by Daryl Banner
It was Thadold. Aardgar reached out to him.
“Stay back! No! … N-No!” Thadold cried out suddenly to another presence that had entered the room.
Aardgar retracted his hand, alarmed.
There was a brief scuffle, one short grunt, and then a body crashed to the floor.
Aardgar grasped at the bandages on his face and pulled at once. His brand new eyes flapped open, and the world twisted into view as brightly as the piercing of morning sunlight, despite his room being dark. I need to see. I need to see, fool! When he blinked, he discovered that the light came from a single candle carried by a middle-aged man in a blue vestment with a curiously stylish set of shoes and baggy purple pants. Upon his head rested a slanted hat. His face was smooth and handsome save a jarring gash that ran down its length—over his left eye and cutting across the left side of his lips creating a cleft.
And in the strange man’s other hand was a short sword painted in blood.
Aardgar shrunk against the bed, completely weaponless and wearing nothing but a slip of beige silk for his dignity. For some reason, it didn’t matter that he was immortal in this moment; Aardgar was terrified of the peculiar man.
“Aardgar?” he gently said, lowering his sword.
Just then, yet another man entered the room—a man far less inviting. He was bald and wore a fairly unremarkable, modest robe. He was scowling—or else his mouth was bent downward naturally like a line of kinked wire, lips thin and dry. His eyes reflected the fire from the candle, though they appeared watery and amphibious, like a frog’s.
“That is you, yes?” continued the sword-bearing man.
Aardgar wondered if he should try to speak to them. The bandages still gripped his throat like a soft, cottony stranglehold.
The next voice came from the floor. It was Thadold, who bled from the sword wound in his side. He gripped the wound feebly with two red, sticky hands. “King. M-My King Of Legend. These … These men … Th-They only mean to—”
Quicker than Aardgar could register it, the sword found a new home in Thadold’s throat, silencing him forever. When the man removed the blade, Thadold was dead.
“I am sorry, Aardgar,” murmured the man as he casually scraped the blood off his blade against the sheets of a nearby bed. “I regret very, very much the circumstance of our first introduction. But the people of this regime only meant to use you. They slayed a Queen and half of her regime before you, and had plans laid out of precisely what to do with your immortal corpse after using your presumed clout to secure their permanent spot on Atlas’s throne. Don’t mourn for them. We just came to your rescue.”
Aardgar parted his dry, dry lips to push out his first words from his tender throat. “Who are you?”
The two men stood at the foot of Aardgar’s bed, the colorful one with his candle and sword, and the other with his bald head and watery eyes. As they gazed down upon Aardgar, a dark and long-forgotten recognition began to dawn in Aardgar’s frightened eyes. He had dreamed many times more of the man who was made of water and prayers, and the other who was cloaked in flame and time.
For years and years and years, he even considered that the Goddess had lied to him all this time, that the visions were not true.
But here they stood in the flesh. Her visions made real.
“My name is Baal,” said the colorful one, “and this is Baron. And we have waited a long, long time to finally meet you, my sweet little brother.”
The Three
At the top of a tower called Cloud Tower—aptly named as it was said to kiss the clouds, what with all of Sanctum being literally “Lifted” now—Aardgar stood beside Baal, his brother in colorful silks. A brother he wasn’t even certain he had. One of two, as it turned out. In just the space of days, his whole existence changed. Again.
It had been two weeks since his brothers infiltrated Cloud Tower and slayed the others in charge. The only one who was spared was the sharp-tongued Zema, who was then put in chains and kept in a place called the King’s Keeping, which served as a royal imprisonment cell of sorts. She was still there, fed only twice a day, and without anyone else to keep her company. Despite his brothers telling him that she and her devious peers already planned Aardgar’s demise after his use to them expired, Aardgar still felt a stab of pity for her. What if she was just a pawn in someone else’s plan? What if they all were?
If it weren’t for the visions the Goddess gave him, he would have dismissed this colorful man’s claims of kinship at once. But the visions long ago did not lie; Baal and Baron were, undoubtedly, his blood brothers. He could see it in their eyes, in the shapes of their jaws and lips, in the way they held themselves. They were all three of a kind.
