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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/DestroyatronMk8 on 2025-10-01 17:26:33+00:00.

Mankind likes to believe that there are no monsters. That they have always ruled the world. It is not so.

Gwydion trudged up the old dirt road. The dark of a forest surrounded it, dimly illuminated by just a sliver of the moon. He imagined the area had been beautiful once. Natural. Soothing. Now it looked sinister. Like there were nightmares hiding behind every tree.

Perhaps there were.

Gwydion wondered if it might have been smarter to drive. He’d parked his car a few miles back, traveling on foot in an effort to be stealthy. Normally he would drive up anyway, trusting in his power to keep himself hidden. Not this time.

Gwydion was tall and dressed all in black. Black pants. Black boots. A black t-shirt with an alien skull and crossbones on the chest. Below the crossbones were the words SPACE PIRATES: GIVE ME YOUR BOOTY. IN SPACE. A black leather trench coat stirred slightly in the breeze. Gwydion was more lean than bulky, with sharp grey eyes and a ponytail of silky blonde hair. .

The woods were silent. Eerily so. There were no rustlings of squirrels or rabbits in the brush. No birds. No crickets. Nothing but the wind in the trees. And the whispers.

The whispers were the reason Gwydion had chosen not to drive. They were quiet. Subtle. Everywhere. They pressed in around him, soft enough that he could almost make out the words if he listened a little harder. Gwydion did no such thing. That way lies madness. Even for him.

The whispers grew louder the closer Gwydion came to the source. Eventually he saw it. An old church. Peeling white paint. A broken cross leaning on a steeple. It was old. It had probably been charming once. A place of faith and peace and worship, blessed with the touch of the divine. Now it was none of those things.

A terrible light was coming out of the windows and a pair of holes in the roof. The light was a color mortal eyes had never seen. Must never see. The color of madness. It didn’t make any sense. That wasn’t how light was supposed to work. If the whispers hadn’t been proof enough, the light made it certain. There was a power from outside of reality in that church. Something that could ignore physics and twist the world beyond reason.

Vines crept up the walls, but they were dead. Blackened. So was the grass. The closest trees had withered in on themselves, twisting into nightmare shapes. They were dead now, too. Cars were parked all over the dead lawn of the church. A lot of cars. Gwydion sighed. He was late. Too late.

He’d been hoping to find cultists or similar ilk. Foolish mortals playing with forces they didn’t understand. The world was full of such groups, and they were mostly harmless. Well. Not harmless, but not capable of threatening humanity so much that Gwydion had to intervene. As for the dangerous few that could? Gwydian made a point of finding and killing them. Preferably before they could summon anything from Outside. It was work he enjoyed. Gwydion had been known as a trickster and a magician, but he was a warrior, too. It was one of the reasons he’d been chosen.

When the humans had raised the Veil and banished the gods, Gwydion and a few others had been allowed to stay. Forced to, really. It was their job to protect the world from things the mortals couldn’t face alone. Alien deities, eldritch horrors, and especially things from Outside. Things like the one in the church.

Gwydion took a moment to check his weapons. Two pistols. A shotgun. Two swords. One of the swords Gwydion had made himself. The other used to belong to Freyr. Gwydion had stolen it from a Jotun. He also had a couple of knives and a fair amount of extra ammunition. And his magic, of course.

Speaking of magic, he was getting close to the church. It was time for a little something extra. Gwydion called upon his power. His magic could do many things, but his bread and butter was illusion. He cast one now. Gwydion disappeared. He was invisible, save for his shadow. His footsteps made no sound.

Gwydion walked up to the door of the church. The door was closed. Gwydion cast another working before he opened it. Anyone watching wouldn’t see or hear the door being opened. Gwydion drew his pistol and pushed open the door.

The first thing he saw was an orb resting on an altar in the back of the church. The orb was about the size of a bowling ball. It was perfectly smooth. It glowed with the light that should not be seen.

The glowing orb seized Gwydion’s attention. It tried to pull him in, force him to gaze into its depths. It took all the power of his disciplined mind to tear his gaze away.

