by Daryl Banner
“Run,” whispered Zema, her eyes wide.
It was the last word she would ever utter.
The knife drew across her throat quickly, and then Baron dumped the woman’s body to the floor. But she was not yet dead—drowning in her own blood, gagging and choking and spluttering feebly as she clutched her throat, red rushing over her fingers.
One opened mouth becomes two closed ears …
But what of one opened throat?
“We’re out of time, my brother,” warned Baal. He ignored the last moments of Zema’s truncated life as it spilled from her opened neck. “We must flee this place and this time. But you must tell us first.”
Aardgar lifted his eyebrows, trembling. Zema still lay at their feet, slowly dying. “T-Tell you what?”
“Where are they? Quickly, brother.”
They? Who were “they”? Aardgar’s face wrinkled up as he wondered what his time-walking brother was speaking of. Meanwhile, Baron calmly wiped the bloodied knife off on his drab, woolen cloak, eyeing Aardgar.
“Who?” asked Aardgar.
Zema’s free hand went for Baal’s foot, clutching at it. He kicked her away like an annoying puppy at his feet, his gaze locked on Aardgar, unbroken.
“You know exactly who,” said Baron. “The only ones who can turn this tide. The ones to whom we have been praying.” At that, Baron touched either of his shoulders, then his forehead, and then kissed his fingers, eyes closed—his sign of respect toward the Goddesses. Then his eyes flapped open. “Where do we find them, Aardgar?”
One opened mouth … Aardgar found himself once again faced with certain doom. With the onslaught of raging slumborn pushing their way through the Iron Floor and the desperate seconds ticking by, Aardgar felt the terror as real as if icicles grew upon his back.
Aardgar’s eyes dropped to the knife still in his bald brother’s hand—Baron’s withered, pale hand. The knife glimmered in the light, a streak of Zema’s blood still on its ruthless edge.
Could he trust his brothers?
Suddenly, he had an answer—a plan. It was a plan that, he felt, would either validate all his worries, or cast them to the winds with his doubts.
He knew there was a reason he ought never reveal his true Legacy.
Aardgar held out his hand. “Baron, your knife.”
Baron looked as startled as Baal did, the pair of them staring at their brother with alarm.
Aardgar gave a nod at the woman at Baal’s feet. “She is not yet dead. I was the one who let her out of the Keeping. It should be me who ends her life for good. It is only right. Let me have the knife to finish the job.”
“Aardgar,” warned Baal. “The slumborn—”
“—will wait,” Aardgar cut him off, then took a bold step toward his brother Baron, who bristled. “Knife.”
Baron gave his brother one sharp look—a look so sharp it could rival the blade that just passed over Zema’s throat—then finally gave in, reaching out and letting the knife drop onto Aardgar’s opened palm.
The blade touched his skin.
Aardgar drew in breath.
And he saw everything.
From a thousand years ago came a vivid memory—a memory restored from the dead realms of Aardgar’s mind that he had assumed was long lost:
His own father’s split open throat.
“You have the knife now,” spat Baron, his eyes darkened with annoyance. “Make an end of the traitor and tell us where the golden light has gone.”
The knife … that knife … it had its own story—a story it told Aardgar like cold, detached words on a white, unfeeling page before his widened eyes.
“Aardgar!” shouted Baal, his eyes hardening. “Tell us now! We are out of time! Tell us!”
Tell us! screamed the zealots who murdered their father, long ago. What is your sorcery!? They screamed those words as they held a knife to his father’s throat, and while his mother shouted, and while little Aardgar watched, terrified. The zealots then murdered his father by pulling a knife across his throat …
This same knife.
“Tell us!” Baal persisted, his eyes furious. “Where are they? Where are the Sisters Three??”
Aardgar kept his one mouth closed and his two ears open, just like mother told him to, long, long ago.
The same knife Aardgar now held had pulled its way across his father’s throat over a thousand years ago. It ended his father’s life … What is your sorcery!?
And Zema’s last words … Don’t say a word.
