In the Halls of the Mountain

This short story is one i wrote for Halloween last year (2025) Written over the course of a week, i also managed to hand paint the cover for the story in time for Halloween!

“I’ve need of your magic.” Those were the words that had landed Samorost in his current predicament.

Lost inside a sprawling labyrinthine complex of caves, he sat. His back against a wall, a conjured flame by his feet offering him warmth and some light. With a glance up at the roof of the cave, he gave an audible sigh and shook his head.

“What a nightmare.” He muttered to himself.

The handful of bats dangling above him in the dark offered no reply, their eyes shining as they watched him cautiously. Samorost wondered if the blizzard was still raging outside. He also wondered how long he had been in here; it hadn’t taken long for this whole ‘quest’ to go awry, to say the least.

Seven of them had entered the cave; he and two others were magic users of some sort: Samorost, a traditional Midlands-trained mage, and the woman who was some sort of swamp-dwelling witch. She smelled of earth and was as beautiful as a sunset in autumn. Samorost didn’t see what happened to her in the chaos; it was as though she just disappeared. Not unheard of for a witch to do something rare like that, He thought to himself. The third magic user was an interesting one, skin dark as night, his face painted to look like a skull… entirely out of bone ash. Tall, emaciated, voice as deep as the ocean. When the mutiny began, he whispered to Samorost without moving his lips, “Go deeper, turn at the waterfall.” Then this man had melded into the cave wall and disappeared also.

Samorost naturally did as he was told, except that in his panic, he never conjured a flame to light his way, and he ran right off the edge. He fell a great distance, only surviving the fall thanks in part to a spell that slowed his descent and to the body of water he fell into. What a beautiful body of water it was. The water glowed a glorious hue of blue; lichen, moss, fungi, and their fruiting bodies covered the cave all around the water. He would have stayed and admired this scene longer if it hadn’t been for that sickening feeling that wouldn’t cease, emanating from way above. That… Beast, had stood on the ledge he fell from and stared down at him. Even from that distance, its glowing red eyes had felt like they were penetrating his very soul.

So Samorost knew to some degree that he and the other magic users were alive, but as for the other four. He scanned the vestiges of his mind to figure out if he had seen what had befallen them. Well, he knew what had befallen one of them; Wendol, that accursed wretch who had approached him at the tavern earlier in the night; his treachery was the cause of all this.

That left the fate of the tan-skinned brute from the desert, the red-haired woman with a bow and the paladin still unknown. The paladin, Samorost, figured was as good as dead; that was about all their kind were good for when it came to matters like these. Cloaked in their unshakeable religious fervour, they jumped into the fray and thus jumped straight into the afterlife. From what he could remember, this paladin had done just that; his pale face and blonde hair had quickly disappeared beneath his gold and silver helmet, then charged at the beast. His gargantuan shield in one hand and an unnecessarily ornate flail in the other.

The red-haired woman Samorost eventually remembered had leapt backwards. Not to run, but to sink to one knee and draw back on her bowstring, waiting for a shot. The brute, on the other hand, had run. Not out of fear, though. The brute had laughed and shaken his head. He declared something before he turned tail, Samorost however, couldn’t remember it.

“Ah well, time to try get out of here.” Samorost groaned as he struggled to his feet, using his stick in one hand and his other hand against the wall to help get himself up.

His old bones ached; age paired with dampness was not a good combination. But something about that pool of water was off; he was just as wet as when he had clambered out of its body. Those beautiful blue waters beckoned to him; the waterfall splashing into it sounded like a sultry whisper. With a reluctant sigh, Samorost peeled his eyes from the pool and began to trudge forward.

The part of the cave where he had stopped to rest was at the base of an upward slope. He figured he’d either find an exit or run into that beast again. He was going to exit this cave one way or the other. As he walked, Samorost listened intently. He could hear the rumble of the waterfall back in the distance, and he could hear the dripping of water all around him. Damp, wet and dark, Samorost thought, three of his least favourite things, why had he agreed to this? He still couldn’t figure it out.

