Ascension
Written for Bradley Ramsey's Flash Fiction February challenge. Day 2 Prompt
Moriah stood at the door to Calla’s study. The wood was dark, weathered by time. It smelled of tobacco and salt. The air coming from beneath the door filled the corridor with the scents of electricity and smoke. As if a stellar fire-storm was on the other side. She had always wondered why Calla’s rooms needed to be sealed with wood from a tree that only grew in the universe she came from. Surely a true Goddess wouldn’t need sealed rooms and filtered air. She would be able to change the atmosphere into whatever she needed.
But Moriah kept her questions to herself. It was forbidden to ask about what Calla could, or couldn’t do.
She was the Savior.
She was the reason the universe was stable and able to support life.
The spaces Calla lived in had always been off-limits. But Moriah was sixteen now, and sixteen meant she was allowed to knock, allowed to announce herself, allowed to call Calla her teacher. She was lucky. Calla didn’t choose just anyone to be her disciple. She only selected those she believed could ascend to the higher universes. The places she called home.
Moriah knocked. The sound rolled in waves like thunder. Echoing down the hallway and through to the other side of the door.
No answer.
She hesitated, wondering how long she was supposed to wait before knocking again. She hoped someone would walk by that she could ask. Anyone at all. But most people avoided the door entirely. Frightened by the ancient rumors told in dark corners and folktales shared around campfires. Those who entered the study were never seen again.
Moriah had lived here her entire life and had never known of a single person disappearing.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and knocked again. This time she heard shuffling and the hiss of wind as the center of the massive door warped in and then snapped back into place. Moments later the screech of metal on metal as bolts slid and the door swung open.
Calla stood there.
Dressed in white.
Her light was blinding, like the sun.
Moriah had to look away. She breathed, focused her mind, then turned her eyes back on Calla.
“Child, you have come. I’m so pleased you are here.” Calla hissed. The words arrived inside Moriah’s mind before Calla seemed to speak. Her voice was a high-pitched whine. Otherworldly. Something in between velvet and screaming.
Moriah stumbled back, fighting to keep her balance.
“H-Hello,” Moriah said.
“Come inside.” Calla stepped back and waved her through the door.
Moriah stood in a circular foyer. The floor was white marble, inlaid with concentric gold rings that descended toward the center. The ceiling reflected the design in reverse, rising to a single point that glistened brilliantly. Moriah blinked. The light of the room was as unsettling as Calla’s voice. And like her, seemed holy, and yet, something wasn’t right.
“Something wrong bless-ed one,” Calla shrilled in Moriah’s head.
The room started to spin.
Vertigo.
She couldn’t tell where the floor began and the ceiling ended. Everything was moving too fast, she was going to throw up.
And then it stopped.
As if it never happened.
“N-no, nothing is wrong,” Moriah answered.
For a moment Calla seemed… disappointed.
“Gooood,” she hissed. “Please come into the parlour and sit now.”
Moriah was glad to be out of the foyer, but she couldn’t shake the unease. Calla was different in person. Taller, stranger, maybe dangerous.
Except for her disciples and the colony leaders, people only knew the beautiful Goddess who appeared on the monitors in every apartment and home.
Each morning began with Calla leading prayers. Materializing on the screens, she would offer love and encouragement for the day. She cheered them on, reminding them how special each and every one of them were.
She was radiant.
Magical.
A Goddess wrapped in light.
Moriah lowered herself onto a plush pink sofa, Victorian in design. Flanked by two matching chairs and a shaggy white rug. The room, like the foyer, was also circular. Painted blush pink with ornate white wallpaper covering one side.
Calla sat in a chair across from her.
“Are you ready for a paradigm shift, my dear,” she said,
Her glow brightened, her eyes sparkled, and sprays of her hair drifted in front of her face.
“Sure,” Moriah managed to whisper.
Calla began, “You see my dear, you exist here, in this tiny universe. So small with all its planets spinning around.”
