The Monolith

Lithuania awoke to the sensation of a wet sponge mopping her forehead. Her sight was bleary at first—but then a man’s face came into focus. He was holding her in his arms, wiping the dry blood from a gash on her forehead. “Hey there,” he whispered as Lithuania looked at his face.

“Marco?” she smiled, pleased and aloof for a few seconds.

The hand with the sponge stopped mopping her. “No Lithuania. It’s Felix.”

Suddenly Lithuania recalled everything that had just happened. She stiffened, “Oh crap,” she said, pushing Felix away and sitting up. She looked around. “Where are we?”

“Shhh, Lithuania it’s OK,” Felix reassured her, taking her arm. “We’re in the dungeons. You’ve been here before.”

Lithuania looked down. She was on a cot, in one of the cells, with Felix by her side. “Timoteo?”

“I’m over here,” she heard him say, his dull bass emerging from a cell not far away. “Alive and captured as ever.”

Lithuania’s hand instinctively flew to the wound Felix was nursing. “No no, don’t touch,” he said, pulling her hand down and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I just disinfected it, don’t go getting it dirty again.”

“Felix, I saw Marco!” Lithuania said, her voice shaking, her eyes large. “I saw him! I—I was somewhere else!”

Felix’s eyes darkened. “Yeah, I noticed. That was one freaky magic show you pulled off back there. You sure you feeling OK?”

Lithuania frowned. “What was that thing?”

Felix sighed, rising to his feet. “That thing is what we’ve come to call the Monolith. Unmovable, unbreakable, unkillable. Believe me, my men and I have tried—and we didn’t all live to tell the tale.”

“Where—where are your men now?”

“Did you forget? They're a kilometer down the tunnels. I was going to take you as soon as you finished questioning Timoteo, but… In any case, the path in their direction is still standing, so we’ll go as soon as I know you’re OK.”

“I’m OK,” Lithuania said, attempting to stand, then feeling the world around her spin.

“Whoa, take it easy there.” Felix took a hold of her arm and helped her lie back down on the cot. “You’re not looking too good just yet.”

Lithuania grunted, annoyed. Her head was pounding. “So this Monolith,” she said, “What is it?”

“It’s a creature unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. I’m assuming it arrived at Luscious Locks after the psychic attack… though I don’t know how, or on what. It sure as hell isn’t Coralendian though, no doubts there. Did you see it?”

“It trumpets,” Lithuania said, “Like an elephant… but…” she tried to recall its appearance, but found it difficult. She didn’t understand why though… She had looked straight at it.

“You can’t remember what it looks like, can you?” Felix smiled. Lithuania looked at him, perplexed. “Nobody can, Lithuania,” Felix said, his voice a mixture of amusement and annoyance as he paced around the cell. “Nobody can.”

“But how is that possible?” Lithuania asked, attempting to sit up again.

“Ah!” snapped Felix, placing his hand on Lithuania’s shoulder and pushing her gently back down. “Take it easy. We don’t know why we can’t remember it. We just know no one can. We attacked it once, and have heard it several times, and the one time we attacked it—we all saw it. But afterwards, no one could remember what it looked like.”

Lithuania stared up at the ceiling, her hands crossed over her stomach. “Well that makes planning an attack kind of difficult.”

“Yeah, it does,” said Felix, taking a seat on a three-legged stool next to Lithuania’s cot.

“Why’d you attack it?”

Felix was about to respond, before pausing and clearly reconsidering what he was about to say. “The first time I heard it was one day after my troop and I landed in the capital, Green City. Communication was cut off and the black storm clouds swept over the sky the moment we landed… as if AssMachenstan had been waiting for us to land, just so they could trap us here. We found the city vacant… Completely desolate… And then we heard it. It was just a trumpeting in the distance at first… curious, but not threatening. We ignored it, and proceeded to search through the city for survivors.”

“Your troop,” Lithuania said, “Wasn’t it led by General Jack Jillian? A psychic?”

