Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Only the merciless blows resounded on the tender flesh.

Only the last blow sounded, grafting his nasty bite, added to the other marks marbling the alabaster skin.

No longer shivered the bruised and punished body, in a long sinuosity in slow motion.

No longer passed through tight lips, only a long moan of relief and pain, as the silence returned.

The room vibrated with the tortured essences of a kneeling being, as the bruised object descended with a last sigh of resignation from the punishment inflicted. Not a word was said, barely a choppy breath from the blows of the cruelly punished one, and another jerky breath from the effort of hurting. Heavy was the unhealthy smell of sweat from exertion, mingled with that of suffering, as well as the ferruginous smell of blood seeping from the tears made by the striking nerve node.

Time was suspended in agonizing slowness, while the punished straightened his young build carved in the muscles of greenness, and the thinness imposed by fasting, paradoxes which shared the stooped and submissive silhouette, and long threads of black silk like the night scattered painfully across the bruised back, soaked in sweat and bloody gullies on the tortured quivering flesh, stuck in a grotesque web whose architecture could have made think of that of a spider stricken with madness.

Despite the suffering of an unjust punishment, the penitent slowly raised his face cut with billhooks in the deadly coldness of an indifference he wanted to display, leaving no chance for the executioner to rejoice in the searing pain that tore his body. And two scathing orbs of blue steel planted themselves in the exhausted gaze of the executioner, open challenge to the refusal to stoop and submit to the injustice of the punishment.

Once again, this arrogant sass froze his accusing eyes in a silent cry of revolt! Once again, the tired look detailed the supple body predisposing a powerful frame in the shoulders, a long work carried out by the intensive training of weapons: no doubt, that would make a formidable warrior of power and ferocity, - as the Founders wished so intensely in their mad illusions of the perfect warrior who would one day stifle the Dragon's breath!

With each punishment, the icy eyes grew with a tapering will in hatred and resentment, and held promise of future vengeance. But for now, this young savage would be tamed, and the Brother tutor would not fail in the harassment he had harbored for years against the rebellious pupil. Since he knew the identity of the one who was standing bent under his blows, for the moment broken by the new punishment. But one day, who would dare to tear the whip out of his hands and slam it in the face…!

Hateful and vindictive words passed the tormentor's wrinkled lips, in a breath ejecting from the burning lungs with the effort, but which were easily picked up by the penitent:

"... damn Belmont, I would end up breaking you ...

The lakes of pure water sparkled like precious stones, sapphires whose shards danced with spangles of raw obsidian, the time of a dangerous mixture that warned of the coming storm. The tormentor recoiled under the force of that gaze, and a long shudder made his old frame throb in nauseating vibrations: in the depths of his hardened being, he had always been afraid of that gaze of deadly ice, suspecting the owner of such pupils, of to be subject to dark forces whose cause he didn't know, but against which he had been warned time and time again.

"Remember, Tutor Brother, what this boy is made of ... never forget him ! We tremble for the day when we will teach him who his Father is… That day, God help us… ” the Founding Brothers had lectured him. And despite the warnings, he persisted in his anger and grievances towards the child ignorant of his origins which brought him so many outbursts of hatred and rejection from his peers.

But there, he knew instinctively that he had perhaps crossed limits which had to be measured in their dangerousness, when his eyes were struck by the rumbling inflexibility of the sapphire orbs diluted in storm-gray waves: it was a real Predator gaze. That of a killer in the making!

He stepped back slightly, trying to blur the fear gnawing at his being, and his limbs felt liquefied from the flood of rage he was reading there. He detailed, mortified, the spasmodic contraction of the muscles, straining the body architecture a little more in a draft of suspended attack, and he believed for a moment that the teenager, already cut in the strength of a man, was going to jump on him, and make him pay that last punishment too much.

He had forgotten himself in the face of the youth who proved to be more excellent in all the tasks imposed by the Brotherhood, seeming to juggle with mortifying ease on innate capacities, which others took years to master. He had forgotten the roaring danger that could explode at any moment, in the harmless acts first of a life of warlike labor, accustomed to seeing the spines of other students bow under inhuman efforts; he had completely missed the exceptional morphology that was taking shape over time, disregarding his profile under the length of tunics and other shirts and gambeson hiding a ruthless force of nature.

"The Son of the Dragon, in its purest form ... From this unbreakable brood. "

"Dogs do not make cats ... Remember that you will soon have a white dove in your hands, to pluck it more ... You will end up losing feathers, by force."

The penitent felt his whole body arched under the pain of the beatings, but he himself tried to suppress the exponential tremors, and which he knew not to be due solely to the suffering of his torn flesh - no, there was this voice, this recurring companion, which shouted imprecations at his mind, invoking him to tear the smug smile from the face of his executioner -, but to a thirst that had become fierce for some time with bruises, as if all his wounds had insidiously let a Shadow filter through their bloody gaping gap.

And the young one had taken fear of this tormented obsession taking part in the invasion, over the years, in his Soul and his feelings frayed in a fabric which escaped him. He had "felt" his heart swell under the impact of this presence, and had felt a death anguish that had brought him to the ground during one of those perpetual unjust punishments that made his body bend.

And there, he felt it rise to the surface in successive pernicious waves, breaking the last remains of a rock reinforced with blows of sermons and confessions, giving way under the impact of the waves of fracture risking to complete a long path in the applied stoicism of an ascetic life. It was like a one-way mirror exploding myriads of silver-splintered sparks, under the treacherous explosion of bottomless anger to limit the shock; a raging sea of vaporous gasified in acidic interlacings. The power of pure adrenaline twisting every vessel, every neuron in its intense deadly crash, and he thought he was having a vascular attack by the jolts of his impulsive heart. The entity invited him to Ire in all its glory, whispering ruthlessly tearing apart that cantankerous old man who had tortured him for so many years.

"Your incessant flogging will never ruin my body, I will not give you that satisfaction, nor my mind will falter ..."

Despite the storm dancing in the blue steel orbs,the lips hemmed in pout of contempt remained sealed in mutism, preferable to a few dangerous words which could put him more in a perilous situation, the Brother tutor irrevocably hating him. Instead of escalating the painful scene, he restrained himself in a loose movement he wanted to perform without trembling, muscles screaming their agony, and his pale flesh weeping rivers, to put his tunic back in place, and get up on his legs threatening to bend at any time. Like a last bellows to a restrained impetuosity, his long night hair slipped over his still bared shoulder, and even the delicate brush of the silken strands made him vibrate in a painful surge.

"Get out, Belmont…" growled the Brother killer, silently praying that fear wouldn't make his voice weaken. Will you be treated at the Apothecary, and I will be grateful for your presence for Vespers. I am reporting the matter to the Founding Brothers.

The young Belmont took the audacity of a last look taunting the figure barely suppressing a sly fear he felt rising in the Brother, which stretched his soft lips into a subtle sneer which had the gift of exasperating the tutor a little more.

"That filth just got beaten up, and he's smiling again… he's taunting me!" Yelled the warning in his mind clouded with rage and outrageous sadism to cross the line of what is acceptable.

But above all, the Entity had been singing to the brunette Beauty, for a few seconds, the troubled gaze of the brother, shaded by strange pernicious undulations, which the young Belmont could not decipher, but which he had surprised when he received his punishments. A hazy, enigmatic disorder, when the warm brown of the irises flirted with the vision of transparent skin with a marmoreal complexion crying bloody gullies under the whip. And Belmont understood in time that a relentless sadism tightened his lips in anticipation, when the Brother tutor invoked the punishment cascading over his rebellious being.

"This infamous junk undoubtedly takes pleasure in making you suffer ... the 'voice' began to sing," ... look at him, I'm sure he gets satisfaction in his old flesh ... "

Belmont was then dismayed at what he had dared to think: it was a foul sin to have such thoughts towards a Brother of the Brotherhood ?! He was the penitent, he the culprit, and he had all his impure remnants, suggesting an unforgivable crime in the eyes of the Church! But it was the Entity that whispered such an imagination to him, right? Not a developing body of taboo desire, of incipient lasciviousness under the touch of a whip, or of professional hands filling in the gaps more or less deep excoriations depending on the punishments.

This time, the Brother tutor was unleashed more than the other times, pushing the deep-rooted vice of having the penitent remove the shirt and tunic, so that each blow is imprinted on the flesh. And the damage was quite substantial. So it was with great difficulty that he rolled his bruised shoulders, trying to the end of his ferocious pride not to show anything to the sadistic monster with a human face that had haunted his nightmares for years already.

With a semblance of grace that made the executioner squeal, Belmont turned and attempted a straight gait, as his legs were in danger of flexing under his weight at any moment, his back threatening to make him scream with every step. This time he was going to have a hard time hiding a significant lameness.

When the door closed on the broken figure, the Brother tutor threw the whip against the wall, in a rage that released its long suppressed springs. He wanted so badly to break this arrogant impertinent man so badly that it choked him and made his pulse rise dangerously. He had already been called many times to the Founding Brothers for his unjustified punishments, and given in an exponential violence that was really starting to worry his Superiors.

He was stronger than him, knowing the history and origins of this "kid", he would have killed him a long time ago, if the Founders of the Brotherhood had not muzzled him in time, and calmed down in its murderous ardor. His last interview had been very brutal, moreover, and the Founding Father had heavily threatened and sanctioned him, which had only thrown a little more acid into the already haunting gall of his hatred towards the teenager.

This time, he was sure, the day wouldn't end without a visit to the Founders' apartments! He suddenly felt the adrenaline rush into a waterfall of ice gripping his heart threatening to stop at the realization of what he had just done, and a red veil of wrath blinded him. He had been too strong this time !! No doubt the child would complain, and have every reason to succeed. It had been too long since his relentlessness on him had become deadly in its unacceptable proportions. Too long that he still punished the Belmont, instead of others whom he knew were guilty of the facts, but of whom, alas, one should not even pronounce the noble names of the families involved.

But this was too much! He understood it slowly, and took the measure of his actions, contemplating his hands trembling, not only from the effort, but something more that had thrown him overboard, and losing his nerves.

My God ! Why had he had young Belmont undressed to suffer a little more of his punishment? And this body which, despite the suffering, refused to bend, and had straightened up in all its arrogance and the splendor of its young years ... The teenager was barely more than a few months after his fifteenth birthday, and already was cut like an adult man in the outline of his shoulders worked by the intensive training, in spite of a morphology which remained somewhat "thin" compared to the others. The muscles sculpted gently under a diaphanous skin barely tanned by the stingy sun of the country, but the structure remained relatively dry and raw, as under a brutal weight loss. As if his developing body refused to amplify like the other student fighters did.

He seemed to keep a form of femininity in his frame, and his features, something that swayed gracefully between the two genders, without really deciding on a precise direction. And this is what troubled the Brother tutor, for months: this body, this appearance which danced so lightly between two sexual profiles, virile in the muscle mass gradually taking shape, - his feline and aerial movements when he wielded the sword in a ballet which astonished even his Master-épéistes by his dexterity flirting with perfection, the young man predestined himself to the art of the sword with an anchored and innate constancy, and the coaches turned pale with anticipation when his novice hands would draw the Combat cross, no doubt that it would wreak havoc in the opposing ranks, manipulated by such a fervent heart! - and so feminine in that hair like a mad mane in the wind, and the face sporting features of a beauty that no one could deny, a natural charisma which made that even the most hateful of his comrades willingly bowed their heads, and recognized the strange and unhealthy attraction flowing in ethereal waves of ambiguity.

Belmont was a sulphurous beauty, which could only be blessed by Hell itself! And that was what put so much violence in the thoughts of the Tutor Brother, smashing the doors of his moralizing inhibitions. Despite his internal admonitions, Brother tutor then gave in, drowned in the shadows of a penitent night, to his self-flagellation rituals in order to purify this cursed soul flirting with such impure meditations. Deep down, he knew that he was not a lonely soul in the face of this conflict, this terrible dilemma, he knew perfectly well other of his "brothers" succumb to this state of mind, and he was often surprised to think that the wolf was indeed in the sheepfold in the presence of the young knight in the making.

The hardest part was to deal with what the Brother Abbot had also detected in this fiery and hardly disciplined temperament, these strange vibrations which were not content to be reflected in the transparent blue gaze. There was something like a shadow on the board, something that undeniably gnawed at the teenager, and it had been from childhood himself, but which the abbot could not define. There was no doubt in this obtuse, bigoted mind, that the child was now possessed by something that certainly had origins in his…. Father ?

Sometimes the abbot tutor found himself regretting the knowledge of Belmont's birth, and then felt the depths of his bowels twist at the very idea of the "Shadow" hovering over the child's parentage. Maybe one day they would all pay for their efforts to hammer Belmont's mind under sermons and superstitions of hatred towards the Dragon? One day, he would be old enough to know… and that day, he would go and fight the One who terrorized the country so much. Would he eliminate Him? or would die of it, who knows? ... And the perverted Brother found himself favoring this last thought: ... and if he died? ...

The Brother Abbot tutor was there in his troubled reflections, while trying to calm his nerves seriously loose just by the guilty presence of the young novice warrior. He only noticed that he was unconsciously pacing up and down, before heading towards the high arched window, letting his gaze descend on the expanse of the courtyard serving as an atrium, as well as a place of training for the "chosen" by the masters of war. He knew that Belmont had to walk through this courtyard atrium, certainly to join Brother Efrain's pharmacy, where he would once again receive treatment from the punishments. Efrain would report back to the Founding Brethren again, and he would walk up the path to the private parts of the Brotherhood, to receive his blames, reprimands, and non-cryptic threats, all of which he had been used to for months now. He seriously thought of going to confession with the Brother Prior, before physically lambasting himself, and cleaning his soul stinking with his shameful fantasies which tortured him without ceasing, making his heated mind bend under the incessant flashes of images that almost suffocate him in shame. A shame that only lasted a few seconds, quickly frightened by the procession of dark misdeeds persisting in sticking to the corrupt soul of the man bent under sins.

In short, as he saw the silhouette of Belmont crossing the courtyard as planned, he realized that he had indeed screwed up this time !!

He could see a crowd of young fighters in training, under the shadow of the atrium, silently watching the unruly youth walking straight, remaining proud in his punishment, and somehow hiding a limp from the beating on his back that would have made him scream, if he was alone. The abbot recognized the majority of the young people as being the real culprits of the last crime, which had earned this unfair punishment at the Belmont, whereas they should not be touched, no ! They came from families whose provenance we knew, and whose Legacy was only pronounced in measured and honored words...

« What a temper, this Belmont… thought the Brother tutor bitterly, twisting his fingers regaining a little calm. He would rather be killed by beatings than surrender ... My God, have mercy! When he will know who his Father is… ”

By an irony of chance, as if young Belmont could have heard his thoughts, before stepping through the arcade leading to the apothecary, he turned and gazed intently at the window overlooking a fountain nestled in the ivy-woven arcades,  where the tutor stood straight in his frightened hatred. The glare in his gaze must have made the other students freeze in ice, for none would have the misplaced offense of challenging the young penitent. On the contrary, they had the good idea and reflex to pull back a little more, guessing the storm which risked landing on their heads, if one of them dared to raise a protest or a mockery !  A Look  like that, you had to admit, it wasn't good for their business at all.

"Your flogging will never ruin my body… you hear, old man !" You will never bend me under your vices ... "

Gritting his teeth in pain, Belmont walked away, still a hint of limp that he vainly tried to stifle under a gait he wanted to be sure of. Deep down inside, he was dying to rush to a hiding place where no one would find him, and spare him from all these judgments, and mocking and scrutinizing looks, and also allow him to swallow his burning shame of having been exposed, beaten and humiliated like never before. Even though the others weren't there this time! The other punishments inflicted had always been witnessed by his comrades who had to stay, at the order of the tutor. One more stylus stroke in his bruised heart, tearing his Ego relentlessly under the sly pikes, slicing further through the shroud coated in the venom of stigma and degradation, a withering staining the folds of his aching Soul.

But this? It had been beyond comprehension this time! And Belmont left the place, consumed by the incendiary rage which devoured him mentally, and physically too! He felt ablaze with the blush spreading over his contorted face and white with fury, as well as all over his body.

A low, disapproving whisper rose, as the battered form disappeared around the bend of an alley mired in the last rains of a summer promising warm, welcome warmth. The drying mud retained the imprint of the disturbed footsteps for a long time, while faint trills of waking insects added to the gentle nascent hubbub, broadcast by somewhat indignant voices. No, not everyone was in agreement with the punitive decisions of the abbot tutor, and some were starting to revolt, faced with the misery of poor Belmont who took the blows instead of the real culprits, all that because he was an orphan child whose origins were more than dark.

Among the protesting whispers slipped strange strategic thoughts bordered in the mind of a silent shadow, standing discreetly leaning on the arid fountain woven in the ivy, just below the window where was frozen the tutor statufie by the look of steel lightning he had discerned despite the distance. That’s to say the power charged by that look !

And the mute shadow considered the figure cradled by the flaps of a long deep green tunic thoughtfully, - apparently its owner’s favorite color - which had just been swallowed in the late rain mist. The gaze of the shadow, deeply nutty mixed with subtle gray undertones, was covered with a veil of concern, staring at the spot where Belmont had disappeared.

Busy with their comments, none of the students returning to their selective training paid attention to the shadow that seemed to dissolve amid the faint darkness of the arcades.

Chapter Text

May Nature be beautiful, when It awoke from the last frost, and let its breath of Eolus rock the numb living, shrouding the rivers and lakes with light mists in the image of an impressionist painting, with which She enriched the scent in filaments of His magic brush shaded with the last shades of pink and soft silver gray. Almost an irrational fresco unwrapping its delicate pieces in chromatic touches, in perceptible hues in the discontinuous wonder of a day elaborated in the sweetness of summer after a discreet drizzle.

The carefree fauna rustled with its rambling, and made the vegetation quiver with its courtship displays in a vital and balanced continuity of things generated in the ranks of the living. The river, which sang its crystalline litanies, was no exception, and its joyful waves polished the pebbles lying in its depths. Its wave made of diamond-like transparency, slightly diluted by the precious emerald reflections of the trees, and silver flashes flirting on its twittering surface. Its water had slowly warmed up over the course of the day, advocating the well-being of a bath for anyone who bravely faced its remaining freshness in the depths of tiny, bubbling life.

And it emitted a very small tremor under the slit of its current by the body coming to nestle there, a foam of bubbles burst delicately on the skin which came to find a little comfort there, it was barely a burst of laughter from the wave, when the figure gave itself completely in its grip of liquid silver. Rather, it was the moan that arose, which broke the crystalline silence, as the being indulged in the bath that could calm the fire of the bruises. The water was still cool enough to make the warrior pupil cringe, when he covered his wounded flesh in the soothing wave. The nasty whip bites revolted in the chill, and eerie palpitations rolled over his back and shoulders, revealing the severity of the blows. Bathing in the river would not be enough this time! Even if he went looking for herbal remedies to make an ointment, as he usually did.

This time, he felt that he should go to the Apothecary Brother, and that he was stuck in a situation where he was going to need the help of others, and he hated the idea. He hated calling for help, with each punishment he hid like birds hide to die, and managed to use his nascent knowledge of a necessary medicalization for his injuries, but disregarding of those of his mind in constant rebellion suffering the martyr under conflicting torture and Self-hatred..

He wrapped his face in his wave-cooled hands, sitting down painfully in the watery depths, letting the ice calm the eerie twitches. Blood continued to ooze from the tears, fifteen in total, but which looked like he had been whipped to death with a hundred blows. His back curled into a fetal position, bringing his long legs under his chin, he tried to clear his molten mind, staring at the silvery lightning on the surface reflecting myriad blinding solar rays.

He had taken the time to neatly fold his clothes on the side of the shore, and already the fabric was warming under the darting rays, and the sharp stones washed by the caresses of the waves. The humidity didn't stay long, evaporating almost immediately into the soft air.

He thought for a moment and memorized the long list of medicinal herbs he could glean, but realized the bitter realization that he had to take charge of the pharmacy, and it brought up a moaning growl from the depths of his chest tight with anguish.

All in good time, but first he found it best to stretch gently, lengthening his numb limbs and his back rolled up in pain, which he let lie a little deeper into the river. Emptying his clashing thoughts, he blocked his breath, and dove below the surface, keeping his body still sinking into the shallow depth. The length of his hair spread out in slow motion, in a graceful antigravity, rising to the surface like the wings of butterflies crumbling in the wind, luminous silk algae in their raven-wing darkness, and a few strands wrapped around his thin, fast-sharpened waist.

He would have liked his breath to stop there, finally, that his lungs no longer react under the existential impulse, that his heart shocks and stops its pulsations.

“It is forbidden by God to put an end to his days… It is a terrible sin which is only rewarded by eternal wandering in Hell… Man does not have the right to put an end to his creation which God gave him as a gift… It is a Divine right, and only God decides your life and your death, when He calls you back to His side… ”

"... and why would you give up your existence, for a few strokes? ... Watch them hope you bend your knee, and obey ... their lustful looks hoping to see you fall ... just for that, you owe it to yourself to do them defy… ” the voice of Inner Shadows sang happily. They had been whispering hauntingly for a long time now, lifting the abyss of an Inner woven into conflicts whose exact meaning eluded him. Each sermon, uttered with theatrical threats, found its paradox contested by the sweet whispers of the "Voices". And under their chorus, changed the blue orbs which were diluted in nuances announcing the intense combat taking place under the great forehead half-hidden by an eternal long wick wavy in its ears.

Frozen on the bottom of the river, holding his breath until his lungs burned, in the trembling wave, there were sapphires so upset that, if he was on the surface, they couldn't hold back the tears that gathered there, and they set his cornea ablaze.

No longer able to be nourished with the precious oxygen, his lungs revolted, and in a magnificent arc that drew a thousand droplets around his tense body, he resurfaced, opening his mouth wide to absorb the vital air in an almost agonizing cry. Muscles worked to keep the figure balanced in the watery universe, pearly flashes underlined the nervous valleys and gorges of the energetic bust and waist, sculpted in the magnificence of youth.

He had reached his fifteen years, fifteen springs and fourteen winters, and he already sported a body made of hard work, hard training until late at night, as his comrades left in the arms of Morpheus, - often giving the opportunity to the Brothers of the Brotherhood to constantly reprimand him for his warlike fugues in the dangerous darkness, he was only after all, a young novice, far from the Chivalry, and not having still the right to manipulate the Cross of combat, but not going so far as to punish it under the blows, the Brothers educators having given up to bend this character soaked in an obstinate rebellion, and an incredible resilience -.

And yet, his mind was molded in an insidious asceticism, blocking contradictory thoughts endlessly in disorder in his young Psyche. Willingly mediator in his actions, he often found himself reconsidering the eternal sermons preventing him from living fully, instead of a life made up of absence, emptiness, nothingness, both emotionally, friendly, that self-esteem. The admonitions having chiseled his young conviction, which can be influenced under the styluses of doubt, of the imperfection of the human face in the face of the Divine, a disapproval of a Self shattered in many cleavages, and the permanence of being a sinner delighting himself with a harmless, innocent gesture, to raise him in a self-punishing censure (or castigation).

Fifteen years old, young Belmont was already a pile of plasticine that was knocked down to soften him, that was squeezed to draw its bitter outlines under an implacable will that did not belong to him. But above all, a mind sharpened to Hate in its all-consuming omnipotence, in order to bake the mold of the resulting sculpture in the blast furnaces of a sacrificial Brotherhood. And yet the small sculpture was sometimes lacking, in its rebellious movements, and showed an additional breach with each rebellious earthquake, opening up to possibilities that the young considered to be his, without going through the sermons box and threats frightening the relevant reflections of a mind that would not recognize the abstinence of its free will.

Very often, late in his sleepless nights, because he was too nervous during the day, he plunged into the paradoxical incomprehension of his Being, and bound himself to listen to the oxymorons of the "Voice" of Shadow revealing to him that the man was not that universal sin, contrary to the word of the Erudits breaking into theatrical gestures when they belched their apocalyptic imprecations, from their pulpit, in the heart of an abbey vibrating with superstitious terror that made the will of the toughest crumble.

The paradoxes and the contrasts in the education of a Brotherhood which carved out its future Knights warriors, ready to face the infernal hordes of the Dragon, in practices which smelled good ... esotericism, and the recurring manipulation of spells and Magic somehow little dark, anyway ! You had to fight fire with fire, didn't you ? And at no time did these High Scholars think about the incongruousness of the situation, putting fresh-born students in the tub of essences mixing purifying religion, and practices advocating deliberate obscurantism ! In short, sinners in penance, but who had to work in sinful tactical solutions !

Still in the throes of violent punishment, his brain in the agony of insubordination, young Belmont did not hear the slight rustle in the air, heralding that he was being watched, as he again attempted to bathe his bruised flesh under spoonfuls of waves in his cupped hands. By dint of intolerance and rejection of him, he had come to doubt everything, and himself, until finally accepting unjust punishments, as being justified towards his unclean soul bathed in sin as a leitmotif. This was the point of his reflections that would once again throw him to the ground, in the twists and turns of his fears about his essence fragility.

The voice that rose made him jump violently, his heart exploding with the rush of adrenaline exhilarating all his nerve fibers, and swelling his arteries painfully.

"You are in favor of an exemption from training, and a stay by the stables ...

The tone was slightly sardonic, and accentuated by a little something that bristled young Belmont's skin. His gaze, which had frozen in the quivering wave of the river, landed hard on the silhouette of the one to whom that familiar, but unrecognizable voice belonged. Instinctively, in a strange reflex that he himself didn't understand, he covered his shoulders with his arms, and sank deeper into the water. Modest movement that did not escape the scrutiny of the newcomer who continued :

"And if you stay there, you are good for a bad chest fluxion, in addition to your injuries ... and above all, cold water stimulates bleeding, and does more damage than anything else...

Soon the cogs of facial recognition kicked in, and Belmont was able to put a name on the speaker.

" What are you doing here ? You are spying on me ?' he spat in an aggressiveness he didn't even bother to repress.

"I suspected you were heading towards the river, too proud to ask for Brother Efrain's help… the new one sighed, slowly emerging from the shadow of the rock he had been leaning on for long minutes now.Trevor was able to admire the tall figure that he knew only too well as he walked around the fortress enclosures. Also for having observed it discreetly, on many occasions, he had to admit it to himself.

"How long has he been watching you?" … ”

"I don't need it ..." Trevor began, lowering his head, fixing the crystal wave of his sapphires bursting with anger. The other's movement to his clothes, made him return his attention.

"Get out of the water, Belmont, and I'll take you to see Brother Efrain ...

He grabbed the fabrics drying in the sun, and rolled them casually in his hands, which repulsed Trevor. He sat up threateningly, baring his teeth. Pupils dilated with pain and simmering rage, which he had failed to calm.

"Leave me alone ... I don't need anyone ...

Without being in any way impressed, the other young man walked over to the shore where Trevor was still sitting in the water, and gestured broadly, showing his clothes.

"Belmont, as far as I know, you don't have a lot of friends reaching out to you, do you? So, it would be better in your situation, to accept this outstretched hand, don't you think? ...

The voice was deep and soft, without aggressiveness, and the words hit Trevor's heart as he had to admit his loneliness in the face of a situation well entangled in the troubles to come. He had been wrongly beaten, was in pain, was alone without a friend, rejected by the Fellowship in a common accord that often made him despair, and above all crippled now with wounds that needed urgent treatment. And he was getting cold in the water, he could feel it! The other was right to tell him that he was also at risk of congestion.

It was a slightly calmer look, and pupils that became clear again, that landed on the newcomer he recognized as the pupil of the apothecary Efrain.

"Acthéean, is that it?' he whispered, ashamed of having to let his guard down. ''Why would you want to help me?

"Because here, Belmont, you're in deep shitty trouble ...

"You blaspheme !! interrupted Trevor, who hated profanity.

"Maybe, but that's the sad reality of your situation ..." Acthéean replied, without raising his voice. Get out of the water, don't be a virgin ... and we'll get your back treated, it's ugly! and in addition, the cold water makes the wounds bleed much more, and it gets ugly...

Trevor lowered his head, unable to recognize the truth of this situation.

"Walk away, please, while I go out ... I got tired of being exposed, today ..." he growled, slowly straightening himself up, as best as possible erasing his privacy in the eyes of the other. He felt his whole body suddenly burn under Actheean's gauging gaze.

"He's gone overboard in punishment this time… He's gone beyond his rights, Belmont. It must go back to the Founding Fathers. Why are you accepting this ?

"I don't hope for any support from anyone, it's always been that way ... Ever since I was a child ...

"That I know!" sighed Acthéean, resigning from a grueling conflict. This is not a reason for this to endures ...

As they exchanged sparingly, Trevor stepped out of the suddenly cooler wave, covering his entire body in goosebumps. He didn't even notice that he was showing off his painful nakedness to Acthéean's eyes, who hadn't had time to turn around, still handing him the clothes softened with the summer heat. Hazel eyes veiled in gray had time to appreciate the fiery youth of a harmoniously developing body, and of a handsome stature that exceeded that of his comrades, by more than a head. Trevor would be very tall, much taller than the others! And he exceeded in capacities and in will all his comrades, in all the fields.

Acthéean knew a little of Trevor's history, having seen him arrive at the Brotherhood almost at the same time that he himself had been placed in the care of the Founders. A baby torn from his dead mother, orphan, and about whom strange rumors were whispered haunting the darkness of the arcades and corridors of the abbey, about the origins of the young Belmont pupil. But, Acthéean had learned to beware of the words of those who, most of the time, knew nothing, but continued to talk about a subject whose insights were completely unclear to them.

Acthéean was two years older than Trevor, and it was always in the shadows that he watched young Belmont spoil his childhood, his youth, in sermonal rants and other humiliating guilt, mingled with sampiternal endless inhuman combat training, forging long before its time developing morphologies hardened in sweat and blood, and in the dry muscles of imposed fasting.

This gave the young Belmont that body already sculpted in the hard, voluptuous in sharp and acerbic curves halfway between weight training and abstinence. The chest displayed a soft undulating valley on slightly protruding ribs, a cozy and inviting nest, hollowed out between thin contoured collarbones, a long neck spreading all its grace on tendons on edge of skin like pillars on which one would willingly place a few subtle caresses.

Even more tempting was the veined alabaster skin, almost transparent so milky, even more beautiful than that of women with generous necklines. The breathing became calm again, floated gently through slow contractions of the ultra-flat and muscular belly in relief pleasing to the eye, whose ethereal undulations slipped sly towards the inguinal folds deeply marked in a mother-of-pearl groin, nestled between the sharp hips in the slimming.

Despite a dark-night-hair, young Belmont displayed a marmoreal complexion that would have made the palest of the Naiads turn pale with jealousy. Which gave a striking contrast in this profile made of darkness and light, highlighting an undeniable beauty in the young warrior. In ancient times, there is no doubt that Trevor would have been a prized model for perfect statues carved out of the perfection of human architecture. And he was only fifteen! The temptation of the Devil personified in a man !

At the same time, the two young people blushed violently for their audacity: one emerging from the waves, forgetting all modesty, the other statufied and caught in full voyeurism on this beauty made quite young man. Acthéean moaned inwardly and struck down by two intense sapphires of a Trevor noticing the exhibition, both mortified by their impropriety, one quickly turned away, while the other tore off the clothes in an offended and angry gesture. .

“…. Oh ! but he takes pleasure in seeing you naked! Just like the other, Trevor, that scumbag who delights in punishing you ... " purred the" voice ", afflicting Trevor with the consuming guilt he thought he was liquefying.

"What's the matter with you staring at me like this? he growled. It’s a shame in front of God what you’re doing ... for how long ...

But he found, in despair, that his voice wasn't loud enough on the scolding, and hastened to pull his tunic over his wet body, not taking the time to dry himself off a bit. All his limbs were shaking with shame and anger, pain too, which awoke cruelly when the tunic rubbed too roughly against the injured skin, in a hurry to cover his nakedness. Caught in the torments of his trample modesty, he yelped miserably as the stiff fabric brutally woke up the nasty bite of the tears. His back flexed, seeking comfort he no longer had in the water. A fire thundered his nerves bristling with the friction, the thrusts nibbled at the wounds making his spine jump. The tears were still bleeding, and the little threads quickly colored the back of the garment with a dark purple.

Acthéean had turned at Trevor's cry, and approached in a gesture of appeasement.

"I didn't want to embarrass you by my presence," he said in a gesture he wanted friendly, hoping to calm the youngster's irritation. Please don't take any offense. Reaching out a friendly hand isn't a sin, right?

Nothing helped, his gaze was irretrievably drawn to the suffering form, the damp skin where a few silver droplets still clung in a tender, barely emerging foam in the shaded intimacy of the legs, that the groin was almost hairless under its mother-of-pearl veinlets; the hair in places so long, that thin strands were stuck with the small watery diamonds around the navel, giving the vision a sudden impression of fragility that made Acthéean think that the whole was going to break under too sudden a gesture.

The silence stretched as Trevor pulled on his breeches, giving up on putting more diapers on his back ablaze with pain. His thoughts collided and he didn't know when he should have rebelled or be shocked, his will lowering its arms and deserting his being. He had no other choice but to trust Acthéean to take him to the care of Brother Efrain who, he anticipated the brave apothecary's reaction, would utter loud cries of scandal at the damage. And this time, the good man would have enough to pour out his reproaches!

He had, alas, taken the habit for some time, to welcome in his apartments reserved for care requiring more attention, the battered silhouette of the unfortunate Trevor having suffered the wrath of the Brother tutor, and on many occasions, the apothecary had raised his reproaches to the Founding Fathers, as an emergency as an aggravated situation. And for the last few months, almost a year now, Trevor had noticed that Brother Efrain had relieved himself of the intense care work due to training injuries, with a young scholar in training with him: Acthéean. The latter had also expressed his desire to serve the medical field and repair bodies, rather than destroy them in war. Even if he had passed the milestone of the Combat Cross, Acthéean wanted above all to help his people, by intensely studying the grimoires of ancestral medicines, spells and potions, but recognizing in a very contradictory way that he was far from possessing the gift for creating spells and potions as did Trevor who, himself, vowed to become a Warrior Knight of the Brotherhood.

Acthéean had revealed himself to be a shadow among the shadows, speaking as little as possible, not seeking quarrels at all, even avoiding crowds of his peers too numerous to walk in total incognito. Of all, he was the one Trevor knew the least about, the young man never waving or participating in any discussion often raising fairly strong discrepancies of opinion, and the result was that Acthéean came out of the shadows to heal ailments happily inflicted with heavy pints, - when the students were allowed to let go a little -, or with blows of sticks and blunt swords.

Without participating in all of them, Trevor was also not the last to warm up to a contradictory word or thought, slapping a few slaps in the process, before usually running away, and have fun at the merry mess he had spread, without too much damage to him ! Even though he was already well cut in strength, he was only fifteen years old, and he shouldn't tempt the devil either ! The others, that was another story, all somewhat tipsy, very upset, completed the debacle, then giving a hard time to Brother Efrain and his disciple. Both had gotten into the habit of sighing and philosophizing in rhetoric that drank the belligerent protagonists, giving them furious headaches that had nothing to do with beating or hydromel !

Even though he did participate in his small "conflicts" at times, Trevor remained an enigma to all, favoring more of a shadow of anonymity too, well aware that he was often tolerated more than accepted. And always his doubts returned at a gallop, finding no hint of an explanation for the phenomenon of mutual rejection he faced. Something made others hate him fundamentally, and it gnawed at him not to catch a bit of understanding in this recurring context.

Acthéean had seen this hateful distrust of young Belmont since their childhood and had never been able to theorize about such behavior, arguing in total vagueness about where Trevor came from. Then the punishments began to fall, unjust, given to the only one who was not guilty, uniform in their collective humiliation, the child was being spanked in front of the mortified class! Certainly, no one dared to raise their voice to denounce the real culprits, and preferred to watch the punishments on a poor orphan suffering from the pain of having been abandoned, unwanted, and toss like garbage to the winds of a capricious Destiny.

Over the years, the turpitude of the sentences imposed was exposed in the baseness of painful sanctions in their exponential degree, making the high thinkers of the Brotherhood creak in a straitjacket of injustice that has become regular and murderous. The Brother in charge of the supervision of the students harbored an incomprehensible hatred towards the young Belmont, and the lips began to unseal.

It whispered to itself as young Belmont was paying dearly for dubious origins whose superstitions and rumors swelled into a grudge, until they burst and unleash their virulent poison in malleable minds. The whole was carefully matured by a discreet display reflected in an Artifact owned by the Brotherhood, and which was said to reveal the Truth. And the Founding Scholars imagined they held the pure and true truth! They followed the greatest occult scheme to the letter, blindly trusting in their assurance of a Blessing offered by the Divine himself.

Of this incoherent amalgamation of theories, Trevor was the knot of a Heart-Shadow that refused to fan its secrets, crushed by the Wheel of such ancient Prophecy, that we could no longer find traces of it anywhere, except in the heated minds of the Founding Patriarchs. A Prophecy which was said to have been written in cruor ink poured out by the Holy Knights at a time when these Chosen Warriors were not yet ennobled, only in secret Traditions barely whispered to the reserved winds of hateful distrust.

Acthéean had been perhaps the only one to follow the meanders of this labyrinthine story, with many voids to fill, dragging his attention and his ears on the prowl for a whisper which would lift a bit of the veil on a situation balancing above the easily suspected Chaos Abyss, for too long a time. And so often he'd had to deal with the wounded figure with other ailments than just a brawl. But now, at that moment, it had gone beyond anything he had been able to see, and required his sustained intervention, he could no longer remain indifferent silent.

The apothecary disciple must have been immersed in abysmal thoughts, for a time that had eluded him, when he looked up he encountered the painful sapphires of the Belmont who waited silently, spine slightly bent. Hair bending its damp tablecloth into an aerial silk fabric, mingling water with blood that beaded from tears. He was in pain, but in silence, noted Acthéean.

"Come on," he urged him, "let's not delay, you need care… and for once, Belmont, accept that we help you, without taking it any offense.

A simple nod of the head was the answer, and Trevor trudged on his way, always seeking to lessen the lameness accentuated by sitting in the water. He refused to walk at the same height as Acthéean, brooding over swearing thunderstorms, asking forgiveness from God for the insults he was shouting in his heart. He let the other guide him a few steps, never daring to touch or brush against him. His flesh could never have tolerated another touch, whatever it was, without he falling to the throat of anyone who dared. Of this, Acthéean was perfectly aware, and understood it easily. Trust would be acquired slowly and with difficulty.

In the clutches of sharply angled loneliness, Trevor Belmont, in his fifteen years, had grown helpless in the face of his Savage Beast churning out his Shadowheart piece by piece.

==II==< &< &==II==

Chapter Text

All was silence in the nave of the abbey, so still that it seemed that even the insects dared not scratch the stones of the building with their mandibles. No echo bounced off the frozen sculptures of saints stretching out their hands as in a gesture of begging towards the visitor who would come to wander in the confines of semi-darkness veiling the sacred place. Here, no one speaks unnecessarily, the act is prayer and meditation. A private atmosphere that only the Brothers members of the Brotherhood, and the student knights, could penetrate in all quietude, in their eager homage to the Sanctuary.

The smell was pervasive everywhere, drowning the silence of the nave in its heavy and airy scents at the same time. Incense diffusing its tablecloths in an almost sickening sweetness; wax from the candles which burned and melted in a sizzling last sigh, flowing down the tapers in yellowed opal sculptures giving way to an imaginary molding them into ghostly shapes; anointing oils, the scattered drops of which froze on the cold pavement engraved with Latin symbols; worm-eaten wood releasing its tangled creaking hints of mold and moss; stones eroded in places, releasing its aromas of wet greenery, as well as that of corrosive saltpeter feeding on their material.

And then, at the bottom of its subtle olfactory layers, bursting surreptitiously like a desolation of its opportunity, the hints erased in the oblivion of identity of such an abrasive rust, nibbling the gates-grids leading to lost basements , or to powdered crypts with their spider webs, gnawing at the frameworks supporting the building, and which became one with the various mortars composing it.

Everything indicated the antiquity of the abbey and its quarters, entirely dedicated to spiritual reflection, and to the escape of the soul in its sought-after catharsis. And the man who tread with his quiet steps on the ground shining under the intimate lights, melted his own human essence made of sweat, blood, and hormones, to this odorous magma suspended through the rays of light filtering their audacity to through the stained-glass of the high windows.

The two men confined in the small screened room of the confessional, were no exception to the rule, avoiding to break the tranquility of the place by their whispered dialogues reserved for the Angels who could have given them a somewhat mortified ear, and above all to the Divine so feared that the two Brothers almost expected to be struck down on the spot.

It must be said that the confession would have had enough to set Hell itself on fire! And the Brother Confessor was appalled, and curled up as the scandalous unpacking of the fantasies hated by the mouth of a Brother tutor, to whom he would never have granted such acts of debauchery!

In murmurs barely higher than the breath of a dying man, one cradled his lost soul, eaten away by the guilt of temptation, the other gently inveighed to relentless penance. But both inevitably deluded each other, trying to abstract from an aggravated situation, which had made its way into the heart of the Brotherhood on multiple occasions. No matter how much the Brotherhood preached a sanctualized conviction in the idea of the perfect Being willed by God, the fact remained that its Founders were human! For the most part ... And perfection did not exist, even in the godly servant, the most fervent!

More than a confession, the two Brothers knew that they were exchanging words that should never have crossed the lips, and their dialogue looked more like a form of conspiracy or finding on something that they knew how to take place, and who made their hearts freeze in the ice of fear. It seemed that the two Brothers of the Brotherhood harmonized perfectly in their united connivance, their dialogue on the pretext of confessions that each of them knew to be decoys in acts of holiness which had long ago lost their chaste veils of remorse, and lost souls gangrened in the fruit of a temptation that made even the most prudish of all shudder. Their wounded Narcissism displayed its festering gaps in language that would have made the hell spawn themselves turn pale, overflowing their absolute perversities in the intoxication of fantasies, which had indeed anchored their poisoned roots in the crestfallen and flabby flesh of hidden debauchery. In their minds strangled with dread, the two Brothers knew that they were not the only ones in perdition, carried away by the waves of anathemas bearing crowns of sharp thorns.

This something had been meandering for years already, and was slowly swallowing up the bowels of the Brotherhood in the poisonous intertwining of doubt and prevarication. There, the Dragon hordes struck mercilessly, with lulls that put the most seasoned to sleep, the better to strike harder, again and again. And perhaps these two Brothers, nestled in the narrowness of the confessional, dared to put into words the blindness of a Brotherhood that was forging its own destruction through a silhouette still frail in the implications, and never for a second did It suspect that their "pawn" was meandering on the Dark Path in a form of programmed apoptosis.

There, the infernal pack of the Dragon waged their devastating war, here in the abbey, the Founding Brothers bet their illusions on a few reflections distributed sparingly by a Mirror carved in bronze and obsidian, pushing the blind folly of their hopes to reserve its meaning in small pieces encased in polished silver: artifacts slipped under the cloak of the most learned who thought they knew the Sibylline messages.

And no one noticed that the Divine had looked away from this scene of consummated disaster, as the Founders affixed their Seals on parchments signing their own death ...

As they strove to erase the dreadful and feared name of their greatest holy Knight whom they had ever raised in their ranks ...

------

Everything was smelly in the apothecary, the most sustained hints of sage or thyme, more delicate essences of lavender or Madonna's lily, woody aromas of bay leaf or rosemary, more intense bouquet of tansy or savory, bitterness exhalations of borage or fennel. A real olfactory waltz that never ceased to charm Trevor's senses, when he came there for bruises and other little training wounds, and his mind often drifted happily under the amalgamation of exquisite aromas, as a man drunk on wine would readily indulge in dizziness disrupting his cognitive behavior. Between sweety-salty, bitterness and tangy confectionery, citrus acidity or restorative sweetness of subtle essences, this mixture in permanent suspension, did not fail to give him sly headaches, viciously attacking his senses already well polluted by the environment. constantly boiling.

Usually it was just a quick stopover for treatment, and he would quickly rush outside to flush out his threatening sense of smell to rebel against the orgy of smells that infiltrated it. Trevor had always been very sensitive to all this extraordinary range offered by nature, and sometimes his absorption capacities reached their limit, when sneezing fits set in, causing him to retreat from the overflow of plant information ! It wasn't that Trevor was allergic, far from it! but there were times when a well-made man had to not impose himself !

But this time, Trevor knew not to cut it! And that he was going to have to put up with it all in a longer time. So it was with a wry look that he let himself go to contemplate for the umpteenth time, all the shelves crumbling under pots and alambics, an invention that had just been born, allowing the maceration of the ingredients for much better elaborated potions in the care of the injured flesh.

And to think that Acthéean is swimming in all of this ... he found himself thinking, as the Brother Apothecary gauged the nasty whip bites with a disapproving and critical eye.

Brother Efrain had known Trevor ever since the Founders brought him back to the Monastery, a tiny babbling package, snatched from his mother, and already begging for affection that he never quite got the way he was supposed to. Little being wrapped already in the bloody linens of a cruel Destiny, as IT walked away crying bitterly, while the nets of the Elders of the Brotherhood were woven around his flesh, and their Stylus engraved his "Tabula" Rasa ”…

Efrain made several discreet clicks of his tongue, examining the bloody and torn back. Acthéean worked to prepare the various restorative ointments, in an almost religious silence, as if fearing to disturb the concentration of the Apothecary Brother.

The young apprentice had been relieved that Trevor had followed him without further problem. It was practically incognito that they had gone directly to the care building, but it was more complicated when Trevor had to relate the why of such injuries, knowing full well that it set up a series of complications that escaped him, and which he suspected he would pay the price for sooner or later.

The part where Trevor had to strip down and show the damage proved even more difficult, if possible ! The young warrior being of a molded modesty of unparalleled inhibitions ! He also estimated that he was not entitled to the necessary considerations and care, muttering protests that were stifled by Brother Efrain. Fortunately, the latter knowing the child well, succeeded in opening the confidence of the beauty with the sapphire eyes, not without having received all the same in passing, one of the bursts of rumbling storm on the attentive silhouette of the Brother.

"Young Belmont, you really don't need to have such beautiful eyes, to have such a nasty look ... had calmed the impetuous youth, unanswerably the brave patient herbalist, and slightly amused by excessive prudishness.

As the examination progressed, Efrain echoed his orders to Acthéean who hastened to obey, only too glad that the savage Belmont bowed to the medicine man's experience. Thus, he set about gathering clean, soft nightcloths in contact with sensitive wounds, animating braziers in the room where Trevor was ordered to rest, and above all a very hot full bath, macerating in the oils and medicinal plants which would sprinkle it, in order to warm the aching and shivering body, - as Acthéean had said, Trevor had cooled in the river, thus weakened, he was becoming fit for a bad blow of cold - and gently repair the crevices streaking his alabaster skin.

Trevor stifled painful moans as Efrain's expert hand parted the hair whose strands of silk had stuck in the bloody ooze. Gnarled fingers gently palpated each weld, gauging the excavating depth, and measuring the extent of any infection lodged in the degraded cell tissue.

The man leaned over to Trevor, who had an alarming complexion even whiter than usual, and sighed in a voice that never rose, not in anger and annoyance. Trevor had always admired the Brother's perfect control over every situation, even the most confusing.

"Tell me, my child, did he make you take your clothes off? Why ?

Trevor lowered his head, as if he was the culprit, the guilty one. His cheeks heated violently, and it was not from the enveloping steam of the bath being painstakingly prepared by the apprentice's quick hands.

“I don't know, Brother Efrain. He got everyone out… Luckily…' he pressed that word, strangled with emotion as he recalled the scene.

"The bath is ready, Brother Efrain," Acthéean said softly, and Trevor was grateful to him for interrupting the difficult interview. He felt a bitter, icy sphere growing in his chest, which made him uneasy, and he thought his body was going to falter in a pernicious unease.

Seeing the exponential change that made the limbs tremble in spasms that the young Belmont wanted to hide, Efrain wrapped the young man's hunched shoulders in a protection he mostly wanted comforting, guessing that it wouldn't take long for the youngster to collapses. And morally, and physically.

"Come on, my son, you are going to sit in the medicinal bath, and I will put on some herbal poultices. You're going to stay there for a while for it to take effect. And we'll talk, if you don't mind?

Efrain, in his long experience of suffering and affliction felt by others, was gifted at the comforting of trust, knowing perfectly well how to vibrate the sensitive and abused chord of the soul in perdition and despair. And he knew that the teenager in front of him was in an extremely unstable situation, balancing above an unfathomable abyss, in which at any moment he risked abandoning himself without struggling any further. The Brother knew the hardened character of the Belmont, the strength of resilience that he could seek in the depths of an undeniable will, but there, he suspected, rightly, that the rope on which the young had been pulling for so long, was going give in and let go permanently. If Belmont let it all go, it could be irreversible. In absolute terms, he needed benevolent attention that would help him find the paths of a comforting calm, in the absence of a catharsis, however much necessary for this mistreated soul who had resigned from the buttresses to which it still clung desperately.

And Efrain knew of the Brotherhood's relentless plans for the youngster. Somewhere deep inside, the respectable man heard immeasurable sorrow flood his chest, and his heart clenched in the grip of the Stranger he dreaded to be baneful.

He was reassured to feel the slim frame submit to his push towards the carefully prepared medical bin, releasing long mists of blissful warmth bathing the room in its humidity laden with subtle and delicate aromas, as well as heady, which made Trevor's temples pound a little as he exhaled the mingled aromatic scents.

The youngster still hesitated when he had to get rid of the last clothes made wet from having put them on his skin bathed in the river. Understanding his modesty, Efrain turned away and grabbed the pieces of clothing as they were removed in long, careful strokes.

"I'll wash your clothes as best as I can, the bloodstains are hard to remove," he said, wanting to reassure Trevor in his exposed nudity, not wanting to let a more awkward silence set in. I don't promise anything for your tunic, however. You will wear the nightgowns as long as you stay here.

Trevor froze in his movement to step over the tub, and slid into the syrupy ointment water, the orange light of the roaring fire danced for a moment around his sketched figure, and lightning caught in the hollows and protruding valleys of the muscles. A sculpture of an athlete in the effort, taking shape under the spatulas and scissors of an inspired artist.

"But, Brother Anselm demands my presence at Vespers tonight ...' he whispered, aware that Efrain would not let him go without being on the right track of care.

“Brother Anselm will complain, if he wishes, although I strongly suspect he will be silent about it, given the consequences of his blindness.

Efrain had breathed, made up his mind to do battle with all that, and grabbed a stool on which he spread saucers of ointments bearing questionable colors, and smelling of sour and powerful smells, which almost made Trevor cough, as he settled into the tub with an unchecked sigh of relief. The warm water made the welts pulsate a bit, but it was no worse than the cool water from the river. He began to think of the Brother tutor, and the anger that would result from his absence.

He allowed himself to be manipulated in the careful and delicate gestures, sighing in relief as the Brother Apothecary's cupped hands poured invigorating loads of medicinal water down the bruised back, as he offered his suffering to the loving care of the two men. As Efrain cradled the sore flesh, Actheean helped part and hold the long night hair, some of the locks now falling well below the shoulders, a mane promising veils of velvety softness under the fingers.

While the applications of cleansing oils and oily ointments were spread very carefully so as not to wake up the slenderness in the flesh, Efrain decided that it was absolutely necessary to make the young afflicted speak, the presence of Acthéean wasn't an obstacle, for he knew the young apprentice of unparalleled discretion.

In a measured, confessing voice, such would be that of a confessor, Efrain monologized at first, finally eliciting timid responses rooted out with difficulty first, then flowing from the lips hemmed in endless sadness. The words that washed up on the labial beach, hurt the heart of the brave apothecary, making him aware of the pain of this being lost in the way of moving, like an ash bubble vanishing in the stale air of a brutal existence having already torn off the wings of a struck down Angel.

"Brother Efrain," Trevor began, tilting his face to the side in an attitude of waiting for an answer that he knew would not be given to him. The features chiseled already in an undeniable beauty that was developing into a genetic perfection rare in this century, tensed with anguish, and the gaze of pure water became painful. Brother Efrain felt his heart break with excitement at so much despair coming from such a young being. On the other side, facing him, Actheean shrank into disapproving silence, patiently holding the long, supple raven-wing locks, but his gaze saying so long when he stared at Efrain's.

“… Why does Brother Anselm hate me like this? … He whispered. Why am I afraid of what I saw in his eyes? ...

Trevor curled his knees in his arms, arching his injured spine, surrendering to the healing and expert caresses. After a moment, Efrain asked, anticipating the fear of an obvious answer in all his horror. What he suspected for years, was comforting himself in the terrible confidants of a child barely out of what should have been a carefree innocence, following in the footsteps of an adult in the making, between dog and wolf of a life barely sketched out.

"What did you see, my child? Are you sure what you there have discerned? You know, under pain or anger, we imagine things ...

"No, Brother Efrain, what I saw scared me… A look loaded with wickedness, but also with something that I don't understand…

"Of course you do, you understand ... You know what's in that hateful man's heart ..." the Shadow began to sing with the many pleading voices, and Trevor knew IT was right: what he had seen shining in the eyes of Brother Anselm, was an unforgivable ignominy in the eyes of God, an abjection punishable by death in any other case, a filthy reflection of a temptation hated and forbidden by the Writings of the divine word, and this man who was supposed to perfect their education, protect them, was succumbing to the evil scheme of a spirit possessed with shameful lust doomed to Hell.

The hearts of Efrain and Acthéean froze in the ice of understanding, statuified by the mortification of such a revelation. Embarrassment set in as Efrain tried to reassure young Belmont. But, he was hardly deluding himself, the teenager's mind had already understood the deliquescent intertwining of the situation. How would he explain the toxicity of such defilement towards the Founders, without the adolescent suffering the constraints and fallout that would necessarily result?

Brother Anselm had been present in the Brotherhood for so long that he was almost its contours and patient elaborations in the educations of their young people, and Trevor? He was only an orphan-pupil, whose knowledge of his origins made the high Patriarchs of the Brotherhood shudder, so necessarily also, an element arisen from the Underworld, disruptive in the nascent temptation of his Being, possessing a savage character of indomitable rebel, and for years now, "blessed", if one could argue, exceptionally beautiful in features and form, promising to wreak havoc in human hearts! Yet, paradoxically, a beauty that was far from being blessed and blissful in this case! Trevor literally became a temptation on legs, bathed in the Beauty of the Devil, rendering those around him incapable of coherence, when he simply plunged his crystalline orbs into the gaze of others, removing any inclination that was diluted in the abandonment of reprimands or of punishments. Faced with his eyes there, what did you want to do? In addition, the teenager had naturally learned to know how to express his opinions or convictions, for the sake of diplomacy that made the most hardened to give up. A beautiful seductive and above all manipulative manner, which he had nevertheless been able to sharpen without knowing it. Contrasts and paradoxes fought in the Being and the Soul of this adolescent who could have been called Angel and Demon in the same metaphorical dance!

An axiomatic symbol of oxymoron in all its glory! And from that, Brother Efrain would have bet his apothecary on the fact that young Belmont was far from being oblivious to the power he wielded over others, on the contrary, the mischievous wily already knew how to play with the reactions of his peers! Anyone who gazed into the innocently presented wave of the blue lakes found themselves suffocating under their intelligent intensity.

To everyone, even those who were suspicious and dismissive of him, Trevor attracted like a magnet, beyond an understanding of the human, and an unwavering charismatic ease. Everything took place in a confusing naturalness, despite a desire for asceticism on the part of the young warrior. In the example of a young man wanting to ignite the powder, without appearing to be, and feign ignorance with a single modest look, it was staggering theatrical naivety!

For everyone he was an Enigma. Except for Brother Anselme, for months, displaying a destructive behavior hiding cogs much more complex in their ambiguity. There we were reaching depths in the malignancy of incidents becoming all too common in recent months. Gravity reeled in its poison in the disturbing peculiarity that it affected more and more members of the Brotherhood.

Efrain even often questioned himself about the dark identity that worked behind the beautiful large, streaked forehead: a pure Angel unaware of the misdeeds resulting from deadly sin, or fiery Demon, innate manipulator,fashioned into a brilliant intelligence. Intelligence that had proven itself in tactical plans during strategic installations by his Peer Warbenders, it was undeniable. So, was the child playing in several aspects, pulling the strings with the tips of his candid eyes, his voice moulting in the depths of light baritone, the sharp, muscular lines of a body ditto to a Greek lyrical statue? He did give the impression of dancing like a drunken boat on the slippery waves between two worlds, risking everyone in an unconscious diversion, taking on the dazzling and innocent glow of river blue sapphires.

It was in this reflective stagnation that Brother Efrain tried to untie the knots of a man-made mystery, with hints of sulfur. The confidences that followed only cooled the picture a little more than it had been over the years.

"My child," he continued, while laying the poultices of herbs on the crevices, 'you are aware that I am obliged to report to the Founders. You understand that, don't you?

"I thought you owe it to yourself to keep it a secret…" breathed Trevor, sliding his sharp gaze into that of the Apothecary Brother. His voice was deeper in tone, and suddenly felt like an older adult man talking, not a molting teenager.

"Trevor, that's the role of Brother Confessor, but even he has to refer it, when the situation is really… delicate. Me, I am an apothecary above all,  a doctor under oath, you know it, and the wounds that you entrust to my care, must be reported as the result of outrageous and divergent behavior on the part of your Brother tutor.

"But, if you ...

"Let me go on, don't cut me off. Brother Anselm has just put you through a treatment that will require you to stay in bed for several days, while being completely free from training, class, study and prayers. It’s bad enough to get it back to high places, and I couldn’t suffer any dispute from you. This is said, and decided.

Trevor remained with his mouth open to silent protests, his mind calculating the consequences of fifteen strokes of the whip, which brought down the projects that the young man had drawn up for his comfort and his progress within the Brotherhood. There was no point in arguing, he knew Brother Efrain scandalized by the confidences, even if the latter showed incredible coolness.

Acthéean, meanwhile, was unsure whether to stay, to keep the hair dampened by the steam, thousands of sensations clashing in his hazy and shocked mind. The cheeks also purplish red, but that wasn’t due to the heat of the bath ! His gaze never ceased to contemplate the shapes and volutes in the young body, and internally, he could not bring himself to give up his contemplative admiration.

After a few moments of heavy, uneasy silence, without letting the Brother go from his steel-blue orbs, a supplication hemmed in when Trevor hissed, like a roughness carved into the angular marble of indifference:

"Brother Efrain, am I so bad that God has turned away from me, and is punishing me like this? Does he hate me for my actions?

"Child, there is no creature of His conception that God hates, what are you saying? Do you know that you blaspheme by saying this? God does not hate you, He has not turned away from you, because He has plans for you, remember that.

"I often feel like I am abandoned again ... He never answers my prayers, and only sends torment to me through others ... I think I am not worthy of Him ...

"Unhappy, do you realize that your angry words are against you ... It is you that you hate by such words ... You are as worthy as any other, to have His Blessing, do not doubt it. God does not allow His Children to question themselves like this, and castigate themselves by deeming themselves unworthy of His Love. It is a Sin to think otherwise, and to have your life for nothing when He has plans for each of us.

Efrain shuddered with every word, bewildered by Trevor's intransigence towards himself. He wondered if there were many with such sharp minds in the face of adversity that shattered even the most hardened convictions. Was the child having suicidal thoughts? The greatest of all sins in the eyes of the Creator, and this young man who had shown himself to be as intense in an ascetic life as ... the Other? the most fervent in his Faith, lost his balance in doubt and pertinent questioning about his Sacred Essence.

In his astonishment, Efrain did not see Acthéean's decayed face as dismayed as he, who had let go of the strands of moire-night silk at, and stepped back, a fold of bitterness twitching his lips.

The two sapphires drowned in silent prayer, when Trevor could breathe out his plea:

"Would you accept that I accompany you when you report? I would like to talk to the Founding Fathers… I don't want to make history, but I want answers… Please?… I will not stand being beaten for others, and above all, I do not want no longer see… what I saw in his eyes… I don't want to be impertinent or pretentious to demand to be received by our Patriarchs, but I would like so many answers… My soul longs for it, Brother Efrain, and I'm dying a little more every day… I don't know anything about who I am, and somewhere, I…

Trevor interrupted the flow of words, lowering that look of so distressed incomprehension. He was reaching the end of his tolerance when he was only following in the footsteps of his young existence.

My God, what a dismay! Efrain realized that the child needed to talk, and quickly thought about how he was going to approach the situation. If Trevor's fragile position within the Brotherhood was the result of his birth, there was no doubt that the Founders would agree to hear the child in his erratic lament, knowing that he was the One revealed by the great Mirror.

"Good… I'll make the Fathers receive you." Turning to Actheean, still silent, he gave his orders:

"Acthéean, you help him dry off and dress him. You lay him down, and bring him some soup, he needs warmth in his stomach. I charge you to watch over him during his stay here. As he will be on call at the stables, most certainly, while waiting for him to resume training, we will have to be very careful with the dust and the straw which raises enough dirt, so that it becomes encrusted in wounds. So you clean his wounds every three hours, with fresh ointment poultices, and baths twice a day, I grant you occupation too. I am going to take care of other of our soldiers awaiting treatment, one of our garrisons has returned from a quest against the Dragon, and it is the hecatomb there… I then go back to the Hierarchy. . If you encounter the slightest problem, you make me look for it immediately.

Turning to Trevor, he added:

"Don't worry about Brother Anselm's injunction, there's no question of you attending Vespers, or whatever, as long as you're in this state ...

Acthéean recorded the list of intense occupations without flinching, and Efrain thought he had gotten out of the barrage of orders.

"Do you think you can cope?" Will it be okay? You already know the plants involved in medication, now is the time to prove your skills in dealing with problems. If you have any doubts, you have all the grimoires at your disposal. I'm going to have some for a while, and I need to sort out some issues.

Then turning again to Trevor who was looking at them, still coiled in the herbal bath, the water of which was gradually cooling:

"I think you know each other a bit, don't you? - The two young people nodded with the same nod. Well, that will be easier. I will be back in a few hours, I hope, Trevor, that I will find you asleep, groomed, calmed and sated by Brother Isaac's infamous brew.

The two young people chuckled in agreement, at the mention of the poor cook's dubious cuisine, who nevertheless made great efforts for his swarm of hungry flocks, pushing away their meager plates much more often, appetite cut in front of the total lack of imagination and culinary gift. It also explained that none of them risked seeing his fat body from too rich food, and Trevor's razor-sharp hips were a blatant explanation!

Regardless, the bit of humor had a knack for cheering up anxious faces! A very small victory that Brother Efrain proudly cradled in his heart.

After Efrain left laden with sacks of herbs and medical items, silence slowly re-settled, barely broken by a gentle splash as Trevor turned to Actheean, waiting for the latter to instruct him what to do next. The sapphires brushed with their brilliance the many jars and vials lined up in a methodological row on the crowded shelves ready to collapse under the weight. The copper of the first stills threw a flame like a wink under the intimate light of the fire that Actheean had nurtured. A strange thought crossed his attention : "Ash from the fireplaces is used as a poultice for bruises." Weird ! He certainly didn't see any ash clinging to his whip bites. But least of all, above all, the ugly urine poultices! Trevor still trembled for his flesh to be cradled with the ignominy of the care and the stench that flowed from it, preferring himself to plug the faults with weeds torn from his hands! Even though the healing was assured by this horror, there were limits in the desperation to seek treatment! His eyes squinted in shuddering anticipation!

A quiet scrape drew him from his thought, and he considered Acthéean removing the grass roots from his back, and piling them carefully in a cloth, before handing her a large towel which he unfolded between them, making him understand that it would also hide Trevor's privacy when he got out of the bath.

"HHmmm… are you going to take care of me, then? Trevor asked, suddenly hesitant and intimidated.

"Don't get me wrong, Belmont ... It's my job now to take care of people, it's my will to study medicine, like I told you, I would rather mend bodies than cut them under my sword.

The reply was sharp, unequivocal, hard as the lifeless mask that had settled on the features of the young apprentice. However, the latter invoked a silent prayer: that the disordered beating of his heart could not be heard by the Belmont. Heartbeat he didn't know the cause of, but tried to quieten down discreetly.

Trevor let himself be wrapped in the soft fabric, and his back was gently padded, before being handed a clean, immaculate shirt. This time, Acthéean pulled back and looked away, letting Trevor put on the garment. The bleeding seemed to have dried up, not staining the shirt. He noticed that the seams opened up the garment in the back, certainly reserved for this purpose in case of back injuries.

"Now you're going to lie on your stomach, I'll put bandages on you that won't move. But you have to stay in bed like this. On your back, you wouldn't hold on anyway ...

Trevor gracefully obeyed. At this point, he didn't really want to rebel at a sideways look, or his modesty being tested under the care he needed. He wanted to find his peace of mind in simple acts that would take care of himself, to languish without remorse in a lax laziness, to revel in a carelessness he had never really had, even in his young years.

It was hot in the room prepared for the reception of the most important patients, the air was healthy and regularly rocked with delicate incense, having the property of totally relaxing the body and mind by their ethereal scent of herbs burned on the coals of fed braziers. Efrain had known, like a good herbalist knowing perfectly all the medicinal properties, to create an environment beneficial to the cure. Trevor found himself well as he stretched out his aching, burning body in clean, soft-feeling tissue, and it was unconstrained that he surrendered to the finish of the meticulous care.

He let his gaze drift into the surroundings, but ignoring the importance of it, his face resting sideways on the bedsheets serving as a pillow. His mind sailed and took stock of the day, as he registered as in a static mist the expert palpations of Actheean's hands as he worked to heal every tumefaction.

Until he became aware of the insidious way his body was reacting, as the bandages cauterized and calmed the twitches, anesthetizing them into a blissfully settling form of numbing, muzzling the nasty bites he had endured for too long a time. And yet, around that blissful and comforting cloud, his flesh yearned strangely in another way, and delivered a sheet of goosebumps branching from head to toe, in a mortifying ecstasy, which he hoped the other would not notice.

His mind stammered, frozen by this new sensation, and there he was, not knowing how to behave so as not to put Actheean in the uneasy. What was happening to him? Has he never felt this way before?

"Yes, but usually you don't get such extensive treatment ...? Shadow explained, in unfeigned irony. "... and you want to blend in, don't you? For once someone's taking care of you ... and it's not that old Efrain that flatters your body like that ... "

A feeling of intense dizziness relaxed his limbs, but his flesh was still covered with small, quivering pimples.

" Are you cold ? Actheean asked, having felt the slight throbbing tremor under his fingers. Wait, I'm done, then I'll put some blankets for you.

Thank God ! He didn't see anything ... Suddenly, what Brother Efrain had said, before leaving, came back to him, and he took advantage of this lure to question the apprentice, begging his interior to calm the sudden eruption of a reaction as ambiguous as unsettling.

"Brother Efrain spoke of a garrison returning from failure?

"Yes, this is one of the garrisons sent on a quest, with Knights appointed and seasoned in the feats ..." Acthéean began, with a little emphasis in his voice. But he continued in a sadder tone: Many did not return… The Dragon had them… The Founders have been mourning their sacrifice since last night. And there are serious injuries, we don't know if we will be able to bring them back.

"So this is a bitter failure for our Brotherhood, again, is it?

“Belmont, it is better not to speak like this in front of the Founders…

“I'm not talking to the Founders there, but to you…

Pointing out his swollen reply with anger at the knowledge of yet more dead fallen to the hordes of the Dragon, Trevor straightened up on his elbows, and returned his transparent gaze to the apprentice herbalist.

"When can we end all this horror?" Will there ever be someone strong enough to bend this monster's knee?

"A Prophecy is whispered ..." Acthéean conceded. You know It as well as I do, but it's still unclear, like a prophecy should.

"Yes:" Only the Blood of the Dragon will put the Beast out of harm's way ... "...

"" Blood against Blood, for Eternity ... "But you know as well as I do, that Prophecies are metaphorical puzzles ... We don't understand their content, or too late, when they reveal themselves in Its clarity. However, I suspect the Founders to know more about the subject, but only they have the right to Knowledge ...

"And we are raised for war against this Scourge, of which we never see the end of its Terror. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a pawn on the chessboard of God who alone is the holder of the Truth. From that, I believe it. The rest…

Trevor stopped short, resigning from his rant and resting his head on the pillow again. He found that his body had calmed down from the strange sensation, and he felt "empty" of this sensory absence.

"Forgive me, I get carried away, but I often think of possible solutions, strategies to develop ... I sin out of pride, it is not my place to think for the Patriarch Fathers ...

"Belmont, I got to know you a little bit, over time, and what I do know is that you will make a great warrior and a great Knight when you become one… You have that formidable strategic intelligence, which makes even reflect our Masters of War ...

"Maybe, but I'm still a long way from being allowed to manipulate the Cross," Trevor conceded sadly. 'You, you devote yourself to medicine, and you manipulate the Cross ... Me ...

"Your time will come ...

With these words, Acthéean put the last bandage in place. Unbeknownst to him, before closing the seam of the shirt on his painstaking work, his fingers ghosted on the bruised back of blue-purple-yellow shades of bruises: this so pale flesh would take a moment to be erased of. If these bruises disappeared one day ... Already scars on a young body still virgin of the battles of the Brotherhood ...

Trevor felt the suspension in the air, the hesitation, and again goosebumps ruffled his epidermis, making his neck shiver. Again, the Unknown's icy fluid slid surreptitiously into his being, and his brass pupils dilated under the gentle pressure. He was almost relieved when he heard Acthéean, but detected a sudden tension in his voice.

"I'm going ... I'm going to get a bowl of soup, you have to eat before you sleep." I have orders to watch over you, you heard ... so, I'm going. I'm closing the pharmacy, so you won't be disturbed ... Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone, Belmont?

Trevor split him with a flash of steel, but understood the humor in the words, which were spoken only for the sake of relaxation and self-assurance. But he had time to catch the tiny trembling of his hands, and remained fixed on the pleasant figure of Acthéean leaving the room, in a comfortable silence.

He began to appreciate the discretion of the silent companion, he seemed to be comforting himself in an anonymity that suited him perfectly. Trevor had often seen him fade away like a shadow, as the others bark at each other mockingly at each other, testing their brutal manhood that begged to expand through the bumps, or pints of mead, which they were allowed to consume only if they had proven themselves. Acthéean was… like him, in fact. Shadow among the shadows, asking only for peace in his studies of sacred texts, or training, whether physical or intellectual.

On these last suggestions by a spirit wishing to sail in a restful haze, Trevor surrendered in the comforting warmth of the fur Actheean had laid on him, before leaving. The pain had subsided to a faint pulsing thudding degressively, put to sleep by the ointment generously distributed on the wounds.

He sighed, closing his eyes. He hadn't let himself go like this since ...? Since when ? As far as he could remember, his childhood, his adolescence, were strewn only with various and varied incidents, peaks of intense stress which had never left him any respite, runaways which kept him away from punishments promised to rain on his thin spine, already ... from as far as the gaze of his Memory could project, he had never experienced the carelessness of a child!

It had taken an overzealous relentlessness of a Brother tutor, to finally take a deserved rest for his body, much too molded in the harshness and implacability, normally imposed on a seasoned warrior ... And this obvious realization made form a sigh "oh" rounding his lips, as he settled himself a little deeper in the diaper, aware of the insidious pulsation lingering there, in the inguinal hollow, and below… where the quivering fluttered in the gentle shivering jerks of a waking being. But it was such a soft jolt, like a ghost shedding the weight of its chains, evaporating throughout its being on the edge of welcome sleep still bathed in the fumes of the bath.

Before plunging definitively into the welcoming arms of Somnus, he returned to the well-being of his immersion, he would have wanted these moments to last an eternity, although the result was of a medical nature, it had been so in osmosis with his passion for toilet, that he always arrogated to himself the time to pour himself into this precious ritual of which he had made his fad mocked by others.

He always mused, when he was spread out in the hot and perfumed wave, to mold a silent prayer to God who allowed him to take care of him thus, and not to repress him from a sin, because to this Point of view, Trevor had some reservations about the church's edicts threatening the people.

"Why would God forbid this ritual to his creatures whom He loved so much? … A bath like a caress on the wounds of my Soul, why would He see it offending in His eyes? "

It was in those moments that Trevor was still proving to be very green and innocent! He had learned later that some of his comrades bragged about enjoying the privacy thus exposed to ...?

"Haven't you polished yourself yet, Belmont, by dint of taking your baths? ... one of the more daring students had burst out to harass him about this. And all had roared with a fat sneer, adding deed to speech.

He had blushed fiercely at the suggestions, and had run away from the discussion with broken sticks, under the unchecked cynicism of others, and the obscene bursts of laughter mimicked by the unambiguous catchy gestures. Thinking about it, a burning sweetness crept up his pale cheeks.

No matter what, he sailed seamlessly through muses and oblivion, crossing the border of the Great Mirror. He let go of reality.

And he dreamed ...

==II==< &< &==II==

Chapter Text

There were flames. Lots of flames. Little imps who licked the sculpted legs of a large Mirror, whose strangely silver and bronze tain reflected the anamorphic silhouettes of a mighty edifice in an architecture that could not have been designed by the hand of man.

The skies had been torn by torrents of shadows bleeding from their clouds, before finding that they were vomited by thin sharp turrets, whose height was lost in the vastness of space. Everything was only permissive aggressiveness in the layout of the belvederes and their guardrails, the armored buttresses, chiseled in the sharpness, powerful archbuttons retaining all the insane creation spreading its impossible materialization for miles, as far as the eye can see, where horizons flirted with oceans, and much more.

The dark dungeons vanished in nets like miasmas of darkness, twirling in a storm surge, breaking against the sharp cliffs exacerbated in decay, the whole being overloaded with toxic smells of rotten and tainted living, so that the disgusting scent of blood disgorging stones splitting into ruins, to rebuild itself again and again, always in a delirious and impossible architecture. I t unraveled and re-inserted, incessant in waves of palpable torment.

The Great Mirror was cracking, and myriads of silver shards melted under the breath of a Dragon's smoke and purple, stretching its immaterial form into the clouds bursting with bloody cascades. It was not a fantastic flesh animal, no! There was nothing but dark, insubstantial, wild mists, springing from unfathomable abysses, shaking the dimensions that ruled this world. The spirals of fog danced in a ballet indescribable to the human eye, and its inconceivable rage surged from its lungs, melting everything in the martyred environment.

As the surrealist structure deformed and reformed its mass, in endless thrilling transformations, knights charged the Unnamable, and ended up crushed to the ground, like flowers under a scornful foot, when they did not liquefy into a unclean purulent magma, their endless howls flowing from their distorted mouths.

And the smell! What a unpropre olfactory putrescence!

Trevor stared in awe, his fellow warriors slaughtered under the advancing living fog having multiple shapes changing with every step. He saw those who mocked him, ended in infamous gurgling, and the sublime smoky Dragon with a ferruginous taste, raised Its wail in a fairy song in his ear, more beautiful than a siren song:

"Bring me my Son ... Give me back my lost Son ..." he intoned in lamentations bathed in an unrivaled Ire.

The Great Mirror began to vomit debris sharp as razor blades, slicing all life in the path of the internal breath that spat them out. Trevor found himself stuck in swamps of mud and blood, undefined corruption and entrails, mesmerized by the gigantic smoke twisted in thousands of shades of darkness of every nuances. The substances intertwined in rumbling pulses of a raw heart, torn apart and leaving aggressive tendrils twirling in a dance of death at deadly tempo. He saw the blades of the Mirror split the Founding Patriarchs of the Brotherhood in two, and disappear into the rubbish that piled up with the falling bodies. He held out something at arm's length towards the Dragon, and was amazed to hold up the Sacred Combat Cross.

"Come closer, let me embrace you ... my Son ! Suddenly hissed the Dragon, taking on a more materialized form, flapping its long wings made of slender bones.

Two purple eyes stared at him, the Dragon's gaping mouth approaching dangerously close to his face, Trevor collapsed helplessly. Searing pain broke him in a final cry.

He saw the Combat Cross buried mortally in his chest, before drifting into the chasms of Darkness, as he was gently lifted by a huge claw.

Nothing existed….

000ooo000

It was the pain of the tear that woke Trevor with a start, panting and sweating under the intensity of the dream. In a post-reactive reflex to the muse, he touched his chest, seeking the gaping wound made by the Cross. His pulse gradually calmed down, realizing his dreamy state. Or a nightmare, rather!

Something next to him stirred. Still poorly placed in the real world, hazy with images of the apocalypse, the steel gaze sought movement that he had picked up. The clean water pupils were dilated with the insidious fear that was now seeping from his limbs, as the abrupt awakening. He was still dazed when he stared at Actheean who was rekindling one of the braziers, busy balancing a pot on the makeshift grid resting on the glowing embers. A tantalizing scent wafted from the pot.

"Are you awake, finally?" You moved in your sleep, you moaned… Nightmare? the apprentice asked, carefully taking the pot in his protected hands.

" You are here since a long time ? Trevor just replied, muttering and cranky, he hated watching him sleep. He still felt in a weak position like this. Also, like a disturbing intrusion into his private bubble, an exhibition like being exposed in sleep, which weakened him under a voyeuristic gaze that always made him uncomfortable. It had always been like that, already a child when he shared the dormitory with the others.

A sharp paranoia that he had developed through self-deprecation, a childhood endlessly surrounded by uncompromising and demeaning self-criticism. By dint of shielding himself in the absence of affection, Trevor could not bear to have his precious bubble confining him being burst by too intrusive glances. He therefore felt that his periods of falling asleep would not suffer from curious observation by others, judging that these times were favorable to weakness of body and mind. At times he even refused to pour himself into the twilight of Somnus, struggling with the progressive numbness, so that others who were not yet asleep could see him succumb.

He had found himself relieved when one of the Founding Fathers granted him a rest cell, admittedly small, but reassuring, when he reached his thirteen years. He hadn't asked for anything, of course, had never complained, but the man must have already guessed the vagaries of childhood, realizing that Trevor would never be able to fit in with the community of others who seemed tight against the hapless orphan. Of course, this special little "gift" had been badly received by the other jealous children, who saw it as a strange form of favoritism, which only put Trevor and his companions at cantilevered.

But what did it matter to him, at least he no longer heard strange rustling sounds in the night, or other not very subtle conversations about sleep and the awakening of the flesh, which the others boasted themselves on telling among themselves, under the guise of whispers, but always with the aim of making blush the rebellious teenager who, decidedly, did not want to conform to the small drifts just like them.

"Wait a moment… you really needed to rest… I put the pot of soup to heat while waiting for you to wake up… rather brutal, actually!

While speaking, Acthéean installed a low stool as a small table on which to put the pot. He waited patiently for Trevor to come out of the trance of his sleep, and straighten up as he sat up, facing him. He admired the gorgeous, shiny veil of the overly long hair, draping the shoulders and half-exposed front of the chest in the wide cutout of the shirt. A night wing floating on the curves of a Carrara veined marble sculpture.

Trevor didn't seem to notice the gaze that had become fixed and cloudy, and Actheean's frozen demeanor.

"Be… careful, it's hot," he said a little stupidly, when young Belmont grabbed the bowl. Did your dream sound terrible? You moaned, and seemed to cry.

To gain composure, the apprentice leaned against the simple table in the room, trying to mask the unwelcome turmoil that languidly settled in his stomach. A bitter sweet mixture seeping through his veins, setting them alight. Quivering as delicate as feathers, spreading a blanket of bubbles across the bottom of his belly, as he met the ice blue of the dreamer's irises.

“God, how beautiful, intense and pure that look was!”

Trevor didn't answer right away, his eyes moving from the puzzled face to the bowl, his memory trying to put the picture puzzle together. He assumed from the now blurry memory of traumatic images that the events of the day had coalesced into a bric-a-brac symbolizing his pain. He had already dreamed thus, of frightening things and of suffering, being rocked since childhood in the fear of the common enemy of the World, it was normal that at one point, the minds influenced by the Terror itself, had to to govern their defense mechanism through dreams. But never had these nightmares been so intense.

He wrapped the bowl in a cloth so he could grab it without burning himself, and muttered a vague response, wishing Actheean would be less curious.

Silence fell between the apprentice, a little uneasy at the lack of speech, but understanding, and Trevor subconsciously putting a wall around him, praying in the comfort of the unchanging spreading his furtive shudder. Yet he knew he couldn't stay like that, in a stubborn silence that the other might misunderstand, and did himself violence when the words passed his pursed lips, between sips of the hot broth, and my faith! pretty good ! He chooses to slide on a sally, which might lighten the mood a bit. A feat for a silent one like him!

"Is that… Isaac in the kitchen?

" Yes. I think he outdid himself today… Actheean chuckled softly.

The tone of the voice was a very soft tenor, deep in vibration, and above all mastered. As far as he knew him, Trevor had never heard him scream or howl under the impulse of anger. Always between two neutral tones, half fig, half grape. Vibrations pleasant to listen to, in fact. A voice that had definitely found its specific and unique imprint, in his seventeenth year, as others got stuck in the irritating highs of developing vocal cords.

Probably for this, that the Brother Prior often asked Actheean to read the selected passages of the Scriptures or the daily Liturgies, while the others were sustaining in the deepest imposed silence, then letting fly the serious intensity of his voice delivering the holy verses in a pronunciation so easy and slightly theatrical, which had the gift of calming the spirits, even the most troubled. To top it off, Acthéean had a disconcerting ease in the elocution of Latin, a language that Trevor expressed having enormous difficulty in remembering, and especially in adhering to it. Far was his preference for tactical combat, or hand-to-hand combat, rather than wasting his time in prose in Latin ! When he had to go to language classes, he already felt his hair curl up, and the urge to throw all the books out the window was gnawing at his nerves.

But, he had to admit, Actheean's vocal resonance had often put balm in the anguished heart of the young man in war training. And caused something else, too ! Which was situated much lower than the heart cradled by the litanies ... From that, Trevor was aghast, not knowing the difference between the possibility that this voice awoke a very easy platonic quietude, or if something hidden in the darkest depths of his unconscious, vibrated to the chords of music to which his body responded with questionable ... disturbing reactions.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Trevor also observed a portrait that strangely matched him, in form, appearance, demeanor. Like an image in a mirror, the effects of which would be interlaced with a disturbing twinning. Could we say that Actheean looked like him? Not really, but at each line, each curve, unconsciously we made the parallel between the two beings, if we saw them side by side, as at this second. A confusing similarity that kept questioning Trevor.

Acthéean displayed singular and uncanny similarities in attractiveness and delicacy of features, an aesthetic embellished with balanced and fascinating physical qualities, and just like Trevor, carved in the virility of a provocative jaw, sharp and high cheekbones, and a gaze flaring in shades passing from diluted hazelnut into a nostalgic gray, seeming to reflect a soul at times tormented with regret, calculating on an uncertain future. Without having the lax extension of Trevor's, the thick hair also flaunted its deep auburn-brown locks, never turning red, flirting with the shoulders well-grown in the muscle of the workout.

If Trevor emanated a breathtaking and balanced aesthetic, that of Acthéean sailed in the deep waters of a fascinating Beauty of Irresistible Dark One. Undeniably, the two young people were blessed by their exceptional physiques.

Never a gesture too much, dispensing loads of unnecessary air. The walk measured and long by the legs, Acthéean had the same tendency as Trevor to wave like a big predatory feline ready to swoop on the prey. Trevor had often surprised himself studying this gait, which was meant to be relaxed and reassuring, but knew was always ready to pounce. Identical to himself. So he was hardly surprised to hear some of his companions making strange comparisons between the two of them, when the apprentice herbalist appeared, quietly walking through the atrium on his way to training.

“Hey! Belmont, there is your twin who deigns to join us! " Trevor knew that behind the irony of the comment lay the bewilderment of others at what increasingly sounded like a replica of him. To young Belmont, it was an ominous mimicry that sidely distilled its share of questions, though he still showed a lifeless expression at the reflections, and turned his back on the newcomer ignoring the reasons for the stupid snickers.

Stupid fools! When one moved somewhere, the other systematically deserted the place. It had been going on for some time now, two years, maybe more ? Trevor didn't insist in his stubborn will to wander into his corner, only wishing for one thing : if he didn't have a friend, be it ! but let no one come and disturb his living space walled in solitude, patiently constructed by a defense mechanism repelling all the years of rejection he had suffered.

Insidiously, over the years, the Shadow had begun to infuse its venom, creating doubts in syrupy words in a mind still blooming with fragile innocence that begged to burst under the caresses of treacherous promises. The Shadow rebounding against the writings Trevor had caught himself reading, unbeknownst to the Brother Librarian. He had discovered in the meanders of dusty rooms unsuspected by the students, shelves where nestled forbidden grimoires whose vellum threatened to fall into ruin under the prying fingers, and the framework of these supports bearing brilliant illuminations ... erotic!

This time, the Brother Librarian who had discovered the upheaval in the books, didn't throw his justiciary wrath on the good culprits! And Trevor was able to quietly escape with a flaming memory full of his literary "theft," his legs shaking with emotion not just from fear of being discovered, and thousands of butterflies floating in his stomach. A purplish red too, one might say from his alabaster complexion, reading the shameful loves described. But luckily for him, it was night. We could also have said that, that night, poor Belmont was discovering "life", and gave the impression of a foal that had just been "brooded".

He had spent the rest of the night in his tiny cell, trying to calm his mind on fire with the hectic obsessions of his imagination, and his flesh struggling to reveal that a life was beating between his legs. A mortifying price to pay for the ironic curiosity of a scalded naughty cat...

He had finished his soup, embellished a quignon of bread wrapped in a napkin. It was sufficient, and even a little more regal than the usual brew. He put the empty bowl and napkins back on the bench, and looked up questioningly at the sigh of Actheean, who was sitting up from the table.

"You can sleep easy, I'll change your bandages in a few hours. Brother Efrain is apparently very busy with the garrison which has been decimated.

"Lots of injured?

"Yes… a lot of deaths, especially. It’s a drama to give the bodies back to families… We’re talking about it everywhere outside.

"When will this end? Trevor sighed, slowly lying back between the furs.

He settled down comfortably as best he could, so that the curvature of his kidneys was not stiffened by the forced belly sleeping. Actheean knew he was putting an end to all discussion. It was no longer worth trying to strike up another conversation, young Belmont had just shut the oyster he was ...

He had one last look at grace surrendering to the delights of escape through sleep. He still admired the shimmering black diamond veil of the hair scattered in latent seduction. He was still amazed that a young novice in knighthood could be allowed to keep such a long mane, usually reserved for officers. When it wasn't cut off by tradition at a wedding where innocence was lost.

But it was Trevor Belmont, orphan-bastard taken over by the Brotherhood. And Actheean knew the Founders foment dark plans for him.

000oo000

"Come into my arms, let me kiss you ... my Son !

A soft breath murmuring these words… It is beyond his attention, he cannot give in to it. Would it be reassuring to curl up between the bony blades woven of wings sharp as cleavers? Nestled there, in the hollow of a monstrous claw that could split his body in two effortlessly, but which turns out to be a real soft and caring nest in which he abandons himself without thinking.

"What do you want to do for our Brotherhood later, little Trevor?"

"I want to fight, like Chevalier Guilyem de Rem… answered a very small childish voice, but already motivated by challenge and confidence. The thin figure stood straight from the top of his six years.

"And I will kill the Dragon ...

The child seems to hesitate for a moment, then asks timidly:

"But why do I have to kill Him? ...

"He's done a lot of harm to everyone… you, your family… But we're your family now, little Trevor."

And a hand slips through the child's messy hair, in an intended soothing gesture. But too much support perhaps ... Why does the man's hand slide over his fragile little shoulders?

He sits in the bloodbath of his fallen Brethren, and contemplates the strange anamorphic reflection in the silver tin of the Mirror. With breath of anger, and furious fog, the Dragon knocks down everything in His path, and he watches this, without reaction, his clothes stained with bloody tears, the broken Battle Cross in his hand displaying an ugly angle, symptom of a fracture. His exhausted gaze measures the extent of the cataclysm Dragon made.

A piece of the Mirror comes loose, and comes crashing down at his feet stuck in mud and blood, and his dull eyes gaze into a grinning face, reflecting on it. It's his face, does he think! A life mowed down in stressful slow motion, as he feels a violent pain pushing through him. He looks down at the painful spot, and finds that a sharp point has pierced him right through, impaling him like a devastated insect. On the point which comes to wound him mortally, he sees his heart torn out beating its last pulsations, before turning to stone.

He then hears, in the distance, and yet close to his ear, at the same time:

"Bring me my Son ... That I hold him in my arms… " It is a painful plea.

He is cradled in the claws of the Dragon, almost languidly. The hellish breath murmurs words it does not understand, but to which it replied with a pleading sigh:

"... Don't fall asleep me yet ... I didn't take the time to live ... "

His body is lifted slightly, then rolled cautiously, as if floating on the tranquil flows after a storm of unstoppable grief, and the waves symbolize his tears of bitterness, remorse, incomprehension. The impression that you veil his body heckled in all directions, before finding the calm of a cocoon. Would he return to the Transparent sphere which saw him born?

"He doesn't even feel like you're moving him…. Said a voice near him.

"It's beautiful ... no sudden gestures, that it does not reopen ... answers another, deeper.

Hands glide over his Being, curled up in the well-being of the nourishing cocoon. They flatter his sides, the lower part of his back, pull something airy from his shoulders. He consolidates himself in the ballet so tender, so beneficent, in a lasciviousness which makes his flesh tremble in a calm and painful stir at the same time. Something is throbbing deep inside him, and he finds great comfort in it. Almost sensual.

He would like so much to keep this extraordinary feeling for unlimited times. It’s so good to feel your flesh rocked like this! He would like to moan in this mortifying silence, but he hears only his broken breath which intensifies as inquisitive fingers … caress him ? He feels an unusual (freaky) mixture of languor and throbbing pain in the light friction… Something also that is applied… He tries to express his happiness, but his lips can only whisper a few words, which he has already heard before. He can't remember who said that, like through a tear over eons that have passed ...

"I didn't take the time to live ..."

He finds himself wishing he was always cradled between the monumental claws.

Nothing matters anymore, now that he soars over the Chaos Abyss on the fabulous wings of the mythical Great Antediluvian ...

==II==< &< &==II==

Chapter Text

What woke Trevor up in what seemed like the dead of night? The abysmal silence that had pervaded the heart of the room that served as both the bedroom and the apothecary's infirmary? Lack of activity beyond the walls of the compound? The piercing pale lunar ray only with difficulty, the windows carefully obscured, so that the sicks and others wounded who come to rest their discomfort there, are not disturbed by light pollution. The luminary ended its cycle in a fragile crescent barely sketched in sickly blue-silver outlines, playing hide and seek with heavy latecomer clouds, stretching their ethereal forms in grimaces heralding a very unstable atmospheric upheaval at the end of a long winter.

Young Belmont slowly emerged from his deep sleep, realizing his position, wiggling his arms slightly numb from their role as pillows, surrounding the face. Still half-misted, Trevor looked up, peering into the half-darkness disturbed by the flickering gleams of the braziers and the hearth burning the last piled up logs. By the time his blue irises discerned outlines shrouded in shadows, he put his memory back in place, and opened up to the gentle stimuli that reached him.

Okay. He was lying in the apothecary. He felt the slight tingles in his back, as his wounds gently stretched their sealed lips under the layers of ointment, under the smooth ripples of the awakening muscles, as he rounded his back, breaking the imposed curvature of the kidneys. in the prone position. He kept his balance on his side as he shook the stiff limbs for blood circulation bringing its share of unpleasant electric tingles.

His hair fell down the front of his chest, and he felt a coolness on his back. He remembered that the nightgown he was wearing opened at the back, and the sides were wide apart. Reflexively, he cautiously bent one arm back, groping the loose links hanging over the spine. He felt painstaking bandages with his fingertips protecting the nasty welts. His mind began to mix up the whole course of the day: what should have been a normal morning, the unfair punishment, the beatings - he blushed again as he thought back to the very intimate conditions of this correction - his bath in the river - which worsened his bleeding -, and… Acthéean.

Why did he think so of the apprentice herbalist who had convinced him to come for treatment, agreeing to swallow his pride in asking for help. He was so used to his loneliness that he no longer interacted with his comrades in a perspective of normalization necessary in his development. He winced as he remembered showing off like that, from the bath, his shameful wounds that he would barely lick for a long time, he knew. His new bath, but hot this time, which had rocked him so gently in his dismay, as well as his Soul as much hurt as his flesh, his trembling confidences with Brother Efrain, so conciliatory, so understanding, and - if he does not had perceived it - esteeming the teenager with real affection. His trouble. Trouble ? About what ? And his dream? His dreams? Why so many images so cruel, so overwhelming. This inconceivable happiness of being cradled by monumental claws ... of the Dragon? What was wrong with him?

He straightened up, and extricated himself from the overly warm furs, sitting on the edge of the diaper, as he tried to reduce the insidious dizziness that made him tremble. His hearing gradually sharpened, registering every sound in the room. And precisely, he had been picking up for a few seconds a weak regular sound, behind him.

A breath? He concentrated, his head bowed, bathed in cascades of locks tangled with sleep. Yes. Someone was sleeping in the same room as him.

In the shivering shadow under the oranges and golds of embers and assailed nervous flames by the chimney draughts, Trevor's piercing gaze made out the contours of a low layer, almost to the floor, where a long sleeping figure lay. As if the sleeper had been transfixed by the dumbfounded gaze, he stirred before waking up. What looked like a long, pale ghost, still dressed in his tunic open over the dilapidated shirt, emerged from his thin sheet which casually covered him. A sleepy voice rose slowly, barely disturbing the heavy silence.

"Belmont? You have a deep sleep, say so ...

"Acthéean? What are you doing here ? Why are you sleeping there

Acthéean stood up cautiously, heading in the warm halftone glow towards Trevor.

"I'm studying here, I'll call you back ... The apothecary is my sleep cell. And Brother Efrain wanted someone to stay with you. I also remind you that you have the right to changes in regular stupes to stop any infection.

Trevor looked at him for a moment, taken aback by the unusual flow of words from the apprentice. Acthéean was like him in a stubborn muteness, very stingy with words he always deemed unnecessary. The other faced him, backlit to the fireplace, and subtle gleams shone through the piping of the tunic, and the crumpled shirt neckline. Surreptitiously, in the thin shirt loosened around his figure hemmed in pain and a remnant of sleep, Trevor felt exposed again, though the garment barely revealed the chiseled collarbone neckline to the eye.

"Your sleep is irregular," noted Acthéean. Either you have nightmares that make you feverish, or you sleep like a dead person! Didn't you even notice that you were treated with Brother Efrain?

"Did you change my bandages?"

"Yes ... Complete care with application of oils and herbal plasters ... Efrain was afraid you would wake up, you were so tired. We moved you, cleaned and groomed you. You barely sighed… I don't know who you were dreaming about, but it sounded… nice?

Trevor detailed a trace of mockery on Acthéean's face, and was surprised when he couldn't find any. Deep down inside, he was extremely embarrassed and unsettled to have been so manipulated in his sleep. Somewhat exasperated, too, that his comfort space had suffered such a discreet intrusion, unwittingly, into the weakness of deep sleep. He would have liked to respond more brutally to the innuendos, but he couldn't. After all, they were there to provide him with the care and comfort that was supposed to relax and heal him.

"I don't… I have weird dreams," he breathed simply, noticing a slight tachycardia causing the soft, sensual nest coiled up in the hollow of his throat to pound. As if to underline this emotional state he didn't understand, the flames rekindled by an inquisitive breath in the chimney flue launched a pearly lightning on the pulsating skin, emphasizing the curve of the long neck, as it flexed to the side.

“I don't understand what I'm seeing. And… I'm tired. I would like to sleep without dreaming.

He lifted the gaze, stepping back to the couch where he was sitting. Suddenly, Acthéean had the impression of seeing this young fifteen-year-old, crumbling under the weight of centuries, watching in the semi-darkness the shoulders falter.

"You are feeling mental exhaustion… I can…" Acthéean began, quickly interrupted.

" No ! - The tone was uncompromising. I just want to sleep.

I would like to understand why I aspire to abandon myself in the clutches of the Dragon. Why I feel so good under his power. Why am I feeling this way?

But that he couldn't tell, could he?

He rolled gracefully on his stomach, barely covered, he turned his face towards Acthéean's bed, stubborn in his silence, he was pleased when an armful of bushy locks covered the features even paler under the emotion of the dream. And something else that had a knack for pissing him off too, for he understood even less of its subtle mechanism.

Eyes half closed, he studied the form of Acthéean receding in turn, a form slightly distorted by half-fawn half-night shadows, through the raven-wing silk threads. He felt weakened by this motherfucker sadistic tutor, and at the mercy of others to take care of him. And that he hated.

He waited for the other to freeze in his sleep, breathing punctuated by the invading and soothing mists. When he was sure that the apprentice had fallen asleep, he considered again the slightly paler figure silhouetted against the darkness, a tiny pennant dying at the mercy of a capricious wind, mentally sinking into the gentle pulsations that chanted in a intimate hollow, there, on edge while being at the same time in the depths of an emotional flesh.

He decided to let these new sensations rock his body in search of awareness he didn't want to name. Of course, echoing these disturbing stimuli, he dreamed ... of images of a Dragon weeping for the name of a Lost Son, and fire in his upset body ...

000ooo000

Two sapphires of a blue so transparent that they seemed to be cut in silver, scrupulously observed the comings and goings of Acthéean while he was busy preparing a hot bath, working in absolute silence as if his feet didn't touch the ground.

No expression veiled Trevor's sluggish face as he waited under Brother Efrain's medical examination measuring the condition of the wounds. The herbalist had already predicted that he would have to put up with inactivity for quite a while, and that was what made young Belmont's mind boil. So be it ! He had to be patient, and it was all the result of a shameless debauchery of violence against him, not the other way around!

He had known when he woke up that the Founders would maintain him in a private dialogue in the days to come, and that apparently Brother Anselme, the angry tutor, had to raze the walls of the Monastery, flabbergasted in a wave of punitive fury from the Founding Fathers. Anselm had learned the hard way that he had an injunction to no longer addressing or making an inappropriate comment, much less an invective to the teenage Belmont, who was evidently being carefully watched by the Founders. And supported! The glare barely passed through the quiet walls of the Brotherhood, but there were still "little mice" who had heard something, and the word had gradually crept into the lingering rumors, reaching some eavesdroppers.

Brother Efrain's gaze lit with evil glee as he reported it in chosen words to a Trevor who sank deeper into his mortification. What he knew about all this was that it was going to amplify in the degradation of interactions with others, necessarily! He was still going to pay the price for it! The others would distrust him even more, and Anselm would persist in his exponential hatred, which could only have predictable consequences ...

The pupils suddenly dilated under a painful surge, as the feeler fingers tickled one of the deep, perennial welts a little too much. A low moan escaped as he twisted to escape the touch. Efrain whispered an excuse. For his part, Acthéean had finished the preparations, and waited patiently.

"Brother Efrain," Trevor hissed, "I'm afraid this is all getting worse ...

"What is it, my child?" Efrain looked over the cut crystal he held in one hand, helping him to see more precisely the development of the injuries.

"All of this ... Anselm will always be right ... And the others will reject me again because they will think that I have been complaining like a coward ...

"The others have never accepted you, for some reason beyond me, so that won't change your situation ... What is disturbing are those who intercepted the explanations of the Founders with Brother Anselm. And your situation can no longer be silenced. Look how you are, how to explain your forced absence of classes, and training, tell me? Anselm displayed questionable and distressing behavior in the sight of our Lord, and sooner or later he had to be put back in place ... And you're by no means a coward, Trevor. Quite the contrary ... You've endured this situation for far too long, and I have never heard you complain ... Would you have come, if Acthéean had not forced you to do so? ...

Efrain made a small click of his tongue, which told Trevor that the discussion had to end now. The youngster turned a puzzled and painful gaze to the herbalist, and the hair, set aside for auscultation, fell like an airy canvas on the chest. And suddenly, a sad thought in his sight, came to Efrain who silently scrutinized the tormented teenager in front of him.

"God, what will happen to this child in the future? The Founders stir up many dark secrets around him ... I'm afraid all of this will suck him into a dubious fate ... Lord, have mercy on him ... "

"Trevor, you're going to be able to indulge yourself in your joy of taking your bath, I know that you're a mad lover of these ablutions… and let Acthéean cleanse your wounds… They are still oozing, and will take longer to close… I don't want any activity for a good week… Besides, did I know that your sleep was disturbed?

Trevor gratified Acthéean with a grim look of reproach, before responding.

"Yes ... it's in spurts ...

"Do you know that you were treated overnight, and you didn't even wake up? However, we did not take precautions to move you ...

"Of that, too, I've been told…' The blue orbs stared intently at the apprentice who showed no reaction to the gravity of the gaze.

"Dreams, nightmares send us signs about the health of our body ... It is normal that your sleep is disturbed in these times ... The ancient Greeks were convinced that it was the Gods who spoke to dreamers, through dreams ...

"They also said that the fools were blessed by the Gods, and locked them in the Temples…" replied Trevor, still in his soft voice, glancing amusedly at the brave Herbalist Brother who caught the 'fly' laughing, and muttering "Clever child” gently patting the perfectly skinned alabaster cheek. Which elicited a slight smile in the youngster, the upper lip was more hemmed than the other, which constantly resulted in an adorable childish pout.

Trevor just gloated inwardly, approaching the steaming tub emitting a pleasant, almost intoxicating scent. Lavender and Rosemary, with perhaps a hint of more musky Cedar. He already felt his body relax in anticipation, before he even slipped into the water. A few delicate sprigs floated to the surface, medicinal leaves which adhered to his pearly skin and shivering with well-being. His hair flared out in a crown, like fine seaweed at night, as he sank with a sigh into the syrupy ointment liquid.

Aside, the other two men muttered directions, as Brother Efrain took a few things from a bag, and left the pharmacy, leaving Actheean in charge of care, and Trevor silently playing in his favorite element. If it weren't for these nasty sores, he would have already immersed himself in watery bliss.

Trevor loved these intense moments of intimate care, and chirped almost like a bird wriggling in the water of a river, sending small swirls of diamond droplets as it waved its feathers in pleasure. And the teenager looked like that bird, except that the feathers were replaced by the sublime veil of nocturnal silk, which he shook to permeate the silky threads. He avoided leaning his back against the tub, of course, and let himself be drawn into his happy ablutions, suddenly oblivious to his surroundings, forgetting the apprentice who considered him surprised, a slight amused smile flirting with his lips.

Trevor forgot himself in his precious ritual, and Acthéean felt unwelcome, almost voyeuristic of a seemingly benign scene, so rare with others who did not regard the act of bathing as a blessing for bodily well-being at all and mental, but more like a chore, if he was referring to his sense of smell!

Already in the river, despite the suffering resulting from the mistreatment, Trevor had displayed an almost illegitimate happiness under these circumstances, which had considerably taken aback the apprentice who had been watching him for a while. And Acthéean had measured the incomprehensible and exponential confusion arising from this scene. Definitely, Belmont didn't adhere to the punitive sermons demanded by priests advocating abstinence from sinful baths before the Lord.

When he was seen performing this ritual, the very act took on forms inspired directly by all of Hell ! Acthéean had seen few women indulge in it, but these women didn't have a third of that sultry charisma in the act. He himself loved to take care of him too, but never to such an elaborate and sensual extent. All the gestures were made in a visual erotic symphony, all in the irony of a situation where the youngster was completely oblivious to the given and unwanted effect. Definitely, the Belmont was molded in the visceral material of a latent sensuality which only asked to express itself freely, like a light muslin which would tear to let the raging waves of a strong character break the last ramparts of a cliff already well eroded, - a sharply angled body just waiting to surrender to the eddies of an insidious storm. This body would be this cliff to assail, this wild hair of nourishing algae springing from the dark depths of an encrypted Inner. And on this dancing wave, ships breaking on cruel reefs in their indifference ...

This was all this being baptized Belmont, of whom nothing was known of a murdered mother, and of an even more obscure father, sparking strange rumors filtering their gall along the dark arches of the Monastery of the Brotherhood of light. Bringing a day-old newborn baby, babbling for a gesture of love he had not had from birth, his forehead already shaded with shameful secrecy, and the whiff of an age-old Prophecy. Was it this lack of love splitting its Real into a murderous graph, which desperately poured out his Being in the abundance of a little nothing, seeking out-of-date attention, dying on the frozen lips of intolerance, making of that little bundle a pile of miserable secrets? All this being forged in the asceticism of an existence that he never took the time to live in the carefreeness of a childhood unfit to love, drinking from the fountains of Knowledge with the tip of a mind calculating and keen, and a heart overflowing with desires always designated as illicit, but melting his essence in nuanced embraces of emptiness in the heart of an Eternal Night.

That was all that, Trevor Belmont, a real enigma dragging his Heart-Shadow into constant meditations, deepening the blue steel orbs, during periods of total spiritual absence, and that even if he was surrounded by his comrades in full swing, Acthéean had often noticed that the taciturn teenager was no longer among them, despite his physical presence.

This Heart-Shadow had unwittingly woven, for years, thin canvases imprisoning the curiosity and perplexity of the apprentice, gradually painting a sketch in sfumato carefully developed, of what others would call "Soulmates" or "Astrales-Twins". Over time, an attraction was built, the adjectives of which would have made the most holy ones turn pale, but irreversible and unconditional. Actheean had understood this for a very long time, since his gray hazelnuts had met the transparent steel blue, as in an unspoken pact whispered by breaths held in the evaporation of a mysterious osmosis.

The Ichor, Drunkenness and Agony, in sighed tears, he could have seen his Life in the mouth of the Wolf… He could have seen the slightest ripple of a boat on the calm wave like a message distilled in fragmented snippets… All these absolute metaphors, nestled in a barely pulsating hollow, under the intense light of an impenetrable gaze.

It was all that : Trevor Belmont, who dreamed of taming Dragons ... One Dragon in particular. The one who crept into his dreams, his thoughts, to the point of clouding, an obsession tinged with unquenchable hatred ... and strangled in another feeling he dared not name : love, perhaps? A pile of inconceivable torments, endlessly trapped in tornadoes of overwhelming feelings. This amalgam crawling under his skin ...

Since when had Trevor been talking to him ? Acthéean was drawn from his contemplation by a voice which marked his impatience. Apparently, Trevor had been speaking to him for a few minutes, and he, had deserted the place by spirit.

"You make up your mind ...? he finally understood, crossing the intense irises that questioned him.

"Sorry ... I was elsewhere ...

" I saw that…

Trevor waited patiently, turned slightly towards him, gently soaping one of the arms. His hair was rinsed with herbs and precious soaps, and shone like a river of absolute diamonds, clad in a twist over his shoulders. Young Belmont was now waiting for Actheean to cleanse his back wounds. Faced with his reluctance to comply, Trevor whimpered slyly, tyrannical as only children knew how to be, while maintaining a naughty kindness in order to get a treat:

" What are you waiting for ? That I crumple in the bath and look like overripe fruit? In addition, the wounds pull painfully ...

Too soft, the lips of the wounds tugged treacherously, thirsty for the balm that would regenerate them. Acthéean set to work professionally, trying to calm a tremor that was burning his fingers. He focused on the healing which presented a nice diagnosis, none of the ugly welts from the day before had become infected, that was already a very good point, and Actheean made a eulogistic comment on Brother Efrain's perfect work. He didn't even notice he was thinking aloud, when Trevor let go :

"You too had something to do with it… You both worked on it.

" Oh ! You know, I learn with him every day, he is a real medical treasure, he has studied many forms of medicine from other countries, as well as that of Antiquity. He knows how to mix and match to achieve amazing results. I hope one day to reach his level of knowledge ...

As he spoke, Acthéean carefully bathed the wounds by watering them with a cup filtering out the residue of herbs. He wiped every gash as he went, appraise the slightest crack. The bruises that surrounded them with their impressive shades of dark purple and sickly yellow, as well as dried ichor, splayed out like crushed flowers, threading their marbling flush on fleur-de-peau of the pale skin.

"Is that going to cause permanent scars?" Trevor asked softly, surprised to appreciate the slowness with which Acthéean worked in his study.

"In your sleep they touched you the same ... and you liked that, didn't you? You, who are used to blows, it's good to have hands that don't hit you ... "

Trevor silenced his playful mind, but blushed at the truth of the facts. They were touching him, and this time it wasn't to hurt him! Too bad if he had to ask God for forgiveness in a future confession, all he wanted at that moment was to stop thinking about the pain, the insane turpitudes, the harsh words, the permanent aggressiveness towards his being which yearned only to let himself be lulled in a little comfort, without ulterior motive. Just like in his dreams, where he surrendered almost with relish into the conflicting claws of his Superego heated by the Unknown. The human was fragile in his fantasized temptations, wasn't he?

Then suddenly he came back to the surface of his memory like drowned people screaming their last breath, bursting a layer of ice formed in the boring flatness of its waves of existential constraint, the pernicious, sulphurous writings, the shameless illuminations of prohibited acts. Pieces of scandalous testimony that he had carried away, etched in his shocked memory, in a nocturnal escape, and which lay there, in the confines of a hidden room of the library adjacent to that of desks crumbling with writing-desks carefully aligned in chromatic circle, on which the Illuminator Brothers worked. Texts that should have been burned in a purifying pyre, but instead were carefully scanned apparently by nosy hands for a moment. Like his! But it was pure chance!

It all came together, and he tightened a little more around his knees tucked under his chin, sighing without realizing it. Acthéean thought he had hurt him, and worried about it. On the other hand, he thought about getting out of the bath and snuggling up in bed urgently, feeling a vicious twist tighten his stomach. Unaccustomed to this type of reaction, always walled up in overly prudish thoughts, he was aware that his comrades, at his age, had already felt such emotions in the anonymity of darkness, which further damaged his self-esteem strongly shaken by permanent abstinence from affection, or even friendship.

And there, his strange companion, who resembled him in some behavioral aspects, gave him a fluffy comfort in which he only wanted to lie down, and not interrupt this warning little time.

"A man, in addition ... But, didn't the writings tell of such loves, in the humid dungeons of confined cells? They throw dishonor on others, and they reserve for themselves what is obviously, good for their personal satisfaction… They ask you to confess yourselves when you have done nothing, whereas they indulge in their debauchery which would make blush the Hell itself… ”

Trevor moaned at that inner voice, that he knew how to speak such an offensive truth, it could cause the walls of this monastery to collapse. And what about the Founding Fathers?

“Isn't that okay ? I hurt you ? worried Acthéean, who had felt Trevor's whole body suddenly tetanize himself under his hands a little too retarted and slow.

"I want to go out, I'm not feeling well… I'm going to bed… it's not okay…" Trevor whispered, feeling the nausea rising, far from understanding the panic attack that was branching slyly through his inflamed veins.

"A little too long in the bath, maybe ..." suggested the apprentice, startled by the sudden change in behavior. He was sure, a few minutes ago, he felt his friend relax perfectly, all of a sudden, snort like that, and panic.

He didn't argue any longer, fearing that Trevor's discomfort would cause something more awkward for the procedure to follow in the care. He was only an apprentice after all, not in the same degree of panic, but he knew Belmont was extremely fragile in his constant turmoil. After a while, humans finally let go under the mountain of accumulated worries, especially already at such a young age, overwhelmed by multiple existential crises.

He took a few steps away, letting young Belmont escape from the bath, dry off quietly and carefully avoid rubbing his back, put on the shirt, and finally flee to the restroom. All only punctuated by chopped breathing disturbed by nervous movements. Something had disturbed his fellow in an impromptu way, which left Acthéean speechless.

He took the time to choose which balms to spread, leaving time for the taciturn Belmont to settle in. Thousands of guesses arose from the repulsive reaction, uneasy ideas that left him in cantilever of what to do. Had he made too much of a gesture to embarrass the teenager ?

He himself didn't know what to think, as he gathered the bandages and vials of overwhelming smelling oils. Something hurt inside him, bit him deeply, twisting his heart in an icy grip, and it was the lump of bitterness in his throat that he made his way to the bedroom. Knowing Belmont a bit, he expected to receive all of his head-care supplies in an incomprehensible fit of anger. By dint of being repelled by others, Trevor had forged a fiery character that did not suffer from any constraints or deviations. In short : utter dread when he chose, putting a wrathful mask over the wreckage of a generous heart that only needed a little friendship, in fact ! And beware of the one who suffered his wrath, without taking the time to lift a little of this mask of scratched coldness !

But, it didn't, much to his relief. Trevor was lying in his slightly oversized shirt, the back laces undone for injury access. He looked up at him as he entered, watching him carefully put the products down. But no word crossed his lips. He just settled down flat, so Acthéean could coat his back with the repairing ointments, a little oily flowing in fine lazy ramifications on the marmoreal flesh. The touches were subtle and airy like a sigh on the crevices displaying their palette of bruised colors, absolutely avoiding making the flesh quiver under painful thrusts.

" It's better ? What happened? ...' Acthéean asked softly, while elaborating his treatments punctuated with quick touches on the most sensitive excoriations.

"Yes… was whispered even more ethereal.

"Did I ... Did I say or do something wrong?

His touches were more hesitant, waiting for an answer. Under his hands, the body reacted in a convoluted scale of the most diverse and thought-provoking emotions. The hands seemed to tighten around the pillow for a second, then the whole figure sagged like a predator at the end of its frantic run.

"No… was the answer after a few moments, still whispered. I haven't thanked you for everything you do.

"Yes, you did," reassured the apprentice. 'You thanked us in your sleep.

" You're kidding ? Trevor heaved himself slightly on his elbows, looking at Acthéean in a veiled perplexity of an onset of drowsiness.

"No… You talked a bit in your dreams… But you thanked us… And… you looked happy…

The graceful circumflex arched eyebrows above the sapphires deepened their astonishment. A fine veil of discomfort fell on the diaphanous features, and a light dew sprinkled on the high cheekbones. He sank back onto the couch, biting his lip.

"Am I talking in my sleep?"

"I don't know if this is a habit with you, but what is certain is that you thanked us ... You were apparently between dreams and nightmares ...

"Thanks again then… I'm grateful to you."

"Even though I made you come for treatment?

The two young men, as in a silent tacit chord, had harmonized their voices to the same intonation: light, deep, smooth baritone, voices made for lull and confidence. Two twin voices in their inflections, that it was almost unreal, and it made for a calming and musical dialogue. A surreal symphony of angel choirs that would have left speechless Gregorian choristers of a sacred rapsody. And each was reassured inwardly that the other was not going to burst into angry protests, or outbursts of anger. Each thanked the other, inwardly, but this mutual "thank you" was felt by their intelligence in deciphering the behavioral codes that their bodies naturally delivered in an enigmatic language difficult to discern by minds restricted by taboos and daily inhibitions, boiling down to vibratos and dermal undulations smelling of their stimuli through their respective flesh. A whole panoply of the tiniest reactions, but which one knew how to pick up in the other, without a single word being spoken.

Undoubtedly, Acthéean had felt the flattening of the atmosphere discharged with aggressive electricity, and it bounced all over the walls of the room so intimately lit by the fires kept alive, like thousands of soothing flakes swirling in the heated air, ethereal plumetis which came to plug tenuous breaches that could have torn the fine web of well-being. It was all this mass of cognitive information that the apprentice's mind recorded, which had the gift of reassuring the two friends in a welcome relaxation after the last hours of pain.

Eyes half-closed, as he lazed in the twilight between vigilance and sleep, Trevor continued in that soothing tone:

"I feel like I've been unfair to you ... It's hard for me to accept ...

He paused, but Acthéean understood what he meant. His hands floated in delicate brushes, brushing the bruised flesh with fragrant essences, as he would paint a canvas in the diffuse colors of wash, transparent glazes lit with moving shadows, the ointments would be the precious pigments that would stain the ribbed alabaster of the skin, and the body would be a pictorial work halfway between organic surrealism and lyrical expressionism in the throes of ecstasy in its last breath.

Trevor vibrated with each touch, and forgot the bite of the welts, the numbing effect slowly doing its job. He had never felt this way. Yes, he could tell that he was receiving loving care, as much as professional, and that it was not only on his flesh that the balm was so spread, but indeed on the wounds of his suffering soul for so many years.

No one had rocked him like that… even Brother Efrain, whose unquestionable professionalism always erected an invisible barrier preventing the outbursts of emotions, as he felt them at that moment. It did him so much good. But, it hurt so much, too ... A void that had been there, in the pit of his heart, nestled in a ball in his stomach, and that had always made him suffer so intensely. A graphed Real, yawning its abyss, from which sprang a resilience which he didn't know where it took its source, probably in a provided Imaginary which only asked to wake up, cautious, and would allow him to build this new Trevor to sheltered from symbolic bad weather. That All of, which wasn't just the result of an improbable addition of an out-of-place serendipity. A void that woke him in the middle of the night, and would make him scream in agony if he didn't cling desperately to a mad hope that Fate had plans for him, but the rules of which he didn't know.

He couldn't have known that this Void, creating indescribable chaos in his Psyche, was the forever bleeding wound of the absence of the primordial gesture of Birth. The sterility of feelings reduced to nothing writing the history of this little being, on his "Tabula Rasa", in poisonous, sour, ineradicable words. What do you do then, when you never meet a bit of affection, an encouraging word of friendship? We forge an insurmountable wall of ice for others who would like to try their luck in climbing this unchanging mountain. Too bad if they broke their teeth! ...

Through absence and indifference, a Monster was born... And that was what gave all the appearance : Trevor Belmont.

So, when he felt so much well-being and happiness under the care becoming caresses for his multiple injuries, could we dare to blame him for finally giving in with confidence? His internal voice purred, and he felt all the vibrations of it as if he had a cat nestled in a love nest against his chest. Everything about him was warm, vaporous, light and inconsistent, his stomach rippling in ecstatic shivers.

He plunged weightlessly into the twilight of sleep, while one hand squeezed his in a soft and definitely serene grip, his neck relaxed by knowing fingers tangling in the soothing strands even there, the wild animal that lodged there seemed tame.

His dreamlike universes were delicately placed in diaphanous shrouds of foam, and kept in his Great Sleep. The Dragon to himself 'purr', and sang soft litanies to him spoken in dead language since a long time…

000ooo000

Hyssop, Drunkenness, Agony.

He throws himself on the shore, in a black night of drunkenness. Wrapped in the shroud of stars cut out of the onyx lake of the sky, he contemplates himself suspended in his deep sleep, a little solitary, carried naked in the draconic arms which encircle his fetal figure.

He invited Death to the great banquet, and She applied her rule of three, unmoved. He persists in gazing at himself, suspended, through the reflection of an unstressed Mirror spitting out at him the remnants of a future that was not written for him.

Foam shrouds and washes cradled his forsaken body, while combs sharp as claws slipped through his sparse tresses, and the locks lengthened, stretched further in size, if more were needed. Ethereal hands made of smoke and shadow, smoothed the strands of silk and smoothed them into intricate braids and hairstyles, as the locks grew and their silky tips languidly gripped the evil architectures springing from the waves, the foundations battered by the raging waves of an angry ocean. More than anything, the DragonChild had to be born into the protection of the Living Entity at the will of his Master.

The clouds poured out their tears in continuous streams, as he watched his Cross melt into the sheet of copper and ichor disgorging mirror blades, in which he watched his own reflection born in throbbing agony. He saw himself screaming, but heard nothing. Everything was silent, despite the incendiary rumors of the fighting around him.

All he could make out was that wonderful, almost languid song ringing in his ears. It came from everywhere and nowhere, but it was calming.

He thought he could discern hands slipping stealthily from the cesspool, crawling towards him. Seeking to grab hold of it. But he saw himself gradually getting stuck in the piece of silver tin, until he disappeared into total dissolution, and he felt ecstatic bliss invade his body as he faded into the great mirror, wrapped in shimmering shrouds of deep night. The Angels lay down at the feet of his dissolute being, raising their protective swords crowning the last atoms of his diluted fading essence ...

No pain ... except that of a darkened Birth, plating the residue of nourishing material in his cry inspired by agony ... As his body rolled back into painful spasms mixed with ecstasy ...

Then a throaty voice blew in an ethereal melody:

"My Son ... Until ... Where we go, because it is the Law ... You and I ..."

000ooo000

Between his sleep invaded by strange and disturbing dreams, and the periods of fullness rediscovered through the happiness of indulging in care, the uninhibited appreciation of hands on him, Trevor no longer struggled in vain remorse, or perverse ideas making him feel guilty, and finally preferred to empty himself and enjoy every moment.

Anyway, he understood that he could no longer fight against an ‘I’, who had decided to torture him deliciously in pernicious pangs letting go through the fantasies of his Unconscious, when he observed, mortified, in the early morning, that the dreams provoked previously unseen reactions. His body betrayed him shamefully in the carnal torments which furiously scratched the layers of his Imagination.

Did Brother Efrain sensibly understand the results of a restless night, when he quietly offered up a clean nightgown, after his injury assessment? Trevor stirred in his memory the slight smile the herbalist had given him for a long time. That morning he didn’t ask for his left over to soak in silence in the medicinal bath, his mind loose with blazing reminiscences, barely picking up a word or two.

Acthéean's silence also confused him in a flurry of questions and guesses. But his companion was far too discreet to reveal a prior clue.

And it was that morning, precisely, that two of the “right-arm” Fathers of the Founders, well known as special envoys in place of the “thinking heads”, made their visit to the apothecary, coming to inquire about the distressed penitent. The Founders took to heart the situation of one of their proteges, and had ordered a visit before a next meeting. However, it was rare for them to come to his treatment room to check on news, which gave Efrain a little more comfort in Trevor's position with the Founders.

Brother Efrain himself was nonetheless a statue at their silent entrance. Barely surrounded by two guards for protection, the Fathers asked to be brought to the injured. And it was in a strange atmosphere laden with embarrassment, inappropriate shame, respect bordering on homage, and above all anguish, that Trevor saw the two members of the Brotherhood sit beside him, he who wasn't presentable, tied half-naked in an oversized nightgown, crippled in pain and nasty bruises, a mop stretching in its utter savagery, covering the too bright and slightly surrounded gaze, screaming in that face of lunar alabaster.

The youngster felt the uncomfortable heat spread over his cheeks, under the stern inspection of his condition. No doubt he must have passed for a savage with dirty manners in the eyes of these two holy men! He would have wanted so much to hide in a hole at this moment, and did not know what to do with his too tall figure, his too big hair, his eyes too big in amazement. Strangely, he hated himself for being so weakened, his self-esteem sagging even more, he who stood proudly in training, under the attention of the Founders who regularly came to enjoy the spectacle of the students in combat. His pride was taking a serious slap in his face, and he never felt more shabby in front of authorities stingy with words.

In his mortification, he had to bow to the inflexible voices measuring the degree of their anger at the result of excessive punishment, and yield to demands for investigation into the extent of the damage on the pale back. He felt himself mortally bared under the gloomy gazes, his whole being throbbing with guilty shame, as the two men exchanged sibylline words. His mind was so boiling, he barely understood the sentence, the words blurring into a crippling stutter. He could no longer put coherent phrasing into his answers, and he felt like he was the culprit standing on trial, his logic totally inverting the pieces of the puzzle in a silent invective at himself. The stinging humiliation of stooping to allow himself to be examined like this, left him with an icy fluid electrifying his senses. He didn't deserve such attention, others were in much worse shape than him, to gain the consideration of the Ancients. So those who had survived the latest Dragon Slaughter, and who were of concern to Efrain, went to their bedside for treatment that was often unnecessary. He had known that many were succumbing, even despite the herbalist's eager medicine.

Then he discerned words like compliments kindly addressed to him, and he emerged from the cognitive haze he had been floating in since the Brethren entered. The orders were given with mutual acquiescence, and he knew it would take a long time to finally be quiet, in a settling peace that would not nibble at his mind with sour words of reproach.

It was decided that his return to life as a student and warrior wouldn't take place until a good and complete recovery. And that he would stay in Brother Efrain's quarters for the entire stay. Even his presence at the various prayers, meditations and vespers was unwanted, much to his amazement. Trevor was fervent, and of good spirit, the Fathers trusted him to follow up with his confessor, if he so desired.

He was so stunned by such laxity of practice towards him, that he considered at length the Elders in what might have been an expression of arrogance to others. Efrain, who stood ‘’coi’’ (silent, quiet) in a darker corner of the room, silently studying the "right-hand men", perplexed at such words and their eagerness to hatch the one they considered to be a precious “fledgling” for their Order.

"The Founders protect this child, until the incomprehensible, exempting him from the tasks that every good Christian must follow ... But what happens with him? "

Before the Brethren left the premises, Trevor dared a question, in a weakened voice:

"May I ask you if I could get my… mirror back?" Please? ... I left it in my cell ...

"Of course, Trevor," one of the Fathers replied, his voice smooth, almost in disgust. You should even always wear it with you ...

The Brethren stood up, reaching out to the teenager who was barely suppressing a tremor, and he bowed gracefully, bringing their hand to his forehead, in a sign of deep respect. A strange light twinkled in their eyes, and they exchanged an indecipherable look at the silhouette in tribute. It was Brother Efrain's turn to feel an enigmatic shiver shake him, when he saw the gnarled fingers of one of the Confreres brush the skin of a bare shoulder by the yawn of the shirt, congealing in the nocturnal strands, and back up in a tiny tremor along the voluntary jaw.

“We ask you to take good care of yourself, young Belmont. The Founding Fathers will receive you when you are better’’, was the sentence ending the visit.

But the prolonged support of the fingers escaped no one, neither Brother Efrain who felt himself sink into something bitter, nor Acthéean who observed the scene from afar, nestled in the shadow of the rows of medicines, nor Trevor who thought he was falling to pieces, liquefied by a feverish wave twisting his stomach. At that moment, he did himself violence not to give in to the internal call screaming at him to bite violently this intrusive hand violating his physical space in such a way.

He stubbornly kept his gaze downcast, suddenly afraid that if he lifted it up and plunged it into their own eyes, he would see there the same glow he had seen in Brother Anselm's. And the idea hit him, and made him sick. Everything was frozen in him, and a sly nausea seized him. Snatches of his dreams came back to mind, portraying him when he was six years old ... That hand on his little shoulder, too leaning, which had even left a mark on the fragility of his transparent skin. It was forever etched in his memory that reminded him regularly in the series of nightmares that left him stunned.

A play of unhealthy shadows repeating their sinister ballet, miming ambiguities that made his heart burst. The pieces of a cynical puzzle fell into place, in a cacophony of flashes reverberating the same insidious, permanent gestures, slipped surreptitiously in innocuous conversation, recurring in their approach to a trampled innocence. He confided in the shadows of a confessional, whispering the bruises of his lost soul, while hands ventured too long on his shoulder, or his head, gently scratching the roots of hypnotic hair, an all too obvious symbol of a seduction taking its ramifications in a poorly interpreted silent plea. He sought advice for spiritual relief, and finally received only questionable caresses which he preferred to keep silent, unconsciously guessing that something had no place in this ritual which each time became a little more haunting, drowning the adolescent in oceans of devouring turpitude.

All the bitterness of a distressing observation made him realize that his stubborn denial had nailed him to a cross that was torment with the stench of sulfur, rather than a symbol of holiness. He felt, more than he saw, his weakness knock him down, weighed down by the evil sneer of ironic Lust looming in all its impunity. He chooses to let himself go to the sudden discomfort: everything, rather than endure this disgusting touch on him any longer. He deepens the stun so as to be free from the snares of those slender fingers thirsty to touch radiant youth.

Efrain stepped forward, hiding his discomfort, and helped him back to bed, stammering a few apologies about the youngster's condition, that the treatment was recent and the wounds still fresh, hoping to be believed. The Confreres left the room in a mortifying silence whose embarrassment had just cast down its thick, sour-tasting veil.

When they were gone, Trevor succumbed to vomiting in disgust - as he did in his cell, when he came back from confessions where intimacy had allowed this kind of behavior, If it weren't too strong a gesture, it was an uneasy look on his person during brief discussions in the shade of the holy arches - supported by the also nauseated Brother herbalist.

The man had seen things, had witnessed the unimaginable. Efrain had long known the consequences of recurring promiscuity, especially that of such beauties as that of young Belmont. But still, he had to keep an appalled silence on such exactions. He knew the distressed rumors whispered in the confinement of confessions, by languages too closely linked except by secrecy. Men of God or not, they were already human, and like the others, gave in to the temptation of flesh offered in all innocence into their hands trembling with anticipation, by families totally ignorant of the worm in the fruit ...

For a long time, no word was spoken. Besides, what could they have said? They knew instinctively that what they had surprised had been done in a confusing naturalness, those guilty of it knowing that they could not be punished by their high position in the Brotherhood. What to do, when it was the most senior who didn't even hide such acts, and probably boasted of being the first profiteers? Brother Anselm was just a submerged part of the iceberg. Efrain knew that the higher authorities of the Church turned a blind eye to what was going on in the barracks and brotherhoods, in the darkness of their monasteries, the Knights went to war, and it was human such weaknesses… right?

The Brother herbalist had seen the moralizing layers evolve in two weights, two measures. Under the festering scabs of sermons spitting out, insulting peoples frightened by a slightest misstep attracting the wrath of the Almighty, the shadows were loosened in a mire in which others could hardly dip their fingers without being excommunicated, exiled, or the stake for the unlucky, molding strange statures forged in the dregs of perverse hypocrisy slaying sacked innocence, and baked in devout ovens that would have made the saints carved in their gaping niches of blind fanaticism turn pale.

And unfortunately, Trevor was learning that his looks were doing him more disservice than he expected. In those troubled times, it wasn't just women who trembled at being too beautiful. In conflicts, rape made no difference between the sexes, and covered itself with sickly masks of overwhelming stupor ...

Efrain could only remain silent, trying to comfort as best he could the suppressed figure in a state of bewilderment of the broken child once again. Trevor accepted his reassuring hand on his bruised back, acknowledging the man's silence, seeking to probe the infinity of the abyss that carved its foundations within him.

"I want to ... wash myself... Please ... I need to wash ...

The jaw clenched in pain, the gaze frozen in an unhealthy, wrathful glow that would have scared the most reckless, staring into space in an ominous expression. Efrain could almost hear the teeth grinding between them, so much the pressure was stimulated. The child had said: "to wash myself", not "to take a bath", and the herbalist understood all the symbolism of wanting to wash away the stain of touch, not only of the flesh, but especially of the spirit that found it violently traumatized.

Efrain turned to his apprentice, and nodded slightly for the preparation. The wise man knew instinctively that there was no necessary and vain word to utter, the young Belmont showing himself to be a foolproof character, where, where another would have collapsed pitifully, he was hanging on against all the winds in an unshakeable will. And what a granite cliff that he displayed against the light of the chiaroscuro canvas of his life! Cliff sharpened with gray-mist contrasts on the honey-bitter vapors of fading purplish ochres...

In the half-tone glow of the preparation room, Acthéean melted his pain, occupying his hands in the elaboration of a Lavender tea mixed with a pinch of Hyssop, which would relieve the crying soul of his friend, as well as a tub of hot water.

"Do you want us to leave you alone?" Efrain simply asked, aware that the teenager badly needed to be with himself.

So he wasn't surprised at the silent acquiescence. Still, Trevor straightened up to his full height, as if facing something he wanted to fight with all his rage, and Efrain imagined him climbing up grip by grip, clinging to this high, sharp cliff of his life. Inwardly, he was proud of it, and a slight smile crossed his weathered face as he admired the young man's iron will. No wonder he was one of the best warrior students who commanded the admiration of his Warmasters, if not THE best! He'd been to practice before, his presence needed to patch up minor training ailments, and the teenager was quite a dazzling sight to watch. Like an "Other", it was a long time ago ... The match was even disturbing, and often had made Efrain think. Even if the latter actually had little knowledge of a very sinister story, when we took the time to listen to the whispers flying in the breezes of indiscretion.

He was about to leave the bath room, when Trevor half-turned to him, and uttered in a voice that had regained its poise and firmness, as well as its melodious baritone:

"I have the option of never crossing their paths again, right? I will do as with the others, I will avoid them ... Say nothing about it, Brother Efrain, it would only bring problems for all ...

Efrain retraced his steps, suddenly facing no longer a traumatized child, but a mature adult who chose to act intelligently in all thought, for the well-being of all parties.

"God tells us to forgive, doesn't He? Even the ones that hurt you the most… Trevor continued.

"They're not the first ..." Efrain sighed, but that wasn't a question.

The brief nod of the head poured a leaden cap through his veins. But before he could answer, a soft wave of his hand, Trevor cut him off.

"The human is weak, this is how our Creator decided it. But would He not be conciliatory towards His creatures subjected to temptation?

Efrain looked at young Belmont, aghast.

"Am I so bad, that I provoke such unclean thoughts, Brother Efrain?"

Efrain suddenly became aware of the presence of Actheean, a shadowy, patient witness in a corner of rows of herb pots. He wanted to send the apprentice away, but again, Trevor interrupted him.

"No, don't bring him out ... I trust his silence ... The icy gaze fixed Actheean's strictly still shadow.

"Trevor," Efrain started, "... I can assure you that you aren't at all guilty of anything about what is happening ... You aren't bad, Trevor, don't think so. It only happens that, without our knowing it, without doing anything by our will, we cause situations that completely escape us. That natures of which we did not suspect the existence, are revealed in a pernicious way, it is in the human being ... We are sinners and weak in an existence that we would like free from drifts, and that, God knows this and forgives us very willingly, for He loves us infinitely, and knows how His creatures are so imprinted with original Sin. So He constantly puts us to the test, in order to harden us in the face of the weaknesses that strike us. I have seen, in my profession, many divergences that I would dare say aren't caused by the Evil One. This is how the individual works, even the most fervent ... Temptation is not only hidden in the devil's sly song ...

"I think you've read the ancient Philosophers way too much, Brother Efrain," Trevor noted softly, his sapphires sparkling with subtle amusement. They were polytheists, don't forget ...

Efrain nodded in agreement, in an unspoken moment that might have passed as blasphemous in the appreciation of others.

"And Styx led to the Underworld ruled by Hades…" Efrain concluded laconically, certain that Trevor's intelligence knew how to grasp its encrypted substrate.

Actheean must have turned out to be perplexed and lost in this strange exchange of the nuanced colors of irreligion and impiety mixed, ironically certain.

“Do you think this is what Brother Anselm revealed in his beatings? This perversion to want to hurt, because he— ”“ Trevor interrupted, suddenly weary. He gestured vaguely, " … Whatever, I don't want to talk about it anymore ... Just bathe, and try to forget ...

Efrain knew perfectly well that he would not forget, we could not forget that with the back of a hand. But he knew Trevor was stubborn in some reflective aspects, and he had just slammed the door on any discussion in the face of the herbalist, preferring to close his protective bubble in his world of silence. The oyster had brutally closed its mother-of-pearl flaps, protecting the precious and chipped pearl that was his heart. Philosophy and Mythology were no longer even entitled to their sly sociological pikes. Everything had only been like a dream, to disappear the next breath, if Efrain hadn't been so attentive to the slightest change, a tiny heartbeat, and he felt like he had another Belmont sharing the steely gaze, the ironic words blooming on the same beach of the lips stretched out in a pale smile, so faded that it was delicate in the inconsistent design.

Acthéean stepped forward cautiously, holding out the cup of herbal tea. He felt out of place, and only whispered a few unnecessary words:

"It's lavender, so you can sleep peacefully ... and a little Hyssop, for ... the moods of your soul ...

Trevor stared at the cup resting near the tub, waiting for the two to leave the room, walled in a silence the apprentice knew would be difficult to disturb for hours to come. He turned his back to them, his fists clenched, his face three-quarters to the side, watching for a slightest gesture that might have bristled him, the hair flirting on part of the shoulder and the front of the bust. A warlike position that the young Belmont affected during training, which underlined the predator latent in him. The herbalist and the apprentice could have been like two birds having smashed against a wall of ice, and left the young to indulge in ablutions which, they hoped, would wash away the indelible splashes made on the intimate canvas of his being.

But this time, he wouldn't look like that little sparrow chirping through the diamond pearls of water splashing on his feathers ...

==II==< &< &==II==

Chapter Text

A flash of lightning, more blinding than the previous ones, made the night spasm in electric blue shards, casting ecstatic shadows jerky, bursting the deserted landscape of all activity. Everyone had taken refuge in the different spaces of the monastery, sheltered in the study or training rooms. The lightning showed the violence of the storm that had been rumbling for several hours, and didn't seem at all ready to calm down. He seemed to be in harmony with most human hearts squeezed under the various disturbing conditions. Regularly, the peaceful scenes of the library, or the desks over which the illuminators were leaning, or in the studious confinement of the cells, all these living scenes of everyday life were torn in hypnotic blue pulsations, frozen for a few breaths in sequences resembling a gigantic heartbeat, transformed for the second by a flutter of eyelashes between darkness and light, before falling back to the normality of their ambient lights of the place.

The drumbeat of inclement weather rocked the living and nature in the talons with superstitious fear, or reckless terror depending on the individual, paralyzing the very hearts of animals hiding in the fleeting protection of their nests or burrows. The storm had torn the end of the day brutally, the clouds pouring downpours like a hand zipped open in Payne-Gray large carpet of heaven. It seemed the thunder had settled its anger for quite a while, when everything on earth was going to take its thunder.

Between two shards tearing the darkened atmospheres of the rooms, the studious and applied gazes froze from time to time, to fix the raging elements, the pupils revulsed with fear. Feathers or brushes stopped their dancing convolutions on the parchments and vellum damp with ink or precious pigments. Hearts twitched in Asystole listening to the falling lightning, generating cold sweats electrifying the backs of the most superstitious. No one was smart about the raging deluge.

If some had returned to the warm rooms of their studies, others gathered in groups scattered all over the place under the shade of the deep arcades, from where they could admire the wrath of the sky well sheltered from the centuries-old stones, philosophizing between them in murmurs which dared not disturb the more and more angry growls. These small gatherings stretched along the corridors and under the arches torn with ivy greedy for their fistulas resigning under the unforgivable claw of time. Eyes of all colors, in all shades of luminous iris, half closed under the blinding impact of each lightning flashing their graceful arcs in the dark web of a threatening night. For the space of a second, the faces burst into convulsed profiles in the electric gleams, the men frozen in the spasmodic electricity which threw its thick blanket of excitement, of exacerbation of stimuli, until the unbearable nervousness of the bristling flesh.

And in this furious magma mixing hormones upset by the adrenaline of fear, the sweltering air that prevented healthy breathing, natural perspiration mixed with rainwater, the cognitive apparatus reacting differently in everyone, delivered its totally opposite reactions in the mire of moods oozing with irrepressible excitement in the face of natural danger. The divergence of over-excited stimuli, while others trembled only under a phobia of the elements.

Hints of aggressive humus, and irritated and explosive ozone, bristling the olfactory taste buds, it was through this odoriferous and sonorous tumult, that a silhouette shadowed by a damp hood, stretched out his supple, silent, measured gait, as if a predator had crept in between the rows, humming muted, and preparing to tear the apparent calm.

But, the form was only content to cross the disturbed intimacy of the stones, catching the flight of his stride multiple fragrances tickling his keen sense of smell by dint of determining medicinal plants and herbs. Hints of rancid perspiration, - that of badly washed bodies made him most uncomfortable, when he had to treat wounds bathed in poorly cleaned flesh, he was on the verge of nausea - the scent of recently used soaps on others that he silently blesses for their act of cleanliness ; bouquets of exhalations mixing the drunkenness and agony of hormonal developing bodies and puberty exhibited in the more acid and pungent scents; or the fan-shaped scents of the skin releasing their natural musk in a single imprint. The trained nose of shadow sliding into half-darkness was literally assaulted to several degrees in the olfactory scale, and his stimulated mind detonated every sweetness, every essence until it mapped it out in the large fragrant panel that he treasured in the safe of his Exercised Memory.

While his stooges philosophized lazily in front of the bursts of thunder, who decidedly didn't even want to give up a little ballast on this night already well advanced, the silhouette slipped into the privacy of a large porch leading to the main library of the 'abbey. Where were the study rooms with their desks loaded with writing precious in the elaboration of rare pigments, and nuanced inks, which were always the object of admiration in him, until fascination when he could observe the meticulous work of the cautious illuminators.

And he knew someone else who had that same adoration of chromatic palettes, the same patient passion for long, conscientious and detailed work. The same one to whom he silently addressed his blessings for the perfect care of the body, thus avoiding unnecessarily offending his keen sense of smell when it had to be treated! In fact, a lot of similarities between the two of them, when you consider recent events.

A small additional observation, which stretched a slight smile on his face barely shaded by a stubble growing from beard, as he entered the great room, and climbed the few steps leading to a large mezzanine carefully lit with tapers sealed in wrought iron feet, and dozens of candles, in order to facilitate the visibility of the Illuminating Brothers concentrated on their work, trying to do abstraction the sonic fury outside, though sometimes some still jumped at each rumbling warning. Chase away the fear born of stupid beliefs, it comes back at a gallop!

There were five illuminators coiled on their arduous tasks, bathed in yellow-orange gold, sometimes white-of-pearl, flames dancing in the squeaky wind that managed to infiltrate through breaches in stormy weather, Eole thus managed to invite itself into the heavy silence of the Library, disturbing people's minds with its tickling little spittle on their bent necks; its soft fresh murmurs that one could've associated with subtle chants of strange litanies, making the Brother Librarian responsible for the place bitch, still seeing reason to complain about the deplorable isolation gnawing his precious books.

With each disastrous inclement weather that disseminated its consequent damage, the poor librarian would've a cold sweat as he made an inventory of grimoires declaring forfeit in the face of the humidity, unwrapping their delicate pages cracked by the growing mold, and the aerial nets, gently blown by the invading winds, which had drawn their thin cobwebs in their tears! The lamentations of the poor man could be heard until late in his sleepless nights when he spent his time counting the damaged literary corpses.

And that night would see the scholar again trying to save his sinking artwork. In fact, when the hooded figure reached the top of the steps, he paused for a moment to absorb the scenes unfolding before his eyes: students browsing the writings, illuminators at their work, and the Brother Librarian who fluttered everywhere to keep his precious books safe most prone to collapse into ruin.

The hazel gray-shaded gaze spotted the man strolling nervously back and forth, arms laden with knowledge just begging to escape from his grasp to wallow on the ground in a splash that made everyone jump, in addition to the roaring thunder! A small smile dared to appear on the face hidden by the thatch barely shading a fair complexion, amused by the Brother's theatrical despair. Seized with mocking pity, the figure stepped silently between the desks, deciding to go help the man who had again just dropped a stack of tomes, the sound of which echoed yet another lightning warning. As he approached, the curious glances of the Illuminator Brothers all diverged on this ghost which seemed to float, so much was the silence his companion.

"Let me help you, Brother Andréas, you look in pain! the shadow whispered, bending down along with the librarian to pick up the scattered writings.

“Ah! Acthéean…' Andréas sighed, wincing at the action of bending over. What made you leave the apothecary in this weather?

Then, as he remembered the reason, he straightened up, holding parchments slightly torn in the accident with his fingertips, and pushing back in a comical way, like a tic, his strange glasses that were holding, we do not know how, to balance on his nose.

"Ah, but tell me, it seems you have a private boarder over there ... Young Belmont. How is he ? Did I know he had been particularly mistreated?

Acthéean smiled at the flood of words from Andreas. The man was a word mill, and threaded diatribes, often without any consistency between them, which had the gift of quickly losing its interlocutors. The apprentice herbalist continued his benevolent smile as he piled up the books and scrolls he picked up, heaping them on Andreas's outstretched arms.

"Yes, I think history has already covered the Brotherhood… He's in bad shape, and it might take a while this time.

“Ah! I knew Anselm would lose his temper one day! continued Andréas in his small hoarse voice. But I didn't think it would go that far ... Now Anselm has to shoulder the unforgivable harm he has caused. I never understood the reason for his perpetual anger towards this child ...

Andreas approached Acthéean, and lowered his voice again to breathe in comic intimacy:

“Between us, I don't pity him, God forgive me. I heard the Founding Fathers were furious, to an obvious extent. Poor kid! He's so serious, so studious… And he's like you, he always adores watching the Illuminator Brothers at work!

"Did you notice that, Brother Andréas?" Acthéean pointed out, still with his affectionate smile towards the man he greatly appreciated. And amused him too!

Both had picked up the dog-eared and battered bundles, and the apprentice naturally followed Andréas who, while speaking, led him towards the back rooms leading to storage rooms that Actheean knew kept out of reach of the other students. The young man hesitated on the doorstep heavily shod in his forged gongs, awaiting permission to enter the holy place, sanctified with secrets that made more than one student dream, and other Brothers who didn't have access to it.

He had time to admire the high pillars which reinforced the structures of convoluted staircases leading to the upper floors, or tumbling vertiginously towards catacombs dedicated only to holy literature, and to the mysticism of the theologies encrypted to the origins drawing their written codifications through centuries. Where an obscurantism spread its darkened wings of cruor, drowning crafty minds in its venom, disintegrating barely-baptized beliefs to bow its forehead on the soil soaked in murderous words. All carefully covered by elites who believed themselves blessed by occult science, of which they didn't even understand half a third of the Sibylline litanies. It was abound of those cursed grimoires, which many would've paid a heavy price for to be able to flip through a page, even at the cost of blood.

This was what jumped at Acthéean's throat, by the smell of paper piled up in its humidity and eroded aging, but above all by the resulting atmosphere, excessively underlined by sculptures scratched by time, which appeared flush with the pillar, in contorted, grimacing silhouettes, worthy of the gargoyles that would decorate Gothic cathedrals in barely a century. All its gaping mouths, shrouded in the frightening grimaces of Vanities, each more repulsive than the next, twisted in a dreadful ballet of shadow and light dancing under the jerk of makeshift lighting dangerously weakening under the invading winds. And it sagged, and it hissed, inspired by the violent storm, it cast immensely long shadows on the crumbling stones of the walls covered with tapered and moldy tapestries, spider webs queen of the place. And the stairs, Lord! they were crumbling under the hundreds of books lying there, at the chance of a hand that would've sent them for a walk in a fit of rage! Dizzying piles rose in a more than precarious balance, and Acthéean began to think in dread of the possibility of a fire in this place which seemed abandoned by all. A spark of a badly extinguished candle, and that would be the tragedy!

The apprentice blinked several times at the aberration of the largely lax facility, displaying volumes of knowledge that tasted more than sulphurous! No wonder Andréas closed the doors with infinite care, knowing what was hidden there, half of which, if not more, contained blasphemous writings that would've made the heyday of Hell! But, especially safe from the temptations of destruction, the church had burned many books for half of the reasons! The Brotherhood of Light, as its name indicated, might well bathe in healthy spirits and ordinances invoked by God, they clung to their forbidden writings like the apple of their eyes!

Of course, not everyone was aware of the deposit of such works in these places, but Acthéean, as a medical student, had already had access to volumes refused by others, and the young man being of an infinite discretion, and known for a beautiful spirit of confidence, had his private entrances near the Brother librarian who had often opened the doors of "Paradise" to him. He had also proven himself to the Founding Fathers in order to have his validation for further studies. His lips were steadfastly sewn to the secret rooms, and the deposits of "sulfur" illicitly contained behind the high walls of the abbey. A sort of Hippocratic oath sealed in the folds of the first ethical paragraphs.

It wasn't the first time he had entered this place filled with suffocating intensity, probably because he knew what was crowded there, but also produced by the static electricity of the storm giving places bathed in unhealthy chiaroscuro, an even more terrifying allure that gnawed at the depths of the guts. So he was relieved when Andreas motioned for him to enter, and especially to close the heavy portal behind him. There was no question of letting some prying eyes filter through.

His eyes had grown accustomed to the half-darkness, and he carefully followed Brother Andréas down the winding stairs, descending from a landing, and reaching a small room nestled under the frame of a dizzying flight of steps which, if we paid attention to it, showed obvious wear and tear in terms of frequentation of these places.

Acthéean noticed that there were other identical small rooms, carefully enclosed in an arc of a circle: blind rooms widening out into a huge circular room made up of its innumerable staircases which branched out everywhere, but apparently keeping octagonal architecture. Like nesting boxes, they were rooms in rooms posed as if suspended, but from which one could make out in the last glance the spiraled frames which sprang out of them in order to support all the weight. Ingeniously thought out, each of these rooms had double retaining walls, they were almost double-bottomed safes, of which they probably retained all the devilry, as well as all the sanctity, of the writings of mankind, and has been since eons. True temples dedicated to the thirsty thought of prohibitions ...

Brother Andréas laid down his burden with a long sigh, having previously made a small place, so small! for damaged works. He muttered something that was addressed only to himself, about coming in the night to tidy this up. And Acthéean knew him maniac enough to tackle the task and ruin another sleepless night.

"Tell me, Acthéean, while we're at it, would you like something in particular to look at?

"That's kind of what I came for. I would also like to bring something back to Belmont, he has been ordered to remain in the apothecary while he's recovering. We've received the strict orders from the Founding Fathers. So he can't go to his cell to collect things, I do it for him.

" Oh ! Nice of you, yes ... replied Andréas, still straightening his strange binoculars, and his eyes rummaging in search of a title that might appeal to the young warrior novice. ''HHmm! Would he be interested in philosophical essays? I know he hardly appreciates Latin…

There the two laughed a good, understanding laugh at Trevor's "pains in the ass" of learning Latin, and the librarian freed from the skillful hands who sought out the treasure that would put some literary and spiritual appeasement into days risking being revealed long in the convalescence imposed.

"Especially not prose or poetry, I don’t think he’s blue flower…” Acthéean suggested, still lightly and gently mockingly.

Though? At times, the young man had noticed certain moments of flower-of-skin sensitivity on the edge of his friend, and a look that was made more dazzling in its fragile intensity. Behind the unchanging facade loomed the debris of a bitter-tasting utopia. The reflection sent another gleeful sneer from Andréas, a little squeak that faded away like a hungry-looking specter, absorbed by the heaviness of the place. Even then, laughter had no place!

Then, Acthéean had an idea that crossed his mind insidiously, and he attempted the request:

“Brother Andréas, I believe I know Belmont particularly gifted for spells, spiritual elaborations which will support him in his assignments, he has already proven himself with the Founders who rely heavily on him, apparently. Probably, he'll soon have the opportunity to handle the Cross, despite his young age.

"Yes ... yes," Andréas conceded, his gaze peering over his pinched binoculars, "I knew that too. The little one is promising ... I think he has read and reread the history of the Brotherhood ... But, I should find something for him that will arouse his thirsty mind to know ...

The good man made his index finger dance to back up his words, and Acthéean could've seen the cogs of his mind racing behind his pointed and benevolent gaze.

"You tell him I'll bring him a selection of my own ... I took it to the apothecary myself. And that'll take me out of this crypt of secular papers ...

Acthéean smiled at this remark, and received without warning in his hands, a small stack of books that Andréas had chosen casually, while rummaging through his jumble of papers scattered all over the place, to the point of leaving some the apprentice stunned by the choice that exactly matched his expectations. The young man answered him with a warm smile which was worth all the thanks in the world.

They left the place crumbling under the mounds of dust, feeling like they had torn a piece of the veil blocking this choked universe of secrets. It was in respectful silence that they walked through the door, which was immediately barricaded by steel rods padlocked with large keys with intricate locking arabesques.

Returning to the ambience of the Illuminated Room, made them feel like they had crossed the borders of another world. Behind the high door, on the other side, the vaulted rooms and alcoves seemed to belong to a world of deadly silence, while the library and the desks lined up, still trembling to the beat of the stormy drum, and the violins lamenting indiscreet sighs by the voice of Eole. And the spines still bent over the laborious work, jumping regularly with each electric spit, and the looks, again, floated in a curious note on the figure of Acthéean who had pushed back his hood delivering his taciturn physique to curiosity…

Proud of his small bundle of selected books, he left the study hall without a glance at those around him. As usual, shadow among shadows, he chose his next destination, and leveled the long rows of protective arches. The idle groups were still around the pillars, the arid fountains, blasting until more thirst in inclement weather that seemed to have no end.

000ooo000

At the same moment when Acthéean's ethereal steps trod the dust of the alleys, towards his next goal, two orbs of pure water contemplated, in ecstasy, the twirl of expert hands between the vials, the ointments, the various herbs, the alambics projecting their shadows of tanned copper which were reflected in the steel lakes, mingling their flashes in the so transparent blue in a watercolor sketch where the water channels would make the pigments dance on the paper, without ever the colors failing blend into it. Without the tawny of copper ever polluting the shimmering magnitude of sapphires.

The pupils retracted at the gentle invective of Brother Efrain somewhat annoyed by his young convalescent's insistence on staying awake, and watching him.

"Tell me, young Belmont, didn't you have to take some rest, by any chance?" This isn't how your wounds will close ...

"I slept, Brother Efrain, but the storm woke me up…" Trevor replied quietly, his chin resting diligently on his crossed arms on the herbalist's desk. “It's violent tonight.

"Yes, it's been a long time since we've had this kind of storm… Are you afraid of it, like many?

"No… The storm doesn't scare me. I find that… fascinating! This unstoppable brutality that Nature can have ...

“Ah! … Efrain considered the youngster with an amused look. Are you not one of those superstitious people who tremble before the wrath of God?

He said the last words with a little irony.

“No, that I don't believe is due to any anger from our Divine. Why would He be angry, anyway? Although the actions of men can often disturb Him ...

The orbs took on a darker shade, under the reflection of the brass and the hearth whose flames danced, tickled by the winds seeping into the chimney. One cheek was resting on the forearm, while one hand absently played with fingertips with peelings of plants, pushed back into a lax little heap. The shavings bounced under a playful fingernail.

"Do you want me to make you another herbal tea?" But, I will put something else in it, because too much lavender risks causing opposite reactions ...

Trevor stared at the herbalist, a little bewildered.

"Aren't you shocked by what I just said?

"Why would I be? I know you're hungry for knowledge pouring into explanations other than holy ... Just like Acthéean, by the way. And it's not my role to criticize your mind looking for answers, and in my eyes you're free to have beliefs other than those written in the words of our Lord ... are you not?

"Others would take offense at such words ... Sometimes I have the impression that if I spoke without obsequious lies, I will end up at the stake for blasphemy ...

Trevor sank deeper into his arms, resting his face on the other side, gazing into space, let go of the parched tendrils.

"That's why you talk to me like this, because you know that nothing will come out of here… You know, I am in the rationality of medicine, and I'm not sworn in as a practicing Brother… First of all, a philosopher and a researcher. Not that I'm an unbeliever or a heretic, but I was able to sort things out during my life long experience. And what's more, the paradox is that you still study texts not very versed in the preaching of a life of holiness, if you want to succeed in the art of combat supported by ... spells! In the face of the Dragon hordes, this's the least you can get, no matter what the minds stuck in absurd theologies say ... In the face of the threat to our country, we can't work totally without getting dirty in the mud of impiety ...

Efrain stopped what he was doing while speaking quietly, never raising his voice, and considered the thoughtful teenager, who was obviously also struggling with the heaviness of sleep.

"So, know that you can always talk to me openly… But, I see that you're struggling not to sleep! I'm preparing something for you, and you'll give me the pleasure of going back to bed right away, young rebel!

A loving smile spread across the youngster's finely fringed lips. A smile that echoed in the innocent light of the magnificent eyes fixed on the herbalist. The latter felt a wave of blessedness making his heart throb, however hardened by a humanity in perdition in its darkness.

"I like watching you work, Brother Efrain. I feel like I’m learning more from you, than in the training camps…' said Trevor, in a languid voice proving his sleepiness that was insidiously numbing his limbs in gradual slow motion.

He stood up slowly, took one last look at the fascinating devices, at the piles of plants neatly categorized in containers. Each object was bathed in the changing reflections caused by the flames of the hearth, the walls were haloed with dancing shadows which clung surreptitiously to the stones, to the rods loaded with heavy trimmings, to the hooks welded in excavations and supporting kettles, buckets, and other basins where odoriferous oils were fermented.

In these containers from which Efrain extracted in a few spoonfuls the plants intended for the drink which would relieve a too light sleep, while throwing a light "tsk" towards Trevor who was dragging to leave him, in a kind threat towards a child who refused to obey. Efrain began to think that he definitely adored this unhappy child, and found him more and more endearing in his solitude. Adoration that he had seen clearly in the eyes of the Founders, when he brought up the matter of punishment. Something else too, but which he preferred to keep deep in his trembling mind than he had discerned, and assumed in a devious chain of events. He knew he had to live with this uncomfortable weight, and it ruined his heart in the darkest anguishes.

Trevor slipped into bed with a long shudder that wasn't due to any coolness or the crash of lightning once again streaking the air, slamming the half-shadows in its blue rage. More than the preparation room, the room took advantage of the visual and sound deluge, through the high windows obscured by dark glass. The mood in this room was quite different, conducive to the intimacy of a nature blocked in the varying shades of fractured darkness of fiery orange flames, halfway between layers of ash diluted with soot, specter of gray haloed with gold adorned with tarnished bronzes and hot coppers. A scene that could be painted in the privacy of an expressionism in shadow and diffused light.

And through the outstanding beauty of all these chromatic gradients, bloomed the pearl-moon softness of a silhouette surrendered again in the arms of Somnus. Eyes drooping over two lakes of pure water, endlessly filled with curiosity.

--00ooo00--

Until…. You and I ... Because it is the Law ... Where you will go ... Where we will go ... Drunkenness Agony

It took on a dark hue… It gradually permeated the whiteness of the fabric… It slowly spread into a rotting flower, crushed angrily under one foot… It crossed the layers, moistening the skin… The lips parted in pain deaf, weeping fine greasy tears soiled with humus ...

The atmosphere shuddered under yet another violent crash of lightning that fell somewhere there, breaking an arc of life, outside the walls of the Monastery, the echo of which rolled far through the forests, spitting out its inexhaustible anger ...

Until ... The hand gripped the strands of nocturnal silk, as if in a grip that would subdue the wild lover.

--00ooo00--

We always say that we learn from people, from within. Their most secretive character, their habits, a form of uncompromising profiling oozing through the keeping of a place, a domicile, whatever it is that has to do with the individual himself. So, in the dream metaphor, home is us! It is also in its dependence on being what we make of it, an inverted image in the murky tin of our most complex Psyche. It is our twin reflection projecting all our flaws, our imperfections, our state of mind, and that in the smallest detail. So it will reproach us for being too dark or damp, because we ourselves are in a melancholy state of mind, and in mourning: humidity being our tears, darkness, those of our afflicted heart ... etc. And by this fact, this room, this house, reveals to the most observant eye, all our conflicts in the smallest detail, or our most expansive joy.

Acthéean was one of those very sensitive people, who knew how to decipher a place and attribute the right characterizations to the owner of the place. He had this innate sense of "smelling" people, and had a knack for reading them at first glance.

So he wasn't stunned by the layout of Trevor's cell when he entered. The room corresponded exactly in its intimate and careful atmosphere, to the young novice warrior. Tidy and clean, without growing obsession, it was harmoniously arranged by its furniture, without being too empty or too full: the middle. Of course, the novices didn't have much either, especially an orphan like Belmont, but he had been able to find a few chests lining up at the foot of the single bed, and along a wall, a rather large table on which was spread the passion for the young person's books, parchments on which, apparently, he exercised his hand with arabesque and nervous writing, loose and balanced, in the copy of writings that he patiently gleaned in his favorite books. He also tried his hand, on some thicker vellum, with watercolors and illuminations which he admired so much during his visits to the library. And Actheean took the time to study one of his drawings, and recognized that the Belmont had a beautiful artistic touch.

The hazel-gray gaze of the apprentice lingered somewhat on the delicate pages, abandoned on the dull varnish of the table, considering the studies and the writings retransmitting formulas of spells and magic, along with some very old texts on the philosophical nature of the individual. A work of patience profiling Trevor in an asceticism endowed with a thirsty curiosity for obscure areas touching on other beliefs. Actheean knew Trevor was open to Knowledge which he absorbed into a keen intelligence about the world he interacted with. Far from being stuck in ready-made convictions, poured into their easily influenced minds, Trevor always looked for explanations beyond what others were doing. Where many of their comrades stopped without trying to understand better, and thought only of handling weapons, Trevor always advanced further on paths he far preferred to beat at his convenience, rather than doing it for him.

Acthéean, of course, had the impression of violating his friend's privacy, by snooping around like this, but if the young man had given him his key by asking him to bring him some things, it was because he had given his trust without ulterior motive.

So a surrounding look on the layout of the room was not likely to harm anyone. He glanced at a cleverly hung clothes rack, supporting a few armory accessories, belts, a thicker coat with somewhat threadbare trimmings, a pair of well-made high boots, which he had unearthed during a of its rare authorized exits, outside the walls of the monastery.

The bed was immaculately made, the blankets protecting a crude but comfortable box spring. Right next to the pillow was a book in which a small bouquet of dried plants with a slightly rancid flavor served as a bookmark. Just above the table, a small narrow window let its light filter sparingly, additionally obscured by a piece of also threadbare curtain, the threads of which separated on the wear and tear of the almost transparent fabric by erosion. Moreover, the violence of the storm filtered its blinding dangerous arcs through the frame, precipitating an ecstatic light illuminating the room for a few seconds almost surreal.

But if the curtain was already well worn, it was clean. Like everything in it here. Unlike other cells, this one was cleaned regularly. Clean and silent, the room admitted all the solitude of those who lived there. An intimate confinement that was reflected in every detail, even in the way the sheets were folded and the cozy nest blanket, which formed the comfortable and protected shelter enveloping the exhausted body of formations of the youngster who slept there. One way like any other to cut yourself off from the outside world.

So Acthéean easily imagined Trevor curling up in a fetal position: like when he had lived in the body of a mother he had never known. A return to childbirth, a desire for unfulfilled affection. A return to an Innocence he had never really tasted, nor experienced in his calculated time, pressed by emotional extraction and the desire to make him a ruthless warrior.

Acthéean was mentally measuring all these little intimate details, and he felt like a widening void in his soul, equal to what Trevor must have felt, for so long already. His jaw clenched and rolled in a bitterness creak. He himself felt so afflicted for the teenager.

Then, tearing away from the atmosphere comforting a spiritual rest, - because yes, this piece made you want to bow with ease, and immerse yourself in the study of texts, or reflection, or painting -, Acthéean opened the chests, looking for the requested artifact. Various objects, intimate pieces of clothing, immaculate white shirts, a few braies, strange tools that the apprentice knew had been created for drawing, among other things, carefully folded maps of different regions and countries, and especially the artefact lovingly coiled in a beautiful piece of dark purple fabric, moire with delicate bronze undertones.

The apprentice quickly unfolded the velvety envelope, and admired the object in all its mystical splendor. It was oval, holding in the palm of the hand, perfect balance in the lines and the average weight, the fragile tain with bronze and silver aspects was gripped in claws, like powerful roots that Acthéean might've believed alive. The sizeable locket hung on the end of a thick silver chain, the links of which themselves seemed to be intricately engraved.

A superb piece of silverware that Acthéean knew to have been given only to Trevor Belmont, for some totally obscure reason. But unlike the others, he had never wondered about this gift, and absolutely understood Trevor's desire to avoid wearing this locket for all to see. Just as he now understood Belmont's vow to recover his precious artifact, during his recovery period. He clung to it like a man drowning at the end of an unexpected buoy rising from the raging waves.

With infinite care, Acthéean stowed the necklace into the inside pockets of his tunic, picked up some requested private things, and left the room after one last contemplative look. His research had hardly taken him long, the tall candle serving as his light sizzling in agony under his breath, before he put it back on its plinth in the long corridor leading to the cells.

Those who resided in the rest of their room would never have suspected the passage of Acthéean, so much had happened in the most complete silence. Even as he walked away towards the exit, one would've thought that only a wandering ghost had trod the cobblestones with his inconsistent step.

000 ^^^ 000

The indigo-blue stained glass window failed to fully filter the blinding flash that tore the darkness of the room.

The night was endless. The storm had no end.

Even the boldest groups of students, gathered under the arcades, braving the torrential rains, had begun to retreat into a quieter shadow of the study rooms, before the pouring waves splashing all that still tried to resist the flood.

The atmosphere was more than suffocating, padded by the painful hiccuping breaths, a bad wetness permeating the fabrics already soaked with intolerable moisture, crushing the bodies shining with sweat, which brushed randomly with a heavier gesture.

In this sweltering that pervaded every room in the building, the bedroom wasn't exempt. The fire in the chimney had run out, and was slowly dying in its wet embers from the gullies seeping into the exhaust ducts, braving chance in their wanderings pushed by the furious whistles of the wind. The brandons let out a long sigh of smoke when hit by the stray droplets.

Once again, the sky took a photograph of the world it immersed in its torrents. The darkness creaked, tearing its modest veil of privacy, releasing the pale glow of a body waving in the bed. Covered in thick perspiration, glistening with tears and blood that mingled in a lascivious and furious dance at the same time.

A plea. A shout. Pain.

It hurt.

He was being lifted by hundreds of hands, dragging it out with difficulty from the unhealthy puddle, leaving a sickening sucking sound as the flesh was released.

He thought his coat was ruined by the unspeakable filth in which he had been lying for so long, and that he would no longer be able to clean it of the stains. His shirt was ripped off, and hung over his sanguineous hips where the hands gripped, leaving unforgivable bruises in the alabaster whiteness.

A longer bearing than its predecessor brothers. The atmosphere in the room's untenable. The desire to roll in the freezing rain is felt.

New, more intense moans.

The great Mirror unfurled its long wings of night and purple, which encircled it in their case. A sinister crackling sound was heard through the muffled background noise of the complaints. Multiple small shards shattered the pure tin of the Psyche.

Searing pain as one of the silver bolts streaked through the air, and sank into his throat.

The stodgy gasps rippled to the rhythm of the kidneys.

Somewhere over there something shreds in jerks, releasing a lukewarmness that isn't auspicious. The lascivious swells undulate the curves and valleys of young muscles reflecting the humidified gleams among the stormy dazzles.

Undulations rocked with sharp, biting pain, deburring the shivering shores.

Sharp rockeries, knotty hems of power, rippled the carved back in unstoppable force. He had no more breath escaping from the ugly wound on his long neck presented to his Victorious. He knew it would hurt, and his whole body tensed like a bow, involuntarily opening himself to the other a little more. He still thought his coat was fucked up, the blood never really goes.

