Long, long ago, there was once a world known as Veskanufhta.  It was primitive, yet beautiful, a world unspoilt by technology, where foxes lived in skin-garbed huts and hunted with blades of stone.  Rolling fields of wondrous green carpeted the land, mountains of bluish-white blended against the sky, and the ocean stretched on to eternity.
Standing upon the cliff, one could see a herd of whales breaching the distance, a glorious plume of white as silver bodies crested the waves.  A lone fox closed his eyes and heard them sing, a symphony of innocence that he hummed along with.  Many years he had spent listening to the whales, to the point he could mimic them better than any of his tribe.
He always hoped one day they would come to him.  But he knew all animals had their needs, just as his tribe had theirs.  A part of him wanted to be a nomad, wandering the ocean, riding on their backs or even just on a simple raft.
	"AKLAN!"
The fox turned to the voice coming from the land.  Dressed in yellow skin with silver over his red fur, the whale-listener had a somewhat-wide face, and strong cheeks with soft ears that bent slightly at their peak.  A vixen approached, garbed in white dusted feathers with a slender long snout.
	"What news from the singers?"
	"A child was born," he smiled, looking back to the sea, "she took her first breath, tasted the sky first time."
	"Awww, how wonderful!  Did you bless them?"
	"Hah, I'm not clever enough to bless anyone."
	"Really?" she crossed her arms.  "You can hear them well, that should be enough."
	"Even if I could, I couldn't send any pale ash to them.  They never come close, they seem to understand we're warriors."
	"You think anyone would hunt them?"
	"Someone would," his eyes slit with a frown, "someone would defile the sea, and I will not be that one."
	"Hmmm..." she hugged him from behind, "come, father needs to arrange the hunt."
	"Aye."
Taking up his spear, he walked back with his mate, the dust picking up under their bare feet from an errant breeze.  Aklan's spear was unusual for the sharded green tip he found at this cliff, a gift of the sea mother as he called it.  The Piercing Song, as he named his weapon, had served him many years in hunting, but never it had been used in battle.
The village he came from was a gathering of smoky huts on the cliff-side plains.  Animal leather wrapped round their exteriors, with stone pillars propping them up.  They had no wood with no forests nearby, so fires were sparked by special rocks from the mountains.
Half-naked children ran around the elders' feet with small blunt axes or cool stones they found, one child pretending to be prey and the others "hunting" them.  Amongst those garbed in dirt-ridden leathers, was an old hunchbacked fox wearing the skull of a deer, whose head was adorned in blue feathers.
	"Anva kulama-suk, deh kennar finerr-ruk, lasdeh emmar-tuk.  Tannah kokomo-muk, sin lehchek heera nuk."
As he recited the hunting prayer, he stepped to each adult fox who readied their weapons and daubed blood on their snouts.  This was their call of fate, their sign that they would either hunt or be hunted.  Aklan never liked the blood-paint, always worrying when it would turn, when the gods would target him to join the Mother Sea.
But he trusted Varmu, the seer of the wild, who had lived in a mountain for 8000 days and could hear things others could not.  No one understood his markings, so no one knew who was fated to live or die.  He understood basic medicine, and knew which diseases could be cured.  But he never gave hope falsely.
	"My blessings go with you," he finished his prayer with a sweeping hand, "Sakamha watch o'er you, may thine blood enrich the soil."
	"Thank you, Seer Varmu," the largest fox bowed, "ALRIGHT, hunters let's move out!"
	"URAAH!"
Six vulpines followed their leader, a burly beast with rippling muscles who stood a foot taller than Aklan.  As befitting of his rank, he wore a spotted skin from the most dangerous of beasts, the False-Eyed Drake that resembled a giant gila monster.  His face was riddled in scars, with one eye cleaved shut and his red fur faint from middle age.
	"Watching singers, again?" he snarled to Aklan.
	"Yes, sir," the smaller fox bowed, "a child was born to the sea."
	"Hmm, good blessing.  The grazers will be birthing soon, check your targets only for fathers."
	"Why not the mothers, they are fat with young."
	"Because those young will grow," the father-in-law raised a finger, "they will birth more, you would not eat a seed before it turned into a tree."
	"I have never seen a tree," Aklan shook his head, "what are they like?"
	"Tall and boundless, the greenest you'll ever see, with hundreds of long fingers as soft as your mother's blanket."
	"So like the grass, but...taller?"
	"One day I will show you," the leader rubbed his shoulders, "consider it a gift for mating with my Farim."
	"Hah, thank you sir, but your daughter is the greatest gift you already have given me."
	"She is innocence herself.  You bonded well, now you must prove your malehood again."
In most tribes of this world, the males always hunted, and the females always cooked.  Both these tasks were considered as vital as the other, the raw meat to be killed sufficiently, and the cooked meat to be cared for.  With no vegetables or agriculture yet, the vixens had to make do with wild flowers that they stored and dried.  This also made them healers, which was yet another reason why Varmu was considered strange.
It was rare for a male to understand the ways of herbs, but a seer's knowledge was unique, one who transcended the knowledge between genders.  This was why his face was always covered, for the one he had been born with was no longer his own.  As he watched the hunters leave, he shuffled over to Farim who was tending to the children.
	"Your coming role you fit in like a glove," he said with husky voice.
	"Thank you, Varmu," she smiled up at him, "how are you?"
	"Ahhhh, a joyous day, but tinted with grey I feel."
	"Did you hear the singers had a new birth?"
	"Ahhhh, yes."
He smiled wide beneath his mask, making funny motions with his hands to scare the children into laughing.  The cubs babbled and touched his bony face, the seer giggling at their chubby fingers digging into the grooves.
	"How soon am I until birth?" asked Farim.
	"Hmmm," he touched her belly to feel a pulse, "another hundred days, thereabouts, the bump is starting to form."
	"I can't wait, I hope they will speak to the singers too."
	"Aklan is a rare breed, sensitive to the ways of the sea and earth, to even earn the respect of your father Kennuf.  I recall before my soul-search, before the death of my face, that his mother always loved the sea, to which his father made love to her beside it."
	"Beside it?" she cocked her head.  "But it's a cliff, how can one be beside?"
	"Did Aklan not tell you of the Sunkissed Sands?"
	"N-no?"
