"Intelligence is a matter of perspective, Jason. To even the most mighty of ants, the greatest genius amongst them is their Queen, and us humans are lumbering, ancient beasts with no care towards their kind as they struggle to nibble and impede our wrath. To the most mighty of humans, the greatest genius amongst them are their unrivaled inventors and discoverers, and ants are but mere insects, left to be squashed beneath our boots.
But what of something greater, Jason? Greater than humanity. Do we become the ants, desperately doing all in our power to stop the rage of something beyond us? Or are we even aware of it?" —The Dreamer
The only sounds at this moment that Jason could distinguish were one, of his own heartbeat, and two; of the breaths between the two people —rather, one person— at the scene. The other one, who had just spoken to him, was not what he would consider a human. Humans did not have fur, nor eyes that large, nor were they quadrupedal- though he could imagine some humans wearing capes and pointy hats whilst pretending to be fantastical people of mythology and distorted history.
Despite this perpetual mental self-preservation, the creature before him- a unicorn, continued its glaring. Another nightmare, he might presume, if the tapping at his chest by a stubborn hoof that felt like a hammer to styrofoam in his shocked state; eliciting a gasp of surprise as he stumbled, or crawled, rather, backwards.
"Wait! Stop this instant, you haven't answered Trixie's question—" the horse, pony, something bellowed, catching up to you but giving the benefit of a lack of physical touch. He, or She, stared down at you; taking the time to let you calm down despite their hard gaze. "—Why did you fall out of the sky and into Trixie's wagon?" she asked as though he'd have an answer.
"I- I don't..." he started to speak, shaking his head and searching his mind for answers. Jason had never experienced this before. Not in any of his nightmares, not his dreams, and especially not in any form of reality that he knew of. However, in his foggy, hazed mind slowly recoiling and recovering from the events of moments prior, one thing stood out to him.
"I crashed into your wagon?" he asked, finding the words easier to grasp that trying to explain how he crashed into it. Some 'whys' came to him, such as why a pony had a wagon, why that pony was talking to him, or why that pony possessed a horn like a unicorn from mythology would; but they were sidelined by a need to regain his bearings. Self-Preservation was far more important than environmental factors, save for if that unicorn would use its horn as a bludgeoning or stabbing tool.
"Yes! You fell from the sky and into Trixie's wagon. Trixie might consider complimenting the ape's ability to crash land if it hadn't been into her abode!" the pony exclaimed, although from what he could gather their name was almost certainly Trixie, which he'd dedicate to memory if he could; not that Trixie was making it difficult to forget; and she gave him the benefit of ending his questioning as to her gender.
"I'm only distantly related to apes, actually; and bananas, ironically,' he said halfheartedly, if only to try making light of an otherwise stressful situation. His eyes left Trixie's form and scanned as much as his head could swivel to see. To his left, he could make out the wagon he'd crashed into; splintered wood and a damaged wheel being the result of his unintentional handiwork. To his right, he could see a long dirt road the two of them were situated on extending out onto the horizon, as far as he could see and most certainly further beyond.
Surrounding the both of them, of course, was forestation and vegetation on a level he'd never had the benefit of seeing in his life- a city hound from birth to... rebirth, as the case seemed to be. He'd vaguely heard Trixie speaking, but had zoned out until his focus returned to her visage.
"—and Trixie expects you to help in immediate repairs and to help pay for them however the ape can, understood?" she asked, the glare in her eyes only slightly lessened by her cutesy bravado. It seemed her focus had diverged from why and how he'd crashed into her wagon, and instead turned into how he was going to repay her for the damage, which he could hardly complain about.
"Yeah, yeah, okay," he said submissively, raising his hands in a defeated manner before pushing himself to a stand; legs shaking and numb from the position he'd been in. He looked down and leaned forward to pluck his glasses from the dirt, messily cleaning them with the nape of his collar and pressing them to his eyes, addressing the blue unicorn.
"It's- uh, it's J—" he stopped himself from continuing for a single blink, taking a breath and giving Trixie a shortlived smile, "—It's Miles, by the way. Not ape," he finished, chuckling under his breath. Why was he uninjured after crashing into her wagon, why had his sanity not yet been stripped from him; assuming it wasn't gone already?
He'd read stories much like those, of people displaced into alternate worlds or realities, and he couldn't for the live of him understand how these people -savants they must be- continue to live in normalcy after having everything that gave them solace ripped from them as they were thrown into a world not their own.
