Eternal Hunger

I was sleeping comfortably curled up at the end of the bed when Margot woke in a fright. For a moment, she shook with gasping breaths, then she hopped out of bed and scrambled to the corner desk, lighting a small candle.

The soft amber glow on the bottom half of her face contrasted with the shadows around her brows and deepened her erratic appearance. Sweat dripped from her temple down the side of her face despite the chilly autumn night. She was frantically writing something down as if she were in a race against her fading thoughts. This was the third night in a row that she had done this. Even for Margot, this was strange behavior.

I hopped from the bed with a thud and sauntered over to Margot, nuzzling her leg. "What, no ear scratches?" I thought as she ignored me. After a few moments of weaving between the chair and her legs, I decided to get comfortable again on the bed and fell fast asleep.

When I woke in the morning, Margot was nowhere to be found, and even more devastatingly, my food bowl was empty. I moped around for a bit until I ended up in my favorite pouting spot, the place where the desk meets the windowsill and the morning sunlight melded into the wood. I actually quite enjoyed being a cat, and there were few things I lamented over from my long-lost humanity, but opposable thumbs and the ability to open a can of tuna were among the grieved.

It was mid-morning when Margot bolted into the house and slammed the door shut. As she turned the lock, her hand lingered on the knob. She closed her eyes and gently pressed her forehead against the back of the door. She let out a slow, tight-lipped exhale, attempting to calm herself from whatever morning activity she had engaged in. I ran over to greet her and to give a friendly-ish nibble to the back of her calf. I was a little hangry after all.

"Yeah, yeah Lenny. I know you missed breakfast. I'm sorry." She bent down to give me long-awaited ear scratches and smiled a half-hearted and weary smile. Although I could no longer speak in a human tongue, we were able to understand each other. I ducked the next, scratch and looped back to sit directly in front of her. I looked her in the eye and let out a concerned "MEOW".

"Lenny, I don't even know where to begin." Margot shook her head, stood up and walked over to the pantry, reaching for a can of tuna on the shelf. As she prepared my meal, she tried to explain things as best as she could.

"Len, I think I've dug myself into a hole that's too big to climb out of. What started as a curiosity has turned into a moral dilemma. And... and I'm trying to do the right thing. But the right thing might get me killed." She turned to place my bowl on the ground, and I raced to meet her lowering hand. I began to furiously eat as she sat down next to me and pulled her knees to her chest.

"You know how I've been practicing astral projection?" I quickly looked up from my bowl to give a brief affirmative "MEOW".

"Well, I've gotten good at it. Like really good at it. And I wanted to give myself a little bit of a challenge." Margot was a brilliant young witch and had always excelled in her witchcraft studies. It was no surprise to me that she would pick this ability up quickly.

"For many, astral projecting is hard enough. And practicing magic while astral projecting is next level. But you know me..." she shrugged her shoulders. "I knew I just had to try it." I continued to ravenously consume my food.

"Well, a few days ago, I stumbled upon an old book in the box of your old things."

"Going through my old human stuff without my permission? New low Margot". I hissed disapprovingly.

"I started to read about lifting hexes while astral projecting. Specifically for the purpose of gaining access to areas otherwise off limits."

"Wouldn't be the first time you trespassed," I thought. I had just finished the tuna, and I was only slightly disappointed to be down to just the hard kibble.

"I really started to rack my brain. Where is the ultimate off-limits place? It consumed me, Len. I had to find a place where no other had gone before." At this point, my bowl was half-empty, and my only thought was how my stomach was not yet half-full.

"About halfway through the book, there was a chapter that had caught my attention. The one on the Eternal Being." I immediately looked up from my meal. The hair stood up from the back of my neck all the way down to my tail, and I let out a low growl.

"The book talked about how there was a council of witches formed after the Being's discovery to keep it protected and locked away, never to be found. It mentioned enchantments and illusions placed that were practically unbreakable. And obviously, I thought I had found my next challenge."

"YOU STUPID GIRL!" I wanted to yell at her. She was treading into dangerous territory. Not only for her, but for every other being on Earth.

The Eternal Being was an ancient being, believed to be one of the old gods. It was a being so old that it existed before the concept time was conceivable. It was discovered over 1,000 years ago, deep in a coastal cave along the Mediterranean Sea lying dormant. The Eternal Being is said to have grown so bored of the world it created, that it decided to put itself into an indefinite sleep to form an entire separate universe in its unconscious mind. It is feared that if it ever awakes, its intrapsychic reality will clash with ours with cataclysmic effects.