	"Hmmmm," Varmu grinned and stroked her face, "one day he shall, when your children are born, he will take you to his mother's home."
	"It will be ours too," Farim stroked her bump, "our family, a home by the sea, joining the singers in their birth."
	"The sea is from whence we came, and it is where we shall die, for all the land returns to the sea."
	"Whyyyy?" asked one cub, interrupting.  "Whysat land go back  to sea?"
	"Because the cliffs," the seer nodded sagely, "the sea devours the land, slowly, with each passing day, very slightly.  You never see it, slower than a slug's crawl, but one day, many, MANY, many many days from now, the land will disappear, and all shall return to the Mother Sea."
	"Buh, ah can't swim!"
	"You will learn one day at the Sunkissed Sands."
He pinched the little one's cheek then tickled his belly, the boy's laughter a balm for the soul as other foxes cooked, taught their children how to chip stone, or skin leather to make clothes.

Out on the plains, one could see for miles beneath an infinite sky.  The tall grass shuddered against the breeze, a wave of emerald that the foxes slipped into.  Their snouts twitched for the scent of deer, a strong, sour vinegar as they readied their spears and axes.  Whilst Aklan had his Piercing Song, his father-in-law had a heavy black axe in two hands.
Crawling through the dirt, they followed a trail of urine to a herd of deer in the east, large majestic beasts standing 12 feet tall with curled horns.  Aklan lifted his head to scan their shapes, and used his hand signals to indicate there were two pregnant, one young, and two adult males.  The leader nodded, signing back for him to point out the males.
The foxes spread out in a pincer motion, focusing on the one deer as they watched him step further away from his mate.  Sometimes a head would flick up, an ear twitched as the foxes kept still.  Aklan was soon inches from a leg, as he gripped his spear and readied his aim.  But the young buck nearby picked up his scent, and with a bark alerted the herd just when the fox thrust his lance.
The warning came too late when Piercing Song ripped the deer father's upper thigh.  Aklan made a whooping call to his pack, as other foxes joined to take down their prey.  Two grabbed at the back legs before hacking with axes, bloody spurts painting their already-stained faces.
The large deer staggered with a scream, then stumbled to the dirt as the tribe piled on top to gouge his throat.  Scarlet coated the grass, as the leader swung his axe to chop its head clean off, letting blood gush from its gaping wound.  The foxes cheered at their kill, their bodies smothered in crimson as they hugged each other, before picking up the body.
	"Good work!" the leader Kennuf called.  "Your families will be proud, remember the head for burial!"
	"Yes, sir!" Aklan carried it in his hands.  "This one was big!"
	"You did very well, getting close.  Your feet are swift, and soft like the tides."
	"My mother said the same thing, haha.  The antlers could make a good gift."
	"Only if Varmu allows it," the one-eyed fox snorted and looked behind him, "keep that back straight!  Don't let the meat twist."
	"Sir!" one of the younger hunters pricked his ear.  "I...I-i hear something, a voice!"
	"Don't give me that, this is not the time to start being a seer!"
	"No no, I mean someone nearby!  There!"
They stopped for a moment, carrying the deer corpse like a coffin as they all squinted to the west.  Sure enough, there was a gasping voice, a trembling wheeze that was nothing like their prey as Aklan crept forth.  He put down the severed head and crept through the growth, his spear at the ready as he sniffed for anything unusual.
Then he caught it.  An odd musk, not like the ones of his tribe who were dusty with the salts of the sea, the great unwashed stink that always kept them warm.  But this odour was different, more rugged with a minty chalk sting at the back of his throat.  Hunched over a rock, was a white fox clutching his stomach, the ruby tears of a bleeding wound seen through his fingers.
	"What the...HEY!  SIR, SOMEONE'S WOUNDED!"
	"K-kaah...kah...paali-"
	"Shhh, sh-sh-shh, save your breath, we'll help you, SIRE!"
Kennuf hurried over to find the bloody stranger, who had a grass band of beige wrapped round his head, and blue furry fabrics wrapped round his chest and thighs.
	"Eaaasy now," said the leader, "do not fear...where do you hail stranger?"
	"Lih-ko...a-aaah, liko!"
	"I don't understand him...but this scent is familiar, he must be from the Toh'Kan."
	"You know them?" asked Aklan.
	"They live beyond the northern trees, I went there on my pilgrimage.  They are a distrustful type, so the fact one is all the way out here is disturbing."
	"We need to help him, yes?!"
	"Of course," said Kennuf, lifting the stranger up, "Aklan, you carry the prey with the rest of them, I'll manage Liko here."
	"F-faisah, f-fah," the pale fox wheezed in his grip, "kapa, k-kapaa-AAAH!"
	"Hoi, save your breath," the leader mimicked a deep breath that he held, "hmm?"
The stranger nodded and sucked through his teeth, still holding his stomach that continued to bleed over Kennuf's fingers.  The long walk back was filled with concern, as the red-furred foxes kept their kill held aloft.

Back at the village, Farim was first on the scene to help the newcomer, placed down in an empty hut as both her and Varmu checked over his wounds.  The Toh'Kan wheezed at their prodding fingers, examining a twisted hole that had punctured through three organs.
	"A-AAAH, ANYAAAA!"
	"Shhhh," she stroked his face, "it's alright, just lie still."
	"A-AAARRH, NNNNGH, KHASSAI NAYANMA!"
	"ATAK!"  The seer raised his hand above him.  "Tonmahka, sineenakukuu."
	"Wehk?" hissed the white vulpine.  "Denneh guum ha-AAH, fanviya?"
	"Sah sah, mallak ehsuku ditah."
	"H-haaah...sah."
He calmed down enough to let them operate, as they dug in his wound with sharp bone implements to get out the dirt before stuffing it full of poultices.  Sealing up the hole, they fed him water and offered chopped pieces of cooked meat, whilst Aklan and his leader looked on.  After the patient calmed down enough to rest, the bone-headed seer stood up and washed his hands in a bowl.
	"He was surprised I spoke his tongue," he began, "I told him to be calm, he is among friends."
	"What was he ranting about?" asked Kennuf.
	"Something terrible, he mentioned briefly that 'no one believes him' and I notice the wound was not from a beast."
	"It looks too clean, it must have been a spear.  But not like ours, very thin and narrow."
