They Be Ascended - Scene 9

Blaire finds herself somewhere, a place she has never been.

Blaire’s eyes snapped open as her nose ran afoul of a rancid odor. She gagged and spluttered, trying, but failing, to press her hand against her nose to block the stench. She was laid on her back, against a cold, bumpy surface which stung her skin through her night gown. Her head was aimed upwards, to the sky. Yet, it wasn’t the sky she knew and studied through her telescope. This sky was dotted with stars she couldn’t hope to recognize. A massive coppery moon with two perpendicular rings around it dangled much too close for comfort, accompanying the behemoth were two more distant moons the same reddish color as the larger one.

After a bit of effort, she managed to move her arm.                               

‘Breathe through your mouth. Do not inhale. Good, remember that. Now, look around. Get a sense of perspective and remember to stay calm.’

Blaire was in a place that wasn’t familiar to her in the least. There weren’t a plethora of colors like what she was used to seeing. The stone wasteland around her was an inky dark blue. There was no grass on the ground, no trees, no plants at all, only mountainous rock. Pink crystalline formations as wide as a full-grown adult and twice as long jutted out of the inky stone. Gargantuan beasts that could be mistaken for dinosaurs if one didn’t see the tentacles sprouting from the tops of their heads, and, by way of divine intervention, missed the multiple appendages erupting from places where they didn’t belong.

In the distance, there were crumbling cities atop enormous, raised ziggurats made of great blocks of dark purple rock crystals. The city consisted of massive castle-like pyramids besieged by thick, powerful cylinders with pointed tops sprouting from each of their eight sides, spherical buildings were placed in large open-roofed can-shaped frames with hollowed out fronts allowing for entry. There were rectangular prism-like dwellings suspended in the air above the grounded city, undeterred by the simple concept of gravity.

The oceans were filled with water so repulsive and filthy it was black. The putrid stench emanating from the unclean, human waste-like liquid was enough to cause a person to be sick. A creature comparable to an eel, but bigger than an aircraft carrier, breeched the surface of the water, immediately disappearing beneath the murky waves it had created.

The world around her was instantaneously sucked into a voluminous shade as a serpentine face appeared before her. Its skin was scaly and gray, flaking off and secreting a thick, pale viscous fluid. Its eyes could not be seen, for they were obscured by the enigmatic gloom. Forward pointing, curling, dark yellow horns the color of urine sprouted from its skull and hung in front of its face.

Blaire couldn’t be sure where the horns originated; it was too complete, too pure, the black surrounding her. All she could see were its horns and two great crevices that served as its mouths; the top sneering and the bottom giving an eerie smile. It opened its great grinning maw and spat a flood of the sickening murky water at her. Before everything descended into nothing she heard something, it, whisper to her like a faraway wind. She sensed it, not with her ears, but her mind.

In a chilling, gravelly voice, it told her, "Diamonds are no longer in the prisoner's ideal of distortion.”