The Undying God (32 page)

“Hrioshango!” she screamed. The chaos
magician did not answer. Her grip failed.

Together, they plunged over the lip of
the chasm. Entangled with Arxu, Nishka clung tightly to him as
their bodies impacted. A piercing splash echoed in the obscurity,
tainting the surface of an underground lake. For many moments,
silence permeated the underworld.

Nishka’s face erupted from the water,
choking for breath.

“Where are we?” she asked when she
regained her voice. She searched for the Nightwalker without
success. She almost screamed when cold fingers wrapped around her
wrist.

“Are you okay?” Arxu asked.

“Never
do that again. I thought
you were that Gilith thing…”

“Do you suppose it led us into a trap?”
Nishka’s expression quickly soured.

“We shouldn’t have trusted it,” she
said. “It was probably luring us to a nest of Giliths.” While she
didn’t accuse him of any wrongdoing, her eyes clearly said,
How
could you be so stupid?

“Hrioshango won’t be killed that
easily,” Arxu said.

“Can you say the same about us?” He
didn’t have a chance to reply. Spots began to swim before his eyes,
dulling his brain. A few seconds more and he would pass out.
However, it became clear that his eyes were functioning perfectly
fine—the green spots were swarming in the lake. A chill ran up
Nishka’s spine as the light intensified.

“Get out,” Arxu urged.

They swam toward an unseen shore. Arxu
spied a silhouette below as his arms knifed through the lake.
Engorged, black eyes stared hungrily into his. A fleshy branch was
growing out of its head, terminating in a pulsing node. One glance
at its fangs was all it took to compel Arxu forward.

He breached the shore first, crawling
out of the water’s sucking grasp. He faced the lake as more
illuminated nodes began to manifest. Dozens of the creatures
occupied the pool. The lake was transformed into a frenzy of
thrashing limbs and sickly wails. Nishka heaved herself onto the
rocky bank, soaked and shivering.

“We’ve got to search for a way out,”
she coughed. The Nightlights clung to the solace of the lake,
pardoning the intruders.

“Good idea,” Arxu said, trudging
through muck toward the infested tunnels.

“Arxu…” Nishka said. She pointed at a
mysterious shape on the floor. She picked it up, something warm and
velvety between her fingers. “One of Hrioshango’s
cloaks.”

The fine material was lacerated to
shreds.

“His clothes aren’t in very good
condition to begin with. It doesn’t necessarily mean he was
attacked.”

“Did you see the claws on that Gilith?
It had
twelve
fingers,” Nishka argued.

“Then let’s find Gilith.”

Nishka’s jaw dropped as Arxu ushered
her into the vault of stone. “Is that Hrioshango?” she wondered
aloud.

The silhouette in question couldn’t be
mistaken. Hrioshango stood perfectly still in the chamber,
paralyzed from head to toe. He broke their silent trance with two
unlikely words.

“My... home.” Runes and intricate
glyphs bathed the chamber in turquoise light. They were scratched
into crystal deposits on the walls and floor—
even the
ceiling
. Overwhelmed with bittersweet memories, the darkling
stepped forward into his personal sanctuary.

His companions reluctantly followed the
hermit. The idea of Hrioshango possessing a home struck them as
surreal. Even the notion of him being born to a mother and father
seemed ridiculous. He may as well have been born out of raw
chaos.

“How long has it been, Hrioshango?”
Nishka ventured to ask.

“Twelve years.”

The young woman traced her fingers
across several etchings that resembled people.

“Did you once have a
family?”

“Hrioshango does not understand the
concept of a family...” He followed her gaze to the cryptic
symbols. “Hrioshango has been alone for nearly all of his life. I
had only myself to speak to. That is likely why my dialogue differs
from yours.”

Hrioshango was flooded with memories of
his dark, quaint hermitage. He did not long for his lonely past,
but he could not deny the nostalgia of his younger days. Things
seemed much less complicated before he encountered
people.

