IX - The Dragon
They stood at the foot of the dam, with the lake beyond. The front wall had partially collapsed, exposing the great silo the two had emerged from, as life had emerged from primordial soup so many millions of years before.
August felt odd. The world felt hazy around him, still and somehow moving, undulating, vibrating beyond his perception.
"How are we gonna get back up there?" August muttered, expecting a reply.
The wind whistled through the grass.
"June?"
August turned his head. Nobody. He was alone. The sun passed behind a cloud above him, casting a shadowy veil over the land. The clouds above were soft and heavy, contrasted against the bright, deep, rich blue of the sky.
August fully turned, scanning the landscape for his Ghost. He instead saw Cyrell, approaching him from the road.
Confused, August walked to meet him. Cyrell too had no Ghost.
"Cyrell? Were you heading here, too?"
Cyrell met his eyes and stifled a smile, "I found myself here without my Ghost. Something is afoot."
August's skin prickled, "Yeah, definitely. This is where I got risen, Cyrell. I think this is where the monster is."
"Do you really think so?" Cyrell furrowed his brow and glared at the dam. "Let's go."
Cyrell grabbed August's wrist and pulled him up towards the dam. They walked within a dry creek bed, the brown clay moist from the earlier rainfall. The dam itself hadn't let water through for centuries.
"Cyrell. Did you find anything at the hydroplant?"
"Indeed, I did. The basin we fought over was drained when I went back. It had become a pit, and it led deep underground. When I looked into it, I found myself here."
August listened with distracted attention. The clouds above him were flying by at a near breakneck pace. Shadows and light danced upon the ground, forming shapes and silhouettes and angry faces, bones and blood and grasping hands. August felt like he was falling over backwards, but his feet were firmly upon the ground, trotting forwards step by step as Cyrell pulled him toward the dam.
Now they were atop the silo, within the dam. August blinked hard.
"Did I black out?"
Cyrell was lowering a rope into the silo. "August, my friend, the dam is affecting you. We need to kill that thing quickly, before you succumb. Now, grab this rope. I'll lower you down."
August's knuckles felt like jelly as he gripped the rope. The silo raised and lowered like a piston, or a see-saw, or maybe a beating heart. For just a second, the rope looked like a long, thin tendril. He could only hold it with his left hand, his right was stuck in a rigid fist.
"Cyrell?"
Cyrell was climbing down the rope underneath him. "Yes?"
"I don't feel good."
"Once we get deeper in the dam, you'll recover."
They stood at the bottom of the silo. The sky was black outside the dam. Two pipes led into the darkness on either side of the filthy basin. One led to the cradle, the other was entirely unknown.
"Well, friend, we are only a step away! Let us continue."
Cyrell began to tromp into August's pipe, the one he was familiar with. August stood still, feeling a mixture of nausea and regret well up inside him. The basin smelled like dark thoughts and cold rain. Aged saliva and unfulfilled wishes.
"August? We cannot delay."
"Did I ever tell you my name?"
Cyrell stood for a moment, bewildered. "I-I just simply… knew it." A look of confusion passed over his face. He began to make his way back towards August, but a shot rang out.
Cyrell dropped dead, melting into moist, black sand.
August barely reacted, his daze worsening, his stupor all-encompassing.
Micah ran from the unfamiliar pipe, a large revolver in her hand. She spit on the dissolving mud.
"I thought he'd be fake, but I wouldn't care either way." She spun to face August, who struggled to stay conscious.
"We need to leave. Now," she grabbed his wrist with bone-crushing strength, and began pulling him toward the dark pipe. It seemed as if a black cloak had been draped over the entrance, obscuring what was just beyond. A writhing excitement stood just past the curtain, waiting in anticipation.
August felt supremely uneasy. He wrenched his arm free from Micah's grip, dislocating his wrist in the process. She continued forward, and was swallowed by the darkness.
August took a few uncertain backwards steps. He fell to the ground, splashing down in a black puddle. The silo continued up forever above him, there was no longer any semblance of a sky, of an outside world, of an escape. His nose began to bleed, goosebumps rose on his skin. He felt feverish, disoriented, betrayed, forsaken.
"Micah?" He called into the drain. A low gurgle was his only response.
"Junebug?" He spoke a second time, the words reverberating endlessly inside the infinite silo. The bones in his clenched right hand tightened. His dislocated wrist throbbed. His sweat froze over and his breath caught in his throat. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his nose began to run. He looked again into the pipe that Micah had returned to. A wet, sloshing sound could be heard from within it.
Suddenly, a torrent of thick muck cascaded out of the pipe, engulfing August and pushing him away, into the darkness of the opposite passage, the place he had woken up. The muck writhed with joy as it shot into his nose and mouth, filling his stomach and lungs and entering his blood. He fell backward into the pipe, feeling himself slamming into hard concrete and metal as the mud guided him throughout the inner working of the dam. He could hear voices in the mud, screaming, pleading for him to give in. His eyes were sealed shut. He would be freezing cold and then scalding hot second to second.
He landed hard on a concrete floor, skidding a few feet before coming to rest. Rain washed over him, and he recovered some of his senses. He peeled a thick mask of mud off of his face, and forced his eyes to open.
