Princeps

The promises they made to each other became reality in the coming days. The tutor was diligently exposing the pupil to the world of letters and numbers, with the latter showing natural affinity towards hoarding knowledge. Atef was already spelling with ease with nervous rubbing of forehead being present only in the hardest of cases.

- O-ur Empire spa-ns from north to south, from east to west, eve-ry-where it is kn-own by every-body. You are its chi-ld, and its sold-ier. You will ma-ke it gre-at-er and stro-nger.

- That’s enough for today. You are doing well, you read this sentence without a single mistake. Be proud of yourself! Within only days you learned all the letters!

- Thanks tutor Everard! At night when I go to sleep I picture the loopey shapes of letters and draw ‘em with ma finger until I fall asleep… And I spell out all the words I know that start with sucha letter. Night before, I said all words which start with letter gal.

- Wisely done! I’ll tell Togrin to let you stroll around longer tonight than usual. Who knows, if you also treat him with a good story, maybe he gives you a fig cookie or two – said Everard with his finger over the mouth pretending he said a secret which he wasn’t supposed to. – No words came from me – he concluded turning his faux blurt into a devilish smile.

*

Slumber was reigning over Aref’s mind and body for a while now. Customarily, he pushed himself to sleep with his letter exercising, stomach heavy with fig cookies. Tonight, it was the fus’ turn to be endlessly etched into memory.

A sudden all-encompassing pain and gasping for air were the first sensations which reached his senses, followed by the sound of the next bat swing. The hits were coming one after another in a flurry while the eyes were gazing the dark trying to identify the number of attackers. The rush stopped abruptly, as if the attackers got tired, needing recovery to continue unto death. Battered, unfit to release a sound or a scream, Atef dropped to the floor and started crawling to the small arc of moonlight, puncturing its way into the room through the barricade at the balcony. The punishment for his attempt caught up with him in an instant. He finally could count. Three of them were alternating, crushing down all of their power onto his back which was always the first to take the brunt, even back there, in the pit.

Breathing for Atef’s pummeled body started feeling like luxury that he will not be able to afford for much longer. Blinded by blood, he was cursing his attackers for taking away his destiny. It was tragic that the spark of his life’s flame is dousing before it could flare up to a life he would be happy to reminisce at deathbed, wondering with serenity what comes next. Abducted, torn from this world with each strike, more and more into oblivion. He curled up and started praying, to his mother, to the gods of underground which protected him in the pit. The ones above he didn’t have the opportunity to acquaint, nonetheless he sent out a prayer to them as well.

Something deeply embedded within him, foreign and yet an intricate part of his being, hearing the prayer, announced its existence with a shriek. Atef, emboldened by the unknown entity, instinctively lifted his arms above to meet the next hit from his aggressor. Flame sparked from the tips of his fingers spawning a bright fireball illuminating the room. Burnt flesh released its acrid essence revealing a blackened skull of the closest attacker whose sudden scream hollered demonically as the searing flame ran down his throat. Completely possessed, Atef concentrated his attention to the next one in line who was still struggling with understanding the horror he just witnessed. His masked face started twitching, arms rushing towards the chest, trying to overcome the force pouring from the inside. A thunderstorm of cracking bones coincided with a scream, victim’s floating ribs gushed through the flesh like snakes. Slithering around his body they chose their target, striking a deadly blow to the heart.

The third one experienced the destiny he had in store for Atef. As he was running towards the exit howling for help, a bat struck him on the back of the head. The other two joined in, mercilessly pulping the head with inhumane force.

The boy felt appalled by the bloodlust that coursed through him, frightened by his capabilities and the ease with which he could bring them forth into this world. Exhausted, sullied with his and the attackers’ blood, and with a bitter taste in his mouth he relaxed for a moment on the floor. A beginning of a joyous smile, celebration of being alive started appearing on his lips; an insolent contrast to all the gore that surrounded him.

