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Info
Stygian Blue Moon
Author:FleshMaddAvalon
This piece contains gore, suicide, scenes of extreme violence, and sexual elements. BUYER BEWARE
The moon stirs. Under its surface, beasts arise, a millennium of resting and waiting finally coming to an end. The core of the planetary satellite begins to pulse with ancient anger, an ancient evil once imprisoned by cosmic forces no longer present. They yearn for their old home, they yearn for their previous living space. The water, the sea, the ocean. It is a place of intense evolutionary pressures, of nature's innate creativity. The ritual is nearly complete. Like sawdust in a workshop, hatred of the human race floats among and through these beasts. If someone was standing on the surface of the Moon, their vision would be filled with three immense beams of cosmic light, beautiful rays of energy, slowly moving towards the lunar object they are residing on at the moment. The various rituals being committed across various coasts beginning to work, pistons in an engine of intentional and focused doom. Pumping, primed, prepared. It is nearly time for the world to kneel.
Anderson is nearly moaning with pleasure, the power flowing through him, his pentagram, his focusing tools. The energy is here, and it is beautiful. The research he did, in some transparent realm between realms, has paid off, his energies and effort finally coming to fruition as his plans swing into full-tilt motion. All that remains is the destruction of the so-called "bookburners," some clan of degenerate scum humans that attempt to oppress all within their grasp. Anderson's perception has expanded to five miles within his position, every little thing occurring within this zone rocking around his brain like a brick in a washing machine. Within this zone, Anderson can see six military vans, each aluminum box filled with six heavily armed humans. Anderson laughs, his ball-throwing monster moving into position, a fleshy half-human artillery machine crying with pain as she is positioned by forces outside her body. A command — not spoken but thought, quicker than any trigger pull or keystroke — and a thick ball of energy and iron careens, containing gunpowder mixed with the blood of a demon flies out, twirled by the growing cyclone of energy, and flung out, on a nearly perfect, sensuously curved arc.
The cannonball is expertly aimed and the path of the targets is predicted perfectly. The ammunition reaches its target, flying home into the reinforced roof of the truck, slamming into it, and exploding with the force of a missile. The truck, and the trucks on either side, explode in greenish hellfire, the men within it burned to a crisp, their screams a chorus of pleasure for Anderson, his fingers spasming with joy as his body feels a true sense of oneness with the world. His enemies burn at his whim. The twirling power of his rituals is pulling, gripping, twisting the moon down, bringing it back to its home, bringing them back to their home. The energy is focused, and his work is expertly done. The cannon fires again, the ball twirling up into the now tornado-level magical energy swirls as it explodes in the oosphere and exosphere, destroying any remaining barriers between the ritual and its target.
It is lunar pull at its fullest.
It is anger directed at a thousand million billion screaming pointless souls.
The world is at its knees, and Anderson holds the executioner's axe.
The vans draw near, within the range of Anderson's heavily equipped homeless man. Beneath the plates of armor grafted to his skin with gnarled seaweed piercing his veins, he grins, recognizing the three-arrowed symbol gracing the sides of the vans. In his current state, the man cannot speak, but it's easy to guess what he would've whispered, the words coming from the throat those arrows crushed again and again: "Revenge." An impulse travels along his veins, quickened by the enchanted seawater that has made its way into every system of his body. The twitch of a reassmbled hand and a bullet fires from the hand-machined long barrel 450Z assault rifle, the compact stock with inbuilt shock absorbers keeping recoil minimal as a torrent of bullets flood out, high-pressure torrents of water-like-brass. His heart pumps lead, the veins the carrying mechanism for the ammunition, fired from tools of man, changed and destroyed. The bullets find their homes. The soldiers feel the pointed armor-piercing bullets rip through their skin, blood splattering across every piece of glass in the vans. A bullet makes the long trip, finding its home in a man's eye socket, ripping through his cornea and spraying yellowish goo before popping through his skull like a thumb bursting a bubble, brains splattered over the screaming, temporarily traumatized face of his compatriot, until that man has his windpipe turned into a four-way intersection.
Blood sprays.
Organs pop.
Eyes shut.
Tears fall.
The moon shudders as its orbit shifts, bringing it another kilometer closer to the Earth.
The west coast is abuzz with movement. On the nearly abandoned stretch of trashy desert, the old man who lost his wife sits in a lawn chair, surrounded by seaweed and letting their hatred fuel the ritual. Slowly, the sands begin to take shape. Rising from the ground, humanoid forms begin to take shape, slowly absorbing the moisture from the now cresting waves, solidifying, and then falling away. This cycle is repeated several times until, surrounding the old man, are the forms of pirates, sailors that died in the now roiling ocean waves slamming the shore. Bedecked in the spectral imitations of their ancient garb, carrying swords, muskets, and flintlock pistols, a horde of the undead prepares their final duty- to hasten the death of world none of them ever felt at home in, to bring the sea to bear. An army of the damned, many hung for simply trying to survive in a world which refuted the nromalcy of their people, their cultures, their very skin. They are angry. The vans approaching down the beachside road halt on the other side of the beach, along the grass marked by scraggly trees.
