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Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.
It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants
worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed.
And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people.
–Revelation 13:11-13
It’s so strange to see this place with primate eyes.
The clouds are thick up here. I can’t make out the Caspian Sea. For a moment, though, at least, I can look across the snow-kissed peaks and remember the glory, the purity of this place when I last stood here, before the taint of Man. They’ve piled stones and hung banners along the spine of Damāvand. It was only right to return them to the earth in my wake.
No one will mind if I take an hour to reminisce before I begin, either, and admire these bold young mountains and their canopy of stars.
Snow crunches underfoot. It’s strange and brutal – nothing like the graceful sweep and churn I would enjoy outside this form. Stranger still, I find I don’t really care. My freedom is worth a little challenge to my perception. These fingers (clever little struts of bone) are useful for carving sigils of living flame in the air to fill with Grace as I call to the caldera, or more precisely, what lies chained and sleeping far, far beneath.
“OLGI LRING, ILS VIME D-BVTMONI.”
Damāvand remains impassive. My hands twist and shred the air, scorching tiny pockmarks in space-time with antimatter to anchor my will here. He won’t ignore me.
“ILS OLGENE CAOSGI, TORZV SOLPETH PAMBT.”
Bursts of light dance around my fingertips as they spiral to a central point, and I insist: “TOATAR. TOATAR.”
A sound like a glacier splitting along a fault line fills the heavens and echoes out across the Alborz. He hears. My core shivers in response, a ruffling thrill, as the caldera’s pool boils higher and thick white smoke spews from the fumaroles around me, and through them he speaks.
There is a blasphemy that claims that what Man calls the Big Bang was the moment my Father and Death came to this universe from a place beyond and before, and that alongside them came the petty things that call themselves Elder Gods, and other, older things. I have faced these so-called gods and found them sorely lacking; and the monsters of Earth share a common ancestor in one of them, but what Men call dragons are mealworms compared to the thing beneath my feet. This is no child of Eve.
I am the second son of God. I helped ignite the stars and watched this planet form from dust. I’m older than the milky band of galaxies stretched above me. There are few things in the universe that can make the likes of me feel small.
The voice of Aži Dahāka is among them.
For one wild moment I catch myself thinking that perhaps that blasphemy is right after all.
It comes from the mountain. It is the mountain. His voice is fathomless, so deep it pushes back the tide from the Caspian shore, so great it thrums against the spaces between my vessel’s atoms where my body lies. That the world does not pitch beneath my feet only means that he has not truly stirred.
“YOUR SKIN FIT YOU BETTER IN MY DREAM, LITTLE STAR. YOU OUGHT TO SHED.”
“I intend to, old friend,” I assure him. He has no idea how much I want– need to do just that. “Very soon.”
My limbs quake in rapture as the singular meaning of his Words fill me. They push against me in waves: their crests crush my body and Grace to this ersatz vessel that’s already so full and ill-suited to my glory that it bloats and burns; their troughs leave me so empty that my vessel gasps in yearning to be filled again; the crash of our atoms snapping back in place is thunder echoing the sound of his voice. Even locked away and lethargic from aeons of sleep, his power is intoxicating. It reminds me too keenly of the things I’ve done with Sam.
“IS IT TIME ALREADY, THEN? HAVE THEY REACHED THE SUN?”
“It’s in motion. My...sword has been hidden away,” I admit; “so has Michael’s. The sun is unsullied, but they’ve touched the moon. They’ve marked her.”
Gouts of boiling sulphur spew from the volcano’s vents. I had a feeling that would displease him. “YOU PROMISED HER TO ME.”
“And you will have her. Will you wake now, old friend?” I swallow as I say it, shivering in the wake of that voice. The sigils I’ve burned in the air flicker. The fumaroles calm in the long lull before he answers, and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that I could bind him to me. I could command him, lay crowns of gold around his heads and mark him mine forevermore. I could.
I don’t.
“THESE CHAINS ARE VERY HEAVY, LITTLE STAR, AND I AM SO TIRED.”
Damn it all.
“COME TO ME WITH YOUR SWORD AND SCALES, AND ROUSE ME THEN. TOGETHER WE WILL BREAK THE ROOT OF THE STONE. THIS AGE WILL END.”
“Soon, my friend, you have my word,” I promise him. And his answer, for all its formidable magnificence, sounds as amused as it does drowsy:
“I HAVE ALWAYS HAD YOUR WORD, SON OF MORNING. WAKE ME WHEN I CAN HAVE YOUR WORLD INSTEAD.”
The mountain lapses into silence and cold once more. The fumaroles smoke lazily, as if his presence left them reeling the same as it’s left me. A sigh wrests itself from my throat. The sigils gutter as I withdraw my Grace from the anchor-points and let air rush into the voids with tiny cracks of thunder. I could be disappointed with the way this has gone – Aži Dahāka has refused my summons, after a fashion, and for reasons I myself can’t quite understand I’ve let the opportunity to force him to my side slip through my pinions. I could.
I’m not.
He’s still promised to me, when the End comes. Through me he shall come out of the earth and perform great signs, even calling down fire from the sky in view of Man, and before a river of flame sweeps him away as prophesied I will let him devour who and what he will.
My wings stretch out over the curve of the Earth as I seek the cold again. There are other things to wake beneath the Antarctic ice. For now I can let my old friend gather his strength. He’s waited down there this long, but it won’t be much longer now.
Just as soon as I find Sam.