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Short Fat Stubby Finger Stories PRESENTS:

THE Night OF the DARKNESS

By Tony Stewart

LEGENDS: Linked to EPISODE 14 (4)

His head still pulsating slightly, his thoughts still undecided, Johann took a deep breath before letting out a sigh … then finally emitted the words that Arkerious had been keenly awaiting.  

   “How can I refuse such a rewarding and complimentary offer?  Go forth, young man … and do battle with Devils and Demons for your love of your country and your world … and the entire universe for that matter … or should I say universes.”   He stated with a broad grin, “But what about the committee, how could I of use to them with no memory of Rangor?”

   “There will be no problem.   Your prime minister will eventually give you background information on a situation which I haven’t yet revealed to you.  This situation can certainly be investigated in your own environment: your own department; your own personnel, but in the course of time you will realise that you need outside help – which is where Joseph will enter the scene at your request.   The two events are expected, eventually, to be found to be linked: Rangor, and the new situation to come.  Your involvement in this new incident will eventually help you in making future decisions, especially those involving Joseph.   Your involvement in this new event is also the reason for the committee seeing the need to incorporate you and your expertise into their team.   Your induction into the committee is the catalyst to your eventual teaming up with Joseph.  And that is all that you need to know about this particular event.   The rest will fall in to place in the future … all going well.”

   “So much for optimism, well let’s get on with the lessons,”   Johann said, happy now that he felt that he fully understood the reason for his being where he was, and why he being subjected to all things wild and weird.”  

   “Thank you, Johann.   Now prepare yourself to further your education, and perhaps this lesson could save your life sometime in the future.”   Arkerious said rather gaily, and not for the first time since they had first met Johann saw a lighter side of Arkerious as he winked on completion of the sentence.  Johann had no idea whether or not Arkerious’s suggestion was to be considered with any serious thought, but the wink had convinced him that it wasn’t, so he said nothing, but gave Arkerious a reciprocal smile.

   Arkerious then indicated for Johann to look directly into his eyes and as soon as he did Johann felt a slight queasiness in his stomach.  The discomfort lasted but a second, however it made him squeeze his eyes closed shut … and when he opened them he found himself looking not at the inside of the building on Earth where they had been monitoring the events of a day in the life of Joseph Jacobson, or even at the Prime Minster’s residence, but at what at first appeared to be a desert on the edge of a jungle.

   “Where are we?”   Johann asked in surprise, slightly bewildered at the sudden change in scenery.

   “We are on the planet Angoria, an inhabited planet, located thirty million miles from Earth one, but in the second parallel line,”   Arkerious replied in a tone that immediately reminded Johann of the guided tour of the Natural History and Science museums and the National Art gallery that he had undertaken when showing Harry Johnston the sights of London.   Pleasant memories of Harry resurfaced, and the visit to the famous sites took prominence in his mind.   It had seemed to have been the perfect place to have taken Harry … he had seemed so beguiled by every single aspect of the cultural repositories … especially in the art gallery where he was so taken aback by the complexity and beauty of the art that passed through his eyes on their way to his heart.   Johann could feel almost a child-like awakening in the man as he watched his new friend absorb the world as seen and described through the eyes and paintbrushes  of others … it had been as if Harry was seeing the beauty of art for the first time in his life.   Johann had put this unusual characteristic of an otherwise apparently well educated and cultured man down to an accidental oversight in his upbringing in America, perhaps he was initially raised in a small town in one of the more rural states, before moving to a more enlightened city in pursuit of his education.   But never for one minute did he suspect that Harry was seeing art for the first time because he was an android – another detail in his lessons on ‘all that was unbelievable’ that he was still coming to grips with.  

   “Please pay attention, my friend, this is an important lesson.”  Arkerious continued, his voice snapping Johann’s mind back to the present once again, “Where we are going shortly will become so deeply entrenched in your memory that even after I have placed the other things that you have seen and heard today deep into your sub-conscious, to be brought to the surface only by my hands, in a manner of speaking, the fear that your mind will encounter where we are going will, more-than-likely, be so strong, so near the surface of your emotional state of mind that it will occasionally rise out of your sub-conscious and metamorphose into nightmares while you sleep.  

   It will not be the horror of the scene that confronts you when we enter the cave that will seep into your thoughts, for all going well there will be nothing to see, but it is the foreboding depth of loss and despair the cave emits that will make your blood run cold; the stench of death that floats through the corridors that will fill your mind and heart with terror.   For your own peace of mind remember that you are not here physically – you cannot be hurt or seen.   Your presence will not be known, but that will not protect you from the aura that fills the cavern; from the aura that will chill your heart.   Making you face such soul destroying horrors is not something that I take lightly, but I can assure that it is imperative that you encounter this fear … and retain it … and then let time harden you to it.”

   “You would make a great tourist guide in a haunted house, Arkerious.”  Johann commented with a nervous laugh, “I am glad that I don’t scare easy.”

   “I am certain that you don’t, Johann,” Arkerious replied, “but please remember what I said.    You are safe being here on this planet, at this point of time at least.    Shall we go?”

   Johann looked hard at Arkerious, again uncertain at the phrasing of his words, but finally decided to take it as a joke.   “I certainly am, oh myth maker and traveller of the dark worlds.   But from where do we seek this evil of the night?”

   “Do you see the smoke rising in the distance?”   Arkerious pointed to somewhere in the far distance, but the expansive, possibly impassable green, red and blue world that lay before them made it hard for Johann to initially see anything but the high foliage and the many strange looking trees that contributed to the density of the jungle.

   It took him several seconds to locate the wispy, blue smoke rising slowly upward from somewhere beyond the thick, red, blue, and threatening, foliage that lay before him. 

   “Yes, I see it.   Is that where we are going?”  

   “Yes.”

   Johann looked at the jungle that lay in front of him with trepidation.   Tall metallic-black coloured stilts of unknown substance loomed high and thick on both sides of the dark, shadowy, red and black foliage lined, single walkway that was to be their passageway to their destination.  The strange tree-shaped things rose high into the sky; their girth ranging somewhere between one and fifty feet, with long, leafless, limb type extensions that ran outwards from the body for an expansion of between ten and forty feet depending upon the height and width of the tree like thing; limbs that constantly popped red, yellow and orange sparks into the air – with each spark followed by a small puff of a rusty coloured smoke that slowly floated down to the earth below.   The smoke that came from each limb was not of great volume, but its flight to the ground was so slow that the various puffs became entangled to such a degree that is was almost impossible to have a clear vision of where the forest ended, and what lay beyond it.   A path, Johann considered, possibly inundated with spiders, and other equally creepy crawlies things hiding in the shrubbery on both sides.  And as his thoughts began to turn to something of a nightmare Johann felt a shudder run over his entire body – this was definitely not somewhere where he would be happy trekking, he thought to himself.   “I suppose you simply zapping us to the spot where we are heading to, is out of the question then?”  He asked hopefully.

   “I am afraid so, Johann.   It is imperative that you take the full journey,”

   Johann was beginning to think he had been a tad impetuous when he had agreed to joining the committee and attending the rest of the lessons.   First it was something simple like being told that he was going to help fight a gigantic monster that had devoured the majority of the population of six universes over a million year period.   Next he received notification of incoming nightmares for forever and a day to look forward to, and now he was being invited to take a walk in the enchanted forest with black widows and tarantulas lying in wait for his arrival.   ‘And the grasshoppers and crickets will likely most likely dine on the remnants, he thought, ‘Definitely not my cup of tea.  Arkerious, you can read my mind,’ he thought to himself as he tried telepathy to convince his friend to conceive a different approach to their destination, ‘don’t you realise that I am on the verge of suffering from arachnophobia?’

   “I don’t read it all the time, Johann.” 

   Johann turned to look at his mentor to find him to be even more human-like, judging by the huge smile on his face.   “This is serious, Arkerious,” Johann retorted, “I have no problem admitting my fear of all things creepy and crawly.”   But the infectious smile on Arkerious’s face made it impossible for Johann to complain any more.   “Come on, McDuff … let’s get moving.”  Johann said with a fake growl as he tried to hide the smile from his own face.  

