Australian Outback
Excerpt from Wrath of the Heavens: The Dichotomy of The Storm by Elder Maxwell Forrester
In the vast emptiness of the Australian Outback, a tempest raged with divine fury, witnessed by no mortal eyes. Pillars of lightning struck relentlessly, each bolt a celestial hammer smashing into the sands. Rather than forming the usual small piles of silicon dioxide that are created when lightning mixes with sand, these monumental strikes wrought something miraculous.
Massive towers of glass ascended from the desert floor. Each lightning strike birthed another architectural marvel, each column of lightning a divine architect crafting a holy edifice.
The heavens flickered with continuous flashes, each a moment of divine creation. Over the course of twenty-two minutes, the once barren landscape was transformed into a shimmering city of glass. Hundreds of thousands of lightning strikes converged to sculpt a celestial metropolis, a beacon to the faithful.
As The Storm subsided, an entire city of glass stood tall amidst the red sands of the Outback. The intricate and ethereal structures glistened under the sunlight, casting rainbow reflections across the desert. This miraculous city was destined to remain unnoticed for the next month, hidden in a remote section of the Australian Outback while the rest of the world grappled with the aftermath of The Storm.
While cities and towns across the continent assessed the damage, counted the losses, and began the arduous process of rebuilding, the glass city of the Outback stood untouched. The world remained unaware of its holy creation, a testament to the divine’s unpredictable artistry, lying in wait for the faithful to stream into its borders. This shimmering beauty awaited an unsuspecting traveler or an adventurous pilgrim to discover its sacred splendor, heralding the dawn of a new faith.
Avore Bamba, Gabon
Loic was truly horrible at football.
That wasn’t Tarik’s opinion, it was pure fact. He was sure all the other kids would agree with him if the topic were ever brought up. That was the only comforting thought in Tarik’s head as he trudged the couple hundred meters from the pitch over to where the ball had rolled.
Loic was the biggest and fastest boy in town. His speed let him catch up to anybody on the pitch, and his physicality pressured the younger kids into always making mistakes and allowed him to snatch the ball back for his team. But it was his strength that was the problem. He couldn’t kick the ball accurately to save his life, always trying to smash it as hard as he could instead of adding a little finesse to his touch.
Tarik had tried to convince the older boy to switch to centre back. It would have been a natural fit for the larger kid. But Loic had brushed him aside easily, saying he was going to play forward or nothing.
Tarik was the youngest and smallest of the local boys. And when everyone was out on the pitch, there was no spot for him. They had all convinced him to be the team manager, to come up with the strategies, to run the practice. But that was only because he was small and young and easily manipulated into standing aside and not threatening the spots of any of the other players on the team.
All the other boys had told Tarik that the manager was the most important person on the pitch. Klopp, Ferguson, Guardiola. All those were big and important names in the world of football. It was because the manager was so important that he was the only one on the touchline who was allowed to wear a suit and tie. The other boys had all raided their fathers’ closets and come up with a mismatched ensemble that they had claimed made Tarik look like a true manager. And when all the fathers, wondering why they were suddenly missing shirts and ties, came down to the pitch, they all laughed and took pictures of Tarik in his ill-fitting clothes and told him he looked important.
What could he do after that?
He’d wear his oversized suit and tie, stand on the sidelines shouting encouragements and instructions to the other boys, and try desperately to get them to play in specific formations. And whenever he complained that he wanted to play football and not just pace the sidelines managing the team, the other kids – and sometimes even their fathers – would all say that the manager was important and vital and one of the most well-respected people on the team.
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But that didn’t mean anything to Loic. Whenever he had the ball and tried for a goal and inevitably kicked it too hard and inaccurately and the ball soared through the air and rolled away from the pitch, Tarik was always the one pushed to go and retrieve it.
Today was an even longer walk than normal for Tarik. Loic had really put all his growing power into the shot and the ball had rolled far into the overgrown grass by the field, forcing Tarik to spend time looking for it. With the shouts of the other boys ringing in his ears, he eventually found the ball nestled next to a chunk of grass.
Rain began to fall in a gentle drizzle, the kind that hardly bothered Tarik. He knew the game wouldn’t be called off for something as small as a few raindrops. He stared up at the sky, trying to determine if the slight misting was a precursor to a much larger storm, when the ground gave way beneath him. Tarik startled out a cry and plunged into the earth, swallowed by a massive sinkhole.
Tarik’s panicked screams drew all the other boys who came running. When they saw the massive sinkhole that had swallowed their friend it was Loic that acted first. He yelled for all the other kids to stay there before running off to find an adult.
The closest building to the pitch was the local concrete factory and Loic quickly returned in a jeep driven by the factory foreman with several adults all crammed in the backseat of the small beat-up vehicle. Minutes after the ground had opened and swallowed Tarik, the place was swarmed with adults who were worried they couldn’t help the boy, already thinking through what they could say to console his family, feeling horrible for the unbidden thought that crept into their minds of ‘at least it wasn’t my son.’
