S Peter Davis
All characters (C) SEGA, Archie and SP Davis 2004 (unless otherwise noted.
Used without permission To contact the author
Two:
Colours of Worship
I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert, you can't remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.
- America
It's getting so creepy, just nursing this ghost of a chance,
The fiction, the romance and the technicolour dreams Of black-and-white people.
- Matchbox Twenty
INTERDEPENDENCE
I
The colours whirled. Every colour of the spectrum. But only in Sonic's head.
Sonic, the weak, parched shadow of his former self, was reduced to crawling along the desert floor. He'd dropped his empty water bottle behind the large dune which now made up part of the horizon, and his tongue extended its full length past his gums, as dry as the sand he was crawling on. The first kilometre without water, he was kicking himself for misjudging the size of the desert, and for assuming that Cinos isurely/i wasn't going to trek into it's heart, that he'd travel into a town or off the side to a scrub forest or an oasis. The second kilometre without water, he noticed he was no longer sweating, that the sun had squeezed the last remenants of loose water from his pores. It was about then that Sonic had begun to get delirious.. thinking about the strangest things, such as 'wouldn't it be funny if the cacti could talk' or 'I wonder what the world would be like if the sky was green and the plants were blue'. This was bad enough, but now he was on his third kilometre without water, and the sky iwas/i green, and the plants iwere/i blue, and the cacti were singing "It's a Small World After All" while the spinifex shrubs held a tea party.
At least, they were to Sonic.
So now he was crawling, and the obvious threat of death never even crossed his mind. All he knew was that he needed to stop and maybe take a little nap while he composed himself. So, in his parched state, he did. And he fell asleep the instant he stopped moving his limbs.
II
(Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.")
Two months he had trekked the sometimes harsh rural landscape of Westerica, and the journey had shown him just how little civilisation had truly touched the continent. The wide green forever was sliced through by the occasional highway or train track, and many of these roads were still unsealed from lack of use. Sonic's journey had taken him northeast through the fertile crescent of Westerica's tropical lands, first through the Great Forest and several villages that made the forest their home (many of them were very adverse to city life and didn't get along with Sonic much at all, which only made his journey more difficult), and then into a city on the other side of the forest called Point Adrien. He had never heard of it before, and in fact realised that he had never seen the northern side of the Great Forest before. The forest was so deep and so dark that it had been difficult to picture it even having another side. The feeling of journeying through the ocean of trees until he stumbled upon a foreign civilisation was a sobering one - he had been so grounded ever since the fall of Mobitropolis that the Great Forest may as well have been the edge of Mobius; he felt as though he had built a rocketship, flown to another planet and discovered an alien city. And though he knew that he shouldn't be enjoying this vacation (if Freedom Fighting was his job, then surely this constituted a business trip) he couldn't help wishing that he had taken a camera so he could have shown the pictures to Tails when he returned.
At this point he didn't have a clue just how long that would be.
("No, I will go on farther--and we shall see.")
Cinos had spent three days in Point Adrien and then moved north again, so Sonic had done the same. There were no cities north of the Point. The Plains of Mirth stretched from one horizon to the other like a green ocean. Sometime in the middle of October, Sonic had realised that he had probably missed Tails' birthday, though he wasn't in a position to contact his friend because there were no phones or mail service here. The days began to blend together and melt into one heterogenous lump of sunlight and darkness. Sonic began to realise just to what degree the idea of civilisation being the norm for mobiankind was a flawed concept. Here, in the wilderness, there was no time, no government, no technology. The small-town mobians were more like tribes than true towns, and though they spoke Sonic's language, each had their own dialect. There was housing, but no electricity or running water. Most grew their own food to nourish their extended family, and lived from one day to the next never knowing of the events of the world. Sonic wondered how many of them knew Mobitropolis had fallen. He wondered how many of them knew what Mobitropolis was.
(The view was all in straight up and down of tall slim trees, too much alike to mark or name a place by)
He lived off the hospitality of the plain-dwelling folk for about twenty days before he reached a point where there were no more folk. Every so often he would encounter hostility in a tribe - it shocked him the first few times it happened, but he soon realised why. Cinos and his guide Rasputan were pillaging to stay alive, cutting a path of havoc and notoriety through the Plains, and Sonic was riding the wake of vengeance. Once he was chased for a good twenty minutes by a young farmer with a shotgun who claimed that Sonic had killed his father, and who swore that Sonic's corpse was going to be hanging in his field as a scarecrow by sundown. Sonic was unfortunate in the way that he shared the physical likeness of his antiverse twin, but fortunate in the way that he also shared the speed. It pained him that Cinos was ripping families apart as he tore through Westerica's rural country like a natural disaster, and wished that there was some way he could make it better. But at the end of the day, the only thing that he could truly do was keep moving.
(So as to say for certain I was here or somewhere else)
But he grew concerned when the ocean of green began to turn into an ocean of brown and Cinos continued moving north into the thick of it. Where could the dark hedgehog be going through the wastes of the Barren Quarter where no mobian made their home? It was then that Sonic made his biggest error in deciding to continue to follow Cinos, that there must be something here that he didn't know about, some final destination or simple path of which his evil twin had some prior knowledge. It was this decision that left Sonic, two months after he left the safety of his homeland and thousands of kilometres from home, dying in the hostile nothingness of the Crux Desert and pleading for his end to be swift and painless.
But the end never came.
(I was just far from home)
III
It was impossible to tell how long Sonic had been unconscious. It was anywhere between five minutes and a day, but he came to upon the sound of talking.
Was this a mirage? The lunacy of a dehydrated mind? At this point it was hard to tell. The voices were speaking in some bizarre language that Sonic could not recognise. He opened his eyes a crack, and saw many pairs of purple feet. Very purple, very scaly feet. He tried to look higher, but couldn't.
As the purple people chattered away, Sonic caught a single phrase spoken in his own tongue that was nevertheless meaningless to him.
"...the Great Shade be very pleased with us"
The hedgehog was then grabbed by the arm and yanked up onto his feet. He howled weakly in pain as his badly sunburned arm was touched. But the pain fell away when something was shoved in his mouth. A bowl of water. The instant his tongue was bathed and reverted to its moist self, Sonic's muscles remarkably began to work again. He grabbed the large bowl with some force and chugged down as much of the fluid as he could, making loud gulping noises with each swallow. Somebody grabbed the bowl back from him, spilling some water onto his feet, and he was shoved from behind to start walking.
He was able to get a good look at them, now. All of them were shorter than he was, but they carried very pointy spears. They looked like a race of pygmies. They were reptilian, though of a race Sonic had never seen before. Bright violet scales and yellow horns on each forehead. And their tails stuck up into the air and curled into a spiral at the end.
One of them was staring at him as they walked, and it seemed to be a child, a young male. Sonic looked at him, and he looked at Sonic... and then the lizard's skin changed colour. It changed from purple to blue - the same colour blue as Sonic's own spines. Sonic gasped and stumbled. One of the lizards wrenched him back to normal walking position, and another one poked the young lizard with his spear and gave a harsh sounding reprimand.
"That's a neat trick," Sonic announced. He got a sharp jab with a spear in reply.
He detested being pushed around like that, and their spears didn't really seem all that threatening to him. Only thing was that they had probably the only water he'd find for miles. He could escape them easily, but then what? Where would he go and what would he do? Sonic retained some hope that he would be brought to some kind of authority figure who could be reasoned with. Until then, he would have to suffer the jabs and hostility. After all, the lizards had saved his life, so clearly they didn't want him dead, right? Sonic's power of logic never was all that impressive.
They walked for half an hour before they came to any kind of landmark. It was the base of a mountainous cliff, and there was a cave in it. A very wide cave indeed. An eerie orange light emenated from within.
"Want me to go inside there?" Sonic asked. "Hey, no can do, dudes. I'm scared of the dark, and I can't sleep in strange places. Thanks though"
Nobody replied, but somebody started tying something around his head. A blindfold, made out of some kind of leaf. Another lizard grabbed his hands and held them behind his back, and pushed him to keep walking.
"Hey, pushy little fellers, aren't you," he commented.
The next fifteen minutes of travel consisted of descending and ascending and turning corners in the complete darkness of Sonic's blindfold. And it was very difficult. But he could tell from the voices and the noise throughout the cave that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of the lizards living there.
The journey ended when Sonic was given a violent shove, and he tumbled down some kind of slope and landed on rock. There was the sound of a door closing.
Sonic, hands now free, ripped the leaf off his head and checked out his surroundings.
