“Some did.” The old man replied, seeming more fragile than Khar had never seen him before. It looked like he had shrunk further into his chair, lost amongst the wood and cushions like a small child. “We were just, too late.”
“Why did she do it?” K'Chool said to Aitch.
“We do not know.”
“How was she stopped before?” She continued pressing the old man, who wasn’t feigning anything anymore, visible fatigued by re-living the past.
“We do not know that either. Just that another Dyad stopped them.” He was reflecting with warmth this time, some energy returning to him. “Eve and Tor made a great and terrible sacrifice that day, binding The Last Words soul to Eve’s.” Silence followed as Khar and K’Chool processed what they were hearing. They’d never heard any of this before or seen any of it recorded on the walls of the Monastery. Riddles buried in riddles and snake pits. Secrets keeping secrets from themselves.
“There must be books on this Master Aitch.” Khar spoke softly.
“Some sort of record of how to stop her.” K’Chool added.
“Once.” The old eyes darkened. “But the library containing all of our rituals, lineages, spells and lore burned down soon after she turned. Most of what we teach now is from memory. Scant recollections from some of our more scholarly brothers, trying to record our heritage-” He passed a withering hand over the collection of books behind him, “-and this.”
“I thought this, was our library, Cleric Aitch.” Khar using the more formal name of the elderly man for the first time in years, trying to settle some unfriendly score after hearing what he just heard. “What happened with the fire?” He continued, feeling satisfied at The Archive’s slight sulking behaviour.
“The Master happened.” Aitch said through gritted teeth.
“What do you mean?” K'Chool asked with cynicism.
Sighing and bones creaking, The Archive grudgingly laid it out. “A long time ago, The Reapers tried to rally against The Protectorate after The Nameless had pushed them back and held them at bay for so long. The Naïves suffered from massive conflicts, including their two world wars, whilst the Lucids were decimated. Age-old Orc bloodlines were lost. Elf tribes vanished. Faery’s became myth. Dwarves went into space. The list goes on.” He paused, finding the next thought to continue the story. “Our order had been struggling the most since the appearance of The Nameless but The Master at the time, Master Cedar, had steered our ship through awful times, always managing to keep us afloat. Then he joined us.” Khar saw the same emotions bar the telling of the story as earlier.
“Before long, Master Cedar was killed during a mission, that our current Surelikhan was leading. Eviscerated by Reapers, or so the report says. Somehow, Master Rumaliza became our leader, taking us into the darkest hours of our history whilst The Thousand Curses was becoming more volatile, using The Reapers as a cover for her crimes.” Aitch looked to be tiring again, K’Chool not being able to read the man.
“Why is none of this taught to the Sojela?” Khar asked.
“The Master’s orders. He is fearful of the truth, thinking it will poison us and make us weak. His actions also betray his intent because it became apparent after some time that The Last Word was seeking knowledge, but he didn’t stop her. She was specifically looking for texts that were in our library and so, it burned down.” A dark look appeared across the old man's face, suspecting and dangerous.
“The Master cannot have done that.” K'Chool scoffed.
“The Protectorate and some of our clerics found him, and only him, standing amongst the smouldering remains of all that we were. The Master blamed The Betrayer, saying she had escaped before they arrived. A convenient excuse in my opinion, and remember, Weyaal, if you take a step back from the shoreline, you can see the ocean.”
“So, anything recorded of The Thousand Curses, and how to defeat her, will have been lost in the fire?” Khar asked, sounding dejected.
“Not necessarily.” The old man said rubbing his chin. “Our monasteries and ceremonial sites still contain knowledge that may be useful to you, even if they are scattered across the globe. If we had the time and the resources we could rebuild some of what we lost in the fire, however, The Master has made that quite difficult since he took charge.” For an extremely old and knowledgeable man, Khar found it amazing how childish he could be sometimes in how he spoke.
“We can help.” K'Chool blurted out.
Khar slowly and using the most exaggerated face he could, made her very aware that he was surprised by her sudden interest in books. He knew how much she’d hated her time in the library as a fledgling, so it didn’t take too much effort to exaggerate the surprise as most of it was genuine. She saw the look out of the corner of her eye but didn’t turn to address him.
“What? I like books.” She said to no one, not daring to make eye contact with the old man or her best friend.
“There you have it, Master Aitch, our prodigal Sojela wants to read some books.” Khar said sarcastically.
Clearly missing the exchange of looks and dismissing both their tones, the elderly librarian was pleased he had some help, so forged on before they could change their minds. “Then I suggest you start where the fire took place. China.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - DECISIONS
Watching her feast last night shook Christophe more than it should have. He had walked around in a daze with moments and captured glimpses of the scene visiting his waking eyes, having tortured his closed ones that night. He had chosen to sleep somewhere else, letting his new charge rest and to give him a break from the visions. Her black teeth wrenching flesh and sinew, tearing into bones, breaking and chewing. Her jaw distending to swallow larger chunks, throwing her head back to gargle blood and massage body parts down her throat. Blood covered her face, neck and hands, careless in the passion of eating. All that had been left of the woman, was her waste, which Rosalind had squeezed out of her intestines like toothpaste. He’d forgotten how putrid and despicable she could be when she wanted. The years passing by had left a rose tint on his memories of her, but he couldn’t shake how he felt, even when he returned to the suite later that day.
It’d been hard to come back to his home after making excuses to run errands all morning. He walked everywhere slowly, delaying his return and finding excuses to waste time. The corridors to his home no longer comforted, the elevator taking him all-to-quickly to the Penthouse he wanted to avoid. He could feel the dread press down upon him as the doors split to reveal the room where it happened, and he recalled awful moments of how that poor woman met her end. He knew the steel room had a new occupant already, Dreeoth having fulfilled his duties without question as always. He’d left her alive and gurgling to herself in a drug induced half-awakeness, pristine grey-silver metal surrounding her. Dreeoth had also just finished cleaning the room when Christophe left last night so it was untouched by blood, the surfaces oozing cleanliness, inviting them to stay in the immaculate and unblemished space.
However, even the safe haven of that room wasn’t enough to still his heart as he cast his eyes over the rest of the spacious apartment, fresh terror visiting his eyes and mind. Where the steel room was unblemished, everywhere else was filthy. Where the steel room smelled sweetly of cleaning products, everywhere else reeked. Where the steel room’s soul was pure, everywhere else was tarnished with sin. He had seen battlefields with less blood and body parts. Guts were draped carelessly over furniture. Organs were thoughtlessly discarded on surfaces or sitting in designer bowls. Limbs were trapped in doors, stuck out of walls and comically broken into unnatural shapes. Teeth and nail marks, scarred the body parts and furniture, torn and ruined clothes mixed with urine, sweat, blood and bile.
Taking in the entire scene he hadn’t even noticed Dreeoth studiously cleaning, covered head to toe in plastic. Every available inch of him was covered in blood and the refuse of once-whole people. In stark contrast to the rest of the room, he was holding a large vase filled with different coloured
decorative beads, clean and bright compared to everything else. Walking towards his Pavleja, he blinked the nightmare away, focusing on his trusted servant and the last vestige of clean in the room. The holiest of vases, protected from evil. Smells didn’t drift towards Christophe as he moved, they manifested as physical blows to his conscious, indescribable curses hitting him one after another and then blending into a new mix he couldn’t compute. Metal, faecal matter, stomach acid and partially digested foods fused with disinfectant, pungent cleaning products, perfume and fear. He was losing his senses as he came up to Dreeoth, wading through a thick fog of pictures and smells he would drink hard to forget later. That bottle of 1990 Pinot Noir from Burgundy should do to start. Not a bad way to sink ten thousand dollars if you’re trying to forget. May I suggest the Pinot Noir with your cursed thoughts and the human detritus sir? As an aperitif I would then follow up with a rare 50yr old Whiskey from Scotland to finish the night off. Yes?
“What happened?” He asked his servant, concern spreading across his features.
“She went hunting Hältia.” The Elf responded without emotion, finding his own ways to cope with what had, and was, happening. Christophe thought he looked very ill, knowing Elves were never afflicted with sickness, he must be in a lot of emotional pain.
