Can You Hear Them Calling

Chapter IX

"---IGVAR---UMDUN---HILDSIG---"   "---IGVAAAR---UMMMDUN---HILDSSSIG---" 

It kept on repeating in a deep disemboweled voice of a creature while drums and rattles with screams, humming, and crying of people splashed in the background. 

The chanting and everything else in between started to emerge beneath my skin. It began to deafen me, my right hand felt a burning sensation as it went in a fierce fiery, then golden cinders sparked all the way up my arm.

"---IGGGVAR---UUUMDUN---HILLLDSIG---"   "---IGVAAAR---UMMMDUN---HILDSSSIG---" 

My left hand began to cripple in the freezing sensation as flames of crystal blue rolled over my entire arm like waves on a shore. Everything came naturally, but none the less I still felt nothing. 

In both my palms were a flat stone with a carved symbol, the left has a triangle for a head, lingering lines for a horn of some sort---antler maybe? and has several more lines beneath the head. The right stone rather has a symbol, Celtic maybe? I couldn't recognize it, this is definitely yet something that I know.

In my chest grew out vines of green, what comes with it also has many features of green and at the middle is a flat stone with yet another symbol that I could barely see. It felt heavy and was the most bothersome between the others but none the less felt no pain. 

"---IGVARRR---UMDUNNN---HILDSIGGG---"   "---IGVAAAR---UMMMDUN---HILDSSSIG---" 

Butterflies in the shade of a dark blue as the universe preferred it, flew out of the stone in my left palm. 

A calm and majestic stag walked itself out of the stone at my right palm, It looked down on me with its towering size as it slowly galloped aside---a foot after the other could be heard and like before life bore in it's each step.

Birds covered in a pool of blue starlight flew in flocks out of the stone at my chest. The flock whirled above my head and so did the butterflies as the towering stag stared me dead in the eye.

 The sphere orchestrated itself, it grew in size and burned in the brilliance of light. The ground trembled as it levitated near the level of my hair. I stepped back by a couple and realized that my arms weren't burning nor did my chest had vines and neither did it have a symbolic stone.

Stunning light flared in a spiral as the sphere also did. Reins and Rio saw the huge ball of light that hovered near me. "SCHNEIDER GET AWAY FROM THERE!" called out Rio, but they wouldn't understand for they could never see what I have seen nor what I see now.

The butterflies dashed inside the sphere followed by the flock of birds and finally the stag. Together they merged inside the orb as it slowly hovered down, rays of white stars burst out in a form of rampant lines outside the sphere. 

Again it rested in my hands, this time hotter than ever, heavier than before. "Schneider, what did we just saw?" asked Reins, but we all knew that there was no time for talking nor could I. The blockade wouldn't hold much longer nor would a minute, we were losing time.

Whispers echoed in my thoughts, it was dry and rough, deep and old. I took a glance and their I knew that it certainly came from the sphere. I held it out of my hand trying to somehow rise it, then again---it glowed in white light. 

A terrible crack against the eardrums almost made me deft as a tear within space opened up in front of me, this time it didn't act like a vacuum but rather stagnant.  Rio and Reins certainly had this unavoidable expression, similar to what I first had.

I couldn't speak but at this very moment, I'd yell for them to jump in. They were hesitant at first but when the door blasted open they were left with no other choice. I was the last to go, and what I saw could never be explained by just mere words nor expression, only by what you can see and feel would tell you what this abnormality truly is, and yet still wonder what it is.

At first, a river of black blasted the blockade as far away as it could, then monstrous black tentacles shuffled in, they were twisting, some were slithering, but all were definitely twitching in great discomfort. They were in tremendous agony. 

Jumping in last I saw Reins and Rio not too far away from where I was, we were falling to an endless enigma, they were more than terrified and sanity must have been hard to cling on, at least for them.

The sphere was lit yet again with precious gems of silver twilight and further below we could see the other end from this free fall. Just as I thought that I finally understood at least a fragment of this skyscraping catastrophe---I was wrong.

As we were falling I---we, heard a grunt that made our skin shiver and our souls crawl out of our body. It felt definitely something...big, enormous even. It came from the vast black emptiness from beyond, or so we presumed.

The thought of falling faster made me eager to get to the other side, quickly as it could be. Then again a gigantic sound vibrated through the dark and cold emptiness, it was longer than the first. 

A red eye with a single strip at the middle opened far our West. It blinked slowly seeing how big the eye is, then a couple more opened with some smaller and some bigger than the others. They were all red with a single strip in the middle.

"Our Father..."

They certainly stood out seeing nothing but eyes in the void of complete silence, but so did we. All eyes were on us, it was watching us fall as it stood at bay, observing as did we.  

"Who Art In Heaven..."

The abyss hammered its anvil when a red thunder spectacle stroke near the eyes and a dim shade highlighted some parts the massive creature. Its body wasn't even half of what we saw, Giant squirming tentacles as far as an endless scape of the ocean ate our breath away. 

"Hallowed Be Thy Name..."

The unimaginable. The lengthless. The great catastrophe. The end of the beginning. The unspoken. The forefather of calamities. The tyrannical embodiment. The God of a forgotten time.

"Thy Kingdom Come...Thy Will Be Done,"

A gnar almost sounded like a cry when it bounced off from one eardrum to the other. This time I felt it coming from inside me, as if the creature was connected to me. I hear it calling.