As we walked through town, heading toward the waterfront, I could see how New Hope had already begun to change, reacting to the corrupt energies enveloping the island, energies that emanated from me, although my ability to control them was still only in its nascent stage.
Paint peeled from buildings that had previously gleamed clean and fresh. Lichens and mosses, colored in offensive greens and browns and ochres, created slimy coatings on the walls of many structures. Queer-looking vines, with sharp hooks and bile-yellow leaves, crept up walls and staircases. Some of the alien flora moved of its own accord, weaving back and forth like botanical cobras despite an absence of wind. Structures that just a few days before had stood tall and proud now displayed crumbling stone and bricks, and black, gaping holes occupied spaces that previously held plate-glass windows. Inside stores, clothing and other goods sat covered in mold and rot.
The sidewalks we walked upon, like the roads we crossed, had deteriorated as well. Fissures and cracks ran in all directions, crossing each other in arcane patterns, some of which I recognized from my readings as words and symbols written in the Old Language.
The changes weren’t limited to the town. I trod upon the broken ground in my bare feet, which had grown too large to fit comfortably into shoes. Like the rest of me, their flesh was gray and covered in spiderwebs of bulging, greenish veins. Translucent webbing filled the spaces between my toes and fingers, and all my nails had turned black and sharp. Most of my hair lay in clumps back on my bedroom floor; only scattered tufts still sprouted from my head, sticking up at odd angles. I’d glanced in the mirror before we’d left, so although I couldn’t see them now, I knew that tiny cilia ringed my mouth like miniature feelers.
The deterioration was worse when we reached the docks. A rancid mist obscured the water, from which issued eerie bellows and croaks as the first dreadful denizens rose up from the depths, harbingers of greater horrors to come. The piers themselves seemed to have aged a hundred years since I’d seen them last; rotted wood appeared ready to crumble under the step of an unwary person, and vile slime grew in large patches. Strings of mucous-coated ocean weeds hung from beneath the piers, occasionally lashing out to snare unwholesome sea creatures. The half-digested corpses of fish peeked out from clumps of the carnivorous seaweeds.
Abandoned fishing boats lay half-beached on the rocks below the seawall, covered in barnacles and other growths up to their rails. The door to the harbormaster’s shack hung at a sinister angle from one hinge. Something resembling a giant spider, larger than both my overgrown hands and covered in horny protuberances, had created a home for itself in the doorway, its web composed of fiercely barbed strands.
A repugnant odor drifted in from the corrupted sea. It was the smell of impossibly faraway realms and distant plains, the stink of flesh not meant for the Earth, the contaminated morning breath of insane creatures waking from eons-long sleep.
“How long do we have?” I asked Melissa, as we paused to watch the soiled waves leave their liver-colored foam on the rocks.
She looked out at the rank waters, a tranquil expression on her bruised face. “This is but the beginning. The process is a slow one. Once New Hope has been made over, you’ll need to travel to the other places, other cities that occupy similar places of power. Only when that phase is complete can the next steps be taken.”
“The opening of the Gate.” In my mind, I saw the black disk of my dreams, bulging outward in anticipation. Only now I knew what lay behind it, and what its opening meant for the future of mankind.
“Yes. It will take us many years to prepare the ceremony. Many sacrifices will have to be made, much blood gathered.”
“And in the end?”
She shook her head. Her hair, once sunshine bright and full of body, now hung pale and limp about her neck and shoulders. Her flesh displayed the red welts and bruises of our mating like badges of honor, some shaped like fingers, many more like circular mouths.
“Don’t think about that. By the time you have to depart your human body, you will have lived far longer than your human lifespan. And even then, you will go on, in your true form. As a god, you’ll know no death.”
“And what of you, Melissa? You’re only human flesh and bone. How long do you have?”
She smiled, showing teeth already growing pointed and sharp. “I am more than that, thanks to you. I will be with you to the end, and give you many offspring.”
I reached out my hand. My fingers elongated, and tiny suckers formed on their pale undersides. I pulled her close.
Amidst the corruption and death, I began the process of populating my new world.