Happy birthday Taylor

Once billions of years ago, when the universe itself was young, when sentience itself was nothing but an imaginary concept, there were monsters, gods of untold power and cruelty.

Beings so advanced that the rules of the world only were because of their wills. Amongst the weakest of those beings, the weakest of those monsters existed two camps.

The great old ones and the elder gods. They weren’t that really different each of them. Gazing at their illusive forms, at best would be inviting madness.

They were kins, parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, both none and all of those things. They were family and like all family they fought, bickered with each other.

They fought for their ideals. They fought for their beliefs. The great old ones fought to ensure their cruelty, their arrogance would forever be unchecked.

The elder gods, they fought for something they knew was antithetical to the universe yet was worth being fought for. They fought for kindness, to ensure existence itself would not be menaced, distorted by their cruel kins of the same station.

They fought for a world they saw potential in. The war because it is what it was, a war made multiverses bleed, cosmic cataclysm happens, erased from existence billions of alien existences fighting each other for the sake of the elder gods or the great old ones.

Like everything that was, the war began, lasted and ended as did all things. The elder gods were the ones to win. They were the ones to triumph.

It would have been the end, a good end and no reason for this tale if there wasn’t an ick, a shade of darkness on what should be a perfectly clear canvas.

The great old ones and the elder gods were descendants of the demon sultan, of the blind idiot.

They were nigh supreme existences only surpassed by the outer gods, the direct children and grandchildren of the blind idiot and their ancestors.

Death was something impossible to inflict on such beings. They were made of Azathoth and only Azathoth could unmake them.

The elder gods knew that they needed to do something, to find a solution to ensure their victory stayed definitive, to ensure that in the future, a second war between their kin and them could never see the light of the day.

The elder gods thought, searched for a solution with their supreme intellects and found one. The great old ones couldn’t be killed but they could be trapped.

With arcane might, cosmic sorceries and technologies so advanced they seemed more like miracles than anything, the elder gods forged, created a material from the dream of the demon sultan himself.

The elder gods called the new material starstone and with those starstones, they trapped each of the great old ones at different corners of the universe, hoping it would be enough.

One of those great old ones who had lost and been trapped was called Azhorra-Tha. He was an abomination of the highest order, so cruel that even the crawling chaos would be impressed. Azhorra-Tha was trapped on Mars by his victorious Brethren.

In a better world, it would have been the end, evil forever trapped, never to disturb the universe until its ultimate demise.

The end of many universes, the liberation of the great old one happened due to multiple factors.

The Mi-go may have been wise enough to ensure the seals made of starstone wouldn’t be disturbed but their enemies, humans weren’t as wise.

An orbital bombardment from humankind, a push of a red button was enough not to break the seal due to the shields of the Mi-go but to move from one degree one of the starstones and one degree was enough.

It hadn’t been enough for the great old one to escape, to use its cosmic might to warp reality but it gave enough leeway to the great old one that for the first time in billions of years, Azhorra-Tha was able to look beyond his prison.

Azhorra-Tha was an old god and knew the importance of patience. He was given back awareness and awareness was sometimes all that was required for great but terrible things.

In one world, bleak and on a sure path of ruin, a young girl was trapped in a locker amongst vermins unable to escape.

The girl triggered, a connection opening itself between her and a shard. In another world, she would have gained the power of controlling bugs, all the little things that crawled underneath and on the Earth.

In this world, the connection was noticed by Azhorra-Tha. A young girl trapped by her pairs, destined to control everything that skittered and crawled.

A great old one trapped by starstone, by his kin whose dominion extended over the same things as the girl and more.

There was familiarity. There was synchronicity. There was likeness and sometimes, this was all that was needed.

The shard had opened a pathway, one the great old one could use and thus did. The shard was erased before it could understand something wrong was happening.

The girl and the great old one connected, so different yet so similar and the multiverse wept due to what would come.

scene

20 hours before Taylor Hebert’s birthday

Breaking, changing to become just as monstrous as them was so much easier than she thought. She had tried to be better, keep the moral high ground.

She had wanted to prove to others but especially to herself that she wasn’t broken, that no matter what they did, Taylor would continue to endure but it wasn’t the truth wasn’t it?

Taylor Hebert had shattered that day in the locker. In a still cruel but kinder universe, she would have awoken with power over bugs, worms, all the things that skittered on the ground and under it, on all the things that skittered with their filth as their only mantle.

In that world, she would have won, changed, suffered and broken. She would have killed a godly being in all but name. She would have been a saviour, a hero, not the one the world had wished for but the one the world had deserved.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the case here. Someone, something had interfered, chosen to break the threads of the daughters of Ananke.

A being, an existence too much higher noticed the phenomenon and chose to change the story.

Taylor Hebert had died in the locker, her heart not beating for more than ten minutes. Taylor Hebert had come back when she shouldn’t have with something dragged by her resurrection.

She had powers, she knew it deep down terrible means to end all of this quickly and brutally yet she hadn’t no matter how appealing the idea had been.

Those voices, those things in the head of the girl always whispering day and night, speaking of unseen things, of thrones of dark obsidian.

Those voices, they told her how only at her command, the Earth would open and swallow all of her enemies, how at her command, curses would be unleashed on her tormentors, how at her command, the world would crumble.

Remember they had been whispering in a maddening and endless choral since she woke up.

Remember they told her.

Remember what you are. Understand what you have become. Open your eyes to the infinity slumbering inside of you.

