Chapter 8

Iambran lay in a hidden room in the Marxist New Republic's hidden bunker, past rusty chambers through dusty corridors. The door ahead of him rotted and creaked, rust dripping from the orifices. A white flag lay in the corner, while a PO-KT plugged into an outlet lit up with MindStop and KneeDeep. Both of which gave him heavy cocktails of moods, all mixed with pocket drops. The wonderful drugs boiling in his mind.

He was transcendent. He knew the world, the features of clay, formed by gold, carved by the hands of god. He saw the kaleidoscope of people and things. Buildings, pure marble, shimmered, glistened, white as snow, dropping slowly, floating… Floating… He saw it all in his strangely dead eyes. Gone, were they, under the obedience of the PO-KT and shriveled from years of closing them. He dreamt of the soft bulbs of green fruit, a dragon with red eyes, a man in chain armor, an ocean of pearly-white fish, and the ivory teeth of a strange god. The dreams he had bought from the store.

They were fun and happy, full of bright colors that flashed across his useless, dazed eyes.

Beside him, his hand rested on a title with the insignia Magister on it. The card with the Court of Marxists laser-grinded on it rested underneath the table in piles and piles of dust. Another hand rested on a soft pillow, his unusable hand, pale from the shade, and crisscrossed with veins.

But inside his strangely, twirling, chaotic mind, he felt euphoric, high. In the lights of multiple dreams and multiple PO-KT's connecting to his mind, he saw God, he dreamt of the stars that rotated in the grey night sky. His mind rambled forth images, spouting like a waterfall filled with rainbow salmon.

It allowed him to see into God's Magic, and he did this while taking those spurts of MindStop and allowing the spurts of pleasure to fill him.

He dreamt of other things outside of the earth, flying in the air, having all power, superhuman, flying. The PO-KT was making him superhuman, he saw it all, everything, the inner flames of humanity, the logs burning, the things, the people, the horrible demons of Creus, the great red serpent, all strangely warped, strangely random, strangely surreal. Putting out their curled fists and beady eyes, observing him, examining him, twisting their lips upward into a mocking smile.

Continued, as silence enveloped the world until he was in the void as Creus was. The pale green writhed, slithered, horribly excited by the emptiness, the meaningless. The scales glittered in the night, and the stars shone brightly.

A beating heart formed from a crescent moon, the ventricles filled with earthly soil until it was a glorious planet. With Creus slithering toward it, slithering slithering slithering… Iambran saw the creation of the world take place, with the drugs pumping pleasure into his tender heart. Further, faster, until it blurred and he saw lights and stars and planets.

When he opened his eyes, he saw something filling his voiceless, meaningless life, the God Creus. A god he knew existed, a god he had worshipped for years and years, saw as something else, knew was something else. The serpent, from the kaleidoscope of colors, looking through a sticky bottle, saw people of other planets, of other Earths. The walls of his normal mind were broken free, collapsed, shattered, ripped, and torn against the ground.

It filled his strangely twisted life. He drank the KneeDeep, basking in those glorious pocket drops. He listened to the Book Of Creus, the description rolled across his mind, filling it with a buzzing, strange, calm, as the raspy whispers rolled across his spine.

"The scales are yellow, blue, green, rainbow in its hue, strangely bizarre on its left edge. A particle of sand sticks to a piece of hair. From the edge of its rippling spine to its dragon tails, the heart beats wildly, strangely, irregularly. It cares, it obeys, it understands, it helps. We must understand the wild, crazed eyes, the strange brain that writhes and floats in the acidity of space."

Lay back with the pleasure of transcendence and pure silence, and slowly began praying in his slow, humming voice. Mumbling forth words from the tip of his shriveled tongue, thinking about that red dragon, the thing that thought and spoke to him from its wrinkled eyes. The God Creus, covered in the allure of blood. Great infinite Creus! Creus!

It sent him to the universe of Sonom, a place where information floated across strange lines and buzzed with aethereal emotions. He saw nothing, ate nothing, but felt the allure of the stars and other planets.

Through silent words, through the rush of his senses and strange emotions that curled around his festering, brewing mind, he saw Creus writhe and prosper. He wished for silence, he wished that the slightest moans of wind and men would die away like fall leaves.

A strange whisper interrupted his thoughts, full of a strange melody, thrumming across his mind, a beautiful, beautiful golden pitch, ringing in his mind, echoing the hollow drums, the hollow earth…

"Iambran"

The world spoke his name, and for a moment, he could feel his blind eyes slightly blur between dream and reality. He was awake, conscious, yet walking on his imagination, his thoughts…

"Iambran, wake!"

And grand, great scales rumbled up the earth, erupted above the world… A beautiful, beautiful array of scales, shining against the sun, red and orange crackling, running like rivers, like small tears, all across the sky, and glowing yellow eyes stared at him from above.

"Iambran, you are the Prophet, churned from the loins of an ugly metal thing, from the deep chambers of gears and wonderful machinery… You are the one to save the world… Stop the floods, bring Ainom to a broken, shattered State, into a world where there is nothing left… Nothing left at all… You are to be the savior, another great Messiah growing from the soft earth… Wake! Iambran! Wake! You are gifted my power, to save our world… To bring me up from the chains weaved by God himself…. Wake Iambran!"

From his strange, small bed, boring, lonely, built from burnt rags, from these thoughts plaguing his mind, he awoke into full consciousness, sweat dripping down his bent spine, his head overflowing with strange thoughts, strange ideas, and energy… Like magic…

Like Magic…

The soothing thoughts, now echoed again through his mind, tinny voices scurrying around his mind, and there was a voice again, now through a medium.

"You must guide them like a shepherd, toward Ainom, away from the horrible, rotting State. First, I must work, I must build frames in the feeble human mind, build a great iron web around us all.…"

And then there was a strange static… A great grand static…

In the distance, he could only faintly remember the golden pitch…