Cerberus Slept

by Doonvorcannon

  Hidden from this changing guard

  Your gates have long held no regard

  Spit on your might, these new men do

  They laugh and scoff at myths untrue

  They can’t see that power persists

  Eyes swollen blind, a chosen cyst

  Tradition is as Tradition was

  New gods and old, a lingering buzz

  Hornets will sting and bees will build

  This new man, this new man, cannot be killed

  Cerberus awake, the glorious gate remains

  Cerberus awake, your poor sleep is profane

  Let them hide, oh stalwart of worthy death

  A new man I sing, and he needs your breath

  Cerberus slept, he sleeps so still

  Cerberus wept, for the unworthy kill

  Hades died and sleeps in black blight

  Hades didn’t know you were of light

  Rangabes comes, this new man of gold

  Cerberus I sing, arise and behold!

  I finished my song with a swaying glissando, the notes ascending like stairs to the sky. Hypnos profaned my music with wretched snoring, but Cerberus stirred. My song echoed—perhaps Echo herself had joined in. I played again, my holy lyre reverberating as I strummed a succession of flurrying crescendos. My music could make dirt rise to life, only to die again from the shame of lacking such beauty for itself.

  Cerberus’s body twitched and spasmed until at last, he shook his head and dragged himself free from the murky mire of false release that Hypnos had promised him. The hound howled, smoke venting through his nostrils and flames ejecting from his three cavernous mouths as he stormed to his feet. His serpents spewed yellow venom at the sudden spring to life. I stepped away. Howling even fiercer, Cerberus charged at me and I held my ground. With a desperate growl he flung himself out of my path and proceeded to crash against the walls, banging his body in agony at the realization that his long-held master was gone. But my words had been true. Cerberus was meant for the light. This forgotten shadow world was not meant to drag him into irrelevance. I had a use for him. It was my own play of fate. My song had stirred his soul, but I would let him mourn. I would miss Hades too, but my mourning could not come until my own sun arose in the fires of a new day.

  “You awoke me and for that I am grateful. A weakness... I slept because the world of nobility had decayed and forgotten what it was to be truly powerful,” Cerberus said, stopping his thrashing and towering over me. He growled as he spoke but his words were mental, traveling into my mind as thoughts.

  His seven serpents stared at me with bright red eyes, their heads still and their tongues flapping like fiery ribbons. His black shoulders bulged like mountain-tops, and his chest rippled into a valley of black fur and muscled hills. His three heads peered at me with wise red eyes that had the look of a rising sun reflecting an ocean of blood.

  I said, “Rangabes is a noble one of the old order. His Hyperborean blood beats with a spiritual heart, deeper than my solar kind could truly know. He is worthy of myth. He is a worthy avatar in an age that has forgotten what it is to embrace the form of the truly powerful soul that you say is forgotten. He is of the light, and he is in need of a noble steed to carry him forward into the untamed promised land. The land Hyperboreans should have taken and kept when their world froze.”

  “You speak of your chosen people as if I belong to them. You say that I am of light, but how can that be when I was born from the mother of monsters, Echidna? My father was Typhon, the scourge of the gods. There is no light in either of them. And I have lived in this realm of darkness long since, and thus it has become me, and I it.”

  “Have you forgotten that you were a guard of it? To keep out the unworthy?”

  “No. But I protected the dark and live in it still. I guarded it not from the unworthy, but simply from those who did not belong. My judging is the only act I’ve done worthy of light, but that too is no more. There are none to judge.”

  “And when Hercules bested you and carried you into the light, was it not to your liking? You loathed the daylight at your first taste, but did you not consider that this taste was one you’d always known?”

  He growled at the mention of his humiliation at the hand of that unarmed hero. “Is that what Rangabes is? Another demi-god to take me away in humiliation? And I only know the darkness. That light was blinding.”