Back at the Tavern, this Wendol fellow had approached him, a handsome, charismatic young man. A sword sheathed into the side of his belt, a dagger on each shoulder like they were pauldrons, and the typical tanned leather garb befitting of a mercenary. Wendol had tapped on the staff that lay across the table in front of Samorost and his tankard of ale, “I’ve need of your magic.” He had said, a brilliant youthful smile on his face. Samorost had cocked one eyebrow skyward and shook his head, “I don’t do birthday tricks.” He muttered before returning to his tankard.

At this, Wendol laughed and sat across from Samorost, leaned in close and nodded towards the table he had come from, “I’ve gathered a party, you see, there’s a beast that terrorises the villages in these parts. On the night when the harvests come to an end, the beast emerges from its den, a cave up in the mountains. Lures away dozens of villagers over the course of one night. They are never seen again.” Wendol had explained, his eyes had drawn Samorost in, the youthful, fiery gaze of a young man keen to be a hero. Perhaps this is what had made Samorost agree to join them in the end.

“Pah! Sounds like some bedtime story to tell the whelps so they stay in bed while the adults get drunk and fat.” Samorost had exclaimed, his mood souring as his tankard ran dry.

Wendol’s eyes had glinted at this, a smirk on his face, “Maybe it is? So, say we go up into the mountains and kill a bear, cut off a paw and bring it down as proof. Care to hear what the reward is for killing this monster?” he asked as he slid over a roll of parchment to Samorost.

One look at the number on the parchment, and Samorost had stood and grabbed his staff. “Fine.” He had muttered.

The path in the cave came to a fork. Samorost closed his eyes, listening and trying to triangulate where each path might lead. The right path heads upwards, right back to where the beast was, I bet. The left path looks to slope down again. He stared at that downward slope; a cold wind seemed to emanate from its maw. He cast his eyes to the centre path; everything about it was still. Calm. “Middle it is.” He muttered.

Just before leaving the fork in the path behind him, his ears caught a distant echo to his right. Samorost’s skin prickled, and his heart froze for a moment. “I’ve need of your magic.” Samorost quickened his step, as much as his old body would allow.

When the party had approached the cave, the dark-skinned gentleman had warned them of the cave, “Something is amiss, I feel an ancient evil in this cave. I suggest we turn back.” His deep voice had said.

That foolish paladin had taken it as a challenge and stormed ahead, “All the more reason to go in and put this demon down.” He’d shouted.

Wendol. Wendol had said nothing. He just smiled as he followed. The rest of the group cast looks at one another and tightened their ranks. But ultimately, Samorost and the others followed.

This middle path quickly began to seem like a bad choice to Samorost. At first, it was just one here and there, but after what could have only been a hundred meters or so, there were piles of them. Bones. Human bones. Picked clean, arranged into sizes and types. It’s like a god forsaken library of bone. Samorost thought.

He came to a halt as he heard the sound of someone talking, muttering, up ahead. He didn’t recognise the voice as one of the group he was with, but it sounded old, like him. A hermit? Here? He pondered. His grip tightened on his staff. He readied a spell in his mind. I’m getting out of this cave, one way or the other.

Samorost slowly crept forward, and a glow began to grow as he got closer to the voice. It all seemed like rambling, incoherent babble. But it all sounded awfully familiar to Samorost, and he cursed his memory as he couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

He paused just before the path turned to his left. The cause of the glow lay just beyond. The shadow of a wizened old man could be seen pacing about in the light of a flame. An old mage, older than I, Samorost realised as his mind placed the incantation being rambled. He’s trying to raise the dead!

Samorost hurried around the corner and shouted, “Halt your fiendish spell!”

The necromancer stopped and spun to face Samorost. He was an old, hunched-over man, his grey beard almost to the floor, his eyes a milky grey, long void of sight. “You have come!” the necromancer exclaimed in a wizened rasp.

“What?” Samorost mumbled as he placed his free hand at the end of his staff, a flame flickering from his palm and engulfing the blackened and gnarled tip of the wooden staff.

