The Breath of the Sphynx
A strange wind came to the village each night, washing through empty streets and stirring the dust gently in lazy whirlwinds. It tested a loose shutter or door to the tune of a low creak made loud in the silence. It was far in the southern reaches of the Dragongaze desert that the great red mesa stood unchallenged in its claim to most of the view south of Zircon City.
The scorched mesa was a sheer wall of rock that soared above all else, short of the mountain chain that sectioned this savage land off from greener and more civilized pastures on the continent. The flat top of the mesa was crowned with a line of broken ruins- grand structures and shapes carved from rock and metal. It was out of these ruins that the strange winds began to blow without warning one night, in the long and hot days of the summer. They most commonly came in the period between sunset and midnight, known to be the time of minor night spirits which stared with curiosity at glowing windows or scared the grain birds in their coop.
Strange tidings crept into the dreams of the villagers, whispers of deep places and alien depths further below Gaia's bones than any natural creature would have cause to venture. Soon enough, the villagers began to follow the spirits in flight out of town. They trickled by day and night out over the hot, wind-sculpted hills bound for a promised land where a restful night's sleep could be found. In a matter of months, Zircon was only a couple dozen souls from a ghost town.
Loriot was among the cream of the stubborn crop, which few would find surprising given his appearance. The Giraffe was a grumpy elder, with sun-faded yellow fur and a stoop to his long neck from the many years weighed upon it.
His anchor was the general store he had managed since his youth, inherited as was customary for his family. Dreams of moving on to the great city of glass pyramids, Palacia, had dissolved slowly over the years as he realized peace and quiet was tragically underrated. He hoped that his perseverance through the current crisis would pay off. Business dried up, carried away with the fleeing population. But it did not return. Loriot's days passed in silence and he eventually stopped bothering to make the daily journey into town. He came home to face the bare walls of a shack that his acquired wealth could have easily livened up if not for his zeal in penny pinching. Thoughts now crowded the room until he could scarcely breathe. Around a week after closing up shop, he found his mind slipping out of comfortable slumber and into strange places far under the world.
Having little imagination, Loriot was sure that he was seeing what was really down there. He was shown lightless meadows where crystalline petals bloomed under a stony sky with precious metals scattered over it. The glint of the gems and ores had been hidden from sunlight since the dawn of time. Strange creatures moved in the dark, forms only hinted at in the sound of their passing. They scraped and tapped in the black, clicking as if made of restless needles and busy mandibles.
Over time, Loriot found that he could not trust the black wall behind his eyelids, afraid that it was a thin ruse and in reality those terrible depths into which he was dragged over and over again. A tremor came to hands that had been steady for a lifetime.
His mother had once explained the ruins, years ago,
Ouranos. That was the name of the city up there. Built by the Precursors themselves.
The Precursors? Who were they?
Don't let the lofty name fool you. Bunch of pompous bigheads is what they were. They named themselves the Precursors as if to suggest they were the first tribe to walk Omerinen. Of course, the Kitsune hold that honor and they don't let anyone forget it. Full of themselves as they were, they did have some talent where magic was concerned. Wanted to become immortal and all that usual nonsense. And what did it get them? Nobody knows in truth. But you can see what's left.
And deeper still did Loriot's dreams take him with each passing night.
It was a sphynx that he was brought to with increasing frequency. It lurked at the bottom of a great pool of water, body barely distinguished from the surrounding rock. It had the long face of a Jackal and its head was oriented at an extreme angle- straight upward. Straight toward the surface in a soundless howl. The teeth carved like arrowheads barred a mass of oily black tendrils wavering gently in the water.
The profane idols that were carved for strange gods were birthed in the imaginations of mortals- they could not truly convey the formless things that peeped through them and into the world.
On a moonless night, Loriot retired well after midnight when the breeze had at last ceased. He wouldn't have been able to drift off sleep otherwise, such was his anxiety. No hurricane or dust storm could ever make the old Giraffe as nervous as the gentle breeze that rattled the kitchen window and scraped the dry scrub against his shack.
How long he was asleep was unclear, but he awoke some time later. As if his body had reacted on its own accord, he hurled himself out of bed in a convulsion that toppled the night stand and sent the candle on it flying.
The wind outside had come back and now it roared more terribly than he had ever heard it before. It rocked the walls of the shack and left little doubt in him that what he heard was the breath of the forgotten monster. It had made its way up through the impossibly twisting caverns to the surface and was here to reap him. The front door rattled on its hinges, the thin wood miraculously holding under the assault of the monster hammering on it. In blind terror, Loriot tore open the bedroom window and scrambled through the other side, tumbling to the sand on the hillside.
Loriot made it as far as the dark village before something slammed into his lower legs and he tumbled into the maw that materialized below him. He was so sure that his doom had come that his heart collapsed in the plunge down the monster's throat.
It was a dead body that landed at the dusty space in the bottom of the old town well, which had been dry for decades. An unflattering expression was plastered on his face, eyes bugged and tongue lolling out of his mouth, collecting a layer of mud where it met the dirt.
Framed by the circle of stone above, the body slowly slid into the shadows to the tune of rustling sand.