His throat was widened a bit by the oversized fangs. But strangely, that's not what hurts him so much. It is soft. The Victorious dutifully laps the cruor, which is boiling away. It looks like a cat who delights in his milk.

The more than powerful body crushes him with His weight and His aleph, as if in fusion with his being beaten and submissive. The claws blackened with soot and blood grip his delicate throat in the sensual undulating where his heart pulsates which weakens in its Asystole. They slip badly, leaving bloody traces, adding to the supreme sadistic suffering.

But they aren't the ones who make him suffer the most terribly in a tear felt deep inside his being. His mouth opens in search of a hiccup of breath that would relieve him of his burning lungs, and above all releasing a draft of howl in a futile attempt to express the horror of his flesh bristling with the brutal intrusion.

Another flash of lightning, closer this time, surprising the pale glow of a body arching in dying torment. The hands cling to the sheets, almost tearing them apart. The tissues are soaked with his intense exudation. Moans roll from deep in his burning throat.

A navrement, gehenna like a thorn in the depths of his groin. A throbbing shattered like a calvery that digs a bottomless abyss, alternating violent shocks, as if we wanted to gut him into pieces of desolation.

Terrible suffering, as the Other drinks him, and enters him ... as a multitude of fingers languidly intertwine his night locks, in cynical plaits bathing his violated body.

The sighs are endless, interspersed with endless sobs, staining the hollow cheeks with mental and physical exhaustion. The body struggles with final tremors, as a release diffuses its salty flavor of bodily humus.

A crackle of thunder, the most violent that has been since the beginning of the bad weather, makes everyone who lives outside and between the walls of the monastery jump, causing the last courageous latecomers to flee definitively, nestled under the arcades. There, it was a flight of sparrows facing the fury!

While the aching body twisted under the sudden awakening, two arms gently circled him, supporting him, cradling him carefully, while something cool and molded was slipped into his hand, as he tried to calm the twitching of his stress-repelled flesh, the youth of his heart resisting relentless Asystole.

000 ^^^ 000

Efrain cursed by mumbling, awakened abruptly, and by the continual violence of the storm more like the Downpour of Last Judgment, and by the alarmed jerks of Acthéean rousing him from sleep aided by calming herbal teas.

Well, definitely, this night was a failure! What a horror this evening!

While rushing to the bedroom, where Trevor apparently had had a nocturnal terror attack, coupled with tears from the deepest wounds, Efrain was trying to pull his clothes off.

He could only be dismayed at the figure swimming in his sweat, and the blood of the wounds, haggard with bulging eyes as before an unfathomable terror, the hair stuck with perspiration, tied in knots of nests that would be difficult to control. The herbalist wondered what could've done so much damage to the youngster, detailing his look of extreme savagery. Even when he came for treatment, he wasn't so scary.

The pensive man approached, contrite by the spectacle. Everything had to be redone!

Alas, the rolling thunder continued in their terrifying threat, and did not help at all to calm what looked more like a terrified wounded animal, rather than a teenager who, some time before, still had the sparkling gaze of nice teasing.

He was burning with fever on top of that, the brother putting a soothing hand on his sweaty forehead.

"Most certainly a fever of the spirit ..." he diagnosed, recalling particular symptoms affecting the suffering soul, and sleep agitated by terrors. ‘’ With everything that has happened over the past few hours, his mind has mixed everything up in a panic attack. He was already having trouble sleeping because of the storm. I had to threaten him to go to bed.

As he spoke, Trevor had gradually calmed down, and now measured with a disgusted look his drowning appearance under the shirt soaked in different aqueous humors, and the stale smell of blood, and sour of perspiration. And another too! Which made him swallow violently in sudden and astonishing shame.

A crash literally lacerated the dampness of the room charged with electric and suave aromas, mingling the acidity, bitterness, sweetness of distressed skin, and its paradox in the salty of released excitement. The unique imprint of a body managed by natural hormonal communication.

Trevor stared dazedly at the arc flash blasting the surrounding darkness with its sharp, deafening crackle, at the risk of burning his eyesight. In the spasmodic jerks of lightning, were grafted the intact images of his dream. The rough and graceful ripples of both His loins growing in him. And the guilty pleasure he had felt from it, in the very ecstasy that had made him come under the force of that pernicious dream. The music of his own liberating cries, set his distressed memory on fire.

He wrapped his arms around his stomach, and the infamous wetness of his sweat soaking up his shirt, almost made him vomit in discomfort. Terrified by the treachery of his body which had found perverse pleasure in this… rape. Although the act itself was a haunting dream, he was still apathetic in his astonishment.

"Anyway, tonight, no one will sleep anymore…" whispered Efrain.

The two young people nodded in agreement in silence. This night would leave no rest for anyone, neither humans nor animals. No one could fall asleep in the peace of Somnus, and the study rooms, the library, or the nave of the abbey, seething unnaturally with a life shattered by the raging elements.

Trevor was in favor of a complete toilet in the refreshing bath, gorged with antibiotic and analgesic plants, such as the precious Sacro-Saint Laurier, radical disinfectant with Lavender of course, St. John's Wort promoting all forms of healing of the most infectious wounds. Sage distillates were added in counted drops, for Efrain knew the perverse effects. Prohibited by the church, of course, because of its reputation as a high quantity aphrodisiac. But, in Trevor's case, it was necessary to cure evil with evil, the herbalist suspecting the bodily awakening of his young adolescents often coming to see him for advice, he knew how to recognize the behavior of youth ashamed of the betrayal of his body in the moments when he was weakest. He didn't care about the stupid censorship of all those giant clam frogs! Du Saule would know how to exude bad bodily moods, while sanitizing all the wounds revulsed.

The Sage therefore joined its plant comrades in a round of dizzying aromas and spices floating on the surface of the bath, which had become a veritable broth of culture, attacking the grievances of the flesh. Dandelions and Nettles happily joined in the party, the Poppy Coquelicot brother of the mighty Poppy balanced itself in anesthesia at the right dose, Efrain fully aware that the use of opiates could prove dangerous. Most of the plants were added in their roots or in their raw form, others like opiates, were distilled by the alambics, and carefully drizzled in a fine mist.

If the infection resisted this, and the pains persisted, Brother Efrain would return his apron immediately!

Again, Trevor's smell was flattered by the multitudes of flowering flavors, wrinkling his nose a little on some of the others, and he felt like stepping back when he had come… that was two days ago. already ! So much had happened in two days! How many stressful situations suffocating him under their pernicious blows.

Everyone was in danger of not wrapping themselves in the tranquility of sleep for the rest of the night, so Brother Efrain happily prepared some good calming concoctions for them nerves supercharged, as Trevor relaxed under the touch of Acthéean mending the weeping wounds. It was decided that the deeper excavations should be sutured, in order to avoid the risk of reopening again under the pressure of too sharp movements. As Trevor tried to distract his attention from the added pain of the coarse, hooked-hook needle harpooning his delicate flesh - to seal his lips swollen with bruises and cruor-, carefully washing each strand of silk from his tangled hair. More instruments of torture that Efrain had brought back, and which the youngster felt he enjoyed experimenting with on his misfortune! Which wasn't the case, of course, when you knew the conscientious mind of the herbalist.

Despite precautions to be as gentle as possible, Acthéean couldn't stop each prick of the needle from pulling out a squeaky sigh from his friend, and feeling his whole body tensing in the exacerbation of overactive nerves. Fortunately, all the bruised tears, in ominous shades of purple, didn't need to be forcibly sewn up.

Acthéean internally grumbled Anselm's violence, and found himself longing to inflict a memorable beating himself on the Brother tutor. As Efrain poured the fragrant broths into cups, Trevor half turned his face to the apprentice, and whispered softly in thanks:

"Were you the one who slipped my mirror into my hand?

A beautiful blue steel glow sparkled in the transparent waters of the irises.

"Who else do you think?' Acthéean gasped, amusedly. And you'll have a visit from our dear librarian who will bring you, in person, the books he has chosen for you.

A more biting sting made Trevor jump, followed by yet another thunderous crash that completely shocked the beings under the waves of adrenaline.

"Fortunately you didn't break it in your sleep.

"I thank you Acthéean for what you do ... I appreciate it, believe me.

A reassuring hand was resting on the shoulder cleared of dripping hair. There was no need for more words, it was all in the body language. And in the eyes: blue so pure, and those, hazel so gray.

The first light of dawn enamelled the horizons laden with the powder of wet ash and dust, silvery grays and blinding electric-blue shards. Finally bringing the clouds of tranquility on a storm that resigned with difficulty, refusing to let go of its claws on a world frozen in fear of its wrath.

In its nuances of found peace, a rumbling background still singing its last complaints, humans and animals finally let themselves go in the warmth found in nests, burrows, undone layers, for a late and offbeat rest.

In the privacy of an apothecary's room, the fire had been rekindled in the braziers and hearth, cutting out the heavy dampness of the atmosphere. The beds were cleanly redone, the bodies no longer perspired under the suffocating sweltering, but finally relaxed in sleep helped by soothing herbal teas. Efrain hadn't hidden from young Belmont the addition of a few "forbidden" drops that would help him even more to surrender to well-being, after all, it was the necessary exception to care, and a bit of Sage, a zest of Poppy, so little not to disturb the heartbeat beyond all measure, and the teenager could sail on the shores of relaxing utopias for a few hours. And even beyond, if it required it, because after all, it would take a few well packed days of rest, real sleep free of intense exudation, for a good recovery.

It was always faster to do an almost irreparable harm than to healthily patch up the collateral damage that resulted from it.

Trevor's skin was refreshed from the bath, groomed, and calmed with analgesics ointments. The shiny silk of his hair, magnified by the oils, finished drying slowly on the back seamed and bandaged in protective layers.

It almost felt like the vigorous body had been operated on and reshaped in another medium, and that the slow and gradual cooking was going to give birth to a new Being. And in many ways it was. The comparison could have been attributed to certain medical practices, consisting of covering the wounded bodies with clay, entirely from head to toe, and letting the suffering flesh macerate in calm niches away from any disturbing zone for the necessary rest. Efrain had been the esbaudi witness of these unusual practices, at the other end of the world, and where patients recovered in a regained form, a rapid healing, and a total recovery. All the pride of this man, constantly curious about medical developments, lay in the fact that he could provide extraordinary benefits to his patients.

Still lying on his tender belly which he had sealed in the downy warmth of a pillow, in order to reduce the curve of the kidneys strained by the position, Trevor had surrendered in the twilight of beneficial sleep, silently counting the small pulses deep in his groin, small beats to the rhythm of his pulse that had betrayed him in his dream… oh, so delightfully, after all. Why be ashamed of it? He was fifteen, and his body was gradually waking up, that was in the order of things.

So he fell asleep, soul at peace, decidingn't to feel guilty any more, but still puzzled by his dreams so strange, that they came to derive some of this pleasure so new to his senses.

He slept soundly. Very deeply, floating there, where the layers of the Subconscious kept preciously enveloped in their ecstatic vapors, dreams in their sweetness, their smoothness, their absolute, beneficent Void. What one might've called: a sub-dimensional Catharsis. This mist between two Ocean Mirrors engulfed in the Sacred Essence of Being and of his Spirit. Yin and Yang intertwined in the origin of the World, Astral Souls purified in their Tabula, a return to Innocence.

Girded by Acthéean's protective arm at his side, avoiding wounds, lying in a self-reflective image of himself on the same bed, in tacit acceptance of closeness thrilling one another.

No one would find fault with it. We saw there that these two twin "Astral Souls" intermingled in an absent siblings, and whose heart pulsed in the Shadow-Sister of its Darkness.

000 ^^^ 000

"I'm telling you, Brother Efrain, the damage is substantial ..." moaned Brother Andréas, looking suspiciously at the strange dark mixture swirling in the bowl the herbalist had prepared for him for breakfast.

The poor librarian was recovering with difficulty from a dreadful night in wiping the consuming moisture from his precious writings. The storm had helped nothing, quite the contrary, and the unfortunate afflicted man poured out his complaints to Efrain, who had greeted him at the first light of the morning. Very few had slept peacefully in the monastery because of the violence of severe weather, and at dawn premises, damage had to be noted, some of which made Andréas shudder.

Efrain, on the other hand, had succumbed very little to rest, definitely awakened by Trevor's night terrors, and the care he must've given to them, all amid the natural violence of the elements. He half-admitted that he must have pushed the chance that young Belmont could fall back into Morpheus's arms, weighing his hand down in the brews. It was also valid for Acthéean.

So by the time Andreas was visiting the apothicary, the two young men were stunned, and somewhat "stoned" by the magical herbs of Efrain! At least, more on Trevor's side of course, between painkillers, antiseptics, and opiates, the fiery teenager in his disturbing dreams wasn't likely to open an eye for a while. We will also understand, in his defense, Andréas had slipped a suspicious eye on his drink ...

The two brothers were there in their exchanges of news not very encouraging for the Brotherhood. And for the librarian who still saw himself in high places the complaints about the appalling state of his archives that were taking water! Listening to them, one could've imagined the powerful enclosure walls of the Brotherhood like gigantic sponges bleeding from everywhere rivers of devastating rains, oozing through all the holes in the vegetal.

There had been floods in the stables, the water had been blown by the gusts of wind into the porches of a few stalls, and the students and teachers had all got down to the task of cleaning and wringing out the overflow, equipped with brooms and mops. Fortunately, no animal had been injured or died from a panic attack, only scattered in fearful bands at every corner of the stables. If the young men feared one thing that would've made them all sorry, it would be good to pick up their animals from the ground !

The nave of the abbey had itself undergone the drowning of its cobblestones and the high doors badly pushed back, in spite of the height of the steps which led to the access, and the adjoining crypt behind the heart and the transept, had been also affected but by other internal routes. Never before have the Brothers of the Brotherhood faced such water damage.

The chimneys of the various hearths scattered throughout the abbey and the monastery, as well as the rooms adjacent to the barracks, all had been harassed by the furious winds in which they had shed many icy tears which had put out the already dying fires, and soaked up the ducts, causing long, fatty channels of ash and soot that flowed along the stone surrounds. The kitchens hadn't been spared, and Efrain, going to collect some loaves and pieces of dried meat for lunch for his two youngsters, had arrived in the middle of a disaster scene, where the cooks, this time, didn't have their arms in the flour, but in a lot of shit !

Training, of course, was suspended, classes too, and everyone was putting their hands to work to wipe out the damage and ruin in many places. Acthéean knew, upon waking up, that he had to accompany Efrain to the village, for the acquisition of food, medical and basic necessities, his class program jostled in his learning.

It was in total haze that the two young people awoke to a new day that healed his wounds in a memorable anger of Mother Nature. Acthéean was quicker to land in everyday reality. For Trevor, it was another story ! Even wide open, emerging from a deep dreamless sleep, and completely resting, the water orbs still hinted at a slight guilty note of "high stoning" in the still delicately dilated pupils, and to say that the steel eyes were swimming in a fog, would've been an understatement ! So much so, much to Efrain's amusement, who wasn't at all shocked, and Acthéean's half-evaporated amazement, Trevor tightened his arm around him, grumbling his appreciation for the closeness more than the intimacy of the apprentice almost lying on top of him.

The herbalist suppressed a laugh at the lascivious laxity of young Belmont who, a few days ago, would've beaten hell to anyone who approached him like that! Acthéean, on the other hand, contrite, didn't know what to do to resist the unusual and growled affection !

"Maybe I strained a little on the opiates and sage ..." Efrain admitted, chuckling, dumbfounded by a resigned and taken aback look from Acthéean. ''At least he slept well, he is healing properly, and he needed it as his wounds were sutured. By the time we get to the village, he's going to sleep again, that's all he has to do… Right, young man ?

Efrain's outspoken laugh finished pulling Trevor out of his torpor, and the hazy gaze fixed him for a moment with no way of determining what was going on behind the large forehead almost drowned under the wick again tangled with sleep. Young Belmont's bewildered and hovering state was a sight to behold, and the herbalist and his apprentice would chuckle for days on his unusual awakening. After all, it had been a terrible night for everyone, and this interlude put them in a good mood.

The height of hilarity was reached when Trevor tried, but never really succeeded, to stand up ! To land directly, but luckily without hurting himself, on the buttocks, in a sly dizziness proving that his mind was still far from emerging from the volatile mists.

The brave herbalist and his faithful apprentice came to compare poor Belmont to a baby taking his first steps, and besides the few words that the young man grumbled, resembled a babbling sung by a child… stoned !

But in the honor roll of expressions of astonishment, the face of Andréas could've been in first place! Who saw this strange company arrive in the preparation room, where he waited patiently in front of his drink as it finished cooling, and almost tumbling down on all fours a scruffy, sleepy Trevor, mop in bird's nest, staggering dangerously.

"Indeed," he whispered, appalled at the comic scene. ‘’ Efrain, I think you've abused the plants a bit ...

"Oh, so little… Efrain agreed, with a cheerful wink of collusion. At least he doesn't hurt anymore ...

"And I'm still here, Brother Efrain…" Trevor pointed out, in a very small voice. 'Even though… it feels weird in my head…

And the unfortunate man slowly collapsed, caught by a hilarious Acthéean. All three could only give in to good humor, and the child gave them a soft glance of luminous transparency - though still misty! -, on each of them, while letting himself be raised.

"Trevor, my child," Andréas said, having calmed down, "you're going to go back to bed right away. I've brought you a collection of books that you should enjoy. You'll be able to consult them at your leisure, in peace. Take your time to read them ...

"I wanted to thank you, Brother Andréas ...' Trevor tempted his voice that betrayed him little by little, until it was no more than a thin net, but had to retreat into his bed, dizzy.

When he was resettled, Efrain brought him a piece of bread which he dipped in an herbal tea just distilled. Some instructions were given to him, in particular the absence of his two companions going on missions, but it was in the stretching of the misty slats of sleep carefully embracing his limbs, that his mind wandered in lethargy, his hearing blocked by the abyss of cotton wool in which he plunged blessedly, and the rest of the words faded completely from his attention.

One last look at the sleeping brunette beauty, and the three of them were able to get on with their day, which had turned into a chore.

"Definitely, dear Efrain, you've forced the plants ...' was Andreas's last amused comment, as he walked back to his library, the mere thought of the wet leaks on his jewels making him shudder with anticipation.

000ooo000

After the rain, the good weather, they said. But on this day that was drawing to a close, the sky still hadn't decided whether it would finally close its hatches, and drive out the ballasts, in order to bring a little respite to a ravaged nature all around the walls of the Brotherhood. On the contrary, everything pointed to the fact that the torn tissues of the heavens persisted in being engulfed in the spinning of cumulonimbus refractory to leave the battlefield of inclement weather. The storm had not said its last word, although a lull had quietly brewed the end of the day, allowing everyone to clean up the disasters.

And it was confusion, the buzzing muffled by the colored windows of the apothecary; disapproving murmurs at the discoveries; grieving dismay claimed by lips constricted with fatigue. However, from where he was, he couldn't hear the sorry lamentations of the poor librarian, who noted the damage by having them carefully notified by one of his student secretaries, trying to follow as best he could the desperate man through the meanders of the high shelves crumbling under the sacred aediles, and the oldest grimoires.

Since the time that Andréas asked to reinforce the enclosure of the great Library which, for years, displayed in its facade nasty scratches made by time, letting in dangerously the humidity and the slag of bad weather! Now he noted a laxity pushed to indifference by the responsible architects who didn't give a damn about the indications ordered by the Founders. How important was the strengthening of the foundations of a library, when mankind was in constant danger in the deadly clutches of the mighty Dragon? The fights paraded like pearls on a necklace stand, and the dead were numbered in mournful armfuls, while an insufficient "scraper" hummed his constant anger in their weary ears.

The man wept for the destruction of his precious writing gems, and the child bathed in the moonlight of his complexion coated with soft blue-red-green-purple shades delicately brushed on the alabaster of the transparent skin, couldn't hear not his tears, numb in the happiness of no longer being in pain.

For it was in a web seaten between chiaroscuro, dog and wolf, dusk-dawn, sleep-wake, unconscious-subconscious, that the symphony of stimuli rocked Trevor. A fresco haloed in so many different degrees fused in the lingering essences of medicinal plants, that the young Belmont could've been the heart of a Oeuvre painted in the most intimate sensations possible, in the washes of multiple feelings pulsing in his young chest, through so thin layers of precious glaze of upheaval regenerating his soul threaded in expectation.

It would be a brush so tender, so careful, which would smooth the whiteness of the flesh slowly closing its sutured sores under the benefit of the chosen herbs, sewing the lips of the wounds so scarifying of his essence with the end of an inconsistent curved needle, for the irrational had no form, even woven into the fabric of a newfound peace. Who would be the inspired artist painting his unique Masterpiece, in these moments when the end of the day hesitated between reducing its stormy anger, and a deceptive lull to better attack the deepest fears, and beautifully filter its streaks of faded light through the obscured stained glass windows of the large bedroom window. Surprising the youth in their fog between sleep and wakefulness, coiled so carefully in fragrant sheets, forgetting the whole environment beating at their temples. The body, relaxed as never before stretching in the gentle warmth of the braziers and the fireplace, was also bathed in the chromatic softness pouring out of the colored windows, the pallor of the skin mixed with the immaculate whiteness of the shirt, formed like a mosaic of myriads of hues whispered by the half-darkness succumbing to the late hour of the evening.

It was as if Trevor was dancing in the cotton clouds, welcoming him graciously for hours now. Yes, Efrain may have had a heavy hand in his preparations of decoctions and ointments, herbal teas made from opiates to make him forget all the physical, psychological pain, abstraction made of the many twinges in his soul. But, he had never felt so good in his life. He was high, sure, but it was all good for his lost morale, and he never tired of lounging languidly in these layers of wadded clouds, so relaxing and calm. He would've liked it to last a long time, in order to forget everything.

He had made attempt, when his healers were gone, to try to concentrate on a few writings that Andréas had brought, but his eyes had quickly squinted at the graphs and illuminations which danced in front of his still well dilated pupils, and his head had rested gently on the pillow layer, no longer resisting.

Between wonderful beaches of cottony falling asleep, where dreams were made exquisite sketches caresses flirting with his flesh in abandoned shivers, and comatose awakening where his cloudy apple of the eye tried to define the curves and arabesques of strange irrational creatures drawn in the steam of the windows. Nothing more arched his body, his flesh in the painful bursts, nor his excavations raw stitched together by an expert hand. Nothing but tender thrills following a sawtooth graphic curve that would reveal his raison d'être in absolute fullness, if it were represented in a drawing. Trevor was in dizzying ascension stasis, and only dreamed of ascending into endless heights ... cradled between the curved wings of a Dragon, perhaps ?

It was an inextricable mix in his dreamlike fantasies, where nothing more could take control of his body, not even him. And he wanted it to last… to last… to Eternity, forever and ever. Never rest the foot on the field of the rational which shattered its future a little more every day. Finding that he never enjoyed his childhood. That he didn't take the time to live ...

Between hazes and compact mists of his mind, he managed to put together some pieces of the puzzle of his young life, and put them together in a scene he has never experienced. False memories lulled by illusions, harsh words, punishments. And that hurts. Always and again. Until grinding his teeth, late at night, nestled in a fetus in his cramped diaper that has a hard time accommodating his size too large for his age. Until he has his own cell. But all that brought him was a little more loneliness, lock-in as soon as the training, the classes, were over. A little more time, of nights to wander in front of himself. Building Castles of Cards on a Psyche that's always ready to collapse, and sink the foundation with the pieces of the Cracking Mirror.

And for the first time in his young life, it had taken such a cruel punishment to finally experience happiness, certainly ephemeral ! but a tranquility where there was no longer any place for pain. Stretching his arms high above his head without pulling on the wounds - he no longer felt anything at this level - he let himself drift like a drunken boat on the waves of this bliss, listening to the least of these flickers that convulsed in the abyssal depths of his being. It didn't matter to him that his cognition was totally distorted by the excess of plants, that he saw dragons and chimeras twisting in convolutions on the misty tiles, which he heard like whispers singing in the crackling of the hot coals of the hearth, and it sang litanies out of the world whose language he clearly didn’t understand, but he assumed they were languages that had been dead for eons. He was good… and happy!

He purred thus, - literally his throat rolled with soft cooing sometimes interspersed with small discreet laughter when an image was projected on the large canvas of his imagination influenced by opiates -, for long hours. His body soothed and stimulated at the same time, became one with his soft couch, and the whole flourished in a lyrical sfumato strewn with diluted colors like watercolors, in so delicate tablecloths emphasizing the half-light that nibbled the environment, herald of a dying day.

This was how Efrain and Acthéean found him, when they returned from their mission. Time had given the world a significant respite, and they had been able to go about their business unmolested, as Efrain had feared.

Both could only consider young Belmont babbling quietly, leaning against the stained-glass windows, apparently speaking to shapes only he could see. Stand against the coaching staff, the position didn't even hurt him. Stunned, they were greeted by two crystalline orbs still swimming a bit in its small clouds, but showing a Trevor slowly descending to earth.

No doubt: the youngster would hear about it for a long time to come from the two hilarious herbalists!

But, above all, even though he was entwined with all these delusional fantasies, Trevor had deduced that he attached himself to his two healer friends : one was so fatherly and friendly to him, that he was coming to replace the father he never had. With all his might, he had total and blind trust in Brother Efrain, whom he admired and adored for his unwavering dedication to his humanist profession. And the other : a young apprentice whom he knew just by sight, never having really exchanged a word with, always putting up his protective wall between himself and the others, and whose same others had very often had fun comparing them to twins. They were right in their sneers: he and Acthéean had so much in common, it was confusing.

In the remnants of the sneaky mist, Trevor recognized his budding affection for the two men. And it was in gratitude bathed in honey, that he greeted the two accomplices, still faltering a little on his long bare legs by the shirt parted wide on the shoulders, loosened somewhat on the bandages still in place, and a mop, Lord ! unkempt in its bird nests.

But most impressive, through this disheveled portrait, it was the intensity and the size of the eyes-sapphires that stunned the two men. Slightly surrounded by too deep sleep, the remaining afterglow of opiates, a sawtooth stress interspersed with lingering lethargy, the irises devoured the emaciated features appearing even more acerbic in their cut. It could've been utter desolation in the face, but no ! even this accumulation of degraded states of mind and physique never succeeded in making the young Belmont ugly, whose beauty was truly carved in the rough and pure diamond, unalterable, almost timeless like the precious mineral in which it took its inspiring sources.

Vaguely returned to earth, Trevor insisted on not going back to bed, he had slept enough all day, and wanted to keep them company in front of a generous dinner, made of good hot and crispy bread, gleaned in the kitchens of the abbey which had found a semblance of order and cleanliness. The bakers had taken on the arduous task of baking breads in enormous quantities that would satisfy everyone in the Brotherhood. And God knows there was work to be done ! Everyone had to be rewarded for so much effort.

So, Efrain had slipped into the oven room where there was a sticky heat, whose fires could not dry up the dampness that heralded more storms to come, and crispy smells invoking those who were present there, to lick the walls under the greedy stimulation. Scents of golden crusts, plump breads that could have satisfied the hunger of an entire family, the various flours of cereals, spelled, corn, barley, especially the fabulous buckwheat, sprinkled the hardworking hands, and the mouths devouring the first bites still hot. The phantom vapors of the crumb cracked into irregular craters, before being swallowed up by hungry workers from the intensive cleaning.

By means of a few friendly nods, and a few glances of connivance, Efrain managed to steal some magnificent breads which would be the joy of their future lunches. And when certain brother craftsmen knew that the young Trevor Belmont was the patient of Efrain, - having been aware of the terrible punishment, the history of which had definitely covered the Monastery, the abbey and the Barracks - the Herbalist's bag of sweets was embellished with a few extra loaves, under the personal confidence that the young Trevor with the tender eyes, sometimes knew how to flutter with his eyes for a quignon that would replace a miserable Brother Isaac's bowl of failed inedible stew. And the wily knew how to do it ! Several of the artisan bakers had often cracked before his "desperate" gaze at a pitiful pittance, and had entrusted him with a precious rabe bread, which he would happily scavenge in his cell ! It was also necessary to say in his defense of eating this meager consolation so selfishly in his corner without sharing, and that he also had to, as soon as his reward in hand, carefully avoid a few hands tempted by his youth, and which would have liked to flatter him the sides… or even lower !

The bakers who succumbed to the demand, knew their hands were dreaming, and for nothing in the world would stray into danger. They had a certain affection for this kid who knew how to play nicely with his big waterlakes, and he was always polite, without the arrogance of most of his comrades. He knew how to stroke the right way, even if he had to run away from wandering hands afterwards !

It was therefore a bag well supplied in flourishing food so good for the tantalizing paradise, which was presented on the table invaded by decoctions, vials, heaps of plants mixing their scents embalming the air of flowery, sweetness, smoothness, heavy tenacity, with the crispness of the bread spreads.The harvest had been fruitful, with this ulterior motive for the young man in convalescence. This youngster with such clear eyes that made even the most hardened hearts capsize.

The intoxicating power of the Hibiscus rose, and was grafted to the olfactory dance, when the herbalist had an herbal tea distilled from this magnificent flower. Another of Efrain’s finds on his many travels. Hibiscus was used in ancient times, and was loaded with antibiotic benefits, especially for eczema wounds, Efrain explained quietly, as the three soaked their breads in the infusion. For Trevor, it would prove to be useful against any internal infection of the intestines, therefore good for him to swallow. After a slightly suspicious look, Efrain reassured his young about the NON opiate content of the flower!

Trevor loved the bewitching scent, and the wonderful taste of the hibiscus, of which he remembered the name, with the intention of returning often to have an infusion of this flower brewed with the herbalist.

He feasted on these breads prepared with so much knowledge and passion just for the happiness of the taste buds, and grumpy stomachs. He knew not everyone was so lucky, that was one of the many perks of being brought up in the Brotherhood, the Brothers all had their professional specializations, and the art of cooking was one of them. Although Isaac was an exception !

Gradually, his brain had departed from the last opiate mists, and he was able to participate in the conversation in a more cohesive manner. Efrain had a lot of distillation preparations to make, and was conversing with his young people with playful prolixity, talking about his experiences, his discoveries to the two attentive and admiring young men.

Maybe he still had some stirring in the organism, which padded his senses and his steps on the path troubled with complex feelings, for more than anything, he appreciated the careful touches of Acthéean's fingers, when the latter spread a few branches and needles of Thyme on them sutures. The spicy and refreshing sweetness of the regenerating plant invaded his sense of smell in its addictive fragrance layer, and succeeded in breaking down the sly inhibitions that had plagued him for years.

He liked, no he adored these little ones rubs trotted on his skin, carefully, always being careful not to sore it any more. He enjoyed those tiny ethereal wing beats of a butterfly made for gentleness and care. He clung to his smart, relieving hands, never asking for anything in return, always in attentive decorum. His flesh, his body became greedy for a little more of that touch, as it went, and he wished it never stopped. To imagine that Actheean would realize his relaxed happiness under his artistically medical hands.

What he didn't know was that his body spoke for him in a dialogue that left no ambiguity unknown under the silent apprentice's keen observation. Acthéean had long known how to decipher behavioral gestures naturally. But, never let show this aptitude, so as not to put anyone in the discomfort, and especially nor to give to think that he would be inspired by demonic malevolence ! So Trevor was totally unaware that every quivering convolution of his limbs, each curve and tightening of his muscles jumping under the massages or light touches, each nerve that howled wanting more, every little nothing in his gestural relaxation, everything was silently and carefully recorded and deciphered by a sluggish Acthéean, with the emaciated mask of indifference. While on his side, the unperturbed mask crumpled further in the care practice, without Trevor ever noticing, unconscious just like the others, of the strange abilities with which the apprentice had been gifted since childhood.

This mutuality of emotions didn't know how to spread into reciprocity without sparking sparks,then both walled themselves in their condescending and awkward mutism.

Trevor fell asleep, sated and happy, with that priceless happiness that the soul could catch on the fly, in a blissful coincidence putting characters in osmosis on the same wavelength ; the blessed bliss of fortuitous encounters in the serendipity of vicious blows, until the joint parties list the commonalities in their otherness, until the slightest breath in diapason with the other. A complex twinning, the origins of which could be defined in the dust of the stars. In the irony of a Machiavellian Fate.

It was still difficult for him to put into words what he was feeling, having always woven his most intimate secrets to a Brother confessor who was more or less concerned or attentive. Until the day when the confessor became too attentive ... then, he left his moiré veil case, the precious sacred ornament, and whispered his secrets, especially his sorrows, his unnumerable wounds in the light mist forming on the silver and bronze tin. Often, the bronze hues of the pendant merged with the opal undertones of his skin. But he never saw anything in it that could have relieved the weight of his fragile soul.

The night that followed was relatively untouched by bad weather, and it was in the fiery and golden halo of the hearth that the blue orbs reflected one last time in the bronze lake, coupled with gray hazelnuts. Before the eyes surrender to the sandy vapors of a deep sleep.

Nothing. Empty. Wadding. Cloud. Lethargy. No pain. Above all, no pain. No more body. It floats, and it descends slowly, very slowly, towards unfathomable abysses, only through his Soul and that of his "twin".

Once again, Trevor, in the privacy of his sleep, accepted the protective arm gently resting across his shoulders. After a Thyme-scented hand squeezed his, in a sincere friendly gesture.

Once again, the two figures huddled into a single form sculpted in innocent, platonic grace.

Two Soulmates that time disfigures, in the same Heart-Shadow ...

000ooo000

"What do you want to do for our Brotherhood later, little Trevor?"

“I want to fight, like Knight Guilyem de Rem.

“Here, my child… A piece of our Sacred Mirror.It was given to you in the hollow of your swaddling clothes, by a very ancient God, so it’s a priceless gift that very few of us have had. Know that It will show you things, if you know how to do it. You must always keep it with you, It will be precious to you in your moments of doubt and support. You are still small to understand its meaning, but one day you will grasp all the knowledge He will show you ... With the help of our Lord. "

And a magnificent pendant of silver and bronze, larger than the small hand which took it with astonishment, was pressed by thin and trembling fingers against the so tender youthful heart, whose precious artefact pulsed in unison with the light beat making shiver the so thin chest which contained it ...

The lull was short-lived. After having given up on clogging the night and a good part of the day, with the anger of an icy drizzle and as deadly as thousands of needles falling on the world, the skies opened again to the sharp deluge of the waterfalls, and another more vicious storm blew its fury-bristling winds. The thunder sounded its bad mood through its shattered rolls, discharging more lightning, as if there hadn't been enough before.

The men were desperate to have to start all their moping and cleaning work all over again, having had time to seal leaks and other damage with little time and materials. It was with startled, resigning looks that they stared at the avalanche of raging elements, all anticipatory motivation leaving them before the blinding bursts of lightning and curtains of scathing rain, quickly bogging down the paths and streets nestled between the enclosures, and whose puddles of mud hadn't taken time to dry their previous tears of anger.

An isolated world in an unknown world struck by the capricious weather, on which everything seemed to indicate the immeasurable anger of an Entity wishing to eradicate the place definitively.

The end of the day was well pronounced when the first roll sounded, quickly obscuring the dying light of twilight, in brutal penumbra. Surprisingly, this time there were only a few brave people who strolled under the arches, taunting the fury. Probably discouraged in advance at the thought of having to reset everything afterwards! Some were still resting their aching backs from cleaning tasks they hadn't seen the end of.

It was towards the dark skies, shattered by electric zebras, that Efrain's worried eyes turned, before returning to the safety of his apothecary, and carefully barricading the heavy warheaded doors. He had just returned to the shelter a whole stock of medicinal plants, and strange material that would join the ranks of alambics and other containers with unusual shapes, helped by his apprentice. As the enormous wrench sealing the crossbars of the zipper spun with a reassuring "clack", the herbalist let out a soul-breaking sigh, exchanging a silent look with Acthéean shaking off his damp clothes in a matter of minutes, struggling with loads in the overwhelming drizzle.

"It's gone for a sleepless night, I think ..." Efrain grumbled. I know some who must sweat all the water in their bodies with the idea of the next damage ...

As he said that, he thought of his friend Andréas: poor librarian who must already have had no more hands, by dint of twisting them.

Again the waltz of dazzling lightning disturbed a rhythm that had settled in, in the hope of calm at last.One of the many twisting arches lit up the intimately haloed half-light of the shaking halos of the fragile flames for a few seconds, and Trevor found himself imagining them as delicate little dancers twisting in a complex contracture, most certainly missing a step in the alterable ballet of their contortions.

In his elusive contemplation, the blue glow flashed in ethereal reverberations on the marble skin of the relaxed face, the eyes so cloudy in their meditation. The echo of the glow bounced off the lifeless tain of the artifact, and shimmered more shades of bluish bronze, and polished, glowing silver, in the haze of the tain stubbornly refusing to show anything other than the attractive features of the profile mirroring it in.

The water of the irises quivered with multiple fickle sparks, subtle and diluted flamboyancies, and the blue fire of the torn skies, brought there even more passion and altered shimmers in the reading concentration.

Leaning over the grimoires brought by Andreas, Trevor alternated his thoughts with chronicles spelling out the extraordinary story of one of the knights whom he greatly admired since his childhood, and glances at the artifact which glistened furtively in the warmth of his cupped hands.

What did he expect from this pendant? He didn't know it himself, the Mirror never having granted him yet if it was just a misty shape, or some clue. So often he would whisper like a silent prayer invoking the magic of the apotropaic artifact, pressing his forehead against the cold tan in a respectful plea of worship, then his lips in a light kiss on the elaborate claws gripping the oval of the Psyche in miniature. He considered himself lucky to have such a work of art distributed with discriminating parsimony among the ranks of his comrades.

And he became aware in the chronicles, that thus this admired knight had himself been blessed with the feared and holy offering.

He was still in his reflections when the storm broke again, bathing the environment in renewed insidious fear. Efrain had carefully put away all of his ordered and returned components, and had prepared a welcome little snack for them that had comforted their suddenly hungrier stomachs, as if they were being influenced by the thunder drift. Good buckwheat bread, and a few slices of cheese had made up their meal, and the two young people felt themselves truly blessed by such attentions on the part of the herbalist taking care of them.

The man’s patience was infinite, and he constantly perspired in all his measured, calculated, exploratory gestures, and always in a professional gentleness made only to relieve, rather than cause more pain. Through the windy moans, and the raging bursts, the conscientious ritual of the medicinal bath, and the healing, continued in trials of humor thrown here and there, in order to lessen the heavy and menacing mood of the storm.

Trevor was babbling in the oiled wave of ointments, forgetting the throbbing pains with the opiate helping. It was important not to make the treatment addictive to a young body fighting against burns from excavations still too freshly sutured. While sipping an infusion of hibiscus, each sip of which he savored with the captivating and haunting musk, the teenager calmly allowed his body to open up to the herbalist's meticulous observations, all the tension at the start was gone, and it was gleefully that he confidently submitted to the study. It was by talking about his readings that he indulged in the care, and no longer jumped under the thunder spitting. He was relaxed as he had never been before, and preferred to submit to this new state of mind for him.

Efrain was able to examine the sutures at leisure, and express his satisfaction at the complete absence of infection that could've soiled the seams. Finally, the lips of the wounds were seamed and displayed their progressive healing in their beautiful scar tissue. Finally, if we excepted the purplish-yellow-blue-almost black shades, which branched out the transparent skin in its marble, like fine spider-webs. But, it was a good omen, compared to other interventions that Efrain carried out on other wounded, and saw all the premises of irrevocable gangrene. Even for whip wounds, in this 11th century, all the dangers of infection, bacteria, and other filth were to be expected very commonly. In addition, hygiene being very rarely observed, it was more often the catastrophic observations of death characterized and encouraged by all these lapses in the simplest hygiene.

So the result was: an herbalist cooing his happy appreciation, a relaxed Trevor like never before, and apparently giving a damn about everything right now, like he was still on opiates! and Acthéean flattered to have done such a good job on his friend. Even though the storm was all the rage outside, the three men bathed in a bliss which was also exacerbated by the ambient electricity and the re-installed dampness. All minds were at the peak of unfailing optimism, which nothing would tarnish.

Languorously wrapped in a new clean shirt, fragrant with multiple vegetable flavors, carefully groomed, Trevor settled himself on his diaper, cross-legged as his sutures didn't pull on his delicately sewn skin, the precious chronicles straddling his knees, his artifact gleaming softly beside him. He began a slow brushing of his hair with the tips of his long fingers, in order to untie the nests of birds which had been a little entangled in the part for a relatively long time in the lax brushing.

It allowed him to wander in his thoughts drifting with the waves of his imagination. He loved to immerse himself in such meditations predisposing him to relaxation, but they were very rare at times of intensive training, and study. So he had to take advantage of it. Another strange advantage due to his mistreatment. Did he finally have to discover himself, and become aware of himself, through an immobility forcing him to such a deep meditation on his Self, neglected for so long?

It was with yet another electric flash tearing through the wadded atmosphere of the room, that Trevor noticed the silent presence of Acthéean leaning on the upright of the fireplace, scrutinizing the flames disturbed by the chilly winds infiltrating the duct, also lost in deep thoughts. The face was relaxed, however, and the gray nuts of the irises soaked in the soft flirtation of the crackling oranges. He seemed in fact to soak up everything, absorbing himself in the deliquescent darkness endlessly torn by the intrusive arcs. He gave that impression of irrationality in his presence, vaguely blurred by the aerial swirls of dust and ashes from the hearth. Once again, Trevor was struck by the similarity of the thoughtful and demeanor identical to his own, as he sailed like this through the mists between the mirrors of his Inner. The same trip that would take the two young people by the hand, in a twinning wandering.

Then the blue orbs slid down to the relaxed hands along the body: his same hands that knew how to take care of him so well, becoming more ethereal and outcropping as they calmed the aching flesh. His hands disturbing Trevor's mind at the same time, in that sometimes too intrusive softness also in his shivering privacy. Young Belmont realized that these hands were the first to be so kind to him - apart from the herbalist brother who remained only in his profession -, and more often than necessary aroused strange emotions.

Was it he clinging to a crazy idea that someone could appreciate him as an individual, or was he deluding himself about this person who was only doing his training job ? Was there anyone who could lean into his loneliness, into an exact reflection of his own Self, in an insane pairing-twin ? Trevor was so unfamiliar with all that meant friendship, solidarity, that he systematically dismissed the grotesque idea of a setback protecting his psychological defense mechanisms, and ran to take refuge in his oozing bubble of thick humours and dry withered tears on the cornerstone of his heart so chilled by the cold of solitude.

Just like in his dream… where the Cross continually pierced him, and his heart froze in stone… recurring dreams he had been having for months now. Oddly enough, he sometimes associated his dreams with subliminal images sent to him by God ? or by the big Mirror which he always saw in his obsessive pregnancy. He gladly felt lost through the existential vagaries and the dreamlike rebuses that straddled his constantly questioning being.

A few more flashes of hatred for a poor nature passed exploded in the inclement weather, before Acthéean gazes at his friend with a slender smile fluttering from the tip of his lips, barely visible in the permanent stubble subtly shading his noble features. Secretly, Trevor found himself envying him that hairiness he seemed to tame easily, as he displayed totally hairless ground on his body and face, aside, of course, his mane admired by all.

The apprentice lifted himself from the fireplace, and immersed himself in the preparation of his bed, but hardly deluding himself on a night that would still be very busy. The intense wetness had shamelessly settled into the atmosphere, and again made it impossible to breathe properly without feeling the heavy scent seeping through every pore. He was aware of the curious gaze of young Belmont, even through the soft half-light haloed with the most diverse chromatic smoothness.

To break a little the combersome silence, chipped only by the cracklings of the hearth, and stormy anger, he whispered, as always, a banality, the first that occurred to him. Everything, as long as this deafening silence ends.

"Poor Efrain, he's gone to bed, but I don't know if he's going to sleep ... It's like last time ...

"I didn't help that night either…" Trevor replied, equally whispering, as he continued to carefully smooth the flyaways of his fingers.

"It's not your fault ... But I don't remember such a severe storm ... Do you want another brew before you try to sleep?

" Why not…

The irises throbbed strangely in the half-darkness, the bursts of candles flirting with the deep reflection of their waters.

"I'll go get some ... after, can you explain to me what you're reading?

Acthéean disappeared into the preparation room, leaving the heavy drapery serving as the door, haphazardly spread to one side. The moire of the fabric was enriched with new hues dancing in the intricate folds, giving the idea of another mirror reflecting scenes from another world. Trevor's imagination raced, and amusedly crafted universes all around him, in a frenzied dance of metaphors that never saw the end of the beat. The storm inspired him. Making him fantasize about every detail, every breath, every movement, which he wouldn't have taken into account in a previous life, made of fights, slight wounds, invective, insults, contempt, intimate care alone in his corner, distrust of the looks on him, strategies wisely devised in his wartime mind, twirling around to get away from fights he didn't care about ... all those little things which, put end to end, rotted his childhood and his adolescence to the pain of living, and thirsty for affection and attention that wouldn't be aggressive this time around. Friendship, quite simply. Love, if he could hope for it ...

So, walled up in his protective world, in his observant mutism, Trevor wandered through the twists and turns of an ascetic life, without the flavor of a possible complicity, which would again make his heart beaten into stone in the corners of his ivory tower that was his dereliction.

Until a tutor has a heavy hand on his spine, and make him realize that there might be hope for him. He couldn't deny now that he had become attached to the herbalist and his apprentice. Clearly, the two men showed him a close friendship, and a genuine affection for what he was in its most expression.

Even though Efrain had given him, happily, with a wink, a :

"You can see that you are appreciated ... look at how much I have been given for you, and just for you and your recovery ! They filled the bags for me, when they knew you were caring for me ... and apparently your eyes are doing wonders for them !

And the brave brother unwrapped all the beautiful breads on the table, laughing, in front of the amazed eyes of the two young people. But at Efrain's rant, Trevor, not deluding himself, had teasingly replied :

"Yes, but most of the time, I have to quickly save myself away from their wandering hands ... It's not really my eyes that they want to flatter ...

At this, the herbalist and his apprentice roared with laughter, easily imagining a bewildered Trevor so daring towards him, and quickly running away with his petty "theft" of seduction.

Shadows wriggled stealthily over the tissue wefts shrouded in almost black crimson, capturing the water of the orbs in a hypnotic and delirious fixity of fantasies and memories, letting such a pale smile float on the hemmed lips abandoning their permanent pessimistic grin and bitterness, in which they were often frozen. Perhaps with the absorption of the infusion, there would be a little more verbose exchange with Acthéean ? He sincerely wished it ...

And it was the case. Acthéean on his side trying to tear the veil of enclavement which surrounded the young Belmont. He had been pleasantly surprised to see that Trevor hadn't taken any offense at the more than intimate promiscuity they had had on the previous two nights. Dare to fall asleep next to the savage Belmont was quite an achievement, especially when it was not followed by beatings punishing the daring. He was also grateful to Efrain who hadn't been shocked in the least. It was purely platonic, just in a desire to relieve the other of his protective presence, in friendly solidarity, a cradle that would welcome the erosive nightmares of his sleep.

But it remained none the less a promiscuity of males. And a gesture of intrinsic possession over the other. How could anyone be offended that the first emotions were influenced by the daily contact with people of the same sex, while most hadn(t taken the step to approach the other sex, on which the church used to line this feminine world with stigma and abuse, opprobes and invectives.

Enough to frighten young novices discovering their bodies, but fleeing the female demonic spawn with hints of sulfur. What else, in a Brotherhood that absolutely refused any feminine element, for anything ? A monastic life, without having signed the tacit agreements at the bottom of a parchment

And Trevor Belmont was so peculiar in his painful isolation ... and so beautiful, that it was almost impossible and painful to step through the gates of this heavy introspective monastery ...

Probably even, when he was very young when he first met this orphan whom everyone was curious about, and caused the craziest rumors to swim on the waves of incomprehension, had he been seduced ? By that look so unique, that fragility of glass, which he remembered feeling like the child was going to break between the mountains of muscles that surrounded him. He knew the Brotherhood's pupil, snatched from a murdered mother. The whole thing was at an impasse of inextricable muddle concerning his history. But he knew the child tangled in the roots of his origins endlessly poisoned by a dracholic ghost. Probably that too, which made others instinctively fear young Belmont?

Loaded by his tray of aromatic drinks in their sensual sweetness, he decided to play the small object he had been holding in his hand for a while, and which he knew was going to undoubtedly charm the proud young man with his mane. It was a bit of a dangerous game of seduction he was going to attempt, he knew, but his essence was irrepressibly drawn to the other, this total stranger, this bubble of ashes and atoms moving blindly in existential murderous turmoil. This sphere tossed furiously through the acid waves of a hardly acceptable Self. This swell of energy ignoring his voracity to love, despite the bitter and sharp cracks of a cliff eroded too soon by misfortunes, he clung to so desperately from the top of his fifteen years; that ripple made of muscles and a powerful temperament resembled his own, like an infernal twin in his gallop towards the shadow pits of his sacrificed childhood.

When he stepped through the heavy curtain which he put back in place, obscuring the opening, he caught the blissful wandering in the sapphiric orbs admiring a point invisible to him. The youngster was still sitting cross-legged, with the grimoire balanced on his knees. It even seemed that the storm didn't disturb him in his dreamlike meditation.

"Be careful that your position doesn't pull too much on the threads…" he suggested, resting the beverage tray on the diaper.

Trevor quietly sniffed the delicious scent of the flower, his fingers still in the strands he apparently struggled to disentangle.

"I'm going to have to lie down again," he replied. 'But I can't rest my back on a hard surface yet.

Acthéean hummed in agreement, and gazed amusedly at the flow of knots from the bristling, still wet waves. He then grabbed the chronicles in which Trevor seemed to have engulfed himself in his concentration, and read the slice. One second, his stupidly "smug" mouth, before putting the book down. Trevor didn't miss the sudden fluidity withdrawing from his face, lying on his side propped up on one elbow, in a curious expression.

As he brought the infusion bowl to his lips, Acthéean tossed a small, thin object that glowed the time for a sparkle in the intimate candlelight, which didn't fail to attract all the attention of the intrigued look. Long, slender fingers grasped a beautiful engraved object, with double rows of teeth of unequal height, and of different width too. The central part was carved in bas-relief on both sides : on the obverse, a triple semicircular arch housed a busty female figure pointing her right index finger at her left shoulder, framed by two figures seated on the ground, in profile and raising one hand. On the reverse were a griffin and a lion facing each other, standing and one paw raised, on a background decorated with small chevrons in irregular lines.

A true ornamental piece in its design splendor, a pure masterpiece in the action of beauty and maintenance of the hair. A jewel that must've been priceless, and impossible to own, even for a knight ! except, if it had been offered to him. So, an apprentice war student, it was impossible to imagine having such a marvel in your hands.

Trevor didn't hide his amazement at his friend who possessed such a treasure. Acthéean settled himself closer to him, crossed his legs in the same lotus position, and took the jewel with his fingertips, rocking it in rhythm with each of his words :

"I offer to help you unravel your impossible bird nests in your mop, and you tell me these chronicles ... why you chose them.

Trevor stared at the apprentice for a moment, his lips slowly arching in a twitch of wonder.

"How can you own such a beautiful object?" he asked, his voice hoarse with admiration for the jewel.

"I'll tell you its story, if you tell me yours ...

Acthéean arched a questioning eyebrow, freezing the comb in his direction.

"Are you seducing me…? With a comb?' Trevor swallowed, his voice shaking slightly, uncertainly.

"Belmont, know that this comb has a story, and it was a gift given to me when I was still a child. Initially it was for my mother. Then she gave it to me. But it was a wonderful gift given to us by… someone whom everyone found wonderful.

Trevor realized the incredible gesture of friendship, and settled himself comfortably on his belly, while Acthéean first began by hand-smoothing the hair splendor that had made him dream so much, for a while now. Long before the Belmont was cruelly injured by the tutor. He let himself go under the expert caress of his hands on the mass of lascivious seduction that was his mane, a real object of worship symbolizing the latent eroticism that only asked to be released. Real thick creepers scurrying to be free of their psychological shackles, and curl in emancipatory hysteria around the hands that would honor their Sanctuary.

Whole Acthéean' body shuddered with the sensual sensation of his fragrant locks, mingling natural musk with the olfactory vibrations of more intimate juices diluted by the intoxicating nuances of the oils. It was a real sacred ritual that unfolded its charms, electrified by the arcs of lightning always fed by the anger of the heavens.

So the hands began to slowly massage the base of the skull, and the roots, in a motion so gentle, Trevor could think he was going to fall asleep under the massage. All the tension had evaporated, and the stiff neck a few moments before, became supple and languid under the fingertips. He took advantage of the healing fingers brushing the entire length, to take a sip of his infusion that released its seductive scent along with the other fragrant and sweet notes stretching through the moist air.

“We look like two idle princesses, combing their hair… he chuckled gently. Not to future knights ...

"And does it really bother you?" Acthéean asked, knowing full well that wasn't the case.

He waved the uneven strands in the palms, before beginning a long and languid combing, holding each point between the fingers, so as not to pull on the scalp. Little by little, he worked to tame the knots that had intertwined in the agitation of dreams, and that the oil bath had not succeeded in its smoothing task to untwist. Little by little, the sculpted double-ended comb bit tenderly into the spiky nests, and succeeded in taming the silk of the wavy strands glistening in the bluish onyx of their night.

Then he began the story attributed to the jewel, in a calm voice, measured and researched words.

"Do you know we're going to untie your precious mane with a comb that comes from afar ? It’s a liturgical Byzantine comb in ivory ...

Trevor was speechless and looked at his friend for a moment, dumbfounded by the revelation of the wonder that tamed his raven-wing curls. A gentle movement of the hands down the lengths made him straighten his face facing the wall supporting the bed. Then while attacking with brushings so soft, that almost whispered on the overexcited meridians and solicited with the tips of their nerves finer than a hair, Acthéean continued his beautiful chronicle on an object prized since the Night of Time by a humanity eager to take care of the most beautiful symbol of seduction that Nature has given it.

"Liturgical, because it was used to carefully comb the beards of priests and the hair, before his ascent to the altar. It’s a ritual dating from the 5th century in Christendom. You see the figures under arcatures on the obverse, this’s a stylization that was found in several regions of the Byzantine Empire. These are recurring forms of Allegory, just like the animals faced on the reverse. They had similarities to Fatimid art from Egypt.

"So this comb belonged to a priest?" Trevor hissed, admiring this time the extraordinary memory of Acthéean. No doubt the comb had been more than a gift to him, for having memorized quite an extraordinary story in its conception.

"Not that one… He brought up royal and noble hair… It was my father who brought it back from his campaigns, when he was raised in knighthood. He has traveled a lot, and brought us gifts like this ... Certainly to make up for an adoration and love he didn't have for his family ...

The bitter words made Trevor straighten up, and pivot towards his friend who had to stop his careful combing, so as not to pull on the strands of silk.

“But you had a father. You knew him ... why do you say he didn't love you, your mother and you? You're so lucky to have a family.

Acthéean made Trevor lie back down, pushing him back by the shoulders, continuing his untangling work once the Belmont was in position.

"Belmont, why are you reading the chronicles of Guilyem de Rem?"

He made a discreet click of his tongue at the stubborn resistance of a wick that refused to let go of its obstinate entanglement.

"He’s a great Knight, whose chronicles have been written all over the world. I have admired him since I was a child. I would like to one day be like him ... do as many exploits as he ... so many trips.

"Trevor, Acthéean interrupted, "you know how he… died?

There was a suspended space where one could discern the specter of an escaping angel, its wings covered with shame and cruor.

"During one of the assaults on Dragon Castle ...

"You see, if he'd been such a great Knight of the Brotherhood, ordained by Cardinal Volpe, would he have failed like this? to lead his garrisons to massacre?

"This is one of the Brotherhood's greatest losses, and a complete and shameful failure against a seemingly indestructible monster! ‘’ Trevor croaked under the sting of pain. ‘’It is said that Guilyem died of his injuries for four days ...

"The Greatest Knight couldn't bend the Dragon ...

"Schritch" gently combed, in heightened lasciviousness, which once again made Trevor's hair stand on end in tender ecstatic shivers. It seemed that the double endenture, expertly alternated in the hands of the apprentice, managed by dint of perseverance to smooth a rebellious ear, to untie the fine twigs from the back of the neck, to untwist recalcitrant knots, resolve and supple the voluptuous moiré mass in its humidity and care oils. Trevor couldn't count the number of times his spine rippled in the sensual pleasure of the expert embrace.

And Trevor let himself be confused with elation. The fingers continued their ballet, entwining the impossible hairstyles with the loose aerial tufts, and the longer drills serving as ephemeral links, neutralizing in the blink of an eye the wacky tassels that snaked abruptly to extricate themselves from their ethereal ties. It was of unprecedented playfulness, and incomparable. Acthéean had already had fun, once or twice, with those of a passing mistress, with such admirable hair, and which he had fallen in love with in imagined convolutions, while he indulged in carnal pleasure with the beautiful.

And yet, never, the hair splendor of the young woman couldn't be compared to that of the young Belmont. She didn't have a third of the fascinating beauty, and yet she was a woman, normally to whom Mother Nature always gave the finest adornment. All the beauties with such intense hair couldn't compete with the exceptional capillarity of the wild Belmont !

The teenager's cloudy eyes closed, he plunged with delight into the continuous caresses of the ritual. Nothing would motivate him to push back the hands too invasive, too pressed, too lascivious between the strands of silk, and for once, he accepted the care as a fetishist ceremonial cultivating his finery, and by the way, also somewhat flattering his Ego. But for him to finally become aware of Self in impoverished esteem, it would be inhuman to see it as an inappropriate act of pride, then he finally discovered that you could've respect for himself, with a little affection, it wouldn't be so bad ! So he let himself be pampered, just as he'd accepted in the care of his wounds. And too bad if the hand which held the precious caressing object was masculine ! He didn't want to dive in unnecessary tergiversations over light customs that seemed to really shroud the atmosphere of the abbey and the monastery. In fact, of the whole Brotherhood ... if we considered all the too numerous and recurring attempts towards his person, for many years. He had to take into account that ultimately his god-blessed physique might cause serious problems in the future. Even for a quignon of bread !

He thought back to the vicious gesture that leaned a little too hard over his shoulder, his jaw a few days ago, and his shiver was quite other than that of pleasure. A real disgust ! Compared to the hands of Acthéean, it was… to compare the ambrosia of the Gods on a curious tongue, to a pissy piquette that was served to novices in taverns, thinking that they would enjoy it without knowing the difference. It was all that, Acthéean. This mystery makes teenagers soon to adulthood, but hardly two years older. A mixture of enigmas whose existence had been steeped early in experience of all types.

Trevor had relaxed so much in the smoothness of the flickers around his hair adornment, he almost jumped when Acthéean spoke again :

"Perhaps the Brotherhood had put too much pressure in the foolish hope of bringing Dracul to the ground ...

His voice had faded, and Trevor pricked up his ears at the flexing intonation.

"If this noble knight couldn't do it, who can? Sometimes I find myself thinking if Guilyem had been my father ...

"You are only fantasizing about an ideal father, Belmont," Acthéean cut him brutally. ‘’You weren't lucky enough to have this dad, but don't think about how De Rem could have been the perfect father ! You would be totally wrong ...

"Why say such harsh things?

Trevor half-turned to his friend who had stopped unraveling, stunned by the sudden aggressiveness of the words. Yet through the continued roar of thunder that did not weaken either, the vocal intonations of the two interlocutors hadn't increased, even under incomprehensible anger.

"You know, Trevor, maybe it was just as good that you didn't know your father… as opposed to having one… who never paid much attention to me and my mother.

"Acthéean… what's your full name?" Trevor asked, took a sudden thought inspiration.

A silence hung before a response that Trevor anticipated.

“De Rem… my name is Acthéean de Rem, son of Guilyem de Rem, great Knight ennobled of the Brotherhood of the Light…

In shock, Trevor could only stay speechless, missing a few breaths.

"He's your father ... but why, Acthéean?

"Because he was a great Knight, whose fiery and warlike heart was equal to a king, but as a father he was despicable ... You didn't have a father, maybe it’s better that way, rather than having a character so full of himself, that all you could do was never good enough in his eyes ! He'd such an overwhelming personality that everyone stooped to his feet, never daring to raise their voices or their eyes ... I saw, throughout my childhood, high people reduced to nothing before the fury of this father, and believe me, his anger was destructive ... I sometimes come to compare the outbursts of my father with ... the Dragon… same devastation in the enemy ranks, and those of the broken family because of his behavior.

"Oh, Acthéean… never would've thought that… I didn't even know your full name, ‘Trevor dared, contrite.

“We were just crossing paths, it’s normal that you never found out about it…

“That’s why many respect you and hesitate to find trouble with you,” Trevor murmured thoughtfully. ‘They respect you because of your father’s fame…

“Yes... if they knew him... The truth is far from beautiful...When he found out that Mother was pregnant, he mistreated her, in the sure hope of causing her to miscarry… but I held on, born prematurely, but still alive… and he was very angry with my mother for to have conceived me… I knew all this by the domestic service and my nannies, with time, I was painted the portrait of the one who finally turned out to be a monster…

Acthéean resumed his gentle brushing, despite the very cruel words that followed.

"You see, this comb, he brought it back from his travels which he undertook at the slightest opportunity, in order to get away from a wife who had the audacity to give birth child to him ... that he didn't want. The cruelest thing is that it was a gift so that my mother ... to get rid of her burden ... And all the presents he dared to bring back from his roundups, were all poisoned, because the bearers of an eternal silent request for destroy what'd been built. Of course, it didn't take long for my mother to understand the intentions behind these spiteful gifts, and she also knew that, not having achieved their purpose, the gifts were being offered to others ...

Trevor felt like he had the heart stuck in ice. He stopped the wrist that was handling the jewel, and in turn slipped it between his fingers, trembling slightly with emotion.

“My mother slipped this jewel into my crib, and it became a symbol of a rebellion against this unspeakable father. Bequeathing it to me, it would still be a reminder of an individual who almost became infanticide. When I was born, the fact of being a male didn't calm him down, and under any pretext he left our lands, to conquer a world he wanted to hold in his hands, under his rules. I think the Brotherhood had made him sparkle with so many illusions and dreams that he thought he would one day become King himself… How ironic!

Acthéean gently picked up the object and began his healing work again. In the distance, the fury rumbled constantly, the rain steadily beating the stained-glass windows with such force, one might've thought it was going to shatter the glass, and the humidity in the room had grown heavier. Trevor didn't know what to say to this revelation, and felt a lump of acid stuck in his throat. The rest of the brew had cooled, and he stared without seeing the bottom in which danced plant residues.

"And to think that I am mourning an unknown father, and a murdered mother ..." he whispered. ‘’I didn't think you could be so miserable while you knew both of your parents.

“My mother was devastated by my father’s attitude. She never really got over it, I even think she lost her mind last. She was still in a melancholy mood, and cried incessantly. I don't think I knew her happy, or with even a ghost smile on her pale face.

The uneven-length teeth caught in a nest knot that had hitherto gone unnoticed, and patiently Acthéean untangled cautiously, not pulling on the lengths or roots. His face remained impassive, even though the little color usually blushing the cheeks had faded, leaving a diaphanous skin identical to Trevor's marmoreal complexion. In this focused attitude, Trevor found it hard to associate the terrible words with the quiet action of brushing. It suddenly seemed to him to belong to two different, parallel, two-dimensional worlds so antagonistic, where the apprentice worked in his soothing ritual, while in another he told a harsh life story. In opposition. Completely offbeat.

Then there came a thought that Trevor had never had for anyone. Still. But, this time, this thought dug its nest in an abundant soil able to surround it and protect it from any other idea which would pollute it. And it was his Shadow that sang.

"If he is your Soulmate… your Heart-Shadow… and you pulsate in unison… that would be him. "

“When we learned of her passing, my mother had long left this world in thought. He took the last person I was holding on to from me… That's why my mother never came to the Brotherhood in person… We couldn't let her appear in public like that…

"Who took care of you, when she wasn’t able to?

“My uncle, my mother's brother. On my father's side, he had been so obnoxious to everyone that the few remaining family had chosen to sever all ties ...

"But ... after her death, how is it going for you?

"Don't worry about me, being a male, I inherit family assets with no problem. The worry would've been in order if I had been a girl ... maybe that's what calmed the father a little, so little. That I'm a boy, and not a girl ... It would've been a complete disaster if it'd been so, and probably I certainly would've had an "accident" much more prematurely.

Mortified, poor Belmont didn't know what to say to console his friend. However, the latter provided proof that he had long mourned this absent and contemptuous father, most certainly misanthropic, by adding a note that he wanted to be humorous, in order to lighten the confidences.

"So, do you see what you've been missing out on? Probably your father too was a vile egotistical selfish and hateful of his peers. In a way, being an orphan you might've escaped a worse fate, who knows ... I've heard the worst stories ever about parent / child bonding, some really thrill ...

Acthéean heaved a happy sigh at the success of having untied the recalcitrant knots, without damaging the long silky locks which twisted sensually between his fingers and the liturgical comb, and gradually dried under the drawn aerial loads as the apprentice lifted a mass of strands and fanned it like a sail in the wind. He could watch the night silk fall back in slow motion in a wide movement where the grace was no longer strong enough to adjective the beauty of the vision.

For pure pleasure, he went up several times the entire mass flaring out of his cupped hands, in splendid dripping falls, to perform a long rub along the base of the neck, and up to the frontal meridian. And let everything fall like an inconsistent litham, absent of weight, which spread its wings in artistic undulations. A work of art that a painter could spend hours depicting in sfumato diluted in the luminous mists of a bottomless night.

Hypnotized in his fetishistic worship, Acthéean felt the intense pleasure of touch and smell, seize all his senses electrified by the latent eroticism that oozed in an irrepressible savagery where he was almost dying to plunge his face into it, and inhale the perfumes, and swallow this precious silk and this ecstatic velvet, soak it up until you're thirsty, or gasping for air. He did himself violence not to give in to this impulse like he'd never felt so much the brutality, before. If his one-time mistress had drawn him from the paths of Heaven, Belmont was revealed to be the Way of Hell.

To alleviate this all-consuming urge, he measured his voice to continue, heart pounding, and he felt like a bewildered bird was smashing against the sharp sides of his ribs. He prayed that the Belmont wouldn't hear the sound of its mad pulses.

"Trevor, although I have told you, remember that just as you admired the Knight, you must continue to admire his exploits, and not think about the man he was. It's not worth it ... The Chronicles don't lie when they tell their extraordinary story, and that's only what should stay in your mind.

"But he made you suffer, and hurt your mother a lot…" Trevor objected sadly. ‘’ I admired this man, I remember as a child that I was asked what I wanted to do for the Brotherhood, and I replied that I wanted to be like Guilyem de Rem… In my innocence…

"You"re still innocent, Trevor ... still think like when you were a kid ... these are legends we always remember, and often we forget what the man was behind that beautiful facade and his golden shield, and we disregard it until it dissolves over the centuries, leaving only a selective memory imprint ... and that's better, believe me ...

Acthéean paused for a few seconds, in order to finish :

"Stay with your dreams, your motivations, and build your own future ... You too will write your own page of history, but it certainly won't be as bloody as that of all those heroes you admire ... Because that very early on, you knew what a full individual was, with all due respect to his honor ... Because you are human, quite simply ...

"Listening to you, you'd never say you're only seventeen ... I think I'm hearing a wise old man ...' Trevor laughed.

"Maybe I've read too much of those old, old philosophers! the apprentice concluded with a smile of appreciation.

Mirrored, a splendid smile softened even more, if possible, Trevor's saddened features, revealing by candlelight the white glow of healthy teeth, also magnified by impeccable hygiene.

As if time had judged that the two young people were conversing in too heavy a calm, a furious crackle erupted near the window, making them jump violently. A moment later, a dazzling zebra tore through the soft gloom, where the flames of candles danced tirelessly, and the scorias of dying embers in the air of the fireplace.

"I think it fell nearby there ..." Acthéean observed, staring at the furious burst shadows squirming under the electric staccatos.

"Do you think there is going to be as much damage as before? Trevor ventured, propping himself up on one elbow.

Acthéean wished not, but had no illusions about the day after the cleaning chores. Now, if the lightning had fallen near the enclosures, it was more of a problem.

No one thought of the fallen knight in disappointed esteem, of the unworthy father, of the mother gone mad, of a broken family, and the absence of parents for an orphan. It all vanished, streaked in a flash from the failing memories in pain and sorrow. The two young people waited in silence after a burst, on the lookout for any noise, in case Efrain got up, awakened by the hellish noise.

This was the case: the poor herbalist was already not asleep, but with the crash-bang, he outlined himself in the minutes that followed, his features drawn with fatigue and fear, watching if all was well on the side of his "youngsters", as he had grown accustomed to affectionately calling them. And he loved them his two little ones! To the point of worrying about going to see them, before assuming the stormy outrage had struck outside.

He got down to opening the doors of the apothecary to take a look around. The observation was quickly made, by the few curious who had faced the bad weather, in search of what had been struck by lightning. One of the superb ancient cedars, which stood in splendor in the middle of the courtyard giving access to the atrium, smoked under the sheaves of the torrential rain which prevented the burning of the tree. But the trunk had been split from the impact, blackened by electricity and fire from the sky. Definitely dead.       

Some of those who'd ventured out, crossed themselves in superstition, and murmurs of curse crumbled among the ranks of the curious, before each parted and returned to the shelter. For many, it was better if it was an old cedar that was struck down, than buildings or stables.

Of course, while standing, Efrain proposed to infuse these delicious flowers, which decidedly the two young people were crazy about, and which everyone tasted slowly while wandering on banal or unusual conversations. But neither Trevor nor Acthéean returned to the painful revelations, Trevor having whispered the promise to keep the secret. And Acthéean knew he could trust him.

The styling'd been completed just as the storm hit, and Trevor sported his gorgeous slicked back hair, shinier than ever, in his moiré onyx cascade. And God, that these silky shadows contrasted with the immaculate whiteness of the shirt, emphasizing even more the marble of the skin in which the transparent sapphires were drowned.

The damp air made the angry and strained bodies sweat lightly, it was difficult to move without the suffocating heaviness that squeezed the lungs. Minds disturbed by the constant blasts, were far from being able to give in to sleep: it was another night of forced insomnia, and it risked undermining the morale of the men preparing for the worst.

Efrain decided to hang around in his preparations, and added to the sticky ambient heat, the infernal temperature of his machines, latest creations that seemed to come straight out of the cauldron of Hell, by their complexity. But the herbalist loved to immerse himself in the difficulties of functioning of devices which he always brought back in a good-natured motivation, which made Acthéean smile: the good man looked like at those times like a kid amazed in front of new toys that had appeared from the mud he kneaded a few seconds before! 

So it was with some gently humorous threats, that he pushed his young people back to the padded confinement of the room, not wanting to hear anything as protests, much less from Trevor who was still in danger of tearing his sutures with continuous movements. But the herbalist brother'd reserved very scrupulously a nice surprise for the young Belmont. With stars in his eyes, anticipating a joy which would be evident in the young, and with much calculated slowness, after recalling Trevor, he took out a large, carved wooden box that the teenager was sure he'd seen somewhere but couldn't find where.

Magnificent case which displayed its seniority in the various shades of sepia, brown, purple red, gold, sober in appearance, at the opening it sported a triple row of small vials of various colors, which Trevor recognized for pigments carefully sealed with sealed wax, as well as grooves between the rows, where superb arabesque feathers coiled, and very sharp fine brushes in their water reserve neck. A jewel of paintings and illuminations, inspired by those used by the Tibetan Bonzes, or ancestral Asian practices in the monasteries perched high in the heavens, flirting with the clouds, as Trevor had seen painted images of these unreal landscapes that made him dream.

Efrain gazed in delight at the slight blush spreading his brass powder on the young man's high cheekbones, his lips curving into an ecstatic "oh", and the pupils so limpid that they must certainly have been suffused with emerging tears of emotion.

"I forgot to tell you that Andréas saw me this morning, and gave me this for you ... It's a gift, because he knows you're envious of the dexterity of illuminators, and that you always take the time to admire them in respectful silence in their very patient and elaborate tasks. On the sides of the case, you've small secret compartments, there you see… These're coal mines for sketches… and also, this…

While speaking, Efrain had pressed two small discreet handles which engaged in a very small click, to disclose thin, smoky sticks nestling in it. With a wide theatrical movement, and a mischievous wink, he pulled out scrolls carefully twisted together, sealed by a sealed velvet ring.

"A few vellums that will welcome your sketches ... As you've time to spend among us, to rest, to read, to educate yourself, you save a little time for your passion ...

"I don't know what to say, Brother Efrain… I am so grateful for your kindness, and that of Andréas…

"And will you still say that you don't have any friends? Hmm? And these will never give you the inappropriate insult with one hand ... wandering in return ...

Forgotten the furious blows of insistent thunder, forgotten the flashes of lightning miserable tree-splitters, eradicated and buried under a ton of emotion that choked the youngster's chest. He didn't know what to say, he stammered, he spluttered, he wasn't at all used to so much kindness, especially platonic, neither perverse, nor devious, without the expectation of a devious gesture as a reward. A gift in its friendly simplicity, without the risk of opening a vial of venom that would spill viciously through the veins of corrupting shame.

He stood there stupidly frozen in the middle of the room, which rippled from the most subtle to the sweetest scents, heady musks, acidity softened by a touch of sweetness, wrapped in his oversized shirt, livid as a specter, barely recovered from his wicked punishment, the so beautiful eyes surrounded by pain and fatigue, but whose color softened under the emotional pale pink blush, hugging, accustomed to holding swords and fighting maces, delicate parchment supports soft as velvet intended for the most ethereal paintings, and for sketches that his dreamy hand would be surprised to draw in moments of borderless wanderings.

Quickly, he remade his day in acceleration in his memory, counting the pure moments of happiness coming knocking on his door, suddenly in a comforting amalgamation, after crossing the desert of… fifteen years!

Under the fading light, his cheek glistened with a trail of transparent, wet, lonely diamonds.

"Brother Efrain, may I?" ... he begged, not daring to make a move, for fear of offending the herbalist.

“Of course, you little fool…! replied, smiling so tenderly, Efrain, opening his arms to him, where the young one nestled, grateful, his arms laden with his treasures. He curled his face on the Brother's shoulder in silent thanks, but which was worth all the thanks ’in the world, and it squeezed the herbalist’s heart with the modesty of the gesture. He carefully stroked the bruised back in a fatherly hug.

Acthéean stood on the doorstep of the bedroom, and gazed at the scene with as much emotion as his friend to whom, finally, life made a sweet offering of happiness without vicious backlash. Again, his heart raced in the golden gift package of an affection that couldn't wait to free itself from its shackles, to pulsate freely. Towards this taciturn, tongue-tied being, mutating like a grave, to whom he had just confided his secret which had been rotting his existence, and his nights, for years. What did he expect from the admiring orphan of this vile father? Nothing, if not the sharing of two fractured lives, the exchange of their lonely souls disfigured by murderous time eroding their lives with its claws. A strange pairing-twin in the similarity of their essences. A fate that laughed at them, like two bubbles of ash misdirected in the headwinds of a mocking Aeolus.

The apprentice waited for a gesture from the herbalist, who would indicate to him whether he should stay to help, or if, what happened, he was ordered to go and seek some rest through the howls and groans that persisted in cascading the heavens in apocalypse. Too bad if Somnus had deserted the layers in the dormitories and the cells, the pause time would be in alternating acrimony of agitations of the elementals, and a softness that would stubbornly embed itself in the anointing of a dim light ravaged by countless flashes of blue coldness.

And anyway, Trevor was too exhilarated by his gifts! He had forgotten his pains, his freshly stitched and still fragile wounds, and the silken strands of his mane swayed dangerously in the sticky humidity of the air, threatening to undo all of Actheean's work of patience. Regardless, the liturgical comb rested like a precious artefact, in the shades of white gold of the candles, alongside another apotropaic production with semi-evil scents, and yet "blessed" by divine light, shining with an aura distilled by the silver of the claws and the bronze of the tin.

Acthéean bathed his diaper, readying it for a draft of the rest he sincerely desired, feeling the beginnings of exhaustion from the cleanings, and shivering with fear for the next day. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched in unfeigned amusement as his friend neatly piled up the books Andréas had lent him, including the Chronicles of Guilyem de Rem, which, he was sure, Trevor wouldn't read in the same way. He looked at him lay down cautiously, tucking a pillow under his belly, as he had become accustomed to, flaring his black satin veil over the pillow, after slipping his pendant under the head pillow, and put down the precious box of inks in plain view of his dazzled eyes of contentment.

"Will you be able to sleep, do you think?" Acthéean asked him, breaking free from his tunic, leaving his shirt open, yawning loosely on a chest sculpted in hard muscle. He would change it tomorrow, even if he went to cleaning chores.

"It'll stop eventually ... I'd love to help you clean up ...

"No way, Belmont! The worst stupidity to think about in your condition.

He neatly folded the clothes on a stool adjoining his couch. The humidity was such that it was impossible to bear a tissue on the exuding skin. He silently complained to Trevor who had to keep his nightgown on, in addition to the bandages and oily care anointings. Added to the powders and slag of plants directly on the wounds, the whole thing was to give a sticky impression to the obligatory amalgams to thwart the infections. Fortunately, for the sense of smell, the scents that emanated from them remained in the pleasant olfactory spectra. All this diverse dimension of smells hit the apprentice's nose, in old-fashioned layers piling up one on top of the other in strange mixtures, but fortunately never nauseous. Above all, that Acthéean knew how to define the categories of perfumes by dint of working in their atmospheres, and excelled at spotting even the hints of gangrene, when it arose. Of course, with his training in the face of human suffering, he had learned very quickly what the so pervasive and peculiar smell, both sweet and sickening, of Death, and could boast of smelling it in several places, like a scavenging predator inhaling the putrid pieces that would remain to be cut down in a starving hunger.

But tonight, on this night torn by thunder and inconsolable storm, Acthéean bathed only in the most paradisiacal scents, the subtlety of the infused and cold hibiscus still sailed and was added to the many fragrant chromatic, because yes, the perfumes had their own colors, and the circle of shades that flattered his sense of smell, flirting insidiously with them, was far from monochromatic. The Belmont was fire and ice combined in a twirl of meaning, to intoxicate the most placid and sober of men. The olfactory and visual aura which extricated itself from him in large pulsating waves, was a maelstrom of stimuli unleashing their poisonous empennages at all the tiny breezes crossing the thick walls of the room, carrying on their misty wings the metaphors of a sensuality overwhelming and unconscious.

The Belmont let out a sigh so thin, it would almost have gone unnoticed if Acthéean, who was blowing out the candles, hadn't come closer. Caught in the indolence heralding the onset of sleep, Trevor looked up half-blurred with fatigue and joy from a good day that ended in the stress of contentment - this time the adrenaline fueling his veins, was one of the best arousing, even aphrodisiac, potions he had ever felt - and the apprentice read something in it that gave him confidence not to act recklessly.

So he no longer wondered, chasing all traces of shyness or shame, intoxicated by the soaring sensations of the chromatics dancing all around his friend, when he grabbed the slim cupped chin, smoothed one side of the assertive jaw with the tip of his thumb, whispering a quick "good night", placing the parted lips between his, for a deep kiss, slow, step by step, so as not to make the oyster close, taking possession of his suffocated by daring friend's mouth.

But the latter didn't defend himself, didn't recoil screaming imprecations, as he'd feared for a long time, didn't push him away, nor to reject him. It was his first kiss, it was obvious. Acthéean was flattered to be his educator, and Trevor let himself be carried away by the gentleness of the act.

Acthéean avoided being too devouring, not too much the first time! Definitely, Trevor was an intoxicating amalgamation of the hottest and most icy smells at the same time, as he'd guessed: the ice, the tip of the fire that was undeniably smoldering under layers of cold indifference. There were many delicate mists of nuances clinging to the dizzying stimuli, and Acthéean thought he would lose his footing under the weight of the intertwined feelings. Never before had he had such an intense experience released by this body boiling with contrasts.

The consumed hibiscus spread its smoothness on the palate and the clumsy tongue which tried to keep pace. The hands framed the unruly hair that rebelled under the fingers, holding it in an armful, as in a case at the foot of a sanctuary. The stubble of a few millimeters had lost its roughness, and became soft floating on the hairless cheeks of the brunette beauty.

When Acthéean gently lifted himself from the kiss, he bit his lower lip, letting his friend catch a breath he had instinctively blocked under the intrusion.

Without taking his eyes off Trevor, he blew out the last candle, and only the glow of the hearth remained to interrupt the begrudge darkness that set in. The blue orbs got used to the lack of clarity, and detailed Acthéean's silhouette against the chiaroscuro background, the reddened oranges of diminished fire reverberating on skin as fair as his, hemming the powerful contours of a more firmer musculature than the drier one of the Belmont. The latter was fascinated by the undulating spasms under the hard plate of the abdominals, starting a broken breath that was difficult to manage under the intensity of eroticism, abruptly stagnating heavily in the room that seemed to crumble beneath the thickness of the musk in powerful, aggressive showers.

It was like a blaze of electricity poured into the room in the blinding flash that cracked, shattering the magical intimate atmosphere in a roaring threat, and Acthéean's body cut out like an ectoplasm which would roll back into the body of the invoking medium.

"I think tomorrow I'm on call," Acthéean whispered. ‘’Try to get some sleep, Belmont. Dream about the gifts this day has given you. I'm happy for you. Good night…

Without waiting for an answer, he flexed in his bed, suddenly aware of being half-naked, shivering with a dampness that owed nothing more to the storm, vibrating ripples at the deepest of his belly. It would be difficult to calm the excitement that had plagued him for several minutes already. The cognitive “crisis” which blurred his vision in a colorful capernaum, caused a sneaky cephalalgia to arise, gripping the temples. He knew it was calming down, and he especially didn't want to scare his friend, and hurt him more than he did.

So he lay down on his side, deliberately turning his back on Trevor who remained for a moment stunned, undecided, leaning on his elbows, almost statuified by the improbable chain of events of the end of the day.

He wasn't even offended or shocked by the hot kiss, which made his body react immediately. He just didn't think it could ever happen to him. And he couldn't have described, at that precise moment, all the emotions that came crashing into his mind, his flesh which now vibrated with an intensity so new to him. Nothing to do with the meager passages of starving excitement due to forbidden writings, images painted in the purest outrage, sighs sometimes escaping from the darkest corners of the dormitories.

None of this had plucked the fine strings of the violoncello that was his body, brushing against them with the bow of sensations, to ecstasy the barely repressed moans punctuating the lascivious undulations that would agonize over a few notes struck with the end of white and black keys, completing a symphony written for a newfound serenity. We scream for it to stop, we stifle the release in muffled groans.

And end in the dampness of a night bathed in dissatisfied thunderstorms, a perspiration foreign to the heaviness of the air, and a humidity that wasn't like a cascading drizzle.

Or a dream in shambles.

==II==< &< &==II==

==II==< &< &==II==

Chapter Text

Burnished gold, polished platinum, carved ivory ...

The filaments of pigments loosened in a haunting ritornello. Precious gold threaded into the glittering platinum, distorting any airs of nobility the medium might have claimed. The two pigmented essences were difficult to mix, having the same bases evaporating in the rigid fixity of their links, true treasures embellished with micron-grams so tenuous in their mixtures, that they were carefully calculated by the master illuminators.

Only, the delicate and so fine brush which spread out the precious material, was not expert, and struggled for a few minutes with the clumsy layered touches, simply wrinkling the straightness of an elegant nose a little more, noble in chiseled wings, perfect without deviation or bump. It was quite an art to tame the practice of illumination, and despite the long moments of observation with brothers specializing in this art, Trevor had to admit that he was still far from mastering the relentless mixtures of delicate inks that did nothing to their liking, in failed miscellany which made the young novice sigh with disappointment, with his trembling hand.

“Everything is an art for mixtures, young Belmont. Some pigments cannot be miscible with each other ... and we mustn't spoil the material in unsuccessful trials, because they are precious with real gold mixed in the egg paste ... ". One of the illuminator brothers had explained to him, amused to see so much wonder in the eyes of the young future knight. The man had marveled at such a passion on the part of a young boy raised for combat, and to handle formidable weapons, rather than feathers and brushes. A sensitive side probably, open to the beauties of the art, and which had motivated the brother in his patient demonstration to Trevor.

After yet another sigh of frustration, Trevor put down the thin pigment-soaked brush, but instead of diluting the precious medium, he chooses to soak the point of it, and to apply a wash of it with multiple shades fused in an aerial ballet, along a line with the point of coal which he had carried out in parallel with his work of illumination. He then considered the graceful spread on the vellum, absorbing infinitesimal spirals of carbonaceous pigments into the damp arabesques. Fascinated, he observed the random and natural reaction of this incredible fusion between opposing mediums. While he gave a little boost to the otherness of matters and their dissolution, by tilting the support more or less, his mind sailed to imagine the whimsical curves and volutes of chimerical creatures, and other demonic beings which swarmed in this country. His brain, influenced by legends and myths, heated up to craft extraordinary stories, while contemplating the work under construction under his novice hands.

He didn't know that this ritual would've been more natural for him, as a child and adolescent, to contemplate himself in the fullness of the simplest acts, like drawing or painting, helping to develop his so fragile Psyche, rather than having to seize from an early age improbable weapons destined to be subdued in desperate battles. But that he was far from realizing. For him, all this inhuman training in the relentlessness to make him a knight who would one day stand up against the devastating power of the Dragon, all this intermingling of senseless turmoil shattering his childhood, was normal and part of his destiny. War dogs bred in intransigence and fed hatred, Trevor expected nothing better from his situation than he considered "normal" from his first steps in a world perverted by the most deadly requirements.

And now he was sitting among the heaps of parchment, vellum tangled with timid sketches, vials carefully unopened and capped to avoid clumsy overflows, the charcoals and coals dirtying the tips of his long fingers, small aerial fabrics absorbing overflows and erasures, all scattered in an arc of a circle on his couch and the ground where he had displayed his beginnings of difficult projects, in order to have a perspective on the results.

Slowly, the cellular tissue did its redemption over the sutured flesh, and every now and then Trevor winced a little at the feeling of the threads being pulled, knowing full well that not much was needed, yet, to give way to the painstaking work of mending. So it was with measured and cautious gestures that the young Belmont fluttered between his artistic endeavors, his mind finally at peace and free to think of something other than the problems that had accumulated with the thunderstorms.

He was a vision all to himself. Efrain, who had left the large curtain pushed aside, glanced from time to time amused, all occupied at the same time with his preparations, and the inventory of his herbs. He had seen someone who had slightly injured themselves during the cleaning chores. After his departure, the herbalist hearing nothing coming from the room, thinking that the young had succumbed to one of his sleepy passages, had discovered a funny and unusual scene where Trevor wandered through montages he had scattered on the floor, table, and even his bed, concentrated by his playful task, various instruments between the fingers, floating in his nightgown still too big, - Efrain had noticed that in a short time, Belmont had lost weight, again - the indentation of the fabric gaped on the shoulders haloed by the loose hair, and whose strands resembled fiery stallions freed from their shackles, the tendrils clinging in curls to the hollow of thin collarbones. Trevor, in a reflex movement, tossed them back and forth again and again, releasing his curious gaze to observe the tracings made.

The youngster was so supple and moving in silence, that he appeared to be a diaphanous specter traversing the delicate gloom, shrouding the room in their perpetual aura threaded with gold and flame. A timid sun darted its pale rays, barely recovered from the nocturnal storms, and the misty rays crossed the stained-glass windows, casting its moiré in the suspended dust, bathing the objects in soft and velvety shades through which fluttered the marmoreal silhouette and almost slender in his thinning.

Was it necessary that Efrain dared a weakling: "Be careful with your sutures! ‘’ To which he received a barely muttered grumble from a mouth arched nicely over a focused pout. At least he was focusing on something that drastically changed him from his long periods of sleep where the youngster felt hopelessly useless. Acthéean had gone to help from the first hour, and mightn't come back until late at night. It was therefore necessary for young Belmont to find occupations other than sleeping - not having his companion to concentrate him in rich discussions, as it seemed they had become accustomed to - it was in his nature.

Efrain gave himself a few more moments to admire his "young boy" evolving like this in his drawn dreams, before setting off again in his decoctions he had prepared to filter. As he resumed his instruments in hand, Trevor for his part amused himself by attempting a test by means of a drop preciously charged with gold and brass, which crashed in unparalleled grace on the vellum, causing a little more a halo scattered around the path supported by charcoal.

- ~~ 0 ~~ oo ~~ 0 ~~ -

“Plop! »Cried the puddle thrown by the bucket broken up by too many manipulations and spitting its last oily drops of dirt on a nasty smear of ash-soaked soot, having settled through the grooves of the slag-mired slabs.

Acthéean leaned for a moment on the handle of the broom, the brushes of which wore very quickly and lost their broken fibers from the increased cleaning. He let out a deep sigh of discouragement, wiping his face shrouded in its eternal stubble, accentuating, if needed again, the attractive features and the mystery of the hazel-gray gaze.

He hadn't said a word since he left the apothecary, early in the morning, to help his cronies with the endless post-storm clean-up. It was necessary to start cutting the unfortunate cedar struck down, and debit the pieces in heaps which would come to feed the hearths. The torn trunk gave off a heavy, aggressive scent of burnt, which would never quite dissolve in the air, leaving its imprint of sudden death forever on the gullying occasioned, where a remnant of thick roots stubbornly scratched the ground itself blackened by electricity.

Efrain would try to harvest some roots and seedlings, for the realization of his medicinal anointings. He also knew that the sap of the cedar had valuable peculiarities for bath oils, of which Trevor was a follower. Sure. All these buggers were only thinking of burning a vegetal that had many other healing skills, but which were only used by a few connoisseurs. In their wild pruning, they risked ruining the few small roots and bark that could still be used, and Efrain’d struggled in the midst of the carnage trying to save what could be saved for his distillation experiments.

It was quite naturally, while considering his comrades crumbling and grimacing from the cleaning gestures, that his mind wandered towards his friend who remained in the warm privacy of the room, where he was slowly healing. His face remained marble, indecipherable to others, as he thought back to the wonderful end of the night that had finally seen so much happiness all of a sudden for Trevor. His eyes so blue, transparent as diamonds, so moved at the first act of kindness bestowed upon him. There were not many such moments, and Acthéean felt no shame or remorse for having finalized these moments of happiness by sealing a kiss that brought these two soul mates a little closer together in the currents of icy air of their respective solitude. He'd achieved the feat of taming the fierce warrior novice, where the others failed miserably in their stupid and hateful exactions that only made this frightened animal kick more in the shafts of the rebellion.

A sense of wholeness swept over him, and he took a moment longer to contemplate him in, silently in hopes that smacked of an unwavering and long-gone attachment to the youngster. This young man who, moreover, at no time had rejected him, and had accepted the kiss with a submissive lasciviousness which left no doubt as to the dark feelings blooming in this heart thirsty for tenderness.

No one, seeing him thus, leaning thoughtfully on his broom, could've suspected the warm, intrusive thoughts in fantasies dawning like fabric flowers dotting their aerial wings in a slow and lascivious unfolding. A flower of darkness, like the sumptuous black diamond mane he'd combed for a long time, electrifying an underlying eroticism that he'd struggled to contain. He must've done violence to himself not to give in to an aggressive impulse, which would only have made matters worse if he had succumbed to it.

God ! He hadn't felt so much brutality unloaded in his veins, even when he was dating his favorite mistress. Such an intense attraction that'd ignited his nerves, the mad hormones almost releasing their palpable smell of upset pheromones. He'd even wondered if young Belmont had detected the musky scent of his arousal he'd suffered so much to suppress.

His sensitive nose'd denoted the subtle and heavy essences at the same time, coming from himself, and the more evanescent ones released in a hesitant and timid wave of the body of his friend. It was sour, bitter, heavily weighed down with the virginity of the coveted body. This still clumsy body of affectionate, sensual gestures, but whose scents he'd caught full of shame, poured out by the sly fruit of a burst of enjoyment in its wonderfully poisonous tendrils. A sweet and creamy venom, covering the fluffy strata with a layer scattered with jerky movements. A smoothness that he knew his friend caulk under sighs he thought inaudible, before plunging into a restful sleep. Acthéean'd mentally counted the seconds of ecstasy he guessed, more than he heard, stretching the overheated flesh unfairly and hungry for a result that would calm the nerves exacerbated in this first experience.

And then, again, the dreams had done the rest. It wasn't the first time that his friend'd woken up, completely dazed, overwhelmed by a night of strange songes who'd had the skills to boil the youth.

Suddenly, like a house of cards collapsing under a more brutal breath, his reverie was unpleasantly interrupted by an unusual exchange between a group of his comrades, who breathed a little from their chores, gathered in a circle of connivance, as if they shared secrets, which only they were able to understand the dialect of.

"It's rumored more and more that thunderstorms aren't natural ...

"Apparently the Founders believe it was due by the Dragon ... He has the power to act over the elements ...

"I wouldn't be surprised ... the worst thing is that these storms would've brought demons out of the forests ... They would've come down from the ruins of Agharta itself ...

"A village north of Wygol has been attacked ... it won't be far before we're sent to scout ...

Acthéean knew those who spoke like this well, and unfortunately he also knew that they could be credited with. If thunderstorms were unnatural, it didn't surprise him too much. What worried him now was knowing that villages not far from the Brotherhood's walls were being attacked. So the Dragon repeated its strikes, and approached dangerously. As if he was looking for something specific. Or someone. The apprentice knew objectively that the Dragon's warlike and destructive fury was aimed beyond measure at the Brotherhood, but for reasons very murky and incomprehensible to them, the Prince of Darkness was busy bringing about the total destruction of this Brotherhood.

Of course, in all their ignorance, stimulated by the blind will of the Founders to keep absolute secrecy, novice warriors and knights did not know a third of the distressing truth, nor the origins of the Dragon. Not even the name of this Supreme Knight who'd carried with pride and haughtiness the banner of the Brotherhood, only to disappear mysteriously, on a day of total devastation, and to see his very name erased from the Holy Archives.

Even Guilyem de Rem, Acthéean's father, had never referred to him, although he'd known him perfectly, and rubbed shoulders in the same fight. What no one knew either, was that De Rem'd his lips sealed in utter silence in the face of this Knight's fall and downfall. He'd been one of the few witnesses who'd discerned the laconic and blurry images filtered sparingly by the large Mirror. And in aghast silence, the Founding Fathers, and the highest Knights, like de Rem, had sworn an unchanging silence sealed by blood, on this shameful secret which would forever disfigure the Brotherhood.

But of all this, no one knew a strict litany. No one had pierced the twists and turns of this cryptic abstruse, and ever would, with mouths suddenly shut, in case words were released on the beaches of the deadly blue lips.

And the broad, membranous wings of an Antediluvian, stretched over superstitions bubbling madly in fevered spirits. In the distance, could we hear a languid complaint about the disappearance of a fantasized child ...

Actheean cautiously stretched out a back, becoming painful under the permanent curvature, towards a ground too low. As usual, he took no part in the conversation, and let the words fly away in the remaining dampness of an atmosphere that was difficult to breathe.

"They came down from the ruins of Agharta…". Lord, if these troubled times saw the filthy creations of Hell desert the thousand-year-old ruins of this fabulous city, and invade the surroundings, it was still necessary to prepare for something infinitely more formidable, since the devastating quest of the Dragon ... Agharta protected within its forgotten foundations a number of infernal children, found nowhere else, bolstering the ranks of the hordes with their unstoppable power.

Shivering under these not very optimistic findings, Acthéean instead chooses to leave the place, after a last angry blow on the spot flared in the fat and soot, permanently polluting the shiny and worn pavement. There were plenty of places to get rid of stormy anger, whether it was caused by a Dragon or not, he knew he wouldn't be home until late night.

000 ~~ ooo ~~ 000

He considered his reflection for a moment in the distorted tain of an old hanging mirror, no one knew why, among the junk of the place. The anamorphic image sent him back to the realization that his shirt was definitely ruined, torn by nasty rips, and soiled that it could no longer be properly cleaned.

He made his way through other hallways, which opened with sealed doors, spilling more or less tragic scenes to his discerning eye. Everywhere was the mud that had seeped in with the swirls of boiling water.

The cleaning laborers were all wiping exhausted and grimy faces, bitterness and doubt making their mark on the devastated features, and the limbs creaked under the grueling workload.

The airtightness of the hazel-gray gaze slipped over these scenes becoming banal. The barracks vibrated with preparation for departure, as had been whispered earlier in the kitchens. "Wargs" had arisen from the depths of the forest, and had slaughtered without concession more than half of the attacked village. The Founding Fathers, aware of the terrible events, had dispatched a special garrison which would leave in the early morning hours. The village was a good two hours away on galloping horseback, so the heralds would ride, along with a small panel of back-up warriors, to report the disaster, and aid the survivors with medical supplies. Efrain made every effort to equip the healers, being himself imperatively requisitioned from his apothecary by the Founders, he couldn't leave the premises to be away for so long.

The anticipation of something devious that was about to attack was felt in hearts, and insidiously besieged the fears in its poisonous spokes. It swarmed, it abounded in all the worried words, wherever Acthéean strolled.

He almost expected to be part of the troop sent to the village. After all, he'd been handling the Combat Cross for some time now, and had an expert hand in the art of swordsmanship. Failing to take care, he could be involved in possible suspected battles. A thunderstorm never came alone, so neither did a battle. All the more reason when the demonic invasion had done so much damage to the human ranks.

A passage in the stables was an additional indication of the boiling in the troops which were preparing, choosing the mounts less affected by the storms, the others being repatriated in other stalls unscathed of the barracks, still too frightened by bad weather, even if no loss was to be declared, fortunately. On the side of the pack animals, it wasn't so reassuring, some animals having hastened in the terror of lightning, some unfortunate little ones'd succumbed under the terrified hooves of their peers. Water had cascaded into parts of the stables, and the hay supply was spoiled for most of the bales. It was therefore necessary to evacuate the poor animals still traumatized in dry and clean rooms, to palliate the first aid of food especially, because in this century, one didn't take the time to heal the wounds of the animals, they themselves served as primary food.

Acthéean helped the evacuation for a while, before returning to another place where he could provide help. He especially took the time to go see his friend Andréas, shuddering in anticipation of the spectacle that risked unboxing its disasters in front of his eyes.

A breach had given way under the impacts, and displayed its crooked smile, viciously clogged through the exposed rafters, high in the ceiling. Of his toothless slyness, still dripping greasy tears, landing in a dark corner invaded by piles of literary works definitely wasted. Students had erected makeshift scaffolding to reach the dizzying height of the ceiling. The boldest, insensitive to vertigo, walked in equilibrium taking turns of makeshift materials in order to caulk the maximum under random tows. Acthéean, by virtue of his greatness, stuck to the task, blocking the crack as best he could, while waiting for a more solid clogging, which the workers set out to manufacture as a matter of urgency.

Andréas opened the doors to the secret rear rooms, which had made him admire previously, and both were able to draw up a quick inventory completely devoid of damage. Housed between double walls of considerable thickness, even the winds filtered their rage only in sound, the effort of traversing the incredible consistencies reduced them to poor sighs that'd become harmless, scattering in the echo of the vast spaces protected from the mysterious twilight.

It was an intense relief that relaxed the shoulders of the two men. Rejuvenated by the optimistic examination, Acthéean continued his wandering through the common rooms, the dormitories, the studies, where everything needed hands to chase away water and mud with deep mops.

- ~~~ 0 ~~~ -

The evening dragged on as the apprentice returned. Trevor perceived, hushed up, the rumbling rumors of the latest news swelling the ranks of the locals. If his gaze correctly pierced the zigzagging shadows through the diffuse glow of the stained-glass windows, he'd the impression of a ballet of exhilarating ghosts by something that advocated in the air. Between three strokes of charcoal blurred by his fingers colored by all the pigments he used, even if his mind sailed in the happiness of his artistic relaxation, his ears had picked up the murmurs in the alleys, and the conversations caught at random by the visitors invading the apothecary, and telling Efrain of various not very optimistic accounts.

It was thus that he became aware that his friend Acthéean was going to have to be away for almost three days, being part of the garrison planned to help the attacked village. Efrain had to fend for himself for a while, with the necessary care and the logistics of certain tasks that Acthéean'd taken under his responsibility from the start of his training. Fortunately, the list of straight sores had ended with the suspension of training, and there were few reported illnesses or serious injuries. Nor was it every day that a perverted tutor let off steam on his young to train ! With the young Belmont, Efrain'd had his quota of worries in a single character, when he put on such "high performance" on the board, in a month of care dispensed.

It was therefore with a stern and scrutinizing eye that the herbalist brother gauged the sutures, on the lookout for an effort that could've nullified his painstaking surgical work. Trevor wasn't very quiet under the scrutiny, knowing full well that he'd pushed his limits in the art hours, rather than at rest, and he almost feared a corrective slap for failing to obey the comfort of sleep.

But the wounds were beautiful, and healing beautifully, and Efrain was so glad to see his 'youngster' so happy with his gifts, that he never would've had the heart to even preach the rebellious child. There would always be time for him to return to brutal and warlike habits, so he could take advantage of these precious moments of relaxation! The brother also had to recognize an admirable job which would've brought glory to the ranks of the illuminator brothers, but the young man was dedicated to the art of war, an art which made people fear more for the future of Belmont, that if he remained quietly behind the illuminated desks.

Efrain set about making everyone wait, with his decoctions of Lavender and Hibiscus, and the heavy sweet scents covered the atmosphere that remained stuck in the rays of a dampness that hasn't given up on weighing down with its scent bodies moving as if in slow motion. Trevor occasionally added a 'paw' to his sketches and ink wash, severely deeming an awkward draft, or an incorrect angle from a perspective of the drawing.

A perspective that was far from being known, let alone mastered and instilled, in this century when backgrounds were realized on a single plane. But Trevor subconsciously sought a balance in the forms, which he guessed was missing something he could not conceive of in his lack of artistic education. It was a strange and fabulous mix of demented architecture, interwoven with the flesh of creatures straight out of the Brotherhood's bestiaries, which Trevor always studied with passion, learning all the flaws and loopholes, as well as the skills.

Chimeras and Manticores, Griffins and Gargoyles, also spring up remugles of memories of his dreams. In the midst of this unusual equilibrium of lines and curves inextricably curved sinuous convexities and concavities, from which emerged hazy outlines strangely resembling "dracholic" shapes. Obviously, Trevor'd been influenced by his disturbing dreams. He then observed that through all the stumps, the mist of evaporated ink, the inconceivable and successful sfumatos, the sharper or hatched feather lines, than the cloudy evanescence which defined itself before his eyes, represented the imposing mass of the great Mirror.

He already knew to whom he would give this fresco which he still considered awkward, but to which he knew how to follow up, a more concrete pendant perhaps, or more abstract in his unbridled imagination. He also knew that these were works that the church wouldn't be comfortable having in front of them! But, whatever, he wasn't meant to be a great artist, so his works would remain in the privacy of his bubble. And that of his friend ...

A wry smile slipped discreetly on his lips, when the absurd idea of entrusting his "masterpieces" to Andréas occurred to him. Hidden among the multitudes of shameful and astonishing works he'd discovered, his shameless sketches would illuminate the clouds drowning dark spirits with their venom of sedition and perdition. He imagined them in all their mocking flamboyance, and gave a subtle sneer that raised a questioning eyebrow to Efrain, who was gazing at him, immersed in his dreamy ramblings.

Then, under a look that had become more severe, the young Belmont packed up his humorous utopias, his images of priests made ugly by scandalized grins,- his proud flatteries towards his skinny Ego who, however, really needed it -, Trevor did a little tidying up in his work, freed his couch from the intertwined vellum and parchment, carefully slipped the comb liturgical ivory, and its precious apotropaic symbol still frozen in the mystery of its bronze and silver waves.

He was almost like a child being ordered to tidy up his room by his parent. Except it was the body of a young adult who lay loosely between layers, stretching voluptuously in smooth layers of well-being, like he'd never experienced before. He realized that his happiness wouldn't last, when he resumed his classes, his training, but God ! that he missed his weapons. Even blunt, and not really swords as they should be, being still in the novitiate age, he looked forward to re-handling them. He already envied Acthéean for having passed the Combat Cross test, allowing him to make his outings as a prelude to attacks within the ranking teams for the tasks invoked in the fighting.

Stuck in the layers of furs bathing his bed, the wounds on his back, mute in their knitting and pain - and this time it wasn't from the opiates! -, the two steel lakes stared at the braziers, their glow reflecting the wild and furious gold diluting in their waters. The pupils dilated smoothly, almost minute pulsations dancing to the notes of the heartbeat, and sleepy vapors flooding his mind with their dust of sand.

Outside, the darkness gradually enveloped in its onyx and diamond shroud the world as it fell asleep peacefully, peace found after the nerve-wracking thunderstorms. Everything was quiet, and it was hard to imagine the cataclysm that had unfolded over the course of two nights. Still, a sticky wetness persisted, a sign that perhaps the Heavenly Ire was not done with all those who trembled under his wrath. What if these thunderstorms were really caused by ... the Other?

It was common knowledge that the furious battles waged by the Dragon, for over a decade, had always been preceded by equally devastating and destructive shards from the rampaging elements, which made Hell look like on Earth. Besides, the rumors had reached the apothecary, it was never trivial. We were saying that the Founders anticipated the worst to come.

Trevor felt a lump of bitterness block his breath, at the prospect of next outbursts that could be deadly this time. Just like it had been for this lost village not far from another ghostly and deserted, cursed, Wygol.

Wygol which'd seen the rest of its inhabitants cling to its crumbling foundations, desperately clinging to what little possessions they had left, entangled in an eternal curse. Wygol, whose alleys resembled infamous quagmires that never dried up, and in which floundered the rest of a humanity frightened under the Terror, but persisting in remaining between the walls eaten away by the insane foundations of a cursed architecture, coming from the depths of millennia, probably even of unknown dimensions in space, border of the Infinite on everything.

Monstrous enclosures that could've engulfed an entire country in the madness of its development. Arrows that kept flirting with the ever dark storm clouds, with stars that had been dead for eons. Tucked away in the inextricable roots of slow putrefaction, which ate them to the bone, the surviving inhabitants of Wygol lived in absolute fear, in the uncertainty of when the Castle would come back to life with Its Master of the All, the Void and of Chaos.

And yet, these people had nowhere to go, because their streets regularly carried putrid carrion grazed by the claws and fangs of the night, but strangely, the bodies of the victims were generally not those of the inhabitants. Or very rarely. In its eternal curse, Wygol was becoming somewhat ‘spared ’, it will be said, by hordes, preferably slaughtering fresher flesh from elsewhere.

Eternally woven into an encrypted anathema, Wygol hadn't counted the days, the years, for a long time, as if time had suddenly stood still, since a grand Knight of the Brotherhood had confronted the Vampire Queen. Before disappearing into the depths of the haggard and absurd architecture that long ago belonged to Necromancer Lords, devotees of the most aberrant dark arts, then to the Supreme Vampire Queen. The walls were oozing in abundance with the blood of the brave, even foolishly reckless, the hearts of the inhabitants of Wygol could no longer bleed in unison, having congealed in stone, since that moment when the Queen had abdicated, well against at will, to see an Other more powerful than all the hells, encircled the crown of Prince of Darkness and Absolute Chaos. Why did the Dragon spare Wygol, this unfortunate village, more than any other, relieved from the total conundrum.

Perhaps, unbeknownst to popular knowledge, it was because one day, one of its brave tiny peasants, had opened the way to the Underworld to this mysterious Knight, whose weapon which had greatly impressed them, had been aptly named: Vampire Killer... The memory of the place had preserved this courageous gesture. Maybe... But no one would really know, because Oblivion had quickly swallowed up events...

Yet Trevor, like everyone else, knew only a tiny part of the truth, such a fine chink in the compact Veil of the Unknown. He could only swallow the piles of lies and absurdities, distorted nonsense in the sacred preaching of an Entity, that many thought IT had abandoned them. Starting with this Stranger who came out of nowhere, and having been caught into the void of forced oblivion.

As his thoughts floated tenderly in the sleepy cotton wool between Twilight and Wolf, they had the strength to hover again, graceful, in the lingering vapors of a kiss that isn't at all chaste, but very intrusive. He felt like he could still feel the gentle pressure of the lips against his, and the spark that had ignited his flesh recalled his memory. It had throbbed deeply, in there, in the depths of his groin becoming painful, he didn't know why. Before understanding the reaction to the successive chain of his hesitant and inhibited biology. Was that it, kissing? Share the molecules full of endorphin, the atoms shielded with hormonal excitement, an explosive broth for the brain giving in to the wave of pleasure discovered. He thought he knew that, one day, with a woman, like the moral codes required to the detriment of the contrary and paradoxical feelings of the boiling body. Moral codes? What was it that he had surprised in the library hiding places? Were his dreams swayed by their shameless debauchery, about which he had no word.

"... but your dreams are your fantasies that you try to suffocate under holy words of absolution ... hypocritical, like the others ..." squeaked the Shadow, currently lurking in the depths of his belly, and instilled him electric shivers making him exude slightly, cheeks flushing with the delicate blush of boldness.

"You grant him, which you don't grant to others, who tirelessly covet you ..." biting a little deeper into the wound of mortification, and sending more guilty vibrations that made him moan, stretched out on his pillow.

The fatigue accumulated during the day, and his obstinacy not to rest, finally got the better of his body which tensed up one last time, before relaxing in the arms of a Morpheus welcoming him with fragrant and musky armfuls of Somnus. The black stars cut out of the obsidian of the heavens, soft shrouds dressing his being, and carrying him in his great Sleep.

Late at night, plunged into the abyss of troubled sleep, without a word being uttered, a light hand stroked the cheek of the sleepy man who continued to dream of a lamenting Dragon in a language forgotten for eons ...

~--~~~000~~~--~

"You must come back ... Where you will go ... My footsteps will always follow you ... So that you come back ..."

A chipped and badly damaged tip springs out of the peat, there all is dirt and rawness. The hard footsteps make a strange sickening "schrouitch", a spongy sound that suggests flesh and gore mixed in this infamous molasses. Fingers stretch out, hesitant, before pinching the destroyed edges of the book that is peeling away from this shit, with that same nauseating noise. The plot's dripping with unrecognizable moods.

In the big Mirror is reflected the exact opposite of his disgusted image in the face of the fallen find. The reflection chuckles, as Trevor feels the urge to throw up, and he sees in the false bronze tain his "twin" spreading the putrid pages. Another perverse sneer draws the features of the demonic reflection, while the pasted sheets let out in cascades of jerky images pieces of strange scenes, stretching and diluting in their illumination stains from which they were born. It makes big drops that 'plop' on the ground, always with strange squeaking sounds. The inks seem to come to life, and a voice nearby whispers:

"Look… these are the paintings in the hidden room…"

In a hard-to-understand magma, the images come to life, mimicking obscene acts, as they drown in the acidic dilution of the pigments, becoming nothing more than a single stain made of dubious, slimy traces.

In the Mirror, the reflection still sneers, opening the full page of the book which is slowly rotting, pierced by fine living vines. They even look like… worms?

Whose voice is whispering what he himself sees as obvious? Trevor answers him, at random, because he's afraid of what he's going to see, if he turns around.

And then he hurts. A throbbing pain that tears his throat. All of a sudden, straight. It takes his breath away, as he feels something sucking powerfully into the wound caused.

“It hurts… It hurts me. "

" He just wants you to come back… He took so long to find you… You can't go back, until… Where you will go ... Because it is HIS Law ... "

The images now inexorably diluted, crawl up to him, slide over his suddenly bare skin, seep into his hiccuping breath. He can no longer breathe, all his energy, his essence disappears in the suction of the Other. His clothes were ripped off in an incomprehensible dilution, as if they had been eaten away by a strong corrosive. He has to endure the fiery shame of showing off his naked body, what he guesses are perverted gazes scattered all over the inks of darkness engulfing the destroyed world.

But it doesn't hurt anymore. No. Powerful hands grip his hair wildly, pulling his head back a little more, showing off more of the whiteness of his throat stuck with his own blood smeared by the murderous lips.

"My book, I want my book ..." he thinks, worried about the purulent disappearance of the tome, as he weakens from the loss of blood.

"What does it matter, these are Chronicles about a false man ..." the Voice whispered, next to him ...

Someone gently brushes his hair, while it is still held by the relentless grip. The contrast of the two takes calls out to him : one is soft and flattering, almost charged with a restrained sensuality, in the brutalized locks, the other is hard and uncompromising to make you scream so much it pulls on the roots, as if they wanted to tear off the scalp.

He tries to see through the tears flooding his so blue gaze, who is there, but doesn't help him. Who goes after his throat. And the Great Mirror pours cascades of nauseous mosaic inks in their nuances. He perceives sketched scenes that disappear into the opprobrium, uneasy eroticism, while distant choirs begin throbbing litanies, veritable lullabies releasing their anguished notes on his flesh quivering with cold and pain. But also, trembling with something which he can no longer control.

The sucking continues, and he knows that soon he will be bled dry. He's already very cold. Numbing his limbs in a frightening submission to his Attacker. It hasn't hurt for a while. This is a very bad sign, he knows that.

Suddenly, the lower part of his body, the depths of his belly, the folds of his groin, twist in searing pain, burning his whole being. It rips inside him, forces the barriers of muscles, his flesh twists in the intensity of the intrusion. Everything within him is torn apart, under the nasty thrust of an unmanageable invasion of its heaviness. He wants to scream, but his voice has died down. One hand, still in his hair, still reassuring, another grabbed his own which he sent haphazardly around him, seeking a lever of support.

"Let it be, HE brings you back ... where HE will go, you will go ..." sings the Voice, at the same diapason as the choir at the back of the bronze tain.

Burning sensations do not run dry. It is an agony of his flesh. Exhausted from the loss of blood, torn by relapses shattering his privacy, he knows he is going to die.

In the distance, mingling with funeral chants, resonances of combat, somewhere. Shields that give way, swords slicing bodies en masse. The cries of an announced retirement. A world that crumbles in unison with his own abused body.

The sung moans cradle his being as he dies, while one hand brutalizes the strands of silk a little more, to the rhythm of the tremors in his body, while another hand continues to caress that mane. A mane that loses its glares of blue night. Which rubs off strangely in graceful puddles, where onyx black and royal blue intertwine their rills, to slowly drip into a vial of purple glass in which waves of scarlet and obscure wave in a sensual ritornello, before resting at the bottom of the bottle while waiting to be stirred by the hand of the illuminator artist. The ink has turned the color of his hair, of his blood.

And he realizes, before dying out in nothingness and chaos, that the hands, the soft one, the wild one, are now grasping long white locks bathed in silvery lunar shards, of incomparable moiré silk beauty ... and the infinite lengths stretch and drag in the pools stuck with unspeakable matters, to weave themselves voluptuously around the sculpted gimbal of the Mirror. The weight of their crazy locks, makes him tilt his head a little more in a graceful arc revealing the suave depth of his long neck now sprinkled with the silver of extinct stars, and his own blood.

A final leap of his body which releases unusual, hot, heavy, sticky layers, with a strong musky smell of satisfied excitement ...

~~~ --ooo-- ~~~

Acthéean really knew how to be discreet, silent. A specter parading through the room, between the braziers and the hearth, the flames of which he somewhat rekindled as he generously fed the mouth of the fireplace, - though summer was slowly settling in, the successive thunderstorms had left traces of unforgivable humidity for the walls and the atmosphere, added to the permanent dampness, but which it was absolutely necessary to dry up, at the risk of being too hot -, navigating gracefully on tiptoes, while getting dressed. He pulled his shirt into his brais, with the flat of his hand along his stomach, fluttering his cleaned tunic over his shoulders. A surplus of light chainmail was added. It was still a long journey, and no one knew what they would find on the way to the devastated village.

Everything'd been adjusted in total silence, as if the apprentice didn't exist in this world. He scratched his stubble lightly, deeming that he would remedy it later. A few quick fingers put back the silky and long locks too, in place on the shoulders armored by the chainmail

Then, after a quick glance around, he gazed for a few more seconds at the coiled figure of the sleeper, in his layers of furs. A faint lightning flashed under the orange shards of the braziers, and he approached cautiously, being careful not to jostle the artistic little piles his friend'd made at the foot of the bed. An amused smile stretched his thin lips, when he recognized the object carefully and tenderly held by the long hands : the mirror was sleeping in its clawed indentation, preciously protected by the palm spread out on its tain shining faintly under the intimate gleams of the room. Trevor was sleeping half on his side, half on his stomach, both hands cupped like a dome over the artifact.

Acthéean also knew, that by this position and the pressure on the pendant, his friend'd again had disturbing dreams. Besides, he'd heard his moan weakly, long minutes in that night too silent now that the thunderstorms had died down. Moans of pain, or disturbing sighs, he couldn't define it in the complex babbling provoked by the dreamlike universes of young Belmont. What he did know, however, was that the youngster'd been exhibiting disturbing sleep disturbances for a while now, and Acthéean didn't know whether to interrupt the sleeper's flow, or remain silent at the strange reactions, even night terrors like the previous nights. It was also not the first time that the apprentice noticed that, during attacks of nightmares and bad sleep, Trevor hugged his pendant tightly. Was this to be seen as having any influence, or were there forces at play in the young rebel's mind?

Ostensibly, Trevor was immersed in one of his deep sleeps, making his condition resemble that of a dead man. He hadn't felt him come in, during the night, and he would still be engulfed in Morpheus' arms when he left. Too bad, he would've liked to talk to him a little, before hitting the road. But, it wasn't like he was never going to come back, right ?

Very quickly, the time of a suspended breath perhaps in order not to break the so intimate atmosphere of the moment, he dared a finger as light as a feather, flirt with the hand holding the artifact, then a quick stroke of butterfly wing on the angle of the cheek slightly pink under the intensity of dreams, certainly, to barely remove one of the eternal locks stubbornly covering that large forehead. It was wasted effort to put some semblance of order into the disheveled mane of sleep, and more than half of the face was drowned in the soft comfort of the pillow, on the verge of suffocating him. Actually, Acthéean rechecked the subtle, slow flow of the thin breathing, to the point of doubting that his friend was still breathing.

Reassured, without further insisting, he turned away from the diaphanous figure, hooded in shining gold halos and ashy haze. When he pushed aside the curtain on the door, Efrain was already standing in front of his hellish devices. The whole scene had unfolded without a single sigh of noise disturbing the gravity of the silence, nothing that couldn't cause the thin crystalline dome of absolute void to crumble, bathing the halftone darkness of the place. As if this room was definitely not part of this world of nascent noise, and clamors gradually piercing the still sleepy alleys.

Some instructions were quietly distilled by the herbalist, while Acthéean checked his package, and gave a brief stroke of the cloth which enveloped it to his regularly maintained sword, useful to him in certain practices, and especially during the outings in scout. As it was going to be precisely the case. Mainly formed for the Cross, which he handled with progressive ease, for the past few months he'd carefully reserved it for high, more dangerous missions, and even kept it carefully kept in the wing of the main nave, under the management of the Sacristan Brothers responsible for the abbey. Acthéean was still a 'novice' for the Cross, to have the possibility of taking it on missions where, directly, it was ordained Knights who could manipulate it under the blessed directives of Cardinal Volpe, the only decision-maker to apply the strict rules for owning it.

The holy weapon created by the warlike genius of Rinaldo Gandolfi, existed in few copies, and some copies were even enhanced and embellished with vicious and relentless retractable weapons for the creatures of darkness.

Not everyone would've the blessing of having this holy jewel, a true Holy Grail for the Brotherhood, in their hands. You'd to prove yourself for years, and again! many would never get that chance. Acthéean was one of the lucky ones, although he strongly suspected that being the son of Guilyem de Rem, positioned him at the top of the list for accessors of the Good bathed in the Essence of God. He also knew that the young Belmont pranced far in pole position to possess it one day, supported by the Founding Fathers.

Caught in putting his mind in order, it was barely if he heard Efrain's constant babbling, very verbose this morning, as he was preparing something warm for his apprentice, before he left. He swallowed the prepared broth too quickly, squeezed into anxious silence. It wasn't fear he felt, no, far from it, but something more devious that flowed in a thick mass, like venom, in his nerves excited by the adventure, eliciting an anguish that he couldn't understand.

He didn't know why, but instead of heading for the exit door, his nervous footsteps brought him back into the lukewarm confinement of the room, as if he'd forgotten something. What was he looking for? His eyes immediately got used to the difference in the light, and the grey hazelnuts caught the metallic glow of diamond blue in a second.

Was there a need to talk ? To foolishly say he was awake to find something to say ? No. The warmed face of a dawning smile, a slightly mocking look, Acthéean walked towards the bed of his friend, who had risen on his elbows, the disheveled hair around the still sleepy eyes, falling in furious strands along the shoulders and bust.

" You go away ?' Trevor hissed, barely emerging from the mists. 'I didn't hear you come in ...

"That, I know ... We shouldn't be gone too long ... But I don't know if we're going to stay and sleep there, it'll all depend on what we'll find ...

"Hopefully it won't be too heavy in loss ...

Then Trevor reached out a hand to shake in a friendly grip. Yet Acthéean let his instincts decide his free will, taking the hand by the thumb in the chivalrous welcome, and squeezing the palm firmly, bringing them both closer. He rested his forehead on Trevor's, happy to see the teenager comforting himself in his loving grip, whispering in a form of humor:

"I would tell Efrain to wait for me to remove the sutures ...

"Because you think you've been away for so long ?" Trevor asked, swallowing hard.

"No… I'll be back soon… but you heal quickly too…"

Trevor didn't know what to answer, affected by his friend's gesture, he kept in touch with his forehead as hot as his. All he wanted was for the reinforcement garrison to return as quickly as possible, and not encounter anything bad. Mostly.

"Hear my prayer, my God, let nothing happen to them…" he pleaded intensely in his mind. Before adding in a hushed voice: "I would've liked to be among you ... To be able to participate ...

"You can't, you know that… Heal, Belmont, you better be in good shape when I'll be back.

A last breath of choked laughter. Both foreheads slid for a few more seconds. Acthéean kissed so thin, and yet so inflamed at the same time, between the eyes, at the root of the nose, while squeezing a little more the thumb and the palm fevered by the covers, but also of the redness which mounted on the diaphanous features, and along the neck so long and graceful.

With a slight metallic squeak of his mail and shoulder pads, Acthéean straightened up and left the room after a last friendly wink, which he knew perfectly well had been received by his friend's gaze : a knowing wink that was reflected in misty blue waters.

Trevor heard Efrain whisper something, advice maybe. The heavy door was unlocked, and its low slam echoed for a moment more in the silence that had barely been disturbed in its lazy stretch. He seemed to perceive, filtering through the delicacy of the stained glass, the characteristic sound of the clattering of calipers, and the stamping of hooves, in front of the apothecary. The garrison was ready, and waiting for the last warrior to join them.

He thought then that he hadn't had the opportunity to offer his sketches, and stared at them for a long time. Spread out in their more or less careful bulk, the dullness of the vellum outlined its basic tones in the fading glow of the braziers.

Ooo --- ~~ --- ooO

“This mission must absolutely be a success…' emitted a weary voice with anguished tones.

"Do you think they'll find IT ?' another asked, in calmer and deeper tones. 'It's imperative that they bring IT back ... We cannot leave THIS, at the risk of being discovered ...

"But, are you sure IT at least exists?' asked a third voice, equally calm and puzzled. 'What if this was a legend born in the minds of poor ignorant beggars ...

The voice was drooling with unmitigated contempt for the people. The man to whom it belonged stood frozen in the carved embrasure of the arched window, a critical eye on the long line of horsemen passing through the gates of the sacred precinct, and walking away into the wan light of the early morning. Hands folded casually over his lips pursed in a worried smirk, managed to hide a slight tremor from the excitement of the mission.

"No, not a shadow of a doubt ... De Rem had witnessed his writings, and had surprised him more than once in the writings ... He entrusted it to us, remember. Unless you count Rem among the 'ignorant beggars' ...

A few seconds of silence followed the acid pike.

"But… are we sure THAT'S in Wygol?"

"That’s logic ..." whispered the man near the window, and who appeared to be the most powerful and ranked among the rest, and visibly unimpressed by the harsh thought. 'Personally, this is where I would've hidden THIS ...

The others approached in turn, casting hopeful glances at the figures bearing the Brotherhood's banner, gradually diluting into the landscape, which grew thick with lazy mists.

"We just have to pray to our Lord, that they come back safe and sound, with THAT ..." finished the one who seemed to be the leader. He wrapped himself a little more in his large Guild-colored gowns, encompassing his lean length of an unruffled ascetic. His cardinality was distinguished by the so-called "ecclesiastical" colors of his stole casually draped over the shoulders, as if it'd been thrown away from hasty clothing.

"Above all, let us pray that you didn't ram yourself, Volpe…" added the worried first man bluntly. The acidity of the tone sent a rush of adrenaline rushing through the Cardinal's veins. Was he really guilty of injunctioning a seemingly doomed mission? It seemed so. At least, in the eyes of others.

As the fearful attention of the three men was drawn to the retreating garrison, none of them saw the strange nauseating glow pulsing in the depths of a gigantic Mirror polished in its bronzes and silvers.

Neither of them caught the evil tendrils of darkness twisting into an unhealthy intermingling like putrid vines that eroded what they touched in their twirls. Ramifications crossing the borders of the placid tain and pale in its shades of sickly shards, stretched out like fine claws which scraped in perfect silence the marbled floors, to curl up through the padded shadows of the recesses of the large room dimly lit by candelabra that had run out of steam with their candles.

While human backs quivered from the chilly morning, consciousnesses never recorded the treacherous undulates anamorphosing their disintegrated shadows in the murky waters of tain turning to verdigris. Penumbra with infamous origins corrupting the sanctity of the place and the gigantic apotropaic artefact, which dared to infiltrate the precious reliquaries exhibiting the unique and sacred weapon, designed by a genius mysteriously disappeared. The whole atmosphere that took on the hints of misfortune in its prosaicism, growing heavier under the irrational death scent, even causing the unfortunate flowers on display in priceless vases to wither.

Everything seemed to crumple under an unreal hand, crushing the petals bursting with their vivid hues one second, only to be corrupted the next in the corrosive torments of noxious emanations. A decaying brown polluted all the floral splendor, and the leafless heads hung in their wailing shrouded in sudden erosion. All that was glowing bouquets, lush vegetal lyricism, crashed under the deadly onslaught, torn apart under the circulating venom of living shadows. In a suspended breath, it was as if a furious Deity had swept the scene, once so sublime in its natural display, a spectacle of desert desolation.

Then, suddenly, with a blink of an eye, everything retracted, sucked into the misty meanders of the diaphanous tain. Nothing remained of the inconsistent invasion. The whole absorbed into a retraction with retroactive effect in the subtle movement that totally escaped the notice of the three unconscious.

The Big Mirror had just delivered a most disturbing message, subordinating a behind-the-scenes activity that should've made people think about the merits of businesses within the Brotherhood. So no one could understand that this angry Deity was expressing His intrinsic willingness to turn away from human functions that no longer concerned Him. Warnings abounded in the vilest "penumbra" sense, in the venison of an Obscurantism grafted into the superstitions necrotizing these centuries of collapse. The man saw in the messages only what suited him perfectly for his own convictions. And once again, the Brotherhood was unaware of anything, blinded in their disregard of words suggested by what was arguably their greatest Knight, having warned too late of the decay of this world fallen into the clutches of Darkness.

When the three men returned their attention to the center of the room, and the Great Mirror, they were dismayed to see all the floral displays completely rotten, the flowers swimming in their putrescent puddle of decomposed moods, and foul smells, resembling smelling of sulfur ... even the candles had collapsed in shapeless heaps, on their supports oddly carved in dripping wax suggesting uneasy shapes. None of them flaunted their cheerful little flames, blown out by something inconsistent, and throwing the elaborately proportioned room into the shadows whispering ethereal screeches in threat …

--- ~~ õoõ ~~ ---

The landscape was disgorged with difficulty from the lazy mists installed, flying over the sheets of swamps, stagnating above streams whose even the song had lost its gaiety in its bursts, and whose banks of fine mist drifted like a blanket on the paths which the hooves sometimes trod with hesitation. Horses, extremely sensitive and nervous animals, often reluctant to sink into the detours of roads winding between the thick groves of scattered forests, whose trees barely regained their luxuriant vegetation, as if they were devoured from the inside by juices exhausting them, their sap strangely dried up despite the timorous rays of the sun. We were in a country that was never bathed in the heavy heat of the regions, located further south.

And this morning, the solar star was struggling to show itself - once again languishing in a routine painful for men - smothered by the carpet of mist clogging the mouths it could've pierced with its pale rays. The ambiance gave an unusual silver canvas to the entire bloom, which to the appreciative eye was breathtakingly beautiful. Atypical lights bathed the entire valley that the garrison crossed, but alas without any amateur gaze of beauties being brought to them. On the contrary, the riders, feeling their mounts to shake themselves off like this, were much more worried about the stagnant silence around them, on the lookout for the slightest suspicious movement through a nature that'd decided a late morning in its sleep. Not a bird song, not an insect trill sounded. This made the men even more nervous, who felt like they were walking in cotton wool, before being inundated by the storm surges. From experience, they all knew that when Nature was so silent, something bad was brewing.

Acthéean was aware of all of this, managing to register all the different parameters in the changing landscape they all passed through in the dull gloom. He'd noticed all the details of frozen nature, this reluctance in time displaying its abnormal taciturnity, the absence of life that simply didn't bode well. But he also took a moment to admire the dissimilarities in chromatic gradation, elaborated by a morning light stingy with solar in its tones. His nose categorized the proposed olfactions drowned by the languid and glacial dew.

His mind wandered happily between different universes that were his own, refusing to share his thoughts, as he heard a few of his comrades voice their fears in half-words. While guiding his mount with the tip of the reins, a fiery powerful steed with a shimmering night robe under its lightened warlike harness, the caparison being dressed for wars and combats, - but they weren't going to fight, were they ? something was wrong in that muted resonance -, he kept a careful hand on the hilt of his sword, ready for any attack, inwardly congratulating himself on having oiled the blade.

At the height of seventeen, Acthéean was far from a novice, as his Masters of War still assumed. Value doesn't wait for the number of years, it's said, and this saying fitted perfectly with the mold of calculated prudence of the young man who'd reached a degree of maturity very early, by the vagaries of his short life. He'd this in common with his father, Guilyem de Rem, who'd strived in tactical and strategic practice from an early age. Of this, the father couldn't deny the son, even if he was no longer there to see his concrete evolution. Although the apprentice herbalist was more devoted to the sacred arts of medicine, prevailing over his warrior art.

Strengthened by his instinct which rarely deceived him, Acthéean remained on the caution reserved for his environment, without sacrificing his spiritual wandering. In an anguish shared in silence, the garrison advanced in the hours which brought them closer to Wygol. They'd to take a fork in the mountain, which would make them avoid the cursed village itself.

Despite the exacerbated nerves, jumping at the slightest noise, even before a sudden flight of wild geese, a rare animal presence in the morning, the garrison arrived at the border of the village, without any particular pitfalls or worries. It was time to head North, in order to reach the devastated village, there was still a good way to go.

However, to everyone's astonishment, one of the Knights in charge of the garrison halted, and removed the stirrups for a few moments, while they distributed what looked like new orders, causing the garrison to split into two colonies : the one continued North, with medical supplies and two healers, the other went to… Wygol?

Acthéean was astounded to note that among the two healers planned for the village, it was two of his companions, totally benevolent in medical practices, who were sent on a rescue mission, with the bulk of the troop. He found himself with three of the Knights General, plus five companions, heading towards Wygol which they were to invest in a dark mission summoned at the last minute by Cardinal Volpe himself, as was indicated to them in the explanations which followed the impromptu separation of the garrison.

"No wonder they wanted more of us for the team, they've been planning this from the start…" Acthéean thought, watching his chosen comrades join the other troop. He was irritated, somewhere deep inside, to be a pawn again in decisions that were carelessly made without regard to individual functionality. A strict rigor of which he'd to accept the tacit contracts, without ever formulating his free will. The army, the war, were intentional crushers of moods who'd never inscribed their laws in the gold of delicate illuminations ! And he clung to optimistic beliefs, when he longed to be trained in caring empathy, rather than slaughter. In this case, the Brotherhood didn't bother with awkward details, throwing the dice at random on the carpet of a permanent war game. Too bad if they fell back into mortal figures ... the banner of the Divine trickled of bloody rivers, and hid its contempt in a sneering chuckle echoed in all hearts frozen with shame.

There were stunned exclamations from the ranks, quickly eradicated by orders barked by two other Knights, obviously not very happy with the change of program they had been expressly ordered to inform the troop about at the last moment, in order to alleviate any indiscreet rumor within the confines of the Brotherhood. The discontent was swept away with a wry kick, as the nape of the neck sagged in vindictive annoyance.

Acthéean, despite his face which he kept sluggish, couldn't prevent a twitch of curious and slightly worried eyebrows. In front of his mutism, one of his comrades, Norton de Riv, whose father'd worked under the orders of Guilyem de Rem, approached him, and couldn't help exchanging a few words in confidence about his sly concern, making him beat the heart of anguish at the announcement of the new orders.

Norton didn't have much experience in field trips, although he was a year older than Acthéean. The apprentice even suspected that it was his first real outing. So he easily imagined the growing torment in the face of the unforeseen nature of the mission. The hapless young man expected to come to the aid of a village at bay, not to navigate troubled waters in a cursed and haunted village. In addition, rooted at the foot of the Château !

"What do they have in store for us, do you think?' he asked sheepishly.

His too thin silhouette plated with his armor too big and too weighty for the mission, couldn't hide his obvious awkwardness, by his choice of harness too heavy for a simple rescue mission, by his hesitant and redundant movements, as if he always checked his actions several times in a compulsive behavioral disorder. Acthéean, rightly, didn't see him at all as a Knight or a warrior, just a poor kid who'd been gotten rid of so that he would promulgate a line of seasoned fighters within the Brotherhood. The kind of kid he suspected the first fatal blow would fall on his frail shoulders. It’s bad luck ’fault, it’s the fault of ruthless Fate.

Acthéean appreciated this novice, he was gentle and not vicious, never a wrong word. One of the few who had spoken with Trevor on several occasions, in his stubborn solitude, to make him a conversation to which the young Belmont responded more out of politeness than out of interest. He also knew Norton admiring Trevor's exponential prowess, and he strongly suspected the novice was secretly erecting a private Sanctuary for his idol which Belmont'd become in his eyes. Often times Norton had proudly confided in his verbal exchanges he'd just had with Belmont, like a trophy brandished in the amused ears of Acthéean, shyly bragging about having perhaps tamed a little, oh so little! the savage Belmont, with his sweet and intellectual words.

Acthéean also assumed that Trevor tolerated the novice's chatter, certainly amused, or tender ? by his insistent presence but remaining innocent and timid. A refreshing, pure drop of water in the slanderous molasses that often suffocated the Belmont. Despite an attitude that seemed to permanently reduce the young man to almost nothing, sometimes, there emanated from his thin stoutness a luminous aura whose subtle coruscations pleasantly flattered Acthéean's bewildered senses. A significant positivity which had its effects on those who interacted with him.

Acthéean gazed resignedly at the somewhat stunted figure in his shoulder pads. Norton was visibly upset, and displayed a face drawn by the throes of rising agitation. Golden and copper highlights danced in his hair falling in graceful waves on the shoulders, fluttering in the rising winds, pinching in an abnormal coldness the flesh revealed in a neckline too flared to be sufficiently protective.

But, they were standing in the high mountain, overhanging Wygol, it was much colder there than in the valley where the Brotherhood nested. Dark eyes were fringed with faint grayish circles, indicative of poor sleep, and the complexion was more transparent than usual, almost revealing the fine veins of the neck. Norton'd a beautiful face too, very thin, almost effeminate in the carving of the nose and lips, but without ever being able to compete even once, even in small details, the perfect and incomparable beauty of Trevor.

Acthéean decided to keep an eye on Norton the entire time of their mission. He suddenly felt empowered with his own order to extend a protective wing over the young adult.

"They just gave us a nice surprise," he replied in a whisper, indistinguishable to a curious ear. He knew he could speak with young Norton, without their words being deflected and scattered to the winds of misplaced curiosity.

“Now we can only wait and see what they want from us… But this village has a grim reputation, I'm amazed it's still standing.

Acthéean sits down for a few minutes, awaiting orders to leave, taking advantage of a lull to pull out a flask of water which handed to Norton. The other section of the troop had left on its side, attacking the convoluted climb up the mountain, before descending on the other side of the slope leading to the devastated village. The remaining garrison navigated the rumors whispered by the taken aback riders, and deeply disturbed by a mission of which they still knew nothing too much, the Knights having a certain knack to leave a suspense which gradually gnawed the nerves, obviously not concerned by states of souls of novices with which they had no use either. The high ranking officers were impatient under the injunctions, and didn't even bother to hide their disagreement from the troop of novices serving as sacrifices at the altar of the Unmanageable Unknown. It wouldn't have occurred to them to display a concerned humanism that would've relieved the obsessive weight and tension within the group.

Norton refreshed himself with Acthéean's flask of water, studying the various behaviors around him. His beautiful dark eyes stared at the crumbling tumbling ramparts of Wygol.

Then his gaze lifted, - rose -, immensely high towards the sky, and swallowed painfully at the inconceivable vision of the architecture looming in the background of the village. To say that Wygol was practically embedded in the tortured interweaving of the edifice was an understatement ! Even though it gave the incredible impression of being in the foreground of the landscape, the Castle blurred its brutal and sharp features blended into several dimensions of perspective. Whilst in the background, entire swathes abruptly reverted to the reality of the foreground, mercilessly burying Wygol's remaining roots and enclosures in its demented foundations.

Norton's bewildered gaze floated over the sharp spiers of cursed churches and turrets, soaring into the infinity of the starry carpet, almost giving the impression that the tangled spikes flirted outrageously with dead stars, shattering layers of cumulonimbus heavy. Everything was violence and aggressiveness humanly inconceivable in the architecture projecting an undeniable cruelty in its lines and contours spitting in the face of the heavens, and the whole edifice gave the impression of literally violating any space foreign to its foundations, to make them fade into erotic delusions of penetration by arrows and marble erections.

The rains and the tempest, the thunder and the storm, were they the effects of an enjoyment extirpated by force from a Nature repelled by such an unpacking of such obscene growths? We couldn't speak of stretching in all directions, even in a nonsense calculated in such a hazardous way, as this exponential tidal wave in impossible heights, where only a logic based on rules of quantum physics, or of non-Euclidean geometry in its apostolates distorted by a disordered hand. Everything was impossibility in this architecture which one could only qualify as insane, absurd, foolish unthinkable humanly. It was constantly moving, it was remodeling itself permanently, it blended into unacceptable horizons, before taking shape in an exacerbated ten thousand Vector madness. Chaos in the pure state of its Evil.

And Wygol stood amidst all this ever-changing aberration. Frozen in time. Why ? How? A tiny nutshell, having let all of its substance leak out, to dry in general indifference, disappearing from the eyes of the world.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen this…thing?” Acthéean extrapolated, visibly amused by his companion's suffocating reaction to the aberration displayed before his eyes, wide with fear. More of a rhetorical question than a real one.

“Yes…” the blond whispered. ‘I've seen drawings and heard testimonies in classes, but never yet have I been a direct witness… It’s rumored that IT has been there since long before the advent of the Dragon... Long before the Lords of Shadow... That it’s a powerful family of Necromancers who have summoned this horror from the confines of Hell, where the man should never set foot there...

Acthéean couldn’t boast of having seen the spectacle many times either, but he’d witnessed it twice during his childhood, in the company of his father, and it was more than enough to give him nightmares for long nights after their travels. He’d often wondered if his father hadn’t dragged him behind him in a wicked act of sadism, so that the child he was, was traumatized for life. Coming from Guilyem de Rem, it would hardly have been surprising or far-fetched.

Nevertheless, he was seduced by the poetic prolixity of the young blond, and nodded thoughtfully, his gaze in turn focused on the deadly angles of the turrets sitting high in the sky.

After a long silence, Norton, struck by a sudden idea, asked, still in his soft vocal timbre :

"Do you know the story of the former Abbot of Wygol? ...

"Not all… but go ahead, says, before they tell us to move…" Acthéean suggested, knowing that his friend needed to talk, to release his anguish. He could well grant him this intimate moment of exchange.

“There was an abbot who'd gone mad because of the fear of the vampires which swarmed: Vincent Dorin. He abandoned his people, locking himself in the highest tower of the abbey, which can be seen from here ...

Norton pointed a finger at a massive height of a square tower overlooking the huddled mass of the abbey in the middle of the village, and the optical illusion of which made it almost lean against the basic foundations of the castle. At least, that was the vision they got of them, from the top of their rocky mountain promontory. A wide alley crisscrossed its convolutions between the vertiginous drops, to reach the heart of the village. This was where their troops were going to pass. The horses would have plenty of room to move, without risking falling along steep slopes in their verticality.

"He was in possession of a powerful artifact, the Tears of Christ, which enabled him to keep out the vampiric hordes that were ravaging the village. He's been caulked there for years, mad with terror, abandoning everyone ... and everyone was dying because of his fault ...

Norton had a specificity in his storytelling that piqued the interest of Acthéean, although he knew a lot about this sad story of a man who'd become demented with terror, obviously not having enough faith left to hold up the sacred standard against the nocturnal hordes, and huddle behind a vial of sacrament oil.

"The tower overlooks the abbey cloister, and there is said to be the most fabulous library in the area. The Abbey Library was renowned for protecting some of the most valuable archives, as well as rare Chronicles that cannot be found anywhere other than its heavily armored foundations. It's rumored that the Forbidden Chronicles, which'd been written underground, are sleeping there, in the oubliette pits that the meanders of the library have become.

"You know a lot about that," Acthéean admired. 'You tell it well.

"It was my father who told me about his travels, his discoveries, what he saw and heard. Of course, there're many legends, but this one is unfortunately true by the cowardly actions of Father Dorin. A little over 15 years ago, a Knight of the Brotherhood of Light confronted Lieutenant Brauner and his vampiric hordes, as well as his brother Olrox, who were terrorizing Wygol and its inhabitants. Brauner and Olrox were generals of the Queen of Vampires: Carmilla…

Norton took a sip of water, and continued his story:

“The locals had nicknamed this Knight the 'Savior of God' and his weapon that he wielded, made by Gandolfi, our Fighting Cross: the Vampire Killer. This Savior had the original version of the weapon, with all the add-ons added. The original disappeared with this Knight. An inhabitant of Wygol, to thank him for having rid them of the crooked abbot, led him at the time, with his sidekick, a white-haired man, older than the Knight, to all appearances, on a secret path leading at the castle of the Lord of shadow.

"So there's a secret path that leads to the Castle?" underlined Acthéean, interested.

"Yes ... but we don't know more, the inhabitant is probably dead, and the strange Savior has faded into oblivion. All we know is that he successfully defeated the Vampiric Queen, her horde and her generals ...

“Yes… Acthéean whispered.' We replaced the Scourge by another… Charybdis in Scylla…

"The identity of the Knight is faded in memories ... No one ever knew who he was ...

"And Dracul has arrived…" Acthéean finished thoughtfully. 'In My Father's Chronicles, he says there was a time far away, when the labyrinthine gardens of the castle were the most beautiful in Europe, and many pilgrims came to visit them, and surrender to the inspired meditation of the place. I guess it all disappeared into Dragon Hell ...

The two young men were thoughtful in their story, each recounting the details to the other, in a discreet lyricism that suited both perfectly, perhaps wishing to let themselves wander through the afterglows of an era they seemed to regret not having lived alongside this unknown Knight. Perhaps they also observed a reciprocal osmosis that was surreptitiously woven into their lonely hearts, taking each other's hand in the wandering of their own admiring fantasy.

Their conversation was interrupted by a brief order suddenly shouted, making the spines jump and relax a little, before facing the stranger.

"Everyone in the saddle ...' barked the Knight imbued with its power over hesitant novices. 'We descend by the path that you see below, to access the village. We don't stop, even for a request from villagers, we aren't there for them.

Strengthened by his rank, the "barking" Knight spun his steed nervously, proof that he himself wasn't at ease with the mission either. In his inability to control his mount which pawed its hoof on a rocky outgrowth, he displayed a behavior exasperated by contrary orders, while darting an annoyed look at the listening riders, and somewhat resistant in their flight to headwinds.They all felt like game shuttlecocks being hit against rackets competing for the merits of the direction.

The steed whirled powerfully, arching on its hind legs, before kicking off the drift through the various deceptive traps that threatened to suddenly collapse under an improperly positioned hoof. Caution was required before reaching the long, more stable path what remained of the village gate.

The troop strolled cautiously, directing the horses in dangerously tilted gravity toward merciless ravines. It took them over an hour to arrive on a reassuring level, without pitfalls or falls. All, on the other hand, displayed faces drawn from concentration, and whose skin exuded a perspiration not only due to the effort, but indeed to an insidious fear which made their nerves boil, gradually of progression.

The unasity that poured out of the desolate landscape, and out of the village, took hold of the throat, making the veins swell with the adrenaline rush of fear. Even the most seasoned Knights displayed a nervousness like never before felt, and in their haggard gazes, the recognizable nuances of superstitious terror.

Even though they were blessed by God, they didn't know if God was by their side, in those moments! Even doubt was human, in the face of the abandonment of these cursed places by the Divine!

And in the drifts of darkness, fell their Beings whose very essence was already manipulated by the powers at work, protected by nebulous outgrowths of a dreaded form. Allegories watched over their progress, as They wiped away their tears from the absence of eyes opening into the Nothingness ...

So it was, slightly relieved from their well-managed perilous descent, but a feverish affliction gripping their souls more heavily, that the little troop crossed the crumbling arches of Wygol, in an abysmal silence only interrupted by the rolling of stones under the hooves of horses.

If there were any living in there, they only had name! Not a living soul, not a cat, no birdsong. Nothing. As they lined a stone walkway as dilapidated as the rest, before entering the drawbridge whose chain was broken, and the slats of wood rotted perilously, risking collapsing under the weight of the troops, they passed shacks in poor condition, but one shutter was violently closed, proof, if there was one, of a remainder of life within them.

"Do people live in there? It's unbelievable… ”Acthéean wondered, overwhelmed by such stubbornness, as he watched his steed progress over the broken slats. When everyone'd crossed the fragile bridge, they huffed with relief, but none were sure they were going the same way.

Strolling along a narrow corridor surrounded by high walls, no longer protecting the name, collapsed for a while retreated, they passed heaps of ballasts clearly not coming from the foundations themselves. These tumuli climbed high along the architectural erection, sometimes blocking high smashed doors, yawning on the absolute void of rooms choked with successive landslides. The main beams lay for the most part in the excavations made in the soils which'd become very fragile.

A total desolation which spread in the smallest alleys of the village. It was all rubble, crash, scattered ruins in the smallest rivets of the houses still standing, no one knew how. The central square was a capharnaum of rutted cobblestones, dizzying openings on what could've been catacombs, perhaps, and whose slag and dirt had been lifted by the force of torrential rains and torrents of mud. If there were still graves underneath, the deceased couldn't even have a longed for and rightful rest.

Nothing had spared Wygol. And there were still inhabitants. What about a few shacks that you could call shops ’? As far as the frightening appearance suggested any artisanal activity, Acthean wondered how the remaining villagers even sustained themselves. Conceivably they were sending teams for supplies to neighboring villages, but Wygol was quite far away in the cartography known to the apprentice. Therefore, each equipped had to be the perilous course of the fighter to bring back nourishing substrates for a village ghost inhabited by living specters. Acthéean knew of the regular garrisons sent to the most needy villages, Wygol was one of them, the Brotherhood having as their primary mission to support and help the most deprived. Especially since the emergence of the Dragon. He also knew that the Brotherhood had taken under guardianship Wygol, because other Guilds had cautiously backed out, not wanting to deal with this realm that now belonged to darkness and damned shadows.

Turning their eyes wherever they might catch any other signs of life, the horsemen followed their leader, still in surreal silence, despite the trotting of the hooves and the snorting of the mounts, they too were made nervous by the noxious atmosphere. In fact, since the start of their trek, the horses had been difficult to cooperate, obstinate in their fright which the men understood well, with a hushed thought, so as not to offend everyone's susceptibility to their own transissement.

If there'd been beauty, a distant day it had faded in the merciless and corrosive folds of consummated drama. Wygol was no more than a handover, still accessing one of the masterpieces still standing in these times of devastation: the abbey, its cloister and its library.

It was towards it, precisely, that the troop moved slowly, carefully avoiding anything that could cause their unstable mounts to fall to death on the broken cobblestones.

They arrived at the foot of an outer keep, the roof of which had disappeared in the avalanche of scattered rubble, making its long, scarified cased body a dismembered carcass, as if it'd been quartered by the claws of chimerical animals. The keep must've been a living room, for the riders could discern through the disfiguring breaches ceilings shattered in their beams, an infamous disgust of putrid mortar where only scarifying insects had taken up residence. Of the battlements, there was barely a chip left to witness a life of yesteryear, a few dying stirs from a bygone era in prosperity. Clinging to the fractured ribs of the scrawny edifice, a draft arch suspended in improbable gravity, the last remnants of what must've been an ogived doorway.

Cautiously, and watching with suspicion, the horsemen passed under the arch, fearing at any moment that didn’t suddenly come unhooked, choosing to die permanently on the heads of those incongruous visitors disturbing its timeless anarchy. After all, what did they come to do in this place abandoned by all, and especially by God?

Even more cautiously than before, the riders steered the mounts through countless desolate slumps dotting what would've looked like back alleys once. The rhythm slows down with a gesture of the Knight General, fist raised and finger sketching in a circle to signal the orderly gathering. Everyone noticed the unexpected stop in front of high openwork gates, half smashed in, like the rest, and gaping on ... a devastated cemetery. Here too, this once-sacred resting place had suffered the wrath of fierce combat, and there was no longer a gravestone standing. High dividing walls displayed the same violence in their deconstruction spewed to the ground carrying armfuls of brambles and ivy. Statues of saints and angels were shattered on the ground, into multiple eroded pieces, their plinths strangely plugging large holes sinking deep into the earth. As if the remains were used to block the underground access routes, preventing anything from coming out.

Oh ! Unthinkable fighting had taken place here ... Even the ground had to be desecrated.

Once the horses were positioned calmly in an arc around the Knight 'Militia', silence fell, heavy, only touched by the clicking of the horsebit as the mounts nervously chewed. The commander waited a few more seconds, fixing his gaze on the old corrupted graveyard, before launching into a rant meant to calm his men. His voice tried to sound confident and firm, but his eyes said otherwise.

“Before we left, I was informed as a last resort of the injunction requested by Cardinal Volpe himself. He asks for an urgent mission order, in order to find a precious object in the eyes of the Brotherhood of Light, and that we'll find in this abbey. In the Library in particular. We need to do whatever research is necessary, however long it takes, but we absolutely need to bring back this… item.

The 'Militia' Knight spouted out the words at a speed proving his discomfort, as if every word had to burn his lips to utter them. The man was trained for high warfare missions, not hunting for something they knew nothing about. He didn't hide his contempt for such a task at all, and Acthéean suspected that this ordeal would inevitably fall on them.

"Forgive me," interjected one of his Knights in the ranks and colleagues, skeptically, "but what exactly do we have to find? Sounds like a mosquito hunt to me, all of it!

“We aren't here to discuss the Cardinal's orders!' replied the Militia sharply. The other Knight reprimanded, fatally whitewashed under the humiliating invective in front of novices.

"We need to access the Library and do the research," the Militia continued. 'Whatever we meet, we must annihilate it. Who knows what horrors lie behind these walls. I've in my possession the indications to carry out the successful research. We already know that we've to reach the heart of the Library and its altar dedicated to rare works, by corridors crossing the crypt, the access roads originally planned having been destroyed.

"What, are we here for a book?" again intervened the Second Knight who'd been viciously rebuffed. His amazement at the order allowed him to take reckless risks when discussing the orders.

" Yes. Inside, I'll tell you what book we absolutely must find,' cut in the Militia.

Then, putting an end to any dismayed dispute, he waves his hand in a gesture of departure. Everyone remained silent, delving into the memory of when they had missed a step in understanding the mission! Completely astonished, they resumed their mounts, following the Militia in stunned silence. The third Knight, stoically mutated, lined up his horse next to the second who had dared to take offense at the order, and whispered cynically and mockingly to him:

"This is your mosquito ...

Then, made his mount do a little trot to catch up with his Milite, leaving his comrade stunned. Despite the discreet tone of the wickedly ironic reply, Acthéean had caught it, and suppressed a huffed sneer, hiding his lips stretched out in silent laughter with his gloved hand. Norton who'd also caught the mockery, happy to see such a character being put back in place, had more difficulty in hiding his hilarity.

The small troop climbed the alley leading to the abbey and its cloister, in a mood lightened by the incident, and the comic image of a mosquito hunt ingressing into their depleted imaginations, where they saw themselves banging like mad on a poor bug stammering through a jumbled library ! At least, that is how Acthéean's fevered mind was conceived, which felt himself slowly cracking under a fit of nervous, liberating laughter. Their seriousness again when the opening to the cloister, also devastated, opened their curious eyes to the unpacking as pitiful as the rest.

Through the many rubble spreading their misery between the brambles and the wild vegetation which had resumed its rights on the place, they dismounted, and found to attach the mounts to the shelter of the alleys running under the arches, before entering in what was to be a holy place, dedicated to meditation; the gardens clean and cultivated without ever a weed having any right on the ground, and which displayed its most perverse desolations in its decomposition, from now on. The courtyard with galleries was invaded by a jungle of corpses of shattered wood, and loose stones from the walls, severely cracked in its ground, and whose scarifications made to its former peaceful beauty resembled unhealthy smiles playing on its state of abandonment.

The well open to the sky, in the middle of the garden, was not spared either in its disemboweling, flaring out into the depths that had long dried up. There was no longer any pulley, chain or crank. That a shapeless heap of scrap metal that had once been the delicate forged support drawing clear, clean water to feed the flowers and any vegetable garden.

Sketches of stone benches, having hosted monastic meetings and mediations in the most respectful silence, were now shapeless split stone blocks, mournfully aligned along the covered and closed gallery that formed the cloister. As in the usual arrangement of a cloister proper of quadrilateral form, the gallery was leaned against one of the walls of the nave, with an entrance under the porch, and another overlooking the vicinity of one of the transepts. A little further on, the gallery adjoined its shaded corridors with buildings reserved for travelers, stores or cellars, and further east, opening onto the sacristy and the chapter house.

All the accesses to these places were irreparably closed by innumerable scree in impassable mounds. Everything was frozen now in a melancholy havoc from a bygone era.

Eyes were clouded with grief at the devastation of a once-popular place. High gates divided the course of the corridors shrouded in decorated arches, their height preventing the neophyte from crossing their closure. However, there too, all was only traces of violent fighting, of destruction, in their forge twisted by something powerful enough to have corrected the arabesques diverted from their architecture, and the large locks gaped in their suffering of to have been melted under the splinters. Apparently powerful magic had been used here. The pointed arches were decorated only in name, having spat the pieces to the ground in the battle that raged. These same small porticos opened onto the numerous landslides of the internal walls.

The men's hearts were frozen in growing affliction, as their cautious steps guided them towards what looked like the entrance to the abbey's catacombs. At a nod from their leader, all the horsemen fanned out, gazing for any sign that might signify "danger," their hands clutching the hilt of the sword.

Everything reeked of the afterglow of powerful magic that had annihilated the seals summoned by Father Dorin, before he lost his mind. In order for someone to break down the holy barriers in this way, and leave their suffocating scent, it required the intervention of a character extremely experienced in the use of the various magics of Light and Shadow.

The little hairs on the back of Actheean's neck stood up under the tangible electricity still gnawing at these abandoned places, and he measured the immeasurable alph of the contributor: most certainly that famous Knight 'Savior of God', that no one had seen again.

No one thought of discussing the direction taken by the Chevalier Militia, as the hesitant steps echoed their scraping on the worn steps of the damp pavement plunging into the half-light of the catacombs. The smell took hold in the throat, and suffocated: sulfur, saltpetre, putrescence, and Death. All over.

Of course, it's a crypt! thought Acthéean, but deep inside him, it screamed the warning, and he silently drew his sword, holding it with both hands in front of his chest. The Militia knew very well the expert handling of the young man, and signaled him to put himself in the rear, watching over the backs of his companions. The Knight himself measured his steps in his, having drawn on his side a Claymore almost the size of a man. The Militia were strong enough to hold it with one hand, but found it more prudent to balance its hilt with both hands, as this type of sword advocated.

In an almost imperceptible tone, Acthéean allowed himself to whisper to his superior:

"Do we have to go through the catacombs?"

"Yes ..." the man whispered, in the same tone. 'Access to the Library through the Cloister can no longer be done, everything is collapsed. This's the only way to go up through the nave, and reach the high square tower where Dorin had locked himself. I saw the plans rectified by a previous garrison, which had redrawn the cadastres under the testimony of their personal observation.

"Because it's not the first time a team has come here?' asked Acthéean, suffocated. He stopped dead in his tracks, as they made their way up the last step into the smashed opening of the crypt.

"No ... we aren't the first ...

Then the Knight turned his contrite gaze to Acthéean, whispering to him:

"It really is a mosquito hunt ...

Bringing the discussion to an end, the Militia resumed the lead of evolution, leaving a puzzled Acthean whose mind was swamped with cascading questions. The mystery thickened in an unusual hunt for an object which seemed to interest the Brotherhood so much, to the point of having sent several garrisons on a search mission.

Obviously, what no one could suspect, by far, was the sad reality of a lie, one more, to be collected in the already full annals of a Brotherhood long accustomed to the most infamous manipulations to achieve their end; to murderous hypocrisies seeing the mass sacrifice of their young novices only trained for a war lost in advance.

Rumor or legend, one of the most powerful knights in the Order is said to have written his Memoirs. No one'd read a line of it, but it seemed the Brotherhood'd been investigating for years, in order to put the greedy hand on these writings that the Founders absolutely wanted to do away with. Knowing perfectly well the identity of the One who'd spat out his resentments and the painful memories on parchment, their greatest anxiety was that the underlying scandal would come to light.

It was preferable that the doors, oozing with the juice of shame, remained closed forever, and that many closed their eyes, taking away the sad secrets of human Nature...

When the troop fearfully crept into the place of rest and the most insane superstitions, none of them, alas, was informed of the smallest detail which, over the years, tapered its cropped stitches in the face of a world already having its foot in the grave. It was all a gigantic chessboard, on which danced puppets tied to the acerbic threads of ignominy, or dominoes in unlikely equilibrium whose fall would send tsunamis into everyone's lives. One and indivisible, the human strayed from established Rules of which he'd lost the explanatory note. He only affixed his ‘seing’ of agreement torn from fingertips signing in his own blood, the bottom of a parchment written in abjection's ink. The blood left indissoluble stains, turning brown over time, but still engraving its indelible ailments in the souls of individuals.

The catacombs weren't spared either, and the men had to ride huge shattered slabs at sharp angles dangerous to anyone slipping. Apparently a trap that had been set, consisting, as in the tombs girded by the pyramids, of a heavy ceiling of several tons to slowly crash, moved by a system of pulleys, on the invaders or the grave robbers, which died in excruciating pain under the pressure. The slabs had crashed into ... emptiness! The curious inquisitors had succeeded in hijacking the mechanism, judging the condition of the support coming off its rails.

So far, the whole development of the troop has gone off without a hitch, but nervousness was skyrocketing, men almost would've preferred to have some action which would've relieved them of their anguish. The knuckles of the hands whitened painfully, clenched on the pommels, and if there was a smaller animal or insect that interrupted the thickness of the terror, they would be ready to cut to pieces the unfortunate one who dared to breathe!

Acthéean was in the same state of alarm as his companions, and would be ready to jump out of his skin at the slightest susurrus. He thought his heart was going to burst from the grueling adrenaline rush, and sweat trickled through his tightened body, his hands slipping into his gloves.

When they reached the rusty gates of a possible exit, they considered for a moment blackened traces, like pitch, on the damp pavement: the old seals that the abbot'd scattered all around the crypt, as under the arcades of the cloister, had all been eradicated, annihilated by a magic pernicious enough to erase the sacred barriers.

It was no longer necessary to activate an opening mechanism through a drawbridge wheel, everything had been set on fire with the seals. The crypt was a mill open to all drafts, and other unhealthy ectoplasms.

The abbey was a veritable labyrinthine journey through its extraordinary land registers. Fortunately, the Knight in charge of his garrison had memorized the oddly topographical maps by his predecessors, and managed to lead his men through endless corridors, rooms hidden behind high cracked pillars, - anticipation of a future landslide, again distorting any directional plan -, crossing places with vaults eaten up with saltpetre, overflowing with sewage and stagnant, veritable foul-smelling cesspools, where all human filth accumulated. The troops thought they were suffocated by the smells devouring their lungs blocking the flow of putrid oxygen. It was while coughing and spitting that they fled the unsanitary place as quickly as possible, and scattered at the foot of gigantic staircases flared in their stony twists, finally leading to the high square tower.

Climbing the steps, Acthéean peeked through one of the fractured stained-glass windows giving the view of the steep climb of the steps, and which let diffuse a light weakened by the thickness of the wall to be crossed. Out of the corner of his eye, he checked the position of the horses, the view looking out to the side of the yard where the animals waited patiently, as in the poise of warrior dressage they'd been subjected to since their foaling.

One of the novices had set about lighting the few torches scattered along their progression, each motionless in their erosion stuck to the crumbling stones. There was still a trace of oil sufficient for lighting, and the men didn't hesitate to climb, never releasing their attention to their decidedly too calm surroundings.

Arrived at the top of the floor, the Library opened its dismantled doors to the relieved gaze of the Militia, who passed the opening with an exasperated sigh in tension. His men remained fanned out behind him, one eye on the dark depths of the stairs, where they all expected to see something leaping at their throats, they were so on nerves, and another on the impassable jumble before them.

The Militia turned to Acthéean, asking him to help push back the bulk of what appeared to be columns of shelves, of medium height, and which had spread all over the aisles. littered with crushed and torn books in what still looked like a huge battlefield there, too. So the largest and most beautiful Library in Europe had died out in the hellish calvary that had struck its walls. The two men combined their strength to successfully push aside the collapsed shelves, and create a path for a safe intrusion.

Neither paid precise attention to the swirling nebulosities interspersed in the suffocating twilight of the hall, twisting dizzily on themselves as they took on sinister humanoid forms dressed in hooded bures covering nothingness for faces, in which silvery waves intertwined revealing themselves to be long blades as the sketches materialized in their baleful swish. All rising from the ground, in a fatal hiss. This ballet had only lasted a few seconds, before invading the space of their sepulchral calamity.

To help with the effort, Acthéean must've sheathed his sword, and it was disarmed, as well as the Militia, when a warning yelped by Norton startled them. The next second their hearing was pierced with a languid, high-pitched cry, twisting their eardrums in a terrifically long trill, making them clap their hands to their ears to stop the hyperacute howl.

Before even seeing him, Acthéean knew what they were going to face: a Sword Specter, just like a Nazghul. Among the most dangerous specters, because very difficult to kill. Hooded by monk's bures, they levitated, sporting human-long swords, Claymores, which they wielded with deadly ease and speed. Their cry served to freeze the prey, as they fed on the life energy thus pumped by a spell they drew in front of them.

Of all the filth trick that may remain in the abbey, the troop hadn't expected to have to fight among the worst plagues guarding the cursed places. Their might equaled that of the terrifying Vampire Knights of the Carmilla Guard, and of which too many now served the new Master of the premises, in the Castle. In the abilities of skilled swordsmen, one didn't do more powerful than these Knights and Specters.

It was necessary to unload all the force of reflexes to avoid barely the charge of the Phantasies, on the Milite and Acthéean at the forefront of the targeted exhibition. And they were three bastards cutting through the air towards unarmed humans.

Acthéean narrowed his eyes, hypnotized by the ruthless blade which sliced its attack towards his bare throat, weakened by the sliding of his shoulder pads as he lifted the shelves. Terror had spotted the weak point instantly.

Õ0oo-- ~~~ --oo0Õ

In the distance there were screams, a long shrill hoot, entangling its unbearable tendrils in the brain about to explode under the force of the siren.

A hand grabbed the edge of a blade, and slid along with a high-pitched screech, cutting itself almost to the bone. A misty mass of indescribable miasma retracted into itself as it retreated, as if being sucked in by a rumbling breath coming from the bronze tain. Wicked welts tore the silver Lake of the Mirror, and he reached out to a undefined figure dancing there, shouting for help, echoing through the menacing archbuttons plunging their razor-sharp base into the mud.

Trevor knew that if he failed to reach the stranger's hand in the bronze tain, this latter would be lost forever. As he crawled through these putrid swamps, each sucking of which made a sickening noise as bodies succumbed to their death kiss, he saw his footsteps crush one by one of the uniquely colored flowers suddenly withering, curling up on their rotten stems, their petals crying out in agony in their rubbed off. Beautiful roses, or Snow Lilies, Madonna's Lilies, were tinged with nauseating shades, brown like old dried blood with which they soaked up the metallic scent floating in thickness.

The swamps were full of these withered flowers, stunted in their acidic etiolation, they overflowed with these foul loads. Yet between him and the Mirror where the pained figure was still struggling, stood fragile, the top of its stem threatening to break at any moment, a pristine snow Lily. Standing upright in its plantation, still untouched by the filthy splashes surrounding it, untouchable by the cascades of rain which fell on the world. As Death invited itself into the Great Mirror, and removed the grieving soul with the tip of its relentless scythe.

He knew he'd to pluck this unique Lily, and offer it to the lake that'd become placid in its argentinian, in order to free the soul in danger. Up there, all up there, the spiers of the turrets twisted into a sly sneer, as they released a tsunami of flames and ashes mingled with the tortured and insane arabesques of misty spirals, the colors of crimson and smoke. Shaping a silhouette he recognized with a shudder.

