Riverwatch

Chapter Eight: Ressurection

Inside the tomb.

Movement.

It began as nothing more than a subtle shifting in the darkness, a change in the rank air that filled the buried structure, a stirring sense of motion that was more felt than seen, as if the air pressure had suddenly lowered.

Gradually as the moments passed the motion became more substantial until at last it could be seen with the naked eye, had anyone been watching.

A patch of darkness, darker than even the heavy gloom that filled the tomb’s every nook and cranny, detached itself from the shadows in one corner and drifted like a curtain of mist into the center of the chamber. It churned about in rich, lazy spirals, a bubbling, seething witch’s brew that whirled and spun about itself.

The mist became a haze; the haze became a fog, and still it writhed and rolled. With each revolution it slowly gathered substance from the darkness around it. When the cloud was several feet in diameter, it slowly wrapped the statue in its inky embrace.

The murk began to adhere itself to the finely wrought stone, slowly at first, and then faster, as the intelligence guiding it gradually awakened from a long sleep, its senses progressively becoming more in tune with physical reality.

The human blood shed earlier acted as a catalyst, providing the ingredients required for him to again assume a corporeal form. The dark union of forces that had sustained him for so long did the rest.

A light sparked about the statue, a tiny flash of crimson the size and shape of a cigarette ember, located somewhere near the center of the thing’s chest. With each pulsation it grew slowly brighter, bit-by-bit, until it reached the intensity of a carefully contained fire. There was no heat. The strange light seemed to give off an unnatural chill that wafted forth and turned the air inside the tomb several degrees colder than it had been moments before. The blood-red light flickered across the face of the statue, causing its teeth to gleam eerily in the glow.

The cloud pulsed and swelled as it coalesced about the figure, until it was a semi-solid mass of churning black, mated to the stone, covering every exposed inch of its surface.

The light flared suddenly brighter, so bright that it would have blinded anyone in the room in its gory red glow.

But no one was there, and so the change went on.

Unheeded.

Unhindered.

Unnoticed by all but the one who’d triggered it and the other who’d sought so desperately to prevent it.

A smell suddenly filled the air, a stench like the cloying reek of sulfur or rotten eggs. With it the light flared in a flash that lasted for several long moments.

When the light died down and the darkness returned, the beast that had been hidden for centuries stood in the center of the room where the statue had stood just moments before.

In the darkness, yellow eyes gleamed brightly.

The beast remained where he was for a moment or two, rejoicing in his newfound freedom. The rush of the stolen blood in his veins brought a rhythmic pounding to his ears, and after the ages of silence even that slight, internal sound was like thunder.

He reveled in it. He was alive.

The creature once known as Moloch walked towards the door, eager to escape the confines of the dank, stone structure where he’d been imprisoned. He moved with steady deliberation; the first steps slow and awkward, the joints in his knees and hips seemed rusted tight with disuse. After a few more steps the tissues began to remember and established the proper rhythm.

Where his movements had at first been disruptive, jerky, they now became fluid, composed and filled with a savage, feline grace. He walked the circumference of the room. Once, twice, three times, each step renewing his familiarity with physical motion and the laws that governed it.

As he walked he worked his arms, swinging them back and forth at the elbow and rotating them in their shoulder sockets, flexing the muscles of his biceps. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

Moloch opened and closed his jaw several times, snapping it shut to hear the sharp click of his teeth, force enough to crush bone to a pulp.

He delighted in the tension and release of the muscles in his back and legs. The sound of his claws scraping the rough stone underfoot sent a shiver of pleasure through his frame.

Moloch strode across the chamber. With a shove from one muscle-laden arm, he swung wide the door. It crashed against the outer wall with a loud metallic clang. He was barely aware of the sound, so entranced was he with the sight through the open door.

There, just steps away, lay freedom.

Sounds were assaulting him from all sides; the whisper of the wind, the trip-hammer of tiny hearts in the shrubbery.

He laughed, the sound welling up from the depths of his throat in manic glee and echoing into the night.

It was a sound that was less than human.

Lights gleamed off in the distance. Spying them, the beast’s thoughts turned to the terrible, gnawing hunger that had awakened deep inside. Too long he’d been locked inside that stone, imprisoned and left to die alone in the darkness. Too long he’d existed in that twilight between this world and the next, his life extended by the dark forces that had imprisoned him there.

Now he was free; free to act and to feed.

He extended his arms. The leathery wings that lay smoothly against the surface of his back extended with them, rustling in the breeze like the sound of a quickly snapped sheet. Bunching the muscles in his scaled legs, Moloch gave a powerful downward shove and cast his body upwards into the dark night.