Despite lacking understanding, he could admit that he wasn't a cackling, forgotten mess. There was that, at least.
"Well, then begin helping Trixie, Miles. She is not going into town with her abode and stage looking like a loony-mare's hand me down," she stated, blowing a heated breath into the curl in her hair -her mane, rather- and began... walking? Prancing? Whichever word would suffice, she made her way back to the wagon and began displacing broken splinters with a phantasmal force you couldn't fathom, turning her gaze towards you expectantly. "Well?" she asked.
Jason didn't exactly have the best internal clock so he could hardly tell just how much time had passed before Trixie was willing to accept that the wagon looked presentable enough for 'a crowd beyond his wildest machinations,' but the two of them had eventually accomplished that particular goal.
During the finishing touches, he'd finally had the confidence he needed to ask just what it was he'd been seeing; a question gnawing at the back of his mind for quite some time now.
"So, what exactly is it that you're doing?" Jason asked, eliciting a confused glare from the unicorn.
"What are you asking Trixie, Miles? Be more specific," she stated half-aggressively. She wasn't quite as demanding as she'd appeared in the beginning of your meeting, but he realized quickly it was silly of him to ask so vaguely. If it was something that was abnormal to her, he wouldn't expect her to use it so haphazardly.
"The... The lifting, the- what do they call it? The telekinesis? You're moving things without touching them with this weird energy," Jason deadpanned, shaking his head. What else could he call it? Magic? That'd be absolutely demented.
"Oh! That's magic. I suppose Trixie shouldn't have just assumed you'd know what it is, since she's never seen anything quite like you before. Us unicorns can use magic for a number of amazing and fantastical displays of skill!" Trixie exclaimed, followed by a display of what Jason could only compare to fireworks before the mare followed up on her words. "Telekinesis is only the tip of the iceberg for the Great and Powerful Trixie! Trixie's actually heading to a town to perform, although she might be a little late now," she finished with a huff, pulling a crank that seemed to bring the entire wagon to life- the structure clearly beginning to move.
Howl's Moving Castle? More like Trixie's Rolling Wagon.
In any case, his curiosity piqued. Why did they develop magic, what gave them the means to use it? Was it organic, or was their truly a mythological origin? Were they all equal, or were their prodigies among the 'magic users' of this world? Trixie seemed to notice his wayward expression given her bitten lip, but it seemed as though she decided against saying anything.
You two sat in silence for some time, your gaze taking in the details of the rolling machine. Boxes of props, and stage tools littered this main room, with simple seating present for when Trixie had 'guests,' Jason could only guess. There was a door near the back leading into what he assumed was her personal bedroom, but thought better than to ask that out of the blue. Her gaze seemed affixed to him, but she appeared to be tentative- refusing to ask or say anything out of uncertainty of perhaps fear.
Such human features and expressions from such an inhuman creature, he thought. Although he reconsidered rather quickly, deigning that it'd be a matter of raw perspective as to what should and shouldn't be considered a 'human' expression. It was a place of ignorance, of a world where the only sentient creatures his kind knew of were of others of the same species, as varied and countered to one another as they could be from time to time, of course.
He was in a similar position, of course. Every creature alive had a set of 'lines' as he called them. Lines to the amount of lies they could be told, the amount of social interactions they could have, the amount of stories they could tell, how much questioning they could take before snapping.
There was a line for every little thing in a creature's life.
It was an instinct of his to discover where these 'lines' stood for each and every person —or pony as he was learning— he met, and refrain from doing anything that could even potentially pass those limits until he figured out where and what they were. He did it for his own safety, and because if he didn't limit himself in such a manner he'd be maddening to others with his constant questioning.
His constant whys, and hows, and whos, among other things.
So he sat, limiting himself so he couldn't provoke the woman, the mare, before him. She, clearly, was in a similar state of mind, and it was a competition to see who'd break the ice first, or if they'd reach their destination before then. It wasn't something he had to think about for long, however, since before he knew it a proposition arose.
"Trixie thinks she's figured out how you can repay her, Miles."
Prologue; Knowledge of the Past
I offer my condolences to anyone who may be reading this.
I am not the man you came here for, for I am but a loyal caretaker to His misgivings. His efforts, while unobtrusive to myself, leave much to be distinguished; as I cannot see the results of His work. I can only record that which has happened up unto that point — the results of His Chosen are beyond me.
