There is a general idea in adventuring (both intentional and otherwise) to follow the river downstream, or follow the shoreline, or—in an especially bad case of the unknown—find the high ground. There is such a place here. In the center of the island, seen through gusts parting the mist, looms an enormous mountain, black as the universe itself.
Days pass in transit. Or perhaps weeks. In time itself, you notice something peculiar about this place. You'll think you've slept for days but the sun will have advanced only inches. Other days, nightfall will have crept in during a brief rest. But all you need to know is that despite a diet of twigs and snared scurrying things, you're finally here.
Porous igneous, scoria, and pumice cover whatever geologic catastrophe first created this island and steam billows from the heart of the mountain as you crawl. The edges of rocks—far too sharp to have been aged more than a generation—cut at your hands and feet. The lacerations heal over, or perhaps they do not. You no longer notice them; you're no longer bothered by the teeth of the inanimate.
And as you climb, you reminisce about the one you lost, the one you will soon find. But this seems so familiar. You feel as if you've climbed this mountain a hundred times. And more ominous than its appearance, is your travel to it. Throughout your path to this monument to destruction, at least until you reached the foot of the slope, not a single volcanic rock lay in sight. It is as if, rather than the explosiveness of an eruption, something had slowly—thoughtfully—burrowed out from the center of the earth.
YOU ARE READING
The Second Stage
HorrorA world unseen dies over and over. It shrieks at a pitch that you cannot hear. It rots with a stench that you will never quite know. It isn't a place meant for you and I, it is merely a bank for the dead and dying; a vault of visceral agony. I...
