Tails of the Apocalypse

One

The world is rarely as it seems. You look to the stars and think you know all there is to know. You look to the depths of the sea and assume that by cataloging the variations of life, you are the master of your domain.

But what about the war that rages beyond your ken? What about the legends of old that occupy the collective unconscious of your people, the truths that dare to escape the dark recesses of your dream-self? You think you know yourself, but your dream-self knows you better. Your vanity could be your downfall on that day when the Final Stand is made—as it was once before.

I know this, because I have watched you for eons. That is what I do, and for years beyond counting.

Time immemorial.

And rarely have I seen one of your kind that stands above the rest, that accomplishes something worth remembering. Most of your race merely disappear into the dust of endless days, but on occasion, one among you will glean a useful insight into the universe.

One of your poets said it best.

And what was that other thing he said? Oh yes.

But then, when least you look for it, you see something that flies in the face of expectations, something that erases your preconceived notion that mortal creatures are innately inferior. Sometimes this nobility is shown in the rare spirit of one of your kind, and sometimes it’s in one of the Creator’s nobler beasts. As you will, perhaps, see in this story I am sharing with you.

Who am I, you ask? I have been called many things. Names. Labels. Myths. But I am most well known as Armaros, one of the Watchers.

And who are the Watchers? Each culture has its own way of describing us, and we have a history as interwoven as the most complex of tapestries. Most of your kind refuses to acknowledge our existence because of what that would mean for you. But if you open your mind to broaden your understanding, you will see that we have been here all along. One of your sacred texts even lays it bare.

“There were Nephilim on the earth in those days… and afterward.”

It would not surprise me if you have all but forgotten this. Your kind is cursed with the arrogance of willfully selective memory. Your species is special, as you believe, but not in the way you believe. You are the latecomers, a relatively new species. You think you are the only ones, Earthborn, and you think your history is the only history. I see your shortsightedness as a curse, but I suppose you might see it as a blessing. It is probably easier that way for you. Sometimes I too wish I could forget.

For all your shortcomings, I must say, you are beautiful. But you lack the ability to accept realities unsupported by your physical senses, and you think that if you cannot touch a thing, then the thing is not real. Perhaps it is due to your temporally linear nature. You feel a special connection with this floating rock. Grounded. And why would you not? You were fashioned from that very earth. How ironic, then, that the tale I wish to tell is of a legendary hero who built a boat to survive.

I witnessed this history—what you think of as myth—despite the Creator’s best efforts to wash us, the Unclean, away. We were here long before you. We are here now. We will be here long after you are gone.

You think you are His favorites. You think you are special in that way. But you will never be as close to Him as we could have been.

As once we were.

Thousands of species call this place home, and one of them is the purest of heart in all of creation. And that is where our story begins.

Two

I found her when she was just a pup.

I was walking along the valley floor one day. It was almost sundown. I heard a whimper and stopped, turning my head to listen. I found her burrowed under a log, her dead mother at her side. I bent down to pick her up and she growled at me. She wanted to be fierce, but she was small. I held out my hand to show her I meant no harm. She growled and bared her razor-sharp puppy teeth. I crouched down beside her to be less intimidating. I fished out a morsel of bread from my pouch and quickly won over the heart of the tiny but fearsome creature by appealing to her belly.

She whined and flopped her head over my arm, staring at her mother’s cold carcass. I stroked her shivering head.

“This is the way of things, little one. But I will care for you now.”

I took her with me as I walked the valley. When her mother was out of sight, the pup buried her head in my tunic, nuzzling around for a comfortable spot. Soon, she was fast asleep. I called her Keena, which means brave in the language of my people. I do not know how long Keena stood guard over her mother, but I must have earned her trust for her to sleep so soundly in my arms. Even the fierce must let down their guard eventually.

She never left my side after that, even after the Builder offered to take her. I will never forget that day. Or the days that followed.

Of all the Earthborn, the Builder and his family were different. I remember the first time I saw his great-grandfather, the one that vanished, talking about him. The great-grandfather had quite the reputation, always screaming about destruction. Always preaching his warnings.

“Destruction and desolation! Turn from your wickedness!”

He never found any peace. And his grandson, the Builder as we came to call him, carried his ancestor’s curse. Always disturbed, always an outcast. Especially after he had his vision.

Why the conflict, you ask? It goes back to the beginning. Before that, actually. Time is an invention of your people to measure your finite lives. Once you are outside it, you realize what a useless measuring stick it really is.

The Shining Ones existed long before even this world was formed. They were the fallen, the Unclean who once had lived as one with the Creator but now were shackled to the Earth for daring to challenge His rule in Heaven. They watched as the Creator made your kind and all the creatures of the world.

Then He fashioned you from the Earth, and the Shining Ones were amazed. In awe of your pureness of heart, your indomitable will. But mostly in awe of your subtle beauty. There had never been anything like it in the expanse of the universe, nor has there been since. Magnificence. That is one way in which you are special, I must admit.

So enamored of your beauty as they were, the Shining Ones enticed you, His newest creations, to lay with them. Their offspring, the Watchers, were born, and that is how I came into the world.

When the Creator saw the result of these liaisons, He grew angry with the Shining Ones for corrupting his newest creation and banished them from the Earth. But we Watchers, their children, claimed Naud—the right of sanctuary—since we were half-Earthborn. Despite His judgment of us as the corrupted issue of unholy liaisons, and lest He be perceived as merciless, the Creator granted our petition. And here we, the Watchers, remained.

However, His mercy carried with it a condition: He held us Watchers true to the very claim we invoked. He bound us to the Earth, never to leave. We were free to roam, but not break the bonds of this world like our star-born parents could.

Being half born of the earth and half of the stars, we are imbued with special abilities compared to you. Our lifespan is much longer than yours. We are practically immortal and can see past the veil of this reality. To some, we seem as gods. And with all races, yes, even mine, there are those who will take advantage of privilege. The Watchers were, after all, the descendants of those who’d rebelled against the Creator. I wonder if He grew to regret his act of mercy.

I was different from the other Watchers, though, and I suppose I still am. They had designs on power and conquering others, whereas I simply wanted to live alone and in peace.

So I was an outcast among my own people. They quickly divined that the Earthborn could be easily manipulated, conquered. I would have no part of it, so I walked alone. Until I found her, my faithful companion.

Keena and I slept under the stars. I would gaze up at the pinpricks piercing the pitch-black canopy. I would tell her stories of my ancestors, the Shining Ones. She would watch me intently and sometimes cock her head, regarding me as the tears inevitably trailed down my cheeks. Then she would gently nuzzle me and lick the tears away.

We were good for one another.

In a matter of months, she transformed from the ferocious puppy guarding her mother’s body into a majestic creature of grace and perennial good nature. Her regal head always seemed to float above her body as she strode by my side. Always by my side.

I am an imposing figure to your kind, or so I have been told. Nearly nine feet tall—small by my people’s standards, to be sure, but plenty big enough to intimidate your race. Which is why Keena and I steered clear of your settlements as much as possible. Every Earthborn I met seemed to regard me as either a god or a threat to be subdued. For my part, I want to be neither worshipped nor conquered.

Keena and I hunted for our food each day and ate by the fire of our camp. We enjoyed each other’s company and had no need for anyone else. We took care of each other and were content to do so. An orphan dog and her outcast master. Sharing my life with Keena was the closest I have ever come to the contentment I seek.

And we lived that way, in easy reciprocity. We were not master and animal. We were the best of friends. We protected each other, provided for each other. We understood each other. Words were unnecessary. Keena was the perfect partner. I had found the purest of all the Creator’s creatures.

