The Filthy Tale from the Sky-Ground

On one of my latest expeditions to The Mighty Hills up north, I discovered something. I first saw a distant shimmer in the sand, different to the elusive lanterns that the aristocrat so desperately seek, but also different to the beasts that imitate them in order to attack lonely researchers like me. This shimmer called out to me. Some deep part of my mind compelled me to flow closer into this light despite my bones shaking from the thought of encountering a leviathan. For my immediate fortune (although, I would come to regret it eventually), not a single breathing thing welcomed me into what I was about to see: A casing made of strange shiny metal, shredded to pieces, as if strangled by a colossus. It had all kinds of limbs and glassy eyes attatched to it, made of the same shiny metal. The same kind of iron our kind once used to harm each other. It was also hollow, filled with equally fringe items, except brittle despite their resilient aspect. This thing, if I can call it that, was manufactured by beings as aware as our kind is, yet as different to us as we are to our prey.

I decided to seek shelter for the time and enter this unnatural monster, even with my fears of encountering one of its makers, which would surely not welcome me into its intrinsic jail. Perhaps some small animals lived in the hollow carcass, animals that could be hunted for food. I did notice traces of food, although at first I hesitated to eat it due to the nature of its containment, but given enough sleep cycles stranded in the dark sands of the north, I was eventually compelled to rip these containers open and eat the food provided to me by the iron prison. I shall add that I spend many hours researching the many details carved into this object and analizing every item and every trace of life found inside of it, so my expedition had to be cut short in order to return home with my findings, and I could not hunt for long.

As for food, there were pieces of meat and even full insects like the ones we thrive on, only contained in jelly-like lungs. The meat was also an dark tint of red with strains of fat all over it, which indicated that these beings hunted leviathans for sustain. Regular meat was kept in smaller casings made of metal, but different: metal I have not seen anywhere on our vast lands, softer and more maleable. As if by mockery, these casings contained paintings of each animal the flesh came from. Some of them were ripped wide open, revealing that the meat itself had been twisted into tiny pillars. I hypothesized that these beings could only digest food when ingested in large containers made of other substances. The paintings on the small metal casings would then make it easier to distinguish between the different meals that came from ordinary cattle. This hypothesis was dismissed later on, when I found the cadavres of the creatures that inhabited this place.

To my surprise, the iron monster (as I shall continue to call the hollow casing) contained a few heretic places devoid of any ether. My gills shrunk the minute I crawled into them, and splashes of hell began merging with our fluid world, and then rejecting the essence of our land. Every time I sunk in and out of this hell, the void settled, creating a perfectly still barrier. This hell had more dominion than the cave dwellers usually find on their quests for resources. It was stagnant and refused to be swallowed by currents of ether. Something was strange about it, the fragile items flowing out of the casing were completely undamaged when placed out of ether, as if made by some demonic science. If not by my scientific skepticism and some evidence found on later items inside of the iron monster, it would be of my total conviction that these creatures ascended from below our lands, where there is no ether and only hot iron exists. I then realized that the purpose of the metal casings was to isolate their items and food from and in ether, since they clearly had a grasp on what they could sumerge in it and what they could not.

I then found the first cadavre. All of its body, excluding its head, was covered with a mesh which I had to remove in order to analize it (this mesh might have been ceremonial, since it provided no isolation from the ether and it was fragile both in and out of it). Its body was unsettlingly similar to one of our own, except its skin was a pale red, it did not have any scales or gills (which leads me to conclude that these creatures had to absorve ether in a different way that breathing). It also had fleshy horns between its eyes and its jaw, and a collection of a couple thousand tendrils on the top of its head. Had my expedition been religious instead of scientific, and I would have named this being a demon, Satan himself, proving he still lived outside of the ether. I was terrified to my guts, even as I kept examining its anatomy. It had no fins or flippers to flow properly, so I can only assume this creature crawled around in the sand in its four limbs like the same insects we feast upon at ceremonies.

After the descovery of this carcass, I found three more. There were variations in the colors of the tendrils on their heads: black, red, and gold. There were also variations on their size, and some other anatomical differences which evidenced a distinction between males and females. The male were smaller, and appeared to have longer tendrils, bright colored crystal-like scales at the end of their fins and larger chest muscles, which could have been used for attracting mates. The females had shorter tendrils which expanded to the mayority of their bodies, and had a viviparous reproductive systems such as leviathans. This was evidenced by a visible display of their ovaries between their lower limbs, and a tube from which they likely gave birth. As the scientist responsible of the discovery of this species, I decided to name them Syreni Leviathanis, alluding to their similarities to us intelligent beings, but also their flesh devoid of any gills and their vivipary reproductive system. Besides from that, the religious elite will appreciate a name that is easy to demonize in case they find my findings controversial. I later found another cadavre in a different place, wearing a crystal pane on their eyes, flippers made of another creature's leather on their lower limbs and a big metal cylinder on their back. I do not know the purposes of these artifacts, but it may have been for easier flowing on the depths.

After examining the bodies, I found a particularly interesting item. I can only describe it as a box made of skin, containing hundreds of thin layers of a delicate material, filled of images and glyphs which my mind failed to comprehend. It appears that these creatures carved their tales into these layered boxes just as we carve them into the walls of our citadels. Even though there was no way for me to comprehend them, I interpreted some of their illustrations as references to their realm. The first one was of a young leviathanis, standing in her two bottom limbs on what seems like sand, surrounded by small leviathans with stumps for flippers, which also crawled on the sand instead of flowing. This civilization may have gathered creatures similar to leviathans for cattle or for recreative purposes, as they did not show any fear for them in their illustrations. They exhibited their carcasses proudly on their living quarters, and illustrated each other with their remains.

The next illustration depicted an adult female leviathanis, holding something similar to a hunting spear. She was holding a creature very similar to our cattle in her upper limb, and only had the ceremonial meshes from her waist down. It appears that in this culture, females were in charge of hunting and other violent activites, even when in their reproductive cycles, infered by the appearence of other leviathanis with enlarged torsos, which could be explained by them carrying their children even while hunting. Their tendrils appear to descend to their torsos on the females, most likely for protection. Other illustrations depicted the leviathanis holding elongated, intrinsic metal tools, while wearing sheets of green mesh as to imitate the algae on the higher surfaces of our realms. This allowed me to speculate that the leviathanis did not come from the depths of our world, but rather from the skies, where the bright god burns our skin and blinds our eyes.

Other illustrations had variations of the meshes these creatures wore, mostly in order to cover their lower bodies. I could not interpret them, but I encased the leathery box inside of some metal boxes as to not damage it with the ether, and I have sent them to the elders in our citadel for further analysis. As for the metal cage I found all of these artifacts in, I memorized the coordinates to send a team of experts to recover most of the leviathanis' technology. I however must end this article with a confession, rather than a scientific conclussion.

I do not care for the Syreni Leviahtanis. I may not be one of faith, but the existence of such filthy creature defies all that is good with nature. They have flippers, but are unable to flow. They have eyes, but spend their lives in the scorching skies. They are similar to us in intelligence and shape, yet they butcher all other lifeforms for their saddistic rituals, and they appear to be descendants from the creatures we fear most: The Leviathans, creatures of incredible size that with a gentle touch can crumble entire cities. Creatures that flow up to the great skies yet do not burn. Creatures that remind us of our insignificance.

I hope for everything that is dear to me, that these creatures remain brittle and weak to our ether so that they might not find our rich cities and our children, as they are everything we despise from the skies, and their tale is one of disrespect, domination and doom.