   The two men simultaneously began their journey side by side, but very shortly, to Johann’s delight, Arkerious assumed the front position as the already narrow path became tighter and tighter, the jungle darker … and then the noise began.

   At first it had been a soft rustle, like a small mouse, or even a large cricket or grasshopper, scurrying about in a leafy underlay, though whether or not leaves did or did not lie under the hedges was a mute point because the foliage was far too thick to give the casual observer any idea at all what gathered where its roots met the ground.   And to make the uneasiness felt by Johann. P. Biggs even more harrowing, the sound seemed even more amplified by the serenity and silence that otherwise surrounded them as they walked.   When they had first begun their journey the strange, oddly beautiful, foliage that fenced the trail on both sides had been only ankle high where it had lain, but now, as they moved forward, deeper into the jungle, it had begun to get taller and taller – to the point it had almost risen to a height slightly higher than themselves and was beginning to snake its way up and across the top of the trail in its attempt to meet in the middle and create a natural trellis, thus cutting off any vision of what lay behind it – ahead of it – or on top of it.

   Johann’s nerves were on edge, a response to the combined feeling of fear that accompanied the unsettling, unseen, sound that walked with them every step of the way, and the claustrophobic reaction he was encountering as a result of the narrow, ever-growing, ever-darkening corridor they were following.   And when the sound of the rustling bushes increased multi-fold he could feel the hackles rising on the back of his neck and sweat beginning to dampen his shirt, but he said nothing, and nor did Arkerious as they travelled deeper and deeper into the unknown.

   However, despite the anxiety that increasingly threatened to take over his sanity; despite the challenge his brain was facing as one part of his mind continually did its best to convince the other parts to request Arkerious to return to Earth – immediately, Johann somehow found an inner strength to deal with his newly found, slowly growing, demons.   And as the two men travelled they did so in silence.   Lost in their individual worlds, their thoughts uninterrupted by anything other than the constant sound that had followed them for what Johann deemed to be a distance of three miles.   Three, long, fear-provoking, miles along the dark, brooding, track that ran between the seemingly endless red and blue naturally fenced path that led to their destination.   And every step of the way was accompanied by the rustling in the bushes.

   “Just what is making all that noise in the bushes, Arkarious?,”   A perplexed Johann finally asked, uncertain whether or not he really wanted an answer.

   “It is alright, my friend,” Arkerious replied, “remember, you cannot be seen or heard, though you may be sensed.   However, in order to help you relax, the noise is simply ants on the move.”

   “Ants?”   Johann could not get a grip on the answer, feeling he must have misheard, or misinterpreted, something in Arkerious’s reply.    “Ants?  He repeated.

   “Yes, Johann … ants”

    “How big are they, because they sound a lot louder than anything that I have ever heard on Earth.   In fact I don’t think that I have ever heard an ant moving.”

   “It is not the size of the ants, Johann, it is the volume.   Compared to the ants on Earth they are perhaps a little bigger, but there are probably around five hundred thousand of them on the march towards the feeding grounds which is why they are making so much noise.”

   “Five hundred … five hundred thousand …ants?”

   “Just keep walking, Joahnn – we’re almost there.”

   Arkerious’s reply was hard for Johann to swallow considering the volume of the noise, but he could see no reason to mistrust Arkerious.  Out of despair he brushed both the question and the answer aside inside his mind and, as he walked, Johann allowed his mind to wander back over all that he had seen, had heard, and had been both intrigued and intimidated by over the past three and a half hours.   For, upon glancing at his wrist watch, he realised the enormity of what had been covered in such a relative short time.   And then he began to give thought to his future … and what might be expected from it, for he realised too easily that the way Arkerious was playing the game, he would most likely find himself involved in much more than he could ever visualise.   He also realised that whatever he became involved in sometime in the future – it would not be without great risk.  To Johann’s way of thinking the things that Arkerious had spoken about; alluded to; shown him, was not simply a tourist guide’s introduction to the universes in general.   ‘No,’ he thought, ‘there was a wide ranging reason for everything shown and spoken about’; and he wondered if he dared attempt to conjure up thoughts of exactly what was to come.

   Johann’s attempts to remember all that he had been told and shown eventually began to dominate his mind.   Soon the rustle caused by five hundred thousand ants as they moved their three million feet over the dead leaves began to fade away into the distance, until the sound was no more important than the light breeze that appeared to flow gently through the dark-red and blue bushes that had grown ever-upwards on either side of the walkway, and had now somehow managed to merge in the middle – as if on a trellis several feet over the visitor’s heads.   The two visitors were now fully enclosed in a natural built tunnel.   A tunnel so narrow and so seemingly long that to a claustrophobic it could cause a disastrous, agonising, final feeling of anxiety; the final fear factor inserted into a war of nerves that the planet had thrown at the uninvited visitor with all the vigour it could muster.   But for Johann’s current mind set it was the most perfect gift that nature could give to help in steadying his jangled nerves; the subdued, filtered light that flickered constantly through the leafy roof and walls gave the walkway a soft, gentle feeling of enclosure and safety    .

   His mind wandered aimlessly over a hundred memories which resulted in a thousand questions being crammed inside his already overworked brain, and he worried inwardly that every question answered would produce another three questions.   ‘They would breed like rabbits inside my head,’ he thought worriedly to himself.   ‘No, I can’t keep doing this.   This is not going to do anything but bring on a migraine. I need to sleep on it all.   Let my mind have total control and it will do its thing.   By morning all should be revealed.’  And it was in that very instant of thought that Johann realised he had another paradox on his plate, for he remembered what was going to happen when he did return to Earth.   He needed sleep to deal with all that he had seen and learnt, but sleep, in this instance, would do the opposite of what he wanted – because it would close off all memories until they were awoken by time and Arkerious.   Once again Johann’s brain began to pound unmercifully.

   “We are here.”   Arkerious called out as he stopped moving so quickly his lack of momentum almost caused a non-concentrating Johann to crash into him.

   “Please do not stop like that in the future, Arkerious,” Johann scalded in a slightly embarrassed tone as he attempted to regain both his balance, and his composure. “You frightened the life out of me … and what the hell is that in front of us?”   

   At a point around fifty feet from where they had stopped, the soft, red and blue walls with its yellowish tinged matting that had been their enclosure for the past three miles disappeared, along with the jungle and the haze creating tree-like things.  What they now headed towards was a brightly lit field similar to many on Earth on a fine, sunny day.   Johann’s mind had been engrossed in his memories and thoughts as he had walked through the tunnel; so engrossed in all that he had seen and been told that he had failed to notice that the path was coming to an end at that point, and it was taking his mind some time to come to grips with the beautiful, serene scene that now lay before his eyes.

   As he and Arkerious reached the spot where the trail ended and stepped out of the tunnel and onto the field, Johann’s eyes momentarily closed shut, such was the pressure placed on them by the intensity of the sunshine compared to the subdued light that had been their guide for the past half mile or so.   But when, a second later, as his eyes again began to adjust to the brightness, instead of welcoming the beauty and freedom of space that an open field of soft green grass and occasional patches of yellow and red flowers offered, he gave his full and undivided attention to a point around fifteen feet from where they were now standing where a thick layer of something multi-coloured – something green, silver, blue, gold, black, red and white, almost twenty feet thick extended inwards onto the field.    And then, as his eyes began to follow the length of the strangely arranged colours, he quickly began to realise it was not a straight line that his eyes followed, but a perfect circle which he estimated to be around half a mile in diameter.   And in the very centre of the circle stood one hundred, what he assumed to be, rather large, but equal in size, pit holes with ridges rising around two feet in height encircling the edges.  However the usage, the reason for the existence, of these uniformly positioned structures did not immediately reveal itself to him.  There was no housing or mechanical devices in the area which discounted any form of mining, and the land around it showed no sign of wear and tear so he assumed that no vehicles had travelled around them in recent times, but, never-the-less, judging by their symmetrical layout, they had been purposely manufactured, he decided, regardless of the fact that he could not see the depth of the pits from where he stood. 

