As soon as my eyes adjusted to the pain of the sudden light, I looked down to see what form of being I had slain, but, to my surprise, I looked down to see the corpse gone, with nothing left of it but the blood leaked out of its head. As I frantically looked around to see what could have taken such a large beast away so quickly, I heard a slow clap begin, I spun to look at where it was coming from and saw there a man, or something with some resemblance to a man, standing in the corner of this surprisingly cubical opening in the cave, clapping his hands and smiling. The man was about 8 feet in stature, which I approximated because he made me, at 6'6", feel small, like a child looking up at his father.
The Creature then spoke in a deep and scratchy voice that seemed more like the growl of a tiger than any noise that could have originated from a human tongue, "You have done well, little one. Though a select few have passed my test and lived, none whatsoever came up with such a beautiful solution as you did."
"Huh?! Who are you???" I asked, startled. My mind was racing to think of how he got here, and who or what this was. This strange man, though looking casual, emanated an aura of uncanny dread. Uncanny, yes, that was it. His face looked strange, it didn't move where it should, didn't seem to carry the natural springiness of living skin, the skin around the eyes in particular hanging just low enough that the bottoms of the 'man's eyeballs were visible. They, too, were odd. Not red, but just the opposite, the irises seeming almost gray. He was not a bulky man, and his fingers and arms were strangely long, but just slightly too thin.
"You don't remember? You dare attempt to take my life whilst you knew not my name?" The Creature spoke angrily, and his eyes glowed a threatening crimson red, his growling voice echoing powerfully, giving the impression of a god reprimanding his foolish subjects.
"I'm so sorry, I couldn't see in the cave at all- and I- I mean I Didn't know it wa-" I stopped as I noticed the man had his hand outstretched and was hunched over in a breathless laugh.
As I paid closer attention and truly listened to the laugh I felt it was wrong, incorrect in some way, fake, like a man who had never laughed attempting to replicate a laugh. The Creature seemingly regained his composure enough to speak and said, "Relax, I was... joking!," The Creature spoke in an uncanny lilting tone, and briefly, as he said joking, he looked into my eyes, and I glimpsed his face, and in that glimpse noticed that he still had almost no expression whatsoever, no hint of humor or even anger of any kind before going back to his uncanny, inhuman gasp of a laugh. Eventually, he regained his composure and began to speak again, "Your question, "who am I" has a many answers. I go by many names, in many places, to endless peoples. I am an emissary of [_________]." He had just said a name, and I had heard the name, but as I thought of the name my head began to ache as if being pulled from all directions and endlessly crushed, all at once, and the name was gone from my mind, as iff blocked from my perception. The creature spoke again, mercilessly hammering his voice into my vulnerable and sore mind as if he had not just taken a sledgehammer to my soul, "I doubt you're familiar, but it is also known as 'The Great Hunger'"
Though the name was completely foreign to my mind, the title sounded somewhat familiar, I thought back to a strange interaction I had had with a friend of mine not long before his even more strange disappearance. It was a warm summer night, the stars clearly visible above, we were standing next to each other looking out over the river, watching it flow past. He spoke, in a quiet tone hardly above a whisper, but more than loud enough for me to hear on this incredibly silent night,
"I wish we could stay like this, freeze the world and watch the river flow…" he took a breath, "Time… If only we had time"
I chuckled softly, "Time stops for no man, and no rest for the wicked..." The last part was added with some more solemnity, it was a bittering thought.
There was a moment of silence between us before I spoke again, "Well, we've only ever had the present, we'll only ever get this moment, so I suppose we should live in it while we can, mm, Nathan?"
"Yes, now is all we get," Nathan's voice cracked ever so slightly as he spoke, and now I can't help but think, had I looked, I might've seen a tear.
Did he know? Know then that that day would be the last we met?
He continued after a short pause, "But 'now' is so, so short," then all of a sudden he turned to me, speaking with a strange intensity in his voice, not loud but certainly louder than before, "Have you heard of The Great Hunger?"
I cocked my head a little, "No, never, why? What is it?"
He seemed to nod his head gently, then smiled and said, "Oh, it's nothing, just some new myth some student of mine made up for fun."
"Ah, sounds intriguing, a student of mine once claimed to have seen God, don't concern yourself too much with the imaginations of those kids," I responded, chickling wryly.
Nathan seemed somber even in his slight chuckle, "Ha. And what did he say god looked like?"
