03-13-2017, 12:52 PM
I spend the night staring down the northern road, focused on the spot where it vanishes behind a distant stand of trees - the spot where my victims will appear - filled with eager anticipation for the day ahead. The annihilation of the supply caravan is going to be more than just a gratifying exercise in total destruction: it will be a crucial test.
When the caravaneers round that distant bend, it won't be this small, vulnerable, humanoid form they meet. For the first time since arriving in the Omniverse, I will assume something resembling my proper form. The question is, what will it be? I know that something is wrong with the shape that slumbers inside me, that if I wish to truly be myself I'm going to need more power, but how close am I? The men and women who drive those trade-wagons, their lives and livelihood, are going to help me find out.
It's sadly true that I'll be unable to glean any additional information from them after I ascend - the difference in scale will be too large, and whatever form I assume I can say with some certainty it won't be able to talk. However, Chatterly has made it clear that the caravan's guards and crew would be unlikely to humor my demands anyway, and he's told me enough about them to give me some idea of their lives and roles in the greater fabric of the Kingdom (which is a lovely, savage, snarling word, but a stupid name).
Besides, investigating every single person and place I despoil is never going to be practical - I'm simply not that patient. Sometimes, as much as the ruiner's knowledge of his subject adds to the beauty of an act of ruin, the old way is going to be best. It will, in any case, provide a pleasing contrast within the aesthetics of my wider experience.
Taking all of this into consideration, turning it over in my mind and plotting the means and methods of the upcoming massacre, I while away the hours.
Before I know it, the sun is coming up. I proceed to the ruined inn in the nearby meadow, station myself inside, and wait.
When the caravaneers round that distant bend, it won't be this small, vulnerable, humanoid form they meet. For the first time since arriving in the Omniverse, I will assume something resembling my proper form. The question is, what will it be? I know that something is wrong with the shape that slumbers inside me, that if I wish to truly be myself I'm going to need more power, but how close am I? The men and women who drive those trade-wagons, their lives and livelihood, are going to help me find out.
It's sadly true that I'll be unable to glean any additional information from them after I ascend - the difference in scale will be too large, and whatever form I assume I can say with some certainty it won't be able to talk. However, Chatterly has made it clear that the caravan's guards and crew would be unlikely to humor my demands anyway, and he's told me enough about them to give me some idea of their lives and roles in the greater fabric of the Kingdom (which is a lovely, savage, snarling word, but a stupid name).
Besides, investigating every single person and place I despoil is never going to be practical - I'm simply not that patient. Sometimes, as much as the ruiner's knowledge of his subject adds to the beauty of an act of ruin, the old way is going to be best. It will, in any case, provide a pleasing contrast within the aesthetics of my wider experience.
Taking all of this into consideration, turning it over in my mind and plotting the means and methods of the upcoming massacre, I while away the hours.
Before I know it, the sun is coming up. I proceed to the ruined inn in the nearby meadow, station myself inside, and wait.
***
The outriders come first - lightly armored scouts on horses, riding ahead to check for bandits lying in ambush. This I was told to expect. They approach the crossroads and begin to circle, waiting for the caravan to catch up. Soon it appears, lit softly in the orange light of dawn - wagon after horse-drawn wagon rounding the bend, with ranks of armored swordsman riding alongside. Teams of horses raise clouds of dust. There are four guards to a wagon, eight wagons in all - sturdy and wooden, loaded down with crates of supplies covered by tightly-secured canvas tarpaulins. This I was also told to expect.
I wait until they've almost reached the cross-roads before I make my move.
As I suspected, the mental trigger for my ascension proves to be the same psychological device I formerly used to emerge from my cosmic cocoon. Gazing out the charred window-frame at the wagons in the road I look inside to the sleeping knot of power within my well of astral charge, and I will myself inside-out.
What's left of the building explodes.
My world turns white, as blindingly as white as the featureless landscape in which I first arrived, and then it catches on fire. I'm rising rapidly, a living column of flame a hundred feet high, crackling with power as I become something glorious! My perspective splits in two, then three, a familiar echo droning in my -our - mind, eclipsing our thoughts as the roar of the flames and the shriek of cosmic energy rises to a crescendo!
It ends as abruptly as it began, the cacophony of an astral catastrophe ending in a thunderclap - and leaving... what? We shift our weight. The taughtly-stretched skin of a golden wing rumbles, vibrating in the breeze. Our left head writhes, considering our body in a brief moment of independent curiosity.
It's not as bad as we'd feared. We recognize this form - three predatory heads, beautiful sinuous necks, two tails and wings instead of arms - but it's far too young: an adolescent, barely two-hundred million years old, scarcely a hundred feet tall and still weak. But we will grow - and our power is more than enough for the task at hand.
The caravan is in chaos. The horses are panicking, frothing and trying to escape their traces, ignoring their drivers out of pure animal fear. They drag the wagons off the road, some of them overturning amid the sheer, heedless rush to survive! The scouts and guards are either forming ranks or attempting to flee. They were prepared for bandits, for rogue Primes and feral monsters - nothing could prepare them for us.
We unleash our golden lightning. Arcs of blazing cosmic energy as wide as cottages erupt from our mouths, itching pleasantly as the power leaves our throats, raining down upon the caravan. Wagons burst, turned to ash at the touch of our burning breath, their contents vaporized! Horses scream and tumble in their traces, cooked to death in an instant, hair scorched away, their flesh steaming! Men in armor fall where they stand, broiled in their own juices or simply obliterated!
Wagoneers and their families disappear in flame, burning fast, like dry tinder.
The clamor of armor and the ongoing shriek of mercenaries and their panicked mounts draws our attention to the scouts and guards who are still attempting to flee. We sweep a bolt across their path, halting their progress, and in three quick strides we're standing among them. We stomp men and horses into the earth, little more than an uneven texture beneath our mighty feet! A quick turn, sweeping our tails wide across the ground, churning the earth and knocking the guards not slain outright from their mounts - then its time to apply the lightning again. Crackling, leaping, arcing golden radiance puts an end to them all!
With every footstep, the ground shakes. With every wingbeat, the wind howls. With every breath, thunder and flame. It takes less than a minute to reduce the entire caravan to ashes and meat amid a field of burning grass. Even the road has been destroyed, scarred beyond recognition by the weight of our tread and the impact of our lightning!
We remain diminished, but we are Ghidorah once again.
Quote:1073 words according to wordcounter.net
6400/5000 words.
-travel to a human duchy: accomplished
-find a post soliciting for the services of a 'rakish individual': accomplished.
-follow through with the instructions: accomplished (and how!)
-do not implicate the person who contracted you: accomplished
Time to turn this in!