Often I had travelled far and viewed fantastic sights in the lands beyond the dreams of most men, and knowing that should you read this you have done so also, it is hard for me to explain the delight with which I greeted the simple village of Orival when I found it. 

Nestled between the low slung arms of Mount Ormir, which glistens white with its terraced glades of poppy, and the golden fields of undulating grain that lead to the sturdy stone bridge over the small smooth river that curves out of the nearby hills to lazily creep west, then south, and finally east and south towards sly Xura, the village struck me as somehow distant and cut off at first.  

But when I crossed the little river at the bridge I met with a lone fisher casting his line for the fiery carp and powerful iridescent salmon that occasionally disturbed the almost mirror like quality of the river and his idle banter gave me cause to investigate further, for he spoke in mine own French tongue, although perhaps a bit more archaic and tainted with the vocabulary of dream. 

There being but one tavern in the quaint village, I soon found myself the sole audience of delighted storytellers who asked but that I listen to their prideful tales of their home, but whose stories I found worth every delicate goblet of wine I could muster to quench their thirst when my interest outlasted the teller's tongue. They told me of the times of the dragon, when the river ran foul and the fields lay fallow and the songbirds flew long miles around their vale. And they told me of the man who came one evening and promised to rid them of the wyrm for the price of one hen's egg.  

He came they say one night at dusk and set his price, but the young people of the village laughed at him and he parted. But he had seen that the old did not laugh. He stayed away for half a year and when he returned the dragon had laid waste to their orchards and they were in despair for food. Again he stated his price and they did not laugh for despair was upon them. He was given his due and from his travelling sack he drew forth a great sword and pieces of armor with which he girded himself and set forth into the blue dusk. When he returned just before dawn few doubted that he had indeed beset the dragon for he bore great festering wounds and smoking holes in his armor and sword. The people made ready to rejoice, but at dawn he was gone. Only twice more did they see him.  

On the anniversary eve of the death of the dragon the villagers gathered to celebrate their bountiful harvests of sweet grain and catches of bright fish and were surprised to see him return. This time he spoke of the dark and ghostly ruins built by no man atop Mount Ormir and the great black shapes villagers sometimes saw before someone would go missing on a night of a new moon and they begged him to rid them of this menace also. And again he stated a price. He was to have a bride.  

Now, the stranger was fair and no small number of maids sought to be wed to the heroic man, but he set his heart upon the daughter of an aged sculptor and she consented. Near dawn he came and took her away to the ruins, and none questioned him, for great lights and horrendous noises had come from there and he was alive. But none of the village dared tread near the dark ruins, oft complaining of horrid deformed toads which crawled from mountain streams and echoes of discordant flutes coming from the apparent sky and other more subtle and yet no less blasphemous happenings, and so he was forced to enlist the help of strange gypsies in rebuilding the ruins and cutting the great basalt stones into a fashion befitting for man.  

None ever saw him again, nor his bride, nor claimed to have heard ought from the chateau but a great peal of wedding bells, but his bride must have affected his life greatly for many years later his son came to the village also seeking a wife and carried curious small basalt statues, to be sold to the gypsies, that he remarked had been carven by his father. And it seemed that his grandsons for many generations repeated this tradition, coming to the village at dusk but to obtain a wife and sell strange carvings to the gypsies, and then disappearing without any more clue than that strange peal of wedding bells.  

Having learned the strange history of the village and its reticent Lord's ancestors, I might have travelled onward, but that my eye alighted upon the fairest maid in all my years and I was struck to my deepest heart of hearts with fondness and not a little desire. Begging leave of my storytellers, I found her name to be Tarania and spoke to her daily for the next few weeks. Unfortunately, time for a dreamer sometimes grown short and the waking world intrudes upon us, and so I told her that I must go away for awhile, but to await my return. I was delightfully pleased when she consented and the hours of waking I was forced to endure ere I could sleep again and return to her in the lands of dream were more torturous than the vultures of Prometheus.  

When I returned to the village of Orival nestled in the arms of Mount Ormir I feared the worst had happened, for the villagers told me that the Lord of the Chateau had come and Tarania had left with him. But when they told me that it had been just before dawn that morning and that none had yet heard the bells, I knew that it was not too late, and set out to climb the path that lead steeply past terraced glades of white poppies thick as a snowcap that never quite melts.  

