V Against a Screaming Planet (Unmaking Quest - An Arbiter's Rage)

[King Ghidorah]

I descend into the depths, through narrow, rocky tunnels which still glow with little limpid piles of golden ember: pulverized granite and vegetable ash, scorched and riven by my astral fury. The blackened walls are marred by strange channels within the stone, twisted and winding – the telltale imprints of the roots and vines which until recently strangled these caves; As I stalk deeper into the hollow crust of this benighted ice-ball I trace the serpentine patterns with one clawed hand.

The effect is less severe, but I can feel its presence within the very ground: the terrible blandness that I now recognize as the hallmark of Darkseid’s touch. Pursuing that awful sensation, at the very limits of my vision I catch glimpses of movement. It is swift, sinuous, slithering around corners and coiling behind stalagmites, burrowing into the dusty basalt floor - and in every case before I can identify it, it vanishes from my sight.

As I approach a fork in the path, a looming divergence of ways lined with stony spikes, like the throat of some great and lordly beast (myself for instance, in days gone by) a familiar sensation steals over me. I am angry – no, I am furious. Astral charge arcs and leaps across my gleaming scales; it crackles in the back of my throat, lighting the darkened tunnels in shades of molten gold.

This anger in and of itself isn’t unusual, and gives me no pause. There are a great many things about my situation for which I might be justly livid with rage. There is another emotion alongside it, however, mixed inextricably to the point where I could not truly call them separate feelings. While I have never experienced it personally before, I know its flavor well: Anger fed by sorrow – the towering, righteous rage of the bereaved.

I halt in my tracks, the clack of my talons upon the stone floor echoing through the silent tunnels. These are not my emotions; there is a shadow upon my thoughts, an echo of a grief and a fury the depths of which I have seldom encountered. It is a vengeful sadness so all-encompassing that even with my telepathic abilities at their current, humiliating ebb I can feel it as though it were my own – and it seems to come from everywhere at once.

Bursting from the tunnels head a ripple races along the walls – a swift and subtle disruption heralded by a bass note so deep that it is felt rather than heard, so quick that I can scarcely track it. It washes over me, a horrible crawling tingle, and is gone as swiftly as it came. I whip around, looking back from whence I’ve come – and see only darkness.

I snarl, anger and apprehension clashing with the foreign feelings. Even with only one functional pair of pathetically weak eyes, those tunnels did not appear so dim when I traversed but moments past – and even as I watch, they grow darker.

I raise my right hand and cosmic power crackles across my claws, the blazing golden light of a primeval catastrophe casting flickering shadows across the ancient basalt; Shadows which move and dance in ways that do not match my surroundings.

Shadows of creatures which are not present.

Echoing through the tunnels, a scream rises, then another, until a chorus of wailing agony assaults my aural canals with all of the subtlety of an iron brick. It is an empty sound, a pantomime: despair without the possibility of joy, shriven of context and value.

I sneer. If Darkseid’s puppets wish to frighten me they would do well to –

‘HOW COULD YOU?!’

The alien voice pounds against my consciousness. It carries more than just words, an ontological heft which bears deeper truths. I am abruptly consumed by the undeniable certainty that I am being addressed by the very soul of this frozen little world.

A word flickers across my brain.

Arbiter.

It seems that there are forces at work in this vile little drama with which I had not reckoned.

The stone beneath my feet cracks apart. The walls and ceiling dissolve, running and melting, ancient igneous rock dripping and sagging in a way that should not be possible without incredible heat. I have just enough time howl my cackling defiance before the ground gives way entirely, and, cosmic power and vivid scorn blazing bright in equal measure, I am sent tumbling into the dark.

739/2500 words

 

[King Ghidorah]

I drop like a comet through the subterranean night, a bronzed metallic star that plunges through the writhing murk trailing streaming arcs of amber lightning. Illuminated by the pulsing glow of my golden ire, titanic brown stalks flex and pulse: a forest of wrinkled columns bedecked with leaves twice the size of this diminished form which I am compelled by circumstance to call my own. The enormous vines squirm like great promethean serpents; They creak and groan as they move, twisting and branching, wending away into the void.

Normally I would be thrilled to encounter such grand fodder for my nihilistic muse, but these, too, bear Darkseid’s taint, their beige falsehood offending my astral perceptions. They offer nothing save empty spectacle and a terrible insight: this planet is more than merely afflicted – it is rotting from the inside. Even the darkness itself stinks of corruption, smearing my effulgent scales with an oily-yet-immaterial patina as I pass.

