Liam

Wednesday, May 11th, 2022 (50 days after the Shutdown)

More cries pierced the night.

An entire swarm was approaching him through the Laurelwood Forest. Running forward, his face contorted into a mask of fear for the first time in a while. Back when he still had the eldritch creature’s powers, he’d deludedly thought he’d mastered his fears.

He hadn’t mastered anything.

He’d hidden behind a curtain and masqueraded behind the powers of others, convincing believing that was enough to vanquish his fears.

The very air around him had turned to ice, chilling him to the core and leaving him with a sense of impending doom.

In the forest, at night, with no idea where he was going, he was terrified. Every muscle in his body tensed, frozen in place by the overwhelming dread that gripped him. Only through the remnants of his will was he able to tear himself away and flee deeper into the forest, in the direction the ghost of his mother had pointed.

His improved sensory skills were the only thing keeping him from Death’s door. Pushing them in front of him, he easily made out obstacles like dried-up stream beds and protruding tree roots and branches. But even if he was faster, the obstacles were enough to slow him down to the point where even the Medusas were fast enough to reach him.

Diving through protruding branches, the skin above his eyes split and blood poured into them.

Damn it!

He still had his other senses but without his sight, his weakened Sphere of Perception collapsed to half its power. Struggling to blink the blood from his eyes, a low-hanging branch broke against his head and he fell to his knees.

A high-pitched whine filled his head as he struggled to get up.

Suddenly, the air currents near his legs shivered as something moved through them. Twisting out of the way, the undergrowth where he’d stood trembled as a Medusa’s smoke spewed forth to infect him.

An outraged cry roared out from the monster as it failed and it chased Liam as he rolled down the side of a ravine.

Jumping to break his fall, his landing was less than graceful. The rotting wood of a long felled tree crumbled under his weight, but the barbs under weren’t so accommodating. Protected from the elements by the old log, twisted roots that hide themselves underneath now shot up to pierce his skin.

Growling as he tore himself free, he hastily climbed up the side of the ravine as his arms grew sticky from the blood pouring down them. Pain seared along his left side, leaving him gasping for breath as he reached the top of the ravine.

Looking back, his heart faltered.

A sea of them blanketed the forest behind him, ready to swallow everything in their path. There were too many of them to outrun forever.

The ghost… why did it point in this direction, he gasped as he pulled a root that had lodged itself in his wound.

Liam had pinned his hopes that it hadn’t been a trap but the possibility grew more and more likely. There was nothing out here but damned trees. Yet, it was too late and he’d come too far to give it up now. He’d run till the dawn if he had to.

The Laurelwood Forest was on the border of a provincial park meaning he could’ve run for days without meeting anyone.

But his run would end before that could happen. The holes in his flesh leached out his strength, and the constant state of panic wore on his mind and body. Each footstep plodding forward was another frantic attempt at delaying the inevitable.

The distance he’d painstakingly put between them had drastically reduced from 500 meters to under 50. Leaning against a knotted trunk, he silently gazed at the incoming wave of monsters. Initially, it bugged him that he had no clue why they were chasing him but after hours of this game of cat and mouse, did it matter?

From the injuries and falls he’d taken, remembering the direction he was supposed to go in was a hurdle. His soul grew weary seeing another obstacle in the clearing dozens of feet in front of him. He was at his breaking point.

Staggering forward, he gaped at the sight in front of him.

A circle had cut through the canopy, leaving shredded branches and leaves scattered across a 40-foot-wide crater. At the center, hidden underneath a scorched pile of twigs a white gem glowed, scattering glittering dust reminiscent of wisps of smoke.

This had to be what the ghost wanted him to find.

The cold the monsters exuded nipped his heels; his time was running out. Diving into the crater, severed branches nicked his hands as he dug through the pile. Ripping the crystal free he spun around —

And froze millimeters away from a Medusa.

A faint whimper escaped the depths of his throat and fear coiled around him like a python, squeezing the air out of him.

Hesitating, like it was wondering why this stupid mortal wasn’t running away, the monster’s amorphous body began to swallow him. Liam trembled despite the warmth of the night. Those who had experienced the Medusas knew the creatures had the same calling cards: their insufferable never-ending wail and the cold winds that accompanied them as they drifted around.

Liam had assumed the winds were a byproduct of its shifting forms but as one entombed him in its formless body, he found himself in another setting.

