https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/u0ahv4/the_old_hermit_part_1/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share - Part 1
Hello everyone. Forgive me for not uploading a sequel from some time, I picked up a lead on some of the hounds and had to go to Austria. I’m in France now and sitting in another cyber cafe. I have some more tales to share with you all today. I’m going to tell you about a place that roughly translates to “Never-Realm’.
I first discovered it a few centuries before the founding of civilisation. I was chasing a hound which took the form of a white horse with eyes dripping black mucus. It could outrace me easily, and it knew it. Every time I got close, it sprinted away, devouring any humans that came across us. Eventually, I caught it by the tail, and it panicked. It ran faster than ever before, towards a tree. It slammed into the trunk melted through it, taking me along with it. I quickly wrapped my arms around its neck and twisted its head off. After doing so, I looked around.
The place I was standing in was a small pond, coloured deep purple. I walked out of the pond, and gasped at what I saw. It was unending plain of obsidian, twisted trees with corpses hanging from them, and far far in the distance, a tower piercing the sky. As I wandered further in, a deep fog settled in, and I stumbled into a house. This house looked like a house from the Victorian era, but I did not know this, because the Victorian era was thousands of years away. I stumbled into the house, and ran my fingers across the wall. This was when I discovered the true horror of the building. It was built out of teeth. Thousands and thousands of rotting teeth, covered by a peeling wallpaper of skin. I nearly puked when I saw it.
A door opened, and the master of the house stumbled in. It was a hound, one made out of bones and locks of bloodied hair. Every one of its orifices were dripping blood onto the rotting carpet. It saw me and screeched. It charged ahead, and bit me with it’s ‘mouth’, which was just a gaping hole near the bottom of his ‘face’. It ripped out my throat, but before it could continue, I jabbed my arm through its chest and out the other end, piercing his heart in the process. It screeched again and writhed on the ground, spilling pus and blood everywhere until it finally bled to death. I steadied my breathing and moved on as the house collapsed around me. I sat down and took a few deep breaths, until my throat grew back. I then got up and continued moving through. I came across more hounds, such as a sphere made out of human hearts, an animal skeleton chewing on another hound’s corpse, and many many more untold horrors.
After days and days of walking, and killing dozens of hounds, I reached the tower. It was a tower constructed of jagged black rock. There was no door, and as I looked up, I was hit by a blinding flash of purple light. I screamed as it burnt off my skin and slammed me into the ground. I tried to look up again, and I caught a glimpse of the creature. This entity was far above my own power, and I only saw a mere fraction of it. It seemed to simultaneously exist and not exist. It was an eternal abyss of unending power, and it ruled this place, that much was indisputable.
A single mind breaking roar from it sent me sprinting away. I fell into a pit filled with corpses. But something stopped it from killing me, perhaps it was my creators, or maybe it thought I was interesting. All I know is that it stopped attacking me, and let me flee this nightmarish realm. I ran far far away from it, until I found a pond again, and fell through it, entering the material world once again.
I simply sat there and shuddered in fear for a few hours. After that, I left that place and continued to wander the world once more. I discovered a way to consistently enter the realm by using dead hounds as gates, or even parts of them instead of a whole. I took a few hairs from the horse hound that let me enter for the first time and now use it as a key to enter the realm through weak points in reality. After the first time, I make sure not to venture near the tower whenever I enter the Never-Realm.
I also have some troublesome news. A very long time ago, something came to this reality. I can only describe it as a storm of evil. I was sat on a tree one day, before the hounds or humans existed, when I saw it. The sky was covered in purple clouds, and a ghastly wind swept through the planet. It drained life out of everything it touched. The tree I sat on had its leaves turned withered and colourless, but the animals did not fare so well. They were molten away at the touch, and my little friend was huddled in my grip, shivering and sobbing gently. I clutched him tighter, and that seemed to help. Eventually, after a long time of feasting on the animals, the sun came back and the wind abated. I wandered through the planet, and saw that nearly every animal had been extinguished of all life. I sat in despair for a long time, until I noticed some animals crawling out of their burrows. There was hope in the world once more. After some more time had passed, the world was as beautiful as ever and I stopped worrying about the storm.
That is, until recently. There is some primal instinct within me, telling me that danger is approaching. I have seen purple lights tinge the horizon, and even some clouds turning purple. I fear the day it comes back is not far, and if that happens, then my mission will be for nothing, the race I have spent eons protecting will be wiped off the face of the earth in one gust.
It appears my time for now is up, night is falling and I have to leave Paris to continue the hunt.
Farewell for the present.
The Hermit.