Cerberus Slept

  Peering at us both with his now golden eyes, he said, “I am now what I was meant to be. I do not guard death. I do not sleep as though dead either. I step into this light pure, powerless to stop its touch, but willing to embrace it fully. I walk awake now.”

  “Was it Apollo?” Hesiod mumbled.

  Cerberus shook his heads. “A curse brought about by his priests—this land hollow and dead, it awoke a darkness in me that could only be consumed by an even higher awakening of light. I believe this is why he first came to me in Hades, to unlock the light of his homeland. We must end Apollo. This land and this people—your people, are not his.”

  “Cerberus,” I said, running up to him and hugging his chest, his fur warm against my breast. He nuzzled against me and licked my head. I stepped back and looked up at him. “I saw you as a hound of light. I knew it was true.” I smiled and nodded my head.

  “But now what? Do we still search for Apollo’s temple?” Hesiod said. “Was your cleansing the key to unlocking the temple’s location? A sacrifice of darkness at the altar of light?”

  I sighed. “Why has Apollo chosen me to carry the light of Hyperborea if he wants to end me? Does he truly? Is he the one who devised this quest or is he supplanting Wyrd who herself answers a higher call? Apollo cannot think he will be able to use me to do his bidding, not after all this. Either he’s lost it, is being controlled by some other, or truly wants me to make it through this all. Perhaps none of that.” I rubbed my chin and shook my head. “The priests. I think the answer lies with the priests.” I pulled back my hair and cracked my neck, looking up at Cerberus and admiring his ascended form. The glory of his light manifested in physical truth. To think how close he was to ending in darkness. To think how close we all were. I breathed deeply and turned to Hesiod. “The temple first. Let us get out of this miscreation as soon as possible. This place is not supposed to be.”

  Hesiod walked ahead and said, “If this is the land beyond the North Wind, then let us continue north. We might as well keep moving forward. The temple likely lies ahead.”

  And so we continued north, the billowing white flowers still blooming coldly around us, and the trees staying distant and austere. The golden buildings even higher up remained hollow and vacant as they stood silent. But what would the temple be like? It would be different. It would stand out. Yet our walking was leading us nowhere. There were no markers and everything looked the same. Up close, the majesty of this place proved imagined and in jest. From afar, it certainly had been glorious, but now that we were in its midst? It was like a scarecrow lacking even its straw.

  Our walking in silence was heavy, unsure. The shadow of Cerberus’s almost death loomed, even overcome with his present brilliance. Our lack of clarity and the uncanniness of our surroundings only made it all the worse. An air of corruption seeped from the beauty of the empty illusion, the trees and flowers had long since lost their charm. This northern path we walked was not leading us anywhere. A temple hidden in this nothingness was fitting of those twisted priests. Another test, the last one to put a cap on the nonsense I’d been through. I walked ahead, letting my surroundings blur and my thoughts bloom. I’d suffered the ritual pain of my Hyperborean scars, infused with blessed light and power. I’d earned Ra’s guiding light and my heart was judged worthy. I’d proved myself in possessing the nine virtues of the Norse. I’d gone through the four circles and earned my truth. I’d torn through the quilt by overcoming the darkness of time, and finding myself in it as a speartip. And I’d left behind the lying light of the moon, supplanting it as the sun.

  What was I to do to unlock this hidden temple? What? What? Perhaps not what. What if its discovery required a negation, like the rest of this place? Our walking was not it. To cease, then? To wait? More inversion to cut through the lies. Fire and fire. Dark on dark. The nothing. Perhaps... I laughed and stopped walking, shouting at my two startled friends to stop as a sudden idea shattered my stupidity. I laughed louder, ripping the suddenly startled silence into submission and sending Hesiod into a start so sudden that he jumped around to face me. Cerberus’s now pale-pink ears and noses twitched at me.

  “We keep moving as if we could overtake the sun. Can you walk to the sun? Can you catch it?” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Cerberus said with his three pairs of golden eyes squinted tight at me.

