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FROST CLAD - The guardian of the threshold

from HDK 131 † HDK Dungeon​​​-​​​synth magazine # 9 by V.A.

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“This victory will be your ruin, Lothar!”. These were the last words of the barbarian warrior Alasred, before he died. He had turned them mockingly at you and they kept echoing in your head like a dark omen.
It had been a few hours since, leading an army of mercenary soldiers, you had crossed the most remote lands of the east and set fire to the remote town of Abarak. When the duke himself had entrusted you with this mission, you, Lothar the conqueror, felt down in the dumps: why should he send his best leader to that land of miserable people? Since childhood you had known the rumors about that city, on the edge of the known world: it seems that no one in the civilized world had ever had the ambition to conquer it. Guardian Alasred must have been a skilled swordsman, but you had heard of him for too many years, he must be old by now. You were sure that any well-equipped army could easily get the better of those barbarians of the remote eastern lands.
It was the old priest of the cult of Gorm who warned you: “you should not fear the barbarians but the dark forces that dwell in the temple of the city!”. For you it was just superstition: in battle it is the weapons of men that kill, not rumors.

Your army had raided the Bothar Gorge: the money to bribe the sentries had been well spent. The plan worked and your army was able to get to the city walls easily. Having opened a breach in the walls with the catapults, the blood began to flow profusely. The barbarians of Alasred fought with a sinister fury: badly armed and disorganized, they still managed to repel the attacks of your army. It was then that you joined the fray too, to motivate your men. You will never forget the gaze of those foreigners: even if wounded or unarmed, they did not flee, as if they feared something even more frightening than death. One of them, as you pierced him, looked you in the eye and, in the throes of death, whispered something to you. “Flee now!” you thought you understood. But the adrenaline in your body only ordered you to conquer the city and do away with this story.

Now the whole city was littered with corpses and the smell of blood was nauseating. Alasred’s corpse lay on the temple steps in front of you. He had defended the entrance to the temple to the end. He was a seemingly young man. “Weird”, you think. Your sword is still dripping with blood. You begin to feel sick, as if in the grip of a strange fever. The city is now in your hands, but you need to make sure there are no other barbarians in the temple. “Go inside and search the building!” you order as you try to recover from that strange illness.
The heartbreaking screams of your soldiers, coming from inside the temple, make you jump. It was as if someone or something was tearing them apart. In the throes of mad anger, three times you order your soldiers to enter. And three times a dozen soldiers, although terrified, cross the threshold of the temple and never come out again. In the end, you decide. You light a torch and walk through the threshold of the temple yourself. You show confidence but a strange fear arises inside you. You expect to encounter a terrible threat. Hold your sword firmly in a defensive position. Then, suddenly, you are hit by a blinding red light. And everything becomes dark.

A few minutes later you come out of the temple, back into the sunlight. After an initial moment of uncertainty, some of your men greet you and come towards you. You, on the other hand, brutally tear them apart with your sword. To hell with the duke, to hell with everything. You would no longer obey any other human being. Now you had a far more important mission to accomplish and no one could ever distract you from this task. You would have forced your men to obey you by any means. None of them would ever go home again. “From now on, Lothar the conqueror no longer exists. For all of you I will be Alasred, the Guardian!” Like others before you, you would have remained until death guarding the threshold of the temple.

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Heimat Der Katastrophe Milan, Italy

DIY label focused on ambient punk, minimal-synth, dungeon-drone, wartime music and post-nuclear wave. Managed by a creative punx collective from Milano city.

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