“An absence... An absence,” I said, shaking my head. The reborn god wanted to talk. Was this the further prodding into that quilt unlike the others? Was the end finally at hand? I had to find out. “I know, I know, darkness is an absence of light. Evil an absence of good.”
He coughed, and raised his finger, wagging it like a cobra’s tail. “Evil is the presence of absence.”
“Semantics. You speak meaningless paradoxes, fool.”
“Evil is irrationality. Evil is necessary, because it never is. I do not twist my tongue here in confusion. I speak those true untruths you’re so fond of! Evil is never necessary, because it is always good. How can an absence of good, be always good? How can this void filled with nothing, the present absence, be something when it is nothing? Because nothing exists, as long as something remains some, and not whole. Therefore, all the something is touched by nothing,” he said.
I frowned and crossed my arms, thinking once more of that enlightening conversation with Hesiod on the nature of purity. We’d figured it out then that to be pure was to be untouched by the nothing. But here was this fool claiming the something implied the nothing’s touch. But he was speaking in the theoretical, the nonexistent mind frame. Not from the eternal, and not even merely the finite. He was speaking in terms of decay. The rot of shallow being. The stench of low becoming. He spoke as if nothing was not better than something, but it simply was all—was the everything. Nothing corrupted all. I squinted at the smiling god’s hungry face.
I shook my head and said, “You speak of not merely the irrational, but the irrelational—the man without relation. My words are my own. I made that one fit into this talk. Can you not see though that my word could not exist without language and all its parts? You speak in the grandiose terms of the great nothing. Then what are you doing here fighting with me? Why? Any why you hurl out from your nothingness is tainted by unreason, untruth, and darkness. The decay you espouse has rotted any truth you purport into falsity. Nothing matters, when nothingness is the end.” I nodded, but my heart clenched in my chest so as not to drop too far into that pit of nothingness. How could I not fear eternal darkness? How could anyone live as if that wasn’t there? What mattered was why one answered the dark.
His face drooped, then tensed back up like a turtle into its shell, hard with the determination to survive with his strange worldview intact. “Evil as the presence of absence. Evil as the nothing. What do you call good? The something. Existence. I propose another definition: the good can only be something that cannot decay and fall fully into my nothingness. So good is the perfect existence in the eternal, infinite being. But then you must ask yourself, is not everything and everyone evil, for all are not fully eternal—they all rot. But there my friend, where the dark and light shine together in relation—I know you like that word—there where they impossibly, paradoxically shine, there blooms Good Evil. A flower with petals of solar rays and a stem pushing out from the eternal night. Ashipattle for all his good, agrees with my evil. It was in his song.”
I frowned, for he was not wrong about Ashipattle. If only I could have asked that ashen king what he had meant, what he himself had believed. What had Manannán forced him to do? I knew Ashipattle was a hero and a good man. Whatever happened, I knew he belonged to and in the light.
I crossed my arms and scowled. “I am untouched by your Good Evil for I will one thing, and that is the eternal. You will death, I will life. May this be a fitting battle then. I’ve been fighting death this whole time.”
“Let’s see how pure you are after this, you little angel. Look, here is Lugh!” Manannán gestured wildly to his left.
A shadow arose from the depths of the perfect white light we stood on. A man emerged from the dark with black tattoos that shifted like smoke all over his pale skin stood there with teeth bared. His eyes were swirling pools of black mist that leaked out of the corners, trailing behind him in putrid trails of fiery ash. He held out his arms which extended into fine points: shadowed swords of black mist serving as his hands.
“Lugh has no Answerer anymore!” Manannán laughed, flourishing the grand Fragrarach in his hand. “But he has his friends! The Morrígan, the crow who tried to circle the light. You are a carrion, my dear!”
Another black silhouette emerged, this time from the light above us. A woman with her pale breasts exposed and dark black hair spread out like wings, hovered above Manannán. Her bottom half was wrapped in smoky gray robes that hung low on her slim waist. Her mouth was an evil pout with lips black and smooth. Her eyes sported the same leaking black mist that Lugh saw through.
