Chapter 11
Creatures of the Night
In the shadows of this desolate, chaotic, gloomy forest, tainted with remnants of black magic, we continued our flight. My spectacles had fallen off, obscuring my vision, a cruel twist of fate to have my sight fail me at such a tender age.
The prospect of confronting blindness felt like a fate worse than death. I had always considered tending to my health and body a trivial matter, focusing solely on cultivating my intellect. Perhaps it was a lack of fear of death, or maybe an unknown reason, but had I known the realities I would come to perceive and comprehend, I would have preferred a dull mind with strong muscles over being a possession of the void.
The driver began to suffer from his wounded leg, sustained during our frantic escape, so we halted near a graveyard teeming with crows and tombstones, a multitude of graves marked by crosses and statues amidst withered trees. It was then that figures began to emerge from the mist beyond the graves – the mad daughter of the Costinas family, clutching a wooden axe, a deranged smile twisting her lips, her hair unkempt. In my desperation due to my failing sight, I decided to don a patch I always kept in my pocket, a pirate's patch I had taken from my grandfather when I was young.
I placed it over my weak eye and continued to delve into the darkness, hoping to find a glimmer of light. The girl started to laugh, raising her hands to the sky and licking the blade of the axe with her tongue as she stared at us, proclaiming, "You belong to the God of Fear, and you will never escape him!" She began to drag the axe, walking slowly behind us as we ran, as if assured of her easy prey.
It was then, amidst my frantic running, that I began to question the very act of fleeing. Why did I care to save my life? And I also pondered the golden reason for solving the Costinas family case. Any other investigator with a shred of self-preservation would have refused, but my obsession with mystery and my disregard for my own life had dragged me here. What had brought us all here, to this nowhere, to the emptiness where nothing existed but water? Then, a question dawned on me as the driver and I huddled behind a colossal rock.
I asked him in a hoarse voice, pausing briefly before he replied.
She said to him:
"My friend, as these might be our final moments, I wanted to ask: do you find any meaning in life, or anything that holds significance?"
A profound silence descended for several moments before he answered with a single word, more than sufficient.
He said:
"No."
Then, he continued, his watchful and alert eyes scanning the surroundings:
"Mr. Sebastian, you are a nihilist, aren't you?"
The investigator responded:
"Yes, but how did you know?"
The driver replied:
"Because you haven't asked me my name all this time."
Their absurd conversation was interrupted by the Costinas daughter, who leaped from behind them and tapped the back of both their heads with her finger, causing them to gradually sway and fall to the ground.
Before they lost consciousness, the girl stood before the graves and the green grass, the darkness of the night heavy around them. A crow perched on one of the graves behind her, its red eyes fixed on the two young men. She strolled, placing the axe over her shoulder and whistling.
As their vision blurred and before they succumbed to unconsciousness, she placed the blunt end of the axe on Sebastian's shoulder and whispered, "Welcome to the world of dreams." Then, both men blacked out. They awoke in the vast, terrifying darkness of space, but the horrifying part was that they hadn't awakened within their bodies; it was as if they were experiencing astral projection. They were literally observing their own forms from a third-person perspective.
Then, space began to shrink, as if some entity was enlarging the image of spacetime and the cosmos before them, deciding to show them the complete picture. It controlled their vision, forcing them to perceive space in this incomprehensible and terrifying manner. The image before them diminished until their own bodies, which they had been observing, vanished. A brilliant white star appeared, larger than a million planets the size of their own. Sebastian felt a chill, for it was the first time he truly grasped the magnitude of the tiny white dot he had barely noticed when he was playing in the streets of his planet at night. This star had existed before him, before them, before the sea, the sky, all civilizations, and all creatures.
This star had existed even before Earth came into being, before any rule or any entity. It was ludicrous that humans from their planet might not even notice this star, so much larger, more ancient, and older than they were, its heat capable of incinerating their planet and their existence in mere seconds. Then, their eyes were drawn to something even more awe-inspiring than this star.
They saw a black hole larger than the solar system that contained their planet. This black hole was not only capable of swallowing them but also their entire world. This black hole had existed even before time itself. The black hole pulled them in, trembling and terrified, merely to show them what lay within its depths. And so, they plunged into the eternal darkness. They entered the black hole and saw millions of colored vapors, a darkness filled with stars, but it was a violet darkness, not black, a wide and long violet line. This line was part of the Horsehead Nebula. This small line had existed before them, before us, before the great god decided to create these trivial and arrogant creatures.
This line, a minuscule part of the Horsehead Nebula, was millions of times larger than the planet Earth where we live and wage wars. Yes, we are to them merely minute bacteria, or tiny particles, or perhaps even less. This is how the gods see us, and this is how these cosmic entities, whose sacred lair Sebastian and his companion had entered, perceive us. They floated, astounded, sweating, their mouths agape, but even more so their eyes. They were almost invisible, and even if a telescope were aimed at this breathtaking patch of space, it would be impossible to notice that humans were there, for they were, as she had said, merely bacteria in an endless, colorful, dark sea that had existed before anything else.
They saw Raggnar, or rather, they didn't see Raggnar, for Raggnar was merely a triviality of our foolish imaginations. The truth was, they saw the first revered ruler of these darknesses. He sat upon a throne made of stardust, nebulae, and the fires of stars. On the hilt of the throne was the face of a demon formed from the flames of ancient stars. A strange red jewel adorned the crown of this throne made of darkness, starlight, stardust, and nebulae.
He sat in a manifestation, one leg crossed over the other, leaning on his hand, his cheek resting on his palm, tilting to the left, looking at them with utter narcissism. Perhaps they were the size of germs, but his eyes could see even germs, his right eye yellow, his left eye red, his long blue hair, and the scarf made of the tears of the moon that covered his neck. His features were stern. Sebastian and his companion could only perceive a light sitting on a throne, for their ordinary minds could not comprehend what was more ancient than them.
In a voice that seemed to shake the very fabric of spacetime, he spoke:
"You are humans, I presume. Not many creatures bear this form in this place. This domain is not usually meant for dust, from whence you came."
Then, he raised his hand, unleashing a violent gust of wind, a gale that hurled them across galaxies, planets, stars, and moons, returning them to where they had been – planet Earth...
They gasped for air on the grassy ground of the graveyard as the sun began to rise, painting the dawn. They believed they had awakened from a dream, unaware that they had been flung across millions, nay, billions of light-years.
Sebastian uttered in bewildered awe:
"What was that? What was that? What was that? If it was a dream, it was the strangest dream I've had in all my thirty years. I can't even recall everything that happened there; there's a gaping chasm in my mind."
The driver awoke, brushing dust from his clothes.
He replied:
"It's natural to have a headache, brother. My head aches too, and I couldn't fully grasp all those cosmic horrors we witnessed. But I can assure you, it was real, not a dream or a hallucination. You can't blame me for this – I was close to uncovering the secret, even to obtaining a tiny fraction of their power. You might have been slightly surprised that you didn't ask for my name, but what truly aroused my suspicion was that you didn't recognize me at all. You even told me your entire story! Truly, Sebastian, you are deranged."
Sebastian, in a state of shock and sweating profusely, recoiled slightly on the ground and said:
"Impossible... you..."
He replied:
"Yes, I am Leviathan."