@parcxysme
“... Did it just move?” Briar asked, staring out the window at the massive twisted creature outside.
There were warning beacons marking off about a 500-yard radius around it on all sides; even seemingly dead, the Old Evil’s body had enough power in it that getting too close was a good way to get chopped in half by invisible forces or sent plummeting to the planet below. The miners that got Briar offworld in the first place had narrowly survived just such an encounter.
And Briar wasn’t wrong. Mere seconds after he asked, several house-sized lumps on its surface contracted while others bulged out. One gnarled limb twitched, then another, and then the whole alleged corpse started to convulse, twisting and bubbling until a dark, gaping hole the size of a stadium yawned open on the side facing the planet and the Old Evil’s whole body made a single, unified movement: It contracted, and a column of inky black material shot down onto the planet below, billowing out in all directions as it plunged through the atmosphere, with no sign of stopping.
By that point Briar found himself clutching Lucca’s sleeve with both hands, startled and grossed out but not horrified. He hadn’t known the Old Evil was connected to the month of Shadow at all, but the black fog was just weather to him, as normal as snow. He just knew where it came from now.
