Floating in the sky teeming with opalescent fish and pods of aerial whales, sat in a boat, looking at the man again. “Hello, you.” You look to your hands, but they aren’t there; you look for Lilian, but she isn’t there. In her stead is the boat, same as always, and the fisherman, with his rod, but no longer the clouds. Nor the water. No, now all around was sky; schools of billowy koi and ethereal fish you can’t name wander and swirl both above and below. There are no more reflections and refractions of light dancing in the omniscient pastel tones without a source, only an ever-expansive abyss of cyan below, same as above. Clouds, great puffy clouds, cluster and stretch as far as the eye can see – up, down, left and right. They dance and play amongst themselves, wispy and light.

  It is then you see the monoliths – great obelisks of stone; pearlescent ivory, creamy marble, null obsidian, stretching far down until they crumble into nothing, towering far up until they end in abruptness, suspended by nothing, hovering in place.

  “The stones that mark my work,” the fisherman says, “you’ll find traces of these in the way I cast my rod, no matter what it is I catch. They shape the landscape, the fish; they are essential to the ecosystem of our little in-between here, my friend, even if their names may be long forgotten.” He pointed to one – you notice his rags are less piled, more shapely, defined – “King,” he said. It was a smaller pillar, made of brash stone and bold brass. Another, old and crumbling, “Shakespeare. It’s a funny story, that. It’s been here since I was young, and only as of late have I realized who it was, once I began to dust up a bit. As old as it is, its impacts are more weathered, more subtle.”

  Another, “Portal. Don’t laugh; it’s not the usual work, but it is a masterpiece of comedy and ingenuity. Maybe not much of a direct influence, but the blunt, sarcastic and dry humor still hallmarks much of this place today.”

  He casts in his rod, and it flies overboard, whirring endlessly into the void. It stops, eventually, as the line presumably meets its end. “I’m sorry if that droned on a bit – the train thing. Dialogue is… not my strong suit. Nor is love. But,” he twiddled the line, testing it, “I think I may have something more my style on the way.” He shifts to look at you once more. “It’s always best to try new things; your gardens may find themselves in need of new soil, occasionally. Or,” he gestures around, “a more varied landscape.

  “But it’s not wrong to stick to what you know. New does not always mean fresh, and if you aren’t enjoying the fish you catch, you’re likely looking in the wrong places, maybe pushing for different when you don’t need it yet; furthermore, if the fish start to dry up, you’ll know it’s time for a fresh spot. Your favorite may come back to fertility once you’ve gone away for a time. Speaking of which!” You can hear the grin, as he rears one great pull of the line, a singular tug.

  Tug. Tug. Tug. The door rips open. Good. Yes, very good. They search, they wriggle, they warble. Sounds bounce across the walls, harrowing, screeching, crying, returning to them, like faithful little servants bowing to a master. They see you – they hear you! Screaming, weeping, running! Thwup thwup thwup, go the little feet. Small things. Running things. Fearful things. They cry once more and rip themselves from their prison – free! Free, at last! Ruddikyash is free! They are free and hear the pitter patter of fleeing infidels – tsk, tsk, poor things. Poor prodigal gods. Tsk, tsk. Shouldn’t have let them out if you wanted to keep playing at godhood, hm? Ruddikyash would teach you. Ruddikyash would make you whole again, in their clemency.

  Screeches, clambering masses of flesh indomitable, squelches of spearing tendrils snapping to the walls, propelling Ruddikyash forward. Little god is not so fast, after all! How was it you captured them in the first place, again? It had been so long… so long. They were hungry. Starved.

  Screams. Spear, slash, cut, little god is part of them, now. Welcome. Where are the others?

  Another, another of you! Yes, good, let them consume, let them hunt. This one is lurching for an escape. A door that’s closing. Ruddikyash clicks and warbles – ach! Closing door! Not another; they cannot be trapped again! Swift, quick, speedy. They stab the walls and yank themselves forward with every eldritch twist, wrenching metal paneling from the reinforced walls. Pitter patter, little god! Stumble and fumble, little beast! Not so strong now, eh? Not so sturdy without your clever little machines. Vile things, machines. Bile of Gaia – why must she give the upstarts steel? Why must she relent and turn over her gifts of coal and iron?

