Primordial Things ((Solo))

[DarkDelights]

Thousands of tiny bubbles floated to the top of the stagnant waters of the fetid pool, some popping, but most hovering there on the surface of the swamp in clusters of twenty or thirty. The tiny air pockets fanned out as the water's surface started to gently swirl. Barely noticeable at first, the water's current began to gain momentum, and the bubbles spiraled inwards in neat lines until they revealed the form of a gathering whirlpool. They congregated in the foaming center which roiled as the water level sunk lower and lower. Then, there was no water left, only a black, tarry mud and the faint fizzing sound of greasy bubbles. No lampreys or snakes flopped about in the mud. Nothing natural lived in that part of the swamp at all, where no sunlight ever penetrated the tangle of trees, briars, and vines. It was an ancient place, and the thing that lived there was older than the marsh itself.

The muddy crater where the great stagnant pool once lay was almost fifty feet in diameter. The slime and ooze quaked and quivered as the primal roar of some bestial, non-human thing shook the mud and trees alike. High over head, carrion birds took to the skies in fear and would never again return to their nests near the center of the bog. The world shook again and the mud surged as another terrible roar echoed forth from seemingly everywhere at once. A great round form began to rise from the muck like a tumor growing wildly out of proportion. Then, it sank with harrowing moan, causing more methane bubbles to gurgle up through the mud, causing a great tainted stink to fill the air.

***

The black rubbery tentacle, thick as a man's thigh, slithered around her neck, and she knew it could have lifted her head from her shoulders if that was its intention. It had done so before on countless occasions. It might, for all she knew, be planning on doing it again now. The psychic pain it inflicted on her when she died in that state clung to her soul on waking, causing migraines, bleeding from orifices, and a more subtle scar that none could see, but was real as any to her.

It did not decapitate her though, and she did not awaken from the tangible nightmare. Another tentacle, vibrant red and purple like a poisonous jungle frog, crept along her bare belly leaving a trail of grey slime and making her stomach queasy. It crept higher, the girth of a human wrist, slithering between her breasts and coiling around her shoulders counter-clockwise to the larger one that choked her. Several more strands of ropy sinew knit themselves together around her torso, binding her arms to her sides, and a final stubby pink one, ripe with warts, bound her ankles. As a collective, the appendages lifted her into the foetid air, and a mass of rot, the size of a foothill loomed before her.

Higher still, she was carried, to the summit of the spongy flesh mountain, and from that vantage point she could see the hellscape that ran on in all directions. Rivers of myriapods, with billions of wriggling legs and colorful bodies flowed like jungle waterways, and knots and tangles of fungal rot rivaled the greatest forests of Raiaera in scope. The entire world around her was one of disease and madness, and she babbled incoherently, drool and spittle dripping from her mouth as she gibbered.

An eye in the mountain as large as a monastery, opened wide, and then several smaller eyes opened around it in a cluster. They were the yellow of puss, with great patches of foecal browns and splatters of mucousy blood-red. To say the pupils were black was to reach the end of the way human language could describe things. They were not simply black, but the color of incomprehensible oblivion itself.

The mountain of rotten flesh peeled back its top layer, the eyes folding back and giving way to a colossal maw. It had millions of visible teeth like needle spires, and had the depth of eternity. Somewhere deep within, a roaring inferno churned. A wave of hot toxic stench washed over her with the force of a hurricane and it rippled the soft skin of her face, threatening to flense it from her angular cheekbones. It spoke no words. And all of them at once.

She knew what it was saying.

It was threatening her with the knowledge of the 10,000 torments it had prepared for her in the afterlife. She shuddered and voided herself in terror. She gibbered her remorse to the dark entity, in spite of knowing it was incapable of empathy or mercy. She could feel its hunger. She could feel its lust to force itself on the virgin world above. A world that thought it knew suffering, and was very, very wrong.

The tentacle around her neck slackened.

***

Her eyes opened, and they were a rich emerald in color. She was nude, sitting cross-legged in a patch of brown grass – an island in the midst of a part of the marsh that was mostly submerged. Her hands rested on her muddy knees, palms up and her index fingers and thumbs formed rings.

She could still feel the slimy living ropes binding her skin, and her stomach did back-flips. She broke her meditation truly, placed a palm into the sharp brown swamp grass, leaned over, and vomited. The second roar emitted from far away in the heart of the swamp, and she knew it was what had awoken her from her trance. She heard the flight of birds overhead, and the splash of countless marsh-things diving into the obscuring safety of the water.

The Witch rose to her feet, legs shaking. She wiped the sick from the corners of her mouth, and her calculating eyes scanned her domain. She understood her task, and understood the consequences of failure.