Unfathomable. Simply unfathomable.
Deep purple sky met crimson ocean, twisting the Sun's dimmed spurts of remaining life into a sinister, crooked grin across the horizon.
How did it reach this point? What had humanity done to deserve this? Neither the individual nor the collective evils of humanity - when viewed under any reasonable perception of morality - could warrant such cruelty being perceived as a form of 'justice'.
A few days ago, 'he' had come. He weaved the fabric of the world as though it were nothing but plasticine. When he arrived, he brought with him suffering unlike anything humanity had ever known. What started as seemingly random detonations and implosions of matter evolved to utter havoc within hours. He popped into existence in enormous form, grinning down at the planet in anticipation. He could not help but goad as humanity scrambled for a solution. Armies were dispatched and flattened with a flick of his wrist. What had been everyday life one day had become a living nightmare the next. Humanity and its various members became fleshy rag dolls to be twisted and mangled to suit the wants of a mad god.
Hopeless. Simply hopeless.
Harrison's mind rumbled as he looked down the street. Buildings floated in ruin, leaning in seemingly random directions. New, fake buildings had appeared, swelling the city into a seemingly endless labyrinth of decaying material and morphed biomass. Once straight, the road was now deformed and branching off into shimmering cascades of dust and warped space-time. Sitting at its end was an enormous throne laden with deep-red silk that appeared to bend and squirm. Two goat horns protruded from its peak. These horns appeared to gradually dissipate as they reached upwards into the sky, yet a faint throughline remained when viewed from a peripheral that extended far beyond human vision.
Screams and cries had made up the ambiance for what now felt like an eternity. A plane lay crashed into a nearby skyscraper, yet the two entities appeared formed together. From the head of the plane spouted a fleshy tube with agonised faces along its length. It flung around in the breeze as it wailed in anguish, a hundred voices crushed into one.
Harrison coughed, causing sticky orange sacks to spew from his mouth and onto what remained of the road below him. They burst moments later into small, oblong creatures with many legs. The yellow monstrosities scurried off to the other side of the street towards a vulnerable young man. The man was lying on his back, gasping for breath. Harrison watched as the creatures latched onto his face and ripped their way through his cheeks and down his throat. The man screamed in a squelching gurgle and clawed at his facial wounds. Harrison reached out to him, but the man was yanked along the pavement at a massive speed, disappearing into the distance in almost an instant.
A deep, gutteral laughter rattled Harrison's bones and weakened his knees. He tried to stand, but fell back down. He instead opted to crawl towards the throne, desperation bleeding from his bloodshot eyes.
The end. Simply the end.
Harrison watched as the mad god leered. At the foot of the throne stood humanity's last hope. Two women with armour in tatters and wills half-broken.
"Havok! Have you not had your fill? Without us, you will be without your 'toys'." One of the women spoke, her voice piercing through the screaming cacophony of the remaining masses.
Harrison gave a wide berth as he witnessed a crying mother distend and expand her jaw to begin swallowing her wailing child whole. The unconscious woman by the throne was locked in his sights.
More laughter. The god's voice boomed, amplified beyond reason. "Well you see, my dear girl, that's why I will be keeping you humans around. As it turns out, the Universe is quite empty without you in it. You truly mean the world to me..." Havok grinned as he trailed off, tapping the arm of the throne with his crooked claws. "No, no, I think I'll be keeping you with me forever! This is fun, is it not? The fun never has to end! Isn't that right... Pyrah?"
The god's serpentine neck crunched loose and wormed his head down towards the smaller of the two women. Pyrah stepped forward in front of her sister, coming between the two with indignance. She thrust her fist towards the god, as though meaning to split his head. He cackled when her arm became lodged up to her elbow between his eyes; the flesh of his face stuck to her skin like glue.
Pyrah frantically blasted fire from her fingertips while smacking his face with her other arm. Each smack resounded like an earthquake and Harrison braced for dear life as the impacts opened a crater in the road beneath him. He puffed and heaved himself back over the threshold, attention focused on the unconscious woman.
Pointless. Simply pointless.
His legs literally screamed as a falling cow crushed his ankles. The screams of his legs caused his head to throb with their piercing pitch. The mouths his legs had used to scream had razor-sharp teeth. Harrison fought the urge to panic when he saw this. Calm, order. Maintain focus. Harrison pulled his mangled feet from beneath the deceased cow. Not much further...