- Justice – he let loose and closed his eyes wishing he never finds out what will happen next.

*

Deep scrapes reigned over the marble slabs shaped over centuries. The ghosts of generations past cried melancholically as the scrapes widened, crumbling the black throne. Its exposed red matrix revealed its inner matter, its innards’ secrets, as the dreary disembodied voices bickered, constantly shifting blame. A milky mist was everywhere. Atef, laid nailed to a sacrificial altar eyes bloodshot and wide open. The spikes in his palms, there since forever. The constant pain they caused long ago became a habit. His breathing was fast and shallow fighting the grip of a sour miasma. Only the steady cracking of the black marble sediments dispersed the sense of endlessness. White hot fear of expiring forced onto Atef a new bout of courage, the strength of his hands putting up resistance, through pains hell-like. The wounds widened, flesh humbled by the steadfastness of metal. Agonised cries deafened the ethereal squabble. Atef sensed the weight of olden, observing him with, could it be, a grin showing hope or rather hate for his resistance. The spikes yielded.

Disoriented, Atef allowed himself time to rest and gather strength before trying to get up. The throne was still there, fractured, its faults and crevasses inexplicably stopping their toil. They waited. The voices in the mist were whispering. They sounded as if they are guessing, finding a new pleasant leisure for scouring idleness through entertaining hypotheses.

- Maybe he is a herald? Or rather, future discord? – the first voice revealed itself for an instant.

- A buffoon out of nowhere, don’t get your hopes up – the next one horned.

- Salvation, salvation, salvation! – ringed the hymn of the third.

- Smooth-chined turd that got lucky!

- Rat!

- Another red dot in the weaving, another meaningless hoodlum.

- Whatever he is, attention he did get. Agreed?

- Dear little creature, he doesn’t even know what got to him!

- The gift is not meant for him, others should be privy! Curses upon him!

- Scum! Skin him alive!

- I’d rather see him burn!

- Dust, as everything, fleeting…

- War, slaughter, weapon, treasure!

- Saint, apostle rising from the mud!

The voices kept swarming, more and more interjecting, cursing, advising, threatening. Atef lost all colour, the encroaching swarm caused him to panic, enriching his blood with adrenaline which emboldened his getaway towards the sombre depths of the mist.

He wandered aimlessly.

The silvery thickening and dispersing dance of the mist alternated before his forward rush. Frantic and out of his wits, he wished only for torturous voices to die down. However, the ephemeral dance turned before his eyes into a testament that spoke to him. The voices, continued their tirade from afar, though they weren’t of importance anymore. Visions of the world, some world he knew nothing of, floated towards him in vivid colours laid on a nacre canvas as he continued forward. Incomprehensible to a mortal being, from a distance akin to a bird’s eye in mid-flight, the visions displayed landscapes of vast spaces jewelled with mighty cities which shaped the destiny of their surroundings. Serene passage of history in the making twisted in an instant, the change led by civilizational progress awakening old ambitions. The tools of death were sharpened again, their bloody gleam sovereign over the world. The legions marched in unison, but the individual faces Atef couldn’t see. Fire rained from the skies, breaking the will of the defenders, blending their ashes with those of the fortresses. The victory seemed absolute. Battle cries and shrieks of the fallen, enslaved and wretched brought tears to his eyes. Blinded, he continued his escape deeper into the weaving which reverted to its silvery misty form, concealing other secrets.

The insidious dusty bite sullied the wounds on his hands as he fell. He howled with pain, instinctively wiping off the tears in his eyes with his hands. A grey, muddy film was burning his eyes. He started rolling in pitiful, painful rage sensing an unexpected slanting terrain. The slope that, he figured, doomed him. A slope that leads, within a gash, to a certain direction. To a destined ruin. He curled up and whimpered. A new stream of tears soaked the dead land, the cursed ravine. Eyesight slowly reset, pain went away, but he wouldn’t dare stand up. He was listening, finding the only safety in his apathy. Spectral voices, afar at first, grew steadily, gifting to the misty surrounds a terrifying aura of an invisible hunt. He felt he must. He must put one foot in front of the other, away from here, away even if the road led back to the pit. Warm, safe pit, with known demons. A new frantic rush, anywhere but back.

