“I am Miseria,” she said, her voice a bottomless hiss of whispers, sounding like it came from my own mind, all around me, and from her.
A voiceless voice, an ever-present whisper so constant that it faded into white noise and became a backdrop of static. I shook my head to try and stay clear minded in the face of such a strange goddess.
“Did you eat my fruit?” she said.
“I found none worthy of eating.”
“Good. Never fall into the trap of eating fruit from others. My suffering must not come from others, but from you. From within you. Those impaled fools ate the fruit from the suffering world, thinking the suffering their own. That is not true darkness. That is only the fruit of those masturbatory, pity worshipers.”
“Is suffering in the world not a fruit we must all digest?” I said.
“That is merely life. To not eat it is to not live. The pity worshipers who impale themselves on the trees of such fruit became entranced by what they take to be the world’s death throes. They pity the nothingness that they imagine to exist, pitying their lot so much that they become the nothingness they imagine.”
I crossed my arms, the hissing everywhere-ness of her voice frigid and distant. “So, the fruit they offer is not yours, but merely the fruit of death?”
“In part, but those so devoted see the death and suffering around them, ignoring that same suffering that pours out like sewage from their own mouths. They spread despair and decay just by espousing their supposed love for humanity. They climb up on their own trees of rot, pretending to care for the many when in turn, they want only to secure a meaning in themselves. Their fruit is excess, it is the will to death. It is the pitying will caught up in the exuberance of feeling bad for others, and feeling good about feeling bad for others, as though their fruit was righteous. No! You did well in refusing the common fruit that we all swallow, that we all breathe like air. They think it special and seek its decay.”
“So then, where is your fruit?”
Her cowl tremored and fell back to reveal the face of a young woman with wide spread soft gray eyes. She had a ghostly yet angelic complexion with a delicate nose and an even more delicate mouth flowering beneath it, the lips pale-pink petals drained of blood. Her eyebrows were wispy and light brown, and her hair was pulled back in a loose and messy bun. This was the goddess of misery? A pretty young woman? She tilted her head and smirked, her lips pouting before spreading like the thin wings of a butterfly, revealing her rounded, soft-white teeth.
I looked down and watched as her skirt drained away, its tendrils reaching out towards me before vanishing, leaving behind pristine white skin and shapely legs. She stood before me uncovered and smiling, the goddess of misery innocent and pure in her nakedness. I had no wife or family. I’d been wed only with war, but could I now succumb to my own suffering, sleep with my own misery? Miseria was my fruit to pluck and taste. Yes. Yes. This was it.
I shed my armor as I reached out and held her chin. Her eyes beckoned me forth as I pulled her into my arms. Her lips were cold and tasted of ash, like kissing a slab of marble, yet her breasts were ripe and her body soft and warm. We kneaded ourselves together, a knot tied and bound as one—flesh and spirit, divinity and mortality, eternity yanking my mind into the ecstasy of full abandonment to the current of timelessness and perfect relation. I was awash in an ocean of oneness that churned us together until we became as the other, while remaining perfectly ourselves.
As the waves finally subsided and the current slowed, I untied myself from her, sliding back into myself as I let go and drifted to my lonely shore of self. We stood up, unbound from the heap we’d become and we stared at each other with the shared knowledge of union.
She pointed her long white finger at my heart, her long nails the same off-pink color as her lips. She lightly touched my chest and it glowed black, my heart a shadow pushing my skin and rattling against my rib cage. And in a grotesque gush, it plopped out from my chest and rolled itself into my hand through a sheer will of its own. Seeing the blackness and realizing its union with myself, I surrendered to its dark and shadowy force. I lifted the heart to my mouth and bit it, its taste bitter yet sweet. I consumed the rest of my heart and let it descend back inside of me, worming through my throat and inching back into my hollow chest.
And I saw inside me what I already knew. There were black eyes within, staring down from a moonless night. The eyes possessed a somethingness that was more of a something than my somethingness—more of a something than my nothing that was myself, staring up. A nothing. A something. A someone. Me. But the nothing slept within.
