THE DWELLERS IN THE PIT OF DARKNESS by Kondoru
Standard Disclaimers
Thanks to JP for Betaing
Introduction.
This story is about the ordinary Dragon Soldiers (1) of Lacryma, their role, and what they believe. I think I could tell a good tale on this; I have always been interested in such things. (The Celtic saints and Japanese Shugendo in particular.)
You will note, that though I may be a Mystic (I never really own up to such things, but I certainly have a bent in that direction. I'm more knowledgeable on the subject than many self professed true believers, and soon put them in their place.) I have no religion. I'm an Existentialist.
One of my heroes is Maurice Wilson. I won't bore you with his life (and death) you may look him up on Wikipedia if you so wish. It's not accurate but then nothing is, except perhaps his diary.
It's interesting to note that though he had a God, but no religion, and was probably an Agnostic.
This didn't stop him from going on an amazing pilgrimage, one that eventually killed him.
Someone in recent decades (Was it Arthur C Clarke?) gave a very significant quotation.
He said that the time was past for Religion and Politics, and what the world needed, was Science and Spirituality.
. ..But that's exactly what they have in Lacryma...
One of my Brothers went to a better place yesterday.
There are worse places than here...
...But he went to a better one...
We had been fighting an incursion by Shangrila.
We managed to beat them off...At the usual high cost to us.
Matt was in a bad way.
He had been crushed by falling debris, and now had multiple fractures and internal injuries.
I suppose he could have been saved, but what would be the point? His recovery would be long, and painful, and there was no way short of very serious surgery he could have been restored to normal life.
So it was agreed to move him back to our dorm in the monastery prior to him moving on.
So me and Dixie, and Rynn and Hoshi and Jo sat with him. There were the others, of course, but they kept respectfully in the background.
Matt lay silently on his bunk; we had borrowed a foam mattress from med bay for him, as normally we sleep on the bare steel.
I don't think he could feel anything though, he was very injured and also full of painkillers. We had his dose of something to send him off for good. It was up to him to say his goodbyes, distribute his few possessions among us and make his peace with the world.
"Is there anything you want to take?" I asked.
Matt shook his head as best as he could. "No, I don't think I need much."
He would have his layze, his quarterstaff, a bottle of water and a bag of food.
"What do you want as a companion?" Rynn asked.
We are not alone in our monastery of course.
There are lots of animals living with us, we have cats and dogs, mini pigs, lots of birds, these are almost all semi wild.
But they let us pick them up and pet them.
They know we won't hurt them. Unlike the people of Uptown. (Who sometimes eat them.)
(Sometimes the people of Uptown eat each other...)
It is our custom to sacrifice an animal to serve as a companion on the journey. This is no great hardship to them, there are always old and inform ones we help on their way.
Best of all, I think, are the Lovebirds. (2)
You would think in our pit of darkness we would not need colour, we see well enough, having night vision goggles in our masks. (Some of us have been altered so we have natural darkness vision, like the cats and dogs.)
But we crave it; its something there is precious little here.
The Lovebirds come in all colours.
Green, yellow, blue, purple, brown, white, grey, multicoloured.
They are the most cheery characters you could imagine, they love to play with us, and have many amusing tricks. They also chatter, and can be taught to talk.
The animals do things, they hunt vermin, or dig in the soil, or simply produce fertilizer.
But we need their companionship more than anything else.
It's very dark down here.
But not as dark as in our souls.
"A cat." Matt said finally.
"Commander Kyuan has got you a bird. A blue one." Dixie told him. She stood up, "I'll go fetch it."
Hoshi and Rynn went in search of a suitable cat.
We devote the rest of the afternoon to small talk and Matt giving away the scanty contents of his locker.
I think Matt likes me the most. He gave me his felt tips. Coloured ones.
Pretty soon Hoshi and Rynn come back bearing a gaunt striped cat. "Will this one do?" Rynn asks.
Matt is tiring, but he opens his eyes. "Yes, come on puss."
