“Oh, we shall,” the three shadows said menacingly, a grin of flame spread across their faces as they reached for the Chaplet, when out of the fire the girl’s hand grabbed it first.
“What shadows are thee?” the girl asked as she stepped out of the flames, her voice growing in depth, her body in size. “Why did we lie to us? I, we, do not recognize the three of you.”
“For we are not the Other,” the shadows spoke. “We are Übel, Powerful and Righteous. We are beyond You.” At once a thousand shadows emerged from the flames fighting each other and themselves, tearing at their own shadowy flesh. The Other fought itself.
The three wisps grew darker and puppetry strings flowed from their fingers, piercing the nearest shades. Upon touch, the Other’s shadows became obedient to the three and the strings spread like a web. The Übel and the Other were at war. Bell and Alice saw the three shades fuse with Dahlia forming a great mass of twisted roots, insect parts and mangled appendages. An explosion followed, which knocked out the canary.
The girl, who grew sinister and threatening, attacked the mass. A flash of light and an explosion accompanied each one of her strikes. She tore at its flesh but the mangled bulk displayed its regenerative powers, growing insect armor where it once gushed wounds. The girl fought hard but the god-like bulk outmatched her. Bell and Alice tried to help but the mass swatted them away, laughing at their weakness.
“I, we are sorry,” the girl told Clementine’s parents, handing them the Chaplet. “Stop us, please, stop us.” The mass struck down the girl and she melted away into a puddle.
“Save us,” the faces cried from the walls. “Save us by knowing who we are.” The shadows became like wild beasts and began merging into one another. They grew monstrous and feral, tearing at themselves, the walls, anything that stood near. The Other became a fiend.
“The Übel killed the Other’s reason, the girl” Clementine understood. “It all makes sense. The way it’s acted, it’s defensive; it’s a frightened animal seeking calm.”
The monstrous mass began to feed on the Other’s chaotic shadows. It grew large and its shaped became more malformed, resembling a twisted demon with a great many legs and a great many arms. Its flesh twisted and spiraled into itself. Bell and Alice stepped back and the creature reached for them. “We shall take all. We shall rule all. We shall be everything,” the mass spoke.
A great light burst from the Chaplet, cutting the creature like a burning blade through ice.
“We cannot allow you to leave,” Clementine’s parents said, holding hands.
The canary came to and gazed, astonished, at what transpired. “Go,” they told him.
“But—” he tried to protest.
“Get out now,” Alice said. The canary understood and flew off into the tunnels.
The mass grew larger and wilder, screaming, “I the Übel, I am God, I am Life, I am Death, I am Existence, and I condemn you to an infinite end.” The Chaplet lit up in flame. Bell and Alice squeezed each other’s hands, exchanged a gentle kiss and just before the mass engulfed them they said, “I love you,” to one another.
A great explosion of color shook the chamber. Light shined for a moment, expanded and spiraled into a great vortex where space, time and an infinite void rested. Clementine watched the color vanish. She saw the mass scramble to flee and understood that her parents sacrificed themselves to cage the Übel, not the Other. Accepting that they sacrificed everything, including their lives, pouring all of their love into this one act, she fell to her knees and wept. Her grief turned to awe, when out of the vortex a great cage of light burst forth and taking on the shape of a dome, it encompassed a great area around the mountain, an area now known as Mundialis.
“To starve and weaken the Übel, and to still the beastly Other, my parents had to keep the power that color provides away from the both of them,” Clementine thought.
Three great slabs of stone, each one acting a cage for the three facets of the Übel, emerged from the platform. Clementine saw as the remnants of the spirits fled from the chamber: one split into two and possessed her Aunt Dahlia, trapping her in a living nightmare while the other became Ecilám; another became a regal-looking man, and the third, mimicked the Other’s reason, but instead of taking on the shape of a girl it became the strange boy in torn clothes. Clementine watched as the possessed Dahlia twitched on the floor, her conscience battling the Übel fragment deep down in her soul. At once, her aunt’s seizure stopped, she stood up and, as if on a leash, she walked across the bridge, disappearing in shadow.
