The wind sighed softly through the twilit sky, shivering the
great fern trees that bedecked the lower slopes of the mountains
the tribes called the Sisters. A dusky Mountain Cat paused in her
silent stalking and raised her muzzle into the breeze, searching
for the scent of prey.
High above, one of the great Stone Eagles added its
voice to the whispering wind, a melancholy cry echoing through
the mountains. The Cats' eyes tracked upwards to regard the Eagle
solemnly, one hunter to another, then she lowered her nose to the
ground once more as the wind died and padded off further down the
slopes, the Eagle forgotten.
The sound of the wind faded away and yet the tops of
the ferns still swayed to and fro. As the winds voice was
silenced, so to was the rustling of the treetops as the mountains
became blanketed with an unnatural quiet. It rolled outward like
a smothering fog, invisible, untouchable, leaving this perfect,
deafening silence in its wake.
Confusion and fear vied for dominance in the great
Cats mind as she felt the oppressive weight settle over her. Her
hackles raised, ears flattened to her sleek skull as she yowled a
soundless cry and crouched ready to pounce, every muscle taut as
a bowstring. The ferns swaying now became a frenzied dance as
some unseen, unheard force shook the earth, dislodging pebbles
and rocks that tumbled this way and that, some striking the
maddened Cat, who's terror was so great the pain went unnoticed.
Had anyone been watching the sky they would have seen
the first bashful stars of evening obscured behind a shimmering
curtain. It looked like a heat haze high in the darkening sky.
Streaks of yellow appeared and deepened to red, red deepened to
blue and then to a rich, midnight purple. In the centre of this
display grew an untidy circle of perfect black, slowly expanding,
consuming the stars and the light of the burgeoning moon.
Now sound returned to the mountain, the Cats'
screeching briefly heard until it was drowned by a hideous
rumbling and tearing. Lights flashed within the voidspace that
hung in the sky and the cacophony intensified. The strange lights
began to merge, slowly at first and then faster and faster, the
quaking of the earth and the terrible noise escalating in
Several of the mountain Ferns toppled and a number
simply split apart as the sound and pressure increased further
still. The great Cats' bones began to grind together as she was
forced harder and harder into the unyielding earth and her cries
stopped altogether as her throat began to squeeze itself shut.
Suddenly there came a single terrible flash of light
from the sky and the voidspace disappeared, admitting the stars
back to their rightful places. The night sky rippled slightly as
reality tightened its grip once more and the mountain became
The Cat slowly pulled herself to her feet and stood
on shaking limbs. Apart from the shattered trees and misplaced
stones the slopes were as before.
But not quite.
A man now stood near the Cat, naked as a newborn. He examined his
muscular arms, flexed his powerful fingers and gazed at his
sculptured torso with an expression of pleasure, almost wonder,
on his handsome, angular face.
He raised his head and looked at the Cat standing
shaking before him. One look at his eyes told that he was far
from just a man. They burned with lambent power and an almost
palpable malevolence. He grinned and his face was now far from
handsome. He stretched forth his arm and beckoned once, twice.
The Cat moved forward on stiff limbs, every sense she possessed
screaming at her to turn and run but her body unable to follow
the commands of instinct.
Her will no longer her own, the Cat lay obediently at
the creatures feet. He had seen similar beasts before as he had
fed in the great wastes. Always considered strange by his peers
he had sought to study such morsels of life rather than blindly
consume as his brethren were content to do. He had hungered for
more than the unthinking gluttony that marked his kind. The
hunger for knowledge had grown even more than his unceasing
appetite, although he had never been able to deny the call of his
form for long.
His kind existed only to feed, little more than vast,
gaping maws adrift in the great wastes. That he had cultivated
his rudimentary intelligence over the centuries showed how
markedly different he was from his kin.
The beasts had never survived long enough to sate his
curiosity though, as the forces he generated in his original form
had soon torn them apart. But now he had made the change. After
millennia of desire he had found the way to take flesh and move
from his own realm to this one. It was like nothing he had ever
imagined, clothed in flesh, a true body of his own, feeling the
night air on his skin, his skin!
And now he had his first subject to study at leisure.
He stroked the Cats muscled back and gazed down onto the plains
where his eyes, sharper than the Stone Eagles that now lay
charred and broken some yards away, picked out the firefly lights
of campfires. The hideous grin returned to his face and he
giggled in malevolent glee as he anticipated studying the
intelligent ones below. Of all the life he had studied and
devoured it was the intelligent ones he had enjoyed most. The
special taste that only his kind could appreciate as an entire
culture was consumed.
This whole world was spread at his feet, his kingdom,
his laboratory and his playground. Now the smile almost took in
his ears as he wrapped the Cat in his power, selected a
knife-like piece of flint from the ground and began to cut.