by Rich Hayden
Once she stood over Amil, he was given no option but to remain still. Crippled by the limitations of his body and exhausted by what he had done, he cowered in defeat. She peered down upon him, and, as her absent stare burned its way onto his flesh, he found the strength required to squirm. He wanted to flee, to forever leave the sight of Aphelianna, but, like a broken puppy, all he could muster was the ability to inch his body backward by means of his damaged legs.
Aphelianna knelt down beside him, her locks tumbling down her breasts like rain clouds as they obscure snow-whitened hills. The icy fingers of her left hand crawled over his, and they tightened themselves around his flaccid grip like slender constrictors. He looked upon her face and into her empty sockets. Like mysterious rivers as they hide themselves under the weight of fog, the pale green eyes of Aphelianna came into view. To her parted lips his eyes did fall, and, in an instant, the congregation cooled their song to a respectful and beautiful whisper, as their Goddess desired to speak.
“I will not hurt you,” she delicately said to him. “But I will ask one more favor of you. Just lie still and accept my hand, painful as its touch may be. I cannot bear to be alone for this. I’ve always been alone,” she whispered.
Aphelianna exposed the key she held, and after a moment set aside to gaze upon it and all the memories which it held, she crashed her sister’s treasure into the floor. The soft material broke apart and scattered around her in chunks. From their division, the true nature of Isadora’s key was revealed. Below the broken stone encasement, a blade was held. Unlike the menacing example of bestial craft which Aphelianna employed to cut the dead free from the earth, Isadora’s little dagger was nearly as beautiful as she had once been. The handle was ivory white, and had been shaped into an exaggerated curve, while the blade sat upon an oval bolster of water. This tiny pool was held in place by nothing tangible, yet it retained its form, and from that glittering well did the blade extend. It was translucent, like crystal, and shimmered as does the sun when it dips into the sea at evening. She twisted it around in her hand a few turns, and allowed small tears to crawl from her eyes as she gazed into its glory.
“This blade,” she began, in a voice choked by sorrow. “Was what my sister once used to carve out the first forms of Mortal life. It is Creation. And now I can sleep,” she whispered.
With the speed and fury of lightning, Aphelianna stabbed that little blade into the side of her neck. Her eyes bulged at its penetration, and, as she pulled it down through her skin, pain deformed the sides of her mouth. Tremors shook her as she sliced, and by the time that she had reached the top of her collarbone, her hand was forced away from the hilt by shudders. Awash in blood, the dagger hung from her damaged neck as her voice cracked and her eyes purged centuries of tears. As Aphelianna was forced to sway from disorientation, the dagger slipped from the fresh wound, and disappeared into a coil of smoke before its short fall toward the floor could be completed.
Horribly red with her own blood, Aphelianna pressed her dirtied hand onto Amil’s shoulder as she braced herself up. Her chest heaved with the palpitations of the dying, and blood leaked out from between her teeth as desperate breath was sucked into and out of her lungs. Her fingers bit into his flesh as she suffered, and her nails dug pits that would surely never heal. Though she desired the eternal darkness that raced toward her, the body resists death, and so Aphelianna fought the inevitable as she stared down at Amil.
Of all the times he had envisioned what may happen were he to hand over Isadora’s key to the Goddess of Death, perhaps the only outcome never anticipated was what unfolded above him. It was strange to him that the blood of Aphelianna was the usual red, and, even more surprising, was that it was warm. It didn’t sting his flesh as it fell, and, as she leaned in closer to him as the end neared, her hair actually felt soft as it tumbled down across him.
The closer she sank, the more visible her eyes became, and, for the first time, Amil truly saw Aphelianna for what she was, a child, a sister, a creature perverted by the task bound to her. Through walls of tears, her eyes spoke to him, as her mouth no longer held a voice above that of gurgles, and as she stared into his wide and frightened gaze, he was witness to a power even greater than Death Herself: fear. Aphelianna was afraid, terrified of the blackness to come, and as she bled out atop him and strangled his skin in her grip, Amil knew that Aphelianna didn’t want to die alone.