Ecilám reached deep into the surrounding shadows and pulled out the Infinity Satchel. He walked up to the burnt remains of Clementine’s parents, unhinged the bag’s top flap, and placed their bodies in the swirling color.
Clementine accepted that her parents sacrificed everything for her. They sacrificed themselves so that she could grow up in peace and safety, so that she could live. They never anticipated that she would journey to witness the replay of their demise.
“We never left you,” Alice and Bell said, their spirits emerging from the platform. Clementine looked up at their glowing faces. “You need to get up now, darling,” her father said.
The fire around her died away and only the faint glow of her parent’s spirits remained.
“You have grown beautiful, Clementine,” her mother said. “An emerald does not lose its quality because it is not praised.”
“We are so sorry to have left you, Clementine,” her father began. “It wasn’t easy. At least you are alive and well, and that is all that matters. Now, it’s your job to teach and show others that kindness is a choice. Fuss not if they don’t understand at first for through your actions they will see that goodness is the key to wonder. Be kind always Clementine, because kindness is invincible, indestructible, and permanent. Do you understand?”
“I do,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I love you.”
“We love you too,” they said. “Always and forever.”
“Do you know what you must do?” her mother asked.
Clementine nodded. “I must find the three that escaped,” she said. “The Other has lost its reason. It is wild. It needs to be tamed, lassoed in, like a wild horse.”
A beastly roar echoed through the chamber. Everything grew dark and out of the blackness emerged a most horrifying face of shadow, infinite and ever-changing with unstable black eyes, mouth and nose. It gave off a great roar and the whole mountain shook. Every shadow in the chamber merged and like a giant fist, it came down upon Clementine. The Other tried to smite her, but just as all the darkness descended upon her, the handkerchief burst into colorful light and acting as a shield, it shattered the shadow which washed over Clementine.
“Find the Arcenciel Chaplet, Clementine,” her parents said. “It is hidden in the depths of your sorrows.”
“What?”
All color and light faded from the chamber. As Clementine stood up, an appendage emerged from the darkness. It knocked her off the platform. She fell and dispersed into the shadow below. In all of this, she let go of the handkerchief. Its color and light faded, and slowly, like the last fall leaf during the first snow of winter, it floated down into the abyss.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tears
Forty thousand men, clad in armor, bearing swords and bows, stood in attention before the King Consort’s balcony. They lined the streets and defensive walls of the capital and crowds, bearing bouquets of holly, mint and morning glory, came out to see their might. Cheers of encouragement and hope rang out from taverns, churches and homes.
“To you brave men,” King Consort Perow began, “I say, you are this nation’s shield against all brutishness, you are the blade that brings freedom, the sling that rains down justice on the unjust and cowardly demigods of this world. You go to war to strangle evil in its crib, to prevent further bloodshed so that the little ones of this nation can sleep in peace and the women live without dread. Our success as a nation is based
on your gumption, perseverance and courage. You are men of might, men who stand up for a greater ideal, men who stand up for the smallest and weakest of us. You are men of exemplary hope, men of daring. You are the wave of freedom that sweeps away the walls of oppression and hate. You are supermen, heroes of men because you are willing to sacrifice yourself for something bigger: this nation and its past. I ask you, great soldiers of Vivéret, mighty heroes and champions, are you willing to bring righteousness, goodness and hope back to our land? Are you ready to be the right hand of justice and slay the dragon of vileness slumbering across the border? Are you the best of the best? Are you ready to go and fight a just war?”
“Yah!” the soldiers yelled and the crowds went wild with fanfare.
“May the Windcallers bless you,” Perow said. “I salute you.” The crowds grew wilder still. The soldiers saluted their King Consort and marched down the streets and out of the Capital. Their footsteps and, the hoofsteps of their horses, echoed for miles around. Men cheered, goblets of ale in their hands. Women wept, glasses of wine in their hands. Children whistled, flowers and confetti in their hands. The whole of Vivéret celebrated the just war to come.
Perow stood upon the balcony and watched as the army slowly moved across his city. “To war you go,” he whispered. “To my glory.” He grew proud and joyous and watched the sunset and the moonrise. From beyond the horizon, a bright flash, followed by a spiraling darkness, caught his eye. A sonic boom sounded all around and a great pain, so horrid and raw, surged through his chest that he fell onto his knees. The crowds turned westward when fireworks lit up the sky, concealing the events beyond, in Mundialis.
“What was that?” he said, observing the horizon. A shriek sounds in the distance and the Pale Rider’s shadow arrives in haste. Like tattered cloth, pieces of it hung torn in the midair.
“I have the fox,” the shadow said. “I will arrive in full soon.”
“Did you feel that?” Perow asked.
“The girl descended into the valley,” the shadow said. “I can only guess as to what is happening below the mountain.”
“I need to talk to the Xis piece,” Perow said and, while getting up off the floor, the shadow faded. The King Consort crossed halls and rooms until arriving at a heavy stone door. Using the diamond key, he entered a spacious room, a cage sat in its center. Two bühos stood guard over it
“You don’t need to keep me under watch,” the canary joked. “Not by these brutes.”
“I see you’ve regained some of your vitality,” Perow smirked.
“How did you tame such mistrustful and wild creatures as the bühos,” the canary asked.
“Everyone wants something,” Perow said. “And we have the power to give it to them.”
“And what can you give a mindless beast?” the canary asked.
“Freedom.”
The canary gave a weak smile. “First, you’d have to destroy the Other, an impossible task.”
“Is it?” Perow said and the canary grew wide eyed. “Let me tell you a little secret,” Perow continued. “Remember, long ago, when the Earth man and woman arrived? I brought them the Arcenciel Chaplet, causing uproar among the noble and powerful men in charge of that war. They wanted to use it, to attack the Other. You were there, you know. They thought they can damage it, cripple it just enough so that it would flee and infect someplace other, someplace not in their backyard. But I suggested handing it over to the Other as a sigh of friendship, a sign of peace, why do you think I did so?”
The canary remembered the events under the mountain: the argument, the shadows, the betrayal. It remembered fleeing through the tunnels as the mountain shook and color faded from all things. It remembered the brightness that pulsated above the peaks and the wall of gray that descended over the land now dubbed Mundialis. It remembered the joy in the streets of the capital. “I don’t know,” the canary said.
“The Other was not always a beast, a monster. How quickly we forgot that it had reason once,” Perow said. “We destroyed it—that girl with a thousand faces—so that the thing that lives in Mundialis would grow angry and confused, so it would feel threatened and shatter the gray cage cast upon it. We were patient, but a part of us grew weary and chose to speed up the plan by sending into this world the girl whom you’ve so valiantly protected in the woods.”
The canary stepped up to the edge of the cage.
“It took us years to be absorbed into it,” Perow continued. “We were ombras once, abandoned by our owner upon his death in Olland’s infirmary. That vile sickness took him from us. We meandered among the city’s mines, hopeful that our human would return for us. He never did. But then, our greatest part returned to us from the Infinity Satchel and said, “Welcome, my dears. It’s been a while,” and we knew, we knew that we must journey to the Other and bring it here, feed it on the Men of this land. We became part of it, so that we may harvest its being. We knew not just how powerful the Other is, and we fell under its charm but no longer, we the parts most clever can finally be released of it. We can bring back our human and be his shadow again, be his everything.”
The canary stared, shocked.
“Yes,” Perow smiled. “I am a piece of it, the one powerful Übel, the sickness. As any doctor will tell you, a sickness cannot grow on its own, it needs a body to infect. By destroying the Other, by taking three pieces that escaped beyond Mundialis, beyond the deep caverns of the mountain, we shall combine in our new form. We shall be given a new life, a new flesh.”
