[Original Novel] The Black Pool, Part 20
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Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
I ran to one of the narrow vertical windows by the door, hoping to identify the source of the tremors. I thought back to that manor with the dollhouses, and the stomping, suited creature which dwell in it. Not here, surely?
My heart raced as the tremors continued, stronger and stronger, now audible in the distance. It couldn’t have followed me. No way. How would it fit through the tunnel? Fear paralyzed me as I peered just over the sill of that narrow window, framed with spines.
The truth was worse than I dreaded. I worked myself up over the prospect that the baffling mirrored monstrosity followed me here, only for it to be something totally different. Something unlike anything I’d seen until then.
I couldn’t believe the size of it. A mile high at least, head immersed in the cloud cover. Its flesh a mottled white with patches of beige. Pulsating black veins showed through everywhere except on its legs, as those were coated with a layer of mud flakes and other grime from the feet up to the knees.
Being so large that it couldn’t move its considerable mass any quicker, it appeared to march towards us in slow motion. Leaving a craterous footprint embedded in the barren, cracked terrain behind it, then creating another in front where its foot next came down.
“We have to get out of here.” I whispered at first, not realizing it. Breathless because of the spectacle unfolding outside. “We have to get out of here!!” I yelled it this time, but to no avail. They just proceeded up the steps with a precision that suggested countless rehearsals in anticipation of today.
I scanned the city outside for any place more secure than this in which I might hide. But without knowing where the giant meant to step, one building was no more or less safe than the others. Trapped like a rat, I frantically peered out every narrow slit of a window I could find in search of some distant cave or other shelter I might still escape to.
Once it was close enough, I could make out little jet black eyes speckling its skin here and there, blinking sporadically as it moved. My stomach turned. I could feel myself losing my mind as it bore down on the cathedral, the only small mercy being that the cloud layer concealed its face.
That is, until it stuck its head into the church through that great, round opening. I screamed and fell all over myself trying to get away, but it had no obvious interest in me. Its eyes, six red slits, widened slightly and focused on the devoted multitudes gathered on the platform before it.
As I watched, its mouth opened, then the maniacs disrobed and began to climb in. One after the next, some even helping those too elderly and feeble to do so on their own. In they went, stepping over its lower row of teeth and crawling onto the tongue, then towards the back of its throat.
Once they were all inside, it closed its mouth and started to chew. I heard muffled cries of pain, but only briefly, before it swallowed. The impossible beast then looked directly at me. I froze and wet myself.
For a long, tense moment I lay there waiting for it to eat me. To tear the cathedral apart, pluck me from the wreckage and finish me off. But it didn’t. Its many eyes slowly searched the rest of the interior...then the gigantic head carefully withdrew through the opening.
What the fuck was that? What was that? I cried black, sticky tears as madness took me. Why? Why build this place? Why come here and wait for so long, just to be eaten? Was there no other meaning they could find in their lives? Or did they really believe it was the way out?
...Could they have been right? I wouldn’t have believed, before all this began, that there could exist a world like this at the bottom of some random hole in a field. For all I knew, their mangled bodies were now someplace else. Perhaps being healed in a black pool.
But then even if they were simply being digested, at least their suffering would be over soon. Perhaps they felt that if they were going to be eaten one way or the other, they might at least control when, how, and by what.
Like me, when I learned to make blankets of my own skin. Resigned to the impossibility of escape, simply trying to make themselves as comfortable as possible. It really is remarkable how comfortable you can get at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. You just have to belong there.
The impacts resumed, violently shaking the structure around me, toppling some of the skulls out of their piles. All of a sudden, I found myself wanting to follow it. Despite what I just saw, something within me forced my body to its feet, then out through the double doors.
It wouldn’t eat me. An assumption I admit, but with a firm basis. It had the chance, but I wasn’t even worth the effort. Probably only bothers showing up here because it’s guaranteed an easy meal. A snack, anyway.
Once outside I paused for a moment, stupefied by the scale of the creature now walking in the other direction. Towards another cathedral perhaps, for its next meal. I then set off in pursuit, cursing myself even as I did so.
It’s pure insanity to run towards such a thing rather than away. Yet I continued chasing after it, because it was something different. Something I hadn’t seen yet. Reason for caution, but also for hope.
How I wished for my mount. If only I’d seen where it landed! My thigh throbbed terribly with every step as I hurried, fast as I could manage, after the lumbering giant. Every ponderous step sent out shockwaves which nearly knocked me over again and again, until I worked out that I should follow it from a safer distance.
A few times it seemed to sense it was being followed. It stopped, knelt until its head was below the cloud layer, then surveyed the landscape around its feet. Whenever its eyes opened, brilliant beams of red light issued forth, which it swept around the landscape like search lights.
Because of its slow movement I had ample warning, such that every time I was able to duck behind a building or outcropping before it could spot me. More than once I was nearly too slow, and spent many tense minutes waiting for the giant to lose interest and continue on its way.
By the time we reached the outlands, pain and exhaustion forced me to stop. Between the bullet wounds and forcing myself to hobble all that way, it was all I could do to make it that far. The giant slowly plodded on ahead, leaving me behind.
That might’ve been the end of it...had the second giant not appeared. A distant silhouette at first, obscured by the thick yellow haze until close enough that I could see it properly. The first giant turned to face it, and before I could so much as guess at why there were two, they launched themselves at each other.
Blow after blow they fought, fists sending out shockwaves that I felt through the ground. The second giant was somewhat smaller. A juvenile? Could there be a whole species of these creatures? I climbed the exterior stairwell of an obsidian monument to get a better look.
The smaller giant bellowed, reverberations hammering my eardrums. Like a greatly amplified fog horn. The moment it got ahold of the other giant’s arm, it wrenched the whole thing loose in one swift motion, tearing it free from the socket.
I gasped. But the larger giant seemed all but indifferent to the injury, planting its fist in the smaller giant’s shoulder. Why do they fight, I wondered. Is it territorial? Something to do with mating, or simply their nature?
The smaller giant, when struck, lost hold of the arm. It tumbled a ways, devastating the obsidian ruins beneath it. Then the arm began to melt. Flesh liquefying, rearranging itself...into the shape of a much smaller replica of the creature whose body it was torn from.
The miniature giant ran straight for the largest, fusing rapidly into its leg the moment it came into contact with it. As I watched in awe, the assimilated flesh reformed into a new arm, sprouting from the stump of the old one.
It just went on like this, the two behemoths trading blows, tearing each other apart and reforming until the lesser giant was at last defeated. With its head ripped off, the body offered no resistance as the larger giant absorbed it, growing considerably in the process.
Stay Tuned for Part 21!