The ones who put this system in place are greater than any human who has ever lived. They are greater in speed, strength, and intelligence. They are immortals, and they have experimented with many forms of human government throughout the centuries.
These powerful immortals perceive well beyond those of their human counterparts, yet while they secretly undermine humanity, other immortals push back against them and their cruel, false world.
Through immortal power, they are not always openly seen, and even when the average human sees them, they go unnoticed, appearing like everyone else in the world. Nonetheless, the pressure of their conflicts can be felt in waves by humankind, like contractions when a baby is due labor for its delivery, society feels invisible pangs of distress.
For there is a last war, an immortal war, its symptoms can now be felt more than ever from one end of the earth clear to the other. Immortals perfectly reflect on a past, which they have lived, a present undoubtedly controlled by them, and a future that has been planned since the birth of this alleged civilization.
In the wilderness, early streams of sunlight filter between leaves from a thickly covered forest. A large, green tent sits as the only livable structure in the clearing. Oversized rocks circle billowing ashes from a large fire the evening before. Half-cut logs in multiple rows project an empty audience for the smoldering, ashen residue. Millions of orange pine needles litter the forest floor, yet apart from that, no trace of human debris share even a footstep along the ground with the campsite.
At midday, the sun can only penetrate the dense covering of the tallest trees at their thinnest points. In patchy torrents of hazy light, the woods are disturbed in silence. The creatures of the glen have all left this place long ago. There are no crickets, birds, chipmunks, or squirrels. There are no sounds of buzzing bees or cooing doves frolicking even in the highest branches overhead. Altogether, it is a loudly quieted, uneasy, but untouched area, appearing incompletely unchanged as the forest was before the campsite arrived not long ago.
Yet this place is not devoid of life. For inside the flapping outer door to the tent, under its tarp cover, a series of subterranean tunnels, lined with burning wax candles on both sides of the excavated walls, light a network of crude, dimly lit passageways. Off the main burrow, a square room, with hundreds of candles on multilayered shelves built around and into the dirt walls, scorch back the darkness, sending gloom away for a time.
A middle-aged man stands by a table packed with beakers, flasks, stirring rods, test tubes, cylinders, and Bunsen burners. He carefully uses scoops to measure, tweezers to pluck samples, along with many other instruments and utensils of every kind, all of them neatly arranged on the surgical table from end to end and from back to front.
Some of the test tubes and flasks were half filled with different colored liquids. Some glowed, flickered, and fizzed with various shades of reds and blues, greens and yellows, purples and pinks, while others were murky black, thick as tar, with a sludgy and deathly appearance.
A large crow, with feathers dark as coal, watched, tilting its head with a pair of thinking, blue-gray eyes.
The crow sat on its wooden T-shaped perch, angling its head toward the man as he stirred some of the flasks, while others boiled under controlled flames. The man held one tube up near his face, and then another, comparing them side by side. He scowled and grunted at the concoctions before placing them back in their holders, frantically grabbing more to compare beside each other.
He wore a sackcloth-hooded robe, with the hood folded behind his head. His scalp, a shiny bed filled with sparse patches of straggly, whitish gray hair, which was thinly dispersed, appeared as a plain dirt field of weeded growth. He held the test tubes up for a closer look. Distracted by failure, he glanced at his fingers and then drifted toward the upper part of his hand. His wrinkled, scrawny hands had been fresher than a child’s skin not long ago, but now were dried, aged, lined, weathered, and leathered, imperfectly maturing before his very eyes.
He placed one of the test tubes in its holder, and casually looked behind him. He touched his face, tracing the deep scar, routing a cavernous line from the top of his left eyebrow down to the lowest bulge of his cheekbone.
He had one good eye and one made of glass.
He moved his finger in and out of his deeply creased, old scar. He stopped just short from touching his left glass eye, briefly mourning its loss. For a moment, his clarity had vanished. Frozen by a memory of what used to be, he blinked several times before the crow on its perch cawed at him with a keen, shrill pitch. Caw! Caw! The crow bobbed its neck up and down. Rapidly, he began working at his table again, speeding up as if for show. Gwuf, gwuf, gwuf, gwuf. Pitter-patter footsteps pranced down the candle lit, dirt floor halls just outside his location.