The Chateau d'Ormir seemed to mock me with its dark turrets and grim gates, and it bothered me that the grinning gargoyles carved and set upon the roof seemed to stare at the sky as if they were searching for some malevolent entity that might slip out of the oily clouds that fled from the hot winds that scoured rotting Xura with ocean air baked humid by the sun.  

Soon I discovered that I could not reach the Chateau by day, for the path was barred by sinister gypsies who somehow hid their disastrously colorful costumes amongst the white flowers, and so I determined that I must sneak into the fortress by night, and given the superstitious nature of the villagers that I must do so alone. That night and a few others I crept up the face of Mount Ormir and came close to the brooding fortress. Sometimes I glimpsed shadows passing the gleaming cracks in shutters, but not often, and I guessed that the Lord must live alone, or nearly so. Each night I was repulsed by the wary gypsies and indeed once was nearly caught.  

I do not hold my constitution at fault, for that which caused me to utter a sound at so delicate a time was truly cause to do so, but I do fault mine eyes, for such cannot be. I had spied a gypsy on watch eating some exotic form of pie possessed of an odd pork odor not to be found anywhere on the earth, when I realized that his teeth were quite nearly as sharp as needles. Such a start did my temporary delusion give me that I never received the opportunity to disprove it for I was forced to flee for my life to the village below.  

I was beginning to become discouraged, each night fearing that the bells would peal and my love would be forever lost to me, when I had the good fortune to meet a most disreputable, although not altogether unlikeable fellow, who claimed in a rather drunken state to have been within the wine cellar of the Lord's Chateau.  

After plying him with a few more drinks than he really needed I convinced him rather quietly that I might desire the company of one of his talents. I did not like the way he hinted of strange dark things hidden beneath the surface of his village, for it seemed most disrespectful of the kind, gentle, and industrious people I found all around me. But, as I needed his services and he really did seem rather a jolly fellow, I listened in a sort of disapproving-amused state to his stories and assured him that he had far too much liquor in him.  

I snickered patronizingly at his stories of bloodless and mauled corpses, found tied with colorful gypsy scarves. I pointed out to him that no one had disappeared from the village since the Lord had ascended and banished the haunts above, only for him to claim that perhaps this was why no one ever visited and they were forced to trade with the gypsies.  

I jeered at him for hinting that there must be some foul reason why no one ever came from the Chateau to be buried in the village below. And as he revealed more of the supposed sinister secrets of Orival, including a rather unbelievable tale of what he had found in the place of wine in that certain cellar's casks, I grew rather disgusted with him and began to wonder of his real use to me, as I finally left him muttering in his cups and slipped off to my room.  

The fellow proved to be rather more reliable than I had hoped, though I noted that the other villagers avoided him and gave me strange looks when I was in his company, and the following evening beneath the dark sky of the new moon we crept up the Mount and he led me quietly past the gypsies whom had nearly captured me with their strangely pointed teeth. Though I shivered at the delusion of which my mind could not quite rid itself, I knew that it was foolishness and so pressed on without any real fear.  

The fellow I had hired led me to the far side of the Chateau and showed me a place where a stream escaped the wall to plunge across the broken and suggestively larger foundation of the former ruin and down a fall that thundered remarkably for so small a flow. He showed me how two of the bars could be removed and replaced with ease and with no one the wiser, and we slipped into the dank subchambers of the fortress.  

I have never been fond of tight spaces and ascribe part of the strange occurrences I must relate to you to that fear, and certainly the concern for my lost love must also have caused certain illogical visions to form in my thoughts, but I can not help but wonder at the truth behind the myth so to speak, for some grain of truth must lie there behind every story no matter how fantastic. The deep black basements to this horrid fortress seemed oddly cavernous and proportioned as though for strange beings of inhuman form. As we crept through the dank places upwards toward the Chateau a strange odor at once avian and serpentine seemed to assault my nose, and the fellow seemed more nervous than before, though I dared not issue even so much as a whisper to inquire why.  