   ‘Just another mystery to add to today’s list of all things strange and weird,’ he thought to himself, ‘and I can add that strange reddish strip of land to the list as well.’ he noted, as his eyes suddenly beheld a reasonably large area of the field located not too far from the pits.   The area that now held his attention was roughly several hundred yards square, and an unusual, rusty, reddish colour which was completely out of character with the topography of the field with its otherwise lush coating of green.   Johann found the geographical anomaly interesting, but decided that he had enough on his plate already, saw no reason to question nature’s strange quirks, and took his mind back to the outer ring, and the unusual colours that dominated the main area of his vision,

   They were not wild flowers or bushes that had been grouped together in a wild and woolly fashion over the centuries by nature, birds and the wind, but colours that glistened like highly polished jewels in the bright sun – and the thousands upon thousands of vibrant colours that sparkled from the vast, exposed area very well could have been emitting from jewels strewn upon the ground – had it not been for the fact that the ‘jewels’ seemed to be moving.

   And as Johann strained his eyes to make sense of what they were taking in, a light began to glow inside his head, and he asked his question in disbelief at his own assumption of what he was looking at.   “Are they the ants that accompanied us?”   He asked in a dubious tone.

   “Yes,”   Arkerious replied, “they are very pretty, are they not?” 

   “They are a bit larger than I was expecting, but indeed … they are beautiful.  But what are they made of … crystal, perhaps?” Johann asked.  

   “In a manner of speaking,”   Arkerious replied, “Their bodies underwent a change several thousand years ago and as a result their skin hardened to this state.   But it does them no harm and they use the new armour to their advantage.”

   “Interesting,”   Johann admitted,   “Well, what do we do now?   Do we move on?   Go around the ants perhaps?   My god, that will take hours … there are thousands of them.”

   “Five hundred thousand … with more arriving by the minute,”   Arkerious clarified with a smile, “However, to your question, the answer is no … we wait.   Johann, I must give you a warning at this point.    You already have the ability to hear and see what is happening around you when we travel through space and time via my mind; you can move freely around any natural or man made structure that we visit, now I am going to adjust several more of your senses to give you access to further physical conditions in combination with what you currently have.   But please do not worry.  You may feel certain things, smell certain things that are far removed to what you encounter on a daily basis on Earth, but you will still be as safe as you are now.   It is entirely necessary for you to really feel the difference of another planet.   To accept the intake of different smells and the different reaction to things you thought to be familiar.  These things I have mentioned are but a few that are necessary for you to know about and accept so you do not get sidetracked when something out of the ordinary attempts to distract you in the future.   And may I suggest that you completely survey all before you at this very moment, remembering to take note of what you find – and record it in your memory banks.

   Again Johann regretted Arkerious’s apparent inability to speak in a more simplified manner, wishing he would stop with the cryptics and simply tell him what it was he wanted him to do.   But with a sigh he accepted the suggested action as it was intended – as a lesson, and attempted to comply with the request, doubting very much that he would be able to fit anything more inside his already overcrowded brain.  And as Johann’s eyes began the arduous task of perusing the mass of moving ants, his mind suddenly conceded recognition of the soft smoke emitting from the pits located in the middle of the circle.   The pits were still a bit of a mystery to him, or at least their existence was, for he could see no real reason for them.   There were no man made structures in the immediate locality so they weren’t there for mining and if they had been the result of a meteorite shower it would seem terribly co-incidental that they were all within an equal distance to each other and all appeared to be very similar in size and shape, if not perfectly … and everyone of them had smoke emitting from them which meant that every single one of them had a connection to whatever heating appliance burnt beneath the ground.   But he still could see no reason for their existence and put it down to a freak of nature, much the same as the beautiful ants that lived in the strange, unnerving wilderness he had just passed through.

   Johann was on the verge of asking Arkerious a few questions about what it was that he was looking for when he noticed the increased volume of the ants in the circle.  The quantities of ants were now doubling in size every second.  Soon, with the trebled, almost quadrupled, volume of ants of all colours almost literally joined at the hip, the imagery now presented to him reminded Johann of a mosaic or tapestry, with the irregular groupings of singular colours presenting an unexpected reproduction of the universe as he had seen it through Arkerious’s eyes earlier that day in the Prime Minister’s residence when they had first met.   Stars, planets, galaxies all appeared to be incorporated into the montage and Johann was mesmerised by it, and like the universe itself it seemed to be ever expanding as more and more ants arrived and became part of a living piece of art … and its beauty brought a tear to Johann’s eye.   However, for reasons unknown, Johann’s mind unfortunately picked that very moment to recall the rules that now governed his return to Earth, the rules that would banish all such memories from his mind.   But still he wished that remembering this beautiful scene would be an exception from the norm – something that he could at least see in a dream occasionally– ‘Much better than dreaming about caves which will be guaranteed to reform as nightmares’, he thought, but he refrained from saying anything aloud, and Arkerious refrained from saying anything at all – so Johann had no idea whether they had been linked at the time or not.

   Suddenly everything went deadly quiet.  The ants were now completely compressed into the one large, perfectly circular, mould that ran unbroken for several hundred yards deep – and nearly a mile in length around the outside perimeter of the smoking pits.   And for Johann, the silence had the same physic disturbance about it as had the noise that had accompanied them on their journey.  It was too quiet … much too quiet.   He was beginning to become agitated again and he knew not why, but he knew something was not quite right.  He could feel the hackles rising on the nape of his neck and sweat was forming on the back of his hands … yet there was nothing to hear … nothing to see … nothing to fear.

   Then, out of the blue, an unexpected increase to the wind began, escalating in minutes to what felt to be near cyclone strength to Johann.   Johann could now begin to understand what Arkerious had meant by an addition to his senses because, for the first time since they had begun this journey through space and time and story-telling, he could feel the elements; he could feel the wind that tore at his clothes, threatening to rip them off his body with one gust; a wind that blew so hard against his face it threatened to blast the skin until their was nothing but bare bone showing – and it also cast doubts on Arkerious’s assurances that it was only his mind that was on the planet.   It was strong for land wind, incredibly strong and Johann feared for his own safety lest something be thrown by the wind in his direction, or even worse the wind picked him up and threw him into one of the pits whose smoke was now blowing in all directions, and whose depth he still had no idea … nor did he have any idea what lay on the base of the pits … or if the emitting smoke was toxic, but he had noticed that the ants stayed far away from them.

   But the wind kept coming … and then a strange smell began to accompany the wind; a smell so strong that it threatened to over-power Johann.   “Well,”   Johann called out over the wind, almost choking in the effort, “my senses are working very well, thank you.   What is going on, Arkerious?”

   “Wait and watch, my friend,” Arkerious replied, his cloak and hood flapping wildly in the strong gusts, but his voice producing the image of a man who was completely unruffled by the wild weather, “… and have courage.   Remember you are safe, regardless of the air or the elements that surround you”

   “Watch and wait,”   Johann repeated sullenly, “have courage.   Do you think I am a child … what am I supposed to be frightened of … a few hundred thousand ants?   A bit of wind and a foul smell in the air – I don’t think so.”

   “I wasn’t talking about the ants, Johann, but perhaps you should be afraid of them.  After all, they are highly intelligent creatures.   They certainly have intelligence far greater than yours, and that is saying something, and that is why they are a protected planet – but they have one asset that makes them the most threatening life-force in the second universe – perhaps in all of the universes.   They are small, almost invisible to all but the keenest eye and always appear both too small to be of concern, and certainly too beautiful to kill for the sake of killing by all but the blackest of hearts, but let their enemies always be wary, for these beautiful, constantly busy and productive creatures carry a toxin that would kill an elephant six times over with just one bite.

