The Ardoon King Read online

  Chapter 27: The Temple Monster

  When Ben and Vedeus entered the main chamber of the cave, the sound of gunfire stopped, or rather, became something very different. The pops of the rifles were transformed into high-pitched, drawn out hums.

  The ozone smell had dissipated, and Ben found that the light on his helmet was now operational. Vedeus’s light was also working. “What shall we do, Anax?”

  “Help me finish tearing down this section of wall,” Ben said, retrieving a fallen ladder and struggling to erect it.

  Vedeus moved to help, saying, “Shall I get more men?”

  “No. We were lucky the two of us made it in here undetected. The last thing we want is for that thing to chase us down this hole.”

  After the first ladder was up, the two men put a second into position, at which point they climbed to the top of the walls and began pulling blocks away. They tried not to ponder the slaughter that was likely occurring just above.

  “Okay, keep doing what you’re doing, Vedeus. I can see some of the inscriptions now. I need to stop and study them. I’ll make photos to study later.”

  If there is a later.

  “As you say, Anax,” grunted Vedeus, hurtling another block toward the muddy floor below.

  Ben selected an arbitrary location to begin his study, taking digital photos of everything he saw. He saw numbers, numbers, and more numbers. Then, a name, which must be the name of a place, Ben decided, because it didn’t mean anything to him. Place names, being arbitrary, didn’t have meaning. The numbers, though…dates?

  “Do you smell that?” asked Vedeus. “Ozone, again. It’s getting stronger.”

  The lights on their helmets flickered.

  “Nuts,” said Ben. He began scanning the inscriptions with renewed urgency.

  Suddenly, a small circle of green light, no more than an inch in diameter, appeared on the cave wall above the men. Mystified, they watched as the orb began moving slowly away from them in a counter-clockwise direction. As it moved, it picked up speed, and just second later, it whizzed above their heads again. Soon it was rotating so rapidly that it took the form of a single, glowing green line. Ben saw the Empyrean etchings flash red. Vedeus saw the scarlet flicker also, and looked at the other man questioningly.

  “I think these glyphs are a boundary. Like the narrow end of a funnel. A gateway.”

  “A gateway? You think the inscriptions are necessary for a creature to manifest?”

  “Probably.”

  Vedeus, a block in his hand, said, “What if we destroyed them?”

  “The etchings? How? They’re everywhere! The cave is wallpapered with them.”

  “Maybe we don’t need to destroy all of them. Perhaps they are like computer code. We would only need to corrupt a few lines to crash the program.”

  A faint growl echoed through the dark chamber.

  “Good enough for me,” said Ben, lowering the Cicada and turning his head away as Vedeus struck the first blow.

  The creature was not distracted by the surrounding gunfire. It expanded itself to completely envelop the tractor’s cabin, preventing any escape through the doors or busted windshield, and then contract. The tractor’s cabin was squeezed to the width of a gym locker. The screams from the woman inside the inescapable metal tomb were unbearable. A Peth sniper positioned atop the nearby bus shot her in the head, ending her torment.

  The mercy killing came not a second too soon. The creature contracted once more and the dead woman’s body exploded like a peach under the drum of a steamroller. The abomination roared as its prey’s blood sprayed through its ribs and onto the snow below. Illuminated by the moon and dozens of flares, the blood appeared black.

  The behemoth’s antennae danced as it turned toward the bus, twenty feet away. The two dozen Peth inside the vehicle decided they’d rather take their chances in the open and rushed out the emergency exit in the back. Once outside, they made a hasty plan to disperse and draw the creature further away from the cave and their comrades. Dividing themselves into groups of six, they fanned out and began running away from the perimeter, occasionally turning around to fire their weapons to keep the thing’s interest.

  The Peth still in the vehicles, cheering them on, watched as the monster reared back in apparent anger. It went almost vertical, its ribs contracting until they rested atop one another, and for a moment their attacker took on the semblance of a grain silo enveloped in raw meat.

  Then the ribs expanded at incredible speed, and the creature shot into the air.

  Too late, the Peth realized that while the creature was slow, it could jump. And with its thousands of muscular joints – the thing was nothing but muscles and ribs, after all - it could jump a very long distance.

  It landed on top of the decoy group that was furthest away - a jump of more than a hundred feet - and the falling ribs immediately crushed or sliced into pieces three of the running Peth. The thing quickly contracted its ribs, mutilating the bodies further, before rearing up again over two Peth who’d avoided the monster’s impact. Stoically, they fired up the thing, vainly struggling to damage a thing that essentially had no body. A few rounds hit and bounced off of the hardened shell that encased its tiny brain. Another round hit and penetrated the air bladder. The slime covering the monster seeped into the hole and sealed it.

  The creature fell atop the two soldiers and squeezed and the gunfire stopped. Again the creature rose, raising its flabby, grotesque trunk and roaring in triumph.

  The remaining Peth had by then come to grips with the horror that was their enemy. It was a creature unlike any they had ever seen, and it was seeming invincible. Nothing could hurt the thing. Not bullets, grenades, even mortar shells. Still, it was their enemy, and they were the king’s guard. They weren’t going to die cowering in vehicles or running away. They would die like warriors. Screaming obscenities, they rushed forward in a ragged line, emptying their magazines into the beast.

  The thing reared back again and howled, and the Peth moving forward readied themselves for the underworld. Before they could begin their journey, the ground shook violently and the ground beneath them swelled upward. For a split second they were atop a giant hill that had not been there. Yet even as they attempted to grasp this development, the bubble imploded under its own weight, sending them, the beast, and dozens of cars hurtling back to earth. Unfortunately for the Peth, they fell a greater distance than they had risen, because the giant hill had collapsed into a giant a crater. The warriors fell twenty feet or more and, unable to prepare for the fall, an unlucky few were returned to the earth head first. Other Peth landed loudly atop vehicles, buckling hoods and roofs. Others landed safely on the ground. Some landed on the ground only to be crushed by a falling car or truck.

  Making a very bad day worse, the surviving Peth saw a vortex appear near the crater’s center, where the cave’s entrance had been. Those who could scrambled to escape, and a few did, but most of the wounded Peth were sucked into the invisible pit below.

  The creature that had emerged from the cave was drawn into the sinking soil, also. Two-thirds of the thing’s body was sucked into the vortex before the cavity below was filled. The surviving Peth watched as the creature twisted its upper body angrily in an effort to escape its fate. It seemed to be trapped by something below the surface. The thing’s trunk howled.

  The Peth did not intend to give the beast an opportunity to escape its grave, and aimed their weapons at it. Before the first shot could be fired, the creature went still. Its ribs turned black and began to crack. The beast’s howl became a wheeze as the air bladder withered and the ribs began to disintegrate. As the Peth watched in awe, a gust of wind destroyed the blasphemy, turning its crumbling body into a million pieces of fluffy gray ash.

  The ensuing celebrations were short-lived. There was no trace of the cave’s entrance. There was merely a mound of dirt and rock capped by a hill of battered cars, trucks, and buses.

  The earth had swallowed the k
ing.