as a torture chamber. I
wonder how many of his enemies have disappeared into these haunts never to be
heard from again," pondered the hulking brute.

"Let us flee before we are also caught within Agaphim’s ghastly
clutches. The exit from this tunnel cannot be very far from here!" Said
Carthena with a slight sob to her voice, as she sagged in Grignr’s encompasing
embrace.

"Aye; It will be best to be finished with this corridor as soon as it
is possible. But why do you flinch from the sight of death so? Mrift! You have
seen much death this day without exhibiting such emotions." Exclaimed
Grignr as he led her trembling form along the dingy confines.

"—The man hanging from the wall was Doyanta. He had committed the
folly of showing affections for me in front of Agaphim — he never meant any
harm by his actions!" At this Carthena broke into a slow steady whimpering,
chokking her voice with gasping sobs. "There was never anything between us
yet Agaphim did this to him! The beast! May the demons of Hell’s deepest haunts
claw away at his wretched flesh for this merciless act!" she prayed.

"I detect that you felt more for this fellow than you wish to let on
… but enough of this, We can talk of such matters after we are once more free
to do so." With this Grignr lifted the grieved female to her feet and
strode onward down the corridor, supporting the bulk of her weight with his
surging left arm.

Presently a dim light was perceptibly filtering into the tunnel, casting a
dim reddish hue upon the moldy wall of the passage’s grim confines. Carthena had
ceased her whimpering and partially regained her composure. "The tunnel’s
end must be nearing. Rays of sunlight are beginning to seep into …"

Grignr clameed his right hand over Carthena’s mouth and with a slight
struggle pulled her over to the shadows at the right hand wall of the path,
while at the same time thrusting this torch beneath an overhanging stone to
smother its flickering rays. "Be silent; I can hear footfalls approaching
through the tunnel;" growled Grignr in a hushed tone.

"All that you hear are the horses corraled at the far end of the
tunnel. That is a further sign that we are nearing our goal." She stated!

"All that you hear is less than I hear! I heard footsteps coming
towards us. Silence yourself that we may find out whom we are being brought into
contact with. I doubt that any would have thought as yet of searching this
passage for us. The advantage of surprize will be upon our side." Grignr
warned.

Carthena cast her eyes downward and ceased any further pursuit towards
conversation, an irritating habit in which she had gained an amazing
proficiency. Two figures came into the pairs view, from around a turn in the
tunnel. They were clothed in rich luxuriant silks and rambling o on in
conversation while ignorant of their crouching foes waiting in an ambush ahead.

"…That barbarian dog is cringing beneath the weight of the lash at
this moment sire. He shall cause no more disturbance."

"Aye, and so it is with any who dare to cross the path of Sargon’s
chosen one." said the 2nd man.

"But the peasants are showing signs of growing unrest. They complain
that they cannot feet their families while burdened with your taxes."

"I shall teach those sluts the meaning of humility! Order an immediate
increase upon their taxes. They dare to question my sovereign authority, Ha-a,
they shall soon learn what true oppression can be. I will … "

A shodowed bulk leapt from behind a jutting promontory as it brought down a
double edged axe with the spped of a striking thought. One of the nobles sagged
lifeless to the ground, skull split to the teeth.

Grignr gasped as he observed the bisected face set in its leering death
agonies. It was Agafnd! The dead mans comrade having recovered from his shock
drew a jewel encrusted dagger from beneath the folds of his robe and lunged
toward the barbarians back. Grignr spun at the sound from behind and smashed
down his crimsoned axe once more. His antagonist lunged howling to a stream of
stagnent green water, grasping a spouting stump that had once been a wrist.

Grignr raised his axe over his head and prepaired to finish the incomplete job,
but was detered half way through his lunge by a frenzied screech from behind.

Carthena leapt to the head of the writhing figure, plunging a smoldering
torch into the agonized face. The howls increased in their horrid intensity,
stifled by the sizzling of roasting flesh, then died down until the man was
reduced to a blubbering mass of squirming, insensate flesh.

Grignr advance to Carthena’s side wincing slightly from the putrid aroma of
charred flesh that rose in a puff of thick white smog throughout the chamber.
Carthena reeled slightly, staring dasedly downward at her gruesome handywork. "I
had to do it … it was Agaphim … I had to, " she exclaimed!

"Sargon should be more carful of his right hand men." Added
Grignr, a smug grin upon his lips. "But to hell with Sargon for now, the
stench is becoming bothersome to me." With that Grignr grasped Carthena
around the waist leading her around the bend in the cave and into the open.

A ball of feral red was rising through the mists of the eastern horizon,
disipating the slinking shadows of the night. A coral stood before the pair,
enclosing two grazing mares. Grignr reached into a weighted down leather pouch
dangling at his side and drew forth the scintillant red emerald he had obtained
from the bloated idol. Raising it toward the sun he said, "We shall do well
with bauble, eh!"

