Paratethys: A Sialon Story

Lockwood sat at his post on the lip of the Anilos Volcano like so many had done before him. It wasn’t a tall volcano and it hadn’t erupted in over a thousand years. A lush, deciduous forest had grown on the base and at the crater was a layer of magma which puffed away silently as if it were some ancient but powerful being waiting inside. Lockwood had never ventured far from the volcano- it had been decided long before he was born that he be the one to wait. Wait for what? Lockwood could never quite tell.
His clothes had been brought to him by villagers. So too had food, books, and ‘female company’ but Lockwood had worked it out long ago. He was like a parrot in a mine; he was the warning to the rest of the village. The moment he croaked it would be time for them to pick up and leave. He had resigned himself to his situation though; it wasn’t likely that the volcano would erupt in his own lifetime. So he waited at the cliffhanger, waiting ever so patiently, thirty years he had spent waiting.
Then one day, people stopped arriving. No one came to bring him clothes or food or books of ‘female company’. Lockwood was alone on the mouth of the devil with nothing. One hundred days finally passed before he had a visitor. He was reading Roald Dahl for about the millionth time in the hot sun when he saw the figure approach. This figure was dressed rather raggedly. Lockwood had always been supplied very smart clothes for reasons unknown, to give the demons a good impression? His figure however was dressed in a thin shirt, large denim trousers held up by suspenders, a pair of buccaneer boots and a grey woolen overcoat.
“Hello?” Lockwood put the paperback into his jacket pocket, “are you lost?”
“That was so going to be my question” the man’s accent was American. Now that he was closer Lockwood could make out the man’s face. His hair was long and straggly, his skin was rough like tanned leather and his chin was surrounded by unruly stubble. Lockwood took the clues and assumed he’d be one of the jumpers- he wasn’t the first to have jumped into the mouth of the volcano.
“I’m Lockwood”
“Is that your first or last name?” the man scratched the back of his greasy hair, “it’s a nice name nonetheless. I’m Professor Orwell, nice to meet you”
“What do you want?” Lockwood said bluntly, “not another seismologist, for God’s sake, I’ve talked to a hundred seismologists, literally”
“I’m not that fortunate” Orwell took a little green glass orb from his pocket and rolled it around his hands, “I’m not that fortunate though I wish I were”
“Are you another one of those Occult people? I have explicitly told the villagers-”
“Ah, then you’re going to have a bit of a problem complaining to them”
“Why?”
Orwell pushed passed him and made his way uphill, “they’re all dead”
“What?”
“They were all found dead forty-two days ago. All of them, men, women, children, cats, dogs, horses, the lot. Nothing lives down in that village”
“What did they die of?” Lockwood grew cold.
“At five o’clock, forty-two days ago, they all stopped breathing; all four-hundred of them just stopped breathing”
“They asphyxiated?”
“I wish they had. Something just stopped them remembering how to breathe; something got into their minds and just wiped everything from it on how to breathe”
Lockwood shook his head, “what could have done it?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out” said Orwell as he buttoned up his coat, “things might start to get very cold up here”
“We’re sitting on top of a volcano”
“Is that your shack down there?” Orwell nodded to the little cottage built centuries ago, mended by the villagers for the post, “anything valuable to you?”
“I don’t keep any money or-”
“But is there anything valuable to you?”
“My ring. It was my grandfather’s or so the villagers claimed”
“Is that it?”
“Yes”
“Go get it now” Orwell ordered. Lockwood felt compelled to accept the orders of this stranger and so went to fetched the gold circle. When he returned Orwell had taken a rock from the ground and tasted it.
“Ah!” Orwell spat, “that’s…”
“Well what do you expect? It’s a rock”
“No, there’s something else” Orwell grimaced and took a worn notebook from his pocket, “let’s see now”
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh just… seeing the sites” Orwell blew off, “you know”
“I may have been here all my life but I’m no simpleton”
Orwell put on an apologetic face, “no. Sorry about that. In all your life has anything ever happened at this volcano? Anything the volcano’s done? A tremor, anything?”
“Actually no but that’s not too weird for a volcano”
“It’s not just a volcano” Orwell closed his book, “it’s a prison”
“What?” Lockwood didn’t take too lightly to jokers and even though Orwell had said it in all seriousness, Lockwood felt like the man was taunting him, “what do you mean?”
“A demon, a death cloud, maybe a devil”
“You say ‘Devil’ like there’s more than one”
“I did, didn’t I?” Orwell patted Lockwood’s arm, “you better get out of here. Things might get very dangerous”
“We’re on top of a volcano”
“Do you have the patience to hear an old story?” Orwell asked politely.
“I’ve heard a thousand old stories, I’d be surprised if I couldn’t hear one thousand and one”
Orwell took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket, “this is an old story but I think you’ll find it enjoyable nonetheless. Here we go…”

