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Ravagerrr
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 Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 4:57 pm Post subject: Chapter 7: Woe to Thee o' Earth and Sea |
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:biggrin: Pillbox - Chapter 7
Woe to Thee o' Earth and Sea
Deep within the Earth, far beyond the light of day, in a cavern of immense proportions, amidst the formations of stalactites and stalagmites, a place ruled by darkness, dominated by exposed veins of brilliant gold, the Beast shifted in her slumber.
Such an adjustment had been exceedingly rare; centuries had past since the last. Snapping calcified deposits as she rolled onto her side, she emitted a snarl, which shook the stone foundations of the cave's environs. Smoke drifted upwards from the Beast's nostrils, a testament to the fire lurking within her belly.
A rumbling in the Earth registered in high tech instruments on the surface above, a shimmer on the rictor scale.
But still, the Beast slept on, unwilling to yet emerge from her dream world. Conscious within the dream, the Beast was hardly aware that she had physically moved at all. She fully understood, however, that the time to awaken drew near, and as such, adjustments were to be expected.
Although dreaming, the creature, born of stone, the first daughter of the Earth, had not been out of touch with reality. In fact, it could be said that her dreams had been profoundly touching the world above for the entirety of recorded history. Modern man had never laid witness to the Beast, as throughout the known span of human endeavor, she had remained hidden in her solemn tomb, healing, recovering, growing, dreaming. But, nevertheless, mankind knew the beast, intimately.
They saw her in their dreams; they wove her into their artwork, into their legends and songs. They carved her visage onto boat masts to terrify their enemies. Never was the creature far from their thoughts, though none could ever verify her existence and she remained hidden, immortalized in discarded mythologies.
In ancient times, the Beast's descendants had terrorized the world. In that era long past, her mind then, as now, contorted the thoughts of weak psyches, bent them to her will to resist her enemies' works. Her children fought mightily to throw off the oppressors, but in the end, her kin had lost the war.
Long before the others came, long before they gave birth to the plague of man, her descendants ruled the Earth, gardened it, nurtured it to life. Their creations, deemed horrible monsters, terrible lizards, by the men who found their stone-incarcerated remains, had been beautiful in her eyes. The garden had teemed with a plethora of life forms, living out their adventurous natures, their cunning hunts, a saga of life the way it was meant to be lived. But those days of ancient pasts had long since gone by the wayside, and the others had come; the enemy had arrived.
But a defeated opponent, if not dispatched, spends little time in remorse and regret, and, given the beast's nature, even less in forgiveness. Ever since her retreat, and her entry into concealed hibernation, she had plotted, schemed, and manipulated her way into an place of influence in the minds of men. Her world was as active while sleeping, as while awake.
It was she who nurtured Ghengis Khan, she who had been the object of cult worship by a group known as the Black Dragon Society, which had spurred Japan to conquests in WWII. And it was she who domineered the heart and mind of Mao Tse-Tung, and continues to whisper her directives to that great world power.
Her impatience, her lust for the battle to manifest in the flesh, was growing. Dreaming herself into the world had been met with many failures and she grew restless in her slumber.
Just a few more years, and her crystallizing bones would complete their hybernative process, her 'batteries' would be fully charged from the gold she slept upon, and she could emerge to bring ruin on the Earth and those parasitic human vermin, devastation to the garden of the others. That would draw them out to fight her again, and this time, she meant to destroy them forever.
Her plans were coming to fruition. Her enemies would soon know terror and the world would be engulfed in a flame from which her children could be born anew. But her dreams carried warnings in the winds; great consequences were suggested. The humans were beginning to awaken to the mysteries of the past, the secrets of their forefather race, the others, the enemy.
She knew the humans would never be able to achieve the kinds of powers that she would be facing when she inevitably challenged the others, but the warning remained, the portent of doom focusing on the potential of one man, one man who could sway the balance against her and her foes alike.
