New, Unsuspecting People

[King Ghidorah]

The sun is coming up by the time my wounds have healed. It crests the canopy of the forest which lurks above the lowlands, casting the distant crimson cliffs at the valley's far end in vivid hues of rusted orange. The lake below them and the waterfall that feeds it turn to liquid fire, glowing so brilliantly in the light of dawn that looking at them is almost painful. The castle is a silhouette beside the water, nearly black by comparison.   

Tucked away beside a filthy pond below the edge of the small ridge where I've chosen to nest, I remain in darkness. Excepting the ambient glow of twilight, I'm lit only by the fading twinkle of Omnilium wisps; They rise from my newly-mended flesh like the smoke of burning cities.

I grin, my teeth solidly within my head once more, the once-unfamiliar expression now delighting me with the sensation of its savage subtleties.

Very carefully, I stand up. My knee is just slightly stiff, but it doesn't hurt me, and my thoughts are clear of pain and muzziness. I walk to the road. Stepping out into the rising light, my scales glint and gleam.

Signs of the previous nights battle lie all around. The road is blasted and torn, sticky with my gold-flecked blood, as well as that of departed foe. Nearby, grassy fields have been scorched and riven by my golden lightning.

Remembering the struggle, I laugh. The power that's awoken inside me, the sheer difference in mass between this tiny body and the purer form that stirs within it, would make such a contest trivial by comparison. 

Of course, had that been the case, unmaking Dawnika Snow would not have been nearly so satisfying. I learned so much about her during our battle (such a bright, defiant little creature!) which I'd never have known had I faced her at the height of my golden glory. She would have been just another one of millions fleeing my shadow... or more likely in her case, standing against me in defiance of all reason only to be thoughtlessly swept away: dust in my wake. The girl was a jewel, her destruction a triumph, and I would never have noticed her. 

When I think of the nuance, the texture, the subtlety of composition I've been missing for the past eon, all due to a simple accident of perception and relative scale, it makes me want to weep (something which has never, ever happened before).

Below, across the hills and dales, the valley is waking up. Livestock stir in the fields, and villagers emerge from their highly flammable hovels to go about doing whatever it is they do in the morning. The larger towns gain a sense of purpose and motion, distant though they may be. Mist begins to rise off the fields as the sun climbs higher in the sky. 

The temptation to simply ascend and lay it all to waste is nearly overpowering, but even that pales in comparison to the promised reward for my patience. This valley is going to mark the beginning of a new era for me. It will be the first of its kind - an entire society thoroughly known and experienced in preparation for its demise. 

Thoughts abuzz with curiosity I set off down the road. 

[King Ghidorah]

It takes an uncomfortably long time to get anywhere. 

The road meanders downward across rolling hills and gentle slopes, cutting between fields and small, forested glens. I pass pastures full of fluffy hoofed beasts, and I don't roast them where they stand. I pass shepherds (such specific words for these menial jobs) and the stone-built cottages where they live, and I don't bring their little worlds crashing down around them. 

Several times I stop, perching on stone fences amid the liquid mid-morning light. I observe the people going about their routines, making a game of trying to figure out what they're doing, and why, before continuing on my way. Eventually I call out to one of them, demanding an explanation, but he turns away, kneeling and pawing at a sheep, pretending not to hear.

Unforgiveable. I've chosen to let him live for even a short while longer, and this insignificant laborer ignores me! 

I leap from my perch, landing heavily in the sod beyond. The sound agitates the livestock, but the man doesn't seem to notice, remaining on his knees and continuing to do whatever it is he's doing while I make my approach.

"I asked you a question, human," I rumble, standing at his back. His clothes are drab and simple, his hair is long and gray, and he holds a staff in his hand. There's a leather bag open on the ground beside him.

(When was it that I acquired the word for these creatures? And when, for that matter, did I learn about gender? It seems the knot of new knowledge that came with my diminished form continues to unfold, linguistic definitions leading to broader associations and ideas.)


The subject of the shepherd's arcane ministrations, already unnerved by my approach, flees at the sound of my voice. It runs off across the green making the most irritating sounds, frightening its fellows. I'm on the verge of destroying them just to make them be quiet when the man stands, rising slowly as he leans on his staff for support, and turns to face me. He has to look up to do it. His eyes are barely at the level of my lustrous chest.

At first he looks angry, but then a wave of mild surprise passes over his tanned, wizened face. He's silent for a moment, and I recognize the look in his clear brown eyes of a creature deciding whether or not to run. I can smell the fear on him as just an inkling of what he's dealing with infiltrates his brain - but then he speaks, his voice possessing surprising strength.

"I do beg yer pardon, uhm... sir. Mi'lord?" He watches my reaction, and seems to find it favorable. "Mi'lord. Sitting over there in the sun, I couldn't tell how big ye were. With those long pointed ears I thought ye must be an elf."

He spits on the ground. I look at the glob of as saliva for a moment, congealing amid the short, rich grass, and then back at the shepherd. 

"You thought," I drawl, not recognizing his last word and confused by his sudden expectoration, "I was an elf. What is an elf?"

He looks at me strangely. "Ye're not from around here, are ye. Are ye a Prime?" 

His question gives me pause. The fools I killed when I first arrived here spoke of Primes and Secondaries, but I paid them no attention. Brock Coxley called me a Prime, and Dawnika Snow mentioned it as well, claiming that being 'Primes' meant we were almost related (an assertion so ridiculous that I dismissed it out of hand.)

The shepherd sees my uncertainty. 

"Were ye brought here by Omni? Can ye use Omnilium? Then ye're a Prime, mi'lord, and have no use for the likes o' me, and no further call on my time."

