The ocean
floor, having been the subject of a great deal of my childhood fantasies, did
not at first strike me as an unusual setting in which to find myself. I naturally assumed I was in
the middle of some pleasant dream I would soon wake from. As time progressed, however,
both the sharpness of my consciousness and solidarity of my surroundings became
increasingly apparent. I was,
evidently, standing on or perhaps gently floating above the sandy ocean bottom.
I did not
want for air, nor was my vision impeded very much within a certain radius. I was being conveyed, perhaps
by a current, through a forest of columnous, craggy towers of blue rock. I craned to see the extent of
their height, but they rose into the blackness and out of sight. I heard nothing save the
swish of the salt water in my ears as I turned my head, and noted the absence
of any form of sea life, fish or otherwise.
Though I was not oppressed by
the ocean’s weight that one might expect at a depth so great a one as I was
surely at, the great expanse made me feel horribly alone. I am a potter by trade, with
no apprentice or family, and I am accustomed to being at work without human
contact for several days at a time. But even I, and I would imagine many who lead far
more solitary lives than I, take comfort in knowing that I have neighbors,
however distant they may be. Living a mile outside of a small town gives one a comfort that
one lacks if he lives in the wilderness. Here my only sense of surrounding came from the
rocks, and I took as much relief from their presence as rocks are able to
provide.
I floated on,
never seeming to change direction, and my path never impeded by any obstacle. I could not think of how I
had come to be in this situation, nor why I was not at that moment drowning. No bubbles issued from my
mouth and nose when I attempted to exhale, and I found I breathed quite
normally. I preferred
to seal my lips, however, for I could taste the salty sea all the same.
The novelty
of my predicament soon waned and I wondered if I were being taken somewhere
purposefully. I could not
imagine a force capable of conveying me in the manner I was being so, save God
Himself, and I decided that if He was indeed behind it, He could certainly do
whatever He pleased with me.
I now believe
that it was a little less than an hour from that time that I first saw the
light ahead of me. The terrain
became steeper and I more or less crawled up the incline, barely touching the
ground with toes and fingertips, and pushed along by the current or God or what
have you. The light
began as a yellow pinprick like the start of a sunrise. It gradually increased in
vibrance and intensity until I reached the lip of a cliff, at which point the
force driving me forward ceased completely and I settled gently lying on my
stomach, peering down into an enormous crater at a wondrous scene.
Where to
begin! Dug into the
center of the immense crater were many hundred pits, like deep holes, and from
these rose, attached by long translucent tendrils, a host of creatures the like
of which I had never seen, nor even heard of in stories. Their slim, spindle-shaped
bodies were long, covered in a myriad of transparent tentacles that stirred the
water around them, and extended up to a round head with globular eyes and a
wide, thick-lipped mouth. These heads
too were covered in a nimbus of smaller tendrils, closely resembling hair. The entire scene was almost
blindingly bright, and from what I could tell, these creatures were the source
of the light.
None took
notice of me, and all seemed to be looking intently skyward, or surface-ward,
as it was. It was
deathly silent for some time, and it was this that allowed me to detect the
instant the first of them began to sing.
It seemed
that the very centermost creature closed its eyes, tilted its head back, and
issued forth a soft note, so gently as though the song had already started a
good deal of time ago, and she (for the voice seemed feminine to me) was simply
joining in as unobtrusively as possible. The note quickly grew in strength and volume,
however, and soon her immediate neighbors started up, and then their neighbors,
and the song rippled out to the edges of the crowd with great speed. As this happened, the light,
which had been difficult to look at before, became nearly intolerable, and I
was obliged to shut my eyes.
I lay
motionless for a great length of time, eyes closed tight, yet far more
attentive to the song or chorus than I had been to any prior musical
performance. I was by
turns transfixed and upset by the beautiful yet definitely inhuman voices. The emotion being expressed
by this fantastic chorus was, however, unmistakably joy, and in this notion I
took solace. I could feel their joy, blasting through
their song through me, and out into the dark sea in all directions. A creature that expressed its
delight through song seemed, to me at least, to share something of the human
condition. Indeed, the
longer I dwelt upon it, the less alien they seemed.
I had by this
time forced my eyes to adjust to the light and I was able to see well enough
provided I did not focus on any one particular for more than a few moments. I saw that their sizes varied
greatly, and evidently with their size, their note. It became apparent after some
observation that each creature was capable of only one musical note, and had to
rely on its neighbors to sing when others were necessary. They coordinated a melody
quite beautifully, and I found myself getting so caught up in the whole thing
that I stood up on the lip of the crater, fists raised in the air, tensing
triumphantly in before the crowd like a conductor at his orchestra.
