The 13th Chime

Chapter 6: An appendage of the rooted child

In the blaze of day, the world awakes,
A blinding light, each moment takes.
Yet as dusk falls, in numbing shroud,
The night descends, with silence loud.

Within the glare, a forgotten blight,
Lies buried deep, out of sight.
But as dawn breaks, the new world shakes,
Awakening from its slumber, it partakes.

A new record etched in skies,
As history's pen continues to rise.
A new bell sings, a chorus bold,
Echoes of stories yet untold.

In this dawn of change, a future begins,
With hope's bright spark, the darkness thins.
A journey uncharted, a path untrod,
This new world beckons, to dreamers abroad

I awoke to the very fucking large trees in front of my face. They weren't green or oak trees, they were made of some kind of weird wood. It was grey in color but in texture it was like I was touching a stagnated pineapple which had developed some sort of rough bark covering. After looking around, I found an axe laying on the floor, the handle facing towards me.

Gingerly, I reached out and grasped the weathered wooden handle, pulling the axe head free from where it was embedded in the ground. The blade itself looked ancient, the metal pitted and dull from years of disuse. Still, it had a solid heft to it, almost reassuring in its simplicity amidst the bizarre surroundings.

Steadying myself, I rose to my feet, taking stock of my new environment. Towering all around me was what could only be described as a petrified forest - those strange, grey pineapple bark-like trees stretching up into a sickly, discolored sky. They almost seemed to pulse with an inner glow, their rough exteriors flickering subtly.

The air itself felt thick and stale, like the inside of an airless tomb. A fine, ash-like particulate drifted lazily through the space between the trees, stinging my eyes and throat with each shallow breath. There was an oppressive sense of age and decay all around, as if this place had been frozen in a state of perpetual rot and decomposition.

As I turned in a slow circle, the axe gripped tightly in my hands, more details began to emerge. The ground beneath my feet was hard-packed and gnarled, like the twisted roots of the trees had fused over eons into a singular, contorted surface. In the distance, I could make out crumbling formations that might have once been structures or dwellings of some sort - now little more than indistinct piles of rubble amidst the looming forest.

The entire scene filled me with a profound, visceral sense of unease. Like I had awoken in the remains of some long-dead civilization, the final resting place of a society that had crumbled and fossilized into these haunting, lifeless remains. Whatever living, thriving realm this had once been, it was now a mere husk - devoid of any vibrancy or warmth.

I jumped as a cracking sound rent the still, oppressive air. A fallen branch - or what might have passed for one in these petrified woods - had snapped underfoot as I shifted my stance. That simple noise, so stark against the eerie silence, filled me with an irrational surge of panic. I clutched the axe tighter, my knuckles whitening around the worn grip as I strained to see any signs of movement amidst the trees.

But there was nothing - just that same, oppressive stillness lingering over the ashen landscape. Still, the fear of potential threats looming in this dead world lodged itself firmly in my mind. I needed to keep moving, to find any signs of something - or someone - that could shed light on wherever the hell I had ended up this time.

With a steeling breath, I started off in the direction where I had spotted the crumbled ruins, the soles of my boots scraping against the gnarled, uneven ground. Each step kicked up small plumes of that ash-like dust, coating the legs of my pants in a fine grey layer.

As I wound my way between those twisted, alien tree trunks, something else began to register - a faint, rhythmic pulsing seemed to permeate the entire forest. It was almost subconsciously subtle at first, like the thrumming of some great unseen heart pumping deep beneath the earth. But the closer I drew to the ruins, the more pronounced and insistent the pulsing became.

It was then that I noticed the shifting, flickering glow emanating from the tree trunks themselves. What I had first dismissed as tricks of the dim lighting now revealed itself as some sort of internal luminescence, throbbing in time with that incessant rhythmic beat.

Unease bloomed into outright dread as I found myself surrounded by these pulsating, pseudo-organic forms. It was as if I had stumbled into the remains of some long-dead organism, the trees mere fossilized appendages of a once-living megastructure. And that haunting, omnipresent beat...could it be this place's equivalent of a heartbeat? Some residual life-force still clinging to existence?

I tried to shake the notion from my mind as I finally approached the crumbling edifices in the distance. Up close, their shapes took on even more bizarre, alien forms - great looming monoliths fused together by twisting, gnarled growths that could have been misshapen architecture or more of those bizarre tree-like constructs.

Here and there, singular standing pillars or arches rose up from the rubble, their surfaces flickering with that same luminescent glow as the surrounding forest. The entire ruin almost seemed to undulate slightly with each thunderous beat of that unseen pulse, like the last dying tremors of some colossal beast.

As I wound my way through the towering remains, something finally struck me - amidst the endless sea of greys, browns, and sickly off-colors, there was one distinct hue that stood out: a deep, insistent crimson, seeping up through the cracks and fissures in the cyclopean structures.

Stooping down, I ran my fingers along one of the rents, the strange red crystalline substance crunching like compacted grains of sand beneath my touch. Despite the arid, desiccated nature of my surroundings, this crimson vein-work seemed to pulse with an inner luminescence, reflecting that same insistent, rhythmic throb.

A sudden sound - the unmistakable crack of stone fracturing - caused me to whirl around, the axe raised defensively. There, across the ruins, one of the larger pillars was...shifting, its entire mass undulating and rippling like something trapped beneath was trying to break free.

I watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as the structure's movements became more violent, fissures spreading rapidly across its surface as that crimson glow began to seep out from every crack and crevice. Finally, with a resonant, grinding boom, the entire pillar burst apart in an explosion of rock and dust.

What emerged from the rubble was nothing short of nightmarish - a twisting, pulsating mass of that same crimson crystal, now freed from its stone sheath. As it undulated and writhed, I could almost discern vaguely recognizable shapes amid its contortions - appendages, jaws, multitudes of malformed eyes blinking in and out of existence.

The axe slipped from my trembling grasp as the abomination let out a sound that could have been either a scream or a roar of exultation. All around, more of the ruins began to fracture and break apart, those same horrific forms lurching forth from every corner in a tidal wave of shattering stone.

I didn't even have a chance to cry out before they were upon me.