Hell, Sing of Heaven
Lightning, roll above the mountain of doom, and sing loudly and well in its choir. The day was hot and the wyverns were all hiding from the sun. An ancient and abandoned temple stood nearby. A vast giant's sarcophagus had long ago slid down the vast face of the place during a particularly bad storm, like the one getting ready to roll in from the ocean today. It had crashed to a new home in front of the antediluvian place of celebration and sacrifice, and there it rested now, looking from afar through the lens of a photographer's camera much like a disembodied gold doorknob. Such a thing positively invited discovery, and indeed, it may even have caught the intrepid researcher's notice had a brief slithering sound issuing from back the way it had come not presented an urgent distraction, like scales of a serpent passing by beneath skittering across the underside of an old clawfoot bathtub. What was that noise, he thought, bemused. He was to take no more pictures in that location.
A steep hill to the left had been his reward for walking to the right away from the parking area he'd left his car in, and he'd headed up it readily enough, though many hours spent developing film and stories at his desk at home had left his muscles feeling rather rusty. It was good to be getting back outside and in the mix again. Or at least, so he had thought as he had made his way up the hill and then off to the right again down a rutted old dirt path he had found near the top where the rugged incline segment of the road had come to an end, leveling off for the most part and continuing on for however long it was. He looked back now at the way he had come, and found it impassable, stopped up by a highly unusual roadblock - a large king snake, which must have made its way swiftly across the path, no doubt... intending to sun itself beneath the pulsing light of the Californian mid-afternoon? A serpent of this type does not tend to be in much of a hurry. It was thick and well-fed, like a pet store python, and some five feet long besides. He'd just been through that way.
It was odd, certainly, but he did not panic. He didn't have the time, as things worked out. For as he gazed in bemused surprise back where his feet had just so recently led him, a furred and claw-bearing pair of hands reached down and picked the snake up. The face of a definitively non-traditional human being looked over at him and smiled lengthily with a vast crocodile grin filled with long sharp teeth. It was a natural, friendly sort of smile. Unreal, he thought, like one set deep in a dream. He guided his dogs, whose grins were nearly the equal of his visitor's for sheer saurian potency, with a slight tug on their leashes, and up back the way they came they did return - right past her.
To be afraid of the snake-wielding, two-legged cryptid which now stood motionless off to the side of the small trail he had come in on never occurred to him, and it wasn't until he was already safely back in his car and doing image forensics on the pictures he had taken on the way that perhaps he should have been. For in the bushes on the way to the temple he hadn't seen while taking the shots had been the intent, intelligent, ultra-focused head and gaze of the being who had somehow been able to get around to the other side of the trail without him noticing behind him. Later he found subterranean tunnels honeycombing the area on old maps. One of these must have allowed her to do it. Certainly there was little doubt of her interest in him. Her intentions had been to kill or to inspect a prospective husband, without a doubt. Something had told him to bring his knife along, and this he had calmly readied and shielded with his body without anyone present having noticed. He wondered if this creature, who as he'd walked by he might have mistook for a shaggy Holstein cow had she not been holding a huge king snake and looking quite humanly sheepish, surprised at her own conduct, would have regarded this as a challenge and attacked him for it had she seen what he was up to. As it was, he smiled in a friendly, easy manner, and said hello, just as he would have with anybody else.
He could have sworn he noticed her blushing as he walked by. In that moment she'd looked remarkably like a young girl, unsure of herself a bit, maybe, but very sweet of temper and happy to have made his acquaintance. In his heart, he had somehow been aware that she was of importance to him. Indeed, it was true! For the man who took that photo was the Aryan King! The necromancer Sauron, the Lord of Hosts, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Mashiach! The Anointed One had had a highly spiritual experience in the place known as the ancient volcanic preserve Cybele, and he wouldn't soon forget it. For these are the End Times, folks, and it's a good thing too, because our situation is well nigh unbearable. Only thing is, on what note will things end? Is it to be the end of an era, or the end of life on Earth? The being known as the wyvern empress, as that is who she turned out to be, might have some thoughts on the matter, and the Mashiach will receive them very soon. This is certain...
Comments