There were tall spires, enormous fractals, thorny and infinite. A forest of fractal trees, a wasteland. I was a wanderer and I was not alone. There were more like me, but no one with me. We wandered this forest, searching for the same thing. I can’t remember what it was, but I don’t think I ever had an idea of what I was looking for. There was just a longing that we who wandered shared. This longing had drawn us here to this wasteland.
We were not alone. There were things that lived here, feral aberrations. They stayed away from us, for the most part. A few braver ones attacked us. We killed them. The wasteland left us hollow and desperate, and in due time, we began eating them. The thought of eating these things, mutant and vaguely human, never once struck me as horrid. Not once.
We had our own worries. We hunted the feral things and Angels hunted us. They had chased after us into this wasteland. They were Angels of fury and terrifying elucidation. Like us, they were alone in their hunt, ignoring each other’s presence. Our work was solitary as was theirs.
I watched as one of them killed one of us. Its form was crystalline and had a prismatic glow, and it was beautiful. It skewered one of us, threw the body up onto a spire, impaling it. Gruesome as it was, it was a sight to behold. Like the other wanderers, I ran.
We hid in the deep catacombs of the fractal spires. In the bowels of that darkness, we were safe, safe from them, but not from each other. We hid there, occasionally killing one another for resources or sport, for an untold length of time.
Later, we emerged, slowly at first, but more and more with time. I wasn’t the first to leave, that one died quickly. The feral things became braver when we were driven into the catacombs.
A few days, maybe a few months after I left the deep, I met the angel hunting me. It had a body of numerous, flawless concentric circles, emanating from an origin of brilliant light. It was wreathed in silken ribbons, red like blood.
I ran from it. It struck me with its light, a lash derived from its body. I fell into another, deeper dark. Immobilized and frightened, I lay there, alone, as it descended to meet me. Its’ light revealed the endless geometry of the catacombs. It knelt beside me and it held me.
I wept in fear. I held me tight, as if afraid to lose me. I struggled against it helplessly. The thing I longed for beyond the wasteland called for me. More than fear, more than pain, I needed to keep going, beyond this wasteland. More than anything, I needed to go beyond this forest of fractal spires. Whatever waited for me needed me. It had been waiting for so long and it needed me and I needed it. The Angel, wreathed in red ribbons, held me tighter still.
It broke me in its arms, and I still struggled to go on. It whispered to me in soft, gentle, and loving chords of how I could stop. I was deaf to its melody. It crushed me in its arms, singing its small, remorseful tune. Just as the ribbons of its face peeled away, showing its face to me, I woke up. I knew it was weeping.
Though it murdered me and its kind murdered those who wandered with me across the wasteland, it did not wish death on me nor I on it. Nonetheless, it was murderous work that we did, this Angel and I, and it needed to be done.
I am awake, but I still feel the longing for whatever is beyond that wasteland of souls. If I go back to look for it, I know I will be hunted again and likely murdered again. As for why I must be hunted like s many other wanderers and as for what it is that I long for, I do not know. I know that, eventually, I’ll make to cross the wasteland again and when I do, the Angel will be waiting for me. The hunt will go on, I for beyond the wasteland and it for me.
