Chaos Mode

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IT was the strangest creature Darius had seen. “Uh-oh,” he heard Colene say.

The four of them stood by the anchor, gazing out onto the world it showed, and the thing that hovered in the foreground. The world was ordinary: a gently rolling countryside, patches of flowering bushes, and trees beyond. In the distance were blue-gray mountains. He had seen many realities like this. But the creature was something else.

It was about the size of a calf, maybe the weight of two solid men, and roughly oval in cross section. At the top was what looked like a stout elephant’s trunk, but it connected to no elephant’s head. Instead it seemed to thicken, and then condense into another trunk pointing the other way. Two or three projections sprouted from its center, moving sinuously, as if snakes were poking their heads out of small tunnels. The double trunk might as well have been the snout of a dragon, ready to belch fire fore and aft.

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