Chapter 13: The Devil at the Root
Etienne could feel himself coming apart. He’d held on as long as he could, but he knew that the end was coming.
Under him, the monster raged! It was trapped, held, restrained for the first time in its short existence, and it hated it! Hated it with a blazing passion that actually took the French demigod by surprise. Less than an hour ago this thing that grew from him had possessed nothing in the way of emotions, only appetites and drive, yet now he could feel hate and anger from it. Under other circumstances he might have found it interesting, but as things were . . .
He was sinking into the beast even faster now, its flesh seeming to grow more eager to consume him the more agitated it became. Maybe some part of it understood that it could grow to be more once it took him in? He didn’t know. All he knew was that the more the monster struggled, the more it bled, the more it fought the stronger it became. And as it grew stronger Etienne was slowly swallowed up, not just in body, but also in mind.
He could feel it, tiny bits of him coming apart as more and more of him disappeared under the creature’s hide. Ideas, concepts, even memories, it was taking them all, making them part of itself. He could no longer remember his own mother’s face or the colour of his home’s front door. He couldn’t remember how to start a campfire, or how to fix a broken fan. It would have been awful, but his mind had once more collapsed into a strangely lucid apathy.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to him being consumed, maybe this winged young man would kill him. It was possible, right? Etienne wouldn’t have thought it possible for the other demigod to restrain the monster as he had, but he’d managed it. Could he do it? Could he really end it before Etienne was gone?
By this point only his head and shoulders were still unsubmerged, all the rest of him was gone, melted into the flesh of the monster. He was less a person fused to the back of the monster’s head, and more akin to some sort of grotesque growth. Was that all he was, a growth, a pustule, a pimple on the monster that had taken over his life?
Through eyes that were growing heavy he watched as the other demigod clambered to his feet and all but stumbled towards the beast’s bound form. Was he really going to try to kill Etienne and the creature that had grown from him? He didn’t look like he could. Hell, he looked as though he could barely stand.
When the winged demigod fell back to the earth, his legs seeming to give out, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise. But then he reached out and touched the bound tentacle . . .
There was a sudden sensation of falling, as though the world around him was receding into the distance. For a moment he felt the apathy burning away, being replaced by panic. Was this it? Was he being pulled in and consumed? Was . . . was he going to die? Or was he going to linger, his soul trapped in this monster until it was killed?
No. no, he didn’t feel bad. In fact . . . Etienne blinked as he realised that he felt good, better than he had in weeks. The pain, the pressure, the constant grind on his mental walls from the hunger’s incessant demands, it was all gone! For the first time in what felt like forever, it was just him, his mind on its own.
The last of his uncaring faded away. No, rather it was torn away! For the first time, the demigod looked around himself, finally finding the will to act, trying to understand what was going on.
Wherever he was Etienne knew he wasn’t here in the flesh. He had no flesh, no arms, no legs, all he had was a point of view, a perspective that let him see, hear, feel, even smell. He could turn, he could alter his viewpoint, but nothing else. Whatever was going on, it had left him an observer.
As to where he was . . . he was unsure. All around him seemed to be nothing but endless open space. It wasn’t white, rather the space around him was a pale grey that seemed to stretch away into infinity. There was nothing else, no landmarks to orient himself upon, just him and the void.
In a way it was restful, a relief from the constant crushing pressure he’d been forced to endure since his awakening. For a moment he just enjoyed that relief, not bothering to think about the future, just existing in the present freedom from his monster.
Then there was a flicker off to his left, a hint of motion amidst a world of stillness. Instinctively Etienne oriented his sight to focus on the movement, his will directing his viewpoint as easily as it would have moved his eyeballs. What he saw was a vague outline cast in white, as though mist was moving around an invisible figure. There were arms, legs, and . . . wings? For a moment the French demigod wondered if this was the afterlife and if this was some sort of angel here to take him wherever he was meant to go. However, there was something familiar about the outline, the proportions, the hints of the face . . .
The roar that drew away Etienne’s attention started low, so much so that at first he didn’t really hear it, only felt it. But it grew quickly, and soon it was a distant rumbling that couldn’t be ignored. His eyes flicked away from the outline, trying to find the source of the sound. To his surprise, it was ‘behind’ him, the spot directly opposite to his original line of sight.
It was a distant globe, one that seemed only to be the size of a football. It was mostly grey, and darker grey than the rest of this place, an angrier grey. Every now and then a flash of red would light up a part of it, only for it to grow dark again.
And it was growing larger.
Much larger.
Very quickly.
