Cerulean Dreams

by Dan O'Brien

  He saw it again.

  It was the darkened sheet that flittered in the corners like a carrion bird. The darkness had eyes. Floating effortlessly, it watched Marlowe. It gazed without vision, without sight. Fear and paranoia flooded through him, his mind a void that flashed white.

  And again, the world slowed as it had before.

  “I am Armon, a son of Babylon, and you are nothing more than a mongrel, Orionian. Your death is insignificant. Call to the girl, tell her to return.”

  Marlowe swallowed.

  The very act seemed like a gigantic chore that he was nearly incapable of doing. He could hear her voice, screaming through the steel.

  “No,” spoke Marlowe.

  His eyes were glassy, distant, as he watched the phantom hover in the corner. The thin web-like sheets that served as wings allowed it to soar without sound. Armon reached down, the motion of his hand seemed to ebb before Marlowe’s eyes. Deliberate and methodical, Marlowe reached up, grasping his adversary’s hand. The coils of the whip snapped, splitting the whip into a thousand ringlets.

  And together they rose.

  They rose as one man with four arms, two heads. One was full of confusion and horror, the other of determination. “I will not call to her, Armon, son of Babylon,” spoke Marlowe again. His lip was bloodied, eyes dilated. He gripped the slender hands of Armon in his, hand over hand.

  Slowly, the assassin sunk to his knees. “This cannot be,” whispered Armon as he strained against the grip of Marlowe.

  Marlowe twisted his hands, watching as Armon’s face faded to horror. “It is.”

  Then as if the world flooded to real speed once more, Marlowe released one of Armon’s hands. Grasping a thick blade from his side, a sharpened bludgeon of a sort, he drove it through Armon’s free hand and into the ground. The assassin screamed, his call of agony resounding in the atrium.

  “I promised I would go wherever she must go, and she would go wherever I go. I mean to keep that promise, Armon,” spoke Marlowe, releasing his grip on the blade.

  Armon screamed again, his flawless features contorted into a face of pure anguish. “You will not…” he began and then swallowed, the pain flooding his mind.

  “I won’t what, assassin?”

  Armon winced and closed his eyes, not wanting to look at his hand so deftly stapled into the ground. “You will not survive the desert. There is nothing there for you.”

  Marlowe sighed, tearing away a part of the body armor that covered his forearm. The rune had spread. Thick, foreign lettering was superimposed over wavy lines and prehistoric land markings.

  He knelt so that Armon could see it.

  “This is a portent, assassin. This leads to somewhere.”

  Armon looked at it wide-eyed. “You are mad.”

  Marlowe stood, folding the armor back once again.

  “Perhaps, but I will follow this road, this path on which I have found myself.” He looked at the assassin’s back, a drawn pack strapped around his narrow shoulders. “I don’t think you will need your supplies, stranded as you are,” reasoned Marlowe with a sardonic smile. Tugging on the pack, he tore the straps.

  He held it in his larger hands.

  Armon felt bile rise into his throat. He tried to pull the blade free, but could not. “We will hunt you. I will hunt you down, no matter how far you travel.”

  For a moment the Orionian considering killing the assassin. However, the presence of the disjointed faces, frightening and insistent, steadied his hand. Marlowe sheathed his blade and tied the broken straps of the pack to his belt.

  He looked at the kneeling assassin. “I would expect nothing less from someone like you. I won’t leave you alive again. This journey has at its end an answer to what I seek. You will not keep me from it. Know that death awaits you if you choose to pursue us.”

  Armon struggled against the blade. “One of us will indeed no longer stand when next we meet,” managed Armon with a cough.

  Marlowe grabbed the ring of the door once more, pulling it with greater force than he had previously. The cold desert was mixed with the heat from the city. It was, however, the arms of Dana that were the first to reach him.

  Hugging him, she laid her head against his chest. “I thought that you were going to leave,” she cried into his armor.

  He placed a hand against the back of her head.

  “I will never leave you, Dana.”

  Together, they walked through the door.

  Marlowe grabbed the edges of the door, pulling it closed behind them. The mechanical click of the massive hinges was left for only Armon to hear. In the darkness the assassin was haunted by the blank skin on Marlowe’s arms and the madness that it signified.

  XIV

  S

  ephes looked out across the sand. She was sweating heavily beneath her leather forearm guard in the noonday sun. Jesses in hand, she looked toward the sun, seeing the silhouette of her companion. The azure skies were tinged with purple, as if they were brushed on a canvas.

  A whistle rested between her lips.

  She tightened her lips around it. The sound was shrill, though nearly silent to human ears. To the hawk that circled above, it was an alarm, a form of communication that drew his attention. Powerful wings carved his descent before leveling off as he neared his friend.

  Sephes held out her arm, her brown skin nearly as dark as the leather of the hawk’s perch. Majestic in flight, he was even more so sitting upon her arm; the rich crimson feathers of his head contrasted with the tan and white plumes of his wings and body. Crushing talons honed to a razor’s edge glittered in the sunlight.

  Spreading his wings, he basked in the sun.

