Chapter 7: Humans

  “Papa, please, hang on! Please!” A little girl was crying over her unconscious father’s body. The man was skeletal, his body basically withered away. What disease he had, I have no clue. It reminded me of my own father though… Diabetes doesn’t always make you obese. Sometimes it makes you waste away like a fucking mummy. Hopefully it’s not something dragons can get.

  “Tamarah… Papa’s already gone. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do to dey the inevitable.” A young woman rubbed her daughter’s strawberry blonde head and breathed out a long sigh at the heartbreaking cry. I gagged a little from the stench and decided to hold my breath. I could breathe through my skin to a certain extent, but my skin couldn’t smell the shit, piss and decay.

  “Stop screaming!” A man shouted from the front of the wagon, “You’re upsetting the others!”

  “I don’t care! I don’t care about anything anymore!” ‘Tamarah’ screamed back at him and then hugged her dying father while crying even louder.

  Super fucking depressing. Seriously, I’m already starting to regret finding humans. Yes, just pin old regur-looking and smelling humans. They didn’t even notice a foot long iguana-bat that was lurking on the top of their bookshelf.

  “Woof~! Woo~!” Okay, they might not have noticed me, but their big-ass dalmatian certainly did!

  “Look, you’ve upset Rexi!” The brown-haired, blue eyed woman yelled at the child and then hugged her precious puppy… Which was almost bigger than herself.

  “Waaaah~!” The little girl ignored her mother, at least I think that’s her mother, maybe her sister or aunt or some shit. They look eerily simir. Either way, I should probably leave.

  “Unnng~!” The dying man suddenly groaned loudly and opened his dull gray eyes! Just like a fucking zombie show, he grabbed the little girl!

  “Papa!” She was surprised and I was about to jump over to headshot the zombie!

  “Tammy…” The man muttered quietly in a raspy voice, in other words, not a zombie. He hugged his daughter and whispered, “Take care… Take care of your siblings… I’m sorry I can’t stay with you, longer…”

  “Papa…” The woman came over to his side as well as the dalmatian. But the man outside was still driving the cart along.

  “Wooo…” Even the dog stopped paying attention to me and focused on her Daddy.

  “Papa, we’re almost there! We’ll reach the Wall in a few days, please, please hold on!” The little girl cried onto his chest, “Please, Papa, I love you! Don’t leave me!”

  “I love you too…” He seemed to respond automatically as his eyes gzed over, staring up at me. No clue whether he could actually see anything though. Then he just… Was gone. It brought back bad memories. I was never actually there before. When my grandparents died, when… Any human died.

  Saw dogs and cats, birds and other pets die. Killed plenty of fish and birds since I was reborn. But this was the first time in both lives that I saw a human die in person. I wanna say it was traumatic, but honestly I didn’t feel anything at all. Just numbness.

  I didn’t know the guy. Or the girls. And when my retives died, I could actually… I could ‘feel’ it. Even if I didn’t know they were sick or dying. I just felt it somehow. Inexplicably, I was really upset and I would find out the reasons why ter. Or I would wake up in the middle of the night randomly and it would turn out that they died at that exact time.

  “He’s gone, Tamarah. We need to call the Priest and have his body consecrated before it’s too te.” The woman sniffled a bit but seemed retively okay for the most part. At least for now. Everyone handles loss and grief differently.

  “No! Papa can’t be gone! No~!” The child was inconsoble and acting irrationally. Refusing to accept reality.

  “Is he dead?” The man outside shouted as he opened the cloth to peek inside. He had brown hair and blue eyes, with a somewhat handsome face that was marked with several knife scars. He looked at the dead guy and sighed, “About damn time. If he sted any longer, we’d have to waste morphine to put him down.”

  “Holy shit.” I whispered quietly, the sound of crying and wagon wheels easily covering up my voice.

  Logical.

  “I was gonna say autistic. I mean, retable, but still. Of course, for all I know, their Dad could’ve been an evil psychopath who abused them all their lives. Doesn’t really matter to me either way.” I smiled wryly and waited for the dude to close the curtain before I climbed up onto the cloth ceiling. Then I crawled out the back of the parted curtains. Finally able to get some fresh air to breathe. Though it still smelled like ox and horse shit. Plus human shit and death… Okay, it didn’t smell amazing outside either. But it was better than being trapped in there.

  Now what?

  “Now we… I don’t know.” I looked at the wagons again. The stench was really off-putting and annoying. I wanted to investigate more information and snooping on a single family wasn’t going to do much, especially since they were dealing with the death of their father.