All thoughts of the white outline beside him faded away as the once small globe grew, first to the size of a beachball, then to a house, then a hill, then more as it began to dominate his entire field of vision. It was colossal, the size of an entire mountain range. No, even bigger! What he’d taken to be a ball was actually a huge globe of . . . storms?
Yes, the massive sphere seemed to be composed of immense billowing banks of storm clouds, black as soot and roiling as though driven by the winds of some mad hurricane. The storm front seemed to bubble up in every direction, then fall back down towards the centre of the enormous sphere, only to be replaced by more clouds only an instant later. The whole thing was like a gigantic ever-moving spherical tempest, one that roared the entire time.
By the gods, that noise! It was as though the entire world was being swallowed up by a never-ending thunderclap, or maybe the endless cacophony of some impossibly massive waterfall roaring on interminably. But . . . there was something else, something beneath the endless torrent of sound, something hidden. He didn’t know what it was, but deep in his soul he felt something he’d never known was there stir and shiver.
Closer and closer, and finally, he realized that it wasn’t that the once small globe had grown larger, rather it was that he had drawn closer to it. No, had he possessed eyes they would have widened as the realization hit him. He wasn’t travelling towards it, instead he was falling into it!
Understanding of his situation came only a moment before his viewpoint passed through the ‘surface’ of the massive storm, plunging into darkness that was lit only by the frequent flashes of red. To his side, Etienne could still make out the pale winged outline that had been moving with him, but it was difficult, through the strange raging tempest.
And even more disturbing than the wind was the fire. Yes, fire. That was what the strange red flashes were, gargantuan bursts of blood-coloured flames! At first, he’d thought that it was red lightning, but then he saw a huge column of fire erupt from the depths of the storm. For a moment it blazed there, a crimson line of light in the darkness, but then it was torn by the wind, scattered and dissolved into the tempest. Etienne couldn’t see what source the fire had, but he could tell that it came from the depths of the storm, the centre.
The point he seemed to be falling towards!
He didn’t know how long he fell, time seemed to lose all meaning in the whirling, roiling world of cloud, wind, and fire. It could have been seconds, minutes, or even hours. The young demigod only came back to himself when suddenly he fell through a final bank of clouds to find himself . . . in the eye?
It was a calm space surrounded in every direction by the huge storm, a smaller sphere within the larger globe. Of course, calling it smaller was a relative term. Etienne had no idea how far he had travelled through the tempest, or how large it had been from the outside, but this calm spot was still large enough to comfortably house the mountain that floated at its centre.
It seemed that it was that mountain he was being drawn to, even as his fall began to slow down. After only a few minutes the French demigod was floating above the dark mass, gazing down at it as the world of storms roared around him. As he hung there, Etienne wondered what was meant to happen next. Why was he here? Just what was going on?
Then the mountain moved.
For a moment he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing, his mind unable to fully grasp the sheer scale of it. He thought it was some sort of rockslide, a side of the mountain giving way and sliding off into the grey void around them. But then he watched the supposed avalanche rise up, up, and up, and he couldn’t deny what he was looking at.
It was a wing, a titanic bat’s wing fit for the most fearsome of dragons. It unfurled from about the gargantuan mass like an unwrapping cloak, then it was joined on the other side by an equally huge wing, completing the pair and revealing what they had been wrapped about. Absurdly, the sight made Etienne think back to a Disney film that he’d seen as a child, a scene that had frightened him at that time, of a demon on a mountaintop unwrapping its wings in a similar way. All he could think was of how . . . childish the sight that had once given him nightmares was in comparison to the sight before him now.
Awe inspiring as the sheer scale of the wings was though, it had nothing on what they revealed. The figure was vaguely human-like in that it had a head, shoulders, arms, and a torso, but that was where any similarity to a man ended. Below the waist, there were no legs, simply a mass of . . . tentacles? Vines? He wasn’t sure. This place, the eye of the storm was better lit, lines of fire constantly running along its inner surface giving a dull red light, but even so it was murky. Etienne was sure he could see several sinuous lengths wrapped about each other, but that was all, he could see no details.
The upper body of the . . . the titanic figure before him was easier to make out. The bodiless demigod could make out a broad chest and muscles that bulged like carved stone beneath the surface, connected to the huge wings extended from the figure's back, just around his shoulder blades. The arms, which stretched out as the wings spread, could not be mistaken for human. The left one had at least one more joint than it should have and ended not in a hand but in a gigantic dragon’s head. He couldn’t tell the colour of its scales, not with the red light from above, but there was no mistaking the huge jaws, the gleaming teeth, and the tongue that flicked out serpent-like. The right arm was more human-like in design and proportion, but rather than fingers the hand was composed of five short snakes extending from where fingers should have been on a hand.