  Green eyes watched her companion carefully. Stroking the feathers of his chest, she smiled. Her white teeth glowed beneath her tan skin. “Did you find a meal, Icarus? Amongst the creatures of this cruel desert, did you find something that satiated a creature of your honor and grace?” she cooed.

  Icarus opened his mouth, no sound erupting for he only responded in a mournful caw if he wished to be fed. This was a gesture of understanding, not hunger. Continuing to bask in the beating rays of the sun, Sephes touched him underneath his beak to which he responded by gnawing her fingers playfully.

  “Do you wish to fly again?” she asked, tilting her head.

  Icarus tilted his head slightly and opened his mouth as if in response. He tucked his wings back against himself. Digging his beak into his side, he picked at something only he could see.

  Sephes was tall, especially for those among her tribe. Green eyes surveyed the horizon, occasionally hampered by strands of curly black hair that darted across her face. Her thin nose smelled the air, searching the winds as a predator would. Tight-lipped, her mouth was small and slightly moist as she licked her lips.

  She pet Icarus’ head and then with an expulsion of air, launched him into flight once more. His massive wingspan blotted out part of the sun. Her leather outfit was cracked in places; along her knees the hardened guards were worn from walking through the dull heat of the desert. Her boots rode nearly to her knees, concealing the bottom part of the guards placed there. Leather straps bounced as she moved into a graceful sprint across the white sands.

  Cresting a small bleached dune, she shaded her eyes with her hands. Looking out across the sea of sand, she could see the long blackened wall that marked the extent of all that she knew. It was there, against that division of darkened steel, that she saw something in the distance. Her sight was like that of her companion.

  The wall was disquieting.

  None of her tribe dared to make their way toward it. If game wandered past, then that game would be forgotten until it drifted once more out into the lonely sands of their home. She saw two shapes. Glancing at the skies, the angular cut of her features symmetrical and perfect, she saw her hawk flitter. His powerful wings soared toward their shared discovery.

  Icarus had seen the shadows as well.

  Sephes pondered the words of their E
lder about the Wall: to be mindful of the separation of her people and the people behind it. There was fear on either side. Each feared the presence of the others, the possibilities of any interaction. She watched the two shapes carefully. From that distance, she could not discern what they were. Only that there was indeed two and one appeared larger than the other: people.

  People from beyond the Wall, she thought in her frozen posture. “Why would they venture beyond the Wall?” she wondered aloud. Smoke rose from the distance, from beyond the two figures: on top of the wall itself.

  Had there been a battle? Were these survivors? Neither thought was the reason she catapulted forward suddenly. It was the shifting of the sand, where a massive sphere was moving in the distance; the bristling spines of cactus and brush that moved as one.

  It was the Mimic.

  *

  Marlowe opened his eyes slowly.

  The bright sun scorched his sight, burned straight through his skull. He felt as if he had been drained of his life and now was waiting for something to take him, for death itself to swoop down and grab him.

  The scared look on her face was marred with pain.

  “Marlowe,” she whined.

  He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat growing. They had not made it far from the exit. They were still so close that if he turned and craned his neck and scrunched his eyes, he could make out the darkened exterior of Orion.

  “You have to keep going, Dana. I got you out, but you will not get far looking after me,” he whispered hoarsely, thirst sapping him of his voice.

  Her face hardened.

  “No, we will not leave each other behind.”

  Marlowe nodded.

  He had expected such an answer. His eyes darted to the black pack that he had taken from the assassin. “Is there any water left in the pouch?”

  She turned away, thick strands of hair plastered with sweat against her face. Digging through the pack, he heard her frustrated sigh as she pushed aside objects that did not hold what she required. Dana spun back around, a white and gray bottle in her hands.

  “This feels cold,” she replied, placing it in his hands.

  Marlowe grabbed it, wincing as he felt the frigid touch amidst the desert heat. He unscrewed the top and tilted it into his mouth. Handing the bottle back to her, he took a deep breath.

  “Not too much, won’t do me any good.”

  She smiled weakly and replaced the bottle into the stolen pack. He considered getting up, but he did not think himself capable. The heat of the desert on his back––through his body armor––was intense. With a groan he managed to push himself to his feet, if only momentarily.

  “We need to find a place to rest during the day. Traveling in this sun will kill us for sure. There must be a cavern here somewhere, shade of some kind,” he spoke.

  Faltering, he nearly fell to one knee.

  Dana walked beside him closely, occasionally turning to look at him. “We have not seen anything since leaving Orion.” She paused. There was something that she wished to say, but hesitation halted her. She let a deep sigh loose before continuing. “What does the map say?”

  Marlowe stopped; his legs felt heavy. The map: he pulled back his sleeve and the horror on his face was tangible. The rune had spread. From the tips of his fingers beyond his forearm, the sprawling unintelligible map had spread.

  “Madness,” he whispered.

  Then, as if attacked, he clawed at his shirt.

  Lifting the mantle of his armor, he threw it into the sand. The blackened script had spread to his shoulder. He panted. Hands balled into angry fists, he stared at his uncovered arm incredulously.

  “This cannot be,” he whispered in awe.

  Dana moved closer.

