To Love Victoria

1: Zenith

The roaring blaze in the distance illuminated the night sky, engulfing the entire hillside in a sea of fire. I watched from the warehouses as it began to spread across the treeline, coming ever closer to where I was standing.

"This is only the beginning, we have more that we need to take care of. We should get out of here before they start hunting us down." I turned to the stranger beside me, confused by his words. The glow reflected from the eyepieces of his gasmask and he stood with some kind of rifle in hand. The rest of his head was covered with a black balaclava and he wore some kind of military uniform but it was not one that I recognised.

"Who are you?" I asked, fearing for my safety.

He looked at me. "I knew something like this would happen, time has become a little messed up. No wonder you don't know who I am, none of this has happened for you yet, but it will soon." He tensed his shoulders. "I am Zenith and I am so sorry for everything that I am going to do to you. I am so sorry for all of the billions of people that I am going to kill. James, I want you to understand that all of my past and future actions, I do them because they are necessary." A bright light swarmed my vision and blinded me. By the time the light had faded, he had disappeared as if he had vanished from existence itself. His words echoed in my mind, leaving me with many questions.

There was a low rumbling sound and the buildings around me began to shake. The shaking began to become more violent as the windows shattered around me and knocked me to the ground. The air was pierced by the sound of the ground violently cracking open which emanated through the entirety of the valley as the ground several hundred metres away began to deform. My entire body was frozen in fear, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Several black pillars protruded over a kilometre into the air and in the centre of it all, rose something that should not have been physically possible.

Thousands upon thousands of eyes covered the black mass with hundreds of malevolent tendrils extending from the ground around it. The diameter of the creature, or just the part that was visible, must have been at least several hundred metres and with an even greater height. I needed to run. I needed to get out of there and get as far away as possible but I couldn't move. My entire body had been paralysed by fear with my eyes resting upon something that should not exist.

Its eyes darted across the entire landscape, scanning the surrounding area. Before long, every single one was staring directly at me, locking me in place while I tried to get up.

The creature towered over me, staring down at me with its many eyes across its many tentacles. I knew I was going to die, it was obvious. I was just a mere human being and that creature in front of me was something that could ravage an entire city in a matter of seconds.

It raised one of its tentacles a mile up into the air and brought it down, speeding to the Earth. Speeding towards me. This was it, this was how I was going to die. Memories came flooding back to me, memories of my family, my mother, my father, my brother. If they were still alive, they would grieve me. But there was nobody left to grieve me, nobody would mourn for me or visit my grave, I would just be a number in a death statistic. The thought of death no longer scared me. All my life it had been what I was most afraid of but in my final moments, I came to realise that it was not death itself that I feared, it was the thought of dying without anybody to mourn for me. I closed my eyes, ready to embrace death. There was no way I could dodge the attack, both my left and my right were blocked by two warehouses, stopping any chance of my escape.

I fell to the ground and I was knocked over by what felt like an earthquake. Around me, the ground had cracked with a large crater and in front of me was a woman wearing a black military uniform along with some kind of collar. She held a sword that was plunged deeply into the creature's tentacle. The sheer force of the creature's strike was not something that any ordinary human could stop. A black liquid spewed forth from the wound, drenching the both of us. It poured over us, staining my clothes and even getting inside my mouth. I gagged as I tried to cough up the vile substance that was burning my throat, but it was too late, I had already swallowed some.