Aeon of Wonder

by Carey Henderson

  He sat back in his seat and felt the plane wobble and twist. People around him started getting restless. The familiar, fake 'ding' came over the loudspeakers, noting that the 'fasten seatbelt’s sign was again on. Joshua fastened his and listened to metal clicking all around him in unison. Then came another ding and the captain spoke,

  "Ladies and gentlemen, uh, this ride is about to get very rough. Uh, hold on tight to something, folks. I'll get us out of this in one piece."

  The intercom went quiet and Joshua felt his knuckles go white as people all around him gasped and whispered, the plane creaked and moaned. The wind outside howling and screaming as though the air itself wanted to rip the plane into pieces.

  There was a jolt and Joshua heard screams as the plane tilted suddenly to the left. The plane quickly followed the motion of the force. He almost put his hands on his ears when passengers started yelling. Overhead compartment doors starting flying open. Things began falling out of the compartments and hitting people, knocking several out. Joshua put his arms over his head and then noticed his hair was standing up.

  The jumbo-jet was upside down.

  He realized he was screaming and closed his mouth. Slowly, surely, the pilot began to right the plane. The chassis was taking a beating and it cried out with moans and groans and squeals. Quite a few passengers passed out, many more tried to hold onto what was left of their sanity. Most just screamed at the top of their lungs.

  More were knocked out as the items on the ceiling of the plane rolled and bounced back toward the floor. Joshua ducked down as far as he could into his seat and no sooner did so than he felt a sharp pain in his back. A suitcase corner slammed into it. He yelled and shifted and the suitcase fell off him, onto the floor.

  And then the plane dropped. And it did not stop that descent, nor did it slow down. Joshua noted a hush that came over the entire plane. No one said a word, it all seemed to happen at a pace that was both too fast and too slow to properly discern. Shock had taken over.

  Then, one more collective scream as the pyramids of Giza came into view, along with the sand which approached them all too rapidly. Lightning struck and Joshua felt a jolt.

  Then he felt nothing more.

  Part Two: Dreams

  Joshua dreamed of giant things; old monsters and angels, storms and lightning and desert. Over and over, he dreamed of the desert. Wandering it forever, endlessly; eons traveling alone, looking for things that he couldn't see. Things that people had told him he'd never see, and he'd at some point tried to believe those people, only to fail at holding onto their words and ideas, over and again.

  He just kept wandering. Joshua felt he'd find what he was looking for at precisely the time it intended to be found.

  His dreams were invaded by the feeling of falling. Joshua felt himself suddenly high in the sky, falling downward, faster, toward a tan and dark ocean rushing towards him. In his dream, he put his hands over his eyes and screamed.

  Part Three: Waking

  Joshua woke lashed to a chair, in the darkness, things touching him and crawling all over him. He struggled and pulled and knew his arms were free but could do nothing with them. As he kept struggling to get free, Joshua began to wake. He realized that he was sitting in an airplane seat in the sand. He saw that next to him were palm trees, grass and water. But everything else was sand.

  Then he saw the giants in the distance, which his mind eventually told him were the pyramids of Giza.

  Panic slowly faded as reality came into focus. He was alive. Joshua could not believe it to be true. Until the pain hit him, and then he knew. He reached down and pressed the button on the seatbelt clasp and it released. When he tried to stand, Joshua fell back into the seat. It tipped over with him in it, sending him into the warm sand face first.

  Joshua cursed and tried to get up again, finally giving up and looking around him. A few feet away lay a busted suitcase, a blanket falling out of it. He reached and winced in pain, got the blanket and tried as best he could to spread it out. When there was enough spread out, Joshua pulled himself onto the blanket, off the warm sand.

  He lay flat on his back and moaned for a few moments, trying to discern how badly he was hurt. Each movement of his arms and legs produced immense pain, yet miraculously, there were no broken bones. Carefully applying pressure down each side of his rib cage, it appeared none were broken, though the muscle tissue around them was badly bruised. Rolling his head slowly back and forth found nothing irregular. Just pain.

