Ekron

The Parasite - 3

Anubis was severely affected by Gog's death, something difficult to understand to any other Chimera, as they barely remembered their life as animals. Gog meant many things to Anubis, a father, a master and above all, a guide. Now Anubis ruled Ekron and all their creatures but had no path in front of him. Kish was abandoned, letting only a few hundred humans hiding inside it and the mindless worms playing around the city that once conquered the stars. He wasn't in the mood to do anything with the couple thousand humans kept prisoners in Ekron either, Gog would already be consuming them, or giving them to Hoszusárnyu, but that beast was dead too, thrown along northern Europe like a wall. Without a reason to leave the guts of Ekron, he hadn't even noticed the three new blue suns on Earth's sky. In his depression, he hadn't noticed either that the content of a transparent box, like an aquarium, captured by himself and Gog, had disappeared. Hiding in the shadows of a metallic corridor, he fell asleep because he could not cry.

In a bicolor dream, he was again a dog in the streets of Constantinople. A butcher at the end of an alley had broken his front right leg with a stick for trying to taste some meat, it hurt but he kept walking because thirst and hunger had never forgiven him. Humans passed by his side as if he didn't exist, as if he was just a nuisance in their path. He moved his tail, but nobody noticed. He kept searching for food, water, care, and connection in that yellow-blue nightmarish world. Limping down a street he found some garbage from a restaurant, he managed to eat some but then two other dogs came barking at him and showed him their teeth. Anubis fighting instinct was always exceptional, years and centuries later he was able to defeat more powerful and prepared entities in combat, even when he never received any formal martial instruction, just relying in his instinct. So that was not a fight that he would run from, even with a broken leg. Without even barking, the black dog pounced on an ear of one of the other dogs and ripped it off its head with one bite, the third dog attacked him biting his wounded leg, so he receded and escaped. At least he ate some meat that day. Then he saw a glass on the street, part of a bottle maybe and it still had some water in it, so he licked it, but the edges were sharp, and they cut his tongue. It didn't matter because it was water, and the thirst was burning his throat. He kept licking the glass with the broken leg in the air and the blood from his tongue mixing with the water until there was no more liquid in the glass. Then he looked up and saw a human face, he moved his tail and showed his tongue, lacerated in the name of thirst. It was a girl with blonde hair and beautiful blue cat eyes. She offered him food, and of course he accepted it, then he felt sleepy and laid on the ground, extremely tired, and all went black. He woke up and the girl was by his side, they were in a park, and his leg didn't hurt anymore, he looked at it and it had a stick attached to it, a little longer than the leg itself; she had splinted it for him. He stood up and it worked perfectly, like a walking crutch, he jumped and ran almost the same as before. She looked at him and the happiness that he felt was not comparable with any emotion a human can experience.

She talked to him, and then he was able to understand her, "My name is Maria and I come to you with an offer, because is the only way you and I can survive. And there is gain in it for both of us; you get to conquer a planet and I get to rule Kish, from the shadows. Of course, you would have to liberate all the human prisoners that you have in Ekron."

"You want my help to become Empress of Kish?"

"Wear a crown, sit in a throne, and fake fantasies to the lambs so they don't destroy themselves? That is not my kind of job. I can get a puppet to do that."

Then Trimurti appeared by their side and Anubis started to tremble like a child.

"No, not them," said Anubis, terrified.

"They are with me."

"No deal, not if they are involved."

"Listen, is only a matter of time before they realize that we can't blind another of their planetary size monsters, and when they do that, what is left of the Solar System will become dust."

"This is just a dream, a nightmare."

"It's not... get outside your hole at dusk and look at the horizon, three blue suns will be on the firmament, debris from Mars and the dark side of the Moon will be orbiting Earth like a ring. If that is what you see, you'll know this was not just a dream."

"If that is the case, how do I find you?"

"Meet me where the head of Gog's snake lies scorched and gutted. And be prepared to trust me with your life."

Anubis woke up soaked in sweat, his red eyes shone like fire in the darkness of Ekron. He climbed to the surface and looked at the sky. It was an hour before dusk, and there were no blue suns up in the firmament. He sighed relieved, but then he looked closely and saw a ring of debris crossing the skies from east to west. A blue light emerged from the eastern horizon, three stars, significantly bigger than the sun dawned before the incredulous eyes of the Black Dog of Ekron, who understood that he only had one choice.

Maria opened her eyes, she was sitting on the ground holding hands with Trimurti in front of her, with a lit candle between them. The high blue flame that the candle was giving while María was in Anubis's dream, returned to its normal shape, and Trimurti opened his eyes too.

When the suns finally went down Maria and her cats gathered around a bonfire. A pair of red shiny eyes emerged from the shadows of a former forest and Anubis; Black Dog of Ekron and Spirit of Possession, revealed himself. He had the head of a black dog and his body was humanoid, with black fur, metal and ceramic irregularly spread on it. His eyes were bright red, like the ones of a meat fly.

Maria stood up and said to him, "Just consider, that you will never be able to trust me as much as I have trusted you."