Halloween Short 2015: Extinction Hour · 10:56pm Oct 31st, 2015
(While I had no time to do a full on special, I whipped this up. It's not much but I hope you enjoy!)
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Attu Island (2 days before Dimension Tide's Hijacking)
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Her name was Dr. Andria Young. Born September 4th, 1975; she was a fresh graduate from the University of Alaska Anchorage specializing in anthropology. She'd come to the island to hunt for Aleut native artifacts as well as any Paleolithic finds she discovered in deeper strata for a thesis paper. Attu has some kind of anomaly in its history in that it is still unknown when exactly humans first came to the now deserted island. Dr. Young had come here to try and find out when, arriving on the island several weeks ago with a host of other researcher colleagues. An oceanographer placing hydrophones, an ornithologists studying the local avian nesting population, and their aides. It was a small effort on a shoestring budget, set up in a recently abandoned US coast guard station.
Andria slung her pack over her shoulder and double checked her position on the grassy slope in her log. Absentmindedly she looked up across the wide, tree-less slopes and at the calm seas in the distance. Aside from the seabirds squawking in the distance, she was totally alone. The others all left for now, heading back to the university to gather more grant money while she volunteered to hold down the fort. They'd told her to just stay in the station and that they'd be back in a few days. Not like she listened any, she had work to do.
Work that unfortunately meant lugging the core driller out to a hill behind the station by herself. Andria tuned out her aching limbs and the loud generator's noise as the core drilling machine buzzed to life to dig into the terra firma. She could have gone with the others, maybe even should have. Maybe it was the quiet stillness aside from the occasional bird or gale blowing across the central peaks behind the station, maybe it was the sharp slopes that almost seemed like scars cutting into the island's surface; maybe it was the fact she was in one of the few places in the world she could tread across to call out and get no response. One way or another, this island gave her the creeps.
In her zoned out state, she didn't notice the ground beneath her begin to rattle violently. Andria's eyes widened and she yelled out under the earthen groan, falling over. Just as she managed to get on her hands and knees though, the sudden tremor halted as soon as it started. The machinery next to her however roared and creaked, the core drill digging far deeper into the earth than intended. Dr. Young scrambled over to it to shut it off. Just as she managed to tear into the controls however, the screaming drill let out a reverberating, metallic gnash and stopped. Regaining her breath, Andria put it into reverse and backed the mounted machine up on its dolly.
The core bored out of the machine, a tube shaped cross section of gravel, dirt, permafrost, and other strata, fell out of the broken drill bit in two pieces. Dr. Young shrugged as she looked it over, trying not to fume over busting the corer. The core looked good, but its size was a clear indicator the drill had slipped and dug down much deeper than what was programmed. Looking at the end of the drill, she soon spotted a large object wedged into the end of the bit.
-Must be what broke it. What is it?-
She puzzled, fitting on her gloves before feeling around the hunk of encrusted minerals. It was a large object, about the size of a half deflated basketball, and seemed to be one single piece. Thinking she'd struck bedrock, Young gripped it and grunted as she tried to pry it out of the twisted metal. The object winced and groaned against the drill bit before she managed to tear it free. The action tore off some of the encrusting minerals and revealed a more solid interior. It looked almost shiny. Young raised an eyebrow and rubbed at it with her thumb, revealing a dull luster across a smooth surface. She'd hit something metallic.
Recovering her wits, she double checked the strata core against what she suspected to be reworked material from the WW2 battle that had occurred on Attu, somehow buried down into the deeper layers. Startlingly though, none of the encrusting matched the top few soil layers of the first couple, let alone first hundreds of years. Having memorized the island's layers of strata like a book, Andria walked back along the core. The modern era flew by quickly, then the occupation of the island by whalers in the 1700s, the Aleut-bearing layers of the Holocene, and then her usual cut off point, late Pleistocene about 25,000 years back. Dr. Young looked at the hunk of metal, then back at the remaining 2/3rds of the core. She bit her lip and walked back along the cross section of prehistory. It was only at the very end, where the strata became more and more rocky after a long layer of permafrost, that the encrusting minerals on the object had matched. Andria looked back up at an impossibility, eyeing the exposed portions of smoothed metal. Whatever it was, it was worked, forged metal about four times older than the most ancient stone tools she's found on previous digs.