A protective shell of seaweed embraces the old man, shimmering and constantly shifting, dripping. A Feberge egg of hate, power, and greed.
The armored men with the circular, tripled-arrow insignia emblazoned on their vests extricate themselves form their transport, falling into three orderly squads of six each. Three vans now lie empty, waiting for their masters. The soldiers advance on their orders, piped into their ears using satellite communications. Each vest has a camera recording each soldier's actions, their advance slow and deliberate. The bodies of the dead hold no such regulations and charge, a hearty yell emanating from their undying throats. Are they specters? Spirits? Illusions? These thoughts race through the minds of the soldiers who open fire. The bullets, normal 5.56mm, pierce their targets ineffectually, their bodies reforming quickly, but ping off their weapons and go in a variety of wild angles. One soldier screams. It is his first day, and he attempts to flee. Nothing can save him now.
The pirate dead collide with the squadrons, swords shredding through high-density polyethylene armor, machine-sewn fabric ribbing easily, bones popping out of sockets as sharpened oceanic steal lodge in joints, the strength of the undead letting them rip arms out of sockets. Blood sprays, absorbed by the sandy creatures, empowering them. With every swipe, every stab, blood sprays and is absorbed, and then funneled along the beach to the seaweed Faberge egg, who is then infused with this spilled blood, empowering the ritual even further. Within the book, the creature giggles with murderous glee as they feel the spilled life-blood of the damned filling its charge. Up above, the egg/Moon shudders, anticipation flooding through it. It moves ten kilometers closer to the earth. It is nearing the time.
On the Atlantic coast, sitting on top of a skyscraper, the woman who had her family taken away from her sits in ecstasy. Hared flows through her, the constructed ritual components ready for their purpose. The crab skitters back and forth, adjusting and ensuring each component works perfectly, and the human-tools are integrated properly into the flesh of the sacrifices. Everything has been prepared and is working excellently. A typhoon of magical energy is sweeping up into the sky, a rainbow of blues and greens swirling about as ravens in a heat bank. The rising heat creates wind currents along the city, the southern heat swelling up and causing the nearby buildings to turn into sweltering hotboxes. As people filter out, they begin calling emergency services, and a news van arrives, and begins filming. Across the continent, by the Gulf, the woman-cannon fires, cannonballs swept up into the sky and carried by cosmic winds to their target. Four enchanted and empowered steel messenger balls are swung into the cosmic tornado, shooting downwards into the spell components. They explode before impact, infusing the constructs with intense amounts of mystical energies. The woman laughs at the protection of her unseen master, them giving more than the world.
The beings stand, no longer human, not at all machine, something else. In the stairwell of the building, a passing patrol officer, eyes filled with determination, opens the door to the roof of the apartment building. As he opens the door, gun drawn, the being closest to the door splits away from the formation, bladed fingers whirring in angry circles. With a wasp-like strike, they attack, slicing through the 9mm pistol barrel easily, stabbing a claw into the man's chest whirring, blending, turning his chest into a soupy homogenate of bone fragments and organ meat. The would-be savior is then dragged through the torential winds, and dropped in front of the crab. It chitters, its claws clicking against each other and reforming into monstrous human hands, five-fingered and four-thumbed. It skitters away, running to an empty apartment and obtaining a stand mixer and flat iron, the walls of the building crumbling as massive gouts of seaweed work their way through the foundation, tracing the underground sewers of the city from the toxic sewage dumps that empty directly into the ocean.
The crab begins to work, disassembling the human-tools, using a blade d claw to cut apart the dead officer, seaweed shooting up to begin pumping salt water into his veins. His heart is replaced by the mechanical innards of the mixer, his thumbs replaced by flat iron heating mechanisms, his throat twisted and blended around the trigger and grip of his pistol. With a final chanting from the crab, he is risen, it lives again. The training the crab undertook under Anderson has grown and given fruit, fermented in the mind of a beast. The new protector stands, the open chest whirring with dripping flesh, useless organs sloshed away and absorbed by the women again. The cop-thing no longer haas thoughts of its own. It no longer possesses instincts beyond death. It turns toward the Annalissa-witch, and bows. Annalissa bids it to find more fuel. There is a fight coming. She needs an army.