After an endless straightness, he felt a turn to the right which lasted as if it cares not for when it will end, until he hit a new straight path. He wouldn’t dare oppose the bend and distance himself from the beaten path although he felt as if he was circling back into the nightmare. – Who’da know what kind of demons peep and snip around the’e – he gulped. Determined to proceed on the path, he felt a sudden rush of despair as he stumbled upon his starting point. The sight felt as a poisonous flow from his treacherous eyes directly into his soul. This time around, the throne was crushed into a black-red mound over which a portal-like vortex hovered, siphoning light away. Its grisly presence threatened to consume everything the mound reigned over. The ethereal voices wailed from afar, terrified of oblivion, pleading Atef to learn, aid, alter.

Confused, wrought by inability to understand, petrified by the overhung vortex, he spotted and ran towards a route across from where he came from. The mist behind him carried the voices’ prayers.

The visions on this new path were more dreadful. The world burned in a brighter flame, the tally of victims greater, the raging war now sacred, a fight for survival. He thought he was glimpsing fragments of a new outcome. In it, the spilled blood soaked the land quenching its needs, providing a sacrifice big enough. New – old order of things glittered to glory, the world in visions carved a new path for Atef. Led by it, this time down a left bend, he closed another circle, right at the foot of the throne once more. Rebuilt, with new marble layers of various colours which glowed on the black existing frame, it shone with might.

- Follow this path! Follow it or you will perish, your blood gorged by us, your soul eviscerated! In nothingness plunged and in that abyss, tortured forever! – the self-content spectral voices threatened, drunk with power drawn from their marble symbol.

- Who are ye? Whe’e am I? Leave me alone, let me from this damned place where worlds churn together! I jus’ wanna live, get to know one, only world! World above the dark, in the light of suns and stars!

- Get to know?! – shrieked the voices together with seething fury.

- Yours is to reshape, mould, not to discover you unexpected, unbefitting, insignificant maggot! If it was my will instead of divinity’s folly, I’d pick another… another to endow and mark as the turning point! But divinity chose a rat, hid the gifts far and deep below our eyes and now what we built over centuries in incertitude and fear of every decision you may change in an instant! Curses upon you! Curses! Curses! The voice laden with hatred was deep, thundering and ancient. Atef’s mind eye twirled from the fearsome thought that this voice spawned something great, in olden times, a vast space away. Its ominous sermon spelled end of a time, dispersion of its legacy into nothingness. The wish of wishes for the spectres to disappear, for him to disappear, for any salvation from this hell to happen coursed through Atef. Damned, he headlessly raced anew into unknown.

And anew some novel, unknown reality materialised before him. The world gained a new regalia, and the throne morphed with it at the end of each Atef’s loop. On the first pass, he saw a ruin with only the seat remaining, then the shimmering throne with lavish ornaments which concealed its deep faults, while the next go greeted him with nothing more than a plateau where the throne used to reign. He saw enough pain and suffering for an eternity in his cyclical run offs, perhaps longer. And the spectres were still there. Drained beyond his wits, wishing for the nothingness he was promised, any change, Atef fell and stayed. He wouldn’t take part anymore in a game the spectres created for him.

He felt that he was leaving his spent body and heading to the skies. He saw what he left differently, a shrivelled husk of a dwarfish old man. Suddenly it turned into crimson dust, a twister which spun around his path. Already far, in his triumphant flight, Atef could observe the red spot hemming the way he rounded endlessly in his hell. Two intertwined circles, the creator of life at the moment of division, a sideways eight, drawn with an accelerating pulse. Climax! Explosive soul-tearing bloody flash in the path’s crux. Darkness.