The Shadow Crucible

by T. M. Lakomy

  The hound snarled at the sound of his name, and before the cardinal could formulate further words, Cerberus had lunged at him with jaws agape, clenching them tight upon the cardinal’s face. The screams were pitiful and shrill as the hound’s many heads simultaneously ripped the cardinal’s flesh and crunched his bones, spurts of arterial blood splattering across the walls. The man in the corner, naked and hyperventilating, was slumped against the altar watching with unadulterated horror, clutching his heaving chest while the blood spatter rained down on him. Cerberus feasted on the cardinal limb by limb, slowly tearing him apart. Hands were swiftly devoured, then an eye, a chunk of thigh.

  Meanwhile Estella dispassionately observed the chasm that was growing above Cerberus, the gateway she had opened to bring him in, and which she stayed mindful of keeping in control. The bloodstained jaws of the hound quivered hungrily as it licked the blood off the floor, and within minutes the cardinal was completely consumed. Estella watched the orchestrator of her people’s demise being physically erased from earth. She braced herself for the imminent relief, but to her bitterness none came. The cardinal was but a tool, and likely the culprit would soon fashion himself another willing conduit.

  “What a wonderful sight it is to see vengeance being taken. Is it not freedom to be able to give in to such a vital desire that stems from our need to establish justice?” The august voice was cool and light with a lilting twang that ran like gentle ripples over a limpid pool. It was floating over her, around her, and within her, but she could neither find the source nor identify the speaker at first. “Justice is what defines us as children of God, he who is all just and all merciful, ever holding the balance of things. Are you not gods yourselves, seeking to emulate your Father? Justice, after all, is righteousness.”

  The voice was mild yet potent, and Estella’s skin tingled with recognition as the gentle drops of venom in the honeyed tones bore into her. Her heart pounded like a hundred drums beating in unison, and an inexorable dread flooded her. She looked around her seeking an escape. Cerberus, meanwhile, had been sated on his prey. The soul of the cardinal, freshly reaped, was glowing dimly in the dismal eyes of the beast, who had turned its fixated glare upon Estella. Her spell slowly began to unravel and weaken, and its ravenous might gathered like a brewing storm.

  “There is nothing you can command that has not its innermost source in me. All darkness robed in light is my creation. I thought you would have been wiser than that,” the voice mocked while Cerberus let out a hellish growl, baring its teeth. Its many heads were fixed on Estella with an implacable hunger.

  Estella took a step back and started to sing in a steady voice. The hound howled and shook its heads, yawning luxuriously. Then Estella’s voice rose higher and higher as Cerberus grumbled, fighting back the spell of drowsiness that assailed its senses. Estella walked backwards calmly, then suddenly stumbled over a loose slab. As she fell backwards, her voice broke for a moment, and Cerberus released a mighty howl, lunging in her direction. Estella froze in horror, then screamed, hastily making a ward sign before her with trembling hands. Cerberus crashed into the invisible wall before him, the blood on his jaws splattering onto the unseen barrier.

  And there Estella’s eyes met with the many eyes of Cerberus, realizing she was no longer immune to his attention. The magic that had led him to her docilely had evaporated. The feral wildness of the beast of hell was now locked on Estella, eager for her blood, and egged on by a hand stronger than hers. The hound began attacking the unseen glass between them with renewed vitriol. Estella scrambled to her feet and made for the church door, but it was closed firmly and bolted shut beyond opening. She tugged at it in vain, cursing.

  “Antariel! Where are you? I need help!” Then ripping at her cloak, she whispered words into it. Her shadow flickered meekly beneath the candles and stiffened, then it departed, fleeing in the opposite direction in the same form as Estella, making loud footsteps as it went. Attracting Cerberus’s attention was no easy feat, but it fell for the bait and set off chasing the shadow’s heels, snapping at it wild with rage. Estella gasped loudly in brief relief, then turned her attention to the door’s bolt and pressed her lips against it, whispering feverishly, muttering every opening spell she could recall. But it was clouded and a weighty presence was gathering in it. She could feel the voice creeping up on her, looming like a towering tide, rising higher and higher. It penetrated her mind through the fissures of her fears.

