Realm Book One - To Tell of Darkness

by K. A. M'Lady

Where all flames are blown out and no lights linger

  From Song of Time’s Raised Finger by Otto` Orban

  Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We were out in the middle of a bean field, twenty-some cops trailing us and one slimy, pissed off and hungry Ogre wanting nothing more than to return to his people surrounded on all sides. It’s too bad it didn’t realize it was already dead and had nothing to return to. Now I got the fun part of convincing it that it needed to return to the Darkness.

  Riiight. I had to be out of my fucking mind.

  At Gimlit’s instruction, we formed a large circle around it. We were going to use ourselves as the corners of power to send this damned thing back to the Shadow Lands. Gimlit had never done this before, and come to think of it, I’d never heard of anyone doing something like it either. So it better damned well work, or all of us were fucked.

  Mercy took the point for fire calling on the flames to fill her--crazy bitch liked to burn. Kieran was the point for the earth. Since he came from the earth, it only seemed right. Gimlit and I briefly debated who should be wind and who should represent water. We had four Weres to choose from and if we didn’t get it right, the circle would not be complete and our plan would go down in a bloody ruin. Literally.

  Finally, after some major arguing on my part, we had agreed that Ien would be the wind and Garric the water. And may the Prophets preserve us if I was wrong.

  I didn’t know why I was insistent on my choices, but I just couldn’t shake the gut instinct that was welling inside of me. There was just something about Ien that spoke to me of the wind’s power: alluring and gentle when need be, powerful and damaging when tempted.

  Garric had a constant power, cool and ever flowing like water itself, with the strength to wear down mountains or pummel time with his shearing force. Gimlit merely nodded his understanding and agreed. It was so refreshing not to be argued with. I prayed that I was right.

  We stood in the darkness, the moon hidden beneath a thick mass of clouds, the wind all but non-existent as every cricket and June-bug hidden within the thickets seemingly waited for death. My pulse was hammering, and I could feel it pounding against my chest as I looked out across the clearing at the gory heap that was once a person. I prayed that I didn’t screw this up, that I didn’t get myself and everyone around me killed. Then with a sigh of resignation, I stepped into the circle.

  As soon as my feet crossed the edge of our imaginary circle, the wind rushed up like a vortex in a tunnel, sending my hair straight up around me with the force of the magic we called. Our skinless creature was screaming and thrashing about like it was having a seizure, but it couldn’t seem to break free of our circle. The magic seemed to be holding, and for now we had time.

  As soon as it spotted me, its bulging sockets oozing white mucus down the planes of its pussing cheekbones, its eyes began to glow a ghostly white. The site of all that goopy, meaty flesh exposed before me started that gagging reflex deep in the back of my throat. I had to grit my teeth to keep from retching.

  “Call the Darkness, Rihker!” Gimlit yelled, his voice carrying over the swirling storm of wind that was erupting all around me inside the circle.

  The creature took a step towards me, its clawed fingers extended, still dripping with the blood of its last victim. Just seeing those sharp talons flashing towards me was enough to get me moving.

  Centering myself in the circle, which brought me far closer to the damned thing than I wanted to be, I closed my eyes and opened myself to the Darkness within me. I thought it would feel like the Light when it came; a beacon filling me up with warmth as it flowed into my veins and spilled over like warmth and sunlight.

  Instead, it was like a floodgate to the darkest side of hell. And hell was a cold, lonely void in the middle of an ice age. My body rose off the ground, my arms extended to my sides as my aura overflowed with blackness thicker and darker than an oil spill.

  I threw back my head and the scream that erupted from the pit of my soul felt as though it had been torn from the very hand of the gods. My spine bowed as my body was racked with the overflow of Darkness that consumed me.

  “Stop this! What the hell is she doing?” Cage screamed, but his pleas went unanswered as the creature stilled, watching me as I floated above him.

  “Rihker, can you hear me?” Gimlit called to me from across the expanse of the circle. His voice, though I knew he was yelling at me, sounded so far off and distant, as though I’d never hope to hear him again.