Trembling with a mix of befuddlement and awe, she didn't hear the oncoming gales of wind until they scoured the highland slopes and smacked her in the face. Cold talons of frozen air dug into her skin despite the previously mild summer air. Dr. Young almost dropped the artifact due to the uncontrollable need to hunker down and retain any measure of warmth, the freezing gales tearing the heat from her. The seas, agitated in unison with the sky, roared and bellowed. Intense waves birthed from the watery ether crashed against the beaches and drove scores of sea birds away from trembling ground and into the blustering winds for some measure of cover. As she crouched down to avoid some of the winds, Dr. Young was quick to collect the samples she could and pack up. Something in the interior of her mind was lashing out, demanding she get to safety. Atavistic fear and wish to get out of the sudden bad weather, Andria abandoned the core and rushed back to the station.
All of Attu seemed to be in chaos for several minutes. Freezing gales, bellowing waves, and groaning earth seemed to send nature into a frenzy. Dr. Young just managed to get inside when it stopped as soon as it started.
DORAGON
The clean up at the station after the earthquakes kept Doctor Young busy for the better part of the day. Some of the long halls and jerry rigged research rooms looked like they practically exploded. Nothing she could do about the busted windows in many of the rooms, only try and relocate her things into the intact chambers. The rest of the day she spent locked away into her new laboratory for some field analysis. Despite the bizarre weather from earlier, Andria had written it off as aftershocks from a distant earthquake stirring up the sea and altering the wind. Climatologist she was not, but the half lie did help her to stay on task. As she painstakingly brushed away the encrusted pebbles, dried clays, bits of shell, and other debris from the chunk of metal into collection trays for later analysis; more and more glimmer became evident. The metal looked like it had been burned at some point and was partially deformed from being buried for so long, but the casing of minerals had protected it from most corrosion aside from some small spots. The metal object as it was revealed to her started to take shape. The specks of red on the dull gray caught her eye. Pulling out a magnifying glass, Andria adjusted her glasses and looked closer.
Embedded in tiny pits or flaking off the surface were bits of reddish brown corrode. It looked like rust. Trying to reign in her excitement, Dr. Andria put the prize down and rushed to the refrigerator. Taking off a photograph magnet, she charged back over to her work station. Taking in several deep breaths to keep her hand from shaking, she held the magnet a half inch away from some exposed metal. Sure enough, Adria felt a tiny tug in her fingers, trying to force the magnet and metal together. Dr. Young felt her breath escape her as she slumped back into her chair, looking blankly at the magnet. Some of the smaller red flakes and dust had levitated off the object and clung to the magnet, confirming them to be rust. She looked at the object, the almost alien artifact, with widened eyes and a shaking head.
-It’s iron… Iron from the Pleistocene that’s way too pure to be natural or a meteorite…-
“This, this is impossible. First metallurgy was copper and that was only 8,000 years ago, and the first Aleut only arrived 20,000 years back…”
She murmured to herself, having to speak aloud to confirm it. This find shouldn't exist, but it did. No signs of reworking, forgery, and all signs of truth. Ice Age steel over 70,000 years old. It was like looking at a unicorn it was so unbelievable. The good doctor had to keep herself from hyperventilating. She had to find out what this was, what she was looking at, desperate for any clue as to who made this. Before she could however, the station's power went out. Yelping from the startling darkness, Andria felt around on her person for the door. She checked her watch, hitting the tiny side button to light up the screen.
-Midnight already? Time flies...-
Groping around in the darkness, she felt her way to the door and headed out into the main hall, making for the back of the building. She'd just gotten outside when light began to glimmer down from the sky, illuminating the generator shed. Dr. Young looked skyward and was greeted by a truly ominous visage. An aurora streamed across the sky, stretching across it in glowing tendrils that seemed to converge on the highlands in the island's interior. The colors ripping across the sky were not the typical streams of green and violet, being near indescribable, eldritch. The sky almost looked like it was bleeding, ichor-gushing veins streaming out from the mountains above. Andria felt her skin begin to go numb and heart rate quicken. Nothing felt right about this, and her subconscious was screaming of danger.