Once he had been thoroughly drenched in the fluid that once coursed through the veins of Aphelianna, Amil was given the full weight of the drained goddess as she passed out over his chest. He heard the last, indecipherable murmurs of her voice, and felt the final convulsions of her body as it surrendered to the assault. He felt her grip unwind from him, and as her chest failed to rise, and all remained still, Amil felt her die.
There was no great catastrophe that followed her passing. There was just a dead woman upon the floor who was striped in the colors of her own ruin. But it was in the smallness, in the silence of her expiration, that the true result of their combined actions was seen. He discovered the abominable nature of what Aphelianna had so long planned, and had at last achieved. She could never go home again. Nothing would ever be as it was. She could never heal anything, and so, she would kill everything. Her will was supreme. Her command was an order that all would one day obey, and into the cavity of death that Aphelianna had cast herself, everything would eventually follow.
The blade that was responsible for the formation of life had been used to murder, and by this paradox, absolute extinction had been won. All that remained was all that would ever be, and once every living speck had died off, once every Waste had expired, and once every god did disappear, the eternal nothingness would prevail. The End of Time had begun.
Under the bluish glow bleeding down from the chandelier, Amil slid himself out from under Aphelianna, and rose laboriously from the slippery floor. Once he had righted himself, and found the strength to assume a rickety stance, Amil looked again to the daughter of Arcanus Tyme. She appeared small, feeble even, as she lay with her face pressed into the carpet.
The red weave, which bore the dead weight of Aphelianna, played a trick on his mind. The sensation he felt while in the presence of Isadora, a feeling of boundless life and serenity, had been inverted. The sodden fibers looked to be an extension of the blood that spilled from the expired goddess. The vision that surrounded him was one of supreme death. It was a conquering erasure of life that promised to extend into the furthest reaches of time.
Amil felt this weight, but gravities more immediate descended over him as he viewed the lifeless deity as she lay in the embrace of her forsaken home. Gazing upon her with genuine and common pity, he felt sympathy for Aphelianna. Though she had condemned the remainder of existence to oblivion, Amil knew that it must have felt like the only option left to her as she had spent aeons there herself. As he momentarily forgot her savagery, and partially identified with the epic journey of torture which she had undertaken, his heart broke for her passing.
Once he turned away, his gaze was drawn to the statues, who just moments before were in the praise of the queen of curses. That seemed ages ago, as the sculptures were riddled with cracks, and stained by the touch of bacterial growth and the unforgiving disfigurement of time. Everything was silent again, and, as Aphelianna commenced her descent into rot and decay, Amil knew that it was time to leave. At last, it was time to find Ali.
As Amil walked back through the gallery, he tried not to look upon the portraits and all the extinguished candles which rested below. He could feel the glares as they shot at him from each set of oily eyes of gods dead or soon to be. As he endured this silent gauntlet of accusation, the stigma that Aphelianna was forced to wear for so long was his to carry. He hated it, the revulsion cast his way. As he hobbled down the hallway with divine reproach draped over him, Amil learned to despise Aphelianna anew. He was nothing like her. He wanted to scream it, to explain to every soul that he had served to ruin that he was only trying
to save the one being who had truly loved him. It was a selfless and righteous quest. How could it not be? It had to be. Overmatched, as always, by higher forces, he again found fault and failure in his excuses.
It was a miserable condition, a collapsing of the soul that he suffered, as he still felt the bond formed with Aphelianna. Though their journeys had taken different paths and their desires stood worlds apart, it was Amil who had trusted and lent his aid to the Goddess of Death. Each had won victory, a poisoned version of triumph, and completed their monstrous tasks in the pursuit of different ends, but the final result was one in the same. And for his sin, for this ultimate blasphemy, Amil wondered what his punishment would be.
