Ald woke up in his room, screaming, and seeing the familiar ceiling only deepened his desperation. On the vestibule or the living room or her own chamber waited Kali, she whose death had been tallied thrice a dozen times. Kali who fell from the walls, Kali who died ill in his arms, Kali who disemboweled herself on a stake. Kali the snatched by the flying misshapen, Kali the terminally ill, Kali the torture.
Thirty-six deaths he remembered, and for sure many more had gone by. His head, sole record of the atrocity, had not registered the first cycles more than as mere feelings of uneasiness, a lurking dread in the back of the mind. But gradually more and more details began to persist, to intensify the feeling of Deja-vu. With each cycle that passed, the previous one felt less and less like a dream.
And now he woke with the certainty that Kali was alive and wouldn’t be soon. What would kill her now? A knife, a falling brick, a space rock, a murderer?
Or maybe… his own hands.
He sat at the edge of this bed he hated and stared at his pale hands, tools to enact change in the world. Turned them slowly, taking note of his dark nails. The could be used to dig, the could be used to scratch. He imagined them tinged with Kali’s warm blood, and the thought, far from distressing, resulted calming. It was his incompetence and powerlessness on each of Kali’s previous deaths that flagellated him the most. The feeling of inadequacy, the billowing guilt after every death. And if he killed her only this rue would be there. A different sort of it, new and painful in an exciting way. And afterwards… next time he woke up, he could try saving her again. And fail. And then kill Kali once again, because it would not matter anymore. This dream, this dream that ached and itched and even festered all around him,
He put on his trousers and climbed out the window, heading for the shed. Orange-tinged clouds and crawling bugs among the stretch of grass were the only witnesses of his trip. As the key clicked, as the hinges whirred, as the blood clock on the wall ticked, he wondered what tool to use for the vile deed. Hands alone were good enough, but maybe not as cathartic or fast. What to use? His eyes wandered over his stash of swords. He was deft with them, and Kali was a frail little thing. Compared to a misshapen, she would pose no challenge. Piercing her chest would be a quick ordeal. But the swords were too clean, too unbecoming of the monstrous act. A dagger, a weapon for betrayal and subterfuge? Fitting, but it was also a lady’s choice for self-defense. Once again, too clean.
His smile widened when his eyes happened upon the shack with his metalsmithing hammers. One, but which? It couldn’t be the ones he used to give finishing touches to his works, those were tools too delicate, tools of creation. The Ball pen hammer was a bit too wieldy, he felt comfortable with it. Definitively not a tool for murder. Maybe the heavier one, with a flat head on a side and a round-tipped wedge for spreading material on the other.
With the handle grasped firmly he flexed his arm as one would while holding a dumbbell. The morning sun intruded through his shed’s lone window, and It made Ald think on how he had been seeing the same sun, the same light, for so long—despite having just woken up. The dream was never ending, and he couldn’t demolish its walls with any mundane tool. But he could cave in Kali’s skull; he could be the artificer of his own torture, and not give the pleasure to whatever fate had trapped him in this loop of punishment. Control, that’s what he had come to crave, as unwelcoming of his nature as it was.
Ald swung the tool over his shoulder and exited the shed with a firm step. Did he want to murder his ward, his child? No. But he didn’t want to see her die to contrived circumstances again and again. For Kali to die was inevitable, and if couldn’t save her, maybe destroying the object of his love would end this, make him wake up to either a reality where Kali wouldn’t die before, or one where she had died for the last time, in and by his hands imbibed by madness.
The main door would be bolted from the inside, so he climbed in through the window once again. The hammer felt unusually light in his grip, maybe because he had just woken up and his muscles felt rested, despite his mind being so, oh so tired.
“Kali! come! I have a surprise for you!” he called with a sweet singing voice while making his way to the basement, out of his room and to the left. Beside a bag of coal that stood against a humidty-laden wall, he waited, hearing the light steps of Kali on the floor above. The handle felt wet on his hands, wet and coarser than it should. His heart beat violently inside his chest, threatening to become misshapen. When Kali descended the spiral stairs with a swiftness and mirth only seen in children and those who carry good news, wearing that smile that Ald now considered venomous, he almost broke down and cried. Omen of pain, that she was.
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He grabbed the child he was supposed to take care of by the neck, his nails nearly digging in her flesh as she scratched and kicked and tried, in vain, to bit the blacksmiths’ strong arm. With his other hand, Ald raised the hammer.
“No, Ald, no, I‘ll be good!” She cried with eyes wide open, expecting a beating, like a child of her age would.