“This cannot be the fourth circle! What has become of that accursed soil?” I shouted. “I was not finished!”
“The Ichor Games, inverted and foul; you really think there were four? What were those circles but spirals of time that when neared, draw one to a faraway nothingness. Do they not appear as the graves they were designed to be? The fourth is me. Again and again. The fourth continues onward. You will not redeem these lands and peoples! That sword you redeemed is a lie! It still failed and you cannot take it away,” Manannán said.
“But I can make it better.” I held up Hrunting in my left hand and hoisted up the returned Solisinanis in my right.
“But wait, my eager angel. You are a bear cub stumbling into a wasps’ nest. There is another shadow come to aid my war against the light, against what once was but never truly is. Here is Arawn, a green knight turned into violet night!”
And from the far horizon, a dark purple shadow burned into being. The clacking of hollow horse hoofs boomed as if the steed were made of thunder and the sky it raced across was of glass. The horse shrieked all the way through its weeping gallop. It was a hulking beast of black with muscle rippling in sheens of shadow. Its eyes carried a piercing red glow, fiery pits alight with rage. I leaned to my right and left, stretching as I readied myself for the challenge of battle.
Astride this horse was a deep violet knight who wore armor of such a dark purplish hue that it appeared infused with an even darker black. It shimmered and crackled with swirls of a lighter violet shade. His horse thundered to a lightning crash of a stop beside Manannán. I watched him with sadness as he sat there accursed atop his shadowed steed. It was a kind mercy that his black mask covered those hideous leaking eyeballs of black mist the others had. But his black helmet was an even wickeder sight. Like a skull with its mouth burnt away, the bizarre ribbing of the helmet made him look like a corpse brought back to life. There were no holes for the eyes either, just two empty sockets. I looked closer and shuddered as I realized it was no helmet. That was Arawn’s tortured skull. The skull moaned like a man gagging on his severed tongue.
My armor intensified its red glow in the face of such darkness while surrounded by such perfect light. I could feel that power burning inside me, a volcano about to erupt. My armor did not smoke with decrepit, twisted black mist like the dark ones surrounding me—instead it glowed like the sun, blood-red rays extending out from me. I’d become a bloom of beaconed light. My arms glowed their distinct hues and I held up my glorious weapons bursting with power. Our talk had been made cheap by the nothingness that gripped these foes so ferociously.
“Come, you fallen god! You pollute the light with your presence. Even as you say all is naught, I will show you that you are naught!”
I leapt into action, light bubbling in my chest and exploding in a fountain as I bounded into the air. I swung my axe and sword down, heading right for Arawn’s skull. The horse reared back on its hind legs, kicking its hooves at me. Like a cannon ball to the chest, its hooves cracked my armor right in the center, but the landed blow couldn’t prevent my own swinging weapons from tearing through the beast’s flesh. Solisinanis cleaved a chunk of dark meat from the horse’s underbelly while Hrunting dug a straight, fine slice that spilled the horse’s guts out. The horse bayed and wailed. It reared back, flailing off its feet and onto the ground. Arawn flipped off his horse unharmed, but his steed had been
rendered useless like a broken stud.
My chest armor’s cracks glowed an orange hue like lava pushing through the surface. Staggered as I was, I barely had time to throw up my weapons to parry Manannán’s strike. I threw my arms up, holding my weapons crossed together to stop his blow. I pushed my parry back at him and he swayed away. Lugh and the Morrígan attacked in unison as I rushed to dodge. She cackled and cawed like a crow as she flew back and forth, zipping around while hurling orbs of black shadow down at me. My axe and sword were able to swallow these strange orbs, their light burning away the dark. But with my attention focused upward, I was vulnerable to the rest.
