Garong's Heart

Lying interred in his bed of buried earth, Garong begins to stir. It has awakened from a nap that has lasted no less than two millennia, during which it has managed to restore the tremendous amount of creative energy that it unleashed during its last creative phase. Great things were done then, though this is a thought that Garong will not be able to comprehend, let alone bask in, for its simple mind lacks the intellectual ability to understand the concept of time. It has no remembrance of the monstrous and demonic changes that it wrought on the native human population of this little island during its previous stage of creation, or how they subsequently fared. It learns only now that its desire to turn the entire ecosystem of the land into a giant living extension of itself has failed. Its near omnipresent senses inform it that the cancerous growths it sought to weed out eons ago, have not only remained but have actually increased, fouling and infecting the very nature from which it draws its strength. The tainted air and water irritate its keen senses, causing much pain and discomfort. Garong is temporarily confused and puzzled. Its primitive mind, if it can be even dignified with such a word, does not understand why its centuries of painstaking effort have seemed to bear no fruit.

The original population of two-legged beings that it so skillfully modified and re-wrought to suit its goals, no longer exist. A new, vastly more numerous species of other two-legged beings have replaced them, and these unlike their predecessors, have no respect for the ambitions of Garong. They fell the trees and dirty the rivers. They sink the stone and metal roots of large, deformed artificial mountains into the soil, making it uninhabitable for the native vegetation.

New information begins trickling into its nerve centers. These two-legged beings are infected and tainted, with something not of nature. They are consumed by this alien plague, driven by it in fact, to continue their dismemberment of the enviroment, and the surpressions of their own true primal natures.

And Garong is disturbed that a foreign taint is infecting its world, twisting it to their ultimately fatal designs. It must take action before it is too late.

So it begins to create again. Channelling its abundant energy, it begins to shape the forest above its buried cradle, choosing it to make its base of extensions as it once did in a past it cannot truly recall.

The trees it encourages to grow taller and wider, and their roots stretch deeper. Living wood creaks and grows as it finds itself bound to obey the orders imposed on it. But that is not enough to sate the apetite of Garong. Pushing its animalistic imagination further, it commands vast blossoms to sprout on the barks of the trees. Vast enough to completely envelope a human hand, the blossoms are in full bloom. Colored a brilliant purple, they begin to eject great spurts of the black blood into the air. Immediately dissolving into a vaporous form through some will of its own, the black blood of Garong is now born by the wind currents throughout the entire length and breadth of the jungle..

The vines and creepers immediately begin to thicken immeasurably, doubling in diameter and width as they grow to monsters proportions. Garong now inserts his wordless commands into their cells, the very matter of their material fabric, grafting on them the instinct to seek out all intruders who carry within them the containment. By suffocating the host bodies, they will compel the alien microbial plague to escape their host bodies, rendering them easy prey for the predatory orifices quickly emerging in gaping, ugly gashes across the green sides of the vines. Ever open and hungry, the hungry little toothless maws will inhale into them the displaced microbes, devouring them for their sustenance. Already, Garong has created an organism that by its very nature, will come to pose a deadly threat to the existence of the Quarsooth.

The black blood continues to circulate in the vicinity of the wilderness, leaving yet more radical mutations in their wake. Little tree frogs that unwittingly draw in the vaporous black blood through the pores in their skin, soon experience the violent and dramatic changes seizing hold of their physical frames. Their bodies swell and grow massive, causing them to swell roughly to the same dimensions as a bull. But the changes do not end with a mere increase in size. The amphibians begin to develop a ravenous appetite for the flesh of all living beings clad in the shimmering armor donned by the soldiers of the Quarsooth. Driven by their new diet, the giant frogs begin to eagerly wait for such prey to enter their domain so that any one of them can swoop on him when he least expects it and swallow him whole with their freakishly expandable maws.

It is not long before the insect eating pangolins so endemic in this jungle, inhale the black blood too. And their transformation is truly terrifying to behold. Within minutes, they are transformed into fifty foot long monsters that boast thick, plated hides invulnerable to steel weapons of any kind, as well as anything but the most ferocious flames. Garong has now gone some way towards combating the greatest menace that its creations have traditionally faced. Its instincts are faultless, leaving no glaring weakness untouched.

Still floating on the currents of the wind, the vapour of black blood now begins to make contact with tiny humming birds hopping from blossom to blossom in the course of their never ending search for nectar. But the black blood leaves them with a new taste. Now they desire the blood of those infected with the pestilential containment, to drink, instead of nectar. And they know how to obtain it. Gathering themselves into vast clouds of massive feathered bodies, they will leave the jungle and devastate the closest villages in search of their meals. Everything is progressing as it should.

Finally, the black blood is discharged into the lakes and rivers dotting the jungles. There in those murky depths, the twin terrors of the waters, both the massive freshwater sharks and their mortal rivals, the gators, breathe it in through their gills and lungs respectively. And they find themselves suddenly sprouting limbs that will enable them to lumber onto land, and in the case of the sharks, primitive lungs that will allow them to survive without having to remain in the water for great stretches of time.

Both savage tribes of aquatic carnivores decide that there is an abundance of prey awaiting them on land, and no longer allow themselves to be restricted to the water any longer as they have always been by the dictate of nature in its unchallenged form.

They clamber out and begin their search for easy, weak prey. Such as those that they will soon begin to encounter as they wander ever closer to the remote settlements colonized by the Quarsooth.

The full extent of Garong's work is far from complete yet, but it has begun to provide what will be a safe haven, a base of operations for the Scions that will soon emerge from its raw, visceral creation..