The Pit Of Nergal

A horror lingers in the minds of every man who is sent to Nergal. Deep within the prison lies a spine-chilling place that holds the spectral secrets of death and the blinding mysteries of life. Its macabre imposition is an abominable pit for the forsaken captives condemned to the chasm of their interminable hell of hideousness.

Few men have survived the brutal wrath of its insanity, and countless men of sundry origins have vanished into its cavity of no return. The agonising echoes of screams are heard resounding throughout the merciless pit of evil. One by one, the souls of the condemned are sent to their discernible doom. It is an unbearable place, synonymous with irrepressible death and desolation. It is said that no man escapes the haunting pit of Nergal.

It was the year 2168 when I was sent to Nergal. Its location was secretive, and no man knew where to find it on a map. Yet, those who were sent there could describe its unrelenting terror. Of me, you will know that I was just a prisoner with the number 88 on my back, and of the account of my life that I shall narrate, know that I disclose my private hell with the admission of the truth.

The reason why I was sent there is insignificant, for I was an unwilling participant and prisoner. What is of significance is what I experienced—an experience that was unmatched and transpicuous in its nature. There are no reasonable explanations that could asseverate the position of the truth, except its horrifying sequence. I did not revel in the misery of others; I simply observed the fear in their eyes as they were taken to the inextricable pit of death.

After a week, I was taken from my dungeon in shackles to another, solitary and wretched. It was there that I would listen to the incessant hours of horror from the abyss of the pit of Nergal. Those terrible sirens were the precursor to, and cessation of, the ceaseless screams of death that deafened and disquieted the minds of sanity. No man alive knew what lay beyond the lethiferous pit.

There were only suppositions of conjured images, disturbing in the deleterious peril of their illusions. Blood was its avatar, and human flesh the satisfaction of its voracious hunger. Some would say that a hideous beast lurked at the bottom of the pit, while others claimed there was a vortex sucking up the souls of the condemned sent to Nergal.

I could not see past the edge of my dungeon, but I could imagine the suffering and cruelty the men would have to bear unwillingly there. It is said that the worst punishment a man encounters in that profound pit is the thought of the unspeakable fear that is Nergal.

Since my time in this new dungeon, I had marked with a stone on the wall beneath the oubliette of my dungeon that twenty men had died within 24 hours—none of whom I had known or seen before. I did not know their crimes or their sins, but I was aware that all who were sent to the pit of Nergal would never return alive. Their bodies were never buried or discovered.

This I was apprised of by several captives who had been told this information. Whatever misfortune these men had been subjected to in prison, they did not deserve such an inhumane outcome. My mind tried endlessly to occupy my thoughts with rational thinking, but it was difficult not to be affected by the impending grasp of doom—the ultimate chastisement for all captives sent to Nergal.

We were neoteric experiments for those who had captured us, and we were forgotten by the sanctimonious society that had ostracised us after the war. They had deemed judgement on our fate for our iniquities. We were numbers placed on our backs, and our entire history erased when we took our first step into the old fortification to be processed.

Every man condemned to Nergal would never see a day of freedom again, or breathe its sheer excitement. I would often sit in my unwanted solitude and reminisce about the zoetic memories I had experienced before being sent to Nergal.

There was not much I could do to prevent my appointed date with the pit of Nergal. All the captives were appointed their time, but none of us were told when that exact day would come. I had counted the days of my imprisonment on the scribable walls of my dungeon. Perhaps it was morbid of me to count the days until my demise.

It was the only leisure afforded to me of my own volition. We were not allowed to step outside of the dungeon. Surrounding it was a moat, with deadly spikes to thwart any attempts at escape by a prisoner. No man in my time there had ever escaped.

The bold and defiant ones would lose their courage upon seeing the massive spikes, stained with rufescent blood. During both day and night, the deafening sirens would echo, releasing their terror upon the prisoners. It was also at this time when an unfortunate prisoner would meet his death in the pit of Nergal.