   Johann’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emitted from it.   And while he was pondering the information that had just arrived; while the wind continued to increase in speed and intensity; while the smell threatened to make him physically ill; while his heart pounded wildly, he began to wonder why they were waiting for something to happen, never mind why they were waiting at all.   Johann felt that this planet was really beginning to get on his nerves. First it had been a harrowing three mile walk in fear of the unknown; then it was a trillion toxic laden ants playing strange games around weird, smoky pits that seemingly had no reason to exist … now it was cyclone Angoria threatening to blow him into the next dimension.   He could only put his difficult feelings down to the wind that continued to slap him around: a reaction; a condition that had plagued him on Earth for many years when a certain wind arrived, though he never knew why.   He would find himself unexpectedly becoming incredibly cranky without any good reason, and outside of a Panadol or its equivalent to help subside the irritable feeling, he usually would have to wait until the wind abated for him to calm down; a calmness that usually resided within him seconds after the wind had stopped.   However, regardless of whatever was the cause of his current condition, or what was really beginning to aggravate him at the moment did not matter.   Johann P. Biggs just wanted to leave this planet and he swung around to force … to demand Arkerious to take them both back to Earth … he had enough.  He wanted to go home – right now!

   And as he turned Johann felt the downdraft that was soon to be proven to have been the catalyst of his current psychological condition; the cause of his aggressive mood; the cause of the wind; the cause of the smell; the cause of the unsubstantiated fear that had begun to run through his veins.   As Johann faced Arkerious – before he spoke – before he could form the words in his head, the area where they both stood suddenly became enshrouded in shadow; a long dark shadow that seemed both unnatural in shape and felt temporary in its sudden appearance, as if it was moving and Johann put it down to clouds being blown by the strong wind.   And when it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived Johann believed his assumption to be correct … and continued to believe his assumption to be correct when the space was replaced by a new shadow but a millisecond later.

   However the changes from light to dark to light became continuous; repetitious; almost equal to a strobe light.   Its energetic output beyond acceptability; flickering between light and dark at such a speed that it threatened Johann with a migraine and distracted him from his original mission.   Then something liquid flew past his eyes and when it hit the ground the blast rocked him on his feet, leaving Johann to feel grateful that he had managed to remain upright and not been knocked to the ground by the force.   He stared at the spot where the liquid had fallen and found himself confronted with smoke emitting from a hole approximately two feet in both perimeter and depth only twelve feet from where he was standing.   Johann had no idea what had fallen, but it gave him the impression that whatever it was had been of an acidic element.  He looked up to the heavens to see what was causing this unusual phenomena … and as his eyes focused and began to tell his mind the truth of what it was that he was looking at Johann’s heart threatened to stop working forever.   His eyes all but popped out of his head; his breathing, like his heart became erratic and for the first time in his life Johann P Biggs screamed out in fear as loud as he possibly could.   For up above him, against an otherwise clear blue sky was a gigantic spider, possibly fifteen feet in height from the tips of the hairy feet that dangled just above Johann’s sweaty brow as his turned head stared upwards, to the top of the creature’s huge broad head, and somewhere between six and seven feet in span.   As his brain scrambled to take in the complete scene, despite the incredible fear that was doing its utmost to dominate his thoughts, Johann realised there was not one, but perhaps a hundred of the huge black arthropods … and they were all flying.   And then he almost fainted as he saw the first of the invading monsters coming in to land in the middle of the field beside the pits … and others then began to emulate the movement until over fifty of the extremely large, patent-black, horrifying spiders had landed and now occupied the field.

   “What the hell are they, Arkerious?” a visibly terrified Johann asked of his mentor. “We have to get out of here … now!    Those monsters will kill us.” 

   Johann’s eyes were opened so wide, Arkerious was frightened that he would cause permanent damage to them.   As was he concerned that Johann’s agitated behaviour would also cause him harm as he swung himself vigorously in all directions in a desperate bid to find a way to escape from the spiders that were still flying overhead, their long, thick haired legs dangling down barely inches above his constantly rotating head.  And as they flew, a thick ball of mucus occasionally dribbled down from their terrifying mouths to the ground below, and each droplet caused a small explosion similar to the one that had appeared in front of Johann; each small detonation taking several dozen ants out of the equation.   However, the deaths of some ants did little to disturb the equilibrium of the others.  Their places were quickly taken during a quick reshuffle of those that had lain beside them – and within a second there was not a space of any size between those that still lay in wait.  The montage remained a perfect representation of the second universe.

   Arkerious looked sadly at his friend and student.   He was fully aware of the existence of arachnophobia, but he had never seen a reaction to this kind of fear in real life and was, therefore, unable to interpret the possible results that could take place in this set up he had created.   It had not been Arkerious’s intention to cause any discomfort to Johann, he had simply intended to introduce Johann to a few planets whose aura was completely removed from Earth, so when the time came he would not be intimidated by the planet’s atmosphere or life-forces.   Now he could see that he had made a rare incorrect decision and he knew he must rectify the problem in the most expedite manner possible.

   Having no recourse, Arkerious applied another link to Johann’s mind and took a gigantic leap into the dark unknown.

****************

   Arkerious had spent less than a minute inside the hell hole that was Johann’s current mind set when he removed the new connection between their minds and replaced it with another.   Within the space of three seconds of the new link being applied Johann went down on knees and began crying his heart out, but when he regained his composure, the fear was mute.

   “I am so sorry, Johann,”   Arkerious began, his voice both soft and sincere, “I should have made myself more familiar with your fear level when you told me you had an aversion towards spiders and other insects.   I had assumed your statement to be a state-of-mind fear, not the reality of how severe it was going to harm you.  I have seen you in action.   You are a brave man by nature.  Your phobia in regards to certain insects is a regrettable state-of-affairs.   My handling of the situation was both deplorable and regrettable, and once again I apologise for my poorly thought out decision to allow you to face your demons under these circumstances.   My aim had not been to intimidate you, but simply to have you face new elements under my guidance and protection so you would be ready for extreme differences in environments that can cause you to lose control of your self-confidence, and your basic instincts, in a time that is yet to come.   My error is a lesson that I have learnt today and the only compensation to my error that I can offer to you is to tell you that I entered your mind and I was shocked by the way your brain was reacting to pure horror … I can assure you that it was beginning to affect me as much as it was you and I was forced to retract my link within seconds of facing what you were facing for fear that it could affect me in a way that I had never known before … and that could have caused a very dangerous situation for you and I.  I very well may have lost control of all my functions.   If that had happened we may very well have been stuck here forever.   I have taken action to correct the situation … and hopefully you should never again feel the fear you have lived with for so long.   Please forgive me for my foolishness, Johann.”

   Instead of replying, Johann slowly turned his head away from Arkerious to face the spiders that, by now, had stopped flying and had settled themselves down within the smoking pits.   Johann immediately became mesmerised by the site of one hundred, gigantic, black haired, creatures from the depths of hell gently resting in pits that seemed as if they had been custom made for them.   Their huge bodies; their thick dark legs folded around them; covered every square inch of the pit they had occupied.   As the rising smoke, now greatly restricted in the ground below the pits, gently filtered upwards and outwards through the narrow gaps that existed in the contours of the basking spiders it would have been, to most eyes, a tranquil, magic, moment in nature; a chance for explorers and tourists to photograph the incredible quirks and beauty of nature. 

   But to Johann it seemed more like a scene from some macabre war movie or play, where two opponents positioned themselves for a battle-to-the-death scenario that was about to be played out before his eyes.   Had it simply been that the spiders had arrived and settled themselves into the strange, smoky pits that had seemed to have had no other reason to exist other than for the nightmarish creatures that now resided within them, he probably would not have viewed it in this manner.   But it was the ants that made this feeling reside inside his mind.  The ants had not moved since they had settled themselves around the outer rim of the pits.   They had arrived before the spiders had even been heard, never mind seen.   They had lain in wait of the gigantic monsters, and now they were still waiting …. “But waiting for what?” he wondered.

   Johann turned to Arkerious and grinned.   “Don’t put yourself down so hard, Arkerious.   I never think you do anything without reason – and we all make mistakes from time to time.   And thank you, you were right … my fear seems to have disappeared.   But tell me … what is actually going on?    It looks like a fight brewing to me.”

   “I will show you,”   Arkerious replied, a relieved look on his face,” but we will have to travel forward a few hours.”

*******************

   Again Johann felt a slight queasiness in his stomach which momentarily forced him to close his eyes and when he re-opened them he was surprised to find everything exactly the same as it did a second or so earlier.

   “Nothing’s changed,” he noted disappointedly, “No, hold on a minute, the light has changed … it is getting darker.   Is night coming on?”