Still, as inhuman as all of that was it was the head and face that were the most horrifying.
The proportions were close to those of a man, but the details . . . the head and face were framed by an almost leonine mane, the hair seeming long and matted. However, as he looked closer, he saw that the ‘hair’ was moving, twisting in place. Even though he didn’t have a body the demigod was sure he felt the blood freeze in his veins as the realization hit him.
Snakes, the entire mane, every hair of it, was made of snakes, hundreds, thousands of them!
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And the face . . . horrifying as the snakes were, the face of the giant was even worse! It was as though some mad sculptor had tried to craft facial features that were the distilled essence of ugliness. The face had the correct features, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and so on, and they were all in the correct place, but that was all. The mouth was too wide. The lips curled in a sneer to reveal inhuman teeth. The eyes were wide and staring, the distant glow of dancing flames to be seen in their depths. The nose was jagged, crooked, broken and hooked. And all of it came together to show an expression that spoke of overwhelming rage and cruelty.
The giant’s mouth opened, and suddenly the roar of the storm was overwhelmed, buried beneath a howl that could have made an erupting volcano seem tame by comparison!
Etienne felt something slam into him. It couldn’t be considered a voice or words, it was simply too huge, too vast to be contained by such concepts. If continents somehow communicated with each other, if they somehow used earthquakes and volcanoes to pass concepts between them, then it would have sounded like this! In that instant, the young demigod was happy that he had no body, because any sort of flesh, even the inhuman monstrosity that he had become, would have been pulverized by that sound as surely as an ant before an avalanche!
Yet there was also something else, something buried. He could hear it though, he could understand it!
It wasn’t a word. It wasn’t any sort of language. It was a concept, one that combined many notions. It was primitive, it was brutal, and it left no room for misunderstanding.
*BLOODLINE/DESCENDANT/KIN/TOOL/VENGENCE/OFFSPRING/REVENGE/ANNIHILATION!*
For a moment Etienne felt his mind creak and shudder, not only unable to endure the sheer force behind the communication but also stunned by what it meant! No! No, it couldn’t be true!
*PROGENY/WEAPON/BLIGHT/INHERITOR/MALEDICTION!*
There was no denying it, no matter how he wished otherwise. He was a demigod, which meant he was descended from a divine being, and the roar was hammering into his mind one thing.
This monstrosity before him was the source of his divinity.
Now, at least, he knew why he’d become a monster. How could he possibly have been anything else? This . . . this monstrosity, this abomination, was his ancestor, the source of the power that had made him a demigod! How could such a bloodline be anything other than incurably tainted?
And beyond that, there hadn’t simply been an explanation of their connection in that howling hurricane of a roar, there had been more. There had been possessiveness, a sense that to this being he wasn’t just a descendant, he was a pawn, a piece to be moved. And there was a sense of towering rage. A burning need to strike out, to hurt, to ruin, all as an act of retribution, to hurt those that had hurt this being.
*Wha . . . what?*
By comparison, Etienne’s own voice was a thin and meagre thing. It felt as though it were being lost in the wind, swallowed up by the darkness about him before it ever had a chance to reach anyone. But it must have reached the titanic monster, because images and emotions came back at him, slamming into his mind with all the grace and delicacy of a sledgehammer being used to crack open a peanut.
Etienne saw himself as he had been when he began to change, his legs becoming those of a monster. When this had happened to him he had run from his home, trying to find somewhere to hide, somewhere to stay until he worked out what was happening to him. However, in the vision, he wasn’t hiding. Instead, he was rampaging, ignoring attempts to stop him with guns and improvised weapons as he gorged his hunger on anything or anyone he wanted.
Etienne saw himself again, now larger, the first time he had shed his outer skin as he grew. In his vision he left, but his view remained on the cast-off flesh. He saw as it attracted animals, he saw as they devoured it with wild abandon, and he watched as they died. Then he saw as they came back, as they changed, twisted, and became monsters. He watched as those monsters ran off, seeking prey of their own, saw them as they hunted down other creatures, devoured them, and grew in size.
Etienne saw himself once more, now as large as he had been when he was fighting the other demigod. He was surrounded by a great throng of the twisted animals, rats, foxes, squirrels, insects, birds, boar, and deer, many of them so warped that he could barely even guess what they had once been. He watched as his self in the vision consumed them, tentacles snatching them up and throwing them into the gaping jaw of his monstrous body. Before long the host was gone, and his body began to heave and bulge as it grew. Again, his skin split, the larger from growing out, and again it was abandoned, only to draw in more animals after he left.
