#10: YELLOW DOG I

The land rolled under the torrential rain. The sky flexed and cracked, lighting up the murky earth with brief flashes. The trees groaned their anguish under the storm, the animals feigned the silence of death in its presence. As the great revealer above turned over the world that lie in prostrated fear beneath it, there was only one who stood unaffected.

Yellow Dog, a being of desolation. Where purpose evaded sight, it was there like a watcher. Where chaos asserted its hand over order, it was Yellow Dog that came to see.

Unlike the many beings of Tytanis, Yellow Dog did not exist in the same plane as everyone else. True, it could bear witness to the living and the dead, each in their own plains of existence. True, it could see and hear those around it with clarity and understanding. But it was not bound by the power of physicality, and thus did not exist, perhaps, at all.

The storm that roiled around it was as inconsequential as a breeze.

It pondered the words that had motivated a churning across the lands of Tytanis. Though each realm was distinctly different, it had come to realize that they were all sitting, truthfully, within the same plain. It was amusing, it though, to see the realization of this denied to all the living of Tytanis, while all the dead could not deny the fact.

It reached its mind outward, penetrating the spaces that disconnected each of the realms. The realms themselves were spherical, suspended in the darkness of the night sky. Those distant burning lights, each one might possess a realm like those of Tytanis, but not in any meaningful way.

Yellow Dog could slip beyond space without a second thought, the physical nature of reality had no bearing on its movements. But those who lived were unable to do so, bound by the laws of physics. They would never reach these other lights in the sky.

“Physics. A method of understanding motions.” Yellow Dog did not have a voice, but its meaning was a great emanation throughout the realms. Where the storm turned above, it surged harder. Where the tides slammed waves against distant shores, the water pummeled the sand with greater intensity. Where the sun baked the land into a dusty waste, it burned even that much hotter.

Yellow Dog lapsed back into silence, and Tytanis continued on its predetermined track. Which track it would take, it did not know. There were so many to see, so many to choose from, and yet Yellow Dog was bound by temporality.

It would not be able to see the outcome until time forced it upon Yellow Dog.

It moved then, standing in a great, dark library. This was new, a section of time that had not yet come to pass but whose track had become clear, many converging to form one massive rail of time that would not be denied.

A young woman crouched in the darkness between bookcases. A killer roamed, whispering her name, searching for her. It was like an endless moment, prey and predator, one circling the other as the other hid in fear.

The track split then, and it split only in two. One where she died, and Tytanis was destroyed, and the other where she lived, and the realms had a fighting chance.

This was highly unusual, and Yellow Dog felt a rare feeling: interest. It was often beings of power which created direct splits in the flow of time. Yet, this young woman, Nabras, was anything but.

This made Yellow Dog wonder what might be coming for her in the future.

For a timeless instant, Yellow Dog found itself at the precipice of a choice, something that did not come often. Help the woman? Help the killer? The flow of time was hidden beyond these simple observations of the tracks of causality.

“The stars seek out your warmth, Nabras.” The storm above seemed to hesitate for a moment. The throng of battle raging across the realm of Hotan seemed to ease. And the darkness around Nabras seemed to engorge, covering her from the sight of the one who would end her life.

Yellow Dog would have sighed, if it could. A somberness took over it as it observed the rippling divergence of tracks open up before it. The convergence had passed, and now infinity was returning.

The stone was cast. Whether it would sink, or skip across the surface of time, Yellow Dog would have to wait and see to find out.

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redmysterium