Timeline: Past
Point of View: Claudia & Lisa
Location: Red Planet
Claudia ran down the dark hall until she reached the bright light that was once Lisa. Already the gore she couldn’t see in the visible spectrum had coalesced back into the form of a person, a weak corpse in the shape of a human at her feat. She knelt beside it, and found the ground to be wet with the residue of the buzzsaws.
She waited as the body continued to coalesce. She couldn’t hear anything beyond the hall. It was quiet outside the mound. Claudia wondered where they’d all gone. She wondered how many had Lisa killed. She was surrounded by the tendrils of living energy, essence with no where to go, little worms of light scattering through the darkness. Some of that light continued to be leached by the Lisa-corpse, but the rest escaped through the walls. With nothing to touch, Claudia didn’t know how to take any of it in for herself. It felt wasteful.
Pick her up. We should go now, before more come.
Claudia did so, scooping the wet body up into her arms. It was surprisingly light, both because Lisa was a small woman, and because Claudia was heightened by the essence in her blood.
She ran with the body towards the light of the entrance. As the red light outside spilled onto Lisa’s body, she could see the broken flesh and sinew moving as if alive, slowly stitching itself together. She looked into the Lisa-corpse’s eyes, and found that the corpse had none. On her stitched neck was a skull, flayed skin waving as she ran, her eye sockets nothing more than thick, viscous red liquid.
I’m going to be sick, she thought, as she realized that she was covered in the blood of Lisa and the buzzsaws.
Don’t think of it. Run. Run for cover in the trees.
Claudia stopped at the entrance, too fearful to run. She could hear them outside now that she was closer. She couldn’t see them from her hiding point against the entrance wall, but they were scurrying out there.
I can’t take them. I can’t kill any of them. They’ll get us both.
They know where you are. They’ll get you anyway. Those sounds are the sounds of them coming to you. You must run.
Claudia burst from the doorway back into the light of the red sun and ran amongst the mounds. She heard a creature squeal, close behind her, and used it as motivation to continue running. She felt light on her feet, and focused her essence into her calves, hoping to push herself faster. She bounced in between the houses in a zig zag pattern, hoping to lose those chasing her.
She burst out from beside a building and collided with a small creature, and she and the Lisa-corpse tumbled to the ground. She quickly scattered to her feet and looked at the small creature, which too looked up. When it saw Claudia, it scurried away fearfully. It was a child, she realized quickly, before scooping the Lisa-corpse back up into her arms and running again.
They have children.
Of course they have children.
I know that, but I guess I didn’t really think about it. The child looked scared of me.
It’ll tell the next adult it finds exactly where you are. Keep running.
And so Claudia did, and before she knew it, she was deep into the trees, bouncing between them as she ran at her heightened speed, distancing herself from her aggressors.
----------------------------------------
Eventually Claudia tired and collapsed to her knees. She laid the Lisa-corpse, which once again resembled something human, down as softly as she could.
They were in a tight clearing between four wide trees. Claudia was still for a long time, holding her breath, listening for movement. She knew now that she could outrun the creatures, when she had essence available, but eventually they would catch up. She’d tried to take a jagged route, preventing herself from running in a straight and obvious line. Were they expert trackers? Could they follow her footsteps? She thought that they could, and they would. They’d been hunting humans for who knew how long.
“Claudia,” came Lisa's cracked voice. It was her first time speaking since the incident.
“Lisa. Yes, I am here. How do you feel?”
“My eyesight is weird. I can’t see clearly. Everything is dark. Oh my God, I think I’m blind.”
“No, no,” she said, both to herself and Lisa. “You’re not. It only takes time for your eyes to heal. It’s taken your body a long time now to heal.”
“I don’t think so. I think some things can’t be healed. My ears… I can hear, but it’s not as clear as it was. But my eyes… there’s nothing there at all. I can’t see anything.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Give it time. We’ll escape the trees and find a place to rest. We’ll get you some water, find some food.” Food, she thought, what the fuck are we going to eat?
“Okay,” Lisa said. But she didn’t sound convinced.
There was silence again. Claudia listened for the sounds of movement, but heard nothing. In time, her anxiety got the best of her. She scooped Lisa back up into her arms and continued to run. She couldn’t run as fast, but still she ran. When they next stopped, she’d have to rest and focus on her essence.
----------------------------------------
The sky was black overhead, both stars over their respective horizons, the next time they stopped. Claudia laid Lisa down, and the woman continued to sleep. Claudia could see that Lisa had a decent amount of essence remaining, but the woman still seemed exhausted. She’d been asleep for what seemed like hours now.
Claudia laid flat against the soft red ground, staring up into the black sky beyond the endlessly tall red trees.
We are so royally fucked. She thought to herself as she fell asleep.
----------------------------------------
In her dream, she pictured her mother and father. They were saying things to her, telling her what to do and where to go. Where that was Claudia couldn’t really tell, but still they urged her to go there and to do that. They were all back at home together, the small three-bedroom home she’d grown up in and hadn’t been back to in so long.
