The Beast of Gasmorphia

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky.

They floated softly over the desert, roaming high above the cratered soil like giant pastel cattle. Maybe they could see the man, deep in one of these Gasmorphian craters; building something he shouldn’t.

Huge stone tiles encased the walls of red dirt that rose up around him. He mumbled something under his breath at a rapid pace, incoherent through the thick, blue mask he wore over his face. His eyes narrowed in concentration behind a windshield of anti-exposure plastic.

In front of him was a thing not born of any planet, hiding under a thin veil of silver-embedded gauze. You could say it was sleeping but it had never been awake.

Above the man, the watercolour sky began to open itself with the rising of a sun. The one that rises first, its rays the hottest and most brilliant, pierced light through the lavender clouds that hissed as they evaporated, angry to be denied their slow wandering. The man snapped his fingers through thick, leather gloves and his facial visor produced little windshield wipers to clear the fog of sweat from his vision. He stared up at the unfurling sky, the purple bruising into a dark maroon glow, then picking up energy to a thrumming blood orange.

As the sunrise enveloped the land in its radiance, the surfaces of the massive tiles exploded into written sigils, crawling their way through the stones’ heating flesh as they began to hum, and then sing, with energy. The sound of a thousand people running wet fingertips over the rims of as many crystal goblets. The man cried out and clamped gloved hands over his ears as the world around him screamed in the waking of the Day God. The sun continued its ascent as a spinning cube of spectral glory. The tiles surrounding the man vibrated thickly with hot power, pushing him to his knees. Their brilliant sigils began overflowing with light, pouring down in wide fountains into the very depths of the crater. They bled past the man, towards the creature under the gauze, puncturing through and melting the silver within the fabric.

Then, as quickly as it rose, the sun surrendered into a sunset that reversed the colours of the sky as cleanly as a child thumbing a flipbook in reverse. In three hours a second sun would take its place; a normal, unassuming globe in the sky that gave light and life on these twisted little reddish plains.

The time between suns is called Abscondita est Mortis or “The Hidden Death,” and it is in this abyss of inky darkness that the creature under the ruined gauze began to move.

“How fast do you think it can go?”

I clicked the back of my heel into the safety claw of the hoverboard. It whirred to life with a glow of white crystals embedded into the wood and I slid over to Ellie who revved the air crystals of her own board teasingly. The new Mercury Lift model had finally come out and of course I had been first in line to grab one. It was thinner than Ellie’s and had an opalescent sheen in the wood’s polish that made my heart race in excitement.

“I dunno,” I answered, tilting the board from side to side under my steel-lace boots. “I bet it can ride your whole property line in less than five minutes though.”

She smirked- not that I could see her mouth behind the dust mask, painted to look like a fern leaf- but I knew her well enough to know it was there. She flicked her head back and the small metal beads woven into her thick hair chimed as they struck each other.

“You’re on.”

I put my weight down into the board, feeling my Will go deep into the wood. Go.

It shot forward, zipping above the sun-scorched soil and nearly giving me whiplash with its jerky, fresh-from-the-box movements.

“Woaaahhh!” I wove in big crescents from one side of the field to the other, trying to slow it down, the red dirt under me spraying up in bright clouds as I went. I could hear Ellie’s laughs ringing out as she flew a safe distance behind me. C’mon, remember what Uncle Sven told you. Bend the knees, keep your spell focused on either side, like fins… I forced my body down against the wind and the board evened out under me. I whizzed out of the barren field and down the road towards her house, the small bunches of Aolyian shrubs and stocky thistles bowing their beady leaves away from me in a wave as I went by.

“Terran!” I heard Ellie call, almost beside me now. I let up on the air spell and slowed down to match her pace. “Jeez, that thing is wicked!”

“Y-yeah.” I ran a hand through my short hair which I could feel knotting up at the front from the wind. “It packs a punch alright.”

The whoop-whoop of a siren clipped through the air and we glanced behind us. A police cart was making good speed up the road, the two dirt golems pulling it nearly tangling their many legs together as they went. Didn’t think we were going that fast. I thought as I felt my spell die beneath my shoes. The hoverboard thunked onto the dirt, now just a very beautiful chunk of two-by-four. Not that it should matter, we’re on private property.

The cart slowed down next to us. The officer in the driver’s seat snapped his golem whip against the side of his rather tall chair and the creatures tumbled to a halt with the sound of a very small landslide.

“You kids from ‘round here?” He called down, voice low and stern, but not in a way that indicated that we were in trouble. I bent down and clicked the safety claw off my boot, with one foot now firmly planted in the soil I wouldn’t have to worry about tipping backwards. I heard the same click and knew Ellie had done the same.

“Yeah.” She said and pointed to the farmhouse further down the lane. “I live there, and Terran’s place is a ways past it.”

The cop squinted behind his red, circular riding goggles. “Past it? Like by the old mining craters?”

I nodded and he beckoned me closer with a beefy finger. I shuffled lop-sidedly towards the cart. He pulled back on a long metal handle that- with a series of ka-chunks brought him down to a more conversational level. The officer leaned over to me like he was going to share a secret; I could smell the must of old cigarettes on his uniform coat through my dust mask.

“Did you hear any weird noises last night or this morning?”

I frowned. “No, Sir. I mean, I’m a pretty deep sleeper but-uh, what kind of noises?”

He shifted his weight upright again, I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not behind those thick lenses. “Ah, we just got some complaints from the locals in the area. Said there was screamin' and loud bangs this mornin’. We went to check it out and sure ‘nough, looks like a buncha punks were building a party shack or somethin’ down there.” He shook his wide head, the golems in front of him mimicking the movement, like they couldn’t believe it either or maybe they had gravel caught in their ears.

“You kids stay safe on those things, eh?” He said as a goodbye, and then he snapped his whip into the air and the golems trudged forwards, a little slowly at first and then picking up speed as their legs found the motion. The cart wheels put up a smog of dust that would have sent us hacking up a lung if we weren’t wearing the dust masks.

Ellie glanced over at me in puzzlement. “A party shack?”

“Sounds cool.” I replied, kicking my free heel back into the safety claw and pushing the air spell back to life with a whoosh. “Let’s go check it out.”

“Pfft, sounds like there’s going to be a lot of cops over there. I don’t think they’re going to be letting the public just wander in.”

“But we’re not technically the public.” I countered. I had picked a more survivable pace to fly over the road and Ellie drifted beside me. “My Dad owns most of those craters. It’s not anyone’s business but our own if, say, some barbed wire was taken down by the cattle last night and needs a repair in the same area…”

“Great.” My friend rolled her eyes dramatically but I could see the spark of excitement in them. “Let’s go get arrested.”