Introduction of Hosen 2: Records of the Invasion

Hosen stood in front of the time-jumping machine, ready to enter his first mission.

"...let me explain again. Keep your eyes closed. The coordinates of your destination are unknown, which signifies that we cannot determine the specific timeline or location of your arrival. Upon arrival, you are to immediately identify any issues present and take swift action to resolve them. It is crucial to remain vigilant and aware of your surroundings, as you may encounter entities with-"

"unpredictable capabilities." The white-haired man cut himself in. "Forming attachments with individuals from the era you enter is strictly prohibited during your time dive. Additionally, any attempts to alter future events are forbidden." He looked at the stunned researcher. "Right?"

That little cheeky smirk—the woman crossed her arms, defeated.

"I see that you got accustomed to the time-traveling regulations." She huffed, "At least one of you is giving me less of a headache," glad she didn't have to repeat herself every time with this newcomer, unlike she did with 02.

"I like reading rulebooks before I do something haphazardly." The man explained.

"At least you know." She pressed buttons and booted the machine. "03, ready!"

The portal opened, and Hosen walked through the familiar sensation of shimmering lights.

***

Currently, he found himself in the middle of the apocalypse. The hand-pillars moved west, leaving a trail of destruction behind, so Hosen gathered his things to follow in that direction. Parting his eyes (or rather his eye, he wore an eyepatch) from the group of survivors along with his soon-to-be-mother, he proceeded further into the unveiling events.

Pieces of glass shattered on touch, falling out of hazardous holes in large building windows. They pierced the ground with their sharp edges, nearly impaling his foot and rendering him unable to walk ahead. He was lucky to move away on time. The fallen shards mirrored Manhattan's remains, distorting its destroyed, miserable state—the man was able to see it firsthand in the window's fractured reflection.

The buildings, demolished and unstable, toppled over, endangering the lives of many innocent bystanders. Crumbling in chaos and making spine-chilling echoes, debris crashed down, as well as dust rose from the streets, its particles danced whimsically in the sunlight. Many of the people's houses collapsed with no hope of rebuilding.

Across the street, a ripped, short-circuited wire sparked with electricity here and there, moving around its pole like a child on a garden swing.

Sudden explosions and thriving fire were visible across the horizon. It was far from here, but the time traveler was sure this area, too, would soon be engulfed by flames.

Hosen appeared to be the only still person in the chaos this world had fallen into. In the midst of it, he walked past the injured and the wailing, yet he didn't bother to stop and help. He knew the consequences it could bear.

The shrill cry reminiscent of birds rang closer and closer. It was far too akin to the sounds made by seagulls, and yet, somehow completely different. This uncanny similarity could only mean one thing: they were coming.

Soon, the invaders passed through a portal from their own dimension into ours, communicating with each other through these otherworldly sounds.

Hosen stayed hidden behind a headless monument, catching a glimpse of countless vine-like appendages stretching its greasy muscles to wrap around their unknowing victims. He had the responsibility to see through everything, no matter how gruesome it was, for the sake of the future archives.

Their fate was dire. Not only were they crushed, bones breaking, and trapped in the thorny tentacles, being slowly eaten by the little beak-like mouth on the horror's bottom, but those who were still alive also had their skin ripped, flayed, bits of white bone visible through bloodied muscle tissue. Their eyeballs were crushed in, and, what was worse, the victims underwent a horrific transformation that melted their very muscles and bones into a black liquid splashed on the ground. Their bodies were reversing back in time, devolving at a rapid pace until only pus left in a puddle of black slime smeared on the ground. (1)*

No one in their sane mind would want to end up like that.

Desperate to avoid such a fate, people broke into a panicked sprint, doing whatever it took to escape this terrifying death. Some hid behind the ruined buildings or even under the fallen rubble—their lives ended by being crushed by its weight.

Many died horribly when caught by the creatures seemingly appearing out of nowhere—their portals were hard to spot. Their black-colored bodies flooded the city, dispersing in every direction while they scavenged through nooks and crannies for any human leftovers.

During his act of hiding, Hosen felt an unbearable chill drawing near, which meant one of them was approaching.

