EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH (I AM THAT I AM): An Elena Duran/Corazon Negro
Vi Moreau (vmoreau@directvinternet.com)
Wed, 25 Sep 2002 13:20:05 -0400
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I am that I am) 30.0/34
Julio Cesar divad72@prodigy.net.mx
Vi Moreau vmoreau@directvinternet.com
"You know this is a trap," Aylon said to Zarach.
"We have no choice. We're going to have to play by her rules now." Zarach
said handing his companion one of the branches he had collected at the
cave's mouth. Instantly, the brushwood burned as Zarach placed his gaze over
them.
Aylon approached an opening under a tilted rock, peered inside, and then
carefully beckoned to Zarach. He led him around and to right, pulled himself
up and over a sizable boulder, and looked down into the passage which had
the width of a city sidewalk and the height of two men. A wall of rock had
long ago split in two. The forces that had driven it had forced the pieces
closer together at the top, wider apart at the bottom, forming an irregular
tunnel sloping down into the earth. The floor was formed by dirt and rubble
washed in by water. The walls sported moss and small plants only so far as
light entered the crack.
The Old Man of the Mountain observed all this without pausing. He lit his
own torch and led Zarach into the cavern.
At the end of the descent, the tunnel opened out into a large, ungainly
chamber. The two torches-very small and dim in comparison to the dark
expanse they had to contend with-played over the billowing curves of the
cave. Aylon recognized the smooth, weird shapes of water-cut and water-built
limestone. He fanned his torch out as far as it would go, and turned it on
the ceiling, which soared to the right past the limit of the light. To his
left, it swooped down to within four feet of the floor. Maybe another would
suffer a bizarre combination of claustrophobia, agoraphobia and vertigo, but
not him. He looked to his footing, sharpened the focus again, and tried to
keep the light on the same level as his eyes.
Zarach stepped out, taking a slightly different route to avoid the
stalagmites and columns jutting up from the floor. Aylon picked his way to a
narrow, nearly invisible opening and Zarach followed-though it was a tight
and difficult squeeze for him.
On the other side there was a disturbingly familiar chamber, a memory from
the distant past. Aylon felt as though he had walked into a natural chapel,
the cave's roof was vaulted like a cathedral's. More stalactites,
stalagmites and columns had formed here than in the first room, and the
largest of them formed two uneven lines... like rows of pillars in a ruin.
The few formations down the center of the room lay low; skulls dotted the
gently rolling floor, and the corpses suspended from the ceiling hung no
lower than the tops of the pillars on either side.
"I cannot feel her," said Aylon. His voice echoed. He lowered it and went
on. "Where is she?" he asked, glancing toward Zarach.
"She is down here, trust me," Zarach whispered. "She will be always here,
waiting for us in the dark."
Aylon clambered up and found a bone on a stone stump. He watched as Zarach
looked around. By now in the midst of the moving shadows, Aylon realized
that what he had taken for the black wall of the cave must be a freestanding
column of enormous size. He squinted to see better.
Zarach reached the side passage he had chosen and turned back to look at the
giant pillar himself. His torch caught the thing in a sharp profile, and his
gaze narrowed. For an instant, the sidelight formation had seemed to move;
an optical illusion gave it a hundred monstrous faces and distorted limbs.
Zarach moved on and darkness settled on the far end of the cavern once more.
The flame flooded the huge hall with light. It stripped the shadows away
from the pillar and threw them into the corners of the room. It picked out
dirt and rust imprisoned under the translucent calcite film. But the faces
were gone. Zarach studied the surface of the hundred-headed demons of the
natural, two-story, stone pillar that must have grown for eons and stood for
millennia-and tried to find and angle from which he might see the faces
again. The light refused to bring out the contours that could have fooled
his eyes. The faces never reappeared in the stone.
Aylon came back, curious and slightly worried. "What was it?"
"I thought I saw something."
"Moving?" Aylon jumped in.
"No. Just... there," Zarach said nothing more.
"You've got a feeling about something?"
Zarach grimaced. "No. Its just... the echoes... sounded as though there were
more than just us in here."
"Focus your mind, brother," said Aylon. "Forget your sins. Don't let her
play tricks with your mind." Then Aylon followed the trail of the tunnel
easily-almost smugly.
Suddenly, the darkness in the tunnels became more than an absence of light.
It was a fog on inky moisture that seemed to coat Aylon and Zarach, the
stonewalls, the floor, the air itself. The darkness weighed them down,
clinging to their bodies, seeping into their spirit, leaching away their
strength of will. With each step, the darkness grew deeper ahead and behind.
They could see just enough to keep moving forward. There were no more side
tunnels, no alternative paths.
"Here we go again," Zarach said behind Aylon.
Aylon's eyes narrowed. He wondered how Zarach had ever lived under Lilitu's
influence without going instantly mad. Even the Old Man of the Mountain, not
completely averse to dour solitude, felt the weight of the earth pressing
down upon him, crushing him. What did it say about Lilitu, that she would
choose places like this black labyrinth in which to spend eternity?