Pyrah's smaller sister screamed and grabbed Pyrah's arm. She had not nearly the physical strength of her sister. Pyrah's sister fired crystalline shards of ice into Havok's eyes, yet only found that they melted upon impact. "You know, uh... what was your name again? Freezing? Whatever. Have you ever thought that you two working together is a little self-defeating? Fire and ice together don't amount to much other than a soggy attitude, you know!" Havok guffawed as Pyrah bellowed in agony. Her arm bent and twisted as his flesh broke her bones repeatedly. Finally, her forearm was let go, and what came out resembled a sickly yellow and red gnarled tree branch, infested with some kind of rot. Havok held the two in place as he turned his attention elsewhere.
Pyrah's face leaked lavender tears. "Fride! Freeze my arm!" Fride hesitated, her legs shaking uncontrollably.
"B-But..."
"Now!!!"
Fride closed her eyes and held out her arms, freezing her sister's mangled appendage solid. Pyrah then roared as she thrust the arm towards the ground, shattering it into blood rubies that sank into the asphalt and slowly pulsed. She then used her other arm to cauterize the wound with a popping hiss.
Havok paused with a mass of humans in his magical grasp as though he just had an epiphany. "Oh! That was it! Fride! It's good to know. The three of us are going to be spending a lot of time together, after all."
Harrison could hardly watch as Havok magically twisted each person into a cubic mass of flesh. He then added them to an enormous field of cubic people, pushing them carefully into place as though polishing a rare coin collection. Holes then appeared in other nearby cube-humans. What emerged from these holes appeared to be small intestines. The intestines wormed towards the newcomers like tentacles and sliced into them, connecting the new cube humans together with the pre-existing masses. All the new additions were assimilated.
Awful. Simply awful.
Harrison continued to weep as he neared the end of his crawl... He had almost reached her. Harrison noticed this and felt a surge of determination propel him further.
Fride watched the masses scream as they were assimilated into the web of cubic biomass. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks when Havok turned his attention to her. He stood just barely over 20 feet tall, at the moment. He spoke with gravel and thick, sticky malice that clung to her skin and sank its hooks into her skull.
"Fride... do you have any idea what I have planned for the two of you?" He giggled. "I think you're going to love it..." Drool began to pool beneath his maw as he continued. "For so long have I watched humanity develop. For so long have I allowed you to persist. You have built so much now that it is oh so much sweeter to tear it all down."
Fride whimpered. Pyrah stood to her feet and pulled her sister away, readying her remaining arm to fire. Havok laughed again. "Oh, please. Enough of this. I am the only reason you humans gained abilities such as yours in the first place!" He slammed his eagle talons into the ground, the force of this step causing a wind that blasted Harrison back against a maggot-infested cheese car. "I can just as easily take them away again! You two, the last remaining heroes will be the final example. The eternal reign of Havok officially begins today..."
The corpses of fallen heroes hung from the clouds above them, many of them having been far stronger than the sisters. They were attached to the clouds by what appeared to be liquorice. Havok spread his arms, his bear's paw and reptilian claw opening to reveal balls of energy. The energy swirled and warped the space around it. Havok stared the women down with a grin as the sun and moon flung through the sky at unimaginable speed. Several distant stars detonated, and their light was teleported just within visible distance. The fantastical lights of their supernovae were seemingly infinitely suspended in a loop, causing an array of cosmic chaos to surround the comparatively tiny planet.
"This is..." Pyrah lowered her arm and watched, her mouth agape in disbelief. "There's no... There's simply no way..." She looked at Havok, who smirked at her with blood seeping from his gums. The ground beneath her grew slick with the contents of her bladder.
"Ladies. I'm going to keep you here with me as a deliciously torturous trophy. You will be a monument to humanity's subjugation. With me you will remain for eternity!" He chuckled, his eyes pointing in random directions as his drool continuing to flow like syrup in a torrent. "Get used to the lovely view, my dears. Now just hold still..."
The sisters' eyes met for a brief moment. Fride's heart dropped, and she froze in shock at the apologetic look she saw upon her sister's face. "I'm sorry, Fride..." Pyrah blasted her remaining strength into an enormous fire whirl, directed at her sister's face. Pyrah panted as the dust cleared. She choked a sob. "I'm so sorry, sister..."
To her horror, both the flames and her sister remained stoic, in a form of stasis. Havok smiled and snapped his claws. The fire dissipated and Fride dropped onto all-fours. Pyrah was still for a moment, but soon regained her instincts. With dread etched into her typically stony features, Pyrah sprawled in front of her sister and yelled, "RUN!!!"