Pity was never to be demonstrated to the prisoners, and atonement was never permitted. All the prisoner knew was that he would be taken to his gruesome death. It was a grueling experience that no words could measure in their ineffable description. I could only attest to what my eyes had witnessed and what my ears had heard. It was a constant despondency amidst the dismal gloom.

The once hyaline sky, once a sign of former days of halcyon joy, had been erased by the memories of worthless tragedy. Many men went mad in the dungeons, while others committed suicide. It was said to me that madness and suicide were far better options than the death within the pit of Nergal.

One cold day, I was awakened by the awful screams of a poor soul beside my dungeon. He had been attempting to communicate with me, but the guards were always vigilant and present with their technology. We were their particular amusement, and they were the revelers of our torment and throes. They were myrmidons of a higher power. We were deemed inhuman and cast off by the self-righteous zealots of society.

On this day, it was his time to meet the inscrutable face of death. I sat still, listening, as the guards came for him to escort him to the ancient pit of Nergal. Through the faint light of my front door, I could see him pass by me. The siren had indicated that his death was imminent and unavoidable. It was the call to Nergal. There was nothing that could save the poor man. His fate was already sealed.

It was another body to add to my senseless count of doomed prisoners sent to their death. I sat still at times with the resignation of my quandary. I had begun to prepare myself for the eventuality of my date with the pit. It was not something I desired, nor fully embraced as a possibility, but it would arrive without much ado. The rations we were fed were just enough to keep us alive, and the water we drank came from an old well that was putrid. We were not granted any access or use of modern technology.

Our beds were extremely rough and hard. We had only one pillow made of hay to rest our heads upon, day and night. The hopeless isolation was affecting my mind and slowly debilitating my body. The stress and pressure were nothing more than my reality gone astray.

When I was not sitting on my bed or the floor, I would pace in the dungeon nervously, pondering at length like a solivagant, the consequences of my actions that had brought me here, and the implausible salvation of my soul. I was a mere mortal, whose mortality was predestined to its inexistence and inextricable result. I was a practical man of principles, but that could not save me from the wrath of the pit. I was a prisoner of war.

It was difficult to imagine that I had been reduced to the most animalistic part of my fading humanity. Sleep was only a transient time to rest and escape my dreadful reality—the fever of living. I could do nothing more than that. I had to deal with the intolerable sirens and screams of the other captives constantly.

Dreams were but insane hallucinations conjured in my mind to avoid the gorgonising effects of the ominous omen that had foreshadowed my demise. I could sense, through the recesses of the Stygian chambers of Nergal, the eldritch sound of death and smell the putrefaction of decomposing bodies of those thrown into the endless pit of Nergal.

It was a gory and funest spectacle to witness with such amazement. There was a part of me that wanted to go insane, and the other part that wanted to rid myself of this horrendous imprisonment. In the end, I was forced to accept the despicable reality of the dungeon, but the unyielding sirens that blared would begin to make me question the core of my sanity afterwards.

Time was the measurement of my captivity, and it had allowed me only the distraction of moments of bygone memories at intervals. I assumed that most of the men around me had been prisoners long before I arrived at Nergal.

I was aware of their attenuating condition, and I could imagine how deteriorated their mental faculties were, as mine were slowly deteriorating. Many aspirations had become fruitless, and many agonies had transformed into lengthy minutes of no surcease. Pain was the face of my torment, and the dungeon the embodiment of my lingering despair.

I was conscious of the effects of the weariness of the alienation, but the fear of being absorbed by the pit and the terror that existed in the pit was consuming me more than the lassitude. No prison could match the Lovecraftian horror of Nergal. It was simply incomparable in nature and distinctive in its fever of madness. Its vercordious grasp of reality was ever present in the psyche of all the men that were oppressed, in the cacoethic chambers of the dungeons of their phantasms.

