The Mask of King Arthur, Book I: Haern Cleddyf

Chapter 9: Quest for the Cauldron

From the account of Cynddylig the guide, as related to the bard Taliesin.

I have witnessed the true face of horror.

My name is Cynddylig Gyfarwydd, and I am the guide and tracker of Duke Ambrosius's court. I was recruited by the great Arthur to lead him and his warriors through the most treacherous of landscapes, and the most dangerous of dungeons. When I was a child in Snowdonia, the men of my village trained me to follow the twisted and winding paths through the mountains of our region. As if by magic, I am able to see any pathway, passage and route in my mind's eye, before I even set foot there. I can safety lead any group of champions through the most dangerous of traps, and can see any danger to the Pendragon warriors coming.

I never could have seen this coming.

Our three ships arrived at the otherworld island of Anwnn, and disembarked onto the grim and stormy island. Doing my duty, I led our warriors across the dreary and chilly landscape single-file, marching slowly so all of the warriors could keep up. The grass was dead under our feet, and the trees bore no leaves or fruit. The air was colder than an autumn night, and carried a sense of uneasiness and foreboding that affected all of the warriors in our band. We heard not a sound, save our own footfalls on the dusty path, and we saw no animals in the trees or on the ground. An aura of death hung all around us, blotting out and choking the rays of the sun.

At that moment, we all wished we were elsewhere.

We soon found our goal- the glass fortress, Arwan's mightiest stronghold on the island. It was a large fortress made entirely of blood-colored crystal. Quickly getting over our shock and awe at the sight of this intimidating structure, we began to sneak our way through. The others followed swiftly behind me, moving through the empty and silent hallways, and trying to ignore the skulls and bones that decorated the place. The candles in the fortress were lit with an eerie blue flame, and the only signs of life were large and creepy spiders, spinning webs in the corners of each room.

When all returned home, broken.

The silence in that place had become deafening.

We made our way through endless passages, walking up and down stairs, and going through trap doors and passageways. As we made our way to the top floor, Arthur broke the silence by whispering a question about why there were no guards. Bedwyr muttered that this didn't feel right, and Kai responded by saying that it almost felt like a trap, and that we should be cautious. Following my guiding instinct towards where the lad was held, I led the group through the final passageway, and up onto the building's roof.

And that's when the trap was sprung.

We found that poor lad's body lying beside the cauldron, his throat cut, and a trail of blood up into the large pot. Edyurful yelled in despair that we were too late, and everybody else began drawing their weapons. An eerie red glow emerged from the cauldron, and a large skeletal hand clawed it's way out of the top. The foul stench of death filled the air, and several shadowy forms followed the first one out of cauldron. We all readied ourselves for a fight, and were horrified by what happened next.

"SLAUGH!" Gwalachmei cried out, saying the name of the decomposing undead in the lore of our Irish neighbors.

Suddenly, our whole host was swamped by these horrors of the cauldron, as rotting corpses in different stages of decay lunged at each of us. Arthur and the rest of us hacked, slashed and cut away and the slaugh, chopping the monsters apart, and sending pieces flying everywhere. We could see most of them now; skeletons and half-rotted cadavers, many wearing the armor and weapons of our ancestors from the time before the Romans. Eyeballs were hanging out on cheeks, centipedes were crawling through empty eye sockets, and pus and green bile poured out of open sores and holes that had rotted in the flesh.

For every one we cut down, five more slaugh crawled from the cauldron.

Soon we were surrounded by several hundred of the monsters. As more and more of the slaugh fell, our shining armor became covered in green, yellow and grey gore from the fallen corpses. I chopped off the head of a man who had only half of his face left, while beside me Bedwyr hacked a totally skeletonized undead clean town the middle. War hammers crushed their ghoulish skulls, while Edyrful shot arrows into still intact pieces of flesh, cutting them down. The mere strike of our iron weapons destroyed each of them, but the cauldron was ready to vomit forth more of the slaugh, who surrounded the cauldron to prevent us from attacking it.

And our warriors began to fall.

The slaugh were slowly tiring our warriors out, and one by one our comrades fell. Here on Anwnn, we could actually see the souls of our comrades depart their bodies and fly away to the christian heaven. But then we witnessed the horror as the slaugh dragged the now-souless corpses of our companions over to the cauldron, and they rose as more of our enemies. We had to cut down the bodies of our own friends, destroying enemies that wore the faces of those we cared most about. But still we fought on, our numbers slowly whittled down as we managed to destroy more than a thousand of these horrors.

It was a terrible battle.

Arthur had a moment of satisfaction, however, as the corpse of Hengist the Jute appeared among the hordes of the dead. He had been executed by his own people after his defeat at Arthur's hands, and he recognized our leader at once. Unlike the other slaugh, he seemed to still have his own mind about him- probably due to the jute's strong will in life. Hengist attacked Arthur with all of the warrior's skill he had had in life, but our brave leader easily cut the undead Jute down, finally avenging Duke Ambrosius's parents. It was a fleeting moment of satisfaction, but it did not last.

Soon, there were only eight of us left.

The few survivors- Arthur, Kai, Bedwyr, Gwalachmei, Menw, Edyurful, Gwryhr, and myself- formed a circle to protect ourselves. Then, in our most dire moment, Menw the druid made the ultimate sacrifice, leaping over all of our heads into the cauldron, with the top of his staff alight. The cauldron suddenly exploded in a shower of blue flames and sparks, and the now lifeless body of our druidic companion now lay lifeless among the shattered pieces of the cauldron. The remaining sluagh all collapsed lifelessly to the ground, and the glass fortress became silent once more.

Then, our enemy appeared.

Gwyn ap Nudd materialized before us, sword in hand, and challenged Arthur to a duel. Our leader engaged him in a fierce duel, in which the exhausted Arthur still managed to hold his own. The sinister faire lord in dark furs blocked many of Arthur's powerful blows, and even managed to get a few nicks and cuts in himself. But he was no mach for Caliburn's iron blade, and Arthur soon knocked Nudd's faire sword from his hand, and forced the proud faire lord to his knees, sword at Nudd's throat.

Arwan then emerged from the darkness.

What happened afterward was like a blur to us; Arwan held a feast of the dead n our honor, declaring us heroes. The shards of the cauldron were melted down, then the melted droplets thrown into the faire sea so it could never again be remade. Arwan punished Gwyn ap Nudd by making him the leader of the wild hunt, to bring back the souls of the followers of the old faith upon death. After the celebration were over, the seven of us boarded Prydwen (the only ship the slaugh hadn't burned during their attack on us) and we sailed for home with the bodies of Menw and Gweir.

We all returned home, broken.

After getting back to Caerleon, we were all silent. The youth's body was returned to his mournful father, while Ambrosius stands vigil over the body of his fallen mentor, mourning the loss of another link to his childhood. We all came back from this with scars that will never heal, some scars which are of the mind. The other Pendragon warriors try to get the seven us us to talk about what happened; but they can never understand what we went through. The things we saw, what we experienced... that will truly haunt us forever.

We will always carry the memory, of the darkness of Anwnn.