Leviathan Envy

The traveller struggled across the shifting sands of the dune. The sun threatened to dip below the horizon, its baking heat retreating. The frosty night hadn’t settled in yet, but it was starting to make its appearance. The traveller, pausing before the crest of the hill, crumpled down to the ground and stole a sip of water from his waterskin. He scanned along the landscape and toward the horizon. Nought but orange hills and red skies with touches of craggy vegetation. Even tracing an invisible line back over the path he took, the man’s footprints were nowhere to be seen. He sighed and, putting his waterskin away by his hip, finished the trek to the top of the dune. The plain, sandstone, rocky platform sat ahead. And atop it was a floating black upside-down pyramid. The obelisk.

He cracked a smile across his chapped lips and slid his way down to the bottom. The closer he drew to the obelisk, the larger its shadow loomed over him. Suspended above him, spinning gently and floating up and down. He permitted himself a little pat on the back and a quick fist pump before walking under the structure. The sun had dropped down to a vague purple, completely hidden by the surrounding dunes. The platform lay surrounding in its own small valley by the hills around. The traveller had made directly under the point of the obelisk. He breathed in carefully and held out his index finger. The obelisk was just half a finger’s length away as he stood on his tippy-toes, but with a small hop the traveller was able to touch it.

Nothing happened. He watched it continue spinning, unabated. He looked at his finger which showed only the slightest indentation. Suddenly, the ground shook violently, vibrating loose sand off of the platform and causing the sands of the surrounding dunes to pool around the edges. The traveller rushed back to the edge of the platform, attempting to keep his balance and avoid stepping in the loose cushion of sand that was pooling behind him. A beam of light shone from the top and a creature rose out of the obelisk tall enough to touch heaven. It stopped rising at its waist and silently looked around. The traveller marvelled at it.

He could only see the front from a low angle. This leviathan, glowing a bright purple, was unmarked save for a scaly front patch that looked to the traveller like a leather chestplate. As it looked around, the traveller could see more of it. The spine mottled with bone spikes, the wings that, even retracted, sat broad enough to take flight. The eyes with no pupils sitting atop a short snout. The inquisitive look on a face that had the wear of an ancient being, older even than the world it resided on. And that face started making the long journey down to look at the traveller.

The body and neck drew across the traveller’s field of vision, recoiling down and back as it finally was able to position an eye in front of the speck that had awoken it. The sands grew silent. The leviathan’s expectant gaze pierced the traveller, and every instinct in his body screamed at him to flee. He took a step backwards, forcing his foot to the ground before his nervous tremors got the best of him. The leviathan made microscopic movements of its eye, looking the traveller up and down.

“Well?” It boomed, screeching soundwaves barrelling into the traveller’s ears. “Why have you awoken me?”

The traveller noticed his mouth agape and closed it promptly. He swallowed, breathed out, and squeaked out a noise before clearing his throat.

“G-great leviathan,” he said, “I have been sent from my village to gain your merciful assistance.”

The leviathan’s eye continued scanning the traveller up and down. The traveller continued.

“I have travelled far to—”

“You must have misheard me,” The leviathan boomed, slinking back a bit, “I did not ask the circumstances of your travel. I have asked the reason for it; else I have little to care about.”

“Yes, of course. I have been sent to gain your assistance in our war.”

“You wish for my aid in conflict? I have seen millennia of warfare; never is any conflict resolved.”

“No, great one. I do not wish for direct aid. We wish for your presence.”

The leviathan raised a scaly eyebrow.

“Many are the creatures who have asked for me to fight their battles for them. Few are the creatures that only require my assistance once.”

“And we are aware. But we need not a god to fight our wars, but a lightning rod to stir fear in the hearts of our enemies; a motivator to swell our military forces; a presence to ensure that law and order are maintained. That is all we ask. Not for physical force, but for just a presence.”

The leviathan looked away from the traveller. The traveller stole a glance in the same direction as the leviathan, but it was clear that it was looking at nothing. Simply thinking.

“You wish me to present myself to your village? To be little more than a grand statue to inspire your people?”

“Oh, great leviathan, it is so much more than that. The village will be entirely yours to enjoy. A village full of enthusiastic worshippers to grovel at your feet. The chance to shape a village entirely in your image. The love, adoration, and intimidation of all.”

The sun had fully disappeared. It was here, at night, that the traveller could enjoy the true majesty of the leviathan. The purple glow that shone as though another sun was in front of him, which only seemed to intensify as it thought about this proposal.

“Your village, how are its families?”

“Its…families?” The traveller asked.

“Yes, does the village have a connected web of families. Does its community accept all, healthy and sick, rich and poor?”

“Well, er, yes, great leviathan.”

The leviathan seemed to recoil slightly at what it had been called.

“And I would be this village’s patron deity.”

“Yes, you would.”

“I would be of the village, but I would be apart from the community. I would shape it in my image, but I myself could never be part of a family.”

The traveller stayed silent. Though the leviathan was looking back at him, the traveller could not answer his question.

“I accept,” the leviathan said.

The traveller raised his eyebrows in shock.

“However…” it continued, “I have one condition.”

“Of course, anything.” The traveller said.

“We must trade places.”

The traveller was taken aback.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I cannot, I will not have a village as though glimpsing it through a film. I want to be there. I do not want to own the village, I want to be of the village. I will inhabit your body and continue your role in the village, whatever that may be. But, I will act in the way you are asking of me now.”

“Oh, great leviathan,” the traveller took a step back, as the leviathan seemed to do the same at being called that, “I simply cannot. Unfortunately, you cannot impose if you are in the body of a mere mortal. I do not have that power.”

“But surely, it is not simply my grand stature that you require; do you not require my soul, my presence? Is that not enough for you?”

The traveller said nothing, only taking a single step back. The leviathan understood and grimaced.

“I hope you understand what you are doing. You would spurn an immortal being? Lock them out of your community but ask that they protect it? Who are you to do that to me?” It shouted with such power it forced the traveller to cover his ears, lest his eardrums shatter.

As the leviathan boomed, tremors shook the sand loose and began to fill in the depression. The traveller, ears still covered, scrambled backwards. He was being buried by the sands.

“I have lived to see a thousand suns be born and die. Your life is a fraction of a blink of my eye. Long after your pathetic village has been reduced to dust, long after your whole planet has been reduced to dust, I shall remain. Go tell your village what I have told you and what you have refused to grant me.”

The traveller screamed, convulsing on the ground and clutching his ears. Blood leaked down his arms, staining his clothes crimson.

The tremors had built up to a mighty sustained roar. It was as though the leviathan was breathing in, and taking the entire desert with it.

TELL THEM WHAT I CAN NEVER BE A PART OF AND WHAT YOU HAVE ALL DENIED ME.

***

He was found at the village well in the morning, bloodied and shivering. Any question that we required from him had to be written on paper and shown to him, though is answers were not very insightful. Mostly babbling incoherently about the village. As for how he showed up, or any details about the creature, we haven’t the first clue. His mother has been taking care of him since he returned, but word of this leviathan has rallied the community. Tales of the great power that lies beyond our communities has warded off our aggressors, but we live in fear of what truth may lie behind those tales.