Revelation

sleep the night away — and perhaps a good portion of the day as well. I stifled a jaw-cracking yawn, leaning up against Anna for support.

That’s when she fell down into the xenofungus.

“Anna!”

I knelt on my knees, finding Anna’s eyes closed. Was she asleep?

That’s when I noticed that Michael and Makara were also dreary-eyed.

Through the haze, I could think of only one other time I had felt this way — at the entrance to Bunker 114, where the xenofungus had released sleeping spores. But — this wasn’t supposed to be affecting us. We were wearing gas masks.

Apparently, the masks were not enough. These things had found a way to beat them.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

As Samuel tried to wake up Anna, Makara and Michael nodded dully, just now reacting to what I had said. I looked upward, noticing that the spindly limbs at the top of the spire were shaking in the breeze. No, not in the breeze. There was no wind, at least not now. They were shaking of their own will, and what fell from them was a fine, glowing dust that was percolating into the air. It was covering everything — the fungus, my clothes.

My hands.

That was how, then. The thought barely registered as I fell to my knees. I twisted my torso in order to call for help from the men guarding us. But none of them were there. It was then that I noticed that they, too, had fallen to the fungus.

I realized, then, that this was the end. We would fall asleep, and never wake up. I held Anna, her long, soft hair fanning out over my arms. Her eyes were still closed. Above I heard a rustle, not from the wind, but from the spire as it continued to rain the glowing dust onto us.

Michael was next to fall to the fungus with a thud. Makara and I locked eyes for a moment before her gaze faded. She folded to the ground, collapsing to the fungus.

I looked upward once more, my vision fading. As I snuggled against Anna, the top of that ominous spire was the last thing I saw before darkness overwhelmed me.

* * *

What followed was a darkness so long and absolute that I couldn’t be sure how long it lasted. Days. Weeks. Months? Surely not that long, but if it had been months, it would have made no difference in my perception of it. I drifted between consciousness and dreams, or dreams and death. I was in no state to tell the difference between one and the other. I saw alien images and colors that I could have never imagined on Earth. I was a flying bird, zooming across a pink landscape under a bright sun and purple sky, over faded ruins of a far-future Earth where the xenovirus had already taken over everything. I swam in deep, warm water, where I could see the xenovirus evolving, billions of years ago, in a primordial, alien sea, on a planet orbiting a star countless light years away. Where did it come from, this xenovirus? Were these dreams a message, or were they the imaginings of the sleeping spores?

Something Samuel said, seemingly an eternity ago, came to me:

Foolish thing — to run into a xenofungal field without the proper breathing equipment. If I hadn’t come along, you would have been dead. Or worse.

We did have the proper breathing equipment, but the spores must have gotten in some other way, through my skin. Through the fog of dreams I remembered the glowing dust settling on my hands. But this thought slipped from my mind as sand slips through a crack. It just didn’t seem important, now. Not anymore. I saw the effects of the xenovirus, infecting a thousand worlds across our galaxy. Why was it doing this? Why was it expanding? Why did it want to destroy everything?

Or did it want to save it?

I didn’t know where this thought came from. All the same, it felt…right. But it couldn’t be right. It was killing us, all life. It turned humans into ravaging monsters. It was twisting animals into warped versions of themselves. And some creatures, like the xenodragons and crawlers, did not seem to be of Earthly origin at all. How could it be saving us if it was killing us?

It was a wonder that I could comprehend anything when my head felt so addled. In my dreams I found a conscious lucidity that was hard to explain. I felt I suddenly knew everything there was to know, and that this knowledge would disappear as soon as I awoke. It was hard to tell if this was a feeling, or if it was the truth. It felt like the truth. These swirling dreams were my new reality, and that waking itself was but a distant dream. I found myself not caring, either way. Strange as it might sound, this question wasn’t important at the moment. What was important was discovery, of finding answers to all the questions that had been haunting me ever since the xenovirus killed everyone I held dear.

I walked forward, finding myself on Earth again. I was in the Great Blight, walking toward a line of hills under a boiling, crimson sky. At the top of one of the hills, a lone figure stood, brown cloak and hood swirling in the wind. I walked toward him, unnaturally fast, my gait seeming to take me a mile with each step. The man turned, and walked away — to the north.

I followed, and was soon running. I wanted to scream at him to wait, but no words came. Instead, I ran, fueled by a panic I didn’t understand. If I lost him, I felt all was lost. Somehow, I knew catching up with the man would help me discover all the answers to the questions that had been maddening me for so long. I sprinted, finally making headway. The miles melted behind as I charged north, across flat plains spread evenly with xenofungus, past copses of deadened trees cocooned in pink growth and dripping slime. I passed lakes and rivers of pink fluid that cut their paths through the fungus, some of the liquid funneling into tiny crevices within the surface, dripping down, who knew how far. I ran and ran through thick, pink trees growing claustrophobically close. Then, as I burst from the trees, there was the man, standing at the top of a ridge.

I climbed the ridge, and walked up to stand beside him. Something told me not to look at him. Not yet. Instead, I stared straight ahead. I saw that I wasn’t on top of a ridge. The ridge made a wide circle, round and round, like a rim, until it was lost to my sight. A bowl spread out before me, so wide that all of its edges were lost to sight.

Ragnarok Crater.

Within that crater I saw nothing but an empty field of pink, countless rocks and boulders, covered with the xenofungus. No, not rocks and boulders. They were the fragments of Ragnarok. An entire, fiery mountain had crashed down from Heaven, had rent itself into Earth, had created Hell. Sometimes, I wondered if it really had fallen down, the Rock — if the world really had ended like this, or if it was only one massive lie, designed to keep all of us Bunker dwellers underground. From what I saw before me, it was all too real. Though I knew this was a dream, in my lucidity, I knew that this existed. This was real.

Swarms of flyers spiraled out from hidden holes in the ground, from between the cracks of crumbled, jagged mountains. Moving out of their holes, at lightning speed, were crawlers — thousands of them. With high and painful shrieks, they charged toward where the man and I now stood.

The man half-turned to me. “This is the fate of the world should you fail, Alex.”

That voice. I could not place it, though it sounded so familiar — both in its tone and seriousness. At first, I thought it was my father. I don’t know where this thought came from. Then, with realization, I remembered where I had heard it.

It all hinges on you, Alex. You have wondered, more than once, what your place is here. I am telling you now. Without you, this mission will fail. Without you, the world will fall and everyone will die.

I could finally find my words and speak.

“You are the Wanderer.”

I turned to look at him, but the Wanderer’s face was masked in shadow. The terrain had somehow become dimmer, the clouds thicker, and the darkness deeper. The Wanderer gave a slight smile, nodding in wordless reply. From my position, only his right eye was visible. It was completely white.

I stepped away. He was one of them.

But something kept me from running, even as the swarm of flyers and monsters rolled toward us in a Blighted tide, white eyes glowing. Though his eyes were white, he wasn’t on their side. Though infected with the xenovirus, he was not a Howler. He had not fallen under the xenovirus’s spell. He was