Jack Yeovil - Krokodil Tears

A tightness was growing in her chest. Without knowing why, she opened her mouth and began to suck in air. Her lungs filled, but still she sucked. She inflated a little, but was able to take it. With the wind, she tasted power.

The thing stopped, and stood ten yards away from her, its appendages waving in the draught.

She sucked in more.

Stones came away from the chapel wall, a hundred feet away, and flew through the air.

Her inbreath continued.

She was Krokodil. The Ancient Adversary. She lived only to bring down the Dark Ones.

The thing was shaking now, pulled out of shape by the wind. Its tentacle was tangled, and the strands were parting.

Through her mouth and her nostrils, through the apertures of her eyesockets, through the pores of her skin, Krokodil drew in air…

The thing was struggling with itself. One of its components tore free and, manlike, made a dash for the edge of the Bubble. A pincer struck out, and sheared it in half.

Krokodil paused, and held the breath. There was a terrible quiet.

Then, she exhaled.

In the Tabernacle, Nguyen Seth was preaching. He eulogized the sacrifice of the Inner Circle, and vowed to his congregation that their deaths would not be in vain, that their bodies would be foundation stones for the greatness of Deseret. Choirs sang as he spoke, filling the vast space with heavenly music. He was eloquent. His words flew like birds.

Roger Duroc sat near the back, exhausted, not hearing the Elder's speech. His world had been transformed completely by the manifestation of the Jibbenainosay. He was sobered. Now, for the first time, he fully appreciated the vastness of the work upon which he was engaged. Nothing else mattered. Literally, nothing else in the entire history of the universe had ever mattered. His own life was less than nothing, and he was one of the handful of human beings who had anything at all to contribute to the Purpose.

Seth was enthusing the congregation. Tomorrow, when Krokodil was dead, he would select a new Inner Circle, and the process of initiation would begin. Duroc was impressed by the Elder's attention to petty details. A lesser immortal would have sunk to his knees in the presence of the Dark One and let everything else disappear from his mind, but Seth knew how important it was to retain his grip on the minutiae of the Great Work.

Duroc could not think of anything but the Jibbenainosay. When he closed his eyes, he saw the blackness of the thing. Behind tne beautiful harmonies of the Josephite Tabernacle Choir, he heard the Dark One's symphonic roar.

Elder Seth recounted the good deeds—manufactured especially for this service—of the martyrs, and listed their names among the saints. Above him, on the cross, a stone Jesus was forgotten. His tear-filled eyes averted from the preacher. This had nothing to do with Him, either.

Then, in the midst of his flight, Seth paused. He put out his hands to the lectern to steady himself, and shook his head.

He did not resume his speech.

Duroc was alerted, and looked up. He left his seat, and joined the throng pressing towards the Elder.

Nguyen Seth was shaking, in the throes of a grand mal seizure. Duroc had seen him like this before, when Krokodil bested Dr Proctor. But this was more serious.

Duroc realized that the finish of the battle being waged to the South would tell heavily on the Elder, whichever way it came out.

Seth staggered away from the altar. His jacket was open, and Duroc saw he was bleeding from the wound in his belly. Yellow tears crept from behind his dark glasses, and trickled down his white cheeks.

Duroc pushed his way through the Josephites. They fell back, reverentially. He knelt by the Elder, and hugged him.

Seth was trembling. Duroc held him fast.

He waved his hand. "Clear the Tabernacle," he whispered. His order was taken up, turned into a cry, "Clear the Tabernacle! Clear the Tabernacle! Clear the Tabernacle!"

The people flooded out, until they were alone.

Seth didn't speak. Duroc took his spectacles off, and saw the naked pain in his master's eyes.

Seth's hand found Duroc's arm, and grasped. His fingers fixed painfully into Duroc's flesh.

He was speaking now, an outrush of words in a dead language.

The battle continued…

The composite creature burst like a squashed puffball when Krokodil's blast hit it. Bodies peeled away from its mass, and were smashed into the sandstorm, where they were lost. The tentacle pulled it up off the ground, and its limbs kicked. There were shreds of bone and fleshmatter swirling around, and it was destroyed completely.

Krokodil yelled in her triumph, and seemed to expand inside herself. She was not just her tiny physical form, she was a vast jacket of energy. Her body was simply the core.

Her consciousness spread inside her extended sphere of power. She outgrew the bubble the Jibbenainosay had left her, and spread out through the storm.

The Dark One could not hide from the Ancient Adversary that way.

Hawk-That-Settles saw Dr Proctor drop into the storm, and felt unsteady. With nothing beneath his feet, it was hard to balance. Then, the sand came up for him, engulfing him completely. He did not know whether he was falling, shooting upwards or flying through the skies. But he was moving.

The Jibbenainosay raised another million tons of sand and held it in the air, thickening the atmosphere. The business with the human tools had been a feint, designed to dislodge the Pawn of the Nullifiers from the womanspeck, Krokodil. It had drawn out its Adversary now, and swelled in readiness for the serious fight.

As its passion built, continua were created and destroyed in the discharges of its energy. Dark thunderbolts struck all over the desert, blasting stretches of sand into polished glass darkmirrors the size of small cities.

Time stopped, then jerked backwards, then forwards again. The Jibbenainosay chewed at the fabric of reality, sucking in the Chaos from the Beyond, and spitting it out in phlegmy dollops.

Throughout Creation, the cacophonies were heard.

Dr Proctor had stopped struggling as soon as the impossibilities started. He accepted his fate as a cartoon character, and allowed the world to stretch like elastic around him. His head had exploded like a firecracker, but instantly reassembled. Anvils, safes and pianos plunged towards hapless citizens, but he was ascending like a hot air balloon.

He knew that, so long as he did not look down, he would never fall like the Coyote to the canyon floor miles below.

The Indian bobbed about, maybe twenty feet away. In Dr Proctor's mindsight, Hawk-That-Settles was three figures: a wiry, gaunt, nearly middle-aged Navaho in bloodied denims, covered in sand; a large bird of prey, wings outspread, talons pointed for a strike; and a tubby cartoon redskin with a big nose, a feather in his oiled black hair, warpaint on his cheeks, and fluffy moccasins on his feet.

In the storm, he heard the Warner Bromers' Orchestra race through a Spike Jones arrangement of "What Do They Do on a Rainy Night in Rio?" before doing a segue into "Tell the Doc to Stick to His Practice, Tell the Lawyer to Settle His Case, and Send the Indian Chief and His Tommy-Hawk Back to Little-Rain-In-My-Face."

The Tasmanian Devil howled for his dinner. He wanted Devilled Hare!

He leaped at the Indian, his legs kicking the air, his claws out. Stretched horizontal, he saw the boiling clouds of sand below, and felt the pull of gravity tugging at his face.

He was frozen for a second, and then the whoosh pulled him down. The sand hit him hard as he sank into it, and then he was plunging through the unknown darkness towards a rocky ground.

It would be all right. He might flatten like a pancake on impact, but he would pull himself together double-quick and bubble back to his original shape within a few beats.