On the Hill of Megiddo

The exile staggered in the riverbank mud. Blue-black circles wrapped around his rheumy eyes. He saw the world through dark swirls of hallucinogenic haze that faded to black at the periphery.

He had been trekking for days without food, and for how long before that? A week… a month? He couldn’t know. The parasite-goddess, Minaptra, carried every memory further than his previous step into an inky dreamworld where time didn’t flow, but blotted.