A New Night

Hello Nurse, Goodbye Divinity

Everything around me seemed to freeze, and my panic coated everything around me in a red haze. Even with my ability to see in the dark, I could barely see the jungle around me. The trees … the vines … the canopy … they were all spinning! Something yellow had grabbed the albino Night Person … and this monster wasn’t the only one! I saw the hint of a second yellow creature peeking out of the tree. This one was close—but hadn’t moved.

Until, suddenly, Romalla was swooping toward us.

My vision blacked out for a moment. I dove between them and barely caught Romalla in my rubber hands before it struck. I felt an impact to my side; the blow sent me rolling along the ground. I slowed to a stop in a large patch of moss.

It took me a moment to realize that I had not been shattered into pieces by the creature’s tremendous strength. But my ears were ringing, and my panic was making everything unclear.

Romalla shouted something urgently, something I couldn’t quite hear. Something about the other Night Person, maybe? Romalla opened her wings and pointed her nose upward. Confused, I released her to take flight and stumbled onto my feet.

Finally, I faced the thing attacking us.

The yellow creature was long … a serpent! It was enormous, as big around as a dinner bowl and longer than a truck. The snake had yellow scales with black speckling—mostly smooth, except for a line of tiny protruding scales running down either side of its body.

I had never been particularly afraid of snakes. So, being able to see it, my sense of alarm decreased instantly. The ringing in my ears stopped, and I could see normally again. I … wasn’t scared of snakes at all, it seemed—which was a surprising relief since there were so many things I was terrified of. If anything, I thought they were kind of cute—these giant ones only slightly less for our unfortunate introduction.

I knew these were not the cute, gentle giants I would have liked to have kept as a pet. These were wild, strong, and still quite dangerous … and yet, still just animals. In my mind, there was a certainty that snakes, even venomous and giant ones, were scared of people. So, I dashed toward it and yelled as threateningly as possible while keeping out of its strike range.

However, the snake did not turn tail or just give a normal strike. Instead, it slithered toward me—and at an alarming speed! The snake then rose vertically, standing tall like a cobra, and then turned at the last moment so that it struck me with a coil of jagged scales.

I only had time to throw up my arms in a desperate attempt to shield myself. A shower of sparks ignited where the creature hit my blades, and I staggered under the impact. Still, the attack wasn’t over—the snake began to wrap its slicing coils around me.

Almost immediately, I found myself being overpowered by the animal that was like one hyper-exercised muscle. I struggled to keep my arms extended and not let them be pinned uselessly to my sides. The screeching sounds of scraping metal rang out as it tightened around me—and I could smell mechanical burning! Oh yeah, that was me.

Had I not been in a metal body, I knew I would have surely been cut in half by this point. Even as I was, however, the snake was winning. And it would not let up!

That is, until Romalla swooped down from above and landed a heavy kick on the animal’s face. The snake let out a pained wheeze, followed by a loud, defensive hiss. Then, for just a moment, there was a bit of slack in its hold on me.

This was my chance! I pressed against the first snake’s coils with one arm to free the other. Then, I punched the snake repeatedly in its exposed belly. Only after my third or fourth punch did I realize that I was being careful not to hit the animal with my blade … and that I was definitely pulling my punches to not break its ribs.

The snake let out another series of strained huffs, followed by threatening hisses. For an instant, it coiled tightly enough to pin my arm to my torso. In terror, I forced myself to punch harder than I felt comfortable doing.

It wasn’t enough! The metal in my pinned machete squealed as the serpent’s sharp scales created a nick in the blade. And this creature was far stronger and more stubborn than any anaconda or giant python. So, I punched more! I punched for all I was worth as Romalla landed another kick.

For the first time since seeing it, I genuinely felt that I was in far more danger than I had thought. Much more, and it would surely break me! I could cut or stab it but … could I really do that?

Right when I thought there was nothing else I could do, the snake gave out. Its coils went loose, and it let out the most labored huffing noise yet. Then, with the same speed with which it had struck, it slithered into the jungle.

There was no time to relax, though! I turned to see what was happening with the first serpent—the one that had snatched the albino Night Person. The Night Person had somehow escaped but was cowering on the ground only a few feet away. That wasn’t the only change, though.

