30 Days Of Undead Summer

The Calm Before the Storm

#TenByTen

Noah erupted in a great flame of purple and green and gold. The nearest undead were propelled backwards through the air. Holden Price on his rooftop perch had been thrown into the surrounding forestry. Antonio da Silva was launched from the King's statue as it too fragmented in stone and dust. Perceval had no time to prepare an adequate shield. He evaporated in the blast along with his undead army.

However, much like in the lab in a future Cardiff, the energies of the active nanobots and enzymes seemed to absorb the nuclear blast as it spread through each airborne undead.

And time seemed to still around the growing ebony haze spreading from Noah's shattered body. A single golden cog gleaming brighter with each second as black tendrils seeped from it. Snaking across the brick and wood and severed limbs towards the body of Antonio da Silva lost in the rubble. It clutched his unmoving leg and as the world rolled back to speed, he was gone.

*

Holden Price awoke to darkness with throbbing skull. As he lifted his head, he cringed against the piercing ache tearing through him. It felt as though every bone in his body had been broken.

"Holden Price, you must rest." A soft voice spoke. Holden gazed about and found nothing but a moonlit Excalibur at his feet. The from beyond it were the pale feet of a woman. The woman. The Lady of the Lake. She moved towards him with a jar of water.

"Drink." Holden opened his mouth and let the cool, sweet waters dribble down his throat. He withheld a scream as he felt the bones of his body knit themselves together.

"You must heal quickly. I sense an approaching darkness on the horizon."

"What... of the... undead?" He managed to gasp through the pain.

"Gone."

"And Perceval?"

"Gone. You are the sole survivor."

"Great Gods."

"We must move quickly and see whom we can salvage in what remains of this mostly empty kingdom."

Holden was already feeling better and managed to sit up.

"What now?"

The Lady of the Lake gazed towards the dark sky and the blinking stars. Concern had etched its way across her face and Holden felt a new fear course through him.

"I do not know Holden Price, but whatever is coming... it is dark. So very dark."

*

Between the veils of space and time and reality, Antonio da Silva drifted through darkness. On occasion, his lids would flutter and an ebony figure that resembled Noah would be standing over him. Only it wasn't Noah because he killed him. And Noah had not been a writhing amalgamation of slick, squirming tendrils splotched by blinking stars. Noah didn't have galaxies for eyes.

In the veils of space and time and reality, Antonio da Silva was consumed by the dark tendrils that crawled over his body. Every memory flashed past his fluttering lids in disordered structure until only darkness existed.

In the veils of space and time and reality, a new creature was born.

And it was hungry.