The memory of
the events that followed is painful to recall, but I must recount them
nonetheless. Piercing
through the chorus came a hideous shriek, in a voice that sounded as though
living metal were being scraped upon living metal. The singing died in an
instant, and the light dimmed considerably. All the creatures’ attentions turned to face away
from me, and upward.
The scream
came again. It was a
scream and nothing else, for like the luminous creatures’ song, there was no
mistaking the intent of the voice. It was not a scream of pain, nor anguish, nor
anything except hatred. It was a
scream of an ancient, seething, concentrated rage that had festered and stewed
for centuries. The sound
shook me to the core and I fell back into my prone position to see what was
coming.
For a long
time I saw nothing, partly because my hosts had retracted into their holes up
to their necks, greatly diminishing the scene’s brilliance. Eventually I made out a great
black form, blacker than the waters around it, hovering over the edge of the
crater opposite mine. The shape
was wholly unfamiliar to me, and it was a few moments before I realized there
were two separate entities involved in its formation.
I have been
fortunate enough to live in a time of complete peace, and had never before this
point attempted to imagine the terror a lowly peasant might experience when
mounted, armored raiders charge upon his village to destroy his way of life and
everything he values. I now
believe that they, like myself at that instant, would be rooted to the spot
with fear at the sight of a giant, black-helmed horror wielding a great glaive
atop an armored beast of war.
The intruder
snapped his reigns, and his great whale of a ride inched closer to the silent
chorus. For what
seemed like hours, the crowd and the monster sat motionless and mute. I could hear the chinking of
his armor and the creak of its fastenings as his mount treaded in place.
Then a poor,
luckless luminous creature began to rise from his pit and glow with great force
once again. Wide-eyed he
stared at the armored beast and hesitated for a moment, then tilted his head
back, opened his mouth and began pouring out his note.
The
ear-splitting shriek came in an instant, and with a hideous swiftness the
monster swung his great blade and clove the unfortunate singer through his
grounded stalk. In an
instant his light died, and he floated upward, transparent and nearly invisible
like a ghost. His faded
corpse hung over the crowd for a moment before being slowly taken away by the
current.
I wanted to
shout and cry, to hurl rebukes at the monster, but I was paralyzed with fright. In my mind I fervently urged
all the remaining creatures to remain silent and still, lest they wished to
join their dead friend.
But twice
more members of the choir rose up to sing, and twice more they were cut down
with a sickening snick of the tremendous edge and a shattering scream. For a long time, none of the
creatures built up the courage to raise themselves from their holes, and the
standstill resumed once again.
In a while
the silence was broken again, this time by the monster himself. He began to laugh, in
deep-gutted guffaws, at the cowering crowd. His shoulders heaved and his head tilted back in his
mirth, his mount struggling to maintain stationary under all the jostling.
Then, to my
amazement, the creature closest to the monster raised himself to a height above
that than I had seen any yet achieve, and began to sing his note with terrific
force.
The monster
reeled at the sonic blast, and attempted to recover himself. The rest of the crowd,
however, seeing their adversary so disoriented, quickly followed suit and rose
to join in the song.
There were no
more martyrs. The volume
of light and sound far surpassed that of the previous displays I had witnessed,
and I was once again forced to shield my eyes from the glare. I stood up and squinted from
behind my shading hand, however, and saw the monster struggling with his mount,
which was wriggling frantically and trying to get away. With a mighty heave it bucked
him and shot off, leaving the armored fiend to fall heavily to the ground.
Deprived of
his means of escape, the warrior struggled to his feet and attempted to raise
his glaive to make corpses once again. As he did so, I could see his armor cracking and
smoking, issuing a billowing black discharge from his armor joints and
eye-holes. He screamed
again, the same metallic voice, but in true agony. He dropped his weapon and
clapped his hands to the sides of his helm, in a futile effort to shield his
ears. He
desperately tried to climb the wall of the crater, but it was too steep for him
in his heavy armor. The fissures
in his armor became larger, and he dropped to his knees, covering his head and
burying his face between them.
A tremendous
cloud of oily black smoke erupted from all sides of him; his armor bulged, then
shattered and flung its tiny pieces in all directions. The dark smoke cleared, and
nothing remained behind. He was gone.
The most
fascinating part of the whole ordeal, to me, however, was not the death of the
tyrant. The chorus,
even when they sang in defiance of the monster, their message had not been one
of revenge or righteous retribution. It remained the same joyful song as it was when it
had first begun.
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