No longer in the trees, the first snake was now fighting from the ground. I wondered why until I saw Romalla descend from the air in a jagged pattern and then deliver a flying strike to the top of its head. There was no predicting her movements; the snake could only watch—coiled defensively—as she returned to the air.

I ran behind the snake and picked it up by the neck and upper body.

The serpent writhed and wrestled against my efforts like the world’s heaviest earthworm.

However, I struggled … and pulled … until I got it over my head. Then, with all my might, I awkwardly threw it toward a bush.

It writhed in confusion for a moment, glared at me … then at Romalla … and then ducked its head down. Then, finally, it retreated, following the same trail the other serpent had used to escape.

I stood there for a moment, not really believing that the fight was over. It took me what felt like a full minute before I thought that maybe they weren’t coming back. I almost relaxed, feeling a little melancholy that I couldn’t have befriended them, when I heard I shriek. I turned to see Romalla hopping close to the albino Night Person.

The albino Night Person was wounded—with a small amount of blood matting its fur. It was also terrified and shrieking louder the closer she got to it. Now that it wasn’t flying, I realized now that this Night Person was significantly smaller than Romalla.

Its mouth was open, and it bore its teeth with as much malice as possible. This look of fear … it was not like the complex way the Night People had expressed pleading, sorrow, and fear all together when I had awakened in their cave. This fear was singular, primal. Seeing Romalla beside it made the comparisons even easier. There were quite a few noticeable differences between them. The fruit bat had longer, dull teeth, tube-like nostrils, shorter fur, a longer tail, and short feet entirely unsuited for hopping.

Romalla got closer.

“Watch out!” I shouted.

The albino bat lunged with a bite, barely missing Romalla’s folded wing.

“You ungrateful heretic!” Romalla seethed, her eyes filled with just as much fury … but complicated by how she tried to stand up straight, keep her tone steady, and make her moves of aggression deliberate. It was more like … righteous fury, not primal fear. She lifted a claw over the bat. “You have assaulted one of your own kind, and a prophet at that!”

“Romalla, stop,” I shouted and ran to them as quickly as I could. I gently placed my hands around the bat’s wings to hold it in place, ignoring its pointless attempts to bite my metal hands. “She isn’t a Night Person. She’s not a person at all. She’s an animal—a bat!”

For a moment, Romalla continued to glare violence at the creature. But then, her face softened as her nostril lifted in clear disgust.

The first aid compartment in my leg opened, and the medical kit slid forward … just like when Krogallo had …

I shook my head, willing myself not to think about that. I picked up the kit and opened it. First, I found a cotton swab and cleaned the wounds, removing the dirt. Once each toothhole was relatively clean, I looked through my supplies to see if there was anything to use as a disinfectant. There was a bottle that said ‘alcohol,’ but it was empty. Presumably, it either hadn’t been filled or expired to such an extent that it no longer existed.

Then I found a tube of paste with lettering that said, ‘crema antibacteriana.’ It was antibacterial cream, and it had not disintegrated. There was no expiration on it … so I hoped it to be some kind of future ointment and continued on. I opened the sealed tube and began to clean—finding additional holes that the serpent had made in the bat’s wings.

The bat screamed with pain and terror and continued to bite at my fingers. Usually, this would have made me jump a little, especially with my vague memory that bats were supposed to carry rabies. But being around the Night People had left me much more comfortable and cool-headed with bats. I also felt something else, where it came to my body—a sense of … indifference?

I didn’t like the idea of pain, nor did I want to die, but I felt entirely unconcerned with the well-being of this body I inhabited. Glancing at it as I cleaned wounds, I noted how little I cared about the giant, permanent nick on my blade or the lines of scraped metal from the snake trying to cut me in half. This was odd, given that I was pretty certain that there was no escape from this body. And, at least, I didn’t feel like the sort of person who had a disregard for damage. In fact, I was currently worrying about the scarring that would be left on this poor bat’s wings. Even the thought of a ripped scarf bothered me. But this body … privileged in power and abilities as it was … it didn’t matter to me.

I tried not to think about the matter any longer, and instead began to make soothing noises for the bat as I applied the ointment. As I worked, I found myself surprisingly engrossed and calmed. Though I wasn’t convinced that my noises were helping the bat, they were helping me. This felt like giving in to … instinct.

And I wasn’t just enjoying my care of the bat; I was good at … this. Part of me seemed to just know what to do. How to move the wing, how to clean, and how to care for the animal. When I finally finished, I looked for a bottle I’d seen earlier with ‘vendaje líquido’ written on it—which meant liquid bandage.

I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping there would be some. Fortunately, there was—and it would be perfect for this wound. I pinched the broken skin closed with my rubber-tipped fingers and poured the glue-like substance on. It took about a minute to mend each hole.

“What are you doing?” Romalla asked from my shoulder, reminding me that she was there. I hadn’t even noticed that she had perched herself there and watched the entire ordeal. Now, there was no mistaking her disgusted tone. “Why are you helping that … animal?”

I thought about this for a moment, not really getting the question. “Uhm, I think she could survive if we just get her wings bandaged up.”

“Yes, but,” Romalla said and hesitated a moment. “Why should you care?”

Why? I … realized that I wasn’t sure. We were on a dire mission, and I was wasting time by patching up a wounded animal that probably wouldn’t survive anyways. But it just felt … like something I was supposed to do. It made me feel, oddly, like me.

I continued to ponder the question as I picked up the bat. Stroking its head absent-mindedly, I looked around for somewhere its kind might nest. The best option seemed to be a large tree covered in yellow ripened fruits—which happened to have a small hole rotted out of it. I walked to the tree and then placed the bat inside.

Immediately, it clamored as deeply inside as it could and screeched threateningly at me.

I smiled and then stepped back to collect some of the yellow fruits. They were shaped like little eggs and smelled like a cross between mango and papaya. I rested these on the outside of the tree hole.

The bat didn’t respond to these at all—which didn’t surprise me, given its trauma and stress. I hoped it would eat once we had left.

“Is there … a wisdom you are wishing to teach me?” Romalla asked, her brow wrinkled.

Oh, right, I had forgotten about her question. I tried to reply, “I … don’t know.’ I scratched the back of my head, trying hard to think of how to explain what I was feeling. And now it was even harder to identify them, now that those feelings were in competition with my rising embarrassment.

Romalla sat still for a moment, scratching her toes. I feared she was trying to attribute more meaning to my words than they deserved. After a moment, she said, “You are teaching me to delight in caring for stupid animals when I am not eating them?”

I wasn’t really sure how to reply to that. I wasn’t trying to teach anything; it wasn’t a complex ethical decision. All I could think of was a mental picture of an orangutan in a zoo, fishing a drowning baby bird out of the water to save it. I was that orangutan, a monkey doing a monkey thing. Only a bionic monkey, in this case.

I just mumbled, “Being nice to animals is … good.” Wow. It was so lame that my embarrassment from before was utterly lost in a flood of new and more expertly earned embarrassment.

“Huh,” Romalla said and then gave a slow nod. “It is something that Camolla has said as well. When I was little, she often told me and even the other children not to play with our food’s feelings. To kill quickly when we eat. I thought it was just a practical suggestion. I will … inform her of her unintentional spiritual wisdom when we return.”

I nodded and averted my gaze—grateful that the conversation hadn’t worsened. But something Romalla had said rang in my mind. ‘When we return’ … that was an optimistic phrase. Was it even possible to reach the Sky City? If we did, would the Triumvirate people be kind or evil like Steelface had said? Would I ever be able to get Romalla home? I quickly decided that these questions were too difficult and tried not to consider them further as we continued on.

-O-

Romalla didn’t say more about the albino bat, even as the hours of walking passed. In fact, she was mostly silent as the sunlight ceased to glow above the canopy. But, I noticed a change in her when she hunted for food that night. When she returned with a lizard in her mouth, I saw that the small green creature was missing a head.

Later, when Romalla brought back her first three-tailed mouse, I noticed that it also lacked a head.

I didn’t say anything … but I felt relieved that their deaths had been as quick as possible.

