#apothis

Inside the Dread Meteor 

Deep Style and Digital Painting

An experiment doing concept-work on an inner chamber of the FossilGhoul creating meteor-being Apothis. The core of Apothis remains active even when trapped in Earth orbit, and within its myriad passages and chambers it pulses and shifts, impermanent yet ageless, awaiting its chance to return to its grim work.

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“This body is flawed!” 

Extinxion caught Yorik’s neck with a swipe of his right claw. Yoirk’s head failed to hold to his spine, and popped off, only to be caught in Extinxion’s other claw. York felt himself being throttled and crushed at simultaneously, and let out a piteous gasp.”How did you allow this? Speak, bonehead!”

“You are a thing of magnificence, Lord Extinxion!” Yorik chattered. “What possible flaw could you be talking about?”

“The sun should not make us weak and yet-” Anger flared in the skeletal horror’s flaming eyes. “-I do not appear to be rekilling you despite the fact that nothing would make me happier, explain.”

“I did not smith your body, Lord Extinxion! You are self-made!” Yorik’s body struggled feebly. “It is our master, it is far away and injured, we cannot draw on its power to fight the sun.”  

“Or else it is denying that power to us. An effort to remind me of my place no doubt.” Extinxion tossed Yorik to the ground. The wilderness was darker here, the steep mountain cliffs cast a perpetual shadow, but still Extinxtion felt his strength diminished. He was feeling fatigue a failing of the living, and it disgusted him. “You will commune with it and find out, and deliver my, lets call them firm requests.”

Yorik put his head back on his neck. “I- I think we can infer the master’s will in this instance.”

“You would force me to commune with Apothis myself?” Extinxion chuckled. “And what, exactly, would you use to bind me during the conversation? Your filthy rags? That doesn’t sound promising. You’d really want chains, living metal would do the trick. I’m sure you could find some just lying around in the rocks before I lose my patience.”

Yorik swallowed hard. His disused esophagus creaked as he did. 

“But you are a quick little coward, I’m sure you could stay out of reach the whole time.” Extinxion snapped his jaws. “Aren’t you?”

“You know, Boss, Lord Extinxion, your extreme maleficence? I think it would be best if I undertook the communion, after all. Even an unknowable profane deity gets lonesome. I imagine, and you- you’re not one for chit-chat, so I’ll just, begin the ritual.” 

“See, you’re not a complete lackwit after all.” Extinxion tilted his skull down, giving the impression of a sinister smile. 

Yorik reached a long, bony claw through his own ribs. He rooted about for a few moments, before the claw tapped on the corrupt amber heart at the center of his being. He withdrew his finger. A single drop of yellow-orange amber, now a thick, honey-like liquid, sat in a blob at the end of that claw.

Yorik raised the claw, and let the drop fall into his open mouth. The light in his empty eye socket went black, as his remaining pupil darkened into the same reddish-amber color as the drop he’d just devoured. His pupil split into four lobes like a single cell dividing into two, then four. 

There were three souls on Earth that would not have been terrified by the the sound Yorik was now making. Two of those three beings were in this valley at that moment.  

It sounded like a scream and a cry and a howl were all trying to overpower the others at once, though in some moments the tone sounded like metal against metal and in other moments it almost became words. 

--

Yorik stood on the surface of his master’s eye 65 million years ago. No. That was wrong. It was him. He was flying toward the Earth,, free and powerful and hungry.He could feel the rush of solar wind, taste the futile tang of nuclear fallout in the void. A bounty lay before him on a banquet table. 

The air was compacting, heating, turning into fire and then plasma around them. He felt the hunger-like sensations his master felt, he could feel the rising tide of fear from below. 

Then Yorik felt an unseen force catch the time in him, around him, pulling it out of place, turning it into a blade. Time tore through him, An upstart dimension that should hold no sway ripped him from the world. Not all of him, just the important parts, the parts that knew and hungered and now understood agony for the first time in unknown eons. He floated, his head lodged in nothing. 

The mortal trap held him, slowed him to imperceptibility. The prey was still there, but out of reach. Yet he could see. He saw that banquet table laid in his honor, scaled and feathered hands snatching the feast away in greedy, thoughtless, sloppy handfuls.

He tried to hurl himself toward them, to steal back his feast, but he could not. His head was strung in a web of fragile string. Though he could twitch and bite and shake, the lines held. His beak was too dull. He had no leverage. He could only watch. 

He watched as his headless body tumble into the banquet table, spinning and thrashing, scattering the scraps left by the saurians to the floor, ruined and uneaten. 

Hands of wind and rain and sun cleared his motionless body from the table, as other hands set new plates piled high with new dishes to tempt him, the phantom waiters vanished, leaving him to hang, motionless, looking down at the table. He felt hungry as never before.

Then a gloved hand moved form the shadows around the table, and placed a tall glass, filled with a tantalizing liquid in the middle of one of the plates.. Yorik recognized the glass from the first banquet stolen from him. He focused on the glass. There was a claw in it, his claw, sitting at the bottom of the glass like a forgotten garnish. 

From the Lotus,

The Serpent of Chaos,

Who was actually the First,

Who thrives in the primordial waters,

And hated the order imposed,

By the Great Cow Mother,

And hated that the waters receded,

From the heat of the growing Sun.

And so a plan was devised,

That the Sun would be consumed,

And water and darkness,

Would rule once more,

But the Great Cow Mother was fierce,

And her hooves and horns,

Wounded the Serpent of Chaos,

Who retreated to the primordial waters,