Chapter Text
She wasted no time, Poppy sprang into action and wrestled out of the muddy pit, glancing in all directions she brushed the entire surrounding with her sight. There was too much to see, her cat-like pupils shot open like punctured hides. She looked up and a flurry of dark clouds began pouring into the once clear sky, and an iron red light ruptured through them like a bloody wound.
Her breath began growing desperate for air as she began looking around. What is this, she thought. I gotta run… but why? There was a knot in her stomach, she felt a dread she had never felt before, one that ripped through her chest and pulled like a hook trapped between her ribs. She felt this before.
She held visions. Visions of Orlon not succumbing to age gracefully, but of him desperately folded on the ground begging for life writhing in the ground, trying to rub dirt into his skin which began to bubble and melt into a putrid green liquid. His face became indistinguishable, and his once shining hair was dry and tumbling off his brow as he moaned like a weeping child, dabbing his scalp with the once shining mane with increasing fervor until they became a pounding and resounding thump. Rhythmically thumping louder and louder until his head began creaking and crackling. Soon after, a voice began chanting for help as her vision quickly sprang from a series of creatures frozen in terror as they looked up at a darkness overcoming them. The thumping grew louder and the crackling began sparking and snapping like an unrelenting fire. She felt a terrible pressure in her eyes and then slithering on her thigh. She looked down at her feet as she stood on a floor made entirely of slimy interweaving ligaments. One of them was wrapped around her leg and it reeled its end, it had a mouth but no eyes and no nose and no ears, Poppy’s screams were stifled by her frozen body as she stared at this fleshy snake with an intent to dig itself into her skin.
A quick sting and Poppy finally woke up, she looked down at her thigh, a weasel as white as snow had bit her thigh and wriggled around trying to free himself from the boot he got trapped in. She gasped and rubbed her scornful eyes exposed to the fresh air like festering wounds with tears rolling down her face. The crackling grew louder still, and Poppy looked towards the forestry behind her. It was the crackling of woods. And the thumping, it was the thump of her heart that pulsed in her ears. But the clouds were still looming over, and a fiery light still pierced them.
Poppy quickly sprang towards the opposite pines and looked around with lunatic fear. She heaved desperately as to not let her thoughts catch wind. Beyond her sat a decrepit fallen trunk from a pine, slowly becoming engulfed in shadows. She jumped into it and plugged the hole behind her with her hammer. The weasel in her boot was frozen in fear as she. As she lay in fear, she felt a soft breathing near her head, there were others, squirrels and mice were trapped by her head, and above them, a spider was still in its silk web. Her fur was straight at every edge of her body with not a thought in stir, synchronized with all the creatures in the log.
The light of the fires were piercing the log. Poppy could barely make out some ground through cracks in the log across from her. But that was all, only the ground with grass littered about. It was then that she heard a heavy breathing, huffing and puffing, slow as the devil’s stroll. The crackling of flame slowly followed in a rhythmic pace with familiar pauses. She peered closely into the crack to make more out what she could see, but she couldn’t push farther to see, her body wouldn’t allow it even though it could. The grass began to wilt and rot. She heard a high pitched squeal and a clambering as she saw two pairs of hooves run past her sight, they were small and nearly unscratched.
The huffing grew louder, and she heard scratching on the ground. She saw a fifth hoof take an earth shattering step, it was larger, as large as all four of the other hooves put together and it was soaked in a darkness and seemed to exhume black fumes from its origin. Then, another hoof clamped down with a quiet sizzle. And the former hooves, the four, belonging to one creature, slowly levitated off the ground and she heard the squeal grow louder and more desperate, higher and violent, as if to say, “Help me, help me, please help me!”
It did not stop, the squealing did not stop, instead it became slower and drew longer squeals as they echoed quietly in the forest. A thump quickly followed, a large mass thudded on the ground before her, not as loud as the silhouette would indicate. All was still. She heard a large snorting and she twitched in fear. It came closer, the snorting brushed over her hiding hole and it snorted heavily. Something brushed against the trunk she was hiding in and began slowly moving it side to side, taking large whiffs of air and exhuming foul gusts of hot iron air. An unbearable heat wafted into the log with each gust, but still, all remained still within the log.
She winced as she felt the log rumble, and when she opened her eyes, the ground was far beneath the hole she saw. A dark mass was visible through the crack. Poppy could not decipher as to what she was looking at. It was an awful mess. A mass of contorted wretched masses, bloody and dark, contorting with rhythmic viscera. It had eyes that burned faintly red, like a dimming charred mass in a dying flame. Her thoughts recoiled and wretched, and a burn surged through her neck that enauseated her with its melting heat. Indecipherable horrors were what laid beneath the surface of this bloody mess. An amalgamation of wailing she could not hear but watch within the bloody viscera. Eyes stared from beneath. Familiar eyes she’s never met. Eyes like hers but innumerable. And she realized that what she gazed at was merely a shadow on the ground below.
A roar from the distance, as well as the sound of distant snapping quickly pierced the air. The creature stopped and with no warning, Poppy saw the ground beneath her move away, and she was pressed against the log before seeing the ground become sky then a violent thud as the log smashed against a few jagged rocks. She heard the heavy snorting farther away now, and the log was cracked and battered, losing some of its structure, she felt herself exposed from the back down.
A foul high pitched roar shattered the sky, and finally Poppy could move, the squirrels scattered out and the spider scurried out, while the weasel was wriggling free. She herself began pushing her head out of the log. And, when she finally broke free from it. The sky was blue once more. The forest she was in had restored its hue, and the clouds, gone.
Poppy looked around, it was all back to normal. She looked down at the weasel and pulled it free from her boot. It wriggled around before nipping at her glove and breaking free, getting lost in the pines.
She got up and slowly walked back to the craters. The trees around her were dead and wilted away, and the grass around her was a pale bone yellow. She slowly stepped towards the place where she once hid.
A small crater laid where the log once was. But, her attention slowly rose up to the once dark mass. A dead creature was curled up there, and over it was another creature, just like it, but larger. She recognized it, a Druvask, large, violent beasts. Though, this one stood quietly over the little one. Poppy rounded it slowly, but it paid it no mind. She saw a pair of udders underneath it, and she finally realized that the smaller one was its child.
But child it was no more, it was pale, sunken inwards, all its skin clinged onto its bone like drapery on wood. Its eyes. Its eyes were still there. Poppy looked quietly, the eyes were open and strangely fresh. They even twitched slightly. But, there was nothing to be done. Its eyes slowly began to lose moisture and they began to dampen as its mother slowly sniffed around its body, nudging it silently.
Poppy quietly moved away pausing to feel a hot ichor fall to her lips. Blood had leaked from her nose, and she closed her eyes for a moment to remember her old friend. She was visited by a vivid vision of Orlon, laid in his bed with his children gathered around, she watched from afar as his skin turned a pale white, like a candle losing its wick to turn a pale stone color, like a statue frozen forever more.