Episode 9 - A Dark, Deep Place. And the Hollow Beyond.

  Chapter 91 - Scars

  I scramble up the rocks and gasp at the view down the valley and onwards towards the ocean. I didn’t realize how close we had gotten during the night.

  The ground drops, cut away suddenly like the sheer walls of buildings. Instead of solid, featureless concrete, the sides are banded with layers of rock - some are red umbers, others pale ochre and yellows. In the belly of the valley, debris and sand are mounded between highways of natural rock. The valley yawns open, spreading wider, the highways dividing and spilling towards the thin blue line of the ocean on the horizon.

  Horizons are strange. Once they made my stomach turn to look so far and see nothing. Now, I find that I dream of them, Pooka’s memories slipping my way unconsciously.

  The wind races along the contours of the rock, rushing up and into my face as I lean outwards and let it whip my hair behind me and across my clear face shield. It’s so strong and consistent that the air is almost clear of white haze, certainly the clearest I’ve ever seen it out here. It’d be sad if I missed this view.

  “There used to be a river here,” Rhett calls, leaning on the base of the outcropping I’ve climbed onto and following my gaze.

  “Does it flow where the rocks are?” I ask, curiously leaning over the side to look down at him and feeling giddy at the twist of vertigo that follows.

  “Careful,” he grumbles, watching me wearily. “It made the rocks. The water carried them here, rounded them with friction over time. It might still flow when it rains, probably for the better it’s dry right now,” he muses. Then, unprompted, he adds, raising his voice over the wind, “There’s some massive canyons, nothing like this, out by Ikhran. Far west from here. When I was younger, these sorts of places were the only ones where you’d still find plants. They need the water to soak in properly to get to their roots, and plenty of loose soil to dig deep if they are to survive the holobionts foraging the surface. But everything is so hydrophobic now...”

  “Bigger than this?”

  “So big it doesn’t even feel real,” he adds. Is he grinning behind his respirator?

  I look out over the valley again. It’d take a whole day to cross it, surely. “I can’t imagine it.”

  But I can remember it. Mother blood, pure and clean, carves like knives with the patience of endless time. The wind screams between the valleys, and the trees all stretch their eager hands to her, feeling their leaves dance. Mother blood, violent and joyous, rushes deep below. Onwards she bleeds, into the sea, becoming salt and foam.

  The wind catches in Pooka’s mane as he looks out upon the valley, and… I can see it as we remember it. A lazy, wine-dark river bends here and there, its path younger than the skeleton that remains now. At the banks, dense green undergrowth. On the cliffs, sparse vegetation clings to crevice and ledge.

  Beyond the sea is unchanged. Memory and reality blur as we watch that pale blue line on the horizon.

  “How do we get down?” I ask.

  Rhett scratches his throat. “It’ll lower as we get closer to the ocean, according to the contour maps. We might need to leave the trailer up here and descend on foot.”

  “Where is the platform?”

  He points down the dry river, closer to the ocean. “That way, in some of the odd formations between the branches of the delta.”

  As I look at the ocean beyond his hand while he points, I can feel my heart leap with desire. I have never wanted anything like the pull I feel towards that distant blue. Dare I? “Can we see the ocean after?”

  He is quiet for a moment, the only sound the wind whistling through the valley below us. Finally, “I don’t see why not.”

  I could not hold back my grin of joy even if I wanted to. Rhett blinks as he watches me when I glance back at him to nod vigorously. His expression is impossible to parse beneath his mask.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Pooka bounds on his paws down the path ahead of us, dark purple tongue lolling out the side of his mouth and bouncing with each step he takes in his favorite hyaenid form. He scampers round a tight bend and doubles back another path as we walk, hind legs scrambling on rocks and kicking debris down the path that Rhett watches silently. Pell is spread across Rhett's back, shifting to keep her balance as he walks and bends.

  Why do you not become fog? I ask as I watch Pooka squeeze his belly between two rocks and tumble out the other side, paws comically splaying.

  Fog is not for living. He replies simply, tail erect behind him, and trots off out of view to explore the paths. His ranging isn’t entirely for fun; his scouting has let me navigate a path down into the valley with relative ease.

  We left the trailer at the top of the valley; it seemed too wide for the narrow trails down between the contours of the cliffs. I was not convinced I could keep Pooka accepting the harness much longer anyway. I can feel his body as he moves, just as I can feel my own heart beating or lungs moving. I’m aware of him when there is a novel sensation or I focus my mind his way, but mostly he passively exists and moves with little thought from me, just as I don’t really think about moving my legs to walk. He does not feel the weight of the trailer, but it irks him to feel the tight straps around his body, and he must fight his urge to sublimate. I must feel like a similar extension to him, a strange rotting, wet bag full of blood and air and flopping organs.

  Rhett was right that the tablelands dropped as we got closer to the ocean, but there have been signs that once, long ago, humankind might have roamed here as well. Some of the rocky steps seem too evenly placed; some bends too angular; some widths of the road too comfortable. Here and there, the cliffs have collapsed on the path, and we’ve had to scramble over loose boulders, or at one point where we had to drop down a collapsed section. We’ve set a quick pace, unsure despite the short distance to the manifestation platform how long the descent would take us. Conversation was quickly lost in steady exertion, breath better saved for other things.

