Everyone claims that the world ended today, but I don’t think that's true. People will live on and at that time a first hand account will be valuable. I wont make the same mistakes as all those people in history. Every day I make a copy of this journal to save for posterior (I meant posterity, it’s hard to write without a spell checker). Anyway, monsters showed up Dad and Titus fed them half a box of shotgun slugs. I helped out too and got some cool new stuff to play with. It was worse in town, a big snake thing with centipede legs had eaten several people. Thankfully the Midwest is filled with nothing if not overarmed people. It was tough, but not get run over by an eighteen-wheeler tough. Anyway, Titus chose to save that sigil as a way to boost morale. I’ll write more tomorrow.
Day One, Owen Landers
Silas whirled, nearly slipping in a pool of congealing monster blood. The feeling of crackling static electricity told him that there was either a horribly malfunctioning electronic or another portal had just opened. He made to dash for the sigil, but the portal had opened between him and the corpse of the werewolf.
Claws had not gotten through whatever membrane separated Earth from whatever was beyond. He had time. Turning to Matteo, he found the man shivering in fear, but still climbing to his feet.
“Let's see if a second sigil won’t upgrade your lesser one,” Silas said gesturing toward the portal. There would be a brief period where the newly arriving beast would be vulnerable and that would be when Matteo would strike.
Matteo blinked, shoving his lizard brain back. He took a deep breath and looked around for the axe. The werewolf had tossed it into the kitchen where it had smashed through a cabinet door and destroyed a few dishes. Silas weighed the risk of getting the axe against taking the time to grab the sigil.
The sigil had taken only a little time to integrate itself with Matteo, but that gap had almost gotten the constable killed. Silas would rather arm the man who would effectively be his bodyguard before he took the sigil. So he jogged to the kitchen and yanked the axe out of the cabinet.
A bubbling sound distracted him, there was a pan filled with oil and some kind of breaded vegetable boiling on the stove. Silas did not recognize the dish it would create but was more than happy to take a plan of boiling oil. He placed the lid on the pan and carefully moved back to Matteo.
“I don’t think that’s the same monster,” The constable said, gratefully taking the axe as he watched the rift get pulled wider.
Silas took a look, his first real look at a portal. He had moved away from the first one when it was only a finger width wide. No, it was definitely not a wolf.
Tentacles wormed through the aperture, covered in blood. No one had died on this side, so this creature must have killed something on its side. The word tentacle might have been wrong, as the suckers on the underside that were ordinarily associated with them were replaced by a disgusting array of eyes and teeth.
Small mouths would open and reveal an eye, lock onto Matteo, close, then reopen as a maw with teeth and a slime covered tongue. It was made of mouths, so Silas fed it. The portal was wide enough that he was able to toss the pan, boiling oil and all, through. A choir of hisses preceded the tentacles retreating.
That gave Silas his first view of the alien landscape beyond. Torn apart monsters lay in heaps on a reddish grey stone, a dull purple sky that gave everything a slightly unreal appearance, and of course the mass of angry tentacles moving back in. They crashed through the portal like a pissed off tide.
Spectral claws and antlers formed around Matteo. After the first tentacle was cut with ease, he abandoned the axe in favor of his claws. Silas tried to make his way around the rapidly escalating number of tentacles as the portal widened further. Grimacing, he realized that he would need to cut his way to his sigil.
He scooped up a thick butcher's knife from the floor where a diner had dropped it. Never before was he so grateful for Germany’s focus on quality over quantity. The rectangular blade met little resistance from the rubbery flesh.
“START CUTTING,” He yelled at the frozen people.
No one had been expecting to fight an eldritch horror this morning, but they would need to if they wanted to live. The reason was not immediately obvious. A tentacle wrapped around the injured woman, snaking into her gut wound.
The elderly man and his daughter hit it with stools trying to save the woman’s life. It did not take long for a worm made of teeth to kill the unfortunate woman. Matteo slowed, as the size of his pack decreased. The tentacles he tore through with near impunity, now took a bit more effort.