It was not implausible to not sense the dangerous episodes of death and consternation, for they were pervasive and minacious in their manifestation. I was an ordinary man who had survived the abominations of war, but I had found myself trapped in the zone of no return. Thus, I was captured and sent to Nergal to face my death, as a sacrifice to the god Nergal. I had heard stories of the redoubtable god and how men had perished to its terrible hunger, but I had not seen it to believe them.

As the weeks passed and the months, I then became accustomed to the loud sirens. I feared that I had become deaf at that point and indifferent to the screams of the other prisoners. Had I succumbed to my internal madness, or had I died already mentally?

I would enter into an unconscious state of nightmares, when I would imagine my death at the hands of the pit and the terrifying Nergal. The images in my head were too surreal, but they were real in their horrid manner of my depictions. I had begun to draw pictures of Nergal on the walls that encompassed me. Its darkled guise, its razor-sharp teeth and a bulging eye, with a black film, were what I remembered the most in my hallucinatory episodes. Was this a signal and evidence that my finality was approaching nigh?

More prisoners were sent to their cruel death. Soon my walls would be covered with abundant numbers or depictions of Nergal. I had survived the war of the nuclear bomb, but I had become a captive to the ruthless foes who had imprisoned me to a destiny that was marked for me from the beginning, as just another casualty.

War is never merely a game of winning and losing, for it is the harshness of the victor over the loser, and the consequence that the loser must bear regrettably, within a small measure of defiance. To be restricted to the solid confines of the achromaticity of a dungeon was only the consequence of my definite circumstance. It had no special attachment or actual meaning, except that of my heinous imprisonment.

One day, I saw the figure of a prisoner trying to escape from the sturdy walls of the prison. I could hear his feet climb down the walls, with a stealthy anxiety in him. Within a few minutes that had elapsed, he would stumble and fall onto the sharpened spikes that had awaited him below. The sirens sounded then. He died instantly upon his untimely fall. I do not know how he managed to escape the chamber of his dungeon, but he did.

He had decided to risk his life and not be a sacrifice to the god Nergal. It had been a long time since anyone had reached the point of where he had reached in his attempt to escape the prison. For a moment, it gave me a glimpse of hope, but quickly that hope would be dashed away by the fact that he was not successful in his desperate attempt. I had admired his courage, in spite of the futility of his act.

My appearance had changed for the worse, and I was growing a long beard and long hair. I had been in that wretched prison for nearly a year. I supposed that it was their pleasure to torture and render us to the behaviour of wild animals, as prisoners of war. How any man could continue to survive under these appalling conditions was an absolute miracle.

I had to remind myself that despite the fact that I had lived for almost a year, it did not signify that I would be spared defunction. It meant that I would continue to suffer and be exposed to the insurmountable madness of the dungeon.

I had lost some hearing as well, due to the loud sirens. At certain degrees of my sanity, I was capable of pondering the idea of my improbable escape. This would only result in drifting more and more into the incessant maze of my hysteria and mussitations.

The echoes of the sirens had begun to damage my eardrums inside. I would often speak to myself incoherently. I do not know if this is how delirium manifests. All that I shall expound is the fact that I was experimenting in the illimitable realm of its imposture.

There are moments in time when our mind decides to deceive us and make us believe in things that are not real in their creation or shape. The thoughts then began to enter my mind. Was I only dreaming about this amorphous horror? Was it just a nightmare of mine conjured? Death and madness were at the corner of my obsession to discover the truth.

I had believed that this is what kept me alive in my cerebration, during my time in the prison. It was a pathetic admission on my part, yet it was the veracity of my experience. I did not know if Nergal was an actual god, or just a horrific deformity of a being created by humans.

Every day, a new prisoner would arrive, while another would be sent to his death. It was a predictable occurrence. Piles of skulls and bones had amassed outside the dungeon in a nearby chamber, as a fearful reminder of our terrible fate. Our enemy, who was intransigent, was a masterful conniver of draconian oppression. The place where we were imprisoned was chosen to terrorise the prisoners. I had felt a certain amount of pity for them. Perhaps, it was more due to the serious nature of our imprisonment and punishment that awaited us at the pit of Nergal.

