The Relentless Slaughter [Round 3: Tormentorland]

The Relentless Slaughter [Round 3: Tormentorland]
#64
Re: The Relentless Slaughter [Round 2: S'kkoi]
Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

SCREAM FOR THE DEATHS YOU HAVE DIED AND THOSE THAT AWAIT

drowning

FOR THERE IS NOTHING MORE SACRED THAN THE SILENCE

again

AND MAY THE LAST BREATH YOU TAKE

he just wished

BE THE SWEETEST ONE YOU KNOW

this time he’d remember


who he was


Gannet’s eyes flickered open.

He was aware of the water in his chest, like a closed fist holding something precious and long since forgotten, brought up from the tide and brine of the ocean. He would walk through the shallow waves of the shore to find it again and he would not fear the water as he had once done, before he had learned that nothing would stop the pull of the sea from taking him down. There had never been any point, he thought happily as he stared into the dark face of the water. There had never been any point in trying not to drown.

He pushed himself up, feeling the weight of the ocean on his shoulders like a comforting hand. Claws scratched on stone; he paused to examine the surface he’d died on. Vast swaths of rock, hacked roughly away by some strange tool, sank away on either side of him, forming the sharp angles of a great and hateful face. Though Gannet could not recognize it, the carved expression was one of furious agony, jagged teeth bared and blind eyes staring straight into the looming sea above. His hand hovered above an open eye; hesitantly he stroked it, unsure if he would be welcome, unsure if this was allowed. The stone held up under his claws. It was cold, far colder than it should be when the water was this warm. Maybe it didn’t want him here. He scratched at the great curve of the eye a little longer, wondering why he was even here at all.

A tongue of water, the effort of some distant force, washed over him and Gannet shivered, suddenly feeling vulnerable. His clothes were gone, he realized detachedly. Bare skin, always unnaturally pale, now glowed softly in the murk of the water. Warped muscles forced to grow far too much in far too short a time lay stretched over birdlike bones, covered in tiny scars from barnacles and razor clams and the claws of a nesting albatross

And eyes

There were two eyes, round and bright as harvest moons, staring at him from the sockets of his hips.

Gannet didn’t panic, though he wondered at first if he should. The sound of the sea, a titanic heart stuck on a single beat, was too loud for his own feeble thoughts to carry weight. He could only stare back at the things sunken into his flesh, as flawlessly joined to his skin as though they had grown there his entire life. Little moons, he thought, waving a hand over them slowly and watching their horizontal pupils track his fingers overhead. Little moons in the night of his body. He reached down to tear them out and froze as a thick black tendril lashed out around his wrist.

The drowned man startled, expelling a stream of bubbles from his mouth. Its grip was like iron on his flesh and he couldn’t pull away no matter how hard he tried. Do you really want to? Yes, he thought frantically, tugging on an arm that wouldn’t even move an inch. He wanted to be free, he didn’t want this on him or the eyes on his body or the statue’s snarling teeth scraping the skin off his back but they were there, and they wouldn’t let him go and he just wanted to be free please please please, child, stop your chatter. We have not the time for games.

Gannet stopped pulling at once, letting his arm slowly sink down onto the great carved face. The tentacle uncoiled like a snake sliding off its prey, letting the blood flow again where Gannet hadn’t noticed it stop. Look at me, it said. Look at us. Look at what we’ve become.

From his waist down, spiraling away from him and ever more out of his control, everything that could have been called part of Gannet was gone. In its place was a mass of rolling tentacles, black as night and writhing like eels. Each one was thicker around than Gannet’s legs had been, back when he had them, and gripped the statue with frightful strength as though they’d been rooted there. He saw with a feeling he couldn’t name that the few finer details that had existed on the sculpture had been ground off by their contortions. As he watched, something that could have been a cluster of beaks snapped under a mass of coiled muscle and rolled off into the darkness below.

Aren’t we beautiful, this new voice crooned, harplike as the tentacles seethed over the stone. Leviathan. Behemoth. I was old before anyone thought to count my years. I see the same in you, O pariah. Leper. You have aeons in your blood, yes, not yours but another’s. You take what was never meant to be given. The tendril, stemming from an arm now winding around Gannet’s ribs, tightened on his wrist.

His head swam, his tongue turned to lead. “I- I am an Eye-”

You are a victim, was the answer, and now the drowned one could see it, a blackness rising in his chest. It pierced him like shards of glass; he gasped for air and felt it burst into the water in his lungs, a leeching plague of night. It churned like a storm-tossed sea, a maelstrom in his bones, pulling away everything in him that might have tried to struggle. He tried to whimper but found that nothing in him would permit sound. A victim of something as old as I, and I as well…

Gannet’s head was hurting. He stared numbly at the rippling black flesh flowing seamlessly up to his ribs, and those terrible eyes glaring at him with the coals of a dying fire. Dying? O thou my brother. Perhaps my capsheaf had passed before your shadowgod called me here, but I have traded no words with death. No, not yet. I am not so ancient as that. The blackness was rising, rising now, spiraling up his throat and surely he was choking now, deprived of air and water and everything besides the darkness covering his tongue like bitter oil and dripping down from the roof of his mouth. He was speechless, helpless, and all the while the eyes of the moon held him in their ember gaze.

But we’ve been here long enough. We have time yet for such idle talk, do we not, my brother? The black cords of night were slithering up, releasing the frozen stone with the sound of falling rain and Gannet was horrified to find that he could feel them as though they were his own. They pushed at the statue with terrible strength and his neck was snapping down as he rushed airborne, waterborne, black tentacles hanging down like taunting fingers above the furious face of stone.

I do not think there is much near us in the way of the living, burned the shadows now creeping into the corners of his mind, growing like roots where they had no place to dig. Images exploded behind his eyes, too fast for Gannet to comprehend, and the shadow was upon him and he no longer had the strength to refuse. But what is death to you, O my brother? You fear nothing. He couldn’t tell if it was laughing or crying but lightning was going off in his head, flickering and flickering and he didn’t know how he’d ever lived like this, anything other than this would be fine please stop please I don’t want to go why’d you let them leave I don’t want them to leave I don’t want to be alone no no no stop please please please I don’t want to die

I don’t want to die alone is the way we all must go. A wanderer, I see it in your thoughts, yes. Wander we will, thou my brother. We carry no fear in our hearts, and the statue watched them leave, endlessly wishing them death in the abyss.

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Messages In This Thread
Re: The Relentless Slaughter [Round 2: S'kkoi] - by GBCE - 07-28-2011, 04:03 AM