Banished To Earth Book Two, A Dragon King (42)

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        Far below, great swaths of green blanketed shattered houses, vehicles and buildings. Clearly, sadly, much time had passed. ‘Nothing is moving..’. Davin thought, troubled. He swooped down and skimmed the surface. A sea of green slid beneath him. Silence. Stillness. Overgrowth everywhere, but no birds, no insects. Where were the monsters, the Hunters, the people? Where was the threat? Where was Stayner?

      He sensed nothing. Was Stayner dead? And what of the Urgis, Chase and Mabel? Unnerved even in his present state, he continued searching. Miles of thick, strange foliage stretched out in all directions. 

      Scanning the sky, seeing nothing, sensing nothing, he concluded the Urgis were off-world. Could he pierce the atmosphere, be a real rocket man? He would have to if he wanted answers.

    But first he would go home.

    A shift portal plopped him out on familiar sand. Hovering, he spun and scanned. Sea sand, overgrown dunes, and irregular humps of green dotted the landscape; shattered homes, he assumed. Rising high above the beach, he saw exactly what he expected: greenery, but no creatures of any kind.

     Turning toward the sea, he dove deep; strange sea grass gently undulating in the current, disappearing into the distant murkiness, sank his heart. There were no fish, only plant life. The sea floor was choked with it. He was not surprised, but neither was he relieved. The Earth was dead. Whatever this greenery was, it was new, not native, not good.

     Satisfied the ocean was as lifeless as the land, he emerged, swung up and over and settled down inside a bowl of vines and grass. Thinking his beach house might have stood there once and figuring this spot was as good as any to stop and plot out his next move.

                                                                                         *

     Was all this the result of Stayner’s conquest? He feared so. If that was the case, then reaching out to him with his mind might be far more prudent than leaving the planet. The Urgis were there. He was sure of it. Maybe he could manage a psychic link with Stayner. That struck him as much safer than risking a confrontation with the Urgis on their home turf, namely space. Besides, he was already disembodied. The thought of floating naked in space was more exposure than he could bear…  

      Turning his attention outward. He calmed his mind and hoped that whatever conscious part of Stayner still existed out there might slowly drift toward him enough to make contact.

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     It took a while. Controlling his emotions enough to let the subtle nuances of another’s mind, settle into his, was proving more difficult than he had expected. Something nasty was gnawing at his heart, distracting him. He pushed it aside.

    A subtle shift, a shallow ripple that barely registered against the backdrop of space, ever so slightly pressed against his consciousness and revealed the truth. Stayner yet lived. But he was not on Earth! The Urgis had him. That could be the only explanation. But why? Did that even matter now? He had failed. Except for a few plumes of smoke on the horizon, there was no sign of life. The smoke, the distant fires were no doubt the result of lightning strikes.

  Not wanting to reach out to the Urgis, even indirectly, he chose to scour the Earth one more time.

      After a few more hours flying, shifting, searching, he only found more vegetation. They were dead, unless they were deep underground or imprisoned on Urgis ships; Earth’s people were extinct

    Tears did not burn his eyes. He could not cry, so he cursed the sky and every star in it. “I failed them.” He wanted to hear the words, not just think them. He needed to hear the truth. He wanted his ears to bleed.  If only he had ears. “All for nothing. They’re all dead, billions of people, and I only saved a few; now I’ve lost them too.”

‘…. Stayner did this…’ He thought as he forced himself to look at the truth….’ He must have. But what did I do…. I bit him…. infected him… with my mutagens…I did this …I didn’t know…how could I know?.... how can I be sure…’

  Disembodied, unable to slap himself or hurt himself in any way, he dropped to the ground and looked down. What was he to do? His best efforts, his best motives had made him the worst monster the world had ever known. Why did he leave Alisar? Was he here to save Earth? Or to save the universe? Which was it?  Did he come to sacrifice Earth to save the universe? As if killing a baby was not evil enough!

    Is this why seers are always troubled? They eventually see too much!

   Falling back, he floated in the air as though it were water. He emptied his mind, happy to tune out the guilt. If Stayner was up there, he would know.  While they were safe on Trudy’s farm; Stayner was wreaking havoc, attacking and being attacked, poisoning the world?

    Relax and invite or slip gently into Stayner’s mind, whatever worked. It did not matter. He must know; he must embrace him. Once he touched Stayner’s mind and revealed the truth, only then would he know; anything short of that was pointless speculation.     

