Dryden Nightmares
By Eugene Kelly III, Laura Konrad, Katie Papilio and
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About this ebook
The Dryden Experiment is expanding its Creative Commons revolution into new genre. Dryden Nightmares gives you nine treasures of the horror genre plus a bonus creepiness from Dryden founder Katie Papillio.
Welcome to the twisted minds of Kitty Sarkozy, Eugene Kelly, Laura Konrad, Katie Papilio, and Fluffy Sama. They are the things that go bump in the night.
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Dryden Nightmares - Eugene Kelly III
Dryden Nightmares
All stories Copyright 2016 their respective owners
All settings, characters, and environments CC 4.0 BY-SA
Published by: Dryden House
ISBN 13: 978-0-9915417-3-7
Welcome to the Nightmare
The Dryden Experiment is a creative commons publishing concept. We build settings and environments under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license. What this means is that anyone can come in and build off the materials they find in the Experiment and they don’t have to pay royalties to anyone. All they have to do is credit the original developer and put their materials under the same license as well so that other can carry the task on. Then all of us who participate work hard to cross promote each other. What this does is give us environments the size of Star Wars or Hellraiser that we can use and share without having to sell out to a corporation. It’s a wicked cool idea and lots of fun.
After the successful introduction of our Science Fiction Universe, which now boasts seven books and two games, we are turning our attentions to other genre. Next up, horror. Come with some of the Dryden Experiments very best authors as we open up a new cosmos, one guided by dark and malevolent powers. In some of these stories you can see the twists in the universe. In others, the characters have no idea that they are instruments of the madness that haunts the center of our very being.
Enjoy.
-Katie Papilio, Owner, Dryden House Publishing
Introduction to Nightmares – Eugene Kelly III
And know this, Solassa, that evil comes in all forms, from the maddening screaming of the roaring core of the hottest star to the subtle spite of the faintest of whispers in the night. Hold fast to the Truth that you have been given, or there will be nothing to save you from the pit of everlasting darkness.
- Genhowesha to King Solassa, Book of Crowns 5:17
In the sarcophagal heart of the forest, the black flame burns. For ten thousand eons it has burned, without smoke or sound, both nurturing and destroying the roots of Creation. High above this eternal fire stands tall one half of the Tree of Life and Death, whose roots run through the smoldering soul of the Earth, emerging forth to feed its twin. Under a bleeding sky of onyx and crimson, it encases the world in the grip of its engorged tentacles of expanding venomous wood, cracking the universe asunder. Its branches extend limitlessly into the void, rivers of shadowy poison flowing through its hollow veins of perpetual night.
The Tree’s toxin, liquid reflections of pure pain and malice, travels freely through the veins that unite the Realms. For there is not one universe that it touches, but a hundred million, each of them infected from the black bile of the Tree. Some of these worlds drip with the poison and are hell realms of madness and death. Still others are only lightly touched, and it is here where the horrors of the dark manifest themselves as dreams, thoughts, and momentary visions of terror that creep just at the edge of our vision and slink silently through the overgrown gardens of forgotten wisdom that fester in the wilting corners of our consciousness. Yet even in the smallest of ways, every living being is touched by the polluting pestilence that grows from the heart of this cosmic cancer.
In its very being, nature abhors itself, as cycles of life and rebirth are always fed by the two remorseless viceroys of the void; death and dissolution. Yet even more so, it abhors a vacuum. Within the midnight veils of the shrouded abyss, in which the swirling spheres beat and pulse to the pounding music of the Cosmos, there lurk incomprehensible beings of power; Olden Things which seethe in the darkness, looming in the hidden corners of man’s fears. They writhe perpetually in the depths of eternity, devouring the poison of the Tree in a feast of grotesque gluttony. They hunger, they feed, they wail in agony from a gnawing which they can never satisfy.
Among these is Xzodzoa, the Emperor of the Land of the Dead and guardian of the City of Tombs. Then there is Vinrunum, the mysterious face of pulsating fungus who lurks in the diseased palisades of the Land of Dying Flames, and Skullflower, the Mistress of Agonizing Intimacy, who lies amongst dying flowers dripping with her repellent, lecherous stench.
Ruling over all worlds is the dread Ahmarjanin, the Genie of Creation, who sits upon a throne of liquid diamond, wrapped in a million robes of scarlet and sapphire. God Emperor of the celestial seas, its astronomic abode is a molten citadel of a Thousand Palaces, in which lie riches unthinkable to mortals in their splendor and majesty. It is the only being with the power to rip open the barriers between the Realms, baring those within naked to all the glory and horror of the Olden Things. It is only the veins and the Tree itself that Ahmarjanin cannot enter, for that is the abode of Xzodzoa alone. Together, the two wretched beasts rule over all time and space; Ahmarjanin traveling amongst the blazing stars, dominating all under its crimson gaze, while Xzodzoa is the master of the dark, stalking the hidden caverns of time and space where shadows float amongst seas of black poison through caverns of echoing ebony. It is an eternal dance of blinding light and smothering dark, with neither titan ever able to fully consume the other.
The poisoned, retching body of the Cosmos is never static, for veins open and contract, closing off some worlds to vistas beyond while opening up others to realities enveloped in the purple perfumes and cerulean spices of the Gods. Sometimes it is a blasphemous ritual that shifts the Tides of Creation, tearing open portals to the tyrannical tempests beyond and almost certainly dooming all those involved in the horrid sacrament. Other times it is subtler; a gesture, a word, a thought. Pen put to paper, concepts made words made reality. A book of vague remembrances cracking the wall between our world and that of the Gods. For when the firmament falters and the thin veil that protects man’s sanity from the inconceivable profanities from beyond is ripped away, the locusts of rot and ruin shall rise from the abyss to claim what is theirs, and woe to all who stand in their way.
Dream Girl – Kitty Sarkozy
I saw you for the first time in my favorite coffee