Akanor: Tales From Necro Box Set Page 4

  The King gulped heavily and slowly gave in as the words escaped the sticky surface of his dry tongue, “I…I…I hate you! I hate myself! I hate not having loved her back the way she loved me with entirety! I hate not having savored every second of my life with what I called my own! With her I was complete, but I was too vain to recognize it. I gave her up because I thought I could gain more from my ambitions. I wanted to matter, to be someone, that is all.

  “But there is nothing more than love; nothing else truly matters in life! I wish to love her for eternity, please. We are made for each other, we should grow old and die together! Don’t you see? I don’t want this power; it is useless to me! I find no value in it! I hate it! Take it away from me and give me my love in return! Please! I beg you! Take my arm! My leg! Just let me try to win her back again.”

  The image shattered as the jaws containing the mirror snapped shut and devoured the reflection, causing Deathenor to gasp and lose his breath.

  The Devil reappeared as a righteous priest. He was dressed in brown robes like a monk, a book in one hand and the hammer of justice in the other. His eyes glistened with an eerie red glow. The priest’s voice was incriminating, his posture an imposing figure of virtue.

  “You wish to love her?” the Devil-priest asked dryly, matter-of-factly.

  “Yes! Only her, forever!”

  “Do you wish to live forever?”

  “NO, please! Death would be liberating after a lifetime of loving her! Please, kill me, let me die! I wish to rot, to be part of the earth! I wish to meet glorious death! OH, PLEASE!”

  “You wish to win her back, no matter the cost?”

  “Any cost! Yes! I will pay any price, gladly!”

  “Will you take an oath to those words?”

  “Yes, yes! I will take any oath, sign any contract, anything to bind this agreement! Just let me see her!”

  “Then we may yet strike a deal.” The Devil-priest smirked.

  Deathenor could not believe it. He had almost gotten what he wished for. At last. I can’t believe I’m actually going to win! The King’s demeanor changed from total submission to one of victory.

  “I will let you see her, grow old, and even die together; I will let you love her for eternity in exchange for your tattooed arm and all of your power.”

  “It’s yours! Take it! Take it away immediately! I will sign the contract with my words and my blood!” yelled Deathenor uncontrollably, smiling and pressing his hands to his mouth, unable to believe that he would actually get to see, love, and die with his beloved.

  “Swear it!” bellowed the Devil-priest, smashing the hammer of justice down over solidified lava, his eyes glaring with righteousness.

  “This is not God’s house, where repentance absolves your sins! This is a place of trade. A bargain has to be made, an exchange of values,” said the Devil-priest.

  “I swear it!” screamed the King, the words exploding with a burst of saliva as he made the deal with the Devil, his heart racing vigorously—pumping blood eternally stale, now finally boiling hot with emotion.

  “It is done. I will give you what you requested, and then I’ll take what is mine.”

  The Devil's image slowly faded away and darkness remained. Slowly, black space filled with lovely colors.

  A vast field opened up, flowers blooming in the rippling airs of spring. Tall, leaf-covered trees hugged air and sun as they gallantly cast a shade over the earth. On the horizon, a line of never-ending mountains trailed off, as blue as distant memories, posed as statues embroidered into time’s eternal drift.

  On the open field a woman ran gracefully, laughing at something. The King’s eyes wept silently as he saw her move so happily. The King’s heart, like a chick birthing from its shell, began to crack upon seeing the light of love after millennia of dormancy. A surge of emotions circulated within his veins, his body liberated from eons of longing.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, things changed. Jealousy sprung like a cobra, venomous and fierce. Behind the lovely woman once called Léssemna followed a man in his youth invigorated by love. It was evident from the blossoming emotions of untamed affection on his face that he cherished her deeply. The invigorated man hugged and kissed her soothingly when he reached her. Two children caught up with them and embraced their legs warmly.

