Howl of the Heavens ch.0.5

    The year is 2005, the place a dark forest covered mountain in California.

Far from the eyes of man there is a cave that seemed to have been dug out from the rock it’s self. With in this crevice lives a creature, a horrible beast that could best be described as a gargoyle. His skin is as stone; a black onyx, his hands and feet boast terrible claws like flint knives. They are as thick as his fingers and toes; which un-naturally have but four digits a piece. Upon his broad shoulders and thick neck is a head resembling a polished stone disrupted in its spherical shape only by two structures one would assume are his ears; more akin to the extended gills of some b-movie monster than any known natural animal. If not for his square jaw is head’s profile would easily be mistaken for a bowling ball.

 

    Above his wide nose is as most terrifying sight for any who would venture into these woods at night, two red eyes like large spheres bulging from their sockets. Finally this particular monster’s favorite feature two great wings upon his back as black as the rest of his polish stone body save for having small white spots on the under side. Logic would assume such a beast fitting this description could not fly, however logic is no friend to any man who confronts such a creature.

 

    He is known as Rawl the onyx gargoyle; demon of the forest, mightiest of beasts of this mountain or at least that’s what he had come to believe and with good reason. Centuries whispers from the native people’s had spoken of his presence here, he has remained un-challenged in all this. After all what in the forest could stand against a nine foot tall onyx gargoyle?

 

    Rawl could have any creature he wanted to eat in the forest and nearby towns thanks to his strength and stealth, deer, rabbits, even humans if he so desired. However he had developed a most gruesome appetite, a gluttonies greed for the taste of new born carnivores such as dogs, cats, and even coyotes, cougars, and bears, wolves, or anything else of this nature. His taste for such things may be part pride, part appetite, one wonders if a creature whose exterior screams of rock and stone even has taste buds, what better way to re-establish one’s feeling of superiority than to eat the top predators.

 

    He eats far more than he needs on these young filling his bulbous gut to the point where it unnaturally extends from his frame. He has been doing this every spring for several centuries now. Partially thanks to human hunting and his own predations the animals of this type to the south, east, west, and north of his cave for several hundred miles are nearly none-existent, humans naturally assume they are responsible.

 

    The animals have been moving further away to secure their own well being as any natural instinct would drive them. The humans for the most part in this region have been having their pets spayed and neutered except those who are breeding them, insuring him only the occasional stray, even his pride does not allow enough to regularly venture near human cities and towns to look for these small strays. It doesn’t help his case that a trend has become popular in recent years to keep smaller dogs and cats, and to keep them indoors at night.

 

    That is except the deer and other easy prey which remain behind but Rawl will have nothing of them instead preferring to move further and further away in his hunting circles looking for the young of the carnivores, and this day he will need to move further than ever before, and unknown to him that this night he would encounter something very different and very much un-expected.

 

    Rawl begins his flight this very night as he always does by starting around his cave and  moving in concentric circles further and further away.

 

       “I can’t believe How far I have to go to get my prey. These miserable beasts should stay close and be glad I don’t eat all their young and be happy with it” his grumbling thoughts echoing the rumble in his gut.

 

     He sniffs the air searching for that familiar scent of newborns, finding nothing as he moves further and further away. He flies over the towns of humans but no prey he can easily reach is in sight, he again grumbles and moves on. Before he knows it he has traveled far outside his usual territory and into mountains he does not recognize; at least not from up-close, with forests much richer than his and old growth woods untouched by the hands of man save for one small nearby town and the lights a larger one some miles further up the road.

 

     Here he finds a strange scent somehow familiar yet… vastly different than he remembers, it has been so long that the only thing even remotely similar would be…,

 

    “Wolf cubs!” despite the difference in scents his fangy maul drools, dripping his sticky saliva onto the trees below.

 

     He has not had wolf cubs for more than a century, he thinks nothing of the fact that the scent isn’t as he remembers it. He locates the scent on the far side of the mountain in what to be a crudely built stone structure around the entrance of a small cave on a tiny plateau overlooking a rocky clearing by the edge of a cliff. He had thought this land untouched by man but then again the stones were nothing more than a pile at the entrance to the small cave.

 

       Unknown to him, a creature whose species isn’t exactly known for building complex structure they actually form a well supported structure camouflaged to fit into the landscape, but that sort of this is not what is on his mind at the time. He silently creeps to the entrance lowering his bulk down to peer inside, he finds no sign of an adult wolf much to his delight.

 

      “Although” he thinks “it might just prove interesting if it does show up or maybe a whole pack I will show them for making me come this far for so little a meal.”  