“Destroying the Other is impossible,” the canary said. “Another would be given rise soon after. People are always afraid of others; they fear the different, the strangers, the foreigners, they fear other sexes, other races, other nations, other points of view. Otherness is constant and as long as there is life, there is otherness. Shadows, abandoned and hopeful at being understood, are bound to merge. You know that, you know that human otherness is impossible to eradicate. A placement of a freckle, a color of an eye or even the way someone smiles is precedent to difference. Make everyone the same and with time, they shall even find difference in the way they blink. The Other is indestructible.”
“We have found a way,” a cold voice said. Out of the shadow emerges a badly burnt Ecilám, holding, in one hand, a book and in the other, a limp fox.
“Is he dead?” Perow asked.
“No,” Ecilám answered. “We were instructed to keep him alive. Is the rite ready?”
“Yes,” Perow said and motioned to a small redwood table with a bowl carved into its middle. Three v-shaped channels led from the bowl to the corners where, in small grooves, sat several etchings of multicolored eyes. Stopping just short of overflowing into the channels, dark oil filled the bowl.
“Perfect,” Ecilám said.
“Where are the others?” Perow asked.
“The one is on its way, the other shall keep watch of the doorway into Earth until we’ve become one, it shall join us soon after,” Ecilám said.
“We can begin,” a voice sounded from behind them. The canary watched as a shadowy figure, sparkling with vibrant color, stepped up to the redwood table and lit the oil in the bowl.
“Eternal flame,” the figure said. “Royal blood.” Ecilám pulled out his blade, sliced the fox’s paw and handed the vulupine’s body to the figure who held it over the flames. Several drops of blood fell into the fire turning it dark green.
The fox stirred, then awoke, gazing directly at the figure. “You!” he said. “The boy.” A crescent smile spread across the figures face before it struck the fox on the head, knocking him unconscious. The figure passed the fox to Ecilám who threw the animal against the wall.
“Where did you get that?” the figure said, noticing Meditations in the rider’s hand.
“The fox had it.”
“Give me it,” the figure put out its hand and Ecilám handed it over. “This is not a good sign. She was supposed to take this with her. The memories associated with this book were to give her hope a
nd strength.” The figure gave a maddening scream so that the bühos burst into a puff of shadow and feathers. Perow and Ecilám glanced at each other fearfully. “Now I have to go and remind her not to fail.”
“Is it that important?” Perow asked.
“It’s vital,” the figure said. “You and him made sure that war came here. I and our splinter on Earth must make sure that she frees the Other.”
“I thought we’re destroying it,” Perow said.
“Freedom in flesh is what we desire,” the figure said. “It is what we shall receive but not before we take a god’s life.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” the canary said. “You’ll unleash—
“We know,” the figure said. “We’ve seen it in the satchel.” Ecilám grabbed the canary from the cage and brought it to the green flame.
“Any last words?” the figure asked.
“Love never dies,” the canary said. “And that girl that you’re all so afraid of is eternal. Not even you three can kill eternity.”
A smile spread across the figure’s face. “It is not her that we are killing,” it said and with a slash of its harp blade, the canary was no more. Shining golden fluid poured out of its wound and into the flame then, after enough of it had burned, Ecilám dropped its body into the fire.
After cutting their thumbs open, the three placed them on the edges of the table where the eye etchings sat. The oil boiled out of the bowl in the center, the flames turned multicolored and a clear shiny liquid spilled out, rushing down the channels and onto their flesh. In the thumbless corner, the liquid shot up and formed into a sphere, a dozen faces flashing across its surface. Meanwhile, the liquid fizzled upon touching the three. Their shadows elongated, twisting and turning in agony. A shriek came from the flame. The shadows stretched yet again then merged at the feet. The three gave off a gasp and suddenly, none of them cast an individual shadow but instead all shared in one.
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