Dimension 5 — The God of Nothing and The Dragon

When Kiri’s bowels finally released her from the accursed porcelain throne, she washed up as best she could, dousing her face at the sink, then scrubbing it like she might peel off her skin.

At that moment, she made her choice. She needed to set things right. She wasn’t even supposed to be with these people.

Before exiting, she opened the door ajar and snuck a peek outside the bathroom. Checked that Gabe and the friend group had really gone. All was quiet and still in the hallway, so she locked her gaze on the BBQ restaurant’s front gate. Made a run for it.

She was almost there when she made the mistake of glancing at the group waiting for their food by the counter. She accidentally locked eyes with Gabe for a second. Snapping her eyes away, she barreled through the exit.

She scampered back to the festival in a clumsy mix of fast walking and jogging. Took the long way around the block to avoid the porta potty area.

When she arrived back on the crowded street, there seemed to be more people than before. Shouldering her way through the crowd, her eyes focused in and out. Every bit of nostalgia she’d felt before now cascaded at her like daggers as the last bit of sun blazed painfully in her eyes, and loud voices and music blasted into her ears. She could feel her heart race and that familiar prickly feeling of her hair standing on end as she made her way toward the stage. In the corners of her vision, the distortions appeared again. There were many of them this time, appearing on people, blurring their faces or turning their limbs abstract. Even so, no one noticed.

Figuring they were just hallucinations again, she ignored them. She only prayed that Uncle Jim was there. Strangely, she thought about the story she wrote with him. She thought about what might happen next.

“What if it all turns out pointless?” Jade’s eyes looked full of doubt.

The voice in her vision told her, “Yes, I see even the brightest, most hopeful of people can fear the worst. Perhaps the goddess is right in her own way. But are you not right to hope? Are you not right to strive for a better future?”

Kiri felt relief when she saw Uncle Jim standing in the crowd watching the show on stage. Like a beacon, he drew her in, away from the chaos and back into the comfort of home.

The band had just finished their set, and now the town MC was introducing some sponsors.

She pushed her way through the crowd, keeping her eyes locked on him.

Jade looked up, her eyes brightening. “I suppose I would be right to hope. Maybe it won’t work all the time, but I can still try.”

“Then go. Keep going, young one.”

And so Jade went on her journey. A long, arduous journey, it was, but she had a path now. With orb in hand and a baby dragon on her shoulder, she had a renewed sense of purpose. Through the ups and downs, the allies and the enemies who sought to break her, she always had that purpose to hang onto.

But then she finally reached the deep, dark lair where the goddess hid…

Kiri was close enough to see Uncle Jim’s face now. Her relief flatlined, disintegrated, and she slowed her pace. His face looked nothing like the warm, calm one he usually wore.

“Uncle Jim,” she said, but it was barely audible over the mayor’s temerarious announcement.

When he noticed her, he attempted a smile, but it wasn’t hard to see how broken it was. He turned away before long. She stopped next to him. Looked at him first, then followed his gaze to what he was glaring at.

On stage, the mayor of Goldtown was shaking hands with a man in a suit. The suited man wore a dazzling smile as he waved to the crowd, and the mayor introduced him as a sponsor of the festival.

“I didn’t even have a chance. They even cut funding for our department this year,” was all Uncle Jim said.

Kiri knew exactly what he meant.

The goddess’ lair smelled like mold and death. The air was damp and heavy. The goddess herself looked like nothing but a skeleton, her eyes glued shut with years of crust and ooze.

She asked Jade with her weak, paper-thin voice, “Do you know why I let you in, mortal?”

“Because you wish to be helped? Or at least, wish for company?”

“You are beyond naïve, girl. You only come here to be proven right. But I will show you that your puny little life of hope has nothing on my millennia of knowing this world has grown irredeemable. I once built it to be perfect, but it has been corrupted so much it could never return. There is no reason to maintain what deserves to die. Let the God of Nothing have it. I do not care.”

Kiri looked down. She knew nothing she could say would take away from the reality of the situation. Not from the fact powerful people would permanently stain this town and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not from the fact her new “friends” actually cared nothing for her, and never would. She was a fool to believe otherwise.

No one noticed it yet, but on the stage, another distortion appeared, shimmering the air just behind the mayor and the CEO.

Kiri turned to Uncle Jim. “It’s alright. I’ll stay with you and help out with the bills.” Her eyes glazed over, and a ghost of a smile formed on her lips. She looked down. “I’ll just grow out my hair, wear pigtails, and start working at a restaurant for extra tips.”

Something was different about the distortion on the stage. It suddenly pulsed, shooting out an intense radius of pressure from its center. Then it became visible—a small crack in the sky.

Kiri could hear yelps of surprise coming from the surrounding crowd, but it didn’t register just yet.

Uncle Jim turned to her, worry springing into his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I won’t even go to university. I’ll stay here and work,” she continued.

“Kiri, what’s wrong? What brought this a—”

Behind her, Kiri heard a familiar voice calling her name. It was Gabe. She ignored it.

Suddenly, several more pressure pulses radiated from the crack. It grew exponentially each time. Became larger than the stage itself. The distortions only Kiri could see before now became visible to everyone.

