The Prosocalypse

This is a short thing I wrote for class awhile ago. The response was... mixed. Again, this "short story" ended up becoming something of a first chapter. For the most part I don't write anything I don't already have a preconceived world for, so some things I write or think about take place in specific settings I cobbled together over the years. This one is rather new, as far as settings go. I'll explain it if there is interest. Anyway:



Purpose

    The chamber was choked in an incense fueled miasma, amber eyed sticks studded along the stonework expanse like a calcified wheat field. The throbbing murmur of thralls echoed off the obscured walls, their hunched silhouettes lost beyond the burning thicket. My whiskers dragged against the thin openings between the incense; drifts of ash peppering blood matted fur. The stone slab floor was cool in spite of the burdening humidity, a brief solace between the clots of congealed refuse that steps sunk into. My escorts stopped briefly while I swallowed back the desire to retch, clutching a likely fractured wrist.
    Running my tongue along the rift between my teeth, the senses burdening me lessened. I glanced at my keepers. Two of them, tied down in a mishmash of leathers and scale, absently gazed in different directions with bulging black oil eyes. Their faces were sallow, the skin that made it through the discolored fur pocked with sickness. They wavered in their stance, loosening tendrils of saliva from slackened jaws to dribble on their chests. One stepped forward and tugged my arm. Eyeing the hooked blade at its hip briefly, I conceded and was nudged along.
    A clearing eventually yawned open, revealing an island of fineries under a tent of purple fabric. My feet were greeted by a path of inviting crimson velvet, softly leading us towards the interior. Mounds of regal pillows, hanging embroidered silks, and all manner of cloth luxuries could be made out through the gray murk that roiled within. I ran a crooked nail along passing piles of pillows, catching on the sewn details as we passed, until a pillow twitched under my touch.
    A low, tittering hiss of delight evoked undulations along the shadowed mass. I felt my gorge rise again.
    What first glances had me believe were more beddings, actually amassed grime caked bodies. The bodies of my people, each paired with stout arms and legs leading to pink padded hands curling into hooked claws. Men, all of them, huddled en masse against a single female bloated to immobile disproportion. My escorts began pushing me along again, opening my attention to other bloats rooted throughout the chamber. Feeble wheezing escaping them as we passed, the quieted moan consumed by the gibbering coo of the nuzzling males.
    Another clearing opened to an expanse of paradise colored rugs cascading off a raised platform. My escorts jolted to a halt as we approached the dais, their mannerisms suddenly wobbly and disoriented. The lip of the platform was cluttered with crude fetishes, tokens of valuable metal, and twists of parchment.
An unsettling stillness forced me to take cue. I approached, immediately focusing on the offerings now splayed before me. Uncurling a slip wedged under an ingot of iron, I read aloud:
    “We are Birge! We are nothing!”
    Fingering over the papers, many read like this. Announcing our name and striking it down. Another, ending with plain sketches labeling Mother and Father.
    “I love you and so does Mom and so does Da and if I had room so would my brothers!”
    The crumpled notes could not contain the praises and hymns scratched onto them, most spilling off onto the dais to overlap into others like ravenous ivy. As I delved, the somewhat innocuous notes began to deteriorate into fevered scrawls, repeating a single name.
“NETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRANETHRA…”
    “Endearing, isn’t it?”
    The voice vibrated my diaphragm with its rhythmic depth, shuddering my body upright and awkwardly away from the offerings. A laugh coated thick in sickly sweet tenor followed my reaction, the penetrating beat cracking my senses to what had been poised in front of me.
    Luminescent yellow strokes of a painters brush bore down through the smoke. Its body was covered in hair like the night sky, blending like liquid into the murk. It was framed like an altar unto itself, the foundation of it held atop two massive paws, one casually draped over the other. It leaned forward, the jewelry pierced along its tipped ears chiming. A long, serpentine tail waved languidly behind.
