Born a Monster

541 A Horror of Love

We who live beneath the Earth, we are not as you.

We come not so easily unto fear as you surface dwellers. Where you see spiders and snakes, we see food. Where you see eyesight devouring darkness, we see the deeplight. Where you see caverns barely wide enough to squeeze through, this is our world.

We live where you fear, and thus come not easily unto fear.

So let that sink in while I begin this tale.

It is not a tale of fear, but of love. Another thing that comes more readily to you softlings than to real people.

We who identify each other by smell and by touch do not need names as you surface beings do. To us, she was just She Who Speaks. You would call her a chieftan, but that is your ignorance. You would call her an Adept of Earth, but again that is your lack of understanding.

But we knew her as She Who Speaks. She spoke, and the people listened. Not as you know rulers; when she told us to go elsewhere, it was always with the words, “Follow me.” When we were to make war, She Who Speaks was in the fray. When we negotiated peace, it was She Who Speaks who spoke those words with other groups of the people. When there was surplus food, it was she who bade us set aside food for the future. When we were going hungry, she was the one who kept us from eating our children in despair.

She Who Speaks was our group. For a time, at any rate.

She had always told us to value our children above ourselves. And we tried, within our culture. It wasn’t until her daughter was born that she showed us by example what she desired.

.....

And the people fell away from her. Our people were based on strength, upon that which permits us to survive so deep in the lightless earth.

Once her daughter was born, she suffered the Mother Sickness. A disease took her from us, as her world shrank around her daughter. No longer did she take time to lead us, to see to our needs. Only her daughter mattered to her, even above her desire to continue living herself. From She Who Speaks, a woman who took care of all of us, her world shrank to one. Not even her chosen mate was spared this loss.

And the people were strong; we deal with losses daily. If that were the limit of our loss, nothing would have changed. Our losses would have stopped there.

But our losses were not to stop there; where her daughter went, she followed. Where she went, there also went her daughter. This alone is abnormal, but would not have led to what followed.

When That Which Dwells Below began to rise, briefly, She returned to us. She Who Speaks addressed the people, proposing madness. If That Which Dwells Below were to rise, then we the people would need to rise and then rise again.

It was our fault, what happened during the second rising. We found the Ghouls, and though we ate different things, the greedy Ghouls wished to hold all of their spaces. It was not the first time the people had struggled against non-people. We were winning.

And then the true weakness that She had let into the tribe revealed itself. She would no longer come to battle, citing the illness of her daughter, the dangers to her without a mother to watch her...

It was nonsense. Child or no, the true people are strong.

Yet this was exactly what She Who Used to Speak did. She watched, and instead of letting her learn and perhaps die from her mistakes, she removed her daughter from danger. She served, willingly, as an obstacle to her learning. Her weakness would extend to her daughter, who would then pass that weakness along to her child, who would in turn pass It along to others.

It was no cavern troll, but it was something that could kill all the people of our group. Maybe more. Such a threat could not be permitted to grow, not permitted to infect others.

Need I say it? We did what we had to.

She wept, she cursed, she held the broken body of her child close. And when she slew her chosen mate with her own hands for not watching her daughter while she slept, we thought She Who Speaks had returned to us.

Oh, how wrong we were!

Would that she had killed us all, but that was not to be how this story ended.

She took her dead daughter with her to all the elements; to the stone, to the underground lake; to the molten places far below.

“There must be balance.” all of those spirits told her.

“Let there BE balance,” she pleaded. “Let me die, and my daughter live!” You can see how insane she had become. How lost. How weak.

Yet each among the people who tried to kill her died by her hands instead. Our respect for her grew again. We merged with another group of people who also disliked the Ghouls, for many had been our losses.

And, briefly, She Who Speaks returned unto us. She said she had taken her daughter back inside her, and we mistakenly thought she meant that she had eaten her daughter. Would that she had!

She led us in many fights against the Ghouls, even reaching the surface in her frenzied attacks.

We had missed her. We saw not Madness, but instead only the leader we had lost.

Her belly swollen as though she were with child, She led us into battles.

And no, I see your eyes. Please understand, times when She Who Speaks led us were good. We usually had more food than we could eat, than our children could eat. We had more children than we normally would have, and there was enough food.

We knew it was too soon for another child, and yet none of us did anything. None of us said anything, even when She was not around. Did it not make more sense that since she had loved her first child, that she would allow her chosen mate to inflict another upon her? This madness sometimes affected other women when there was enough surplus food for long enough.

It was after a battle when we had driven the Ghouls again to the surface that we learned.

She made noises, placed her hands on her distended middle to placate a child who apparently wanted to join the fight. “Would you like to see my child?” she asked another mother, whose child lived at that time.

With a wet, ripping noise, her daughter... her SAME daughter ripped out of her, leaping onto the other mother. And for a moment, we did not know what we were seeing. The second mother screamed, and the daughter just hung there, clinging to her.

Then She Who Speaks took hold of her shoulders and pulled her close. And then pulled closer still.

Would that were the last of the horror we experienced that day, but it was not to be.

Not counting the daughter, the thing only had the two heads, only two hearts, only four arms. Would that we had sense enough to kill it rather than to run.

She sang, a hollow noise that echoed in the caverns. Those who heard it, some were bewitched, were weak enough to go to the surface and join her of their own wills.

And then, you see, it was too late. Too late for us, and too late for the Ghouls. They tried to claw and bite at the thing She Had Become. She gained strength and size from this.

They Who Have Become are what lives in that crypt over there. With a gift of captive ghouls did we lure Her inside, and now they are too many, too large to exit.

But her wastes, you see. The Death that happens inside her, the Chaos that enables more than a single body to become one, the Madness that led her to her path, and the Evil that They have become. These She makes manifest. These she sings into reality, even as she hopes to trap others in her song so She can devour them to sustain herself.

And with each living death, you see, she grows stonger. Her song grows.

We, the people, are stong. And we are not easy to come to fear.

Consider this, WE FEAR HER.

She is born from our hope, from our will to simply have back She Who Speaks. From our weakness comes this, the end of us all. Our punishment for not being strong enough to kill her as well.

Or, we can kill her. However uncounted her hearts, her lungs, her minds, they have a number. It is only... we cannot do this thing without coming into range of her own grasping arms. A momentary touch, a simple grasp, is all that she needs.

Her song preys on our desire to have her back, on a weakness that no amount of pain can purge. It cannot be dug out of the body, no matter how sharp one’s fingers. Her body feeds upon ours.

And, in our last attack, she threw herself at the doorway we fled through. There are cracks upon the inner walls of that mausoleum.

How long will it be before one of her many brains realizes she is strong enough to break bricks, to shatter stone?

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