[color=#1A1A3B][b][u][h1][sub][sub][sub]Farren[/sub][/sub][/sub][/h1][/u][/b][/color]		    felt a not-at-all subtle sense of not-so-distant, but altogether foreign, dread and sorrow settle over him like a gossamer thin sheet made from lead. It weighed on his mind and that weight had him nearly dragging his feet, his shoulders sagging subtly in a way that he didn’t even notice even as he peered about, scanning his surroundings. It seemed that Yahar’gul was an even more harrowing and strange place than he’d heard, its seemingly endless central boulevard straddled on both sides by statues of an eerie, disquieting nature.

Farren’s brow creased in a frown, but he continued forth, moving towards the lantern he’d caught sight of even as he glanced back behind him. It was then that he noticed the uncountable stone figures frozen in a scrabbling, maddened fear as they attempted to scale the great walls that enclosed this fell place. A shudder wracked his figure for a moment and Farren shook himself, his eyes narrowing slightly before he deliberately pulled his gaze back to the lantern, which he’d just reached. Taking a calming breath, Farren snapped his fingers in the unlit lantern’s direction, as he’d been shown once by the Messengers, and waited for it to light even as he kept his senses stretched to their limits.

Yet…he heard nothing except the occasional shift of old masonry and woodwork. The place seemed utterly and profoundly abandoned…yet it had been guarded by that terrifying undead creature and concealed by the lightbeast. The question was…why?

Why had someone taken such drastic precautions…and how had the enclosing wall been created, hell [i]when[/i] had it been created for that matter. Of course…while those questions were pressing ones he wanted answers for, the thing that truly had him unsettled were the statues themselves. For, with his enhanced eyesight, he could see details that only the most prolific of sculptors would have been capable of including. Even the most warped of the statues, after all, had an eerie realism to them, like flesh and cloth, sweat and tears, hair and sinew and skin had been wrought from stone by some unknown power. In fact…the statues barely [i]felt[/i] like statues, in a esoteric sort of way. Logically, Farren wanted to believe that some utterly mad artist had done this, that the sheer quantity and quality of the statues was just the result of perhaps numerous sculptors working tirelessly for weeks–that the beads of sweat and trails of terror-induced tears on some of the cheeks of the statues were just additions of someone utterly and profoundly dedicated to their craft.

But it didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel that way at all and while it felt…irrational, Farren was coming to understand that the world in which he lived was one profoundly more strange than he would have liked to believe.

So, instead…Farren admitted to himself–if only in the silence of his inner mind–that it was more as if every resident of Yahar’gul had been suddenly and inextricably turned to stone in the midst of attempting to flee in a terrified mob in every possible direction.

The idea–again–made him shudder, but he steadied himself with another deep breath and glanced back towards the threshold from which he’d entered, hoping the others would hurry. For…while he wanted to call out to them, to not be alone in this place, Farren couldn’t quite bring himself to speak. The dread and misery in the air was too thick and choking–and if he were being entirely honest…while he was handling it well, and barely displaying it in his demeanor, he was profoundly frightened. Something about this place just…it had wormed its way past his defenses.

Whatever dwelled in Yahar’gul…after they had extracted everything they could from it…it needed to die. Then, he would only be satisfied if he never had to visit, see, or speak of the place again and perhaps not even then would he feel relief….