He was running through a field, stalks of wheat shining silver in the moonlight. A nameless horror chased him, a veil of living shadows moving closer. Whatever it touched disappeared into it, meeting an unknown fate. Even the moonlight couldn’t pierce its cover as it absorbed all light from its surroundings.

Pushing himself till his body gave up, he stood at the edge of a cliff. Below, a wall of fire ringed a small encampment by the cliff’s base. People he knew and cared for were frantically running around, knocking down huts and structures to use the materials to fortify their walls. A ring of darkness encroached on the camp, sending the people scrambling.

Arrows of fire were shot into the dark, trying to scare them off but they were extinguished the moment they touched the dark. If he only looked at the moon, the night almost seemed peaceful, silent even. There were no screams of terror, just the moon in all of its serenity staring back at him.

The situation below worsened. As the first wave of the darkness contacted the pyres of fire outside the village, their lights were snuffed out and all at once, every person in that village stopped and looked at him. David, Carter, his parents, and people from every walk of his life stared up with white, lifeless eyes. Unmoving, they stood as the darkness devoured them until there was nothing in the world but the light of the moon, its silvery glow casting an eerie pall over the landscape.

Stolen novel; please report.

Inch by inch, darkness swallowed the last remnants of warmth in his small world and he felt himself consumed by an overwhelming void, lost in the vast expanse of nothingness. Blind, the cold started seeping into his bones.

This is what the Medusas were. They weren’t harbingers of death. They carried a promise. In their wake, they stole away warmth, and emotions, and left behind nothing but the echoes of memories. They were a catalyst for disasters, warping the forces of the universe until everywhere they went, nothingness followed.

That’s what they were. Beings of the end. There was no outlasting them. Hiding, running, or building a damn village and setting it on fire was delaying the inevitable.

Inhaling a breath of cold air, Liam found himself thrust back into the forest, reeling back from the embrace of the Medusa.

How the fuck am I alive?

He was certain that the Medusa had touched him but it moved away, like it could no longer sense him.

Distracted by a vibration from his core, he noticed an attraction between the crystal and his chest. Holding the crystal higher, a concentrated shaft of moonlight entered it, making it glow brighter than before. On a whim, he brought it closer to his vibrating core.

A sea of color blossomed on the surface of the oblong cradle in his chest. Previously inert, it’d awakened, sending small ethereal strings out from its unscathed surface, trying to connect with the white shard. Moving it in front of him, the cradle trembled with renewed intensity the closer he brought it.

Evidently, the crystal shard was a puzzle piece that unlocked something within his body, related to the powers the demon sealed. Yet, he was reluctant to experiment.

The Medusas were drifting anomalies, physical embodiments of the void where nothing could exist, while themselves being made of something. He hadn’t heard of anything that could act as a talisman against them, yet here he sat in the middle of a swarm, alive.

They passed over him like he didn’t exist, their tendrils of smoke stopping a good foot away from him, prohibited from coming closer by an invisible boundary.

The crystal in his hand had saved his life.

Letting out a haggard breath, he broke down laughing. His body was spent, his mind caught between the constant tug-of-war of terrifying visions and the tension and terror of fleeing an onslaught of dangerous creatures.

But he had the golden ticket in his hands.

As he limped out of the crater, the Medusas moved out of the way like he was their messiah, parting the sea of monsters. Well… not to that extent but he passed through without any resistance.

Biting his lip, he wondered what to do now that he had what he’d come for.

Keeping the crystal an inch away from him so it couldn’t come into contact with his pulsating chest, he studied the landing site of the crystal.

An ignorant bystander might think nothing of it, but by the brilliance of Liam – words no one had ever said… aside from Liam himself – there was something peculiar about it.

For something of this size to be created from a crystal, which was barely the girth and size of his pinky, was questionable. True, one had to acknowledge that the means the crystal had used to arrive on Earth could be responsible, but in the case it was moving at terminal velocity or beyond, a crater this size was all it’d been able to make?

Liam’s physics skills were lackluster and he’d hated mathematics, but still, he felt like the science wasn’t sciencing.

A Medusa approached him from behind, making him tense up but a foot away, it veered left. Breathing out in relief, he watched the swarm move around him, circling him like he was fishbait, though none of them attacked.