The necromancer said nothing; instead, he reached into the sleeve of his long, flowing ashen robe and drew a dagger from it, brandishing it above him. “Don’t you come near me!” Samorost threatened as the flame at the end of his staff tripled in size.

The necromancer took a step, “You are… The final piece!” he croaked.

Samorost clenched his jaw, “Take one more step and you’ll be nothing more than ash when I’m done!” he threatened.

The necromancer smiled and took another step. Samorost unleashed a cone of flame towards the necromancer. The inferno engulfed the wizened old man, who cackled for a second before his voice was ripped away by the flame licking the air from his mouth. He staggered backwards and fell into his own fire. The flames turned a sickly green as his body smouldered and burned away, quicker than a human body should. Samorost gulped and turned to run, knowing something was wrong. The green flame burst upwards, scorching the roof and spreading all over the small alcove. The flame slammed down behind Samorost like a hand trying to swat a fly; the slam caused an explosion, which threw Samorost forward. He flew into a pile of bones. Oddly enough, they served somewhat to cushion his landing, but as he lay there, face down in a pile of femurs, his body refused to move. Instead, his vision swayed and swirled. Before long, he had fallen into unconsciousness, swearing at his uncooperative body before slipping into darkness.

When the party had entered the cave, Samorost figured something bad would happen. Not this bad, though. The paladin’s zeal had eventually waned, and his march slowed into careful, deliberate steps. Wendol though, had slowly increased his pace until he was several meters ahead of the rest of the group. Then he rounded a corner and was gone by the time the group had rounded it.

They wandered through the cave for some time. The red-haired woman marked their trail with her dagger, scratching an arrow intermittently that pointed back the way they had come. Then, they finally found him.

Wendol was stood in the centre of the path, his back to them. His tunic gone, revealing scars and strange symbols all over his back. Arranged in a circle in the centre of his back was a set of symbols that most looked like a circle with random notches running through them, one though, had caught Samorost’s eye – it was like an upside-down Y, two notches on the branches, two notches on the stem and a circle that ran around the point where the three points of the Y converge.

The group approached but stopped when they heard a low whisper coming from Wendol, “Where Wendol Goes,

The hunger knows,

Where Wendol Goes,

The hunger grows,

Where Wendol Goes,”

The next line was muffled, but Wendol would then start again, his voice slowly rising, his scars opening, blood beginning to seep from the symbols.

“You must expel the Demons inside you!” The paladin had shouted.

Wendol went silent instantly, his body shaking, shoulders rising and falling like a panting dog. His head slowly turned, over his shoulder, he cast one eye back at the group, blood leaking from either side as the iris grew red. This was when the brute made his leave; he muttered something in his own language and walked past the woman of the swamp. By the time he had passed her, she was gone.

Wendol’s head turned forward again, and his body suddenly began to convulse like he had been overcome by some horrific seizure. This was when the man with the skull painted on his face had spoken to Samorost’s mind, “Go deeper, turn at the waterfall.”

When Samorost had looked back at Wendol, he had grown larger, his skin torn open in places. He fell forward onto all fours and resumed his chanting; each pass of the passage sounded like it came from a different voice. Each voice he spoke in joined the next, until it was a horrible cacophony of pained, manic screaming. The red-haired woman loosed several arrows into Wendol’s back, which had no obvious effect. Samorost was sure he had heard her sucker her teeth then chuckle in disbelief. The chanting stopped for a moment, then a horribly deep voice came, like it was gurgling up from the pit of Wendol’s stomach.

“Where Wendol Goes,

The hunger knows,

Where Wendol Goes,

The hunger grows,

Where Wendol Goes,

THE BLOOD FLOWS!”

Then he turned and stood, his head almost scraping on the roof of the cave. The whites of his eyes, now black. The iris’ blood red. The sides of his mouth ripped open almost to his ears. “By the grace of the Lord, guide my righteous fury!” The paladin had shouted and sprang forward; the red-haired woman leapt back and took a knee to offer back-up.

