Liber Beneficiorum

Juan reposes.  Elbowed upon the viewpoint, he is contemplating the sea.  Below, where there was a beach yesterday, some cliffs have risen, and a shark challenger yells his defiance from a tiny islet like purpose made, brandishing a ridiculous lance more fitted for a videogame.  When the challenger turns his back on, the shark springs in the air, catching him in flight between his mandibles.

"Good meal!" exclaims the shark before plunging back into the water, as if aware of having onlookers. Not many, only a couple a little apart from Juan, is watching dully.

The couple kiss one another, and Juan gazes at the sea.  Sirens zigzag among the dead´s reincarnations.  Apparently mangrove-men don´t care.  They just keep on staring at the shore.  Through the fibrous wood the faces whom they were can be made out if one pays attention to it.  Its position hasn´t changed; at least the Book respects some things.

A few stifled footfalls make him turn his head.  His father is approaching, his appearance a mash of clots, tumefaction and worms.  It doesn´t seem he goes further from that.  He has become stabilized for three months.  Nor he notices it seemingly.  Juan isn´t going to tell him. 

"You ought to look for a woman," his father says, "one that can cook and is home-loving." 

Juan doesn´t answer.  He has seen Laura twice.  First, looking at him with eyes as lifeless as mangrove-men´s.  Later, stalking fishes.  The Sorcerer might do it again.  Loosing a sermon  is sufficient. Difficult though it may appear, with all TV channels broadcasting it, but all the time there are those attached that fall asleep, forget it or whose TV is broken.  And that ends up by affecting you.

Babies, for instance.  They undergo changes continually.  Juan knows one who tried to repeat his college trick, assenting from time to time and thinking of another thing.  Now he has five legs and Janus´ head.  People are starting to carry their TV receivers to Churchs.

Juan draws the revolver from his pocket.  Maybe his corroded tin head isn´t as strong as it looks.  He opens his mouth, levels his tongue sticking it to his lower jaw with a metallic tinkle.  He presses down the trigger.

The Temple Thief

In the small hours, the supple cloaked figure entered the pagan’s temple, going along the churchyard among the decayed tombs and age-old vaults. He was passing himself off as a common rustic pilgrim, disguised in a coarse robe and a carved wooden staff. The grim guards had not noticed ought unheard-of about both his manners and tongue. He came across as a pious farmer who was just trying to worship his nocturne god. His mumbling opened the iron gate for him better than a frenzied army. His limping persuaded them into giving him way.

Notwithstanding the feat was not accomplished yet. People say no thief has ever left the heretic’s domed church. At least, not alive, it is rumoured. Beelgar the thief already knew it. But the shining onyx jewel which lay betwixt the claws of the cruel god the pagans worshipped was too much arousal for him to ignore.

The inner chamber was teeming with local dwellers. Hither and thither an acolyte of shaven head and slanted eyes was chanting in a monotonous voice the blasphemous litanies in praise of his dark god. Beelgar couldn´t see through their weird words more than an eldritch awe. If he were caught in, the altar stone would be soon tainted with blood. His.

Beelgar wandered around as if afraid of the holiness of the place, until he could manage to slid between two rear curtains he knew well by his outside minions. Then he went past a carpeted hall lit with bronze lamps, and when he reached a cross, he headed confidently to the right, descending a path of worn down steps, till the pagan God’s effigy stood before him implacable and haughty in the candlelight.

Beelgar came closer in order to get the onyx jewel lying between clawing alabaster hands. Right away a hidden door was opened, and a horde of eager worshippers rushed into the chamber, iron knives in their hands, and ropes of reed grass, their eyes flaming with primal bloodlust. It was only then he realized that he had been completely taken in.