The impact, when in comes, is not the one which I am anticipating, arriving not from below but from the side. It burst out of the dark, eerily silent and five times my size: a mutant aerial predator, all pounding wings and polished chitin, blue scales and blackened teeth dripping with nameless venom. I am snatched by a talon dissimilar to my own only in terms of magnitude, sable claws grinding sparks from my golden hide, and raised to a set of screaming jaws lined with row after row of back-curved incisors. I squint as I feel its hot breath on my face – and I answer its scream with my own, a crackling torrent of solar-bright astral discharge unleashed directly down the beast’s pulsing gullet!

I am rewarded by a blow-back of pearlescent flame and blackened organ-meat as the primeval beast is lit from within, bones clearly visible through its hide for the merest instant as its vitals are consumed by the ancient fires of a newborn universe. With a roar that ends in a burbling screech, the claw in which I am held slackens, and I again tumble away into the dark – only to be struck from the other direction.

This time it is no subterranean apex-predator with a terminally mistaken idea regarding the order of the food-chain, but a swarm. Falling in an uncontrolled spin, my bearings hopelessly lost, I am surrounded by the rush of tiny wings, scraped and clawed by beaks and talons which sizzle with biting frost. It is… an irritation: Little pinpricks of pain, unable to cause true harm to my glorious golden body but which nonetheless prevent me from focusing. I unleash my power wildly, blazing arcs lancing into the dark, tracing flaming incisions in the looming vines and reducing dozens of the tiny bird-like harriers to burning skeletons, but every discharge gains me only a moments respite; there must be thousands of them.

So distracted – so enraged am I by my miniscule persecutors that I do not detect the ground approaching until it collides with my face.

My impact comes at an angle, sending me bouncing and rolling along an uneven rocky floor. Three times stalagmites shatter against my body, blunt impact jarring me to my very bones amidst flying shards of sedimentary rock. My momentum bleeds away with every impact until finally I strike a large boulder and am finally brought to a halt.

I push myself up to one knee upon a floor of steaming granite, lit by molten pools of magma. The air is thick with heat and reeks of sulfur. Raising a clawed hand to my bleeding face, I snap my lower jaw back into joint. The bone sets with a meaty pop and a flare of pain, rapidly fading as my regenerative abilities repair what little damage I have sustained. It is only then, as I wipe golden ichor from my snout with the back of my wrist and turn crimson eyes upon my surroundings, that I apprehend the scope of the force which this planet has arrayed against me.

1409/2500 words

 

[King Ghidorah]

I gaze upon a granite maze of uneven hills, stalagmites, and fractal crystal spires. Bubbling reservoirs of superheated ore and fast-moving streams of molten rock wend between them, casting everything in hellish shades of brilliant twilit crimson, stretching out over the landscapes like the bleeding, fiery veins of some vast subterranean god. Even as I watch the subterranean landscape twists and deforms, overtaken by terrible grinding tremors which fill the ruddy darkness with a deafening roar. The bedrock cracks and ripples like waves upon an ocean, plateaus and valleys rising and falling from moment to moment – and it does not stop. I am forced to scramble, adjusting my weight and position second by second, leaping from short-lived plateau to collapsing hilltop in order to avoid being sent sprawling. The crystal columns shatter and tumble, the crash and hiss of breaking crystal a mere accent upon the geological cacophony; Great gouts of magma burst forth, grasping fronds of molten rock pulsing from their violently shifting channels with the semi-random rhythms of an arterial spray.

In the light of my astral perceptions everything has gone flavorless and grey, a wave of bland irrelevance washing through the terrain. It is polluted, however, with the faintest echo of that all-pervading psychic scream which heralded the beginning of this frantic encounter. All around me, very near to the limits of my senses, everything is Darkseid, but this manifestation is flavoured by a secondary will: the wailing soul of this diseased little world.

Even given the scope of the problem this presents, and the unfortunate implications regarding the breadth of Darkseid’s capacity, the prospect of an immediate opponent in this matter who is not wholly without texture is a welcome one. Dancing and scuttling amidst geological chaos, my hide glittering crimson-gold and my snout still slick with my own blood, I curl back my lip in a savage and satisfied snarl – and immediately lose my footing, .

