The Crystal Crux: Blue Grotto

by Allen Werner

  The alpha, breathing heavy from the renewal of heat, lowered its head, eyes still focused forward and approached the Spaniard. It growled a bit and sniffed at him when it got near.

  Pero did not move. In his mind, in his thoughts, the Spaniard was back in the clearing in the middle of the night surrounded by tall torches. This is where he and the wolf had left off.

  ‘Can we reconnect?’

  Pero released his fears. He took a deep breath and dropped down on one knee. He went eye to eye with the wild wolf. They were near enough that he could smell the forest in the thick coat, feel the hot breath emanating from the lungs.

  Spiritually, they touched. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.

  Pero’s whole spirit melted.

  The wolf’s spirit did also. It stopped snarling, red eyes turning amber, flush with curiosity; all the rage completely vanished.

  Pero couldn’t fathom the measure of confidence swelling his heart. Without thinking, he extended his right hand and held it there. He waited.

  The wolf bowed, nodded slightly as if submitting.

  Pero ran his right hand through the beasty’s thick tuft. There was peace.

  The link broke.

  The wolf shifted its head abruptly, turned aside, and ran off to join the others.

  Pero’s path was clear. The test, if that’s what it was, was over.

  Channeling all the poise of an accomplished toreador, the Spaniard rose to his feet and stiffened his back. He wished for a moment he had a cape, flowers and an audience.

  The whisper returned for an instant.

  ‘Proceed.”

  Pero de Alava obeyed.

  Chapter 18 – Lonely Giant

  If Sinibaldus was nothing else, he was a performer. The magician had discovered early on the advantages of being a showman, the art of the spectacle. To enhance the mysticism already circulating around the Bellerophon Crystal, he created his own breathtaking gestures, a series of unnecessary movements of the hands, strange shiftings of the fingers, wild gyrations of the arms, sometimes even the legs. With an occasional spin, perhaps a pirouette, he blurted out outrageous sounds, bleats and shrieks, guttural glugs and foreign curses. He spouted and recited meaningless incantations.

  The bald giant found that any combination of these brazen theatrics tended to enthrall, intimidate and captivate an audience.

  Most spectators, before a show began, already harbored profound superstitions and unfounded fears concerning the bearers and wearers of mysterious artifacts. It was often believed that these men and women must possess some innate spiritual powers, or, at the very least, have their humours cosmically aligned with gods and goddesses, or worse, devils and demons.

  The viewers tended to imagine a great deal more about the performance than the sorcerer himself could often produce and Sinibaldus could produce a lot.

  To engage the latent energies confined to the Bellerophon Crystal, Sinibaldus learned he need only focus his concentration on the inner fire. His gift of prescience, a gift he didn’t entirely comprehend, would attach itself to the fire, to the formless esoteric particles reeling inside. With meditation and attentiveness, the magician’s thoughts were absorbed into that flame, into a black void first. From there he would become one with the Stone’s soul, able to travel over the earth, sometimes breaking the rules of time, enter people’s minds and exploring distant landscapes through their experiences.

  It was a talent. There was no denying that. Not just anyone could do what he did. Lesser men had tried and failed, the absorption of their thoughts into the blackness of the Stone extracting from them their will to live, their ability to reason and speak, to think and rationalize. These men went utterly mad before finding their way back out. Sometimes their hearts just stopped.

  Sinibaldus knew that by maintaining and preserving the true nature of the Bellerophon Crystal, even the bravest rogues and ambitious cutthroats, would hesitate before trying to wrest it from him, fearful of what horrible thing might befall them if they failed. People tended to be superstitious anyway, thieves more so than others. Powerful talismans were nothing to be toyed with.

  After insisting that Rugerius Fabbro halt his assault on Anthea Manikos’ left breast, Sinibaldus directly recovered the Bellerophon Crystal from its special niche on the hemp cord dangling about his neck. For a long spell, the giant held the glimmering talisman afore Anthea’s bruised face, his mind sufficiently distracted by several branches of wayward thought. He was absentminded, troubled, incapable of utilizing the Crystal. He kept jumping from limb to limb. His concentration was amiss and he lacked focus. ‘My duty,’ he kept telling himself. ‘My duty.’