My attempt at yelling came out as a "MEOOOWWWW! YEEEOOWWW!" I was scolding her and she knew that.

"Len, it's worse than what you think."

"Worse? How? HOW?" I thought.

"When I finally got into the Eternal Beings consciousness, I was expecting to find some strange and alien land. I thought I would enter into a realm so magical that I may never want to return. I expected anything and everything except the exact thing I found." I stepped away from my long-forgotten meal and inched towards the shaking girl.

"Len, there was nothing, nothing but darkness. It felt completely devoid of anything. It was almost as if my life force was being sucked out of me, and a sense of dread was steadily creeping in to replace it. I panicked and immediately tried get out of there, but as I was preparing to leave, I heard a voice calling out to me for help. The voice was low and rumbling, seeking me out like an approaching thunderstorm. I frantically turned, searching every corner of the void for whatever it was speaking to me. That's when I saw a speck of light far off in the distance. All of a sudden, the sensation of wind was on my skin, and the speck started to get bigger. I was so disoriented, I couldn't tell if it were me or the speck of light that was moving. I began to make out a huddled figure in the speck of light, and within a breath it was directly in front of me. The thing huddled on the ground before me was shriveled and gray. It was humanoid with two arms and two legs but had two broken protrusions on its back. It was as if former wings had been clipped away, and it had never quite healed."

Jarringly, we were interrupted by a beating knock on the front door. My low growl returned accompanied by an arch in my back and my whiskers widened out, grasping for any information I could sense in the changes in the air around me. The pounding came again, this time with shouts.

"Shit. Lenny, we have to go. NOW." Margot quickly grabbed a piece of chalk from her desk and began drawing symbols on the ground. She then grabbed a bag with a few important items and went to stand in the middle of the symbol. She motioned for me to join her, and I skittered over and hopped in her bag. In a flash of smoke and light, we were transported to a dense forest. She lifted the bag to her shoulder and took off into the maze of trees.

"That must have been the council," I thought to myself. I had heard of stories of the fates of witches who had angered the council. Banishments and executions were among their favorite punishments. Margot reached into the bag, fishing around for something, and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. As she jogged, she tried to straighten the paper out as best she could. I peeked out of the bag to study the paper she held. "The late-night scribblings!" I hadn't had the chance to read it until now. "Left by the three sister trees. Under the widow maker past the patch of blackberries." They were directions. But to where?

At that moment, Margot came to a stop and caught her breath. She had seemed sure of her path until now. She carefully studied the paper in hand, flipping it back and forth, searching for her next move. She looked left and right and then...

"Ah ha! There." Margot ran towards a large dead oak tree, shrouded in vines of English ivy creeping up its lifeless trunk. "Okay, so past the dead oak towards the trail of moss. It should be right up here." Margot sprinted on and a small cabin grew in the distance. We reached it in moments, finding a decaying porch attached to an even more decayed house. The unsteady stairs creaked and groaned but held still. The front door was cracked and was unattached from the top hinge, leaving it to lean downward causing the door to scrape at the ground when Margot pulled it opened.

"They should be in the basement."

"They who Margot?" Every hair on my back stood stiff.

There was only one door in the dark and empty room. She raced to it and pulled it wide. She shuffled around her bag once more to reveal a flashlight. And down the stairs we went, flashlight leading the way. The guiding light revealed sigil after sigil scribbled on the walls, the stairs, the ceiling. Every space that could be carved into or written on was filled with arcane symbols. At the bottom of the stairs, we turned left to reveal a massive underground space, housing cages barring dozens of huddled creatures.

"Angels? Those are fucking angels." I let out a loud "MEOOWW".

"Len, I have no time to explain right now. Just trust me please. We need to get them out of here. But the sigils are trapping them and taking away their power. I am going to try to burn away as many as possible, and I need you to help amplify my energy so we can get them out of here quickly."

I hopped out of the bag and sat on the cold, damp ground. "You're lucky I love you, Margot." I closed my eyes and focused my mind, visualizing the energy field around me and pushing to expand it. Margot chanted a spell and fire ripped out of her palms. She carefully waved her hands over the surfaces she could reach, trying her best to not burn the whole place down. Within minutes, enough sigils had been destroyed for the groups of angels to overcome their captivity.