Suddenly, the thing I had feared most came to pass and my mental state must be held greatly responsible for much of what I perceived after this point. The peal of the bells I had agonized about rang and echoed about the chambers like some horde of armor clad daemons battling in dread Acheron. Immediately, I threw all caution aside and sprinted with all might towards what seemed to be the source of this nemesis sound. For now I had to reach fair Tarania before the awful ceremony dooming her to a life as bride to the Lord of the Chateau could be completed, before I lost my love forever to this cold, carven stone house.  

My companion could barely keep up with my sudden furor and if I had not stumbled so many times in the darkness I might have left him far behind and not been spared the fate that befell him instead. As we passed into a chamber which at last seemed to bear the signs of light from above, a hideous hissing series of cacophonous squawks shrieked about the room. I must say that though it may seem silly to you, somehow it reminded me of drawings of geologists findings of early avian fossils, covered both in scales and feathers yet all the more frightening that its cry seemed to reach into some ancient mammalian memory buried within me and nearly paralyzed me with terror. 

My companion indeed did not fare so well even as I and fell beneath its claws and vicious beak, but I fled up the stairway and such was my fear that though the door there was locked I burst it from its hinges with a resounding crash. Then any possible chance of stealth being spent I hurried to the rooms where the last fading echo of the horrible pealing bell seemed to die. I cannot readily understand what must really have happened in that last room, where the master of the Chateau worked his evil craft, and of course I do not believe things were as they appeared. However, in the hopes that perhaps someone else may scry out the true meanings of the events I perceived, I will relay them as they seemed to occur, though certainly they greatly consist of fantasies derived from my emotional state. In large part, they may be feeble attempts by my inner mind to explain away my great loss.  

When I came into that last room I saw that it must certainly be the chamber just below the bell tower. Then I saw my love crouched upon the floor, and I cannot say for sure if she was alive or dead at that point, for the Lord of the Chateau had set upon her foul wounds with a chisel he bore in his hand, yet she did not fall limply away when he struck her. I was repulsed by the sickness and strangeness of whatever dark ritual he was performing, as her body seemed to be painted some mottled gray shade and dressed in odd clawed gloves and boots. She seemed covered in blood, yet the very area he struck, as I gazed in stunned horror, showed the least of it. And it was only when I realized I was screaming, and stopped, that I heard her scream with a sound that pierced my soul.  

I charged upon him as he struck her again, and a part of my mind still swears that her lips never moved, but I heard her scream such that it tore my heart. In his distracted state I would surely have slain him had not a most unfortuitous event occurred. The grisly statue of one of his gargoyles fell from the heights of the bell tower above and through the trap door above. Oddly, it did not shatter upon striking the ground and instead fell forward into me. In my deranged state I must have struggled with it and cut myself badly upon its carven claws, but in any case I had lost my surprise and the Lord turned upon me with his chisel.  

As I tried to cast aside the gargoyle statue that seemed to me in my delusion to be attacking me with a frenzy I began to notice certain peculiarities which sorely disturbed me. Sometimes I wish I had remained and been slain there in that dark place, but when I heard the tramping feet of the gypsies and the hideous grating of stone upon stone as though all the gargoyles were about to fall from the roof at once, I could not help but to run. In my haste to escape I ran even toward that shattered doorway where my companion had fallen prey to the beast in the cellar, for my immediate danger from the mad gypsies made me desperate.  

Even as Orpheus surely regretted his last look back into Hades, so I do sorrow at mine. As I glanced once more upon the scene which had broken my heart, I heard the peal of the bells and saw that the Lord of the Chateau had taken to sculpting again. I can scarcely remember my flight from the ghastly house of stone, usually only in scattered snatches of nightmare that rend me howling from sleep.  

I do briefly recall fleeing past the paradoxical creature in the cellar and nearly being caught when I stumbled across the impossibly stiff form of my companion. When I hear the cold rain beating against my windows sometimes I think of my stumbling flight across the strange suggestive expanse of the older, ancient foundation and my long breathtaking dive from the falls into the small pool below.  

Most of all, though, when I sometimes grow insane in my dreams and brave that terrible village where the gargoyles stare unblinking at the sky, I wonder if my love ever gazes down at the inn window I haunt with my melancholy vigil of the rooves of the Chateau.