A Shadow in the Night
I chose night for concealment not for the rain bucketing down. Ladon will be furious but I saw no other way to do this. His chambers had been ranksacked, furniture broken down to sticks, clothes scattered and slashed and I'm pretty certain someone shat the bed. I sneaked to the roof of the dwellings of his parents via a stairwell and a ladder. There were people in the street despite the rain, I guess they were still pillaging the place. Some buildings were burning to the left, or rather a large pillar of smoke was going up the dark sky, probably recently mitigated by the downpour. I looked at my wrists, I’d been expecting that, the needle of the compass was spinning wildly, never fixing itself on a reliable point. I removed it and set it next to my foot on the wet roof. I needed to get going, if Ladon understood what I had done he will come here and we’ll be utterly fucked. There was a flash of lighting and the profile of the tower of the exchequers was outlined directly in front of me. I pulled the digital compass and marked the vector of the tower itself. I knew the direction of Gehanna was at a 50° angle from the direction of that tower from Ladon’s home. I oriented my body and turned into lamasu. I could feel the muscles take the weight of the feathers as I opened the wings and stepped over the side of the building. One leap and I was into the clouds, never flown into a thunderstorm before. It was at the same time exhilarating and scary.
Thunder, lightning, wind and rain the complete show.
Well I almost got to know the particular architecture of the tower of the Behemoth close and personal but I pulled harder on my wings and pierced the clouds: moonlight. Good news. I flew over the blanket of clouds avoiding those shaped like anvils towering above me and tried not to allow the insane winds to pull me completely off course as I raced north and east above a white bleached world of fluffy clouds with zero recognizable features. The flight was harrowing, lack of practice I guess and diving under the cloud cover I almost slammed into the rock face of the Gehenna themselves. I stood back up from the mud where I disgracefully landed on my ass and turned back into my human self allowing the little backpack to fall on the ground behind me. It contained the beacon for the creation of a bleed to one of the free slabs in the henge. We were going to get these people out of there and Caspilor was leaving here empty handed if I had anything to do about it. Ladon hated that plan… The me flying out alone from Forgat alone plan and he was going to rip my head off as soon as I was back in reach. But, I don’t know. I could not stay and wait for the news that the Stone Dancers had breached the hidden city’s defences and that the legions had slaughtered everyone including Ladon’s dad sitting on my couch in front of a flat screen TV playing reruns of the witcher. Ladon did it to protect me, to protect us. Both his parents were away, kept apart by this dumb war already, both at risk of getting killed anytime and I would stay put because of what? Fear? A need for self preservation? Yeah, I know what I wrote at the end of part one. I remember what I did on the very off chance of getting at Ladon, but I am playing it safe. This time I was getting into a secure place and getting back as soon as the people were through the bleed and I would face the consequences like an adult. I understood Ladon’s fears, his need to safeguard what little certitude he had left but I felt it wasn’t me anymore, being a bystander, a witness. I don’t care to tell the story of Caspilor’s victory. I want to be able to say that I did everything I could to thwart him even if in the end he comes on top it would be on top of empty shells, cities with no souls he could destroy at his whim because it would not matter anymore. Erebus was next on line and if we could get the people of the Gehenna back there to join the refugees from Tenebrun and Potolomea maybe, just maybe there would be enough of a fighting force to if not make a difference at least make Caspilor think twice about what he had planned.
I took the orange veils of the peripatetos’ servant from the bag and wrapped myself in them, they offered zero protection from attack and in the absence of a master meant little to others but at least they hid the fact that I wasn’t one of the most human looking inhabitants of the region. They soaked up the rain almost immediately and clung to my body making walking and breathing difficult but I rapidly saw in a flash of lighting the twin needles of Gimbre at the feet of which one of the grand gates of the Hidden City was situated. Unbalanced by wind gusts and stumbling over rocks, the veils catching in thornbush I crawled my way up mostly on all four only to find the little pass between the twin peaks a desolate barren rock space devoid of any clear entrance. Well, the catch was in the name, Hidden City wasn’t going to have neon signs and population count advertising boards pointing the way. The wind up there had much stronger gusts probably funneled between the two identical mountains and it howled like demented banshees and stopped abruptly allowing the sound of the rain and trickling water to fill the sudden silence. I spotted an overhang and took shelter there looking around myself when the sky opened with what I can best describe as a flower of lightning crackling loudly and echoing all around. Its light bleached white the rock face opposite me and showed smooth rock face and undisturbed stone boulders. Shit, if Caspilor needed the Stone Dancers to get to it maybe it was going to be harder finding an entrance than what I had foolishly anticipated. Had I given in my imperialistic colonizer north american culture and assumed I would be cleverer than people who had hidden their city here thousands of years ago? Yeah, I guess. Sensing something close to despair getting to me I stood up and in the silence between the rage of the wind and the breaking of the sky I shouted to the Gimbre pass:
“I came for Krisaor, I have a message from his son!”
I fucking jumped out of my skin when a voice almost at my ear replied.
“Then let me take you to him.”
One of the boulders behind me was one of the Chthonians and he’d stood up two heads above me and spoke with a voice like a bottomless pit. He began walking out of the protection of the overhang into the renewed rain and I made to follow as fast as I could but he was impossibly quick. The entrance he took me to was no more than a crack in the rock face, a fissure in a wall and the bulking creature slithered through it like he changed shape or became liquid. I followed panting and scratching my knees to a small empty cavern. He was gone.
“Well at least I am sheltered from the rain and the wind down here.” I bitterly mumbled to myself. I was starting to think I would have to set the beacon right in this spot and go home to explain what I had done but at least we would have a Bleed here.
“Ladon sends you without your master, servant?”
Krisaor had materialized out of the walls of the cave inches from my veiled face, making me jump for the second time tonight. His presence filled the cramped space to capacity and I felt like there was not enough space left for me.
“You are in the gaol of the Unseen, in the belly of mountains that will endure for eons pray you speak truth or your corpse will remain part of the mountains until they are no more.”
I swallowed hard, hoping not to be betrayed by my own voice.
“Is this place safe, can I speak freely?”
“I grant safety of words and confidentiality. Use them wisely.”
“I took the veils off my face, noticing how Krisaor almost averted his eyes. The recognition was instantaneous, what I had not expected was the hug.