Now desperate for any light, she opened up the control box to the generator and adjusted the settings through jittering fingers. Sound began to fill the air just as she managed to get the machine to wind back up. A low rumbling vibrated the sky, a slow build to the eruption. An explosion of icy cold wind and a tremendous roar akin to rolling thunder knocked Andria against the wall and made her numb ears ring. She grimaced and shook her head to try and clear it as the noise and gales dissipated. Her hearing returned to her and she was greeted to a new chorus. Through the lingering ringing, she heard a wave of squawking and chirping, growing into a tsunami of panicked voices. Through the malign aurora's light, hundreds of dark objects flooded into the sky. Hundreds of sea birds took to the air, screaming in blind terror and fright as they fled from the interior. As the horde of a flock passed over head and out to sea, dozens of them began to dive towards Dr. Young.
Jolting up to get her feet beneath her, Andria crawled and scrambled to the door as several birds hit the wall behind her. Mind in a blur, at first she thought they were dive bombing her. It was only when she looked back in time to see a gull flop to the ground in a heap that she realized what happened. Its neck was craned back at an unnatural angle, tongue flopping out of its gaping beak with the eyes partially rolled back into the skull. It had been dead before it even hit the ground. It was raining corpses as hundreds of formerly nesting birds died in midflight.
Dr. Andria Young got almost no sleep that night, rest only coming to her when she passed out.
MIZU
Andria woke up at 2 pm the next day, half covered in a cold sweat and with an aching back due to passing out against the wall. The stench of death stunk up much of the building, many dead birds having fallen through the previously broken windows in the other rooms. Opting to do the only thing she could to avoid panicking and to get away from the stomach twisting smell, Dr. Young made herself some coffee and went back to her study. Something was very wrong with this island, but the seas were still restless outside so she dared not try to take the boat out. The rest of the team should arrive early tomorrow, she just needed to hold out.
Her only saving grace was that the study of the artifact proved a godsent distraction. She'd gotten off most of the encrusted minerals now, the piece's shape coming more and more to light. It was a single solid hunk of steel in a vaguely oblong shape. It started looking familiar. There were two round spots on one side with more grime and impacted dirt, along with a much larger hole on the bottom. Scraping away at the fragments bit by bit on the large encrusting on the bottom, it became apparent what she was looking at when a clump of gravel fell away to reveal an almost glowing ivory. Chewing her lip somewhat, Andria leaning in more and pulled away more of the crust. More and more white became apparent, something distinct from the rock and dirt coming to light.
Bone, and what she recognized as a human neck vertebrate. One after another in a line of subfossils. Andria held her breath and adjusted how she's been letting the artifact rest on the table. She careful put the bone against her table's surface and stood the artifact up. The shape was slightly distorted by malformation, being dented in on one side, but she immediately realized what she was looking at upon crouching down to view it at eye level. The two holes punched into the front and still full of grit were intentional, eye ports. She'd found armor, a helmet apparently.
-The core drill must have torn the head off the skeleton. That's what jammed it up!-
She reached out to lift it up and get a closer look. But just as the helm was lifted a half inch off the table, the filler minerals within it sagged and fell back to the table, having been jostled loose. Andria halted for a moment, before she continued lifting. All her fears from last night were banished. She felt like she was opening a winning lottery ticket or a Christmas present. An impossibility, an iron working civilization in the Bering Sea during the Pleistocene. Question after question were bombarding her. How had this happened, where did this civilization come from? What could have happened to them? Who were they?! She wanted to see the skull, the last remnant of that civilization's face.
Half fossilized bone stared back at her once the helm was lifted away, cradled in its mineral nest. Slanted eye sockets dropped bits of dirt as dust spilled out from between crossed fangs and protruding bottom jaw in an eerie grimace. A tall, sagittal crest stuck out of the top of the dome. It was hominoid, it was huge, but it wasn't human.
Long ago humanity thought it shared the world with numerous other sentient beings. The Other Folk, the Fae, Yōkai, and many others since faded to legend. Many legends have a grain of truth. Dr. Young never would have guessed she was looking at a legend. Trow, Jjötunn, Ogre, Ge-no-Sqwa, Stallo, Rakasa, Oni; pick any label you wish.
Andria quickly scrambled to seal the specimen and head out. If the drill had torn the head off the rest of the neck, the remains of the body might still be there! She was alight with a mix of panic and excitement, bolting out the door soon as she got her jacket off. She crossed over the peak of the hill where she left the machine when her sprint halted.