Carthena gaped at the gem gasping in a terrified manner "The eye of
Argon, Oh! Kalla!" At this the gem gave off a blinding glow, then dribbled
through Grignr’s fingers in a slimy red ooze. Grignr stepped back, pushing
Carthena behind him. The droplets of slime slowly converged into a pulsating
jelly-like mass. A single opening transfixed the blob, forminf into a leechlike
maw.

Then the hideous transgressor of nature flowed towards Grignr, a trail of
greenish slime lingering behind it. The single gap puckered repeatedly emitting
a ghastly sucking sound.

Grignr spread his legs into a battle stance, steeling his quivering thews
for a battle royal with a thing he knew not how to fight. Carthena wound her
arms about her protectors neck, mumbling, "Kill it! Kill!" While her
entire body trembled.

The thing was almost upon Grignr when he buried his axe into the gristly
maw. It passed through the blob and clanged upon the ground. Grignr drew his axe
back with a film of yellow-green slime clinging to the blade. The thing was
seemingly unaffected. Then it started to slooze up his leg. The hairs upon his
nape stoode on end from the slimey feel of the things buly, bulk. The Nautous
sucking sound became louder, and Grignr felt the blood being drawn from his
body. With each hiss of hideous pucker the thing increased in size.

Grignr shook his foot about madly in an attempt to dislodge the blob, but it
clung like a leech, still feeding upon his rapidly draining life fluid. He
grasped with his hands trying to rip it off, but only found his hands entangled
in a sickly gluelike substance. The slimey thing continued its puckering ; now
having grown the size of Grignr’s leg from its vampiric feast.

Grignr began to reel and stagger under the blob, his chalk white face and
faltering muscles attesting to the gigantic loss of blood. Carthena slipped from
Grignr in a death-like faint, a morrow chilling scream upon her red rubish lips.
In final desperation Grignr grasped the smoldering torch upon the ground and
plunged it into the reeking maw of the travestry. A shudder passed through the
thing. Grignr felt the blackness closing upon his eyes, but held on with the
last ebb of his rapidly waning vitality. He could feel its grip lessoning as a
hideous gurgling sound erupted from the writhing maw. The jelly like mass began
to bubble like a vat of boiling tar as quavers passed up and down its entire
form.

-END OF AVAILABLE COPY-

---

The lost ending [added 2005]

With a sloshing plop the thing fell to the ground, evaporating in a thick
scarlet cloud until it reatained its original size. It remained thus for a
moment as the puckered maw took the shape of a protruding red eyeball, the pupil
of which seemed to unravel before it the tale of creation. How a shapeless mass
slithered from the quagmires of the stygmatic pool of time, only to degenerate
into a leprosy of avaricious lust. In that fleeting moment the grim mystery of
life was revealed before Grignr’s ensnared gaze.

The eyeballs glare turned to a sudden plea of mercy, a plea for the whole of
humanity. Then the blob began to quiver with violent convulsions; the eyeball
shattered into a thousand tiny fragments and evaporated in a curling wisp of
scarlet mist. The very ground below the thing began to vibrate and swallow it up
with a belch.

The thing was gone forever. All that remained was a dark red blotch upon the
face of the earth, blotching things up. Shaking his head, his shaggy mane to
clear the jumbled fragments of his mind, Grignr tossed the limp female over his
shoulder. Mounting one of the disgruntled mares, and leading the other; the
weary, scarred barbarian trooted slowly off into the horizon to become a tiny
pinpoint in a filtered filed of swirling blue mists, leaving the Nobles,
soldiers and peasants to replace the missing monarch. Long leave the king!!!

By Jim Theis
winner of the Jay T. Rikosh award for
excellence.

---

Transcriber’s note:

No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of
The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual
typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were
overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with
correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs
were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were
grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations — I cannot do them justice
in mere words, but they were a match for the text. These are the major losses of
this version (#02) of TEoA.

Otherwise, all effort has been made to retain the full and correct text,
preserving even mis-spellings and dropped spaces. An excellent proofreader has
checked it for errors both ommitted and committed. What mis-matches remain are
mine.

I shall endeavor to keep a copy of the original available for viewing, so it
may be appreciated in all its fullness. But as a labor of love for those whose
3rd-generation copies have now suscummed to the bitter vicissitudes of time and
entropy, worn away by the ravages of countelss re-readings before entralled
audiances, yet who have found that the the heady flavor of its stylistic
paragraphs has seeped into their soul and still grips it with a fervid grasp, I
dedicate this machine-readable version of the inimitable The Eye of Argon.