  I fpped my wings and almost crashed into a crow that darted past me! The bird cawed and didn’t fuck with me. I’ve come a long way in the past few months… Okay, maybe it’s because I’m a lot bigger now than before. A foot-long flying lizard is too big for anything but a hawk or eagle to fuck with now.

  “Neigh~!” A brown horse down below made a noise and suddenly knocked the blonde dude off its back, trying to run away and escape.

  “Aaagh~! My leg~!” The man who fell was screaming in agony, while a few other people on horses were chasing down the one that was trying to escape. One of them used a sso to wrap around behind the shoulders, then another ssoed the neck and soon enough the poor bastard was captured and ensved again.

  “Damn!” A man came over wearing an old-timey bck suit, with a monocle on his left eye. The pudgy, balding middle-aged guy had blue eyes and blonde hair, just like everyone else seemed to have… It was kinda weird, actually. Were they all retives? Then again, it could also be that their blue eyes and blonde hair was really strong in the genetic lottery. Just like dark hair and eyes tended to be super common on my Earth because those genes were just stronger for whatever reason.

  I fpped my wings and circled around, getting higher and keeping my eyes on the caravan as a whole. I could see some men and a young woman helping the dude with the broken leg onto the caravan where that monocle-guy came from. I guess he was probably some kinda doctor. Meanwhile, I saw something that freaked me out a little. A handsome young man with long, flowing golden hair and bright blue eyes that seemed to have a somewhat violet hue. That wasn’t the concerning thing though. It was the fact that he was wearing an immacute white robe, walking barefoot through the mud. It was pretty offputting. Especially when I saw the purple octopus tentacles tattooed on his neck and arms…

  Don’t think!

  DON’T THINK!

  “Shit-shit-shit…” I flew away like my life and soul depended on it! I didn’t know where I was, but I knew who SHE was! Who THEY were! I thought about them before, didn’t I? But that was out in the middle of nowhere, that wasn’t right next to one of their fucking worshippers!

  I was probably worrying too much and being paranoid, but if this was even close to where I thought we might be, then I needed to escape! I don’t know where, but definitely away from people!

  Will that be enough? Will that really be enough? What if this is-

  “Don’t say it! Don’t even think it!” I looked around anxiously as I flew to the north! They were heading west, coming from the east, and I came from the south, so I just… I don’t know why I thought the north might be safer. I don’t even know why I was so afraid.

  We know why.

  “I’m… I created them, right? If they are who I think they are, then I created them and I already know so much about them. About their past, their future, their present. So why am I afraid?” I stopped escaping. There was no point in running or flying away from a memetic disaster. Devils are like infohazards. In fact, by my own settings, I could’ve been ‘infected’ by them when they tried to Ascend to a Higher Dimension. And by dying, I got pulled down to their level…

  Or something like that. Maybe I’m being way too narcissistic? Maybe it’s just a coincidence? After all, there are loads of octopus-reted gods. Even purple octopus Deities. Eldritch abominations.

  I circled the wagons again. Looking down as they stopped to let the oxes and the horses rest for a while. Not just that, but they had a corpse to bury and a funeral to perform. I fluttered down and nded on top of a wagon’s brown cover, watching the group of humans that were gathered. A few men and women were crying, the ‘doctor’ and the dude with the broken leg were missing, but almost everyone else was gathered together for the funeral rites and burial ceremony.

  I saw the withered middle-aged corpse tied up and bound in a clean white robe, simir to the one the Priest was wearing. Some men were still digging a hole in the ground nearby, while men and women were pcing flowers on the body. The dead guy’s eyes were closed, but they had painted creepy purple eyes over his eyelids.

  “Joshua Terrance Gregory was a very pious man.” The Priest started giving a speech, “A devoted father and an honest merchant-”

  “Alright, let’s hurry up and bury the body before it starts raining again.” That scar-faced son of the dead guy was one of the dudes digging the grave, “We’re almost at the Wall.”

  “Yeah, even if the boss is dead, we still gotta get this shipment there before Saturday!” One of the ‘cowboys’ that ssoed that horse earlier was the one that spoke this time. Giving some more convenient information through exposition.

  “Papa~! Come back, Papa! We’re almost there!” The little girl was still hysterical and in denial about her father’s death.

  “Very well.” The freakishly ‘beautiful’ Priest sighed dramatically and ran his fingers through his hair before opening what looked like a white Bible. Then he read aloud, “From Lust we are conceived. Through God’s Love we are born Chaste. Throughout life, we struggle with temptations: Greed, Wrath, Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, pride… Especially Lust. Yet we persevere through the Virgin Mother’s grace, for SHE knows that although we succumb to Sin, we will always be guided into the arms of Chastity in the end. Amen!”

