What was there to say? There was nothing I could tell them that they didn't already know. You didn't need to see it know it existed. It's been here all along. In the dank caves of the neanderthals to the buzzing cubicles of the office buildings, it was there. Well, they are not buzzing anymore. Only ash and dust coat the cities: ties, suits, pens, computers, flesh, bones … all gathering as one lifeless powder.
I know what caused it all, and so do they. Egon, that historian they introduced me to, wished to speak with me. I will, I suppose. He suggested I get some sleep first; I'm guessing he wouldn't have made that suggestion if I hadn't had that outburst. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Maybe some sleep will do me some good. I wonder where they found these pills.
The guards woke me from my dreamless sleep. I'll have to ask them for more of the medication they gave me. I don't care if they take me for a selfish person; I need it. If the entity is in my dreams again, the historian—or anyone for that matter—will get nothing out of my shattered mind. The two guards walked with me to the historian's apartments. This underground facility is quite something: durable steel walls to keep the krals out.
"I hear tower six has a problem with their AC," said one of the guards, this one with black hair and beard. "They won't stop complainin' about it until it's fixed."
"Bah!" uttered the other, this one short, fat, and bald. "Let 'em figure it out themselves. Rick lives there, and I know he used to be a mechanic before the war. Machines are his thing."
The first guard shrugged. "He can find a fan, too. The scavengers found some good stuff. I heard they found A plasma TV without a scratch on the screen, man!"
I didn't know these men. I heard their names in conversations outside my door, but I didn't seem to retain them. After seeing the absolute, all men looked the same. It's like we're flies: gathered around with no variation between us, superficially.
When we got to Egon's place, one of them opened the door for me, and I walked in.
"Ah!" said the historian, "welcome to my home. Come, have a seat on the couch." He was fiddling with a camcorder on a tripod. It was a little thing: something a smiley father would use to record home movies. It was all scratched up, and it was interesting to me that it still worked. When he finished configuring the device, he pointed at the glass table in front of the couch. "Help yourself to some lemonade. I hope you don't mind it's from powder," he said jokingly, referring to the half-full pitcher. "We had homemade ice cream," he said, "but my little girls ate it all up."
In the living room was an end table set against the wall. It looked like an altar, its deity in the form of photographs and trinkets. In a big family photo, Egon showed off his wife and five kids. To its right was a wedding photo. Next to it, there was yet another scene. Egon shook hands with an older man in a suit who was much taller than him.
Among the objects on the table, one of them made my heart sank. Sitting next to a child's toy was an urn: a small one at that. There was only one boy in the family photo, maybe six years old, with a wide honest smile. My little girls ate it all up, he had said. It looks like that we had something in common, the historian and I. At that moment, I thought of Timothy. Then I …
"Mr. Rowes," he was saying to me, "are you all right?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to keep myself together, "it's nothing. It's nothing."
The historian became warm and sympathetic. "Look," he began, "we can do this some other time—"
I panicked, though I'm not sure why. "No!" I yelled, "I have to tell you!" Egon raised his hands in surrender and stepped back towards his kitchen counter. One of the guards opened the door and asked if everything was all right. "I'm cool," I said softly, "I'm fine." I turned to Egon. "I'm sorry. I know how I look to you all. I don't know why I yelled."
"This world does things to us," the historian said lightly, not out of fear but out of empathy, "if you want to talk, then we can talk." The guard nodded stiffly and closed the door, seeing peace restored.
"Yes," I said after swallowing spit, "yes, I would like that."
The historian glanced at the camcorder. "May I record you? If it makes you more comfortable, I can get my tape recorder or a microphone."
"No," I told him, "my face means nothing, anyhow."
Egon frowned at my statement. He cleared his throat, picked up a coffee-stained notebook, set the camcorder to record, and sat in an armchair across from me.
"Could you state your name, please?" Egon requested with all the politeness in the world.
"Dawson Hart Rowes," I stated.
"And where are you from, Mr. Rowes?"
"Euriopia."
"You've come a long way. Are you from North or South Euriopia?"
"South."
There were more of these kinds of questions: just small things about who I was in the old world, but nothing too personal. Eventually, we got to what was valuable.
"So," said Egon, "you are saying it wasn't a kral?"
