I hadn't heard it approach. Only seen it – a sudden, impossible silhouette filling the tent's entrance in my peripheral vision. It stood unnaturally tall despite a permanent, predatory hunch, easily clearing seven feet. Its skin was desiccated parchment, grey and shriveled, hanging in loose folds from a skeletal frame.
The horror crystallized. Four arms: two smaller, spindly limbs clasped together over its sunken chest in a grotesque parody of prayer, fingers interlocked like brittle twigs. The other pair hung long and simian, knuckles brushing its knees. Its maw was a vertical gash splitting its face, a thin, blackened tongue lolling obscenely past its collarbone. Sunken, pupil-less pits stared blindly... or perhaps directly at me. I froze, breath trapped in my throat, becoming stone. What unholy thing is this? Hideousness beyond even the undercity's worst nightmares.
It remained motionless. I remained motionless. Silence stretched, thick and suffocating, each second an eternity.
Its shriek shattered the stillness – a sound like rusted metal tearing flesh. It lunged, one long arm whipping towards my head like a fleshy flail. Instinct screamed. My knees buckled, dropping me just as the air whistled where my skull had been. A hairsbreadth escape. Prey confirmed.
Enraged by the miss, it shrieked again, the noise vibrating in my bones, turning my blood to ice. In a blur of unnatural strength, it seized the heavy wooden desk and flung it aside like kindling. My scant cover vanished.
Trapped, cornered, desperation ignited. I gripped the dagger until my knuckles bleached white and lunged, driving the blade with all my strength into its leathery thigh.
Clang. Not the wet thud of pierced flesh, but the jarring impact of steel on stone. The shockwave tore through my arms, numbing them. The dagger slipped from nerveless fingers, clattering to the rug. My reflection flashed once in the falling steel – eyes wide with terror – before the creature's other arm connected.
The world dissolved into blinding force. I was weightless, then crashing down onto the frozen grass outside the tent. Breath exploded from my lungs. The world cartwheeled, stars bursting behind my eyelids. I tried to push up, only to collapse face-first into the icy mud. Agony, sharp and sudden, lanced through my left arm. Glancing down, bile rose in my throat. The limb was bent at an obscene angle, bone glinting whitely through torn skin and fabric. Shock had masked it; now, as I lay gasping, the pain surged like liquid fire. Adrenaline's fragile shield crumbled. My back screamed. Ribs throbbed. Legs spasmed. Ragdoll tossed. Broken.
The creature emerged from the tent with dreadful slowness. It approached with deliberate, unhurried steps, its smaller arms still clasped in that mocking prayer. Its sunken pits fixed on me.
Helpless on the frozen ground, my gaze flickered upwards to the baleful crimson moon. Why? Teleport me across worlds just to be torn apart on a corpse field? So many questions swallowed by the inevitability of silence.
It stopped beside me, looming, a monument of nightmare flesh. It peered down, those empty sockets absorbing my broken form. Then, with chilling precision, a massive, clawed foot descended onto my shattered left arm. Bone ground. White-hot agony consumed me, pinning me utterly. A low, guttural chanting began, emanating from its vertical maw – a sound not of this world, incomprehensible, vibrating in my teeth rather than reaching my ears. A prayer for the damned? The irony was a bitter ash on my tongue.
Always knew death was young. A detached thought surfaced through the pain. But a little longer… and not like this. Not by… this. But survival had never been fair. No point in complaints now. Just the end.
It crouched, bringing its clasped, smaller hands level with my face. Slowly, deliberately, they unclasped. Within its palms, beneath the parchment skin, things writhed. Black, oily tendrils slithered from between its fingers, coiling and uncoiling like serpents birthed from shadow.
I strained, a feeble twitch against the crushing weight on my arm and the ruin of the other. Futile. Trapped meat.
The creature leaned closer. One large, knotted hand slammed over my face, sealing my mouth, crushing my nose. Then came the pain. Not the blunt agony of broken bone. This was a violation. Agony distilled.
The tendrils struck. Not from outside, but erupting through its palm, piercing my skin like hot needles. They burrowed, tearing through muscle, seeking pathways. My eyes were the primary targets. Wet, tearing pressure, then absolute darkness as they invaded the sockets. I tried to scream, but the creature's hand was a suffocating vise. Tendrils forced their way down my throat, filling it, choking me from within.
Abruptly, stillness. The tendrils ceased their invasion. Silence, profound and terrifying. The pressure on my face lessened slightly, the hand still there but no longer actively crushing. I couldn't scream. Couldn't see. Could only feel the alien presence coiled within my head, my throat.
Then it resumed. Not just the face now. Everywhere. Under my skin. Through my muscles. Coiling around bones. Tearing through sinew and fiber. An internal vivisection performed by a thousand razor-sharp worms. My body became a map of excruciating pathways as the tendrils claimed it inch by screaming inch.
Time lost meaning. I lay paralyzed, a vessel being remade from the inside out. Sensation was reduced to unending, exquisite torment. Unable to move. Unable to scream. Unable even to weep.
Utterly alone in a private, infinite hell.
Just me. My shattered thoughts. And the silent, eternal question echoing in the abyss it was carving within me:
Why me?
Again.
From birth, it seemed, my existence had been this solitary hell. Not life. Survival. A desperate, clawing thing on the very edge of nothing. And now… even death was denied. Replaced with this. Is this eternity? Is this His final scorn?