Semiramis Reborn

by Maya Daniels

  “You’re still there, Mother, right?” I send my thoughts to her, and even I can hear the worry in them.

  “Yes, love, do not worry. I will not leave you alone. Even when you get me angry, I still don’t want you harmed. What mother would?” she says gently, and I hear sadness in her words.

  “Mine would,” I mumble, thinking about my birth mother but I don’t dwell on it.

  I start lifting my body up. Maybe it’s the merge with her that gives me more strength, I have no idea, but I gracefully climb the rocks, flinging myself from one to the other, a seasoned rock climber would eat their heart out if they saw me. Well, I feel like it’s graceful. I might look like a jumping mountain goat to others, for all I know.

  As I reach the top, I lift my upper body with both hands just enough so that I can peek over the cliff at what’s on top. Wow! My breath hitches in my throat and I stare frozen, holding myself up with a white-knuckled grip on the dead rocks. A black gothic castle sits at the top with an eerie glow surrounding it. Four towers are jutting up on four sides of it, looking like crooked fingers reaching for the moon. It’s hard to focus on it and I don’t know if that’s the same for everyone or if it’s because my body and soul are trembling so much that I start doubting my sanity for thinking I can do this on my own. I think… no! I know that I will never be the same again if I set foot inside that monstrosity. There is some deep-seated knowledge in my very essence that comes to life at the sight of it and it overrides my thoughts, feelings, everything. I start shaking harder and I wish I can let go of the rocks and plummet down the dead mountain now to my death, because if I walk in there, I’ll wish many times over that I was dead. I know it better than I know my own name! All I have to do is let go. I want to do it! I try to pry my fingers open so it’s done.

  “Snap out of it right now, Alexia!”

  Inanna’s voice screams so loud in my head, I almost let go of the damn rocks I was holding. She jars me out of the doomed thoughts like she’d slapped me, and I suck in a breath. What the fuck was that! That’s not me, I don’t want to die. Well, not until I save my sisters, anyways. After that, I don’t care. It must be that damned castle.

  “Does it have an illusion cast on it to make everyone want to kill themselves if they come near it?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says glumly.

  “No? That’s it? You need to elaborate on that one, Mother, because I will be of no use to you if I get to the temple doors just to perform hara-kiri or something in front of it,” I spit angrily. Great! In my anger, I can picture myself getting so close to saving them only to end up disemboweling myself with a sword at the temple doors. I can see it in slow motion in my mind.

  “Stop this nonsense, love. It’s the energy of their magick. That’s how it affects those that still have their light intact.”

  “So, what do I do? Will you take over when I reach it?”

  “You are stronger than what you give yourself credit for, love. Why do you still doubt yourself?” she asks tenderly.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mother. Maybe because I almost would have killed myself two seconds ago if you hadn’t snapped me out of it??”

  “You didn’t expect it, yet you are still here, are you not?” Her husky laughter pisses me off. It’s all games to her.

  “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be,” I tell her pointedly.

  “Not true, but let us be done with this here and now. We will have time to discuss it later.”

  She has a point and I know I’m stalling, but you’d do the same. I don’t know if I’ll survive this effort to save my sisters. I’m of no use to anyone if I die.

  Taking a deep breath, I pull myself all the way up, put my knee on the ground and lift myself to the top of the cliff where I’d been hanging. By now, my arms feel numb and shake with exhaustion from holding onto the rocks. I feel warm blood trickling down my palms where the rock has cut into my fingers. Huh! I didn’t even notice it until now. As I stand up, my arms fall limply next to my body and I start sprinting on my toes towards the temple as fast as I can while I shake them to return some feeling.