Those were his last words—my father’s.
Aardgar brought his gaze up to Baal’s frantic, beseeching one. In Baal’s eyes, he saw the zealot’s eyes. It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t imagined their faces in a thousand years, and yet there they were. The two Goddess zealots who had murdered his father—with the very knife he now held.
What is your sorcery?!
And the two of them still don’t know his Legacy. After a thousand years. They’ve been hunting his true power all along. They went to the very root of his existence in search of it, and they killed their own father for a price.
In pursuit of the Goddesses.
In pursuit of Aardgar’s true power.
In pursuit of the special light their little brother had and they were undeserving of.
Did he cause his own father’s death? Was it his fatal mistake to tell his brother Baal that his immortality actually came from the Goddess’s touch? Was his brother Baal as mistrusting of him as he was of Baal? Did he not believe the lie that Aardgar had an insignificant power?
Baal must believe I have a Legacy of great magnificence.
He’s hunted it all my life.
The truth now lay in his hand, as sharp as every blade that took the lives of every person he loved. But what should he do with it? Whose throat should kiss the metal next?
“The Goddesses are where they belong.”
Aardgar’s answer didn’t please Baal. “Might you be a bit more specific, little brother? Now is not the time to be coy when the end is near.”
“The end?” Aardgar took a step toward Baal as the noise of rebels chasing their way up the tower—mere seconds from the King’s chambers—filled the hallways outside. “The end is already upon you.”
“Upon me?” Baal’s eyes twitched, confused.
Baron gazed between them, his face hardening as he tried to figure out his brother’s scheme.
In one quick movement, Aardgar grabbed one of Baal’s bony wrists. “Safe,” he finally said, not letting go of his brother. He wouldn’t let him escape—not again. “That is where the Goddesses are.”
“Safe?” Baal shook his wrists, but couldn’t break free from Aardgar’s hold.
“They’re safe … from the likes of you,” he finished.
Baal’s eyes flashed.
Aardgar thrust the knife toward Baal’s belly.
But he missed, Baal parrying just in time to avoid the point of the deadly sharp. Baron shoved his way between them, grabbing a firm hold of Aardgar’s knife-wielding arm and shoulder, but Aardgar would not let go of Baal or the knife. His eyes burned as he grimaced and aimed the knife right where he wished it to go, but both his brothers thwarted his efforts.
Then the mob of hollering slumborn was upon them, bursting into the room with their cries of rage, their blades shimmering, and a torch or two waving their fiery, growling mouths overhead.
Aardgar turned to stare into the fury that was the rebellion. His eyes were wide and he sucked in air. The mob had bloodlust in their faces, and their fingers and weapons were ready to tear the three of them apart.
Then they fell away. The tower vanished. Aardgar felt a sudden sickness in his gut. He fell forward against Baal, losing his balance.
And then the brothers were against the wall of a dark alley between two tall buildings. Aardgar blinked and stared up, confused. Two brick behemoths towered over him on both sides. They were not in the King’s chambers anymore—or even Cloud Tower. Where had they gon
e?
“TELL US!” cried Baal. “WHERE ARE THEY?!”
Then they were ripped from the alleyway, and the three of them were falling through the night sky like a trio of comets.
Aardgar screamed into the air as it whistled past them, still clinging to Baal, Baron clutching the both of them, fingers sunk into Aardgar’s arm.
“TELL US!”
The world ripped away, and they crashed into a vendor’s cart in the middle of a busy market square at midday. The shoppers and folk nearby shrieked at their sudden appearance, squawking in scandal.
Aardgar tried all he could to strike his brother’s belly, but Baron and Baal combined were too strong, holding him back. “You killed him!!” screamed Aardgar as tears stung his eyes. “All this time! It was you two!”
“WHERE ARE THE SISTERS??”
Sickness struck his belly, and the three of them were suddenly surrounded by trees, the sky ignited in the yellowed yolk of dusk. “You won’t find the Three!” Aardgar shouted. “Neither of you will!”