I am anchored to the spot by thorned black brambles; emerging form betwixt the heaving rocks they have lashed themselves around my ankles, and as I attempt to leap clear of the rippling stone I instead find myself catapulted face-first into a displaced magmatic tributary.

The heat is a shock, though not an unbearably painful one: This diminished form cannot withstand such temperatures for long, but endure them it may. Grinding my claws into the granite I lift my head clear of the molten flow, rapidly-cooling magma running in blackening beads down the red-hot scales of my scalded and smoking face. I wrench my legs free, snapping my arboreal shackles with little effort, but before I can right myself the ground bucks beneath me and I am hurled skyward – only to be immediately driven into the ground by a tremendous blow from above!

Stone buckles beneath my unyielding golden form, and a for a moment, dazed, I rest at the bottom of a shallow depression in the rock. Then the roiling landscape shifts again, and I am sent tumbling into a crevice that mere moments before did not exist. The stony fissure inverts itself with a terrible roar, battering and blinding me with flying stone shards as I am thrown again into the air. The sulfurous tang in the air is rapidly being overtaken by the scent of pulverized granite.

This time, I see the blow coming: it is a vine, as big around as my thigh and covered in gnarled obsidian bark and bearing leaves riven by glowing red veins. The mutated plant strikes me in the side this time, a resounding metallic clang echoing from my peerless hide, and I feel my rib-cage flex beneath the force of the blow. I sail across the cavern, finally impacting a wall which I had not previously been able to perceive through the dim subterranean twilight. Coughing golden ichor, amber energies crackling across my body in time with my rapidly spiraling rage, I drop to the ground amidst a shower of broken stone, barely managing to turn the momentum of my fall into a controlled tumble. The environment seems more stable near the wall, and my acrobatic efforts bring me to a crouch, bruised and bleeding, on a patch of momentarily-still gravel.

It is in the amidst this chaos that new foes emerge: tentacle-faced and hairless purple humanoids, reminiscent of the priest I encountered in the hollow garden not so long ago. They are bulkier than that subsumed and benighted fool, their limbs swollen with unnatural musculature and their bodies draped in stained and ragged robes. They move effortlessly through the heaving landscape, in perfect synchrony with the rhythms and upheavals of the grinding stone and leaping molten effluence. The creatures advance as though on rails, their legs concealed beneath their robes, still as statues save for the twitching of their tentacles, glistening orange in the underground glow.

2201/2500 words

 

[King Ghidorah]

I charge, leap into the air, golden gravity blazing in the palms of my hands, crackling across my fingers – only to be gripped by an invisible force and slammed again into the sheer stone of the cavern wall, pinned beneath the obsidian gaze of the advancing mutant mob. With every passing moment they grow closer, the seemingly-random motion of their progress coalescing into a semi-circle which closes in around my position, the roiling landscape parting to accommodate their passage.

In all of the universe there are few things I more despise than psychics.

Straining against the forces which bind me, ancient basalt grinds to sand against the golden scales which adorn my back as I am pushed into the wall. I cannot move my limbs, and even shifting my head feels as though I am dragging a planet from its orbit – but that does not mean I am without options. I snarl, cackle, and scream a torrent of white-hot astral charge, raking it across the gathered ranks of my soul-less tormentors! The muscles of my neck and shoulders vibrate under the strain, discharging amber arcs of energy, but still I persist in my assault.

Wheresoever my power alights, the heaving terrain erupts. Stone is pulverized into clouds of dust and shrapnel, magma sent skyward in great molten bursts. The cephalopod mutants whither beneath the glare of my fury, their ragged clothing blown to ashes, their purple flesh blistering, melting, tearing apart. Many of them fall, reduced to offal and ruin, but many do not, standing blackened and burned but still pinning me to the wall with a smoking, eyeless gaze.

The force binding me lessens. With a scornful roar of titanic effort I raise my arms, and in a blaze of cosmic power I strike down my foes. There is no satisfaction in it, no sense of want or wonder – only the mundane necessity and the knowledge that this conflict is not sustainable.

I cannot fight a planet; Not yet. There do, however, seem to be limits to what the force behind this attack upon my person can accomplish: soul of the world or not, if it held total sway over the fabric of these caverns I would already be imprisoned beneath megatons of unmoving stone.

