Chapter 25
Datu
I can certainly not be wrong about the Sarkany—the dragon, as my sweet dreamer would put it.
Their kind were rabid, always half-insane with the need to mate.
Breed. Fuck. This one seemed leashed. Not well-behaved, but I sense a palpable, measured menace as he exhales smoke from his nose, shooting daggers at me.
We’ve learned they flew in the females who went missing trekking to the east village with a few other Sarkany. For some reason, they had stumbled upon a portal that sent them straight to another island. I know I have closed all portals.
I grit my teeth, loathing the feeling of strangers in my land. They are like nits and lice I can’t get rid of.
The Sarkany’s human form is shorter than the towering Void, so when Xiaoyu and I turn around the corner, the Sarkany covers his woman’s eyes. She giggles, and I’m unsure why.
“Please be respectful to my wife and take another form.”
I look down at myself and see the Void’s cock is still out. “My apologies to your wife.” I mutter as I take the Terra’s form again. Thankfully, this one has hidden its cock.
Xiaoyu looks uncomfortable as she adjusts the toga I just had the spiders make her. Or maybe it’s my tooth up her ass. Her nails dig into my forearm.
“Missing women? There are others like me here? When were you going to tell me, Datu?”
I do not feel bad for not telling her. “You would have worried yourself sick if I had.” I tell her softly while stroking her hair. The look of betrayal is an image etched into my mind.
“Ahem,” The Sarkany’s wife cuts in. “Does he talk at all?” She asks Xiaoyu.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot. No, he’s mute.”
“But you can communicate though?” This one with wild orange hair taps her unnatural arm. The metal morphs into a thing she places over her mouth and nose. “Just so you know, the oxygen here is tainted with some volatile fumes. How long have you been here with no respirators?”
“Umm, four days?”
“You must be high as a kite!” The woman says disapprovingly. “Here.” She creates another mask from her arm, and before Xiaoyu can take it, I block her.
“You will not be sullying my land with unnatural things.” I realize too late they cannot hear me, but the tremble in the earth says enough.
The Sarkany is quick to protect his wife as he shoves her behind him.
“Jesus Christ, can you fucking stop and be civil?!” I am taken aback at the screeching Xiaoyu. Fire burns in her eyes as she drags me farther from the hulking male. I know this Xiaoyu. She is not taking no for an answer.
“She’s right, though.” The other quips. “Why can’t we just act like decent humans—err, people!” She nudges her Sarkany.
Begrudgingly—like he’d rather pry his teeth off his gums than do this—he says, “Yes. I agree.”
“Awesome! Let’s go somewhere safe where there aren’t bugs trying to eat me, yeah?”
I cannot put into words how irritating I find the Sarkany’s wife.
She has taken Xiaoyu away from me like I am yesterday’s dung. Xiaoyu has taken the shape of the less vicious personality again. The observer. She is quiet as she listens to the woman, but I see the look in her eyes. She is fascinated. It is the only reason why I do not pull her away.
As they talk “science,” the Sarkany and I silently judge one another.
He is ugly. Tall and wide like an ogre. His face, neck are coated with what look like reptilian scales, nails cut short and blunt. Probably because his wife told him to.
“You are a disgusting eater.” He says all of a sudden like he knew the whole time I’d been judging him.
I bristle, defensive. Eater? What is this foolishness?
“You do not even know what you are.” Khaliv says incredulously, repulsed by me.
I AM A GOD, I want to scream.
His scaled face twitches like he hears my rage. “You think you are gods. You trap people in your forest. You feed on them. You make people think you are gods in their dreams, but you are actually just parasites.”
Truly, I have no words.
“I have been plagued by one of you before. A powerful, clever species. But know when you latch on too much to someone, they will go mad. Or worse.”
I have plenty of hearts, and it is as if they just dropped simultaneously. My eyes plead for more answers.
“You do not want to have to kill her.”
Xiaoyu
“Fuck me, it’s creepy in here!” The redhead named Winnie hollers a few feet away from me. She tours around our root cave with a huge smile on her face. “It smells like grapes inside, too. I smell it through the mask. Are those what’s inside those canisters? Grape juice?”
I choke on my saliva and she has to pat me on the back. She doesn’t have to know that those are Datu’s collected seminal fluids.
“Definitely not.” I had asked her to help me make sense of how the machine is set up. It should have a damn powersource for it to work, but obviously, there’s no electricity here. There should be some place it gets its energy from. I need to know for my peace of mind.
Maybe it's taking a lot of energy and causing the drought. It's a stretch, but it's what I have for now.
“So, let me look at this thing…” She crouches over the pump and shines a light over it. “I may need to pull some stuff apart.” When she starts dismantling the machine, I can’t help but feel nervous that she might fuck it up.
She haphazardly drops the parts on the floor. There are grey metal pipes buried into the ground. Winnie and I follow it as her mechanical hands detect where it goes. As we walk deeper into the cave, I get the distinct feeling I’m invading someone’s privacy. The smell here is different.
“Eeeww, that smells like Stygian gold.”
“What is that?”