 

     He sticks his head in and as he licks his lips, the difference in the scent becomes far too obvious for him to ignore any longer, he looks quizzically at the pair of black fur covered creatures, wolf like, yet…not

 

“What the hell are these things?” he thinks to himself, clearly confused not only by the scent, but by the fact that these things are clearly newborns yet look like foxes, only larger than any foxes he had ever seen.

 

     He has no time to linger on this as with in the next second he feels something he has never felt before, pain. Something has just wrapped around his throat with enough force to make him *the onyx gargoyle* gasp for breath and yank him dragging a slip stream of dust in his wake from the stone den like he was nothing more than a small rodent.

 

     He can not see his assailant for his great red eyes are forced to see only the tops of the trees and the sky above for what ever this thing is has tilted his head upwards with what feels to be  a large claw tip, a thumb perhaps. His first thought is a bear but what bear can lift him off the ground. In this moment it hits him, he stands nine feet tall yet he can not feel the ground beneath his feet.

 

    Before he can linger any longer on this he hears a low yet somehow feminine voice say to him, “Who are you to invade my den creature?”

 

    His face is then tilted lower to see a truly terrifying visage, a grayish white muzzle like a cross between a wolf’s and a fox’s (as his experience would best be able to describe it) in that it is long and thick yet comes to a fox like point with fangs easily six to seven inches in length. The ears are more akin to a fox’s than a wolf’s yet not really either and she has eyes that seemed to glow with a blue inner fire.  

 

   His first thought is that this creature must be a werewolf but as she tilts his head down, he is surprised by the very voluptuously human like yet fur covered breasts of this creature, he has heard stories of werewolves far too the north from the small few of his nomadic cousins that resemble this creature. As he peers lower he sees the ground of course below his dangling feet. He would show an expression of surprise if he could realizing that he has been raised five feet above the ground. He may be arrogant, but not un-educated in basic math, between his height and this distance, this makes his assailant easily fourteen feet tall. He had chased werewolves out of his territory before and they were not this big, he had the ones to the far north were potentially much larger, but even this seems too large, something one might imagine able to enter hand to hand combat with a large predatory dinosaur.

 

    “Answer me now creature!!”

 

      Her earth shaking command jerks him back to reality.

 

     The realization that what ever this thing is, it is big, and more importantly it has him by the throat. To make matters worse its only using its right hand.

 

      He says or more appropriately guttery grunts to this she-wolf like creature, “I am duh oniwicks glargoglgle.”

 

      “I guess I should loosen my grip abit aye beastie” she growls back in a mocking manner.

 

     Taken this loosened grip as an opportunity he slashes at her with his claws screaming, “I am the Onyx Gargoyle and I shall Devour Your Young and Make a new loin Cloth from your Hide!”

 

    *shriik* “HAAA!”

 

    Then silence as he feels warm fresh blood on his claw. But something is wrong for her grip has not loosened; he is still suspended in the air with the same firm grip. He looks into the face of the she-wolf  creature and sees a spine chilling smile from her. It is then that he realizes his hand… is throbbing, her grip is just so strong that it seem it cut off the sensation from reaching his brain till just then, and with this twisted smile on her face she tilts his head down further so he can see that he had broken his claws and torn his hand open at the base of the knuckles.  

 

    What he notices next causes him to truly feel fear for the first time in his long life. Despite the force of his blow she is completely unscathed. At this moment looking down he notices for the first time her tail, it is long and very fluffy like a fox’s only longer still and it is in this instance that he knows for certain that this is no creature he has ever even seen or heard of before now.

 

    She tilts his head back up where he  is forced to stare directly into her smile, a smile that would scare even the bravest of souls; teeth from end to end and blue fiery glowing eyes that seem to pierce his very soul.

 

      “So you are going to devour my young and use my skin for a what? Loin cloth? I think not little beast”

 

     The sheer look of horror upon his face would seem impossible given what he is; he barely manages to let out a low question, “What are you?”

 

     “What was that worm?” she hisses back.

 

     He knows she heard him, with ears like hers she could undoubtedly have heard him had he whispered from across the mountain. But he feels he has to obey her least he enrage her more.

 

     He lets out a pathetic whimper, “What are you? Please tell me.”

 

     At this she can’t help but laugh shaking him about like a child’s doll in the process.

 

    “Very well little beast I will tell you, Unlike with your kind the humans never singled out a name for us other than gods by those of us they have seen. But I suppose you could call us the Dire, that name… certain humans have chosen to call us now.”

 

     She smiles at the confused expression on her captive audience’s face.