He rushed to the flower to mow it down with a steady hand, before the spirals of darkness reached it. As his fingers closed around the delicate rod, he noted that his hands were a pallid hue of silvery ash. The flower was snapped off. His gaze fell on his lower body sporting the same too pale shade. His belly, so hollow, jerked in the vagueness of interrupted breathing, and sported the same disturbing shade of silver. He unhesitatingly held out the Lily through the bronze tain, which opened to a grateful hand which took hold of the flower with a sigh:

"I saw my life in the mouth of the White Wolf ..."

The enigmatic words faded into a melodious song, so beautiful to listen to, that he paid no more attention to his windswept strands, scattering the strands over his bare chest. Enchanted by the melancholy lyricism, he didn't pay attention that the strands of silk were bathed by the silver moonbeam which made them their unique color ...

As he didn't realize that a vein as fine as a hair, came out of the opal corolla, stretching into a link taking its root in his navel, into an inconsistent umbilical cord so frail in its symbolism ...

--- ~~ ---

Trevor woke up with a start, exhaling violently, as if choked by a load on his chest. His heart pounding madly, as if he'd a distraught bird banging itself on the bars of its cage. His clothes were stuck in a profuse sweat, and his hand ached from its tightness in sleep. He found himself squeezing his artifact to shatter it, in the twitching caused by the dream.

He slowly took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. What was that dream again? A sharp pain lashed his lower abdomen, and made him tense up on the nasty pitch. As if someone had just dealt him a fatal blow by a contending object.

Moved by the memory of the last image of his dream - an umbilical cord so frail in its symbolism - he rolled onto his side lifting his shirt, examining the place that stabbed him with its sharp pain, a ghosting finger along his navel, as if he expected to touch such a thin thread there. The dream'd been so pervasive in its paroxysm.

The door curtain was abruptly pushed back, and Efrain came forward, stunned, his arms still laden with vials. Concern visible on his face, he leaned over to his youngster, brushing off his tools on the table near the braziers.

"What's going on, did I hear you screaming?

Trevor stared at him, still dazed from the dream, failing to order a word for a response.

"Did you have another nightmare? I'll give you some Lavender to calm you down. Hyssop too, your soul is in a melancholy mood ...

"Something's going on, Brother Efrain… something's wrong…" Trevor stammered, poorly recovered from his terror.

"You've had a lot of nightmares since your punishment, we've all noticed that.

"No, no… this time it's different, Efrain.

It was the first time that Trevor hadn't spoken the politeness of the rank of the herbalist, and crudely tossed his name in a choppy flow, proving the young man's deep confusion.

He rose abruptly from his bed, gripped by an irrepressible anguish he couldn't describe. This time the artifact, he was sure, had shown him something else. Something infinitely more terrifying, and he was sure it was about the Brotherhood itself. Acthéean!

"Efrain, the Mirror has never shown me anything, strictly speaking, but I think IT has been talking to me in my dreams for some time ... To warn me ... I don't know what ...

Efrain sits on the couch, trying to tidy up the open folder obscenely in sleepy debates, and picked up on his belly, revealing its rawest nudity. At this second, the young Belmont didn't care to show off his body weakened with panic, tetanized in what he now felt were strong clues warning him of unhealthy situations.

"Do you think these are warnings? Sent by the Mirror?' Efrain asked, somewhat skeptical.

"Why do I perpetually dream of the Dragon? Why all these horrors that come to haunt me? I didn't ask for any of that, I didn't ask to be the one through whom the Founders put their hopes… It's too heavy for me, I don't even know anything about who I am, nor about my parents…

"Trevor, Trevor… calm down, please. You mustn't succumb to the hysteria that guides your words. I'm aware of your situation, and that something can grieve yourself like this, but you must take the visions of your dreams with caution and distance. Your mind is influenced by everything that happens to you, and believe me, you experience a lot in the interaction of your surroundings. It can cause nocturnal panic attacks like you have already done ...

"Efrain, I think something has happened to the garrison…" Trevor dropped placidly, regaining his composure. 'I always have the same dreams, it's not harmless. But then I heard a cry for help ...

Efrain stared at his youngster for a moment, grieving at the great lakes of water throbbing with concern.

At all times, the Gods have always intervened in the dreams of men, to bring them messages, often sibylline and cryptic, but every detail is important.

He'd often hammered this diatribe to lost souls who came to seek advice from his philosophical wisdom, before being turned into reassuring theology, or rhetoric that flattens the most delicate questions on the nature of the soul inspired by the mystical songes sketched by capricious deities in the dreamlike universes of the sleeper.

With young Belmont, he'd to review his basics, taking stock of an atypical spiritual functioning in adolescents. What if Trevor was right? What if he possessed, for one of the reasons the Founders supported him, extraordinary gifts grafted into his transgenerational genes? If all of this were just endless continuity, a perpetual cycle manipulating family members into a round they've no control over? The Fathers'd invoked the extraordinary abilities of young Belmont, and expected a lot from him. This proved to be a burden that was difficult to manage for such a young person who couldn't grasp all of its enigmatic, indecipherable codes. A grain of sand crushed in the Wheel of Destiny. Like the others, before him. Like the Other ...

The herbalist wasn't sufficiently in the confidentiality of the 'gods' to perceive all the complexity of the cogs which jerked in an infernal machinery, but he was clever enough and shrewd strategist, to understand the gray areas which were tangled up in the young existence of the Belmont.

"Okay, listen… I'm going to go check it out for some news. But it's only been a few hours since they left….

"Brother Efrain, I want to come with you ... I can't take staying here anymore, I want to go out for a bit and stretch my legs with you…' Trevor asked, taking a sudden inspiration.

"Young brash, are you aware that we're coming to the night? There's no way we'll go out at night, you're not healed enough yet… and then I won't compromise,' he continued, seeing that Trevor was about to retaliate. 'It's no ! Still look in the state you"re! I don't want to sew up ad aeternam your wounds that you keep reopening! You'll obey, otherwise, tomorrow, I"ll go alone ...

Understanding the proposed emergency exit with a slight smile that lessened the invective, Trevor knew he'd gotten successful, but that he still had to apply himself to following the instructions of the herbalist that night. That upper lip, which was slightly thicker than the lower, arched into a typical adorable pout, which made him look so much like a naughty child, glad he had managed to catch a bird to tame. Halfway between wonder and adoration. Efrain himself was taken aback by the teasing nerve his youngster had shown to get what he wanted. Belmont knew how to make you say 'yes', when you'd planned an uncompromising 'no'! All with an innocent minois, and that cute little pout of the lip.

"Aaaahhh !! He'll go far, that one ... " Efrain sighed inwardly, affectionately stroking the cheek of a Trevor whose joy of having succeeded, glittered in the eyes.

Poor Herbalist Brother, if he'd known that when he'd such a thought, the Allegory of Fate turned away from the scene, and wept bitterly ...

# # ~~ ooo ~~ ##

The powerful arc, which curved in a blazing, flashing curve in its silver, slammed sharply against the Claymore, deflecting it just inches from its deadly target. Acthéean's throat was saved from sharply by the sword drawn in a thundering reflex from Norton who'd uttered the cry of alarm.

Carried away by the momentum of the blow's shattering, the Specter hovered over itself, unleashing another shrill cry of frustration, focusing its swift attacks on the young novice, the hellish entity's new target. Acthéean'd time to draw his Claymore, at the same time as the Knight Militia rolled into a defensive reflex, rapidly investing the space around him, a warrior seasoned in hand-to-hand combat. In his roll, he'd balanced his huge two-handed sword, and sliced in all directions, hitting the other two Wraiths surrounding him, floating and twirling at speeds difficult for the human eye to handle. The other two Knights melted into the deadly waltz, countering from all sides the dangerous cutting edges of the blades singing viciously in their ears stinging and agonizing movements of air like huge scavenging insects invading the choir with staggering noises.

Until Milite Grégoire shed his Claymore and unrolled his Combat Cross to the chain bathed in the coronation, the only possibility to stem the deadly round of the infernal blades. Even though the swords of men were dipped in cardinal blessing before each mission, the famous Cross of Gandolfi held the upper hand in eradicating demonic spawn, and it was a mind-boggling concert of serpentine paths that wreaked havoc, helping each group attached to its own Specter.

Acthéean and Norton, in a fabulously executed ensemble, finished off the first Specter that nearly pierced the apprentice's throat. The entity died in a nasal howl, terminated by one of the barbed spikes in passing, spun around, before melting into dust, and barely leaving an ashy trail on the ground. Other novices had jumped into the fight, helping their superiors. The specters gave terrifying blows, which when it hit the mark, made all the bones vibrate with unbearable thrusts, while the holy blades and those cursed clashed in devastating percussions, where he easily guessed that the simple thread of these blades was enough to cut humans in two effortlessly. Not to mention all the necrophilic darkness that infused it, transforming the dying who would unfortunately fall under their evil Claymores, into Wraiths doomed to eternity, just like them.

The Sword Specters knew how to counteract every human blow, by raising the impossible length of their weapon in a verticality causing a barrier of protection difficult to break. Just like the Vampire Knights. Everything was in the difficulty of splitting this protection stimulated by the blows, bending under the shock waves like reverberations which gradually oxidized the mortal flesh handling the weapons. When the Specters saw themselves ceding under the weight of attack and counter blows, their defense was to utter their inhuman howl, shattering their eardrums. Faced with their protections of darkness, the Combat Cross was able to break their hoops shrouded in dark light of the most harmful effect.

Acthéean understood that they'd to be interrupted in their shriek, slamming the flat of his Claymore squarely into the hooded heads, which instead displayed a face, emptiness. A black. Nothingness. Nothing. Then, without stopping, seeing the Specter weaken, he put on the alternating blows, until succeeding in breaking the protective barrier, and beheading, as it were, the demon. The others having spotted the procedure to get rid of these plagues, did the same in their continual strikes. And always the spiked ball of the sacred chain aided in the given agony.

Just before the Third Wraith passed out for other hells to haunt, the demonic blade made one last desperate bow. Who hit his target.

Acthéean gritted his teeth, when the blade slipped into the subtle gap that the chain mail had uncovered, the time of the maneuver necessitating raising the arms to push the weapon into the cursed bure, and cut the tender flesh in the lower abdomen. Fortunately, the demonic blade no longer possessed its dark aura power, disappearing to dust with its owner, so the wound wasn't corrupted into the noxious miasma.

The Knight Militia was by his side, in an instant of understanding, as was Norton, as Acthéean's legs faltered from the adrenaline rush of the fighting excitement and the sharp pain of the incision, springing up in the aftermath supercharged nerves. The blow would've been delivered just before the death of the Specter, Acthéean would've been eviscerated in the blink of an eye.

Nauseous dizziness seized him, and he collapsed, deprived of strength, supported by his two comrades preventing him from bumping too hard against the prone shelves, against which he'd just been thrown under the circular gravity of the blow. The face had emptied of all color, and displayed a sudden lividity, disturbing the whole troop who gathered around his sagging body. The ash and gray slag of the last Specter, still hovered in an evil cloud and hadn't reached the ground when all inquired about the condition of their fallen friend.

Quickly, the Militia pushed aside the chain mail, carelessly tearing off the shirt already soaked in blood, pushing aside the belt of the brais, also soiled by the flow of the wound. It'd been very quick in the flow of the action: as soon as the injury was caused, as soon as the effusion'd already soiled the clothes in its liberated gutter.

Yet Acthéean made the instinctive observation that the injury wasn't fatal. Awesome, yes, but not causing death, the superficial skin tissue'd been carved out without exact depth, not even reaching the muscle layers, or barely scratching them. It was just a brush against the super sharp blade that'd cut, without any force given in the desired depression being able to tear more deeply. Otherwise, it was the deadly and relentless wound, and Acthéean knew that there he would've emptied himself of his guts. It took a little let him fall asleep in the arms of the Grim Reaper. Strangely, as his mind, shocked by the vicious attack, slowly recovered, his thoughts drifted to Trevor.

A sharp pain lashed his lower abdomen, and made him tense up on the nasty pitch.

What makes this unfathomable mystery enveloping true monozygotic, or heterozygous, Twins? This strangeness in the ability to feel the same emotions, at the same time, the death of one of the same twins, across the infinite space that can outrun them, on the other side of the world ... This unwavering bond that eternally unites two identical beings born from the same cell, in an incomparable and enigmatic symbiosis, defying all scientific theories. The mystery of the Twins: undoubtedly, forever sealed in its cryptic dictate, elaborated in the magical essences of the twin stars, engraving their Tabula with the same symbolic graph of two Souls in one.

But when they aren't biological Twins, but astral? The symbiosis would be such that rare in its uniqueness inscribed in the stars, in the dust of these constantly evolving stars, so that others can pulse in turn. The enigma is just as thick in their conception, and the links that unite these beings who have found each other are woven in the great canvas of timeless imprints, in the iridescent hairs of comets causing a furrow of life captured through the dimensions that only they're able to cross. On a specific day, smash their broth of energy into the webs of a unique destiny that has become binary.

This is all about Twin Astral Souls. And in a microsecond, Acthéean and Trevor were united in an irrational bond that brought their two minds together. That's why Acthéean thought so hard of his friend that he believed he would never see the time of that micro second that saw his torn flesh again, felt the very start of his body, at the same time as that of his friend shivering on his side under the phantom blow in his own flesh. And neither of them thought that the other was dying, because knowing the catastrophe passed very close, without causing bad consequences.

Not much time had passed in all these unusual exchanges, and the movement of foreign forces at work between the two young men, but for the rest of the troop, Acthéean stood still too long for them all to worry seriously.

As he slowly rose to the surface of reality, he realized that his body had been frozen in a kind of catalepsy caused by the excess adrenaline that had resulted in a form of Asystole, a more aggravated fainting consciousness, resulting from the powerful stress that put his arteries to agony. An attack combined with the terror of failure, of death, the guilt of having let your guard down too quickly, the surprise of being struck like this, the anguish of leaving without having done anything in your life: a whole combination of reactivity exacerbated by the brain’s defense mechanisms in the face of an emergency mired in pernicious transients. Everything was calculated at the speed of light in the brain registering serious damage to the organism, and Acthean experienced this bitterly in a kind of panic trance.

The Militia, for his part, wasted no time in collecting a few pieces of torn shirts from all the men, in order to make a compression bandage over the heavily bleeding wound because, at this level, there was an infinitesimal network of ribs under the epidermal layers, as well as a few more pronounced veins in the inguinal hollow. The groin wasn't far with his femoral artery, and the apprentice also knew it hadn't gone far either. It would've been enough to slip lower in the crease, and it was screwed up.

Then a thought occurred to Acthéean, and he didn't hesitate to say it aloud:

"See, Lord Militia, if we'd been properly briefed on this mission supplement, I would've adjusted my finest armor ...

The voice was not a reproach, but a bitter statement about the secretive behavior that had put everyone in danger. The Militia understood it well, nodding helplessly, pursing their lips, and keeping their pressure on the bandage, while another novice bandaged it with more scraps of tissue. He couldn't answer anything, aware that what'd just happened to Acthéean, could still happen to one of his young people under his responsibility.

"Cursed be this Cardinal and his whims… He will end up having all of us with his devious lies…" he thought, in an anger that he barely restrained. He was dying to keep those words to himself, but uttering such words in front of witnesses was likely to cost him dearly. Volpe was all-powerful. The Brotherhood was all-powerful. There was nothing he could do but obey stupid orders willingly oblivious to human life which they all disregarded with a total absence of shameless morality. In the logic of the Art of War, he was ready to accept any sacrifices requested for a cause which he considered just and holy. In the case of this inappropriate request, he was questioning his core beliefs for a struggle that was truly not worth the price, and his mind was scaffolding the start of a justified rebellion.

Sure enough, if he'd been approved to inform his garrison of the change of plan before departure, everyone could've harnessed themselves in anticipation. It made him shudder inwardly, thinking of the other half of the garrison that had left for the attacked village. All went on a rescue mission, with food and medicine, with the sole aim of helping any wounded, not to risk fighting powerful creatures, staying behind hordes in the specific case of other hunts on prey that offered themselves almost naked and unarmed.

When he finally tied the bandage reinforced by the bands tied together to go around Acthéean's slender waist, he was relieved to find that the blood flow was gradually drying up.

“More fear than harm, my son. But we need to find plants that you can tell us, which will heal this nasty wound while we wait to come back. The rest of the squad took all the medicine with them, and the plants.

"Yes, and you've sent novices who have no medical practice there ..." Acthéean replied softly in mortifying rebuke. Not a second, the hazel eyes diluted with gray more pronounced under the palpitions of the stress, didn't leave that of the Milite.

The gravity of stupid decisions settled on its uneasy weight in the silence that followed, the novices glancing at each other not proudly, before focusing their disapproving eyes on their superior. All minds were mentally making the list of landing negligence punctuating this mission which was turning into disaster. Everyone thought of the other team.

Eléas, the Knight who'd been put back in his place sharply, allowed himself a thought rightly:

"Do you realize, all the same, what will result from this… mosquito hunt? Even if you were under the secrecy of the mission, you'd to tell us about it to me and Norin. We don’t even know if we’re waiting for the other team to come back.

"No… I'm just following the Cardinal's orders!" replied the Milite, heated by the reproaches. 'You know we can't stand up against his will ! It was a simple mission, there was no question of finding shitty residue in this abbey, but a fucking book! The other teams didn't have a problem with bad games ...

"With all due respect, Militia, you are supposed to be able to anticipate problems, in all missions, in all battles ...

He avoided pointing out the blasphemy, all the same.

"Look, there's no point in procrastinating in 'ifs' and 'maybe' now, '' Norin, the third knight, intervened, drawing the other two away from an argument that was becoming embarrassing for everyone. "Let's find this damn book, bring it back ... The kid needs some serious care, even if the injury is slight, it's likely to get infected if you drag too much ... Let’s hope and pray to the Lord that there’s no more crap haunting these places ...

The three men, who were approximately equal in size, presented a strange picture, drawn up among the desolation of the rubble and rubbish in anarchic tangle, drowned in the powdery luminescence of ash and dust, filtering through the stained glass windows dirty and shattered in places. Three giants harnessed themselves too lightly, in the confidence of a trouble-free mission promised by a forked-tongue Cardinal.

Helped by Norton supporting him by the shoulders, Acthéean straightened up, grimacing. The wound was pulsating. Even though it'd stopped bleeding, he knew it needed to be patched up urgently with potent plants in coagulant analgesics, in order to stop a possible infectious spread. The blade was demonic, even though it'd been castrated of its death aura just before the hit. Mentally, he turned the opposite way to their arrival, certain that at a specific point, just before crossing the crumbling village bridge, he'd noticed a few wild sage plants. A few leaves would be enough to stem any corrupting poisoning. He imagined Efrain's shocked face when he got home! His apprentice left for a rescue embassy, returning with the belly opened by a Specter swordsman!

It was difficult for him to walk without a limp that would relieve the unpleasant stretching of the wound. He also had to keep himself slightly bent, so as not to stretch the flesh further. He was perfectly aware of the obvious discomfort of the Milite, who had known him well since his childhood, having ordained under the rank of Guilyem de Rem, his father. Probably why he had let the youngster talk to him like that, another would've been gravely suspended by his failure to respect the superior. Acthéean suspected the hellish dilemma that was gnawing at the man, faced with total irresponsibility in the face of the situation getting out of hand. What could Cardinal Volpe've said to him, or threaten? to act thus in any event thoughtless? For he was certain that something had once again been relegated to the second degree, in the orderly rush of what could be estimated be a whim.

Once all minds were somewhat calmed down, the Militia, ordered increased searches in the different rooms that made up the Library. All were invaded to the mouths of writings from multiple eras, and languages, some of which were indecipherable to a Boeotian. The shelves were crumbling with layered dust which stifled the works, even had absorbed the inks enough for the arabesque signs to disappear completely into oblivion for centuries. The few tall windows with stained glass thickened with irrecoverable dirt and grime, were cracked for the most part, and pierced by rays of light degrading in hues, heralding a night that extended its troubled shroud over the numb world in his gradual sleep.

The men resembled, between the shades of the dawning twilight, the specters they'd just fought, evolving in their dark tunics which fell to their feet in boots, their coats of mail letting faint tarnished shards burst forth when one of the long lit candelabra projected their fragile flames on the buckled steel. Everything in each took its measurements in its space, memorizing the bizarrely intricate arrangements, seeking its lair in the areas ordered to be exploited in a careful search. They were all entering uncharted territory, and had to tame its murky rules.

With each step rubbing against the disgusting floors, with grooves choked with suspicious dirt, there was an ethereal flight of gray dust that flew up and clung to the fabrics already soiled by the various external sludge and slag. The lighting of the candelabras was too stingy to reach the high vaulted ceilings, certainly haunted by the spiders, the sole owners of the place, weaving their spider veil over the written miseries of this human world which didn't concern them. Haunted also certainly by scavenging insects or scarifiers from the fortune of beams put at their convenience.

Casting worried glances into the shadows little inclined to comfort, the men didn't dare to imagine the people swarming up there above their heads, and some even hunkered down their faces, for fear of an unfortunate fall of one of these parasites on them ! They suppressed shivers of anguish at the obsessive idea, which saw them fear mere little, often harmless critters, when they had just battled much more deadly things. Human phobias had their mystery too.

The immeasurable piles in their organized "mess" defied all logic of strategic storage, and Acthéean and Norton, - the two young people had decided to stay together, by mutual agreement, accentuated in his solidarity since the injury -, stared at those piles for a moment with soul-breaking sighs. With an exchanged look, which meant: "We aren't out!’’ The two decided to visit the kiosks set up along the paved alleys, which housed strange fountains that had long dried up. They formed like gazebos overlooking the floors enamelled with the steps of staircases flying to other endless heights.

"Looks like the secret room behind the library…" Acthéean thought, in front of the unpacking of aedicules at regular intervals. He limped along rails deeply anchored in the paving of the ground, on which were arranged strange statues, each sporting a mirror reflecting the vastness of the library in its anamorphic tain. A cross bar in the middle of what looked like curved basins supporting the mirrors, allowed without any effort to rotate the statue on its base, and thus direct the reflective surface to different points.

Acthéean understood immediately that they were serving to echo light points, certainly in order to open secret wedges intelligently blocked by this system of opening by the projected light. From every door open without exception, it looked like the mechanism'd been used a long time ago.

In the background, he could hear the faint sound of his comrades rummaging, turning over anything that might seemingly look like an atypical display altar which, by all accounts and speculation, housed the precious and desperately coveted Grimoire. He threw around a calculating glance at the leaning forms of the other men, all concentrated in their quest.

"Why doesn't the Brotherhood repatriate all these treasures within its own walls? Wygol is doomed, and a holy community is absolutely not possible for the management of the premises… ”.

But more than anything, why this specific manuscript of which no one had a precise idea of its appearance which would set it apart from the others, for simplified research?

The questions circled in his strategic mind, but he knew full well that he wasn't allowed to submit his doubts so relevant. Sweeping all around the different corners puffing up their literary surplus, he couldn't help to make loose assumptions, perhaps unrealistic utopias, but it was a start anyway.

"It would take months, years to bring everything back ... Certainly, there're treasures there that would certainly resolve strategic positions to have against the Dragon ... Who knows? What if there was something about the infernal power of the Prince of Darkness that would help us in our fight? Maybe that's why Volpe absolutely wants this book? ".

It was the clarification in Acthéean's clouded mind: what if the Cardinal knew there was a written solution to slay the Dragon? Where did the garrisons sent on this hunt come from, how did he say the other Knight ? ... mosquito hunt? The most obvious probability for Acthéean, at this moment, was that this mosquito zoned very badly in their fevered minds, escaping with each stroke of the fag to eradicate it !

Acthéean'd a real gift for hiding his emotions and thoughts behind a placid mask, which could've made him nicknamed: Sphinx. Norton didn't suspect any of the outlandish ideas that were scaffolding in a more than uncertain structure, but which Acthéean strongly suspected had a hint of conformity in their acquaintance. A + B = C ’. Little by little doubt escaped from the staging of the forces intervening in what gradually seemed to be an apostolate distorted in its intangible rules.

A large chessboard, on which drown the little puppets used in their simplicity of executing orders ... Even the Militia was being engulfed in this game of fools.

Acthéean then thought back to certain doubts expressed by his friend Trevor having recently confided in him disturbing questions which devoured him internally. As they advanced in the confines of this Library, so prized and admired it was a long time ago, the young man attached all these abstractions end to end - rantings perhaps, allegories admittedly cynical -, in a sketch constructive that was starting to give him a sly headache. Here he was, starting to elaborate, just like his overly imaginative friend in terms of sensitivity. But we'd to agree on the merits of this surrealist plot.

For young Belmont, it took on the air of a Dream of Allegories, but for Acthéean, it took on much more realistic turns in their devious archetype. A Doctrine that took on a double mask in the image of the Roman God Janus, whose gazes were transposed to the two opposite dimensions of the Past and the Future

His holistic intelligence could both handle dystopian plans for many, while reflecting on the strange opening mechanism through the mirrors. Norton was following him, dawdling on his side, his dark gaze assessing the shapeless heaps in impossible pyramids and gravity that presented themselves wherever one looked.

A dull sound of falling, a cry, a blasphemous interjection, drew them from their search: one of the novices had dropped one of the inconceivable piles, vomiting up its loose bindings along the stairs, all in guttural sounds reverberating between the empty spaces invading the innumerable interlacings. A cloud of dust ensued that made the cronies cough around the drop point. A few light insults were sent at the clumsy man who let go of the stale damage with a snobbish snort, and everyone started looking again… for the mosquito!

Acthéean quickly planned a sort of time travel, imagining which would be the first mirror to trigger the openings, starting with the last. Always followed by Norton, he quickly measured each room as devastated as the next, calculated the space required for the sliding maneuvers of the mirrors, - because obviously they'd been moved on the rails, so that their position was perfect for their point of strike -, and tried to set up the movement game that the foreign Knight, - because it could only be him -, had performed for the desired final opening. In his calculating mind, Acthéean speculated that the Compendium might be in the last open secret room.

Since the pattern was rapidly emerging in his mind, Acthean muttered his assumptions while pointing his finger at every imagined movement, under the astonished eye of a Norton in admiration at the thoughtful elaboration that took 'body' in the aerial volutes that the apprentice was performing. Acthéean'd put himself totally in the shoes of the 'Savior of God', and his constant comings and goings drew a fascinating metaphysical cartography on the course executed more than a decade ago. The apprentice'd forgotten his injury, and was standing up gracefully, moved as if possessed, absorbed by the past dimension which had seen someone other than himself evolve similarly.

In this unusual dance form, neither of them noticed the approach of Milite Grégoire who, curious about this bizarre convolution by one of his novices who normally had to look for a book, indulged in his mechanical steps making him look like a crazy puppet in his space that he sought to tame. It was therefore stunned by Acthéean's aberrant twirls that Grégoire approached the strange scene, followed by others who'd noticed the bizarre merry-go-round.

Milite Grégoire frowned as if his novice was struck with madness. The others'd flared behind him, and were watching the strange ballet. Acthéean, all with his foreboding prospects with an instinct in which he trusted, continued his maneuvers, enacting aloud his supposed calculations in front of a stunned audience. Beside Grégoire, Norin let down his consternation in a few laconic but precise words!

"Is he possessed or what?"

"No ..." Grégoire murmured, having understood the actions of his novice. He's very intelligent, and will surely find where this damn book is ...

In his universes, Acthéean could ‘see’ every gesture of the Knight, until he discerned the fuzzy shape running in the corridors between the rooms, from one mirror to another, while hitting them violently to move them on their rails - because it took a force of gravitational push to succeed in making the heavy bases move -, grab hold of the transverse pivot bar to position them correctly.

He thus went up the chain of execution, crossing various niches and cluttered rooms; doorsteps undoubtedly shattered by the violent thrust of the mirror basins as they froze on their point of impact; shelves broken in bitter amalgams in their jagged wood, revealing the following passage forced into its secrecy. Each rail was recomposed in its sliding function by the deductive spirit, a reversal of each shimmering structure. Each point of light impact that returned its twin shard back to the next, and so on, until exactly delineating the strategic face-to-face. To finally find the place that'd been unlocked on what would be its 'treasure'. The scene was reminiscent of a movie set backwards, in broken jerks where every crumbling detail released further architectural cover-ups.

Until the moment Acthéean cautiously crossed an arch sporting an ugly crack running its zigzagging verticality towards the heights of the ceiling, part of the partition that supported it'd disappeared in a powdery fragmentation, another torn panel was the only link of a cracked ogive, leading to a sort of aedicule erased in the darkness, the narrowness of which didn't allow the passage of several men abreast.

An aedicule in a blind room, not visible from the outside despite its recess from the first floor, hidden by the high load-bearing walls flanked by carved pillars. Completely invisible to a glance flying over the place, without thinking of mentally composing the confused space erasing its linear in an extraordinary trompe-l'oeil. Escaping the exploration, however intensive, of previous teams. It was a genius idea for whoever had thought of developing this hiding place!

So it was Acthéean who entered this narrow place suffocating with mystery, drowned in centuries-old layers of lapilli and residue.

As soon as he stepped through the small arch, a terrible weight weighed on his chest, and it surely was not the stagnant musty smell, although the room was unsealed from its silence for a long time, his thin gap hadn't allowed the deadly sweltering to evaporate through the forced opening. It was something else so pervasive that it became painful, it wound up in the depths of his soul weighed down with a conflicting pain rarely felt.

His hazel-gray gaze gradually got used to the stifling half-light which enveloped the place, to which he immediately attributed - as well as his companions affected by the same thought and who'd suddenly knelt before the torn arch -, an aura sacred illuminated in its intangibility; a divine substratum of which he couldn't calculate the impressions invading his being in a plenitude rarely reached.

Behind him, Grégoire let out in a moved voice:

"It's there ... it has to be there ...

The Chevalier Milite crossed himself fervently, immediately imitated by the rest of the moved men, some of whom felt a tear flow freely down their dirty cheeks. As Norton lit one of the many tapers that adorned the winding halls, and handed it to Acthéean so he could continue his investigative advance.

The darkness abruptly pushed back, retracting as if alive and bruised by the flickering glow of the candle just aflame and so fragile in its dance of uncertain balance. It was like moving shadows that rushed in the escalation along the walls covered with spider webs. Actheean was not sure, but he thought he heard a faint, outraged whisper, hummed by the fleeing shadows. Was it his supercharged and overused imagination that made him hear desolate litanies, intoned by guttural disembodied "voices" from the ashes and slag washed up in these places ?

He then felt himself entering a dimension that hadn't belonged to this world for a long time, and when he turned to his companions still suspended at the slightest of his actions and gestures, frozen in their genuflection, it was as if he saw them suddenly through a sepia filter, in aged shades of verdigris, bronze tinted brown, and rippling polished silver.

Then, in this surreal vision, he made out a fuzzy shape behind his comrades, a diaphanous ghost, a lunar specter stretching above the troop, freezing as if time had stopped everything in a breath. The pale ectoplasm stretched out its evanescent tendrils like strands of hair as silvery as the specter.

Acthéean understood that it was hair swimming in its magical inconsistency as if it were flowing in the shallows of a river or an ocean, through the foamy waves of a flat expanse in its stillness. All was silence of abysmal depth. Acthéean saw the lips of his comrades move, but he heard nothing more, fascinated as he was by the slow-motion waltz of the pleading specter, with the lunar silver hair flaring above the statufied men. His entire spine twisted under the insidious bite of an icy fluid, snatching his ribs into its sharp thongs, to flex and curl like a fetus in his aghast belly with missing breath. His hair must've been bristling with electricity radiating etheric curls in front of him.

Then, the features of the specter were refined, appearing hazy through the flutter of the silky strands: there, a nose which took shape in its perfect straightness, there, a lip thicker than its sister curled in a form of song or of supplication of which he guessed, more than he heard, the carefully mimed words.

Then there, his eyes closed, parted and focused on his half-arched form. The eyelids were strangely painted with unfathomable darkness, they revealed in their vaporous rising, two lakes of molten gold, so intense in their attraction that they were in agony. Two volcanoes so feverish in their glow, at the same time icy, drowned in the obsidian of sclera, indication of an infernal gaze. However, in the apparition, everything yearned for the seraphic in his attitude detached from any aggressive inclination.

Acthéean suffocated under the density of his eyes. Still, he knew the specter wasn't acrimonious. The silver-black lips mimicked words that washed up on the beach of their arched form in absolute sadness, without him being able to make out any sound whatsoever. But he did know. He was aware of endless distress in the specter's behavioral gestures.

He wanted to reach out to this entity that he felt deep inside him, as if it was his own essence, his own vital fiber that was being tortured in this way. Strangely his hand, meeting the long, diaphanous fingers approaching, bumped against a billowy surface, undulating under the intrusive pressure of his flesh, curling, deforming, but at no point broke the intensity of the bronze and silver moiré surface, like fine tulle that refused to tear.

The phantasy floated in vaporous swells constantly playing with the chromatic fuses of colors as Acthéean had seen in the mixtions of pigments dosed by the illuminator brothers, creating endless gradations in smooth fondue scale, so that a shade only appeared in the blink of an eye, only to merge with its twin in other iridescence. The apparition would've appeared to be a slick dissolving and evolving into effervescent humanoid features, if it didn't slip then into another more abstract form. A large drop of precious pigments flowing into a container of water, and letting tendrils create in a pure and liberated abstraction, arousing the imagination of the mind which detailed every tiny jolt.The Law of Serendipian Physics in the purest and most perfect instinctive primal state in its conception.

Acthéean savored every hypnotic ripple, mesmerized by the appearance of what looked very much like an obsession deeply extracted from his own Inner. A ghost blending into its convolutions of his own fantasies. What disturbed Acthéean, was that in the profile of this specter, indeed swam the typical attraction of the vampirism mixed with a tenuous part having kept its humanity. If the ghost was an angel, he was also a vampire. And from the chiseled and pure features of his appearance, he was a 'Highborn', and not a stump demonic slums.

Why then was his wonderfully beautiful features so inhumanely that he was so familiar? He wanted to make a comparison with any acquaintances who'd known him, but his brain strangely refused to study the characteristics so that he'd a possibility of recognition in connection with any friend, a comrade, a one-time attendance. The similarity was there, taunting his memory, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

The specter made a last twist on itself, as if disturbed by something which put him in turmoil, and his lips tightened in a last silent plea, not leaving Acthéean of his pure golden orbs. The darkness of their makeup engulfed them more, the more he stared at the apprentice. The time to note mentally by the young man statufie, that he was also in the most total nudity, that the long, long locks of silver curved towards the bottom of the loins, or the slender waist with the hips sharpened by relative thinness, that a hand then reached out to him, presenting him with a flexible stem supporting a chalice of the purest white, before he reacted and understood that it was a flower : a Snow Lily, or called Lys de la Madone for its extraordinary chaste authenticity ! Acthéean saw the flower to succeed in crossing the floating tain, before reacting to accept it. Upon contact with the shimmering wave, the Lily withered abruptly and its chalice took on the ugly shade of ancient rosy brown, like dried blood.

Suddenly, as the scene had rolled into a hindering dimension with the quantum rulers of its own world, in calculated slowness and hypnotic wadded softness, it was as if a pendulum struck from its deadly blade, skinning the two imbricated realities into one anchored in the present, the other disappearing into the limbo of a bygone past.

Acthéean fluttered eyes dazzled by these too quickly unrolled wonders, tears drowning his cheeks. He found that he froze painfully all over his body, even in his breathing, as well as the reflexive blinking of his eyes that now called for natural moistening.

The men in front of him had stood on the doorstep of the opening, getting up, and looking at each other, perhaps aware that something had just happened which they'd ignored without their knowledge. All their eyes turned to Acthéean who was reacting again to his surroundings, observing the erect forms that were emerging through the dim light of the blind room. As under the opening of blocked valves, his body tingled at the sensation of circulation returning to its normal course. The sensation was overwhelming, the same if he'd been immobilized for hours in an impossible position numbing his whole being, flesh and essence. Was it that, coming out of a grave after decades of rest? was his strange inspired reflection he didn't know where from. What an extravagant thought in his morbidity… as if breathed in by a disembodied voice totally foreign to his soul.

He differentiated the various usual mounds of archives tangled in their amalgamation, glimpsing a few meager pieces of furniture weakened by the heaps. Then as he turned the candle throwing its wan halos on the incommodious walls, he made out what looked like a desk carved from a centuries-old oak tree, its foot rooted to the ground invaded by gutted parchments, and leaves torn off at random from writings.

He knew. As soon as his footsteps brought him closer to the massive writing board. He felt the sigh hanging on everyone's lips, behind him, when everyone had also understood. His armored boots made no sound in the measured steps which brought him closer, as if the thin room didn't accept any disturbance of this type, and arrogated to itself the right to stifle anything that would be noise inquisitive for the sacred mysteries that it contained.

There, too, Acthéean felt that reality was twisting again as he carefully placed the candle on the writing desk. Next to a sober Grimoire, with tarnished threaded pages, bronze closures closing mystical writings with curious eyes. In all its simplicity, the work rested in its absence of luxury that other theological collections or consecrations to the Divine, generally displayed in grotesque rococo outbursts. One could've missed it without imagining for a second the importance of the book so stubbornly sought after.

The snow Lily was pointed somewhere beyond, behind Acthéean, before he could catch hold of it ...

It was with a trembling hand that Acthéean tried the clasp which clicked silently, to his surprise. He'd found the Holy Grail! So it was up to him to take the first look, right? He only had time to detail a strange and very complex writing, and in multiple languages, while being only one, which destabilized him a bit, before an interjection arose, breaking in a second the magical moment of discovery.

" No !' threw Gregory. 'We aren't to look down on this book, it's specifically ordered by Cardinal Volpe!

Acthéean turned to him, somewhat offended and frustrated by the order, and the inconvenience caused in these intensely sacred moments of the discovery:

"How can you be sure that, this's the right book? Did he tell you what was in it?

"It's the right one, Acthéean… I can tell you that in view of everything that has just happened here… The one-eyed room, the place loaded with something… We can all feel it… As if God himself sent us a sign ... it's IT ...

Around him, the other men nodded in a fearful ensemble that made Acthéean smile. He himself could no longer doubt that they were facing an object involving forces of which they had no rational knowledge. Whoever wrote this Grimoire, he'd aroused a form of terror of great magnitude among the Founders.

With a suppressed sigh, he still took a few seconds to admire the loose writing of complex arabesques, with cryptic words, but which he recorded a few sibylline sentences in his extraordinary memory. He cautiously closed the grimoire with its heavy pages from a past that many wanted to see eradicated, engaged the click of the clasp on the cover sheathed in unusual leather, tanned by dark tints reminiscent of dried blood.

He spotted a reliquary cloth on one of the tall, cluttered chairs, used it to wrap the precious writing in this shroud that smacks of mold and confinement. A last circular glance at the shadows which persisted in evolving in lascivious and slow movements, before seizing the candlestick and the pantheistic work of art, how good it sounded in the few phrases he had deciphered. Probably even a pamphlet with an undeniable sulfur taste.

Acthéean'd the impression of returning to the world of the living, - after a wandering journey through cosmos made of darkness but bright and optimistic, having cradled his soul in stimuli rarely felt rationally -, when he crosses the half-destroying arch.

His companions all wore tired faces, and outside, the night showed its progress in its starry dress and silver luminary edging. The troops had to find a place to rest quietly, and the Library was ultimately the ideal place. No one expressed the desire to return to the catacombs, especially at night! So too bad if they were going to find some rest among the spiders and centipedes!

Two novices had loaded up a few packs of blankets for a night in the abbey, before leaving the steeds to graze on fresh herbs that were struggling to make their way through the plant refuse. Accustomed to tasks performed in a rush,  they had the good idea to leave within reach of the animals some water reserves installed in the shelter. It all happened in a discreet speed, and the rest of the troop didn't even notice the maneuvers of care left to the animals forced to sleep under the arches of the gallery.

The steeds were a very enduring and powerful race, cut out for wars and withstanding extreme loads in their heavily armored riders, and instinctively knew how to sustain themselves when they needed it on their own. Faithful mounts bound to their masters, they were able to await their warriors in battle, as they could find the smashed body among the rubble of others. Over the centuries, the tombs of warrior knights also served as a resting place for the steed who had accompanied his master in death, and it wasn't uncommon to unearth by archaeologists such burial mounds, where man and animal were entwined for eternity.

The Milite Grégoire took hold of the Grimoire with gestures of meditation, exaggerated in their respect. But too bad, it was up to the highest ranking to collect the laurels of the award. However, while the troop spread out in one of the rooms, somewhat in the center of the Library - two men on duty would take turns taking turns, while the others would try to catch Somnus on the fly to appease these turbulent hours. -, Grégoire took Acthéean aside:

"I won't forget to point out to Cardinal Volpe your involvement in discovering this Grimoire ... Besides, I'll ask that you accompany me for the personal delivery ...

Acthéean blissfully amazed, and found nothing to complain about, except to bow his head in thanks. He had kicked enough in the stretchers to put his superior in behavioral difficulty.

"You won't be on watch tonight, you've to rest your wound… I didn't think we would find it so quickly… But, we've to do a quick inventory, so we'll still take the day tomorrow, before leaving the day after tomorrow… Do you think you can handle this injury?

"I spotted Sage outside the village ... I wouldn't need much, the injury isn't serious, the infection is to be feared, I cannot wash it off properly.

"So I'll send Norin with two of the kids to pick you up some. You'll explain to them what the plant looks like.

"No, I'd rather go alone with the Knight Norin, it'll go faster, and there won't be any confusion on the plant… if you allow it, of course, Militia. To send two more novices is to deprive you of research labor,'' Acthéean suggested.

Grégoire nodded, agreeing to the request. He was about to finish the discussion, but Acthéean risked a question that'd been bothering him for a while.

"Militia Grégoire, how come no mission has ever found this book? Why wait for years like this, if the Brotherhood knew where he was?

Grégoire observed a moment of silence as his gaze, chiseled by numerous crow's feet, deep in their wrinkles down to the cheeks, gauged the courageous and intelligent young man. He knew the young adult gifted for the handling of weapons, the strategy of war, just like his father Guilyem, and regretted that he'd chosen the medical path, rather than the battlefields.

"I'm not really sworn in to tell you what's behind these missions that I personally consider disparate, but I'll speak to you sincerely, because I've known you since you were a child, and that I've ordered under the aegis of your father ... I know you're confident by your silence and your seriousness in everything you do, and I believe that some should take your example ...

Acthéean stirred in confusion under the veiled compliment, but said nothing.

"Having said that, all I know is that the Brotherhood has been investigating something for years that's totally beyond our comprehension. Apparently this ... book would be important. Teams were sent on missions over several years, but it seemed that the Founders were chasing a chimera ... There were rumors that swelled over time, and even reached the borders far beyond where mountain peoples live. All were saying the same thing: a mysterious knight appeared, brandishing the Cross of Gandolfi… then disappeared, as the world plunged into darkness. There were very dark times, the dread born under the Lords of Shadow ... They also disappeared ... But real history is lost in the fragile memory of men ...

Grégoire was staring at an invisible point, while his voice was almost whispered as it recounted what appeared to be a fabulous Legend shaking men, and even countries. Around the two, the small troop settled in a circle, wrapped in makeshift blankets, enlightened by the flickering lights of candles lit all over the place. Every lump of wax, the emaciated remnants of yesteryear's pomp, had been put to use, and spread their shapeless debris in the last faint blazes.

"I don't know exactly what's the fantasy of overheated minds, and what's true," Grégoire continued, "all we can think of is that we had one hell of a stroke of luck! I still don't understand how you got that… intuition. But, it’s well done, boy!

"But ... the Founding Fathers went on specific bases in their research," Acthéean persisted, fascinated by history. What made them believe in writing a special grimoire? And what will that do for the Brotherhood? And who was this mysterious “Savior” that everyone seems to talk about in whispers, as if, in fact, people wish he never existed? It even makes me think, at times, that our Brotherhood even fears this invisible character whose existence we aren’t sure of...

“Child, there, you ask questions too elaborate in an understanding which isn't allowed to you… even to me… it gives you an idea of the repercussions of a story of which we cannot grasp a quarter of the truth… I even told you too much ...

The tone was slightly a warning that Acthéean caught on the flight without showing any further reluctance. Grégoire'd his lips sealed with secrecy, and probably wasn't even familiar with the totality of the complex riddle. It was no longer his responsibility, he would bring back the coveted item in question, and he would return to his war strategies, leaving all the jumble of miserable secrets to those who thought they had knowledge of it.

However, just before leaving him, and settling in for the night on his side, Milite Grégoire had one last word: sibylline, but taking on an entirely different aspect, without revealing anything compromising for his position. Acthéean wrote it down in his memory. Just in case.

"Your father was more informed than all of us here today ...

The Chronicles of Guilyem de Rem, which Trevor devoured all day long… made the connection reflexively, the young man’s quick brain of execution. Could there be some clue?

Acthéean succinctly thanked the Militia for this exchange which had only heated his imagination a little more. His thoughts raced back to his friend who must've been languishing desperately in the apothecary, brooding unfeigned anger at not having been able to be part of the journey. Knowing the fiery Belmont, he would've appreciated this mission, and certainly would've wandered through the alleys covered with literature that he would've devoured with passion.

He imagined him for a moment, and smiled, amused at the image of an oversized butterfly, with an oversized mane bathing a large, stubborn forehead, and whose oversized eyes would unravel the mysterious writings in their cryptic messages. Especially the grimoires detailing the dark spells and the different kinds of magic used under "God's approval". And God knew that studying Latin was torture for the Belmont, but deciphering impossible languages bathed in sulfur was suddenly easy for him!

This man was an oxymoron, a paradox and a contrast all by himself!

He joined the others, some of whom had already fallen heavily asleep, bundled up in the thinness of the fabric called the blanket. It wasn't that the nights were cold, but with the last thunderstorms, a permanent humidity stagnated everywhere, embellished with a abnormal moisture, as if the weather was still on the lookout for storms to come. The bodies quivered sometimes with freshness, sometimes with uneasy heaviness. Most of the men had rolled their coats into pillows to prop their heads up out of the nests of ashy dust flooding the pavements.

In the gloom hardly disturbed by the wan gleams of the candles, he could see the silent back and forth movements of the two novices on guard duty. He lay down next to Norton who'd made the makeshift couch for him with his own coat sprawled on the floor, and a blanket they shared. Acthéean checked his wound appreciably: the blood had coagulated, impregnating the ends of the shirts, and it pulled a little on the flesh. Nothing mean. Nothing that couldn't be thoroughly cleaned up on returning to the apothecary. A few Sage leaves would stem the infection, still to be feared in this century of poor hygiene. He'd seen simple cuts to fingers become severely infected, until the necrotic joint was amputated.

"The primary principle of good radical care is already strict hygiene ..." Efrain had hammered at him from the start of his training. In fact confirming to him what he applied from an early age in all healthy habits for body and soul. But, unfortunately, he'd had to face the fact that what he found normal was seldom applied in others.

" It'll be OK ?' Norton whispered to him, pulling himself closer to him, visibly chilly in the atmosphere.

At the same time, the poor fellow didn't have much meat on his bones! And Acthéean didn't have the heart to push his intrusion a little too close, pressing the thinness of his body against the apprentice's side. Besides, some of the novices had also moved closer to each other under the covers, looking for some warmth. And nothing like human warmth!

"Don't worry, it's nothing at all…' reassured the apprentice. 'More fear than harm. Tomorrow I'll go with Norin to look for plants that I've seen outside the village. Try to sleep now. And ... thank you for your reflexes, I didn't thank you for saving me from the blow of the blade.

“Oh… Norton whispered. This one was a vicious one. I'm also glad that it was you who found the book. Some people are bothered by it.

Acthéean hummed softly, giving an amused wink. His young mate looked so childish at the moment, that he let himself be tempted by a hand flirting with some flyaways in their ashy golden glow.

It wasn't without reminding him of the beautiful opal forehead drowned in nocturnal streaks, beneath which sparkled two lakes of crystal clear water.

Encouraged by the friendly gesture, Norton allowed himself to rest his head on Acthéean's shoulder after receiving a look of agreement. And one arm grew bolder across his chest. But the young man heaved a sigh of contentment so moving, that Acthéean wasn't at all offended.

After all, hadn't he, too, indulged in a violent stormy night, surrounding shoulders quivering with dreams and pain?

Norton fell asleep almost immediately, in the ease of his youth rushed by a hectic day. Besides, virtually everyone had succumbed to Somnus's charms, and from time to time the silent atmosphere was disturbed so slightly by small rounds of agitated snores.

The two guards wandered cautiously between the stylized shelves; the archaic piles of books in a haphazard balance; the relief sculpted pillars bearing Allegories casting distorted shadows dancing to the rhythm of jerky sparks. From time to time, over their hazardous twists and turns, looking for any suspicious activity, they peered cautiously into the shadows of aedicles supported by twisted columns, and rosettes carved in the peculiarity of a disturbing resemblance to human faces.

The guards prided themselves on observing the details in the stony carvings, and from time to time slipped from their exploration, a snooping finger on the rim of the cracked basins of the dry fountains. Wondering about the composition of what these fountains had been able to splash in their crystalline gurgling, in milder times for the Library. But despite the ramblings of their minds excited by exploration, they still didn’t let their attention go. If there'd been three of these nastinesses watching over the scene, there sure would be more. Maybe by their intrusion, they'd opened a portal? Anything was possible from a place forsaken by God, cursed, and rooted in the foundations of pure evil.

Acthéean was on the lookout for the tiniest bit of sound that informed him about his surroundings. It was an infinite number of fine creaks, perhaps mandibles working on the wood which'd become popular food for scarifiers;  the ethereal breaths of furniture branded in the antiquity of its conception, mingling with the regular breaths of men relaxed asleep; tiny scratchings from teeny clawed paws; frail creaking stretches in the movement of the constantly distorted parquet floors; imperceptible touches of spindly taper swaying in breezes so slender that they seemed coordinated in their insubstantial filiformities, unstable in their consistency in which they failed to graft properly.

All of this information reached Acthéean's keen hearing, trained to notice every detail passing through the filters of his cognition. Sleep refused to wrap him in its cloudy arms, and to spread the sand in his curious eyes, the color of tree nuts variegated with a few golden nuggets and such an ethereal gray in a misty mixture. A bewitching crossbreeding which had achieved the feat of seducing a savage with such enigmatic and fascinating eyes.

If he'd to admit the truth to himself, he couldn't get any sleep because his mind wasn't stuck in what he'd experienced and seen in the one-eyed room. To all appearances, no one noticed anything, as if the elapsed seconds were an impossible dream. What had happened? An inconceivable distortion of dimensions on the same uniqueness? Everything was plausible, when we knew the abbey in the vicinity of a Castle, a pure Entity born of Chaos. Pass ? Future? Both nested in metaphors symbolizing the advent of something indistinct? Had Acthéean witnessed a dream to come, or past, the alarming muse of a suffering Allegory? What he was sure of was that this Specter was in pain. Even though he hadn't heard him, he'd guessed distressed words asking for help.

God ! May this image of this pale ghost with eyes so fiery with lava, would haunt him for a long time! Eyes like those of a magnificent wolf in its immaculate whiteness, sooty black sclera absorbing flaming orbs. The eyelids he guessed so thin, painted in the dark in sexy smoky, like a seductress preparing for sulphurous eroticism. Why such an appearance? Even in the hair so long in its lunar silver braids, unwrapping a fascinating beauty more elaborate than that of a woman. As well as the lips seemed to have been moistened with a glittery obsidian gloss, making them look so tempting to bite.

The whole was anamorphosed in delicate bronze moiré patterns, the surface of which undulated like cool water calmed from boredom. Barely small shock wave circles wrinkled the intangible expanse when he ventured a fingertip.

The sickly figure sported disturbing features with feminine overtones, and yet it was unmistakably the specter of a man who'd formed before his shattered conscience. Androgyny detailed in every aspect of body plastic uncluttered in a voluptuous frame of elegantly muscled shoulders, supporting a neck curved in pain it seemed in extraordinary length, without being excessive.

Acthéean'd caught himself gazing at a soft, weakly pulsing location, like a cozy nest carved into the hollow of strongly pronounced collarbones.

But to whom did this apparition resemble in such a so confusing similarity?

His mind was recurring in an alienating cycle of the absurd scene, certainly sprung from his stoned mind from the adrenaline overload of having come close to death. Yes, surely that was it! He knew the human brain capable of inducing hyperrealistic hallucinations under the influence of strong emotions, and the additional stimuli at the time of the event. During training by their masters of war, they were reminded of the extraordinarily reactive possibilities in the face of the supernatural which had become daily in their combat quest. By coming into contact with the unspeakable, they came to fantasize the worst.

And his fabulous memory had recorded every disturbing detail, so much so that he would've been able, if he'd the necessary materials, to paint an exact picture of the apparition. Such beauty was not accessible to a mortal.

Acthéean couldn't help but understand a message in there. If he'd been asleep, he wouldn't have been so grieved: it would've been a dream, one more, like the ones Trevor'd apparently been having in his obsessive rounds for months.

His gaze drifted to the split stained glass windows filtering the faint rays of an opaque night lightly powdered with moon dust so tiny you'd to really fix the ink dot to discern its subtle blush. In the distance, came a sleepy snort from one of the steeds. Flames curved the spine of fire as in undulating curtsy exaggeratedly obsequious before a Lord appeared in his lyrical theatricality. The discreet shadows of the two guards floated, almost inconsistent among other more pronounced shadows. Norton was sleeping a righteous sleep, his breath so thin it seemed like he wasn't breathing. His arm was resting lightly on Acthéean's chest, his hand wrapped around a side of his tunic, as if hanging from a lifeline.

Perhaps he also dreamed of desolate specters weeping snow Lilies? This was what Acthéean saw in a dream, when Morpheus suddenly seized him, and made him fall into the impalpable softness of a found peace ...

Õ0ooo ~~~ ooo0Õ

A snow Lily, immaculate in the virginal radiance of its whiteness, spreading its delicate calyx, barely ribbed, like small blood vessels gorged with life, and whose pistil pulsed the rhythm of a heart awakening to a life news.

Were drawn the gullies as thin as a hair, flaring in an exquisite outline along the flute corolla, tickling the length of a stem, taking the color purple-sepia, sheathed with thorns forcing its ethereal film to hatch their languor sung in litanies throbbing.

A hand tried to grab hold of it, and thrust the small vegetable claws into the pads of long fingers as thin as spider legs.

Then, as the delicate chalice overflowed with the liquid of life, an ash-colored tongue lasciviously licked the sculpted petal, reveling in the fluid, coating the pistil in a satisfied pout.

The hand wrapped around the stem, as if it encompassed a lover. The corolla withered, the streams of the cruor dried up, and the fingers opened on the pristine Lily, become… nothing. A Chaos ...

In the distance, a fiery gaze at the lakes of molten gold, cried rivers, whose bloody diamonds spread over cheeks of silver ash ...

Acthéean was among the first to be awakened, and stretched out his limbs twitched with an imposed stillness due to Norton's intimate sleeping against him. The young man was still asleep when he gently freed himself from the sleeper's hold. He'd slept in irregular patches unseemly for a good rest, and had heard the two shifts during the night.

Some of the novices were still poorly recovered from what appeared to be disturbed and hardly restorative sleep. Many of the candles had agoniated in utter indifference, and clinging to the insubstantial ruffles of ash powder and weathered particles of the old one, there were uncomfortable areas of darkness for a safe vigil. The first awakened ones had gone in search of wax sticks that had escaped permanent oblivion, quickly lighting them in order to push back this nerve-wracking darkness.

Outside, the early morning scarcely poured out a few pale rays which had difficulty in filtering through the dirt of the stained-glass windows, and the room where they'd all slept was suffused with fading rays in which the layers of centuries-old bloom danced in a slow and lazy whirlwind.

The three Knights were already hard at work, leading a few novices in directives to which they were to give their attention for this day, after a frugal lunch of bread and cured meat, which they'd taken home. The drink ran out and the flasks of water were starting to dry up dangerously. The men drank slowly, in order to last the remainder of the journey.

Acthéean perceived a somewhat heated discussion between Norin and Grégoire, Eléas remaining somewhat withdrawn from an argument to be expected and which tired him in advance. Clearly, he was resistant to what he considered to be functions lost in the fads of an old man oblivious to what was important to the Brotherhood. In other words, he was less and less tolerant of the bizarre whims of Cardinal Volpe who saw the quest for a book more important, rather than a rescue mission. Eléas'd never hidden his unfriendly feelings towards the ecclesiast, which had often put him at odds with his subordinates, preferring to act rather than think.

As he quickly checked the bandages stuck to his wound, Acthéean suspected that the Knights were disputing a day wasted taking an inventory? of the Library, in view of future missions. Apparently, in high places, we had decided to start transporting priceless goods and treasures, for librarians, and cramming them into the Brotherhood. It also prejudged that Wygol was definitely lost in their eyes, and that the backlog had to be caught up, before other Guilds finally claimed what turned out to be a bonanza of knowledge for generations to come. And perhaps in the lot, a miraculous recipe to use against the Dragon? Just like that mysterious Grimoire that Acthéean still couldn't realize he'd found that simple, when others had broken their teeth in it.

What if you'd been helped… inspired? He sighed for a long time, chewing on the last residue of too dry meat, as hard as the soles of his boots, as with a grim eye he watched Norin walk towards him. The knight signaled to him to go hunting for plants, and it did Acthéean good to leave the place which was gradually suffocating him in its too heavy and unhealthy silence, by a slowness of the atmosphere that he couldn't define, as if the great Sandglass of Time had shattered, and no longer cried the tears of seconds, minutes, hours, forgetting these completely out of place premises in this world.

The steeds had indeed managed to find sustenance, one of them had managed the tour de force of loosening its reins, and waddled proudly through ivy and brambles, in front of the lifeless gaze of its brothers. It was this runaway who was chosen to take them quickly out of the village. Although quickly was easy to tell, when it was necessary to redo the reverse path, always circling carefully between the scree and other devastated tumuli. Passing through places like the catacombs didn't erase the wary anguish that internally suggested that something was waiting there.

Acthéean rode behind Norin, and let himself toss without reaction on the horse's powerful hindquarters, astride an armored saddle, wide, too wide, to unpleasantly wedge his battered hindquarters, and his private parts screaming in protest ! All the way, he suppressed a grinding of teeth to the rhythm of the rump, and was almost on the verge of screaming with joy, when he hurried down from the animal. Good God ! his crotch would make him laugh for a moment ! Not to mention his injury which didn't appreciate the mistreatment either. He wondered if it wasn't safer for him to walk back. But Norin turned out to be more subtle than he showed, and laughingly proposed that Acthéean should sit in front of him on his return. Steeds are fabulous to ride, but for one person at a time, preferably with an armored ass, it was good enough!

Acthéean wasn't mistaken when he remembered where his gaze had met a plant growing wildly among others with a more vague identity for the apprentice herbalist. Right next to the hovel where someone had slammed the shutter in their path

The plant was generous, and the young man cut a few leaves, enough for a poultice that would take the time of return, persisting in reducing the severity of the wound. He still had to recognize that the cut flesh was pulling unpleasantly, causing a tingling, and that a little blood had soiled the bandages with another dried crusted layer. He couldn't wait to get home, and clean it up in a good herbal bath that would negotiate the bacterial culture broth that badly soaked tissue turned into.

Norin polite him to inquire about the healing qualities of the plant, thus making a little conversation, and breaking a lingering silence and really uncomfortable for all. Even for the horse, showing signs of nervousness in its eyes which sometimes rolled back, when they were animals trained to be calm in conflict. The reaction of the animals doesn't deceive, the animals aren't mistaken in their fear, and of that, Acthéean was aware of it and always made a case of caution. The knight, seasoned in any dangerous practice, too, trusted his mount to warn him of danger. By the time the young man took to cut his plants, the steed grew more and more nervous, regularly shaking its head towards… the castle. Obviously.

This ominous weightlessness hovered incessantly over the village it encircled in its poisonous and corrosive brambles, neutralizing the slightest sign of life in the desolate and still deserted alleys. Hardly a dirty face had drawn in the crack of a door, quickly slammed on an angry and deranged look on the two warriors.To think that it was these people who'd led the stranger knight down a hidden path leading to the cursed place ... now they were visibly bitter, hostile in incomprehension leaving Acthéean astonished and pensive about ungrateful human nature.

Maybe they also had reason to be like this? Abandoned by all, suspicious of religious orders that had left them bogged down in the most total cowardly neglect, destitute and sacrificed.

While Acthéean gave a final blow with his penknife in a particularly abundant load, his gaze turned to the obscurely erected spiers, misusing the cloud layers of the sky. God, there was a dreadful aura about it, and the apprentice wouldn't have been surprised if misty swirls in the shape of 'dragon' swept over them in a deluge of fury. Sheer anguish suddenly gripped him, and tilting his head in his ultimate root-pulling, he stopped dead.

His eyes rolled back, the pupils gradually dilating in the adrenaline rush of amazement. His hands quivered as if they'd taken a discharge of those trap spheres they were using to eradicate Mer-Men, and his clenched fingers nearly let go of the preciously harvested leaves.

In the midst of a diffuse efflorescence stagnant of curiously platinum-coated sparks, an intangible nimbus like a late and chilly pollen, stood proudly in its opal virginity a chalice so threadlike in its transparency, that it let shine frail veins barely more nuanced than the flared petal, from which emerged an even more slender pistil, if it was possible, that one could think that it was going to break under the light wind wave: a snow Lily .

Unique. Rare splendor. Delayed in a winter that had breathed its last long before. The wonder faced a nature stretched out in the rays, admittedly, lazy of a sun that was desired. This marvel brandished its clean and angelic lines, in all the arrogant toupee that such a beauty could dare, in front of the infernal turrets and dungeons vomiting their erosive slicks on a chilly and frightened world. Beauty in the face of Evil in its purest form. Life facing Death. The Rational conceptualized in the optimism of evolving life in the face of the Intangible devourer of worlds.

Long slender fingers the color of silvery ash carefully held the slightly curved stem under the subtle weight of the mother-of-pearl corolla, a Snow Lily… which was held out to him through the moving wave of liquid bronze.

Actheean swallowed several times, his throat dry with emotion. His heart was racing, overwhelmed by the intensity of the ascending blade playing yo-yo with his skin-deep sensitivity.

A snow Lily here? In the midst of this rocky desert, void of all soul and exhilarating bubbling? A Lily, like 'His' ... The one he wanted to offer me through that ... mirror?

The Knight Norin soon noticed that something had deeply upset his novice, slightly withdrawn, holding his steed by the bit that the animal kept chewing on nervously, and waiting for the picking to finish. Puzzled by Acthéean's statuified position, he approached, wanting to hurry things up a bit.

"Have you finished cutting what you need?" What's the matter ?

The man's gaze fell on the angelic flower, and gave an "oh" of surprise.

"Here, a Lily here? It's late in its season, or early ...

"Chevalier Norin," Acthéean murmured, not letting go of the flower, lest if he looked away, the splendor would take advantage of it to disappear into the hazy winter limbo where it should normally have its place, '- What are the chances for a Lily to bloom here, out of season, and lonely?

"Hmmm… I don't know much about it, but sure enough, this one was at the wrong time," Norin sneered, visibly insensitive to the miracle of this anachronistic presence.

He went back to his steed, seizing a little sharply the bit tortured by the sharp incisors. Obviously, he'd already forgotten the flower.

"Pick it up, if you want it, but let's hurry, they won't be waiting for us up there ...

Why did the apprentice take so many infinite precautions to sever the delicate rod? He couldn't say it, but organizing his armful of Sage in a welcoming nest, he curled the angelic flower in its heart with moved gestures, and his throat tightened by a lump.

He realized the soft warmth of something streaming down his cheek. What happened to him being so sensitive to cry, and blue flower? Did his passion for flowers and medicinal plants give him a more emotional touch that made him vibrate like a sacred symphony whose language was universal? He hardly dared to touch the velvety chalice with the pale skin, for fear of seeing the flower suddenly wither.

Pale as his moon skin. A white mother-of-pearl diamond as ethereal as his complexion. Whose complexion ?

Acthéean gasped at the brutal realization.

~~ oooÕooo ~~

~~ oooÕooo ~~

Chapter Text

"Young man, I warn you that if only one of the sutures fails, I can swear that you'll end up drowned in a forced bath, and suffocated by opiates that will knock you out for several days ... I'll take care of it personally ...'' Efrain's voice growled, halfway between the real threat, and the urge to laugh at young Belmont's eagerness to adjust a shirt immaculate in its cleanliness.

"Oh, I don't doubt for a moment that you would be glad to punish me like this, Brother Efrain," replied Trevor's gentle baritone, in the same measure of tone.

The teenager and the herbalist stared at each other for a moment, through their respective gazes where everything only danced in the worry, the fun and a levity they wanted to display, but wasn't really taking the truth.

Fun in the fact that both objected to the other's decision equally stubbornly, as a challenge to whoever would give in to the other. In this case, Efrain was losing ground. A lightness of tone that they wanted to give to their exchanges, but of which neither one nor the other was fooled.

A growing concern for their companions who'd gone on a mission - which might seem trivial in the context invoked - but for some obscure reason, Trevor trusted his instincts, which'd often inspired him, certain that his dreams denoted a threatening situation. Efrain'd seen his young thus gnawing at his nerves in exponential anguish. He'd many questions himself, faced with an erratic behavior Trevor rarely exhibited. It was a panic that poured its bitter waves through the veins of the young.

The latter was up long before dawn, long before the herbalist who, when he emerged into the preparation room, found the youngster struggling with some pieces of clothing that Acthéean'd brought him previously, not even taking the time to have his wounds examined by the man. He'd put on the brais in the forest-green shade that he loved so much, high and lightly armored boots, encircled his thighs molded into the fabric, the shirt indented deeply on a chest gently chiseled in a dry but very pregnant musculature, valued the valley suggested between the surprisingly pronounced collarbones.The jaw clenched sporadically as he pulled his tunic, the same shade of color as the brais, from the pile of laundry Efrain'd managed to clean perfectly from the dark blood stains of the punishment.

As he arched a graceful movement to wrap his shoulders, it already seemed a long way off the day he arrived, dragged and grumbling by an apprentice worried about his condition: five days and six nights, who'd seen a number of incidents of all kinds punctuate the indwelling. Between the storms, the nightmares, the tears in the excavations, obligatory mendings, the doubts, the gestures moved by those, - so imbued with their high position, that they hadn't even been moved more than that to have this kind of outrageous behavior, - had added moments of pure joy, laughter, kind mockery, and above all a solid and real affection that'd brought the three protagonists together, linked by the same empathic propensity.

In these few days of confinement and care, a bond so strong having united them, that they didn't even suspect the content of the strange Syndrome bringing them together, favored by their mutual positions: one being hurt, the other in the position of a caring and empathetic healer.

Trevor winced slightly when, with a movement too loose to put on his tunic, a devious pull made his flesh creak in warning, backing up Efrain's words. He looked up ruefully at the herbalist, who immediately caught the guilty glow. With a somewhat theatrical sigh, Efrain crossed his arms in a sign saying, "You see what I was saying?", and Trevor curbed his eagerness to dress, ducking his head.

He was going to make a sheepish excuse, when a buzz fluctuated outside the doors of the apothecary, drawing their curiosity to the outside. The apothecary was located slightly away from the main entrance doors, nestled between annex buildings used, in case of large crowds due to the fighting, treatment rooms, infirmary, but more often medical storage places, as well as for eclectic weapons used for training.

A form of courtyard stretched along the perimeter walls, intervening between the gates and the apothecary. In its center, moreover, now lay the lightning hollowed out trunk of the dead cedar. It was through this courtyard that hurried footsteps seemed to be treading in a race towards something that had brought the inhabitants out.

Efrain released the armored doors of his apothecary, and went out to find what was causing all the commotion, followed by an equally curious Trevor. The latter being glad that he'd time to put on the correct clothes for the occasion, he wouldn't have dared to appear to inquisitive eyes in his nightgown, which was still too big for him.

The two men advanced down the middle of the street, not taking their eyes off a gradually congregating crowd, surrounding what looked like scattered horsemen, probably coming through the entrance gates. Their slumped demeanor, their shoulders tucked in, their faces exhausted, denoted a troop on the verge of nervous extinction. Several people gathered together and grabbed the reins of the horses suffering from laminitis, all as exhausted as their horsemen, and the rumor of multiple voices arose, while questions in inexhaustible waves, beached on everyone's lips.

"This's the rescue garrison ..." Trevor whispered, recognizing the new arrivals.

In addition to the crowd, a few senior figures in harness, inquiring like the others about the unusual arrival: dubbed Knights, who were also worried, like all those surrounding the stranded troop like a mirage heralding bad news.

As the riders dismounted, some aided by locals, sporting light armor stained with humors which led to believe in the most pessimistic scenarios regarding the situation encountered. From where they stood, Trevor immediately saw the ugly streaks of more or less coagulated blood, spreading over the tired faces, as well as on the frosted pewter of their knee pads or shoulder pads. A much too light harness, apparently, for what they'd encountered there. They were all equally soaked, certainly surprised on their way by sudden rains.

Stopping halfway through the assembly, Trevor turned a stunned, worried look:

"Where's the rest of the garrison?" he asked with a hiccup.

Where had the rest of the garrison gone? It was the right question, which everyone asked in a touching ensemble. The Militias, understanding the gravity of an embassy having gone wrong, preferred to drag the meager contingent out of the pressure of the crowd shocked by a few words uttered in the dismay. The report of the mission, if there had been a mission, had to be made urgently in front of the Founding Fathers, and the crowd showed its morbid frustration at the separation of the troop taken to high places, far from indiscreet ears.

But the same disturbing phrase was whispered in a leitmotif swelling in the ranks of the curious:

"They stayed there… We didn't see them again…"

Over there where?

Efrain frowned deeply at the facts, correctly assuming, that a not very beautiful story was going to unfold its stormy explanations in front of whom it may concern. The desire to leave an entire community living within the confines of the Brotherhood, in expectation and in doubt about the fate of comrades who have remained behind, wasn't a good auspicious at all.

Mentally, Efrain took stock of who he was going to head, to find out a little more. After all, his apprentice Actheean was among the missing, and Trevor looked so sorry that his heart froze in apprehension of misfortune that had happened.

"They made such an unpacking of secrets, of shameful detours of truth to be revealed, once, for one of their most fervent Knight who'd disappeared body and goods in the thankless oblivion of this Brotherhood ... "

Efrain still remembered, as if it were yesterday, the sly panic that'd gripped the members in high places, their almost hysterical actions to cover up a case that'd become too ... dangerous? obsessive at the permissive bruising of their sin-heavy souls ... What'd happened to this man? ...

Nothing became Chaos. And understandings that had become blind in the face of a Fate that was writhing with laughter, outrageously diffusing its prophetic reflections in front of the obscured eyes of these obtuse holy water stoups, in a fearless Mirror open to the “maybe that” and the “if”…

~~ ooo0Õ0ooo ~~

Walk along the long, misty alleys of refreshing penombra under the arcades, running all around the gigantic quadrangle of the cloister, didn’t happen place without attracting all the eyes of those who appeared there in the shade of the stony friezes, adjusted to the edge of deep basins letting little perky waterfalls overflow of over-full on the shoes, discussing among themselves in whispered words for fear of breaking the spirit of serenity reigning there, or sometimes shamelessly flirting as a gesture fades to a brushing body, or a hand grows bolder. Outside their training section, or their classes, some allowed themselves derivatives hidden behind latticework of accomplice ivy, the ramifications of which would be links uniting the tempting flesh. These same young people who'd braved the bad weather a few nights ago, daring to share the wetness of their bodies in discovery, freely mocking a morality that'd no place to brandish the banner of a hypocrisy that each one knew suffocated by their own inclinations. Here, under these arabesque arches in their severe temporality, tolerance had a good back.

Efrain knew all about it, and knew the inquisitive glances sealed in the abstinence from any invective. As a man of experience, the herbalist was familiar with all-daring youth, gleefully breaking through the prohibitions hammered down all day long in developing minds. He knew most of the bands by sight, duets who delighted in the protective shade, keeping the diatribes on a leash sharply strangled in holy necklaces. He could imagine these allegories of guard dogs barking in their muzzles, uselessly drooling the verses of a Holy Scripture fundamentally opposed to "these fondnesses".

So it was with a face decked out in a mask of absolute stoicism that he crossed the long alleys leading to the abbey. Followed by a Trevor, slightly more uncomfortable than him! In fact, it was an understatement to call his state of mind uncomfortable! Mortified to meet glances openly gauging him, even downright rebellious undressing him mercilessly, surprising signs towards him making no ambiguity about their obscene meaning. He attempted, like Efrain, an unperturbed face, which he absolutely missed, embellishing his Eburnean complexion with a splendid blush, if any! He too easily recognized those who, moreover, used to rib him sharply on his innocence, and was relieved to have his own cell, so as not to share against his will, the nocturnal explanatory gestures, the salacious reflections, all that made those young adults become a pack of roosters fighting over who had the longest… sword!

Yet neither he nor Efrain could miss the heavy gazes on them, on him, laden with reproach, or perhaps jealousy, a mixture of envy or lust, which made poor Belmont very uncomfortable, knowing he was the target of all these moods and feelings mixed with underhanded substances. His "punishment" having circulated around the community, he suspected many of using spurious arguments to justify dark, cruel fantasies about himself. He'd been aware of it for a long time already, but after a stay which lengthened in the throes of care, as well as a regained serenity, as rarely he'd experienced the benefits, he'd almost forgotten the meanness of which he was regularly the victim. The older he got, the more his physical and moral integrity was cantilevered.

He swallowed several times under the uneasiness of the looks, and almost expected to be put to task in the beginning of a quarrel, nor did he pass for a "holy" question of hardened and fiery character. when it was necessary to whip horses packed with his temperament quick to fight. But, at this point, the teenager was hardly in the mood to be rushed into a scuffle, much preferring the tranquility and taciturnity of his troubled mind in the face of worry that'd piled up over the past few hours.

Efrain felt the unpleasant gravity that'd settled in the rumors throbbing around them, the attitude of others clearly hostile, of which he didn't understand the correctness, and made a sudden decision, dragging his young by the arm in the reassuring shadow of an access to a transept of the abbey. Fortunately, the heavy doors were ajar, and the two were able to slip in perfect silence between the decorated pillars, the altars dedicated to each of their saint, the tall candles cluttered with their huge sticks of freshly lit consecrated wax, their feet flirting with the slippery and slightly damp pavement.

They followed the transverse path leading to the choir of the nave, crossing themselves in front of the huge effigy of Christ on the cross overlooking the main altar. The silence was pregnant, charged with the heady odors of incense burning constantly, the scent of burnt wax, the oppressive scent rings of holy anointed ones, whose thick oil chained the contrite foreheads during Sunday ceremonies, and the pernicious hints of stone withering away under the saltpetre. Behind the altar of the choir, the half-light couldn't blur the gaping gates leading to the crypt, like a gaunt mouth vomiting the darkness of hell.

Efrain pushed Trevor onto a bench, and made him sit down, after his last instructions which the young didn't dispute, sorry for not being able to accompany his healer, the one he now valued as a friend, for he knew the man showing him an affection he wished he'd in the presence of a fantasized father. Wisely, he began to meditate, waiting for a Brother confessor to introduce himself. In the curve of his tilted head, long silky strands mingled, carefully smoothed by the liturgical comb, - so precious gift made by Acthéean - brushing with their velvet plumetis the front of the high-cut shirt.

He was far from imagining the spectacle of his person, so bent in prayer. If he'd taken the time to reconsider his appearance, he would've found that unintentionally, he'd dressed in a way too flirtatious, too clean, too ... sensual, for such a place of spiritual surrender. But he'd been caught up in his worried thoughts for the garrison which had remained in the most total mystery of a disappearance - for his friend, that's how he liked to think of him, the only one he'd -, for focus in a presentation that'd to be more humble. No wonder the others'd stared at him like that.

But Trevor was still awkwardly unconscious of his Being, fully grasping the subtleties that could turn out to be perverted, devious or debauchery in the eyes of others. The quintessence of a sensuality overflowing its attractions on the surface of the skin, on the edge of this hair which, for many, dreamed of grabbing. In a fight delivering other quarrelsome scents.

~~~ ---- ~~~

Trevor soaked in the blessed ambience of the nave intensely, happy that he was apparently alone in this place. A tranquility that spread its cathartic rays in a voluptuous immensity that only these holy places knew how to untie. Churches, abbeys, cloisters, cathedrals were this intrinsic possibility of uniting with the Divine in a unique transcendence of the Being of flesh with his Spirit purified of all defilements making the individual bend in his original Sin.

Immense peace swept over him, as his lakes of pure water detailed the dancing shadows between the half-open gates of the crypt. A voice sang to him to stay still, sitting on his bench, another had been teasing him for a while to meet the mysterious gloom. Adventurous and fearless spirit, certainly! Like the one who'd led him through other hidden doors, leading to forbidden knowledge. It seemed like it was innate in him to always have preposterous and arrogant ideas germinating in his overly imaginative and adventurous mind, often putting him in situations where others would've run away at full speed, he was encrusted to face the imminent "danger". Or the blows! One thing was certain about him: he couldn't admit to giving up, or turn his back on something inextricable and thus abandon his curiosity in a boundless frustration that would prevent him from sleeping as results.

Curiosity killed the cat, it’s said, in Trevor's case it was he who paid the price, but always coming back buzzing and stinging where it hurt, until he'd the last laugh. Certainly for this the Brotherhood placed all its strengths and hopes in the one they saw as the greatest Knight of the future. Unrivaled stubbornness to obtain the fruits of success, and winning the case.

Or equal to that of Another who'd made the heyday of the Order under the blessed banner, and whom it had become obsessive for the Founders to eradicate even in the name.

Dogs are not cats ! And in the eyes of the Founders, Trevor’d been born from the thigh of a dark God flirting with the Unspeakable... None of them would’ve dared to assume the involvement of their own Sin of Treason, and Lucifer could’ve fun at their expense...

The crystalline orbs stared for a long time at the corridor of darkness he guessed was engulfed in the depths. The attraction of Death? Morbid curiosity about crossing the ban, seeing how far he could go without being caught and being punished? A fantasized wandering in his overheated mind, while he would descend the degrees bathed in a darkening promising ... delicacies? Of mysteries, of allegorical liturgy, of clandestinity in the graphics adorning the slabs, below, under his feet. While his Imagination was drawing the silhouette of his missing friend, taking on the appearance of wandering through the puzzles lying down.

Why "see" the shadows sketching the profile of his friend in his adventurous fantasies? Hands as reckless as his, whose fingertips would brush the centuries-old dust, to decipher the forbidden mysteries of the many recumbent figures. Lips also courageous to evoke the ethereal essences by their slightly accentuated phonemes, and to question Those of the creeping shadows on the rumors eroding the most deeply rooted superstitions in any individual. There was no doubt that his friend would spread his specter among the ghosts, in the same curious uniqueness of the horizons hidden behind the Main Veil. Trevor wouldn't see himself by proxy in living through this fear-misted turpitude, willingly tracing in his alter ego's footsteps, and blazing a trail unworkable for many.

Efrain's words of comfort came back to him:

"Do you feel the need to submit to confession, young Belmont? You're waiting for me in the nave, given the turn of events, I think it wouldn't be good for you to accompany me ... I'll inquire, because from what I've seen, for some newcomers, I'll need to intervene for care… ”

How long will the herbalist take? More and more, the thought of descending into this hypnotic darkness tormented him, and he suppressed an urge to tear his image of a wise novice waiting for his healer, and rush to the depths of a rebus chanting his seduction. Even more since his imagination had planned a twin wandering, and boiled his nerves in an irrepressible desire to transgress the taboos of a mortified silence to be respected, of a world that only lived in the minds of others in a fixity absolute and repentant before the Lord.

The nave radiated in a paradoxical cabalist stealth, which never ceased to question the young novice thirsty for adventure, desirous of feeling the adrenaline of combat again, greedy of sensations other than the routine in which the workouts stuck him, frustrated at not being able to add his skills to those of others, in missions that would bring him out of the fortified walls of the Brotherhood. Take him far, to unknown shores, distant frontiers he'd only seen on approximate maps. Like Acthéean.

"Acthéean who we have no news about ... Acthéean who kissed you so well ... He was sincere ..." then cried the Voice in his Heart-Shadow. The sneaky spikes of anguish tickled his flesh again. His fantasized friend, a few minutes before in the shadows of the crypt, took on a curious tinge of remorse, of lack. Yawning emptiness in his belly. A dark spiral of bitter ooze under his skin.

His dream that had alerted him so much, emerged from the acid waves of his memory. He relives all the details, a lump in his throat. If he hadn't suffered the unfair beatings of a pervert, he could've been with his friend, maybe? Not knowing anything about the disappearance of the troop, put him in the agony of a terror oozing of a form feared by all. At the foot of the Castle, anything could happen.

"You have to be patient, Trevor, and know how to interrogate when the time is right ... as far as I know, injured young recruits always find that they find solace in unloading what they've on their hearts ... I'll certainly know more, than if I questioned them abruptly ... »

The reassurance of the brave herbalist hadn't, however, allayed fears. It was worse than the bramble roots in the foundations of his Being, worse than those fractures in the stone which disfigured the buildings affected by the claw of Time. He felt in the depths of his spiritual fiber that if Acthéean were to disappear, he too would be drawn into irrevocable drowning, like two twin soul mates, eternally bound before the Infinite. Would there be redemption for them? Or would they disappear forever in the Enigma of the great Unknown, without leaving even a few ashes, some debris of a dream that'd started so well?

He was about to fall for its"invitation" to the underground scenes to be exploited. He looked like a big feline ready to pounce, as the mighty hindquarters stomped in the soaring fatal leap on the prey, muscles arched, his gaze calculating the distance it would take to reach the target. A predator knowing it would've the upper paw no matter what its victim did. Trevor's nerves were gnawing at him with the same arousing intensity. It took just a few seconds to access the darkened gap, and join the phantasm of his alter-ego in the delusions of quest for the treasures sealed in the tombs.

When a hand rested on his shoulder, making him jump violently. Perfectly molded into reflective training, he brought his hand to his side, searching for a weapon. Then, the second of astonishment passed, he faced the owner of the intrusive hand. Relief collapsed on his shoulders, like a devastated piece of wall, leaving him frozen, empty, when he recognized one of the priest-confessors of the Abbey League.

"Well, my son? I didn't mean to scare you, come on, the man said softly, in a voice that made Trevor uneasy, in his overly sweet accents.

His apple-of-the-eyes twitched under the flood of memory assembling the priest's identity with the voice: he'd dealt with him before, submitting to confession in all innocence, and without ulterior motive. The other hadn’t only made him a list of prayers to chant for the peace of his relieved soul, but also, unfortunately, embellished with too heavy a touch on the hair, while he'd Trevor brought to his knees in his sinful mortification, too caressing in his beautiful disheveled braids. Promising a deviousness he didn't dare to name.

Oh shit ! What was wrong with him? He'd a knack for attracting people with dubious aura, for a painful time. The others didn't know this type of problem, so why him? Even though he'd, from time to time, surprised at the assembly for prayer, vespers, liturgies, a few hands that lingered on the necks presented in blessed submission. The temptation was too strong for these men advocating the sanctity of verses, daily rubbing shoulders with exuberant and innocent youth. The man was weak in his hermit's entrenchments, and the spirit was strongest when it came to letting the weak craft of excitement drift on the waves of the Styx. Often times, Charon wasn't paid out of his room to pass the unconscious riders on his skiff, on a one-way trip.

But Trevor was starting to get fed up with all these weaknesses towards him! He quickly composed a lifeless face, using the excuse of prayer as he couldn't do anything else at the moment.

"Ah yes, young Belmont…" replied the priest, strangely hammering every word. But would you like to indulge in confession? It's been a while since you came ... You must have a charged soul?

"The charged soul? Enough to ? Does he think you're going to talk to him about what's gnawing at you? In his perversity, what does he hope for? ... Does he think you're the image of his twisted mind? ... "the Shadow intoned, its sulfur-hinting vespers.

But Trevor knew he was stuck, and now forced to submit to a confession, which he desperately searched for words that would calm the priest. Even if it meant deflecting his ‘sins ’, he would get away with a few Pater and two Avé to dabble in front of a chaplain jubilant inwardly to have a youth at his feet! No question of talking about Acthéean, and especially not of the emotions that'd tortured his flesh for a while. And especially not the kiss! He was sure that if he did such a recklessness he was going to pay an exorbitant price for it! He'd learned too much from Human Nature through his involuntary readings. All covered under the blackmail of the secrecy of confession. He was still quivering with the echo of misty sounds in the darkness of the confessionals. What an idea to always be on the lookout for those around him, and to apprehend all the surprises that spread their nets! And the fishing was good, some days when some Saints were more blessed and honored than others!

It was part of the intrinsic obligations of all novices, all knights, even men of the priesthood, to spread the overload of their souls, and in these times of worsened obscurantism, no one could deviate from it, for fear of becoming the scandalous artifact that took its inspiration from demonic essences. Religious superstitions had founded their corruption in the hearts of men irrevocably. Excommunication was never far away, and with it, sometimes, the stake for the unlucky ones who'd had the brow not to answer their prayers in the sanctification of confessions torn up under terror.

It was therefore with a pang of heart that he followed the man to a draped aedicule pointed out with a certain authority. The rest of his gaze, Trevor didn't dare to face it as he walked past the confessor. The same look as the others! With his disproportionately long hair backing, his eyes so transparent, he was far from going unnoticed, and everyone recognized him, even though he was in the midst of the crowd of his comrades. Because of his height greater than that of others of his age, his build. But above all his features undeniably beautiful and fine. The beauty of the Devil who drove all those who came across his luminous charisma crazy. He was one of those individuals whose aura capable of bringing everyone to their knees - in every sense of the word - damning the saints for a single word.

What he didn't know about his confessor was that he was also the confidant of tutor Anselm who'd slaughtered his back with a cudgel. The same one who'd heard the mortified confession of the Brother educator, and of which he knew the deepest troubles aroused in man by young Belmont. A risky and acerbic blend, not devoid of painful irony. One doesn't go without the other, and when one domino falls into the complex assemblage of a perverted game, it draws all the others away into the same aerobatics.

Trevor began to pray earnestly for Efrain's speedy return, as he settled down on the bench in the confessional, his stomach knotted in anguish.

~~~ ----- ~~~

As a thoughtful and intelligent young adult, Trevor was able to pronounce the precise words with calculated caution, in order to bring out some small 'sins' so insignificant, but that wouldn't put him in an inextricable situation either. Mentally, he asked forgiveness from the Lord for these slight excesses which did not turn out to be outrageous lies either, swearing that he would "come to terms" with the Divine, without the unexpected intervention of a confessor boiling with hoped-for crisp details, in order to plunge the penitent into verbal sanctions putting him in a situation of cruel humiliation.

Trevor'd tolerated enough for the last few days, without adding excessive kneeling and bending in ablution, under the shameful pretexts of purifying his soul. He'd witnessed such practices which he knew were carried out by some zealous chaplains. He knew these "directors of conscience" going beyond their rights as confidants, by archaic actions dating back centuries in the dust of ages.

Always this pure human enjoyment of forcing others into the lowest and degrading dictates that exist. And the more the practitioners ordained under a puritanical adage, the worse they were in their enraged belief that they were hurting others. The self-righteousness of supreme humiliation flattering oversized and sadistic egos at will, causing irrevocable inhibitory trauma for those who suffered such disproportionate punishments.

And that, there was no way Trevor allowed himself to be bogged down in such corrosive dictates, which the Divine, to be sure, had never validated in an agreement to be made in any strictly absent consciousness. In the blinded ranks of beliefs, we no longer knew how to distinguish between hysterical fantasies and holy penances objectively bestowed on poor souls too young to feel its dangerous sulfur. The fear of the All had replaced the Passion of the platonic anointing.

For his part, the confessor let thoughts overflow that would've made all the sanctified saints flee on their altars, in one panicked flight ! Having received the tutor's haggard words, and remembering their discussion on this subject, what was his disappointment when he heard the unpacking of such small sins that the young man strove to detail him in his most candid voice possible ! For a bit, Trevor would've fluttered his eyes, and the angels would've collapsed at his feet to bless him ! The child couldn't be as defileless as he confided, and the chaplain mentally gritted his teeth at the bad faith evident in lies slightly devious, but uttered by such a disturbing voice of sincerity. It was confusing !

He who already saw him bowing his spine under the purifying anointing, introduced into a half-full basin, shivering with cold in the holy water, and of course only dressed in a simple reliquary shirt for the circumstances, and dipping all that hellish hair in the greasy oil of consecration, like a new baptism from which the repentant would emerge in his mortification. A practice that'd had good, but had a tendency to disappear under the astonishing disappointment in its prostration inflicted on the unfortunate. Now we'd to stick to the simple liturgies that the penitent'd to stoically preach.

God ! That he would've liked to make this savage who gave his guardians so much trouble to submit in this way, and his peers! The chaplain took pleasure in thinking bitterly, stuck in the realization that a simple punishment was enough.

If Trevor'd suspected even one of these preposterous and brazenly debauchery ideas in their obsession, languishing in the maniacal and depraved mind of his confidant, it was certain that he would've fled definitively from this Brotherhood whose members were encrusted in their evil predicates, in veritable worms in the fruit, that they were.

Unfortunately, many years later, Trevor would taste its full poisonous flavor, in dramatic circumstances, and to an extent that he would never, oh never have! suspected... The disappointments often took on the mask of a Father that we so hoped to have in utopian fantasies. Orphan's dreams...

But having finished his "sinful" rant, the teenager waited, deceptively humble in the outpouring of his hair wrapped around his face, barely suppressing a smirk of mischief. Artistically, he'd known how to pull the cover of sorry remorse, where he made his executioner, a victim of his youthful arrogance who'd deserved a few blows to right the wrongs. Flattering the proud contempt of the two Brothers directly from his sycophantic impetuosity. You never knew if the two men'd spoken! Without knowing it, Trevord played in the big leagues with a cunning mastery worthy of the "roué" he'd trained himself to be.

Far from imagining what was fighting behind the wrinkled forehead of the perplexed confessor, who, at that moment, wanted to grab that mane too long, like those of demonic seductresses, and drag the child into a repentant from whom he would remember. He'd to do violence to himself not to give in to this raging impulse, and contented himself with listing a few prayers that the young was going to have to debit in front of him.

On your knees! He won't get away with this! ruminated the embittered man, seeing one of his delusions fade into the acidity of remorse.

When Efrain returned from his investigation, he knew he was on time, when he caught a confessor priest pulling, almost, by the arm a decomposed Trevor, whiter still if possible, but maybe rage too, and kneel before the altar of the nave in a beginning of penance.

His blood only swirled around when he saw the draft with one hand start to roughly brush the dark strands of the deadly white face, seemingly in retaliation against the inadmissible length of the mop. He could measure the degree of anger in the child, by the threatening contracture of the jaws, and especially the murderous outburst that'd just been born in the blue waters.

"Lord, that doesn't smell good on the kid! His physique is becoming a real problem for many ... "thought Efrain, already panicked by the bad news he'd gleaned.

The chaplain noticed the presence of the herbalist, finally putting an end to a situation of abuse of power with aggravated violence over the young Belmont who, apparently, didn’t want to comply with the injunction of a punitive submission, and scolded dangerously on the hand that'd invested his personal space by daring to touch his silk finery.

The depraved man could only step back in his demarche, and free the teenager, while keeping a suspicious eye on Efrain, who only whispered an apology, while in turn taking his young's arm :

"Forgive me, Brother Confessor, Trevor'll make his constraints on his sins, of that, you can be assured... But, I've to take him away for an emergency, and he is still under my care responsibility ...

Trevor would've jumped on his neck! A roundabout way of showing the precarious state of health to the cantankerous priest who saw his ` 'prey' slip through his fingers, and caught in the act of mistreatment to an injured recovering patient. He knew the herbalist to be uncompromising,having the ears of the Founders in his grievances, and swallowed hard at the magnitude of his "fault" embarrassed in utter confusion.

He could only let the two men abandon him to his acid reflections, as the figures hurried to another exit leading to the other side of the threaded of arcades they'd passed through on their way. Efrain wanted to avoid a new discomfort with exhibitionism under the indiscreet glances to the poor child, silent and stiff in his walk.

When they were out of earshot of the confessor, walking along long aisles adjacent to the cloister, Efrain didn't raise his voice as he asked Trevor what had happened, the two passing a group of novices through the shadows lying stretching out under the pallid glow of a late sun in its office.

"Did he molest you? I saw him take you roughly by the arm… He was pulling your hair, too?

"No, he didn't have time… and he started to blame me for the length of my hair that hid my face," breathed Trevor, reassured, counting the palpitations of his heart which gradually calmed down, as he they left the enclosure of the abbey. “You arrived on time, Brother Efrain, thank you with all my heart…

Efrain sighed deeply. They progressed their way quickly through the high porches of the abbey to the outside where waves of groups went about their business, in what seemed like a sudden gloom. The herbalist's gaze swept the entire environment, before peering further, beyond the closed walls of the Brotherhood. He frowned worriedly as he measured the compact, dark mass of clouds piling up in horizons clad in the most anxious shades of gray.

"Thunderstorms are brewing again, look into the distance," he pointed out to Trevor, directing him to an alley that would lead them behind the apothecary more quickly. They would enter through the exit of the building adjoining the pharmacy.

He paused for a moment, time to give a few succinct explanations.

“We're going to have visitors, some novices got injured on the way. Nothing serious, but I want you to get back to your bed, and not move out of the room.

"And Acthéean? And the troop?' Trevor hastened to ask, an anguished hug tightening his throat. ''What happened that they weren't with the others?

“Apparently, on the overhangs leading to Wygol, they'd formal orders to split into two groups. Acthéean's part of the colony that was sent to Wygol… They don't know more. They were attacked while leaving the village, which is besides devastated, without any survivors ...

Trevor smug at the news, his throat dry. Cruelly dry.

"Why did we send them to Wygol?" he squealed, in bitter incomprehension.

“Nobody knows anything about it. Or at least, only the Militia who accompanied them knows. All the others said was that when they left the scene, and the mountain ridge Wygol, they saw no trace of the troops, and had no orders to join them, so they came home. They also said bad weather was once again hitting the scene, and a severe thunderstorm was hitting Wygol. They assume they were all stranded in the village by the violence of the storm. What is of great concern is that the garrison does not have enough food to stay stuck there for days.

" What can we do ? Trevor sighed, both hands smoothing his flyaways back, his face extremely pale, sick with the complications that had come to the troop and his friend. The confessor's incident had fled from the very real anguish of more serious issues concerning the small legion scattered about in places everyone was deserting.

“Nothing, Trevor. We can only wait. At least we can't do anything. If they send an outfit to meet them, it can only be done in a few hours, not before. Look at what's on the horizon ...

"So we abandon them…" spat young Belmont, the orbs throwing furious sparks.

"No, wait ..." Efrain attempted, trying to hold back his young boy who was rushing forward striding in frustration, hitting stones in anger. "Is this the way to reward faithful men in their work? Do they have to follow orders that put them in danger, without doing anything for them? This isn't an act of war, but a simple mission that should go smoothly, right?

They'd come to the side of the dispensary, next to the adjoining building, and Trevor let himself go on everything that came his way, suffering his wrath. His hair stood on end in an arc as he pursed his lips in blasphemies that he belched very rarely, if at all. He needed to express his intense frustration at not being able to go and help. Not to ride a steed, and gallop with others to meet the unfortunate team. No matter what his wounds, at that moment, he didn't even feel the vicious bites of the threads pulling the excised lips. The edges of his eyes burned with a few tears of frustrated rage that piled up, never wanting to drip down his hollow cheeks. He'd emaciated slightly during his stay which lasted forever.

"Trevor," Efrain insisted softly, joining him, and taking him by the shoulders, still so weakened by the blows.''I know you feel sorry for Acthéean, he has become your friend, and for me, he's a good kid who I appreciate very much too. Don't think about the worst, please… I know!' he continued, when he saw Trevor inhale for a response, ''you'd a dream that scared you, and now you associate that dream with what's going on.

"Am I not right to be justifiably worried?

"God doesn’t abandon His people like this, and the garrison is under His protection, don't doubt it ...

"In a village like Wygol?" … Trevor argued firmly. A village abandoned by all? And at the foot of the Castle…? With thunderstorms returning ...

Thunderstorms above Wygol, the rescued team had said well, and nothing around… As if it was this very village that was targeted… Suppositions fantasized by superstitious spirits, or reality of bad weather ordered by a force come from the darkness ? Efrain hadn't told Trevor everything, and would stay away from it until we knew more. Until then ...

"But, we're at war, son, permanently with the Other, and you should expect to see individuals falter in their duty to which they swore in from the start. ". But, he couldn't afford to throw that in the pained teenager's face. Is not it ? The child would've plenty of time to see that often the men of war fell into the sacrifices planned by others, in the name of personal values engraved in the strictest unperturbed egoism. He would've plenty of time to feel the first bites of acrimonious disappointment.

He froze. Foolishly watching the young adult leave the hook of his comforting arm, to move towards a specific point the blue gaze'd spotted as they conversed. Belmont seemed to have taken off completely from his world, and walked like a prudent sleepwalker on the wires of sloping roofs: his body stiffened, his arms dangling, his head bowed in deep questioning.

He followed the direction the clear orbs detailed in the deepest bewilderment, and himself, understanding the scene before their astonished eyes, gasped in his breath.

The cedar struck by lightning from previous nights, now had its body gutted by the many cutouts, made in an attempt to recover most of the tree's old strength in anointing or heating tasks. Little was left of it but a flaring hollow in its roots, the last vestige of a splendor devoured by merciless weather. The trunk displayed an ugly blackened burn, staining the whole environment with its corrosive desiccation, polluting the grass and soil over a large part in which the tree was still rooted. In the hollowing out of the trunk, one could make out the afflicted earth several inches deep, leaving exposed the shattered roots which seemed to want to feed one last time from the poisoned crucible.

From this unhealthy gap, in a fascinating helical circle, dark volutes emerge, made up of thicknesses, seeming to be diluted between them in loose layers, as if stretched by the tip of a brush to remove the filthy, ethereal substance promising temperate ectoplasms. And it fluttered in a layer that was sometimes immaterial, sometimes more significant in its consistency, to become again disembodied.

Spirals like tender muslins wrapping something in their spider-like rivets. Something that sketched its outlines in the progression of impalpable windings, seraphic features in their immaculate conception. And it stood proudly in the midst of desolation in the colors of darkness. It was exposed in a subtle destitution where there was only room for a vaporous beauty in its immaterial exhibition.

It stopped time, the thin breath of the two men who witnessed this inconceivable miracle. It drew a trembling hand of a suffocated teenager, whose fingers dared to bend over the thin flexible rod to be weakened by it, and became a startled dream debris in the afterimages of images etched in the shattered memory.

While one hand had delicately severed the velvety shaft, the other cradled the so pure and angelic corolla in its dazzling moiré. Such Aphrodite in its magnificence couldn't be allowed to wither in the putrid depths of plant death. Don't we say that the most beautiful flowers grow on the most infamous soil? This was the case with this splendor, unsuspected in the withering desecrated by the angry skies, and flaunting its untouchable majesty by stormy vomit.

Armed with his treasure gathered in sacred meditation, Trevor knelt for a moment in front of the gutted trunk, turning his gaze that had taken on an even more transparent shade under the wonder of discovery, fixing Efrain in astonishment mingled with admiration. His voice was broken with emotion as he addressed the herbalist, explaining his sudden stir:

"A Snow Lily ... Brother Efrain, I dreamed of a Snow Lily that I was picking, and that I was going to offer ... How could a Lily grow in there? At that time ?

Efrain didn't know what to answer, forced to see there an obvious sign of something materializing in a symbolism that escaped him. He could only contemplate, for a long moment, his young cradling in his cupped hands the floral magnificence that seemed to have been at the wrong time.

On Trevor's cheek, an imperceptible tear slipped its way, escaped from the glacial orbs which observed in a shuddering transissement (transience), the heart of the pure opal corolla, the soft velvet of the curved petal on which shimmered two small crystalline diamonds of what could be the dew.

But that Trevor instinctively recognized, that like his painful emotion, the Lily was crying.

~~~ ----- õõõ ----- ~~~

Fortune bags were spread at the feet of the men, who searched the depths in search of the meager remaining food. The water reserves were running out dangerously, and it'd been forced to observe the total exhaustion of the water from the well in the yard. Even for the horses, stagnant water, the only vestige of an ancient filling, would've been fatal for them. Worst of all, the lack of potable water was cynically slammed in the faces of thirsty men by new rounds of capricious weather crises, in the stinging drizzle gradually descending on the village and its abbey.

It was almost the frantic urge to stand under the scathing beginnings of mistiness, open your mouth and swallow the pungent, aggressive features of moisture. Everything, rather than still feeling the pangs of a thirst that would lessen them more than necessary, added to the painful vagaries of an agonizing "mission".

Milite Grégoire cast a disillusioned eye on the chapter house invaded by its wall collapses and by the innumerable scree, in which they'd gathered, as best they could, their animals frightened by the new change of weather. All this deadly atmosphere enveloping the abbey put the nerves of the steeds to the test, to the same degree of nervousness as for the men.

He'd ordered his men to release the animals from their last harnesses and loads, before dragging them to safety. Mentally, he kept railing against Cardinal Volpe's orders, having embroiled them all in a series of exhausting problems. Checking the alarmingly thinning food stocks - provisions not having been made for a prolonged stay - the men had left sufficient water containers for the horses, while they returned to the rooms of the Library where they took refuge in their exponential gloom in the face of the disturbing outburst of their environment.

Two days since they left on this mission which had become an unusual hunt for a book, and an inconceivable inventory of places doomed to disappear in the inevitable curse. Grégoire'd drawn up a quick report, in which the impossibility of listing the 'treasures' contained and coveted in a desperate utopia to recover all the knowledge later, was written in bitter words, and in a few sketches made by nimble hands. In all missions, it was essential to prepare detailed reports and travel logs describing anything that might’ve been important for future embassies. It’d been wise to create the Magic Scrolls collecting the thoughts of the officers in apostolate. Often the words “written” through Magic revealed themselves to be the last breaths of the dying. The Brother who followed then found the relics of his companions, and often this could save his life...

What did this Cardinal have in mind? Look for miracle cures that would permanently eradicate Evil? By the time we carefully scrutinized all these writings, and derived the saving substance of dystopian tactical projects, all were sure to die before a century had even seen all the exploration come to fruition.

Palimpsests in shambles, strongly suspected of obliterating forbidden treasures; hagiographic pamphlets describing in exaggerated and satirical lyricism the forgotten lives of great heroes with identities buried in temporal miasmas; factums written in sulfur ink; questionable biographies of contested "holinesses" who'd once dared to deviate from the beaten track by a Christianity blinded in its libation of pamphlets, each more sulphurous than the last. Choose, Ladies and Gentlemen, from these improbable mounds of flayed philosophy, of a theology donning the heavy coats of the most biting chains of censorship in its eradication.

And among all those glittering brocades of destitution, and breathless diatribes in the dying murmurs of scarifying mandibles, God was to find His own! The Militia, for his part, was losing his Latin!

What he knew precisely was that one of those cryptogrammed manuscripts in mostly forgotten languages, was now wrapped in its protective velvet, to be entrusted into the hands of a Cardinal eager for a knowledge whose even some of his cronies didn't suspect a word of it. And for this grimoire, here they're stuck in the literary bosom of an abbey abandoned by any substrate of blissful mysticism.

A whole day wasting the time of his men chasing graphic ghosts, and after the hints of a story that should've remained confined in total oblivion. Instead, the afternoon had so engulfed them in the impossible task, that they failed to discern the ominous changes in the heavens.

None of them had seen strange darkeneded convolutions pouring out of the Castle ramparts. Long clawed hands stretching out among the gray wadding of compact clouds, crawling along the towers twisted in their height, weaving around elephantine footbridges straddling immeasurable abyss. Oversized fingers entangling themselves in the walls of convex places suspended in a weightlessness that had nothing to do with logical physicality, and whose places were cracked with rubble also suspended, like satellite stars orbiting around their primary heart. Multitude landing stages sustained in the forge of rings the thickness of a turret, tumbled in staggered degrees into scarified spaces in their dangerousness impractical for mortals. Sprawling platforms smeared their inconceivability in cascades of erosion in poisonous waters.

From all this crumbled the asperities decayed in murderous waves, so much the permanent rumblings of incessant tornadoes around the edifice of Chaos, abounded towards the cursed village encrusted in its collapse. Pitch-hued rolls unleashed their putrid breath towards the forsaken place, now targeting the once sanctified site of the abbey. Rolls entangled in mists of pervasive evilness, and erosive fog of niella shaded by a "living" drizzle, like raging oceans carrying their slag in the delicate foam edging the waves hiding their disguised resentment.

When the elements descended on the afflicted hamlet, it was already too late to invest the horses, and flee the endangered setting. As the men gathered their meager booty, and prepared to leave the place, it was as if the stained-glass windows gave way under the immaterial thrust of this clawed hand, - which had meandered from the heights of the Castle, involving in its destructive madness the various architectural levels now shrouded in deadly ooze - and letting the arabesques of darkness filter through, thickening on silhouettes, alas, familiar. Before the astonished eyes of the busy men, arose Sword Specters, lined with long phantasies armed with scythes.

Worse ! When all mortals set out to counter the plagues, there were added three of the most evil and dangerous presences of all: Sword Knight-Vampires! What will appall the mortal fighters the most was that these Seraph Vampires were generally assigned to certain spaces belonging only to the Castle, cloistered in their Tower entitled to their dark origin: Tower of the Vampires, where Carmilla'd ordered them, there were eons of it.

And there were three! Who stood back for a moment, strangely, studying the deadly ballet that'd been exchanged between Specters and men, all punctuated by the devastating whistles of the Combat Cross.

Acthéean cut and counter with great flights of his sword, deflecting the worst of the blows dealt by the howling phantasies, fighting back to back sometimes with Norton, sometimes with another of his companions who succumbed dangerously under the false immaterial but very deadly of the other Reapers spectral. In the desperate mixture of their protective gestures, he felt his wound open sharply in a significant twinge.

With one accord, he turned, alongside Norton, to the motionless, but terribly frightening Angels-Vampires behind their impossible-length swords. All in black dressed in an assemblage of obsidian feathers resembling dresses hiding their feet, velvety in their poisonous aspect, connected to the undulating wings which finished the adornment, they floated at a good height, in total contempt and outrageously displayed. Their muscular busts were encased in lustrous leather corsets, which brought out all their power of swordsmen confirmed in the sharp trapezoids of the shoulders, and impressive, sculpted deltoids. The hands ended in long claws, were covered by long leather gloves, climbing up the forearm, almost reaching the shoulder. Their faces were twins in identical features, lifeless, implacable, stoic, acerbic, perhaps beautiful in a monstrously angelic and demonic chisel at the same time, in an attractive oxymoron.

But you shouldn't let yourself be tempted: they were deadly aggressive. Quick as lightning to sink their fangs into their prey, which drifted away under the poisonous spell. They were worthy of the terrible reputation they'd garnered, when they'd been dubbed Knights General under the aegis of Carmilla who'd made them a protective garrison unrivaled in the brutality and savagery innate in their vampiric nature.

One of them, perhaps the Chief, turned a nagging gaze through the embers graphed therein, at the apprentice daring to disturb them in their silent observation. Not a frown, not a smirk came to disturb the seraphic facies, when the Knight-Vampire considered the form of this arrogant mortal, wielding a ridiculous sword in the face of the fullness of his own which he carelessly held by his side, as if he expected nothing in particular from this human insect having the courage to confront him.

Acthéean didn’t know what to think, hearing his companions fighting for their lives, eradicating the Ghosts one by one, as the three Angels-Vampires regarded them, as simple spectators of a theatrical play with an ironic breath.

Why were they present? They seemed to be waiting for orders. They were completely indifferent to the fate of the sub-entities which broke out under the holy blows of the Cross, in addition to the warlike blades, supporting in an imperturbability of marble the creaking hoots of the shattered ghosts. The Reapers were more discreet, disappearing with a sigh of ash and soot. But one had to beware of the scythes that collided with the spectral blades, taking advantage of a weakness exhibited in a defensive movement, to slay the victim.

Impatient to wait for an attack, Acthéean leaned towards the staring Vampire, slamming the blade that was countered against him violently in a dizzyingly rapid reflex, despite the incredible length. The second the blades clashed in a blue glare, saw Acthéean wince in pain as his shock-electrified hands let go of the sword. The next second he might've expected to see the weapon brandished at his hunched form by the echo of the shock, and slitting him mercilessly, - the world would no longer exist for him under the undeniably fatal blow -, but instead he took a shattering backhand from the Vampire's hand, which made him see multiple stars of dumbness. The force was such that he flew against shelves which collapsed with him in the fall.

He remained curled up like this, struck down by the monumental slap that'd viciously offended his cheek, displaying a purplish red bruise immediately. Luckily the jaw didn't give way, but hurt 'like a dog' in teeth which creaked under the impact.

Nothing broken despite the aerobatics and the violence of the blow! Acthéean made the observation in a haze of dazzling pain, adding to the tear of his first wound, while, as if buried in cotton, he heard Norton's alarmed cry. A hard headache engulfed his brutalized body, his face ablaze with the bruise, with exponential nausea, concussion warning: his head had hit a bad angle hardly on one of the shelves. No doubt one will think that he'd just been lucky in his fall, not to have been killed outright by a fractured neck.

One would've thought that someone had thrown one of those apotropaic hourglass artifacts with the ability to slow down time, so much it seemed to Acthéean that everything'd stopped in a veil stretching its red and dark shades. His eyes struggled to analyze his surroundings, with the sensation of squinting the lines of perspective overlapping in a dizzying illusion, his cognition completely distorted in all his senses in disarray. He didn't understand the cries that surrounded him, partially deafened by an intensified rattle in his head, obscuring the sharpness of his hearing. He'd fallen into a whole other world made of agony, drunkenness, painful shadows that gradually enveloped him, and led him definitively towards the Void. Perpetual Chaos.

He disappeared for the world. Literally.

Terrified by their desperate fight - without any human loss, which amounted to an absolute miracle - the three Knights and their five novices were helpless witnesses of the disappearance of their comrade.Their weapons still smoked hellish miasma, as they gazed upon the three Knights-Vampires, whom they expected to have to confront, surrounding the stunned body of Acthéean lying like a doll shattered by a childish vengeful hand.

As they dreaded the Vampires to finish off the hapless novice with the sharp points of their oversized swords, they saw the Seraphic Knights forming a triangle and grabbing the remains, lift him without any effort. Acthéean was shrouded in their angelic onyx feathers, and smoky and misty arabesques in a magnificent ballet of nebulous waves merging with his pale, lightning flesh. A strange phenomenon ensued, giving an unhealthy impression of nauseating time lag through sporadic cracklings, making the vampiric forms and the body of the devastated novice jerk, as in spasms of furious epilepsy contorting dimensional layers, interposing them to merge into shapeless silhouettes diluting in the very essence of the cosmos.

While the men couldn’t make any movement, suddenly seized in an immobility imposed by the Vampires having thrown a seal drawn quickly on their gathering, they could only witness their total disappearance from the room, absorbed - the three Vampires and Acthéean unconscious - by the rolls of unhealthy mist which suddenly retracted through the interstices of the stained glass windows in a pushback folding its tendrils, a last sigh moaning its spasms.

In a few seconds, silence and stillness had fallen like a mass relieved from its shackles, crashing on human shoulders, as well as on the endless shelves of literary dust. In those few fateful seconds, men were freed from their insubstantial shackles, and some even fell to their knees, breath shocked in nervous jerks, brutally aware of what had just taken place before their dumb eyes. The seals summoned by the Vampires had disappeared with their summoners, and Grégoire, followed by Norton, were the first to react to the tragic disappearance of Acthéean.

Norton didn't suppress a desperate sob as he threw himself on the spot where his friend was lying, just seconds, brewing the void of shaking hands. Grégoire knelt by his side, strangled by the gravity of the event: he'd just lost one of his novices under his responsibility! All this for the desire of possession of a cardinal lax on the emotional of the individual. This courageous kid who had achieved the feat of discovering an artifact prized by many, who'd rushed forward for the empathetic protection of his peers; a character steeped in generosity molded from a semblance of indifference who, when the mask was eroded, aroused a very sincere friendly attraction.The Milite’d known this son very different from the father. Why was it always such valuable people who disappeared too soon?

No one could utter a word, dumbfounded at the sadness that swept over them, the Knights regarded themselves, contrite in their transissement, understanding what was to come, in pain as alienating as a spear in their flanks.

All eyes were focused on the tiny spot on the floor that'd supported Acthéean's shattered body. No one paid any attention to the beginning of a rumbling crash invading the suddenly icy atmosphere of the Library. Norton didn't stop the burning of tears from radiating to his cheeks, which had become as opalescent as Acthéean's, when he relieved the fluffy implantation of an eternal stubble.

~~~ oooÕ — 00 — Õooo ~~~

… From the transparent corolla in its archangelic whiteness, diamondine tears streamed like tiny splinters splashed in a virginal mist. So refined in their bloodless affliction, that it was inconceivable that a human hand couldn't defile them with its sinful imprint.

Yet the hand that held up the sweet chalice was made of the most precious argentinian complexion, and a long, tapered, almost fragile finger, drawn from ethereal infinity, to carry it to Acthéean's parted lips.

"Drink, my friend… Drink to the tears of my remorse…" whispered a voice from nowhere, and everywhere at the same time, disembodied in its haunting consonances of deep baritone.

A voice so familiar, without being able to define it in his scrambled memory.

In a brazenly sybarite gesture, paradoxical with the act of purity in collecting the ooze, the young man's eager lips curled around the offering finger. The teeth clenched lightly on the pulp bathed in diluted diamonds, so that the finger didn’t escape it. While his lips coated the cold knuckle in their hemmed envelope cradled in velvety stubble. The tongue began to suck the drop of brass, in a ritornello that asked for more.

The silver finger was joined by another, which made its way into the greedy mouth, then another that waddled under the teasing muscle rippling between their space and their slender phalanxes.

A faint smile stretched the black-silver lips so smoothly, in an expression yet so saddened, that gripped Acthéean's heart seeing a tear drop from two orbs of gold encompassed in an opacity of onyx highlighting them like nuggets in their case, to roll up its bloody bangs on a cheek too ashen silver as the hands.

What weeping grief up there, in those ‘wolfy’ pupils, that the young man thought he had hurt the Other in his mouth caress.

He couldn't speak, his dehydrated throat refusing to cooperate, but he counted on his begging gaze for the Other to tell him what was afflicting him so. He gently took the wrist with the translucent skin, and withdrew his fingers from his devouring mouth. At the end of the phalanges, magnificent claws extended, retracting into a silver-black like that of the lips.

The young man admired them, touched them hesitantly, raised his gaze to the Other who seemed to assent to him smoothing them in his admiration. So he pulped the sharp point, which could've torn his flesh effortlessly, and slid his face into the velvety palm, caressing the freshness of the blemish-free skin with his cheek. He placed a line of respectful kisses there, as if he were engaging in a sacred ritual of worshiping to this white Angel who offered his tears.

His lips returned to the long knuckles as diamond-like as the saddened dew of the Lily.

In a gentle movement, the silky hand he adored, again plucked a teary pearl from the corolla, and presented it to him. Like the first time, he curled his tongue over the pulp, and licked languidly into a message, which he hoped to send correctly. He was pleasantly surprised at the beneficent freshness he got from the candid hint, when He lingered slowly on the finger, realizing that the Other was moistening his lips under worship. His mouth wandered over the knuckles, on the back of his hand, in the palm, wherever he could leave a physical impression of his devotion, and his tongue reveled in the taste of frost, of the acidulous which emanated in exhilarating and sensual aroma from all that glacial skin and precious drops.

The Other was so cold, he felt a violent urge to warm him gradually with the tip of his fluffy jaw, causing his stubble to convolve over the surface of this fascinating silver skin. He rubbed himself like a cat, depositing his scent in smooth flattery, skirting the bust with sharp and tense muscles under the dermis cradled with a lunar luminary, going up to the satin undulation over there, hollowed out between extremely thin collarbones and prominent in their chiseled neckline. There was rooted a long graceful neck with a slightly bluish marmoreal complexion in its precious silver, supported by the visible tendons like two alabaster pillars just sculpted by an artist in love with sacred beauty.

The Other's bare arms enveloped him in deep embracing, barely hugging the young man's body against the mighty bust, when the displayed strength could so easily have crushed the mortal flesh beneath its cuddle.

Everything was naked in Him, sparkling in his plastic detailing a breathtaking beauty, a sublimated aesthetic so identical to another which he failed to identify. And the dying young man unrolled his iconolatry in the sanctuary of his splendor. His deification without taboo in a meditation uninhibited by his adoring lips, teasing every part of this angelic body with his loving prostration.

Every part his lips greedily kissed quivered in the ice silk, almost numbing his tongue desperate to warm that marble body. Still, he guessed, more than he immediately felt, a fire melting from within, flooding the protective arms, upper torso and face he now stroked with the tip of the stubble. Gradually, the Angel warmed in his admiring ecstasy, and released a more pronounced aroma of intoxicating musk, aphrodisiac in its pheromones delivered in the olfactory dance.

The Other didn’t let go of his sweet embrace, and he felt his being tickled by a cascade of ethereal silk that enveloped them both, as he licked with the tip of his tongue the purple tears delicately staining the smooth, hairless cheeks.

The compact veil of the long hair sparkled in its silver-white, as it fell in smooth waves covering the two entwined men. The devouring tongue lingered on the pearls it was cleaning, tasting the heavy accents of embers and iron, fire and ice, another powerful aroma he couldn’t identify in a fuzzy recognition that seemed to come from the memorial depths, before crossing the sanctuary of black-silver lips, and intertwining with those of the Other, in a kiss that he knew he was going to suck out the last remnants of his life ...

"Drink my tears of remorse, so that your imprint will always remain in my memory ..."

~~~ --- 0ÕÕ0 --- ~~~

Was it possible that the flowers were crying? Was this the early morning dew? The tears of the flowers regretting the embrace of the night which thus abandoned them under the awakening of rainy days, or arid too intense solar rays.

In his cupped hands, the Lily released its diamondine tears without stopping. Its corollary well seemed not to dry up. Beneath the steel-blue orbs staring at him thoughtfully, almost cradling the flower in his own silent tears.

He didn't know where these hot pearls were coming from that were eroding his cheeks, it flowed by itself. Perhaps fueled by the deep conviction that the Lily's affliction was an obvious sign, sent to him from beyond a Unknown he couldn't grasp. Through his dreams, through the bronze tain of his Mirror which he stubbornly interrogated, since the troop halved, had returned from what now looked like an absolute debacle.

He listened with careless ear to the muffled words he overheard through the heavy curtain that separated his bedroom from the treatment and preparation room, where a few novices from the escaped garrison had come to have their slight sores/bobos healed, and like Efrain'd so rightly supposed it, unpacked their concern in stories, each more different than the next, according to the rumors that their Militial Knights had kindly entrusted to them.

Another garrison was preparing to search for the troops lost in the cursed confines of a village. The Founding Fathers had their report from the surviving Knights unpacking a sad inventory of fixtures effectively destroyed by the hordes descended from the ruins of Agharta.

He was furious inside that he couldn't join the new outfit, having suffered the wrath of Efrain himself, who'd glanced angrily at the slightly scratched seams under the anger of young Belmont. It was with plasters of ointment furiously stuck to the scarlet lips, and a nice slap behind the neck of the imprudent, and a merry kick to the buttocks, that he'd to regain his bed, mortified with shame like a corrected kid, gasping a shocked "Brother Efrain" with so much audacity at having flattered his butt in this way!

"What are you all after my butt ?!' could only scold the fiery Belmont, rubbing his hindquarters in a gesture more dumbfounded, than relieving a pain he hadn't felt, the herbalist having struck the blow in touch with no intention of bruising. It was actually his self-esteem that was 'spanked'!

Brother Efrain didn’t hide his frustration at the treatment that was slow to take effect, a recalcitrant young man ready for any extravagance putting his health on the line, a deep sorrow at the alarming news, and the disappearance of Acthéean with his troop which perilously delayed, while the storms returned to stultify the landscape already devastated by their continual angry crises.

Still, he couldn't contain a satisfied chuckle at the scandalized expression of his young climber on his couch, to hide his ulcerated expression. And above all, vexed! Spanked like a disobedient brat, at fifteen!

Trevor wanted to grab the throats of these aborted mission survivors, shake them and make them say what they didn't dare to say, aware that they weren't telling the whole truth about their hapless companions. His imposed immobility was ruining his nerves, and at that moment, as he questioned in mental loops his artifact remaining desperately silent, he was dying to turn everything around him, to hit everyone who showed up in the apothecary, blatant the same helpless nonsense.

Sick with a devouring rage over his diminished state, he squeezed the Mirror a little more in his trembling hands, begging in whispered words for the tain to reveal something to him, resting his feverish lips on the angelic chalice of the Lily which was still crying over its brazen diamonds.

He'd tenderly protected the virginal flower in the chalice of the pillow, resting on one of the drawn vellum which he'd wanted so much to give to his missing friend now. Yet not a single one of his prayers was addressed to the Divine, but to a mirrored Mystery, deified by worry in search of hopeful answers. He wasn't even aware of the words that beached in waves on his pale lips arched in plea. All he knew was that he endlessly reiterated a long rosary of pleading litanies, the very interpretation of which escaped in the thick mists of his dismay. Springing from his memory having opened its doors to an emotionally disoriented unconscious, some strange phonemes came to mingle their guttural accentuation in speeches forgotten for centuries. A few brackets of verses learned relentlessly, and rehashed by cantankerous teachers, and which he never for a moment supposed to remember like this under the influence of emotion. His lips moved on their own, his mind a thousand miles from the bedroom, summoning powers he was conscious of not awakening with impunity. But too bad, weren't they taught the dark sciences to confront Evil itself? Be it so, God would recognize His own ...

As suddenly as a muslin tearing on an unexpected scene, he was the victim of hallucinations caused by his nervous delirium, as a fluffy mist loosened between the claws encircling the oval of their case, and a slender figure, etheric in its floral features, palpitated in its intangibility. He believed at the time that it was simply a reflection of the flower he was holding coiled in his other hand on the art supports, but that was impossible due to the angle contrary to the Mirror, and the flower was alone in the nebulous space of the tain.

So he took advantage of this tiny clue, another symbol encrypted in its eternal diamond tears. This time the Lily was cut with infinite care by a foreign hand. Quick as the blink of an eye, the mist circled around the detached petal, faintly sparking a tear of … blood.

On the other side of the curtain, one of the novices was telling the same story in an enigmatic loop, to an herbalist dumbfounded in his perplexity.

0ooo ---- ooo0

The heavy silence drowned the rooms of the Library in its thickness that even the insects didn't dare tear, as though aware of the overwhelming atmosphere of affliction which wasn't to be disturbed in any way, not even by a sigh from the slats working under the imprint of time. A deadly lead chappe had fallen into an ambience that'd totally frozen the place in its suffocating essences of sickness. Remnants clinging desperately in murky tears on all the foundations and pillars of the rooms, that one would've the impression that the whole was going to collapse in turn in indescribable chaos, debris of relentless combat, and especially of sudden disappearances, as if torn from the souls of the remaining men.

Barely a few words spoken between the three Knights, in a plan to leave the scene as soon as possible, return to the Brotherhood and urgently request a reinforcement garrison to storm the Castle. They were all still in shock at having lost one of their own in the most unforeseen circumstances. If at least it'd happened in the heat of battle, it would've been much more normal in warlike functioning where everyone expected to be fatally struck one day. It would've made more sense than ‘that ’. Now they could only guess, plan on a comet for some hellish destination, where Acthéean’s body had been lifted and sucked up.

Outside, it was also the hells liberated on earth. Obviously, they came from the very essence of Personalized Chaos in the foundations of the edifice. The men stuck in the literary rooms, had been able to observe the effects in pandemonic rolls, poured out by the constructions constantly in alternating movements, like a gargantuan Entity that it was, the architecture didn't stop developing, to deconstruct and rebuild in aberrant structures, throbbing huge platforms surrounded by deliquescent ruins, from which escaped in inexhaustible torrents the torrential ropes piercing viciously the bodies that dared to face their sulphurous spill.

Milite Grégoire'd his men prepared to risk an emergency withdrawal from the scene, as soon as the rainfalls and the stone-devouring lightning bursting under their impacts, would've calmed down. But it didn't seem to be improving, and the men considering the inclement weather, could only think that the Dragon'd blocked them here, for a time only He would assign.

However, as the morning announced its languor in its pink and gray shades of rain, illuminated by the blinding flashes, it seemed that a clearing was pointing the tip of the nose, and the torrential downpours gave way to a drizzle of icy needles. The exteriors were spreading their devastation, and the adjectives weren't powerful enough to describe the intensity poured out on this earth.

Grégoire very quickly calculated their possibility of escape in complete safety, and ordered the retreat to the men languid with exhaustion; none'd been able to sleep under the continual thunder of lightning and the facial features of humidity flagellating the windows already weakened by the erosion of time.

Amidst all this raging hell, it seemed then that something had calmed the surge to allow the men their haste to cross the many corridors and stairs leading to the catacombs, to climb the steps that separated them from the flooded surface, to find the steeds frightened by the elements but ready to gallop away from this pandemonium where only Chaos and Capernaum reigned as twins of Tartarus.

Were they lucky to slip in like this, enjoying a welcome lull? Or was it decided by forces in action of which they'd no idea, and by the hour after their flight, they hardly cared, only too happy to hurtle down as best they could the hazards of petrified mounds bordering their way, without asking for their rest. But, a part of their torn and dying soul remaining to haunt the places which had seen their companion disappear.

They barely paid attention to the curved figures crossing the village square, to flee to the shelter of the hovels exposing their progressive disintegration. No doubt some villager emboldened by curiosity. Regardless, they traced without looking back on a brood that'd lost what little of its humanity in its indifference and ingratitude to welcome warriors inclined to help them, but disgusted by an attitude of total abandonment in the face of the curse.

So, may they remain in their cursed discomfort, and languish in their darkness devouring human essences. It was without any regret that the team trotted, as far as they were able to move between the dangerous rubble, to the exit, the only way out of this hells, the rotten drawbridge.

Men would've a tendency to think, quite rightly, that they wouldn't have had the opportunity to climb the detached planks again, without taking a mortal plunge into the abyss bordering the buttresses. It was with insane relief that the horses' hooves clacked in muffled echoes on the wood, ending up on the ground soaked in torrential waters, where the animals slipped a little, before gaining momentum in a gallop that would free the shoulders of the unbearable tension that had lodged there.

Admittedly, this retreat was shameful, an affront to their pride and their ego as warriors, but certain situations had to be abandoned under the blows of an implacable fate, and to find before a renewed calm, plausible solutions in order to stop the tragedies consumed.

The Milite Grégoire, death in the soul, took the advance of the troop, without a glance on the hovels disfigured by their disintegrating pain. Another shutter could always slam in their path, Wygol would manage with its living dead haunting places eroded by "dracholic" venom. If another garrison is granted to him to attack the cursed Castle, Grégoire would be ready to spit out in any strong way possible the secret route to access it, to all the inhabitants if necessary.

Head-on with the trot of his steed, Norin and Eléas grumbled sinister thoughts, while Norton, poorly recovered from his friend's disappearance, swerved his steed at random from the rock encountered under the mighty hoof. Engulfed in the unfathomable pit of his memories in jerky flashes, where he saw again and again the face of Acthéean rejected by the vampiric bellows, the body collapsing viciously against the shelves, perhaps a sickening sound of a head hitting hard at the corner of one of the wooded piles. And the sharp looks of the three Vampires circling Acthéean, before taking him away from them in hypnotic jerks beyond their comprehension of the physical Laws of the Cosmos.

At the border of two worlds whose physicality escaped him, his saddened and gloomy gaze caught something that shone faintly in the silver rays of the compacted clouds of rain ready to throw themselves again on this cursed land. By the time his mind registered and understood its mystery, the pupils dilated in surprise at the exposed sight. The next second he let out a cry of warning, bringing the rest of the troop to a halt as they gained momentum on the more stable ground.

“Stop! Wait, look!'' Norton yelled, his arteries flooded with the rush of adrenaline, to understanding the vision.

Without thinking further, he hounded his steed towards the point that had caught his attention, in violent emotion. Then threw himself out of the stirrups to run the distance to what he'd seen. He no longer even felt the weight of his light mailcoat, of his whole body screaming brutal movements executed in their fight. Nothing mattered as his rushed footsteps in tiny hope carried him close to his target.

" What is it again ?! Grégoire belched as he reared his steed in an exasperated U-turn.

He'd had his fill of catastrophes and Specter swordsmen and other Reapers, and felt ready to slaughter anything that fell under his horse's hooves. The others, in a harmonious whole, had done the same with their mounts which turned abruptly, ready to face another danger which charged at them.

What they saw first was a young novice slicing like a madman through the tall parasitic vegetation, and medicinal herbaceous plants, - where Acthéean'd gathered his Purifying Sage, and hadn't even taken the time yet to use the leaves on his wound -, to lie practically on an elongated form revealing its lines through the stems and brush trod unceremoniously by the armored boots of the young man.

He leaned over what was a body lying on its side, parting long, warm auburn-brown locks, to reveal the easily recognizable facial features under an eternal thatch: Acthéean!

After what was a few seconds of realization, of a touching ensemble, all the men rushed out of their stirrups, dropping their mounts at random, and joined Norton and his discovery, gasping for breath with forbidden suffocation. Their armors clicked in unison in a symphony that seemed to never end.

Grégoire collapsed alongside Norton, followed by ELéas and Norin not believing their eyes that never let go of the frozen figure, and deathly pale, so much so that the Milite immediately thought that the young man was dead.

When they gently rolled the corpse flat in their joined arms, the face protruded back, and the parted lips let out a slow moan. Nothing seemed to have moved in the body composition, nothing to attest to a fracture, no apparent injuries, apart from a purplish bruise on the side of the face, resulting from the slap by the Vampire, and the bottom of the tunic haloed by blood that has leaked from the wound. The limbs didn’t have a questionable angle that would've suggested some bone breakage, and apart from the humidity from the rain, the clothes weren't particularly soiled: as if he'd been dropped off in the present moment on the nest of soaked greenery.

Norton remembered the unpleasant sound of the head hitting the ground, and slipped his hands behind the neck to support the vertebrae in the event of a concussion. Several moaned sighs reassured them of their companion's return to consciousness, and all witnessed the nauseating awakening of Acthéean presenting apple-of-eyes drowned in the comatose mists from which he extricated himself only with difficulty.

"Lord God," began Grégoire, while crossing himself, the others did the same in the same movement, ''how can you be here? Who brought you, and who brought you back to us? It's a miracle that you're coming back to us ... Thank you my God ...

Acthéean opened his lips several times, like a dying fish out of water, and a gourd containing the last drops of water was presented to him. He swallowed hard, still grumbling, muttering incomprehensible phonemes that were struggling to get through his dehydrated throat.

Everything was a dense haze in his ideas, and he couldn't sharpen any coherent thoughts, nor a hint of recollection of what had happened. A devious headache banged on the doors of his temples, blued from the impact of the snub, at the base of the neck too, which was a worse sign. But a strange feeling of benevolent cold covered him entirely. Not a cold that made you shiver with discomfort, or an icy bitterness that would numb his limbs and his whole body, no. An incredibly healthy freshness, almost healing in its endings of cathartic stimuli, a coating made of ice and softness that seemed to repair all possible sores, and relieve the ailments caused by his disappearance.

A chappe of deep sadness too. Why ? An absolute desolation which made his soul sob in the haunting reminiscences of sorrowful choirs. A song for the Dead. He swallowed several times, feeling a lump of bitterness choke him in an oppressive emotion, so overwhelming, like a brutal mourning for something he didn't remember. He then felt tears rolling down the hot river, the reason for which he didn’t understand. He let himself cry. That's all. And the others waited for him to gently come back to the surface of a world he seemed to have left for a time that didn’t have its Quantum Rules in that universe. They melted before the weeping desolation of this comrade so courageous, and tolerant in the face of the excesses of life. Without understanding their friend's sudden grief, they almost united in a solidarity outpouring of tears streaming freely down their dirty and exhausted faces.

At the time, no one would've had the absurd idea of reproaching these tearful verses by saying that "men didn't cry". The nameless sadness of Acthéean had taken hold of all the hearts of these brave warriors, yet forged to face the worst horrors. Melancholy has always been difficult to decipher in the internal fibers of human essence which undergoes its permanent weaving. Relief also to find the one they thought dead and lost for all, still dubious in the face of this sudden "miracle".

Whatever. In this present moment, they all understood that they'd just witnessed phenomena that they would've a hard time accepting, and explaining later. Even if it took place at the feet of the worst Entities to emerge from Chaos.

Norton, without letting go of the back of his neck with his cupped hand, wrapped his other arm around his friend's shoulders, helping him to stand up. Still clinging to parched lips, on the lookout for a word, a whisper beached on the arid labialshore, patient with a treacherous dizziness that could make the edifice of flesh and metal falter. But, Acthéean seemed to gradually come to his senses in a balance that he tested limb after limb, slowly opening up to full awareness of Self in his physicality.

The Militia, as relieved as the others, gently enjoined him, helping Norton to pick him up gesture after gesture, without brutality.

"You think you can ride with one of your friends, we need to leave the place as quickly as possible before the storms come back…. It's amazing that you landed here ...

Speaking calmly to him, the Knight's gaze assessed the menacing build-up of storm-engorged cumulonimbus clouds that clearly stagnated above the village.

As if they were waiting for an order… observed the man of war. It was becoming urgent to take off from these places forever infected with curse, the stammering explanations of Acthéean would be given for later. Moreover, the young displayed a complete bewilderment in his orientation, when he managed to stand up, to stagger miserably in the arms of the Milite. Nevertheless, he managed to nod his head gently, numb with the dull ache oppressing the frontal and temporals, and ventured a few steps, supported by Norton and Eleas.

It was obvious that the forced ride wouldn't accommodate the foggy state of the novice, but more dragging was necessary, hostile and sinister groans rolled their angry waves in the endemic skies, accumulating very, very aggressive dark engorements. The horses would certainly have to have their temporary masters, laden with sacks filled with a few literary relics, and exhausted and armored bodies, they'd to endure a gallop, enough to keep them away from the brunt of the impending impact. The further they moved away from the Malevolent Castle, the more they would find renewed security and relaxation. Animals were propped up and born to accumulate unparalleled strength, but here they'd to show extreme more endurance, and men hoped and prayed that their mounts wouldn't give in under pressure and stress.

Norton settled down on his mount, one of the most powerful, to accept a second rider in the presence of Acthéean who was seated firmly in his friend's arms, conscious enough to hold the reins with one hand, and immobilize his head against the shoulder pad, limiting jerks for his weakened neck. Whatever the means of absorbing the shock, it was going to be very tricky, and no doubt any internal injuries wouldn't settle in the frantic cavalcade. But, they'd no other choice, already extraordinarily happy to have the young man back.

Strangely, the steeds didn’t get rammed any further to begin a disbanded race in the disheveled flight from inclement weather, in a muffled sound of power in the echo of their hooves digging through the clogged ground, sending slabs of mud in the flight of their redoubled strides under the adrenaline of terror.

As the athletic beasts carried their human load to the comfort of the Brotherhood, Wygol collapsed in the thunderbolts of rage that burst their shatters in all directions. The ominous crackle of lightning striking its target in a blaze of sparks reached the ears of the men lying on their race-packed mounts.

No one saw that it was the square tower in which former Abbot Dorin had taken refuge, which died in an outbreak quickly choked by torrential waterfalls, spewing out tons of writings, stones flying to pieces, and beams to through the scarification disfiguring it forever.

~ - ~ - ~ -000 ~ - ~ - ~ -

Chapter Text

What was this strange fleecy fluctuation, cradling his weight in gentle, almost cautious oscillations, a floating halfway between two bubbling waters on which would dance a sinking ship in the intoxication of its torments? It was irregular, and sometimes his body drifted from right to left, from left to right, as if unbalanced between those who carried him, and having different sizes, so much so that it seemed to him that it was floating on one side, of another, in syrupy round which'd no end, and whose eddies of the sway were amplified still, if that was possible. While waiting for the wave of diffuse ice which would pierce his numb limbs.

His first thought was he was in a crate, slowly reborn from a drained mind, painfully emerging from the sticky mists of unconsciousness. A coffin ? No. He took, as the wobbles accentuated, awareness that it was carried with bare hands. Hands? Something gripped his shoulders, his hips, his feet, in a shaky straightness, but it wasn't the hands, strictly speaking. So what ?

It seemed inconsistent, without a physical substrate, insubstantial. A compact mass, all at the same time, but whose amplitude lacked hardness, intangible in its dislocated substance. He was carried, but not by something earthly. His body apparently floated in a linear path the geometry of which his mind couldn't comprehend. In fact, nothing could be absorbed by his drifting essence anymore, as if he was walking alongside his body mass himself. Disembodied.

And his mind, and his flesh, struggled in a form of molasses agglutinating all that was pain, even suffering, almost comatose intoxication, but above all with an infamous tear that tore his soul apart: a scream in his lost mind, as he didn't suspect that there could be such an agony in the evanescence of the soul, this primary disembodied: questioning of any philosopher. He never thought he would suffer so much in this immaterialization! Worse than if it was his flesh which succumbed cruelly under a surge of distress, treacherous etiolation, a decay of the mind in its last moments.

He wanted to scream that he was put down, so that he could finally die in peace. Had his time come? So, let it be done quickly, the acme was too much in its anguish degrees! But, his lips refused to mold only one word that would free him.

Nothing in his body obeyed him, neither a muscle, nor his vocal cords, nor his mind, which couldn't quite stack a sketch of an idea. Was that Chaos, the unfathomable Void of Death?

Even his eyes wouldn't comply to open, and he continued his wandering through chasms of darkness carefully sealed by the eyelids blued with shock crowding out the desperate order to open up on the doldrums he guessed abyssal, opaque. It was all in the conjecture of his Being abandoned in a hermitage of which he didn’t know the rules. And those who 'carried' him, made his sacred Essence float towards these Convents of the unthinkable, through courtyards whose only echo was the decay of his Self tormented by so much abnegation, to land in the Monastery of his Solitude at angles so sharp that he could never blunt.

Yes. There was one who'd succeeded in the hard work of rounding the angles of his ivory tower, filling in the excavations of his cloister in which his being was buried, never to come out again.

A multitude of sensations slipped over his skin, but he could no longer dissociate the forces and impacts that infiltrated the time of an overload, before dying in the Gap that he'd become.

He'd become a Recumbent whose we put in shrine. And he witnessed his own in-sepulcher, without being able to roll back for a second, the last reflexive leap of a dying body. He wasn't even given that last instinctive trait in the face of the inevitable. He was dying languidly on the shores of a Styx for which he hadn’t paid his passage fee to Charon. Limbo opened up to him, without being granted privilege, in a totally abandonnique inertia.

He could've had one last jump allowing him to cling once again to this cliff which was collapsing with him in the streams of brackish water spewed out from the hellish underworld. He saw only the splinters torn from his Being, plunging into the promising eddies of infinite tortures that would complete him in his downfall of not having had time to make peace with his Creator.

Then he shuddered violently as his back met the ice of a hard, tangible surface. We put him down gently, and he felt the commotion there, under the Diamond Veil of the stars. He then thought to join all those stars dead for so, so long. So he hoped it would go quickly now. That his conscience would shed his dead body, that his Soul would leave for unknown and frightening worlds, but better, it's said.

His last thought made it beat one last time his heartache, before Asystole: Trevor. He would never see him again. He was leaving without being able to say goodbye to him. This kid so strong in his youth in construction, and yet so fragile on his bases of reed which bends and doesn't break; this young adult who resists all the winds whistling their poisoned sputum maliciously, but never bends his knee under submission. Probably his Soulmate, his Heart-Shadow.

He melted into irrational dimensions, vanishing into the World, with the unbearable image of two blue orbs, so pure in their waters, that'd stared at him so sadly, when he was gone ... A look that would haunt him forever, beyond crossing distant horizons whose roots no longer belonged to this world, and even the dark waters of the Styx would never manage to wash away this azure so intense and luminous, nor to corrupt it. So he chooses to dilute his supreme moments of life in the depth of this pure gaze, taking with him this ultimate memory.

The steel blue merged into a fading nut-gray ...

It was like an electric arc discharging its fury in echoes scarring the high walls between the countless corridors, ending their races in a sinister crackle. Space was the time of a second, an unfathomable scratch devouring alternate temporality, in this unknown place not belonging to Euclidean Geometry, exhaling the intertwined layers of incalculable dimensions in the Cosmos. Everything was jostled, disrupted, unbalanced in the rotations, the ellipsoids, the timed revolutions since the All was born in a gigantic Big-Bang, in cadencial measurement of the particles and atoms constituting the Living. There where everything was organization, Equilibrium, Harmony, this immense quantum carpet gave way to pure Chaos, the Void, Lords of Anarchies, Archaic and Capernaum. The Wheel of Time and Destiny, Twin Brothers executors of existences at the end of their Reapers ordered to glean indiscriminately, crushed each sandy micron which saw itself molded into a new medium: nourishing soil that would make it evolve according to Rules rewritten by a Universe to which we had been carefully blindfolded.

From this breach, were exhaled layers of new substrates shaping the structures governed by Clepsydra disgorging their vital juice in the seconds, the minutes, the hours which would cry. The great All began to move again in its inexorability, the cogs of the great Clocks creaked, groaned, as their steel teeth bit into pristine enclaves.

The Recumbent stood up, freed from his suffering shackles, his agonizing bits devouring his jaws in its fangs. The chiseled chest in an endless moan, the flesh pulled by the weights sliding in the pendulum mechanism. Hands clinging to the razor-sharp edge of the sepulchral notch, where in its depths lay a body forgotten in eons dripping with sidereal black holes.

White coma. Vertigo. Agony. Rationality in the dismay of his sorry face. Extirpation of a torture taking on the dimensions of abominable Gehenna. Was it, "Born"? repeated agony, nameless terror in the face of the Unknown of Being shaped.

It took a long time for that body, curled up like a fetus, to stretch out in the languor of a returned life. He was cold. So cold! Frozen to the bone, curling a slender flesh in its affliction, every square inch of which he only became aware of in the torment he endured. Every nerve was being tested, and he was flabbergasted to still feel his heart pounding instead to burst into pieces.

What is this strength of mind that allowed him to retract his limbs one by one, to unfold them in their anguish of circulation absent in the veins, to end in myriads of sparks stigmatizing his essence in convulsed discharges?

The lungs were burning from returning breathing, flowing freely through the exposed trachea, swelling the pleura so that it didn’t stick to the wheezing bronchi. He took his time to regulate the nerve aspirations, as a semblance of warmth spread throughout his stiffened body. He was gradually returning to a life that'd been forgotten for… how long had he sailed in the dark torments of Chaos materialized in a frightening edifice?

With the minutes, the hours? his body was becoming light, as if in weightlessness, until he could no longer feel anything in the fibers. Empty. Gap. Where was his consciousness of Being? Or was he nothing more than an insensitive, inconsistent envelope, trapped in a shell broken from being trampled on?

The passage of the shock, the trauma of his Syndrome, was done in interminable languor. He still didn't know if he should stay like that, lying ... in what? Was he still in his grave? Or should he begin the challenge of standing up? Thus losing the great Homo-Erectus Legacy of a million years ago? A poorly managed, unstable equilibrium above an abyssal Void of which he couldn’t perceive the melted shadows. An unfathomable abyss that cried out to him: "I am your Cradle". Him, it would take only a little will and fight to face the Grim Reaper.

So he began to explore his surroundings with his blurry gaze, through what looked like a red veil. Like a baby at the start of his life, in the first eight months: everything is only red in his chromatic filter. He is the same: Newborn in a decadence crumbling into particles with each of his breaths found in a jerky, convulsed rhythm.

He thought he was bleeding, and his eyes were stained with the blood that has leaked out. Besides, the shapes, the lines, everything was blurry. And bloody.

His brain picked up the succinct sounds reaching him: freezing moans, sighs of ecstasy or pain, he couldn't tell the difference. Dull creaks, windy hoots through pipes, demolished scaffolding. Brackish lapping water giving off a foul putrid odor. The sound of chains rattling against walls that flow into dizzying heights. Did he fall into a well? Could they be potholders at the end of links of monstrous sizes? How tall would these Chained Titans be?

He managed to sit up first, then straighten up, helping himself to some eerie hooks in the seeping wall. Was he in prison? Everything looked like vertical cells where water would regularly flood the foundations according to the mechanisms of opening and closing of pipes by infernal sluices, thus engulfing the places and their prisoners. When there was. Those who would’ve survived.

Where was he ? The cold continued to sweat his flesh, and he wrapped his chest in his arms helpless with warmth. The continual flow of information parasitized his brain, which desperately sought to orient itself in unknown and distressing spaces.

He began his hieratic stroll, carefully feeling each shiny pavement with his armored boots. And with every step it's a piece of his memory unfolding its film, blurry in its striped pellicle, twitching in epileptic jerks, as his eyes gradually regained their sharpness. Fortunately, the sticky darkness was seldom torn by a streak of dying light, too, strangely flickering the shadows around him, and making it more difficult to discern obstacles. It was little, but it was already good.

He remembered the garrison going on a rescue mission, and becoming a valuable book hunt in Wygol. Militia Grégoire and his companions attacked by Reapers, Specters swordsmen.

What about the Vampire Knights of Carmilla? They never left their Tower, those, what got them out of it?

His clash with one of them. Norton who'd screamed. The monumental blow that'd almost torn his head off. Hence his vision defects, probably a concussion. As he put each piece of the puzzle back in place, he spun around, measuring the aberrant heights of the ceilings, the stone beams spewed from the depths of questionable water, where he guessed the silhouettes of horrors confined into them. He didn't know where to go, looking for an exit that would see the end of this nightmare. The infamous gurgles that rose to the surface of the stagnant waters made him nauseous.

There, in front of him, what appeared to be a crumbling remnant of a wall, botched with bloody signs dripping down the wall. It took a moment before his eyes could make out the overlapping graphs on top of each other. Part of his memory selected the language in which the characters were written: Latin. He couldn't quite grasp the meaning, the letters mingled with each other, making the message ambiguous. Apparently a threat, a curse of the place. A warning, no doubt. But his brain couldn't decipher concretely, shared by multiple tasks of stimuli that endlessly disrupt his cognition.

Letting go of this arduous ordeal, finding a semblance of balance, he tried several times to reach platforms not very confident in their wobbly balance, and their worm-eaten wooden slats. He wasn’t dressed for balancing on sharp buttresses, and most certainly doomed to give in under even an ounce of his weight. If he'd had his Combat Cross, he would've been able to jump these overly dangerous obstacles with the included grappling hook, a retractable spur ingeniously added to the already extraordinary abilities of the holy weapon.

Rinaldo Gandolfi. Besides, what had become of this great man? Strangely missing. No one has ever seen him again. Passed out in the mists of oblivion. Just like him, who caught himself thinking of the Brotherhood warrior. Why was he suddenly thinking of this astute engineer? His mind seemed to roam all over the dusty rooms of his Memory, trying to rid certain corners of their inaccessible landslides, to dislodge the precious gem that would finally lead him on the obfuscated Paths of an understanding that was struggling to settle down.

But, he found that all he'd was his clothes : his chainmail, his sword and other knives in his belt had disappeared. He didn't even know where he was, especially what had happened. How did he end up there?

Some time wandering in corridors each more dangerous than the next, on the lookout for a creature, he made the bitter note that he would be hard pressed to defend himself. But above all, and obviously, by some totally unknown means, he was in the… Castle! If that was the case, he was ‘very badly barred’ in the event of an attack!

He felt his organs gradually liquefy, with each step sketched on soil engulfed in questionable, even disgusting matter, of which he especially did not want to know the composition. All his mind prayed in leitmotif was to have the chance to walk through these deliquescent places without any intervention that would seriously put his life on the deadly thread. He grumbled to find himself in this totally weakened position of potential prey, entirely at the mercy of hellish predators. Human helplessness in his ability to defend himself against shells, claws, fangs, and other merciless filth that would tear his fragile being.

Alone and unarmed, man was really nothing in the face of the forces of Nature, whether natural or supernatural. He only had his Intelligence but it wasn't this inconsistent thought substrate that would save him from a nasty claw strike! Man is born in the most complete nakedness in the face of the dangers of the environment, but there he appreciated in the bitterness of the observation, the grim truth of an orderly imbalance for eons.

What strange thoughts he was scaffolding! As he slowly, cautiously walked through quantities of cracked vaults, suspended in unthinkable gravity, from the foundations devoured by a generous saltpetre releasing its almost suffocating stench of mold. He went up small alleys under arches barely protecting the ogives thus deteriorated, noticing notches sculpted in the shape of worked diamonds, where once, there was lodged a medallion, a gem perhaps, in order to open gates forged in strange mystical arabesques, remained open and rusted in their forced yawning. How many knights, warriors, had come here to solve these many riddles, sesame opening portals into voids that would've been better not to face? Too much apparently, when you considered the few scraps of ash and bone dust spreading over the damp paving stones. Remains of courageous reckless who'd attempted the challenge. Or foolish, rather, in view of what they'd to face.

Suddenly, as he passed layers of eddies whose origins he didn't want to know, the space seemed to merge in front of him, the shapes, the shadows, the curves, the convexities took on a whole different appearance and consistency. Like a theater scene transforming into an anamorphic tain mirror.

As if he’d just crossed the floating threshold of leaves undulating like water, making other strata shudder tearing the atmosphere. Go through the door of a Liquid Mirror.

Before his hesitant steps opened high halls draped in torn curtains, hanging from stained glass windows misted with ice, letting pale rays filter through, reverberating on the polished bronzes of monstrous statues representing warriors devoured by Wyverns or Basilisks. Human bodies twisted in ghastly sculptures of terror and agony, devoured by bone-winged demons, grimacing vampires in their infamous seduction at the idea of the meal of flesh on which they were going to gorge themselves.

Here, flanking huge closed doors shackled in the glacial nets, two statuary twins unboxed a violent scene of struggling warriors, armed with shields in grimacing effigies of roaring demon-lions, and one of whose legs disappeared devoured in the oversized mouth of an unspeakable reptile, whose features of the head were dreadfully similar to those of humans. For eternity, these warriors found themselves absorbed by the annihilating monsters, frozen with their arms raised in a final attempt at defense for the ragged limb. The details'd been sadistically represented by the chisel of mad artists displaying such cannibalistic debauchery.

There, one of the shaded alcoves was the receptacle of an enormous sculpted cartouche appearing to rise from nothingness, leaping in the face of any spectator surprising the scene in its highest degree of aggressiveness. A dizzying altarpiece of unhealthiness in the conception of faces losing their humanity in the expression of eternal agony stretched out in horrific baseness. Endless screaming faces, expanding at the end of twisted and enlarged necks, like reptilian napes, and mouths open on fangs promising merciless shredding. It jumped in the face with a monstrous burst of inconceivable evil. Based on the cartouche, the mad sculptor'd detailed tiny bodies entangled in the insane curls of the necks: piles of crushed anatomies of children and adults who were ending their agony in long tresses of flesh torn by fangs. .

There was so much realism in every detail of stretched muscles, of sinews torn in expressions of horror, of skin shattered and soiled by contundant weapons, that one'd the impression of real characters of flesh and blood, of monstrosities, petrified in a stony medium, frozen ad aeternam by the Medusa's deadly gaze. Seized forever under the spell, in their last act of senseless savagery. It would be enough then to break the spell of petrification, to see the scenes move again, and continue their infernal amoralities.

Everything was frozen under layers of ice hampering the pillars engraved with the same artistic monstrosities, sometimes engulfed under the shimmering silver films, sometimes marbled in mediums of ribbed and sparkling obsidian, emphasizing if there was a need, gargantuan acts of devouring, cannibalism exacerbated by a disgorgement of ignoble but fascinating details, because they combined the act of consuming human meat, with the act of… confusing eroticism in its anthropomorphic metaphysics. Humans, demons and animals were inherently entwined in dizzying orgiastic debauchery. The bacchanalia scenes reached appalling levels of pornography, as he made his way through the various oversized halls, whose monumental portals gaped on a new petrified cinematic, more elaborate in cruelty and sadism, in each room.

The sculptures were elaborated in breathtaking dimensions, as if chiseled by Giants, or even Titans. And all this unbridled lust on an infernal scale, displayed a lubricity reserved for the worst demonic spawn in inconceivable spatial sizes. Everything was engraved, modeled, chiseled in precious marbles, delicate stones, alabaster with veins so anemic that one'd the impression that they were veins gorged with the fluidized cruor pouring out a sybaritism uninhibited from all prohibitions having no rules here. It was all depravity as far as the eye could see, human bodies lying down by unspeakable beasts, men and women, and even children, depicted in unbearable sequences of barbaric rape by shapeshifters he couldn't even recognize, rummaging in the memory lexicon of the Bestiary of the Brotherhood, in which he'd learned each spawn figure. Unimaginable saturnalia whose every feature and figure stretched its convolutions in absolute horror, as well as a sumptuousness that could only fascinate the morbid instincts present in each individual.

A long, irrepressible shiver ran through him, making him curl up even more, when he recognized, in a statuary, the Knights-Vampires themselves represented as proud conquerors, holding in one hand their long disproportionate sword, on the other savagely plucking the hair of several slumped humans at their feet, in an uncompromising grip pulling the heads to the extreme in a merciless pull, and bringing out their carotid veins dilated with pain. Two knights thus exhibited their throats in their destitution, while what one guessed as "Novice Knights Vampires" hurried on the necks and tore them from their greedy fangs, in voracious delight of offerings thus sacrificed. Their clawed hands tangled among the exposed flesh and limbs, in an obscene tangle mingled with caresses and sanguineous concupiscence.

And he was at the feet of these lasciviousness, these enjoyments in their horrific splendor, certain to hear even the breathed whispers, the groans of pain and pleasure, the muffled cries of immorality personified in these structures. He'd forgotten the cold that made him shiver some time ago, the dull ache of his bruised body. Only aware now that he'd a body that reacted, betrayed him in the face of this profusion of shameless libations, of perverse abuse, each particle of which was only waiting to heat up and activate before his bottomless amazement.

Faced with all this pullulation of violent lust, his mind drifted into shameless fantasies of which he wouldn't have believed himself capable. It woke up something more painful in his belly, but it'd nothing to do with an exponential arousal that seized him slyly. He was appalled by the betrayal of his organism reacting in the purest Primitive, rushing into the depths of his suffocated Psyche.

And amidst all this display of inordinate sensual cruelty, he saw IT. IT, among many others, who delivered the fatal blow, finishing him in his flesh bristling with deaf excitement beating at the gates of his own dizzying unbridled fantasies that he would never have suspected of cutting into the most obscured essence of his Inner.

He'd a sudden orgiastic intoxication, and fell to his knees before IT : one of the Cyclopean statues, the density and size of which reached the ceilings displaying the same barbaric excess in its pornography. Deep onyx embellished with fine gold, it represented a scene of salacity exacerbated by dark chiseling, embracing a fallen Angel, apparently, whose muscular body sported serpentine twists tearing from his flesh, from his shoulders as wings, unfurling Basilisk mouths spitting disproportionate fangs, part of his body and his neck carved in the relief of scaly serrations, an impressive ruff of which encircled his powerful throat bathed in long night hair.

As the Fallen tore the throat of a man split in two from the brutal rape of fangs digging through his veins, and cock stuck in the depths of his belly clenched in pain. Everything about the victim demonstrated such genuine agony, that it was unhealthy to a nauseous degree. What was apparently a young man, - whose demented sculptor'd chiseled lyrical hair into its inconceivable length tangled among the fractured curves of the Basilisks, in dazzling waves of unbridled sensuality that one wanted to seize with full grips -, broke his body abused in the desperate rejection of the aggression, the skin-deep muscles ready to burst under the effort. Where the tortured and his executioner were joined by rape, the legs merged in an unusual embrace which raised doubt as to the younger's refusal. Were they trying to repel the consuming power, or were they clinging to the Fallen's hips, in order to draw his rapist deeper in his entrails fiercely scratched with savagery ? Terror, suffering, ecstasy and intense pleasure. Everything was linked forever in the barbaric act of devouring flesh and blood of the assaulted ephebe, in a dazzling fusion of the tortured bodies.

An exacerbated flamboyance, thrown at his face, ecstatic with suffocation in front of the realism of the scene. Again, he thought of the figures petrified in the act by the angry gaze of a furious Goddess. The crux of the matter was in the blended ecstasy and suffering, spilling out of the deep reliefs hindered in the bodies shocked by the strain. He almost wanted to approach the hand, in order to touch the shores and valleys of the over-inflated muscles, the sulphurous satin of the skins exuding the sadistic pleasure of the aggressor, and the sublimation evoked in the separation of the legs receptacles enveloping the power of the Fallen. Horrific Beauty in all its glory, for doubt lingered in the abused Apollo's welcoming-rejecting attitude.

In front of such paintings of fiery and animal lust, he gasped with shock and perverse excitement, - an unhealthy and painful torsion twisted in his groin, causing vicious contractions which he tried to resist - and had to lean against one of the walls covered with tapestries and paintings. All were in the same state of mind of excessive amorality. Not a painting, not a panel, wasn't dedicated to an erotic intensity unrivaled in its inhumanity. Everywhere he put his gray nuts, it was mad and insane debauchery.

Magnificent demons intertwined with humans, - strangely, few female figures, the altarpieces and statuary seemed entirely dedicated to the Phallic -; animals and men shackled in infamous libations; Chimeras and Basilisks devouring ecstatic flesh, simulacra of unnatural copulations in a sequence worthy of Tartarus. An anthropomorphism detailed in its amoral rules defying the degree of brutality in its measurement scale. Even the most elaborate Bestiaries of the Brotherhood didn’t deliver this kind of anarchic hierarchy in its most perverse profiles. Those who'd crafted such scenographies had no belonging in this world.

Backwards, he let his dismayed and groping footsteps guide him towards other rooms, also heavily loaded with pornographic art, each other. The ceilings themselves sparkled with considerable frescoes in their aggressive actions. It didn't seem like a single scene delivered a purely mutually agreed-upon act between the parties involved. No ! It was all in the intoxicating violence, the bliss of rape consummated on young people afflicted in paradoxical ecstasy, or the agony of being torn apart. A symphony dedicated to the carnal in euphoria and veneration, inconceivable for a human mind with simple basic fantasies.

Pendulum chandeliers were overflowing with dried candles, of which even wax disguises had taken random erotic shapes, in their flows mimicking lechery and cum, abundant along the pulley mechanisms and their metal support spans. A man could climb on it, and sway in wide movements that would take him to the heights of luxurious balconies, all crumbling under mounds of candles. All lit. The black marble floors glistened with their jaspures sublimated with contrasting veins, and encaustic coulis.

The widely flared and richly decorated balconies opened onto dark corridors whose thickness left nothing to the imagination, gold and silver trimmings, guipure in tones of precious purple and onyx tenebra, embroidery also dedicated to lechery in their meticulous details, hangings with arabesque embellishments twisted with moiré fabrics in shades of sanguine and agates. The whole was stunningly Baroque rococo, which wouldn’t see its convoluted lyrical style born for a few centuries.

Everything here was bombastic and unthinkable by the human imagination. He whirled around in staggering pirouettes, staring at the heights of overcrowded ceilings, breaking his neck. Suddenly intoxicated in front of so many frightening beauties. His gaze admired the graceful convolutions in their excessive marble of the alleys that ran between the balconies, along the walls encroached with sumptuous brocade, joining the spiral cornices between them.

He fell silently, not holding back, free to indulge in this uncontrollable visual intoxication. He let go, and lay down on his back, his gaze still attached to the wonders unfolding in endless cascades. A tear escaped from his hypnotized eyes, pleasantly burning his fluffy cheek, but he didn't brush it away. Even letting it be added to others who were now freeing themselves. Heart clenched in irrepressible melancholy distress, he found it hard to calm the icy embrace clawing at his chest.

He thought of his friend then. He wanted him there, with him, lying on those magnificent shimmering surfaces in their marbling, contemplating for eternity these splendors of violent eroticism and sulphurous beauties.

His mind, overheated by all this erotic debacle, developed fantasies that would've made him blush other days, but there he felt in harmony with a sexuality that only asked to explode freely, largely influenced by this environment devouring his lustful essence, and certainly sadistic in another aspect, because he admitted to being intensely fascinated by the last statue of the young man’s rape by the Fallen, and which'd shaken him very strongly.

He began to construct images virulent by their carnal delusion, which even with his mistress he'd never developed such sexual practices, too stifled with excessive prudishness. So to imagine his friend submitting to such brutal acts such as those exhibited in these rooms was utter delirium in the impossibility of the challenge. He felt an aggressive animal from the sexual pressure, and figured that if Trevor was here, right now, not sure he would endure this kind of brutality, too ascetic in a life arid with feelings. Even if he woke up slowly under a kiss, the ranks were to be climbed carefully with this wild nature.

But he could also surprise, who knows! Don't we say: under the ice, the fire is often smoldering? His friend, so prudish, would perhaps reserve some big surprises in a fiery temperament, inclined to succumb to the most debauched lust that there is. He himself’d once known a wife who was too rigid and practiced excessively the prudishness of clams, and the ‘rouée ’ had indeed turned out to be hotter and more expert than all the prostitutes in a big city! Which, in this inhibiting century, was a feat for women.

His head was spinning from thinking too much, and he closed his eyes for a moment, plagued by the beginnings of what he assumed were post-traumatic hallucinations brought on by the sulphurous scenes. His body continued to stroke him insidiously, as he squeezed his temples under his fingers.

The Apollo attacked from the statue, became Trevor screaming under the Fallen destroyer of his last barriers shackled with taboos.

It was then that he heard it. First a distant echo, ricocheting on the priceless marbles, smothered by the precious draperies, sent back into a repetitive cycle by the feverish statues of lechery. Undulating in successive waves, like a herald sound announcing a theatrical entrance. Rhythmic footsteps in feline fluidity, echoing in what seemed to be metal mingling its ethereal clicks in the alabaster walls. The one who was walking didn’t even try to soften his gait, apparently sure of himself, at the gradual pace.

The headache swelled exponentially, at the pace of the approach, which he guessed was remarkably supple. Then, tearing through the treacles of his migraine, the click finally washed up beside him, haloed with something else that encompassed their measure in a wadded softness of heavy fabric floating against what seemed to be an armored mass, certainly on the boots.

The stimuli seemed to be painfully amplified in the rumbling throb of his pain. He kept his eyes closed under the bite of the cephalalgia, but he heard the other stride cautiously, still shrouded in the velvety smoothness of a drape flirting with the contours of a body. The smell'd filled the room too, a suave sheet of ice and embers. Fire and ice merging into a dazzling atom, weakening the atmosphere of rigid coldness in a cascade of heightened senses sprinkled with a musky and woody intensity, heavy, pregnant in its subtle nuances.

His nose detected another explosive lasciviousness in its notes pleasantly over the others, adding a notch to the powerful eroticism that emanated from it. His memory quickly scanned his knowledge: Hibiscus! God, that this newcomer smelled a savage and feline sensuality. And he was sure it wasn't an exaggeration born of his fantasies caused by Porn-Art.

Strangely, he noticed a lack of something in his reactions slowly becoming muddy, almost amorphous: in other circumstances, his senses would panic at the shock of all the cascading sensations; his vision would be deceived and abused by the multiple arcs of chromatic fractals reacting randomly in diapason with various odors and unusual sounds.

While there, at this moment suspended between two vague worlds, his senses seemed totally lost and dulled, as if caught in a stinging ice of indifference. All of his instinctive reactivity gave the appearance of a worrying falling asleep, and what sometimes paralyzed him during too long moments of desperate cognitive “crisis” suddenly petrified him into anguish. This void. This absolute lack, making him a frail shell, emptied of any inebriating sensation. He began to bitterly regret his strange crisis which often brought him a little balm in the biological mystery with which he was 'gifted'.

He guessed from the silky movement of the Other, that he was kneeling beside him. A weak scraping on the floor, as metal rubbed on its surface. Another velvety brush, as a cool hand rested on his aching forehead from the migraine circle. Exhaustion seized him, he no longer had the courage to open his eyes and find the newcomer.

Then he felt that hand so cool take one of his that was holding his forehead, and he decided to open his hazel-gray gaze. It was a downcast and dismal gaze that he cast on the silvery moon silhouette.

He became aware then he was dead.

Had he gone through the Circles of Purgatory in all these carnal scenes? A frustration born of the abortion of the many existential perspectives that'd presented themselves to him, and which he'd brushed aside with a contemptuous reverse? A reproach to the belated taste of bitterness on what he could've conceived?

Or was he dying… What was he dying of, he couldn't tell, his body tensing again with intense throws going through him everywhere. And out of nowhere. Everything was paradoxical in his stimuli. If that was Death? An intense fever followed by a painful icy rush; an anguish biting his disoriented Soul, and an immense sudden appeasement loosening his muscles; a sudden revolt which would make him stand up, then a weariness like a screed invoking a compensatory rest; sharp twinges showing him that his flesh was still suffering, while everything gave the entire appearance that he was sinking into a dizzying hollow annihilating all other stimuli. What's the point of struggling in the face of the inevitable? A grieved abandonment, without even wanting to turn around one last time on the path he'd barely made. All he longed for now was surrender to the apparition that had come for him, perhaps.

He finally managed to croak through the countless mists that gripped him, making him travel through different planes of distorted reality. He didn't even think he could say a word yet, his vocal cords seemed so inflamed. Like the rest of his being.

"So I am dead… Are you an Angel?"

Even though certain aspects of the apparition set off alarms of danger in his mind, he couldn't conceive of the Being of Light in front of him, like an exterminator who'd come to finish him off. He could only be an Angel. As many dazzling nimbus, haloing around his fluid figure, he himself seemed carved from the purest marble there is. The man was indeed kneeling beside his body remains, dressed in a heavy mantle trimmed and armored in rich gold ornaments nestled in the slate-gray of the fabric, the garment flared in wings beautifully around the half-naked body, as if the scattered flaps were a crown encircling a chiseled sculpture in immeasurable beauty.

Everything was silver and ash in form, in almost transparent, milky skin. The feline and powerful mass was covered in a cascade of luminous white hair almost blindingly lunar pure.

The man was naked under his coat, if not a pair of black leather pants which encircled his hips, very low in waist, almost at the limit of the sex which he easily imagined, in his mind fevered by the eroticism exhibited in the statuary, liberate by the relaxation of thin straps closing the tight fabric. His gaze stubbornly fixed the exciting curve of the inguinal folds plunging into the softness of the leather. It was so easy to mentally sketch the groin extension thus discovered in his provoking destitution.

Two thick belts crisscrossed the ultra-flat belly and pelvis razor-sharp in lean muscles, supporting a heavy scabbard that contained a sword of unprecedented design and size.

His gaze drifted along the tall waist, which appeared slender at first glance, but which one could guess at an immeasurable strength in its developmental capacities, nestled in the depths of this profile falsely ephebe. He understood that it was a beauty as a whole that gave this deceptive impression of weakness.

In his careful study of the stranger's features, he noticed the muscular chest marked by gentle waves of skin pressed against the skeleton, never showing a morbid aspect. The man gave the appearance of being constantly hungry in his powerful frame but with that desiccating, almost anorexic side. However, by the peculiarity of perfect proportions, this thin profile in no way made the silvery sketches perfectly balanced in the silhouette ugly.

He was fascinated by the length of a mother-of-pearl neck in its ashy shades, carried by apparent tendons of such grace, that he almost felt the urge to bite into this beautiful flesh. The collarbones stood out in their magnificent uncluttered design, digging this little valley at the root of the throat, where normally a life should’ve pulsed, which also encouraged caress.

As for the face which surmounted all this carnal architectural splendor, it was the showpiece placed on the piece of jewelry sculpted in its magnificence. Through all this light, the features denounced an absolute perfection in the natural harmony and skilfully calculated by the generosity of incomparable sublimissence. Never had he seen such an aesthetic attain such a degree of perfection in a man. Or even in a woman. Or in a mortal. Because he was sure: he wasn’t a mortal he'd before him. A human would never achieve this sumptuousness without suffering counterfeits on the other hand, whether physical or spiritual, inevitably disharmonizing the desired structure into majesty and distinction.

Perfection wasn't of this world, and obviously, this Angel wasn't of this world. That pure Beauty was Darkness Incarnate.

The apparition didn’t utter a word, as if his slightly black silvery lips couldn't unseal. The face was modeled in a noble and balanced sublimity, marked by a finely sharp and determined jaw, high and very slightly hollowed cheekbones, a nose of chiseled uprightness without any deviation or bump in its profile.

As for the eyes. God ! Their eyes ! Molten lava in their precious gold drowned in unfathomable tenebra that swallowed the sclera. The forehead was large, cradled with an indomitable lock tickling it with its silver velvet. Large eyebrows, also of silver-grey, arched gracefully above those precious pupils, whose pronounced almond made them resemble a wolf gaze. They were also grazed by long white eyelashes, hemming them like precious bird's dots.

Barely crunched on the surface of the silky skin, a few very fine scars streaked from their lightened claws in their seams, upper lip, left cheekbone, and across the nose. The chin was also scratched as well, the large forehead half hidden by the wave of hair, flirted with the lighter shade of the more pronounced scarification. Remnants of a distant fight, so distant, they'd almost completely faded their delicate kisses flirting on the airy texture of the skin. But even though they were more pronounced in their outrageous wickedness, the beauty of the features was never affected. On the contrary, they were displayed in an essence of tender sensuality that he wanted to honor with deep kisses, as in a ritual of consoling worship.

His mind putting all the riddle pieces back in place, pieced together the twin portrait of the Angel seen in the Library. His gaze obscured by a milky fogginess, slowly cleared, and he could admire perfectly this magnificent specter which he'd glimpsed in the clouds of a mirror, the time of a breath of life, now extinct. This archangelic fantasy having handed him a crystalline Lily, for the time of a blink of an eye, before letting him collapse into the harsh reality of life. The time of a barely brushed wrinkle on the wavering clarity of a mirror.

This voluptuous mass of silver thread which he'd seen floating in lethargy, now fell back on the front of the bust, clinging to the passage in the rivets of the mantle, its waterfall daring to flirt on his face, while the Being leaned closer to him. The smooth strands awakened delicious little waves on the surface of his skin, when they kissed him brazenly.

With infinite care, the specter slipped an arm behind the recumbent's shoulders, and propped himself up so that he could barely stand up. The dying man was struggling to breathe properly, and displayed worrying weakness. The head pounded with unbearable thrusts, and the young man let out a tired, helpless sigh. It was as if a protective screed had just given in under the pressure, and finally unleashed the accusing rays of mortality pervading every fiber of himself.

The coolness of the diaphanous hand'd been a noticeable relief, and the Being seemed to notice it. His face wore such a deep sadness, but his curled lips, the upper one thicker than its sister which gave an almost childish pout, didn’t depart from a smile so angelic of kindness, which dug a little deeper a well of incomprehensible pain in the heart of the dying man.

"Are you there to take me?' he managed to ask, his voice still gritty.

The angel tilted his head surprisingly, not letting go of his gaze, where emotions were fighting in a rage that the dying man could see. He suddenly noticed that one of the hands, the one supporting his shoulders, was protected by gauntlets dangerously pointed at the ends, like claws, but keeping a graceful slenderness in their structure. The other hand came under his exhausted gaze, naked : offering a Lily with the tips of long, diaphanous fingers.

The weakened young man's heart jumped at the sight of the virgin flower. He was reliving his vision, as he was slowly dying of consumption. He'd no regrets, he was leaving in the friendly arms of a purest Angel he'd ever seen. He realized that in fact, the tears hadn't dried up since he'd stretched out in the heart of the room, new ones, born of visual emotion, were added in the damp thatch of his cheeks.

"Did I see you over there in the Library?' he managed to croak in emotion.

He clung to one idea when he left this world, and whispered his mourning regret at a desperate loss.

"I have only one regret, that I didn’t say goodbye to a dear friend ...

Another distressed inclination of the Angel who deepens his gaze in fusion in that color of gray hazelnut. Resting a sorry silence, he tightened his grip on his shoulders, and curled the dying man's face against his chest. Without letting go of the Lily, the other arm came to complete the voluptuous embrace, and a river of lunar silver splashed the two figures merging into one. The gorgeous face covered the warm auburn-brown hair in a protective gesture, and nothing, no word was needed not to shatter the unreal dome housing the two men.

Acthéean fills his senses with all these sublime aromas that hovered around them, enjoying the warmth of the skin. Comforted by the obviously friendly and tender body language, he allowed himself to slip his arms under the cloak, and circle a thin, vibrant waist, leaning on the top of the scabbard, the sword hilt pointing outward. He wanted this moment to last forever.

But, it might last, since you're dying ...

"Trevor…" breathed Acthéean, in an effort that weighed heavily on him. ''I will never see Trevor again ... I would've had so much to say to him ...

The gloved hand gently scratched the back of the neck in a soothing motion. Then a voice of melodious depth in a light baritone echoed. Acthéean knew it wasn’t coming out of the Angel's throat, but resounded in waves in his mind, invading his quivering essence under the voluptuous ripples of phonemes.

You're not dying… You'll go back to your friends, and you'll have plenty of time to tell Trevor what is close to your heart to tell him ... But, don't forget: always follow the Lily, it will be your link ...

Acthéean reluctantly lifted his cheek from silvery softness, and examined the Angel who'd just communicated by thought. The smile was still there, unchanging, in that childish pout. He looked so young! Like an ephebe whose figure he'd compared a few moments earlier in his delirium. If he was dead, in such a distant time to imagine, he'd been, certainly broke at a very early age, there was no doubt.

"Why do I feel like I know you? ...' he dared to sigh, in search of acquaintance with someone he would've met.

Nomore answers. Just an abysmal gaze into its half-hearted riddle of obscurity and molten gold.

So, Acthéean chose not to think anymore, but let himself be carried away in the flood of emotions which embarked him in torments over which he'd no control. He realized that his body was still just as emotional by his flamboyant visions of eroticism. It was without hesitation that he covered those beautiful lips with his own, and deepened a daring kiss, emboldened by the other's acceptance of his intimate intrusion.

Just like he'd done with Trevor. The same incendiary touch he felt vibrate through the Angel making him the same fiery with more expertise apparently. Trevor was a virgin, this angelic entity, no. The Porn Art unwrapped in all its outrageous impropriety, in the previous rooms, stimulated his imagination to high degrees, and he attempted gentle massages with fingertips electrified by painful tingling and so good at the same time. His intrusion was more worked into his kiss, daring to take charge of the man submitting to his emotional display. At first hesitant, he brazenly takes courage to open up the Other under his exploration. Meeting of fire and ice. Mixture of embers and acidulous. Devouring sensuality in peppery musk, and the aphrodisiac flavor of a rare flower. A burst of bouquet with multiple stimulating evanescences in their intoxicating exaltation. Hidden among the bursting particles of suavity, afterglows with a non-living aftertaste, without having the sickening mellowness. That little something that slyly reminded him that he was cradled in the arms of an ethereal inhuman and struck by Death. This made him a morbid fetishist suddenly overcome by erotomaniac hysteria.

However, the Angel released him and set off in search of Acthéean's digging hands, gently grasping them, and bringing them back to crucifixion, interweaving his claw fingers between those of the young man in a firm grip releasing a considerable fusional intensity. Without interrupting the kiss, the tongues dancing between them in such an intimate and voluptuous ballet, of which no one wanted to miss a step in the execution. Who was going to take precedence over the other, Acthéean didn’t know, preferring to taste every tiny particle of atom, particles of ice, embers, woods, musk hibiscus in its aphrodite juice. A vertigo of the most erotic flavors in this being who seemed to be molded in evanescent marble, deliberately opening up to him the intimate temple of his Essence.

Abruptly, the clawed fingers squeezed the grip more firmly in a silent order of separation. Acthéean reluctantly broke his worship, while the other pushed him back to the ground, without the possibility of countering the gap. He felt a bitter wave of disappointment wash over him as he lay there, his arms crossed under the uncompromising grip. The Angel displayed an obvious outsized strength, it would've been so easy for him to send Acthéean's body crashing into the walls, effortlessly. Just as he'd rightly assumed, aware of the unparalleled power behind the frame's 'delicate' and fluid profile.

The disappointment took on a sour taste in the face of failure. The other rejected him, nicely, but too crudely in an indifference that hurt the young man. Yet he'd allowed him to pass through the entrance to his personal cloister, during the minutes of the kiss exchanged. Had he exceeded his right of access? Too eager? Too adoring in his impetuosity? Too imposing in his willingness to submit that the Other took offense?

And always looping in his confused mind, the same question came up again in an obsessive observation: why was this specter so familiar in his attitude, his beauty, his features? His smell ? The vision in the Library to which he'd associated another form of hallucination.

The Lily almost rested between them, opal whiteness against the marbled background of darkness, abandoned in the separation hold. Mixed with the refined veins of the precious medium, poured out a few vaporous diamonds escaping from the corolla.

The grip on his wrists resigned, but he knew he'd to stay that way, crucified in a most submissive position, waiting in the hope that the Other wouldn't push him back in a final heartbreak.

He regained consciousness of Self, in the slight twinges, throbbing all over his flesh, in his head, but which seemed to gradually subside. He then remembered his shocks, his battle wounds, notably one abruptly, to his groin, which emerged on the crumbling surface of his memory. He realized the wet look on his skin, all those little details that his body'd stifled into oblivion under the visual ecstasy of the scenes; all his tiny incisions slowly nibbled by the teasing fangs of desire and arousal. He'd forgotten the nasty bite in his lower abdomen, blurred by another teasing pulsing in the depths of that groin now painful with engorgement he wanted to relieve, in this atmosphere deliciously suffused with incendiary musk.

So when he felt and saw the clawed gauntlet descend down his aching ribs, and lift up the chainmail, push aside the tunic and the shirt whose edges were soiled with the reddish brown typical of dried blood, he thought the Other would accept abandonment in a dance whose feline steps he was already maturing in a coveted embrace. This Angel, identical to the spectrum seen there, was surrounded by such fascinating and attractive charisma, that he felt devoured by an irrepressible passion to hold him tight in a vise that would see their atoms merge in a bestial osmosis, like the outrageous statues in the halls.

And Trevor. He would've wanted so much this prudish teenager by his side. Make him discover these exhibitions in their most flayed brutality, and replicate them in the liberating act that would uninhibit his savage friend.

Brutally pinning the timid ephebe to the ground, and make him HIS delighted Ephebe who would scream under the devouring savagery of the coitus so desired. An aggression of which he would never see the end, overwhelmed by the flood of suffering, of tearing, a tetany which gnawed away even the tiniest part of himself which he no longer recognized in this explosive vehemence of animality, of sadistic rusticity, a cruel harshness born to inflict pain without distinction. He would mark his submissive friend to the depths of his Being, until he could no longer erase this Seal of infamy. He would free himself in the depths of this flesh so abnormally soft and hairless, and sink his fangs into the tenderness of this belly torn by abuse.

The expression that'd invaded the so thin and pure features of the Angel's face was unfathomable, indefinable. As if he’d just ‘read’ the mortifying thoughts of the barbaric fantasy which had taken over the delirious mind of Acthéean. As the ungloved hand flattered the injured spot, still wrapped in bandages stiffened in the same brownish hue. The long diamond-like spider fingers knitted strange twirls as they gently pushed aside the soiled layers of fabric, and he felt the freshness of the skin and the air, flirt on top of his scarified dermis, relieving the dull throbbing of the torn wound. Acthéean only saw out of the corner of his eye a luminescent fluctuation brushing his bare belly, as he didn’t take his eyes off the molten lakes that looked back at him.

What followed was the last action he was aware of, before plunging into the infinity of oblivion. That of the hand so magnificent, long, fine and agile, pouring tendrils of smoke around his body, reaching his mouth, teasing his lips with the tips of those marmoreal fingers where they left the unfailing imprint of a bewitching musky sweetness on the tongue that enveloped them like an irresistible confectionery. He nibbled tenderly on that silver pulp, so fresh in his mouth, while a smooth squeeze tensed in the depths of his belly.

At the same time that he felt a sticky heat spreading in his aching groin of tension, the silver fingers nourished him with such a refreshing diamondine substance, as it sang in his mind, an ethereal baritone with hoarse notes:

"You will drink to the tears of my remorse ... I will carry this oblivion forever in my loneliness ..."

Empty. Silence. There was nothing left but the wreckage of a dream. And a long, endless strand bathed in lunar silver, over his shoulder.

As he permanently closed his consciousness sucked into the Void.

----~~00ooo00~~---

Chapter Text

We might've thought of drum rolls at first. Dull gusts, vibrating in the bowels of the earth's crust, dripping in haunting waves until the smallest living particle is frozen in its roots. Exponential echoes, bursting into muffled beats, to the point of hurting in the depths of guts of mortals undergoing these powerful staccatos in their low tones, and echoing endlessly in the heads which clenched in pain under the impacts. Jerky, regular rumblings invaded the plain, emerging from threatening horizons, echoed in what one might've assumed emerging from the Nine Rings of Hell itself.

Before even seeing this cyclical and cataclysmic surge, the guards carrying out their constant surveillance on the walkway, appointed to the ordinance running along the ramparts of the Fortress, were electrified by the angry ebbs, seeming to come from the very core of the earth. Frightened by the phenomenon growing in power, they felt their footsteps fail under this mini earthquake which managed to corrupt the stony foundations in their sluggishness.

It was no exaggeration for them to suddenly think that Hell was breaking loose again. If the Fortress'd been built by the sea, no doubt they would've witnessed a devastating tsunami, shattering the tranquility of the village locked in the Krak and its surroundings, which'd been installed for too long, and spewing its tons of destructive waves on the scene. The comparison might've seemed exact, with what was growing dangerously beneath their feet.

Then, their eyes wide with fear rose to the various causes of the devious maelstrom, swelling in its hectic ripples. Even beneath the serene hollows of bridged arches vibrated large concentric circles disturbing the peace of the river which stretched casually there, never having known such intense disturbances in its transparent and perky waters.

Through the village, curled up in the high walls where the Brotherhood of Light nestled, resounded in long echoes a warning cry in its hysterical sounds gorged by the acidity of the flood of adrenaline which'd struck all the soldiers on guard, in front of the magnitude before their eyes. The howl was such that it was heard everywhere, impacting every nook and cranny of the alleys, the smallest cobblestones of housing estates. And all, again, presented themselves, aghast and interrupted in their tasks, to witness what collapsed between the high portals of the walls.

“The surviving garrison !! Open the doors! They are being hunted! ... Open the doors, quickly !! The garrison is coming! "

Even the insane hoot, which seemed never to dry up, reached the high glazed windows of the highest keep, where the Founding Fathers confined themselves. There was almost a touching ensemble that saw all the humans, inhabitants, warriors, novices, Founders, Knights and Commanders, Priests, rushing and bringing their shocked attention to the scene which unfolded its waves of anarchy in convulsed surges, eyes not knowing where to focus the dumbfounded attention in front of the flood of frightening information.

All lungs hiccupped at once, as the towering doors opened in a surging wave of bodies, human and animal ailments, of panic, rightly terrorized when one considered what followed them. A crash of dislocated limbs, laminitis, remains shattered under the inhuman effort provided, in bursts of howls that made the witnesses squeak in fits of terror and consternation, which didn’t help the immeasurable disorder which thus shattered in the passage of the doors, resembling a living hurricane, like the one which chased the fleeing troop in an unmanageable upheaval.

As soon as they were pulled apart, the leaves closed as quickly as the guards could spin them in their haste, arching their efforts to rotate the huge iron gongs attached to the panels to stop the tide of horrors following the fugitives. But no matter how powerful the protective walls, nothing stopped the dammed flow of thunderstorms that really seemed to be following the unfortunate riders, collapsing in serious falls, and strewn their bodies in deadly lightning for a few crumbling mounts dead from laminitis and senseless exertion. As if the whole troop, horses and riders, were cut short by the ax of Death, and were crumbling in all directions. A miserable house of cards sagging in the deadly thunder of a nasty tornado.

This was particularly the case for one of the poor steeds succumbing under his two horsemen entwined in the confusion of their race. The unfortunate beast'd one last snag of the weakening paws, betraying their load bearing, and fell on the chest scratched by the pavements, slipped on its long shattered nape of the neck, before falling on its side, killed outright by the neck which broke in a sickening crackle. The animal, had it not died of its fracture, would still have died of laminitis, the frenzied gallop had the better of its strength. Not far from its remains, one of its brothers also surrendered the soul under asthenia, and collapsed miserably under its grieving rider.

The two struck down animals threw in their agony the helpless bodies of their armored charges, in metallic clashes, and various cries of pain, adding to the sonorous mess sinking in haunting echoes on the village.

On the other side of the portals, pounding raging fists and sharp claws of the monstrosities that'd included themselves in the pursuit of the troop disbanded by elements and predators mixed in threats that no seasoned warrior could face than in total unconsciousness for his physical integrity.

Under downpours of freezing water, the archers aimed at the maximum amount of monstrosities that rose from the forests, while the inhabitants witnessed a total debacle of sounds unbearable to the nerves, scarlet visions of bruised flesh, bloody splashes and putrid diamonds, poured out of enormous clouds, disemboweling their insane disguises on the living and the environments. It squirted in all directions under the stormy outcrops; it screamed unceasingly, trying to rescue the fallen troop.

It gave the illusion of jerky, rickety visions of displays torn apart in abjection and death associated in a hellish and desperate dance. Individuals scattering under the diluvian torrents; terror weakening their hearts hiccupping with fear, helpless solidarity in the collection of remains and severely contused bodies. The horsemen who hadn't been crushed under the weight of their fallen mounts,struggled with clumsy gestures and drenched in various stains.

Among the men recovering from their debacle, some seized their fallen companions, but unharmed without understanding how it could be. All faces were haggard, some openly grieved without feeling ashamed. Weeping for their cruelly wounded cronies. Crying over their shattered mounts. Weeping for the horror they'd just escaped without quite knowing how.

Amidst all these anarchic clashes freezing the individuals in their implacable grips of transience, rippled in suspension above the decomposed faces, an abandoned body of vital reaction, drifting at the mercy of the hands carrying it carefully. Torrential rains dripped from long chocolate-auburn locks, and cruor-soiled clothing. Not once did eyes swimming in hazel-gray shades open to the devastated environment, but remained sealed in frightening sluggishness. The limbs dangling in their asthenia, proving the prostration of the body thus removed.

--- ~ 0Õoo — ooÕ0 ~ ---

The tain poured out its diluted shadows in sinister, hostile tendrils, tracing strange comminatory sketches of messages misunderstood by dull gazes considering the large reflective lake of the Mirror. Respectful and slightly trembling hands'd presented the coveted Book, on a pulpit molded in an altarpiece with half-sacred, half-deific effigies of unspeakable entities. The small ritual edifice stood up against the mighty and devious Artifact, sparingly delivering its cryptic enigmas in often misinterpreted language.

What the men, thus assembled in a semicircle around the Bronze Mirror, saw when the Grimoire was nestled in the protective notch of the altarpiece, they only half understood the meaning, preferring to object to the convictions which suited them, in all unconsciousness and distorted subjectivity.

"It was Acthéean de Rem who found the artifact you wanted ... I promised him he would come with me when I hand it over to you ..." a voice cracked with grief resounded.

Everyone's eyes converged on the silhouette of Cardinal Volpe installing the Relic and bending before the erected altar, without even showing any emotion in the face of the display of catastrophes which had devastated lives. Mute reproaches glittered in the narrowed eyes of the assembly, but no one dared to openly express the anger that was rising in the face of such indifference.

Tired eyes turned to the harassing skies, expressing their rage without ceasing, and this since the unfortunate garrison had landed in the Fortress, in a stampede where the men of the Milite had made figures of castaways on the verge of mental asphyxiation and physical. Sighs regularly arose at a report drawn up in justified cynicism, and growing anger.

In an abysmal silence, the words were spoken in sounds of desperate and weary abandonment, bouncing against the cold walls of the room. The echoes which hissed like sighs barely touched the disoriented men in helpless consternation. For interminable minutes, these were words without consistency, without momentum, which ended up on the lips of the witnesses, and in the careless ears of most of the founders. A terrible indifference which dismayed those lamenting their failed mission in disaster.

« It was already a miracle that Norton’d seen him through the bushes, otherwise the troop would pass by without suspecting his presence…’ a voice hissed, barely crumbling the stone of the walls.

« ... ancient doctors called this state: catalepsy or catatonia…’’ another sounded in a more solemn tone, pronouncing a very worrying diagnosis.

"… it's much worse than that... You have to understand that he has fallen into a state close to death: he no longer has any reactivity... When you brought him into the dispensary, he was already absorbed in these symptoms of non-consciousness... I’m obliged to express very serious doubts as to his recovery...

The man who painted this gloomy picture had no illusions as to the correct understanding on the part of his peers disconcerted by the fatal turnaround of what must’ve been a banal mission.

"What is strange," continued to pour out the words in icy rain through lips pursed with bitterness, further chilling the already heavy atmosphere "are his wounds which seem to have healed, closed, when he hadn’t had time to heal them properly, as you pointed out, Milite, moreover, they’d apparently become infected... but ... it closed properly... but, internal organs, I can’t prejudge nothing about their condition, alas ... if there’s internal bleeding, he’s lost forever ...

Turning away from the heavy altarpiece of its now precious treasure, the Cardinal cast a strange glance at Milite Grégoire attesting to his surrealist report, and whispered:

"Knights-Vampires, you say? Leaving their tower?

The question had no raison d’être in relation to the herbalist's alarming diagnosis. Volpe brushed aside the human condition in favor of an unhealthy curiosity which seemed to delight him more than to distress him.

No one answered, suffocated by the lack of compassion on the part of the clergyman, and Gregoire voluntarily chose to despise this reflection.

As the personalities in the huge Hall of the Mirror were debating more or less scathing remarks about a routed dissolute mission, they were unaware of the subtle and gradual transformations affecting the Grimoire, in twirling waltzes having appropriated the artifact.

The leather of the book cover is grained in blebs blistering its deeper shades, and what appeared to be blood forging its texture, revealed itself as such in purples seeming to flow their ribbed gullies, thin as hair. The texture thickened and the coppery corners split under the fangs of sudden erosion. Gradually, the heart of the book cover gave way under the grimacing features of an outline demon hammering its sharp laughter into shards of fused silver and brass.

The texts within took on a whole new meaning in the detailed truths of a tragedy based on unnumerable unspoken betrayals. And by all the Saints, a swarm of Angels escaped from it wing-pull, covered with shame and opprobrium, the hands stained with the blood of the Innocents, yelping in Luciferian language.

But the few words that a mischievous novice'd recorded in his extraordinary memory sparkled with their dubious inks, now echoing as a leitmotif in the young man's hazy and lost mind , probably buried in the arms of Death.

---- 0ooo ~~~ ooo0 ----

"... In the charred remains of the struck down cedar, in the hollow of its broken trunk, grew under the torrential rains, an immaculate Lily ..."

A limp body in its spread of arms outstretched, was placed on a large examination table, by cautious hands. But bodily atony worried everyone in the room.

Pain. Agony. Void. Nothingness to hurt. A puffiness numbed with suffering in its annihilation. Chimeras snatching succumbing flesh from their clutches of abyss. No more futility in its vacuity, everything is absorbed into the insignificance of being struck with inanity.

Absence in the mist sucking up the essence of the departed Being until it thirsts.

"Where you go ... you and me ... until ..."

Two reflections facing each other. Two mirrors? No. Two individuals separated by a bridge of silence. While being bound by misty filaments, sfumatos interlacings in the colors of darkness, distortions of smoke thickened with painful musk of old-fashioned excitement.

Two ambulatory silhouettes in a wandering in shades of bloom between the Psyches reflecting their eternal agony. Two inconsistencies profiling their melancholy like a mist between two identical mirrors in their coppery silver tains.

One reaching out, offering to the other frozen. Between helical piercings flowed the inextricable flang in a hair so long in its threads of silver purity, a nourishing crimson ooze whose every reflection was quenched in an inextinguishable thirst, one for the other.

Shadow among the nebulosities joining the shimmering shores, a Lily fluttered in its virginal whiteness, linked by its own cirri to all those nested in an evanescent grind.

The two reflected beings were feeding abundantly from it to the point that every vein, every filament was entangled in the flesh, like an umbilical cord uniting the two yet so fragile-looking entities through the dazzling splinters that made up their essence.

Something was born there, and its consistency couldn’t be apprehended with a rationality that had no right to rule in this extraordinary movement. Trying to explain the inexplicable of the Great Unknown. Cosmic Laws which rarely reached the sources involved in an inconceivable twinning.

The mist between the two mirrors stretched its languor in lines exceeding the forbidden. Deviated twists constructing the emotions scattered through the millennia, to finally find themselves in arabesques melted forever in the rediscovered harmony of boundless love.

--- ooÕÕoo ---

"Where you go, always follow the Lily ... I will carry it in my sorrowful memory ..."

Footsteps hammered into armor were heard in endless echoes, reverberating against the smothered walls of curtains, as if they obscured with an imperative finger the too sonorous outbursts.

"Watch out for his head ..." a voice hissed.

The limbs, the spirit, drowned in cotton. His body moved, but it wasn’t his mind that left that ordered its execution. Touches unnumerable on his painful screaming flesh. His lips couldn’t sketch a plea invoking the immediate stopping of making him toss in such a throbbing motion awakening every wound, every cruel impact, every hematoma hollowing out the skin layers with their blueness.

Escape through the long endless corridors, covered with a thick layer of unchanging ice and shimmering in its silver shards, like a million stars in the grand ballroom of a swirling galaxy. He didn't feel the cold that should’ve gone through him to death. This place didn’t accept mortal intrusion, without inflicting consequences on the unconscious people daring to cross its saddened prohibitions.

"You will drink to the tears of my remorse ... I will carry this oblivion forever in my loneliness ..."

His gaze plunged for an infinite time on the curves and muscular meanders of the bodies in ecstasy, fascinated without limit in front of the exposed rawness. The all-consuming urge to pour himself into it unbridled, to blend in between the shimmering flesh of various musks, twisted his guts, gnawing at his nerves about to explode under the sensual overdose.

He reached out for another one he sincerely hoped was at his side.

Only a ghost sketched that desired hand, holding the weeping Lily in its crush, in his palm. Its petal slowly slipped at the statuary's feet.

A freshness suddenly trailed on his bare flesh. The clothes gradually slipped from his paralyzed limbs.

This throbbing cold atmosphere crawled over his ends scourged with painful goosebumps. He was only a void, a gap, in which the rushing waves cascaded, dragging his being into the hyperbole of decadent distress.

"I picked up his business bag, before we ran away ...

"Strange ... The wound seems to have been cauterized ...

Greed in the interminable rift in which all the loose sufferings spread, as if they were piled up at the bottom of a sack stuffed to the mouths of mourning, gehenna, acme, in seething stagnations.

"Why did you come to me? ... "

" I am dead ? Are you an Angel? "

A delicacy touched the developed smell, in its olfactory layers between sweet and musky without being heady. A touch that predominated over the others. A sweetness that triggered all the mechanisms of memories, opening their doors to an intensive sensuality deeply rooted in the lascivious flesh.

The body retains the memory of the tender residues of distant lovemaking, a liminal glow on the threshold of Consciousness plunging into its Little Death, like an imprint in marble; the mind is amnesiac of the remembrance of a fleeting face, a stolen embrace or a place that saw you fall, as if Death were volatile and everything died with the afflicted Being. Barely an armful of translucent butterflies scattering across the Night which has become a mourning screed over an Innocence absconded with dread.

"How long has he been like this?" He doesn’t react to stimuli ... It looks like his mind is elsewhere ... Has he spoken to you?

Such an intimate contact, skin to skin. More velvety than all the embroidered trimmings, fresher than all the lakes under the dying sun rays of a twilight. A tenderness in the caresses, which none of his successive mistresses'd shown towards him. Corrosive heat torching his insides in an almost overwhelming intensity causing him to scream his lust-thirsty arousal.

This undulating agitation between his legs curled up in the effort, while his gaze never left the exalted archings, cycloidal shapeliness, tender and brutal sinuosities and curvatures at the same time of the aggressive and wild statuary in inhuman degrees. As the smooth swell intensified deeper into its supercharged depths of pleasure, begging to finally burst into the orchestration carefully directed by the devastating rapture inevitably amplifying.

"I want you to examine this young novice, I think he has hidden wounds… He stayed with him all the time…

The immensely dilated pupils saw nothing, couldn’t distinguish anything, but a dark veil, throbbing, lashing his forehead in the deaths of nameless pain. Tears flowed in a discontinuous river, drenching the emaciated face in an empty and deadly expression

Noises in cascades, cracklings, attempts at massages. Nothing. The very essence of the individual was no longer responding to any cognitive stimulation. The gaze was fixed and lost towards horizons invisible to others, enlarged in a form of sluggishness taking on the features of madness.

Desperately, hands were palpating the bruised flesh in many places, but whose wounds had strangely closed cleanly, as livid as scars that'd been several weeks old. The jaw presented a frightening hematoma in the brutality of the blow, and made fear to a consequent fracture. The nape of the neck denounced disturbing bloody traces wrapping the chocolate-auburn locks in a greasy, sticky puddle of ominous omen.

Faced with the utter lack of life and reaction, everyone thought he was gone forever. Perhaps for this world he'd stared at one last time, before his eyes almost golden in their changing shade of hazel-gray only remain fixed on ... the void. Nothingness. Death, surely.

Everything was muffled. The painful scraping of sobs never reached the Recumbent's hearing. Nor the heartbreaking complaints that escalated to unbearable highs of excitement.

"He was alive ... he was alive when we picked him up ... he was alive ...

A broken voice repeated in leitmotif the tiny hope of a reunion - a vain hope that'd collapsed in front of the remains - when they'd relieved their sidekick and companion, obstinately refuting the observed passing.

The strange softness of the curtain walls under his bare skin made him sink deeper into a newfound well-being. For nothing in the world, he wouldn't have wanted the feeling of happiness to disappear like a dream debris.

He gazed for a long time at the gigantic frescoes which displayed their graphic arts in the elaboration of their haunting, flamboyant eroticism, soul devourer suffering from excitement. He couldn’t remain marbleled to such masterpieces! The savagery in its purest form was detailed in all these inhuman, anthropomorphic, gluttonous metamorphic assaults hitting their bellies with the residue of pagan eroticism bordering on the flesh, and it seemed that his most enraged primitive side of his Inner was being released with sadistic claws and fangs, just like the scenes.

He indulged in his instincts rebelling against the holy shackles that'd been hammered so often into his young mind. All the rumbling invectives spitting in their inhibitory venom, all these sermons dripping with hypocritical perfidy, it all fell overboard, and it didn't matter if this disgusting ensemble drowned in the waves of his resentful bitterness.

"I didn’t take the time to live," this precious friend, whom he so longed to have by his side, had already said too often. To hug him so powerfully. To smell his scent when he would be similarly excited in front of such bacchanalia. To seize him gradually, to deflower his too prudish and suspicious virginity, and to bring him to the borders of the most insane pleasures in their unbridled fantasies. To hurt him, certainly, and to rejoice in his cries mixing fear, excitement, ecstasy and pain. He would become the amalgamation of a whole bubbling under the diaphanous skin of the savage teenager, making him climb the stairs to a symphony of stimulation that he would never suspect of possessing in the depths of his emotional flesh . He would be his bandmaster, leading the violas and contraviolas in jerks, and would vibrate his light baritone in moans, in litanies, worthy of a sacrificial choir.

He was stunned by this unquenchable rage to cause suffering in aggressive sexual outbursts, like he'd never felt the heartbreak before. Was it all this stifling atmosphere of harshness and machiavellian barbarism? He understood that it wasn't only the flesh that was thus bruised, raped, devoured, but at the same level of devastating power, souls, spirits, torn in hellish depravity. And it rubbed off dangerously on his feelings, his stimuli painfully exacerbated by this breed of cruelty.

He moaned sadly at having to extricate himself from his soft layer of velvet and silk, and his erratic footsteps brought him again to the foot of the only statuary, where he willingly gave up all will and even desire for existence, ecstatic by the scene. The pupils widened until they engulfed the gray nuts, and froze, the breath like a dying breeze on his lips. While in front of his mortally petrified being, the statue slowly came to life.

No more noise reached him. The deafening of the Void where sounds didn’t exist, and found no sounding board to make their useless sighs heard. All senses were blocked, and his being tumbled into the unfathomable abyss of his perdition.

The Ephebe contracted even more than his arched body would allow, almost breaking his spine under the inhuman strain of the prominent muscles. But his lips curled in silent cries, as his hips rippled under the Fallen's savage thrusts. This time he was sure, on the face marvelously chiseled in dazzling beauty, the features were enveloped in liberating ecstasy, and the belly throbbed in the debauchery of approaching orgasm.

The Fallen let go of the throat, and his fangs drooled long streaks of blood and smoky darkness stretching from the bite to his lips curled up in boundless savagery, dripping in long fluids over the abused body, emphasizing every muscular arch flush with the surface of the skin. His terrible eyes twisted on the lifeless human figure at his feet, shattered by the force of the deed. The bony wings floated gracefully, as the Fallen and the Ephebe climbed the ecstatic ladders of enjoyment in unison. The long hair fell in bestial waves, shaken by the simultaneous aftershocks of orgasm, and a few silken curls crawled into the outstretched hands of the Recumbent, who grasped it greedily, like a drowned man clutching a buoy. He wanted to participate, to caress these bodies in bliss sublimated by the ferocious relationship. He wanted to flatter that belly in its rapture, hollowed out by the powerful sequences of orgasmic spasms. He wanted to bite his lips silently screaming their debauchery, swollen with desire.

Before he returned to his creepy state of levitation above the stratospheric layers, far away from this decaying world, he was pulled back by mighty arms, and tenderly coiled against such cool skin, who managed to calm somewhat the incendiary fire which ravaged his own body in a bath of softness and calm. Slowly, he landed on the ground, like a leaf suddenly torn from its branch, fluttering violently, hitting the obstacles crossing its drifting road, to sail in random waves, abruptly abandoned by the wind which'd uprooted it, and finally touch a shimmering and undulating surface which carried it in its cathartic currents. The bronze and verdigris water of a Mirror, where he floated, and tossed quietly in small circles in delicate earthquakes, carrying him he didn’t know where.

All he felt now was the smoothness of milky arms supporting him firmly in a voluptuous embrace, making the contrast so intense between the frozen statuary again, and the calm space of this lunar envelope. His body was still burning with the wickedly overturned excitement eager to find its climax. He began to voraciously lick that beautiful, silvery, ashy skin, pulling the sides of a cloak covering the treasure out of his mouth a little roughly. He restrained only with difficulty to plant his teeth violently in this lunar wonder: to hurt, to draw painful moans, to mark it brutally as HIS possession, was all that made him vibrate with a rare intensity which gave the true impression that his being wouldn't survive it.

His hands rummaged under the heavily armored fabric, searching for the groin, inguinal folds that'd so fascinated him in their sharp outline of hard muscles. His fingers met the belts supporting the scabbard of the interminable sword, and it was almost in an angry and annoyed gesture that he attacked the zippers, frustrated by the meaning of forbidden by those cursed straps preventing him fully from gripping those hips so sweet and acerbic, promises of perverse delights. His lips and teeth never interrupt their devouring devastation on the creamy and refreshing dermis. He didn't even want to open his eyes to the wonder he was abusing his possessive caresses, he knew what he was going to see. He let his velvety facial stubble flirt with all that surface, wanting more, as things progress of his exploration.

He was losing his mind, and was aware of it, but didn’t want to fight against his furious desires, even if he felt himself lost in olfactory stimuli which deepened his neurotic madness a little more; his touches which sent him deeper into new sensations, to the point where he would've howled in frustration and hysterical impatience.

It was then with a miserable squeal that he felt himself being pushed away from his possession which he gradually nibbled at, by pointed gauntlets that grabbed his wrists. With lightning speed, he was pinned to the ground by a force impossible to counter, so much was it loosening in a degree of inhuman power.

"Why did you come to me !! he yelled, in sobbing despair.

A flood of unbearable pain seized his being, and stiffened him to the ground in a deadly grip.

Reminding him that he was dead ...

"Why does Belmont hate me? I think he's angry with me, because he would've preferred it to be me who left, rather than his friend ...

A heavy look of silent reproach, a murderous glow erupted in the steel-blue orbs. The childish pout that usually melted, turned into a relentless, furious grimace in its graceful bow.

A few laps of water splashed over a surrendered body. The water was soiled with mud, various slags, blood. And tears. The afflicted man gave in to grief on purpose. Like many who'd paraded for treatment in the dispensary.

Silence of death. A heaviness hardly acceptable by the men gathered here. Scattered items from the picked up bag were lying on the large examination table. The rich and pronounced smell of Sage invaded all the more discreet substances in the atmosphere, as if the plant was imposing itself on conquered land, proud of its olfactory power, whereas it'd already withered since it'd been picked.

But it was He who picked it up. Then its importance was at its peak in weeping hearts, knowing that it hadn't even had time to be put to good use.

The coup de grace had been in the sight of the wonder which'd been nestled there with love among its leaves, as a magnified case for the virginal corolla which remained untouched, intact, pure.

"He plucked it there in the Sage. I think he picked it up for you ...

Jaws fatally contracted, muscles rolling under the alabaster skin in a dangerous spasm. The teeth would almost have given way under the raging force. The look, God, the look! So murderous, so intense in a draft of desperate madness.

In the tawny darkness of the bedroom, the mother-of-pearl twin slept in the cradle of a mirror, and of passionately executed designs.

---- 000 ~~~ ooo ~~~ 000 ----

Interminable were these meanders. Labyrinth of plant greasy, branched ivy. Everywhere, these multitudes of ramifications so tenuous, so tiny, which ran in all directions.

Tirelessly, these compact bands of mist stretched into infinity, veiling everything that innocently presented itself in their eternal lasciviousness. Then, these cloudy ropes seemed to shrink to tie themselves in spasms of pleasure with the ribs thus scattered. The sum of the whole rippled, meandered languidly between two high hieratic frames in their patinated bronze, and their throbbing silver. Calamistred in their subtle claw-like frizz, perhaps, polished by the sly patinas undulating in prophetic promises, the two Mirrors confronted each other, imperturbable in their flattened tain of lull, noble in their scrupulous chiseling. The brass mists mingled with the almost inconsistent bloom, to water the beings lying at their arched statuary feet.

No windy ounce came to disturb the hair spread out in utter sluggishness, the chance of a fall caused by Sudden Death. No drizzle made the eyes flutter, fixed on the threatening stormy skies, but which no longer had any importance for the struck souls. No fuss over there on those bare chests carved in alabaster medium so finely stylized with almost invisible and arid veins of the precious cruor.

Choirs arose out of nowhere, chanting angelic modulations: a song for the Dead. Resounding in this desert of abyssal silence, even the turrets so high in the broken skies, didn't dare make their pointed frames creak before the respectful contemplation of the annihilated beings.

Reverberating endlessly in twin reflections, a Book opened, flipping through its damaged pages, graffiti of sibyllin symbols speaking a language forgotten for millennia: a Dracholish language. The choirs languidly sang the unintelligible verses.

While a corolla of mother-of-pearl rose on its endless stalk, from which cascading diamondine tears were shed ...

