Episode 4: Hungers: Part 8
HAUDH AN BAUGLIR THE SLAVER'S MOUND, FAERIE
July 17 2010: 11:00PM
The hill is bare and brown, parched earth and red sand. Nothing to obscure the prison I built here. The bars are bones joined to a monstrous skull that could have been human. The prisoner has no place to sit and thus must stand, broken bones on broken bones, twists in the flesh laid bare for all to see. He has nothing to hide now. His face is marred by the sword and acid and thus is a nightmare of scars to behold. His eyes are bleeding, always bleeding in long tears that makes the ground sterile. His mouth is stitched shut with silver thread. His arms and legs are pierced and unusable. He can't shift shape, becomes mist or fade away for the bars and the chains and the runes will hold him fast until the centuries have passed.
Even as I twist and shakes and send my limbs in all directions and none I feel joy when I gaze upon my handiwork. As long as he is imprisoned here, with no eyes to gaze on the world, with no tongue to tempt the unwary, with no limbs to go to evil deeds, the world is safe from at least one great evil. Even if I die, which is the most probable outcome, scratch that, the most desirable outcome here, he will remain bound until the reign of my masters' is forgotten. I have done my parts. So why…?
So why masters do you persist in this agony? Why my life didn't fall from my shoulders with the mantle of Anpu? I would be free then, at peace and not suffering this! The venom is no ordinary poison. It is fire burning my flesh in fever. It is cold freezing my bones in multiple shards. It is pain rising with me with each beat of my frantic hearth. It is everything that scratches, burns and gnaws at man and worse.
It is the shame of every deed you've done surging through the expanses of your mind. It is sentient in a way, seeking your darkest secrets to parade before your mind. Like the creature itself, it is a thing of eating, of devouring, it gnaws at each fiber of your being until only pain and despair remain. I could appreciate the sheer artistry of such a vicious thing but I'm a little too busy suffering to really care.
The mist of ghosts I freed is still around me, bent to their savior, unable to do anything. I can't do anything more for them as my flesh still imprisons my soul. Then perhaps the time will come when I will shepherd the dead one last time. For the moment they can only gaze, glassy eyes and sore throats, some of them perhaps remembering they died of the same poison.
I dimly hear the shuffling of many feet and my eyes are clouded with shadows. I don't make the faces of those involved, just shades of colors, green and orange and blue and the copper tones of skin. They have come. They have found me. I hear them whispering. Or are they talking aloud and I can't hear them anymore. I seem to piece my comrade's voices. Asking the monarchs to heal me? Not in this life boys. Against serpent's bite and scorpion's sting there are simples of great virtue to be plucked with the waning of the moon. Against nyss' breath and basilisk gaze there are spells to be sung and potions to be brewed. Against the Manticore's venom, no cure was made by the daughters of men, no cure was wrought by the arts of the Fae. For the beast with the face of a man is poison viler than the serpent king's.
There are demands to be made with the last of my breath. I gesture to the faerie monarchs and grumble through shaking teeth and short breath:
"Saved…Son…Give…Peace." The words fall me but they understand. A knife is drawn, my comrades scream their disagreement, someone speaks words of peace, someone, Tamlin, bends in the direction of my face. Swiftly they strike, ripping my throat apart.
My last breath is a long litany of unheard thanks.
I rise from pain. I rise through pain, forsaking my body like a used mantle. I rise whole and Vergil rise in my shadows amidst the sea of ghosts. Gods they are so many and they are so young. Where will I deliver then before following the power in me to the marshes of Duat? After what was visited upon them, they deserve the best afterlife I can lead them to, even if they had the souls of snakes while they were alive. Alas I can't bend the rules in their favor. Not yet. Still I can follow them.
I gaze upon them with the eyes of a judge, appraising their thoughts, their deaths and their origins. Then one after the other I invite them to take my hand and be sent to their proper place.
The oldest are the easiest for they worshipped the gods when they were on Earth. So I send them where they'll expect to be. The others are trickier. There are warriors among them, most of them indeed. They fought the monsters in their lair and paid the price for their defiance. Still they died in battle and so desserve to be brought where the warriors are. I ask them if they still want to battle the enemies of creation. Those who answer yes I send either to the House of the Left to defend the sun, or to Valhalla where they will fight the last battles. Those who are tired of conflict I send to dim Hades, by the river Lethe that brings forgetfulness to all weary souls. The youngest and weariest of them, I recommend to Naraka to be delivered to a new existence along the wheel of life. To dread Irkallu, shadowy Mictlan, rotten Metnal, to the House Down Under the frigid seas and to the other places of darkness I send none for none among them deserve the long wait in the dark.
Some of them of Egyptian birth or chosen by the gods of the Two Lands I bring with me as I follow my own way down the world. To Duat and its green-skinned lord. To Duat where the forty-two judges await us and the two-score gods await us.