After that, more silence. Dark trees, dark vines, dark leaves. The infinite boredom was briefly alleviated only when Romalla flew upward to make sure we were on the right course. I did wish once or twice to discover that we had veered in the wrong direction—if only for something vaguely interesting to happen. But there was nothing.

Not until light, once again, began to subtly illuminate the green canopy above.

Romalla gave a yawn. To my surprise, she stopped in her tracks. She flew past the canopy, remained gone for a few seconds, and then dropped back to the ground.

“Everything okay?”

Romalla shook her head. “The spirit realm has been … silent since we descended from the Gods’ Wall. I can’t help but feel like this realm is a place of punishment for the spirits of Night People who displeased the gods. Is that perhaps what caused the … bat … to be in its pathetic, bestial state?”

Romalla could no longer hear the spirits? At this point, I believed that she was hearing something. Which made me curious as to why she suddenly couldn’t.

An idea came to mind. It occurred to me that she had lost her ability to hear it while we had traveled. Making me think that it wasn’t grief or something like that. But was it possible that she couldn’t hear precisely because we were in a jungle? I realized that the implication of my question was that I believed that Romalla received signals from some outside source.

However, it begged the question of where the signal was coming from. Of course, the most obvious answer was that it came from the City of the Gods towering above us. But what if it came from a distant island of more advanced Night People. Or what if it came from some technology of Steelface and the other Immortals?

The question of the spirit realm almost made me forget Romalla’s actual question … about whether this jungle was Hell for naughty Night People. I shook my head firmly. “I … don’t think that any real god would punish your people in such a cruel way.”

“Then … why else would the ‘bats’ be this way?” Romalla asked. I noticed that a vein was visible on her temple and that her body was much more rigid than usual. This bat thing really seemed to be upsetting her.

I stopped walking and tried to think about how best to explain what I thought. “There, uhm, you know how there are many kinds of frogs? Like—they have different colors, and some are poisonous?”

Romalla did not reply, but her stare was intense enough that I was sure she followed. Unfortunately, this intensity also made me stumble on my words a bit.

“Well, there, uhm, are different kinds of bats. Brown bats, mouse bats, flying foxes, and many others. I think the one we saw was related to a fruit bat. Before I woke up in this world … all the bats I knew of were animals.” I knew my explanation was missing a lot … but I hoped evolution made at least a bit of sense to her than this place being the torture-filled wet dream of some evil deity.

“So, the gods created the Night People in the image of these bats?” Romalla asked, an unmistakable weight in the tone of her question.

“I don’t … really … think the gods made anything in this world,” I answered and then realized how condescending it could have sounded. I blurted out, “Us either, though! My people came from animals as well. We just slowly became smarter over time. The Night People are probably … just like us.”

Romalla did not scratch her toes or show any other sign that this was fun or helpful information. Instead, she turned her head a little and stared blankly at the trees.

Inwardly, I groaned with brimming anxiety and guilt. I had hoped by comparing the beings that she thought to be gods with her people—and showing how similar we were—she would have a heightened sense of value for her origins. But it wasn’t working! Maybe I was doing a poor job of explaining what I meant?

Romalla, in a monotone voice, then asked, “You are saying that the Night People were once fruit bats?”

“Uh …” I said, not really sure how to reply. “I think … maybe … vampire bats, actually.”

“Like … parasites,” Romalla did not reply further. The veins in her temple were still visible, and her posture was far more … slumped than I had ever seen it.

I wanted to scream no, and to explain further. But when I started to say something, it was like Romalla could no longer hear me. She turned and began limply hopping forward. This left me in a state of inner turmoil. How did I stop her? How did I explain that I was trying to make her value herself? How did I keep from making things worse yet again? But whenever I managed to voice any “hey” or “wait,” there was no response from her.

Romalla said nothing for minutes, then an hour, then several. It wasn’t until the jungle had filled with as much light as possible that she finally stopped on shaky legs.

“I-uhm,” I asked. I knelt and awkwardly lowered my hand to the ground, palm-up. “Do you … think you want to sleep?”

Romalla looked at my hand, gave a passionless sigh, climbed onto my hand, and then hung upside-down from it once I stood. It was worse than her hesitancy and subdued anger before. But, within minutes, she was asleep.