Friday, June 20, 2014

Day Seven-Twenty-Five: Rise of the Nothing


Tremors, tremors, tremors in the dark. Tremors and running.

Because the ghostly rats are pretty much omnipresent down here, there's no real discrepancy between 'day' and 'night'. Everything looks the same. We can only guess when it's nighttime based on our levels of fatigue. When we're sufficiently tired, we sleep. Once we've slept enough, we wake up. Night, day, day, night. Simple. So when I say that something happened last night, I'm only guessing.

I'm glad it's somewhat light down here all the time. If we were forced to flee this thing in the pitch black... that would be bad. We'd probably all be dead.

Before the tremors awoke me and loosed my bladder, I was dreaming. My dreams were - Dragomir the Farsighted as I apparently am! - quite bad. In this case, I dreamed that Traveller, Traveller, had ripped my face off and put it over his own. He looked absolutely delighted to have two eyeballs again, as mine had left my skull along with my skin.

And beneath the skin...

I don't remember. A whole lot of blood. Not enough to jar me out of sleeping, apparently - it took the tremors to do that. Tremors, and the insistent push of Jeffrey's rocking hands.

"Dragomir! DRAGOMIR!" He hissed my name into my ears, quiet but insistent. "Wake up! Something's happening!"

Perhaps eager to escape my subconscious, I woke at once. At once, too, I noticed the dull pound of heavy vibrations through the stone beneath my body, as well as the thud, thud, thud of something impossibly heavy several blocks away. Sitting up, I poked my head through the window of our shelter, a two-floored mansion with some very fancy spiral staircases.

"Look," Jeffrey whispered, pointing carefully through the swarms of rats in the distance. "See? Fuck, it's huge."

"We're so dead," Logan whispered, joining us. Grylock tottered along at his side; I suspect Celine watched from the roof of the mansion. "Reeeeally could've used Traveller about now."

I didn't catch what they meant at first. Looking through long rows of buildings, all I could see beyond the rats was the rounded blackness of the horizon, as sure a sign as any that the city is massive. Then the blackness moved, toppling a tower, and I realized just what they meant.

"H... holy shit..." I swallowed. "That's the... the sphere we saw yesterday, isn't it...?"

Grylock cleared his throat and nodded. "Aye. Gotta be. Nay a thing down here that'd match the description. Daresay we'd best stay out of that brute's way, gents."

The sphere, whatever the fuck it is, wanders restlessly at intervals. It will pad about Below on enormous feet for three or four hours, go silent for two more, then continue shuffling about aimlessly. All it seems to do is knock over buildings, crush roads, and scare away large clouds of phantasmal rats. They won't go near the thing, which, in a way, helps us keep track of the sphere when it's not moving. I'd rather maintain my distance, personally, and I've refused offers from Logan and Celine to go check it out. I don't want it to know that there are living creatures down here.

Unless... unless it already knows.

And if it does...

Could it be looking for us...?

I don't want to consider that. Not for a fucking second.

Sincerely,


Dragomir the Wanderer

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