Spoils That Await The Wicked: Six

Six: Mountain Commandment

And there, I saw one
Whose head was that of a fish.
Giant globular eyes burned like hot coals
In that hating head which stood straight up,
Upon its shoulders, high and immobile.
It body scaled with stone, iron and bone.

The harshest of noise spun from its guttural throat
Mocking those over whose path he tread.
Its right eye met me and
Like a starved dog after a hare
Charged me in bestial fury.

A cacophony of shrieking sounds
Wherein a thousand cries for mercy
Reach out in vain, as a sailor’s whose ship
Vanished under the cold embracing shroud of ocean.
Such was the laughing wail of the fish-thing.

I withdrew somewhat, knowing its
Loping legs like pounding pistons
Would carry it to my back before I made ten paces.
So, like any who can not retreat
For fear of being taken from behind
With tooth and horn,
I stood my ground before the lusus naturae.

Confused by my bravery
It dug its knobby heels into the hard ground
Fifteen paces before me.
All the while, shifting its body
So that both eyes in turn met my gaze.
As if each eye were connected to a separate creature,
Both longing to see and struggling for the body
To shift, so it might have a turn to behold its quarry.
It regarded me for an eternal moment
And then spoke.

What came were no words to be deciphered,
Its voice echoed as grinding stones.
From cracks and between boulders
Came beasts fouler than the fish thing.
Creatures whose complete visage, impossible to recall.
Through these tiny cracks emerged
Great bloated bodies with flailing arms
Long and sinuous, thrashing about
With heads of wolves and contorted faces.

They came to me,
Groping paws, hands and hooves,
Lashing tails and gnashing beaks.
Pressed their cold skin against me,
Ushered me through dark hallways
Whose very way clamped down
As a great swallowing mouth,
And stole hope in heaving breaths.

They pressed me further
Into a great room where
Down in a chamber,
A hundred men high and ten-thousand wide,
His followers circled a massive thing.
Around the huge bloated mass they danced.
Danced to degradation, the falling of man.

They beat their drums
Trumpeted screeching notes
From horns made of sin.
They tramped upon refuse
That spilled from the beast.

A great funnel above dropped
Souls into the grinding mouth
Where they were devoured
And ran as sludge from his anus,
Under the feet of the wicked.

Though ground to sludge,
The faces of souls yet remained;
Wordlessly mouthed screams
In their hellish torment, as they floated.

I gazed upon the great mass of ungodliness
When its eye did catch me.
I beheld the huge bloated form
Its hand out, seemingly in offer.
Above the palm rose a blue flame.
A tarnished crown beaten down
Upon a misshapen head
Whose mouth fit not within its confines.

The right arm held a wooden club
Putrid in color, as rotten teeth
While within it, veins pulsed
As though it were alive.
And, for a moment,
I heard from the club,
A subtle breath had crept forth
Hesitant to move into creation
But unable to resist the temptation,
Being both its doom, and champion.

Thus, it would wield the club,
And hammer its message of wickedness
Across the land.
Sordid its message was,
With the first strike,
Tendrils as asps slashed
And a new wave of souls
Crashed through the great funnel.

A second strike rung
As a clap of thunder,
And stars fell.