Trying to focus on the topic at hand, he maneuvered through the throes of monsters till he reached the edge of the crash site.

Another thick glob of blood landed at his feet and he staggered, latching on to a low-hanging branch so he wouldn’t collapse on the spot.

A bitter smile made its way onto his lips.

In the likelihood he managed to return to the Sheffield Steel warehouse, where he was based, he knew Nina didn’t have any way to heal him.

The channel that existed between Liam and the eldritch creature was little more than a metal straw, formed by unknown magic during some dream. Unfortunately for Liam, this particular straw had corroded and cracked from over-exertion — not that he was completely responsible. From the power both sides had been forcing through the channel, for how small it was, it was a miracle it hadn’t exploded. If he were to force a connection through to the eldritch creature to try and heal himself, the repercussions of doing so could end in the channel being entirely severed and extreme backlash. A prospect he wasn’t eager to explore even if it could save him.

He should’ve learned the semantics of their relationship, but there was no need to worry when he was going to die in a few hours… maybe.

The orb in his chest where he believed the creature was, had wanted the crystal. Gaining a better understanding of his dwindling health, his previous reluctance to experiment unsurprisingly vanished. To which end the demon wanted the crystal, Liam didn’t know but the little hamster wheel spun in his head and told him to take hold of the chance.

So as he studied the crash site.

… which made him realize his hypothesis was right. The small crystal in his hand couldn’t possibly account for the impact crater the crystal shard had created.

Carried by its momentum, something had skipped like a stone over water and landed somewhere in the distance. As if Liam needed further evidence, there were signs such as burnt trees and blackened soil – which sounded stupid after he said it since it was night… when everything was black – but something had detached during the crash.

He could feel the hunger in his chest as his situation became more dire.

Limping through the crowd of monsters, the cold seeped into him, restricting his movements. The struggle was slow, swinging the crystal at any Medusa that got nearby. Collapsing with his back to a tree, his eyes felt heavy as he looked again at the crystal, glowing brighter the deeper he walked into the forest till it was a beacon in the night. The creatures shied away, like water and oil, with entire portions swerving away from the crystal’s aura.

Just for shits and giggles, Liam punched a passing Medusa and chuckled as it dissipated like a puff of smoke with a hole in the center, before returning to its passive form when he removed his hand.

Following the trail of burnt vegetation, his body reacted as he entered another clearing.

A trope in Hollywood films – if it could be called that – was the protagonist stranded in a desert and stumbling into an oasis, saved as he was about to collapse. As a wave of what Liam could only describe as “warm” energy pulsed outwards from the epicenter of the crash, he sighed as a smile snaked onto his lips.

Brilliantly shining like a small sun, ghostly pale flames rose around the asteroid in a dance. A sense of elation rose from his chest as the cradle within hummed in recognition. As he neared the crystal, he realized he hadn’t seen a monster in the last 100 meters he’d stumbled through, their wails becoming distant.

“Fuckers can’t catch me… I’m fast as fuck,” he muttered to the trees, the blood loss making him delirious.

Collapsing onto his knees, for a moment he just stared into the fire.

Should he just lie down? The thought wormed its way into his head, feeding on his doubt about what he was planning on doing, and as if picking up on his hesitation, the cradle hummed indignantly.

The world was growing darker…

It was a primal instinct, ingrained into humans since the dawn of their kind to survive. But if the cost was too high, would survival hold the same meaning? The creature which he assumed to be a demon could permanently take over, leading on a different path. He’d seen what it was capable of, and he knew it moved on the wings of death.

Frustrated at being led on like a dog on a leash, Liam gave in, feeling the abyss settling into his soul.

He couldn’t die. He wouldn’t die, pathetically stabbed by a fucking tree when he found the monster’s Achilles’ heel.

So he grabbed it, and without giving himself a chance to rethink it, he shoved the nearly bowling-ball size crystal into his chest.

Throughout the forest, the slaves of the Maleficent Ones trembled, as for the first time since they spawned they felt emotion. They were planet destroyers, spreading their masters’ creed as they went forth, terrorizing denizens of the universe. Mindless and resolute in action, they were programmed to ravage and lay destruction upon the land.

Yet, they trembled, fearing the birth of a monster more dangerous than their own. And so they fled, their muted emotions telling them to run from the archaic magic spilling out from the depths of the forest.

The birth of a true demon.