Part Five – Dazed and Confused and
Very Likely Concussed
I stop, staggered.
By a thought:
Peitho's religion is dedicated to Chaos.
R – Robert you have known this for—
I – Her religion.
What does it even mean? I don't know. I do think that it is—
I – Profound.
I feel, standing there, in the dark of deepest midnight, as though the ground beneath my feet were trembling and quaking as though a distant western peak had exploded, spewing rock and vomiting lava into the sky – as though the very Earth had rent open its own crust, revealing a cavern directly into the depths of her mysteries.
And I am overwhelmed.
I see, in my imagination, the chasm which led to the River of Fire from my NDV – that river which separates this life of torment from the next in the Yaldabaoth's Grand Scheme of Things. In my mind, I am staggered, then fall to my knees, arms upraised in anguish – like that scene from that movie – Platoon – you know, the one on the poster.
There is only so much information one can hold in one's mind, only so many multi-dimensional models one can maintain – only so many plates one can suspend aloft and spinning. Right?
Metaphorically I turn from the chasm and plod along. The plodding isn't exactly a metaphor – I do continue round the side of the church, soon to emerge beside its front. Toward the exploding mountain – and my inevitable doom – I go, one dragged step at a time.
That isn't how it feels.
I feel... strangely good. Calm. At peace, at least, with what I've done. What I've managed to accomplish in this life – how far I managed to come on this quest. I maybe feel even a little excited. I am not analogous to a witch going to the pyre – not really. And yet—
In reality, I don't turn anywhere, and I no longer feel doomed. For now. I shake my head slowly, whatever thought I'd had – I must have thought of something I meant to ask Peitho – it's forgotten. I lift my foot to head back to Ted, and—
“Robert, Robert, Robert,” tisk-tisk-tisks the rasping-bone voice of Death.
I am frozen in place. I turn, slowly, my arms pinned to my side. Less by a motion of investigation than of being manipulated by a deific hand, I turn to the sound.
“Metus,” I nearly exclaim. “We really do have to stop meeting like this.” When they don't react, I kind of anxiously chuckle; then I try: “How did I know I'd run into you before too long?”
The priest does not laugh. In fact, in the light only of the moon and stars, they do not appear to react at all.
“It must be your guilty conscience.”
Metus is standing in front of the church as though admiring the facade – or waiting for someone to emerge from it. Perhaps some ten yards separate the two of us, making for a long and ugly triangle with the door – and Peitho beyond.
“What's wrong? Can't go in?” I snicker.
R – What are you doing?
S - I really must want to die.
Metus regards me much the way that I am – surprised, not by the question, the implication, as it were – but by the insane leer smeared like the last peanut butter in the jar across my face: Neither of us can believe I'm taunting them.
Metus turns, now, not just their head, but their whole body to face me. “Have you been trying to avoid us?”
I kind of sigh a laugh. “As a matter of fact, yes. I have been hoping to. Failed, it seems, is what I have done.”
“Do not try to be funny with us, Robert Alan Longshore. You are in much more trouble than you appear to understand.”
My stomach is gripped in the icy fist of panic. Panic I should not feel. It should be no surprise to me that Metus knows that Peitho is in the church, and that I am with her – or anything else, for that matter. It should come to me as no surprise that any passing stranger should know who I am at this point. And what do I have to fear? What more that is. That they would hurt my family to get at me? My wife, who no doubt by now already thinks I am dead—
Would that work?
If they knew me, they know that it—
Then why do I feel trapped – paralyzed – like a tingling net of cold is closing tight enough around me to cut into my clothes and flesh?
“You are not answering us and we are becoming impatient,” Metus says. “Is there someone you do not wish us to see in there? Who is it?”
“Why don't you go on in and look for yourself?”
Metus appears unfazed by this, going so far as to smooth their vestments and summon all of the dignity of their desiccated cadaver – and leveling it on me like some kind of Kamehameha Wave. I am shaken up by their non-reaction. Can they not go in? What would that mean? Some jurisdictional something or—
I wish I could the priest's eyes. Simultaneously, I am thankful I cannot. Because I see something else – something I have repeatedly told myself I have only imagined: a blacker-than-black mass, bilious and barely corporeal, floating above Metus's head, roiling like clouds and shaped vaguely like a titanic torso and requisite beefy arms. It is, if I am seeing it at all, looking still at the door of the church.
