Chapter 3: Not All is as it Seems
They stayed that way for a while, Paulie and Jakiikii just taking comfort in each other’s company before she cleared her chest and let out a heavy breath. Paulie jerked upright and then nodded, she looked tired. Hell, he felt about ready to drop off the deep end of sleep himself.
Mustering his remaining strength he moved to stand and Jakiikii released him a little hesitantly. He put his hands in the small of his back and stretched, several small pops announcing the shifting of his spine and causing him to let out a loud rush of air. He twisted at the waist and then stretched his neck, rubbing his right shoulder with one hand.
Paulie walked the short distance across the room and sat upon the edge of his bed. He had already taken off his shoes and so removed the socks he wore next even as Jakiikii stepped closer and rubbed her lowest pair of hands together.
“Well, I should be getting some sleep too. I will head out now...”
He raised a hand though. “You don’t have to.. go. You know? Away.”
She shifted from hoof to hoof in that cute way she always did when slightly flustered or excited. He couldn't really tell which as her face was largely in shadow from his angle. Only the glinting of her bright eyes telling him she was looking his way.
“You want me to stay here.” He knew it wasn’t really a question.
He nodded. “Yeah, it would be nice to have some company right now. I don’t really want to be left alone. My head is all turned around.” Paulie rubbed his head for emphasis, he really did have a headache brewing so that part was not an act.
He thought he heard a chuckle before she stepped closer and to the side of his bed, sitting down next to him with a slight thump. In the lower gravity of the planet she didn’t have that big of an impact, but it was still large enough to make him bounce on the mattress slightly and he smiled back at her in the dim light of his bedroom.
He sighed a little and then shook his head after another moment. “It’s just getting to be too much some days, Jakiikii. Do you know what I mean?”
She seemed to shake her six-eyed head slightly. “Not really, what is getting too much for you?”
He gestured at nothing in particular. As if waving at the issues could manifest some ultimate solution to his growing list of problems. “Oh, you know?” She still just looked at him. He grumbled. “Oh come on, this whole mess. The shit that is happening all around? Surely there must be some greater meaning to it all? They tried to assassinate the queen. They tried to destroy the city.” He looked at her more seriously. “They tried to kill you .”
Jakiikii scooted back onto the bed a little farther, one of her longer primary arms leaning back to support her body in an upright position as her tone became more thoughtful, her rumbling chirps taking on meaning in his mind even as she spoke an incomprehensible tongue. “I have been thinking of it nonstop, Paulie. The events happening are unprecedented, never have I heard of such a blatant attack on a large civilian population by these.. chaos forces. I talked to Rozz about it and all I got out of that sludge-pile was something about an apocalypse or something similar.”
“An armageddon?” Paulie prompted.
She stopped, her eyes locking with his as her breathing caught in her chest. “Y-yes. How did you know? Rozz must have told you something similar, am I right?”
Paulie hunched forward, rocking slightly as he shook his head slowly in response to her impassioned question. “No, not really. Rozz called me the key to the annihilation of the stars or something wild like that. I laughed it off initially as them being overly dramatic, but I am not sure Rozz even knows how to be dramatic.” He felt a hand on his back, Jakiikii comforting him even as the thought of the end of civilization threatened to tear at the remaining corner of his sanity.
He stayed that way for a bit before he heard her speak softly. “Come here, come on Paulie.” Gentle arms drew him close to her stealth suited chest and cradled him even as he tried to bury himself into her arms. “I don’t know anything about doomsdays and apocalypses. Armageddon can wait as far as I am concerned, the only thing that matters to me is you.” She squeezed him tight with all six arms as she said it and then placed a gentle peck on his temple.
Almost immediately he felt a little safer. This close to her chest he could hear the beating of her heart, her breath. Her body was a little cooler than his, but not so much so as to be uncomfortable. One of her hands resumed its gentle stroking along his back as she cradled him like he was a child.
Paulie closed his eyes and smiled. He didn’t want to be alone, and he never would be as long as Jakiikii was by his side. His breathing slowed and he felt himself drifting down, falling..
Down, down.. down into darkness unfathomable.
The sensation stopped and he opened his eyes, immediately he knew that he was in a dream. He didn’t have a way to explain how he knew it but he did. Knew it as surely as he knew his own name.
