by Scott Beith
As that being that, we managed to get inside, entering into an open and mostly roofless atmosphere not very different than how it felt outside. However, upon entrance there was a complete and sudden quietness that encapsulated this long dim hallway of theirs, all seeming rather strange and remorseful, as everyone went quiet while the crowds looked at and passed dozens of gold statues and shrines in humble and respectful remembrance. The hardest part of our journey had elapsed while we simply joined them along and had to merely keep our heads down and our hair hidden upon the successful infiltration inside the dangerous coven.
The lot of us just watched the crowd move as the silence had dimmed to the sounds of pattered footsteps and occasional black bricks crumbling and falling down from the broken walls of the cultish cathedral entrance hall. One long crowd was following a narrow line of wall torches on either side of the entrance forum while heading down towards the main theatre room complex where Midas’s throne and his militia were obviously being established.
We were the very last to be welcomed inside before the loyal gold-cloaked guards shut the doors and sealed us all inside with them. More of a formality than anything, considering all the cracks and small holes we potentially could have crawled our way out of along the right side wall.
I was at the very back of the group once again, holding the shaking arm of an elderly prisoner many gnolls might have considered my father, based on the way I had to aid and help him down each tiny step or wonky turn of the greatly obstructed path. Both of us were having to dodge the rubble as well as the reflective glimmers of gold lifelike statues scattered all around the floor with tiny plaques and candle-lit shrines that sat beside a rare few of them.
In the beginning my eyes were glued solely to the frail and shaky old man I was helping to usher forward. He was the slowest of us, yet I had to try and maintain the group’s pace or risk unwanted exposure by the guards watching us from behind. His welfare was paramount to me, as he seemed by far the most incapable of running or fighting. Whereas, just ahead of us was Radament hidden under his tiny undersized cloak. Arlo was beside him, discreetly helping Radament to relearn how to walk after multiple days of being suspended by his arms in chains.
Unlike those who had been good friends for decades, however, I already knew the name of the man I was traveling beside, even if he might have felt like I was a stranger to him – he had an uncanny, if not iconic, look about him. His frown and receding grey hairline were a close match to a famous author’s portrait I used to see spread across many early history books taught during early schooling sessions. He was an exceptionally wealthy and successful historian named Cain: a long-retired celebrity archaeologist in our world, being the very first to ever write a book on the ‘three spheres of ascendance’ based on the ancient religious teachings their burnt cathedral was mostly likely built around.
The man I had beside me had spent much of his life being criticized for his theories about us forest species being created by ancient siren heretics who wished to stop eating meat and leave the water as a path of evolutionary transcendence, and that forest nymph sprites like ourselves were just the failures or fallout of a vulnerable transitionary period between those sirens heretics and a rite of passage that led them to become the flying light-eating wisps they all wanted to be, that we were just the cocoon stage that all maggot larva go through before they get to morph and break free into the flies and moths that exist up above.
Whether you were a sceptic or not, his mind once fascinated me. Among countless other things, he was also the very first archaeologist to find fossil records that could prove that myrmidons were not a separate race of sea-nymphs, but rather the siren’s male drone working class who were enthralled to each vast rivalling system of hive queens.
Given a year or two back, I would have taken any chance to pick his brain for his theories on all the questions about the forerunners that were still left unexplained. Back at home he was one of my first idols, and yet having him there beside me in the darkness, I couldn’t dare to try and talk to him, nor did I even want to. All I saw in him was that he was a liability I could do without. He was too old and scrawny to be there with us, and as I walked alongside him, I watched him stare at each various gold shrine with a frightful look on his face. Each one being potentially the one that could give him a heart attack, and hence disturb the peace that was currently keeping us concealed and safe.
There was a great cruel irony that came with all the new additions we had in our group. Other than two teenage farm girls and their big brother, the rest of the prisoners we had found had only made us more vulnerable and weaker than we were before finding them. How cruel and selfish it was for me to think it, but I wasn’t thrilled to have any of them beside us – even Radament, who was only there and wounded because of how he sacrificed himself to save my life.
I felt guilty over how much easier and safer it would have been for us to have freed them and then left them to fend for themselves, as I felt like that is what I would have done had I been the team leader of the group. I was just grateful I had two royal siblings with me that unanimously made those tough choices so I would never have to.
We headed underneath a broken and patchy ceiling roof, chasing the scattered remains of fallen soldiers who had been melted alive and turned into gold life-like statues sporadically across the hall. Moonlight was catching them and making them shine as the sparkles only increased in radiance the closer towards the main stage theatre doors up ahead.
Despite being deceased, most of the gold hands of those fallen were extended out, as if to grab our arms and beg us for help. Most of them had small hands that were virtually the same size of my own. It was the only part of their body I could bare to look at while we passed them. To breathe slow, deep and steady as I and the others squeeze past grouped clusters of that lifeless crowd.