Firstly, the cave was very, very big. It must have been a long way underneath the desert, because it was also very hot. But a different kind of heat to the aboveground - the desert itself was scorching, piercing, frying heat, and Sonic's arms, mouth and belly were tender and red, and would probably start to peel skin in great gruesome chunks before the week's end. This place was a humid heat that made Sonic break out in an uncontrollable sweat almost immediately. Another major difference was that, down here, the source of the heat was down, not up. It was coming from Mobius, not the sun.
Also, it was being used, it seemed, by an enormous colony of the purple lizards, as their home and place of worship. Several different rituals were going on at once, down below. There were lots of smaller caves within this large one, and most of them were labelled, but in a language that Sonic had never seen before. Some of the lizards were dressed elaboratly in white and black, despite the heat, signifying that they were probably quite important, and some even had followings of the normal, peasant lizards who were as naked as God (or The Great Shade?) had made them.
But there was something funny about this settlement, and Sonic couldn't quite put his finger on it at first. It looked wrong, somehow. It was drab and primitive, and looked almost animalistic despite the clear use of simple technologies. What was it about these people that made them seem so unmobian? Finally he put his finger on it. Even the most primitive mobian civilisations had some form of art, adorned their colonies with decorations and pictures. But this was different. Sonic looked around the brown caves and brown buildings and brown clothing and saw not a single sign of embellishment in the entire place. There was no colour. No colour at all.
It was quite a spectacle, and an interesting place to be. Sonic folded his arms behind his head and wondered just how the heck he was going to get out of it.
The only way out of the small dungeon cell was the way he had come. All other directions led to an immediate thousand-foot-fall onto the mixture of hard stones and bonfires on the ground below. Trying to imagine which of these would constitute a more painful death made Sonic cringe, so he didn't.
The direction he had come was a steep slope which led upward. It was a large gradiant, but Sonic thought he could run up it with little trouble, it didn't go very far. Unfortunately, however, the top of the slope was guarded. Quite heavily guarded. And if he got past that, he would still have to make it past thousands of other lizards, while all the time climbing steep inclines to the surface. That much he had learned by using his senses during his blind journey from the desert to the cage.
The biggest question was whether the desert really was a better option than this. To be honest, he couldn't decide.
Sonic couldn't remember how many times along this chain of thought he slipped into sleep. Some of those times he didn't even realise.
IV
Sonic's fatigued body was wracked with the strangest dreams, and sometimes he wasn't exactly sure whether he was dreaming or not. More than once he had been staring at the bars of his cage and seen Cinos wander out of the shadows, grinning in the way he always did, looking like a parody of Sonic's own grin but with a twisted edge to it, the grin of a homicidal lunatic. But he wasn't a lunatic, Sonic feared, and that was the most dangerous thing about him. He had Sonic's mind, complete with the virtue of sanity, and the implication that Sonic didn't really want to consider was that Cinos was right about the powers of these runed stones and their links to the power of the Old Ways.
Every time he saw Cinos outside his prison, the dark hedgehog had wavered and vanished, nothing more than the illusion of a tired mind. At one point he had been dressed in the robes of Father Thaldymort, and had been holding the priest's rosary, although the holy symbol on the sacred item had changed from the object of Thaldymort's faith to the object of Cinos' - something like a capital letter 'M', but not quite. Something, some living thing, was squirming around inside those robes, and for a moment it poked up from the hedgehog's collar, only briefly. Something long and skinny like a thin white tentacle.
"You will have four Awakenings before your quest is complete. The early hedgehog catches the wyrm, Sonic," the dream-Cinos had whispered, and Sonic knew (in the way that you simply iknow/i things about the world of your dreams) that his twin had said 'wyrm' and not 'worm', though they were pronounced exactly the same. Then Cinos grinned more devilishly than Sonic had ever thought possible, and perhaps it wasn't possible in reality at all, and leaned in. He lifted one hand and offered Sonic a juicy red apple, then screamed "iWake up blue animal/i"
Sonic shot up. It hadn't been Cinos screaming at him at all, but rather one of the strange purple lizards. The hedgehog squinted, a little alarmed, until his vision adjusted and he remembered where he was.
"Time for eat," the lizard announced. It shoved something through the bars - not an apple, but the leg of some poor bird of unidentifiable species. Its talons were still attached, twisted in a bizarre angle, but it was cooked and it was greasy and it was food. And Sonic was starving. He stumbled across the room and grabbed the drumstick. It was the same size as an ordinary chicken leg, but its claws were too long and sharp to belong to anything short of a carnivore, and there was something oddly just about eating a carnivore. Sonic didn't care about justice at the moment, he gulped the meat down in two bites without chewing and began to suck on the bone while the lizard watched. They stared at each other intently.
"That's it?" Sonic prompted. "That was 'time for eat"
The lizard turned away and began to walk off. Sonic bolted to the side of the cage and grabbed onto the bars.
"iCome back/i" he yelled, "iI've only just begun to salivate! I haven't had a decent meal since I left home! How long before you feed me again, huh? You can't keep me here! You can't lock me up and you can't keep me here/i"
The lizard walked out of sight.
Sonic stormed across the cell and kicked the bars as hard as he could. While he had been fairly cool about the whole affair, he was now angrier than he had been in a very long time. He was famished, he was hopelessly thirsty and couldn't stop sweating which made him even more parched, and Cinos was probably over the hills and far away by now, with a sack full of Armageddon Rocks and a wide grin on his strangely handsome face.
Sonic looked down at the floor of the cave below. What did these savages intend to do with him? Feed him to their god? Torture him with hot pokers? He gritted his teeth, and when he heard a loud crunching sound he remembered that he was still sucking on the drumstick. He pulled the jagged end of the leg out of his mouth and spat the sharp bone fragments out of his mouth onto the floor. Then he chucked the remains through the bars and hoped they hit some poor lizard on the head. He supposed they would see it as a sign from the Great Shade.
V
The lizards in this hole probably had no concept of night and day, Sonic realised. The sunlight did not have the power to navigate the labyrinthine corridors that led into the main caverns, and the only light within was provided by bonfires that never went out. It didn't take long before the tedium of just being in this place began to tighten like a vise on Sonic's sanity. He had never been so bored in his entire life. This coupled with an unbearable hunger, aching thirst, no sense of time whatsoever and nothing to look at but brown, turned monotony into literal torture. He walked in circles just for something to do, tried to remember the lyrics of songs, had conversations with himself, all the while remaining wary of the topic. Sane people, he told himself, have conversations with themselves. Lunatics have arguments.
Sonic drifted in and out of microsleeps continually whenever he was relaxed, always waking up with a jolt moments later thinking "Oh no I've got to get out of here and save the universe", then realising the impossibility of this task, especially in his current weakened state, and drifting off again. But something was happening in the pits below. Bonfires were being lit in circles, and the lizards were beginning to dance bizarre dances and get a lot more social.
"What are they doing down there?" he asked any of the nonexistant companions that he had created to keep him company. None of them replied, because they were all products of Sonic's imagination and, uselessly, couldn't tell him anything that he didn't already know. Imaginary friends were a real drag.
"Dinner time!" somebody announced, and Sonic shrieked aloud and leaped into a defensive position. There was another of the strange lizards outside his cage, and he was holding another greasy drumstick, but there was something different about this individual. The difference being that he iwas/i an individual. All of the desert lizards appeared to be carbon copies of each other, and Sonic had found it impossible to tell one from another. This one was different. He had expression on his face. Sonic couldn't help but notice this, but he was too hungry to care.
"You've brought his other leg I see," he grunted. He crawled over and snatched it greedily. "How about some water, huh? Would that be acceptable, or am I asking way too much, here"
The lizard stepped back nervously and shook his head. "Uh... sorry"
Sonic grunted as he tore the last of the meat off the mangled leg and threw it to the ground like a wild animal. He stormed over to the bars where the lizard stood and grabbed onto them, scowling.
