Chapter Two
A head jutted out of the side of the hull she’d been leaning on, twisting to follow her frantic retreat. It was human in the vaguest sense of the word, to the point where her mind rebelled at labeling it as such. A gaunt to the point of emaciated face regarded her from beneath a brightly colored hat, the top split off into various hanging portions, each tipped with a small silver bell. Virginia noticed that even as the bells shook and bounced as the head turned to follow her, no sound came from them. Something about that struck her as more unsettling and alarming than this thing’s sudden appearance or it’s more prominently horrifying features.
The sunken eye sockets were hollow, the dark pits where eyes should be instead filled with purple flame, which seemed to burn a bit brighter when her eyes focused on it. An unnaturally wide smile split the thing’s face as it regarded her, like someone had hooked their fingers in the corners of its mouth and pulled back until the skin was about to tear.
“So sorry for startling you!” The thing said in a tone that made clear it was not at all sorry for startling her. “You’re one of the more interesting things going on right now, and it seemed like you were going to have more questions about all of…”. It gestured absently at the blue screen, that Virginia now noticed had shifted and moved with her, still floating directly in front of where she now crouched in the mud. “…this. And, as one of this planet’s newly created Heroes, you’re entitled to a bit more of an explanation than the other schmucks.”
The thing stepped forward out of the boat, an equally thin body supporting its sickly looking head emerging, the metal of the hull seemingly none the worse for wear after its passage through it. It was clad in a sort of one-piece costume made of alternating squares of black and purple silk, that stretched from its neck, to its wrists, disappearing down into a pair of black boots with slight heels and pointed toes. It slid one of these forward through the mud around the boat, and executed an elaborate bow.
“My name is Tryn, and welcome… to The Depths.”
Virginia stared up at it, uncertainty and confusion joining the sudden burst of terror that had propelled her away from the boat.
“Is that like the Below?” She asked, her words coming out with a brief pause in the middle as her raspy and rough sounding voice caught her off guard. A snort followed by distinctly unkind giggling came from the bowed head, the bells of its hat bouncing merrily and silently along.
“The Below… oh human, you are in so much trouble if you’re still focusing on that.” It lifted its head, the purple flames flaring brighter for a second as it gazed at her. “Well, sort of human. Human… shaped. Within the acceptable range of colors for humans, which is…” It dropped its voice into a stage whisper, “…apparently super important for your species.” It punctuated that comment with what appeared to be its version of a wink, one flame flickering out briefly while the other one flared more brightly, watching Virginia intently as it did. “I’m sure that’s going to work out great for all of you in the days ahead.”
Virginia frowned back at it. Her thoughts from just before Tryn had arrived, that sense of unease at the occasional cruel and mocking tone of the words on the screen, reoccurred to her now. Tryn’s presence and thinly concealed glee at what seemed like a terrible situation for her and apparently the rest of humanity, seemed to confirm all of that.
It’s smiling, it’s laughing, but… I think it’s just hiding the fact that it’s excited to see people get thrown to “monsters”.
” Half credit.” The seeming non-sequitur from Tryn made her blink and shake her head slightly.
“The smile is genuine. It’s entirely because based on everything I’ve seen since arriving here, your people’s descent into a level of death, terror, and unending suffering is going to be as brief as it is delightful to watch, but it’s genuine.” Tryn straightened up from the bow it had been holding, stretching until its back made an unsettlingly loud popping noise. “And yes, people are getting thrown to monsters. Honestly, you’ve already been thrown. It’s just taking your planet a while to hit the bottom.”
Virginia stared back at him, catching her lower lip between her teeth and worrying at it.
Did it… he, just read my mind?
She wasn’t sure what made her begin to start referring to Tryn as a ‘he’ rather than an ‘it’. The creature clearly wasn’t human to begin with, who knew if that kind of assignment even applied? Still there was something, maybe it was in its voice or it’s mannerisms, that led her brain to switch from “it” to “he”.
“I wouldn’t call it mind reading, exactly. More like… what would you call the thing below reading, that you do when flipping through a coloring book?” That mean, amused tone was back in Tryn’s voice as it once again responded to her thoughts, smile stretching across his face briefly before he continued. “It’s your own perceptions. My true form is far less, let’s just say ‘perceivable’, to your people. At least as they currently are. What you’re seeing is a vague telepathic concept, that your own mind is filling in.”
Virginia considered this, her mind struggling to wrap itself around what he was describing.
“So, you’re not, what, real?”
Tryn snorted at that. “Rude. Also, hardly an accusation for someone who only existed on eighty-three minutes of film reels until a few minutes ago to make lightly.”
Virginia opened her mouth to respond to that, but Tryn waved a hand at her. “Shut up, not important, still talking about me.” He gestured down at himself with both hands. “I’m quite real. To interact with the limited, limited, limited, limited, limited…” He continued on like that for a moment, eye flames watching her and flaring up a bit brighter when a look of annoyance crossed her face. “…limited, limited, limited minds and perceptions of humans, I’m sending out a telepathic signal of what I look like. Just a little hint to help those squishy human brains along.” He spread his arms out wide. “A gaunt figure in a black and purple jester’s costume. Now, little details beyond that vague description get filled in by the individual minds I interact with. The pitch of my voice, whether I’m tall or short, whether my skin is smooth or wrinkled, the size of my nose. Usually, details stolen from memories of someone that made the person seeing me uneasy, or anxious in the past.” He presented his face in profile. “Do I look like a cruel uncle of yours? I often do.”
Virginia once again opened her mouth to answer, and he once again waved his hand in her direction.
“Oh, you wouldn’t know. Your parents weren’t even in the movie, which means you’ve never actually met or interacted with them.” He sighed heavily, as he turned to face her once more.
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“Stop saying that.”
Tryn’s eye flames flared up a bit brighter in response to her words.
“Oh?”
“Stop saying things like that! That I’m a story, or a movie, or that I’ve never met my parents!”
“Describe one interaction you’ve had with your parents.”
Virginia glared at Tryn openly as she responded. “The last time I spoke to my dad was right before I left for camp for the summer. He warned me to watch out for any boys who tried to get fresh.”
She frowned even as she said it. She wasn’t lying, she remembered her father saying that to her, remembered jokingly telling Johnny about it when he asked her if she wanted to get dinner together. But it felt off, the same way everything before the last few minutes felt off. Hollow, or…
Flat. Remembering that feels flat, like a cutout propped up by nothing.
Tryn frowned, and rolled his non-existent eyes, purples flames spinning in their sockets for a second.
“Urgh, you’re annoyingly dense, even for a human. The others are all getting this much more quickly.” His alarmingly wide smile flashed across his face briefly before he continued. “You’re close though, I see it on your face. Describe him. Describe dear old dad. Or mom. Or anyone you knew before coming to this camp.”
Virginia stared back at him, opened her mouth to retort, then nearly retched instead as another wave of vertigo struck her, the black edges of her vision pressing in further. She would have fallen if she hadn’t still been seated from where she fell when Tryn had first appeared beside her. He stared down at her, the flames in his eye sockets growing brighter, and that smile returning to stay this time.
“There it is! There’s that moment, that realization, then confusion, then panic, then the question…”. He trailed off, staring at her expectantly. Virginia shook her head slowly, taking a deep breath.
“I can’t remember.”
His smile tipped down at the edges, annoyed at receiving a statement rather than a question.
“Smart ass. That’s right!” His smile returned. “Or rather, wrong! It’s not that you’ve forgotten, it’s just that you never met them in the first place.” The flames in his eyes burned even brighter, enough now that the flickering light from them was slowly consuming the boat in a deep purple glow. “You’ve never met anyone aside from the people who were part of this story, all of whom are now dead. You never did anything, aside from briefly work at this camp, and then watch your world get turned into a low budget bucket of blood and gore.”
The darkness around the edges of her vision had stretched to force her focus down to a narrow point directly in front of her, a narrow point now filled by an unnaturally, terrifyingly large grin, and two dancing purple flames.
“Before ten minutes ago, you weren’t real.”
* * *
The being known as Tryn loved what was going to happen next. Loved it as much as he hated everything else about his chosen role in this whole affair. Being around humans, around mortals, whose consciousness sprouted out of ambulatory chunks of flesh like mold on rotting meat, was excruciating, for the most part. Taking on the appearance of one, even if it was only in their primitive lizard brains, was demeaning to the point of being the kind of torture that would have driven a being like him hopelessly, violently mad.
Though that ship had long since sailed.
He grimaced at the human parlance and idioms that infected even his own thoughts. He didn’t even understand most of their idiotic phrases, but used them fluently, because such knowledge and behavior were part of the role he had been tasked with.
