I realized only too late after the words had left my mouth. A chilling crackling laughter erupted from the ocean deep. The waters grew ice cold, it went completely.
"Got you, child" the voice grated, permeating through my very being. I cried out helplessly. I lost control of my body and my consciousness.
I woke up in the dark expanse of space i was before. It was quiet again, eerily so. I called for my mother in my head, but she didn't respond.
Then i felt those presence again. They lurked just outside wherever i was. But this time i could feel them closer. I shivered as the presence grew closer and the air chiller.
" I shut my eyes and placed my mouth over my mouth, as if by sealing in my breath, I could also seal in my fear. But fear, like the presences around me, was not something that could be contained by mere human gestures.
The feeling of something hovering, watching, was palpable. It was as if the very space around me had become sentient, alive with a consciousness that was both curious and terrifying. The air, if you could call it that in this void, felt thick with anticipation, every molecule vibrating with the presence of the unseen. It was like standing at the precipice of the divine, where the beauty and horror of the cosmos blend into one overwhelming experience.
Then, a chilling breath—ice against my ears simultaneously, like the whisper of a winter wind from beyond the stars. It was an impossible sensation, the breath of something not meant for this world, touching me in a way that defied physics. My hands trembled, still clasped over my mouth, muffling the sound of my own terror.
From the darkness, from all around yet from nowhere at all, came a voice. It was not a voice meant for human ears, layered with the depth of the cosmos and the sharpness of the void, "Open your eyes."
The command was irresistible, a force that tugged at the very essence of my being. Despite the terror that gripped me, a part of me, perhaps the part that was curious or that recognized the futility of resistance, wanted to obey. Yet, my eyelids remained shut, a last vestige of defiance against the unknown.
The breath on my ears grew colder, more insistent, like the chill of space itself was trying to seep into my mind through my ears. The voice, now a chorus of whispers and roars, repeated with a patience that was both merciful and cruel, "Open your eyes, child of mist and dust."
With every ounce of my strength, I resisted the command. My mind was a fortress, besieged by the relentless assault of the voice that sought to shatter my will. "Open your eyes, child of mist and dust," it boomed, the command echoing through the void like a decree from the depths of the cosmos. My body shook with the effort of defiance, every muscle tensed, every nerve stretched to its breaking point.
Then, amidst the cacophony of the cosmic voice, I heard a gasp—a sound so human, so out of place in this realm of unnatural darkness. It was followed by the soft, sweet voice of a woman, her words a gentle ripple in the sea of dread, "He can resist you."
The voice of the abyss, which had been all-consuming, snapped back with a ferocity that seemed to shake the very fabric of the void, "Silence, you fool!"
But the woman's laughter, sweet and clear as a spring morning, countered the darkness. It was a laughter that didn't just echo in this space; it seemed to seep into my very bones, warming me from the inside out against the pervasive chill. "I will help you," she declared to the other voice."
Then I felt hands on my cheeks, warm and soft, a comfort so alien in this place of cold and dread that it almost burned. It was a touch that spoke of understanding, of compassion in a realm where such concepts seemed impossible. I had never felt anything like it before; it was like the caress of daylight on skin that had only known the darkness.
The woman with the soft voice spoke again, her words a soothing balm to my frayed nerves, "See." Her tone was not commanding but inviting, a gentle nudge towards something beyond my comprehension.
I shook his head vigorously in defiance, every fiber of my being screaming to resist, to maintain the sanctuary of my closed eyes.
She chuckled, the sound light and airy, cutting through the tension like a knife through silk. "You don't have to open your eyes," she said, her voice carrying a playful note, "You don't have to look to see."
In that instant, vision poured into my mind's eye, flooding my consciousness with visage and sensations that transcended physical sight. Even with my eyes closed, I saw...
In my mind's eye, the vision coalesced into the visage of the woman. Her face was the epitome of divine beauty, the kind that poets would stumble over words to describe, and artists would despair to capture. Her skin was luminous, as if kissed by the light of a thousand suns, yet it held the cool serenity of the moon. Her eyes, vast pools of an impossible azure, held galaxies within their depths, promising both knowledge and mystery. Her hair cascaded around her in waves that seemed to move with a life of their own, shimmering with colors not found in the natural spectrum, a kaleidoscope of the cosmos.