~~~ >> ÕÕoooÕÕ << ~~~

How long ? How many hours had passed since he wandered at will of shadows engulfing endless corridors, doors moaning on their inconceivable heights, among the dying colored reflections projecting their pools of diluted moiré on the marbled pavements, highlighting a more murky atmosphere than was necessary? Crossing the sly currents of air that made his body shiver, exhausted from the endless walk.

He wandered endlessly over magnificent paving in their alabaster designs in crimson and black, gold and bronze, verdigris and stumps of bistre, dust and tinted ash. Careful arabesques traced in the same colors that repeatedly claimed their deeply intimate and rich harmony, causing the eyes to be ecstatic, endlessly feasting on them, wherever they land. Despite all this silvery grayness that enriched the materials, at no time did these tones provoke gloominess of the mind or sadness, but magnificently underlined the cold chromatic in its precious accents.

Everywhere was a collapse of hundreds of candles and candelabras diffusing their warm golden gleams across the halls immensely curved in their intricate sculptures, their ceilings almost invisible in the dark nimbuses in which they hid fragile reflections. The warm colors of reds and purples bounced in their magnificent intimacy, feasting the eye which reveled in their nobility. The gigantic windows curved in their pronounced ogives, the points of their prolonged arches, - the discs delicately hollowed out between the grooves chiseled in triple rosettes so fine that they seemed to disintegrate at the blink of an eye - were obscured by heavy dark velvet panels, or by stained glass windows clogged with secular dust, and gave even more the throbbing impression of an offbeat atmosphere as a whole, where the foot shouldn’t make any noise so as not to upset a equilibrium sought in a particular temporality not having its roots in this world.

And always the parade of rooms of insane proportions, with niches darkened by their heavy statuary, with aedicules suspended in the silent void supported by what looked like pillars of ivy tied in stone and marble.

The sense of internal direction had completely lost its needle pointing all the poles, and none at the same time. No one was able to draw an accurate map of places strung one after the other in utter anarchy. Or wanted. Who knew? It was in front of the eyes, suddenly uncovering itself, only to disappear permanently from the first contour of the hallway. It moved endlessly, in a crazy round of delirious anamorphosis in the structures. As if this Place born of Chaos were having fun with the stimuli and distorted cognition of any unconscious that would like to visit its confines.

It was aimless, without a finish, with no starting or ending point. A cyclical monstrosity accepting to unwrap its rolls of inconceivable wonders to the dumbfounded eyes. All in the most diverse olfaction possible: the smell of candle wax mingling with burnt boxwood and incense in syrupy, slightly heady waves. Hints of Armenian paper intertwined with those of dying tapers pouring out their vapors, sublimating this atmosphere in which the soft click of the boots frets resounded. A moist heat that descended on the shoulders of the wanderer, as well as a contrast to the cold that gripped the feet despite the armor, coming from the long glacial mottled pavements. Large stone slabs took over from the precious marbles, on which echoed the reverberations of the world in secret murmurs, the exaggerated bulges of a thin cough spit out from a dry throat, whispers by the thousands swelling all around him, as if he found himself in the heart of a cathedral delivering its sighs and tears to a benevolent soul.

The richly damask drapes gave way to the coldness of the bare walls, flanked by myriads of sizzling sparks, spitting their anger from thousands of candlesticks and light fixtures of all sizes, tempting all for all to warm up the astonishing atmosphere of the vaulted and braced room which he recognized as a crypt.

His feet seemed to sink into the cold paving the gray and black colors of scattered ash, while he crept almost to the gigantic mound that rose up in the wadded shadows of evanescent vapors of smoke and incense, of damp as mist, almost obscuring the sharp outlines of what looked like a sepulcher. His gaze slipped over the intricate arabesques and curves of the designs on the dusty marbles. Then fell on a heavy plate almost cracked, certainly by its fall: a carefully engraved cover , unsealed and collapsed leaning against the intimate niche hollowed out by agonizing tenebra.

Cursive flotation intertwining, loose writing of a name. Strange. With harsh sounds in their phonetic inflection, when the lips curved and whispered the syllables thus sculpted. The resonance of the breath seemed a ritual in the dumbfounded pronunciation. And the deaf walls returned the thundering rustle to each other, naming the One lying there, as a prohibition against modulating that name. He tried again to formulate this atypical name, and felt in the depths of his soul, the convulsed jolts of the Place which seemed to manifest its disagreement to invoke the Recumbent who slept there.

The apple-of-eyes wobbled on the afflicted height of kneeling angels at every corner of the tomb, their lifeless faces lying on their arms, in an everlasting plea. Who was buried here, surrounded by so many marks of devotion, and love in sorrow? The whole environment vibrated until the slightest subtle drizzle raising the ashes sprinkling the surroundings of the burial mound, emphasizing, if it was still needed, the sublimissence of the crypt in its artistic organization, thus revealing a very high character, affectionate, rested, and that everything'd been carved out of the inconsolable mourning of the one who'd ordered the erection of the sarcophagus.

"I found you ..." a voice whispered, reverberating off the high vaultes, and the warheads.

His faltering footsteps climbed the few degrees to the tumular, leaning on the edge of the gaping opening on lurking penumbra. His breathing was reduced to nothing, suffocated by the emotion of the place, and the anticipation of what he was about to discover. What was to arise from this threatening abyss?

As his gaze searched the tenebra, seeking for a deeper distinction in visual comprehension, he found that the sepulcher was strangely connected by an invasion of fine veins, roots so tiny, which ran like ivy to assault the gap, and in fact covered all the architecture. Strange he didn't notice it right away. As if the inextricable ramifications had suddenly appeared before his tired eyes from so much wandering, lack of rest, and relentless focus stimulated with every step.

Like the angels half-reclining on the tomb, he lowered himself to the ledges, slowly becoming aware of the vision thus spread out in the nebulous nest. Lying in lunar rigidity, the White Angel rested, his arms crossed on the brazen chest, the immense hair spreading its abundance over the front of the bust, meandering along a sharp waist, face soothed in the rest tilted a quarter to the left, the slightly parted lips seemed to wait. What ? That we feed them? That we kiss them? Everything was diaphanous about him, his skin, his hair. Everything was silver, and slate-blue in his coat, which barely covered him.

Everything was invaded by the hundreds of little ramifications crawling over his alabaster body, like little tubes connecting him to something. Did it feed him? The venules clung to the skin, even seeming to sink into the upper layers of the delicate, transparent dermis. He was covered with it. Even along the leather-wrapped legs and the armor of the boots. The branches intertwined everywhere as rallying points, as if carrying vital fluids to the Recumbent body.

The highlight was given by the finish of the intertwining in the shape of a mother-of-pearl chalice flared in its fragile and immaculate dome, lying preciously on the hollowed out belly. Diamond in the heart of its satin case.

An icy flow seized his spine when he recognized the virginal flower. He let his head fall, heavy with grief and fatigue. When he lifted it up, he faced the corolla presented by a silver moon hand that held it in a cup.

Frozen by a gaze that opened to two molten lakes staring at him intently. While in the distance, facing the tomb, the iridescent bronze puddles of a Mirror of svelte and slender proportions throbbed, surrounded by two Dragons with bony wings. From the blinding reflection of its surface, slowly emerged two offering hands, from which fluttered incandescent tendrils of smoke and ashes taking the formidably hostile aspect of an Antediluvian undulating in its endless winged appendages, giving the fusional aspect with its chiseled twins in receptacle.

---- 00ooo00 ----

“… And then they disappeared… as if absorbed… there was nothing we could do, we were all paralyzed…

"... I think he brought this back for you ...

"What happened there in the Library?  

"Are we all going to suffer the consequences for bringing THIS ...?"

"These are only a few stragglers in the hordes, but they followed them to the foundations ... They're the tree that hides the forest ...

The Shadowheart was beating in eerie languors, too slow, too weak, almost a tiny sigh that the ear could barely hear.

Hyssop, delicate envelope of a saddened mood. Intoxication engendered by the olfactory rounds of bodies inebriated with ecstasy. Agony in the flesh wanting to reach the blessed heavens of deliverance.

The strands of mist stretch out, tear themselves apart in sighing lamentations of emotion.

The scrambleness fillets deposited their murky and opaque moods on the quivering flesh of abandonment.

The Void consisted of a whole, single sum of a Being in debates to untie itself.

The Void absorbed the life essence in its final reflex jolts.

The meshes of the insubstantial net detached themselves one by one from the life thus spread out in their spokes.

The Mainsail saw a stirring beneath its ethereal bure, more languidly sucking up the struggling body in its angelic fabric.

The virginal dome seemed to burst the tanned surface of an intangible puddle.

A reassured hand clung to the almost transparent corolla of purity, and brought it to the lips thirsty for its divine juice.

"Follow the Lily ... drink from its fountain, drink my tears of remorse, and I will carry it in my memories ..."

"Why are you so familiar to me? Don't leave me, I'm afraid in this darkness ... Don't abandon me in my death ... "

Ooo >>> ~~~ <<< ooO

Long was the fall. Vertiginous. Endless source of ecstatic agony in the sharpest Terror facing the Great Unknown opening its Portals on its impenetrable ways. Obscurely defined were the inconsistent penumbra, dancing in mixed nebulosities of stellar demise, of the milky concentric Ways, of atoms flirting with the Rules of an architecture of the Living.

Icy fluid that electrified his whole being, shocking the dumb heart in its sluggishness. The lungs suddenly set on fire, drowned in the cataclysm of the reflexive mechanisms of life resuming its primordial rights. Strident was the cry that released from a throat that'd been dry for too long. In a painful arc, the spine of the Recumbent bent, throwing him violently into this world where everything pulsed with great blows of organic rhythm graphed in the cells exploding under the unbearable variations of the very definition of the Being emerging from their myelosis.

To be born is suffering. To be reborn is even worse.

It was as if the anguished cry'd lifted the pleura from the lungs, sealing the shaken diaphragm with unquenchable coughing respiratory spasms causing the body to jerk, as if it were drowning again in the oceans of dead stars and molten planets. His Cradle was the deep and mysterious Cosmos, and cool arms were his shackles in the desperate attempt to contain the nervous crisis, and prevent the catatonia from settling again in the limbs it'd stiffened.

An endless stream of pain larded his body in all directions, and the howl didn’t stop as he convulsed under the murderous splinters lacereting his organism, his soul, his whole Being, his Essence which seemed to liquefy under the slow etiolating passage the mass curled up in its acme nest.

All of his senses suddenly recovered, and it was an orgy of stimuli that struck him further with the collapse of information parasitizing all of his cognitive parameters. The mere touch of the arm apparently trying to hold him down was a decay in its gehenna, a riot of thrusts and torments, literally devouring the shattered being that he was.

The scream, or the call that mingled with his own yelping, seemed to poke his eardrums out, as he was interjected with a sort of strange sweetness. Like an injunction to calm which failed to find its roots in the suffering biological balance, nor to make itself understood through all the interference scrambling his brain, liquefied by successive migraines. All his nerves were supreme agony. The whole nerve center was screaming under the overdose of neural communications. And the process risked leading to insanity in the face of such a pile of ordeal and bitterness. His reason was going to give up definitively, long before his body finally found the peace retrieve in the reorganized stimuli.

Then all of a sudden it all stopped. The fall had come to an end. The dizziness gradually subsides, leaving an acid trail in all the exacerbated ends of the nerves. An unfathomable void gripped the heart on the verge of asystole, lodging a bitter lump in the depths of the torn pharynx. Breathing were exhausted rales and squeaky, managing to sparingly inflate the released lungs. The breath slowly resumed a more peaceful jerk, and became long inhalations/expiries painstakingly mastered, aided by voices that gently urged him to tranquility settling little by little in all his sensitive fields bombarded with new sensations, and always more painful than the next.

It took a long time for his brain to understand the various stimuli, the touches, the hands that rocked him, the incessant noises that managed to cross the receptor lobes evaluating and adjusting the data that flowed into multiple puzzles. The different parts of his brain were at work in their decryption tasks, causing exponential cephalalgias encircling his sweaty forehead.

Then, again, the void. The impenetrable darkness. The agonizing silence. He didn’t hear the hubbub caused by his Renaissance, his long-awaited return. He only plunged again through the eternal mists unraveling between two mirrors ...

--- OoooO ---

"Slow…" Efrain's cautious tone rose. Above all, you shouldn't make a sudden gesture. He could interpret it as an assault, and be shocked by it. It would add to his trauma ...

"May I do it, Brother Efrain," a soft voice asked humbly. I would so much like to help in his relief ...

Then, in a much lower tone, like a secret susurred in the hollow of an ear:

“Have you noticed the strange shade in his eyes?... What is this caused by? It seems... that it changes depending on the angle of the light...

Efrain could only agree with the remark, but had no idea that could explain the unusual phenomenon. It seemed as if a tiny dust of gold was delicately fanned across the hazy veil of the hazel-gray firmament, and released its frail, muffled shards from the angle from which the two men observed the clouded eyes of small, fragile diamonds.

The herbalist seemed to be giving scrupulous directions, in order to avoid any false movement that would irreparably disturb the troubled and lost cognition of one who lay unresponsive on the soft layer of the bedroom.  He must certainly have acquiesced to the request, as a different touch began to move back and forth, cautiously brushing the exacerbated dermis. A warm and soothing humidity enveloped the many goosebumps reactions tingling the whole body, and a very airy diffusion in its composition of sweet and oily scents awakened his keen sense of smell.

Always in a tone that was meant to be reassuring and guiding both to the tormented soul struggling against the hazy miasma that persisted in obscuring the wandering spirit, Efrain, attentive to the slightest stammering and muddy reflex of emergence into this world, almost whispered to the recumbent:

"Are you with us?" Only blink your eyes if you understand correctly ...

Weak blink of eyes tinged with hazelnut in layers of gray seeming to darken the eyes a little more.

“We need to do a full toilet so that we can reevaluate your injuries. You have it all over the place, but your head that worried us the most. Do you understand me ?

Another long blink, haphazard and hesitant. The brother's soft and empathetic voice echoed painfully in the foggy skull still drowned in distressing memories that regularly made his adrenaline rush rise in irrepressible anxiety attacks, which the herbalist'd been very difficult to manage, and his help, when the Recumbent'd returned from his mysterious journey, when everyone thought he was lost forever.

All was still nausea and insidious dizziness, which tossed his being between two brackish and murky waters lost in the roots of a fog lingering in his memory and logic. He was having a hard time threading two coherent thoughts in a row, without suffocating under the unhealthy wetness that seemed to devour his mind and soul. His soul, God, his soul would've wanted to scream out its pain and its corrosive complaint about something he couldn't remember. Everything seemed to disintegrate in the dark rooms of his memory, real capernaum of flashes, grotesque images, which failed to materialize in a rationality that seemed to have resigned from all pragmatism.

The sickening filament molasses gave the impression of having stuck all his cognitive functions, the memories failing to construct a semblance of structure to which he could attach the beginning of an event. Unable to search all those deliquescent ghosts, and other sneering specters, mocking him, as his imagination tried to put together some shattered pieces of the puzzle.

Pushed gently by Efrain's reassuring voice, he was already attempting to reestablish his primordial connections with his surroundings, and let his body settle in and explore its stimuli, one by one. He quickly noticed he was on a warm, fluffy expanse. He was naked, if he’d to trust the slight currents of air on his skin curled with goosebumps, and the constantly fluctuating temperature difference between the atmosphere warmed by the fireplace, and the fabrics that were washing him.

His breathing quickened at the sight of his submissive nakedness in the hands he hadn’t yet recognized, and which apparently were performing ablution on his body. The mortuary toilet? Something, deep in his memory was scratching at the condemned doors refusing to open, and to understand their meaning, but this feeling of nudity’d rekindled that little something that put him between two violent emotions: fear of the Unknown who so moved him, and intense excitement vibrating the depths of his belly where a lump seemed to nestle there, and from time to time nibbling in the nerve fibers of his groin, in a form of ecstasy. As if part of it was numb, paralyzed, and that another brazenly responded to a natural reaction of waking up. As if still wrapped in a milky cocoon of warm, sticky juices; a terrible plasma from which this marvelous Chrysalis would be born, electrified by the offering of variable stimuli from which his body could benefit. He became this precious Chrysalis enjoying this thrilling suavity within him.

But he was reassured when he felt the fabrics slide carefully over his privacy, the inside of his thighs, his pelvis. If he felt the tender flirtation of towels, it was because his nerves weren’t desensitized. But he remained in this mash of pitch weakening his mind, preventing him from thinking in a homogeneous way. His very soul was trapped in this murky puddle, sobbing in its endless pain that ruthlessly tore it apart.

The still whispering voice motivated him on the path of benumbed comprehension, and he clung desperately to this lighthouse sailing the tumbled waves of its mnemonic space, guiding him towards the concretization of his being in his Rebirth.

"Do you recognize us? Always blink if You do ... Do you know who I am?

Weeping wink of gray hazelnuts. For the tears were intermittent, and many times the herbalist'd wiped the afflicted face in a boundless melancholy, while paying attention to the ugly hematoma spread across one side of the brutalized jaw. Everything suggested a fracture or an underlying dislocation, and yet no, the mandibles had only suffered from an impressive ecchymosa spreading like spider's threads of small burst vessels, under the pale dermis covered with a thatch developed into an unusual entanglement.

He felt two other hands more hesitant in grooming, working respectfully in the sacred ground of his privacy. His blurred gaze moved away from the herbalist's, to fly over the second figure who was practicing very private ablutions as gently as possible. There too, a strange reaction to the warning act: a conflagration of his lower abdomen, a feverish fever in his shivering hemostasy making him whole dermis tingle, a sly erethism under the caress becoming sensuality towards his excitement. Why such an intense reaction?

He knew that there was a stranger who'd emulated his being like that, and that it'd happened there. Where ? He no longer knew. What ? Certainly no stubborn memory, persevering to remain holed up in the sands of its perdition. Over there? Some event had traumatized him deeply, and the ultimate agony wasn't being able to remember it. If only an image, a detail that would emerge from the intoxicating swell of his ignorance. But Mnemosyne didn’t seem motivated to stimulate the abyssal lack in the various deserted compartments.

And this simple gesture of grooming on his privacy had awakened a reflex he couldn’t control. His lips curled in the silent void, and the attempted phonemes failed in the thirst-dried labial desert. Efrain misunderstood the movement, and handed him a cup of cold water, which he lapped hesitantly, like a kitten on its first feedings. It gave a little affectionate and tender side to the laps.

He took advantage of the small wipes by another cloth which dried his thatch which had grown in a more haphazard fashion, and would need a refresh as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The glove was rinsed off, and passed over his face filled with a multitude of conflicting emotions, while his lower body felt the soft warm slips continuing the ritual of cleansing. There were two of them taking care of him, and his eyes once again searched the fawn and gold half-shadows, looking for the identity of the careful, conscientious healer in his spider-like arabesques.

Finally his reminiscences drew a coherent portrait, perfectly adhering to the bridging of the identity, if only by the magnificent veil of black diamond which spread out its silk fibers around a pallid face, much too pale, contrasting with the dark onyx of the hair: the Ying and the Yang, Clair-Obscure sublimated by the chiseled features that he immediately recognized, even through the stubborn fog of his tear-clouded vision. A tiny tear clearing in the opaque tulle of diluted shades painting again the web of his intertwined senses.

He tried to speak again, but only came out a low croak exhausting in cracked baritone gravity.

"Don't try to speak if you can't. Everything will come back gradually. We've to turn you around a bit for your toilet. Let yourself be manipulated without struggling, relax ... You're safe, now ...

Then turning to his aide, slipped in some medical advice:

“We’ll put a little cornflower water distillation in his eyes, to calm the lachrymal flow... it can end up irritating the skin, because the tears’re made of salt, and burn in too large quantities...

The herbalist's voice was still on the same quiet, comforting tone. As a good expert in ancient medicines, especially the Greeks specializing in mental suffering long before their time, Efrain knew exactly all the directives to be taken with infinite precautions towards people in traumatic fragility. Mostly coupled with a loss of memory, temporary, he hoped. The memory disturbances could worsen over time, he knew, as the Veil of Amnesia could tear apart just under the power of a single timely stimulus. It was necessary to keep all soothing behavior towards the afflicted one who saw his Psyche flee from the brutal truth of the traumas, only by moving away into the limbo of Agnosia.

When he saw the reaction to the sight of Trevor's hair and face, he already knew that his apprentice wasn’t lost forever in the memory nothingness. Now he'd to count on the gradual recognition of his surroundings, and of the events that'd unfolded in the haze of the utterest unknown. Whatever one had to do to stimulate his memory capacities, was to refer to even a specific image, or a voice, or a word, to finally succeed in opening the doors of the monastery of oblivion which had erected in the residual and erratic memory of the young man.

Unable to utter a syllable, he reached out his hand towards the beautiful shadow of black and pallor silhouetted against the flame and orange halo of the fireplace. As soon as offered, his hand was taken without hesitation by his friend, displaying a reassured expression at his attempt.

"Acthéean…" Trevor gasped painfully, squeezing his fingers in his firm, friendly grip, moistened by the oiled and fragrant bath water. ‘’ We all believed you were lost ...

The last words were cracked with emotion, and a hand gently pressed Trevor's shoulder, as a soft "shhhht," urging him to calm his panic, was whispered in his ear, so that his own fear isn’t shared by Acthéean.

Acthéean's sense of smell quivered strangely at the good fragrant odors of oils, but a specific scent suddenly lit lights in his mind: Hibiscus. A creamy languor spread its shimmer across the atypical visual color chart of his abilities, and it was like a flighty brushstroke grazing the already delicate sfumato of his senses. At lightning speed, his compartmentalized brain searched desperately for information. This peculiar olfaction garnered thousands of tingles of acknowledgment, but one of which remained conspicuously in the shadow of his apraxia.

Hibiscus = Trevor's adoration for this flower that he loved to brew for himself. But also ... what else? A sneering fantasy twisted in the dark mists, mocking oblivion. What was it that had so moved him? How long of that?

No way to remember it, and it was a desperate gasp that crossed his lips as he let himself be manipulated to the side to allow for the aftermath of the toilet. He gave himself the impression of a newborn baby being tossed about quietly in the contortions of cleanliness. But deep down he was glad to let himself be abandoned to it. He let himself appreciate the sweet glides of the scented linens on his skin, in every recess of his healing flesh. He almost wanted to dip his own soul, his own essence, into them and wring them out in a toilet that would relieve him of all the mental misery that was impartially gangrening him. He would've liked to wash out this immense blanket of uncontrollable sadness, until no more colors. Did he hope his two friends would fix it?

A very wild side, of which he didn't know the cause, awakened under the smooth movements, and it made his pulse climb again in an almost hysterical way, causing a conflicting unease under which he faltered miserably in a long interminable moan. The two men stopped their ritual, fearing that they'd caused pain, or moved a limb incorrectly.

Why did he suddenly have this urge to devour, to assault, to pin to the ground in order to hurt? He'd the brutal impression of another Self about to spring from his distraught being, in blind and unstoppable violence. What had caused this in him?

He was repositioned on the back, cleanly dried, and wrapped in the furs of the diaper. He heard Efrain succinctly ask Trevor to cook something warm, as he focused on the various wounds inflicted, which he couldn't even remember collecting, at some point in their adventures.

He could confirm that he wasn’t in pain, anywhere injured, and instead floated on clouds of stillness, sometimes sailing in sly, muffled thrusts in his head, sometimes in snatches of welcome relief. But on the whole, it weren't the pangs of agony he'd felt lately. During his "trip"?

Efrain'd reassured him in his careful examinations, especially concerning his nape of the neck which had shattered in the Library. The sword stab in the stomach he'd collected, during his fight with the Sword Specters, had strangely closed and healed, cleansed and safe from any infection, to the amazement of the herbalist who'd learned about it from the reports of the afflicted witnesses who'd followed in the chain in his apothecary.

Most precise in the details of the testimonies, of course, was Norton, who'd remained throughout the mission with Acthéean. The unfortunate young adult had given a precise account of the terrors, of the horrors that'd shaken their existence, during their mission order which could be considered half as a success, if we excepted the tragic disappearance of Acthéean before their helpless eyes. But that only unfolded even more the unfathomable and deadly mysteries which enveloped the events where the troop'd had, all the same, to flee in front of the rage poured out in the bad weather, and the dread which'd been seized by the devastated landscape.

A few more palpations reinforced the perplexity in Efrain's examination, and with each exploration he delivered his concise comments, always in his soft, soothing voice, accented with evident affection and relief. The wounds were beautiful, well sealed. The nape of the neck that'd released the very disturbing bloody imprints had loosened in the port, unlocked from tensions that might inflict more harm in the manipulations, and the lingering nausea from the beginning had faded away.

On the other hand, the complete stupor on the wound that would've broken any other individual by its violence, takes hold of the scientific logic of the herbalist. It was obvious that the back of the neck had hit the ground very badly, and that it would almost have been normal for a fracture to ensue, hence the thud that Norton and the other men did hear. What prejudged a rupture of the neck, had become an incredible miracle deflecting the fatal blow. Efrain shuddered at the thought.

Plus, the inconceivable story of the various witnesses. Many didn't know how to explain the inexplicable as a whole, being of course very far from the physical knowledge that'd struck the place, millions of light years from their education impoverished in the Laws governing the Universe. They were taught the art of war, not Quantum Physics, nor the Complex Hierarchy of alternating time dimensions. What the Castle of Chaos was obviously full of.

What happened there, no one would know until the young man regained all his focus, and his memory, even in bits and pieces. And of that, Efrain was going to tackle scrupulously, with the intervention of Trevor, and especially of the young Norton, because he was certain that the novice'd had some role in his accompaniment, and was surely the best placed to remember details that the others'd obscured. In addition, the child'd saved Acthéean from a first fatal blow that would've sent him ad patres without his lightning reflexes, and most certainly, the two young people'd had time to forge a closer friendship.

Norton was also by his side when he discovered the famous Grimoire wanted by the Cardinal, and had already been able to detail the incredible riddle the apprentice'd unraveled. Everyone was talking about it, reports'd been traced to the Founders grieved by the feared loss in the lifeless remains they'd picked up from under the corpse of the steed struck down by its scourges.

Milite Gregoire'd valued the facts, making Acthéean a hero. The testimonies of the Novices and Knights who'd all passed Efrain's medical examination were unanimous, and had unfolded their prayers in High Place, and before a saddened herbalist, and a mistrustful and suspicious Trevor of Norton. The men's words'd given balm to the heart and heightened pride in the apprentice, but only hollowed out further the grave of desolation for a being of such worth, probably lost forever.

Acthéean'd been plunged into a frightening cataleptic state, the cavalcade having worsened his condition, and for three nights, and two days, it was in agonizing and heart-rending wait, as each alternated to watch for the smallest reaction which would've proved that the young man was still part of the world of the living.

Two whole days, and three nights of dying, waiting for a tell-tale sign of such a tiny life still pulsing in the Recumbent. Strangely, the eyes'd remained open in an atonic muscular tension, the pupils dilated to the point of practically absorbing the gray and hazel undertones. But the lens seemed opaque, refusing to reflect even the orange flamboyances of the fireplace, and the many candelabras scattered throughout the bedroom, projecting dismal atmospheres of mourning vigil. Carefully apply a few drops of precious cornflower distillation to healthily moisten the cornea and the entire ocular cavity.

Which made Efrain think of a possible death of the spirit, if not bodily death. The worst that can happen: a dead spirit in a living body. A terrifying catatonia which had made sweats of dread among the great Philosophers, Physicians and Mathematicians, such as Aristotle, Plato or Socrates, having devoted themselves to studies on the "Wanderings of the Psyche in the face of suffering". Efrain was fond of all these ancient medicines, and knew the dismay and helplessness in the face of an individual's psychic resignation.

Suffice to say that it was also for him an agony of every moment, cursing himself at times for having such capacities of knowledge, and not being able to do anything, just scroll through his prodigious memory, the full verses on memory pathologies, Drifting Soul pangs, all memorized and practiced as much as he could for not always heartwarming results. He'd often dealt with physical trauma, where heads were irreparably shattered in wartime, and usually the flesh was extinguished with the spirit. But more rarely, he'd had to deal with a deep trauma, where the dark foundations were rooted in a dying brain under the fangs of an exponential madness, where the very essence of this soul was unhooked from its carnal burden, for wander towards often inaccessible horizons.

Three nights and two days to eat away at the nerves in the unforeseen, the impossibility of a concrete cure. The herbalist'd plunged back into old medical grimoires, looking for any clues that might aid recovery, or at least, a shy first step on the road to finally rebalancing health. Everything was hazy and intangible, irrational in the care of the soul, of the mind so compact and unknown. He could no longer count the number of times he'd seen him confront the Founding Fathers, and issue a health report that had no expectant consistency.

What about Trevor? Otherwise, that the teenager's collapse over the remains of his one and only friend was predictable and terrible. He'd forgotten all his own turpitude, his bleeding, his painful throws stressing his healing flesh. His water orbs had darkened dangerously, and Efrain easily guessed the murderous and revolted thoughts that jostled behind that great pale forehead, incessantly swept by the curtain of obsidian silk. He didn't even take the time to comb through all that wig, which looked more and more like shaggy lianas rising up in electrical convulsions. He'd barely agreed to feed himself, not leaving his limp friend for a second, desperate for a breath, a sneer, a spasm that would finally deliver its message of hope.

Efrain'd explained to him a few small gestures to take care of, such as regularly wiping the continual tears from dead eyes, and bathing the face with fresh water with a delicately scented glove. He'd even refused the sleep which seriously accumulated glaring lacks in his already weakened spine and still in redemption, and Efrain often surprised him half-conscious and drowsy next to the Recumbent, jumping at the slightest noise.

Trevor lived on a nerve mass that threatened to give way at any moment. Efrain also suspected that it wouldn't have taken much to crack the teenager permanently, or do something desperate towards someone who upset him. Also, it was with enormous precautions, that he took in the wounded, sometimes making them lower their voices during their testimonies, in order to prevent the fiery Belmont from hearing certain details that would've confused and panicked him. Norton's story, in particular, had added salt to the wound, and the herbalist, at any time, feared that an angry teenager would appear who would've violently relieved himself on the unfortunate young man. His upheaval was such that there were no more words strong enough to comfort poor Belmont, cursing a destiny that seemed to be hitting his poor spine, and all those around him. A veritable collapse of chain dominoes that have been crumbling lately into desolate anarchy. We say well: misfortune never happens alone.

But the herbalist was endlessly ecstatic at the young man's character: with phenomenal resilience, he saw his young man succeed in eradicating the most morbid and pessimistic thoughts in the concentration paid to his drawings which he patiently fine-tuned. Without ever taking his eyes off the Recumbent, as pale as himself, always on the lookout for a frown that would unknowingly appear, his hands danced gracefully on the vellum, shading strange anamorphic graphics of which he confided, on a particularly long and nervous night, that they were born out of songes, each one more staggering than the next. Efrain was familiar with the agonizing gloom that haunted Trevor's dreaminess, and knew that from these utopian images all these deliriums arose in the sometimes disturbing drawings that resulted from them.

And since the troop's catastrophic return, since he’d lovingly plucked this wonderful Snow Lily, delicate arabesques and slender twists have been added, corollas and petals in circles diluted in the inks tinting the supports, absorbing it in a form of artistic ecstasy in the discovery of the micturition projected in a stunning coincidence. A fleeting grace spat like pleasure in the face of a grinning timelessness of chimeras, gargoyles, fantastic bestiary, and aggressive thrusts of architecture tearing the weeping skies. It’d become a real obsession for the young aspiring artist, but one who managed to control its effects through this gift that had made his watery eyes shine so much.

"And you tend to forget what he's ..." Cardinal Volpe'd viciously hammered at one of his cronies.

What he is ? What was Trevor? Who was he, that the Founders clung to the crazy idea that Trevor was alone in solving so many mysteries? Either way, they'd huge hopes for this frail teenager, and Efrain felt a dull anguish, more and more pulsating in its acidic meanders.

It took an even more caustic turn, when Norton unwrapped Acthéean's bag, displaying the few books he picked up from the inventory, the Sage that should've healed him. And nestled in the heart of fragrant plants, the sacred flower.

When Efrain laid eyes on the Lily, he knew the doors to an unfathomable Mystery had opened under their hesitant steps.

There's blood flowing from the wound. The nape of the neck soggs it up viciously, soaking the hair in its sticky grip.

The ashy hand circling his forehead was so cool and soothing. He wanted to speak, but the dull twitches prevented him from finding the words for a coherent sentence.

The Other seemed to understand, however, and his other gloved hand slipped behind the neck, balancing the skull in its gentle, caring grip. When he removed it, the hollow of the gauntlet glowed ominously purple.

Without leaving the headache-aching forehead, the silver being dissolved the protective gauntlet into sinuous shadows, baring the tapered diaphanous hand of long, refined claws. Without ever having the claws inadvertently brush against the weakened dermis, the long spider-like fingers gripped the base of the neck, which modeled itself comfortably in this cozy nest of moon and ashes.

He closed his eyes under the smooth and soothing grip, letting himself drift languidly in the very airy and so tiny rocking that gave him the impression that all his broken bones were plugging, and returning to their natural place, as before the blow propelled them into the incisive anarchy of the fracture. The result was a fragment of pure bliss in the pain relief, a sudden sense of well-being, and his brain happily drowned in an overdose of endorphins. An absolute blessing that almost bordered on priceless ataraxis, after all these shocking and deadly events.

He almost sighed in rapture, long in a bliss paired with a strange ecstasy that'd taken hold of all the sufferings of his being, only to crush them in a voluptuousness flirting with exquisite excitement. After so much misfortune, his body, his soul, his most intimate essence, reveled in incredible bliss, where this time his nerves were put to the test with boundless joy. Just because those wonderful hands encompassed his dying skull, and apparently had dissolved all the shackles of acme, revulsion, affliction and torture.

He longed for those brazen hands to never leave him from touching them so tender. A welcome nest of relaxation and coziness. His whole being melted together without constraint. Gradually, his head had let go of its painful harassment, and he felt that the rest of his body was made up in the same way. The thrusts in his lower abdomen, cut open by the sword, had become mute, deaf in their incisive blows, to leave room only for emptiness, as if there were no more than inconsistency himself in his space.

However, the hand under his neck, released slowly. The ethereal smile on the silver face never left the black-silver lips. Everything was calm, assured tranquility, voluptuousness, radiating from that magnificent body leaning over him.

He then took hold of this careful hand, holding it back by the tips of his fingers so frail, but deceptive in this apparent fragility. Without leaving the molten orbs, he slid his fluffy cheek into the silky palm, in a feline caress of a cat marking its property in its worship cult by gracefully arching its neck. He couldn’t speak, but he wanted to show his gratitude to this Angel, his devotion to this unexpected protector.

He thought to himself the intricate designs of the lines of the hand he adored, as he voluptuously kissed every bit of the velvety surface. He gripped the forearms with both hands, lifting himself slightly as he slid his cheek along the slender wrist, his down flirting with the satin and gold edges of the coat sleeve. He was moving in slow crawls as well, leaving a line of respectful kisses.  

He reveled in the soft, cottony sensation his whole body indulged in. No more painful hindrances. That it felt good, this wandering in a newfound serenity.

No more pain. Levitation in relaxing bliss. Unbridled recollection of this silver and ash skin. And the heady and sweet smell of Hibiscus evaporating into olfactory delights from this powerful armored frame. Frost and heady smoke, animal fur, tangy and musk, all merged into enticing smoothness sublimated scents, thunderous softwood, making the mouth moist in a sly eager reflex.

He was bathed in a deeply pasty state, mixing his misty, downy, fluffy spirals at the same time. A bath of serenity found in the cantankerous absence of torment, as if he were stupefied under the power of opiates. As it'd happened to him, it wasn't that long ago. In the company of his friend.

His friend by his side. Loyal. Trembling with emotion he could barely contain from the tip of his fragile youth so tried so many times.

Trevor. Trevor was by his side. But he has been on this endless journey, hasn't he? Why did he have this feeling that the teenager'd never left him, even in his wanderings in the mists impossible to dispel from his memory? He sensed that something was knocking on the doomed door of his Anamnesis, without succeeding in forcing it open on "maybe". Something that would finally make him aware of the beginnings of a buried memory.

He kept in mind this unusual image of himself and Trevor in the mists stretched between two… Mirrors.

Then his smell was struck by the suavity of a delicate and heavy aroma at the same time, pregnant. Like an imprint of fire on the elastic walls of this failing memory. Before realizing that a bowl was cupped up to his dry lips.

An arm was placed in support behind his shoulders, to help him straighten up a bit, while his internal scanner had defined the smoothness of the scent: hibiscus. Trevor'd loved this flower ever since Efrain introduced him to the infusions made from it. He himself enjoyed the relaxing and meditative taste of the efflorescence, and made no secret of revering the drink with long strokes, sometimes warming his being in need of contemplation. But certainly not as young Belmont'd acquired the delicious habit! He couldn't help but smile blissfully at this priceless memory, which comforted him in the hope of a passing memory lapse.

Hibiscus: languid effluvium released from a powerful body carved out of silver angularity.

A sketch of memory? But which stubbornly refused to reveal more. Just a chipped corner under an impatient fingernail. He'd smelled this flower somewhere. Elsewhere than here, in this intimate apothecary room. Elsewhere than on the very body of his friend, because his hair absorbed in its thickness the most diverse perfumes, always pleasant and throbbing, including that of the flower and the cedar, the benefits of which he also loved during his careful ablutions.

All tiny details that seemed to fall into place, reassuringly resonating Mnemosyne's complaints, thus stimulating his distressed memory. This comforted him a little happiness in his aching heart, and raised his hesitant expectations about his condition. In addition, all its little clues sang a mischievous symphony whose notes rose in the grace of a melting sensuality.

As he carefully swallowed the brew, the dark corridors of his memory amplified with warm echoes, rekindling a flame he thought was extinguished under the disappointments of his mysterious wandering. The slightest bit of remanence sparkled like a luminary come back to life in its atom exploding heyday, and everything shimmered through the lingering mists and fogs, but he knew he would manage to unravel every bit of it, every lazy ban above the swamps of his Oblivion.

He blessed that creamy hibiscus scent inwardly, for it linked him to his friend… and to something else, imperative in that impression clinging to the membranes of reminiscences. He admired for a long moment, - still in the silence of his gravelly throat and the impossibility of formulating a few concrete syllables, the assigned region of his brain, managing verbal practice and phonetic coherence, remaining obscured in the tremors and uncertainties of forgetfulness -, Trevor's long, smart and diaphanous hands, supporting him the cut while keeping a subtle touch against his fingers, shy in a more frank grip.

…. Magnificent silver hands tinged with ash, with fingers slender like spider legs ... hands that cradled his forehead in pain, relieved his shattered neck, caressed his belly opened by the sword ...

Graceful hands that lay over those of the Belmont, attentive and somewhat trembling. The vivid image of those hands so skillfully manipulating the training swords, to the point where they already know how to execute twirling and impressive tricks in the port of the blades.

But where did these other hands come from? They seemed to burst the quivering surface of a shore darkened with bronze and silver and gold luster. They were an extension of something ethereal, wonderful, benevolent. They were bidding a figure as an offering, but what? The snatches failed to interconnect properly for a crafted response. All he knew deep down was that they were as pure in their layout, evanescent and pale in their lunar radiance, as those of young Trevor.

"You'll have to rest, young man," Efrain said softly, joining them. 'True sleep will help the recovery of memories. Physically, your wounds are healing and are very healthy. You're out of all danger.

He put down what he'd brought: a few ointment bandages, almost useless, when you could see the state of scarring, but which he conscientiously took to heart to smear on parts of the dermis still swollen with ecchymosas.

Acthéean didn’t try to force his voice, and simply nodded. He pushed the empty cup into Trevor's hands as the herbalist covered him with furs. Immediately a sheet of bliss added to his cottony state, and he let himself go into Morpheus's arms without a struggle.

Just before diving into restorative Somnus, he heard Trevor whisper in his ear:

"When you are rested, I will give you something ..."

Perhaps he squeezed Trevor's fingers in an ultimate reflex before his dreamlike dive, or he was gripping another skinny but powerful hand, carved in silver ...

--- ~~~ Õ0ooo --- ooo0Õ ~~~ ---

If in the conscious state, Memory makes its own under the wounds of trauma, preferring to send Psyche back on hesitant journeys through its labyrinths, on the other hand when It delights in the restorative rest of Somnus, this capricious Anamnesis unfolds its stammering stories gladly through dreamlike universes rocking the sleeper. And it’s without constraint that It indulges with impunity, in torturing delights because they're inaccessible in the waking state. Sometimes, It pushes its indulgence to let burn its delusions found in the frail confines of its capacities, and the afflicted in psychic disorder has the extraordinary possibility of seizing the meager rope which will take him to the complex skein of an Anamnesia prodigy.

This was what happened to Acthéean. What hastened the return to this so coveted Memory, no one really knew, but the young man'd all the necessary clues through the dreams that continually raged during his periods of sleep. But this stubborn harassment was rewarded in a few nights, even if his being collapsed under the excessively intense images, symbols, flashes in continual staccatos, provoking a swarm of exacerbated sensations that constantly made his thirsty body react to almost agony since his wandering.

What'd taken place there in the Castle of Chaos, couldn't remain in the shadow of Agnosia. All the inherent visual traumas that'd bristled his essence, his soul and his flesh, had to come back at a gallop, sooner or later, and thus spit their disturbances, their delusional confusions in the face of the young wanderer lost and relieved of his memories.

Without anyone being able to suspect the Machiavellian gears in place, in parallel, a very young teenager was experiencing the same painful pangs of incomprehensible and recurring dreams. Flamboyant and acerbic at the same time. Suave and sensual electrifying the flesh subjected to dreamlike stimuli. Trevor's sleep had been very disturbed already since his sanitary confinement in the apothecary, the sensory riots added a degree to the anarchic mess of visions often unrelated to each other, all at the same time being viciously linked in a vivid imagination, influenced by the intensive readings the youngster devoured throughout his recovery.

In touching unison, the two friends dreamed of powerful symbolism in the shadows haunting their time of rest.

Throughout dreams flogged with bony wings the constantly darkened skies in whirlpools spreading out their layers of gray gradation; turrets pouring out over the weaving of climbing roots, digging into the soil and atrophied flesh. Claws piercing the grounds mired in nauseous humus, in search of the sparkling pearl that would light up the penumbra of these wrecked landscapes. Shiny footsteps of metallic sounds disturbing the age-old dust enveloping the sleeping domes in secret languor, covering the uneven cobblestones in their damp oozes, while the tangled limbs of those who wandered thus slipped over these fatty and deceptive layers, tearing the fine tulle of silence in apnea.

Blessed times that saw bodies writhing in languishing under the enigmatic power of the messages. The bedroom purred with lascivious rustling ; languorous or indolent sighs ; indistinct or mumbled susurrus, pale reflections of the exhausting unfolding of suspended seconds of life, of tragedies jostled, of consummate dramas.

Efrain saw himself disturbed regularly, getting up slowly, to go and check on his two young people struggling with too intense dreamlike pangs, which made them moan too loudly at times. Often he pushed aside the curtain separating the bedroom, to meet two blue orbs blurred with disturbed sleep searching the half-darkness for a reassuring landmark. The herbalist was no longer counting the number of times he and Trevor woke up, constantly on the lookout for Acthéean's reactions in his sleep, when he'd just woken them up with his muffled cries born of violent or ambiguous images.

Efrain couldn't force Trevor to swallow potions that would put him to sleep without risking plunging him into dangerous depths from which he could no longer bring the teenager back. He could only bring himself to see his young people wear themselves out in the effort to find a little rest: one vacillating under what looked like clouds of disturbing dreams, the other waking up with a start at the slightest sigh alerting him, he was balancing himself so much on the sharp edge of stress leading to insanity. By not having stable, restful sleep, or even suffering from insomnia, the human brain twisted into psychotic and hallucinatory dementia. But Efrain refused to stupefy his young people on opiates which would put them irreparably over the edge of all rationality. And probably worsened morbidity.

All he could do was a heartwarming, friendly caress on Trevor's sharp cheek, urging him to calm down, as he sat and watched over his two ‘cubs’, waiting for one to quietly fall asleep, the other freezing in the meanders of his dreams after a careful resettlement by the herbalist. In his care, he indulged in intense meditation combining quests on remedies and prayers. Rarer the latter.

Then, after a few minutes, sometimes even an hour, when he was sure that the two young men were abandoned in more serene worlds, he regained his bed with difficulty. Knowing that he wouldn't fall asleep again before dawn, his brain sharpened on the continual attention of suspicious noises.

--- ooo ---

It came back in a discontinuous loop, in an interminable cycle. Unfathomable echo mingled with complaints, disembodied voices moaning miserably. It bounced between the heights of the walls, to circulate in a throbbing round, and come back to the starting point of impact.

A blow slammed violently on flesh that rolled back in agony of shock. The abused cheek crashed into the ice that'd invaded the place. The pain stopped dead beneath the coldness of the surface, bathing his dull twitches in frosty relaxation.

Everything was ice as far as the eye could see. With every step he took, his armor ripped viciously under the sly blades of the frost. A shower of white petals suddenly snorted, and each delicately ribbed little lamella lay down like a protective mat, overlapping each other endlessly, allowing him to step on without slipping further.

So many petals and corollas? Where did they come from like that, in milky bloom, muffling the sound of his boots?

There, before his eyes, stood a glowing mass proudly in its precious marbles.

He knew what he was going to find there as soon as he looked into the rectangular mouth of the pit framed in transparent alabaster and carved stone.

Above the tumulus, a monstrous catafalque in its bestial statuary seemed to be suspended in levitation. A magma of undefined bodies, between unspeakable animals and humans, swarmed with its infernal obscenity in simulated acts of savage copulation. Surrounding the statue like an altarpiece, metamorphic mouths were projected, vomiting torrents of suspect fluids, greasy and sticky, sickening which poured into the dark sepulcher. Rills of cum mixed with honey and oils with the powerful flavors of musk, bodily fluids gushing out to nourish what was lying there.

Before even making out the moonlight lying there, he mingled his own scorching humus, twitching uncontrollably. His milky sap came to bathe his own shivering flesh, without being able to stop the incisive thrusts of his betraying body.

He was struck down on the cross at the foot of the tomb. While he wondered when he'd lost his clothes. At what very moment had he activated on a impoverished excitement, orphaned by the bitter pleasures arising from it.

Up there, the statuary came to life, and the inhuman faces laughed at his body afflicted with irrepressible thrills ...

~~~~---ooo---~~~~

Chapter Text

A wry sigh escaped the tight lips of concentration, as Efrain's dark, tired gaze swept over the charred remains that huddled in front of the high portals of the fortress. The guard was bustling about like a beehive, cleaning up the place that'd served as the pyre for the carcasses of demonic beasts having stormed behind the surviving troops. At least what was left of it. Some of the broods'd been simply killed by unconsecrated crossbows, and so didn’t evaporate into sickening mists, like those struck by the Combat Cross of Commanders and Knights to the rescue of the hapless comrades of the disheveled garrison.

The little square that'd welcomed the blazes still smoked purifying fires, and the earth was awash in suspicious humus, blackened and sticky intermingled with the thick mud of the rains. Mixed with all the soiled layers, traces no less stewing of seals summoned by the Priests of the Brotherhood made the ground boil menacing stirrings. They weren't completely dissolved, and remnants of holy barrier evaporated in the air overloaded with ozone, sulfur and oxide, diluted in incense and latencies of medallions and charges invoked against raging hell.

As soon as the garrison'd landed dramatically between the foundations of the Brotherhood, the torrential downpours which seemed to have followed them, had in their turn dried up, - as brutally colliding with an invisible border rejecting all the enraged invectives coming from outside - , giving way to more lenient skies, allowing the erection of the pyres. The emanations strongly impregnated even in the foundations, seized by the throats of the humans, even the animals were reluntant in front of the odors.

With the spawning decimated, the Priest Knights'd taken on the complicated task of reactivating the sealed seals all around the foundations, summoning other spells that flirted outrageously between holiness and brimstone. But in times of war with hell, anything was done to save the meager asses taking over the Fortress. Evil by evil, and the Priests slipped slyly between the arches and cupolas of the fortifications, growling with great reinforcement of threatening voices spouting in the sacred language the nebulosities charged with protections not quite validated by God himself. But in war as in war! Once again, the Lord'll provide in the recognition of his contrites. Even the waters of the river basking under the bridged arches, lazily crossing the village and its Oppidum, were put to contribution in their role of kettle for demons, in case one of them has the crazy idea of dipping their toes in!

No more doubt about the bad weather accumulating these days: the thunderstorms were indeed caused by the Dragon. The Founders took every precaution to put the Grimoire in a safe place, but none of them was fooled as to the reasons for such a cavalcade: apparently, on the other side of the Infernal Castle, 'We' had no appreciated the removal of the precious collection. Moreover, the literary artefact'd taken on strange transfigured forms, shapes of metamorphs with unhealthy shadows, since it'd returned to its altarpiece base, under the dumbfounded and frightened eyes of the Fathers. Efrain'd worried silently, mortified at the lackluster and helpless reactions of the Cardinal keeping a stoic mask despite the events.

During his nights of forced waking, Efrain convinced himself that all these events, the disappearance of Acthéean who'd discovered the book, everything was linked in a devious and perverse way. Too many disturbing similarities'd arisen in recent days. But now, with this horde of Wargs struggling to pursue the troop, borne by the raging storm torrents, everything suggested that the Brotherhood'd to prepare for something more dangerous. What swirled through men's hearts like a heavy message to ignore was that apparently the millennial ruins of Agharta had dangerously deserted with all their infernal spawn dripping through the devastated landscapes taking alarming signs of apocalypse .

AGHARTA ... Where centuries-old wars'd broken out between demonic forces and the first Order Founders who were forced to create the Army of the Titans to revoke Evil Incarnate. To finally abandon this world and put on the clothes in a precious holiness, but irreparably shedding their putrid side, their Twins born in Limbo of Tartarus, a Pandemonium in its Triad that mortals'd baptized the Lords of Shadow.

Agharta, formerly the Splendid, collapsed in its Curse, presenting only superb ruins last witnesses of its magnificence, and of which each crumbling block mourned a tragic story. This majestic and avant-garde city in its Knowledge and its futuristic Inventions, had become a nest of garbage and putrescence of all kinds, which swarmed constantly, waiting their turn to feast at the banquet of deliquescent lust and cannibalistic orgy. Beware of the reckless traveler who wanted to venture a foot there for the purpose of a simple tourist visit!

And now, terrifyingly sketched specters'd descended from it, and now roamed the spaces surrounding the Fortress, Wygol and of course the Castle. You couldn't think that they weren't on a sightseeing tour!

One last look at the charred forms on which he preferred not to seek to define the being to whom, or rather to what, they belonged, and the herbalist set out on his way to the large library of his friend Andréas. It was time for him to consult the specific archives, in order to resolve Acthéean's amnesia, and he knew certain hidden rooms containing the treasures of medical scholarship which would easily help him in care which'd become very delicate when it touched the Psyche.

Trevor'd been torn between two choices: accompany Efrain in a thirst for research, or stay quietly with his sleeping friend, and watch him just in case. There was still time for him to go swimming among the precious shelves, but not before his friend'd fully recovered. Moreover, an absurd idea'd occurred to him, seeing Acthéean emerging slowly from his amorphous states, having found a semblance of a voice that was always rocky, and reacting much better to those around him. Reflexes returned, cognitive reactions reestablished, nerve connections were functioning again without precipitous clashes of anguish and terror. Admittedly his sleep was haunted by devouring songes, but he already presented certain connectivity with phantom memories linked to particular objects, or smells.

Efrain'd noticed that perfumes and other scents'd a great influence on the apprentice's memory research. But it all remained in conjectures taking on the appearance of gagged specters, rather than concrete forms of faithful afterglow. Everything was going in its place very slowly, Efrain helping him in stimulating his short-term anamnesis.

As he walked up the gently sloping street to the wide flights of stairs flanking the library portals, Trevor was sharpening a blade that would have a whole other use.

--- ooo ---

Waves of hazelnut-gray colors sublimated with tiny gold spangles, radiated irises bathed in intimate gold light and the flame of the hearth. Gradients of the admiring gaze were subtly nuanced in the lighting forces, and their fluctuations paired beautifully with the spread of colored glazes and washes in gradations of burning fawns, gold patinated in their essence, deep and vibrant greens, of copper and sepia, highlighted by subtle touches of charcoal whispering its grays identical to ecstatic apple-of-eyes. The artistic blend was such that it blended wonderfully with Acthéean's eyes and the equally exquisitely crafted vellum spread out in front of his blissful wonderment.

From all these layers studied in multi-chromatic strata unrolled an infinity of graceful spirals, of concentric and burst tendrils, that the eye discerned progressively along each drawn millimeter, in a more detailed observation. As you study through the eye, the sensual curves and the more aggressive sharp and acerbic highs invaded the media space in their promising convolutions of tragic and emboldened stories of superhuman battles between Shadow and Clarity mastered in sketches dilated in murderous splinters. We guessed under the artistic accumulation, that the practitioner was influenced by his off-putting readings of Chronicles, each more hagiographic than the next, and by the study of extraordinary Bestiaries, regularly learned through great sermons and warnings, generating sneaky headaches lasting days and nights.

Obviously, the glaucous and deadly universes in which they bathed since their infancy, rubbed off strongly in the creations of the Brown Beauty with the sapphire orbs, which gave a breathtaking result that Acthéean would never have guessed to be able the one who was patient in front of him, watching for reactions.

What can we say, except that Acthéean was stunned by the sharp elaboration of worlds, fantastic creatures, chimeras, architectural carcasses brandishing loud and clear the honorary banner of a certain chaotic Castle looming not far from the foundations of the Brotherhood. A form of homage, and almost of adoration in the detailed sketches of the menacing constructions, which would run the risk of making the holy men of the Order leap if they came to take notice of the outrageous paintings. The apprentice was amazed at such creative daring, and could only be amused inwardly by imagining certain abbots or priests, even the Founding Fathers, who would've these drawings in hand.

"Did you do all of this while I was gone?' he whispered, finding nothing more to say.

"You were helping clean up when I started… I was planning on giving them to you when you got back. I was asleep when you came back ... and then ...

Trevor paused, knowing that Acthéean would finish his thought.

"I was called for the mission ...

Acthéean couldn't take his eyes off the sketches and wash of precious inks.

"It's for me, you say?

He lifted his head, and considered the transparent orbs. A haze clouded the glare of the gaze, and Trevor was perhaps expecting a sharp reaction from the daring and somewhat blasphemous designs. It was after all an invocation to the infernal beauties which was represented there in a flamboyant manner.

"I was also inspired by my dreams, sometimes nightmares,' Trevor continued, trying to justify his artistic outbursts which could well cause him problems of morality and censorship. And in this century, we don’t prevaricate with those guilty of such works: they were burned with their outrages. Even if Trevor didn’t risk such an expeditious punishment, he was a novice warrior protected by the Brotherhood, that wouldn’t spare him an exemplary punishment in order to disgust him definitively from any ungodly creation carried out with impunity.

"I don't know what to say, only thank you, but it's not powerful enough to express my joy to you at receiving such a gift,' Acthéean whispered, deeply moved. 'This’s the first time that I've been given a real gift, which isn't poisoned ...

"Even if my drawings are tendentious?' pointed out Trevor consciously. 'We've every interest in keeping them in a safe place, otherwise, I think it would heat up even more for my buttocks!

"You can say that, yes you would be in danger. Fortunately, Brother Efrain's a grave, discretion level. And we're both in his heart now, he loves us… He would never do anything to embarrass us, that's a certified thing…

Acthéean still took time to admire the sketches haloed with shades dancing between the green-bronze, the hazy fawns, and autumn freckles, embellished with various gold in their gradations. Numerous dilutions of warm browns and hazelnuts, equal to his apple-of-eyes, exhorted by the gray nebulosities sublimating the paintings of a character of nobility, if not for the anthropomorphic outlines of the beings depicted in the chaotic landscapes.

"Do you think God's mad to see me draw such things?" Trevor asked timidly, mortified by his nerve to display such sultry creations.

"I don't think our Lord gives us such a gift, to sleep in us and never speak out," Acthéean suggested cautiously, taken aback by the question, and pondering the subject. So he crafted a thoughtful response, meaningful to his young friend much more ascetic than himself.

"If He were to take offense at what man does in the name of this precious gift,' he continued, his gaze lost elsewhere, "the artists of antiquity would all be engulfed in the Underworld, without hope of redemption. The church cannot destroy such art objects as they are, it's part of human history. God would've manifested Himself a long time ago, if it'd been an offense in His sight. We're imperfect, it's just other overly obtuse and superstitious men who've called upon stupid Laws to cripple Creation itself. Polytheists were more than tolerant of artists. Haven't you noticed that censorship came with Christendom?

Trevor was smug at such an outpouring of talk flirting with ideals larger than those involved in theological principles permanently influencing them in fear of any conflict arising from a gesture that might offend the Divine. Obscurantism had a grip on their minds weakened with terrors engendered by the Sacred Saint, and Acthéean's words suddenly took on another philosophical meaning. He knew his friend somewhat "marginalized" by an obtuse and blind belief, but that he didn’t outrageously display in front of other attentions that would make it a bad fertilizer.

"At the same time, it makes me worry about you, if you dream of such things," he continued, in a puzzled tone, his head suddenly dizzy, as if he'd just concentrated too much, by too much effort.

"I remember all of this, and I can't seem to put together even a clue to remember what happened to me…' he found himself thinking.

" It's the case… but we all have those kinds of dreams, right? We're trained to face horrors worse than this. Efrain always says that sooner or later God ends up reminding us of our place in the face of unknown powers. Could this be some type of punishment He gives me for doing things ... like that?

Acthéean glanced amusedly at his friend whose words were imbued with a humility far too ascetic for his young age, and his lips formed a pale smile, as his brain bounced between the multiple tasks of reasoning, of memory, processing logic, shared between several layers of reflections all more impatient than each other to break down the doors of a conversation with multiple ambiguous flavors. It tumbled in dizzying curls, as young Belmont clung to his futile fears of a Divine whom he imagined enraged by his deliberately sulphurous art. Once again, the child doubted himself, in a disapproval seriously dented by the heaviness of the gazes of others constantly gauging him.

"Doesn't he say above all that it's our brain that makes emergency plans to free our souls trapped by the pangs of a day of hell in the hands of the tutors? And I don't think God hates you that much, either. He tests you, sure, but He doesn't punish you for drawings, don't worry. Don't make it personal, it's you who're unfairly self-criticizing. I think our Lord has other matters of concern about His creatures so human, and so fragile ... And ... what would He say then what some have'd the audacity to do to you, if He were to be unhappy?

Trevor chuckled at the insightful idea. Efrain, it'd to be admitted, as a good man of science, studied more ancient and polytheistic medicines, in which he forged his scrupulous practices which, moreover, gave much more fruitful results, than simply based on theological ideologies patiently awaiting divine intervention. The brave herbalist, thus, rubbed off copiously on Acthéean's thoughts, but Trevor didn’t find himself as disturbed as he should've been. A few months earlier, he would've been shocked at such lax talk about a Ubiquitous Entity within the Omniscient Brotherhood.

But, little by little, the teenager drifted towards more intense and enigmatic reflective fluctuations, to which he couldn't find concrete answers, disrupted, even disturbed by a nuanced environment of paradoxes and sometimes undesirable contrasts. More than necessary, in no time, he'd been swimming in troubled waters, which only put him off balance a little more when he found himself thinking and questioning himself. Acthéean, in a relatively short period of time, had'd this peculiarity of making him aware of something he would never have thought himself inclined to exploit so deeply, in such an introspective way.

From that day, when he'd stretched out his hand, and pulled him out of his icy river, Acthéean hadn't only lifted him physically from a risk of congestion, but indeed tore him from dark worlds of lonely wanderings; of his cruel hermitage which inevitably mourned his young years. From this blessed day, Trevor would be eternally grateful ...

The two young people exchanged knowing smiles, which spoke louder than words. Even though he was a little offended at Acthéean's freedom of mind, he could only see inwardly that he was gradually embracing his friend's sane and relevant thoughts.

And again, two Shadowhearts beat in unison in the young Soulmate chests, to a sweet rhythm echoing the everlasting chants of the celestial bodies.

"Maybe it will also help me in my memory wanderings ...' breathed Acthéean.

"I hope so ... but you can count on both of us, along with Efrain, to help you ...

Acthéean seemed to come back from his long mental journey where he felt like crossing a desert, the heavy footsteps of the void that seemed to still absorb some of his life essence. It seemed to him that everything was in abeyance, at the end of fine strings waiting to be cut, in order to shed their weight of responses in the materialization of puppets with sewn-in lips. Yes ! That was it: puppets dancing a macabre, cynical ball, manipulated by the omnipresent and sneering Shadows, madly mocking the young man's amnesia, making jerky convolutions fly in front of his nose in mechanical movements, metaphors in constant ebb of his poor memories hiccupping in the mud of oblivion.

It all felt like it was suffocating at times, not only engulfing his lungs with the scorching lack of oxygen, but also strangled in his mind struggling to maintain some semblance of consistency and rationality. He didn't want to confide in this sneaky discomfort so as not to worry his friend and the herbalist more, but he knew he couldn't continue like this in his wandering Psyche screaming for help.

Having immersed himself in the grace of Trevor's art, had moved him somewhat away from all that deliquescent peat, but there he was raising his gaze that seemed to have diluted in unusual shades since his awakening to the world, and the hazelnut-gray sloes now mingled with strange infinitesimal slivers of molten gold. This phenomenon which hadn’t escaped the young Belmont and the herbalist, and now took on a strange cynical guise in atypicality causing shivers in those who witnessed the change. At the moment, this gaze, which'd become disturbing, if it wasn’t already enough, scrutinized Trevor's silhouette molded in false fragility.

God, that the child was still thinner, weaned from training, and consumed by the stress of all the chain events, since he'd come for treatment in the apothecary. The shirt floated a little more over his sharp lines, and the neckline gaped deeper over his collarbones, which seemed to want to eject from the joints of his neck, projecting the threadlike curvature onto the tendons sticking out more. The whole thing really gave the aggravated impression of tenderness, and one'd this feeling that the long swan collar as a neck, risked breaking in a too strong gust of wind. Moreover, he'd eaten virtually nothing since Acthéean'd been brought in lifeless by the messy troop. Everything indicated that young Belmont was on the verge of falling into the abyss of distress that'd gripped his chest for too long.

Acthéean himself didn’t display a glaring expression of good health either. His chocolate-auburn hair was tangled in nests erected in a way that might've been comical, if we didn't know why. A few wicks remained stuck in a thatch that'd invaded the majority of the face, thus hiding the blued hematoma which'd so terrified those around him.

As for the eyes ... His eyes remained very often plunged into unknown abysses, visible only to him, since he'd awakened to this mortal world. Since he'd come back ... from there. The pupils persisted in dilating constantly, as if under a deep shock that lingered beyond his view of the real world. Admittedly, the mood lights in the bedroom remained very intimate in their private lighted niche, and the pupils always dilated in order to regulate night vision. Efrain'd noticed the phenomenon by examining it, and by testing the ocular reactivities with the candles approached as close as possible. Eyes seemed constantly frozen on something that'd been traumatic shock registering in reflective memory, no doubt possible.

The young man also displayed a slumped posture, and no longer parade this uprightness which made it all its nobility. As if his shoulders were collapsing under a considerable weight of infinite sadness. Trevor often surprised him with tears in his eyes, but kept silent, respecting this fragility so intense, that he himself felt every incisive jump, every subtle tremor, every hot shower like a sudden fever. Acthéean was involuntarily transferring his physical and mental unhappiness to his Twin Soul who was equally overwhelmed by it.Their two Souls in unison wrote the score of a symphony of silent suffering, and no despotic Entity could’ve relieved them of their common burden.

Thus, a witness would(ve been present in front of this scene, he would've been moved by the indisputable twinning between the two youngsters, even more accentuated in the similarities of physical features definitively suffused with refined diaphanous and evanescence giving to think that the two beings face to face were about to vanish into spellbound space. If it were only for the darkness of the night whorls of Trevor's hair, and the sloes cradled in their different chromatic auras, the witness could've discerned two identical statues in their behavioral understanding, their gestures in unison, their vocal sounds, their obvious fragility, bending but not breaking under the blows of cynical fate.

So Trevor'd an idea, which might've seemed preposterous at the time, but he knew it would take his friend's gray mood a little to more lenient horizons. He set to work carefully sharpening a knife blade, preparing some creamy secretions that would help with the task, and it was very happily that he settled down beside his friend, laying out his utensils, and patiently awaiting the reactions to the gift, before tackling his idea: that’s to say, to shave the hairy jungle of Acthéean, which decidedly invaded too much the harmonious and sharp features of the beautiful face darkened with melancholy.

He was entitled to a questioning eyebrow at a malicious "I'm going to shave all this off you, you look like a mountain man!". But, the apprentice'd gladly bowed to the request, the tongue ready to unload multiple jokes on the subject. He didn’t fail to do so, as the oils used to moisten and soften the recalcitrant hair spread carefully over his dried up dermis. He leaned back, propped up on layers of pillows supporting his still slightly sore neck. And finally decided to leave the memory desert of his preoccupations.

Acthéean couldn’t help but enjoy the scene, and for the first time since waking up, sported an affectionate and wry smile at the lanky figure of Trevor struggling with the overly long sleeves of his shirt that he rolled up regularly in poorly mastered gestures. Serious ! This emaciated teenager, the hair wild and tangled outrageously, pouring out in long undulating rivers before his eyes and on the front of the bust, drowning the bony shoulders, and pulling up from time to time brais that are too large which threatened to fall to his ankles at the slightest gesture. So much so that he'd to constantly, between slips of the blade, put back a semblance of sartorial order visibly resigning in long slippery trails on the sharp limbs. All complemented by exacerbated sighs and grunts in front of the tissues resistant to clinging to his figure, which'd become as ascetic as his mind.

After a few seconds where the blade'd barely cut into the down, which'd become rough from the growth, Acthéean could only laugh softly at the comical situation, and was forced to stop his friend's hand, for fear that the sharp edge of the razor would inadvertently slip under the sneering jerks overwhelming him. The sapphire orbs stared at him, tinged with an outraged and slightly offended glow. Then, the lips followed in that typical childish pout. Which woke up a strange flash in Acthéean's mind, made him stop laughing.

Such adorably arched lips in that pout… Why was it so familiar?

As Trevor let out an exasperated breath of incomprehension.

" What ? What's the matter ? Why are you kidding?

"Excuse me, but… - another burst of laughter: 'It's still a bit of a quirk situation, he managed to mumble between gasps.

The reaction taken aback on the diaphanous face of the teenager, elicited more chuckles.

"You want to shave me, when you yourself don't know what facial hair is ... A little ironic, right?

Trevor smug at the finding, but very quickly the gaze flashed threateningly, and the razor-sharp jaw darted forward in a revolted movement made to impress. Which completely missed its ‘threatening’ effect, and caused the apprentice to laugh even more.

"Just because I'm still hairless doesn't mean I don't know anything about shaving' the hapless Belmont rebelled, annoyed.

Acthéean plunged into a nervous fit of laughter, with the impression that the barriers had just been blown under special impact. Tears beaded again, nebulosities drowning the gray hazelnuts.

"For sure ... he gasped, 'you're getting your hands on the three intimate hairs that were kind enough to grow ...

Trevor was suffocated by such blasphemous images, and normally would've reacted brutally if it'd been summoned by anyone other than Acthéean. But it was his friend who, all of a sudden, broke into a hysterical fit of laughing about a subject he hadn't even thought about himself.

"He needs to let off steam, you shouldn't blame him ... He comes back from afar ... If he laughs, it's affectionate, not like the others…' The voice softly hummed a sad reality with a bittersweet flavor. Where Acthéean was coming from, it was urgent for him to unblock himself from all this, and who knows, maybe the laughter sessions would unlock the scabrous situations of amnesia.

Acthéean broke off his laughter, catching his breath. He suddenly became sheepish at his mockery. He could only whisper a "sorry," as his hand tried to straighten lips that again stretched out into a smirk that came back with full strides.

“Forgive me, I think I just broke… he managed to say. 'I’m not allowed to make fun of you when you want to take care of me ...

"No,' Trevor admitted, swinging his arms in acknowledgment. 'At least you're kidding friendly, not like the others ... It's always mean when they say it ...

"Have they ever blamed you? It’s silly and shabby.

"It's been a long time ... I've always been ... a source of blame for them.

"You don't have to deal with these morons. It doesn’t shine with intelligence this kind of mockery ...

Trevor resettled his arm and balanced his hand to continue the long, cautious slides over the hairy dermis. During a few movements of the blade which crunched smoothly on the beard, the silence only allowed those tender little gasps to let slip their keen complaints, while the sharp edge gleaned the hairs leaving the skin without argument. Without letting go of his concentration so as not to cause a cut, Trevor continued quietly:

“There were already guys in our team who sported precocious hair. Discreetly, I watched as they went about getting rid of the hairs that they deemed intrusive. I saw them get annoyed at their little distorted mirror that sent them an image of themselves in the midst of debate with their dull blade, only to pull out the hairs and cut themselves nastily in their anger. Me, I was alone with myself, facing a vain reflection of skin that didn't want to know anything about hair. Obviously, it was always them who laughed and attacked with sometimes obscene language. Everything was a pretext for them to denigrate me… So, when they saw that my skin remained virgin of hair, it was worse… You know that I'd to cut myself on purpose, to make it look like I'd managed to shave ... it didn't work for long, they understood the subterfuge. Some've looked for me to the dangerous ends of workouts, putting my virility in doubt by skin that’s too pale, too soft. It almost went wrong more than once ...

Trevor took the time to wipe the dark down-laden blade on a clean, soft cloth reserved for this purpose. He'd seen that Efrain stored a few folds of it only used for his own personal grooming. The sapphire orbs seemed to reflect on the innocuous memories, but which Acthéean knew painful, more scraps projected in spiteful reproach and mockery at the rejected child. He internally rebuked himself for making fun of an ultimately very sensitive and delicate situation among young adolescents seeing their bodies change and tip over in the adult world. Young people like Belmont who didn't trace the same physiological paths and habits as the others, saw themselves hopelessly put aside, and regarded as strangers to a logical Nature. So he wasn't surprised to hear Trevor continue his memories in a distant voice, clouded with reminiscences.

“Obviously, with my hair and my skin pale and glabrous, they started to compare me to a girl… My muscles formed with the workouts, but ... these morons'd just one thing in mind anyway, and they haven't stopped making endless derogatory comments. Some even dared to make blasphemous proposals towards my physical integrity ... it started to compare me with girls of little virtues that they wanted to bed down, and wanting to make me suffer the worst horrors ... I was very relieved when the Founders granted me a cell for me ... I think that one of our educators who witnessed the failed brawl scenes that broke out more and more often, must've traced the facts to our Founding Fathers ...

"But, it can come later, you know… the body doesn't work in a universal way, but everyone has their own unique rules,' Acthéean commented, grieving for his friend at the immature behavior capable of doing so much damage to the hesitant Ego of a very young man whose body was awakening and seeking its sexual path in the beginnings of puberty…"And then, personally, it’s better that you wear this magnificent hair fleece, and not have hair elsewhere ... You know, in fact, those who laugh at you like this will most likely be bald by the age of thirty, if they can. While you, I am sure that you'll always keep this magnificent adornment that makes people envious, believe me. I know many who would like to let catch these beautiful strands in hand… Me, I'd the chance to comb them… I combed you, you shave me… But, I didn’t know that you encountered such problems with your cronies, I knew like everyone else, that Belmont was associated with 'fundamentally lonely and wild hermit', but I didn’t know the exact cause ...

Trevor gave a cheeky jaw movement:

"You're trying to make amends…'he chuckled, smoothing the blade. Be careful, I'm the one with the knife in my hand ...

Acthéean took the slender wrist which sported the blade in a false threatening movement, and turning over the member, he began to contemplate the palm where nestled the intricate arabesques of the graphic lines which were said to represent the Life, the Heart, the Destiny…

Again, a flash blinded the cloudy web stretched over his amnesia. Layered like a transparent ghost, the image of another hand as diaphanous… no, moon-colored, mingled with the frail definitions of Trevor's.

An ashy palm. Pale. With strange concentric arches intertwined in the hollow, and yet so velvety on his cheek.

Was it a rough memory? Or was it his imagination overheated by the naughty and wickedly insulting words confided by his friend?

" What's the matter ? Trevor asked, stunned by Acthéean's transissement, staring at his hand, not releasing it. His friend's frozen attitude sent a wave of icy fluid through his veins.

"Is something coming back to you?" he managed to say, hesitating to rub the hypnotic focus on his hand. The silence'd grown heavy in its privacy, and the sudden crackle of a log collapsing in the fireplace, startled Trevor, as Acthéean seemed to search for his words:

“I don't know exactly… these are… images, since a while ago, which seem to come from elsewhere… I don't know what they mean, what they represent… I'm deeply disturbed by them … It's like a songe… I can no longer differentiate dreams from reality…

Trevor could only follow the hesitant movements of his friend who'd begun to study his hand intently, which he still held. He easily imagined the gears activated for the reactivation of a desperate memory. Efrain'd told him: a sound, a smell, something subtle, even the slightest, could've their importance in the force invoked to bring down the door panels of his agnosia.

It was in respectful silence that he let his friend pour out in fragile scraps of memory hardly restructuring. It would never have occurred to him to reject or stray from a stammering movement so barely traced in the pain of memory loss. So he wasn’t at all shocked or outraged by the strange ballet of a deep adoration of what Acthéean perhaps felt was that something or someone he saw sketching out in Trevor, through the dense mists engulfing his poor suffering memories.

The apprentice seemed to be navigating elsewhere, out of this world, totally disconnected from the rationality of the room, and it was easy to imagine him walking through the deceptive swamps of his affected anamnesis, risking being sucked in at any moment, around the corner from a twisted trauma. He was fascinated by the palm of his hand, which he contemplated at with his eyes veiled with returned sadness. The fit of nervous laughter was far behind, and had given way to the molasses of unknown affliction.

Trevor held a breath becoming panting as the soft and careful touches of his friend, but that he knew addressed to something or someone else, from which he vainly tried to extract stubborn and fuzzy memories. Stunned, he saw his friend slide his half-shaved cheek into the hollow of the palm, and flatter himself there like a worshiping cat pouring its scent imprints at its master. A devotion so imbued with sensuality that Trevor felt a shameful awkwardness rise within him, a sly uneasiness that slowly began to nibble at the walls of his unbalanced morality. The blue orbs fluttered, as a lump of fear mingled with bizarre excitement eroded his sharply parched throat.

But Acthéean was a prisoner in his phantasmal stroll, trying at all costs to catch the tiny net of the skein, which'd extracted itself from it and now taunted him for seizing it, in order to unroll the inextricable knot, and finally unearth a draft of the truth. All in his act of sensuality overflowing with affection, a parallel scene unfolded, replicating the gestures identically, but in another dimension of which he became aware that it was the premises of a drained memory screaming at the aid.

He loved those hands, kissed them, stretching time like a rubber band, hoping a few pieces would be returned to him as a reward. He reclined in that hug thoughtfully, cupping the nimble fingers, furiously scratching the thick layers of his mind with his metaphysical nails foraging desperately into this thick and stubborn peat. Wildly digging in the abyss that refused to grant him the stammering of a path that could finally light up the darkness of his apraxia.

These hands. His hands… To whom? Almost identical to the teenager's. That flattering ritual of worship he'd performed before. Where ? It was so far away ...

"I've done that before…' he whispered, his voice broken again with emotion, as if the vocal cords had been put under a pestle.

He drew a line of kisses again like plumetis. Trevor stood still, numb with amazement. He was afraid to gesture or say a word that would definitely break what looked like superhuman efforts to tear the veil of amnesia. He swallowed hard, and barely whispered, for fear of shattering the fragile dome of concentrated silence.

" What do you see ?

"Hands ... like yours ... which I thank effusively ... with a love that I don’t understand ... and ... an infinite sadness which doesn't belong to me, but of which I feel all the pangs echoing which never ends to torment me ...

The gray hazelnuts now gazed at the back of the hearth, projecting their joyous flames onto the soot-blackened bricks. The fixity of concentration provoked the tears to flow freely down the fluffy cheeks.

Then he looked up, still staring. Trevor imagined treasures of ghosts playing their theatricality in the invisible worlds only his friend could see. Mnemosyne in her struggle to find her 'little ones' was a lifelong fascination with doctors.

Poor Belmont must've displayed a contrite and deeply saddened expression, which Acthéean understood immediately as having unwittingly wounded him. He knew that by confessing this strange adoration which seemed to weave the meanders in the memory matrix, he'd just unconsciously hurt his friend weakened by the yawning lack of friendship, to whom he'd just confided the humiliating passages inflicted by pedantic and immature imbeciles ranting about their vile fantasies ...

He took hold of the beautiful, afflicted face and rested his forehead on that of the silent Belmont. He realized how much the teenager'd grown attached to him, desperate for loneliness and continual rejection. He'd clung to this 'savior' who'd dislodged him from his river of ice, to confine him in the sweet cocoon of care which'd finally cradled him in the symphony of a serenity found through the benevolence of others. A world he'd never belonged to in his young life.

"I beg your pardon,' breathed Acthéean. 'I can't remember… everything is dark in me, I see things, I've dreams that haunt me, but of which I don’t understand a strict word, nor an image.

Trevor let himself be lulled by the reassuring and breathed voice, flooded with the sweet scent mixed with musk and plants, smoothness of skin, oils still clinging to the half-shaved beard, tangy in the first notes of a softly flared intimacy. For nothing in the world, he wouldn’t have freed himself from the cupped grip of his neck, from the aerial rubbing of foreheads smeared with rebellious locks, some tender chocolate color mixed with dark auburn from an autumn to its twilight, the others cradled night of obsidian, sparkling like diamonds. The two foreheads carved in the purest marble of a flawless diaphanous complexion.

"You have nothing to forgive yourself ... Maybe ..." Trevor ventured, still under his breath, as if the two young people were afraid of awakening an entity in the bedroom. "Maybe this's the one who helped you, you see? ...

"I don't know… Who said HE helped me?' Acthéean moaned, gently nodding his head in negation, never leaving the contact of the forehead. 'Trevor, I think I'm dead there ... the rest escapes me ...

Le Belmont in turn felt the tears burn his alabaster cheeks. He couldn't tell him openly that yes, he'd been gone from this world for a time of eternity that'd made them agonize over him. Yes, he'd left this world of mortality, to escape to where all the deceased meet one day, because that's the Law. Yes, he'd evaporated to the frontiers of Infinity, where Mortals never return. Until ... someone decided that he'd to return to his loved ones, to this world where he'd surely not finished his summoned task.

"Especially if he asks you about his absence, you don't know anything," Efrain'd ordered him. Besides, you weren't there, and you didn't hear anything from the testimonies. Explaining to him what happened might add to the trauma of the Void ... We'll deal with this together. Trevor, a man's never ready to face his Death, even warriors at the fateful moment ... "

He pursed his lips in his childish pout. He saw in unfeigned astonishment, Acthéean staring at his lips again like that, as he stepped back from the hold.

Before he could ask, the apprentice continued:

"Lips like that ... in that pout that you always wear when you're perplexed, or you've done something wrong ... or you want to ask something ... it's your little tic that you've, when you want to 'seduce' the people…

It was the tirade that broke the gradual tension that'd settled in everywhere, in their limbs, in their attitudes, even omnipresent in the room, compact as a medium made difficult to mold.

" What ? Trevor protested. I don't seduce anyone, and I don't have a tic ...

"Yes, you have, with your lips,' Acthéean laughed. 'You don't realize it, but we learned with Efrain to know when you have a crazy idea in your head, and you're proud of it!

Threatening chin movement, and narrowed eyes rushed to the apprentice's mocking words, which added a layer:

"You see there, that's the typical ‘Belmont-Not-Happy-And-Annoyed-that-we-Discovered’ pout!

"You forget I still have the blade and need to shave you! Maybe it will accidentally slip off your tongue!' Trevor grumbled, mimicking an exaggerated pout of anger. But halfway to laughing too.

The two young people realized that their sadness'd vanished at their jokes. Acthéean, however, had to admit that something'd undeniably triggered a laceration in the dull veil of amnesia.

"I'm serious, Trevor… I think something's trying to resurface in my memory… Your hands, your pout, my mind vainly tries to associate them with something I can't quite understand…

"It's a good sign, isn't it? Efrain did say that it wouldn't take much sometimes for the memory to come back ...

"But why then with you?" Why does my wavering mind associate you with shadows? I feel it's deep within me… it's recurring to an extent that I don't understand… these're compact haze bands that refuse to let themselves be caught, and it slips through my helpless fingers… it's there, to taunt me ... to disappear as soon as I take a step towards them, towards those grimacing shadows ... but something inside it keeps telling me that it has something to do with you, or something similar ... you understand?

Trevor could only nod in the same incomprehension. He got ready for his shaving task again, as Acthéean asked:

"Why are you doing this for me?"

The teenager suspended his gesture, considering his friend. With obvious logic to him, he replied calmly, almost confidently:

"Because you were the only one to reach out to me… You helped me out when I needed it. You treated me with Efrain. You’re my friend. Something terrible has happened to you, and I want to do everything with Efrain to help you get out of your grief ... You’re the only one who has shown me respect and friendship. I want to give it back to you.

"Maybe that's why I associate my torn apart of reminiscences with you…' Acthéean whispered. My mind is warning me of something, but I still don't get the message ...

The apprentice studied the teenager in his opalescence, through the tangled locks lashing his forehead as diaphanous with the transparent skin than that of his friend - one could discern the fine veins which crossed the tender flesh of their long arachnid streams. The two looked at that moment like specters so fragile of translucence cracked by the hard knocks knocking on the door of their existence. They instinctively knew that they would both rise up, bound by the tenuous threads of their astral twins, in the labyrinthine meanders of a conflicting identity, but in tacit and silent agreement, they would easily cross its vertiginous walls if they thus comforted themselves in this strange twinning that they'd recognized graphed in them for a long time.

Much like Trevor's thoughts, in the nave of the abbey when he waited for Brother Efrain to return, he found himself thinking of possible wanderings in worlds that would belong only to them. Acthéean'd always felt in osmosis with the teenager, even when they were still only strangers not talking to each other before, and had felt the pain facing Trevor's broken being. In an identical reflection, Trevor'd agonized over the sudden departure, the disappearance-Death. And the misery of Acthéean.

Coming from far away, diffuse echoes launched their complaints, as if they came from a deep well of ice, where the tears bounced in a stunned void, finding no answer to their lamentations. A bottomless well. Covered in frost. Like somewhere.

Follow the Snow Lily…

Somewhere, his haphazard footsteps echoed along thick layers of ice. Everywhere was ice. Everywhere was deadly cold and the astonishment of quivering flesh.

Long metallic reverberations of boot-frets on uneven cobblestones. Long stony moans were the responses to the regular clicking sounds. In the background, groans intensifying in cries of agony, to climb into the unbearable highs of a confusing ecstasy.

Suddenly superimposed the appalling image of Trevor agitated in pain under the torture of other criminal hands on his flesh, on that… abominable in delirious anthropomorphism where nefarious human beasts uttered languid cries of their victims. Mute dumbfoundedness in front of such an unpacking of fantasized violence.

But where did these allegories in stigmata tearing with their fangs the aerial garment of Mnemosyne come from, as the Goddess made her way through her Labyrinth for Psyche which She held in her hand?

Another log died in the hearth, shattered in two from its calcination, barely making them jump in their thoughtful shudder. The thoughts were raging torrents in Acthéean's hesitant mind, as the reflective part of his brain processed Trevor's words of recognition, in a form of unspoken confession.

His hands swam with mellow bliss in the river of black diamonds, harpooning it tightly with a full grip, but never pulling hard on it. Time to think that he should take a moment to unravel that splendor with the liturgical comb, his lips fluttered over those of a dumbfounded Trevor, but allowing himself to be. Like the first time.

Acthéean didn’t forget that the teenager was still pure and innocent. And the thought troubled him a little more, for it stirred yet another riddle in the cluttered clouds of his memory.

Trevor was innocent. The Other, not.

It was a barely audible whisper, bouncing happily into an enigmatic litany causing him to react strangely. When had he thought that before? He was gentle in his intrusion to meet his friend's tongue, hesitant and fluttering. It was moving with so much innocence. Part of his mind rebelled, however, and images of violence suddenly imprinted themselves alternating with the sweetness of the kiss. He was disturbed. As he continued his slow teasing progression in the offered mouth, biting his lips cautiously, something screamed at him to brutally pin the teenager, and inflict the worst outrages upon him in a cerebral stampede which took his breath away under the visceral flow.

Continually, his mind sent him tons of contradictory information, where the figurations flashed in the blink of an eye in multiple cynical laughs at the mental confusion of the young man who could no longer properly process the clues that thwarted each other. It was a maelstrom of emotions just as violent and sweet at the same time. Consent and insurgent fought with equal rage; permission and revulsion torn apart in their virulence; ecstasy and suffering agonized in unison in flesh impaled with pernicious splinters.

Mnemosyne and Psyche blindly ran towards Madness which welcomed them with open arms ...

Trevor sensed that something strange was going on with his friend, as he interrupted the kiss softly, and stared at him, curiosity sparkling in the blue sapphires. Acthéean lifted himself from the soft lips with regret, surprised to be pushed back.

" I've done something wrong ? he asked, pinching his lower lip, tasting the juice and musk thus collected.

God, he tastes really good, even in his intimate musk ...

“I don't know,' Trevor hesitated. 'All of a sudden you looked different, and sweet and brutal at the same time. As if you were trying to hurt me, to devour me.

Saying that, the youngster felt his slightly reddened lower lip from the harsher onslaught of the kiss. Acthéean thought that his skin reacted instantly under the bruises, like a rebellion towards crude gestures that would revolt it.

Devouring and cannibalism ...

Acthéean let out a long sigh which ended in a muffled moan.

"I feel like everything I do with you stirs things up in there… He gestured to his head. 'It wants to gush out, but it fails to identify.

"Of kissing me, reminded you of something? Should I be worried?

How badly I bit him… An act of possession like I've never had before…

The gray nuts focused on the ice orbs, searching for a clue of an emotion that would've afflicted the Belmont.

“I don't know if to be worried yet, but it's quite confusing for me too. I wish I could hold on to something that would point me in the right direction.

" You've to be patient. I'll be patient. Efrain'll be patient. Together we can pull you out of this amnesia' Trevor reassured him gently.

"Yeah, but… what if it wasn't good?

" That is to say ?

“I don't know, Trevor. I've the feeling that in part of my brain there's something like a voice whispering to me that I mustn’t know the truth of what happened ...

"You must've seen some really terrible things...' Trevor whispered, aghast at the anticipation of the worst possible scenarios.

Acthéean leaned back, gripping the stubborn strands in a hard grip, pulling them back, clearing his pale, blued face from the impact. He remained with his eyes closed for a moment. The lower lip disappeared under the teeth that tortured it. Trevor was at a loss what to say, being very clumsy with words, he was unfamiliar with ready-made empathetic phrases, and his friend's unhappy amnesia left him in complete disarray.

“It's as if something was inside me, and which has no natural or logical place... and it seems to think for me, to act against my own will... I brought something back from there, Trevor... But this impression I must keep silent, as long as I don’t find more clues to enlighten my memory... otherwise, it could condemn me forever, even if I’m a novice protected by the Brotherhood... No one must know... My journey, already, frightens many who see it as an infernal phenomenon among many others in our fight against the Dragon...

It might’ve been a dangerous random thought to express in front of anyone other than Trevor, but Acthéean knew instinctively that he could leave complete freedom of trust to his discreet friend. Trevor would never betray him, and would be an immovable grave regardless of any attempt to extract confidences from him. Many could’ve followed the conscientious example of the teenager concerning the confessions revealed in the shadows of the confessionals. This wasn’t the case for many of them, and some secrets’d been revealed in a distressing and dramatic display in a small community like theirs. If a word was released about his situation, it could very quickly be a witch hunt for someone who’d suffered an event well beyond his consciousness.

Acthéean knew, even if he hadn’t left the dispensary, that the rumors were growing, and traveling through the thick walls and damp partitions of Danaşti. Distrust and bitterness slowly raised their acid ramparts against a very young man who’d returned in an unnatural way from the cursed places, and his loss of memory took on the appearance of an exponential madness so frightening to superstitious devotees. Human nature being like this, the people always resented those who’d miraculously escaped from battles, or from evil places like the Castle where Terror and Death reigned as sole masters. Gradually, the status of Acthéean would shift in the minds of the poor, terrorized people, to become that of an outcast strangely spared by the Obscuro sitting in Hell.

Trevor simply nodded, thinking deeply about the implications of the revelation. In a tacit and silent agreement, his thoughts joined the outlines of disturbing conjectures into mirror ideas whose cynical flavor didn’t escape him. Very quickly, the Belmont became aware of the overhanging situation which might well cause his friend to fall in the worst possible way.

Words weren’t necessary, only the apple-of-eyes linked their bursts together in a metaphysical signature on a contract of silence. Acthéean was comforted in the disturbing nebulosity, pearly with reassuring flavors and reinforced by the gift of faithful self-sacrifice, emanating all around the contrasting silhouette between the tawny and gold shimmers of the hearth. A myriad of colors so intense that it was difficult for him to compartmentalize the numerous nuances undulating in coalescing coruscations all around this pure Soul so devoid of pettiness. As for the efflorescence that emanated from it, impregnated the intimate ether with its subtle claw of tasty undulations that would’ve made any living person salivate at the prospect of a frugal and sensual banquet.

After a few controlled breaths, in order to resume a steady flow in the emotionally poured adrenaline, and whipped vigorously by the wild mix of alert senses, Acthéean attempted a sheepish smile, leaned forward and again caught Trevor's lips in a kiss of calculated and truthful sweetness. Without intrusion that could've offended the young man, he contented himself with pecking the childish pout, teasing his lips with the tips of his teeth, without squeezing them viciously. Not the way he'd suddenly wanted to, moments earlier, and who'd seen him succumb to that brutal impulse.

Trevor returned his "pecks" to him with an innocent touching tenderness, which made one forget that he was forming in intensive training to become a bloodthirsty warrior, uncompromising in the face of the dragon spawn and infernal minions.

At that moment, these two twin Soulmates were bathed in the purity of feelings that they knew were totally forbidden by the church. And whatever the promising verses of the flames of Tartarus, these two Heart-Shadows united in the embrace of true emotions, in the discovery of their moved bodies. One went cautiously towards the other who sailed in the troubled waters of the Unknown.

This moment spent perfectly relaxed the warm atmosphere of the room. But Acthéean remained pragmatic in his thoughts, when he slyly called out to his friend, still vibrating with the hug:

“Hey, you still have to finish your shave. I'm not going to stay like this when Efrain comes back.

Trevor let out a bright smile that completely relaxed his worried features, and picked up the sharp blade he'd put down during the kiss. Dutifully, he got down to the task, and the blade again sounded its airy song over the down. Acthéean'd correctly wedged his nape, and let himself go under the caresses of the knife which each time released him a little more of the invading hairs. He took the opportunity to calm himself internally, too, for the kiss had of course stimulated a start of excitement that was now pulsing slyly in his groin, and tugging painfully in his lower abdomen.

To distract the other from this bodily betrayal, the apprentice whispered:

"You leave me a bit anyway, I like a three-day stubble ... that's my brand of identity,' he said with a subtle smile.

"I know, I noticed ... Trevor replied, almost sticking his tongue out with the effort of shaving without a break above all. ‘’Even though I don't have any hair experience, I know how to educate them ...

"Scritch" sang the blade laden with the beautiful chocolate down, wielded by a Trevor proud of having done no damage to his friend's thin skin. A peacock making the wheel in its pride to muzzle the companion who'd dared to laugh at his lack of hair! At the same time, reassured to move away from this friend, to clean the blade, trying for his part to hide his emotivity exacerbated by the kiss. Trevor wasn’t leading off either, caught in the revolutions of his waking body, his stomach tightening under the sweet embrace that curled his flesh on irrepressible goosebumps. He took advantage of the opportunity to turn around, to breathe a tension that'd settled a little too low in his self, to remain stoic for longer. He took the pretext of bathing one of the down-soiled linens, to get away from the object of his sudden desire.

Silence had settled again in the room of permanent privacy, and the two found themselves thinking in unison that they so wanted time to stand still, may they rest in the eternal stillness of a life that has become carefree. One rowed the murky tides of his apraxia, moved by suspicions barely disclosed by his stammering anamnesis; the other drifted on the unfathomable shores of an Unknown delivering him the most cryptic messages ever.

It was in this reflective silence in twin echoes, that the blade ended its rapsody on the cheeks now strewn with a tender fluff as if it'd been born only a few days ago, and cured with ointments that would also relieve the persistent hematoma in its bluish purplish spreading outrage on the left side of the face. This remained among the only visible traces of the assault and fighting, the rest of the scars showing in discolorations reminiscent of wounds several months old, instead of just days. Efrain and Trevor'd washed him thoroughly, cleaned the wounds, had therefore seen him naked, and were ecstatic at the 'miracle' seams of healing. A mystery in all cases.

When Trevor displayed a somewhat strutting satisfaction on his careful work, without the slightest slash, taunting Acthéean for finding a fault, the latter could only signify his thanks by placing a kiss on the nimble hand that'd known how to handle the dangerous knife.

A painful lump rose across Trevor's throat, who in the spontaneity of his youth weaned from affection, couldn't help hugging his friend, muttering like a throbbing lament:

"I thought we lost you ...

Acthéean embraced him back, taking advantage of nesting his clean, softer cheeks even in the large, almost outrageously yawning cleavage of the shirt. An endless cascade of nocturnal silk covered them both during the embrace. A cloud of various scents obscured his scent, and he reveled in mentally detailing the subtle and exciting layers. By the way, he was grateful that the teenager'd put on some brais. It was certainly a few thin layers of fabric separating the flesh from any intrusive touch, but it avoided overflowing all the same. And above all the temptation! Acthéean couldn't help but divulge his criminal thoughts:

"I will ask you to put on shirts in your size, from now on you're a temptation on your feet with this shirt open on your navel ...

Suffocated at the audacity of the words, Trevor pulled away from the grasp with a punch to the shoulder in retaliation, and threw the rest of the towels in his face. Vexed, the fiery Belmont walked out of the room, and Acthéean snorted at his ease at the teenager's exaggerated outrage, folding up the strewn cloths in anger, while stilling the jerks of laughter. Really, young Belmont hadn't stolen his reputation as a savage!

When Efrain returned to his apothecary, his arms full of medical texts, he found his two youngsters quietly sipping hibiscus infusions, the musky scents of which hovered outside where they could be sniffed with relish. Trevor'd certainly strained the doses of the flowers again! This kid would swim happily in a tub filled with only these flowers, if he could! To the point of getting outrageously intoxicated with it, the herbalist not ignoring the perverse effects that the sublime flower could possess in the excess used of its particular gifts.

Regardless, the young people were relaxed, babbling quietly between glances in the books. Wise as images, they say! Efrain hadn't witnessed Trevor's little bit of blood from the teasing on his overly high-cut shirt ... But the mockery'd been too sweet and sexy for the Belmont to sulk for long, and finally made him realize that what his friend'd thought shrewdly, others might think more perversely. Which would explain the many worries encountered by the young man, not yet aware of his Self and what he projected onto others. Subtly, Acthéean'd lifted the eel under the rock, while retaining an insidious possessive side that'd expressed itself in an underlying jealousy.

The herbalist immediately noticed the refreshed cheeks from a close shave, and even marveled at the agility of a hand that'd avoided cuts. Acthéean seemed at best, rested and relaxed. Trevor's stunning designs were artistically displayed on the apprentice's diaper proud of his friend's gift. A brighter glow, which he hadn't seen since waking up in coma, danced in the sloes and twirled a few golden gradations in the hazelnuts.

He joined them in satiating on a decoction, deciding to take his time in idle conversations drifting on nothing, absolutely avoiding the critical atmosphere outside. It would still be time to inform Acthéean when the appropriate moment would've come. At that moment, it was necessary to enjoy this detente, to relax the young adult, to reassure him. Efrain was sure that everything was on point when you knew how to shape it, and especially a good dose of patience.

For now, he didn’t miss the knowing glances of his two little ones, the frank friendship and affection that'd been woven in the sleeping tranquility of reciprocal attraction. Something, however, that resonated in what was more than brotherhood, he was aware of and had subtly understood the underlying cogs setting in motion a shadow mechanic, where no one should interrupt its smooth running, even in the name of a morality slyly masked behind intransigent appearances.

Now Efrain'd two patients to watch in their convoluted convalescence, one of whom wandered through the very troubled waters of his injured psyche. Their healing would only take place in good conditions in a padded atmosphere of relaxation and absolute rest. And there was no question of poisoning the right path of recovery, by harassing the two souls lost in the torments of complicated feelings, only because a handful of high ecclesiastical dignitaries'd violently condemned to pyres the unfortunate people who succumbed to the emotional fiber forbidden by the sacrosanct church. He kept in mind the reaction of the others as they walked through the abbey's atrium, and remembering the scrutinizing, even perverted looks on Trevor's figure, made him shudder inwardly. Assuredly the incident at his own apothecary turned out to be the worst hypocrisy of all.

Efrain'd been able to take a sharp look at his fellow man, throughout his medical practice, and had made the disturbing observation of the stirrings awakening between the one who was suffering in his flesh, and the one who was treating him. A strange attraction that came to bring people together in empathy for the disease, and the affection between the afflicted and the practitioner, the disease or the injuries weighed heavily in the balance of the easily influenced and weakened beings. The healer'd this extraordinary capacity for empathy which made him become attached to the suffering, and a reciprocity forged bonds that became unbreakable in the passion of conflicting feelings.

And it was exactly this unusual mechanism of pain and disturbing emotions, of gratitude towards the "savior", of "loving" humility on the part of the patient, to which the herbalist was a silent and understanding witness.

In order to interrupt this flood of bitter-sweat thoughts, the herbalist mentally reviewed the various paragraphs studied in the manuscripts that his friend Andréas'd unearthed for him in the secret back room, as he listened to the still gritty chirps of Acthéean's voice, and those of Trevor's light baritone. He'd to agree that the vocal tones of the two youngsters were strangely identical, pretty much the same, except of course the apprentice's still hoarse voice.

Just as he also didn’t miss the way the drawings were displayed in front of an Acthéean who detailed the smallest shadows, in front of a Trevor blushing with humility under the compliments

His observant eye spotted the two splendors sleeping quietly in their angelic virginity, one within watercolored vellum, another in the sage nest. Both'd been picked simultaneously, in two different places, a few days ago. But instead of being withered by the erosion that would've dried them up, they shone in their beauty, as if they'd just been cut off instantly.

Two mother-of-pearl beads reflecting the tawny shadows of a hearth thirsty for material to be burnt.

"Follow the Lily ... drink from its fountain, drink my tears of remorse, and I will carry it in my memories ..."

~~~ ---- ooo ---- ~~~

Strangely enough, the book was cumbersome, weighty to handle. The clasps that kept its written secrets echoed in a silence heavy with threat.

As soon as a few leaves flared in the compulsion, the parchment of the support has obfuscated, and the fine arabesques of the writing seemed to come to life in sinuosities unrolling their tendrils of darkness. He would've liked to close the grimoire quickly, but the pages refused the order to fall back before the profusion of smoky volutes which now straightened up in a swarm of shadows in spasmodic movements.

He regretted too late that he'd failed in his curiosity, as the threatening cloud of convolutions released twisted figures changing in appearance with each pulse of his fear-filled heart. A fog of inconsistent and threaded penumbra, from which swirls of nauseating chromatic gushes out, before concretely emerging a corolla of immaculate white. Birth of Aphrodite in the ooze and humus of sulphurous putrescence. Trembling from the top of its threadlike stem, the flower dripped its diamondine tears as it held out its delicate chalice to a hand that would take hold of it. Lips, perhaps, to water from its tears.

"You picked it up for me...' a gritty voice whispered next to his ear.

He didn't turn right away to know the identity of the one who'd just whispered. Instead, his hand, holding a brush gorged with precious ink, busied itself with writing words whose language he'd no understanding of. He'd barely sketched the first syllables when he crossed out, and the brush let out a watercolor cry that spread its halo quickly absorbed by the parchment. The task stretched out in puddles soiled with dubious molasses which undeniably corrupted the sought-after nuances, by more tarnished and acidic colors. The halos thus obtained arose from the tiny channels like small blood vessels, running to drink towards the fountain of the chalice.

In the blink of an eye, the flower was invaded by the microscopic pipes eager to water from the corolla. Its stem withers and the archangelic whiteness fades miserably, making the splendor curl up into a desolate floral corpse stinking of sulfur.

"See, you'd to pick it up from me before it died...' the voice growled in his ear. It faded because of your negligence ...

A searing pain crossed his chest. As his gaze fixed on the tip of a weapon that'd impaled him from behind, presenting his heart torn from the end of the bloody claw that'd ruthlessly opened it. A retractable span of a Combat Cross, which transformed into a hand set with monstrous claws, twisting the still throbbing organ, from which the bursts of blood of ruptured aortas squeezed.

He was still alive. He watched his heart freeze in death, as his throat failed to let out the cry of agony he should've uttered. Nothing could be done. As he saw the clawed hand wrap his heart in a relentless grip, and withdraw from his chest.

He finally fell at the feet of the dead flower, which lay in the blood stirs invading the pages of the grimoire, flowing out of the crossed out leaflets with diffuse ink, soaking his own dying being.  

He wasn't dying. He didn't feel… anything. Nor the pain of his torn chest. Neither sounds in the atmosphere, as if he were buried in a dome which insulated him from any noise or smell. He lay there, frozen completely in a cold that took precedence over his limbs deprived of blood circulation.  

His bust gaped open, but he felt nothing. The only burn on his cheeks, that of the discontinuous tears escaping from his painful gaze from not fluttering its eyelids. Devastated to the ground, he felt a body crawl over him, covering him delicately, unable to react.

"Cardinal Volpe is unhappy with you...'the hollow voice whispered, on a sweetness that made his flesh shiver bruised with myriad goosebumps. The intonations were mean, and seemed to be delighted with his misfortune.

"You scandalized him by your arrogant and outrageous art ... He dedicated you to complaining ...

This singular mocking threat was echoed by hundreds of choirs which intoned the litany of Volpe furious against him, in unbearable shouts reminiscent of the howls of harpies. He wanted to cover his ears with their throbbing yelps, but he couldn't move. It was as if the honeyed words had opened floodgates, cascading thousands of sound stimuli that put his hearing to agony.  

His flesh was suddenly electrified with sensations impossible to handle as a whole, and he wanted to contort to escape the gehenna of his being thus attacked.  

Hands sprang up on either side of his face, slowly swirling the sticky locks of humus and cruor spread all around him. He felt like he was stuck in the mud, and that gnarled and unsightly arms of Naiads caught in his hair. The disjointed and hideous branches grabbed armfuls of soiled silk to present to him the dripping lengths of dirt.

His vision captured the shape that gravitated sinuously over him within its periphery, and he recognized the dark meanders, crimson and flame that danced around his frozen body. The defining figure elongated a long, slender neck towards his face, as the Antediluvian assumed humanoid form and a steady weight on the helpless recumbent.

"If you'd plucked the flower for me, Volpe wouldn't have punished you...' purred the rocky tone mimicking the human voice it didn't have.  

He meant he hadn't had time, but his lips remained as still as the rest. He begged to die at last. Invoked the mercy of the Almighty in His infinite goodness, but all he received from his silent invocations was a soft purr almost out of place in this case.

"I'll take care of you, so that you don't succumb to this thief cardinal ...

Each word was spoken carefully, so that he imprinted them in his memory. The purr took on rumbling tones, and the body over him ignited with heat almost unbearable to his dying flesh. The whole envelope of the stranger was shrouded in fluttering smoke, in which dazzling nebulosities of embers and flames danced.

The Being held out a hand as clawed as the one that'd torn his heart out, and brought back between his long fingers handfuls of hair silk with which he played for a moment, sniffed like a big feline soaking up the scent of its prey, smoothing out the curls on his indefinable face among features that seemed to navigate a permanent blur so as never to take on a stable identity in facial recognition.

He was fascinated by this testimony of adoration towards his adornment. Also suffocated to note that instead of rocking rivers of black diamonds, the fingers interlaced kisses on silvery-white silk. The wicks didn't even seem soiled with the ground humours.

The hand pulled back a full handful of those lengths, which it carefully spread out in place of the torn heart. Long, curved needles were invoked by the infinite fingers and the tips of the claws. Slowly, the twisted awls dutifully weaved the sutures made of the silver silk to close the pale, bloody chest. The more they pricked their seams, the more relieved he felt, floating in suave bliss.

His silver strands became darning threads, and slowly, almost tenderly, a delicate, harmonious lace was embroidered, absorbed by the dermis bursting with lunar paleness. The Being hummed incomprehensible guttural phonemes, but a few faint syllables reached through the cottony envelope that’d taken care of his torn body.

“…Your heart now belongs to me…your Soul is no longer from this world of hypocrisy…Contemplate your Rebirth forever…my Son…”

As the Other lovingly sewed his chest up, he let himself be manipulated completely without even wanting to react, in sudden and unnatural confidence. He would've liked to fall asleep in those benevolent arms that cradled him, while they healed him for his loss. He no longer felt the emptiness of the torn organ, and he didn't care that nothing had replaced it. Just the welcome Nothingness he wanted to voluntarily drown in.

He averted his burning, still tearful gaze towards the rotten flower, collapsed in its putrid miasma, encircled by the Grimoire which'd resumed its cleansed and changing forms, whose pages continued to pour out streams of veins so fine that he thought of hair stretching up to him.

The flower's hair became his own immaculate adornment, he thought idly. But he never had a reaction to the Entity's last words... He called me "my Son", and everything became normal in this illogical songe.

Hypnotized by their crawls, he barely felt he was elongate, obscenely outspread in the sight of the Other. The ramifications united towards his body, and he found that the whole plant was in turn sewing his body with that of the Being. Their two morphologies merging in the ecstatic euphoria of the incredible weaving, making their twin essences one and the same extraordinary anatomy. A congregation of atoms that began to ripple lasciviously, as he felt his dreadful Siamese twirl carelessly inside him, ripping him apart mercilessly, laminating his scuffed elastic walls with erosive, painful burning under vindictive thrusts.

He wanted to scream out this brutal intrusion that opened him so violently, but his throat couldn't deliver a sound. Instead, the tears became sour torrent, mutating into the void that became silence again.  

Then his body betrays him. Swinging in exponential rapture, a sublimation of the senses with which this infernal Siamese knew how to play, in order to make him progressively climb the stages of unfulfilled carnal veneration.

Pain and sublimation played on the ropes of his emotions, and he moaned to ask for more ...

… He leaned down to pick up the petal, anticipating the velvety softness under the pads of his fingers.

He heard a recognizable click on the Carrara marbles…

Acthéean was roused from his sleep by plaintive moans. He allowed himself a few seconds to become aware of his surroundings, to observe the muffled atmosphere of the room, the fireplace burning the last logs, the braziers half-extinguished. Since he'd "returned" from his long journey, he didn’t feel totally in osmosis with himself, and his body and mind were totally out of step with his interactions with the environment. As if he dragged himself tirelessly on an icy paved road on which he lost his balance with every step. He seemed to him to be grounded in his physicality as an element of flesh, but not in spirit. The impression of stammering against a one-way window, like a bee on the verge of suffocation, and whose very essence of his sacred Self remained loose in remnants far behind the borders leading to this mortal world.

A bee against the pane…which buzzed to the point of exhaustion, while the others could never hear its desperate pleas.

The anguished sighs began to cry again, and this time he knew they weren't from a dream. It took him a few more moments to relate to the couch where the visibly sleepy complaints were coming from, and where Trevor was lying.

He's still having a nightmare…Acthéean thought.

Even though he felt moved by his own recurring dreams, he slipped gently from the furs where he was tangled, and moved like a shadow towards his friend's bed. He barely took the time to realize that he was half-naked, wrapped only in very thin sleeping pants. It was an orange glow on his transparent skin that drew his attention to his body still shivering with goosebumps relative to one of his endless dreams in ritornello.

He rubbed his arms to cut off the chill of the draft from the fireplace yawning the rubble of a dying fire, and thought he'd to put in some material to burn, as he approached the restless sleepy bed.

Trevor was lying on his stomach, his face contorted by the dreamlike images encircled by folded arms. A hand was writhing convulsively on the medallion of the Mirror. The half-open lips let out soul-splitting little barks, which made it clear that the dreams were really violent or pernicious. Obviously, the poor teenager was in pain in his dreaminess, and even gave the impression of suffocating in his anguished sighs. The body was tangled in the shirt soaked in bad sweat, and the back laces'd come undone under the jolts, exposing a scarred redeeming back, whose regenerated tissues grimaced in twists zigzagging in purplish and red-anger gloomies haloed in sickly yellow and black shadows, like ugly melting makeup. On an opal skin, it was to say how much healing painted its grim painful portrait.

Acthéean bent over the furs, parted it a little from the feverish flesh, and sat on one hip, as he flared and unglued the strands of silk clinging to the sleeper's back and shoulders. Then gently, he smoothed a hand on the back of Trevor's neck as he urged him to wake up.

The Belmont gave a start under the rest of his hand on his shoulder, uttered a last breathless cry, before the steel orbs opened on Somnus' hazy gaze. In the transparent clarity of the irises, it was easy to make out the dilating pupil, balancing the night vision in order to make out through the semi-penumbra the figure of Acthéean bending over to lie on top of him. The brain processed the image quickly, and Trevor straightened up on his elbows, straining a worried look at his friend.

" What's the matter ?' he grumbled. 'Is it not okay?

"You were still having a nightmare…'Acthéean sighed. It woke me up. I was doing one too ...

Trevor let out a reassured breath, plunging his head in a graceful arch on the pillow. The hand clutching the mirror relaxed, and the pendant slipped on the sheet wrinkled by dozens of intricate folds.

"I'm sorry I woke you up ... he whispered, genuinely sorry for the inconvenience. You need more rest than I do, and I'm not helping ...

“Hey! You too have a disturbed sleep, we are both in need of rest, now… Acthéean reassured him, wrapping his shoulders showing a slight tremor. I'm going to put more wood in the fireplace, time to calm down, we try to sleep again ...

Acthéean's hand on his back was doing him so good, he didn't want the contact to end. When the fingers fluttered towards the back of the neck, he leaned in, arching the long grace of his neck into the grip. It was the delicate frisellis of his silky locks that made him realize that his back'd been exposed in his struggle with dreams. The hand slid in light touch over the ecchymosas spreading their sarcasm on the diaphanous skin, and smoothed out some of the scars. He guessed the hazel eyes estimating healing, and couldn't suppress a long shiver that made him wince deliciously.

"I'm going to have to seriously tackle unraveling this mess' Acthéean hissed, while separating his hand from the nasty mottling, and stirring the nests in which his fingers were hanging up, preferring not to emphasize the sensual and tender reaction of the young teenager. 'It’s not possible, how long has it been since you’ve your hair done?

"Ever since they brought you back dead on that exam table...' Trevor snapped, almost a sob in his voice. 'Believe me, I was far from taking care of my appearance, while you were lying between two worlds ...

The words hurt Acthéean who blamed himself for his innocent clumsiness. He gently grabbed one side of the wild hair, and brought their temples together. He squeezed, squeezed so hard in an embrace that was meant to be reassuring. The passing fever made Trevor's whole body boil, even his face was unusually wet. The same he'd had during thunderstorms.

"I'm here now…'he calmed down.

Both of their voices were quiet and cautious breaths, always on the lookout for fear of awakening something that would be with them in the room, and take offense at their whispers.

"I navigate hazy mazes of oblivion," he continued, "but I’ve faith that you can help me out. We've a lot in common, it’s from this osmosis that we’ll be able to overcome the obstacles, I’m sure ...

"What makes you believe that?' Trevor asked, turning his troubled face to his friend. 'So where would this necessary strength come from, and why me?

"I don't know how to express it, but I know it's there, very close ... Our dreams themselves have a strange coincidence between them, as if it was influenced by something that’s beyond us ... Over there, what happened, I cannot yet define the memories, but, what I do know is that I’m being handed clues that I don’t know how to understand, and everything refers to you , in one way or another…

The gaze of water observed the gray hazelnuts, shrouded in multiple questions. But Trevor waited for his friend to continue with explanations he could hardly reconcile. Nonetheless, his inner Voice cradled him with confident consolation towards his friend.

"Like the flowers...Don't you find it strange that we both picked these wonderful flowers at the same time, when it isn't their time...I constantly hear someone urging me to 'follow the Lily', and I think it echoed even during my...absence. I can't tell where it came from, or even if it's just the result of my hurt imagination...I’m in a perpetual desert, I’m sinking into the swamps that suck my memories...I think I see a hand reaching out, but I'm not sure...I’m overcome by doubt and fears of the Unknown...Trevor, understand it...I can only trust instinct who is unknown to myself, like it’s not part of me, but someone else who thinks for me…Do you understand? I'm here, but I don't feel like I'm alive...

Trevor looked at his friend, his mind piecing together completely dissimilar pieces as best it could, so the puzzle couldn't fall into place by just fitting the parts. It was more than that: his friend couldn't even manage to be aware of their identity. Was this how some subjects stricken with amnesia slowly slipped into madness, as he'd already read?

An individual who lost all notion of his own personality in the twists and turns of traumatic oblivion, could only succumb at one point to pure Psychosis and all-consuming Paranoia. But in this century, we were far from psychoanalytic explorations, and everything that arose from problems having some roots in the irrationality of the mind on which we couldn’t deposit any consistent matter whatever, became a phantasmagorical problem linked to the chaotic domain of the Dragon, itself being the causal identity of all the evils of mankind in this world. A real war of nerves in the face of the trials of infernal Darkness, which gleaned in abundance thousands of mortals succumbing to unknown forces.

Trevor comforted himself in their temple-to-temple embrace, and for a few moments, the two complexions sparkled with the orange glow of the braziers, their mixed sweat, auburn chocolate and dark night of the intertwined and tangled strands.

"Do you have any pictures, or early memories of when you were...'gone'?

He struggled to formulate the last word, pushing a little more into the moral wound of the loss which had almost been definitively such : lethal, fatal, irrevocable, mowing down the lives around which were solidly hampered there, in an intrinsic dependence, like stalks of ears stirred by the gleaner's blade.

"I can't say these're memories…just a consuming sense of utter emptiness.  Dark nothingness. I don't even have this idea of divine light. Just…like dust in a bottomless abyss…No weight. No consistency. Nothing. My body seems to remember endless pain, and it still echoes in my limbs at times. It’s awful that feeling: to be and not to be all at the same time. Of that, I think it's part of my absence, but I'm not even sure...

"Do you think Efrain can figure all this out? Me, I must admit that it’s beyond me...Haven’t you seen our Lord? Perhaps it’s He, in His immense Goodness, who has guided you?

"Trevor…I sincerely believe that here our Lord has no role in my situation…I've probably gone to this damned Castle, don't forget…What refers to, isn’t in the domain of the Divine. Believe me, the explanations're elsewhere than in the hands of God...

Acthéean's misty gaze slid to the side and seemed to focus on an invisible point in the ambience of the room. Scrutinizing into the Unknown, probably only he could discern. His downy lips parted in a pout that was both dismayed and softened, while the hesitant words trickled in sparkling foam onto the beach of his lips.

“It lurks there, in banks of compact mist... It wants to break away and it always hesitates to cross the tiny border in order to prove its identity to me... it's like a specter that transforms, reabsorbs itself, as if swallowed behind this wall of oblivion, to finally turn around and disappear forever...There’re something like silent wings that float alongside this indefinite figure, but I’m unable even to decide whether it’s a man or a beast... or some fantastic spawn... and the scents that fly all around, are like a painful explosion that my senses’re incapable of naming... I’m in a Void, but everything’s an echo of suffering that throws itself at me... I think I was confronted with something or someone, but what I'm sure it’d nothing to do with God calling me back to His side...

Young Belmont opened his mouth to dispute the idea, but remembered that Acthéean didn’t have quite the same convictions as him, and didn’t yawn in front of ready-made procrastinations for the benefit of a God who was becoming more and more discreet in the face of the infernal events disbanding the country, for years already. Besides, hadn't it been whispering for a long time that God'd deserted this world? Trevor remembered shuddering in the conflicting imbalance more than once, when his eyes caught such assertions written in numerous Memoirs.

Acthéean put in place some wicks out of the pale forehead, but in vain, these last nose dived obstinately in front of the sleepy eyes.

"Just know one thing, Trevor, I'll share all of my feelings with you and Efrain. If my memories come back you'll be the first to informed...For now, even my dreams're enigma...We've to go back to sleep now, we both need some sleep, and poor Efrain finds himself with two droll subjects to brood!

It drew an impoverished smile from the Belmont, whose cheeks were delicately covered with a pale pink, so tender as a subtle trail of powder, and it was in a voice even more muffled than he dared:

"Stay close to me for the night, maybe that will help me stop having the nightmares...

Acthéean raised a mocking eyebrow, cocking his head in a surreptitious questioning manner.

"Belmont, Brother Efrain may be tolerant, I don't think you’ve to push his tolerance a little too far...

" What ? Trevor innocently remarked. You've slept next to me twice, and he didn't mind! We're not doing anything wrong...

"One of the times you were…nicely high on opiates? Besides, I was also not clear...The first time, you were in pain, and you'd a nightmare too...

Acthéean thought it best to get up, so that his friend would understand the excuse that wouldn’t come through this time, if Efrain happened to catch them sleeping together in the early morning. This time the man would've some pretty tough questions to ask. It hurt a little to pull away from the embrace, and to reject the youngster's request, who was now looking at him with disappointed sadness. It hurt like a spade biting his heart, he knew his friend was so cruelly deprived of gentle gestures throughout his childhood, it destabilized him a little more, even if he didn’t want to show the clues which would be salt on the wound.

Trevor still took the time to admire the muscular body that stretched out through the tawny shadows. His friend was right, no need to draw attention to shameful and devious attractions strongly rebuked by the Divine. He swallowed in shame, and bowed his head, as an insidious voice cooed in a corner of his mind:

Distorted attractions...and the others, what about when they brush your cheek, pull your hair, and their hands reaching out eagerly? They go unpunished…Why would they have this vicious right, and not you? 

"Acthéean,'he breathed, unloading a weight that seemed to fly away with the liberating words. 'Do you know that...I don't even dare to go to confession anymore?

The apprentice stopped his act of rekindling the fire, and stared at his friend, still leaning on his elbows, half-turned towards him.

"Do you know that Efrain got there on time the other day? He'd to go and find out about what'd happened to you with the surviving troop...he left me in the abbey, to pray for you, for the troop, for all the worst that I could imagine that happened to you…Also, if I wanted to express myself in confession.

A silence that Acthéean respected, appalled by the anticipation of what his friend was about to reveal to him, and which he guessed to be vicious.

"...a priest arrived, and I recognized him immediately as the one among those who...

Trevor pursed his lips, searching for the words. The atmosphere'd just turned badly, and an uneasiness gripped the two young people. But Belmont needed that second to confide in the one he considered his faithful and discreet friend, and to whom now he could only admit intimately to have clung to shameful desires.

"Efrain came along when he was grabbing me by the hair, and wanted me to kneel down in front of him…If you'd seen his eyes…that's what I see in the eyes of many, for too long…it weighs on me…

"Did Efrain understand?

"He understood for a long time, I think...He intelligently threatened the priest, and put in his place...

"Brother Efrain has listening ears to the Founders, it can go up high, and this…fellow has got it...' Acthéean confirmed, gnawing at the inside of his cheek in scandalized anger.

Suddenly, Trevor lifted his face, and voluntarily strained his jaw, ending all comment. Judging that he'd felt enough self-pity for himself and his hurt ego. The oyster'd just closed in a dry, uncompromising snap, and the glow in the steel waters took on a dangerous shade, bursting the clouds of sleep that weighed them down.

His piercing gaze gauged Acthéean's pleasing figure again, with unfeigned appreciation, and a more perverted angle shaded with twists like the apprentice'd never seen in those eyes. Like a sly reflection of dreams of debauchery, and constant attitudes towards him. Perhaps by dint of splashing the white dove, it still ended up being soiled ...

The young man squirmed slightly under the inquiring gaze, suddenly feeling like he'd someone else more evil in front of him. He turned away, hiding his confusion, but couldn't ignore the visceral twist coming from biting his sides viciously. Even though he wanted to throw the pieces of wood casually into the fireplace, he felt the thickness of the magnetic gaze.

It was urgent to leave the room, otherwise he felt capable of harpooning his friend, in a brutal reflex that he'd felt his nerves straining since he woke up. He'd never been so, so possessive, enraged, devouring and brutal, even with his most raging mistresses. Where did he get such aggressive behavior? What'd caused him this? A door'd opened violently on the intimate compartments of his libido, and he frankly had the impression of not having the key, nor the tacit rules established between the parties, in a gnawing fear of hurting the other only achieving one's own narcissistic pleasure. He'd noticed the strange reactions of his body, since he’d extricated himself from the mists of his disappearance. A chrysalis devouring inverted worlds, tearing its cocoon with its scarifying mandibles.

He'd to calm down quickly, in this moment, if he succumbed to the bodily reactivity that was gradually sharpening his senses, he risked nastily pinning his friend, in order to satisfy a primary instinct he no longer recognized in himself. As if another'd taken hold of his being, and manipulated him like a broken puppet.

"I'm going to make an infusion, that'll allow us to go back to sleep peacefully. But I do it! You've a heavy hand on the ingredient...

He finished his sentence by underlining it with a wink of connivance. Trevor understood the sign, and nodded silently. He followed his mate's graceful form pulling the drapery away from the room, and his lips formed their adorable, smiling pout. He rested his face on the crossed arms, and waited patiently, as he tried to ignore the sneaky little bites on his groin. His body was already aroused by the lingering dream, which he remembered perfectly in every detail. A loop in a repetitive chain, where his being was broken, abused. And where he always emerged victorious in an ecstasy that irrevocably ravaged him in torments the dregs of which clung stubbornly to the cliff of his revulsed flesh, and at the same time submissive in aggression. He was afraid of his intrusive and persistent dreams, but paradoxically, he took a liking to them in a perversity he didn’t recognize.

So he waited in the languor taking over his limbs, mischievously letting his flesh calm down under the tender thrusts he was analyzing coldly. He also tried to ignore the throbbing pain that was stimulating his cock, not wanting to submit to what might've finally relieved him. Instead, he inflicted on himself severe thoughts of sermons, and scandalized fury of the Divine, all that would inevitably throw him into the flames of hell, and devote him eternally to gemonies.

Failed! When Acthéean walked through the door with the fragrant drinks in ecstasy, his hormonal stimulation set off again at the gallop ! He could only plunge a red face with embarrassment into his arms as his friend handed him one of the terra cotta mugs. To fantasize about an object of fascination was one thing, to see it reveal itself thus was another. A pent-up desire that began to haunt him perniciously, and forced him to act in a cheeky masochism that saw him self-abnegation his own flesh, and his own desires flattering his flanks. Silently, he gritted his teeth, hoping to ignore the painful urge in his lower abdomen.

The cold shower came… with a voice rising behind Acthéean, startling them, neither had heard the new sidekick arrive. And when we say ‘cold shower ’, it was no exaggeration when it comes to the mutual feelings of the two young people overheated by their confidences.

"What are the two of you doing?' Efrain exclaimed, awakened from his sleep for a while, even though the young people spoke very quietly. 'You absolutely must rest, it’s not by flitting around the room at night that you'll get there!

"Exactly, Brother Efrain,'Trevor explained quietly, taking a first sip. 'We both'd nightmares...Acthéean got me out of a bad sleep...

The latter sat down on his couch, and discreetly pulled a blanket over his waist, which was too exposed by the outrageously descending pants. But the gesture didn’t escape the herbalist, who folded his arms, waiting for a more ... plausible excuse, perhaps?

An amused gleam danced in Efrain's eyes, who readily admitted that his youngsters were really having trouble sleeping.

"We'll talk about it seriously during a first exam on your amnesia, Acthéean...'sighed Efrain. 'I found some theses on the subject, Andréas helped me a lot…in the meantime, maybe you could give me your brew, right?

The smile relaxed the three men, and Acthéean almost ran for another cup, forgetting his semi-nudity. The herbalist was in no way outraged, and even noticed a slight straightening of the figure which displayed a disturbing curvature, heavy with infinite sadness, since his awakening from the abyss.

It was well into the night when the men returned to their respective beds. Somnus pulled them into his arms, without any quarreling, and Morpheus cradled them in limbo free from Nightmare choosing to desert Onirism.

---- ~~ ÕÕooo >> << oooÕÕ ~~ ----

Two nights and a well-started day passed, during which Acthéean was harassed by recurring images of his strange journey. Scenes interspersed with unusual feelings of anguish and death leaving an acidic and icy aftertaste in his throat when he woke up. His thoughts had become a constant obsession with not being able to get out of this murky labyrinth of apraxia. Neither did he understand the deep melancholy that gripped his heart with each memory leap.

Efrain'd patiently entered into interviews in which he tried, according to the principles ordained in ancient medical and philosophical registers, to rekindle a semblance of reminiscence insisting on remaining in the sardonic shadow of oblivion. What'd emerged from these stammering attempts was that apparently the entire long-term and short-term Memory part, as well as the biographical compartment, was indeed active and not hesitant. Acthéean was in full possession of his Living Memory, even remembering funny details, until the Library incident in Wygol. Then, black curtain! Void of Infinity, Absolute Nothingness dissolving his Being...The violent strike on his cheek continued to leave a burning afterglow at times, which tingled his aching dermis and stubbornly blued with shock.

Trevor was helping as best he could, often silent in the face of the apprentice's efforts on relevant Efrain issues. But the dismay for his friend glittered permanently in his blue waters.

On this morning awakened by the hot rays of a sun managing to warm the atmosphere and the deadened ambiance of the fortress and the village, the three men had risen at dawn, sleep still shaken by the muffled whining of the two young people succumbing to their distressing dreams, and an herbalist getting up regularly to check on his two 'little ones', and for whom he was worried without limit.

Acthéean'd been the first to groom himself thoroughly, and sported clean clothes, as he stared thoughtfully at the rekindled fire in the fireplace in the treatment room. His shoulders were a little less slumped, and he himself'd refreshed the eternal stubble of his clenched jaw in deep concentration.

His gray nuts now displayed a strange golden light he hadn't had before, and heightened its intensity in a wilder and more ambiguous way. Something that neither Efrain nor Trevor could put their finger on. The nuances were so subtle and discreet, that you really had to know Acthéean's eyes almost intimately. This was yet another source of questioning and worry for the herbalist and the novice: what could possibly change a man's gaze in this way, affecting his very biology? It wasn't just shards anymore arising from intense emotions, no, it was really a discreet change in the chromaticity of the irises which now sported those fascinating ripples forged in glowing gold. Microscopic molten scales that enhanced the nutty beauty of the orbs.

Obviously, consternation in the young man who'd observed himself, dumbfounded, in a piece of mirror with tarnished and damaged tain, thinking that perhaps it was a distorted optical effect due to the permanent orange lights of the hearths, and to the bad reflection of the mirror sending him that look which had become almost foreign. The hazelnut was always intensely melted there with the beautiful mouse gray which already haloed them in atypical shades,-Acthéean'd astonishing eyes which also fascinated all his interlocutors, one of those looks unique in the world and very rare in their chromosomy-, but now with this incredible addition of such tiny glitter setting its sloes ablaze, it spawned one more unfathomable mystery.

Was it a gift from the Castle? More loose questions that gave the herbalist a furious headache. And nevertheless delighted Trevor seeing in his friend an attractive side which added to the already flattering profile of the young man. For it wasn’t only with beauty that the eyes sparkled, but also with a very great calculating intelligence, mixed with a certain coldness and a harshness that they didn’t display before. It was undeniable that what Acthéean'd seen there, had hardened him, struck him in the immovable medium of lack of emotion. Acthéean was cold, fearless, and his face darkened somewhat with frozen features of indifference. It was getting hard to read his emotions now. Admittedly, he'd never been truly verbose in his friendly or affectionate outbursts, or in his attentiveness, often slipping into gaping abstinence from reacting to everyday situations, which made him a character that others referred to him as 'stoic', or more trivially 'block of ice'.

Except… when he laid eyes on his friend Belmont. Something was brewing there in that gaze that hadn’t escaped Efrain's notice. But again, the herbalist could only conjecture silently, with this furious impression that it was no longer totally his apprentice who'd returned.

Of those who crossed the threshold of death, and rested in the arms of the Reaper, won't return intact...nor alone, often.

Sleepless nights in perspective for the poor herbalist brother who saw himself browsing all the holy archives that would try to open the impenetrable sacred Ways of God...Man and his Mortality. No answer would concretely alleviate his perplexed states of mind, and long periods of sobbing wouldn’t suffice to reassure the human of his capricious and uncompromising Fate.

So, in this young morning, lulled in corrugations of silver and gold, a day promising to be beautiful and peaceful, still recovering with difficulty from the latest events, Acthéean contemplated a pot of water boiling on the fire, as Efrain bustled around the utensils the sight of which had caused the teenager to sweat coldly as he struggled to extricate himself from the temperamental Morpheus's arms, wanting to keep him a little longer against his brazen chest.

“Brother Efrain, why do the Founders want to see me?' Trevor asked, half-grouching, ill awake. Worried too, since he'd learned from Efrain that the Founding Fathers specifically wanted to maintain him.

"I don’t know exactly, I've an idea, but I’m not sure...'the herbalist replied calmly, checking the sharp blades in the hazy light filtering through the large stained glass windows of the room. 'But don't worry, Trevor, nothing serious is blamed on you. It’ll also allow the Founders to take stock of your healing.

"Will you come with me, Brother?" he hesitated, praying inwardly that the herbalist wouldn't leave him stand alone to face those all respectfully feared.

"Obviously,'the man replied, concentrating on his task. 'I make a point of explaining to them a daily report on your improvements, they asked me to bring you, I come with you, logically. I’m responsible for you two, don’t forget.

Trevor wasn't completely convinced, and just let a cloudy water float in worried bewilderment on the herbalist. Acthéean watched for the pot, before arming himself with thick oven mitts to grasp the hot twisted handles. No words were spoken as he lifted the relatively heavy container very easily as if no effort was needed, and carried the boiling liquid to the tank that was waiting in its oil approvals and fragrant ointments. Cedar, Sage, Lavender, Poppy and Hibiscus competed for the halo layers with dancing shades of warm green-yellow-blue-magenta-brown of the various plants macerating there quietly in decoctions, waiting to cling to the flesh that would bathe there, and do their job of care and disinfection.

"Come on, young man, in the bath!' Efrain ordered, gesturing towards the bin with the hand holding one of the blades that winked ominously in the tinted light of the stained glass. 'I need your skin to be softened by the water to remove the threads painlessly.

Trevor smug for a moment without knowing what to say, glanced at the blades uneasily at all, and resolved to plunge into the water, where Acthéean was just checking the temperature. With a little hesitation, he released his body from the shirt, after a furtive glance at the herbalist and his apprentice who'd the good reaction to turn away, and leave him alone in his intimate modesty.

Efrain and Acthéean'd largely seen more than enough about the anatomic nudity, thus he himself'd volunteered in the care when his friend'd been deposited, shattered, lost, wandering in unknown worlds, but this recognition of personal space put his heart and mind at ease, and in coordination with his thirsty Self for revalorization. He needed to rebuild his lacking self-esteem, and he trusted the two men to help him. The bath was a privileged moment which allowed him all the daring necessary to rebuild the foundations of his Supreme Being, without inevitably collapsing under constant guilt, of being at fault in every thought.

He slid with a long sigh of delight into the oiled waters that made him slip a little to the side, before he settled back down. It was going to be a long day, and he decided to let himself drift off to an awakening not yet fully installed in his sleep-numb limbs. He immersed himself deeply, savoring the smoothness of the scent oils adhering to his bruised skin, trying to grip as best they could the wild strands constantly tangled with the posturing of sleep. Acthéean'd attempted a smoothing with the liturgical comb. In vain. Stubbornly, the mane seemed constantly bristling with nervous anger, electrified with anguish and fears chipping away at the pretty head under their venom. While Trevor was trying to hide most of his anger, his wig didn't hesitate in its supercharged display. But the apprentice was also stubborn, and would certainly not give up in front of a few angry ears to offer the sublimity which the adornment deserved.

The wounds were slowly healing, his back was practically nothing but hematomas spread out in every possible color circle that indicated the degree of brutality inflicted. The fair skin had hardly any ground, barely if you could distinguish delicate parts of it, and the seamed lips were stretching viciously, their girth almost reached the blued sides also under the spread of the shock waves of the blows. Some excavations weren’t completely closed and scarred, some going down the fragile lower back to the pelvis, refusing to close their wicked smile on the outraged dermis.

He indulged in most of his unaided ablutions, soaking the hair in nourishing sips that would take the greatest care of it. And always, the young man was active in a confusing banality of unconsciousness of his self. Between each rubbing of the fabric, he inhaled deeply the heady and intoxicating aromas of the plants, taking advantage of each heavenly puff he inflated his lungs making them enjoy the creamy and musky layers.

When he'd finished all the part to which he'd easy access, he just had to glance at Acthéean who understood. Still without a word, the apprentice handled linens over the mostly seamed ecchymosas, and internally gritted his teeth at the tragic painting of some nasty colors. He gently sponged the oils on the skin so that it absorbed as much as possible, and gradually became tender. It was a real pleasure and well-being that Trevor tasted on his skin, and Acthéean taking care of his friend. Pleasant chills were sprouting his dermis, and he internally savored this simple sensation which secretly belonged to him in the depths of his flesh.

Efrain was focused on something else entirely, and had to carefully observe the wounds he could relieve with their careful sutures, watching for any indication of a sneaky infection settling under the threads, this was often the case in deep wounds of long healing duration. Moreover, if a lack of hygiene threw its negligence into the follow-up, it wasn’t forgiving, the bruised flesh then displayed irreversible can be lethal alterations and swelling.

Belmont's intransigence towards his appearance, and scrupulous care over cleanliness, bore fruit, and it was no surprise that the herbalist examined the beauty of the dermis in redemption, in clean seams ; flesh regaining its delicate dew which would ted in the weeks to come, to disappear, if not completely, to fade in their pale almost invisible line. 

Trevor suppressed grimaces under the keened slide of the threads meticulously pulled out by a sharp pliers-shaped utensil. Even though the skin was soft from the bath, the sneaky little pain of the withdrawal was tickling his nerves, and he could only sigh and squeak as more sutures were pulled from deeper, longer wounds.

“I can't take it all off, some aren't quite closed yet…recited Efrain, between two careful cuts of the threads, and the pliers slowly pulling out the weave.

"Are there…many left?" Trevor gasped after an incisive drag one catgut longer than the others.

"Forced to wait for healing again. But there'll be at least three very long ones left, the worst I think, slanting down to the hips. It’s in the most sensitive part of the back, which results in more unpleasant removal…

"Beautiful...'the novice sighed, tilting his head to the pleasant warmth of the scent fumes. 'I guess resuming training is unthinkable...

"Aren't you thinking about it seriously, young fool?' Efrain asked wryly, tilting his head to the side to gauge the youngster hidden behind his shiny silk curtain. 'You'll have the opportunity to ask our Founding Fathers for their opinion' he continued, resuming his incisive drawing on certain threads that'd become tangled with the flesh,'...impossible to insist on removing at the risk of all bleeding all over again,' he grumbled, abandoning the task risking damaging all the still raw flesh.

There was an amalgam of sutures there that were best left alone in their secure knitting. The blade and forceps alternated cautiously on the parched back with chills from the soft touch and pinching of mild pain. It wasn’t prudent to absolutely want to present a clean back without disfiguring sutures, only in order to please or reassure the Founders about the still precarious state of health and healing. Trevor'd prepared his finery that would hide it. Unless they'd the absurd idea of wanting to check it out by themselves!

Acthéean hadn't said a word all morning, leaned back on the hearth to which he occasionally cast a neglected eye, before focusing on the task of care. Efrain'd seen a lifeless, fearless face several times, no emotion showing in it, and he'd shuddered without showing it. His apprentice was a wall of ice! Impossible to imagine what he could think of that second, in front of work.

The young man, for his part, observed the cautious movements, but his attention wandered in several dimensions, thoughts scattered in the winds of worry, sadness lingering in his aching heart. His mind was constantly digging into unfamiliar soil, furiously scratching at any dross that might coalesce into the mud of a medium who might accept being molded by Mnemosyne's hesitant hands?

It wasn’t that he was indifferent to the painful treatment of his friend, in front of this back seamed with vice poured out in the blows. No. He was looking for his way in the fog, his path in convictions in which he was gradually losing faith. Deep within himself, he reassured himself in the solidarity of his two friends, and a strange voice urged him to cling in confidence to the return of his Sacred Memory.

While Trevor let out a small squeal under the bite of a catgut reluctant to leave the healed flesh, over there an echo came to him and languidly sang a litany to him which he repeated as a leitmotif, and which he wanted so much to declare, at the same time :

...my friend, you'll water my memories in the labyrinths of Mnemosyne...you’re the key, I don’t know why...

Follow the Lily...was the response from a world that refused to open its portals to him.

Ooo ---- ~~ ---- ooO

It was awesome. Huge as Trevor never imagined, even with the descriptions he'd read. He noticed that his little piece of silvered-tain clinging to the bronze claws, stood pale in front of the wonder that stretched its inconceivable height to the stylized and carefully decorated ceilings. Sparkling shades of sanded bronze, liquid silver, weathered pewter and fused verdigris sublimated the oval encased between the guardian legs of the two Leonean-Dragons fanning their bony wings coiled in translucent membranes. Very high in the carving of the surface on the left of the one who was mirrored there, spread out an immense spider's web of cracks cracking the magnified tain, giving it an even more dangerous and heavy aspect in these wounds made there, had a long time of that. The Mirror had almost succumbed definitively to its tearful bursts.

The transparent blue waters followed the dracholiche curves, greatly impressed by the menacing image released by the shimmering mass. Breathtaking beauty. Trevor stared at the large, flat, stoic, brass-tain lake, which sent his exact twin back to his observation, without any flaw, or distortion that would’ve falsed the reflections; the lightly golden shape stood out against an impressive background mirroring the voluminous and harmonious space of the Founders' meeting room, down to the smallest detail, giving an impression of multiplied grandeur to the room. And he, a tiny sparrow frightened by the grandiloquence of the place, almost wanted to sink his shoulders a little more, and hunch a sore spine under the small sly bites sent into his flesh, where the sutures'd been torn.

He was taken aback by his full reflection. It was the first time he’d mirrored himself over an entire surface depicting him from head to toe. Mirrors or psyches were reserved for clergymen -no doubt to reflect their putrid vanity- and for high generals and knights to dress in their heavy and precious finery. Never could a novice afford to contemplate himself for even a moment in such splendor. Or there were so few in the Library and adjoining rooms, but the tains were all distorted in their deceptive anamorphosis, and dotted with erosion flecks. As for being able to afford such jewels of goldsmithing, it was inconceivable for these little chicks with empty pockets.

He blushed slightly, ashamed to indulge in a perverse admiration of his image. Pride was a Cardinal sin, and the youngster felt a mingled guilt with astonishment, with a subtle aftertaste of bittersweet flattery. He silently asked forgiveness from God for his vanity to contemplate his silhouette. He looked down, swallowing painfully at the self-awareness he was taking in his face. He was mortified by this twin reflection that showed him the individual as others saw him. His little piece of artifact that he hid preciously against his chest,-which he'd taken care to hide as much as possible, closing the neckline as best he could with added laces, the experience in the abbey and wearing clothes that were too indented, had been more than enough for him-, had always shown him only a few parts of the face, in fuzzy nebulosities even obscuring the pallor of his complexion in moire glazes sometimes giving him the appearance of a irrational being, often even a sad ghost with large steel velvet eyes.

So it was a little shocked that he noticed his pearly milky skin, contrasting strangely with the graceful grout of obsidian silk. He was tall and slender, he knew that in comparison with his companions, whom he protruded by more than a head, but was disturbed by the too pronounced relief of the collarbones carved in the alabaster; the too sharp waist in the brais was underlined by a thick belt hiding a tender belly modeled in the pronounced and dry muscular plates, and the tunic was stretched on a musculature also drawn in acerbic.

The features of his face weren’t unknown to him, of course through the pale reflections returned by his pendant, but in the icy lake of the Mirror, he became aware of the delicacy in the carving of the cheekbones; the voluntary and fine jaw at the times; his eyes widened in their transparent shine of steel; his forehead shrouded in his rebellious fringe which he tried to brush aside with a hesitant gesture. An undeniable beauty balanced between masculine and feminine, he thought maybe he’d taken all the beauty of the Mother he'd never known. Nonetheless, the uncertainty of his being, and the uneasiness of the gaze upon him, settled in and dispensed their venom into the young mind of discovery.

The Mirror of Fate. He never thought he would face It one day. He felt both out of place in this immense room projecting its wonders into the silver tain, and at the same time curious about his identity. Was he only worthy to receive clues that the Mirror would deign to stare at him? He felt so small, so humble in the face of the greatness of the sacred Psyche, and also knew that they were all walking outside the paths of God by consulting an Artefact of such power having nothing to do with it with the Magic of Light blessed by the Divine. But rather squinting furiously at a certain Shadow Magic that all Knights and novices learned to master early on. Sometimes you really had to deviate from impenetrable paths, to gain some ground on Evil Incarnate.

And this Mirror which aroused as much fear as superstitions, projected to him all the reality of his conscious being uncovering himself. Yet he’d the uneasy impression of plunging his timid gaze into that of someone other than himself. Another who had put on the same skin, the same clothes, who looked like him like a Menechm. He couldn't agree that it was him in the shimmering wave, acting in the hesitation of a toddler who would reveal himself through the relentless gaze of a psyche sharply waved before his attention. Strange, he thought, that he’d never had the opportunity to see himself like this before. But the times weren't spent in the pretentious idleness in which the better-off in the world lounged. Trevor was born with a wooden sword as a toy, and had spent his childhood wielding weapons that left him with nasty cuts, rather than spasming his hands on an object of luxury, and lust, bragging about his physique. The Combat Cross would soon replace the blades for which he was very skilled at wielding, and the time wouldn’t be for the sycophantic admiration of a physique certainly blessed by the Gods of Beauty.

From the constant rejection by others, was born the indignity towards this advantageous physique, the hateful disesteem of oneself, and the absence of a lucid look at his individual which he neglected in a primitive revulsion.

Certainly one of the Founding Fathers noticed his embarrassment and fascination at the same time, he felt a hand rest gently on his shoulder. The tallest patriarch sporting an infinite, immaculate white beard falling to his waist, leaned towards him, reassuring in his deep stentorian voice:

"What is it, Trevor? Do you see something, my child?

Trevor was already a good height at fifteen, but he still had to look up to the Founder, whose stature reached seven feets. Impressive of calm wisdom, Trevor'd always preferred him to the other Founders, for his kindness, his immense culture, his gaze as transparent as his, always imbued with gentleness. Young Belmont loved the sermons that the man regularly ordered twice a month, in the nave of the abbey. He’d always felt safe with him, confident, and wished he’d been his confessor so much.

If one wanted to study the very contrast of this high figure of holiness, one could say that Trevor had only instinctive repulsion towards Cardinal Volpe! Worse still since he'd learned that the mission of Acthéean's troop had been a disaster thanks to the injunction by the Cardinal himself! All that for a book. A resentment arose in him towards the cantankerous man, for having disregarded human life outrageously, and often the Belmont'd liked to imagine that he was avenging his friend by pouring out his anger on the individual.

He would thus taste the bitterness of the sacred whip, of the retractable span of the Cross which he would plunge into the chest of this heartless man ...

He caught up with a quiet hiccup and brushed off those unhealthy ideas, stunned by aggressive reactions he wouldn't have believed himself to be guilty of a few weeks before. Exactly the same type of violence he suffered in his songes!

Water gazed down at an altarpiece wisely erected on the side of the Mirror, supporting the Grimoire itself, and his flesh rolled back in shivers at the bloody crimson sight of the artifact. What a weird looking!

He turned to the Founding Father, whom he knew as Chester d'Uries, an iconic surname that all men had inherited systematically from their eponymous Ancestor Commander having waged eons ago, and in particular had faced the three Gorgon sisters, Euryale, Stheno and Medusa, unique survivors of the Millennial War of the Founders and the Titans, with one of his comrades Thorir de Norvège. Reliquaries and splendid statuaries were strewn in the Founders'Keep, as well as in the transepts of the great Nave of the Abbey, flamboyant tributes to these men of valor who brought down the Shadows of Chaos.

Trevor knew he was facing a high dignitary, himself shrouded in victory and bravery in the face of the Dragon minions. It was whispered in the dark confines of the corridors where only the echoes of forgotten battles reigned, that this Knight'd rubbed shoulders with mythical characters, including a Certain, whose name few dared to pronounce, which gradually crumbled into the oblivion of the Lord.

So it was with a miserable voice of impressed humility, that Trevor babbled a poor excuse:

"Forgive me, Father, why would the Great Mirror show me anything to me? Why me, I’m not worthy of it...

“You're being too humble, and you seriously underestimate yourself. I see that you were looking at the Book, you’re not unaware that it was Acthéean who discovered it, in a very intelligent way, his superiors don't stop praising him ...

Trevor could only nod, proud of his friend and the compliment. A gleam of contentment and pride twinkled in the perky waters, and the mischievous pout stretched out his lips. The man chuckled at the teenager's reaction, and continued:

"You like Acthéean, don't you? He helped you when you needed it most, I saw it.

At this point, Chester turned to Efrain who'd remained out of the mirror's reflection, discreetly out of the way, waiting for a call to intervene. Chester seemed to ask him about an agreement with his words, and Efrain nodded to continue.

“Brother Efrain reports to us regularly, and told us how Acthéean took care of you. You've become close, and it’s very good that the Lord always enjoins us to take care of our brothers. With what happened, it saddens me deeply, but I think very concretely that if our Mirror must send us messages, it will be by you. We've been putting a lot of hope in you, Trevor, you know that ever since you arrived as a baby in our arms. I know you’ll do it. You’re the pride of your masters of war and educators. If there’s anyone who can unravel the mysteries of Acthéean's disappearance, it's you. I am formal.

Chester spoke quietly, reassuring the fragile teenager of his self-confidence. His beard undulated with the movements of the jaw, it might've been a comic effect, if it was only a child devouring him from his great lakes of pure water, fascinated by the legendary existence of the last descendant of a prestigious family.

Still, the orbs couldn't help but drift between the High Patriarch and the Grimoire which looked more like an underlying threat to its altarpiece, than a trivial and mysterious pamphlet. Chester must've sensed the overwhelming attraction in his novice, and for a moment considered the artifact that seemed to pulsate darkly in its niche.

The hand rested a little more on Trevor's shoulder, silently urging him to move forward towards the milky tain that seemed to ripple in smooth waves. Something was pulsing down there, something was waiting. After a brief shy look, the young man nodded and approached by hesitantly step. He glanced at Efrain again, as if seeking help from the herbalist. The latter nodded softly, and he felt reassured.

With a quick gesture, he threw back his rebellious bangs, and plunged his watery, impressed gaze into the silvery gold of the brazen slick. Silently, he invoked a prayer to the Divine, worded so humbly, while gripping a sweaty hand in fear on one side of the Mirror. He was surprised to feel only the ice of the holder, dreading that his fingers would be scorched any second from the daring touch. It was almost as if he expected an entity to emerge from the tain, and carry him into the rippling depths.

This had happened to him before…was it that long ago? Or was it only a few months ago...He’d been dragged into the disturbing depths of unknown waves...Fleeting was this thought throwing itself in the face of his Memory suddenly blushing with shame. Whether it was the result of a sneaky reminiscence or of this present moment, he felt his cheeks burn with discomfort.

Then the first quiet seconds regained, he grew bolder in resting his palms on the placid surface of the Artefact, still fearful that his fingers would be caught in something he undoubtedly felt lurking in the moiré waves. His lips arched in the silent plea, focusing on the request invoked from the impressive object of worship.

He felt himself gradually and strangely absorbed by the shimmering calm, and after a last glance from below in a sign of respectful submission, he dared to rest his forehead, feverish with anguish, on the tain. He heard a slight gasp of surprise behind him, but didn't break his pleading ritual. He could’ve said at that moment, that he felt his Essence merge with the tiny vibrations of the brazen lake.

Like a call, joint attention.

Chester and Efrain witnessed, somewhat shocked, the strange ballet of a skinny young novice indulging in reverent worship of a powerful apotropaic artifact that everyone dreaded. Their wide eyes discerned a nebulous draft swirling around Trevor's brunette figure, making strands of silk dance surreptitiously, as if blown by a naughty breeze. They understood that the child was entering an osmosis with the Mirror, something indistinguishable that'd reacted to his request, and probably would deign to bring  its encrypted messages.

Staggered as they were on an invisible side of the great hall, they couldn't see exactly what was to follow, and the Founders, until then silent and withdrawn, muttered their frustrated disapproval. Cardinal Volpe'd scowled from the start of the interview, gnawing inwardly a helpless anger towards his cronies, and especially towards Chester d'Uries with whom he’d never, never shared diplomatic harmony. For now, he’d to content himself with remaining last in the discussion of any argument regarding the decision to bring in the one he deemed a wild and rebellious little orphan of no importance to his look so condescending.

Along with the dramatic mission summoned in the name of a precious reliquary, it'd been the last straw in the vase brimming with exalted ambition on the part of a man of subversive, overvalued ideas and an oversized ego. God invoked a humility that apparently man'd never taken into account in his devastating behavior, sure of his untouchable position. The Divine wrote His prose which His flock didn’t know how to interpret.

So our man was simmering in black anger, chomping at the bit with the furious urge to grip badly this scandalous mop of beauty, and throw to the ground his unfortunate owner so young, who dared to challenge the great Mirror of his lack of culture and his disgusting bliss. For him, young Belmont'd no right even to raise his eyes to the blessed tain, and here he was, emboldened to flirt with his arrogant brow the surface which'd remained stoic to his own questions. He was in the back grinding his teeth, while this brat was apparently going to have some answers! All protected by this pedant d'Uries!

The Lord himself was to be dismayed at the murderous thoughts fighting in the wicked and vicious mind of the Cardinal, and a swarm of shocked Angels flew away, soiled by the venom of the words violently uttered inwardly by the jealous man and devious, towards the poor emaciated form of the novice who'd unfortunately aroused the virulence of the Cardinal.

This moment, fortunately wasn’t spoiled by the man of the church embittered with resentment, the latter swallowed his thoughtless rage, while the men were witnesses of a scene so rare in their eyes thirsty for wonders. And it unfolded through the hesitant fragility of an unusual novice with the deceptive appearance of a little baby bird in a promising metamorphosis.

The big mirror seemed to be giving him all of its attention. Undeniably, there was a form of 'miracle' unfolding in the now stifling and oppressive silence, and even witnesses could assert that the atmosphere was smeared with muted vibrations making the armfuls of flowers blooming in the priceless vases quiver. Out of the corner of his eye, Efrain, who was as close as possible to one of the massive carved tables, could swear he saw the flowers bend under an invisible grip that made them shiver, picking up a few stems and leaves under the vibratory thrusts, which scattered in aerial volutes over the lacquered surfaces.

The herbalist saw that he was the only one to have caught these furtive movements, the others being literally clinging to the figure in meditation, whose onyx curls fluttered gracefully under an almost indistinguishable breath. Even though he knew nothing big could happen to the young teenager, a bitter lump of anguish gripped his stomach, and his hair stood on end under the icy grip of an invisible hand on the back of his neck. The whole room was now breathing subtle and pungent scents of frightened wetness, electricity causing capillary revulsions swarming on the surface of the exuding dermis, waves magnetizing the atmosphere whose origins nobody could locate.

No one, absolutely no witnesses, not even Chester d'Uries who stood closest to Trevor saw exactly what the blue orbs perceived, adding to the frustration of the men the terrified and superstitious acidity of the meaning of ' messages' delivered.

None of these men of the church, men of science, or mighty knight in a memorable lineage, could take cognizance of what a teenage boy just out of childhood, saw.

It was in sorrow coupled with overwhelming astonishment, that the translucent sloes discerned the beginnings of floating shadows, enigmatic in their anamorphosis, symbolic in their sacred twirls. Above all, so identical in their frightening twinness to the dreams Trevor'd regularly now. So similar in their convolutions, that it took his breath away, and made hot tears bead on the edge of this staring gaze, the pupils dilated under the concentration and the bitter observation.

They were ectoplasms of nested images, sometimes overlapping in a disturbing fusion for vision. Inconsistent specters loosening themselves from murky scenes, blurry as in his dreams, poured out in channels flowing like slicks of oil. Trevor discerned there swirls like so fine roots that plunged into abysses shrouded in tawny darkness. Corollas stretching into their torn petals. Living knots like sickening furuncles on corrugated surfaces. Silhouettes frozen in poses… outrageous. They were themselves pierced by the sharps of turrets stretched out immensely towards skies the color of storms and dawns. Chains whose links encased deliquescent ruins suspended above abyss teeming with starving gloom. Humanoid forms that seemed to convulse in dubious spasms, as armored boots threw their protective shards onto walls of considerable height, as far as the eye could see.

Faced with this visual tumult, Trevor sought to understand these allegorical metonymies. He was trying to approach a rational synthesis on metaphors, sort of icons from elsewhere. Of course, he understood right away that the Mirror was undeniably showing him what looked like representations of the Chaos Castle. But what were these ethereal simulacra paired with his own dreams? Those lithographs that emerged from pencil drawings, terrifyingly resembling what he drew on his precious vellum? Did the Mirror remind him of what he'd given to Acthéean? But why ?

He shuddered at the thought that the humanoid mirages were their own beings, for him and his friend. Was this how the Divine perhaps reproached him for unnatural desires towards this companion for whom he was so worried? Through the Mirror, was He sending him devious warnings? Or if it was really the Artefact, why so many familiar manifestations in the symbols? The corolla was the Lily, it was irrefutable. The boots that pounded the slippery cobblestones, were they Acthéean's?

But above all that: what did these forms of statues represent in suspicious, doubtful, ambiguous states? What was this enraged and aggressive nature that flowed from it? All those diagrams that corroborated with what he 'experienced' through his sleep... It was all vague and convoluted, and yet Trevor suspected the acidity of the comprehension. His friend'd gone into succinctly sketched worlds before his tearful eyes, as if the Mirror was playing with his feelings, his emotions so intense, handing him a start of compensatory confectionery for his efforts, and suddenly withdrawing it from his mouth.

In fact, the parables invoked on the moire surface were only a little more of a mystery in the misguided memories of Acthéean. Echoes fashioned in the watercolors of remorse, taking on the appearance of an unusual lasciviousness in the turn of the evanescent bodies there. Delicate sfumatos diluting the exuded musks of exacerbated flesh. The fantasies elaborated in the shimmering tain seemed to sneer at the innocence of the Belmont, in splendid sensual exhortations, didn’t escape the young's aghast attention. Why was the Mirror unpacking such visual debauchery bordering on outrage? The prints scrolling in the form of etchings, mocked being imbued with his own dreamlike symbolism, harassing his fevered mind night after night, reminding him of his own being undulating under the aggressive pushes of an Other in dracholiche forms, and which caused flare-ups of redness spreading over his diaphanous complexion.

Under the burn of guilt, he hid his face a little more behind the curtain of locks, ashamed if by chance one of the men present could notice this denouncing detail of his discomfort. The Mirror knew! It knew all about him, and projected it in his face in an uncompromising way. Was this his punishment called upon by God? It might be successful, if one of the witnesses managed to catch his behavior. So he begged forgiveness, mortified at being shelled against the wall, as he comforted himself to believe.

Deeply troubled, Trevor didn't know what to think anymore faced with all these forms of engravings which for some looked more like mock laconic responses. One thing was certain, the Mirror had tuned in to his innermost, most dreamlike thoughts. But perhaps also that something had unfolded furiously repeating the same scenario, but in more introspective tones distorted by the Laws that governed these 'hereafter'?

One thing was certain for Trevor: In the workforce, Acthéean'd experienced something that tasted oddly similar to him, but which was only revealed in frustrating partiality by the Psyche. It didn't make the young man's amnesia problem any clearer, though. But what Trevor assumed, - perhaps rightly so, given the acquaintances in the floating and cryptic incarnations - was that whatever happened there, Trevor and Acthéean were sailing the identical waters mingling their reciprocal beings. One didn’t go without the other. One was just the one who would lead the other through the labyrinths of Mnemosyne.

Then it all diluted into monochromes of bronze, silver, tin, sluggish liquidity again. The ripples that'd vibrated the bewitching emanations of the Mirror, gradually froze, and Trevor felt that everything that'd just been revealed to him, was slowly submerging in the waters of gold diamond of the tain, disappearing in a last convoluted puddle. A slow-motion withdrawal, like a movie unfolding upside down.

...of which there would remain only a few particles of withered petals, abandoned by a hand diluting in tears on the foggy erasure of a broken Combat Cross...suspended forever between two waters of ice persisting their faded coalescence through the layers dimensions of space, infinitely confusing their perspective in ill-defined planes…

Then within seconds, the blue gaze was admiring only his twin reflection. Everything'd fallen back into the room, and the men'd the impression that a sticky and electric cap had just been relieved from their shoulders.

When Trevor turned away from the Mirror, stepped back a few steps reluctantly, letting his numb arms swing along his sides, his decision was made. It was a fearless face, empty of emotion despite the few tears drying on his hollow cheeks, that he offered to the Founders impatiently awaiting.

If they wanted to know what'd happened before the eyes of the novice, they were at their expense. The majority of the witnesses let slip a desperate sigh, Chester and Efrain were dubious and unconvinced, while Cardinal Volpe droped a scandalized and frustrated yelp, at the same time also reassured and sardonic about the helplessness of this incompetent whipper, when Trevor whispered a simple:

"The Mirror didn't show me anything…I didn't see anything, I'm sorry. I don't know where Acthéean went...

The broken, aching voice, struggling to keep the suppressed sobs from breaking it more.

As the blue waters, elusive in their brilliance, settled on the scattered and oddly faded remains of leaves and petals clumped together at the feet of one of the vases crumbling beneath the floral arrangements. Seeming to have succumbed to the invisible ax of a scythe.

The slender lines of an evaporated Lily were superimposed on the collapsed threadlike forms.

--- ~~~ ÕoooÕ ~~~ ---

Chapter Text

It could've been gardens forgotten by Time, abandoned by the swell and the scythe of gardeners, relieved of their splendors long since passed away. Wild wasteland gardens, which everyone has forgotten even their names so admired in the past. Plots of wonders that travelers came to admire after timeless journeys, and to place their tributes there at the feet of vegetation that forceddazzling. Like gardens and labyrinths once nestled in silver nets of a castle where all was optimistic life, and splendors sharpened in the most raw and pure diamond, like this edifice belonging to a family who then chose to plunge into the darkness of forbidden knowledge.

But that was a long time ago ... Men've since forgotten the marvels that were hiding there, and the indentation of dust and ash scattered there comfortably over their deceptively jovial curves, and their acutes woven in the solitude of the place. And Acthéean could’ve said that the extent of his Memory desperately resembled those gardens forgotten by Time ... Thin pellicles of dust and silvery slag on which he couldn’t breathe a sigh that would finally relieve him of the ambiguous penombra in which he'd walked, now for endless days.

It could've been these rocks battered by the ocean of oblivion, each wave of which swept away the slightest residue under their mossy, sparkling tongues. No semblance of memory managed to catch hold of the stony shards incessantly rinsed by the wild waves. And Acthéean strolled on this deserted and silent beach. His heart crushed by a melancholy pain that'd never left him since he'd opened his eyes again. Even his footsteps failed to carve their footprints properly in a sand of glistening onyx and boulders hitting the soles of his feet.

He despaired of being able to turn back, in order to flush out the Shadow that followed him, weighing on his shoulders, without his being able to understand the identity. A paranoid obsession that never left him, and for which he absolutely exhausted himself defining its contours.

He despaired, because something in him sang a litany warning him of the imminent danger if he took the thought of turning back. That he wouldn't like what he saw there. Over there, in that big mirror ...

Little fish, come quietly
Your fins are frayed and sore
The ocean breeze enchanted you
And led you onto shore
Although you gasp for air, you share
The essence of your waning
And all that's left is hurt and theft
Of waters once sustaining

Acthéean let himself be lulled by the nursery-rhyme coming from elsewhere that he didn’t know as an individual, but whose origins he knew through his long journey during his ‘passing’.

Little fish, come quietly ...

He was like that poor little spawn, that tiny fry, gaping to absorb the precious water that bathed its gills, shaken with the last merciless spasms before stiffening its slender, silvery body on the shimmering grains. The waters of Mnemosyne no longer sustained this fish, the image of his shattered Memory, and the miserable animal was dying under a black sun lighting up the beach with his memories with its angular rays.

His fins were frayed, yes, by the spur of oblivion that'd struck it. The jaw clicked on words that would never be said, also wiped out with a sponge.

According to his wandering, he could’ve picked up this small minnow, bringing it back to life by plunging it into nourishing waves. But, he perceived the translucent essence of a net stretched across horizons barring the border between ocean and sky mixed in a single and identical glaze of twilight hues. He knew that this net wouldn't allow the fish to regain the depths which supported them so preciously.

The ocean breeze enchanted you and brought you to the shore ...

Acthéean'd been brought thus to the shore of the Scrambled Anamnesis. A total abnegation of his Being, in a few moments.

But who'd led him there? Vaguely, almost unspeakable, footsteps hitting the pavement, underlined by the fresh, metallic laughter dissolving into echoes, like bootfrets on marble. Such a quivering ounce of sensual and vibrant scent. The brushing of an essence like an inconsistent ectoplasm desperately seeking its rationality, in order to convey an identity that was dazzled in the stubborn vapors of amnesia.

"What is a ghost?

"A terrible fact condemned to repeat itself over and over again

"A moment of pain maybe

"Something dead that still seems to be alive

"A feeling suspended in time

"Like a blurry photo

"Like an insect trapped in amber

"A ghost, that's what I am ...

That was what he'd become. A specter condemned perpetually in his search for identity. A few pieces of his so precious Memory which'd engulfed irremediably in the gaping wells that'd opened under his hazardous feet.

An insect trapped in the amber ... because he’d followed his path in the footsteps of Another. A fantasy transparent to his identical, of which he had listened to the mortal sirenian song, and had thus enveloped himself in the cocoon of erasure, of a final remission of his Supreme Being in favor of a Shadow coaxing his sadness, pampering his wounded flesh, cradling a forbidden love in silver arms.

A moment of endless pain… that he'd felt deep inside him, that he knew this wound would never heal again. A deep excavation that didn’t even belong to him, but for which he felt indebted to vibrate in unison with this feeling lost in time, like a blurry photo, but from which the artist could still draw fine weaves of tragedy, in order to make a unique masterpiece.

Something dead, but which seemed to be alive in a relentless way, in a paradox that united the will to end at last, and the instinctive desire to cling to the shreds of an existence that'd bowed out, one day.

And that ghost by his side, which'd washed him up on those uncertain shores, was a tragic moment that repeated itself over and over again in miserable pain crumbling every inconsistent bit that seemed to form this Being in ironic sketches of a brutally aborted life, in the long corridors of Time Infinity. He'd tied Acthéean's limbs in bondage that'd nothing sensual about it, except in the consummate drama of its unfolding. The young man felt irreparably linked to this specter which persisted in withdrawing any concrete trace of memory from him, like this hook invisible from the contrary winds which'd attracted the small dying spawn. He felt it in the depths of his flesh, but never managed to cross the private limits that would finally allow him to shed light on these miserable tears of memories.

What is a ghost? Was he absolutely trying to define its outlines through the vaporous clouds escaping from the scorching liquid? His obsession bordered on madness. Mnemosyne lamented, however much she pulled Psyche by the hand to save her from Agnosia. But through the limbo of Anamnesis, the Goddess'd lost herself, had lost her grieving mate, and now the two abandoned Allegories were drowning in dreams of Madness.

... at his side floated a familiar, threadlike form, frolicking in the billowy ripples of the waves, picking up the little spawn ... the fish was dead between his pale fingers, and as he thus stared at the body, his attention was clawed at by a few wild strands that swept the space between him and the figure ... flash of bluish onyx, almost the same shade as the grainy sand of the beach ...  

... behind the transparent shadow so close, another profile shaped from which a terribly overwhelming force flared, copying the gestures of the translucent specter in a twin mimicry, but in a completely different power tinged with mourning sadness in gesture… an impossible return to a revoked past, carrying its dumpers of disuse of bygone eras ...

... the thin fry'd stiffened and drooled over a remnant of the wave that'd smashed it on this beach, as its scales streamed with silver light between the intertwined fingers of two phantasies so opposed, yet complementary in their Essence ...

"Here are the remnants of your Memory...''was whispered to him like a distant call, so distant, that it seemed not to belong to these dimensions ...

The fingers were gripped to the container, like a castaway to a buoy. This is what he was: a castaway, a drowned man desperately sucking in some air before his lungs burn with asphyxia. Clinging fiercely to the buoy of indifferent ingratitude in the face of his psychic agony. A weakened ghost, replicating a tragic fate in his ritornello, that was what he was ... an infinite pain that nothing seemed able to appease in the endless torments nibbling at his sanity.

Stuck in the wounded depths of his memory, Acthéean even forgot to swallow the medical liquid that Brother Efrain'd prepared for him. The brew evaporated in the pearly undulations of heat leaving the cup.

"Hyssop for you, in order to cure your melancholy...it'll help you sleep more comfortably, without disturbing dreams...'''the herbalist'd said, before intrusting the young man to a sleep he hoped would be calmer. At least, he hoped. That Acthéean fell asleep while they were gone, as the man took Trevor with him to his friend Andréas's Library.

Acthéean'd gone to worlds unknown to him, but in which his thoughts hung greedily on soil of uncertain mediums. His thinkings were haunted, day and night, and the very idea that he might one day not be able to find even a bit of memory put him to death.

He carefully drank the still hot sips of the hyssop infusion, his hazel eyes fixed on the hearth permanently reactivated, but the pupils which were now strewn with tiny nuggets of gold, didn't see the hearth, nor its generous fire warming the room, never allowing humidity to sneak into this place of rest and health.

His thatch grew back quickly, and it'd to be maintained regularly. Or Trevor'd given himself childish pleasure to unload the recalcitrant hair from his cheeks. The teenager noticed as the days went by that he might be losing his tangled friend in oblivion, and when the task was over, many times the steel orbs espoused saddened gleams in their shades. Young Belmont couldn't bear to see his friend like this in the desolation of a spirit wandering into the Unknown.

This delicately shiny stubble of amber chocolate chrome, was often now damp with tears that poured out unwittingly, as if the eyes were constantly irritated. Even in his dreams, Acthéean cried. When he'd been in this catatonic state, the only clue that'd proven to those around him that he was still clinging to a hint of life had been tears. Flowing without stopping: fine silver pellicle, small diamonds so fragile making the hazelnuts of gray gold red.

As he took another sip, the stubble kept getting wet from the incomprehensible tears. It was with a somewhat angry wave of his hand that he stamped them out with a deep sigh. Those tears weren't his. He'd gradually become aware of this. Just like his dreams weren't his. It seemed to him that he was thinking with the thoughts of Another. That he saw things through Another's gaze.

How sure he was that this indefinable melancholy that gripped his heart didn't belong to him, but was only a cynical reflection of it. The hyssop was good, both bitterness on his wounds that were purulating oozes that wasn't from his wounds properly related to his body.

Gradually, by dint of intensified reflection, he portrayed an Another who seemed to live through him. He was no longer him, while being his pure Being returned with his carnal and psychic tears. He deeply agreed that there - where exactly? -, his Soul'd been marked definitively by a white-hot iron, with the mark of this Another who'd brought him back among his own, of that he was convinced. A few shreds of that Being'd remained clinging to him, and he'd returned like this: a Tabula which found itself engraved by the stylus of Another, and which he now kept warm in his palpitating shadow-heart of new life. But a Tabula Rasa that it was necessary to write again, to model in a new medium binding together these two precious essences, in an eternal and immaculate chalice.

As he swallowed the last drops of the infusion, the magnificent gray hazelnuts sprinkled with gold saw a scene repeating itself endlessly, the only vestiges of his fragmented memory: sweet fantasies dancing in the red and gold flames of the hearth, enveloping a slender and graceful silhouette carved in the argentinian of a moonbeam.

Ashen hands patiently holding out a chalice made of petals, waiting for it to be finally plucked ...

~~~0ÕoooÕ0~~~

The water gaze seemed even more transparent and pure than ever, as the orbs hopped in jerks over the words, the sibylline lines in a language one had to know how to decipher. The pupils dilated sporadically on the obligatory concentration in the detail of the alchemical signs, and other theories based on methods of scholarly calculations and various operations. Complex arithmetic in their resolutions and the elaboration of their formulas, which left the apple-of-eyes peeling them apart, completely muddled with incomprehension.

The unfortunate Belmont wasn’t far from terrible cephalalgia in the face of so many mathematical complexities written down centuries ago by philosophical Soul doctors, and utterly despaired of being able to at least snag an ounce of understanding in all this scientific hodgepodge that was beyond him. Was it always as complicated as explaining the "sores" of the soul? Couldn't these philosophers ever write in more easily accessible syntaxes without causing constant headaches to poor students of their medical arts?

To say that for him it was all eternal suffering to already learn Latin - largely preferring the art of war rather than philosophizing in Latin or Greek prose - was absolute euphemism! For two hours now, he'd been sweating blood and water to understand a coherent paragraph that would concretely enlighten him in his search for solutions to Acthéean's disease. And he constantly ran up against the convoluted epigrams of ultra-complex formulas, which he doubted even those who’d written them, didn’t quite understand the turn themselves.

He was there in his research. His hands tangled in a mop that also revulsed at the wording of the paragraphs, as if it'd an independent life and was itself dismayed at the abyss of incomprehension that made its owner nauseous.

From the side, chatting discreetly among themselves, Andréas and Efrain sometimes threw amused glances at the poor form of Trevor who was gradually falling apart as he went of his readings. By tacit agreement, they'd decided to let the teenager do his own research, moved by his loving stubbornness in wanting to help his dear friend. A great lesson in existential learning, at the same time, which prided Efrain proud of this novice who really held promise in the future.

Efrain hadn't been fooled by what Trevor'd seen there in the great Founders Hall in front of the Great Mirror of Fate, in the amorphous tain which'd revealed nothing to them. Except the child, of that, Efrain was persuaded. But for some reason still unknown to him, he'd preferred to remain silent, respecting what was obviously to Trevor, a terrible secret that'd just been signified on him. He’d asked no questions on the way home, but the child's silence was fraught with threats, with the most pessimistic interpretations. He knew that, too, Chester d'Uries hadn't been fooled by the openly whispered lie, eye to eye, almost brazenly.

Chester knew. He’d respected Trevor's desire for silence, aware of the deep thrill he’d discerned in the pure waters of the innocent gaze. The tears that stubbornly clung to the edges of the eyelids shrouded in light circles left over from nights without real rest, continuous nightmares; weight loss resulting from physical abuse; wounds that healed poorly, or not fast enough. Cries that refused to flow in the river despite the distressing circumstances, and that remained frozen there, in the long eyelashes shading the steel sloes. That little something that'd upset the two men who'd kept silent, while others expressed their scandal in rowdy and mocking words, like forked tongues pricking the sides of this skinny teenager daring to brave them with his obtuse mutism.

So, Chester let the kid go back to Efrain's side. A cherub-like minouchet, walled in the stunned silence of a witness who shouldn't have seen so many unhealthy things in a short time. The powerful Founder'd whispered in his long white-gray beard, impeccably combed and groomed, a prayer of invocation which he only rarely allowed himself, so as not to offend the susceptibility of an Entity which'd become strangely deaf for a long time. And the man's heart sank a little more as the frail figure moved away, gently supported by a friendly hand on his shoulder, as the herbalist led his youngster out of the dungeon walls.

Strangely enough, as the incessant, painful screaming erupted from the scandalized voice of a dumb, soulless cardinal, Chester felt like a click echoing through the air: like a bolt slamming shutting something permanently which made him cold in the back. His jaded gaze slipped over the transformed form of a book which weighed heavily in its altarpiece, and of which the Founding Knight was certain that the brief sound having echoed in the imposing room, came from this place from which he seemed to perceive also like very fine and misty tendrils envelop the literary artefact. Facing the manuscript shrouded in terrifying hints, the tain of the Mirror displayed its copper and silver water, as in a sheet of false tranquility that taunted men.

Far, far away, from the incredible height of the dungeon window, the slow forms of Efrain and Trevor quietly receded among the groups of novices, students, villagers, trampling the cobblestones of the outer courtyard overlooking the arches of the abbey. As Chester’s gaze unexpectedly wetened, as a cardinal whined grievances at his bleak face.

It was in this same state of mind that Efrain'd left the scene with his young so taciturn suddenly. And the uneasiness was growing in him. A ball of anguish that kept growing, on which he couldn’t put an interpretation. When Trevor asked to accompany him to the library, he hadn’t argued, preferring to try and stifle that impression in the concentration of medical quest. He knew Trevor thrived in the manuscripts, and was happy to take him there. But, even to his friend Andréas, he didn’t confide his growing discomfort.

So to see the teenager thus struggling through the collections of applied philosophy, and ancient medicine grimoires, brought some excitement and joy into the display of the youngster's most alarmed and lost expressions. Poor Trevor was trying to follow impossible formulas with his fingertips, verses in Latin and Greek that he couldn't translate correctly, stumbling over mind-numbing theories of Soul discomfort, never finding a hint of understanding.

Plus the hapless Belmont searched among the literary relics, all carrying a weight of cumbersome knowledge in every sense of the word, - the manuscripts were very heavy to handle, and extremely delicate to some, threatening to crumble dangerously under impatient fingers - , the more the pale features of his face lengthened under the difficulty of reading, the concrete impossibility of a find that would help him; the more the water orbs almost wept under the dust heaving and concentration; plus the adornment carefully smoothed by Acthéean's liturgical comb bristled with outrage at the failure.

It was agreed with an exchanged glance, that the moment had come to help the miserable teenager who no longer displayed the expression of a angelot or cherub at all, but rather the premises of a mouflet who threatened to dramatically burst his impatience! Everything was clue in edgy passes of his hand through his tangled hair, throwing wickedly stubborn bangs almost into a twitch, and darting murderous looks at the poor writings stretching out in a language desperately mastered.

The benevolent gaze of the two rescuing men met the exponential fury that sparkled in the water irises. It only took a few more minutes before Trevor risked giving a very nasty time to books daring to display indecipherable formulas, and Andreas thought for a second that one of the books was going to crash out the window. The eyes were the first clue to the storm, and anyone would’ve been unconscious not to assume the hurricane announced in the sloes when he stared at you like this.

The dismal books that dared to taunt his intelligence in too complicated areas,suffered the blue lightning on their scribbled pages. A few more minutes, and some of these manuscripts would certainly have ended their existence in the depths of the chemney which blazed happily in its task of drying up places still weakened by constant humidity, especially since the last storms.

“Come on, my child,”Andréas began cautiously, 'do you look very upset over these books? I would even say that you've desires of murder towards them…''Andréas ended with an amused chuckle in front of the astonished fluttering of the pupils.

"I can't understand half of this… stuff!''Trevor moaned, pointing to the yellowed pages, some almost crumbling.

"Young man, if you'd a little love for languages, you would certainly be able to understand a good part of it, don't you think?"Efrain suggested, in the same amused tone.

"Brother Efrain, I would much prefer learning warfare and combat maneuvers, rather than knowing how to express myself in Latin or Greek prose!'' Trevor replied, without hesitation. ''It’s not the poems that will help me fight evil, when my turn comes on the battlefields...

Andréas and Efrain both huffed at the impertinence and assurance of the words. Nevertheless they didn’t miss the subtlety of the truth in a little sharp words.

"I can imagine,"Efrain argued,"but a little intellectual relaxation other than in combat is necessary in the thirsty mind to learn ... See, if you gave the languages that you're taught a chance, certainly very acerbically, you would manage to understand what you’re about to throw into the flames...You want at all costs to understand immediately what took years to be correctly discovered and written by scholars...Time's necessary for the understanding of these sciences, some of which will never completely reveal their enigmas...

The herbalist gestured towards the collection in a dangerous position to end its life in the fire.

“You would see,”he continued,“that you just found answers to your questions…

Trevor considered the grimoire, suddenly sheepish.

"It's Greek…I can't do it with Latin already,"he said in a pitiful voice. 'It's not my fault, I can't hold back what we're getting into our heads.

"Let us say rather that you're refractory with the pedagogy of your tutors...''intervened Andréas. ''For you, it's like a constant aggression when they hammer out the declensions, the grammars, and other endless syntax formulas we've all stumbled upon. And I would say your intelligence's more developed for action and strategy, rather than literary. It's just a matter of donating to you, you’re born for war and its uncompromising Laws. But you agonize, like many, at the statement of hagiographies in Latin or Philosophy in Greek. On the other hand, you’ve a love of reading Chronicles, spell statements that many don’t yet understand, while you assimilate them perfectly and quite naturally.

Andréas ended his report with a big smile. Efrain nodded, totally in agreement. Trevor was simply gaping at the exact description of the librarian who'd understood his being.

"This is all well and good,"he whispered, putting the book in jeopardy, "but that doesn't point to a solution for me, or I fail to understand them. I think I found something, and I've a few ideas, but I would need some help translating.

His gaze fluttered at Efrain with a heartwarming expression that made the herbalist chuckle again.

"Definitely, young man, you aren't the same when it comes to asking for help,''he mumbled between laughs. ''How do you want people to say 'no' to you with eyes like that? You're lucky that with my job I've learned a lot to be able to read the ancient manuscripts necessary for my practice.

Trevor straightened up, re-motivated by someone he trusted. A relieved smile stretched his lips in the typical pout that softened everyone. The storm threatening in the eyes, had disappeared, and the annoyed clouds evaporated to give way to the luminous waves of the sapphires.

"Take the books you think will help, and I'll help you understand them.

"But why did all these elders write in incomprehensible formulas, instead of concretely explaining how to proceed to relieve the soul?''Trevor asked, assembling the manuscripts into an instinctive selection.

"Because the Psyche of man is complex, little Trevor,"Andreas interjected. ''At all times, man has looked at this mysterious organ, this essence that makes us vibrate, most philosophers were mathematicians and doctors, so they wrote in the only language they understood perfectly: the language of the Soul which is multiple in its sufferings.

"Acthéean understands all of this, because he's studying medicine with you, Brother Efrain. He has this intelligence that I don't have...

“Trevor,”Efrain interrupted,“you can't compare yourself to Acthéean. You were born to fight, he was born for medicine. The two of you are opposites, while being complementary in your different intelligences. Neither of you have to think that you’re better or worse than the other. You’re different, and you knew how to understand and get along perfectly with each other, right? Science is manifold, and it has its roots in all the intelligences that know how to come together.

Trevor left a moment to absorb Efrain's reassuring words. Andréas stared at them silently, his gaze straddling his eternal bizarre binoculars, slipping from one to the other, a smile of connivance illuminating his chiseled features.

"I hope that at the end of the day, with all of this, we'll find solutions to help Acthéean. Maybe I have an idea…''Trevor pointed out.

"I’ve no doubt that you’ve plenty of resources to help," Efrain concluded. You’ve this creative intelligence that allows you to get out of all dangerous situations, you see! Your Imagination is your full and potential resource which you instinctively know how to take advantage of. According to some writings, there is a practice to be put to use, and I’m counting on you to achieve that. Certainly, we’re basing ourselves on polytheistic theories, but I’m confident in the results which won’t be discussed by the Founders who’re too narrow in their devotions.

Efrain knew he was emphatic in his words, but also that it was necessary towards a teenager with low self-esteem, and still stumbling in his intellectual comfort. The herbalist was aware that the youngster would be extremely sensitive to his words of encouragement.

"Hmmm?''ricocheted Andréas, still amused. ''Are you referring to a certain…cardinal? Who's no longer really in the odor of sanctity, they say,’’he whispered aside, leaning towards his interlocutors.

Quickly, with one movement, the three men glanced around. The sound box was wide on the illuminated floor they were in, and an echo reaching a bad ear would've been unwelcome. Certainly, Cardinal Volpe'd been swimming in murky waters for a while in the minds that'd been shocked to see how he'd used men from a garrison with such impunity, and many silently vilified him for his unstoppable megalomania. But, the danger of curious ears did exist. They were chatting away from the illuminator desks, and that day all the desks were occupied by the illuminator priests busy with their copying duties. The faces were stern, slanted in concentration, but an indiscreet hearing was still in order.

Andréas then had an idea, if they wanted to continue their explorations and their discussion away from the curious eyes, which moreover began to drift towards them in a recurring way. Inwardly, he bit his lip for suggesting the simple word ‘cardinal, and immediately saw, out of the corner of his eye, attentions surreptitiously straighten up, and unkind glances, thrown over their silhouettes as an aside. The scholar was aware that many of the rats roaming these places were not just library! No doubt that this breed of informers would go belly down to denounce badly interpreted words to ears eager for scandalous gossip.

Based on the long experience of the man who'd learned very quickly what his accomplices were capable of to bring down others, within the Brotherhood, we weren't half measures, on the contrary! Andréas knew, alas, since his time in the walls of the library since his adolescence as a learned novice among his peers -, the smallest paving that had been embedded in the high steps leading to the edifice. And those who'd been placed to bring down heavily and irrevocably certain drifting spirits who dared to advocate their convictions often going against the sermons well learned and memorized, spat in the face of novices unaware of this internal struggle and silent. The "wars" of egos and rigid ideas were fought in the privacy of thick walls, and no words were to filter through to the hearing of the young people who would be upset to the shock.

A few pieces of memories came to rock his thoughts, to the statement of indiscreet attention, while he made a discreet sign to his two companions to follow him towards the holy of holies of the hidden places, of which no one possessed the key to the secrets: the back rooms of the illuminated floor, where he'd confidently taken Acthéean, a certain violent stormy night, while the young man gleaned occupation for his wounded friend.

This time it was Trevor with eyes so wide with innocence, whom he took away from jealous or accusatory whispers, in the company of his herbalist-friend, himself perfectly acquainted with the place as well as the priceless possessions that slept there, and that he compiled regularly.

It took so little to make a man fall under dumpers of defamation, and often the two men themselves had taken refuge in the sleeping shadows of hidden niches, resolutely protected from slanderous glances, or disparaging gills whose carriers would undoubtedly go to blatant and calumniate the harmless words in dishonorable poison, painting an arsenic portrait of the individual who was unlucky enough to have caught their attention.

It’d been a long time since Andréas, like Efrain no longer had any illusions about the individual in the face of ambitious positions, the two’d unwittingly witnessed events that’d drawn them into the desolation of a world that lost its humanity in the name of a Divine that we no longer even recognized. God’d become a pretext for disempowerment, and the Entity turned away and wept bitterly over His cursed Creation wrecked in absolute and noxious Obscurantism.

Straight in their posture, the three men walked towards the condemned doors that Andréas'd carelessly hidden behind heavy curtains, thus cutting off all curiosity on the part of the illuminators who would’ve the absurd idea of going to try to cross the threshold. Since the last storms, the librarian'd had the rings of the dark velvet panels fixed, and was required to use a long hook that pulled the fabric rails.

Not one of the three cast a glance around at the scriptes bending over in their task, but they very clearly felt the heaviness of the hastily glances, heavy with reproach, on their forms receding towards the holy place. Although discretion was the order of the day, it was nonetheless necessary for the tongues to loosen up sooner or later on their escapade within a totally prohibited ground, except for a few scholars, and again, it was necessary that these advantaged'd 'white paw' to be entitled to the sacrosanct place overflowing with taboo anathemas.

Especially since among the three men taking refuge in these places, all those who observed the group in hustle and bustle, had perfectly recognized Trevor Belmont. What was this kid doing with scholars? and especially why was he allowed to go where they weren't?

Trevor's instinct sang to him of the conjectures raised by his cronies, and felt a long shiver in his spine, as he lagged behind the two men, his arms heavily laden with these precious manuscripts which he knew very well were going to give him terrifying migraines.

There was a time when he could've approached the illuminators, and tirelessly admired their so detailed work, as he'd done a few previous moments, without risking being rebuffed for his curiosity, or throwing heavy glances of reproach, because he was still a thirteen or fourteen year old child. In addition, he no longer recognized regulars who came to work regularly on the easels, they'd been sent to other factions that needed scrupulous copyists, or even to other abbeys who'd expressed the desire to the Brotherhood.

So Trevor no longer knew most of the ready-made colorists or miniaturists who struggled with their tasks, and didn't dare go ahead with them anymore, in order to glean some valuable advice that he would use in his own personal work. He'd tempted it once, but was crudely rejected by two illuminators who took offense to his presence. What did a novice warrior come to hang out in these places reserved for meditation and the sacred art of illumination? He'd been deeply hurt, and the scene hadn't escaped Andréas.

Trevor'd a saddened thought of those good times when he was allowed to feast in awe of art. Was he becoming a man? So he was no longer allowed to dream? He thought furtively of the master illuminators who'd left the premises, transferred to elsewhere he would never go, and their patient kindness in showing a little kid how to dream with the tip of a colored feather, when he wanted so much to change his mind in something other than handling weapons which often left him small wounds. He remembered how some consoled him with their mesmerizing arabesques, while breathing on the succinct bleeding scuffing the diaphanous skin. Yes, a few'd been fatherly and kind to him, and had made him realize that he didn’t take the time to live his childhood...

Now, they were faces completely unknown, closed, arid with feelings, frozen in stone, devoid of all emotion, as cursed by a poisonous Gorgon, except the animosity that one guessed in their glances of lightning which, if they'd the chance, would've killed the poor figure curled up on his books, wearing his proud adornment that many unjustly jealous of.

Trevor was full of thanks to Andreas for the priceless gifts that'd moved him. And the librarian'd just laughed, and allowed himself a loving hug, away from prying eyes.The elder'd found the glaring sapphire sparkle that made the beautiful eyes gleam precious. So shining like stars in the mantle of the heavens, that he suspected a few teary diamonds nestling there, and begging to be dropped on the beautiful transparent cheeks beard virgins.

The study floor was already bathed in a silence to cut with a knife, - ordinance obliges, not a sigh should even cross the lips sealed in absolute mutism -, but the thickness of the taciturnity was an unhealthy tightness of the throat, prejudging the worst things, and Trevor was shaking inside to imagine the evil looks on him. It wasn't at all paranoia on his part, as the two men in front of him exchanged knowing and worried looks when Andréas triggered the opening of a panel serving as a simplified threshold, rather than opening the two doors in large.

The time to slip stealthily into the unlocked corner, and let fall the heavy pieces of trimming, and the young man felt like he was definitely plunging into a whole different world. Aside from his once nighttime foray, he hadn't had time to consider the scale of the place in all their lenitiving weightlessness.

He felt a sudden giddiness when his eyes gradually discerned the angles, the curves, the concavities, the obscured niches, the incredible architecture of certain suspended aedicules ; the flights of stairs disappearing into abysses of stifling darkness. The whole carefully sheltered under the dust of the centuries ; the parsimonious gleams of protected candlesticks ; the force imbricated in the carved stone representing effigies of gargoyles and other chimeras emerging from pillars, walls with unequal angles ; bearers of unknown flags, keepers of secrets probably long forgotten.

He knew his friend Acthéean was familiar with the area from his research for his medical practice, Efrain of course as an herbalist-physician, and he wasn’t even sure that other science students or novices like him had never had the opportunity to even approach the scene. He envied Acthéean momentarily, before whom the doors opened with confidence.

So it was with eyes like saucers, that he pierced the semi-penombras revealing their treasures with miserly parsimony. He suddenly realized that he was allowed to do so because Andréas and Efrain’d deemed the teenager to be trustworthy, and stood for a few moments, frozen with dazzled gratitude and joy at discovering this unthinkable temple to him! simple novice.

He took every precious second to engrave in his memory the smallest extraordinary detail, the smallest pile of manuscript in improbable balance, the smallest grin carved in the gurgling faces of the sculptures bearing the immeasurable weight of all this accumulated Knowledge. He stood there, stupidly, his arms weighed down with his few complicated texts, as he gaped in fearful admiration at the place imposing a threatening severity, with the aftertaste of bitterness as well.

“Well, young man,”Andréas called out, “don't just stand there, the visit begins, and we'll be safer talking here. Also, I know some of the books that'll help you, hidden somewhere around there.

The bookseller walked the talk, pointing with a sweeping movement to the space clogged with literary relics from all countries and all kinds. Behind him, Efrain gave a strange mocking sneer as he climbed a few steps leading to many small doors dotted around the privacy of the shadows cast by the flickering lights of the age-old rust-red candelabra.

Trevor joined them, unscrewing his head to measure the inconceivable height of the arched ceilings, and almost tumbled into a narrow cavity from which spewed a few stairs plunging into the thickest darkness, leading to one of the rooms hidden in the walls lined in optical illusion. He wondered briefly how he’d been able, that night, to gain access to rooms without breaking his neck at all the bends and convolutions climbing crossover floors.

Andréas led them to one of the small chambers adjacent to the one where he’d taken Acthéean in search of books for Trevor. The latter was ecstatic at the ingenuity of the rooms set up like a herringbone, one inside the other, disappearing between the thicknesses of walls and false bulkheads giving the illusion of a smaller space, while everything was cleverly arranged in the false-septum. Halls in other auditoriums, like nesting dolls. Trevor quickly calculated that the entire octagon of the library dungeon concealed dozens of passages interwoven with each other in the secret complexity of an architectural layout like he’d never heard of, or even seen access plans designed by the architects of the time. There was no limit to his amazement at the ingenuity of the place.

He was almost out of breath under the impressive mass that enveloped them, when he placed his stack of books on a desk, which itself was crumbling under manuscript studies and other parchments. How could Andréas find his way in there? The amount of work it took to organize it all scared him. Was the man born in all these books, that he knew the slightest scratch on the covers for some gnawed, the slightest chipping of the fragile paper?

The two men quietly exchanged some thoughts on the research, muttering their dissatisfaction with recent events that'd unfolded in an exponential awe that left no doubt about predictions and decisions that would be made without reference to the highest hierarchy. Andréas was skeptical, Efrain didn’t hide his frustration. The Brotherhood was facing many problems that plagued the functioning, and that for a few years already. Since the advent of the Another. But who is it? Who were the two scholars talking about? Trevor understood nothing of their dialogue, but suspected that something more pernicious was plaguing their hearts.

Young Belmont regarded them in silence, intimately believing that he shouldn't intervene in a secret conversation fraught with apprehension, and his blue orbs detailed in passing the incredible accumulation of scholarship in the rows; the shelves that Trevor shuddered to see crumble under the weight; the thick carved cabinets. Quite an unpacking that would've given a cold sweat to any bookseller other than Andréas. But Trevor was impressed to know that among all this jumble, Andreas was sailing on conquered ground.

While the two friends chatted quietly, Trevor let himself dawdle a bit through the shelvings, especially trying not to provoke the anger of the staggered piles of papers that threatened to bury him viciously under their weight, if unfortunately his fingers brushed too closely their unstable balance. He was trying to decipher the titles engraved on the back edges of the books, but some epigraphs were written in completely unknown languages. So his imagination subdued, - perhaps rightly so - mystical texts laden with shameful secrets; acid invocations tinged with sulfur; intimate verses on venerable hagiographies of which we wouldn't have forgotten even the name of the invoked saint. His imagination'd no limit, and the little voice inside him sneered:

"Forbidden oeuvres, like the ones you've read...daring drawings on illicit loves..."

Trevor blushed fiercely at the thought, and noticed the same second the two men were talking to him. When he turned his attention to them, Andréas chuckled as he saw his pale cheeks powdered with the delicate dew that'd resulted from his thinking.

"Does this sound familiar to you, young man?"the man asked abruptly.

Completely confused, not knowing what the bookseller was talking about, or if he had guessed what he was thinking, Trevor blushed even harder, stammering at an untraceable answer, he could only croak a "what?" pitifully, which made both men laugh louder.

Then Andréas walked over, put a hand on his shoulder while leaning in as if in confidentiality:

"You're certainly a little familiar with the place, aren't you?

His cheeks burned with the intensity of his confusion, feeling trapped in something he didn't dare say.

“Why do you say that, Master Andréas?''he stammered, as the eyes on him sparkled with naughty mockery.

"I'd a little trouble, one early morning, reorganizing a merry mess that we'd been kind enough to scatter in one of the rooms...I assumed a few rats who wanted to sustain themselves...and then, I thought that the rats were in no way capable of turning the pages...especially of certain works, uhmm, prohibited, one will say...

Efrain laughed openly. Andréas gave subtle and unspoken winks, like sudden tics. Trevor, meanwhile, was turning nicely scarlet, and suffocating from sudden hot flashes! He thought he felt bad...

"Are there any works… prohibited here, Master?"dared the brazen Trevor, under the piercing gaze of Andréas.

Roar of laughter from Efrain's side. Want to choke in a mouse hole from Trevor. Even die.

Andréas turned to his laughing double-folded friend, and mumbled ironically:

"I'd heard many times that young Belmont wasn't lacking in nerve and resources, but at this point, the payoff was his...

Poor Trevor who tried a miserable excuse clashed with half-eaten words. Andréas moved closer to the desk, while starting a selection of scrolls:

"I personally think that for once there's silence on the alleged culprits who got the beating instead of someone else...that's only justice in a way, this...little rat was probably very hungry, and he takes punishments more often than necessary in place of others...So I felt that the incident was over...

A pitiful thank you was whispered through the dry whitened lips, as the cheeks still ablaze in acid shame.

"I just hope this little rat has fed well for the occasion...''the man finished, considering the teenager in all the glory of his mortification.

“H…how…??'’Trevor stammered, feeling his entire being liquefy with adrenaline.

“How did I assume the identity?’'Andreas finished in his quiet voice. 'Let's say that I don't know many little rats with hairs as long as the one I peeled in the dry and rough bindings which surely caught it and tore it off...a very beautiful night hair that few have...and also, a very delicate scent of a tree that we don't forget, and here too, very few people have this obsession with cleanliness to the point of permeating the atypical smell on everything they touch...

Trevor realized then that Andréas'd laughed at the indiscretion, but if it'd been any other, probably the librarian wouldn't have done the same. A last wink comforted him in the affectionate esteem the man'd for him sincerely, probably at the same height as that of the herbalist. But more than anything, he realized the man's trust in his overly curious person, having brought him into places forbidden to others.

The incident was closed, having made the two men chuckle, and delivered an unusually high rate of adrenaline to the teenager who'd only one urge at the moment: to plunge his burning cheeks in the cool water.

While teasing the child, Andréas'd made a selection of invaluable works for their research, and now spread out on a side that he'd freed from his literary booklets, pamphlets, scrolls, theses, anything that would enlighten the herbalist and Trevor about the care to be given to Acthéean.

Trevor got down to it with all the seriousness in the world, as the conversation between the two scholars turned strangely around the Grimoire discovered by Acthéean. It was whispered more and more that the manuscript was looking bad, as Trevor'd noticed in his face-to-face with the Mirror. It was swished strange modifications which gave a cold sweat to an increasingly irascible and angry cardinal, whose character outbursts became unmanageable, if not by the acerbic grip of Chester d'Uries, becoming the unusual mediator between the Founders and the Volpe bristling with his deleterious whims.

But Trevor was obstinately mute, as he'd done after this alarming confrontation. And it was in this stubborn mutism that he detailed certain passages with the herbalist, jumping from one work to another to connect the conjectural points that would succeed in embroidering a semblance of solution in these nebulous confines of Mnemosyne doing as it pleases.

Then, on this distant beach deserted by memories of his friend, footsteps were slowly imprinted on the grainy onyx, and a long, thin and intelligent hand seized a small fry, and a Shadow got down to work to breathe a remainder of life in the wide gills ...

Little fish, calmly come and wash away your debris of remembrance in order to sustain a Memory in distress ...

~~~ <<000>> ~~~

Until ... where you go, there we go ...

The little spawn desperately grabbed the watery element that'd forced itself back far towards the velvety horizons, abandoning it in the windy frosts whose ethereal songs'd fatally attracted the tiny fry.

Numerous silvery lightning bolts erupted through the mass of compressed clouds, coming from the rippling wrinkles of the changing ocean. The surf was like memories that tried to emerge in vain, but somewhere on the sides of a rocky outcrop as trenchant and sharp as a blade of steel, heaps of clay slag stood out in tracing jets across the misty space.

With each foamy strike of the mighty waves, a new layer of limestone exposed itself to the erosion of the winds, and it was like the reminiscences stretching out in ectoplasms howling their laborious extrication from their asphyxiating cocoons.

A little further on, a translucent threadlike shadow arose over the frayed lengths of a rope clinging to the spur, in which memories rushed en masse in the hope of finally being shipwrecked on this beach abandoned by Mnemosyne ...  

Further on, an echo of their complaints, the joyful and punctuated clicking of metal bootfrets on cobblestones steeped in history.

If there'd been a witness, he could've seen beautiful, immaculate petals falling in rain behind every step imprinted in the pavement.

And a greedy and thirsty mouth gorged with tears from the chalice.

>>> 00ooo00 <<<

The oils coated him like a cottony cloud that Trevor didn’t want to come out of, halfway between reality and the sweet rocking of the Unconscious that falls asleep. In this enveloping bliss, the Belmont almost went numb and sank, stuffed with absolute delight in the bath of oils whose suave and sensual scents made him turn his head a little, but all in a beneficent abandonment that he really didn’t want to disturb.

Even when the first menacing rolls galloped through the mountainous depths, again heralding stubborn thunderstorms to ravage the landscape. The young man grumbled in his teeth at the hearing of the premises which made the atmosphere tremble a little: imminent signs that the storm was going to be very harsh again. The village’d its difficulties to wring out the last overflows, the river meandering quietly between the arches of the fortress dangerously licking the buttresses and banks which’d collapsed into mud ditches destroying architecture. Bad weather’d given way since the troop collapsed between the Brotherhood portals, and the men’d been able to breathe a bit to rearrange and clean up what the damage’d shaken savagely.

In fact, since the dramatic return of the garrison, the slaughtered creatures that pursued them from the doomed village of Wygol, the inhabitants wandered through the pests of incomprehension and superstitions, each more eccentric than the last. A heavy atmosphere of mistrust and terror stemed the hearts of the bravest, all grades combined, from ordinary people to general knights of all orders.

You could tell that everyone was sailing in troubled waters, Trevor and his companions even more. As the rumbling tumble swelled into a bewildering exponentiality, Trevor thought about all those little improper details that regularly enamelled their existences. In a short time, the teenager'd seen all his life to fall over.

His wounds, remaining sealed by the catguts, unfortunately persisted in not healing properly, to the chagrin of Trevor who saw himself tirelessly devoted to the lightest of gestures so as not to over-solicit a still very bruised flesh. Efrain'd explained to him that the three large slaps, which hollowed out his spine wickedly, refused to close because they were placed on dorsal midlines, the muscles of which were agitated too often to allow the wounds to heal on their own, if only by a simple walking, a scratch spreading to one hip. Distressing results of a sadistic force given in the blows.

The water was gradually cooling, and it was almost death to soul that Trevor'd to leave his nest of plush softness, to dry himself quickly, wring out his hair before putting on a nightgown. As he busied himself thus with the grooming, his mind was tirelessly heated over multiple concerns that made his heart beat faster at times under the sting of bitterness.

In the night already well advanced, he cleaned the remains of his bath, emptying the tub, piling up the towels, carefully putting away the bottles of ointments and other medical bars for the toilet, knowing that Efrain displayed an uncompromising meticulousness towards his sanitary equipment. Trevor infinitely respected the habits of the herbalist almost bordering on obsessive mania.

He was the only one wandering in his conflicting mind, flitting silently between the treatment chamber and the comfort room used to welcome patients and visitors. Where a whole treasure trove of alambics and other superb machinery made his admiration when Efrain put them on the road to concoctions of healing ointments, or herbal teas.

He loved being there for a moment suspended in time, where no one would come yell at him because a twisted grammar refused to force open the doors of his logic, or that a clumsy manipulation would’ve risked injuring the hand that was grasping the weapon. Where at last he could meet in peace with himself, and draw up plans, projects, incessantly struggling specutations in his heated imagination, without anyone, nor an ill-advised and zealous tutor would reproach him with unfair blows. Where at last he’d assumed to have found a semblance of tranquility more cathartic than ever, through those days of suffering.

The storm was coming, and Trevor could hear the beginning of gusts of wind bending the vegetation in subtle cries. Once again, all life within the foundations was going to have to lurk safe from the splinters. Perhaps once again, poor Andréas would alarm the hierarchy over the inventory devastated by the floods which inevitably devoured the foothills under the cursed and erosive saltpetre. Trevor'd noticed some storage areas heavily damaged by acid rain, which managed to penetrate the breaches in the foundations. There was only one place that was still intact: the secret kept behind the massive doors protecting them.

The first muffled howls of lightning streaking the overcrowded sky, suddenly clicked, predisposing to a rapidly approaching thunderstorm, and stagnating just above the fortress. Trevor, leaning over a cauldron of water bubbling lazily over the joyous blaze of the hearth, glanced from below to the chimney flue, which shuddered with echoes. So he poured some of the gurgling water into a alambic made for infusions, and let the maceration take place.

He hoped that the storm wasn’t yet going to wake Efrain, nor Acthéean sound asleep, relaxed by the hyssop he’d swallowed. The herbalist’d added a tiny particle of Poppy, so that the mind could relax completely, but without being stupefied by the opiate. Although the brew’d been taken a few hours before, Trevor's smell still caught the languid trails of aroma in the air, following in his friend's footsteps to his couch where his body lay. Hyssop, Poppy, and now holy Hibiscus which he adored without moderation, hovered in smooth and aromatic layers worthy of Paradise. In addition to warming his hands around the container, his taste buds reveling in the incomparable flavors, his nose was being flirted outrageously by the olfactory tendrils which rose in cloudy spirals in the half-tenebra forged of gold, flaming orange, and incandescent red.

Quieter than a shadow, he returned to his bed with the precious brew. He looked calculating at the parchments brought back from the library; the blank vellum awaiting the caress of the brush or the strata of a feather engraving strange symbols that come to life in artistic virtuosities; his mirror which he always contemplated before falling asleep on humble prayers and whispered requests for a restored health to his friend. The lily. His Lily still lying among the dried brambles of Sage, still as immaculate and intact as on the first day Acthéean'd gathered it. The marvelous flower didn't wither, not blemished with a wrinkle that might've disfigured its curved opalescence.

Acthéean's either, didn’t bow down under the claw of Time, and kept this incredible freshness. The two Lilies seemed to be waiting for something, entwined in their virginal whiteness, their corollary petals from which occasionally oozed a tear, such a fragile diamond. And men wonder how these paradisiacal flowers could weep at a moisture that their stems hadn't absorbed for a long time, without withering unstoppably.

While quietly sipping his infusion, Trevor let a respectful finger slide over the floral chalice, like a caress, a hug distributed before sleep. Then his gaze turned to the barely defined form in the tawny half-light of the hearth, lying flat on his back, the blankets thrown back over his bare chest demonstrating the sleeper's regular, deep breathing. His face was turned to the stained glass in the window, which began to glow in the silent bursts of lightning.

Under a more intensified flash, joined by the growl approaching a few seconds later, Trevor discerned a wetness on the thatch-shaded cheeks: more tears. Acthéean persisted in crying, even in his sleep. Like the lilies. Trevor'd very keen eyesight, and the small rivers, soaking up the cheekbones to get lost in the hair, hadn't escaped his notice.

He stood up slowly, grabbed one of the very soft linens left on the corner of the table, and approached his friend. As he brushed the skin bathed in tears, a violent blow was spat out by the storm installed just above them, and Trevor flinched abruptly as he rubbed the fabric. Which woke up Acthéean with a start.

Trevor swore a couple of insults into inclement weather, while Acthéean rolled his eyes in bewilderment at the fear of waking up making his heart beat like a panic attack. He fell heavily on the pillow, rubbing his face, cursing in turn what'd torn him out of Morpheus's arms.

"We're blasphemers, both of us..."he mumbled to the chilled figure who'd thrown back in the rush of adrenaline.

"Storm filth, Trevor grumbled,‘’it's starting again. I'm sorry, I just wanted to wipe away your tears like Efrain advised me...

" It's not a problem…Acthéean cut in, sitting up straight, the blankets sliding over his narrow hips.‘’In any event, I was still in the grip of dreams...

His hand combed his hair backwards for a long time, trying without success to tidy the locks stubbornly falling on his forehead. Much like the wild bangs streaking across Trevor's pale forehead.

"Do you want the infusion, I did just make it?"Trevor asked, handing him the cloth to wipe his cheeks.

Acthéean nodded, sliding the light cotton wool over his thatch. Then he remained for a moment with his head resting on his knees, which were pulled up to his chest, while the Belmont prepared the drink for him.

"Did you find anything over there?"he asked when Trevor handed him the hot, fragrant cup.

“A lot of complex things've been written about these issues,”Trevor explained, sitting on the edge of his friend's bed. ''Efrain thinks he knows how to forcefully suggest your memories. I've an idea, but I would like to submit it to you...

Acthéean took a few sips, before continuing the conversation. It was fun to see how these two young always dialogued in a very calm and soft tone in their reciprocal baritone. Always as if they were afraid of waking something up next to them.

"And what is your idea, exactly?"

"Your dreams, do you still manage to remember them?

“For a large majority, I would say yes. It's even like a hot iron imprint left in my mind…but sometimes, I can't put the details together, it remains vague…It's there, without being there…it gets diluted until it disappears completely…I mightn't be able to define the main features, but it remains like a general idea ...

"Yes...as with everyone, with all dreamers...We travel in worlds that we then forget as soon as we open our eyes...it's strange...Efrain would know better than me to explain to you what he calls the 'cycle-of-sleep', as he studied in ancient manuscripts…Would there be only God to understand our essence when it drowns in dreams inaccessible to our memory…

Acthéean considered his friend for a moment, a clean sketch in the black and white of his hair and his night clothes. A magnificent living spectrum. Like...the Another. But who, the another? This ghost that seemed to cling to all his hesitant steps; this phenomenon that repeated itself over and over in the nebulosities of his memory, persisting in keeping the doors closed padlocked in bitterness.

"A little too stern for conversation in the middle of the night, don't you think?"he grumbled.

He regretted those harsh words when he saw the shoulders sag slightly under the acid sting. As if he'd just slammed him with a dry slap that would've knocked him unconscious.

"Sorry…I didn't mean to be brutal. I'm having a little trouble communicating right now.

As if echoing his invective, an interminable blow shook the walls of the apothecary, again making the two young people grumble in colorful blasphemies that made them laugh in unison.

"Tell me, what do you recommend to help me then?

One hand holding the cup of herbal tea, the other reaching for the river of onyx, which he tidied up behind his shoulders. A gesture that Trevor wanted to lean into, but didn't dare.

"What do you remember from that dream, before you woke up? I suggest you put in drawings all the dreamlike memories that you can keep...the smallest detail, I'll trace it on parchment. Perhaps we'll be able to sketch the beginnings of recurring images that could help you lead...?

Acthéean thought very quickly of his very last bursts which'd punctuated his travels. The idea was very good: to find a sketch of care for his memory through the drawing. Could it work? But the noises, the echoes they heard through all this hazy trap, would he manage to draw even a curve there?

"It's stealthy,"he said, stirring the armful of images that'd forced themselves on him, but the lingering effects of which he could feel was gone forever. ‘’But I've memories of some of them, like endless rehearsal…There must be something we can do, yes, but I would admit, not more tonight. In addition, the storm annoys me.

"Let's try to get back to sleep then,"Trevor suggested, removing the empty cup from him. ''But if ever something'd to be traced on paper, to keep a subtle trace of it, don't hesitate...

He took the time to bring the container back, choosing not to let their awakening disturb the order of things, so that Efrain wouldn't be disturbed. As he slid the clean cup over the stack of other containers, his gaze lingered on the large table in the middle of the room, most of its surface laden with urgent first-use utensils, sachets of herbs and dried plants, a few sharp instruments that Trevor knew from flirting with his injured skin.

Another more intense thunderclap, new shock of adrenaline. And on the table, through the bluish spasms of the lightning, there was the shape of a lifeless body, stretched out in a hurry, limbs limp and flexing under the hurried slide. A lifeless face, his gaze fixed on a point the eyes could no longer see, opaque under the ghastly-veil. The clothes torn in shreds, carelessly by blades scintillating in their edges. And screams. And crying. Desperate laments over the state of the devastated body. Worries slashed with anguish-chopped words.

Another thunderous rattle, even more incisive. Blinding flash in which danced the gasping mist of ghosts scattering there, around the lifeless-remains. And a long lament rising:

"He was still alive when we picked him up ..."

Third stormy spit. The walls vibrated with the angry impact. Had lightning fallen somewhere yet? Trevor found he was crying too, his cheeks burning with the salt of tears.

While the dark swarms of phantasies finally disappeared, and the table seemed to absorb in its wood the trouble essences which’d been born from it ...

When Trevor returned to his bed, Acthéean’d settled on his side, waiting for Somnus to return. When the Belmont in turn slipped into unconsciousness, just on the edge of a remaining draft of consciousness, in the soothing twilight of the subconscious cleansing of troubled souls, he felt warm hands slide down his back, carefully so as not to awaken the bite of the lips sealed by the catguts, caressing like a purring, adoring cat.

He bathed happily in the touch so intimate and sensual, chuckling a form of purr in turn, in diapason with the little feline singing in his heart. His flesh vibrated briskly with a shiver of ease under the thoughtfulness, the embrace so gentle. Lips lingered somewhere in the ebony canopy so fragrant from his bath, slid down his neck. Lips so fluted that they were almost inconsistent, as if afraid of outraging the dermis sensitized by this tenderness.

He'd time to hear a whisper breathe in his ear:

"… Oblivion Sempiternum Daemonis…"

~~~ Õ >> << Õ ~~~

I’m in the image of this specter which copies each of my steps like a Siamese twin woven into my own Being, and whose identity I only know in a perpetual grin that sticks to my skin. I tirelessly pull on the stitching threads that suture us immutably, without ever being able to even slightly part the sides of our essences without making weep the crimson-black cruor of the resulting tears. And it's like a gaping  scarfed-off-ulcer in which our mutual suffering engulfs.

I"m trapped like the insect in the amber, and the resin is my Memory which is disintegrating every moment.

I'm a terrible fact that took place in a temporality that escapes me, and doomed to repeat itself endlessly.

I'm overcome by a moment of permanent pain clinging to my sides, flooding my breath with its acrid, painful hints. There's something dead, probably me, but it still seems alive.

It's like a feeling suspended in time, where I understand that I left something there that belonged to me in an intrinsic way, but replaced by something else that I brought back, welded to my essence in a bitter and nostalgic fusion.

I'm a ghost now, just like Him whose cause I don’t know. I feel him every moment invade my mind, pitiful at His hesitation to finally release my loneliness. If only He finally resigned himself to letting me wander in my desert, perhaps I would find my Soul's peace there.

Maybe if He finally deigned to shed some light on his encrypted message, I would find the rest I deserved.

Colours. Odors. Emotional shocks. Tangled bits and pieces that refused to evaporate. Continued harassment in what might appear to be vain hopes in the sketches of a solution. Pains imprinted on the flesh. Blows impacted in bad hematomas, like that of the offended cheek, which refused to fade under the permanent thatch.

A perfume. Magnificent and sublimated. Flavor of ice, dying embers, charcoal, perhaps fur, bittersweet tangy in an exciting sweetness, powerful musk like an erotic broth where all the heady aromatics of ecstatic pheromones would merge. Above all this, a layer of delicate freshness of a blessed corolla, and the more milky and pronounced layers of an exotic flower with a mystical aura.

Trevor first had to bathe the vellum in mixed and dripping glazes, slowly absorbed by the granular supports, in order to represent the thickness of ecstatic mists in which gradually rounded out a few outlines of tiny visions laboriously drawn from the memories, without sullying their meaning, nor influencing the first thought.

The colors seemed to be identical to each other, like endless copying and pasting in gestures, events, in particular chromaticities always shrouded in copper, tin, bronze, verdigris, Payne's gray, down to the smallest subtle shade of the color wheel. Incendiary reds; violines forbidden in the artists' palette; purples similar to blood; incandescent incarnates in the image of the Dragon; sublimated blacks in different shades personalizing them; deep blues flirting with the indigo of the skies of thunderstorms; golds and silvers highlighting shocking curves in taboo frolics.

Young Belmont bustled about in impossible and unimaginable dilutions, spouting here and there the sharp points of anamorphic monuments, sly shards howling of ecstatic body sketches. But always, in this debauchery of trials, the incredible shapes of a mirror, of a flower were blazing. And now, over the feather which detailed all the contours explained by an Acthéean navigating in the midst of a storm of memorial efforts, the nebulous traces of strange drapes of a mantle; of veined marbles; of candelabra erected under their waxy melting; of fuses of unusual and still ill-defined statuaries.

As his drawings progressed, scrupulously following the tiny snatches being executed with unwillingness to describe infinitesimal dreamlike afterglows,-the efforts invoked under the work of a torn memory, exhausted Acthéean until almost uneasy-,Trevor saw the disturbing similarities to his own dreams.

Efrain’d given his approval for Trevor's clever idea of gently soliciting his friend's memory in this way, as if he was building something still fragile, so frail that it threatened to collapse at any moment; a imperfect monument, always inconsistent, breeze-block after stone, after mortar, the medium of which was the precious illumination inks spreading out the distorted and grimacing expanses of landscapes still refusing to fully unlock their mysteries.

The first thing Efrain brought up was what Acthéean remembered last, before plunging into the Unknown. Acthéean'd sunk into the unfathomable pit of his suffering anamnesis, attempting as he'd been advised, to step back in the last actions he remembered. Hands clinging to his diaphanous forehead, chocolate locks swept back under clenched fingers, he’d begun his long journey into the limbo of Mnemosyne, with the hope that Trevor would manage to water his poor reminiscences with the help of his glazes, wash, and other artistic blends.

And it was almost like a game. Pleasant, inducing a bit of relaxation as he watched intelligent hands trace the blurry outlines of his dreamlike worlds. Efrain dictated advice like patient assemblages, whispered quietly when the young man stumbled over the obstacles of oblivion. The herbalist attempted the ancestral practices he'd followed through medical theses. What was far to be a sinecure.

The man also knew that these practices'd to be silenced, if he didn’t want to suffer the wrath of certain holy men of the Brotherhood, who would see a slap in the face of the Divine whose sacred word'd no say in this case of care of the Soul. As Efrain'd surmised, the rules of polytheism'd gained ground in this case, and were much more effective than the rigid verses voluntarily obscuring the evils of a Soul to which they recognized little more importance than in a few reassuring words for the penitents suffering from these ramblings. God'd breathed Soul into Man, but man didn’t have the right to study its secrets...Once again, the herbalist'd raised one of the many paradoxes constraining the Brotherhood and its participants to work in a form of obligatory obscurantism, if we wanted to obtain results. The most glaring evidence stood in the huge Founders meeting room.

So, it’d been a couple of hours now since the three men’d locked themselves in the apothecary comfortably, closing the doors to the opportune ones that would disturb the peace,-except in an emergency of course,-then leaving the first drafts to scratch the embossed paper under the beginnings of hesitant descriptions of the apprentice.

At first it was the debacle. Pieces here, details there, groped by an Acthéean who felt a headache rising. So, Efrain proposed to the youngster to speak in the spontaneity of ideas. The first images that came to him, naturally, without causing pain in the concentration. One word’d to invoke another, and Acthéean’d to follow a pictorial or verbalized course of action. Trevor’d to restructure it all with the tips of his brushes.

Last memories there, in the library, before the Knights-Vampires came to smash everything. To the long dazzles of a blinded memory in the confines of the Unknown and the Forgotten. Fragments so frail, the debris of dreams stretched into the exaggerated falsehood, or the truly unspeakable, of the tip of a feather cut in different thicknesses for contours either broken or reinforced. Even the incongruous in form took on more concrete aspects in the debauchery of grotesque images, and the three men easily adapted to the strange cryptic metaphors and mystical symbols arising from songes.

Acthéean lived in absolute confidence in his artist friend, newly revealed in his still clumsy art, but he knew how to cling irremediably to the difficulty of the task in order to give all his help and alleviate his despair. To lose all memory in this way on certain facts that we suspected to be disastrous was to lose one's identity, the very essence of what makes us live. It was a real agony of Soul and Psyche even submitting to the ruthless flogging of Madness taking the beautiful role.

It was still an incredible chance that the young Belmont’d finally accepted to open up to a beginning of life that he’d never taken the time to live fully, to aspire to the wonders of the Imaginary that existence offered. To finally take the time to dream, as he should’ve done since his very young childhood.

It was fortunate that Acthéean'd finally decided to take the first step towards the teenager he'd been watching for years, hoping to one day make a contract of eternal friendship with him.

It was a miracle that’d finally seen these two Soul-Mates united in a tragic fate, meet, unify, and now observe disturbing and unusual similarities, as if they’d been Siamese Twins that the we would’ve detached by uncompromising decision, ignoring the Destinies thus crippled. But Fate’d in its certain sense of humor, was drawing its sarcasm through the long thin hands, skilled in handling redoubtable weapons, and at the same time ethereal in the artistic construction of dreams made accessible only by the strenght of the Imaginary which overcame its obstacles.

Trevor's imagination was rife. By dint of readings, studies, observations, the future knight turned out to be more apt and at ease than Acthéean himself, rigidified by the mathematical and medical formulas which he drank daily in addition to training. Complementary opposites, Andreas and Efrain’d said in unison.

At this very intimate moment of dreamlike and memorial confidences, the herbalist and his two youngsters understood the strengths and the results of two united destinies: extraordinary contiguities in the twin acts; inconceivable parables in their dreamlike universes; unthinkable analogies in their utopias. Their dreams covered the same fabrics trimmed with chromatic banners in ‘dracholich’ hues, with confusing homologies in their weavings embroidered with the same precious gold. The Mirror. Identical in its improbable affinity. The Lily. Recurring figure now, vital substance to the lips drinking from it.

In the moans of his shipwrecked memories, always a voice so far away whispered:

"Follow the Lily…water yourself its tears…"

Sometimes Acthéean heard the echo of that brassy sound, as if it didn't belong to a human throat. Anyway, was it really a human he could see desperately in the blackout mists, only to fade away the next second? and still leave only a clawed open gap on the walls of his consciousness. At times, he thought he was finally holding a tiny bit of the canopy, and arched in the effort to shoot at it. To finally see the dog-eared wedge that'd sadistically been slipped into his hands, escape him in a wicked burst of laughter, as if it were covered in oil. And He collapsed heavily, unbalanced by the abrupt withdrawal, on a hard and cracked pavement, streaming its veins in a dark marble with shards mattified by crimson spots. If he tried to get up, as soon as the ground he wallowed on, curled limply beneath his feet, pitched dangerously in an attempt to make him fall even lower into the well of his Memory.

It was far from a simple task to try in vain to bring together a semblance of concretization in the senseless wrecks of ideas, in a memorandum which risked making the young Belmont very angry, who tried himself repeatedly in the abbreviated sketches, the sample clues barely making it past the tight lips of concentration. Irascible compendiums of haphazard description, implausible epitomes for a more elaborate structuring in an analysis that would finally open the doors to "maybe" or "if it turned out that way". Acthéean's attempts to be as specific as possible would've driven anyone else crazy to tackle the immeasurable task of visual cheat-sheet.

It was a misnomer of Trevor's stubbornness, when he decided to focus on something he hoped to get subjected to his crude analysis. Trevor was persistent in his thoughts, and when an intention dawned in his teeming mind, no one possessed the strength to turn him away, and make him surrender. It was apparently the sheer, raw strength of his character. And in the case of his idea to help Acthéean, nothing and no one would‘ve made him waver, even in the face of hesitation and errors, and the wanderings of his friend desperately seeking to bring back the raft of his memories on the deserted beach of Mnemosyne.

The two were in the process of combining their common effort to extract this long, gutted ship on the nebulous shores, appearing to the image of galley-slaves whose broken spines were breaking a little more on the oars which would irrevocably redirect the drunken boat to less muddy bottoms.

It was therefore in total confidence in the infinite patience that Trevor would’ve with him, that Acthéean sketched out the first glimpses into artistic epitaphs. Efrain was very focused on every word that stumbled on the lips, even analyzing every gesture in the behavior, he’d read in the philosophical pamphlets that it was perfectly feasible to determine by the behavioral gestures, if the suffering patient was wandering in real memories returned, or was totally lost in memory debris that didn't belong to him. It was important that the subject wasn’t in any way influenced by his environment, in order to access his true memory which wouldn't be soiled by the remnants of others. Patient and analyst were to be confined in a space free from any negative emotion that would disturb the waters already corrupted by oblivion.

Paramnesia, or even Ecmésia, made life difficult for those who forgot part of their existence, and we were far from imagining the deleterious effects on mental health. The subject could irreversibly vanish forever into a totally falsed Anamnesis, but which the deceived brain would adopt as a return to the incorporeal sources of betrayed reminiscences. Furthermore, there was a real risk of influence between the two parties: unconsciously one could be modeled without his knowledge in the medium of memories belonging to the other.

Efrain’d internally noted some disturbing details emerging strangely under the feather and the brush. What similarity in the gleanings thus confused! It was more than disconcerting by the suggestiveness in their scrupulously sketched parity. The bristles saturated with delicate inks brushed heady sfumatos, beguiling in a very emblematic way, charming in a brutal way, provocative in indecency, as the lines purified into grace, the delicate mediums greedily absorbed by the vellums The herbalist more than once had the impression of twins hunched over the works taking birth in a brazenly enticing and sensational breathtaking soil.

It was even more bewitching, startling, even unsettling, when Acthéean shared stealthy thrusts streaking his memories, and describing a few millimeters of contortions that should’ve made more than one shudder. But was it really Mnemosyne who was picking up the net, or was it the polluting influence of some collection studied lately?

Acthéean didn't notice the tiny change in his accounts, and didn't see the herbalist's eyebrows curl in astonishment as he began to explain the strange"flashes"that disturbed his concentration. Trevor'd discreetly pricked up his ears at the descriptive enunciated, and his hand'd then hesitated for a few seconds on the vellum, giving Efrain a questioning glance, in a mute request if he should continue with the sketch which turned out to be somewhat...dared. The man'd made a discreet sign to continue, focused on Acthéean, whose hazel eyes'd taken on hazy tints of desolate somberness.

Something was wrong with the nesting of the memorial slags! Trevor realized he was munching scenes more than disturbing, under the aegis of his friend who didn’t notice their unpalatable emotion, and continued in erratic spurts. From the nebulous confines of his mind, painfully emerged the beginnings of somewhat offensive rememberings, if one relied on an uninfluenced memory. Often, the man would combine his own fantasies with the reminiscences of his stammering anamnesis. But now, it seemed, it was confusing!

Acthéean'd begun to describe his sputtered images, while pacing around the fireplace, which he never took his eyes off, as if the flames, joyfully dancing their mysterious volte, could help him construct the outlines of erased scenes. It was leaning on the ledge that he picked up the last vestiges, starting with the very last actions, as the herbalist'd advised him, in order to separate the different memory stages without being cheated by parasitic thoughts poisoning the interpretation.

Efrain took careful notes, as brushes and feathers hovered lazily over the waffle of the holders, at the inspiration of the painfully hiccuped words. The herbalist even suggested setting aside the other drawings, so as not to influence the memory struggling against the suffocation of selective oblivion. Acthéean's memory was strangled in compartments annihilating all possibilities in a precise selection. Memories'd been discriminated against when Acthéean'd vanished with the Vampire Knights, and his incredible reappearance in the Sage plants outside Wygol.

Yes, he remembered perfectly his last moments in the library, where he fought specters and other reapers, among his companions. Yes, he remembered the moment he turned to the Vampires guarding behind their long swords, and stood up in front of them to challenge them. He remembered the monumental blow that’d come crashing down on his face,-with the stubborn ecchymosas around the jaw, it was difficult to persist in denial-,the sharp thrust behind the back of his neck plunging him into a profound faint, as the head slammed hard on the corner of a shelf, as Norton and other witnesses’d attested.

Then nothing. The absolute void. The Nothingness he'd struggled in, while the others thought him dead from brain shock, and the terrifying kidnapping by the Vampire Knights. Something inconceivable. All those who'd recounted the scene, were struck down aghasted, even despite their intensive preparation for combat where they risked witnessing such unthinkable horrors at any time. No one was ever ready to face his death, or that of others, regardless of training and rank.

All Acthéean tried to extract from it was just a huge screed of ice that sporadically refrigerated him, while his body, his entire being, his soul, his essence, everything liquefied into complete oblivion. The feeling of being a handful of ashes carelessly thrown into the great vat of erasure, absence, an omission blurred with a sponge. Of this self-abnegation where identity was dying under the jaws of remission. Where the individual became lacuna. Where amnesia stretched out its mocking laughter kept twisted by the sutures of the paralipse plaguing primary thought. Where the individual was extinguished in the sticky shroud of preterition.

It was all that, and nothing at the same time, for the impossibility of bringing together a few strands of thread that would allow Agnosia's ragged coat to be rewoven. Of course, all these feelings torturing his mind confining him to madness, Acthéean didn’t know how to express it concretely.

But more than anything, it was this unfathomable sadness, this heart-wrenching melancholy that hindered his breath in miserable gasps. It was a swarm of screams, strange sounds, which rustled around him, without his being able at any time to locate its exact origin, like endless ricochets on the tall crumbling walls of his sanity. And this long hoot which was expressed in intonations of dreadful lament, a surge in that overwhelming darkening of soul, twisting the grayness of this raw-flayed grief, preventing him from breathing, crushing his heart convulsively in a spiral of a deadly panic attack.

Something tore irrevocably...Acthéean suddenly burst into uncontrollable sobs, a fit of hysterics, as he tried to pull his hair out under the tension.

Efrain rushed forward to hug the sobbing broken form, as Trevor let go of his feathers, shocked at his friend's collapse. Falling carelessly on the vellum, the ink-soaked tips spat out their drops which immediately spread in clumsy fusions, marring the supports with strange gutters and halos taking random curves of the sparkle. Pigmented shards erupted in myriads of dotted lines, staining certain aspects of the sketch that were difficult to draw.

Trevor didn’t care, and joined in the reassuring hug of the herbalist, to calm the nerves of his friend who repeated like a leitmotif his inability to bring together even a bit of reminiscence, while his ears could hear sounds from elsewhere endlessly. His sight navigated in the murky essences of a mistiness born from the violent aggression by the spectral chromatics of his senses destabilized under the emotional wave. His sense of smell flambed under the myriad of distressing odors, expansions of stimuli hypersensitizing his atypical cognition. A painful sensory cycle in agony, where everything exploded wildly; where the olfactories were sweetish and sickening flavors; where each emotion became a sensation imbued with its own insane colorimetry.

The scientist whispered reassuring words as he rocked his grieving apprentice. Never in all of his practice had he seen anyone break down like this under the stress of unmanageable emotions. Never, either, had he’d the opportunity to treat such a selective and shocking type of amnesia. He found himself helpless in the face of Acthéean's distress, for the young man’d never lost his temper like this. He berated himself internally, for he felt he should’ve seen it happen, if not for the abnormal mutism Acthéean’d been swimming in for the past few days.

Trevor grabbed a neatly folded cloth from a pile, moistening it in a cauldron of clean water waiting to be boiled. He gently wrung it out of his friend's face, being careful to avoid rubbing where the lingering hematoma taunted them under the thatched dermis. It went up to the blued temple, and the eye area still slightly yellowed from the impact. The blow’d been unbelievably strong, and Trevor shuddered at the thought that his friend must’ve had his jaw debilitated or fractured. As for the mental decay that gripped the apprentice, there’s no doubt that these were the remains of a trauma that’d definitely shattered the entire structure of psychic mechanisms in a disastrous maelstrom. Abyssal excoriations in the Soul, which would probably never heal again.

We never left there intact...he’d read so often in the numerous testimonies recorded in the Chronicles.

Acthéean managed to regain control of his nerves, soothing his swollen face in the cool linen, wiping away the tears which irrigated his cheeks sporadically. Over the minutes, his breathing became lighter, the grip that clasped his chest released weight, and his heart pounded in a calmer rhythm. He stammered an apology always in hashed words.

"You don't have to apologize,"Efrain whispered to him, as Trevor plunged the fabric back into the cool water.’It’s a miracle you don’t lose your mind with all this pressure.

"I can't do it...''Acthéean grumbled. 'It's there, but I can't. They're like shadows refusing to identify. But I hear...I keep hearing them...

"What exactly are you hearing?''began Efrain.

He paused as he noticed that Acthéean's gaze'd frozen on the vellum now displaying numerous spots stuck in the intertwining of unfinished sketches. The whole gave a strange appearance of inverted images, distorted, but whose structure was easily recognizable.

The herbalist followed the gaze, taking a closer look at the carefully drawn arabesques. He did recognize a lot of similarities with Trevor's drawings, mentally comparing the words young Belmont'd told him one long night-watch when they watched their friend recently brought "dead" by the garrison. It was obvious to him as the two young people were sharing nagging songes in a more than unsettling way. At what level of influence was Acthéean involved in his descriptions? The conditions turned out to be more delicate to discern fantasies from reality.

Without letting go of the drawings of his misty gaze, Acthéean again seemed to plunge into his evanescent quest, taking the washcloth from Trevor's hands, he wiped his forehead as he threaded exhausted words like pearls on the string of a life that would’ve been bereaved from him, to the rhythm of his breathing deepening again, as if hypnotized.

“Something happened there…something that I remember well. It's fluent in my memories, and I think I witnessed this thing when the others saw nothing...

He suspended his flow of thought, his gray nuts fluttered on the vellum, the irises twinkled with a new light giving the impression that he discerned something in the drawings that seemed to have awakened the Forgotten in his lair.

"Of all those who came to testify here while receiving treatment, few said they noticed anything unusual..."Efrain began. Even the Milites who were present. They said they felt a heaviness in the air, and Norton reported it as 'a bit of something' that he seemed to have missed...Like a failure in the sequel...He'd a hard time describing his feelings...

"A failure?''Acthéean pointed out, agreeing to tear his attention away from the drawings, and focus on the herbalist.‘’How does a failure?

"I don't know…as he described it, I would say like a suspension in time…which would hardly be surprising, given that the village still has its roots at the foot of the Castle. We all know that this hellish place seems to be ruled by 'cause and effect' Laws that elude us. Dare I call it a ‘hook’ in a torn temporality…

"What did you see there, Acthéean?''Trevor hissed, fascinated by the multiple emotions that made his friend fall apart.‘’Do you want to tell us about it?

Acthéean was done with the wet laundry, and handed it back to Trevor, as he straightened up, pacing again, as if walking might more freely make him open the gates of Mnemosyne Limbo. Perhaps there was a sign of hope for those shy epitomes which only greedily agreed to chant their languid laments to him.

He leaned his forehead bathed in fragrant freshness on the mantle of the fireplace, considered for a moment the undulating and warm flames still faithfully encrusted in the glowing embers. His Shadow-heart began to beat a strange rhythm, and confusedly he felt himself in diapason with Trevor's who was staring at him sporadically, himself feeling the unusual radiance that vibrated between them.

When the hazel-gray irises crossed the sapphires, they merged in an inextricable joint attention, and Acthéean'd the courage to begin to describe the scene that he would certainly never forget, this one. Last vestige standing before the rest collapsed.

Then the words flowed quietly, smoothly, fruit of elaborate concentration in the eyes that'd become dreamy, seeming to follow invisible movements in space, his long-term hidden Memory browsing the Biography, and the young man recounted the apparition in the obscured room; time suddenly suspended; the dazzling moiré patterns of a mysterious tain disturbing the frozen atmosphere. Acthéean saw the spasmodic rewinding of this extract of life, like a film backwards jerking its scratched images making them appear like possessed specters dancing a strange dawdling whose footsteps they would've forgotten.

His comrades stood on the arched doorstep, motionless and oblivious to the"marvelous"that was unfolding without their knowledge. Something was hovering in there, on the moiré surface of an echo. A moon and diamond-like fantasy so immeasurably beautiful that it caused inexhaustible tears. Besides, the young man began to cry again without understanding, but gave up wiping the hot and salty pearls.

At the enunciated of the diaphanous hand offering the Lily, Trevor couldn't suppress a interlocked reaction. Everything Acthéean was describing now corroborated with his own songes in a way that made him uneasy, and into a freezing shiver.

"You say you saw…a ghost, in fact?"Efrain ventured, cautiously, so as not to interrupt the soft, whispered flow too abruptly.

"I don't know what it was, Brother Efrain. It was there in front of me, and yet it didn't seem to be there, as if it didn't belong to this world…Of course, if it's a ghost, they don't belong to our world…But, that, it'd nothing to do with everything that has been reported by those who've witnessed this kind of phenomena...

"And...''Trevor said softly,"what you saw there is in your dreams themselves, right? A bit of a repetition of your mind searching for meaning?

"From that moment, in the aedicule, this...thing seems to be circling in my head...it keeps coming back to haunt me...yes, it's a constant haunting...

"And the others haven't seen anything at all?''Efrain asked again, desperately looking for a solution or an explanation.

"Nothing, Brother Efrain,"Trevor interjected.‘’Remember that everyone who came all said the same thing...Even Milite Grégoire. They suspect that something has happened, but fail to understand the change that there was in the atmosphere. Some even suggested the intervention of the Divine in their fear...

Efrain nodded, humming. Yes, there, all the men'd signed each other out in superstitious fear, when they'd seen nothing. Only felt. But what ?

"What is most disturbing,"Acthéean continued, his gaze fixed again on the unfinished sketches,"is that during those few minutes, I felt such incredible felicity, absolute happiness in the face of this…apparition? Trevor, Efrain, it was so beautiful, I don't have a strong enough word to describe it, that's what invariably reminds me of a ghost-Angel…I almost wanted to dive into the liquid tain, and join the One who beckoned to me... He seemed to be floating in the still water of a transparent lake, and He stood there, rippling in spurts, just above the others who were praying, it seems to me...The hands with which He held out the flower to me, were so pale and transparent, it looked like a moving moonlight...

Young Belmont and the herbalist stood dumbfounded at descriptions that plunged into meditative reflection on this strange 'miracle'. None dared interfere for fear that even the silver fantasy would dissolve into oblivion.

Acthéean's eyes gave free rein to the fluid drops carelessly moistening the cheeks hollowed out by physical and mental exhaustion. The rims of the eyelids were red from the endless rivers, but Acthéean couldn’t cure the burning felt, nor the headache resulting from grief.

Trevor recovered to his feathers, and the marmoreal outlines of a hand crunched in the silverish-emulsion holding out a Lily gradually came into being, shrouded in glaze fluids, exacerbating a moment of pure bliss bordering on euphoric that his friend strangely appreciated in the depths of his being.

The meeting with an Angel?

"Brother Efrain, do you think this was something sent from…the castle?"Trevor asked, brush hanging, genuinely troubled. Maybe more than it needs to be.

"If this’s a castle event, it boggles the mind. This cursed place only spews horrors made for our destruction. The idea of an Archangel coming from this building would leave me a little flabbergasted...it would go against everything the Dragon usually summons...

"Yet that’s the impression I got...”Acthéean cut softly.‘’What if it was beyond the Prince of the Castle's own will? What's beyond disturbing is...the surge of love I felt for this apparition. It didn't encourage aggression at any point...I know it's blasphemy what I just said, to feel some kind of attraction to what appeared to be a man, however inconsistent, or in soul form...

"No one other than the three of us will have your words for him, don't worry about it,"Efrain interrupted, reconciling the young man's start of panic at the revelation of such worship.‘’If you feel that you're in conflict with yourself with this idea, only you'll decide to comfort yourself with your confessor if the need arises. Here, no one is certified to judge you...

Acthéean was confused by his own unusual and ambiguous admission. A spark in him’d awakened, making it easier for him to confide. He knew his two companions were silent and discreet. One didn’t confide to chance with a curious ear the "amorous" outbursts of a strange encounter.

"Was it directly after this apparition that you discovered the Grimoire?"continued Efrain.

" Yes. The scene faded as it'd appeared. My comrades were kneeling, and praying I believe, as I said. Behind me was this loaded lectern. A book on it, half-open. I knew it was it...I took a few moments to leaf through the artifact. It came out like strange impulses coming from its stained pages. Milite Grégoire asked me to close the book and bring it in right away. Not to read anything in it. But, very quickly, as the pages flowed, I'd time to discern that there were several written languages. Some I recognized, some didn't. But...

His voice melted into a painful choke at the recollection of the events. He finally deigned to brush the fluffy cheeks that burned him with a weary top of his hand, reminding him of the flowing waterfalls streaming down them. His gaze, on the verge of extinction, floated on Trevor who didn't even dare to breathe, hanging on his friend's lips.

Trevor didn't know the cause, but in his chest there was a 'beast' that gnawed at his ribs painfully, nibbled at his heart with its devious fangs, absorbed his lungs into void spheres, poisoned his guts in an erosive twist. Acthéean'd confessed an adoration for an apparition…and the confidence was now making its way into his mind soured by a resentment towards this thing, this monster who'd had the audacity to appear in front of his friend. He gasped at the thought of succumbing to the sting of unhealthy jealousy. Jealous that this other had, admittedly for a few moments as insubstantial as a breath, an ephemeral role in Acthéean's life. Resentful at not having been there, by his side,-alongside his only friend for whom he'd boundless and risky affection, dizzying in its spontaneous outbursts, and this since the young'd placed his reassuring hands on his wounds, caring for them, relieving them, as no one'd done before-, almost enraged at the idea that others, like Norton, had shared such intense moments with him.

As he eroded under the acidity of thoughts, Trevor then raised an interesting question:

"Did you remember something from the little that you'd time to read?"

Efrain raised an eyebrow interested in the question. Acthéean took a deep breath before letting it fall into a whisper so fragile you would've thought the words would otherwise have broken under a higher intonation.

“Oblivium sempiternum daemonis…

Trevor instantly recognized the words whispered in his ear as he fell deliciously asleep. He gave Efrain a lost look, setting up the corresponding variations that would give him the translation. Efrain smiled a little at the dismay reflected in the blue irises, before sententiously translating the sentence that'd made him wince too, but he showed nothing:

"The devil or demon will be forever forgotten...Are you sure of the incantation?

"Certain,"Acthéean replied, in a voice that resigned definitively.''This’s a sentence you won't forget...

"Are you familiar with this, Brother Efrain?"argued Trevor.

" Latin ? Certainly yes, little Trevor, unlike you...''Efrain finished with a cheeky laugh.‘’Don’t forget that you'll need to comfort yourself there in order to strengthen your spells...

Trevor muttered an imprecation that made the herbalist's tongue click in the way of urging his youngster to calm his language ardor. But the teasing made the three men smile, and relax a bit of an overloaded pressure of electricity that was choking the room.

"But, to be more serious, yes...it’s an adjuration uttered by seasoned Knights as they fight and bring down the spawn of hell. The most powerful, of course, not the unimportant demonic subforms. In general, an order to chant this adage should only be done in the face of very powerful Entities...

Trevor returned his attention to his friend:

"So why did you enunciated it to me in my sleep?

Acthéean was taken aback, and fluttered towards his companion, his mouth opening on the void of words. He stammered confusedly:

"I must've been talking in my sleep, as it happens to me now...I must've heard it in my dreams ...

"And you whispered that in my ear as you stroked me…''Shadow chirped in Trevor. Young Belmont didn’t show any of his confusion, but Efrain noticed that his youngster's complexion was equally upset in the delicate dusting of pallor along with a subtle and touching dew on the graceful corner of the cheekbones. In fact, on closer inspection, the velvety meat turned old pink along the neck twitching delicately under the tendons emerging in slender pillars as the head swiveled a little haphazardly, suffocated by sudden shame.

Acthéean knew. He knew that silence was in order. It was a little prank he’d indulged himself, so innocently, when his friend was being cradled tenderly by Somnus's arms. He couldn't resist the urge to stroke the adornment so shiny clean and care oils, wanting to thank his friend for his help. And his kisses'd met the blissful unconsciousness of the sleeper.

"You would've wanted him to be by your side there so badly...show him those daring and outrageous splendors..."

Who whispered that to him? He couldn’t go further in his introspection, exhausted on every level, ready to collapse. Efrain noticed this, and gave leave to the two young people, without giving them the opportunity to dispute:

"Trevor, you’d a really good idea to use the art like this, congratulations, we'll come back to that later. For now, Acthéean and you, go make me the pleasure of going to bed right away. You’re both totally exhausted. Acthéean, you're about to fall stiff...I think we've advanced the problem a bit. I'm confident in your ability to regain your memory, but for that you need intensive rest. I'll make you a slightly stronger decoction with hyssop. I do it for you too, Trevor. You’re excessively pissed off and upset these days, and I hate to see your wounds fail to heal properly.

"Is the appearance still nice ?''asked Acthéean, worried and oblivious of his fatigue. So much to fear any infection that would hide under the sutures, despite intensive disinfection care.

"Yes, yes..."Efrain muttered, as he began to flutter between his alambics and other containers of concoctions.‘’But, the last threads cannot be cut yet, since Mr. Belmont, here present, doesn’t remain quiet for more than a day!

The herbalist narrowed his eyes menacingly at young Belmont, but it totally failed in its effect which didn’t impress the fiery teenager at all.

" What?''belched Trevor, scandalized that they put their goodwill into healing, to badly.‘’I do whatever you tell me, Brother Efrain, and I feel strong enough to move again...

"Tell me you didn't just say that?"the scientist cut him off. ‘’You're constantly shaking yourself in all directions...I can no longer keep you quiet for more than an hour...You would practically be hanging on to the walls, if I didn’t pour a little tranquilizer in your infusions, sassy young!

Trevor stupidly smug at such a charge of laxity, he who begged for help!

"Since we're on the subject of confidences, young man, do you want me to explain to Acthéean how I kicked your ass to put you to bed?‘’Efrain whispered honeyedly, narrowing his gaze a little more that was sparkling with laughter at Trevor's dismayed and hilarious expression.

Poor Minouchet who only knew how to stutter, crimson red took over from the delicate old rose. Acthéean still had the strength to chuckle.

"You kicked his butt??!!...

"Because this young man didn’t want to know anything to rest his wounds!!''Efrain scoffed, thrusting the knife deeper into the wound of shame.‘’So yeah, one night he pissed me off, and I stroked his hindquarters with a good, well-felt kick...

"I didn't even have pain…''spat Trevor.‘’You hurt me more in reporting the incident.

He pretended to leave the room. But the roué was smart, and knew the three were having a good time at a childish game, in order to relieve the tension so painful. He was paying the price on a hilarious anecdote, never mind! He would play the game, far too happy to be able to relax. He'd already learned from this wise man that the mind needed to wander in spiritual relaxation, heartwarming moments and companionship, all those precious moments that made the smoothness of a life found in more peaceful imaginary grounds. Giving barely left childhood the tasty salt of another existence that would provide rare opportunities to make a sorrowful heart beat in hard earned profit.

Trevor smiled in complicity at the two men who’d finally made him realize that he still had to live through the remnants of a childhood that had largely fled now from the long dark corridors of his Being.

Then he accepted the friendly arm which encircled his shoulders, and led him towards the room shrouded in its eternal warm and intimate gentleness, he who, there was some time not so distant, would’ve spat, clawed, currying like a wild cat, the one who would’ve had the audacity to even touch him, or push him a bit like Acthéean did it freely.

The relaxation room was misted with the sweet scents of musky anointings, tasty decoctions, in the following minutes. The vellums displayed their carefully crafted sketches, scattered over the table, which remained laden with them. Efrain silently detailed the cast shadows, the devious but harmonious mixtures, deeply upset by something he himself couldn't quite comprehend. He was destabilized by too many timely similarities.

The alambics gently bubbled the smooth juices that poured out, as his sharp gaze saw the silhouettes shaped against the halos of flame, leaning over their respective beds.

“Oblivium sempiternum daemonis…'' was the litany written by the Brotherhood, in order to dilute the Supreme Evil in the Abyss of the Forgotten out of this dimension. A litany that a fearless knight'd recited more than necessary in his bitter struggle.

>>> ~~~ Õ00ooo00Õ ~~~ <<<

Chapter Text

Time seemed longer when he stretched out like this, unable to do anything, not practice, only exploring texts dealing with various concerns that the human soul encountered daily in its solitary entrenchments. Chronicles that Trevor devoured, eager to learn a little more about those who'd made the Brotherhood famous, among the biggest names, while feeling more and more relevant that there were terrible loopholes that we would've carefully erased the written memories,-a bit like the Memory of Acthéean-, to rewrite its history in dubious palimpsests, with a single goal: the utopia of a war won in advance by men against Evil. And the young novice to ask himself more and more questions about the illogicalities told in the collections making a good figure.

Efrain regularly left to healing-report on his two 'little ones', which Founder Chester d'Uries apparently took to heart to learn about. A somewhat stifling atmosphere of "mini war" between Uries and Volpe now poisoned the atmosphere, and it was becoming heavily grasped by anyone who came to visit the Founding Fathers. Volpe was up to something, and the other founders were rightly concerned about it. Apparently, Wygol's rout wasn't enough.

Efrain could only do his summaries, helplessly, while glancing visibly troubled towards the altarpiece bearing the Grimoire. Until one morning, when he no longer saw it. He knew as an aside that the cardinal'd locked up the precious and terrifying artefact, out of too curious eyes. Above all, however, the look of the book threw the men into utter dread. As if simply locking a book between weak walls that would inevitably collapse under attack, would prevent events from collapsing on their miserable spines.

Even more than silencing suspicions, this sudden paranoia of cloistering the Grimoire in secret abysses, had the gift of igniting deeply anxious minds and imaginations. For those who'd glimpsed its menacing lines, the artifact was now dominated by a terrifying figure that'd twisted its most simplistic conception into a dreadful outline of a specter silently screaming its imprecations written in letters...of blood?

But who'd written such horror?

Volpe'd contented himself, one evening when he found himself alone in the great icy room, to permanently steal the manuscript of the silent guard of the Mirror, to wrap it in holy bure, and carry it away from the copper radiance of the fearless Psyche. He didn’t even glance at the swirling silver lake, which revealed fluid and inconsistent forms yawning silent laments, like warnings, but which the old embittered cardinal didn’t care to pay more sustained attention to them.

During his short journey, which he trotted across ridiculously, he felt devious vibrations between his wrinkled, withered hands, sly vibrations twist the weight of the book, like an animal trapped and struggling desperately. He left the sackcloth completely obscuring the cursed object, and let it lie on a seal of protection he'd previously drawn. The narrow parcel, accommodating the feared artifact, was forged into additional barriers that would prevent anything, or anyone, from leaving, or entering.

In this particular night shaded by eternal stormy rumblings, Volpe came to "bury" the relic in the remote depths of the dungeon, and of his delirious memory, out of the sight of his colleagues ignorant of the desperate gesture to needlessly eradicate a coveted Book, and now, which'd apparently opened doors to an introspective Hell.

Too late, Volpe, you stole the last thing you shouldn't touch ...

Far from all this sulfur-flavored theatricality, the herbalist and Trevor, for their part, organized relaxing sessions for Acthéean, as soon as the young man looked better in order to support the efforts. He seemed to be regaining his strength and his face no longer displayed the features marked by mental exhaustion. The bruise gradually disappeared, and the midlines of his forehead were no longer as tight as they'd been when he woke up, so deep and chiseled, it looked like the young man'd taken twenty years of a sudden in his physique. The gray hazelnuts were less drenched in melancholy, no longer weeping for rivers of silver, but often remained focused on a point that only Acthéean could see. The hyssop seemed to be taking its toll on his mood more stable.

Instead of comforting himself in his psychological misery, he’d chosen a few days ago to resume his studies in the library of Andréas, or near Efrain when the latter wasn’t called elsewhere. On these occasions, Efrain'd accepted the apprentice to follow him, in innocuous situations that didn't require intensive deepening in the care. No matter how much Acthéean recovered the slope to more stable health, he was still forbidden to push his efforts too far.

Between these little loopholes which provided beneficial relief for his mind, he set off on the shores of his Memory, patiently in diapason with feathers and brushes. But it was still the same angles, the same strange curvatures of anamorphic images that resulted on the vellum.

It was still there, next to him. Without being there. Dotted hiccups in his wanderings. Acthéean dreamed in a loop of the pale phantom of the Lily that'd appeared to him in the aedicule of the library. An infinite songe, like a Muse mocking the dreamer struggling in his wandering among places…of ice?

It was more than five more days since their first artistic investigation to define the main features of reminiscences that were struggling to emerge from the waves of Agnosia. Acthéean suspected that if he didn't have his two friends around him, he would've gone mad circling through the twisted and insubstantial corridors of his mind. It was insane how an individual became a wreck when he lost all identity and memory structure. While keeping the events of a more distant past, clear and precise in Biographical Memory.

Until…Acthéean's obsession took other, more subversive forms, to the point of anguish. He found himself on the edge of the void, knowing that he might've to reach out to grab a tiny piece of veil obscuring his memory, finally pull out, and tear up that coriaceous residue.

The sketches that sprang up on the supports seemed to breach something he couldn't yet grasp concretely. He was dreaming in a loop from 'moon burst', as he described it, and his fleeting dreamlike visions, his unreal journeys to places he never knew. Subject to hallucinations, to hauntings incessantly drawing the same contours, imprinted in his sick mind with this invasion like a throbbing and unmanageable monomania. Until he found some semblance of a lead, he knew he was doomed in his ethereal wanderings.

Efrain much preferred to let his youngsters speak in their hesitation, while he watched closely for small changes in the descriptions. Did we finally succeed? By dint of stubbornness, the arabesques graffiti in the parchments took on a different consistency. At times the two youngsters were almost forehead to forehead as they bent over the efforts.

Until...Acthéean suddenly described more lingering atmospheres in the cycle, confusing compositions. Now the place seemed to weigh down under the ice, and the footsteps slipped on icy patches, causing him to fall into other spheres, resorbing a little more into an oblivion that'd decided to let go of the ballast. Finally.

Perhaps his Denial was slowly crumbling under the muddy recognition of his IT taking back the chipped reins, the still badly controlled halters to put the Steed of his Self back on the clearer paths of his Anamnese? The cart thus directed, sometimes took the somewhat insane paces of horses wrapped in their haunting fury to crumble the obtuse walls of Agnosia.

Nonetheless, Acthéean still woke up muddy, lost, trembling in his loss of orientation. He persisted in taking several minutes to settle into the physicality of his surroundings. If he got up too quickly, dizziness seized him sly, as if Morpheus refused to let his sleeper escape plagued by anxiety attacks poisoning his mind. True, the young man was making every effort to reconstruct an appearance less neglected than his mind was. Often, that was the first difficulty of the day. Sometimes he did it thanks to his two friends.

Andréas'd provided for the contribution of various materials from the illumination study room, and the drawings and other succinct delineations were now fanning themselves on the tables in the bedroom and reception room. But as soon as someone showed up for treatment, the rough drawings and engravings quickly disappeared into the soft confinement of the restroom, away from glances that would be too intrusive. It became an incredible jumble of thoughts and debris of dreams embodied in tangles circling around in sfumatos shrouded in the tulles of the drama. A fantasy playing hide-and-seek through the layers diluted in riddles and rebus.

The Milites Grégoire, Eléas and Norin'd come to take news regularly, to the great satisfaction of Acthéean, more moved than he wanted to show. The officers gave a little of the often distressing news on the maneuvers sent on various grounds, outside the foundations of the fortress. And each was anxious with each journey, to see the repetition in failure, as their garrison'd so dramatically experienced.

Every concrete block, every brick, the smallest stone in this immense edifice that was the fortress, seemed to tremble with a new pernicious terror poisoning even the slightest mortar sealing the buttresses. A new dread frozen in dismay took hold in the hearts of even the most seasoned. It was becoming consistent, without ever really revealing its identity.

High above the silence of the ramparts, the metal of the armouring rattled from time to time, and the armors shuddered with one wing beat harder than another; hearts were racing in a semblance of distorted abandonment in the gestures of relief team. The throats were parched in the flood of panic when the eye caught sight of a furtive shadow not belonging to the laws of this human world.

But, over and over again, for how long, the silence of the ramparts blossomed again, waiting to be jerked out of its unrealistic thick coat.

<< <000> >>

The cool wind could've carried on its ethereal and icy wings a dark lullaby which would've finally appeased the places frozen in perpetual winter. Here, the sun'd no rights. Half-darkness was the only queen in these localities, a sort of inanimate paradise, and orphan, a lament slowed down in its stifled echoes, was the song of eternal night. The trees'd long ceased to shiver from their bare branches, and the smells of moss and renewed vegetation'd given way to the permanent wiggles of fear graffiti in the hearts of the men surviving there.The icy and refreshing suavity of Petrichor, healthily seizing the bronchi of the Living, was nothing more than a very distant spectral trace in the memory of the Ether.

There was a time, not so long ago, in this village, no one closed the doors. The men went to the neighboring fields, and the village was deserted during this time. The older ones were in bed relieving their pains in a well-deserved rest from a busy life. The stables were emptied with the animals frolicking in the fields; poultry scattered in the heat of a summer, certainly stingy with sincerely hot rays,-but in this country, summer wasn't king in the most favored seasons-, the roads were clay, grass grew in the middle in crazy inextricable tufts, and the wheels of the wagons dug deeper excavations quickly filled with water from persistent rains. Cattles dung here and there deceived the clumsy sole of a childish race; a multitude of blue butterflies danced around in a ballet masterfully conducted by a clean nature exuding honesty.

So Wygol throbbed, it wasn't that long ago. Of course, the village'd found itself on a haphazard night, at the foot of an infernal structure that'd arisen from the Void and the Unknown. At that time, the sinful foundations even belonged to cursed owners who'd chosen the impenetrable paths of Necromancy, the darkest Esotericism, the most abominable Necrophagia. And Wygol was woven into the most infamous yardage that Fate could stretch on its Loom of human souls.

The people of Wygol no longer tasted for mosey in their infertile, stagnant fields, dying under the poison infiltrated by the deliquescent roots of the foundations. The old people no longer had a taste for sleeping their pains, for fear of not waking up again. The animal stalls emptied, but the beasts no longer grazed happily in the putrid fields. The bloody mud'd replaced the rainwater in the peat moss happily carved out by the cart wheels, and the soles that got lost, chomped on the acid from the sick cruor. Butterflies so blue or gold, dancing in the light of a faint, mellow ray of sunlight, deserted air and space, replaced by winged things we daredn't name. There was no more childish run that ended in laughter in the puddles, the chirping of their jokes choking off under the gurgling of ripped throats. The aerial and happy dreams of the sleepers, had become the dreams of the abyss devourers of places and people.

Everywhere there was the long endless thrill of Nature strangled in winter and eternal night. There was no more summer in Wygol. Not even a cold spring. The Chaos-Castle'd risen in absolute ice and snow. And the people of Wygol got into the habit of making their way through tunnels of freezing, collapsed roads of sharp stalactites begging to impale the clumsy that would slide down the gullies.

Wygol fell into diapason with a mad structure, a true Independent Entity in its origins coming from an unsuspected Elsewhere, while being dependent on its only Master who would know how to take advantage of it and nourish It with His cursed essence. Each lived on the other in its dogmatic and devastating osmosis. And Wygol learned the rules to its great detriment.

In this new night of perpetual frostbite freezing the devastated and desolate landscape in its bitter concretions, the shutters were sealed more firmly on the terror moved by the attentive ears having discerned the strange twirls creaking in the air, coming from immeasurable heights surrounded by heavy links of chains forged in the abysmal depths. The unthinkable parapets suspended up there, side roads breaking through the ice mists towards gigantic portals opening onto the fleshy mouths of unfathomable abysses,-all this impossible architecture, defying constructive logic-, jolted dangerously under the raging winds awakened as if under the dracholiche breath of an antediluvian entity.

The fragmented islets of their identical brothers were tossed about in whirlwinds oscillating vertiginously downwards, as if trapped in tornadoes which distorted them into figures charged with their deviant past. The slender, murderous needles of the turrets sharpened a little more under the invisible blade of renewed power hissing its rebirth after a long sleep in the demise of its stones.

The space fills with grumbling rumors, irrepressible shivers of the call to rally; deafening whistles like a unison acquiescence; a steady strike in the wind, like a wing tearing the fabric of Reality, and beating heavily in underlying threat. What if a sharpened gaze could've pierced the lingering darkness, it would've discerned the strange obscene ripples endlessly twisting the keen lines and contours, as if the edifice took an endless inspiration, swelling the volume of arches, flying buttresses, supporting pillars, stained-glass windows, windows oblong arched, at the very idea of lungs swelling excessively before suddenly bursting under pressure.

The blast seemed to extend to all the surrounding forests, and elsewhere through the deserted lanes crisscrossing the land; enveloping every fragment of centuries-old ruins collapsed and forgotten for so long; making every fine line vibrate on the surface of the lakes, rivers bubbling with the influx of unwanted lives suddenly defiling their confluences. The waters opened under spawn which shouldn't have been; the glades were invaded by evil shadows awakened from their sleep beyond the grave. The silent ruins were eviscerated of their putrid burden having watched for centuries before their call to duty.

The bony bridges crumbled under the weight of hellish mounts also awakened, as did their dead knights, their silhouettes infiltrating between the remains of cracked ribs, curved like parapets preventing morbid horsemen from falling into the void; the swamps emptied of frightful anthropomorphic Naiads, they who used to strangle reckless travelers in their gnarled arms like starving shrubs, were called to ravage the unconscious shores which lazily crisscrossed with their bursts of laughter, the edges of villages carefree.

Over there, on the confines of dried up aqueducts, swarming hordes gathered, sullying the ancestral stone with their poisonous juices, becoming encrusted in the smallest parcel of granite, poisoning even the cascades of water so pure and crystalline that scattered so happily from leonian mouths, so long ago. The arches and flying buttresses of centuries-old-aqueducts were enveloped in greedy roots of ivy and nasty brambles, scratching their wrinkles in the rubble carefully sealed, attempting to dig irreversible breaches in the purity of their architecture so defined and useful in the times of their Birth under the creative hands of forgotten architects. The delicate curvatures and sculpted in grace, suffocated under the invading branches, agonized under their murderous fangs. It became almost impossible to imagine that there was in this place, one day, the splendor of a carefully designed aqueduct in the navigation of subdued waves, the canals eroded under putrid moss, the devouring lichen, the sickly roots carrying their venom.

Everywhere, in a few dark nights suspending their breath in agony, the arcades, the monuments, the most remote vegetation, the villages where there was still a little normal life, everything was erased under the threatening claw which patiently woven its spokes. .

La Penombra watched for the moment which would prove opportune, nestled among its Fetish Shadows, before chanting its litanic songs which would make the hearts of humanity tremble. An Ode to Melancholy that it would engrave in the marble of a nocturnal symphony.

Ooo ~~~ Õ ~~~ ooO

Not hiding in the slightest bit his desire to return to a 'normal' life, Trevor pawed in impatience to go back to training, under the indignant eye of the herbalist scrupulously monitoring the progress of his healing. Efrain was regularly struck down under the crystalline and feverish gaze of young Belmont, to whom he refused day by day permission to climb the walls!

The unhappy teenager was undergoing a healing that strangely lingered in a languor that made him crack. Efrain was worried about it, and regularly checked the encrusted lips, admittedly in a clean and neat weaving of scar tissue, but which absolutely didn't validate a total closure, let alone the possibility of cutting the last sutures.

It was beyond his medical comprehension, and he began to rethink some medical philosophers who'd confided in their writings that spirit and flesh often went hand in hand for healthy healing. In short, if the mind was wrong, the flesh wouldn't heal. And since spirit is stronger than matter: WDS-CQFD.

Efrain didn't cogitate long before realizing that Trevor wasn’t healing properly, because he was so stressed out about his friend Acthéean's condition. If the herbalist still wondered about the mysterious functioning of the "Soul-Mates", he'd a living example in front of him: his two young people worked and suffered together, in unison, like two real Siamese twins by their destinies almost identical. They would come to dream of the same disturbing songes they stuck in from night to night.

Efrain'd also noticed that with the possibility for Acthéean to go to the library, to move around, certainly not for long, but to immerse himself in an activity that would make him forget his worries somewhat, Trevor, on the other hand, was constrained in forced confinement, the herbalist fearing at any moment that the stitched wounds would snap open with a sudden gesture. So, the poor kid was moping obtusely in his corner, even studiously reading his books.

Every now and then, Efrain would catch a fine diamond clinging to the eyelashes, making the crystal sapphires shine a bit too much. If by chance, a fine pink powder spread delicately over the high cheekbones, so preciously painting the Eburnean complexion, it was obviously a sign of internal nervousness which was gnawing at Trevor in a panic attack, that the young struggled to fight so as not to burst.

The herbalist gently consoled the poor adolescent who felt abandoned in his cloister of silence,-perhaps a little selfishly in a possessive desire to have his friend with him. But who could be angry with him, when he'd never known a faithful and reliable friend like Acthéean? All he wanted most, too, was to finally find what would trigger his friend's click, that little something that would finally free the bird from its cage. It wasn't even for himself that he worked so much for this presence, but rather to burst the abscess of this Amnesia.

So Efrain continued to rave about the patiently drawn works under his friend's still nebulous descriptions ; he studied them and sometimes drew strange, disturbing conclusions that he feared one day would be explained in a disturbing concrete way. You could tell Efrain was watching things fall into place, in an agonizing form he couldn't quite pinpoint.

But the evolution was there anyway and prevailed, through the early stammerings; the unhealthy hesitations generating fits of tears and ramblings, as the nights awake, and days when fatigue, even mental exhaustion. The drawn curves were traced in more coherent stories over the pen and brushes bursting with precious inks. Plus the delicate sketches revealed similar grim scenes in each of the youngsters’s dreaminess.

Efrain also took pleasure in giving some courses of medicine, advice, explanations on certain benign ailments which thwarted the daily life of the warriors, the novices, of any individual breathing between the foundations of the Brotherhood,Trevor gladly took hold of those cleverly strung nets for his attention, and delighted in openly arguing with the herbalist whom he esteemed a wise friend. Efrain smiled inwardly: he had succeeded in drawing Trevor's melancholy into other topics of conversation that he knew would interest the youngster's intelligence and thirst for knowledge at a high level. And more than once he looked at the glow back in the water orbs.

Then, Acthéean returned from his short absence. Recounted his day and his encounters, although limited mainly to Andréas, and a few novice friends like Norton. And a kind of renewed life beat, fluttered between the intimate partition of the room, and the graceful and volatile buzz of conversations bounced tenderly off the walls hung with colored curtains saved from affadation by the permanent half-darkness of the room.

As the fifth day ended in the crimson and violet colors of its misty dusk, Efrain invited his two youngsters to attend vespers, the liturgy of which was to be read by none other than Chester d'Uries, like every month end.

Trevor's first vespers, since his brutal punishment. When it was announced that the master of ceremonies was Founding Father Chester, in unison, the gray hazelnuts and transparent sapphires were dazzled with contentment.

Conscientiously, the two young men chose their most chic clothes; Acthéean tidied his shave more closely in order to present a face more lively than it was, trying to erase the lingering dark circles of his poorly slept nights; Efrain looked at Trevor's scars again, but could only nod at a possible withdrawal of the threads. Sadly, Trevor pulled on one of his prettiest immaculate shirts, taking great care especially to tie the cords tight, so as to hide from all view a plunging neckline on his razor-sharp collarbones and the gently undulating hollows of the pecs refined in a marble whiteness. No need yet to panic old minds unbridled with perversities, Trevor was fedup with all these immature and deviant reactions to his physical integrity.

But above all still, for a few hours, the young man felt a furious desire to rub his back against the walls! Not by misplaced excitement, but rather by what Efrain'd diagnosed as perfect and full healing, causing irrepressible itching now. And the back area was terrible to deal with, when it devoured you tissue in redemption! If Trevor followed his urge, he would look like a bear scratching itself against a tree!

"Above all, you mustn't scratch yourself, miserable one!" Efrain'd enjoined him, devastated by the beginning of a vengeful gesture on the bites from the youngster. "You're going to tear off the scabs, the threads, and bleed everything again ! In addition, it'll make you indelible scars afterwards!

"How do I do, Brother Efrain?" Even the fabric of the shirt makes me want to scratch! And we go to the abbey...if it takes me in full vespers...

Acthéean gently rubbed his back, trying to relieve a little of the arousing "itchiness" that was twisting the youngster's nerves.

"You should be happy, it's finally healing! Even though we can't remove the threads yet, it really is proof that it's healthy...at least you've the consolation that there's no hidden infection which would delay the cicatrization...

"When we get home this evening, I'll prepare nourishing oils for you that'll relieve you...'offered Efrain. 'Try not to think about it...Really think that you're going to pray and listen to Chester, and have been going out since you came to the apothecary.

Trevor'd that peculiar look, from below, when he didn't dare make a request that bothered him.

"Brother Efrain…do you think I could…? You know what I told you...

The herbalist immediately understood the hint.

"I'll take care of it, don't worry...I'll check with him about this 'problem'...

"Will he think that do I take too much pride in asking that sort of thing?…But, I would like to have peace with myself, and with others…

Efrain didn't answer. There was nothing to say, by the way. He could only put a comforting and friendly hand on the young man's shoulder, simply acquiesced with a look in which he concentrated a calming response the youngster could interpret.

Trevor put the slight worry behind his attention, and nodded happily, his childish pout gently stretching his lips. He'd unrestricted confidence in the wise man whom he knew to be silent and discreet about the tendentious situations which regularly punctuated everyone's daily life now.

The light rub that Acthéean'd given him on the back, seemed to have done him good, and had made him 'fall back asleep' the little tingles which had flirted a little too much on his healed flesh for a few moments.

>>> ooo ~~ ooo <<<

It almost looked like the Natality procession during the sacred feasts illuminated by bonfires in braziers scattered all over the path leading to the abbey; the procession of shadows wisely in meditation while walking slowly, heads bowed in the prayer invoked for access to Vespers; the heavy silence barely interrupted by the rustling of the burlap robes, the sandals dusting the cobblestones on which they scraped, the metallic clattering of the plate armor of the high-ranking officers; the whispering barely expressed in a respectful ritual between several penitents doing their verbal ablutions before entering the holy of holies.

The liturgical psalmody of the sacrament hummed in all the throats in a deep symphony, bass in the tones, like meditative Gregorian chants, and the Te Deum of Ambroise of Milan had started its modulations in vocal variations that gave the irrepressible shiver in all the spines, listening to the musical beauty of these sacred laments.

Efrain and his two youngsters waited patiently for the parade of the "highs" to engulf the half-light of flame and gold of the excessively lit candlesticks of the abbey. All these high figures'd priority to settle in the first rows of the nave, and the maneuver took place in a calm and a more accentuated respect than on the other days: it was after all one of the highest dignitaries among the Founders, who was going to lead this ball of spiritual rituality.

Trevor'd rarely been able to participate in vespers with such a presence. As a novice, time for schools and member educators, he could only see the very end of the ceremony, all being put on the back stands, they entered last, and often missed the entire sacred celebration. At least when it was Uries who was the Master of ceremonies that night. In memory, Trevor couldn't find a whole moment where he'd been able to participate in these vespers, more sacred than others, by the presence of the Founder respected and adored.

On top of that, novices absolutely had to spend almost "in a single line" at the confessional run by priests of higher rank that day for the circumstances. But whether the priesthood was higher or not, Trevor saw some hypocritical situations bitterly. Behind the most flamboyant golden hangings in their weaving, no matter how many candelabra lit that evening, no matter the intoxicating and heavy smells of incense, all of this failed to hide the blackness of certain individuals who like scavenging insects gnawed at the fruit from within, leaving only a withered carcass at the end of the banquet.

So finally tonight, Trevor was going to attend the entire ceremony. He would religiously listen to the texts modulated by a character he'd grown to admire and appreciate. He was so exhilarated by the event, that he'd indeed completely forgotten about the vicious little "bites" of the scar tissue that wisely stitched the wounds together. His blue orbs followed in wonder the long parade, trying at times to discern the dance of singing shadows through the rich lighting of the nave. He could've fancied himself in the midst of the wedding ceremony of a high dignitary, or even the coronation of a king, so the sacred edifice sparkled with dazzling personable!

He felt himself pulled by the sleeve as his sharp gaze made out the hated figure of Cardinal Volpe settling alongside the muscular and awe-inspiring mass of Chester of Uries. Efrain was rounding the two together, in order to cut through the crowd of those who were quietly waiting for them to finally be allowed to enter the holy temple.

Without saying a word, the herbalist led his two young people to the side doors of the abbey. Doors that Trevor knew were closed regularly, but which this time would open discreetly before them. Indeed, the people were too busy admiring the procession and calculating how gain access to a place that would favor them for listening to vespers, to take care of the stealth of three men having the possibility of hijacking the hierarchical merry-go-round.

Acthéean, Trevor slipped silently between the leaves of the double door which closed immediately on them, while the man who'd opened them, remained hidden in the shadow of the threshold, whispering some instructions to Efrain who nodded, before leading his 'little ones', silent with ecstasy and pride, towards the side niches of one of the transepts, quietly going up the shining alleys of the paving stones smoothed by the use of the passages; the permanent dampness that always remained in churches or other august buildings, silver particles too, like powder poured onto their matte shards projecting strange designs; of reverberations in moiré multitude of the many lighting made of tapers, smaller candles lit in memory of a deceased person or for a special prayer. In some places the pavement was so reflective that it looked like a shimmering surface of water in which were reflected strange contortions of holy statuaries, or more severe carvings.

Trevor took the time to record all these marvelous details he loved to observe when he'd a little more time. But for now, his gaze ranged from those fascinating scenes, in more subtle bursts of titillating his boundless imagination, to the alert figure of Efrain guiding them between the members still scattered through the aisles, waiting for a place on the benches blackened with polish and dark purple with sinuous veins.

They almost came to the front of rows, normally reserved for high officials, and Efrain motioned for them to stay put. Instinctively, the two young people approached the herbalist, attentively considering the crowd which was settling down quietly; the swarm of priests and abbots in ceremonial clothes for the exceptional circumstance, who nodded their heads when one of their sidekick whispered a few secret words in their ears; Cardinal Volpe who put on an air he wanted detached, while his gaze seemed to bruise anyone who stood in front of him.

What was fascinating in itself was still the chanting modulations that hadn't ceased since the start of the procession gradually settling in, and the intonations rocked the souls subjected to deep meditation. A magnificent music in itself that Trevor and Acthéean fed on without moderation, while Efrain regularly monitored everything that was going on around them. What did it matter, if they'd to remain standing in the side aisle, under the very shadow of a pulpit dedicated to a saint whose name he'd forgotten, as long as they were relatively close to the heart of the nave, in the right place to follow the ceremony without the gaze being parasitized by other figures standing in front of them. It was a first Efrain'd managed to slip into like this, and he was happy to have been able to give his youngsters the benefit.

His pride was flattered a little more, when his inquisitive gaze suddenly recognized a peculiar figure among the crowd now well installed and governed by order and rank of everything in everyone. Efrain was even astonished to see a novice arrived at the height where they were. No doubt that the young man must've come without his school friends, and had managed to slip much further forward in the rows, most certainly recognized by the priests who led the lines of faithful.

Efrain leaned over to the two young men, and gave them some direction that they wait for him where they were, and that he would be right back. Acthéean nodded, Trevor said nothing, busy absorbing himself in the music of the hymns, and the aerial ballet taking place in the heart of the nave for the preparations. So he didn't see the herbalist quietly walking away, slicing through the groups of people clustered wisely along the supporting pillars engraved with symbols of faith. Acthéean saw the one Efrain was trying to reach, and a small smile tugged at the ever-pale lips surrounded by eternal stubble.

<<< ~~~ ooo ~~~ >>>

Everything here was eternal ice. Flakes constantly swirled over the desert landscape shaded in the most sublime gray, the dissimilarity of ‘mouse’, 'Payne', 'cold' or 'hot', bluish or slightly glowing. It was all a monochrome palette of bistre, beige coupled with touched and faded greige, pristine white, candle black, or soot black. The stones were only modeled in the same gradations, dusty colors, ash tones, subtle sparkle modulations flirting with deep purples, but never heightened light to define their harsh forms in their erection.

The Overlook'd been the same for hundreds of years. The edifice erected its heavy structure in the footsteps of a mighty, cylindrical, and immeasurably tall keep, so much so that its crenellations seemed to tear the clouds apart. But the Overlook wasn't just a single tower, but made up of several more or less debris turrets scattered across the mounds of snow that languidly lazed over the sharp cornices; the ravines with gaping mouths spitting out their scree; the remains of steps carved into the slippery stone, forming afterglows of winding paths along deceptively reassuring escarpments. Leading into the breaches disfiguring the cliff into devious caves crippled with traps, in which unspeakable lives awaited their opportunity.

To the reckless traveler, stepping into this eternal whiteness was synonymous with a fatal fall at one turn or another from embankments and hanging mounds, or treacherous ledges. But nobody, for a very long time, had the right to tread these arid lands of frost, without paying the serious consequences. Moreover, no one in their own right, or alive, would've dared to even get lost in these forbidden places.

Perhaps on a brighter day, the Overlook'd been a magnificent tower, full of wisdom and Memory, where man could've wandered in peace. The other small dungeons and turrets, frozen belfries and torn belvederes which flanked it, could've been places of pilgrimage dedicated to the cults of ancient and forgotten gods. Oh yes ! No doubt there've been great battles here, fought by great minds…if so, everything was blanketed in the snowy dust of irrevocable oblivion. Nothing's forever…

But the Overlook, despite its stern, grieving appearance, which elicited deep recollection, was one of the forbidden wings for mortals, and had its roots and origins in the same obscure soil from which Chaos-Castle was born. Its ruined platforms, for the most part, nestled between the rugged mountainous foothills, from which here and there arose unstable bridges in centuries-old erosion. Sometimes, an excavated climb twisted along the sides of dungeons not spared by time, and of which nothing remained but gaping and void in their gutted walls. It was through their sad wounds that one could gain access to interiors as sordid as the outdoors. No, definitely not a place for mortals!

The winds howled their anger through the weakened battlements, threatening at any moment to take a dizzying plunge into the panoramic view of breathtaking eerie beauty. At the top of the side-rails were staggered pedestals and beams having served as a support base, there was a time, and which firmly united the structures between them, or a ceiling disappeared in the depths of the forgotten. Pulleys, the last vestiges of what looked like catapulted siege machines; unusual devices carved out of war, struck down on the ground like the bones of an endless story lying in powder swirled with silver and blue.

Half buried in dissociated walls, wheels with handles sprang up at the bend of a small courtyard, inviting the curious who would've been lost, to turn them despite the rust freezing them. Certainly after a great effort to rotate them on their axis, they were connected to rising gates which submitted to the order to rise. So that the dangerous visit to the premises can continue and thus lead the unwary towards the unsuspected depths of mortality.

If the brave traveler'd come to their enigma spewing out their debris, the opening of the ruined portals allowed access to immense rooms cut brutally in the mountainous stone, and his gaze could be lost towards the incredible heights which seemed to really crush the human insect that would've dared to cross their sacred and mysterious threshold.

Everywhere crisscrossing the collapsed foundations, greenish disgust asked only to rip the hesitant step under their slippery humus. Even the huge bell of the Overlook Keep was disfigured by a nasty crack, but the beating, so long ago, no longer struck the brass throat of the bronze monstrosity carved with esoteric effigies. Under its suspended weight, mounds of rotten landfill were frozen in uncertain equilibrium, perhaps waiting their moment to collapse onto the back of the unconscious visitor.

Still far away in these vertiginous heights, like twisted centipedes, unstable scaffolding scattered their relics of worm-eaten wooden floors, their torn plinths cracking their knots streaked in the mold. It would've taken an unconscious fearlessness to climb its rickety rungs, to land on questionable flats, each slat of which threatened to give way under the insecure foot. These bunch of uncertain conglomerates clung as best they could to the cracked fortifications of the dungeons and campaniles which were surrounded by some, certainly for the former purpose of reconsolidation, and if the climbing didn't prove to be too perilous, the reckless accessed other aggregates just as rickety as their colleagues, some of their planks suspended by some unknown miracle from a few twisted points preventing them from falling into the deadly void with the sharp blades of the buttresses.

On the tops of numerous turrets, beams and planks were piled up in a most complete disorder, which could've made think of a clash of sticks of "Mikado" that a player would've abandoned in a fit of nervousness. It was even inconceivable that all these anarchic tearing to pieces could remain frozen in space-time like this; one would expect at any moment that they were shattered under the sweep of an invisible hand.

Huge and magnificent ogive forged gates stretched their sharp points into the recesses that quietly shadowed them, assuming those creaky portals would open to well-kept secrets. The Overlook was superb, tiled thus in its irrational landscapes of frost and perpetual powder, enveloped in all its courtyard in ruined splendors, sublime evanescence in its veils of silvery grayness.

In the setting lights of a new twilight, if the awe-inspiring gaze of the visitor harnessed a holistic view, it might've resembled a backward tracking-camera-movement, absorbing the entire magical expanse into a single vivid image of shadows, intertwined darkness; bursts of rage for inclement weather hesitating to surge in; grainy, rocky, cavernous sounds, amplifying the atmosphere of frightened and plaintive tremolos. Glacial odors that would freeze the throats of any being who has crossed the prohibitions; those more intense of the subtle woods strangled by the sly acid swirls of sheets of dubious moods soiling the snowy ground.

Frost and flamboyance fought this landscape violated by multiple pernicious erections brandishing an evil omnipotence. And through this all merged into myriads of aggressive stimuli, suddenly languish in a long, initially indistinguishable lament, only to swell into a gullied depth of low, almost deafening tones. A sound. No, a moaning call crescendoing in the sound impact, which would painfully vibrate the eardrums with its extreme bass rolling in the traveller's guts until nausea, and making the brain suffocate with the dull tremors.

First of all: echo quartered in its too starched ricochets in a solemn and austere baritone, it amplified alarmingly, reaching heights in a voiceless cry. Everything that lived around knew what it was, where it came from. A foghorn? A siren with aggravated sounds seeming to spring from the depths of the earth itself.

Attached to the Overlook, far behind in its immense surface, a diamond-shaped promontory stretched lazily, rocky hanging from the building like an unhealthy Siamese. Covered in ice and snow, stalactites of impressive length cascaded down its guardrail. At the end of its crumbling railing point stood a splendid flared horn with a gaping bellows, the base of which twisted around itself like a huge sleeping snake: the Horn of Bromios! Made of the purest brass, thus facilitating the long modulation blown through its ringed body, thus projecting the irresistible call echoing throughout the mountain valley, bouncing off the foothills and chiseled cliffs, to reach the hearing of spawn that would only ask to respond to this invoked gathering.

Who was blowing into the tip of the horn, no one knew. But the profound exhortation was heard from afar. Far into the guts of forests stained with infernal shadows, through the millennial ruins of Agharta which began to vomit up its minions in moving and nauseous torrents. Deep in the putrid basements of the 'Forbidden' Wing, inaccessible caves harboring the worst forms born of absolute nightmares, Towers reserved for certain ranks of monstrosities awaiting orders.

The Horn of Bromios sang for hours, summoning the terrors of Dark Monks, Summoners, and Howlers, the worst specters to fight and who often brought down the bravest garrisons. Unbeknownst to all, in the most total unknown, the fabric of Reality slowly tore, and inevitably disgorged its unhealthy rivers of avenging and warlike ectoplasms, treading with their cursed steps the sacred ground, violating the foundations of their bitter thrusts in order to spread their venom in the very targeted walls.

Wargs and Lycans swept through the degraded chasms of Agharta; Ride-Warthog, caparisoned with indestructible armor, unrolled their frantic gallops, pushed by their evil and sick riders; War-Warthogs of war resembling reborn Triceratops with impossible to pierce steel plates, ridden by the worst depictions of starving Goblins thus waiting for their pittance. Tonight was finally going to be the unbridled libations, and bloody banquets, allowed by their Master of All and Chaos. All this bacchanalia spewed out by hell, tore landscapes and valleys, glades and forests under their vengeful hoof-claws, pouring in a frightening and unstoppable physicality.

All mortals who heard the lament of the Horn of Bromios, knew that they'd to enclose all the issues of their abodes in helpless superstitious terror. They could only tremble in the recesses of their meager dwellings that could never resist a raging surge in a door or window, if one of these monsters'd the idea of banqueting before their final destination. All knew that Hell was suddenly called into a war that'd now dragged on for too long, and was in danger of dragging on beyond all expectation of human life.

Almost identical to the swarming tide that'd fallen on the heels of the last garrison that'd dared to brave the ramparts of the destroyed abbey, over there, within this cursed village, it became an exponential roll, bursting into poisonous, sour miasmas, rotting everything it touched, shattering death with one breath.

And it hurtled like a horde of wild horses in madness, entangled in a chaotic race the outcome of which would be fatal.

~~~ 000 << >> 000 ~~~

Immersed in his pious concentration, Trevor'd eyes only for the ceremony which took place in a peaceful and respectful silence, if not the liturgical readings modulated by the deep tenor of the voice of Chester d'Uries who'd taken the controls of the vespers, while the other ecclesiastics'd arranged themselves in a quarter-circle around the tall, massive and impressive figure of the Founder-Knight. Everyone listened religiously to the harmonious psalms, and the abbey was crowded with the influx of people who'd come to listen to the sacred prayers formulated by a dignitary highly esteemed in the hearts of all.

Trevor was like the rest: rocked carefully by the deep and powerful sound of Chester's voice. Every word that flowed from the bearded lips was a symphony of fascination, and the meaning of the verses themselves took on a whole different identity. For nothing in the world, we couldn't have torn the Belmont from his astonished and moving contemplation. Far behind him the devious little "scratches" that tickled his dermis in redemption; far behind his attention, the subtle little stings that nibbled at the lower part of his loins. Full and whole in his meditation caressed by the theological psalms, his mind thought of nothing more than the happy blessing in which he was swimming, overjoyed to finally be able to participate in vespers to which he'd longed for so long, and almost in the front row even!

He'd so stuffed himself with anecdotes, extraordinary chronicles that told the epic epopees of the Founder, stories he'd devoured and re-read over and over again that he could recite some of the manuscripts by heart. With Guilyem de Rem,-from whom he'd only recently learned to be Acthéean's father, through intimate and sweet confidences-, Chester d'Uries held the upper hand in the Chronicles. Trevor dreamed of experiencing such exceptional adventures and feats as these men'd experienced them.

Confined in the sweet room in which he was now assigned, - silently regretting the day he would leave the premises, for his austere cell - he loved to immerse himself in precious manuscripts, retracing forgotten wars, painting absolutely unthinkable characters. Like the Chronicles of Ledorinian, soldier of the Brotherhood, and who'd sacrificed himself to feed these semblance of children that were Euryale, Stheno and Medusa, without suspecting for a single moment that he was giving his life for the terrible Sisters Gorgons, the only survivors of the fall of the Gods of Agharta, but oh! it was millennia ago, during the Thousand-Years-War of the Necromancers. The Three Sisters hid themselves among the shadows, and their hearts were corrupted and withered, but they kept their childish appearance on their faces, thus deceiving any valiant warrior who saw in them nothing but starving and exhausted children.

Or Thorir de Norway who followed a command to confront Medusa, and saw his companions pass away, eternally frozen in the stone tombs they'd become. All Thorir could do was stay with his companions on this one-to-one journey.

All those tales that lit Trevor's eyes with sorrow for those brave warriors, and his heart beating faster, straining his will to a hope of one day fighting these spawns, as he'd been trained to do from his early childhood. And maybe also, face the Dragon?...

It was seething in Trevor's mind, halfway between silent prayers, attention to recited vespers, the dancing of holy men in front of artifacts and consecration objects. So he paid no attention whatsoever to the small movement of the crowd that swirled around him, before his neighbors settled down quietly at his side. He was in the shade of the pulpit above their heads, and was definitely no longer present in the spirit with his cronies, obsessed with the ceremony.

Acthéean was also focused on the stage, but not as intensely as his friend. He made room for the newcomer dragged in tow by the unwavering Efrain. The herbalist gazed at Trevor's frozen figure, his thin and determined face in the sharpness of his chiseled features and the angular jaw, highlighted by the hair wisely tied in a leather tie, falling down the back in a river of onyx, only the shorter locks framing the face, and the slanting bangs barring the forehead, escaped freely in a vaporous cloud emphasizing the wild and undeniable beauty of the young man.

He’d made the careful effort to tame his finery by styling it with a semblance of wisdom - at least what might’ve passed as such - but which, in fact, enhanced the Eburnean complexion even more the savage glow of pure waters, high and sharp cheekbones. In fact, despite serious combing of the strands of silk ordered in a sober tie ; more fitted clothes and severely laced as an additional precaution, the color of the tunic, of that typical forest green which enhanced the radiance of the mane and the complexion ; the brais of a shade that sailed between mouse-gray and verdigris ; high-boots that hugged the tapered and muscular thighs more than necessary, Trevor’d succeeded in the involuntary tour de force of drawing all eyes on him, instead of blending into anonymity.

Efrain noticed that a number of people seated quietly on the benches, sometimes looking away from the altar, to examine the young man yet so silent and discreet in the corner of his pillar. It'd to be said, too, that the majority of the human mass mingled in drab, grayish shades of sober yet so expensive clothing, as Trevor sported a crisp shirt and a soft green, which stood out in all this dull chromatic.

The man laughed inwardly, peering at people curious about his 'little one'. He knew that some personalities were suffused with such fascinating charisma, that when they entered anywhere, it seemed that they incredibly illuminated the place with their "light", and attracted all the hypnotized attentions. It was a unique gift that Trevor was apparently blessed with. Without ever realizing the effect he was having on others. All eyes were on him, because Chester’s Uries'd noticed their presence on the lateral side, and was keeping his eyes on their little group, as he continued his sermon. Which'd made many wonder, who the Founder was staring at.

After a while, Trevor then noticed the unspoken merry-go-round between Chester's gazes, and those of some in the front rows who were starting to turn strangely. A delicate powder of dew suddenly dusted his cheeks, when he realized he was unwittingly becoming the target of over-warned attention. Under the weight of too curious and focused gazes, young Belmont drew back a little further into the shadow of the niche which housed the small espaliers climbing up to the pulpit.

No one noticed the tiny smile that stretched his lips intoning the prayers, giving a perky glow to Chester's eyes, who continued unperturbed, if not that smile, his sacred rants. Inwardly, he laughed at Cardinal Volpe, who he knew how to chomp in the face of so much attention and sympathy towards his personality, and savored a sort of petty revenge that would teach this imbecile humility. If the ecclesiast could guess the gestures of curiosity towards the little youngster Chester'd spotted, tucked soberly under his pulpit, he must've been swallowing his bure with rage. It would also teach this narcissistic megalomaniac to calm his egocentric ardor. Let him plague as much as he wants!

While maintaining a neutral voice, he vowed to meet the scientist and his two youngsters after the ceremony. This was what infuriated Volpe even more, when he chose not to abide by hierarchical ethics and obligations, instead deciding to go out and talk to the chosen people and talk to them with ease. So he decided, and in anticipation feasted on the fury that would inflame the cardinal even more.

All those present were far from suspecting the storm of thoughts in the mind of the one they adored and respected, and Efrain and his little youth committee even less. The one who'd been sought to join them, stood at attention silently, arms folded behind his back, dark gaze lost in the distance of the altar, barely brushing against the holy figures. Acthéean'd greeted him discreetly, giving him a friendly smile. Trevor hadn't noticed a thing, hadn't seen a thing, and certainly wasn't paying attention to the newcomer. Which pained the young man somewhat, who took this attitude as contempt for him, and he felt a nasty bite in front of the affront, his cheeks burning, a little.

Acthéean must've understood the misunderstanding of the situation, and as discreetly as possible made a reassuring gesture towards him and Trevor, seeming to tell him that his friend was too obsessed with the session he had long dreamed of attending. Lightning fast, his hand squeezed the arm as if in a reassuring movement. Acthéean'd known that, during his comatose state, Norton'd been very badly received by a Trevor mad with worry and despair at the remains of his friend who'd returned "dead" on the novice's horse, during their stampede. Efrain'd told him about the insane mortifying moments during which Trevor let off steam on Norton whom he held responsible for his condition. The hapless young man hadn't even had a chance to defend himself against a raging fury under grief. It'd taken that Milites Grégoire and Eleas intervene to explain Norton's involvement in the rescue of Acthéean, the fact that he twice saved his friend's life.

Anger and despair drowned in sorrow, often made those afflicted with sudden grief commit the unthinkable. And Norton'd almost suffered the consequences. The two young men'd argued fiercely over Acthéean's boneless, limp body lying on the treatment table. A painful memory for Efrain who thus saw himself burdened with the probably lost body of his apprentice, the mortification of the tragic event, as well as two dogs enraged with terrified fury who were to cut each other apart.

Norton'd been to the apothecary twice since: for some mild treatment of superficial wounds, under Trevor's dark gaze, and another time on a friendly visit and to check on some news, while Acthéean wasn't at his best. Young Belmont'd said nothing more to him, but he felt as though he heard the darkest thoughts about him, which the savage was brewing for him. The halting exchange between the apprentice and Norton had taken place in the gravity of growing unease, beneath the orbs of storm-colored steel this time.

He didn't know that Acthéean'd told his side of the story, which he remembered vividly before the disaster, and had emphasized Norton's heroism towards him heavily, on several occasions. The young novice’d shown himself to be valiant, courageous and reckless, not hesitating to put himself in a perilous situation alongside Acthéean. From the fond memories he’d detailed in front of the two men, and reiterated later, in the mellow, reassuring privacy of the silent bedroom, to a distraught and still shocked Trevor. Jealous too, perhaps. He understood right away the glances between the two, and something'd 'snapped' inside him, insidiously. Norton'd been lucky enough to go there. Not him!

