Seranda (Patreon)

For many years I have attempted to gain access to the near-mythical valley of Seranda, located in a mostly uncharted region in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa. All manner of stories were told of this place, all of them ranging from the utmost absurd to the completely unbelievable, and yet the very few instances where I could positively identify someone who had demonstrably been to this place all yielded the same results: a distant stare out the nearest window, maybe a sigh or two, and clear regret in their voice for having abandoned what they deemed to be heaven on Earth. These visitors recounted how they met many others like them, who had set out to see this legendary valley themselves, and yet did not make the same mistake they themselves had; those ones chose to remain, to experience the bounty of the creature said to empower the very land with its mere presence. None of the people I spoke to were willing to say more than the bare minimum, leaving me with precious little to go on when it came to securing my passage.

Access to Seranda is jealously guarded by neighbouring countries, whose foreign policies align purely when it comes to keeping the valley as far away from prospective exploiters as they can. Much like Kamchatka in the Russian Far East, very few are given the honour of a visit, and those lucky enough to see Seranda for itself almost always have the backing of either powerful research institutes or governmental officials. I was therefore informed that, being little more than an investigative reporter with a fancy title, I would be unable to gain the authorization required to set foot anywhere near the place. Nonetheless, I insisted on trying anyway; and though it took me the better part of three years and enough letters to plant a small forest, I am happy to say that I write this after the fact, inside a small house built by the locals.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of my visit was the degree of police protection required right after I landed at the airport. I was informed that there were many “individuals of ill repute” who constantly sought entry to Seranda, and thus spent fortunes tracking down those who were granted access, either to bribe them into giving them their pass, or threatening them into bringing them as hangers-on. Though I was assured this would never work, and in fact never did, I was nevertheless kept on edge by the amount of firepower carried by what were apparently mere officers; I remember wondering at the time just what the valley would have waiting for me, if that was the kind of reception that it warranted me receiving. 

Fortunately, the overall mood lightened significantly once the car I was being transported in cleared the suburbs and began the journey to the border; the officers were surprisingly gregarious and jovial, and despite never having been to Seranda before, had heard a great number of stories about it from both the few locals that made their way outside and previous guests who chose to return rather than make their residence there. I must admit, I did not believe any of them at the time; but now, with the benefit of direct experience and hindsight, I can safely say that most of those tales were, if anything, underselling the true nature of the valley.

Located at the junction of five different nations, Seranda enjoys a special status recognized by the African Union; though it lacks a military, or even sovereignty in the traditional sense, attempts at colonizing or interfering with its self-determination are strictly forbidden, as well as any armed incursions or industrial ventures. It is effectively a nature preserve, one kept away from anyone who might defile it, and to my surprise it has been that way since before the Scramble for Africa even took place in the 19th century; historical records recount how local tribes and sovereigns worked together to keep the valley as a peaceful “neutral zone” of sorts, with there being multiple confirmed instances in which diplomacy was conducted within its borders. Of course, with the arrival of European settlers and the tipping of the balance of power, it was difficult to keep the valley as open as it had been before, and its secrecy and inviolability were maintained only at great cost to the natives and the tribes entrusted with guarding them.

Thankfully, after witnessing what awaited them inside the valley, both French and British settlers agreed to keep Seranda as it always had been, under the condition that they may send a certain number of envoys to it every year; this explains why a significant chunk of its population is of European descent, and why the valley’s inhabitants speak French and English in addition to their native tongue. Speaking from experience, I have seen the kind of cooperation and unconditional acceptance that most people can only dream of, where rivalries and hatred are concepts that simply do not, and cannot exist. But I’m getting ahead of myself; the main issue at hand was that Seranda was effectively cordoned off after an unknown diplomatic incident in 1920, only re-opening for visitors in the late 80s, and one of my goals was to discover what had happened to warrant this.

I arrived at the border when the sun was beginning to set, and was informed that I would need to make the rest of the trip on foot while accompanied by one of the valley’s residents. It was then that I had the first taste of what was waiting for me.

After having heard the stories, I assume part of me made the effort to process the information, in the off-chance that it might turn out to be accurate and not mere fanciful invention. This is the only explanation I can find for why I didn’t immediately try to pinch myself awake after seeing Anzu Iwai, a celebrated Japanese biologist who had gone missing in Seranda some thirty years prior to my arrival. His face was still recognizable, even if it somehow looked younger rather than having thirty decades of wrinkles added onto it, but the rest of his body had become a thing of beauty.