He looked around this new dark hell. A barren landscape surrounded him where mighty walls had once stood. Instead of the great blocks of stone that had at once stood he saw only rubble and ruin. The twisted remains of towers made of dark stone and tarnished gold, he saw the ruined and rotting implements of war all around. Shattered timbers, twisted spars of dark iron and more. All gone, all ruins now.
Paulie turned around and then around again, searching all the while for some last remnant of his mental bastion. That great spiritual fortress he had built upon the rock of his own mind. But all he saw was the desolation of a battle long since lost, but he would not give up. He would fight the terror in the darkness until he no longer had the strength to fight, and then keep fighting.
He shook himself out of that haze of dark thoughts that threatened to choke him like the gloom and malaise that seemed so thick in the air. Surrounded him like a blanket of evil, heavy and pressing.
He wore armour that had once been silver and chrome but was now battered and tarnished as if by the wear of ages. He reached over his shoulder and felt the familiar form of his greatsword slung over his back, the blade was blunted and notched but it still had a sense of deadly weight to it and he smiled grimly. Good, at least he wasn’t completely defenseless here.
Paulie wandered a bit, stepping over and around crushed rock and under metal bars that speared towards the sky like rust colored bones from some long forgotten abyssal creature.
He paused as he thought he heard a distant sound. Like thunder over the horizon or the raging sea out of sight on a stormy night. The air prickled his exposed skin, the hairs on the back of his neck standing erect as he got the sudden and distinct impression he was being watched. Somewhere in that endless void that surrounded his island of sanity lurked a beast made of hate and shattered dreams.
His shattered dreams.
Paulie pulled the sword from his back, the blade clattering along his dented armour even as its familiar weight settled in his gauntleted hands. The blade was worn as was his spirit, but he girded himself with what little strength he had left and set his stance wide as the void boiled in front of him.
From the edge of that island of stability arose a great mass of gibbering flesh and chitin, a horrid pulsating black ooze that seemed to seep from the cracks in his own reality towards him like an unstoppable tide of nightmares. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He snapped them open again even as the first attack came. It was the same as every night had been for a week. He found himself awake inside his own mind, a living mass of horror assaulting him over and over till he was exhausted and spent. But it did not finish him, it would laugh at his weakened state and then slink off into that dark endless night of his subconscious. Usually throwing a few new broken memories at his feet as it did so.
The parasite. He knew it for what it was now. Not a jargon worm, but something older and far more dangerous. He had gathered as much from its slurping groans and snickering taunts. But as to the true nature of this beast, he was as of yet unaware.
More attacks came now, even as he deflected a tentacle the size of a city bus the parasite seemed to moan, “Please continue to fight. It is so much fun to watch you struggle, you are like a bug in honey. And you are the honey too. Your pain is the sweetest nourishment to me, your misery a soothing tonic. Your hatred a cooling balm.”
Paulie grunted and deflected another blow, actually managing to draw a splash of foul ichor from the offending limb. This elicited a hiss from the great beast and he laughed aloud.
“If it bleeds, we can kill it!” He shouted suddenly, the idea of a heroic figure flashing through his mind.
“Another memory to sacrifice to me then?” It grumbled, a sharp pain lancing through Paulie’s mind as he felt as though a red hot needle were passing through his left eye. He screamed as the dark mass gibbered in maddening pleasure. “Oh yes, here we are. You hid this one well, but it is mine now. Don’t worry, I will leave just enough fragments for you to remember what you have lost. I am not without mercy.” It laughed again, this time the sound was deeper and more sinister. A sort of eager hatred like it wanted him to understand just how much worse things still had to get.
Paulie swiped his sword at the creature that manifested in his mind’s eye but it held back. “Come and finish it then, you coward!”
“I think not. For the game would end, and your torment is far too delicious for me to give up its savour just yet. I may keep you for a time longer yet, you are nothing. You mean nothing. The great dark ones will have their fill of your kind yet, now and forevermore.”