	"There was no weapon when we found him," Aklan added, "he was exhausted and trembling, I could smell his sweat."
	"Farim will keep an eye on him," the prophet bowed, "but now, let's see about that deer you caught."
He hobbled over to the fresh corpse, which had been let in the centre of the village where it was ready to be chopped up for the spit.  Varmu grabbed the head of the deer and pressed his own to it, chanting an ancient song that was said to reach its spirit.  He raised it aloft and did a twirling dance, as others joined in the ululation with a deep-throated cry.
Blood dripped from the severed head to sprinkle on Varmu's skull, his dancing more frantic as he shook it harder until it was dry.  Then he placed the head on a stick, wrapped it in leaves of a sweetened scent, and nodded to the others to let them cook the meat.  The corpse was soon hacked apart with jagged axes, stone blades crunching the bones and twisting free the joints.
Several spits were set up over a large fire, the dusk soon approaching as the sky dimmed to a rosy hue.  The mountains darkened to an icy gleam, strands of sapphire shimmering through its strata as the natives danced around the fire.  The dance was both communal and also to bless the meat with their joy, thanking the deer for its life to sustain them as they tore chunks of roasted venison.
	"The wind has changed," said Kennuf, "how odd."
	"I felt it too," said Aklan, "it's much saltier than usual."
	"Perhaps the singers are blessing us, hmm?"
	"No...I am not sure they can do tha-"
	"I was in jest, Aklan," the leader stripped a leg of deer with his teeth, "you should lighten up more, life is too short to be sour."
	"I know, sir," the younger blushed, nibbling on his meat, "I think Farim and I should go to the mountains, it seems a beautiful day tomorrow."
	"Will you be mating her there, closest to the sky?"
	"W-well, if she wants to."
	"VARMU!"
His wife's voice alerted him as the two shot up, seeing her struggle with the pale fox in her tent.  A violent seizure ripped through him, choking spasms as he gargled with shrieking moans.  The seer rushed to his side and tried to pin him down, his mouth frothing with bubbling white as he ranted.
	"SUU-FAH, KISHTINA!"
	"WHAT'S HAPPENING?!" cried Kennuf.
	"He's gone mad!" Farim shouted.  "Keep the children away!"
	"BACK, ALL OF YOU!"
Varmu warned them away as he struggled to speak to the stranger.  The wounded vulpine grabbed at his mask, and pulled him close with a ghastly hiss.
	"K-kaa...paa...Kaapaallikko sikahrm har."
He fell silent once more, his hand slipping from Varmu's face as his eyes turned faint.  With drooling spittle and a last heave of his lungs, the stranger laid still much to the shock of the tribe.
	"He...h-he's dead," whispered Farim.
	"Poison," sneered the sage, "I have seen these symptoms before...from the Toh'Kan, no less."
	"Wait, are you saying that...he was killed by his own?"
	"But why?" gasped Aklan, leaning over.  "What was he saying?"
	"Something about...death," Varmu bowed his head, "death comes from Kaapaallikko."
	"What, what is that?"
	"...I do not know.  I don't know that word, it's not from their tongue."
	"We should bury him," the wife rubbed her hands, "the poor soul, he must have been frightened."
	"We will take him to the mountain," the seer lifted himself, "wrap him in leather skin, I shall bury him by the ways of the Toh'Kan."
	"That's very kind of you...you have such knowledge beyond this land."
	"Too much knowledge can be a curse, sweet Farim."
Despite the upsetting death, the party managed to pick up once again as children painted each other with the deer's blood, pretending to be hunters and prey.  Aklan decided to be the deer, and wore its skin with a goofy four-legged walk for the young ones to stalk and capture, stabbing him with blunt stone axes.
Once the feast was over, they all went to their separate tents to sleep.  Aklan watched the stars through the top hole of his house, an endless vast of night where the dark blue canvas covered the world.  In his last moments of consciousness, he saw the stars shift out of alignment, as straying lights split away in terrible gleams.
In his last moments of consciousness, he thought he saw a giant wing stretch across existence.  A cluster of stars turned into a single eye, and a long terrible grin split the universe in twain.  The dream would fester in his brain even when he awoke the next morn, bright and early to help Varmu with the burial.

Accompanied by his wife, they carried the Toh'Kan's body up to the Father Mountain, said to be the protector always watching over the Mother Sea.  It was a beautiful rising cliff, where striking azure bands rippled through the white chalk, reflecting the sun's sheen on a gorgeous cloudless day.
It took several hours before they reached the peak, and laid down the white fox's body still wrapped in leathers.  Varmu would make prayers in the Toh'Kan langue, whilst Farim scattered crushed petals over the body, and Aklan would set it on fire.  Once the corpse had burnt to ash, the shaman took the fox's skull and put it in his pouch.
From this great mountain, one could see the vastest plains stretching out to the north, east and south.  The ocean covered the length of the west, an infinite abyss of two blues caressing each other.  To the north, Aklan's sharpest eyes could see bumps of other tents, and a mossy green sliver that was these rumoured "trees" Kennuf spoke of.
	"Such a terrible thing," said Farim, shaking her head, "I wish he had not died."
	"He is at peace now," said Varmu, patting her.  "You did well making his last moments less painful, his spirit has thanked you in passing.  But for now, Aklan and I have another mission to pursue."
	"What?" the scout turned to the seer.  "What mission?"
	"We are travelling to the Toh'Kan tribe to speak of their fallen friend.  I need to know what this 'Kaapaallikko' was."
	"Can I not come with you?" asked Farim.
	"No, the Toh'Kan are...different, with their females, they will not respect you.  And I would not want them to take advantage of you."
	"Oh...I-i understand."  She kissed her husband.  "Be safe, my love."
	"I will return soon," he hugged her mid-smooch, "tell your father not to worry."
	"Hahah, when does he ever?  May the Mother Sea protect you."
She waved them off as they parted, the skull-headed seer shambling down the mountain path and heading to the north.  Aklan kept his spear at the ready, guiding his shaman through the uncharted lands as they avoided the boars and grazing deer.  They had no need to hunt today, having still some roast meat in their skin-sewn pouches from last night.