  “No, Rangabes is mortal and for that reason he is tied to you and your realm. But you are forgetting something that is truly an everything,” I said as Cerberus lowered his heads and leaned forward impatiently. “You guard the past by accepting it with honor. Those dead souls that came through here—those heroic ones worthy of Elysium—they carried that solar nature and you could see it because you instinctively knew it. Even the people of light need guardians of darkness to see them through. The ice of death runs through your veins. The flame of power pours forth from your mouths. What’s the origin of such elements? Where was your fire conceived? You see, you give life by allowing the dead to live in their deserved state. Your word breaths outward hotter than your flames. You are of light. You are solar by your perfect fulfillment of holy command. You are solar because, while you hated the light, you guarded it all the same. You possess the flame, Cerberus. I ask you to step out and away from the shadows and to live amongst the decay as a towering pillar of fire, purifying the dark through a heroic existence.”

  Cerberus barked, belching flames up to the cavernous heights. He turned around and stomped over to where Hypnos still slept undisturbed. Cerberus bent down, his three heads hungrily snapping at the god of sleep. I watched as he feasted on the flesh while Hypnos remained in slumber. In truth, Hypnos had died long ago. Those who slept and did not persist would fade forever away. To lie down and close your eyes in an attempt to stay pure from the evil of an age was to be weak. To be a hero, one had to leave the cave, no matter how bright the burning of the day or dark the freezing of the night. I strode over to Cerberus and placed my hand proudly on his chest. Rangabes would need this hound. And more importantly, I would need them both. It was decreed.

  Book 3

  Snow Pure

  Snow vortexed my vision in white. I couldn’t make out Hesiod despite his standing beside me.

  “A bit cold?” I yelled, the wind howling icily, tearing at my skin.

  “At least I have my robe! Thin as it is, it’s better than your bare flesh,” Hesiod yelled back at me, laughing.

  “A far cry from the Egyptian desert. Why would pharaohs want to be sent here?” My question thudded into silence as a booming voice shook through the flurry of snow.

  “You are not in the far north the Egyptian spirit once strove towards. This is the land of Jötunheimr, home of the Jötunn.” The voice was deep and it creaked ancient and tired.

  “Ra’s light must have guided you here for a purpose,” Hesiod murmured.

  “What?” I said, barely able to hear him through the blizzard.

  “Ra wants you here. The solar deities must have something here for you to take!” he yelled.

  “Another test. I grow tired of all their hoops they want me to jump through. Am I to build a nation, or be a pawn entertaining some distant gods? Where is Wyrd and where is my God?” My questions drooped in the wind and the bellowing voice groaned.

  “I will clear the storm. I see who you long to be.” The detached voice breathed in a deep inward growl, followed by an outward hot breath that burned the cold away.

  As the white melted from my vision, it was replaced by a crystalline blue wall, thick and wide, extending out in front of me like a mirror. Its light blue disfigured our forms into odd, misty skeletons, our bodies appearing as bones. I turned my gaze from the strange blue wall of icy glass and was unsurprised at the barren tundra around me. In the distance there were rocky, white-capped mountains, but in the land between there was nothing but snow and gray-stoned debris.

  “Where are you, oh wise and ancient voice of the Jötunn?” I asked with
a smirk splayed across my face and mirth morphing my tone with an affected husk. Hesiod chuckled.

  The strange mirror rippled and its reflection revealed a man as tall as the wall, his body clothed only in a tattered brown loincloth which hardly hid his grotesque form. The reflected man was a skeleton of frozen bones that were a pale and icy color. His eye sockets were lit with a similar-colored glow, and he had long and stringy white hair that was balding on top of his bulbous skull and hanging down from the back as long as a cloak. His beard was pulled together in a long knot that stopped right in front of his groin.

  “Quit gawking at me like I’m Freya in the buff. This wall is called Gastropnir, and I’m the ancient voice of the Jötunn, as you so eloquently put it,” he spoke, his voice quaking just as thunderous as before, and his shimmering form on the blue of the wall bowing mockingly.

  “Your name?” I inquired, rolling my shoulders and walking closer. It was odd: even in my ragged waist robe, the frigid cold instead of stinging like before seemed to invigorate me, pumping my veins full of frigid, ice-fueled virility.

  “Fjolsvith.”

  “Great.” I shook my head at the strange sounding word. Hesiod chuckled.

  “And do you know why it is that we are here?” Hesiod asked, stepping beside me and pulling at his beard.

