HAGEN: 1. Revelations

by Jadhe HAMILTON

  During her fifth meditation session with the old man, she suddenly opened her eyes, unable to close them again. Facing her, Stanislas sat like a Buddha, in deep meditation.

  Ever since she had met him, a question had been burning on her lips, but she had never dared pronounce it. However, as she spent her days by the old man's side, what had once been taboo for her, gradually became a mystery that she was determined to solve:

  “Stanislas,” she began, suddenly taking the plunge.

  The old man with the drooping eyelids remained concentrated on his meditation, but answered her nonetheless, in a faraway voice:

  “I’m listening.”

  “Why did you choose a blind body?”

  The old man smiled, stretching his thin wrinkled lips. Now that she had been working with him for a while, she knew his face by heart, from his protruding aquiline nose to the depth of his empty eye sockets. She had become accustomed to his limp eyelids and spaced eyelashes that hung heavily into the void. She was no longer afraid to look him, and she was no longer afraid of what his reaction might be if she asked.

  Pleased that she finally had the nerve to ask the question, Stanislas couldn’t stop smiling. After a few long moments, he finally answered her in his usual serene, albeit mischievous voice:

  “I wasn’t always blind. I was born with quite an ordinary body for a legionary.”

  Tara’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “But then...” she said, horrified. “Did a demon do this to you?”

  Stanislas' smile faded:

  “Indirectly, yes.”

  Tara frowned. She didn't understand. Faced with her silence, he said:

  “As I'm sure you’re aware, I'm the one who taught Hugo the art of surgery...”

  Stanislas paused, before resuming in a much lower, almost trembling voice:

  “But I also raised him, which is why I feel a very powerful paternal love for Hugo in this lifetime...”

  Touched by his confession, Tara listened to him in silence. She had come to understand that Hugo’s love for Stanislas was equally as strong. On many occasions, she had noticed how important he was to him. Every word spoken by his adoptive father was accepted as the gospel truth, and a reproach from Stanislas had far more impact on the cockerel-like gladiator than any disapproval from Emily, his archangel.

  After a painful silence, Stanislas confided in her in a voice that moved Tara's heart:

  “One day I met a woman... I was already a bit old at the time, but she was the same age as me. Her aura captivated me like no other charm in life had ever captivated me before. When we were together, I felt a happiness and joy that I had never felt before in thousands of years of existence, not even in the Sphere, our Paradise.”

  “You fell in love.”

  “Yes, very much so,” confirmed Stanislas, who seemed to be severely condemning himself. “So in love that a few months later, I had the dreadful idea of presenting her to Hugo...”

  He was silent. His lips contorted, giving him a gloomy and painful expression.

  “It was a little over ten years ago. Hugo had just had his Revelation... One day, as I was leaving on a mission with Emily and Mark, I left Hugo alone with this woman...”

  He closed his mouth abruptly, as if not to let out the pain of the memories that rekindled within him.

  “When I got back home,” he resumed after a short silence, “I found Hugo lying on the floor with his chest torn open. This woman, or rather this monster, was kneeling beside him with eyes that I had never seen before, not even after thousands of years of war against the demons. She was about to tear his heart out.”

  Tara's blood froze.

  “Fortunately, I reacted quickly. She didn't have time to finish the job. Instead, she died screaming horrifically.”

  Stanislas fell silent, terrified by the images that passed through his mind.

  “I hadn’t been able to see that she was a demon,” he concluded, in a voice full of remorse. “I had been blinded by her the whole time... Even though we were so close... She knew of course... She had used me to infiltrate our regiment, and I had allowed her to do so...”

  Tormented by the vision of Hugo bathing in his blood, he nervously rubbed his knees before resuming in a livelier voice:

  “That day, I swore I would never be blinded by anything or anyone again, so I gouged out the eyes that had kept me from seeing... It was one of my wisest decisions, and since then, I’ve been able to see better than ever before.”

  He fell silent, moved by his memories. Shocked, Tara had listened to every word with both horror and compassion. She could never have imagined such a story. Stanislas had shown so much courage. There was no doubt that he loved Hugo like a father.

  After having observed a religious silence, Stanislas suddenly exclaimed, as if to break the gloomy atmosphere that had set in:

  “Come on Tara, it's time to get back to work.”

  With this, he took a deep breath and returned to his Buddha pose. Troubled by what she had just learned, Tara found it difficult to concentrate. Suddenly, her respect for this wise man had grown tenfold. From now on, she would consider him with utmost respect. And she would never question him about his past again, for fear of reopening wounds she didn’t know existed.

  In the days that followed, Emily continued depriving her of food as she had already been doing for over 2 weeks. At the same time, Tara continued her strenuous workouts every day, so much so that she had stopped counting her hours of suffering. But, to her delight, the infernal rhythm was finally bearing fruit. Exactly three weeks after her training began, Van der Worthen greeted her one morning by handing her a scale:

  “You’ll weigh yourself tonight, after your workout with Nina and before eating. Starting now, you'll weigh yourself at the end of every week and report back to me with the results.”

