***
On Apollo’s arrow, I shined like a pillar of light; a gold wake stretched from my ascending flight down to the sea of cold clouds below. I couldn’t cease my climb yet, for Apollo wouldn’t let me go so easily. His ghastly priests were probably already scouring the forest. The air snapped at me with icy teeth, yet my aura of light fueled by Apollo’s arrow warmed my soul with a perfect peace. The atmosphere thinned as I climbed and the frosted scent of arctic air was sharp against my nostrils.
As my arrow arose in its fiery pillar, the urge to ascend forever was overwhelming. My will resisted having to leave the light and stop my flight—the glory was too much! With great effort, I held my breath and clenched my chest, and the light crumbled off of me like dust, and my flight ceased and sharpened to a hovering standstill.
I shook as the sudden reality of my mortality overwhelmed my being, and as I shivered and clung to the arrow, seated on it like a child hanging off its chair, a tear drew itself out like blood and trickled down my cheek, collapsing off my chin down towards the clouds, lost in the haze of the heavens. I hadn’t flown so in tune with that immortal light since I’d fled Hyperborea in desperate search of my peoples’ salvation. Now the only thing salvific was Rangabes’s beating heart, and Apollo wanted to suck it dry to a shriveled standstill. My immortality was a mortal curse. Not true. I didn’t quite understand it myself, but it was a trick of being so near to Apollo’s light with this arrow. But my immortality felt like an always dying, without release. I sighed. A release was coming at last. I was here to protect these waters. I’d spoken with Wyrd. I’d listened to St. Michael; he told me that this was decreed. I swallowed, accepting the fate of death that would undoubtedly come. But not yet. Not yet.
The frigid peace of this empty arctic sky was of a hollow kind. As if this part of the world had given up, and in its lying down, in its last sigh of rest, an uneasy and somber peace would forever remain in the pure air that was once breathed by so many here. The blanket of white clouds was billowing so thick below me that it looked like an ocean overflowed with cottony snow, softening the darkness of the desolation beneath it all. My family and friends, my people and civilization, gone in an instant. Those that escaped spread their blood thin through the other peoples, and in my search for salvation, I did not heed the call to sire one of my own. Cursed with this mortal immortality, I longed for a moment of worth. It was coming now, and this silence, this shivering peace had to be thawed and melted into a lava this land hadn’t seen in many millennia. It was my destiny to burn. For I’d lived as a flicker, and it was past time that I used my remaining flame to make a difference.
I breathed heavy and aimed my arrow down, slowly descending as I searched for Lugh. If the priests came after me, their combined might would be too much along with the Celtic sun god. But if I faced him alone, with Michael’s sword alight in my spirit, I could cut through his darkened sun. He and Apollo both were Chthonic now. They belonged in the darkness, in the underworld of unliving. They lived not, they merely drained the world of glory like lunar leeches. What had happened to the sun? The good solar gods had bowed to Rangabes and offered him what remained of their diminished might. They had not fallen for Apollo’s plans like he undoubtedly thought they had. They’d done it out of goodwill and honor.
I lowered myself down further, the lazily curled clouds begging to be disturbed. I watched for any sign of movement, but if there was any, it surely was beneath. For Lugh to spy he’d have to ascend, but how high, I couldn’t guess. I saw nothing, but then music of indescribable glory tore through the clouds below. I felt myself fall into infinite peace, while the finite me lowered steeper to get closer to such glorious song.
The clouds still sheeted below, shielding me from what a glorious sight those musicians must be. If the earth could sing, this would be her song. Better yet, if the sun sang, this would be his song serenading the worth of his earth. I stopped myself just above the clouds, their thinning swirl tantalizing me with what might lie below. But it was not for me. It was for Rangabes. I had failed that once immaculate temple, its seven pillars holding up an impossible rotunda that towered like the dome of the heavens. Whatever it was now, I deserved not to see it aflame once more. I was here to see off Lugh, and that was it. I let my toes dip into the cool bath of fog, letting the chill rise through my body and freeze out the immortal music carrying me where I didn’t belong and to what I wasn’t worthy of—not until I killed Lugh. And even that wouldn’t be enough to excuse my lingering existence of inaction. My heart thudded faster at the thought of Lugh. It beat and rattled at my bones as if screaming for a release from the cage of my breast. Its terror at failing in the heat of this song was a welcome stirring, it pulled me further from the glories below.