Etienne saw himself, but it was as he had never been. There was no hint of humanity left in the self that he saw, there was only the monster driven by hunger. The beast was huge, towering over the form that Etienne had been trapped in many times over. There were more aspects to it now, wings, claws, teeth, all in places that seemed bizarre and unnatural. The monstrosity was ripping its way through a city, bringing skyscrapers crashing down, snatching up people and throwing them into its now multiple mouths. Figures lashed out at it, striking with lightning, fireballs, blades of ice and darkness, but none of it seemed to do anything. What injuries were inflicted healed immediately. And even worse, any wound made left flesh behind, flesh that drew in animals that then ate it and became monsters.
Etienne saw himself as he would have never wished to, as a titanic monster the size of a small mountain! All about him lay the ruins of a once thriving city, but now it contained only the dead or the twisted. In the sky about him hung figures. Some glowed with power, some had wings growing from their back, some were even wreathed in black and malevolent fire, but all of them were staring down at him and gathering their strength. They descended upon him, powers that felt strong enough to crack cities being unleashed, but his other self only roared in defiance and lashed out in return, a thousand times a thousand teeth, claws, limbs reaching to rend and tear divine flesh!
He reeled back, his thoughts racing as he struggled to process what he’d been shown. Emotions had accompanied the images, painting a dark and painful picture.
He wasn’t a demigod, not in the normal sense. Rather Etienne was a half-blood meant to be a weapon, flawed in a way specifically meant to create a monster. That flesh that sloughed off him each time he grew . . . it was meant to create monsters, monsters that would spread, flourish, grow, and then serve as fuel for him to grow once more. It was a repeating cycle, one that would overtake whatever ecosystem existed and shift it to destroy the enviroment around him while giving him the biomass he needed to continue his monstrous growth.
And all of it was aimed at the creation of that . . . that thing that had been in the final vision! Etienne knew that it was what he might have become, had the hunger consumed him and gone on to feast without restraint. A monster that could kill demigods with ease, once fully mature! A catastrophe that could devastate cities and force the gods themselves to act!
And that was what his . . . progenitor wanted! The French demigod knew it with a bone-deep certainty. Whoever this titanic monster that was the origin of his divine blood was, they harboured an unending hatred for the gods. To them Etienne was not a family member, wasn’t a child or some sort of descendant, rather he was a weapon aimed at their enemies, and meant to die in the attempt. But not before he hurt them, and that was all that this monster cared about! That his creation made the gods suffer, that Etienne hurt their worshiper, that he made the gods bleed before he died! Compared to that, the death or survival of the young demigod was utterly unimportant.
For a moment the bodyless young man simply hovered in place, stunned by the titanic rage and crushing indifference. The gargantuan monster had answered his question because it didn’t care that he knew, as far as it was concerned, Etienne’s fate was set. His body would become the monster he had seen, the only other possible outcome was his death.
*Who are you?*
The question slipped out on its own, his mounting bewilderment, frustration and fear all combining to force him to ask it. He had to know who was doing this to him.
Again, it hit him! Images, emotions, concepts, all of them slamming into him with the force of a tidal wave!
Figures fleeing before him, both the gnats on the ground and beings of power, of authority, and they flee all before him! They flee from his power, from his rage, from his very visage! The Gods themselves flee before him, hiding themselves in distant lands, hiding in the forms of animals!
Monsters! Nightmares! The creatures that mankind cowers before! A lion with an invulnerable hide, a dragon guarding golden apples, a many-headed serpent that knows not death, a three-headed dog that guards the underworld! All of them mighty! All of them dangerous! All of them his children!
A battle that makes the sky shake and the earth splinter! A king of the gods who has regained his courage lies broken and beaten before him, his limbs leaking golden blood where they have been torn open! He howls his victory to the heavens, letting his mother know that her retribution is at hand!
Rage! Hatred! The defeated has returned, his strength greater than ever! They battle again, but this time there is no victory! The sky is blotted out as a mountain is lifted by the god-king, then brought crashing down! He is buried, he is broken, he is defeated! But it is not enough! The rage still remains, the rage that is as much a part of him as his bones! His immortality remains, and he lives! He lives as ages pass! He lives as the world changes! He lives as he is forced from the world!
Escape! Freedom! A chink in the prison after so long! He can only become one of the gnats, the tiny ones, but it is an escape from the prison! He lets loose his rage! He satiates his appetites! And then there is death, a return to the prison! But there are other chinks, though the time between them is great, and each time they come he escapes and gives vent to his frustrations!
