Requiem for a Dream, Chapter Two: The Swamp of Fears

CHAPTER TWO

The Swamp of Fears

                Squelsh seems like the most appropriate word. The smell of months old ichor, rot, and death pervades the air. As he awakens, viscous slime crawls over Xaphnos’ hands, knees, elbows, and legs; it grabs at his chest and lurches sickeningly toward his face. With a start he stumbles haphazardly backward, sloshing through muck over a foot deep. Suddenly recognition lights over his face. The Swamp of Fears. One of Kallith’s tricks. Do not believe her lies, friends. Do not believe.

 

                Xaphnos has to struggle to retain his footing in this squalid place. Withered trees claw their way to sunlight here and there, and trying to reach one, Xaphnos grasps a nearby object protruding from the tar-like swamp to gain leverage. As his weight falls on the pale, round thing, he finds the hard way that it is unsuited to this task and plunges back into the sticky, vile soup. When he slips and pivots to his knees once more he holds the object aloft to examine it, but then a sharp, frightened noise escapes his lips and for an instant he is held transfixed in terror as he stares at a half-rotted head. The flesh is either missing or misshapen and covered in verdigris, but the crimson cowl covering the eyes and crown is unmistakable, marked by the two stylized lightning bolts above the eyes, and the strong, black “D” stamped between them. Any other might see the spoiled head of Dynamic Man, but Xaphnos sees the last shred of his old friend Bert McQuade, another denizen of the Earth city New York.

                Who could do this to you? Xaphnos’ mind reels, but before he can begin to grieve, he hears movement to his flank, its source concealed by the trees and the hazy humours of primordial decay. Panic grips him and he pulls Dynamic Man’s head to his bosom and starts, whifflingly and burblingly, away as fast as he can manage in the thick of things. Peering with his dilated eyes into the uncertain surroundings, he finds alien expressions within the gnarled skin of trees and swirls of sour gas. Startled, he cranes his head to look behind, and to his astonishment not one, but three Jabberwockies, great coiled snakes with dragon wings and man arms, amble after him, clumsily navigating the stench of the swamp sky. Quickening his pace, Xaphnos tries to scream but can’t even exhale, his fear freezing the breath in his lungs. Truly, a dread chill begins to steal over his chest and crawls through his veins. Frost collects, first on a tuft of hair springing from Dynamic Man’s mask, and next all over the dismembered parcel, and next spreading onto Xaphnos’ fingers and hands and body. He shudders terribly, and with quaking, jerky steps presses on, barely evading the snap of a Jabberwocky’s fangs. His three pursuers wallomph frightfully at his heels, seeming even to cause the black, dead trees to cower and shrink from their path.

Cobwebs litter the area into which Xaphnos flies, getting thicker which each step, strung all over between trees and other detritus that fill the grotesque bog. In this section, although Xaphnos’ progress is slowed, the Jabberwockies are given pause. They could not fly within for their wings are scantly strong enough to carry them aloft in thin air, let alone dredge through dense webbings. Two of them turn about and with another ear-shattering screech, give up their chase, but the third lands, folds its wings, and continues on, slithering and crawling on its hands. Daring to find some hope in the Swamp of Fear, Xaphnos once again checks to his following, but with a sinking heart sees the last of the monsters clawing, and biting its way through the webs, moving with greater ease than he could ever hope to. He was lost, and lost for good. He would die here, in a thrash of echoing wallomphs and warbling cries, clutching the vorpled head of an old friend, and mourned by no one. For who was left now in this forsaken place to mourn him? The webs take him as he gazes in his wake and he struggles only for the moment it takes him to recognize his fate. Accepting the trap, Xaphnos closes his eyes to the pain and awaits the jaws of the Jabberwocky, but instead he feels something else altogether more delicate moving over him.

“I don’t know who you think you are barging into my web, bringing that monster with you, but don’t be afraid,” the soft words of a raven-haired human woman.