It turns to regard me.
And then I see it no more.
“I have looked,” Metus breathes in his eerie monotone. “And I have Seen.”
“Isn't that expressly forbidden...?” I ask. The question is impertinent, and you may expect for me to be – for my sneering insincerity to continue. But it does not.
I am filled with cold, the tendril-fingers which always play along my scalp when I am near this creature, this Iustitiarius, reaching into my skull and taking hold of my spine and brain-stem. Any impertinence, any insolence or impiety which I felt – or which I puffed myself up with – is gone. I am clamped in the clammy hand of Dread, and any feeling besides is choked, strangled out of me. Replaced only by the essential oils of terror.
“To the flock,” Metus shrugs.
And again I am aware of the uncanny – the unnatural – way this being seems to be suspended from its shoulders: not rooted and growing from the ground, but dangling above it.
“Yes, Robert. But to us?” The hooded head tilts to the side. “Robert – there are secrets deeper than those you think you know. Older. More powerful and capable of destroying—“
“I think, Metus,” I interject – my voice clear and bright and brave, free, in other words, of the tremulous quaking and cowardice of my body – “that I have had enough of your threats. Either make good or—“
“We are not threatening you now, nor have we ever. We have sought only your—“
“My what?”
“You cooperation – if not your conversion.”
I blink at this like a slap.
S – Conversion?
“You are not wicked in your heart, Robert Alan Longshore, Seeker After Truth, Philalitheia, Fulcrum of Human Fate. We came here to give you one last chance to turn away – to seek solitude and the life of a father and husband, the life of a man, far from the conflicts and politics—“
“Of the War.”
Metus blinks. “Of the World. But – yes.”
“Why?”
“Why what, Fulcrum?”
This voice – this is not Metus's. That is not to say not Metus's alone. In unison with their usual monotone, unfeeling voice, is another – deep, guttural, and filled – no, roiling, violently – with emotions I would rather not describe – which I would prefer not to dwell on feeling.
Which I would prefer to have never heard in the first place.
“Why— Why—“ I hear myself stammering, and that's the only reason I remember the question – as asked by either of us – at all. The answer fills me with a sort of bolstering defiance. “Because— Why do you want me out of the way? How do you benefit?”
“How do we benefit? Robert, Robert, Robert— You misunderstand loyalty. Duty. It is not for us to profit off this world. It is for us to obey the will of God. It is God's will that there are those who will lead – and all else must follow. Even you.”
Is it just my imagination, or is the night... darker? As though even the stars have gone into hiding from Metus.
“The will of God as given to you by Man?” I ask.
“The Will of God is the Will of God, Robert! It matters not from whom or out of what it is proclaimed! Those with the ears to hear will comprehend its message and they will act in sanctified righteousness!”
My ears... it is not enough to say that this, shouted as it is, hurts my ears. It is not the volume of Metus's voice, nor even the vehemence of his cries. They itch, burning, like stinging, biting insects are chewing their ways into my sinuses – and into my brain.
“Then what of the Pope?” I ask, wincing outwardly.
“What are you doing in Pavia, Robert?” Metus asks, and over his shoulders I see that there is no semi-corporeal thing of spirit and malevolence – but there are real, genuine, black clouds massing and roiling about in the sky overhead.
The wind is picking up, whipping my jacket around my knees and threatening to steal my hat from my head. I have to raise my voice to feel heard.
“Would you believe me if I said I were trying to stop a war?”
I am answered by a crack of distant thunder.
S – Guess not?
“No. Not immediately. But then I might reconsider and ask why. Why tell such an outlandish and obvious lie, Fulcrum? To make me ask the question? Are you?”
Metus does not obviously raise their voice, and yet I have no trouble hearing them at all – as though they are speaking as much into my head as the medium of the air between us.
“I am,” I all but shout.
I can only describe what Metus does as beholding me – in the tumult of wind and the mist of rain beginning to fall, the priest, this judge of the Venatores Maleficarum, appears unaffected. Their robes remain as still as though the rising storm buffeting me were entirely in my mind..