    “I suppose not. Not for you, hm? So broken, as you are.” I avoided the eyes, unable to find my heart lost in the pit of my insides to brave it.
    “Now, now.” It tutted, amused, as it reached out to me with a paw larger than I am, a claw uncurled from its sheath. My stance spasmed briefly out of reaction, reigned in with the knowledge I was in a futile position to defend myself. Or flee. The claw brushed it’s broad, smooth side along the tip of my nose; A gnarled, scarred flat of pink flesh that had long sealed my nostrils.
    I was vaguely aware of a shuffling sound to my side, my attention locked to the crescent claw as long as I am tall gingerly prodding my nose. Something immense was being pushed along towards the dais.
    “Go ahead. Look.”
    My attention shifted briefly to the shuffling object. Thralls, dozens, pushed along the engorged bulk of a female towards the dais. They clicked and cooed, sputtering short verses of praise and envy as they hauled the dazed mass. The creature ceased it’s caressing, saving me the option of voiding my bowels, and uncurled its claws to pluck the bloat and set it onto the dais. The creature shifted its posture, resting its whiskered cheek onto an upturned paw. With its free claw, it began to gingerly spin the whimpering bloat.
    “What brings you into my audience, hunter? Hm, is that wrong? You are not armed in the bone and flesh plunder of my siblings.” It huffed a laugh, maintaining the slow spinning of the female with a claw hooked along its stub arm. “Are they making fresh ones? What for? My kind is long dead, are they not? Skulls mounted at the gates of cities to proclaim prowess, sun bleached remnants cursed as desecrated lands, and skins tethered to roofs to ward away the rain. An irony, really, that the skin of my kind be used to ward off the rain of all things.” Its eyes narrowed, assessing me. “Speak.”
    Nothing came. I was mesmerized to sickness by the spectacle. The bloat had vomited onto itself, its labored breathing worsening as its nubby limbs tried to find purchase to slow the spinning. The creature on the dais made an annoyed sound and brought the motion to a halt.
    And sank a curved claw into the top of the bloat, just below its head into the chest cavity. It barely whispered as it died.
    “Very well. I will enjoy my meals properly at a different time. You are a guest, I suppose. My manners, I forget them without daily judgment. May I have your pardons?”
    In a practiced motion the creature tilted the bloat onto its back, its own weight dragging the claw along its abdomen. The creature dislodged itself, its claw flicking to spatter flecks of internals on the dais.
    “If you are incapable of speech, then all better. I don’t require your insights, but you are in a unique position.” The creature gently pressed two extended claws into the gigantic oozing dumpling and daintily plucked a pink, rubbery growth. A babe.
    “Whether or not you are aware of it, you cannot sense me. You are not allured by me. How distressing to my self-esteem, truly.” The creature flitted a paw and rolled its eyes. “You are marked as a hunter is marked, that much you must know? ‘Remove the freedom of scent, evade the shackles of the tyrants.’” It chuckled at its quip while tilting its head back, maw gaping with puncturing fangs, and placed the morsel on a bristled tongue.
    I was suddenly shocked to my senses. I felt damp; my fur clung to my flesh and garb. I couldn’t stop shaking, the pain in my wrist shrieked with each manic jerk of my body. My focus was blurring, details exaggerating and fading as quickly as they came. Its eye was on me, holding the flesh on its tongue.
It kicked the newborn back, throat twitching from the passing lump.
    “Hm-mmm.”
    I blacked out.
    “You spoiled one of my rugs. A shameful thing as a guest, but a guest is always worthy of forgiveness.”
    Little time had passed. I could hear the flesh and saliva undulation of swallowing above me. I had opened my eyes, but vision granted me nothing but bleariness and a pool of vomit.
    “There are more of my siblings, few as they are. The foolish and gluttonous were torn apart for roofing by your kind while others hid and bided their time.” The creature paused, swallowing another nugget of flesh. “Ah, but fortune spins quite an interesting fate for me with you.”
    Hands gripped my legs and dragged me away from the dais, my hands pressing my ears to my head. I could not get the sound of feasting out of my mind.