by Daniel Caet
“Of course!” he answered as he rose from the throne. “You have come to kill me, I mean, you have come to try.”
When he was fully standing we saw that he was completely naked, barely covered by a kind of purple sleeveless gauze that only covered the flanks of his body leaving the bare everything else. That gesture reminded me of the one I had seen in Gilgamesh years ago, a show of excessive and unnecessary arrogance and security that made me think that the man in front of me had his own insecurities.
“Leave us,” he said dryly to the women who turned to his order. Just for a moment before disappearing into the air I thought I saw their bodies transform into what were undoubtedly their true forms, with horns on their heads, skin scaled like reptiles and matching teeth. As if reading my thoughts, his voice rumbled again in the room once more.
“I hope you do not mind my lack of clothes, they certainly do not care, I like to be comfortable in my house. No doubt my dear aunt will appreciate it, in the end the women of this family often go crazy for my cock.”
The sound of his laughter was mixed with another much more powerful and strong, that of a huge ball of fire that shot out of nowhere in the direction of Narmesh. The ball continued its course without deviating a bit to its destination, but Narmesh opening his arms as if accepting a gift uttered a single word in a whisper and caused the ball to disintegrate as if it had hit something physical.
“You'll have to do a lot better than that, dear aunt, if you want to kill me. You're not the only one who has had several lifetimes to study the dark arts,” he said through clenched teeth. “In fact, let me show you.” His hand rose in the air and closed his fist. Immediately Sadith put her hands to her throat in an unmistakable gesture that indicated she could not breathe. “This is my damned kingdom, bitch, here my power is much greater than yours!” Narmesh shouted angrily. Sadith began to struggle with more and more violence.
“Enough!” I yelled with all my might, but Narmesh was not willing to listen. Suddenly, Sadith stopped fighting, her hands fell on both sides of her body and for a second I thought that her life had been extinguished but it was the opposite, her eyes widened and became completely black, and at that moment, a blue light began to radiate from her body, becoming more and more intense at times, until the light shot out at Narmesh, projecting him against the throne with brutal force. The next thing I saw was Sadith who was again by my side as if nothing had happened except for her hard face like that of a statue. This time it was her voice that resonated in the cavern.
“None of your tricks has anything to do with my power, Narmesh, because I have something that you will never have. The goddess is with me.”
Narmesh's laughter resounded this time in our minds, not in the cave.
“Do you really think that will save you? Do you really think that the strength of your goddess can help you defeat the god of the underworld? Do I have to remind you of everything you've already lost by my hand? You could not protect Niel like you could not protect your dear Ankh. Both ended up moaning with pleasure as I tore them apart with my cock, over and over again.” His laugh echoed again in the grotto. I saw how his words had an effect on Sadith whose body tensed preparing to attack again. At the same time Narmesh made a movement with his hands that caused a wave of sharp pinnacles like swords to rise from the floor of the platform towards Sadith.
“No!” I shouted as I pushed Sadith back to interpose between her and those structures that came out of the ground. When they reached me, instead of crossing my body, the pinnacles exploded into a thousand pieces leaving the floor of the platform full of fragments of glass. Sadith looked at me as surprised as I was, and Narmesh noticed.
“Oh, please, you cannot be more pathetic!” he said with clear repulsion. “Don’t you see, father? You are not aware of your power yourself. You should be a god among men and you crawl like a worm at that bitch's feet.”
“That bitch is my family,” I shouted in an unconscious way.
Narmesh remained stuck as if a dagger had just pierced him, his eyes looking at me with an indecipherable expression halfway between grief and deepest hatred.
“Family? She is your family?” he replied angrily. “I am your son, blood of your blood. Where were you when I was scared at night? Where were you when my powers made me afraid, even of myself? Where were you when that damn bitch denied me the power she gave my sister? Tell me father, where were you when I needed just that, my father?”
The silence followed his words filling everything, and then I could see the hatred concentrated in his eyes that looked at me without tears, without grief without anything but bitterness and darkness.
“Do you think that this whole situation was my choice? I did not want to be separated from you, it was your mother's betrayal that ...”
“Oh yes, my mother!” he interrupted, moving closer to me. “What a wonderful woman! Do you know that she got to sit on this throne? Only one thing failed in her clear plan. Me. Let me tell you something,” he continued. “Do you know how the king of hell has been chosen for eons? No? Well, through the murder of the previous king. Here there are no families, no heirs or anything similar, only the most absolute justice, which can only come from the hand of death. This way of choosing a ruler has ensured that there are no wars between the demonic castes because they all have the same options to govern, they just have to kill the current regent. You see,” he continued, “my dear mother managed to gain access to the post through alliances of a more or less carnal nature with the lords of the different demonic tribes, but she did not realise that it could not last because that is not the way it works. Here the blood is worth only if it is spilled. And I, dear father, am extremely good at that, in spilling blood.” Narmesh started pacing the platform, still looking at us like a caged tiger waiting for his moment to attack. “Do you know that it was she who found me? I guess my movements among humans ended up being, let's say that somewhat flashy, too many corpses. I began to be considered a demon without being one, and my life began to be in some danger. It was her who offered me refuge here, in her kingdom. A dark queen for a dark place. And I decided to accept the offer. At first everything was extremely fun, mother let me do and did not worry too much how many deaths were left on the road. There was only one issue that she was not willing to discuss with me. You.” he said, stretching out the word like a cat that is lame. “You see. She never wanted to tell me what had happened to you. Until a little bird told me about a man my mother had locked up in some kind of prison, an eternal man condemned to an eternity of suffering, and then I understood everything.”
