The place I landed was dark, dank, and smelled of decay. There were no walls in sight, only oily shadows occasionally interrupted by massive pillars of crudely cut greenish, dank stone. The pillars rose out of sight, vanishing into darkness that was punctuated, but not illuminated, by leprous whitish green lights that oozed through the sky like diseased fireflies. Disturbing shapes moved and slid in and out of my peripheral vision, vanishing when I turned to face them.
A loud, horrible dragging, tearing sound came from the inky patch ahead of me. As I watched, seven rubbery phalanges flung themselves towards me, latching onto the pillars. The dragging sound resumed, and something hauled itself into the insufficient light.
Whatever the thing was, just the sight of it made my eyes burn, and the world seemed to bend in disturbing and impossible directions. Whatever the thing was, it had many, many tentacles, mouths, and eyes. Parts of it seemed to fold in and out of somewhere I couldn't see. Black, burning ichor seeped from it where it had torn itself open while dragging itself across the floor. It open its mouths and screamed, and the whole world tried to shake itself apart.
I turned away from it, covering my eyes. As the thing's jagged scream beat against me, compressing my skull, and making my brain feel like it was being pounded flat and folded, I tried to gain control of the disgust and terror that gripped me. I tried to feel out where I could Step to escape, but the odd shape of this space kept me from being able to sense where the threshold was; it would be there, then vanish and reappear somewhere else, with no rhyme or reason.
I needed to see more, and so the third eye in my forehead opened, exposing the glowing under-structure of existence to me.
Even through that eye, the world I found myself in was dank green and shadowed. But the shadows glowed, outlining the shapes it had hidden before. It became clear that the horrid abomination I had thought was in front of me in fact surrounded me. Even the sickly lights I had looked up at previously were revealed to more of the creature's eyes, hanging from the parts of it that were stretched from pillar-top to pillar-top.
The section of the thing that had dragged itself into my view screamed again, sending discordant vibrations cutting through me. I turned towards the open mouths, seeing clearly now how the thing was folding out from a direction I had never known existed. I stumbled backwards, pressing my back against the dank emerald stones of the pillar behind me.
As I watched, some of the unholy thing's mouths stopped screaming, which made it easier to think. Of course, the only idea I could really hold on to was that I was going to die very soon.
The mouths that had stopped screaming stretched themselves wide, and from each a large, moist tentacle shot in my direction. As I leaped to the right, barely in time to avoid the strike of the tentacles, I dragged the fingers of my metal left hand along the face of the stone pillar. As I landed on the ground, I could see that the tentacles had struck exactly where my back had been pressed against the pillar. Instead of the continuous stretch of stone I had felt against my spine, though, the mucous-covered appendages had struck some sort of hole in the pillar, which, even to my special eye, was just an irregular shape of perfect black, with a section of the stone hanging from the edge like a piece of ragged, peeling skin.
I scrambled to my feet, and stumbling, ran as fast as I could to hide behind another of the stone pillars. I could hear the wet smacking sounds of other out-flung tentacles striking the ground behind me as I ran, and then hitting the vertical stone of the pillar as it came between me and my attacker.
Hanging from the tips of my fingers were strips of the stone my hand had torn from the pillar, creating the obsidian hole. The strips still felt like stone, but it seemed like all of the underlying structure that made stone act like stone had been stripped away, so it hung loosely, floating back and forth as my hand shook.
Another tentacle flashed into view, wrapping itself around the pillar just above my head. As I fell away from the stone, yet another squidlike appendage whipped into view. Instead of gripping the pillar like its mate, it nosed back and forth, searching for me. My heels scrapped on the ground, and the slimy finger came right for me.
My arm lifted, and the metal hand, fingers spread, reached out. Somehow, the fingers gained purchase in the very air in front of me, and another hole was rent in the space between where I lay and the approaching end of the questing tentacle. Like the others, this one vanished into the black, and couldn't extricate itself. The tentacle that had sent me to the ground unwrapped itself from the stone. Ignoring me, it took a grip on the captured tentacle, and vainly tried to assist it in freeing itself. From where I stood, I could see the first group of tentacles. They were stretched tight between the hole in the pillar, and the writhing mass of creature from which they had been extruded. The main body of the thing seemed to have been pulled forward quite a ways, and its keening seemed to have taken on a frightened edge.
The two holes my hand had cut seemed to be calling to me. In the disturbing geometry of this place, to my eye they looked like the only solid points I could latch on to.
Without thinking, I lunged forward and cut the two captured tentacles nearest to me with the same hand that had torn the holes in this place. As soon as the outstretched tentacles parted, the section that connected to the hole shot forward and vanished into the blackness. The stumpy appendages waved madly in the air, spraying ichor, accompanied by the shocked scream of the creature of whom they were a part of.
The hole that had eaten the severed tentacles still floated in mid-air, gradually growing larger, seeming to be eating the very fiber of reality that surrounded it. But through the hole, I could sense a place where I might be able to make good my escape. There was a pull the hole was exerting on the surrounding area, and I could hear air whistling past my ear towards the hole. As the aperture grew, it's pull increased. Took two steps forward and leaped into the air, the hole pulling me towards it as I lifted my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. In less time than it takes to say, I passed through the plane of the hole. The screaming of the creature vanished, and blackness surrounded me.
I was now less than sure this had been a good idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment