A heaviness wraps itself around my mind. It pushes and contracts and seeps in through the holes—my senses dull and my thoughts slow. We have entered The Land of Corpses. Their leviathan bodies flicker in and out of existence:
A child as large as city, falls slowly in the distance. Or it gives the impression of falling, but it does not fall. Its body is thin and wasting away, bit by infinitesimal bit.
We pass a million beetles in a quivering pile, melting into it each other. Bubbles burst from the streaming mass, sending a brown fog into the air. We cover our mouths with damp cloth and hold hands until we leave the cloud. It stings our faces for hours to come and the seer breaks out in a painful rash.
We stop when we reach the body of what might be massive worm—it extends as far as I can see in either direction, and is almost ten times my height. It may not have an end. Indeed, it might coil around the entirety of the Earth, or galaxy, or universe.
We come close enough to feel heat radiate from it. It might have been far warmer when it was alive. Its flesh is dried and lumpy and faded pink. Rowan gets up close to it, and searches for something to take a sample with.
But she doesn’t get to. “Don’t touch that,” a warbled voice says, although I can’t tell where it comes from.
Rowan draws back, possibly a little annoyed.
“Thank you,” the same voice says. It appears to vibrate off the entirety of the snake. “Might I see you? You’re so far way, come closer.”
“Who are you?” Rowan asks.
“What is the more pressing question,” the seer says. They’ve grown paler and seem to be fighting their nerves.
“I am a human or was one. Just like you all were.”
“I still am,” I tell it. “Where are you?”
“In front of you, but come further. I can feel you, but I want to see and I lack the strength to come there. Please, come to where I am. Walk beside my tongue, to your right.” The worm is in fact a tongue? Or is it both?
The seer steps back as Rowan and I step forward. “I will not see what lies at the end of this,” they say. “Please reconsider this.”
“You can wait by the border,” I say. “We’ll get you when we’re done.” And the seer does not press the matter further. They depart our company and we travel the length of the tongue. As we near whatever we’re meant to near, we notice it get healthier and thicker, wetter and pinker. We do not engage in conversation with it until we finally see it—at first we think it’s a hill, or a boulder, and when we’re close enough to see the glisten of its eyes we see it’s a face, the origin of the tongue.
The head is lying on its side, half buried in the ground. It’s not as large as you might expect given the length of the tongue, but you could still build a small house on it. I’m astonished by how very human and very old it is; apart from the tongue and eyes, it is merely a large old man’s face. It can see us now and I feel heavy when its gaze finds me. Whether or not it’s malicious, it is unpleasant.
“I’m sorry for my state. I’m sorry about many things, but right now I’m sorry that you I’ve made you walk all this way to see a dying thing like me. What brings you to this place? Seldom anything so alive as you comes here.”
“We’ve come to kill the Waker.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
It blinks and I feel like I way three times as much as I did. I’m forced to my knees. Rowan is similarly afflicted and masks a gasping sound as the breath is drawn out of her lungs.
“You cannot. I won’t allow it.”
I’m silent, trying to think of how to not provoke it further. It might be dying but it’s still far more powerful than either Rowan or me. The seer might have had some idea, but that doesn’t matter now.
“If you promise to go,” the thing says eventually, “you can live. But don’t return. The Waker is not your enemy.” Here its voice is far louder, and I can see the vibrations travel along its tongues. If it were a normal volume coming from a normal person it might have been smooth and charismatic, like a singer’s voice.
“Fine,” I manage to get out. “We’ll go.”
“You do not mean that,” it says, and with more strength than I gave it credit for it opens its mouth wide.
Darkness and music pour out.
I try to run. Rowan does too. She’s even less successful than I am, barely moving an inch to my two. My muscles strain heavily under the confusing new weight. I do not get very far at all before the dying thing’s strange emissions catch up with me.
Trills of impossible voices invade my ears, and the darkness seeps into and behind my eyes. I see red outlines of arms and scowling faces. They grip my limbs. They scratch and envelop me and grow more numerous. And they drag me towards a great red hole I know to be the monster’s mouth.
I cannot let them stop me. I tear at the hands. I bite them and try to grip their wrists. When I can remember prayers or powerful words, I scream those over the voices.
I gain an inch and lose twenty.
It’s futile, I know it is, but I have not cared about futility for a very long time.
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