  Deathenor's face distorted from a state of vulnerable acceptance to bewilderment, to complete and utter defeat. Jealousy, hatred, malice, lust, a will to kill sprung within his heart; but it was too late, for his heart had lost all purpose after the shell that protected it collapsed. Vulnerable as it was, his heart began to slowly cave in, dehydrated from the absence of the compound that had drugged it for eternity—the hope to be loved entirely by Léssemna once again.

  Shattered and mangled, the King’s heart went into shock. His legs failed him and he fell to the volcanic floor, cutting his kneecaps as the sharp stone bit through skin.

  The Devil’s accomplished voice emerged behind the image, “This was your wife, Léssemna, who now lives in a special place I harvest in a faraway galaxy. She lives in a planet full of green and prosperity. She goes by another name and is oblivious to your existence. She will live a fruitful and prosperous life, married to the man you could never be. I keep this angelic soul I earned in the perfect place.”

  The Devil's voice turned fatherly––eerily tender, “And it shall always be so. She will find happiness, fulfillment, and will know nothing akin to the evil you showed her. She will remain uncorrupt...”

  Deathenor could not believe it. There she was. Her smile was so beautiful. Her eyes, her body, her hair…she was looking at the horizon just as she did on the day they met!

  The Devil's tone of voice suddenly shifted, the hammer of justice slamming against volcanic stone, shrapnel flying into the air, “And so you have what you wished for; you promised to love her no matter the cost, and so it shall be.

  “Love her until she perishes—until death do you part—and suffer while you see her flourish in a prosperous life. And now, I shall take what is mine. Just you wait, my punishment has only begun. I will fulfill my promise and take your oath, word for word.”

  The image of his wife played on, but behind it, a sardonic smile slowly appeared, the smile of the monk pointing the hammer of justice toward the condemned.

  Deathenor stumbled on his own feet as he cowardly tried to run for the shore of the island. Sharp stones and uneven ground hindered his passage. He could see the shore, but it was too late—his hands gripped thin air as they tried to find safety.

  With brutal force, he felt his stamina being drained from beneath him. His powers were ripped from his flesh and soul by an invisible hand; Deathenor felt as helpless as a fly without wings being swatted at. He was left naked as his clothes fell in a pile, torn apart from the violent stripping of his power.

  With nothing but a mangled heart and a rotting soul, he gripped his chest in desperation, his lifelong emotions piercing what little remained of him. Panic ensued, which then turned into a guttural scream of primal fear when he saw a red-and-crimson-inflamed Minotaur march into view with ruthless determination. Each step it took released a tone of condemnation in unison with a gush of heat and fire. The Minotaur did not wait, nor did it speak or flinch.

  The demon gripped Deathenor’s shoulder with a merciless bite. With one of its powerful hands he held on the tattooed arm, while the other pushed against his subject’s head to create the desired tension to slowly saw through flesh with its maw.

  The demon gradually applied force, pulling millimeter by millimeter to begin the condemned’s torture. The naked and defeated man beheld his captor with utmost fear. The Minotaur spewed heat and hyperactive malice as he gained interest in the mutilated subject. An expression of pleasure drew across its face as it foresaw Deathenor’s steady suffering.

  “Go on! Rip it off at once!” screamed Deathenor, unable to restrain his fear, no longer caring about being naked, his frail body exposed to the harshness of Hell.

/>   The Minotaur smiled at the prisoner’s request and denied him with a cold, mordant smile as it began to pull the arm off, as he slowly sawed through his shoulder joint with its jaws.

  At first Deathenor sensed nothing more than an idea of what the pain would feel like. But his imagination was merely a shadow of what was to become reality. Whenever pain flashed across the prisoner’s face, the Minotaur would hold that position and twist his arm to aggravate the suffering. When the round of pain was over and Deathenor’s face seemed to cope with it, it would pull a bit further.

  “Please! Pull it off once and for all! Ahh!” he screamed through clenched teeth as the monster tore off fiber by fiber, tendon by tendon, articulation by articulation, popping cartilage and cracking bones. Finally the elastic blood vessels started to give in, and blood began flowing from the impending wound. The Minotaur then took from a fire pit a scorching lava-rod. Every time a vessel broke out bleeding, the demon would cauterize it, creating the stench of cooking meat and the drilling torment of being burned alive.