The man you came here for is one Jason Miles, an behavioral analyst for the Metropolitan Police Department, of St. Louis. Regarded by colleagues as a hot-head, yet capable of his work with dizzying and uncanny proficiency.
It was this same prodigious insight that led him into His gaze, an act which sealed his fate regardless of his efforts thereafter. To become the eyes and ears of His will.
The ear-deafening cycle of a helicopter's rotors always did wonders to the man's psyche- if the pilot's habit of trying to overwhelm the noise with the cliche crackling of Creedence's 'Fortunate Son', or Flogging Molly's 'Devil's Dance Floor' wasn't problematic enough.
At least the man couldn't blame the pilot for his erratic taste, the guy was a damn mad-man and a monster with the stick.
The notion of the day was a multiple-homicide. Normally the boys would just drive up like normal folk, but the catch of the case was that it happened in the middle of the bay; on some kinda spooky corral reef that popped up. Boats couldn't get close to it without getting shredded, and going for a mile-and-a-half swim wasn't exactly at the top of the man's to-do list; so helicopter ride it was.
The metal machine slowly lowered itself down just above the cracked, uneven surface, refusing to land down as a nylon and twine ladder was tossed out and left to hang idly; awaiting whoever wanted to step up -or down as the case might be- to the plate.
Luckily the man didn't have to bolster his confidence all that much as another man, someone recognized as his Captain, Leonard Marcus, grasped onto the handholds the metal machine provided, and began his descent onto the unnatural structure. The two CSI analysts, an older woman named Rachel Jeans, and a young boy far too young to be at a scene like this, named Dirk Young; followed behind Captain Marcus.
The man was the last one to make the trek, and the feeling of the 'ground' splintering and cracking under his feet did little to aid his already doubtful mind, but what followed after would make even the most grizzled and veteran detectives hold back a bubbling brew in their stomach.
The staunch flow of blood had long since stopped spilling, instead caking the surface of the crystalline reef like a disease. The tiniest crack showed the scene frozen in time was little more than an illusion, red liquid, eerie and enticing continuing to stream below the surface of the coagulated life-water-
"Young! Watch where you're stepping, dammit! Your job is to record and preserve the crime scene, not fuck it up!" exclaimed Captain Marcus, dragging the man and his co-workers from their momentary lapse in judgement. A lapse so strong, they'd hardly noticed the most horrific sight on this alien scene.
Or perhaps the man's mind was just trying to protect itself.
What followed next was the man's breakfast; or at least it would've been if he'd had the instinct to eat. The man's senses were flooded all at once as he came to realize just what they were all looking at.
Bodies —twelve of them— mutilated horrifically and beyond measure. Entrails were stacked neatly upon emptied sacks of vaguely human-shaped skin; muscle and sinew turned into shirts, pants, and shoes for the unfortunate victims. Eyes were arranged in a circle in the center of the massacre with the bones tied by ligaments and veins into a circular pattern around the scene.
The first to break was Dirk Young, who immediately turned tail and got as far away from the scene as he could before evicting his breakfast. Rachel Jeans was more composed, more professional; and merely gave way to clasping her hands and giving the poor, unnamed souls a prayer. Captain Marcus took a breath; longer than the ones he'd take with cigarette smoke invading his lunges; and turned his eyes towards the man.
"Miles. What do you make of this? What— Who could've done this?" he asked, voice shaky and begging for answers.
Miles- That was the man's name. Jason Miles. Did he forget? No matter.
"I'm not entirely sure—" Jason started, shaking his head and clamoring onto the scene. Deftly avoiding the subtle pools of blood and covering his nose as he looked over the scene from up close. Personal. "—but something doesn't seem right, if that wasn't obvious enough."
Jason removed a pair of gloves from his back pocket, rubber and nylon, and adorned them over shaky hands, and removed a white, filtration mask from the other one; placing it haphazardly over his face as he crouched down to investigate one of the bodies.
His work was one that consisted of various 'whys.' Unlike a detective who searched for the 'who,' a crime scene analyst who searched for the 'how,' or a coroner who hunted down the 'when,' his work was abstract. It required searching through the psyche of these mad-men, these monsters, who engaged in pleasures of the flesh of a far more violent origin. A verisimilitude of the most extreme scale.
Whoever, whatever did this, was obsessive, and clean. Not a single stroke of the blade out of place, and each and every aspect of the 'pattern' this perpetrator displayed perfectly executed without a single mote of hesitation. Yet, something seemed off. This particular corpse had everything there except for its heart. Its very source of life, stripped away.