"You can't keep me in here for long on this," he said. "I don't know how much you guys eat, but I'll die before long if I don't get some water and some real food. I've walked further in this last week than you have in your entire life, hornface, and I need food and I need water. You hear me"
"Living isn't on the agenda for you I'm afraid," the lizard said with a shrug, "You've stumbled into the Pit of the Chameleon Cabal. It's a bad move. The plan is to feed you just enough so that you're alive for the Cleansing Ceremony tomorrow morning"
"And what happens at the Cleansing Ceremony"
"You get cooked until you're as brown as everything else"
"Oh, so that's your custom?" Sonic demanded. "Snatching people out of the desert and killing them"
"It's your quills," the lizard replied, "It's a pity you're so blue, buddy. The Cabal has a policy about exotic colours, they all get sacrificed for the glory of the Great Shade. It doesn't matter if they happen to be part of a living, breathing person. That's just the chameleon way"
"What did you say you are? Chameleons"
The lizard nodded and reached out to touch one of the bars of Sonic's cage. The scales on his hand and forearm changed almost instantly from their original purple to the rusty brown colour of the metal bar. The illusion was magnificent. Sonic forgot his anger a little and reached out to touch the lizard's arm with his own hand. The scales around the area of contact faded into the dirty white of Sonic's glove.
"The Great Shade is the supposed creator of the universe and every colour in it," the lizard said in a mocking tone that struck Sonic as distinctly strange, "We don't get to see a lot of colour out here in the desert. It's shades of brown as far as the eye can see. When a colour does appear, the clerics immediately have it snatched up to sacrifice it to the glory of the Great Shade"
"You don't sound like you believe it," Sonic pointed out. He had also noticed that this particular lizard, this chameleon, spoke his language fluently albeit with an accent that made him occasionally difficult to understand. The others had a feeble grip on the dialect at best.
"Heck no. I'm an atheist. I don't think there's any Great Shade, just a lot of light reflecting off stuff and hitting our eyes a certain way. I study a lot, you see. The others hate me, I'm just a heretic to them, and they have me doing all the jobs that nobody else wants to do. Cleaning the toilets, washing the dishes, feeding the sacrifices, you know, that kind of stuff"
"Listen to me," Sonic pleaded, "What's your name"
"Espio"
"Listen, Espio. You've gotta help me. You're probably the only one here who can. Just let me get outta here, let me get back to the desert, I'll be on my way and I'll never show my bright blue hide around here again, okay"
Espio looked uncomfortable. "I don't think I can," he said, "That's uh, that's the kind of thing that'd get me killed around here. Look, don't take this personally, you're a nice guy and all, but, uh... sorry"
He began to walk away.
"No! Come back!" Sonic shouted. "Come back! Let me out of here! Come baaaaaack"
Somebody came back towards him - not Espio, but one of the guards protecting the entrance to the hall.
"Shut up you!" the guard warned.
Sonic scowled at him and shrank back. He couldn't stay there any longer, he had to get out of there, one way or another.
VI
One side of Sonic's cage was under a thick layer of reddy-brown dirt. Sonic had discovered this while he was passing the time, drawing little pictures in the ground with his index finger and then rubbing them out. Fifteen minutes of this activity turned his dirty off-white glove quite red. The hedgehog inspected the glove, and tried to rub the dirt off it with his other hand. No success - it was stained.
"This is the dirtiest dirt I've ever seen," he commented to himself. "Roll around in this for a while and this cult of killer chameleons probably wouldn't even want me"
He lingered on this for a while. Did he seriously think they would let him go if he just replaced his brilliant blue for ordinary dirt? It was crazy, it was insane, but it was a plan. It wasn't a plan worthy of placement in a spy movie, but it was a plan, his only plan, and at that moment he decided that beggers couldn't be choosers and perhaps it was better to get to work instead of thinking about it so much.
He lay down in the dirt and started rolling about as though he had a particularly irritating itch somewhere he couldn't reach. Sonic had been unfortunate enough to be imprisoned a number of times in his life, but of all the escape plans he had concocted, this was probably the strangest. iThis is the dumbest thing anyone's ever done/i, he thought. Just dumb enough to work? iLet's just hope./i Sonic had to wail for quite a while before two chameleon guards came to investigate, and they probably only intended to knock him unconscious or gag him or something. Their faces contorted in shock when they saw him, and Sonic thought that their entire bodies shifted to a redder hue.
Sonic was lying on his back, still yelling out incomprehensible garbage, and the only blue that was showing on his entire body was dull and in small patches. He was now mostly dirt-brown.
"What wrong with you is?" one of the chameleons demanded, "You mental sick? Problem with head"
"I'm isiiiick/i" Sonic exclaimed. "I'm idyyying/i I need food and fresh air to restore my complexion"
"Get him up," the guard demanded. The other chameleon opened the door to the cage, and as soon as he saw that it was unlocked, Sonic's first instinct was to charge the door and pound it open like a battering ram. His ambition was more than his body could handle, for his fatigued and undernourished muscles could barely put him on his feet, let alone show these lizards why they called him the blue blur. He'd never moved so slowly in all the time that he could remember, and a severe sensation of embarrassment flooded through him. The blue blur had transformed into the brown clod.
The chameleon guards caught hold of him and dragged him to his feet, forcing him to leave the cage in his custody, and he figured that at the very least they were going to take him to a doctor or something and there would be more opportunities for escape later on. No such luck, as it turned out. The chameleons dragged him past what appeared to be a series of sacred chambers (In each one, several lizards kneeled side-by side, rocking back and forth quickly with their eyes closed and their colours darkened) until they came to an antechamber at the end of the hall, a tiny synagogue beautifully decorated with stones and crystals of every colour of the rainbow. Sonic noticed that the room wasn't just tiled with natural objects - cemented into the walls were bottlecaps, machine parts and discarded garbage. Everything coloured that they found but didn't consider significant enough to sacrifice probably found its way into this chamber. In this bland brown colony, it looked like a bowerbird's nest.
In the centre of the room was a deep pool that was probably part of a natural hotspring. It was into this pool that Sonic was violently tossed.
The hedgehog spluttered and tried to scramble out, but the chameleons held him down. Sonic could see now that more of the lizards had entered the chamber, and were staring down at him with their fingers knitted together and morbid, serious expressions on their reptillian faces. They were wearing long brown hooded robes that looked as though they were made of hessian, like monks in potato sacks. They did not move but to blink.
"Cleanse you," one of the guards said, scrubbing at Sonic's arms, "Make you clean, washing you holy spring now"
"Washing me or basting me?" Sonic asked, "You know, you're not going to get away with snatching people out of the desert and murdering them"
"Not murder," the lizard insisted, "Ascension"
"Oh right, I forgot. You're doing me a favour by frying me today"
"It is a boon"
"Thanks, I'm honoured"
After restoring Sonic's vibrancy (his spines were now even bluer than they had been when the chameleons caught him), they did not drag him back to his old cage but to a new one, a bigger prison that was suspended by a system of ropes. It looked a little like a cable car. They threw him inside and locked the door, and he shouted with frustration and futility until they went away.
So much for escape.
VII
It was perhaps an hour later, and Sonic was asleep when the chameleons returned. In the glugginess of sleep, he barely registered the sounds of a struggle and of the cage door being opened, closed and locked. He came out of his trance and opened his eyes.
All he saw was the clenched fist a nanosecond before it pummeled him in the centre of his face.
Sonic twisted, fell over and belatedly screamed out a swear word as he clutched his bleeding nose.
Cinos stood with him in the cage, scowling and giving his twin a look so acidic it could kill grass.
"That felt good," he said.
Sonic glared for a moment, but then as realisation hit he began to chuckle.
"You got caught too"
"A minor setback," Cinos replied. His eyes narrowed further, but then he grinned. "So," he said, "Look who actually learned how to slide"
"Piece of cake," Sonic said. He straightened up and sniffled, his nose dripping blood but unbroken. "If you have it in you, then I have it in me, right? Isn't that what you've been trying to tell me all along"
"You're smart as a whip, my brother," Cinos said.
"And speaking of which," Sonic added, "If you're so good at it, why don't you just slide into the antiverse right now and get out of this cage? Got performance anxiety"
"You're new to this whole thing, so I'll give you a tip. You only skip over the fence when you know what's on the other side. If these caverns don't exist in the antiverse, you've got trouble. I'd much rather be here than manifest myself into solid rock, you bet your sweet blue fur"
"So you're just as helpless as I am. How does it feel to be a loser"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Cinos snarled, and he gripped the bars of the cage and stared out into the caverns beyond. "I'll be out of here in no time, and I might even stick around to watch them cook you. It serves you right for following me, sticking your nose where it doesn't belong"
"If you get out, then I get out," Sonic replied, "Didn't we just conclude that there's nothing you can do that I can't"
"Very true, brother. But there's one difference. I'm willing to kill as many of these people as is necessary to get out of this can. I can't say the same for you"
Sonic opened his mouth to reply, but there was no rebutting clear logic. If bloodshed was the only way to get out of this mess, then without a doubt, Cinos held the cards.
