by Max Jager
He opened the doors and let the echo rise through the building. He ran to the back of the place, towards a small wooden door just his size. He crawled through, took a torch from the wall and hit a flint in his pocket against the wall. The sparks went wild. The fire rose. He tripped and ran and tripped and ran all the steps up that tower, up to a chamber, out the window through the pointed arches. He followed the maze-like structure, wrapped his arms around the spires as if to not fall. The long way up, the only way up. Platform after platform he went through until he touched the thin-ice glass acting as the ceiling to the main room of the church. It cracked beneath his feet and he spread out his body along the material. The stains of his hands and feet littered the picture of the three wise kings. He apologized, mentally, and went past them near the top of the cathedral. Past the ribbed vaults and the clustered columns. Like bones compressed into a cage. A collection of skeletons, a macabre tall building this was.
The wind at the top of the building blew harsh, he could see the villa miles away. It was all here, the history of insanity. He looked behind himself now, to the giant bell. A large, patina covered green bell. Cracked a bit at its ends, hungry to ring. He heard the whistle it made as the wind blew through its little cracks.
His eyes felt swollen, his arms did not want to move. He crawled to the tall bell and the chain mechanism near it.
Let him kill me, he thought, I won't summon them.
He began to sweat, thinking, better to let his passions die.
But he crawled forward anyways. His right hand found the lever, his other hand pulled the chain.
I shouldn't, he thought. I'm feeding his desires.
He pulled it a bit, tugged it only and already he could hear the mechanisms at the top of the bell, creaking with the aged gears. They scratched against each other.
He stopped. But then thought, coward that he was, he thought of the question he had asked Astrix.
Are you afraid of oblivion?
Yes, yes he was. Afraid of the death of the soul. And afraid of the man he loved like a son. Afraid of them both, at the same time.
He pulled the lever. He heard the wretched sound. It was booming, it pushed his body back. He barely hung by the handle of the lever and lifted himself back slowly. His hairs rose off his arms and chest and made his skin sensitive. As if lightning had begun to allocate itself around him, into a kind of shield that contained and encompassed all thrill and fear.
The sound of the bell was killing his brain. It haunted him, all the way down as he made his way back. A cry. The sound bled in and out of him until his brain was filled with it like a hemorrhage. Until he ran out of space to even think. He made it down, touched the floor and ran to away as fast as possible. His hands clasped to his ears, he ran away from the summons of Astrix.
The call of the Colosseum. The call for war.
And he wondered, only briefly in the small interval of one bell ring from another, he wondered if God could hear the sound from far up high.
Ajax IX
Ajax
Berok tripped on a small rock and hurt himself on the chest when he fell. They all knew then and there, as he lay rubbing his chest, that it was time to stop. He lifted himself with his small hands. He looked down, noticed his knees were cut and bleeding and blew on the wound. He rubbed the blood out, but there was no sense of pain on his face, there was nothing to read of anything on the boy.
"Alright, we'll take a break. We've been at this for hours." Ajax said.
"It's been days." The Hyena added.
Ajax didn't answer, he blew out air and wiped the grime off his face. The dried trees were dense in this area, they looked like little stakes coming off the floor and were ubiquitous across the uneven horizon like small hairs on an old scalp. The little, black forks in the dirt.
"Aren't you hungry?" Ajax asked the boy. "I'm starving here."
"You can eat the child." The Hyena bemused. "I wonder what he'd taste like."
The boy turned away from the beast and walked back towards a log.
"Stop making jokes like that." Ajax walked over to Berok. "Don't mind him. He's a prick."
The boy said nothing and sat with his hands on his lap. Ajax sighed and went past him, towards the trees.
He took out his blade and started working on them. He could feel his weakness, his hunger, he felt it in his weak swings and his gait and how shallow his cuts were on the trunks of those thin, dead trees.
"Is there a reason why I keep confusing days for hours and weeks for days?"
"You're losing your corporeal form, is all." The Hyena said. "Physical beings are something of an oddity down here, in the land of spirits. I'm surprised you're even material, still."
"Is that why I can't tell time anymore? Why I can't sleep, or why I feel so hungry? I'm slowly dying?"
"I'm not hungry." The boy cut in.
"No, you're not, are you?" The Hyena curled into a ball next to the boy. "However, Ajax isn't a boy. Or a human, for that matters. Vicars starve much faster down here than any normal person."
"What does that mean?" Berok asked. He rubbed his legs, still.
"Are you allowed to tell him, is that part of your church's creed or would it be forbidden?" The Hyena asked.
"No, I can't say much." Ajax felt his hands tremble against the wood. "They'd imprison me for years."
"Then I'' tell him," He closed his eyes and burrowed his snout in his fur. "A Veron is a name, one of many, for the biggest transgression a mortal could commit. This young man before you," Berok turned to Ajax, Ajax kept swinging his sword. "This man has bedded a devil."