  Joshua's mind accepted that he was alive and before he was aware, tears streamed down his face. He only knew One being to thank so he did so profusely and then tried to contain himself again. He had to chuckle that, despite the fact he'd just survived one hell of a plane crash, he still needed to look around after crying to make certain no one had seen him.

  The moonlight crept in as Joshua fell asleep and dozed for a time. When he woke, he could see the desert around him quite clearly. He sat up despite the pain when he saw shapes moving in the distance, far to the left of the pyramids. He realized that the shapes were people. Survivors, he thought to himself. Joshua got up and began walking. It took him some time to muster the energy as he hobbled toward the shapes, but eventually he let out a yell. None of them moved. He figured he must still be too far away, so he kept stumbling through the sand.

  He ran into something he couldn't see and fell down onto his rear-end.

  Joshua shook his head and got back up, started walking in the same direction and again hit something hard enough it knocked him backwards. Whatever it is, Joshua thought, it has energy. That's what's knocking me down. He stood, reached out his hand and felt it, like static electricity. Reaching further, his hand encountered force that reacted in kind to the force he exerted.

  After some experimentation, Joshua realized he could walk toward the pyramids as far as he wanted, it seemed. But in certain directions away from the pyramids, toward the survivors, his way was blocked. He soon found his way back to where he'd crashed, righted the plane seat, moved it into the grass of the oasis and sat back down in it, utterly puzzled but in too much pain and too woozy to make any sort of decision about the entire thing.

  He simply gazed toward the pyramids, somewhat dumbfounded, having survived what he'd never planned to survive in the first place.

  Part Four: The Dragon

  The rumbling of the earth woke Joshua from his reverie. The palm trees shook around him, the sand shook, the very matter beneath his feet was being shifted somehow. Joshua sat ramrod straight. He looked toward the pyramids. With a sound like thunder, toward the pyramids, somewhere in between himself and them, the earth flew upward; sand flew in all directions and hard earth also flew upward into the night sky.

  Joshua couldn't help the words escaping from his mouth.

  "Holy shit," he said out loud.

  A human-like hand the size of a full sized pickup truck blasted up from the earth. Joshua watched in awe as the clearly humanoid hand began to change its shape and features right before his eyes. The fingers twisted and the two middle fused together, he could hear the sound of gigantic joints and bones cracking from where he stood. The fingernails turned into great talons. The skin was being quickly covered by scaly tissue; black and deep red in color. Neither his ears nor mind could make out what sorts of sounds the monster made. The sounds were inhuman. Joshua could think of no other word.

  Suddenly the entire monstrosity began to pull itself up from out of the earth, dust and debris flying upwards for what looked to Joshua to be miles. It did look like a man to Joshua, albeit a man that was around fifty feet tall. But that 'man' had wings. They spread so far and tall that it made Joshua's head ache trying to deal with the unimaginable sight in front of him. He thought about all the Hollywood films he'd seen. Not even the best of the best had come close to seeing a Titan like that blasting its way from the deep below.

  The sand and debris flew high into the night sky, glinting at times in the moon light and Joshua watched as
what had emerged and looked like a human angel transformed into a dragon, one twice as long as the angel was tall. The wings lost their elegance and began twisting into leathery things, the angel's human head twisted, elongated and malformed itself into something reptilian but aware and its arms and legs shifted until the angel no longer stood on two legs but now pounded the earth with four.

  The Dragon reared its head on a neck newly made long and roared into the sky. The sound made Joshua's ears bleed instantly and he shoved his hands over them, doing everything but actually burying his head in the sand to escape the terrible sound. With his hands still on his ears, Joshua whirled toward where the survivors walked in the distance.

  None had turned. None had heard or seen the angel morph into the Dragon.

  So at least I know, Joshua thought to himself, that I have, in fact, gone mad.

  As he looked back at the Dragon, his stomach sank into his shoes and his heart pounded in his chest: the Dragon looked his way. One leg lifted high into the sky and when it came back down to earth, Joshua watched as his airplane seat toppled over. But he was frozen. How does one run from such a thing, he wondered.

