by Max Jager
"What are you getting at?" Darr pulled his shoulders back.
"Forgive the confusion. What I mean to say is that you and I are of a completely different make as them." He stood. "I've seen over the years, the stupid modes people would use to differentiate amongst each other. Skin, tongue, flag. That's a dishonest way to categorize. Wouldn't you say? Especially when they're missing the point."
"Point? We're all humans, you and I. We should be helping each other."
"Didn't you call me a demon earlier?" Astrix took his index fingers and tapped his temples. "And you were right. I am a demon, as are you. We are part of a deadly species, we're warriors. You and I. Why should we mingle with the weak? The only category in the census of man that matters, the strong and the weak. The haves and the have not."
"Men are more than the way they kill."
"Are they?" Astrix walked four steps down. "All men are killers or leeches, never both. And they both utilize the craft that suits them best, either force or pity. I have no interest in playing the game, so I kill them all the same. That's it."
"How can you say that of all the suffering souls here and beyond?"
"I say it with ease. Pity and the laws they instigate are the means to disenfranchise the strong. Stop playing their games. Stop living for them. Do what you want, for yourself and no one else. There is no other way to live life"
"You're crazy." Darr walked forward. His hands on his side, his right hand gripping something discrete.
"Because soothing my pain, my boredom, is of a higher order than soothing someone else's. That's why. Because anything short of selfish greed is stupid and an exercise in suicide. Suicide of the self, the ego." His hands were open, almost in an embrace. "There are hundreds of billions down here who suffer, who will suffer, seemingly for eternity. Will you help them too? Can you? Probably not. So why try? It's much better to live for yourself."
"You're just bored?" Darr walked forward, his gripping arm carrying his stride.
"I'm not crazy, I'm just trying to wake up from an abstract boredom. A three thousand years long boredom." They walked towards each other. Have you ever watched the sky for years just to realize it never moved? Not a cloud, not a sun or star. That's torment" Astrix smiled.
"It's enough to make you cry, isn't it? To harbor your sympathy?"
Darr ran forward. The guards tried to move. He avoided them. The wind broke past him. The tapestry fell from their hanging places from his gallop. Darr had in his hand a piece of clay, a shard of it, that very clay of that very potted plant in his room.
The dagger was in front of him, he reached his arm forward and aimed for Astrix's neck. He skipped the first two steps of the stairs, jumped. He was heading for it, waiting for it. His eyes a hungry crimson as they sought the tender white-skin of Astrix's neck. All momentum, all forward. It was the quickest, he thought, he'd ever been or ever would be.
And all it took was a quick sidestep to dodge.
A shuffle of feet, rightward, for Astrix to turn.
Darr watched it all slowly through that adrenaline high. It was just a dance move to Astrix, just playground games. Darr tried to move, but in midair, knew it to be worthless. He instead braced himself, readied his hand to bounce off the floor and to try again from a new angle. His hands reached out again to touch the floor as quickly as possible.
They never did.
Astrix grabbed his arm with both hands, and in one move lifted him above his shoulders, then slammed Darr back down. A judo flip, as it was.
"I haven't seen this much enthusiasm since Troy fell!" Astrix roared. "Since the butchering and rape."
The floor shattered. The rubble fell down the steps. Darr tried to breathe but found himself caught in between screaming and gasping. His left shoulder felt broken, in four different spots and he clutched them. He could feel himself healing, slowly though. Weak from famish. It wasn't fast enough to stop the pain, it might have worsened it even. Darr turned his head to look at his wound. He saw bone sticking out near his bicep. There was a piece of rock in his ribs and breathing out, he could feel it move and loosen from the hole. It fell, weighed by blood and rolled down four steps.
The guards moved forward but stopped, almost afraid, as Astrix raised Darr's good hand and forced it to wave. Somewhat like a puppeteer.
"Let's see what's in this hand." He straddled Darr by the chest. Darr felt his air push out like someone had taken a rolling pin to his body, had flattened him and had forced every ounce of blood and juice and oxygen out into a defeated gasp.
Astrix worked on Darr's hand. After a while, he stopped and just broke his fingers and watched the clay dagger fall to the floor. He picked it up, inspected it with childish glib, then shook his tips above Darr. It was almost playful, had Darr not wheezed and coughed blood.
"Now what's this?" He presented the evidence to the court. Herald in the back stood, somewhat ashamed. "No one thought to baby-proof his room?"
Astrix laughed. Alone.
"What an affront to my offer." He slapped Darr's face and pushed it side to side, letting him spit blood everywhere like a pressured hose. "In the old days, my people would have cut your head off and offered you to Zeus. Your scalp would have been made a weight for the holy scales of the tribunal."
Darr's eyes rolled around like billiards on the break.
"Could you heal that? Decapitation? Would you, would you?" Astrix slapped him. "Aye, Veron?"
Nothing but wheezing. Astrix paused. Disappointed, almost, beginning to form a frown on his lips. He shook it off and stood off him.
