A New Night

The Jungle Voices

The grating (and therefore grounding) tone of Romalla’s voice ringing from within me saved my mind for a time. It was still dark, but she had already been singing far longer than I could have with fleshy vocal cords. I knew that daylight would have to be coming soon. And with it, a new level of exhaustion for her. So, I ran—directing myself toward the Sky City—slashing away any plant life that stood in my way. The black cords remained, but they stayed clear of my reach.

Moving that quickly only worked for as long as the canopy above remained open. Gradually, the sky was lost beyond the thickening canopy of leaves and branches—just as it had been throughout most of our journey. I became scared. Running would only make me more disoriented! So, I slowed to a walk—slashing less but using my ring gun as a flashlight.

As Romalla’s voice continued to give out, my fear increased. I knew something bad would happen when she could no longer sing. Part of me expected that succumbing to the psychic attack of the black cords around me would be like my low-energy mode. Instead, the transition from the last of her song to hypnotic darkness was seamless as it was sudden. But it was not a state of mindlessness that I fell into.

Dark shadows seemed to descend from the trees and blanket me, not into a nice unconsciousness but into a state of paralysis and mental difficulty. Then, the jungle around me seemed to stretch into the shadowy towers of trees, plants, and cords. I felt almost as if I had shrunk … in a world where every thorn, branch, and animal seemed to stretch into a gnarled and vicious version of itself.

I felt cold—the kind of cold that was internal. And there seemed no amount of the warm, muggy jungle air around me could affect the chill. Then, the alarms inside of me began to all go off in succession—the blue, the red, and even a yellow one I had never experienced before. My chest felt tight—and my inability to breathe became mentally painful. I wanted to scream, but I was trapped … walking.

I had no idea how much time was passing. I never saw the sun rise, even when I was sure it should have. Still, I began to feel like this had been going on for longer than I thought. My mind raced … but then began to wander and succumb to horrific fantasies of myself and Romalla being torn to literal pieces by giant shadows. Picturing this again and again made it seem more real each time.

Occasionally, a cool wind would hit my face or a tree branch, and I would have the clarity to realize that I had been lost in fear. Yet, I would still somehow lose myself to them all over again. I could hear the distant sounds of rushing water. I could smell diesel and feel the reverberations of a heavy engine.

“Bassello,” said someone with a young masculine voice. Familiar and foreboding, it woke me instantly from my imagination of nightmares. I felt a violent chill go through the length of my body—forcing me to shake. I knew that voice! I knew it …

“Stop being such a coward!” he said.

Then came a metallic click of a gun behind me.

I tried to squeeze my eyes closed!

I could not—I had no eyes.

So, I forced myself to whisper, “What do you want?” I did not turn my head because I didn’t want to see the face that the voice belonged to. Somehow, I knew it would be the same as the face from my nightmares. The one I saw right before his bullet punched a hole through my skull. I couldn’t bear the pain of it, not again.

The man chuckled … but he wasn’t alone. There were two laughs—his and another from someone with a smoky voice. They laughed as one, with no pause or separation between the sounds they made. In one voice, they said, “I want you to do something for me.”

Before I could ask what that something was, both voices let out a feral growl that cut through the dark. Suddenly, I could see the real trees again, the sunlight coming through the canopy, the bugs flying around me. Hours had passed … and, sure enough, the sun had long since risen.

Someone approached from behind, casting a shadow against the green moss-covered ground before me. The shadow grew and darkened until mine was engulfed entirely within it. Still, the shade continued to tower until it was as tall as the trees. I could feel it … staring … causing my body to tremble in fear.

“I don’t,” I began to say, hearing terror in my voice, which choked me to silence. I made the mental gesture of swallowing, felt my mechanical throat do nothing, and tried again, “I don’t even know who you are.”

The presence replied with something like amusement in his dual voice. “I am fear incarnate.” I heard him pull back the hammer of his gun again and then saw his shadow move to aim at my skull.

I winced, breathless and paralyzed.

“More than one of my kind is watching you, filling you with fear and illusions. If you want to keep your life and sanity, you will listen to my whispers and ignore all others. Otherwise, I will let them tear your mind to pieces, let you face your fears and relive them in an eternal hell.”