  Deathenor finally fainted, and consciousness slowly let him loose. He felt glad that he was passing out. At least he would be far away as his arm was being torn from his body.

  As he came to, he was greeted by the Minotaur’s evil grin. It held his arm with its jaw still powerfully biting his shoulder, and was waiting for him to awaken before proceeding. Just as Deathenor was feeling the torture subside, his screams of pain and demise erupted as the monster applied force and resumed tearing the prisoner’s flesh, fiber by fiber. Sheer joy spread across the Minotaurs’s horrendous face as he relished the gore.

  Deathenor could no longer move his fingers. He could only watch his tattoo being savaged by a grueling force, a trail of memories making him relive the moments he had once savored after putting the tattoo to use.

  When only a thread of raw, bloody fibers held the limb at the brink of being completely torn off, the Minotaur yanked it off and then smashed the scorching lava-rod against the bloody wound. The monster continued chewing on the arm, savoring each thread of tissue and gulping savagely as bones cracked and blood poured down its throat.

  Deathenor could no longer scream from the pain; he could only suffer in silence after being slowly, cruelly ravaged. As he started to cower away, seeking for the canoe to take him to safety, a heavy chain burst from the ground with brutal force. It gripped the King’s neck tightly, making it difficult to breathe but not enough to strangle him.

  With eyes wide open, Deathenor held the gaze of the Devil, who was now in the image of an executioner covered in hooded black robes, except for the tormenting mouth and chin. The Minotaur quickly returned to its lava pit, leaving the prisoner alone to endure the Devil’s unfiltered malice.

  The once powerful King tried to regain his composure, touching the surface of his cauterized limb as he tried to salvage his fleeting mind. For the first time in ages, he felt the weight of mortality pulling him to the ground. He had forgotten how vulnerable one could be at the brink of an agonizing death.

  The Devil spoke out with supreme delight, digging his claws of misery into Deathenor’s rotting soul, “Endure this pain as you pay for your sins. I am not yet finished casting over you my ultimate punishment. I hold promises tightly—I will bind you to every single word you vowed. And thus, you shall be sentenced:

  “First you will grow old with your love as you admire her from where you stand. You will see her create a happy life with another man. You will grow old where you stand without any comfort, weak, and fragile, and then you will die when she does, just as I promised.

  “After you have experienced your first death within my Chasm, you shall be delivered into the perpetual cycle of eternal redemption. Behold the fine print of the promise you made in desperation—when you swore to love only her, forever. You said you wanted me to grant your death, and so it shall be.

  “You will be reborn and so shall your ideal woman, and you shall share time and space. You will grow close to her, share mutual friendships, and as you enter manhood, you will both fall in love as circumstances allow you to get closer. You shall woo her and she will respond to your calling, but at the very second when love is to be ignited, she will always feel something lacking, and she will deny you again and again, never granting you another chance. You will always strive for another opportunity, and you will always be denied.

  “Furthermore, you will never be aware that this is your curse—to find your soul mate and fall in love with no mutual recognition. Thus, you will forever seek out ways to convince her of your love and worthiness, always feeling that it was meant to be. But she will never heed your calling, and likewise she will never suffer your absence. On the contrary, she will live a very fruitful life, and she will always fall for another man. And you will suffer as you see her create happiness.

  “You shall perpetually long to have her, to be the husband you could never be. Only when she is at her deathbed will you have your greatest chance, the grand moment of your life. You shall hug and kiss her as she dies, but her soul will already be leaving by the time you arrive. And you will suffer her death, mourning before, during, and after her funeral.

  “At her passing, you shall begin a terrible involution. You shall start to decay—slowly—dying from the eroding pains of a broken heart. Upon your death, the cycle of eternal redemption will begin again, and so you shall love her forever—till death do us part! Just as you promised God on the day you wed her! Even that vow I dare not breach.”