Her sobs and whines were interrupted by the splattering of her blood, when the hammerhead descended upon her shoulder, piercing flesh, crushing bone. Ald frowned at the sight of the squealing, shrieking Kali. In so many gruesome ways he had seen her die, and now he was killing her. He smiled, as one does when released from a heavy burden.
The hammer descended again and again, hitting the other shoulder, the arms, the skull, leaving no point of impact intact, silencing Kali forever just to leave the splashes of blood on Ald’s face. That, and the intruding, soft cry of the ravens.
Ravens all around, ravens raising from the blood that covered the bags of coal and the forgewood floor. Raven’s forming from the wounds of Kali, from the pooling blood and brain matter in her crushed skull. All over the lifeless body that slumped over the steps Ravens were born, and they regarded Ald with blaming eyes. Their cries slowly mutated to those of Kali as Ald let the hammer fall and reverberate against the planks. Next to the bag of coal the Felsian sat, and tried to pluck the birds from his skin with shaking hands, and where he tore out a bird, another sprouted, crying both like a raven and like the child that now lay dead.
He wept as if he were a child, as the birds mocked and their wings beat fiercely, like coal that had learned to fly free. If truth was like steel, this was the trial that would have broken any blade.
Soon it was all over. The blood, the basement, the home and the murder. He opened his eyes to be met with the green exuberance of the cloudcryforest, and a sister bedecked in colorful feathers that stood before him, regarding the man with a haughty stare.
“Caretaken is gone, and you have a quest to fulfill. Up, up.”
It took Ald some instants to realize what add happened, to fully remember the extent of his situation, and when he did, he burst upwards, towards Pandemonium’s face, an sweeping a hand as if he had claws instead of fingers.
“What have you made me do? You and your ilk! I will stand pain, I will stand dismemberment, I will stand fire burning my skin and claws digging into my eyes, all to save Felsia. But they had to mess with what I care of, more than anything. Forced me to renounce to it to ease the pain.” Ald Punched her in the face, and Pandemonium just bounced down and up, like one of those inflatable punching bags for children.
“Boing,” she mocked, with a delay intended both for comic effect and to elicit Ald’s anger.
But before he could hit her again, the Felsian’s rage got interrupted by Caretaken’s deep voice penetrating into his mind. “You were an adequate toy. I, Caretaken, am pleased with your act. You may go now, Ald Elvisatcaught.”
Ald began swinging against the air. “Where are you? Come out! Let me give you what you deserve. “
Pandemonium’s hand, found the Felsian’s shoulder, stopping him with a cold grip. “Nowhere, Ald. Caretaken has no body. Unlike me, not even transitory ones.”
Caretaken did something he was not used to doing, but deemed necessary for communicating with a Felsian: he cackled. “I have never found a use for a body when you don’t need one to exist. Look what a body and a mind did for you: it allowed me to break you. Heed Zaburanatea and continue your search for Father.”
Trembling from irritation but also devoid of the boiling rage that had spurred him to claw Pandemonium “Who is Zaburanatea?”
“It’s the name Father gave me long ago, when I first opposed him, irrupting in one of his summons to save the idiots that had called upon him. It’s not my name, mind you. Call me Flock , Unkindness, Pandemonium, Crown. Call me like any group of birds and I will be happy, Ald.”
Ald didn’t answer, and instead leaned against a tree. Oppose. She had opposed Father. “Why are you doing this, then? Help me save my Father if you hate him. Speak, birdbunch.”
Unkindness sat onto the litter and fallen branches of the jungle’s floor, supporting her eight with her seemingly delicate arms. “Saving Felsia is more important than my hatred for Father’s hunger. Don’t you see both actions, me leading you to Father and me saving some Felsians from Father’s maw, are born from the same love and admiration for my mortal aunts and uncles? I fight against the wrongdoings of the progenitor gods, and I watch over every soul in Felsia, yearning to save as many as I can. Do you understand?”
Ald looked around a bit to see if he could reorient himself. “Our souls are safe with Mother, is our city and way of life that’s in peril. Our bodies, and how they will suffer if the city falls to the misshapen.”
Caretaken sing sang into his sister’s mind. “Do I tell him? It would be fun to watch his reaction.”
Without speaking, she answered. “No; in time, he will know. I need the shock to push him over the edge. Tell him, and I will be the one torturing you.”
Then, a colorful bird perched on Ald’s shoulder, and, pointing with its curved beak, it said a single word. “North.”