So the fact that Efrain noticed the young novice in the rows in front of the altar, and suggested that he join them, was an unforeseen event to which it would be interesting to see the reaction of the fiery Belmont, almost three weeks after the tragedy. Efrain was attempting to bring souls of goodwill together in a circle of friendship, knowing many similarities in each individual, and what could be better than during this vespers, when Trevor was in a relaxed and spiritually happy state of mind? It was a temptation. And the Belmont was smart at sorting things out. Even if he didn't recognize it right away, stubborn as he was, he would agree to make "peace."

Efrain sighed inwardly: a ragpicker battle'd been enough for him once, at the worst time! At best, if he saw that the two were starting to scold each other, he would slash them by the collar himself, and fire them with kicking insolent arrogant hindquarters!

He swayed a bit on his stability, folded his hands behind his back, shrugged as if to throw a devious weight, and listened religiously to vespers. Trevor hadn't left the stage for a second, literally and definitely spellbound. Acthéean winked at Norton who began to stare at the beautiful, shiny ponytail that flowed between the shoulders dressed in green and white. Even so fastened, the diamond set retained its sulphurous and fragrant sensuality,-Norton'd noticed several times, long before Trevor was confined for treatment, that the Belmont always gave off a fragrance of freshness and care, pleasant and unique-, it was a true symbol of vice, pushing the most daring hands to grab hold of silk that was always clean but not always tamed by the comb.

When you knew that his comrades didn’t always have these good hygiene practices, to be by the side of the Belmont taking so much care of his physical appearance, was a blessing. Even this incredible hair didn't admit any pests, lice or other animals so common in others. To believe that Trevor wore protective seals all over him, scaring away the horrors infecting the lives of others! He knew the young mad of baths and ablutions that would cleanse him perfectly, and in this century it was a miracle, a submission to such intoxicating care for the flesh-….

Blessed would be the one who would be his lover! My god, had he thought that now? He bit the inside of his cheeks, blushing surreptitiously, and tried to focus on the scene in front of the altar, which'd taken a different turn.

~~ ooo << >> ooo ~~

Then there was that insistent scratching, echoing on all the damp fortifications, the walls cluttered with webs skilfully woven by arachnids; the smallest partition sealed in esoteric nectar, the thinnest separation holding its breath, buckling its diaphragm in hiccups; half-timbering and hourdage roofing invaded with splinters of timbers, of fragile planks undulating on a vertiginous void.

Starting from nothing, with a simple scratch on the catatonic marble of a sepulcher, the scratching became a deafening squeak for those in the shadows who heard it, and rushed to answer it. With a single claw, it was rekindled by its 'sisters,' sharpened at the tips of five diaphanous fingers that proudly displayed them in their onyx shine.

The catafalque quivered with newly heightened languor under the keen caress. Those who rested there, souls struck down for a long time, were slowly drawn from the sacred Limbo of their rest. But whoever was lying there would find no compulsion but to respond to the call of his Prince.

Wherever they were scattered in treasures unwrapped in their rich white and gold halos, the candles languished their waxy bodies in strange modeled and distorted structures, coating the pavements and marble floors with golden liquor, immediately freezing in the coldness of the place. Some candelabras'd been burning for so long that their wrought iron rods literally upchucked with fragrant cascades of encaustic, sometimes exhibiting strange and beautiful waffle statues in the serendipity of the coulis, mirror reflections of seals carved with mystical effigies. All it took was a current of air to influence the drips and give them a whole new look. Running along mediastines overloaded with decorations in certain rooms, magnificently crafted balconies disgorged their overflow of wax and gel which mingled gracefully in these scintillating stalactites, plunging into small, almost intimate ditches where unusual fountains finished spewing out their crystalline waterfalls of ice.

Under the endless, throbbing squeak, all this haphazard artistic abundance vibrated succinctly, as if awakening to showers of extravagant heat that shouldn't have exposed its warming rays. Here it wasn’t the lava-cradled undergrounds, as they’d conquered ground farther on, in forbidden and deadly wings. Besides, there was only the Master to come, from time to time, to drown his bereaved fury in their rivers of incandescence and amber-purple. Even the Witches-Coven invoking the Demon-Lord, never allowed themselves to be tempted to cross this fire-border, and wander in confines forbidden to them. These were the Prince's imperative orders: everyone in their territory, if they didn't want to get into more trouble than necessary.

The sepulchres which'd previously been caressed by the nonchalant claws, quivered under a new lament whose language they recognized as dead for eons. These recumbent figures of marble and the most precious stone, moaned at the lack of the flattering hand, and could only be content with the shivering of heavy fabrics dragging on the dusty paving stones of ash and bones, raising layers of particles disturbed by the delicate smear, delivering new heavy odors of ashy humus unstuck from their centuries-old-gallandage.

Through the sleeping half-penombra, rays of crimson color, blood-purple, tore their precious greyness by their drainage on the ground. At each step resounded a deep and heavy sound, sparkled the frayed shades of the elaborate trimmings of the garment withered by time.

The footsteps tinkled deep in the depths of the foundations, tearing the sleepy membrane that enveloped the whole thing like an attentive cocoon. If the building were a living Entity, one could've discerned a gigantic sigh of relief, long retained in its slabs and other windbreaks.

As the advance progressed, the cautious footsteps were gradually joined by other tiny screeches, sly creaks, stoning by winged limbs on the precious grounds.

The hand caressing on the tombs, then ignited, projecting its claws in a halo of red lines, haloed with remanences while spouting, spitting their undulations in the air like a toxic cloud, or like a vaporous smoke trailing behind a hot dish that we would carry, the last witness to the intoxicating passage of flavors. With the other hand stretched out a blue-glowing sword, as sparkling and blinding as the gauntlet born from the mental impulse of order.

The sword swirled gracefully in a drawn 'eight', and projected a blast as metallic blue as the weapon, which struck underground waterfalls, numerous and narrow in this place awakened by its Master, dripping from wire-mesh cliffs, immediately freezing them in agglomerate of ice studded with coruscating stars.

Gauntlet of Chaos, and Sword of the Void, power of Nothingness and Darkness, united for a quivering chorus summoning the Blood Children.

Swarms arising from the hanging landscapes of the castle, all responded in unison to the invocation that should never be ignored.

~~ ooo >> << ooo ~~

Trevor cringed his teeth inwardly at the collected parade that stomped past Chester and the Cardinal for the Communion of Extreme Unction, a prestige everyone hoped for, given by high dignitaries once a month. It was therefore with a vainglory-heart, proud to have been subjected to the various expiatory ablutions required, that the meditative penitents jostled each other for the supreme gesture which would relieve them of a conscience that wasn't always pure and intact. But at least scrupulous practitioners could sleep soundly, even on an often "bloody" pillow with sinful remorse.

Trevor wasn’t entitled to it! Already subject to the constraint devoid of confessions, the first door to be crossed in order to hope for the ultimate blessing. And his last confession'd taken place in issues that'd become unbearable and more than common with his grieving soul at not being able to confide, and thus shed the imposed weight of remorse injected with great blows of sermons.

Grumbling in his lack of a beard, the Belmont could only take offense inwardly, casting desperate glances at the devotees dressed as Christmas trees, tinsel under the jewels exposing their wealth. Still leaning on the pillar supporting the pulpit, he crossed his arms in resentful protest.

It was there that he finally turned to his companions, hoping for a gesture of consolation from Efrain. To plunge his water gaze into other clear waters, not as translucent as his because carried by a nostalgic sombritude of a beautiful golden brown. Startled for a second, Trevor nodded in greeting to the newcomer, but turned to the herbalist in plea:

" You think that…

"Be patient…it's planned,''the man whispered to him.

“Norton...”the Belmont began. 'How long have you been here?

The young apostrophed stiffened somewhat under the intensity of the steel orbs.

He detestes me, thought the poor novice. On a misunderstanding, he hates me. But he picked up a bit of the animal's head when he replied in a tone he wanted as neutral as possible:

“It's been a while since Brother Efrain picked me up to join you…but you were so busy…

The pike didn't escape Trevor, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he considered his interlocutor. Strange this way of preparing almost identically to himself. The pale blondness hair, not as long as his finery of course, was similarly tamed in an engraved leather tie, in a strong, strict ponytail that brought out the young man's fine and effeminate features. Without having the sultry beauty of Trevor, Norton was no less attractive in his always neat and clean appearance. His shirt, laced more loosely, was the same unspoiled whiteness as Trevor's, and the tunic slanted strangely in bluish-ocean-green shades of the most beautiful effect, bringing out his fairness as diaphanous as Trevor's complexion with night-blue hair. An extraordinary edge between the two, while being almost identical. Astonishing also this shade of warm brown slightly golden of the iris for such a pale blonde.

Acthéean, in the middle, could've been a so-called "basic" neutral element in the tones embellished with the hazel-gray colors of his eyes and certain clothing fabrics. An intermediary in the harmonious chronicity of the different personalities. In fact, a nice balanced color wheel in the sight of these three. Norton and Trevor were Dark and Light, Clear and Obscuro. Acthéean became the middle color coordinating the harmony of the Aura palette.

"I was busy listening to the Founder, finally enjoying what I never had the chance to see...''Trevor began, not taking his eyes off Norton.

"Brother Efrain asked me to join you,"Norton seemed to apologize.

"…And come back with us, to end the evening,"Efrain intervened. 'I planned a few collations together, and Norton, I would be grateful if I could accept the invitation.

Seeing that the novice was reluctant to respond, awestruck by the looming strain in Trevor's eyes who persisted in gauging him, as if he could tear out any flaws he imagined, Acthéean joined in, arguing intelligently:

"Besides, Norton, will you be able to help steer me through the fog of my memory?...We were together, probably would you've seen something more than the others?...

Yes, it's true that they stayed together…thought Trevor, shifting his attention from the novice to his friend. Acthéean didn't like what he saw there blazing in the abyss of sapphires. The spark irradieted even more when the two young people slipped into a more intimate conversation, where it was about vague memories and situations that'd made them laugh at times.

Watching them babble like that, Trevor's heart gasped at the sudden lack that was becoming utterly empty. In a few words, a few gestures that betrayed the mutual demeanor of the two, Trevor sensed an intimacy he discerned, and which hadn't been there a few weeks before. Obviously, their mission, and their mishap, had brought them together in a collusion over which Trevor'd no hold. He couldn't help the nibbling of a slight jealous resentment towards the young man who'd been by his friend's side, as he languished in his confinement, worrying about being sick. For the first time, he'd a genuine friend to whom he now clung desperately in his hardened loneliness, and another was turning him away from him?

The amused shares they'd exchanged together, everything they'd been through there, made the fiery Belmont squeal inwardly. Until Efrain signaled to the two that it was time for them to join the long parade of parishioners receiving the anointing.

Trevor watched them move away and merge into the dense mass of practitioners, still side by side in unspoken mutuality, constantly tweeting their succinct memories.

Trevor's heart skipped a painful beat. They could go and be blessed, while he...

He was gently pulled by the sleeve, pulling him out of his dark thoughts.

"Give him a chance, Trevor,"Efrain whispered.‘’He only wants to help, and he has nothing to do with the decision that has been suggested to you, to remain quiet confined to my office. It wasn't his fault everything that happened, remember. You mustn't be angry with that kid, Trevor. You know better than that.

"Yes, you're right, Efrain,"Trevor nodded.’’I don't know why it hurts so much.

"Acthéean's a good friend, believe me,"reassured the herbalist.‘’He's ultimately as withdrawn and wild as you're, but he knows who he can give his friendship and affection to. See Norton as a second good friend?

“Third, Brother Efrain…You're part of my very closed circle of friends.

Efrain, this time, was surprised by the reply which put balm in his heart, and cut him off. However, he resisted the affectionate gesture towards the youngster, deeming to have to remain stoic in front of an assembly which could misinterpret the gesture. There were enough tangled situations in the hearts of men gathered here in the pure act of blessing. This was something Trevor would learn to master in the long run: not showing any of his emotions in front of people whom you would consider 'confidants' or 'friends', when they weren't at all the case, and that everything in everyone was ultimately working in the fall of the clumsy under the infamous defamations.

While chatting, Efrain led Trevor to confessionals whose curtains were tightly closed to the privacy of practitioners' confidences.

A priest confessor walked up to them, and joined in the quick introductions. Trevor’d seen him before, and knew that the clergyman worked mainly during vespers honored by high dignitaries. Apparently, Efrain’d been working as an aside to direct his little one ’into safe’ hands for his faith-based desires. No need to persist in heinous debacles like last time, and Trevor'd complained enough about abusive behavior he couldn't stand at all, sickened by the debauched attitude that seemed to be driving some of the clergy mad.

It was therefore in all confidence that Trevor placed himself in the hands of the confessor who led him to an aedicule remote from the others. The man and the teenager melted among the purple shadows heavy with syrupy incense, while Norton and Acthéean received the sacred anointing by a Chester d'Uries haloed with wise kindness making the hearts of all vibrate in unison.

O0oo >>> <<< oo0O

The room was so empty. Heavy with its too cumbersome silence. No more souls living in these places. No more scrutiny glance that would’ve upset the tranquility of the Bronze Lake. Its waters were from time to time cracked by a few silvery gleams foaming peacefully. Far from all attention, and inquisitive gaze.

It would’ve taken even a single breath to unbalance the harmony of this stillness. Related. Deceptive.

Perhaps it only took a glance to seal the beginnings of the frail ripple, causing it to retreat again into the obscured depths of the false lull. A lying ataraxia. An apocryphon in a languid, painfully deadly nostalgia, released by fine welts in the tain. Seeming to never decide to go further into the gap that they were timidly drawing, only to finally disappear in a sinister blur.

It wouldn't have taken much, in fact, to stop the bloody tear sketching its first snags, gutting the fine tulle veiling the verdigris tain, like an apologetic hiccup quickly muffled under the underlying defect of the act. Circle within circle, Appearance became a lingering path in its transformation, until it ostensibly transubstantiated into a rotating contemplation: infernal Eucharist in all its mischievous and diverted glory. The Bread and Wine becoming the inconsistent Body of Dread; the putrid Blood of the Antediluvian Almighty crushing the primordial Idea of the Universe.

But no one was there. Breathing in the monotonous stirs that unraveled from the gutted fog stretching over the now disturbed lake in its placid shimmer. Only the fragrant wreaths of rare flowers, cradled in priceless vases ; the scented armfuls of pure and immaculate roses ; the harmonious presentations of the sacred Lily intertwined with the Madonna slightly more veiled gold in its corolla ; the cardinal purples of the exotic ; all this outcropping decorative and olfactory plant, began to wither lamentably in an insane acceleration striking their opal fragility. Most of the magnificent buds bowed to the ground, and the petals broke out irreparably in a smear blackened humus in which they curled up, struck down by the vicious hints extricating theirself from the lake of bronze.

…Blood becoming poison; the Body, these unspeakable etiolations, carcasses desiccated into infamous scribbles; abject peelings abandoned in their vomitous ooze…

In record time, the entire floral invasion passed away under the evil waves rushing into the breach that tore Reality apart. Far away, away from a blind room devoid of all light, something jumped under the facing of a holy sackcloth. A breath absorbed the fabric in a rattle. The thing that awoke under the veil, melted its grimacing features into the weave, and the covering rippled in the aspect of the Awakening One. No one saw the yawning smirk over a silent cry, locked in sealed darkness.

In unison, the room, which was dimly lit by the precious candelabra, was permanently obscured by the darkness blowing out the poor flaming wicks. The sulphurous hints carried their foul-smelling tendrils in tortuous intertwining, drifting towards the statuaries of saints whose eyes began to weep for the cursed cruor. The shadows cast from the sculptures warped and assumed obscene positions, sullying holy gestures in lustful cacophony.

The lake seemed to crack in a long cry of agony unbearable for human ears, so inhuman was the hoot, and the breach drawn in the thin veil of Reality parted a little further to vomit out its waves of demonic spawn: Specters and Dark Monks, Infernal Summoners, demagogic entities, sneering and perverse phantasies, crossed the tain in a frightening nocturnal symphony.

Up there, high up in the mountainous depths, towards a cursed and passed away village, lingered the long cavernous breath, while the piling of cumulonimbus engorged with rage, poured out myriads of sharp and murderous shards of poisonous lakes disgusting from tall architectural structures, immensely in the mourning skies.

OOOooo <> oooOOO

The abbey emptied much less quickly than expected, the eternal retarted trying, playing on their rank and nobility displayed with great sartorial splendor and precious gestures, to attract each for himself the attention of the high dignitaries who conducted the ceremony. The next one would be in a month. But too bad for the wait, many struggled not to want to wait for the deadline, and clung like real parasites to the clerical robes and outfits in bright cardinal colors. Each working for their own selfishness to calm their bankrupt conscience, hoping that a hand on their forehead would help them forget their crimes in decorum.

Trevor was a little disappointed that he couldn't come too close, hoping for a word of encouragement or a hand to kiss. But what could a simple novice like him do, when all the ennobled high-ranking officers, and generals, crowded around the one who was truly adored by the crowds? And then he thought that he, too, had been able to approach the Legend, it wasn't that long ago. Chester d'Uries'd summoned him to unravel the mysteries of the Mirror, if the artifact would deign to show a sign.

He remembered the session. Of his fearful silence. From what he'd glimpsed. The mocking anger of this vile cardinal, may the whole of Hell suffocate him! But Chester'd no doubt guessed Trevor's confusion, and hadn't disturbed him further with questions that would've proved unsettling. He couldn't forget the feel of the holy man's protective hand on his hunched shoulders in intimidation.

Yes, he’d been so lucky, which others probably never would! It was uplifted and lightened, as he joined his friends, patiently taking their pain as they stomped with the other lines of worshipers out of the egg-filled nave. He’d been able to ease his soul and his spirit in confession. He was far from having unloaded everything! but too bad if it’d earned him a meager penance, his privacy needed to cocoon a cozy nest without parasite to spoil the pleasure, right? He wouldn’t fail in his prayers to ask forgiveness from God, as an aside, the circumstances’d been numerous to make him remain in his defiant positions. The Divine would know how to forgive him for such small deviations, would He not?

What he didn't know was that Chester himself was engulfed in his crowd of penitents who grabbed him like a swarm of crabs rising from the waves and throwing themselves at the crawl of freshly hatched eggs. The holy man’d been unable to leave the altar quietly, hoping to make his way to the herbalist and his troop of novices, as he’d mentally projected during his ordinance. Out of the corner of his sorry eye, as the worshipers incessantly held him back in grievances, he saw the small group patiently slip out into the darkness of a calm night.

It gave the real impression that the entire village and its fortress'd been emptied of all life which'd curled up in the blessed light of the Divine, in the heart of the abbey nave. This was certainly the case when you saw all the edifice spewed out like a human tide.

Efrain and his brood,-because seen in this way, their little group gave this impression of Father and his little babblers-, once they finally emerged from the golden shadows of the nave, dazzled by the lingering illuminations, took the time to breathe in the quiet of the night. Efrain gazed at the cloudy vault of misty mounds laden with rain, again, but which was pierced here and there by distant flashes of fleeting stars, remnants of luminaries dead for eons, in the most total anonymity and the ignorance of men about the infinite Cosmos, Cradle of all life.

He stayed that way for a long time, almost breaking the back of his neck, gazing up at those magnificent skies, sparkling with contained rage and boundless hope. What was there, up there, perhaps contemplating them, without their knowledge? God, how beautiful this world was, suspended in the infinity of the Unknown...

Curious with his gaze fixed on infinity above them, the three young men did the same, and directed their attention to the skies so shrouded in mystery. They knew how to take this precious time in meditation, and no one wanted to break the quiet with a derogatory word.

Yes, it was an amazing night! Why exactly this night which seemed eternal? Because they'd attended one of the most beautiful vespers ordained by one of the Founders who became Legend?

Efrain and his little litter immersed themselves in meditative contemplation, away from the rush that could've shattered this sacred moment, while the groups of faithful gradually split up to go about their business, and regain the happiness of their home.

Not a single parishioner, his eyes still full of dreaming, thought of raising his head, like the four silent men, leaning casually on pillars, and setting out on a journey that belonged to them alone. All were ignorant of this magical moment which kept the small group fascinated and above all absorbed for a while longer by the wonders that pulsed up there, in the purple and violine darkness of a night between dog and wolf.

However, as a small teasing wind persisted in tugging at the wicks which gradually leaked from the leather tie, a small part in his brain registered something indefinable, coming from far away, muffled by the various noises paraziting with the first auditory layers already disturbed by the heavy resonance of the drone of the bell towers behind the abbey. A persistent shock wave at the same tempo. An insane vibrato, a monotonous baritone that seemed to destabilize his attention as he focused on this new information. The others didn't seem to notice, and Trevor, after some hesitation, let himself go in his imagination.

Yet, becoming tiny in the back of his mind, the weird and unusual song seemed to struggle to stay on the surface of the shimmering wave of his cognition, and mingled in a fascinating way with the aggressive pounding of the brass throat of the drone, causing the depths of his belly to retract under the powerful and invasive sound impulses.

And even as they made their way back down to the apothecary, chatting lazily, Trevor's hearing still picked up that cavernous tremolo, like an endless siren from a ship crumbling in the deceptive waves.

Efrain’d everything prepared, anticipating a good end to the evening after the superb vespers, everyone needed to stay in that soft cocoon of quietude. As an organized man who he was, he’d gathered the plentiful victuals from the cooks and bakers, making his little rounds before the event, in all discretion.

So, before the astonished eyes of the three starving young men, heaps of crispy, fragrant bread spread out, big enough to force-feed them for a week. Creamy cheeses flowed their temptation in irresistible sheets, and strips of cured meat added to the banquet almost fit for kings. Even Norton'd never seen so much abundance on their pitiful dining table. In general, they all had to be content with a tasteless broth,-often failures of Isaac to the point of wondering if he wasn't particularly good at starving the ranks of desperate novices!-, as for bread? most of the time it was a crusty illusion and so hard, you could kill your neighbor with it! Trevor often imagined sending the cinder-blocks-bread in the mouths of the nocturnal hordes, or even Isaac's soups ’, he was sure they would die on the spot!

Complaints'd been made about it, but Isaac clung to his position as saboteur-cook, and often twice a week novices'd to poke their stomachs with their fists or they would die of poisoning! The higher ranks didn't have that problem with their stomachs...

So Norton's eyes almost popped out of his sockets as he considered the beautiful nourishing table. It was almost Christmas! So much so that he hesitated for a moment before cutting generous slices, simply gazing at the debauchery of food carefully collected by the shrewd herbalist. Acthéean didn’t hesitate to open the tasting ball, followed by a bright-eyed Trevor over the goat and sheep cheeses he loved. Nor was it everyday that such abundance was fleshed out.

Trevor’d loosened his hair and gently brushed it in a corner as he changed, avoiding staining his undamaged clothes still in the scent of cleanliness. The locks fell freely, and resumed their wild and bristly allure. Acthéean thought for a moment that a good combing would be necessary. He loved this ritual which’d become almost daily since he got better, and Trevor’d to admit himself to the angels when the liturgical comb stroked his adornment, seeming to release the tensions inside he dragged during the day.

Norton was then aware of the little rituals that'd taken place between the three men, marveled inwardly. Efrain was a wise man of infinite science, whom he admired without limits ever since he came to receive regular treatment for training "sores". That’s to say, since his childhood too, although his entry into the Brotherhood had been later than others, his parents not deciding to entrust their son to the father's warlike heritage, or if they intended him for other options available to noble families.

Efrain was busy distilling liquids with bewitching scents that he didn’t recognize, but widely enjoyed with deep breaths. Before being invited to eat by an Acthéean astonished at his hesitation. The herbalist poured the hot concoctions into flared bowls, and arranged them in front of his young, before joining them at the table. He was able to multitask, chewing on pieces of bread that were still hot ; rekindling the fire in the chemney; switching on his infernal machines that fascinated Norton ; sorting through armfuls of herbs and plants constantly retaining invigorating emanations and relaxing in the atmosphere of the room, blossoming towards the bedrooms.

So, on this special evening, Norton joined the tight-knit group, and began to speak with Acthéean about the events that took place there in Wygol. As the little scenes they both recounted unfolded, Trevor's eyes wandered in a more painful elsewhere, perhaps.

"…The way you found the book stunned everyone!" Norton babbled in admiration. ‘’Even the Milites were turned over...Do you remember?

"…I saw myself clowning through the aisles and those kind of…mirror-fountains…''Acthéean laughed. 'I remember at one point that you all followed me...

The words gasped in Trevor's mind, and he dreaded half the words out of two, the rest of his attention being drawn to something else. What? he didn't know, but he knew it bit badly, it pulled on strings like sutures that would rip out in pain.

"Look at him, with his innocent face, he's pulling him away from you…he's already sharing things with him that you haven't experienced…" the sadistic Shadow bit further.

"...besides Trevor found a trick to revive this capricious memory...

It was Efrain who joined in the conversation, and who'd curiously considered the Belmont taciturn and elusive for some time.

"Trevor? Are you still with us?...

What's that insistent sound over there shattering the stillness of the night?

Trevor gave a delicate start, and seemed to come back among his own. His eyes were cloudy with dreams, his lips parted in a breath he subconsciously suspended, tangled in a concentration disconnected from the rest.

When he came to reality he stared at three pairs of frowns in puzzlement, the conversations had stopped.

"…Yes,"he stammered. 'But ...didn't you feel or hear something as you left the abbey?

"Like what,"Efrain asked softly, aware that something'd been disturbing his youngster for a long time already.

Wrongly Norton still assumed that his interference was bothering the Belmont. And bit his lip under Acthéean's hard eye.

"We took in the view of the heavens, and it was magical,"the apprentice began, turning to Trevor. 'I don't see…

"I don't know…''Trevor cut him softly,"I couldn't quite define what it was. But it seems to me...

"What did you hear that was special, son?' intervened Efrain.

Trevor nodded softly, resigning from his idea with a "drop it, probably an illusion," and continued to tingle the bread into small dumplings which he slowly chewed on. The oyster'd closed again.

“We were explaining to Brother Efrain how Acthéean deciphered the riddle of the blind room. It was beautiful to see,''Norton detailed, too late aware of his words and what they could upset in Trevor.

"I imagine, yes...I see the scene...

He couldn't hide the acidity in his response.

“Trevor,”Efrain said, “do you want to show Norton your work? This you're doing to help your friend?

The Belmont hesitated a little, staring at the herbalist, seeming to ask him if it was a good idea to reveal sketches, some of them dubious, to a complete stranger coming to mind their business. An unwanted intruder in what he considered to be his intimate couch, his secret and private bubble. Acthéean was the One and the Chosen One who’d the right of access to his isolated Sanctuary, having passed all the tests to tame the shaggy and suspicious savage.

Acthéean leaned over him, and wrapped his arm around his shoulders, muttering reassuring words to the Belmont whom he guessed was wildly resistant and upset beyond measure. His friend was on fleur-de-peau at the cognitive level, his emotions took too much precedence over reason. It was urgent to reassure him.

"Hey…Norton has helped me and saved me on several occasions…Don't be like that, please, it's nothing to do with everything that's happened…if there isn't only one to blame, you know perfectly well who...

"It's just...you seem to have been through some amazing things, and I would've loved it so much...

Trevor looked around the table, and continued in a hoarse voice from the tightness of his grip.

"It eats me up from the inside that because of a stupid sadistic guardian, I'm confined as I am…I would get nowhere if I continue like this…

"Trevor," Efrain interrupted him, "this situation won't repeat itself. Brother Anselm has been dismissed from his status, know it, and no longer has the right to approach you...The Founding Fathers’ve great hopes in you, and nothing should distract you from your destiny...if that was the case, do you think Chester would’ve summoned you?...

Efrain's gaze’d hardened, and remained frozen on the teenager who’d gradually curled up on the table. Norton didn’t dare to say a word, dumb in amazement and fearing at any moment a nervous outburst from the Belmont, who’d definitely suffered a great deal of torment in the weeks. He’d heard a lot of "bell rings" since the incident, no doubt the whole village was roaring with rumors.

He'd long been aware that Trevor was a figure ‘protected ’by the highest, but like everyone else, could only make unfounded guesses about the young man’s strange turn of fate. He'd learned from the slanderous purring that the tutor brother’d been punished in a unique and completely new way for a clergyman. And that was only a good thing, as many'd stood up for the unjustly injured young Belmont. In his isolation and loneliness, Trevor wasn’t at all aware that he was attracting any uncalculating sympathy from some.

Confined to the obligation of care, he considered himself useless and good-for-nothing now, rejected once again by others in the daily activity which should’ve been his. His reactions were completely normal, though truly unfounded, seeing only the empty glass, instead of the plenitude of the bottle full of the nectar of life.

Not being able to join the Norton and Acthéean team only made matters worse, and spread more poison in his melancholy of abandonment. Because that was the deeply painful feeling that Trevor yearned for: an complete abandonnique state of his lost being, of his landmarks, and to see his friend so grieved, having flirted so outrageously with death, had completed his work of mental destruction.

Efrain reached out and took Trevor's hands in a warm, comforting grip, pulling him into the middle of the fragrant slices of bread crumbling their creamy flavor into myriad little ashes that made you want to peck them like birds indulging in their gluttony.

"Can you go get your artwork, Trevor?"the man asked, squeezing the grip gently. ‘’Let Norton admire your art...Don't worry, he'll be discreet about the tenor of some...sketches.''- He turned to the young man, "Isn't that right, young people? Some...people donnot've to read these drawings...they would take offense, and maybe they would make a heartattack!

A small chuckle escaped the four throats, but it was enough to relax Trevor, and convince him, while Norton was nodding desperately, begging the young teenager to finally give him some trust and friendship.

As Trevor disappeared into the tawny shadows of the bedroom, Efrain explained the idea that was to help Acthéean's failing and selective memory. When he returned with a few sketches done, Norton was marveling at the concept of memorizing through drawing. He'd always admired the careful illumination in manuscripts, but when he saw the incredibly realistic work of the sketches, he was speechless. Stunned by Trevor's unthinkable approach to completing each structured shot in the correct proportions, which gave the whole a new take on depth and figurative development in all its more than realistic sense.

Trevor'd known how to play with the nuanced shadows which allowed to perfectly hollow the curves and the bitter shapeliness, making the impression that certain elements thus sketched, were going to spring from the media saturated with ink. This gave this unique and unusual aspect to washes, unusual by the most talented illuminators of this century. Perspectives unthinkable to be realized by minds narrow in religious and sacred standards which would risk seeing in them an exacerbated outrage of forms and bodies having to be erased before the Divine.

Norton, like all the others, had been accustomed to the absence of plans and perspective, traditional in all illustration, and had never been confronted with the planned works of the ancient architects of Antiquity who, for their part, had apprehended the perspectives and achievements in 3D, long before the debacle and insipid design in their platitude during the centuries of obscurantism having banished all realism in the line, as censored by too prudish minds.

It was with eyes bulging in wonder that he carefully leafed through the soft leaves of the carefully watercolored vellum, exposing a fabulous riot of fascinating sketches of mystery and sacredness in feather and wash strokes.

"Now do you understand why some...mustn't know about the existence of this art?''asked Efrain quietly, as dazed as the young man.

"But...''Norton gasped, so fascinated by the beauty of art, ’these're other universes that you draw there…these're…

"Dreams, for the most part…"Trevor cut in gently. ‘’It comes from a lot of my dreams…I must be influenced by my readings…

"Some sketches...''observed Norton, while continuing to follow with a light finger and respectful of curves, sensual shapeliness and extraordinary curvatures spread languidly over the supports, ’reminiscent of parts of the…castle?

Norton glanced at Trevor, to see if he'd said something stupid. He was reassured by a silent nod of agreement.

"I myself have seen a lot of sketches of this cursed place...and maybe unconsciously, I'm replicating its shapes in my dreams...I know it's wrong though...

" Why?…''Norton raised an eyebrow. ''You're lucky to be able to express yourself in this way with an exceptional gift, if God has granted it to you, it's because He wanted you to make useful use of it...look, you're achieving it with Acthéean.. isn't it?

Norton turned his gaze to the apprentice still fascinated by the drawings.

"Looks like we're having stammering results, yes..."Efrain agreed, brushing against the velvety surfaces, soaked in degraded inks.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm leaning against doors that still refuse to open…"Acthéean pointed out, cutting generous slices of bread for everyone.

The aroma of the concocted herbal teas invaded the atmosphere, smoothing it over with an irrepressible and relaxing creaminess. It was astonishing to notice that the spirals born from the hot concoctions, seemed to merge harmoniously with the delicate curves of some 'sanguines' or certain slightly charcoal refines. Added to this were the olfactory and tender undertones of dried pigments and infused floral plants. A mixture sublimated in the chance of the emanations flirting with the smell of men.

Norton no longer dared to eat above the drawings, and the four of them'd spread the food a little bit so asn't to soil the papers. Efrain'd brushed off most of the crisp, golden crumbs, and pushed them back into sharp, neat little piles in a compulsive gesture.

Norton was silent for a moment longer, considering the washes,-some that looked even more like anaglyphs with symbols strangely detailed in a stone, or unknown metal perfectly transcribed-, elaborations which would certainly infuriate unscrupulous individuals of art.

Suddenly an idea occurred to him. He turned to Acthéean:

"Tell me…what happened there in the library? Before you find the Grimoire...?

Acthéean flickered his eyes at the unusual question, and suddenly his memory threw him into a nebulous scene leaving him speechless. He thought quickly and weighed his decision to reveal certain points to Norton. He'd told his two friends about it, and Trevor'd also sketched out branching projections halfway between dreamlike and reality.

Besides, Trevor caught the hint right away, asking the blond novice:

"Is it because you saw blurry representations that you say that?

His tone was flat, lifeless, even suddenly icy.

Norton didn't have time to answer, Acthéean explained:

"I'd the opportunity, yes, to relate what I... saw? It's actually very blurry, and I've the impression that it moves away a little more as soon as I try to remember correctly...the images, of themselves, dissolve in a past that's erased gradually…I keep like splinters...

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary over there, Norton?''intervened Efrain.

"All we saw was you standing in front of the reliquary that carried the Grimoire, it was dark, but we all felt a... something weighing down the mood...I couldn't be more precise, but we’d all felt a form invading the place…I’d time to see that you were looking elsewhere…and your face!…You were so luminous, as if you’d just seen the Divine, or an extraordinary manifestation…yes, you were almost vibrating with a sparkling aura…it lasted a few seconds, no more…the time of a heartbeat maybe to be...it was unreal...

"But haven't any of you seen anything?''Efrain reiterated, fascinated by the blonde's composed tone, and his gaze drowned in the haze of memories.

"...no...what I know is that when you spoke to us again you were shining...

Raised eyebrows from all three. What magnificent manifestation could've transformed the young man in this way? This was indeed another important testimony given by Norton who witnessed the phenomenon's front row seats. At least, having seen the resulting reaction, since no one'd perceived the said ordered ‘miracle ’. Besides, was it even a miracle?

Trevor quickly scratched at his own reading memories, and began to recite the extraordinary and terrifying legends he devoured through the Brotherhood manuscripts. And on the subject of the Castle, he'd found a plethora of writings, often hidden from unwary readers.

“In the Chronicles I read, it’s said, among other things, that an outstanding knight archer Michael Gelhart Schneider was locked up by the Bernhards and tortured by Walter. The Bernhards were the first owners of the castle…They plunged into Necromancy and Esotericism, even Necrophilia, and they’re attributed the possession of said Castle by Hell…the building was born from the bowels of Chaos, and would be a Entity to Itself, both independent and dependent on Its Master...Schneider died in one of the Bernhard dungeons, we even say in the Forbidden Wing because the most dangerous of all, even forbidden to other infernal spawn...Schneider swore revenge by taking possession of the souls of the purest knights, those who would be worthy of his attention...

"And you think the Angel Acthéean saw would be Michael Gelhart Schneider...?''finished Efrain.

" An Angel?''Norton asked, completely lost in the conversation.

"Acthéean thinks he saw an Angel, yes...strange, unusual, but an Angel..."hissed Efrain. ‘’Personally, in these places, I don’t think of an Angel of our Lord at all, this place is abandoned by God...so, with the description you've given us of it, Acthéean, I opt more for a Vampire...breathtakingly beautiful, but Vampires're like that...besides, he's unmistakably a 'Highborn'...

"A Highborn?"repeated Acthéean. 'That’s to say ? Vampires're all dreadful broods, shapeless monsters, undead to be ruthlessly eradicated, in the holy name of our Lord, and by the hand of the Brotherhood...

"Acthéean,"Trevor cut him off, "don't you remember the Hierarchy? Do you think the Dragon’s a low strain of demons? Carmilla herself was the ennobled Vampire Queen…she created Her Children of the Night who served as guards, but you’ve Vampire-Knights of a high lineage which makes her generals, so already purer in the hierarchical lineage...and you’ve her true Children, her Fledglings, her Youth of whom She was the Sire who created them…and these’re from the highest branch in Birth…that makes them perfect Highborns, bathed in Darkness, and therefore practically invincible too...

“Well done Trevor!!''admired Efrain. ‘’You're really conscientious in your readings, and you learn the Hierarchy of the Underworld well…it’s also important to know the history of those that one's trained to kill, that can help…So, you would also agree to suppose a Highborn?

"Said like that, thinking about it…yes…"Trevor observed.

"HighBorn?’ Norton repeated. ‘Did you see a ghost there? a HighBorn Vampire Angel? but you looked so...happy to see what you saw...

Acthéean allowed himself to be convinced, and described in a few words still mixed with admiration his vision which, according to his conviction, had presented no aggressive sign, nor murderous corruption, which once again seemed inconceivable as an illusion projected by the castle. The apprentice knew in particular that this kind of entity had all the gifts of unstoppable seduction towards the mortals who let themselves be caught in the seductive strings of these Vampires. And the Angel of Acthéean'd all its poisonous components.

Norton listened intently, his chin resting on his fists which he'd gathered on the table. He too had released his ponytail carelessly, the flexible cord resting on the side of the table, and his slightly wavy hair streaked pleasantly over his concentrated face. Trevor let himself gaze at the aerial golden foam with a critical eye.

Norton then had images of silvery moonlight, symbolism in the immaculate appearance of the phantasm, and his lakes of molten gold. He found himself stunned by the description, his brain racing, making crazy guesses that would've made some men of faith turn pale.

He pulled out one of the more worked prints than the others, loaded with different layers of glaze that tried to define the shapeliness of the fantasy. Besides, speaking of fantasies, he quickly spotted sulphurous delineations in the withdrawn corners of recessed vellum, as if hidden, and outrageously flirting with bubbling eroticism. His cheeks'd time to take on a speckled pink paint, when he made the connection with the masculine curves and the spectrum described. Ghost, or Phantasm? The brain made little difference when it got lost in the imagination of Lust. But the descriptions Acthéean gave him, left no doubt as to the tenor of the apparition wandering between dreamlike universes and dreams of sensual debauchery.

Or had Trevor let his own imagination sway him? Acthéean seemed to agree with the turn of the engravings which really projected ambiguous inducements...

For his part, Efrain’d been busy setting his alambics on the fire, and boiling strange potions with very, very pleasant effluvium, sweet at the same time tangy, oiled and fat with heady musk. An incredible medley that bloomed good, and let heavy and generous perfumes evaporate in the already loaded atmosphere olfactions that would inebriate anyone.

Trevor fixed his alternating attention on his companions, and on Efrain's activity. Acthéean recognized the herbs used, out of the corner of his eye, as he finished his tale, and inwardly amused himself at the expected result: Efrain was preparing an anointing that would relieve the scarring itch. Chervil and Elecampane? The plant looked like the Dandelion, but he knew it was radical in disinfecting, especially for those afflicted with Anemia. Efrain knew how to superbly make his effective loads for the care, and he was in the process of adding beeswax plates that he collected from one of the beekeepers in a neighboring village, and even had a flower distilled from which he immediately recognized the thick and divagant scents: Poppy! A few sprigs fluttered in a beautifully bluish rain, adding to the dance: Lavender to continue the work of disinfection.

Trevor glanced questioningly at Acthéean, at the herbalist's unusual preparation. Acthéean gave him an amused and reassuring smile. Norton was now following the preparation carefully. The conversation'd slowly dried up, and Efrain noticed that he’d become the center of attention.

The night was very deep in its sleep. Up there, on the dark ramparts, the teams of guards were changing regularly, never leaving the horizons of their watch. The fortifications still hummed with the resounding hints of bells slowing down on their supporting pivots until nothing more than a faint rustle of the clapper escaped against the brass of their bronze. The abbey closed its doors slowly on the last latecomer flock, and the streets emptied of their humming human mass returning to their homes.

Viscerally in the depths of the valleys encrusted between the mountains with eternal snows, the insane vibrato pulsed continuously...

"It's late, Norton,"Efrain offered. 'Why don't you stay with us? I've a bedroom at the back of mine, and a room with a tub for your toilet...rather than coming into your cell at night.

Norton hesitated for a second, yawning at the request that tempted him. Acthéean came to his aid, relying a little more on the seduction of finally resting in a quiet place, far from the deafening jumble of others who didn’t always take precautions towards their roommates. Although Norton also had his own cell, it was nonetheless impersonal, cold, providing no comforting intimacy for sore training limbs, and brains stunted by the hammering of lessons.

And then, the next day, there was the promise of a hearty breakfast, well, before investing in the morning classes, and the war schools in the afternoon. He glanced uneasily at Trevor, but Trevor didn't seem at all embarrassed by the proposal, starting to collect his sketches carefully, even patiently waiting for Norton to let go of the one he was observing as he listened to the conversations that'd become idle again.

His heart pounded faster when Trevor gave him an amused wink, the orbs of water very clear beneath the glow of light dancing in them. The crazy locks'd resumed their rebellion all around the face, and fell in a silken rain on the chest now bared by a spare shirt more indented freely, without fear of curious and offended glances.

“Can I ask what you're up to, Brother Efrain,”he dared.

Trevor took the vellum from his hands, straightening up, and answered instead of the herbalist:

"My wounds're healing...and they're itching...to stop the urge to scratch the scabs, which will make the sores worse, so Efrain's planning something for me to soothe the irritation...

"Haven't your wounds closed yet?"

"No…it's longer than expected...''-Trevor tamped down the vellum correctly-"The tutor was…until the end of things in his blows…I've trouble healing...

"You're not helping either,"Efrain hissed, naughty around the edges. ‘’But, everything that's been going on lately, I can imagine, hasn't helped either...

"This’s an incredible chain of dire circumstances..."Norton whispered. ''But this's by no means a reproach against you, above all!

"Don't worry,''Trevor finished, 'I miss training, I miss education, but I've to deal with it, and I've plenty to do in my spare time...

"Yes,"Norton smiles, "you’ve discovered a wonderful gift in art, and I sincerely envy you. My parents decided to put me on the path to war, but I don't really feel comfortable...

Acthéean raised a curious eye to Norton who’d just confessed what he suspected from Wygol. Certainly the other two’d come to understand the anguished dilemma of the young man sacrificed by a family trying to keep its name in the prestige of an inflicted lineage. We didn’t choose our family…!

The apprentice took the blond novice by the shoulder, directing him to the bedroom, in which fed braziers were already vibrating, and a merry bonfire in the hearth.

"You’ve all night to think about it...and possibly rest as it should...’’he slipped aside, while the young entered the languid half-shadows. ’Don't be surprised either, our favorite herbalist’ll bring you a good herbal tea to help you sleep...

Efrain let his young people lead, finished infusing the oily anointing at will, and fragrant like Heaven. Trevor nestled in the shadows of his room, after a friendly nod to the herbalist, dressing in a new nightcloth, taking his time, pensive and moseying through his molten ideas. His collection of studies and washes was tucked away neatly to the side of his couch ; he grabbed his precious mirror, and concentrated in a prayer of thanksgiving for a day so well ended in the osmosis of accumulated wonders. He felt especially happy. Weirdly.

A little nick not at all unpleasant, made a particle click deep inside him, and he sighed happily as he quickly thought back to all the good times. He squeezed the mirror tighter, and kissed it fervently, thanking God infinitely, and above all asking forgiveness for 'forgetting' certain small sins that he couldn’t bring himself to confess to his new confessor.

The silence was so deep, he detected the metallic clicks falling from the guard-walls, the whispered sighs and the words exchanged between the scientist and his apprentice.

And the long, vibrant hoot that never ended. As he carefully nested the still intact Lily miraculously on the scrambled tain of the pendant.

~~~~ ooo >>> <<< ooo ~~~~

"Norton fell asleep?…''Asked Trevor, when his friend settled on the edge of the diaper, setting down a bowl filled with a half-solidified and creamy paste of still warm oil: the ointment prepared by Efrain. The herbalist'd given the task of smearing the scar tissue with it, which relentlessly gave out devouring little throws unpleasantly tickling the dermis. The fact of having slid the fabric of the nightgown over the twisted grins, had awakened the little incisive flickers.

"If he'snot asleep yet, it should be soon,"Acthéean hissed, smoothing his fingers through the semi-consistent slick, and gesturing to pull the back flaps of the shirt apart. "He was entitled to the magic decoction to fall into the arms of Morpheus...

Trevor sighed in relief as the fingers warmed from the anointing slowly wandered over the seamed labia majora, sliding over the irritated dermis. Acthéean was thus able to mentally deliberate on the state of the closed wounds, enjoying under his fingers the velvety texture of the damaged skin severely drawn into the welt of the scabs exposing their crooked smile along the ribs, on the sides, down to the lumbar region. He decided it wouldn't be long before he could finally remove the sutures. He easily imagined the torture of the invading itching, under all this rubbish wounded in redemption.

He took advantage of taking his time to spread the scented anointing so pleasantly, knowing full well that the subtle dose of Poppy would positively sustain the irritated dermis, and undeniably calm it, as under an effective anesthetic. Trevor shouldn't have that hellish urge to rub against walls anymore. His healing was so long. Much longer than necessary. The apprentice wasn’t far from agreeing with Efrain on the testing psychological conditions of recent times.

He felt his friend abruptly loosen under the smooth massage, and subtly pushed him so that he lay face down on his stomach, and totally relaxed. The sharp curves of his body rippled with the grace of a big feline, and with his black hair one could've imagined a panther lying voluptuously on the blankets, as the long, skillful hands untied the rest of the shirt and slid it lower over the loins, baring the entire battered spine.

The golden sheen of the chemney mirrored the flowing smooth movement for a moment, lending a golden-brown glow to the skin slightly damp with the oil. In the blink of an eye, the body became the mirror of flamboyant and warm waves, bathing the supple silhouette of ebony and ivory in a tulle cut from the delicacy of Eros. The mountains and valleys undulating muscles and tendons took on a chiaroscuro aspect of the most disturbing. Slender and powerful, at the same time graceful and noble almost in his movements, an elegance which was to be inherited from the mother figure, most certainly; a languidness which, like his features, flirted between Masculine and Feminine, giving that impulse of charm and absolute candor even in the warlike gestures of the handling of weapons. A striking contrast when one attentively observed this body moving.

The back laces of the shirt curled slyly in the hollow of the buttocks, reminiscent of lustful little snakes coiling in the moving shaded niche. Each moment that could’ve been banal in his stretching, became a source of exponential temptation, especially when we knew undoubtedly that the youngster was acting in total oblivion of his actions, not measuring for a single second the scope involved with those around him. Or, the teenager was a real tease innate in his seductive perversity!

Acthéean parted the silky onyx layer with an unoiled ointment finger, exposing the bruised neck, shoulders and entire back. Gradually, the diaphanous skin was shaded with still slightly yellowed shadows, persistent remains of hematomas, of crimson-brown crusts striping the spine, from which erected as in an unmanageable fury, tiny black points: the remaining sutures, sealed henceforth in the redemption of the flesh. A few more days, and Efrain could safely remove them, without the risk of pulling off a nasty bleeding. But until then, it was essential to bathe the skin regularly in oily ointments that would facilitate the painful removal.

For now, the young Belmont greatly appreciated the healing caresses on his dermis which tingled slyly, and was beginning to feel the relief, the skin slightly anesthetized by the Poppy. He let it be known with small, happy sighs of appeasement. God, how he worshiped those careful hands on his skin! It gave him the wonderful feeling that all the burden of his daily tensions was giving way, only to resign entirely from his limbs stiff with pain. The hands of a magician! In addition to this bliss, the healing oils released paradisiacal scents that gradually inebriated him, adding to the happiness of the massage, which really put him in an atmosphere loaded with sensual influence.

Fingers flickered gently over the still sutured parts, stretching their light "beak" along the dark grins, and cradling others returning to more rosy tones that merged into the diaphaneity of the complexion. The beeswax hadn't completely melted, and tasty morsels were deposited in the hollows of the sealed excavations by the piling up of tiny residual layers of healed tissue. Their affixing did good, while sometimes awakening a sweet ticklish urge, only to die out the next second, the flesh absorbing the warmth of the melted alveoli, gorging on precious and calming oils

The act of care was even more heavenly than combing the hair all over the place on the pillows, flowing its length on the edge of the bed. Trevor felt himself drift gently into sleep, his mind adrift tenderly dizzyingly absorbing any sleeper as he crossed the threshold of Somnus. His whole body vibrated with languid heat, ready to sink deeper into the diaper covers.

Acthéean was there for a lot in this feeling of absolute well-being, voluntarily pressing with the tips of the fingers on certain parts of the back which seemed to give way under the careful caress. The twisted smiles of the healed wounds melted under the soft slick and smelling of extraordinary suavity.

The gray hazel orbs observed the smallest reaction, the tiny reflex contraction that gently strained the spine patterned under the growing muscle mass. Despite a loss of weight after weaning from training, each part of the joints was suffused with the muscular profile which attested to a future well-built figure. Along with a more elaborate skeleton height than other young people, Trevor already defined himself in a stature that would be very powerful and sculpted in strength. The flexibility of a predatory feline that predisposed to wild combat. A real force of nature in the making.

The face resting on the pillow relaxed infinitely under the heightened stimuli of the offered happiness, and the cheeks seemed to be powdered with a delicate evanescent pink. The relief from the healing oils was incredible, and Trevor felt a sly twist rise in his lower abdomen, which he then chose not to fight against. Wasn't he also entitled to this languid ease?

"Are you feeling better?"asked Acthéean, aware of his friend's voluptuous relaxation.

Trevor didn't even dare to articulate, for fear of breaking the divine thickness of the intimate silence. He just nodded, not opening his eyes, or leaving the comfort of the pillow where he was literally buried for a moment. He watched for the smallest reaction convolving over there, in his soft groin. He took advantage of the sensation of munching on his flesh so sweetly, and threw any thoughts of guilt back into his mind. He was so good, why should he feel such a shameful mortification? Because it was caused by a man?

Acthéean took a deep breath, while continuing his display of care. Suddenly, his mind flashed on an aggressive image that threw itself brutally against the walls of his consciousness and his stammering memory.

….Bodies twisted, entangled in each other, in an orgiastic debauchery of unbearable indecency...an ephebe struggled violently against the savage intrusion of his executioner, muscles bursting under the skin in desperate contortions...but the lips of the abused opened with a silent cry, and we didn't know whether it was agony to be violated in this way, or the devouring liberating ecstasy...

...diaphanous hands...the color of ash...a broken and dried up Lily on the marble square, at the foot of the abominable statuary, sculpted in the suffering of abuse...

...further on, Basilisks were drinking flesh in an infernal bacchanal, devourers of suspended world...

Acthéean gasped, causing his breathing painfully to hit. Trevor was on the prowl, and straightened on his elbows, gazing at his friend, worried about the sudden change in attitude.

Acthéean'd turned pale under the shock of the mental images, and remained frozen in his movement suspended on the back. The pupils seemed to have dilated beyond measure, as if in shock with fear.

" What's the matter?''Trevor asked, reaching out to his friend. 'What's wrong?

Acthéean didn’t answer immediately, stammering incomprehensible words. The gray nuts seemed to probe an abyss invisible to Trevor, as though mesmerized by something that was evolving only for the young man.

Only after a few seconds, the apprentice seemed to come to life, his mind still bewildered by the jerks of images that jumped hopelessly on the surface of Agnosia's murky waters. He’d had a few memory twitches in recent days, but it was still too succinct, like a dotted line he would’ve a hard time cutting out of the fabric of his aching Memory.

But this time it seemed to take a different direction. The convulsed images of dreadful statuary continued to dance before his eyes, and an icy flow descended into his throat, making his spine bristle with an unknown simmering.

Trevor'd straightened up now, sitting on the bed, his shirt yawning at the sharp hips, almost exposing his half-excited privacy. He didn't care at this moment, and swept aside his devious urge under worry for his friend, who now displayed a rotted, pallid face as if from a violent blow smashed in the head.

He was far from imagining that Acthéean superimposed other fantasies on his naked figure, distorted perceptions of visual disturbances, almost distressed anamorphs who writhed in endless pain.

... the bust was the same silvery color as the rest...a skin of a velvety softness and silk at the same time...he comforted himself to nestle against that brazen chest, squeezing the alabaster waist so acerbically thin, he was afraid of shattering the Being like glass under her sultry hug ...

The fuzzy fantasy rippled in an ashy haze, interposing itself on the bust exposed by the fall of the shirt, the alabaster skin of the Belmont diluted smoothly with the subtile sheen of silver, and Acthéean'd the impression of two images trying to pair up on top of each other, with hesitant attempts to match clean lines.

...and the eyes...god, that his eyes were deep lakes born from the fusion of the purest gold...silver and gold, was that Angel...

The clear waters fixed upon him were shrouded in unanswered questions, and the widening and elongation of the eyes interlocked with expanses of gold also trying themselves in the overlay composition. What was this hallucination?

...over there, the pendular candlesticks poured out their shaped wax sculptures so exacerbated in the eroticism stagnating here, to be suffocating...

...everything was ice and fire, and he slipped on treacherous plates that made his steps ripper, as he attempted a desperate escape through the endless corridors between the vertical metal prisons, immersed in the mud and the silt of brackish water...

…Everything was splendor and absolute horror: devious concupiscence and sly sensuality; both suffocating and renewed with a fresh breath of newness; savage aggressiveness and agonizing gentleness; melancholy and optimism about the renewal of Being; brutal love and old-fashioned perversion; bitterness on the tip of a tongue and sweet tenderness with ethereal scents; worship of the flesh in outrages and delicate rituals in intimate outbursts...

...undulations of the bodies in full effort, muscles which tightened under the caresses, irrational which opened the beautiful part to the imagination in the rite of carnal love...the hips which danced a slow jerk to lead the afflicted to the height of their sensations, the bellies which spasmed under the pain of the released ecstasy...

...the lips so soft and fresh dragging on his flesh shivering with cold...

Acthéean let his hands drop, nodding softly, as the pupils gradually thinned into their normal roundness. Somewhere inside him there was a strange snap that poured a new shower of frost into his heart. When he looked up at Trevor, he saw the focused and worried attitude leaning over him, waiting for an answer. The steel orbs gazed at him in painfully expectantly.

He slid a hand down his forehead, throwing the chocolate locks back, exposing his suddenly sheer, more than usual complexion. Yet when he mumbled the first words, he expressed a thought completely opposite of his sudden shock.

"…You've such a self-denial, that you fear at any moment that everyone'll abandon you, and it'll be well deserved for you…"he whispered in front of a Trevor completely stunned by the thought.

"...wh...what?"

"You think that because you've been abandoned by life, that systematically everyone'll do the same...you live constantly in fear of rejection, that you've built this wall around you, and you become inaccessible to those who would like to do your knowledge…

" But what are you saying? Something just happened to you, and it has nothing to do with me…''Trevor defended himself, stepping back quietly.

"...there's something I think I remember, but it's still blurry, brutal...I need a rest and so do you...

Acthéean pinched the bridge of his nose, frowning at a headache gradually invading the back of his neck.

"Trevor, your defiant behavior towards Norton hurts me…for me it's a complete lack of trust in me, in my friendship and my loyalty…I wanted to tell you, I want to be honest with you…Don't believe that because I appreciate someone else's friendship, that I turn my back to you in the most total ingratitude...

He’d delivered the rant without a hitch, his gaze fixed on the blue orbs that wavered under the words. It'd started so well, in the tender sweetness of relief, the sharpening of the senses that only asked to paw into new experimental possibilities, only to end like this? suddenly, under words that were sour and yet so painfully true.

"…Trust the others a little, Trevor! Don't shut up like an oyster when we try to make a friendly gesture to you, please! Even Efrain's sorry for your excessive savagery...

"It's because I don't take Norton that you say that..."Trevor admitted piteously, aware that his friend was right about his vindictive attitude in every way.

"Yes...apparently you said a lot of bad things to Norton, when they brought me back...he's a good kid, believe me, and he's been precious to me by my side in Wygol...if he hadn't been there, I wouldn't be here! Give him a chance, please...and consider that if I offer him my friendship, it's because he deserves it...but I'll never turn away from you, however...you seem to think that if we no longer take care of you, it's because we abandon you again! it isn't, Trevor…think about it!

"But, that's not what we're talking about right now,"the Belmont defended, pulling the shirt back over his neat shoulders and now anesthetized under the soft perfumed and relieving scents.

Acthéean wiped his hands on a clean cloth, and put the dish back on the table near the fireplace. Trevor was flabbergasted at the turn of the conversation, as his friend relaxed his tall body in a graceful arch to move around the bedroom. Then the apprentice turned back again to the contrite form of Trevor, who didn’t know what to do with his hands. He realized that he’d been a little harsh on the teenager, as he’d tried to distract from his troubled thoughts by the projections of images, the beginnings of memory? He was sorry then for his brutality, and walked over to his friend prostrated painfully in his seat on his hips, his back bent.

A gesture he wanted halfway between the 'gruff’of a manly hug, and an affection demonstrated in its sincerity, he wrapped an arm around the bust, reached up and pulled the side of his face to his forehead, hoping he hadn't hurt his emotionally fragile friend too much.

"Trevor,"he whispered to him,"I'd to tell you, because it matters a lot to me, believe me. Open yourself up a little more to others, while keeping your integrity...you've always been frank in your positions, but sometimes hurtful too...

"I didn't mean to hurt you by doing this,"Trevor grumbled, keeping his forehead against his friend's. ’But it hurt too…when they brought you back, I thought I was dead…they were all there, alive, and you, dead, lifeless on that table…and Norton…whimpering things that I didn't understand…I saw red…you're my only friend, and you were there, lifeless…while they…were intact, alive…

"But, they'd nothing to do with what happened…and I'm here, now…thanks to you, to Efrain, to you...There is something changing in me, I can feel it...if it’s my memory which accepts to come back, it’s thanks to you two!

Trevor straightened his face, firm and decisive.

"You know, I didn't admit it of course, but I'm glad Efrain invited him to stay…of course, seeing you talking about things you've been through, hurt me a lot…but I trust you and your friendship…maybe you're right: I'm afraid that I'll be abandoned again…is that selfish of me?

Acthéean let go, and looked at his contrite friend:

"In a way it can be, but it's totally understandable in your situation...I'm just asking you to be a little more accommodating to those who would like to be friends with you, and not immediately see it as a miscalculation in their behavior, that there isn’t...You don't even realize what you’re, what you distribute around you, the influence you’ve on others...you don't realize that there’re people who value you a lot, and you only see the pernicious evil...Norton’s the typical example of what you unconsciously reject en masse, because you fear any aggression, or irremediable injury...Look at the outrageous punishment you allowed yourself to endure! As if you judged yourself permanently deserving all these judgments and punishments...Trevor, life gives you examples of extraordinary redemption from yourself! Look, it’s here, in this healing place, that you’ve found your balance, your friends...it’s food for thought, right? You've told me many times that you never took the time to live your sacrificed childhood, but now it's time for you to live! and no longer poison yourself with all this torment for fear of abandonment, or of self-denigration...

The steel orbs sparkled with crystalline diamonds clinging to the edges of dark lashes. His friend was so right! He drafted a moose to nestle in his friend's arms, but had a hesitation that Acthéean caught on the fly. He enveloped the diaphanous, somber figure in a heartfelt, heartwarming hug.

"We're going to sleep, now we really need sleep, and we say that the night brings advice...

"But, you didn't say what happened to you earlier…"whispered Trevor, getting drunk on the abundance of sweet, penetrating scents from his friend's body, as well as the manly strength of the hug.

"...I'm going to think about it to give you the real impressions...but that's what I wanted to tell you as a priority, because I want the frankness between us...thinks that maybe there was something that happened, and made me talk to you like I just did…don't ask me in the present moment how to describe to you what upset me beyond measure, but be confident and patient…

Acthéean grasped his friend, harder, taking care not to irritate the sutures calmed from their itching by untimely rubbing. Trevor gently bit the shoulder of the garment, a certain way of proving the physicality of the present moment to himself. Everything was so boiling inside him, that he couldn't shake the suffocating emotions of exhausting stress, or the sweet bites of endorphin-laden excitement, making him feel like riding clouds.

"He's your friend, he's all yours…he's your Soulmate, the beating of your Heart-Shadow, and no one can ever break that, beyond the borders of the Immortal…'' tweeted the Penombra in him. And Trevor suddenly found himself afraid to name this new feeling, this possessiveness which devoured him wickedly to the point of exaltation, and which he would never have believed himself capable of feeling so intensely towards anyone.

Acthéean made him release the hold, oh so soft and not hurtful, of the jaws on his shoulder, and took his face with both hands. Slender, slightly gray-rings shadowed the gray hazelnuts, and it seemed that they sparkled more intensely with gold nuggets so thin, that they could’ve been missed, but Trevor, who’d observed this new phenomenon in his friend's eyes, didn’t miss the intriguing spark.

“I feel…Acthéean began, in a voice exhausted as from a physical effort,“…tired as ever…it's been an intense and busy day, full of little pleasures that we all four knew fully appreciate...if it's a sign from our Lord, then let us savor these precious moments again, and end this night as well in a sleep without disturbing dreams...or at least, dreams that could solve many things ...

Then he pressed his lips gently to Trevor's, without devouring or unnecessary aggression, just with platonic pressure, tasting Trevor's juice in passing, but never intruding. A kiss in all its friendly simplicity, as Ennobled Knights exchanged with each other, before going into battle, or in a meeting. Also during a sacred dubbing, the honored Knight received this long platonic kiss. And Trevor’d this astonishing sense of out of step: Acthéean seemed to dub-knighthooded him honorable rank, sealing the Pact with that pure kiss.

But he knew better than that and than anyone else, the value that this mouth caress had, one was beyond the tacit agreements of ennoblement. Before splitting up, and laying down in their respective layers, Trevor tried again:

"At least tell me if Norton helped tonight? It looked like yes, you took inspiration from his memories, right?

Acthéean'd pulled away from him, and was now walking to his bed. He looked at his crossed hands for a moment, certainly preparing for a prayer, before hissing laconically:

"It probably was...

Trevor'd to be satisfied with the answer.

Would it be astonishing to note that, in the minutes which followed, the room purred softly rhythmic breaths in the deep sleep, in diapason with the woods which cracked their burning, as if they hesitated to make a noise which would disturb the souls resting in peace in these places.

In the distance echoed the clicking of armor in the changing of the guard, while the gazes perceived, far removed in the background of hazy horizons, shimmering shades that danced, twirled, probably above distant villages in the mountains of eternal snow.

Just as this atypical night seemed to be, made up of little things but which'd known how to make the Shadows Hearts beat in a symphony mingled with so rare enjoyment...

Ooo << >> ooO

Come on, little fish...

The little fry hiccupped on a breath he didn't have...

The scum of stormy days quietly tossed the jiggling tiny silvery body, and the crystalline bubbles hung around the laminated scales.

There, under such a fragile crepe, there was a movement imperceptible to the human eye. The little fry sucked in gulps of air desperately, his ears bristling in worried spasms.

Until...the gritty onyx sand sank under the molding with firm steps, wrinkling the lacy shores with calm waves.

There, Death loomed, hesitating between the borders of the sky and the oceans. But She decided not to mourn this beach-tomb of the frail minnow.

The rocky outcrop lost within the shores carving their bed among the deep waves, spat its dross in an eternal waltz, resisting disintegration in its fight. It witnessed the silver hand picking up the fry carefully in its shell palm.

In the distance, growled a frustrated sigh released by the thousands of throats of the deceased, while the fry impatiently was sustaining the translucent lips that nourished it.

The foam jerked harder against the savior stranger's feet, and its bubbles took on a crimson hue, trying to drown the delicate fish in its cynical delusions.

Little fish, come quietly...eat my plankton, my seaweed with hair as silver as His...

Your frayed fins sew together under His tender caress, and no longer agonize from having been torn so...

The ocean breeze that enchanted you, has silenced its haunting litany, to become nothing more than a fairy lament, lullaby of your tears...

You were led to the shore where you shared the essence of your decline for so long, before being drawn into the new life bestowed upon you...

If you've been robbed and injured by the waters that once nourished you, now you're sustaining yourself on unexpected abundance...

Fiery again, is your little fuselage scaled with silver and light, as you meander in the greedy waves of your renewed existence...

Go quietly, little spawn, among yours, never fall back into vain utopias that would distract you from your ultimate goal...

The rocky outcrop'd been battered by winds and tides for eons. And it'll be beaten by storms and the anger of the oceans, for millennia to come, without bowing its spine or crumbling in razor-sharp waves...

And he would keep this moving testimony of this little fry, forever in his Calcite Memory...

And clinging to its sides, there would still be the reminiscences of erased eras...

<<< oooÕooo >>>

...with each step, a piece of his memory unfolded its film, blurry in its striped pellicle, jerking in epileptic fits, as his eyes gradually regained their sharpness.

...the aromas flirted with the atmosphere in nebulous spheres, heavenly on the nose that perceived them...what this skin smelled good of universes clogged in the reassuring intimacy of the flesh...

...his lips at last greedily drank the generous tears of the corolla...he felt each hematoma, each tear close, each blow anointed under the calm warmth of a draft on his jaw, each migraine pulsation receding before the unction of a blinding oscillation cradling his neck...

...the room was so beautiful in its marbled majesty loaded with the most beautiful damask hangings, the most magnificent precious floors in their artistically painted arabesques, intertwined by tiny veins, like blood vessels that would make the alabaster and the priceless mediums pulsate...

...he wanted his friend by his side to admire all these orgiastic splendors in their gold and their riches, in their flesh melted together in extraordinary libations and against all nature...a beauty inaccessible to any mortal, of which his eyes delighted shamelessly, his cheeks no longer burning under the shame of the first glance, as if he was now part of this infernal bacchanal…

...at his side were pulsing movements so gentle that if he hadn't turned his attention to the newcomer he would hardly have heard the happy clatter of metal on the ground, like an aerial armload by the beating of wings of a young bird leaving the nest...

...he got lost in wonderful lakes where his passion merged with the debris of a dream.

Finally found...

~~~~ 000 >>> <<< 000 ~~~~

Early in the morning, the village was rocked by shades of purple and dazzling gray, under an efflorescent bloom of dust and ash falling in myriads of smoky debris of pollen. The magical afterglow of a night that the inhabitants considered "holy", when they witnessed this strange phenomenon upon awakening. Where did these delicate ethereal scoriae hanging all around the walls come from, no one knew, and no longer asked the question. For them, it was like a miracle sent by the Divine who'd decided to come back to bless their foundations.

Up there, all in height, windows open on the vertiginous pinnacle of the keep of the Brotherhood, the Founding-Fathers, gathered for the preparation of ‘Lauds’, were attracted by the strange manifestation. Few of them’d slept well, however, on this exceptional night, still lulled by the ceremony of the day before, but deeply and fearfully upset beyond measure by the alarming observation of the state of the great Hall of the Mirror, in which they’d picked up all the wonderful blooms lying in their incredible ulceration and sudden decay. Releasing a nauseating overload of sulphurous hints that’d to be evacuated by opening the windows wide.

There'd been general dismay in front of this devastated floral cemetery. It wasn't the first time that such a phenomenon so struck down any beauty that'd presumptuousness to be exhibited in the majestic and priceless vases. No one could provide a rational explanation, and many wished they hadn't even known, curled in their hearts suddenly stricken with superstitious dread.

Dull, fearless, stoic, there remained the immense Mirror which seemed to mock the fear of men.

Carefree and well rested, Norton had risen at dawn, with a still very early morning Efrain, and both had glanced curiously at the strange misty blooms floating gracefully in this chilly early morning.

Trevor’d followed, awakened by the startled whispers of the two men. He, too, was perfectly rested, and hadn't suffered the constant dreams that’d haunted him for nights. Arms encircling his figure still quivering with sleep, he’d glanced surprised at the unusual landscape. Even the noises seemed to be clogged by an irrational blanket thrown over the village, in order to diminish the echoes. It was as if the environment was trapped in the Time that’d stopped its tears in the Clepsydra.

Efrain rekindled the fire that had died down overnight, as the young men quickly attended to their toilet. Norton ate himself happily, before heading to his lessons. It wasn't every day that he'd the opportunity to munch on something other than a foul and hard quignon of bread, before indulging in the grueling maneuvers that consumed all the meager accumulated energy. He therefore took the time to taste the dishes left over from the evening.

Acthéean joined them shortly after. They all immediately noticed an inner glow that was diffused from the young man, and which hadn't existed before. As if Acthéean came back to life?

He too gazed for a moment at the heavens laden with this inconsistent drizzle. The four of them couldn't understand this strange phenomenon, even Efrain'd no explanation. No one knew whether to worry about it, or to see it as a sign from God. Of course, the majority of the villagers were steeped in divine belief, but the scientist doubted.

"Looks like…it's like something has burned, and the ashes of which are blown up here by the winds…"he grumbled under his breath, not really believing it.

Trevor pricked up his ears. It was still there. In elusive, guttural modulations. Swelling and resorbing. Noticeable only at certain times, if the wind allowed it. His transparent gaze scanned the horizons in vain for any clue, before Efrain let him in. What was most disturbing was that apparently he was the only one to hear this.

Ooo >>> <<< ooO

Efrain, who accompanied Norton, quietly walked away in the stringy haze that persisted in loosening its lazy threads through the twists and turns and streets of the walled village. He listened wisely to the babbling of the blond novice, while considering his surroundings decidedly very silent, as if a hand was covering its lips in forced silence.

They parted in front of the library steps, Norton walking towards his classes, the herbalist to care for a student who remained at Andréas' premises before returning to his cell. The reckless one’d risen at dawn to go about some digging for his studies, and had stupidly lost his balance on a stepladder leading to the steps displaying their literary treasures which he desperately sought. The dumbest incident ever! One of the illuminator priests’d been sent by Andreas who’d picked up the clumsy one. Not only had he been lifted up at dawn by the messenger, so Efrain’d contemplated the unusual phenomenon in the air, wondering if it was to be overly concerned. The day began under strange auspices!

Confidently, he left his office to his two charges. Left to their own devices, Acthéean was perfectly capable of managing a possible treatment visit if necessary, Trevor prepared himself a good bath perfumed with oils,-believing that the damp cloth of the morning wasn’t enough for him to feel fresh and clean, and he still had plenty of time in the world for his favorite ablutions. Perfectly practiced in the intimate ritual, unearthing everything he needed without asking anyone, as he’d been obliged to do the very first times in his arrival. Sacrality the apprentice knew wouldn’t be disturbed under any circumstances.

In him throbbed an extraordinary revival, drawn from a night of revealing songes. His friends were right: something’d indeed exploded in the light of the truth, the abscess’d finally opened. But the mood that’d poured out wasn’t really of a healthy and honest taste. On the contrary, it’d all the hints of an unhealthy ambiguity, and he didn’t know now how he was going to reveal this to his friends. He who’d struggled so fiercely in the confines of his agnosia, trembled a little to face the memories that’d emerged currently, displaying all the irony of an embarrassing situation.

First, he’d to take his courage, and already confess half-heartedly to Trevor. The latter would help him formulate even the unspeakable. He would undoubtedly support him, without judgment, without contempt. Efrain too, he was sure. The man of science was endlessly wise, and knew how to deduce the incoherent, and tolerate the intolerable.

He knew,-as he was about to cross the threshold of the bathhouse sanctuary where Trevor was already frolicking, sighing happily in a tub filled almost to the brim with all forms of flowers and oils floating on the smooth surface-, that he was going to have to select the parts of the truth to tell to one and the other. The biggest embarrassing part would probably be safer in Trevor's ear.

The night’d finally revealed more concise sketches of his anamnesis, and short-term-Memory’d apparently freed itself under the constant snags of dichotomous symbolism invading his songes, often out of breath under the harsh efforts of a capricious tide imaging his suffocating Memory, always exhausted under the merciless surf that swept away the poor debris that’d escaped from it.

His eyes sparkled with unmitigated glee as he approached the tub cautiously chirping a funny, happy bird bristling with a mop in need of a good wash, and a comb in a hairstyle order. Caught in his ablutions, the youngster didn’t hear him come, and he contemplated for a moment, amused by his innocence and his cheerfulness. For one of the rare times the Belmont was happy freely.

Trevor remained for long minutes, leaning over the oily, fragrant wave, seeming to be immersed in the delicate spirals that sparkled the floral surface, the lengths of silk freely framing his face, and hiding the sight of his friend frozen in admiration. Half the hair flared out in the water in front of the bust, baring the appearance of the scarred back. Acthéean made out the small black tips of the remaining seamed threads, spiky like an angry ball of needles. Apparently, the ointment applied that night had calmed the itching, and Acthéean wondered if he could anoint his that beautiful pale flesh of that precious pasta again.

Trevor would sketch my memories, while I massage his scars.

Trevor gave a little start, certainly at the slight squealing squeaked by the wooden slats breathing their lascivious stretch in the fragrant humidity of the room. His gaze glared at where Acthéean was, ready to verbally castigate the intruder. Very quickly, in a second, the threatening glow which made the sapphires flash, transformed into a cheerful and luminous glow by recognizing his friend in the always soft penombra and intimately haloed by the braziers and the rich candlesticks of their sculpted wax sticks. A childish and honest smile tenderly stretched the hemmed lips.

"Forgive me, maybe I should've asked your permission to enter...''Acthéean apologized, taking the last steps to separate him from the tub, while raising his hands.

"You don't have to...neither you nor Efrain have to apologize,''Trevor whispered, smoothing his locks in a weird soap made from a mixture of herbs, of Serpolet, beeswax, and above all,-an improbable mixture found by Efrain!-, birch-wood ash! The smell was far from unpleasant, woody and humus just rinsed off with rain by the birch, bittersweet and sugary by the wax, a little more lifeless and dusty by the ashes, and cool, almost icy and lemony by the disinfectant Serpolet. An explosive mix, but which Efrain'd attested to be radical in warding off parasites, lice and other infesting dirt the hair too abundant. The care, the aromatic, and the healing virtues had immediately won over the conscientious Trevor in his toilet.

"...and then, we all saw each other naked, in often derogatory circumstances..."Acthéean continued, taking the soap from his friend's hands, bringing it to his nose to catch more of the characterized efflorescence with deep breaths. In the background of his senses, it was a refined kaleidoscope of colors so basic and neutral in their delicacy, and he let himself go under this ballet of moroseness with the taste of nostalgic frost. He foamed the oily bread, and began to rub the scalp soaked in inebriating scents.

"… Apart from Efrain, of course…''he smiles."In my job, I'm like him, doomed to see the worst...

Trevor gasped, shocked at the hint, and sent a scent shower with a slap of his hand, falsely taking offense.

Acthéean sneered, turning away from the vengeful and good-natured squirt. He continued his hair massage, really enjoying how the cascade of black diamonds meandered between his fingers, plunging back into the oily water, and sticking to the alabaster dermis. True sensuality engulfed the flawless adornment, which the Belmont always took care to keep clean and fresh, if not always tidy!

A quick glance took in the scarred smirks of the back again, before assessing:

"Would you like me to give you the soothing oil on your 'itchy' again?''he asked teasingly.

"It calmed me down, yes!''Trevor turned a smiling face towards him, "I slept well last night, not upset by anything like a nightmare…I believe that night was magical, by the will of our Lord. Besides, you're well rested too ...

"You say that because you are happy that you got to participate in Chester's vespers…you were quite exhilarated with joy…

"Why don't we've so many beautiful moments?''Trevor lamented, suddenly nostalgic again.

Acthéean didn’t respond immediately, gently rubbing the oils and soap on the spine, emboldened by the lack of refusal or the deflection of the invading hand. Taking a decisive breath, he almost whispered:

"There might be an even more beautiful moment to come...while you draw my memories I will nourish your scars, what do you say?

The sapphires sparkled brightly at the comprehension, and Acthéean was bathed in the delighted flood of their hypnotic light.

"When...when did you get your memory back?" Trevor gasped, anticipating the explanations.

Acthéean couldn't resist any longer, and gently wrapped his chest and shoulders in a heartfelt hug, and too bad if he brazenly wet his high-cut shirt casually. His chocolate auburn locks mingled with the onyx river, as he kissed the temples and the hairless side. The heat of the bath seeped into the fabrics, but he blatantly didn't care, only too happy to hug his friend tenderly, enjoying a rare moment when they were alone.

Boldly and ardently, he swiveled his face and tilted it to press greedy lips against it. The Belmont melted into it without struggling, and accepted the kiss in all its frenzied voracity. He submitted to the intrusion of a tongue winding his fragrant cavity of crusty breads and powerful, sultry hibiscus.  His whole being shuddered deliciously under the devouring of the embrace, very different from that of the day before.

His flesh adored the warm vapors infused by the bath, and always tingled with an exciting sweetness, and during these moments so pampered and intimate, he enjoyed all the sweet and intoxicating sensations that bristled his body in moaning shudders of an excitement which he savored every electric spike. He took pleasure in the deep tendrils which made his groin contract, his lower abdomen pulsing with devious waves of which he took pleasure in stretching all the languid perception, perhaps in a form of perverse masochism, but he prolonged his ecstasy in new and secret experiences, throwing overboard any shameful inflammation castrating his euphoria.

At that moment, the all-consuming kiss set his already relaxed and bathed-happy body on fire, and he clung to his friend's face, opening wide, arching his back in the grip. Acthéean'd never kissed him like this, with so much frightening brutality, almost violating his mouth, and he felt his lips swell under the stimulation.

Acthéean suddenly broke the carnivorous kiss, gripping the damp hair in his fist, considering his friend breathless and pink by a light powder coating his high cheekbones, the pupils’d doubled in size, now surrounded by a thin circle of steel-sapphire, the lips’d indeed swollen and moistened under the bite-kiss. Acthéean's keen sense of smell detected a subtle, gripping and heavy odor over the oiled aromas: that of the musk of arousal, the sharp pheromones in olfactions that few people could perceive, except what the one called a 'nose' for the trade of perfumes, or medicinal plants. A fragrance that’s particularly pronounced among young people who’re still "green", awkward in the ritual of love and the discovery of their pleasure, the skin exuding a more pregnant musky acidity.

"Brother Efrain won’t be long, it’s better that he doesn’t surprise us like this..."breathed Acthéean. ‘’I want you to enjoy my first impressions ...I even have this feeling that if I don't do it now, the few memories I managed to root out last night, will again fall into the abyss of oblivion forever ...

God, if Efrain weren’t to return from one minute to the next, Acthéean would finally abandon himself to bed the savage Belmont, and prove to him that he too had the right to be loved and that to cry freely wasn’t always synonymous with suffering inflicted by weapons or whips, and that the body wasn’t only doomed to twist under the wounds. He felt dizzy as his heart pounded in the adrenaline rush of excitement and passion.

His dreams’d finally opened doors that’d agreed to give way under the pressure, releasing the reminiscences in exacerbated libations of utter cruelty. Like his memories, it was as if the great Mirror of his songes’d shattered into thousands of twisted thorns, tearing at one blow the muslins that’d clogged his anamnesis for too long.

The herbalist was going to return from his round of treatment. He hadn't realized that the transparent pearls were slipping discreetly through his thatch again, thinking it was the wetness of the bath that was drowning his face. He took a few more seconds to contemplate the depth of the blue lakes, also moistened with scent vapor, and perhaps a few tears from the intense emotion. He’d time to admire the noble and assertive features of his friend; the straightness of the elegant nose; the high cheekbones and the square jaw without being brutal or prognathic; the chin gently rounded finely, without being pointed, but rather in a diamond-shaped tenderness. The elegant arch of the eyebrows enhances everything, widens the look and gives the final touch of the perfect isosceles triangle in the balance of the face. A charismatic feline beauty, without any asymmetrical error that could spoil the effect.

And Acthéean saw the phantom overlap. But was he in fact the reflection of a fantasy fueled by his imagination developing a perfect "type" who could make his sensuality vibrate? The mind was so powerful when it came to creating everything you needed in the most intense moments.

And up there...

He placed another kiss on the corner of the lips swollen with desire, pinking so delicately, but nicer, plus a subtle peck like a signature on a parchment validating a Precious Contract. Under his lips, his friend let him lead the tender ball, trusting him, still his back curved in the extension of the neck thrown back, his hands lightly gripping the edges of the tub. The paradisiacal emanations continued to flutter around them, embracing them in a possessive cloud, a precious cocoon of the two Soul-Mates.

On the oil-shimmering surface, the silk adornment floated lazily to the rhythm of their minute movements, a magnificent myriad of black algae sparkling with cleanliness and soaps. It was waiting to be combed for a long time, relieved of tension and hassle, tidy and dried in its splendor that would turn all eyes on its owner's tall figure.

"I'm finishing my toilet…''Trevor offered, still overwhelmed by the kiss so wild and possessive, almost tearful under the overload of emotions that so deliciously embraced every part of his body. ’Maybe you can start telling? while I finish...

"I got to know you,"the apprentice teased, as he began to bathe the hair again, picking it up gently in a superb cord, and clearing it of the lather and oils clinging voraciously to it. ’If I don’t help you, you’re still for a while…worse than one of my mistresses!

The answer was thrown in his face with a vigorous watery slap that he received all over his front, drenching him inadvertently, forcing him to change completely. Not without throwing Trevor under the water with a vengeful gesture.

How good it was to see this savage Belmont whom he’d never seen other than gloomy and taciturn, laughing now with great liberating bursts, in an unconsciousness which he’d never been able to display in all his childhood weaned from affection and simple and happy moments.

Yet Trevor kept his promise this time. Exhilarated by his friend's announcement, he was in one hurry: to listen to the one he now esteemed more than his life, to remember the strange things he’d experienced. It was a limitless happiness that at last the apprentice’d left the infinite mazes of Agnosia. Mnemosyne’d finally put Anamnesis back on the right track, avoided the traps of Madness, and rescued Psyche in its delirium and lamentation.

The room was drenched in their teasing games, and the two struggled to clean up and scoop up most of the "shipwreck" that’d spread over the stern slabs of the pavement. They also took the time, out of respect for the herbalist who’d this compulsive taste for order, to put everything well in the various treasure bottles of oils, the plants in their jars, the tissues and towels used for the toilet.

During the time they were tidying up, they hardly uttered a word, saving themselves the moment when Acthéean could relate the event. They even took a few minutes to prepare a decoction which they would offer to the scientist as a drink to celebrate the successful healing of the apprentice's memory. He would certainly be moved and conquered!

Both'd donned loose, wide-cut shirts, as Trevor unashamedly loved, happy to be able to let the necklines yawn over his moving, beautifully drawn bust and collarbone. A simple belt of fabric, wrapped in rings around his waist, prevented the sides of the garment from opening up any further in the strong pattern of steel abs. Brais, simplified in their design, covered the long legs with their verdigris shades. Acthéean’d dressed almost unconsciously paired up with his friend, except for the belt, his shirt yawned more freely, the sleeves rolled up above the elbows.

The jais-black hair spread in its healing oils and scents, and waited only for the sacred ritual of the comb. The large strands were still well soaked, and the entire back of the shirt was wet from the natural wringing of the volumic hairmass.

Trevor'd armed himself with his pictures, and was scattering them happily on the large treatment table. The feathers and brushes had joined the ranks of carefully ordered inks, the box disgorged its coals and sanguines, dry pigments intended for prints like Andréas and certain illuminator brothers'd shown him use.

The two silently examined what’d already been worked out, and which’d certainly allowed the beginnings of recognition. Acthéean’d to admit the fair comparison to the mists he’d tried to keep from his oblivion, and the memories clearer now. Strange! In this tangle of memory loss, how incredible detail’d managed to extricate itself, it was unsettling! As if, in fact, his Memory’d never been lost, but remained carefully hidden in the rooms of a cynical Denial cruelly mocking the afflicted youth...

So began the process of setting up each playlet where the smallest detail mattered, the smallest dramatic accent, a gleam surreptitiously shining on an acute angle of a statuary...and the liturgical comb began its ballet between the strands of heavenly aromas.

While stirring the capillary-mass with a full grip,-performing subtle massages on the scalp, in order to dry while wringing out the overflow with a towel, the teeth of different widths bit tenderly into the silk, tidying it up, parting a semblance of a nest of rebellious knots, ventilating the strands while slowly lifting the worked mass-, then began an astonished and surprising litany of descriptions in chosen words, hissed as sung.

Acthéean entered single-storey into his memories which embraced him effusively, sharing their verbal libation with the mind freed from its weight of oblivion.

Outside, the bloom of dust and ashes persisted in its ethereal aerobatics, no doubt carried by capricious winds, coming from distant fires, perhaps...lulled by a throaty monotony that never ended supposedly...blessed by a eternal nocturnal finish shrouded in its typical violines-purples, assuredly.

Taking advantage of the fact that they still had some private time for them, Acthéean'd settled on a bench higher than the one where Trevor was sitting, giving him the opportunity to gently enclose the chest and shoulders between his thighs, while he combed his hair, and took care of the adornment. Trevor thus became the Sanctuary where Acthéean performed the ritual of worship, occasionally brushing the jawline in a caressing "ghost", prompting the one who was so flattered to lean his face in the touch for a moment. And the fiery Belmont, calmed down under such languid attentions, indulged in sketches that were born again from extraordinary recounted memories, sometimes in hesitant clashes, sometimes in emotional strangulation.

One narrated with his words of heart and Melancholy entwined, the other patiently painted the ardor, the hazy tears, the gel and frost everywhere, shading with a feather details taking forms expressed in inconceivable.

"I also wanted to tell you about some aspects that took place there, just for you, because it's more...intimate...''confessed Acthéean, floating deliciously between his dreamlike universes, and these strange worlds which'd been revealed to him crudely.

Trevor half-turned to him, not enough to interrupt the ballet of the comb, but enough to observe the multitudes of vivid emotions playing a strange play of shadows on the bearded face, like a mysterious theater of contrasting silhouettes fighting over concentrated features. He knew his friend'd gone to unusual landscapes lost in the dead-ends of his Memory, and waited patiently for the feather raised on a sketch which he evasively shadowed under close listening.

As the story unfolded, Trevor quickly associated the incredible similarities between the private microcosms making their interiors beat in a contiguous identity of the strangest effect. Acthéean spoke openly of the castle, certain parts of the architecture of which recurred in their dreams; of the immensity of the Mirror endlessly pervading through the mists of the eerie identical; the fighting they both heard but couldn't see; a flower, which has become a haunting echo at every corner of songes and reality.

One'd plucked the virginal flower from the charred trunk of a struck down tree, the other'd picked it up from a wild sage grove, where he’d been 'dropped' after his strange journey. And the two Lilies were still ineffably intact in their shadowy and intimate niches, as if entwined by a Siamese destiny.

"I'll wait until Efrain comes back to tell him the bulk of this trip...but to you, I've to tell you about things that concern you....

"We've the same dreams, Acthéean, why?''Trevor asked, having carelessly resumed his "shadows" over the sketch that took on abstract form mixed with alienating jerks on familiar delineations. Painful.

"How long have you been dreaming like this? Was it like that before you came here?''asked Acthéean, also disturbed by all the extraordinary dreamlike resemblances.

"No...I assumed, and Brother Efrain too, that my punishment triggered what he calls anguished forms generated by the mistreatment, and my reading that influences my mind...but it took on a whole new aspect in a few nights…when there were the severe thunderstorms it was as if my nightmares were beating in unison with the lightning…and I remember it perfectly, enough to feel lost...

Trevor took a deep breath, as Acthéean slowly brushed the strands with the comb, slowing the movement, deep like Trevor in his thoughts, seeking some semblance of explanation in the face of the fascinating inexplicable. The two were as if suspended in the warm space of the room, physically present, but absent, far out of reach except their tacitly, treading the sandy ground elsewhere that only they could recognize.

"While you were gone,"Trevor continued, "the nightmares were more violent…I saw only battles, dead…we were both dead, and we were lying in the hazy mists between two Mirrors…and still the Lily…that night, it was more violent than other nights, and I woke Efrain by my moans...

Trevor turned completely to his friend, wanting to fix his gaze on his, as if to press harder on the words he was about to say. The untangled and almost dry mass fell like a crow's wing on the shoulders, displaying its length taunting the decency of a cut imposed on novices, with large bursts sublimated in the silky darkness. Definitely, the two forged their way down paths that were impractical for others, obsessed with each other's memories, in an extraordinary parable.

"I continually dream of this Lily...until I even see it cling to my being with its endless roots, like insistent ivy on a stone...it grows in my belly, and always emerges as a word whose meaning I don’t understand...that night, this dream was so real, that I knew that something'd happened, and I begged Efrain…and then, I saw this flower, coming back from our survey with of the troop who'd returned without you...and you, you picked this flower, over there, before you disappeared...

"Trevor...''hesitated Acthéean,"before Efrain comes back, I've to tell you: I went, it seems, to the castle, at least it was these Knights-Vampires who led me there, or who took me, I don't know yet, and probably I'll never know...I've seen things...wonders and horrors at the same time... the abominable and the infamous corruption...the flesh devoured by demons of sex, ecstasies which shouldn't be in such circumstances ...hellish debauchery of eroticism that a normal human wouldn't dream of...

Trevor blushes fiercely, imagining the worst. He didn’t know whether he should allow these conjectures to be confided in senseless ramblings with such crude and obscene words.

"I saw tombs invaded by a multitude of fine roots, finer than ivy...and when I looked where they came from, they disgorged from a broken mirror, and gathered in the depths of the sepulcher, to always give birth to this flower...I don’t know who was resting there, in these precious marbles, carved in love for the Recumbent...it could've been morbid and unhealthy, but I felt at those times, a serenity like I never felt before...I was almost to come to terms with my death, and never come back...

Acthéean displayed his gaze permanently lost in the well of his memories. Every word that squeezed painfully onto the beach from his lips struck a painful and bitter blow in Trevor's soul, and it folded into a crucifixion in odious and baneful tourments.

"...still a similarity between our dreams, when we were apart far away...and I would've wanted, insanely, at the height of myself, that you were with me to see what I saw...and all these awful and splendid things at the same time, excited me beyond measure...I found myself in a state of mad confusion, and I really thought I was losing my mind...these statuaries...if you'd seen that! but more than anything, I wanted you by my side, so that you could experience this too...and that's when I heard...

New interruption. Trevor gazed at his friend now with bulging eyes at the idea that the young man'd experienced what visibly resembled a hellish and unimaginable bacchanal scene, but especially that the latter'd wished his presence to be the privileged witness.

"What did you hear?''he stammered.

So Acthéean described the Unknown. With a passion beyond comprehension. As the description progressed, Trevor grew a little more dismayed, but his heart gasped in sly pains that he couldn't handle.

"Do you realize, Acthéean, what you(d to do with an Incubus?"he growled, his gaze slipping away from the revelation. It was painful at that moment to see a radiance of fascination surround Acthéean's features in the portrait of the stranger. "What you think you saw in the library, that ghost, did you see him there again? This’s proof that he’s a demon! far from being an angel, Acthéean! You've been seduced by an Incubus! And you would’ve liked me to attend orgies banished from God? You blaspheme, Acthéean!

Acthéean might've had enough of the false modesty and prudishness of Trevor stifled by constant priestly reprimands. It was important to him at this moment that the youngster accepted what'd unfolded without false shame. Finally accept the outbursts towards his being, without taking offense in an exasperating and scandalized modesty. He grabbed the pale, round-eyed face of embarrassment and disgust, lifted it up in the cup of hands, holding it in a firm grip, as he twisted his fiery gaze into Trevor's, far too bright for a moment.

"Trevor, you must understand that I was taken away by these vampires, after they badly hurt me…you heard what Norton said about the disturbing sound of my head hitting the ground…I was already hurt by this Armed Specter, and probably I was poisoned by its foul fluid when it passed away...in a flood of circumstances that totally escaped us, out of control over these aberrations, it was all over for me! you understand that! Death was kissing me, and there’s no longer any control over your senses which fade at the same time as you die...

He spoke each word, pressing them down slowly, to make sure the teenager registered them perfectly in his comprehension. With each more important part of the narration, he gently nodded his head in the catch, to further assert the meaning. His gaze'd taken on tones that hovered between fury and passion, loathing and infamy perhaps, dismay and troubled shadows. A myriad of emotions so passionate that they became toxic in their heightened vibration.

"I can seem possessed to you seeing me like this…''he admitted, seeing that Trevor shuddered under his grip. '…You must understand that anything over there that I saw was not aggressive or belligerent…Ghost, specter, phantasm, demon or Incubus, call it what you want, but IT saved my life, irrevocably...I don't know who HE was, or why He came, or even if He was the one who sent the vampires, in which case it would be even more disturbing...I've thousands of questions, and no answers...He hasn't even spoken to me...at least vocally. His voice echoed in my head without it ever coming out of his throat...

Acthéean loosened the grip a little, and his hands brushed the sides of the jaw in subtle butterfly wing beats. Trevor seemed to calm down, his pupils gradually tightening in a restored calm, and his heart no longer pounding like the first few seconds his friend'd started his tale. A whole different feeling gnawed at him, and his barbels darted between his ribs, burning the edge of his sapphires. Jealousy maybe? Suddenly contemptuous resentment towards this Being? who'd delighted his friend like that with the snap of a finger. A flicker of eyelashes that'd upset many people.

"He repeated to me: 'Follow the Lily...drink to the tears of my remorse..."...''continued Acthéean, flirting his jaw with the tip of a light finger."He told me that several times, and I couldn't understand…He was so tender and friendly, and I admit it to you, I couldn't resist nestling against his chest…Everything was so calm with Him by my side, as I'd just passed through rooms which revealed their cannibalistic and erotic violence, that I was struck with terror.. It allayed my fears, my pain, because I was in pain all over, and I think I was bleeding...my head was making me suffer terribly, my neck was bleeding...so he laid me down near the Lily that he held out to me, and nursed me...I believe He used Dark magic spells…it sounded a lot like it…All this time that has passed, I know that I only had affection and trust in this Being…I cry, because He was crying...I've this incomprehensible melancholy, because He was infinitely sad, a bottomless pit of unspoken lamentations...The rest, I'll tell when Efrain'll be there...

Acthéean fell silent, and leaned back on his bench, leaving the face of Trevor who didn’t know how to react. His friend trusted him for confessing such emotions, knowing full well that it could hurt him. He picked up one of the neatly trimmed feathers, and presented it before Acthéean's eyes.

"Do you want us to try to paint his portrait? That I draw what you saw?

Acthéean gave a bitter sneer:

"You can expressly hide your art, otherwise you will land on a pyre, if ever it's known...

He took Trevor's hands back in his, and planted his gray hazelnuts in the sapphires.

"I'll probably never have an answer to what happened to me, but it will forever be etched in my Memory in letters of fire...I even think my agnosia was caused by Him...

"So why do you remember now? If He'd wanted to prevent all recollection, that would've been final, right?

Acthéean spread his hands, keeping Trevor's hands still in his searing grip.

"I don't know, Trevor, it's part of the total mystery…All I know is that our Divine hasn't taken hold in these areas, it's inescapable…anyway, in this castle God has deserted with his Blessing every stone, every foundation that oozes out of it...What's obvious is that, in any case, certain details aren't known to anyone! It'll sound brutal to you, but what happened to me with this...Angel, whatever it's, also involves you...I thought I would never see you again, Trevor, I don't even know if I'm 'dead', all I know is that I've been sailing for a long time in nebulosities impossible to describe, except by Death...I told him that I was mourning your loss, that I'll never see you again, and I admit without false shame, that I cried in front of him, so much He gave off an infinity of emotions all more grueling than the others...And THAT, I'll live and die with, forever and for all eternity…IT will never leave me…and for some reason that I don't know, you’re an intrinsic part of this heap of exaltations which tear my Being, my flesh same…

He pressed a strong kiss against the forehead shrouded in the rebellious lock, now dry and regaining its ease in blurring the impudence, as well as part of the left eye it was zealous about. The feverish lips slid along the straightness of the nose, landing in graceful flight on those of his friend. He pecked gently, nibbling very, very softly, but he didn't miss the sad glow in the orbs.

"You're someone I care about very much, young Belmont. I wouldn’t offer my friendship to anyone who doesn’t catch my interest like you do...and nothing but you, you’re an enigma in the eyes of others, and I make a point of solving this riddle...You see, this's also a bit of what this Unknown Being made me understand: knowing how to take an interest in and love people, and let them know it in time, before people leave...afterwards, all that remains's unnecessary and belated remorse...This's what this Angel opened my eyes to...

New tender peck on the lips parted with wonder at a revelation ultimately not so trivial. It's true, when we lost someone, very often we bitterly regretted not having taken the time to express the affection, or the love that we'd felt for this being, that he either male or female, before he pass away.

And before Acthéean's eyes, on the dark canvas of his memory, reflected the strange attitude at the desolation the apprentice'd displayed when he'd expressed his regret.

...the lakes of gold'd been drowned with such a grieving intensity, that it'd been overwhelming in agony...

Outside, the early morning, very young in its evanescent awakening, persisted in stretching its languor in the ashy mists. The violaceous streaks merged with a shade of purple bloody the heaped clouds. It was still very early for those who didn’t get up to attend the Lauds, and dawn seemed encrusted in its vermilion grisaille costume, keeping in its palette the navy and indigo hues of an eternal night that was still sluggish. Moreover, the skies were so hollowed out in the depths of dark inks, that the marvelous dusting of distant galaxies spread their infinitesimal stars and brazen hairs. So that those who wandered in their activities between the ceremonies, and the works, wandered in a strange atmosphere halfway between dog and wolf, like a capricious Twilight.

When Efrain returned, he found his little youngsters studiously bending over the vellum strewn on the table. When he saw Trevor stammering his feathers and brushes happily, his eyes sparkling and keen, his lips stretched out in a blissful smile, and Acthéean leaning against him, whispering an explanation to him, he knew instinctively that something'd happened, and rejoices.

By the way, he'd time to be taken aback by the unleashing of a storm apparently which'd created an incredible wet mess in the bathroom! When he returned, hoping for an explanation, pointing to the part involved, he was delightfully interrupted by the sight of two young men handing him in a touching ensemble, a cup of enticingly smelling drink, and a few bits of food. A delighted and innocent smile blissfully applied to the two faces illuminated with happiness.

Ooo <<< >>> ooO

Chester d'Uries’s gaze bore lingering traces of fatigue, despite a night that’d ended in the merriment of the ceremony. The worried tensions still marked the whitened forehead of their lion's claws; the collection of the floral bodies’d upset him, and he kept remembering the different identical incidents where they’d all found the poor armfuls once brilliant, bathed in their sickening liquid of putrefaction.

Volpe believed he’d solved the problem, implicating the strange phenomenon in the nocuous presence of the Grimoire, and Uries suspected the place in which the cursed artifact now rested. Still, it hadn't done much, the same desolation spread out its graveyard across the hall. Even the statues seemed to have been subjected to the sacrilege of despised desecration.

At that moment of fresh early morning awakened from its eternal, strangely crimson mists, the dignitary's dark circles cast a weary glow over the empty altarpiece. He was going to have another heated argument with the embittered cardinal.

Then, while he straightened his dresses in an automatic gesture of setting up, before heading with his silent colleagues towards the abbey where the Lauds were going to be distributed, he caught out of the corner of his eye another phenomenon copying on the already heavy atmosphere of unhealthy absurdities in the drizzle of ash and dust. Now, high up in the skies, above the amalgam of grayish clouds of the worst effect, there were endless streaks sharp, like murderous claw strikes, unraveling in space, invading the air of its fine lineations in a gigantic web that a reaper-arachnid would be pulling, tearing the fabric of the stellar vault which peered through the slashes. A strange superimposition giving the appearance of austere surveillance by the dead luminaries, high up there, like voyeurs wanting to surprise the ban which was about to run down.

This new manifestation caused an irrepressible shiver in the spine of the Founder, who’d nevertheless seen worse ones during his entire career as a warrior of the Divine. But there, it was something else that was happening, and he knew the unspeakable was going to befall them, the very second he understood the singular wonder.

He walked over to one of the very tall stained-glass-windows, swinging one of the small skylights cut out at eye level, avoiding wide open the sashes. Perhaps his colleagues’d also noticed the strangeness scratching the sky, for he heard muffled sighs.

When he turned to them, he found himself face to face with a Dark Summoner and a slick rippling viciously under the bures of Dark Monks who stared at him with their void orbs. As his hearing caught the harrowing modulations of a long cry of alarm.

~~ ooo << >> ooo ~~

Efrain would’ve expected anything from his young people, questioning himself about a possible stupidity made by them, when we saw their blissful and a little stupid smiles that were displayed on their faces, we could've thought of two cats caught the paw in the bag to taste the poor canary fallen between their claws!

They get along well, these two to do some silly things...what did I get again as a brood? he wondered, as he watched the two "minouchets" prepare a snack for him. He was expecting everything, yes, except what he heard in the next few minutes.

It was dismayed that he took a seat at the table, while Trevor told him about the miracle of Acthéean's returned memory. The two were so excited, that they overlapped in their talking, and the herbalist could only stare at them, dumbfounded, trying to calm the tide of words that poured out. The rest was like a haze of amazement where scraps of hesitant words kept piling up, jumping from 'rooster to donkey' in awkwardly tackled topics, while the apprentice began his tale cautiously. He’d so much to say, but he insisted on keeping the parts the most delicate for Trevor, as he'd promised himself.

Acthéean was relatively succinct, narrating in a restrictive globality a majority of descriptions that he preferred to come back to later, in the context of another conversation. This was why Efrain didn’t know, for a moment, how to take the narrative, so much the youngster was scattered everywhere, as if taken for fear that he would again forget important points.

For now, memories led the ship of Memory through the murky waters of Acthéean's disappearance, navigating the mazes of ice and frosted snow, intense cold up to the nail; the sulfur-smelling labyrinths of vertical and underground prisons; strange portals that seemed to open only with medallions of Shadow and Light that the Brotherhood entrusted to their Knights setting out to storm the castle. And of which, alas, some bodies’d been discovered by Acthéean along the filthy and oozing corridors. At least what was left of it. Bone dust and carne-slag still clinging to broken bony-frameworks. Profaned bodies and desecrated in all their abject horror.

The herbalist, for once, had no word, flabbergasted by the apprentice's story. Acthéean kept a very low and intimate tone as he spoke, focused on his memories which he delicately untied over the chosen words, knowing full well that he was leading his companions into scabrous and unhealthy universes.

He was taking his time. Everyone was taking the time they thought they’d in this morning barely pulled from its nocturnal sheets. Acthéean was confiding a strange thought that'd crossed him, after having reconsidered for the umpteenth time the drawings of Trevor.

"...your drawings, Trevor, I'm sure I've seen them elsewhere...at least what I saw looked a lot like your conception of the drawing...

"Where did you see them?''finally intervened Efrain, coming out of his dismayed silence.

“…In the Grimoire…when I flipped through the pages very quickly, before seizing them, there weren't only writings…I discerned very well done sketches, as realistic as yours…whoever wrote this book, had to be an artist too…there must be more still, but I didn't have time to explore, as I told you before…

"That's interesting,"Efrain muttered. ‘’So in addition to seemingly disturbing writings, subversive drawings that would frighten the church...but keep going...

Before Acthéean could even utter another word, and continue with his narration, there was a click in the air, a little something that cracked sharply. It was paradoxically deafening, at the same time indistinguishable, as if this "breach" had opened in them.

The three men felt the same, at the same second, for they looked at each other in utter amazement.  The next second, their gazes fell in unison on the weeping sketches their inks sprawling slick as if withering under the putrid breath of dizzyingly accelerating time. They stared at the illuminations merging their washes into almost sickening spots, exacerbating the darker halos in the blood-crimson, the oily coals into suddenly reddish and crimson ephelids, alterations becoming withers in their unusual speckles. The vellum and parchment was overflowing with variegation flecked by the diluted pigments. Most unbelievably, the prints and sketches were in no way degraded to a predictable ugliness by the corrupted smudges. On the contrary, it'd the incredible result of marveling the lines, enhancing them in their realistic expression. It was as if an invisible hand'd soaked the supports, and the slightest delineation drooled in surrealist compositions of extreme savagery. The Fortuity brush painted a whole different picture in its hellish anamorphosis.

The Lilies, which the young people'd placed on the side of the drawings, regained an incredible vigor, as if suddenly nourished by the inks staining them, the liquids stretching along the streaks of the wood of the table, as if drawn by a magnet irresistibly towards their stems which seemed to arch a little more towards the invasive slick, releasing in the process a powerful scent of crushed pigments and croupy lees.

It was then that a long shrill hoot tore the too deep silence outside. Almost a dying howl, bursting from the ramparts all around the fortress, bouncing in desperate chirps off the walls and into the heads of everyone who lived there. A bellow mingled with unbearable clamor, gutting vociferations, yelling and deafening moans, making their hands clasp over the ears of those struck by all this noise from hell.

The three men jumped violently, torn from their tranquility, bluntly: the alert was given in sporadic imprecations, attesting to the brutality of the attack, supported by painful borborygmi sounds foreshadowing the worst. Without concerting, Acthéean rushed to the bedroom where he'd one of his training swords still close at hand, lying under his bed. Trevor and Efrain dared to point their noses out, in order to appreciate the scale of the disaster unfolding before their bulging eyes.

The Brotherhood was under attack! And in the most abominable way possible. Efrain didn't hesitate to risk taking a hit, they weren't armed, and quickly grabbed Trevor to get him to safety. Outside, hell'd broken loose. They could hardly have seen the guard doors shatter under charges spewed out of Tartarus.

But before becoming a medical herbalist, Acthéean’d been trained from a young age for the possibility of any stroke, and he was already rushing outside, armed with his Claymore he’d taken to Wygol. He took a second to send Trevor a smaller, simpler sword, but he knew that in the hands of the Belmont it'd become a deadly weapon.

Efrain wasn’t lacking, unearthing from one corner of the fireplace a flat sword which, given its appearance, had been used more than once as well. The three men hurried out, no longer thinking about the danger.

Before plunging into the fight which was already raging at a terrifying pace, bodies already scattered all over the space of the courtyard leading to the exit doors, three pairs of eyes pointed towards the heavens, attracted by the hecacomb that surged.

It was truly Hell that was vomiting on earth! Acthéean muttered strangely the phrase he'd learned from the book:

"Oblivium Serpiternum Daemonis". Under their heartbroken eyes, so flowed from the darkened clouds, the swarms…

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Milite Eléas fall, who'd had time to disembowel a powerful unarmoured Warg, while Milite Grégoire slashed his Combat-Cross on two fronts at once. The spiked chain, blessed with the sacred unction, killed the surrounding area with great murderous circles, and the span at the end of the armored links, mercilessly tore the desiccated or 'living dead' flesh according to the horrors that dripped from the gallops of charged.

The attack'd been so sudden, that the Summoning Priests hadn't yet to arrive on the ground which in a matter of minutes looked like an absolute horror of shattered and torn bodies. The guards on the ramparts'd been slain by hellish-archers falling from the swarm in wan and lethal vomit.

Then, Acthéean blocked all coherent thought, and let out an enraged cry, as a dreadful caparisoned warthog charged at him, its dreadful rider, a starving Goblin protected by his plate shell, its three long, too long, and tapered horns, pointed towards Acthéean's unprotected tender belly. He was going to be impaled, unable to deflect the fatal blow. And he only wore his shirt and his brais, in everything and for everything.

Trevor measured the extent of the damage as in a ghastly slow motion. He saw the hot chocolate auburn hair twitch in the frantic race to death, and his only garment was already soiled with thick spurts of dust and blood gushing from ripped throats, all in a deafening Capernaum.

He saw his friend bounce under the shock of the Warthog who immediately sought to search his bowels with its deadly and sharp appendages.

~~ ooo << >> ooo ~~

Chapter Text

Outside, the bloom of dust and ash persisted in its ethereal acrobatics, no doubt carried by capricious winds, coming from distant braziers, perhaps...lulled by a guttural monotony that never ended, no doubt...blessed by a Eternal nocturnal finish shrouded in its typical purple-violets, for sure.

Nebulous bloom dispensing its efflorescence in the ashen dust in myriads of sparkling constellations falling as in a dying breath in fragments of smoke and pollen...

Cover cajoling a landscape on the edge of desolation, like the twin image of other villages deserted by the force of minions vomited from hell.

Norton was happy. Like he'd never been before. It was with a perky heart that he lengthened his silent steps through the long cobbled crossroads leading him to his classes where a Languages option was to take place, before participating in the next training maneuvers.

He felt like he was riding clouds! with this intense feeling of well-being and joy that flooded his veins electrified by an adrenaline of happiness. How long had it been since he felt that? Had he even felt it once? Probably his being'd never recovered from the tragedy, and that he'd been dragging this coffin at arm's length for so long, a metaphor for a Mourning that he was unable to do. It was so long ago…He was still a child, and his parents hadn't yet made the decision to entrust him to the Brotherhood.

God, it'd been so long…Perhaps he’d never even laughed or smiled since… Death in his soul, he'd taken the direction of the Fortress which welcomed him, never to return between these walls, over there, where he'd abandoned so many painful memories. A broken family, destroyed by the Mourning that'd descended on their well-organized life, despite all the circumstances in shambles seeming to strive to disfigure a sibling so long desired.

Bitterness'd carefully installed its cozy little nest in Norton's so young heart. Not out of childhood, and already disgusted with life.

So yes, in this very young early morning, quivering in a dawn that revealed itself to be absolutely beautiful in its strange weightlessness of powdery dilution, and strange ashes in suspension, the young man vibrated with an intensity like he'd never felt before. He felt capable of many good things today. If wings suddenly sprouted from him, he wouldn't have been surprised!

He knew how to walk in silence, even his boots just touching the pavement like a delicate butterfly wing. He’d noticed that some, like Acthéean or even Trevor, had this exceptional ability to stealth, even armored in their war gear. And he’d modeled his movements identically, the two young people becoming models for him.

It'd been a long time since his warm brown eyes, atypical for such a pale blonde, had had that special sparkle as he watched this intimate and private world happily navigate Efrain's apothecary. He'd always thought that this place was a place where pain, even broken hearts, came to pour out,-because the herbalist'd this exceptional capacity for benevolent listening-, the infinite suffering of torn limbs, or the last breaths of the wounded of implacable wars.

He'd always feared this place where only stank of the desolation of shattered bodies, distraught psyches, the despair of failures. Simply death. He'd had a hard time accepting that a young man like Acthéean reserved his life for others in bodily affliction, where everything was only obligatory deliquescence of the human being brought up for disorder and debacle. During internal conflicts, bloody fights, it was rare that a little optimism could point the tip of its arrogant nose.

But there, suddenly, he'd just discovered all the intoxicating perfumes, which finally gave birth to hope, without fear of the pernicious punitive fallout from the spirits daring to indulge in the psychic relief of a moment of happiness. It smelled of the invigorating future, the careful care for both the flesh and the soul, the friendship woven into the fabric of sincerity, and not by unhealthy and pharisaical spirits as he'd already seen on several occasions in his “classes”. A good-natured atmosphere, where shimmered olfactory essences seeming to come from Paradise itself, the flamboyant colors of an osmosis in subtle degrees, a symphony of wise philosophy dictated by a contemplative man on his dark time, teaching the Laws of Life to his brood fascinated by so much erudition. Slicks of well-being never perverted by venomous remarks. He never thought it could exist.

If it were possible for him to give colors to these atmospheres so...particular and rare, he would melt chromatics in layers of warm and orange, for the sincerity of the spirits; cyans and fuchsias probably for wisdom; erudition in delicate sfumatos of sienna and bronze; plums and indigos for pertinent reflections; silver and gold for the richness of subtle thoughts; tourmaline and opal for the freshness of feelings. All the preciousness of the individual could’ve diluted all its olfactory and visual flavors in a painting summarizing the incredible capernaum that could boil in a human being.

What he was ignorant of, like everyone else in the village, was that what he imagined so blissfully while painting this extraordinary miraculous picture of dazzling colors, totally unaware that such an atypical and rare aptitude existed in his friend. A strange and disturbing gift. An ability to remain absolutely secret, in these troubled times.

So, no wonder that Acthéean comforted himself there so peacefully and patiently, carefully burying his 'view' of the world deep in the grave that was his heart. Efrain was a marvelous luminary of knowledge, full of attention and knowing how to listen, even the inaudible lulled by metaphorical words. He almost found himself envying his friend's position. These personalities’d succeeded the feat of being real luminous auras among all these 'greynessed' shadows haunting the corridors and alleys of the fortress. But maybe he was one of those overly optimistic people, who saw the glass half-full, confident in humanity for an ever-hopeful rosier future. Trying to forget the horrors of combat.

His footsteps flew, air, on the cobblestones constantly wet with a glossy pellicle that never seemed to evaporate, and somewhat misleading on the balance of the stones. A sideways movement, and the victim was sliding badly on his hindquarters, in too tight turns of a poorly lit hallway. His feet seemed to run over these treacherous pavements, never slipping inadvertently, carried by his deep thoughts, as he headed for his cell. He'd to take things there before going to class, the night spent in the apothecary, among his friends, hadn't been planned.

In-depth theology, and applied languages, before warming up a body in the handling of weapons, until dusk. He found, as he walked through the door of his cell, that he would never have time to attend Lauds, too delayed by his languid preparation after waking up. A first time, to take so long to breathe in a slow awakening, emerging from an enchanting night's sleep. And what a night!

As he selected a set of books to bring, he felt his heart skip a beat, thinking back to that night. God, how happy he’d been when Efrain’d invited him to rest in the medical clinic. And relieved. Finally, he’d the possibility of relaxing elsewhere than between these four severe walls, emotionally frigid, austere by the practice of assiduous prayers. What a difference, after spending a few hours in the invigorating heart of perfumes sublimated by the permanent storage of all plants; the efflorescences of healthy cleanliness, and not those of sickness or infected wounds; the fragrant bath of stimuli exacerbated by recent ablutions; the undulating mist between violin and purple of the atmosphere shrouded in tranquility and appeasement, which could make you think that you were inevitably in another world than the one that was collapsing under the permanent threats of the Scourge.

Everything was just a melting of colors in different degrees of shades on the chromatic and prismatic circle, and it mixed the ecstatic spirit in a joyous string of fascinating tones drowning the attention in these astonishing sfumatos. Everything was organized and harmonized perfectly with the activities of the three men living in this incredible cocoon.  Norton would never have imagined that we could finally find some form of catharsis here. An unexpected abreaction for the individual suffering.

In a few hours, he’d noticed the striking contrast between the atmosphere of the pharmacy and the outside of the fortified village, where all life was seething in the miasma of anguish and irrepressible fear. He’d observed the gradual change in his apprentice friend, and especially in Trevor. The latter was always on hot coals, ready to jump on anyone who looked askance or had the audacity to provoke him, his mane bristling with permanent fury, his eyes sharpened in distrust with grumpy hints, when the sapphires weren't immersed in infinite sadness. He'd often compared this strange fellow novice as an unfathomable emotional well, and whose abyss was so deep, that if one threw a pebble of interest, one would never hear the end of the fall, nor any response echo.

Even the water gaze seemed to have taken on a magnetic clarity it hadn't had before, like a burst of energy that surreptitiously melted the ice around it a bit. Surreptitiously, but surely. Norton’d seen the clear eyes judged as deadly daggers when aimed at you, light up with an aura they hadn't had before. A progressive opening on a Consciousness which stammered its first words of recognition. No doubt the Belmont'd finally found that unique something that managed to warm a soul shivering with emotional frosts for too long.

That little bit of warmth still shy, but sparkling out there, in those fascinating orbs. Convalescence’d given Trevor a hint of the possibility of peace with himself. That was what Norton’d seen in those eyes, when they rested on you, with that certain something that no longer resembled fearful aggression, nor to this terror of an abandonnic state which’d so often struck him.

Norton then had a strange comparative thought about Trevor, which confused him a bit more.

“He’s like a dried pistil between two sheets…waiting to mold itself between the writings which would imbibe its bewitching perfume…this pistil would absorb the vitality of the sheets, would capture all the flavor of life described in arabesque letters, while by diffusing its most subtle, most inebriating olfactions...the most sensual...this pistil would be elaborated in the spreading of new stimuli for it, and even drying, it would remain impregnated in these parchment laminated for eternity...''

For eternity…As if he kept his imprint on this world forever, without ever being forgotten by collective memories. Perhaps he would write great things about his exploits, because no doubt he'll achieve very great things. The Brotherhood seemed to have unfailing faith in this.

What strange thoughts were he having there! But Norton, inside, also wanted to erase the pernicious reflections he'd made during this night, and which dangerously surfaced with a completely different type of emotion that the young man wanted to forget.

My God, what had he huddled up in the night, in this silence so heavy barely disturbed by a strangely hoarse and guttural echo seeming to come from so far away. The same sound Trevor'd heard? When the four of them'd taken that precious time to admire the beauty of the starry skies. Even the carpet of space was studded with mysterious wonders flashing their millennial agony. The perfection was infinite in the cosmic creation, and he’d been able to taste its attractive and hypnotizing flavor, the time of a breath suspended by the sublimisence of the phenomenon. Yes, even the Cradle of God'd adorned itself with its finest finery, in this magical opacity.

He'd waited for everyone to fall asleep. Too nervy by the excitement of a wonderful night ending in peace, without bitterness or anxiety of the unknown tomorrow.

When he'd been sure that everyone was asleep,-he hadn't yet flinched under the capricious sleep which struggled to imprison his being, however numb,-he'd risen silently, and without lighting even a candle, he'd wandered cautiously, on the lookout for the slightest noise, the slightest breath of the sleepers, his eyes quickly becoming accustomed to the orange and mysteriously purple semi-penombra, like an exquisite tulle wrapping around a precious egg stuffed with bubbling life. Same, where his cell languished in dull, candle-black grays, here there were spectra of fractals of infinitely bright colors.

But what was he waiting for? Standing in the tawny penumbras and obscuro, his senses sharpened over all the rooms quietly bathed in the dancing lights of the respective hearths; cooings sizzling with logs slowly consuming themselves; through armfuls of smells mixed in heavy sweetness, pregnant, musky, woody, tangy, in a symphonic magma of bewitching and heady scents of a sensuality that one guesses at the flower-of-skin of pleasure. A timeless atmosphere, as he’d never savored the most intimate expression.

He found himself waiting for long minutes in this sweet darkness. Wait for what? So he confessed in a bittersweet shame that he was on the lookout for a particular noise. Something that testified that some people mightn't be sleeping? That the regular breaths of the sleepers could've been perverted into any other gasping breaths. Everything was just a peaceful inhalation, sometimes a very small snore streaking through the sleepy mechanism, barely more than a one-second rattle to plunge back into modestly audible inspirations. The louder snoring came from Efrain's side, but without the painful undertone of sleep apnea, or the erratic gasping of a poor sleeper.

Norton’d dared to approach the holy place of rest, blessed by the angry-red embers of the braziers, or by the dancing flames of the fireplace, the brazing ripples darting their lasciviousness on the bodily reliefs abandoned to sleep. His gaze’d pierced the so soft and inviting semi-penombra wrapping the chamber in its half-tone cotton wool. The stained glass in the high window filtered shades strange to say the least that merged into the unusual mix of already rich prismatic tones, and the brilliance of melted and matte colors were deliciously mirrored on the exposed skin of the sleepers.

The young man was mortified by his audacity, having suddenly the feeling of violating an extraordinary intimacy which was never to unpack all its sensuality before profane eyes. But it was stronger than him, and he remained there, crouched in the door hangings, which hadn't been drawn in order to hide this bubble so fragile to the indifference of a chamber too big and too professional that was the reception and treatment room.

Green and blue, faded yellow and earth ocher, plumb and tin, silver and gold, warm and cold chromaticity, all forms of the color spectrum, rippled on the pale complexions of sleeping bodies, giving the forms ghostly, ethereal, diffuse aspects, almost anamorphosed. Acthéean was half on one side, one leg bent over the blanket thrown carelessly over the rest of his body. He seemed to be dreaming, because from time to time, a painful sigh escaped him in a rattle ending in a slight snore, to fall back again into the quietude of his breath. Trevor, meanwhile, always slept on his stomach, out of habit to spare the pain of the back pose that would irritate wounds. His face drowned in the sparseness of his extraordinary hair, which even had the audacity to shine with its black diamonds under the tawny brilliance of the braziers. We could barely make out the alabaster features of the sleeping man under the sensual mass. His regular breathing was like that of a cat deep in its sleep, where the feline no longer exists for this world and can be manipulated without ever being awakened. The acerb of cheeks with proud cheekbones winked at the curious voyeur's fly, through the locks scattered in cheeky, slightly wavy strands. The nose and the lips disappeared under the dripping veil. He would've been a marvelous model for an artist wanting to paint languid beauty in the arms of Morpheus! Sometimes, a few barely audible little hiccups hampered the breathing regularity, and showed that the teenager must still be dreaming intensely.

And Norton'd immersed himself in this incredible stillness. Breathing in unison with the sleepers. Perhaps envying their peacefulness at this moment. He knew it was wrong to be there like this, watching others in their sleep. Waiting for what? Voyeur of stolen moments of the most fragile intimacy in humans, in animals, in all living beings, during the sacred period of sleep. In the mazes of Somnus, everyone was helpless, defenseless, exposed to the outward desires of whoever so admired them.

Who would be above, undulating over whoever submitted to the caresses? Norton swallowed hard, and was mortified as such fantasies began to gently tickle his body. He shook himself roughly, refusing any longer to let the irrepressible shiver sting his spine.

Still in silence, he’d returned to his bed, and had found sleep despite the nasty nibbling that he suppressed with difficulty. With the hitch of a little something that deeply disappointed him, refusing to indulge in the longed-for lascivious dance. An intense screed certainly fell on his exacerbated nerves, because he didn’t feel plunged into the indifference of falling asleep.

What would you like to surprise? Admit it…Gasps? Breaths on the brink of sinking in the intensity of a shameful act? Two bodies uniting, instead of lying stupidly in the innocence of inactivity?

Norton blushed violently, conflicted with himself. Yes, this twinge in the heart certainly meant something else that he daredn't recognize, even if only to sketch in a mortifying introspective examination.

He pulled himself firmly out of his wandering thoughts, snatching up his necessary books for class, and decided to hurry. Perhaps he could arrive without too much delay at the prayer of Lauds? He ran cautiously over the cobblestones, and noticed as he passed that the floors were covered with a fine ashy film, like the one that persisted in fluttering in the young morning.

He came within sight of the abbey, quickly tying his hair in his usual ponytail, and went through the portals of the nave.

It was then that he froze listening to the piercing cries, bursting the dawn streaked with nasty blackish and purplish streaks, as if under a monumental claw. What strange skies! He'd time to think, before turning to the shrill howls that gathered in the suddenly torn atmosphere.

His blood congealed under the deadly observation. First appalled by the agonizing alarm, his brain stammered arguments of impossibility, before understanding the facts beating down on the tranquility of the fortress and its village. He recorded in a holistic vision the movements of scattered gatherings towards the portals of exit, the barely awake groups rushing towards the hecatomb which vomited its horrors on their suddenly shattered tranquility.

Swirlings of frightened groups flooded the streets, springing from the abbey where they should've followed Lauds peacefully, before going about their daily business. Fellow classmates joined him, disheveled and terrified by the aggressive invasion that was already tearing the place apart. Some already had their weapons by their side, as they were leaving for training after the ceremony. They were joined by their Milites. A weapon was slipped into Norton's hands, and he was urged with the others into a chain of violence, where no more rational thought'd place in their minds liquefied by the brutal attack.

All of a sudden, the passage from an enchanting tranquility to tipping into a concert of primitive violence, seizes human hearts in the spokes of a consternation devoid of combat reflex, so fierce, dazzling and deadly it was. An inextinguishable and temperate rage. A tsunami tidal wave, sweeping away absolutely everything in its spill.

…. then flowered from the darkened clouds, the swarms…

Norton’d that same taste of ashes and blood-ridden dust in his mouth. Identical to the macabre bouquet that’d made his taste buds cringe during the fights in the library of Wygol Abbey.

~~~ooo000ooo~~~

Lauds never took place. Chester d'Uries and his colleagues too busy dealing with the abject horror that’d managed the incredible feat of invading the spaces confined by the countless seals sealed by the Summoning-Priests, and yet useless in the face of the onslaught. All the holy barriers, all the blessed seals’d melted under the powerful and immoderate impact of venomous cascades pouring out the most lethal darkspawn that were.

The Mirror of Fate. Was the alarming realization by Chester, as he twirled his sword and Combat-Cross in a dancing mishmash that might’ve been visually pleasing, had itn’t been so tragically deadly.

The Mirror’d allowed the rending of Reality through its ever fearless and avaricious tain of its messages, and all the horrors most potent in their summoning had poured out from it without restraint. The Brotherhood, in their stupid blindness in this apotropaic artifact, had once again misjudged the risks of a possible opening with the infernal worlds managed by the Dragon. Too confident in their convictions, the Brotherhood’d completely misled themself in their megalomaniac assurances of being able to manipulate everything and everyone.

The result was pouring in screaming tides before their eyes, wide with fear, and it was now far too late to understand the bitter realization: all their increased security was hardly going to be a match for unstoppable thaumaturgies. The fortress and its village were crumbling under the flows of demonic lava. All the seals blessed with great prayers and rolling eyes, the drool on the lips of the Summoning-Priests; all this absurd theatricality; all these fragile masks placed on faces grimacing with superstitious fear; all the protections regularly checked: everything, absolutely everything, had resigned miserably in nauseous iron-cast flows, in an ether ruined by the acid and sulfuric fumes burning the lungs.

That they were emblematic footprints; holy coats-of-arms; oiled cachets of priestly anointing; bubbles engraved with the most obscure religious effigies; the plumbs and silvers having been used for the gird of episcopal-timbres; stamps with flamboyant and liturgical characters; relics and prayers melted into complementary identities; everything’d been crushed, melted under the intensity of the powers of Chaos and Nothingness.

All the religious crises shaken by ecclesiastes seized with epileptic madness, belching the worst blasphemies that would’ve appalled all the saints in a desolate stupefaction before this debauchery of human hysteria face to the inevitable; all that insatiable orgy of sermons spat out by the most obscure and devout preachers of the intolerable; all this absence of rational cohesion never agreeing on the softer violins of a balanced Theology; all this NOTHING, this wind, the brewing of futile and revengeful uselessness; all this bundle of dirty laundry washed in front of the public rolling around in the garbage remains, last dross of internal wars where the Ego largely predominated over Reason; a WHOLE that was collapsing lamentably due to miscalculations, collateral damage, and refusal to see the absolute in a lethal denial.

And this ALL, this EMPTINESS, this NOTHINGNESS, was crumbling beyond repair through a single crack in the fabric of Reality, kicking into the edifice of a colossus with feet of clay. Simply because some men'd decided that they were the only holders of a divine power which shone curiously by its conspicuous absence. No one wanted to acknowledge the facts: that the divine words, the most devout prayers, had long drawn from the ink of sulfur, diverted irretrievably into a game of absolute power where Darkness'd its unshakable seat. Oeuvre by fire, to extinguish the infernal fire.

“Lord, forgive us, what if that Another’d been right…''Chester mused, as his Cross shattered the Black Monk ectoplasm that released twisted afterglows of darkness from its evaporation. The power medallions of Darkness and Light blazed on the chests of the men of God, nearly igniting the flesh beneath the layered fabrics of their priestly tunics. Even those artifacts seemed to backfired on them, reacting to the imperious and vehement vibrations of spells cast by the vile and fickle tongues of reviled phantasms.

Out of the corner of his eye, he'd time to see Cardinal Volpe wielding,-more awkwardly of course, his sedentary state of 'holy bookworm' having ungracefully encrusted him,- a Combat-Cross, certainly not his, and handled with a great deal of doubt about the weapon's training, so that Chester'd no choice but to come to the aid of the clergyman who was entangled in the retractable chain of the Cross, flirting furiously with the Blade of the Swordsman-Specter. And beware! if the sword touched you while the fantasy was still materialized! The wounds would fester in the second, and you would die in the most abject agony. Acthéean'd been very lucky in his injury.

“And to think that he’s part of our Founders Assembly…”grumbled the noble Knight-Founder-Father, in his beard bristling with anger having slipped from the tie that kept it spotless.

The reaction-time window was very short, and he managed in three circular volleys to destroy the dark spawn of his blessed chain. Underscoring his saving gesture towards Volpe, a vial of holy oil thrown by another Elder burst at the feet of the fainting Spectre with a rough rattle.

But this was no time for thanks, and d'Uries immediately made a strange and disturbing match with the number of Swordwraiths who’d occupied them, when few Dark-Monks’d participated in the fight.

"They occupied us, while the others went to the Grimoire!" he cried to the assembly, flabbergasted.

To see the reaction of his associates, they'd made the same observation at the same time. They'd all been diverted from the online lens by the demonic fantasies. Eyes bulged excessively, and faces took on a chalky hue with the worst effect. Chester wasted no time, and grabbed the cardinal vigorously by his stole, spitting his injunction in the sputtering clergyman's face, his overgrown beard jumping in the Founder's anger.

Outside, at the same time, the windows of the room leaked invocations shouted by the Priests:“Tellum Magica! ". The summoners'd joined the attacked troops on the ramparts, and Chester sighed inwardly.

“What can they do, when all the seals've been broken?»

“The Grimoire, Volpe!! Where did you hide that cursed book?! This's no longer the time for hypocritical bowing...These horrors've come for the Grimoire, and they're slaughtering our men!!

At that time, one wouldn't have given much of the skin of the cardinal who looked more like a dying man than a holy man generously fed by the Brotherhood. The other Elders'd gathered around them, threatening and grumbling dangerously for Volpe's physical integrity. Many agreed to now accept a very big responsibility for all the failures en masse by the cardinal, and could no longer hide their dissatisfaction with the unmanageability of a situation exploding in all unbearable excesses, because of a megalomaniac character causing the Ship of the Brotherhood, and all its crew, to run to ruin. Everyone'd a hard time digesting the recurring failures of the last missions, especially that of the Milite Grégoire garrison in Wygol.

Fortunately, the cardinal was quick to realize that his situation was perilous, and didn't require further bluster. He swallowed his fury at being so belittled and humiliated in front of an assembly visibly against him, and while trying to stammer out useless information, he darted off in a ridiculous jog dragging the others to his shore.

Chester took one last look at the stained glass windows that echoed with outside imprecations, torn between rushing into the heap and running towards the place where the precious Grimoire'd been hidden. Neither solution implied anything of optimism in view of the decaying situations.

We’d to act quickly, there were many corridors and rooms to cross. But when he muttered to where the Grimoire was hidden, in a 'in a closet behind the clock tower', Chester knew they would be too late. The Dark-Monks and other summoning-Specters possessed the power to cross the temporalities that ruled humans, with disconcerting ease. Time didn’t exist for them, had no law over them. Time’d no word to say in the face of Chaos-ruled spawns.

Obviously, Chester should’ve immediately thought that Volpe would hide the Grimoire in the clock-tower, only visited by the beadle clockmaker and repairer of the mechanisms. D'Uries was frightened by such an enterprise: the tower was surrounded by multiple holy barriers and seals of prohibitions, and all that’d been swept away with a contemptuous setback by an implacable thaumaturgy. Irony: where Time’d to keep the most vile secrets, the Clepsydra’d burst under the acid and all its protections’d been violated and foiled without any difficulty.

Endless stairs, very often irregular and risking the assured fall into the void, bent their cynical and twisted curves under the feet of the desperate men. The steps tumbled in endless spirals, sinking into the untold depths of the tower's perfect cylinder. Other floors were hewn outside as well, and crawled in equally deadly spirals, whispering possibilities of falling as the dazed climbed their uneven steps, disregarding the abyss that plunged beneath their feet. From whichever side you attack on the climb, every danger awaits at the bend of a devious landing and in astonishing balance defying the laws of gravity. Those who’d cut these steps of hell, had to have only one goal: to see all brave climbing these slippery floors, rushing into the precipice which would swallow their maladroitness.

Who was this architect of hell who’d designed such designs? One would’ve thought, in comparison with his missions in the castle itself, that the designer of the plans had shared his ideas with that of the building of hell! If it weren’t for the fact that the castle was constantly being built and redeveloped in a totally chaotic logic, it’d always been impossible to draw up a faithful cartography of it. All the missions sent for years to attack the building, came back, - when they weren’t completely exterminated! -, to make the impossible point of recognition of the places which seemed to be constantly metamorphosed, in order to definitely lose the reckless in these 'Tartaresque' mazes.

Chester wondered, though, as they made their way as quickly as they could, taking the necessary precautions, up the dreadful steps to the summit nestled behind the heavy dials and cogs in strange jagged ellipses. It was easy to imagine Devil's machinery! Moreover, the oscillating movement was hypnotic for the men, some of whom displayed all the signs of vertigo! We added their clothes not at all adapted to the circumstances, the fabrics flapping in the capricious winds infiltrating the breaches and other murderous-windows cut in the foundations. A dreadful colony of men mostly too old for battle, thrashing about in their enraged robes and threatening to sneakily trip them, climbing rickety and deadly stairs. All this to chase after an artifact most certainly stolen for quite a while now.

Of course, when the men finally arrived at the aedicula intimately cloistered in shadow, they found the doors closed. But ghosts didn't need a key, did they?

Chester knew what they would find there. His companions, ditto. The faces showed terrible mein, blowing like bellows from the exhaustion of the climb. All around them the mechanisms rattled, indifferent to human dismay. Certain interlocks sent shivers of fear down the spine, and gave the impression that the marvelously balanced pieces were about to collapse on the slinger men for having dared to interrupt the tranquility of the metallic mandibles. The smells of metal, rusty iron, coppery remugles mixed with melted seals exacerbating their magical and sulphurous scents, of sneaky corrosive humidity having attacked certain fasteners, certain gears, everything took to the throat in a heavy and aggressive olfactory soup. The tombac and the brass of the split chimes mingled joyfully with the string of perfumes, like a punishment inflicted on the lungs of daring men.

Chester recalled a mission where he'd seen much the same magnificent clock topography, but at the Castle. He remembered long jumping from one platform to another, deflecting the fearless traps that only wanted to absorb their being in the chewing of their gears. There were lost men, fallen into these fascinating abysses of murderous ticking. It'd seemed to him, that day, or that night rather, that the alabaster faces sculpted in the supports of the ritornellos modeled in the marble, were laughing maliciously at the collapsed bodies. Their eyes were blindfolded, their arms supporting the platforms. But Chester could've sworn he heard them sing of their misfortune.

So of course, when the tiny door to the aedicula was unlocked by the cardinal's shaking hands, it was no surprise that the men slipped into the creaking gaps heavily laden with the smells of Hell adding to the rust and humidity, erosive moss, unhealthy history-eating fungi, and were greeted by the distressing absence of a silhouette wisely wrapped in its dusty monastic bures.

~~~00ooo00~~~

There was like a deep blow that seemed to shatter the atmosphere at large, puncturing unknown layers of the ether which was ruined under the impact. A wall of sound shaking the space. Vibrating in the hearts of men, turning the guts of terror.

What'd caused this infernal noise? As if suddenly, the multiple layers of the atmosphere, of the stratosphere up there, had torn in all directions under an immeasurable impact. Then, poured out the relents of unhealthy drizzle, smoky twirls, acid and greasy rain, puking its drops with nauseating nuances. And the smell. The smell of innumerable mass graves made mortals choke under their epiphytic effluvia. The vegetation was dying under the endemic, rotting it in seconds. Everything seemed to shrink, to curl up under the abominable deleterious layer of all life

On the abandoned table, the sketches and vellums displayed their pellicles of stains diluted in strange monochromatics. Without disfiguring them, the drawings'd taken on other appalling aspects in their metamorphic rebus.

The fine rills spread in the wood hadn't had time to be absorbed there before going to nourish the graceful stems of the Lilies. However, the delicate corollas took on bloody and tearful hues...

<<<000ooo000>>>

“Tellum magica!'’shouted one of the Summoning-Priests for the umpteenth time, while the end of his raised scepter flashed dangerously towards the stricken darkspawn. Nothing seemed to help. All the spells invoked gave the impression to be completely incapable of stemming the endemic floods.

All around the men thrown into battle, it was a real mess! Savagely dismembered bodies, burned by the creatures' evil venom, writhed in constant agony. Their companions'd to grant them completion in a liberating 'coup de grâce'. Otherwise, the dead would inevitably rise again, the poison of swordsmen or the sulfuric smells of killers flowing in their frozen veins now. The summoning-Priests were therefore obliged to smite the demons, as well as their cursed companions, giving them peace of rest.

The entire guard on the ramparts’d been slaughtered in seconds, never understanding where the attack was coming from. From skies! The attack came from the skies! The swarms streamed in an inexhaustible torrent of clouds swollen with deep purple and fury. The tall gates at the entrance had given way under the charge of armored war-warthogs to the twisting tusks they proudly wore, hacking at everything in their path with the tips of their sharp, steel-reinforced horns.

They were ridden by vile goblins also protected by chain-mail. In their wake, one could already count the victims trampled under their powerful paws, and a sickening and bloody path was drawn under their attack. A hecatomb of flesh, limbs, guts that flew in the raging wind, mixing their cruor with the greasy and corrosive rains of ghosts, Specters-swordsmen, Black-Monks and dishonored angels with chipped wings of filth.

The noise was infernal and burst the eardrums with its guttural chords of suffering, terror, affliction, disarray. The men were dropping like flies, yielding under the heaping minions. Even the Summoning-Priests were awash in threats that coalesced endlessly. For every two creatures killed, five more arose from the unfathomable ether, much to the despair of the Milites and warriors running to the rescue.

Milite Grégoire'd been among the first to arrive on the scene of dread and disaster, followed by his heavily armed colleagues and already beginning their dance of death with their swords and Crosses brandished with prayers. They were bursts of intertwining sequences without taking the time to pause, every second counted, and the holy links reinforced with spikes, as Rinaldo Gandolfi'd conceived, did their dirty work relentlessly gutting the dead and demonic flesh, members of mighty Wargs rubbing shoulders with warthogs, blasting the heads of goblin horsemen in disgusting spatters of spoiled meat.

Norton, instinctively, had placed himself at Gregoire's side, and kept his back in a way, and the Milite did the same for his novice.The two men leaned against each other, for a moment, and it was an incredibly murderous ballet that they executed in unison, like two damned dancers contorting their aching bodies into humanly impossible figures.

Their comrades in tragedy did the same, each on their own. A devouring nightmare of consciences paralyzed with horror, and which seemed to have no end. Fright like they'd never experienced before. No one could properly concentrate on his comrade who fell into painful ulutations that would tear their souls and memories apart, for endless times. They would hear for a long, long time those howls of agony, those piercing howls at the horror of a damned body battered by the minions. They would dream of it constantly, as a leitmotif, because they were forced in the process to complete these struck down accomplices, so that their bodies rest in eternal peace, and not recalled to an abominable existence.

Also, it was together that the Milite and his novice saw a terrible charge, profiling the rays of an inevitable death towards the brave reckless who'd thrown himself into battle. Both'd unconsciously approached the entrance gates and the courtyard that separated the apothecary. Their attention, relieved for a few moments by the absence of belligerent enemies, was drawn to a recognizable figure rushing towards…an armored warthog presenting him with the lethal tips of its tusks, scintillating for a furtive wink in the ashen and silver light. Real dangerous pals pointed at the belly of the young man driven by his race. Barely dressed, the unconscious wore a thin shirt, most certainly drawn from his private activities, just like the others, he hadn't taken the time to harness himself properly. He was running towards his death, undoubtedly. Once again ! thought Grégoire.

The Milite and Norton barely had time to shudder at the young man's unconsciousness. It was like a sudden slow motion, the scene unfolding almost in agonizing jerks. The impact of the beast against the body of Acthéean was bound to wreak havoc. The young novice was about to die. He faced his death smiling! belching three words of release that only Knights could chant in the face of the mighty hordes.

The phenomenon of cause and effect is only held together by the flapping of a butterfly's wing. Often, one cannot define what happened exactly, because the memory cannot contain the inconceivable correctly, without being parasitized by it. Was a Stolas-hourglass of fractured in desperation by a summoning-Priest plagued by a useless solution in this mortal world? The Stolas-hourglasses’d all power within the Castle, not in the ether of men. They were useless on the minions discharged thus in inextinguishable torrents.

Yet it was this suffocating feeling that Grégoire felt during the endless seconds that would make them helpless witnesses to the horrible death of their companion. There was a dump of information piling on top of each other, spurting out from every corner peripheral of their vision, it was dizzying.

In a few micro-seconds, Grégoire recorded a cry of pain coming from his colleague Eléas succumbing under the pal of a raging Warg.The Milite-Knight dropped his Combat-Cross which rolled close to Acthéean ready to be skewered by the warthog. A searing flash of black and white flashed out of nowhere, furiously spewing blasphemous curses that would’ve made hell itself blush. But at that second no one would’ve held it against the fiery warrior who thus inveighed against the massive form and collected in the effort of the murderous charge.

Acthéean realized too late that he'd thrown himself into the mouth of the monster, and was about to end his race on the deadly edge of these steel tusks. He gasped in anguish as he realized he was going to die stupidly, as the terrifying tusks barely brushed his unprotected tender belly, suddenly deflected by something that'd stopped short the lethal momentum of the beast.

He saw, as in a strange dream, the caparisoned head of death plunge towards the ground, one of the wavy horns causing a current of air quivering against his flesh saved in extremis. He jumped back, as he watched the beast wallow heavily on the soil, ejecting its infernal rider. It slid a few meters on the protected collar, squealing miserably. Funny cry for such a bulky beast! he thought stupidly. The brain was capable of unusual reflexes in the face of Reaper.

A thick trail of blood followed the trajectory of the fall. Grégoire, Norton, and Acthéean, stunned, saw a fury bristling with a mop of hair tangled with anger, his shirt torn, handling a Claymore gleaming with bloody streams. Trevor regained his balance, brandishing the sword that'd severed two of the warthog's legs. The latter now uttered growls that would've made anyone shudder, and had slaughtered its rider under its armed mouth of tusks, driven mad by pain.

A wounded animal's one of the most dangerous, we know that! and this'd become a more than lethal weapon if possible. Despite its severed legs, rage made the monstrous animal recover on a precarious balance to throw itself on its target again, with great reinforcements of guttural and painful howls.

Around them, the world continued its war with the darkspawn, and numbers of beasts and humans collapsed in unison in a foul amalgam of deformed corpses. It was appalling to see a war-beast wounded as it was, but keeping its objective to kill as much as possible before collapsing in turn. Acthéean’d recovered from his blind error which could’ve been fatal to him, had itn’t been for the intervention of his friend. Now he was once again facing his 'killer' who was rushing at him again.

He braced himself for the clash, balancing his own sword in a graceful whirl of the blade, preparing for impact. His vision was blurred by the super-charged adrenaline that made his heart burst, and he saw with dismay that he wasn't as balanced as he needed to be for the next brawl. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Efrain who'd come to help too, brandishing a fine sword, ready for battle.

The charge of the wounded beast resembled a wall collapsing on them, and Acthéean only had time to turn on himself in order to avoid the impalement again. He felt the gust of air as the animal brushed past him, blind with bloody rage. For his part, Efrain’d time to strike the rear of the beast, but his blow wasn’t as powerful as that given by a seasoned warrior. Grégoire and Norton’d just joined them, and shouted in order to divert the warthog from its target.

Acthéean felt his strength suddenly abandon him, and noted with horror that he'd been injured in the shoulder, and he hadn't realized it right away, thinking that his recoil'd been caused by a reflex of last minute. The adrenaline was so high in his bloodstream that all his senses were distorted. A beautiful wound whose gash was pulsing wickedly now. He knew that as soon as the adrenaline subsided, it would be even worse. The angle of his shoulder worried him: certainly the impact, even slight, with the animal had perhaps dislocated the articulation of his capsule. His shirt was soaked in seconds and stuck against his tender flesh, weakened by the lack of protection.

A low moan escaped his lips as he tried to straighten an equally searing spine painful stitches. He felt like he’d really gone under the beast! He heard a yelp of warning he couldn't pinpoint, but saw through a haze blurring his vision that other knights’d joined them. Including Chester d'Uries? All around was a real capernaum of sickening smells of thick blood; burst guts; poison-infected flesh; choking rancid putrefaction; pungent acid sweat almost to make you cry; musk of wild excitement. Of Death. God, Death tasted so unforgettable when you’d smelled it once! You could smell the scent several hundred meters away for a sharp nose like that of Acthéean. Sweet and nauseous. Attraction and repulsion, all at once. The pestilence of putrid animal mouths macerating the remains of spoiled meat.

Certainly still concussed, and shocked by the din of his injury, Acthéean moved in slow motion, gradually dropping out of his environment. Under the appalled gaze of his companions, he'd again frozen in the insubstantial mists of his growing uneasiness, while the warthog was once again rushing at him, stubbornly killing him first, like a warmachine programmed on a single objective.

The fortress and its village got bogged down in infernal blasts: body against half-living body; flesh against putrid flesh; holy weapon against blade of Darkness. It cannot be said how many victims weighed in the balance of an uncertain Equilibrium. The Summoning-Priests no longer had the assured timbre in their voices resigning under the inhuman effort of praying to the forces of the Divine against the accursed darkspawn.

They'd never experienced such a violent attack!

As Acthéean positioned himself to counter the warthog's charge, relieved by Efrain on his side and Chester who’d closed in, Grégoire and Norton forming a pincer encircling the demonic fury, all eyes were dazzled by an unexpected zebra bursting with power in half-shade light. They understood what’d spawned it, when they saw, amazed, the beast's longest tusks being imprisoned securely in a swift circular-chain-barrier, entangling the natural weapons in the wicked claws of the spiked links, neatly interrupting impetus of the load. The warthog’d its head jerked back roughly, its tusks smoking strangely under the blessed silver of the chain. A flurry of furious grunts responded to the phenomenal pull that stretched the monster's neck, until it stumbled again on its open, blood-soaking paws. The animal weakened from the loss of blood, and tumbled over without being able to reply to the new force which subjugated it.

All saw a furious and enraged Trevor, pulling the chain of the Battle Cross he’d picked up from the dying hands of Eléas having dropped it. He wasn’t yet old enough to have the right to touch the holy relic, a fabulous weapon designed by the genius of Gandolfi, but he proved in front of everyone that he was forging a deserved reputation for his acts of bravery. If his Warlords still needed proof, the one that unfolded before their eyes would definitively seal their doubts about the young man whom the Prophecy’d designated as “The Chosen One” alone capable of slaying the Dragon.

But at that second, the Belmont wasn’t thinking at all of this name that would make future generations shudder, wasn’t musing of any reward. No! now was the time to defend his friends, those he’d come to appreciate and love. Going into battle in order to kneel the minions who’ve come to do evil among the ranks of the helpless and the innocent. And this monster from hell was attacking Acthéean! Hurt, moreover, he’d seen it right away. Efrain wasn’t a warrior, but maintained his battle positions. And if this suffering-drunk beast persisted in its stubbornness, it would succeed in killing more people. Even without a rider, it was an unstoppable aleph under its blind battering, there were already too many fallen remains around its ravages. Before finally peg-out, it risked cluttering the streets with more disemboweled victims. The Warthogs were redoubtable to finally succeed in smashing them without leaving more than a feather in the carnage. Already the carcasses of brave fighters were scattered everywhere like bloody pawns sacrificed in a chess game.

Trevor instinctively knew his very small reaction time windows for his sweeping attacks, and it was without much thought that he let himself be pulled along by the gravitational momentum of the chain, to...suspend himself at the end, taking a mighty thrust from his thighs, and leaping in a graceful arc over the huge, effortlessly bent spine of the warthog. Adrenaline drowned his heart under its icy and electric floods, and Trevor could've been touched like Acthéean, that he wouldn’t have felt anything, the nerves being anesthetized by the enjoyment of the fight. Nothing existed at that second, and the water orbs crystallized on his lens, sending out murderous flashes. An unwavering will to kill, tear apart, torn apart.

He savagely gripped the furry and armored neck in places, literally riding the beast, clinging desperately to the bulges of muscle protruding between the steel plates. The warthog, feeling the weight of the novice on its shoulders, tried to unseat him, made even more furious by its wounds which drained all its vitality through the streams of blood.

Trevor himself looked like a demon from Tartarus. His face was disappearing under the waves of night mired in cruor, dust, and ashes that persisted in vomiting with the swarms. His shirt was in tatters, hanging over a distended body of overworked muscles. Even the brais’d tears. And the stunned witnesses’d the impression of seeing a bloody barbarian caught in the rages of a flamboyant ire worthy of the Dragon. It was no longer a blushing teenager before their eyes widened with wonder, but a fiery warrior without an ounce of fear, a knight in the making, and probably one of the greatest of all the Brotherhood. Undeniably, they could’ve sworn at this very moment to see a luminous aura engulf the convulsed figure of destruction, as if the silvery glow of the skies which’d lost their blood clawed traces, bathed the novice in its dark blessing certainly not of divine birth. But the witnesses were dazzled with amazement.

Without wasting a second, risking being unsaddled from his dying mount, with a broad movement of the arm holding the Saving-Cross, he plunged deeply into the metal span that served as a stake for the weapon, emphasizing the violence of the impalement by a desperate guttural cry that seemed to come from a throat other than that of a human.

The mouthpiece plunged into the depths of the carotid artery, blasting the Warthog who let out a last heartbreaking howl, before kicking at the impact, this time throwing Trevor from its spine.

Who unfortunately fell very badly, just in front of a sharp defense sinking into his groin. Trevor gave a low gasp, more surprise than pain, his nerves still numb from adrenaline. As it died, the Warthog shook its head sideways, roughly throwing the poor teenager a few yards. Trevor rolled on himself, and finished his fatal race against the charred trunk of the cedar struck down, so many nights ago. Of the ugly stump parched and withered, pointing out small, badly broken protrusions. Trevor jumped at the additional vicious stab, and felt like the middle of his stomach was giving way under the pressure of the root.

His breath hitched in petty languor as he stabilized on his back, his sides bruised, the remaining sutures in his back screaming their tear under the rolls. He thought his trachea was broken, so much did he look like a poor fry out of its sustaining waters, lying there: disembowelled, blood flowing from his wounds, staining his thin hips.

They say that when death takes you, you see in a few microseconds your whole life flash before your eyes. Yet he saw nothing. What had he to do, moreover, with his meager life of relentless training, without ever taking the time to live?

"We don't have a bad…I don't feel anything…” Trevor thought, trying to recover a gasping, wheezing breath, as he froze beside the blackened trunk. His ears felt like they were compressed into cotton wool, and sounds barely came through to his hearing. Everything seemed to float in the wadding. He felt the tears drown his beardless cheeks, while his chest tightened on hazardous breaths. A little lower down, sporadic contractions made his bloody belly quiver, and ironically, if he’d been able to examine himself, he would’ve noticed that a strange flower with weeping branches was stretching its thin channels like hair, in a delicate web around his stump-wound navel. He could’ve made the strange connection between this unusual and serendipian drawing, and one of his disturbing dreams on a stormy night.

But all his hands could do was tense nervously, clawing at the muddy ground of humus and questionable matter, searching for something to hold him up as he drifted on uneven, nauseating derivations. His body seemed to drift in all directions, suspended in a vacuum paralyzing its limbs.

Was this how Acthéean'd experienced his death? Was this how we died?

There were screams. Everywhere there was screaming. The environment was still drowned by the deleterious and poisonous mists of various stench causing emetic spasms. His field of vision was invaded by multiple information on the course, but narrowed in an agonizing way, like a screen that melted into oblivion.

Then the faces of Acthéean. Norton. Efrain. Gregoire. And even Chester. Then others he didn't recognize, because he felt himself sinking, leaving. Released.

“Oblivium sempiternum daemonis...” sang a lament far away, so far away and barely puncturing the layers of time groaning under the pernicious thrust. Had he really heard this faint echo, narrowed in the hiccupping flagellations of an almost voluntarily forgotten past...

>>>ÕÕoooÕÕ<<<

Efrain’d the sinister impression of reliving that fateful day when Acthéean’d been brought back to him lifeless, laid there on the large wooden table scratched and stained by the various plants with indelible inks, or by old blood from a bodies that’d disappeared, or by the illumination inks that’d seeped into the thirsty oak, and which refused to be diluted in the insistent cleaning, signing the last proof in the sometimes morbid use of the slab. There were so many already who’d poured out their lives here.

The village and the Brotherhood wiped away its sorrows, its sufferings, raised its dead. The swarms had dried up, but had done most of the irreparable damage. The portals’d been smashed in by the Wargs clinging to the walls, by the armored war-warthogs of like the one that’d gutted Trevor, and badly wounded Acthéean again.

But the hardware was easily replaceable and repaired. Humans, no. Even the Dungeon of the Founding-Fathers, had suffered from the powerful claws of the Wargs having climbed them. All the warriors, regardless of rank, looked frightening and devastated. One could only guess that something'd definitely broken in all these men of war.

A real slaughter, which no one'd been able to anticipate...after such a magical night, what irony!

“Who are the most urgently injured?''Efrain asked Grégoire with a nasty gash on his face, but apparently quite unscathed, as he busied himself haphazardly arranging Trevor's drawings out of curious sight in the privacy of his little-ones'room. All that was needed was for a rigid and devout spirit to take offense at the sketches in the midst of a warlike catastrophe! He still had a long shiver of frost as he quickly contemplated the troubled and mixed forms in their dripping medium.

“Even the drawings suffered from this violation of space…'' thought Efrain, heaping the supports on the bedroom table.

The Milite closed in on the herbalist when he returned, and muttered in an exhausted voice:

“Not much that requires your attention, Efrain. They're lightly injured, which can be taken care of by someone other than you, you're quite busy. The others…it was best to relieve them of an infernal curse.

Efrain knew what the Milite meant. And certainly, the heavy task for these men to have had to “relieve” their companions, was worthy of the horror felt as if they'd had to finish an animal. All the moral misery and more.

Acthéean presented a very nasty deep excavation, certainly due to the shock of the warthog which'd been deflected in time by Trevor's sword, but had had the opportunity to strike him, dislocating his shoulder now displaying a nasty angle with the scapula. His clothes were ruined by the floods of blood. Severely anemic, the young man blanched alarmingly. It was urgent to treat him too. He was shaking with nausea: probably from the shock of the injury, or perhaps a blow to the head, although he hadn't seen him fall.

These beasts're so armored as hell, an impact from their bulk would shatter every bone in a man. Probably, the Warthog'd struck him frontally with its chest, and caused an echo in the cervicals, which recoiled in shock, whiplash. 

As for Trevor…Trevor. Poor bloody kid, slumped on the table. He took the place that Acthéean'd occupied, following such a catastrophic debacle. The urgency was on him, absolutely. Everyone'd understood this, and had offered to help the poor herbalist crumbling under the arduous task of repairing all these broken bodies.

Norton showed no nasty wounds, just a few ecchymosis with no blood loss, and easy-to-clean scratches. So the young man disregarded his condition, to volunteer firmly and decidedly in the care of his friends. Efrain was surprised but let the blond take matters into his own hands. He didn't hesitate to take care of Acthéean immediately. Sensing the difficulties to come if the shoulder remained thus, dislocated of its capsule, the apprentice'd every chance of remaining handicapped for life.

A young novice, shy and fearful of the wrath of the Belmont on him, the day before this extraordinary night, Norton proved to be all excellence in his practice of care, usefully twirling between Acthéean, whom he carefully installed, in order to put the suffering shoulder back in place, and helping Efrain lay Trevor down properly, ripping out the last shreds of ruined clothing. The herbalist was flabbergasted by the composure of the boy, whose hands weren't even shaking.

Efrain admired the administration of the reinstatement of the Acthéean member, without an ounce of hesitation. Just a word to reassure his friend, and the next second, and a brief scream, a sickening snap sounded as the bone's head pinned into the place it should never have left.

Acthéean cringed under the electric thrusts crushing the articulation by the nerves exacerbated by suffering and anger. In a desperate reflex, he dug his face into the crook of Norton's neck, and nibbled at the exposed flesh in a helpless chew of pain. Norton let him vent his defense mechanism, silently supporting him as he felt the nervous spasms quiver tirelessly under his hand. It was hardly if the blond novice grimaced under the bite, more stoic than a block of marble.

Acthéean was still moaning and clutching his arm, when Norton, after a few seconds of respite spared to catch a resigning breath larded by the sickly impulses, then made him lie down on the lower table installed in the corner of the hearth, and wedge against pillows he'd fetched from the apprentice and Trevor's rest room.

"Sorry, but you shouldn't have expected it, you would've contracted even more, and the placement would've been more difficult...''Norton murmured, blond locks'd escaped from the ponytail, and fluttered under the breath of reassuring words.

Then he grabbed new towels on the fly, which he deployed in compressive layers on the open wound, arguing Acthéean to press hard on it, and folded the afflicted arm against his chest. The apprentice complied, trying to straighten up to help mostly heal Trevor. But Norton firmly pushed him away, asking a comrade present to huphold Acthéean, while he turned resolutely to the table supporting Trevor's broken body, from which blood was escaping in runlets from a very deep open wound.

A quick "Make sure his arm stays like this against his chest, I'll immobilize him afterwards" to the help of healing, was almost a yelp in clear and precise order. A new Norton was revealing himself to their dazed eyes.

It was helpless that Acthéean assisted, relieved by the support of his companion who was holding the towels, which were tinting an ugly deep red. But he didn't care, concentrating on the figure of his friend who gasped with pain and nervous spasms. He didn't care about his injury, he wanted to assist Efrain in the treatment. The throbbing in his bruised shoulder grew duller, deeper in his aching flesh, and the nausea was still there, but he made sure to move his limb as little as possible, as Norton'd advised him.

Milites Grégoire and Norin were present, but could only remain planted there, on the spot, without knowing what to do to stem the evil. They'd a few innocuous minor injuries, but were especially shocked by the death of Eléas who'd succumbed to his injuries, and was one of a significant number of victims who fell in the massacre. Everyone was trained for war. All these warriors knew that one day they too would fall. But losing a friend, a sidekick, a companion, more methodically shattered the mind of these men of war. Especially when it was necessary to free the soul of these fighters in order to prevent them from being 'turned' by the darkspawn that struck them.

They were kindly sent back to the barracks quarters, waiting to be heard by their superiors. It was frightening to see these men so hardened, happily mocking each other on a shipwrecked mission weeks ago, and now stunted before the disaster of death, shuffling like centenarians on the edge of their death.

"Where did you learn to put a limb back in place?" Efrain asked abruptly, as he examined the wretched alabaster body throbbing with pain beneath his hands.

“The story would be too long,”breathed Norton. ''Later, I'll tell you…

Trevor tried somehow to regulate a breath that was failing him, and so much like a poor fish pulled out of water.

"Provided he doesn't have a cracked or broken rib, or a broken pelvis,"Efrain examined, gently palpating every surface of the tortured body.

No longer was a piece of cloth covering the bloody anatomy paler than Death itself. Norton grabbed a clean cloth and had the decency to cover Trevor's privacy with it. Although the unfortunate man was injured, at the hands of men accustomed to nudity, there was still a little modesty and respect to be had towards him. And Norton was a stranger. Even though at this moment the teenager was drifting in the throes of pain, unaware of his exposed state.

"Look at the angle of his legs and pelvis, if it makes a suspicious curve, or if the leg falls too far to the side in an abnormal position, there's a fracture at the level of the femoral-neck," Efrain asked softly, while starting to mop up the large impressive wound that'd been opened by the acute defense.

He couldn't have explained it, but he assumed right away that Norton knew how to direct his attention to ailing anatomy and define its main outlines in the possibilities of very serious injuries. So he wasn't surprised when he saw the young man gauging the questionable angles that Trevor's body might present.

A negative nod relieved the herbalist, who busied himself gathering oily ointments and plants to apply directly to the torn gap. For flesh so carded was truly frightening in appearance. The defense’d slipped from the left flank, rebounded on the hip in a nasty hitch, to end in the hollow of the belly, not far from the inguinal fold, narrowly avoiding impaling the abdominal aorta. But the tear was neat and flawless. Young Belmont’d slipped down that lethal weapon, and the hip-bone’d deflected the perforation that should’ve been fatal.

It was deep, to be sure, cutting into tender flesh and the first layers of muscle, but by some miracle it looked more like a gash to be stitched up than a lethal excavation that would've pounded vital organs. The youngster didn’t even have enough natural fat to stop the shock, but the apparent finesse of the pelvis had made it possible to stop the inexorable blow.

"What's the use of being too thin sometimes," grumbled the herbalist, scouring away the bloody bubbles that leaked from the tear.

Acthéean could only contemplate from afar, his healer remaining motionless to serve as his support. He was in pain, but more for his friend than for himself, and his shoulder throbbed dully with its irritated twinges, but it wasn't unbearable now.

Suddenly, he and his helper were stared averted by a tall figure looming in the doorway, who entered without hesitation and joined the group around the table. Chester d'Uries. The Founding-Father himself came to ask for news. The tall stature of the founder moved towards Acthéean. The man gently put a hand on the apprentice's good shoulder. His words were encouragement and a bit of comforting warmth in the young man's heart. The gaze of the holy man was an empathetic crystalline blaze devoid of any shadow of falsehood and pharisaism. His beard was disheveled and still bristling with anger and dust from the fights.

"Holy Father, I'm fine," Acthéean whispered. ''It's for Trevor that I'm afraid...

Chester nodded softly, and walked over to the table that now supported the young Belmont in the throes of pain, writhing with a sigh, arching a hammered back from barely healed wounds to be alive again. His belly spasmed with the vicious pulsations that put his flesh in agony. His long, graceful swan's neck arched back, and the beautifully sculpted tendons held his alabaster throat in a motion that should've been bathed in the sensuality of an act, rather than repelled in unbearable soreness.

Norton was trying to hold him by the shoulders, muttering reassuring words, but they didn't seem to reach the teenager who was beginning to gurgle inconsistencies inherent in the onset of a fever. Who said fever, said infection!

Chester was impressed by the ugly gash that tore him from the flank to the belly, and the bloody streams that regularly stained the fabrics affixed in compression. But he was also taken aback by a strange hematoma that appeared in the middle of the abdomen, around the navel. Like a tiny branch of small vessels having burst, and drawing these tiny veins in purple-violet-blued-yellow shades accentuated by the impact.

Efrain barely looked at the Holy-Father, too busy stemming the bleeding.

"How is he?''asked Chester. 'Will he make it out?''.The anguish was real in his voice hoarse with emotion.

"I'm going to give him opiates to put him to sleep, and this'll anesthetize the pain. He's lost a lot of blood, and he's going to be weak for a while with anemia. We've to sew it up, it's mandatory, but above all eradicate any infection, that would be fatal there...He already has a little fever...but he doesn't have a fracture, which's a miracle when we saw how he been thrown against the dead trunk…The monster's tusks didn't completely impale him, fortunately, it just slipped on the flesh.

Despite the beginnings of delirium, the conversation came to the hazy attention of Trevor, who moaned constantly, and twisted to escape the afflictions that chewed his body. It was covered in dust, ashes, of cruor, and with a sickly sweat sticking his adornment in all directions on his shoulders streaked with light cuts. His throat thrown back displayed innumerable scratches around the collarbones seeming to stand out a little more in their relief exacerbated by the pangs.

He seemed to want to straighten up, reaching out a hand to the Founder who took it from him, nestling it in his large, warm, welcoming palms. He chirped the beginning of an apology, of harsh words, gasping in painful spasms.

“Father…sorry for what I've done…

“What are you saying, child?''Chester whispered, getting as close as possible to the alabaster face surrounded by the shadows of pain. "You don't have to apologize…for what?

“I…I took the Cross which didn't belong to me…I…I'm not worthy of it…

Chester was surprised at the teenager's concern as he pointed to one of the uncompromising rules of warrior propriety among the Knights of the Brotherhood,-ordering the prohibition of any manipulation of the holy object by any hand other than that of his accessor, especially if he was a novice yet not authorized to wield this artifact-, rather than worrying about his condition. And above all, he'd just saved his companions with his reckless gesture! Chester'd been part of the saved group.

The noble man pushed back the leathery lock in front of the eyes so clear, but whose pupils were dilated by martyrdomed distress. Without ever letting go of his other hand those of the afflicted novice.

"Look, child, you're going to drive this idea out of your mind...We'll talk about it again, I promise you...I'm going to stay with you while Brother Efrain takes care of you...Let yourself be quietly...I'll stay here...

Efrain intervened, presenting Trevor with some flowers he knew well, and just as gently instructed what to do next. Norton waited with preparations carefully cleaned and boiled in antiseptic oils. Very quickly, they'd drawn a large bowl of powerful distilled painkillers, always at hand. Carefully selected mounds of herbs believed to have healing properties were artfully stacked in squares of impeccably clean fabrics.

“Here, Trevor. You chew it slowly, it's opiates. It'll put you to sleep, and also put the pain to anesthezise. This'll allow me to treat you without you suffering too much...

Then, turning to Chester, the herbalist seemed to apologize.

"Forgive me, holy Founding-Father, but I'm obliged to use certain practices that our holy Mother the Church doesn't approve of...notably Sage, which's however very effective in eradicating any infection...

"Don't worry, Efrain," Chester interrupted softly, raising a hand to cut off any futile excuses in his eyes. ''Do what you do best: care for and restore our novices and warriors to their feet…and whatever means they use, believe me, some use practices…not always orthodox, if I may put it that way…In these dark times, it would be indecent to discuss care that can bring hope for a saved life...

