Planet of the Evil Ones

Chapter 5: Trudge through the Pyramid

The air in the pyramid felt stale. No. Not stale. It felt of rotting - a wall of dying. A wall of dread and fear.

One could track paths through this wall. As the duo walked through the pyramid, they found that some rooms were blocked off by this wall. Looking into the doors revealed horrifying sights. Corpses piled on top of corpses, highly mutated warriors fighting to their deaths behind bars - their armour barely fitting over their teratomorphical adjustments, altars to gods of death and torture.

After a while of this, Areex stopped in their tracks. "All of this place is horrible. It's just needless death! Can't they have some other form of entertainment?! Or at the very least not use unwilling participants?!"

Eventually, they came to a room that they could enter without being swamped with a feeling of unease. Inside were puddles of blood in all shades. Clotted red blood, spills of yellow blood - still steaming, greenish-grey blood splattered all over the walls. It was gruesome but any evidence of whatever had made these spatters were gone. Murals on the walls were covered by the blood intermittently.

After several seconds staring at the wall, Areex realized something. "The murals. They're moving. Could be holograms. I saw something like this on Yingil. Religious murals."

It was then the murals began screaming - a horrible screech like rusting nails dragged across a chalkboard. Tom could have sworn that the murals were actively tearing themselves off of the wall to attack them. By this point, the duo had fled from the room - quickly running into an adjacent room.

The room was empty - devoid of any features. It was boring. Primitive. It looked as though it had been created and immediately forgotten. Tom and Areex left it very quickly as nothing of value was within it.

As they left, Tom felt something brushing against his shoulder. Looking to see what it was, he could something quite improbable. It looked like his form but twisted - the hair twisted and full of thorns, the eyes glaring with red beams, a mouth filled with twisted fangs. Tom shuddered. He could then see as this being was met by two other beings - one resembling a massive praying mantis in the distance and the other made of paper. Due to the distance, the second being's form was undecipherable. Limbs could be made out but what they were was unclear. Eventually, they just vanished. They didn't shrink down into a sight impossible to see any details beyond. They simply vanished.

Once they were gone, Tom turned to Areex. They were gone.

"Probably just looking at one of the rooms," said Tom as he walked down the corridors. He walked through many, guided by the path of air as to what to avoid. It took several corridors before Tom found anything of note.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see something gesturing to him from an adjacent room. Walking in, he found the room was seemingly empty. The only notable feature was two holes in the wall.

Tom began looking over the wall. "Swear I saw someone - or something - calling me in here."

As he began to back away, he could see something emerging from the holes - a glistening form comprising two tentacles. It was clear this was one creature. Its body was made of meat - maybe pork or veal.

"Do you intend on killing me? Torturing me? What if I don't die? What if I don't scream? What if I don't lay my life down for you in devotion? It's integral to your existence, isn't it? What if I don't give you what you want? What if I'm not a willing victim?"

The creature remained still.

"So worship isn't required for you to live. Fascinating."

It was then that the creature began gesturing towards another room. Tom began to walk away but turned back to ask one simple question. "If we meet again, what can I call you? I'm called Tom myself."

The name came into his mind as though he had always known it - Tentaclo. It had been stitched into his mind as a name to remember. Tom left with a simple "thanks!" for the room that Tentaclo had been directing him to.