   “Actually it is dawn rising,”   Arkerious replied with an accompanying mocking laugh,   “It is getting lighter, not darker.   You will see what happens in a minute or two.”

   “I will really have to train myself to not close my eyes when we travel in time and space.”   Johann mumbled to himself.   I absolutely have no idea where or when I am when I re-open them.”

   As Arkerious and Johann watched; as the dawn broke; as the sun began to light up the morning sky and warm the earth, the spiders began to rise from their pit and as they arose; as their long legs pushed their huge bulk back up into the sky, the pits were exposed and their content surprised Johann.

   “Eggs?”   He asked, not quite believing his eyes.

   “Yes”,   Arkerious replied,   “There are only three continents on the planet.   Angoria, where we are now, is the smallest, Radnoria which is located one and a half thousand miles away, and Euro, which is the largest, situated a further nine thousand miles from Angoria.   A strange place is Euro.   It is a huge landmass, but we know nothing about it.   There is some type of deflection barrier that surrounds it; a barrier we have found to be completely impenetrable, so we have no idea if the continent is inhabited or not … and we do not know if the barrier is natural or man made.    On the other hand Radnoria is full of life, including several species equally as large as the spiders.  However, the spiders have no natural enemy on Radnoria, and, therefore, their eggs should be safe there, but for a reason that you will soon become privy to, they have come here to Angoria every year on an annual pilgrimage to lay their eggs in the pits.   They have made this trip for over two thousand years.   Oh, and just for your inforomtion, the name Radnorian was given to the spiders by the Angorian ants who had also named the place that they came from as Radnoria simply to have a name to refer to when they taught their young about their own heritage … and how they obtained their beautiful skin**.”

   “And how was that?”  Johann asked automatically.

   “All in good time, my friend … all in good time.”   Arkerious replied.

   Johann automatically shook his head in defeat before suddenly deciding to ask a question that had been mulling around in his head over the past few moments for some reason currently unknown   “Has this planet ever been attacked by Rangor?” 

   “This planet is protected by the Guardians, but not by G.I.S.P.A, but there has never been any sign of an attack by Rangor on this planet – nor by the proxy.   Not on the Angorians at least.   As far as our records show there has never been any form of invasion to the planet … except for one occasion, now that I think about it.”   Arkerious paused for a minute.   “I had almost forgotten, it was so trivial, but the Guardian observer for this planet recorded the fact that on one occasion, several years ago, perhaps five, ten, twenty years – for some reason the exact time sequence evades me, however, the essence of what I am telling you is that one individual spider failed to arrive for the egg laying.   It was noticeable to the ants who reported it to the observer because it had been the only time in their history that one of the pits had remained unoccupied since the pilgrimages began.  The spiders had been questioned at the time by the ant’s leaders, but no answer could be provided other than the fact that the missing spider, a young, extremely angry and volatile, third time mother who went by the name of Narinda had been flying at the rear of the cluster.  Nobody had been in a position to see what had happened to her.    They had no idea that she was missing until every one of them had moved to their pre-allocated spot and the vacancy was exposed.”

   “Did they work out what happened?”   Johann asked expectantly, his curiosity once more aroused.

   “No.  The observer called in G.I.S.P.A. to help search for it, assuming it may have had an accident on the journey, or perhaps even died, and there was concern for the hatchlings who may have been saved if found in time.   But no body was ever found, no sudden appearance of baby spiders turning up where they should not have been located … absolutely nothing.   The following year everything returned to normal during the annual pilgrimage and so the problem was placed in the ‘curious event’ file and eventually forgotten … until now, that is.”

   As Arkerious spoke, something flashed* through Johann’s mind for a second or two, something familiar, but the full details wouldn’t come easily, so, without any further thought he dismissed the intrusion assuming if it was important it would eventually return to his mind.

   “So what happens now?   Do we watch the babies as they come out of their eggs?   And, for that matter, why do they use the pits?  

   “We have no idea why things here happen the way they do, but we accept what happens because it happens.  As for the pits we believe that the heat that emits from the volcano below keeps the eggs warm and infuses some form of nutrient into them which provides the babies with the strength for the trip home.”  

   “There is a volcano under there?”

   “An underground tributary that bubbles away with no known threat to suddenly explode … it feeds off the main volcano base which is located quite a few miles from here.  It has been like this for thousands and thousands of years.   But please return your gaze to the spiders.  You are about to witness the ritual.

   The giant arthropods had all risen to their feet and had moved to a spot commencing roughly twenty feet from the pits by the time Johann returned his attention to them, and were in the process of lying down on the ground in ten straight lines of ten spiders, all lying on their backs … and all lying in the same direction – head up.   Johann wondered about the spot they seemed to have purposely chosen.   Unlike the grass that surrounded it, this patch was the strange rusty coloured patch he had noticed earlier … and he also noticed that it covered an area that housed the entire one hundred spiders with barely an inch to spare.   It was almost as if they had been herded into an invisible made-to-measure pen, like cattle or sheep … only with no fence, and no cattle or sheep dogs to muster them.

   An unexpected series of sounds like walls cracking in an earthquake suddenly grabbed their attention and Arkerious and Johann both quickly turned their eyes back in the direction of the pits – not quite prepared for the events that were about to unfold in front of their eyes.  

   Eggs, three per pit, roughly twenty five times the size of an Earth ostrich egg, were lying in the pits and the exposure of their size made Johann realise the pits were nowhere as deep as he had previously thought.   However, the soon-to- emerge spiders were still presumed by the visitors, especially by Johann, to be roughly the same size as the eggs… especially considering the size of the mothers.   Arkerious had not previously witnessed the ritual himself, however, as he knew he had immediate access to any information about it should he require it, he felt, in the circumstances, that he preferred to let the magic of the moment wash over him in a way similar to Johann.    But whichever way their minds were prepared for the event – they were both in for a huge surprise.  

   As the carbonate crystal coated eggs continued to break open, the first of them to fully open spewed out fluid the colour of egg white – almost ten gallons of it.   Suddenly there were more and more of the large brown shells following suit until every pit was almost full to the brim with the liquid, and then the hatchlings began emerging from beneath the fluid … and all things considered, Johann could not believe his eyes.

   Totally enshrouded within a thick layer of shiny, slimy, black matted hair, the young spiders were only around twelve inches in diameter as their thin elongated legs pushed their small bodies through the egg white to just above the fluid that circled the rims of the pits.   Johann was bewildered by the size of the creatures.   With the eggs being so large he had expected the hatchlings to be much bigger at this stage.   But as he watched, the small creatures began to drink the clear fluid, and as they drank, they began to grow, bigger and bigger, taller and taller, until suddenly the pit was empty and the babies were now nearly four feet tall and almost three and a half feet in body size as they stepped out of the shell and moved towards the spot where their mothers lay. 

   The first child that arrived beside their individual mother lay on her chest as a young child would to an Earth mother, its small, but constantly growing, body close to her heart.   And upon this action each mother rolled two of her massive legs around the child, comforting it, while the other two children, as they arrived beside her, rested on the ground, one on her right side, one on the left, positioned in lines similar to the mothers, only with their backs in the air and their eyes facing the opposite way so that the family faced each other.   And when the third and final child arrived beside the last mother and positioned itself at her side all mothers simultaneously burst into a sound so beautiful even Johann realised it was the mothers singing to their children.  Not words that he understood, but a stunning melodic sound that struck straight at Johann’s heart; a song that made him feel sad and warm at the same time, he had no idea of the songs content to fully understand what was happening.

   “The mother’s are dying.”  Arkerious explained through his link to Jonann’s mind, so as not to override the serenity of the moment with the volume of his voice,   “They are saying goodbye to their children.   It is a ritual that has occurred for over two thousand years.   The song is almost finished, but the ritual still has a few stages to go, so keep watching and learn.

   The song came to an end after a few minutes and Johann asked why the spiders came to Angoria to die and give birth and not back on Radnoria.   “Do they have a natural enemy that attacks the eggs, or the newly born there?” he asked.

   “There is far more to what you are watching that we still do not understand,”   Arkerious replied, “and will, most likely, never know, but I will explain more about what we do know shortly **.  In the meantime just watch and observe.”