“Once upon a time there was a fiend or a sprite of chaos or a punishing whisper; something of great pain. A terrifying, utterly terrifying thing. One day it would just hide under your bed and wait for you to go to sleep. That’s what It does; it comes for you to use your repression, your rage, everything you hold dear, everything that makes you not you. It hid well but in time, it devoured half the planet and then everyone recognized what It was and It made them mad.
There was nothing anyone could do about It because It could be anyone, anything and It knew when anyone would even think about hurting It. It feeds on the panic; It is nourished by whatever’s hiding in the Dark. No one could fight It because they didn’t know how It worked.
Then one day, something fell from the dark side of the Moon and he was praised as the Magician who might defeat It. The Magician tricked It, he tricked It into hiding in him and threw himself into a place where It couldn’t escape. He threw himself into a volcano where no matter how much It screamed there was no one to hear. Once that happened, they forgot. Everyone forgot about It and the Magician who had tried to be a Hero and ended up a Martyr.
So every man, woman and child forgot It ever existed but It was not friendless”

“It’s a nice story”
“It’s not just a story- it’s Paratethys” Orwell looked into Lockwood’s eyes with a dead stare, “one of Sialon’s Brigade”
“So whatever this thing is, you think he’s escaping?”
“Paratethys isn’t a corporeal being- bits of him squeeze through the cracks, your whole village wasn’t enough to feed him though, they all lacked… well, the cynicism to keep him healthy or even to keep it from starving. It went through each and every one of those life forms in less than a second and he died of malnourishment”
“So it’s over?”
“That’s just a tiny-tiny bit- a pilot fish. The rest is still in the volcano, waiting for the right time”
“Is this thing immortal?”
“As long as there’s life on this planet; there will be those like him”
“So what did you come here to do?”
“I came here to release it” Orwell breathed in the sulpher, “I’m going to take away the bars of the prison. Paratethys can use me to rip open a crack in the volcano. All those suicides, all those people who fell in were feeding the prisoner. I should be enough to revive him”
“Why would you do that?”
“A demon we know how to fight is better than one we don’t- when I unlock Paratethys he’ll go back to Sialon. People will remember Paratethys and if he is remembered he can be fought”
“All those years ago-”
“They didn’t know what we know now” Orwell dangled himself over the crater and let the hot air envelope him, “and if we have a chance of beating Sialon, I need to throw myself into this volcano. Better it calls the attention of those who know what to do rather than wait for Sialon himself to find this”
“I’m sorry”
“I’m not- if I die; it might mean the end for all of this” Orwell teetered over the edge.
“One question” Lockwood couldn’t help himself, “is any of this real or was that just a fairy tale?”
“Sounded like one, didn’t it?” Orwell tipped himself in. There was no scream, just the gushing of lava around a man. Lockwood was frozen in thought until he felt the ground beneath his feet rumble. He ran. Something in his genes, all those race memories, told him to run and he did. He dashed until his legs hurt and he was at a reasonably safe distance. He looked at how the volcano began to belch dark smoke; it almost looked like a demon. Alone, friendless, he lamented to himself aloud:
“So it begins”