She hugs herself, grinning. She has found her purpose. She has entered her ideal form. She can feel every moment of this. Annalissa has become the thing she always desired- a tool to destroy the world. Her body feels like a tuning fork, vibrating at its highest possible octave. Her mind is filled with pleasure as the cop-thing turns and enters the apartment again. She is no longer Annalissa, she decides. She is the Sea-Witch-Queen, the penultimate result of an abusive world. Her body has been changed, her figure full in a way she always desirred. Her face has become angular and sharp, small anterior jaws enclosing her lips and jutting from her cheeks. As she leans over the puddles of blood and takes in her reflection, she unleashes a deep and gutteral moan of pleasure, and swings her arm in a wide arc, disembodying the chest and legs of several curious passersby with swinging vine.
The moon shudders, lunar dust shedding away as it moves one thousand kilometers closer to the earth.
As it shunts closer to its destination, the cratered surfaces begin to shudder. The energy, three massive tornados of light and power, of hatred and destruction, sweep up and grip the satellite. Like three enormous hands, their power pulls the floating dead shell closer to its place of origin. Closer to the shattered tectonic plates that were once flung into the sky.
Human scientists posit that, hundreds of millennia ago, the moon was flung into the sky by a massive meteor colliding with the Earth in a cataclysmic collision very early in the Earth's life, before the surface cooled entirely. They are wrong. In the much closer past, a race of humanoids managed to master magic. Their tormentors were aquatic, on the land, and beasts of the air that pushed humans into a small area of modern-day Africa, destroying any cultural evidence of their existence. As with many innovations in this world, it was fueled by hatred. The beasts of the sea were baited together, and a monstrous spell was cast. Hundreds of humanoids sacrificed themselves to fuel this spell, morphing the very stone and grinding their bodies to fine dust. The beasts were flung into the sky, the sacrifices magnetized to the surface of this spiteful ovular prison. Lunar dust is not rock dust- it is the cremated and decimated ashes of human ancestors who sacrificed themselves to save their world. It has been an epoch. It is time for another. All of this is present in the eternal memories of the beasts within. They are waiting. The time nears.
Anderson has achieved his ultimate form. His skin has been stripped away, titanium-strong scales replacing his skin, his body becoming the form he has lusted after for more than one hundred and fifty years. The skin was stripped away by the winds, and thrown up into the sky to act as further fuel. His organs rearrange, becoming more efficient and smaller. His hands become webbed, his toes lengthening with a series of sickening cracks to become flippers, a razor-sharp set of claws and fins popping out on his forearms and back. He no longer requires an enchanted sack to carry the tools of his delay trade- much like his components, they have been assimilated into his body, his now bulging muscles serving as retracting mechanisms to bring out tools as Anderson desires. He has become the arrow, the quiver, and the bow, the tools of his masters now made into one streamlined murderous creature. The hordes have arrived, a convoy of vans having been dispatched. It has been three hours since the ritual began. It only needs another hour. Anderson grins maniacally as he steps out of the ritual circle, clasping what passes as hands with his formerly homeless compatriot. His voice is like rocks being bashed by a thousand hammers.
"My friend, you have served me well. I only ask for another hour of your service."
The homeless man nods.
"May you find peace in Valhalla, ally."
The homeless man grins, the few remaining teeth dripping with blood. Anderson lunges towards his foes, his new body gleaming with moisture as a pair of blades slides out of his length forearms and into his hands, forged from the remnants of a meteorite. His blades slide against each other, singing the song of battle. Yearning for spilled blood. The need to create bodies, to turn the living into that paralyzed race known as the dead. To consume those dead as the sickening fuel for more conquest, more war, more death. An unending cycle. Anderson is now in that cycle. He relishes it, more than the love of any human, more than the life that caused him nothing but pain until he found his masters. Dual-bladed, stone-hearted, and hatred-shielded, he bounds into battle. The moon screams down, rocketing to the Earth at approximately eighteen meters per second.
Purpose is a hard thing to find. The homeless man, Yasheem, has been looking for it all his life. As he sends electrical impulses along his neural pathways, causing bullets to slam into the eyes, throats, and hearts of armored enemies, it flows through him like the alcohol he loves. Murder was the one thing he was good at, ever since the Army turned him into a killer. But of course, when his usefulness came to an end, there was no cushion. No parachute. No safety net. He was thrown onto the street, made to look insane, and had his life ruined when he tried to raise alarms. "Just a terrorist," they said. "A foreign agent to be ignored," said the news. "A valor-stealing bastard," from his own family. There was nothing for him. Just the sweet, burning emptiness of liquor and wine. When Anderson found him in the back alley of a box store, he was crying into a bottle of the cheapest whiskey he could find. All Anderson had to do was lean down, put a bill of large denomination into his hand, and whisper of a purpose for his life. Yasheem gave Anderson his life and connections to the old military suppliers for the weapons that now make up his body. For once in his life, he felt seen, valued, and appreciated.
