Chapter 30: Tau

Makore was sick with fear. The floor and walls of our cell were covered in a stiff, abrasive fabric, the purpose of which seemed to be the gathering of mold. Again I envied the targs their masks. I tried several times to engage Makore in conversation, but he merely huddled in the corner farthest from me in a growing spot of damp from his fearful sweating. His eyes were open wider than the vestigial ornaments of a basilisk.

The ennui was deeply interested in me. It came often and watched, especially when we were fed. Makore refused to eat their food, and grew weaker by the day. I feared for my sweet Eris, and worried how long we might have been captive. I grew angry with Makore when he refused to tell me how many days we'd been held, and eventually beat the information out of him. It had not yet been a week, but for two days I had lain in a bloody heap on the ground, slowly retaking shape.

When Makore told me this, I rolled my eyes. I had no use for the company of a madman. My body did hurt from what was clearly a massive impact. I remember distracting myself by speculating on why Belial had slammed me onto the ground, and how I survived. I remembered very little, save a sense that the same thing that compelled Belial to threaten my life was the very thing that saved me. I considered reasoning with Makore, pointing to the clear and obvious differences between my brand of humanity and his. As a child I endured numerous injuries that those around me were shocked to see me survive. But the crazed look in his eyes dissuaded me from attempting any dialogue on the matter. The man had made up his mind in ignorance, and any attempt to educate him would be a waste of breath.

I found myself growing increasingly spiteful of his hateful staring, and by the end of the fifth day was fearful of sleep. After making it this far, dare I risk being strangled by my own commanding officer? I sat upright that night, keeping my eyes fixed on him the entire time. He pretended twice to fall asleep, but I caught him slowly opening his eyes precisely an hour after they closed. The morning found us both exhausted, but still Makore refused to eat. A bucket was brought in, and he watched me like a predator while I defecated. When my ablution peaked, he leapt at me with his hands ready to grasp my throat, but I was ready, and finished my expulsion with the same energy I used to jump back and bring the bucket upward, striking him in the jaw and covering him with my filth. The ennui clapped outside our cell, and ordered a guard to throw us rags to clean ourselves with. I stood, naked from the waist down, and raised my fist to strike Makore. He withdrew, and I used up both rags, enduring the remaining stench so that this man who, by incompetence or by intent, had gotten all the soldiers under his command killed, could wallow in humiliation while I turned his hateful stare back on him.

We measured the passing of time by the shifts of our guards. Around midday the ennui came to see us, taking an almost pleasurable whiff of the dried feces coating Makore.

"It cannot kill you," the ennui said. It. It called one of us it.

As I did to Makore when he claimed I'd risen from the dead, I ignored the ennui's lunacy.

"It will go mad trying." The ennui's voice trilled like a string of chimes. I looked at it, watching as its aperture oscillated with its hissing breath, and its eyes blinked sidelong with perverse glee.

"I'm glad we can entertain," I retorted. The door opened again, and at the ennui's orders, three guards entered and prevented me from interfering as Makore was given a bucket of water and fresh rags. He was stripped, washed, and dressed in clean clothes, and when they left our cell he sat cross legged with his hands behind his back. Another sleepless night passed, and I began to contemplate murdering him so that I could bring a swifter end to the ennui's morose game. As it happened, it was not murder. While three guards stood in a semi circle around me, the two that tended to Makore gave him a knife. He waited for me to blink before lunging. He managed to stick me several times in the belly and the arm before I turned his knife on him and slit him from navel to collarbone.

I struggled to keep from weeping as I staunched my wounds with strips I tore from his clothing. My hatred for the targs (the ennui in particular) blazed like a purging fire in my gut, but mostly I felt a deep longing for Eris, a malady of which I have never been cured. A sound like the tapping of a black goat's horn against a chain fence drew my gaze towards Makore. One of the guards heard the noise and peered through the barred window, while the other guards and ennui slowly backed away and down the hall.

"You fool," Makore said to me. He was panting, blood spouting from his long gash, his voice rattling in his throat. "You should have died. It was supposed to only be me. He would have had me brought close. But you'll die now. No Dolomite necromancies can save you from this."

White light plumed, red mist sprayed, the cell turned to rubble, and I looked upward at another's memory as the sky blistered with unfolding perianths of igneous titan arum. Anpiel emerged from the stars, spread her dread wings, and her birdsong drowned out minds and hearts and dreams. Pazuzu hurled his winds in defense of the world, and Jove his lightning, and Apollo his golden spear, but they were beaten, and Nyx wept over their graves. Around their divine corpses were the decaying remains of Demeter, and Nyx perished too, being the last to stand against the tempest. Her lifeless husk was then flayed and spread as a cloak over a dread spirit who was decreed our warden; our home being now a prison, a prison called Tarthas.