  “Nothing can be opened that I have commanded shut, for is not everything on this earth attuned to the melody of my voice? The very air you breathe, is it not my bounty to all mankind?” Then the voice suddenly stabbed at her like a dagger and she fell choking. It seemed as if the air around her had been quenched, and she gasped, clutching her throat and writhing in agony. The shadow she had cast to evade Cerberus was running back in her direction, and before she could avert the danger, it merged with her again. Cerberus following on its trail and was once again before her, appraising her before moving in for the kill.

  The air slowly began to trickle back into the atmosphere, and Estella took deep gulps of it, shaking and whispering ineffective ward signs, drained of energy, and resigned to her fate. She was aware of the watchful gaze of the malevolent archangel surveying her, a benign warmth emanating from his disembodied voice. Her thoughts went to Antariel, whom she could not reach, and her sadness welled inside her and overflowed till she wept bitterly. Her heart, so long immured in deep thickets of thorns, bled in anguish. Memories took flight like a flock of birds, some fair some foul, and images of her life filed past, their colors dripping together like tears. All the while the voice glided over her like a deathly veil.

  “Embrace your mortality, Tsura,” it said.

  Then Cerberus descended on her like a wheel of knives.

  Beyond the church walls, a piercing scream rose to the laden skies and rent it like a crack of lightning, shredding the veil of clouds and sending them drifting far afield. A crescent moon, silver and bright, poured white light onto the slumbering town. The scream renewed again plaintively, and a flock of birds sheltering beneath the heavy foliage of an oak fled in a flurry of feathers. A silence followed, one that reeked of pain, as the silence that follows the final moments of life.

  But the silence did not last long, for a responding groan of anger and dismay rose like a wail. It hunted the echoes of the scream and found them and groaned with them, lamenting, and together they rose in unison and died upon the cold pinnacles of the nearby manors. The groan seeped through the layers of the firmament and the dimensions of thought and matter and bled its agony through it till the whole night throbbed and heaved like the ailing heartbeat of a tormented beast. And he was beyond the gates of night, his wings pinned with black nails into the fabric of darkness and his limbs bound with chains of shadow. He was bound till the hours of dawn when mercy would show her face, heralding the coming of a new day.

  Antariel had lost to his foe again, and he knew this time the price was higher than before. He mourned not for himself, but for Estella. The chains he bore were serpents that bit and bled his strength, and the deep dark nails were wrought of Lucifer’s malice. This time Lucifer had come to him first, suspending him over the night and robbing him of sight, but bestowing upon him the gift of hearing, so that he could hear and feel Estella’s agony.

  There were all manner of fiends around him, laughing and mocking with dreadful voices, coiling creatures whose cavernous eyes gave on nothing but boundless chaos feasting on the bleeding light of Antariel’s essence. There he strained his ears for the sound of her departing soul and wrung his arms helplessly, tearing his wings and roaring into the night. With the remnants of his will, he formed a vision and sent it hurling down to earth to find Mikhail.

  Mikhail was pacing up and down Rosalind Constance’s hall. The many voices of the queen and her esquires and the Templars clamored around him. They were celebrating a victory after gleaning pivotal information from the demon that the Twilit h
unters had captured. For once, there was unity of purpose between both camps, and the wall of silence between them eased. Bound in an iron container placed on a table, the demon’s protests had suddenly turned to mocking laughter.

  “Master has succeeded. I can feel your filthy witch’s begging . . . I hope she hurts, I hope he bleeds her and disembowels her!”

  The inscrutable Selene blanched where she sat with her companions near the hearth.

  “Liar, this is one of your tricks again. Shall we seal your mouth shut?” she drawled, but her face betrayed a brewing anxiety.

  Mikhail, who was pacing restlessly, stopped in his tracks. Casting a distrustful look at Selene, he said, “Where is Estella?”

  Selene rose to her feet, wrapping her shawl around herself. “I am going to find her, we do not need your involvement, Templar. She will be back soon.”