The herbalist and his 'cubs' flashed glances of affectionate recognition at the tall figure. Such intelligent and tolerant wisdom was rare, in their days doomed to the worst excesses unjustly punished by a church blind to the welfare of its flock.

Trevor slowly chewed the Poppy mingled with another plant he didn't recognize, but let the bitter-sweet taste gradually invade him, effectively anesthetizing his whole body in an unusual way, as in a feathery cocoon wrap, his tongue slowly going numb as the taste buds fell asleep. His blood quickly carried away the natural molecules of opiates, distributing its lethargy to the receptor synapses, dozing the nerves in their cruel tension. He still felt somewhere in the middle of his stomach pulsate, a strange pressure that almost tickled.

He arched his back a little more, in a final jolt countering the suffocating feeling of emptiness and cotton that was already making his aching body hover. He squeezed Chester's hands in one last spasm, before resigning to his surroundings, his soul languidly stilling like a cat stretching itself before the fire before falling asleep. He drifted deep into numbing sleep, never loosening his grip on the holy man's fingers.

They watched as the dark Beauty finally dozed off, ending the symphony of bitter moans, muffled by pride in never recognizing the pain. The body was deathly pale, chest tight in sickly gasps that subsided into the depths of Somnus. Inwardly, Norton congratulated himself on covering up the fiery Belmont's modesty. The latter would certainly have reproached him for this weakness thus exposed in front of one of the characters he admired the most.

As if to justify himself, Efrain completed his explanations aside, while his fingers didn't tire of fluttering on all the supports that would bring relief to the sleeping youngster.

"I mixed Sage with Hemp, which has great anti-putrid properties, of course, Atlas Cedar shoots, Clove Nails...it reduces pain, it anesthetizes, and it disinfects radically. Here we're on a whole different aspect of bruising and trauma to the flesh.

“And for Acthéean?'' Chester questioned, looking down at the apprentice who was watching his friend's care carefully.

“Norton fixed his dislocated shoulder excellently. Good job. He has numerous minor abrasions, but a large dismembered shoulder excoriation. I've to stitch it up too.

"Would you like my help, if there is anything I can do?"

Efrain hesitated, surprised by the unusual request. Seeing his hesitation, the founder added:

“There was a time, in my younger years, I learned a little about the care that was needed. In times of war, you’ve to be just as competent to sew up a brother who has fallen in combat...As far as the possibilities’re sometimes experienced without your knowledge...It also very often happens that the Medallions’re no longer enough, and that we find ourselves in hostile territory to hope for help...

The man of science could only nod gravely before the solid argument delivered by the one he knew to be a man of extraordinary experience and exception. The room was silent before this respectable and honorable man, and one could only discern the soft, lazy crackling of the hearth, interspersed with tiny moaning sighs from the sleeper, sleep not being naturally given, the spirit of the young fluttered in the mists of analgesics and various anesthesias. Beneath the fingers of the men, the body grew feverish and could no longer wait for the care that primarily stemmed the bleeding that was draining Trevor's last strength.

Norton'd carefully sorted out the instruments that would be used to patch up the nasty scrapes and wounds, especially that of Acthéean, who displayed a complexion as chalky as that of his friend.

"I'll take care of Acthéean, if you don't mind," he offered. ''I feel capable of stitching up his wounds. Father Chester, help Brother Efrain get Trevor back on the road to recovery…Please, Father…without giving you orders, of course…

Chester nodded silently, while Efrain considered the one who was proving to be amply useful in a very delicate task that many would've shunned, already sick from the spilling of blood. This young man was making smart and reassuring decisions, and no doubt his courageous attitude would be taken into account by the founder, in the future. The solidarity of humans, during painful conflicts, was something precious and rare that'd to be supported and rewarded when the time came.

So the pale-haired young novice set about the conscientious operation of stitching the large wound on the shoulder, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. With great reinforcements of aseptic and curative oils, the hemmed lips of the excavation were carefully cleaned, under the interested gaze of Acthéean, surprised like the others by Norton's medical intuitive capacities.

While one concentrated on his clinical sewing work, the herbalist and Founder focused on Trevor's painfully languid form. Chester watched and studied the grim grimace that now scarred the youth's flank, hip and belly. Soft cloths soaked in antiseptic decoctions, sterilized plasters and locked in small special tanks according to the method of alambics, disinfected instruments heated in a purifying flame probed the bloody hollow of the dermal layers, closing them carefully after amicrobial cleaning, almost cauterizing the flesh, before the catguts were carefully knitted by a strangely curved needle for this effect.

In his artificial sleep, Trevor may've felt the bite nibbling lightly on his body, as the men slowly stitched him up, for he moved a little, and moaned tirelessly throughout the sewing operation. At least he wasn't in direct pain, operated on the spot, contrary to what was often done in these days of clinical infancy.

Chester thought they were all extraordinarily lucky to have such a gifted man for the humanities, bringing his treasures of knowledge that relieved much more in success, rather than having to let the dying agonize in their misery. He knew a lot of pompously appointed "doctors", who would've excessively abused savage cauterizations with white iron, ignoring the gehenna of the unfortunate victims often succumbing under the deliberate act. Or already anemic on the verge of death, to be excised in inconceivable bloodletting to bring down the fever, the poor wounded passed from life to death under the last blood puncture emptying them of all vital substance.

He couldn't help asking a discreet question of the conscientious herbalist, taken aback by the abdominal hematoma, while his long fingers, calloused from wielding the sword, and unaccustomed to the handling of a needle, helped with the sutures, manipulating a small forceps that supported the lips of the wound as the medical weaving progressed.

“Why does it have such an impact around the navel? I didn't see a hit there...

“It certainly bounced against the trunk which sported a stump full of broken asperities…one of them must've hurt him in passing…''supposed Efrain, sweating slightly under the concentration of the task.

“He could've been impaled on that stump too…''Chester noted. ''Why was this blasted trunk left in the middle of the yard like this...

“Do you know the number of chances you've of falling on this stump like this?'' Efrain questioned, just raising one eye to highlight an unfortunate coincidence that could have turned into a tragedy. Once again.

"In his misfortune, this poor minouchet had an incredible chance of not being killed outright, from the first blow...the Lord must really watch over him...

Norton, on their part, was doing a remarkable job, and Acthéean hardly felt the steady bite of the needle now, the whole shoulder and excavated part having dozed happily under the liberally applied opiates. As a result, it was almost a local anesthetic that worked wonders, and effectively prevented Acthéean from feeling the painful aches. The assistant who'd remained in aghast silence, witness of all these marvels of skill, sometimes contemplated the scene of the table where Trevor was lying, and the work of a companion whom he thought 'destined', like many, for the arts of the war, but finally predisposed himself for an even more noble art: that of healing and relieving.

The care room hummed for a long time with activities displaying their experience in the proper care of the two young people. Acthéean was gradually engulfed in restorative sleep, also, identical to his friend. Norton also made him chew the heavenly flowers for the erratic and sickly spirit, while he immobilized the arm in careful bandages, supporting the member which needed to find its bearings naturally and deflate the violated joints, under pockets of cold liquid in order to calm the pulsations. The arm was bent at an angle in the compression wraps woven around his torso. Before he finally fell into blissful unconsciousness, he was led slowly by Norton and his assistant to his bed, where they settled him properly, so that the body resumed its natural biological and behavioral dispositions.

For Trevor, it was trickier. After having bathed practically the whole body under layers of fabric soaked in fragrant and antiseptic oils, cleaning the biggest of the dirt accumulated in the fight, relieving the various inconsequential scratches which enamelled the alabaster skin, the hair gathered loosely in a towel in order to get the bloody slag clinging to it, he'd to be moved to his bed. The teenager was tall, and even thin he was his weight, doubled, the body being in amorphous stasis, as much moved a dead body.

Efrain was helped to deploy a large sheet which piled up under the sleeping mass, taking all the precautions in the manipulations, casting an eye on the way to the last sutures of the back which’d of course jumped in the mess, and let thin rills trickle bloody. Nothing too bad compared to the rest, and it was nonchalantly that Efrain ran a wet washcloth over the small remaining scratches. It would be time to remedy this, with the cleaning of the mop of hair, but as soon as the teenager would recover a little strength. At the moment, he was seriously anemic from his injuries, and he absolutely needed complete rest. Efrain thought about the food ingredients to make him absorb to find a hemostatic balance. Among the antibacterial plants, he’d the good reflex to generously apply Yarrow, a radical herb that effectively stops any hemorrhage.

Thus ensconced in the sheet, the four men each took a corner of the sturdy homespun cloth, and lifted the boneless remains of Trevor, in the form of an improvised stretcher. They carried him to his bed, where they also took every precaution to spread the mass, perfectly and softly in the clean pillows and blankets. The couch was bathed for the occasion, and if Trevor’d been conscious, he would’ve sighed happily under the softness of the cocoon which warmly welcomed his poor bruised body. He was slid carefully onto this cozy nest, Efrain making sure to arrange every limb-resting angle correctly, straightening the back of his neck in a relaxation that wouldn't cause any stiffness from bad posture, balancing his face to the side neatly tucked into the hollow of the pillow. Almost identically to an artist who would install his model in a pleasant and tension-free position, preparing to model the vision in a medium which would preserve the eternal beauty of the moment of pose.

Once again, the room took on the appearance of a doleful alcove made to lull bodily ailments and those of the soul; the walls lined with hangings in faded colors would witness once again the attenuated groans uttered by the pain, the dreams inherent in the discomfort of the flesh; the stained-glass windows would outline graceful, multicolored prisms on the eburnian dermis flagellated with multi-hued ecchymosis; silk and velvet would cuddle contusioned flesh in their richly hemmed trimmings, reserved even for the so-called "high-born," but this time these riches would be the tender cradle for pure-hearted and noble warriors; the chemney would still consume its fragrant and ecstatic woods in its centuries-old imperturbability, in order to soften the sense of smell and the heightened sensations of the two bodies at rest, and to warm their dislocated limbs of a moment, now in repair.

Chester gazed for a moment at the strange anamorphic designs that'd resulted from the shock of the tearing of Reality, sad heralds of a cacophony of despair and failure. Efrain wanted to say something, but the wise Founder raised a hand, and just whispered:

“Have no fear, Efrain, nothing’ll transpire from here…and anyway, I’ve all the arguments in hand now, to muzzle those who get a little too excited…Now, we’ve other priorities more urgent, rather than being stupidly offended in front of very beautiful drawings, I must say it, and recognize it...You’ve a heavy task to watch over your 'little ones', and lead them on the path to recovery, with the help of our Lord…The rest doesn’t matter to me…

Efrain perhaps missed the dismayed and infinitely sad depth that for a moment enamelled the shaded irises of the Founder, as he remained motionless immersed in concentration on the two Lilies which'd been rested on the papers gorged with colorful riches. His mind took a few seconds off this world, admiring the corolla now faded with glaucous shades, instead of the usual immaculate one. Far, very far towards the horizons of his memories, in silhouettes on a stretched canvas of his Anamnesis, furtive actions unfolded which'd tightened, it was for a time forgotten, his knight's heart hardened. The protective embrace enveloping a babbling infant of perdition. A few mother-of-pearl petals sublimating the fabrics with its unique scents. A priceless piece of the Mirror wrapped in swaddling clothes, by the very hand of a respected ancient God...

Then, resting the vellums in their quiet, discreet shadows, swallowing a strange ball contracting his throat, the high dignitary bowed before each layer protecting their amorphous treasures, raised one hand to his medallion of power, the other signing the Holy-Cross on the brows of Acthéean and Trevor, murmuring a long litany in Latin, blessing the young novices, and entrusting them to the hands of God.

Efrain felt his heart leap with gratitude and happiness at this unexpected homily. This eulogy was generally reserved for dubbed Knights, and there he'd just attended the benediction ordered by one of the highest dignitaries of the Brotherhood.

Discreetly, as fleeting as the two men might’ve imagined it, a tiny palpitation flared its fractal, taking the time of the blink of an eye to surround the intimate space between the bust of the Founder and the two sleeping bodies. Like a tacit agreement intimately ordered by the Medallion of Light throwing its protection over the two young men, as had just been asked of it through the absolution with deep Latin accents...

The two men left the room shaded with tawny and darkness, as usual. Perhaps a little more intimate still, seeming to really envelop its sleeping two in its wings of silent penumbra.

Chester returned to the dungeon, refusing any examination, needing only a bath, and to think seriously about the disastrous consequences that were sure to accumulate in the hours to come, worsening the already tense situation within the Brotherhood. He led away the young novice who’d helped, still walled in his silence. Efrain’ll learn later that the youngster was mute by a traumatic birth, and destined for illumination tasks with the artist brothers.

Then he gently ordered Norton to allow himself to be examined in turn, despite the meager gashes. Anyway, everyone needed to cleanse themselves of hardships, and the young man gladly agreed to a good antiseptic bath which would effectively clean the various wounds, and give a good kick in the ass of a sneaky infection.

In his languorous, relaxing maceration, Norton'd plenty of time to think of the 'little pistil between two sheets’’ he'd pictured so deliciously on the Fate-stricken figure of the Belmont.

A pistil that would feed on the strengths of the wisdom of the writings, and on a unique experience.

He thought melancholy of these two Soulmates, Astral Twins, who lay in the ether ruined by the poisonous essences of a war of which they risked never seeing the end.

Until...Because it was the Universal Law of the Cosmos, Cradle of the innumerable blessed pulsations of those who know how to find themselves through the dédale of this unknown Universe. The beautiful warm brown of Norton's eyes clouded with tears that refused until the last second to leave the ciliated shores reddened with fatigue and intense grief.

He wept in the warm intimacy with the heady scent of healing oils, he sobbed desperately over the missing who'd been mowed down, on this new morning promising a wonderful day, and collapsing in the most annihilating nightmares, destroying the slightest ounce of hope for the future. Smells of copper, of iron, of blood, of unhealthy wounds, of poison no doubt, of disease, the gnawing acid bitterness of lost souls, the acerbity of the blows of destiny, peppery ashes on the tongue, and who knows, among these versatile powders the bland and burnt taste of the embers having suppressed the flesh in ethereal layers, slag to the winds abandoning this ruined ether.

He lamented in nervous sighs, weeping for something that choked his heart in a feeling he couldn't name. And Efrain didn't have the heart to interrupt his harrowing litanies, intoning his own inner lament, joining in the massive pain of the youngster curled up miserably as a fetus in his cooling bath of oils...

000<<>>~~~O~~~<<>>000

Chapter Text

The Brotherhood'd been hit like never before. It would've a hard time recovering from such a setback. But more than anything, the anguish of having seen all the most powerful sigils summoned, the unshakeable barriers of spells, the most incisive protective efforts against the darkness, reduced to nothing, irrevocably under an aleph even more devastating than all the series of spells learned during the formative years of a novice destined for the chivalrous priesthood wielding the standard of the holy order.

Everything, ruined in a single forced passage in the most primitive brutality. Yet another onslaught of the Night Dragon's hordes, for years now, since the new Lord's accession to the 'throne' of Darkness, but this time it’d taken little for the Brotherhood to bend the knee irrevocably to the ire. The recovery of the Grimoire’d been a pretext, most certainly. The swarms’d come, had struck, and those who’d escaped, had gone back into the skies torn apart by the claw of the fabric of Reality. How they’d descended in lethal waves, how they’d evaporated in the devastated limbo. A fragile sigh which still quivered on the bloodless lips of the collapsed landscape, where even the thickest canopies now scattered their mercilessly torn hair on the sticky mists of mornings struggling to separate themselves from the nocturnal shadows.

It was now necessary to put in the tomb in eternal rest, all the shattered brothers. Carry out the sad ceremony which would finally take all the broke souls on their journey of no return. Take stock of the extremely heavy ranks ransacked. Rebuild this colossal building which’d just collapsed lamentably under a rout from which they would’ve difficulty in recovering. There was so much to do in such a short time. Faith’d wavered cruelly in the hearts of the common people, these having been the most seriously affected, death having descended on them, they who were preparing for a day bearing all the premises of a friendly and peaceful day…What disappointment! What a stampede…What a tragedy that saw the Brotherhood suddenly discredited under the bereaved rumblings and resentment.

Volpe wasn't leading wide, aghast and lethargic in the corner adjoining the Mirror, which remained regal and impassive in its sluggish tain. Barely a crack or two'd been added in the crumbling canvas in the upper left corner, for centuries it seemed.

The cardinal’d just suggested the injunction to send troops as heralds to neighboring villages, in order to make the news known, and draw up an inventory of the surrounding areas, because it also seemed that other hamlets’d also been hit. It was whispered in the reports returned in the hours that followed, by the messengers, that all the small villages bathed in rivers and streams, had suffered the attacks even of the terrifying Naiads, who came in their turn in the magma descended from Agharta.

The clergyman was struck with amazement, and gave all the signs of a dejection from which there would be great difficulty in getting him out.

Perhaps this egocentric pharisaical man was finally realizing all the mistakes he’d made in his tyrannical blindness? Chester d’Uries surmised, very quickly taking the halter from a disheveled stampede among his cronies. But he’d no illusions, knowing the individual who would rebound in a short time in one of his eternal fits of hysteria which would send more troops to be massacred at the foot of the castle...

Ooo>>><<<ooO

Ire’d calmed down. The swarms’d dried up, and the obscuration’d returned to its sepulchral niches, waiting to be summoned again. The Horn of Bromios was silent. The vertiginous hills and foothills bordering the mountainous asperities were again bathed in the fallen calm, cramped with accumulated clouds gorged with flakes of frost floating in languorous spirals.

The Overlook Tower was rigid in its eternal frost, its joists of sustainable scaffolding slowly covered with efflorescent drizzle with a metallic and coppery taste, astonishing, with the scent of burning embers dying in the abandoned braziers. But by whom? The light mingled with the blue steel of the sleepers above deadly precipices, and everywhere lingered the sweet and dark scent of frost mingled with the woods rotting under its moss, the acidity of corrosive humus. The saltpetre continuing its obstinate rodent work in the stony layers crumbling under its pitiless fangs, and the stench which escaped from it stank of putrid mushrooms and poisonous earth.

The Overlook regained its peace, for a time. And would still be standing for millennia to come. Stoic in the face of misfortune with acid and emetic aromatics of the human soul who would've dared to make a paralipsis before the powers generated by the Lord of these places.

The monumental cornet of the Horn of Bromios'd fallen asleep in deep lethargy. In unison with those who fell asleep in the castle. They were all called to impossible dreams, to the Nothingness of thought, to the Emptiness of torment, to the nebulosities of satisfied hunger.

The long corridors winding indefinitely between their towers and their partitions of reinforced mortar, had found the sonorous peace. No more rustling of claws or twisted paws on the drawn pavements.

Up there, at the very top, flirting with the frozen clouds, a slight rustle of heavy fabric, weighed down by the golden armor flowing on a rich material with purple colors like the purest blood. A hand ending in long curved spurs, more deadly than talons, caressed for a long time a cover engraved with a sneer surmounted by ferrules encircling the forbidden writings which could only be read by the chosen ones. An Chosen One.

The catafalques rumbled on their pillars while the lids of the tombs scraped, sealing themselves in the immutable, for the eternity of Time.

Over there, through the deserted banquet halls, where still trailed a few carcasses finished off by the ghouls reintegrating their putrid humidity, along the corridors skirting the underground passages, or haunting the Tower of the Vampire-Knights, dragged the sickly opalescence of a Specter carrying all the suffering of the damned, of those who’d been murdered,--hoisting his chains with a pain equal to infinite despair, modulating his inexhaustible sighs on the curse of the deceased finding no Rest. If by chance, we came across this wandering hermit, you should never ask him about his distress: Wraith would tie your soul to the links of his potholders rustling in tune with his silent tears, and would lead you in his hobbling dance to the depths of his hells.

The majestic throne sculpted with terrible gules welcomed its Prince, its Master, its Lord. And time stood still, refusing to scratch the foundations of Chaos any further.

Into the Silent Shadow melted the Black Diamond ruling the dead Dragons for the eons. Ordering the awakening of the mountains of bones fallen into ashes and dust, extirpating the antediluvians to whom these slender dracholiches had belonged...

Ooo<<<<>>>>>ooO

Norton gladly took over with his two friends who were still deeply anesthetized by opiates. At least they weren't in pain right now. He hoped so. He took his role to heart, deciding to help as much as possible the herbalist who seemed about to crack in turn.  Everything was suspended in Danaşti, as if Master-Time Himself had released His clocks of Stolas, immobilizing existence in a closed Cycle, in order to allow the living to pour out their thoughts over the struck remains, and begin the long procedure of Mourning. A good number of comrades, villagers, even passing visitors, had fallen during this tragic event which would sadden the whole place, for a period which proved difficult and long. Impossible to erase from the memories of those who survived.

So he’d firmly endorsed his work as healer and watchman. Efrain was thus able to go and visit the lesser wounded who’d been repatriated to the barracks, in order to administer the necessary care to them. He knew that the cleaning of wounds and disinfection would be much less arduous than what he’d to do to his two youngsters. What exhausted the man wasn’t in itself the medical task to be brought, but a sneaky etiolation of his mind in the face of the amalgamation in series of disasters harassing them for weeks.

What’d become of their life in a short time? His consternation at chain situations no longer had a common measure. He’d the impression that indeed the attacks were more numerous, more sneaky, more brutal. More powerful and deadly than ever.

Fortunately, he'd guessed correctly in the case of much lighter injuries. A few bruises, minor slashes, tears but which required little suturing. Alas, the paradox was in the piling up of the dead in the rooms adjacent to the abbey, and serving as a temporary morgue pending the ceremony decided by the Founders. It was necessary to act quickly, the bodies'd started the processes of putrefaction, some more damaged than others by the infernal aegis, releasing harmful olfactions that it was impossible to overcome without completely covering the nose and the mouth against the aggressive emanations gnawing throats and lungs.

While the herbalist worked with the victims, administering his care with precision and aided by novices with some knowledge of the medical arts, Norton'd taken on the responsibility of watching over his two friends.

Efrain’d built two rather clever containers in a back room, away from any source of heat, and which served as refrigerated tanks identical to the techniques of ancient Rome which’d found the trick of keeping liquids in the intense cold, without being for so frozen. An ingenious system that he’d been able to contemplate during his countless exploratory trips. He’d memorized the clever procedures, and made a point of replicating receptacles of them for his own use, giving him the ability to keep certain plants or aseptic anointings cool. The Romans’d unearthed the trick to notably refresh their beer! Already at the time, it was a leap forward in the modernity of the preservation practice, and medical philosophers hadn’t hesitated to understand how it worked, in order, in turn, to preserve the precious sanitary liquids.

In addition to the healing potions thus provided, pockets of distilled water were part of the stock. Norton thus had the possibility of regularly changing the pockets of very fresh water for the dislocated shoulder of Acthéean, as well as of soaking the tissues regularly placed on the forehead of the two youngsters, in order to lower the temperature. Especially with Trevor, who displayed a disturbing fever that made him sporadically delirious.

The Belmont must've wandered between nightmares and feverish stings, for from time to time he babbled broken words, or moaned miserably like the squeaks of a wounded dog. His forehead was soaked with sweat and the coolness of the gloves changed very often.

The two were still diaphanous from the lack of blood. Acthéean exposed his firmly held shoulder, seeming to gradually deflate. The effusion of the irritated liquid in the articulatory capsule seemed to be relieved by the icy cooling of the water coming out of the small preservative wells.

But Norton knew more than anything that he’d to recognize the infection immediately if it presented itself. Even despite all the sanitization and almost the cauterization of the flesh, it was enough for the wounds to tip over into the putrescence of the damaged tissues. Norton knew that the smell was the first alarming sign, even if nothing was visible on the surface. Efrain’d also explained to him how to monitor the dermal colors as the bandages were changed very regularly. Everything’d to be examined with a magnifying glass. A sign taken lightly, and it was a disaster for the patient.

So all through that hellish, endless day, Norton did nothing but put ice-water bandages on their foreheads; wipe away the overflow of sweat; push back the silky locks that’re now soaked in dirt; sometimes putting a limb back in place while the sleeper wriggled in his misty and nightmarish nimbus; smelling deeply the different odors evaporating from bodies smeared with anointings and poultices often irritating his sense of smell in the acerbity of certain bouquets. All this mixed with the natural bodily musks, amber and frost for Trevor, woody and suave for Acthéean, sometimes their intimate perfumes even seemed to alternate between the bodies, as if the two were linked together, knotted and sewn to each other in Siamese-Twins who exchanged their emanations in delicate aromas miscellaneous with suffering, ultimate pain, disarray with a coppery and ferruginous taste, melancholy with the flavors of ashes.

All this daytime languid in its dreads, Norton almost prayed in a thirsty compulsion for answers that would relieve him about the future of his friends. All these hours, he effloresced the skins pulled from torture, calmed the beginnings of nervous crises arising from wicked dreams. He contemplated the drawings without daring to touch them, as if they were going to decompose under his curious touch. He studied the strange metamorphoses that'd taken place during the invasion, pursed his lips to keep the tears from flowing at the decay that'd taken hold of everyone.

Sitting between the two couches, he held the two Lilies for a long time, which were dying in the shades of faded inks...

~~~ÕoooÕ~~~

One was picking up the debris of a dream, succumbing to the call of the ecstatic shores that would pull him from his sustaining waters. He gathered every clue that’d brought him to the cinder cobblestones now welcoming his bare footsteps, tying and untying the curls of a capricious Memory. Scattered phantoms who laughed at him, made fun of mischievous pranks without malice; harmonious specters delivering their theatrical acts and entrechats in games of hide and seek.

When he managed an embroidery stitch, thinking he’d imprisoned these sneaky ectoplasms, they evaporated and left him only a few moonbeams, a distorted memory on his shoulder, and again the tearful remnants of a songe...

The other contemplated two silhouettes stretched out in the dying gleams of an eternal twilight, wrapped in the fabrics of the sky like brazen shrouds merging into their flesh, which’d become pallid as the alabaster on which they were laid, waiting. Waiting for what? A toilet so that their essence is purified, and leave for their last journey.

There were innumerable roots so slender to pick, and he didn't know where to go to gather enough to offer the Deceased Persons fragrant armfuls that would perfume their steps towards the horizons of the Indefinite.

They were both contemplating the Infinite. But they didn't know that.

They perceived the painful echoes of an endless war, in which they knew many of their comrades would fall, but they weren't overly moved by it: they were perhaps no longer part of this universe of chaos. .

The eburnian skins reflected all the bereavements of the world in myriads of unhealthy shades, they didn't care, persisting in their absolute frigidity, admiring themselves between the twin Mirrors facing each other.

They were waiting…Livid, stretched out among the immaculate, posed in a journey of no return.

Hands materialized out of nowhere, combing, weaving arabesques in the silky locks, mixing chocolate with dark auburn, obsidian night with the silver of the moon at its peak. Extraordinarily elongated dexters in nimble gnarled curves embroidering floral braids with virginal finery, and covering bellies hollowed out by the absence of soft breath. Groins sensually touched by the long petals of Madonna coming to kneel in the inguinal folds in relief more expressed in amorphism.

They waited thus...their essence adored by the paradisiacal armfuls, festooned on the easel of the Gods, while the majestic Psyches opened their Portals on dark bottoms where the Unknown and the Expectation signed...

"Follow the Lys, and you'll drink from its fountain...I'll feed on the tears of my remorse...'

…but the crowns plunged their stamens into the juices of an irreversible poison…and their slender stems weakened in the earthy shades of sooty black…

…and the Allegories cradled their intimate dreams with their bereaved laments, sponging from the corner of weavings with precious threads the unfathomable Voids which served them as pupils…their guttural songs lifted the catatonic bodies, carrying them towards their universes closed to Mortals…

~~~i=ooo=i~~~

Efrain'd made a detour to the kitchens of the Brotherhood, planning to have some food prepared which would favorably consolidate the battered biology of his little proteges. Both severely anemic and weakened by their consequent blood loss, he knew that they needed a diet of barely cooked red meat to strengthen their blood defenses. A recipe he knew perfectly, but he still had to have the right ingredients at hand.

A quick point with his friend Andréas who quickly unearthed manuscripts on this subject, confirming his idea of food restructuring, with a few other foodstuffs that he knew he could only find in one place.Thus, he'd headed for the only place that could provide the necessary ingredients, and officiate in the preparation of scrupulous meals

Efrain was a leader in the whole village and with every employee working in the service of the Founding Fathers themselves. He was therefore presented with no difficulty in his requests, the staff knowing the support that the herbalist-doctor'd with their holy men. So it was with disconcerting ease that he kindly gave his orders, asking for delivery at a certain time the next day. His youngsters weren't going to emerge from their dreamlike maze until midmorning, he mentally reckoned, calculating the periods of taking the opiates on the biological reactions of the youngsters. They would certainly not be very hungry, but above all thirsty, due to the fever, and at the same time planned compositions of rye, barley, spelled, buckwheat bread.

He also knew the virtues of blood. Blood’s life! But, the church cast their threatening shadow over all these practices which took an obvious risk for the practitioners, of landing at the stake! and with the ongoing threat of the Dragon, Efrain shudders even to think of such solutions. Red meat, yes, blood…it was absolutely excluded! Already he was flirting with the outlaw borders of the plant administrations prohibited by the said church. Theological prohibitions died hard, sometimes concessions were necessary, it was necessary to show adequate respect to the traditions imposed with honeyed words, but nevertheless...threatening ?…

No matter what might come of his requests, as long as his 'little ones' get it right! He was certain, as he went back down to his apothecary, that already “little birds” were spinning tweet their spy report to whom it may concern. He knew himself strong in his decisions. After all, no one else and no less than Chester d'Uries’d assisted in the repair surgery, so never mind, many would be informed and muzzled by the consequences that ensued. If it occurred to them to protest with all their vehement haughtiness...

It was with a cheer in his heart that he returned to his pharmacy, finding a Norton always on the lookout for the slightest sign that announced a worsening in youngsters.

It was a long, long night in its ups and downs. Hours of exhaustion where the body screamed its need for sleep. Norton, faithfully clinging to his new task, no longer wanted to abandon Efrain to his drudgery of care and care. The two alternated their tireless comings and goings between their couches where they tried to doze a little, but unable to do so, gnawed with worry they got up and ended the night side by side, on the lookout for the slightest sigh alarming about a possible degradation.

Without leaving Somnus, the two young people hiccupped softly in search of a little refreshing water, which was served to them carefully from the end of a cup drawn from the reserves. Above all, it shouldn't be freezing either, Efrain knowing the thermal shock with the feverish stomach just like the rest of the body. The gloves soaked in this freshness flew regularly on the foreheads, and sometimes on the chests and arms, where goosebumps took shape as the fabric passed through, quickly suppressed under the covers.

A waking nightmare night for the herbalist who reviewed in his prodigious memory the various medical acts handwritten by Aristotle himself, and that many'd to study the fundamental principles before hoping to join a sworn school.

He and Norton exchanged few words during this long vigil which announced others in stride. It was likely that the two also imagined the organizational excesses that were to take place elsewhere, in the dungeon of the founders, for example. They’d been informed of the great wake and burial ceremony for all the victims of the massacre, and they were aware of the implications for the whole village. By obligation, some of the remains too damaged and poisoned by the darkspawn, had to disappear in the ashes of the pyres, in order to eradicate any late curse on the dead flesh.

All it took was a scratch at the fabric of Reality. And everything'd turned into horror.

The early morning opened its eyes numb with grief to that same strange efflorescent bloom that lingered in the general atmosphere. Less compact, perhaps, but still an afflicted shroud covering the gloom of a devastated landscape.

Acthéean’d groaned his numb shoulder, trying to tear off the bandages that held it in place. Trevor wasn’t left out, seized with violent pains which’d pulled him badly from his sleep. They were ominously thirsty, and Efrain decided to unwrap all the bandages, and carefully examine the progress of the healing. After a few gentle frictions on the dislocated shoulder, they reconsolidated the bandages into a sling. The wound was clean and seemed to be healing well. Everything was bristling and swollen with ecchymosis, multicolored in the shades spreading their palette on the dermis, impressive but all in all well on the way to healing. The shoulder joint was to be massaged with pain-relieving oils to soften the irritated head of bone and traumatized cartilage, and to help evacuate the resulting effusion of synovial fluid.

Trevor, it was a little more complicated, weakly moaning persistent twinges in the pelvis and the whole side of the injured flank, as well as the affected belly, he felt like he was compressed in jaws of steel that chewed his flesh. He was half in the opiate fog, again, and seemed delirious, nauseous and dizzy. The unfortunate man wanted to get up at the same time, and clung to everything to find a balance that he no longer had, even in bed. He felt like he was on a beaten drunk boat to the waves of a storm. Efrain only had time to help him empty his stomach of what little he'd. The shock of the injuries, the resulting psychological trauma, caused an unmanageable vagal discomfort, and Norton and Efrain felt like they'd a hysterically convulsing teenager in their arms.

Acthéean tried to get up, in order to help control his friend giving all the symptoms of a panic attack and anguish, consequent of falling-sleep forced by the opiates. Trevor was reacting brutally to the weightlessness of the medical plants, and making it known with great reinforcements of nervous vomiting and spasms, his body revolted by all the violence of the last twenty-four hours. Efrain'd never seen anyone react like this before, and was somewhat taken aback and hesitant about the care to follow concerning an anesthesia practice which proved to be harmful in high doses, for the teenager.

With reassuring words, and support from the three men, Trevor managed to calm his body gradually, and fell back, completely soaked in bad sweat on the diaper, breathing hard and limbs shaking. He mumbled a few jerky words accentuating the pain he felt, his eyes were blurred and looking in all directions for a lost point of orientation. You would've sworn that he was coming out of a deep coma, without any more landmarks, rendered half-crazy by the treatment.

Efrain inveighed Acthéean nervously, ordering him to go back to bed in an exasperated manner, but which the young man didn’t take umbrage at, understanding full well the gravity of the situation which was panicking everyone. Nevertheless, he insisted on staying with the teenager, still out of breath from his discomfort, while Efrain went about preparing for additional sanitization, poultices and bandages. Clean cloths soaked in cleansing and sweetly scented anointings piled up, as well as basins of water heated regularly in the cauldron permanently placed in the fireplace for this purpose.

“I would like to help, Efrain…'protested Acthéean, under the threat of a gesture of rejection towards his bed.

"Trust me, you won't help if you get tired too, and you only have one arm! Norton's here, and that won't solve the problem of interfering with each other in unnecessary shuffling.

Acthéean still grumbled for the form, and was obliged to obey. He was in better shape than his friend, but was of no use at the moment! Lying cautiously on his immobilized side, leaning on a layer of soft pillows, he observed the manipulations attentively, and had to recognize extraordinary skill on the part of Norton, as the latter gently but firmly brushed the flesh exuding its martyrdom by toilet tissues.

Trevor regained a more stable calm under the fragrant caresses of the healing oils, relieved of his uncomfortable layer of sweat, even his face was bathed in the essences. Efrain'd found a way to change the sheets under him, sparing him the maximum of contortions, and he tasted the happiness of cool and soothing fabric, his whole body relaxing as the expert palpations progressed. The careful examination of the stitched wound comforted him a little more in relaxation. Gradually reassured, he finally relaxed as little plasters rich in Sage and Hemp, embellished with a tiny pinch of Poppy, and the famous little Cloves came to tickle his dermis swollen with purplish anger, covering more than the surface in suffering, and bandaged tightly around his thin waist and pelvis. When they finished bandaging him, he almost looked like a mummy! The entire abdominal area clogged in its layers of aseptic concoctions and fabrics finely cut into strips.

Poor Belmont thus curry-combed might make one think of a horse that’d just been corked! He’d the strength to stammer out an apology for his nauseous behavior. Apologies which Efrain refused, of course, too relieved by the good aspect of the healing. Acthéean mischievously underlined the state of an old mummy under her bandages, which’d the good effect of relaxing the atmosphere and finally making Trevor smile. Who groans, but in another way:

"Stop, don't make me laugh,'he gasped, 'it hurts me...

"I'm going to prepare a little recipe for you to treat your blood loss,'Efrain told them kindly, while cleaning up the remains of soiled sheets, the strips stained with bodily humors and ointments.

The room was shrouded in a thick cloud made up of the remains of smoke evaporating from the dying embers, countless flames also leaving their twirling filters slowly extinguished, as if blown by a small voyeuristic breeze nestling in the tipsy threads of the faded draperies.  But also a thin layer of discreet incense absorbing the heavy mixtures of medicinal materials. Added to the fragrant bouquet that risked becoming heavy with the various bodily juices, the musks of wounds, all this threatened to weigh down the atmosphere of the room which’d to be aired and purified.

Efrain was extremely organized in cleaning duties, vigilant and scrupulous. But the agenda didn’t allow Trevor to be evacuated elsewhere for the next few days, so he decided to purify the stagnant atmospheres with cedar and birch-woods which crackled happily in the revived hearth, spitting out their musky scents and paneled recalling the freshness of forests waking up from a night of dense drizzle. Braziers were coaxed and crowned with armfuls of willow and olive leaves, icy mint and purifying lavender. The little room took on the appearance of a universe blessed by the Sylphides themselves. The healing vapors did their job very quickly, and the rancid smell of wounds and sick bodies was absorbed into the woody incense. Efrain didn’t want to open the panels of the large stained-glass window, fearing a cold snap would seize the weakened and feverish bodies.

It was therefore in delicate mists with heavenly scents that the two young men were able to cleanse their thirsty breathing for purified air. The emanations also had the power of relaxation, thus making the afflicted body feel as cleansed as in a full bath.

While Efrain showed a Norton constantly in ecstasy before the curative demonstrations, the preparation of Sage wine in which he beat a raw goose egg, a powerful tasting and intoxicating decoction, radical for anemia, of the personnel of the dungeon kitchens delivered breads and rare cooked meat. The herbalist winked at the blond novice dazzled by so many tricks, while carefully preparing small bowls of light portions that would come to the rescue of a failing hemostasis.

Acthéean was playful in front of the small snack, and slowly savored each bite, aware of the healing benefits brought to his body. Norton helped support the cut, and laminated the squares of bloody meat further.

For Trevor…it was a little more complicated! He immediately understood the deviation from a practice heavily reprimanded by the church, and to which the herbalist'd had the mischief to find an emergency solution: the absorption of blood! In front of his dismayed head, Acthéean sneered openly, carrying everyone away in a cynical laugh.

“Hey, Trevor! Might as well ask a mutual friend to supply us with blood!

Trevor was mock-outraged, rounding the orbs into exaggerated saucers, before sliding a hand over his face, which was shaking with the start of laughter.

“I see a certain Volpe choking with rage...''he purred, trying the first bits of meat that was bathing in its blood in a...unappetizing way.

The grimace he let out as he swallowed the juice made the laughter even louder. On the other hand, the loaves passed like a paradise in their throat avid for greedy outcrops, underlined by symphonies of borborygmi dedicated to the angels who blessed such a collation, with their tacit complicity. At the same time, it was their first meal since lunch the night before, in the early morning, before the fights.

Efrain was happy, as long as the stomachs cried their enjoyment under the taste buds thus spoiled, it was a good sign! Although Trevor'd a tiny appetite, constricted by the pains that awoke with the elimination of the opiate effects.

When he swallowed a few sips of Sage wine and raw egg, they all thought he was choking under the power of the taste whipping the taste-buds, like a monumental slap that would’ve slapped him! There, it was the opposite for his alabaster cheeks which were suddenly tinged with incandescent red powder, while he’d the impression of swallowing fire. His eyes stinged with hot tears, and he gasped miserably at the fire in his throat.

" Gently!''Efrain warned him too late, hiding his laughter behind his bowl. ''Unhappy! you've to drink it sip by sip, it's too strong.

“You’re not used to drinking, my friend!''Acthéean sizzled in a sadistic echo, shaking with sneers.

“Because you do!” the youngster rasped, swallowing the fire of the concoction with difficulty.

The half-angry, half-appalled look the fiery Belmont gave them, the sapphires wet with the salt of tears, trying to squeal a protest, but couldn't.

But all that joyous moment of food appreciation, and hilarious little incidents, had the miracle of spreading a blanket of well-being and relaxation between the men, and the suffering bodies forgot for a time the sneaky throws biting their stitched flesh.

Then suddenly, like a heavy tread, fatigue weighed on the limbs, and the eyes began to flutter, and the lips closed slowly on the arid beaches of words that'd become useless. The two wounded tasted again the cotton wool of the premises of sleepiness, and let themselves go peacefully, inhaling deeply the ecstatic and woody essences enveloping the room purified of the miasmas of war.

The warm diapers bathed languid bodies in unison, while Efrain answered by murmuring the astonished questions of Norton who, decidedly, had just experienced the extreme in the palette of intense emotions, in less than twenty-four hours.

He'd just experienced the terror, the adrenaline of the impossible, a feat he'd never felt capable of, all on a jagged scale of emotional power. And now he was aware of a feeling so oppressive and ethereal at the same time, so uplifting and redemptive for a wandering soul: he was strangely happy.

<<<>>>OooO>>><<<

Three days passed in contagious dispiritedness before the village and its fortress mourned their dead in an interminable commemoration, which’d united absolutely everyone around the remains leaving for their last journey, blessed before being buried in a space plowed for the occasion. In outside the foundations, as required by ancestral traditions separating the living and the dead, except for the warriors of the brotherhood who joined the mortuary field provided for this purpose.

Alongside the sad excavations uniting the missing in a single group and somewhat separated from the rest of the mortuary field, more sinister niches, dug in the earth, supported their lots of tightly intertwined branches, erecting modest pyres which would greedily swallow the flesh desecrated by evil fluids. Then it would be the saddened winds which would scatter the ashes and other dross of what’d once been human beings. Certainly this gloomy and heavy whole would hover over the ether for a long time around the towers and dungeon of the stronghold.

It was of intrinsic will that the tombs of the knights should continually be bathed by the all-powerful shadow of the Founders' keep, and the underground crypt rooted in the visible stumps of the stones and abutments of the holy building, as well as the bulk of the fortress. The recumbent figures thus benefited from the luminous and protective seals invoked by the Priests, without however being forgotten by the regular annual services which came to honor them. Thus, the Light and the Shadow cradled for eternity these knights-warriors-novices fallen in battle. As soon as a youngster was taken into the care of the Brotherhood, he no longer belonged to the public and popular world, sometimes even no longer to his own family which moreover, most of the time, got rid of him so that the unfortunate person could to prosecute a semblance of futile Legacy in the face of warlike violence.

So, one could assume without inappropriate cynicism, that the tendrils of powdery lamentations slowly extracting themselves from the purifying hearths, simply wanted to be able to insert themselves into the holy miasmas, protectors of this blessed people to which their own fires had never belonged. A frail redemption in the shadow of the guardian-seals of their abbreviated souls too soon.

This was the case for Norton, who carried a ton of dictates imposed by his family struck by continual mourning. He was there, frozen during the ceremony, among his companions, fleeing in thought from the commemoration of an infinite sadness. That it was blue-print to see all these boxes loaded with remains in serious putrid progression, hence the fact of having closed the lids, but the public in the front rows pressed handkerchiefs to their noses assaulted by the deadly emanations. Death was ugly in Itself, and this distressing display of it was a thin, sneering mask, among the many guises of the Grim Reaper, giving no hope to Mortals who gazed upon It thus, in the omnipotence of the inescapable end of all living.

The abbey hosting the commemoration puked its overflow of participants, many of whom also came as diplomatic representatives of neighboring towns and villages warned of the carnage by the garrisons sent to the four winds as sad heralds of disastrous news. It was thus that many officials and lords of lands adjoining the fortress, had mandated their legates, or acted as a presence themselves, indebted to the Guild, the order of support towards the one who’d done so much for them, had naturally shared between the municipalities in a solidarity movement in the face of adversity. And umpteen hearts froze at the thought that if the Brotherhood’d collapsed like this, what would happen to them when the hordes attacked them in turn? Too multitudinous villages defiled by the minions, generated corpses piling up in hastily mass graves dug, barely blessed by priests with broken voices of terror.

…Forgotten the pyres by the distraught; through the bloody nights, extirpated from their desecrated land, dumpers of the dead would spring…

Norton’d been allowed to attend on that cursed day that many would remember. Acthéean’d been deemed unfit, his shoulder still being too fragile and obliged to be immobilized under restraints. In addition, he was dizzy due to the too long lying position, and it was necessary for him to help him in movements that would gradually rebalance him.

Trevor. Let's not talk about it! Brazenly, he'd dared to suggest 'the possibility that maybe, etc etc...' and Efrain'd sung to him a litany loudly about how he was going to strangle the unconscious, threatening him with exaggerated abuse, and even renewing the flattery of his vengeful foot on the arrogant hindquarters,-emphasizing having already done so, to the great mortification of the youngster at the cynicism of the reminder, and the shame at the memory of the punitive 'caress'-, if by chance the rascal set foot on the ground, leaving the teenager speechless! Acthéean'd mingled with the song, adding if necessary the expeditious punishments that he would be happy to bring down on the fiery, even with one arm!

Trevor withdrawed into oneself, grouching for several minutes, his eyes stubborn, his jaw thrust forward in a rebellious pout, and the muscles of the mandibular joints could be seen rolling under the skin still exposing an eerie diaphaneity. The imposed immobility gnawed at his nerves. After being afflicted by the beatings of his tutor, he was blasted for a much longer period!

He ate little, with difficulty. The blood absorption of freshly cooked meats to keep them fluid, disgusted him to the point of immediately rejecting the meager contents of his stomach. The Sage wine and the egg raised a little more nausea. And all that wasn't enough, apparently. It hurt his friends witnessing his bodily rejection of any substance, gasping sporadically in fits that exhausted him further. His body seemed to be draining of all fluid and was becoming alarmingly dehydrated.

He felt bad, felt dirty, soiled, helpless, useless under the pains. The bandages flew in all directions regularly, and were replaced with their layers of nourishing and healing ointments, after scrupulous examinations of the sewn lips, of the ugly hematomas which’d decided to put their luggage definitively on the irritated dermis. Almost everywhere, especially on the abdomen, there was hardly a dermal surface that didn’t rub off its disturbing nuances. Impressive ecchymosis spread across the alabaster of the pelvis. The chest’d been spared a little, but still exposed a few superficial scratches in the undulating valley between the pectorals emerging in the freshness of youth trained in combat. Trevor’d lost weight from the lack of activity, but displayed a figure that promised to be carved out of muscle power. Only, his body showed all the signs of alarming desiccation, the skin pulled on the dry and dehydrated muscle.

Faced with this sad appearance, Acthéean often found himself placing the idea of a sly similarity on the frail form of his emaciated friend, with the fluidity of lunar silver haunting his deepest dreams in a troubled intimacy. What remained were fine, etiolated ribbons of flavors impregnating his taste-buds, and leaving an aftertaste of wilted flowers on his dry palate.

Trevor dreamed of bathing without moderation, thinking back to his last ablutions in front of Acthéean. His languishing state afflicted him beyond measure, and he was almost envious to see Acthéean recover faster than him.

But it’d only been three days since the unthinkable’d happened. The bodies would take time to heal, and he’d to take his troubles patiently. Efrain helped them to fall asleep with infusions of Verbena, Lavender, Hyssop especially for sad souls. He was very careful with the opiates in the dosage. Above all, his youngsters mustn’t become addicted to these sneaky drugs. The herbalist knew of former war wounded who’d become slaves to these languorous and deceptive flowers, after unfortunately necessary dosages for healing treatment. Sage remained a taboo for the church, but given in small doses for their own fighters, they agreed to muzzle the virulent vindictiveness that could vomit up too large devout mouths. The result was the same: some chewed on these plants before going into battle, restoring a bit of courage to their hearts weakening with anguish.

So Trevor was more often plunged into sleep than Acthéean, letting himself be languidly bathed in the voice of Norton, who read to him a few passages chosen from the grimoires borrowed from Andreas. He was grateful for the presence of the novice who admitted to being endearing, and thought back bitterly to the way he’d welcomed the unfortunate man. Especially during the dramatic return of the defeated garrison. His throat constricted with regret as he remembered the threatening words he’d said to Norton. God, he’d been tough, mean, vindictive. And jealous!

So he'd taken advantage of a few serene moments of returning to consciousness to gently express his sincere regrets in mortified words of apology to Norton, who carefully tucked him in and accompanied him to the other shore of a new sleep. The young adult accepted his apology, squeezing his hand until he slipped back into unconsciousness. Norton took the habit of reading in his soft voice chapters of favorite collections, chronicles carrying to dream, rocking the attentive hearing and prone to sail on its clouds of cotton, dozing quietly, the echoes of ancient glories resonating in the auditory canal, until fading into utopian drifts influenced by the brainstem dedicated to this natural mechanism of sleep. The soul, the heart lined with recited exploits, he left in the nebulous meanders of dreams haunting the same dreamlike sequences.

Acthéean was perhaps recovering faster than his friend, the injuries weren't as serious either. He would've liked at times to be able to go also in the nebulosities of Somnus, that would've allowed him to forget. To forget. While he'd worked hard lately to recover the fragments of afflicted memory. What a paradox! While he considered his friend plunged into unconsciousness, while he often saw him jump into spasms under the onslaught of disturbing songes, he most certainly watched him tense up on the pillow or the very often changed sheets, and voluntarily exiled in his debris of fragmented dreams still in his Anamnesis.

What would he not want in those endless moments, that his silver 'savior' would appear there, and could help them heal.

Then he in turn sank into the tormented limbo of falling asleep. And dreamed in unison of his friend. His gaze misted over tiny, stunted figures in the corner of a table.

As he rode the rippling waves of numbness again, a dense crowd there prayed for those they would finally put to eternal rest. The shadow of the dungeon seemed to widen still further under the twilight hues falling in a scintillating swarm, like a request for forgiveness begged by the space afflicted with so much misfortune. And the men in their prayers acquiesced in peace.

00<<>>00

Careful palpations, and expertly directed oscillatory movements to slowly roll the head of the bone in its capsular cavity, had started the beginnings of relief, relaxing the atrophied limb from immobility. Efrain dispensed his care with extraordinary professionalism and empathy, demonstrating positive developments through simple, wise explanations whispered in his soft voice to attentive Norton. The young novice’d been offered to provide his precious help, and to remain in the protection of the apothecary, rather than returning to the gloom of his cell. The Brotherhood’d decided on a few more days of mourning, and all training and course activities were suspended until further notice. Until the spirits can draw new strength from the continuity of an existence with acid, bitter flavors.

Two days’d passed after the funeral ceremony. Two days that’d seen the two wounded wander between the troubled spaces of restless sleep, and the vigils to sustain themselves properly on recipes that Efrain scrupulously prepared in order to regain a new momentum. It was a pity that Trevor most often non-existent for this world, 'dead' for what was taking place intimately between the walls of the dispensary, because the teenager’d twice missed the visit of Chester d'Uries who was making a duty to visit his novices for whom he’d a special affection. It’d broken his heart to see those poor 'children' torn apart so badly, and he couldn’t have left the apothecary without helping to heal them. His visits’d given an extraordinary balm to the wounds and an immeasurable renewed hope.

But Trevor was always passed out when he came, and Acthéean'd had the impression of seeing the tall white man in his beard and his finery, curl up a little more when Efrain explained to him the little progress in the state of recovery at the Belmont. His gray irises darkened with desolate flashes, as he nodded silently at the apprentice contrite for his friend. The Founder'd touched the stunted stems, and the permanently withered corollas, before leaving, his shoulders still seeming to slump with a strange grief.

~~~<<<>>>~~~

Acthéean was definitely on the way to recovery. He sighed happily when his arm was freed from its obligatory shackles, and gently massaged to regain its full vigor. His complexion’d picked up some color, not as much as needed, but already much better than Trevor's, still showing all the signs of weakness resisting sanitary efforts. He nevertheless managed to swallow more easily portions that would bring him a boost of vitality, and his stomach no longer rebelled under the ingestion of food. His body was accepting the lighter opiates henceforth, giving him more sleepy periods purified of bad dreams. His biology seemed to support the different stages disinfecting and balancing his homeostasis. The fevers of the beginning’d finally subsided, and the impertinent sweats no longer sullied his dermis under the pungent and acerbic olfactory layers.

Efrain’d suggested the possibility of removing all the remaining catguts from his back. At least, those who hadn't torn themselves during the fight with the warthog. Trevor was semi-conscious, still clouded by the Poppy, thus the herbalist preferred to take advantage of it, rather than undergo another painful act of withdrawal.

Helped by Norton, they’d tipped the body on its intact flank, and laid out layers of pillows that supported the figure in balance without lying on his stomach, half on his side. Soft, warm fabrics were piled over the hip and torn breadth. The face resting sideways towards Acthéean, the latter could see the softened and slightly more acerbic features of the thin cheeks. The eyelids fluttered in half-sleep, and the forehead was bathed in the rebellious lock of hair tarnished by the grease of the absence of cleaning. The soiled strands’d been pushed aside and held in place by a loosely tied towel.

Efrain applied himself to nourishing the skin with disinfectant oils, in order to soften the lips sealed with scars. Scabs’d popped off during the fall, parts of the tissue’d leaked tiny rivulets of blood that the herbalist’d cleaned during the suture operation. The back well rid of any amalgam of dirt, the traces of blows finally took shape in a topology much more reassuring than expected. Fitted with his small, flame-disinfected tweezers, his strange magnifying binoculars’d reintegrated the bridge of his nose, thus allowing the man to work with sharp precision.

Norton stood motionless in his focused attention, admiring how the recalcitrant threads were forced to give up flesh in redemption, leaving behind their trails tiny reddened but not bleeding spikes. The skin stretched with the careful traction, falling back into place in a slender undulation redrawing the natural curves of the microscopic asperities of the dermis.

The blond novice’d never witnessed such fascinating work, and wasn’t satiated with admiring ecstasy. He was surprised at the passage of his observations, the curved anatomy of the back in delicate outgrowths of developing muscles; the shoulder blades which hemmed a pleasant undulation between their articulation; the spine raised by the corrugations of the visible vertebrae due to weight loss. The blows were sketched in the scars gradually fading into the diaphanous complexion. They overlapped in zig-zag, some extending their twisted smiles, from the top of the shoulder to the root of the pelvis, in the hollow of the lower back adjoining the firm plumpness of the buttocks.

Norton was stunned by the force summoned in the blows that’d so disfigured the Belmont's backmass. Barely weak moans escaped from the parted lips on a more regular breath, but he couldn’t tell if they were provoked by the semi-comatose state or the titillating sensation of the threads resigning from their crown of flesh.

With a satisfied sigh from Efrain, the last cicatrixed snag was removed in the most sensitive area of the lower back. The back now displayed its healing at acceptable paces in the awareness of a job well done. In addition, the beauty of the skin wouldn’t have to suffer from too marked slashes over time.

Acthéean smiled in relief at the optimistic sight. He’d risen, and was poised serenely, examining the final suture cutouts. Despite the worrying flaying resulting from the tackled fall, everything was nice, clean, and definitely well cared for. He couldn't help but marvel at an Efrain who displayed all pride and contentment.

“Brother Efrain, I've seen comrades otherwise cut, and who've kept terrible scars, even if the wounds weren't so aggravated…

“I must confess that this youngman has been giving me trouble and worry for too long a time,”sighed the herbalist, wrapping the dissected tendrils in a fine cloth that he was going to burn in the hearth.

"Let him be installed like that, it'll relieve his back, and avoid the risk of bedsores due to the extension of the lying body,"he continued to his two attentive youngsters for the slightest advice.

“We'll let him wake up naturally, and if necessary we'll install him differently. That, you see Norton, is important in the monitoring of your patients, you've to take into consideration the physiological reactions incurred by inappropriate positioning and rejected by the body.

He continued his advice-chaplet, wisely followed by Norton who missed no gesture. Seeing his fair-haired friend thus follow the attentive directives of the wise science-man, didn’t surprise Acthéean, having understood from the first moment that the novice’d voluntarily embarked on a path which seemed to suit him perfectly. He remembered his first medical experiences which’d reinforced his desire to devote himself to the art of medicine, rather than the barbarity of wars, even if he continued his training and was a warrior-reservist ready for any conflict.

Acthéean allowed himself to sit on the edge of Trevor's bed for a few moments, and pulled the blanket up a little over his superbly healed back, with his good arm, keeping the other close to his side. Checking where Norton and Efrain were, by the fireplace where the sutural remnants were flying in the greedy flames, surreptitiously, his hand caressed the relieved shoulders, and the side of the matted, dirty hair, in friendly and affectionate flattery.

"You'll soon be entitled to a good bath, and a nice combing of this wonder, my friend,"he whispered almost inaudibly.

Only a brief contraction of the pale forehead under the coiled wisps of grease answered him, as if the sleeper’d heard him, and acquiesced in his hasty assent. The long, superficially scratched fingers floated for a moment over the pretty scars, fading and melting into the alabaster in frail veins that promised to disappear in the months to come. The thumb curved in the graceful furrow dug between the shoulder-blades, and flirted for a few seconds on the ironic smile of one of the marks almost absorbed in the dermis. He tasted the suppleness of the fabrics, the non-sticky warmth of the rested flesh, savoring the beautiful marble with its fine jaspers tinged with a soft blue that no longer had anything to do with the sickly blueness that’d haloed this spine for weeks already.

He felt like leaning over and putting his lips to that languid body, whispering encouraging words into the arabesque shell of deaf ears to the world boiling with life. He wanted to bite and kiss those lips, thanking in caresses the one who'd helped him so much to extricate himself from his agnosia. It hurt to see the two dead flowers at the same time they were both biting the dust. He wanted to give free rein to the tears that formed a painful lump in his throat. He wanted so badly to finally hug this stricken silhouette again under the blows of fate. Himself barely out of a lethargic state close to death, now saw his friend struggling in turn in the torments of bitterness, on the border between deadly unconsciousness and muddy vigil.

He wanted so many things, but Efrain and Norton were present, and he’d to calm his ardor to be alone with his friend whom he would cajole, invoking in a silent plea that a flash of moon could appear by miracle , and lull Trevor into His mysterious redemption spells. As He’d done for him. There. In the chaos of an entity castle that’d just poured out its rage on the spines of helpless men.

So too bad if the two men saw his gesture, he pressed his lips firmly on the sleeper's sharp cheek, whispering a prayer to an Angel. Shedding a single tear that drowned in the river of black diamonds dull with affliction.

If Efrain or Norton overheard this affectionate outburst, they said nothing, preferring to let this precious intimacy lull the hearts in distress.

Oooo00~~00oooO

Their faces close, close enough to identify specks of bronze amid rich golden ponds of mesmerizing irises. Lakes of pure gold where shimmered waves of indescribable and encrypted emotions.

Bathed in the light of the setting sun, He and His throne appeared as a single solitary object, vast and immeasurable, like an incredibly realistic statue sculpted in the jagged rock face of a large mountainside.

As lifelike as the other statuaries he took so long to contemplate, over and over again, searching for the subtle hints of painful exertion that would awaken his numb flesh of apathy.

How these copper-hued twilights haloed his powerful and timeless frame, while He stood at his side! A simple look of complicity'd comforted him in the idea that he'd his place among these rooms of such monumental and impossible dimensions.

He would be allowed to contemplate the absolute in the great Unknown; revoke a shame reproaching him for his instincts drawn from the Primordial; accepting the fullness of adoration, kneeling at the feet of anthropomorphism and abjectness for all mortals, becoming deific in their ranges of wild sensuality.

Even if the minutes after, he would've this bitter impression of a non-existent songe, scrambling the cards of his Destiny in sly lies. Would he one day be able to recognize the Reality of a moment of his existence suspended in a perpetual swinging motion between false irony and an even more painful truth?

If his Imagination were forever prisoner of barely suggested fantasies, he would sail there with peace of mind, then, but would never forget these dancing shadows for a moment, leaving him with a marvelous taste of amber and embers, of Suave woodiness and tartness in wrongdoing.

He would then choose to squeeze to suffocate a desired body under his protective embraces, determined to reveal his moods in intimate words...

00011ooo=~~~=ooo11000

As the gaze opened its sleep-misty abyss, the magnificent fractals of water light gradually sparkled in recognition of his surroundings. He was numb all over, limbs heavy, weighed down by lack of activity. A screed of infinite sadness no longer left the pupils tarnished somewhat by the trauma.

Acthéean'd pain in front of these so extinct fractals, because he'd known them so dazzling for a few weeks. And now, again, those lights were drowned out by an absolute melancholy, just like his when he came back from there.

He couldn’t prevent his hand from running in a delicate touch on the sharp cheek of his friend who was waking up painfully. An ounce, so tenuous, of pale rose color powdered the ridges of those cheeks, making up so lightly the tip of the strong-willed jaw. A very weak natural blush which hid with difficulty an obstinate pallor spreading its veil on the whole of the face and the body.

Trevor’d been stripped of his nightgown, waiting to be washed. Efrain prepared vats of hot water for this purpose, aseptic ointments and fragrant oils. Twice a day, the herbalist worked on the meticulous toilet of the Belmont, the latter being absolutely unable to get up and even try to infiltrate in a full bath. Acthéean could again indulge in his ablutions without help, for two days, his shoulder showing optimistic evolutions in his healing. Without however lifting loads like basins of water, he could help with the preparations, look for fabrics that would bathe his friend.

Which they were doing, as Trevor awoke from one of his heavy, soothing slumbers. Norton’d returned to his classes and the training which’d gradually resumed, in the gloom of an entire fortified village hit by the painful events. But the youngman agreed to return to the apothecary, once his day was over, sometimes very late, there were many late activities, and preparations to be planned in the weeks to come for the garrisons preparing to different missions thought out by the Founders. Efrain’d made his request to Chester to keep the novice close to him. Request granted without problem.

Trevor stretched carefully, arms stretched above his head, carefully arching his weary back from the prone position. He would’ve liked to lie down, relax as only a cat could do in the listlessness premise of a deep sleep, undulating his limbs with the rare grace innate in felines, but a sharp pain reminded him to be careful, and he suppressed a grimace under the sly throb of the abdominal muscle belt, his hands flying towards the aching stomach.

“Hey, take it easy!''Acthéean whispered to him, placing a hand on his bruised hip. “You aren't in shape yet to play the lazy feline…

Trevor sighed miserably, and the blue steel fractals shone with unshed tears. He put his hand on his friend's, trying to raise his head towards the place that made him so sorely lacking. The blankets were piled up at the edge of his privacy, and the bandages’d been removed for the upcoming toilet. He grimaced at the image of his pelvis mutilated by the glaucous shades of pain, and his flesh heaving in a crimson, purplish grin from the sutures. An impressive gash that tore his belly, his flank, his prominent hip in weight loss. A whole abdominal area in the throes of permanent pain, when it wasn’t deafened by anesthetics.

He realized then, for the first time since his injury, how close he’d been to the arms of Death. He kept a worrying state of persistent weakness, while it’d been a little over ten days since the horror’d fallen on them. Ten days, and he couldn’t even get out of bed without risking tearing the seams, and becoming dizzy viciously signaling to him that his body wasn’t apt to move.

“Why do I stay so weak?''he begged. "I can't heal...it drives me crazy to always have to sleep, and to sleep...all the time...to have to get help for everything...

"Because your blood loss is substantial, Trevor,"Efrain intervened, whom Acthéean hadn't heard coming, loaded with vats of vaporous and perfumed water. He very quickly withdrew his hand, tenderly patting the injured belly, hoping that the man hadn't seen the intimate gesture. If Efrain saw him, he said nothing.

"Besides, your body rebelled under the anesthesia, you were sick, remember,"the herbalist continued, setting up the bedpans and toilet tissues next to the diaper. “You took several days before your stomach accepted any food without rejecting it.

Efrain’d caught the hand tenderly placed on Trevor, but decided to keep it in the dark confines of his memory, which’d been storing far worse secrets for a long time. He was certainly not there to be the Judge of their behavior, in a complicated situation.

He coordinated the containers neatly, while spreading the towels and tissues that would absorb the traces of the toilet. He placed the piles of fabrics differently, brought the vats closer to the couch, while always asking in his very soft voice and never raised in a tone higher than the other:

"How's your arm, Acthéean? Do you feel ready to fetch me the fabrics delivered this morning, and take care of the wild hair of our friend, here present?

Acthéean nodded positively, too happy to be able to participate in the care, while Trevor sighed what could pass for a cry of relief of joy.

The young Belmont by further care in the hair laden with grease and various treatment oils, weighed down with greasy anointings, causing itching. The herbalist'd found himself obliged to apply certain lotions which, without being intended to properly clean the tangled strands, had at least the effectiveness of repelling any parasite wanting to settle there in the hairy amalgam in disarray.

In the eradication of any harmful proliferation, whatever it may be, Efrain’d become the leader of the maneuver for the bacteriological destruction of all hair. But the result, if it was positive towards a parasitic destruction, had the inconvenience of course to provoke scratching desires towards the owner of such an abundant mass. Trevor knew full well that Efrain could’ve cut his hair drastically, in order to 'cut short', no pun intended, to the hygiene problem. Many would’ve opted for this solution without warning the victim.

Also, the announcement that we were finally going to clean his finery intact, without cutting it, relieved Trevor much more than the evolution of his healing. His psyche would’ve collapsed in an instant, if his capillary 'pride' had to be cut, as his wounds struggled to heal. Human logic’d its mysteries.

Efrain smiled kindly at his youngster who now displayed an adorable wide stretch of his perpetual pout in the thicker upper lip. Acthéean, meanwhile, felt his heart tighten with contentment at the suggestion of the herbalist to occupy himself with restoring the magnificence of the adornment. Giving someone a bath was in itself an act of intimacy going beyond the boundaries established in the trust between the healer and his patient, and thus developing the hints of tender affection that one ended up feeling for the other, with its reciprocity. Giving a toilet that touched one of the most beautiful sensual symbols that humans possessed in their hair, opened up other attractive perspectives where the people involved really sailed in universes that nothing would've the right to pervert by an inappropriate presence, interrupting the process of an eroticism releasing its delicate scents.

Cleverly, Efrain knew Acthéean adore this precious moment when he devoted himself to a ritual that’d become regular with the displayed splendor of his friend. A superb fetishism that did no harm to anyone, and to hell with the well-meaning of a church that was increasingly castrating human fundamentals. These two really needed to anchor themselves in a mistreated physicality, and find their points of reference in this world crippled with pain and mourning.

The apprentice went to rummage through the recently replenished stocks of sheets, draperies, fabrics, blankets and nappies used for sanitary activities. The Founding-Fathers’d called for donations from neighboring towns, and several carts full of food and medical and bedding items had arrived since the day before. The apothecary’d taken in full cases of it, and Efrain’d made a quick inventory with Acthéean, as the carters unpacked their load. Norton, meanwhile, had the duty to bring back some necessary books that Andreas was happy to select, dawdling in his forbidden shelves, in the hidden room behind the library.

Acthéean chooses a few long new towels and soft fabrics, preparing vials of lotions which would help in the thorough grooming of the hair. When he returned, Efrain’d had Trevor put on his stomach, starting his task from behind exposing a handsome appearance. He’d propped the body against pillows cushioning any pain caused by the difficult pose, in view of the state of the abdominal injuries. The pelvis was curled up in the feathery tenderness of an eiderdown.

The man remained attentive to the psychological well-being of his patient, and respect for his modesty. So he kept a lengthening tissue over the youngman's loins, while his expert hand washed the sensitive spot in any human, sliding the glove down the long, slightly apart legs.

Trevor let himself go, sighing so weakly under the aromatic softness of the fabrics. Although a twice-daily wash, he seriously dreamed of the time when he could freely indulge in his ablutions. He thought he would stay at least two hours in this fantasized bath! For now, he was relaxing pleasantly, like a cat purring under caresses. He almost suppressed an urge to ripple his spine under the fragrant freshness of the oils, and the creamy warmth of the washing waters. If it'd been Acthéean who gave him the bath, he would've let himself go in this chasm of pleasure.

"Failing that,"Efrain began, "it keeps the body clean. It's no substitute for a good soak, I grant you, but it has its uses. I fully understand your discomfort. I waited until you could move a little before moving things differently. You’ll be able to settle across the bed, I’ll hold your neck with towels so that you can let your hair hang in the basin, and Acthéean’ll be able to wash.

A smile tugged Trevor's lips again as he lay back delighted in the tender layers. Acthéean piled up the objects collected for the occasion, and waited patiently for the end of the toilet, a little behind, leaning on the table where the drawings and the flowers lay. He’d a look as withered as the poor Lilies on their dried and discolored corpses. His shoulder, from time to time, gave a sly throb, but he knew the healing was definitely moving on the track. He would’ve liked so much that it was so easy for his friend.

Under Efrain's calm injunction, Trevor carefully turned onto his back, so that the scientist could finish his scrupulous task. The minutes stretched out between the delicate sounds of gloves wrung out by an iron fist, the water dripping in joyful and aromatic cascades. The sweat of fever no longer raged, and the pungent and acid humors of a body in pain no longer soiled the tissues. The skin kept a cleanliness ensuring over the hours, contrary of course to the first hours of the wounds, where the water’d taken on brackish colors mixed with the filth of the fight; unsavory shards which’d squirted on the dermis and the clothes; bad sickly perspiration; natural body musks. For several days, the toilet tubs were emptied, full of water stained with the misery of the wounded.

It was a refreshing cleansing that bore fruit in the relaxation of a body gradually regaining health. The smells, the scents that clung to it now, were those of cleanliness, of musk breathing natural biological recovery and not the heaviness of suffering hormones, of an unbalanced homeostasis ; the intimate perfumes evaporated in healthy delicacy, strangely in amber and frost for Trevor. Spicy and woody, sometimes, but always in very pleasant gradations.

Acthéean could tell that his friend smelled good. Subtle musky fragrances inherent in green youth, tingling the sense of smell in their fluids emanating in a suave and pregnant sensuality. His gaze intensely fixed the unusual flower embroidered in its tenuous tendrils around the navel, and persisted in its scattered in rills nuanced with deep purple, streaming towards the depths of his groin covered by the modest sheet. Where he’d found that intimacy of his friend was barely cradled in any light down, like that of an infant. His friend was really beardless. Surprisingly gorgeous contrast with the capillary splendor of the head.

He modestly lowered his eyes when Efrain once again wrung out the glove, rinsed it, drenched it in oil with heavenly essences, to flatter this private intimate territory. Without looking, however, Acthéean felt his cheeks burn, having great difficulty preventing his gaze from skipping over the act which was taking place almost in slow motion. The herbalist took every precaution not to cause discomfort in Trevor, knowing full well that it was unbearable for any patient to undergo an intimate toilet by someone other than himself. So he wasn't long in the dance of the glove on this sacred place. This shrine was to be honored by none other than its owner, but soon the youth would take back the reins of his Self.

Efrain finished the legs which softened under the warm effluences, and deposited all the fabrics used, at the bottom of the basin where Acthéean admired them for a moment floating, swelling with water, and falling in undulating masses under the shimmering surface multicolored fat from oils.

"Good,"Efrain sighed, pushing the vat back, and bringing the other closer where smooth vapors were still escaping. “Now, Acthéean, it’s up to you! Trevor, if you don't mind, you slide across the bed, and I'll position you for the shampoo. You must feel much better, right?

Trevor was 'aux anges'. He replied with a sincere sigh, a subtle smile that never left his lips during the entire toilet. Aided by Efrain, he settled himself as instructed, his neck supported by a soft pile of towel, shedding the length of silk, tarnished for a while, suspending the wavy tips above the flowing vapors. The diaper was large enough to contain his body with bent legs. The sheets were loose and damp, but he knew they were going to be changed after the toilet was completely finished.

“When Acthéean's finished, I'll put bandages on your wounds. In the meantime, your skin breathes a little. Everything's clean and healthy. I'm glad there's no infection in either of you!

Trevor languidly stretched his long swanneck back, now waiting for the caress of his friend's hands, which would relieve him of the filth and fat of his sacred finery. He knew his friend adored his hair, and a long anticipatory shiver of happiness made him shudder from head to toe, when he saw Acthéean upside down settle behind him, readjust the tank, and start carding the dirt-heavy strands between his fingers.

His dislocated shoulder exposed an impressive bandage through the neckline of his baggy shirt. Languid exhalations of sensuality evaporated from his body, the wood mixed with the deep and tangy musk of a subdued sweetness, aggressive at the same time very erotic, tickling Trevor's sense of smell in exciting nuances. The finesse night pants couldn’t filter the lascivious emanations, as if the fabric was impregnated itself.

The same pungent, sweet scents of arousal that almost made Trevor's head spin. His friend was excited because he was going to wash his hair. He now knew his friend's strange fetish for capillary splendor. Acthéean’d never hidden this attraction which’d always made him react to his mistresses displaying beautiful finery. He obviously had a type, and well-affirmed fantasies that he assumed perfectly. An adoration that promised many pleasures to come, when they would find themselves alone. Maybe someday. A night, certainly, among the discretion and dampness of the tawny shadows.

But Efrain was there, helping to maneuver the back of his neck so it wouldn't get strained. The herbalist’d a fine sense of smell, like the apprentice. He most certainly must’ve smelled the inibriating effluvia delivered by the flesh heated by the healing vision. As well as the slight redness spreading under the fluffy dermis which’d moreover found its specific shave, abandoning the velvet of a hair of three days to soften the cheeks cut in the same alabaster as those of Trevor.

It was probably at this time that both would’ve liked to be alone. Alone in the world, sharing so many things they’d felt during those endless days of convalescence. Twins in their suffering. Conversations recumbented there, interrupted, and they hoped to recover them in the intimate warmth of a bednight. They could thus avoid a sleep that has become too invasive.

Both were struggling against the urge to kiss, in the release of their fears for each other, who would’ve asked for nothing more than to express themselves in sighs, in cries, in needy groans, everything but above all to confide their relief in front of a Death who’d resigned to mow down their shattered beings. The defense mechanism in humans who’d brushed against Death so intensely, always engaged in erotic frolics liberating their consciousness stunned by the drama. A sort of snub to the Grim Reaper who’d failed to bring down His scythe, through libations howling Life.

Trevor knew that Acthéean was thinking the same thing as him, feeling the fingers trembling a little; the too intense heat of the hands cupping his forehead and his cheeks to free them from the sticky locks; the dew gently powdered on each other's cheeks. They could argue that the water was too hot, to hide the culpable subtlety of their excitement. Would the herbalist be fooled? If the man perceived something, he remained marbled. True grave burying the indigent desires of the weak.

Both locked their emotions in relaxed and purposely flat facies. Difficult when it was necessary to manipulate the incredible lengths of a blue-night whose diamonds would soon regain their luster. Trevor lay down with relish a little more into the cupped grip of his long neck, leaning sweetly into the touch that’d become searing with shared emotions.

Efrain quietly whispered advice for a good first flush of greasy humors and antiparasitic anointings. Acthéean used a large glove to soak all the hair. Trevor closed his eyes, relaxing in the heavenly bath. His hearing appreciated the crystal clear sound of water flowing in torrential dripping, while the fabric was already catching all the oozes. The perky waterfalls spread a little to the ground all around the tank, wetting the sheets under Trevor on the way. No matter, they were going to be changed shortly.

Efrain'd to admit deep down inside that a scene of extraordinary sensuality was unfolding before his eyes, and for nothing in the world did he want to interrupt its bewitching charm. The sublime mane melted and languished in the hands of Acthéean in fascinating crawling, gorging the hot water; Trevor's throat curved in an arc of incredible grace for a man, and he could see the pulse throb tenderly in the hollow nestled between the raised collarbones.

They were two youngmen engaged in the simplest ritual of washing, and yet the scene’d a latent lasciviousness even more powerful than if it’d been with a woman indulging in her toilet. The harassment incurred on his physical integrity was no longer a question of astonishment, so the youngster carved out a seduction for himself in the purest marble that an artist would’ve chosen to immortalize his beauty, even broken to the ground by nasty injuries.

Efrain’d to admit the strange pairing in the figures thus bent in the simplest ablutions in the world. He’d rarely seen such a beautiful and moving harmony moving two young people blessed with a rare and infinite beauty; dark and mysterious; fascinating and hypnotic; contrasting and paradoxical in an incredible way. Symmetrical and angular features at the same time: in one, they developed under the intrigue of a velvety down nuanced chocolate-auburn of the most beautiful effect; in the other, the seduction was born from the absolute beardless marble where only a mane shone in the most gleaming onyx and the sensual length worthy of a woman's hair. And what if it was two youngmen like this in a pretty symphony haloed with tawny and amber; frost and peppery spices; acidulously sexy and ambiguous, the sight was too rare to raise scandalized thoughts about this osmosis.

Free perversity? Maybe. Voyeurism? Without a doubt. But a rare moment that Efrain felt he could appreciate without his morals being chipped.

Acthéean'd rinsed out the biggest of the messy filters that were caked in layers, and the water'd taken on a greasy, earthy hue. Efrain wasted no time, and went to get another tub of clean lukewarm water, despite having a hard time tearing himself away from the licentious, almost immodest sequence.

The apprentice took his time, gently stroking his fingers and the fabric in the strands, massaging the back of the skull in friction, having the advantage of relaxing Trevor even more. The latter finally discovered that he loved being touched like this. Maybe also because it was Acthéean? He melted into the tender manipulation, and sighed in contentment to feel the lightening of the strands of their miasma. He felt as if he were hovering over swarms of velvet and silk that would be the same midnight-blue-ravenwing color as his hair.

Trevor didn't miss the quiet little taps of the fingers along the tendons supporting his swan-neck, the blunt edge of the fingernails gently scratching the hollow at the base of the nape of the neck, real point of relaxation. What Acthéean was doing for the purpose of showing affection, proved to be doubly positive for Trevor.

Then the apprentice used a bar of soap molded in Saponaise, Reseda, Veytiver and an ounce of the fabulous Cedar whose body Trevor seemed to have melted into the bewitching scents of this tree he loved. He soaped his hands, and patiently knitted each strand between the fingers coated with the frothy anointing, and whose powerful aromas evaporated in intoxicating bouquets. A real paradise spread out in the thick mass which gradually regained all its brilliance. The breaths bowed more deeply on the magnificent essences bordering the lungs with an unexpected veil of appeasement. If the movements practiced by Acthéean weren’t underlined by so much underlying carnal languor, Trevor would’ve fallen asleep under the incredible benefits of the bath. His friend’d a specific touch to massage the scalp, and get rid of dirt that has become too comfortable, taking advantage of the state of dejection due to injuries.

Efrain tore himself away from the superb view of this toilet, and returned to his reserve to choose sheets and fabrics for the diaper, from among the stock which’d been brought to him.

Acthéean kept a stoic face throughout the wash, but when the herbalist left, he quickly dove to ravish a fluttering kiss on his friend's lips. Trevor was surprised, but let himself go for those few seconds when they were alone. It was very fast, nevertheless, the herbalist was lively and often silent, there was no question of him surprising them like this.

"How's your shoulder?" Trevor breathed between flicks of a butterfly's wing.

Acthéean sighed a barely audible 'better', preferring to peck his upper lip. He appreciated the very slight mandibular rolling of the knuckles under the transparent complexion. Still too translucent. His friend still hadn't recovered from his anemia, and was truly exhibiting a snow whiteness as pure as the immaculate of the Lilies.

Trevor took a quick breath, and whispered:

"Efrain shouldn't do my bandages now...

The naughty allusion made the apprentice chuckle, surprised by the audacity of his friend, who’d changed for weeks. When Efrain returned, Acthéean was continuing his care work as if nothing had happened, while Trevor was asking:

“Did Norton shave you?

Inwardly, the Belmont thought of heaps of images that would abort the pernicious impulses that were beginning to make his groin throb. He’d never before been so excited by this studious and concentrated care. He knew he was hypersensitive when it came to his hair, but now discovered his very lustful reactions when caresses ventured into his wild locks. Without a doubt, his hair was proving to be an intense erogenous zone, causing a swarm of successive shivers, stretching his body into ecstasy. He would so much have liked at this moment the firmer support in the more at all innocent cajoling. The desire to comfort himself in this immensity of happiness which made his flesh cry out with need. His whole lower abdomen quivered, undulating with exquisite goosebumps, oblivious to the sneaky thrusts which, from time to time, still nibbled at his hips and pelvis. His scratchy flank trembled steadily in his sutures, quavering his nasty tugs. All it took was a gesture, such a gentle touch on his feverish skin again, to trigger the poorly controlled ecstasy of a still virgin soul.

He would’ve liked that Acthéean dared this unctuous flattery on his groin begging an attention he never granted, suffocated by the shame of oaths making those who succumbed to such impious orgies feel guilty. Crushed with paradox between the penances resulting from these practices, and the amazement of what he’d read in the shady abstruse of a secret room, and culminating in erotic ceremonies he never supposed were possible, or unnatural couplings, or deemed so by the church.

The apprentice simply nodded, while lathering the temples and forehead with the enchanting balm, trying in every way to disregard the seraphic pheromonal waves flattering his sense of smell. The bedroom was suffused with delicate mixed sweet scents adding to the fresh smells of burnt birch wood, and all the plants that were grilling on the braziers. All the smells that could’ve signified illness, fever or infection were now gone, only the scents smelling good of regained health and relaxed bodies, calmer and soothing sleep, and dreams of ice and frost haunting still troubled minds, finished powdering their resurgent sense of healing, with a fine layer of sparkle restoring radiance to their complexions. Where the haggard and the atony were attached to the drawn features.

Trevor swiveled his manicured head a little towards Efrain, not hiding his little squeals of pleasure under the expert hands. The herbalist smiled friendly and affectionate, as he laid down his pile of bed linen, amused by the chirps escaping from a relaxed throat.

“At least you appreciate the care as it should be, and Acthéean seems…more expert in the matter!''he suggested with a glint of complicity in his twinkling eyes."I see that you like to be taken care of you and your finery, and it's certainly not I who would reproach you for it…

The length of the night tapered off in slow rinses, and big bubbles of fragrant foam slipped into the copper tub. Gradually, the hair was resplendent with care, rediscovered beauty, vigor, each hair gorged with protective anointings. The mass pulled back under the weight of the water, gave Trevor a false fragility in the face, and seemed to make it even younger if possible. The large smooth forehead displayed all its transparent diaphaneity, and the eyes were even larger, lying under finely arched eyebrows like permanent interrogations, and stretching their curved 'circumflex' almost to the temples, which underlined the water fractals in an indefinable mysterious and shadowy expression, where perhaps the immensity of a melancholy space shimmered.  Like those of a languid cat plunging its pupils into the milky depths of space where only the little feline was able to define all the mysticism of it, and it gave him this unique concentrated attention of a few precious moments suspended on a point that only the animal could discern. The cheekbones stood out in their proud height and the cheeks hollowed out in the sharpness of a billhook, enhancing a little more the voluntary jaw.

A dazzling beauty waking up from a dream that too long clogged its attractions under the thickness of a rebellious fringe, and the serpentine undulations in a veil hiding this perfect symmetry. A sculpture finally exposed in all its brilliance to the eyes of the witnesses of this awakening, like a renewal in the world. A new birth.

It was all this that took Acthéean by surprise. Already aware of what his friend was, he still discovered him in another light: the one where Trevor was coming out of an oppressive arduousness, harassing him for too long already.

Trevor was amber and ice, fire and frost, copper and ember, incandescent and immutable at the same time; unctuous and clumsy sensuality, powerful musk and the aroma of freshness, the acidity of a citrus fruit pricking your tongue with delight, the sweetness of a bittersweet lightly sprinkled with a soft sugar.  A whole intertwined in dizzying bouquets of emotions and sensations in punches that made you bend your knees in front of this magnetic aura, charismatic to the point of damning yourself for him.

…citrus fruits and snow, a pure white landscape with soft shadows and big, deep cracks, all covered in bells and glass, silver moon shards...that was how was the Other.

Acthéean jumped inside under these intrusive thoughts, opening the doors again on remnants of memory from which he was unable to disentangle the threads of a complex skein defining the oneirism of reality. His hands dutifully wrung out the last drops, then wrapped the clean mane in a fluffy towel.

As he passed, he thought of how lucky he was to have such items on hand, being reserved for high dignitaries. They could thus, within this apothecary gluttonous with treasures, indulge in the pleasures of bodily and soul care while rolling around in the preciousness of objects dedicated to this purpose. An extraordinary chance that they’d in abundance, while others were satisfied with the bare minimum imposed by the humility of body and spirit in prayer to be respected daily, and the weaning which was often sorely lacking in novices and warriors of lower grades. The gloomy brunette often had the impression of wandering in two distinct worlds, very different from each other, which sometimes gave rise to the feeling of uneasiness of not deserving this right of passage into the more comfortable upper spheres.

Acthéean helped his friend to straighten up, so that he wouldn’t force the wounds of the abdomen by a too brutal muscular traction. Besides, Trevor stifled a grimace under the nasty stretch of his hip, and brought his hand to the contusion. He wiped most of the moisture from the hair in gentle friction, while Trevor lifted the sheet a little over his nakedness too exposed without his knowledge, the fabric having slipped as the relaxation progresses.

Efrain supported him as he took the few steps that brought him closer to Acthéean's bed. A few steps, but which caused the sneaky dizziness due to a brutal hypotension caused by the standing position, while the body’d been lying for days. The young Belmont’d to lean on Efrain's shoulder, sighing heavily, the two were drowned under the soaked veil of nocturnal silk.

While the sheets flew in all directions, almost torn off to leave in the crates intended for the laundry. The apprentice took care of the unpacking carefully, not forgetting his shoulder, as the fabrics fluttered around him as he carefully unfolded them for the stall of a cool, clean bed. When the diaper was bathed properly, he spread out a few more sheets which would absorb the traces of the dressings and ointments to be redone.

As he worked efficiently, Trevor casually questioned Efrain occupied to gather the ingredients, on various nonsense. Inwardly wishing that speaking would divert the part of his brain clouded with sensual anointings, risked a reaction of certain parts of his body barely covered with a light fabric to react. The teenager gently combed his cleansed locks with his fingertips in order to untie any stubborn knots, waiting quietly on the edge of the bed, his waist wrapped in the loose sheet.

When everything was ready, Trevor cautiously returned to his couch, and sighed as his spine came into contact with the fragrant warmth of lavender and cypress cradling the woven layers. What bliss to find a pure and healthy place, from which all traces of sweat and body musks no longer soiled it. Acthéean patted pillows that settled behind his neck, while Efrain slid the top sheet to the edge of his groin, to begin the new anointings on the sewn dermis. The ecchymosis were impressive, the sutured lips swollen, red with anger, with purplish veinlets, with the usual yellowish smears, but one could guess the wound was healthy and out of danger of any infection.

It was strange to see the unusual weaving of tiny crimson nets haloing the navel slightly scratched by the impact of the vicious outgrowth of the stump. His tender groin, surmounted by the graceful inguinal folds, was shrouded in such a delicate shadow of some disparate down on the dermis as pale as the rest. The down of a cherub enveloping intimacy in its suave and discreet richness, it was almost moving.

Acthéean’d thought, the first time he’d seen this at the river where poor Belmont was calming his unjust blows, that it was the droplets of pure water which’d effaced its outline under their delicate and fragile transparency. But he found himself preferring this beardless strangeness so touching on a body in virile muscular development, rather than seeing a sloppy fleece bristling in all directions, going so far as to cover with their wild carpet the groin to the navel, as he’d often seen it in others. He himself wasn’t crumbling under hysterical hairiness, barely a shadow at the bottom of his stomach, and a light tulle in the undulation of the pectorals, and that suited him perfectly, as well as his mistresses of the time. The dermis wrapped in its perpetual three-day stubble suited him well, and that was it. Deliberately, he let loose straight strands of that same warm chestnut shade sweep over the shoulders just below their knuckle line.

Cleansing lotions resumed their ballet with the tips of soft sponges, and seaweed and other macerated plants restructured their nourishing plaster. The professional fingers smoothed the ripples sketched in aerial tracings of the muscles under the skin of the tender belly, spreading a fluid and perfumed ointment of woody-heady on the irritated and ecchymosed dermis.

Acthéean tried not to let the gaze drift on the hematomas, and especially on these small discreet undulations hemming the abdominal belt. A secret Trevor'd told him the day he shaved him came back to him: a disturbing dream that'd caused a panic attack and woke him, when he himself was disappearing…there.

"...in my dreams, flowers grow inside me, come out of my belly...I thought it was real, I was sure it was a premonitory dream..."

The bandages made their refrain around the waist, protecting the voluptuous essences and the skin in a cocoon of softness and hydrating fluid. The beautiful, slender musculature disappeared under the finely knitted linens, and Acthéean suppressed a frustrated sigh.

Efrain hummed along, greatly pleased with the positive development. Acthéean’d a leaden look on the small corpses, over there, which began to squirt in an unappetizing stench. We’d to resolve to throw them away, they wouldn’t dry healthily. A strange shiver made him curl up on himself. Efrain seeing him like this, thought he still suffered from his shoulder, and urged him to return to his bed in turn, he’d done enough.

No, I haven't done enough...I need to talk to Trevor. Lilies're dead the moment we sort of 'died'...I need to hold him tight...

But Acthéean could only keep such thoughts to himself, and obeyed without answering, the gray hazelnuts now hemmed with a coppery gradation, fogged up for a moment, tingling with fatigue or lassitude. Under the horsebit/mors of a returned melancholy, he didn’t know. Trevor must’ve understood his friend's sudden hesitation, his gaze skimming the table where the drawings and the little curled up bodies lay.

"I'm going to infuse drinks the way you like them,"Efrain interrupted, not having noticed the confusion that’d taken hold of the two youngsters; his arms laden with dirty linen, evacuating the still warm and fragrant copper vats. He refused any offer of help, and pointed the bed firmly at Acthéean without needing to repeat the order. While he went about the occupation of snack preparations, Acthéean took a moment to shake his friend's hand, bring it to his forehead, while whispering sadly:

“Lilies…they died…after being so fresh for so long…

Strangely, it was something that upset the two young people, probably because the flowers'd been reciprocally offered to each other, in extraordinary conditions, and knowing that they'd faded, died forever, finally putrescible, provoked as an incomprehensible void in each of them.

As if they were intrinsically linked to the flowers... as if the fine roots intertwined the hair of jais and chocolate auburn in a weave that originated in the eternal snows of a mountain forgotten in history...a fountain where quenched their thirst hermit spirits suffering from absence...

"They were bound to wither one day,"Trevor explained, trying to be pragmatic, and like his friend, not understanding this 'lack', a tomb dug curiously in the warm contours of their hearts, and which a gravedigger would've abandoned in the arid graveyard of their bereaved beings.

"We need to talk, you and I…when we're alone…continue a conversation that was interrupted, before…

Efrain came back with cups of infusion with the idyllic scent of hibiscus. Acthéean'd released his hand, and was simply standing on the edge of Trevor's bed. He grabbed the liturgical comb, and proceeded to pick up the mane to the side, spreading it over the pillow. The herbalist and Trevor watched him, amused by the apprentice's concentration. Efrain wordlessly held out a dry towel to soak up the last moisture clinging to the velvety silk.

A silence’d settled in, soft, beneficent, relaxing, with the capituous and heady emanations of the essences having bathed the body and the hair, the curative oiled concoctions. A beautiful mix that crackled its olfactory layers joyfully with the warm sounds of incensed wood burning in the fireplace.

To the symphony was added the velvety rustling of the comb in the damp strands, releasing even more showers perfumed with paradise. The round of the luxury object proved to be as fascinating and lascivious as the bath given to the mane which submitted between the hands in libertine undulations. Again Trevor felt his spine beading with a sybaritic goosebumps, deliciously electrifying the depths of his belly. He adored having his hair stroked like that. Since the first day when Acthéean’d offered him the comb, and told his story, something’d been unblocked in him. He who refused any attempt to approach anyone.

Efrain found himself reveling in these precious, unique moments, and wished deep down that there was no end to this magical and bewitching moment.  What a space of happiness, after such an intensive debauchery of horrors! An unthinkable dichotomy that he would never have thought to compare between the moments that’d shattered lives forever, and this moment that few could taste. He regretted in a moment of bitterness, not to have this artistic fiber which would’ve allowed him to immortalize this wonderful moment. In the alabaster of the medium perhaps; the soft wood of an age-old tree; or the end of coals blurring their shades in idyllic shapes enhancing the exceptional curves and incurvations of the muscles modeled under the fabrics; or quite simply exposed to view dazzled. No doubt, a scene that would make devotees scream crawling through the obscurantism of their oaths.

He savored his infusion in small sips, this time taking his time; not between two visits, or between two limbs to put back in place. He lapped up all the flavors that he never took the time to dissociate in peace, in order to rework a dosage or an addition that would bring more sweetness. He finally sipped in the redemptive calm allowing him to open all his senses to the stimuli overflowing in the room, a veritable tidal-wave of the sensory organs in the full enjoyment of recognition.

His youngsters did the same. Unaware perhaps of their attitude exposing a self-acceptance first of all, as well as a lucid sybaritism, the subtle emanations of which hadn’t escaped him.

While the comb was playing with the lengths it stretched then let them fall slowly to speed up drying, Acthéean’d a sudden idea and asked Efrain the question, the latter continuing to contemplate the skillful work of delicate styling. Trevor was silent with ecstasy, between the airy caresses of his hair, and the infusion that tickled the taste-buds so perfectly in complete happiness. He suddenly seemed to take on a tiny bit of color. Oh so little, barely a brush of powder flush with his cheeks. Efrain thought about preparing a snack soon, his youngsters must be hungry.

“Tell me, Efrain, how did Norton learn about these medical practices? The way he put my shoulder back in place is amazing! He knew what he was doing...

“It was better for you, don't you think!''Efrain suggested, chuckling slightly.“Otherwise, I wouldn’t give much of your shoulder, and you would have been handicapped for life. And the surgical sewing work he has done is appalling, I must admit...

He took a few sips before continuing. Acthéean alternated his attention on the spread of black velvet, and the herbalist, juggling with the comb and the cup of the beverage. Trevor’d opened a slight slit over his water fractals, caught in the nebulosity of gradual sleepiness, warming his hands on his bowl. He felt so good in his friend's nimble hands, completely absorbed in the careful strokes of his mane.

Gently slipping into the warm, fluffy diaper, he felt like he was one with the covers pulled back carelessly over his relaxed form, and really relished the moment when his mind meditated in many directions. His skin paraded a strange defile of marks, hematomas of all kinds, and in different stages of healing. The bust wasn't spared benign abrasions, but still showing off in their sly sneer in deeper pink. Trevor hadn't wanted a shirt that would cover him, preferring to stay that way in the invigorating warmth of the bedroom.

Halfway through the conversation between Acthéean and Efrain, he’d a funny thought that escaped his lips numbed by all the wonderful scents of plants, hibiscus seasoned with cinnamon. Coppery and woody musk from the lips of Acthéean. But neither could catch a single comprehensible word in the mumbling. They didn’t insist, seeing their friend's semi-asleep state. Nevertheless the water orbs merely reflected a beautiful amused fractal in the fullness of the sapphires regaining some tranquility.

Efrain took a breath and began a moving tale of Norton, a destiny also stricken with continuing misfortunes, which shocked the two youngsters as they listened intently to what they would never have suspected in a novice, after all, that they barely knew. The young adult was also stingy when it came to talking about him. Efrain'd managed to get the novice to open up in barely whispered confidences, during the nights watching over the aching bodies of their friends.

"Norton comes from a family where it was extremely difficult for them to have children the way they wanted..."the herbalist began, gazing down at an invisible spot, over there, that only he could see, in a behavioral reflex that anyone wanting to remember something painful could display.

“The mother’d repeated miscarriages, putting her life in danger each time. Even though the midwives advised the parturient to give up giving birth, the brave lady clung to the idea of one day having this chance to give birth...She succeeded, despite a difficult and dangerous pregnancy which put her to bed almost immediately after conception...The midwives’d all the trouble in the world to give birth to her, and the husband thought that his lady was going to succumb to pregnancy haemorrhage or purpurin fever…We don’t know by what miracle, but she succeeded, and the child turned out to be well on the way to surviving the hours of birth, because many succumb after a few hours. He was viable. The parents called him Ledorinian, in reference to the Knight who sacrificed himself to feed the Gorgon Sisters...

He stared at Trevor, pausing.

"The chronicles referring to Ledorinian must've been part of your diligent reading, Trevor?

The youngman nodded without saying a word.

“I read them too, and I remember the incredible sacrifice of this Knight, intervened Acthéean.‘’He was really fooled by the appearance of fragile little girls by the entities.

Efrain nodded, took another sip of his brew, slowly cooling between his hands, which were heavily scarred from the use of surgical devices.

“Norton's parents took every precaution to avoid exhausting a wife already badly scarred by all the miscarriages, so young…Ledorinian grew up, but the possibility of a second child didn’t arise…as soon as they were conceived, the fetuses were rejected by the mother's body...The parents’d somehow walled themselves in their castle, avoiding any unpleasant company that might continually blame the mother's inability to conceive…which all the “friends”and family members did, of course…Despite their status as lords with many lands, and vassals attached to their service, the couple avoided the worldliness imposed on all powerful...unable to eject the plasma, and had to fight against the purpurin fever...The delivery’d been so hard, that the pelvis itself of the parturient’d tilted, causing unbearable suffering...for a long time the castle resounded with her inhuman howls...

Efrain paused, thinking long and hard about what Norton'd told him. Acthéean and Trevor were amazed at the misfortune that'd befallen Norton's family.

"A doctor came from the depths of Europe, and managed to save the mother in extremis...but there was no longer any question of giving birth, the body of the unfortunate woman no longer supporting any maternal pressure, or other torments inherent in conception…the pelvis was at an ugly angle that it was impossible to put back in place, so the mother’d to remain lying down most of the rest of her life, handicapped…very intensive care had to be given to her, and the afflicted husband did everything to bring a little joy to his young wife thus shattered…they’d achieved the inconceivable by bringing two sons into the world, and that was all what mattered now...Norton was fragile, small and frail, and gave further concern about his viability...but the Lord’d mercy, and granted life to the infant adored by a family so broken by events...

Another break. The drink was lukewarm now. Trevor'd forgotten to sip his, Acthéean put down his empty cup. The silence was cut with a knife, and even the vaporous layers of incense and burnt wood seemed to no longer dare to spread their so tasty olfactions, a few moments before, to nestle in a nervous frost that seized the spines.

"You were too young to remember,"he continued in his dull, saddened voice.‘When Ledorinian reached his tenth birthday, apparently displaying a good constitution, the father decided to entrust him to our Brotherhood, in order to make him a Knight, which would of course allow the continuity of the Family Legacy as it’s imposed on firstborn sons...then Ledorinian continued his apprenticeship with the Warmasters…until the day when he was knighted for his nineteen years…The first-born going to the war, Norton’d taken the practice very young to help his mother in her physical affliction, the father often absent. So Norton saw all his childhood the most diverse doctors who paraded an impressive cartload of treatments of all kinds, and was obliged to help in certain practices...

“So this's how he learned first base handling, and healing?''gently interrupted Acthéean.

“Yes, he very quickly learned the first steps of first aid from a health-wise failing mother…The father gathered all possible and imaginable men of science, and it was an unthinkable chain of events where there was little more than its herbalists-doctors to cross the doors of the padlocked castle in their misfortune...The worst came, however, as if this family needed more...Ledorinian was called to his first mission, he was nineteen years old, fresh from his knighthood, and his heart perked up in expectation of this first mission...it must’ve been be a routine prescription, without any complication…We don't know what happened, what were the effects that caused such a mess…Ledorinian lost his life tragically…from the first salvo of attack, apparently no one’d prepared for the fight like this…just as we’ve just suffered the damage of a savage attack…or like your garrison, Acthéean,’’ended he lowered his already very weak voice a little more, broken by emotion…

At this reminder, the two young people lowered their heads, musing of the deceased who’d collapsed and been cut down so brutally.

«Since he was eight years old, Norton struggling with a mother who looked like a sick ghost from day to day…and Ledorinian fell on the battlefield, he hadn’t reached his twentieth year…That was ten years ago…the Commanders and Milites, the generals of this mission themselves didn’t recover from it… ironically: the fight ended very quickly, with a few minor injuries, but no other victims…except this unfortunate child: Ledorinian, torn from his family already tattered from not being able to raise a large sibling...I let you imagine the circumstances that ensued when these poor parents opened the doors of their castle to the remains of their first-born, transported by the victorious garrison, paradoxically...but victorious over what? we cannot say...The father decided to entrust Norton, practically immediately after the Mourning...and so, Norton arrived among our ranks, completely disoriented and removed from a family that’d resigned from happiness...

Distressed sighs escaped from blissful lips of astonishment in front of such disasters. Neither Trevor nor Acthéean knew what to say to such news. That was ten years ago, and nothing they could say would’ve changed anything. But within them burned a surge of compassion and empathy for the poor lad who remained, his shoulders shaking under the burden of the inheritance. An abominable Recumbent-Syndrome that plagued the young adult, and daily poisoned the confused mind of the novice sacrificed in a task for which he wasn’t born.

The knuckles of Trevor's handsome jaw rolled again, trying to suppress the burn of tears that welled up on the beach of eyelashes as black as hair, shading the sapphires in their silky case. Acthéean also had great difficulty in remaining unmoved, and his hand sketched a movement in his down which he felt moisten.

Efrain was no better, being still upset by the confidences of the blond novice, a few nights ago already, in the dampness of a room cracked by a heavy silence. Norton's words had moved him more than necessary. Why did all his 'little ones' have to had so many tragedies in their young lives? No one could claim to have a rosy future, and the permanent threats of wars afflicting the country, did nothing to relieve destinies targeted to be broken. How many had he seen die even on his examination table? How many had come the day before to treat a trivial sore, and returned torn, lying in the arms of the Grim Reaper? He never had time to get attached to all these poor sacrificed souls, and preferred to close his heart now, work as a professional, but no longer let himself be moved beyond measure. He knew, however, that too much empathy risked 'killing' the man...but...

Three youngsters, barely out of their disastrous childhood, and for whom Efrain’d an immense attachment, in the same register as that which a father would take under his protective wing this unexpected little brood. Worthy image of little fledglings in the abyssal hollow of their nest of pain, opening their beaks to the hope of some friendly attention that would feed their frail, swaying carcass.  The wild expectation that burned in them, that someone would take them out of their sealed sepulcher on their complex of Martyrs powerless to rebel, made the little flame burst within you, motivating you in turn to be able to finally shake off a life unfairly striking always the weakest.

But in their discreet affliction, each had succeeded in the feat of bringing a new day, unwavering hopefulness, in the existential grayness of the herbalist. It was this exceptional tour de force that saw them merge into a united and solid osmosis. It was quite an invaluable treasure that still gave hope about human nature. For nothing in the world would Efrain want to change anything, or regret anything, if not the anguished spaces of injuries that sometimes made him fear the inevitable.

And he, without saying a word more, had gladly accepted the phenomenon of 'transference' interacting between him and his little fledglings. Until he arrived at the end of a road where he'd to make the decision to counter-transfer the harmful interactions which risked invading their exchanges in an inescapable toxicity for the good serenity of the souls involved. This was what he'd spent his sleepless nights on for some time now.

A silence settled like a subtle veil powdered with sorrowful ashes over the spirits gone to the beyond, only the crackling of the woods remained under the joyful flames,-they, at least, waltzed merrily in this heavy atmosphere of sadness-, the tenuous sighs of the embers in the braziers and licking the last roots of fragrant plants. Trevor found himself shivering, not from the cold, he knew, but from the nostalgic cover of the story. He crawled under the blanket a little more.

Acthéean continued the ballet of the comb in the locks which were drying slowly, collecting the whole of the mane on one side, breaking the natural fold of the roots which always swayed the hair in a hairstyle on the left side. Teeth irregular in their size, fanned the parting used to being trimmed in the same movement, according to the natural implantation of the hair. Trevor couldn't fault it, all too happy to nestle in the smoothness, though unsettled now by the narrative.

Suddenly, in this leaden silence, these dancing movements in an almost exhausting slow motion, a firm knock was heard at the apothecary's gate, arousing bewildered and curious reactions in the three men. Who came to interrupt this moment that was both magical and tragic?

Efrain got up, almost reluctantly, and went to meet the visitor. Who knew.  Possibly a training injury? Both were so pensive in what he’d just exchanged, that neither of them interrupted their task: one to caress the fleece, now glowing with health, the other to melt into it deliciously, smelling the beginnings of a flirtatious sleep numbing his marvelously warm body under the covers, despite a few sly throbbing dissuasive from a total and full relaxation.

Efrain opened the doors on the tall silhouette of Chester d'Uries presenting himself with his hooded head by the wide collar of his long tunic. A piece of the Mirror encased in claws of silver, identical to those given to certain privileged few like Trevor, winked at the tawny flashes of the monumental fireplace welcoming visitors.

The high dignitary’d his arms laden with a package liberating promising scents of sweetness and gluttony to come. The holy Founder took the health of his novices to heart and visited regularly. This time Trevor was awake for the benevolent visit, Efrain thought

"Brother Efrain,"Chester's stentorian voice greeted, but softened in the imposing intimacy developed by the play. “I come to the news…

"Holy-Father, the young people are awake,'replied Efrain with renewed enthusiasm, while freeing the impressive founder’s arms.

He placed the load on the large table, and began to unpack the fabrics that covered it. As the unpacking progressed, enchanting showers escaped, marveling the fine sense of smell of the herbalist.

"This time Trevor's awake,"he continued, looking ecstatic at a nice pile of bread still warm from baking. The aromas that emerged from it were real sensual temptations stretching out their seductive nets.

“He'll be happy to see you, Father…

“How are our ‘baby birds’?''asked Chester, in an impassioned and attentive tone.“I made a passage with our bakers, I think that this collation'll divert them from their affliction.

“Hmm, especially since I just told them about the tragedy of a friend of theirs, Norton…they feel sorry for him…

Efrain piled up the marvelous crusty breads, of all beauty in their artistic swelling and their gullies of browned and golden crust. He himself felt salivating at the sight of these food treasures. Obviously, all the flours rich in vitamins had been used for the manufacture of the loaves, and certain creations displayed different cooking in their colors borrowed from the diversity of wheat, barley, rye, and other buckwheat. This brought back Efrain's memory to a certain other evening when they'd gorged themselves on these sublime victuals worthy of the tables of kings. He saw the ecstatic faces of Trevor and Acthéean again as he slowly tasted each batch, aware of the exceptional luck knocking on the doors of an often dried up hunger for good things.

"I don't know how to thank you for what you've done for us, Holy-Father,"murmured Efrain, moved.

"I don't expect thanks, you know that...All I want is to iron out already very complicated situations, and bring a little joy to our poor novices, to all the people who're waiting for us protection, wisdom, and guide in very dark times...

"You're having trouble resulting from the attack,"Efrain said, not stopping his preparation task.

Chester d'Uries'd complete confidence in the herbalist, whom he knew to be extremely diligent in the discretion and silence imposed in his profession. It was also for this reason that the man was very often called to report by the members of the founders. He was the barometer, the temperature of the garrisons and of the men who composed them. Without ruining the vow of silence in inopportune descriptions, Efrain knew how to ring the alarm bell in certain cases on which the attention of the Founding-Fathers'd to be addressed urgently.

And for a while, Trevor'd been the center of all that attention, especially Chester's. It wasn't insignificant that the holy man'd begged for Trevor, in order to interrogate the Mirror during the wandering of Acthéean.

"Nothing that can't be resolved, and put in its place...''Chester sighed laconically. “Cardinal Vicus has taken over the reins a bit, Volpe being...inactive at the moment. It's easier to plan with Vicus, because the man doesn't pretend to an oversized ego, and demonstrates intelligent diplomacy...

Efrain preferred not to suggest his own thoughts, and just nodded and hummed.

“So, tell me, evolutions in our fledglings?

Fledglings. The term used voluntarily by the Founder, proved the affection that the Elder'd for the two young people. An adorable word that Efrain was glad to hear from the wise mouth of a high dignitary with immeasurable and unprecedented exploits.

The herbalist wasn’t fooled either as Uries proved to be certainly the most reliable of the Brotherhood. In the years following his arrival in Danaşti, he’d seen unspeakable things that he’d witnessed lurking in the shadows. The Order’d indeed become a veritable nest of vipers thinking only of the profits that would bring them to the pinnacles of very troubled hierarchies. Even if it means erasing certain ‘memories’. Also, Efrain's basic principle was immutably: listen, record, and above all carefully measure his words.

‘It takes two years to learn to speak and fifty to learn to be silent…’…And the circumstances were numerous for muteness…

"If you'll follow me, and share the collation with us, you'll see for yourself...but, I’ve to tell you, Trevor remains in a distressing state of weakness. He has great difficulty recovering from his anemia, despite the regular intake of rare meat, and the fluid accompanying it...I must confess to getting him drunk with my Sage wine, but it only seems to cause unrestful drowsiness…it's only been a few days since his stomach no longer rejects the slightest bite...Acthéean has healed nicely, and his shoulder has been well consolidated...he’ll soon be able to resume more complete activities with his two arms, but, for training, I'm not in favor of a follow-up, of course...

"So it's Trevor who gives you more trouble?"Chester mumbled, humming in a guttural tone purring his concern.

“More than anything, I think he suffered serious injuries at too close intervals…and his morale's as bad as that of Acthéean when he came back…

“I would give a lot to find out what really happened there...''Chester muttered.

Acthéean’d had time to ask Trevor and Efrain for the most total discretion on the recovery of his anamnesis, not being entirely certain of his memories. Were they only due to fevered fantasies of his suffering mind, or whether was it a reality in all its overwhelming irony. Trevor now knew some more 'sensitive' aspects, which could never be brought to outraged ears by such occurrences. Efrain knew his young apprentice in the paradoxical throes of a returned memory, and of the consequences that might result if by chance consciences too narrow in the devotion devouring free will, seized knowledge in breathy words. It would be a sandstorm in the emotional desert of some uncharitable souls, when they’d preached on other scrolls.

“I think Trevor cares a great deal for his friend, and ignores his own pain...''Efrain suggested.

"That's why he almost died, to save his friends..."continued Chester.

"He took very much to heart the bereavement that struck the whole fortress, and its villagers...he was unhappy not to be able to attend the funeral ceremonies...

“Let’s go see them, and talk a bit with…

Chester stretched a protective arm around the back of Efrain, who had finished his presentation of food on a tray for this purpose, and the two men stepped through the half-rolled drapery onto the quilted atmosphere of the room.

Ooo<<>>~~>><<ooO

Two pairs of apple-of-eyes sparkled with joy when all gazes were frozed on the apparition passing through the heavy fabrics obscuring the room.

Acthéean hastily put down the comb, letting the hair flare gracefully over his friend's right shoulder, and came to bow respectfully before the Founder, murmuring a moved ‘Holy-Father'. Chester refused to let Acthéean prostrate himself thus, lifting him up, and just accepting the kiss on one of his hands. He’d always had a horror of this kind of devotion in which comforted this egomaniacal Volpe who always took advantage of it to leave his subjects bent over for as long as possible, in a sadistic satisfaction, strong from the psychological crushing of the individual.

Trevor could only sit up on his couch and hold out his hands to take the one that’d just been kissed by his friend. He was aware of his semi-nudity exposed by the sheets having slipped on his marble skin, and blushed violently at his indecency.

“Forgive me, Father, I'm in an unworthy situation...''he stuttered, lifting a little from the blankets that would hide the progressive redness spreading over the pale dermis.

Chester clicked his tongue, immediately ordering the self-critical ramblings to stop. Efrain'd moved a heavy armchair between the two couches, and Chester nonchalantly settled into it, invoking with a gesture to Acthéean to return to his bed as well.

“Do you want me to bring you a shirt, Trevor,”the herbalist whispered quietly to the teen.

The Belmont nodded briskly.

"I'm not here to make you uncomfortable, my children,"reassured Chester in his fantastic timbre of voice which, in normal times, made the men bend under the orders given with a powerful stentorian worthy of his build.

With a light hand he distributed the folds of his clothes, and carefully considered the young people in front of him. Time to quickly measure the state of health on the right track for Acthéean, but unfortunately a complexion still far too pale and an exhausted mine for Trevor. Efrain returned quickly with the light shirt he helped pull over Trevor's shivering shoulders, Chester turned away to Acthéean, leaning over it gently, asking permission to examine the injured shoulder.

"Can I?...

Agreement quickly given by a curt nod of the head, and the founder pushed aside the neckline, an edge of the bandages, observing the red and purple swellings of the dermis, the brown-black dotted lines of the sutures stitching the lips of the excavation. Very gently, he moved the joint in rotation, judging the rehabilitation of the bruised limb.

Efrain was grateful for the Elder's intelligence, thus avoiding the further embarrassment of having to hastily dress Trevor, hiding his harshly exposed anatomy. And his expertise too, he noted in passing, the man knew how to judge the evolution of a healing in its reality, and not just as an idle gesture diverting attention.

Chester mentally appreciated the good surgical work, and blinked his reassuring gray eyes. When he turned back to Trevor, the youngster was crumpled under a black shirt that’d faded from many washes, the first item of clothing Efrain cursed himself for having grabbed in his haste. Observation of error in this choice: we always used white in the sanitary, because it was easier to boil, and especially less likely to bring out sickly complexions like Trevor's. Indeed, in the night-colored shirt, even when washed out, Trevor presented a bewildering complexion raising concerns about his insistent weakness, even after being bathed and groomed barely an hour ago. But God, how pale the child was, almost on the verge of death!

Acthéean himself was amazed at such a distressing contrast. He'd clearly seen the drawn features in the permanent fatigue and the whiteness caused by a bad blood refusing the help of nourishing contributions.

“You're very weak, child,”Chester whispered, moved by the frail figure of the teenager.'Do you take everything that is given to you?

“I'm sorry, Father...''poor Belmont stammered. I can't find my strength...I feel like I'm struggling in swamps that are suffocating me...

“Are you still having trouble sleeping?''asked the Founder.

"I do…Father…"he hesitated, looking down. ‘’I would like to talk to you, please? Can I have this claim?

The men knew the teenager'd an urgent need to talk, and it was time to allow a moment of peace between Trevor and the Founder. Without consulting each other, Efrain nodded at Acthéean, and came to help his apprentice to get up and leave the room. Trevor called them in a broken voice:

"I didn't want to chase you away...Acthéean's tired too...

"I'll lay him down in the back bedroom,"Efrain replied softly.''Take your time, all the time you need. You'll come get me when you're done.

"Besides, when we're done talking, there's a wonderful collation waiting for us...''Chester pointed out with a smile.

Then he looked back at the prone form, drowned in the layers of blankets and sheets, swimming in the dark fabric of the sleepwear. To say that this adolescent whom he’d always known, fiery, wild, with the temperament of an inner fire which consumed him; brandishing the sword and the Combat Cross; striking down a Warthog; saving a troop from death; all this incredible sequence of living particles that made a human being, an amalgam of intense emotions, of hypersensitivity on flower-a-skin, now lay almost as amorphous as on the first day, in the hollow of a bed bathed in sweetness.

A painful image, coming from another time, from another world, imposed itself on him: fragile piece of woman exhausted from her diapers, bedridden in the bloodstained whiteness of the nightgown, a baby babbling in the heart of a cradle, falling asleep on a world he wouldn't understand.

Fifteen years later, the infant’d grown up, but lay like the mother he’d never known: a pale ghost, exhausted and anemic, floating in a shroud cut from the fabric of the melancholy lifelessness of a abandonic spirit.

Chester took Trevor's hands in his, squeezed them, staring into the transparent sapphires. The beautiful mass of clean, dry hair spread in airy curls all around the face. The founder parted the stubborn bangs again crowning the forehead and the eyes heavy with a kind of fever that seemed to haunt the fractals.

Same hair, same eyes...

“Now, child, tell me what pains you so much?''Chester offered, instinctively lowering his voice, inviting the intimacy of secret dialogue.

“Father, would it be pride on my part if I express to you my desire to confess to you?

“No…''Chester cut in, quickly weighing the distress of such a request, as if the teenager feared dying without being relieved by the confession. ''It's not pride, it flatters me that you want to trust me like this.

"I want it, Father...I express the desire...I would be happy to confide in you alone...the others...

Chester hummed, knowing full well the derogatory incidents that were turning the youth's life upside down. He knew all too well human nature, its weaknesses. His baseness, when it came to obtaining the ban at all costs, and against the morality abused by offenders.

"So, I'm going to recite the blessing, listen to your confession…then I'll tell you something…Everything we're going to exchange, won't get out of here. I agree to be your confessor on an exceptional basis, because you’ve shown exemplary courage which has saved lives, are you at least aware of it? You’ve, I believe, another confessor that Efrain assigned to you during the last Vespers, and you’ll refer to him regularly. But I grant you that once a month, after the Vespers which I’ll lead, to receive you in private, and to bless you in the prayer of our Lord. Does that suit you, young Belmont?

The gaze of water lit up, and it was with a big smile that Trevor agreed to the proposal, only too happy that the holy man agreed to support him as a confiteor. He poured out thanks, his voice cracking with emotion.

Under Chester's urging, Trevor agreed to relax, and talk quietly, confidently. His condition didn't permit the usual contrite position, and Chester made the first blessed applications on the forehead, lips, and chest of the repentant, while chanting in Latin the litanies for souls in hope of communion, relieving them of the weight of their sins.

And more than anything a regular Confessing-Priest could do, Chester d'Uries embraced his Medallion of Light in one hand, as he slipped the piece of Mirror belonging to Trevor into the confessed man's right hand. The Belmont tensed on the pendant the entire duration of his confiteor. He found the right words for his mea-culpa, swinging between the regrets expressed in penance, and the confessions he so hoped to be able to unpack without suffering the wrath of his presumptuousness.

Chester listened attentively, never judging the child in such afflictions that dragged his essence into the astonishment of the grave, landed a fragile conscience in acerbic and uncompromising self-criticism of his being. The Founder was hardly surprised to see a being, after all, completely lost in rules of propriety whose excesses he no longer understood. Relevant questioning about events that’d upset him beyond measure.

The Belmont no longer knew which saint to devote himself to, faced with the behavioral debacle of his peers. Discreetly sobbing, he confessed to the gesture that’d made him sick towards his physical integrity, on the part of the representatives of the Brotherhood having acted with impunity in front of witnesses, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be worried. A confession that outlined certain scenes that made people shudder, and put a little more abut the excessive savagery of the Belmont. Drifts which, placed end to end, threaded the beads of a rosary with an acid and sulfuric taste. The perversity of the tutor under too much punishment, was only the tip of an iceberg deeply rooted in the glaucous of brackish waters.

The delicate pink of shame powdered his cheeks a little more when he raised the issue of lying in front of the Mirror. Yes, he’d seen something, but was afraid of what he’d discerned.

"It's not really a lie, young Trevor, at least I think so,"reassured Chester, first intervention during the painful confession.“I suspected that the Mirror'd entrusted you with something, but I knew that there were also inopportune ears who shouldn't hear the secret, so I didn't insist…

Trevor spoke freely of his friend Acthéean, for whom he’d agonized while he drifted into the Unknown. But all behind his spirit freeing itself from the chains binding his psyche relieving itself, a small voice insisted that no one should take notice of the Recovered Memory of Acthéean.

It wasn’t up to him to reveal the secret, but indeed to his friend, the only decision-maker of his own arbiter to confess these things that touched him so deeply. If he’d to confide his recovery and his doubts on this subject, that was only up to Acthéean. He instinctively knew that the silence of the grave would seal his lips on these very introspective and private worlds. He’d promised on his life, and knew that his friend would’ve many secrets to tell him later. No wanting to break his word, he was silent on the mnemonic convalescence.

Chester listened to everything, every detail, every inflection given in sincere regret, and knew that the youngster spoke with the true and undeviated words, even when he expressed his hesitation on feelings that made him tremble.

As he spoke, the leaden screed that’d buried him for many long months was finally unloading its shovelfuls of venom into a tumbrel on which he hoped to place a permanent lid. He would probably seal with the tears born of anointing, of repentance, of the noblest feelings that made his heart beat; with the coulis of candelabra that would burn to the holy memory of a sacrificed mother. Tears of wax that, he sincerely hoped, would weld this sepulcher to the firmament of a happier future.

The confession stretched out in the hour that passed, each word carefully chopped; hiccupped or chirped on an increase of emotion; flowing its sweetness or its lament; accentuated by the crackling of the fire in the hearth, the braziers didn’t inspired more than sighs. But the sense of smell of the two interlocutors was permanently flattered by the various layers which evaporated slowly, until nothing was released.

Taking advantage of a second of Trevor's contemplation on what he'd just confessed, Chester ended the service knowing full well that he would get nothing more from the youngster. Penance was lightened and really for the form, not really adapted to the words so innocent and sincere, that it was impossible to punish the contrite more severely.

So he proceeded with the blessing, still brandishing his medallion, which oddly throbbed for a brief wink, until the two felt like they’d dreamed that subtle flash aimed at Trevor. A heartbeat was all it took. The next second, the bronze-silver pendant answered the wink of the Light. Chester’d never seen such a reaction from his locket, and looked for a moment at Trevor, who was staring worriedly at his Mirror.

"Is that a bad sign, Father?"asked Trevor.''Would God show his displeasure with me like this?

“No, child,”Chester whispered, kissing the obsidian silk shaded brow.‘If He was offended by anything you did, He would’ve shown his anger long ago.

“But what if my wounds were the result of God testing me and giving me His punishment…

“Now, do you think our Lord’s cruel or so hard on his poor weak creatures? He has seen your act of bravery, and I can tell you that He’ll reward you…In the meantime, you’ll do your penance as I ordered you…and above all rest assured that nothing in this room will transpire elsewhere. Not even your beautiful drawings. You’ve an exceptional gift...

“Father…the flowers, the lilies, are dead…there is nothing left…

"Hmmm,"Chester hummed, looking away from the withered flowers in their brackish juice.“I see you're devastated by their loss. Why?

The founder’d approached the remains that Acthéean’d wrapped in a cloth, intended to be burned, but first he wanted his friend to see them that way. The holy-man knew that a unique and incredible bond bound the two young people to these flowers, for a reason that he understood, or hoped to understand correctly. It remained an uncertainty in a mystery deepened in the crucible of Chance. What a coincidence!

"I don't know, Father, but probably it has a very special importance, because Acthéean and I picked these flowers almost at the same time, in two opposite situations, and in distant places...What caused these beauties to be found out of season? I picked mine with the idea of giving it to my friend, and he did the same...and he was brought back...

Trevor's already weakened voice cracked. He now displayed a consequent exhaustion in his features which collapsed into a returned melancholy. Trevor felt on the edge of the abyss, ready to plunge into the unfathomable. Dizziness swirled around his body, and he arched himself slightly against the pillows, his hands clutching the covers. Paradoxically, the infinite relief of the confession had yet an aftertaste of bitterness, leaving his throat constricting again under the anguished swell of unknown gaping its absolute void under his hesitant feet.

Chester came back to him quickly, and examined him carefully. How pale he’s, it looks like he’s going to pass away!

“Child, are you all right? What's wrong?

“I'm tired,”Trevor muttered weakly,“I feel a sudden need for sleep. It makes me feel strange inside me...like an immeasurable void, something that tries to pull me down to agonizing depths...

Chester took his hands, waited a bit for Trevor to resume a more regular breathing, before continuing in this soft tone lending itself to the intimacy of confidence:

“Above all, we’re going to sustenance properly, you need it for your recovery...I brought some victuals that Efrain prepares...You’re tired of your confession, and emotionally you’re lost...You’ve to come to your senses, and don't give in to your body, which’s asking for rest, of course, but you apparently still need a moment before regaining your strength...

"I've never felt so weak,"Trevor muttered.‘’Earlier, I felt so good during my toilet, and when Acthéean washed my hair...

"Precisely, you've to keep in mind this moment of happiness that you savored, disregarding any negative thought that would make you see this moment as a sin of lust...that's what scares you in a way …

Trevor blinked, at the wise Founder. Even though the holy-man knew nothing about the biology that governed bodies, he understood through these words that the teenager’d had an emotional and hormonal endorphin overload that’d sent him to seventh heaven of bliss. And now the endorphin was gradually evaporating, giving way to a complete etiolation of all his functions, exhausting the body almost to the breaking point of fainting. A backlash of a state of absolute anxiety, aggravating the panic attack resulting from the relief of consciousness. The total behavioral paradox in any individual in remission.

"Before I go get Efrain and Acthéean, I want to tell you something disturbing about you...

Trevor widens his eyes like a saucer, in a form of fear anticipating a new disaster. The man hadn't let go of his hands, and he was floating in a cottony, almost comatose mist. He heard the words sound like a muffled echo as he tried to gauge their strange meaning.

“We knew your mother...she was a marvelous woman of kindness and love for her husband...she knew how to manage and lessen things with exceptional diplomacy...she would've made a good adviser to a regency…

“You knew my Mother...''repeated Trevor, dazzled, his voice barely a trickle inaudible.

"You've everything about her: your hair as black and beautiful as hers, which she kept in hairstyles of silver nets...your eyes as transparent blue as hers, with this curious light on the wonders of the world...her undeniable beauty...you really took everything from her...do you know that's partly why, in her memory, we decided to let your hair grow? Besides, you screamed when a scissor approached your mop of wig…

These last words'd the tour de force to make Trevor smile, fascinated by the little that Chester told him about his Mother.

“I was the one who took you when…

He didn't have the strength to say the fateful words, but Trevor swallowed hard in understanding.

"When we took care of you, entrusted to the nannies of the Brotherhood, I was present when you were undressed and given your bath...

Another interruption, and Trevor clung desperately to the words that were about to fall, and reveal something unusual, he was sure of it by listening to Chester's tone.

“In your swaddling clothes, curled up against your little belly, was nestled a magnificent Snow Lily, the largest I've seen...The corolla and the petals enveloped your skin in a unique perfume, and the stem seemed to wrap around your tiny size, you were a little infant...Your mother adored the Snow-Lilies, I remember that when she gave birth to you, there was an armful of them on her bedside table, and the room was suffused with these heavy sweetnesses...One could almost believe that you were born with this flower in your hands…

Trevor gaped in awe and amazement at the story. So the Lys'd been following him since he was born?

"What would that mean, Holy-Father?"he stammered.''What message from God in this flower? And why was my Mother murdered, then, if she was blessed by Him?

“The mysteries of our Lord are inaccessible to us poor mortals, you know…His ways are inscrutable to our stammering conscience before our Creator…

"Is that what I've always been drawn to these flowers for, do you think? I never understood the meaning of it, and I didn't dare to speak about it, the others would've laughed at me...

"Men too have the right to love flowers, to appreciate the wonders of our Lord,"Chester protested gently, a little mocking at the modesty of the Belmont's feelings, thinking of harming his virility because he simply loved some flowers.“Perhaps you've kept in your memory the presence of this flower which rocked you in your nappies…

"But, I was a baby, I can't remember...

"I'm sure Efrain would've an explanation for this...he would tell you that sometimes, even as infants, things, events've marked our stammering memory, and that we cling to them without our knowledge, and that one day it'll reappears...

“You, you've read the Greek philosophers...''Trevor chuckled.''More than reason, like Efrain…

Chester gave a soft laugh, and patted the cheek marked with fatigue and a dew from the onset of sleep which persisted to weigh down the being more and more, to draw him into drowsiness.

“I'm grateful to you for telling me this little bit of my Mother...it's precious to me...I cannot thank you enough…

"I'm going to get Efrain and Acthéean, and we're going to enjoy ourselves,"Chester cut in softly...’’It also relieved me to tell you this anecdote, it may help to bring additional peace to a ghost that languishes in my memory...

Chester'd that distant gaze, like that of those who remember an almost erased nostalgia.

"Then sleep,"he continued with a start,"you all need it badly...

Suddenly, another idea sprang from Trevor's foggy mind.

“Holy Father, one more favor, please? It's not for me, but for Norton... He too had misfortunes...

Chester nodded silently.

"He showed himself to be so excellent when he came to treating us...obviously, war is not made for him...Acthéean told me how he acted at Wygol, his worries, his uncertainties...Would you have enough support to tell his family, his father?

“Are you worried about Norton and his future?

“He also has the right to live happily, and Efrain told us his sad story...He lives in the ghost of his slain brother...Isn’t it possible to interfere in his situation?

“This request honors you a little more, young Belmont,”the amazed patriarch said slowly.‘’But, I’ll consider your request…In all discretion...I’ll let you know of my decision, and what’ll come of it...Thank you for this child for having such sympathetic thoughts, Trevor. God’ll know how to give it to you...

The Founder's tall stature unfolded, towering impressively over the teenager curled up in his blankets. He took three steps, and before crossing the dividing curtain which’d been drawn for the intimacy of the confidence, he’d a glance towards the table with the drawings, with the flowers vanished forever. He turned around, taking a sudden breath. He didn’t fully grasp the meaning, but he knew he’d to pronounce this strange sentence.

"Remember, Trevor, even from ruined ether, will always sustain itself the Lily...

The enigmatic sermon floated for a moment in the resonance of the room, like an extravagant premonition with baroque and unusual flavors. A riddle of the Sphinx spoken in the strangeness of the moment. It was disconcerting, but the two men couldn't explain the exceptional comprehension of the words, which they'd tacitly.

0oooo<<<>>>~~~<<<>>>oooo0O

Chapter Text

I’d a long dream, during a sleep that lasted an eternity.

I dreamed of a small fish that was dying on the edge of a beach on which it’d torn. Entangled in the deceptive streams of perverse lies, the small fry gasped its last remnants of life, its jagged fins on the rocky foothills that’d trapped it.

As the poor animal muttered its last breath, someone came to pick it up. He picked it up and breathed a fresh breeze into its gills.

And the little fry left all perky in the wriggling waves of rediscovered joy and nourishing waves.

I’d a dream: the one where I picked up the debris of my memories scattered there, among the onyx pebbles of this beach.

I patiently assembled the pieces in a puzzle whose enigma wasn’t to be divulged, except to the Chosen-One, the only witness of my wanderings in the eternal labyrinths of Agnosia...

I fell asleep in the carpet of the sky cut out to make my shroud of stars.

I dreamed that I was dreaming, following the cracked cobblestones of an ancient tomb that would hold my secrets and my fears.

For eternity….

There, Anamnesis wept in the arms of Mnemosyne. Agnosia tenderly cradled Psyche while both were lost in the whispered Limbo of Madness...

~~~~000<<>>000~~~~

DANAŞTI.

Thus the village was confined quietly in the persistent and lazy vapors of this barely hatched morning. The sun still hesitated to cast warmer rays, perhaps for fear of interrupting the perpetual waltz of ashes remaining in the half-dark atmosphere between the lingering shadows and the cowardly sleep that was fleeing its inhabitants. For the majority.

Bands of mist stretched along the alleys which no longer hummed with the joyful echoes of a carefree life,-or almost-, barking, various cries of children refusing to leave their beds, cries alarming for the the customer tried to buy a few pieces of freshly hunted food.

No. Danaşti resounded only with its imposed silence, because the hearts of its inhabitants were always heavy and bereaved, and this would continue for quite a while. People didn't have the courage to wander through the markets that were normally set up around the stream, which strolled nonchalantly under the arches of the bridges, skirting the mighty foundations of the village.

The mood was in tenebrosity. Even the waters of the river had taken on a dark hue, still infected with the invader who’d poisoned its tranquil waves. Despite the multitude of magic seals and holy barriers to exorcise the remaining demonic miasma, by the summoning Priests, one could guess that devious "something" lingering in the depths of the lapping waves. At any moment, we expected this "thing", this abomination, to reappear, and grab the first unconscious who would push his curiosity to the edge of the undulating banks.

The imposing fortress of the Brotherhood cast its shadow over the whole village, like a trickle of deaf terror with the bilious hints of a decline hard to accept for the Founding members. It seemed as if the edifice’d swelled and elongated a little higher above the encumbered surface of the floors, like a tempestuous optical illusion that would threaten anyone doubting the faith in the correctness of the actions.

It’d now been far too long days that’d stretched into the infinity of their unfolding of pain, tears and contritions, and each inhabitant of Danaşti saw a little more the desolate specter of their optimism fading in the obscuro with their sullen thoughts. They’d lost big in the sneak attack that shattered and crippled their village. A strike of a violence like they’d never seen before. Their Faith seemed to buttress and gradually crumble in diapason supporting stones that granulate into small pieces, never to consolidate the bases again.

Because similar to the morale at-half-mast of the people, strangely, the foundations of the Fortress of the Brotherhood did indeed seem to be disintegrating, and the fine particles leaving the ramparts, seemed to drown in the unusual powder fluttering in the air. Thus, since the brutal assault, the ether above the village was laden with a layer halfway between the translucency of its ashen molecules, and the darkness of toxic dust, putrid remnants of the orgiastic minions having been annihilated by the holy oils and the silver of the spans and hooked-chains of the Combat-Crosses.

It was also a slow-motion vision representing the muffled and pernicious degradation disintegrating the massive abutments and flying buttresses of the stronghold, and whose particles chipped to evaporate the burnt outlines which rose towards the obfuscated skies. Fuzzy swarms and swirls, almost indistinguishable to the eye, seeming to be drawn in by the powerful inspirations of those who lay there in the unhealthy comfort of the cloudy broods. We could almost have discerned like mini tornadoes evacuating, up there, in the indescribable architectures of the chaotic masses, melted in the atmosphere to disappear forever among the dead stars.

There was something waiting. There, in the bases and armrests of the fortress; the guard-paths of the ramparts; the battlements torn apart by time displaying their gaps born of the permanent wars with Tenebra.

There was something biding its time there, curled up in the hearts of men; in the shaky loss of faith; through the mounds and dumps of the darkest alleys and not yet cleared of the assault.

There was that something waiting, there, in Danaşti's confused nimbus, like a tiara of decay seeking to infect every living particle within its devious stench. An Entity that perverted, ruined the devastated ether overlooking the buildings that witnessed this absolute disgrace in the eyes of the Divine.

All these thoughts of decadence, humiliation, debasement, poisoned Chester d'Uries' mind, as his gray orbs considered the permanent swarms suspended for days now. Far from simply thinking that all this was due to fires coming on the wings of angry winds, and spreading their ashes and dust from neighboring villages caught in the throes of the flames. As they’d all foolishly thought, staring at the pellicles of wilting and cinder slag dotting the atmosphere.

While his gaze swept away the slightest persevering clue in its angry threat, his hearing picked up quietly, and in mournful silence, the divergent arguments of his colleagues and fellow representatives from other towns and cities, in order to attend the great meeting of the solidarity and fraternal forces. Secret conciliation ordered urgently, agreed upon during the general funeral that Danaşti’d organized for his deceased and fallen under the assault.

He resolved to detach himself from the distressing sight of his broken and bereaved village, to face the one who’d just spoken.

“…yes, I think that before sending convoys to reunite the survivors, it’s imperative that we measure the extent of the disaster, by sending garrisons in the vanguard who'll draw up an inventory, the possibilities to consider for the extraction of suffering peoples. We also need to take note of the wishes of those concerned...

“…I agree,''intervened another representative,-that of Targoviste, in this case-,''look at Wygol, this cursed village at the very foot of the castle...and the inhabitants refuse to leave the place, possessing only their meager hovels in which they take refuge...nothing's done to make them leave this place abandoned by God...

Targoviste. Poieşti. Gresit. Braila. Powerful cities that fought, like Danaşti, against the demonic forces of the Dragon, for decades, long before the advent of the Prince of Darkness. At a time that’d seen a terrifying family of Necromancers, the Bernhards, who already owned this edifice of Hell that was the Castle of Chaos. It was said that these Necromancers’d summoned an all-powerful devastating Daemon, and locked it in the very foundations of the castle, making it an indestructible and unmanageable Entity on a human scale. An Aleph coming from the Cosmos itself, drawing its vigor and its infernal physicality from the essence of the dead stars. A pure Abstraction born of the Quantum, independent and dependent at the same time, having only one Master: the One to whom now belonged the Underworld, the Darkness, and having resuscitated the immaculate Soul of the Dragons dead for eons, by nothing other than through His own Reincarnation.

More than anything in the world, united in a Crown of holy defenses and beliefs, the four largest powerful cities of the surroundings, had signed at the bottom of the Scroll of an Endless War, girding their seals of allegiance next to that of Danaşti. And the five cities’d also dipped their fingerprints in Scrolls that tasted more sulphurous than they’d all predicted.

My Medallion of Light reacted to the child. Strange thought that came to him, while he was considering the exchanges of his companions between them, the tone becoming somewhat stormy, because some weren't very 'hot' to repatriate disparate elements who would come to swell their already loaded numbers of populaces unnerved by events, and unmanageable at certain levels of discontent.

He’s indeed the Chosen One. The one who alone is able to stop the Dragon, as the Prophecy said. But at what cost will this be effective? Chester felt a stifling blanket of hesitation and motivation battered under the mounting threat. A dull anguish that he couldn’t explain, and which grew exponentially as the child slowly tipped into adulthood. And time would pass quickly before he did.

The day’ll come when the truth must be revealed to him. God, save us from that day, Chester sighed inwardly. He could only make the bitter observation that he’d become attached to the teenager, and that this involved problems of objectivity and ethics.

"Even from ruined ether, the Lily’ll always sustain itself..." What’d passed through his head to pronounce such a sentence to a child afflicted by the loss of...flowers? What a strange bond attached the two adolescents to their blooms, out of season moreover.

As in a relevant breath of Time mocking the mortality of men, Chester saw again the toddler wrapped in his layettes, in which rested the immaculate wonder against a skin already diaphanous in its marble complexion, suggesting besides a weakness and a fragility in the infant. False. For clearly, Trevor'd defied the Organic Laws that deal with all living things, dealing with disease, injury, with affront and relevance worthy of…the Other.

However, at this moment, if one was recovering perfectly from his wounds, the other languished in a very real weakness, anemic as if infected by a sneaky poison that the Warthog would’ve inoculated into his biological system. As if a feathered curse’d been thrown on the silhouette thus freezing the unfortunate to the ground of the disease, the feared infection, the apathy which’d seized him.

Brother Efrain was probably right: even if the wounds were different in their trauma, the fact remained that they’d thrown young Belmont to the ground in desolation so easily, because they’d succeeded each other in a lapse of time displaying a window of sequence that was too narrow. It’d been a heap of disasters hitting them on a ladder with rungs far too small to fit properly. Traumas and scrapes of the Soul; hemorrhagic excoriations; concussions and wounds; ulcerations perverted in mourning and despair. Plagues having spread in the human parameters, until destroying the weakened bases of their Faith, scraping the mortar of the ramparts of their conviction until modeling a colossus with the feet of clay.

“…we've to consider the possibilities of everything in everyone,''intervened the representative of Gresit, apparently expressing his disapproval of receiving other convoys of souls in pain within their city having also suffered enormously from the parallel attacks of the Dragon.

"We won't be able to accept even a reasonable number of returnees...we haven't even managed to repair our damage from the latest assaults...you know, for weeks now, it's been recurring...

“…among those closest to Veros-Wood and Wygol, some've heard the Horn of Bromios ringing for hours,”admitted one of Poieşti’s representative ministers, his voice muffled and as if scratched by gravel, giving it an unusual tone. rising from the Patriarch's throat.

"Now they say they can't hear it anymore...

Trevor heard the Horn! He'd reported it to his friends, but none of them heard a breath on that magical night. How ironic! Such a beautiful night, ending in the horror of the morning.

Chester stared for a moment at Cardinal Volpe, who was slowly recovering from the failed attack, but again displaying an arrogance that seemed to be dripping from him like natural murky moods. Cardinal Vicus'd taken over, much more diplomatic in the arguments between the various advisers who made the trip for this extraordinary meeting.

Vicus hadn’t hidden his worries in front of the gigantic Apotropaic Artifact, whose upper left side now exposed a cobweb of torn filigrees, as if a huge impact’d fractured the flat lake of the tain at full force. Chester’d admitted to himself that he’d expected the brass surface to shatter.

Yet the Mirror was still erect in its wound, imperturbable as ever, stingy with any sign that would alert them to concerns. It hadn't even reported the attack to them. Though, maybe It did, but the Elders weren't there for the warning? All they’d found on their return had been a field of desolation in the rotting of all the foul armfuls that lay in their deadly pus. That was the warning! Was it only Chester to worry about and wander into a sleep that’d made up his mind to run away from him for the rest of that night?

The Mirror’d shown something, but it was to a kid just out of childhood. A ‘minouchet’ who’d preferred to be silent. By fear ? By apprehension? He’d been succinct on the subject in his confession, and the Founder’d preferred not to interfere in this delicate bubble of secret intimacy which risked bursting at the slightest misstep.

Chester’d a hard time concentrating on the words exchanged between the various ministers sent by their fellow neighbors and diplomats. The Cardinalice was only represented by Vicus and Volpe, the only referents in the Brotherhood of Light. The others who worked in the friendly cities, didn’t have the status as privileged as those of the Brotherhood, and were content to assemble the directives according to the imperative orders of Danaşti. It was chaotic enough within the Brotherhood themself, without having the hysterical divergences to endure from other sworn in who would’ve a say in certain 'signatures' on the Deviant Scrolls for drastic solutions. Not everyone appreciated the omnipotence of an all-powerful Artifact directing holy affairs.

Also, scattered between his intrusive and harassing thoughts, and the stormy swell which now flooded the reluctance displayed before requested help, not really considered in absolute terms, Chester decided that it was necessary to intervene cautiously.

Gresit refuted any idea of ​​new intrusions within their foundations, their own people being barely manageable in the protective and nurturing maintenance, foreigners coming to settle in addition risked weighing the scales heavily against the managers of the city. Poieşti also expressed cautious reservations. Targoviste wanted to rush into the heap. Braila’d just experienced a reversal of accession to the throne by greedy lords who’d bled the city dry for generations. Their population’d also been too weakened by a heavy and gangrenous enslavement, and was also recovering very badly from the successive attacks of the minions.

In short, everything was going very badly, in the worst of all worlds! And everyone was suddenly thinking of pulling out a few bits of the crumbling blanket of political putrescence, to cover their own gaping and infected wounds. As always, it was the people who suffered to pick up the pieces. So welcoming armfuls of uprooted and adrift human beings didn’t at all cheer up the stakeholders in the Quintemvirate who saw their position in uncertain balance in the face of the heaviness of the task proposed by the Brotherhood.

Chester's stentorian voice worked wonders in calming heated tempers. By dint of persuasion, and well-thought-out advice, it seemed that the Quintemvirate was finally finding long-term solutions, allowing the implementation of country-wide resolutions.

It became necessary and urgent for the Brotherhood to rise again from affront and Mourning, for the shadowy horizons of anger rumbled and drew their frail borders between panic and terror. It was time to take up the capricious halters of a Destiny which was decidedly showing itself to be very chagrin in its ringworm tenacity.

Above all, they needed to go to another place that only the Chosen could reach, as once a Chosen had. They'd to return to their Cradle desacralized by the cursed essence of their doubts, and which would welcome their sleeping Souls. Such was the Peace within, which Chester and all the others yearned for. Maybe in vain? Who knew…Fate'd a curious sense of humor.

And more than anything, forget those horizons that have become darker than a shroud of extinguished stars...

~~~<<>>ooo>><<~~~

He gasped and shivered bodily as he ran his fingers over the damaged flesh. The one on his left shoulder, a wrinkled spot about two inches in diameter, pink in the center, a small hollow where the subcutaneous tissue still needed filling. Where the murderous defense’d sunk cruelly, and fractured with its sharp blade all the cutaneous part in depth. Then in extension that vile 'smile' of the excavation that stretched into a jagged hypertrophic ring, where the poison’d eaten away the skin until it was necrotic. Because no doubt, the cursed Warthog’d injected them with the venom covering its tusks, and their wounds exposed often disturbing appearances in their evolution. The cicatrixed tissue was slowly being recomposed, but in necrotic filters that would mark indelible blemish obviously.

Fortunately, the poison anointing the twisted defenses of these war machines didn’t possess the deadly properties like those of the Swordsmen-Specters or other Black-Monks displaying their mortally coated weapons. Which undoubtedly saved them from the gangrene which would’ve carried them away in a few hours. Thus denatured, they would join the ranks of the cursed, doomed to Hell, becoming their desacralized Cradle, in which they would be condemned to wander forever. The worst being their Souls engulfed in pariahship and abandonment by the Divine. Without any hope of possible Redemption: Abandon. All. Hope…

In quick succession, Acthéean could therefore say that he’d been incredibly lucky. The first time, the Swordsman-Specter who’d reached him, was dying at the same second and its perverted essence’d diminished in the evaporation of the particles which’d composed the aegis. Otherwise, the young-man would’ve died of poisoning if not the wound. Worse still, under the conditions that unfolded in the library, he himself would’ve become one of these evil brood in turn, having no one to be able to exorcise the resulting necrophilic power.

More than anything, he'd had this Angel who had absorbed his Death...

He dreamed of it constantly, reliving the moments indefinitely, in a reality stretching in the abstract deformations of the overheated Imagination, until becoming infamous ectoplasms screaming their mendacious ignominy.

…soft layers of copper and bronze dotted the molten lakes, and the darkness of sclera blessed with the fabric of subtle stars…

…parma and steel blue halos haloed the figure, as HE breathed the mighty waves like smoky tendrils into his broken and helpless being…that it all felt good, relieved his withered Soul, as his lips gently lapped the nourishing fluid as needed for his convalescence…

…along that ashy alabaster throat, nibbling at the graceful pillars of tendons supporting that tender neck, his tongue reveling in the scents of frost, citrus, spice and ash, embers and melting snow, fragility and power at the same time, Hyssop and Hibiscus melted in the syrupy and heady stubbornness…

…his teeth biting without tearing the fine silvery skin, for a mouthful with a sweet taste…

…recovery of all the stimuli in an intense exaltation electrifying all his still weakened body…

… a striking amalgamation of all emotions and sensations at once, like a majestic Big-Bang taking birth in the complex Cosmos that was his Being of minute particles…

…perception of Void and Nothingness upon absorption of the blessed fluids exuding from this lunar silver body…

…an apotheosis to the suffocating erethism of his flamboyant flesh in his Renaissance…

…a sublimated glorification of his excitement pushed to extremes, as he’d never felt it; the suffocating petrification in all the nerves exacerbated in the opisthotonos arching his flesh almost to the point of breaking it...

…even in his most intoxicating orgasms he’d never been so blasted in his effervescence energized almost to the degree of the incarnated divinization that sustained him…

…and on that arrogant throne of effigies menacing with fangs and claws his senses’d awakened into a monstrous maelstrom over which he no longer had control…that throne which was one with the dark slope of an eternally snow-capped mountain...

…to the marble feet with notched steps, socle of an immaculate sepulchre, only cradling corpuscles rooted in the whiteness of an opal virginity…

…feverishness of a passion never equaled in the conflagration of his flesh exposed so crudely, and making only ONE and unique, indivisible in the eyes of the Stars blessing the astral Soul-Sisters…

…fanatic ecstasy in the abduction of the bodies lifted by the transport of the bubbling disorder its forbidden and taboo orgasm…

…fingertips flirting with ecstatic silk and velvet, languishing in the waves of bitterness and greenness, nostalgia and sweetness, a veritable dizzying dichotomy from the tip of his sharpened senses…

…vehemently in his feverish over-excitement, to the point of no longer knowing if one still has a physical body, no longer feeling the deep heaviness of inhibited feelings…

…scattered on the sweet winds of wandering comets with hair as long as the Infinity of the Dephts, the malleable molecules of the individual splitting into multitudes of ethereal layers, and returning to their original but refined form, cleansed of the glaucous ooze of the malsanity inhibiting the wildest desires...

…to immerse oneself forever in inanimate paradises as white as the Immaculate of the Flower with the crowned corolla of the divine nectar whose lips quench an inextinguishable thirst…

…to abandon oneself peacefully in the protective arms which have held this sweet agony so tightly in liberating ecstasy…

…press again and again long kisses on the silk of a moon skin, sigh a last rattle while the shackles are detached from the Soul thus abandoned in its cocoon of moistness and sweetness, and the taste buds melt from happiness under the musky aromas of the precious coulis gushing from his beneficial fountain of youth...

Void. Nothingness. Ether ruined. Wandering space. Desolation desert.

…spasmodic movements of a backward movement, towards borders forbidden to hermits stumbling over their scattered existence…

…Being born hurts, it seems.

…Reborn’s even worse…

…it’s to display the immeasurable pain of the Being in the face of a Reality that he wants to flee, to deform and to reconstruct according to his intimate norms…

…but that isn’t Life in its unfinished completeness: oxymoron and antinomy at the same time, contrast and paradox, dichotomy in the mise en abyme of inaccessible hopes…

More than anything, he dreamed that this Angel could absorb both their pain...

Acthéean savored without getting tired of the multiple emotions that’d made his body quiver, between death and the tiny breath of life. An intense ecstasy, as he’d never experienced before, far from all the castrating inhibitions invoked by the church. And he felt no shame. Only the frustration of not being able to share such experiences fully with Trevor. He knew his friend, the latter would take umbrage at such intimate, warm confidences, and certainly that it would tragically hurt his soul as a barely awake child. He would like to tell him about these unique sensations, but had to be careful and delicate in his words. Trevor’d been so often rebuffed in his young life that he didn't have to add.

All his nights’d passed through dreams as a leitmotif. His whole body, his flesh revolted with ecstasy at the memories undeniably arising from other worlds. He remembered the slightest breath on his dermis bristling with pain, then outburst in carnal frenzy. Every touch, every impression on his broken body giving a new influx of vigor. Sensual distractions and bubbling conflagrations, which’d no common measure with the orgiastic and hysterical alienation of the Porn-Art statuaries. Where debauchery was calvary howlings, tearing of violated flesh, here everything was only praise to ecstatic divinization, sublimation in erethism without taboo, without desire to annihilate. Nothing but the drunkenness in the ardor of the bodies in the abandonment of the other in absolute confidence and respect for the individual. From an abstract coitus that’d no materialization, to the tender copulation of entwined limbs without the flesh ever dying under the clumsy intrusion. A flame activated under healthy attraction, a more charming and intense inebriateness than under opiates.

Would he be able one day to make this erupting volcano feel under the thick layer of ice that flooded him, and share it with the one who’d tied his heart and his soul in an unthinkable astral twinning? It would be difficult to relive this almost inhuman exultation, because more often than necessary, Acthéean doubted the veracity of certain details of his reminiscences. Time blurred the outlines, and diluted them in hesitations and doubts as to the reality of what’d happened. Perhaps he’d not regained all his memory capacity? Or a part of his mind too shocked, blocking access to dark rooms jealously guarding their secrets, and revealing them only through dreams. Which sharpened even more the doubts of Acthéean: had he really experienced such effervescence through his Rebirth, or had his dying Imagination skewed the cards, playing a trick on pretenses and lies to counter a harsh morality that’d been instilled in him since childhood? Giving birth to a sinister Ecmesia sinking its painful needles into the conflicting mists.

An epic journey into Oblivion. Oblivion. Sacred cradle of Anamnesis in disarray. Sometimes Forgetting’s necessary, they say. Acthéean didn’t know if he should be happy to have regained his memory, or if he should pour out rivers of remorse and anguish, melancholy and nostalgia, like what he’d read in the Other. So infinitely powerful and attractive, that it pulled him into the unfathomable well of his repressed childhood, as well as into the abyss of One who cried bloody silver tears.

Deep immersion and eternal rest. This Eternal that he couldn’t cross because his time hadn’t arrived. Because it’s the law. His Soul like a star particle, scattered to the winds of silent Comets, yes. He, the inconsistent Recumbent of a broken childhood, languished under the fires of the dead luminary for eons.

He too aspired to forget horizons that’d become as Stygian as a shroud cut in the extinguished stars...and to take his Soulmate, his Astral Twin by the hand, in order to cross these impassable borders to others, in contempt of lies, in the denial of corrosive jealousies…

Without realizing it, completely immersed in his intimate worlds, in search of the shivers felt for the time of a liberating jolt, with his fingertips he caressed the small halo of necrotic tissue haloing the rictus grafted into the still puffy of irritation flesh. His little finger touching the hypertrophic circle, the point of impact where the tip of the defense’d made its way. Like a small navel delicately excavated from which stretched tiny purplish and withered veinlets, identical to the one on the tender belly of his friend, always exposing this myriad of infinitesimal shocks in a hyper fragile lace spread over the hairless groin.

Acthéean was really no longer connected with the world, lost in his thoughts clashing, fluttering from one idea to another, looking for solutions where there would never be any. The memory of his body cast its nets over the wriggling fry on the surface of the agitated ocean of reminiscences which seemed to mock his concrete logic, strutting about the fragmented debris of sad puppets at the end of their threads. And it sneered at his anguish cruelly butchered by the judge-knife, throwing sardonic "remember" at him, as his being wept over the pains and ecstasy his flesh tirelessly remembered.

Had he dreamed all this, after all? His brain, suffocated by lack of oxygen, would've started to delirious and hallucinate? His mind would've completely made up these scenes, while all his defense mechanisms were desperately activated, caught in the throes of Death...?

But in aedicle from the library, he wasn't dying, was he?

His fingers continued their ticklish caress, like an outlet for an itch that shouldn't be scratched. When he decided to smear one of the regenerating healing oils on the cicatrixed tissue, the mere flattery of the creamy, greasy ointment caused a memory rush as for the gentle stimulation invoked by the treatment.

…HE hadn’t needed any decoction to bring the necessary alleviation to the suffering, only a few thin smoky filaments like the starless night, that’d gracefully infiltrated his dermis until the depths of his ravaged flesh…

…infinite, instantaneous remission'd anesthetized all the rest of the anguish, the terror of Death, the panic that froze his limbs and lungs, making him look like a fry struggling in its last moments, shattered on the beach on which it beached...

The perfumed and heady oil flowed in slender tears down the undulation of his so violently offended shoulder, but the apprentice didn’t care, leaving the honeyed and slightly sticky cry to trace the curves of the pectorals, down along the sternum, tickling the epigastrium to nestle in a naughty drop in the soft excavation of the navel.

Acthéean didn’t even notice that he was putting too much material on his dermis, and didn’t care that his belly was enveloped in a soft layer in a few minutes. Too damaged in his painful reflections, so contrasting in the stimuli, so dichotomous in the devouring sensations.

He felt haunted forever. An obsession that he could probably never fully share with his friend, for fear of hurting him. Acthéean, without realizing it, was struggling in a Melancholy that didn’t belong to him, and that didn’t even come from this world. Like a senseless transfer to his Soul in search of the Unknown, he’d absorbed all the subtle essences that made him a full-fledged individual, someone who no longer belonged to his Reality.

It was a commotion from the examination room that finally pulled him out of the reflective swamps where he'd been engulfed for too long now. How long had he been in the bathroom? The fireplace blazed happily, soaking up all the moisture and syrupy fumes, but the embers showed alarming failure in the reactivation needed to rekindle a gentle warmth.

Acthéean then noticed that the whole front of his body was swimming in the oil cheerfully, and grabbed a long fluffy towel to mop up the bulk, before putting on his clean clothes. He was lucky now to be able to relax again in the toilet bowls, his shoulder recovered and on the very good road to convalescence, even if the small hypertrophic hollows and a few necrotic spots showed their annoyance at having to blend into the anatomy in redemption, his condition allowed him to perform daily movements again. Thanks to the form of rehabilitation advocated by Efrain and Norton, the head of the shoulder was rolling in its joint without any further signs of pain or protest. However, the apprentice was forbidden to carry excessively heavy loads.

He’d resumed his continual round trips, in order to relieve Efrain in his care tasks, regularly navigating between the apothecary, the barracks, and the library where Andréas dawdled on his side to provide concrete health solutions for everyone.

He’d molded himself into this affectionate habit, towards an evening between half-dog, half-wolf, before the sacred prayers gathering the desperate spirits, of making a few graceful movements of his sword. Gradually he complicated the arabesques danced in the singing air, their steely lament in soft guttural hisses, as the beautifully shimmering, oiled blade drew its intricate figures, taming its pendulum gravity points.

Acthéean was ecstatic to slowly recover the balanced forces necessary for the dance of this legendary sword that was the Claymore. His whole body undulated in the prolongation of the fuzziness and twirls, his relaxed and natural hands swinging the long blade; passing from dexter to sénestre; underweighing the steel forged for his father, there was a time, and which he’d inherited. Rare thing recovered from this tyrannical father. With the magnificent comb, but which’d belonged more to his Mother.

When the capricious weather of the evenings allowed it, we could then see the supple and feline silhouette of Acthéean melting into the shaded horizons of their parma/orange/and green, promising a warm day of tomorrow. The curious would witness a strange minuet merging a man and his dangerously beautiful blade, and whose every step was calculated in the balance of things in space: silver steel and eburnian flesh in beautifully blurred slow motion for the ecstatic eye. Aerial convolutions to soften the wrist and manage graceful outlines in their uncompromising balance. Man and steel were one in this harmony sublimated in the extension of each towards the other; the spangled blade singing its hissing murmurs in secret stories to its concentrated master on the lookout for the slightest unbalanced sigh that would announce a bad manipulation. Each independent of the other; each greedily dependent on the other; intrinsically bound in the meticulous Laws managing the swordsmen indulging in their passion.

The arms regaining their strength to raise the double-edged blade, graffitied in the moist atmosphere complicated waltzes followed by the fuzzy afterglows resulting in the lines drawn, lost in the dizzy gaze in front of these dances. The Big Eight or Infinity symbol weighed carefully in the ether, releasing its balance of steel and flesh. And the muscles of the man to revel in the sharpened edge magnificently balanced by the forge hammer, regaining all their potency for the ability to swing the sublime weapon engraved with the emblems of the one who was one of the greatest knights of the Brotherhood.

Acthéean devoted himself as soon as he could to these exercises allowing him to clear his head of the many existential questions, and also of the incessant calls of his returned Memory: a child prodigy with the aftertaste of remorse. He was happy to be able to manipulate his blade again as he saw fit, to make it perform these ballets of which he was the sole director. His shoulder was slowly regaining the strength needed to spin the lethal edge carved with glyphs, and Acthéean’d learned as it should ambidextrous manipulations allowing the use of either limb, if one of them were to fail. Which was still the case for the shoulder which pulled painfully on an over-intensive convolution, and the resulting 'wooof' weakened in its unbalanced arc. Soon he would be able to use both arms without restraint, but for now he’d to be careful and patient.

He thought that as soon as Trevor would also be able to join him, they could get drunk in training that certainly promised moments of intense happiness. The Belmont’d proven himself to be an excellent blade manipulator in front of his ecstatic Warmasters at his prowess, far ahead of his comrades in warlike excellence. No doubt that he would soon obtain a real blade worthy of the name for his training, and perhaps even one of his own, engraved by the Brotherhood. Trevor hadn’t yet reached the age required to finally possess his own blade, but since the teenager was gifted, no doubt that a blade was already found in the foundries. Acthéean’d had his own at sixteen, also considered to have great dexterity to be in charge of his own sword. And he’d brandished his father's Claymore on the morning of his sixteenth birthday, proud as ever, chaining passes and counters in a frantic dance, until the twilight which’d seen him exhausted but drowned in absolute happiness.

A magnificent breath of the ecstasied blade in chanted its brazen sonority in the hazy shine of the shadowy dusk crowned with sublimated hues in their purple and violet velvet, trimmed with intermediate verdigris in the neutrality of warm and cold colors to at once. The sharpened point seemed to cut through the swarms piled up in the border of the visual vanishing point. Acthéean allowed himself a horizontal salto extending the languid arc dragging its luminous and dark remanences. A whiplash of freedom exploding in his chest rediscovering the joy of moving in the abandonment of his adored sword.

While he’d resumed these feline trainings in these dynamic ballets, Efrain was often on mission with the novices who’d resumed the ardor in combat, and displayed light and benign injuries in a row. So, for the past few days, the apothecary’d been bustling with constant comings and goings, and the herbalist's mood had been soured and grumpy.

This was the case at this moment, the man brought with him two novices, apparently who'd confused a dangerously sharp blade with their wooden bats to hit the mannequins on kneecaps. The fight between flesh and blade left no doubt about the result! and Efrain dragged along two miserable whiners, ashamed of their debacle, having literally 'messed up' their maneuvers in what could've proved deadly.

And Efrain, usually so calm and never raising his voice, copiously lectures the two youngsters mortified by their stupidity. Not only were they bleeding from their clumsy wounds, hurting all over from training, but now getting a bad headache under the angry invectives of the herbalist. Not one dared to reply! it was better that way. From the dark corner of the bathroom his arms crossed on his clean and perfumed linen shirt, Acthéean considered the scene, which could’ve been comical because the wounds were finally light, amused by the contrite faces.

The apprentice’d noticed all the same that the herbalist brother’d been in a gloomy and worried mood since the attack. Like an additional trauma that’d opened a new breach in the man yet seasoned with daily misfortunes.

Norton was torn between his classes and his now highly appreciated presence in the pharmacy. Strangely, Acthéean’d also noticed the ease of access for Norton, he who always displayed anxieties about his future, suddenly was more serene. He came to them in a natural way that was no longer hampered by the fears that he would be surprised to be among them, rather than toiling away in laborious and exhausting training.

“As if he’d had some authorization that freed his tormented spirit...'' thought Acthéean. What made him think was that this sudden well-being and ease had come a few days after Chester d'Uries' last visit. A wonderful time they’d all spent, in the company of the wise and charismatic Founder. The latter’d spoiled them with the victuals worthy of the Gods, and which they’d stuffed with the force of contented and happy sighs, philosophizing with the great Sage.

Just like the others Efrain’d indulged in this sumptuous banquet, already relaxed by the touching and beautiful scene of Trevor's hair bath. A scene he would never forget, he was sure. Moving, almost to the point of bringing tears to the man too busy serving and caring for others. If he was a voyeur? and too bad, the beauty of this scene which should’ve been harmless, was too intense to remain frozen in front of the pure friendship and the affection of two Soulmates. It was too rare in this world to express stupid regrets.

Even Trevor who, however, was exhausted and gave all the signs of irrepressible drowsiness, managed to get out of his fluffy clouds, to feast without exaggerating so as not to be sick with gluttony. His stomach’d lost its volume and ability to ingest food, by dint of vomiting and fasting. He mustn’t push his limits, even if he was salivating in front of the still hot golden crusts of cooking.

Chester told them extraordinary legends; epics that made their eyes twinkle with envy; of great feats that’d made the Brotherhood proud. But when it came to a certain Knight,-the best of all-, Chester's words slipped, and suddenly the man stopped in his ecstatic impulse to mutter cryptic words that escaped everyone's understanding. Except d'Efrain, perhaps. And the mysterious Knight set out again in the molten shadows of the Unknown.

It seemed for a moment that the Founder was overly moved, and apparently had spoken too soon, noticing his misdirection of history. He was distressed and hesitant, minutes long and dragging on, as he resumed the course of another adventure lived by other heroes who'd disappeared forever into the unknown of History.

However, Acthéean didn’t miss the strange sad glow in the steel gray of the apple-of-eyes. It was a bottomless depth, this painful abyss that’d awakened ghosts that should’ve been left sleeping. Even in peaceless rest...

Trevor didn't notice, struggling for a while now against the drowsiness that numbed his body sated with such good things.

Efrain, meanwhile, also seemed to wander in a wasteland of indefinable emotions, giving an unusual harshness to his gaze.

Acthéean questioned himself for a long time, in the night, in search of capricious sleep. Then Morpheus opened his arms to him, and engulfed him in the misty layers from which escaped the recognizable rattling of metallic boots-frets.

~~~000<<<>>>000~~~

The steel-blue spiral tendrils in tortoiseshell form, twisted lasciviously around the supporting pillar, throwing the enormous resonance horn into the face of the tormenting winds that rattled the mountain foothills. A nasty wind continued to seep into the abyss of the enormous echo pavilion of the Horn of Bromios. In vain. Even its virulence to blow its frost and its anger into the mouthpiece, nothing helped. No sound vibrated through the brazen throat. Only the ice and the eternal snow in these places, had control over the ethereal body of this semblance of a snake coiled on the returned silence; orphaned by its shady modulations which invoked the minions, as had been the case a few days before.

And the Overlook Tower was once again bored in the frost of its ether...

Chester d'Uries’d told the strange possibility imagined by Rinaldo Gandolfi, to his interlocutors one evening. The mysterious disappearance of the genius engineer has never seen any real resolution. The man’d disappeared body and well, no one saw him again, nor found his body. Rinaldo Gandolfi’d melted into the meanders of oblivion, even if the Brotherhood dedicated him an eternal homage through his Chronicles, his courses, the statues more or less vague on the identity of the man, because few kept in mind memorize the features and physique of the engineer. The statues therefore had this particularity of being impersonal in the coarse detail of the physical attributes of the face. It was like a shadow, a specter, which holy men and their novices regularly honored. It was like a fog that’d never had any real consistency as a man.

In the Marshes of Death, an unknown tomb’d been erected, in which huddled the ancient remains of bones that belonged, perhaps, to one of the high knights, fallen in his mission. It was said that Rinaldo used the base of the sepulcher to erect a charging pillar system there for the improvement of the Combat-Cross. Another subtle invention coming to the aid of routed knights, lost in their mission, and having the possibility of adding intelligent mechanisms to their Cross. In addition to being blessed in the crucible of the cruciform pillar, whose sculpted 'teeth' hampered the holy weapon, and molded it into its new medium, the Cross was embellished with vicious additions of chain with jagged spikes, and retractable silver span, lethal point for vampires, in particular.

Yet the church’d themself railed against these somewhat sadistic and relentless machinery, and it was only for the privileged few possessing the Cross, who’d this improvement welded into that pillar standing above the tomb of the unknown.

Now this tomb with its half-fractured lid lay in its damp blanket of unalterable silence. Its stone’d vibrated so painfully in the guttural depths of the calls of the Horn. Its Recumbent’d quivered in his great interrupted Sleep, protected by the immutable seals that sealed its structure. The vegetation’d trembled in its dull terror, and the inextricable ramifications that intertwined in the damp soils, had sunk a little deeper into the compost, in search of an unobtainable shelter, cowardly abandoning the origins from which they were extracted.

The tombstone'd cracked wider, but even a curious gaze couldn't discern its dusty darkness that smelled of putrid humus and powdered bones. The sickening smell of Death, the abandonment of all hope, the sepulcher would reveal none of its mysteries lying within, nor even the troubled identity of the One who lay there. It was also said that these were the remains of Gandolfi himself, scattered in the anonymity of a resting place forgotten by all.