But Aardgar did not grow up with them. Aardgar did not experience the long centuries with them. He did not know them at all, even if they’d come to save him from yet another certain dooming fate. Still, after several lifetimes spent isolated and without a single soul to cling to, Aardgar longed for the companionship they offered.
“The city … is broken,” muttered Aardgar, eyes gazing over the Lifted City, the place he once knew as Sanctum, a safe space for his people, a place he swore would never become the elitist city that it had. “This is not the Atlas I envisioned. This is not—”
Aardgar gave into a fit of coughing just then. Baal looked upon him, then gently patted his back. “Take your time, brother.” He smiled. “Your voice needs much more time to rest. It is still young.”
Aardgar snorted as he righted himself. “You just called a thousand-year-old man’s voice ‘young’.” He eyed his brother. “I have countless questions.”
“Countless you can ask,” Baal returned. “I will answer what I can.”
“Mother and father …” Aardgar had started to speak, but just the mention of those two people felt so … alien to him. Did he even remember what they looked like? Had he dreamed so many different versions of them over the centuries that their existences were forever altered, the truth never to be known again? Still, he pushed to get his words out. “They thought you two were taken young.”
“I didn’t know the power of my Legacy. I pulled Baron with me. Forward we went,” Baal said, the story coming to him as if he’d told it a hundred times, “and backward again. Quickly, we became lost in the twists of time, much like a maze of passages with no notion of where an exit or an entrance was. You must understand, brother, even now, I am still learning how to … more precisely aim my time-walking. It is inexact. It deceives me occasionally. I have made … mistakes.”
“Mistakes …?” echoed Aardgar, studying every emotion that passed over his brother’s face. Were they genuine? Was he being deceived all over again? He needed to trust his brother. He had no one else in the world. “Tell me of these mistakes you’ve made.”
“There are a plethora. Even our arrival here, we were off by a few days. We waited, the pair of us, until the right time found us. There is always a right time. A perfect time.” Baal picked at his nails, flicking the bits he peeled off over the ledge of the balcony upon which they stood. Aardgar winced as he watched Baal. “You are wondering why I never came back to see mother and father, or to discover your existence. That is why. I simply could not find them. Even finding you—”
“But if you couldn’t find them, how did you learn of my existence?” Aardgar countered.
Baal smirked, amused. “If I told you, you would not believe me.”
Aardgar faced his brother. “You may be quite surprised by what I am willing to believe, after all I have had the displeasure of seeing.”
Baal let out a short laugh, then nodded. “Very well, then. I learned of your existence … from you.”
Aardgar did not expect that answer. “Me?”
“Many, many years from now. I found you during a dark, dark time in our future.”
“Dark. Always dark.”
“The city was broken. More so than it is now.”
“And I was there?”
“Indeed. Our
beautiful city was broken into five pieces. Five pieces ruled by five kings. You, my dear brother, are one of them.”
Aardgar clutched at the hole in his chest. The jerking of his heart was an illusion, since he had no heart at all. Just after reuniting with his brothers, verified by a vision from the Goddess, he was now about to remember the third part of the vision—the part that involved him with an electric crown upon his head and two beautiful women. But he would not say it; he wanted to hear it from his brother’s lips, if that future was still to come by the Sisters’ dreams.
“You, dear brother, were on … the hunt for me,” Baal explained. “You wished to reunite so that we could conquer the other four kings. And when I learned of your history, of your past, and the birth of Atlas as you recalled it … I knew it was true. You were my long-lost brother. ‘Find me at the second fall of Atlas,’ you had told me. ‘Find me and rid me of the poisonous hearts that threatened to deceive me in my worst state of mind and body.’ And so here it is, dear brother, that I’ve come to save you from uncertain fates.”
Aardgar could not fathom what his brother was telling him. Four other kings. Dark futures. Now he was expected to believe that he himself sent his brothers to find him?
