Prologue cont.
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The Fifth Apocalypse
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“Wi the blood o this flesh…”
Iarl Thorvald held his palm under the dripping blade, christening the crystals in blood.
" I caa upon the cleansing o yer ancestors, an the binding o yer descendants te the will o the all-father.”
As the red fluid enveloped the jewels, they began floating their way around the Quinametzin.
The blood connected the drifting pendants along its river, spiraling around its body and ascending towards Xicalancatl’s crown.
Once the strobbing pendants had reached the apex of the giant’s skull, the rotating stones collapsed together, into a self-orbiting cluster.
The contorted sky swirled in turn, reacting to the jewels blasting luminescence.
Phweet Phet
Phwit
Like arrows they launched out.
Homing in on their chosen bearers lined along the outskirts of the ritual grounds.
CRUNCH
SNAP
The gems broke through their sternums, puncturing into their hearts.
“For rBuslt the will UheDmf.”
"Hinsk holy Lkjujoen.”
"GRRK-Rk!
Their poetic invocations transformed into a garbled mess, something between speech and retch.
Glurp
GGRrgg
grg...
The twelve Primus’ began to spit up globs of the black oil.
nostrils, ears, mouth, and even their tear ducts expelled the sludge.
In their eyes, a human panic was still visible.
Watching in horror as the blackness began to dye their arteries, tracing their veins.
With the twisted words of each broken incantation, the warping space started to peel at reality.
Forming a dark ring that seemed to contain the pulsating oddity.
The visible fracture at its center splintered outwards.
Like a scroll eaten by flame, ashes of glittering sky seemed to fade into a void.
At its fringes, the blue skies outlined its round frame.
Leaving an abyssal pit darker than a moonless night.
"SHRIEEEEK!"
The spine-chilling cries of the captives accompanied the blood-curdling screams of the Primus.
With each pulse of the crystals, necrosis spread across their flesh.
The decay disintegrated their limbs, siphoning away their entirety into the chasm.
At the heart of their disappearing bodies, the shards had continued to amass radiance.
FWOOM
FWOOM
FWOOM
In perfect synchrony the crystals detonated into pillars of light, puncturing the darkness above.
A mystical light trickled over the city.
Thorvald watched as countless strings of light spawned from the shining columns, slicing through the emptiness.
The speeding rays spun together, magnifying their shine.
From the base of the pyramid to the entrance of its courtyard, they circled the congregation under their domain.
With the soaring threads wound into a wreath, the lingering fibers braided a complex tapestry upon the ebony fabric;
Its pleasant glowing flakes like lint of wool snowed over the destitute captives.
Each pulse of light charged the sigil's frame, inscribing a menagerie of symbols across the distortion.
Taking the form of a wheel, with one spoke for each shard.
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Strange horoscopes embellished the space within each divide.
As the engraving carved inward, its complexity of lines came together dropping a translucent beam, and embracing Xicalancatl far below.
Its energy drew the blood that had been collecting over the dying giant.
Scarlet streams filled the floating sigil, as the light evaporated his blood into clouds of phosphoric dust.
CRAAAAAACK
An explosion crumbled the mural like stained glass.
Revealing a cosmos the veil of pitch had so easily absconded from the realm.
The darkness of the void now flourished with a geometry of countless constellations.
Where the blue atmosphere once stood, clusters of galaxies interlaced their fertile stars in labyrinthine harmony.
"LET ME GOO!"
"RUUUN!"
The prisoners broke into a frenzy, clawing at their torturers.
But without a break in demeanor, their captors kept the tips of their spears steady on the commoners.
Their futile supplications could only beseech their forsaken gods.
At the center of the pyramids arena, the resplendent beacons spired into the heavens.
With their resonating crystals connected to a series of stellar nodes across the domed map.
A trumpeting hum rang across the entire landscape.
Its celestial tenor carried an animalistic intent.
City and nature shook.
Mettles’ yielded.
Yet quiet suffocated the bedlam.
In the heavens tidal waves of starlight gathered across the yawning abyss.
Tides of energy broke into rivulets, fashioning a host of mythic creatures from the cosmic tempest.
“IN TEOMEH!!!!
A few villagers exclaimed with relief.
Gathering the attention of their compatriots back toward the sky
“PLEASE HELP!”
“SAVE MY CHILDREN!” “HAVE MERCY!”
One of the manifestations reeled toward the fractured window, dipping its paw through the portal.
Their circulating energies synthesized its bone and skin, not by mortal design but with materials of celestial and elemental qualities.
Its gliding body coalesced into a more compact shape.
Molding itself a skeletal frame of a crystalline fluid.
As its paws gracefully landed, a shadow flooded the skeletal frame, hardening as it chiseled a jaguar’s figure with a pendulous tail.
“Awitzotl!”
“Oce-To-t-tonal….”
The bound natives gibbered.
Thorvald grinned at his men, he dislodged the sword sealing the Quinametzin’s artery.
“IN THE NAM O VALHALLA! FELAGI!”
Pointing the sword out, directing his War-band.
RAAAAAARGH!
ONWARD!
“FOR VALHALLAAAAAA!!!”
Wielding their sharpened steel, the Scanvaragn made for the beast.
The enslaved warriors flung themselves at the relentless men, in an attempt to protect the creature.
“Kill aa who stand in oor wake.”
their Iarl mandated.
The tall barbarians swept away the rebellious nuisance with a swing of their dull claymore sheaths.
HISSS
As the feline creature growled at the pale men with their weapons in hand, its forelegs crouched slightly before the panther leaped into the air.
Evading the slashing and stabbing of the attackers.