  In the sky above and to the right of the Dragon, there was a moment when Joshua saw something flash and then a round portion of the sky became instantly crisper, sharper and darker and something flew right through the middle of the phenomena. He watched something shoot from the sky like a comet, right for the Dragon. The monster reared back and Joshua realized the Dragon, too, saw the object and was trying to shift its own footing. All too late, as a blow struck the Dragon's head hard enough that the creature was instantly knocked to the dirt of the desert floor. Joshua fell down because of the shockwave of the Dragon hitting the earth so hard.

  Part Five: Battle or: Making a Point

  Joshua stood up and backed up, falling over backwards onto his own plane seat, which he kicked and cursed. Then Joshua continued to back up instinctively, looking back only once to see the palm tree was big enough. He ducked behind it, never once tearing his eyes away from the view. Joshua knew he was terrified yet he knew he was also too transfixed to care. He actually found himself laughing. What was going on in front of his eyes was something he'd dreamed of for as long as he could remember.

  The plane crash (including the pain that went with it) washed away in his mind as he watched the Dragon getting up. When the Titan spoke, though terrified, Joshua could not say he was surprised.

  "You," it said in a voice Joshua wasn't certain he could fully comprehend. The register was so low, the volume so loud that he had a suspicion his own mind was simply doing the best it could to translate the sound. Stones on the pyramid began rolling ever downward from the top, so many that Joshua wondered if even they could be left standing. He thought maybe he understood the weird force he'd encountered.

  Joshua looked in the direction the Dragon faced and saw a giant of a man, though one not nearly so big as the Dragon had been before transforming. This man looked to Joshua to be between twenty and thirty feet in height. The absurdity of the whole thing made him laugh. They sent the short guy? This is the short guy? he thought to himself. The man had no wings that he could see. But the sword in his hands was something to behold. And clearly the man was only holding it for ceremonial purposes at the moment. The Dragon had not been cut. That had been a fist striking the Dragon. The man leaned on his sword and seemed, to Joshua, utterly without fear.

  "Me, indeed, Dragon," the man said. Again, Joshua had to simply assume his mind was deciphering the sound of the Titan and the demigod as best it could. It was a sound alien to him entirely; the depth was far below even a basso profundo choir, yet he could register those tones, something he knew his ears really couldn't do. He tried to get the thought out of the way and just hear them.

  "It is my time," the Dragon hissed. "Not yours. Not yet. Begone." The Dragon swished its tale as it spoke.

  "I am here only to give you a message, Azazel."

  Joshua watched, amazed, as the man sheathed the mighty sword and crossed his arms. That doesn't seem too smart, Joshua thought, then laughed at the thought.

  "And what is THAT," the Dragon howled. Then the Titan lunged at the demigod. The man's fist met the Dragon between the eyes and again there was a residual shockwave. Joshua nearly jumped out of his skin when a coconut fell from the palm tree he hid behind.

  The Dragon was clearly hurt and embarrassed. It shook off the hit and met the angel in the eyes. "Give me your message, then. I have work to be done!"

  For a few brief moments there was a holdout, the demigod sending a message through a moment of silence. And then the man spoke up:

  "In a manner of speaking, Dragon, I'm doing just that."

  Then the man again hit the Dragon. This time hard enough to send the creature up onto its hind legs. It had been ready and met the demigod with burning fire on the way back down.

  But the man was already out of the way. He whirled and caught the Dragon easily and threw the creature down into its back, shaking the world again. Joshua risked a quick look back. To his shock, there were rescue vehicles---both airborne and land---helping the survivors. Flashlight beams darted the landscape where the moon light did not hold sway. But not one, single person appeared to see what he was witnessing. Joshua would have been unable to believe his eyes, had there not been a Dragon and, for all intents and purposes to him, a god, fighting a terrifying skirmish in front of his eyes.