They were vanquished soldiers forever entombed in gold. All of them mummified alive under liquid gold so that they may serve as a reminder of Midas’s unquestionable resolve, and what must have been the overall ramifications that would befall any of his subjects, should they dare desert or betray him.
Some of them looked like members of our own world, the bravest former Borderland knights we had in our kingdom – as others seemed to be the most determined mutineers of Prince Akoni’s alleged rebellion. But clearly none of them had the level of raw rage and power necessary to defeat their tyrannous oppressor.
Like a battle based on nothing but a hopeful prayer, the room had a real genuine look of desperation about it; it looked like a failed riot and rebellion that had ended in cinders.
The living among us were no exception; other than his loyal elites, the gnolls seemed just as afraid by what they saw as we did. Nor did they make any exemption from carefully ducking their heads over the statues arms and avoiding the staring eyes of those frozen permanently in fear while we weaved on past them towards an opening out stage room up just ahead.
Although even from a distance, I had great difficulty looking into the grave faces of those soldiers entombed in gold, the expressions of pure terror felt like it could sear into my brain. Each one was a separate traumatic sight I would never be able to forget.
I could tell that was a feeling felt by all, as many gnolls ahead of us would stop at certain statues and lean on each other compassionately, shedding a few secret tears or just clenching their fists tightly as a type of repressed anguish before they attempted to ignore their own survivor’s guilt and put on the silver iron talons that acted as their hands once they were to leave their world and make the journey through the portal stone to our world.
Helios had described to us this rebellion in his crop paddock, but hearing it and seeing it were two completely separate things. Wherever one’s eyes could look it was clear that the uprising he spoke of had been fought right in these halls – the huge trophies serving as one giant reminder of who happened to win that failed rebellion. Thirty particular members of them unfortunate enough to be forever
cemented into the minds of those left standing.
And although I’m sure some solace could be found in the symbolism of what they all stood for back then. Various tribes uniting in their ambition to save their land from their own poorly elected government and the total sacrifice most of them paid for risking everything they had, just to try and protect those they had to lose.
Statues of merchants and knights alike, all standing side by side as they were caught dead in between the deadly crossfire of a rebellious lightning prince and his molten auriferous father.
I wanted to pay some respect to all those nameless nymphs; the saddest one I came across being that of a poor farmer who I had to step over before climbing the exiting group of stairs. His knees were bent and stuck as if he’d died while kneeling, but he had been rolled down the stairs and left with his back against the floor, his eyes staring up, showing just how he must have had begged his king for mercy.
Each step I took up the stairs as I looked back, was only seeming to make me look more and more like I was standing in the place where Midas had been standing when he must have put a hand on either arm of the farmer to melt him alive.
I just couldn’t understand it: the violence and desecration that had been allowed to occur in a place supposable hallowed and untouchable. A supposed sanctuary where monks ventured for their path towards enlightenment under the protection of the angels above, and just how those guardians could allow their sacred refuge to become a metal graveyard.
Not cocoons but coffins that had trapped the spirits to remain in for all eternity, and just how Midas could have considered these poor soldiers crimes to be so incomprehensible they were worthy of being condemned in both their life and afterlife.
I had been on a long journey, given the full week of things that had transpired around me, and there were many high and low points I felt and mentioned as the time came and went. But never, at any point, had I ever lost faith in the possibility that there was something above. How divine beings could willingly allow such corruption to occur and go unchallenged? How they would not return to their former motherland to restore the natural order when things had fallen so far out of control? Or maybe they weren’t because they, too, were just as afraid… Maybe Midas was stronger than the angels that watched over him from above?
There was no doubt in my mind, that my mother had to have been a powerful individual. But if she was gone that meant there were things in this world exceedingly tougher than her, and maybe that was Midas, or Camilla? That wasn’t a question as much as it was an outright concern. For behind the stage doors after a small platform above, I was preparing myself for a demonic kind of evil, the likes of which I had never seen.
With every slow step up the stairs, I was trying to hurry Cain to move faster. For quite a while we had been slumping behind the others, but more importantly there was something at the top of the stairs they were all caught up beside.
With it, a certain statue of significance that made everyone linger before going inside through the bulky and partially-busted theatre room doors.
Only once arrived at the top could I see its head and realise what it was. Leaning over, stretching for something with a warrior’s stance, there was a real-life monument of Akoni for all to see. It was the golden remains of their frozen prince. An altered version of one of my closest friend, yet someone much more masculine and youthful than the one I typically knew in the flesh.
He had a real presence of importance and greatness about him. A destiny despite the gritty look of scolding pain painted across his frozen gold face, his statue was so astonishingly fierce and compelling that I couldn’t help but look at it with unfamiliarity.
Our entire group and one family of gnolls were gazing upon the myth that was that talented individual. The poised position he was stuck in had him fighting restraints as he looked resiliently determined to reach for one of his silver gauntlet gloves that had fallen off his hand and down to the floor, making it one of the most horrifically explicit war re-enactments, too confronting to be made by a sculpture.