Truly a disgusting job. But not one without it’s perks.
He continued to stare at the young story in front of him, relishing the confusion and fear that he could see in her eyes, the way her breathing grew unsteady, and her hands started to tremble. This was how it always went and was in fact currently going at several points around the world simultaneously. Summoning forth heroes and legends from comic books, movies, books, anime, for the love of the Depths so much anime, sounded good on paper. Or at least it did if you were a human drooling on the paper while distracted by thoughts of mating. One thing humanity had a great deal of was stories, even some stories where heroes fought off threats very similar to the ones that had just arrived on their world. Beings of overwhelming power and dauntless heroism, who would be humanity’s saviors, delivering them a fairytale happy ending from the nightmare.
In practice, this usually ended very, very poorly.
It turned out, that “heroes” that found themselves suddenly in a new world and found out that every moment of their lives up until now was only real between the pages of a comic book, they reacted poorly. Finding out that their old world, every struggle, every tragedy, every love, was penned at the hand of a writer who was usually trying to make some kind of social commentary, and enjoyed by an entire universe of voyeurs who watched them suffer and succeed with equal fascination and glee…
Well, most of them broke down right then and there. If it wasn’t that, it was finding out that any loved ones they had were similarly not real, and usually hadn’t been, and wouldn’t be incarnated into the world. Or one of a number of other ego shattering, breakdown inducing truths.
Tryn giggled as he recalled the young story who had vomited himself into unconsciousness upon discovering that not only was one of his biggest claims to fame in this world a series of exceedingly explicit and detailed accounts of an incestuous relationship with his brother. Not only that, but such works were an established enough part of his following on this world that once he incarnated, his mind was filled with memories of those acts.
That was the other problem. Many of this world’s fictional characters were so old and established, and had been told with so many variations, that they effectively had several different backstories and histories. The Depths made no attempt to distinguish or establish a “true” origin for a story when it was incarnated to act as a hero, and instead just shoved all of them together.
That also broke quite a few of them.
Madness, despair, a single-minded focus on escaping the world and returning to their story. Some of them even lashed out, turning on the humans who had summoned them to be their saviors. That was always fun.
Tryn turned his attention back to the young story in front of him. She was getting wound up for her particular brand of breakdown in the face of the existential crisis he’d sprung on her, and he was eager to see just how she decided to fall apart.
But she wasn’t falling apart. While he’d been distracted enjoying the suffering of other stories, this one seemed to have steadied herself. Her breathing had slowed, and the shaking in her arms had stopped.
Tryn frowned. Some stories did push through, although the effort was plain to see. They didn’t simply calm down in the face of finding out their entire existence was a lie. That was exactly what this one seemed to be doing, however. Her breathing steadied further, returning to almost normal. She still didn’t look up at him. In fact, her eyes were unfocused, and she gave the impression of not paying attention to him at all. He glared at her, his wide and expectant grin now gone.
“What are you doing?”
* * *
Virginia was reading.
She’d been hyperventilating, the light-headedness from the lack of air compounding the black edges of her vision, making her arms and legs shake. Desperately trying to recall some memory, any memory that would disprove what Tryn had gleefully revealed to her.
Nothing.
Her family was a blank spot. She didn’t know if she had any siblings, if she had a mother, or what she might look like. Aside from that one, flat and isolated memory of him telling her to “not let any boys get fresh”, her father was equally faceless and absent. Even that statement lacked any context, no lead-in conversation or history of being a stereotypical over-protective father.
As the gaping void that was her memory, her life up until this point, spread out before her, her odd and intrusive thoughts played through her mind again. The odd behavior of her friends, the strange things they’d all said, the odd lapses in the rules for how the world seemed to work.
Like a bad movie.
Virginia had sucked in air to laugh at the absurdity of it, but it had rushed right back out in a shuddering gasp instead.
I’m not real? None of the people I know are real?
Her vision was almost entirely dark now, the eerie purple glow from the flames in Tryn’s empty eye sockets the only thing that pierced through.
Just a story. And from what it seems… not even a good story.
She could feel herself starting to pass out, the darkness and dizziness all pressing down on her. She probably would have, if she hadn’t been startled by a sudden flicker of blue light, piercing through both the darkness and the glow coming from Tryn. She narrowed her eyes, and a small blue screen came into focus.