There was a white light blinding your eyes. You felt cramped, hot, and uncomfortable. Why was everything so hot? You couldn’t speak, and despite the unbearable temperature, you could not sweat. Where am I!?
There was the shrill groan of what sounded like a rusted and iron gate opening. You were tossed; you tumbled; until your small form was crushed within a giant black fist. It was dark but for the numerous glowing bodies that surrounded you. You realize then that there were more confused Souls just like you, frightened and lost. They did not speak. You could only hear their timid whimpers as you and them were carried into the sky. The fingers unfurled beneath you, revealing the gaping maw of a monster. Its teeth were yellow, jagged, and misaligned. Its gums were so dark red you might have thought they were just clumps of coagulated blood. A pink and lengthy tongue unfurled from the creature’s mouth to dribble saliva down the fat swells of its chest. You saw that it had no eyes and from its pale-head protruded horns or antennae—you couldn’t tell and they might have been a combination of both. You fell.
You and a few others were fortunate enough to miss the monster’s gaping mouth and instead tumbled and bounced down its white globular belly. One Soul who had also missed the creature’s mouth had fallen across its tongue and as it rolled near the tip, the monster’s tongue curled, rolling it up like a rug. You and the surviving others struck the basaltic floor, and above you, you could hear the grunts and crunch of the giant gobbling the Souls up. Their bodies popped and tore between its grinding teeth, spilling blood like a sanguine curtain down its quivering belly that squirted blood from its stapled seams. The monster uttered its finishing gluttonous grunts before it gulped audibly and leaned over to belch a black gas upon a few of the survivors. You watch as their bodies turn black and shrivel in the heat of the gas.
There were even fewer of you now and the monster sadistically laughed. You’re frozen—afraid to move as you wondered if you were next. The monster instead scratched at the staples across its belly before it hauled what appeared to be a massive iron mace onto its armored shoulder.
“All right,” the tongue the creature spoke was nothing you had ever heard before, and somehow you understood it. “You lucky ones are my new Spirit slaves. I got hungry and ate my old ones.”
The monster, now to be called The Horned Guard tensed a little in surprise as it uttered a, “Whoops!”
He shrugged his colossal mace from his shoulder and swung it over his head to bring it slamming down like a hammer on top of what appeared to be a large iron cage behind you. The door he had opened to draw out the handful of Spirits was slammed closed, snapping several Spirits who had tried to crawl free in two, and leaving some to writhe on the ground without arm, leg, or head. You realize that you had been in that cage once. The cage was pure white from the thousands of Souls tightly packed together in what looked like a glowing and wiggling snowball.
“Almost had some escape…that wouldn’t have been good,” the creature muttered to itself. It retracted its mace and gazed upon the Spirits that were still sitting and lying about. With an annoyed growl, the Horned Guard swung its large mace, crushing a few Spirits beneath it who had been too slow to flee. It slid the mace across the ground, leaving a red smear and crushing a few other slow Spirits in its path. With another wicked chuckle, it retracted its mace and growled, “You lazy shits! I let you out of the cage and all you want to do is lie around! Move those stones! They’re in my way!”
The Horned Guard indicated to the large black blocks with sharp red and glowing thorns curving out of it. There wasn’t a single area of the block a Spirit could grasp that wouldn’t make them bleed. Afraid to be killed, a few Spirits raced over to the stones to attempt to move them. The first Spirit to the block abruptly stopped when it nearly ran into one of the thorns, but the Spirit behind it had pushed it into it, impaling its body on the stone. Other Spirits followed like lemmings accidentally bumping into each other and causing more to be impaled. The Spirits eventually figured out that the bodies impaled upon the thorns made the stone safer to move and proceeded to do so while the Horned Guard hysterically laughed.
“You stupid little shits! Ha, ha, ha!” The Horned Guard’s laughter suddenly ceased as its teeth came together in an ominous frown. One of the Spirits was sitting on the floor with its arms wrapped about its legs. Why wasn’t it obeying it!? Why wasn’t it working!? “Rah! Disobedience!”
The Horned Guard swung its mace at the Spirit, and the Spirit rolled out from beneath the weapon before it struck. The Horned Guard’s horns went stiff and upright in shock. With a frustrated growl, it began bashing its hammer on the floor, cracking the basalt and sending fragments flying into the air. Unfortunately, the Spirit didn’t make it.
“Don’t ever defy me! NONE OF YOU!” the Horned Guard screamed before he marched back over to the Spirit pin and opened the lid. It set his mace next to the iron cage and dunked both of its hands into the white batch, swirling them around and gathering fistfuls. The Spirits were like weeds gripped in its hands and the Horned Guard in its greed and gluttony began cramming them into its face, rumbling away with its grunting and munching. It had barely finished the first fistful when it crammed the second fist in, its cheeks expanding like balloons. A few Spirits were even crawling out through the holes in them. The Horned Guard swallowed and the writhing Spirits that survived the fat creature’s chewing expanded in its throat as they tried to escape. Some fell passed the ball of carnage lodged in its gullet, while others clawed desperately at its slick esophagus. The Horned Guard’s horns drooped across its head as its hands reached up to grasp its throat.
You notice the Horned Guard wasn’t making its usual sound of grunting and munching. It was choking and wheezing. Turning away from the cage, the guard dropped to its knees with a loud boom! and hunched over until its stapled belly swayed upon the floor.
1x Laugh
