A thick swirling mist rolled over the ground where I stood. A few feet away in every direction the world faded to a deep red haze that churned and pulsed in a slow rhythm.
When I moved, I could not feel my feet moving over the ground. There was no sound but a slow thump that came and went with the same rhythm of the red haze.
It was a heartbeat.
For an unknown amount of time I walked in an indiscernible direction, not knowing if I was actually moving.
Something moved within the haze, shadows that disappeared when I focused on them. After a while I heard whispers in the fog, it was too low to hear what was said, but it felt malicious.
A hand shot up from the roiling fog beneath me and grasped at my leg. It had smooth skin and long black nails on the fingertips. It passed right through me, and I felt my chest tighten as my leg swirled and distorted as if it was part of the fog.
Something shrieked, it sounded gleeful, victorious.
“You’re mine now,” a feminine voice whispered beside my ear. “You will never leave again.”
I shivered and tried to turn my head, I couldn’t. All I could do was continue to move forward.
A light shot through the haze, and I heard a foghorn far away in the distance. The light swept in an arc before me, slicing through the fog, blinding me when it passed over my face. Then it disappeared, as if it had never been there.
I felt something land on my shoulder, and a crow’s head appeared in my peripheral vision. It looked at me, cawed once and started pecking on my ear. There was no pain.
It cawed again and took flight, beneath it’s talons my shoulder dissipated and swirled before slowly returning to its original shape.
I walked for an eternity, whispers following my every step. Gleeful cackling and the sound of distant cannon fire reverberated through the red haze.
Another light appeared, and I heard a train’s whistle pierce the air. The rhythmic thu-thug of a steam engine came closer and closer. The light grew, and around it a huge black shape formed. I felt fear grasp my heart harder.
The muffled roar grew stronger, and I could see the haze part before something large. It whistled again, louder, closer. It was close.
It passed within inches of my right arm, the hulking shape of a black train. Windows on the carriages glowed a dull golden color as it thundered by me, there was no rumble in the ground. All I could hear was the roar of its engines and the wind whistling against its hull.
Then it was gone.
“There is no escape,” the voice whispered again. “You’re mine now.”
I could do nothing but move forward.
The pulsing of the red haze slowed, and I shivered. The heartbeat slowed with it.
My foot hit something solid that rolled away with a dull thud. It was a human skull. It had been bleached white, and all the teeth but its canines were missing. They were longer, sharper, more vicious looking than they should have been. It disappeared into the fog.
Another skull appeared, this one normal but for the spine attached to its base. It moved like a snake, trying to wrap itself around my feet, hitting nothing. The skull hissed and slithered away.
I kept walking.
A dark shape started forming before me, and I approached it feeling dread creeping up my spine. When the shape resolved itself it turned out to be a huge pile of skeletons, bony hands stuck out from crushed and misshapen ribcages. Empty skulls stared lifelessly at me as I began climbing.
I stumbled and I could feel my hands and legs tear on the jagged bones, they didn’t bleed.
The climb seemed endless, but soon I could see the top.
Balanced by skeletal hands and legs, a throne perched precariously on the peak of the mountain of dead bodies. On it sat a figure dressed all in white. Framing the throne was a dim sun, casting the throne’s shadow down on me.
The figure rose. It was a woman. Her hair flowed around her face, hiding her features. The hair’s colors swirled and changed, ranging all the colors from deep red to bright blue.
On the front of the dress was a symbol of a sun.
“This is not the end,” the woman whispered. It sounded much milder than the malicious voice that had haunted my journey through the red haze, motherly and kind.
“He’s mine,” another voice hissed. “He will never leave this place.” It was the cruel one, but there was nothing else around us.
“Your journey does not end here, young one,” the woman’s voice was growing stronger, and the sun behind the throne shone brighter.
“He’s mine,” the malicious whisper repeated. “He will never leave this place.”
“Silence!” The woman before the throne roared, her dress flapping wildly in the wind that appeared as if from nowhere. The red haze swirled and roiled, and I could hear shrieks of pain coming from below.
“You have a choice,” the white robed woman before me said, she stretched out her hand.
“No!” The voice shrieked from below. “He’s mine!”
The wind grew stronger, and the haze began to fade, revealing that the skeletons were nothing but marble and stone, shining in the light of the now blindingly bright sun.
“Take my hand, and leave this nightmare.” The woman’s hand stretched towards me, open and inviting. “Or do not, and stay forever.”
I reached out my hand to grasp hers. From behind me a coil made from the spine of a large beast shot forward. It wrapped itself around my torso, and pulled.
“He’s mine!” The voice screamed from somewhere in the fading red haze, and I could feel myself slipping backwards, pulled by whatever lay below.
I lunged forwards, screaming soundlessly, grasping for the woman’s outstretched hand. I felt strong fingers clasp around mine, and the cord from below dissipated into mist.
