She Forgot to Pray

The carriage had entered into an under path that ran beneath the castle. Although lit with lamps every few feet or so, it was hard to see what lay around her. Fatima’s imagination took hold. In her extreme state of fear, she forgot to pray.

He wrenched her out and down from the cabin, as though to make plain his strength over her. His treatment had fast gone from wooing to contempt, and Fatima was helpless.

She did not resist as he chained her to a cold stone wall. She could hear herself crying over the weeks to follow.

She died a death of sadness.

The dragon Vlad never became any wiser from his taunts and interrogations upon her.

When Fatima passed over into Heaven, she could see the city of ghosts he had created. Her spiritual confidence left her there and then, with the great gift of healing as well.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Mystery of Immortality

“I have heard of your healings”, he [Vlad] sneered. It appeared he was enjoying her state of bewilderment.

“This is why I have brought you”, he continued - “I need to understand the mystery of immortality and resurrection. I want these things for myself. And, I also want to know how to die …”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Tsunami of Forsaken Souls

“Why have you brought me here?" she [Fatima] wailed uncontrollably.

Death had always been a friend to Fatima - she had never doubted the goodness of God in His plans. But this unnatural death she had just seen the magnitude of, was completely different.

Her sensitive nature could feel the suffering as a tsunami of forsaken souls - men, women and children, rotting, oozing, contorted, naked, defiled, and pitiable, stuck on stakes, exposed in the cold wind.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Horrific Insult to Humanity

In a field of a thousand sufferers, Vlad Dracul walked as though it were a blossom garden. It might as well have been.

It was said that he was the greatest strategist. But the truth was, this cadaver display was not for political victory, or to ward away the approaching usurpers - it had nought to do with military manoeuvres or keeping safe that part of the country he controlled.

It was all about the very worst and lowest a man could go. It was what it was, and no amount of reasoning - good or bad - could explain or qualify the horrific insult this demon was to humanity.

And so when Fatima was brought into landscape of death, her own soul was overwhelmed.

“Who are you?” she cried.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Black Arts

Suffering quickly drives the spirit up, and out, and away.

Vlad Tepes never knew this truth. He was anchored to an earthly tragedy, gaining pleasure with earthly eyes. He thought himself a scholar of these black arts, that had now in turn, tarred his soul, as he corrupted the country surrounding with such an atmosphere of agony, that would remain for centuries to come.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Vlad is Bad

He would sit and watch, playing games with himself of predictions as to who would feel the pain, and who would spasm, and who could will themselves to die.

Vladimir did not however, see the angels that hovered above and around the suffering, he could not perceive their supplements: the grace of shock, the soul’s repose, the disentanglement from a body that was torn with irreparable injury.

He could not perceive the ghosts of the children rise above their dying remains, only to play, chasing one another in the winds above.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Gruesome Vista

Through the carriage window the dark forest blacked out the sunlight, and the passage itself was naturally quite terrifying.

When the trees finally cleared, the roads opened up, and as they climbed the mountain, she could make out many poles on the horizon - now dimming with the sunset … as though the big hill was one great spike furred animal.

She could not understand what it was that she was seeing. Only when they drew closer did Fatima find that there were human bodies skewed by huge wooden stakes. And, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of these spikes that had a person attached to every one of them.

Fatima believed there and then that she had been transported into Hell - for no place on Earth could insult life with this horror.

She turned to her companion, expecting that he also was caught by the horror, and then it came.

He smiled. He looked out over the acres of torment, and smiled. He looked back at her frenzy, and smiled. Without a heart or soul, this man had nothing - but a smile.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances