Undeath

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.”

The aged woman prodded the fire with a stick, shifting the kindling and sending embers dancing into the dark sky above. “People used to live there, years ago. A village they called… Meridion.” The wrinkles in her brow deepened at the mention of the name, and the flames danced in the reflection of her old, sad eyes.

It was clear that she longed for something that no longer existed, and had not existed since before Erik was even born. It was difficult to imagine such things ever happening now. Bustling towns of people trading goods and living in peace? It sounded like a fairy tale, a fantasy. Yet Erik knew enough to know that actual fairy tales were meant to provide some sort of lesson. You tell a child about a girl who got lost in the tall grasses and never came out so they know to not follow in her footsteps. But this? A tale of a happier past gave no lesson, no moral to remember. It would only fill the few who lived before the End with longing and lamentation and those born after with discomfort and discontent.

But he knew not to interrupt those thoughts all the same. So few elders remained in this world, and finding one alive and able to speak was quite the phenomenon. He had found many still breathing, of course, but the earth had taken them long before he met them. There was once a man, skin so sunken and wrinkled that he resembled a corpse, hanging against the wall of a mountain by vines. When Erik attempted to free the old codger, the man’s back peeled off of the stone, and an inhuman shriek escaped not the man, but the very earth itself. Erik never attempted to save such sorry souls again.

But this woman had not been discovered in such a state. He had found her home before he found her. An old shack just beyond the Valley here, well-maintained and kept free of the nature that seemed to swallow everything else. She was not so frail as any of the other elders he had seen, able to still move without the joints slowing her pace. Her skin was not nearly so pale as his own, perhaps because she once lived in a time with the sun. And though he had grown tired of these tales, he knew that interlaced with the sorrow and sentimentality in those stories were secrets. Ways to pass through the impassable, ways to escape the inescapable. And so Erik would let the woman continue her rambling, if not to at least learn how to get through this decrepit village without being turned to ash.

The old woman smiled wistfully. “The sun used to peak past the clouds then. You would have been blinded by it, I think. It was… it was beautiful.”

“When did the dragons move in?” asked Erik.

That withered smile fell flat. “After God abandoned us.”

Erik had used to believe that it had simply been a metaphor. After all, all he knew was a Godless world, one without a sun to shine upon mankind. But things had been different before the End. There was a God, and everyone knew His name. He was not some unfathomable, untouchable spirit that merely created the heavens and the earth, yet never showed His face to the latter. He walked among the people He made. He kept them safe from harm, from the lawless throes of nature and the evil that lingered in the shadows. Yet He did not remain forever, and no one knew why.

The day He left was known forevermore as the End, for it was the day that the clouds obscured the sun, and the day that nature became a cancer, growing and growing without any heed or worry for the men and women that lived alongside it. According to this old woman, the sun had once been necessary for the crops to grow, and for nature to survive. But it did more than survive in the sun’s absence. It was as if the End was not merely the death of the world, but also its resurrection. It was no more than a corpse, undeath filling its lungs with rotten breath that would keep it moving along, but without purpose. Erik had been unfortunate enough to be born in a world that had no place for creatures like him. He did not live because of the grace of a God. He lived in spite of its absence.

“Why doesn’t anyone remember this God’s name?” he asked. “I mean, you’re able to remember the names of villages, of times so long ago that I’ve never imagined anything like them. But everyone I’ve spoken to acts like they can’t remember the name of the being that shaped the world.”

“It is not an act,” she answered firmly. “No mortal can remember His name because He did not want us to remember His name.”

“Why not?”

“I do not know. Perhaps we do not deserve to remember it. Or perhaps He simply does not want us to have a name to curse every night before we sleep.” The fire burned brighter in those gray eyes of hers, burning within her just as much as it burned the leaves and twigs in front of them. Erik had little doubt that, if she could muster it, she would reach past the clouds and strike at the very heart of God. Perhaps He would deserve it.

“We’re getting off track,” he said. “I need to get through this Meridion Valley.”

“And you are wanting to do so without becoming a dragon’s dinner, I would assume.”

“Exactly.”

