@LeeRoy
It was supporting itself on its arms, reared back and swaying softly, silently, like a mantis on a stick. Its feelers, each as long as a child's leg, tasted the pressure of the fear in the air, tickled over dreams, nuzzled sickeningly at reality. It was in the process of flooding this realm with its presence, filling every nook and cranny. It had begun the same way as it always does. A pin poking through the fabric, planting itself as a seed from the outside. It grew steadily, a bubble of food coloring in a jug of water, expanding bit by bit until it burst. There can be no nightmare without a dreamer, but a dreamer's distinction between reality and dream is the barrier it had needed to overcome. It could flood an uninhabited universe immediately, but in one that had life, it needed to, at least temporarily, take on a physical form to begin its work proper, a quantum demon that needed to defile the mind before it could defile the matter. It had finally turned the tide by manipulating the minds of more than half the population, and now its power was like a tidal wave.
But, not here. For some reason it hadn't been able to influence this area, as hard as it tried. There was life here, something not sleeping, and stubborn in its grasp of what is real and what isn't. The Magna Pater had searched, and found nothing that it could immediately interpret as an Earthly lifeform. It was stumped, and in its timeless intelligence, utterly infuriated. Something was holding it back, and whatever it was, it was sentient. The monster cast out another powerful sonic volley, seeking to vainly echolocate biological matter that stood out against the environment. Rocks, trees, grass. Inside the cave was smooth, marble-like stone, as the monster interpreted it, and little else. In its frustration it arched its back and slung open its dripping mouth to more than ninety degrees, yowling as would a baby, or a hyena, or a cat, or a droning cicada, if all four could somehow coherently combine form a single, terrible cry, reverberating for countless leagues, even through the black barrier of imagination that marked the end of this world.
It was supporting itself on its arms, reared back and swaying softly, silently, like a mantis on a stick. Its feelers, each as long as a child's leg, tasted the pressure of the fear in the air, tickled over dreams, nuzzled sickeningly at reality. It was in the process of flooding this realm with its presence, filling every nook and cranny. It had begun the same way as it always does. A pin poking through the fabric, planting itself as a seed from the outside. It grew steadily, a bubble of food coloring in a jug of water, expanding bit by bit until it burst. There can be no nightmare without a dreamer, but a dreamer's distinction between reality and dream is the barrier it had needed to overcome. It could flood an uninhabited universe immediately, but in one that had life, it needed to, at least temporarily, take on a physical form to begin its work proper, a quantum demon that needed to defile the mind before it could defile the matter. It had finally turned the tide by manipulating the minds of more than half the population, and now its power was like a tidal wave.
But, not here. For some reason it hadn't been able to influence this area, as hard as it tried. There was life here, something not sleeping, and stubborn in its grasp of what is real and what isn't. The Magna Pater had searched, and found nothing that it could immediately interpret as an Earthly lifeform. It was stumped, and in its timeless intelligence, utterly infuriated. Something was holding it back, and whatever it was, it was sentient. The monster cast out another powerful sonic volley, seeking to vainly echolocate biological matter that stood out against the environment. Rocks, trees, grass. Inside the cave was smooth, marble-like stone, as the monster interpreted it, and little else. In its frustration it arched its back and slung open its dripping mouth to more than ninety degrees, yowling as would a baby, or a hyena, or a cat, or a droning cicada, if all four could somehow coherently combine form a single, terrible cry, reverberating for countless leagues, even through the black barrier of imagination that marked the end of this world.