Artwork: Thief of Life, © JasonEngle

The Caged Emperor

His bruised body woke up Zula in the middle of the night.  Star-lit mist had entered the dungeon wrapping the hideous air with its nebulous, wet cloak.  Zulla pulled his corroded chains, in a futile effort to break free.  Blood began again to ooze from either wrists but it didn´t restrain him of gripping and shaking fiercely the irons for a long while.  Finally he stopped, exhausted.  Above and beyond the bars a wandering dog was howling and scratching the ground of the yard.  The beast had smelt his wounds and was trying to have a fleshy loot sooner than vultures and hyaenas.  The ebony giant clenched his jaw grimly and his reddened eyes glared at his fate.  He who had been the ruler of the vast lands of Kush, lay now in a cage of slaves, waiting for his own execution.  Two days ago, when the full moon was hanging high above the jungle, and he was trying to sleep after a minute and long inspection of the fortress foreseeing a brutal siege, his shaman had betrayed him by guiding his slayers straight across the labyrinth of guards toward him.  He heard their velvet-footed steps and the dim sound of a furtive key from his bed and instantly realized the situation.  He stood up, crossed without being overheard the soft carpet and stalked his killers, brandishing a curve dagger.  They were northern Shemite armed with swords, too much to beat all down, but two of them now wandered lost around the House of the Doomed.

            The hours went by as slowly as a lifetime, and at last the night vanished.  The sacrifice drums were sounding loud while the end of Zula, emperor of Kush, came.

Warrior by TARGETE

Ebony and Ice (2)

On the other side of the abrupt mountain there lay Minartee, the pagan´s city, its golden carved spires and marble veined domes rising lofty in the chilly morn´s overclouded sky.  He lurked behind the mossy crags beside the North path coming from the Last Sea until he managed to rob a lonely pilgrim heading for the unwholesome city.  He put on the man´s coarse wool clothes and so he entered Minartee´s stony enclosure without being noticed.  Once into the city he headed toward the heretic´s temple.  It was said their impious priests eager exchanged their advice in return for some blood.  So he did it, passing himself off as a pilgrim.  No answer was handed over to him.

            Presently he left Minartee due North, across the marshy lands.  If both toads and fauns actually croaked the answer smirkingly, he did not understand it.  The Last Sea reached, he talked a water wrinkled seamen´s group into going on board in a lustrum journey all around the known lands coast.  He met and asked many people.  None of them could tell him.

            Eventually he went back home, saddened and old-looking, his eyes forever lost in the distance, still searching for an answer.  He went to the palace, and entered the princess´ chamber without being announced.  She was sitting in her royal throne.  As remembrance came to her on seeing him she just smiled briefly and stared at him.  Then he knew it.

            Both ebony and ice were lying there, throbbing upon an ivory throne.

Sculpture © by Jun-Sik Ahn

Ebony and Ice (I)

Once upon a time a haughty Shahir princess challenged whimsically her trusty devoted lover on asking him a riddle which the selfsame fennec God had whispered to her during her solitary worship beyond the Mystery´s Gate.

“Wherein lie both ebony and ice?” the tall grey-eyed princess asked.

Her lover´s name is not remembered.  A thick wall of oblivion was cast into since, although his sad journey still remains.

He was not a knowledgeable man and neither the age-old litanies nor the arcane cult the princess was keen on said aught to him.  He couldn´t see through the book-lore.  He could only go by his sweetheart´s shining pupils.  So he moved away in quest of an answer.

He rode along the Valley of the Damned mumbling the question, as if afraid of forgetting it.  Loneliness was his companion among the dead warriors´ olde-worlde undecayed bones.  He had to hand over his well-beloved stallion to its hovering spirits to get away with it in the ends of the valley.  The skulls did not answer him.

Then he faced the grim Sacrifice´s Cliff which teemed with fearful inhuman dwellers full of charnel longing for whatsoever they find.  He could scarcely avoid them while climbing up.  He was never going to know the answer hither.

Drawing: Devil´s Queen, © by Rudesoundz

One Thousand Visitors to -Darkly- Celebrate...

It took five years to reach the milestone, but it was all the time worthwhile nonetheless. Thanks be given to all of you who came here to read the dark rantings of this humble scribe of yours.
To celebrate that, the first visitor to make a comment in whatever post of this blog will receive a free copy of my ebook "Tidal Purgatory".
Only comments in English, of course :).