“Basically the Philosopher’s Stone. Can turn any metal into gold, but instead of gold, it’s…anything. Medication, weaponry, artificial intelligence…” She raises her arm toward me. “My Bucky arm is sentient. She thinks for herself, and she’s made out of Stygian gold after I lost my arm completely.”
“W-what happened?” Is this why I don’t need my glasses anymore the longer I’m here?
“An eater got to me. Someone like your love interest? He’s an eater, right? Maybe I’m just racist…or speciesist…”
“What?” I hiss, not understanding anything she’s saying. “H-he’s a god. God of Void.”
She purses her lips as she moves ahead of me. “They always have a God complex.”
I feel offended for Datu, but for some reason, I want to hear more of what she’s saying. She obviously knows a lot about this strange land… she is human, she would understand my need for answers.
“Wait, I need to know more!”
“Can you tell me what you see him as? The place around you?”
I search her eyes for…what? “What do you mean? He has different forms. Sometimes he’s Terra—the plant people. And this is a rainforest in a drought!”
She makes a low noise in her throat and I see her frown through the transparent mask.
I want to scream at her to just tell me what she thinks.
“He’s too painful to look at.”
“What do you mean? That he’s ugly? No, he isn’t!” I scoff loudly.
Shaking her head, she unmasks herself. “No, just that I get a furious headache when I look directly at him.”
Confused, I just blink.
Uncomfortable, she pats my arm. “One thing about here is you don’t want to interfere with the natural processes of life. Personally, I will interfere, but this place is not my domain. I don’t fuck with magic with a ten-foot pole.”
“They said the island’s health is his, too. Do you know what that means?”
Then, a look of utter disgust takes over her. “Oh, ewww!”
“What the fuck does that mean???” I am getting so frustrated at this.
“It means we’re in his innards, lady! God, I need to decontaminate after I get out of here.”
I stew in her words as we turn a corner, then into a hole on the cave wall only one of us can fit into. The power source is inside. I hear it beating like a heart.
Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.
It’s my responsibility. I have to go first. Without a word, I inch into the crawlspace. It’s not dark inside like I feared, but the brilliant glow of violet here hurts my eyes. I scoot more and rise to my feet, finally seeing the thing before me.
It’s a tree, but I can’t make sense of what species it is. It is as wide as a wall, tall enough I can’t see where it ends. The leaves have a pale sickly violet glow while the bark pulses the same light.
There’s another thunderous growl—and one thing is for sure—those sounds originate here. The closer I look, the more I see. The curls, knots of the periderm become a gruesome display. I am experiencing pareidolia—the very human tendency to see faces on inanimate objects.
But pareidolia doesn’t show you your childhood monster’s face. His bulbous stomach. I gasp and back away, nearly knocking over Winnie.
“That explains the weird vibrations! This place needs some rain!”
“Rain. Again. How do I make it rain in a place that hasn’t rained in decades?” My voice has become shrill and panicked.
“You serious?”
“I am for fucking real.”
“This place is a hundred percent magic apart from the boat and that pump. I’m just an engineer, I’m sorry.”
Thoughts slam over me as an urge to stuff anything down my mouth overcomes me. I look at Winnie, and she is unappetizing at best. She carries with her the stench of metal. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
“You okay, lady?”
I drop to my knees, and she jumps up and climbs over a vine, hooking her legs to keep her up.
“What are you doing?! You’re sniffing around like a dog!”
Her voice is giving me a migraine. I snarl and breathe in the ground. My hands feel every pound underneath. Every slam cuts me farther away from coherence. I need something in my mouth, down my gullet, NOW.
A glowing fungus catches my eye and I practically stumble over and shove them into my mouth.
“Bloody hell, lady! Are you all just fucking insane here?”
As it goes down my throat, her words echo…
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
Are we all just fucking insane here? Are we all just fucking insane here?
My body caves, and I feel like I am falling down a gutter of memories. All buried, but no matter how much you bury the past…
“It will always come back.” I pant as I attempt to wipe the cold sweat off my forehead. I’m incredibly weak, but my sight is clear. I feel like a child again as I watch the bark. The patterns.
It’s him. The monster is petrified into the tree.
I blink and I’m eight years old again. I’m back in my room with the monster, shuddering as I fight the fear when he turns off my capybara night light.
“You’re already a big girl, you shouldn’t be having night lights.”
I’m afraid to make a sound. My teeth make hair-raising grinding, rubbery noises as I clack and grind them together.
Like that thing who ate the monster inside my room, but it doesn’t do that to hold back a scream.
It does it to let the monster know it’s there.
Like a twister of black gums and sharp tenterhook teeth, it engulfs him, slicing through his skin until he is all but adipose and guts.
The mouth swallows his skin first before the rows of teeth whip along his pathetic body and stab, grind him with hypnotic precision. Twist, crunch, twist, crunch until there is nothing to twist. Until all that’s left is a bloody room and me hidden under my blanket, shaking.
Before the thing that ate the monster leaves, it glows, telling me not to panic. A ghost-like figure turns on my night light, and as soon as it’s on, it’s gone, only leaving blood.
Barely conscious in a feverish haze, I realize Winnie is hauling me out of the cave, calling for help.
I have to close my eyes…