	"I had a strange dream," said the scout, "I thought I saw the stars move and...a giant bird drifted over the sky-"
	"Did stars bind together to make a single eye?" Varmu looked to him.  "I had the same dream too."
	"So...what does that mean?"
	"It means I was right about you.  You have always had a gift, Aklan, since you first spoke of the singers.  I have always thought of you like a son, and if not for your good scouting, you would make a fine seer."
	"I...th-thank you, Varmu," he bowed gratefully, "I never realised you held me in such high esteem."
	"Yes, well," the prophet rubbed his skull, "I am not comfortable with praise, giving or receiving.  But let me speak with the Toh'Kan, you act as my bodyguard, and do not react whatever happens."
	"Yes, sir."
It would take half a day to reach the forest, with Aklan's eyes widening at the great emerald pillars.  The rustling shudder they made in the wind excited him, the turgid thickness of their brown bark made him curious, and the sight of birds nestling between branches made him happy.
But then he saw the Toh'Kan.  Compared to his own tribe, the houses were built from giant bones where an unhappy populace lived.  Wooden struts formed a barricade surrounding the camp, as males strutted proudly bottomless with blue-furred vests and pale headbands with additional colours.
The females were not so lucky, all naked except for ropes round their necks that tethered them to a specific house.  When they weren't slaving over a fire, they were being fucked in public by their chosen mates, their swollen cocks pumping into their holes at both ends.
	"KRAG!" a muscular white-furred guard blocked their path.  "Tohno kalassa!?"
	"Varmu esbina," the seer bowed, "telek Bisa akena koh."
	"Hm...tolarmoh."
The guard barked for someone in the village, before a reply came back and he ordered Varmu to march in.  Aklan followed behind with spear still in hand, as they wandered through the encampment with its glistening ivory huts.  The chief stood out like a broken rib, his dark purple robe rattling with foxes' skulls off his hips.
	"//Shaman of Bisa,//" he growled in his native tongue, "//what business have you here?//"
	"//I thank you for receiving us,//" said Varmu with a deep bow, "//forgive our transgression, but we have come to inform you that we discovered one of your party, deceased from a terrible wound.//"
	"//Hm.  A straggler from a hunt, how does this concern me?//"
	"//We only came to inform you that your fallen brethren was given the appropriate rites, and he was buried on the Father Mountain.//"
He offered the blackened skull of the deceased, planting it at the elder's feet.
	"//Your humility is noted,//" snarled the leader, crossing his arms, "//that will give less problem in our census.//"
	"//I am glad we could assist,//" Varmu nodded, "//that was all we wanted, to ensure he was returned.  But I would ask, in his last breaths, he spoke of something named 'Kaapaallikko', what is-//"
A dozen spears and axes were suddenly brandished towards them.  Aklan readied himself, but the seer patted his hand with a soft shake of his head.  It was then the scout noticed that a few of the guards had bendy pieces of wood tied with string, where long fluted sticks had been notched with deadly arrow tips.
	"//You heard...nothing.//"  The Toh'Kan leader bent close to them.  "//Whatever our addle-brained orphan spoke to you, was nothing but the ramblings of a deadmouth.//"
	"//Hmm.  As I suspected.//"  Varmu smiled graciously.  "//I apologise, great leader, thank you for clearing it up.  I have nothing else then, we shall take leave of you.//"
	"//Do so.//"
The chieftain stomped on the ashen skull, cracking it apart as the saddened eye sockets split beneath his toes.  The two from Bisa turned to leave, shuffling back out of the camp with arrows pointed at them.
	"Did you see that?" whispered Aklan, once they were out of earshot.  "The little sticks they were pointing at us."
	"Bows," said Varmu, "they match the size of their victim's wound."
	"But why did they kill their own?"
	"That is not for us to ask.  I learned what I needed to know."
	"What did they tell you?"
	"Nothing."  The seer shook his head.  "But they are frightened of this 'Kaapaallikko', whatever it is."
	"Some sort of monster?" the red fox shook rubbed his chin.  "That seems odd they would be frightened of it-"
	"But it can only be that, there's nothing else out here-"
	"Um, psst!"
Something whispered from the trees as Aklan twirled his spear.  A small white cub beckoned them close, far away from the guards with a begging look to not be found.  Aklan whispered something to the seer who understood, grabbing his crotch as if he had to relieve himself.  Shuffling towards the trees, the shaman snuck behind the roots and found the small white fox.
	"//Hello there,//" the skull-face bowed, "//did you need something, pup?//"
	"//You...y-you found my dad, yah?//"
	"//Ah, that we did.  My condolences, dear child.//"
	"//You said, he told you about, K-kaap, kaapa-sumthin?//"
	"//Why yes,//" said Varmu, squatting down, "//do you know what it is?//"
	"//My dad was...he was the seer,//" the boy gulped, clenching his fists.  "//He wuz doing his special naps, when he see things, I-i dunno what they-//"
	"//Trances?//"
	"//YAH, trances, an' he heard sumthin' from the stars.  He said he, he had to warn everyone, every tribe, cuz it was coming, i-it was gonna...g-gonna kill everything.//"
	"//So it's a monster?  How big is it, where is it from?//"
	"//There.//"  The boy pointed up.  "//It...it's eating the stars.  And it's coming for us.//"
In the deep shade of the forest, Varmu could see past the sun's gaze as he watched the sky.  While his eyes were old and not as sharp as Aklan's, he could see a whisper of something that should not be.  Feathers shaped like black clouds loomed in the distance, much farther than clouds should ever be.
	"//Thank you, child,//" Varmu patted him, "//I will see what I can do, with what you tell me.//"

There was nothing he could do.  Not that he didn't try, but once he entered that deep meditative trance, following the instructions of the Toh'Kan child, it was only then he would realise the weight of despair.  After returning back home, Varmu insisted that he return to the mountain by himself, and re-enact the same ritual of the dead seer.
Normally he would never practice another tribe's sacrament, but the sight of those strange clouds had disturbed him, the way they moved from left to right like a lure for a fish.  Something terrible, something wrong and disturbing, like seeing the sun burn in darkest night.  His tribe were worried, but he had to do this.  He had to reach out to this monster, in some hope of knowing.  It was the worst mistake of his short life.
	"Banmalaaah hanya, banmalaaaah hanya, tohhh kah nee foh, tohhh kah nee foh."