Webs cover Xaphnos’ body as he hangs in suspension, making him impossible for any to recognize and across the vast stretch of webbing moves a pair of delicate hands and delicate feet. The woman pats Xaphnos’ head and then gives the Jabberwocky a fierce, defiant glare. It uncoils, and bares its fangs, and screeches fit to wake the dead as it unfurls its wings in a primal display of dominance and might. The woman grins as errant strands of spider-slik seize the wings at full stretch, shackling the creature in place as it writhes and shrieks helplessly. She jumps from her web, her lemon-colored cloak billowing in the air, and lands directly upon the Jabberwocky’s tongue. Extending each arm, her hands pointed into the creature’s throat and fashioned into an odd gesture, webbing sprays from her wrists in a deluge, choking the life from Xaphnos’ would-be assassin. The beast convulses and struggles, clutching the woman savagely but desperately for a few moments in its man-hands, before it finally dies and lets her loose.

“Ta da! The Stupendous Spider Queen saves another soul!”

She stands tall for a woman, and her black hair descends from her porcelain brow in waves, falling half-wild to her hips. Wearing a red domino mask accenting her sapphire eyes and matching her short, red skirt she strikes a vogue pose and sports a confident look. Her cloak is swept over her shoulders falling behind her, clasped over a low-cut blue blouse with an opal brooch. She is quite beautiful.

“Sphammem?” Xaphnos mumbles, his voice muffled by webs.

“Oh!” the Spider Queen jumps and quickly sets herself to removing her unwitting captive from her web. Soon she finds a familiar face, “Xaphnos Wundervayn… what are you doing here?”

“Shannon, you’re alive,” Xaphnos embraces her like an old friend, albeit somewhat robotically, “I missed you for a long time.”

She screws up her face, and half-heartedly returns his hug. Letting out a deep breath, “I missed you too. I called you. I haven’t heard from you, I haven’t even gotten a letter, in years, Xaphnos. Where were you? And what is that in your hand?”

“Oh, I…” he lets loose and takes a step back, “It’s, uh,” looking at it reveals not a head, but a plain rock, “it’s nothing.” He tosses the parcel into the muck below and continues, “I was… cut off from the Mindscape. I was imprisoned within a single mind, an Earth man named Tom Callahan.”

“I was dreamt up by an Earth-mortal, right?”

“Yes, Elsa Lisau, I think. Or maybe Louis and Arturo something or other. But yes. I was so stupid to go after Cobweb that night.”

“Psychwarden stuff,” she says understanding.

“Yes. He got the upper hand and he flung me into Tom’s mind. I was stuck there for a long while, but eventually Tom and I worked out an agreement and found a way to free me into Earth while he slept. I couldn’t go back to the Mindscape, so I just… did my best. I made many friends there.”

“So how’d you get back?”

“Tom died.”

“Oh,” Shannon’s eyes fall to the ground, “It’s gotten really bad here, Xaph.”

Xaphnos takes Shannon’s hand and looks at it for a long time as if contemplating what to do with it. After a moment he simply caresses it between his fingers and thumb. “I already ran into your sister, the so-called Dreamqueen.”

“Oh, Zoroaster’s sake, not that bitch.”

“She’s the reason I am here in the Swamp. What are you doing in a place so ugly?”

She recoils from Xaphnos, cups her head in her hands, and sighs. At last she looks at him resignedly and replies, “We’re awakening the Old Weapons.”

“What?! Shannon, you can’t! We put them to sleep! We hid them in places like this for a reason!”

“Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, Xaphy,” while her tone is calm she still manages to command a fierce presence, “that ‘we’ you’re talking about isn’t exactly around to protect us these days.”

Xaphnos’ eyes fall to the swamp muck, his breathing grows quickened and hot, and he clenches his jaw once… twice. Finally he lets out a long frustrated breath through his flared nostrils.

“Shannon, the Old Weapons’ powers are too vast to control. They are a threat to existence itself. To undo their slumber? After the price we paid?!”

“Xaphnos. I remember how many men were lost. I remember how bad it was, and I’m sorry. But it’s not like we have any kind of choice. Without the Old Weapons we simply don’t have the power to fight against Nightmare and Dementia.”

“Now you’re talking about a ‘we.’ There’s still resistance?”

Shannon nods, “Of course. Walk with me a while, I’ll explain.”