  Despite being dumbfounded by it all, Joshua could understand that this fight was not a real battle. At least, not in the sense of the victor necessarily changing the course of the defeated's trajectory once the fight ended.

  There was a blast of sound, like a whirring of an engine. No, Joshua thought, two engines or more. To his left he looked up and another plane was coming down, headed for the darkness beyond the pyramids. He heard the Dragon speak.

  "Save them, savior! Isn't that what you do?" The Dragon began to laugh, expecting the man to release him. Instead the man tightened his grip on the Dragon's neck.

  "I am not Him, at least, not in that sense. And I am not here to save them. Their choice was made upon boarding."

  "I'll bet they don't know of your cruelty," the Dragon rumbled. He stretched out the last word into a breath. Behind the Titan and the demigod, the plane exploded into the night, orange flames casting the largest pyramid into shadow. "And is that not His sword in your hand again, ready to slay the Dragon?"

  The man actually laughed. He looked down at the sword, then held it high, then sheathed it. "It is indeed His sword. But I did not come to slay you."

  "Then," hissed Azazel, "tell me your message, Michael, for it is you, is it not, if not Him?"

  Again the man laughed. "No, not quite him, either, Dragon."

  The Dragon swung its tail hard, bringing it around onto the back of the man's head. It was an unexpected blow which sent all twenty plus feet of him flying into the largest pyramid, his head striking the ancient stone with a clap like thunder, and Joshua feared the man dead instantly. Instead, he slid down the pyramid and hit his haunches, immediately righting himself into a sitting position. His laughter echoed through a valley of Kings. Joshua watched as the Dragon's face rearranged into pure rage.

  Joshua had to admit: he hadn't had so much terrifying fun since that time he'd gone and jumped out of a perfectly good plane. Suffice it to say, that act would never happen again. But he thought that he'd attend another experience like this just about any time he was invited. So long as the invitation didn't require a plane crashing with him inside of the plane.

  Even then...

  His reverie was again jostled away by his vision detecting a very large chunk of stone heading his way. There was nothing else to do but duck. He dropped to the ground and heard a crack, followed by a ripping, tearing sound, followed by a rush of air. He removed his arms from his head and looked up.

  A stump and thousands of fibers were in front of him now, in place of the palm tree. He quickly scanned the la
nd behind him and saw an outcropping of rock and ran to it. It was about five feet tall. There was nothing going to save him if more debris was hurled at him at that size and speed. Not even a natural rock wall.

  But Joshua felt safer, and that was enough for him.

  The Titan and the (Joshua figured he was some kind of angelic being, anyway) angel stopped discussing things and began trading blows. The Dragon was formidable, using all of itself against the angel; its fire and wind, its physical strength as well as pestilence and plague; the poison in its lungs which it could transmute into vicious fire at will. It hurled it all toward the angel in a burning rage. The earth shook beneath them, beneath Joshua and he watched hundreds of stones rolling down the pyramid, things dropped from the trees all around him. The Dragon put on one hell of a show.

  And yet the angel never drew his sword. He fought back every attack from the Dragon as though he knew each one before the move was acted out. The Dragon only became more infuriated as the angel laughed, narrowly missing blow after blow from the twisted monster. The earth shook more and Joshua thought once that he actually saw a star from heaven fall to the earth during the battle.

  Yet the angel kept the Dragon from destroying everything around it just as the Dragon protected the pyramids.

  "Why do you fight," the Dragon howled, "WHAT IS IT BETWEEN ME AND THEE, whoever thou art?"

  At this, the angel dealt a final blow that opened the earth from beneath the Dragon that stretched only a hundred yards or so from Joshua's feet.

  The Dragon fell, not dead, just hurt. The angel flipped it onto its back, air from the act rushing all the way to Joshua's face. He smelled things on that air that were foul and things that were wonderful. His mind threatened to give. Joshua felt himself about to black out from all of the stimuli and so he said four words into the night, "Not yet, please, no..." He snapped his head up and watched as the angel placed his foot on the Dragon's neck.