Gwydion’s wandering gaze fell on a different problem. The room was full of people. At least fifty of them. Half of them were dead. The other half…

Gwydion saw one man eating his own fingers. A little old lady laughed as she used her hands and a pocket knife to remove the skin from her face. A naked man had broken some of the old pews into pieces and set them on fire. He was sitting in the fire. He was naked. He was also weeping.

Everywhere Gwydion looked he saw a different horror. People were fornicating and torturing and eating each other. The church had once been a holy place. A place of comfort and worship. Now no trace of divine presence could be found. Instead it was a place of madness.

Gwydion sent up a prayer to Yahweh. More a message than a prayer, really. Gods didn’t generally worship each other. It was one of the things that made faith so hard to come by. He asked the christian god to take in these damned souls and give them comfort. He didn’t get an answer, but he was sure the trinity had heard.

Outsiders were dangerous for a lot of reasons, but the biggest was the madness they bring. Even a brief exposure could devastate the mind of a mortal. He’d heard that was what happened to Lovecraft, and the reason so many of the author’s stories reflected beings he should not have known about.

These people had taken a lot more than a brief exposure. No amount of time or therapy would help them. Gwydion didn’t know if there were cultists among them, or if the orb from Outside had found a way in on its own and called them here. It didn’t matter now. There was nothing Gwydion could do to save them. Their minds were broken, shattered by the touch of the Outside.

Gwydion drew his second pistol. He would kill them quickly. It was all he could do for them. He took aim.

The madman eating his fingers looked up. He looked Gwydion in the eye. He pointed with his fingerless hand and let out a scream.

Gwydion shot him.

The gun was silent. Gwydion’s spell meant he made no sound. The man dropped with a hole in his skull. It was too late. All the other people in the room looked up. Looked at him.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Gwydion was invisible. But the people saw him anyway. Maybe it was the madness. Insanity could make you see things that weren’t there, but it could also let you see things that are hidden. Or maybe it was the orb’s doing. Maybe the color that shouldn’t be seen was cutting through his spell.

Either way, the madmen in the church all let out a wail. Some of them rushed him. Gwydion opened fire. He’d killed three people before he noticed some of the others reaching for things. No. Reaching for guns. Not good.

Stories and tv shows made gods out to be more powerful than they really were. Gwydion was stronger and faster and tougher than a mortal, but he wasn’t invincible. Bullets would kill him just as easily as they killed everyone else. Gunpowder was the main reason humans had come to dominate the planet. You’d be surprised how many things a bullet could kill. There were things that were immune, but not many.

Gwydion ran. The sound of gunshots chased him as he bolted out onto the lawn. He needed cover. In the movies you could hide behind a table or a couch or a wall, but in real life that was a quick way to die. Furniture wouldn’t stop a bullet, and walls didn’t do much better unless they were stone or brick. The walls of the old church were plain wood. No help at all.

Gwydion leapt over the hood of a pickup on the lawn. It was a beat up old white chevy. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, either. Gwydion didn’t stop, but he ducked low, hoping to break line of sight. He holstered one of his pistols and drew the Sword of Freyr.

Freyr’s sword had a proper name, but Gwydion didn’t know what it was. It was a beautifully crafted longsword in the viking style, with a leatherbound hilt and a three foot blade lined with runes.

The sword was supernaturally sharp and extremely durable, but that wasn’t what made it special. Most enchanted swords were sharp and tough. What made it special was the enchantment Freyr had given it.

The Sword of Freyr would fight on its own. He tossed the sword up in the air as he ran. The sword floated for a moment, then turned and launched itself at one of the madmen spilling out of the church. It stabbed him in the heart, then jerked itself out of his chest and lopped off the head of an old lady with no face.

Gwydion kept running, dodging around or under cars and staying out of sight as best he could. He made it to the tree line and kept going. The trees close to the church were so withered and rotten he wasn’t sure they’d stop a bullet. He was thirty feet into the woods before he found a living tree of decent size. He ducked behind it.

He could hear screams and gibbering and gunfire. Gwydion leaned around the tree carefully, showing as little of h…

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