It was seven days of straight bloodletting in the City of the Crying Wolves. The red ran in rivets down the P’tan’s general’s face, mixing with the heavy downpour of rain. His grin was etched on in stone. The P’tan’s hands felt for heads nearby, and his fingers gouged out the eyes, bringing the heads together in a splintering crack. The nearby Chiztincik general came out of hiding behind his royal guards, lifting a carved cross of P’tan make. Thunder pounded over the battlegrounds.
“It is too late for converting!” The P’tan general strode forward, kicking the Chiztincik general in the jaw, sending it upwards into his brain cavity. The Royal Guard unsheathed their poisoned daggers, and lunged for the P’tan general. He brought up a shimmering gauntlet in return, and broke all three blades in a flick of his wrist. The Royal Guard let out a sharp whistle, and the fighting Chiztincik withdrew into the city ruin.
A sharp blast of lightning hit the ground and split it open like a gaping maw. The sound of barking, snarling and whining overwhelmed the headsplitting cracking of thunder. The victorious P’tans stood frozen, watching the opening in the ground. Light shone through, brighter than any fire from Hell. Dozens of white wolves scrambled through the hole, attacking in all directions. The P’tan general opened his mouth to shout a command to his fellows, when a rushing dog tore out his throat.
“No blood is shed without the permission… of Space Wulf!” a voice echoed through the ruins, splitting some of the weaker buildings and sending dust and dirt up into the air. After every last life was taken, the wolves returned to the hole in the earth, jumping down into the depths. The hole stayed open for one thousand years, and none ever reached the bottom of the abyss. The light still shines brightly, and can blind even in the brightest summer day.
When you go far enough away, in space, you start heading home. Carlyle knew that. So did Lou. Only now am I beginning to notice the vastness. The empty, vastness of nothing. Absolute nothing. My emotions have almost faded, most now relagated to a bemused chuckle at my life before. Pining for a woman I could never have, getting in a fender-bender. At the moment, it seemed like a pretty important thing. Now, I find they were never important. Not even at the time, when it was all that took part in my life. Important events happening all the time. Was the big bang important? No, it simply happened. We were just there as a witness. I never truly did anything worthwhile back home. I never prayed, I never killed a man, I was never married to a woman for 70 years. All those experiences will be forever unknown to me, but I’ve already gotten past that. Perhaps a longing is what I feel? Pangs of regret? Should I regret what doesn’t matter in the least? No, but I do. The last lingering bits of my mortality cling to me like lint.
I saw their bodies at the precipice. Carlyle and Lou had been at each other’s throats, literally, and had snuffed out their lives for all encompassing knowledge. Which made it all the easier for me to obtain. Now it is the bane of my existence. My human shell is almost gone, some pieces of brain and bone from my skull still exists, not yet converted into the rest of the soul cloud. All I feel is a terrible coldness. Knowing it all makes everything so predictable.
Her skin looked like pleather and her clothes clung to her body strangely like she was sweaty in weird places. I was walking through the aisles, stopping casually to look at a magazine. “Y’all gonna buy that or you jes lookin?” she said.
I looked deeper at the magazine. Was I going to buy it? “Trout Fisher.” Probably not, but who could tell? I don’t know how much change I have, that fisherman on the front looks pretty excited. Fish looks weird, but don’t they all? I looked up in a moment of indecision, and the woman and my eyes locked. She had one lazy eye, looking off gum stand above the counter. The other eye was full of redneck fire. My lame eyes, hiding behind my prescription glasses, were not up to the challenge. I blinked furiously and turned away. I harumphed, and in my harumping dropped the magazine.
“Now yalls gotsa buy dat magazine. Used now.”
Shit. She was right. The cover had been bent in the fall. I had to get out of this store before I used anymore of the merchandise.
“How—er, I…” I meant to ask how much the magazine was, but the words could not form.
“Whatsa matta? Yall a retart?! We gots laws gainst retarts round ere.”