The salty sea air stunk, the smell of fish hitting her nose so strongly she had to cover her nose. Waves crashed and roared against the beaches, getting her to cast her vision downhill, past the dig site and at the beach below. A cold snap stabbed through her when she saw what the waves were spitting out.
Dr. Young choked back a breath, crossing over her chest.
"Mother of God..."
The thin, dark beach line was littered with fish and squid of all types, several dolphins scattered amongst them along with an entire pod of whales strewn across the shore and shallows. There were no fish flopping or cetaceans gasping for breath amongst their number, they were already far gone by the time Andria jogged down to the parade of the deceased. The dead were too numerous for her to hope to count, and seemed to carry on for almost a half mile along the shore. A streak of white and red caught her attention. Bobbing in the waves alongside a dead shark was a float connected with a small box. Andria recognized it as one of her colleague's hydrophones, recording devices set out into the water for weeks on end to record passing whale pods.
The same sense of danger came rushing at her as the thrashing sea seemed to become more and more violent, the air beginning to chill again. For a moment, she thought she glimpsed something dark in the waves, but didn't stick around to look closer. Probably was just another dead whale about to wash up, something she had no fancy in seeing. The find could wait, there was no way she could work out here with this in eyesight. Reluctance and fear drove her back to the safety of the station, trying to not look at the flocks of forever still birds laying across its exterior.
It took her some time to calm down, pacing through the lonely corridors. Not even the fossil could distract her now, the island itself was occupying her every thought. Recalling her colleague's words about how sonar testing sometimes caused whale beaching by frightening the creatures to shore, she pulled up their computer. If the hydrophone was near the beached animals when whatever happened occurred, it might have picked something up.
She dug out the last audio file and skimmed across it. For hours it seemed normal, just the echoes of waves and the occasional passing whale. Then she spied a large cluster of noise coming up on the track and turned down the volume. Had Andria not, it's likely she'd have blown her ears out as soon as it hit the sounds recorded at noon. A quick build up fired off into an explosive wail that caused static in the speakers even with the lowered volume. After the brief call, the seas became alight with the screams of panicked whales and fish, symphonies of death cries ripping into the hydrophone before they all cut out. Then there was nothing but the slow drum of the churning sea.
Dr. Young turned the looping recording off and shook. The forewarning siren, it wasn't like anything she'd ever heard. Anything except the thundering call last night, right before so many of the birds fell to the ground dead. She drew heavy breaths, looking out the window and at the rolling hills and roaring sea beyond; both littered with corpses.
There was no waiting for the rest of the research team to come tomorrow. This island was evil, and she had to get off it...
ENJIN
She tried the radio for hours on end, but heard nothing but static despite screaming into the receiver so loudly and for so long her throat became raw. Be it by broken equipment or some outside interference, no one could hear her; no one was coming. It was 11pm when she finally gave up. She'd have to leave on her own. Packing her bags with emergency supplies, Andria stuffed the skull and helmet into a case and put it into her backpack. Not one footstep out the door and a gale of frozen wind stung at her face. Dr. Young slid a pair of goggles over her eyes and bundled into her jacket, trudging through the howling gales and inching step by step down the hill towards where the boat was parked. Every step the screaming gales numbed more and more of her body to the core.
It was as audacious as it was tedious, trudging step by step across the rapidly freezing landscape. But she cared little about it, she had to get off this forsaken island. She reached the crest of the steep hill, huffing for breath to rest her legs before trying to journey down hill. The gales of cold wind and the dense cloud cover above obscured any moon or starlight, the entire world before her being nothing but pitch black. Fearing she wasn't going the right way, Andria crouched down and dug a flare gun out of her pack.
She loaded it, raised the gun, and fired. Ruby glimmers shot into the air, blown around by the wind but still managing to engulf the local terrain in red brilliance. On the edge of the illumination, Andria spotted the boat. Sheltered from the roaring waves by several sandbars to either side and deep water behind it, it was still afloat. Noting the flare's dying light, Andria randown hill as fast as she could. With her panic and a sudden gust of frigid wind behind her however, she ended up doubling over on her feet and tripping. Rolling a short distance, Andria heaved and managed to stop her tumble. She ignored the metallic taste of blood in her mouth from a busted lip and warily looked out at the dark sea fifty meters ahead of her. The flare had died by now, but a new glow had taken its place. Moving beneath the waves, a waving glimmer of bright blue shown through the sea water. Surrounded by a dark mass, it cut out just before reaching the boat.
