There was a moment of hesitation, where the pale man appeared stuck in his own head, and that gave me the time I needed to regain my breath, and even manage to crawl a few feet into the darkened hall, climb back to my feet, and face him again, holding my ground. I made took a step forward, about to rush towards him to take advantage of the opportunity, when his head snapped up to me with understanding in his eyes.
“Yes, of course.” He said as he stalked forward, lifting both knives before him as he approached. “Our Mistress’s wrath will deliver salvation to all, even the damned. For She is just, and She is the light, and She is the way!”
He rushed towards me in a sprint, quickly closing the small distance, and I grabbed hold of the knife handle, whose blade was still buried in my shoulder. This time I clenched my jaw as the pain flared, and ripped the knife free as he closed on me, swinging the blade with quick, skillful strikes. Bobbing and weaving, I cleared the blade much the way I would an opponent’s fists in the ring, until I found an opening, which came when I ducked under a powerful lunge, letting his blade pass clean over my head, and plunged mine deep into his side as we passed each other. He roared in pain, but it didn’t slow him.
He spun back around, just before I could thrust the knife into his back and end the fight, and I was caught fully extended with my arm high above my head. He grunted and rammed his head into the bridge of my nose in a spray of blood, causing me to blink tears away to clear my vision. I saw him swing again, and it was too late to do anything but put my good arm up to block my neck. The blade bit a deep gash across my forearm. As I cried out in pain and shock, another flash of pressure swiped across my forehead, and I felt the flow of blood run down my face.
I clenched the slick blade and pulled my arm back to slash back at him, but caught a glimpse of the toe of his boot coming into my vision too late, and his kick snapped my head up to the ceiling, and my legs gave way. I hit the ground, and the world faded to black as rhythmic pulses filled my hearing and jolted down the back of my neck.
There was a moment of peace, stillness, a welcomed break from the chaos, and then world came back in a flare of pain at the center of my right palm that raced up my arm. My eyes shot open, and I found myself flat on my back with the pale man looking down at me from my side, eyes glazed over as he hummed an eerie hymn. When I turned my head to him, the pale man's eyes locked on mine in a flash of clarity.
He paused his hymn just long enough to speak. “The Mistress’s wrath will make even the most wicked lay prone before Her glory and await salvation.”
The pale man stood and stepped over my body with a casual disregard of me. A surge of anger-fueled adrenaline flooded me, and I sat up, but only managed an inch before I was stopped short and another flare of pain from my outstretched palm. It was only then that I noticed my arm pinned the wooden floor by a knife that was staked through my palm, down to the hilt. The word ‘wrath' was visible in the dimmed light.
“What the hell.”
Pain exploded in the back of my head as it bounced off the floor. I looked up and saw the bottom of the pale man's boot return to his side. "Mind your words and await your salvation. It will make the process far less painful." The pale continued his hymn.
I grunted in pain as I rolled onto my side and tried to bring my free arm across my body to try and pull the blade free. But it was slow and cumbersome, and no longer had the range of motion to bring all the way across due to the wound at my shoulder.
The pale man rolled me back over onto my back with his heel, and then dug his boot into my injured shoulder, pinning me in place. I clenched my jaw as the intense wash of pain flooded my body and refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing me cry out.
He leaned his body weight forward, adding to the intensity of pain, but I felt his center of gravity shift too far over me. Drawing as much energy as I could muster, I bucked, throwing him off balance and causing him to stagger back a couple of steps. I used the surge of energy that came from the pain flooding my body to roll back over, this time entirely onto my staked hand. I managed to grab the handle of the knife in a weakened grip, but before I could even try to pull it out, the pale man’s weight fell onto my back, pressing the hilt deeper onto my palm in the process and creating a new blossom of pain.
I squirmed, trying desperately, but only realized my mistake when I felt his arm slip under my chin and cinched closed my airway. Trapped and unable to even cry out as the oxygen was constricted from my body, the pale man’s voice spoke from right behind my head.
