The first thing that Keira felt was the rain on the back of her head. Quickly followed by the push of the asphalt in her face. Her head hurt. Everything hurt but her head was the worst of it. Another thing that was weird was that her heart was racing, even though she herself wasn’t out of breath. In fact she felt rather calm. There was still a fuzziness to her consciousness, something that stopped her from thinking too hard. But her heart was racing and there was a clenching pain in her chest, almost as if she was anxious about something. She wondered what. Staying here? That makes sense, though she couldn’t connect the dots at that moment.
Her eyes cracked open and she sat up, waiting out the sudden bout of nausea as the world spun. She felt her heartrate pick up even more, opposing the slowing chill that had come with the rain. Even with clarity returning to her, she couldn’t understand why she had to rush. Wasn’t the immediate threat over? Why the panic?
Is that what humans call urgency?
Keira froze. It hadn’t been a voice, at least not how Palotl had previously spoken to her, but instead it was tacked onto the end of her inner monologue, like a thought that had only just occurred to her. But those words didn’t come from her. Legs shaking, she stood up and immediately fell to her knees as everything moved too much for balance to be kept. Groaning, Keira tilted her head up to the sky and let the rain wash down her face. Letting it refresh her. When her hand moved up to wipe some of the larger droplets out of her eyes, it came back with the water being a diluted grey. Keira braced her hands against the ground to stand up again and that was when she noticed something sitting where the leech would be, if it hadn’t been replaced with a small glass orb.
It was black, but not completely. The centre of it was a deep onyx but it had a gradient to it as the further away from the centre, the lighter the colour got until it reached a familiar diluted grey. She didn’t know what it was doing there, but something was telling her to pick it up. And considering the circumstances, she felt herself agreeing. It was cool to the touch and felt like regular glass, though she could tell that there was something… different about it, so Keira felt like she could put it into her bag without cushioning it. Keira made to stand up and this time succeeded. Though she was still a little shaky, she could walk and make her way back to Iris. On her way she decided to organise her thoughts, or more precisely, ruminate on why she didn’t need to do much organising.
At the moment she wasn’t feeling… anything really. It was as if she was coming off of a great catharsis. It was intoxicating in its own right. No more emotions clouding her mind. That also meant that there were no emotions that weren’t hers in her head, though Keira doubted that Palotl felt things. There were other things that were scratching at the back of skull, persistent enough that they seeped into her brain. Memories from eons ago and memories that never were. Fading from clarity. It was a mess and there was so much that whenever she tried to hold onto one of the memories, it slipped into the darkness like sand through fingers. A shame. Such knowledge would benefit her greatly.
No, Keira didn’t want anything to do with that. Her experiences with the supernatural have left her scarred and in a forever worsening position. After Palotl was out of her head, she was going to live a normal life until she died, whether it be of old age or an ancient god descending onto the mortal plane didn’t matter.
By the time she had reached the outskirts of the town, the noise in her head had died down and the curtain over her mind was instead replaced by a splitting headache. Her footsteps were slow and uneven, something which only got worse as time went on. It had only taken a few minutes for her to reach where the coach was supposed to pick the group up from but her legs could hardly support her weight. Which was why she was so glad when she felt a warm body press up against her side and support her the rest of the way. Someone was talking but she couldn’t hear anything over the pounding in her head. All she wanted to do was fall asleep until she was feeling better. Maybe that was what the person holding her picked up on, as they soon fell silent. Didn’t do much aside from help her up some stairs into something that felt uncomfortably warm, and then steady her as she fell into a seat. And then fell asleep.
Blissful darkness enveloped her only for a few moments before light shined onto her eye lids, turning that black to white. Keira sat up with a groan and rubbed her tired eyes. Then she tilted her head up towards the sky and braced her hands against the sand. Then paused. She was nowhere near sand when she fell asleep, in fact, the beach they went to was specifically a rock beach. Her eyes zeroed in on the ground and the first thing that came to her attention was the fact that this sand was a shade of vibrant red. With a gasp Keira stood up and looked around her surroundings.
Large canyon walls stretched up either side of her, the same colour as the sand, and not too far away, there was a perfectly circular hole. Keira cautiously edged towards it, foot knocking against a black scale as she got closer. What her foot caught against didn’t catch her attention for long, but it was enough for her to notice something in that glossy sheen. She would have enjoyed looking at it closer, had a breeze not brushed past her face and beckoned her closer to the perfect circle in the ground.
As the distance shrunk, however, something crawled into her mind and nestled itself there. Echoes and whispers that sounded like screams that were carried for miles by the wind. It was a famous characteristic of the whispering pit, residing far south of Aria and in the middle of the ruins of the first known civilisation, Akanzag. The most common theory was that the unique architecture of the landscape allowed the wind to whistle in such a way that it sounded like people, though studies to confirm this had decreased thanks to the local government locking the site down.
Getting closer would give her a once in a lifetime opportunity, even if it was a dream. Peeking into the pit she saw something truly horrifying. Those familiar countless rifts, larger ones could be the eyes of Palotl, or they could be closer sections of its body. Suddenly everything crashed into her, emotion that had once been suspended in the back of her mind entered free fall and before it could even start, she screamed at it.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS THAT?! YOU JUST- JUST- OVERWROTE EVERYTHING! YOU STRIPPED ME OF MY CONTROL AND THEN PRETEND LIKE YOU’RE ON MY SIDE?! FUCK YOU! HOW DARE YOU!” Keira continued to scream and cuss at it until all of the anger had left and all she had left was overwhelming indescribable feeling. She sunk down and rested her head on her knees and dissolved into sobs.
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“You are done.”
“Fuck you.”
“I chose a memory closer to the start of our ascension as to not disturb you, as my previous option seemed to have disturbed you. Was this in vain?” Keira tilted her head up to the clear blue sky and sighed. It would be truly idyllic without the present company.
“No.”
“Good. Now that we have moved past your tantrum, let us talk about your next steps.” Keira breathed in and out before removing her head from her knees.
“No. You are answering my questions about whatever that was, and then we are setting up some new boundaries.”
“It matters not child. Soon this shall all be over. Better not to delay.”
“Good idea. So, first question, why didn’t you explain more at the town? I know that you were capable of talking to me.”
“Hm. Whilst awake your mind is active. Your own thoughts and feelings are echoing around your head, blinding you to my will. Whilst asleep, you are more open to me. We can hold a conversation."
"But possession is easy?!"
"Yes. The physical body is far easier to manipulate than the mind, and in the points where your body was breaking down, where your mind slipped into unconsciousness, those were the only times I could truly communicate. Is that what you are upset about?”
“No- I mean yes, but the worse part of it was the possession. That was not necessary. I could do what I needed to on my own.”
“If you could have done that on your own, I would have left you to do it on your own. Possession is only viable when the risk you are under outweighs the risk of me taking control. This does slightly go against the clause in my contract wherein I give you my protection.”
“…What risk?”
“The same risk that happens the longer I stay attached to you. I realise that you are quite oblivious on these topics, so I shall keep it simple. In order to maintain this connection across the planes, you are serving as a temporary open gate. Though this means that my power, as well as the power of the plane I currently reside in, are always flowing through you. These levels of power are not dangerous to you, however when I possessed you, they became fatal. It certainly didn’t help when I had to pull more power onto this plane to fuel the ritual. This is why I've pulled you into this memory to help you recover.”
“Fatal?!”
“Indeed. As your body had yet to adjust, it was torn apart and so I have been providing ample assistance in helping you move back to your rendezvous. As this solution is unreliable, I have been stitching your body back together as you have been resting.”
“Is there anything else that you have failed to tell me?”
“No.” Keira wasn’t sure she believed it. Even if she should take everything Gastele said with a grain of salt, she had outright said that Palotl could lie. Though she had no way of even telling whether or not it was telling the truth.
“I’m serious Palotl. I may not be able to call off this deal, but if you keep hiding things from me I will turn myself into the authorities.”
“A sufficiently threatening bluff, I’m sure. I have fully divulged the risks you are currently under, however, so if you wish for me to prove my investment you shall have to ask another question.” Keira sighed and looked around her surroundings for a clue on what to ask it about. She would have asked more about the area the memory was taking place in, but she was reasonably sure why she was brought there. Then her eyes fell upon the palm sized black scale that she had kicked aside earlier, and she went to grab it. Upon touching it with bare skin, she shivered and memories flashed before her eyes, too fast for her to pick out anything in particular but Keira was still left with a sense of déjà vu. She brought it back over to the edge of the pitch and held it aloft.
“Fine then. What’s this?” A pause.
“Remains.”
“Of what?” Keira asked with a frown, squinting further at the scale and trying to remember whether or not there were any animals that matched it. Maybe some extinct species but given that the canyon looks exactly the same as it does in her time, it couldn’t have been too long. And she felt like a recently extinct giant snake would generate a lot of news.
“One of my kin, the one who turned against me.”
“You can be killed?”
“Hmph. Not in the traditional sense. We were born before the concept of time; therefore we exist at both the start and end of everything. If we were to be killed between then, it would create a paradox. For one of us to die, we would have to be completely obliterated. Wiped from reality itself.”
“Then how do you have remains on the mortal plane?”
“In order to inhabit the mortal plane we need vessels, even when dully ascended, but it is impossible for us to exist on this plane as we walk in one too many dimensions. To exist here with our full power, in our full glory, our vessels will shed and decay, no matter what they are made from. Sometimes, the decrepit remains survive and become shards of our power residing in this plane.” Keira was silent for a moment before letting the scale fall to the ground.
“You left this in the memory on purpose… Why would you want me to know about this...?” Realisation hit her and her eyes widened. “You have remains on the mortal plane too.”
“Indeed. Wheels have now been set into motion that cannot be stopped, and now that you have decided to trust the parasite, you are now forever embroiled in this. Our corpses have a large amount of power inherently in them and have an innate connection to us, if you are to hand my fate over to her, she will bring me onto this plane in such a way that is unstable. For this to become resolved before reality itself is ripped apart; I would need to be reunited with my past body.”
“I don’t trust her. It’s just that she holds all the cards, and from the sounds of things my time is running out. Though she refuses to explain why... as do you. And quite frankly I’m not going to change my mind. Gastele has more idea of what she’s doing than I do, and I trust her motivations more than I trust yours.”
“The stunt that we pulled has garnered attention, and those that have remained passive observers are soon to be spurred into action. You should be thinking about changing your mind.”
"We?"
"You did not want to leave more to that fate, and I did not disprove of the decision." Keira grunted.
“To be more honest, however, I believe that it sounds like it's more beneficial for me to never complete the deal."
“I am obliged to tell you, under the conditions of protection, that if I were to remain in your body at my current state, that your body will become so inclined to my power that it will smother your own soul and consume you in your entirety. Already the process has accelerated due to the liberal use of my power in the ritual.”
“You- Is that why I’m on a timer! Because if I take too long you’ll push out my own consciousness and my body will become your little puppet?! This is not happening- I’m turning myself in and I am dealing with you without inflicting this on anyone-“
“I have tried let your stupidness run its course with patience, child, but I think that you are due for a stark reminder of what I truly am.” And with that the darkness shifted, and the cold lumpy hand that she had shook in those caves gripped the edge of the pit and Palotl began to rise without a veil. Keira gazed upon it and oh, how wrong its body was. Without a veil to shield her mind it crammed itself into her head, all sharp angles digging into her nerves and her eyes. White hotness flared across her mind and a lashed at her brain until she had the most painful migraine that forced her awake.
She was back on the bus. Gasping in a cold sweat. To her right Iris raised an eyebrow, but mercifully said nothing. Keira decided to not go back asleep.