  The cloaked monsters (or wizards, if you may) don’t pay attention to me at all. I’m sure they would’ve seen me by now, but I have a feeling whatever it was that made me want to die looking at the monstrosity of a temple in front of me is like a beacon to them. I can almost feel them drooling like a dog staring at a juicy steak. I plaster my back to the walls of the temple and I shiver when dark energy like icy fingers starts prodding at my skin like a leech trying to find a perfect spot so it can suck the life out of me. I need to get in and then get out as fast as I can. Hopefully with my soul still intact. No problem, I got this! Right? Right!

  Peeking around the corner, I see the last cloaked monster walk towards the doors and I start creeping silently towards it. As I get closer, I see cloaks hanging next to the door and go straight for them to snatch one. Perfect! Unless they take the cloaks off inside like we did at my initiation, I’m good. Go in, grab a lantern, get out! Easy peasy! I almost want to chuckle menacingly. Dumbass wizards, all that dark magick has made them cocky. It works for me.

  Pulling the cloak around my shoulders and the hood over my head makes me gag. It smells disgusting. Like rotten fish sitting in the sun for days. I want to throw it off me and scrub my skin until the first layer comes off. I just need to keep it on me for a few minutes, I tell myself as I start breathing through my mouth so I don’t make a retching sound. I can do this. I’m close to getting what I need and taking my sisters home with me. I’ll wear the damn thing for a month for that, if need be. Okay, fine! I won’t! But I’m just saying that I would if that’s what it took to have them back. It’s a small price to pay. Squaring my shoulders, I start walking towards the doors. Here goes nothing!

  8

  Have you ever imagined walking onto the set of a badly-made vampire movie? Well, this looks worse! As I step through the doors of the temple, I realize that as bad as it looked from the outside (Dracula fanboy much?), it looks even worse on the inside. Black shiny rock covers the walls and ground of the hallway that leads into the depths of the temple. Looking ahead, it seems like it’s leading into a black hole that has a gravitational pull on your energy. You feel it yanking on a string attached to your gut and it makes you feel like a fish on a hook. Torches line the sides of the walls with that creepy green fluorescent flame, and like a million ants are crawling on your skin, it spreads the feeling through your body. You have to move or you’ll go insane just from the sensations alone. So putting one foot in front of the other, I start walking. To my doom? Maybe, but it doesn’t stop me. Halfway towards the entrance to what I assume is the center of the temple, I see cave-like entrances in the shiny rock walls, but luckily no one is there. Well, I hope no one is there, but I can’t be sure. It’s darker than black inside, so I keep walking, trying not to think too much or I’ll start getting paranoid.

  Just breathe, I repeat in my head.

  “Yes, love, just breathe. I’ve got you.”

  Inanna’s gentle voice should’ve put me more at ease but strangely, I can detect sadness and something I can’t name. It rattles my nerves and I get a bad feeling about this whole thing. As if that’s not bad enough, the air feels evil in this place. What can be worse than this dread at the center of my heart and soul? I don’t have time to think about that. In and out! That’s my focus. As I get to the gaping black hole, I feel its pull on me, and like submerging through an oil lake, I walk to the other side of it. It wasn’t easy. It feels like it wants to stop me from entering but with a determined push, I get through finally. I stop and assess my surroundings.

  The same black shining rock covers the walls and ground of a huge round room that is the center of the temple. Everything else looks barren. In the middle of the floor there is a red circle that I would’ve thought was paint if it weren’t for the four poor souls kneeling naked around it, staring at the ceiling with glazed unseeing eyes, their wrists slashed open and t
heir blood running in rivulets, creating the circle and sigil in it before which they are positioned. The sigil moves around like a snake biting its own tail, creating a never-ending line that resembles a dragon or a snake, but I can’t be sure of it. It’s disturbing to look at. They’re enthralled, judging by the serene and reverent look on their faces, while their lifeblood is leaving their bodies. My heart shrivels in my chest with pain and sorrow for them.

  “Please, Mother, bless their souls. Don’t let them suffer,” I beg Inanna silently with my mind.