Do so and you'll have everything you ever wished for they told her. Do it and no one would ever hurt you again.

She was better. She was supposed to be better. Taylor Hebert had tried but how could she have succeeded when the cards had always been against her?

How could she have succeeded when she was nothing but a conduit to a higher will?

God may save their souls. It would have been appropriate to say if God hadn’t given up on Earth Bet.

The clock was turned on, its advance impossible to stop.

Each step taken, each minute passing was nothing but a funeral being done no one knew about.

Maybe things could have been alright. Maybe even though unlikely, things could have ended well. Happy endings existed after all.

Unfortunately for Earth Bet, Enma Barnes existed. Unfortunately for Earth Bet, its survival hinged on the mental state of a bullied teenage girl.

The girl, Taylor Hebert looked at Enma Barnes, at the one who had been her best friend, the one who had been her sister.

Enma Barnes knew Taylor Hebert. She had loved her, maybe still did because wasn’t hate just the reverse of love?

Enma Barnes knew almost everything about Taylor Hebert. She knew her favourite colour, her dreams, her insecurities.

She had used all those things to hurt the one she once had called sister. Taylor Hebert was weak Enma Barnes thought and weakness like any virulent disease was something that needed to be excised, destroyed to thrive, survive and Enma Barnes saw herself as a survivor.

The girl had thought that the locker had been enough, that it would be enough to prove everything she believed because that was the thing.

Enma Barnes wanted to break Taylor Hebert because she was scared. She wanted to bring her down lower than her so that she could say to herself I was right, I am strong and she isn’t but Taylor Hebert hadn’t given up.

Taylor Hebert had continued to come again and again and again day after day no matter what happened to her.

It was near the end of the school year and Enma Barnes hadn’t succeeded. Fortunately, the girl had thought, because she had known Taylor Hebert as a sister, she knew when was the birthday of the girl and wasn’t it right for this birthday to be the day she would succeed?

The flute of her mother hadn’t broken Taylor Hebert. The locker hadn’t broken her. The images of the trashed grave of her had been enough.

Enma Barnes had just needed to pay some Empire skinheads and tell them Taylor Hebert was of Jewish descent through her mother.

Taylor Hebert had entered Winslow and felt a difference in the gazes focused on her. They were different, almost empathetic she would have said if she hadn’t given up for a long time the idea that anyone would help. Those gazes, they were similar to the ones she received after the locker.

She hid her fear, her dread behind a mask of indifference. It just meant to her that something had gone or would go wrong for her.

She was proven right when she was approached by the three girls behind her bullying.

The smirk on Sophia’s face, the fleeing gaze of Madison and the triumph on Enma Barnes’s face should have been enough to prepare her.

It wasn’t enough. Enma Barnes almost kindly with the softness and delicacy expected from a lover gave a picture to Taylor Hebert, a picture of what remained of the Grave of her Mother.

Taylor Hebert felt her limbs lose strength. The red-haired girl was grinning, towering over the fallen form of her once best friend. Cruelty flowed from her lips like a love poem, around her laughed cronies, people watching the injustice and finding either delight in it or too scared that doing anything could come back to bite them. “Happy birthday Taylor,” the girl said.

Taylor Hebert didn't hear her, her senses disconnected from her mind. How could things have come to this point the girl thought as she began to break, as she began to let her control over the voices inside slip.

Tears fell from the hazel eyes of the girl. Sophia Hess scoffed seeing it as weakness, as the proof of everything she had ever thought was true. Predators and prey, weak and strong.

If only they had been wise. If only they had been kinder. The heart of Enma Barnes wept for an instant before being encased by its owner in an ice as cold as the death of the universe.

Predators and prey, weak and strong Madison Thought. It was the way of the world. It was survival and even though it was cruel, sacrifices sometimes needed to be made to survive she thought.

Predators and prey. Such foolishness, such naivety. Predator and Prey. Such a curse to think such.

Predators and preys, two components of a seemingly endless cycle, an endless wheel. A wheel of trapped mortal existence.

It was only fair for it to be broken down by a monster. The girl changed. Taylor Hebert's existence shifted.

It wasn’t something eye-catching. It wasn’t a spectacular phenomenon. It just was.

The girl rose, her body moving like a puppet, like an arachnoid being trapped in a mortal shell.

Those surrounding her finally realized the wrongness of the situation, the way breathing became hard as if the air itself was staying away.

They should have run. They should have fled, no matter how stupid and useless it would have been.

Maybe had they done so, they would have merely perished. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell the scripture said.

The shell that was Taylor Hebert cracked, dark fissures spreading through her body, a buzzing noise, one of millions, no billions of flies, vermins made itself known.

It came from her and everywhere, from the world around her and the dimensions beyond it.

The girl closed her eyes, accepting, her consciousness already disappearing, to lodge itself in the centre of the entity she was hosting, had become.

The fissures of her body opened, becoming gaping holes. No one screamed, terrors, having removed the use of their voices.

Their instincts now screamed at them to flee, to run but their bodies didn't move. They knew they were observing, bearing witness to something glorious, something monstrous, something divine.

“Freed,” the thing inhabiting Taylor Hebert would have said if speaking in such a way wouldn’t be the entity lowering itself.

The gaps in Taylor Hebert’s body met seemingly swallowing the girl from the inside leaving behind a giant portal, an opening on Azhorra-Tha’s prison.

From the portal shone eyes, malevolent eyes. Before any scream could be shouted, they crossed and Winslow fell in slaughter.