  “Svipdagr once came to me asking for information about the great staff called Lævateinn. Carved from black root and imbued with icy veins, its power is one best locked away. Yet he wanted the weapon for a wedding. He eventually succeeded and my gates opened for his bride. But nine spells were cast.”

  “And what has this to do with me?” I said.

  “Nine spells were once cast, and now there are nine spells you must pass. These nine spells correspond to nine virtues you must prove worthy of possessing. Only then will the nine locks unlatch themselves for you. This staff, this Lævateinn has a heat that is the kind that burns with frost—melts with ice. Fiery root imbued with the spirit of the Jötunn.”

  I turned to Hesiod and raised an impatient eyebrow. “They sent me here for a staff? Are these marks not enough?” I held up my arms, the glowing wounds hot in the frosty surroundings.

  “You think they’d send you after some sort of armor or such.” He gestured at my torso and laughed.

  “My skin is good enough. Do I need to hide my flesh behind dead matter? No, for my matter is what matters. I am enough, and to walk as I do is to dare the beggars hiding in their scarlet cloth to scoff. I will handle any, for I have no handler handing me hand-me down cloth. I don’t care how magical!” I finished with a flourish, grinning and bowing melodramatically.

  “Well done!” Hesiod clapped as we both laughed together.

  “Are you done?” Fjolsvith said, crossing his arms yet sporting a mirthful grin which was hilariously haunting in his icy skull. His teeth were missing in gaps and gathered together in clumps of pointed fangs seemingly at random like sprouts of white-stoned weeds.

  “Quite,” I said with a nod, smiling and enjoying my display of rhetoric and the strange but welcome cheer of the atmosphere. Much better than the lands of death I’d left behind.

  “And you’ll find some armor as well. You’d be wise to take it,” he said, glancing at my body.

  “Perhaps,” I said. But despite my soliloquy, I’d welcome the added cover. As confident as I was, an arrow was all it would take to spell my end. Armor would certainly do.

  “Is the armor magical? Is it of fire and ice like this staff?” Hesiod asked, sarcasm swirling in the ticklish tenor of his tone.

  “The kind that you will find is not from here.” Fjolsvith said, his bony face folding as if of flesh, all scrunched up serious and grave. “Best not to inquire further. It awaits you over this wall. Only those of pure light can clothe themselves with its radiation.”

  “Apollo,” Hesiod said, his eyes lowered and his face went blank and withdrawn. Fjolsvith winced at the name. “You fear him?”

  “I do not dare speak on it. All I will say is that he is one of the last threads on the frayed end of the mythological rope. He is one of the few fighting to keep himself tethered to a nonexistent existence.” Fjolsvith paused, leaning forward while lowering his head, still encased in the reflection of the wall. “He is all that holds the frayed end together, but he also threatens to let it unwind if we do not heed his lead. Wyrd sings high and her song is one that belongs above Olympus. Listen to her voice. I’ll probably perish for saying as much, but trapped as I am, I crave the release of nothingness.” Fjolsvith’s cold eyes burned into a blue flame. He banged both his fists against his side of the wall. “Solitude in this reflected unreality is no way to live!” he screamed.

  “Apollo watches over us. He restored me from ashes. How can he be bad?” Hesiod said. “He’s the reason Rangabes and I walk in the land of the living despite being once dead.”

  Despite the topic at hand and the stress of the situation, it finally hit me that I was not in a nether world of sorts. Even if this was a land of myth, it at the very least was a land of life, however sparse that life appeared to be. I took a deep breath of the chilled air and sniffed greedily at the fresh smell of cleansing and purity that only snow manages to bring. It took Hesiod’s mentioning, but now that I realized the reality of this place, I wouldn’t let the moment pass without engaging all my senses in the fullness of aliveness.

  “Apollo is using you both. But I’ve said too much.” Fjolsvith stopped speaking, his jaw creaked shut and he ground it back and forth. “Before I open this gate, please release me from this misery.”

  I nodded, both my arms bathed in red and blue light. Fjolsvith smiled and tiredly opened his arms wide, and the wall’s glass shimmered and disappeared as if never there.

  His voice came from where the wall had been and said, “Walk through where the wall was, and when it reappears, shatter my reflection. Perhaps light from Apollo’s favorite might be the burning end I’ve so desperately sought.”