“By aiding a witch? A whore? You think that you can end a war by—“ Their hood dips to the ground as their voice suddenly chokes off. “We did not come here to debate with you. We see that you have been poisoned against us, corrupted by the—“
As if on cue, in that very moment, the church door opens.
“...Serpent,” Metus announces Peitho, cooing with a dreadful sort of pleasure.
Their switch to Greek from the Welsh of my earliest childhood is made with such fluidity and ease, I almost don't notice it. What I do notice is that Peitho is much closer to Metus than I am.
“The Metus, I presume,” she says. I can't see her face – but she sounds like she's smiling – she may even be glad this is happening, knowing her.
This is like that moment when you introduce to very different friends. Actually, it's more like introducing your spouse and your side-piece – because these two want the other dead and gone forever.
There is a pregnant second which seems to linger for an eternity – not least because I am frozen, as incapable of movement – or even of screaming – as the sufferer of sleep paralysis.
And then, in a practiced motion – one which I can't help but think, watching it unfold with all the alacrity of oozing molasses and none of the clarity, is hasty, even panicked – Metus snatches the inverted crucifix from around their neck and holds it out, before and above them. Every bit the archaic priest filled with and commanding the power of their god – the image of the Exorcist in holy combat.
It must be my imagination – my sincere belief, even hope, that the weird metal and the icon its fashioned into are magick which causes me to interpret what I see in this light. But the crucifix and its chain, dangling down Metus's arm, glow bright with their own silvery-green radiance – like the moon with an oxidized patina, only weirder and more unpleasant even than that sounds.
“Abomination!” Metus stabs an accusatory finger at Peitho with their other hand. The night echoes this cry with a deafening boom of thunder – a sound like the very Firmament of Heaven were cracked open. “Daughter of Lamiya! By the power vested in me by the Grand Magus of the Venatores Maleficarum, in the tradition of all righteous men who have defied the Devil and all the beings of his Kind, and in the name of the Lord God Almighty—!”
Two things happen.
The first is that Metus never finishes this speech. I don't know how long they had been waiting to make it, but – well, bummer for them, I guess. The other is that I realize that Metus's strange voice is not raised in a cry or a shout of any kind. But it is projected, booming with an unnatural and unpleasant, almost painful feeling inside my head. Not so much in bones, the hammer anvil, and stirrup – though I feel like if there were any more of it, my ears would certainly begin to bleed. The second – and probably more interesting – is that Peitho explodes forward, clearing the distance between her and the significantly shorter and lighter Iustitiarius nearly instantaneously. Before I'm finished analyzing Metus's voice.
Before I can even think.
Peitho is upon Metus before the Witch Hunter can react.
I can only watch, dumb and stupid, my limbs so much cordwood, as the crucifix is knocked into the air and Metus tumbles backward, arms flailing to keep Peitho's tearing hands from their throat and eyes.
I don't know how the fall doesn't kill them. Metus looks as brittle as a thousand year-old mummy.
The two land hard. I hear the crack of the priest's skull against the stone of the street. No grunt or wheeze or ejaculation of air from the lungs, however, as Peitho's weight crashes down on them.
Peitho is upright almost instantly, straddling high on the little priest's torso – out of easy reach of swinging knees and limiting the range of motion of desiccated arms. She is hailing blows down on Metus, slashing their defensively upraised forearms wickedly – with what I hesitated to describe as clawed fingers... but she is certainly swiping her hands. She's definitely not punching.
S – She's going to kill Metus.
I hear the relief in the thought.
R – She's going to kill Metus.
S – Oh no.
I – She going to kill Metus!
I hear something else on the stones of the street, something that turns my attention away from the one-sided and soon-to-be-ended fight.
Ted sees Peitho at the same time as I see him. He nods, his face as determined as I know I should feel.
I'm running before I know why. Then I'm sprinting.
Ten yards isn't that far, in the grand scheme of things. But it's miles when you're trying to save a life.
I don't know if the blow she raises her arm to deliver would have been the killing one. I do know that her face is frozen in my memory, in that second. The... it's not rage. The murderous grimace contorting Peitho's beautiful face, her lips pulled back to reveal long fangs where I had known there only to be her upper outer incisors – fangs as long as my middle finger – and dripping viscous venom.
I lower my shoulder and close my eyes.