Time went by. The chameleons were creatures of patience, it seemed, and although Sonic was loathe to admit it, a part of him was quite glad to finally have some company. Months of wandering the continent alone had a way of doing something to him, made him yearn for a familiar face, even if it did belong to his murderous twin.
"So, interesting story I heard back in Chagrin Las Mortis," he said, "There's a priest there who seems to think you're messing with some pretty dangerous powers. You've always been a pest, but I didn't think world domination was your style"
"I couldn't care less about ruling the world, Sonic," Cinos replied darkly, "You know as well as I do that I'm not interested in that kind of responsibility. God was a little misguided, you see. All He wanted to do was create. He invested all that energy into creating. What a waste. The power to destroy is the only power that matters. I'm sure you can relate"
"No way," Sonic replied.
"Oh, sure, you're into all that usual heroic tripe. Truth, freedom, justice. I know how your mind works, after all, we share the same past, the same memories. Don't you ever forget that, Sonic. I dreamed of snakes, too. We were brought into this world hard, dear brother, born of a lot of pain and suffering. You think you don't want what happened to you to happen to anybody else, but I'm more realistic. I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no-one to escape." He turned to Sonic, and there was a strange grin on his face, a frightening grin. "Do you remember when they used to tell you that you were useless? That you were nothing? Don't you want to prove them wrong once and for all"
"Not like this," Sonic said, "Not like this"
"Oh, I think if you searched your feelings deep enough you might just frighten yourself. That's the beauty of being you. I know things about you that you'll never admit"
"We're not so alike, Cinos. You're a gullible idiot, believing that you're going to destroy the universe with a bunch of old rocks. That's the kind of fairy tale I stopped believing before I could talk"
"Oh really?" Cinos laughed, "That's interesting! Why did you drop everything to follow me here? Just bored, I suppose? You could have died in that desert. Seems strange that you'd give your life for a fairy tale"
Again, Sonic didn't have a response. He was spared this embarrassment by a sudden movement in the ropes that attached to the top of their cage. There were a lot of loud voices coming from the dark of the chameleon catacombs, and the ropes were pulling them, now, destination unknown. From the sound of those voices, something exciting was happening, but Sonic didn't feel much like celebrating.
"I think it's time for us to die," Cinos said.
Sonic just rattled the bars uselessly as their hanging prison was slowly winched into the darkness.
VIII
There was more contributing to the chameleons' joy this day than the celebration of two colourful gifts from heaven about to be burned in the name of the Great Shade. The word echoed throughout the caves like a voice from above. These were the Final Times, this word said. The beginning of the end. Soon, the Great Shade would descend from His heavenly throne by way of a rainbow, would return to Mobius and drain it of colour as though sucking the juice from an orange. He would spit out the nonbelievers, the unworthy, the sinners and the unredeemable, and leave them in a black-and-white purgatory of a toneless, achromatic world. The rest would be taken to the kaleidoscopic heaven of the Saved, to bask in the glory of His colour for an eternity.
They knew this, because, as promised since time immeasurable, the Prophet had come. Empowered with the ability to perform miracles, to control the colours of the world through the power of the Great Shade, the Prophet of the Shade had arrived to inform his followers of the future. When asked about the coming times, the Prophet had smiled and announced that the world was about to end.
The Cathedral of the Shade was the holiest chamber in the Pit of the Chameleon Cabal. For hundreds of years the chameleons collected the coloured objects that decorated the walls of the cathedral, the residue of Westerica's technological and artistic legacy. An outsider might descend into the dark caves of the Cabal and find what they perceive to be a giant hole lined with scrap, and they may even guess that the ones who lived here used this room as their garbage dump. It would be a hundred and eighty degrees from the truth, for the useless debris that lined these walls were the most sacred of things, and their holiness could only be contained within the most sacred of places.
Here, the Prophet sat upon a throne that had been made for him by his followers, not the most beautiful (or comfortable) chair ever to grace Mobius but certainly the most elaborate piece of furniture to created by the Chameleon Cabal. The Prophet sat in his robes and watched the sacrificial inferno blaze in the centre of the cathedral, soon to be stoked with the kindling of the brightly pigmented outsiders. Above the fire, bathed in the glow of its orange flames, was a massive brown statue cut into the rock wall. The statue of a chameleon, leaping out from the wall in a frozen spear-dive, both arms thrust out ahead. These hands were clasped around an object, thrusting it toward the observer, not like an offering so much as an imposition. This object was the focal point of the entire cathedral, the centrepiece, the accretion of all-importance. A small stone, deceptively ordinary, like every other rock under the sand and soil of the Barren Quarter. Except that this stone was flat and smooth, and it was emblazoned with a symbol, a simple design carved into it like a marker. An ordinary lexicon, but one that for some reason hurt the head to look at. Perhaps because it's meaning was too complex to fit comfortably inside the sane mind.
Chameleons dressed in the robes of the priesthood flanked the Prophet and prayed to the Great Shade. Others, naked, worked the machines that winched a series of ropes high above the inferno. The sound of chanting and worship hit a crescendo when the sacrificial cage came into sight and moved slowly toward the blazing fire. The Great Shade would be pleased, and nobody who believed in His grace would need to fear the end times.
IX
"They're going to put us right over that fire," Sonic lamented. "They'll cook us like chicken schnitzels, all 'cause we're too blue. You know, there are some things about this world that make it difficult to figure out why I want to save it"
"There you go, Sonic," Cinos replied with a grin, "There's that good old cynicism rising to the surface at long last. Hold onto that, brother, it's the last thing to go. Soon you'll be begging me to end this world. We might even join together, side by side, the way it's always supposed to have been. What do you say"
"Sure. When the Cabal freezes over and chameleons fly. What are you smiling about, spinebag"
His twin's tooth-filled grin widened, like a crocodile sighting it's prey. "I know something you don't know," he sang.
"I'll bet," Sonic replied. "What is it? The length of a piece of string? The number of angels that can dance on the head of a chameleon"
"Actually it's the number of runes no longer lost to the ages, oh my brother, and the answer is right over there"
He grabbed a handful of the spines that sprouted from the back of Sonic's head, and jerked them to the right, forcing Sonic, with a yelp of pain, to turn his head to the left. Like that the two hedgehogs stood and gazed out together into the Cathedral of the Shade. The immediate focus for them both was the giant lizard statue carved out of the stone wall, its arms thrust out ahead of it and victoriously clutching something so small that it was difficult to see. Sonic squinted to try and make it out.
"The Rune of Nothagodos," Cinos whispered in awe, as though the name meant something to Sonic, but it didn't. It didn't even ring a bell.
"Is that thing supposed to impress me?" he asked.
"It should," his dark twin replied, "It impresses me a lot, being that such a small and simple thing contains one fifth of the energy keeping two realities from colliding like worlds in a shrinking orbit"
Sparks of static electricity were snap-crackle-popping like wet cereal at the point where Cinos was grasping Sonic's spines, but neither hedgehog was too concerned until Cinos reached around to put an arm around Sonic's shoulders (a brotherly gesture that seemed too comfortable, and Sonic was terrified by the idea that some innate bond between them was continually trying to bring them together as kinbound siblings despite their inexorable enmity). A loud crack ripped through the air as soon as they touched, and a dart of pain made Sonic flinch and shove the other hedgehog away. "Don't touch me," he growled. His shoulder stung in the place where his body had made contact with that of his otherworldly eqivalent. Whatever glitched physics made Cinos what he was, still made it impossible for the hedgehogs to touch without a painful electrical discharge ripping between them. Cinos also tendered his stung hand, but continued to gaze out at the stone at the peak of the statue.
"It's fascinating how these people have grown so fanatical living down here with the Rune," he said, "Through the years its power has been filling these caverns like a poisonous gas, but poisonous for the mind. It's influenced their religion, like the presence of a something radioactive will mutate the environment. The Rune has mutated their minds"
"Insightful," Sonic replied.
"It works just the way it's supposed to. Do you believe my fairy tale yet, Sonic"
"All I believe is that some whacked out cult of technicolour lizard people is about to roast us for our fashion sense if we don't do something soon"
The cage began to heat up amidst the growing excitement of the lizard Cabal.