  “She’s having a private audience with Lucifer,” came the voice from the iron box. “Fancy sending her to murder the poor fool of a cardinal!”

  Selene gritted her teeth and hurried to the exit, trying to hide her concern.

  “What on earth were you thinking?” Mikhail bellowed incredulously after her. “Going after the cardinal? Then you turn your backs and flee? By God I will hold you accountable!” Oswald cracked his knuckles darkly and barred the exit, crossing his arms grimly.

  “I advise you to tell us now,” said Oswald, his amicable tone in stark contrast to his seething eyes. “If she gets captured because of you, you are going down into your own private casket, just like that demon you brought.”

  Selene’s face cracked like a porcelain mask, revealing cold ire, and she furiously turned back to the hearth. “I fear it is already too late, Mikhail. Go after her if you can.”

  “She’s gone . . .” whispered the queen, her chalcedony blue eyes hard and cool, sternly fixated on Mikhail.

  He turned around to face her slowly. His face was a mask, and his eyes held the tempests of the wildest north. Silently he held her gaze, defiant and haughty, until the queen lowered her eyes. She turned to the fireplace, where the flames had taken the queer shapes of beasts, observing them quietly.

  “This has been your failure, Mikhail,” rumbled Oswald, wearing a deep frown. Suddenly he smote the table, rising with a sweeping movement and crushing his high backed chair against the wall. Still, Mikhail remained like a carven image of stone, immovable and distant. Oswald roared, cursing.

  “Even the devil cannot see all ends,” Mikhail spoke, breaking his silence and sweeping his cold stare across them all.

  Oswald snorted derisively, drawing his sword and making for Mikhail, who drew his likewise.

  “Do not presume to lecture me on how we managed things here, Oswald,” Mikhail said. “I have been loyal to this cause at the expense of everything dear to me, even my own soul. I have tread paths that you will never be worthy of even attempting in your mortal life, so be wary of your accusations.”

  Mikhail held his sword before him and stood firmly with his legs apart as Oswald swung his sword at him. He evaded the blow easily and smote back, knocking the sword out of Oswald’s grasp with nimble movements.

  “She was a fire that could not be tamed,” Mikhail said. “She would break you and herself both in two to spite you. God’s will be done, I do not believe this is the end. It cannot be!” For the first time Mikhail betrayed emotion, the cracks in his mask revealing raw pain and loss.

  “Before the night has grown old I shall see the truth to this, and then you can be the judge of me.” Mikhail pushed by Oswald, whose narrowed eyes bore nothing but ill will. Bowing to the queen, he left the manor to greet the cold stars.

  21

  THE DISCOURSES OF HEAVEN AND HELL

  The mere glint in his eye as his gaze swept over the stillness of earth

  Did suffice to quench the rambling tumult of the marshalled legions of dearth

  What was a mere whisper of the void, was a lost tune in the forbidding echoes

  Of the slumbering mind’s vain attempts to suppress the awakening throes

  DEATH IS DEATH, BUT IT COMES IN MANY GUISES—SOME GRUESOME, others peaceful. And sometimes the fortunes of this world bring death to the door not as the grim reaper, but as the culmination of agony and torture only a fiend could conjure. Being eaten alive was one of those slow deaths, pain unendurable beyond relief, and terror insurmountable.

  Cerberus’s jaws had clamped on her, each head victoriously claiming a piece of its own. They bit deeply, crunching bone, but did not tear the flesh out—yet. Her first scream was the sheer agony of her ripping flesh in the jaws of the beast. The second came as one of the heads deepened its bite into her thigh, the smell of blood and flesh permeating the air, and the nostrils of the beast flaring. As she shivered and groaned weeping, blood grew into an ever expanding pool beneath her, and the pain and fear froze her mind and nearly stilled her frantic heart. Each time the beast dug deeper with its razor teeth, she let out another cry of agony. Her eyes, facing away from the creature and its malodorous scent, sought something distant; an icon painted in gold over the wall of the church, a white dove crowned within a golden halo.