Samorost had never seen or heard of a creature like it. He spurred his body forward, his eyes fixed on Wendol’s ribs, which were protruding through his skin. And somehow, someway, a mouth, where his belly button should be. A wide mouth full of sharp teeth and a long, red, pointed tongue that hung out of it like that of some gluttonous freak slavering over his next meal.

Samorost hurried past and screamed at the paladin, “Run, you fool!”

He stopped for a second once he had put several metres between himself and this creature. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Wendol’s face, looking at him, watching. The beast hadn’t turned its body, just its head, a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Like two independent beings, the body swatted at the paladin, while the head, which to some small margin still resembled Wendol, watched Samorost run off deeper into the cave.

Samorost flinched and fell as the pile of bones shifted under him and sent him rolling onto the cave floor. He sat up, panting, his eyes blinked, greeted by nothing but darkness. Once his breathing had slowed, he stopped and listened, nothing, silence. Samorost felt behind him and felt the corner of the cave. In his mind, he knew the fire pit was ahead somewhere. He conjured a ball of flame and lobbed it forward. The ball of flame hit the ground and bounced until it landed in the fire pit and burst into life. The light from the fire illuminated the room once more, and Samorost quite quickly wished it hadn’t. There, on the other side of the flame, was Wendol or whatever it was now. It sat there looking at him, a piece of a human body in its hands, an arm perhaps. Samorost stifled a scream and scrabbled backwards, using the wall to get to his feet. He conjured another flame and launched it just in front of him, then ran. The flame hit the ground and spread in seconds. It created a wall of fire, cutting off the beast from him. Or so Samorost thought. He sprinted as fast as he could, and just before reaching the fork in the path again, he chanced a look back over his shoulder and saw the creature standing on the other side of the flame, watching him.

Back at the fork, Samorost immediately took the right path; the entrance was up there somewhere; he just had to find it. The uphill made for twice as much work; his lungs screamed for reprieve, but his legs were scarcely under his control, and they just pumped one after the other – pushing him onwards, to an escape, or so he hoped.

A voice eventually came to him, the painted man, “You didn’t turn at the waterfall.”

Samorost growled between gasps for breath. The voice penetrated his mind once more, “It’s too late for you now.” The calm tone of voice only served to draw Samorost’s ire.

“Well. Help me then!” he wheezed.

“I tried; you didn’t turn at the waterfall.” The voice replied.

Samorost’s path continued upwards until a blue glow could be seen up ahead, the stinking waterfall? He thought in confusion. “I ended up. Where you wanted. Me to go!” Samorost shouted into the void.

“No, not to the necromancer, the other path.” The voice stated.

Why? Samorost thought, then, as if hearing him, the voice answered. “An exit, the waterfall carved a path out to the base of the mountain. A river.”

I’ll have to turn around? Samorost couldn’t help but think. “It’s too late, it’s behind you.” The voice chimed in.

His eyes widened, his flushed cheeks, managed to lose their colour. Now that this voice mentioned it, he could hear it, feel the ground rumbling beneath his feet as it lumbered after him. Samorost reached the point where he had fallen and took the left turn back where this nightmare had begun.

Samorost dropped orbs of flame every few steps behind him; they sprang up into walls of fire, hoping they would at least slow the creature down. As he continued to run, he spotted in the distance the paladins’ flail. He ran past, and the spiked iron balls on the end of the chains of the flail were covered in blood and flesh. The paladin had managed something at least. Several meters further on, he passed the paladin’s helmet, dented on either side, covered in blood. Not far past it lay the shield, originally almost the size of a man. Now, battered, folded in half.

Samorost continued on, his legs far past the point of being tired; they ached, screamed too for reprieve. Then he saw it as he passed it, the bow of the red-haired woman. Right next to one of the arrows, she had scratched into the floor. The bow was unbroken, seemingly discarded. Did she run? Did she get out?

Samorost didn’t know how far the entrance was, but he began to lose hope. He could hear the beast more clearly, feel the tremors under his feet growing stronger.

