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Authors: Marcus Pelegrimas
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decimated the world’s structure including its government and economy using terrible force and sheer numbers. Most of the population didn’t know why or how such a thing could happen.
Despite dropping their largest bombs and firing its biggest guns at the creatures invading their lands, every nation’s military had been brought down and slowly picked clean like elephants succumbing to unrelenting packs of lions.
Every day, people feared what might rip them apart.
Whispered talk among the humans told Randolph they were all waiting for the lights to go out. Their phones had all but gone dead, but the power was still on. News was broadcast over computers by brave souls speaking whenever they could from secured locations because television studios and the corporations running them were in ruin. The fact that computers could still speak to each other at all was another mystery. Surely it was only a matter of time before darkness would come.
Darkness and ignorance.
Randolph had lived through similar times, and they weren’t so bad.
For one that could use the scent of fear to find his next feast, such eras were filled with many bountiful harvests.
While he knew the answers to some of the humans’ questions, Randolph did not know them all. And there were some things which could very well break the humans’ admirable spirit. If the Mist Born were added to their list of things to fear, the despair would be palpable.
Holding on to the strap above his head, Randolph closed his eyes to drink in the sounds and smells around him. Pushing beyond the scant amount of passengers and the vehicles in which they were carried, he used a new sense that had been granted to him by the pure Torva’ox that was now a part of him.
With so little earth between himself and the water, Randolph could feel the touch of a Mist Born like a slowly roiling exhale washing against the back of his neck. He was still new to the sensation, but a whispered name drifted through his mind which he somehow knew belonged to the presence he was feeling.
Tiddalik.
Devourer of the seas.
Teller of tides.
After what he’d experienced in facing the Snake Lord Icanchu, Randolph could only formulate wild notions about what Tiddalik might be in its physical form. The few stories he’d heard were of a being that could drink every bit of water on the planet and spit it out to fill the oceans again. Tiddalik could occupy a single drop at the bottom of a well or stretch out to every sea at once. But those were just stories. Where the Mist Born were concerned, that was all anyone had.
Kawosa may have dwelled at the lower echelons of the old ones, but his re-emergence into the mortal world granted the greater beings a taste of what was happening there. Icanchu had seen fit to rise up from the jungle floor, and now it seemed Tiddalik was flowing through the waters that had once been the Mist Born’s home. Randolph could feel the ancient being on all sides; a great flowing rush of consciousness that was too mighty to take notice of specks like him and a handful of humans moving through the Chunnel like stones encased in a metal shell.
If Tiddalik was having a look around, others must be stirring as well.
Or perhaps the Mist Born had always been closer than he’d imagined, and it was only now that Randolph could tell where they were.
Darkness and ignorance.
Perhaps the humans weren’t the only ones living in those conditions.
When he opened his eyes again, Randolph found two of the passengers in his car staring at him uneasily. He’d been grinning to himself as fresh possibilities within this new world flowed through his head. Such easy comfort had become a peculiar thing, and the trepidation on those pale, sunken faces reflected that.
Ignorance was a veil to be shed from each set of eyes at different times.
Darkness, as it had always been, was inevitable.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charleston, WV
S ecret entrances, sprawling urban tangles nestled within a
Despite dropping their largest bombs and firing its biggest guns at the creatures invading their lands, every nation’s military had been brought down and slowly picked clean like elephants succumbing to unrelenting packs of lions.
Every day, people feared what might rip them apart.
Whispered talk among the humans told Randolph they were all waiting for the lights to go out. Their phones had all but gone dead, but the power was still on. News was broadcast over computers by brave souls speaking whenever they could from secured locations because television studios and the corporations running them were in ruin. The fact that computers could still speak to each other at all was another mystery. Surely it was only a matter of time before darkness would come.
Darkness and ignorance.
Randolph had lived through similar times, and they weren’t so bad.
For one that could use the scent of fear to find his next feast, such eras were filled with many bountiful harvests.
While he knew the answers to some of the humans’ questions, Randolph did not know them all. And there were some things which could very well break the humans’ admirable spirit. If the Mist Born were added to their list of things to fear, the despair would be palpable.
Holding on to the strap above his head, Randolph closed his eyes to drink in the sounds and smells around him. Pushing beyond the scant amount of passengers and the vehicles in which they were carried, he used a new sense that had been granted to him by the pure Torva’ox that was now a part of him.
With so little earth between himself and the water, Randolph could feel the touch of a Mist Born like a slowly roiling exhale washing against the back of his neck. He was still new to the sensation, but a whispered name drifted through his mind which he somehow knew belonged to the presence he was feeling.
Tiddalik.
Devourer of the seas.
Teller of tides.
After what he’d experienced in facing the Snake Lord Icanchu, Randolph could only formulate wild notions about what Tiddalik might be in its physical form. The few stories he’d heard were of a being that could drink every bit of water on the planet and spit it out to fill the oceans again. Tiddalik could occupy a single drop at the bottom of a well or stretch out to every sea at once. But those were just stories. Where the Mist Born were concerned, that was all anyone had.
Kawosa may have dwelled at the lower echelons of the old ones, but his re-emergence into the mortal world granted the greater beings a taste of what was happening there. Icanchu had seen fit to rise up from the jungle floor, and now it seemed Tiddalik was flowing through the waters that had once been the Mist Born’s home. Randolph could feel the ancient being on all sides; a great flowing rush of consciousness that was too mighty to take notice of specks like him and a handful of humans moving through the Chunnel like stones encased in a metal shell.
If Tiddalik was having a look around, others must be stirring as well.
Or perhaps the Mist Born had always been closer than he’d imagined, and it was only now that Randolph could tell where they were.
Darkness and ignorance.
Perhaps the humans weren’t the only ones living in those conditions.
When he opened his eyes again, Randolph found two of the passengers in his car staring at him uneasily. He’d been grinning to himself as fresh possibilities within this new world flowed through his head. Such easy comfort had become a peculiar thing, and the trepidation on those pale, sunken faces reflected that.
Ignorance was a veil to be shed from each set of eyes at different times.
Darkness, as it had always been, was inevitable.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charleston, WV
S ecret entrances, sprawling urban tangles nestled within a
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