∗ ∗ ∗
A wisp of tobacco and ash emerged to mingle with the smells of fresh jungle, upturned earth and deep, saturated, moisture.
"Bwah…What did you just say?"
Before giving the beetle time to answer, Aoi wrenched his face back to the hidden mountain reservoir, the golden statues leaving trails of light as they passed in view. The jaguar was gone, but the glimmering trail of golden spectacles danced and drifted peacefully into the depths where the beast of shadow had descended.
The amphitheatre surrounding the tarn, surrounding them, seemed to expand as time passed; Aoi and Bwah, both growing smaller as the tableau expanded.
We are meant to follow it…We…are meant…to follow it…We are meant to follow it?
Aoi, covered in sweat, Bwah presumably the same, looked to the pool again. The depths seemed to call him, they were bright somehow even though obscured and deep and dark. The peaceful, shining, golden trail of glitter began to coil and swirl; or rather everything was swirling. Nothing was swirling.
The surface of the water lit up beneath each footstep the beetle took. A golden light lingered as perfect footprints, yet the steps themselves made no wake or ripple on the glazed surface. Bwah was heading to the center of the expanse exaggeratedly glacial, yet Aoi could see Bwah had already arrived, as well as his trajectory and his progress throughout the journey. A refulgent emerald blue continuous circuit of motion, already completed, yet just beginning bathed in the wash of living green gold.
What the fuck
Aoi felt hot, hotter even than before. Drenched in sweat with no breeze he could barely draw breath. He could only hear the rush of his own blood inside his head, and the echo of his strange insect companion's statement…or question.
We are meant to follow
Bwah, head bowed, sipped from the mirrored surface, as the jaguar had done. Aoi took steps toward its edge, yet the meeting of land and water moved further away the closer he got. He was thirsty, he was dehydrated, he was thirsty, he was knee-deep?
Up to the hem of his shredded shirt, now, what surrounded him was not water as he understood it, but something more akin to a living, liquid, quartz. He continued further toward the center, somehow never submerging further into the depth beneath him, though his feet never met lakebed…he was emerging as if walking up steps that moved themselves.
Click click.
Snip.
Aoi was arrested. The sound had come from everywhere and nowhere, its anomalousness only emphasized its insistence — just hunger —, seething, empty hunger filling the amphitheatre around him.
We are meant to follow…
The statues' faces all began to twist and wrench, contorting in pain. A cool breeze descended onto the surface, followed by that slow, stalking fog. The golden statues' reflected faces staring into Aoi from beneath the depths of the surface.
"We are meant to follow." Aoi offered.
The gold of the statues around him washed away while the reflected gold faces began to dance and sway in the recesses below. Contorting and congealing. Then, all together, at once, they vanished. The pool around him and beneath him, only a vast expanse of black but for two distinct glowing lights, slowly getting larger and brighter. Closer.
Commanding, and impassioned, the yellow eyes had him in their sights. Aoi went to wrap his arms around his head in defense but was instead compelled to dive straight into the open maw of the hungry jaguar who had quarried him from below.
Nothingness.
∗ ∗ ∗
DaDum.
Aoi awoke in the center of the deep. Bright gold, ornate tools and artifacts, vessels of all kinds, glowing around him, his own skin dazzling, projecting daylight. The subaquean terrain was lit completely. The surface above burning bright, lit in a perfect effulgent circle. He could see for miles, the mountains of treasures and offerings, gifts he knew were his. A loud booming roar was filtering down from above. It was calling him to the surface; the corona awaited his arrival.
"TEES!"
Compelled toward the sounds he knew were in celebration of their new King, he felt himself moving toward them.
DaDum.
His body slowly began to advance to the sound, to the surface, he was being drawn toward them and he was moving without the need for movement.
"KAY!"
The blinding light now emanating from his own skin, he inched closer and closer. How were his eyes able to stay open? Momentum increased around him.
DaDum.
The shaking and rumbling of the world above threatened to erupt and yet he lay there motionless, proudly removing the distance between his resplendent self and the deafening roars, advancing toward the Sun itself, as the sun Himself.
"SOO SAH!"
DaDum.
He had now broken the surface, the water pooling and settling, golden, atop his head. Ascending still, the surface of the water clung to his body at his shoulders, draping from him, a gown of deep blue silken aqua, spattered with golden stars and adornments.