  I walked slowly through the vacant air and felt a strange chill seize my blood. The frigid feeling fled as I walked forward. As Hesiod stood next to me, I turned back and the wall stood once more, its reflection showing Hesiod and I both as skeletons, dwarfed next to Fjolsvith’s gigantic frame. It was strange to see the two of us standing beside him in the mirror, but I knew this was some mere trick of the wall to try and prevent me from ending its eternal guard’s existence.

  “I suspect no trick here. If there is one, I will face it myself,” I said.

  I didn’t look to Hesiod for any acknowledgement but only closer at the wall. It was just a reflection, and regardless of the poor copy of my body as a skeleton with glowing arms, it could do me no harm. I saw my skeleton sneer at me and before it could do more, I baptized the section of the wall in a purifying wave of light. When it at last cleared, the wall was a blank and pristine blue lacking any reflection.

  I sighed and placed a hand on Hesiod’s shoulder and he shivered at my touch. He was pale and quiet in such a way as I’d never seen before. I looked at him with concern and said, “I fear what this all might mean for us, Hesiod. I’d foolishly assumed Apollo and the rest of the solar gods were for my favor and reestablishing a solar people on this earth. But if he is torturing Jötunn here and threatening to undo it all, can we trust such a god? I will try to listen to Wyrd’s song, whatever it might be. I still wait on my Lord.”

  I let go of his shoulder and waited for a response, but he just kept standing there vacant and pale. I walked ahead and into the white blanket landscape, listening for his footsteps to follow. They came lingering and slow, and we walked aimlessly in an odd silence as he staggered behind.

  Finally, after some time like this, Hesiod cleared his throat and said from behind me, “Why would Apollo turn on you? He’s given us both new life. He’s allowed for you to gain power. Would Ra sacrifice himself simply because Apollo said to?”

  I sped up, and spat my words forward, “I gained this power through my own merit.” I clenched
my fists and scowled over my shoulder. Hesiod glared back at me as if I were a common blasphemer. He’d forgotten that I believed in one God, not the many he served. “Perhaps I’ve returned to life due to my own dormant light within. Must I attribute my power, my merits to someone else? I would do so only for my true Lord, and I believe it is He who carries me on. Wyrd said as much. You did too, but now it seems as though this wall brought about a change of face, friend. These frayed myths are unbound and fading fast... they are falling forgotten. But I carry my ancestors proudly within and forward. I do them honor and strive up this mountain without complaint or question. It is not for Apollo nor any other setting sun god. It is for my people that I march. It is for my future sons and daughters that I ascend. The forces driving us from realm to realm must submit to my might. Apollo underestimates me if he thinks I would bow and worship him. I serve my blood and the Lord’s, not his. Hyperboreans might have called him their god once, but they existed apart from him and his light ultimately failed them. I owe it to my people to bring about a new order under a much brighter sun.” My voice burned and I looked back at Hesiod who was slumped over as he walked, wilted from my fiery speech. He was my brother and he knew I spoke true. Whatever he’d gone through in the thousands of years after his death, he had to know that Apollo was not wholly as he appeared.

  “In darkness were many of my days spent after death. I cannot speak clearly of what went on, as that is not easily spoken of in such finite words—it is meant to belong in the eternal realm of mystery, I think. But I can say this... Apollo means well in the sense that he sees his future survival in your light as truly yours is the last of its kind. I perhaps foolishly thought he and the other gods of light were of goodwill, but you are likely correct in suspecting his desire for continued godhood through you as the other myths are consumed. I never even considered such an angle, so blinded was I by Apollo’s warm light in that cold dark.” Hesiod paced up to walk beside me. His gaze was set on nothing as he looked inward. “Ra gave himself to you, speaking of his fading. Whether that was Apollo’s doing or simply the effect of time and his adherents forgetting him, does not answer the question. Perhaps Ra listened to Wyrd and not Apollo. Perhaps he saw only his own light. The question remains. Helios and Hyperion were also willing to relinquish their light and hand it to you, returning to their primordial forms. Was that Apollo or their own choice? They saw you as their own, no doubt.”