The castle screamed in the dark. It might have been true that within its gaping walls its occupants screamed, but they were not the only ones. The great turrets, the walls of stone, the pillories, and the long finger-like entrapments of rock, all these screeched in the flickering lightning sky.

It stood atop an isolated cliff-face, aloof from the troubles of the world. But that did it no good, for within its sides were far more troubles than the world might ever encounter. Within its walls was treachery, murder, seduction, violence, treason. A desperate struggle for power.

The ancient stone pillars reaching for the sky seemed ever more austere at night, veiled as they were by thick black mist and surrounded as they were by swarms of vile flying creatures. The tolling bells of the castle centre seemed far more melancholy in the dark, for the night merely amplified the lugubrious tone which reverberated around the empty dusty halls. The great ante-chambers and oak-doors did not appear grand and splendid as they had done in their heyday, but merely depressing, decadent, dying.

The castle screamed in the dark. And the dark did not scream back, but only smiled.