"SOO-AYY!"
The water settled atop his head, began to stir, forming itself, moving, gaining shape, building itself, protruding points from almost every direction atop his crown, solid gold but liquid still.
BOOM!
He had risen completely from the reservoir, glorious — a vision; the Birth of Venus. Draped in the turquoise of the lake, his skin radiating gold, underneath his feet a brilliant corona. He was standing atop the water's surface leaving no ripples or wake, surrounded by the now humble amphitheatre, crowded with his once-screaming, adoring subjects. Each now stood with bated breath as they beheld his visage.
The silence, absolute.
His mouth opened, and a cavernous voice exploded into the arena before him. The onlookers fell to their knees; heads bowed, arms raised in rejoice.
My people.
The language he used, unintelligible, but the meaning behind his divine musings crept and permeated into all. He spoke to their hearts.
The one who commands life and light. You have dressed me in your worship, you have provided me a sacred vessel so that I shall breathe the air, and drink of the fruits I labor endlessly to protect. Eternal life, endless without suffering, is my bonanza.
My children, hear me, you will return to me. Speak now.
The worshippers; a rose opening itself to bloom, they swung their heads back and exclaimed for his exultation.
"SOO-AYY!"
He bowed his head, grateful, and began to ascend above the surface. Slowly into the air he rose, gravity was immaterial. As he ascended he offered his embrace to the world beneath his grace. The fine gown in which he was adorned trailed long, growing in length proportionate with the height he rose, a growing extension of the lake itself.
He opened his palms, looked at his left hand and willed his own glowing light to condense; shaping and growing, forming a dagger of radiance. He gripped it with both hands to raise it into the air, and angled the blade toward himself.
BaDun.
He plunged the knife crafted of light into his own stomach, and began to carve himself open slowly, dragging deep into his flesh from left side to right. Disemboweled.
BOOM!
Coruscating gold made way to deep red. His blood gushed, a river. Crimson ran into the gown now mixed midnight and sunshine, following its train toward the tarn's surface.
BOOM!
A waterfall now, his blood had filled the basin, marring its beautiful clarity. With no signs of stopping, his blood rushed out from his flayed stomach. The water, now dark crimson, began to swell and rise. Expanding above its own surface, it crawled up each of the levels of the amphitheatre.
"SOO AYYYYY!!!"
"Ghel."
As he spoke, the torrent of crimson began to flow gold. The worshippers jumping and crying. They made no sound, or rather the only sound was the dreadful, echoing boom of his incantation. The gold rushed down the trail of his gown, into the water, solidifying its surface and spreading up through the amphitheatre, climbing each worshipper as they stood motionless, engulfed in breathing aqueous aurum.
The echoing of his incantation ended, in its place a frightfully peaceful silence fell upon the air. The worshippers gleamed, gilded just as he was.
…
The blade dissipated in his grasp, the bleeding ceased. The gown's train, once an extension of the lake, separated itself, scaled the distance, and swelled to engulf him. He was cast in gold, gilded once more.
He fell from the sky, fast and hard, shattering the surface, slowing his descent, as he fell through.
The gold that adorned his skin deserted him to dance in the waters above, rising to the surface as he descended deeper.
Together forever, my Children, you are safe.
Two brilliant, deep amber eyes bore directly into his own.
∗ ∗ ∗
His stomach warped and contorted. Intestines climbing and wrapping themselves around his vocal cords. Throbbing, pulsating, the Velvet Worm's image filled the insides of his skull. The pressure welling up inside him, too much, threatening to burst.
His veins burned — the fire in his throat and eyes tearing through his flesh. His mouth gushing, pouring saliva — was he rabid? His stomach filled, a great expansion knocking at his own uvula.
Wrenched into unbelievable positions, he retched and retched. Blackness, darkness, shadow, whatever its label did not matter. It poured, flooded out of his throat, from the deepest part of his being. He was crying and screaming as he threw up his devastation; filling the emptiness with pure molten darkness.
Darkness.
…
Now drifting in an endless dark expanse, Aoi, himself again, was looking into the eyes of the beast of shadow of night and mystery. Holding the world's boundless secrets, esoteric knowledge, and a voracious hunger, the eyes of the jaguar bore into Aoi, bore into the depths of his soul and consumed him from within.