I stared through this moonless night of my reflected self’s reflection, the I staring not an eye looking, but a mass of meaningless marionetted flesh with a limping gaze attached to a half-broken form. Most of my strings were snapped, detached by my own doing in this continuous moment of digesting the fruit. I closed my eyes to the moonless night. Therein lied my lying eye. To get through the heavenly abyss required a passing into something, and my something still seemed as nothing. My eye could not see, because my I was not me. So, I closed my black eyes, the invisible moon setting to the purity of powerlessness. In this perfect purity, my soul burned and the wound of my empty tomb chest was cauterized shut by a boulder of burn—my heart resurrected as caustic fruit.
And Miseria stood there naked and smiling. I reached down and put my armor back on. The black cowl returned to her, shading her face from my gaze and its darkness leaked over her whole body until she was covered in black mist. And finally, she vanished and the surroundings shivered, and once again I was back standing in the circle with my armor donned. The inner spirals of the circle were now gone and only the outer wall of small boulders remained. My blood was mine. The darkness was below me. It surrendered to me as I did to purity. This was to be whole.
I breathed deep and walked out of the circle and headed towards the next. This one had but one boulder in the center with five small boulders surrounding it in a circular, unfilled border. I stepped into its bounds and my settings whisked themselves away like a quilt being torn off then thrown back on with new fabric. The fabric of my changed reality was a wide, soaked space of deep red. The sky dripped like wax, yet nothing fell. I stood in endless shallows; there was warm scarlet water all around me that mirrored the sky and covered my ankles.
I heard grunting behind me and I turned around to see two men boxing each other. Each man stood unclothed and of powerful form. The one had curly hair cut short, red and thick like wool with a beard draped over his face from just under his eyes to his chin, shaved close yet still shaggily carpeted. The other man had a long yellow-white beard and medium length hair that was fine and splayed out down to the nape of his neck.
Every time they swung their fists in attempt at fighting each other, a crack of an invisible whip sounded, and each man grimaced as his punch struck something solid, as if they both were encased in an impenetrable shield of glass.
“What is this?” I said. Neither of the men turned at my voice.
The yellow haired fighter unleashed a flurry of jabs which caused him to wince with pain just as much as his opponent, who needlessly held his arms up.
“Two men of power,” a voice said from beside me. I spun to my left and there a brawny man garbed in exquisite black armor stood, with only his wide, unshaven head and ox-like neck exposed. “Hercules is the curly headed one, Beowulf the blonde.”
“And you?” I said, studying the armor closer. It was covered in etched skulls; the eyes of each skull shined with red rubies serving as unblinking irises.
“Turnus.” His gray-coal eyes smoldered with passion and hatred.
I shook my head. “Oh hateful one, has defeat at the hands of Aeneas and his justice not taught you anything? You cursed destiny, there was no righteous fulfilment.”
“I fought against the unjust favoritism of the gods.”
“Is perhaps this favoritism due justly? Was Aeneas favored because of his perfect will, w
illed upwards and into the eternal moment?” I knew all too well of this in my own experience. “Blame thyself, not everyone and everything else.”
“Spoken pompously from a favored mortal himself. You should be dead.” Turnus frowned and crossed his arms.
“I should not be, for I am not. Shoulds are mere weakness. Musts and wills are strong. I willed this through making my own must,” I said.
“Then what must you do?”
A loud thud sounded from the fighters. Hercules threw down quaking strikes, his fists fruitlessly landing from above and against air. Beowulf weaved and threw his elbow. They kept fighting as those unseen whips continued to snap. I shuddered, thinking of how long they’d been going on in this dance of numb death.
“What’s the use of power unused? What if one cannot use it?” I asked, turning back to Turnus with a wince. Seeing these great heroes so strong yet so stuck, pained me.
“Here fight two of the most powerful heroes of all, and yet their power is useless here. They neither hear us nor see us. They are trapped in their useless power.”