And the cat, as if knowing he's going on a journey, climbs into Matt's drawstring bag.
Matt strokes him. The cat begins to purr.
Commander Kyuan steps forwards. "I just came to say my goodbyes, Matt," he says (obviously on the verge of tears, even though he has had to do this task many times.) "Heres your bird."
Matt strokes the dead bird thoughtfully.
And then he bursts into tears. "I wanted..." he pauses, "No, don't you worry about `that`! The birds `just` fine!"
We all weep a bit.
"Please Matt...No." Whimpers Dixie. She knows what he is thinking.
I step forwards.
"Nage?" Matts eyes focus blearily on me.
"Please don't mention your family." I kneel by him. "You are long dead to them. And don't worry about us. We will fight on your behalf."
"We love you Matt; we don't mind you leaving us." Said Jo.
"We forgive you." Said Hoshi. "Get your nose out of that." He scolds the cat, who is looking at the bird in a `I don't want a bird but I have to have a look at it` way.
Matt laughs.
"So are you ready?" Asks Kyuan. "We have a really nice drink for you."
Matt has tasted the parting drink.
We all have.
Its part of our Initiation rites.
A little wont hurt you.
You just go off to sleep.
And then you wake up, no hangover.
But you are dead to the world, and now wear a dragonskin covering of layze.
You are now one of the Dwellers in the Pit of Darkness.
"Let's give puss his drink, and then we will all have a taste." Matt is cheery again. (Or else the painkillers are wearing off and he can feel the devastation of his body.)
Pretty soon the cat is licking the last of his share off Matts hand. He yawns and is gently decanted back into Matt's bag by Jo.
Eventually he falls asleep.
"Is that all?" Ponders Matt.
"Yes, we are all going to have a good nights sleep on your behalf." Rynn tells him, not very tactfully.
So we shake hands with Matt, kiss him, and have a sip of the parting glass.
Dixie has to hold it to his lips.
"Mmm, now that was good." Matt drains it. "Goodnight."
He falls asleep.
Jo yawns. "Save us supper, will you?" She asks Commander Kyuan. Who nods
We take an early night, that night.
There are no dreams.
So Matt passed away.
When you are dead, you do not feel hunger, pain or the cold. Nor can you see the darkness.
But then you cannot fight Noein.
We have each other, and the animals, but we also miss our families.
There are women in our order, who once put their children to bed, kissed them good night, then snook out and signed up.
Once you join the Order of Dragon Soldiers, you give up all ties. You are dead to the world, and are mourned as such.
No wonder we all wear our masks when outside the gates of our dark monastery. Loss of individuality...But anominity is sometimes good too.
Me, I have no family, there's no one to mourn my passing.
Except my fellow soldiers.
But I once asked one of these women, who most untactfully mentioned her children, (a big violation of manners, as you expect,) `why?`
What she said, was that she thought it was the best thing she could do for them.
Keep them safe from Noein.
I said nothing to that
But I'm not ashamed to admit, that when safe in my bunk, I had a good cry under the blanket.
Jo heard me.
She had the bunk over from mine.
"Are you all right?"
"No," I didn't fob her off with some excuse.
"Did you have a nightmare?"
We all comfort each other when we get nightmares. Nightmares are part of life here.
So I told her.
Jo did not cry herself. I didn't know whether to be annoyed at her hardness or relieved.
"You should be glad she wasn't afraid to give things up, not afraid to join our Order." Jo paused, "we fight for everyone, understand? We sacrifice `everything` in order to make a better world."
"Yes," I said weakly. We hear that chestnut all the time.
"Who do you do it for?"
I wasn't really sure. "The Lovebirds. I think they deserve a better world if any of us do not."
Jo gave a laugh. "So do I."
I dried my tears and went to sleep.
You may think it odd that we should have men and women sharing a dorm.
Certain things don't matter anymore.
We have all been radically `dealt with`
Terrible? No!
