by Max Jager
Closer. The light, nimble steps. Closer to Ajax. Near him, next to him.
He heard the breath of Astrix, he felt the hot air hit him.
And Ajax threw something forward.
Something that made a plopping noise as it hit cement. Something that sounded like flesh. Something that glowed in the dark.
Astrix, near, and quick stabbed at it. His gladius struck flesh and bone and the floor, the sound was loud. Clear. Obvious in the darkness.
And they both knew at that moment what would happen next, with Astrix in that darkness, having stabbed the floor and cement and having made that noise. With Ajax, behind him, with the steady hot blade.
He aimed at the noise, put all his strength into it. Astrix moved, tried to.
Ajax felt his blade hit armor, then as the heat began to reduce the metal, felt it hit flesh. Blood boiled in the wound and escaped. His blade cooled within the human sheath. And with one final burst of will, Ajax reached for Astrix in that darkness, his crimson eyes only appearing as a flash, and threw Astrix back, into the light at the center of the church.
Astrix rolled on the floor, each bump sinking the blade deeper into his chest. He laid there for a moment, above a bed of broken glass. Surprised by pain, of his injury. Surprised by the black leather wrapped handle of a sword sticking out of his chest.
So very confused, his eyes wandered around to Berok and to Darr and to Herald. Berok who screamed, not jovial or triumphantly, but in shocked horror.
Astrix stood there in the center. He dragged the wreckage of the church, nails and wood and glass, below his trembling feet. He took his helmet off to see properly. His two braided bangs of hair falling down his face. Ruined. They looked like worn ends of a disciplinary whip.
Why am I so weak? He wondered. There are no lungs, no organs like the other three, living people have. I'm just a spirit, just a mighty soul.
Then why can't I stand still? Astrix thought again. He wobbled left and right.
Why can't I fight? He thought. He tried looking for the gladius to his rear. He found it at last and widened as he looked at it.
There was an arm hanging from the tip of the blade. There was string wrapped around it, and it glowed gold.
He laughed. Then tried to pick it up like a broken crane, he took an inch off the floor only to drop it.
He couldn't bend his knees. His poise was shaky, at best.
"Where are you?" Astrix wheezed out.
There was a noise. Something in front of him, a scream, a scuffle that kept going and growing.
Oh, that's why. Astrix thought.
He looked into that darkness from where he had been shot out of. Towards the staccato. He smiled. He understood.
Ajax's eyes shined through the absolute black of the cathedral. Those crimson eyes. Then a new face appeared, one Astrix could only imagine, one that would haunt him to oblivion. Ajax came out, red-eyed, with his mask. That which hid in his jacket, that which possessed Astrix with fear. The white mask, engraved with black lines. A rorschach that revealed something in Astrix that he did not want to accept: he was to die, sad and alone in these remote lands.
The rest of Ajax appeared, slowly materialized. One armless half, the other tightly clenched into a fist. The knob of his arm was cauterized. The skin was burned black.
He walked close up to Astrix who could barely stand. Astrix fell to his knees.
Ajax pulled his amputated limb close to his chest.
Astrix, as a final attack, grabbed onto Ajax's severed hand. He gripped the amputated arm, dug his fingers into the burned flesh and began some foreign enchantment. Ajax screamed, felt a bolt of pain stride his arm nerves, straight to his chest and his neck. He put his foot down at Astrix and pressed him down on the floor.
"A gift." Astrix's eyes rolled to the corners of his skull. "So you never forget me, heart-eater."
Ajax looked at his wound. It felt strange now, weak and cold. He didn't understand it, couldn't, not in his ravaged state.
Whatever, Ajax thought. I'll deal with this later. He comes first.
He looked back at Astrix who spewed blood from his mouth.
"Was it worth it?" Ajax said. "Everything you did. Did you get the good fight you wanted?"
Astrix focused his dying eyes back at Ajax. Yellow, hardened.
"Don't patronize me, Ajax." He said.
"I'm not. I'm trying to understand you."
"But can you? Can you understand my loneliness, could you ever?" Astrix said. "A loneliness so strong it makes you wish for love. For hate. For anything, just to feel. Can you understand that?"
Ajax kneeled down at Astrix, whose blood sprawled out of his mouth and onto the floor.
Ajax put his hand on the handle of his blade. "Yes, yes I can." He pulled out his blade. Blood poured out. It covered his armor, then overwhelmed.
The ceiling broke off a chunk and the cement fell behind him. The sound signaled a reaction amongst the crowd.
Behind them, frightened voices whispered in the dark. Some faces appeared through the doors.
Astrix rolled his head around. He was trying to find someone. He looked at Darr first. Then to Berok.
He spat, a long string of blood came out and to his rear.
He stopped at Herald. Herald, broken on the floor, both sad and happy that he would join him soon.
At last, he faced Ajax who still had his foot down his abdomen. With his blade ready.
"Curious about me, aren't you?" Astrix asked. "Of who I was and who I am then?"
