A New Night

The Jungle Mystics

In my state of panic and fear, I wasn’t sure how long I flew weightlessly through the dark jungle— remaining in the fetal position I’d forced my body into. It didn’t feel very dignified, but it was the only way I trusted myself to keep my chassis shut and Romalla safe. I tried to squeeze my eyes closed—to no avail. The black tendrils surrounded me—and the only sight past them were gnarled branches that looked like they were stretching their claws around me.

This panic went on for hours, and I could sense my helpless feelings of alarm triggered like they had never been before. Even so … there came a point at which I noticed another feeling mix in with my fear.

Boredom.

It didn’t hit hard or all at once. But at a certain point, the fear was just no longer sustainable. I wondered if this was like a fictitious infinite pit. There was just a point at which … the sharpness of my emotions began to dull from insustainability.

I looked more closely at the tendrils. They were furred … like the tails of mammals, thought proportionally thicker and lined with muscle. The fur had an array of animal print patterns and shades of color. And the more I looked at them, the less mystifying they seemed. I then tried to look past them even more. There was a bit more light coming through the canopy. Showing … more trees, more green.

I tried to visually follow the black cords back to their source. When I did so, however, my vision became blurry. All I could see were shadows. And the harder I concentrated, the more I developed a dull headache. So I stopped trying.

It was morning now. The ground no longer seemed like an infinite abyss of darkness beneath me. In fact, it had changed. Instead of black dirt, thick moss, or tendrils of jungle vines, we were now on a path—laid out with large, flat stones. Around me, the jungle had also thinned quite a bit.

Then I saw something that made me double-take. It was a stone structure … that could have only been a pillar! It was in ruin—toppled over and mostly grown over by the jungle. But the markings, the perfectly rectangular design, and the plates on top and bottom made it clear that this was not just a natural rock. Then, after another minute or so, I saw another!

Were we … approaching some kind of ancient city?

A few minutes later, we passed something much more substantial than an old pillar. This structure was larger—made by combining multiple dark stones into a large square—with an open entrance in the front. This had to be a … a house! Despite the lack of any floors to speak of, the vines growing on it, and the lack of tenants, I was sure this was a small house. And just a little ways past it was another! Then one that had crumbled to the ground. And then two side-by-side.

We really were in an ancient stone city! This made my mind spin with new questions that were more interesting than my fear. Was it possible that these were the remains of some ancient human civilization? Or something the Triumvirate had left behind? Or was all of this the work of the creatures now carrying me?

It was a few more minutes before I saw a house that stood out from the abandoned ones we’d seen. It was similarly ancient—but there was clearly a gray patch on the ground in front of it, with charred sticks and logs scattered around. The remains of a fire—which meant that someone had been using the house.

After passing a few more abandoned houses in states of disrepair, I saw another structure with a fire pit in front of the entrance. Except this one had a section of wall near that was not ancient and dark like the rest. No, this one had recently been chiseled—with whitish marks still covering it. It was a repair job—which meant (at least in my mind) that these mysterious creatures carrying me were the ones to have done so. And this was their village.

As I looked past the blurred forms of shadows carrying me, it struck me as odd how sparse and undecorated the homes seemed to be. There also was a distinct lack of people walking around, selling things, working, or even staring openly at me. I only spotted one pair of yellow eyes hovering in the darkened doorway of a building. It was the only hint of something really using one of the homes.

There were no outside decorations. There were no looms, no kettles, no gardened plants. It was as if these buildings existed only for sleeping.

Even the fires seemed utilitarian—placed in a way that triggered something in the part of my mind where memories should have been. I felt like … I had seen such fires before—outside of mud and makeshift huts that people around me used. They were made to keep mosquitos out. And though this knowledge struck me as very specific, it seemed natural to me—like something that had been a regular part of my life.

As I was carried along, thinking about all this, I began to see at least a few more signs of life in the stone city. On the roof of one building, I noticed the sleek silhouette of something standing bipedally. Though I couldn’t make out any details through its blurred form, I saw an impossibly long tail coming from the creature’s backside—curling and standing like a cobra! Except … this snake stood taller than any cobra I could imagine—three times taller than the creature it was attached to.

A few houses down, I saw one of the green three-tailed rodents in the doorway. It started to scurry outside when a large, black claw snatched it into the shadows. Seeing this made my heart race. An illogical and superstitious part of me pictured demonic creatures being one with the shadows.

Of course, this was silly. With the yellow eyes that had followed me since the Wall, the sleek figures of the shadows, the clawed hands that snatched prey, and the fangs I had seen a glimpse of when I’d been attacked, these had to be some kind of cat. But then, how were cats able to make me see things? Like the man with the gun … or even themselves as blurred.

I still wasn’t ready to accept that they were magic or anything of that nature. But for anything to control my thoughts was … challenging to my perceptions of reality. I wished Romalla could see it all, if only so I didn’t feel so alone in my confusion.

We reached a part of the city where there were no more houses with ghostly beings haunting the insides. Instead, a series of monolithic, black stones stood imposingly along the path. Rudimentary drawings were carved upon them. The first ones we reached seemed absolutely new. They were crude depictions of what looked like big cats standing on two legs—with their oddly proportioned tails. These were shown slashing at everything from animals to one another. Each stone was a new depiction of violence.

The last one, however, was quite different. The carving itself was ancient—with a depiction that seemed to be nearly lost to the elements polishing the stone flat over who-knew how many centuries. Depicted were no scenes of violence, only two figures standing tall. However, seeing these pictures filled me with more anxiety than any of the gore.

The first figure brought the most immediate shock, so I had to check that I wasn’t hallucinating or reading what I wanted into the picture. It appeared to be a woman … a human woman. Her hair was medium-length and depicted in tangles. Unlike the second figure, her depiction had no visible iris or pupil—as if she had been blind. A scar ran from her temple to her cheek. Her body was shown clearly very pregnant. She had one hand placed on her belly and the other on what seemed to be a trident.

The second was a bipedal and taller cat—standing in much the same way as the others I’d seen. This one, however, was depicted with a tail about half the length of its body. This struck me as odd since all the other depictions brought particular attention to the enormous length of the tails. Which made sense since they were enough that a few dozen could carry a robot as large as myself.

With the additional detail, I could make out a better idea of what these creatures were. With its rather square maul and build, it looked like a jaguar—complete with the slightest hint of circular print on its uncovered fur. However, as I studied the details, I recognized that the figure was proportioned in a way I did not expect.

I could not assign sex based on the creature’s frame. It was lithe—like every other cat pictured before—but muscularly built. Its breasts, shaped and positioned like any cat in my memory, were depicted as swollen and dripping milk. However, the genitalia included what was unmistakably a sheathed phallus.

For a reason I could not explain, my mind again went numb at seeing this. The unexpected presentation of this being didn’t offend or surprise me. But seeing it made my brain latch on much like the first figure’s humanity did. I felt overwhelming confusion … regarding myself as much as from seeing a human depicted in ancient jaguar art.

There was little time for that, however. As quickly as with everything else, we passed the last raised stone and reached a place where the paved stones below were replaced with the square blocks of a cobbled street. Then came a series of stone steps, followed by a shifting in weight which indicated that I had stopped moving.

For a moment, I thought they were going to release me. But they lowered me to the ground—and then past it! It took me a moment to realize that I was being lowered into a hole. It seemed perhaps fifteen feet deep. Suddenly, I felt the horror of falling—which was over faster than what it took my brain to process my terror. It seemed I had only been dropped the last couple of feet. My fall was broken by sticks, leaves, and wet soil at the bottom of a hole.