1083: Story 1083: Wormtongue’s Hymn 1083: Story 1083: Wormtongue’s Hymn In the ruins of Ashwood Monastery, the wind sang a song that no human throat could replicate—a rattling, lilting dirge that twisted the mind of anyone foolish enough to listen.
The villagers whispered that it was the voice of Wormtongue, a creature born from the bones of saints and the bile of blasphemers.
Long ago, Ashwood was a place of purity, a citadel against the growing horrors of the world.
Monks chanted hymns from dusk till dawn, their voices said to keep the darkness at bay.
But one winter, an abbot named Eldric Malrow dared to study the forbidden psalms—the hidden verses left by mad prophets and nameless gods.
He opened a hymnal that should have stayed sealed.
From the depths of that blasphemous text, something answered.
A voice slithered into Eldric’s dreams, promising salvation, strength, and endless wisdom.
But the price was the monastery itself.
One by one, the monks’ chants grew twisted, their songs turning into guttural moans.
Flesh melted like wax; bones warped into writhing, serpentine forms.
The choir of Ashwood became a pit of gurgling monstrosities—and Eldric the loudest of all.
Thus, Wormtongue was born: a mass of tendrils, human teeth, and broken hymns stitched into a body that should not exist.
It sang constantly, a hymn laced with madness, spreading its corruption like spores on the wind.
The monastery collapsed, devoured by the creature’s endless chant.
Generations later, only a few walls remained—charred stone and broken archways jutting from the ground like broken ribs.
Yet still, at night, the hymn rose from the ruins, thin and keening, as though carried by a phantom choir.
Marla Vey, a scavenger hardened by the wasteland, heard the stories but scoffed.
She saw Ashwood not as a cursed ground but as an opportunity.
If relics of the old monastery remained, they would fetch a fortune among the cults and collectors of the dark arts.
Armed with a lantern and steel nerves, Marla entered the ruins.
The song touched her first as a hum at the edge of hearing.
Then it grew—words slithering into her mind, promising her secrets beyond time.
Her hands trembled as she approached the shattered altar where an ancient book sat, bound in skin stitched with veins.
The lantern sputtered.
Shadows bent unnaturally.
And from the cracks between the stones, Wormtongue rose.
Its mouth was a thousand mouths; its tongue was a scroll that unfurled endlessly, each word a wound upon reality.
It sang Marla’s name, peeling it from her soul syllable by syllable.
Her knees buckled.
Her mind frayed.
The last thing Marla saw was the hymnal splitting open, the verses crawling free like worms across her skin, burrowing, whispering.
Now, she sings too.
Travelers who pass near Ashwood hear two voices now—a chorus of anguish and ecstasy, harmonizing in a language no human throat should know.
They call it Wormtongue’s Hymn, and once it touches your ears, it festers in your dreams forever.
There is no silence after Ashwood.
Only the endless, hungry song.