Author's note:
This one is a short one, but I think you guy's kinda deserve a break from the longer chapters. It will be back. I promise.
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On all beaches of hell, souls wash ashore in their rawest state: a gelatinous, fleshy mass barely in any shape or form. Their grotesque visage is a mess of barely human features, waterlogged and pruned by the time they've floated ashore.
Most can barely move when they find purchase on the sands of hell. But even those hapless eyes of the damned could see the red sky come alight and clouds tear as a falling star entered hell's atmosphere. Hell, every soul and demon could see the wound that marred that evening's dark umbra.
In a fireball, Zephaniah pierced hell's outer layer, leaving a trail of smoke and ash before cratering into the dark gray sand. He wouldn't know it though. At some point, crossing between heaven and hell, he lost consciousness. His soul-gelatin lay nearly splattered at the bottom of a pit. A pit of his own creation, caused by his unconscious collision on the beach hell.
When he slowly came to, he was staring straight up toward a burnt-red, if not starry space, framed by a near perfect circular cut out in a group of clouds.
He sat up– however a slime sits up– and tried to peer over the edge of his small crater. He was struck with awe at what laid before him. A boiling sea of tarry, black fluid ebbed and flowed, crashing against a gray sandy beach. On the horizon, a red giant star painted the ocean in a blood orange glow, broken only by large serpents and tentacles breaching to pick off the human souls that floated on the surface. The sun was paired with a collapsing neutron star that seemed to soak up some of the red sky but speckled it with a glittery, nebulous belt that stretched overhead and across to the other horizon.
He turned to see the beach lined with sharp, pointed rocks that obscured the feet of several enormous volcanoes, some erupting in the distance. They billowed smoke that trailed off in his directions, lightly scattering the air with ash and powdering the ground with soot.
Somewhere in the middle distance was a structure; walls, like a fortress, seemed to climb out from the ground but the ground wasn't quite ready to let it go. There were clearly the tops of buildings behind the walls but his gawk was interrupted mid-turn when his gaze finally landed on the grotesque being that was standing between him and the distant city.
The creature was taller than any human ever was; it could easily stand at 20 feet fully erect but it was squatted in a feral "M" stance. Its four long, slender legs were rubbery and alien-gray. But they were covered in thick, black hair and propped up on disproportionately small, hairy feet with two sets of toes on each foot going either direction.
Its arms, though conventional in number, and body still matched the legs in length and lank. It was hunched over, resting long bony arms on the knees of the front two legs, dangling six, thin and jagged fingers on each hand that had thick, chipped, brown fingernails that capped each fingertip like hooves.
Thankfully, it wore a tattered cloth over its crotch or Zephaniah would have a full, unfettered view of whatever the demon might have down there. If only its head had a matching cloth to hide the horrible, repulsive face.
Atop its shoulders was a massive egg-shaped head, easily larger than Zeph's whole body in his current state. However, instead of any discernible bone structure, the skin had five deep holes in the face, like some jabbed their over-sized fingers deep into its skull. Lining the inside of those holes were more, smaller holes that oozed a slimy mucus that dripped relentlessly to the sand beneath it.
It breathed closing two holes on each inhale and closing two different, less snotty holes on each exhale. The bottom hole never closed, overflowing a pool of ooze as the being leaned closer, pouring even more liquid to ground. It hissed in a voice that gurgled like someone who had never cleared their throat in their whole life. The phlegm was thick and audibly ventilating with each word.
"Welcome to Hell, fallen."
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