JMJ

Chapter Thirty-One

The Sharper the Knife

Violently, Meegs took hold of Quark's hand. Quark did not make any effort to pull it away. It was possible that he already was out as Zof had suggested. His eyes were half open and blinking slowly. With a sharp hard nail, Meegs scratched the skin on the back of Quark's hand just enough to start it bleeding. He shoved the abrasion before Quark's face.

"See?" he demanded. "Your blood's already getting a little pink there, isn't it? Feeling weak? Are the drums getting unbearable? Just thin, weak, red blood. Your heart will give out. Don't think it won't. I can hear you struggling already."

"Eja lat Grena," was all Quark said, and he said it again and again and again; it was becoming a chant. "Eja lat Grena, eja lat Grena…"

"Yes," seethed Meegs. "You'll lose your voice soon too. Best to use it before you can't anymore, eh?"

"He doesn't sound as struggling as he should, Meegs," Zof whined. "I think something's wrong. We should stop to examine him in case—"

"Shut up!" snorted Meegs as he kicked Quark again, this time in the chest to try to silence him.

But Quark did not stop. In fact, his voice seemed to get clearer each time Meegs harmed him. "Eja lat Grena, eja lat Grena, eja lat Grena…"

He did not even know he was saying it anymore. In fact, he hardly felt where he was anymore. At least physically. He could hear rain. Soft, gentle, and almost nostalgic, it was a peaceful fire rain, as peaceful as it was strong, and it was raining into the river near his home in the Ferengi Highlands… he almost could not feel it when Meegs slammed him against the table.

"Drain the rest."

"Should we do the Dance instead?' asked Zof, but the sound of it was like a fading dream.

He did not even hear Meeg's response…

The glittering of the rain through the softly rising sun sprinkled soothingly upon him in its golden trickles. It was not the branch of the North River near his home. It was too big, too beautiful, too brilliantly glowing.

It was the Great River.

He was riding upon its current. Above was the current of the material river. Through it he could see just faintly the current of physical life. But the way it was directed was in a way that if those in the material river looked up they would also see the river as though they were upside down, and he was right side up, but they did not look up. Meegs and Zof, Sharzee, Nog and Bennar and whoever else was down there… they were fading out from his vision and very soon his hearing altogether.

A wave or a rapid dunked him suddenly, but the water did not choke him. He felt a slight chill but it was more refreshing than disturbing even if a little surprising. Where he went he was not sure. The true topside of the River? After all, if the river was flowing through space the river would not be in a bed but be flowing like a tunnel on all sides of the inky blanket of space.

The sky was half shrouded with beautifully shaped trees now glowing ruby-gold in the fire rain, or maybe that was their natural color. As he lay there looking up, he did not know what he was lying upon, but it felt gentle and alive. He was merely floating on the River itself. It seemed to straighten and relieve his spine better than any chiropractor machine in a way that he never felt before. It eased his shoulders, it cleared and cleansed his ear cannels, and when it got into his mouth it was the smoothest aloe to his throat that he had not even known how sore and dry it was until it was being healed so gently and down into his body it worked the same way.

But was he dead?

Were those gates he was passing through? They were not made of gold-pressed latinum. They were not made of anything that he knew, though they were tangible. They were like living vines of precious stone or resembling it. They were green and violet and gold and were intense with life.

If this was death, it felt much more alive in general than it had in his empty dream of the Nagus Gint that looked like an old version of Rom. There death had been silent and staged like a cheap advertisement. That Divine Treasury entrance porch had been more like a driest and most deceitful entryway to the Vault, but this? He was as amidst the veins of a garden of something far more than a mere river and a forest. It was far more than a beating heart and the blood of running pyrocyte. This death was more alive than life, and he felt rather out of place like a withered leaf from some planets' autumn beamed to a palace made of spring itself.

The sun continued to glow beautifully and warm and pleasantly humid in the glittering rain caressing him, making it feel more alive the more it fell filling him with a vitality that he did not understand. It sifted through his skin and into his blood and his inner core. It seemed to flow with the ease of a river directly into what he would have said was his soul.