X
Time slithered past like a fat and gluttonous serpent, achingly sluggish and laggard, the slow-devourer of Sonic's well cherished sanity. The heat was growing, and he knew it would continue doing so until the hedgehogs were both toast. And yet he watched his evil twin from across the cage (he didn't want to get too close in case he got zapped by the electric reaction between himself and his other... or worse, be taken in by the insane urge to be even closer to Cinos and forget his animosity). Cinos, the reflection of his own mind and soul, was using the wits for which he had been notorious in the world where he went by the name of Kinnos Sharpe. The wits for which Sonic himself was notorious in his own world. He could see the dark hedgehog staring out into the caverns, looking one way and the other, focused, always thinking. Sonic the Hedgehog had never been accused of brilliance, but speed of body required speed of thought. That was one thing he had learned from his short time with Kethriel, a mentor he had known a while ago. Whatever he did think, he thought it quickly. And of course, everything he had learned, every skill he possessed, he passed on to Cinos upon his creation.
What he feared was that his dark twin would soon come up with a way to escape the cage, and when that happened, he would use the opportunity to consign Sonic to his fiery fate while he made off with his life and his Rune. Sonic knew that he would have to escape first, and so their entrapment became a kind of mind-race, a battle of wits. Sonic had to slow down his twin, so he did it the only way he knew how. He attacked the ego he knew Cinos had (because he possessed it himself) by drowning it in questions.
"So how did you get the psycho eating out of your hand?" he asked, "And where is he now"
"What?" Cinos mumbled, clearly irritated by the distraction.
"That porcupine," Sonic clarified, "That lunatic"
"Rasputan is a moron," the other replied, "I bought his services the same way you buy anything from a moron. By giving him crap he doesn't need. What's normal to us amazes him. He's so addicted to modern comforts that he's as loyal as a dumb puppy, he'll be waiting at the front door for me no matter how long I'm stuck down here. He's also a big fan of the Prophecy"
"The Prophecy"
Cinos grinned. "That a leader draped in blue will inherit the world"
Sonic frowned and looked again at the rock that Cinos had called the Rune of Nothagodos. The symbol on the flat face of the stone, like a letter 'G' drawn without curves, burned his mind with its simplicity and the power of its connotations. His head ached from the heat, but it ached more when he looked at that symbol.
"Why does it make my head hurt?" he asked.
Cinos shrugged. "It's probably doing the same thing to your mind as it's doing to theirs." He pointed to the crowd of praying, celebrating chameleons.
But that was preposterous, Sonic thought. He wasn't taken with a desire to burn things and pray to a colour-god. But yet, he did feel isomething/i, when his guard was down and his mind was at its most vulnerable. A feeling like some otherworldly broadcast that he couldn't hear or interpret was being transmitted into the core of his brain. He felt no compulsion to get on his knees and pray to the Great Shade, but there was the nagging suggestion that, should that compulsion already exist, then it would be a lot easier to give in to it down here in the Pit of the Rune. Especially given the discomfort of roasting slowly over an open fire.
There was a new commotion down below. The tone of the celebrations changed just enough to gather Sonic's interest, and he saw that many of the hessian-cloaked lizards were consulting, engrossed, with another figure who appeared to hold some kind of authority over the others. Perhaps an archbishop of sorts, some kind of High Priest of the Shade.
"I wonder who he is," Sonic murmured.
"The Tooth Fairy, for all I care," Cinos replied, "Feeling the heat yet, dear brother? Starting to sweat"
"Mind your own business"
"Now, that's a piece of advice you should have followed when I gave it to you months ago. If you'd had the sense to keep yourself to yourself then you'd be cool and comfortable right now surrounded by our good friends in Knothole"
"No friends of yours, Cinos"
"Sure they are! Sure! Hey, what've you got that I ain't got? Nothing, that's what. And hey, how are the old gang these days? How's Amy, you still got your eye on her? She's a real cutie, a real hot number"
Amy was a slave to the Arack Empire, and Sonic had been working on her rescue when he had digressed to track his evil clone instead, unaware of how time-consuming this new task was to be. At the mention of her name, he was overwhelmed with concern about her wellbeing, and that of the Freedom Fighters. He was horrified by images of New Knothole being stormed by the armies of Terantulopolis, his friends marched away to start a menial and demeaning career of servitude to Arack.
"If you ever lay a finger on her," Sonic said, "I'll saw off your hands and use them as doorstops"
"Ouch! Touchy," Cinos replied, "Well, I guess I'll lay off, don't wanna start a fight with you. Don't wanna turn this into a cage wrestling match, not when we're bonding so well. This is a great excuse to get to know each other, don't you think"
"I'm afraid of getting to know you," Sonic admitted. It was the truth. "I'm afraid of what might happen, and you should be as well"
Cinos looked him in the eyes for the first time in the conversation, cautiously but curiously. "Yes," he said, "Yes, I know what you mean. We are the same person, you know. Shove us together in the same reality for too long, and the universe starts feeling a little crowded, starts trying to pull us together like two magnets with opposite charges. You know, you could always join me, Sonic. Together, we're halfway to being a deity already"
"Never," Sonic replied.
"Sure," Cinos said, "But you realise what that means. The moment we step outside this cage, it's war. This world will have one of us dead, one way or another, if it can't bring us together. And I don't have any intention of letting it be me." He grinned that toothy, terrifying shark-grin of his. "I'll kill you if I can, oh my brother. I like you, you know. I like you a lot. And I'd like very much for you to die"
"I know," Sonic said, and the mind-race resumed, a precursor to the marathon around the world that was about to begin. The greatest race of their lives - two hedgehogs enter, only one leaves.
The next real conversation they had was almost a full year later, and ended with a murder. Approach your starting positions please, gentlemen, and start your engines.
XI
"Blue animals!" a chameleon exclaimed, and ripped Sonic out of a reduced state of consciousness. He realised that his fatigue, combined with malnutrition and heat, were getting to him enough that his body was trying to shut down whether or not he was willing to allow it. Cinos, much more prepared for his journey than Sonic had been, was burdened with no such problem. Reflections of each other though they may have been, they were becoming much less equal as time went on and had its way with Sonic's overworked self.
"Wakey wakey," Cinos muttered.
"The Prophet is wishes to be speaking with you," the lizard said with its broken speech, "Is wishes to see you before you is to be given to the Great Shade"
"I is cannot understandify," Sonic said.
"I believe," Cinos replied, "That the fellow down below wants to have a word with us before he roasts our hides"
A group of chameleon guards moved to collect the hedgehogs and escort them out of the cage. For a moment Sonic was sure that Cinos would execute some kind of escape plan the moment the cage door was opened, that he would slice their captors apart with a deadly spindash and bolt. But Cinos was complacent about the situation, and allowed them to take him willingly. In fact, he began laughing as the guards siezed him. "Hallelujah!" he exclaimed, "A Governor's pardon! At this late hour! Saved! Saved"
"Could be out of the frying pan and into the fire," Sonic warned, as the lizards came to take him as well.
"A poorly-executed pun, my brother," Cinos said, "Should I assume you have reservations about the motives of this so-called Prophet and his intentions toward us"
"Bingo"
Cinos laughed again as they were escorted together away from their near-execution. "Maybe he's a cannibal! And oh, maybe he's really hungry, too. Fe! Fi! Fo! Fum! I smell the blood of a mobian! And maybe I'll convince him to eat you first. You always were the juicy one, I'll give you that. Your bones would make excellent bread, dear brother"
"You shut up!" one of the lizards commanded.
"You know, you guys are too serious," the dark hedgehog continued, "You really should learn to smile more, get a sense of humour, maybe brighten up the decor around here so it's not quite so drab. Nothing says 'dangerous lunatic desert cult' like a nice coat of fuscia or teal"
The chameleon slapped Cinos across the face, cutting him off. His larrikin grin vanished instantly, as though it had been slapped right off his head, and for just a moment it was replaced with what Sonic considered to be the most evil glare he had ever been unfortunate enough to see. For that moment it was as though his twin's facade had been stripped away and he had been given a glimpse of what was really at the fundamental core of what it was to be Cinos. A chill ran down his spine and he imagined that if that chameleon had been alone in a room with Cinos and had slapped him the way he did, then there wouldn't be very much left of the lizard before too long. After all, underneath the mask of a harlequin, Cinos was still an enthusiastic murderer. If he'd kill a person for looking at him awkwardly, Sonic couldn't bear to imagine the grisly fate of one who would dare to give him a demeaning slap across the face like that. Once again, Sonic was certain that his twin was about to go into a spin and create a bloodbath, but an apathetic grin once again found its way to Cinos' face and he continued to go willingly, although he kept an eye on that offending lizard, perhaps fantasising about the many horrid things he could do to him, things that didn't rightly belong in anybody's sane fantasy.