Calla stood and walked to the white wall. Moriah glanced away and caught something in her peripheral vision. Confused, she turned her head and there it was. Calla, but dark, not human, not the Goddess Moriah grew up worshiping. She was something else.
“Is your neck okay,” Calla asked, gently, lovingly. Breaking Moriah from her thoughts.
“Oh, yes, I was just stretching it. I slept funny last night,” she lied.
Calla breathed, or maybe it was a hiss of another kind.
“Alright, let’s continue,” she said. “Your universe was having… problems with gravity. That is why I came here. To bring it back into balance and to provide a world for your ancestors. For all the generations up until now.”
Stepping back, she pressed her hand on the wall. It shimmied, and parted. Like curtains being drawn aside. Revealing a window looking out into space. Billions of stars shimmered, galaxies spiraled around planets, and luminous arcs glowed everywhere.
Moriah gasped,
“It’s incredible.”
“Yes it is,” Calla whispered.
“It all glows, the same way your foyer does,” Moriah said.
“You’re quite observant,” she purred. ”Perhaps you are more intelligent than I thought.”
“Why, do they have the same light,” Moriah managed to ask her.
Calla moved. Not walked. She moved across the room in an instant without a blur. She simply appeared on the other side.
Again, Moriah thought she caught a glimpse of something else. Not Calla.
She needed to get a good look at whatever was seeping through.
She asked again,
“Why does the universe glow like that?”
“I balanced it,” Calla answered.
“How?”
Calla moved. This time she appeared in front of the window. One pale finger tapping on the glass.
“I tethered it together,” she said.
“How,” Moriah asked again, forcing power into her voice.
Calla answered in Moriah’s mind. No words, just a high-pitched piercing shriek that tilted the room.
“I won’t pass out,” she screamed.
Calla stopped.
“So many questions. Maybe you are the one,” she whispered, more to herself than to Moriah.
“One what,” Moriah asked.
Calla shimmered. Rippled. Maybe she glitched.
“One what,” Moriah asked again.
“I cannot stay here eternally,” Calla said. “When I leave, this universe will die, because there will be no need for it to exist anymore.”
Moriah stood up,
“What do you mean you’re leaving and the universe will die,” she shrieked.
“I saved your universe,” Calla hissed. “It was being drawn into the black hole of another dimension. I stopped it. I caught it.”
“If you stopped it, why can’t it just stay where it is, without you,” Moriah asked.
“It will have no purpose. It will collapse,” Calla replied.
“No purpose! We live here.”
“Your purpose will no longer be needed,” Calla said, matter of factly.
Moriah shook her head,
“That doesn’t make sense.”
She could see out the window. The luminous arcs that wrapped around the planets weren’t nebulae. They were silk. A web that stretched across the galaxies.
“I spun it to catch your universe before it was consumed. You live inside it,” Calla said.
The thing Moriah had seen in her peripheral vision began to reveal itself.
She had legs. Many of them. Too many of them.
Calla grew as they unfolded. Black and vast she spread out in the room.
“I am old now,” Calla sighed. “If the web is abandoned this universe will be devoured.”
“What about us, your disciples,” Moriah asked.
“Disciples? Disciples are food,” she answered, without blinking any of her eight eyes.
Moriah’s chest heaved. She gasped for air.
Calla extended an enormous limb. She pointed its razor-sharp tip at Moriah.
“You are the first that was not afraid of me, you are intelligent, and you fought back. You will be the one to maintain the web.”
She moved. And pierced Moriah in the back.
Moriah felt something inside her.
The monitors in Calla’s lair flickered and reloaded.
On the screen, Moriah saw herself. Not herself. Glitching as she began to lead the morning prayers.
copyright ©2026 by Rachel Tribble
Musical Pairing ;)
That was totally original and well-crafted/ i totally enjoyed it
Whaaaat I was not expecting some borderline HORROR HERE. BIG ASS SPIDER LADY. Imagery as always, is a TEN. So good.