The full concept of being dead in a place like this began to blossom through him too as he took all this in. It did not strike him with any sort of trepidation, though perhaps it did fill him with a little sadness that tagged along his otherwise truly peaceful and truly blissful experience, slow and steady like everything that flowed in the river and in the rain. Sharzee, Nog, and Bennar were still in a state of trepidation for him. That nightmare he had left behind seemed so dull and lifeless it did not seem as if it had happened at all, but the tenderness he felt towards those he left behind there were more acute than when he had been lying on that table trying so desperately to fight his fear of pain for their sake.

It was not like when people spoke of being spirited away by godly elites into some other plain of existence where it was explained as if the people one left behind did not matter. Nor was it like how he had been taught as a Ferengi that once one was in the Divine Treasury one forgot about the living and knew only the Treasury. On the contrary, those he left behind seemed more important than before. More important, and yet, he could not rightly say he was fretting about them.

The gentle warmth and love surrounding every drop of liquid without and within his body and within his sight or hearing or even drawing forth in every breath he took, caused him not to feel fretting about very much. It was the physical universe that he did not care so much about, but the spiritual part of the universe became as one with what he felt now and where he had come from. He understood that he had not left and yet he was seeing and feeling all from an entirely different perspective or dimension that his physical body could not have comprehended. He had come home, or at least the garden outside his home, of the place where he had been fashioned. Indeed he was not certain if he comprehended it now, but he did not want to leave the others. Those he loved. No matter how much he could have lied there for eternity in that river and slept in peace and comfort, relaxing every tired muscle, healing every wound and deleting ever scar upon his heart he had ever felt, and letting every drop of sweat and secret withheld tear be swept away in the waters around him. But those he left behind would cry upon his corpse and not know how happy and soothed he was otherwise.

He wrinkled his nose and sighed at the thought of Sharzee's face plunged into his motionless chest, half dried vomit plastered to his suit jacket and all. Could he not open his eyes for her.

"Is that what you want?" asked a voice, so gentle and so sincere. It was so soft that it was almost part of the sound of the rain and the river and the living flow of the vines and the veins of all life all around him.

It was not like the voice of the Prophets, pretentious and proud and psychiatric. It was casual in some ways like how he imagined a conversation in the Divine Treasury would be, and yet strong and full of authority in a manner he had never pictured in his life. "Noble", he supposed was the word, and in a way he had never heard nobility among the living. Purity flowed through it like the purest crystal but as soft and delicate as the petal of the most fragile flower. He could have almost likened it to the voice of a mother over a child just recovering from an illness, but it was the love in that voice, especially that was purer and deeper than any mother he had ever met.

"I don't know," he admitted at last finding his voice; he felt it sounded out of place here so raspy and physical in comparison to any sound here. "I just don't want anything bad to happen to my family…"

"You helped to save them either way… all your family."

"All my family? You mean, Ferenginar?" asked Quark, and he sat up as though picking himself up out of a warm bath, but it was still just as warm and soft and soothing outside the water than in.

"Yes."

"I mean… uh, can I go back even? Aren't I dead? Didn't I have a heart attack from Meegs… uh… the lack of pyrocyte and the stress? I think he just drained it all, and after what happened to Rom… Oh, Rom and Moogee… when they find out…" He sighed.

"You're alive, but the choice is pending."

He was venturing onto a glistening bank until he discovered that it was not so much a bank as a living boat. He could hear it moving along the River as well, though gently to the point of being almost inaudible.

He looked up at the person to whom the voice belonged as though made of light incarnate. Or was it truly something more than light? Love incarnate? She could be made out a little like an angel, beautiful and delicate but glorious and strong.

He trembled a little, but it was not out of terror nor out of uncertainty and certainly not out of any sort of pain. He felt unworthy of such a decision as had been posed to him and unworthy to be before such a presence, and yet the encouragement given to him— imparted to him from this being— was more than anything words could have expressed. It was like a kiss on the wind or a baby in a safe pair of arms as loving as they were secure. Normally, he might have scoffed at such sentiments, but he could not and would not dare to now.

He bowed with full sincerity more than to anyone else in his whole life. He knelt upon his knees with his hands to his chest and his head still lowered with humility.

"Who are you?" Quark asked the beautiful and indescribable image. "You're not the Dayitela."