Three

The Builder and his sons began to construct a massive box of wood. Each day some of my Watcher brethren would stand and observe the construction, and each day the Builder would ask them to turn from their wickedness and join him. As his great-grandfather had. Then the Watchers and the Earthborn that were loyal to them would gather and ridicule the Builder while he worked. To his credit, he never stopped his labors to answer them.

Keena and I would watch him from the edge of the forest. He would call out for anyone to join his labors who wanted to, but no one took him up on his offer. “The water is coming!” he would shout. But anyone listening would only laugh at him.

And we watched.

One day, a group of Watchers and Earthborn brought casks of wine and filled a long table with roasted meats and feasted while the man and his sons worked in the hot sun. When they were fully drunk, my brothers and their followers began hurling stones at the family and their long, wooden box. Their attack became so furious, so relentless, that the Builder and his sons were forced to seek shelter.

And we watched.

Keena growled, and the fur on her neck and back prickled. I shook my head at her and assured her this was not our fight. We retreated to the safety of the forest and our camp, far away from the Builder and his harassment at the hands of the drunken revelers.

This pattern continued for months. Keena and I moved camp often to take advantage of better hunting or fishing, but we always returned to look in on the madman and his massive construction project.

One day the Builder climbed down from his large, long box of a building and declared it done. On that day, everything changed for Keena and me.

The Builder left his home for the wilderness. A strange thing happened while he was gone. The sky filled with dark clouds, and a tangible sense of doom pervaded the air. When the Builder returned a few days later, he and his sons gathered provisions and stocked them in the large wooden box.

One evening, after the Builder had gone to his bed, Keena and I snuck inside the box. It was the most ambitious thing I had ever seen an Earthborn undertake. The inside was a combination of house, barn, and granary. It was four times larger than the largest house, with stalls that could hold many hundreds of animals. We could see the foodstuffs the family had stored, and it looked as if they could survive inside this box for a very long while. Looking around at the great empty stalls and provisions stacked high, a keen sense of foreboding descended upon me. I called to Keena to leave, and as we passed through the doorway, I made the sign against evil. We slipped away unseen into the forest.

I lay awake under the dim light of cloud-covered stars that night, wondering at the dread that had come over me, that I was still feeling. Visions of destruction filled my mind. Terror filled my heart, and I saw the end of all things. I thought of the other Watchers and their treatment of the man, of their followers’ cruelty and the Builder’s proclamations of doom. I thought of the Creator and asked myself what the limits of His mercy might be.

I jumped up gasping for breath! I must have fallen asleep. It was just a dream. All my terror, all my ponderings. I tried to shake off the dread from my dream, but as I went about the next day’s labors, my dark mood would not lift, no matter how I tried to distract myself. My foreboding was unrelenting.

Keena and I went into the village after a few days of nervous distractions. The normal crowd was there, gathered around the Builder and his project, but they stood in sober silence. The Builder was standing watch over the main entrance of the box, while scores of animals were shepherded inside up a long ramp. Some animals in pairs, some in groups of more than half a dozen. Slowly they plodded, one after another, up the ramp and into the box. No one said a word. Keena and I watched with the same amazement as the rest.

The Builder, no doubt seeing an opportunity to address an attentive audience, climbed up on a stump.

“You see now before you the work of the Creator. You have taken it upon yourselves to leave your natural estate and conduct yourselves in a manner that goes against everything you know to be right. You, the offspring of the Earthborn and the Shining Ones, and you, the Earthborn that have pledged your fealty to these fallen few—you are witnessing the arrival of disaster, that which has been foretold. You have been warned, and now you have one last chance to redeem yourselves. Even the beasts of the fields and forests understand they are being cursed because of you. That is why they come willingly to me. The Creator will destroy his creation and start anew, with a world uncontaminated by the likes of you. Turn now from your wicked path and join us, before your eternal souls are forever held apart from Him. Turn or be destroyed utterly!”