  I’m using everything in me to stand still where I am and not make a sound. I feel my body shaking with the force of everything I am pushing me to go try save them—or end their misery. Anything but standing here motionless like a statue. One wrong move or sound and I’ll screw everything up. My sisters can be the next ones kneeling here. That made me snap out of it. That brings another thought. Am I saying their lives matter more than the lives of these people? Who made me the judge of who deserves to be saved? Do they have someone looking for them or, maybe, even trying to save them this very moment? Faith’s words come back, stabbing me in the heart, ‘I was too late.’ Did she see her loved one bleed to death at this same place?

  Emotions overwhelm me and I almost start bending from the weight of them when I hear my grandmother’s words spoken like she is standing next to me. ‘We cannot save them all, my child, no matter how much we want to do it. But we can make sure their lives are not lost in vain.’

  Her words bring me back to the present, so I don’t move but it still doesn’t make me feel better. I need to grab that lantern and get out of here before I do something stupid, like try to kill everything that moves in this place. I feel the heat in my heart starting to rise, my palms are starting to vibrate and get hot, and I start taking slow, even, deep breaths. The last thing I need is to burst into flames here with Inanna merged inside me. I’ll eviscerate this whole realm to nothingness. How’s that for walking in and out unnoticed!

  With effort, I avert my eyes from the scene in front of me so I can look up and see what they are looking at. Suffice to say, I wish I hadn’t.

  There is no ceiling in this temple, but I’m not sure if that’s true or that the dragon-slash-snake coiled there is hiding it. Its red eyes are turned my way, the slit vertical pupils expand and retract and its focus is on me. Its black body is in constant movement like it reacts to the movement of the blood sigil on the ground. I freeze. Does it know I don’t belong here? Can it see me? Does it know who I am? Will it strike and end my misery right here, right now so close to getting what I need? In my frozen state I wonder how it’s possible that my heart is not in my throat just from the sight of it.

  “I’m shielding you, love. Avert your eyes. She doesn’t know you are here.”

  I hear Inanna’s voice, and just like in the old days, I obey but I still feel frozen. I need to get the hell out of here. Well, that’s what I want, but my body is still standing in the same spot. I look around me just to occupy my mind and keep from having a meltdown. Looking around, I see half of the cloaked monsters standing on one side of the blood sigil. The other half have their cloaks writhing open around them, defying gravity with a mind of their own, the same way they did when they were chasing us through the field. They stand in a circle along the walls, holding their lanterns. Slowly, like a wooden doll, I drag my feet towards the cloaked ones. They have no lanterns, so I’m guessing I’ll blend in better there. As I reach them, I finally have a better view of the altar sitting opposite of the entrance. Spiked columns stretch up towards the top with what looks like skulls of all sorts of creatures on them. I pray silently that they’re chiseled out of the rock and not actual skulls from living beings. Black oily liquid slides slowly over them towards the flat surface of the rock altar. On top of it a single silver apple sits, so out of place that it makes me want to go and push it off. I clench my hands and grit my teeth, my nails biting into my flesh, just so I stay still on my spot. The shock of seeing the disturbing scene and the damn snake lookalike dragon makes me oblivious to what else I’m feeling, or not feeling, as is the case. Now standing here, I notice it, and the dread I felt earlier comes back with a vengeance. I feel nothing! I’m an empath, I always feel something. At times I can’t feel myself because of everything and everyone else I feel. Nothing! It’s like I’m dead. I guess this is what departing from your skin suit feels like before you transition to your next journey. Emptiness. Void.

  The sound from behind the altar makes me snap out of my own head, thankfully, or I would’ve started freaking out for the hundredth time in less than a day. I look towards the sound in time to see a red-cloaked figure, hood pulled low over the head so you can’t see who or what it is, exit the spiked columns like walking out through the wall. I wonder if it’s a ghost or this whole creepy setup is playing mind games with me. I shake my head slightly and follow the movement of what I’m guessing is the high priest or wizard. Maybe it’s Tomorith. I wonder if I can kill the fucker if it really is him. It’d save us all some trouble. If Lucifer could hear me now, I’d make him proud. I almost laugh at the thought.