He sat back on the throne, letting out a slight, clearly feigned sigh.
“When I asked her openly about that man, she refused to tell me where the prison was or how to access it. She did not even reveal to me your true identity although at that point it was already evident. As you will understand,” he continued, “in the face of such lack of collaboration, I had no choice but to get rid of her and take her place on this throne.”
A chill ran through my body and I was surprised that despite the time and pain that statement that Liliath was dead still provoked a reaction in me. But above all I could not conceive that this monster capable of killing all his family, any person who had ever been something for me, was my son.
“Is that your madness has no end? Are you not going to stop until our whole family is extinct?”
“The truth is that it's an idea,” he said, putting his hand to his face, mocking the thoughtful gesture. “I just have a little problem with that,” he continued, looking at Sadith suddenly with rejuvenated hatred, “that my bitchy aunt is still in the habit of getting in the middle.”
My face must have expressed my bewilderment at his response because he immediately turned to face me directly in disbelief.
“You don't know, right? Of course not, you have no idea how much my dear aunt has played with you as with everyone else. Go ahead, aunt, tell him, tell him your little secret.” Sadith did not answer, sh
e simply looked at me without saying a word although her eyes transmitted a fire that clearly indicated that Narmesh had touched a sensitive spot. “Go ahead, aunt, do not be shy. Tell my dear father how you managed to make my bastard disappear, and how you convinced Ankh that the girl had died despite the pain you knew it would cause her. Tell him how you pulled a newborn baby out of his mother's arms to hide her, who knows where, while her mother shouted her grief from the rooftops.” he blew out almost without breathing as a cruel smile filled her mouth. “Very bad, aunt, very bad, even me, I am not capable of such cruelty.”
Narmesh's words stuck in my soul like a dagger and I turned to look at Sadith incredulously, but her impenetrable face confirmed that all this was true.
“It's been a long time since I made a promise, Helel, that I would protect your children with my life if necessary, all your children.”
Her words sounded completely empty, cold. I could not separate my eyes from that petite woman who, now I saw it, had handled us all at her whim, even though I could not understand why or for what purpose.
“Ankh cried for days the loss of her daughter, was about to end her life in pain, and all that time you had the key to her happiness and did nothing about it. A phrase, you only needed a phrase to make her happy, to avoid that pain and you kept quiet,” I said, and I realised that the anger was making me scream.
“You don’t understand, Helel. If I had not, both of you would be dead right now. Do you really think that this monster would have let them live?”
“I could have protected them,” I said, spitting out the words.
“The same way you protected her?” Sadith shouted with infinite cruelty. “You are no more than a man, Helel, and one who has not yet been able to find himself. How do you intend to protect anyone if you are not able to protect them from yourself?”
Those phrases said without acrimony, but simply as irrefutable truths unleashed a wave of anger inside me that I knew I could not control. An anger I had only felt twice before; the first time when Gabriel had massacred Armesh's family, the second when I had found Ankh's lifeless body.
“You see now, father? You cannot trust her, you've only been a pawn in her hands. Your place is not at her side but mine, sitting on this throne next to me, being what you always should have been, a god among men and demons, a lord of the underworld,” he said, extending his hand to me. “I beg you, father, join me and let's finish this bitch who has destroyed our family. Father come to me!”
I raised my head slowly and saw his hand reaching out to me, an open offer to be what I should always have been, a god. Almost without being able to control it, my feet started moving slowly, one step after another, without moving my eyes from the one who was my son. I could hear Sadith’s voice calling me, urging me not to be fooled, to fight against the dark energy that possessed me; but my feet continued their march until I got in front of him. Sadith tried to launch an attack of some kind, but Narmesh repelled it with just a gesture without taking his eyes off me.
“Father hug me. Hold me, and let us unite in our destiny,” he whispered in my ear like a snake. My arms surrounded him in a tender and deep embrace and his arms responded in the same way. “My heart bursts with joy, father!”
I separated him slightly from me, my eyes looked at his and I could see that they were not like mine, those eyes were those of Liliath looking at me from the body of Narmesh.
“I'm afraid it's impossible for your heart to be happy about our union, son,” I said, still looking into his eyes, “because you do not have a heart!”
