This content was originally included in The Art of Magic: The Gathering — Innistrad.

---

The world has gone mad.

Monsters that dwarf even the grotesque skaabs born of the most twisted imaginations of Selhoff’s stitchers now surge across the land. People I have trusted, even loved, have given themselves over to obsession, violence, or despair. And Avacyn? She is gone again. If the whispers from Thraben are to be believed, she is dead.

And the things I have done in her name will burn on my conscience forever.

As if I could atone for the blood I spilled in the Elgaud Grounds, I sought to battle the so-called Ospid Horror, to end the legacy of generations of evil. I brought with me a group of young cathars—a handful of soldiers fresh from their training—and marched them to the ancestral manor of the Sarka family.

The manor stands near the Ospid River, just above Selhoff’s Delta. Travelers have long avoided the estate, for the local gossip held that strange howls, grunts, and gibberings were sometimes heard from inside its grounds, particularly at night. The inhabitants were known to be hostile to strangers and they were never seen in town, but a single servant—a tall, lumbering man with no tongue, carrying written instructions—would sometimes travel into Selhoff on errands for the family. He was given a wide berth.

The legend of the Ospid Horror suggests that a monstrous corruption runs in the family, and that every other generation produces a hideous, inhuman creatures. For years, the locals blamed the Ospid Horror when livestock was found mutilated or people disappeared at night, even when it was more likely that a cultist, werewolf, or filthy skaberen was responsible.

The rumors and legends did not prepare me for what we found in the manor.

The stone wall surrounding the Sarka lands was warped, as if it had begun to melt and been reshaped under a lunatic’s hand. An iron gate blocked the roadway, similarly misshapen, the sharp tips of its metal bars bent to point out and down at any who approached. I cannot say whether it was an accident or some malign intelligence that drove one of those metal spears through the skull of Elda Hamm when she forced the gate open.

As we rode to the manor, the front door opened and that mute servant awaited us, silhouetted against a weird greenish light from within. We dismounted, and I signaled my soldiers to have their weapons sheathed but at hand, ready for the first sign of danger. The servant beckoned us inside. Who knows whether he had any idea of the horror that awaited us.

The mother greeted us, Jotti Sarka. A bent and twisted old crone, she bore the mark of her ancestral curse even if she did not deal with demons herself. She spoke lovingly of her two dear sons, Edgard and—well, she did not name the other one. She called him her dear, her sweet, her angel, her boy. She seemed to be prattling about nothing, and I listened with only half an ear as I tried to assess the danger.

I though I heard churning water, splashes, and the squelch of mud from the direction of the river.

Then Edgard came into the room, and every sword leaped from its sheath, a fine testament to the training of my young soldiers. He was a monster, barely recognizable as having ever been human. His arms were huge clawed things with knobby tentacles sprouting from the skin, his face was distorted beyond recognition, and his long neck was a tangle of fleshy lattice. As his mother cackled in glee, he fell upon us. The thought of what he did to Gerad and Koss makes the bile rise in my throat—I cannot write it, but I record their names at least so their sacrifice will not be forgotten.

Those of us who survived managed to take the Edgard-thing down, though many of us were injured in the effort. He made a pitiful mewling as he fell, and his mother wailed in grief and despair. I almost struck her down out of pity, but I suddenly remembered those in the Elgaud Grounds, and I stayed my hand.

As the mother drew a shuddering breath between wails, I heard plodding footsteps drawing near the house. I shouted an order and led the way back out the door, shouldering the lumbering servant aside. And we saw it.

The Ospid Horror defies description. Shapeless flesh, writhing tentacles, dripping marsh weeds, gaping maws, distorted limbs, and everywhere that sickly lattice of magenta flesh.

Hannis went down first, then Grodd and Perall, then Foote, and finally Elden. In the end, Jedda and I stood alone against it, the swords of the fallen jutting from its monstrous form, sickly ichor dribbling in a constant stream onto the flattened black grass. She dealt the killing blow as I distracted the thing, and if she had struck a moment later I would have been gutted. As it died, it disentangled, its latticed flesh writhing open into shriveling gingers, and then dissolved. Without a word, we put our backs to it and the Sarka estate.

I have not atoned. On behalf of the Lunarch Council, I saw evil everywhere, and turned a blind eye to the true monstrosities like the Ospid Horror. One less nightmare haunts our land, but eight young cathars no longer stand to fight against the numberless horrors that remain. There can be no atonement, no forgiveness, no reconciliation.

The world has gone mad.

From the Journal of Captain Eberhart of Elgaud