  Slowly I felt the ebb and flow of a million souls falling through the gates of hell as though each one passed through me on their downward descent, their Darkness leaving a stain upon my soul at their passing, and my body trembling from their touch.

  “Rihker!” he yelled, and this time I heard his call, like the distant flutter of wings against my brow. Slowly I turned my head, my eyes narrowing as I took in his tall, dark frame and his bright turquoise eyes.

  “Jesus H. Christ! What the hell have you done to her?” Cage swore at Gimlit, shoving him, or at least attempting to shove seven feet of pure muscle.

  Gimlit grabbed him by the scruff of his coat and flung him away from us. “Shut the hell up, Cage! She’s fine.”

  “Gimlit, finish this!” Kieran growled between clenched teeth, his own humanity slipping as the Darkness began to seep in around the edges of his composure. My head turned towards his voice, my eyes alighting on the pale visage of his face. When I looked at him, it was as though I could see into the very depths of him. Down through the tunnel of his own Darkness, to where his soul should have been.

  The path to his morality was a lonely, stark road. The longer I stared down into the well of his being, the more I realized his core was empty, and the only thing I saw was a Darkness to match my own.

  Gimlit caught the feral look of hunger on Kieran’s face as he gazed at me, stark adoration in his jet black eyes. He glanced at Mercy, saw the same image of raw emotion flash across eyes that had bled to mocha, and knew this needed to end. “Rihker, now! Send it back, now!” he ordered, his words demanding.

  I looked at the creature, now standing before me in all his mangled glory. It was mere inches from me. It extended its hand towards me, beseeching almost, its claws a breath away from gouging through my chest and ripping out my heart. My mind filled with the overbearing presence of Darkness, stabbing through my brain like shards of glass ripping through my every intention, each pain a dark pleasure that I didn’t bear to seek.

  But I had a job to do. And if I wanted any of us to live another night, I had to finish what we’d started. Reluctantly, with Darkness eating away at my will, I forced the words past my lips.”By water, earth, fire, and wind, I bind you; the Darkness is your guide, and death it is your sin.”

  The creature threw back its head, opened its mouth and roared in agony. It was a moan to rival the call of the banshees, the wind inside the circle whipping up like a small tornado pressing against the edge of the round as it blew everyone’s hair back.

  The humans were thrown off their feet as the pressure erupted, spilling over like a sonic boom. “Hold the fucking circle!” Dragon called as he forcibly held Ien in place, Gimlit having to hold Garric in place as well. The trees began swaying as their branches whipped around in the darkness like an F-4 Tornado was coming full force. Shrubs and small trees were uprooted, to be sent like missiles in the night. The monster swung for me, my death clearly marked in its eyes.

  “Gimlit!” I screamed just as the fucking thing swiped, breaking my concentration and knocking me clean out of the air. I landed across the circle on my ass at Garric’s feet. My stomach had three jagged slashes torn from one side of my belly to the other, about two inches deep.

  “Motherfucker!” I swore, coming to my feet, blood soaking across the waistband of my shorts as it oozed down the front of them to seep down my legs. The first thing I thought of was Light, and a glowing silver orb appeared in each hand.
I whipped them full force at the Ogre, hitting it dead center in the chest. It screamed as if I rammed a blade through it.

  “Finish the chant,” Gimlit yelled, struggling to hold everyone in the circle. “It’s the only way.”

  The creature turned towards me, its chest oozing blood and chunks of shit--I didn’t even want to know what the hell it was--as it started towards me. I whipped another ball of light at it as I began the chant again, the words flowing past my lips in a flood. “By water, earth, fire, and wind I bind you; the Darkness is your guide, and death is your sin.”

  It extended its neck, teeth flashing as it squelched its rage into the darkness, and I hurriedly continued, “A soul that once was sleeping, in a place where shadows walk; I command you to your slumber, by word, by blood,” I said, smearing the blood from my seeping belly into the palm of my hands as I called the Light simultaneously to fill my outstretched palms. “And by the power of my Darkness!” I roared, rushing the creature as my anger overwhelmed me.

