The shadows numbered many more than the people moving in front of the light given off by the many fires throughout the great hall. There were thousands of them! A sudden chill swept through me as I heard the sound of terrible laughter ring throughout the hall drowning out all else. The sound of it almost paralyzed me during mid step so frightful was I at the sound of the laughter.
"Peace Roric, you can hear them, but they can't touch you as I have sealed you to My purposes as long as you remain faithful to My will."
I felt peace settle over me at the words I felt pour into my innermost being, even as the sound of laughter grew louder and more hateful in its pitch all around me.
Curiously I looked around the place. The laughter was deafening, but no one here seemed to be hearing any of it. Not even the guards, who prodded me along gave any indication that they were hearing what I was. Were they all so unaware of the foul spirits they were keeping company with?
There was no peace in this place, other than the peace I felt within my own soul at the steady words of encouragement spoken into me by my Creator. What must hell be like when all those lost and led astray, by their own desires of self-gratification became aware of where their paths of pleasure had taken them and whose will they had been so busy accomplishing while alive? What must the full weight of the emptiness of their lives and actions feel like, when it became clear to them as to what they had missed out on for all of eternity?
It was scary to know how close I had come to making the same mistake myself. It was even scarier to think of falling back into my errant ways and rejecting the ways of the Creator, who I was just now learning to serve. I said a silent prayer for the futures of all those around me, in that I prayed that they would wake up to the reality that I was even now beginning to see as plain as day. Who knew perhaps it had been someone's prayer for me that had steered me back onto the right path in life.
We at last came to a pair of double doors at the end of one of the long halls. One of my guards stepped forward and knocked on the door.
"Enter."
Came the muted reply from within the room. The guards swung the double doors open and I entered the room, which was shrouded in darkness. A single candle on an end table near a shuttered window cast its glow feebly out into the room.