Every day was a constant battle to extirpate the evil that was our condemnation and abalienation. I had utilised my intuition and instinct to guide me, when my mind could not process coherently, my thoughts developed. I had learnt that I could not underestimate the capacity of the mind, or its debilitating effects exposed to enveiglement. The conception of freedom was no longer applicable.

The question that had persisted in my mind was, how long would I be able to continue sane and alive? I was left alone to cogitate the essence of that question and the plausibility of the answer. Nothing was more direful than the untoward predicament of my uncertainty.

If there was ever a time for my comprehension of the situation that was unfolding, then it was at that precise moment when I realised that my time had finally arrived. It would not be what I had expected. I had expected my date with my death on another day, but for some unusual reason, I was not prepared on that day.

Apprehension had begun to enter my mind immediately, as I began to shiver. It was a clear sign that my body had lost its strength and my mind its shelter. The contraction of doubt had consumed me, as my muscles had astringed. The door to my dungeon had opened wide and an austere guard had come to escort me to the abhorrent pit of Nergal and ultimately, to the denouement of my death.

The siren had sounded, and it was the indisputable indication that it was my time. I had spent all those months in abject despair and madness. The phlegmatic guard did not look into my eyes, and I had only stared ahead, knowing that I would not return to my dungeon ever again. At that moment, my fear had turned into a brief measure of resignation.

It was the unknown of the pit that had concerned and obfuscated me. No one knew what Nergal really looked like, in its actual guise and physiognomy. All that was known was hearsay and fearful tales of horror that few had ever lived to confirm their authenticity. I said my goodbye to the adamantine walls that had confined me.

The corridor was long and drear. It took me a whole ten minutes at least to be escorted to the pit of Nergal. Along the way, I saw the sober faces of the other prisoners, who were watching me pass their chambers. They could sense the solitary steps that I had to endure to reach the obscured pit.

I did not have time to fully contemplate their predicaments nor their individual tortures. I could only think of my terrible situation, while I walked the inexorable path surrounded by the lambent torches. As I was taken down the stairway that led to the imminent chamber of the pit, horripilation had caused me to shiver more, as the dread was more palpable. With every second that passed, I felt my heart pounding with a maddening palpitation. No words could describe that exact moment in time.

The sirens had suddenly ceased. In the same instant, any hope of my survival seemed to fade. I had the overwhelming urge to flee, but my body was incapable of movement. I could hear the thunderous voice of Nergal. I was to be a chosen sacrifice to the ancient god.

My legs had buckled, and my arms had stiffened. The callous guards had prepared me for death. I was meant to be thrown into the pit, to be completely consumed by Nergal. No opportunity was granted to me for repentance or to make a final declaration before my death. From above, I could plainly see the vast pit—an abyss of pitch-black nothingness, into which I stared, fear evident in my eyes.

I could smell the fetid stench of blood. Escape was impossible, for there was nowhere to run. I was marked for death. There was no time for the use of my sharp wit. I had to find a way out of this imminent doom. One of the guards proceeded to toss me into the pit, but his feet became entangled with mine, and he fell in instead of me. The other guard tried to save him, but it was too late. The first guard had plunged into the pit, straight into the maw of Nergal. I could hear his loud, agonised screams as he fell. I had little time to react.

This was my moment to seize advantage. With urgency in my eyes, I shoved the other guard into the pit, ensuring his death as well. His screams of agony echoed in my ears. Through the mist, I could just about make out their bodies being devoured at the pit’s bottom. It was a ghastly sight and sound to bear.

It was then that the terrifying leviathan of Nergal rose from the depths of the chthonic pit, shrouded by the enveloping mist. What I saw was a darkness dripping with blood, its sprawling tentacles reaching out.

