Monster

The world never stopped burning, randomly spouting destructive waves of the familiar blood flames through cracks in the earth. They never slowed, fueled by the nightmarish core of… whatever this place was. The air was hot and thick with smothering heat as smoke and steam escaped the same vents of hellfire. Every step was a struggle as the scorching air moved across my face, unforgivingly trying to peel away my flesh. Yet, I continued walking, searching… for anything. I saw many unknown things through my travels.

Bodies of a similar-looking build to the corpses I first laid eyes on in this hell. They were massive, hulking-looking creatures slightly larger than my inhuman form. They were everywhere, littered sporadically like a wave of murder had washed over the land and stole the life right out of them. They fell where they stood at some point in time, and then the heat and oppressiveness of this world began to consume them.

My feet burned and charred against the never-cooling ground as I paced across the lifeless frontier. I gritted my teeth through the searing pain of each step, never stopping as I searched for hope. The sharp crags of what almost looked like volcanic rock, protruded out like sawtooth blades, ready to steal whatever life hadn’t been claimed by the fire. This place screamed death. It was the most inhospitable environment I had ever seen or imagined. How had anything ever called this place home? The skeletal remains around me were a sign that it had been at some point, but… what the hell happened to this place? What was this place? Where was I standing?

Then, something glinted through the haze of heat. Something stuck out of place in this wasteland. I saw some sort of structure out in the distance, through the jagged expanse of the burning world. It was a beacon of hope in this forsaken world. Something to aim for. Fires lingered everywhere, making the figure in the distance a wavy smudge in the rising heat. Still, there were enough gaps in the hellfire that I could find a path through. I could navigate the charred rocky earth to get to the white structure without taking any unnecessary burns. However, the blood-red flames licked against my human form when I had to get close at certain points when the environment didn’t give me any easy options.

The structure’s image changed in my eyes as I grew closer to its location. The faint figure I thought to be some kind of structure was something else entirely; it was a skeleton. Massive ribs shot out of the smoldering lava-like surface. Whatever the creature had been, it had sunk down into the molten rock where it found an agonizingly painful grave, partially swallowing this creature; then hardened again to anchor the bones in like cement. The ribs towered out of the earth about twenty feet high and were about two feet thick at their widest, forming a cage-like structure that could have been the frames of a two-story trailer house; if such a thing existed. Did it? I pushed the stray thought away.

Whatever the creature was, it had died on its back. Hints of leg bones barely protruded from the earth at one end of the ribcage while a massive lower jaw jutted from the hardened earth. It formed a small cave-like enclosure where you could hide out of sight from the surrounding flames. Gnarled teeth and fangs still hung onto the frame of the mandible since the moment this behemoth had taken its plunge.

I ran my hand up the massive rib bone, feeling the petrified surface warm beneath the ragged remains of my palm. That’s when I saw my flesh fading away again, disintegrating into fine ash before rapidly regenerating across my exposed muscles. It was a grotesque cycle of destruction and rebirth. There was no rest here, no respite in this hellhole. I could not escape this world and its extreme elements in any way, shape, or form.

My body was in a relentless war against the searing hellfire, but I couldn't shake the gnawing fear that it was losing ground, that something was going wrong. The heat was relentless, burning through me, stripping away layers of my skin and flesh until I could almost see the bones beneath. My teeth ground together, each surge of regeneration was more painful than the last, each fresh coat of skin already a memory as it withered as soon as it set in place.

I felt a dangerous wobble in my stance, a tremor that crawled through me like a parasite. Panic clawed at the edges of my mind. I knew my monstrous power would keep me alive, I was witnessing it, seeing and feeling it stitch me back together, but that knowledge did nothing to quell the horror rising in my throat. I could see my body being eaten and mangled by the heat, brutalized by this alien place, and I was terrified that something wouldn’t heal right. That I’d be left deformed, scarred, a grotesque shadow of myself, forever marked by this hellish ordeal. My body might never recover perfectly, and the thought of being trapped in this twisted, scarred shell for the rest of my unnatural life was a suffocating, bone-deep fear that I couldn't shake.

However, my body was even more overwhelmed with its own ability to regenerate damaged tissues than I had ever witnessed. In this place, the monster displayed far more power than I had witnessed in my few years as this thing. The beast within me had tremendous resiliency that even this hell couldn’t overtake completely. I felt a building power in my core like the beast was surging strength through me while I remained. It didn’t make it easy, but it made it possible. I kept walking, remembering my mindset for when things were hard… left then right, left then right through the pain of the incinerating blood flames.