  “You can’t catch the sun,” Hesiod said, pulling at his beard with his brow tight, curtaining his dark eyes in folds of shadow. “It shines on who it will regardless. But it seems as if its rays touch a chosen few in such a way that no man can force on his own. The sun’s kiss and caress that can only be known if manifested. Abaris had Apollo’s arrow yet not even he dared fly to the sun. We cannot look at it without blindness. Yet here we are looking for Hyperborean light, the sun’s holy power, as if we might see it with ease.” He shook his head at his foolishness in rushing forward. “So desperate was I for movement that I couldn’t see. I see, Rangabes. We can’t catch this light, this sun here, no. Not in a land that is dark and reflected. The only way to win the sun’s affection is to stay in its light and let it shine where it wills. We should wait,” Hesiod said, his eyes unlatching from whatever vision he’d imagined before him and focusing back on the two of us.

  I nodded at Hesiod in agreement. “And what is the one trial, the one aspect I have hitherto avoided and failed to prove? The ability to wait and do nothing. Further, the ability to trust in the divine will. So, let us sit here and wait. This temple will come, I am sure of it.”

  “Then we wait. May your faith not be as blind as those who look at the sun,” Cerberus said as he crossed over his two front paws and laid down to rest his heads on them.

  ***

  “What is this Apollo? How is this going to end? When is it going to end? Why are you doing this?” I said, my voice shaking with a desperate and anxious rage.

  Apollo stood there staring into the forest, and his priests glared at me, holding their lanterns high and in my direction.

  “Lugh, follow Rangabes and make sure he is on the right path,” Apollo said, pointing at the woods. Lugh ran forward, his legs crackling with blue light as the forest swallowed his charging form in darkness. “Abaris, only two of your questions are worthy of answering. The what and why are what matter here.”

  “You send Lugh and not me because you fear what I might reveal. Or is he as dark as you? What of my questions?” I said.

  “I want Rangabes to be worthy. That is why. What I’m doing is putting him on that path. You know this.”

  “You want him to be worthy yet you yourself aren’t,” I growled. Apollo stood there unbothered while his priests hissed.

  He held up his hand to silence them. “Your power and ability to survive, to leave behind the plagued Hyperborea, came from me. You still live because of my blessing. Now you question it?”

  “Your Hyperboreades oversaw the destruction here, yet you keep them in your service. I once came back here after learning from the most powerful sages and physicians in the world. I came back to heal my people. Yet when I returned, nothing remained. As if it were mere myth and I myself were a lie.” I clenched my fists and fought the urge to strike at Apollo. I snarled at his ghostly priests.

  “You keep repeating that blasphemous accusation. The plague came from sclerosis. When society remains stuck, it is better to start anew. The Hyperboreades were righteous rulers from the beginning, the plague was not their doing. You accuse without proof. They did not set the sun on the Hyperborea, the people did it themselves. Yet their pure spirit and blood can be renewed and cleansed from such filth. Rangabes is that renewal. I’ve waited a long time and have seen my fellow pantheon collapse under the weight of this modern world. All this unbelief is forcing many of my brethren to return to nature, their identities diffused into the green.”

  I scoffed, “Oh god of wisdom, where is your wisdom in reigning so sickly over a pure people? ‘Know thyself’ is what was marked on your temple at Delphi,
but did you know thyself when calling yourself wise? How can you claim to be a god of light? I see why you did what you did. Sclerosis, what nonsense. I lived there, you didn’t. You were off fornicating with some Greek pretty boys and playing your lute to enthrall them. Sclerotic is what you are. You only know how to please yourself. That is your great, so-called wisdom. You set your priests on us because you feared our murmurs. You feared our strength. We were becoming gods! Gods! As powerful as you, and with our power we saw through your degeneracy. And so, you plagued us out of weakness and envy. And the people wept and forgot what they were, and what they could become.”

  Apollo turned to face me. His eyes were burning red as flames leapt out and cast his golden body in crimson shadows. “You are an accuser who sucks at the teet of power, remaining merely mortal without the nectar of the infinite. You accuse. I should have known you’d come here. The Fates didn’t see your face. Wyrd must think it some joke to send you my way. How did you know?”