The darkness was a crèche of doubts, and as Aylon continued along the
passageway, uncertainties assailed him and gained force. He questioned the
veracity of Zarach's words. Who could read the mind of the Son of the
Endless Night? Perhaps it was not Lilitu and the Headless Children who
manipulated the Game but the other way around. Maybe Lilitu had been warned,
and had sent Vlad and the others as a sacrifice, a decoy, to lure them to
this place devoid of hope.
Even if his scant knowledge proved accurate, ahead in the darkness a
guardian lay in wait. The Goddess. With every mission, of course, there was
the risk of failure, of final death. Tonight was no different in that sense.
But Aylon would destroy Lilitu, or he would not. He would survive, of he
would not. Only once before, however, had he felt that perhaps failure was
the best outcome for a mission and that defeat and death were what he
deserved. That time, millennia before, risking disloyalty, he had made sure
that word of his target's identity preceded him, and Zarach, completely
prepared, had defeated him.
But times had changed.
Death was among Immortals. The eldest of their kind was not long behind. The
children of divine fornication, ever dutiful, ever uncompromising, were
being drawn toward a narrow path indeed. The Endgame.
Prove yourself, Aylon said to himself. Prove yourself worthy. By destroying
Lilitu. And then himself. If that were what worthiness entailed, Aylon
thought he might be able to do it. He might be able to cut off his own head,
if that were required to avoid Lilitu's Dark Quickening.
But even that would not be enough. He could do all that, but still the
dreams in the other world would come eventually. Still the herald would call
him to fulfill this great and terrible task for his faith-for that he could
not and would not discard. There was wrongness here, a wrongness as palpable
as the darkness that surrounded him.
And what about Zarach? If Zarach became just as Lilitu after taking her
Quickening, could Aylon destroy him, sacrifice the bond between them? They
were the only two original members of the Ancient Gathering left in the
world. The blood was their blood. If Aylon reclaimed it for whatever reason,
just or unjust, could he live with that? Could he live with, or even
survive, both Lilitu and Zarach's Quickenings?
No, he would not abandon Zarach, though he had abandoned him. For justice or
injustice did not change one fact-that the bond between them was a blight
upon the earth. Of this he was certain, even amidst the stifling darkness.
Even more so amidst the stifling darkness, where Lilitu's foul corruption
was given release.
Ahead through the gloom, Aylon's eyes could make out an exit across the
tunnel, a different shade of black upon black, and he felt the wind from a
different passageway. It was not a wind of air currents, but a shadow. And
the shadow, which was everywhere, enveloped him, took hold of him. It was a
solid, one hundredfold, as the blackness which he had already waded through.
Aylon's arms were pinned at his sides, his hands unable to reach a single
weapon, as he was drawn into the maw of Lilitu.
========
Zarach followed Aylon through the narrow tunnel. He had been expecting an
ambush, but nothing had happened, yet. They reached another chamber.
Zarach lunged away from a wisp of movement that might have been nothing or
might have been one of the streaks of the shadow. From the corner of his
eye, he saw the flash that was Aylon's scimitar; saw the silent flare of the
blade and the patch of darkness ripped apart like shredded paper.
Now Aylon whirled and slashed with his scimitar at another shadow. The blade
met resistance. The darkness jerked away from him momentarily. Zarach
followed his brother's example and set himself in motion. The rocks were not
a great obstacle. Zarach danced over and around them without losing even
half a step. The shadows could not surround what they could not catch. But
the darkness was everywhere.
The shooting in the United Nations had gone so easily, even though the
resistance had been swift and intense. However, Zarach had felt some small
relief after he and the others had quickly dispatched the score of Hunters
and the rest of the crowd had dispersed in a panic.
There the shadows had entered him, becoming one with the Son of the Endless
Night. But now it was different. Now Zarach was weaker, and Lilitu herself
was near, she was no longer in a far away place sending her powers toward
them. Down here, she reigned supreme. The battle now was one of survival.
And he knew it: he and Aylon would attempt to draw Lilitu out into the open,
but the shadows were everywhere.
Zarach just hoped that Heru-sa-aset, Methos and Myrddin could give them
enough time to kill her. The island above had been swarming with
legionnaires, Hunters-Zarach would have sworn it was a hundred.
Every way he turned, the darkness exercised its will-lashed out at him,
grabbed at his legs, his weapons, and attempted to smother him from all
sides. Ever so often, a solid figure appeared, only long enough to attack,
and then was gone when Zarach's blades sang in the night.
Suddenly, another tendril of shadows appeared, stalking through the one
remaining passageway they had entered. There was no turning back.
"Lilitu is near!" Zarach yelled in frustration as he fought against the
darkness.
They had run out of time. Aylon was barely holding back the shadows. He was
fighting as a man possessed against the darkness. His scimitar, denied
sound, still possessed its sting.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??? GO!!! KILL HER!!!" Aylon roared, wading into
the darkness, striking fiercely. "GO AND KILL HER!!!"
Zarach could not stop him. The Old Man of the Mountain was soon overwhelmed
by the potent darkness-willing to die in order to defeat Lilitu, as he had
sworn to do millennia before. For a moment, Aylon's body shone with an
unnatural light.
Then he disappeared from Zarach's view.