The Evolver

The Evolver

In the depths of the darkest bog, where sin would coagulate and be devoured and spewed by all manner of pondscum, would a disaster grow and live; wrought from all the evil humanity had not named. The terrible beast slowly rose from its waters, as all those evils that cultivated it now fled in terror. It stomped through the marsh, its mind still unformed, and it bit at the hanging vines and the toads. This would be the entirety of its early life in the swamps. No manner of change until one day, where it viciously shook its head while frog legs dangled, and it found the taste of blood to be bitter. Or rather, it “knew” it was bitter. Sticky, no sweetness to it, but he did not know sweetness, and had no manner to, so how could he know if this was not it?

Regardless, it spat out the frog, and saw the top half of it missing, and that messy inside which disgusted it. It questioned how it ever ate that, and then quickly turned to the vines. It took a bite out of the overgrowth and saw a simple green interior, and took to eating. Its mind was beginning to form, and too, a long war. 

It felt so much more now, it realized, as it walked back to the pond which had spawned it. It still stomped toward it, but now feared the smashing sound of it. And when it saw its pond, full of scum, and grime, and far too much more, disgust set in. He had spent every night enveloped in that filth, comforted by it. Now when he set a spiny toe within, it burned. Its skin hissed and so was withdrawn, and still it hissed; now from the air. Its scales burnt and felt like they may pop, and it set toward a tree, clawing the bark off and tearing it apart with its horrid jaws. 

The horror did not settle, and so, it just returned to its normal habits, now fueled through dread. As it walked from tree to tree, tearing off vines and devouring trees whole, it came upon a clear pond. It looked within, and did not see its body. It saw this original blackness, in a single glance it knew what it came from. Its thoughts told it that it despised that dark, but it felt no great hatred toward it, whether or not the beast truly hated it, we may never know.

Though the creature would begin anew, leaving the swamp, that plague remaining within. The black of his soul only grew alongside him, and innumerable layers of white paint could not change what was written, and the unwritten. He scoured forests, eating the greenery until he saw it waning, then leaving urgently for the next. 

He saw many villages and towns along his trek. Brimming with life. With humans. He recognized their design being comparable to his own, yet so different. He would grow brave and stalk the edges of those worlds, stealing books and vegetables. He slowly became literate, and discovered disregarded stories. So many tales and battles that had simply been thrown aside. His hate grew from this.

He learned to hate the men, knowing what would be done to him. For in those tales the monsters were always threats, no matter how much he recognized them. Beasts that were called terrible, yet had not grown their teeth or their hearts. Monsters that were gored and obliterated, and then that death celebrated. He knew if he went within one of those worlds, he would become the ending of a story, and so, he waited outside them. And once, when seeing them dance, and share merriment and kisses, and exchange laughter like breath, his first words would be: “I wish it could happen to me.”

His voice sounded so wretched, this cruel reflection of himself, just another thing to control and humiliate. He wrapped bony fingers along his long snout and ran to the woods. A young boy watched him flee and whispered to his mother, which would soon end that party. He would see torches descend toward the woods and leave for another worldless place.

By now he had stolen tools, chisels and mallets, saws and nails, and a grindstone. He dragged it all behind him, leaving a line through the dirt like a plow. He thought the thinness of that line to be like his heart. Which had grown thousands of times in size, and which he feared could grow no further without bursting. It took the grandest things for him to have any reaction, all the glory compacted into one event for him to feel. He thought many reactions, and feelings, and practiced them in his mind, but they did not arrive.

And the chisel and saw had worn his snout down to half its size, but it still stuck out so far. He still could not reach the tip, and the grindstone had made the lines of body grow thinner, but still so prominent. And the deconstruction of the lines of his eyes had not been seen. Did they grow long from his knowledge, or from his nature?

So many heroes absorbed into him, so many monsters exorcised. And still the black of his soul swirled around an atom of white. A drop of paint that had sunken in, soon to be pushed out. The behemoth knew this entirely, and still, took the chisel, and shaped his snout into a grin. Wearing away at the lines and the frown. And the lines of his eyes now a half circle. And his fingers far shorter and thinner, far smoother. Like one big scale plated him. His embodiment of nature accelerated this weathering, and it would be his only comfort.

And as his treks grew longer, he would recognize himself as the sole librarian of all his spiritual understandings. His singular divination wrought such doubt that he turned over ideas like a handle being spun. He insisted that no souls were black and his heart was mistaken, for there was such a difference between the two. And that pain that came whenever he spoke that would quickly silence him.

And upon his final trek, in his ultimate, final, developments. The inky depths still buried any possible grace. So when he came upon a dying knight, and it coughed at him, begging to die. He raised its sword, and struck his chest. And it would laugh at him. When its troop recovered the man, it would tell them of how it had found the smartest creature in all the lands: The Beast that thought to slay itself.