A Druinte of the planet Druont is an average of seven feet tall, which is about two feet taller than the average human. The average Druinte weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds in Earth’s gravity.
Halgod was almost nine feet tall and he had an abnormality among mainstream Druintes. All Druintes have three fingers on each hand, including an opposable thumb with a long, talon-like nail, but each one of Halgod’s fingers had long nails and he was able to retract them at will. It is believed that Halgod is the child of the race of Druintes who are known to inhabit the wilds of the uninhabitable continents of the planet Druont, and that e was somehow left on the steps of the Hall of Orphans where e was found with a name card indicating e was the seventh iteration of Halgod, though no Halgod had ever been registered in Triusia’s population, and e was raised like every other orphan that was left there. Halgod was closely watched and studied during eris time at the orphanage and the scientists of the Mighty Druintes Delegation of Scientists, or MDDS, determined that the wild Druintes were evolutionarily different than mainstream Druintes who had formed their society over thirty millennia ago.
Halgod’s presence at the Hall of Orphans was strange. No wild Druinte had ever been spotted outside of the wilds of Druont, as though they refused to leave the cover of the exotic canopy of the dense rainforest that covered much of the planet. No Druinte with the physical characteristics of Halgod had ever presented in the whole of mainstream society and it made the Lead Scientist, Duraq the Only, very curious.
Long ago on Druont, what seemed to be a meteor impacted the planet in a dense section of forest. The wilds of Druont have ancient trees with huge, exposed roots that tower over the forest floor and many creatures call the forest home. Some of the forest-dwelling creatures are unable to withstand the environment outside of the dense forest; inside there is minimal direct sunlight and oxygen levels in the air are much higher than the flat lands that would eventually become home to Triusia.
The meteor is believed to have brought the organic material that started the race of Druintes who evolved in the wilderness as agile, sloth-like creatures, who eventually fled their apex predators of the forests to walk upright on the flat lands. Expeditions to the ancient site of the meteor impact are as old as mainstream Druinte culture; the massive crater formed into a lake and transformed the land so dramatically that the apex predator of the Druintes fled the area. It is the only part of the rainforest that the mainstream Druintes visit.
This spot was sacred to ancient mainstream Druintes and it has continued significance to the wild Druinte population. They would describe it as a place of magic, often dark magic with tragic consequences for the Druinte who meddled with it. Mainstream Druintes do not have a word for magic.
Following the devastating explosion in Triusia, that killed a third of the planet’s population, and during the recovery efforts to rebuild the damaged city, the fully intact and naked body of Halgod 7 was found amidst the rubble of the damaged sections of the Pyramid for Biological Sciences. E was unconscious but alive and he was immediately taken for observation.
Detective Paul Young was shaking when he made it to his empty house. It looked exactly the same as it had when his family was still alive. Even when he was drunk and stumbling over himself, Young made an effort to keep the place spotless, just as his wife Darlene had done. Every weekend he would fill the house with her favorite music, classic Motown R&B, and scrub the hardwood floors by hand (he could never get the floors quite as clean as she could with a mop, maybe he used it wrong), then the walls. He washed the inside of every window in the house and then the outside of the first floor windows. He took the time to dust everything and he even vacuumed the curtains that Darlene had made herself. He took his time in the kitchen and usually on Sundays he would force himself to try her recipe for roast beef. He got better each time he tried, but regardless of the outcome, he set the table for four and usually sat softly crying while he ate. He did it to honor the home they had made, but he was just wallowing in his own mystery.
When he made it home after his encounter with the giant monster, he was frantic and knocked things over absent mindedly. He made sure that every lock in the house was secure and he paced back and forth to the first floor windows to see if the monster had followed him.
He’d been drinking, but he was sure of what he had seen. First there was the clicking sound that started far away in the shadows as he sat on the sidewalk of the empty street in front of his favorite bar. Then the sound seemed to approach and the monster, the giant man with long claws, emerged in front of him. Young ran, he lived about fifteen minutes from downtown Tennessee and he made it home quickly. And just when he was starting to feel confident that the monster hadn’t followed him, he saw the thing standing mostly in shadows in his backyard. There was a low fence all around Young’s house and he figured that the monster was tall enough to make easy work of it. The pace of his heartbeat quickened when he saw it. He couldn’t see its eyes, but Young wondered if it could see him peeking and he quickly jerked his head away from the curtain and let it fall.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Should I call for backup?, he thought. He called his closest friend at the Department, Detective Marcus Colston.
“Hey, I was wondering if you could stop by and check something out for me,” he said, trying to hide the slur in his voice.
“What you got going on, old man?” Colston asked, and it was obvious that Young had woken him from a deep sleep. Colston liked Young despite the opinion of their peers but Young was a hard man to befriend after his family died. Colston had tried to invite the man over for dinner with his family, but Young seemed content to be alone when he didn’t have to be around other people.
“I just need another set of eyes on something. Don’t know if I should be suspicious or not. I hate to bother you, it being a school night and all. I know you got kids.”
“I’ll swing by. Do I need my weapon?”
“Can’t hurt I suppose,” Young said and ended the call. He grabbed his gun. He expected Colston to arrive soon and he went out the front door to wait for him. Young eyed the sides of his house from the sidewalk to see if the monster would emerge, but Colston arrived before anything happened.
“So what you need?” He asked as he got out of his car and approached Young.
“I think there’s something in my backyard. I saw it through the window. It looked like a man, but way bigger, claws on its fingers.”
Colston looked concerned as he drew his weapon and loaded it. “You smell like you’ve been enjoying yourself tonight. You sure you saw what you saw?”
Young looked at the man in the eyes. “You know me. When was the last time I called you over to my house? And I know you. I wouldn’t bother you like this for nothing.”
Young had Colston follow him into the backyard and as soon as they made it to the back, they saw the monster, standing still as though it was waiting for them. Both men raised their weapons and stood side by side.
“You’re trespassing,” Young yelled. “If this is a prank, it’s over now. There’s two guns on you.”
Then the clicking noise started again, much louder than Young remembered and he saw the long claws on the monster’s right hand moving quickly. As the clicking continued, the monster made a noise like it was moaning, humming, or singing. Colston seemed to panic.
“What the fuck is going on?” Colston yelled. “Put your hands up and shut up now or I’ll empty this gun!”
“Easy there,” Young said as the sounds from the monster intensified. “Let’s deescalate if we can…”
Before Young could finish, the monster was on him. It swung wildly and knocked Colston on his back, then grabbed Young around his neck. He closed his eyes tight, as he felt the large rough hand tighten around his neck, and he heard gunfire.
When Young opened his eyes again, he was on the ground and he stared up at Colston.
“I think it’s dead,” he said panting like he had jogged a mile. His eyes were wide and it was clear that he was still afraid. Young sat up to see the body of the monster lying face down in his backyard.
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