Life without sexual urges...Well, its `very good. `
You can see clearly now. (Who is spreading this stupid rumour about having things chopped off? Its true the Reizu Social Order are really keen on physical alteration of all sorts, but no, we don't get bits removed. What would be the point? We get a little chemical implant put in...Do you object to a syringe in the butt?)
It's a bit like being a small child all over again. You can hug your friends without shame or jealousy, no one gets embarrassed in the bathhouse, and life is free from care.
Chemicals seem to be our Rulers answer to most of life's problems. Hungry? We get given an appetite suppressant. Restless? Out come the tranquillisers. In pain? We have lots of painkillers.
Oh, and when we need rewarding, there's stuff for `that`.
But no ones found a drug for our general malaise.
Noein.
Really Good Things About Being a Dragon Soldier 284.
You get to be buried on the surface where the sun will see you.
The morning after Matt passed on, we buried him. (We are quite used to sharing our dorm with a corpse overnight, thank you. There have been times in which a third of the bunks had been occupied by the `rather sleeping too deeply. ` Or our other name for them `Folks who wont wake us with their nightmares`.)
` We carried him up on s stretcher, and out into the ghastliness that is the surface.
It's a little odd to be on the surface when not fighting Shangrila.
Gives us time to look around.
Perhaps its best not to see things...We have too many memories.
So we took Matt to our cemetery. Hoshi had gone on before, found rubble for a cairn. He stood there, leaning on his staff.
We buried Matt under the wan sun with his staff and his provisions and a cat and a Lovebird.
When the cairn was finished, we dismissed our layze masks for a while, as we always do on such occasions.
Dixie had a coughing fit she unsuccessfully disguised as crying.
The air...We wear masks for a reason, they are not just something to hide from our friends and enemies. The air here is tainted with dry dust, and sulphur and smoke from the many overactive volcanoes that Noein has cursed us with. He ruined our world, with all the natural disasters he could devise, so that we long for a place as good as his home.
He won't catch us that way.
But it doesn't hurt to breathe the air a little while.
"Go to a better place." Said Rynn
We were silent
"I mean, better than Shangrila." He added.
We all have to laugh at that, though it is rather forced.
"And if he goes into Darkness, that doesn't really matter, if you live in darkness." Jo said.
We rematerialised our masks and went back to our black pit.
We were happy in a sad way, so on our way back though Uptown we called upon someone and gave them a good hiding with our quarterstaves.
It's so good to be bullies!
If some shit of an Uptowner says things about us. We give them a licking.
We have quite the reputation in Uptown, I'm afraid.
Not that we care.
Nor do we go there much, except on business. It pays to be mysterious.
But we are very forgiving. Once we have duffed over our target, we always invite them to join us.
Sometimes they do.
Our enemy is called Noein.
He is Bad News.
Noein is one of those philanthropic sorts who want to make the Multiverse a Better Place.
This is by reducing the entropy of the multiverse to a stable stasis.
No more Time
And No more Humanity.
Fortunately, he lives a long way from our world of suffering. (Mostly inflicted by him. but honestly, we Lacrymans like to weep.)
Noeins world is called Shangrila,
It's a place of blue sky, green grass, white mountains and is everything our Dimension of Tears is not.
A Heaven to our Hell.
Yet, Shangrila would be Hell to us.
Noein doesn't allow `people` in his little Hell of course...
That would make the place lowbrow.
The people who `do` live with him have no bodies, they are pure spirit.
They don't even possess individuality; they form a gestalt mind.
This is ultimately what we have to fear.
Assimilation.
Can you see why we fight so desperately?
And then there's the Much Esteemed (by the Rulers) Dragon Knights.
The Flower of our Order, and general nutcases.
But we call them `Bluetails`
The Rulers want to acquire (i.e. nick) an artefact going by the code name of `Dragon Torc`
The Dragon Torc will defend us from Noein.
It will give us longer lifespans, whiter teeth, bigger screens and better dinners.
