Winged Monkey

393 AC - The yellow bricks break apart, and Dorothy grits her teeth, then signals to her troops. Hordes of winged monkeys descend upon the enemy, their wings flapping furiously, their tails whipping the air. Ozma is there as well, dressed in her royal attire. Or is she wearing armor? There's a foul smell in the air, as if something were rotting nearby. The sky grows ever darker, and bruised clouds gather on the horizon as the storm brews. Black, pink and violet tongues like brambles, and eyes that never blink. The army of flying monkeys sweeps in like a flood. They come to bolster the ranks of the defenders…

I wake up with a start. It was a bad dream. Just a bad dream. For a moment, I'd felt an evil presence, very similar to the Hunger when I was wandering through the bowels of the City of Scholars. Did we really defeat the abomination? Had it found a way to survive? I try to remember the details of the encounter and analyze how the battle unfolded to try and find something I might have missed. No, there's no other explanation. Unless… From what Waru told me, he had placed a Rhombus on the black stone to access the City's memories – a Glyph that could act as a door to the Gestalt. Had the entity found a way out? Or was it really just a nightmare?

The winged monkeys are characters in L. Frank Baum's novel "The Wizard of Oz". In this children's book, these creatures are initially slaves of the Wicked Witch of the West before being freed by the hero, Dorothy Gale. They help Dorothy fly across the sky by carrying her with them.

MOYO