  Her lips pursued. “Can you read it?”

  He shook his head and sat into the sand with a confused huff. “What is happening to me? These things I see, this strange design. What does it mean?” he asked, staring at the white sands.

  He looked at her from a sidelong glance.

  “Why did you call it a map?”

  She sat down beside him on the scorching sand. “That is what it looks like to me.” She pointed at the thick black ring that encircled his wrist, tracing her slender fingers up over his fingers. “You see here, all the colors. They look like lights. Lights of a city. A city like Orion. The thick black ring is the wall that separates the city from the desert.”

  He looked at her with disbelief.

  She continued, moving her fingers up his forearm. “All this, the speckled script, the strange lines that travel up your arm, is this endless desert. The words are telling us where to go. If you could read it, or even if I could read it, we would know why we are here in the desert and where we are supposed to go,” she reasoned with a small smile on her lips as she stood once more.

  “I thought we were in the desert because that was where you led us?” he asked, feeling sick and stupid all at once. “You said that you could read it when we were at Pharaoh’s. You said that some of the script was unfinished.

  She thought about that with a furrowed brow. “I knew only that we needed to leave Orion. We did not belong. Where in this forgotten desert we are supposed to go is beyond me.”

  He sighed in frustration.

  She looked away.

  “I am forgetting things. Already why I was there, and what I had said to you, are leaving my memory. With each step that life disappears. All I remember is you and that I was afraid there.”

  He shook his head.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. Slamming his fists into the sand, he looked high into the sky, screaming into the heavens. “What do you want from me?”

  The thunderous sound echoed across the desert.

  Marlowe stood quickly, his existential funk forgotten. “What was that?” he spoke and then looking at his hands, he continued. “Did I do that?”

  The sound came again, like a train rumbling across the ground––a thunderstorm beneath the sands. Sand exploded from the ground in the distance like steam from a smoke stack.

  The rumbling grew closer.

  “No, I think whatever is underneath the ground coming this way did that,” spoke Dana as she moved behind Marlowe.

  The ground exploded, a haze of sand and sun blocking their vision. Dana fell, but Marlowe grabbed her roughly by the arm. Lifting her and his body armor from the ground, he moved into a sprint.

  Weaving through the sand, his wound thudded as it pumped with blood. He dodged one way and the other as another column of sand exploded next to him, fueling an even more desperate pace.

  He tripped.

  The world spun.

  Marlowe watched Dana fly from his grip.

  He saw the glint of his body armor in the sun as it spiraled away from him. He could no longer hear. Her mouth was wide, a scream billowing from her no doubt.

  He saw only a wave of sand rise in front of him, a massive curl of white that seemed ready to flatten him, to make him one with the desert.

  Dana watched as the white sands crashed down on Marlowe, returning to its undisturbed state. As the sand filtered to the ground once more, he was gone. She started to scream; an end to which would not come for some time.

  XV

  A

  rmon thought of nothing other than Marlowe as night passed into day. He saw him leave through the circular door over and over again––the moment replaying as if it were a record that would skip for eternity. He was not certain how much time had passed, only that the pain in his hand had subsided and numbed.

  Looking at his flattened, discolored hand stapled into the ground so perfectly by the sharpened bludgeon, he was struck by the irony of being trapped in the atrium as his prey fled. He had worked out how far Marlowe could get in the condition in which he had left.

  “Is anyone alive down there?” called a voice, decidedly feminine. Armon shifted his body as much he could. His throat and mouth were dry. He swirled his tongue around trying to gather
moisture, but the act nearly made him vomit.

  “Here,” he called out.

  He tried to turn, but he was pinned so that he could only see the exit. He gritted his teeth and grabbed the hilt of the blade with his good hand. Breathing in and out quickly, he grunted, pulling at the blade. It wiggled, tearing fresh flesh once more. Spilling blood over top the wound and onto the floor, it spread over what had already dried.

  He cried out and fell away, his forehead sweating. Rivers ran down his face, but the blade stood strong. He remained a hunter trapped by his prey.

  Footsteps came closer.

  There was a click of heels among the heavy footfalls of soldiers. “Dr. Crowne?” he called out weakly. His powers of observation and intuition had not left him. He recognized her distinctive steps from a distance.

  Her voice answered with trepidation.

  “Brother Armon?” came the uncertain reply.

  Armon felt the pain, everything anew. He knew they would sweep the atrium eventually, but it seemed too much time had passed. “Yes, Dr. Crowne, I am here,” he answered. Though she was a Sister of Babylon, he did not use her designation. He felt their placement in Orion had perverted them, led them astray from the teachings and purpose of the Children of Babylon.

  She moved out in front of him, kneeling so that they were nearly face to face. “By Babylon, what happened here, Armon?” she asked worriedly. She waved soldiers on with an urgent scowl. “Where is Marlowe? The girl?”

  Armon swallowed. His face was smudged with dried blood, rich in color as the sweat awoke it anew. “They escaped into the desert,” he mustered. He saw the soldiers move around him, their hands collectively gripping the blade.

  “This is going to hurt a little,” cautioned Susan.