I sighed. The man was tiresome. I smiled, “How must I right this wrong and fight and write my own song?” I laughed at Turnus as he clenched his fists and scowled. “I think your old master Aeneas would have appreciated such a line. Virgil certainly, that Latin poet who wrote your own demise. He wrote your wrong! It was right.”
Turnus took a loud breath to calm himself. “Is it a wrong? Mine was unjust. But is it wrong what has happened here? Or have these two heroes not chosen this fate?”
My smile collapsed and I grit my teeth. “An inversion. An injustice. Let them strike each other then!” I said, my fists shaking as my helpless gaze was directed back towards the legendary fighters throwing their purposeless, painful punches.
“This is what happens when might is lied into the wrong,” he said.
“They did not lie!”
“No, but the gods did,” he added.
“Your victimhood will not contaminate me. The gods did not lie, for that implies that the mortal believed.”
“What is it then to be mortal, if not to believe in something? Whether in a here and now, or in a forever after?”
I breathed through my mouth, the warm and wet air of this strange place making me sick. “It is the mortal’s choice on whether or not he will believe. It is the mortal who drinks from the wellspring, who conquers the empyrean, invading into the infinite. The mortal does not believe in the past, the now, and the future. No, not in the infinite sense. The true mortal—the immortal mortal—believes in the always, which implies a dwelling place housed and solidified in the sun. Aeneas’s rays shined forth on gods and men alike. Can you blame the sun for not providing enough light, when you hide yourself away in darkness? No. But you can come to the sun and dwell within it, but only when its rays have damaged you to the point of perfection.”
“A fool’s rambling, nothing more. Hercules and Beowulf are cursed because the gods hate our ilk.”
“You hate the gods,” I snapped.
“Then what of those two?” he screamed, veins popping angrily at his shaved temples. His wide shovel nose sniffed greedily at the air as if to inhale added fury.
“Perhaps they fight this impossible fight to make up for the weakness of the world. Maybe power unused is in itself a use. Withholding or suffering, so others might one day possess such strength,” I offered.
“This is a prison. None of us wanted to dwell in this twisted circle; we were tossed here in chaos as the mythical realms continue to bleed out.”
“So, their righteous deeds have become corrupted by the degeneration of the herd. But they themselves continue onward in purity,” I said.
“And it fails. You see their strikes, hitting nothing but air.” His eyes darted back and forth between them and I.
“Have you not thought to join them? Perhaps their victory cannot be had here until you step in.”
“It is my job to guard this sword," he pulled out an ornate silver weapon. “Hrunting, the sword that failed.”
I understood what was required here the moment he unsheathed the weapon. I spun and kicked his hand, his loosened grip allowing me to pry the sword from his grasp. I blasted Turnus before he could strike me with a burst of blue light and he flew backwards, skidding through the shallows and spraying the scarlet water high. I walked over towards the two heroes who had yet to pay me any mind. I chopped at their bodies with the sword, and as silver struck flesh, they evaporated.
I turned back and slowly walked over to Turnus, who was on his knees and staring down at his empty hands. The angry champion was too distraught to even fight. Again, he no doubt blamed the gods. I shook my head.
I said, “And now it succeeds. Their fight required their own blood. This place prevented their holy fight from finality. To be in the always, one must belong to finality, the endless end of eternal surrender. Then destiny and atonement can come. Those who do not fight, render the sacrificial fighting of others an impossibility. If one refuses to be strong, weakness will win and can have no end by any other than that pathetic individual. They fought for those who did not deserve their fight. So, they fought hopelessly, as against thin air, for those people they sought to save remained in the dark. Their rays shined outside, but the individual remained. Eyes shut, head lowered, and back turned.”
Turnus looked up to me and I held no pity for the chosen resentment and madness of this sad man. I nodded and brought the sword down into his skull, splitting it in half. The circle flashed a bright red and I was back to the bleeding realm.