“Have it your way—painful it is. The Mistress will ma—”
I must have passed out as he was speaking because I awoke again to the sound of my own screams as another explosion of pain pulled me back awake. I knew it before I had even looked down and saw my other hand pinned to the floor, this time with the knife that had ‘salvation' etched into the handle.
“Fuck!” I panted “Hey…” I coughed and swallowed hard as the soreness in my throat made speaking difficult. “Listen. I…I don’t know what the hell is happening here. Whatever you think I am, you’re fucking wrong. I’m not a demon, devil, witch, or any other fucking thing. If you are a holy man, you have to know this isn’t right. It isn’t fucking right.”
"Judgement is not for me to decide. We must all submit to Her ever-waiting grace. I am nothing more than a conduit of Her will, and even I am not immune to Her judgment."
The pale man produced another knife from the coat and dropped down to his knees beside me, head held high, eyes closed. "Mistress, forgive me these sins, I pray. Accept this penance, I pray, for I am not worthy of your light."
The pale man lifted his shirt and bared a torso that was leaner than his considerable power suggested. Deep scars both new and long healed marred every inch of his flesh, overlapping in most places.
He pressed the point of his knife into his skin, just above the left side of his collarbone, and twisted the blade an inch deep into his flesh. Gasping heavily and hand trembling, he carved a deep cut diagonally across his chest, past his belly, that finally stopped at the beltline of his right waist.
“Shit!” I said with wide eyes as I watched the curtain of blood run down his chest before his let his black shirt fall.
He wiped the blade clean using the crease between his forearm and bicep, and then returned the knife to the inside of his coat, and then produced another. He read the hilt and nodded.
“The Mistress’s light is both terrible and beautiful to behold. For you, devil, will serve as a living testament of Her power.”
The pale man dropped down, pressing his knee into my belly, and grabbed a handful of my shirt, bunching it up into a tight knot above my chest.
“Hey, wait, wait, wait.”
The pale man began humming again, brought the blade just under the knot of fabric, and cut the cloth away with a single stroke. I was frozen with disbelief as I watched him toss the scrap of cotton aside, exposing my bare torso.
He held the hilt before my eyes so that I could read the words ‘testimony' etched into the handle, and then leveled the point at the base of my collarbone. "Fear not."
The blade dug into my flesh, and I screamed and bucked, trying to knock the pale man aside. But the pale man's center of gravity was too low to throw off, I could feel it in the crushing pressure at my waist. He carved a line straight down the middle of my chest, past my navel, down to my waist.
I surprised myself one time as I nearly threw him off of me. The pale man paused his hymn and stood, walked around my thrashing body, and straddle my knees, robbing me of what little force I had been able to generate. He didn’t have to worry about my continued efforts to throw him off as he resumed his hymn and brought the blade to my left shoulder. Ever so slowly, carved a diagonal line down my torso that converged with the first line at the center of my waist. He moved the knife to my right shoulder, just below the wound, and cut another diagonal line down that converged with the other two at the center of my waist, then finished with a s
eries of smaller, intersecting lines all across my torso, some connecting with the first lines, some independent, until a pattern began to form.
He stood and watched me writhe as the cut felt like fire on my skin, and I watched him with pure hatred and rage, any lingering fear and confusion gone. What was happening didn’t matter. Why it happened no longer mattered either. If I somehow survived this night, I was going to kill that man; I knew that much with every fiber of my being.
His humming stopped as he dropped to his knees beside me and began rocking back and forth, mumbling words under his breath, eyes rolled back in his head. A chill ran down my spine, and I searched for something that I could somehow use to help, but there was nothing anywhere within arm's reach. And even if there were, I was in no position to make use of it.
The pale man unzipped the right front pocket of his coat, snapping my attention back around to him as he pulled out a polished metal flask. I watched him unscrew the studded top and lock eyes with me as he raised the flask high in the air.
“I pray, O Mistress, consecrate this wretched man and bathe him in your cleansing light.”
He upended the flask over me, soaking my face with a liquid that looked like water, tasted like mint, and smelled like sulfur. When my entire head was saturated, he moved down to my torso, and my wounds burned, forcing my eyes open wide despite the stinging pain, and I screamed.
The pale man pulled something from his coat pocket and held it over me. It took a few seconds to focus through my blurred vision to recognize the small book of matches. I understood what was happening at that moment, and my mind blanked. I didn't buck or try to fight back anymore. Dying with my dignity was suddenly more important to me than anything else in the world, and I merely watched, eyes locked on his hands as he resumed his hymn.
Then my mind flashed to Red—to the last thing he had said to me. Something about that encounter nagged at me. He had tried to warn me, I realized. In his smug way, he'd tried to warn me, with that fucking grin on his face, telling me to leave right then, that I might need him sooner than I’d think. Red knew what would happen. He knew I would need him. "Fuck you!" I shouted, eyes closed, picturing Red's face as I had known it all these years, the face that was my oldest friend. "Fuck you…"
The pale man struck the match, and the face of my friend that I held in my mind's eye, Red's face, turned into the demon I had just seen, and my eyes shot open. My face twisted into a rage as I glared at the pale man, and then I shouted as loud as I could. "Mbwir—"
A feeling, more powerful than anything I'd ever felt in my life, stilled my tongue, and a wave of peace and calm washed over my body.
And then the pale man tossed the match, and my world became fire and pain.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS LIKE an awakening of sorts, but I hadn’t been asleep. I looked around and found myself back in the desolate arctic tundra, but I couldn't remember where I'd been before. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I hadn't always been here, in a place both foreign and familiar, alien and home, in equal parts as if both were the truth.
A powerful gust blew, making me vividly aware of the frigid air on my naked body, numbing my feet and hands. But even colder than the wind was the icy air that radiated from the cylindrical monoliths, the closest which was many yards away. Cold as it was, I wasn't uncomfortable—didn't even shiver, and I understood, on an intuitive level, in a language only my body could interpret. The cold was undeniable in its presence, but my body seemed to almost welcome it.
Behind me, my footsteps stretched on for as far as I could see. And as I gazed off into the far, far distance, a wave of vertigo washed over me as my mind tried to comprehend how I could see so far beyond where I knew a horizon should have joined the earth with the sky.
And farther out, beyond the point of which I could see no further, there was the presence, every bit as powerful and terrifying as my subconscious remembered. But this time it was not alone; another, weaker, force joined it. Weaker though the new presence was, it radiated power on a scale that would have humbled me, had it not be beside the other.
I sensed discontent between the pair, but no outright hostility. The discontent bred a caution as each demanded the attention of the other, which meant neither focused on me.
On an instinctive level, I knew I needed to get as far away from the pair as possible, while their attention was anywhere but me.
And so I turned and began to walk. I couldn’t say how long exactly, because the passage of time was difficult to quantify with no sun or shadow, no watch or phone. Minutes turned to hours that could have very well turned to days, or longer.
Thankfully, time didn’t seem to matter, only the journey, and so I walked without worry of distance, or fatigue, or even normal primal urges, like the need for food, or sleep, or safety—
I stopped, eyes wide, and found myself clutching at my chest as I tried to remember something significant, something at the edge of my memory, like a dream just forgotten. I broke into a sweat, despite the cold, with an overwhelming feeling I was in danger, or had been, or could be. The feeling was slipping away, even as I tried to hold on to it, straining my memory. But it was gone, and what remained was the more imminent threat by far—presence, off in the far, far, distance, but real enough nonetheless.
