Eons of End

  Ripples spread through the ground under her boots, deep vibrations born from the glacier itself, and at that moment, she knew they brought the news of her imminent death.

  The snow underfoot, dense from a fortnight of storms, resisted every step. Each movement was a struggle, a spar to break her way through it. She knew the route by heart— so many times she had traced this path. And yet, the lab seemed infinitely far. Unreachable.

  Still, she had no choice but to try, for she was herself the harbinger of something terrible.

  The readings were clear. Clearer than any previous experiment. Ice-stress levels, thermal imagery and seismic readings all concurred. In a matter of hours, the glacier would split in two, and when it did, a 1,000 square kilometre chunk of solid ice would shear away and crash into the sea fifty meters below.

  The resulting wave would rise as tall as the Statue of Liberty. And while the world would undoubtedly keep on living as if nothing had happened — only with sea levels a few millimetres higher — the nearby coastal villages would be ravaged. Reduced to splinters and memories, their stories drowned beneath the rising tide.

  And yet, it wasn’t a concern for them that fuelled Lucy’s race. Her desperation wasn’t for faceless strangers. It came from within. She ran with the energy of despair simply because this loose chunk of ice was the place on which she stood. And the lab, also the only thing keeping her alive this far from civilisation, had its supports anchored in the very glacier that had started breaking apart.

  A shock wave rolled beneath her feet, carrying the sound of thunder through the ice. Lucy stumbled, flinging her arms out for balance while the snow shifted underfoot. Her mind reeled, refusing to accept the truth her body already knew. She couldn’t believe it. Despite the context, the readings, and her studies. It simply couldn’t be.

  Sure, she had picked up a rapid acceleration of the melting: unexpected, defying all previsions. But she had been the last one surprised.

  This wasn’t an acceleration, not the exponential thaw she’d painstakingly documented. It was something else entirely. Unnatural.

  Another tremor. The ground beneath taunted her with an almost mocking finality: the glacier was breaking. Sooner rather than later.

  The realisation struck her as vibrations shook her entire being.

  Months. Months of patience and vigilance. Months of freezing air, isolation and exhaustion. Months of witnessing the thawing snow and the fissures creeping like veins across the ice. Months spent trying to raise awareness while reassuring local authorities. All had led to this very moment.

  The cracks weren’t distant anomalies, a projection in some “worst-case scenario”. They were alive, surging around her with a deliberate inevitability.

  And so Lucy ran faster, though she was unsure why. It was too late. Yet, ignoring the ache in her muscles and the burning sensation of freezing air entering her lungs, she kept running. An instinct, a need or despair itself.

  Pieces of shattered ice toppled into a screeching chasm as a jagged line slashed its way across the ground to her right, devouring the blanket of snow — along with Lucy’s last shred of hope.

  The ground convulsed, throwing Lucy to her knees. Her hands plunged into the snow, and beneath her palms, she felt the ice tremble. A deep rhythmic vibration that seemed to come from far below. The glacier was reeling, wailing from the pain. Dying.

  For a moment, she didn’t recognise her own thoughts. They seemed foreign, unbidden.

  She shook her head to banish the phantom voice and pushed herself upright. Her legs were unsteady; the ice-quake had worked its way into her body — the vibrations rooted in her and worming themselves into her skull. They resonated there in an oppressive hum.

  Why run? The thought slithered into her mind. It will take you anyway. It will take you all.

  Lucy pressed a trembling hand to her temple. Shock. It had to be shock. Her body was betraying her, and she needed to focus. She needed—

  A flicker of movement caught her eye. Her chest tightened as the hum grew louder — a swarm trapped inside her skull. And then images flashed before her eyes: distant memories half-forgotten. The warm sun on an afternoon walk. And laughter. Her daughter’s laughter. Fingers brushing the pelt of a white dog. Her dog.