A shot was fired, and my body fell limply to the ground. But I didn’t feel the bullet. There was only the ringing in my ears. Once the ringing subsided, I sat up and looked around.

The shadow and the darkness of the jungle were gone with it. Black cords—in an array of stripes, animal print, and solid tones—darted between the trees. I could feel his presence watching. Not only his but those of others as well.

However, I could now see the jungle and knew which direction to go. As if the thing from before were … directing me.

I tried to take a step and found that my leg did as I wanted. I’d been saved, but I wasn’t sure that this was not a good thing.

“Forward,” whispered the smoky voice from before.

Fearing that the voice of the man with the gun would return, I did as I was told.

-O-

I walked throughout the day and well into the night. When it became dark, I spotted more of the same glowing yellow eyes I had seen upon descending from the Wall. I had a pretty solid hunch that they were somehow connected to the black cords. Both would frequently appear, shift, and float around us.

They were like fireflies … if fireflies followed people with a ravenous presence and whispered thoughts and feelings into their minds. The worst was when I would find myself distracted by a set of yellow eyes that seemed to be within touching distance, and then suddenly felt one of those black chords brush against my arm or foot. The first time it happened, I nearly shot blindly into the woods.

This must have amused them because this toying went on for hours. Eventually, more of them began to speak—whispering thoughts into my mind.

“You have claws like a person,” whispered one. “Yet you do not look like us.”

“Are you a lost little Alpha Predator by chance?” asked another.

The voice from before was not having it, however. “Do not answer them,” he whispered. Since his voice was the loudest, I assumed it was the most powerful. And I had no desire for him to release whatever protection he seemed to exert—leaving me to be mentally torn apart by the rest.

These voices … they challenged everything I knew about reality. Sure, it was one thing for Romalla to probably be hearing something with her hyper-sensitive ears. It was quite another for these new beings to be able to exert some kind of psychic power. At least, that’s what it felt like—since their words seemed to be coming from inside my ears, not from any particular direction. Not to mention the illusions from before. Was … my mind just playing tricks on me?

So I asked in a hushed tone, “Can you hear them?”

“I can’t hear anything,” Romalla replied, her voice a hoarse whisper that I could barely hear. This wasn’t the only change, however. Her tone seemed tense—quite unlike her usual, confident self.

Letting out a heavy, breathless sigh, I continued to walk—the whispered questions and comments about me becoming gradually more sparse as I refused to answer. Of course, this gave me more time alone with my thoughts and emotions. I wondered if I was doing the right thing by following along to where they wanted me to go … or if I had any choice. At some point, the mental picture of running away in terror popped into my mind.

“You would not survive us all—even with your speaking bat,” the smoky voice immediately replied. “Even if I were foolish enough to let you go, the others would not. They would destroy you … with a viciousness that you cannot imagine. Currently, this is a game to them. You do not want to know what a legitimate hunt would look like.

“It’s not a good game,” I said under my breath, feeling my emotions weighing even more on me as I did. As I spoke, I began to spit my words in a petulant fury. “The game, the hunt! It’s stupid!”

“The game is all that matters,” the smoky voice replied calmly, seeming not to care what I thought. “For us … for everything that lives. All are but predators who toy with prey. People hunt the snake. The snake hunts the bat. The bat hunts fruit. All for the amusement of the Alpha Predators.”

Alpha Predators? The term gave my emotions pause. This was the first tell to make me think there was something far more mortal to these shadow monsters of the jungle. It reminded me of the religion of the Night People. Was “Alpha Predator” the term these creatures called the gods of his people? Did he mean the Triumvirate … or the Immortal Golems?

The Golems! If these creatures were just the people of the jungle, surely they would take the threat of the Golems seriously. And if they understood that I was seeking help against a mutual threat, they might let me go altogether!

“I’m not playing a game,” I said aloud. “I need to reach the Sky City. There are beings trying the get over the Wall, evil stone giants called Immortal Golems who will try to enslave us all. They are huge and almost impossible to destroy. They conquer the other peoples of this world. They drag them away to some unknown place. If you don’t let me go, they will find a way to get to you!”

“Oh, I have seen your memories of them,” the smoky voice said dismissively. “Do you really think that there is anything that anyone can do to stop them?”

“The Alpha Predators would have to!” I replied, repeating what I had told myself a hundred times by now. “If they find out what I know about the Immortal Golems trying to get to them, they will do something for sure.”

