Black Rain

The rains stopped a few minutes back; it stopped battering your cover, but you wisely waited to ensure that no more would fall. Pushing the sheet of metal scrap off of you and staggering to your feet, you brush some of the dirt off of your clothes and take a look around. The village is eerily silent, the only light belonging to the uncharacteristically baleful and charnel visage of the Moon of Vask. Pools of roiling darkness still yet bubble away, seeping into the earth, and every single torch has been snuffed out by the primordial rains.

You know better than to call out yet. You slowly draw your blade from your hip, and traipse deeper into the village, careful not to step into any of the puddles. Your liaison had clearly sought cover elsewhere, as you find no sign of them. You opt not to light a torch yet; something, you worry, lurks in the wake of these rains.

You quietly move towards one of the village homes, and find it unlocked. You push the door open, and slip it shut behind you. You clear your throat and issue a quiet request into the darkness:

"Is anyone here?"

You receive no response. You fumble about, using flickers of spirit magic to provide quick and subtle light to the room, until you find a single candle. You set it alight, hoping that it is not sufficient to attract any attention, and use it to search through the main room. You find nothing here; it seems in relatively good condition, with no signs of struggle or battle, but for. . . a few drops of primordial fluid.

Carefully, you peer through the door into the adjoining bedroom. You see something, shifting, moving faintly, on the bed, but opt not to speak to it. Instead, you kneel down, and slide the candle across the floor into the room.

The object reacts instantly. Before you can catch much more than a glimpse at it, the light is snuffed out as it scrabbles across the floor at it, practically tackling it and brutally snuffing it out with its body. You barely catch yourself as you almost exclaim, but even your careful silence does not protect you; it comes barreling through the door, hitting it with such force that it breaks in half and slamming into you, throwing you across the room and into the wall on the other side with a loud thud.

You cough, trying to drag yourself to your feet, and draw your pistol from your hip. As you do, it rears back and vomits fire onto the ground, catching the wooden building on fire with ease. The light reveals this thing to you.

It stands tall, hunched over. It bears the form of someone who you faintly recognize, but warped; its flesh still looks mostly stable, but slowly sloughs into pitch drops of primordial mass, hanging in strings from its limbs and its maw, and bubbling from a hole in its back. Its arms seem to be broken apart, its fragments locked together with globs of primordial mass, elongating them and allowing them to move at unusual angles. Its hair has fallen out if it ever had any, and its eyes are distressingly hollow and vacant, drained of color.

It staggers through the fire, glowering at you in utter silence. It launches its arm toward you, the primordial mass stretching considerably and allowing it to seize you by the throat, dragging you toward it kicking and yelling. You raise your weapon, but your vision blurs and your hand seizes as you feel it begin to drain you. It forces your body against it, its face inches from yours; it stares at you in silence, breathing in your soul.

You manage to gather the strength and get the right angle to ram your blade into its chest. It doesn't let go immediately, but with some twisting and further force it seems to withdraw. It makes no noise; no pained yelling, no hissing, nothing at all. You fall onto your back, and as it raises a hand to hurl at you once again, you fire.

The bright white bullet leaves a glimmering trail, phasing through its flesh and striking the soul out of it. You briefly witness it drag a horrifying shade out of the creature, with far out of balance proportions and a massive, gaping, drooling black maw. The shade vanishes, torn apart as the bullet explodes into particles of white light. Following the shade's arc as it was pulled out, the body destabilizes quickly into primordial mass, splattering against the wall behind it.

You quickly get to your feet, though you are interrupted as the entrance is thrown open by another one of these horrible things. The room is quickly becoming engulfed in flame, and more of them begin to clamber inside; you back away, shattering the window on the back wall and desperately scrambling out, feeling their claws grazing at your legs as you barely escape. You break into a full sprint towards the woods, looking back as you hear gunfire from within the village. You stumble to a halt, considering that there may still be others trapped in there. . .

But you see more of those things, baleful and silent, beginning to give chase. They climb out of the window after you, and others yet come out from around the house. There is no way you can help them.

You take off into the moonlit woods, not daring to slow down until you are over a mile away from the village.