Inspiration! His strength cannot escape his prison, but his essence can! Another beast, one to scar the world! Time, time will be taken until the power returns, but until then his blood will last! It will wait! It will fester! And when the power returns his blood will make the very land that the gods love bleed!
Again, Etienne was sent reeling by the communication. Flashes of the past blurred with the present, scattering his thoughts and leaving him unmoored for a moment, adrift in this strange abstract world. Then cold realization crystalized his thoughts, and it all slammed back into place with jarring force as he understood!
Typhon, the last Titan, monster born of Gaea and Tartarus, born of Earth and hell.
As any sensible person in a world where the legends of ancient times had returned in the flesh would have done, Etienne had made it a point to find out about the mythologies of the gods that had entered the public eye. When he’d first begun to note his own changes that research had taken on a frantic fervour as he tried to find some hint of what was happening to him, and how it might be reversed. He’d learnt the tales of the Greek, Norse, Celtic, and Egyptian myths. He would have learnt more, learnt other mythologies, but he’d been forced to flee as his powers awakened and things grew worse.
Still, what he had learnt was enough to let him understand what he saw, to make sense of the images he saw. Typhon had been one of the great monsters of Greek mythology, the last challenge the gods had been forced to face to end their wars against the titans. He was the last titan, one so huge that his head had brushed the sky when he walked, one so fearsome that the gods had fled before him when he attacked. He battled with Zeus, after the sky god marshalled his courage, and Typhon crippled him by tearing the sinews from his muscles. The victory was short-lived though, since with the aid of Hermes and Pan, Zeus recovered his strength and faced the titan again. Tricked and poisoned Typhon was weakened, and eventually, Zeus used his might to lift up a mountain and bury the titan under it, trapping him forever and turning the mountain into a volcano.
Typhon, the father of the Nemean Lion, the dragon Ladon, the Hydra, and Cerberus, all famed monsters that faced heroes and gods. He had been the mate of Echidna, the mother of monsters, and he himself had been the most horrifying monster of all!
And that was the origin of his bloodline?!
Perhaps the link did more than just carry his words, perhaps it let the distant titan sense the broken demigod’s emotions because even as he watched, Etienne saw those vast and ugly features rearrange into a cruel smile. Eyes filled with fire stared at him. Stared into him.
*WEAPON/VENGEANCE/INEVITABLE!*
No! He wanted to scream it at the distant figure, to defy him, to deny him! Etienne wanted to curse him for the ruin his life had become, for the despair, for the creeping sense of hopelessness he’d had to suffer. Yet for all his fury and spite and outrage, there was nothing he could do. He might as well have been cursing at the sun for burning him, Typhon paid his descendant’s emotions no more mind than a mountain would to the activities of an ant.
Instead, the French demigod felt himself being slowly . . . squeezed was the only word for it. Pressure was being applied to his being from every direction, his mind, his very essence, all of it was being crushed down into a more condensed state. Etienne could feel his thoughts pressing together, running out of room to flow. The same was true of his emotions, anger, despair, bewilderment, all of it was being forced together, running into each other and losing distinction. It was insane, impossible, thoughts and feelings didn’t work that way! But it was happening anyway, and through it all, he could feel a cruel glee radiating from the gigantic figure before him.
Typhon might not care about the tiny mortal soul before him, but he cared about his vengeance upon the gods. There was concentration going into whatever he was doing. Not care, even through his growing pain Etienne could be sure of that, and not real effort, since it didn’t seem to require much in the way of power, but there was focus. The demigod could feel it, something . . . twisting inside him. Something that was being condensed and strengthened by what Typhon was doing to him, something that was blackening, warping, becoming . . . other than what he was.
Oh . . . Oh gods, no! NO!
He could feel it, the hunger that had dogged him, it was there growing inside him! Whatever Typhon was doing, it was making the hunger take him! This was what it had been trying to do earlier, when he’d been sinking into its flesh, being swallowed up by it. Now . . . now it was trying to eat his soul from the inside out, the hunger growing within him, until it had devoured all else. Until there was nothing left but the all-consuming monster that he’d seen in those visions.
And that was what the titan wanted!
He had no use for humanity or reason. He just wanted a monster, and Etienne was simply the soil from which that tainted fruit would grow. And if he was consumed in that growth . . . well, what should it matter to the Greek monster?
Around the bodiless soul, the world began to grow dark as what consciousness remained to him began to fade.