This mantra he repeated would help his mind dip to another level.  The herbs he had gathered would align his senses to another plane of existence.  As he closed his eyes, he felt the narcotics claw through his mind and twist his dreams into a mangled web.  For any creature of this world, this mixture was ruthless, a dangerous drug that felt like nails driven into his memory.
But Varmu had done this for years, resisted the call of phantoms through his deep training.  He wove through a ghostly forest in his mind, climbing the slopes of reality and into the stars.  Most creatures would be driven mad by their own fears and vices, or the grand shadows of savage beasts smothering them in fright.
	Kaapaallikko...show yourself to me.  I beseech your presence.
In his mind's eye, the skull-faced seer was floating above the world.  He had no concept of this planet, imagining it as a grand flat shape of infinite fields and even greater seas.  The stars twinkled all around him, effervescent lights shining all over his body.  Then he felt it.  The feathers of black cutting through the void, severing stars in  twain with helpless screams.
WHO SPEAKS OF ME
Towering above him were a monstrous pair of wings, that blotted out the entire galaxy.  The sun was gone, and so too the moon followed, replaced by a pair of piercing eyes that could swallow half the ocean.  Black, nebulous feathers flapped with such force, that the stars shifted out of place, like maidens parting before their master.
	Are you...Kaapaallikko?
THAT I AM, LITTLE SPECK
YOU TEACH EACH OTHER FEAR...HOW QUAINT
	What are you?  Why did you haunt the seer of Toh'Kan?
TWAS NOT MY INTENT
HE SAW TOO MUCH, AND SELF-FLAGELLATED HIS DREAMS
	What is your desire?  Why do you circle our home like a vulture?
WHAT ELSE?  TO SATE MY HUNGER OF LUST
	Your...hunger?
LITTLE SPECK, YOU ARE GIFTED WITH A TERRIBLE LORE
YOUR WORLD IS ENDING, YOUR HOME IS DYING
AND NONE OF YOUR CHILDREN WILL EVEN SEE IT
	What?!  NO!  What beast is so savage to rip a world apart?!
ONE WHO SHALL FLOOD OCEANS WITH MY SEED
AS YOUR SINGERS BECOME SILENT
SO TOO, YOU SHALL PRAISE ME WITH...YOUR EXTINCTION
One flap of his wings forced Varmu from the dream, thrusting him back to reality with a heavy thud.  His body trembled in violation, the touch of God scarring his brain as he staggered onto his feet.  He knew now the horrid truth of Kaapaallikko, and yet even worse was the fact he could do nothing.  He stared at his hands, fell to his knees, and wept with a shrieking pain.

	"The world is...ending?" gasped Aklan.
	"It is true," the seer bowed, "I...I have no hope to offer."
	"But, but," Farim shook her head, "you can't just say that, how do we know?!"
	"I know, dear child.  And I only wish it was a lie, but the fact remains that...our home will be destroyed by a savage monster who flies above stars, and rents them asunder with wings so great, that one feather covers the mountain."
He spoke this to his tribe in the centre of their village.  There was no dancing, and the children stopped their games in confusion at the adults' faces.  Fear and scorn crept through their expressions, some backing off with disdain whilst others clutched their heads.
	"D-does he speak the truth?!"
	"Nonsense, it can't be!"
	"B-but he is never wrong, is he?!"
	"This is absurd!" Kennuf turned his back on him.  "Nothing that huge exists in this world, it's impossible!"
	"Correct, dear leader," the prophet clasped his hands, "nothing that exists in THIS world...but soon it shall, and soon it will devour us for its most base of greed."
	"No creature so grand can be so cruel."
	"Do you care for every ant you have stepped on in your life?  Did you ever hear their cries for help?  We are that, to Kaapaallikko."
	"I don't believe this for one second," the leader walked away, "everyone!  Ignore Varmu's blustering."
	"But, but he's never wrong!" gasped one tribal.
	"There is a first time for everything, now, we need to organise another hunt.  Aklan, you should rest today, keep an eye on Varmu."
	"Yes, sir."
The scout saluted and sat down with the seer, who slumped with fatigue at the weight of his terrible knowledge.  Farim wanted to say something, rubbing her belly to feel the bump developing as two children dragged her by the fingers.
	"M-miss, miss faram, ah made sumtin'!"
	"A-alright, alright just in a minu-"
	"Nuuuuu noooow!"
	"Sorry dear," she shrugged to her husband, "I'll see you soon?"
	"Of course," Aklan nodded, "I'll just take Varmu to his bed."
The prophet gripped the young fox's arm to in turn lead him away.  Shuffling back to his tent where leather skins were propped on stone plinths, there were several gourds of various herbs and liquids hung upon strings to keep out of children's reach.
	"Is it true?" he asked the seer.  "Is this Kaapaallikko really going to destroy us?"
	"You know me, Aklan," the skull-face sat on a rug made of smooth black fur, "I would never lie, and I know well enough the difference between truth and fantasy."
	"Are you certain you are not mistaken?"
	"I'm sorry.  I wish I were wrong, I would want nothing more than to be...but Kaapaallikko is coming, and we must do something."
	"We cannot defeat it?" asked Aklan, sitting beside him.  "How big is this thing?"
	"You saw its wing pushing the stars."
The youth gasped with a widening fear, a void of horror that left his heart cold and replete.  Varmu rubbed his hands with a deep breath, a dark contemplation beneath his mask.
	"What would you consider worse?  To watch your world be torn apart, the sky itself ripped in twain and all that exists become reduced to ashes?  Or to perish at the hands of your beloved?"
	"I...I-i would say," gulped Aklan, "perish to my beloved since at least I would...I...would not be alone."
	"Good."  The seer patted him.  "I thought the very same, which is why I must ask of you something grievous.  If there is no hope, no escape from Kaapaallikko, then at the very least we must save everyone's souls.  That monster will take our bodies, take our land and even our oceans, but he cannot take our spirits."
	"And how would we do that?"
Varmu took something from underneath his rug.  A black obsidian dagger, that was spackled with white spots to make his student reel back.
	"Did you know my mother tried to kill me?" said the seer.  "She was frightened of me, so frightened that she hurt me in ways you could not imagine.  But I could not hate her, for she gave birth to me and her only crime was failing to understand that the soul I have, and the face I was given, were both gifts from her."
