They dig, endlessly. It is their purpose, their sustenance, and their orders. Norvet Meruun is ever growing, worming her way through the tunnels and caverns of my world, but she cannot chew through solid rock. She fills the spaces her minions leave behind. I used to hunt them. It was the easiest way to stop her expansion.
I have since made a study of the digging monsters of the Other World, and my personal copy of the Encyclopaedia Otheria contains a whole chapter dedicated to the segmented creatures. I call them Geolids. They grow slowly, a single segment taking many years to form, and the legs even longer. Their only sustenance comes from the rock they consume, and it makes their carapace as hard as stone. For this reason, I have found it is best to go for the fleshy gaps in between segments when hunting the monsters. Waste rock is trailed behind their passage from the faces on each leg, it drips like sludge and quickly hardens to a substance even sturdier than the rock it once was. That is where all the ridges on the floor of those tunnels come from, rock paste drooled from a hundred passing Geolids. Perhaps the strangest thing about the creatures is that no two faces are ever the same. They are not, as you might assume, featureless masks. Each one is different and distinct. And the more you stare at those faces, the more of them you begin to recognise. Sevoari truly is a world of our nightmares made manifest.
"Why did it listen to me?" I truly doubted it was my order that stopped the Geolid. After all, there was little chance it spoke the terran language.
It didn't. It heard me in your voice. It may be one of Norvet Meruun's minions, but all creatures of Sevoari recognise my power. I am fear.
That was a lesson I learned and took to heart. The monsters of the Other World could sense Ssserakis within me. The imps, down in the ruined Djinn city, had recognised the horror before I knew what I carried inside. They had supplicated themselves to a power they understood, to a lord they knew to serve. Command and control, without the use of an Impomancy Source. The foundation of a plan formed, whispers of power I could take for myself. There are two ways to form a kingdom from within another. The first is sedition, undermining the current regime and syphoning their power away, all while adhering to whatever laws are governing the general populace. The second is rebellion, a military force operating within the boundaries of state. I was never one for subtlety.
That was not what I brought you here to show you, Eskara. Follow the heartbeat.
I was lost in my own thoughts, considering possibilities and implications. That was why I didn't resist or ask why, or even where Ssserakis was directing us. Part of it was trust, I think. The ancient horror loved to cause fear, both mine and others, but I also believed it wouldn't harm me, or allow harm to come to me. We were, the two of us, linked. For my part, I admitted I didn't want any harm to befall Ssserakis. It wasn't fear for my own safety that stopped me from opening any more portals, but fear for the horror's.
I cannot tell you how long I wandered those tunnels. Lost in my own thoughts, time passed quickly. My visits to the Other World were dreamlike, even if they were not truly dreams, time passed strangely while we were there. Sometimes it would feel like only minutes had passed and I would wake to find half the morning gone. Other times it would feel like we travelled Sevoari for hours and I would wake to find I had dozed off and barely minutes had gone by. One thing I will say I was glad of; I no longer woke screaming with every visit. I'm sure the others were even more glad of that. But I wondered what it meant for me, that the nightmares no longer scared me. In fact, I welcomed them. I looked forward to them. Sevoari was starting to feel like a second home to me, and I no longer had a first home. It is hard to admit, but at times I was more comfortable there than in my own world. Maybe that was another consequence of my growing bond with Ssserakis, that I felt the horror's pangs of homesickness. I think, perhaps, there is a different explanation. I have always been drawn to the Other World. I have always been drawn to the nightmares and the fear. I have always felt, even just a little, that I belong there amongst the monsters. But I don't. No terran belongs there.
It was something of a surprise when I rounded a corner of the tunnel and came face to flesh with Norvet Meruun. So absorbed had I been in my own thoughts, I hadn't heard the heartbeat growing stronger, louder. I hadn't noticed the air changing, growing more humid. The low pulsing glow had gone unseen, until now. How best to describe such an entity? In the darkness of the tunnel, and with Ssserakis' colourless sight, it looked like a quivering mass of flesh. I know now that it glows with a soft red hue, like blood just beneath paper-thin skin. With each heartbeat, each pulse, the flesh crept a little further along the tunnel. Not much, and the heartbeat was slow and regular. I estimated it moved no more than a handspan every hour, but its progress is unrelenting, and it was growing down more than just the tunnel I stood in.
"What?" I struggled to find the words as a wall of writhing flesh blocked the tunnel ahead of me. Thin, rubbery tentacles poked free of the mass, slapping against the rock walls with a sodden smack, then rubbing along the jagged ridges of it. The creature was slowly feeling its way forward.
Norvet Meruun. The beating heart. The creeping doom. The eventual, unavoidable death of Sevoari. This is my enemy, Eskara, just as you have yours.
A spreading tumour growing through the world, unseen beneath the surface. Or at least, unseen by any Sourcerers. Ssserakis saw it. The ancient horror had been at war with Norvet Meruun for as long as the Other World had existed. They were two creatures plucked from the nightmares of my world, given form by the Rand, and left to fight an eternal war against each other. There was a perverse symmetry in that.
This is why I must return to my world, Eskara. You see only the smallest part of this monster. It is everywhere, worming its way through my home. It devours everything it touches and spreads forever outward.
I remembered the Abomination I once summoned. The way it grew, absorbing things to add to its mass. It didn't care what it touched; everything was dragged into its flesh. Six people died that day, due to that monster. Absorbed by it. Into it.
"Does it have a heart you can strike at? Kill it at the source."
She is not a creature as you understand them to be. It is a mass with no beginning, middle, or end. All I could ever do was push her back with fear, carve bits of it off with shadow, freeze its progress. All I ever managed was to delay her, slow her down. Without me she moves unchecked.
"What about the other lords of Sevoari?" I took a step back as the fleshy mass pulsed and grew just slightly. I still wasn't sure if I could be hurt or killed while we visited the Other World, but it was the sort of thing I didn't really like the idea of testing.
Ssserakis laughed bitterly. Hyrenaak can do nothing from the sky but watch as the world is devoured. Even if the serpent wanted to help, it is unable to touch the ground and Norvet Meruun grows beneath the surface. Brakunus is too scared and too stupid, as all ghouls are. Kekran is unable to help. As powerful as he is, Norvet Meruun would simply consume him. Aire and Dialos are too busy bickering amongst their many selves to see any danger beyond the other. Flowne fights back as well as she is able, but even her power can barely keep her territory safe from the constant advancement of flesh. And Lodoss doesn't care. I believe he would welcome the oblivion if it would end his torment, but he is beyond death. This is why I need to return, Eskara. It is not just the abrasive nature of your world. My home is in danger.