My heart speaks. Will you embrace me?
The beast looked into his eyes and yet he only saw himself, for his own eyes now shone amber, and he held a voracious hunger and boundless secrets of the world.
On the move, he was now, a scent caught hold of him, gripped and latched as if in chains. The complexities of scent available to his newly upgraded vomeronasal organ and olfactory system rendered the world as a three-dimensional chemical map. He was hunting, and he had Aoi and Bwah in his sights.
Sight and sound became vibration — mechanical, tactile.
Delicious!
He was tasting their chemical signatures now, tapping his front legs and pedipalps.
Delicious!
Following the trail, scurrying in shadows. They were so close, they tasted so..
Delicious! Delicious!
He could feel their snores as wafts of air.
Devour! Devour!
The man stood up, releasing foul scents.
Must wait! Not now, must wait!
Aoi's eyes opened to the vast expanse, he was surrounded by friends. None were moving, nor speaking, and yet they all looked to him, through him. He knew what they were feeling. He knew they felt he was Exalted, a child of divinity itself, a blessing to an undeserving world. Aoi was filled with the warmth they were radiating.
The shadows were inviting and nurturing, they were caring for him. Everyone and everything ever lost to him, a dark warmth…cradling him. The embrace sent electricity through his skin, and warmed him deep to the bones. Rocking and swaying while an unintelligible yet beautiful song echoed around him.
His eyes were being taken over by their lids, heavy and drooping from the kind, loving embrace he so missed. Aoi fell into a deep, cozy sleep.
Darkness.
∗ ∗ ∗
A strange, hard, creaking wooden bed and only a towel beneath him, and only a second, dingier towel covered his otherwise naked body. He felt heavy and yet somehow more able to control his limbs. He felt strong, physically, but was in near-constant seething pain, and a boiling unending rage dwelt deep deep deep within himself.
He rose from the bed, stirring the small creature on his shoulder. He dropped to the floor of the small wooden room, stretched out his thick hairy legs behind him and pressed his tattered, bear-sized hands on the ground beneath him.
He began to push off the floor. Rabid and powerful were his motions. His muscles honed and strengthened from years of blood, sweat and tears. Crafting and transmuting his body with hard physical labor, his pathological need to not fuckin' die ever the antagonizer.
As he sped through a hundred or so push-ups, he beheld that there was much more of himself than he remembered; much more. More hair, and thicker too. Everywhere felt like a caricature of his own normal anatomy, everywhere. He rose, muscles and thick furred flesh bounced powerfully as he whipped himself erect.
He grabbed the second towel which he had thrown aside to exercise, wiped his dripping bearded face, spread his legs and grasped the towel around his meaty dick and much heftier balls. Pleased with himself, he threw the towel aside.
"Hey Salamander, could ya?"
A finely rolled cigarette materialized in the corner of his smile.The creature, salamander-like in appearance, appeared on his shoulder, licked a flame from its tongue, and lit the end of his cigarette and vanished.
He bent down to the bucket of cold water next to the door of his room. He saw — just for an instant, only the briefest moment — a scar across his amber eye, a patch of white in his beard. Then his hands plunged into the surface, scooped up the glacial water and splashed his face.
Sweat was pouring from his brow, or was it the fierce rain, howling and torrential? He rushed and ducked between paths, left and right, into the bushes. Silently, stalking through shadows. He had arrived at a fortification. The walls held a faint glowing teal — sparingly, almost surging through them. The doors, however, were solid stone, manmade. The obstacle that lay before him…two Panthera leo malachaita, females.
Lionesses
He lifted his hands, the chains around their necks fell like rain. A bright light, deep blues and faint greens formed into a four-legged animal, a deer that hopped over the brush and ran past the newly freed lionesses. The color shone masked across their eyeballs, and they pounced into action, chasing it away from the dungeon's entrance enthralled by its charms.
He was alone.
Wait..
He was alone.
He stood, and as he did, a sphere of shadow rose, manifested from the dark of the night itself. It began to glow and shine brilliantly but only for him, for he knew the light was mere shadow from the perspective of another.
B's brilliant creepy design.