And slam into her side.
Any American football coach would be impressed by the form of the tackle.
There is a confusion after any sort of collision at-velocity. The brain thinks that it will remember which direction is which. Trust me on this if nothing else: it doesn't. Either because it is so prone to slamming itself, with nearly any change in direction, against its skullen confines, or simply because it isn't as good at locating itself in three-dimensional space as it would like to be. Proprioception, indeed.
The first thing you learn when you tackle someone with your body, whether they are running toward you, away, or not moving at all, is how fucking bad it hurts.
All the air is expelled from my lungs at once. A red-hot pain sears through my shoulder and side.
And then I meet the ground.
With my face.
My arms are wrapped around Peitho, pinning hers to her side. I feel her body hit the cobblestones of the street first, hear the oof of what air remained within her diaphram violently seeking a new home elsewhere. I land on top of her, but my momentum has better plans for me.
I open my eyes just in time to see grey – that is, stone – filling my vision. I turn my head just in time to take the blow to my cheek and not my nose.
And now I am dazed, confused, and very likely concussed.
Writhing in breathless agony, kicking like I have Restless Leg, groaning and gasping – but more than anything praying that my face isn't broken.
And Peitho is somehow already scrambling to get out from under me. I hear running horses. I push myself away from the ground. My eyes are spinning around in my head on their own. I'm dizzy, I feel like I'm going to be sick – my shoulder is numb, and Peitho won't lie still. I just want to close my eyes, to gather my— Metus is moving, too. I hear it. And Peitho is going to get away from me if I don't—
I catch my hands in her skirts, in her hair. The noises she's making – she's like an animal, a savage – hissing and growling, crying and screaming – mostly at me, in all honesty – and all wordless furiosity - in her effort to untangle herself from me. And Metus is working his way to his crucifix, crawling, slowly, on his knees.
Not exactly the most... dignified combat sequence ever described – if not undertaken.
Climbing Peitho more than under my own strength, I work my way to my feet. My head is clearing. In time, and enough, I hope, to time this properly.
With my hand still in her hair, I whip my weight around, forcing her ninety degrees to her left – away from Metus. She trips, surprised as much as she is simply at my mercy – and I shove her in the back. As hard as I can.
She screams a little, squealed, “What the—?” and stumbles forward.
My eyes flinch to the side – just in time to see Ted fly into my field of vision, shouting the same.
Peitho catches her balance just in time to throw herself – hard – into the open door of the carriage.
“Go!” I shout to Ted, already turning to Metus.
...Who is on their feet once more, crucifix gripped like a murderer's ax at their side. The hood has fallen down, revealing their scarred, dreadful features – now cast in a violent grimace. The vestments around their throat and arms are tattered and torn, revealing hideous burn scars – but not, if I were looking for it – a hint of cleavage. A hint of some ritual scarification and tattoo, however... – I avoid looking that I might not find.
Peitho is giving voice to the rage which contorts Metus's features. Her voice is, at least, retreating.
“Why did you do that, Robert?” Metus's voice, and, soon, their face, are totally blank once more.
“That is a question I'll have to come up with an answer to some other time,” I pant, grinning, back bent, hands on my knees. I spit. There's no blood in my mouth – can't taste any, either. But I can hear the slur in my speech; I see the slight blurring of my vision – and I am aware that I am only barely able to keep myself standing upright.
S – Jesus, why did I have to go and do that? Nearly killed myself trying to keep her from killing—
“Do you understand what you have done? The magnitude of your choice? You must understand— We cannot let you leave here. Not now.” Metus's voice starts dismayed, but ends determined.
S - Were they going to let me leave?
I – Did we save the wrong one?
“She was going to kill you,” I whisper to the ground. Then I meet Metus's eyes. “I— But it doesn't matter with you, does it?”
He is motionless – emotionless.
I can hear the horses coming back for me.
S – Fuck. Ted, what—
“It seems that you have a choice yet to make, Fulcrum.” Metus is smiling, but I know delicious irony when it is presented, like the head of my beloved adopted son on a covered plate, before me. “Stay. Pay the penance for what you have done—“
Metus is extending their hand.
“Or join with Peitho and learn what is really going on with the Rod?” I ask.