I held Hrunting in my hand and smiled. Another worthy weapon beside Solisinanis. Still, I wondered what that game of the circle had been called? No matter, for now those great heroes were freed. And this sword, Hrunting... it belonged to Beowulf. I did not know how I knew, but it was as if it spoke through its silver gleam. A connection to my spiritual past. However, it had failed so I would need to redeem it; its path was far from finished. I nodded and headed for the third circle of stone.
This circle swirled outwards, stones spiraling out in an almost fluid curvature like that of the water’s wake. The stones curled in odd wavelike formations and swirled into smaller circles out to the edge. There was no outer rim of this circle, but as I stepped by the farthest swirl, I was instantly plunged into icy water. I gasped as black water piled atop my body and currents dragged me under. My wind shoes were of no use submerged as I was, and my armor weighed me down, pulling me further into the merciless depths. With Hrunting still clammily clasped in my hand and Solisinanis latched to my waist, I forced both weapons above my head and bathed them each in blue and red light from my marks. Solisinanis burst in golden fire, flaming alight despite being submerged in this liquid tomb. Hrunting glowed a pale blue, its frigid flame brilliant and pure as a pearled sky. With both weapons bathed in my powerful light, they pulled me as if they were wings and I tore upwards, yanked free from the icy sea’s grip. I sliced through the surface and pierced the black, launching into a gray sky like a showy dolphin.
I soared upwards; the salty sting of the water drawn out by the relentless wash of wind. All below me was a black and stormy sea, its waves peaking upwards after me like outstretched and greedy fingers, but I was free from their cold grasp. Above me there was only an endless gravestone sky. I flew in a loping arch as a beacon of light, my rays of power extending out to push away the gloom of this dreary realm. Ahead, there was a large ashen stone formation of several raised pillars, a stairway fit for a giant. It was the only land I could see in this sea of dread. I aimed my falling flight at the formation and as it neared, I pulled my weapons back and the light drained out as I landed softly on the stone stairs.
With the spray of sea-salt stinging my eyes, I stood there drenched and chilled, wondering what inverted game I’d have to win here. The waterlogged air, heavy with the scent of rotted fish, pillaged my nostrils of any hope of clarity. I turned to look at the sea and there from the water arose a bare-
chested man with a blue band wrapped round his flowing brown hair. He rode a boat-shaped chariot made of pale sea-green leather and animal skins. The ship was tethered to a large stallion of white sea foam, stamping its hooves as part of the billowing surf. The chariot surged ashore and the stallion become a solid, beautiful white mare. It waited there at the bottom of the isle as the man stepped up the stone pillar stairs.
He wore dark blue trousers tapered tight to his legs, and his chest was toned and wide compared to his narrow waist. His face was covered with a salt-sprayed gray and black beard, and his oval face and clear blue eyes peered at me with a slow and condescending look, like that of a bored teacher. I glared down at him from my perch as he walked up, and I kept my hands at my side with both weapons ready for use at the slightest threat.
“Rangabes, you’ve come at last. That down there is Enbarr, my foamed steed.” His voice was calm like the surface of a lake with the power of an endless abyss lurking below. “I am Manannán mac Lir, god of this here sea, and delightful deliverer of the dead. I see that you have come to me for a sort of surf game, or should I say served play. This is a game after all, is it not?” He smiled and winked, holding up sinewy arms wrapped with two leather bands of dark brown around the wrists. The bands were interlocked with a glowing blue pattern that curved through each like rivers of watery light.
“And what have you served me? On this surf I’ve come, and I have no interest in playing. I want to finish this worthless wave.” I glared at his wry smile and frowned. I could play his game of wits and win. This fool!
He stood a few steps below me, stopping his ascension and resting his one leg on the pillar before him while leaning lazily forward. “A chariot race, on chariots of the sea. We will ride around my great serpent friend who for the moment sleeps. The mighty Stoor Worm, reborn from Iceland, has melted back to life!” He grinned, flashing teeth as white as his horse. He flicked his wrist and a goblet of pink pearl appeared in his hand. Six sapphires circled its front with an onyx stone in the center, larger than the rest of the gems.
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