He parted the doors and stepped back outside, and under the grim look of a saddened sky, a sensation of failure settled over Amil. He stood before the great staircase and looked out over the barren land beyond. From his vantage, the orchard of the crucified looked much the same as he remembered, although now, he could spot activity between the trees as those once enslaved began to escape. His eyes scanned past the fountain, which would remain forever dry and bereft of company, and along the twisted road over which all the dead would one day walk.
Confronted with an image that set him upon his crippled knees, Amil saw the final cost of his greed and Aphelianna’s cruelty. The fields beyond were choked with the deceased. In numbers near incalculable, they trampled every square inch of ground and poured across the boundary of the ancient fence. Spread like ants across a summer feast, they moved as though one organism. Led along by the curve of the road, the dead shuffled on in packs and scattered pairs. All lost, all stranded without direction, all of Earth’s dead drifted toward the mansion. It came as a flood of melancholy that practically erased the enormity of the land and the horizon beyond.
As Amil looked to the bitter smear of sky in the distance, and then to all the dead that shifted underneath its watch, it was difficult to fathom that one day, nothingness was all that would remain. The multitudes were so many, it seemed possible that the sea of displaced souls would never reveal its end, but, much like the barbaric task that Amil had bested, this, too, was a ruse. It was the explosion before the ash, the chaotic burst of activity that would precede the eventual and unstoppable wind-down of all things. It some ways, this was the end, all fleshed and animated by mournful color.
Dusk, the last twilight of mankind, accompanied Amil as he descended closer to the darkened grove. A cool wind, which whistled only emptiness, swept over him. Rain fell about him in indifferent surges, and the droplets crashed into the ground. There was nothing else that followed his step. No stimuli that hinted at life, no reawakening of his memories, no chronicle of remembrances of times both wicked and lovely, nothing. The power of the stones had been silenced. They were returned to ordinary rock, killed off, like everything else, by the infernal rage of Aphelianna.
As Amil felt his feet come in contact with the soft ground of the orchard before him, he stared into the trees. He watched as women struggled to free themselves, and as the crows greedily picked at those soon to be unbound. Some of those who were freed tried to help emancipate those who were still strung, while a few women who Amil glanced made not a motion. They hung there as though nothing had changed, victimized by eternal habits and frozen in place by the fear of the unknown. This inaction then served to suggest that maybe they had simply elected to remain among the branches of their own volition, as the ground below hosted a fresh set of miseries.
In a state of confusion, many of the women wandered aimlessly around the orchard like former patients of an asylum abruptly flung into the unknown. Some of the newly freed ran frantically in all directions and without purpose. Simply away, far away to destinations unreachable, as the ghosts of the mind cannot be outrun. Most, though, elected to walk. This common action proved difficult and felt wholly foreign after an eternity spent as an ornament. Some had been there for so long that they had simply forgotten the world outside of the trees, and so they knew not even the desire to leave. Others were plagued by phantom images of the Spirit Ripper, and hid like frightened children from every shadow. Under brush and behind tree stumps they silently crouched, suspicious of every movement, with eyes wide and ablaze with the insanity brought about from the hellish nature of the grove. The ground became a place of peril, as those whose minds had grown feral were quick to violence, and among the entanglement of the trees and souls sent adrift, the Wastes did roam.
Cries swam through the trees in voices of both relief and dread, and, for this ominous melody, Amil’s step was halted. He hadn’t advanced far into the orchard, just deep enough for the shadows to swallow him, when he realized that his damaged body, and all its tired bones, made him defenseless. Profanely blessed with good health during his journey through The House of the Divine, he truly had forgotten what a painful labor it was to get around. His joints screamed for rest. His head pounded. His poor vision blurred the danger around him and cast pins into his temples. His faulty hearing left him vulnerable, and the fractured speech produced by his tongue barely gave him the ability to call for help, though he doubted anyone would rush toward the sounds of screaming.