"Who are you? Why are you helping us?" One of the angels stepped forward, revealing a scarred face.

"I... I'm Margot... I'm here to set you free... I'm here because Simia asked me to help."

The angel's eyes widened, welling up with tears. She reached for her mouth as if to hold in the grief that begged to escape. "But Simia... She was taken so long ago. I thought she would be... wou...". The grief finally clawed its way out of her throat and poured out of her in the form of an aching weep.

"I met her a few nights ago in the consciousness of the Eternal Being. It was her dying wish that I save you all. And now we need to get to the Cave and destroy the Being before the Council can stop us." The angel took a deep breath and nodded in understanding. She called a few other angels forward and they formed a small circle, holding hands. They began to sing in unison, and the stagnant air started to move about them. A small ball of light in the middle of the circle grew until it encapsulated the entire group in the underground space. I quickly jumped back into Margot's bag for at least a semblance of safety. She picked the bag up and held me close. The light grew so bright that I had to duck to the bottom of the bag to shield my eyes. After a few seconds, I could feel Margot's grip release, daring me to peer out of the bag. I slowly lifted my head, and I saw the group of angels in front of us. Their wings had unfurled and were spread away from their body. They all had a bluish, white glow that illuminated the rocky wall behind them. In front of them, was a massive being's head. The length of the head was as long as the group of angels were wide.

"The Eternal Being. OH SHIT SHIT SHIT." I turned to Margot and bumped her chin with my head. "We need to leave, Margot," I meowed. She nuzzled me back and said, "We must see this through, Len."

"I can sense the council approaching. Margot, get behind us." Margot crawled to a notch in the cave wall behind the angels and hunkered down. The angels formed a protective shield over Margot and I and got into what appeared to be a battle formation. In seconds, a smokey cloud appeared and dissipated to reveal a group of eight witches. They wasted no time with formalities and rushed towards the group of angels. The high-pitched screams paired with the witches' offensive measures sent a chill down my spine. Flashes of light and fire lit up the area and barrages of explosions shook the cave.

"The council is no match for the angels," Margot shouted at me over the clash of power. "Centuries of imprisonment did not dampen the angels' power as the Council has wrongly assumed." And Margot was right. It only took five minutes for the host of angels to defeat the council.

As the Angels tended to their wounded, I headbutted Margot in the chin again. My cry for answers came out as "meeeeoooowwww". Margot giggled and took a deep breath.

"Len, the entity I met in the mind of the Eternal Being was an angel named Simia. She explained to me that the story the Council had made about the realm in the mind of the Eternal Being was all a lie. It was true that the Eternal Being had grown so bored of its creation. But the Being's solution was not to make another universe in its mind. It actually had developed a hunger so ravenous, only consuming its entire creation would satisfy it. When the angels who served the Being found out, they went to the local witches and concocted a plan together to force the Being into a dormant state. But the Being was so powerful, that it continued to slowly consume, even in dormancy. The angels proposed a plan that would force the Being to consume itself, but one of the witches found out a way to syphon power from the Being while it consumed and devised a plan of their own to trick and imprison the angels. Because the angels were divine creatures, they could satiate the Being for much longer. This conniving witch became so powerful that they destroyed the old council and formed a new one that would go along with their cruel scheme."

Suddenly, one of the angels spoke up. “It is time we end this once and for all.” All the angels lifted into the air and formed a circle around the great Eternal being.

“Our Lord, it is time for your unsatiable hunger to end and for you to finally be at peace.” What started as a low hum wove itself into a great booming chorus. The air was pulsating around us as Margot and I stared in awe of the encapsulating ritual. The Eternal Being began to groan, shaking rocks loose from the cave ceiling above. The Being itself began to vibrate so vigorously that its flesh started to appear like water rippling on the surface of a lake. Streams of impossibly bright light tore holes throughout the being, rapidly growing by the second. Margot turned away in an attempt to shield us both from the impending destruction. Right when I feared that we would surely be destroyed, an angel wrapped its wings entirely around us.

Strangely, the shaking abruptly stopped. There was no sound but the heavy breathing of Margot. I opened my eyes and was greeted by the familiar sight of Margot’s bedroom. The angel had sent us home. Margot squeezed me tight as she cried. “Lenny, were okay.” She sat me on the bed and scratched between my ears. “Mrrrroow” I responded. “Dinner time”.