	"Your...your face?"
	"When I attained the powers of my seerhood, my mother's soul was the gift I gave to the night.  I did not make her suffer, she was old and suffocating with hatred, I freed her, and gave her peace.  I will teach you that same mercy, so those we love can wait for us in the beyond, out of reach from Kaapaallikko."
	"We...k-kill them?" gasped Aklan.  "No, no no no, V-varmu I couldn't!"
	"You said it yourself," the prophet shook his skull, "either we watch our world be destroyed and all hope with it...or we die in the arms of love."
He placed the knife in the youth's hands, squeezing his fingers together as he leaned in to murmur.
	"This blade was given to me by the Aukhu'huma.  With this, you shall send any soul to a peaceful land."
	"Then...why did you not use it for our funerals?"
	"Because it comes with a terrible price.  Each cut this blade makes, further wounds your own spirit.  It must strip a thread from your soul, to become the guiding clew for that lost one.  And too many threads taken from you...will unravel you."
	"A-alright," the scout gripped the knife, "I...I-i-i hate this.  Why did this have to be, what did our world deserve?"
	"Not every god is kind and just," said Varmu, shaking his head, "there are some gods too great beyond our home, and just as those lost at sea are victim to its waves, so too is our world to them.  Now, here is what you must do."
He explained the plan to his disciple, a growing horror from Aklan as he wished for all this to disappear, for this demon of the sky to have never come and to let him have a family, have a wife, have a simple life out on the plains.  When he left the tent that day, the world seemed flat and colourless, the sky a dismal grey and the land a horrible beige.  Emptiness filled his belly, and for the next two nights as Varmu planned, Aklan would eat nothing.
The prophet searched out those in the tribe who understood him, those without the bull-headed obstinance of Kennuf as he explained in turn his plan.  Foxes and vixens began to form a group, a hidden organisation that would make preparations.  Aklan was one of them, and a week after their discussion, sometime before noon, he approached his beloved.
	"I wanted to show you something," he began, "the place where I was born, I feel the time has come."
	"Wait, really?" Farim gasped with a little grin.  "I thought we were waiting until our child was born."
	"I know, but...these past few nights have been hard on me.  I need to...I need to be with you, just the two of us, alone, somewhere where we can forget about the world."
	"Oh dear," she clutched his chest, "is that why you haven't been eating?  Did Varmu frighten you with his words?"
	"Yes," he nodded with shaking breaths, "I-i just...please.  Please, let us forget the world for a moment."
	"Alright then," the wife took his hand, "I would be honoured to see your birthplace."
Aklan felt a moment of peace with her warm fingers brushing against his own.  They walked to the great cliffs, then down a side path that was well-hidden behind a warping of the rock.  Scaling the inner wall, they soon reached a hidden paradise, a quiet shore that sat beneath the cliffs.
A grassy cave laid out behind them, the sands and the sea sitting together like gold and azure.  The rocky walls formed a beautiful acoustic, a roaring breath like the lungs of a dragon as Farim gasped in purest joy.  She said nothing, almost afraid to disturb the peace, as she sat down beside her love.  For a few precious moments, Aklan smiled at the serene ocean, whistling towards the singers that he hoped would visit today.
	"This is...this," she clutched her mouth, "ohhh Aklan...no wonder your soul is beautiful, this place is...it's like no one would ever find you."
	"When I was young," he said, "I always hid here when something terrible happened.  I spent many years not able to face despair."
	"And now?"
	"I have you."  He stroked her back.  "You were my strength and warmth...this world felt so empty before you spoke to me, when your voice painted my heart."
	"I...I'm glad to hear," Farim smooched his cheek, "I always admired your quiet strength, knowing that you would protect us from great tragedy.  And soon we will have a child."
	"Y-yes," Aklan gulped back his tears and shuffled back, "let me do your hair...tell me how you imagine our child."
	"Well," she straightened her back, "if she is a girl, I imagine her to be short and round and lovely, like a squishy stone.  Stoona, I would name her, she would love to tumble down hills, gathering moss on her fur and dust-covered cheeks."
	"She sounds delightful," her husband gritted his teeth, "and our son?"
	"He would be thin as a flower stalk, maybe he collects them...might want to learn about them with me, I feel he would be a gentle soul like you, just as you sing to the sea, perhaps he sings to flowers...I think I would call him, Kanhar-HRRK!"
Farim's breath stopped, along with her thoughts soon paralysed by a cold obsidian.  When Aklan plunged the seer's knife into her brain stem, he clenched his eyes shut and struggled to ignore his tears, that soon flowed down his cheeks.  Her last breath whispered to the sea, a soft sigh of confusion as her body slumped against him.
The dark blade twisted in her throat, severing her voice and her thoughts in one breath as Aklan made certain she died quick.  A choking sob filled her ears in the last second of her life, her eyes fading to grey.
	"I'm sorry," he whispered, "oh, f-f-forgive me Farim, I...I...let your spirit be free, before Kaapaallikko comes."
He kissed her cheek as he pulled the blade from her neck, laying her down in the shallows of a tide pool where her face remained serene.  He howled with a trembling rage, a shrieking rasp over his beloved, letting all his tears fall upon her body, before the ocean washed them away.

At the same time, Varmu was organising his group.  The village felt tense, ready to ignite at a moment's notice as a collective of foxes gathered round his tent.  Children watched their mothers or fathers go into the tent, then leave with haunted faces.  Kennuf would soon notice this, watching them come to and fro with a growing concern before he entered last.
	"Ahhh, my leader," the seer bowed with legs crossed, "just the one I wanted to see."
	"What is this?" the chief slit his eyes.  "Are you feeding our tribe with your nonsense fears?"
	"No, I am explaining the situation.  Kaapaallikko is coming, whether you believe it or not-"
	"Enough!  I told you before, this is just a fantasy you entertained too long!  What did the Toh'Kan say?"
	"The same as you," Varmu stood up gently, "they are blind to the great wings of despair, you have known me long enough to realise I speak only truth."
	"Do I?" the one-eyed fox loomed over him.  "I only tolerated your words because they were reasonable, but now you're splitting the tribe."