I grin. This is useful information. Seeing my teeth, the man's face falls. 

"I was," I declare, "and I can, so I suppose I am. But you're wrong about not being any use to me. What is your name, shepherd?"

His eyes dart from me to a stone cottage, presumably his home, sitting pristine and secure upon the turf some hundreds of meters distant. I can see him wondering how fast I am. 

"Luke Darby, sir. But I'm afraid I don't understand - ye're welcome to whatever I've got, but if ye're a Prime then ye can have practically anything ye want just by wishin' real hard. I get by tending my flock, and the wife sells cheese, but I'm a Secondary, and not a rich man. What possible help could I be?"  

I'm derailed by the idea of a 'wife', which is even more bizarre than the idea of a farmer, but I push through it and I make my demand.

"I want you to tell me about yourself - anything you can think of. I want to know what you desire, Luke Darby. I want to know your dreams, and how you spend your days."  

He stares at me. I stare back. 

"Ye're serious," he says.

"Deadly serious." I hiss. 

Luke Darby freezes for a moment as though turned to stone, a statue on the green -  then nods once: decisive.

"Alright. If that's the way it's going to be. But I've got work to do, mi'lord, so if ye're gonna stick around and listen to me talk then ye're gonna have to follow me while I do it." 

My anger flares. I very nearly incinerate him where he stands! This is not a negotiation!

... although. 

It does occur to me that observing Luke Darby directly while he goes about his work, rather than merely hearing about it, will produce a more nuanced understanding of how a shepherd lives. 

I cross my rippling, radiant arms over my chest, and glare imperiously down.  

"Very well."

[King Ghidorah]

Luke Darby turns out to be both more and less interesting than Dawnika Snow.

The shriveled shepherd tells me of a life made up entirely of an interconnected series of small adventures and met expectations, his initial (and fully appropriate) caution giving way to an enthusiasm for reminiscence. He never took any risks, nor reaped any great rewards, and when he and his wife were summoned to the Omniverse by some nameless Prime he didn't see any reason to change his behavior. Darby believes himself to be well enough liked in town, but mostly he keeps to himself, tending his sheep until shearing season comes (shearing being a disappointing word, in that it sounds like something far better than its actual meaning). 

Much of what Darby describes I don't understand, and he seems incapable of explaining - not the actions, but the emotions and motives behind them. He's pursued goals out of love, which is a word I know, but seems to have no definition. Much of his life seems to have been driven by a sense of obligation - a thing I have never experienced, ever. The closest I can come to relating is a yen for Revenge. The man is fascinating in his unfathomable emotions, and the quiet pride he seems to take in his simple tasks. 

The tasks themselves, however, are woefully mundane. As I follow him, listening to descriptions of bygone rivalries over things like grazing space full of endless tangents about people he knows and things he's done, he performs a variety of sheep-related tasks. He walks the fences, to ensure there aren't any gaps. He checks on the ones who seem languid or sluggish. He ministers to a sick lamb, using items from his leather bag.  

At one point, I ask him why. 

"Someone's gotta do it, Mi'lord. The silly beasts can't take care'a themselves." 

I turn that over in my mind, as he goes back to discussing some misadventure of his youth involving competition over a female. I do see the logic - these fluffy woolen creatures provide a valuable resource for the community the shepherd is a part of, and he's their caretaker. What I don't understand is why he didn't become literally anything else. Darby has no dreams, or at least none that he'll share, and his apparent satisfaction with his role is beyond my comprehension.

By the time the sun is directly overhead, its blazing light making my hide shine so brightly that even I can see the glow, I believe I've come to understand the man as much as I'm able. He's a very textured creature though not, I think, terribly complex. He lacks excitement, but his sense of duty towards his work and the web of relationships around him will make useful points of reference as I continue to learn about this place.

When the time comes, I think I'll make sure to vaporize his sheep first, and then the dairy, and then his house, collapsing his life around him in rapid succession. The aesthetics of ravaging a civilization would seem to apply, scaling down nicely - the sequence has always been important, the reaction of the whole to the removal of a part adding to the breadth and impact of the experience. Destruction is about more than just smashing things, after all; Ruin, thorough ruin, is the goal, but desolation and despair also have their place upon my canvas.

I turn to go, leaving him sitting on the turf, contentedly eating a meal of bread and cheese. Over the course of the morning, his fear of me has disappeared, the opportunity to talk about himself and my lack of violence putting him at his ease. Darby continues to speak for several seconds after I've gone before breaking off and calling after me. 

"Where're ye going?"  

I don't answer him, and he seems wisely content to leave it at that. 

***

I've been on the road again for about an hour, heading along a wagon-beaten dirt path towards a wooded glen with the roofs of houses protruding above trees, when I receive a rude shock. As I walk, radiant as a descended star between a stone-fenced meadow and a field full of grain, something coiled within the sea of cosmic fire blazing at the core of my being violently un-knots - a kink in the astral flux which I had been totally unaware of suddenly setting itself to rights.

I stumble mid-stride, and I stare at nothing. The sleeping, ascended form within me stirs, and I realize something I hadn't before:

It's too faint.  

I was so overtaken with the sensation of awakening, of imminent ascension, that I didn't even realize; I still haven't got access to my proper body! The potential I've regained far outshines this paltry frame, but compared to the light that shone within when I traveled between the stars in my cosmic cocoon, its still much too weak. Were I to access it now, I'd likely end up occupying an immature form, soft and dull, still undeveloped - better than nothing, but far from correct. 

I growl and I stride forward, doubling my pace, eager to explore the village ahead - both the lives of its people, and whatever Omnilium they may have to offer.