I am falling towards one of the green pools. My tattered robe flaps and waves around my face and chest, and I feel my wounds sting with the bite of the wind.
As the viridian glow grows to swallow my vision and eventually me, I glimpse the crowds gathered at the fringes, some falling face first, others wading slowly, all plunging into and dissolving in the ooze. Before I can make peace with this being my fate, I am once again grabbed by talons, around my midsection. Face down, I cannot raise my head to view my savior, were my remaining strength enough to perform such an act.
The creature stops my fall, but not before I briefly splash in the sludge, and feel it burn my skin raw. This thing, with many flapping wings, hauls me through the air over the mountains, croaking and squealing like a boar. My arms and legs dangle beneath me, dull wind chimes anointed in viscous oil. Miles flow like eddying currents in a river, each peak and crag a nail in the bed below, until we arrive at a vast misty valley where the green rivers coalesce into a monstrous current that roars and surges towards a sheer cliff dropoff, a height so imposing I cannot guess where it ends through the fog.
The flying thing lowers me, and drops me on the west riverbank of this foaming torrent, my body coursing with pains. I black out in shock, and sink into the depths of dark dreams.
I see a rusted barge on a black ocean, unpopulated, drifting. I seem to inhabit the wheelhouse, staring through broken windows over dead instruments, past a wheel that rolls untethered from whatever steering mechanism it used to govern. The sky is red and wet, full of black storm clouds that sob down sheets of black rain. The deck is strewn with decayed shipping containers whose contents have long been swept away by the thieving waves. An unnatural light clings to the air above the ship, glowing and swirling in a minute aurora. I feel a hand lay on my shoulder and prompt me to turn around, then wake with a jolt.
I lay beside the river, my face inches from where the current drags the alkaline liquid. As I sit up, I feel my flesh fighting to remain stationary, and look down to my palms. My hand is soft, indistinct, like a sandcastle recently buffeted by waves. My porcelain parts seem to have melted into my flesh more agreeably, and my whole exterior claims a sort of doughy consistency, as though I might be folded up and molded without much pain or protest. The air is humid, and prolongs this sensation, though I can intuit that I may soon dry out and become firm again with enough time. My back no longer stings from a ragged wound.
Examining my surroundings, I see that the beach is of glossy black sand, some of which has become embedded in the side of my body that laid upon it. The mountains rise all around me, and offer their streams to the river. I see no sign of the thing that brought me here, though sparse figures encrust the mist around the river, shuffling into it to be unmade. I do not yet share their compulsion, and instead follow the flow of the water, recalling the sheer dropoff that descended blindly into fog.
I can, as I walk, occasionally glimpse more than just the silhouettes of creatures and mountains through the mist, and recall the monasteries into which some of the afflicted embarked. I still pursue the course of the river as it descends into the valley. I am occasionally presented with the obstacle of a stream that deposits its body into the flow, but each time I am graced with a paired outcrop on either side of the would-be barrier which I can, with some effort, leap.
My journey is once in a while marked by a harrowing encounter with one of the creatures I saw from above. While all others seem obsessed with their sought end at the hands of the acid, or pilgrimage to the monasteries, the red, abstract things seem only occasionally possessed by such urges. Though they are few and far between, I am compelled to call them denizens of this realm. They wander without apparent reason, and often strain against their design- most are little more than a pair of legs, a waist, and a ponderous mass of arms that converge with little symmetry at the elbows, the wrists, even the knuckles, and begin over, until they resemble more tangled roots than proper limbs, each ending in individual fingers. Often the biceps and triceps will pull in different directions, causing great consternation, but never enough to topple the thing. I am forced to view their plight at a distance- approaching causes great suffering in me: my sight begins to blur and speckle with flashing dots, and my gut wrenches painfully as though being pulled taught and plucked at. Thus, I give these unfortunates a wide berth every time they appear in my path. I do note some that seem to possess purpose other than that they might share with the suicidal masses- there are those that march almost parallel to me, many on the far bank of the river. The writhing and swaying of their upper extremities poses but little difficulty to their pace- they leverage these irksome arms to vault the joining streams when they appear, insisting that their lack of eyes does not mean total blindness.
My eyes, I later realize, are now stuck forever open- my eyelids melted away while I slept on the riverbank.
The valley deepens, and the mountains around become steep cliffs before being lost altogether in the mist brought about by the falls- which I now hear roaring as they cascade down. My pace is lessened for lack of want to careen off the edge, but I see the reddish outlines across the river hurtling along with increased ferocity, as though their unfathomable task approaches completion. Too late I notice the blurring and speckling at the edges of my vision, and am doubled over in pain when one of the things comes barrelling towards me, knocks into me, and sends us both tumbling down over the lip into the chasm.
Falling, spinning end over end, I am acutely aware of the darkening of the air as I plummet into the abyss, dim green light announcing that I still follow the now-vertical course of the river. I attempt to right myself, and stabilize in an upward-facing position; this enables me to witness the edges of the pit that now swallows me, a jagged ellipse of tar surrounding and closing around the harsh light of the upper world, so far below. I jostle, and turn over to face the darkness beneath me, and still cannot see to the bottom. No crashing declares the well into which the substance pours.
Then, as I am grappling with the immutable nothing of my peril, a rectangle of light swings open below me, an unquestionable door pivoting along its hinges. Into this, I am powerless to avoid falling, and am compelled to heave nauseous breath as my sense of direction protests that the wall to my side has become the floor. I hear the door close behind me with a click as I roll along, soft limbs preventing harsh bruises and scrapes with their unnatural give.
Seeds of Fear 