From ancient times before our written history there has been a darkly mysterious legend of a castle made entirely of blackened glass called “Pandemonium”. This eerie tale has been handed down by word of mouth from father to son, generation to generation. A few of those who have ventured into the barren zone have seen it and described the magnificent translucent walls and inhuman architecture; only to die a few hours or days later from chronic sickness. The simple fact of the matter is that no one who has gazed upon its crystal walls has lived more than a week.

    This year, half way through our dry season all our wells, lakes and streams from the swollen settlement began to dry up. Very little rain falls during this season to replenish the water supply but usually the annual drought is nearly over before we run low on our water reserves. Since we were only half way through the drought our crops and livestock would never survive until the rains finally came. The village had became so populous that our demand was greater than the supply to take care of it. Ironically, our only hope was to seek water where no one lived to consume it; in the barren zone.
As the tribunal chief of the village, I elected myself to be the one go into the barren zone in search of the fluid we needed so desperately, along with 2 other volunteers. How we would manage to bring it back to where it was needed was a mystery we hadn’t solved yet. After packing enough food and supplies to last through the expedition we left behind our homeland to venture forth into the barren zones unfamiliar sands. We soon found that it was true to its name. Almost nothing living could be seen as the eye scanned the azimuth. Only a few scattered scrub brushes and cactus plants broke up the sands bland monotony.

    We began to feel sick and fatigued as we went deeper into the desert and our nausea grew increasingly worse as time wore on. We stopped and set up camp as darkness fell over the sky and made plans for the next morning. After finalized the search route with the other 2 men we contemplated our certain deaths from this desperate mission. The dismal realization seemed unavoidable as each of us began to display the same signs of sickness that had claimed the lives of all the others before us. There was little reason for me to keep my fears from them since I’m sure they were dwelling on the same morbid thoughts. We knew our quest was a fatal excursion but many lives depended on our success in finding water and surviving long enough to make it back to tell them of its location. It would be up to them to engineer a practical method of getting it back to the village reservoirs. I bade my companions good night and settled into my tent for one of the last nights of my life. As I lay awake my mind was filled with the regretful thoughts of dying man who wasn’t satisfied with his meager accomplishments. The night air wasn’t hot but I was certain the other men were sweating just as much as I was. In my sleep, re-occurring dreams haunted me of a single drip of rain landing in a pool of water and causing it to splash up and make a crater-like wall around the edges and then freeze in place. I woke up in a pool of sweat and stumbled out of my tent to throw up. As I leaned over to retch I wiped the sweat from my brow and along with it came large amounts of my hair. The strange barren zone sickness had begun. The rest of my dreams that night were basically the same. The elusive symbolism disturbed me but I had little time left to ponder its meaning with our objective still unaccomplished.

    When morning came we each ate a small meal from our rations. My thoughts were plagued with the fear that any water we might find there would probably contain the same poisonous sickness that was rapidly consuming our lives. In our dire condition we simply had no other choice. About an hour into that days search one of the men discovered a small pool of water. At first it seemed like we had made some much needed progress but our hopes were just as quickly dashed when we realized it was far too small to rescue our people with and it exuded a rancid stench of stagnation and death. A small animal’s bones at the edge of the pool told us all we needed to know. Our dire quest was far from over.
Before the burning sun had a chance to rise to its highest point the three of us separated to cover more area. We agreed to meet back at a pre-arranged camp site at nightfall. My solo exploration took me into a hidden valley obscured by sheer cliffs and narrow craigs. There before me as I scaled the pinnacle of a large dune, I saw “Pandemonium” in all its dark splendor. The pale words used to describe its sinister appearance by those before me failed to carry across its twisted and macabre magnificance. My whole body was shaking in convulsions of fear and apprehension from its awesome stature and from my nausea and sickness. Its architecture was like nothing I had ever seen. It had perfectly smooth and rounded translucent walls and a jagged rim like frozen tongues of fire which made it seem impossible to have been manufactured by human hands. The sand around its base was black and tempered as if burnt to cinders from Gehenna’s eternal flame, yet there wasn’t anything for as far as the eye could see to have burned. Outside the canyon the sand wasn’t blackened but it was just as barren. Something far more intense and devastating than an ordinary fire had ruined the desolate ground beneath my feet.