How he would accomplish this was not indicated in her divining, but it was clear that while he was weak beyond measure now, soon he would become more powerful than any one human had ever been in this age, save the one, the only child of the lord of the others, whom could hardly have been said to be human at all. This one human, the winds of the future warned, could wreck everything.
The disturbance caused her to shift in her sleep as she devised a plan to neutralize the threat. Lighting upon an insidious concept, she reached out her dream state will into the underworld and contracted to have the threat eliminated, the man destroyed, his soul to be flayed by the beasts of that nether realm. Never mind the cost, she thought, the ends will justify the means.
Besides, the contractor of the Abyss owed her a favor or two, for he had been bent on the destruction of man ever since their birth, and it was she who was soon to deliver.
____________________________________________________
Cackling with evil malice, the Imp's grip tightened further. Mack wanted to scream but no sound was possible without the passage of air. The coppery scent of blood flooded him and he felt his head was as a pimple about to burst.
Panicking, he reached for a knife, which he usually kept on his belt, only to recall how his recent injuries had spelled the end of that practice.
His mind raced as adrenalin coursed through his system, slowing time. The cacophonous monstrosity seemed to drool, to blink in slow motion as Mack desperately probed his imagination for a solution.
The WATCH!, he thought frantically, call for help!
But his greasy enemy had hold of him tightly and he needed to buy some time to use the device.
Slipping his arms between the viselike appendages of his assailant, Mack strained to pry off the demon's hold. Although his muscles bulged, tearing his shirt to make room for newfound might, the abomination held on like stone to a mountain.
His vision beginning to blur, his ears ringing, Mack struck like a snake at the beady black eyes of the creature, gouging his thumbs into the ocular sockets deeply! Howling in pain, the horror momentarily released its iron grip. Success!, thought Mack triumphantly.
Carrying forward in his zeal for battle, Mack clapped his hands against the howling terror's ears, producing a sharp stunning pain in his hands. Aghast, he realized that the demon's ears were as sharp as knives, and as forgiving as stone. Retracting his impaled hands, he winced as blood flowed from his palms to stain the bed.
Recovering, the creature reacted like a rabid cat, scratching and tearing at Mack's face, creating deep incisions with its razor like claws. Hollering in pain, Mack reached out to grasp the demon's firm ears and pulled the creature into a savage Glasgow Kiss. The satisfying crunch of broken bone gave beneath his forehead, indicating the rupture of the beast's nose.
Black, inky blood sprayed the bed sheets, mingling with Mack's crimson stains. Wisps of smoke where the demon blood landed indicated what Mack was already beginning to feel as a burning sensation running down the skin of his face, Acid!
I need to end this NOW!, thought Mack, as he rolled over to throw the perched demon off of his torso. This had limited success. Propelling the Imp away from the bed, it extended its wings and flapped to back away to crouch against the upper corner of the opposing side of the room, leaving a trail of acidic droplets, burning into the floor.
Mack groaned in agony as his face began to melt away down to the bone. Vision in his right eye vanished accompanied by an excruciating burning pain. Using the eye he had remaining, he wildly tapped at the buttons of his watch, hoping the blood streaming from his palms wouldn't disrupt its functions.
After licking his nose with an extended forked tongue, the nightmare leapt from its crouched position towards Mack, charging in flight, claws extended, screaming diabolical curses from some long forgotten ancient language.
Mack glanced up with his remaining visual capacities, realizing that death approached with fury. Considering all consuming pain wracking his tortured body, he was almost welcoming of death.
To Mack's bewildered surprise however, the beast reeled back against the wall yet again, propelled by a loud blasting force emanating from the doorway of his domicile. Soon the rocketing boom was followed by the hideously fierce bleating battle cry of an enraged goat!
Charging into the fray, Kape tossed aside his gun and pulled a huge curved blade from his hip and thrust it at the demon, who's broken face began to betray a hint of fear. Ichorick blood was spurting out from a large gaping wound in the Imp's midsection, but it seemed to be closing; the gun hadn't stripped the fight out of the demon yet!
