My blue tattoos of runes and patterned paths spiraled over my unclothed body, glowing with a subdued blue that emanated from my sacred ink. I rolled my shoulders and smoothed my wide-stripped, burgundy loincloth that hung between my thighs. My red hair was pulled tightly away from my scalp into a topknot, greased with the finest oil and fragrances. My body was as thick as a tree trunk and I planted myself there, shaking my head as Arawn finally made his way over to me.
His armor glittered like glass refracting sunlight. His green, steel-plated suit had large burning, pale-green runes covering it, each rune encrusted with even more emeralds. Truly it was a powerful sight to behold. His face was bare and angular—royal cheekbones and an upturned lip: his narrow face had the look of sleek and purebred nobility. His dark hair spread out on his shoulders like a raven-black cape.
“Why have you summoned me, Lugh?” he said.
“My hero has suffered decay,” I said.
“From who? The desert gods?”
“Yes, their monstrosity of a god, Sobek, is to blame. He had taken to calling himself Sobek-Ra as if he could inherit the role of the solar.”
“Blasphemy!” Arawn shook his steel fist.
“And this blasphemy got him killed. Rangabes presses onwards, but not without wounds of corruption. His people will have to deal with this curse, I fear—thousands of years from now and right in the present.”
“A dark fate, if this fate is met.”
“His bravado was the fault. But that other one sings her song, that song I cannot hear. I do not know.” I turned away from Arawn and looked up at the gray-reflected sky, storming with clouds and capped like the sea it ruled over.
“But why have you summoned me? Is he not still in Egyptian hands?”
“Sulis has betrayed us, as I knew she would. She fears Rangabes. She fears our acceptance of this strange fate. She is stuck and afraid. She belongs only to her own dark,” I said.
“Her light lies,” Arawn said, nodding.
“It belongs to us. Her being is lunar by nature. A deception.”
“Then what do you have in mind? I know that Rangabes shares our blood, however diluted. His spirit remains in our light, does it not?”
I nodded, but stayed with my eyes searching the skies. “Wait a moment more. The Morrígan comes.”
“You invited her, that spiteful carrion queen of death? And not the righteous kind of death!”
“Sulis has her armies and artifice. We do not. We have something... someone better: the phantom queen herself.”
The ominous crashing clamor of crows all cawing together rushed out from above the clouds, their strange song fitting for a funeral. A black cloud descended from out of the gray, and from this mass of crows, a lone one descended free from the rest. As its purple-feathered wings spread out low before us, the bird took on the shape of a beautiful, pale woman. Both her breasts were bare, pointed and perfectly peaked. She wore a thin strip of loincloth that only hid the front of her lower body. We Celtic gods knew how to dress by not dressing much at all. Arawn had fallen in love with the nobility of the Middle Ages and had taken on its strength. I did not blame him. His armor had been much needed in the battles he’d fought to protect his realm. The legend of an eternal, knightly king had captured his imagination. But there was something about the freedom of movement, the air and sun reminding you of your true nature and power. I smiled at such tame thoughts in such a time of terrible change. At least we would remain. At least for now.
“I have come, Lugh. Does that mean he has made it through the Duat by now?” the Morrígan said, her voice fresh and light like the morning dew.
“No, he suffers greatly. But we have a more immediate matter to deal with on our own soil. Sulis, the false sun goddess, has taken refuge in her black castle with an army of thousands protecting her. We need to end her so she cannot ruin our plans. Our fate must be had, especially against those squawking Fates—and the oddly chirping one,” I said.
“Sulis thinks only of herself. She hides upon stilted heights, refusing to bow to the always higher sun,” Arawn muttered.
“We are Hyperboreans, even in our different shades of light. And the Morrígan, you are our natural ally while Sulis is a corruption of our noble past. She does not belong to our ilk and kind. She must pay for her treachery,” I said, hurling out the words with disgust.
“Then let us burn this whore of the dark,” the Morrígan said.