Anzu had made the headlines in the late 80s when he announced he had become the first person in over fifty years to be given access to Seranda, therefore prompting a new age of exploration and research, promising to bring back information that would “revolutionize the world of medicine and bio-engineering”. Considering the illustrious career the man had behind him, very few doubted his ability to do just that, which only exacerbated the public outcry of despair once he never returned from the valley. Many tried to recover him, only to be informed that it had been their choice to remain within Seranda, and the precious little correspondence traded between Anzu and his family in the thirty years since have become the stuff of legends. And yet, according to one of my escorts, Anzu was nearly always the one to come lead visitors through the jungle and into his new home. At the time, I could not understand the discrepancy between what I believed I knew and what I was being told, but as luck would have it, my confusion would be handily cleared in time.

Regardless, Anzu himself had become utterly unrecognizable, with his proportions having become something I had never quite seen before, at least outside the realm of lurid artwork. I recalled that he was always self-conscious about his own image; coming from a family of wolves, it was a mark of shame for him to be as frail and unassuming as he was, with his trademark public image of a brave, bold explorer-scientist being something he built up to try and mask what was, in reality, ailing health and constant run-ins with illness that often left him out of commission for months. And yet, the Anzu I saw before me was the absolute peak of physical fitness: eight feet tall and absolutely covered in rippling muscle, looking more akin to a career bodybuilder than the lab rat he truly had been before, his body kept decent only by an oversized loincloth that barely covered the impressively-sized apparatus he had between his legs. With some embarrassment, I noted that something was oozing onto the ground from behind it, and decided to avert my eyes so as to avoid uncomfortable realizations about what those sloshing noises might be.

The ground itself shook with each of his steps, and he seemed to grow the closer he got to me; and yet, his voice was still the same one I had heard in recordings, entirely at odds with the body it was coming out of. I would have assumed, with a neck of those proportions, for each word to be accompanied by a rumbling bass and commanding tone, but Anzu instead had retained the nasally, sing-song lilt he had become semi-famous for. It instantly put me at ease, even if him placing me on his shoulder spiked my concerns immediately afterwards. It was with no small amount of awkward stuttering that I respectfully requested for him to put me back down, to which he responded by chuckling and telling me that I should prepare myself for what was to come. Naturally, I was left quite frightened.

Bidding our farewells to the police escort and turning towards the thick jungle, I powered through my inability to form coherent thoughts and began issuing a barrage of questions, all of the unanswered queries I had listed in my head in the course of the three years I spent trying to be allowed into Seranda. To Anzu’s credit, he was quite cordial in his reply, though he made it clear that it was not his place to say anything; I would simply have to wait until I arrived. He even refused to explain how he had grown into such a buff specimen and seemingly aged backwards, but after having gone through much of the same myself, it pains me that I have to write it down. Better that these secrets remain as they are, but the world has a right to know, if only because I believe it is the key to our salvation.

But I digress.

The walk through the overgrowth was uneventful, though I noticed a few oddities with Anzu’s body. More than once, it was hit by a stray branch when pushing a few of them aside, or had a spike or thorn run along it. Yet, despite this abuse, his fur and skin remained as immaculate as ever, nary a scratch or blemish upon his silvery form. I found my eyes attracted to the man’s chest, adorned with pectoral muscles that would make most women look flat if they stood beside him; yet, rather than being disproportionately large, they found their match in the rest of the wolf’s musculature, which was itself so overblown as to be nearly cartoonish. Despite this, I was unable to keep my sight away from him; as the change begins to take hold of me even now, I can see why this was.

We reached the edge of the valley when the sun was beginning to disappear over the horizon, but with about an hour of light left, Anzu figured it was best to show me Seranda in its splendor, bathed in an amber glow and in full display. I have to say that he was completely right in doing so; it wasn’t so much breathtaking as the very concept of breathing ceased to make any sense, the valley being so undeniably beautiful, so self-evidently perfect in its entirety, that I am not afraid to say I teared up on seeing it. I still don’t know if it was due to Seranda itself, or the fact that three years of daily effort had finally paid off, but I choose to believe that it was a mixture of the two.