Snarling viciously, the imp again launched itself from the wall, wings extended, retaliating against Kape with rapid claw slashes in succession.
Bleating savagely, Kape stabbed at the creature, but his blade bent and snapped against its impervious hide. Grasping Kape around the throat, the creature alighted its hind legs on the half-man's shoulders, digging into flesh with its talons.
Kape, however, was going to have none of that. Gripping the beast by its throat, he tore the demon from its grasp on him and held it away like it were little more than a flailing child. Slashes landed across goat hide, but Kape seemed to ignore the injuries as he latched onto the demon's foot with his other hand.
The gremlin responded by biting Kape's arm, needle teeth sinking deep into the flesh, but Kape grabbed the creature's head by the eye sockets and proceeded to fling the creature against the Aluminum walls like a shopkeeper with his doormat. Over and over he pounded the beast! Switching to his arm which held the demon's foot, he continued to hurl it into the wall, like a club beating at a mammoth's skull, this time, head first!
As Kape rhythmically beat the demon senseless, acid sprayed freely about the room. The burning mist filled the air with an acrid scent causing Mack to experience a poisoned dizziness. Soon thereafter, the pain and weariness overcame him, and darkness invaded his vision, plummeting him into unconsciousness.
_____________________________________________________
Mack saw a bright light hovering above him. Is this God?, he wondered, Am I dead? A clattering of sounds shook Mack from his dreamy state and the vision in his left eye began to focus. Voices in a hurried rush babbled on all around him and the light began to glint off of tools and spectacles. Completely numb still, Mack slowly began to realize that he'd been here before... HIS LEGS! He reached for his legs, remembering as if it were some horrible dream that he had once had some problem regarding said appendages.
"WHOAH, Mack! GODDAMIT HE'S AWAKE! HOLD HIM!", shouted a voice at the edge of the echo chamber of his mind. That voice... its familiar, he thought.
"Relax, sweetheart", came a whisper in his ear. What a familiar accent... is it... Russian?, he wondered. Nevertheless, he felt the need to obey.
"O-o-okay, M-mack, if your awake and h-hearing m-me, y-you should know th-this might st-sting a b-bit." Where have I heard that nervous man's voice?, he pondered. Images of huge eyeglasses, eyes bigger than a man's face blinking behind them, came to mind.
"G-general?"
"Alright then, Goddammit, DO IT ALREADY!"
Piercing, flaming, liquid fire invaded Mack's arm, searing through his flesh! My God, NOT MY ARMS TOO!, Mack thought desperately, pausing to wonder what ELSE, besides his arms, he might be referring to.
The searing heat crept up his arm, down through his hands, lighting his fingers aflame, as little torches must feel.
Agonizingly slow, the sensation marched on throughout his body, conquering his shoulder in incinerating agony.
But the worst was when it hit his neck, storming a devastatingly painful path up into his skull, eliciting a horrible, rattling howl that could possibly be heard from boaters on the river's surface above.
His brain was exploding in a supernova of flame and destruction, meanwhile he could somehow find even more pain to toss into the pool of sensations as the liquid flames cascaded down his spine like a spilling river of molten lava, engulfing his chest, his belly, his hips.
He spewed forth as the sensation reached his stomach, tightening it into a cramp the likes of which few on Earth could have said to experience.
Boiling down through his groin, he knew what it must have felt like to be lit like a candle at the stake, his whole life melting away with his flesh.
I must be dead and in HELL!, he roared in his twisted mind.
But no sooner had he begun to feel consumed by the flames, the sensation continued into regions he had until recently only felt as a memory.
The agony could not be described accurately with words as bone stretched forth from severed roots, tendons creeped along the framework and affixed themselves into their rightful places along the newly designed knee and continued to stretch down to freshly formed pedial structures, ankles, arches, and toes.