Arxu couldn’t take his eyes off the
runes. He wondered if they represented anything at all or if
impulse alone inspired them. One sigil spawned a hundred more,
giving rise to thousands, all inevitably leading toward an elusive
answer.

“Hrioshango was trying to analyze
himself,” the maddened artist spoke. “Hrioshango tried to
understand the paradoxes of his mind. I wanted to understand what
compels the brain to obsess. What compels it to
insanity.”

“Insanity?” Arxu echoed.

“Insanity... when the emotions erode
the logic; that is how I define ‘insane.’ Why did my brain decay
into chaos?” The darkling grimly shuffled away, a stark contrast
with his natural playfulness. “Hrioshango was not always this way.
Once, I could think without the intrusions of obsessions,
compulsions, and disorder.”

He fondly picked up a crystal shard on
the floor, turning it over between his fingers.

“Emotions are merely chemicals,”
Hrioshango explained. “Reactions. It is fascinating how it only
takes a chemical reaction to make you feel like a god.” He brooded
in the dark. “Or destroy you.”

Arxu often heard the controversial
theory that emotions were chemicals, but no one could prove it. It
was possible that Hrioshango’s chaos abilities endowed him with
insight into occult matters.

“For all my chaos powers, I could find
no way to repair myself.” He chuckled helplessly. “Sometimes, I
wonder if I would truly be happy given the chance to reverse what
has happened to me. Would I lose my chaotic abilities if I reverted
to a stable mental state?”

“You would place power above your
sanity?” Nishka asked.

“Not power. Control.” He regarded Arxu
with a thoughtful smile. “Sometimes, I envy your lack of emotion,
Arxu. How much easier Hrioshango’s existence would be without the
fickle and illogical mechanism of emotion. Even I recognize that
many of my fixations and aversions are irrational. Yet, that does
not stop me from practicing them.”

“What sorts of fixations?”

“No doubt you have noticed my obsession
with clothes and my aversion to light. These two behaviors are
interconnected... There are other compulsive symptoms that I alone
know: the things that occur in my mind. Sometimes I am plagued by
visions of my friends dying.”

“Is that what you fear?” Arxu asked.
“That everyone you consider a friend could die at any given moment
in time? That you will lose everyone and you will be alone
again?”

“I don’t know.” Neither Arxu nor Nishka
dared comment on the disturbing revelation. They wondered whom
Hrioshango considered to be a friend. He loathed Arxu and barely
tolerated Nishka. The prospect of him even recognizing the bond of
friendship seemed phenomenal.

“Hrioshango... do you feel
pain?”

“Physical or emotional?”

“Emotional.”

“Of course I feel pain.”

“I never would have imagined. You have
a tendency to express only lust or rage.”

“Well, those are impulsive... I don’t
have an overwhelming urge to dwell on sorrow. I consider myself a
generally happy creature, actually.”

“Yet you envy my inability to
feel.”

“Well, yes. Sometimes I think life
would be perfect without pain.”

“
Everyone has to overcome
pain in their lives, Hrioshango,” Nishka consoled. “Maybe if there
is no pain, you cannot gain an appreciation for pleasures in
life.”

Hrioshango tapped his chin
thoughtfully.

“And what if there is so much pain that
it exceeds its purpose?” he rasped insidiously. “Then what purpose
does pain serve?”

“If there is so much pain that it
exceeds its purpose...” She lost the words as she considered the
loss of her mother. The pain she felt had consumed her for years.
She did not benefit from the hardship, but still she could not move
past her loss, as if part of her refused to heal. The same way that
Arxu would not move past his death.

“... I don’t know the answer to
that.”

“I see. It seems pain does indeed have
a threshold... I believe pain loses its purpose when it consumes
everything. At that point, it leads to
self-destruction.”

Nishka nodded absently, lost in the
mist of her memories.