Fride's response was slightly delayed. She began to sprint away from the throne; her anguished yell started quiet and gradually grew until her lungs burned. Escape. Run. Flee. Her brain went blank as its instincts desperately willed her legs to move. While running, she attempted to fire shards of ice into her skull, but all melted before any damage could be done. Havok appeared in front of her - a gargantuan deity playing with its food.
At that moment, Fride too lost control of herself. She did not even feel her shame running down her leg as she frantically searched for an escape. Upon seeing a piece of fragmented piping sticking from the pavement, she sprinted and thrust her head towards it with as much force as she could muster. To her utter dismay, the pipe simply bent like a straw upon impact.
As Fride dropped to her now scraped knees, she hyperventilated. Her legs bent inwards, and her wrists strained; her fists clenched in reflex. Her nose and head began to tingle as her brain demanded more oxygen in its panic. Havok laughed once again. "You can't run from fate, my dear. Now come along back and join your sister; she's waiting for us." Fride managed a glance towards her sister, seeing her being held in position by a glowing, chaotic force. Their eyes met.
Pyrah, held firmly in place, finally broke. She openly sobbed and closed her eyes, hanging her shoulders. Just one more wailing soul within an oceanic cacophany of chaotically orchestrated misery.
Miserable. Simply miserable.
Harrison registered these events, and yet continued. By this point, the unnaturally omnipresent screams of his damned species became a barely registered drone. He crawled around a woman who appeared to be melting into the ground and then beelined for the unconscious woman by the throne. It started to rain. Harrison felt his skin begin to itch as the droplets sizzled on his skin, but he ignored it. Just a few feet more...
Fride and Pyrah now were held securely at the foot of the throne, their faces twisted in pain. They were positioned alongside each other facing away from the throne. Havok stepped up behind them and looked down. "Anything else you would like to say, ladies?"
Fride whimpered, while Pyrah became still and silent. Harrison noticed her expression appeared dead and empty, yet she still breathed. Her eyes were completely defeated. He hoped she had found her mental escape.
Perhaps she was in a peaceful field in the evening, warmed by the orange evening glow of the Sun as she stopped to smell the flowers...
"No? Well then." Havok snapped his claws. The fragments of Pyrah's arm that had been embedded into the ground as blood rubies now sprouted as fleshy vines. The two women had been positioned above the arm fragments, causing the vines to pierce their bodies and snake through them like a sewing needle. Pyrah's poker face broke, yet she made little sound. Fride wailed and squirmed, her primal will to live fighting on impulse. The sisters were now bound together, suspended above the ground by the thorned flesh-vines. The tips of the vines protruded from their now open maws, forcing them to look upwards. They both groaned and choked around the vines.
Through the pain, Pyrah appeared confused. Though she was extremely muffled, Harrison heard her croak out, "Whatth goin on? Why... Don... We... Die?" Harrison looked away. He had reached his destination.
"Ma? Ma?" He shook the unconscious woman. "Ma?!" She did not wake up. Havok looked upon the sisters with pride, sarcastically mewling with adoration when he noticed them linking their shaking pinkie fingers together. His smile vanished when he heard harrison's voice so close. He blinked over to Harrison and loomed.
"Well, hello there. Who might you be?" Havok kneeled. Harrison could feel the mad god's cold breath on his back. He froze, his eyes going wide. "No response? Pity... I'm honestly impressed you made it this far." Harrison curled into himself, looking pleadingly at his unconscious mother.
"Ma... Please..." Havok chuckled and ran a claw down Harrison's spine, causing the man's instincts to kick in. "Help me..." He clutched to his fading mother for support.
Havok laughed. "Oh! Mommy can't hear you, my friend. She'll be asleep for a long time." Harrison continued to shake his mother and avoided looking at his tormentor. Havok stood back to his full height and looked around at his conquest. His eyes spun in his head as they scanned the entirety of Earth. "You know, you're one of only 348 remaining humans in a relatively untouched state. My magic hasn't gotten to you yet. You're a tough cookie, pal!"
Harrison grabbed his mother's body and attempted to crawl away, dragging her with him. Havok slowly stepped alongside the two as Harrison crawled. "So, I tell you what - allow me to extend you a courtesy... Look at me, boy." Harrison simply continued to crawl.
"LOOK AT ME!!!"
