Rusty Quill presents The Magnus Archives

Episode 174 The Great Beast

The Shadow falls over everything Marine has ever known. When it had first covered her home, bathing the street beyond her window in unexpected shade she had thought it didn't eclipse.

There wasn't supposed to be one then she is sure of that although if pressed she could not have told you what day it is today. Before the Shadow fell she is sure that the sun was shining brightly although if pressed she could not have pictured it.

And the humid heat of a lingering summer had left the world sleepy and unprepared although if pressed she remembers the heat but not the season.

All told the time before the sky was covered is hazy to her but she knows that there was one a time before something blocked out the sun.

It moves and shifts as if it is willed clearly a part of some greater whole. A foot, a hand, perhaps a single finger.

To look up is to see only the smallest fraction of it covering the sky. And half of Marine's mind screams at her to get back to get further away to get to a distance where perhaps she could see the whole of it. A position where the idea of comprehending what she is looking at isn't some bitter joke.

But the other half of her mind whispers the truth that it is already so far away that to see it in its entirety is impossible. And if she did she could not understand it.

But there is another certainty within her another piece of terrible knowledge that bubbles up on bitten from somewhere in Marine's soul that is no longer hers.

It is coming closer. It is descending on her home and everything that she has ever known. And when it arrives it will not even notice that it has destroyed her.

That it has so casually wiped from the world everything that she will ever know or love. It will crush her home.

It will crush her family and her city and her world. The shadow is over everything.

Marine gathers her mother who sits in the kitchen over a pot of sour smelling tea, berating her that they should have left earlier.

She gathers her husband who snorts in the original and tells her that he is heard that there isn't really any danger at all.

She gathers her daughter who asks with wide eyes and the voice of nervous innocence where they are going. What is going on?

Marine cannot quite make out their faces as she bundles them into the car old and shuddering as it coughs into life.

Does she remember having a child? A spouse. Does she remember her mother having such a cruel snare?

It doesn't matter. They are here now and she has to save them. She cannot leave them to the growing shadow and the thing coming ever closer.

She starts to drive. The streets are empty. The blank faced strangers around them frozen, staring to the sky in still and silent expectation.

There is no traffic, nothing to stop the labored grinding of the elderly car as it carens down the street, hunting desperately for the edge of the shadow.

Marine knows if she can just escape it. Find where it ends and the sunlight hits the earth, they can be free.

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