Tarik’s cries were lost in the darkness. He landed with a splash in a cavern far below the surface, the chill of the underground river shocking him into silence. For a moment, he lay there stunned and disoriented. Then he spotted the small tunnel he had fallen through.
Driven by a mixture of fear and determination, Tarik climbed. His hands were scratched raw by the dirt and rocks and roots as he pulled himself upwards inch by inch. The climb was endless and all his attempts to lift himself seemed thwarted by the weight of his soggy suit dragging him back down.
Tarik heard shouts and saw flashes of light coming from above as he continued climbing. He screamed for help, hoping someone would hear. A rope was tossed down the hole, and Tarik managed to grip it with as much strength as he could muster. He was pulled out of the sinkhole, his ill-fitted suit getting drenched with dirt and grime along the way. When he finally emerged, his lip was split and a cut had opened above his left eye, the blood dripping onto and staining his dirty, ripped clothes.
Tarik looked around, searching for whomever had thrown him the rope. His gaze swept across the children and adults gathered around the sinkhole, and his eyes widened in shock.
A man, over six feet tall, wore the jersey that Loic had received for his birthday a month ago. It was tight around his torso, and the shorts he wore were much too small. Next to him was Patrick, one of Tarik’s closest friends, now with grey hair, wrinkles around his eyes, and a hunch as if standing upright was too much of an effort.
Everywhere Tarik looked, something was wrong. Alain, the foreman of the local cement factory and his father’s boss, was young again. His clothes hung off him, much like Tarik’s ill-fitted suit did. Mr. Ondo was tiny, smaller than Tarik now, with even less hair on his head than before. He stared up at everyone around him, having shrunk to about three feet tall and regressed to looking like a toddler.
Loic was the first to speak, his voice trembling. “What happened to us Tarik? Why are we like this?” The pleading in his voice matched the fear in the eyes of the crowd that had formed around them. Tarik could only glance at them, his own confusion and dread mirrored in their faces.
Pacific Ocean
Excerpt from Wrath of the Heavens: The Dichotomy of The Storm by Elder Maxwell Forrester
At a staggering 100 feet long and weighing up to 200 tons, the Blue Whale is the largest known creature to have ever graced God’s green Earth.
These magnificent leviathans, with their immense size and divine grace, command the depths of the ocean as the silent giants of the marine world. Yet on the day that night blanketed the Earth and vanished the Sun from the sky, even these colossal beings were not spared from the wrath of The Storm that sought to corrupt all that was righteous.
In an unexplored stretch of the Pacific Ocean, The Storm gathered its fury, far from the path of sailors or ships. Towering waves crashed violently, and lightning split the skies, casting stark flashes of light across the ink-black waters. At the heart of this malevolent tempest was a blue whale cut off from its pod. Smaller than many of its brethren, it measured only 80 feet in length and weighed nearly 250,000 pounds.
As The Storm reached its climax, a massive waterspout formed, a spiraling vortex that connected the ocean to the heavens above. The blue whale, caught in the violent currents and disoriented by the underwater chaos, was inexorably drawn towards the heart of the waterspout. With a force that defied comprehension, the vortex lifted the immense creature from the depths, swirling it within its watery grasp.
Suspended in the maelstrom, the whale underwent an unholy transformation. As it was hurled through the air by The Storm’s fury, it began to grow. What had once been a relatively small representation of its species turned into a gargantuan beast, like a wandering mountain flung into the sky by The Storm’s cruel power. The blue whale, now an awe-inspiring giant, was carried for miles until, with a crash, it was slammed onto the shores of an uninhabited island in the Pacific.
The impact left the whale stranded; its colossal body sprawled across the sand. Yet, it continued to grow. What had started as an 80-foot whale slowly stretched until it reached an astonishing 300 feet in length. Its weight doubled and then doubled again until it weighed 500 tons. This sudden and inexplicable growth, combined with the abrupt change in environment, left the whale stunned, vulnerable, and in fear. It had evolved to thrive in the cool, vast ocean depths, not on a scorching, desolate beach.
As The Storm slowly dissipated and the sky turned from dark grey to clear blue, a grim and unnatural phenomenon began to unfold. The whale’s immense form, lying exposed under the harsh tropical sun, started to decay at a supernatural rate. Despite its continued, labored breathing, the whale’s skin cracked and blistered, and a foul stench of rot began to emanate from its body. It was as if the very life of this giant creature was being forcibly drawn out, its body unable to cope with the rapid transition and unnatural growth.
Had there been any witness to this unholy miracle, they would have been struck by the sight of the enormous whale, a symbol of the ocean’s deepest mysteries, and the tragic spectacle of its rapid decay. They would have called the entire situation both awe-inspiring and deeply tragic. The enormity of the whale, grown much larger within the waterspout, served as a humbling reminder of His power and the untold secrets the oceans hold. The accelerated decomposition of the still-living beast would have puzzled scientists the world over.