Hell's Vengeance

by Max Jager

  His rags went with his skin, off and away, like small paper strips. Paper airplanes in the air, bleeding red. He fell to the floor and the ton of slab behind him wobbled before being assuaged into standstill.

  "Is this what you want to be?" He shot out again. "A beast of burden?"

  Flesh ripped, blood sprayed against the marble stone and the swirls of black and white mixed with red, Darr looked up.

  "You're a warrior, aren't you?" Astrix screamed. Herald came around to pull him back, but he couldn't. Astrix cocked his hands and shot out six times. The lashings were quick and cut deep and on the seventh, when the leather straps seemed broken, when the ends of the whip themselves seemed dangle like busted limbs, Darr grabbed back.

  He tugged on the whip from the bottom of the floor. He had some anger in him, a mild flaring of nostrils and focus of eyes. But those subsided along with his wounds. He ripped his shirt off, it dragged with blood and sweat and he stood to face the king.

  "You're weaker than before." Astrix pulled, like a master with his dog. "How long do you think you'll last? Do you intend to make your death as painful as possible? With an empty stomach and empty strength?"

  He circled Darr. Herald tried following but slipped, his old body caked with dirt.

  "I want to see that look on your face break, I really do." He said. "Should I make it slow then, just flay you live, make you beg for it? It wouldn't be hard."

  Darr breathed deeply. He looked at the blank sky.

  "Is that death fit for warriors?" Astrix slapped the floor with his whip. "Say something!"

  "I'm not a warrior," Darr lipped the words but did not speak them.

  "What was that?"

  "I'm not a warrior." He said. "I'm just a man."

  The other slaves, those morphed and mutilated creatures, looked with their eyes (or eye), their mouths open and their faces drooling.

  "I'm just a man," Darr said. "It's all I've ever been."

  "No, you're a boy," Astrix said. "A masochist too, a Catholic choir boy, too stupid to know what greatness and pleasure await you."

  "I'm fine being stupid and childish."

  "No, it's not fine." He whipped his legs and watched them turn red before healing, slowly. "I thought us kin. I still do."

  "Is that why I bother you? You can't look in a mirror?"

  They all heard the whip crack again. It snapped against the floor.

  "Do you think yourself a martyr?" Astrix said. "I've asked you to fight men, to prove yourself, to take yourself the title that of which is owed to you. I've offered you a place here."

  "I have no interest in entertaining you." Darr focused his eyes. "I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to have custody over a desert, in the middle of Hell. To spend my years here, with you. No. Who would want that?"

  "So that's how it is." He threw the whip to his side. "What do you want?"

  Darr's eyes narrowed. Was this a trick? There was a kind of defeatist posture to Astrix, that low, boxed up posture.

  "Well?"

  Darr said nothing, he kept his focused rage towards the king.

  "Of course," The corner of his lips twitched. "I've known what you wanted. The purpose, the stakes.

  Herald came up and touched grabbed his ankles.

  "Stop, don't do this," Herald said. Astrix dug his heel into his jaw and pushed the old butler to the side.

  "Do you think I won't fight you? That I'm afraid?"

  "Ever since you invited me here, you've kept me de-clawed. You've taken my weapons, you've made me play the obedient dog. It sure seems like you're afraid."

  "Afraid of what? I have thousands of years worth of experience on you. I've been in this Hell before your precious Jesus was even born, before your church was ever made."

  They both stared at each other, even eyed. The slaves now gawked with similar intensity, the guards became drawn to the conflict, more curious than cautious for their precious king's safety.

  "We should have done this a long time ago," Darr said. "Wealth didn't work. Courtesy didn't work. Stockholm syndrome didn't work. I've known what I wanted."

  Astrix rubbed his face.

  "I loved you. I wanted you, so, so much." Astrix felt his grip loosen. "I'll be alone again, after you're gone."

  "You were always alone."

  His hands felt loose, slippery. Astrix took a step back and let his eyes fall on the nearest guard. They looked sharper, thinner, beady like a crow. His breaths were controlled and calculated, his gestures cold, stern. His regal nature, killed. His mood, sobered.

  "You won't win." Astrix felt the wind between his red fingers and white hair. His eyes looked like two yellow moons, big and demanding and all imposing.

  "Oh no, no, no, please no," Herald said.

  "Are you sure about that, old man?" Darr smiled. He tried to suppress the happy feeling in him, tried to convince himself better than the king. But his hands couldn't help but tremble.

  "Are you sure?" Astrix asked. Darr nodded.

  "It won't be today. But it will be soon, very soon." He turned. His face looked down. "We'll need an audience for your funeral. If you won't be remembered in life, you'll be remembered in death. Are you sure about this?"

  "I have God on my side, what am I to fear?" Darr said.

  "Don't we all? We're all to His image, we're all apart of His plan." Astrix slicked his long white hair back. "And if everything exists only with his say-so, that if my desire is also God's will, then it's safe to say that I have him on my side, as well. Right?"