His hands, full of knuckles, with bony rounded joints, reached for a glass ampule. His arm coolly slithered across the table, picking up one thing while putting down another. He continued his tests as if he expected no one at all. His long, pointed fingernails inched laterally, crosswise the tabletop, like spider legs, they tapped one vial in a predatory fashion, before quickly pouncing on another, snatching it tightly, and lifting it up toward his one good eye. Though his vision made him nearly blind, he had an uncanny awareness of observation.
He grew impatient.
He already knew a timid, young girl, with long, feathery, jet-black hair would peep around the corner of his room’s entrance any moment.
She thought she went undetected. Peeking an eye up at his doings from the doorway, she was small in stature, thin, and famished, yet not for lack of food, but for her genetics. Her skin was brown, smooth as velvet, fresh and new. She wore a purple and black long-sleeved dress, with knee-high leggings, and heavy fur boots.
Each it seemed, waited on the other to reveal themselves. One grew anxious, and the other angry.
The man with the scarred face coughed. “Ahem! Come in, child. Don’t be so insipid.” His words rattled off his tongue with forked bother. “I’m sorry to be obtuse, but I’m very busy.” He enjoyed using large words most others did not know.
The young girl cautiously entered the room. Her back clinging to the wall, she eyed the crow on its perch, which tilted its head sideways and eyed her back. “Uncle Malum?”
The crow hopped madly, now facing the young, timid girl. It opened its beak wide, harshly squawking at her in rapid succession. Caw, caw! It angrily watched her, flapping its wings and jumping up and down on its perch.
Her body snapped back toward the door, clutching the crook of the doorway as she cowered. The crow waddled with furious delight, almost smiling it seemed.
“Now, now, Alcazar.” Malum picked a crumb from out of his pocket, walked over to the crow on its perch, and pet the bulbous part of the bird’s head, while feeding him a snack. “Don’t frighten Kimi. She’s our friend.” Alcazar gobbled up the crumbs, angling its neck upward as it swallowed them whole, then he hopped from the perch onto Malum’s shoulder. “Alcazar can be so pedantic at times.” He turned his attention to the young girl Kimi. “Now what is it you have to tell us?”
“Tell us?” Kimi stepped in closer and looked around the bright, softly lit room.
“Yes…Alcazar and I, of course.” He mockingly chuckled.
“Uncle Malum, I’m bored.”
“Well then, have you mastered your skills yet?” He turned from her and slyly walked back to his chemistry table.
Alcazar kept perch on his shoulder.
“Um, well, I…I’m getting close.” Kimi smiled, swaying and moving about while standing, her feet planted as she leaned toward Malum.
He looked over into the crow’s eyes and puckered at Kimi’s reflection through them. “Alcazar is upset because you have not been able to even summon a blade with your mind. I think he’s depressed.” Malum turned around, giving her an odd, frightening smile. “I don’t understand bored.
How can you be bored when you have so much to learn still?” Malum flapped his arms up and then down, slapping them at his side. Alcazar wobbled, but remained perched on his shoulder.
“But I’m tired of training with Vanessa. I wanna do something different.”
“Yes, uh huh, something different you say?” Malum whispered at the crow. He laughed, and said, “Good point.”
“Thank you.” Kimi smiled with reply.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Malum said with a demeaned nature even a child like herself could understand. “I was talking to Alcazar. He has a clever humor, and some of the best, pithy sayings I’ve ever heard.”
Looking sideways, she was in a stupor of puzzlement. Kimi huffed as Malum gave the crow another treat from his pocket. The crow, while still perched on his shoulder, lined its beak up with Kimi’s face, and harshly squawked at her. CAW!
