Cerberus Slept

  “Yes! Yes! A battle for truth, a battle for truth while the race to it was untruth!” He bounced from one foot to the other and laughed. “But here is the lie, you fight Ashipattle first!” He cackled and danced.

  “Is it true?” I said, looking at the great Celtic king who had weary lines pressed into his face.

  “I do not belong here. Free me from this untruth. In victory or defeat, I achieve an act. I must act. I must. It is the only way to break free from this monstrosity, this place that should not be. It is a lie. I will be freed in the fight. If you win, your heroic victory will send my spirit into the land it belongs. I will try to win. I act in truth. I must, to be true. I pray you do as well, friend.” His tone was solemn and he held out Sickersnapper in all of its awesome ashen aesthetic; its gray blade dull and smoky, and its hilt glowing with white-infused diamonds.

  I nodded and tapped Hrunting’s silver against his metallic ash sword, and we stepped back as far as we could on his small boat. We stood with knees bent and swords raised, ready to fight to the death. Manannán laughed with glee, his clapping obnoxious in the silent, slow groaning mouth of the Stoor Worm. The only light came from the lantern above us, our swords’ magical gleams, and the white field of glowing mist that leaked out from Scuabtuinne.

  And so, we danced. My blade caressed his, the steel sparking as we spun. I punched with my free arm, striking his stomach, yet he merely grunted and parried my following slice at his throat. He leapt backward to the edge of the boat and dissipated into a cloud of ash, truly worthy of his name and cloak. He vanished as smoke into the air and reappeared in a puff above me. I threw up my sword to ward off the blow but he managed to clip my shoulder, drawing only a slight trickle of blood. He vanished again in a haze of smoky-gray ash and I spun around, looking in all directions for him, my sword waving desperately about. Not wanting to remain trapped and exposed, I covered my arms in light, aiming them down. I shot out bursts of light into the water and propelled myself into the air. As I flew up towards the worm’s walls, Ashipattle reappeared in the air beside me and I twisted with my sword and cut into his side. My legs landed high on the beast’s walls, and with my arms still glowing, I planted my feet and shot myself back like a cannonball at the boat. Ashipattle reappeared grimacing and slow as I plummeted down onto the boat. I landed rolling, slicing at his other side. I then rolled away into a crouch, ready to spring up with another attack. Blood poured from both his wounds, each side gushing geysers of red, yet he refused to give in.

  I watched his sluggish arms and labored movement, and I shimmied to the left of his desperate attack. He thrust right past me and staggered as I rolled and dragged my blade along the boat, yanking it up and plunging it into his stomach. His wounds painted his gray cloak black. He held his stomach but refused to cry out. I pulled the sword free and he clenched his jaws in agony, but held his voice. He impossibly remained standing, truly worthy of the crown on his head. Yet he was beaten, and he stumbled to the edge and toppled into the water. I leaned over the boat’s edge, yet there was nothing left but a cloud of dark red. And as I stared after him, the cloud of blood suddenly was sucked downwards, disappearing into the black of the water. A terrible and sudden screech scorched the air. The awful sound was high-pitched and stabbed my eardrums, pushing through my palms even as I tried to cover my ears. Everything started to shake and the Stoor Worm opened its mouth and flung its head upwards.

  The water surged beneath me as I clung to the boat. The worm spat me out and I flew out in a spout of water through the air. The black ocean rushed towards me as my boat plunged down through the sky. It mercifully held together as it crashed into the sea and I lay there clutching the sides like a child to its mother’s bosom. The Stoor Worm towered above me, waving its head in erratic circles. If mountains could move, they’d still fall short compared to the might of this beast. How had Ashipattle bested such a foe?

  Mercifully, its shrill screaming had relented and now it moaned in a haunting, almost peaceful manner. Its strange groaning was not fitting of its manic gyrations, but more belonging to a wise old whale of some forgotten deep. In the shadow of the Stoor Worm, Manannán mac Lir stood on his boat with his pearl goblet held out as if in toast, and his stolen Fragarach lifted in the other hand. His boat coasted towards me and I stood up and ground my teeth at his insolence.

