The room 10 Word Study group have left every Primary spelling list behind. We have been developing our vocabularies by raiding the word-hoards of famous writers - including masters of the macbre such as Clark Ashton Smith and HP Lovecraft.

My foetid feet stank more than ever before. My garrulous brother William, encrusted in mud after falling into a declivity, trudged along beside me. “When will we get there?” he asked impatiently. “When will you be quiet?” I reply, “You’re so infantile.”

The forest was labyrinthine. We step around the boles of the beetling trees. The gibbous moon, the only thing lighting up the pitch-black night, other than very few stars, shone down, dimly lighting the path ahead for us. I had an adumbration that we would arrive soon.

We see an immense shadow in front of us. The source of the shadow is indiscernible. “I think we’re here,” I whisper as William pauses picking his nose to look up.

We continue to creep closer.

“You didn’t tell me we were going to an overgrown temple,” my brother whispers in fright.

“If I told you where we are going you most certainly wouldn’t come!” I reply with a baleful tone in my voice.

The temple no longer looked immaterial. It was covered in slimy moss and leafage. The walls looked to be made of alabaster but have weathered a lot.

As we came to the cyclopean door, we saw the metre wide walls of the adamantine temple. No wonder why it hasn’t crumbled after all these years.

We both gasp as we see an execrable, cadaverous body on the ground. I cover my brother’s eyes so he could not see the appalling, grievous wounds on the bodies lacerated back. It looked immedicable. We furtively creep around the body chary of a calenture.

I spot a staircase, and of course we decided to walk down it. I try to assuage my brother’s fear as we walk down the pitch-black stairs. “It will be okay,” We reach the bottom of the stone staircase and start walking through a small corridor. We hear roaring in the distance. A small speckle of fulvous light comes from a candle on the ground. Someone has been here recently. I see alabastrine pillars lining the edges of the corridor as we continue through the darkness. The roaring gets louder. Liquescent substances flow through an interstices and squish under our foetid smelling feet.

The corridor expands into an enormous room. Silence. It was as desolate as the bottom of the ocean.

Then we see a convoluted, amorphous creature leer at us with its crimson fangs. We stood there enthralled by its eight eyes.

By Edward.

After the swamp came the jungle, a twisting labyrinth of flailing branches, flapping wings, and waist-deep puddles. And he would have to do it. Alone.

                                                      ~

Under the gibbous moon the two thieves stopped in their tracks, staring charily at the enormity of the glaucus swamp. A mist hung over the marsh like a velvet curtain. Both thieves took a deep breath, taking in the foetid stench. And stepped in.

From the depths of the bog came an indiscernible grumble. The pair jumped, submerging themselves rapidly in the muck. They stumbled further, loathing the wetlands more by every cautious step. Suddenly, they came to a cessation.

Breaking the desolate landscape like a dagger, stood a beetling tower, a finger in the dark, crumbling with age. Two ancient alabastrine statues stood tall, noble and proud, shining grandly. Lingering at the base of the tower, between the statues, an immaterial shadow lingered…

It slipped passed a mahogany door, hanging limply on rusted hinges, and into the tower. The thieves stepped forward, pushing open the door, only to find it fall to dust beneath their fingers.

Inside the tower was a circular staircase, winding upwards into darkness. At the top of the staircase, past the cracked and missing steps, hovered the shadow, waiting, before it slipped around the corner.

A shriek came from the depths of his partner before he could stop her. At the top of the tower slipped a lacerated tentacle, dripping glaucus goo.

By Eleanor.

Underneath the gibbous moon, two furtive thieves trudged through a dark, labyrinthine forest. They snuck past the boles of trees that stretched up into a convoluted canopy. One of the thieves was chary of what they were about to do, he was having an adumbration that when they entered the ancient cyclopean temple, they would not come out.

Up ahead they saw the alabaster skeleton of the temple. The enormity of the temple was enthralling, and Johnston forgot his adumbration as they stared up at the beetling structure looming above them. Johnston pulled a flashlight out of his coat pocket and shone the light into the dark.

The walls stretched up towards the high domed ceiling. Dust covered the baroque engravings on the walls like a shroud. The room was big and empty except for a stone carved into the shape of a throne that sat in front of a half wall towards the end of the hall. “Bill,” Johnston’s voice echoed in the emptiness “come see this engraving.” He walked over to where Johnston stood in front of the throne, his steps sounding like those of a giant in the quiet. Etched into the back of the throne was something like a story, it was hard to define the pictures, but it meant something like this; eldritch creatures had rose out of the ground and taken over the temple. Bill and Johnston looked at each other, appalled by this execrable event. They didn’t know if it had been a prophecy or just a story but whoever had lived there definitely wasn’t there anymore.

They walked around behind the wall the throne was on and found a trap door. They heaved it open, expecting to find treasure but instead they found a ladder that led down into the darkness.

By Nivi.

A Temple of Torturing Terrors

 We regretted our decision almost immediately as soon as we took my first step into the vicinity of this accursed fane, home to a cornucopia of grievous horrors. This endeavour, this night that was full of a cyclopean chary, was in a moor-like swamp under a taunting, alabastrine, gibbous moon. There was a celadon mist around the ebony curls of branches, their convoluted branches twisting like rope, the baroque boles beetling over the bubbling bog. In the centre of this labyrinthine morass, was the temple, a fulvous object, a bright beacon of foreboding in a dark place. My curly halcyon hair was tight, needles on my scalp. My sun sense picked up the foetid stench, and my stomach lurched. It was an appalling smell, and both me, Artemis and Athena knew that this would not be an easy task.

 Artemis cast a cryptic rune in front of her, and, almost immediately, a stone bridge stretched the almost indefinite span. We took a step, and immediately, an enormity materialised that was indiscernible in the light. I took another step forward, and all around us, the scene changed. A roof formed of a dark wood; The walls adorned were several paintings, each with a baroque frame, and an inanimate, baleful face; A rug of deep ruby spread on the floor; we were now in a mansion. The dark figure moved towards us, and it focused into a fair lady, her figure not solid and colourful, but immaterial and glaucous. The wraith ran at us, its tattered, mottled, bloody gown flowing as we ran like a German bombshell out of the ballroom, and through the labyrinthine hallways, desperately trying to find a way back to the morass, and the temple. We turned into yet another passage, when we saw a light up ahead. A way out? We ran through the doorway, and fell.

We plummeted for what seemed like hours, maybe even days. Finally, we hit freezing, dark metal, a cage of dapple iron, inescapable, and littered with ivory bone. We were trapped, forever. We were tangled in chain, ripping tentacles on our skin. Then the floor of the cage opened, and we plummeted still yet further, sure to be dead on the next hurdle. In the air, we stopped, as though a god’s palm kept us from falling. The cold truth were the tight chains that encircled us kept us from the ever-close grasp of Tartarus. All in a glow, the phantom that chased us walked into the room, not faint, but whole. Her gown was no longer littered with holes and runnels of sanguine coming from the now fully healed gash, the material seeming like it had never been ripped, its frail satin threads never torn.

“Welcome dear Artemis, dashing Apollo, and delightful Athena,” our mysterious jailor said in a mellifluous tone, “to the Underworld.”

“Persephone,” Artemis said, “I should’ve known.”

By Oscar.