Then.

Then he felt breath on the back of his neck.

Samorost closed his eyes and kept running. His mind went blank, and he began to mutter under his breath. A spell. A list ditch effort. He opened his eyes, saw a glimmer of light in the distance. Up ahead, to his right, the brute’s war hammer.

Out of the corner of his eye, a black shape began to come into view, Wendol’s face, blank, expressionless. Looking at him. The sound of the mouth in Wendol’s chest was panting in excitement, its teeth nipping at his heels.

Samorost aimed his staff at the roof of the cave and unleashed a ball of flame. It smashed into the roof above him and exploded, quicker than he had wanted, but the flame was seemingly repelled by the water that still clung to his body and clothing. The torrent of flame smashed into the floor and caused a torrent of force that threw Samorost forward. He landed with a thud and rolled, eventually coming to a stop face up.

And he felt it.

Snow.

Falling on his face, his head lulled towards the cave, its mouth just a couple of meters away. There in the shadow, he saw Wendol, human again, mostly. His eyes were still black and red, blood still running from them. That youthful face was gone, replaced by a gaunt, aged face, similar to that of the necromancer. He stayed in the shadows, no emotion on his face; he just stared at Samorost. Then, eventually, Wendol turned and disappeared back into that black maw.

“Old man!” a voice called out in the distance, the brute. His face appeared suddenly above Samorost’s.

“Are you ok? What happened? Where’s Wendol?” the brute asked as he helped Samorost to his feet.

“Wh-what? He, he’s…” Samorost stammered in confusion.

“He didn’t make it? Gah! I knew we all should have gone in!” The brute exclaimed, spitting on the snow in disappointment.

“H-he didn’t make it,” Samorost muttered, unsure of what was going on.

The brute helped Samorost down the mountain for a while until they came to a campfire set up under the cover of a cliff. Around it sat the red-haired woman and the paladin. Fine, unscathed, alive.

The duo looked up from staring at the flames, and the woman nodded in sombre silence. A faint smile formed on her lips. The paladin stood and made some religious motions before he spoke, “I knew we should have gone in. Magic is nothing without the light of purity to guide it.”

Samorost sat down by the fire, and the group sat in silence as Samorost gave an account of what happened, altering the story so it matched up with what the other three believed to have happened.

“Pah!” The paladin exclaimed, “I can’t believe they fled and left you to try to fight that demon pretending to be a man.”

After waiting an hour or so to let Samorost recover, the group made the trek back down the mountain. As they reached the village they had met in, the sun was rising in the distance. “A drink is in order, to warm our bones. And our spirits.” The brute said as he led the way.

Samorost didn’t have the energy to object, so he followed. They sat at a table, and the brute brought over Tankards of ale for them all. Samorost looked at the ale before him, then up at the brute to give his thanks. His words caught in his throat as he watched the brute remove the winter coat he had been wearing. There on the side of his neck was a symbol, the upside-down Y.

“Th-thanks.” Samorost managed to eventually mutter, his eyes dropping to his Tankard.

The Paladin and the brute engaged in talks of whether they should find more people to join their group and try to slay this creature again. Samorost raised his eyes and looked at the red-haired woman across from him. She was looking off into the distance, lost in thought. Samorost was about to avert his gaze when she put her hand to her neck and brushed her hair towards her back. There, he saw it too. The symbol just below her ear.

Samorost gulped and slowly turned his head to look at the paladin next to him. Still locked in discussion, the paladin placed his palms on the table, and next to his thumb was the mark.

Samorost stood; the trio stopped and looked at him.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked.

“I. I just need some sun, get the cold out.” He lied.

Samorost exited the tavern and veered sharply back towards the gate of the village. His hands checked the rest of his body for signs of the mark. He stopped and staggered to a fence for support.

On his chest.

He felt it.

Then he heard a familiar voice in his head. Whispering to him. Beckoning him back to the mountain. To that cave.

“I’ve need of your magic.”