The Revelation of the Vine: Graft

Chapter 26 From Nonsense to the Mountain

  The syllables began to change again, forming new and even stranger words, yet somehow, they seemed to make more sense, like the confusion of it all was the answer itself. I didn t even try to make sense of them anymore. I just listened to the waves of new and ever-changing words. Time had lost all meaning, as I listened to wave after wave. I suddenly felt myself dropping. Then I swung backward, up, over, and around, like I was caught in an undertow. I swirled around in nothing, as the waves of syllables crashed over me like a roaring sea of nonsense. A sudden light shattered through the darkness, as a logical word broke through the barrier of madness. You . . . It was the sweetest sound. Like a mother's song on a stormy night. It comforted me, and I felt warmth as I swirled. I felt like a baby, curled up in the fetal embrace of the womb. I heard a heartbeat in the nothing, the opening and closing of valves and the pumping of blood vessels through vein systems. Up . . . Another word, filled to the brim with reason. I lapped it up into my mind like a dehydrated dog finding a puddle of water in a desert. I grew stronger, and felt cartilage, and flesh, and sinew begin to form and grow. The sense of a simple word, two letters long, made me begin to feel real again. Get . . . I hardened. Bones, joints, marrow; all of my being began to condense into solid forms. I felt a body, but not my own. I tried to push away, suddenly feeling terrified. Who was this? Who was I? I tried to kick out of the swirl, but nothing happened. There was nothing to cause momentum. I was stuck in the spiral. To . . . I flailed my limbs in the emptiness, and began to feel disoriented, as I united with the strange body. I struggled with my consciousness, fighting to reject the host. This isn't me. I tried to remember the strange syllables, tried to bring them back to the nothing. They made more sense. Need . . . A spark erupted in the nothing, and a vortex of lights, colors, and sounds opened in front of me and then warped around me like a whirlpool. It sucked me free from the spin of the undertow, as I slid feet first through the center. A tunnel of lights enveloped me as I traveled through the swirling visions. I suddenly began to hear a faint clap, and it grew louder and louder. It vibrated the walls of the vortex, as it crashed into me from above. I felt it hitting me, like a slap on the cheek, first softly then growing in strength with each wave. The fourth wave slapped me out of the vortex, and I felt myself rise through the endless nothing. I heard the syllables again, and suddenly felt safe. They sounded louder than before and were carried by a definitively masculine voice that seemed familiar. Vir . . . gil . . . I recognized the word. A familiar word: the most familiar word I could think of. I waited for it to come again, but I felt myself stop rising and the voice no longer came in waves. I felt air moving around me; felt a sudden surge forward, and a hand slap my cheek. "Come on, V." I heard the voice say. There was another forward surge, and another slap on the cheek. "Wake up, Virgil." Everything suddenly came rushing back. I was Virgil Lemniscata, Captain of the Knights of the Vine. I opened my eyes, and a blur of purple light passed by my downturned face, as I hung between hands that held me by my limbs. I shook my head and blinked the blurriness from my eyes. The blurs of light I noticed turned out to be the sheets that the Vine-Skip had turned the small sparks on the floor into. The knights were still carrying me to the mountain. I picked my head up to look ahead of us, as Jurgen, Feng, Sol, and Falkir carried me. The mountain path was dead ahead. A strange feeling lingered in my stomach when the Vine-Skip ended. The environs of the mountain's base focused into view, and the stretching bands of light shrank back to normal, thin arcs that traveled along the ground in intersecting lines that a purple and black grid. A violent rush of barks, and howls on the wind pulled me back to the moment. "Captain," voices called, and I realized I was lying on the ground where I had been released from their grip. "Bloody Shadow," I coughed, and a small cheer rose from the group, "I feel like I got hit by a Krinjan Unihorn." "You look like it," Jurgen said smiling, "But then again, you always did." The smile faded quickly as he looked behind him to the growing stampede cloud on the horizon. "Have you guys ever even seen a Unihorn?" Jeizen asked. His voice was cool like a soft breeze with a hint of a Krinjite accent. "Once or twice," I lifted myself to my feet, feeling the sharp prick of pins-and-needles in my legs, and rubbed my thighs to calm them. "Never been attacked by one, though I imagine it would probably be a lot worse than this." We laughed. "The crazy beasts are going to slam right into the face of the mountain," Jurgen remarked, as he turned his head back around. "Let's not be here when it happens, then," I said, and the prick in my legs began to fade, as the moment of laughter was cut short. "I second that notion," Tenbu stated, looking toward the snaking path that carved its way up the jagged face of the mountain. It climbed through a ridge of switchbacks, similar to the one by the cliff that brought us down into valley, until it faded into the mist, and from there it was a literal maze of webbed paths.