“You ought to return to the start of it all,” Aardgar said, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “When the golden light found me and took our dear father from us.”
“You told me of the golden light already.”
Aardgar’s eyes flashed as he faced Baal again, alarmed.
What else did he tell Baal in the future? What all had he so quickly revealed?
“And how it killed our parents, one at a time,” Baal went on. “First father because of angry, Goddess-loving zealots. And dear mother as she slowly lost her mind in her deep, despairing grief. I’m afraid we can’t help them or stop what has passed, Aardgar. Now, after all that’s passed, it’d be irresponsible to try finding them again. Dangerous, even.”
“Even after all that’s passed?” Aardgar squinted as he followed his brother’s logic. “When one walks through time, isn’t the order of events … irrelevant? Cannot you influence time however you wish?”
“That would be irresponsible. It is not so easy to push time here and there, to inspire events, to affect pasts and futures … especially when traveling back. It is too messy.”
“Traveling back. Right. And yet here you are,” Aardgar argued, “having traveled back to me from … from a deadly, dark future in an attempt to change that future. After being warned by … me. Forgive my doubt, but I feel your so-called logic is contradicting itself.”
“I am not perfect. I don’t have answers. Like I said, I have made many mistakes already. Look at my face,” he said with a gesture toward the ugly scar that raced down its length. “Baron, too. Oh, poor Baron, all of the mistakes he’s made. We are not enough, the pair of us, to stop what is to come. We need you, brother. It takes three to … find three.”
“Find three?”
Baal looked off into the sky, a flicker of excitement chasing through his eyes. “Oh, Three Sister save us …”
The words froze him. Three Sister.
“I know,” Baal added quickly, but still did not look at his brother anymore, his eyes bound skyward. “You fear them. The golden light, yes? You’ve always feared them, all your long, weary life. Fear, fear, fear. But you were once touched by them. This much, I know.”
Aardgar didn’t speak. He kept his one mouth shut and his two ears open. One mouth shut. Two ears open.
“Silent?” Baal smirked. “The three of us … you, me, and our tortured Baron. We are the ones who truly run this city. I am the master of time. Baron is the master of life. You, my dear brother, my dear immortal brother, you are a master over death.” Baal threw a hand upon Aardgar’s shoulder, which made him grow rigid. He leaned in close. “It is Three Brother the people ought to worship. It is we who own this world … now that Three Sister have abandoned it.”
Aardgar glanced over his shoulder at his other brother Baron, who was on the floor in the King’s chambers with his eyes closed and his sweaty bald head cradled between his rigid fingers in a state of intense concentration. Brooding and stoic, Baron was far less friendly than his colorful other brother, always scowling and serious. Aardgar had quite a journey of his own through the unforgiving claws of time. What sort of journey had they had, skipping through time at any pace they wished, to whatever destination—no matter how “inexact”—that they so desired?
“You have the power to walk through time.”
Baal tilted his head. “Are you confused? We’ve long since established that already. And you, my brother, have the power to live through all of time. Immortality. Forever surviving. That is your Legacy.”
Aardgar hesitated, gazing out at the dark city below. Apparently, future Aardgar did not reveal all the truth. He had to assume there was a reason his future self held back the truth—if he was to believe his brother’s claims.
And here Aardgar was, yet again, feeling a sharp tinge of protectiveness he could not easily ignore, knowing it important for some unnamed reason to not reveal his true Legacy of history’s touch … or the truth of his immortality—that it all had to do with a certain golden otherworldly woman who literally held his heart in her hands.
“Yes,” agreed Aardgar after his brief, tense moment of hesitation. “And if that’s—”
“You’re wondering why I’ve come at this exact time to rescue you,” Baal said, pulling out the unspoken thoughts from Aardgar’s mouth. They sounded slightly harsher in Baal’s voice. “You mistrust your brothers.”
He had to answer carefully. “I have been deceived many times in my long life. It isn’t mistrust I feel.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is history. History … as it repeats, repeats, repeats.” Aardgar faced him. “And repeats again.”