Leading the two of them through a labyrinth of webs, Shannon the Stupendous Spider Queen, tells Xaphnos the tale of the aftermath of Amaranthus’ Fall. The Psychwardens had run out of options, and in a last, desperate attempt to protect the Mindscape, they baited Nightmare and Dementia into striking at them at the heart of the capitol city. There they sundered reality, loose as the term may be in this place, and effectively removed the entire city, themselves and the two elder evils with them, from the rest of the Mindscape entirely. From this exile they hoped to defeat Nightmare and Dementia, but even if they couldn’t they believed that they would all be trapped forever in the beyond. Unfortunately their hopes and beliefs were ill-founded. Not only were they defeated and slaughtered, but the demons they’d fought so bravely to contain found their way back to the Mindscape, back to conquer.

“At first,” she continues, “a few small groups gathered together. Underground, off the radar, and we pulled small raids and ambush strikes. It wasn’t much, and even though we hit and ran people died.”

“It was unorganized, there were bound to be many casualties,” Xaphnos remarks.

Shannon nods, “Yeah, well, we got organized. This Nemo guy, I thought he was an urban legend or something when I heard about the stuff he’d done.”

“Wait, you said Nemo?” Xaphnos stops walking.

“Yeah. Why, you know him?” Shannon turns and looks into his eyes.

“Is his father still King of Slumberland?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she raises an eyebrow, “He’s never mentioned it.”

“It’s got to be him. He’s a Psychwarden, well, he used to be a Psychwarden.”

“Really...”

“He was just a rookie, barely more than a kid when I was fighting against Cobweb.”

“You were a lot younger too, Xaph,” she remembers.

“He got spooked by something on his first mission and quit. Wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. They said he was the youngest Psychwarden ever and top of his training class.”

“Wow. Really? Huh. Anyway, yeah, he’s crazy. He started pulling off these daring raids all by himself. Stories say he did ridiculous stuff. Someone told me he boarded and blew up one of those airships the Kappa use after single-handedly fighting through dozens of pirates and crew members. Another time, I heard he and some other guys took on Neo Kami – Corvus, Fornax, and Lacerta – and that in the end Nemo shot Corvus in the face with the Rusted Revolver of Van Winkle.”

“That’s nonsense,” Xaphnos scoffs.

“Yeah, he tells me not to listen to that stuff. But he does have the Dragon Key, which he stole from Nightmare himself.”

“He has the Dragon Key?” his blood runs cold, “You’ve seen it?”

“He wears it around his neck. He takes it off before bed every night.”

“You’re involved with him?” a dead weight in his heart pulls all expression from his face.

“Xaphnos…” she releases a heavy breath, “It’s not… he’s not my boyfriend or whatever. And seriously? You’ve been gone for like ten fucking years, Xaphnos! I got over you.”

Xaphnos and Shannon trudge through the swamp for the next several minutes in silence. Xaphnos is suddenly caught by surprise by a tear that splashes onto his cheek. He collects it from his face upon a fingernail and examines it curiously as if it’s the first he’s ever seen before he flings it at last into the dark soup at his side.

He clears his throat and points through the silken haze of a webbing wall, “The control panel. To the Weapon? It’s that way.”

“Xaphnos,” she begins repentantly, “I’m s- … I’m sorry, okay?”

“Yeah,” he says as he pulls the webs apart and makes his way through the wall and into a zone clear of spidersilk.

“I think he loves me,” Shannon continues speaking as she walks after him.

Xaphnos stops walking and presses the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. A moment later he’s walking again.

“Forget it,” he says, “As much as it may pain me it sounds like I’m going to be seeing and hearing a lot of this Nemo guy, so I’d better get over myself too.”

Having taken the lead now, Xaphnos shows Shannon to a wall of scorched brambles, woven together by overgrowth with almost no light showing through. The slog at their feet runs at a current, still slowly, but faster than the other areas of the swamp, like it’s draining into someplace else.

“Your hair’s going to get dirty,” he tells her, “We hid it through here in a cave. It’s a pretty nasty place.”

Xaphnos walks with the current and slips, falling completely under but he snags a dead vine and pulls himself back up.

"There it is!" he remarks as he shakes the grime from his face, "There's a tunnel right here. We have to swim a while until we can get past the overgrowth. Follow me."