Their hand stops two-thirds of the way to an offering.
“Is that what you are telling yourself that you are doing? Using her for your own ends?”
“And if it is?” I take a step toward Metus. Close enough I could take that hand if an offer I like is made.
Casually, with the grace of a noble torquing their best cloak, Metus replaces their crucifix around their neck. Their eyes flit toward the coming carriage.
“Why do you protect her?” Metus meets my gaze with their hideous, egg-white eyes. “Why are you so loyal to her? What is your debt to her that you feel duty-bound to protect her?”
For a moment – just a split second, and, frankly, I might be imagining it – I see her – the girl that died, drowned in unholy green flames—
And then there is nothing. Blessed void behind my eyes.
My... I'm not sure whether it is my brain or my mind, or both – but if the Operating System and silicon machinery are at all analogous, I crashed as hard as a computer can crash.
“I don't owe her anything.”
Black clouds roil overhead and it's suddenly raining. I have to shout to be heard, even across the few feet which new separate us.
“It has nothing to do with her! I was trying to escape her!” I laugh. It's absurd. “But she— And I could have left – I was going to! I was going....”
“To ride west with a Lamia, Robert! You are helping humanity's greatest threat, don't you understand! She is a being of Chaos! An impossibility, an abomination of God's perfect Creation! Robert, please, listen to me: I am not being clever. There is no metaphor! She is a Daughter of the Devil! The Unholy Spawn of the very Serpent of the Garden! She is Sin incarnate!”
I hear, over the boom of their voice, the clatter of hooves and wooden wheels on stone cobbles. Turning, to my great dismay, I see Tedoro, returning, his horses at a run. And Peitho all but hanging from the open carriage door.
S – Oh, fuck. Please tell me she hasn't convinced him he's some kind of charioteer for her glory.
“Metus, I— I protected you, too.” I can hear it, feel, it, too: I'm pleading. I need Metus to understand.
Metus replaces their hood and turns so that they can watch Ted and Peitho approach. I look, and have no way of knowing whether Peitho is leaning out of the open door because she plans to jump out – or because she means to pull me in.
“Every person must make a choice at some point, Robert. Whether in this life or the next. You can't expect forbearance because you didn't know. You're an adult, now. No longer a child. The Master cannot shield you from your mistakes forever.”
“What does that mean?” I ask – and is it my imagination, or do I see the hint of a tongue of purple lightning lick at the night above their shoulder?
“Come with me, Robert. I will take you to the Rod. I will show you....”
“Show me what?”
Metus, hood upraised, face a black hole, extends their hand. “Take my hand and I will tell you.”
I turn to look over my left shoulder, and there is Peitho: leaning out of the open door, her hand extended to me.
Metus – Peitho.
“You have to choose!” Metus shouts behind me, their voice booming with thunder. Rainwater runs from my hat in rivulets.
I close my eyes.
Extend my hand....
And feel the cool of Peitho's palm slap my forearm – her surprising strength as she all but pulls me into the carriage.
And I hear the scream – the howl – of agony and rage and sorrow and hatred.
I lean out the door of the carriage in time, as it races away from Metus and toward Pepin and whatever horrors await, to see the night light up like day.
I don't know whether it struck Metus or whether it shot out of him, but a bolt of purple lightning - I swear I saw it with my own eyes – as big around as the trunk of a tree split the night.
The afterimage is seared, if not permanently into my vision, into my memory.
For a long moment I am blinded.
My reality is one of pain, of white nothing – of Tedoro's cursing, the horses' screaming, the panicked and desperate clatter of their hooves, of the wooden wheels of the carriage – of barely keeping myself from being flung from my feet – from the carriage and worse – and Metus's inarticulate screams. A temper tantrum for the ages. And, through it all, Peitho's awed gasps.
When again I can see, I am already gaping up at the sky. That is, I should say, I am still gaping up at the sky. And there, I find.... If the clouds above me can be described as water – which is difficult, because if it is a body of water, it is the angriest sea Poseidon ever commanded – but if it can, then the smaller storms of purple lightning which rage through the black tumult of clouds can be described like the ringlets of a stone dropped in a lake.
They shoot out in every direction, as far as the eye can see.
And I understand why Peitho is awed.
Comments
Post a Comment