I marched past the massive skeletal structure, up the incline of rocks to look beyond the behemoth’s grave. Once I struggled to the top, I saw the expanse that started below…it wasn’t just another grave, it was a graveyard. I stood on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a valley of razor-sharp, rocky crags that were littered with dozens upon dozens of hulking skeletons. They lay in the massive, charred expanse on the other side of the cliff. The same type of skeletal behemoths all lay below in an enormous stretch of smoke and rock. These guys hadn’t been killed by the terrain like I had assumed of the first. These bodies all lay on the surface, not sunken down when the earth had given way to swallow them into the liquid underbelly of this charred world. They died and fell to the ground, where they had rested ever since. I couldn’t see what had killed them since all that was left of them were bones, but something powerful had to have killed these great titans. I didn’t think it was the heat and conditions of this place since there were such varied sizes that seemed to indicate different ages in these corpses. No, it seemed like, at some point, they lived here. Natural denizens of this fucked up land, which was comparable to the surface of the sun; at least that’s how it felt as I stood there. I definitely got the feeling that these creatures were slaughtered in this location. Judging from the sheer size of just one colossus, whatever had killed them had to have been on the same playing field as the one that created me. Only he had the kind of overwhelming power that I would expect it to take to overcome so many beasts like these.

The journey through the boneyard was an agonizing ordeal, each step dragging me deeper into the belly of the wasteland. The air was thick with smoke and acrid fumes, stinging my eyes and clawing at my throat. The skeletal remains of long-dead beasts loomed around me, their bleached bones scattered across the scorched earth like petrified logs of gargantuan proportions. I stumbled forward, my muscles and ligaments completely exposed on certain portions of my body. Each step sent a jolt of pain through my raw form as my will, and the monster's strength carried me forward.

I forced myself to keep moving even as the suffocating heat pressed down on me, weighing on my chest like a monstrous hand. The smell of charred flesh and sulfur hung heavy in the air. The horizon shimmered with waves of heat, and the distant mountains blurred and distorted through the veil of smoke and smog. Every breath burned in my lungs, each inhale like swallowing molten glass. My vision swam as I pushed forward, the fiery haze warping the shapes around me into monstrous figures that seemed to move and shift in the corner of my eye.

It felt like maybe hours had passed before I reached the edge of the boneyard, though I knew it could have only been minutes… or days. Time was disjointed, a meaningless concept in this hellish place. The last of the skeletal remains lay sprawled behind me, their twisted forms almost blending into the tortured landscape. I glanced back briefly, the white and charred bones barely visible through the churning smoke and flickering tongues of fire that licked sporadically at the ground. My legs trembled with pain; a foreign feeling I had grown accustomed to forgetting but was ever present here. Every movement made my body scream in protest, but I couldn’t stop now. I had to keep going.

Ahead of me, the wasteland stretched out like a nightmarish vision, an endless sea of charred earth. Cracked, blackened ground split open in jagged fissures that spewed plumes of toxic fumes into the air. Rivers of molten lava snaked through the barren landscape, their bright, searing light casting eerie shadows on the surrounding rocks. The sky above was a billowing, churning mass of dark clouds, shot through with flashes of crimson lightning, and a faded green glow somewhere far in the distance; the dying embers of some great, malevolent fire.

Fifty yards past the last of the skeletons, I finally paused, my chest heaving, sweat and blood mingling and trickling down my scorched skin. I stood there, swaying on my feet, the wasteland around me a living nightmare of fire and smoke. The air was thick and oppressive, a stifling, cloying blanket of heat and ash that pressed down on me, threatening to crush me under its weight. The cragged rocks shifted and twisted beneath my gaze, the intense heat warping their shapes until they seemed to move and pulse with a life of their own.

I looked down, watching as the charred, broken ground passed beneath me, every step feeling like an eternity. Each cragged rock, each smoldering patch of earth was a reminder of the hell I was walking through, a hell that seemed determined to break me, to twist and scar me, just as it had twisted and scarred the landscape around me. But I couldn’t turn back… there was nowhere to go. I couldn’t stop. Not while there was still a chance, however small, of finding a way out of this inferno. Going back, or stopping, would be admitting… accepting that this was my end.

I was so focused on each step that I didn’t realize how far I was from the boneyard. Once I looked back up, I was in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t see anything in view as I had before. Even the land fell into a flatter and more undescriptive look. The level ground was still littered with hellfire just as before, but there was dust that had been kicked up in the air that kept me from seeing much further than my immediate vicinity. Only tiny embers glowed through the dust and smog, letting me know that there was a world beyond the thick atmosphere that enveloped me. Although that dim green in the clouds seemed brighter here. It seemed lower to the ground, just beyond the storm of dust that surrounded me.