Amil felt as the false sensation of a nervous sweat left his skin. His nerves twitched with unease, as it occurred to him that he might have come this far to be eaten by a Waste. Nothing had the power to spare him. He had no key or means of escape. Strength was an exhausted gift, and even the Spirit Ripper no longer remained to guard this perverted garden. It became frighteningly likely, inevitable, perhaps, that he would finally meet his end at the jaws of Wastes. As Amil was made to weep for this irony, his focus was newly straightened by the sound of a hollow bite.
A small girl, who scampered over the ground like a beast, had snapped at Amil as he staggered too close to her. Her action nearly sent him into a panic, but as he observed her plight, he was filled with nothing but sorrow. She was thirteen, maybe, old enough to come into his eyes as the ghostly version of the woman she would never become. Built from frail bones, she stared at Amil through an avalanche of knotted blonde curls. Dirtied by death, her yellow locks seemed to enhance the ill pallor of her face. Pathetically, she hid behind a bulbous root that arched itself up from the soil. It was coiled over with vine, and, through stems, leaves, and hair, Amil saw her feral eyes.
She was savage, like a beaten and neglected dog, and here in this wilderness, her young mind had come of age. Though not a Waste, she had already been stripped of humanity. Dirt was packed under her nails as she had used them to dig holes and forage for food like a beast. Her skin had turned rough from a lack of care or shelter, and as she snarled and hissed, she exposed the temperament of a mind gone rabid.
Upon his unsteady legs, Amil stepped a few paces away from her. He bent down and raised a fallen branch from the soil, and as his body straightened back up with complaint, the girl barked a warning. He poked the stick into the ground and wrapped his fingers tightly around the top. With his free hand, he snapped off most of the twigs, and with weary eyes set upon the girl, Amil tested the strength of his cane. Satisfied that it would not snap under his weight, he turned away. He left the territory claimed by the broken child and hobbled farther on into the heart of the orchard.
Along his toil, a few women begged assistance of him. Quietly, he denied each request. Though he had traveled deep into the mansion beyond, Amil gave no guidance to the lost. Shouts for help were hurled upon him from those not able to unfetter themselves from the grip of the trees, but their desperate pleas were ignored as well. He felt like a monster, and maybe he was, but Amil’s body was a useless machine, his mind emptied of compassion. He had come to harbor nothing more complex than the stubborn will required to drag him back to Ali.
“Help me, you bastard!” a woman shrieked, as he passed her by.
He stopped and turned slowly. Her plea was no more shrill or desperate than the many others that he had chosen to ignore, and Amil wasn’t exactly sure why he had paid her any mind, but it wa
s an act which he quickly regretted. Nails had been pounded through her torso, and, as her thin arms reached out for him, the pins sunk through her gut stretched the skin and tore open old wounds. She yelped and flailed. She beat her fists against the bark and kicked her feet into the air. Amil focused on her eyes. She had been blinded, as two spikes had been driven through her skull and into the tree. He hung his head in shame and felt as vomit bubbled in his throat. It wasn’t from physical sickness that this nausea was felt. It came from a place more intangible. This feeling impressed upon him that all that was once redeemable inside him was about to be purged.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t even help myself.”
The activity in the orchard started to wane as Amil pressed deeper into the embrace of the darkness. The dismal clouds overhead remained in place, as though frozen to the background of the sky, and the crows slept upon stilled branches. This area was quiet, deserted, almost, as many of the women had already fled. Perhaps those once wrapped in bondage here had viewed the grisly end of Saint Calvino. It was a horrible thought to entertain, that human eyes could be subjected to such an event. Amil strained to keep the visuals from his mind. However, he could not help but see Aphelianna, overtaken by murderous lust, as she tore to pieces the body of the God of Love.
An unsettling stillness fell over the orchard. The branches didn’t shift, and the brush around Amil went undisturbed. This should have comforted him, for where there is no noise, there is not a Waste. But as the voices of other humans faded away, and as the calls of the crows grew softer in the distance, he felt as a chill settled over his skin. This wasn’t a place where sound grew weary, it was a place already forgotten. Abandoned, and set aside for only the company of the eternally forsaken. And there, a few empty rows from where he stood, hung Ali, cold and frightened.
