Pushing myself away from the wall, I walked with what I hoped would pass for confident steps closer to the window on the far-left side of the room. Keeping a two-meter distance from the other candidate in front of me, I adjusted my steps to her pace as she walked the perimeter of the room.
Up-close, I could now see the incredible thickness of the windows, likely bullet-proof. It went a long way into alleviating part of my fears, unfounded though they were. After fifteen years of the Mist, it had been demonstrated beyond any doubt that the Mist Beings never attacked buildings. They would seek an opening, as they were now, circling around the Observatory, but wouldn’t force their way in if they found none.
I willed myself to gaze upon the creatures. They were divided into two groups. The biggest one seemed to be the Beasts who could go from cute to horrifying, and from the size of a medium dog to a towering behemoth as tall as a building. The second group was the Walkers, commonly referred to as Mistwalkers. They didn’t actually walk as they had no legs and resembled shadow wraiths with glowing, yellow eyes.
I shuddered, seeing a few of the Walkers close in around the windows. They almost appeared to be looking for something or someone inside the Observatory. My one and only encounter with one, more than a decade ago, had nearly cost me my life. Instead, my abusive boyfriend had perished at his hand.
As I reached the midway point of the Observatory, I forced my gaze away from the strange creature that looked like a twisted mish-mash of the xenomorph alien queen’s head attached to some kind of giant bug body with a massive stinger. It settled instead on a mammoth Beast that could have been the ungodly love child of Cthulhu, a tyrannosaur, and a praying mantis. As if it had sensed me observing him, the Beast turned to look at me.
Unlike the Walkers, the Beasts’ eyes didn’t glow yellow, but white. As our gazes locked in the oddest staring contest, I felt nearly hypnotized, like a moth drawn to a flame. Time appeared to stand still as the white light grew, swallowing me whole.
It took a few moments for the sound of the alarmed voices around me to penetrate my mind. I snapped out of my trance to find myself leaning against the window, my palms pressed against it as if I’d wanted to get outside, when I’d previously kept at least a two-meter distance from it. Startled, I took a step back only to see the dark form of a Mistwalker charging towards us.
A frightened gasp escaped me, joining the voices of the other candidates. The Mistwalker appeared to be on a collision course with the window, but at the very last moment, he tilted down and crashed into the Cthulhu Beast. It roared in pain, the sound so powerful the building shook. I shuddered at the sight of its gaping maw, filled with dagger teeth, partially obscured by the tentacles from its upper lip. It reared, flailing its praying mantis arms this way and that in a vain attempt to knock off its assailant.
Suddenly tilting forward—giving us a perfect view of the Mistwalker clawing savagely at its nape—the Cthulhu Beast swiped at its own back with its long tail. Seconds before it would have struck him, the Mistwalker flew up above the creature’s head to come hover in front of its face. Four tentacle-like, shadowy tendrils shot out of the Walker’s ethereal form and wrapped around the length of his prey’s praying mantis arms before the Beast could strike. The tendrils tightened, crushing the monster’s limbs. Simultaneously, the Mistwalker’s razor-sharp claws lacerated the Cthulhu’s face, chopping off its facial tentacles, which turned to ash as they fell. No blood gushed out of the terrible wound.
The Beast bellowed. As soon as it opened its maw, the Mistwalker leaned forward, and a stream of energy appeared to transfer from the creature’s mouth into him. The Cthulhu Beast, clearly in distress but not yet defeated, reared on its hind legs before brutally bringing down its bound arms towards the ground. Once more avoiding getting crushed, the Mistwalker released his prey and flew around it at dizzying speed, savagely whipping it with his tendrils. Long, dark gashes appeared on the Beast’s back wherever the shadowy tendrils made contact.
Using both its tail and broken mantis arms, the behemoth attempted to knock down its aggressor, but