Shattered Stars

The Crypt

Hurdi's eyeless head stared at me as it lay on its side, grinning at me. The Shifter's plasma beam winded down. Gunshots and explosions rang out as Drakes tried to enter the breach in the vent.

I sat frozen in horror. Hurdi was gone.

The severed part of the neck started to grow and morph like lava inside a lava lamp. Two lumps formed into a pair of human feet.

My jaw dropped. I tried to back away, but some unknown force held me in place. The head eased up onto its feet and blinked with its eye sockets. It turned to me, still giving me the evil smile.

I screamed, but my voice was silent. I struggled harder to move, but it was no use.

"You're next," the head said. It opened its jaws, and its mouth and eye sockets gleamed with energy. Then the energy exploded at me.

"NOOOOOOOO!" I jerked awake. Everything was black, and I could barely move my limbs under the intense pressure on my body. My wings were compressed under my back.

I spat dirt from my mouth and choked on the hot air. My interface indicated my lungs were filtering out toxic chemicals. I turned on echolocation, and my breath stopped. Dirt formed a tomb around me, leaving me with hardly enough room to bend my head down to see my body.

A voice spoke into my ear. "Buried alive, huh? How fitting."

I snapped my head toward the voice. The head with two feet from the dream was lodged halfway in the dirt, giving me a sharp-toothed grin.

"AHHH!" I writhed, trying to break free of my dirt coffin. The weight upon me was too much; even with my super-strength, the dirt above didn't budge. "No, no, NO!"

"Being weak again, are we?" the head taunted.

"Shut up!" I managed to elbow it on the muzzle, but my arm contacted only dirt.

"Missed," the head said from the other side.

I spun my head to the other side, and there was the demon again, lodged in the dirt. "Wh-What!?"

It cackled, its bottom jaw bobbing up and down. Pure terror rose in my gut.

Find a way out! NOW!

I took a few deep breaths, but the aching in my gut remained.

"You will never find a way out," the head said nonchalantly.

My eyes widened.

Go! Save yourself!

I twisted around so I was lying on my belly. My interface indicated my body had healed all broken bones, but my energy reserves were low. It recommended I consume matter so I regain energy. I modified my taste perception and wolfed down a few mouthfuls of chocolate-flavored dirt.

"You are only forestalling your death," the head said.

I scrambled around in the interface settings, trying to find something useful. I found a sonar-like app that could find the thickness of the dirt in all directions around me. It required that I roar as loud as I could for a period of time, which I was happy to oblige. There was only five hundred feet of dirt to one side of me, two miles on the other side, and above me the thickness was over ten miles. The app couldn't detect distances farther than that.

I faced the five-hundred-feet-of-dirt side and clawed my way through in a slow-motion breaststroke. All the while, the creepy head followed me and kept telling me I was going to die.

The dirt gave way to pitch-black emptiness, and I tumbled down a slope of dirt and rock for a few seconds. Though the fall battered my body, it didn't hurt.