“You and I both know of histories repeating, yes. You have lived it. I have surveyed it. But there’s a thing I know of that you don’t: futures.” Baal gave him a rueful smile. “And our purpose is to save that very future.”
“Me, a King again.”
“And I’ve lived it a few times, this future. Baron has, too. As have you, my brother, the only one of us who was touched by the golden light. She and her sisters are the reason our lives have been torn asunder. Her and her golden light …” His tone changed. “They aren’t saving this world. They are trying to control it. It’s time we end the reign of the selfish, greedy Goddesses. That is why we are here. Three Brother must stand against Three Sister. And in order to do that, we must find them.”
Days of back-and-forth banter and securing the Keep, and at last, his brothers’ purpose for being here revealed its cold head. Aardgar felt a deep pang of fear, primal fear, bone-loosening fear, at the mention of ever finding that cursed being of light again. He even dared to forget the name he called her. He even dared to forget her face. He even dared to forget the electricity that ran through him by the soft touch of her long, ethereal fingertips.
The night that the Goddess showed her true wrath still burned in golden anger in Aardgar’s mind. Maybe half of his dreams were of her, whether he admitted it or not. Maybe he never truly allowed himself to forget her, even if he so wanted to.
The name came out of his mouth like pus from a wound. “Evanesce …”
Baal lifted his brow. “What was that?”
If Aardgar ever saw the woman again, he swore he would end her however he could. Yes, it was an impossible task. Yes, it was something that even the powerful three of them could never hope to achieve. But Aardgar was willing to help his brothers in this task no matter what it cost, even if they were utterly destroyed in the process. At least my long, weary existence would mean something.
“We will find her,” Aardgar then swore, a different sort of fire burning in his eyes. “We will find her … and we will quash out her golden light for good.”
The Two
Every morning and every ni
ght, Aardgar watched the glorious city he helped build from the love in his heart for a woman named Evanesce slowly crumble before his eyes.
He didn’t care. His happiness no longer came from a city or its people. Not anymore.
The only thing he wanted to see was the end of the Goddess who gave him everything and then took it all away when she plunged her wicked, golden hand into his chest.
Months passed just as fast as the centuries had for Aardgar the Immortal. Together with his reunited brothers, the Three ruled over what little order remained in the Last City of Atlas.
They had acquired a slew of brave Lifted citizens who fought to protect the Keep and the King that ruled: King Aardgar, King of Atlas for the second time in his long life. The Twice King. The Immortal King. The Risen Again King.
King of what? Aardgar wonders bitterly, thinking on the way he felt every morning as he gazed out of the windows of Cloud Tower at the unruly, tumultuous city below. King of ruins. King of disunity. King of the beginning of the end.
Aardgar sat upon the throne in a ridiculously and unnecessarily long, glass hall—what has become of my humble Keep?—but he didn’t feel like a King at all. The people wanted no one ruling over them any longer. They had suffered enough injustices under the corrupt fists of previous Kings and Queens of Atlas. It didn’t matter his intentions; he would be blamed just the same for the vileness that had poisoned Sanctum. He often wondered if the people even believed he was the real Aardgar, or if they were as skeptical as the Council was the day he was brought to Cloud Tower, blind and mute and lost in the world.
Despite what the histories would one day read, Aardgar did not rule alone. He ruled alongside his two brothers, who preferred to counsel in secret. Baal had thought his known presence would somehow disrupt the delicate, fragile flow of time, and Baron’s brooding demeanor would not serve to earn any person’s trust.
Baal and Baron had different approaches to finding the Goddesses. Baal hunted for them by studying the books that filled the royal library, positing where they might be, if they even occupied a physical location in our world. Baron chose a more spiritual method, taking to his knobby knees every day to pray. Three hours he spent day and night, wishing and whispering to himself in the privacy of a meeting chamber near the throne room. He would even sometimes bring an item of tribute to his hand as he prayed, offering it in the name of the Goddesses. “Hear my plea …” he’d moan.