At first she turned away from them, ignoring their demands, and began walking away in her own direction. Something stopped her. When she couldn’t see them, she felt so scared. She could see the way in front of her, but it felt so lonely by herself. She was outside their house now, standing on the clean-cut green grass, looking at her dad’s old work truck. She had her hand out, intending on getting into that truck, intending on driving away.
She couldn't do it. She wanted to turn back around, wanted to go back into that house, back into her bedroom upstairs with the lime green carpet and the twin bed, with her dark purple bedsheets and that small bookshelf in the corner with the small number of books she’d collected over the years. She wanted to go back into that room because that room was safe. She could walk back into that room any moment now, and everything would go right back to normal.
A sinister laugh tore her from her thoughts, and she could see that face in the sky to her left. The eyes bled in long streaks, the mouth stretched open, and the red face laughed at her because it knew she would never go back. The head turned there in the sky, round and round, over the street.
Behind her, her childhood home went up into a blaze of fire. Seeing the flash, she turned around to see her mom in the window crying out. She was screaming there, unheard, as her skin burned, as her hair sizzled, cooking inside the home that had become her tomb, that had almost been Claudia’s tomb.
The face over the street cackled as her parents cooked. The face grew brighter and brighter, the laughing becoming an unbearably loud siren sound.
She covered her ears to keep out the sound, but still she heard it. She'd hear it for the rest of her life.
----------------------------------------
“Claudia,” Lisa said, waking her from her sleep.
“Yes?”
“The pylon. Let’s go there. Maybe it will bring my sight back. And you’ll get stronger.”
“Lisa, how will we find it?”
“A curious thing about blindness,” Lisa said, “It seems that, while I can't see the world as I had, I do see it differently now.”
Claudia sat up. “What do you mean?”
Lisa looked at Claudia, right at her, and the sight of her barren eyes looking directly at her brought shivers down her spine, reminding her of that cackling face in her dream.
“I can see you, Claudia. I can see what your made of. I can see it in the trees, deep inside the dirt. And I can see the pylon, the tower, in the distance behind you, beyond the trees, pumping out of the ground and wrapping the planet above us.”
“You have Astral Vision?” Claudia asked excitedly.
“It would seem that I do. I different version of it.”
“And that tower you see, it’s…”
“That’s right. It’s behind you. I can take us there, if you guide me.”
Claudia stood eagerly. “Can you walk yet?”
“Help me to my feet,” Lisa said, “And let’s find out.”
She could walk just fine.
----------------------------------------
They walked through the trees approaching the pylon, Claudia guiding Lisa away from the bark whenever she’d gotten a bit too close. She could see the essence inside the trees, it seemed, but not quite the edges of the carnivorous bark.
“We’re nearly there,” Lisa said, “Oh, it’s beautiful. It didn’t look like this when I was first here. When I first came, I was so scared, as they lead me here. I didn’t know what it was. I felt it. I felt it in my bones, and I was scared. But now I know better. Those creatures… They worship this place, but they don’t understand it. It’s life, Claudia. It's the life of the planet leaching out. It’s why everything is so much stronger here. Because Earth is dying. It’s dying and it’s nearly dead. Claudia, this is our planet now. We should bring the others here, don’t you see that? Because this planet is the future… It’s… Ctaolthost. It was ours, and we gave it up. Ctaolthost, we’re home.”
“Ctaolthost?” Claudia asked, but received no response.
They broke the barrier of the trees, and Claudia stood before the great pylon.
It circled below her feet, a roaring cyclone that disappeared into what must have been the depths of the planet. The red hot core was down there, a small point at its center. From that point, with her Astral Vision, Claudia could see the essence of the planet pumping upward into the air, being carried out from its center and given to the life of the planet. The trees absorbed its gift, and the the gift was spread across the planet from there.
“Ctaolthost… I’m home. Take me,” Lisa said, and jumped into the swirling abyss.
“Lisa! What the fuck!” Claudia screamed, as Lisa's body disappeared into the blackness of the pylon. The woman only disappeared as she fell, disappeared into the red core of the planet. The woman must have gone utterly mad in her sudden blindness.
Jump. Go with her.
What?! You’ve got to be fucking mad, too. That’s suicide.
If you want power, you’ll jump. Inside is how you get stronger. Inside, you will be rebuilt.
Fuck that, Claudia thought. She turned away from the vortex, looked back into the trees. Before she stepped away, though, she thought about what the point of it would even be. Where would she go, alone? The buzzsaws hunting her daily? No one else but her, wandering the planet endlessly? What was the point.
“Fuck it,” she said. She turned and jumped.
----------------------------------------
As she fell the world around her went black, and the only remaining sensation was the rushing wind as she fell deeper and deeper into the pit.
Then she could feel Ctaolthost embrace her. It didn’t introduce itself, but Claudia understood what it was when she felt it. Ctaolthost the red.
Then she saw glimpses of the others in her mind. Vraagh'endod the yellow. Tegrex the blue. Zaathrhust the green. Amligg'kath the gray. They were all connected, all a part of the whole, and they all gave life.
“Take me,” Claudia said.
Ctaolthost ripped her body apart, piece by piece.