here you go buddies
Δ
Noxious rain and virulent fog were all you could see for miles, clouding your vision—and your mind, too. Land that was once unified into colossal continents from an incomprehensible time long ago was now but a wraith of its former glory, split into an immeasurable number of tiny islands that were home to the remnants of civilization after the disaster. The feeble stone structures slowly dissolved in the acidic rain, as did the humanity of the creatures surrounding them. Monstrous behemoths littered the grounds, once human but now mutated into unrecognizable sea creature hybrids, known to the dwindling number of survivors by the moniker “Atlanteans.”
Carnivorous plants coated with teeth and blood surrounded the environment, making it nigh impossible for even the Atlanteans to traverse their respective islands safely. Sonorous, wet, and saturated gurgles constantly bled from their throats as they devilishly devised plans to eat one another alive. Some had luminescent lights that tricked even themselves into thinking they were near safety, chasing the bulb attached to their heads. They endlessly chased the bulb until death by either exhaustion or the plants. Some had clams or scallops infused into their skulls, barnacles coating their very bones. The rest were twice the size of a regular human, with daunting teeth intended for catching prey.
Simultaneously, the Atlanteans peered at the skies, trying to comprehend what they heard with their decaying minds. In what seemed like an ephemeral flash, only hinted at beforehand by the barely audible whooshes in the air, a deafening BOOM enveloped the whole island. Cannonballs thundered downward from the very sky itself, taking out half of the creatures within seconds as fires were created, only to be extinguished moments later by the ongoing rain. Diving for cover, those who still had intact eyes sighted something unmistakable in the mist: a brig had docked on the island.
θ
The plants themselves wailed, missing pieces of themselves due to the fiery blasts released from the brig. The vessel itself was pure gold with a red-purple tint on the sides, and the sails were bone white with a strange crimson symbol in the center, vaguely resembling a skull. It was indiscernible from such a distance. Men clad in gilded cloaks and armed with fittingly gold cutlasses charged the island. There were fewer of them than one would expect from a large ship such as this, but still roughly twenty people. Without a single second of strategizing, the fools came closer yet; the plants exuberantly prepared for their upcoming meal.
Σ
The fog balefully jeered at the survivors, taunting them with their fates. It made it impossible to see more than two meters, allowing the plants to gradually lessen the men’s numbers without them noticing. Unbeknownst to the men, they had gone from being twenty-strong to ten-strong. When the fog subsided, a sickening crunch emanated from the whole area, an unearthly noise that could not be compared to anything comprehensible. People scrunched their faces in pure abhorrence, covering their ears in an attempt to subdue the grating sound of teeth against bone. Mere seconds after the noise was heard, a second round of cannonballs engulfed the island in a cataclysmic cacophony of explosions, fire, and sizzling as each individual ball pierced the earth. Boiling steam fought back against the wailing fog, and after the steam cleared, the entire forest was reduced to pure cinders.
Despite killing some of their own men in the blast, they cheered vigorously due to the fact that both the plants and fog were gone. After mourning and bringing their dead crew members’ remains back to the brig, they were—strangely—keen to once again plunge into the Abyss.
In what seemed like hours, despite only being twenty minutes, the battered “men” finally managed to reach their goal in spite of their depleted numbers, although something felt… wrong. Horribly wrong. When they looked up from the ground and then at one another, the crushing reality surged through them: their bodies were no longer fully human.
Δ-Σ
Demented voices whispered in the crevices of the men’s minds as purple flames inundated their waning vision, becoming increasingly louder to the point that they were writhing on the floor like trapped rats waiting to be put down. Chaos itself threatened to infect them through every pore in their frail bodies, the fire creeping up into their minds, shrouding their senses with constant shrieks, screeches and weeping in their ears. One by one, they collapsed with a loud CRASH, their brains overloaded with cosmic knowledge that should not be known to any living being. Their very essence was being drained, fermented, and put back in, leaving virtually no remains of their past selves. Within mere hours, they will join the rest of the creatures as Atlanteans. After all, there are no survivors of the Abyss…
Ψ Thanks for reading.