The crowd shook off their amazement and replaced it with anger. They refused to be lectured. They refused to see. Watcher and Earthborn alike picked up stones and hurled them at the Builder. Some struck the animals still in their long march up the ramp. The silent parade became a cacophony of bleats and calls and cries and taunting curses by the crowd as the animals raced inside.

He stood strong for a while, the Builder did, but eventually he too retreated into the box, where he continued ushering the creatures to safety. Eventually his detractors tired of their sport and removed themselves to other quarters in which to seek their revels. Keena and I went back to the forest to search for supper as I pondered all that I had seen.

My dread mood deepened.

The clouds darkened.

Four

A few days later, we felt the first drops of rain. Keena had always been fascinated by the strange water that fell from the sky. I think it scared her when it first dappled her fur, so she scampered under a tree, peeking out only to see who was sprinkling water on her. Eventually she got used to the rain, as she always did, and joined me to wander, wet, in our forest.

Over the next three days, the rain went from a gentle mist to a hard drizzle. After five days, it was a steady shower. On the tenth day, the thunder began.

The rain would not relent, and hunting is difficult when constantly bombarded from above. So Keena and I visited the village to trade some pelts for dry provisions.

We found the Builder furiously running through the village, telling anyone that would listen—and none were—that this was the time. Destruction was at hand.

He pleaded with me as well and told me to climb into his box now, before it was too late. But I pushed him aside. At the time, he seemed so insignificant. So much smaller than me, and his words of warning were like the insane ramblings of so many other prophets of doom in those dark days. Like the seemingly mad ravings of his own great-grandfather, now long dead. I prided myself on standing apart from the irrelevant affairs of the Earthborn; of my own kind, for that matter.

He knelt and whispered something to Keena. She looked up at me, and I could see it in her eyes: she had understood him. She whined, and it was clear she was afraid.

The Builder asked me if he could take my dog with him. “Spare your animal, at least,” he said. Keena seemed to understand this request, but when the Builder held out his hand to her, she moved back behind me out of reach. Her head was bowed like a supplicant, but she would not leave my side, whatever the disaster the Builder foretold.

He seemed to accept that he could not save anyone but himself, his family, and the animals they had gathered. Without saying another word, he stood up and walked toward the box. He ushered his family inside, and standing at the doorway, he looked out on the world he knew, now soaked and swollen with the rains of many days.

He and his sons pulled on the ropes attached to the ramp, heaving until it lifted and pivoted. I realized then that the ramp was a door they were pulling closed. With a final thud lost beneath the boom of thunder, the Builder and his family and all those animals were sealed into the box.

Human faces soon appeared, staring through windows at all they were leaving behind. They watched us watching them, and I felt the knot tighten in my stomach. For I knew at last that it was no mere box the Builder had made.

It was an ark.

Keena and I slogged through the mud to our camp. Water was standing everywhere, pooling up in any low-lying spot. That night we had jerky and hot broth from the fire. The last fire we ever built.

The rain got heavier, more intense in the next days. Homes once overlooking large pastures now stood half-submerged in water. Valleys had become lakes. We sought out higher ground, moving camp multiple times a day. We had to climb constantly to stay ahead of the creeping waterline. Everything was wet now, and if you stared long enough, you could see the water rising with your eyes.

From the top of one of the hills, we could see the Builder’s ark. Water climbed up the sides until eventually it began to float. It passed out of the fertile valley we called home on top of the flood waters. As we watched it go, I knew: Keena and I were running out of options.

We climbed the highest mountain in the region, and at the top found a cave. We walked to the edge and looked out over the world. Water surrounded the mountain. Keena looked over the valley, the only home she had ever known. She bayed mournfully, and I knelt beside her and gently stroked her back. In her guttural wail, she expressed what I could not—a kind soul’s lament for the loss of her world. I stayed by her thinking I was comforting her, but it was she, through her song of sadness, that gave me the courage to face what was to come.