The song was mercifully ending, and as its throes of life went through my dead ears, I sighed with the last note as it breathed itself into the empty sky. And there below me, his head emerging from the white clouds like Dionysus from Zeus’s thigh—Lugh floated upwards with his hands aglow in blue light and pressed downwards. He lofted himself higher and the clouds’ cool grasp released him as its tendrilled grip dissipated. No doubt he hid above the clouds now that the song had cleared. He couldn’t act until the light was possessed by Rangabes. So, the snake had come to slither in the shadows.
I silently drifted my arrow backwards and up, away from where he’d emerged several feet in front and below. He hadn’t turned to look behind him yet, and he appeared lost in the afterglow of the glories he’d witnessed, no doubt wondering if his course was the right one. The light of Hyperborea chose her own, and her silence for both Lugh and Apollo was telling enough. I aimed the arrow’s golden point just below Lugh’s scarlet topknot and filled myself with the blaze of the light’s energy. I shot forward straight and true.
Lugh turned his head at my burning form and threw up his hands in a clap of blue thunder. We exploded together in torn blue-golden light, and were both throttled backwards. I clung to my arrow and hoisted myself back on, and Lugh’s whole body glowed blue as he hovered there with supernova, white-pitted eyes. No words were needed, and we whipped at each other like wasps in the air. He blocked my arrow’s point as I flew, and I dodged his sweeping bursts of blue thunder. My arrow alone wouldn’t be enough, it was time to show him why I’d been known as the supreme magician in my day, and not just for healing!
My cloak billowed out behind me, shimmering purple as my eyes and fingertips crackled with pink-purple lightning. I shot out my violet light in veins of violent, forking bolts, and my arrow burst forward for another gold-streaked attack. Lugh soared upwards in a flash of blue, and dove back down at my hurtling arrow. I shot lightning up at him but he absorbed my attacks with blue orbed light in his hands as he tore down at me. I dropped off my arrow and with both hands, yanked its point upwards by the tail just as Lugh crashed into me. The tip of my arrow pierced right through his throat, but the collision jarred my grip loose and I fell. As I dropped like a cut anchor at sea, I smiled up at the death that glazed the face of Lugh as he and Apollo’s arrow tumbled right after me. The cold swallowing of the clouds was a welcome respite as I fell to my death.
***
The pillars collapsed as we finished our embrace. I stood now as Samuel and she as Columbia, and we reflected each other in our eyes. The red barrier of fire flamed out with the pillars’ destruction, and Cerberus and Hesiod came surging forward, their anxiety announced in each of their harried steps.
“Who... What happened?” Hesiod called out.
“This woman?” Cerberus said, his thoughts only for Hesiod and I.
“She is Columbia and she is my light—the light of our future people and the light of our past. The forever light of the shining now!” I cried out, leaning in again to kiss her upturned nose, so delicate and short.
“Rangabes? Is this true? Was this what you fought for in the flame of this now fallen temple?” Cerberus said, again, only to Hesiod and I.
“Speak to all of us
friend, do not leave her out. And I am no longer Rangabes, but Samuel. As Simon became Peter, so I must become this new rock. God heard my cries in the deep, in the desolation of Tartarus. He heard. We will not be forgotten. A rebirth is needed for myself, just as a rebirth is needed for Hyperborea.”
“My apologies,” Cerberus said, bowing his heads.
“Noble hound, do not apologize. We need your fearless fury,” Columbia said.
“Rangabes?” Hesiod said, his voice creaking with hurt and confusion. “Your name? This woman? All in an instant?” He stood in front of me now with a grim look of defeat sagging his body.
I took his taloned hand, cold to the touch, and his other into my own, and looked into his olive eyes. “I am still me, but I must be someone new. Rangabes stands as a relic of a fallen empire, a city that failed. Samuel is for a new people, a land that will live on. You are still my brother Hesiod. But this renewal is needed, for to remain as Rangabes is to stay chained to the yoke of Apollo and an empire that no longer is. And we both know that Apollo’s yoke is one best forgotten.”