"No, but he is here," she indicated with deep reverence to the sunlight, which Quark soon felt was not sunlight at all.

He had always pictured the Great River flowing among stars, but just as his name suggested— Quark or "the star's seeker"— it was not a river in space surrounding by specks of starlight, but a River glowing with the life of one Star, one sun. The Sun of the Universe both physical and in spirit.

He felt tears touch his eyes as he bowed in fuller homage than before to the lady.

"I am who Meegs is trying in vain to recreate in the image of the Keeoopii," said the lady of light, as though made from the reflection of that sun upon the droplets falling like tiny liquid mirrors. "I am not a goddess, but I am she who will show you the Dayitela."

Quark nodded absently hardly daring to lift his face to hers again. "Am I worthy of such an honor, my lady?"

The lady knelt down like a bird landing. Her hand was sweet and gentle. Even the sound of her muscle-movement was like the sound of music gently carried on a healing breeze. She put her hand upon his shoulder and he nearly collapsed beneath her feather-light touch. She said with such confidentiality between him and her with only that Sunlight as witness in this celestial garden of rain and river and living jewels.

"Your gift is received with the deepest love," she said.

"What?" Quark barely cracked, his voice still like a bad note in this divine symphony.

She smiled with the most tender, most sympathetic humor. "Your gift. 'Eja lat Dayitela.'"

Quark looked down at the puddles of water beneath them, twinkling with the fire rain, and just barely could he see his reflection there staring vacantly back.

Or was that the face of him somewhere else? Solemnly, though bruised and tight.

"Eja lat Grena…" he could almost hear the reflection saying to him.

He was still saying it. His physical body was, anyway.

Bashfully, Quark closed his eyes.

"Neen lat Dayetila…" he breathed with a breath at last more alive than life.

The Sun shown dazzling now, and the rain glowed brighter like specks of stardust. Quark slowly lifted his head towards it…

#

"Stop!" Sharzee shrieked.

Neither Bennar nor Nog looked at her. Her shriek was in vain, but what was happening was beyond simply strength of character or experience in pain. Quark continued to be unshakable. It was frightening. The fact that Sharlezeed had a voice at all was almost incomprehensible to the other two.

No matter what Meegs did to him, Quark did not get a heart attack. Well, he did not stop his chanting. It continued no matter the blood or the bruises. Meegs had worn himself out, panting like a wild, crazed targ on its last reserve of strength, but Quark continued.

At last Benner fell, collapsing onto his knees.

Nog turned to him sharply. He knew what Bennar was doing. Bennar was in awe and humility before the reality of his faith— the faith of the Hidden Profiters. Nog turned back to Quark.

"We have to stop!" sobbed Zof desperately, crumpled almost completely into a toad now, but without knowing what he was doing he grabbed Meegs by the shoulder.

Meegs snarled and turned to Zof.

"What?" he snarled shaking him off.

"This is crazy!" Zof nearly shrieked and he pulled on the sides of his head. "Look at him!"

Meegs sneered and took Zof by the collar shaking him roughly. "Yeah! Then kiss him why don't you?" And he threw him at Quark so that he collapsed on top of him.

As he landed with a frail cry, he could only so weakly pry himself away as though he had just been the one going through torturous agony, but his face showed his horror at being in physical contact with the unbelievable alive Quark as one being thrown onto a zombie. He slid down from the table like a wriggling worm, where then he crumpled onto his knees and buried his head.

"It's too much!" sobbed Zof. "Too much!"

Quark continued his chanting, and Zof looked like he was going to throw up too as Meegs kicked Quark again to no avail and shoved him off the table at last.

Zof looked like he would explode as he clutched his head harder. Then something was coming out of it. Out of his ear was sliming out, oozing and nasty, a slug-like creature writhing in agony as it fell upon the floor.

Meegs stomped on it in his rage.

With a dizzy jump, Zof scurried back on hands and knees, frightened and dazed. He stared at the dead thing that had once been in his head, and for how long, who knew. He started to choke as though he would suffocate. Painful whimpers became a pathetic Ferengi sort of whine.

Meegs stopped as he stared wild-eyed at Zof and his mouth open on its hinge. The gears in his head finally were turning through his crazed state. He looked at the dead Keeoopii and then once more at the sobbing Zof, and as he looked about him, he realized that Zof was not the only one struggling. The guards too looked like they were in pain, but it was all mental.

