Novus Monstrum by Douglas Gwilym

Author:Douglas Gwilym [Gwilym, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dragon’s Roost Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Path of Skulls

Jeffrey Thomas

If you’ve ever visited the Imperial Palace in the city of Haikan, as I did during a class trip as a child—bussed in from our little rural village, tucked in a valley between the dramatic forested mountains that for so many years hid our country from foreign intrusion and invasion—you will no doubt remember the mysterious Path of Skulls.

This path, paved with flagstones, curves up a steep hill to the very gates of the Imperial Palace—once the domicile and seat of power of the greatest of the emperors of what we call the Unnamed Country: our revered Emperor Tho. In his time, Emperor Tho stripped our country of any formal name by which covetous nations and malicious demons alike might recognize and seek out this nation, with the aim of conquering it. In our modern age, however, my country’s very namelessness only intrigues and entices outside tourists, even from the West, who are eager to take sexy selfies of themselves along the striking path to the palace gates, so as to post them on social media.

Whether you’ve seen the Path of Skulls in person or only online, you’ll know the path to the palace’s gated entrance is enclosed on both sides by high walls built without mortar from square blocks, seemingly shaped from an unusual material. That is, these blocks appear to be carved from ivory or bone. Strange fissures resembling those of human skulls run through the blocks, with a fairly consistent pattern, though they are otherwise devoid of any other resemblance to human skulls, such as eye sockets, nasal bones, or mandibles with teeth. These days, those Western travelers who post videos online suggest the blocks were manufactured ages ago to only resemble bone, and that the fissures are manmade. However, scientific analysis has been forbidden by our government, for fear of any damage that might be done not only to the blocks themselves, but to the cultural significance of their lore.

As a child visiting the Imperial Palace, I recall running my hand in awe across the stacked square-shaped bones, and I was by no means the only student to do so, though we were finally snapped at by our teacher not to touch them—for fear of tainting the bone blocks with the oil from our transient human flesh.

All I can do for you here, dear listener—whether you are a fellow native of the Unnamed Country, or a foreigner from the other side of the world—is relate the history of these supposed skulls, untainted by scientific conjecture, so that you might draw your own conclusions.

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