"Bedded? Is he a monster or something?" The boy inched away from his little log bench, further from Ajax and now towards the Hyena.
"I'll let him answer that." The Hyena scoffed "Are you, Ajax? And how did it happen?"
Ajax stopped swinging. He pushed his shoulder towards the tree.
"Don't you know? I thought you knew everything." The tree fell and shattered on the floor. Branches and twigs scattered.
"I do know, but I want you to say it. There's a unique kind of peace you can only get by admitting your secrets. I think you're owed to it." The Hyena said. "And we both know how many secrets you have. Why not let some out?"
Ajax looked to the sky and let his sweat fall. He took off his armor, it hit the floor like the tree, dead and stiff. He took out his coat from the little gap it had hung on his plate armor. He was still wearing his suit underneath, the pants, the shoes, the shirt, the tie. Though rugged looking as it was, it was more comfortable. The torn holes in his clothes made him comfortable, the small holes that allowed air to enter like ventilation.
"Well, are you a monster?" The boy asked. "I wouldn't be surprised."
"I guess I am. Though what turned me into one isn't anything, necessarily special. It's rather tame, actually, for my line of work at least." Ajax said. "It started when I was a kid, a little younger than you, a little more depressed than you. I was an orphan always getting into trouble, too much of a mischief for anyone to adopt or care for. So much so that one day I left the orphanage and never came back. I used to roam around the streets of LA, like the little rat I was. God, I hated it."
Ajax looked out towards the sky, reminiscing.
"Maybe it was okay. I don't know, I met some people then, other kids like me without a place to go. But I guess I couldn't really hang onto them, not with my luck at least." He said. "It didn't take a long time after I ran away to be adopted by the church, all it took were a couple free meals and a shower every now and then for me to buy into the whole thing. Scrounging trash cans loses its appeal quick and starvation isn't any fun."
He took a deep breath and hacked at the second tree.
"I had no future, not until they gave me one."
"The church?" The boy asked.
"Yeah," Ajax said. "A kind of church. One that sent me to strange places to get strange testing. Weird diagnostic checks, weird stuff with wires and groups of people who analyz
ed every little thing I did, from the way I breathed, to the way I ate, to the way I walked. Though I didn't know what they were at first, I realized it a little too late. I just thought they were losers in white trench coats, weirdos with too much time on their hands. Then one day, one night, they knocked me out and operated on me. They cut my chest open. At least they were considerate, they made sure to comatose my ass for two weeks. Dreamt through the whole thing. I still feel like I'm dreaming, to be honest."
"That sounds horrible. You were abducted and tortured." The boy said, his voice showing a bit of life. Some pity, which was a strange thing to be optimistic about, though Ajax was.
"It sounds worse than it was. But how bad was it, really? Who did I have to listen to my protest? No one. What would I have done had I known ahead of time? Nothing. And if I died? The world would spin, without losing even a bit of momentum." He looked sullen at the fallen tree. There were red bugs crawling out of it, long and slimy. They stared up before going back into one of the eaten holes of the tree trunk. "They said, after I awoke, that it was plain luck that I was alive. Luck! That the operation shouldn't have worked. They said, those church surgeons, that I now had a devil's heart in me. That's not figurative either. It is, quite literal."
The boy left his mouth open. He looked just about to ask a question, but held back, confused, afraid.
"H-how does that even work?"
"Do I look like a doctor? If I had that kind of ambition, I wouldn't be swinging swords at giant bugs and tin cans." Ajax scoffed.
"Believe me when I say, it used to be worse. Transformations of those types usually aren't as cut and clean." The Hyena said.
"Let's not talk about those times and those operations." Ajax nodded his head. "How do you even kn- Never mind, of course. Right."
Berok rubbed his head.
"Devil's hearts." The boy repeated. "How? Where? What?"
"You know these monsters down here?" Ajax smirked. "What if I told you they exist up there, on our little green and blue satellite too? Though rare. Much rarer than down here. And often times, scarier too. If you could believe that."
"So. You kill 'em? And steal their hearts?"
"Or eat them! Aha." The Hyena added with roaring joy.
"Sometimes, yes. There are particular methods and other Vicars who specialize in that kind of business. There are too many factors for me to ever consider that kind of work, I'd rather just kill them, quickly and easily."
"So you eat hearts?" The boy stuck his tongue out in disgust. "Do you eat people too?"
"No," Ajax said. "I'm still, somewhat, of a human being so that'd be cannibalism."
"How does your body handle that thing. That demon heart thing?"
"How does anybody handle an organ transplant?" Ajax said. "With difficulty, of course. The procedure is so dangerous because of how many people reject the damn thing. That's why the doctors said I was lucky. I wasn't supposed to live. I was too frail, too much of a failure to live. But I got lucky. I'm just a lucky man."
The boy dangled his legs up and down.
"So you're a monster, huh." He said, whimsical. "Is that why you're strong and fast? And tall and ugly?"
Ajax stopped.