“Alcazar said that you weren’t bored when I saved you from the slums of your village. In fact, you were so un-bored, I believe you were desperate to come here rather than stay with your family, or what was left of it anyway.” He smiled, patted her on the head, and with his knuckled, withered hand he reached out and pinched her full cheeks. “You promised to do all that I asked after all. You have a duty to be loyal to the Shroud.” Malum had a distinct way of insulting with kind tones.
“I know.” Her entire body slouched. “But I haven’t been outside of these tunnels in weeks.”
Malum talked in riddles. In vague bits and pieces, he strung together unrelated ideas. He rarely came out and said what was on his mind, but he expected those with less intellect than his own to figure out what he was saying instead.
Full of smugness, his arrogant comments were backhanded even when they were meant to be complimentary. He did not attempt to hide who he was. He just disguised intentions whenever it suited his purpose. Still, tolerance for his own act became tedious now and again. However, when Malum had made up his mind, there was no going back. He had no remorse and no pity. His disgruntled face exposed much. He respected nothing, except his immortal life’s work on the table, which he had been toiling at for a thousand years.
“Do you ever wonder what I’ve been doing in this room?” Malum uplifted his eyebrows, curling his middle lip upward, with the corners protruding down.
Kimi glanced around. Her opinion uneven, she asked hesitantly, “I guess, maybe you’re making something?”
“Blah!” He grinned. “Very good, Kimi. I am making something.” Malum laughed. “I’ve been trying to make something for the last thousand years.”
Kimi looked bewildered, so Malum continued, if for nothing else, then just to hear himself speak.
“The flicker fruit gives immortals their strength. It once grew everywhere in my homeland, but now, only a few fruits remain.”
“You have plenty over there.” Kimi pointed to a bag covered in the corner.
“Hum, yes.” He eyed the bag, and soon after, her, with an annoyed glare. “I’m afraid that’s all that’s left. I saved those from the evil knights in the castle not far from here. You see, they have the last tree. And do you want to know a secret?”
“Yes!” Her ears perked right up.
“The last flicker fruit tree grows right here on Earth. And if…” He pounded his fist in his hand, hanging his head afterward. “If they would just share, then all the people could benefit, but no!” He gritted and ground his cracked teeth. “The knights are greedy warmongers. Whenever something bad in the world happens, the knights are responsible.”
Kimi’s eyes, large and unblinking, fixed themselves to Malum. She was so engrossed, she had not heard Alcazar’s angry squawks as he jumped back onto his perch, flapping his wings and madly pecking his beak at the wood under his own feet.
“This is why you brought me here, to help destroy the knights, isn’t it?” Kimi asked, more surely.
“Why, yes.” Malum indulged her. “The knights have said that it is a sin to dissect the components of the flicker fruit.”
“Why?” Kimi narrowed her eyes.
“Because they are subject to their own inflexible rules,” he said as gobs of saliva shot forth in fits of rage. “They believe the fruit is a gift…a gift, can you believe that!?” He pointed at the slumped over bag of flickering fruit in the corner. “But I know…” he reached over and picked out several different colored tubes of liquid, “each of these colors separately does something completely different from another color.” He put down the test tubes and picked up a large flask, swirling its sparkling blue contents. “The trick is the preserving agent. I have yet to find one that doesn’t break down the magnificent component inside the fruit’s juice.”
“Why not just drink the juice without a preservative then?” Kimi tried to help.
He put his index finger under his chin, tilting his head up, peering down his long nose while ridiculing. “Now why didn’t I think of that?” Rolling his singular, real eye upward, he shook his head and scowled. “I’m an amalgamist.”
“An imalga…?” Kimi struggled saying the word.
“No!” Malum frowned. “A-mal-ga-mist. It means I blend and mix things to make other things, better things.”
“Oh,” Kimi meekly replied.