  Sinibaldus loathed the very concept of duty, of obligation to anyone but himself. Right now, whilst serving the crown of Parthenope, there were numerous commitments weighing upon his lofty shoulders. He had never imagined he’d ever have to be this responsible to this extent. It took all his energy sometimes not to go mad and reject it all, murder the entire Court and flee back to the wild; abandon Sin Circus once and for all. The black event had blossomed into a nearly irrepressible enterprise. The sheer quantity of creatures, performers and assets in his employ had outgrown his abilities to manage them. Sometimes he pretended to be in control. He had too. The juggling never ceased. Everyone and everything was in his mind all the time, as he was in theirs. He wanted to be a god, and thus he was. It took its toll. No man has the capacity to contain such vast stores of constantly shifting information and thought. His attentiveness slipped. He’d never admit it to anyone, the problems that constantly arose, bigger problems than most might imagine. They were grievous, even dangerous. Much of the time, he depended on fear rather than control. His creatures could be off doing god knows what and he wouldn’t know it. He figured one day it would all catch up with him but until then, he would keep up the façade.

  The years had not been kind to him. Sinibaldus suffered horribly from an assortment of physical maladies, arthritis and other ailments that required his constant attention, frequent restorative health aids, elixirs and creams.

  And then there was the fucking Spaniard who escaped his clutches. ‘Pero.’ He had lied to Gherardus Fabbro about that situation. Lied right to his face. In fact, he told everyone who would listen, he had succeeded, that Pero was dead, ravaged by bears and wolves, but he knew that it was all a fantasy. The truth ripped at his spirit in a manner he could have never imagined.

  Never had lying been so bothersome.

  And then, on top of all of that, his brash overseer, Rugerius Fabbro, the Castellan of Parthenope, challenged him to a duel, sought to war with him right in the grotto, a place teeming with mysticism and ethereal beings. ‘Fool.’ A newly hatched desire for vengeance against the Castellan was yearning to be explored. ‘I want to devise a plan so hideous and grisly, it will be as if he suffers a thousand deaths.’

  But Sinibaldus couldn’t think on this now, not on any of it.

  ‘My duty. My duty.’

  Sinibaldus breathed fully and slowly, creating a rhythm, a cadence, his powder blue eyes gazing blankly at a light blue wall, the Bellerophon Crystal twirling near Anthea’s face.

  ‘If only I had someone to talk to, counsel me, or at the very least share my woes.’ This was the final branch he jumped on. His human side. He wished to run up and down it all day long. Sinibaldus could never admit it, but he was lonely. There was no one in the world he could trust with his rare secrets. There was no one to share his intimacy or the knowledge of the Bellerophon Crystal. He was seventy-three years old now and his interest in women, in men, in anything involving sex had waned.

  There was but one woman who could arouse him and instill a sense of hope where no hope lived.

  Viridian was a great deal younger than him and she had thus far, rejected all his advances. Her loveliness was always tempting to him, teasing him, beckoning him to lie with her. He imagined it, pictured her even now, in the grotto, lifting slowly from the blue waters, her fulsome teats perky and dripping,
the black mane shimmering in the light, her hips, waist and ass. All of it begging him to touch and taste, enter. Sinibaldus suffered a shiver, followed by an elevation. He smiled. This was so unlike him.

  ‘Duty. My duty.’ Sinibaldus threw everything away and regrouped. He forced his concentration and still that didn’t help. The Bellerophon Crystal was afire for some reason but he didn’t care, not enough, not yet. He had to rape this poor girl’s mind, get up inside of her memories and purge them, pillage her modesty, murder it. Rugerius Fabbro wouldn’t be satisfied until Anthea Manikos was a depraved little whore like Viridian. ‘Viridian. Yes, Viridian. Viridian is a whore,’ he thought miserably. ‘She lays with man and beast, women and children, everyone and anyone. Her need to be gratified sexually knows no bounds. And yet, she is bound, for when she sees me coming, the gates are barred. Her world is closed, locked and bolted shut. When I make any attempt to speak with her and enjoy even a brief moment of her sparkling company, her derision is cutting. “Mostro disgustoso, she says. I will not lie with mostro disgustoso.’