The entire planet went dark in an instant, the only illumination being the deep red glow of Havok's asymmetrical eyes. His neck wormed its way down to Harrison. The man found he could no longer look away. "Good boy. I need you to send a message for me." Harrison appeared confused.
"W-What do you mean?" He stammered.
"Well, you see, I exist in every universe. I am the Lord of Chaos, and every universe contains chaos to be lorded over. A different version of myself exists in each one. They are me and I am them, but we're also different, you know?"
"I think I understand..." Harrison barely registered Havok's words as his life flashed before his eyes.
"Good. You see, boy, I'm not a humble individual. I want you to be living evidence of my conquering this universe. Another me will exist wherever I send you to. Tell him I sent you. The other 'me's are pushovers; they don't train themselves for power and domination. I will take their worlds next." Havok yawned. "I don't care where you end up, so let's run a gambit, eh buddy? Maybe you'll end up in a universe containing nothing but an infinite inferno! You won't be able to tell 'me' that I sent you, but whatever. I know myself well enough to know that the magical disturbance will be detected. Also, don't bother sending me to fight me. I can guarantee that I am stronger."
Havok placed a claw beneath Harrison's chin. Its sharp tip drew a small trickle of blood; he felt it run down his chest and shivered. Still, he said nothing. There was nothing he could do to control his fate anyway by this point. His grip on his mother still instinctively held firm.
"What's your name, boy?" Havok asked, softly.
"Harrison..."
"Okay. I'll be sure to forget it as soon as I can. Toodles, Harry!"
A snap. Blinding light.
Harrison's body burned, yet his skin had not blistered. He felt his consciousness warp and throb as he thumped down on something slightly softer than asphalt. He could not open his eyes. His body ached and he could barely move.
He heard a muffled gasp before feeling himself being prodded and poked. It soon passed, and he remained there, piecing his mind back together with agonising difficulty.
What felt to Harrison like hours passed. As they did, his mind became clearer, and the pain lessened. Eventually, his eyes could open. What he saw caused his jaw to drop.
Blue skies... Grass. Flowers. Everything appeared unnaturally bright and colourful. He attempted to sit up and get a better view and to his shock, it was easy to do so. He suddenly felt just fine. Better than fine, in fact. His ankles were as good as new. He felt... different.
He was warmed by the peacefulness he saw. He chalked it up to contrast. The drab of what was once his home was considerably less colourful than this. As he sat there on the grass, he took a moment to reflect. He shook his head at the impossible nature of his situation.
Had he truly just been sent to another universe? That monster is obviously far from trustworthy. Perhaps this is what America is like... That must be it. Harrison cast his mind back home and to his mother. Wherever he had been sent, she clearly had not been sent with him. She was back home with the mad god...
He wept. What had previously been terror and fading hope back home bubbled to the surface in the form of grief in this moment. He had left her there. With him. In just a few days, his world had literally been turned upside down and decimated beyond recognition. The period of shock had passed. Only grief and powerlessness remained.
As Harrison buried his face in his hands and wept, he did not notice a curious spectator tentatively approach. Even when it tapped his shoulder, he did not register the contact. Then, a voice. A soft, feminine voice graced his ears with its endearing tones.
"H-Hello...? Are you alright?" He choked a sob and slowly looked up from his hands. What he saw halted his sniffling immediately. A buttery yellow equine of diminutive stature peered at him from behind its baby pink mane. Its eyes were enormous and glossy - the picture of cuteness.
Harrison did not respond; he assumed he had been hearing things. So, he just stared. And stared. And stared. The equine shrunk even further in size under his gaze. "Um... I'm Fluttershy. D-Do you need help with something? Can you speak? W-W-What are you, if you don't mind me asking...? If that's okay with you, that is..."
Harrison's jaw clicked shut audibly. Honestly, how could he be surprised at this point? A talking equine was nothing compared to the impossibilities he'd witnessed over the past few days. He took several deep breaths and wiped his nose with a snotty sniffle. He looked at the equine with resignation, sighed and then spoke.
"Yeah, miss. I can speak."
Author's Note
I know this was morbid, but Harrison is in happy pony land now! I hope you enjoyed this introduction regardless, as this story might not be heading where you think it is. Let's enjoy the ride together, shall we? Updates for my other stories are very nearly completed, so don't think I've dropped them. Love you guys!
As usual, like all other content on this site, the content of this story falls under "fair use". This piece of fan content is in no way associated with Hasbro or any of their brands.
