Natural Enemy

-It’s coming this way! Jerome the bell-ringer was shouting, screaming. -Please, God! Help us!

Father Juan was staring towards the horizon. They had heard the rumours. Centipede body, mantis eyes. A horrible fanged mouth. Destroying villages, castles and cities along its way.

-Only one thing can save us now… Come, follow me!

Jerome hurried after the priest as he ran down the stairs of the clock tower. They entered the door to the private chambers. A staircase went deep down underneath the cathedral cellars, a staircase Jerome never knew existed. At the end of a long corridor rusty hinges shrieked as the priest pulled an old door open.

The room was dark and humid, smelling of rot and dirt. The light from the fire torch fell on a small crystal box in a corner. The book inside was old, very old. It had strange marks on it, runes and symbols. Unholy.

-Are you sure…? The bell-ringer’s voice was shaking.

The two men looked at each other. A scream pierced through the many feet of ground above them, deep into their bones. Their faces twisted, their eyes opened wide.

-We have no choice.

Outside people were fleeing in panic. The giant arthropod stared down with amusement, crawling into town.

The priest opened the book. Tales of demonic creatures, horrors of the past. Horrendous evils long forgotten. Pagan texts of strange, unreadable symbols. The content was a lot older. He turned the pages.

The ground shook as buildings fell to the ground.

He found it. The page he’d seen before, the page father Jacob had showed him in the last days of his sickness. An illustration for the monster destroying their town in this very moment.

-It has happened before, the priest said. – Long, long ago, the creature was here.

Ancient notes in Latin letters were written beside the godless symbols. Words without meaning, in a language no longer spoken. The priest started reading out loud.

There was an artificial lake outside of town. No one knew how deep it was, or when it had been created. They said it was bottomless. The water started moving. Something was coming up from the deep. Red, glowing eyes approached at high speed.

The fleeing humans were flushed away as the lake poured over its borders. A giant head. A clawed foot grabbed the shore. An amphibious reptile screamed as it saw the arthropod towering up over the houses. The centipede turned its head. The evil grin faded. Hate and horror replaced the lust.

The giant salamander crept out of the lake, ran over the field. Roofs and walls flew through the air as it moved into town, jumped towards the centipede monster. Its huge teeth sunk into the hard cover shell. The centipede struck down on the amphibian’s head.

The two men were crouching down in the corner holding each other tight as hell broke out up on the ground above. The walls caved in as the ground shook, tiles fell from the ceiling. Father Juan prayed for his life, for Jerome, for the whole town. After the ungodly words he had just uttered, he doubted his prayers would be heard.

Their fate was in other hands.

The salamander pulled the screaming centipede towards the dimensional portal it had come up from. The arthropod was twisting its body from side to side, biting, destroying anything within reach. It was pulled down into the water, to the aether beyond, were the inter-dimensional amphibian had crept out of. The horrified spectators kept their distance as claws pulled off the rocks on the shores, desperately fighting the inevitable.

The sun went down in the east. Darkness fell over the ruined city. Cries of the survivors mixed with the moans of the injured. People were running around, desperately trying to help. The priest and the bell-ringer climbed out between the cathedral ruins. A monster had saved them when their God seemed to have left for good. A monster summoned from dark pits of hell.

 

https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/15/4/679/206687(salamanders-and-centipedes)

https://www.mesacc.edu/~thoqh49081/StudentPapers/pan.html(demonization-of-pan)

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/what-really-lies-hidden-vatican-secret-archives-007468

http://blog.serialbox.com/6-popular-conspiracy-theories-vaticans-secret-archives/

Beyond Faith and Reason (Audio story)

Books in Times of Darkness