Lugh leapt to the left of me, swinging his arms as I turned my shoulder and tried to ward off his blow. Unable to move fast enough, his misty sword-arms sliced into my triceps and I screamed, swinging my axe wildly at him as he stepped easily out of my reach. My arm was cut deep, blood cascaded down it like liquid rust. He snarled and set on me again and I parried his blows with Hrunting, while keeping Solisinanis raised and blocking those annoying bursts of black energy from the Morrígan.
Realizing that I’d have to take one of them down before Arawn and Manannán attacked too, I rolled backwards and aimed both my weapons at the Morrígan. Beams of red and blue light burst forth from my arms and amplified out through my weapons, shooting up in a concussive blast of bright force. The light struck her straight on and consumed her, leaving nothing behind as she vanished.
I rolled out of the way of Arawn’s steel fist, blocking Manannán’s stab with my axe and Lugh’s overhead slash with my sword. I jumped backwards and retreated to survey the three remaining foes. They cautiously stalked forward, and I breathed as deep a breath as I could. Could they block my focused light? I poured it once again into my weapons and shot it out towards Lugh. He threw up his sword-arms which held for a moment, then crumbled into ash as my light burnt him away into nothingness—or hopefully somethingness. I prayed these former gods of light might still be redeemed.
Manannán growled and leapt forward but was too slow to prevent me shooting another burst at Arawn. My light bounced off of his dark armor, useless. Arawn charged forward and I ducked and spun backwards, barely blocking both blows. This was going to be a tough one to finish. I sighed, tired and alone, and held my weapons up, readying myself for another attack.
***
Two lights like falling stars burned down from the battle between dark and light in the heavens. Two of the shadowed swine had disappeared. Could these falling streaks of light be Lugh and Arawn, or perhaps the Morrígan? The meteors neared, and I started as I realized they were headed straight for me. Using my talon, I scrambled up the wall and out of the way. Sulis scowled at me and Gwydion laughed.
“What’s wrong poet, never seen a battle like this?” Gwydion said.
“Silence fool. Their fall is not a good sign,” Sulis said, watching the approaching lights with worry creasing her pretty face.
I turned back and stared as the streaks of light crashed into the ground before us, and the air splintered with a loud crack like ice splitting a tree. The fiery lights tore through the earth and struck the wall with a thud as they skidded to a halt. As the dust settled, I allowed myself to breathe again and stared at the two bodies lying there. One had blue tattoos covering his fit physique which was covered only in a loin cloth. The other was a beautiful naked woman with raven hair. They lay there unscathed, as if merely asleep.
Apollo bent over them and gently held up the man’s head. “Lugh?” he whispered.
Apollo breathed into his face, his breath a puff of golden mist that entered into Lugh’s slightly open mouth. He repeated the same process with the Morrígan. They stirred, but before either could open their eyes, two spikes of black burst from Sulis’s outstretched hands. The first pierced the Morrígan right through her chest, pinning her to the soil. Apollo pulled out his lyre and held it out to stop the second from striking Lugh. The Morrígan screamed as the spike spread its dark poison, highlighting her veins black against her pale skin. With one last cry, she burst into a cloud of crows and flew off into the sky.
Apollo removed the spike like a splinter from his immaculate instrument and stared at Sulis. Before he could act, Cerberus and I attacked her. I shot a burst of red light from my chest while swiping down at Sulis with my claw. She was consumed in light, and the flesh that remained was torn to ribbons by my talon. Cerberus’s snakes struck the trickster god, stunning him. Cerberus lowered his gaping maw down and with a wretched crunch, ripped off the god’s head, spitting it out like a pit from a plum.
“Why did you wait?” Lugh said through strained words as he slowly sat up, leaning against the wall.
“We watched the battle,” I said, pointing up at the sky, where the darkness still battled the light.
“We didn’t know if we needed her to save you. She refused to cooperate until it was finished.” Apollo sighed, and sat beside Lugh. “I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if my breath would be enough. In my shock, I forgot like a fool that Sulis waited.”
I was stunned at how haggard and tired Apollo looked. The doubts and accusations I’d hurled at him, this impossible task he’d started upon, truly none of us had any real answer to it all.