  I slammed against it, wrapped my legs around its waist as I rode it to the ground. Taking both hands, I pooled the balls of light, forcing the two of them together, my body shaking with force. “I command you to the Darkness!” I yelled, slamming the single glowing beacon into the creature’s open mouth as it roared in fury.

  The earth shook with the intensity of the power that rushed through us as it writhed beneath me; the ogre, pissed off and bloody, bellowed in agony as the Light filled its body. It funneled out every opening like a laser show; shooting out its eyes, nose, mouth and any fleshy opening like an exploding nebula.

  When the power of the Light began to hurt even my eyes, the creature’s life force exploded beneath me, thrusting me away from it like a human cannonball, my body ricocheting into the air, every limb aching from the blow.

  I was sent careening through the darkness, the wind knocked completely out of me. As I hit the ground, my world going black, I swear I could hear someone calling me, my name being carried on the wind. I closed my eyes to the pain as the faint curse of daughter rang in my ears.

  I dreamt of loving. The dream remains, but love

  Is no longer that storm whose white nerve sparked

  The castle towers, or left the mind unrhymed,

  Or flared an instant, just where the road forked.

  From The Landscape by Robert Desnos

  Translated from the French by Don Paterson

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The emptiness had returned like a dull roar in the cavernous darkness of my mind. My skin felt like it had been peeled back one layer at a time and simultaneously exposed to the flames of a slow burning fire. My bones even ached from the inside out.

  I lay on a pallet thick with fog, soft tendrils of smoke circling limbs too heavy and sore to lift. My brain actually hurt too much to form a cohesive thought, but somehow I knew I wasn’t alone.

  Fighting the weight of my lashes, I struggled to open them; even the gray haze of shadows that surrounded me managed to hurt my eyes. “Where am I?” I croaked, my voice the gritty rasp of a whiskey maid.

  Cool, bony fingers pressed me back against the pallet as I tried to sit up. “You are in between,” he said, his voice as warm and deep as the darkest night on the longest eve of midnight. It was a voice to tempt your reason and profess your darkest fears to; a voice that could charm the angels of their wings. A voice I somehow recognized, but could never hope to place.

  “How did I get here?”

  “Your Darkness called to me,” he told me, “and I answered its siren call.”

  “Will you send me back?” I asked, uncertain of who he was, why I was here, or even where he had brought me to. But I was certain, brought me he did.

  “In time,” he said, cocking a head concealed by a dark cloak and the gray of the fog that surrounded him. It was strange that I noticed that he was there, and yet I couldn’t really see him. The fog clung to him like a glistening web, willowing its way around him in a silk that somehow gleamed.

  I could just make out the outline of a form in the dark; dark shadows of ebony where his eyes were supposed to be watched me with interest.

  “Why can’t I see you?”

  “You could,” he said, stepping further into the shadows. “But what is left of me is not what I was, nor what I truly am.” He spoke in riddles, his voice a soft nuance of rhythm that flowed through me. It was soothing in a way, a dark dream to cast your soul afire.

  “What were you?” I asked, curious.

  I could almost feel him smile, which was odd, to feel such a connection to this being. “I was once just a man. Another time, so long ago…” his voice trailed off and I could almost hear the whisper of regret. Feel it, like an old wound long forgotten but never healed.

  “But you’re not anymore.” I didn’t make it a question. There was something about him, about the place where he’d brought me that spoke of power and Darkness. And death.

  “She is wise beyond her years,” he stated, and I could feel the first inkling of his power simmering in the air around me. I watched, spellbound, as the fog started to shift and currents of wind began to swirl like specters dancing on dark shafts of smoke, each one shifting in the wind like a soul wandering, a soul lost.

  “Why have you brought me here?” I asked as I tried to force myself to sit up, the pressure increasing around me, pressing on me like a lodestone holding me down.