  “So Hrunting succeeded against an apparently not so severe bite. But it will not succeed against the perfect answer. Do you even have a question?” Manannán laughed loud with his arms extended, inviting attack as his boat came closer.

  I was not going to put up with this jester any longer. I bounded to the nose of my ship and leapt off of my right foot and into the stormy air. Hrunting guided my leap as I plunged the sword into the laughing god’s chest, the force of my blow sending me into a crouched landing that pushed Manannán onto his back with my arm buried in his flesh. He gurgled and I yanked my sword out of his chest and sliced at his neck, his head rolling away like discarded fruit. Scuabtuinne rocked back and forth, trying to throw me off before it suddenly stopped like a tamed horse, and its wood groaned, mourning its master’s defeat.

  I bent down and picked up the pink goblet along with Fragarach. I crouched over Manannán’s headless body and pulled free a yellow cloak I’d failed to notice before. As I held it up it vanished, yet I still felt its cloth in my fingers. It seemed my fingers covered by the cloak had vanished too. And I realized now how it was that he’d disappeared in our race. A cloak of invisibility.

  Féth Fíada

  The wind whispered the words, and the invisible cloak fled my fingers and turned into a pale mist that curled into the sea. I looked down and wasn’t surprised to see the body gone. The faithful mist had taken its master home to his sea, even though he could no longer see, or it see him. And alone on his ship, I looked at the sword and goblet, and then back up at the Stoor Worm. The great beast, its head like a dragon, stared down at me. It no longer moaned or moved but was watching, as if waiting for my permission. I looked at the goblet, then looked back up at the worm. I nodded, and held it up in toast to the mighty serpent. It bowed its head to me, purring like a cat. Its black body glowed a deep violet color that shined brighter and brighter as the purple glow lightened to a reddish-blue. And then, the Stoor Worm burst into a blast of pure light. The bright light spread out white effulgent wings in a hundred directions, before coming back together into a single orb that hung there in the sky like a descended star—a pure white ball of energy.

  The light lowered down to me and hung over the water, its size twice that of Scuabtuinne. The goblet of truth was still clasped in my hand and lifted up in perpetual toast. The orb of light lifted above the goblet and poured itself into it. Like sand through an hour glass, the light trickled in, never filling the cup despite its size, as bits of light flecks fell into the chalice in a perfect funneled form. As the last of the light leaked into the goblet and the orb disappeared, I lowered it and peered inside. A glowing liquid like white lava filled the goblet. Not wasting another moment, I pressed the goblet of truth to my untrue lips, and swallowed the light whole.

  Book 5

  Over the Moon

  “Just like that... The dark took him.” I shook my head, scraping my new talon along the black wall as I sighed at feeling so useless.

  “Hesiod, the dark didn’t take him. Whatever trap he rushed headlong into, only he could have willed the where. He is where he needs to be. Perhaps the wall was only for him and it called out to his ears alone.” Apollo spoke frankly as if all had gone according to plan.

  I stepped away from the wall and looked at the god of wisdom with doubt. I remembered when he’d first come to me in the hopeless hell of Hades. He’d reminded me of who I’d been and what I was called to do. He’d come to me in that darkness with the light of the present, and the promised light of the future. He showed me his wisdom. He showed me my own light too. Yet the strangeness of the journey through Jötunheimr, the inconsistencies in his reasonin
g, and other gods’ words of warning had me suspicious. And he’d never quite told me the why behind it all. Why would a god of the bleeding, mythological past be so invested in exalting a modern Christian soldier? Why would he expect all the other solar gods to relent while he alone continued to stand? I had the feeling something sinister was brewing, but for the moment, we were all at the reticent god’s whim. There was nowhere else to turn.

  Apollo frowned at me. “Why do you look at me as if I am some stranger? How many times have we sung together? How many times have my muses guided your own light of understanding? Hesiod, we are working towards something more. Rangabes will surely succeed.” Apollo walked closer to me. His smooth, flawless face was radiant in its natural glow of beauty. He placed his hand upon my shoulder and I forced a tight smile and nodded.

  “The both of you need to focus. We have more than enough to deal with at the moment.” Cerberus stood behind us, looking up at that ominous tower, a middle finger of darkness to the Celtic sun. “Why have we met no resistance? I came expecting war.” His thoughts were clear and measured. Not even a bark accompanied his strange method of speech through thought.

