I am the guardian of the gate, after all.
I realize belatedly that the reason for the sudden influx of my eight-legged nemeses.
They were spies.
Little spying bastards, dirtying up my den, contaminating my sweet gate with their filthy webs.
I throw myself through the gate and hear the clacking of gigantic pincers in the vestibule just beyond. The vestibule is the last frontier. It’s stone and has the look and feel of a castle keep. It smells like wet stone and musty air, just like home back when I was a hatchling. I can see as soon as I pass through the gate that the bastard spiders have brought their friends.
Their gigantic creepy friends.
I give my gate a reassuring pat and then shift into my other form. It doesn’t take me two seconds to spot the creature—one of the Ether’s little monsters. It’s spider-like, the size of a small car, mandibles glistening and dripping poison onto the stone floor.
It scurries closer, and I let out a furious roar. If they get past this point, if they break through my gate, well… bad things can happen.
Ether monsters—soul eaters just like this one are drawn to the gate. This place would be like a smorgasbord of deliciousness for them.
I stare down at the bastard from my elevated height and let out another roar. It pierces the air, making the cobwebs in here quiver and the soul-eater freezes. Not content to make him shit himself, I blast him with my fire.
Chargrilled arachno-twat, anyone?
I chuckle to myself.
I’m about to revert to my two-legged form when I hear more clacking.
More damn pests.
It’s not a regular occurrence to have a breach like this. We get a mix of visitors through to the antechamber. Sometimes it’s bad eggs trying to change their afterlife destination, murderers and con artists, those that decided that rather than change their behavior, they’d rather sneak in and try to trick the system.
Too bad it doesn’t work that way. They always wind up burnt to a crisp with my fire.
Sometimes we just get visitors peeking their heads in. It’s rare, but they find a small gap in the Ether and stumble into the vestibule. I don’t blast them. Normally, I just give them a growl and send them back on their way.
I unleash my fearsome growl now as another of the spidery-looking bastards appears. Another blast of fire out of my snout and it’s crispy on the floor. I hear chittering behind me, but my form like this is too ungainly to twist around quickly.
Fucksticks. We have a real breach.
I roar again, a blast of fire filling the room as one bastard slips through the gate. I charge through behind it and skid to an immediate halt. The first thing that I see is a spray of the fucker’s webbing, all over my beautifully polished gate. It continues to spray out at me and winds up all over my damn snout and I feel almost violated. It gets up my nostrils, making me sneeze a load more fire into my den.
I’d guess that the soul-eater doesn’t have a lot going on up top and is just spraying anything and everything as an instinct to try to get away. If it’s cognizant, then it’s panicking and making some pretty stupid decisions. By marking my gate and my face, it’s only pissed me off more. I’m going to burn the little fucker to ash.
It skitters beyond the gate, moving faster now, past my collection of antique radiators that make up part of my hoard and beyond the mini mountain of gemstones. Luckily, it doesn’t spray its sticky web shit over them or I might just have lost control of my temper. I’m having to be careful since I’m massive in this form and the last thing I want to do is burn my home to the ground just to destroy this pest.
Beyond that, it carries on, plowing through my living quarters, its nasty legs going straight through my nest, dirty feet stomping all over my pillows.
Rude. Just plain rude.
It heads past my little dining table, two of its legs windmilling so that they catch on my crockery and smash it into pieces to the ground. Destroying anything and everything it can in its desperate desire to get away from me. I lumber after it, getting a controlled stream of fire ready for as soon as it steps close to the door. That’s where it’ll cause the least damage to the rest of my home and I’m less at risk of burning the whole place to the ground.
I almost wind up blasting the two figures that barge into my den, skidding into my kitchen like their socks are lined with butter. I pull back just in time and instead let out a chuff that fills the room with smoke instead.
Brogan sneezes in his hound form and Soren wafts a hand in front of his face, scowling and coughing.
“The fuck, Finn? What’s happening?”
Then he spots the soul-eater and his expression barely changes as he springs at it. Brogan leaps toward the thing’s legs and latches onto two of them, tugging at them like it’s his favorite doggy chew toy, and Soren swipes at it with his scythe.
You’d think wielding a metaphysical weapon would be less… messy. But no. Soon my kitchen is filled with a mountain of severed limbs and sticky clear blood pooling out over the floor. What with the webbing and the stickiness and the wrecked furniture, it looks like the remnants of an orgy with none of the fun.