It was the struggle of the Keeoopii against their hosts?

"Why?" he breathed.

He spun around violently towards Quark again.

"What are you doing?" he snapped.

Quark did not answer with anything more than his usual chant.

"Stop it!"

Quark did not stop it.

Sharzee fell to her knees too mouth gaping and tears flooding her eyes before bowing her head to the floor.

One of the few people still standing upright in the whole room, Nog met the eyes of Meegs. He reached for a table and pulled out a dagger.

"I'll stop him!" he snorted, but after two steps he stopped again.

His eyes popped as a thought occurred to him. Then his smile returned more deranged than ever, despite its slow revival.

"Bedbug?" he cooed clasping his hands under his chin almost like a little girl himself though still dangling the knife between his fingers.

The girl instantly leapt from her seat towards him.

He bowed before her reverently and handed Netil the weapon.

"Be a good girl and stab him," said Meegs as though explaining how to tie a knot or pluck a radik stalk. "Show everyone who's in charge here, hmm? Right here." He indicated over his own heart and then pointed to Quark.

"You had her kill Krax the same way, didn't you?" hissed Nog through his teeth.

"It's too late for that, Lieutenant," said Meegs cheerfully as he clasped the knife into the girl's hands all the tighter. "Will you do this for me, o Daishka?"

"I will," said the cold clear little voice.

It chilled the room with the biting edge of a knife made of ice, but it was its non-malicious tone that gave it its sharpest edge.

Her earlaces tinkled and her coattails sprung behind her little trotting feet, but as she neared the foreign entity, she paused with uncertainty. Quark was still chanting as he lay there in a heap on the floor. Meegs came up behind the child encouragingly and laid him flat for her. Then he stepped back.

"Don't do it, Netil," tried Nog. "Don't."

Netil did not seem to hear him. She held up the knife, and this time no one had a voice to say anything, except for Quark. It was too surreal. The only one who moved was Nog whose eyes grew tight and his teeth tighter as he nearly let out a true catlike hiss. He could feel it like a lump in the back of his throat.

Netil hesitated. Her brow knit as she stared hard first at Quark's chest still rising and falling at a normal rate. Then at his face. Her own teeth clenched now, tighter than Nog's, and she trembled.

"O Daishka, my bedbug," encouraged Meegs tenderly. "You've got this."

Squeezing her eyes shut, she did let out a hiss— savage and fearful. She dropped the knife and it clattered to the floor. Tears stung her eyes. She wavered and then swooned.

"My head…" she barely whispered, and with a mewl she fell.

She began to writhe and to choke so horrifically that the attention was still drawn to her rather than to the chanting Quark, and it was not long before something came from her ear much like had happened to Zof. She let out a trio of shrieks and then began a flood of tears and mewling.

"Daishka!" cried Meegs in panic.

Then he snarled.

Leaping to his feet once more he snatched the knife himself. Brutally shoved the girl aside with insane, insatiable savagery.

"I will kill you and your delivery service!" he shrieked and hissed as he towered over Quark ready to pierce his heart through and out the ribcage.

Nog himself felt that he had lost consciousness for a moment. In fact when he came to his senses he was also on the floor and lifting himself up as suddenly a very common sound in this very uncommon situation made Meegs lurch with astonishment— the sound of the automatic doors opening.

He regained himself within seconds, however, not caring who it was and prepared to stab that beating adversary just beneath that typical Ferengi coat.

Tssww!

Meegs choked. He squealed and whimpered as he dropped the knife clattering indifferently upon the floor. Gripping horror sounded through his body and a million emotions shook through his quavering dilated sapphire eyes. One could almost hear the silent shriek of culminating madness through his vitals in deep and harrowing despair, though he did not even take one last breath before he fell limp as a rag.

All was silent for a moment. Even Quark had stopped chanting and had become motionless on his back on the floor beside the shivering child and the deceased madman. The one who had fired was silent as the rest as he surveyed with keen eyes under his browridge, and at last Nog found himself enough to speak to him.

"Lek?" he cracked hoarsely; the sound of his own voice was like breaking through the barrier from another universe.