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    Unseen doors swung open, pathways cleared. Davin swayed, drifted, swung like a pendulum, up and down, back and forth, rising higher with every arc until heaviness crashed down on him. Something held him. He was inside, a box in a box; that was his first impression. A distant yellow wall appeared. Was he in a giant room, a hangar maybe? Cavernous emptiness with distant walls that curved up and around? Yes, a hangar. But why? Wobbling, sinking, struggling to focus, bound and so heavy, paralyzed, Davin realized he was not only inside a massive room but inside living flesh as well!

     “Stayner.” He spoke. He heard, but not his voice; Stayner's.

    A gurgling grunt quivered in Stayner’s ear holes. Another low grunt, “Davin.” The beast spoke his name.

   “Don’t say that again.”

      An inhuman chuckle made the world shake.

    “It’s too late. They have me. Now they have you.”

      Stayner reared up. The massive yellow room shifted down.

 “No. I can leave.” Davin’s voice was not his. It was not even human. He ignored its gravelly, inhuman grate that faded into a low hiss. “Are they dead?”

   “Oh, that?” Stayner answered as the walls swung and swayed.

    “Tell me!”

    Another chuckle. “See for yourself. This is rich. I wanted to invade you, and now you’re trapped inside of me.  Look and see, taste and enjoy” …’

                                                                                          *

     Davin tasted blood when Stayner’s past engulfed him; blue water rushed at him, cold and salty. Just ahead, barely visible through the brine, a wounded seal sliced and rolled through the murkiness, growing smaller with every second.

     Stayner the shark man sliced forward, ripping through the sea like a bullet. The seal swelled in size as he closed the gap. Jaws gagged wide, lips rolled back, jagged teeth

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scraped the water as the seal ducked, spun left and led Stayner straight into the bristled snout of Leviathan.   

    The shark man pulled up and over, but not fast enough to escape the dragon's fang-fringed maw. 

     The sea turned red. Stayner’s front half, neatly bitten off, was already sliding down Leviathan’s serpentine gullet.

      Davin shrieked as he relived the shark man’s excruciating last moments. Blackness again, then light, sunlight. No pain, but power and the sky, sweeping out ahead of him. The sea was far below. Emptiness within. He must feed. And his throat, warm, slippery, oily.

    Like saliva flooding a mouth, a slick, greasy fluid gathered over his tongue as it curled and wallowed against rows of long teeth. Biting bars that caressed his tongue, as they began to glow like the heating element inside a water heater, until they ignited his volatile breath. Fire spewed from his snout.      

     “Oh. I like this.” Stayner said. “I am Leviathan.” …

    Stayner’s memory sickened Davin. But what followed was far worse than disgusting glee. Decades of stalking, chasing, burning, feeding, and replacing Hunters and Monsters alike with horrific, twisted versions of himself followed.

     Stayner's ( Davin’s) mutagen eventually infected the entire planet. A Dragon King ruled Earth for a time. Stayner was everywhere. But not even a monster can tolerate being everywhere for long…

     Global eyes, global ears, incessant, inescapable input tortured him, drove him to the brink of insanity; it was a short drive. But more importantly, at least to the Urgis, his very presence threatened the planet itself.

    When Stayner screamed into the sky for mercy, they were happy to oblige. Housed in a massive Urgis ship, his wings and oil glands removed, he was reduced to nothing more than scientific curiosity, the Urgis equivalent of a two-headed pig in a jar of formaldehyde…

                                                                                            *

     A tiny rectangular opening appeared in the distant wall directly in front of Stayner.

   “Are they dead?” Stayner asked, mocking Davin. “You tell me. Oh, Hello, Rebecca.” His voice screeched and grated, then hissed to silence, as an attractive red-headed woman approached.

 

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    She wore a long white dress, reminiscent of a fifties nurse's uniform and pushed a sheet-draped gurney toward them. The gurney, of course, had no wheels. It floated on a springy pad of directed gravity. But what it carried struck Davin as far more interesting. A body on a gurney, covered by a white sheet. Was she coming from a morgue? Was it Stayner’s feeding time? No, it was not.

    “Ma’am,” Davin asked through Stayner’s snout. “Are you, real?”

     She smiled sweetly, nodded yes, sighed, reached behind her, pulled out a pistol and fired it straight into Stayner’s head. Like a balloon inflated with gasoline it exploded into a massive fire ball.