“TELL US!”
“You weren’t chosen!” Tears blinded Aardgar as he tried frantically to gut his brother, no matter how many times and places Baal took them in his efforts to shake Aardgar into submission. “You and Baron will spend your whole lives seeking them, but you will never hold the light!”
Baal’s breath was sour as the same words kept blasting over Aardgar’s face. “TELL US!!”
Then they were in the back of someone’s house, crashing against an armoire, glass figurines tumbling off the side and shattering onto the floor.
Then they were atop a roof at noon, stumbling toward the edge where the three of them then fell over, plummeting toward a bustling street full of slummers.
Then they were submerged in a pool, wrestling and sloshing through heavy water, a full moon like a pale white sun beaming furiously over their drenched heads.
Then they were slamming against a wall on a grey winter morning, dark towers full of broken windows all around them, and Baal’s heaving, frantic face was so close to his brother’s that they might easily bite off one another’s tongues.
It only took one moment of Baron struggling for Aardgar’s hand to finally break free.
And then the knife plunged into Baal’s belly.
His brother’s eyes flashed open, mouth agape.
Then Aardgar felt a history snake its way inside him—a history from his brother’s own flesh, or from his robe, or from his bowels inside. He would never know what told him the story.
The story was one of Baal weeping next to his own corpse—a bloodied mess in a dark, desolate hall.
And then another story: Baal weeping next to his brother Baron’s corpse, another bloodied mess in a large, ruined plaza with no soul nearby in the dark of night.
And then Baal in a room with sweet, unknowing Baron, seated across a table from one another as they enjoyed a middle night meal. Baal, who hadn’t told his brother when either of them will die, or how. Baal, who kept secrets even from Baron.
“You want the gift of immortality to save yourself,” hissed Aardgar, his brother’s story singing its mournful song through his Legacy’s touch. Zema was right. “You think it is my power to bestow upon you. You think I’ve lied about the Goddess and my missing heart, but aren’t sure. You think—”
“You stabbed me,” rasped Baal. “Y-Your own—”
“You think I am the answer to saving you, but I am not,” stated Aardgar, still holding the knife that was now buried to the hilt in his brother. “Baron will die, just as you have seen in time. And so shall you.”
At those words, bald Baron’s eyes flitted to his brother, a storm of surprise raging in them. “Me …?” whispered Baron to Baal. “I … I am to die? And you … you knew?”
“What is your power, then??” Baal choked out, ignoring his brother and focusing all his fury on Aardgar, greed still burning in his eyes. “Out with it! Your Legacy! Do you see memories, is that it? Are you all-knowing? Or is it that the Goddess has told you these truths?”
“And you’ve known?” breathed Baron, still in shock.
“You will betray Baron in the end,” Aardgar went on, reading the dark, deceitful story from wherever it came. “Your own brother. And me. You will betray us both in the name of seeking the power of the Three … and of seeking my … sorcery.”
The word stung Baal anew. He parted his lips to speak, but then they only began to tremble. His plan was falling apart before his eyes.
It hadn’t occurred to Aardgar that Baron let go of them until he saw it in Baal’s eyes. Then Baal spoke. “No, brother. Aardgar speaks lies. I would never … I … I would never betray you. Not in a hundred years.”
“But perhaps in a thousand?” suggested Aardgar grimly, his eyes dark.
In an instant, rage overtook Baal, and he thrust his hands at Aardgar’s neck unexpectedly, strangling his brother with so much force, Aardgar felt his already fragile throat collapse, crushed in an instant.
He never knew Baal’s strength.
Startled, choking, Aardgar fell backwards, and then they were tumbling through time once again.
When they landed, it was only the two of them—Baal and Aardgar. Baron was left behind. The two of them were now flat upon a humble wooden floor of a long, long hall. It was a great hall, like the throne room from Aardgar’s distant memories …
“HELP!” cried Baal as he peeled himself away from his brother, stumbling down the hall. “I w-was attacked by this f-f-fell man! I need a healer!”