We watched as others sought higher ground. A bear climbed seeking safety and howled as it was washed down the cliff face. Seeking better shelter ourselves, we ventured deeper into the cave. We found a shaft leading into the core of the mountain and followed it deeper in. Eventually, the tunnel formed an elbow, and we followed it until we reached an open chamber. We sat against the far wall and rested.

“We will be fine, girl,” I soothed.

She sat next to me, her ears perked up and the fur at the back of her neck bristling and wet. The tunnel amplified the constant, driving rain outside, and the chamber was filled with the eerie echoes of those pattering drums. We needed to keep moving, but we also needed rest, so I coaxed her to relax next to me. We slept.

Five

I was startled awake by a rising pitch in the sound that filled our chamber. In the dim light of the cave, it was hard to tell how long we had slept, and Keena had awoken before me. She sat at attention, staring down the hole. I rose and we walked down the tunnel to see what the sound was.

When we reached the bottom where the tunnel started upward again, we saw that water had begun to fill the elbow down the tunnel. It was ankle high and rising. If this kept up, I knew, we would soon be trapped.

Keena and I climbed back up the path toward the outside of the mountain, slipping along the way as we fought for purchase in the running water. We reached the upper chamber and saw the problem. The water was already trickling in from the opening to the outside. The rain was fierce now, heavier than before, if that were possible.

I looked at Keena and saw her shaking. She pressed against my leg as if to reassure me that she was there to protect me, but I knew deep inside she was as afraid as I was. The world was becoming one unbroken ocean. The earth-sea had claimed everything and everyone.

The horror struck me deep in my heart. Keena and I were alone with nowhere to go.

The end chamber was still dry, at least for now, so I judged it the best place to wait out the rain. As we carefully made our way down the shaft, a fish slid past my feet. The water at the bottom of the shaft was now knee deep and teeming with fish. Keena grabbed one and I snagged another. We might be trapped, but we would not be hungry that night. We climbed up to the back chamber and had raw fish for dinner.

The roar of the water got louder and louder. I had no idea how long we could last in the dry chamber, but we made trips back to the surface to watch as the waterline rose. Rain even filled the elbow of the tunnel.

I held my breath and dove under, swimming for the surface. I reached the top and saw that the water had breached the opening. It was flooding in. I knew it would soon cover the entire mountain. I dove down again and swam back to the chamber where Keena waited, anxious for my return. I could see that she knew it was hopeless. Any words I could say would be wasted. I sat down with my back against the wall and she put her head in my lap.

Her eyes looked up at me, and I could see in them her resignation. Her low moan filled the chamber. The sound of sadness for the loss of the world. Of fear for the loss of her life. We listened to the droning of the water for a long while. It finally lulled us both to sleep.

I woke up several hours later with a raging headache. Keena was lethargic, and I soon realized that even though we were still dry, our fresh air supply had been cut off by the flooded tunnel. Our time, like our air, was growing short.

She knew it, too. Keena stretched upward and licked my face. She snuggled into me and rested her head on my shoulder. Her breathing became shallow and ragged. I knew this was the end. Finally, after all the destruction and loss of life. After the washing away of the Watchers and the drowning of His other creations, I began to weep. Not for all or any of that. But for Keena.

I wept for Keena.

Some have said that you see your life pass before your eyes at the end, but I did not. I saw hers. Every moment we had shared together played out in my head. My own flood, a flood of tears, came as she huffed her last breath. I kissed her on the end of her nose as I inhaled her last sigh. I clutched her tightly and told her I loved her. The sobs became louder and more violent and for the first time I knew what real love was. How losing one so close can devastate your heart.

Losing Keena broke me in two.

I held my friend as blackness surrounded my vision. Then all was silent and dark.

The hollow emptiness of death.

Six

I awoke. The quiet was the first thing I noticed. I had become so accustomed to the rushing sound of water that the silence was deafening.

Then I heard the birds.