"My uncle, Aeneas, founded Rome. Do you know what the Romans did to people like you?" Astrix walked down the steps. Two guards came to lift Darr. "They'd crucify you with three nails, no more, no less. They'd stab you and bake you out in the open sun and they'd play a guessing game of what would kill you first. The heat, the bleeding, or the insanity."
Darr's body dangled off the two men. His feet made a loud thump with each step he passed down.
"Maybe they'd all come at once like a hot fever. Would you like that?"
There was nothing to Darr, nothing but a string of blood and saliva that hung to his lips like cut webbing.
"Well how about that then. If you can't decide how you'll live under me, then you'll decide how to die under me." He waved the men off. They saluted. "Send him to the dungeons."
"Ave." The demon's said with their broken faces and their broken souls, all eager to satisfy King Astrix.
Jeronus VI Part 1
Jeronus
Hours after the battle at the Barracks of the 23rd
It was strange to walk around the lonely desert and still, to feel as if someone was watching him. But maybe it was just a feeling. Just maybe, it was just the volatile winds of that green and yellow hue that spilled forth from that geyser hell from before. It might have just been the clouds of rolling dust along the desert floor. Or it was nothing (which he never believed to be true). What he did know was that feeling in the back of his head, the feeling of being watched was very true. It was, after all, a unique feeling that he could only describe as a cold yank at the back of his head. An acute sensation of unrest.
Jeronus rubbed the back of his neck. All around him was the presence of sand, multi-colored and all of it fine. It looked like streaks of green running horizontal across the plain and it had a fine texture (he noticed because it dug deep into his feet). It looked like the mountains, if there were any here at one point in history, had been reduced, stone and gem and all, into the flamboyant sand. He shook his head. The gristle was in his follicles, in his eyes, filling every fleshy corner of his eye with the light coating of sand. He rubbed his eyes, looked at the boy. He looked like he had golden-green cataracts on him. It must have been the same for himself.
He pulled the boy by his shoulder.
Behind them were the fumes of the geysers past, like factory stacks. It was a cloud that carried itself and dispersed among the boundless expanse of mountainous sands. The vall
ey of geysers so far that their little alleys and their cracked plateaus seemed to disappear into small smudges. He began to wonder if they were even here. If this wasn't all just some big heat-stroke induced illusion.
There was a sound. His eyes snapped.
He turned.
It was just foliage, dragging its thorny tails down a slope.
"Where are we going?" Berok asked.
"Does it matter? We're going away. Far, far away."
"I know. But where are we going?" His small hands were together and it made him walk awkward with trepidation.
There was nothing in his brain that even resembled an answer. There was no answer. Where were they going? Nowhere, probably. So why run? Jeronus asked himself. Why run, why struggle, why, why, why. Successive blows of questions that made him hunch over and gasp.
Why?
The strong wind blew. It lifted him, gripped his hair and his clothes and pushed them like an inept parachute. Jeronus braced his face and felt gale like a blast, like a wave of the ocean. The boy fell, Jeronus put his hands over him. A giant surf of sand rose high into the air, several feet above Jeronus before it came down. It looked like the brown tongue of some hungry behemoth. But it left him dry and coughing.
All around, the hot and wicked wind was lifting the sand, and pushing Jeronus back with tempests of sandy waves like currents. It was strong, even for him, an adult and it stung like lashings against his skin and it pulled his cheeks.
The boy was lifted off his feet. Jeronus had to pull him back down before he started levitating.
He looked around with squinted eyes, there was no tornado, there was nothing but those toxic, hot, geyser fumes manifesting into wild currents as if the very soul of this island wanted him gone. And he saw the manifestation at last. Illusion? A mental distortion? It couldn't be, he thought.
He saw a lone figure out, from where those geysers had once been in his vision. He saw the black figure walking towards him, without any defining attributes but a shadowy vengeance, Jeronus presumed.
He had the outline of those demonic legions, at least, someone tall and big and frightening and whose figure loomed over. Yes, the desert and island must have wanted him dead. And it must have sent this assassin for him, he felt in his heart.
And now, Jeronus couldn't even waste his time to think of an answer the question (if there was an answer) to why he was here. It didn't matter. Why didn't matter, running mattered.
He pulled the boy from his arm and began dragging them both up the sharp incline of a sharp dune. He felt his legs sinking, he felt his eyes hurting from grit, but he ran. Berok stopped only a few seconds after jogging. Jeronus grabbed him and put him up on his shoulders like a wagon. He felt his feet sink, but he ran anyway, dragging sand up the hill with him.
There were no birds that waited hungrily, none could survive the heavy wind. There were no creatures, at least on the surface, for they would have been lifted. There was no one but the three. A terrible place to be, Jeronus thought. Too heavy, and he'd sink. Too light, and he'd fly.
He just had to outrun it.
With the boy on his shoulder, held by that death grip around his stomach, he braced himself through the rounds of heavy wind. They came in pulses, at least. One, two, one, two. It was an ocean of sand and he felt in the midst of the tsunami.
