Chapter 234 - The Birth of Death part 9

Only the bravest of the clan ventured out when daylight came. Of those brave souls, nearly half retreated almost immediately to the safety of the cave, all the color drained from their faces. They hurried to the back and spoke in frightened whispers. Those who tarried outside a little longer were no less disturbed when they returned. They trod back in with their arms held out to their sides, a glistening black liquid dripping from their bodies. Their eyes, wide and fearful, stood out in stark contrast with the murky fluid that stained their faces. They sought immediately to clean the liquid from their flesh. Some of them claimed it made their skin tingle, others that it made their thoughts spin, as if they were drunk.

Khronos was the last to return.

His mother and mate stared at him as he drew near, clutching one another like frightened children. Ona reached out to him when he approached. "What is that black fluid?" she asked, but he ignored her. He ignored them both.

Instead, he strode to the far corner of the cave where Wali kept her bedding, his movements slow and purposeful, his countenance carefully controlled. Squatting beside the old woman's hearth, he looked at her gravely and said, "Tell me what you know, crone."

Fearful of her brutal leader, Wali had drawn back from Khronos when he approached her, but when she saw that he did not mean to chastise her for speaking foolishly before, she leaned forward and ran her fingers down his cheek.

"Know? I know nothing," she said, examining the dark fluid. She rubbed it between finger and thumb, tasted it, then pulled a face and spit it out. "I feel…" she said.

"So what do you feel?" Khronos pressed her impatiently.

"What I felt before!" the crone said defiantly. Then she looked frightened of him again and shrank away.

"You said Death had been born into the world," Khronos said.

"Yes, can't you feel it?"

He didn't answer immediately, then said in a low voice, "Yes, I feel it."

The old woman sat forward. "What does it look like outside?"

"The sky is dark and it is raining mud. There are trees fallen over as far as the eye can see. There are… animals… lying dead on the ground. Many animals. The birds have fallen from the sky. Far in the east, beyond the gray hills, there is a column of black smoke stretching from the earth to the heavens, as if from a great fire."

Wali covered her mouth with her knuckled hand, eyes bulging.

"It is Death," she whispered fiercely, her entire body trembling. "Death has come to devour the world!"

He questioned her some more, but that is all that she would say. It was all that she could say, he finally decided. She might feel, but she did not know, and so he rose with a grunt of irritation and returned to the mouth of the cave.

He stood there, watching black raindrops splash into black puddles. Not all the nearby trees had fallen over. Some of the nearer ones still stood, but he could see them lying on the hills further away. More and more of them were fallen the further away he looked.

He could not see the column of black smoke from the entrance of the cave. The entrance of the cave did not face in that direction, but that was probably a good thing. If the opening of the cave had been pointed in the direction of the black column, all of the clan probably would have perished the night before.

Khronos did not know this. Like Wali, he only felt it.

What he felt was some nameless dread in his belly, something separate from his shock at the destruction the daylight had revealed. He had felt this dread once before, when he was out hunting on his own one day and realized a large tiger was stalking him. The predator had not given itself away. It had not made a sound. Khronos had suddenly just known it was there, creeping through the underbrush toward him, close enough to pounce, and he had bolted up a tree like a monkey, his heart stuttering in his chest. The fear he shared with Wali that morning was like that. He felt some dread beast stalking him, something filled with a terrible intent. He felt that it threatened his people in some way, that it threatened the whole world, but he also felt that he must see it.

See it and, perhaps, make war on it.