  “Are you the god of idiocy? I saw the flame tear through the sky. With Olympus empty, I’ve spent much time meditating on its frosty peaks. Centuries. I knew this would come. You made a mistake by making a god out of me.”

  Apollo’s bow flashed into his hand and his priests screeched as they flew at me with their lanterns swinging. They carried the light of plague, but they would not carry me into their eternal graves. A golden arrow burned from out of the air and into my hand, and I flung myself forward, the arrow carrying me away as my body dragged behind like the sail of a boat. The priests swung and screeched, their cold flame chilling my bones as their three lanterns just barely brushed my cloak, but I flew free from their evil reach and sped towards the forest. My vision blurred and my body whipped as I glanced back. Apollo had already let loose a volley of his deadly accurate arrows.

  “Ascend,” I whispered to my arrow, and it flew up in a direct and vertical line as Apollo’s shots struck at empty air.

  I soared into the heavens, the icy clouds cloaking me in the true frost of this land. The heat below was as artificial as that hallucination of a city. Hyperborea had been beautiful—perfect—walled in with impenetrable gold and paved with gardens flowing amongst swaying trees. The sea had licked our shores and was a most becoming brother of our homeland. This monstrosity the priests had concocted was simplistic with no originality; it was a uniform chaos that was mere pretend.

  I hoisted myself up onto my arrow, straddling it between my thighs, and hovering high. The clouds spread out before me like an ocean of snow. I skirted above them, my feet dragging lines through the clouds’ cold, wet touch. I had to find Rangabes down there. Lugh would lead him to Apollo’s trap, whatever and wherever it might be. Apollo wanted a new people for himself, which meant he would have to create a darkened and submissive will from the start. How he planned to do such a thing in Rangabes was beyond me. But I refused to let this madman pollute my peoples’ legacy any longer. This was a fight for the right to bear the sun in one’s veins. I only hoped Rangabes didn’t bleed out to darkness.

  ***

  I peered down at my prey from my perch on the high, green shrouded branch. The three of them hadn’t gone all that far into the forest before I’d been able to track them down, but they appeared to be close to solving this riddle the way they were all sitting there waiting. So, I would wait as well, for the time being.

  I smiled. Apollo was wise, and for the plan to come this far, to be so close to its fulfillment... it was maddening to sit and wait. I wanted to act. How could I, the Celtic god of the sun, not desire Rangabes’s power to be swallowed by my own? Apollo and I as the gods of a new Hyperborea while the rest of the deities faded into the background—yes! Rangabes was a vessel that neither of us could be, but neither could he be us in his mortality. The strange chord of fate that had brought him about, and that perfect will of his set into the eternal—a man such as he, at such a moment in time or outside of it, could neither be ignored nor misused. Apollo knew of Wyrd’s infatuation; he recognized that Rangabes was a sort of new Aeneas to her and that she, a so-called higher god, had spelled so many of our ends. She served a god that tired of our free reign. No matter, she was the only one I knew of that had returned to that ancient council. I was just as much a god as any other!

  I tried not to remember those distant days of submission and focused inward, nodding. Apollo, the creator of Hyperborea had seen that his ancient lineage was being resurrected in a new way. Of course, he came to me soon after. Was there any better way to seize control of this strange play of fate than to claim Rangabes as our own? All of it, this whole path merely a proving ground to glory, brought on by himself and continued by Wyrd’s harp, with Apollo’s quiet lyre strumming softly in the ether. I missed my Celtic kin, but with Arawn and the Morrígan gone, it only gave me and Apollo more control of our new nation. So close! And what brilliance, misleading all the gods!