I nodded, my runes and tattoos flashing bright like lightning. I soared into the heavens as a roaring bolt of thunder, storms surging in my wake. The Morrígan flew as a raven, jetting through the air with impossible speed. We flew over the green valleys and rolling hills—an emerald ocean with an equally emerald knight riding its waves on his horse of wind. His steed was a crisp and ancient forest breeze; its green leaves rustled together in the form of a stallion and whipped forward with a wild gale of force. Arawn rode his primordial steed with shocking ease and regality. I grinned, lightning crackling through my ink, and soared high knowing no army could face the might of our nobility.
The black castle carved through the gray skies like a cursed dagger, a scar blackening the surrounding green. It stood profane and high—a giant spire with grotesque black stone branches spreading out along the hills. Its form was gothic and gargantuan. A fortress that belonged in the Otherworld where Arawn reigned, but had been bled into this refracted mortal realm through Sulis’s perversions. She feared us and Rangabes so much that she hid here, as if this realm would remain untouched by his mighty death march through the pagan pantheons. I was proud to call the man my kin, and I would use his might as required. And I required much. Mortal he remained and immortal I stood. This was a battle belonging to the gods.
I shot down to the ground in a bright streak of lightning. Arawn hopped off his horse as it vanished in a leafy gust. The Morrígan cawed and swooped down to stand by us in her beautiful female form once again.
“The Grian Dorcha. This castle should not be. A fortress forged of dark light, a negation... an abomination. She bleeds my domain!” Arawn yelled, his emerald fist clenched and raised as if he meant to topple the fortress with it.
“What do you propose, Lugh?” the Morrígan said.
“She knows we’re here. Let her forces come. Let her army assemble! Let them see the wrath of true gods!”
“A pleasure. Oh yes, oh yes!” the Morrígan cried, her voice pregnant with ecstasy. “We will feast!” She burst into a fluttering blur of purple-black plumage, and an army of crows swept out from the clouds as she rose up to join them. The black beating of their wings darkened the gray skies in a billowed bleeding of impending death.
“The carrions are carrying on, yes?” I laughed, enjoying my pun.
Arawn scowled; his fury was fixed only on righting this unforgivable wrong. To bleed divinity from his realm without his royal permission was an offense that must be punished. He’d kill his own mother if she committed such a sin. Still, his kingly sense of justice was strict and righteous. Hierarchy was fixed and the royal ones were worthy of wearing their crowns. His roots were of the Hyperborean earth and his branches soared into the solar reaches. He was worthy of his position. I nodded at him but his eyes were focused on death now.
I looked up at the black cloud of crows swirling like a stormy cortex, and contemplated. The Morrígan was a strange one and few saw the sun in her darkness. But she was not like Sulis, forcing the light to embrace her dark while pretending to wear the garments of the sun. No, never. The Morrígan knew who she was; she knew her nature. She belonged to the earth, like the corpse drained by thirsty soil. She was not naturally a Hyperborean; she did not bear my solar nature but she sought it. She could not become it, but she aided it. Her black wings spread far and wide, and she was sovereign over much. She saw what Rangabes would be, or could be. She saw the worth of my blood and what Rangabes would mean for it. She was also a bringer of war, and to have her on our side was to surely win. Perhaps in her soaring flight the
re was enough of a reflection to be a refraction, and the fractal light in her wake might just hold a bit of that solar spirit. Not a lunar lie, but an accepted gift. Regardless, she was for me and that meant I was for her.
I hummed and started chanting like a bard. I sang with a jovial grin, my voice surging into song, shaking the heavens. My brother in sun Apollo was not the only one who could spin a silken melody. I held out my arms and stared up at the Morrígan and all her ravenous ravens. The runes on my throat burned a bright blue.
Her murder of crows
brings murder to all that chose,
the darkness of the sunless throes
of the frigid one who froze.
Murder, murder!
The one closed and lacking clothes.
She hides in an abode where not even a toad
might hop. Sulis is only the queen of a sunless stop.