The hedgehogs were once again taken to the antechamber with the hotspring, and thrown to their knees beside it.
"You will be purified before you is speaking with the Holy Prophet!" one of the lizards demanded.
"I've already had a bath today," Sonic said, but the hedgehogs were held down while they were washed and brutally scrubbed by their captors. Sonic got some small comfort out of the fact that every now and again a lizard would stab himself with one of his spines, with a pained yelp.
After the purification, they were taken to seperate rooms and locked up. Sonic was alone again, and he was at once happy and dismayed to be seperated from his evil twin. What he was definitely happy about was being away from the scorching heat of the death cage. It was dark here, though, and once again he was bored senseless.
No more than thirty minutes later, the door opened again and a chameleon stepped in, carrying a plate of food. This time, there was a considerable amount of it, and when the smell of roast beast hit Sonic's nose it felt like being punched in the face and again in the gut. Before his brain had time to interpret his senses, he had snatched the food away and was already devouring it. It was a by-product of his uncanny speed that his instincts often kicked in before he knew what he was doing, like anyone else might pull their hand back automatically when touching something hot, though on a larger scale. Sonic often referred to it as 'breaking the mind barrier.
"Whoa, slow down there, feller, you'll give yourself indigestion," the lizard said.
Sonic recognised the well-flowing speech and unique demeanour of this chameleon. It was Espio, the faithless and shunned one.
"Hey, Espio, right?" the hedgehog said between bites, "Good to see you, thanks for completely abandoning me and furthermore continuing to help the Nutcase Cabal to prepare me for slaughter"
"Hey come on dude," Espio protested, "I brought you a lot more food than I was supposed to"
"Thanks, but it's not going to mean much if I'm dead"
"Hey." Espio looked both ways, as though checking to make sure they were alone. Keeping his voice down, he said, "I might know a way I can sneak you outta here"
"Oh?" Now he was interested. Any way he could get one-up on Cinos was of value to him.
"Yes," the chameleon replied, "The other guy will be harder, but"
"No," Sonic interrupted, "No, uh-uh, don't you worry about him. Just focus on getting me topside again and let him burn for all I care"
Espio appeared shocked. "And here you are making cracks about imy/i lack of compassion! Aren't you twins or something? You look exactly the"
"Compassion has nothing to do with it, he makes your Cabal look like a snug hamlet of happy little love pixies, believe me. And he's not the kind of twin that you're thinking of. We're not twins by birth, he's more like... like what happens when your negative thoughts bubble to the surface and someone skims them off like a layer of cream"
"I don't follow," Espio said.
"Don't worry, just tell me how I can get out of this hole," Sonic replied.
"Well, I'll help you on one condition"
"What's that"
"I'll help you if you help me." Espio gave a weak smile. "I was kinda thinking how much I hate this place... you know, day in and day out being treated like scum by a bunch of uptight fundies, and I realised that all I need to do is find someone who can take me somewhere. I mean, somewhere pleasant, away from all of this, far away. If you know anywhere like that, then I'd love to come with you"
"The Freedom Fighters..." Sonic muttered. "Tails said the very same thing to me once... back when we first met. I'm sorry, I'm talking about a friend of mine, his situation was a lot like yours, and he we helped each other escape so that we could get back to Knothole, the forest village where we both live now. It's a paradise, Tails wouldn't live anywhere else"
"Sounds great," Espio said, "What's the catch"
"The catch is that I'm not going back there for a while. I have some business to attend to first, and I don't know how long it's going to take. We might have to suffer through some worse places than this before things start to get better"
"I guess that's always the way it is," Espio replied with a grin. "After you've cleaned enough toilets, though, you really start to wonder how many places really could be worse than this"
"Cinos is crafty and very, very dangerous," Sonic said, "He iwill/i get out of here, one way or another. Even if he has to bring this whole place down and wipe out every single chameleon, he's going to get out. I need to be ready to follow him when he does, not locked in some cage. If you're ready to commit yourself to this, then I'll take you as far as you want to go. As long as you can keep up"
"It's a deal, dude. Just show me where to sign"
The portal creaked open and another chameleon stepped inside, flanked by others, some of whom were dressed in robes. Espio stepped aside to give them a berth, but they ignored his presence.
"It's time," one of them said, and began to approach him.
XII
No words were exchanged between Sonic and Cinos as they were escorted together into the holiest chamber of the Chameleon Cabal. Clearly their reptilian captors would not tolerate the endless chattering of their radiant heretic sacrifices; more than that, though, Sonic felt that there was simply nothing more to be said between them right now. Cinos, being that he shared Sonic's mind, probably felt the same. While they were being marched side-by-side, Sonic could feel the hairs on the arm closest to his twin stand on end, like they might if he was close to something with a powerful static charge. He wondered briefly whether his unnatural proximity to his otherworldy 'brother' might even be irradiating him somehow, causing him harm, like standing too close to unshielded fallout. If so, a part of him gleamed a morbid satisfaction from the idea that he was having the same effect on Cinos.
The chameleon priests (or acolytes, or monks, or shamen, or whatever they were) who wore the heavy, concealing robes stood in groups either side of the hedgehogs and their escorts as they approached the seated figure that Sonic could only assume was the Cabal's famous Prophet. With Cinos beside him, and with their slow and choreographed march toward the hooded figure at the head of the cathedral, Sonic had the sudden and hilarious impression that he and his evil twin were participating in some bizarre wedding. iIf that guy's first words are 'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today'/i Sonic thought, iI am getting out of here even if it kills me./i Only silence waited for them at the base of the Prophet's throne, however. The hooded figure stared down at them from the dark abyss of his concealed face, and for a moment nothing was said. The chameleon clergy backed off a little, as though being too near their holy leader at this time was painful, or blasphemous, or both. The guards who escorted the prisoners, however, remained close at hand. Sonic and his twin were suddenly jabbed in he back with the lizards' spears, hard enough to draw blood.
"Kneel before the Holy One!" a chameleon demanded, then shouted something in a language that Sonic didn't understand. Then, again in broken half-coherence, "His words is the marker of your fates are! You is unworthy of belief! He speak"
"Well done," Sonic replied bitterly, "That was almost a sentence." He and Cinos complied with their captors' demands, getting onto their knees before the Prophet and staring up at him from the base of his too-tall regal throne. He hoped that they would not be asked to kiss his feet or anything of the sort.
So this was it. This was the one pardon that Sonic's luck was willing to grant him, his one chance to do something or say something that might save him from the chameleon frying pan. If destiny meant this to be his escape opportunity, then now was surely the time to act. Staring up at that hooded face, however, Sonic's mind drew only blanks. For now, at least, he had no idea how he was to talk himself out of this situation.
The Prophet lifted his right hand from the arm of the throne and raised it slowly towards the darkness behind his hood, and Sonic almost immediately noticed something rather bizarre. This regal religious figure was wearing a cheap, tacky, plastic novelty ring on his middle finger, one of those chemical-filled mood rings that changed colour depending on how warm and clammy the hand is.
"Hey, hey wait a second!" exclaimed Cinos. A guard tried to silence him with his spear, but the dark hedgehog seemed to realise something that Sonic hadn't. Sonic looked again at that novelty ring and tried to remember why it looked so familiar, where he had seen one of those only recently.
Before the answer came to him through his own effort, it was revealed to him by other means. The hand grasped the Prophet's heavy hood and pulled it back, their host's grinning face emerging from the shadow.
"What are you doing here?" barked Cinos, in a tone of voice that may have been anger, or relief, or a bit of both.
The Prophet of the Chameleon Cabal was Rasputan the Porcupine. He nibbled on his fingernail with complacent glee.
"I'm doomed," Sonic said quietly.
"Hey, K, whaddaya say!" the porcupine sang.
"What-are-you-doing-here?" Cinos repeated.
Rasputan shrugged, as if the answer were as straight-forward as a children's math puzzle.
"I'm their prophecised holy leader!" he said, "Who knew"
"Now I've seen everything," Cinos mumbled.
"Hey, I just perform a few miracles and suddenly an obscure religious sect is worshipping me," the porcupine said, "Nothing much to do but go with the flow, right"
Sonic noticed that the entire congregation of lizards had changed their skin colour to approximately match the shade of Rasputan's mood ring, which was a kind of greeny-yellow. He figured that that ring probably had something to do with the porcupine's high regard within the Cabal. For people who considered discarded candy wrappers to be gifts from God, the possession of a colour-changing jewel had probably the same impact as the ability to change water into wine.