Jason stood up from the sight and wandered to one of the other victims, crouching down and repeating the same blaring process- a gloved hand moving the scene by centimeters as the sound of cameras shuttering and rotary blades spinning fogged the senses; but this one too was missing a heart. He hardly had to check the others to know they'd be the same.
Why did this monster remove all of the organs and display them in such a manner, why were twelve humans out on a undiscovered reef —or were they brought postmortem— and why did whoever did this take the hearts and nothing else?
He stood up and looked over the scene, and then at the surrounding environment- and found himself turned around, walking towards a distant spire of crystalline, organic 'something.' Hands dug into the spire and carried him upwards, the distant, almost inaudible sound of Captain Marcus's questioning being lost to him. Slowly, but ever surely like a cog in the machine, he reached the top and stood; turning to face the scene.
He understood immediately what was going on now. The bones, formed into a daunting, ankle-height cage for the corpses formed a ring, and other shapes. Shapes that were indistinguishable and unknowable, and seemingly done at random- unlike the masterful, efficient manner in which the victims were slaughtered.
"It was a ritual."
Jason woke up in his bed, a twin-size that was hardly remarkable; save for a flowery, pink and white blanket as a gift from his late wife. Being only twenty-three, calling her 'late' was hardly fitting, but that wasn't a train of thought he wanted to dwell on. The sound of an alarm blaring into his ears.
He groaned, tossing and turning for a few, bleary moments before convincing himself to fully wake- sitting off the side of his bed and forcing himself to stand, turning off the device that woke him. Only a few short paces away was what he could call a kitchen, and clothed in little more than a t-shirt and boxers; he began making breakfast. Nothing more filling than one-too-many cups of coffee and a strip of bacon.
Dressing himself was of little concern, and a shower he could hardly afford to heat offered no discomfort to easing the wounds old memories inflicted on him. Nightmares, new and old alike, stretched across his consciousness and burned into the back of his eyes, promising little to no relief. Even medication that was purported to stop dreaming did little to help.
When he'd first had that particular dream, he'd scattered into the local department asking for updates on the case- and handing in case files he'd never remembered writing down to the chief. He was treated like a madman, being assured nothing of that gruesome scale had happened at all, not the day before, and not since the department's founding- a gruesome tragedy not seen since the 1978 Jonestown incident.
The memory of the looks his coworkers gave engraved itself into his mind that day, and he hadn't lived it off yet- two years later.
Jason downed the mug of coffee in a single swig, the burning, grainy flavor coating his throat as he finished buttoning his shirt, and unlocked the two layers of protection to his apartment; a deadbolt, and a knob that could be removed if one pulled hard enough. There was a sanguine pulchritude to it all however, nobody bothered stealing from a man who had nothing.
He stepped out of his apartment, hands stuffed into his leather jacket's pockets as he shut the door behind him and turned to jog down the stairway into the parking garage. What awaited him was a Mercedes AMG 63S Wagon. A car far, far more expensive than anything he could normally afford, but was paid for by his work as long as he didn't scratch it.
He pulled the keys out from his pocket and clicked the central button, the chime of the automobile recognizing his signal ringing out. He stepped over to the back of the vehicle and opened up the trunk to see if he'd been stolen from again- immediately shocked by what he saw.
Twelve hearts, still beating, still lively, piled atop a throne of Ears that still seemed to move despite the lack of any means to. Jason roiled, falling straight on his back as his breath escaped him; the throbbing of his own heart piercing his mind as he struggled to get up- moving to grab his phone to gather evidence, however arbitrary.
Despite his best efforts, however, the scene he'd experienced ceased to exist. Missing from reality, and gone from the world. With shaky breath and watery eyes, the trunk was forced shut as he lay against the automobile, gathering what he could of his composure.
Minutes passed before he stumbled to the driver's side of his car, seating himself and pressing his skull against the headrest of his vehicle. He savored the safety the tool provided him before shutting the door, and activating the ignition. The metal machine had life breathed into it, and woke with a start- lights shining forward into the concrete wall as he put the car into reverse, pulling out of his assigned spot, and driving forward towards the exit.
The metal gate to the garage's exit slowly shuttered open, giving way to a bright, starstruck sky silhouetted by the metropolitan horizon. Jason was unnerved by this, checking the clock on his vehicle- confirming that he'd awoken at 9:00AM, as he was supposed to.