She stays stuck in her fear.
She stays still, small as a mouse-deer.
Sunken in snow, adrift—
the sunless one has no glow or lift.
Negate, negate!
We hate to see your thin skin so exposed.
Where, oh where, you sunless one,
are your clothes?
I laughed as I finished singing, bowing with a flourish. The field before the castle’s wall was empty, but no doubt Sulis had listened. She’d respond. I smiled wider as roaring shouts and war cries arose from near the wall.
Impossibly, men poured out from the stones of the black wall. What foul trick had hidden them there? The well-armored men were garbed in black-barbed steel, and they burst from the stones in thousands, all along the thick wall. Men ran forward in a thundering herd of meat. I held out my arm and my divine spear shined into my grasp; the great spear called Areadbhair—known by mortals as the Slaughterer—was made of pure crystal and imbued with a refracted rainbow. I raised my other arm and my legendary sword of white steel, Fragarach, shimmered out of the air and into my grasp. The Answerer. A worthy weapon.
I whispered the incantations to Areadbhair, “Ibar. Athabar.” It rumbled in my hand and shot out in an emerald blaze of fire, straight at the coming horde.
I snapped my fingers and my sling-stone, slayer of Balor, wrapped around my wrist in a purple flash. It elongated into a red chain that carried the heat of the stars and the light of the rainbow. With my weapons in hand, and Areadbhair, Arawn and the Morrígan already striking into the masses, I burned forward to join them. I struck as lightning into the midst of the herd and I unleashed my power. My spear sliced through the men in paths of fiery green, and my chain burnt the mortals to ash as I whipped it in circles, a whirlpool of fire scorching the soldiers in waves.
The Morrígan pecked out countless eyes with her form that was a swarm of crows. If their talons didn’t kill as they tore at mortal flesh, their dagger-like beaks did the rest. She was a cloud of black death. Arawn was not to be bested: he wielded two glimmering swords, each a deep evergreen hue that mirrored the black of the deathly forests in his domain. He flourished, spinning in circles, leaping into the mass of bodies as his hair flew behind him like raven wings. I watched their progress from the corners of my eyes, but only to see if they could keep up with my might. They couldn’t. As I split a splotchy man’s skull and his ratty hair drowned in a beautiful bloom of red, I breathed in the fresh air of death and smiled. The killing field was a full table feast of fallen bodies. A glorious ocean of death!
Thousands of men were piled atop each other, mangled and wretched, more swamp than sea. The bodies were foul and ragged; these men were no noble warriors. They had the look of peasants, the lowest of low. Of course, that was the only kind that would fall for such a false god. Those of virtue remained loyal to their betters. How Sulis had brought them into this realm I couldn’t fathom, but wherever she’d scraped them from was no worthy place.
The crows were feasting on the carcasses. Spouts of blood spurted upwards in increments as the crows pierced arteries and other fleshy bits. Arawn was grinning, his face sinister and gaunt after such rapturous ferocity. He strode over to me, crushing the gored corpses underfoot with odd squelches bubbling in his wake as if he were walking through a bog.
“She has more, I feel it,” I said, as my weapons vanished together in a blink of light now that the fighting was finished.
“Weak. Weak-willed filth that I refuse to call men. These were rabble. As much as I enjoyed the slaughter, I can’t help but feel insulted.” He stomped his foot on a nearby head, the flesh bursting like a rotten gourd underneath his green-greaved sole.
“Yes, something is amiss.” I stroked my chin and glared up at the tower. “Let the Morrígan feast; we need to continue. Call your hounds if you must; they surely hunger for flesh not of the Otherworld.”
“A feast they’ve not tasted of for too long. Thank you for this allowance, brother. They grow cold without the flesh of those under this sun—or semblance of the sun anyway.” He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, a piercing shriek that shook the earth beneath us as the ground tremored and the distant sound of barking came. Several packs of his white wolves with their scarlet ears descended onto the battlefield and joined the crows in their feasting.
