ELDRITCH NIGHT (Rough Draft)

Chapter One: Day Breaks, and Night Falls

I was driving home on what the rest of the world would come to call Eldritch Night - the Night of Terrors. It began peaceful enough, the heat of day gradually lessening into a clear, cool night. The backroad and the empty fields around me were illuminated by a full moon in a clear sky. I loved these long drives at night. I didn't have to worry about studying, or what the newest gossip was. My phone was turned off and placed in the seat behind me. No distractions, it was just me and the road.

That peace didn't last long. I looked up at what looked to be a shooting star that was gradually getting bigger as it descended, shading my eyes with my hand as the light became more intense.

The sky shattered like a kaleidoscope on fire, lighting up the dark road ahead of me with intermittent flashes of golds, purples, and reds. The strobing light gave brief flashes of a mass of churning darkness that consumed most of the night sky. It was both beautiful and terrifying. Tendrils spun out from the center of the darkness, each one dancing and writhing independently of each other, with no apparent pattern. The dance of shadows was mesmerizing, and it burned itself into my mind in a way I can never cleanse. The darkness spun, as it still does in my dreams, a wreath of death upon the sky.

I gazed up, and the darkness stared back. Folds of shadow twisted and retreated to reveal an eye- massive and red, large and bright as the burning sun. The world froze, and I believe I lost my mind for a moment. To describe what I saw as I gazed into that eye would be to put a name to the unnamable. My mind retreated in defense as I tried to comprehend the horror and the images that swam before me.

I came to as the sky lit up, this time in brilliant white and gold as bright as day. The sudden change in light was blinding, which is why I didn't immediately notice the world literally coming apart around me. Asphalt and gravel swirled around my truck as the road crumbled beneath me, and yet I kept moving forward, suspended by some invisible force. In the distance I could see trees and rocks floating upwards, it was as if gravity itself had joined the madness and rebelled.

I never really heard the crash, I felt it like a wave of force moving through me, pulverizing everything as it went. My bones vibrated and were pushed out of place making room for my organs and limbs as they repositioned themselves. It should have been painful, but it felt as if it was happening to someone else. Like a dream, or a memory played back in slow motion.

I could hear screams, probably my own, but they were muffled and sounded far away as if I was underwater and the voice was coming from the surface. I tried to reach out to grab onto something, anything, but all I could find was smoke, acrid, and bitter, as it forced its way into my lungs and eyes. I remember the heat and the quiet beauty of the flames as they danced around me. Inch by inch, in a painful, agonizingly slow march they crawled ever slightly closer.

***

Congratulations!!

"...The fuck," I summarized. I awoke to a voice in my head and a translucent screen that was visible even with my eyes closed.

His hunger knows no bounds, and you have awoken him, but fear not! The Old One, Crimson Hunter of the Void, has been delayed!! Your world has been selected by the Hegemony of Worlds and has been accepted as a provisional Tier 4 Planet!! Your world, and you with it, will be given the opportunity to grow and develop to meet the coming challenges!!!

For more information, please think "menu" and then select "guide." Good luck.

System loading.... Basic stats package prepared! "Stats" can be viewed by thinking "stats" or "status" at any time.

Augustus Finn

Class: N/A

Level: 1