by Max Jager
Periodically he had looked up to the birds above with the long beaks that waited and squawked for his demise, he had seen them eat the snakes and other rats and bugs that burrowed and walked through the land. He had seen them spill the carcasses down to the waters below and had seen those phantoms of the river Styx gobble the giblets like starved piranhas. It made him turn when he saw it and it made the climb rougher. But he managed. He always did, he had too much on his mind not too. Too much fear, too much anger, too much curiosity. And when he was done, when he could finally put his body breast first upon the ground to breath, when he could take a calm breath and think, he looked and asked: Where is my family? The whole point of it, the drive that moved him. Where were they? He wondered.
There were two demons, conveniently, to answer them. They stood away, almost patient with their hands folded on their chests. One of them had their spear through the floor and the other moved up to meet the tired man, it was all convenient. Expected. He grabbed Aleistar by the hair, brought his face up and narrowed his eyes as he inspected the shorelined man.
"It's time to meet the king." The demon said and they went at it, headlong north, dragging and pushing Aleistar him all the way there.
Where is my family? He asked himself throughout the miles of broken stones and hot sands. Where is my family? He tried looking for an answer above the high mountains. He tried hearing it through the heavy-blown winds. He tried to feel it through the intensely heated sand on his naked feet. No answer. And after a while, he stopped thinking altogether. He did not care what he was, honored guest or slave or walking dead man.
He figured he couldn't have been anything special. There were no bells to greet him. No carpets, no trumpets. No family. There was nothing but the stiff, cold, mechanical movement of the soldiers and how they pulled him through a dark cave, into a dome-shaped mountain and through fields of flowered grass. He couldn't even appreciate the landscape, for his head was down the whole way through.
At some point, he made it into a building. At another point, he was pulled through a hallway. Then, finally, somewhere along his travels he was let go. The two soldiers that had accompanied him now set by the side of a hall entrance.
"Is he here?" Aleistar asked. They said nothing and Aleistar looked down the bleak tunnel. No light showed save for the mild glow of torches that sat in even spaces down the path. The air was filled with the slow rolling yellow dust as if something far below was blowing back at him back. He went down anyways. The floor was cold and sleek, the walls coarse. He pushed most of his weight upon the walls as he descended and as he neared he could hear a faint sound. It was the noise of clanking, of screaming, of steel hitting stone. A terrible discord. Then silence. Cold again. A saw? Cutting? Slicing? It must have been a butchery considering all the surgical work he was hearing. Like flesh was being stabbed through, cut open, flayed.
He stopped at last. Aleistar scanned the room, his body felt cold. His rags of clothes flew gently through and he could see the cracks in the walls of the room, the wind blew through the small interstices and it sounded like a whisper, gentle-like. There were roman pillars on the floor, burst open and wounded on the shaft. They lay docile and in shards, like torn stems left to decay. Aleistar scanned the lengthy room and found bodies all around. Some of them ancient, some of them new. They converged to some spot, away, beyond what Aleistar could view and as Aleistar stepped forward, he couldn't help but think, I have come here in hope of wife and child, only to stand witness to this garden of war.
This was not the promised land.
Round leather shields laid face down, raised at a bevel by stricken iron-beaked arrows. The swords were many and most were broken. They lay stabbed through the dirt or at a length on the floor. And Aleistar got closer. He could feel grass beneath his feet, he saw the pillars and the bodies and the weapons victim to overgrowth. The very blood of the fallen fueling the invasion of nature, the roots and ivy and vines all strapping themselves and devouring the building. It was more violent the closer Aleistar got to the end of the room.
And then he saw the source of the sound of flesh-cutting. It was a man getting a spear removed from his cut open belly. It was that very same man giving his last pneumatic sigh, tottering off a hill of corpses. He fell, rolled, and lay by Aleistar's feet, with his heels twitching and broken on the floor. On his chest, four bleeding wide cuts. Aleistar looked up, his eyes catching glimpses of the sullen faces of the dead piling the mound. And there at the top, with his spear drooling blood, there stood Astrix. Smiling.
Nude, body completely pale, well-built. His face, gentle. Like a cherub. His hair flowed shoulder length, curly and snow-white. His lips and cheeks and nose and eyes, all gentle. And Aleistar was overwhelmed for a moment, this androgynous nude beauty.
Astrix faced Aleistar. His full member came to view, everything of him came to view. And Aleistar noticed his arms, his legs, stained red. Not paint, not blood, a complete dyeing of the skin. He looked like a backward fox, this hound of war. The warrior laid down his spear and stood tall. And Aleistar's lips twitched, his face contorted as if all the many grievances were finally overcapacity in his patient mind, so much so that they burst out of him in one loud sonorous shout.
"Where is my family? Where is my heaven?" Aleistar stomped the floor. His feet bled out. "There is nothing here. Nothing but desert, desert and time."
The man stayed silent.
"You're Astrix, aren't you?" He asked.
Silence.