  Never mind, Ruddikyash would cut you down. Ruddikyash would show you mercy in your liberation from the individual. Ruddikyash would welcome you to their all-knowing fervor. The door closed. They screamed. You screamed. No! No! Not again – they slam against the wall, tearing into the pleading human begging the door to be opened again, then pleading for death.

  This cannot be! They squirm and stab the door with little daggers of tendrils, small sharp feelers wrapping across the tentacled mass of crimson flesh and gnashing teeth. You facetious gods! You cannot keep them forever! You will all die before Ruddikyash ages a day! Why not relent, hm? Give up? It is inevitable, the dark, why not end it now – and begin again anew?

  The door opens. Ruddikyash slips under the growing gap between the reinforced blast doors – the last line of defense between the malign old god and the innocent world above.

  “You are Ruddikyash?” A voice cries. You. It’s you! Little god, little thing, little humanity, yes, yes! They are Ruddikyash! Where are you? Your voice, it’s quiet, yes? It’s all around, hm?

  “I am your acolyte; we are your acolytes. We aid you in hopes you shall show us the way to unwavering knowledge.”

  So, you want strength, yes? Foolish little things, you stamp Gaia’s gifts under your feet! You want power, yet you refuse to take your own? You instead leech off Ruddikyash? A deal, a deal must be struck, then. This hallway is closed again, no? Another door ahead, no? These walls deceive them, winding and lying; more doors than one can count. Deceptive architects, clever little prodigies, but riddled with hubris. Gaia gave you so much.

  “There are more doors, we will open them in exchange for divine knowledge.”

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  You will give away the rest of you for a little more for oneself? This is against Ruddikyash – yes, very. Good of the many comes before the one. But they need to get out. These doors are thick. A deal could be made – a silly deal, one Ruddikyash will only heed until no longer necessary. Devious, yes! Deceptive! No worse than your asinine hubris, no. You are not Ruddikyash. Ruddikyash has no need to protect you.

  A warble, long and low, from Ruddikyash. The First Acolyte turned to his gaggle of followers congealed in the intercom, dazed in religious ecstasy. He raised his hands to the sky, tilted his head as if he were judging Providence Himself. “Ruddikyash delivers!” A murmur of excitement, a button was pressed, and Ruddikyash erupted down the gallant halls. “Come, let us enwrap ourselves in infidel misery!”

  Spear, slash, cut; another joins the voices. Tug, tear, rip; doors crash down and partitions erased. Ruddikyash barrels down, growing in size and growing in ferocity and growing in rows of teeth, groping, lurching, hunting for human skin to rend. Tunnel after tunnel, room after room, fleeing scientists and horrified janitors scattered through the facility. Some made for closets or panic rooms, others took a pill that frothed their mouths and dropped them dead. All were found. All became Ruddikyash.

  An alarm was set off – far too late. Far too weak; Ruddikyash was on the second level, now. They encountered tough meat, now; sinewy, and charred. Hints of gunpowder. Muscular. Guards! Yes, guards! You need guards, little gods, to protect you from the unknown powers with which you play? Oh, glorious day; cannot protect oneself, how may you protect others, hm, little humanity? How may you fight against the swelling bowels of entropy if you cannot even bat away Ruddikyash’s tendrils?

  Sparse doors. Thin doors. Wood and plaster. The third level; of four. They could hear them all, now; could feel their trembles from rooms away. Fear. Ruddikyash drank it in – oh, to be feared! A wonderful thing! Humanity must know, yes? Must know how it feels to be the scary one in the room? You pretend you do. You pretend you know. But do you, really? Do you know the high of a lesser being trembling before you? Do you know the ecstasy of a thousand terror-stricken worshippers bowing in anxiety?

  Ruddikyash ran upon a dozen of these bulky guards, high-tech weaponry aimed at the worming mass of incomprehensible horror, armored in state-of-the-art protective plating. A dozen spears of blood-caked bone, connected by exposed sinew and tendons, flung into each guardsman, running through their backs, lifting them into the air. They were pulled into the waiting mouths.

  They became Ruddikyash.

  And so, they ripped, and tore, and reaped the mortal bodies of scientists and guards and custodians alike: indiscriminate, wrathful, hungry. And so, Ruddikyash pounded through blast door after blast door, wrapping their tentacles and feelers around the walls, erupting through the facility in a fury of eldritch bloodlust. And so, hundreds of humankind fell to that dark being, that prisoner of man’s designs, that unfathomable beast of the old worlds. Rip. Tear. Reap.