Mack could hardly make out the sensation as the horrid burning lit to a white hot overwhelming state, beyond the mind's capability to define pain. It began to translate into a fuzzy, needle like sensation, almost... pleasurable. The sensation softened, but again exploded, as leg muscles began to rebuild, nerves reached out to extend a network through the reconstructed regions.
Unable to take any more suffering, Mack's consciousness fled back into the shadows of his mind.
_____________________________________________________
Viewing from the mind's eye in dream state, the Beast roared in fury! Defeated! It figures that those underworld lackeys can't get a job done right!, the Beast cursed. Aware of the risk, but blinded by rage, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Propelling herself through the dream realms to find the soul she hunted, a bright illumination in her quarry’s star like beacon indicated that he was within, and subject to attack. She launched through, into the world she had so recently invaded. This time, she wouldn't play with him; she would devour him.
_____________________________________________________
Clouds. Why am I always in sky surroundings here?, wondered Mack. Have I been saved? Am I in heaven now? Floating about, Mack realized that he had more control over his 'position' in space than he had first believed. It was much like controlling the hover chair, his motion responsive to his will.
What is happening to me?, he pondered as he felt a distant sense of heat, and a disconnected, disoriented awareness. He looked below him and noted that the cloudy layers seemed to float by for as far as the eye... I have eyes??... could see. Again, he noted that he had no form, but again it seemed natural that way.
Still, he mused, it would be nice to have a body of some sort to relate to here. Immediately, flesh and bone materialized, placing him in a body as healthy as he had ever been. He stretched his hands and... LEGS! Wow, he thought gleefully, I have LEGS HERE!
He briefly wondered why he didn't expect to.
But his ponderings were interrupted by a wail, which sent a chill down his spine. His heart raced in response to an ancient terror, something he, nor his ancestors hadn't felt for as long as memory provided, yet those pre-historic memories lurked at the edges of his soul and always had. Panic immediately ensued at the horrid sound, the roar blasting through the clouds, rippling the rays of the sun, and propelling Mack back through the sky.
Turning to wonder at this newfound terror, the light of the sun fell prey once again to the enormous silhouette of a creature, which dwarfed the sky above. The gargantuan draconic image spread huge leathery wings in flight. What little light remained glinted off the metallic scaled hide of the Beast and she let out a mighty trumpeting roar yet again, blasting Mack backwards through the infinite space of his mind.
Panicking, Mack realized there was no force within his knowledge that could challenge such a creature. It was larger by far than he could fathom, stretching from one side of the sky to the next, its ridged spine swinging an enormous tail to the ends of vision's limits.
A long, sinewy neck stretched forth from the girth of the Beasts torso, supporting a lizard like, ridged head, rimmed with horns and bejeweled with dazzlingly metallic red scales. Some of the scales bore signs of corrosion, appearing to be rusted a greenish blue color in places, suggesting that the Beast's hide was indeed metallic, perhaps cast of bronze or copper.
It's eyes burned with malice and smoke billowed from its nostrils. Opening its mouth, Mack fully expected fire to spew forth to engulf him, but the creature reared back, allowing rays of light to scintillate through the Beast's Diamond-like row of fanged teeth, casting rainbow lights all around as if the light were streaming through a myriad of prisms.
Surprisingly, the creature spoke, though it did so in a mighty rage, acrid spittle flying madly from its maw, "If I cannot destroy your body, then I'll RAVAGE YOUR SOUL!"
Leaning its head up towards the Sun, the Beast bellowed with all its might, a roar to dwarf a thousand lions. Mack felt his heart stop in his chest and briefly wondered if it was his real chest or the one he had imagined into this world.
The Dragon looked back towards Mack, taking the position of a hawk about to catch a field mouse, alighting on the winds to glide down towards him, talons larger than his body extended and glittering in the light of the sun which was fading to a blood red hue, as the clouds began to turn to pockets of flame around him.
With a menacing glint in her eyes, she sucked in a mighty breath, her belly expanding to twice its girth. This time, he knew that the fires of a million furnaces would soon bellow forth to engulf him.
What should he do?
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