It was the real Akoni; the former heir to their dying throne. Now a subject of a cryogenic conservation, as, just like all the others, he had instantaneously turned to gold long before the very forces of nature, like gravity, had had a chance to bring down his battle stance and the weight to drop him heavily to the floor.
“It’s not a statue,” Cain whispered to me, feeling a need to clarify the obvious. “This is what he does to all his enemies now… Whether he meant to do it to his son or not, it’s become a standard for anyone considering mutiny,” he added wearily. “Even if he wanted to, I can’t imagine there is any going backwards for him now,” he stated with a certain level of caution in his tone. “So if you’re thinking there’s any future chance that a truce can be made,” he then bitterly started to preach towards me, “You’d be wrong,” he then quietly and dispassionately said to me, staring at my prince beside a group of gnolls paying their respects.
“I don’t know if it’s as simple as that,” I replied to the man.
“Trust me, when push comes to shove, it will be,” he stated. “It’s easy for any man to become a monster – what’s hard is for that monster to then revert back to man,” he quipped, sounding most unsympathetic towards the king’s obvious madness and plight.
Surprised by how bold he was to walk ahead of me and be the first of us to walk through the gap between the doors that led into the king’s large theatre throne room.
I found his tone about the whole thing odd – almost like his lack of compassion was based on his own guilty conscience and involvement in the tragedy to befall this world. He was a rather narcissistic nobleman after all, so there was a high probability he was one of the select few that knew about this world – perhaps even one of the ones who took the bribe and exile Milena seemed to offer out, only to be caught in the Ambervale siege and end up an ironic prisoner of war.
The truth of the matter was, I could never be completely sure of exactly who did and didn’t know about the shadow world, other than the youthful who never got the chance to leave the Capital and find things out for themselves.
I hesitated in front of the doors, not so much because I thought it was necessary to wait for the others to be done with Akoni’s statue, but because of who among the gnolls I thought I could see standing before it, using an arrowhead to scratch something into the plaque and shrine below Akoni’s feet.
Curious, I walked over to confront that gnoll, only to see her get up and the face of Pilly brush past me as she tearfully fled through the doors without noticing me.
The inscription was engraved into the metal gauntlet melted and merged with the floor, and it read: Prince Akoni, Beloved Son of Midas and Camilla. Fiancé of Persephone and best friend to all in the kingdom, forever missed but never forgotten xx..
Only then did it dawn on me what Helios must have meant when he’d said ‘the past few years hadn’t been good to her’, and that she’d ‘lost more than most’. She must have shared some sort of forbidden love with the prince before he’d died. A bronze ring that once sat painfully upon her finger was left behind on the plaque, almost symbolic of the likelihood she was soon to join him.
From up high on the top of the steps, I realised that the memorial of this man was the very focal point of the entire dark entrance hallway. And that each gnoll had been nodding and bowing to Akoni before they walked through, acting as if their prince might still be alive. The smallest and faintest of magnetic fields, pulling hairs towards his statue upon approach, perhaps evidence that he and everyone else down the hall could still be half-alive while they remained preserved completely solid in gold.
I’d never met this Akoni before, yet I felt humbled just to be beside him. It was clear he was the most beloved. The rightful king the gnolls all wanted, as every final touch the last family made against his electro-static hands were sacred. His shrine was the only one with withered flowers by his feet, the only one with spare candles ready fo
r the melting. The best of the best their kin could offer from the hostile and depleted environment they all lived in.
As just before the last of gnolls were to walk inside, all of us sat there staring at Akoni’s statue without words. It was a hauntingly beautiful sight to witness. A moment when differences felt like they had been pushed aside and that we could reconvene as one unified nymph species. If not only to pay respects to those who’d died trying to mend two broken worlds slowly drifting apart. One united prayer for not just those who were lost, but also for all the evil sinners out there who were still hoping for a chance of redemption.
One silver gauntlet glove serving as the single greatest metaphor of the running gauntlet we must all endure if we wish to mend something that others think is broken beyond repair, as with it the ultimate price of defeat should we fail to go against the current and finish what others found too difficult to do.
37
Inferno
After clearing the thin graveyard corridor as inconspicuously as we could, I was personally trying to leave all that I saw in the darkness behind me. I had taken front position once again and chosen to forcefully pull open the splintered and slightly unhinged left door board in order to widen the gap for everyone else in that corridor to come and pass through before me, holding open its theatre-room doors for those I knew intimately, as well as the few among us that I didn’t know at all.
Upon entering their great church hall last, I was both surprised and startled by how strong and blinding the glare of the main room was, accompanied by just how loud and reinvigorated the commotion of a background noise became while I looked out amidst a colossal-sized crowd all standing in perfectly aligned rows idle chatting with one another, each member settling in perfectly among their imaginary aisles.