  Sinibaldus knew he had the power to change her mind, rape it as he would soon rape Anthea. The Bellerophon Crystal had the capacity to eliminate any blockage in any mind. Whatever prevented Viridian from lying with him, he could find it and expunge it. But he couldn’t do that. He had a whole circus full of drones and sycophants bowing and doting over him. No, what he required was one soul of sincerity. ‘She must give herself to me. Her concern for me must be genuine, just like Claire’s was.’

  Like a schoolboy, Sinibaldus tilted his head with fondness as he remembered Claire. He remembered the first time she gave herself to him. The whole clan was there. They had gathered to watch the newly christened couple copulate. It was their way.

  Claire was gorgeous. When the sorceresses that had accompanied Claire to the ritual pushed the cloak back from her shoulders allowing the cloth to fall to the cave floor, she was utterly stunning. Her long black hair curled itself over the sides of her face, extending down madly over her entire body, all the way down her back, touching her ass.

  The giant’s erection stirred some more. He hardly ever got erections. It felt good to have another.

  ‘Claire has come back to me. I’m sure of it. She just doesn’t know it yet.’

  Chapter 19 – Purity

  “What the fuck are you waiting for?” Rugerius barked, rousing the daydreaming magician from his obvious stupor.

  The giant chastised himself immediately. It was completely unprofessional to fantasize, to be so double-minded, triple-minded in the heat of his work. All these distractions were a nuisance.

  “Fuck them all,” he whispered to the Stone which he held on the raw nubby tips of his large left hand. “Fuck them all.”

  Anthea’s face was glowing, her mind already absent, absorbed by the Stone.

  Incensed, not even taking a moment to observe and heed what was occurring between Anthea and the Crystal, Sinibaldus reached out with his free hand and washed over the skin of the Stone effectively extinguishing the flame, silencing the gentle light.

  No longer glowing or entranced by the flame, Anthea immediately jumped back, shuddering and jerking in the stone chair. “No.”

  Sinibaldus wasn’t sure what to make of that and yet, he didn’t care. ‘Fuck her and fuck Rugerius. Fuck them all. I’m going to do my duty and get the fuck out of here. I’m tired of this.’

  Sinibaldus’ focus was back, fully motivated to complete this pitiful project and return to more important matters. And although he wasn’t in the mood for performing any of his common theatrics, the mystery of the Bellerophon Crystal demanded he do it. It required sensationalism. Besides, the actions were ingrained in the magician’s psyche, nearly involuntary.

  Closing his eyes, Sinibaldus began to chant in a low, guttural voice, intoning in French, wholly mindful that none of the ears currently occupying the grotto understood the language, his native tongue. His black cape began to breath, inflating and deflating as his hips gyrated in an eerie spherical motion. His right hand shot out away from him. It returned in an unusual and abnormal manner, the wrinkled fingers dancing hypnotically through the suggestive blue air, commanding invisible forces from unseen worlds to come forward and make their presence known.

  The tone of the giant’s incantations gradually swelled until at last they reached their zenith. “Anthea Manikos,” Sinibaldus reared up and roared. “Behold the fire!” He snapped his fingers and the Bellerophon Crystal lit back to life, this time with spellbinding intensity. Loud rays of blinding light reached out in every direction filling the entire grotto with a vivid, twirling kaleidoscope of colors, the subtle blue hues of the trapped waters shamed into obscurity by the magnificence.

  One powerful beam of pure white light being generated by the Crystal shot directly into the space between Anthea’s eyes, above the bridge of her nose. The intensity snatched her face, tearing through her skin and mind, forcibly removing her thoughts from her head.

  Anthea could not move. Her teeth chattered and her grey-green eyes froze in place, open as wide as humanly possible. The drain against her startled spirit hurt more than the lustful twisting of her left breast by Rugerius Fabbro’s filthy hand. She screamed!

  Recollections rushed haphazardly from her mind into the Stone. There were huge memories, wonderful memories, terrible memories, and small ones. Some were old and others were new. There were scores of infinitesimal fragments Anthea had completely forgotten she retained; some from infancy.