“Then you do not want to go through the Valley.”

He shook his head. “I can’t turn back now. I’ve come too far not to see this journey through.”

She smirked. “And what is this journey of yours, pup?”

“That is none of your concern.”

“Perhaps it is not.” The way she continued to smile despite his reticence was… off-putting, to say the least. “But you can tell me this: is this journey of yours so dire that you are willing to risk your life? Or worse yet, are you willing to risk your very sanity?”

“Without question.”

That grim grin remained. “Then, as I said, you do not want to go through the Valley.”

“I can’t go around it, either. The grasses grow wild on either side. At least with a dragon, I would see what is coming to eat me before it does.”

Now it was her turn to shake her head. “I am not suggesting you go around the Valley, pup. I am suggesting you go underneath it.”

The mines had been built into the side of this valley centuries ago, she had said, for it was iron that kept Meridion afloat during the winter, when not even the sun could save the crops from withering away. Erik had never liked being underground. The world above was no longer suitable for what remained of mankind, sure, but the world below had never been suitable even when God walked the earth. Fearful instinct welling in his gut had been more than enough reason to avoid a majority of the old mines, tunnels, and caves that dotted the path of his journey. But now, he feared, he had no other choice. Though, he did have to wonder, would being swallowed by some beast be any less terrifying than being swallowed by the very earth itself?

Such contemplations had drowned out the old woman’s voice as they made their way to the entrance, just outside of the Valley. No doubt she was regaling him with stories of better times, back when the mines were pouring out iron and raking in gold. But unless she was going to mention some ill-made creature that could still be dwelling in those mines, he cared not. For her, Erik may have been the first person to make his way through this area in months, perhaps even years. But for him? For him, he had met a few faces in his travels. Most were false faces, masks that hid their true intentions upon encountering what they perceived as a victim. All of them were wrong.

The journey to the mines had not been a long one, though dreadful all the same. While he would have normally used a lantern to guide their path, the woman wisely reminded him that light this close to the Valley would summon much more than they would bargain for. And so he had to use his other senses to guide him, a talent belonging to all who lived beyond the End. Though the outside world was not quite as dark as the inside of a tunnel, it was at the precipice of such utter tenebrosity. The eyes could deceive you if you relied on them, creating apocryphal monsters in the shadows yet obscuring the real ones from view. But the ears, they could hear the snapping of twigs and the rustling of the grasses. The nose could smell the foul odor of death and fetor. Such things were necessary to survive.

But she led him without tarry or delay. Much of the land here had been burned away by the dragons, inadvertently giving Erik and the woman some recess from the flora. That and, to her credit, the woman had memorized the path very well. Though Erik supposed that if he had ever decided to settle down somewhere, casting off this journey and dedicating his time to such a small area, he’d be a fool if he didn’t remember every square inch of it.

The mouth of the mine was overgrown with bramble and vines. The wooden support beams that kept this entrance stable were barely visible beneath the veritable wall of thorns. An odor of dry earth and decay crept past the vines, causing Erik to visibly recoil.

“I would not be surprised if only the dead greet you inside those tunnels, pup,” said the elder. “When the dragons came, those few who tried to persist within the village retreated to these mines. I never saw any of them leave.”

Erik’s jaw shifted as he thought of what it must have been like for them, huddling with their families beneath the ground, crying in terror as winged beasts of flame destroyed what was left of their home.

Like these people were forced from their village, so too was Erik forced from his thoughts. Thunder rumbled through the Valley, a roar that shook the very foundations of the earth. Every hair on his body stood on end, and a chill breeze passed through them. Were he ignorant of the past, he would not have been able to distinguish that roar from the word of God. Such power could never come from a man.

It came from a dragon.

“You should return to your home,” he told her, pulling the hatchet from his belt. “It’s not safe here.”

“My home lay in Meridion,” she said. “There is nowhere safe for me.”

“Then what do you plan on doing? You want to wait around and become some lizard’s lunch?”

The fire that he had seen within her eyes burned even now, and with more vigor than ever. “My family is still inside that mine. I wish to see them before I return to the dust.”