Hesiod nodded and pressed his forehead against mine. There seemed to be a finality in the gesture—a farewell. Before I could examine the sense of foreboding further, a blurred body fell from the sky and landed with a sudden, cracking thud, followed by another body slamming down right behind it. Lugh was crushed, his head split like a rotten melon with Apollo’s arrow pierced through his neck. Abaris laid next to him with his violet robe pooled around him like a moonlit pond. He looked untouched and undisturbed by his plummet. He lay there on his back with his head tilted and his eyes closed as if he were in a deep slumber.
Columbia leaned over his body, and kissed his forehead. His eyes fluttered open and he smiled up at her.
“You have found him worthy?” he murmured, his eyes barely open.
“Yes. And you are worthy as well. Sleep, Abaris. For you, the last Hyperborean, served our people and light well. Your love will live on. Embrace the mortality you once lost. Embrace the true home of the infinite.” She reached down to hold his hands.
“I leave behind my cloak, madame. Take it and make it yours. Stained red with my blood, purified with white and snowy light, and branded with the blue of the seas I flew over all those years. The purple is gone. Columbia, great light of Hyperborea, carry it forward. May this one act make me worthy of joining St. Michael’s army.”
“You are worthy, great sage and healer. Abaris, rest now, true Hyperborean man.” She kissed him again and lightly pressed the center of his forehead.
He looked up with a sudden burst of life and love flaming within his deep eyes, like an infant greeting the first light of its mother’s face. His body sank into the purple folds of his cloak and he vanished into them. The cloak gathered around itself like a serpent, shimmering with colors flowing through it in a rainbow-like vortex until it stretched itself out, then shrunk, then reached up towards Columbia as if alive. Its color settled into red, white, and blue, and it snaked onto Columbia’s outstretched arm and spread over her like vines over a temple.
The cloak became a robe-like dress, like one an ancient Greek goddess might wear. Columbia’s perfect, sloped shoulders remained bared as thin straps of striped red spread out into a white top, with the bottom of the dress blue. A new goddess for a new people. I took her hand and pulled her close, running my fingers through her rich, brown-cinnamon hair as I reveled in the perfect beauty of her being.
“Apollo and his priests are all that remain. This is the path he wanted me on, but he will not be my final destination.” I kissed Columbia and turned to the horizon.
Apollo rode forward in his chariot, its bronze gleaming with gold, its four white-winged horses casually trotting forward through the snow, lightly carrying him behind. The three Hyperboreades sat behind him, their lanterns held up as if it were night.
The four of us stood tall and still, ready for a final end to our Chthonic journey. Apollo’s dark sun was set to never rise again—I would make sure of it. The chariot approached, the horses’ slow gallop scraping through the icy snow; it was an oddly peaceful approach, like that of a distant and passing storm—the foreboding remained.
“Congratulations, Rangabes,” Apollo said, his voice tight and his face strained as he descended from his chariot. His forced joy wasn’t fooling anyone, not even himself. His priests drifted after him, floating behind.
“I am Samuel,” I responded.
Apollo squinted, and seemed to just then notice Columbia standing next to me. “You chose him? You chose him over me? I am your lord,” he said. “But the deposit has been made. Time is met, and Rangabes is ripe. I am your god.”
“I guarded my people and land. And your people, your Hyperboreades, destroyed us. You are not the sun, Apollo. The sun is already in the sky.” She pointed up at the pallid, winter orb, still brilliant even in this arctic desolation. “The sun is my light, not you. We existed apart from you, and when we were together, there was a thriving. But your greed is why your kind has fallen from its heights. Olympus belongs to the Other now. It was always the Lord’s and so were you. Hyperborea is His sun.”
“Rangabes, is this how you choose your end? I’ve brought life to you and Hesiod, guided your path. And now this so-called light, she speaks blasphemy,” he said, almost pleading as he held his arms out at me.
“We’ve heard many different stories. But Apollo, your light is of the dark. You sought to guide us into your own shadow. You knew that was the only way to survive,” I said.