In the loneliness and despair of that world, I thought of Autumn. I thought of all of them; how much I cared for Autumn, Carter, and their acceptance of me into his whole family. The way Eleanor thought of me like her own son. They all did; the entire Chasse family: Frank, Clara, Wayland, Delilah, Jane, and even Martin’s faces all flashed in my mind’s eye. Every conversation, moment, and relationship I built with them was what I held onto as the incinerating heat grew more intense around me. Would I ever see them… would I ever see Autumn? Caydee… Seth…… Vicky?

I lost track of time in that world, going numb to the outside and living in my head as the monster propelled me forward. I had hit my limit, and my own willpower was extinguished. It took over… and for the first time, I was thankful. I stayed in my mind, in the best moments of my life while the beast kept us moving. I only had a vague sense that we were still moving.

What I was hoping for now was for Jon to show up and pull me out. He was the only thing… entity, whatever, that I knew could move or pull people through different plains of existence. He was my only hope, but I feared I was lost to even the ominous being I had come to know. He told me that he wouldn’t always be able to save me and that there were places I could be trapped.

Actually, the more I thought about it, it seemed like Jon knew exactly what would happen. He told me that I’d have to get stronger, and I did. He said I could be trapped, but I wouldn’t die, and here we were. He told me I’d kill Peter, but that was yet to happen. Did the being know that all this would happen to me? Had he seen what I would endure, and know that I would be left stranded here?

What did I need to do? I still had to kill Peter. I knew I would. I could feel it within me like the monster had it on his mind and wouldn’t stop until he had his talons buried deep inside the gypsy’s body. But how did I get there?

“Walk,” the ominous voice rang out inside of my mind.

It came out of nowhere and took me by surprise. My mind was thrust back inside of my body, fully conscious and aware. I felt a new surge of motivation and strength inside of me. So, my legs continued as soon as the entity’s dominating voice registered in my mind. It was like I had new energy and direction. He wasn’t there with me but was guiding me somehow. I didn’t have any questions. I trusted him. At that moment, I knew that this realm was not him in any way. But he would help me navigate, and he would show me what had to be done. I knew he was going to drive me to where I needed to be. He wasn’t pulling me out like my body begged to be, but he was showing me the way forward. I followed.

After a few more hours of burning and regenerating, again and again, I came upon a mountain that shot up high into the sky. The rocky growth extended out further than I could see in either direction, but I could see the top of the cliffs above. Almost breaching the thick blackness of smoke that blanketed the sky, but never touching it. Directly in front of me was a massive opening in the base of the mountain. The missing rock looked like it was some kind of naturally occurring tunnel, smooth and uneven as it twisted into the heart of the mountain.

I continued, stepping through the opening like an ant walking through a human’s doorway. The shade of the mountain cloaked me from the reddish hue of the flames. It was the first time my flesh tasted relief from the heat. The shade was cooler and more temperate than the outside world. The deeper I walked through the shadows of the darkening cavern, the more I felt my body solidifying and strengthening back to normal. My flesh and muscles mended themselves rapidly in the darkness of the cave. Bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, everything was covered up again in the shadow of the tunnel. I knelt for a moment, resting on my hands and knees as the pain escaped my mind and body. The supernatural power of my monster returned me to what I was. I felt my body spasming and twitching as so much of me was restored, almost feeling like parts of me were syncing back up to my brain or something.

I stood from the ground in the low-lit entrance of the mountain, the only light hitting me in the back. The opening that led back into the fiery stretch of mountain-like desert slowly got smaller and darker the further I continued inside the cave. Soon I was in complete blackness, but that was okay. My eyes shifted to match the black of the heart of the mountain, allowing me to see my way through the inner workings of this massive rock growth. It started to remind me of the caverns and tunnels beneath St. Louis. I felt a familiar vibe as I continued through the smoothed stone pathway. Then, a new light appeared in the distance before me, a hungry green.

A new opening appeared in front of me as I continued through the depths. The light grew brighter and more vibrant as I approached the tunnel exit. I soon realized that I was coming upon a massive chamber at the end of the tunnel. Something was there in that chamber… something alive. I could feel the vibrations of something moving within the room… no not moving… breathing. I heard the hissing breaths suck and escape past the teeth of some beast. The atmosphere in the tunnel moved gently as the exhalation pushed the air of the entire space, almost like the mountain itself was alive.

I walked through the entrance and into the chamber with no hesitation. My entity led me there, and I knew there was a reason. I wasn’t going to stop, no matter what awaited me within. Even still, when I saw what sat in the chamber… it shocked me beyond words.

