5. Leviathan

Weight grew atop Behemoth’s head and with it the weight of dreams in which the Company watched from afar. Behemoth shook his head, tried to dislodge this new-old thing. The invisible invader. Bucked and shook, rolled in the mud, perilous to his bulk. But still the weight remained. No separation.

Nocturnalia returned. Nocturnalia returned, and creatures behaved strange and tortuous and would not be devoured in quite the same way. Could not shake the thing on/in his head. Could not find a way through it. Festered. Spread. Conflagration. Instigation. Morass.

Behemoth dove and held his breath, to drown whatever clung to his head. Behemoth drifted like a dead thing at the bottom, among the skeletons of its prey, among the deep live things that survived by existing beneath its notice. Drifting. Trying not to dream. The surface a silvery-gray hole in the world above.

Behemoth became wraith, became phantom, became a notion and a smudge of night. Came up for air at night. Hunted nocturnal and let the silence and wet black wash over, speak to the thing on Behemoth’s head. Starve, Nocturnalia said. Never see the light, Nocturnalia said. Be forever staring up into nothing and nowhere. Like Behemoth.

Sleep overtook Behemoth at strange moments, found gaps in time where he recognized Time. What occurred and what did not occur. As if Nocturnalia had turned on Behemoth and did not work to dislodge the creature. With this knowledge came the dreams in green again, like something from the bottom of the holding ponds. Overlooked. Discarded. Resurrected. Floating.

Even deep, Nocturnalia spoke to him. Spoke in many voices. Something within rising up to meet it, greet something familiar within Nocturnalia. A fox staring out from a burning shed. A flame that became a red tail that became the form of a salamander, wriggling in the mud. A voice that wasn’t a voice. A body that wasn’t a body.

The green, the residue that, long dormant, now coated him once more, sheathed scars and sheathed the creature, too. That the green might replace the thing on his head. For at least Behemoth understood the source of the green, had parlayed with it once upon a time. Grow and grow as once Behemoth had grown mighty.

The green reached into Behemoth like hands slowly plunged into shallow water and tearing at pond weeds at the bottom. Penetrated the citadel atop Behemoth’s head. Seeped in and snuck in, and as the green burrowed there Behemoth could tell the creature atop his head now had, unseeing and unhearing, the features he recognized but could not name. Will never name.