The valley itself was far greater in scale than I anticipated, stretching far enough that the planet’s curvature occulted the far end, with the mountain ranges surrounding it being just barely visible in the distance to either side of us. Seranda itself was almost unbelievably pristine in its pastoral beauty, the stuff that oil paintings were made to immortalize. Two rivers ran through its entirety after falling from the mountains around us, with multiple settlements on their banks consisting mostly of small wooden houses with the occasional brick edifice; given the lack of any kind of visible industry, the materials were most likely imported from outside Seranda, probably to fulfill some kind of punctual, specific need. Lush greenery filled the rest of its space, evoking images of some mystical hidden kingdom from centennarial stories. It was glorious, and I did not hesitate to let Anzu know that much. He then asked me to pose any question I liked, and despite having a small warehouse’s worth of them before, I found myself unable to come up with any that might be halfway relevant.

It felt as if the valley itself had answered everything I needed to know about it, even if on its surface it was simply a well-kept slice of existence from centuries before. But its innocuous first appearances belied a true nature that was of a far grander scale than anyone could truly imagine, and it wasn’t long before I was made privy to just what this was.

It felt like it had been staged, really. Myself being carried over, allowed to bask in Seranda’s untarnished, untainted glory as the last rays of the evening sun coloured it the perfect shade of orange, only to be told to ask away and find nothing but praises to sing in the valley’s name. As if by design, the ground began to rumble as the distant sound of some monumental beast filled my ears; I knew, even at the time, that it was a creature making those noises, as it was exceedingly unlikely for the planet itself to be yawning.

What followed was something I had until then believed to be impossible. The greenery stretching towards the horizon began to shift and reshape itself, rising upwards and causing no end of debris and dirt to tumble off its sides. The rivers began to overflow, the oddly-tinged water lapping at the walls of the houses when their current inexplicably grew stronger. The very peaks around us and lining Seranda rose as well, before their roots were exposed when they ascended towards the heavens. But the greatest surprise of all came when, on the horizon, rose a head. It blocked out what remained of the sun’s light, what little was left creating a fitting halo around it as its monumental maw opened wide, exposing rows of glinting white teeth and a tongue that must’ve been powerful enough to crush anything made by mortal hands. It was big enough to cover a significant chunk of the sky, and even now I can barely begin to tell its true size. No one has dared to make the journey to where this “guardian”, as they called it, rested its head, as it was believed such a place was not made for mortal eyes to see. This creature, this giant beast, had just woken up upon sensing a new visitor, and it was only after realizing that it was a living being that everything began to make sense.

Looking at the mountain ranges lining Seranda, it quickly became apparent that they were not made of rock and stone, but of sinew and tendon, what I had initially mistaken for paths and outcroppings actually being bulging veins; these were not mere works of plate tectonics or geological chance, but incomprehensibly enormous arms, each one lined with so much muscle that it made even Anzu look pitiful by comparison. The creature flexed and strained them, presumably as a way of stretching out without disturbing the people living on it too much, for that was the true secret of Seranda: those houses were not built on solid ground, but what seemed to be a sergal of absolutely colossal size, who had either buried a large section of their body, or simply slept for long enough that the very planet itself grew around their frame. Whatever the case may be, it was easy to then see them breathing, with the titanic pecs they sported creaking loudly enough for even me to hear, leading me to wonder just where exactly its legs were.

That much was my first question.

Anzu happily informed that the guardian’s lower body very rarely moved, left only for special occasions or the odd earthquake that required them shifting around a bit. In fact, we were standing on top of one of its legs, which made me have a rather uncomfortable thought at just why the waters of the two rivers seemed to have a tinge of opaqueness to it. I queried Anzu, whose smile told me everything I needed to know, but still insisted on letting me know that yes, the great bounty of the guardian was what made him what he was; after bearing witness to the inhabitants, I can safely say he was not the only one.

The idea made me want to retch, but truthfully, at least part of me believed that it was merely some kind of long-winded hallucination, or a lucid dream gone completely out of control. Truly, this couldn’t be happening; creatures of that scale didn’t exist, and yet the more I looked, the more it continued to impose itself onto my unbelief. This maddeningly impossible giant looked at me with eyes that shone brighter than the rising moon above, and its mouth closed after it spoke a word. To this day, three years after first arriving, I will never forget each syllable, each letter, delivered as it was with the utmost sincerity and carrying with it a love and acceptance that, truly, only a truly merciful god could ever have for its supplicants. I knew, then, that this guardian would keep me safe, would keep anyone safe if only they would accept him into their life. And he did all of this with a single word, booming and powerful enough to knock me backwards with a gust of wind:

“Welcome.”