“Perhaps we all need pain in our
lives,” he continued. “It motivates us to find a resolution to our
problems and continue our search for peace. Isn’t that why you
embarked on this mission to stop a mass murderer,
Nishka?”

“Yes.”

“It pains you to see these people die,
thus you have decided to do something about it. Admittedly, I do
not feel sympathy.”

Nishka glanced at Arxu, expecting him
to confess to the same flaw.

“If you do not feel sympathy, what
compels you to follow us?”

“You ask too many questions,”
Hrioshango dismissed. Nishka smiled to herself.

“I think Hrioshango is lonely.” The
chaos magician cackled in response and offered no more. Instead, he
carved something into the wall with a crooked nail, pausing to
admire his craftsmanship.

“Now it ends where it begins, an
eternal cycle. There is only one thing you can reliably count on in
this world, and that is disorder.”

Nishka jumped as something scampered
along the slick walls. Hrioshango brandished his sword, eager to
defend his lair. A lanky hominid plummeted from the ceiling to land
nimbly on all fours like a cat. Its head swiveled to take in the
three characters, and the Gilith scuttled protectively toward
Hrioshango.

“Our guide!” he happily
proclaimed.

“I never thought I would be so happy to
see that thing,” Nishka chuckled. Relief began to replace her
doubts about their journey. Still, she couldn’t help but ask a
question that begged to be resolved. “So, Hrioshango, when you say
you compulsively think of the worst possible scenarios that can
happen to your friends...”

“Yes...?”

“Who are you referring to?”

“Why, Gilith, of course!” He patted the
creature on the head as it crouched by his side. “He—or she—is the
most ugly, beaked, round-eyed Gilith that was ever spawned in the
abysmal depths of the catacombs! Hrioshango would be crestfallen if
his friend succumbed to one of the more dangerous predators down
here.”

“Well, I consider you to be a friend,
Hrioshango, albeit a very weird one...”

Before Arxu left, he closely examined
the sigil that Hrioshango etched. It resembled three figures: two
reminiscent of humans, the third considerably smaller.

Hrioshango emerged from the mausoleum
to relish the tingling air. He loitered on the steps as he surveyed
the silent necropolis. Fog wreathed the sacred grounds, obscuring
the caricatures of resting places long forgotten. The solitary
patch of land stretched on as far as the misty tendrils could
reach. He sighed in satisfaction.

“Ah... there is nothing more
enthralling than the mystique of death.”

“Is there?” Nishka said
sarcastically.

“Well... besides the mystique of women,
no.” With nothing more to add to his sexist comparison, he
descended into the resting place of thousands.

Arxu exited the mausoleum and looked
upon the necropolis. He froze in his steps. The atmosphere of loss
seemed so familiar to him. He almost felt at sync with this place
on a spiritual level, as though he belonged in such a cryptic
setting. It rekindled the strangest feeling.

It brought him peace.

Traveling through the plaza, he viewed
a massive fountain shimmering in twilight. Cemented with crystals
equally as massive, water bubbled from the pinnacle to glisten down
its sides.

Hrioshango marveled at the attraction.
Water cascaded like wine down the crystal facets, and he grinned
playfully at hundreds of his reflections.

Someone plucked a sitar in the
distance, weaving a pleasant melody to water drums. Nishka relaxed
to the sound, but she couldn’t take a break from reality while holy
war seethed at the city borders.

Suddenly, a terrifying thought left her
on the verge of panic. Margzor may not be interested in Eternitas
at all. He could break from his predictable route and cut to the
republic of Praemonen in search of the ultimate prize:
Astalla.

“Arxu, what if we made a mistake in
coming to Eternitas?” she said, voicing her greatest fear. “Maybe
Margzor has already headed north!”

“No, he wouldn’t. We just have to wait
for him.”

“Excuse me,” Hrioshango called out to a
woman passing by. “Have there been any temple-related slaughters
recently?” The woman was slow to reply, not expecting such a crude
and abnormal question, especially from a darkling.