  Then, she saw them. Black tendrils writhed beneath the ice, clawing towards the cracks, desperate for release. And faces. Prisoners of the frost. Mouths open in silent outcries. Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, but the vision remained. Burned in her eyelids.

  She forced herself to move. But to where? There was nowhere to go, nothing left to fight for. It was too late.

  Too late.

  Before her, the glacier tore itself asunder.

  An abyss yawned open, wide enough to consume buildings whole. Giant chunks of snow cascaded into its maw, and for a moment, Lucy stood frozen. Staring into it. It was darkness. It was unstoppable. But it was something more. Something alive, pulsating faintly with a sickly blue light. Writhing.

  The ice beneath her feet gave a warning howl, then shifted violently.

  She fell.

  A scream tore from Lucy’s throat as gravity yanked her down. Her gloved hands scrabbled against the slick surface, but they found no purchase, and so the edges rushed past her, the walls closing in.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  As a last resort, she reached for the ice pick hanging from her belt and let her instinct take over.

  The steel bit into the ice, jarring her shoulder with the force. Her speed decreased, and then, finally, she halted. Her legs swung over the void, and Lucy dangled there, the cold seeping into her bones.

  Just below her, the faint glow pulsed rhythmically. A heartbeat.

  She had to get back up. But her muscles were already burning, her strength ebbing with every second. Down, toward the rhythmic glow, something was sending a signal. It beckoned her downward, irresistible. Waiting.

  Her numb fingers fumbled for the rope coiled at her side. She secured it to the pick with shaking hands and tested the knot. Time was running out. She glanced down once more, then holding the rope in one hand, she braced her feet against the icy wall and began her descent.

  A descent into nowhere.

  Each step down the glacial surface sent tremors through her legs, the rope stretching under her weight. Around her, the ice glowed — a surreal mingling of sunlight finding a way through the crystalline walls and the eerie blue light from below.

  A faint sound reached her ears. Muffled and distant. A voice.

  Before she could think, Lucy’s foot slipped on an unseen protrusion, and she lurched, her hands gripping the rope as it burned through layers of fabric. Then, the heat reached her skin. Her flesh.

  The pain made her cry. The hum surged. No longer a vibration now. It was a command. Words whispered at the edge of her consciousness.

  Come.

  Against every instinct, her grip loosened. Her mind fought back in the deepest corner of her mind, only she fell further into the void.

  Screams died in her throat as a freezing wind tore at her. The length of rope rushed through the muscles of her hands in a blur of agony. Time fragmented — her descent endless and instantaneous. She could only witness her own demise.

  Lucy hit the ground with a sickening thud. Agony exploded through her, stealing the air from her lungs. Her chest heaved, but no breath came. The world tilted.

  And the unyielding glow pulsed all around. Alive.

  Her vision blurred, darkness creeping at the edges. Unconsciousness claimed Lucy, but before that, in the milliseconds separating her from pitch black, she saw shapes moving in the light — twisting forms that reached for her with too many arms.

  And then nothing.

  “Hey, Mom, did you see that?”

  “Yes, pear,” she replied.

  A lie. She had not seen anything her daughter had done for quite some time. And as she answered another pointless email, her eyes fixed on the glowing screen of the latest smartphone; this was no exception.

  She didn’t see the dog sprinting through the forest, its white fur gleaming like snow against the green. She didn’t see the smile of her amazed daughter. Nor the buck leaping over fallen trunks.

  And above all, she didn’t see the rushing water.

  She didn’t see the struggling ball of fur — a white speck fighting against the current, clawing to regain the riverbank.

  She only heard her daughter cry out. By then, it had been too late.

  So she had opened her eyes at last.

  She pushed aside work to get closer to family. Forced herself to look — to really see.

  She saw her daughter, who would never again be the same. She saw the guilt, she saw the shame, all reflected in her own face.

  And when the cancer came, she saw it all.

  The hurried visits to the ER. The smiles that grew more fragile. The false hope on the doctors’ faces. And the diagnosis. And the pain.