There was talk in the darkness, words echoing through the veil. I heard a voice planning to feed my legs to the statues, and when I finally opened my eyes, my legs felt as if I'd never before walked upon them. I could not see them, as my body had been clothed in a long silver robe that covered down to my ankles, and my feet were wrapped in fresh bandages. My hands too were wrapped, save a few fingers. With them I touched my face, gently, as it was bandaged and very sensitive. Truly my whole body was in terrible pain. I winced as I lifted my hands to touch my face, and again when I set them down. Then I groaned mournfully as I turned my head to see my surroundings.

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Gold and crimson flowed in silk tatters from an amaranthine cloud, long since faded to ashen grey, of acrylic stylings older than even my scattered memories of the deep past; an arrow shot beyond the Sun and moon, and the storm of arrows shot back. I sat in a musty corner of a dank space, with pale light lancing down through holes in the dome above me. I waited upon nothing; empty, vague ramblings judging themselves unworthy, staring mutely at my bandaged feet that twitched on their own. It disturbs me that I did not think of Eris then. My mind had been as wrecked as my body, feeling limbs that were strange, that did not respond to my promptings any more readily than did a insect creeping across the ceiling. And the trappings of my new cell, as I was bound to the canopy bed I laid upon with hempen cords, were lavish with decay and unsettlingly comforting. There was a sense of death in the chamber, and in me; a truth I puzzled over in failed vipassanic episodes. When the ennui came I was aware of nothing but the connecting of tissues within my infantile ankles, and the gentle falling of a leaf from a tree.

It cooed as it examined me, long back stooped. It was no more than a sprig, urine like mercury trickling from a sexless groin. Whereas others cowered, it watched inquisitively while my drones circled closer. It was naked and alone, as many children on Tarthas are when born between cities, only frigid cold and poisoned sting did it no harm. I called my sentries to heel, endeared by the fearlessness of this most exceptional infant, the lone survivor of a devil attack. I felt guilt over my initial assumptions, seeing through backward facing windows that there was no demiurgic ambition in its actions, but rather it looked to Belial with a curiosity so strong it had flowered into attachment, and would betray the necro-monarch to no one. It watched me carefully, and I felt nothing in my heart save a desire to continue. The ennui smiled.

Only once have I experienced the sensation of infancy, and through the dense mesh of post-dream fade as a man pulled from the sea, having nearly drowned. I was taken from Belial's arms as I woke, and found myself trapped within a dual fountain of thought, being both father and son at one time, and, realizing this impossible, admitted the delusion of looking into a mirror and desperately denying the flaw in my spirit. While cradling me, Belial had looked into my eyes, and he sought something in those wells, and for a time his own glowed again. But he found something other than what he sought, though what he found was still a blessing. He said the word tau in a hoarse voice, and the ennui smiled.

"Tau," I croaked. The ennui nodded its head.

Caduceus's house was the closest thing I had seen to a throne chamber in my life prior to this, and I had imagined the chamber in which the Board met to be a hundred feet from ceiling to floor, with banners emblazoned draped across the ceiling and hanging low over a grand table, leading to a majestic throne, where a great ruler sat flanked by a deadly guard. Belial sat on an ancient metal chair, hunched and bent, leaning forward with a long, gangrel arm extended. His finger hovered over my forehead, then touched my chin. His nail was cracked and fungal, emitting a rank odor. I felt long fingers on my back and looked over my shoulder. I was on the ground as if I'd swooned, propped upward by the arms of Tau. I rolled my head back around and scanned the hall. It was as large, but seemed to shrink into a black space as it rose, where a dim trio of multi colored lamps flickered in the empty space at the center. The decor was sparse and colorless, the recesses in the walls being partly covered by tattered hangings, with a web of cables suspended across the tapered ceiling. Once jubilant tapestries had faded into grey shadows streaked with dead memories.

One object catches my memory's eye; a drab fishing net with six weights as large and old as Belial's own skull, suspended from the web of cables above his throne. The net was only barely visible to common sight, hanging in that liminal space between dark and light, and as I recall it now I ponder over the power of symbols, for I wish I had kept my own, as it came to define me, just as in every way Belial's symbols defined him, and so I suppose that I should be grateful that I let mine carry me through unharmed, and did not sever them for keepsake.