Aardgar turned onto his stomach to push himself off the floor. Speckles of blood made a trail of Baal’s departure. When Aardgar lifted his gaze fully, he found that he was, indeed, in the throne room of Atlas, yet it wasn’t the one he’d just gotten to know in the Lifted City. It was a long forgotten room, like Sanctum. A familiar room …
It couldn’t be Atlas’s first throne room, could it? The very one he helped build? The one in which he and Evanesce spent countless ages ruling side by side? He thought this place was gone. Despite all that had transpired, he felt a swell of happiness at being in this very room.
Why did Baal take them here?
“He even holds the knife!” cried Baal from down the hall as several white-cloaked healers surrounded him, protecting him, fussing over his bloodied wound. “Dangerous, this one! Dangerous!”
Aardgar parted his lips to speak, but his ancient neck had been crushed in by Baal’s stranglehold. Aardgar was a mute once again, rasping for words, choking on his own air.
“For a purse of gold!” shouted Baal, his voice going weaker by the breath. “Stabbed me! For gold!”
And then a young man stood before him, eclipsing his view of Baal and the medics.
Aardgar gazed up. His lips parted.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Take this poor beggar to a holding room, please,” the young man kindly instructed his guards. “He has lost his way. He will meet the King’s justice.”
The knife, Aardgar begged with a voiceless throat, lifting the bloodied weapon. Touch the knife, fool! Learn the truth! See it all now, a thousand years ago!
But a guard swiped the knife from his hand, and others clung to him, dragging him away. Aardgar made a choked scream that emitted no sound, fighting feebly against the guards. The young man watched him with a cool, unfeeling demeanor, a look upon his face as if he was struggling to remember something.
The knife, begged Aardgar fruitlessly in the prison of his throat. The knife! The knife, you idiot fool! Take the fucking knife!
But the throne room doors shut as he was dragged off, taking away his view of the face of young King Aardgar—a man he once knew, a man who was happy and in love, a man who had just sentenced himself to an eternity in the darkness.
A fool, whispers Aardgar in his tomb.
The Lover
The guards that he hired a thousand years ago—handpicked women and men, personal friends who had followed him in his long conquest to un
ite the twelve villages of Atlas—bound him like a common criminal in iron shackles, then sealed him away behind a great iron door until he would meet the King’s judgment.
His judgment.
And the judgment was quick. Apparently the King was told that he had a curious Legacy that allowed him to be taken apart at the limbs and he would not suffer or die. “It is decided,” young King Aardgar had said, his voice carrying to the cell where the decrepit skin-and-bone version of Aardgar sat, broken and strangled and without a soul left to trust in this world. “He shall have his power turned against him until he has learned to love his fellow man. Hatred has no place in my Atlas.”
Aardgar shook his head. I actually said those words?
He remembered not a single one of them. Were they rewriting history, or did this already happen?
He was brought to a chamber full of strangers he once knew. He struggled to remember their names. One was a woman who counseled him long ago. One was a man who doubled as a guard and as an advisor to the needs of the people in the ninth ward. There were others, but none of their names came.
But it didn’t matter their names. It was this circle of friends—this circle of strangers—who would pull him into pieces and bury him for the rest of time.
First came his arms. Each one was gently carried away, placed into a modest, wooden box, and never did he see them again. I miss my arms.
Then went his legs into longer, skinnier boxes of crude wood, nailed closed by metal, then carried off.
I miss them, too.
When his head and heartless torso was all that was left, it too was placed in a box. He stared up into the eyes of one of his nameless friends, screaming silently. The circle of half-remembered faces only stared down in pity, carrying out the orders of young King Aardgar. “Until you have learned the wrongs of your ways,” assured the closest one, the one who was about to nail shut the lid of the box over his face, “you will know nothing but the dark. Only once your crimes have been atoned for will you be freed.”
Ah, the greatest lie of all.
Then the lid covered his rasping, desperate face, and he listened as the nails drove into the splintering wood one at a time.