Food For The Gods

Weird horror fiction.

 There were four of us, in the beginning. On the dawn of the seventh day, under the last Jade Moon, we would enter the gateway that leads to the shadowless realm, and cross its cursed ground to find the only hope that remained for our people. The Scryseers tell me that this is the only way. The land collapses under its own weight around us, and we are the last of our kind, so there is no other way, they whisper to me. I must find the path to the other side, their sweetling words would crawl within mine ear.

 So we set out, us four. Harljet, Skelvon, Palek and I, the last Lord of Toth. Brave souls the three, volunteers to face the depths of that which none have returned. We must. We gathered our provisions, and set out with the hue of the Jade Moon upon our backs to the shadow of the mountain where the gateway dwell. An ancient path, winding and strewn with the bleaching bones of the forsaken, cut its way through the belly of the old rock, till we found the deception of the gateway. The chill breath of the dying winds sighed a frigid nothing onto our flesh as we looked upon a gash in the mountain, a simple break into the face of the stone. It was here, the Scryseers had told me. Hesitation betrayed our valor, and we stood for several moments to steel ourselves for what was  to come.

 It was I who took the first steps. My hand i thrust into the blackness of the angry wound, and felt myself being pulled through by unseen force. It dragged me wholly with a grasp from which I could not pull away. For the moments I dreamed in blackness a fear gripped my heart within icy talons. Would my companions follow my courage, or abandon me to face  the doom of our homeland in defeated content?
When at last my vision was restored to me, my mind spiraled to comprehend what it conveyed to me. The sky simply not was. An empty blackness hung over our heads. No sun nor moon nor star sung its melodies above us. A great, vast nothing, and yet the landscape somehow was illuminated by a bright, white light, from which I could not find an origin. No shadows were cast under the harsh illumination, not by the alien vegetation, nor by my companions and I, who to my relief found their strength and allowed the mountain to take them.
 

We took a bewildered eye to the forest of tree-like things with the flesh akin to that of man, their veins erupting  impossibly from the stone that made up the earth here . Palek claimed he could see something like faces dancing and leering at him through the strangely polished stone, but I did not look down to confirm his claim. I knew that only madness existed here now, and ordered that we march onward, casting only a glance at the portal we came through, which now simply stood mounted by a lattice of glimmering, metalic vines that held a sliver of darkness. There was a way back,or at the very least presumably an escape from this hell, which sparked a faint hope within me.

Our path, the only one available to us, was through the grotesque forest, as the empty void that wore the face of the sky seemed to have consumed the land that once, or if ever, existed behind the gateway. Skelvon, a huntsman and pathfinder in life, made an effort to find us open ground, attempting to find the logic of nature in a place not made of our reality. It was then we noticed no sound was made here. Our voices echoed but to only ourselves. The flesh trees bent and swayed gently to a breeze we could not feel, yet we heard no creak or groan, no whistling of winds through the leafless finger like branches that sprawled from the meaty trunks. Only ourselves, our hushed whispers and stilled breaths that caught in our throats by a barely contained terror. Several times we had to stop and retrieve Palek, as he was now claiming these faces (now in the trees, I have seen them) were whispering to him, things he could not hear, but we would find him, wide eyed, attempting to decipher the silent words of these molting faces that swirled in everything around us. After a time, when we turned to find Palek once more, he was not there. Only a writhing face that swam through the gray of the stones which would soon join the others that would torment us remained. Our steps now carried hints of panic, as now I was certain Skelvok abandoned any hope of mastering this land, and was simply moving as quickly as possible.

The forest appeared endless, and the twisted faces continued to move about us, finding our gaze wherever we would avert our eyes to, finding a space within our thoughts regardless of how we fought to unsee them. They cried silently for us to save them, at times the skeletal fingers of the trees bending to scrape at us, paw at us feebly to free them, though they knew their was no salvation for them.
When the kindling of hope had all but turned to ash and nerves shattered, we found a clearing from the living forest, an edge in the treeline that cut out neatly in a straight line, both polished stone and fleshling tree alike ending along with the leering visages contained within them. Before us now lie a plane, an expanse vast and covered with a dark red skin that seemed to breath and pulse beneath our footfall. The horizon did not adhere to the whims of any limits, and carried on a offering to us that held nothing. There was nothing our eyes could percieve. Harljet continued on, perhaps in a state of shock, and we followed, left with little choice in the matter by the order of this place.

