Snuffled Frenzy

[Zonty 994]

Spoiler

 

 

 

Firelight flickers overhead. The heart-drum bangs thunderously in the ears. Muscles twinge with strain. A great ache spasms in an unbelonging orifice that skewers through the chest; bane of a stake. The back is sloughed; fissured; dug into. Blood slackly drools from those visceral wounds. The right arm is gnarled and not by design. Bone is broken, twisted- its ivory shards jag out from under the flesh.

 

What pain.. What thrill!..

 

Sanguine smears a trail behind but a languid gait takes further. Deeper. Slouching walls crested with elaborate designs; draped over a flayed sheen or etched into its bulk. Tapestries. Chiseled statues. The shuddering glance passes over some deep gnash that zigzags across a wall.

It takes many steps, turns, climbs and descents. But eventually the snug halls segue into vaster passages and then splay abruptly into voluminous expanse. A hanging castle looms above in eternal dusk. Below, a sacrilege stretches; squelching chunks of meat & flesh, bones entrailed and embloodied. Pyres of forever-smouldering cadavers fight off against the choking gloom. Sanguine splatters. The gait whittles at a vertiginous verge. 

 

When the bell had tolled, I knew what was coming. I was prepared.

Yet still carnage had come. A triumph seized by a fraying thread.

 

Haunches tense. Then the ground aways. Out into a freefall and then down-down-down. Air whistles around and then wheezes. Its skeins wring out with red laces and then unfurl in vanes. Beyond, in those fissures, manifold scapes are exhumed. One such sheen warbles out right underneath and it careers closer; or maybe the other way around. 

 

Calm of a cavern is left behind. Wailing skies and thundering rivers dislodge through downs and ups. Hills are embroiled in flames. There are no trees but the innumerable charred stumps. Gouts of lava burst from gurgling geysers. 

 

Molten carapaces flit along the surface, scorched limbs pouncing to and fro and bearing their haunched masters. They are big. But none are bigger than the greatest bears that once roamed Eos and Aos. One of those loathsome shapes prowls a crook of magma, snout held low to the ground. Air sighs, singing. The ground encloses swiftly in the freefall. Then a quail. A scream.

 

Claws rip through a fallen quarry. Its blood-slick flesh unravels to the grips of horrid fangs. Other beasts outlook at their ruptured brother. Growl. But daren’t encroach. When hunger quells space-wounds embed around again, bloating until they are big enough. 

 

Weak are many.

 

A new world unfurls. A kingdom of desolate frozeland. Mountains of cresting snow stretch in every direction. Gales prowl in the skies, seething and howling in amuck squirms and dances. Blood bristles and paints the stark white red. Afar there is a single unruly shape. Some meagre abomination unfortunate enough to stumble across this territory. The crystalline ground beneath it churns. Collapses. Out spews a surreal dark shape. The wanderer vanishes in its great shadow-swathes. Then gleams freckle in it. Eyes that search for other prey.

 

The air crackles. Another fold of reality spits around and the familiar cavern is back.

 

There is always a bigger game; a greater predator.