   “And what happens next?”   Johann asked in anticipation of another surprise.

   “Watch.”   Was all Arkerious supplied to Johann’s curious mind … so Johann watched, but he was not ready for what was to come.   Not by a long shot.

   The song now finished, silence momentarily reigned over the warm morning air.   Then from somewhere in the distance came the sound of what Johann later learnt to be trilliators, song birds of the morning, one of only three bird groups that existed on Angoria.   Like the song of the spiders, the song of the trilliator was gorgeous in its strength, its beauty, its subtlety and, most importantly, its delivery, but its tempo and expression of hope was far more uplifting than that of the song that it had followed.  Johann had no idea how the ears of the spiders and ants heard the dulcet tones that emitted from the songbirds’s velvet throats:  no idea whether they heard it in the language of the planet or the special language of the trilliators themselves … or perhaps some other way that was well beyond his comprehension, he had no idea.   But to him the song was not delivered in spoken word, but as an instrumental presentation delivered in a manner similar to a classical chamber ensemble’s rendition of one of Earth’s past masterpieces.

   And the song; the song was a wonderment of nature itself.  For each bird in the ensemble somehow produced a sound similar to individual musical instruments that enriched an orchestra on Earth.   Each member of the ensemble contributed to the soul enriching feeling that the song offered.   Bass, trombone, clarinet and flute were but a few of the musical instrument equivalents that their combined voices reproduced and he wondered how many members this ensemble actually had.   And as Johann closed his eyes, he willingly allowed the melodic, haunting, enchanted sound to roll over his entire body as the music accompanied the rising sun that was slowly dispersing the remontants of the shadows of night.   The song reminded him of ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’, the theme song from the nineteen eighty six film, The Mission, but Johann knew the magic that accompanied the rich, smooth, haunting sound had been unique to the trilliators.   

   Though not quite as long as the mother’s farewell, it was never-the-less a performance that was the perfect counterbalance to the sadness injected into Johann’s heart and soul by the song of the spiders. 

   And then silence reigned once again, but the silence was short lived as Johann began to imagine he could hear jungle drums playing softly.  It was as if it was coming from some distance away, but still close enough to where he was standing to fill his ears.  He shook his head several times in order to clear the sound from his head, but to no avail … and then it became louder and louder.  ‘Boompa! Boompa! Boompa!’ the sound went.  Johann began looking in all directions for the source of the sound and suddenly realised it was coming from the young spiders, some of whom were beginning to rise to their feet as the volume of their chanting began to increase … and it was then that Johann realised that what he was hearing was not drums beating, but a wildly excitable chant coming from the spider children, and it was now obvious that they had not all been singing as the volume and enthusiasm rose with each new body to rise from the ground as they too joined in.

   The chanting reached a crescendo, the voices of the spider children were at fever pitch, those that had lain on their mother’s prone body were now upright, straddling their mother with their legs in order to retain balance as they chanted at the top of their voice and Johann was beginning to place his fingers into his ears to restrain the volume when the spider child who had been the first to arrive by his mother’s side turned his head upwards  – and the sound that emitted from his throat was mind blowing.   It was not a scream, nor was it a cry.  But never-the-less, it was a sound that made the land shake, the ants cower and Johann to squeeze his eyes shut in agonising pain at the pressure that the noise placed on his eardrums.   But before they had closed, the sun suddenly disappeared behind a long cloud; the ceremony became enshrouded in a soft, eerie, grey darkness; the sound stopped; the chanting stopped, all replaced by a howl as striking and fearful as an Alaskan Bay Wolf coming from the young Radnorian spider.   The timbre in his voice amplified the fear factor among all present, including the young spiders who cowered beneath its nightmarish threatening tone.  Johann felt the hackles rising on his neck and wondered how many more times that would happen today.   Then the howling stopped … the cloud shifted … the light enveloped the ceremonial ground once again, and the young leader began to sing.   And as the incredibly sweet, beautiful lyrics began enchanting the early morning world the blackness disappeared, replaced by light, light that provided a wonderful and appreciated covering of hope and optimism for all.

   The words that the young spider sang, interpreted by Arkerious** during the performance, put Johann’s heart in such a state of despondency he felt it was literally going to break.  

   For one so incredibly young, the voice was unbelievable.  It was tenor, it was bass, it was baritone … it was whatever it was needed to be in order to extract every single thought, every word, every emotion out of the song and into the hearts of the verbal recipients.   To Johann it was an operatic interpretation of the life that the young spiders would soon face – and although he could not understand a single word sung, the power and emotion that the young boy put into his song he knew that it struck at the heart of every living soul and creature that attended the ceremony.

   Arkerious explained that it was always common for the first born to be the leader during the ritual, and on the trip home to Radnoria.   “It is also common for the entire group of new-born children to perform the chant and for the leader to sing the song prior to their departure from Angoria, “he continued, “but it has always been unexplained just how the first born knew the story in advance of his or her education – far less the song – or the way to Radnoria.   The same lack of information applied to the chants that the others sang.  It would appear to be a heredity thing, but the facts of its origin are unknown.

   The words of the song tell a story that every Radnorian spider understands from the beginning; it is the story of their culture, of their beginnings and their place in life.   In essence the song tells of the reason for the pilgrimage to Angoria.  They existed on the planet for a reason every bit as important and necessary as did every drop of water that fell upon the planet, they believed; as important and necessary as every second of the daylight that warmed the earth and made the crops grow.  They were equal in every way to the mighty apex that ruled Radnoria, and the ants that ruled Angoria.

   But they had a problem that only a few species on the planet had – the magic rocks that had appeared on the planet over two thousand years ago had made it impossible for them to expand as a family unit.   The planet now only provided them with enough permanent substance to produce but a small family.  Only a death would allow for a birth, but without the death the child would be an insurmountable burden on their survival as a tribe.

   The spiders had continued to increase their population well after the rocks** had first arrived, not realising at the time that it was not something that they could continue to do without suffering the consequences.  It was not something that they had given any thought to, but eventually the food source began to run dry, and as a result their population began to decline.   Food was scarce, many died of nutrition and pregnancies began to become a rarity for fear of what would happen to the children when they could not be fed.   Soon the elders arrived at the truth of their future and devised a plan to save the tribe, but at a terrible cost.    But it was a price that could not be measured in monetary terms … because sacrificial love cannot be calculated, it can only be given – and accepted, and that is exactly what the pilgrimage is … a life for a life – given and accepted with love.   The mother’s gave life to their children … and in return they … I am sorry, I can tell you no more at the moment, Johann, but I will explain in more detail after the ritual has finished,”   Arkerious concluded,   “In the meantime I suggest you simply watch and learn.”

   Defeated once again by Arkerious’s insistence to tell him things in chunks rather than as a whole Johann obeyed the suggestion turning his eyes towards the young spider whose rendition had threatened to bring tears from his eyes just as the song came to a conclusion, and a hush came over the scene.  Then without warning, the young leader, now over half the size of his mother, looked down at her, then raised his head upwards and once again made a sound that was totally incoherent to Johann, but sounded to him very much a sound of agony and heartbreak – then unexpectedly brought his mouth down at a rate of knots, sinking his teeth so hard into his mother’s body that Johann could see the blood spurt out of the hole that the force of his teeth had made.

   The action proved to be a catalyst for what happened next as every one of the other two hundred and ninety nine baby spiders did exactly the same thing.   Johann was horrified by what he saw – three hundred spiders, now large and menacing in appearance, all viciously ripping the heart out of their individual mothers in front of his eyes.   He began to feel ill at both the sight of what it was that he saw – and his mind’s acceptance of what the spider children were actually doing.  But suddenly he became further surprised when a new song began slowly, softly, emitting from the lips of the dying mothers – not screams as he had expected, not a sad song like the previous one that they had sung, this was a totally joyous, inspiring, song that now filled the air.  Johann became confused at the situation that was unfolding in front of him; he had no idea what was going on.   However his understanding of the event that confronted him became clearer when Arkerious whispered that this song, this mantra of joy and peace, which seemed totally inappropriate in relation to what was happening; to what their children was doing to them, was in fact a blessing on the children as they said their goodbyes to them.   And this helped Johann to understand that the children weren’t devouring their mothers, they were poisoning them.  When Arkerious had said that they would come here to die he had assumed that it was because they were ill or old, now it was understood that they would die because they were to be euphonised by their own children.  But for what reason he was yet to be told**.