"Iä, Rhyn tharanak…" He quoted, remembering the known work of Henry Kuttner.

What was once presented as the words of a madman, or was deemed completely abstract, became a vast source of knowledge that time travelers used for survival. Hosen also used it as a reference when going against these entities. Thanks to these old writings, he knew more or less about how to behave around them, even if it was his first time seeing them in person.

Once he sensed one coming, he shimmied to the side, keeping himself well hidden behind the statue. Frost coated the area from which the monster approached; it crept onto the stone like frozen needles, bringing a sharp, biting cold to the air.

It's too close…

Hosen made a mental note to write everything down on paper later, but for now, he had to get away from this place.

The tension lingered as he silently picked up a pebble from the ground. With a swift motion, the man hurled it at a distant trashcan. The metal junk clattered loudly when it toppled over, stealing the monster's attention.

While it turned to approach the noise, Hosen rolled to the side and disappeared into the empty labyrinth interior of the abandoned skyscrapers. He wasn't a fighter but a seeker of knowledge, whether it'd be unobtainable or unknown. Between a confrontation and a means of escape, he would always choose the latter.

He walked through a few crossroads until he was sure he was out of the invaders' radius.

"The descriptions in the archives don't do justice to what I just saw."

He commented as if the whole experience was only a projected sequence of pictures on the wall. He was ready to take out his notebook, but something made him pause.

It surely wasn't the end. If the apocalypse were just a mere invasion of these atrocities, then humanity would have already taken care of it.

No, there was surely much more to come, and he was here to gather all of the significant information before he was forced to return to his timeline. Each second of being an eyewitness was crucial, so he had to etch every detail in his memory.

"From what I remember… After the first wave of hand-pillars and the second wave of the invaders, others would soon appear, and these ones were…"

At a distance, he heard screams similar to humans' painful moans, so stopping mid-motion of his pen, he peeked outside.

"Speak of the horror…"

Cries of the terrified signified the striking third disaster.

People scattered around, struck by complete madness. Rage-driven, they started hunting their brethren and then taking their own lives amid their strongly enhanced misery. Their screams of insanity, and of raw fury, would forever haunt anyone who heard them.

They had utterly lost their minds.

"He grew so much in power that he can possess so many bodies at once."

Hosen concluded. Truth be told, he was always powerful, but that was beside the point.

"They must've seen the Yellow Sign, but where?"

There was no Yellow anywhere, only the spreading death. People's empty bodily shells fell to the ground, adding to the already horrendous scenery on the streets. (2)*

He couldn't find the cause of it, so he moved onward.

Among the dead, a significant number of bodies bloated, struck by this unknown influence, not by water but by air—soon were ready to explode from the inside, leaving a red, splattered mess, and decomposing instantly on their resting place.

Some of the untouched carcasses suddenly lost their color, their skin became patched with earth green bruises as if kissed by the soil itself; their forms twisted and turned into spirals, and their bones… These broke into pieces. And with the elastic, stretched muscles, able to move alongside the body after many cracking sounds rang from within, they were forcefully bent or liquified into physically impossible curves.

That is not the doing of the King in Yellow… The symptoms are different. Maybe the Spiral's influence?

At once, the corpses stood up, accompanied by the squishy sounds of outstretched meat. Slimy moisture oozed out from the bent points, filling the streets with grime and blood.

Their slow yet fluid movements resembled those of a snail or an amalgamation of earthworms. One might wonder just how they were able to stand on these tangled legs of theirs. The already morphed fingers grew out long, stretched like a ten-headed hydra's necks, and ending in eyeless, sharp jaws that could bite through any metal.

Each movement of these monstrosities was accompanied by blood-freezing screams, a different voice from each maw, and yet, they resounded in a harmonized disarray.

"Just where did its presence come from?"

It was a question Hosen wouldn't get an answer to. If he had gotten to this timeline a bit earlier, maybe he could have had time to look for the answers.

He shook his head, dispersing his curiosity.

"It's not important right now."

What mattered, however, was that the possessed by Spiral were bloodthirsty and that they roamed the streets, not shying from attacking anything that was moving. Be it a cat, a dog, or a human, it didn't matter. Their finger-jaws opened fast and launched at the throat of any living being, ripping it apart repulsively. Not to mention that the said stretched fingers, having a will of their own, fed aggressively on those whom they killed.