His head jerked forward, a last rebellious move.
"I was not born in Troy. I died there. I was raised, nurtured in Hell. Understand that." He said. "Understand a man who did not get to experience his own history, but was forced to hear of it. Who was of noble line but stranger to it. A man who wanted more of life, but wished to die."
He shouted now, his face shaking left and right. Tears coming down his face.
"I killed thousands and I would have killed thousands more." Astrix coughed. "And am I wrong for that, to kill for pleasure? As what was done to me? Only the naive say aye. Because only the naive make judicious claims of what a life, any life, is worth. For the wise know, nothing matters. And that every act of wills is nothing more than the chance game of the universe, of God. I lived. I desired. I took and killed. And you do the same, don't you, Veron?"
Ajax cocked his arm back. Astrix felt the blood collect in his throat. He swallowed.
"You have no right to judge me, Ajax." He shouted. "You who live behind that mask, fearing God. You who live, shamelessly in sin. You tainted soul. You mutt of man-!"
He looked at Ajax, solemn and tall. Past him, in the growing darkness of the room, somewhere where his vision could barely make out figures, he saw a form. A figure, coming together seemingly through the dissipative light and darkness of the outer edge of the room.
Not a pinned man, not a corpse on the floor. A four-legged creature. Walking with a passive gait, grin in full view. Spotted skin, he noticed.
His eyes widened. His muscles tensed.
"Trickster," He whispered. His last words.
Ajax's hand came down, through the hole in his armor, into his chest. He dug his hand deep into the cavity of the body. Astrix stifled a scream, grabbed the bloody arm and held it tight. At first out of protest and instinct, then, as he felt his innards searched, out of merciful touch. He wanted to hold someone, for some reason.
And after a while, he wanted nothing. Had nothing to want, for there was no one there anymore. Just false-flesh, a puppet where a man once was. An empty vessel.
Astrix let go. His red limbs receding to pearly white. The yellow in his eyes, turning white. All of him, going white and dead.
Ajax drew his hand back, the blood dripped from his gripping palm.
In his hand; the beating heart of King Astrix, sultan of the desert, throne to degenerates, emperor of none.
Berok
Berok
He retracted his arm from the
corpse. The drops of blood made a light trickling sound as they hit the cracked tiles of floor. Everyone stood in silence, the air felt heavy in their lungs, their eyes could not blink. Ajax stood. Above the corpse, his leg poking the body for a sign of life. The eyes of Astrix slowly fading. It was a gruesome death, this slow degradation. The blood spilled out from every cavity of Astrix. The muscles ripped open, bleeding. The chest cavity, open, bleeding.
Ajax looked back to the two on the floor that had waited for him, Darr and Berok. There was a murmur, some wheezing that was so pained and frightened that he could no figure who it came from, the boy or Darr. Ajax, heart in hand, moved towards them. The boy flinched at the sight of the bloody man. Most of the remaining demons did. They could not believe it, though they saw it. But Ajax, in the languor of victory, extended his hand out to the boy and the cup. He swiped it from the awestruck boy and squeezed the heart above it. The crystalline, cloudy heart. It looked like a ruby more than an organ, and it produced no more than a few inches worth of blood inside the cup.
"Now you can go home," Ajax said. He was just about to hand it when he heard a pained groan from Darr. It was something loud and furious and he knelt next to him to hear it.
His eyes blinked, one lid seemed shut and the other was only half-open. As if he was in a stupor of pain.
"I lost," Darr mumbled.
"Don't worry about it, he's dead."
"I lost." He repeated. His face dropped, his eyes seemed to look away from any human contact, staring off into emptiness. "How'd I lose? Wasn't God on my side?"
Ajax said nothing. He rubbed his arm and stood up.
"What's wrong with him?" The boy asked.
"Too much, but he'll live." Ajax looked back to the boy. His shoulders relaxed. "Don't worry about him. It's time for you to go home."
The boy looked up, confused as to whether to smile or not.
And again, the arbiter of the locale, the disruptor, and guardian angel. The Hyena appeared, crawling slowly with long nails that tapped on the floor. Everyone was forced to turn save for Darr who had fallen unconscious again, mumbling his grievances like lullabies.
Everyone else, demon, man, boy, all turned. The Hyena stomped on the floor like an oracle upon the amphitheater. His eyes sharp and thin like daggers.
"But how do you expect to get out?" The Hyena asked. "There's only enough blood for two."
"Then the boy and Darr go," Ajax said. His voice filtered through them mask gave him a bit of reverb. It was a haunting sound, low and brutish.
"Hmm." The Hyena mused with a kind of reserved playfulness. He's hiding something, Berok thought.
But what?
It was a secret, something very close to them. Something that waited further from Herald's crushed corpse, something that hung by the side of the wall like a disgusting fly. Something drawing near with gentle footsteps.