   The violence finished as quickly as it had started – and the spiders quickly moved away from the dead bodies of their mothers.  Johann turned to face Arkerious for answers to what he had witnessed, and as he did so he heard a strange noise, a noise increasing in volume so quickly it was making the ground below him shake.   He immediately swung his body around to view the source of the noise, but he found himself forced to the ground by the inconceivable blast of air that rushed at him.   However, as he tried to regain his footing, he quickly became aware that the sound was that of wings; wings that were beginning to flap as the new born children slowly rose up into the sky.  Johann watched in absolute fascination as three hundred newly born spiders were flying in formation just above his head as they begun their journey to Radnoria … and home. 

   As he regained his footing Johann began feeling despondent as a result of what he had just witnessed.   He had never liked seeing anything dying – human, alien, or animal.  Not even when he was the instigator of the death of a dangerous enemy, or the assassin himself, and it did little for his disposition when the feeding frenzy began.   Over five hundred thousand ants had moved forward from the circle they had created the evening before and lined up to dine on the dying bodies, each taking a huge chunk of the spider’s flesh between their teeth and devouring it before moving off the body to allow the next ant to follow suit.   Nearly thirty five minutes elapsed before the last piece of flesh was removed from its bone by the last remaining unfed ant – and then Johann found himself witnessing one final surprise in the ritual.   Their savage lust apparently satisfied, the ants disappeared into the dark jungle from whence they came, and as they did, from the earth below the pits, large, pale, whitish, creatures began to emerge.   The strange looking creatures instantly reminded Johann of Australian Witchetty grubs that he had seen when he had visited the outback many years earlier, only these things were around fifty times the size of their doppelgangers on Earth.   One hundred of the bizarre insects moved slowly towards the now bare bones that lay on ground, their short, thick, rubbery bodies with an albino colouring almost bouncing with each jerky movement that they took.   And as they arrived on the burnt orange turf, like the children before them, each of the grubs selected a skeletal body for themselves and then waited for the others to arrive and make their selection – a process that took the slow moving creatures slightly over five minutes to complete … then the last of the feast began; the grubs taking less than a minute to suck the complete structure of the skeletal remnants into their stomach.   And as the sluggish creatures began their cumbersome journey back to the pits, Johann noticed that the strange rusty colouring of the grass where the now deceased spiders had lain was still the same colour as before, only it was much brighter, fresher … and wetter than it had been the first time that he had noticed it.  

   Johann stared at the spot for several long seconds in total wonder and awe at the sometimes bloody-mindedness of nature.   “That would have to be one of the strangest things that I have ever seen in my entire life.” Johann exclaimed, “Do you have any idea why that process takes place?   It is a cruel, yet fascinating event.   It is operatic in its beauty; it is Frankenstein in its presentation.   I enjoyed it, I hated it, I was mesmerised by it … and yet, until your explanation and interpretation was expressed, both during the show and afterwards, I had no idea what was I was actually watching … mind you, though … I have a similar problem with the majority of reality shows on television on Earth these days.”

   Arkerious smiled.   “You are finding the going a bit hard, my friend, but that is to be expected.    It took men on your planet several million years to get themselves around the Earth, exploring it, finding the impossible, seeing the unbelievable and having those at home thinking them mad when they told what they had seen.   What you have seen and heard in several hours is more than they achieved in a million life times – and you are not yet finished with your tour and lessons.   Do not be concerned with the disbelief that your eyes and ears take in – for a while be a child on holidays and suck in and enjoy the wonderment of an intergalactic Disneyland.”  

   Johann looked at Arkerious disbelievingly and grinned.   “I doubt that is going to work, I am far too serious in my nature … but I will give it a go.”

   “Good.   I will try to keep you as informed of what you are viewing in advance, however there will be some things that you will see, and places that we will visit, that will be best seen and heard before explanations and backgrounds are given.   This visit to Angoria, and where we go next, is imperative to your training because it is the best way of having you prepared to deal with the unexpected.   There will be many completely unforeseen things that will come your way and you will have to force your mind to accept the situation and deal with it.   You will not always have the luxury of discussing the problem with someone else before you make a decision – you will simply have to use your instincts.   Which probably sounds reasonable enough if you are thinking of your reaction capabilities when your confront something vaguely familiar, but may be out of its normal environment when it arrives in your otherwise safe path.   However, what I am referring to is a situation where something that you are completely unused to, something that looks like something that you have never seen … even in your worst nightmares turns up … and you have mere seconds to deal with it.    This is what could happen … and probably will … when least expected … and you will have to ……”

   Arkerious’s voice faded away, now but a blur to Johann’s ears within the noise of the swirling whirlwind that had suddenly appeared over his head and sucked him into its tunnel as it moved swiftly across the field, twisting and turning his body around and around as if he was but a straw filled scarecrow.   The wind and the twisting was getting faster and faster, contorting his body with such impassive consideration to his durability that Johann felt he would break into several pieces within seconds, but that never eventuated as he suddenly found himself being unceremoniously smashed down into a lake that he had not known existed on the field where something stronger than anything he had ever encountered began pushing down on him, forcing him to the bottom of the lake, and into the reeds that immediately began to wrap their long, slimy, green leaves around him.    Struggling was useless, the more he tried to free himself – the tighter the reeds held him.   Johann began to panic.   He had no idea how long he had been down there … how much breath he had left.   Then, as he began to float up towards the surface, but never out of the strong grip the long, dark green grassy tentacles had on him, he could see the reeds in the distance begin to part in a straight line and he knew something big; something extremely large was coming at him at a deadly speed.   Then, without warning, a giant black snake with flaming red eyes broke through the reed, wrapped its monstrous mouth around Johann’s midriff, and with Johann’s body tightly locked in its mouth, flew upwards through the water … upwards… ever upwards, as it broke through the surface and headed towards the sun, before seamlessly bending its long body as it began gently lowering its head, and a totally petrified Johann, back on to the grassy field… … and Johann lost consciousness as the snake slowly, gently, released him from its mouth and withdrew back into the lake.

   When he began to come to he could hear Arkerious’s voice calling out to him.   “Are you alright, Johann?”

   Johann looked around … and then at his clothes.   He was not lying on the ground, covered in reeds, looking like a half drowned rat – he was standing up.  He was not wet … he was dry … and the lake was gone. 

   “What the hell just happened?   His still shaking voice asked in utter confusion.

   “You have just experienced the kind of mind games that Rangor, his proxy or his henchmen may use on you in the near future.  Do not expect that all attempts on life are by guns and knives.   In fact in your situation you will never expect them to be used,   That is not Rangor’s style.   There will be times when the proxy, or even Rangor himself, will attempt to kill you through the power of Rangor’s mind, but the majority of the attacks that you, Joseph, and his other friends will face will be from Rangor’s cronies and many of them will be under cover of mind attacks.   Thoughts implanted into your minds to destroy your rationality and reasoning so you cannot defend yourself against what is really going on.    You must be able to instantly make a decision on the reality of the attack you appear to be under and instantly react to it in the appropriate way … and that can include completely dismissing the visual attack from your mind so you can deal with the real attack.   The longer that your mind is trying to work out a way to deal with the false attack, the greater the aggressor has of pulling off the real attack.”

   “Do you mean that you implanted that whole scenario in my mind?”   Johann asked disbelievingly.

   “I did, and I make no excuses for it.   I will guide your mind to deal with these situations as best as I can, but in the long run it will be up to you to decide on reality and falsity in this kind of situation.   This is why I am repetitive in forcing you to accept the unbelievable can exist, but it will not always be the case.   Occasionally the unbelievable can be the unbelievable.   Like a kung-fu master you must learn the ability to instantly rationalise the unexpected when it arrives and rid yourself of the false thought that enters your mind.”