"I don't remember, but I remember thinking it was utterly insane. Something like... Mm, yes, how could I forget, it was so odd! 'a mutilated corpse of something infinite and unyielding, which might once have been beautiful, and perhaps still is.' that's what he said! I thought him insane, but I can't deny the child had promise in writing. Hid death truly was a tragedy..."
After this, there was no more conversation. We were both in a solemn state of mind, and the most apt conversation to fit our mood was that between the wind and the trees, and the most comforting words there spoken were of the river caressing the stones beneath it, under the soft moonlight.
I returned from this memory to the conversation at hand, "Ah! I believe I have heard that title before, once…"
"How much do you know?" The creature inquired, a hint of danger in his tone, or rather, a slightly larger hint of danger.
"I heard almost nothing, only that it was a strange myth" quieter, I continued, "though… perhaps he didn't really think it was a myth, then."
The creature took a breath before continuing, "Mm, likely. Few have heard in The Great Hunger, and all who have heard believe."
"You would have to be wrong there, because I have heard of him twice now, and I do not believe."
The creature laughed for much longer now, occasionally breathing, though at such strange intervals it seemed more like an imitation of the sound of breath. "No. I am not wrong. You believe."
"And how would you know what I believe?" With all my defiance left against my fate, which was growing colder by the second.
The Creature reached out, its claw scraping against my chin, "I can see it in your eyes, small one." as he said this, I looked into his eyes -if they could have been called that- his pupils seemed to expand into gaping holed in his head. Two dimly glowing red orbs levitated in the center these holes, which themselves seemed to be formed from sand, which was falling upwards -somehow- while also remaining in the same volume on all parts. I was mesmerized completely, I would not have moved an inch in years, but The Creature broke his gaze, instantly appearing back at the corner where he had been previously.
"I see…" I said, gaining a sudden understanding, "So, this is what you are."
"Our time is up." He said, and he was gone, as if he had never been, and I was sitting, but not where I was sitting before, I still had the stone I was making rhythms with earlier, and the stone I had used to kill the siren, but it was not drenched in blood anymore, it was dry.
With the help of the light in my hands, I found my way through the cave, noticing a few key landmarks and the sound of people and feet, coming across one small group of travelers on my way out.
"Oh thank god, do any of you three by chance know the way out of here?" I asked, breathing a small sigh of relief.
The one in the center looked at me, his face melted off his bones, and he spoke in a booming voice, "The answer to your question is up, the only way up is through, and the only way through is pain." As he finished his sentence his bones disintegrated to ash, and the companion to his left spoke,
"The only way out is death, there is no answer and there is no hope, lust has overtaken our souls, tainted them black." with this, the spirit on the left suddenly was set ablaze, burning completely, instantly, the final spirit to the right then spoke,
"But new hope comes with The Great Hunger, only he can save our world." The final spirit melted into the ground, flowing as water downhill.
I stood there for a moment, disturbed by the encounter, but then realized that I had a path clearly shown to me, water always runs downhill and smoke always rises, so if I walked in reverse of the current newly made stream and followed the smoke, I would eventually find my way out.
Eventually, following these rules, I came to a place I knew well and was able to easily find my way to the entrance of the cave. Here, at the mouth of the cave, I stood a while, embracing the warmth of the sunlight, normally taken much for granted, but now extremely welcome after my time in that wretched cave.
…
Dr. Davidson had just entered The Abyss as part of a search party, they were searching for a medium-sized group that had gone into the cave at about 5:00 PM the previous evening, one of their members had returned to the surface at about 9:00 AM the next morning asking where his tour group was, claiming he wandered off on accident and wanted to make sure they knew he was alive and well. Upon checking for the guide the attendant noticed how long ago the group had left and that they had not yet returned, so decided to call the police to look for them, the man himself was under almost no suspicion as there was another man from another party who verified that he had seen the aforementioned man part with his group discreetly, and simply couldn't follow him because he did not trust in his navigational senses enough to be of any help to him whatsoever. They descended towards the cavernous depths of The Abyss, searching for what had been lost not so long ago, the doctor's feet grew weary as time dragged on, minutes became hours, hours persisted for what felt like years, an eternity of stone stretching out beyond his very eyes. Hope was wearing thin as hours became days, they all knew they needed sleep, but there were lives at stake, and they could not stop now. Time was hard to tell within The Abyss, but the walls had changed from red to yellow, then to crystal rooms, to gray, then finally to a deep and glossy black, which had not changed for what felt like hundreds of times the duration others, occasionally there would be a vein of white, or red, or gold, but never did the black change, there were no longer crossroads of any kind, the group was limited to one path, and the walls were closing in.