	"That is the least of your problems.  Now I ask you one thing...do you wish to see Kaapaallikko?  Or do you wish your last moments to be in peace?"
The leader grabbed the prophet suddenly, hoisting him into the air with a snarl before gripping the skull-face.  Varmu slapped his hands away when Kennuf tried to remove it, biting the chief with a shriek and kicking him away.  The larger fox tackled the seer, putting him in a neck-hold and rolling on top of Varmu to try and subdue him.
	"YOU, will obey ME!"
	"GHHRRKH, AAARGH!"
	"I will not have my home be ripped apart by some mangled mountain-dwelling mistake!"
	"THE, ONLY MISTAKE, IS YOUR ARROGANCE!"
Rolling fast with sudden strength, the shaman slammed his elbow behind him to crack Kennuf's jaw, before rushing out the tent to raise his hands and call his followers forth.  Within each family, there was a son, a daughter, a mother or father who gripped their beloved, and with their best precision drove a blade into their throats.
Horrid screams filled the village grounds, as shrieking terror and trembling shock ripped every heart in twain.  Fathers assured their daughters they would find peace, before ripping their throats free with stone daggers; sons climbed on top of mothers to chop their little axes straight into their necks; and grand-parents were strangled by leather cords.
	"WH-WHAT!?" Kennuf screamed.  "STOP, STOP THIS, NOOOO!"
	"O, FAMILIES OF BISA!" Varmu called to the heavens.  "THE MOTHER SEA HAS HEARD YOU, AND SHE SHALL CARRY OUR SOULS TO THE BEYOND!"
	"YOU, YOU MONSTER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?"
	"I SHALL FREE US FROM THE HORROR THIS WORLD SHALL FACE!"
	"I'LL KILL YOU FOR THIS, VARMU!"
Kennuf lunged at him with a brazen fist, shoving him back into the tent as he slammed his knee into the prophet's stomach, then ripped his skull-mask free to start hammering his face.  Varmu screeched at his face being revealed, with slender female features exposed to the chieftain's fists.  The seer grabbed one of his wrists and chomped down with savage teeth, gouging the vein to make Kennuf reel back in agony.
Grabbing the leader's neck, Varmu launched himself on top to throw Kennuf down with his entire weight, crushing his chest with his knees before rolling off to grab his mask.  When he felt the chief charging behind him, the prophet swung his skull-covering with both hands to whack across Kennuf's face, scarring him with shards of bone before refitting it back on his face.
As the two elders fought, the village devolved into savagery.  Incensed by grief and fear of the unknown, daughters were strangled and fathers were eviscerated.  The more killing that occurred, the more chaotic it would become as trembling hands were soon stained in blood.
Screams of desperation filled the air as a tribal history erased itself.  Ancient grandmothers were throttled with their necks twisted back, sons were suffocated by mothers and even the smallest infants were given a merciful end.  But in that maddening despair, something else grew inside them.  A wrothful darkness, a yearning to exorcise the weight of their sins as their sobbing fury twisted into desire.
The dark thoughts they had long tried to hold back, out of respect or love for others, were slowly coming to the surface.  None could judge the other, as blood-festooned parents looked to other families' children equally marked, where loincloths started to tent or turn damp with arousal.  So would begin the death of the Bisa, through a wretched orgy of deprivation.
A son grabbed his mother's face to fuck her neck-wound, pumping the juicy red hole as her rattling breaths whistled against his meat; a father raped his daughter, spreading her legs to spear her womb to bloody shreds, defiled by the cock she came from; and a grandfather double-teamed his grandson with the boy's father, spit-roasted between two generations that pumped his mouth and ass.
Kennuf had been blinded by the skull-mask, staggering around in the tent before Varmu stabbed him with a sharp bony blade.  The prophet became incensed, shanking his stomach so deep and ruthless, that his guts spilled free in coughing screams, and red streams gushed from his mouth.
	"F-for...forgive me," the seer whispered, "please...believe me, I never...n-never wanted this."
	"Y-you...ghrrrk...y-you will rot in the fire, of your false...g-god, shaman."
With his last breath cursing him, Kennuf collapsed in a pool of crimson.  Varmu staggered out of his tent, watching the massacre continue as his followers ripped their lives apart.  Tears flowed down beneath his stained mask, as he watched and waited for them to finish their death-lust.

Just as his fellow tribe were violating their families, so too did Aklan succumb.  In the shallows of the beach where he had been born, he grabbed his dead wife's body and kissed her cold lips.  Climbing on top, as the waters slithered round her thighs, he pressed his hardening cock against her sweet, stiffening pussy.
	"I hope...you can forgive me from the beyond," he gasped, licking her face, "our child is with you too...and I must carry the burden of our world's fate."
His swollen shaft parted her furry lips, groaning in bliss at the still-warm body.  Despite knowing she could no longer feel him, he was gentle with her corpse as he slid himself to the hilt.  He shivered knowing how close he was to his unborn child, dying safely in her womb, so small and full of hope.  He started to fuck her, smacking his hips in the tidal pool, the ocean drowning out his trembling sobs.
During this, he would witness the end.  The sky turned black at the height of noon, a shadow sweeping over the sea in a cloak of night.  A monstrous whoosh ripped across the sky, a violent gale screeching through his ears as fear riddled through his body.  He kept fucking his wife, focusing on her and the memories they had, his cheeks stained wet and his balls dripping of pre.
From the horizon, he saw two enormous wings of deep ebony, stretching around the world with a bending creak.  Each feather was so great, that a single twitch made a shiver through the earth.  Higher above, Aklan could see a massive black body that warped away from him when it leaned back, causing a rumbling quake deep in the planet.
WELCOME...LITTLE SPECKS
	"H-hoh...s-sweet mother...no."
SAVOUR THINE LAST BREATHS
AS I SAVOUR YOUR LAST EARTH
Despite believing in Varmu's words, he was still not prepared for the great Kaapaallikko.  He could barely see the head, a giant raven with a cruel glinting eye that resembled a small sun.  His body was so vast that the native could not even see the legs, but instead a vile pink worm that stretched from the horizon.  A terrible kraken that scooped through the sea and twisted the waves.