Amongst its many other virtues.
The Observers have detected this item...In the past.
Which means `someone's` going to have to go fetch it.
Fortunately, our technology is sufficiently high enough to allow time travel. (It's no good for petty matters, -like restoring our world. But of course we can't attempt that until that Bastard Noein is out of our way. Actually our Rulers are quite optimistic about terraforming.)
Not anyone can make the trip.
They have to be altered completely on a quantum level. Then implanted with the equipment that allows them permanent interface with the Quantum computer.
This takes the form of an insubstantial blue pipeline connected to their thighs (hence our name for them, Bluetails)
The Dragon Knights volunteered some years back to undergo the very experimental Quantum alteration procedure (I do not know quite what this involved except it took many years, and that some of the subjects hair went white with the stresses.)
If they weren't mad to begin with, they are completely loopy now.
But they are shit hot in a fight with Destructors!
Along with the interfaces they have also been given something called a hyper spin weaponry.
If I told you that a Dragon Knight could take down a Destructor single-handedly, you must believe me.
I for one rather dislike giving so much responsibility to such unstable souls.
But I don't think we will see them for much longer.
There used to be a lot of Bluetails
Now there's only a handful.
They die easily, more easily than we humble soldiers do.
They take the brunt of a Destructor attack, -not all of them have proved good in a fight.
And apparently Time travel carries a ridiculous amount of risk.
Many Bluetails have made the jump, only to be obliterated in warpspace, or fade away in a hostile reality, in spite of the sustaining data and reizu fed by the pipelines.
However, some have successfully reported back.
The Rulers are now confident that the Dragon Torc will be theirs.
I just hope it works like they think it should.
The Bluetails have melted down.
No less than `three` of them have run away to another dimension.
Not just that.
They murdered an Observer.
I don't believe it.
Who of any decency would `even` think of hurting an Observer? They are utterly helpless creatures. Their job is to help run the Quantum computer, and observe things, nothing more.
To hurt an Observer is the act of a monster who would harm anyone, however weak and inoffensive. Its true that they have been so altered by surgery and Reizu changing that they are barely human, that they live in pressure suits supplying a quantum altered atmosphere...But they have a role to play in our society, an important one at that.
I feel sick.
Not only did they kill this poor harmless soul; they then hacked into the Transporter room computer, using it to jump to another world.
They then deliberately disconnected their pipelines.
"They will die from lack of Reality," Kuina, their leader said (all Bluetails have been given bird names)
Which is better than what they will get if they ever make it back to Lacryma.
The Observers are very angry, as you can imagine, and it took the intervention of the Rulers to prevent them from shutting down the Transporter system the Bluetails use.
We get to spit upon and poke any Bluetail we might meet.
They seem to be sulking in their private little coop though.
"It's shameful." Said Hoshi, during break.
"The Rulers should never have trusted such madmen." Jo added. "First sniff of freedom, and they bolt, even if it means just elaborate suicide."
"And killing an Observer," I add bitterly, "who could do such a thing?"
"They will betray us to Shangrila next "growled Dixie.
I shook my head, "their boss says they will die in a strange reality." I paused "This is the cowards way out."
They all nod at that.
(1) Names.
In Noein there seems to be no real differentiation between the ordinary troops and the time travellers, they are called soldiers and knights indiscriminately.
I like to be precise with my words, but I will admit I call the Lacryman computer the Quantum computer, really its the `Reizu Simulator.` Also the organisation our heroes belong to never seems to be named, we know its a monastery (of atheists? Why not?) But nothing further. In Episode 7 Fukuro refers to the `Dragons lair` but I doubt that it is its official title.
(2) Lovebirds.
In the 1920s a Japanese princess was given a pair of blue budgerigars as a wedding gift. Back then, blue budgies were extremely rare and costly birds. These were called Lovebirds, and the Japanese, being great bird keepers, began to breed coloured budgies...They were also probably the first people to keep budgies as pets, previously they were aviary birds.