Its serpent-like tongue was long, its bulging eye enlarged, and its teeth were like daggers. No words could adequately describe the horror of Nergal’s appearance. I was aghast by what I had witnessed. A third guard entered, seeing the unfolding scene. He attempted to throw me into the pit before Nergal could escape, but as he did, the sirens blared once more, causing him to fall straight into the beast's jaws. As he fell, he dropped the keys that would unlock the dungeon chamber.

I seized the opportunity, picking up the keys and fleeing through the door, into the corridor beyond.

The path before me was labyrinthine, with twisting steps leading to a narrow passage. I climbed, eventually reaching a secret tunnel that led to the outside of the old fortification. Once outside, I found myself in a strange forest. I glanced back to see if anyone had noticed my escape, but no one had. Nergal, meanwhile, had broken free from its vast pit and began hunting the humans it could consume, destroying everything in its path.

The remaining guards were too occupied defending themselves from Nergal’s attack to locate me. Chaos reigned at the prison, and I could hear the horrific echoes of the beast’s victims from afar. There was nothing left for me to do but to escape.

I wandered aimlessly for hours through the thick trees and entangled branches, until I reached the edge of the forest. What I saw next before me was yet another cimmerian pit. For a moment, I froze. I would have to navigate around this wide pit to continue forward. The horrifying image of Nergal lingered in my mind as I stared at the mesmerising emptiness of the pit. There was no turning back, and I had no clear idea which direction to take.

I proceeded with extreme caution and apprehension. Slowly, I began to move around the pit, hoping not to fall in. I had no certainty that Nergal wasn’t lurking, waiting for me to fall or be caught by its tentacles. The risk was palpable, but I pressed on.

Eventually, I made my way past the pit, inching towards my freedom. But my nightmare was far from over. As I ventured beyond the pit, I discovered that the world had descended into utter destruction. During my imprisonment, war had resumed—and this time, it was the sign of Armageddon. The end of the world, as I knew it. The worst had yet to unfold.

All around me, human bodies lay strewn across the ground, amidst the mephetic air. It was the dystopian prophecy foretold by the wise elders of ancient times. They had warned that mankind, in its insatiable thirst for power and domination, would destroy the planet through acts of moral depravity. Toxic fumes, carried by a mist, were creeping from the northern distance. I could not stay; I had to leave before the toxicity consumed me.

I turned and headed back into the forest, only to be confronted by the towering presence of Nergal’s booming, reboant form.

Night had settled like a funeral shroud over the ashen plains. I had travelled beyond the black obelisk, through a region where even the wind seemed frightened to blow. My mind had begun to fray. I could no longer tell if the things I saw were remnants of dreams, or the hallucinations of a soul too long exposed to cosmic horror.

Then I came to the lake.

It appeared without warning, nestled within a basin of shattered rock and twisted trees, whose bark bled thick amber sap. The water was still—unnaturally so—and black as pitch, reflecting nothing. I approached the edge, cautious, every instinct screaming that I should flee, though there was no reason I could name.

A fog crept over the surface, and then it began to ripple.

At first, the water only trembled. Then it bulged, as though something below stirred. I stepped back, breath caught in my throat.

A long, grotesque appendage slid from the centre of the lake—wet, glistening, covered in pulsating suckers and strange scars that seemed to move of their own accord. Another limb followed. Then a third. Then a terrible groan rose from the depths, like the bellow of a dying world. I knew that sound.

Nergal.

I turned to run, but my legs froze.

From the mist, his form rose. Taller than any building, broader than the sky could contain. Eyes like furnaces, blazing with unholy knowledge, fixed themselves upon me. Its teeth unfolded, a maw within a maw, slick with ichor.

The air warped. My vision blurred. The trees bent inwardly, pulled by a gravity that centred on Nergal. My ears bled. I fell to my knees. I tried not to scream, but the sound burst from me anyway, primal and broken.