There was a chair… a throne maybe. It was built from bones that were so massive they had to be from the skeletons of the beasts that lay dead out in the fields of hellfire. Ribs, arms, teeth, and spines built a central pedestal that was much larger than any normal man would require. Only… the thing staring out from the throne of bones was no man…

Bright, burning red eyes stared at me from across the chamber as I stepped in. Not the red of a vampire's eyes… the red like the hellfire outside, like the crimson lighting that streaked across the black sky outside. He held that power within himself as his gaze fell on me with searing power. This… thing sat high in the chair made from titanic skeletons. If he stood up, he might have been around twenty feet tall. His body was scaly and coarse all over, having a color that looked like a dark charred orange. The scales were darker and more pronounced around his joints and areas that housed vital organs, like the jagged rocks of the mountain's exterior. The most noticeable feature of it was the horns. Spiked white horns protruded out of his skull to form a naturally grown crown of bone spikes. If I could have ever pictured a demon, this is what it would have looked like. Its sharp extended fangs grinned at me as I stepped into the area. An actual chill shot up my spine as I stood under its massive form, within its gaze.

My eyes darted around quickly inside the void within the mountain. Green fires blazed in twisted, hanging braziers. The metal chains that held them in the air were bolted to the rock ceiling, barely hanging on. The eerie flames ate and licked at the small links that held it in suspension, trying to find something to consume. The sickening light cast itself around the chamber, allowing me to take stock of what else lay inside.

Holes were bored into the sides of the walls around the circular chamber, dark and dry from the inner heat. Where did they go? Then I noticed how similar the bones looked compared to the felled beasts I saw in my travels through the foreign land. A thought popped into my head as I stared into the massive throne of bones; was this the thing that killed all of those great behemoths outside? This looked like a throne room that was built on top of the bodies of its enemies. The bones were trophies of the things it had slain within this realm, and the trophies made up its kingdom within the mountain.

It opened its mouth to speak, making strange grumbles and exhales that formed something… words of a language too alien for me to comprehend. It spoke a few times, leaning forward out of its towering throne, inspecting me closer. Its eyes seemed… interested. Every time its voice rang out, the mountain itself seemed to tremble, vibrating beneath my feet.

“Who are you?” I yelled across the chamber, trying to scream loud enough through the rumbling mountain.

The demon looked over to a hole in the rock at his left, motioning out towards me. A snarl ripped out from the darkness of the cave, the light of the chamber’s flames not showing me what lay within. Then, a voice appeared in my head… it was the one sitting in the middle of the room. This voice wasn’t as powerfully dominating as the being from the fields. This voice was darkly twisted with evil intent and malice as it spoke directly inside my head.

“Peter was right to bring you to me, stranger. Which of my brothers or sisters do you serve?” It mentally spoke as its blazing, crimson eyes burned into me with real intrigue.

As soon as the voice stopped talking in my head, something crawled from one of the holes in the wall. Dark leathery flesh clawed out from the small tunnel as wispy white hair raggedly hung from the nape of its neck. Massive teeth gnashed at the sight of me.

I recognized it immediately; it was a devourer. It was precisely the same as the beasts from the rooftops that night in the street. The big bottom jaw was a dead giveaway as it approached me on all fours. Snarling growls escaped its mouth, along with the same thick drool I remembered from the others. It wanted me dead.

I had nothing on me; no silver blade, no clothes, no nothing. I even felt out with my mind to the supernatural weapon that lay just out of reach… but I felt nothing. It was like that tingle in the back of my mind that always alerted me to its presence wasn’t there. Was it this place? Did it cut me off from access to the symbolic weapon Jon had bestowed on me?

Yet, I never needed any of that. I had my greatest weapon waiting within. I felt it surge against the walls of its cage the moment it saw the creature sitting on the throne, and then again when the horned devil spoke within my mind. My monster wanted out… bad.

When the devourer lunged forward off of some jagged rocks beneath its hole, the beast in me lashed out violently. I met the devourer’s skull with fully extended talons, severing its spine at the base of the skull. I didn’t decapitate it entirely as the front of its neck was still holding the head close to the beast’s motionless body. It fell out of the air in a thud before it slumped and relaxed its muscles for the last time.

I turned and gazed my solid black eyes at the one on the pile of bones at the chamber’s center, talons slick with blood. As the blood dripped off each talon to the rocky surface below, it boiled and burnt away from the temperature of the rocks. The place was heating up.

Within the firelight of the chamber, I stood against another being from a foreign dimension. He eyed me curiously from where he sat, never standing as he motioned again to the same hole in the wall. More devourers appeared from the darkness, about five in total. They circled me as I stood above their dead brethren. The pack of devourers thought I was prey, and the one who sat on the throne thought he could just sic his dogs on me, they were all wrong. I would show them. I felt the cage in my mind open, and my fury was unleashed.

The transformation was complete before I had even killed the second creature. I moved viciously through the area of the chamber where the fighting took place. They split up as they tried to attack me from all sides like a pack of wolves. When the first one lunged at me and had my attention, the others followed suit to catch me off guard. It was no use.