  The red cloak moves in front of the altar, turns his back to all of us (me, the monsters, the dragon snake, and the poor souls kneeling in the center, in case you forgot). Raising arms towards the ceiling, I hear the chanting start at the same time as the cloaked monsters around me start swaying, like they are attached with a string to the voice coming out from the red cloak. The voice sounds so familiar that I forget to breathe, trying to place it at first. It’s like I know what I’m hearing but my mind blocks me from registering it. I jerkily move my body so I don’t draw attention to myself while my thoughts race three hundred miles an hour. “I know this voice! Why can’t I place it??” Dumbfounded I listen to the chanting.

  “Mighty wind, fall quiet inside me,

  You are crushed by my power and settled to these astral chains,

  Do not raise your eyes to mine for I am greater,

  I will you, do my bidding without question.”

  The voice echoes around me, although the words are softly spoken. With each word, more dread pools in the pit of my stomach, threatening to destroy my essence and I still don’t understand why. Why is the voice so familiar and why can’t I remember whose it is? It feels a lot like denial. I feel my body start shaking like it’s going into shock, but I don’t understand why. I stop moving and stare, listening to the voice invoking.

  “Haqadosch,Berakha,Chaioth,Haquadosch,Auphalim,Aralim,Chasmalim,Seraphim,Malachim,Elohim,Beni-elohim,Kerubim,Ishim…

  I summon ye and conjure ye, by the name of one true God, Alpha Omega, I am that I am,

  Oh Lord who regards the abysses beneath,

  Grant onto me thy grace, I beseech thee,

  So that what I conceive in my mind I accomplish with my work, oh great Tiamat!”

  Upon hearing her name, my heart stops for a second before it starts beating so fast and loud I think everyone can hear it, and I lift my eyes up to see the snake dragon that I now know is my archenemy staring at me still with those freaky pupils. I bend my knees ready to jump and start climbing those disgusting walls so I can get to her and scratch her eyes out before I cut her up piece by piece and watch her die a slow, painful death. Well, that’s what I want to do.

  Inanna has a different plan, because without notice, she takes complete charge of my body again and I’m left screaming inside my own mind at the injustice of it all. She killed my grandmother, she took everything from me! I deserve to have revenge. I fucking demand to have it! Inanna is talking to me but I hear nothing. My rage is so strong that all I can hear clearly is a very loud buzzing sound like I’m standing next to a huge generator. I don’t care what she has to say. I want blood, damn it! I want to see the life extinguished from those reptilian eyes by my hand. It’s my right! As I’m raging, seeing red in my mind, an electrical charge so strong hits my body with so much force, it stuns me for a few seconds and everything stops like someone pres
sed pause. The buzzing stops, and while I’m trying to shake off the feeling, I’m thinking I can’t believe she zapped me like that. In the background, I hear the familiar voice finishing up the invocation.

  “Find no solace in this binding, great Tiamat,

  You are no longer amongst the stars,

  Gather your power from the abyss,

  And exercise it for my gain alone!”

  I’m waiting impatiently for the stunt to be over so I can continue my plan of attacking Tiamat, and I watch one by one the cloaked monsters walk up towards the red cloak figure and when they stop behind it, the figure turns sideways, flinging a lantern at them that they catch in their right hand and release a triumphant screech that makes my ears bleed. Frozen in place, I watch them one by one, and I’m thinking, I’ll go grab the lantern thrown at me and then attack the vile creature that calls itself a goddess. Well, I hope to get it if I can unfreeze myself. There are only two monsters left in front of me now. As my turn comes, my legs take me where I need to stand, Inanna obviously still in full control, and I’m seething.

  “You better release me, Mother! I will have my revenge!” I yell in my head.