“You are all that remains,” Cerberus said.
“I awoke you for a reason. Why would I take on treason after waking you to the light? All of you... how can you not see that I helped guide you? And now Lugh lies dead. Is this what you wanted?”
“Wyrd showed me the promised land. In her true light, I saw you for what you were, a mere reflection, dimmed and untrue—of the moon.” I stepped forward, and stared into his yellowing face, the gold paling at my accusation. His priests waited, their faces dead and ghostly, their lanterns propped up and unmoving.
Hesiod pointed a long talon at Apollo and said, “He is not your avatar and there is no taking his light. You deceive!”
Columbia nodded and said, “I’ve given him my own light now, and he has the last of the solar gods’ blazing power smoldering his soul. It would consume you, Apollo. You who are drawn by fear. You who try to supersede the Fates and steal Wyrd’s strange-stringed eternal lyre from her. Only she can play it in her designated station. You saw Rangabes’s destiny of power, and you feared it and sought to make it your own.”
“Empty accusations,” he said.
I laughed. “Empty words. You could only take my power if I submitted to yours. But why would I do that? I stand on the towering foundation of my forefathers. The same foundation you and your priests sought to tear down,” I said.
“Hesiod, have you forgotten our long time spent in the dark? Have you forgotten the second chance I’ve given you?” Apollo said, turning to the poet.
“It was not yours to will or give. I am my own man.” Hesiod spat on the ground, the hiss of his phlegm sizzled in the frost and silence, the snow welcoming it with haste.
With even greater haste and in a terrible, lightning quick motion, Apollo’s bow flashed into his arms, already strung. He pulled back the bow so fast that by the time I even yelled, the arrow tore through the quiet and shattered Hesiod’s fiery robe, piercing right through to his heart. He collapsed, his face drained and blank, not even sure he was dead; he had no time to register the sudden killing blow.
I growled, and my axe appeared in my hand as I sprang like a tiger at Apollo. The three Hyperboreades soared in front of him, thrusting their lanterns at my biting attack. My axe sparked against their ghostly blue lights, showering me in burning flecks of silver. They surrounded me and I roared in fury as Apollo remained out of reach. I vaguely was aware of his golden arrows flying out at the rest of my company, but I couldn’t see if they hit thei
r mark, as the priests required my full attention. They swung their lanterns down at me like maces and moved with such speed that as I swung my axe, I could only catch air, not even managing to clash with their lanterns. As my rage cooled and converted to clarity, I realized they were merely keeping me busy. Their speed and strength surely could have overpowered me. Perhaps Apollo needed me alive after all. With this in mind, I sprang backwards and rolled over while blocking their lanterns, stepping back towards Columbia and Cerberus.
I focused my power and sought to send my marks aglow, but was stunned to find them still empty. What had Columbia done to me? I shuddered, realizing I was alone here with my mortality. Could Apollo have been true all along? What kind of man was I doubting the Lord for a fallen god? And Columbia. There was a purpose, but these useless thoughts coursing through my mind only hastened my retreat. Thankfully, Cerberus and Columbia appeared untouched.
Columbia had climbed onto Cerberus’s back, and his snakes whipped about, biting and swallowing arrows like anacondas, apparently unaffected. Cerberus’s three heads were spitting out jets of white flame that shielded them well.
“Columbia!” I shouted over the tearing of the arrows and roaring of flame. “My power is diffused!” I blocked the priests swinging lights as they followed my retreat. I ducked and dodged, fully aware that they still sought to distract me. The fools!
“No! Samuel, remember your new name.” She called down upon me with grace and confidence, as if we weren’t under attack. “True immortality requires mortality! Only one can possess perfection of both. The promised land, and the light you carry, is your soul. Abram to Abraham! Those marks are vacated, because you’ve become who you are and who you were meant to be.”
“Couldn’t it have waited?” I joked, gritting my teeth and spinning out of the priestly gnats’ endless prattling.
I tensed, and yelled out with anger. Hesiod, my brother, the man who’d awoken me and given me purpose once more; the man who loved me through this whole nightmare! Now he lay there dead and torn away by the whim of a selfish god.
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