“She couldn’t find her book where she had left it and came back here furious. I wasn’t equipped to calm her I am afraid, so she started luring people back here and then casting sleeping spells on them.” Why didn’t I run he thought, fresh horrors coming to visit his eyes just as they had visited his master’s. He stood there as still as possible, unable to move for death and carried on. “When she had gathered enough of them, she woke them all at once and took their eyes.” He nodded down towards the vase in his hands and Christophe didn’t see beads anymore. He saw eyeballs of every colour, optical nerves still attached to some, others picked clean, almost polished to a beautiful finish. Christophe had seen the torturous remains of people, battlefields and all kinds of nightmares, but this struck him as a hard a nasty truth he didn’t want to face.
“She wanted them to hear the suffering and feel her rage. Said that what they imagined from the screams, and the sounds of their rending was worse than seeing the truth.” A singular French curse fell from Christophe’s mouth, eyes flicking side to side, trying to understand it all. He didn’t remember such cruelty in her from before, passing off the outburst as some kind of reaction to her forced incarceration. He made excuses for her even now, wondering why he felt the need. He looked into his servant’s eyes, seeing nothing but a lost soul.
“Contact this man.” He said thickly, reaching inside his handsome waistcoat and producing a business card. Looking over Dreeoth’s shoulder at the back of the woman who caused this carnage, he thought over what he was going to do next, hands slightly shaking and skin crawling. Without looking at Dreeoth, a sort of calmness having descended, he carried on. “Tear it down the middle and say Guise needs him. He can help with this.” Christophe nodded back towards the sullied room and then lay a fatherly hand on Dreeoth’s shoulder, an unsaid apology written across his face. Acknowledging that he understood, Christophe then had permission to gently press past him into the steel room. Dreeoth looked down at the card, ivory white and so clean. Mocking the cleanliness of the card, reds, browns, blacks and hellish colours surrounded him when he noticed his bloodied thumb mark screaming out from the white. Next to the smudge, in simple black text, it read Bleach.
Christophe was lost in thought, manically trying to come up with a reason to leave, to find excuses like he had earlier to delay him from coming home. He wanted to get out. His head told him they should be gone from the chaos, ‘leave it to the young and passionate’. Nagging, opposite thoughts barged their way to the front of the queue, his head beginning to lose the fight, to his heart. I need to help her. I need to love her. He could hear his love speaking to herself as he carefully approached, not wanting to disturb the crazed discussion.
“Where is it?!” She growled. Anger and bitterness made themselves known in her voice, The Rage providing the words to their fury.
“She, must have it.” She purred back to herself, calm and peaceful. The Mistress’ soothing tones wouldn’t be quieted.
“Yesss.” The first voice hissed in agreement.
“It is time we paid her a visit. Don’t you think sweetness and light?” The second voice placated, regal and proud.
“Can we kill her this time?”
“Perhaps. The book is our priority though dearest. Remember that.” A deep growl came from the woman’s chest, clearly displeased with the logical thinking but unable to argue. They’d spent so long in that fleshy prison, so long away from the book that they needed to get it back. Even though they were free from Eve and extremely capable, they still needed guidance from she who knows all, the book.
“Can we eat again?” She pleaded to herself. Even before she’d been trapped, eating wasn’t a necessity, the love and warmth of the book sustaining her in ways she was only coming to understand now. Part of her hoped that finding her prized possession would alleviate some of the hunger pains she was feeling, and she was sure it would, but there was a part of her that knew more was happening to her than she cared admit. Eve had complicated her existence somehow. Tied her to this hunger in the hope it would slow her or make her weak. She felt that admiration again at the beauty of it, how sneaky Eve had been in casting such a devious curse.