   “How could I have known that what was happening to me was not real?” An antagonised Johann asked angrily.   “I really thought that I was going to die down there?”

   “For a start you were with me one minute and by yourself the next.   If the whirlwind had the power to pick you up – wouldn’t it have taken me as well?  And with the noise and force it produced, wouldn’t you have noticed its approach?   When you were dropped into the lake you wondered why you hadn’t noticed it before, but instead of forcing your mind on the reality of what was happening, you allowed the reeds to take your attention away from that thought.  The more you accept of an induced falsity, the more you believe it to be real – yet your senses told you in the beginning that this was impossible.   Now the possibility of the situation is possible, Rangor has the power to create that kind of situation, but he wouldn’t be bothered in torturing you before he killed you.   He would just like to kill you – and move on to other things.

   Now there is one thing that you can easily do until you learn your own way of dealing with these situations, and that is to remember to simply close your eyes and place a danger warning image into your mind.   Something simple that you can remember easily, such as an image of Rangor or a blank wall, when your senses question a sudden unexpected happening … and concentrate on nothing but that image for a second or two.   You do this to block out the illusion that is being fed into your mind.   When you reopen your eyes you will usually see the reality of what is attacking and you will know how to deal with it; perhaps you will still see the falsity of the projection if it is strong enough, but I can almost guarantee that for a split second beforehand you will see the reality – and that should be enough to guide you to repeat your previous actions.  The loss of a second or two in a battle is a dangerous amount of time to lose, but it is far better to know what you are doing battle with, than fighting an invisible one.

   What happened just now is not likely to be anything that you are about to face – you will usually have a bit more time on your side.   But let me put you through another slightly similar battle and see how you cope this time.”

   But before Johann could respond with any objections, a long, white, sticky, twine dropped to the ground beside where he was standing and begun to wrap itself tightly around his body from the legs up.   By the time it began to travel around his chest he found himself being hauled up from the ground and heading straight to the mouth of a giant Radnorian spider, while three other spiders watched on.   Johann nearly screamed in fright.   He could feel his nerves cracking and his heart pumping as he moved higher and higher towards the creatures giant, drooling mouth … he could feel the toxic, acidic fluid that dripped from the creature’s mouth as it burnt his face, his arms, his legs and Johann began to pray to his maker, pray as he had never prayed before.  Yet, despite his acknowledgement at how close to death he was, minutes, seconds perhaps, he, somehow, managed to convince his mind and heart to settle down just for a second or two in order to compose the words he wished to say; his final words.   He closed off his mind to his pain and demonic thoughts: tried, for just a minute to ignore the constant smell of burning flesh; of the fear that awaited him once the journey was completed and attempted to visualise a peaceful death, a death where pain and suffering no longer existed, and nor did fear – and he was inwardly pleased as he found his mind drifting off to nowhere … just a small room, a silent room, where there was a small window which he took his eyes closer to and saw small white clouds drifting across a perfectly blue sky.  ‘Tranquillity, at last,’ he thought to himself … and he could feel a smile widening on his face – when something hit him like a thunderbolt.  

   Johann suddenly squeezed his eyes shut and made a visual image of Rangor as his thoughts imagined him to look and concentrated on it, and only it, as hard as he could  – and then snapped his eyes wide open to find himself still standing beside Arkerious – and no spider.

   “You are a fast learner, Johann.”   Arkerious beamed.    Now, there are many things that you must still see, but first I will tell you a small part of the legend of Angoria … a lesson that I am almost certain will help you immensely in time to come.**”

   Johann stared hard at Arkerious, uncertain whether to blast him with every profanity and word of abuse that came to mind, or thank him for teaching him something that very well may save his life one day.   Unexpectedly everything that he had seen and heard that day flashed through his mind, and every second the name, Rangor, echoed through his ears.  In no particular order he saw the spiders, the carnage where Rangor had been, G.I.S.P.A., the murderous reaction by the Rangonians when peaceful planets attempted to make contact with them, the visit to Earth where he had seen his own image in a room with the Prime Minister, Harry Johnston, the android, the collapsing universes, the committee that had invited him to join them, and the dangerous situation that his own planet was in … and Johann knew exactly how to express his emotions.   “Thank you, Arkerious.   I guess I still have a lot to learn.   Please go on with the lesson.”

   Arkerious smiled, bowed his head and continued.   “Sometime a little over two thousand years ago several meteorites crashed onto the continents of Angoria and Radnoria on the same night.   They proved to be toxic and killed anything within five hundred yards of where they fell, with the exception of five species:   three in Radnoria, and three on Angoria.

   On the southern continent of Radnoria, the spiders, the apex beast and the Oxens, snakes similar to your anacondas and pythons on Earth, survived the toxic spread of the meteorites.   And not only did they survive the toxin, the toxin spurred on their evolution.   The three species increased in size multi-fold over the next few years to the stage that they are now.   However, as a trade off for their new size and dominance over the smaller species in their respective food chains, each of the three species also had a huge problem as a result – there was insufficient food to feed their numbers at their current size.   The food chain could not populate their species fast enough to supply the increased appetite of the large predators.

   Each of the three species eventually found a way to survive over the following years, however for all it was only achieved with reduced numbers, and it was the spiders, whose implication of the rules to continue the existence of their species, that did it the hardest, possibly the most painful, way of all of them.

   They decided, after much heart-wrenching thought, that they would need to set their population at a sustainable limit – and to do this it would mean a new child could only be born into a family to replace a deceased member of that family.    But this plan needed to be tweaked because births and deaths did not always match up … and too many unnecessary deaths to older members of a family began to occur to allow young mothers to give birth.   Eventually it was decided that each year one hundred pregnant female spiders who already had two children, primarily if they were aged, or terminally ill, would be sent to Angoria to give birth, but only the children, the next generation, would return to Radnoria – the mother’s would be euphonised by the children.   To ensure that the numbers were constantly at one hundred, younger mothers with two children would be selected by ballot providing the spider’s children had a father still at home if the children had not yet reached maturity.   Not a happy solution for the mother’s, but one they accepted for their children to live.

   On Angoria the recipients of the toxin had been the ants, the trilliators and the scavengers, strange, albino coloured grubs that fed on the bones of dead insects and animals.   When the ants heard of this decision they approached the spiders and an agreement was made.   Angoria had been chosen because the pits contained special toxin created by the volcano that it fed off that somehow caused all eggs to hatch simultaneously, and it also activated something in the glands of the young spiders that made them grow large enough to safely make their own way back to Radnoria in an extremely short period of time.   The toxin in the ants had hardened their frail bodies to what you saw today, however it was beginning to wear off,   The rocks were no longer toxic, and various anomalies were developing in the bodies of their new born as a result, which meant that they needed a continuous supply of toxin injected into their body.   The toxin was by now permanently in the blood stream of the spiders, as it was in the other four recipients of the body changing toxin, so the ants offered to clean up the mess left – and the scavengers would be employed to finish off the job by devouring the bones.   This way the ants obtained their necessary intake of the toxin, and the mother spiders would not be treated with the disrespect of a pauper’s disposal of their bodies on a foreign land instead of a decent funeral at home.   ‘They were mothers and should be treated with the dignity that they deserved,” the ants had said,  “because they were, in fact, helping life to continue on Angoria as well as delivering new life for Radnoria.”  The agreement pleased all parties and that was how the pilgrimage began.

   “I am never going to remember all this, Arkerious,”   Johann stated with a smirk,   “Now … where is this cave of yours?”

   “It is not on this planet,” Arkerious replied solemnly; however it is accessible from here.   The portal is within the pits where the spiders lay their eggs.   That is why we had to wait for the feeding to finish.

   Johann was slightly surprised by this revelation.   “So which planet will it take us to?” he asked.

   Arkerious looked softly at his protégé, but his face appeared anxious and he paused for a few seconds before replying.   Then, his voice so soft it was barely audible to Johann’s ears, spoke – and but one word emitted from his lips.   But Johann heard that word and he could feel the fear that began to cloak over him before the word had even stopped ringing in his ear.

   And the one word that Arkerious had offered as a reply was … Rangonia.”

PRESS HERE FOR EPISODE 16 PT 5