"Keep your promise, demon! I want my child and my son, I want my good heaven. I want what is deserved to be mine. I want what was taken." The saliva was spitting out of his long-winded shouts.
Astrix studied him. He sniffed the air, looked to the two guards now coming closer with ready arms. He waved at them, they stopped and put their spears back to their side. Astrix walked over to Aleistar, stepping over the broken tangle of bodies.
He put his hand on Aleistar's shoulder. His matched his nubile yellow eyes to Aleistar's.
"I pity. What a terrible fate, to love so much, to lose so much. To live and die a pauper. I'm sorry," Astrix said. "But you have me confused."
"C-confused? Where is my wife-" Aleistar stopped midway. He groaned and opened his mouth to scream. There was a sharp pain in his shoulder and he looked over. Astrix was clasping it, biting deep with his hand, crushing his right shoulder blade into compressed bone dust. It made Aleistar bend over. At that, Astrix swept him across the legs with a kick. He fell on his side, face first and felt the blood leak down to his eye.
"Look at what you've done. You've forced me to rectify this behavior of yours." Astrix said. His face was dull, cold."Who are you to speak to me? Who are you to stand equal to me? Who are you to demand? Who are you, son of man, for I am a monarch."
Aleistar sat curled and wincing.
"I am King Astrix. Son of Hector, breaker of horses. Prince-heir to long-lost Troy. I am king and this is my domain. And who are you?" He kicked Aleistar away, into a pillar. "You are just trash."
He looked at the writhing man who twitched at the touch of the king.
"You've brought two Vicars here. Hunters of men like me, and for that, you have my thanks. This whole meeting stands as testimony to thanks and to the pity I have for you. So I give a piece of my abode, to hopefully give you peace in this land." He put his red foot over Aleistar's abdomen. "But spit in my hand again and you will be fed to the dogs. That is my right and mine alone."
"M-my wife?" Aleistar managed in between puking.
"You still persist? Then let me alleviate your suffering." He smiled. "Your family is not here. You forfeited them long ago. Even I can't save them."
"Betrayer." Aleistar spat.
"Sure. This can be a conspiracy if you so desire, or a practical joke if it humors you. Either or can satiate that animosity in you. But make no mistake in your sad story, this is no tragedy. Tragedy belongs only to the noble and the strong, of which you are, neither."
He walked
past Aleistar who cried and bemoaned and coughed dust.
Darr
Darr
During Ajax's Arrival
"And you're sure he's this way?" Darr asked he held the map, the orders, the confidential papers in front of his face. It was stained with soot and ripped at its ends and below was signed Astrix with black ink. The demon rested on his side, blood coming out of his ear and eye bludgeoned to a mass of purple.
"Yes. Yes! Please, you have to believe me," He had his hand above his face, it cast a five-fingered shadow on the centurion helmet the demon wore. "I am a simple messenger. Please. That's it."
"Is that why you killed the people here? is that why you reek of death?" Darr pointed to the small huts around him with the shabby ceilings and the strewn bodies laid to waste, half interred in the floor or half-burned into ash. It had been a while since they had died and since Darr had had the chance to arrive.
"I didn't do that. The others did." The demon said.
"I found you joking with them all. It doesn't seem like you tried to stop them?"
"I had nothing to do with it. It was a calculated attack by Astrix's orders."
"Why?"
"I don't know. He doesn't tell us why. He just has us sent, that's it. That's how it's always been. For hundreds - No, thousands of years."
"Thousands of years of war on this small island?" Darr breathed in the smell of cremated corpses. "All those years of sin, all the years you refused to change. God can't help you now."
"No, no. Please, I only do as I'm told. Nothing more." The demon said.
"What would happen if I kill you? If I ate your heart? Would you face oblivion? Would you meet the empty darkness with dignity? No, you wouldn't, would you?" Darr asked. The helmet slipped off the demon as he extended his hand out. He touched Darr's ankles. "Evil is your trade, isn't it? It's been this way for thousands of years. I can't help you now, and I can't leave you now. That would be a half-measure, and half-measures cause mistakes. I know that now."
"No, no."
"It's over. The jury has spoken. I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance." He snapped back the lever on his revolver. "And furious anger, those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers."
"Stop, please! I can't go there. Please, not there. Don't send me further down."
"And you will know my name is the Lord."
The demon crawled then, with broken legs, using his knees to push himself down the hill.
"Please."
"When I lay my vengeance upon thee!"
The shot was loud, powerful and it rolled through the valley like a strong gust. And when it had ended and the echo faded, Darr was brought back to the soft licks of the flickering flames. He could hear his heartbeat. It sounded dull, monotonous. And he looked out into the horizon, where he could see a small blip the size of a pea. It was round, Bulbous, like a slumbering flower pod. It was the dome spoken about.
He took a deep breath and faced back down the road and the corpses to his side with the holes in their chests. It looked like the work of machinery. Darr sighed, he put his guns back in his jacket and felt his wrists. They were aching, bleeding, and the dull pain seemed to extend to the rest of his body.