Released from the psychics’ hold, I again drop to the floor, alighting with grace and poise at the wall’s base. Seemingly in response to my speculations, the geological chaos eases for a moment, a suspended tableau of magmatic falls, granite pillars and fractured plateaus. From nowhere, there comes a cool breeze, and in a frenzied eruption of splintering stone and splashing lava, a dark garden blooms.

In an instant they rise, a great deafening stutter-step crack as the very nature of the landscape changes before my eyes – great blackened tree-trunks hung with strands of flowering crimson vines and obsidian bushes adorned with glowing leaves whose veins pulse with magma. Enormous ferns, their blackened and twisted fronds ringed by writing tentacles which end in snapping jaws lined with shards of diamond. Released from its channels, molten ore spreads slowly out across the shattered floor, a glowing sulphurous lagoon; from beneath it thorned vines begin to emerge, gaining in mass and number with every passing moment, flexing towards my position with predatory intent.

This conflict is rapidly losing what little appeal it had as it quickly becomes evident that this chamber will simply keep spawning new challenges in an uninspired attempt to wear me down. It is a pedestrian tactic, but in light of my reduced capacities not completely without merit. With a wave of my hand I unleash an arc of destructive golden energies upon the advancing infernal vegetation, but it is only stymied for a moment, regrowing almost as fast as my power consumes it.

Enough of this.

In the frame of my astral perceptions the murky grey of Darkseid’s hackneyed corruption is all around me, like a cosmic landfill but without the merit or of depth of feeling such a midden heap might provide. I know that it does not extend forever, know too that the boundaries of this chamber are the one unchanging aspect of the scene – and so I grit my many serrated teeth, and for the second time in as many hours I call upon the true depths of the astral catastrophe which swells within my burnished yellow breast.

It is easier this time: no grand circuit is required to draw it forth, the strain upon my body far less taxing. Golden arcs cascade around me, the power flaring in the back of my throat, behind my eyes, crackling across my teeth. A brilliant saffron light rises from my scales, washing out this protean chamber’s molten shades of ruddy twilight. I pivot, my talons digging into the stone, stepping into the blow as I strike the wall of the cavern with a closed fist bearing the full weight of my power.

There is a flash and a roar. Granite crumbles beneath my toes as the force of my blow drives me ankle-deep into the floor. The entire chamber shakes, a shockwave laden with astral discharge bursting forth: the vines and brambles are blown back, the tide of magma stymied, the infernal tree-trunks creaking and groaning as they flex beneath the force of it – and the wall splits apart, caving in upon itself with an apocalyptic slow-motion rumble of rock grinding on rock.

For a moment, all is silent, save for the clack and creak of settling debris and the harsh whisper of rustling obsidian leaves. Before me, a crevice stands revealed – a fissure wending away into the deeper dark, from which rises a cool breeze.

The voice of the world screams again. :

‘NO! I WAS MAKING SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL! IT COULD ALL BE SO BEAUTIFUL! EVERYONE COULD BE SO HAPPY HERE IF IT WEREN’T FOR PEOPLE. LIKE. YOU!’

The calm passes and the false infernal forest erupts into a frenzied cacophony of moving fractal forms, flexing and merging into a single titanic foe, a single boring mass. I do not hesitate I leap once more into the subterranean night. Sprinting, vaulting, squeezing through narrow switch-back fissures I trace the path of a tale of my own titanic strength, its passage written in the bedrock of this blighted world. I can hear it collapsing behind me, the rumble of the arbiter’s rage, the firmament slamming closed like the jaws of a god snapping at my golden heels.

I grip the wall and surge around a final corner, emerging into a dull-blue crystalline glow. Ahead of me, a wider cavern yawns – one that tastes of ancient stone, simple geology. The fissure snaps closed just a moment too late, an echoing boom which sends little bits of stone trickling down from the ceiling far above.

I wait. No gauche grey miasma intrudes upon my senses. Somewhere nearby, I hear the tinkle of trickling water, smell condensation upon the underground breeze. In the near-distance, the feeble flames of complex, conscious lives tickle my cosmic perceptions.

My bronze muzzle twists in a satisfied snarl. Not only, it seems, have I for the moment escaped the wrath of this world’s fallen spirit, but I have been rewarded with thinking creatures – company and carnage which I may actually enjoy.

3411/2500 words. Quest complete!
Tune in for my next thread: How Ghidorah spent his summer vacation! (It will not, naturally, actually be called that)