Source: Richard Ley on Pixabay

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This is the second time I've participated in writing contest sponsored by @f3nix. For me, this is an excellent exercise. @f3nix provides the beginning of a story and asks us to provide an end. This is where my imagination took me.

Thanks @f3nix for running this contest.

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This first part written by @f3nix. My challenge, continue in his style and come up with a consistent ending.

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I Will Write No More

Prague, 22 September 1994

Dear Silent Friend,

Once again, I will force you to bear the tremulous handwriting of this pathetic old man.

Time has yellowed my fingers and your pages in equal measure. But I know you will not complain in finding yourself soiled by my memories once again, after such a long time, after the hiatus of decades of life, spent far away from the ancient leather of your cover. And I hope it did not bother you to try the tickling of my pen again. Not more than three spots of water and ten sheets before this, you still were curiously waiting for the hand of a fourteen-year-old, full of dreams and watercolours.

As I write, the mist rises from Moldova and lingers among the ancient gothic spires, guardians of forgotten secrets, while a pale September sun, as a master of alchemy, transmutes in gold water and heavens.

There is this little kestrel who, for a few days, has been picking on the attic's glass at dusk, while I perform my little preparatory rituals before everything happens like every night. The graceful winged evening’s maid urges me to once again cast my gaze on the hundred towers city, but these eyes will no longer be able to patiently stand on the surface of the mystery.

"I discovered a terrible law that links the green colour, the fifth chord and the heat. I lost the joy of living. Power scares me. I will write no more”. Such were your feelings, Gustavo, and I still remember your trembling voice when you confided in me, the last time we met, before the great war swallowed everything and everyone, forcing us to interrupt our occultic studies. Only now that the layers of reality have finally crumbled before my eyes, like a sedimentary stone on the sides of a primordial river, I can grasp the true meaning of your words. The anxious joy of discovery, mixed with the ancestral vertigo of sidereal abysses, has overwhelmed me and continues to overwhelm me every night I leave.

And, just as in the layers of rock are the remains of creatures lost in time, even these levels of reality are not devoid of surprises .. and encounters. By now, I'm sure they saw me, but I cannot help but go back. Of all, I know that the faceless child already waits for me, every time closer, just beyond the threshold. He craves my warmth, my vibration and, this time, I do not know if I will manage to continue playing the game of deceiving him, while I persevere to the end. Certainly, I cannot draw back right now that my human life ends and, at the same time, I’m experimenting one, a hundred, a thousand lives.

Forgive me, dear diary, for having forced you to bear my poor ravings again. Perhaps, we’ll never meet again. The kestrel flew towards the old city. It's time to leave.

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My Ending: Beguiled and Betrayed

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Oh perfidy! The trust I placed in these vellum sheets was foully betrayed. As I was poised to ascend to the next plane and life immortal, your true purpose was revealed. I had been warned by Gustavo to be alert to deceit, but never did I suspect that you, receptacle of my most secret thoughts, would be the author of my destruction.

You planned it well, you and your confederates. The signs you displayed were chimeras. The kestrel that seemed my guide, led me astray. The child I believed to be beguiled, had beguiled me. The ancient and languorous Moldova covered me in her mist, and cast a spell. I was carried to a distant castle and confined.

All of it a trap, a sham to siphon power I had acquired from the practice of occult arts. In the castle's dungeon my will, my resistance was conquered because you had learned my weaknesses in this yellow parchment, and you exploited them.

Oh, dark forces assembled against me. That child who trembled, I thought at my presence--that child, who was to be the medium through which I would ascend into the next life--the child was a monster, a demon disguised to seduce.

Once my methods were revealed, my wisdom admitted to your worn pages--those mysteries were spirited away and used against me.

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Source: Adapted, Dark Moon on Pixabay

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Oh treacherous trustee of my innermost yearnings. You have taken my fantasy and my reality. You imbued that child, that disguised demon, with my power.

This is the end of me, but beware. I have taken insurance against betrayal. The child may rob my immortality, but she will live deformed, a wretched parody of human shape, hobbled for all time by a contradiction I have incorporated into my essence.

As I nurtured over these many years the spirit that would survive my physical vessel, I instilled a bit of immutable presence unique to me. This quality is intrinsic to the formula that enables transition to the other side. One may survive without it, but survival will be incomplete, like a snake without slither.

There will be not one moment of ease for the demon child. And those who hope to benefit from her conveyance will be sorely disappointed in their agent. Wisdom, insight, skill will be absent.

These are the last words I commit to your pages, duplicitous confidante. As my breath is exhausted and my heart weakened, you will shrivel. Your pages will curl, and disintegrate. Insensate worms will become the repository of these words and will commit you, vile record, to the ultimate fate of all things --- decay.

The time is nigh, my breath labored. The pen is dry, at last. I leave you with a curse... damn you. Damn your arts. Damn the moment I committed myself to the occult path.