  I chuckled, clinging to the tree with a childish glee. How I wanted to shout out our successes! It was something I never grew tired of reflecting on. Even with my forced darkening at the hands of Sulis, this reflecting on our brilliance had kept me as me through it all, even during and after our worst missteps. We’d given those other gods the promise of their power and eternal nature being carried into the finite, continuing in glory while they faded fully into light, and it was not pure deceit. It had been truth. Nobody wanted to submit again to that ancient way. There wasn’t much else one could do. We’d all fallen too far, and had risen as our own. But of course, there were those who questioned why Apollo and I did not offer ourselves up as well. Odin was killed for such resistance. Zeus vanished, resigned to his own withdraw to nature. He’d lived long in fear of the son god who’d been prophesied to take Olympus from him. So fearful was he that he forgot to fight. But Sulis fought and nearly won—I still felt the black pain of that darkness. I shivered, focusing down at the unlikely trio.

  They sat there in a circle, unmoving and silent. Wise of them, as this forest was unnatural and ancient, possessing a dark silence that if stirred too saucily, would boil over into a corruption I wouldn’t be able to comprehend or deter. Once again, Rangabes had proved resourceful and worthy of the light he continued to drink. And Cerberus, now white and pure. So, he had wrestled his darkness into submission? Apollo’s song had fallen on deaf ears then. No matter, it had been a desperate play; we’d hoped Cerberus might somehow serve us. The Fates had suggested it and we’d been foolish to listen. We’d given Rangabes another ally against us. But if it had succeeded, they’d both be in our thrall now. I suppose it had been a risk worth taking. Much like using the ancient poet as a proxy into tricking Rangabes into trusting us. It had worked at points, but our path had been too jagged and we’d cut that tie to us as well. We had our successes, but there were many failures too. Still, we were so close to the end. It was easily within our grasp. And Cerberus and his darkness were required if the temple was to be found. Apollo’s own creation, hidden in its own shadow that not even the sun god could banish. The Fates had said Cerberus was needed to break this binding. I sighed, thinking on how little we knew and how much was out of our hands.

  I had to at least respect the hero’s guile thus far. Rangabes had overcome much that we ourselves had failed to see. And this final riddle was by no means too difficult for him to solve. It was simple: Apollo’s temple couldn’t be reached just like the sun. A ray of light touched the individual based on the sun’s own accord. And was there ever such an individual as Rangabes? Smart of him to not force the inevitable. Patience—the temple would be coming and my time to act was nearing. So much could go wrong here, with just the smallest of steps away from the current of time we were attempting to dam. If only Wyrd would sing for our tune once, instead of her jealous and all-knowing god! And Abaris... he would be coming soon if he escaped Apollo’s grasp. That was something we’d both foolishly overlooked: that of the old Hyperborean returning. How were we to know that he still walked the earth, not going the same way of the gods muc
h greater than he, untrue immortal as he was?

  I looked closer at the trio, sitting so solemn and grave. All of their heads were hung low as if in prayer. I couldn’t tell if their eyes were closed but that hardly mattered. Senses were useless here—yet I felt a sudden stir in my soul as solar rays sung out from an icy tomb below the false soil. I could feel it, and I fought to cling to my branch so as not to hurl myself down to that hidden light. It sang so purely that no sound was needed. Light! It was coming. My breast swelled and my heart soared upwards, a surge of desire mixed with urgent terror at such power.

  The limb I was perched on shuddered as the trees screamed—a shrill cry, as if the whole dead race were accusing us of blasphemy. Perhaps they were, or perhaps they feared the coming light. I looked down one last time and incredibly, the three of them remained with heads bowed, unbothered by the chaotic screeching around them. My tattoos glowed blue and I leapt off my branch just as it misted away into nonbeing. I hovered with my hands burning blue, holding them down to keep me aloft in the air. And then at last as the trees faded into putrid vapor and the buildings collapsed into ash, swirling away in billows of black smoke, life sounded out once more in this icy wasteland. The howls of wolves rode the cleansed air with frigid soul, an ache of forgotten power and an ache for a new future. Gray wolves appeared all around—not as apparitions, but as if they’d already been there waiting, in all their magnificent reality.

  Rangabes and his companions stood up at the sacred sounds from the worthy wolves. They looked all around at them, but thankfully did not look above. I floated higher to avoid their glance just in case, wrapping myself in the arctic chill of curling clouds.