  “Amen!”

  “Praise the Mother!”

  “Holy Mother Watch over us all!”

  The men and women gathered around were shouting various generic phrases that made me cringe a bit. If I had hair, it would definitely be standing on end. At the very least, I felt a chill run up my spine, but… That was about it. Nothing particurly sketchy happened. No crazy tentacle orgy or visions of Lust and depravity. No… They just buried the withered body of that guy named Josh and then that was it. The little girl was still upset, but her siblings seemed to be fine. The dalmatian named Rexi was more distraught by the dude’s death than his adult son and daughter.

  Humans grieve in various ways.

  “I don’t really give a shit about that. I’m more concerned about… Chastity.” I said ‘HER’ name out loud, but nothing happened. Maybe she wasn’t even real? To be fair, the Gods in my old world didn’t really show themselves when their names were spoken. At least not in 2024. Whether they even existed or not was debatable, but people believed in them a least. Which meant that there was a lot of psychic energy involved. A lot of information spreading around. Affecting reality…

  What came first, Gods or Humans? The stories say Gods, but it’s totally possible that humanity could one day reach the level of technology that they would be like Gods. So it wouldn’t be surprising if all the Deities humans ever ‘invented’ would become reality eventually. Alternatively, the Deities spoken of could have been the result of various high technologies created by ancient aliens or humans.

  We are safe.

  “Yeah… We’re probably safe.” I’ve created plenty of Deities of the years as an Author and retively speaking, Chastity was one of the ‘nicer’ ones. That’s not saying her Followers are gonna be nice though. Just like in my world, there were always crazy assholes in every Religion.

  Anyway, rather than spiritual dangers, I should be paying more attention to the physical ones. These humans didn’t have visible firearms. They dressed like old-timey Wild West cowboys, but didn’t have guns. I did see a few crossbows and bows though. Hunting knives, spears, hatchets, one of the guards even had a halberd. Not much armor though. At least not on them now. I did see a couple guys with chainmail and leather armor, but the women mostly wore simple dresses, with some of them looking fancier than others. Jewelry, make-up, outfits that were really impractical and unnecessary… Of course, whether they were rich girls or prostitutes, I had no idea.

  There were only a few children. That one girl Tamarah, a couple boys who looked like identical twins and another girl with blonde hair… They all had blonde hair and blue eyes, with very simir facial features. The Priest looked more feminine than most of the men, some of the women too, but it was easy to tell that they were all probably reted to each other. Okay, that’s a lie, I’m not even human anymore. Even when I was human, I had face blindness. Now that I’m a dragon, maybe all humans look the same to me? And not because my eyes are fucked, because my eyes are amazing now.

  They had quite a few livestock with them. Cows, pigs, sheep, chickens… There were also a lot of dogs of various breeds. Mostly big dogs for hunting and shepherding. Some animals were kept in wagons, like the chickens, but others were just walking along with the caravan. From my investigation, just a brief snooping around, I found that aside from some wagons filled with wooden boxes and barrels, most of them were more like RVs. Basically tiny mobile homes.

  “It smells so fucking bad.” But I don’t wanna lose track of them.

  We know where they’re going.

  “I mean, true.” I crawled around and tried to get comfortable on the thick cloth material of the leading wagon’s cover. Nobody noticed me, because nobody was really looking for me either. Even the little kids were busy with one thing or another. The dogs barked at me from time to time, but they had other shit to deal with than a random bck lizard. Like herding the livestock.

  Why not go ahead?

  I looked up ahead at the distant mountains. There were also mountains to the north and south within view, but we were headed towards those snow capped mountains in the west. If this is the US, then those are probably the Rocky Mountains. They keep mentioning a ‘wall’, but I can’t exactly ask them to eborate or be specific. Did they mean a natural barrier like a giant mountain range that stretched over three thousand miles? Or did they mean a man-made wall like the Great Wall of China?

  Maybe just a chain link fence with some guards.

  “I guess we’ll find out soon. They say it’s gonna take a few days. I don’t think we can make it to the mountains in only a few days at this slow-ass pace.”

  Maybe I’m a bit too paranoid, but most of my stories have extremely high-end technologies along with magical, mystical and psychic bullshittery. I might be a dragon, but I don’t wanna fly over some invisible ‘wall’ and get shot down by a hypersonic railgun or magical death-ray. Either that or the wall could be a dimensional wall and you have to pass through a certain valley to reach it?

  We shall see.

  “Yeah… We’ll find out soon. Only a few days. At least this is probably safer than sleeping on the backs of buffalo and horses, or under rocks. No birds have attacked me yet, which is a step up from most of my draconic life thus far.