The Breach

Down Wallachia way, the fungal godhead divides – a genesis of disgust. Spores fly as the angel choir of putrescence, carrying messages of divine nativity, every body a potential meat manger. Mildew is a holy spirit, and all the world is a Turin Shroud for a hideous face.

Go to the Roman Baths. Note the crack in the hills. A constant gloaming pulses through. Bask in the febrile glow and hear the clank and clatter of heavy machines. The big diggers and earth movers ferry dirt from out the chasm. A drill bites deep into rank soil. Invisible miasmas of atmosphere keep the locals away.

Initiate cursory scan.

Labels mark the machinery as Orochi Group property. So why is it operated by hordes of mutant vampires? There is no trace of the original work crew, save for a memory and a stain. Tattered Orochi memos marked “The Prometheus Initiative” scatter in the wind as dead leaves – vague orders from a management who knows as little as the grunts – orders signed by Lily Engel. What is the chairwoman’s prerogative?

Now the undead hive-matriarch Mara commands her bastard brood to continue the work. Has she any conception of what she unearths? Why does she look at Lily Engel’s signature and whisper, “Mother?”

Seismic shifts detected. The tide of earth is disrupted. Balances are broken. They cannot be reset. The drill runs too deep. The centre cannot hold.

Leak detected! Malevolent idioplasm gushes. Liquid anti-dream. Laws of gravity and polar magnetism warp. Compasses go insane. Heed the floating stones. See the neon tetra glimmer. A foreboding, magical place. Romanian bedtime stories come to life. And now a new mechanical sound, not the Orochi digging devices, but a subterranean machine not built by human hands.

And all the while come the spoors, a contagious prayer of titan molds silently preaching a tentacular cosmology. Perhaps we will see you by the hill crack, sweetling, in the half-light of the wormfire.