He laid atop the dam. The clouds were dark and rumbling overhead, with thunderous booms and flashes of lightning breaking up the steady monotony of the pounding rain. August looked over the side of the dam, seeing the familiar road he had traveled with Junebug, and the moist creek bed he had been pulled through by Cyrell. A sheet of water slammed into the back of his head, stunning him for a moment. He whirled around, climbing to his feet and shuffling over to the other side of the dam.
A tumultuous sea raged beyond the pitiful structure he stood upon. Huge waves crashed against the dam, sending a white mist into the air around him. The water boiled and bubbled, endlessly seething until the monstrous tides met the smothering clouds at the horizon. Great cyclones spun in angry spirals in the distance, battling great swells of water, blasting them apart and sending stinging droplets into a scattershot around them.
August stared at the raging sea in disbelief. His wrist had healed and he had full motor control over his body. The haze was gone. He looked over the surging flow and his eyes found a vast shape undulating beneath the surface. A pale creature, like some ancient cave-fish, twisting in longing spirals. It was enormous, dwarfing him, the dam, and the crashing waves. It felt him, and billowed upward and out of the water, nearly touching the clouds, before coming to meet him.
It was a white serpent, cloaked in glimmering quartz scales and long, translucent fins. It had his own face, magnified to hundreds of times its normal size, and it stared down at him with wide eyes and parted lips, revealing a forked tongue flicking between its flawless, marble teeth.
THIS IS ME.
THIS IS WHAT I OFFER YOU.
A WORLD FORMED AS YOU WISH IT.
The sea calmed, becoming so still that not a single ripple could survive within it. The clouds parted, the warm sun drying August's clothes and washing over him with unabated pleasure.
I CAN DO ANYTHING FOR YOU.
YOU NEED ONLY WISH IT, O LOVER MINE.
"What are you?" August found his voice, and stared into his own eyes staring back at him. "Why do you, um, love me so much?"
The serpent snaked its way around him, encircling the top of the dam, its eyes never breaking contact with his body.
WE ARE FICKLE.
WE ARE UNLOVED.
OUT WANT IS TO GRANT WISHES.
DO NOT DENY US.
August spun with the serpent, keeping his own face within his sight. He spoke with anger, recalling the torment he had faced since his rebirth. "I don't want your fucking wishes; I want you to leave me alone!"
The serpent frowned.
YOU EMBRACED ME.
YOU KEPT IN MY COMPANY.
"When!? When the FUCK did I do any of that?" August screamed in exasperation.
IN THE DEEP.
"You mean when I was fucking DEAD!? I didn't turn you away cause I was fucking not alive you… hellish, fucking THING! I DON'T WANNA LIVE IN SOME FANTASY LAND YOU MADE UP! BRING ME BACK TO REALITY!"
AS YOU WISH IT.
August blinked, and immediately felt his nostrils and throat full of mud again. He was still being shot through the rusted, old pipes of the dam, being carried by a wave of mud with a life of its own. He had the sensation of falling, before he felt himself crash into soft, squishy ground. He again peeled a glob of mud off his face, but this was reality. His dislocated wrist ached, he tasted the mud in his mouth and vomited over himself, blinking rapidly to fight away the crust that had set over his eyes.
He sat on the other side of the dam, but instead of a raging sea, his watering eyes found a lake of mud, baking in the noonday sun. The shadow cast by the dam preserved a small patch at its foot, forever wet. He looked up, and saw the rusted pipe he had been shot out of. A small stream of dark water dripped from it.
The mud near him gurgled, and a pale shape rose from it. It was roughly twice his size, with six clawed legs, seemingly a mix between a bird and a bear. It was hairless, with a segmented head and a mane of undulating tendrils, each tipped with a sharp tooth.
THIS IS REAL.
YOUR WISH IS GRANTED.
The creature waded through the mud to him, and he stepped back in revulsion and horror, the thick sediment caught his leg and he fell backward. The creature mounted itself atop him, hot breath flowing over him. Its head opened, revealing a flat, red face with dozens of eyes and rows of teeth.
COMMAND ME.
LOVE ME.
I WILL GIVE YOU EVERYTHING.
"I wish you would FUCKING DIE AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"
The beast slumped over him, its red face falling next to his. Its flesh melted off its body like mud, mixing with the ground, leaving only an alien skeleton over him. Its bones were rough and yellow, and stank of chlorine.
His fist unfurled, and Junebug flew out, relieved
"Fuck. You killed it? Just like that?"
"J-June? Where'd you come from?" August broke into a coughing fit.
"You grabbed me while we walked up to the dam, moron. This thing has been fucking with you since before we got in the dam."
"Oh." August crawled out from underneath the skeleton. "Do you know what this thing is?" August broke into a fit of heaving coughs, expelling mud from his windpipe.
"No clue, and Micah's not here to tell us."
August grabbed a rib for support, and it snapped off, the rest of the skeleton dissolved into dust. He looked at the bone shard in his hand, and placed it in his tattered pocket.
"What now?"
"Well, we'd be a whole lot safer at the Traveler, so I say we start heading there."
"Where's that?"
"You wouldn't know, but it's pretty far away. We're going to have to find a ship, and those don't come around that often."
August picked at dried mud in his hair and ears.
"Hey, when we get there, do you mind if I tell people this story? I think I have a unique perspective on it, as a spectator."
"Whatever."
August began tromping through the mud, slowly making his way to the edge of the murky pool. The sun peeked out from behind a cloud overhead, casting light over the grassland. The dry stalks rustled in the wind, and the world moved on.