"This is ridiculous!" Sonic exclaimed, "Can't you people see that he's just an idiot with a two-dollar children's toy? He can't perform miracles, he probably can't even tie his own shoelaces"
"iHeresy/i" Rasputan screamed, and on cue, one of the chameleon guards beat Sonic over the head hard enough to make him see stars.
"Speak you will not against the Holy Prophet!" the lizard commanded. Rasputan giggled like a schoolgirl.
"Well, it looks like you're having quite a ball here, Rasp," Cinos said, "Hate to put a damper on things, but time waits for no mobian. We've got some work to do, and I'd really rather get back on track with it. Tell your friends to get the rune down and show us the exit, will you? Oh, and get them to kill him." He pointed at Sonic, who gulped.
"Hmm." Rasputan started biting his nails again, "See, I'm not entirely sure that's as easy as it sounds, K. I mean, these guys are awfully attached to that rock"
As though the mention of the stone was some kind of cue, most of the chameleons clasped their hands together in prayer. One lizard in the crowd shrieked, "The Great Shade watches us always! He sees by way of the iStone/i"
"The Stone," several others agreed.
"And," the porcupine continued, "They've really been looking forward to frying you two. This is like the party of the century for these guys, they really don't get to bring out the good crockery very often if you get my drift and I think you do. I'm only a prophet, any command I give is really only more of a guideline"
"The Prophet of the Shade!" a chameleon declared, "Tell us! Tell us of the End Time! Show us your colours"
Cinos let out a sigh; not of defeat, but of irritation. Impatiently, he glanced up at the Rune, held high above the cathedral's sacrificial fire, and then back at Rasputan, who was basking in this ridiculously absurd farce.
"Right," the dark hedgehog said, "I've had enough of this crap"
Sonic had always been shocked and a little afraid when his twin made full use of his speed. He had never been in a position to see himself through the eyes of others, but this was closer to that than most people ever had the chance to be, he figured. It was a similar feeling to when people saw themselves on film and wondered; iIs that really how I look/i It was easy for Sonic to forget that, with Cinos around, he was no longer the fastest thing alive. When this reflected shadow-being turned on his jets, Sonic was always a little scared, for it reminded him that the talent he so often took for granted, when placed in the wrong hands, was a terrifying one.
Before anyone even knew he was moving, let alone tried to stop him, Cinos had already reversed the balance of power. He leaped backwards, jumping above the weapons of his lizard captors, and landed behind them. By the time they turned to face him again, the dark hedgehog had already grabbed one of their spears and ripped it out of the guard's grasp. He snapped the weapon over his knee, keeping only the tip of it, and leaped forward again. Two and a half seconds after his first movement, he had Rasputan held hostage with the point of the spear against the porcupine's throat.
Rasputan was still smiling and giggling even a moment after it happened. Even he had barely seen Cinos at work. Now his smile faded and distorted into a confused, half-blank expression of delayed shock.
"Uhhh... Hey, Kinnos"
"I'm your Prophet, now," Cinos announced. The congregation of lizards was in chaos, now, all of them crying out in horror and panic. "This is what I forsee. You purple mud-loving ifreaks/i are going to do as I say, or else the keeper of your destiny is going to bleed real bad"
For a moment it seemed that Cinos was the only individual in the synagogue who was still breathing. Even Sonic's breath had caught in his throat, watching as the stand-off unfolded in terrifying slow motion before him. This was the dreaded moment of truth, his dark twin was going to escape the pit and have him murdered for his trouble. What could he do? Any attempt on his own part to attack the chameleons and make his own escape would probably only serve as a convenient distraction for Cinos to make off with his coveted Rune and escape the Cabal, and even then the chameleons, having seen one hedgehog already reveal his power, may be more prepared to bring down Sonic should he make a similar move.
"Blasphemer!" one of the lizards shouted, "Unhand the great Prophet"
"Sorry, doc," Cinos replied, "It's been a blast, it really has. No, I'm lying." The hedgehog took a step back, dragging Rasputan with him. The porcupine appeared half-terrified, and Sonic figured that he had good reason to - it was arguable whether being a friend or an ally to Cinos made it less likely that he would slit your throat just for something to do.
Sonic glanced around madly and tried to figure out some way he could one-up his evil twin in this situation. It was then that he spotted his wild card, the one advantage he had, the ace up his sleeve that might make or break the next five minutes.
Espio stood beside him, though he hadn't known how long the chameleon had been there. Sonic knew who it was, for all of the other lizards were somehow photocopies of each other, but Espio had his own character even now.
"There'll be a special place for you all in the New World Order," Cinos rasped, "The world is ending, all right, but there's no heaven for you lot. The place where"
Espio reached across and grasped a hold of Sonic's arm. Perhaps a gesture of comfort or consolation, perhaps a precursor to leading him away; either way, the moment the lizard's flesh touched his own, time stopped. It stopped dead.
Cinos' mouth was still half open. He had been caught mid-sentence. Everybody else was completely static, the world had been paused like a film.
Everyone except Sonic and Espio were as still as bodies in the grave.
"Whoa..." Espio whispered, and the two turned to look at each other, "What just"
Their eyes met, and Sonic saw an expression of something like horror on Espio's face for a moment - an expression that he himself imitated when he realised that he could see the entire universe in Espio's eyes.
That was when Sonic had his first Awakening.
XIII
Sonic and Espio stood together in absolute darkness. Despite this, he had no trouble at all seeing the lizard. When he looked down to catch a glimpse of himself, he found that he could not see any part of himself. He didn't seem to have a body. He wondered if Espio's situation was reversed.
(-happened)
He heard Espio speak - but that wasn't quite right. He didn't hear it, he ithought/i it, or more accurately, he received Espio's thoughts as his own. Like they shared the same mind.
Am I dead he thought. It seemed a reasonable enough inquiry.
(If you're dead, then we're dead together) replied the Espio-mind.
You heard my thought
(Yes... or something... this is... is this a dream)
Sonic tried to close his eyes but found that he didn't have eyes to close. He was disembodied... he began to panic.
No... I have to remain calm. I think this is-
(-important)
Sonic found to his monumental confusion that he was at times unable to differentiate between his own thoughts and Espio's. They finished each other's sentences, their thoughts ran together and mixed like two liquids.
When Sonic calmed himself, he found that he had a body. Or imagined that he had one. Imagination and perception seemed inseperable concepts in this mixed-mind state. The hedgehog and chameleon stood across from each other in a blank, featureless abyss-world.
(Sonic, where are we? What are we doing)
I don't know.
(I'm scared, I need to get back to reality, I need)
Espio's body seemed to fade away before Sonic's eyes.
No! Espio he projected his thoughts with as much force as he could muster, You have to relax, I don't know why but I think that this is important, I think this is something we need to do, and we might never have another chance. Espio manifested again, and calmed himself. Sonic could feel his calm.
(I've never felt)
anything like this in-
(-my life)
It seemed that the more they settled into this bizarre state, the more their minds seemed to merge, closer and closer until Sonic couldn't even tell whether he was Sonic or Espio anymore.
iI don't know why/i Sonic thought, ibut I think this is called an Awakening./i The instant he transmitted this word, the setting changed. They were no longer standing in a blank and empty mindscape, but in the desert above the Pit of the Cabal, the Crux wasteland, the Barren Quarter. Sand blew in whisps around them, through them.
(This is my life, you see)
and what I need is an-
(Escape)
Yes, I know. I can see that.
(Can you help me? Will you)
I will. I don't think I can complete this quest without you.
(We are somehow connected... aren't we)
We are now. Sonic wondered how long they might be able to remain in this state. Was time passing normally outside, or had time frozen for them indefinitely? Had they been granted all the time in the universe to do what needed to be done here? He thought probably not. They had some time, for sure, a lenient amount, enough for them to settle in to their first Awakening and do what needed to be done. But the engine of their fate would soon crank up again, and Sonic knew that if their business here had not been taken care of by then, they would be doomed. They would probably both die down here in the heat.
Espio, concentrate. I need you to open up to me.
(I don't understand)
I need something... from your mind.
(What is it)
I don't know.
(I can't do this, Sonic, I'm... I'm losing my)
Espio began to fade away again.
No, come back! Concentrate! Concentrate The lizard soldified, but his image was insubstantial and unstable. The connection between them was failing, there was a blockage in Espio's mind that prevented it. The chameleon refused to believe this was happening, it went against everything he believed about the simplicity of the world, and he held back.