"Ugly?" He laughed, he felt it down to his stomach. "Yeah, I guess I am ugly. Would you believe me if there are worse people than me? I'm actually considered one of the weaker Vicars. There are much, much, stronger men than me. Some can even use arcana. Or I guess you'd call it magic."
"Do they make rabbits disappear?" The voice rose on the boy. He was invigorated. The Hyena rolled tighter into a ball until his face was comfortably inside the fat, furry stomach of his.
"There are legends of men who move mountains and rivers and who rain fire for weeks on end. I'm not good with that kind of stuff, never liked it. It seems much easier to me to just chop someone's head off. But I know some magic. Basic stuff."
"Show me!" The boy shouted. Ajax looked back at him and smirked. He reached down and found foot long stick. He pointed it towards the boy and let him watch it carefully. He removed his coat and held it in one hand, the stick in the other. He moved the stick towards the coat, moved it inside and revealed his hand. The stick was gone, Ajax demonstrated, as he showed both sides of his coat and let the boy feel the pockets for any foul play.
"Where'd it go?" Berok asked.
"Nowhere," Ajax said. He put on his coat, reached his hands deep into the flaps and stuck his hands deep inside one of the little sigils inside, with the red string stitching. A stick came out. "It never went away."
"How'd you do that?" The boy asked.
"Believe me, it's more the coat than it is me." Ajax said. "It took me months to learn that trick, it takes most people weeks. Some mystic hermits from the church told me, in their haughty tone, that I had damaged Empyrean reservoirs. Whatever the fuck that means. It's like a vein or something. The heavenly gift, they say."
"It's not a gift from heaven." The Hyena protested. "Trust me."
"As if it matters to me," Ajax said. "Power is only as good as what you make of it or what it makes of you. And abuse seems rampant, in the church and outside. For every holy, pious mage there are five times as many corrupt fucks. The number is worse for half-devils like myself."
"It's necessary." The Hyena said. "Demons are savage, and savagery must be met with savagery. It stands to reason, then, that you'd need a whole army of psychopaths to fight.
"I'm not getting into politics with you." Ajax said. "This is just a small summary of my business, is all."
"Oh," The boy sat attentive, absorbing everything.
"You're forgetting one part." The Hyena said. "You forgot to explain what made you, you. And it was no surgery, was it?"
"Goddamnit, and I was having a pleasant time." Ajax sighed.
"Look, he won't admit it." The Hyena looked at Berok. "Tell him, Ajax. Tell him about your tragedy. Unholy science might have designed your heart, but the cruel universe forged it."
"Why would I? I barely know the kid." Ajax walked in and out of Berok's vision. He was arguing, the child noticed. And he was carrying the bundles of sticks, he noticed too.
Berok stayed silent. His brain seemed exhausted from the talk. He tipped from one side to the other, teetering between falling forward or backward. His eyes drifted, his lids were heavy. He was just about to fall, only inches off the floor when Ajax caught him. He raised him up. Berok rubbed his eyes and looked in front of him. A den was made, a small collection of twigs and dried leaves and the soft bark upon the sand forming a kind of bed. The boy looked at Ajax who was dirty on his dark face, whose eyes too, seemed tired.
"Go on, you'll hold us back if you pass out. Sleep for now." He said before sitting on a log, opposite the den, near the Hyena.
Berok nodded and though experience told him not to trust the hole or the place, that he could be attacked at any moment, his body disagreed. He could not protest and wandered into the small bed. After a few minutes, he drifted. And Ajax waited outside, closing his owns eyes though trying to hard suppress the feeling.
"You two have more in common than you'd admit." The Hyena said. "And he'll end up just as bitter as you too if you don't talk to him."
"Why would I care what happens to him after the fact? My job is to get him out, that's it." Ajax kept his eyes closed. "Besides, what do you know about me?"
"Everything."
"Yeah, I figured."
Nothing was left to say. Ajax's eyes too, were exhausted. He folded his arms on his chest and fell asleep, sitting on that log, pretending to keep watch. It was stupid, dangerous, and comfortable all around.
Ajax X
Ajax
They awoke to the sound of church bells. The loud timbre that shook the trees and that caused Ajax to jump from his seat.
"What the fuck," He slapped his face awake. "It's not Sunday."
The Hyena pointed his sharp face up.
"We're out of time, but we're close." He said. "Whether or not you're ready is of
little relevance now. You're going to face him soon."
He felt the words down to his bones, the oscillation of the church sound up to his brain, both like a fearful rattling of his body. But it was much, much worse than fear. It was existential dread. An impending doom that made his brain scatter in thoughts, that made him feel ill in his gut from anxiety.
"How can you tell? It's just a noise." Ajax shook his hair. The boy came out from his den with his hands shutting his ears.
"No, that noise is special, extremely so. After all, how many churches have you seen in Hell thus so far?" The Hyena's body stretched out. His back was straightened flat, his tail hung and wagged like a hypnotists watch. The boy looked at them both wondering what to do.