A smile tried forcing its way into his face, which was squared and screwed in concentration, but his eyes, they smiled on his face's behalf.
She's a mess.
He walked to the stone edifice, clearly erected much more recently than the rest of the dungeon, and laid his bandaged hand onto the wall, which immediately began traveling over his skin, taking its place. It swallowed hands, then arms and traveled from head to toe, and he was drawn into the structure of the wall itself.
He couldn't breathe or see, nor did he feel as if he truly existed, and yet he willed himself through to the other side.
Fucking whacky.
He grunted. Closed his eyes and breathed deep, intentionally. He was still unseen but he was not alone. They were good, had they not let their bloodlust seep out, they might've gotten him. He pressed his left hand to the stone door he had just phased through, and his right hand on the dungeon floor. Faster this time, the stone overcame him but passed through him as it spilled out of his other hand, settling on the floor briefly before forming lances and erupting skyward.
Screech! Screech!
Two winged monsters, nightmares incarnate, fell from the shadows in the corners of the cavernous walls and dissipated into mana particles before vanishing.
He got to his feet, brushed his hands on his tattered robes, and ventured deeper.
It has to be here.
The floor opened beneath him, once again the jaws of the jaguar. He was swallowed whole.
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi now lay naked, bathed, nay, enraptured in splendiferous ether:
Light of every color — and then colors he'd never seen or conceived — gently washed his skin. He was so truly, so achingly beautiful; a man becoming.
In a womb of spirit, ardor and magic yet unknown to him – Yaya's strength came, wellness washed over him lovingly, delicately, a powerful wave. His departed companions all joined around her singing his praises, but Her voice was though soft as it was, overtook all others:
"You don't know how good you are…"
∗ ∗ ∗
Aoi awoke choking and gagging — water or vomit, he wasn't certain. Bwah had been knocking at his temple, now sore — but worse still within. His interoception of the death of his own ego, and the subsequent release of every organ inside of his body had greatly humbled him.
He rose and stumbled to the water's edge, fished the cup from his pocket and placed it just short of the shoreline.
With a bow deep enough to feel the cooled air floating atop the lake's surface on his face.
…
"Thank you. I humbly return this."
∗ ∗ ∗
He cautiously stepped quite a pace away from the chalice of dubious origins and forced his face into the water, drinking desperately, ultimately stripping off his tattered clothing and jumping into the calm cool water of the eerie tarn. He scrubbed his hands all along his body, paying special attention to his face. He grabbed the fine sand beneath him and scrubbed his face and armpits, then his feet and in between his toes. He scrubbed out the sand from his body and crevices, and gave some attention to his own genitals, excited about what he'd experienced but indignant that his "dick and balls" weren't that much smaller.
He stored away the feeling with a swipe of his hand and emerged from the water, to Bwah, who was comically making his way toward Aoi at the water's edge but instead of joining him, Bwah curtly turned and headed toward the cup; where the rhinoceros calf sized beetle toppled it to its side with his thoracic horn and watched it sink into the water.
Aoi watched the scene unfold, silenced by the subverted grandeur of it all.
Once he recovered, Aoi shook himself off, a wet dog working to dry. He wrung his clothes out, powerful he felt, alive even much more than before this ordeal, but absolutely and utterly empty.
He struggled to get on his wet clothes and met his friend, they walked side by side, slowly marching up the steps to the first level, where they both promptly stopped and dropped to the ground. Without a thought at all, Aoi lay to his side and raised his arms to the beetle, motioning Bwah to join. Aoi met the beautiful blue beetle's gaze and in it he saw only affection and adoration for his big, soft, crazy friend reflected. Aoi's friend waddled into his embrace and once again, the two drifted off to sleep.
∗ ∗ ∗
…
"Hey Bwah?"
…
"I'm sure you realized this by now, but I inadvertently drugged us. By your behavior toward the cup at the lake I surmised that you realized this."
…
"I just want to let you know from the bottom of my heart that I'm sorry. My selfishness caused us a lot of trouble."
Bwah nodded his head up and down and lightly nibbled on Aoi's forearm, which had already begun to prickle.
Aoi smiled.
"Tomorrow, you're the boss."
…
"Bwah, you can't really talk right?"
…
"Night buddy"
∗ ∗ ∗