“I’m sorry about the Morrígan,” I said, sitting on the wall with my feet dangling down.
“She flies free now. No longer tethered to the darkness of the fading pantheon we belong to. Her omens are her own.” Lugh rubbed his temples. “She belongs to the air now. She is animal, her godhood broken for good.”
“I am sorry,” Cerberus said. I bowed my head.
“Perhaps she’s better off that way. Better to be remembered as something, than to be forgotten as nothing. The raven remains,” Lugh said.
“I suppose,” Apollo added.
We stopped speaking and stared back into the heavens. The light and dark were still even, still striking and retreating in an endless dance.
“Rangabes fights pure. He will prevail. He must,” Lugh said, looking at the sky and unable to hide the tear that had fallen free. He sighed and set his gaze strongly upward, and I turned to look up at the sky too.
***
Arawn and his fists had added plenty of blue-black bruises to my blood splattered arms, purpling the flowing red of my wounds. Spots of my skin had been torn off, and lakes of blood filled in the valleys of my arms. My armor was soaked in scarlet and its light was diffused into a dim red where blood filled in its cracks. My eyes were permanently fixed in a squint, dried blood and sweat stinging my vision into a swirled sight.
Arawn stood there tireless, his blank skull unscathed. Manannán wore a mien of mirth, even with his bloodied face. My landed blows seemed only to enflame his sick joy with a sadistic jaunt. My beams of light had proven ineffective against Arawn’s unbreakable armor; it still looked as whole and polished as ever. Its violet shades of infinity sparked purely, mocking the grime I myself was covered in. Manannán seemed to have his answer in Fragarach to my light—Lugh’s old sword absorbed it all. My blade could cut his skin, but I’d not yet managed to strike cleanly, not with Arawn keeping my attention divided. There had to be a better way.
It was odd, this temporary respite. I was panting, hunched over and drenched in pain. Arawn and Manannán both stood there waiting, as if longing for more of a challenge. Manannán smiled with ever-twitching lips that spread and warped each second. Arawn and his mask of death was faceless, but his body stood rigid and tall, apparently waiting for his master to move first. So we stood, the silence distilled with decay as I drained myself of life by staying on my feet, dying standing up. My ragged breaths were loud enough to roughly rub the quiet with hopelessness.
“Rangabes, you must see this is folly. The other two perished because they were not part of the Otherworld like us; even with their dark metamorphosis it was not enough. But we... we cannot die because we reign over death,” Manannán said, his voice zapping his grin into a suddenly straight, grave look of
concern.
“You are wounded and I’ve killed you before, Manannán. I cannot fear what always is, never was, and always will be.” My voice gathered strength and invigorated me, a surprising bubble of energy burst in my soul, my words awakening it.
“Is death and dying an always to you?” He laughed. I think Arawn grunted in an attempt to laugh, but his mouthless skull remained as dead as ever.
I said, “Living, I live! That is my always. That is why I cannot fear. But what I cannot comprehend is your sudden interest in speaking with me as if I’m not covered in blood and on my last breaths. Why?”
“Because you drank from the cup. The Stoor Worm’s sacrifice is no simple sip. That burning light you drank, even with my poison—it still burns. And neither we nor you will end without unnecessary suffering,” Manannán said.
“And what is that suffering? Whose suffering is it?”
Manannán’s face paled and he looked uncertain. Whatever secret he hid, he had hinted at something. Something that Arawn seemed struggling to spit out. Manannán and I both stared at the hulking beast, as he started grunting and sputtering, words muffled by his mouthless skull. His body shook and he raised his armored arms to his faceless face, and punched as hard as he could. He struck his face with booming blows as chips of black skull flaked down, and inky black liquid spilled out from beneath the bone. Arawn’s strangled voice shouted free, gurgling out with the black geyser of blood. He bent over screaming as it continued its terrible torrent. Manannán watched without moving, his face even paler and his grin evaporated, condensing back into an unsteady balance beam, tilting back and forth with weighty fear.
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