Felix winced almost imperceptibly at the name. “Yes. A psychic. But he became as good as the rest of us once he set foot here. His powers were as jammed as our radio signals.”

“Are you serious?”

Felix nodded. “General Jillian could pick up no signs of life in the city—but he also couldn’t pick up any of our thoughts, no matter how hard he tried. So we had to hunt for survivors the old fashioned way. A few of us were sent to these outposts—these concrete towers, where we discovered the tunnels. And then, just a few days before you arrived, the creature grew restless. It was stomping everywhere, making the tunnels and concrete towers shake, filling the men with terror. But that’s not all. Apparently, the louder the creature grew, and the closer it came, the more General Jillian’s powers returned.” Lithuania narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious. He was picking up no brainwaves whatsoever—but then the Monolith began trumpeting and romping around above ground, and suddenly he could hear all our thoughts. All our thoughts.”

“You mean he could read more than he normally could?”

Felix nodded. “It was like the guy was on overdrive. It was incredible. And those blue specks of light you saw chasing after you back there?” Felix gestured back toward the collapsed tunnels with his thumb. “They chased him too, every time the Monolith showed up.”

Lithuania sat up again, and this time Felix let her. “But magic? Really?”

“Hey, call it ‘science we don’t yet understand’ if you like. All I know is, I saw it. I saw those blue specks rush toward the General’s head every time the Monolith trumpeted. And last night, I saw those specks flood your entire body—right before you vanished.”

Lithuania stared at the wall, trying to put two and two together. “But I’m not—I’m not a psychic. Or anything else for that matter. ”

“Well you sure as hell are something, my dear,” said Felix matter-of-factly. “Because last night magic was all around you.” Felix looked at Lithuania carefully. Her face expressed utter bewilderment, but Felix sensed that she was faking it. He knew she was hiding something from him—there was no way she could be magical and not know it. “In any case,” he continued, “The Monolith activated General Jillian’s powers every time. So we decided to pursue it, and capture it. We figured, if it could boost Jillian’s psychic ability when nearby, maybe it was taking his psychic ability every time it went away. We even thought the creature might be responsible for our communications being jammed.”

“Well was it?”

“We never found out. But I don’t think so. Our radios aren’t affected by the monster’s proximity. We’ve tested that.”

“So what happened with General Jillian?”

Felix hesitated. “Well... eventually we sighted the monster and launched an attack led by General Jillian. But…” Felix’s face darkened. “Jillian was the first man the monster killed.”

“He’s dead?” Lithuania gasped.

Felix nodded. “Our weapons… did nothing. And it was like—it was like the Monolith knew Jillian was the leader. I mean, maybe it was because tiny blue specks were gravitating towards his head, I dunno—but in any case, the monster charged straight at him the moment it saw him.” Felix paused. “One moment he was there, shooting at the monster’s face, or where I remember his face to be… and the next moment, he was gone. Obliterated, entirely.”

“His body…?”

“Was a mess,” Felix said coldly. “A complete mess…”

Lithuania stared at Felix’s face, shocked. “I’m… I’m so sorry… He was your General… I can’t imagine how—”

“That was when his men became my men, Lithuania” Felix said stiffly, rising from the stool and wrapping his hands around the metal bars of the cell. Lithuania clutched at her head, feeling stupid. She should’ve known the moment Felix addressed the other soldiers as “his men” that his general had passed away… she had known Felix hadn’t entered Luscious Locks as the troop’s leader… why hadn’t she put the pieces together?

“So, you feeling better?” Felix asked, turning back to face Lithuania.

Lithuania gave him a fleeting glance. “Yeah, I think so,” she said, rising. This time she kept her balance.

“Yo Prince!” Felix bellowed. A few cells down, Timoteo grunted in response. “Get ready. We’re moving on down over to the next tower.”

Timoteo closed his fist, extinguishing the swirl of blue lights he had secretly been spinning in his palm. “Great,” he said flatly. “I can hardly wait.”