It had taken him what felt like a week of trekking and back peddling to find himself around the mountain range, the heart of Ida, as it was told by the messenger's paper. He looked up to the giant walls enclosing the space and how the rocks encroached on the few dried sumac trees that were spread sparsely. It looked unnatural, this tumor of a growth and Darr found himself shaking his head, looking left and right to see how far it extended. He saw nothing but the few cave entrances scattered about. Small vulture-like creatures, with bony exteriors and lanky bodies, flew out and in the dark holes sprawled along the dome wall. He looked to a hole in front of him and the steep darkness frightened him. He breathed. He slapped himself. He dried his sweat and the remembered the girl, Sophie, and the others and with one gallop, jumped inside.
It was not steep. It wasn't cavernous. It was small, tidy, crushingly thin.
His body squeezed and turned to its side as he began to teeter slowly through the enclosed space. It was an unknown darkness that he could feel, that seeped into his imagination. Closing his eyes, opening them, using that crimson visage of his, all of it was useless. It felt as if his limbs had disappeared and all his efforts were useless. He did not know whether he was going further up or further down, or even if he was moving at all. A trickle. The water hit his forehead, it made him jump. Water droplets that came from the closing ceiling above.
It was packed. So terribly suffocating that Darr found himself exhaling, sucking in his gut and his lungs just to squeeze himself through a band of mineral growth (at least it felt different, more chalky than the usual stone). It went on like that, the sounds of alien animals scratching through the walls of the tunnel, the sound of water dropping like false rain, the minutes of breathlessness as he scrambled for more ground, even if just an inch.
It was terrible. His foot slipped. His body fell down. How much? He couldn't tell, too dark. He only felt his face scratching, the earth cutting and scraping along as he went down. And then, land. Solid, he felt crawling on his shoulders. Cockroaches perhaps, (more likely spiders) that scoured the invader. He tried to jump and to flinch, there was no room though. And he grit his teeth and moved forward, he felt web brush against his forehead and tear to long threads. There was web? Then it was dry. And if it was dry, there was hot desert air. He moved his face around. He felt it, the draft of arid heat. He moved again, trying to use those thermometer cheeks of his. Air, dry desert air. It was a little down, a little to the left. He chased after it, forcing his shoulders and breaking stone just to make his way down to the little crack. He tunneled, thinking to himself, All my searches have been for this man. For the chance that there is someone - even if just one person - worth saving. And he's held hostage, I'll kill the bastard if I have to.
He came to a full body stop. His body pushed against the wall and he looked with his throbbing eye through a crack where light showed. And he thought as he licked his lips, I'll kill the bastard just because I can. Just to remind him of everything he's done, here and beyond.
He pointed his gun at the wall and pressed the barrel against the corrugated surface of stone. Blast. A deafening blow, dust that flew everywhere and forced his face to reel. Rocks that embedded in his eyes, in his nose. He wiped his face and blew his nose and felt the stone and dust and critters shake away from him. His suit was completely covered and he did his best to brush it away, stopping at his arms, his arm in particular that glowed in and burned. He undid his sleeve and saw the string, gold, vibrating, turning and coiling. It looked exactly how his innards felt. Squirming.
He looked up.
The light at the top of the dome, the ring, was blinding in its intensity. His eyes adjusted slow and all the scenery came to him as a blur. Darr rubbed his face. He looked down to the fields, an ocean of green that rolled and waved with the gusts coming from the North. There were flowers, he could spot them if only barely, the golden flowers that waved at him. They were in patches, patches of gold, joyous light. It made Darr sick. Confused. The desert out there, the golden and green fields within. He slid down the slope of the dome and rolled down on the grass and laid himself out. It was soft and it made him uneasy. He took both pistols out, looked around and turned his head. It froze all of a sudden. His mouth went silent, his Adam's apple jumped.
There were crosses behind him. Crosses leading up to a road. A road leading up to that giant Villa. Or village. Or capital. The wooden crosses were laid about like makeshift castle walls, the dried bodies were there too, old and rotting, faced to the red ring of light at top. They extended out like lampposts, like signs, like greetings. Darr began to sweat. His eyes looked past the corpses, towards the roman pillars and the aqueducts they carried and he said, as he watched from a distance a little river of water falling into a pond. He thought, as he looked ins
ide of that algae infected pond, I'll kill this monster. No matter the cost. For I can't imagine myself living comfortably otherwise. He must die.
He touched his hot arm and walked towards the road leading up to a set of arches and wooden doors.
Jeronus III
Jeronus
They came to the barracks and to where the giant watch towers loomed over them and where the heads of enemies past were posted on spikes, at even intervals along the wooden walls. The walls went high up and on small platforms, the demon's looked down at the group of prisoners, slaves as they were called. They were eating something, organ meat, offal, perhaps a fruit. It was hard to tell, though the succulent juice came out of their mouths with each loud laugh as they counted the prisoners and watched them set foot inside.