 

    “We were before the humans and your cursed kind,”

 

    *heh*

 

      “and will remain long after. For now I shall punish you little beast for invading my home. Surely such creatures as deer and rabbits are not rare where ever it is you come from, but I smell no new prey upon your breath and you must have come here from far away as I have never seen nor detected your scent here before and what I smell with in your gut puzzles me as it smells like the remnants of young primitives.”

 

      “Primitives?” asks Rawl.

 

     She growls and in an increasingly aggressive tone continues, “canines, felines, bears, foxes, and other such creatures that pass a passing resemblance to my self. Why only this? Why not something more filling and easier to catch? No natural predator would bother so you must be intentionally hunting them, singling them out for some reason.”

 

     She extends her arm and tightens her grip on his throat and raises her other hand to her *chin* rubbing the underside of her muzzle in thought “I wonder if this is common for creatures like you”

 

     she tilts her head in thought for moment.

 

    She looks straight back at him, “I could easily kill you and feed you to my young and make some garments from the membrane in your wings. Which is very fetching by the way what with its little white spots on such a dark black.”

 

    *hmmm*

 

    She thinks to herself “it must be for blending in with the night sky”

 

   “But if I did that,” she says, “you would hardly learn your lesson.”

 

 

    She pulls his face right up to hers and speaks, “also you really should try behaving in a more natural manner. You should only eat what you must and feed on many different prey species.”

 

     Her odd lecture on ecology is lost on him especially in the next moment.

 

     With that she extends her left arm and very awkwardly crosses her hand past his face and onto the joint of his wing while tilting his head down with her right hand by twisting his neck and head. He hadn’t noticed until now

 

     “Her claws” he thinks “they look like black polished crystals what sort…”  

 

    His thought is cut short by a blistering pain; she had with her left hand pinned together the wrist joint of his right wing to pull either side of the joint together crunching them and breaking them as she pushes the wing against his back effectively folding it up. With another twist of her right hand she pushes him down bending him over. She then digs her claws through the membrane just under the main part of his wing closest to his body and yanks her arm while holding on to his whole wing in this manner.

 

      This rips his wing and the skin attached to it along his body where the membrane meets his back and upper thigh off in a ragged strip due to the awkward way it was torn. For a human it is hard to imagine the pain, it would be like having your arm broken twice then pulled off and a strip of skin down the side grabbed and pulled straight off, like a piece of paper pulled apart, that was the kind of ripping Rawl was given by this creature, and all along she kept a straight face with no emotion, ripping his body to her seems to have taken no more effort than ripping a page from a note book.

 

     He wants to scream but her grip on his throat prevents it.

 

     *thud*

 

     She releases her grip dropping his body to the ground like a stone. His relief is short lived as she places her clawed foot down upon his back shoving him flat to the ground. He feels three paw padded toes and three impossibly sharp talon like claws piercing his back. Her other foot lowers near his head where he could clearly see her three toed foot strangely resembling a cat’s foot with arched claws extending from them.

 

     He strains to bend his neck and weakly looks up as she bends down still holding his broken and bleeding wing in her hand.

 

       “I have taken your ability to fly now.” She says with a grin, “I will now send you back to where you belong. However if I ever catch you here again I will simply snap your neck, as for your wing my offspring shall have a nice meal from your flesh and don’t worry I’m sure I can find a nice use for your membrane perhaps a decorative rug for my den.”

 

       With that she lowers her right paw under his rib cage and kicks him into the air like a soccer ball. At which time she lowers her body down and seemingly impossibly enters the small entrance of her den with ease her body looking to shrink on the way in.

 

    He takes little notice of her words as all that he knows in this instant is the feel of the pain in his ribs and feeling himself break through the tree line towards the south so high that he  can actually see where his mountain was so very far away. As he is propelled roughly in its direction he realizes two things; one he only had one wing so he would have to try and parachute down and two she had kicked him in the direction of his home. Did she know where he lived or simply saw from what direction he had come? He had thought she had only found him after he had tried to enter her den.

 

      For now he has no time for such thoughts he can only extend his one remaining wing and parachute himself to the ground still a hundred miles from his home. He finds that miraculously she had spared his legs any serious damage. This is little comfort due to the loss of blood from his damaged hand and back. He had seen the surroundings from above and was able to drag himself the hundred miles back to his cave. Back inside the moon shines through the entrance to where he was crouched in his pine needle bedding to recover. From the corner of his eye he sees a glimpse of what he could have sworn was a black shadow in the same shape as the creature that had slightly referred to its self as perhaps being called a Dire. But when he turns his head nothing is there, leaving him alone in the dark, the dark that was until that night his ally, his power; it is now a looming place of fear, what other horrors await just over the next mountain?