Unsealed

Our only warning was the earth crying out in a great grinding noise that swallowed all other sounds, a yawn of some half-asleep cyclopean giant angry at being awoken. The ground shifted and we clawed at each other to stay upright.

Amidst a roiling cloud of smoke and splintering trees, something prodigious moved. The shadow was large enough that I thought that part of the mountain had broken off becoming an avalanche of boulders stampeding like stone elephants. The reality was worse. The creature that pierced through the smoke was shaped vaguely like a pale submarine, something eel-like, eyeless, and larger than any whale I'd ever seen, lifting aloft on massive membranous wings. Even as a big as they were, the wings shouldn't have been able to keep that corpulent thing in the sky. Yet it flew. Mouths opened and closed along the underside and steaming liquid poured forth in torrents, seemingly at random, adding to the rain of debris. Some began to sing.

"Mashchitim-mashchithim-mashḥitim-memitim! Memitim!"