Malum promptly tossed a hand toward the table full of liquids, test tubes, and flasks. “I’m attempting to find compounds that change the volatile, baser elements you see here in these different colored solutions. I have tried distillers, along with many other mixtures…but most of them have rendered the derivatives from the flicker fruit poisonous to all living things.” He picked a round, glass cup from the edge of the table. He once again held it eye level. It was a cloudy, thick, almost neon green liquid. Malum swirled the fluid around, and then put the glass to his lips. Kimi folded her fingers into her palms, raising them to cover her mouth with a sharp gasp.
Malum gulped the green liquid down his gullet, his outer throat expanding and contracting with each swig. “Ah.” He wiped his mouth with his sackcloth sleeve, and continued talking. “Besides, just minutes after the juice is drained from the fruit, the mixture’s worthless, and apart from the fruit as a whole, it loses all effect…” Malum noticed Kimi’s terrified appearance. “Say, what’s wrong with you?” He aimed his good eye toward her.
“You just drank that poison!”
“Pish-tosh. Balderdash.” He looked into the empty cup. “That was my favorite drink, Absinthe, or otherwise known as the Green Fairy. Mwahaha.” He laughed, and then placed the empty glass back on the table. Malum tapped his cheek. “This reminds me, I’m running low. I need to get some more of that stuff.”
“So that wasn’t poison?”
“No, just a very delicious beverage, but on another note, I did have some success with a potion once.” Malum grinned with the right corner of his mouth only. “Would you like to see the result of that success?”
“Yes.” Kimi jumped, clapping her hands.
He methodically fixed his table, leveling every piece he touched until it was perfect again. “Kimi, do you know what the three worst things in the world are?”
“No.”
His side profile away from her dimpled another grin. “Number three is not getting what you want in life. Number two is getting what you want in life…”
“And…?” Kimi asked innocently.
“And…I want you to think about those two for a while.” Malum tried to smile from ear to ear, yet the nerves on the scarred side hampered that portion of his face. I’ll tell you what number one is later.”
Kimi pouted and crossed her arms. “But I wanna know right now!”
“You do then?”
“Yes, please tell me.”
“Okay. What say we go on a trip first?” He turned toward her. “Go change your clothes and I’ll be ready in a bit.” His cold, bony hands ushered her out of the room, pointing her down the candlel
it passageway.
Once Kimi left, Malum scowled. “She’s a whiny little brat, isn’t she, Alcazar? And we know what to do with whiny little brats around here.” Alcazar jumped, hopping from one foot to the other, his head jerked back and forth. “Yes,” Malum hissed, “we know exactly what to do with whiny little brats.” Malum gave him another tasty treat, and Alcazar happily clicked and cawed several times.
Not long after, Kimi returned to the room, this time with her mentor, the older, teenaged Vanessa by her side.
Vanessa had an upscale, trendy prettiness. She was all about the glitz. Her hair was shoulder length and silky fresh, with frosted blonde tips. Every part of her was finely detailed, from the studded buckles on her black leather boots, to her long, French manicured fingernails. She adorned herself with the hottest, modern fashions of the season, from the shimmer of dangling earrings, to a metallic halter-top that tied around her slender neck.
Vanessa fluffed her locks, tugged her fitted jeans slightly up past her hips, and at the same time, she nonchalantly inspected the small diamond sword pendent at the end of her dainty chained necklace. She then adjusted the collar to her unbuttoned, denim shirt, rolling each sleeve up to the elbow. And if it looked as if she had just stepped out of the finest shops and salons along Sunset Boulevard, it was only because she just had.
Malum enjoyed the spectacle Vanessa displayed, scantily clad and skintight at times. For Vanessa’s part, she knew about his roving eye, but did not care. She batted her lashes and nodded humbly. She was determined not to make the same mistakes her two predecessors, Dominic and Noemi, had made. So, she let him look all he wanted, but never would he be allowed to touch.
Vanessa stroked Kimi’s feathery, jet-black hair. With her fingers remaining straight and spread apart, she cringed with each glide of her hand. Vanessa was careful not to touch the tips of her newly painted, French manicured fingernails on anything. Rather, she patted Kimi’s head clumsily with her palm, and faintly opened her mouth in something intended to resemble a merry smile.
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