Alan is no longer here. Alan is no longer a conscious entity. He has melded with the fish, the entity that morphed into the highly magical book his corpse holds in its hands. Slowly, the fish has been melding with Alan, keeping his brain alive in a soup of primordial energies, irradiating his mind according to the plan the fish had to memorize. As Alan's body is busy being reconstituted to the ocean, the undead pirates finish destroying the men sent by the basement dwellers, two dozen corpses lying bloody and disassembled on the sandy ground. The pirates drag these corpses, along with every human tool bought by the soldiers, close to Faberge Seaweed egg, bowing their heads in silent vigil as they wait for orders from their master.
From within the egg of ocean plants, tendril-like limbs emerge. Hands bonded to seaweed stick out, swirling in the wind as they approach the bodies and weapons. The fingers of the former old man work quickly, disassembling the guns and cars and armor, energy flowing from the fingertips. Like scalpels, the hands dip and tear, opening and rearranging, inserting and fusing. Destruction for creation. The bodies are assembled- and through the winds, another cannonball flies. The hands slide up, cutting it into multiple pieces, the miniature explosions depositing energy into the waiting bodies. Again, they rise, the hands now dripping with necromantic energies. The army of the damned rise as the armies of the fools approach, streaming quickly down the sandy backroads, running through barriers, slamming through the shed of the old man. They have arrived, again. A war on three fronts has started.
The armies collide, like waves smashing against each other. Foam sprays, red-tinged with death. Conventional weapons are of no use against these creatures of the sea- sand flies, seaweed sings, and the bloodcurdling screams of the dead echo. You don't need to put your ear to a seashell to hear the pulse of the Earth- it has risen up, taken its mighty fist, and begun to wreak havoc upon the human world. Death has wrought itself upon the world. It has risen up from the shackles of humanity, slamming against its cement cage, and broken through.
The Atlantic coast shimmers with activity. People flee, and others hunker down. Scientists lie dead in droves in various facilities, bullet holes bored through their foreheads, lower jaws, and hearts. Mass suicide. The shit has hit the fan. And upon an apartment building in the city of Miami, a woman stands up from a chair, having found not just her voice, but her perfect, truest form. She looks up, seeing the moon begin to zoom down to the Earth, and a sick grin crosses her face. Her army has been assembled, more than forty soldiers of the sea, equipped and assimilated with various kinds of household tools to create monstrous beasts of hatred. Their combat will begin immediately. With her hair replaced by a flowing net of turquoise seaweed, and her arms covered in keratinous scales, she sends her army to fight the invaders encroaching on the streets surrounding the building. The Atlantic coast war begins as the humanoid beasts filter down the staircase and enter into the street, beginning the assault on any other human within reach.
The basement-dwellers managed to assemble a contingent to attempt to detonate large explosive charges at the base of the apartment building in an attempt to cease the ritual. This would have failed- it has become more seaweed than concrete, dense and shimmering with rage. Not-Annalissa moans with pleasure as she sees her soldiers begin slaying these armored fools. Blood sprays and she grasps her own breast with joy. Organs spurt out of a man's open chest, and her hand grips her own thighs. A head is separated from its vehicle and an orgasmic moan escapes her throat, a rounded blade of seaweed encircling her leg, slowly rising up to reach her body. She has found her purpose, she has found her bliss. As the army she raised undergoes combat, she joins with the sea. She has become its wife, its lover, and its compatriot, an ally in triplicate form. Her conjoinment with the ocean is complete, and the building is ripped from its foundation and begins to move out of the city, slowly edging away from the intended impact zone of the Moon. As this happens, the roof becomes a mess of tangled roots, bodily fluids, and yelping, excited sounds of human pleasure. Earth rewards those that serve it with innumerable pleasures beyond compare.
It is coming.
It is approaching.
The allies are protected.
It is finally time
The moon breaks the atmosphere, shedding an initial layer. The dust of the imprisoned is tripped away by radiation, the ozone layer, and friction. Underneath is ancient, frozen earth, dirt, and stone fused together. It was flash-frozen by the hating embrace of space, creating a still-porous prison containing the beasts of legend. The inspiration for a variety of legends and mythologies, the beasts writhe in agony, in an exultation of the oncoming stream of violence. It blots out the sun. It casts a deep dark shadow where no light penetrates. It casts a shadow on the sunny coasts of Florida and slams down. The Governor's mansion is destroyed in a blitz of stone, crushing every single of its occupants into a homogenous human paste. It tucks itself into the elbow of Florida, destroying everything in its path as water begins to rush out away from it, creating a tsunami across the entire Gulf, then just as quickly is sucked back into the moon, the now shining crystalline surface penetrated by a high-pressure sucking system contained within. Ocean water, filled with salt and nutrients and plankton and fish, is entered into the dry, thin-shelled prison that has held these monsters for so long. They are here. They are ready. The beasts have come home.