ELDRITCH NIGHT (Rough Draft)

Chapter 54: Our Lady, Who Art in Hell

"Wake up, Gussy Gus."

The voice was low and lilting; it was feminine and seeped in mirth and half-stifled laughter. It was as if the words were spoken during the discovery of some great delight, like a greeting between two friends long parted. I had the sense, however, that this amusement was born of malice rather than joy.

I tried to look around to find the speaker, but I couldn't move. I was surrounded by something heavy that pressed down on me from every side. The weight shifted as I tried to move, causing the pressure to bear down on me all the harder. As my body struggled, my mind reeled at the smell of rot and chalk that permeated my tomb. My eyes saw only black.

I was not truly blind, however. I could sense a thick cloud of energy, made of a combination of eldritch and the strange death-flavored energy. It had sunk into everything around me. It hung over the battlefield like a cloud of malaise, seeking to drown everything beneath it.

At the center of that cloud was a beacon of energy too radiant to look at directly. It was as beautiful and intense as the sun, but consumed life rather than sustained it. I could feel small, pulsing channels connecting it to every creature in the area, alive or dead.

I was no exception.

I pulled back, using my senses to map the contours of the objects closest to me. I seemed to have been buried beneath a large pile of rubble. It was made of small, brittle objects that had broken into irregularly sized pebbles and long, jagged shards. I searched for Head Girl and her squad beneath the rubble, but they couldn't be found.

"Fisher!" I yelled more than once, but no response came. It seemed I was still alone in my own head.

"I know you can hear me, you fucking bird!" The only answer was silence, and an increase in the weight that bore down on me.

The weight and darkness began to erode my will. Flashing system updates failed to illuminate the darkness, instead warning me that my health was critical and that the drain on my stamina had increased in speed. I battled an urge to give in, to just fall asleep and never awake. What was left to save? There was nothing that could be done, best to sleep...

No, not yet.

I pushed aside my loneliness and despair and did what I do best – I lashed out blindly and violently at everything I could touch.

My right arm narrowed and elongated into a whip ending in five razor sharp claws. I thrashed and spun, using the weaponized arm to crush the rubble into fine powder. As I created more room for the limb to maneuver I slowly inched it toward the surface.

At the same time, I created a skintight barrier around myself and slowly began pushing it outwards. The weight was intense, and it took all my focus, but the pressure on my body slowly lessened as the shield expanded. This gave me room to move and allowed me to strike with more leverage as I tried to dig myself upwards toward the unknown sky. Perhaps, I would have been better off hiding in my tomb.

Eventually, my clawed hand broke through to the surface and I saw light. It split and scattered as it reflected off dust, breaking through the dark with visible lines of alternating greys and red.

I worked to widen the tunnel, and several small objects rolled towards me, creating clinking echoes. As one came to rest beside my face I recognized it, and with that realization so to did I understand the nature of my surroundings.

I reached over and picked up the small, chipped knuckle bone. I held it in front of my face, before focusing on the dome of white and yellow that hung above me. It was bone; all of it a mountain of skeletal remains. Most were broken and crushed, but under the pale red illumination they became recognizable. Half-intact skulls were wedged between cracked ribs and shattered femurs. The ridges of a severed spine could be seen under the crushed remains of an ulna and other bones too small and damaged to identify.