Give it to me Sonic was wading through Espio's mind, searching for something. The information found was fragmented and scattered. The desert shifted around them like it was alive.
(This isn't)
happening
Sonic found himself fading as well, now. Espio's disbelief was polluting his own mind, eating away at their connection like acid. They pulled away from each other, pushed each other away, as two matching poles will push two magnets apart. But before their Awakening was severed, Sonic caught a glimpse of what he needed to know. Just a glimpse and nothing more - whether it was enough was yet to be known.
XIV
Espio released his hold on Sonic's arm like the hedgehog's flesh had seared him. His eyes were still wide with horror, and Sonic saw that, bizarrely, Espio's entire body had turned electric blue, the exact same colour as Sonic's spines.
The moment their bodies broke contact, time started again.
"-you're going is very dark and very uncomfortable." Cinos completed his sentence. He still held the Cabal's Prophet - Rasputan the Porcupine - hostage at the end of a spearhead.
"What just happened?" Espio demanded, "What was that, what did you do to me"
Sonic didn't reply, he looked up from the Chameleon's shock-riddled face and saw that Cinos was gone. He had bolted, and was running towards the statue that held the stone he wanted so dearly, the warriors of the Cabal hot on his heels. The time for action was now.
"Do you still want to escape"
"Say what?" Espio was still in shock.
"I said, do you still want to escape? Answer me"
"Yes! Yes, of course"
"Then for pete's sake get on my back and ihold on/i"
There were no more questions. Espio mounted the hedgehog like a jockey on his steed, and the blue blur was off like a shot before the Chameleon Cabal could reclaim their sacrifice. They left the cathedral and descended into the labyrinth that was the great Pit, leaving the enraged cultists in the dust.
There was no time for directions, for consultations, for trial and error. It was time for speed, and the only thing driving Sonic now was what he had seen in Espio's mind. What he had glimpsed that was of such great importance - maps of the underground, knowledge of the Pit, information that only the mind of someone who had lived here all his life could provide. For a moment their minds had been one, and in that moment Sonic had downloaded all he needed to know to escape this horrid place.
They both tore through the Pit like blue wind, two blue blurs stirring the red sand and soil of this underground community. The dark hedgehog, Kinnos Sharpe, the scourge of the antiverse, made one last brutal move to desecrate the strange faith of the lizard cult, having offended the Prophet and spat in the eye of the Great Shade Himself. The final, mortal attack would strike at the most hallowed object in these caves, the Stone that throbbed with energy and hurt the head of its observer for the sight of it. Dozens of spears, skillfully thrown, zipped past him as he ran. He darted back and forth, laughing all the way, iroaring/i with laughter in fact, for the time of his victory was now, and it was so sweet.
Sonic could hear the shouts and cries of the Chameleon Cabal behind him, but they did not persue with the determination they had to begin with. Something was distracting them, he knew. Cinos. His dark twin would go for the Rune, and the Cabal would be more interested in this blasphemy than in his own escape. Nevertheless, he ran as fast as he could, Espio clutching at his spines, through tunnels and caves that were foreign to him.
And yet they weren't foreign at all... a part of his brain insisted that he was hopelessly lost, but another part swore that he knew this place like the back of his hand. Espio's memories sat above his own like a layer of fog, and they weren't as lucid as his own, but he could read them just fine if he concentrated a little. Much of it came down to instinct, vague familiarity and de'ja'vu, but he knew that following these feelings would take him out just as sure as if he were reading a map.
Cinos scaled the massive stone statue of the chameleon that grew out of the wall of this strange cathedral. Who did it represent? Some great hero of ancient chameleon myth? Perhaps the Great Shade Himself? It interested him only in passing. He shouted taunts back down to the furious cavedwellers whose spears bounced harmlessly off the stone around and below him. When he reached the Rune, the sight of it filled his mind with such haunting images. Its proximity would be hideously uncomfortable to Sonic. It would be uncomfortable to anybody with a normal soul. But Cinos had some quite different ideas about what was uncomfortable, and as with many things, his reaction to its pulsing, hurtful energy was reversed. He was drawn to the Stone with the same inexplicable and unexplainable need as a moth to a light. When he touched it, he was swallowed by it.
Sonic emerged from the caves and was engulfed by the heat of the desert. Mixed with his relief was an almost equally intense feeling of dread.
"Oh yeah," he said, "That's right. I forgot about this. Let's go back to the sacrifice cage"
Espio dropped to the sand with a groan.
"Ouch," he said, "You're... spikey"
"I guess this is your last chance to go back to the Pit," Sonic told the chameleon, "I have to keep on Cinos' trail, and that means we have to keep moving. I have to admit, after the last few months, I'd sure love the company. And I have a feeling that somehow I was supposed to meet you"
("You will have four Awakenings before your quest is complete," the street-preacher had said, "And then you will take his place)
"I've gotta say that you freaked me out back there," Espio replied, "In fact, you scared the willies out of me. But I'll give it a shot anyway, as long as you promise not to try the brain-melt thing on me again." He paused for a moment, then added, "Besides, you need me, or else you'll die out here. It's a miracle you're not dead already, walking into the desert without any food or water. I'd better make sure you don't do anything... you know... stupid"
"Welcome aboard, then. Let's get a head start on Cinos before he finds his way outta those caves"
"He might not, you know," Espio said, "The Cabal could catch him. It's likely, even. You guys are fast, but there's only one of him, and he's like a bug in a spiderweb down there"
"No," Sonic insisted, "He'll make it. Believe me"
"Well it's a good thing we have so much time to spare, 'cause I'd like to know more about this wacky adventure of yours. You can tell me what reason two hedgehogs have to chase each other around the world, and it better be good."
XV
(Out walking in the frozen swamp one grey day I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.")
Sonic did tell his new companion all that he wanted to know, and the chameleon was increasingly interested. Sonic's enthusiasm grew with the knowledge that he was in the company of somebody whose spirit of adventure almost matched his own. Through Espio he could see shades of himself, he could recall what it was like to have been boxed in, to stare out over the hills and wish every day to be able to cross them, just to see what was on the other side. It was a quest of discovery for them both, and the more they saw of the world, the more they saw into themselves.
("No, I will go on farther--and we shall see.")
Espio had told Sonic that the first thing they were going to need, more important than anything else, was water. The second most important thing was food. Sonic knew not where his twin was headed, but Espio assured him that, if the dark hedgehog was to survive, he would need to do the same. The only civilisation within reach with no supplies was to the north, and so the puzzle of his evil twin's destination was not an important issue. They would head north, and either cross paths with Cinos again or not. The latter meant death for Cinos, and so the problem managed to solve itself.
(A small bird flew before me. He was careful to put a tree between us when he lighted)
It was a journey of about a day and a half, and the travellers would be severely weakened by the end of it, but alive. The main thing was to always stay alive. And it seemed to Sonic that indeed some strange kind of fate or destiny was driving him, had brought him together with his new companion, for without his chameleon guide he would surely die in the desert and Cinos would inherit the title of the fastest, and most evil, thing alive. It seemed to him that there were powers beyond his reckoning that wanted him to keep trucking. He could only hope. For now, time passed them by, brought tomorrow closer, with all of its mysteries.
(And say no word to tell me who he was)
ESPIO:
The Second Interlude
I've travelled the world from sea to sea and seen remarkable things,
The falls of empires, the rise of mountains, the legacies of kings,
But never again in all my life have I been able to find,
A character so free that he was shunned by his own kind.
He questioned his beliefs, examined their validity,
The reasons that things happen in this world of mystery,
But skepticism was never a virtue among his kin,
And he found he must assimilate or be accused of sin.
I met him on my travels once, a creature full of thought,
Who ran critical analysis over all that he was taught,
But this was known as heresy and he was cast aside,
Doomed to walk the earth alone, and punished for his pride.
I asked him, "Free of Spirit, why cannot you just accept,
That without your faith, among your kind you garner no respect"
He replied, "I fear that these are simply not beliefs that I can hold,
When everything I see does contradict what I am told."
I said, "But will you sacrifice your kin for such a stand"
He replied, "I simply want to be allowed to understand,
I lack the ability to put my conviction on a shelf,
This world is so complex I need to seek the answers for myself."
I've travelled this globe all over, oh the lessons I have learned,
The cultures I have visited, great empires overturned,
But what a lesson I have learned from one who complemented faith,
And who sought belief in something whole but with a solid base.