    I didn’t dare get any closer to it. I could feel its evilness sucking the life from my body. My stomach convulsed involuntarily and I vomited up its contents with a weak lunge. Instead of it soaking into the sand, it flowed away like water pouring off a rock. I sipped a little of my water ration to remove the bile from my throat and then turned and walked away. I only looked back at Pandemonium’s crystal walls one last time before it was out of my sight forever. I simply didn’t need to. I will never forget it.
I met back with the others at the campsite just as dusk was approaching. I wasn’t surprised to find out that they were unsuccessful as well. They listened with fascination as I told them I had seen the castle and the blackened, crystallized sand that covered the entire valley. After a small supper we retired to our tents. All of us were dangerously weak, dehydrated and looked 30 years older from our inflamed, blistered skin and missing hair. Even though the expedition had proven fruitless, our deaths were not going to be completely in vain. We had eliminated the barren zone as a potential source for the villages water needs. Salvation would have to come from some other source. If we didn’t leave soon none of us would live long enough to inform them so we planned on returning at first light. That night my dreams were again centered around the same vision of a raindrop crashing into a still pond and causing it to splash up and freeze in place. I awoke long before sunrise from intense nausea and fever chills. The premonition continued to evade my understanding although I felt certain it was somehow linked to my people’s problem and the castle. I woke the others and we gathered up all the items we could still carry and shuffled through the desert toward home. The reoccurring dream refused to leave my thoughts and thankfully distracted me from how ill I felt. By the end of the day we had reached the edge of the barren zone and the mountains that separated us from our homeland were still green and rich with vegetation. It was quite a drastic and wonderful site to behold from the hell we had been in for 3 days. If death was certain for us then we at least wanted to die at home under the green hills. We made it back to our village at dawn. At first we were mistook to be plague sickened strangers or beggars but we were warmly received when we identified ourselves.

    With bittersweet reluctance we were told the painful fact that the day after we left a small stream began to flow down from the mountains due to ice thawing from the heat of the drought. It had steadily increased and was providing ample water for the entire village and the animals and crops. In retrospect it made perfect sense that the snow from the mountains would eventually melt because no rain was falling to cool down the temperatures in our fertile valley but we had no way to predict natural relief would come. Somehow reassuring myself that we did what we had to do was of little consolation. I was relieved that the others had been saved but silently bitter at the realization that their salvation was at the unnecessary cost of our lives. The first of my expedition companions dropped into a terminal coma and I knew that I and the other volunteer would soon follow. To protect others from our sickness we were placed in quaranteen where I had nothing but time to reflect on the irony of how my life would end. Again and again the vision returned to my thoughts until it now occupies all my waking hours. My remaining goal is to understand this mystery before I die. Somehow Pandemonium’s circular crystal walls are linked to the enigma but how I do not know. “What kind of being would build such a sinister monument to survive so long after his own demise”; I asked myself. “And why would he want to be the ruler of such a wasteland as the barren zone? What lost technology and technique was employed to construct such an abstract abberation?”
Each time I pondered that elemental question the vision returned to taunt me. After running the same events over in my mind for countless times It has begun to come together. The image of the raindrop splashing in the pool repeated continually in rapid succession. Superimposed over it I could see the castle’s walls and realized that they were one in the same! The splashing water in my dream was caused by the raindrop but what horrible falling object could have caused such a permanent “monument” and the sand for miles to be black and crystallized? The old legends tell that a long time ago man tried to destroy himself and the planet with weapons of mass destruction. It seems inconceivable that any being intelligent enough to create such a devastating and everlasting weapon for war wouldn’t have instead used their advanced knowledge for peace but apparently they did. I shuddered to think how close they came. Its effects are still drawing the lives out of myself and the other two men from the mission even now. Perhaps one day the effects of that ancient war will cease and the barren zone will again be inhabitable and free from the sickness that is killing me. With war being an all but forgotten nightmare and its hideous killing technology left behind in the sand, perhaps mankind will have a chance to live in peace. Whether it will ever happen I can not say but at least I can die with a small amount of understanding;
the mystery of Pandemonium, the crystal castle is solved..

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