The deep orange dunes of the desert forests of planet Dhal stretched out endlessly. It was a still, dead air, bereft of even a whispering breeze. Hungry, stale clouds of dust exploded upwards behind the breakneck speed of the Atmos 1 Desert Exploration Vehicle, or DEV for short.

 

“Two clicks to destination, over.”

 

“Heard. Watch your speed, Jason, it’s not going anywhere, over,” a static-muffled voice responded through the radio.

 

“We’ve been terraforming this planet for hundreds of Earth years,” Jason said, rushing his words together, “and seemingly overnight, twenty-seven equidistant anomalies showed on radar. I’m not going to take any chances in case it does decide to disappear again.”

 

“We’re almost in orbit.”

 

“Well, meet me at the anomaly,” Jason said.

 

When the landing craft finally touched down just beyond Jason’s makeshift research area, he was hard at work with several recording instruments and lights illuminating the darker sections of the solid structure that dwarfed the man. It was a dome, blue-green like aged and oxidized brass. Jason hardly looked up from his panels as three others joined him.

 

“Anything good?” asked Erin, the captain of this expeditionary force.

 

“I took some samples of the material; fascinating. Simply fascinating,” Jason said.

 

One of the scientists that arrived with Erin pulled at a display screen, angling it towards him and read aloud its contents. “Sixty-eight percent hydroxyapatite, two percent water, two percent silica, twenty-four percent organic proteins, mainly collagen type one, four percent noncollageonous protein.”

 

“D’you know what else is chemically structured like this? Well, except for the silica, that stuff’s everywhere,” Jason asked.

 

“I’ll bite,” Erin said, then continued sarcastically, “oh wise Guru of the Desert, pray tell us undeserving ignorant ones of your genius!”

 

“Bone!” Jason exclaimed, unfazed by the captain’s mocking tone. “Human bone. Well, not just human, any animal has the same sort of structure–”

 

“Bone? You think this is an animal bone?” Erin asked, cutting him off.

 

Before Jason could reply, the sand surrounding the blue-green dome began to shift, flowing inwards into the structure before sinking beneath it. The dunes followed suit, threatening to swallow both the equipment and the ones who manned them underneath.

 

Erin grabbed at Jason’s collar, pulling him back just as the sand beneath him gave way, hauling him towards her and urging the other two with her to do the same. They scrambled up the still flowing sands towards the DEV and threw themselves on top. Jason managed to slip out from Erin’s grasp and fall behind, struggling to find his footing and slowly losing ground, and the dunes continued to flush themselves down into some unknown chasm. Erin clambered over the vehicle’s roof and stretched out as far as she could, latching a foot onto the metal hood beam near the front.

 

“Reach!” Erin screamed, the sound of the sand turning into a deafening gust. “Reach, damn you!”

 

Jason thrust out with all his might but fell just short of Erin’s grasp. He stumbled once, scrambled to his feet, and stumbled again, rolling head over heels backwards and falling beneath the sand waterfall.

 

Erin screamed, a broken, tortuous wail as the two scientists still in the DEV pulled at her to drag her back into the vehicle. A moment later, it reversed hard, barely edging out the quickly widening chasm. Then, just as quickly as it had started, the sand settled and instead of a flat plain around the dome, there was now a deep chasm, uncovering a sight that struck fear into the hearts of those who looked upon it, silencing the clamor of just moments before.

 

It was a skull, unfathomably large. Its brow was adorned with an embossed crown, weaving intricate and beautiful patterns throughout. Below the jaw were pipes and tubes, beginning and terminating on a collar that rested below the sand’s surface, only peering through slightly.

 

“A spot of help, please?” Jason said, his voice weak and unsteady. He poked his head out from one enormous eye socket. The three standing by the DEV rushed down the slopes to Jason, hugging and lavishing him with kisses and tears.

 

“Okay, okay,” Jason chuckled, “let’s get whatever equipment survived and see what we can figure out.”

 

“What’s there to figure out?” Erin asked. “Oh, you haven’t seen it!”

 

“Seen what?”

 

“Oh God, Jason. It’s a skull. A human skull by the look of it.”

 

Jason’s eyes bulged, his head whipping around and inspecting the cavern they stood in. “Christ. This is an eye socket. Look, that’s the lacrimal, the ethmoid right there, sphenoid,” Jason’s voice trailed off. Something was rumbling, ever so slightly, followed by an eerie blue light growing in luminance from all around. “Out! Out, out, now!” Jason roared.

 

They high-tailed it back to the DEV, more stable on their feet this time, but as they reached their destination, they looked back in horror, frozen solid like Lot’s wife looking upon Sodom’s destruction. The mere sight that unfolded drove the four humans insane, each dying of shock from knowledge they were not meant to have.

 

A pale light drifted downwards from the skull’s crown, an otherworldly visage of a face floating just in front of the bone. With a groan, the ground shuddered and gave way as a skeletal arm burst forth from the sands, gripping the soft substrate and lifting the rest of its body free.

 

It was barely understandable. A veritable God emerged from the planet Dhal; twenty-seven of them, in concert. The haughty human effort at terraforming a new planet instead awoke an ancient prison, releasing a power that should not be. Taller than mountains and with a hunger that could not be sated, twenty-seven Gods rose.