WARNING! This is a
Sequence Complete: Kylerryth thread. There may be any and all of the following involved: physical, mental/psychological, emotional, and/or landscape/widespread violence; mutilation; threats; nightmares; sundry illnesses; and general strangeness.
* * * * *
In no particular order, there had been the Bloody Flux; the drought of the previous year; the assault of the Councilors and Governor in their very own chambers by their very own archers, and the following attack by the demon Archimedes; the appearance of the sword and the Red Eye, and the mayhem caused by one man's touch; the brutal murders that had plagued the town after Straka's numbers suffered a blow due to financial constraints; the discovery of a young girl's body, every bit of tissue and fluid consumed save for its skin and bones...
Now, however, there were more factors: the drow, for one; a mysterious re-emergence of vampries, for another. To add insult to injury, the town itself seemed on the verge of breaking. The Council, despite its reassurances, seemed uncertain of how to proceed. Oh, they had
ideas, for sure. Ideas without decisions, decisions without action, actions without results -- these were the fears of the people, perhaps the Council as well, and their faces reflected those fears like mirrors whose surfaces revealed the heart and soul of the individual, yet when viewed as a collective displayed the rotten, wormy core of an outwardly unblemished apple. The Myrkenfolk went on with their lives and their work; they had endured much, after all, and if they were tense and tired and fearful, why, how was that different from any other day? Or week? Month? Year?
These were a people stretched across the rack, where one final turn would provide excruciating liberation to their tendons, ligaments, and bones, and the resultant scream of agony would be like the death of the self and hope: a candle snuffed by two fingers, plunging the world into such blackness that not even the wisp of smoke, the flame's last will and testament, could be seen.
This may very well be that turn.
* * * * *
When Myrken woke the following morning, its food would be despoiled. Not withered by drought, not rotting unnaturally -- no, not this time.
This time it was pestilence.
Maggots devoured the butchers' meats; weevils infested the grain in storehouses and bakeries; locusts and various flies lay siege to the farmers' fields. Termites dined on the delicacies of many homes' walls, ceilings, floors and supports; ants crept into kitchens and carried away whatever they could, for the glory of the hills and the queens; caterpillars and aphids tore apart and pierced plants and crops, eating their verdant flesh and drinking their sap like wine. Attempts to extricate or otherwise eliminate the insects were met by swift retaliation: wasps and hornets, bees and scorpions, fleas and ticks, spiders and centipedes would swarm those raising arms against their ever-hungry companions, stinging, biting, leaping and crawling and climbing all over their foes until they were altogether vanquished or the humans were driven back. Less frequently spotted were the insects that may be familiar to some townsfolk: wasp-like flying creatures just larger than a grown man's thumb, pitch-black in color and in possession of a malevolent-seeming half-inch stinger. These were avoided like the plague -- which they in fact were -- often to the point that one person would hurl another person or an animal into the path of the distinct and deadly creature. In one instance a little girl, already covered by myriad bites and stings, tripped her older, also-suffering brother by accident on their way back to the safety of their home ... only to look behind her and watch as one of those freakishly large wasps drove its stinger into the nape of his neck.
She ran home and did not look back again; her brother never returned. When she and her parents came out of hiding an hour or so later and dared to go outside again, their stung and sweaty and tear-streaked faces showing a meager slice of hope, they found his skeleton on the dirt path leading to their house. Its fingers were wrapped around the back edge of the bottom step of the porch.
He had almost made it.
* * * * *
Madison watched these events through the many eyes of her body. She had no fear of detection: the town would be swarmed -- oh, an
excellent choice of words, there -- with eradicating its latest invaders. A fun time they would have with it, too. Anyway, she was nowhere near the town. Why place herself in danger at all, when she could observe from a distance?
A feast for the withering, thought Madison.
Ye blessed creatures, know you not the horrors of Perdition? They have been unleashed; yea, and you will come to understand that the worst has yet to occur.
Welcome, darlings.
This is the beginning of the end of the world.