By the time I noticed the approach of night, it was too late. All I could do was run— run, and hope. The partly overcast sky had obscured my view of the sun, and by the time I saw its burning outline on the horizon, shadows had already started consuming its opposite end. These shadows brought a profound terror to my already weary heart. Anyone might make the simple mistake of losing track of time. It almost cost me my life.
I led a frantic chase to escape the coming dark, scampering up slopes and over boulders, sliding through muddy creeks, and sprinting through open barley and pumpkin fields. All the while, as I sprinted, the sky grew ever darker, and my heart did with it. Nothing else, not even what followed the chase, gave me the same dread as seeing the light vanish from the world around me. I heard the warning bells toll, marking the arrival of night as the grand city Elyestus came into view; the hurried descents of the guards from its walls as I approached; and the gate slamming shut only seconds before I reached it, not to rise again until the first sunbeams crested the horizon. While the rest of the city was safe within the sanctity of the gargantuan walls, all ramparted and spiked, I stood alone with what they those walls were built to keep out. No amount of shouting or pounding would bring forth any assistance or convince anyone to disregard the set rules and open the gate. I understood, even at that young age, that I alone brought the situation to hand, and therefore, must face whatever punishment might come. So, I made no noise and shed no tears, and instead looked for a place to hide.
Under the shadow of the sloping, cone-topped towers upon the bastion, I crawled into a boulder-fronted ditch. There weren’t many better spots on the steep hillside leading up to the city; and skeletons of those locked out of the gates like myself showed the futility of any attempt at evading the pursuit of the coming beast. I could only force myself as close to the ground as possible and pray that the horrible thing happened to pass me over. The beast was no creation of the gods, and therefore had no soul to dilute with trickery or other subterfuge. It worked only on instinct but had no animalistic faults. Its cognition exceeded anything in nature; exceeded the intelligence even of humanity. Whatever it chose to do, it did with the same stoic decisiveness of the Emperor; free from the shackles of morality and indecision, but maintaining unparalleled impulse. Its name became synonymous with horror and despair. When its cry sounded through the solemn night, nothing of its magnitude could ever hope to sound back, for nothing existed capable of matching its monstrosity aside from whatever unknown beings might lie beyond the furthest stars or at the centers of galaxies. Nothing planetary could compare to its malignity and desire for destruction; and as twilight faded to black, the aura of its power came upon me like an eclipse, blocking out the night’s dark with an even more grotesque shadow.
It didn’t walk, but gods, it lumbered. It made no noise, but it sent resonance bounding down the hills. Its size wasn’t great, but still, it loomed mighty. What details I could make out in the undisturbed darkness were only fragments of whatever the horrible sight would have been in daylight— but the fractional outline held enough grotesqueness to force my head away and send me into a whispering fit of litanies and prayers. I made out no head; but the horn-like protrusions thereon were visible against the sky. I could see no mouth, but I saw the teeth, packed so tight that they pushed against each-other for space, as if they each had their own innate desire to kill. In the negative space where the rest of its body should have been, I saw nothing aside from wispy shade and the occasional sparkling particle; like what appears when one forgets to breathe. I can’t say for certain that wasn’t the cause; but I only saw the lights around its torso and eyes. Those horrible compound eyes, looking everywhere and nowhere simultaneously; analyzing the field, scanning for its next victim; when they turned to me, I knew then that my life was at its mercy, if it understood such a human concept. I didn’t look up again after that certainty of exposure leaped upon me, and my eyes remained closed. Even when I heard its sloshing movement as it leered over my body and moved past; I did not move, and I did not scream.
Only when its cry sounded off somewhere in the distance, layered with echoes as it chased the night across the land to other cities, did I reopen my eyes and raise my head. But I did not move. I did not, and would not, until the bell rang again, and the gate rose back to suspension. I stayed right where I was, quivering in the dark and looking at the dead herbage that it had left in its wake, piercing a line through the forest and into the distance. An incarnation of death had stood above me, and I survived to chronicle the story. It could have evaporated the skin from my bones like it had to the surrounding corpses, without as much as the movement of an arm— but the creature left me in my pitiful prostration. I’m not one to question the unquestionable, or to ponder that which is out of my control… but I have never understood why. For the rest of that night, I stared at the brown, brittle grass, just inches from where my head laid. Each day before twilight, even now, I take a moment to look out over those walls at the discolored stretch of grass, thanking the world for life.