Beginnings - Night Wind

The wind, erupting from the putrid smelling pit, whipped across the creature’s forehead. He burped up boiled eggs and then pushed through the final cramps, feeling the baby lizard’s head crown from the folds of skin under his armpit. The Alabaster Queen will be so proud of the pending births. She would tell him as much, touting his name to the minions, before eating him at the sacrificial feast.
Pea green blood oozed from his three nostrils into the hair around the tiny oval mouth, filled with blunt yellowed teeth. He was close to completion and his body was giving the signals, telling him as much. The blood, the cramping, the high pitched whine shrieking through his mind indicated that the first of the brood was about to be delivered. He returned to his room to meditate and prepare.

The chanting could be felt as well as heard. Low drudgery, the crunch of bone colliding with bone, guttural groans, wrenching and twisting the very fabric of hell, filled the thick, stagnant, smoke saturated air. Screams of the chosen few cut through the creature’s concentration.

He needed focus. He retreated more deeply into the trance-like state, slumped heavily into the hollow, carved in the rock of the walls. He was hungry; the fever had sapped the creature’s strength. He needed something to satisfy the burning. He needed meat. He could smell charred meat from the various fires, burning throughout the valley. He opened one eye and glanced about furtively.

The twin suns were setting through the haze, hovering over the crimson red colored water. From where he sat, the creature watched the sickly yellow light fight through the smoke, in its final luminescence of the season. There would be no return of the suns in his lifetime. The world would be dark once more, just as had been prophesied by the ancients. The howls of the ceremonial priestesses grew stronger and more anxious in the growing gloom.

He was prepared. He rose, turned toward the wall and, leaning forward to place his head and hands on the floor; he lifted his feet, paused to balance and then continued upward, until his back and legs rested, upside down, against the rough rock. His body convulsed. It was prepared.