My massively growing body muscled every one of them down to the ground in an instant, ripping their insides out and casting them to the scalding floor beneath us. I grabbed one of their skulls with both hands and crushed it with a tight squeeze. It squealed and squirmed beneath my monstrous grip for a moment until the shards of cracked bone impaled whatever brains it had. The rest I just brutalized under the power of my unstoppable blows. The hard and jagged rocks all around us were the perfect utensils to help me quickly rip the beasts to ribbons. The rocky chamber was a perfect giant meat grinder, allowing me to slaughter them all.

In mere moments, I found myself standing in my fully transformed state, a colossal figure looming over the bloody jaggs of rock inside the chamber. My muscles bulged with the unnatural power, veins pulsing like cables beneath my skin. Each breath felt like it expanded my lungs to impossible proportions as the beast was fully unleashed. No more fucking around. But then, I sensed something… different.

It was as if the beast within me revealed… more. Its raw, violent energy crackled through my cells. This was no ordinary transformation. I felt it in every fiber of my being—a surge of unrestrained power that sent my gargantuan heart pounding against my ribs. My flesh tingled and twitched, spasms of growth rippling through my body as if I were being sculpted anew; into a form I had neither felt nor imagined. I felt my bones creak and stretch, sinew and muscle knitting themselves into denser, more potent shapes. My perspective shifted upward as my limbs lengthened and thickened. I was growing

I watched with awe as my monstrous hands expanded, claws thickening and curving like obsidian scythes, each finger now large enough to crush boulders into dust. My shoulders broadened, my spine arching as new layers of muscle piled on top of each other. I could feel the sheer weight of my own flesh, the ground beneath my feet cracking and splitting as if struggling to support the immense bulk where my two feet were standing. My charcoal-colored flesh darkened more, turning as black as shadows on my exterior, leaving the original grey in the creases of joints.

I was growing, and it felt like my entire being was caught in a violent upheaval, each moment stretching me further and further. In seconds, my monster had doubled in size, towering inside the chamber like a living colossus. I glanced down, and the boiling innards I once stood beside now seemed pitifully small, the jagged stone like mere pebbles scattered around my massive feet. The sensation was intoxicating… every surge of growth made me feel more powerful, more unstoppable. I was becoming something even more… monstrous!

The burning orange eyes were wide at the sight of me once I was entirely transformed. The demon-looking creature stood from its pile of bones. I could feel a power in the area growing as the stone structure around us began to vibrate. The low-lit flames of green that had given us light inside of the mountain were burning brighter than before.

“I see now why he could not take you,” the thing spoke in my mind. “He could never take you… brother!” His words dripped with recognition and familiarity.

I clenched my massive jaws as he spoke, feeling the weight of his mental words pressing on my mind. I should have wanted to rip forward and kill, but even the beast inside me felt more controlled. I wanted answers, and this mother fucker… knew something.

“I thought you dead… we all felt you wiped from existence… you… the eldest… the strongest… yet here you stand… in this meager form!” He spat mockingly like he was unimpressed with my new, massive size. “Where have you been all this time?”

I heaved out an angry breath, snarling at the alien entity that stood before me.

He spoke aloud again. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but it was a long-drawn-out exhale of a word that drug on like a bellowing horn. It sounded like a grumbled, “Myoordrakien.” It was more of a guttural snap of noise from his fanged maw, a primal language that I was unfamiliar with. He looked upon me after making the noise, waiting for a reaction maybe. His eyes burned with intent, waiting for something. Moments passed and his face changed. Then, he spoke in my mind again, “You know nothing of whom you serve… do you boy?”

In the heat of the moment, I didn’t question it, but I spoke with my mind, “Who the fuck are you?”

The creature laughed at me from his throne, bellowing twisted amusement throughout the chamber.

“I am your only hope. Your sole salvation to continue your worthless life. My brother… was killed eons ago. It’s what sparked the fall of the Primevals… what your pathetic excuse of a mind thinks it knows as… Ancients. We are beyond ancient... you child! The fractional remnant of my eldest brother's power resides in you somehow… but it won't be enough for you to survive!” Its mental voice was angry, sickened with the idea of even having to look at me in possession of this power. “He was once the greatest of us… the strongest. He was destruction… unbridled rage… doom itself in the first era. None of us dared enter his domain. But now… look at you…” he wasn’t speaking to me but to the remnants of the power he spoke about. He laughed at what he saw as pathetic.

His hellfire eyes bored into my blackened form, searching for something within. He could sense things about me… no not me, the monster within. He was feeling for something, and his eyes gave him away. He didn’t understand the power I had inside of me. He didn’t know how this was possible. But he had greed in his eyes. It was unexpected, but potent in the moments inside the chamber. An ancient avarice that told a story in itself. He wanted something I had.