As it landed, its body melted into its very shadow, escaping the incoming back swings.
The delay from the second miss giving the hiding beast an opening.
Lashing out with its shadow, pitch-black tendrils burst from the pavement.
Like razor-sharp ink gashing through their arms and entwining its hooked vines into their exposed calves.
AAAARGH
AARGh
Ugkh
With their felled muscles, the lacerated men toppled one over the other as the large feline sprinted toward the unflinching Iarl.
“Awitzotlin!” A derelict woman pointed.
Recognizing the panther-like being, with its eel texture and serpentine torso.
Its oar-shaped tail with its elastic webbing flared out, fanning across its five digits.
“ets heer to help save aor Quinametzineh.”
Every villager shifted their sights to the beasts staring down Thorvald.
“I dae miss the challenge.”
He smiled, reaching for the second satchel hanging off his belt.
“ Count yourself lucky mutt…”
Pulling out a fist-sized sphere, its luster and sheen of the same material as the pendants jewels.
“…For the Almightys’ will…”
His extended arm presented the geode to the rushing beast.
“Precedes my ego.”
The speeding panther halted in place, as its flared nostrils grazed the gleaming gem.
Taking the rock inside its broad jaws, the beast took off, his grunting echoed within the star-encrusted rift.
“HRREEEE…UUUMMMM!”
Another roar hummed from the portal, this one shook the firmament.
Two massive eyes spied from the chasm.
Their composition, nothing more than invisible lines and galaxies fashioned their structure.
The darkness behind the stars slithered as if its body was made of void.
The celestial eyes called forth a cascade of light.
Constructing a stairway of pure energy, for the black cat to reach the gargantuan being swimming among the stars.
Without breaking its stride the shadowy beast raced towards the descending lights.
WHAAAAAM
A flurry of axes flew towards the rushing beast slicing through its foreleg and eviscerating its belly.
Their tar-soaked edges infecting the sites.
The panther’s body writhed between its bones. convulsing, attempting to reassemble.
Exploding into a maelstrom of starlight, the gargantuan spatial eyes poured through the abyss.
Unleashing a cascade of luminous beings into the world, their swarms stampeding like storming clouds.
The emerging creatures attacked the Scanvaragn indiscriminately tearing through their units, chasing down the traitorous among the holy men.
Protecting whatever child in their stead.
As the celestial body unwound the darkness, a speck of light grew at the center of the portal.
Widening and ripping through the cosmos.
Stars bent into a cylindrical kaleidoscope.
Like an eye into a parallel dimension.
An identical circumstance greeted them from the end of the expanding gateway.
FWOOOOOOOOM!
A solid column of pure white descended within the same light which had leeched the bleeding Quinametzin.
And as the wormhole receded, the mirror world crept along with it.
The circumstance was the same, their arrangements replicated, and the ceremony, perfectly executed.
Only, the sacrifice at the other end of the giant’s pillar was a woman.
Skin like cocoa, long sable hair, a tiara of feathers wisped across her face
.
A brigade of soldiers and priests also presided over the ritual.
Only their priests encased their heads in egg-shaped domes smothered with delicately cut jewels, and the soldiers’ helmets were topped with a red bristled crest.
The Primus next to the woman placed an identical stone to the one Thorvald had handed over to the Awitzotl
The sphere flared, its energy surge projected all its rune work with a mystical gleam.
WOOOOOOOSHhhhh
A burst of energy launched the stone, sending it careening toward the Quinametzin’s home.
CLUNK!
A dull thud drummed across the heavens.
The impact was unable to plunge beyond the barrier of its atmosphere.
Peaceful in his prayer, the giant murmured under his breath.
The twelve light pillars arched into the falling meteorite, as the pillars above mimicked along.
Their radiating crystals lasered back over the surrendered giant.
A tide of energy blared unto the city energizing the sphere the Iarl had misplaced, reeling up into the vacuuming vortex.
BOOOOOM
The colliding power of the orbs rang across the countryside.
Allowing the projectile to break through, fusing with the plummeting comet.
“Xicalancatl! Semiak tlapani!!”
The villagers chanted.
“NAGWAL! CALACAHUI!”
The Giants lungs rang at the top of his breath.
With his resonant voice masses of scattered creatures dissipated into a shining liquid, torpedoing into the speeding meteor.
Ricocheting it into the massive pyramid, cratering through its foundations.
Causing the rift to collapse, and the connected worlds in its wake.
The floating world faded into particles of stars, like cataracts, they poured through the dwindling portal.
Cloudbursts of energy across the continent, like meteorites, unleashed a prodigious calamity.
Deluges flooded forests.
Bolides as they split the lands.
Tornadoes mowed through the cities.
Tremors split swaths of land.
“RAAAAAARGH!!!”
Xicalancatl’s chest sunk into its cavity, and his muscles began to decay as rapid atrophy consumed his body.
His tissues swam throughout his body, pumping toward his abdomen.
In seconds the giant’s stomach had swollen and become the only part of his desiccated body with living flesh.
A round sphere, almost like an egg composed of flesh, pulsated within the cavity of his hollowing abdomen.
Xicalancatl looked up.
Emptiness filled his eyes, as an overwhelming sense of freedom raptured his body.
His empty husk toppled over, expelling the throbbing stomach.
‘GRuUugrGL…”
Inhuman sounds belched from the object.
The sloshing sac was the size of the Quinametzin’s head.
In the sky, a murmuration of onyx-winged butterflies blotted the blinding sky.
The eclipsing swarm descended over the ruins of the temple.
Swallowing the light with their eclipse.