  Tara took the scale without saying a word and set it down on the marble floor in her bathroom. That evening, the moment of truth arrived. Anxious, she climbed on the scale, praying that the arrow would show several pounds less than it had the last time she weighed herself. She knew that if she hadn’t lost enough, Emily would surely not be kind to her.

  Taking a deep breath, she climbed on the scale, completely naked. She who had never paid attention to the numbers on a scale before, was now afraid of being "too fat" for her archangel. The red arrow moved at full speed and had trouble stopping. Her heart pounded as the arrow oscillated between 125 and 114 pounds. Finally, it started to slow down before coming to a complete stop: 117 pounds. Tara couldn’t help but smile, relieved. She had lost height pounds in only three weeks. She was proud of herself. And when she announced the news to Van der Worthen, she seemed relieved too. All her efforts were paying off.

  Once the fear had dissipated, Tara went back to her room to take a shower, but before getting in, she took the time to contemplate her naked body in the mirror and take in the changes to her physique. Sadly, she realized that her generous breasts had already started to reduce in size, along with her thighs and arms which had gotten slightly firmer. Even though she didn’t want to lose weight, the demanding exercise program with Nina and the drastically reduced food portions imposed on her by the missionaries, was pumping all her energy. She couldn’t stop her body from changing. She would have to accept it.

  She continued the same routine for another three weeks: two days of physical training, running and doing muscle-building exercises, followed by a day of rest which was focused on breathing and self-awareness exercises. By the end of the sixth week, she had doubled her running speed. She was much thinner and much lighter. She was in good physical condition and her breathing was much more efficient.

  Instead of drinking fresh water, she drank only the natural herbal potion that Emily prepared for her to eliminate fat and toxins. It was proving to be very effective. This preparation combined with intensive exercise and a limited diet had helped Tara lose almost 18 pounds in six weeks. Nonetheless, she was worried that she would en
d up losing her self-confidence if the weight loss continued; a prospect that didn’t please her at all.

  Despite all that, there were also noticeable changes in her state of mind, and Tara was both surprised and satisfied. In the beginning, when she had just started training with the missionaries, she dreamed all day long of pastries, cheese and good food of all sorts. She, who had always eaten healthily, dreamed of eating chocolate éclairs, cream cakes, crispy fries and caramel sweets. Her bulimic cravings had almost made her lose her mind. Fortunately, the breathing exercises and yoga with Stanislas had helped her overcome her hunger. Her body’s suffering had finally become secondary. She had managed, thanks to the physical agony, to develop the power of her mind and to direct her emotions: what she experienced no longer made her suffer. After six weeks, she was able to distinguish each of her emotions, to understand why she felt the way she did, and, by the same token, she was also able deal with her emotions. To do this, she either silenced the pain if it wasn’t helpful to her training, and thereby overcame it, or she dug deeper into the sensation in order to find the root cause and heal it. Thus, by following Stanislas' valued advice, she had become much more in tune with herself, and consequently, with others.

  At present, she could feel the energetic bonds that united her to the people in the house, without even having to concentrate. She felt these connections between herself and her missionaries, but also the connections between her missionaries. After six weeks, she was thus able to determine the closeness of two beings and their affection for one another. Thanks to Stanislas, she felt that she would soon be able to sense their state of mind, and perhaps even guess what they were thinking. She was proud of her progress, even though this new ability had weakened her on a psychological level. Basically, being more sensitive to her relationships with others also meant that she was more sensitive on a whole.

  The following days and weeks passed in the same way, always with the same harsh rigor and discipline. On the Saturday of the eighth week, as she repeated the same weight training exercises over and over again under Nina's uncompromising commands, something changed. Her spiritual training had sharpened her senses so much that she suddenly felt the great generosity and kindness that emanated from Nina's chest while she was in the middle of her workout. She was so surprised by this revelation that she dropped her weights on the tatami and just stood there, staring at the coach. She was convinced that she had just felt Nina’s love for her, but after the months of torture and brutality she had endured at her hand, she had trouble believing it.

  Knowing full well what Tara was thinking, Nina began to smile, putting on the charm like she had in the past. With her feline and sensual stance, she slowly approached Tara, whose breathing fell short, making her freeze on the spot. What was she doing? Why was Nina approaching her, devouring her with her eyes? Completely paralyzed, Tara was unable to react in any way, as she watched the coach advancing towards her.

  Standing in front of her now, Nina placed her lips in the hollow of her neck and began to walk around her. The coach’s warm breath against her skin made Tara shiver with pleasure, troubling her even more. She barely dared to breathe. She didn't understand what was happening, nor why she was allowing Nina to do this to her.

  Nina was now on the other side of her, her lips still pressed against her neck. Her warm breath excited Tara in a way she had never expected nor thought possible. In spite of herself, and in spite of the distrust she felt towards Nina, she allowed herself to completely surrender to what she was feeling. At that moment, Victor no longer existed.

  Then, suddenly, a voice inside her cried out, telling her that she couldn't let herself be played a second time. Nina had already done this to her once while she was taking her bath, and she was in the process of doing it again. And like the first time, Tara was totally absorbed in what was happening, allowing Nina to take advantage of her without resisting at all. It had to stop.