Why were the stars out?
He drove forward onto the streets of the city who's every alleyway, crooked cranny, and untoward vista he'd had the displeasure of visiting on one or more occasions, and turned to the intersection he'd waited to turn at every day for the last two years, but one thing was made blatantly clear to him.
The intersection lacked vehicles with which to use it, save for his; and it lacked lights with which to function. There was no blinking, no pedestrian walkway, no green, yellow, or red- the machine was truly and properly dead to the world. He was left to look from side to side, searching for any risk to his safety, before turning to make his way toward the police station with which he was employed.
There was little to stop him, no men or women or children who waved or cursed. The light of the town was gone with the exception of the ones his mighty steed shot forward; and it was no wonder the stars were so visible in a city as polluted with luminescence as this one.
With haste that couldn't be promised nor accomplished with the traffic he was used to, he reached his place of work- parking his vehicle near the front entrance and stepping into the building he, too, knew every inch of; and found it wanting.
Nothing, no-one, not a single insect, rat, bird, or man in sight. He checked every office, every stall in both bathrooms, the evidence locker, the chief's office, the janitor's hole, everywhere; and found nothing, no-one.
He sat in the lunch room, digging his nails into the wood table anxiously. Had he awoken from one nightmare into another, or was the first one reality, and this was all a fabrication? The opposite being true wasn't something he wanted to consider, given the implications.
He looked up and stared at the mirror across the room, and at his own reflection- ironically reflecting on his predicament. A man, looking for more aged than he truly was, with muddied brown hair tied messily into a bun; round, circular glasses fragmenting his stubbled face. He was a sorry mess right now- probably best that he wasn't surrounded by others, which was a dim light in an otherwise currently bleak reality.
With a breath, Jason stood from his seating, and began to make way towards the entrance to the building; collecting himself with every step. If nothing else, he'd make his way home to try sleeping himself back to the world he knew, but what came of exiting the department was not what he'd expected.
He opened the door to the building and instinctively stepped out- onto a grayscaled precipice which dropped into the ocean, stones and rubble dropping into the pitch-black liquid and turning into balls of white starlight. He stared in shock at what he'd walked into, and carefully turned to go back to where he came from; only to find the structure had disappeared and gave way to an empty canvas of stone and grass tufts, a single, additional man now in view.
At first, Jason was happy to see another human being; but quickly realized his happiness was misplaced. Something off, something horrific, something inexplicable wafted from this 'man' in waves, a cracked; nigh broken mask covering the creature's face with otherwise opulent coats and scarves covering their body. A single step was taken forward by this... thing, and a single step was taken back by him.
He could hear words, but could not understand their meaning. He could see things around this entity, but could not make out their shape. He was trapped against this cliffside leading down into a starstruck void as the entity approached. Slowly, gently, ambitiously and without hesitation. Perfectly, and without pause.
He could feel a breath at his neck, and yet this creature did not breathe. He stared into an empty mask, devoid of eyes or features, and hardly twitched as a hand was pressed to his chest- but that quickly turned to desperation and fear as this thing began pushing him closer to the edge, closer to the abyss, closer to The End. He grasped at its arms, at its face, at anything at all; and yet he could not touch it, despite it doing so to him.
...Jason screamed, and yet no noise followed his fleeting resistance, and with a single push, he was drawn and quartered; flung into the dark. He could only watch as the entity became distant, and the gray stone became a vertical walkway that he could not traverse; and suddenly, he was surrounded by darkness, and almost as immediately, he was surrounded by stars.
In all directions, dots of white, like eyes staring into his soul. He could not move, yet he was not drowning. Floating, yet immovable, in an inescapable unreality.
He was given little time to rest, however, and an invisible force yanked him from his stillness- and those white dots passed him and were replaced by others faster than he could process. A booming, intangible voice echoed in his skull and engraved itself in his psyche yet he could not understand a single word.
Soon, the stars were gone, and there was nothing but black. Soon, there was nothing but a distant, but visible dot of blues and greens, coming ever closer. Soon, there was once more nothing but black; and raising his arms to his face revealed nothing at all.
Soon, there was nothing but a voice. Grating, but silky, a language he could hear and know. He woke to violet eyes and sky blue fur, the most beautiful colors he'd ever seen.
"Answer Trixie! Are you alive, ape?"