“Accept service under my power and I will let you leave my realm; back to your world as one of my heralds. Deny me… and I will end you… and what is left of my brother!”

Then… thoughts emerged in my mind. Power. The balance of power that Jon, my entity talked about… this thing was making a play for it. It didn’t feel like he could just take it. I think I had to accept his offer, to willingly give myself over to his power. Like… like how I had to accept becoming this thing to fully embrace the beast and allow my predecessor to pass on. In those moments, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Thoughts of my whole life flashed before my monstrous eyes. I felt an old feeling creeping up on me. Death was near… it might be possible… finally. This thing was beyond me, and the power I felt raging inside. I wasn’t sure I could win in a fight, or even touch this guy, but I wanted to try. I wanted to swing my claws through his fucking head. But… I sensed it. This thing was prepared to wipe me out… to kill me. I couldn’t fight this thing and live… not on my own.

I gritted my teeth and spoke out loud with my booming monstrous voice, “Fuck you!”

He snarled in rage as he stood in front of the skeletal throne. His eyes shifted, burning with the intense green of the flames around him. This was the power Peter displayed… the power of his patron. This was ancient power… the power of a Primeval.

It seemed like he was preparing for one massive attack to end me before I could close the gap between us. His glowing green irises bore holes into me as we stood in our locked gaze.

“I’m going to kill you!” I roared; fangs bared in fury. It was a final surge of strength before what felt like an inevitable end. The words spilled out unbidden as if the beast within me had spoken for itself. It knew this creature. It had faced it before, from another time.

I stepped forward instinctively, approaching to attack. My dark hide, black eyes, and talons lurched forward on a massive frame toward the horned creature. We were two giants inside of some kind of underground colosseum, about to throw down.

He was taller than me, but I knew that it didn’t matter. His muscular frame looked like it would decimate his prey. He held a massive leg bone from one of the creatures of the wastes. It was honed and sharpened to form the shape of a simple-looking sword, deadly but basic in form. Yet, the way he held it told me something. This creature, the king of this boneyard, did not want me to come any closer. He had a rage in his eyes but a defensive nature to his stance. It was like he was waiting to see what I’d do. As if… he could sense something that he was unsure about, something he hadn’t said.

I roared and leaped through the air to him, trying as hard as I could to close the gap and sink my talons into his scaly flesh. I felt the monster inside of my mind, fully taking over. It wanted to end the beast of this cave. I felt a force pushing me towards him like somehow if I did kill him, it would right many wrongs; bring balance back in a way that was needed for a long time.

As soon as my right hand contacted his shoulder, my talons cut through his thickly scaled hide and revealed the blood of the blackest variety. It almost looked like motor oil pouring out of his flesh. An audible snarl escaped from the creature for the first time. I only heard it for a moment, and then I was in flames.

Green flames erupted all over my body, and I felt an explosive force send a shockwave out in all directions. My massive frame struck the side of the chamber, disintegrating stone as I drilled through the mountain. My flesh and bones were pummeled by stone as I felt the force driving me further and further away from the creature, after drawing its blood. Somehow, the mountain seemed to almost move as I rocketed away in a streak of sick flames. A crevice was created to expel me from the mountain.

In a few moments, I felt the cold slicing stones disappear and I was airborne. The force faded, and my body could breathe again. I was in the air for only moments before my enormous body landed back on the ground, carving through the land, and blasting away rock as I barreled to a stop.

I heard a deep, guttural rumble as I struggled to my feet, my body aching from the impact. Turning, I caught sight of movement, but what greeted my eyes was beyond comprehension. The very mountain once thought to be an unmoving sentinel of stone, began to shift and rise. The ground quaked beneath such massive change. Boulders and shattered cliffs tumbled from its sides as if the earth itself were shedding a false skin. The mountain was moving… no, standing up.

A colossal form emerged from the earth, its rocky surface breaking away to reveal an immense figure buried for ages, camouflaged by stone and time. It was a titan, a behemoth whose size defied belief, its silhouette looming high against the charred, smoke-choked sky. Its body was a labyrinth of petrified bones and jagged rock, a skeletal colossus draped in the semblance of a mountain. Sickly green flames licked up from its joints, pouring from its hollow eye sockets and gaping maw, spreading like a plague across the scorched land.

The air itself seemed to tremble with its emergence, the sheer weight of its presence casting a shadow that stretched across the land of flames and death, engulfing everything in its terrible dominion. I could feel the heat of the sickly fire as it surged outward, igniting the ground in a web of ghostly flame that consumed everything in its path. The twisted green inferno spread like a tainted river, its light flickering across the landscape in a sickening glow, as the titan’s monstrous frame rose higher and higher, scraping the heavens with its towering form.