  She saw the fading light in her daughter’s eyes. She saw her slip away, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to see but an engraved stone rooted in grass.

  It had been too late.

  So she had gone back to work.

  She buried herself in the comforting noise of endless distraction. She watched her husband leave. And the years pass. She saw the promotions come and the warm handshakes. They congratulated her dedication.

  Oh, the irony.

  Then, she poured herself into something that almost mattered — a fight for something greater. And she dedicated all aspects of her life to some promise of a better life.

  She went far, so far away from home. And further still. And she did everything she could. Everything that was asked of her.

  And it had been too late.

  Too late.

  Pain seeped into her awareness before anything else — radiating from her side and spreading through her limbs. Lucy groaned, her voice echoing in the empty chamber. She was alive, somehow. And when she opened her eyes, blinking against the flickering glow, she saw it all.

  The walls loomed high above her, coated with frost that glimmered in the blue light. Shadows danced across their surface in unexpected ways. And only one useless and answerless question came to her. Where am I?

  She propped herself up on her elbows despite the pain in her ribs and the throb in her head. She only remembered the fall — the wind tearing at her and the crushing impact. Not how she had gotten there. Yet here she was, nestled against the cold stone as though something had gently placed her there.

  She got to her feet, leaning against the wall for support. The cave seemed to stretch infinitely.

  Come.

  The whisper flitted through her mind. It was her voice.

  It wasn’t.

  Her boots scraped against the ground as she moved forward, sluggishly. The walls glistened, slick with dripping moisture. But something else was moving beyond them, trapped in the ice. Only Lucy didn’t look.

  She paused. The air felt different here, pressing against her skin. The glow was always stronger, and she couldn’t turn away. So she saw it all.

  The chamber opened before her. The walls were great veined membranes, pulsating with the same rhythm as the drums in her head. Light came from everywhere, a radiance that made the shadows writhe like living things.

  And at the centre, it loomed.

  A form defying human comprehension. Vast, gargantuan. The proportions twisting and shifting the longer she stared.

  And stared she did, for as long as she could remember. Longer still than her entire life.

  Great tendrils extended from its mass, curling with an otherworldly grace. They weren’t tentacles. They were something worse, their texture rippling like liquid and glinting like glass. Each movement carried a soundless vibration, echoing with her very bones.

  She let go of the ice pick that was still somehow in her hand. It clicked when it hit the ice. Then Lucy walked closer, and closer still. Although she wanted to shield her gaze, her body wouldn’t obey — her eyes locked on the abyss.

  This time, it saw her.

  Eyes. Countless and shifting, blacker than voids and brighter than the brightest quasar. They blinked in patterns indecipherable, each glance tearing through her thoughts, peeling back layers of herself. Leaving nothing but a fragile shell.

  Her mind screeched, but words failed her. Thoughts crumbled into fragments as she struggled to make sense of what she saw. Her lungs burned from an air that rejected her presence. The vibrations grew ever louder, deafening. A cacophony of sounds.

  Of voices.

  Thoughts that weren’t her own. So many of them. All screaming.

  And then it turned.

  A single massive eye, wide and deep. Older than the stars and the cosmic vibrations. It carried the world’s knowledge, pouring through her in endless threads, and the more she received it the less it made sense.

  The rest of the form dissolved into irrelevance; the eye consumed her world. And she could feel her mind unravel, her body and mind breaking apart. A brittle structure under immense weight.

  She. Saw. It. All.

  The tentacles writhing beneath the earth. Swallowing her. Swallowing them all. She saw pointless wars and endless agony. She saw the race to extinction and the denial of all that is true. She saw men fight to keep their luxury but never their homes. She saw them all, repeating her own mistakes. Fighting when faced with the consequences. And never hard enough.

  She saw faces distorted in front of a thousand stars.

  And infinite pain.

  Until Lucy disappeared. Only a distant memory. An insignificant vibration part of a greater chorus.

  It was too late.

  ***