“Then you wish to hunt the Alpha Predators,” the smokie voice said with a scoff. “You wish to forego the small games we play here because they are too much for you … and instead begin your first hunt? Make the Alpha Predators bend to your will and set them against the devils of the sea.”

“I mean-” I began to reply, feeling my cheeks burn.

“You are like a child who thinks hunting in the jungle will be easier than their fights against other children. And like those misguided children, you will die. The Alpha Predators will swat you away like a buzzing insect, destroying you and ending your quest with barely a thought. If you think we hunters or the devils of the sea are something to fear, you do not understand the nature of ultimate power.”

“They … they’re the enemies of the Immortal Golems,” I replied, unable to imagine an enemy of those monsters being anything but good. Again, however, I wondered why they had not already helped the Servants. And the People of the Night … and me. Surely, they knew what was happening down here.

“Alpha Predators can have no enemies. For how can a predator muster rivalry with something so lowly as prey? That which is strong cares not for the weak. They will not help you.”

His words made me feel another tidal of emotion. I tried to calm down but still sounded upset when I said, “You don’t know that they won’t help. Some people with strength don’t want to use it to hurt others.”

The voice let out a smokey laugh, making it sound like I had genuinely amused him. “You are talking only for yourself, yet you are still wrong. You do not have the strength of a predator. You have the strength of a mother bat so easily snatched by a serpent. You were just forced into the shell of a predator. But I see you … the real you.”

A wave of heat overcame me, and my body became itchy. I didn’t know how to feel about what this being was saying. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I couldn’t help but feel like he was … absolutely right. Not only that, but I preferred him to be correct than to consider that I was anything like the Golems, who were actively hurting the bats and the Servants. And … potentially even the Triumvirate, who were not helping.

But I didn’t like who had said it. How was it that an evil monster from the jungle darkness knew me better than anyone? Also … why couldn’t anybody else see past the weapon I felt trapped within? Maybe … a monster was the only thing that could genuinely see another monster.

The smokie voice continued, “Don’t worry, though. The irony of your search for their help is what will happen if you survive and learn what you wish from the Alpha Predators. You will become like them, an Alpha Predator who watches and toys from the sky. Your search to help your pets and the pathetic creatures suffering across the water will end.”

“No, I … nothing will stop me from helping them,” I said, but I didn’t feel the conviction in my own words. Was there a good reason that the Triumvirate had not intervened on behalf of the people below? Maybe I was only looking for their help because I wanted to feel like I had done the best I could when the Triumvirate inevitably refused to help me. It was just as Steelface had said … and it made me feel disgusted with myself.

“Do not be ashamed,” the smoky voice said. “Yours is an ambition that we share, even if you are but a cub in your understanding of the hunt.”

“I’m nothing like you!” I shouted. But doing so was a mistake. As soon as I lashed out, I could feel my inner self become vulnerable to the other psychic presences pressing upon me.

Laughter erupted from several voices all at once, and a dozen extra pairs of eyes appeared from the darkness. The sound made my automatic functions glitch, and the feeling of an icy wave to ripple across the surface of my body. My mind was no longer my own. I became like an animal, desperate to make the terror stop. I began to run.

From every direction at once, the black cords wrapped around my body and pulled as one. I felt myself being lifted off the ground.

I fired my ring gun blindly into the darkness, but the shot merely burnt the surface of a tree and illuminated the dark for a millisecond. In that instant, I saw black, feline faces—with thick, white fangs all smiling around me.

I thrashed wildly. But there were so many black cords that any I fought or resisted merely released its grip. It was almost as if I were trying to fight weightlessness itself. So, finally, I decided to use the blades in my arms—it was the only way!

Before I could swing, however, I felt a tiny feeling of calm in a distant recess of my mind. It was nothing next to the terror, but it was just in the right part of my mind to cause my blades to sheath themselves. Then, a jolt of power electricity shot through my shoulder, arm, and hand, so I dropped the ring gun.

To my horror, my chassis then began to rumble.

Romalla!” I screamed.

I bent my knees and hugged them so that I was in a fetal position. From there, I focused every bit of my will on keeping the door closed. This was the one bodily function I managed to hold control of as I was carried helplessly through the jungle.