I just laughed softly to myself, because I was thinking that, as I am myself, my symbols are all spent, and I am without any decorum to guide me to the next step. But then I remembered the Stylus. At first I thought only that it is my symbol now, and it is guiding me to write my tale, this being my next (and wishfully final) step. But that was not a satisfactory revelation, as it was too simple and quickly stumbled upon, and I have learned to never trust the apparent answer, as either truth likes to hide, or fallacy is eager for attention. You see, the pen is oft likened to the sword, but it looks much more like a spear. I left my spear behind me in one of the armories I passed while en route to this space. It was filled with weapons that were badly rusted and worn, so I thought my own in good company, and, like Belial failed to do with his net, I left it there. But it seems my weapon will still have use of me, for it called to me through this little avatar in my hand (any object can be pressed into service), so when I write the next paragraph I will have, as I have done so many times before, retread my steps to reclaim what I'd hoped to leave behind.

The ennui have no fear because they have no bonds, I thought. This one might be the exception, should I prove to be as a father to it, and it would give me purpose, a thing I'd long done without. How long do they live? I shall learn. I have outlived my kindreds both by hundreds of years. I've taken to hiding behind an ever expanding band of servants, having lost faith in the instinct that once propelled me onward into solitude. Those who follow me fear my strength, and they fear my longevity, and they fear my fearlessness, and they fear my apathy, and they fear my memory, and they fear my makers, and they fear my eyes. I looked into this foreign thought and felt sad, as it squandered a precious gift. To live on and on and on is the dream of any who see their grandchildren, or live an accomplished life, and here it was bestowed to one who was lost within himself. I sensed that he had tried, had reached for the terminus, and mayhaps crossed it, but to no end. There was a race, and Belial ran, but he found no victory, only endless running. Perhaps he ran the wrong race. Perhaps he ran too soon. Perhaps there were no other runners. Perhaps he ran in a loop, not knowing when to end, and ran until his strength gave out. Tau stood, dragging me to my feet. It whispered something in its strange tongue, and I knew it told me to stand. I did my best, wavering, and it lifted my robe to show my legs to Belial.

I did not look down, so I cannot report to you what the king saw, but his vacant stare shifted into a weak facsimile of hope. Next I felt pain in my back as a blade cut into me. I lurched forward, but Tau pulled me back and held me with tenuous strength. In health, I would have no trouble dispatching an ennui. But in this state, sick and bewildered with a knife in my back, recently betrayed by one in command, and my mind taken by a ruined echo, the ennui bested me, and soon guards emerged from the dark spaces bordering the chamber. I was still for a moment, feeling I had no course of escape, but then anger overcame me, and I lashed out with my elbow, knocking the ennui to the ground. I reached behind my back and took the knife, and without thinking threw it into the ennui's throat.

When I was a boy, I watched a giant die. Bolt after bolt was fired before it fell, and the graduality of its surrender wounded my heart. Behind me in the throne room sobbed a frightened half-giant king, his voice ascending as if he were asking a question, and the guards suddenly halted. The frightened sob refrained, and I heard creaking like a sagging floor beneath an old man searching his house for heirlooms, not allowing himself to admit that those he'd give them to are not likely to visit again.

Belial towered over me, his long, knobby legs straddling me like some withered Colossus. I might have been a treasure hunter invading a tomb of the ancient Hellenes, facing the aged Helios as he came to defend his dead worshipers. My feeble legs gave way and I fell to my knees, watching with growing anxiety as Belial crouched over Tau. First he poked at it gently, then with sparing force, then with urgency, and in the same way that the slain giant's eyes had slowly closed, Belial's slowly opened. A desperation such as I never felt possessed me, and I watched through a haze as his fingers clutched for me, leaving my body untouched as they passed through air. I stood again, my new legs now unhurt, and I watched with strange detachment as Belial made a bloody mess of his guards. I heard nothing, watching casually while mouths opened to silently scream, and time appeared sluggish as if the cosmos were drugged. When only us two were alive, I looked into my own eyes twice, and Belial crawled across the floor to the wall behind his throne where he sat and cradled his head in both his hands. I quickly left when I began to hear his mad mumblings. There were guards approaching the door, looking through me fearfully into the hall. I told them it was over, and that killing their king would be a mercy for all. I do not know what frightened them more; the grisly scene beyond, or the white shadow who emerged from the rift.

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