Beyond The Chaos Gate: Lovecraftian Horror
Page 16
Just when one was prepared to believe that only destruction was the goal of these changes, sometimes eerily beautiful structures would sprout from the air or the ground. Structures such as an intricate lattice of shiny spider webs constructed of light and, just maybe, a kind of living material with the characteristics of a will of the wisp.
Ian did not know if these things were some sort of life, but all around them, life forms were transforming, usually into horrible forms that were undoubtedly a torment to whatever was left of the original natural creature inside the new form. Even if a small portion of the changes in the world were bizarrely beautiful, most of them were filled with horror and pain.
Even in his terrified state, Ian was able to look outward at the world around them with a sense of awe. He saw things that could almost be accepted by his changing mind, and things that were beyond his essential sense of the possible.
Now that he had sufficient time to view his surroundings, he noted the creatures that were marching in line with him and Freya were not all of the alien phenotypes. Some were an apparent merging of other earthly forms. All of the creatures forced to march with him were of human origin, and as far as he could see, none of them had yet to finish changing into whatever it was that they would eventually become.
A man was walking in front of them that was obviously developing lupine characteristics. In other words, he was becoming some kind of a werewolf. Beyond the lycanthromorph, he could see a man covered in reptilian scales, and beyond him, there was a man covered in dark feathers.
The people, or what used to be people, were definitely not the most unusual aspect of this new world in which Ian found himself living. The transformation of the world itself was even more remarkable and disturbing.
The black stars above twinkled in some odd parody of natural stars, with changes of intensity of the dark light from them, if there is any visible light that can be black in color. They were embedded in a sky of bleakest white, with just a hint of some colossal nebula formed structure almost unseen in its firmament.
Once, he saw the road ahead twist as though it was a ribbon, turning completely over and then back to right side up once again. Below the ribbon road was a great chasm of absolute darkness.
The remarkable thing was that the expedition of which he was a part followed that road, all the way through the loop, without experiencing anything that normal gravity would have caused. Any sane mind would have expected that they would have plunged to their death when they traveled on the upside down portion of the road, but they did not fall to their death.
For a short distance along the path, the road ahead cut through the face of some stone embankments, creating cliffs of rock surrounding the passing parade of creatures. In the stone, they could see the agonized features of humans, creatures, and animals that appeared to be merged into the stone, not allowed death, and in agony.
They marched along, in this timeless place that the world had become. They were not allowed to feel exhaustion or any of the other sensations that served to mark time in the old world so Ian could not say if they had marched hours or days. Whichever it was, the world would incorporate new features from time to time. After what felt like many hours, or perhaps days, they come into an area along the path that featured a new type of event.
There were gigantic spider-like creatures that could be seen traveling along a path that was somehow parallel to their own path, and not parallel. However that path appeared, it was visible from the road on which they traveled.
These monstrous spiders were carrying humans, secured in silk threads, and showing all evidence of paralysis by some paralytic agent. Occasionally, the spiders would extract one of their captives from the silk that bound them; lay them out on the road before them, and impale them with their proboscis. The impaled humans would show the results of this invasion by being visibly deflated, indicating that the spiders were sipping the bulk of their bodily mass out of them, probably for food.
Occasionally, it was not the spiders which would drain the human victims, but other, less familiar entities. Other things were stripping the land of all vegetation, and they were transporting the resulting biomass into large structures very similar to the juvenile Old One that they had previously destroyed. The spiders also were carrying some of the humans to the same structures, and some of them were being incorporated into the structures in a manner that resulted in a form that suggested that the human experience was being used as a sort of slave entity inside, or on the surface of, the dominant entity.
Ian, and through him Freya, came slowly to realize that this was the fate that awaited them, to be partially merged into one of these gigantic beasts. They would be conscious, and aware, but not able to control their environment in any way. They would be doomed to a life of servitude to one of these colossal entities forever, linked to a mind that filled their minds with a vast and alien insanity forever, unable to resist, and unable to die.
They would be assimilated, and there was no longer any way to determine their fate. All that awaited them was an endless eternity of hopelessness, pain, and madness. Death would forever be denied to them, and there would be no end to their suffering.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Quentin Ravensbane is an American Author of Lovecraftian and related horror fiction. He hopes to entertain his readers with the cosmic scale concepts of an inhuman universe. While he attempts to entertain hard-core horror fans with a decent level of an increasingly fear-based storyline, he hopes that the idea of an universe that is alien beyond our understanding exists, and is not so much malevolent as unconcerned about the survival of the human species. In such a large universe, our species must run away from the light of the regard of greater beings, or be stepped on like bugs. Quentin is a lifelong gypsy, but he now lives in the Tucson, Arizona area, in an undisclosed location.
If you wish to contact the author to be informed about upcoming publications or to contribute suggestions or information that you feel would benefit the author's efforts or the value to his readers, you may email Quentin at
quentinravensbane@gmail.com
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