Grunting as she tried to sit up on sore and stiffening limbs, she loaded and fired another round into the flare gun. The miniature red sun illuminated the island and her eyes met the boat again. Just in time to see a black tendril rise from the water and smash it and the dock to splinters. The pitch black mass grew amongst the waves, a mass of growing enormity rising from the surf. The blue glow returned, mounted upon a living tidal wave of a beast. Andria fell back, kicking and crawling back to back pedal from the sea. The titan released a deafening wail, the same from the hydrophone tape, before it slowly slithered inland.
Andria couldn't even scream as she clawed her way back up the hill.
A second light joined the first, this time masked amongst the dark clouds above. The ghastly, green glow dove down from the clouds amidst chilling gusts. Broad wings composed of shadow beat the air and pounded the ground, forcing Dr. Young off her feet and was pinned to the chilled earth below. A cackling shriek split the air just as recurved talons tore the station apart. Obscured by the darkness of the storm, the twin leviathans advanced forward with the frozen doctor between them. They froze an equal distance apart. The gusting wind and rocking seas died down and silence returned to Attu.
The earth began to shake, rattling the ground so much Attu Mountain began to splinter apart. Andria hardly noticed, she was too busy grabbing her head as all senses were cut out. The last thing she saw was the helmet and skull rolling out of her bag and staring back at her. Millions of screams filled her mind, causing her to crumble to the ground in agony. Her last conscious thought trailed back to the helmet staring into her. She wanted to know what could have caused such a civilization to disappear, and she was experiencing the answer.
As she thrashed, the tremors grew to their apex, a bronze hued sphere unearthing itself from the ground fifty meters away. Black energy spewed out of the broken earth in geysers, drawing around the glowing sphere. Veins of illuminated energy stretched across the darkness, a simian form constituting itself.
Enjin beat his chest, throwing out a whooping roar into the frosted air, a call of death that Doragon and Mizu joined in on. The Aspects of Land, Air, and Sea converged and Attu Mountain split open. The three beasts fused back together and the 100,000 year old, bleed seal ruptured prematurely. The Avatar of Extinction, Bagan had returned...
Attu Island is a wildlife preserve home to dozens of species. Despite its large population of sea birds and extensive number of marine species, there are no native land animals on the island aside from visiting humans...
Well we know how Bagan got out
3511197 Andria unleashed it?
Nice job, Tarb. That was an alien skull, right?
I bet when Bagan was released, he was like:
Also, what is the weird symbol thing?
3511278 I think the skull comes from one of the magical creatures that used to live before Reijuru went mad and became Bagan
3511368 Ah.
3511368 I forgot.
3511197
3511278
Actually he was breaking out one way or another. Dr. Young was just got hit with history's worst case of 'wrong place, wrong time'. The reason Bagan emerged 30,000 years early is because of other events that have transpired in the last 70,000 years damaged the already incomplete seal he was put under.
3513008 K.
I had always thought Bagan had used the dimension tide to escape from his imprisonment. I find this to be a more entertaining revelation as to what played out when he was free.
Ok, so now I am curious, there are three pieces of Bagan in this short story, where is the fouth? Or are two of them still fused together?
hmmm, still a bit confused. was unearthing the demon (alien?) skull the final catalyst for breaking Bagans seal?
3514297
Finding the oni/troll skull would have just been the final grain of dust that tipped the scale. Bagan was going to break out in year or two regardless of what happened. If it did, it was just the last straw, allowing Doragon to break out, then Mizu, and then Enjin. The drilling was proof positive that there was a human (ergo a land animal) on the island, meaning the time was right for all three Aspects to return from the damaged seal and Bagan to be reconstituted. Basically she rang the dinner bell.
If you noticed, the tremors started before the drill dug too deep, actually being the reason the coring machine slipped and hit the skull to begin with. I'm sorry I tried to make it clear by the sequence of events that Bagan was 'waking up' (causing the tremors) and Dr. Young just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and contributed slightly in some way.
3514059
Bagan only has 3 'pieces'
I just want to see what the 3 Aspects look like as Kaiju P.S. what does the Symble Suppose to mean, is the middle part Bagan's Head?
H.P. Lovecraft, eat your heart out!