12 BC 2 2

"You humans die way too easily," sparks hissed out.

"You humans?" I stared at the bonfire accusingly. The fucker lied to me - unsurprisingly - but here I thought I was bonding with my unwellness manifested. Disappointing. Also unfair. No matter what happened to me, I always got to experience it all fully lucid. The lady down the street would start talking to utility poles at the drop of a hat. I envied the bitch. Even more so now that she was peacefully gone.

Though, perhaps, not all that peacefully. She'd could be screaming at towering teeth for all eternity. The others…

I swallowed the anger. Instead of going into a meltdown over all the monsters and kicking these twinkling coals up the stairs and down the river, I pulled out a scavenged packet of cigarettes and lit one up by putting my face directly into harm's way. I let the heat caress my face and singe the hair. Scratching at it just didn't seem sufficient anymore. Straightened up and inhaled the temporary bliss.

"You can't tell me what to do, because that's exactly what the great oily floater does and we both just agreed he seriously lacks any class."

I examined the pile of gleaming junk more carefully, trying to find a creature inside. It was quite an underwhelming sight. Or was it an invisible monster, completely unrelated to the bonfire? Just something floating in the air unseen. Shrugging, reached into the hearth. I intended to yank a flaming stick out and give some loving to the stubbornly abandoned clip myself, but it did not budge. Neither did the next one.

I tightened the grip. With both hands on blackened material I got flashback of the last time I did this. Urge to kick out all these twinkling sparkles to hell returned with vengeance, but instead I just held on as it seared my palms with a sizzle. Physical pain was trivial. Preferable. I could throw myself onto this pyre. This would all be over after minutes of screaming.

"Nobody nobody nobody else left left to play," several sparkles flew out petulantly.

"Yeah. That sucks," I agreed weakly. I too could have used someone to horse around with about now. Instead, I was sitting smack dab in the middle of ghost town either talking to myself or a monster. "None of this would have happened if not for me," I confided.

"How vain of you, you, uuuu," the wind whistled.

The statement was true. It was uncharacteristically self-centred of me. And yet… "I've brought him here."

"That thing has hasss… been here been here lo-ong before the settlement," crackling informed me and moved on, "How, how can you, can you be part of two beings?"

"Am not," I let go of the logs to stop the nosy fiend from examining my seared hands any further, if that was how it did it. The hands shook. I did not look at the raw (medium?) tissue beneath, just pulled away the cigarette away with wooden screaming fingers.

"They must be, they must be in the process, process of tearing one another apart," flames hissed barely audibly. "What a grandiose event."

"Uh… Yeah, you've just missed it and it was solidly underwhelming."

It hissed and hissed and I could not decipher it, so marked that as cussing right up the point I started to comprehend some of the words again. Agitated fire was funny.

"The tea would be lovely, thank you," it was far too easy to mishear the whispers and I capitalised on it. Frankly, the only reason I heard it at all was because my face was getting a tan and we were sitting in a mausoleum of asphalt and brick. Nothing rustled anywhere. I could hear my heartbeat and parched lungs wheeze. The quiet wasn't unlike the one in the containment unit and frankly all of this could just be a hallucination.

Please god, make that be true. I haven't asked you for anything in twenty years. Make this terrible dream go away. It doesn't even matter which dungeon I wake up in. I'll take anything instead of this.

It came as a surprise to nobody, but my prayers remained unanswered.

"No eyes please, that is the opposite of lovely," I quipped. I had almost grasped what the whispers were saying, but that didn't mean I wanted to deal with it. Sighed after a while and inhaled some more smoke. The one wafting off the trash heap could also be contributing to the all too welcome light-headedness.

It called the snail in epithets of seeing, hearing, feeling. It was some kind of a mobile observatory, if you will. A sensory monster. And it was still alive. For little while.

"You called them both great?" I cut the incessant, repeating whispers off. The fire fiend made the clash seem like the event of century. If so, then maybe snail stood a chance. However from the lackadaisical defensive response back at the base I wasn't holding my breath.

"Yes," a hiss descended like overwhelming madness.

"Is that indicative of size, power, age, status?"

"Yes," fire hissed aggressively again. It wasn't helpful.

"Are you great too?" I asked to make sure it didn't fall asleep.

"No," flames exhaled and plummeted. "My people are akin to yours, yours, yours, people are…"

I stared deeply and concluded, "I fail to see the semblance."

"Small, many."

A lot of little flamelings. Now that was something to be terrified of. Especially because that this one likely enjoyed a casual bombardment. Biological weapons wouldn't work on them either.

And those two supermassive monsters will clash because one took a bite of another – presumably. I was not anybody's body part. Anger simmered in me.

Perhaps it was too vain of me to blame my scrawny ass for this. It was him. He killed everybody. Everybody. Those who tolerated me and even those that didn't know I existed. One who helped me was about to pay full price for that too. It wasn't fair. It was outrageous! Especially because the twisted-eared bastard promised he'd be the one to look out for me. He failed. He should be the one he's demolishing.

The flames whooshed, but I was drowning in my own rekindled seething misery and wasn't paying attention. The hands hurt. Making a fist was out of question.

"How can I reach this guy?" I pressed the blistered leftie onto the embers again and bit my lip to contain scream. Maybe some of this mess could even be rectified if I lost the restored arm?

Wisps swayed and seemed confused. "You're a terrible mouth," they crackled eventually.

I bit back, "You're nothing great either. So?"

"It had another one out," flames hissed at me as though I should know that better.

This was terrific news which cast a small thread of hope. The other option would have been finding an entrance to their world and… what, exactly? Chucking several cans of nerve gas down the hatch? A nuke? As if humans haven't already tried that. And that wouldn't serve me at all. I wanted a precision strike. I doubted I could convince this firecracker to delve back into monster dimension and run an errand. Against some legendary monster.

But I'd still need some aid. "When you said nobody is left to play with, you meant the city guard?"

Flames shot up and unexpected heat scorched my face. Yea! It whooshed, settling down slowly.

"Would you show me where I can find that other mouth?"

"Will you play. You, play."

"Hell, I'm trying. You're the one having qualms," I muttered leering at the mag which moved way out of the fire's way, but smirked. At least this part was shaping up to be easy.