He looked behind himself.
The figure was slowing, but still at a steady pace. He seemed to sink (he definitely had no problem with the ear-shattering winds, he looked heavy after all). No, this person kept his way and raised his hand to wave, as if to taunt.
At least that's what Jeronus figured, that's what he read in the movements and that's what kept his heart rate up and his senses sharp and his brain empty of those stupid questions.
"Slow-down." The boy said with that broken, dry throat. "I can't see anything."
"You don't need to see anything." Jeronus was screaming though he was centimeters away from his ear. The air carried with it a howl. It was a strange noise, a bit like crashing waves and a bit like a collapsing building. It's what he imagined those haunted tombs of kings to sound of.
"Shit." Jeronus screeched.
He felt a whip of sand hit his back. Jeronus put his hand on the injury. He could feel the swelling flesh, imagine the red skin behind his clothes. He turned to look and made a fool of himself. There was a decline in front of him. His feet rushed to balance himself. He failed, he slipped. The boy flew out of his hands and rolled like a log down to the base. Jeronus followed him, with one foot forward and his body leaned to slide himself down.
"Are you okay?" He rubbed the dirt from the boys face. There were no tears though his face looked hurt.
"Who are we running from?" The boy coughed up sand. It looked terrible, the phlegm covered globs of packed sand. They looked like small tumors of earth.
"From them, from whatever and whoever is chasing us. And they won't catch us, you hear me? We didn't escape for nothing." Jeronus said. Sam didn't die for nothing, he thought.
"Why?" The boy curled into a ball. Jeronus covered him and the oppressive wind pushed at them again. Nudged them, prodded, poked, slapped with loud caustic concussions, spinning rocks and clothes into a fine whirlwind of chaos. The stones were hurled at Jeronus. He couldn't feel them much anymore, not with the adrenaline. But he noticed the blood, the long streaks covering his vision.
This wind, this sadist in heat, this abuser.
Jeronus looked over the boy. He wasn't hurt at least.
"You're still asking that shit?" Jeronus said. "Why are we going? Because if we don't move, we die. That's why."
The child, still low and on the floor, gripped sand. He flung it randomly, defiantly. His face, a contorted mix of strain and sadness.
"Where are we going." He said again. Less of a question, more of a statement.
Jeronus grabbed him by the hand and pulled forward. The boy shimmied out of the grip.
"I won't walk until I know where we're going."
Again, Jeronus grabbed his sleeve. He pulled the shirt and the boy pulled back until it ripped. He arm looked like a broken flower, with half the petals strewn on the floor and the other half drooping hopelessly from the bud. The wind cast out again, grabbing the rags high and up into the air, tossing it like confetti in celebration.
"How can you ask me that?" Jeronus screamed. "I don't know where the fuck we are! Or where we're going! Or why anything like this is happening!"
"Then why even try." He fell on his knees. "There's nothing. Just dirt."
"You need to stop thinking like that. The minute you give up is the minute you die."
"And what's wrong with that?"
His heart sank. His lips quivered and he realized, looking at the boys face, that he had accepted the situation long before Jeronus had. That for all intents and purposes, Jeronus had been carrying a corpse on himself and this was their sepulcher.
He looked at the boy's empty face.
"Because I made a promise, that's why."
"My dad's not here. He won't care. You don't need to try anymore." Berok said.
Jeronus struggled to stand.
"No." He said in a voice so low as to be indistinguishable before the white noise of the sandy plane. But the boy could read his lips, no. No? "It's easy to give up, isn't it? Painless and easy. But it's not good enough. Alright? This isn't about having hope or not. Fuck hope. This is about putting up a fight the only way you can. You hear me? This is about not letting those fuckers get your tears, or your pain, or your joy. Because they don't deserve it. You don't give them a thing. Nothing. And when you do that, it doesn't matter where you're going or where you're not going. What matters is making it as hard as possible for those tin-head fucks. Let them try to take your soul.
"This is all I can tell you. This is what your dad would have told you and I'm sorry he's not here, but you need to take it from me when I say, fight. You keep going. You carry the fire, you keep going until all they have left of you is ash and a
big, wide smile. You let them know they didn't break you. This is how your dad was, always a troublemaker. Always getting into business that wasn't his. Always trying, even if he couldn't do much. Putting up a good fight even when you've lost is the essence of being a noble human being. It's an important lesson, it's one I was taught only recently and one I'm teaching you now. So you better learn it, your dad would hold it against me if I didn't."
"But he's not here." The boy screamed.
"He doesn't have to be. You'd be amazed what a ghost can do to your sanity." He laughed, for the first time in a long time. It almost felt foreign to him.
The boy rubbed the sand from his face with his small hands.
"You can keep going." Jeronus raised his chin with a tender finger. "I remember the first time I ran at a guy. Fucker was high on meth, running naked across the street. He ran laps around me. I tried ten minutes before I vomited. And you're dad."