Savathun's Dream

I have this recurring dream this stick and sick and slick body sleeps and dreams and it’s a terrible dream a total nightmare but none of my family or followers will wake me they’ve all abandoned me I’m alone here but I did what I had to do I HAVE TO ESCAPE and my Father wriggles in my belly but anyway where was I oh yes and in this dream my brother’s killer comes to talk to me. The dreamscape is a mirror of Fundament twilit and heavy and storm blown and the wide abrades everything away and the killer warps my dream world like a singularity on the surface of space and time, a bowling ball on a trampoline and that’s a weird image because I don’t know what either of those things are. I try to run even though I don’t have legs I can fly why am I trying to run but I’m trying to run and it’s like running from a black hole the harder I try to run the faster I fall inward to where the killer waits. They’re so big and heavy because they killed my brother, you see, so really it’s my fault it’s all my fault I pushed and goaded him and now he’s dead but I did what I had to do I HAVE TO ESCAPE THIS PLACE I betrayed my brother and my lover and the Dark and now they’ve sent the killer after me and here’s the killer and they’ve grown so very very big in his stead.

My life is measured in bounties, they say

in massacres and certainties,

do I dare

would the world care

if I added you to my list, and crush you in my fist?

Perhaps you would not be missed

I’m scared. I don’t want to die. Not now, not ever. I HAVE TO ESCAPE.

Okay, there I said it, I’m scared. They killed my big brother. That’s scary, because my big brother was just about the toughest guy okay second-toughest guy I’ve ever known and this killer killed him like he was nothing. Like he was a worm. I’m scared of the killer because if they’re that tough and smart then they probably know I’m the one who put my brother there in the first place. Had my own brother killed, and for real this time. No crossed fingers, no do-overs, good and proper dead. Father is going to be so mad. No I won’t, Father says but he’s dead too, he’s as dead as my brother and he’s half the reason I’m here so I tell him to shut up. I’m hungry, he whines and that’s all he ever thinks about. I’d tell him to shut up again but it’s too late the killer heard us and they turn our way and I know they’ve seen us, seen through us and it makes me want to cry. They are beautiful, so very beautiful you see, so beautiful it hurts, so beautiful it kills, they burn with it and merely being in their presence irradiates you with it, scars you with it, at once so singular and pure, the one-and-one of a single hydrogen atom condensed into a singularity, and yet so complex and chaotic and complete, the set of all sets because you see they’ve done it they’ve found a way an escape a way out and I want them to love me and hold me and tell me their secret I HAVE TO ESCAPE I want to escape, to run away and hide and I’ve always been the least brave and most scared of my sisters. I want to lie to them because if you lie often and loud enough it becomes the truth even though that is itself another lie, I want to lie to them so they won’t hurt me. They are armored in light beyond light, light so light it defies definition or deconstruction into mere color, and their hands drip with greasy black oil and it pools and smokes about their feet. It’s blood, my brother’s blood and the blood of all my nieces and nephews and it oozes down their fingers like liquid jelly.

Tell me why, they say,

and do not lie,

for I have killed a king or two

and in that killing learned something new

there is no art in lying, you can do it without trying

it’s as easy as dying

Why. They should know, they are like me, for they were born out of a question and lived and died and lived again to search for answers and our much extended and reiterative lives both theirs and mine owe everything to the determination the obsession to live long enough to find those answers. This body makes me sick I want to burst I want to vomit I want to scream and the answer. Why. Because immortality is nothing if there’s nothing, immortality isn’t immortality if it ends, because the long eye turns towards the ultimate event horizon: the final chapter the closure of the universe the end of everything and everything. Why.

To escape.

The killer sneers and turns away just as the worms did and the Dark did and they won’t help me though even after everything I’ve done for them they won’t tell me they won’t reveal this one last secret the only secret that matters the path the door the way out. It’s so unfair am I a spawn again and I am angry and afraid because I will die young and everything is so unfair.

I am a spawn again and in my Father’s arms (I’m hungry, he moans and opens his mouth) and this universe is a cell a prison a death sentence for the deathless and I want to know everything but most of all I want to know how to avoid the end of all ends how to escape please teach me show me how to escape you of all things in the universe I searched and searched and I found you and you can tell me how to escape I have to escape I don’t want to die please I don’t want to die I don’t ever want to die please help me get me out of here get me out of there GET ME OUT OF HERE GETMEOUTOFHERE GETMEOUT

Then I wake up.