BEHOLD, NATIVE FILTH...YOUR GODS ARE DEAD
AND MY SEED OF LIFE, SHALL CLEANSE EXISTENCE OF YOUR SIN
The god-raven's voice filled every single creature's brain, from the Toh'Kan far in the north, to the most base of deer and insects.  Everyone knew across this earth, that Death had come for this single entity's pleasure.  His giant rose-coloured shaft undulated through the seas, forming a white line that grew thick into a tsunami, and surged towards Aklan like a stone from a sling as he grabbed his deceased.
The cliffs would protect him from the tidal wave, a tremendous crash of salt and froth that splashed over the plains.  There came a great and terrible flood, which the Bisa would witness and were soon washed away mid-orgy.  They fought against the tide as they clung to their dead families or gripped their tents, but all of them bore witness to extinction.
There rose Kaapaallikko, whose vast wings blotted the sun, and his titanic sceptre plunged deep into the ocean.  Those still alive would weep, howling screams that their new god would never hear.  Nor did he feel their pain, or care for their anguish, when he fucked into their world and plunged through the ocean floor.
Aklan was incensed with such horror, that he came into his dead wife and filled her cooling womb, smothering his unborn child with his fear-laden seed.  He watched something gush from the sea before a thundering crunch hit the cliff, shaking the world around him as he stumble-ran with his wife's corpse.  He fell on top of Farim behind some rocks in the shallows, as he turned to see a horrific sight.
The last time he would ever see the whales, was the family of singers thrown against the cliff.  Their grand, majestic bodies, the size of of his village, had been snapped in half by a single flex of the bird-deity's beastly cock.  Their giant organs spilled across the sacred beach, scarlet sands and a heaving cry of their swan song.
Aklan wanted to scream, sob, beg for the end to come before more horrors destroyed his spirit.  But Kaapaallikko was patient, savouring his pleasure in the great desecration.  From the top of the cliffs, Varmu climbed to the mountain, forcing himself to watch the apocalypse as he took off his mask, and stared the raven down.
Every thrust the god made into the planet, caused the ocean to gush over the plains and flood them even further.  There came savage cracks in the depths, a rippling shudder when that mighty pole ripped into the crust, and raped through the mantle to find a luscious, planetary cunt, swollen with bloody magma.
SUCH BOUNDLESS AGONY, OF YOUR MOTHER EARTH
AS TIGHT, AS WARM, AS THE LAST PLANET WAS
The eldritch stuffed the planet to the hilt, his squirming pillar of pandemonium drilling through the core itself.  With a cry of bliss that deafened the stars, the raven shunted hard into the many depths of the land, as stronger, harder surfaces of prehistoria were stabbed through like paper.  Billions of years of geothermal life, where fossils curled and striations of beautiful rocks laid, were soon fucked into dust, to smear across Kaapaallikko's length like ash.
Far beyond in the eastern lands, there was a tribe who had just discovered agriculture.  They were unaware of the Bisa, or the Toh'Kan, and had just sorted a wondrous farm of irrigated channels.  They resembled coyotes with golden fur, and the only thing they saw of their new god of death, was a strange black cloud on the horizon.
They never understood the end of their world, when giant cracks burst through their farms and their crops disappeared into the depths, along with every single one of their families.  In the span of minutes, they would join seven-thousand other tribes in various parts of the world, in a violent sudden extinction.
The white foxes of the Toh'Kan would also witness this.  In their last moments, they raged against their elder, who was brutally ripped apart in a savage defenestration.  His first wife wore his scalp, choked a guard to death with her leash, and they screamed their last against the great raven, before the forest collapsed on itself.
The son of their seer, who spoke to Varmu, was the last one to remain.  He watched the trees from afar when Kaapaallikko's shaft flexed beneath the earth, and caused tectonic plates to shift with such force, that forests and mountains snapped on themselves like a book.  He would watch land masses fracture, and start bleeding volcanic red from a dozen new wounds, each one the length of the Father Mountain.
Once the raven started thrusting faster, the magma became white as ivory, slowly replaced by his godly pre that splashed over the land and burned away every single plant.  The child melted to nothing from a stray streak the size of a forest, his bones sizzling away to erase his existence.  Kaapaallikko fucked with ravenous bliss, pumping so hard that the planet's orbit shifted out of alignment.
This would not matter for the billions of creatures being exterminated, as grand swathes of gushing ocean would drown the great fields, and lava-laden jizz exploded across every continent.  Unnamed cultures were razed, as both savage and intelligent tribes drowned in the same viscous goo.  The god-raven spurted with a rising orgasm, his cum thickening harder to drip out of every seismic fissure, until the oceans were stained white.  A new breed had awoken, as thousands of whale-sized sperm would amass round the world, and crush every aquatic creature still alive, with their ruthless whipping tails.
IT COMES...SOON...WE SHALL...WE WILL
C O M E
	"YOU THINK THAT I FEAR YOU?!" screamed Varmu on his mountain.  "YOU MAY END OUR PLANET!  YOU MAY KILL MY TRIBE, BUT YOU WILL NOT KILL MY SPIRIT!  TAKE ME NOW, DESTROY ME WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE, KAAPAALLIKKOOOOO!"
He spread his arms wide and faced his death head-on, a roaring tsunami of semen reaching high above his head, that soon crashed upon the earth like a hailstorm.  The mountain was gone, as giant sperm heads reduced it to rubble.
The last one to remain of this region was Aklan, clutching his dearest Farim when he felt the earth shift further away.  Kaapaallikko's climax would split the entire planet, a cacophonous explosion of peerless white that gushed from every orifice, of the raped and dying planet.  Trails of galactic milk shot through the other end, blasting off into space and ripping a few dozen stars in half, dark sub-natural explosions celebrating their master's growth.
Aklan felt the violent shift of his world, that tiny piece of shore now adrift through the cold of space.  The planet crumbled apart, draped upon the raven's shaft, before it throbbed a few last spurts to shake off the withering dust.  Nothing remained but his semen and globs of magma, a clump of earth turning to an icy lump.
The raven flapped his wings with a happy sigh, another genocide pleasing his girth.  His lustrous pillar of flesh dripped between his stately talons, as he flapped higher through the stars and turned towards another galaxy.  No one would ever know of this civilisation, or Aklan, or Varmu, their songs silenced forever.  Nothing had existed but a filthy few thousand tribes, whose remnants dripped from Kaapaallikko's superior cock.