The realization hit me like a hammer. The creature I had fought, the one who had sat upon the throne, was merely a fragment of this monstrous entity, a mere extension of the true horror that had lain dormant beneath the mountain’s facade. It was not a king in a throne room, but a harbinger, a vessel for something far greater and more terrifying than I could have ever imagined. The mountain was not a throne… it was camouflage, now shattered and undone, and the true form of this entity had been revealed. This Primeval had risen.

“You choose annihilation… then you shall have it.” The voice of the Primeval rumbled through the air like the toll of a world’s end. It raised its gargantuan arms, each one as wide as the tallest peaks, fingers like mountain ranges clawing at the sky. The air trembled as a maelstrom of sickly green fire gathered above its head, swirling and coalescing into an immense sphere of flame. It grew larger and larger, an inferno so vast it seemed to consume the very horizon, its toxic light casting a sickening glow over the entire world.

The blazing mass dwarfed anything I had ever seen, a blinding sun of searing green fury that hung in the sky, its radiance banishing the shadows and smoke that had suffocated the land. For the first time since I had arrived in this forsaken place, the entirety of the world was revealed to me, laid bare under the terrible light of that unholy sun. Mountains and valleys stretched out like scars on the earth, every jagged rock and twisted tree illuminated in ghastly clarity. The land was marred with tracks. They were the tracks of where this ancient entity had been as it walked this lifeless wasteland, whenever it decided to move.

I could feel the overwhelming power radiating from the Primeval, a force so immense it made the ground quake beneath me, the very air heavy with its malevolence. It was as if the weight of the universe itself had settled on my shoulders, pressing down with an inevitability that crushed the breath from my lungs. There was no escaping it, no running from this doom that loomed above me like the hand of a wrathful god.

The sickly fire seethed and churned, its surface roiling with the energy of a thousand storms, its heat scorching the air even from miles away. The sky itself seemed to shrink away from its presence, the clouds evaporating under the sheer intensity of its flame. I felt so small, so pitifully insignificant before this apocalyptic force, a mere speck in the shadow of a creature so vast it defied comprehension.

And then, with a slow, deliberate movement, the Primeval brought its arms down, the colossal sphere of flame following in its wake, descending like a falling star. The sky screamed as it hurtled toward the earth, the air igniting in its wake, and I knew with a bone-deep certainty that this was my end. There was no surviving this. This was annihilation incarnate, a doom that no flesh and blood being could withstand. I braced my own titanic form, every muscle tensed against the inevitable, but it was like trying to hold back the tide with my bare hands.

The world seemed to stop as that terrible sun of green fire descended, its light growing brighter and brighter, consuming everything in its path. This was it… the end of everything. My end.

“RISE AND TAKE MY BLADE!” The ominous voice of my own haunting entity commanded me from the fields. The words came with a surge of power and clarity that I didn’t question as I obeyed.

Then, I felt it. Where it had been hidden before, I felt the tingle in the corner of my awareness, even in this monstrous form. The blade… the weapon, Jon’s rifle… my knife was there again. With my massive black hand, I reached out into the void and grabbed the weapon. It shimmered into view, sending an aura of dread across the land. The power it emanated withered the power that was descending upon me. Its form massive enough to match my new size and power. I stood tall with my blade of dark power, clutching it like it was an extension of my own body.

The green sun shrunk, dimmed, and fell off completely as the titan watched its attack fail. Its power was eaten up and stolen by the hungry force of the glinting blade, the symbols, and names carved along its length blazing with heat as power surged from somewhere.

The colossal titan’s fiery green eyes widened in shock and disbelief, their molten depths flickering with something far more unsettling than fear. “You… you are not my brother… you are the thief… the murderer who stole our world… our power!” His inner voice, like the grinding of boulders, was laced with rage and horror, trembling under the weight of the dark force radiating from me and the blade I wielded.

The blade pulsed in my grip, and suddenly a surge of power erupted from its core, a black torrent that swept across the land like a shadowed tide. The darkness expanded outward, consuming everything in its path, suffocating the sickly green flames and snuffing out what little light dared to remain in this hellish landscape. The world around us fell into a shrouded silence. There was an oppressive gloom that seemed to drink in the very essence of life itself.

It swarmed over me, a living shroud of void and oblivion, wrapping itself around my form and seeping into my being. I felt my body changing again, expanding and growing vast and terrible, my figure towering into the blackened sky. I became an avatar of shadow, cloaked in darkness that writhed and twisted like a storm of nightmares. The blade in my hand grew with me, its edge lengthening and curving with a vicious elegance, a weapon of the void itself, hungry and malevolent.

I stood above the titan, a looming specter of darkness, my shadow engulfing him, a blot against the dim light of this forsaken world. His once mighty form, a thing of rock and bone, now seemed almost small beneath the vastness of my entity’s presence. The air was heavy with suffocating dread.