  “Sulis will show herself soon enough. If she bested Lugh, Arawn and the Morrígan, then we must be prepared. I think she wants us to come to her tower unimpeded,” Apollo said, itching his cheek and looking up with a hesitant glance flashing across his normally imperceptible face.

  “Sulis hides in her heights, too risen in the night to shine down amongst the stars. Not even the moon can catch her glance, how much less for us lesser suns. She’s forgotten me.” The voice crashed down upon us, its startling heat pushing us all into a defensive frenzy.

  Sitting atop the black wall and off to our left was a man clothed in a loose purple robe draped over golden flesh, covering little more than a small sliver of torso and his groin, stopping at mid-thigh. His hair hung to his feet, its yellow rivaling the strained, hanging sunlight of tree-canopied rays. He kicked his feet at the air and smiled down at us.

  “Now you come? Now? Belenus, you shining sun god, you hid your light from me!” Apollo shouted, shaking his fist but standing still, at least for the moment. “Sulis had the will to at least resist, and Lugh the honor to join, but what of you? How many Celtic suns are worthy to be sons of the true solar soul, the true movement of the one sun?”

  “Easy for you to say. You have us all bow to your Roman pawn and for what? We give him our draining light, and dissipate as you rub your hands in the greedy shadows of your strange sun. Why is it that Ra is no more? Why is it that Helios and Hyperion are gone from the mythic existence? Do you mean for us all to join as one, to have an avatar carry our dimmed light into a brighter future? No... no. All you mean for is to have our lights burnished in the furnace of your pawn. Methinks you plan to let that worthy light burn him to ash as you drink from our fountain. This whole quest, this Rangabes, all of it a lie!” Belenus sprang to his feet and glared down at Apollo.

  Apollo’s face went blank and he lowered his arms and stood subdued. I watched with arms crossed, my allegiance as unsure as it’d ever been. Had Apollo not given me the secret of his bright wisdom? Had he not instructed me on the myth and power in lands unseen? Had he not led me to aid Rangabes, to become brothers with a truly worthy soul? There was no way to turn my back on his blessings, to turn my back on my own people's light-born past. If Apollo was the Hyperborean god, the founder of the people of light, how could I distrust his noble soul? Could he be so maniacal to orchestrate such a darkening of light; had he lingered too long?

  If the realms of myth were so weakened, perhaps it wasn’t so maniacal of Apollo. Maybe nothing else could awaken a sleeping sun so blotted out in its own eclipse of memory. Whatever it was that Rangabes possessed, Apollo saw in him a soul worthy of being sent forward with his blessing. The light Rangabes carried, could it be taken from him? My own accusations joined with Belenus’s were not enough. For if Apollo truly wanted to possess these dying gods and their solar spirits, why would he not do so himself? Still, I had to ask.

  “Why send Rangabes? Could you not take these dimmed flames yourself?” I said. Belenus laughed but Apollo merely glanced at me, his face still blank and pulled back from it all.

  “I’ve explained it before, Hesiod. Of such little faith you are, you who authored the faith of so many for so long. The irony of your unbelief is mad.”

  “Stop it already and speak plain,” Cerberus said with a sharp bark. Belenus tilted his head, meaning the thought had surely been meant for us all, and it had been one that had sounded loud and clear like a cannon shot.

  “I’ve told you already that Rangabes is a beacon of my light into the new world of the mythless masses. A hero forged with a bronze spirit, and a hero meant to bring about a new age through walking in the power of that glorious old. To drink from the sun of the great pantheon of powerful peoples, all who were ignited in some way by that original Hyperborean man and soul, that is what I wanted for him. Is he my vessel? No. He is one who walks as his own because he carries his people. You all doubt and doubt my goodwill, but here I stand and say I am bowing my own might in the face of a mortal.” Apollo shook his head, then turned to directly address me. “Why have I not taken this task myself? That is your question. I have in part. But I do not need these other suns,” he said, his arm gestured up offhandedly at Belenus. “Could I recreate the Hyperborean man, just as he was in the beginning? No. Their blood is sacred, as Pindar sang. Can a sun create separate rays, or are those rays mere extensions of itself, the same substance undivided but united in that first emanating cause? Those rays are the Hyperboreans, and I can no more create them than a man can separate himself into two different persons.”