Everyone else had armed themselves, but the pub was not a fount of weaponry. They had been lucky with the axe. The knives here were made for peeling fruit and cutting bread, Silas and Matteo had taken the few made for cutting flesh. Silas knew this entire situation hinged on keeping Matteo as powerful as possible, if he couldn’t get to the sigil, maybe Mateo could.
“Matteo, take the sigil!” Silas yelled, trying his hardest to mimic his drill sergeant's cutting voice.
Thankfully, the man did not ask any questions, he simply nodded and cut a bloody path through the tentacles. Silas marveled at the destruction that could be caused by a lesser sigil, then watched in disgust as the tentacles ate the severed parts and started to regenerate.
Matteo made it to the dead werewolf and reached for the sigil. The actions of the monster changed. Half the tentacles surged at Matteo, giving him a reprieve. The other half locked onto Silas. He franticly backpedaled as free room rapidly dwindled. Could Matteo claim the sigil if Silas died?
Silas had no desire to test it and chopped at the tentacles manically. They did not quest about like most creatures with the appendages did. The eyes made it easy to find prey, making them far more difficult to deal with.
He hacked and chopped, desperately keeping limbs at bay. Unfortunately, he was not superhuman and it only took a few moments to be overwhelmed. A literal ring of teeth wrapped around his ankle and pulled him off his feet.
Silas cut it off, only to have three more wrap around various parts of his body. He expected to be consumed, but instead, he was dragged. What was it doing? Did it need him alive, maybe to be digested for later consumption?
Notice: Someone is attempting to claim the sigil of the Lupus Cervidae will you allow this? They assisted and will receive the full reward.
Silas was so high on adrenaline and fear that he verbally responded, “Do it, do it now.”
The words fuzzed and disappeared as if he was watching an old television glitch out. Then he was airborne. Silas had a brief moment to wonder why he hadn’t hit the ceiling when he hit the ground at a shallow angle coming to rest and looking up at the sky. A purple sky.
Silas scrambled to his feet. He had dropped the meat cleaver, but it was on this side of the portal. He scooped it off the muddy ground. Both he and the knife were covered in blood drenched red dust.
The creature had pulled him through the portal, knowing it would cut out his connection to his sigil. Silas glared at the creature, it had failed, but he refused to be stranded here regardless of the fact. It had the unsettling implication that the creature was at least a little intelligent,
Now that he was behind it, Silas got a good look a the main body. It was a roiling mass of flesh. Ball shaped would be an apt description, though a tumor came to mind. A single eye sat in the center, blinking between a crying visual organ and a slavering maw. Hundreds of hairlike tentacles extended through the portal, a few were reserved, coiling like snakes underneath the main body.
Silas saw a massive opportunity here. All the tentacles were bunched up as they pressed into the aperture, taut and ready for a large blade to cut. The beast seemed to have redoubled its attention on Matteo, forgetting about the man it had dragged into its world. Silas would make it pay for that.
He contemplated going for the head, but his weapon was not large enough to hit anything vital. There was also the important fact that he would get stranded if that portal closed before he exited. Mind made up, he charged in and chopped at the tentacles.
“Take this,” Silas’s blade bit through one appendage and into another.
He made respectable progress until one of the tentacles supporting the monster wrapped around his leg and pulled him away. It was bringing him to the main body to consume him. Silas refused to be eaten.
With a wild swing, he cut the tooth covered wrapping off and glared at the monster, before rushing back to the clogged portal. Several tentacles retracted and followed him. Silas’s concentration was divided, slowing his progress and making him miss swings he should have successfully executed.
Every so often, the main body would glance over at him, making sure he would not make his way back. Silas screamed in frustration at his impotence. If only he had grabbed the sigil instead of making sure it was safe.
If the monster dedicated anything more than a distraction towards Silas he would be dead. While the disinterest was a bit insulting, its focus on Matteo kept him alive. Every time he cut through his tentacles, another set would be pulled back. Then the discards would be consumed, regrown, and shoved through the portal.