  "I'd like to think you'd have a chance to ask him yourself, but where I'm sending you, there's nothing. No answers, no questions. A man without form, with nothing but his dark soul, I'll send you to oblivion." Darr said. "I'll bury you here, in your own kingdom and whatever you were, or are, will be gone. That's the truth."

  "No, no, no." Astrix frowned. His eyes seemed to drag in and around his eye sockets like loose billiards. "I've already foreseen it. I see it now, your body will be torn, bleeding, and dragged about my home. Like Achilles did to my father, I too will do to you. That will be your glory, as a ragdoll strapped to horses. I promise."

  There was nothing left to say. The wind too, seemed hesitant to blow. Astrix left there, Herald followed quickly after and Darr, with the other slaves, stood indifferently.

  The guards, as if in accordance to some unwritten law, left Darr alone. He was free, to some extent. He walked the grounds, looking for nothing in particular, seeing nothing in particular. And one seemed to stop him. He was free indeed.

  And it was funny thinking then, that he'd wait in that room with the cage. That bedroom.

  He'd wait for his call, the call for war and he wondered what it would sound like. A moan? A shout? A cry.

  Herald II

  Herald

  Herald followed Astrix through the cathedral and its gaudy chambers. All around the main preacher hall, the wooden benches were broken and splintered, the round ceiling tops in the brink of collapse as the painted glass fell like stray drops of candy-colored water. Herald tiptoed and maneuvered around the stray nails and wood and sharp stone, his whole body small and hunched over. The wide, chubby face with the beard that touched the floor and the long-nailed hands he kept close to him to avoid cutting himself on the wreckage of the church.

  "You should have never taken him in, you should have killed him from the very beginning," Herald said. "You knew he was an assassin, you knew how this would end. And now, now-"

  "Do you think I'll lose?" Astrix asked. They stopped at the very front of the church, where the floor was elevated for the preacher or would-be preacher. Where the baptismal pond, the ceremonial font vibrated with the loud shout of Astrix. There were rusted organs, crude shaped things like the pipes of an engine that fueled this hell. A critter inside shook, made a scratching noise and traversed the copper.

  "N-no, master," Herald said. "But it's my responsibility to worry about you."

  "It's the only thing you've been good at. Wo
rrying." Astrix said. "Thousands of years of worrying, doesn't it get boring? Aren't you dreadfully bored of thinking the same thing for so long? What do I even lose, explain it to me?"

  "The only thing worth losing, master, your soul. It's everything."

  "Is it though!" Astrix kicked the wall in front of him. The vaulted ceilings shook, bits of stone fell off. The candlesticks, flat and dusty, toppled over. In front of Astrix, a wooden cross fell down, anchored to the floor. The nail hinges it hung by were broken, the glued sections took with them the piece of the wall they had been stuck to. Both of them looked at it, Astrix's demure darkening underneath the shadows of buttresses high and above the glass walls. His form came in and out of that darkness, and with it, the sharp-blaring sound of the cross scratching the uneven floor. Bumps, pivots, like loud drum bangs as the cross moved around the steps and holes of the floor.

  "Perfect," Astrix said. He took the cross out to the rear door, through a confessional chamber and through a gallery of statues. Priam, Aeneas, Hector. The old family of that old world, with their worn and broken faces, staring down at their heir.

  "What do you mean?" Herald asked. "Aren't you afraid of oblivion? There's no coming back from that, young master."

  Astrix shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned the area around him. He tried to remember the years in which he built this cathedral. He couldn't find the memory, only the feeling of what had made him for a brief moment, consider God. When was it?

  Those crusades, perhaps. Those long-lasting crusades that had inspired him to build this church. Not at first, of course. The Gothic inspiration came years after the wars. All he had to the church, at first, was a small house with a small cross. It hadn't been until nearly half a thousand years later where he would witness the imposing fortress of a proper Cathedral. What a strange thing, he thought, looking out in the field and the shadow overcast by the building. He had held onto that faith for almost five hundred, maybe, six hundred years.

  To build this gaudy church on this gaudy land to satisfy a God that had abandoned him, and the years…

  The years! He had crawled onto the steps of this cathedral and prayed in that foreign faith, abandoning those Roman gods of his, for an imaginary blessing.

  That foreign faith had failed him.

  He knew this, immediately, when he awoke on the turn of the sixth century of his drawling knee-scrapping worship. After that, he tried the rest of those Abrahamic faiths, whatever shape and form they took. Centuries of it all, all having failed him. The same God under different names. All of them, slow and painful lessons that perhaps he just could not be salvaged. Not like other people.

  "I'm not afraid, my dear Herald," Astrix said.

  Thirteen steps led to the cathedral, he stepped down five. In front of him like a path or a fence were rusted swords. Shields, armor, laid around like makeshift grave markings. Which they were. Some were old, too old and now lost to time. Some were fresh, still glistening. What a strange place, this graveyard, and this church. And they both merited the pain it took to make them. Neither were easy tasks, building, and killing.