  “Why don’t you finish that line of thought then?” Belenus looked down at Apollo and leaned forward with gritted teeth. His golden skin had taken on a frightening pallid yellow as if he were a tanned corpse.

  “We come from the same source,” Apollo said.

  “And what is that source? Mere light?” Cerberus questioned knowingly.

  “Power. Divinity. We Hyperboreans are no less gods than you lot,” I said, looking at these mythic beings with equality—no... superiority. I was the sun’s ray, just as these few were too, though perhaps not Cerberus—that old hound of darkness and death. “You are not the sun Apollo, and neither are you Belenus. This noble people, my noble people, were born in light pure. That essence energized us into existence. Our actions belong to the light.” I shook my head as I looked around at the myths I’d once written so devoutly about. “A Hyperborean is not made, he simply is. And to be Hyperborean is to walk in this being, this gift of godhood. My footsteps follow eternity and are pressed with the infinite. To be of the sun, one has to shine forth from it in the first place. But regarding those rays that come discolored through shadowy distortion... well, perhaps those rays no longer can feed at the root of power. Your skin Apollo is thin and pale, and your black boned structure is beginning to protrude. You would take all the light in the world if it meant your flourishing, but your refusal against the eternal being of Hyperborea has poisoned you, and a poisoned well is tainted beyond repair. Your stained soul prevents you from taking light in its pure power. The purity of powerlessness is foreign to you, impossible even. But as Rangabes bowed to his being and willed the one good, you hoped his cleansing power might cover your own shadows in a forgiving light of worth. He is your vessel, yes? Is this because you want to empty his purity dry in hopes of cleansing yourself from this stain—this fear of the shadow that has already covered your soul? You are no Hyperborean. You remain. Rangabes becomes by being.”

  “Are you done? Is this your next work, Hesiod? Jealous of Homer? Must you write an epic now?” Apollo paced to the wall, stopping just short of it and turning back again to walk towards me. “These insults hurled by all. All of you. Cerberus, you doubt me when it is I who awoke you. Hesiod, you question me when it is I who gave you an answer in the first place. It was I who gave you l
ife and light again. And Belenus, you suddenly appear only to accuse and cause strife amongst my own? Has everyone gone mad?”

  “We only want a simple answer,” Cerberus said. I nodded in agreement, standing tall despite Apollo’s aggressive striding back and forth like a cornered tiger.

  “Why have you put Rangabes on a quest you yourself should be able to embark on?” I said. “Could it be that the god of light has been darkened?”

  Apollo stopped stalking and stared at me, his golden eyes aflame. “My soul is a flame that does not flicker, but burns continuous. I am not capable of suffering shadows. You claim I have some stain, but that is a lie, Hesiod, and be thankful I don’t burn you to ash at such blasphemy. Your Hyperborean kinship and my love for you, whether or not you’re willing to remember and still see, is enough for me to hold back my wrath. Honor. I have honor.” He looked at me as the flames in his eyes dimmed to a softer glow, and he squinted and looked above my head at some unseen thought. “I woke you up to guide Rangabes to the land of promise, the land made for the children of the sun,” he said as he turned to Cerberus. “Even you question. Can you not see that I care?”

  Cerberus sat erect as high as the wall, and perhaps thicker. His three heads glared proudly back at Apollo, apparently not interested in apologizing for any perceived affront. “You care about our kind’s end. You care about our power fading,” he said.

  “Of course. Of course I do. And you did not, that is why you slept. There was nothing to uphold, nothing to guard. But you were wrong. The solar spirit lives on, that heroic will that belongs in bronze yet ascends towards a new form. I saw Rangabes die defending his beloved Constantinople. He leapt off the ramparts and held his own against hordes of hungry invaders. Alone and cutting down so many that truly I could not ignore such heroism. I saw him die, his worthy emperor and city along with him. Was this city an heir to Hyperborea? Or was its people? Perhaps, perhaps not. But in Rangabes... as his soul ascended, the sunbeam of Hyperborea connected him right to that eternal source. I saw it. I watched.”