Every second I stood still and didn't put more distance between myself and those entities was a mistake, so I continued. I blinked as I noticed the black monoliths come to an end off in the far distance, a detail I would have missed in my preoccupation with the entities behind me, and my fleeting thoughts, but I understood. Somehow, it was the place I had been searching for, or fleeing towards; I couldn't quite place a finger on the sensation that propelled me forward. (Linked Comment)
I took off in a jog, and after a few clumsy strides as I got used to the deep snow, and slowly picked up speed until I was at a full sprint. The sound of the crunching snow beneath my bare feet must have attracted the attention of the animals around me, because beasts of varying shapes and sizes, beautiful and savage alike, converged on me from all directions, but I was not afraid.
Curiosity propelling me even faster, and faster still. The closest any of the creatures came to me was a large white lioness with glowing amber eyes, close to the size of a horse, bounding at me with shocking speed, moving faster than anything I'd ever seen before. But I only ran faster still realizing that I had been applying my own limit to my speed up to this point, mirroring the pace I ran outside of this land, and suddenly I understood, in a moment of clarity. It was myself holding me back, restricting me from going farther, faster.
I put my head down and pushed as hard as I could, until the black columns every hundred yards or so became a single grey blur, and the frigid wind burned my face and stung my eyes dry. I felt nowhere near the peak of my speed when the grey blur vanished to reveal a vast expanse.
Slowing to a stop, I turned around and cocked my head as I struggled to comprehend just how far away the ominous columns I had only just cleared were, now nothing more than tiny specs on the horizon. But that didn’t matter, because now the terrible presence was gone, like a smothering weight lifted from my body.
Now that it was gone, I turned around in a slow circle, appreciating the beauty of the barren tundra. No longer having the benefit of the cover of the massive obelisks, the animals were much easier to make out, even though they all but blended into the white snow and grey sky. I counted what must have been hundreds of animals, easily, all roaming the flat expanse.
The variety was stunning, giant bears, ferocious and powerful; another lone lioness stalking across the expanse and eyeing me wearily, stoic and beautiful; entire herds of wild horses, majestic and free. It was almost overwhelming in beauty, and immediately transformed my perspective of the land.
A curiosity niggled at the back of my mind. Of all the animals that roamed the flat expanse, I singled out the farthest from me that was also in the opposite direction of the columns that contained the presence
behind me. It was no more than a spec of movement that should have been impossible for me to see, close to where the horizon should have been if this land had a horizon.
I took off at a jog, smiling as the crisp air cut through my body. This time I was quicker to build up speed, sprinting over the flat, featureless plain. It was then, while running faster than anything I’d ever witnessed—be it animal or vehicle—without even tiring, and seeing farther than I had any business seeing while experiencing no discomforts from the coldest I’d ever been, that I figured I must have been dreaming. But, despite the dull grey cast to everything, from the snow to the sky, I'd never felt a dream as vivid as this. Hell, I'd never felt so awake, even when I went through my day to day life back…there it was again, the memory of another time and place tugging at the periphery of my mind, almost close enough for me to grasp this time.
The features of the creature took form as I descended upon it, resembling a great stag with a thick, coarse coat so white it almost shone. Except, along with the massive pair of jagged antlers jutting from the crown of its head that branched high in a dozen points, an equally impressive set of thick horns jutted from its back, along its spine, making for a majestic sight.
When I had closed to within a mile, the beast turned and bolted away, taking powerful strides as it galloped, swift despite its bulk, moving with shocking speed. I chuckled despite myself at the fact that anything managed to surprise me at this point.
But it was no match for my speed, and the more I closed in on it, the more beautiful the creature revealed itself to be. The coat of fur was soft, despite its length, and seemed to gently wave as it trailed in its wake as if swimming on invisible currents of wind.
I pulled up alongside it, feeling as one with the creature. When it cut a sudden change in direction, I matched it. Stride for stride, turn by turn, the beast and I moved as one. Slowly reaching out, I tried to rest a hand on the beast’s flank to chance a touch of such a majestic creature, then a person appeared less than three full strides ahead of me. I didn’t even have time to pivot away before an arm shot out and slammed into my chest, crashing me to a halt so suddenly my world went black.
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