It was  then we found that things would rise and fall around us, the plain sculpting itself for us, for our attentions, as we marched. Tall and grand structures that carried architecture from which I have no ken would mold and erect themselves out of the red skinned earth in but mere moments to beckon us within them, and would collapse and decay as if time had unwound itself just as quickly when Skelvon and I kept pace with Harljet. My eyes told me of figures that were within these sanguine walls, vague shapes outlined by the white light that came from everywhere and nowhere. They stood watching us before returning to the bleeding soil, doll like things that barely moved, as much as part of the structures themselves as they were living creatures, flowing down down down as they did.
After an indeterminable time of this I began to notice Harljet was not of his own self.  His steps labored, and his skin became of the same stuff as the pulsing land, until he too flowed into the strange red flesh with every movement, vanishing before us in the same way as all else that resided here. Now we were but two. We heard only labored breaths in the vaccuous space as we broke into a desperate sprint, weary legs carried by a mad terror that screamed within our minds. 

We ran blindly, eyes shut tight to shield us from the madness of this ever flowing, ever hungry flesh that built this world. When my legs could carry themselves no longer and buckled, and my breath came in ragged gasp from burning lung, did then my tearing eyes crack their lids and see.
I saw straight into the dark nothing, and found the sterile light that cast naught shadow, but nightmare. Slowly, gently, it drank me into itself, and I swam in this void of light, vast and empty. The world then began to shape itself anew. Silvery tiles fasted themselves into place, held by what I could only assume was a force of will beyond any that I would ever know. I lain there alone, on the metalic floors that conveyed no temperature, my skin a numb covering. When I at last arose, I found the scape dotted with innumerous basin like constructions, though to describe them would be like none other I have seen, the material a strange amalgamation of some manner of glossy stone and the silvery metal of the flooring. Nothing was contained in the resevoir of these basin-things, only a sort of plug or stopper of sort. The light that made up everything had faded into the dark of the sky by then, leaving only its shadowless illumination, and I alone in this strange place.

I did what only course was given to me. I pulled at the curious stopper in one of the multitudes of the basin things. It gave only slightly, and in fact seemed to pull back itself, as though it were resisting by means of another force or being. I gave a furious effort this time, gripping the bizarrely curved ring of the stopper with a fervent strength born of a madmans finality. It gave under my insanity, and with the feeling of a great bursting of air, I pulled back a stopper that, upon its end, appeared skewered a squid like creature that languishingly groped about with pale, pink tentacles.
 A knot of disgust began to squirm in the pit of my gut as I gazed upon the thing and its pathetic motions. I wanted to utterly destroy this creature. As I began to raise the horror above my head to strike it down upon the strange, shining stone basin it was torn from my hand by some sort of being from behind me. Tall as I but pale as the white light, smooth and hairless, its features somewhat feminine, but its eyes were deep slits, its limbs oddly proportioned. It casted an expression of what looked to be great anger at my transgression. With an impossible speed and strength it pushed me back, and I was sent hurtling into the dark nothing that wore the mask of the sky. I could see it staring down at me as I plummeted, until the tiles and the shadowless light were taken by the darkness.

I do not know how long I was as this. I do not know if I were dead or dreaming until I felt a pull, a great tugging, until a vaccuous force pulled me into being. Vision surged back to me, only to convey to me a hopelessness that annihilated any and all flame that could drive me further, for now I was the helpless creature, flopping uselessly to beg for whatever tender mercies the being that cast me into the darkness could bestow upon me. It did not stop to gloat. It did not matter what or who I was. It sent me on a descent, slowly, gently, surely, towards the toothless void that served as its mouth.

Again I found the darkness, from which I know not if I were dreaming or dead, simple food for the gods. It was then when you people found me, and I awoke in your gleaming metal structure with your padded walls and needle daggers that inject the darkness straight into my veins. I had succeeded in my task and found the other side, but you will not let me go back. I must go back, don't you see? I have to show my people the way to salvation.
Why won't you let me go back?

 
 
 

Reviews

[Christopher M. Musick]

This was a great piece! The detail and flow of the story was almost poetic. You painted a very clear picture that was very beautiful and frightening at the same time. Top notch ending as well!