  Not knowing what to do, she began to panic, looking for something to say to free herself from Nina's spell.

  Finally, she exclaimed, despite herself and in a very unconvincing voice:

  “I'm not a lesbian!”

  Nina stopped in her tracks. Tara felt the young woman’s grin and heard her mocking laugh:

  “Good, because I don't like you.”

  Tara felt like an arrow had juts pierced her heart. She never thought that those words could hurt her so much coming from Nina. Surprised by her own feelings, she forced herself to retort:

  “I don’t like you either.”

  “Then stop looking at me with those desperate eyes,” Nina said, as she turned and walked away, moving her body in the same sensual way as she had before, leaving Tara spellbound.

  “You seem to be begging me to kiss you every time you look at me.”

  Shocked by her statement, Tara remained silent, not knowing how to respond. After a few seconds of hesitation, she finally replied:

  “You're the one who's always coming on to me!”

  But Nina had already won the battle. She resumed her role as coach, completely indifferent to Tara’s comeback:

  “Get back to your weights. I want fifty more.”

  Tara kept her mouth shut. Her throat tightened as she bent down to pick up the weights. She had just reached a new height of ridicule.

  By the time her training finally came to an end it was already dark. Feeling deeply melancholic following Nina's harsh words, Tara contemplated herself for a long moment in the bathroom mirror before taking her shower: she had changed. Her face no longer had the innocent and fresh look it had when she first arrived at Emily’s place. Her eyes looked more severe and determined, and incredibly sad. Her muscles, constantly under stress, were tense and ready for action. Her limbs had become firmer and leaner. Soon, her abdominal muscles would appear. Her arms, once slightly limp, were now thin and powerful. She could do fifty push-ups at a time and run for almost an hour at a steady pace; but she was unhappy.

  When she saw how her body had changed, she was unable to rejoice. She knew what she had left behind: a lively young woman whose body had been filled with generosity and joy for life.

  Nevertheless, today she was a strong woman, mentally and physically. Her body was no longer her enemy, but her ally. She didn't think she was any more beautiful than she had been, but she knew she wasn’t any less attractive either. She would get used to the change. She had given up on keeping her former body. Emily’s diet and the intensive exercise program had gotten the best of her once bountiful figure.

  In other words, she had agreed to build a body that suited her mission: her honor was at stake with regard to Diane, who trusted in her; and above all, her survival was at stake. In the last few weeks, she had thought back often to when Sofia had wanted to mercilessly behead her with her scythe. Her ally was Diane, not Emily. Tara knew that Van der Worthen wouldn’t leave her alone until she had proven herself worthy of her mission, and until she had proven that she was no longer a danger for her seraph.

  While she showered, she took the time to rediscover her body. As she ran her hands over her thighs and arms, she felt the firmness of her muscles under her toned skin. The outline of her figure was smoother and more compact. Her breasts were slightly smaller, but much less than she had feared. Her only consolation was her hair, which hadn’t changed at all, still as bright and unruly as ever.

  Suddenly, as she shampooed her thick mane and the lather covered her face, she felt a cold presence on the other side of the bathroom. It wasn’t a friendly presence. It was dark and grim, and it had come there for her.

  Her heart leapt. Acting like nothing was wrong, she reached for the shower head and rinsed her eyes. She knew the presence was still there and was waiting for her to acknowledge him. She quickly rinsed her face, trying to keep calm. Once she could open her eyes, she turned around.

  She almost passed out when she saw the huge shadow in the corner of the room. Facing her, a thin, grey angel with gigantic dark wings waited patient
ly for her until she was ready to listen to him. He had skeletal limbs, an oblong face with hollowed features and bulging eyeballs like the guard angels. His demonic eyes with their golden irises and black pupils seemed to stab her like a sword. He was outwardly disgusted by the scene he was witnessing.

  Although the sight of him filled her with dread, Tara knew he wasn’t an enemy. Nonetheless, he wasn’t an ally either. It took her a few seconds to remember his name as they stared into each other's eyes: it was Enkaz, one of the superior leaders of the guards and a seraph like Diane.

  “Did you choose this body as a default choice, or were you trying to punish yourself?” he asked, in an irritated voice.

  Tara didn't answer. She grabbed a towel to hide her nakedness while she waited for the giant to explain the reason for his visit.

  “It's been a long time,” he said in a smooth, hoarse voice. “I wouldn’t say I'm happy to see you again, but almost.”

  She watched him as he spoke: every time he opened his mouth, his pale lips exposed his long, sharp teeth. She could feel the profound disgust that Diane had for this creature.

  “I’m sure you know who sent me,” continued Enkaz scornfully. “I don't understand what They see in you. Maybe They're just taking their time before They punish you... You can’t just disappear from the Spheric Army without paying the price...”

  Tara's heartbeat accelerated. If even the Decision-Makers wanted to eliminate her, she found herself totally alone.

  Enkaz continued, not without a certain sadism in his words:

  “You're lucky you're still alive you know. If it were up to me, Diane would have been dead from the day she resurfaced.”