I slowly separated from him and saw how his eyes looked at me in disbelief and unable to understand exactly what had happened. His gaze fell slightly to look at my outstretched hand where his bloody heart was still beating. My fist closed over that viscera that began to burn in my hand though I could not even feel the heat, while his body shriveled and dried to become the corpse of a man of more than a thousand years.
Immediately, I noticed something happening in my body, it was as if a new energy was occupying everything, as if a part of me that I had lost a long time ago had returned. The creature that was my father's favourite was dead, had long since ceased to exist, but I had become a different creature, even better. I could feel how the power of the universe was in my hands, but it was not a bright and luminous power like the one I had had but a dark and intense power, a power that emanated from everything that surrounded me, from every fragment of rock, from every burst of hot, dense air around me. It was the power of hell, a power much greater than I had ever imagined that now lived in me, that filled every fibre of my being. And that feeling I liked.
Suddenly I remembered Sadith and I turned to face her, to demand that she would tell me where Ankh's child was, but she was no longer there. However, I was not alone. At my feet, prostrated like the humans I had seen worshiping Seti like a god, there were creatures from all the demonic clans including many that I had never encountered in my life as an angel. And all of them prostrated themselves before me in an oath of loyalty and devotion to their new king, and I understood that I was no longer the same, that I had been reborn to become what I had always been. A God.
Heritage
Becca woke up startled and absolutely stunned. She had spent the night reading, and, in the end, she had managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but instead of resting peacefully from exhaustion, nightmares had filled her head. The known faces of the staff of the house or the Daniel McGregor of the painting had intermingled with those imagined, those that she had created for the main characters of that story that someone had insisted she must read. A story that had her absolutely obsessed, and that she knew it had some kind of connection with her family and herself, although she had no idea how to find out what that connection was.
The book was still by her side, on the pillow, exactly where she had left it. The smell of old leather filled her nose and it was a delicious one. The golden symbols of the spine shone with the light coming through the window. Becca could not stop looking at them wondering what they meant, and suddenly, it seemed as if the symbols began to dance, to move transforming into letters that she could recognise, letters that formed a name that by now she knew well. Helel. That was the name of the protagonist of that story, that angel turned human who told his life through invisible books, that man who was not a man because he had never been, that man who claimed to be Lucifer. Had that creature really existed? Was all that fantasy of a third-class author? But, in that case, why her? And how to explain that it was her blood that made the text appear? How to explain the very existence of a text that becomes visible in such an extraordinary way? Too many questions, too many unknowns, but she did not intend to stop until she solved that mystery that was in the end that of her own life.
She struggled to get out of bed, her whole body still ached after the car incident, but she managed to get into the shower and the hot water helped relax her bruised muscles. She put on the first thing she found in the closet and went down to the kitchen for a coffee. That was all she needed, a gallon of coffee, although this time the hot black liquid revitalised her body but did not do the same with her head. Her mind kept turning the story she had read the night before. Helel and his world were slowly taking over hers, and she was happy to admit that she was dying to know more, to know how the story of that man continued. She knew that by now she should be wondering who had sent her those books and why and yet her mind was anchored in a very different question. What had happened to him and Sadith? Was that being still out there, or had he died centuries ago? And why did each passage of those books evoke so many things in her? It was obvious that they could not be memories, but Becca was convinced that each line reminded her of pieces of her own history. She could somehow feel the smell of Ankh's favourite flowers, the incense of the Karnak temple and even the blue lotus of the guests. Helel's emotions caused by loss and betrayal evoked others that she herself had felt in her past, on the many occasions she had felt as alone as someone can be.<
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Lost in those thoughts, she did not realise that her steps had led her to the library, and suddenly she found herself facing the large window that cast a warm and pleasant light on her. The image of the window was tremendously beautiful with the sun seeping through it, and her eyes began to recreate the beauty of the complexity of the story it told. There were dozens of characters in that image, or that is what she thought at the beginning, but a closer look made her see that it was the same character repeated; a tall, handsome man with dark hair and muscular build. Her eyes went to the top of the image, the man floating in the air illuminated by a beam of light coming from the heights. And then she understood. How did she not notice before? The man did not float but fell, and the light reached him in his fall. The recognition of the scene in the window made her heart speed up and her eyes anxiously look for the next image. The same man chained to a wall in what looked like a cave. The man in a field of red flowers like blood. The man sitting on a golden throne with corpses at his feet. And finally, the same man holding a sword in his hand and a kind of bulge or bundle in his other arm while the light illuminated him again from the heights; but his eyes did not look at the sky, his eyes looked intensely at her. Becca's head began to spin. She knew what most of those scenes were. She knew them perfectly because she had read them in the books that had so mysteriously come to her hands. That window told the story of Helel, exactly as the books told it. She could no longer doubt that the story of that creature, of that man, was linked to that of her family, to her own. Even if she didn't know how or why, there was the proof. Someone had considered that those scenes were important enough to capture them in the window of the most important room in the family home. Those scenes had been put there to be seen, so that anyone in the house could see them and remember them. Those images had been treated as a family legacy, a legacy that was now hers.