"No," I answered. Part of me was annoyed by the question. Do you think one of those beasts destroyed our damn town? It was a living disaster, damn you. But I had no right to be upset. He wasn't there. He may think he will just get some information about a cousin race of the kral. A bestiary, he was building, but what I saw deserved a tome of its own. "No, it was not a kral."
"I mean," said the historian, still keeping his kindness up, "I agree with you, this thing … krals aren't quite known to be … how do you say, intelligent."
"I think it's smarter than you and I put together, doctor." I saw Egon's degrees hung on a wall behind him.
"What makes you say that?"
I looked around his living room. Above a doorway hung the symbol of Savar Sanct: golden interlaced crescents, the dove spreading its shiny wings over it. A man of God, this doctor was.
"For she was wise and thus great," I recited from memory, trying not to sound like a sanctimonious old geezer, "And she was great and thus wise. None of Savar Sanct's other offspring could outsmart his daughter of light and wisdom."
"Excuse me," said Egon, "Mr. Rowes?"
"You understand, don't you?"
He followed my gaze. "Oh, yes. But I regret that I do not know the exact chapter and verse."
"My mother was devout," I admitted, "on the other hand, my father believed in nothing." I met Egon's eyes, his full of confusion and worry. My rambling looked like it threatened another postponement. "Sorry," I said. "Were there any more questions?"
The historian flipped through his notes.
"Uhm," he muttered, "Let's uh … how about a physical description?"
"Her body was white as milk. Her eyes were red. Solid red, you know, like marbles. They glowed bright like LEDs or something." I found myself pouring a glass of lemonade.
"How did you know the creature was female?"
"I mean, you know. The face, her chest … " I awkwardly waved over my face and torso in case the historian didn't get it. I guess it was she, after all.
"Oh, I see. So it was human in shape? Humanoid?"
"Yes." Humanoid. The only thing we shared with divinities is some similarities in shape, I suppose. "There were these markings on her skin. It looked like they formed from scar tissue. Hieroglyphs. That's the word. Yeah, that's what they looked like." I took a sip of the lemonade. It was the best thing I've ever drunk at that moment; collected rainwater gets boring after a long, long while.
"When did it appear to you?"
"Well, when she flew over us, she came back and landed in our town."
"It flew, you say?"
"Yes. she didn't have wings. She glided through the air with a trail of light behind her. It was kind of like what you see on a comet."
The memory of that day filled my skull then and there. I couldn't remember it before; I thought the stress of surviving out there had pushed it out of my brain or let it decay into oblivion. But no, it was here. Coming back with such aggression, I could barely focus on Egon's words. The living room seemed to evaporate. I was back at Tursom; the smell of roasting flesh and melting synthetics filled my nostrils.
The absolute floated before me. Her luminescence kept her a foot off the ground. I was on cracked concrete, dragging myself away. My leg had a bone sticking out of it. A pile of dead soldiers blocked my pathetic escape. Some of them were burned to the bone by her holy fire. I was the last one alive; the screams had died down. "Go ahead!" I shouted, failing to sound brave before her, "Kill me. Just do it, damn you!"
But she didn't. Tears of red pitch ran from her eyes as it stared into mine. She deigned to lower itself, its alabaster feet touching the unworthy streets. Closer she came, weeping her scarlet tears. Lowering herself, she held me in her arms. A tail of white flame sprouted from behind her, and it wrapped around my broken leg. I screamed then, not knowing if she planned to give me an excruciating end. Hearing my cowardice, she put a hand to my cheek and calmed me like a child. My leg was healing, the bleeding stopping and the bone receding into my flesh.
That was my first gift. The second was one that I now understood.
"Thank you," I said weakly. Sleep threatened to close my eyes.
My healer kept her silence. With her tear-stained lips, she kissed me. From her mouth, the truth flowed into mine. Her wisdom, it was. I felt the strength of the divine ignited my lungs, my belly, and my tormented mind. When I awakened, I was alone; not remembering our intimacy. I wondered in the woods half-mad until they found me. But now … I had clarity. All was known. My fear vanished, and I remembered my purpose.
The past spat me out into the present. The historian was still talking.
"Did this monster have natural weapons? Claws, immense strength, or anything you would say that makes it hunter, or a predator of—"
Monster. That word irritated me for some reason. "Don't call her that," I interrupted, albeit curtly and in no way friendly.