  The path follows a jutting edge of the cliff outwards, then around a sharp bend. The valley floor is so close, the walls I once looked down climbing high above me now. Ahead of me, I catch glimpses of Pooka’s vision, he can see where it finally meets the ground - and ahead, down in the valley - a dark shape half buried beneath debris with a pale red to its edges that is only visible in the shadow.

  Part of the cliffs above has collapsed across the platform, and from the shelter of the rubble… there is a tree! Pooka’s excitement suffuses me, and he bounds forward to get a closer look at the greenery.

  The tree has a knobby, winding trunk; its bark is streaked with silver and grey and cracked deeply like skin splitting. It stands above the rocks, its branches stretching outwards, then swooping downwards with long, thin tendrils hanging; each a daisy-chain of slim, silvery-green leaves trailing to the surface of the platform where they gently shift with the wind. A few tall, thin grasses sprout from the rocks.

  As I study the tree through Pooka’s eyes, it becomes clear it is not as perfect as the few large potted specimens I had seen in higher-ranked apartments and living spaces. Several stumps close to its body are cracked, streamers of wooden flesh hanging limp. Great burled knots mar the beautiful silver bark with calloused regrowth. Not every leaf is green, many are streaked with brown and yellow. Scattered across the ground are twigs and curled dried leaves, caught on the rocky edges of the debris so the wind cannot blow them away. Despite its flaws, or because of them, it seems all the more majestic.

  Out here on its own, it lives. Out here on its own, it waits for rain and sunlight; its struggle never ending. Out here on its own, without humans or even despite them, it has survived. As I watch, a few leaves drop and flutter on the wind, each a thin green proof of existence another day. It wears every sacrifice it has ever made as the scars on its body.

  Pooka bounds forward, his whiskers twitching, and nostrils flaring wide as he draws in the tree with every one of his senses. He does not hesitate to leap up onto the platform, eager to sit under the shifting, dappled shadows and wind his body between the hanging tendrils of the tree. The moment his first paw touches cold iron, our bond shatters, and I withdraw with a gasp of shock.

  The current is fast, deep below my feet and it quickly rises to claim me. Lost in its depths are billions, voiceless and teeming. Onwards and deeper, ever darker. It calls me; it pulls me. It whispers a promise that I too can dissipate into the black and subsume to the we.

  I shut my eyes, leaning against the face of the cliff to steady my feet.

  “You need a break?”

  Rhett’s voice startles me out of the trance. I’m leaning my back fully against the cliff wall, knees half bent as I’ve crouched in an attempt to remain standing. I feel cold despite the steady heat from the sun and the sweat on my brow. I blink blearily as Rhett watches, both thumbs hooked under the straps of his duffel bag worn as a backpack with our meager hiking supplies. Pell is just visible over the ridge of his shoulder, riding on the bag.

  The reality of my situation washes over me suddenly as I catch my breath, and I feel sick. Not just from my vertigo. There is no backing out. If I am to stop these dizzy spells, this is what I must do. Right? So, I don’t become a mad wild beast, this is what conduits do.

  I don’t want to go walking with the ghosts, never to be in my body again. I’m terrified of confronting that blackness. Terror and anxiety that I have resolutely ignored bubbles deep in my gut. It takes all of my will just to stay on my feet.

  “No. Let’s keep moving.” I say.

  Rhett offers a hand to help me get back up. I sniff as I look at his open palm, then stand without taking it. I quicken my pace.

  checked it out. If you also like the fic enough to leave a review so that audience knows what they might be getting soon, I'd super appreciate it! I think I'm likely going to be taking down Scribblehub as my second location, maybe in the next month or two as I revamp things and we hit book 3. The user interfaces in inkitt are much nicer to work with so far, and I like the mature content controls a little better there too.

  ??

  Tired of suffering alone? Try demonic possession! Our inter-dimensional demons are standing by!

  (Results may vary, Purple wombat not included)

  ??

  Oblivion

  Progression Sci-fi GameLit Tower Ruling Class Dark but funny?

  Eighteen-year-old Aine was destined to live a quiet, miserable life. As an Ashand, her only job was to wade the flooded gardens, harvest the creepy flowers that grow out of corpses, and trust the teachings of the Sanctari.

  Who are the Sanctari? Just freakishly tall, mask-wearing priests who insist those flowers carry souls to the “Living Gods” in the shining city above. Totally normal. Nothing suspicious about that at all.

  Then she stole one of the flowers…

  That kicked off a particularly fucked up series of events resulting in her being forced to climb some kind of intergalactic death-tower.

  Hmm. Now that I type all this out, it does sound rather depressing… But at least she has me! This galaxy’s most dazzlingly brilliant...it's most outrageously fabulous, [REDACTED].

  The viewers are bloodthirsty, the elites are scheming, and I…may or may not be able to help, depending on what time it is.

  What? I’m not missing my soaps for this.

  What to expect:

  - Weak-to-strong progression combining cyberpunk elements with a unique "magic" system.

  - LitRPG mechanics grounded in reality and physics. (No all knowing system)

  - A comedic twist on an extremely grim universe.

  - An interdimensional invasion, consciousness harvesting, and human livestock.

  - Found family, class warfare, political scheming.

  - A sarcastic interdimensional entity and...a baby wombat.

  For fans of: Red Rising, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The Fifth Element