Silas needed to do something, the monster had seemingly infinite regeneration. Would fire stop it? Maybe, but he lacked any. Looking around for any advantage, his eyes landed on the corpses scattered about. The last time he had tried, he had been unable to create a sigil, but this was monster on monster violence, so maybe.
Rushing over he placed a palm on the bulbous shell of an insect monster. He chanted under his breath, “Come on, come on, come on.”
Notice: you have made contact with spirit manifestation Crudelis Tergum. Would you like to purify the taint of Nergal?
“Yes!” Silas shouted. Then the expected message popped up.
Notice: You are not the one who overcame Crudelis Tergum. Please find the one who overcame the Crudelis Tergumto excise the taint of Nergal.
“No!” Silas yelled. He waited for the resurrection message, but it never came. He glanced back at the tentacled monster, he should be glad that it couldn’t mass harvest Sigils and that he wouldn’t be dealing with a small army in ten minutes. The most pathetic silver lining, given the situation.
Anger boiled up in Silas. He was being kept away from earth by a demon calamari. He screamed his anger out and laid into the mass of tentacles, to no effect. The creature occupied him like an obstinate toddler with a few arms that it constantly shifted around and recycled.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Nothing new happened for the next few minutes and Silas started to despair, but something in the monster’s body language changed. It tried to pull its tentacles out, but something was keeping it in place. It jerked, but whatever was on the other end was able to hold all but a few in place.
A handful escaped, smoking as if they were being burned. Silas could only assume that the pub was on fire, but the only reason it would trap the tentacles would be if it had also collapsed. Silas growled in anger, if he couldn’t go home, this creature would die with him.
The events on earth absorbed the monster’s attention until the expected happened. With a crackling snap, the portal closed. The monster hissed in pain from every one of its disgusting mouths as ninety percent of its arms were removed.
Silas cut through the momentarily frozen tentacles around him. The removed sections were quickly devoured, but every tentacle healed equivalently. Dealing with a hundred two foot long arms was much easier than handling even a handful of regular appendages.
He cut the last handful of tentacles and approached the now helpless creature. It snapped its teeth at him and tried to roll away on its forest of arms. Some progress was made, but it was slower than Silas could walk.
“You cut me off from my home and you think I would just let you get away?!” Silas snarled as he started cutting into the beast.
No response came from the flesh pile. Including the arms it had a good ten foot circumference, and a meat cleaver was not a good tool for digging. However, Silas had nothing but time and anger. He followed it as it limped away, yelling and cursing at it to no effect.
He had dug a small cave into its body before he finally got the message he had been waiting for. Silas hit it a few more times for good measure before staggering out and collapsing. The energy boost from the adrenaline had been exhausted, and he was bone weary. He knew what to expect, but still read the red text before him.
Notice: you have made contact with spirit manifestation Famelicus Oculo Dominus. Would you like to purify the taint of Demiurge?
Silas pushed the message aside. He had a few minutes before the creature was resurrected. Slumped against a monster, drenched in its viscera, he took a moment to take in his situation. He was stuck in a foreign world with flesh eating monstrosities from hell.
There was no way home, he would never see Abby again. He wondered if she even survived. The surgery was routine, resetting a few broken bones after an accident that occurred while helping her father remodel his home. She couldn’t fight a werewolf or an oculo dominus.
He tried to push down the rising panic. There was not much he could do even if he was still on earth. The planet was big, but not as big as the distance he needed to cross. He blinked as his head started to get woozy, when had he started hyperventilating?
The fear of his wife’s probable death was supplanted by his immediate survival. If he fainted from hyperventilation, the tentacle monster would revive and eat him. His hand snapped out and he grabbed a tentacle, giving a desperate affirmation to the notice that popped up.
Every piece of monster exuded black smoke. As Silas was drenched in its blood, he was blinded by the black fumes. The fumes were swiftly changing to a purple that matched the sky as they collected into a sigil atop the monster.
Resurrection averted, Silas went back to his thoughts. He was less panicked, but could easily backtrack to that state. It gave him the clarity to recognize that there was indeed a way home. He was living proof that portals could carry humans, he just needed to tear one open and march through. That or find one with a monster using it and get through that way. Silas would just have to hope that Earth was the only exit.