  The Devil laughed then, and his laughter echoed through the tunnels of Hell and back, making the walls of the Chasm tremble with fear and the long-decaying years of ultimate punishment.

  “NOOOO!” screamed Deathenor as he fell face-first to the floor, a gush of blood emerging from the skin of his forehead. The whites of his eyes became bloodshot with self-hatred for having betrayed his loved one, for having betrayed himself. And even as he kicked in agony, the image of his wife living happily played onwards on the scenery before him.

  With eyes wide open he would remain remorseful, observing what he could have been but never was, holding the image of his failure for eternity.

  Time is a soother of sins; yet for the slayer of his own soul, time is the enduring purgatory where the penitent is bludgeoned by the unrelenting fist of unabsolved contrition.

  ––The End—

  Kill Me Now

  I WAS HIDING BEHIND A BURNT TREE. Its branches were less carbonized than those of the other trees, perhaps because of its location near the end of The Wastelands. Most trees were destroyed stumps waiting to be consumed by the erosion of time. Those would remain as the remnants of a beauty, once pristine, now vaporized by some unknown malice.

  The arid field ‘afore me stretched out like lifeless skin; emptiness reached out with nothing more than the stench of the long forgotten. A heavy mist ebbed upon it, casting a cloud too thick to see anything beyond a few strides.

  I panted as I found ma’self free of harm. I had eluded the bloodsucking wrath of ma’ captors for almost an hour, but was damn sure they would hunt me down soon enough if I didn’t keep up ma’ pace.

  I had never managed to evade them long enough, at least not to feel free from death’s grip. Them critters would usually get me and drag me back to that abominable abyss, not before draining me dry of blood. I shuddered, the memory of such a terrible and desolate place rattling ma’ bones. That abyss is so dark you wish you were darkness itself to feel at ease.

  The Bloodsuckers were bad, but worse was the Shocker––a two headed beast with a smooth face made of what seemed to be steel. It would wrap around ma’ chest with its long neck, then sting me with short, intense bursts of electricity. But the meanest of them captors was what I had baptized the Compressor, a slammer that would yell as it pumped ma’ chest with its gigantic hands with the sole purpose of squishing and bursting ma’ entrails out of me. I had been its victim once ‘afore. After being mauled by it I was tossed back into the abyss. Although that thin
g only attacked me once, its dreadful memory still lingers.

  Now, as I took cover behind them branches, I eluded peril’s clutch. I do not know for how long I’ll be able to stay afloat the sea of darkness. Ma’ life span is already thwarted by the chaos engulfing me. I recon it always has been and always will be.

  ***

  From behind the dying tree I combed the vista with a quick gaze. The dead forest ended and would soon be behind me, and there was no turning back once I entered the open field.

  The journey from the abyss to this point was not without risks. But since the soil was dark and the stumps of the trees populated the earth like petrified, lamenting souls, I had the benefit of coverage among the dead. Yet I was not free from the bloodhound noses of those goddamned Bloodsuckers.

  And there I was about to sprint into ma’ worst enemy. There was no cover here, nowhere to hide. There was just endlessness.

  The last time I cleared these Fields of Despair I had the bad luck of running into them Bloodsuckers. Usually I’m able to handle them as long as they’re not in packs. But back then they had somehow summoned a Shocker. Escaping them towards the Tower was a living hell. You see, most foes loom by themselves, except Shockers who are almost always followed by a Compressor. But to see Bloodsuckers call upon a Shocker was just too much for me to handle. If that happens again it would be the end of me.

  That time I nearly touched the stone walls of the Tower. That’s the one that sits atop them distant slopes right in the middle of the Fields of Despair, like a goddamned stone oasis. Sure does give me hope, when I can see it through the thick mist over the fields.

  On another occasion a Shocker and a Compressor ambushed me while halfway through the fields, torturing me for what seemed endless hours, only to fall back into the abyss. Since then I’ve only made it out three times. But there’s been countless instances where I’ve been pushed back into the gluttony of darkness. I hope this ma’ final plight for the life of me. I recon I’ll not make it through another trial in that depths of desolation.