Nergal began to move—slow, inexorable—towards the edge, his limbs dragging across the stones like the chains of the damned. I clawed at the ground, struggling to flee, every limb shaking, every bone in revolt.

A sudden pulse of blue light surged from beneath the earth.

I was thrown backwards. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the soil had cracked open behind me. Strange glyphs glowed beneath the surface, forming a circle that radiated heat. A barrier? A ward?

No—an ancient seal.

Nergal roared, a sound that split the heavens. He reached forth, but his hand met the edge of the glyph-circle and recoiled as if burnt. The sigils flared brighter. Steam hissed from his flesh.

I crawled towards the glyphs, unsure whether they would protect or destroy me. But there was no time to consider. Nergal plunged half his mass into the lake, sending waves crashing against the broken shore. He could not cross the barrier, but he could unmake the land around it.

The air shattered.

The trees cracked like bones. The water began to rise, defying gravity, forming tendrils of liquid that hovered and twisted above me. I could see faces within the water—screaming, writhing, pleading.

My eyes burnt. My lungs screamed for air.

I stumbled through the glyphs, and as I passed into the centre of the seal, a rush of heat enveloped me. The glyphs pulsed again—once, twice—then collapsed inwards with a thunderous implosion of light.

When I awoke, I was lying in a clearing of dead grass. The lake was gone. The basin empty.

There was no sign of Nergal—no black water, no tentacles, no mist.

Only the broken trees remained, bent and scorched. The earth bore marks like claw wounds, vast and deep, as though something had tried to claw its way into this world but had been denied.

I sat in silence for what must have been hours. My hands trembled. My body stank of ash and blood.

But I had escaped.

Again.

Yet something gnawed at my thoughts. Not guilt, nor dread—though those remained in abundance—but certainty. The glyphs that saved me were not summoned by me. They were remnants of a power older than the prison, older than the gods.

There were others who had fought Nergal before. Who had bound him. Who had failed.

And now, as I stared into the darkened sky, I knew the truth.

I would meet him again.

He would not stop.

And I was not yet free.

After hours of silent trudging through the darkness beyond the gulch, I emerged into a clearing bathed in a pale, unnatural light. The air was thick and unmoving, cloaking the land in a muffled stillness. What stood before me was no common forest, but an orchard of petrified trees—tall, skeletal things, charred black as obsidian, yet untouched by flame. Their trunks spiralled like twisted spines, and their branches bore no leaves, only clusters of smooth, glistening fruit, grey and translucent, pulsing faintly as if alive.

The orchard stretched for miles, each tree aligned in dreadful symmetry, forming corridors of shadow and flickering light. I dared not touch the fruit, but its faint aroma invaded my senses nonetheless—a sweet, intoxicating scent mingled with the bitterness of decay. As I stepped cautiously between the trees, I noticed that no sound accompanied my movement. The earth refused to echo my presence. Even the wind, which should have stirred the hanging fruit, had vanished from this unique place.

In the centre of the orchard stood a single monolith, taller than any tree, engraved with symbols too ancient for memory. It emanated a vibration, like a quiet groan echoing from the deep belly of the world. I felt it in my teeth, in the sinews of my limbs, and in the coldness now gripping my spine.

It was a relic—perhaps a shrine—dedicated to Nergal, or something greater still. Around its base were scattered the remains of other wanderers: cloaks, bones, shattered lanterns. They had not escaped. Their fates were etched into the black bark of nearby trees, where strange images writhed—visions of flesh stripped from bone, of tentacles tearing through sky and soul.

I turned away. I could not linger. I knew this orchard was no haven, but a lure—another limb of Nergal’s vast reach. The fruit, I sensed, was not meant for nourishment. It was meant for binding. I pressed ahead, deeper into the unknown, as the monolith behind me began to hum with the sound of awakening.

Something had noticed me.

And it was stirring.

It was the dreadful Nergal.

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