As much as their cruel methods weren't equal to the slow and brutal ones practiced by the invaders, the moving corpses surely made an impact on those who tried to run away.

Their appalling appearance, seeping bodily fluids, and the stale odor were enough to make one throw up their last supper all over the pavement.

The commotion gained the attention of Ny'ghan Grii as well, so now, two unfathomable species were after the same prey.

Hosen was ready to run, but his attention was soon interrupted by a soft sob of a boy whose leg was trapped beneath the fallen debris; he froze.

"Dad…?"

The boy called out when the body beside him rose up, slithering sleazily through the boulders and unburying itself from under the wooden planks.

From what the kid could gather, his father had died after pushing him out of the way of falling remnants from a caved-in ceiling. Soon, the adult's corpse winded into unbelievable angles, becoming part of the army of puppets controlled by something far beyond human comprehension.

The moving carcass menacingly hovered over the child.

"Dad, answer me—!" The boy cried, struck with fear—his beloved parent was no more. "Dad!"

However, it was not Hosen's business.

"Please! Come back—!" The little one's cries continued. "Return to being the nice dad! I don't want the angry dad again! I don't want to be hurt anymore!"

He tried to pull his leg from under the rock but ultimately failed. Though his leg wasn't severely bruised, he was paralyzed with terror, unable to stand.

While the kid's knees trembled uncontrollably, Hosen racked his brain, trying to quickly recall the profiles of everyone who had perished in this disaster. He had memorized them all, having looked through each ID photo for hours before coming here—it was his way of ensuring that no part of their history would be altered.

These people were supposed to die here—he couldn't do anything about it.

The corpse didn't stop at the child's pleas. And the child, who had realized that his tragic end was going to be the same, felt a cold, helpless despair wash over him.

"No…" Tears hung at the edge of his wide-open eyelids, and his body shuddered. Looking around in panic, he searched for any hope, but found none. "I don't wanna… I don't want to end up like this! I don't wanna be an ugly corpse!"

He was soon to join his father in becoming a twisted, outstretched, boneless, spiraling mass. At last, the cries flooded his puffy cheeks.

Despite the desperate sobs, Hosen was going to give this wrecking scene a cold shoulder, the same way he did for many other people. There was no point in saving those who were destined to die—in his timeline, they were long since dead anyway.

And yet…

"I don't want to die!"

And yet, something in Hosen's mind wouldn't let him simply walk away.

"Someone, please help—!!!"

The boy cried out for the last time before the razor-sharp teeth of the miniature jaws flew at his face, ready to bite into his brain through his innocent eyes.

"Duck!"

Suddenly, an adult hand pressed down onto his head, letting the slithering maws plunge into the ground behind them. The man also ducked alongside him.

"Mister…?"

"Be quiet for now—"

Wasting no time, Hosen opened a flask with colorless liquid that he pinned on his belt, and spilled the contents all over the reeking body. With a quick flick of the lighter, he threw it at the monster to catch on fire, knowing the flames would eat away the grease until it couldn't move. The sulphuric acid should help with its decomposition.

Of course, it wasn't enough to keep it dead.

"We're running."

He wrapped his arm around the kid's waist like a bag of potatoes to sprint out of sight faster—it looked rather comical.

And, once in hiding, he let out a breath, finally able to relax.

Peeking around the corner, he watched the abomination of the late father move slower and slower. Its body parts melted into a disgusting, blobby mass, from which chunks of meat tore off, hanging only by a thin skin; or it fell onto the ground and left a greasy trail behind. It had long since lost its purpose of killing his son.

With no one left in sight to attack, it wandered aimlessly until the chemicals burned it to ashes.

The danger was avoided, for now, and the child was saved… Right, the boy wasn't even supposed to be here.

Oh, well, Hosen could allow himself to make one exception because it was just a young one… A kid who didn't seem to have any significance for the foretold and already written future.

(1)*From: "The Invaders" by Henry Kuttner, 1939 

(2)*From: "King in Yellow" by Robert W. Chambers, 1895 and "The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers, 1895