But there was more than just the monstrous fury that had always dwelled within me. I felt another presence, ancient and overwhelming, intertwining with my soul. It was not the monster, no… it was something far more profound. A being whose essence seeped into my mind, whispering in voices that echoed from the abyss. For the first time, the entity was with me, its power surging through my veins, imbuing me with a portion of its boundless might. I was no longer just a vessel of rage and wrath; I was something else, something more.

I felt its influence pouring into me, filling every corner of my being with a cold, consuming darkness that seemed to bend reality itself. I could sense the despair, the terror rippling through the titan as he gazed up at me, dwarfed by my shadow, his world crumbling beneath my gaze. The entity’s power was vast, fathomless, a well of darkness deeper than the abyss; this was a fraction of it that it granted me to wield.

“You… you cannot be here… there are laws… rules! You shouldn’t be allowed in…” the green-eyed Primeval mentally screamed, until it realized something. It shook its massive skull, anger in its heart. “Peter… you stupid human. You fool… what have you done? What have you carried into my world?”

I moved, not with flesh and bone, but with an otherworldly fluidity that defied the laws of the material plane. My blade sliced through the air in a seamless, ghostly arc, phasing through the titan’s massive form like a specter of death. It didn’t cut or tear his flesh… it devoured him. As the blade passed through his colossal body, it consumed everything in its path, unraveling the very fabric of his being.

The titan’s towering frame shuddered, a moment of grotesque stillness before his immense bulk began to crumble. His face twisted into a mask of agony and confusion; the hollow eyes that once glowed with ancient power were now dull with disbelief. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening, couldn’t grasp the nature of the force that had just undone him. It was as if the very essence of his existence was being erased, stripped away by something that transcended this realm.

With an enormous roar that shook the plains of rock and fire, the behemoth toppled, his vast body breaking apart as it fell, shattering the ground beneath him. The echo of his collapse rippled through the land, a tremor that seemed to resonate with the finality of it all. His once indomitable presence was reduced to nothing more than a ruinous heap of sundered stone and bone, a monument to the absolute power that had claimed him.

There was no pause, no hesitation, no mercy. The entity moved through me, its will as cold and unyielding as the void. It was a force beyond reason, beyond any mortal comprehension… a harbinger of annihilation. The power that coursed through my blade was pure, unrelenting, an abyssal hunger that consumed all before it. It wasn’t just death; it was obliteration, a force that denied the very concept of existence.

The air fell frigid across this once fiery land, the warmth of life snuffed out by the enveloping power of the entity from the fields. Its influence spread like a blight across the land. I could feel the chill settling into the marrow of my bones, a cold so deep it seemed to freeze the soul itself. The world around me dimmed, shadows lengthening as the darkness grew more profound, swallowing the light, swallowing any hope for this place.

This was the entity’s will… absolute, unbreakable. The titan’s fall was merely the beginning, a prelude to the annihilation that followed. And I stood at the center of it, the blade in my hand still humming with that dark, terrible power that still hungered to consume.

I turned my gaze to the horizon, and what I saw was a sight that defied all comprehension. A world unraveling before my eyes. The earth itself quaked as fissures split open like festering wounds, the ground crumbling away in vast sheets that tumbled into an endless abyss. Mountains fractured and collapsed, their peaks dissolving into dust, swallowed by the relentless darkness that bled outward from the blade. The void seeped through the cracks, devouring everything in its path with a cold, merciless hunger.

It was as if the earth itself was being torn asunder, unraveling into threads that were plucked and consumed by the abyssal power emanating from the blade. The sky above fractured like glass, great shards of darkness splintering the heavens as they were sucked down into the yawning chasm below. A distant, eerie wail echoed through the collapsing world, the death cry of a realm falling into oblivion.

As the darkness crept closer, the ground beneath me began to splinter, the very stones disintegrating into fine powder that was swept away into the churning blackness. The world was collapsing inward, folding into itself as the power of the entity expanded, reaching out to claim everything it touched. The remnants of this primeval place, this world that had hidden the ancient titan for so long, were being erased, its very existence obliterated.

The void swallowed all in its path, leaving nothing but a desolate emptiness in its wake. There would be no trace of this place, no memory of the life that had once thrived here. It was as though this world had never been, as if it had only been a fleeting dream now consumed by the entity's unyielding will. I could feel its presence approaching, a formless shadow that pressed in from all sides, suffocating, oppressive, cold as death itself. Everything would die. Everything would be forgotten. And then, there would only be the void.

Then, a different force, from another direction, snatched me from encroaching doom. In an instant, all the power of the being, all the strength of the monster… it all vanished. I was ripped away, pulled through a tight squeeze into the blackness that swallowed my mind.