The Great Green is muted by a gruesome blight.
My shattered bones piled high on the infinite green plains. Red pools of blood spreading outward into foaming rivers.
I am gone; why can I still see? “Why can I still see?” I scream out in pain; the land quakes and the bones shift.
Confusion and pain is all I know. An eternity passes.
Confusion and pain remain; even after my bones begin to settle into stone and the rivers have scabbed over.
I look everywhere for answers. I look for a cure; for an end. I look up and still the great web flutters.
After an eternity of stillness below, I finally see something move.
It crawls out from under my bones. It feasts on my scabs, leaving writhing eggs in its wake. My gaze refuses to meet it fully. It is without shape, but distinctly insect in its movement. Light avoids it, darkness envelopes it. I call it The Scabetur and it devours my remains.
The eggs hatch; each passing moment more eggs hatch. They are lesser beasts, but with no lesser appetite.
Only now do I feel true pain. What was once confusion is now hatred. Guttural screams do nothing but rend my scabs and further shatter my being. The beasts continue to feast while my hatred grows.
I can do nothing; helplessness turns my hate into fear.
I can do nothing; hopelessness turns my fear into tears.
I can do nothing but cry.
My tears fill my vision and flood my hellish body below.
The lesser beasts flee; washed away and drowned.
The Scabetur is pained by the loss of its children.
I feel it looking at me. I can feel its hatred.
The Scabetur quickly grows in my peripheral; it has lept to me.
My eyes now meet the monster and for a second I see the horror that it is. 10 legs, 3 eyes, its body made from knots of muscles and thorns, 2 sets of jaws with countless fangs. It fills my vision and then it is gone..or perhaps not. I can feel it nearby, dancing and balancing in the webs above.
I dare myself to never look above. Maybe it is gone; I don’t want to know if it isn’t.