When Gabe drew near, he placed his hand on Kiri’s shoulder. She almost turned to him, but the crowd surrounding the stage fell into a panic. People now yelled.

Kiri glanced briefly at Gabe’s face. It was distorting, too. But then her uncle grabbed her other shoulder, urgently directing her attention to the stage.

These weren’t just her hallucinations anymore. This was real.

The distortion instantly inflated the size of the stage itself in the blink of an eye. It cracked, popped, zapped, buzzed. Kiri wasn’t sure whether to run or freeze. She wasn’t thinking about it at all. Her body chained her to where she stood, and her eyes, drawn to this distortion’s glorious dance of iridescent colors, fixated on it.

She stood in place, letting herself get squished as the crowd drew back. Our own God of Nothing, she thought. Maybe that wasn’t so bad.

One final pressure pulse surged from the distortion, radiating far and wide. It knocked over people nearest to it. It seemed to loosen gravity for a split second; Kiri felt her stomach somersault. Now, the crowd panicked. She almost fell over as people scrambled away from the stage. Kiri thought of joining them, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away.

The distortion itself rounded out, becoming portal-like. Midst the chaos, a strange entity emerged from the portal—a set of black rings, each with small eyes, encircling a black hole with a single large eye at its center. Black tendrils splayed out from it, also covered in eyes. It slithered partially out, then transformed. It dispersed into black particles, which reassembled into a different shape. A dragon.

The medium-sized dragon spread its brilliant nebulae-colored wings as it hopped the rest of the way out of the portal. In a blaze of black and silver, it took to the sky.

The eyes of the crowd followed this dragon, unsure what to make of it. It was an odd dragon, as if strands of its midsection were invisible, so that its body looked like ribbons wrapping around an invisible center.

But none of it mattered as an even stranger creature burst forth from the portal in pursuit, rearing its many mismatched, abstract heads, roaring with a voice so terrible it inflamed the distortions sticking to people, and they all covered their ears. Its appearance was unlike the townsfolk had ever seen—a horrid amalgamation of blood, bones, and sinews morphing to crystal, turning to vapor, shifting to who knows what else. Its jagged edges and poison-like fluids lashing out around it were more of a threat than any relatively familiar dragon could ever be. People screamed and scattered in a rat race away from the stage. They pushed, shoved, clawed.

The dragon did not hesitate. It turned midair, then dove like a silver spear down at the creature. It rammed the creature with its claws. Its momentum sent it flying back toward the portal. But the creature wasn’t done. It sprung into the air, leaping higher than the tops of the tallest three-story buildings in town. It sent the force of its full weight back down at the dragon. It seemed like the dragon had no time, but in the last millisecond, it somehow dodged just barely out of the way. To the naked eye, it might as well have been teleporting.

The force of the creature shattered the pavement and sent an earthquake rippling down the street. People stumbled and fell over. It should’ve been dead from such a maneuver, but it sprung back up instantly, lunging at the dragon once more, every one of its limbs outstretched to the fullest extent.

The dragon appeared lost on what to do as it barely clung to its defenses. It would leap away, only to have to dodge another limb wherever it landed. One after the next, after the next. Their fight kept encroaching into the crowd of townsfolk as they desperately scrambled away, crushing themselves as bodies clogged the street.

It seemed the dragon had no hope, but then there was a moment of stillness. It seized the opportunity, putting itself between the creature and the crowd. Then the air changed. It stood its ground, unmovable now. It glared at the creature. Its eyes turned from silver to black. Upon closer look, it appeared to have multiple eyes—two on the right side of its head, one on the left, and some on and under its wings. They all turned to black as the air grew heavier.

It started with a mild pop. One of the creature’s tiny horns on one leg exploded. Then another, then another. The pops picked up speed until suddenly they were exploding in rapid succession, targeting larger and larger body parts, until most of its heads exploded.

With one last head, the creature roared once again in a voice of seemingly every frequency. It shook everyone to their core, and they clasped their hands over their ears.

In a flash, the dragon lunged at the distracted creature. It latched onto it, using its centrifugal force to roll it back to the portal. Near the portal, it clasped the creature in a death grip, dragged it up, then, with one powerful swoop, ascended the stage.

Kiri, meanwhile, had lost her uncle in the chaos. Gabe tried to drag her to safety, but she ripped away from him and pushed through the crowd back toward the portal. She feared Uncle Jim had fallen along the way, and her stomach sank further and further as she scanned the fallen, but thankfully alive, bodies.

There at the forefront, her uncle dragged himself away from the portal, attempting to stand, but his ankle kept giving. Kiri’s heart lurched with an unfamiliar mix of relief and fear. The crowd was thin where she was, and she ran to him.

The creature struggled to break free from the dragon’s claws. In a final gasp of desperation, it shot out its limbs in all directions. They grew so long; they reached the townsfolk at least two buildings away. One limb made its way to the closest target.

Kiri was a second away from her uncle when the limbs exploded. Without a second thought, she lunged, throwing herself between her uncle and the portal. Not even a second later, something slammed into her back, winding her. Then something akin to roots curled around her torso. She was ripped backward with a force that rattled her bones.

One second, she was high in the air, overlooking the ruins of the festival. The next, her sight went jagged. Every sound became a bomb in her ears, and she felt static pops all over her skin.

Then nothing.