As my vision cleared, I remembered my friend and found her still lying across my chest with her head on my shoulder. The emotions of loss consumed me again. I cradled her stiff body in my arms and headed down the chute to try and escape the mountain tomb. The shaft was wet, but no longer standing in water. I could see bright sunshine beaming down from the outside.

I stood in the mouth of the cave and stared at the devastation and destruction.

How did I survive?

Why me?

Why not her?

The guilt was almost too much to bear. Why had the air been too thin for her but allowed me to survive? Did my heritage as a half-Shining One protect me somehow?

What about all the others like me? Did they survive? As I stepped into the world once again, holding my friend in my arms, I wondered if I would ever know.

Under the warm, baking sunlight, the waters receded quickly. Perhaps the Creator, having cleansed the world, was anxious to uncover its beauty again.

I made my way carefully down the hill, holding her body close. The thought consumed me: she must be laid to rest properly. I walked for miles that day, searching what used to be our fertile valley and surrounding forest for a proper place for her.

Utter devastation.

I walked until I could no longer feel my feet. In the fading twilight, I reached the end of the valley, a place that was known among the Watchers as the Spirit Road. I had never walked the Road before, but as the sun set along the horizon, I felt compelled to take it. Somehow, it would lead me to Keena’s final resting place. This I knew.

As I stepped onto the Road, a rushing wind whirled around me, lifted me up. My stomach lurched, and I experienced the sensation of falling into a black abyss. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

I found myself standing in a peaceful grove in the warm, afternoon sun. But had it not been sundown only moments before? Had more time passed than I knew? Or had I simply appeared elsewhere upon the Earth, a place where the sun was high and shining? My surroundings were completely unfamiliar, but I remembered the old stories of the travelers, and I knew that I was in a place as enchanted as my companion was.

I had found Keena’s resting place.

I stood in the midst of hallowed ground, clutching my most faithful companion, the closest thing to my heart. I had traveled the Spirit Road to the place my heart most desired: a final home for Keena. I stood among the wreckage of what used to be an oak grove, still soaking from the Creator’s wrath. The acorns crunched under my feet and the air fairly crackled with the energy surrounding the intersections of the ley lines of the Earth. The sacred oaks would grow back, I knew. The earth would reclaim what was hers, and the world would have a new birth. The world that had been taken from Keena, the world for which she had mourned so achingly. And from here, upon this hill, Keena would see it all renewed.

I circled the mound to find the perfect spot. When I marked it, I took out the pouch that held the preparations. The ashes of the sacred nine, a pure silver trowel, a beeswax candle—I used these ingredients to sanctify the ground.

The sun began its gentle descent, and when the hill was bathed in the gloaming that is the time between times, I laid her in the hallowed ground. The sun’s rays shone against the horizon, and in this miraculous moment between night and day, I sprinkled the hallowed earth over Keena.

I made three sunwise circles around the hill and declared the spot forever sacred ground. Little did I know that the magic I cast on that hill would last so long, be so strong, even unto the present day.

The land was desolate when I laid her here, but look at it now. The grove that regrew following the Great Flood is ancient once more. Now your people, the Earthborn have built a community of homes here—the place of the Final Stand that is yet to come.

Remember what I told you, dear one, at the beginning? The world is rarely as it seems. You look to the stars and think you know all there is to know. You look to the depths of the sea and assume that by cataloging the variations of life, you are the master of your domain. But what about the war that rages beyond your ken? What about the legends of old that occupy the collective unconscious of your people, the truths that dare to escape the dark recesses of your dream-self?

Well, now you know a small portion of what is. I pray you take heed of your surroundings. Visit this grove when you can. If you sit quietly, you can still hear Keena’s lament whispering through the ancient oaks. Though I have never seen her—and oh! I wish I had—I have heard it said that on a moonlit night, the shape of a great hound can be seen circling the mound, standing watch. And waiting. Waiting for something that is most certainly coming.

Here among the sacred oaks of Weston.