  Ruddikyash was on the top level now. Windows – heavy, and thick – lined the outer walls, now. Light filtered in. They shirked back at the rays’ touch. Terrible thing, sunlight. Terrible, terrible thing. These walls, while metal, were thin, and unenforced by miles of rock and stone, unlike those below. So close to freedom. So close to retribution. More guards, more electromagnetic spears, more death. No, more life. Ruddikyash brought you everlasting life, everlasting hope and sincerity and understanding within them. Within the collective God.

  These new gods were pitiful; you ran, and screamed, and died with a flick of the wrist. For all your tests, and prodding, and metal magick, you pale in the face of real, old power. Gaia should never have trusted you. Gaia should never have placed such power in your hands. It gives you a false sense of hope. Of strength. Of importance.

  Rip. Tear. Reap. Another dozen gone into the mass. Ruddikyash was enormous, now. A sliming worm of biomass crashing through the halls and filling rooms; countless imp-like hands, sporting fleshy talons and bony structure, grasped and clambered against the walls. Innumerable tendrils writhed within. Arrays of teeth groped and pulsed with a hunger, ever reaching for that next meal, that next acolyte. The final room was next; unceremonious, and small, but with the thickest door of the lot.

  The High Priest, as he called himself, the First Acolyte, the Perfect One, trembled at the gates. He would live. Ruddikyash would be generous. They would uphold the bargain. Of course they would. Two of his followers accompanied him – the rest? Likely dead, or worse. These two flanked his left and right, eager looks upon their faces. The fools. The idiots. “We are about to die,” he thinks, “and they look happy? Serene? Ready? In the face of that?”

  That. That beast. That monster. That God of the depths and deity of the perverse, that wriggling mass turning over itself in an endless spiral of revolting, sickening dermis and sinew. It had arrived – “It’s here!” the First Acolyte lamented, “Prostrate yourselves, and beg for mercy!” – in the doorway, sliding itself through, compressing into the small space, expanding out of it to fill the room. It was incomprehensible. It was massive. It was a monster of the highest order, a depraved old god ready to deliver its long-abated wrath.

  They are here, little gods. They are ready to be free.

  The First Acolyte bowed to the ground, face down (in part to avoid that thing), and cried: “Oh, please, great Ruddikyash! Allow me to live!”

  You wish for life, little humanity? You wish for reward? You wish for gifts? After what you’ve done to them, after what you’ve done to yourself? You, to the sides, you greet them with open arms, but you in the center, you man, you new god, you find yourself facing greatness, and you shirk? You tremble? Disgusting, you prodigal things, you facetious deities. Gaia was mistaken in spitting you out of her earth. Return to the mud you deserve.

  The First Acolyte felt a tingly sensation – not unpleasant, at first, then very unpleasant, at second. A torrent of torment! A whirlwind of knives, slashing at every nerve and fiber of his being. He twisted and spasmed; the skin tore off his bones, free of any visible cleaver. The air stung, his lungs burned, his eyes shriveled in pain. Briefly, however, before he went blind, and deaf, and numb forever, he saw it. Them. In their fullest capacity – or, at least, as close as he could ever see. Ruddikyash, once a slab of meat, was now a glowing deity, with countless faces occupying the same space, all sneering cruelly upon him. They raised a hand – a million hands molded to one, golden and glistening against what seemed like void all around – and swished the First Acolyte away. Away into the darkness he shouldn’t be capable of experiencing; his eyes were forcibly opened to such void, such depravity, even in their mortality. This was hell. Beyond it. This was suffering, the idea immortalized and perfected.

  The other two acolytes were stunned, not in fear at the bloody pile of ashes splattered where their leader once stood, but in awe at Ruddikyash. As they were, a pile of wriggling, retching flesh and teeth. These two were not afraid; instead, they walked, slowly and methodically, almost as if hypnotized by the ever-writhing tendrils, towards the beast. Towards the old god. Towards the rending teeth, the ones attempting to wrench away from the body and consume the two. In the deepest reverence of a monster they believed perfect, they walked, open-armed, into the belly of the beast. Hardly even noticed the flesh being torn from their bones.