The walls were creeping ever closer, The Doctor hunched his shoulders.
The air was growing warmer by the second
The walls grew closer still, he had
to turn side-ways
The air began to move,
as though The Earth
did breathe.
The doctor
Let out his
Breath,
The
Ground
Began
to rumble
In anger.
He had
To
Squeeze
On.
He
Cou-
ldn't
Go
on
…
All of a sudden the walls opened, and Dr. Davidson hardly prevented himself from face-planting into the stone; the stone which he now noticed to be a deep crimson, as the inside of a giant's vein might be. The rumbling had stopped, the wind continued, but it was to a much lesser extent now that it was in the open, the air was humid and extremely warm, as though He had stepped into the lung of an animal. He took a look around and noticed four things in quick succession, the first was the sheer scale of the room he had entered, stretching out far in every direction, the farthest edges unknowable, as even their powerful flashlights could not see the full length of this cavern. The second thing he noticed, with no small trepidation, was the looks displayed on his comrades' faces, which were that of pure horror, though not a sound was made, nor a word uttered. The Doctor turned to look in the same direction, and was frozen in similar shock, as there, hanging from strange crimson strings, he found the missing group, or what was left of them. At long last, one among them mustered the will to speak.
"How?" The leader of the party spoke, in a voice just above a murmur, and though it was one word with no full question asked, every other soul present understood what he meant. The (until now) missing group was about 100 feet up and 50 feet forward, hanging from what looked to be nooses, though the material of the 'rope' one could only guess at, as it was a bright, glossy red, and similar vein. This was far from the most disturbing aspect of their predicament, however, as it looked as though they had been brutally maimed and tortured before their placement above. Some of them looked to have been flayed, as much of their skin was missing, revealing the muscle and fat beneath in gruesome detail, others one could only guess at the method of torture, with strangely misshapen, seemingly mutant limbs, bulbous and inflated, some with what seemed to be large fungus growing from their abdomens and heads.
Dr. Davidson was the first to respond, "I…" he paused for a moment to try to collect some semblance of speech from his overloaded and under-maintained mind, "I don't know…"
"Guys, they- they're still alive," a member of the group spoke up, an even deeper horror in his voice.
A slight discord arose within the group members,
"What?!"
"We need to help them!"
"What do we do?"
There was a long silence, tense and panicked, confused and in a state of emergency, there was nothing said by anyone. In response to that question, at last, the leader spoke, "There's nothing we can do," Though he said this in what could have been taken for a whisper, it somehow echoed louder than a gunshot in all our ears. The group was silent, they all knew he was right; we had no spikes, no rope, and no hope. The walls were smooth as skin, so we had no way to attempt a climb, either.
The Doctor spoke, "I think it's best we turn back…"
The one to suggest saving them spoke up, "How could you say that?! Those people are up there suffering, and you suggest we, what? Leave them there to die and forget this ever happened?"
"Yes, that is exactly what I suggest we do," Dr. Davidson responded.
The leader, without a sound, returned through the slit towards the exit, squeezing through and sliding on into the dark, Dr. Davidson headed towards the exit as well, motioning the rest to follow, and with that, they were gone.
…
"I heard the search party got back"
"Did they find the missing people"
"I don't know"
I listened in to the gossip around the café, especially intrigued since it related so closely to me, but tuned it out after realizing they didn't know what I wanted to hear about. I decided to head back to my hotel since I had finished my coffee. I stepped outside, pausing for a moment to smell the rich post-rain air, then walking at a slow and relaxed pace. There were few people out today, which was somewhat odd for how large this town was, but I paid it little mind. I had reached my hotel, I entered and plopped down on the bed, aiming for a moment of relaxation, then was somewhat painfully reminded of the book I had been gifted on my small journey in the cave. I decided it should make for a decent read while I had little else to do, so I grabbed it and made my way over to the armchair in the corner of the room. I sat down and made myself comfortable, then positioned the book in my hands and attempted to open it, but to my surprise, it felt as though it was fastened together entirely. After some prying, I finally got the cover off and was immediately struck by the strange designs of this book. There were only 10 words on the first page, there was no title page, copyright, or empty first page as was standard, and on the left side was a drawing of what looked to be a writhing mass of eyes and limbs. The words on the page were as such "hunger to punish the evil, hunger to consume the eight" and at that moment, I remembered its name.