“Grab my arm,” I said, holding it out to Arawn. I raised my head at the tower.
Arawn nodded and gripped my extended forearm. We burned forward in a burst of lightning and landed atop the spire with a bang, crumbling through the black stone in an effulgence of electric light. We stood untouched by the rubble as the field of crackling blue energy sizzled out around us. A lone crow followed behind us, and the Morrígan appeared at our side.
“Welcome,” Sulis said.
She sat on a black throne with a white sun circled behind her as the backrest. Sulis wore a billowing black-violet dress that ran down in long rivers of silk, extending gaudily across the room to our feet.
“You throw your men away like a prostitute with her chastity,” Arawn spat, his phlegm squelching right onto her overreaching dress.
Her pretty face scrunched up, her delicate nose and thin red brows rising. Her hair was a violent red and she wore a silver crown with four amethysts pointed forward like fangs of a viper.
“You know our strength. You know the world’s unbelief. And you know that Rangabes will come. To resist is to perish. He is of the sun as am I. You are not, as you’ve shown.” I shook my head, sweeping my eyes around the room and then narrowing them as I took a step closer.
“Rangabes,” she hissed. She straightened her back and tensed, her brow lowering so suddenly that her face seemed ready to fall off. With her jaw extended, she ground her teeth and glared off in the distance with her deep violet eyes as if she could see Rangabes coming already. “His arrival is our forever exodus. Do you want our reign to end?”
“He is the proper evolution. All the myths, all the gods, it all pointed towards him. The last of the mythic heroes, the one to start anew. A new age of new heroes and myths. The mortals have already forgotten us. We that persist either have gone mad or become who we were meant to be. Rangabes is the cure to our diseased state. We’ve fallen from our heights, for since the true myth of that Ancient One, our kind have slowly been bled dry. Those that still remain are the ones who bleed the sun. Yet we that choose to align ourselves like a proper constellation, we remain. Rangabes is the only way.” I sighed. I knew Rangabes was the extension of this bleeding. But he was of my kin and his will was pure. It was the only way I could still walk in the sun. And I would use this extension to persist. I had to. Reality grew more distant every day. I shook my head and stepped closer.
“Do you know why I threw my flea-bitten mortals at you?” she said, a creeping smirk marring her face. I stopped and eyed her warily as she leaned eagerly forward.
“Lugh!” Arawn shouted. He loosely grabbed at my shoulder.
“Bitch!” the Morrígan shouted, as she started to shake and heave.
My body shuddered and I suddenly lost all sense of strength
. I felt as if my bones had liquified and I collapsed, quivering to the floor with Arawn and the Morrígan in the same pathetic, fishlike state beside me.
“I threw them at you because I have no mortal subjects—they do not believe. You fools! You think all of a sudden I managed to pilfer a peasant army from the countryside? Not even the Lord could make an army out of such men. Those pigs you slaughtered, those corpulent corpses you let your beasts feast on were not humans. They were swine, actual pigs!”
“What?” the Morrígan gurgled, her voice drowned in blood.
Sulis stood up, sweeping her dress around her as she glided over to us with statuesque grace. She peered down at our rippling bodies and laughed. “The whore goddess of death has drank her fill now, yes?” She knelt down and poked her manicured finger into the Morrígan’s head. I screamed as her body burst into a pool of black liquid. Sulis turned to me and said, “Gwydion, the old trickster god, still lives as he always was, and like me, he is not keen on Rangabes bringing about our end. An end is an end, no matter how righteous.” She looked at me gravely, and placed a perfect finger on her blood-pumped lips. She subtly shook her head and smiled again. “That old wily mage used his trickery to disguise the beasts, and then charmed them into believing they were men. Tricks and magic all around!” She clapped her hands and cackled with her head thrown back. “I cursed the pig’s blood, for whoever came to spill it would become as they were—nothing but foul and impure. Rangabes will die when he comes. He’ll join you in the pool of pig blood you’re becoming.”
Cerberus Slept Page 8