He raised his brow. “Then why haven’t you come here before?”

“I did not have an ax.”

It didn’t sit quite right with him, but he had no time to argue. Dragons had a powerful sense of smell, and he did not want to risk the sound of incoming wingbeats any more than he already was.

His first swing through the bramble was strong, breaking through with a satisfying thwack. Splinters scattered to the wind, scraping his arms as he struck again and again. He ignored the sting of the barbs. Sweat began to bead on his brow. And though his body was here, chopping away at the wall of thorns, his mind stood still, waiting. All it would take would be a single rumble, one distant crack of stone breaking away at the weight of a dragon, for Erik to dive inside this tunnel, thorns be damned. But that sound never came. All that filled his ears was the steady snapping of thistle and vine. With time, Erik carved a large enough hole to squeeze through without injury.

He stepped through the broken bramble and motioned the old woman inside, lighting the lantern on his hip as she did. All that the light illuminated, even when held high, were the fractured support beams that seemed to stretch forever onward, and the dry stone hidden just behind them.

“There’s not a drop of water in sight,” said Erik. “Aren’t caves…”

“The unnatural has become the natural,” she replied. “Reason has no place in a world beyond the End.”

“But I have been underground before. These mines… something is different about them.” Dust began to creep into his lungs. The tickle of a cough began to form in his chest. The way the light danced on the walls cast the illusion of life, as if the very tunnel was breathing at the same pace as the flames. Erik did not want to be in here if the walls themselves began to cough, too, sending the rest of these damned tunnels crashing down upon them.

“Then we would do well to begin moving, pup, so you can get out of these mines as swiftly as you can.”

There was no denying she was right, even if every fiber of his being protested. He forced himself to take that first step forward, and with that, each step after became easier. The dust became thicker as they moved further inward, becoming a veritable cloud from which he began to shield his nose and mouth. His eyes began to sting, and in his tears, the shadows cast along the tunnel became demons, creeping just outside the light of his lantern and laughing at his looming loss of life. They soon came to a fork in their path, neither side more or less unnerving than the other.

He turned back to the woman. Her shawl left only her eyes exposed now. “Do you know which way?” he asked.

“Left.”

He paused. “No story about how you know that? I’m surprised.”

“Let us not waste any more time.”

Her sudden change in character had taken him off guard. It made him uneasy; whatever predispositions he had about this woman were being challenged, and at the worst of times. He could have dropped it. Perhaps that would have been easier. But he could not ignore the hairs standing straight on his neck, nor the growing anxiety of having her at his back.

And so he turned to face her, holding the lantern to her eyes and staring into them. “You were fine wasting my time with your stories outside of this mine, out where a dragon could have swooped down on us at any given moment. What has you in such a hurry now?”

Her brow furrowed; she did not like being questioned. “You see the state of this mine and wonder why I do not want to linger here, pup?”

“You said yourself that you came in here to see your family. Were you just going to jog by their corpses, give them a wave, and then continue out to the other side with me?”

“Get that light out of my eyes.”

“Answer my question.”

“I will if you get that damned light out of my eyes!”

Reluctantly, Erik snapped the latch of the lantern back onto his hip. But as he did so, he froze. His flesh began to tingle with electrical anticipation. The quiet of the tunnels shrunk to utter silence, save for the approaching step of something behind. Slowly, he turned his head, expecting to find something terrible lurking just behind. But he saw nothing, and all that greeted him from the darkness was that dreaded sense of knowing.

“We haven’t seen any bodies in these tunnels. Not even a single bone in the dust.” He turned back to face her, his hand resting on the head of his ax. “You never did say that your family was dead, did you?”

He expected to see some sort of emotion in her eyes, as he had seen before. Perhaps fury at him accusing her of lying. Perhaps even fear of what he would do to her with that hatchet. But he saw neither. He saw no emotion in those eyes. In fact, she wasn’t looking at him at all.

She was looking past him, into that same darkness he had just dismissed. A cruel smile, contrasted with dead, gray eyes was the last thing Erik saw before something struck the back of him. Hard.

He fell into the darkness of oblivion.