Her form was that of a goddess, sculpted with a perfection that transcended human ideals of beauty. Her body was a symphony of curves, each one flowing into the next with the grace of celestial bodies in orbit. Her breasts, full and firm, were like twin moons, their contours echoing the subtle undulations of her frame, an ode to the divine feminine. They were not just seen but felt in my vision, radiating a warmth that seemed to promise comfort and understanding in this endless void.
Every aspect of her appearance was an invitation to the sublime, a beauty so intense it bordered on the painful, as if looking upon her was akin to staring into the heart of creation itself.
Again, she whispered into my ears with an allure that was difficult to resist, "Open your eyes." This time, my walls of defiance melted away like ice under the first rays of spring, not with a fight but with a surrender to the inevitable. I opened my eyes, and what I saw made me let out a shrilling scream.
What I beheld was not just a departure from beauty but an affront to it, a vision so antithetical to the divine form of the woman that my mind recoiled, struggling to comprehend the abomination before me.
It was as if the cosmos itself had rebelled against the concept of form. The creature stood—or perhaps floated, for it seemed to defy gravity as much as it did comprehension. Its body was an ever-shifting mass of tendrils, each one writhing with a life of its own, sprouting from what could loosely be called a torso, if such a term could ever apply to something so alien. They were not mere appendages but seemed to be extensions of its will, probing the air, the void, reality itself with an unholy curiosity.
The head, if one could call it that, was a nightmarish fusion of eyes, not just in number but in variety—eyes like dark suns, others like mirrors reflecting the void; some were compound, insect-like, others singular, vast, and lidless, blinking with a rhythm that suggested a heartbeat of the universe. They were set upon something that could be imagined as a face, yet it was more like a canvas of chaos, with features that shifted and merged, a visage that was at once all faces and none.
Its skin, if that was what covered it, shimmered with hues that shouldn't exist, colors that seemed to pull at the fabric of reality, sometimes transparent, revealing glimpses of stars and black holes, at others opaque, like the surface of some ancient, forbidden stone.
From its form emanated a sound, not of this world or any other known; it was a cacophony of whispers, screams, and roars, each note an echo from the depths of time and space, a discordant symphony that threatened to unravel the sanity of any who heard it.
Beneath what might be considered its arms, if one could force the mind to categorize, were openings, not mouths, but something more akin to tears in reality, spewing forth a mist that smelled of decay and creation, of life and oblivion. And from these, faint whispers could be heard, speaking in tongues lost to time, each syllable a key to doors better left unopened.
It was a being of contradictions, of beauty so grotesque it was mesmerizing, of terror that held an allure, a horror that, in its very existence, questioned the nature of what we perceive as real. To look upon it was to see the universe in its rawest, most unfiltered form, a glimpse into the abyss where madness and enlightenment are but two sides of the same coin.
The revelation of the eldritch horror wreaked havoc on my physical form. My eyes betrayed me first, bleeding as if the sight was too vile for them to contain, rivulets of blood tracing paths down my face. My eardrums, overwhelmed by the cacophony or perhaps the silence that followed, ruptured with a sharp pain.
My throat, too, felt as though someone had thrown a handful of nails into it, each attempt to scream or even breathe sending shards of agony through me, making every inhalation a struggle against a barrage of pain.
But the torment of my mind was far worse. It bent, broke, and then, in a cruel mockery of healing, fixed itself, only to bend and break again in an endless cycle, like hell recurring. Each time my mind pieced itself back together, it was with the knowledge of the horror, only to shatter again under the weight of that knowledge, a perpetual cycle of madness and brief lucidity, each more excruciating than the last.
As I teetered on the brink of madness, the monstrous voice and the woman's voice melded into a single, devilish laugh that reverberated through the void. Then, the woman's voice, still sweet yet now with an edge of triumph, faded as she spoke, "Remember, you owe me."
The monstrous voice, with a tone that seemed to claim dominion over my very soul, declared, "You are mine now."
But just as despair threatened to consume me, another voice, one that was pleasantly familiar, cut through the darkness, "Like hell he is."