“Patience my love. We ate too quickly last time. We need this one to last.” Christophe looked at the woman restrained in the chair. She was very pretty, in her early twenties and he thought he would’ve been attracted to her in his youth. Even now, her serene smile was a little beguiling and he knew, the power of a woman's smile. Completely naked she looked healthy, curves showing her womanly features and toned by regular exercise. There was a simple honesty in the shortness of Naïve lives and how so many of them struggled with their own self-images, but now her right leg was missing just below the hip, recently removed with a precise cross sectional cut through the thigh. He was sad that she’d never exercise again. No blood came out of the wound and looking like a perfect anatomical drawing of the inside of a leg it almost didn’t seem real. The woman he loved turned to see Christophe, who stood there confidently and met her gaze without fear, having decided to stand by her to see what their story held in store for them.
“I’m so sorry Äsheenie.” She said in a delicate voice. Years and horrific experiences ran away from her, to leave behind a scared young woman. She hugged Christophe and then broke down into tears, surprising Christophe with the show of remorse and self-awareness.
“What’s wrong?” He whispered, stroking her hair and soothing as much as he could.
“I couldn’t stop.” She said back sincerely.
“I was so angry. At being trapped for so long. At not finding my book. At what I did in the old days.” Pushing Christophe back so they could see each other’s faces, she went on in a voice he remembered. A calmer, more balanced one that he’d fallen in love with the first time around.
“It’s like I went to sleep and then woke up to this, having dreamt that I hurt these women. I didn’t think I actually did it.” She was crying freely now, innocence and vulnerability taking over. Christophe favoured the more positive thoughts from earlier and nurtured them. Grew them. Forced their roots deep into his soul. This was the person he fell in love with those long days past. He saw the conflict in her now. The untarnished essence of a young woman wrapped in fear, death and carnage. The horrible expression of a tortured soul manifested in this daemon with two voices, keeping her true self locked away from the light. He helped her because of the imprisoned person he used to know. Working out how he could help her, platitudes and calming words echoed in her ears as Christophe tried to calm her further and coax out the woman he loved.
“I need to go home.” She said finally, tears dry on her face. “That’s where she’ll be. That’s where the book will b
e.”
Christophe worried about the focus and determination returning to her now. He knew; the book was dark and the strange, unnatural relationship she had with it. It would encourage the daemon with two voices to take hold and he steeled himself to be the one that would stand for the true version of her. They’d both enjoyed the freedom of not caring about consequences in the past. Killing who they wanted, taking what they wanted. Now though, he wanted to leave it to the young and passionate. Maybe they both did. “Are you sure Äsheenie?”
“Yes. Will you help me?” Her eyes, still wet from crying, looked directly into Christophe’s soul. His head was empty, ideas of what to do next and how to help her disappearing in a flash at seeing those eyes and that smile. He would do anything for her. He was lost to her.
“Of course. What do you need?” He said pathetically, resigned to his fate. The woman in his arms searched the room and gestured towards the human remains scattered across the room, a new life filling her voice with purpose.
“Put anything that is undamaged aside for now. Then take me to my old home. You remember how to draw a portal?”
“Yes, my love. We will need to cast away from here though. The Protectorate are getting more efficient when it comes to finding and persecuting unsanctioned magik. Especially spells that use Naïve lives.”
* * *
Dreeoth tore the business card in half as instructed, saying the name he’d never heard before. Guise must have been some alter ego or different name Christophe used when conducting this kind of business, he thought. Not knowing what to expect, the letters on the paper began to fade, as well as the red-brown stains left by his hands. Fearful, he dropped the pieces of paper onto the floor right into the middle of a pool of blood. When the paper touched it, the fluid moved out of the way so that the pieces could land on clean carpet. Carpet that looked like it’d never left the production warehouse, let alone moments ago been soaked through, with body fluids. Shortly after, the paper dissolved into the floor and the surrounding blood formed into a face, familiar and strange. Detailed and blurry. Featured and featureless, constantly moving. Stunned, Dreeoth held onto his vase of eyes with both hands, holding it closer to his chest protectively and moving it slightly to the side so that he could see the face at his feet more clearly. Was it female? Male? Orc? Elf? Dwarf? Every time something appeared in his mind, the face showed him what he was thinking about. Then it spoke. A man’s voice, with extremely feminine touches and camp intonations.
A Dyad in Time Page 14