“You choose wisely, young one,” the woman said, a smile in her voice. “I am sorry.”
Then her other hand shot forward, clasping a sword as wide as my arm. The sword pierced my chest, through my heart and out my back. I screamed, my voice finally free.
---
My eyes shot open, and all the noise disappeared. I tried to scream, but no air left my mouth. When I tried to breathe in, the pain returned. The stabbing excruciating pain that radiated outwards from my chest.
I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move. With a tremendous effort I managed to lift my head and look at what was pinning me.
It was a branch. A very large one at that, I thought that it had to be at least as thick as my thigh. And pinned against my chest, with the branch piercing through what little was now left of its skull, was one of the changelings. It had been pushed even further up the branch it had been impaled by, and I could see a trail of thick green blood mixing with broken parts of chitin and the bright red of my own blood.
Feeling started to return to my body, beyond the pain. I could feel something heavy draped across my lap, and tried to peer around the changeling on my chest. The thing on my lap was quivering, and a thought hit me. The branch must have severed my spinal cord, so how in the world could I feel something below the wound?
I dismissed the thought from my mind and strained to look over the corpse. Over my legs lay a sobbing and shivering changeling, it was almost twice the size of the one pinned to my chest. It took my mind longer than I liked to connect the dots, hazy from pain as it was.
Chrysalis lay muttering and sobbing, and in the eerie stillness I could hear her. “...lost him too...everyone is dead...” Her voice was cracked, and it sounded like she had been crying for a while.
I tried moving my legs, to do something to alert her that I was still alive and breathing. Well, at least alive. But even though I could feel my legs, I could not move them at all. With a hand I rubbed my face, trying to think of a way to signal her somehow.
Sighing didn’t work, and the eerie silence broken by her sobbing didn’t help. I stared helplessly at my hands, thinking furiously.
The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, my hands and arms were free, and they moved! I would have facepalmed hard, if my desire to get free of the branch hadn’t overridden every other desire.
I felt the ground around me, swiping over the ground to try and find something. My hand went over a loose rock, and with more force than was probably necessary I hurled it at her.
The stone went high, and clattered against the mutilated trunk of the tree, and Chrysalis didn’t react at all, not even a twitch of the ears.
I clenched my jaw and tried to find another stone. Instead my hand went over something sharp. I jerked my hand away and brought it before my face, lodged in it was a fang, doubtlessly from the impaled changeling. I pulled it out and threw it at her, it hit her mane, but she didn’t even flinch.
Another search yielded little fruit, and I turned my head to the side in defeat. There, right beside my head lay the grisly remains of a lower jaw. It was broken and cracked, and pieces of flesh and chitin clung to it.
I grinned and picked it up. It was sticky and nasty, but it was heavier than the stone and the tooth. Aiming carefully this time, I threw it.
The disgusting remnant of a face hit home, it impacted her squarely in the jaw. It wasn’t exactly where I had aimed, but the spot was strangely fitting, and it did it’s job.
Chrysalis’ head whipped up and she looked at me with a glare. “Can’t you see I’m mourning here?” She said with venom, tears dripping from her eyes. “Leave me alone!” She nearly returned to her previous position before the realization hit her.
“You’re alive?” She whispered. Then the big changeling sprung up on her three hooves. “You’re alive!” This time she cheered and hobbled around to grasp my head in a crushing embrace.
The pain nearly made me pass out, but I managed to push her off me, barely. I scowled at her, gritting my teeth and trying to push the severe discomfort of her action out of my mind.
“Oh... Sorry?” Chrysalis did not look sorry. Not even a little bit, and my scowl intensified while I tried to draw her attention to the branch still pinning me painfully through the chest.
She seemed to understand, and grimaced when she took in the grisly display of gore. “That can’t feel good...” She muttered.
I wanted to shout at her, to vent the frustration and pain at her. Instead I had to settle for an eye twitch, and a slap to the back of her head.
Chrysalis turned to me, looking confused. I smiled sweetly, if a bit forced and pointed back to the branch and mimicked pulling it out. At least she seemed to understand that.
“You want me to remove it?” She asked, and looked uncertain when I nodded. “But you might bleed out!” I just scowled in response. “Oh... right.”
Pulling out the rather large piece of wood was apparently harder than I first had believed. She tried pulling it out by hoof, but found that it was rather ineffective with only one leg still remaining. All it did was inflict even more pain, and I screamed soundlessly when she tried to wiggle it loose.
When she gave up, I poked her flank to get her attention. I put a hand to my head, balling it into a fist with my pinkie and thumb extended. With the thumb against my forehead, it could look somewhat like a crude representation of a horn.
“I don’t think pushing it with my horn would do any good.” She said, looking confused.
I clenched my eyes shut and facepalmed. Then I repeated the gesture, this time wiggling the fingers of my other hand at the branch, mimicking lifting it up with magic.
