BRT 12.34 - Pandemonium

by Autobus Prime

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The orb-weaver spins...
Perches in the twinkling threads...
The orb-weaver waits.

---

"Halt, Micron!"

"No!" screamed Skydive, running wildly, stumbling across the alien earth.
"You're not going to turn me into a worm, or a bug, or - EEEAAAUGH!"

Running from one horror, he had fled into another.

Before Skydive, a terrifying landscape had opened, a stunted forest of
dead, twisted trees, festooned with thick and leafless vines. Nothing 
escaped their twining tendrils, and they seemed almost to move and 
change before him.  Everything gleamed with the same sickly green 
radiance that seemed all-pervasive in the Seeker's domain.

Far more horrible than the webbed forest, however, was what rested in
its shadows, tangled within the terrible thicket.

"MONSTERS!" said Skydive, gasping for air. 
"Tangled in those vines! Fighting each other! Devouring each other!"

They were everywhere.  Twisted and sickening shapes, blasphemies
against any natural order, repulsive, impossible masses of limbs and
tentacles, misshapen faces full of malice, tearing at each
other, tearing themselves with broken teeth, entangling
themselves in the eager vines.  He could not look, he could not stand -

"What are they?!"  He must understand, classify...keep his mind safe...

"They are creatures from beyond, drawn as moths to the web
of spacetime close-woven."

The cold voice was shockingly close, behind him.  He thought he had run further-

"Many also there are that you cannot see.  I have shielded your mind.
These too, I perceive."

...he felt it, then, a cold touch on his thoughts, and shuddered.

"The singularity traps all, as it has caught me...Here they are held.
Thus the worlds are preserved."

"My power they covet.  The foolish approach...with a touch, they are lost.
The singularity am I."

With rising horror, Skydive recalled Malaprop, how the demon had stretched
out one claw toward that slight, frail figure...how terribly he had 
collapsed, shrunk, vanished into nothing...how almost human his final,
terrified scream had been...

"The cunning keep distant, and here are ensnared, caught in greed, and
my webs.  The orb-weaver am I."

"Listen, Micron.  Do you perceive?"

"Tsugaru approaches.  Your folly has waked her.  Love drives her onward...
into the demons' claws."

"Long have they been here.  They hunger."

No...it could not be...but it was.  She was coming. An image briefly 
flashed into his mind - placed there by the Seeker?  The little elvish 
figure was in the air, again, jets roaring their green flames, 
thundering over a desolate, sickly plain...thundering toward 
the horrible forest.  Fear gripped Skydive when he saw her face...
he had seen that look in Sideswipe's eyes, as he flew into his last battle.

The voice wavered, only slightly...

"Had I my name...mighty words I could speak.  Break free...save her...save many...
...but my name is lost.  I seek, and find it not..."

Then it was ice...driving sleet...

"Asleep on the plains, her soul was secure...Here, and awake, demons' prey 
she becomes, and I cannot help her."

The words seemed to thud into Skydive's mind, battering against it like hail on a window.

"I am caught.  My blade is useless. My power, she rejects."
"Her mind I cannot shield. Defenseless she would be...She will see.
 She will know."

"You have done this, Micron."

Gazing into the horrible woods, transfixed by the sight of a
bominable hunger and struggle, Skydive knew she had spoken the truth.  

Tsugaru was doomed.

---

Myhobby Says:

Now here it is, a true prison for the vile.
The dregs of the multiverse must stay here a long while.
Unspeakable horrors, immersed in green bile.
Evil and vile, they hide in a veil, it's 'bus' style.
The recommended distance from such? more than a mile.