A face appeared from that dark veil. A face that made Ajax run for the sword lying near Astrix. The lone demon face amongst the hoard of demons. Or perhaps, he was just another kind of demon? Of a smaller make, but definitely of the same species.
Ajax bent down to pick it up, the heart still taking space in his only good hand. His eyes flashed red again, widened, and his knees bent towards the direction of the oncoming figure. No, he wouldn't need a sword. Not that dark steel, warped and cool and laying a pool of blood like a kind of lubricant.
He stood, heart in hand, now nearly crushing it completely.
"Do you know this man?" The Hyena asked.
"Do I know him?" Ajax screamed. The other demons were seized, they froze. There must have been only just twenty, twenty from a large crowd of hundreds. "How could I forget? That beard can't hide you, that darkness can't hide you. Nothing can with that reputation of yours. Am I right, Doctor Aleistar?"
Aleistar did not speak. He walked forward with his bruised bare feet. He entered the jury, he met with the executioner, and now waited for judgment. It seemed like he didn't even care anymore, with his arms lying to their sides and his figure a wreckage of the hostile, frightening thing he was once before.
"So you killed him." Aleistar finally let out. "You were the most dogged after all."
"Yeah, funny thing, huh. Madmen are dying left and right." Ajax said.
Aleistar swallowed his spit. He seemed of a strong conviction, there was no tension in his face. It was all dullness. Dullness and acceptance.
The Hyena, smiling with his devil's teeth took turns glancing between the two, observing them both.
"What is there left to do, Ajax?" He asked."Kill him, like he's done to many."
Ajax stood straight. His eyes a strong crimson color.
"What's one mortal man to you? It would be a merciful thing to do, wouldn't it be? To kill him, to eat that tainted heart of his. I heard that warlocks have a nice tanginess to them." The Hyena laughed.
One death is all it would take. One death to ruin a man, one death to send him into that Fibonacci spiral of ecstatic self-destruction. One death, just one human death to earn his place in that dark abyss whether it be in this life or the other. And who would care, here in Hell?
Demons, men, all the same. Why bother distinguishing between the two? Why worry at all?
"Have you killed a man before?" The Hyena asked. "It's easy, they're so fragile. You just thrust and twist, like this."
He made the motion with his head, turning it like a key in a lock until the bones of his neck cracked. The sound made Berok cringe.
Ajax shook, he felt the hostility up his neck like a hot flare.
"You know what he's done, don't you?"
"I lived it. Of course I do." He said in a raw tone.
And he walked towards Aleistar. His tight grip still on the heart. He'd just need to punch a hole in him, that's it.
Berok stood and watched, the intent in Ajax's eyes striking him with a terrible feeling of numbness. The Hyena sneering, rolling, wagging his tail to the pace of Ajax's walk.
He felt powerless, like before, the many times before. He had lost count of it, those moments of powerlessness. Powerlessness reduced him and made him shiver. Powerlessness had made him a coward.
And he thought of the story of Ajax, second-hand killer of his friend. And he thought of Ajax, the lonely child. And he thought of Ajax, soon-to-be murderer.
He ran towards Ajax and lunged at his foot with a far stretched dive.
Ajax stopped, he looked down at the child and tried wagging him off. The boy clung on with his nails on Ajax's black pants.
"What are you doing? This isn't any of your business." Ajax said. He pulled the child by the back of his shirt and raised him to head level. The boy squirmed.
"Don't do this." He said, arms dangling.
"Do you know who this man is?" Ajax asked.
"I-I've seen him before," Berok said.
"But do you know?" Ajax asked.
"No. Who cares?"
"This man killed your father. This man killed innocent men and women. This man killed children, kids your very age. Plenty of them, I'm sure." Ajax said. "This man is the reason your friend is dead. All of them, dead. This man, above all other men, deserves to go."
Berok looked at the stranger, Aleistar. An odd feeling came to him. Anger, pity. it's not that he did not believe Ajax, it's not that he didn't care. It's that he couldn't care for death anymore. With Astrix's body still cold on the floor, with all the other demons still cold. With all his friends, still dead. He could not stand it. He could not stand the numbness, the feeling of life escaping, the emptiness of rooms where people once were, the emptiness of hearts where humanity once was. And it was not that he did not hate Aleistar, it was that he hated the idea of what he was much more. And hated, further, the idea that Ajax would become just that.
For sin, like any other energy in the universe, like any other system, can be inherited and usually is, destroying the old vessel in favor of the new one. On and on like a curse. The curse of sin.
"So what?" Berok asked.<
br />
They all gasped a bit. The Hyena shook his head.
"Just kill him." He said. "What better judge is there besides you? Who else here is fit to represent God? And believe me, God would have struck him dead."
"You're not God," Berok said. "You're not anything but Ajax. And I think that if you kill him, you'll stop being Ajax."
He sat the boy on the floor and kept walking.
"I'm just trash kid, It's all I've ever been and all I ever will be," Ajax said. "So what's there to lose?"