The historian was taken aback. "Pardon me?" he said, stupidly
"You said she was a monster," I reminded him, "that is not how we address her when she comes."
Egon frowned again, then smiled enigmatically. "I do apologize. If I am to be completely honest, I see these krals as monsters. They took my son, after all."
"This was nothing like the lowly beast that ripped your little boy apart." I cared not for decency at this point. "Did I not say it wasn't a kral? I've seen and hunted hundreds of their kind, mind you. I know what I saw. This … this … goddess tore through dozens of armed men and tanks. Bullets did nothing. Shells did nothing. A thousand railguns will do nothing. How it destroyed my town with her energy …"
Egon stood up and shut off the camcorder.
"Why'd you do that?" I asked.
The historian didn't answer me. Instead, he walked past the couch and opened the apartment door.
"Take five, guys," said Egon. When one of them protested, he said, "it's fine, we'll be okay, go have yourselves a late breakfast." He looked like he was whispering something, then he said: "All right, now. See you!"
Egon went back to his spot and sat.
"Listen, Mr. Rowes," he said, his tone serious and his smile gone. He folded his fingers and placed them against his chin. "What you saw was no goddess. There is no such thing."
I pointed at the symbol over the doorway. "So why hang that?"
"I believe in Savar Sanct, but his magic daughters, his titans, his messengers … they are all just metaphors."
"Listen to me," I said. "the goddess is perhaps a thing of its own. Maybe she is the mother of Savar Sanct instead."
"We are getting off point," Egon said firmly, "what I am saying is this goddess of which you speak is indeed a kral." He raised his hands: a gesture of telling me to relax. "We are both aware that—easy, Mr. Rowes—We are both aware that the scientist Aoltan Lamprótita has been making the krals. You didn't have to read every article about him to know he was ambitious. Well, he's done things no one, no one, thought was possible. What he finally created was what you encountered."
"He created it with the artifact he found at the bottom of the lake in South Euriopia, right?" I remarked.
"Yes, but—"
"And you know that's been there since this planet was born, right?"
"Perhaps. That is what their research suggests, but—"
"Now that I think of it, almost every religion, not just Savar Sanct's, alludes to this goddess. You're a historian. Surely, you see a pattern?"
Egon began to slide over to reach out towards the table next to his chair. "I don't see how—"
"What the hell are doing?" I demanded to know as he reached for a walkie-talkie.
"Please, calm down, Mr. Rowes," he beseeched me, "I need to ask my wife down below if the kids still want to play."
I doubt that, I thought, I won't let him interfere with my mission. I still had that tiny blade up my sleeve. The fools didn't think to search me. I pounced on the historian.
"Yes, he's here. He knows—"
He stopped talking when he felt my blade on his neck. I nodded at the radio. Egon understood.
"He knows nothing. He was just spouting some crap we already knew. He's talking about the same old krals we even have samples for. Gigas bats, gill dogs, silt rats, you know."
After he covered for me, I took the walkie-talkie from him and put it in my pocket. Steel still to his throat, I forced him to tell me where his gun was. Everyone these days had a gun. The krals were multiplying faster and faster.
"So what? Are you some kind of zealot now?" Egon asked as he opened a drawer in his bedroom and carefully took out a loaded revolver. "It's a trick of the mind. Some krals are armed with several bio-weapons, you know? We can treat you. Let us help you put an end to this madness."
"You seem to know a lot," I mused as I took his gun, "that man in the suit looked familiar. I've seen him in the papers before the world burned. You're more than a historian, that's for sure."
I turned to walk out the bedroom door.
"We'll kill it one day," promised Egon, "we know it's weakness. We'll use F.L.A.R.E."
This stopped me from where I stood. "You have spaceships and excavators to find crystals for those weapons?"
"We found a cache underneath a military base in Osla. Other nations are helping us build new weapons. If you know what's good for you, you'll choose the winning side."
"It's not about winning or losing," I said, "It's about choosing what's right."
I left the historian's apartments as fast as I could. An alarm would sound as soon as Egon got a hold of a guard. They would all be looking for me. But I knew I would escape.
Along with the truth about the krals, the goddess had given me some of her sacred power.
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