At least she had the presence of mind to blush. “You want me to pull it out with magic... Of course, why didn’t I think of that...” I patted her head, wondering how in the world this moron ever had gotten the position of Queen of an entire race.
Soon the branch and her horn were enveloped in the same green aura, and I could feel a tugging sensation in my chest. It was accompanied by a pain so intense that sparks danced and flickered in my vision.
With a sickening squelch and a wet slurp the branch was free. The changeling corpse was stuck, and followed the branch up a foot or so before it slid free and fell straight into the now open wound in my chest face first.
I squirmed, both in pain and revulsion, and shoved the corpse off my chest. The blood around the wound was a vile mix of red and green, but the flesh was slowly knitting itself together.
Chrysalis was watching curiously, her nose practically touching the wound. Her face was a mix of fascination and disgust.
The worst part was that I could feel it all. I could feel the ribcage rebuilding itself, the tissue squirming and crawling like a thousand fire-ants dancing over my flesh. It burned.
Clenching my jaw harder than I had ever done before, I let my head rest against the ground. Trying to shut out the pain was an enormous effort in itself.
The crawling sensation stopped suddenly, and a sound reminiscent of the roar of a waterfall invaded my ears. The roar rose and fell slowly at first, but sped up quickly. I realised then that the eerie silence had been the absence of blood coursing through my veins.
But something felt wrong. As if something was in my body that didn’t belong. The feeling was spreading from my chest and outwards in tact with the beat of my heart, and I squirmed in discomfort.
“Ow, bloody hell.” I croaked and clutched my chest, the discomfort intensified when I breathed in. I turned to Chrysalis. “Let’s not do that ag...” The words died in my mouth as I beheld what she was doing.
She was levitating the branch in front of her, and her tongue was running over the blood soaked parts.
“What in the nine hells are you doing?!” I croaked as loud as I could, and sat up. I felt drained, but the discomfort was fading, leaving nothing but a slight tingle all over my skin.
Crysalis put the broken branch down and licked her lips. She turned to me with a slightly creepy smile, running her tongue over her fangs. “Oh nothing much, just a little something I wanted to try.”
“And what in the world could you possibly accomplish by licking my bloody blood off the bloody branch?!” I tried to rise to my feet, but my legs were still not cooperating. They could move, but they felt numb, as if they were asleep, and I had the sensation of pins and needles running over the skin.
Chrysalis sat down in front of me and put a hoof on my chest where the gaping hole used to be. Now, there was nothing but a pinkish scar as wide as the hole had been, and even now it was fading to a dull pale a shade greyer than the skin around.
“That is a surprise.” She said and grinned. “How do you feel?”
I could still feel the revulsion, but I sighed in defeat. At the time I just thought it was another cultural thing I would never get used to. “Like shit, I think some of that gunk, no offense, from your friend over there got into the wound.” I rubbed my arms, trying to get rid of the tingling sensation. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Chrysalis looked me over, her face passive, but her eyes had a curious sparkle in them. She prodded me here and there, poking just about everywhere. I slapped her hoof away when she was about to prod my privates, she just looked up at me with a smirk and sat up.
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” She said, still holding the smirk. Her voice had a strange hint of smugness to it, and I just shook my head.
I glanced up at the sky, during our little operation the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and the air was getting chilly. I took a look at our surroundings as well. The tree had fallen over the road, its weight crushing and dislodging the old paving-stones. The other changeling corpse lay a few feet away, close to the trunk, but luckily not beneath it.
“What do you want to do with the bodies?” I asked morosely.
Her face fell when I changed the subject. “Tradition dictates that we burn the bodies.” She answered, looking down at the ground.
I smiled and put a hand beneath her chin, raising it so that I could look her in the eyes. “Then that’s what we’re going to do. We have enough firewood for a pyre at least.”
She smiled weakly in return. With her help I got to my feet, and together we gathered branches and broke more off the dry old tree.
When we were done, the changelings had been placed on their stomachs on top of a stable altar of firewood. Their posture relaxed, and their wounds hidden beneath a thin blanket of old leaves.
I picked the flint and steel out of my bag and presented them to Chrysalis. “Do you want to do the honors?”
She smiled but shook her head. “No. You do it. Without you we would never have found them in the first place.” She pushed my offered hands away. “I think it’s only fitting that you send them on to their final journey.”
That surprised me, but I just smiled and leaned down to light the pyre. When the sparks finally caught, the flames leapt eagerly over the dry wood. From behind me I could hear Chrysalis start speaking in a low voice.
“From the Ashes our people rose.
To ashes our people will return.
We were born of change.
Death is the final costume.
Let the wind carry us to new beginnings.”
Then she bowed to the now blazing pyre, the the flames consuming the two bodies and lifting the ashes towards the heavens in a sparkling inferno.
I sat down beside Chrysalis and draped an arm over her shoulders. She buried her head in the crook of my neck.
“Thank you. Walker.”