Paulie just lifted a hand and gestured in a most rude manner to the horror that seethed like thick black tar before him. “You know what, fuck you. And fuck your ‘dark master’ that you seem to like sucking off so much. If you love them so much why don’t you go marry them!” He taunted, laughing as he threw his head back. It was childish, it was juvenile, and it pissed off the beast like nothing else he had yet said.
“Insolence!!” The parasite screamed in terrible rage as it swung at him again and again.
Paulie was smashed to the ground then tossed aside like he was a mere toy, and as powerless as he seemed to be inside the battlefield that his mind had become he might as well have been for this monstrous entity. The abuse continued for a time, he swung and dodged and blocked to no avail. And when the creature had had its fill of torturing him it fell back and settled once more to the outskirts of his dreamscape.
Paulie stood on shaking legs, his eyes misted with tears and his chest heaving with the force of his mental exertion. New dents and scars marred his battered armour but his resolve to fight was unshaken.
The thing’s great eye turned upon him, a terrible pale white orb that seemed to see right through him. “Why do you struggle so? For what, this piece of forever you call existence? Your kind shines so dimly and for so little that I can scarcely even call you alive. You might as well be just a piece of fruit, too soon rotten and gone.” It grumbled as if in genuine consternation. As if it could literally not comprehend the reason Paulie fought back so desperately.
Paulie shook his head, too winded to speak as it continued more slowly but in that same semi-frustrated tone. A note of what might have been either pity or disgust entered the thing’s slavering voice now. Their words like bubbles that popped and fizzed through the very fabric of his mind in a manner most unpleasant.
“I offer simply an end to your torment, this madness you call free will. Join me willingly, become my mind slave and I will show you an eternity of chaos most glorious. Your mind will break, your self will dissolve and you will be finally truly free.” It cackled madly, “Because is that not what you desire the most? Freedom!” Two smaller tentacles seemed to drift his way like arms set to embrace him, ends questing toward his face.
Paulie screwed up his features as he found the strength to retort. He spat, the blood and saliva impacting the dry ground before him in a puff of dust. Standing as straight as he could he hefted his sword with another grimace and pointed the broken tip at the thing, “No. I refuse.” It was a simple phrase. But into it he poured all his will and hate, all his lost joys and sorrows. He forced the words past bruised and bleeding lips, past split gums and shattered teeth.
They struck the beast like a physical force, the power of them enough to nearly make it lose purchase on his crumbling bastion. It seemed to growl, a low and angry sound like an avalanche of rage. The small tentacles withdrew with twin snaps to be replaced by another much larger one that it raised over their battlefield like a dark shadow.
“Then perhaps we will have this discussion again next time your mind requires rest. I will enjoy making you watch as I force you to strangle the life from your friends, starting with that one you call Jakiikii.” It laughed evilly at its own remark.
Paulie screamed in hate and raised his sword. His pain was forgotten, buried under the rush of adrenaline as he sprinted at the dark mass like a berserker.
He never made it.
The large limb above fell like the sky crashing down upon him. He was smashed into the crumbling stones underfoot and for a brief instant he felt nothing but a symphony of pain. Darkness covered him, seeming to fill his eyes and mouth and lungs. He tried to scream but was unable, suffocating as he was on that terrible darkness.
Paulie jerked awake, his bare chest covered in a cold sweat as he sat up quickly and looked around in blind panic. It took him a moment to realise where he was. The cool air of his room slowly pierced the haze of terror that had gripped him and he sucked in a deep shuddering breath.
He looked around the room, he was alone. Jakiikii must have left at some point after he fell asleep. He sat upright on the edge of his bed and checked the local time. It was still early, but not so early as to make him feel the urge to return to sleep.
No, he shivered slightly as the fading memory of his nightmare pressed up against the inner border of his waking mind. No, he would not be sleeping again till it was absolutely necessary, for the horror that awaited him when he let his guard down was still there. He could feel it like a dark shadow in the corner of his vision. Gone no matter how fast he turned his head to catch it.
He stood and paced across the floor, shirt discarded and forgotten as he tried and failed to think of a solution. But nothing came to him. He might be cursed, he might be doomed. But he would be damned if he succumbed to some damn alien slug without some kind of fight to show for it.
As the light grew outside and he struggled to think, all he could hear over and over again in his mind was the parasite’s promise to make him watch the death of his friends. And Jakiikii.