A surgical strike at your amygdala, where fear is produced.
The Stygian Walkers approach.
First hear the rumblings, the chthonic quakes that shake shelves and spires alike. Heads rush out to the street, tilting backwards to squint up through the haze—to see pinpricks burning red, outshining the obscured sun. A single spindly limb plunges through the distant mountain, shattering sand and stone and soil. The crimson eyes sway, and grow.
Bang: the alarm’s thin reverberation. Final few feet scamper down stairs to join the valley church ex tempore. A wave of birds flee shrieking overhead. The ground shudders once more, another closer step. For a moment reigns oppressive silence, broken only by the wail of an inconsolable infant in its mother’s unsteady arms. The minister, raising trembling hands to the sky, shrieks:
Not upon us, oh King! Not upon us!
The cry echoes, unnoticed.
The foot raises.