  Anthea, for her part, understood everything that was happening to her but was paralyzed and could do nothing to resist. Her life came rushing forward and all she could do was watch it run. And then it came faster. The speed at which it soared became a virtual tidal wave of jumbled pictures, sounds, smells and emotions, feelings and textures. Everything she had ever loved and hated, valued and denounced, desired and despised, was in there. The whole world as she knew it. The wrenching was so severe, so pressing, she could not process the squall. Too many moving parts. Too many noises and sentiments. And the more she tried to understand it, focus on anything at all, the worse it got. The sensation spun out of control and her mind lost balance. She felt queasy, finally capitulating and succumbing to the dizziness. She stopped screaming, stopped thinking. She slipped helplessly into an unconscious acceptance of her dire situation, the myriad waves of memory just washing over her in a mindless stream, the tide lifting her up, dragging her soul wherever it wanted to go.

  Maintaining the theatrics for a spell longer than necessary, purely for Rugerius Fabbro’s sake, the giant magician continued to spew harsh invectives, garbled nonsense in French and Arabic, seasoning it occasionally with a few Germanic euphemisms he was confident the Castellan had learned while squiring in Bavaria. Sinibaldus wanted to ensure that the hotheaded Castellan respected how truly powerful the Bellerophon Crystal was. He didn’t want Rugerius Fabbro to ever forget this day. The more superstitious the lout was, the more devious the revenge he would eventually inflict on him would be.

  The magician’s fingers continued to dance around the Stone, stroking the blue air, trending up and down, widdershins and clockwise, the broad dark sleeve creating an unpleasant current.

  And then the theater concluded and Sinibaldus got down to business.

  Rugerius could tell the work had begun. The gyrations and hand hops had ceased. The giant’s diminutive face was stern, grave and attentive, the powder blue eyes penetrative and focused. Rugerius couldn’t see what the magician saw. None of Anthea’s memories were open to him. For Rugerius, the grotto was splashing waves, drips of humidity from the ceiling, and myriad rays of colorful light emanating from the Crystal. It was wonderful and terrible all at the same time.

  Sinibaldus labored silently. He started breathing hard.

  When Sinibaldus was younger, this was not a chore. He could energize the Bellerophon Crystal and rape minds without breaking a sweat. He was sweating now. His heart was palpitating. The nerves in his arms
trembling slightly. Veins in his head throbbing. He was simply getting too old to do this.

  Probing the minds of animals and halfwits, simpletons and criminals was easy. Their natural fear of him, of his menacing stature and infamous reputation, tended to loosen all resistance. They normally yielded quickly rather than suffer too much pain.

  Having your mind raped was painful.

  Anthea Manikos, however, was already proving to be different; difficult. She wasn’t as scared of him or her predicament as he had hoped she would be. She was holding onto something that provided her with incredible strength. It was nothing natural, nothing that could be easily arrested. Sinibaldus wasn’t too concerned yet. He’d broken down hundreds of individuals with stronger constitutions than this, most of them religious zealots clinging onto some otherworldly promise of salvation. In the end, the aid these martyrs sought from their invisible, no name gods, never came to pass. There was no deliverance or salvation. Forsaken, their fragile minds eventually collapsed and Sinibaldus tasted victory.

  The seconds quickly grew into minutes and before the giant knew it, a full hour had passed and he was still none the better for it. Anthea Manikos was confident and determined. She did not display any signs of abandonment. There were fountains of hope. Her sacred memories and clever thoughts were still intact and beyond the magician’s control.

  For most people, memories are the most precious possessions they own. They guard them like nothing else in life. The mind stores them, retains them and transforms them into tangible tools much like a chair, a stein or a hammer. It has substance because people fear losing them. No one wants to forget their family and friends, their loved ones, all the precious smiles and joys life has blessed them with. These are the things that make life worth living; treasures. And yet, Anthea was unique. She was letting them all go. Every time Sinibaldus reached and grabbed for one, tried to crush it or alter it, it vanished. The memory turned to white mist in his hand. It was as if it were never there.