  Her vitality was dying with the seeping of her blood as she labored arduously to draw breath. She saw the thin veils between the worlds loosen, shadows watching her with languid eyes. And she could hear the mournful steps of lost souls erring in a blind eternity with no destination and no end. The chill air seemed to dampen further, and she was getting colder. She knew she was nearing the last pangs of death. But then the air became inexplicably pristine and exceedingly pure and soft. Purposeful footsteps approached, and she turned her head apprehensively. She looked beyond Cerberus, whose hideousness could not blot out the ineffable sight gliding towards her.

  There were many cathedrals in the vast world of Christendom, and many skilled artists who captured in sculptures and visions the beauty and radiance of angels and their unending glory. And in this church itself, the oldest in all the land, there was no lack of beautiful icons. But even that was nothing, for Lucifer stood before her, and through the beauty of his countenance she forgot the pains of death. His opalescent wings were luminous and long, with lush feathers, sharp and iridescent as opals refracting the blaze of a million stars and glittering like the reflected light of the purest moonlight on sea-foam. Some had brighter rich hues, similar to light caught in limpid pools, and others glimmered like the nacre insides of shells. With the gentle movement they made, they were like a warm breeze beneath the beaming eye of summer. Like the shrouds of firmament, they illuminated the church with an unearthly light, giving a strange vibrancy to the surroundings.

  Lucifer approached her with soft steps, his azure eyes deeper than any ocean that God created, and bluer than any sapphire burning in its most radiant form. Looking into them was like drifting into an abyss, dreaming in the furls of the skies in its myriad hues, from the purity of a heaven at dawn in turquoise splendor, to the deep royal blue of a dusk in summer. All was whirling together with the nebulae of the cosmos, the endless swirling galaxies revolving in a brilliance of lights. The thick black lashes were long and sharp, and his ruthless gaze was as cutting as blades, yet as enchanting as the most unshakable spell. And the laughter and blithe mildness that poured from his eyes were incongruous with the intermittent bursts of flame within them, where cruelty surged like a blast of the solar flare, then abated to the limpid purity of his calm demeanor.

  He was one foot away from her when she began to shake uncontrollably. She did not know whence the next blow would fall, for the cunning master of all scheming was the god of guile, and his profound machinations and trickery were as extensive as the beauty he stole from the heavens. She consciously rejected the awe that fell upon her, and shook off the guile that his smile cast on her, which was full of compassion and irresistibly grand. He stooped over her, his long, unbound hair, silvery white like threads of moonlight, falling gracefully.

  With one hand he pulled Cerberus back. The howli
ng hound whimpered obediently, and it released Estella instantly, cowering like a docile dog. Lucifer gifted her with an enigmatic smile containing a triumphant malice that was certain of its seductive deadliness. He surveyed her proprietarily, cocking his head gently. Then with one sweeping, graceful motion, he swung Cerberus high in the air where it fell beneath the altar and the open wormhole.

  “Look upon the face of the one true light bearer of mankind, Tsura.” Lucifer stooped, his wings expanding behind him into the church, and he placed his hand lightly over the wound in her thigh. She recoiled as a crafty smile curled at his lips. “Feel the light I am passing into you, I who am the closest to the likeness of God and his strength, giver of life, and healer of those that merit my bounty.”

  The wounds in her body began to heal instantly, and the throbbing numbness within her halted its insidious progress as renewed heat surged through her limbs. She felt life begin to burn within her steadily and her heartbeat quicken with fresh vigor. Lucifer’s delicate, long-fingered hand moved to her face and seized her chin gently, all the while boring into her eyes commandingly. She stared back, unable to deny him, aware of the heat in her body healing the wounds. At first it was a mild warmth, then hot, then it developed into an uncomfortable feverish fire.

  “Feel the life returning to you, the one I am giving back to you. I have poured my essence into you, as I have poured it into this dream of a world.” The warmth of his eyes was replaced with an obdurate, rigid coldness, unbending and immovable as death. “There is room inside your soul for me now to grow, but listen to me first; I am your salvation,” he said gravely, his eyes regaining that tender softness. He stooped lower and lifted her up, placing her across his knees and cradling her like a broken doll, his wings converging over her forming a bower for her head.