To do that he would need power. No one would be here to help him kill monsters. It would be him against a world of fangs and claws. Silas knew it was irrational to think he could survive, but weren’t monsters and superhuman capabilities also irrational?
Clenching his fists, he set that path in his mind, “I’m coming Abby.”
He was like the constable in a way, just for a different country. Even if he couldn’t do it for himself, then he would just have to let that drive him. Death was inevitable, he would simply refuse to go quietly.
Looking up, Silas climbed the timorous mound of dead flesh. The sigil was different, a glowing eye with a fanged mouth around it rotated calmly in the air. Silas hesitated, that looked like something a demon would make. His faith may not have been ironclad, but he still was wary of touching something so eldritch in appearance.
Abby’s smile crossed his mind and he shoved his hesitation aside. He was willing to be a monster if it meant finding a way. Closing his eyes, he shoved his hand into the sigil.
Notice: You have claimed the purified sigil of the Famelicus Oculo Dominus.
Not even an option to refuse. Silas read the text displayed across the interior of his eyelids. It probably assumed that accidentally touching a horrifying monster wouldn’t be accidental. He waited for a few moments for a second white message to tell him what he had received.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes to find nothing had changed, barring the absence of the sigil. There was a split second where he thought he might have gotten tentacle hair in the same way Matteo got antlers. Running his fingers through his hair proved that a false assumption.
The crunch of dried meat and congealing blood dyed his blond hair red. His whole body was red and crusty. Grimacing he wished that he hadn’t made a tunnel through a tumor and then climbed inside. There had to be a stream where he could wash his clothes somewhere.
Silas paused, that was Earth logic, he was not on Earth. Why would there need to be water? If there was, why would it be clean? His thoughts started to spiral out of control again.
“Survive, get home, find Abby,” he muttered, repeating the list like a mantra a few times.
What was the first step? He looked around, get to the high ground, survey the surroundings, and find water. No, Silas shook his head to clear it of panicked cobwebs, his biotech health interface should have been altered.
He should be superhuman now, though he hoped tentacles weren’t the power he got. There was also the concerning fact that his biotech had been fundamentally changed by absorbing a spirit. Was there a demon octopus inside him? He shuddered, distracting himself by bringing up his Health and wellness menu.
It was gone, in its place was a simple graph that depicted information in a similar manner.
Silas frowned, not entirely sure what to do with this information. Most things were similar to the health and wellness interface, simply renamed and not fluctuating in real time. He couldn’t see his heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, or other stats anymore. They were replaced by the less descriptive terms.
He was not even sure what one point in body meant. Did everyone have one? Was it telling him he had one body, something that was blindingly obvious? He had two vitality, so maybe he could get two bodies. Silas shook his head, numbers on an illusory panel would not help him.
Moving on to the sigil, Silas sighed. The tentacle monster was stronger than the werewolves, at least from Silas’s perspective. However, the power attached to it seemed to be, mundane. He would be able to eat anything regardless of how toxic it was and heal somehow. What did it mean by appropriate? The interface did nothing to explain itself.
Silas saw a completely pointless talent for sculpting. If he planned to make bricks and settle down in the monster world, then maybe he could use it. The titles appeared to be equally useless, as there was no explanation as to why he had them or what he did. Ones like foreign warrior and first visitor made sense, but explorer? He hadn’t explored anything.
Without the power needed to jumpstart his survival, Silas didn’t know if he would make it back. Looking at the new world around him, it was a whole world of monsters. When he started hyperventilating again, Silas pushed the big picture out of his mind.
“Survive, get home, find Abby,” He muttered.
Survival was the first step, and for that he needed water. Sitting atop a giant monster did not extend his sight lines as far as he had assumed. Despite the surroundings being a desert, there were rocky mounds that stood at random intervals.
To Silas, it appeared like the hard earth that was tilled during planting season. The dirt would come up in chunks as the heavy farm machinery cut into the soil. This was similar, though not in straight rows and on a much larger scale.