  “I wanted to see for myself,” he said cryptically, his voice dark, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at all.

  “See what?” I asked, my own voice hesitant, uncertain as the first inklings of panic began to rush through me and I struggled against the invisible bonds that held me.

  “My destruction,” he whispered, whipping around to face me fully, the fog swirling in his wake.

  “I don’t understand,” I told him, forcing my way up off the pallet. Despite my fears and my wounds, I had to face him on even ground. My knees were shaking with weakness as I stared into the haze that was his world. As I tried to wrap my mind around all that was happening, my gut clenched as the knowledge of who he might be rose through me like a knife wound to the soul. “Who will be your destruction?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

  “My daughter,” he growled as he extended his hands outward through the haze of shadows, his power rushing through me like a thousand bolts of lightning.

  I screamed with the impact as Darkness funneled through me like a shock wave. It felt like my chest had been caved inward by a battering ram as I was thrust out of his inner sanctum; thrown out like a beggar in the street, the door slammed in my face.

  Only this door wasn’t one I ever wanted to enter again.

  The next thing I remember is an endless void of blackness, a cold so lonely and empty that I couldn’t feel my soul. I started to scream, afraid for the very first time in my life. Afraid I would never see Gimlit again. Afraid that my father had somehow stolen my soul and left me to wander in the Shadow Lands; alive and forever searching; never again to see the Light; never to see those I love again.

  The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, lying in the grass beneath a star-scattered sky, and I was screaming, screaming and thrashing as hands held me down from all sides. I could feel my body being thrust against the ground, back and forth, back and forth repeatedly as my screams rent the night. It felt like I was possessed, and something was trying to rip its way out of my flesh. Like it could tear my skull open and crawl out of my head.

  “Rihker! Call your Light, Rihker,” Gimlit was yelling at me, his palm pressed to my heart as he used all of his strength to hold me down. He finally had to climb on top of me. Struggling against my thrashing, he straddled my waist and placed one hand on his own heart where he held my powers within him, and his other hand firmly on my chest. “Call the fucking Light!”

  I could just make out his voice through the screams that were wrenching through my mind; a thousand dying souls trying to tear their way out of my bod
y as two Vampires, four Weres and an Ogre held me down in the darkness. And I did the only thing that the remaining functioning portion of my mind could do--I called the Light.

  As they age, all things grow rigid and bright.

  The streets fall nameless, and the knots untie.

  Now, with this landscape, I fix; I shine.

  From The Landscape by Robert Desnos

  Translated from the French by Don Paterson

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Some say there is a tunnel at the end of your road, and it’s filled with glorious Light. In the Light, the angels are waiting for you, their outstretched wings etched in gold, the folds of their flowing white gowns glowing with a crystalline beauty, iridescent with the Light of God, and that purity and opulence surrounds them, their shining glory showing the Way. They say that a chorus of heavenly voices; more beautiful than your mother’s on the day of your birth, accompanies them, singing in glorious praise.

  I say I am the Light at the end of that tunnel.

  The great Creator filled me with it when he made all the earthly planes. Now all I had to do was ask Him to fill me with it again. A daunting task, to be sure, especially as I lay in the throes of evil’s mighty grasp, as I writhed and spewed obscenities, as I thrashed about in the darkness like a soul possessed.

  But even Pixies need a little help along the way. So that’s what I did as I lay in the circle where evil walked, writhing with the souls of the suffering and the madness of the dead. I called the Light of the Great Creator.

  It shouldn’t have been that easy. Nor should it have been as amazing and intense as it felt as my plea left my parched lips, my body awash with the degradation of all of those who were lost to the Darkness.

  My people call it Pixie Dusted. And it’s better than sex or chocolate--better than sex with chocolate.

  It’s said that only our Queen should be able to call as much Light as I did in that field that night. But with the hand of Darkness upon me, my soul so close to the tensile grasp of my father’s vile madness, I opened myself up to the Light further than I had ever dared to before.