  "I'm not afraid. I'm angry, you see," Astrix said. "I'm angry about playing games for gods, from all-seeing Heaven to all-consuming Hell."

  "Hold your tongue, please. This kind of speech is what keeps you condemned."

  "Herald," Astrix shouted. The servant looked up with a low brow, with his soft pliable face stretched down. "Won't you mature? I'm three thousand years due for salvation. At some point, you just have to accept it's not coming."

  "It's because you continue with these vanities. Piety can't exist in your swollen, broken heart. There's no room for it! Too much of this arrogance, too much of this fighting. Let it go, or kill it with this last young man at last. I beg of thee."

  "Have you considered, perhaps, that these Gods just aren't worth worshiping?" Astrix said. "It's a revelation that might kick you out of that naivety."

  "Then what do you worship?"

  "Myself." The shadow of a cross appeared on Herald's face, he blinked and shielded his face. A reaction to nothing that came, no, Astrix ignored him and wandered into that high grass. Herald followed, spitting his white hair out of his mouth.

  They went through the fields, the grass felt soft underneath their feet. The shallow graves padded their steps, the overgrown mounds, the fresh holes. They stopped at a patch, a small oval section of the field of grass where small tender yellow flowers grew. Yellow and white field flowers. Astrix turned his shoulder over, he maneuvered his arms around the wooden cross and planted it deep into the floor; turned upside down. A bit rebellious, a bit bitter. With the arms of the cross close to the floor and the stem facing up, he put his foot down and dug it deep like a spade.

  "Here," He said. "This will be a nice place to nail Darr's corpse. Don't you think?"

  Herald put both hands on his face.

  "I thought as much," Astrix said. He looked around his little kingdom, the mountainous dome walls that wrapped around, the hole at the very top whose light seemed magnified to a burning glow. There were cracks in these walls, slow-building cracks where the light had wrestled to find home in, where the desert chipped away slowly. He had tried fighting it for a while, but come the turn of the century had decided not to. It was too tiresome. Home-keeping was too tiresome. And without a physical body to sleep, without rest for his tiredness, there was no use in even trying. Nothing short of eating and fighting and violating mattered, the essence of man.

  "Are you sure you'll win?" Herald asked.

  Astrix felt the draft of wind between his bloodstained hands.

  "Does it make you angry, Herald, when you think about God? When you think of the demons far below us, when you think of how small we are, in this world?" Astrix asked. Herald rubbed his arms.

  "Look at how much has happened in our lives and how short and small it still, all is. A man can live a thousand lives and he'd still only exist in the mere blink of the universe. It's absurd. It really is." His tone fell. "There are creatures that live beyond imagination, that experience eternity. And us? We merely spectate the moving image of infinity. And it will pass us by. And we will be left alone. Victims of cosmic horror. A sideshow for God and Satan and their army of idiots."

  "Young master…" Herald looked at the floor and put his feet close together, his hands in clasp in front of him.

  "I'm sick of it. I just wanted to say that, I'm sick of it. I hate being small, feeling weak."

  "Young master." Herald tugged at him. "Will you win?"

  Astrix looked down. His face shrunk to an offensive dullness as if staring into the sad existence of a dumb animal. He looked at Herald, looked at his stupidity. He was shriveled and Astrix sighed, speaking with tamed patience.

  Astrix shook his head, smiled. He extended himself with gentle hands for the inferior creature and touched his cheek.

  Herald felt the smooth palm. It was cold.

  "Of course I'll win," Astrix turned away. He straightened himself in front of the fixture of light in the sky, that red ring. With his haughty voice, again, he said. "It's my fate to beat Darr, isn't it? And you can't beat fate."

  And his confidence grew into that sinister grin. Insanity and sadness strobing in and out of him so fast and strong that it was hard to even tell them apart. He laughed, earnestly, from the gut, an innocent sound laughter that made Herald reel. Astrix faced the front of the dome, far away from them, he was looking at a little blip on the wall of that giant dome. Herald couldn't tell, he was still off-put by the laughter but figured the king was staring at the doors of this Trojan wall. Two massive, metal doors that began to scratch and screech with an obscene salacity. A want to open. It sucked in and out. And whatever it was keeping out, whatever armies and legions waited for Astrix outside of this door, desperately wanted to come in.

  "I won't fight for God. I won't fight for the Satan, I won't give either the pleasure of my glory! No, I will fight for my people. The serfs and the soldiers, the sick a
nd the disturbed. Do you understand? I need no God or Devil, I need only my people." He put his hand on Herald's shoulder. "An execution without an audience is just masturbation. I need the crowd, I need them to hear the message, to feel it with. We need no heroes, we need no one!"

  The king started twirling to the imaginary shouts and praise.

  "Yes, yes. Go ring the bells, dear Herald. Ring them now or I'll kill you."

  His spine curled.

  Herald left running, holding his gray coat above his knees and running across the fields, cutting his feet on the swords and armor plates of soldiers lost, running desperately to that cathedral once more.