The miniature desert ravine he was in was filled with corpses. No monsters moved about, which was a good thing. Nothing would be trying to eat him in the near future. His emotions told him that he needed to move, to find a portal and escape.
He only knew one thing about portals, which was that one had appeared here. There was no proof that one would appear here again. He slid off the monster he killed and moved to one of the sandstone ridges.
It was a relatively easy climb. Silas had no experience with real mountain climbing. He had gone up a few walls in a gym, but he knew the real thing was far more dangerous. However, his body did exactly what he wanted it to.
He was able to move up the face of the stone formations with relative ease. His hands found grips with ease, never struggling to hold his weight. Silas wondered if this was what the sigil meant when it said his body would operate at peak efficiency. Nothing he was doing was superhuman, or even super Silas on its own. He could hold his body weight with one hand for a minute or two, but he had surpassed that quite some time ago.
“Enhanced endurance?” Silas muttered to himself as he climbed up to the top of the formation, “Not as flashy, but likely better than Matteo’s ability for his current situation.”
Standing at the top of a stone spire, he was able to see that he was positioned in a sea of rock formations. Ravines cut through the entire surface of the desert, making it look like parched and cracked ground. In the distance he could see things moving, they were little more than specks. Silas was fine with letting them keep their distance.
He pivoted, looking for something green. The purple sky made everything a strange off purple color. Simple dust and stone looked alien, despite being similar to what was on Earth. The level nature of the formations let Silas see all the way to the horizons. There was no plant life.
With the desert environment, he hadn’t expected to see trees, but shrub life, possibly some vines, or cactus. The animals out here needed water, at least that was what Silas assumed. It was an alien world, so maybe they didn’t.
His second idea was to look for a large open area in the sea of stone pillars. While he was no geologist, even he was aware that running water formed a landscape like this. Flash floods would carve ravines over thousands of years as water moved to the ocean.
Open areas were scarce, but he did find a few. One was in the direction of creatures he saw on the horizon. The other was much farther away, Silas was not comfortable with traveling long distances through territory he was unfamiliar with. He did see the flaw in that logic, there was not any territory he was familiar with anywhere in this world. Still, that was enough to make him decide to approach the closer area.
He looked up to get his bearings. On Earth, a compass was helpful because, while the sun rose in the east and set in the west, it could rise anywhere from northeast to southeast depending on where on the planet you stood. That didn’t matter in this case. First, Silas only needed to know where he had entered the portal, maybe another would open and he wanted to be nearby.
The second and far more important reason why was obvious when Silas scanned the sky, “Where’s the sun?”
Silas tried to wrap his mind around the lack of celestial bodies. No moon, no sun, there was nothing but a blank purple sky. Even clouds were absent. He tried to think of something to mark his current location, but all he had was a grimy set of clothing and a butcher’s cleaver. Piling up some stones might have worked if the whole area wasn’t simply a forest of stone piles as far as the eye could see.
The lack of a sun would also make it more difficult to arrive at his destination. If he was a ninja who could leap between stone constructs, then it would be easier. However, he would be going through a maze. Silas had never been good at mazes, his father had tried to explain the logic behind them once, but he hadn’t listened. He doubted the advice would be relevant in this situation.
Locking the destination in his mind, Silas climbed down the rock formation. It was barely any cooler in the shade of the spires, which made no sense. How could a planet without a sun be so… habitable felt like the wrong word, but breathable air, correct temperature, all it needed was water. The monsters were the main problem, but enough people with large caliber weapons should be able to handle them. Hopefully.
Silas had a suspicion that a soft bodied tentacle monster was nowhere near the top of the food chain. He took a deep breath and put himself into a more focused mindset. Survival first. Maybe he should have tried to repurpose the bodies behind him, the bugs had armor and the eyeball monster had needle like fangs. Water was his first priority. Dehydration would kill him more surely than any monster.
So he marched through the forest of rock formations, covered in a suite of sticky grime. He did his best to hide, but he was in the army, not the special forces. Stealthier than the average American put him somewhere around average for global ability.
It did not take long for him to come across wildlife and unsurprisingly, it was not a cute and cuddly variant.