May be. Maybe not. Legends're often born out of "one says" and trivial misunderstandings, and the Imaginary has all the power to weave its own story.

And this isolated burial remained frozen in time and tranquility, through Swamps with sinister hints, whose countless bridges of bones straddled them in an imbroglio of unthinkable crossovers, which would lose the wanderer landed there by chance. The shadowy waves no longer rippled under the thrust of the twisted arms of Naiads gone to their Sleep.

The sun, stingy with rays, from time to time attempted a dazzling thrust between the thick canopy of age-old trees, and a sudden brilliance flashed here and there on the dull yellowing and darkness of gigantic skeletons of fabulous animals came there, crushed by death, slowly desiccating to remain only a few shadows of dust, crumbling definitively under the slightest pressure of a weight or a vibration.

Chester'd told so many great stories that night to his mesmerized audience whose eyes shimmered like endless stars in the nocturnal fabric of the Cosmos.

Acthéean’d pricked up his ears even more when he narrated the dark legend of the sages having locked themselves in the great Library, when unspeakable Tenebra hovered over the village, so long ago, and stretched stubbornly in a crown in the skies haloing the Castle. Propitious to dark art? No matter, wise men were versed in this Art of Magic. But what was pure in the original intention turned out to be sly and perverse, and the men in their confinement in the Library of the Building of Chaos were gradually poisoned by the venom of envy, arrogance, reciprocal hatred. They then indulged in the practice of the Obscure, performed forbidden practices, going against their enlightened and ascetic belief. In their abominable rituals, they lost their precious souls which were forever buried in the pages of the cursed books that surrounded them, all around the library.

For the past thirty years a new Shadow'd spread inexorably, darkening the land in its smoky and permanent stench, its noxious mists poisoning any wandering mind. Everything It touched was forever infected, a silent, evil endemic that agonized the hearts of men approaching the vicinity of the already cursed village.

A huge, gargantuan Tower, far bigger than Carmilla's had ever been, rose majestically in its curse, and proclaimed the omnipotence of the new Dark Lord. This enormous peripheral enclosure was added to the construction of the foundations of the Overlook-Tower, and the men of the Brotherhood decided to find no more peace until they eradicated this abomination from the earth. With his Master.

The rest of the story’d proven that until now, the Brotherhood’d failed miserably with each blow brought to bear on the building, no longer counting their dead and expendables in missions impossible to achieve.

In their uniquely forged utopia in their own pharisaism, the mortals'd themselves woven this Shroud dyed from the darkness and dying hues of the extinguished stars. The mind, It, couldn't forget...

000ooo>><<ooo000

The little panel cut out of the high stained-glass window, pivoted on its slightly rusty gongs, and Chester’d the brief idea that the pivots eaten away should be oiled. He closed the pane with the colored diamonds, melted into abstract shapes, including some lead even crumbled. It needed to be remedied with a restoration very soon.

Through the glass distorted in its undulations, Chester saw the landscape anamorphosed in the lens of color, he could barely still distinguish the troop moving away in the streets of Danaşti. An anonymous parade that was going to cross the high gates of the fortress, probably never to return for a while. The discussions at the meeting’d been…stormy? that would’ve been an understatement, perhaps. On the Quintemvirate, only three cities’d agreed on the next missions. Gresit and Poieşti being too involved in murky insolvent political affairs to accept any other intrusion settling in their enclosures, the missionary representatives having been firm on this subject. The Quintemvirate was turning dangerously into the Triumvirate! With Targoviste ready to force even the doors open, dragging everyone into what was likely to be yet another stampede.

Conspuation and aggravated denial of agreements which’d been signed, a long time ago, by their ancestors, welding the five cities together in a desire to organize geopolitical and holy aid, had been almost spat in their faces with a desire to premeditated disintegration from which some hadn’t even hidden themselves. Individuals with the bravado to be a little too talkative, had no hesitation in abashing the Memory of those who’d drawn up the statutes of the Quintemvirate. The Founders’d just suffered a tornado of discontent which’d finished off their great rescue project. Or how to eradicate a sacred and well-established protocol, in a great threatening lecture, and flights of arms razing the buildings meticulously represented on a crude plan displaying pieces too bulky, like a gigantic chessboard but with elements far too massive for the surface. The whole group was sprawled in the shadow of a towering table languishing in a corner of the room, and the man was mentally distressed by such aggressive outburst.

But it was necessary to credit the insurgent emissaries with the fact that perverted situations’d been brewing for a while to rot the rebel fiefs. If the Founders’d wanted to clarify these very dark horizons politically and territorially, they’d been respectfully thanked with scathing words. For the first time, the Brotherhood faced deeper problems rooted in their own lordly arrangement, and the shadow of the Dragon,-whose frightening effigy spread its wings above the 3D-Cartography in a statue exaggerating the proportions in order to symbolize its unstoppable Aleph-, suddenly paled in comparison to the conspiratorial expanse developing across the lands. It seemed that not only was the Brotherhood losing their influence, but also their despotic credentials over overheated minds. It was time for doubt, and everyone to feel truly abandoned by God.

Chester couldn't contain a deep, heartbreaking sigh as he turned to his sidekick, Cardinal Vicus, who was engrossed in exploring regional maps to plot suggested destinations for future missions. At least the parchments detailing a still awkward hypsometry in certain places had survived the angry gust. In a small corner of the Founder's mind, a sneaky idea babbled that would become a contagion as to what was brewing in the shadows of a battered organization, slowly escaping them.

The clergyman, for his part, was concentrated in his task, and seemed completely averted from possible reprisals which were sure to strike sooner or later. He’d to present a previously defined report to his peers, and his hands traced suppositions on parchments which he would seal at the discretion of the ordinances.

Some of the founding-members were currently dawdling in the clock tower which’d been disturbed by the hellish intrusions guilty of the Grimoire's disappearance. Chester’d decided to stay with Vicus in drawing up the maps, and writing the mission orders. He’d managed to gain some time on the mission, wanting to involve certain generals of his choice for the effective realization of the embassy, now that two cities’d temporarily deprived themselves of any mission invoked by the constitutional magistracy of the Quintemvir.

He’d names in mind, but he still had to wait a bit for the men targeted to recover, having suffered damage from the last attack. He knew Brother Efrain walked around every day to visit these recovering men. The latter also having to bear the mourning of their fallen companions.

The gray of his apple-of-eyes seemed to melt into shades of storm and pewter, when he read the names of villages and places it would’ve to cross to reach its destination, and made very precise reports of the ravages suffered, the survivors, and of course, what could be left behind the infernal swarms.

“We understand the resignation of Gresit and Poieşti better when we read the names of the villages,”he grumbled, to no one in particular.

“It’ll be done in due time’’Vicus interjected, in his ever pragmatic manner. 'They’ll have to explain themselves to the Grand Council, but I would lean towards very big problems that they must manage in the present moment.

“The worst part is that all these problems’ve been accumulating for too long, and we’ve deliberately and stupidly turned a blind eye to them…”Chester finished, and it was like a blade falling on the too heavy silence of the cardinal whose gaze’d, surreptitiously, a strange glint of bad omen when it lingered on the tall silhouette of his companion. It swam, for a few seconds too long, causing wet waves to drift from the orbs. A sinister atmosphere in the hardened apple-of-eyes. Unfortunately, the change in gaze escaped Chester's attention, too absorbed in his ruminations.

In the blink of an eye, it disappeared, and Vicus once again displayed this unusual unwavering mask which rarely left him, having this particularity good at hiding his emotions. He leaned again on the careful lines mapping the nebulous landscape disappearing under the shoulders and numerous ravines surrounding the land. Numerous crimson notches surrounded the targeted and dangerous places to explore. At a single glance, anyone observing the cartography could distinguish the 'sensitive' areas seeming to group together ironically, as in a nest built by an antediluvian, throughout the mountain belt leading to Wygol and its sinister Guardian at whose feet the village was nestled.

The aqueducts of Mortvia, the ruins of Aiolon almost twin with Agharta in its conception, Jigramunt or Beleşco. So many memories that screamed in Chester's memory when reading the places to cross to reach Wygol, in particular. Blending into the Bois de Véros was already a torture in itself, knowing full well what was hiding there. The crumbling dungeons adjoining the aqueducts of Mortvia had the sinister reputation of being haunted by the worst ghostspawn feeding on their decay, their inconceivable humidity, to the point that it was impossible for humans to stay there longer than necessary, the stagnant hygrometry of sickly waves was so unbearably saturated for the human skeleton eaten away by corrosive miasma. It was said that even the fountains with Leonian mouths still spat their deceptive rains, so that the wandering and unconscious vagrant came to drink there, unaware of the danger of the waters poisoned by the mucus rooted in their depths.

Reminiscences of his earlier missions, so distant, stormed back into his memory, chanting their underlying menace behind their masks of angelic purity. Everything was wrong there. It was absolutely necessary that the garrison which was preparing for this perilous mission, be ready for any misfortune. At the slightest misstep, everything could switch in a second in a debacle worse than that of Wygol itself.

A journey that would prove to be epic in Oblivion, ignored by all.

Chester put an encouraging hand on the shoulder of Vicus, who only replied with a silent blink of agreement about how dangerous the embassy was. Then, the high-founder took the hidden direction of a passage leading more quickly towards the interior of the Clock-Tower, without going through the perilous spirals outside.

He knew he was going to confront his fellows again in futile discussions stirring in the wind, and growled deep in his throat as his reinforced steps began to climb the disunited and uneven landings, real traps for the stunned.

000ooo<<>>ooo000

Efrain was still very upset this morning. Awakened by a small congregation of novices who’d suffered the thunderbolts and punishments of their Masters, and had discharged their chastisement in the shade of the night, after vespers. Obviously, due to a lack of light in certain places, the flaming torchieres not allowing the maneuvers to be seen correctly as in broad daylight, the novices’d stupidly injured themselves, copiously reviled by the coaches who were furious at their total lack of understanding, the absence of logic in the blows struck, and their eyes weakening in the semi-darkness as they’d to practice sharpening their senses in their combat actions.

Not only to have been severely punished, the unfortunate imbeciles afflicted candied faces of stupid dismay, which made the herbalist wonder if he hadn’t to do with complete and irremediable idiots.

“…and this is what the Brotherhood wants to send as a team against the Dragon…? well, He can sleep soundly...''grumbled the herbalist, severely pushing the incapable wretches.

Acthéean and Trevor’d been brought out of their sleep with a bang by the moans and whimpers. Never had the man been so irritated after wounded. The two youngsters looked at each other, flabbergasted, absolutely not daring to intervene with the angry hydra that Efrain’d become. Even Acthéean, who attempted a rough proposal for help, was brutally sent back to his bed, and no longer asked for his rest!

He pulled back the heavy drapery that separated the bedroom from the hall, and even went so far as to caulk the cumbersome panels under the weight of a chair, putting a separation between the two electric atmospheres. Then he went back to bed, curled up bristling with displeasure and grumbling curses that Trevor didn't catch.

"What’s wrong with him for the past few days?’’Trevor asked after a moment. ‘’He's unbearable, I've never seen him like that...

"You mustn't blame him," murmured Acthéean, quickly calmed down. ‘’You know, he's also been cashing in for some time...in the long run, all that weighs on a man, even for him...

"Do you think it's because of me?''suggested Trevor then, seized with doubt. ''At times, I saw that he was exasperated by the nothingness of my healing...he still sighs and grumbles while healing me...

"Why ?…''interrupted his friend a little abruptly. ‘’It's not your fault if you take longer to heal, he understands that well, you know, and he's worried about you, because he values us...despite not wanting to admit it, this grumpy old man love us!

Trevor gave a faint smile that Acthéean caught in the tawny glow of the fireplace.

"Let's wait quietly, he'll calm down eventually,"he whispered.

On the other side of the curtain that managed to stifle the bursts, things seemed to equable, indeed. The moans and reproaches soon faded into a few thumps given to the mortified wounded, before they leave the premises. Here were those who were going to remember their punishment and their time in the apothecary! they would think twice before facing the embittered herbalist.

When calm’d returned, the two youngsters’d gone back to sleep, and when Efrain pushed aside the trimmed panels obscuring the opening, inwardly amused by the chair blocking access, he gazed at them for a moment in their sleep, while he stirred their embers in the hearth and braziers. He thought that indeed he felt in an unusual state of mood. It wasn’t in his nature to impose consequences on others.

So, in the soft dampness of the dispensary, the man took some things and left for his important appointment, after having properly closed the doors of the apothecary. Norton’d been lying in the back bedroom, as he’d been for weeks, and hadn't woken up.

He walked away into this new morning still misty with ashes and particles seeming to come from elsewhere. Darker horizons in their purple and stormy hues, shrouded in a few tissue debris in which the last stars of Dawn were dying.

Norton almost left in the pale glow of this morning still numb with sleep. Much like its brethren bathed in stammering dawn, this morning looked like the others in a parade of eerie gloom where time seemed to freeze. Danaşti rose only painfully from his fight, while the days were threaded like pearls on a fragile necklace cord having lost its shine and splendor of yesteryear.

The youngman’d slipped an eye into the room of his two friends, checking if all was well; if the fire continued its languor releasing a tenuous dampness in the atmosphere halfway between the purifying incense; the delicate smoke sighing from the embers upturned; the scent of cleanliness mixed with the delicate, woody, lemony or heady musks of bodies at rest and skin cleansed with oils and antiseptic ointments. The atmosphere was never nauseating due to powerful or more ethereal aromas which could’ve given off hints too heady to be bearable.

Norton was in awe of Efrain's ability to cleanse space healthily and relieve the senses in bouquets that always transport you on clouds of heavenly smoothness. He who’d grown up in the incessant odors of illness, impotence, grief, of being constantly broken under the useless care of various charlatans. Whole of that’d forever engraved on him the sickening stench of the sick and impotent body in their olfactory stimuli. It was almost as if all these pregnant emanations, these indelible exhalations’d slipped under his skin like a second infected and putrescent dermis. He was dismayed to see himself attracted by medical practices, when he should flee them forever, disgusted with his childhood sacrificed to the care of a resigned and melancholy mother.

Also, this morning was the start of a heavy day of various tasks that would take him between his classes, his practical language lessons and spell invocation; his research with Andreas in the fabulous library, for most certainly returning exhausted at the apothecary where, he knew, a hearty catering meal would await him. He could talk about his day and any gossip he might pick up on his way back and forth, having noticed that Efrain was a playful taker of the little titbits that was caulked on the beaches of overly talkative lips. A little ritual that amused men, and made them forget their condition.

He knew he could leave in peace, his two friends on the path to convalescence, far beyond the predictions made. Although for Trevor it’d turned out to be much more complicated. Norton’d taken infinite pleasure in being able to help the herbalist. It was also with a heavy heart that he listened to Efrain's succinct account of Chester d'Uries' last visit, the arms laden with precious victuals and distilled wine for the strengthening of Trevor's blood. A few discreet words about the twice-daily grooming, and that of the obsidian hair. He’d immediately noticed the brilliant income and resplendent good-health, upon his return very late in the night.

He took one last look at the amorphous bodies in Somnus, apparently without disturbing dreams or panic attacks, languidly relaxed between the blankets thrown back carelessly to avoid the added heat. The early morning slid its silvery shards through the stained-glass-windows, and waves of shimmering colors delicately reflected on the dermis slapped with ecchymosis still present in an obstinacy which nevertheless didn’t lack discreet charm.

He scrupulously closed the doors of the dispensary, and hurried silently through the misty marbling of the streets, in search of the herbalist who would take over the guard after giving his last care to the wounded whose convalescence was longer.

<<<ooo~~~~~ooo>>>

It was as if the quiet wave, which shimmered under the more generous rays of this decidedly capricious summer, was relieved of all threat, and had regained purity in its depths once poisoned by the infernal spawn. The fish again seemed to wriggle between the silver ripples. The shore sanded its pebbles into the shallow unevenness of the sloping ground, dutifully smoothing them by its wavelett lazily lapping under the vibrations of a bird bathing in it, or pecking beak in search of a meal. A couple of swans let themselves sail languidly on the naughty waves awakening under the push of one of their webbed feet, the other carelessly raised and placed on their immaculate plumage. There was something delicate and moving in this gesture of relaxation in the two palmipeds. A avian binomial floating in a tranquility that seemed to have arisen again in these places.

Two gray-hazelnuts shaded with copper and microscopic gold dust contemplated for a long time the harmonious duetto of the two graces moving away dancing on the flow that’d become crystalline again. Two beautiful birds living their faithful and unfailing love in all carelessness, without worrying about ‘what-will-people-say’. A morality that mercilessly crucifies all those who would dare to live loves dedicated to gemonies and wrath of the Divine offended by such excesses on the part of his 'creatures'.These splendors would never know this discriminatory type only reserved for humans judged guilty of such crimes by their neighbors, often worse than themselves.

For this reason, Acthéean furiously envied these two immaculate marvels. As virginal as their flowers that’d died while they fought. In his quest for a rediscovered memory, he was now making the bitter evocative observation of an Anamnesis that it was absolutely necessary to keep silent from the Brotherhood, from all the others. For fear of reprisals for what’d happened there. There would be only one Chosen-One to whom he would confide in such confidences,-so warm, so disproportionately mortifying-, only one with him would share what he would’ve so wanted him to feel in turn. This devouring intensity of …

A smile tugged fondly at his soft stubble-lined lips, when he remembered Trevor's head swallowing grimacingly one of the last chalices of...blood! It hadn't been an easy task to swallow the strange potion that radically solved his problem of anemia stretching a little too much in time. It was radical, of course, but it’d paid off in the end. Of course, it was far from being in the directives granted by the church, especially since the advent of the Dragon, but the extreme and absolute solution gave very convincing results. Poles apart high-pitched, overexcited yelps of devotees frontally opposed to the care questionable, predicting the antithetical and eternal hell for all who practiced this kind of relief. Etc, etc, etc,…the refrain of usual castrating reproaches.

Most ironic of all, was in the regular ritual in the delivery of the 'fluid' by none other than Chester! In addition to Sage-wine seasoned with raw goose egg, a still hot chalice of cruor from young animals, in the early morning, was added to the breakfast. And it was truly a sight to see poor Belmont grow even paler, almost transparent, his shocked features pulling bewildered expressions. Efrain and Acthéean sympathized, but refrained from giggling at the tight gagging and the difficult swallowing of the purple liquid.

Acthéean got one of those typical-Belmont-killer-looks when he dared to guess:

“Belmont, you would make a really bad vampire… look at you, you’ve plenty on you…

The steel orbs’d turned deadly, as an annoyed hand wiped away the last traces of streaks disgorging from the puckered lips. God, he was going to vomit!

Hilarious fond memories now, as Trevor's complexion no longer displayed that sickly aura of bloody weakness. The herbalist hummed with relief as he unwrapped the bandages changed less often now; scrupulously palpating the stormy sutures swelling the torn dermis; examining the sub-layers of the hypertrophied tissues, and the regular and healthy weavings of the necrotic parts. For indeed, the wounds’d been caused by the tusks coated with sneaky poison, and the two youngmen’d had to endure an additional state of cellular restructuring as well as justified worries about the resulting infections. Acthéean's shoulder still showed the sad consequences, even if the joint was completely restored and rehabilitated. Trevor's pelvis and flank still held the impressive effects.

Especially since for the past two days, the Belmont’d been copiously irritated by still staying in bed, absolutely trying to leave the couch to take his first hazardous and dizzying steps. it made him make painful grimaces at the entire impression that his body was unfolding at the upside down; muscles numb and atrophied from inaction; skin distending dangerously at its striped seams.

No matter if he lay miserably on the ground, dizzy, the fiery teenager cursed all the shameful insults rarely heard by shocked ears, on his still weakened state, and his lack of independence for small intimate tasks. He swore like a carter, and his friends often wondered where he’d learned such obscenities! Because now, being washed like a badly educated kid weighed heavily on his mind and especially his pride. Certainly, moments like the cleaning of his finery by his friend were truly moments of divine happiness, but the fact of being washed without finally being able to soak in a tub, gnawed at his nerves.

For two days, it’d been almost hilarious to see them bickering: Efrain getting carried away to make him return to his diaper illico! The Belmont to 'kill' with his gaze everything that presented himself in front of him, to grumble, to threaten, to finally sulk in the hollow of his blankets which he pulled down furiously on his spine trembling with useless efforts. Belmont was truly the typical case of the bad patient!

How many things’d happened in not even two months! It was dizzying. Acthéean could say that by bringing his friend into the apothecary, he’d brought about a real tornado which’d upset many convictions and ideas, various emotions and a certain philosophy on the whole individual. This human storm with so blue and transparent eyes, with unrealistic hair, had turned everyone's lonely heart upside down. Even Efrain’d been seduced right away, and had to reflect intensely on his own Inner, he who’d always been a hermit outside of his medical activities.

And Acthéean. He who, like his friend, had erected walls of ice between his reflective and pragmatic Being and the others, barely letting some cross the threshold of his internal and private Sanctuary. He’d left this human surge break down the doors that’ve been carefully closed for so long already, and rush shamelessly into the weakened niche of his heart. He’d always had a curious eye on the Belmont, since they were children, but he would never have thought that he would find HIS Soulmate there, his undeniable Astral Twin. Something so rare and so precious in these troubled times, that he understood that this wonderful opportunity shouldn’t be let go.

Moreover, the Other’d opened his eyes to the precariousness of such osmosis. It only took a trifle for everything to melt into Oblivion...and regrets would be useless.

…The Other was that secret he would keep forever, locked away in the vault of his Soul. Keeping the depths of this sublimated Essence that’d so upset his deserted 'island' that it was oppressive to the brink of asphyxiation. A furious surge that only wanted to invade the fragile borders of the tolerable, to demonstrate to the whole world the value of intrinsic emotions as precious as those overwhelming mortals.

Thoughts jostled, tireless, in his mind, while he watched for a few more seconds the couple of waterfowl move gracefully in the silver and gold light; delicate wrinkles rounded languorously on the surface of the waters under the slow thrust of their paws. They disappeared in the distance, merging into the horizon line displaying the antiquated veil of an indolent night. It felt like a new world waking up to newfound optimism.

He’d felt this need to evacuate this too heavy weight by taking a few steps through this new morning, open to new smells; new essences; new cries still rising and bouncing between the walls of the houses huddled together in the fortress security. Security? Well damaged since the attack.

Here and there, a few stalls’d timidly installed themselves in a sketchy market, where hesitation broke the last rungs of their chain in the practice of a life that’d to be continued, good year or bad year, they said. Between the moment when his steps’d taken him to the banks of the calmed river, and his slow return to the dispensary, the streets adjacent to the banks had been slowly filled with trestles flourishing their displays of food or precious fabrics handled by costume designers who made their way to Danaşti and came from other scattered villages.

Acthéean went through all this, never letting an emotion ripple his relaxed face, slipped behind a mask of indifference, while his mind heated under the incessant images of memories, of diverse and opposing reflections, in a monstrous maelstrom threatening to provoke headaches. His audition picked up various dialogues; a few bits of guesswork; the inevitable rumors of course, mostly gossip. Apparently everyone seemed to agree that 'something was brewing in the neighboring villages”. Acthéean’d learned about it from Efrain through his regular visits to the Founders' dungeon, and Norton who took regular temperatures of the electric atmosphere in his research at the library. There too, the rumors were rife, even if most were born of spirits heated by the events.

In all this battle of the senses taken mad, his strange synaesthetic capacity brandishing loud and clear the standard of a fireworks set off by all the environmental stimuli, Acthéean evolved in full creel at different colorimetric levels, and it sneakily trapped him in an aggressive wasp's-nest. He then had to calm these emotional rushes, pretend to disconnect from this world, close his senses to everything in an urgent absolutism so as not to lose his mind.

In a marketplace, this was impossible. He decided to focus on a single object, quietly measuring his breathing, closing his eyes to the incessant dizziness that confronted him. Fixing his attention on a specific point, he approached it while mentally counting the steps bringing him closer to the target stall.

It was there that he took a moment to contemplate the superb fabrics, shimmering with myriads of mottled hues in the weaving of the delicate threads in arabesques almost resembling noble coats of arms. Unctuous velvets poured out their purple; their violin; their deep almost sanguine and hypnotic red; greens sublimated with bronze and gray; aerial silks that would cover a feminine headdress, or highlight eburnian complexions. Trimmings hemmed in gold and silver that would veil the protected walls of rooms resembling banquet halls with their intimacy.

It was in front of this display of beauties piled up in fascinating harmony that he no longer knew how to differentiate his real vision from the one he’d taken to calling 'inner vision'. So he allowed himself to drift along with a cognition intoxicated with various deceptions. The result was breathtaking, and he thought for a moment that it was a blessing to 'see' these colorful worlds that everyone else ignored. Perhaps...This undoubtedly allowed him to sail on solitary Seas, made of the most unusual songes; tasting flavors where the notes were tinted with myriad nuances that do not exist in this world; engulfing himself, poor castaway, in the miasma of bewildered perceptual libations of unparalleled intensity, bordering on the ecstatic subliminal.

Even if it was a very small consolation, Acthéean always feared betraying his secret by a word, or a detail that came up, to his interlocutor who wouldn’t fail to be perplexed. As his parents’d been, the first time he’d revealed to them that smells, flavors, moods, noises, the writings themselves which appear in variegated-diapre blurs disturbing him in learning to read; everything carried extravagant, inconsistent nebulae; florescences with bursts of indefinable colors in the human visual spectrum. He was four years old, but he understood in their looks that what he perceived wasn’t the natural order of things in human stimuli. So, silently, the child that he was, closed the 'doors' on this strange aspect, carefully walled it away in an isolated compartment of his learning, and swore to himself never to speak of it to anyone again.

Merchants apparently came from wealthier cities in abundance and financially, that was obvious. They were used to the wealth of the lords ruling the surrounding lands, but had tried their luck in the Danaşti enclosures. In case there’re some treasures hidden from the villagers. After all, this was the Brotherhood's fortress, and the Founders didn’t mind the opulence on display in their great halls carved into the heights of the keep. Their beds themselves were cradled in the most beautiful adornments brocaded with gold and precious stones. It was hard to imagine a Volpe sleeping in a simple layer of hay and homespun!

Acthéean long admired sublime marbled brocades, sewn in gold and silver with peacock feathers. Obviously they were apparently kept for the Brotherhood, the merchants reserved a visit to the dungeon. The youngman didn’t know anyone in Danaşti capable of spending astronomical sums in the precious fabrics, there was no doubt. He himself, coming from a wealthy noble family, couldn’t have openly and on a whim pay for a quarter of fabric in the realization of a costume. But the scroll presented before his dazzled eyes made him fantasize about the insane possibilities of having a superb embroidered tunic cut that would fit marvelously on the silhouette of his friend. On top of that, the silky fabric exhibited its shimmering, mottled sparkles in myriad shades of deep green, coppery and silvery at the same time, like the gemstone.

The man saw Acthéean's giddy gaze and tried to gently motivate him.

“Where are you from, good man?''the young apprentice asked softly, not taking his eyes off the dancing sparks in the heart of the weft. “Such pieces’re impossible to buy here…

“Targoviste, youngman. I’ve my sewing-shop there. I wanted to share these wonders with neighboring towns, and I've been on the road for some time now.

Targoviste? One of the cities that Acthéean knew was part of the great Assemblies with the Brotherhood: the Quintemvirate.

“Have you been attacked lately?''he dared to ask, not sure that the man would be inclined to confide. But it turned out to be the case: the man needed to expunge himself from a situation that he saw was irrevocably deteriorating.

“Yes, Targoviste suffered…”he replied, lowering his voice, while unfolding the shimmering splendor of greenery embellished with feathers in which the “eyes” drawn seemed to wink mischievously.

“Besides, there’s talk that Targoviste has made a deal with the Brotherhood, apparently. There’re whispers of things that’re being prepared...We don't know more. You know, the people’re always the last to learn of events, but the first to suffer the consequences...

Acthéean hummed discreetly, without wanting to engage in a discussion which could prove bitter, if one considered the beginning of the remarks of the man apparently opposed to certain directives. He was the people, and Acthéean in his training was part of the military sphere. It wouldn't be very wise to slip into a dialogue that could turn out in a very bad way.

So he contented himself with gently stretching the silk, and admiring its pure transparency in its weaving through a generous light in its solar gold. He’d learned to appreciate beautiful things, since his childhood. Father's position and rank’d allowed him to sail in rich and easy waters, savoring the wonders the world’d to offer to those privileged in life. He mentally calculated the cost that the manufacture of a garment could generate. The man thought he understood his hesitation, and chose to abandon his initial invective against the politics of Targoviste.

"Is it for a young-girl of your heart, youngman? This mottled green’s very rare, and is exceptionally suitable for light skin tones. Is she blonde or brunette? Redhead would be even more beautiful, green suits redheads beautifully…

Acthéean felt like laughing. Obviously. It would never be in good taste to admit that the “young-girl” of his heart displayed a beautiful build of a warrior, a developing musculature predestining the trained body to a powerful and…virile structure! If we put aside, of course, an incredible hair that should’ve belonged to a woman, rather than a man. But, even in a platonic idea of ​​creating clothing, perverse minds would necessarily see a shameful deviance in the project, and Acthéean didn’t at all want to loosen the tongues of vipers.

So, he replied still in his low voice:

“She's brunette…with hair black as the starless night. Long, very long. This green would be a showcase for her brunette beauty.

It was a nice lie. Without being one, either. The gender simply differed.

“Oh! You're a poet, my friend! The way you describe your beautiful...

"Yes, but I'm afraid my purse doesn't keep up with my poetry, unfortunately...

He laid the cloth back carefully, smoothing out the wrinkles. Dreamy. The man must’ve sensed something about him, for he remained pensive at the distant and cautious attitude. He nodded softly, while he was confused in reassuring banalities about the time which wanted people to deprive themselves, etc, etc…

Acthéean thanked him for his patience, before leaving, his shoulders a little more hunched, perhaps. The merchant greeted him, whispering that he was going to visit, yes, the Brotherhood. The young-man missed the strange gleam in the eyes of the designer, who stared at him for a long time disappearing at the corner of an alley. The next second, he was hailed by a gruff matron whom he easily guessed, and immediately by his experience of customer behavior, that he was going to do business. Probably with the magnificent brocade square that this young-man’d apparently had the heartbreak to leave for lack of money, and that the rombière kneaded outrageously in her fat hands overloaded with sparkling rings in their jewels,-a demonstration of wealth openly thrown in the face-, certainly with the aim of having pieces cut out of it.

"She's a brunette beauty, with long starless night hair..."He pictured the specter of the 'beauty' in question dreamily. But shudders imagining the woman in front of him who was going to dress in this marvel, while her physique was far from a dream! Life was bad all the same! But business was business...It wasn't a pretty young poet filling his purse.

While Acthéean joined the apothecary, and the merchant was doing business, a small procession of armored horsemen winded slowly between passers-by and stalls. The horses led their knights to the exit gates of the fortress. None of the pedestrians, merchants, wanderlust in search of treasure, idle strollers looking for a little solar heat, paid attention to one of the horsemen who turned discreetly towards the scene which’d just unfolded. The eyes of a piercing steel-gray consider the apprentice for a moment to put down the precious fabrics, and to walk away. Then straightened up and nonchalantly followed the movement of his steed.

<<<<ooooII=~~~=IIoooo>>>>

It still hurt. The offended dermis pulled painfully at the slightest gesture. Carefully, fingers probed the sutures, the space of the sewn flank, the hollowed out plate,-too hollowed out!-, of the blue belly, the groin desperately hairless, the hip too sharp in its definition. It was still far too fresh as a trauma, and the wound laughed at his unhappiness in its eternal grin stitched with dark, bristling threads. What he could be reassured about was the desertion of the infection, after a short period of doubts and fears.

Trevor wasn't far from it, hesitating to fully straighten a quivering spine from the last ripples of heat from the blankets he'd taken off. Stubborn in his idea, he’d tried to get out of his cocoon, in order to indulge in some ablutions that he’d decided he could perform without anyone's help. He’d quickly noticed that the lack of support for walking constituted a wave of burdensome pain in his posture and his hesitant wandering. His pelvis still screamed as the warthog crashed as he flew, and though Efrain’d been relieved that there were no fractures or cracks, he wondered if his bones were going to relinquish their weakened support.

But what Belmont decided, he would do! Whatever the consequences! That he silently hoped wouldn’t be disastrous, for the sake of his ego! He didn’t really see himself slumped on the ground, betrayed by his wobbly legs, wrapped in a sheet covering his almost nudity, who we would inevitably pick up by dint of invective, mockery, and above all a nice 'bawling out' from a very edgy Efrain in recent days! Trevor could tell his ass was in grave danger of being flirted with the herbalist's vengeful foot, and had been for a while now when the man couldn't take anyone's whining anymore. The herbalist was in a dog-mood, and everyone was paying the price. The Belmont’d also heard the irritations breathed on the unfortunate novices who’d the clumsiness to suffer injuries. So now wasn’t the time for Trevor to make the brother give him some deaf dialogue screamed at his ears suffocated with shock.

The teenager heaved a heartbreaking sigh at the realization of his still very painful and stammering condition. His anemia’d given up on dubious and disgusting recipes to swallow, and that was already a very good thing. He knew his back looked very beautiful, and the scars would quickly disappear. No more itching, but the little thirsty side of cuddles persisted in his perversity to have the dermis caressed regularly by unctuous oils with divine scents. As long as you do, you might as well be cuddled to the end! Even better if it was by the hands of his friend...

So Trevor knew he could apply some of these concoctions to his sutures and the space around it, so that the skin wouldn't dry out with the scarring. The apothecary was full of treatments bringing well-being and relief, much more than elsewhere, because Efrain shared his experiences and his study trips with everyone, and Trevor knew his luck to be treated so attentively, and have at hand all the ingredients necessary for the baths of an offended flesh.

It was all well and good to be pampered, but at some point Trevor liked to take matters into his own hands and take care of himself. He thought about his visible lack of training now, he’d lost weight and it showed. The skin stretched over his bones in a way he didn't like; the collarbones stood out in relief, exaggerating the impression of fragility; the muscles were taking shape strangely, as if desiccated, on the chest hollowed out in delicate and suggestive valleys; his swan's neck seemed longer suspended on its pillars-tendons springing with each twist of the head; the soft undulations of the belly muscles were underlined by a diaphanous and outraged dermis of ecchymosed hues, spreading their strange ever-discernible ramifications like a knitted veil around the navel region, to spread its astonishing wings going to nestle in the shadow of his groin. His frame promised a beautiful silhouette in the muscle worked, but not for the moment! He was way too skinny.

He was certain that even his Warlords would be shocked by his appearance, they who knew him in a powerful, flexible and agile form, feline in his twirls with weapons, boneless in the harmony of the dodge and the counters facing the mannequins with pivots often embellished with sadistic balls with blunt points, of course, but which always hurt extremely when the novice took them in the face! The body’d to face all the deadly and constraining possibilities, and the training was endless in the invention of torture devices for the warrior education of youngsters. When the unfortunates were crippled with bruises and hematomas, sometimes disabling fractures, they finally learned healing spells and the manipulation of medallions assigned to diverted occult powers. Often, it was really the privileged who succeeded, the others being struck down by nasty wounds weakening them for life. If they didn’t manage to overcome all these obstacles which broke more than one, their future was very fragile in their mission, and often their colleagues picked up their last scrolls written by the technique of thought, friable witnesses of their failures then that the dying breathed their last sigh.

Trevor’d read entire containers of these witness-scrolls heaped up in a niche of oblivion by the brother successors going on missions, and discovering the bleached bones of the stricken wretches. His fingers’d long smoothed the graphs of what’d been a 'thought', untied in a universal writing in the indelible ink of the medium ingeniously invented for the occasion. Often moving and sad testaments of individuals sent into the furnace of a war that they didn’t understand, at least the ins and outs; the ideologies, the convictions that decided the life or death of certain races, certain tribes. Those of the shadows. Those of the Beyond.

He’d found himself wondering about the merits of such actions, more than necessary, and often thought that one day perhaps, he would come to engrave such a parchment of his last thoughts, testimony of his fall or of his victory, but in any case, of his death...a testament that another would pick up, and bury with the others, in these sad-to-cry containers, filled with tragic stories of humans tangled in stupid fights. For what?...

Until now his body hadn’t suffered such disasters, as some. Even if he’d necessarily picked up heaps of bruises or minor injuries throughout his childhood, nothing too bad, and his visit to Efrain was done in a hurry, because obliged by his Masters, otherwise contusions and sores were relieved in the cool water of the river. As he’d become accustomed to, for so long already.

Until…Too much punishment. The desperate fight against the animal of war, and which’d almost constrained him definitively to the immobility of the grave.

He'd allowed himself a few moments of washing, in order to evacuate what he could only bear with difficulty, an overflow of acid sweat which made him wrinkle his nose, and had carried out oral hygiene, helped by a radical paste with powerful smells that Efrain prepared regularly. Concerned about his appearance, in an already personal mind, as well as towards others, Trevor absolutely persisted in these acts of care for his body, and which pleasantly relieved his soul like a bath completely cleansing it from the miasmas of bad thoughts. As well as embellished with a certain flattery for his Ego.

With parsimony, his hand coated with dark blue oil with inebriating olfactions, brushed the marbled parts of the umbilicus; fluttered on his suffering hip; tickled the erect points of the threads; descended into the graceful niche of the inguinal fold; to rise from the other side and give the same care to the intact hip and opposite pit of the groin. When he was done, his belly was almost completely anointed with the fine oily substance. He rubbed the rest of the fluid between his hands, before wrapping himself carelessly in the sheet.

Concentrated as he was in his ablution, he didn’t hear his friend who’d been watching him, leaning on the doorstep, for quite a while already. Also, he jumped when Acthéean spoke. If he still had the bottle in his hand, he would've dropped it.

"What will I have to do now, if you do everything by yourself?"Acthéean squeaked.

"I needed to get up,"Trevor replied somewhat abruptly, after sighing with his start. ‘I won’t always wait for you to activate me…

“Do you know what Efrain would do, if he saw you like this?''quipped the apprentice, stepping forward and taking the used flask, eyeing it with a flat eye.

“I wanted to clean myself up a bit…''grimaced the Belmont. 'I manage to walk, I can easily go to the bathroom…Efrain's a bit too mother-hen on me…

"And...don't you think he's right...?" You're having a hard time recovering this time...

Acthéean put down the etched glass vial, and faced his stubborn friend.

“I know, I screwed-up this time...''Trevor muttered sheepishly.

“Screwed-up? You call that 'screwed up'? You saved your friends, you knocked that beast out of hell with the dexterity everyone's talking about...You saved us, Trevor...even though it was completely insane of you to do so, you could've been killed...but you knew how to do what'd to be done to stop the catastrophe...

The apprentice looked after his friend, who contented himself with lowering his head, wrapping himself closer in his thin sheet, and hobbling toward the bedroom. Without a word. They'd talked about all of this before, and Trevor hated to be told all the time that he'd done the right thing, but had been reckless and brash.

Something about his curved figure in his tissued layers, still wandering in lingering dizziness, hurt somewhere in Acthéean. Did he really not realize what he'd done? The Belmont was truly an enigma to anyone who rubbed shoulders with him, and Acthéean didn’t always manage to apprehend the subtleties so intimate, buried deep in this tormented soul. Like a pale and plaintive wraith who would drag its countless chains carved in remorse and nostalgia for a time revoked and forgotten for others. A mysterious Legacy that seemed to weave its origins in his Psyche ignorant even of its own foundations and descent.

Acthéean clutched the beautiful, shapely vial in one hand, his heart gripped with a wave of affection. This brocade would've looked so good on his proud figure. Wonderful tunic to wear for big events.

When he reached the bedroom, Trevor was still standing beside the table overgrown with parchments; the books and chronicles Norton was reading to them; the halo-smeared sketches of their disconcerting transformations. On a vellum, there were traces of dried mucous humus: remnants of the tears of the withered Lilies that Acthéean’d resolved to burn.

Why had they both hurt so much to lose those flowers? These flowers, after all, so stupid, although out of season...it’d been as if a piece of their souls’d been burned with the Lilies...Even Chester’d wondered about them with Efrain, flabbergasted by the similarity extraordinary with the fact that infant Trevor’d been wrapped in his swaddling clothes with the precious flower against his angelic skin.

Acthéean knew that he’d to take advantage of this moment when they were alone, Efrain wouldn’t return immediately, having many visits to make, and his daily appointment with the Founders; Norton wouldn’t return before sunset. He approached his friend, feeling the sad vibrations that made Trevor shudder like a stab in the plexus, as if the two were connecting in a telepathic capacity of incredible exchange of tormented and stormy thoughts. He took the onyx river's shrouded shoulders, and led his friend to his bed. Trevor let it go without protest, almost limply, as if he was going to pass out. It seemed that an immeasurable screed’d just fallen on the figure of the proud novice warrior, and that he gave this impression of a fledgling fallen from the nest. Suddenly. Probably the nerves giving out.

Fledgling. As Chester d'Uries put it so well.

"You see,"he said, "you're tired from the effort of getting up. It's still a little too early for you to stay up for so long.

"But you recovered faster,"Trevor protested. 'I can't lie like this anymore, I feel like I'm emptying the last remains of my life in this bed...

“Belmont, my injury isn't comparable to yours! You're afflicted in your pivot axis which supports your whole skeleton, and implies the vertical position...

“Oh, please! It sounds like Efrain!''growled the Belmont softly, scowling.

"But it's the truth,"the apprentice pointed out just as softly, pushing his friend back onto the clean, changed sheets of the morning. First thing that Efrain did when he got up, when possible, and in the appropriate conditions: changing the layers of sheets which went to the direct wash in the abbey laundry. The herbalist always arranged for his patients to be cocooned in clean and airy bedding. Ah, Efrain and his compulsive obsessions!

Acthéean leaned over his friend, daring to cross the barriers of the intimate bubble, stepping over the tough inhibitions embedded deep in Trevor's defenses. He leaned on his hands on either side of his face, avoiding tugging at the hair strewn across the pillow.

“How about we take advantage of our moment between us, to talk. I'll tell you my memories that I'll confide only to you...aspects cannot be revealed to just anyone...

“Yeah,”Trevor agreed, relaxing, “you already told me not to talk about your memory recovery. Efrain knows it too. For all, you remain amnesiac. It's better that way...but is it so terrible?

"Let's just say...some details, if I were unknowingly frank with those around me, would cause me big trouble, I'm afraid...getting my memory back is good, and saves me from madness, but sometimes I come to regret it...

Thus intruding into his friend's intimacy, all his senses were open to the various stimuli, and his sense of smell was sensitive to the sweet emanations of treatments, plants, heady flowers, essences of verdant wood, of citrus fruits and concentrated mint balm suffusing even freshened breath. The youngman's natural musk: frost and spice, with that touch of mysterious peppery amber that exuded deliciously from the skin. An explosive mixture which was truly Trevor's intimate signature, and which delighted the senses with its innocent greenness. An intoxicating bouquet of musk that fluttered ethereal flirtations in the belly of Acthéean. Just as when he was in the middle of the market, he let himself be numbed by the tumultuous volte of his distorted perceptions. Their two silhouettes were enveloped in sfumatos and miscellaneous pepper-and-salt, ethereal Agatite of grisaille and incandescent Carbolite covered with a pellicle of darkened-freezing, flooded their astral spectra in a dystopian kaleidoscope which would weep over the accumulation of the ruined scree of their existences.

This time it was Trevor who dared to make the first move. He propped himself up on one elbow, and pressed his lips to those of his friend, whose face was drowned in the abundant curls of chocolate-auburn in which shone soft shades of dark-ashy-chestnut, the result of a slight natural discoloration under the products of Efrain care and herbs. Boxwood in particular had these bleaching properties resulting in amazing shades on lighter hair like those of Acthéean. The latter’d noticed that his hair took in a few locks shades of golden-honey of the most beautiful effect. His hair wasn't as long as Trevor's, but fell from his shoulders to halo the peaceful features of the young-man focused on his friend. The stubble was, as if woolly, and never rasped Trevor's sensitive skin, enveloping in its ascetic mystery the angular cheeks as those of the Belmont, but without having that noble and androgynous fluidity, fascinating characteristic so in the arrogant beauty teenager.

He’d paled from his injury, and both now displayed opal skin tones embellished with a touching touch of delicate pink that was almost invisible. But what suffocated Trevor was the look that’d strangely turned into its colors since Acthéean’d returned from there. Like a tiny blanket of copper and bronze haloing the gray-hazelnuts, already atypical in their chromosomy, and a detonating microcosm of golden particles now dotted the background of the apple-of-eyes, like very distant stars from which the glow of their death reached across thousands of light-years. A gaze overlooking an unfathomable Elsewhere.

After a second of contemplation over those iridescent splendours, the lips sealed cautiously, almost timidly, hesitating over a gentle intrusion into each other's sanctuary by the curious tongue of the other. Trevor’d taken the first step, and pressed awkwardly on the labial beaches, searching the shores with a little bit of tongue almost fearful and stunned by its nerve, without daring to cross the depths of this fluffy mouth.

This moved Acthéean, this childish hesitation to cross the taboo borders promising severe prohibitions which persisted in curling the heart of the Belmont in religious fears. They separated slowly, and Trevor thought he’d done something stupid that would’ve shocked his friend.

"Forgive me,"he stammered, sinking back into the pillow, a blush creeping up the sharp cheeks, pretty subtle powder in its ethereal pink. Finally a touch of color on this so pure and transparent complexion.

"Why?''Acthéean asked softly, putting back a few mad obsidian strands. Trevor's adornment still looked 'angry'. Bristling as if under an electric shock, puffing out a little more if necessary, the thickness of the silky tuft.

“I love kissing you…you’ve this touching hesitation,”he confided in a lower tone and slightly lost in sound.“I don't want to rush things, and hurt you…it's something that needs to stay solid and pure, not warped in a rush that could shatter everything…it's something that belongs to us, Trevor, and just us...no one should know or suspect...I believe with all my being in the 'Astral-Twins', and it's a chance that we found each other, even in misfortune...A strange irony of the part of the Stars who bless us...

While chanting his words, he strolled gently in the river of silk, sliding his nose and closed lips on the alabaster column of the swan's neck. He wanted to cuddle at this moment, but without crossing the act in itself. His friend wasn’t yet in a condition to undergo any assaults, and to rush, would risk to make everything collapse in an instant, all that to satisfy an ego and a selfish satisfaction. Acthéean didn't want that. He certainly didn’t wish to pervert and further hurt this already fragile Self-esteem friend. So he opted for the restraint and temperance of his desires, knowing full well that Trevor would be grateful to him later.

"I'm going to grease your seams a little, and I'll tell you my memories..."he continued, feeling Trevor gradually relax into the light embrace of his arms that brought him closer, and the circular movements that his hands slowly applied to the healed back.

Trevor pulled back a little, and made an inspired pout.

“You'll also have to wash my hair. I love when you do it, it does things to me...

Acthéean raised a mocking eyebrow.

"Yes, and apparently that makes our favorite herbalist happy too! Didn't you notice how amazed that good man was when I washed your mane the other time...I don't think he'd ever seen that before...at least, between two men...

"Isn't that what we call 'voyeur', in a certain sense?''suggested Trevor, the tip of his cheeky pout.

The apprentice chuckled at the relevant thought, and stood, breaking the sensual embrace, and causing Trevor to gasp in frustration as he felt himself melting under the caress, with pleasant little tingles curling his spine, and warm showers in his whole belly. He who hated even the idea of someone touching him, just a few months ago! Now he lived in expectation that his friend could hug him like this, out of the curious, judging gazes that would pin them mercilessly to the pillory of shame. He was just as dazed and flabbergasted in front of this particular attraction that the holy writings violently castigated, invoking death even for those who comforted themselves in it in shocking and most libertine bliss.

Why would God punish those who truly love each other, and are Soul-Mates in two separate Shadow-Hearts but still intertwined like Siamese?

A thought, a memory crossed his troubled mind, and he muttered almost indiscernibly about this strange aspect that stirred his memory. At the same time, Acthéean rummaged carelessly on the table overgrown with parchments. His hand chose a particular drawing, that of the Other, which he held up to his scrutinizing gaze, while an almost sad confidence rose in the still comfortable and mellow atmosphere of the room. The joyful crackling of the hearth devouring fine logs of cedar and birch whose paneled effluvia, gorged with crisp sap, flooded the vaporous ether.

Beneath his loose shirt and gaping over the impressive scars on his shoulder, his heart skipped and knotted at the words. His Anamnesis leapt into the dark rooms of biographical storage, and found the details of the story that Trevor mumbled sadly.

"When I was still sharing one of the communal dorms, there were guys meeting in their beds, in the deep night...I wasn't sleeping a deep sleep at that time, because probably I was afraid that I'm surprised like this in my bed...so I heard these comrades, they thought no one heard, sleeping soundly from the fatigue of training…and I heard them, in the heavy silence…I didn't even dare to breathe, I was afraid that they find me awake...they were making strange noises, which made me very uncomfortable, I almost felt like throwing up…I didn't know what they were doing, but I knew it was prohibited…When I got up with the others, in the morning, everything was normal, they’d returned to their reciprocal diapers, and I never knew their identities...but I felt this mortifying shame which must’ve made me blush, and I was always afraid that they see my shame for them drawn on my inflamed face...My fear grew when others started making fun of my beardless appearance, as I told you the other day, and their threats made me tremble to see me helpless in my sleep to be abused like this...the two guys who were doing the wrong, apparently were reported one morning, and we saw the superiors come into the dormitory when everyone was still barely awake, and they took the sinners away…We all looked at each other, stunned, trying to detect who’d denounced their nocturnal practices...I’d done nothing, said nothing, but I felt bad under the gaze of others, because I think they all thought that I’d been the delator...

“I remember, yes, this scandal, I was already in the private cell part, prepared to go to Efrain for my training…’’remembered Acthéean, delicately handling the drawn vellum. ''What exactly happened to them isn’t known, but I believe the two men were sent back to their families without any particular reprisals, as they were, I believe, extremely powerful noble families…They weren’t even exiled, nor excommunicated, but banned from any career in the Brotherhood which kept their seal on the delicate file in the eyes of the Church...They covered up the affair...It wouldn’t have taken on proportions the same, if the two’d been more discreet, and not doing that in the dormitories…They were fools who thought they were untouchable, without knowing the true rules of the dark when it comes to deviant morals in the eyes of others…

Acthéean, armed with the drawing, settled back on the edge of Trevor's bed, still considering the fine and meticulous lines of the portrait.

"They were stupid to believe that we would accept their libations in this way, without making an example of it...But in fact, all this is only perverse hypocrisy...You know something about it, you’re subjected to harassment which should be prohibited and punished, but allowed with impunity and blind tolerance…And by individuals who’re supposed to be examples of rigor for all...

His voice’d taken on a menacing and furious tone at the memories of the incident of the Brotherhood envoys towards Trevor. They knew of such practices, but cowardly hid their heads in the sand while inhibiting others.

"You know, I shouldn't say it,"continued Acthéean.‘I learned from my father's colleagues that one of the young people’d committed suicide, collapsed with shame, and rejected by his family...

Trevor's shoulders slumped a little more at the sad announcement, and Acthéean gave him a long look where the gold nuggets merged a little more visible in the reverberated glow of the braziers.

“The worst thing about this story is that they both really loved each other…The one who denounced them, ruined their lives…The second’s only a shadow of himself, collapsed with grief at the loss of his lover...He remains amorphous and indifferent to everything...He dies slowly...

“Why does God punish like this when in the end it’s more common than we think?’’asked Trevor, choking with the emotion of sadness that made him sob inwardly for the two unfortunates. “Men’re intolerant when it doesn’t look like them, when it doesn’t conform to their own convictions…

"Tell me, are you the one who made very nocturnal inspections in the back rooms of Andreas's library, right?’’questioned Acthéean mischievously, a more amused gleam brightened the coppery screed which’d smothered the sloes.“For once it wasn’t you who suffered the punishments…

Trevor pursed his lips comically, the dusty old-pink a little more on the angles of the cheekbones, the steely blue of the orbs glistening with water.

“There’re…strange books out there,”he confided.‘Shocking even…I’ve seen and read incredible things, which I didn’t think we could do…between men…such writings would normally be burned by the church, but there they’re, piled up in dark niches, in these halls secrets…There’re an incredible amount of them…

“Say, did you have fun all night there? You therefore had before your eyes a sample of what men are capable of doing to satisfy their constantly exponential satisfaction in the perversion of others, and very often it’s those who rebel against such procedures, who dedicate to gemonies for the forbidden loves to which they’re the first to indulge, in all simplicity in their position of untouchables,’’underlined the apprentice, with a light, bitter laugh in his voice.

“I was deeply shocked,”the fiery Belmont protested, remembering his exhilarated and overheated body reacting to the almost pornographic texts and illustrations of the manuscripts. His first real emotions’d awakened before these pernicious arts, and had sent him myriads of stings of shame and desire in every particle of his fevered body.

Acthéean leaned towards him, catching his gaze, amused by the exponential blush that was invading his forehead now.

“But you must’ve been extremely excited too…Don’t tell me these Oeuvres didn’t do anything to you…

“Oeuvres? it's shameful debauchery…’’spat Trevor, trying to justify himself, as he sank into the swamps of his mortification under the now laughing and mocking gaze of his friend who wasn’t being turned upside down! Despite his seventeen years, Acthéean’d acquired a foolproof sexual and philosophical maturity, very early in his life. He knew full well that any individual solicited in front of this kind of illustrations and manuscripts powerfully decrying the intensity of love between males,-and that since the most remote Antiquity-, could only lead to the same behavioral results of the involuntary 'witnesses' in the face of the scandalous unpacking that offends their conviction and their firmest faith. After all, the men were all weak to the suggestive debauchery teasing their fantasies and strangled libido with prejudices.

He watched the brunette beauty sniffing the air with large rounds of suffocated mouth, searching for the words that would save him from his behavioral debacle in the face of the boldness of his adventure. Acthéean took pity on poor Belmont's disarray, and put the drawing in his hands.

“And that naturally aroused you…that’s a normal reaction, Trevor. You’ve thus learned that all that’s forbidden isn’t necessarily unpleasant, quite the contrary, and it’s those who allow themselves to lecture, who’re often the worst...So you see, if God really had to strike down with His anger all those who’re considered 'sinners' because they dare to love those identical to their gender, He would start pouring out His desagreement on those who call themselves saints, preaching in the church…Don't you think? And don't give me the 'you're a blasphemer' register, spare me that, please...You're smart to figure it out...and you're the first victim of it, too...

“Does that make us bad men? Unworthy of our Lord's love?''Trevor asked shyly, appalled by the logic of the words, torn between contradictory thoughts that gnawed at him.

Acthéean leaned on the hands placed on each side of his friend, at the level of the hips exposed by the blanket. He could see his friend's flat stomach rippling under heavy, choppy breathing. He noticed the drawn tenderness of the abdominal muscles, subtly carving valleys and hills in their sketched, almost elegiac formation, in which shone an overflow of nourishing oils that Trevor’d applied liberally.

He couldn’t prevent his hand from touching the soft and fragile walls, exposing their share of hues oscillating between the yellows, blues, violets-purples of tiny exploded vessels. Ethereal lacework of ramifications crowning the navel so strangely like a baroque and abstract canvas at the same time, detailing the brutal impact in such eccentric swarms. Such a small root growth had made this hematoma which took on the disconcerting appearance of an unusual oeuvre. And on Trevor's very pale dermis, it gave a detailed picture of pain in inaccustomed haunting.

Does that make us bad men? The question spun at high speed in Acthéean's cloudy and eager to touch mind. His fingers flirted in ghosts on the moving surface of the belly seeming to panic in an increasingly rapid breathing, suggesting an exponential excitement.

…his hands slipped under the armored cloak, snaking between the straps holding the harness of the longsword…the fingers were lost in the smoothness of the inguinal fold hollowed out and highlighted by the flatness of the flawless abdominal belt…flared towards the groin, almost completely bare by the low waist of the leather pants, encircling the sharp hips with finesse...

"If God thought I was a bad man, He wouldn't have allowed me to come back among you,"whispered Acthéean, fascinated by the moving mass that hollowed out the delicate edges of the hips, displaying a borderline anorexic and emphasizing the acerbity of the pelvis.

“It's likely that this…Savior Angel who came to me, was the result of my own fantasies so deeply buried within me, and I imagined this Being of Light according to my own physical quotas, moved under the delirium of my fading spirit...I saw Him Vampire, because my dying mind reveled in one last image of perfection that could only have originated in Darkness, and corrupted by my visions of halls of erotic statuary…Because it’s Darkness who brought me back...Because my whole being, my whole body was irretrievably absorbed in these universes of incredible debauchery...Which still makes me doubt the veracity of certain reminiscences...Where begins the part of the fantasy, and where ends a reality much more painful than we couldn't believe it...

The baritone's intonation pulsated in its lowest sonorities, and trembled slightly under the memories redrawn before Acthéean's eyes. He couldn't have made it all up, could he?

"So if God judges us to be bad because we dare to dream of the impossible, the unattainable, then I'm an bad man by His standards...

Trevor daredn’t move, for fear of breaking the spell of the moment which, he’d to admit, set his whole body on fire. His mind, his flesh quivering with goosebumps, as he felt the breath warm lips spilling over his ecchymosed dermis, tracing tiny furious rivulets scattered in an unusual bouquet on his belly twisting in the impression of a surging wave snaking slyly in the depths. A radiant warmth that merged into every particle of his being. Like that time, before the blasphemous writings, but multiplied by a thousand. A ferocious predator that awakened under the caress of the one who would tame him.

His gaze slipped from the mass of hair falling in a ticklish cascade while Acthéean honored in such a moving and tender way each wounded part, to the drawing of the portrait of the One who seemed to have turned his friend's life upside down. And saving him, too.

His voice almost quavered when he whispered his request, as if he was afraid to break the silence, a soft seraphic bubble protecting them both. A rare moment of intimacy, as they didn’t often have the opportunity. The enchanting fumes escaping from the braziers, from the hearth filled with tasty woods of fragrant sap, from the heady plants burning on the embers, causing smoky tendrils that’re aerial and captivating for the sense of smell. Like ectoplasms engraved in ether heavy with sweetness and devouring sensuality gradually awakening. The natural aromas played like aphrodisiac incense on the bodies rubbed with sybaritic caresses enhanced with oleaginous ointments opening up the senses even more to the underlying erethism.

"Tell me about what happened to you there..."he babbled, closing his eyes, letting himself navigate on those touches so ethereal and firm at the same time. The last words were a gasping breath. The fiery teenager discovered that he loved the flattery on this tender part of his anatomy. At least, he was totally confident between his friend's perfectionist and expert tact. His last inhibiting barriers gave way, and he swayed slowly under the seductive pulls.

Acthéean immediately understood, by experience, that he was touching an erogenous domain in his friend, and set off to discover these quivering zones, helped by a few drops of the oil which took on heavenly olfactions exacerbating all the stimuli in a bouquet of final artifice. While narrating in chosen, delicate words, his strange experience of Death; his wounds; his fears. But especially the Other. He nevertheless chooses to remain laconic in the extreme sensations he’d felt in the arms of ash and silver, exposing only the perceptions encountered; a suffocating seizure of wonder, during the unusual care under which his body miraculously healed.

…the velvet of the silver dermis similar to a precious fabric, to the low, almost cold temperature of the body…

…the angularity of the high cheekbones, the stretched almond-shaped eyes like those of cats, the very high arched eyebrows giving the whole face an unusual triangular shape where everything was chiseled in the perfection of the features…

…a magnificent jawline in its breadth and delicacy, prominence of wide lips hemmed in an almost touching sulky pout, where the arch falling from the mouth fold never altered the characteristics of this so sad Beauty…

…the sloes of molten gold immersed in the disturbing darkness of sclera bathed in a glittering glow, seeming to absorb all that the look gazed upon, like a deep chasm at the edge of infinite space…a world-devouring cosmos to the agony…eyes capable of exterminating anything with a blink of the eyelids, all at the same time screaming with an unfathomable asthenia suffocating under the tears…

…the wings of a straight and fine nose, without the shadow of a deviation or bump, hieratic in its line, seemed to quiver under the tears that HE seemed to hold back…

…intelligent hands, ending in claws which promised fury and extreme danger, whereas they’d become small claws of a fragile kitten, on his sore skin, like caresses promising prohibition…

Acthéean hesitated, then recounted with delight the Angel, the impossible Seraph, who henceforth haunted his nights. Beauty unthinkable to a mortal, only born and bathed by Tenebra pure and absolute; ardent with life and yet sepulchral; ​​dark and visceral; insane metaphysical inscrutable in their spiral undulations. Yes, this Being was Metaphysical incarnate. A paramount question to the unknown Quantum in this century. Metaphysics born of Chaos, this’s what could’ve been this whole and irrational Entity; immaterial Thought which shouldn’t have taken body and form under the intensity of invoked Death.

While untying his descriptions so vehement in their insight, each word defined for exponential appeal without offending Trevor's susceptibility; frantically defining in the fever of the emotions of the present moment; imbuing the imaginary in the delights thus detailed, Acthéean led his friend in these sybaritic universes with the tips of his inquisitive fingers on the emotional flesh spread out there, under his benevolence. Panting under the excessive stimuli infuriating all the essence subjected to delirious caresses and experimenting the taboo borders of what was finally allowed. And the oiled fingers continued their tender minuet like an elegy chosen by subtle and touching pressures like naughty ghosts. Pressing on sensitive spots, causing tiny electric jolts as the flesh quivered with goosebumps. He’d the silent satisfaction of seeing the delicious little pimples bristle against the pain-painted surface of the tender abdomen.

This body which finally freed itself from the culpable constraints castrating the libido, reacted positively to what’d gone far beyond the simple innocent tenderness of more thorough hugs. The skin exuded its exponential excitement in bouquets of greenness and acidulousness of a soul that hadn’t known the sin of flesh; the amber very present in the tones of citrus fruits and pungent bitterness; a suave acidity like that of curdled milk: strong and unctuous at the same time. A musk of frost, of snow, astonishing, opposed to the embers seeming to make it emulsify with the heady scents of spices mixed in the intense woody; the bewitchment of impetuous flowers such as hibiscus, poppy, Trevor's favorite flowerings. An incredible blend that made Acthéean's fine sense of smell quiver, in a harmonious parade where each fragrance’d its assigned place, without ever guarding against the others, or obliterating them with heavier head-redolence. This immense bouquet of flavors was the typical identity of Belmont, and Acthéean’d this incredible idea that even his blood must’ve a particular and unique sapidity.

Why such a thought? Had he given his blood to the Angel? Without realizing it, clouded by the overwhelming sensations that’d accumulated in him, that he would’ve offered his blood without realizing it? Efrain’d said that apparently he was thinking of an Angel, perhaps, but of a Vampire first and foremost, then if HE was 'Highborn'.

Had it been this, this 'miracle' remedy of his healing?

Instead of interrupting this incredible moment of sensuality, the very idea that he would’ve been "drunk" by his savior didn’t put him off, and on the contrary pushed him into his flirtations with the abandoned and shivering body of his friend. The latter listened, delighted by the details, his mind cloudy, engulfed in layers of happiness, his very high endorphin levels suffusing the brain in cottony and erotic atmospheres as if he were on opiates again, but the ecstasy of the senses multiplied by a thousand. It was the very first time that he’d abandoned himself to pleasure in this way, and that another, above all, had honored his body like that. However, he knew he shouldn’t go too far, not being in shape for more intoxicating experiences, but he trusted Acthéean, and decided not to think any further.

Acthéean also knew that he’d to measure his gestures, enough to have warmed this languid body, but enough to stop the inevitable that could destroy everything. Moreover, Efrain could return at any time. Although the man’d tolerated their sleeping together, from time to time, in the very beginning when Trevor slept on opiates,-that he’d admired their graceful osmosis in the toilet of the hair (perhaps he also had a fetish?)- it wasn’t necessary to tempt the devil either! The herbalist would probably go into a rage over the unconsciousness of his two youngsters who sinned openly under his roof.

But if he’d been so shy and repulsive towards the first gestures of friendship, the lithe and muscular form of Trevor blended into a world of bliss intended only for himself, in his awkward clashes against a caress that would soothe him, he let himself be overwhelmed by the urge of his flesh now screaming for touches that would relieve the stormy waves throbbing in his overheated groin.

His breath was agonizing in sighs that he wanted to stifle, fascinated by the soft baritone voice telling him breathtaking scenes of perverse and orgiastic delirium. He softly begged for the lascivious descriptions to continue as he clung loosely to his friend, his hands wandering in turn over the shrouded back of the shirt, fingers rolling over the angular mounds of muscles more developed than his own. He enjoined almost in chopped up supplications to speak to him of the voluptuous marvels unpacking their amorous obscenities in the carnal aggressions that Acthéean whispered in his ear, in an almost deafening and suspended silence, as if the whole room clung to the fluffy lips releasing licentious fantasies.

Each breath became a dull moan, shyly released into the air heavy with dampness and a bitter, heady exudation of arousal, pleasingly tingling the senses of smell and now exalting the stimuli with the release of pheromones, giving vertigo to minds stuffed with endorphins and the aphrodisiac incense of natural musks.

Between the slow oscillations of the pelvis, Trevor was still grimacing from the pain in his hip and aching flank, and the skin tugged wickedly under the sutures, reminding him in a bitter reproach of his still precarious state. The bubbling warmth in his groin failed in the effort to supplant the vicious tugging, and he’d to stop his languid rocking with an afflicted groan. It hurt so badly between his legs too, his engorged arousal crying out for freedom with throbbing pain. He’d reached a level of excitement like never before, and couldn't be left like this now.

It’d been so long since he’d tried to stifle a sexuality that made him feared, and that he recklessly buried himself under layers of uncomfortable tissue. He was frightened by his body's abilities to be heard in its needs, that he’d plugged all the gaping holes in these chasms of lust. He’d tried everything, deafening himself to the silent complaints in the night that woke him up; stupefying his mind with prohibitive readings and sermons promising eternal hell. But all these efforts’d wallowed suddenly, during risky readings of immodest and lascivious pamphlets, of outrageous drawings which haunted him. Mean and perverse gestures against him. The masks’d definitely sunk into the oceans of impudicity with the arrival of Acthéean.

And his dreams! For weeks, since his confinement in the dispensary, these nights suffered the moist sweats of brazen desires, revolting his harassed flesh; his mind was tormented by incredibly shocking images of aggression; tenderness mixed with extreme pain so exacerbated that he could no longer separate the enjoyment of evil from that of the ecstatic happiness of being violated. In the limbo of his songes, he felt the wicked pull in his long locks, along with the possessive embraces that absorbed his soul, his being into its primal essence; each molecule screaming in shameful ecstasy thus submitting itself under the aleph who thus appropriated all the torn fibers. The small dawns stretched out in the languor of limbs tensed by the stormy onirism of embraces, leaving a taste of bitterness, of honey, of milky juice evaporating in intoxicating perfumes; musk heavy with sex and tingling sweat the senses; all leaving their distressed traces at the bottom of a crumpled shirt of 'phantom' frolics. And a cynical pain biting into his unsatisfied lower abdomen.

Now, he wanted to open all his senses freely by playing with his imagination boosted by the naughty stories, outrageous libertine in the widely exposed libations of the statuaries. His mind was constructing sequences of deeply shocking sybaritism, and his body was seeking its enjoyment in the spectrum of its exacerbated perceptions. The maelstrom felt in his dreams took on all the depraved flamboyance, rationalizing his wildest fantasies breaking their chains of censorship.

Acthéean knew he was hurting from his wounds, and from his excitement, and calmly reassured him between the details of the cyclopean rooms with the exhibitions of impure and violent depravity. Whispering "sshhtt" to him to calm the ardor, wiping with a light hand the forehead suffused with tangy sweat. His whole being delivered innumerable olfactions, intertwined in their smoothness, their sweetness, their acidity and their languid fever; the fire and the ice exploding in myriads of suave bouquets at the height of an eroticism pushed to the limit never reached. As if his friend was going to pass away in a final act of total shamelessness.

Then the fluffy lips continued their unpacking of naughty, libidinous words, describing the atmospheres of frost mixed with the forges of hell which made these places of gargantuan, cannibalistic debauchery throb; dismaying devouring of the flesh yielding to the pangs of delicious and agonizing tortures. Balconies crumbling under invaluable marble, gleaming with the golden lights of candelabras; pendular chandeliers in wrought iron platforms, from which cascaded wax stalactites sculpted with concupiscences taking on the crude features of the tortured of these paradisiacal hells.

Out of pure sadism perhaps, Acthéean crudely revealed, with deliberately chosen words in a cruder and more shameless vocabulary, the statuary of the Ephebe violated by the demonic Angel. Oeuvre that’d deeply marked the youngman, more than others. He knew that because of, or thanks to, this monumental statue of lubricity, he’d lived a unique experience, both terrifying and extreme in its stimuli exploding in the delusions aroused. Had he really been through it all, or was there some part his drunken, ecstatic brain’d made up? The whole thing’d passed in a waking dream, or a drowsy awakening.

He persisted in his story, relentless and unflappable now, watching for every bodily reaction as Trevor literally embarked on the transcendent waves of sublimated erethism. It was his first time, and Acthéean wanted to give him a moment of pure enjoyment that he would remember. Even if the report wasn’t sexually consummated. He suppressed the beggarly sway of the slender hips, holding them with both hands, imagining later holding them bruised in wild coitus. His lips'd become tight lines in a wicked grin, and the words clung desperately to them, before being tossed out in a stream of shamefully blasphemous descriptions.

Mentally, he made a fairly precise list of all the reactions conditioned under the expert caresses, exploring the erogenous terrains which were awakening in his friend. Gradually, he would know how to take advantage of the naughty details which wouldn’t fail to punctuate their future more emboldened antics.Trevor's sensual profile was revealed as follows: adoration for the manipulation of his hair-ornament, conducive to the most unbridled fantasies; his belly hyper-sensitive to touch, hollowing out languidly under the searching fingers; the swan-neck and collarbones became a minefield under the oral flirtations. His whole body was a volcano awakening under the ice; thirsty for voluptuous touches; eager for the lascivious layers accumulating in order to make him reach the pinnacles of an ecstasy never before achieved. The image of a delicacies being carefully prepared, ready to be consumed.

Acthéean knew that his friend was lost in the maze of impetuous plenitude, and sublimation in the discovery of his body. So he continued the delicious 'torment' of his narration, putting the climax around what’d made his friend open up in a few minutes. The Porn-Art statuary fascinated him and made his body dance in languor, the hope of liberation. He pushed the vice of outrageous remarks, blasphemies exacerbating the already painful angles and emulating a licentiousness that would’ve suffocated more than one.

Deliberately, he occupied his lips with these elaborate obscenities, and avoided touching the overheated and sweating body as if under a consummate act. Choosing in a lustful and sadic way to contemplate the flesh in begging, rather than melting it under the tactile appositions which would risk making the young inexperienced cum too quickly. Just by the power of the words, of his voice, he knew instinctively that he could bring his friend overboard of the skiff already drunk under the blows of vocal battering, just like that.

Probably a Marquis de Sade, well before his century...

One of his hands remained on the stricken hip, while the other began its wandering, lower down to the moist, warm cocoon of the beardless groin, barely covered in the thin fabric of night pants. A meager barrier that yielded with alacrity under the gentle thrust of the slender fingers like furtive snakes on the marble columns of the thighs opening easily under exploration, revealing the treasure hidden for too long in the halitous shadow of the virgin sanctuary.

Trevor jumped in a gasp under the touch, blushing brutally, the sapphires freezing on Acthéean. An 'sshht' was answered in the languor cascading its perverse words, while the expert hand began a slow and agonizing caress on the aching member of being engorged with desire. The Belmont would've liked to cling to his blasphemous lips of happiness, but Acthéean was firm in his hold, not interrupting for a single moment his incredible details, his voice flat, almost lifeless, his gaze scrutinizing the tiniest reaction of his friend, looking for the smallest hint of an area more sensitive than another, to reach the climax.

It was almost an extraordinary lascivious dance, taking place in slow motion, immersed in the vapors of incense and body dampness; the crackling of embers, the hissing of burnt wood; in the distance a few bursts of voices coming from outside ; a song air from the wind in the hearth sometimes raising some ash and dust from the flue. A long unfolding of smells and sounds so intimate in this sacred bubble where a youngman learned his first sensual emotions under the expert and loving hand of his friend-lover. They were very far away, the two of them, two Soulmates in the ecstasy of discovery. Far, very far from the extreme punishments and chastisements inflicted on those who dared to love each other with a forbidden love. By what right could one prohibit loving each other like this?

Between the long and slender legs in the supple muscle, was nestled a Sanctuary, the most intimate of all, and Acthéean deposited his sacred ritual there in the brushings, the firm touch. Teasing wrap on the pale length, as diaphanous as the rest of the body, barely blessed with infant down in the darkest folds sinking deeper between the firm, plump cheeks of the buttocks.

Even in this part that should’ve been ugly in the idea of ​​some put off by the male sex, Trevor was beautiful, and had this incredible fragility halfway female/male in his harmonious features. Fragile only in appearance, for the roué had been blessed by the Gods of Beauty all the way, and sported a proud and aggressive length, slightly purplish at the head drooling a sweet shy fluid of arousal. Acthéean’d already noted that his friend was lucky, even at rest.

Acthéan let himself drift on the shores of his fantasies, while narrating the magnificent encounter with the Angel. Pressing on the feverish fragments of libations, of sadistic exultations in the sculptures of the Knights-Vampires dragging their victims by the hair. Trevor immediately reacted to the image, his length jerking a little more in the sugary hand. Acthéean knew what was going to release his dying friend in strangled moans, babbling incomprehensible words. He was clinging to the shoulders, taking care, however, not to carelessly squeeze the injured one. His hips'd resumed their drier undulation, hoping to reach the climax he felt rolling in his belly which hollowed out with the effort and the ecstasy.

The hands suddenly let go of their grip on the apprentice who'd begun a kind of undulating dance prolonging the embraces, leading the sinuous body to nirvana, and they tensed in a desperate grip on the sheets, clinging to them like a shipwrecked man on a buoy.

Viciously, the apprentice lapses over the description of the cannibal demons devouring the flesh of the tortured, in a flamboyant metaphor for pornography, while the narration beached in the details of the Ephebe in his silently screaming pleasure, hair insanely long burst in offended locks, down to the feet of the aggressor Fallen. The realistic scene carved from obsidian as dark as Trevor's hair.

The back suddenly arched, the neck broke in the curvature, the face drowned in the capillary web, while the tendons of the throat protruded under the thrust of the strangled cry of liberation. His insides were crushed under the deaf tightening, heralding the enjoyment that was being extracted from his inhibitions. Tense and pain battled the features on the face, which suddenly relaxed in the orgasm finally reached. The injured hip protested under a nasty throw, but its sickly recriminations were silenced by the waves of happiness twisting the depths of his belly, while the juice ejected in great spurts on the protective hand and the glistening dermis of sweat and oil.

Trevor experienced his first hedonism at the enchanting sound of a strange, outrageously erotic story chanted by the fluffy lips. Acthéean felt his own arousal hurt so badly, but he insisted on giving Trevor all the pleasure.

He gently stroked the relieved member still quivering with waves of pleasure, inhaling deeply the heady musks of orgasm spreading a heavy slick adding to the various inebriate bouquets. Very quickly, the more powerful emanations of sex and sweat took over all the smoothness in ethereal mist.

Trevor began to shake from his first orgasm that’d been so intense, and only barely landed from his shattering cloud, like he was high on opiates. His stomach hollowed out even more as he resumed regular breathing. Automatically to fight against the cooling, his arms crossed in front of his chest raised by the spasmodic jolts of shortness-breath.

The water sapphires stared into the gray-hazelnuts and Trevor thought as Acthéean's eyes were… like melting! Bursts of bright stars in the copper and gold sky, more than usual. Could it be that his eyes change like this during arousal and orgasm?

"He…HE gave you something else,"Trevor stammered, reaching for his friend's eyes.‘’He gave you this particularity that you didn't have before...

"What?''Acthéean muttered softly, dazed and delighted by the intensity of Trevor's enjoyment. 

“Your eyes…you didn’t have eyes like that before…

"What's wrong with my eyes?… ''questioned the apprentice, gently grabbing his finger pointing to the phenomenon.

Then he didn't wait for the answer, and slowly flirted with the lips wet from having been bitten under the impact of orgasm. Trevor opened himself to it and they could taste the musk of excitement invading their taste-buds, the still quivering breaths, the different flavors of treatments and plants they used in their hygienic ablutions. A refrain of such diverse molecules charged with all bodily and aphrodisiacs juices, which made them turn their heads in the completion of the sexual act.

A long shiver ran down Trevor's spine, succumbing to the coolness of drying and cooling sweat and seminal fluid. Acthéean having remained dressed, he didn’t immediately feel that the embers were dying in the fireplace, and the space weighed down by various and heady scents'd also cooled down.

"But you?''asked Trevor, as he got up,‘’you didn't get anything…You can't stay like this…

"Don't worry..." whispered Acthéean, kissing his forehead wet with sweat where a few locks were still stuck. ‘’I'm glad you finally had your first orgasm in good conditions. That's the important thing... I'm going to get something to clean you up, and get you dressed a little, the fire’s dying... Efrain’s going to gut me if I let the heat escape this place...

Indeed the temperature of the room’d refreshed now that the peak of ecstasy’d gone down. Acthéean hastened to gather gloves soaked in cleansing lotions, forcing himself to forget and calm his excitement. He was happy how his friend’d reacted, and for nothing in the world would he’ve wanted to spoil this moment by an act of pure selfishness. Just the sight of this young beauty arching himself in pleasure carried on the arpeggios of ecstasy, had brought him as much satisfaction as if he’d arrived at his own pleasure. He carelessly felt the afterglow sneakily leaking into the tissues of his brais, but stubbornly decided to overshadow his own well-being to bring all the attention and care to his friend.

It was a real pleasure to continue this tender moment with a careful toilet of the upset intimacy. The deliciously warm glove cleans the opal groin of all dirt, the belly suffused with too much oil and sweat, the hip in careful palpation. Efrain’d to let the skin breathe out of the too compressive bandages, it was enough just to apply the nourishing anointings.

When he dried the dermis with a soft towel, he couldn't prevent his lips from flickering over the sutures and the flesh still swollen with anger. Then his down flirted like a ghost on the discreet groin, the belly afflicted with its bloody laces; went up along the sternum, in the hollow between the pectorals, the nest of the clavicles; the alabaster of the swan's neck, the arch of the tendons so beautiful in their pillars; the jaw so willful, brushing the lips with a mischievous touch, sliding over the bridge of the nose, fluttering over each eyelid, and landing on the cleansed and relaxed forehead.

Trevor melted into the long, tender affection paying such touching tribute to his lost self. For the very first time, he knew a gesture of love that he’d never known, even at birth. His Real was so deeply and irrevocably graphed in his convulsed genes of various cleavages,-an indelible Glyph of his transgenerational Curse-, that he could never have imagined that such happiness would come to him. Let him be taken care of. And he knew his first emotions in the arms of a man.

He surrendered to the hug again, helping him to fully return to the reality of the chilled room. Acthéean put on a nice clean linen-colored shirt, and even though the fabric was thin, it managed to stop the cold chills.

Acthéean then got busy reviving the braziers, the hearth, stuffing it with slices of birch-wood with such a unique flavor in woody essences. Plants with relaxing odoriferous abilities were sprinkled on the burning embers of the wrought iron containers.

Then, he concentrated on the hibiscus infusion, so adored by Trevor. They spent the rest of the time waiting for Efrain, sipping their intoxicating beverages of perfumes. Acthéean spoke again of his memories, wandering in the meanders of extraordinary details, exalted by his adventure. Trevor was almost envious that he’d experienced such incredible things, at times flabbergasted equally between the marvelous, the unspeakable forbidden, the terror engendered by such places haunted by entities hated by mortals, to whom they’d declared a ruthless war.

But through these abominations, Trevor understood the state of his friend in the amazement of these inconceivable worlds, and which’d been unwrapped to him so crudely in his human eyes. Halfway between Life and Death. Where did the Marvelous begin, where did we cross the borders of the Absurd?

Trevor knew he’d to bury the often excruciating, or downright orgiastic details of what’d happened, in his own Anamnesis. The others were never to know. Trevor was so happy and proud that Acthéean’d chosen him to confide in, making him also this sepulchral tumbrel of his testimonies and his fantasies. Living sepulcher jealously guarding the shadow of this Angel of ash and silver, to whom no one could compare the pure and nebulous Beauty born of Tenebra...

In his heart of hearts, Acthéean made a comparison that frightened him, without knowing why. No human possessed such purity because it was inhuman, blessed by the Obscuro. Except one person. Who was sketched in the exquisiteness of supernatural grace identical to His. And it hurt him without knowing why. This cloak of sly apprehension that gnawed at his soul, his heart. Like a premonition coming true.

Yes, his gaze’d changed, because HE’d breathed something of HIM into him, which’d settled in his soft gray and hazel shaded eyes, becoming a hot copper glittering with boiling gold. So subtle, you’d to get really close to see the change. He knew he was perfectly capable of hiding this strangeness to intruders, aware of a new ability since his 'rebirth'.

And this person was sipping his creamy beverage, facing him, his face still bathed in the luminous halo of the one who'd just experienced his first real orgasm...

And Acthéean, like this afflicted Angel, felt like sinking into incomprehensible tears.

He clung to his need to return to the Origins of a Cradle that would welcome their sleeping Souls quietly into the bliss of their Astral Destiny.

He longed to return, there, to those places where no one could tread the precious floors carved in marble; where the anamorphic grins of scenes forbidden by the Almighty were reflected; but near which his very Essence’d been sated to the point of intoxication. He considered himself a privileged Chosen, and only aspired to lead his Soulmate, his Heart-Shadow, far from the imposed rigors and the confusing remorse that gradually eroded their consumed Beings.

He only longed for this inner Peace, shared with his Astral-Twin, in a great Sleep of which they wouldn’t be afraid. A little Death that would give them one last chance...

<<<<oooII=ÕÕÕ=IIooo>>>>

Chapter Text

This could’ve been cause for despair and discouragement, it reinforced them in their unfailing osmosis. Two ecstatic and intoxicated Siamese sewn together in an endless embrace; the skins merging in their individual musk to make only a layer of freshness and languor where all possibilities denied the stupid rules that would’ve aborted this interpenetration unique; to make a deafening synergy of meaning ready to explode, vertiginous in the permanent inebriate.

The bodies undulated gently, remaining in soft and devouring tempos of sensuality, while respecting the purely platonic act. Some would’ve said that these were simple innocent embraces underlined in superficial hugs. Just enough to flatter the egos; the flesh eager to touch; wrap the abandoned spirits in a selfish hedonism perhaps, or an erethism with the dangerous flavors of outrageous flirtation.

One abandoning himself to submission under the expert and cajoling hands, the other lying on the beautiful alabaster sculpture which undulated lasciviously under the heat of the teasing caresses. The shirts removed, the busts gleamed in the furnace of the braziers, on which were mirrored the bursts of incandescent flame-red storm. The two long bodies devoted themselves to the simple embrace in the sensational touch of the skins with opal complexions, sharing their fever sip of desire. The moment wasn't for the act strictly speaking, but simply for the ecstasy of the senses tasting the intoxicating bouquets that one and the other diffused in their sweet excitement muzzled in its ardor.

Only the shirts'd abandoned their quivering forms in the smoothness of platonic lovemaking. They savored this little masochistic side of pushing their sensations into sensual baths electrifying the simple pleasure of velvety touch, without agreeing to the final act which would be too eager and hasty, and would perhaps risk weakening this incredible osmosis built on mutual trust.

Was this the true lovers who knew how to master their happiness only in this wonderful sense of touch, without ever sullying this pure moment of bliss with pain or final aggression? Instinctively, they’d understood everything in their exploratory perambulations towards each other; united in their precious bubble that no one would burst with venom; wandering on the shores known only to themselves; walking in balance on the carved rocks in 'giant steps' of their introspective universes.

Their spines rolled lasciviously, mimicking the act of love, never crossing the tiny borders of the honored Sanctuary, knowing full well that a moment’ll come, without constraint, without remorse. For the moment, their flesh was woven deliciously in the powerful, spicy and woody emanations, their personal musks made of copper, frost, amber, citrus, greenness, embers, heavy purple, of opiates that’d lined the walls of their greedy lips, indulging in chewing unctuously the treacherous leaves.

Their two auras drifting in fluctuating rings of shaded and bloody hues; greenish for the acidity of the remnants of sly remorse; deep purples for an endlessly inflamed sensuality under the expertise of quest fingerings; blazing golden yellow and earthen ocher for psyches battling the waves of passion threatening to engulf the ardent vessels and drag them down to the angry ocean shallows; the shimmering silver rending the still hazardous hesitations suspending a gesture for fear of offending the idolized flesh; a touch of pearly opal for the rebirth of the senses in agony under the flatteries and the purity of the act and tender feelings where primal respect’d settled in a mutuality that didn’t need verbalization; mixtures of earth and plants in their chromatic circle for the unconditional osmosis that welded their two beings.

It smelt of greenness, ecstatic acidulousness, the salty-sweetness of beading fluids, powerful musk mingled with a pungent, intoxicating sweat. All painted on a canvas where everything would be flamboyance and ecstatic depth; intensified uprising of pain united to pleasure in the same uniqueness where the borders no longer existed to define exactly the quivering of velvety flesh in their purple enthusiasm until to sublimation. In this overflow of anagogy where no exegesis could put into words all the contemplation of the bodies, only in a palette of myriads of shimmering colors in the flux of sensations sharpened to the extreme, the two Souls resembled so much the obsidian statuaries so provocative in their sybaritism, while being redacted of the wild and heartbreaking act.

Their bellies clenched in the storms of desire that rolled slyly into the depths, awakening the stiffened limbs of greed. The breaths hiccupped very softly, almost indiscernible in their desire to remain silent, not to wake up this sensual night gorged with thunderstorms rolling in the air, electrifying the ether with its moist and warm layers. It was a night of dreaming dark shadowy fantasies that would take hold of helpless beings. It was a night where we dared everything. Even the impossible in the sticky dampness so good that they only hoped to lengthen this moment of cajoling tenderness made of deep kisses a little longer, to discover the mountains and valleys that sculpted their bodies so gracefully, to seek all the areas that would make the other shudder in irrepressible shivers.

It was a time for caution too towards wounds that were slowly clogging, but still tugging viciously in the slightly over-eager undulations. A constant reminder of a body that has been seriously offended. Lips fluttered all over the diaphanous surfaces beautifully hemmed by muscles swelling with excitement. The moment was an infinite flavor of exacerbated and respectful senses of the other; intense caresses to get to know each other without limits, without borders, without judgment.

The tips of the tongues tickled in mischievous friction the hollows gently drawn between the nubile bulge of the muscles freshly chiselled under the skin; of the abdominals waking up in their flats and their curves under the effort, for one, and firmly sculpted and defined in their graceful and beautiful obliques to admire for each other. Scrupulously mapping the mountains and valleys of a refined and elegant musculature, attractive until the loss of the dazzled senses, arousing the bewitching fetishism at the sight of the physiognomies which seemed to spring from muscadine sculptures coming to life under the chisel of the artist. Even the most Angeline statues were made from broken pieces, and these two caryatids molded themselves into allegories bathed in the debris of their barely sketched and disfigured young lives.

These same curious little tongues meandering in search of a delicate bud that revolted with shivers and pointed its tiny head on the lookout for a caress that would moisten its desire to be cuddled. When the bold dart thus flattered the button becoming purplish under the touch, a reflex of excitement made the spine of the one thus adored bend; the atmosphere thickened with heavy musky olfactions, of earthy greenness and cantankerous pungency of tears lazily dripping from revered limbs under expert ablution.

One revealed one by one his fields strewn with erogenous zones pulsing their desire to be devoured, the other discovering in wonder the extent of the possibilities to come when he molded the magnificent medium in the dough and the ooze of limitless debauchery.

Cut out on the angry-orange canvas and purple-darkness of the hearth stuffed with wood, and the braziers, the spines rear up gracefully, long felines powerful in their predation, mimicking the carnal act without ever crossing the taboos of violation. Added to the insane heat of the fireplace was the intensity of the skins overheated with ecstasy, the hands sweeping away the sweet perfumed exudation with the aftertaste of aphrodisiac paradise.

Their bellies rubbing languidly, then peeling off each other to arch their spines under the inebriate sensations, flames flickered their coruscating between their moist complexions of abdomens outraged with wounds. Hollowed out by sense possession and relentless sensuality, the breasts swelled with joy and well-being, the bellies twisting in more brutal torsions in the desire to be forced and delighted.

They indulged in those pure moments of cuddling where they learned about each other, in order to know exactly what each wanted when the moment came. Debauchery oozing with pleasure-seeking erethism without ever castrating the fantasies of one or both parties; libations delivering a libertine and naughty prank, teasing without ever being orgiastic and brutal.

The hands clenched between them, mixing the fingers slippery with sweat and scented anointings intended for the wounds, to end in soft layers on the greedy dermis. One followed the crawling and undulations of the other on the same diapason, both forgetting themselves in their misty worlds of lust liberating stilted emotions.

The hair tangled between them seemed to have a life of its own, becoming dependent on each other in their shocked bristling, causing knots of nests that a sublime comb could untangle with passion, with patience; than a soft glove perfumed with the divine essences would know how to cleanse in front of dumbfounded and amazed looks in front of the simplicity of the act becoming scene of a growing eroticism, leaving the witnesses suffocating with asthonishment.

A soft cry, a deep wail springing from an emotionally knotted throat, or a long swan's neck, limbs beating just like the beautiful graceful birds that'd drifted away on the still waters of a cleansed river. A contracted jolt in the effort to stop the hemorrhage of intensity rolling into a ball and tightening these muscular and sculpted bellies, then an agonizing sigh on the parted lips swollen with affectionate nibbles, moist with deep kisses.

The ether of the room seemed to clog in a renewed blanket of syrupy, heady odors, little dull yelps muffled by the heaviness of space, then the almost silent gasps in the air hazy with the fury of adoration and the sublimation of bodies...The calm then fell in soft and suave waves; the body undulations died out tenderly in an unreal slow motion, as if there’d been no movement disturbing the confined atmosphere of the room.

The bodies remained glued together for a long time in their reciprocal musk, savoring the aromas of each other, the molecules of excitement which’d stimulated the more pungent and acerbic taste, more catchy in its olfactory memory, more powerful and heavy in its back-layers with catchy suavity.The hands remained attached to the flesh, tasting again and again each curve, each hollow, always exploring these unknown lands under the languor, like archaeologists who would excavate the most intimate excavations. The tongues would delicately replace the brushes on the emaciated and round bones at the same time, in relief in their remaining pain forgotten for a moment, immersed under the waves of mutual pleasure.

Pure moments of sensual bliss, when they were alone in the world. Far from all this madness that disfigured the country.

Because, there, an Angel had made it clear that it was time to take the time to live...

<<<<oooÕÕooo>>>>

Eyes half-closed as he lazed in the Dusk between alertness and sleep. He would’ve liked to sleep in the arms of the adored one, but he couldn’t. He then burst out laughing, a light gurgling, choking sound that turned into a mocking crescendo, like a cough and a sob.

Concoctions born of his overflowing imagination, and coming to life in convulsed jerks of dizzying realism… anamorphic imagery that his subconscious cheerfully sculpted in the medium and homespun inspired by legends and chronicles learned almost by heart.

From their enchanting juices he saw himself staring at the icy, pointed face of the arrows looking almost delicate in the way they stretched upwards, and finally thinned, almost to fade away in the fluctuating swarms of the frosty atmosphere.

He squinted in vain, his eyes clouded with tears born of frost, he could barely make out the shapes of the monumental windows carved into the towers, and found himself thinking of the possible beauty of the landscape frozen in a perpetual winter, seen from the other side of panes stained with penumbra and sanguine.

He began to think that it was oddly darker than before, or that he’d grown accustomed to seeing it that way. However, he’d only seen this icy desolation once, but he was certain that this monolithic mass born of the shadows and the most chaotic tenebrosity, hadn’t always been thus. He was sure he’d distinguish a day there like a soft glow of firelight, or electric glare in blue arcs writhing from within. It hadn't always been that menacing monolith carved from the most crushing onyx with no moire to soften its edges.

There, this gargantuan cromlech seemed definitively paralyzed in its stones and its worn-out marble, tracing its numbed weight in a sleep that would’ve gripped the megalith whole. Where a dizzying silence clung to his temples, and made a sly pain throb in the sinuses frozen by the bite of the winds making the structures dance in their eternal weightlessness.

…A furtiveness of Time only hemmed with a long, timid and sporadic modulation, which rose from time to time, tearing the secret mutism of the landscape for the time of a breath, a stridulation which made his heart tighten in the anxiety of the unknown...A crying wolf it seemed to be, and the plaintive reverberations bounced off the mountains around him, and surrounded him in his own eerie song that erupted in spite of himself, echoing even after the weeping ululations'd faded…He himself was singing, crying in unison with what he imagined to be a sublime animal; his quivering lips of cold chanting in the ethereal notes tinged with as much melancholy as the wolfish complaints...

Passed the fascination of the spectral song, he then realized that he was walking along an immense suspended parapet, the width barely granting hesitant steps, risking skidding to plunge into the infinity of the void opening under the architectures clinging to their strange impassive gravity. Said narrow parapet was forged into the appearance of huge links of chain, joined to each other sealed by the unusual steel binding them together, and the perpetual ice and frost reinforcing them in their climbing dangerousness. The whole gave a monstrous and curved chain under its astronomical weight, joining one of the high massive towers of the castle, probably the highest and thickest, to merge in the powerful walls which absorbed their catches in their rivets melted in the very material of the structure. To dilute in the gaping-mouthed aggression of a growling Dragon, towering majestically over frozen gravity, and serving as a perverse porch welcoming those who would dare to intrude upon it. The last link was cut directly from the fangs of the monstrous antediluvian guardian of the hypnotic places.

The dovetailing which could’ve been grotesque, seemed to form a single body with the material, and revived even more the crushing impression of an aleph dripping from the sharpened turrets which made up the architecture in a welded circle. Above the dungeons and bell-towers, belvederes and belfries stretched their arrows, just as murderous, in the face of the clouds choked with snow and permanent rain. An impenetrable amalgam of defense made of steel, stone and marble bathed in Chaos, Void and Nothingness.

A tight unity in the strangulation of angles and corners emerging from threatening materials, which itself was overlooked by other appalling arrangements of towers and panel-doors emblazoned with enormous stained-glass-windows with tenebra and grayness shaded tumbler. Majestic wings jagged with their flying buttresses supporting them ; pillars sculpted with the immeasurable projecting their bases themselves surmounted by cartouches encased in the form of impossible altars, revealing their aisles in altarpieces where grimacing infernal broods nested staring at the wanderer daring to face the abyss.

Monstrous and desacralized cathedrals in the formless and the infamous, rising still higher in their stifling force, their foundations staggered one on top of another each time thicker and more consolidated, to a heap that threatened to collapse at the slightest breath of raging wind.

Capitals and friezes spitting out their sculptures in the outcrop of the facade ribbed with marbled streaks. Superposition of massive monoliths in a single unit representing all the gravity of basilicas and their domes vomiting their gargoyles assigned to the guarding of their terrible vestiges, and prodigious porticoes gaping on the smoky obscuro of their sullied tenebras.

Entablatures and cornices carved with multitudes of frightened faces in a thick band crowning the facades deliquescing with sombritude, all in an infrastructure defying the very Laws of calibrated architecture and geometry in space. No one, no architect would've dared to cross such taboos in these constructions bordering on archaic dementia.

Architraves balanced between monumental pillars arched in abutment of complex lacework, rooted in…Nothingness. Triumphal arches in contemplation on the ignominy of cursed places.

Empty Cenotaphs to the memory of some deceased entity criss-crossed the long internal corridors sheltered by the arcades cut into stairs; hemmed by fanned paths of crumbling ballasts on the outside along their shaded alley, all supported by the eternal arches of magnificent-flying-buttresses riding the abyssal winds and voids. No human mind could conceive of reaching these uneven heights, and keeping a non-existent balance in the face of their ugly splendours.

Rotundas displaying their share of frightening sculptures suspended impossibly in the vertigo of unfathomable depths; vaults and domes like protective caskets of smaller turrets almost miniature in comparison to the rest of the buildings overwhelming, but brandishing their spiers as sharp and dangerous as their elders.

The eardrums of the pediments filled the triangles delimited by the cornices, and vertical parts of the portals, wedged between the lintels and their semi-circular arches, or a ogive-vault. Everything was ogive, rounded and sharp, a staggering oxymoron, an impossible paradox where all the architectural styles of the whole world seemed to have come together in this capharmaum of lines, acrobatics, flights, screams, sketches or breaks that wildly attacked the gaze of the curious who got lost in these inconceivable places.

All these unthinkable edifices were compacted together in suffocating masses of prohibitions, raising ever higher massive, elephantine towers which could only lead one to suppose that all this merged globality, or fragmented in places, drew its power and its origins from the oozes unknown from the very essence of Chaos. It couldn't be earthly...

These insane compactions were either, isolated silhouetted against the silver edges of a permanent Dusk, giving the double illusion that they were so distant from their 'brothers', while at the same time being close enough to squint the gaze lost on their bodies of stones; either fused together in constructions defying the imagination in a delirious megalomania. But all, were bound by the same stout chains that landlocked them and tore the ether of their dark opulence.

The links seemed cut from onyx or brass, and sank wickedly into the basket-like constructions. Despite the violence of the winds whistling their resentment not to fail a breach in these buildings, the chains were immutable. Only the parapet seemed more fragile, and swayed slyly under the hesitant footsteps.

Everywhere snow and frost covered the surfaces, and made the advance perilous at every moment. Even if the span disfiguring the pellicle of the parapet could provide insurance for the steps, the man was constantly attracted by the terrible void swept by the windy showers carrying biting snowflakes. The man's tearful gaze barely contemplated the cascades of slender jagged stalactites all along the parapet, and plunging their scintillating peaks of ice towards the tackling abysses.

The man was cold, he was frozen in the raging winds. He didn't even know how he could withstand the elements, or how he’d landed here, in the middle of hurricane hell. He no longer felt his limbs benumbed, stunned by the silence and the alternating winds; the void and the staggering architecture that fascinated him so much that he felt only one desire: to throw himself into this void; to fly towards these spiers; letting oneself be carried on the sharp flicks that slapped him; kneeling at the feet of the Cenotaphs misty with frosty fog.

On his left, an opulent work as elephantine as its sisters, appearing to be a temple adorned to excess with the eternal spiers of bell-towers and open belfries. He was fascinated to see the building reflect its double upside down, like on the drawing of a playing card where the inverted and complementary personalities were mirrored in each other.

In fact, when you looked closer, all those sulphurous erections with hints of perversity in their creation, had their pendants, literally, at their structured bases, like a vicious Siamese clinging to its 'brother', upside down! What was strange is that the vision didn't immediately define the understanding of the aberrant view, as if it were completely the opposite of a constructive logic, the brain partially blurring this complexity which didn't make part of the Laws of this world.

The man knows he’s dreaming. He knows he’s not of this world. And that this world has no place in his. But no one comes to his rescue to help him get out of his spell. Outside, the world continues to throb. In this world, everything’s frozen by the curse coming from the depths of a space that nobody, or few, concretely understands.

His body jerks under the heap of anxiousing images, and his eyes flutter rapidly under the lids. It's almost a panic attack in his dreams. If he awoke right now, he would be paralyzed in his sleep, bewitched by his rationalized visions in the nightmares taking shape.  

He could suffocate, have an apnea. But far, far away in the depths of his overactive subconscious, he chooses to listen to a song that guides him. And soothes him. Just as HE had done in His Death.

Acthéean knew he was dreaming, a part of his unconscious paralyzed by the evidence, while his subconscious dragged all the logic towards the void opening under his feet. He knew that behind his closed eyes, lost worlds were encased in an endless maze of the conception of the mind dazed with exhaustion.

It was a lure, yes, but magnificent and at the same time terrifying, yet welcome towards an unknown destiny which'd begun to sow the uncertain path of its small pebbles, where forgotten memories were desperately awaiting a second coming. A ray of hope looming, only to be consumed by fear the next second, allowing a long, icy trail of dread down his wind-hoarse throat.

His whole mind was captivated and became his own puppeteer of his sleep like an imperfect illusion, and of those subconscious worlds born of his fantasies from the end of his strings, old fires blazed and burned in hanging scorches he wanted to wake up from, never to return to the very midst of their burns.  

And he was dreaming. He lived in an universe that didn’t want him, and resented his presence. He dreamed of a land that didn’t exist.

Beyond the windswept shores the embers were eternal. In the waves of a perception so tenuous and reduced by the frost, the eyes of the sun were lost, castaway forever in Limbo and the bonfires danced gracefully at the edge of the parapet. Somewhere else where he knew a Lost Memory was also burning away.  

He was uncertain, balancing on this narrow parapet, admiring these domains so confident in their establishment, hoping that his audacity wouldn't be confronted. He stared to dizziness at the vanishing points in these solitary and silent landscapes, where the horizon line was lost in the foam of the cloudy mists. The bronze basins scattered along the dangerous crossroad, covered in ice, in which floated the blue fires giving off no heat.

Until the horizon line began to undulate strangely, from which gradually took shape a flowing silhouette of armored silver, seemed to materialize in front of the high carved portals, leaning on a huge link that interlocked in inverted foundations. Even if the apparition took consistency in the distance, at the edge of his tearful vision, through the continual gusts, he could hear the typical metallic clink of boots-frets on the steel of the links and the parapet. The man was coming towards him and beckoning him with something he couldn’t quite understand, fascinated by the dangerous pitching of the parapet, and the extraordinary undulations of a long, very long silver-blue gray coat fluttering around long legs sheathed in armor and leather.

Hypnotized by the flexible form enveloped by the sides of the garment like the wide wings of a fantastic bird, Acthéean lowered his guard against the winds, and lost his balance. He fell without being able to catch himself with anything safe, skidding on the treacherous layers of frost. He only had time to cling desperately to the slippery edge of the parapet, while he perceived in the breaths a plea coming from the man struggling against the gusts and continuing to descend towards him, enjoining him to let himself be carried by the wings of the Great Dragon.

As in all dreams where you’re aware that you’re dreaming and that nothing bad can happen to you, Acthéean let go, as advised, and plunged into a vertiginous fall as he stared at the silver figure leaning on the ledge of the parapet, walking away as his fall which never ends...

Thick, jammy swarms rippled around him...he landed on something that enveloped him and carried him to the endless heights of the towers, turning gracefully back into the ether...immaterial tendrils that seized his being and carried him, piercing the cloud layers, while a guttural rumble arose like a melody sung by a scratched throat...

Wings of obscuro and blood twisted around him, a fluffy cocoon of both gentleness and power, radiating a dark fire that neither burned him nor melted matter in its heat...The aerial volutes deposited him on one of the strange islets suspended and adjoining the innumerable chains leading to the gargantuan tower...Before disappearing in a tide of milky ripples towards the filiform crenels of the furthest turrets...

On the perfect circle surface, surrounded it with railings sculpted in complex forge, the pavements engraved with abstract symbols and cryptic geometric arabesques excavated the floor…Aedicules were erected at the four cardinal points, whose vaulted ceilings were supported by pillars in the shape of caryatids warriors in armor brandishing their swords longer than themselves, and spreading their wings as dark as the medium from which they were carved. The tips of the feathers sculpted into dangerous razors and spears, seeming to pierce the mosaic ceiling of faded colors but still keeping the spark of their former glory…

In each aedicule, slumbered sepulchres forged in the darkest onyx...Acthéean knew that they was all occupied by entities waiting to wake up, sleeping under the starry vaults painted with scenes recounting their past victories...Allegories patient for so long that they were awakened from their too long sleep. Acthéean knew that their awakening would be a new Hell that would open its Rings and let their Tartarish-appointed Guardians infiltrate into a universe that would crumble under their new Laws.

The rotunda was criss-crossed as if by guard-paths on its sides, and the aisles embellished with murderous and menacing pikes towards the heavens where they pointed their cleavers...Acthéean has time to contemplate the narrow alleys sinking into the subterranean depths after a helix-stairs course along the lower steeply from which sprang a multitude of roots of different sizes, ending in claws of ice stuck in their kinks. The set of frosts and plants plunged into the sidereal void embedded in the thick smoke of freezing fog.

Facing each other on either side of the paved courtyard, two huge Mirrors in atone tain of bronze and silver, maintained their impassive erection in the face of the unleashed elements...and each reciprocal lake that made up their surface, mirrored each in its own way invisible and interior worlds having nothing to do with the infernal environment...One undulated in the obsidian bordered with silver, like a spongy and unalterable pitch, the other in shades of crimson and purple, hardly more reassuring…The surfaces seemed alive and teeming with these worlds which only wanted to burst the thin layer of the tain, to throw themselves on the unwelcome wanderer who'd disturbed their quietude...

The tombs revolted, trembled in unison...There, in the brazen lakes, something activated a slight thrill in the atmosphere, like an order whispered in the winds...Acthéean knows that they are going to open up, but on what? An inconsistency floated in a stringy cloud, enveloping all the structures, down to the smallest plot of engraved marble, to the tiniest arabesque forged in the protective grilles. To the tips of the wings of warlike caryatids.

Looking all around him, Acthéean tried to discern the suspended parapet from which he came, and which seemed reduced to a thin Payne's gray ribbon on the ashy-white landscape. The wings of smoke deposited him on this islet high in the heavens, well above the parapet where he perceived only with difficulty the silvery silhouette which’d immobilized. Without seeing exactly the face covered by something floating furiously around him, Acthéean knew that the man was staring at him too. Perfectly immutable, like a statue of hoarfrost.

…among the windy whistles rose again the song of a wolf. Melodious and sad. Desperate lament in the tormented blasts, making his heart cry under the throbbing of yelped modulations.

"Ride the swarms, and make the dead stars sparkle…Follow the Lily…” were the sibylline words chopped through the tears. Did he understand correctly? Enigmatic stranded snippets of distant memories, where he was certain he'd heard this before. Riding the swarms leading to the confines of the chaotic castle that'd been waiting there for so many aeons? Make the dead stars sparkle?

As he wondered about the understanding of the lyrics as a prophecy, Acthéean scanned the surreal setting with his gaze. The tombs remained closed and motionless, the wings of the warriors perhaps a little sharper? Something was waiting there...

Then he saw the body at the foot of one of the Mirrors...lifeless, lying among thousands of tiny ramifications he hadn't seen at first glance...He was dazed and worried that he hadn't immediately perceived the pale, amorphous body, intertwined under the countless layers of veinlets, as if they were all connected to his flesh. A teeming amalgam, almost alive, he felt his flesh bristling with goosebumps…and Acthéean understood that the body was being born from the vegetable roots, gradually emerging from the floral maelstrom…

As he rushed towards the form, he recognized Trevor drowned in a bewildering multitude of lilies that strangled his being and his flesh in their sadistic convulsions. The young man, breathing with difficulty, sought to tear off the innumerable ramifications swarming in a shapeless and nauseous nest, endowed with a hellish life and seeking to restrict that of his friend in difficulty.

As he leaned over him, clutching the far too large roots, he suddenly realized that the whole rooty backwash was taking on an agonizing shape that rippled angrily against Trevor's ailing body. The latter tried to grab the insufficient air and grumbled under something brutal that made him suffer. His face was invaded by sadistic veins taking root in his beautiful features revulsed in pain.

Something bent, dipped, meandered against him, like insane thrusts that drew moans from the plant-choked throat. The floral corollas were mercilessly crushed under the undulations and windings which took on unhealthy and perverse aspects in their movements. Acthéean felt the nausea at the edge of his lips under the vision which catalyzed his attention into a mephitic bewitchment. The youngman suddenly accepted the comprehension of the impure flexuosities which grew exponentially in a barbaric act as he'd contemplated it so much in a room, in front of a sulphurous statuary. His sanity wavered when he saw the licentious and morbid act materialize, taking horrid form between his friend's spread legs. Like the Ephebe ravished by the Fallen...  

At the same time that he witnessed the savage intrusion on his friend, he perceived among the raging breaths hoarse cries, the guttural gasps of an antediluvian awakening from bygone ages.

He then gazed at the Mirror facing him, reflecting the dastardly scene of the assault, but the colors'd taken dilutions in the ooze of the withered flowers, and the fluid released in the violent act, reverberated in oily sinuosities in the second bronze lake. In the two Mirrors the distorted images of sleeping worlds reflected their cynical reflections, engraved in shrouds of dead stars.

Acthéean then understood that the twinkling of the dead stars was revealed in the act of erethism on his Astral Twin.

He couldn't hear anything anymore. Nor the anguished complaints of his assaulted friend, which strangely modulated into sounds flirting with ecstasy. Everything melted into the ether of silence, and he only saw the expressions and gestures mimicking the scene in front of which he remained powerless to come to the aid of his friend. And the cries of a wolf, in the distance, which reached him in haunting waves.  

In the sluggish lake of the Mirror at the foot of which the perverse act took place, were reflected immaculate layers of lilies welcoming the concretized silhouettes undulating under the protection of fibrous and bony wings sweeping the windy blasts of frost…

Acthéean saw the dead stars sailing over rivers of indefinite magma. Then he witnessed the rebirth of these nebulae in a flicker of debauchery that ignited his own body. He was diluted in the essences in redemption, and became one with his consenting Soulmate...He plunged brutally into veils of moist suffering, tearing the delicate walls which wept the intrusion with tears of blood…He absorbed the panting breath in agony between his aggressive lips, giving a sudden boost to the languid moans that were lost in the windy fury... until the sickly gasps drifted into seamed chants in ardent pleasure...

…beaming with a new aura defined in blinding halos of sparks struck by myriad shades invisible in the fractal spectrum to the human eye, the dead orb sparkled in its Rebirth…

In a muffled staccato, the four sepulchres released their lids which fell to the ground, causing further cracks in the crevassed floor…

<<>>~~~ÕÕIIoooIIÕÕ~~~<<>>

Patiently and slowly, as Efrain’d shown him, and as he’d seen many times practiced on his own mother as a child, Norton checked again that the head of the bone rolled correctly in its articulatory capsule without making a grimace, the premise of persistent pain. One eye on the elegant swaying of the shoulder, the other on Acthéean's face, he was reassured when the latter gave him a relieved and happy smile, certifying with a conniving wink the good functionality of the member returning to its place. It moved without any twinge disrupting the supple movement.

As he supported the arm horizontally, his other hand palpated the bones in redemption, the muscles bouncing happily beneath the stitched dermis in regained health, digging a little into the sub-articulatory cavities in search of a fraction of pain that would disturb the proper support in tendons that're still weakened.

He was highly satisfied with his examination, and he couldn't help smiling a good-natured smile proud of a surgical job well done. Beneath his fingers evolving in increasingly demanding expertise, living matter pulsed with happiness and well-being, and everything was swollen with good health, luscious with freshness in the lively and sharp muscle. The tear that gaped wickedly there, a few weeks ago, was beautifully fused in its wonderfully knitted skin layers, leaving only a pink scar, still slightly puffy, and really very good sterling.

To say that the shoulder’d been dislocated and shredded almost to the bone was almost inconceivable when one saw the result of care exercised with unfailing rigor and professionalism. Norton never tired of admiring the miracles of a medicine often stifled by religious taboos, when it was enough to let the men of science go about their expertise to fix a human correctly. The two youngsters like Trevor and Acthéean were living examples.

“So,''questioned Acthéean, amused by the delight of his blond friend,’’happy with your care?

“You really don’t hurt anymore, even when I manipulate like this?''Norton asked again, trying another twisting motion applied to the arm.

"No. I hardly feel anything anymore, except since the stormy season has started again, the humidity seems to wake up bites from time to time reminding my memory...but, it's also a little thanks to you, you and Efrain, that I was able to resume my training, even if it'snot at the barracks...

Norton smiled as he let go of the arm. Acthéean made it roll a little more gently, to support his words. In a few weeks, or even a few months at most, the scar on the shoulder would completely melt into the reassured dermis.

"I know, yes, thunderstorms’ve a strange tendency to rekindle wounds and joint pains, it seems, my mother suffered from it in her crippled pelvis,"sighed Norton, getting up and putting away the vials of ointment he applied for regular massages.“I heard you practiced on the banks at dusk, before Vespers. Many’ve surprised you in your movements...it's quite a spectacle, it seems...

Acthéean raised an astonished and slightly mocking eyebrow as he slipped on a light brown-linen-colored homespun shirt.

“Nevertheless, Efrain advised me to continue my massages for a while longer, to be sure that you're well rehabilitated…

"No problem, my friend…you're good at it, I trust you…

Norton was flattered by the compliment, rolling up his toilet tissues and ointments. He forced himself not to stare too much at Acthéean's fluid, muscular figure, waving gracefully in the arc of his arms riding the almost transparent garment in its woven threads. Even though the hue of the fabric was a beautiful burnished linen-thatch, Norton didn't miss the sight of the slightly ashy auburn areolas that peeked their sassy teasing through the weave, drawing the imperceptibly apparent nipples like a faint lascivious streak just sketched. The detail caused a dusting of delicate pink on the youngman's blond cheeks, and he prayed inwardly that his friend didn’t discern the sudden embarrassment of a voyeurism so nubile that it was charming without perversity. The two youngmen'd isolated themselves in the room that Norton'd occupied since the attack on Danaşti, and were preparing to leave the room.

"I wish it were the same for Trevor, Efrain’s still checking him out...’’attempted Norton, trying to drift his mind off the endearing scene that’d strangely upset him in a more devious way than expected. He couldn’t admit in his heart that the apprentice with the eternal stubble, impressed him more than measure. Even attracted him.

"I think I heard Belmont grumble,"underlined Acthéean gently.’’It's not going the way he wants...

“Oh, I think Efrain's going to give him a few days of private grooming, before our fiery Belmont can dive headfirst into his beloved baths…

The two friends exchanged a knowing look as to the 'misfortune' of poor Belmont, who was forced to undergo heavy care which’d become much too long for his taste, when he only dreamed of jumping out of the window and even throwing himself into the river and splash among the birds indulging in ablution and preening their feathers.

By mutual agreement, they were going to leave the dispensary together, free from their mutual duties. Acthéean grabbed a bag that would envelop the requested things, hastily stuffing a morsel of bread from the day before, while pushing aside the curtain leading to the room where Efrain was giving his last care to a scowling Trevor.

The apprentice poked his head between the heavy fabric, considering for a moment the scene that might’ve been amusing, if not for the deep sadness in the desperate sapphires. Efrain was mumbling his orders and advice, as usual, in a good-natured and exasperating tone at times. The afflicted teenager was boiling on the spot not being able to replicate his impatience, having too much respect for the good man.

“…please don’t sulk! You've to be patient, Trevor, your injuries were serious, you seem to forget it! Come on, two more days, and I swear we can make you the biggest bath tub you've ever seen in your life! and believe me, I'd be happy to drown you in it!‘’finished the herbalist, emphasizing his intentional words, threatening but heavy with an irrepressible desire to laugh, hands on his hips.

Acthéean suppressed the urge to laugh in front of his friend, sighing heartbreakingly and trying to argue as much as possible for yelding before orders.

"I'm walking, brother Efrain, I'm getting there! I’ll never recover if you keep me from moving!''he snapped, running out of arguments, and revealing his solitary escapes during the man's absence. The latter raised a victorious eyebrow, happy to have made admit the unconscious 'nonsense' of the youngman.

"I figured you were fooling around while we weren't here!"he gasped, falsely outraged.“Do you think that because you manage to pass a damp cloth over your wounds, that you're in a condition to get up without falling?

Another contrite hiccup. Acthéean could only cover his face with one hand as hilarity took precedence over the grotesque situation. The two argued in vain, and the apprentice'd the impression of seeing two kids fighting over trifles in the middle of their sandbox.

“…don't realize what you've been through,''continued Efrain, determined to be more stubborn than the Belmont. And it was already a big effort for him, knowing the teenager of an incredible mental obstruction when it came to convincing him on sometimes ridiculous points. From whom had he taken this character trait that often scared away other interlocutors?

“…your anemia has made things worse…besides, you know, the Founders don't want you to go back to your normal course of life until you've fully recovered…no way you're still shaky on your legs, or dizzy that will necessarily take you…already for Acthéean, it's the same!

"Excuse me..."intervened said-named, deciding to cut the argument short, and drawing attention to his bent figure of amusement,"we're going with Norton...

“ah! Acthéean, before leaving, tries to convince this stubborn man that he must follow orders and take care of himself...

Efrain'd turned to him, concentrated in the conversation he hadn’t heard his apprentice. Trevor, on the other hand, was throwing bewildering glances at his friend, desperately asking for support. Who wouldn't come! at the same time, Efrain, for his part, wasn't outdone when it came to the menacing look he gave him, seeming to say:“You better say like me!''.

It wasn't that it was cowardice on his part, but he would much rather suffer the Belmont's wrath than any sneaky resentment the herbalist might've about him. And of that, the youngman was certain, knowing now the cogs that affected the dark thoughts of his master of sciences, the latter would find the slightest pretext to hold it against him. The man obviously hated being upset when the situation didn't allow it! Basic psychorigid, Efrain himself knew the boundaries not to cross regarding his professional integrity.

So Acthéean'd no choice but to back up his mentor's words, casting a distressed glance at the figure cowering angrily in his nest, even the blue-ebony locks reeling in frustration. He'd the impression for a second that he'd to do with an offended baby dragon, who was about to spit the flames of whim because he hadn’t had the best portion of meat distributed to the brood!

“Brother Efrain's right, Belmont. Where your wounds opened up, you won't be able to resume training for a while yet...it could reopen under the slightest effort...I'm sorry to tell you this, but take the opportunity to relax, that'll come faster believe me…on top of that it’s back to back injuries in a short period of time…

Trevor abruptly lay back down, slamming the pillow under his shoulders. The sigh he let out could almost have been a guttural growl of anger. Even his friend didn’t support him! The baby dragon gave up spitting his sparks!

Efrain, sure of his victory over the cheeky brat, reassembled the braziers, slamming them to the ground in a move that obviously meant, “Ah, see? so you're following orders…''. Acthéean shrugged his shoulders helplessly towards his friend who was blasting him with his orbs of water electrified with anger. Norton loomed over and tugged the apprentice discreetly by the sleeve, wanting nothing to do with these arguments which made him uncomfortable.

So they left the Belmont to his annoyance, who'd curled up on his healthy side in the blankets, and was evidently sulking. Efrain tidied up the bedroom before embarking on a new day that would see him go to different places.

But if Trevor’d this characteristic of being stubborn, it was always on the spot. Then, the sharp mind measured the pros and cons and very quickly took stock-sometimes a little late, of course-that others were right in what they said. But that, the teenager would never admit! except for some people, perhaps, who would understand him in his impulvise defense mechanism...

Efrain was one of them, and often when he returned from his duties, he found the youngman making stammering excuses to him, swallowing his pride. The man admired this brilliant intelligence who knew when to lower the white flags in a surrender that would only bring him comfort and well-being. In addition, the kid’d a really good heart, and an absolute generosity, while his existence until now had hardly brought him this largesse.

The man'd to provide his care outside, leaving the young to his independence in the apothecary. The words were softer and counselors for possible trips that he knew that the afflicted would make without their knowledge. The friendly hand he placed on the shoulder found a calm relaxation of the muscles, proof that the youngster'd calmed down and was thinking about the words.

Trevor offered a reassuring smile to the herbalist he loved dearly. Despite their argument, he knew the man of exemplary wisdom, and recognized the merits of things. Efrain reassured him as to what he could and couldn’t try to do. The visit he might’ve in the morning by Andreas who would bring medical books. No one was expected, if there was an emergency, the majority being taken care of at the barracks, because often it was for small hematomas collected during training. The herbalist didn't have long anyway, having to report daily to the Founders.

Like his two youngsters who’d flown off to their mutual tasks, Efrain went away, leaving Trevor to languish in his helplessness and his newfound loneliness...The apothecary was under his surveillance, carefully locked. If Andreas came, he’d a duplicate of the dispensary.

Trevor faced again this hazy silence, heavy with sleep, also loaded with all these translucent ghosts recounting the latest events on a loop. Among them, some were exquisite flourishing sketches emanating their sensual sweetness with the tender perfume of an intimacy that opened like a marvelous flower spreading its petals. Memories in delicious specters hoisting their teasing sip of silver-gray auras bursting with pearly dew of a morning that wakes up.

He enjoyed the long shivers that spread down his spine under the reminiscences so devoted to the Memory of the cradled flesh. A satisfied smile stretched the hemmed lips, and a fluid of utter bliss swirled around his recumbent form; an adrenaline rush of opulence coursing through his veins like a torrent of almost suffocating emotions. They’d had their moment of surrender. Tranquil in the dampness of thunderstorms constantly above the skies. Nobody as a witness, except the blessing of the place in their bubble of intimacy.

He’d liked what Acthéean’d made him discover. No, he’d adored beyond the sensations crushed by the overabundance of attentions, only for him, only for his being bruised by the excavations of existence. Acthéean’d entrusted him with so many secrets too. Anything he would treasure in the vault of his shadowheart. And nothing, nor nobody, would succeed in entrusting the key to anyone, becoming the jealous Guardian of the Sanctuary. For ever. Until his very Shadow dissolves into the Ether of Oblivion. His friend, the same. Two SoulMates having committed themselves in an unshakable Pact, signed with their own blood.

He hadn't had time to thank him again. Aware that these rare moments would occur in situations where caution was required. Even a kiss touched on the corner of the lips became dangerous to see.

It wasn't that his hip was hurting, it was healing beautifully, but the wanderings were still a little awkward, the sneaky dizziness from lying too long, and the limbs numb from inactivity, made his attempts at walking still too painful and unbalanced. He often leaned on a cane to help straighten a beaten spine, and felt like an old man at the end of his life!

Waiting for some company, he plucked up the courage to get up carefully, leaving behind the support stick, and headed for the 'work' table he’d invested with his art allowing him to escape towards the worlds belonging only to them now. Andreas was generous with blank parchments and vellums offered to the teenager, since his ingenious idea to put his friend's Memory back on track.

Thus, the charcoals, the inks of illumination precious and fragrant, the feathers and color pencils pleasantly invaded the tarnished surface of the table, mixed with the peels of support already inked, and other surfaces waiting to be caressed by mediums and objects approved in art. He could fantasize his little corner as an altar resembling indeed the scriptoriums of the Library. This time, he was the curious witness and the master of ceremonies in the artistic direction. He could finally have answers through his sometimes clumsy experiments, his stammering attempts, but in the end, the result was there, and his pride was deliciously flattered, like a cat waving under caresses.

He explored again, for a long time, the patterns that’d coalesced into strange spittle and halos that’d distorted them into dubious and unhealthy essences during the attack. How could drawings have been so damaged and variegated, so that they looked like inconceivable hybrids born of a furious feather; improbable brewings and crosses in their solubility now sporting heterogeneous colors-macedonia that seemed to hold a unique key to understanding the symbolism they 'screamed'. Varicolored variagations by some very attractive and haunting, menacing and promising aspects of something that Trevor failed to explore concretely.

Who could've conceived of such miscellaneous?

Trevor wasn't sure whether to blame it on divine intervention warning them of something darker. Admittedly, he often thought of this state of affairs, confused by such a “miracle”. He grabbed his mirror pendant that he kept around his neck, even while sleeping, since the attack. He’d tied it around his swanneck since his confession to Chester. The leather bond and the bronze of the tain had coaxed his flesh even during his friend's adoration for his stammering Sanctuary. He’d wanted to keep against his excited dermis the freshness of the jewel to which he clung during his prayers. During this little act of contrition, he often kissed the Mirror with the tips of his lips, like a precious chaplet that other penitents would string. Except that his own rosary’d strange hints of a completely different deviated belief, but of which he wasn’t fully aware and granted.

When his irises flirted outrageously with the angry and multicolored mixtures, he’d this soft kiss on the point surmounted by the clasp, his fingers intertwined on the tiny tain of the Mirror. If he’d been careful, he would’ve caught a brief flash coming from the little psyché in front of the drawings. But he would’ve interpreted it as a tawny reflection projected from the hearth cooing happily from its cubicles of birch and cedar.

Pushing back the rebellious lock of hair slightly from his forehead, he thought that soon Acthéean would wash his hair, and that he could once again indulge in the pleasure of being pampered like this. As he did regularly now, his length demanding to be airy and clean very often as he loved it. New shivers tingled his dermis to imagine his friend taking care of his adornment.

At first he was made to lie still, then as his redemption progressed he was allowed to sit on a pew with his head resting on a prayer chair which, for now, was making a diverted office of support for the toilet. Not that Efrain’d much trouble getting his fellow prior to admit that the object was for a good cause, and wouldn’t be desacralized by it! The Prie-Dieu’d a new function that was perfect for medical needs, so God wouldn’t be offended! And Efrain and Acthéean’d worked cleverly in developing a system that even allowed some unexpected features. In Trevor's case, it’d been hair grooming. There were other cases where the chair’d done wonders, especially thanks to its high backrest, allowing an afflicted member to expose themselves properly for treatment. This was the case for the dislocated shoulder of Acthéean.

In any case, Trevor kept the vivid memory of the touches so delicious in his strands of silk, thirsty for care. The gentle slides in his neck, the cajoling fingers between the thick locks, the precise massages on the scalp. A ritual that Trevor longed for between each ablution. Even if the adornment didn't need a wash specifically, everything was an excuse for this moment when he was literally melting with happiness. If he’d been an evanescent particle, he would've been diluted in the fragrant liquid element that bathed his mane.

Thus, in a last embrace of the jewel which tenderly took refuge in the warmth of the neckline of the shirt, Trevor carefully settled down for a moment at the table which'd become a desk, and selected with the tips of his fingers the surfaces he was going to patiently shade of his feathers. His imagination was over-creative, inspired by the stories of Acthéean, his dreams and his, his colorful drafts of memories fitting together the pieces of puzzles tinged with mischievous sulfur and taboos. This bedroom became the setting, the sacred tomb where crowded multitudes of frightening utopias or oozing with the juice of the forbidden.

From the tips of his stumps rubbed by his scrupulous fingers, he reinvented a whole universe of promising compositions from which one chose not to return. Acthéean was his Muse, whispering to him the most shameless and flamboyant fantasies diluting themselves in scenes of suffocating debauchery, until more thirsty, engraved in the proud marble of buildings in madness.

Concentrated on his task of evasion, he never saw the rippling fractals that escaped from the linen neckline, nor paid attention to the gentle heat that evaporated from it and tickled almost imperceptibly the tender flesh.

ÕooooII=>>~~~<<=IIooooÕ

Acthéean was seized with an irrepressible desire for training when he saw his blond friend disappear for his classes. He felt uplifted in a way he’d never felt before. It was as if he were coming out of a Death, but in a whole different way. He’d already welcomed his first 'rebirth' in unexpected comforts, thanks to his friends. There, his body was once again full of the sap of life, and happily extricated itself from the bogged down expectation of a possibility of future handicap. It seemed to him to grow wings, and to be capable of incredible exploits. This was the redemption of spirit more powerful than matter.

For the time being, he’d made his way through the barracks and the refectories where many’d met him to greet him or ask for news. He was amazed at the number of comrades who asked for him again in their teams and classes, eager for him to rejoin their group. Yet he always managed not to engage in friendlier relationships, going his way without asking anyone. Solitary in his intimate monastery. So did Trevor, many of whom also inquired about the news with touching sincerity. The rescue of the teams, of the Founders like Chester in difficulties, of his own life and that of his companions, by the fiery Belmont, had gone all around Danaşti like wildfire, and everyone acclaimed the unfailing courage of the youngman who’d very nearly remained there himself under the murderous blows of the beasts of hell.

Suddenly, the superstitious fear, the distrust, the contempt towards the Belmont by his associates, all vanished under the act of heroism. It would probably last a while, the memory of men is so fallible! Trevor was enough of an enigma to everyone not to gossip again, criticisms or divergences to his integrity. We never manage to convince incomprehensible people terrified by the Unknown. And strangeness and otherness were frightening in these centuries of obscurantism. It was a wave of infatuation on which to surf freely, Acthéean knew well that human nature was so fickle, so quick to pour out its rancor and terrors at the slightest disturbing behavioral clue. The sparkling foam of these 'waves' quickly became a noxious poison in the minds of the frightened blinded by the mud of opprobrium, so as not to discern the sordidness of this world.

Acthéean still allowed himself to be flattered for a few minutes, succinctly telling off the news that he knew how to reassure his peers. The sub-layers that’d to be unearthed by scratching the deceptive surfaces certainly didn’t interest all these unconscious young people, and after all, indifferent to the turn of events when it came to others, and not their little selfish and individualistic existence. During a war, the survivors moaned for a few minutes on the "fall-on-the-field-of-honour", but it only lasted for a faint breath in a lifetime. It was so little and negligible.

The proof was simply in their total non-observance. Not one noticed that something had irremediably changed at Acthéean. Physically as well as mentally. The youngman was such a wandering hermit in his universes, that no one was able to observe the subtle clues that’d arisen since his 'return' from Wygol. In fact, Acthéean was quite happy about it. It avoided a lot of problems, questions, and rumors that necessarily resulting in.

Also, of course, absolutely no one could’ve witnessed copper fractals fizzy of gold that made the hazel-grey luminary sparkle with his orbs, when he left the rooms visited. The glow was faint in the semi-penombra of the arched aisles leading to the abbey wing where the cells granted to certain young people for their novitiate, or to Trevor, resided. It was precisely in his friend's that he was going, like the first time he’d recovered some things.

He saw himself again that night of violent storms, when he’d stepped over the closed intimacy of the room. Everything was as he’d left, curled up in a somewhat erosive and dusty dampness from the lack of life within the walls. The heavy panels that obscured the small window, still half drawn against the morning light, and you could see the shimmering grains dancing in the sunbeam that dared to penetrate the cottony smoothness of the little-room. A few shards glistened on the eroded iron of the outer shackles framing the slender frame.

He left the front door wide open, so that a bit of fresh and new atmosphere came to ventilate the confined space. The sunshine was such that he didn’t need to light the torches in the hallway, despite the narrowness of the place, and the darkening by the arches that covered the internal alley nestled in the thick walls of these private dormitories. They were adjacent to the abbey, and protected by solid pavements, winding corridors cut in age-old stone, and even embellished with decorated paving in places, and discreet fountains distilling their crystalline song.

Long before he went to fetch his friend from the river and convinced him to seek treatment, he’d occasionally surprised, while hiding in the protective shadow of said corridors, Trevor rinsing his face in their delicate tears flowing in thin, joyful streams, even dipping the ends of his hair in the froth of bubbles flaring under the tiny waterfall. The Belmont’d, to all appearances, taken to the habit of quick ablutions upon awakening, splashing as best he could in the crystal clear water. Even the greenish mosses that crawled and dripped on certain aspects of the fountain hadn’t succeeded in repelling the youngman in a summary toilet, when he didn’t have access to the baths which were distributed in order of levels, and by intermittence to the novices occupying the premises.

A very pretty way taken in the habit of bodily care, which Acthéean’d witnessed one young morning barely awake, at the first hour of dawn pointing only the tip of its nose still darkened on the calm landscapes. The snatches of memories burst cheerfully on the canvas of his tender Memory. He was in a hurry for the homily of the day, very few people crisscrossed the courtyards and the alleys stiffened by the absence of life and the compact mists of sleep.

He’d been staring at the Belmont for a while, years even, silent as the shadow he’d always been, locked in stubborn mutism, lips sealed with precocious down softening them beautifully. Acthéean’d always been a 'silent-person', more solitary than a hermit cloistered in his monastery of fearless emotions. But he’d always, and ever since joining the Brotherhood, been drawn to a wildling with eyes permanently flashing with fury and rebellion; constantly castigated by his peers for chronic disobedience, and rejected by others who’d a strange and visceral fear of him. Nimbus by the craziest rumors about the mystery of his orphanhood, it took no less to arouse the curiosity of this enigmatic being.

Always feigning silent indifference, Acthéean’d seen this savage evolve as a hermit as himself, and had gradually gotten into the game of intense observation of activities, training, classes, habits rooted in religion and the belief. Molded in hatred and abjection for the Dragon and his minions, the Belmont proved every day to be the perfect little war-dog trained for carnage, in the image desired by the Brotherhood and their Founders.

But always keeping in mind that a small voice susurred from the depths of his emotional abstinence, that there was something else hiding in the most hardened stratas of severe minds. An aura impossible to determine oozed slyly around the Belmont and the Order. The young synesthete distinguished the fractals and the uneasy specters, without ever managing to define exactly the amphigory coalescences, like darkened oil slicks not knowing exactly which colorimetry to indulge in. Which made the result nauseating; a pluriverse apophenia intrinsically linked in the particularity of Acthéean. He’d no doubt: a stormy secret stagnated in the child's origins. Too foggy in the Unknown to be pierced through. It was this merciless itch that’d clung to him, without ever succeeding in lifting even an infinitesimal mesh that would help untangle the skein. A continual aphotic apathy languishing in the liminal horizons of the ‘Taedium Vitae’ and the ‘Nostalgia Futura’. Silently weeping over a Future that didn’t yet exist, his Dysthymic Melancholy gracelessly stripped the individual of his faults and weaknesses, without ever expressing the slightest remorse.

That morning, when he’d no intention of spying on anyone in their private activities, this was an opportunity he stumbled upon. Luckily for him, he still walked in incredible silence, as if his steps only brushed the cobblestones oozing with dew. Even the rustling of clothes was indistinct. Shadow among the shadows, Acthéean advanced in life, skirting the walls and corridors in the thickness of the silence, his immutable companion. Sometimes those who were violently surprised by his arrival thought he was a ghost, inconsistent in existence, indefinite in his actions.

But that morning, he was happy with his unalterable discretion, as he loomed in the sleepy tenebra still haloing the corridors of access to the cells, and thus heading towards one of the fountains continuing to babble happily its watery crystal. He should’ve continued on his way, if a scene hadn’t made him freeze slowly. His eyes fixed on what he’d taken for delicate splashing caused perhaps by birds washing themselves in the dark basin,  whose bottom remained muddy due to the invasion of moss and aquatic plants that’d taken up residence there. Their roots, as thin as hair, rushed towards a boiling surface that they would never burst.

The 'Bird' who bathed there must’ve thought that everyone’d headed for the abbey where the homilies were taking place, and was therefore alone, quiet in this cool early morning. No doubt his sleep’d been disturbed, or more restless, he’d decided to evacuate the remains of the night from his shivering skin. He wasn’t totally naked, but at the limit of decency allowed in public. He’d taken risks by being thus exposed, strong in his conviction that the others were elsewhere praying, so he’d time to indulge in quick ablutions, refreshing his flesh from the nocturnal dampness.

As Acthéean contemplated the scene, the image of his first conquest came back to him: she was thus enjoying her toilet ritual, in front of her enamel tray filled with scented water. She took her time in a precise cleaning, all in graceful and timeless movements. Acthéean’d been fascinated by it on several occasions, reveling in the sight and hoping that the event would continue forever.

And here he was admiring the youngster under the same conditions. Same firm and cautious gestures, evacuating in small armfuls the unwanted musks sticking to his skin which visibly shivered under the invigorating freshness of the crystalline tears. The face was bathed and wet, still dripping slaps of water, the hair thrown to the side having also been moistened abundantly, Acthéean could distinguish the rivulets winding on the dermis curly with goosebumps. Even though the movements were quick and precise, there was a slight grace that moved him deeply, and caused a strange dizziness that knotted his stomach.

The Belmont could be compared to a bird, yes. A babbling swan in its bath, when one considered the superb neckline of the long sculpted neck supported by the pillars of tendons arching in the rejection of the water in a splashing gesture. The bountiful waterfalls spurted on the arms, the chest, and it wasn't long before the whole entourage of the fountain was disgorged with lapping spurts, and the cobblestones were soaked with ablutions. Quick squirtles on his back, and the youngster finished his toilet with armfuls cupped in his hands to caress his belly, spreading the edges of his night pants, letting the cool swigs take advantage of the groin which contracted in trembling inspirations under freezing water

After a slight hypothermic gasp, a wave of goosebumps rippled the bathed dermis, the thin fabric of the pants landed in a volley, barefoot, pushed away with a hasty hand. In total deprivation of shame, barely a look verifying his loneliness, the youngman exhibited himself in superb nudity, haloing his silhouette with an aura as pearly as his diaphanous skin. The buttocks were defined in muscular and adorable curves of perfect cheeks contracted by the micro-tensions of the muscles while he hurried in the more than intimate toilet.

On the outer faces of the dappled curves, wide dimples were dug sublimated in the muscular and articulatory movement of femur-necks, proof of total abstraction of useless fat and firm and supple flesh. Real outrageous nests of desires to flatter these seductive hollows that seem to move with a life of their own.

It was there that Acthéean noticed the absence of a rare and unusual any duvet that should’ve shrouded the intimacy and the limbs. The pure water dripped superbly onto a flat stomach and groin from which fine bluish veinlets shone through; the diamond pearls taking naughty pleasure in clinging to the soft chiseled nest of the navel, before weeping their frail way towards the down where no unsightly hair hindered their fall.

Dancing mirrored shards coming from the conch, cast their luminous reverberations on the fragile canvas of this bronze skin. Like a brief illusion, a magical moment. Where the timeless space of a sudden desire to apply tender lips to his movements as feline and supple as was permitted. Lying down a tongue eager for taste which, he was certain, would flirt with the nectar of the Gods. Sucking delicate lollipops on this exposed belly, so trembling with jerky breathing in precise and tempting gestures.

A sudden flare inflamed the face of the apprentice under the voyeuristic observation of the scene. For a little, he’d the real impression that one of the so elegant Caryatids supporting the cornices of pagan temples, had come to life before his dazzled eyes. Such archangelic beauty was rare in this century, and Acthéean knew very few individuals possessing this attraction carved in the purest alabaster. At least, among men. The spectacle took on the appearance of Paradise having released one of its Seraph-Angels whose magnificence reached levels unthinkable for Mortals.

At the same time, Acthéean was amazed at such audacity. The arrival of an unwelcome witness shatters this moment of charm, and the youngster would’ve been caught in an outrageous act which would’ve cost him dearly in punishment. It would’ve been considered exhibition at a holy place, even if the intent was innocent. The youngman mustn’t have had the opportunity of public baths, but persisted in his desire to maintain his young body by the only means within his reach: the fountain just in front of his cell.

The impertinent idea made the apprentice in the tawny shadow smile, strangely delighted with his voyeurism which aroused in him tons of emotions which he thought were impossible. From a very youngman, barely out of childhood.

There’d been the other one…but this memory painfully streaked the canvas of his Memory, and he mentally rejected it with a gesture of contempt and disgust. Never in the world would this comparison with the sight before him be permitted…

The church forbade the baths to credulous and superstitious people to the point of obsession with the slightest dissenting gesture, on the pretext that the act of washing was suggested by the Evil-One! And before his eyes, this cheeky youngster was openly giving himself up to the libations of cleanliness. Taking the time to explore his intimacy with large icy swigs from the fountain, after having cast a curious look all the same on the surroundings. Rash but careful! The teenager suspected that he was practicing a wrongdoing, but succumbed to the pleasure of hygiene with an outrageous impudence that would’ve sent him to the stake in circumstances other than those of being a novice within the Brotherhood. The obvious advantage that allowed the men of the Order to act where others were forbidden.

Acthéean’d felt himself melt under a sudden heat in front of the scene so moving in its indecency, and prayed intensely that no one would come to interrupt all the charm of a nubile and involuntarily provocative sensuality and eroticism. Unaware of the effect he could stir up, the youngman rubbed himself with a hastily cut fabric, which certainly didn’t have the softness of Efrain's towels. His quick grooming’d been a tidal wave of intense magic where every ripple of muscle was a graceful sinuosity that could only make one think of a large, magnificent feline doing its ablutions with the grace that only such animals could’ve in their private space.

Acthéean’d held his breath in front of the spectacle, and adding to that of a bewitching statue coming to life in his fantasies blurring his thoughts, the idea of ​​an angelic painting which was being elaborated before his eyes, slowly with delicate strokes of brushes soaked in the most suave pigments in insubstantial colors, had come to mind. One of those paintings which represented the Seraphim, the Angels of God, but in a libation of erethism inspired by the dark side of the artist who would’ve painted this oeuvre. A masterpiece that would be sacrificed to the fires of the church stakes, without a doubt.

This ephebe exhibiting himself in total and carefree innocence, displayed despite his young age firmly drawn and precocious lines in a force of nature adorning his slender frame. Rarely, Acthéean’d been able to see such a silhouette which should still have been that of a child, being sublimated by a grace worthy of the gods. A perfect model that the artists of Antiquity would’ve fought to possess as a Muse, and to accomplish a complete projection of him in the smallest detail in the richest medium, completing the ultimate work of their career.

He’d kept his gaze for a long time on the contractures of the abdominal belt taking shape in slender swellings of musculature sculpted in marble; the inguinal folds in magnificent lines like wings brooding over the vibrating plate between the sharp, thin hips. And he’d imagined himself squeezing the bony ridges between his hands which would explore the smallest contraction.

The icing on the suave perversity cake, the breathtaking contrast between the blue-ebony of the hair falling in wavy waves as if independent of a life of its own, scintillating with health and vigor, on a dermis of extraordinary pallor reminiscent of the mother-of-pearl of an oyster which would open to the nourishing spray. The skin was so transparent that Acthéean could discern the bluishness of the veins timidly hemming the first layer of tissue. A powerful paradoxical impression between the fragility that emanated from it, and the latent strength that one guessed in the curve of the tender muscles swelling their beginnings of arrogant pride.

While Acthéean felt his dermis burning with the fire of his voyeuristic audacity, the youngman’d finished drying and, wrapped in the fabric over his shoulders, had slipped away to hide in the warm shade of his cell, his wet hair unraveling its small rivers of crystalline jewels on the barely covered back.

A few minutes later, the fascinating nudity of the ephebe was covered with flexible and light clothes in the dominant shades of green-forest and bronze. Colors that were hard to find on the common markets, the youngman’d to ferret-out-secrets them elsewhere, he knew the Belmont was very resourceful in appropriating the rarest things.

He’d remained in the shadows for a good while longer, watching the supple figure move away towards his activities. He’d taken an infinite time to lie to himself, and not to recognize that the scene’d dazzled him beyond measure. That day, or that mischievous morning, he was sure that the ephebe’d unconsciously slipped him under his skin; embedded forever under a dermis that would never stop bubbling for taboos, even curled up in the arms of his caring lovers.

How many times had he forced himself so that his hasty steps didn't drift towards the darkness of the enclosure reserved for the cells, in the early hours of the morning just before the homilies, the Lauds or the Prime, when the Dawn barely managed to extricate itself from a damp night. A desire hard to repress when the shadows were fleeing the last wisps of the nocturnal veil, and he knew that a figure like an illusion, still wrapped in his covers, was pointing his lunar and raven's wing evanescence in order to babble intimately with thin, clear streams lapping stoically its tears consoling the remains of disturbed dreams.

Each time, his heart beating wildly, he stubbornly didn’t deviate his step towards the place of languorous lust where the provocateur didn’t even suspect the flood of emotions he was thus arousing. Frolicking quietly in the waters, while a heart-shadow pulsated painfully and a spirit escaped into fantasized elsewheres, instead of concentrating on the texts read and sung by a group barely awake, their faces wrinkled from the rustling of their diapers.

How many times had he asked for forgiveness from the Divine, while his flesh still burned with his testimony, wanting absolutely to revoke the very idea of ​​an attraction that could only be inspired by Evil. But Acthéean was pragmatic in his thoughts, and had learned to know himself very early, what made him react or melt, what attracted him irremediably, and the paradoxes of existence where one learned to be the slave of family wills.

Behind his unshakable stone mask, his piercing gaze that knew how to study the human in his fantasies and his delusions, Acthéean knew how to trace his path in unequaled stealth and discretion. No one would've suspected for a moment the tangy fantasies, wrapped in the delicate and golden foil of scandal and aggressiveness, which bubbled up in this fine and intelligent, lively and calculating mind, the whole bricked up behind the impassive face of a Sphinx with eyes so icy. Acthéean continued on his way, unbeknownst to gossip and evil spirits quick to decry.

Acthéean’d stiffened at the discreet sight of the fountain which never stopped gurgling its naughty bubbles which stirred so many sweet memories not so distant, however. He’d seized this opportunity only once, deciding to leave alone the youngman who savored these intimate moments, preferring not to submit to a perverse habit that could only result in an abuse disorienting the scene, and the inevitable destruction of a trust he was building over the months. He was convinced that one day he could approach the savage with the sulphurous reputation, and could coax him. Without a doubt. However, he hadn't expected it to be so quick, the punishment having come a few months after the fountain scene. When he’d followed the beaten and bruised teenager so miserably, the sight of the unfortunate man bathing his ugly whipped wounds in the river, had projected him to that cozy early morning when that same body was cradling its restless night in the crystalline waves.

He wondered if he should one day entrust this adorable sensual surprise to his friend. The first time he'd been in Trevor's room, the stormy night'd obscured this magical little building, discreet in its old-fashioned charm, nestled in the half-light barely jostled by the angry lightning.

Moreover, this basin was so erased in the decor of the half-dog half-wolf corridors, that you'd to really pay attention to its presence while listening to the tiny regular bubbling. Acthéean understood the cause of it now that he contemplated it, immersed in the delicious memories. Oddity in the construction, wanted or decided by an architect who didn't know what to do with it, its pillar was attached to the retaining pilaster of this part of the balconies. No! It was carved squarely into the massive column. Which meant that it stood quietly in a permanent bubble of moist and intimate shadows, unlike the others scattered along the shaded paths of pointed arches.

Acthéean considered this small place of ablutions which became strictly personal and discreetly merged with the block of stone constituting the quiet force of the bedrock. The fountain took on all the shades of stone eroded by the weather, and really offered a nest of softness to those who leaned over it and knew how to listen to its sparkling little borborygmi. Obviously, it’d to be spirits wandering in peace who would be attracted by its solitary confidence. The Belmont’d found there material of abundance of tranquility when he’d dared to lean into its diamond waves, and cradled his sleeping flesh.

Risk taking of being interrupted in this reciprocal seduction between the human and the small monument of peace, was assuredly zero: no one paid attention to this graceful aedicule barely murmuring a lament that many didn’t hear. Except one individual as solitary as the stone-concavity itself. Another strangeness in the mouths that regurgitated the waterfalls, they’d no definite features in themselves, sometimes resembling leonian mouths or misshapen fish lips. While its 'sisters' were carved in Seraphine or Angeline figures, the ante foreshadowed knotty interlacings of invasive vegetation; the basin a vague, sharp undulation that could pass for a conch; the upper column supporting a heap of abstract faces where one asked if the hesitant tailor’d wanted to represent frightening gargoyles, or angelic and benevolent faces. This gave a confused amalgam of rather unusual but fascinating lines and obliques. Really strange fountain in such a place. Maybe that's why it was sculpted directly in the shadow of a retaining stone.

He tore himself from his reverie, finally deciding to dawdle in search of what he’d been asked to bring back. From the attack of the Wargs, Trevor's clothes’d suffered irreparably. Torn and stained, they were beyond repair. Poor Belmont didn't have much left in his belongings to put on his back, being obliged to walk around with the oversized shirts that Brother Efrain put at his disposal.

From memory, Acthéean hadn’t seen many pieces of clothing standing by in the chests. As a spare, it was limited to two somewhat faded shirts, which he would’ve to exchange sooner or later as his body developed, and a pair of brais that were still almost new. No more pageantry clothes to wear for larger ceremonies. Belts threadbare from having been subjected to intensive training. The boots were potable looking overall. As for the tunics, the last’d just died under the battering of the warthog. Efrain’d tried to have it sewn up and readjusted so that the Belmont would still have a nice piece to wear. The underwear was also newer and intact, having only been used for special occasions, most of the time the youngster liked to wear his clothes next to his skin. A coat with lower edges somewhat unraveled by the friction of the heels of the boots, and of the ground, flared its beautiful fullness in wings convoluting around the figure which was arraying it.

Acthéean sighed deeply while closing one of the chests, after having made the distressing observation of the poverty of his friend's possessions. He still had the chance that his uncle made him wear regular outfits, new linen and superbly sewn, enough to practice a regular change in his wardrobe. He thought he'd like Trevor to enjoy it too. A conversation with his uncle was to be expected. As well as a donation for his expenses to which he'd to participate more and more often in the evolution of his training and his classes. He knew his parent wouldn't give him any trouble to subsist his needs. So, if he added Trevor to his list, he calculated that he’d to play smart for his project by knowing how to invoke the right arguments.

He remembered the moment in the market when he'd to leave the beautiful piece of jasped brocade fabric, and his jaw clenched in painful frustration. He now wanted the best for his friend, his Soulmate, the one who'd definitely taken up residence in his dark heart. His heart-shadow.

He was stuck in his thoughts, he jumped violently when a voice rose behind him. He'd heard nothing, lost in his closed universes. In turn, he'd this feeling of being trapped in a clever game where he liked so much to startle others.

“Athéean? What are you doing here? Have you resumed your classes?

The youngman'd let go of the trunk lid, which slammed shut with a dull sound that seemed to break through the thick silence of the room. He faced the Founding Father standing on the doorstep, his amused and clear gaze twinkling in the chiaroscuro contrast of the inner boundary and the outer. His already impressive silhouette stretched even further on the ground, giving the appearance of a colossus with anamorphic dimensions.

The man entered gently into the dampness, interrupting for a moment the lazy fluttering of the dust in the sunny rays, and Acthéean'd the strange thought that he was going to absorb all the boiling particles of the room, just by his powerful frame.

“Father...''stammered Acthéean, gradually calming the beating of his heart.

He wanted to come forward to take a hand and kiss it respectfully, but the man made a gentle gesture of refusal.

“No, Acthéean, you know that I don’t like all that…Your greeting's more than enough for me.

The stentorum of his voice could become infinite sweetness in its thoughtful and calm intonations. The Founder took a few steps, surveying the adjoining space of the room with his scrutineer steel eyes.

“I came to get things for Belmont…He has very little left, and the clothes he was wearing during the last attack, are ruined and beyond repair…

Acthéean gestured helplessly to the coffer, sighing bitterly.

“I see that he has nothing left, in fact…

"And that saddens you, doesn't it?''Chester continued, turning to him, studying the youngman's figure.“You can call him Trevor in front of me, I know an unfailing friendship having been woven between you both…

Acthéean nodded silently, noticing that he was holding a piece of underwear in his hand, which he grabbed in compulsive movements, showing his embarrassment. He felt oddly blushing as he noticed the Founder's fluid, quick gaze at the piece of privacy held in his hands. He was glad that the soft stubble he wore continually could hide his sudden discomfort.

“Tell me, how is your shoulder? I heard that you'd resumed some private training...

"Brother Efrain and Norton are now treating me with massages, it allows the muscles to work properly again...I do my sword movements, but being careful, it's still a little painful...

As he spoke, Acthéean opened the chest again, as if to show Chester the afflicting desert of useful and necessary items. He vaguely made a selection of light pieces that he stuffed neatly into his bag.

Chester hummed to himself as he slid his gray orbs in a circle across the meager furniture that crowded the space. A holistic vision that didn't quite suit him. The Founder clicked his tongue annoyed and turned again to Acthéean who was piling up the few goods, and a few books and writing cases which came to be added to the thin booty amassed in the bag.

"Tell me,"said the Patriarch,"how is Trevor? During my last visit, he was still very weak, this poor child...

"Father Chester, I couldn't express my gratitude for what you've done for us,"began Acthéean, approaching and spreading his arms in a gesture of desolation.“Know that your presence does a lot of good to Trevor and to us…

Chester d'Uries contented himself with making a simple gesture to calm the youngman's concern, ignoring the acknowledgments. Very often, this exceptional man didn't need many words to put his interlocutors at ease. His charisma worked wonders, and his aura seemed to systematically shelter all souls in pain under his magnetic fractals. It was rare to come across such an individual gifted with so much constancy and wisdom seeming to exude from all his pores.

Acthéean regained his ease to continue his little report.

“Right now, I would say Trevor would be in a rather grumpy mood! He admits less and less the fact that he came very close to death, and that he drags on in pain, the interminable languor of physical and mental ill-being...There're continuous mini disputes between him and Efrain ordering him to follow the treatment without complaining…He regained some energy from his anemia by grumbling continuously as soon as anyone approached him with flasks and toilet tissues!

Chester chuckled gently at the taunting but affectionate descriptions of Acthéean. His mind conjuring up an amusing image of a Belmont bristling in anger at the medical objects, and recoiling like a furious cat with erect fur in rebellion. A similarity that suited the rebellious teenager perfectly.

“It doesn’t surprise me, knowing the character of this fiery kid...''he pointed out, sitting on the edge of the cold and smooth bed.

“He understands later that we’re right, and he apologizes, stammering, of course, because he knows that he has to pack up his pride in Belmont outraged in his stubbornness…it’s quite amusing to see their interactions between him and Efrain…But his wounds’re closing well and everything’s clean and safe from infection…He needs to relearn a bit to walk without a cane, but we're not fooled, we know he's doing it behind our back...

"How many shirts does he have left? Can you show me one?

Strange request, thought Acthéean, but obeyed without discussion and took the slightly crumpled fabric out of the bag. Chester considered it for a moment, still asking odd questions.

“He has lost a bit of weight, hasn't he? But this shirt would be the caliber of his figure?

Acthéean mentally measured the template of the garment and judged that the size was correct, even if his friend was gaining volume when returning to training. He nodded firmly. Chester still had the fabric taut in front of his eyes, and the youngman could’ve seen the gears of his mind turning behind the steel of the irises.

“Tell me, Acthéean, can you lend me this shirt?

Acthéean's puzzled eyebrow. The Founder continued.

“There're tailors who come from Targoviste and have settled for a few days in Danaşti…

Acthéean pricked up his ears, and his heart raced again in a rush of adrenaline.

"They must come to visit us at the Keep, to offer their luxurious items, as they regularly do...Volpe'll be able to strut his stuff in rich fabrics that he'll wear shamelessly during our ceremonies...and he'll be able to fart in silk while at his ease…

After a quick, amused sniffle on the fair enough reflection on the cardinal's pride, Acthéean swallowed painfully, apprehensively awaiting the continuation of a strange conversation with both sweet and sour flavors. Obviously, Chester was lip service to the opulence displayed by the Cardinal, who could afford all the fancies and caprices due to his rank. The words that followed stunned him, and he didn't know what to answer.

“I learned that they brought in their coffers splendid fabrics, coming from distant lands like China…fabrics of sublime beauty, which've no possible comparison between their extremely delicate and silky weaves, and the simple weaving sketches that we're sold to excess for sums, I must say, astronomical...

A look at the gray orbs that'd taken on mesmerizing glows as they landed on the helpless youngman. The hands carefully rolled up the shirt, and Chester continued, still in an even, soft tone.

“The other day, I was going to garrison with my colleagues, and we passed through a part of the market where these merchants were present...Apparently, the one who seemed to be the person in charge of the caravan, was innocently presenting one of these magnificent jasped pieces to a youngman…hmmm! probably that this youngman couldn’t, alas, afford such a purchase, for I saw him gently resting the cloth, and shaking his head in denial…then, he left, his shoulders hunched, he seemed to carry all the misery of the world…The merchant stared at him for a long time, before being challenged by a…matron who seemed to display her wealth in outrageous delight…She must’ve done business, I didn’t see it because my team was going through the portals entry…

Acthéean'd closed his eyes to the words, seeking uselessly to calm the beating of the heart which flew away like a swarm of birds frightened by predators, and sought to burst the rib cage which imprisoned them. His mouth was dry at the frustrating memory.

“Why are you telling me this, Father?''murmured Athéean.''When I was still among my family, we used to have visits from the craftsmen, and many offered us considerable riches...which could be afforded thanks to the high position of my father...So, I know the value of things, and that some can never be possessed by those who can't afford it...

“…tell me frankly, Acthéean, for whom did you look at these marvelous fabrics? For you ? or for someone else?

“I think you've the answer in that shirt you asked for…''the youngman replied simply, sinking his gray-nuts into the steely orbs, sustaining the intensity of the deep gaze.

He wondered for a second if the high dignitary’d already noticed the subtle changes in him, especially in his eyes. If so, the man never showed the hint of an observation made, always keeping his stoic presence in an exemplary discretion and wisdom, as well as an intelligent diplomacy that many didn’t possess.

"Green’s his favorite color, isn't it? This color’s special, and he’s somewhat the only one to wear it with astonishing ease...Did you know that in the world of the arts, the theater in particular, green’s forbidden to be worn on stage, it would bring bad luck they say!

"Violet and all other purple colors’re forbidden from painters' palettes, because they’re reserved for the cardinalice..."replied Acthéean gently, to put on a good face.“But they’re also said to be colors representing Melancholy so observed by ancient philosophers…

Chester rose from the bed, straightening his impressive frame, but not letting go of the discreetly rolled up shirt, and coming to nestle in one of the huge sleeves of the tunic. He appreciated the knowledge of the youngman with a flash of his gray irises which left no doubt about the mutual respect between the two men. Chester was aware of the great maturity and wisdom of a mind as young as that of Acthéean.

"Can you tell me where I can find Norton?"he asked suddenly, completely changing the direction of the strange conversation.

“He…he came with me all the way, then he left for his classes, I think… but he'd to make a detour to his cell which is further away, in the western annex…

Chester hummed softly.

“Thanks to you, I'll return the shirt shortly…Keep our conversation quiet…I wish you a good day, Acthéean, take care of your friend…See you at Vespers tonight…

Acthéean didn’t know what to do, and contented himself with nodding his head silently as the hieratic character passed by. Before disappearing into the narrow porch of the small room, he turned and offered a suggestion that seemed innocuous, but supportive. His voice hadn't taken a single accent higher in pitch.

“Tell Brother Efrain to add a list of clothing needs for you four, and have him bring it to me personally…

For you four? Acthéean remained in the most total confusion, not daring to fantasize about the incredible possibilities underlying this unusual conversation.

When he closed the door of the cell, having stretched the drapes over the narrowness of the window, and arranged the affairs a little in organized mounds, he left the premises, his mind full of questions about the somewhat baroque situation. Strange morning that'd taken shape there.

As he walked away through the shady ambience of the inner walkways, his hearing picked up the crystalline song of a fountain erased in the stone, fading with each step of his distance. In the humid heat of a day that promised to be beautiful in sunshine, the small mouths spitting the diamond waterfalls seemed to contract in a joyful grin, disgorging their pearls on tiny trellised ivy roots which'd come to invest the intimacy of the basin. But perhaps the songs sung by the gullies were in fact mourning the absence of a shadow coming to drink there.

More so, in time, the fountain hid, receding into the beneficent shade, its soothing silence. Waiting. Perhaps waiting for an ephebe to come again to bathe his opal skin under its joyful curls. A complaint perhaps whose accents lamented a nostalgia for a time when simple gestures would no longer lull the silvery-ish whispers, and slam their clarity on the mother-of-pearl of a velvety dermis.

Ooo>><<~~~<<>>ooO

Trevor extricated himself slowly from his sleep. He was surprised to have fallen-asleep like this again. He’d struggled for a moment, seated quietly on his vellums, his hands frantically tracing almost indentations, nebulous contours, marvelous intersections of organic and architectural. Drawings born from the extraordinary dreams of his friend, and his own.

His head’d stung dangerously without his knowledge, and several times he’d jumped into a pernicious drowsiness taking over his body. When his fingers no longer had the strength to hold the carbonaceous mines, he’d been forced to return to his soft bed and still warm by the permanent cordial atmosphere of the room.

He would’ve liked to take the time to read too. Andreas’d come fortunately in his waking period, and some books he’d brought had caught his curious attention. He also had to admit to himself without false shame that he really enjoyed the readings when they were spoken distinctly by Norton's soft baritone. One of the small advantages of his convalescence, not being able to sustain his attention properly for more than a few minutes under the dull pains half anesthetized by opiates, Norton’d kindly taken over, and had since read a few passages to them, while the two friends gradually vanished, lulled by the accented tones of a beautiful reading.

The body’d had needs that afternoon, which his mind didn’t necessarily validate, and he’d been forced to succumb to the absolute desire for rest. Drawings would wait.

His hip ached slyly, as he cautiously stretched like a cat digging his loins in a graceful arc. His vision pierced the semi-darkness, heading towards the stained-glass-windows which’d darkened with twilight already well advanced, then with inky night, in the midst of which he was waking up, no doubt drawn from one of his eternal and nebulous dreams.

The silence surprised him and disturbed him somewhat, at the time. He wished he wasn't alone. He knew he wasn’t. Not anymore. The apothecary was now going to buzz with a new life, upsetting the habits taken for weeks. How could he feel better than now, even if afterglows occasionally made his spine bend under the vicious thrusts. He’d time to heal, he knew that. He’d time to go back to training and do what he did best.

He simply had time to live.

Through the tenebrous permanence in tawny and earth, slowly his vision got used to and distinguished his surroundings. He checked his wrinkled nightgown, tugged at the creases, more mechanically than if he actually saw them. His pendant, still nestled in the hollow of his chest, had left a slight mark on his sleep-numbed skin, and he felt the slight tugging. It wasn’t important. He got up slowly, mastering the sly vertigo that always gripped him when he left his lying position, while running his fingers through a more or less wise hair of his rest, more or less bristling continuously in its many hair-spikes that sprinkled it.

The braziers and the hearth cut out the shadows with their warm glow. The whole thing was like a superimposed canvas shrouded in mist emitted by the embers and the wind managing to slip into the flue, blew in tenuous persistence stagnating at height of pelvis, without being toxic.

He advanced towards the table laden with his works, and observed his oeuvres for a moment,-the perky flames propelled their halos sufficiently illuminating to discern the whole-, while finishing stretching his limbs in a last attempt in order to evacuate the sensation of tingling linked to sleep. What a strange mixture he’d made there! But he and his friend had so many mind-blowing dream visions, it was beyond the wildest imagination. One thing certain spurted from all of this: it was truly a shameless and frenzied stupre/debauchery unpacking its most outrageous forms. And it was now the obsessions that gnawed at them insidiously. An unseemly maelstrom of libertinism that he would never have fantasized about before. The blatant result of a sudden shift into the sybaritic tenebra whose Guide, leading them through the uncertain mists, took on angelic airs, having seized their bewitched souls and minds.

Besides, his friend...He pricked up his ears, trying to pick up in the suffocating silence the brief sound of a breath. Which he quickly found. His friend was sleeping soundly on his stomach, his loins barely covered by the sheets that’d slipped almost to the floor, where one tip lay wrinkled in the contrast of its light color on the dark wood floor.

A look at the stained-glass-windows that were illuminated by an extremely bright quarter-moon after an early night choked with sporadic thunderstorms whose rolling thunder’d repeatedly woken him. The mixed shades of green-abyss-blue were strangely diluted on the diaphanous dermis, bringing out the back muscles in relief, the hollows nestled between their undulations. Unusual landscape of flesh in chiaroscuro, subtly lifted by the slow breathing of hypersleep.

For a long moment, the blue orbs considered sometimes the stained-glass-windows crossed by the intense moonlight, sometimes this pale flesh haloed with spots of diffused mired colors. Daydreaming. A day’d ended in joy, now promising another path traced in his destiny.

He mused, as he left the room, that now he could take the time to live...

The alambics hummed their creamy emulsions with intoxicating scents; the hearth rumbled happily with its perpetual logs preventing the dampness of the night from spreading its cloak oozing with storms. This summer was very capricious in the country, the sun was struggling to impose itself in an impossible dry heat, and this season was parasitized by constant thunderstorms. So it was no surprise that the Belmont still heard the first rumblings in the distance beating the drums of an unwelcome storm. One more.

The Vespers ordained by Chester had been postponed for a few fortnights, as a result of the savage attack. He'd his time to be ready to attend, cured at last. But before the ceremony, he and Acthéean were summoned to the Founders. So he knew he would be more than ready. For why? He didn't know. Nobody knew anything about it.

Trevor remained in his concentrated mutism, always with this impression of riding on tender clouds, his mind reviewing the day, his vellums, Andreas's visit, quick but effective. His lingering dreams. Those of Acthéean. And their own moment. The sublime intimacy that’d been woven between them.

As his long hands twirled his cup into which he’d poured the concoction, his mind flashed back to the multiple events that’d happened in a short time. He couldn't tell why he couldn't fully feel the joy that should wash over him, constantly struggling with the blanket of melancholy longing that gripped him. He was missing something, he was passing by of a fractional staggering emotionality he didn’t understand, which he didn’t discern, continuing his steps in the desert of emotion which suffocated him at times, to the point of haunting his songes. An irrepressible void that he couldn’t probe. Yes, that was it! An abyssal void that couldn't to clog. And this emptiness hurt somewhere, in his soul which was panting under the effort of wanting to extricate itself from it.

He was in pain in his dreams. He was in pain when he woke up. He couldn't strike the right balance because he’d never been given the opportunity to choose. Yet he could’ve wallowed in this very new and very small happiness he’d had in his friendship with Acthéean, but he was terrified by the fact that at some point he would pay the consequences. Inevitably. He was afraid of getting attached, he was afraid of loving. He was afraid of life, in fact. Otherwise, why would he throw himself headlong into battle, knowing that at every turn he could lose the round.

Was this what it meant to have bruises on the soul?...

The words flowed softly and naturally from the lips stretched into a bright hopeful smile from the blonde who'd tugged at his leather tie, and released the healthy glowing locks in wavy bounces caressing his shoulders. It looked like he still didn't believe what'd happened.

“So I find myself with two dunces to train in medical sciences,''sneered Efrain, smiling at his joke...''I'm spoiled! But, you aren't finished, it seems to me...

He saw Norton's beaming face telling them the incredible news. But he couldn't manage to be happy for the youngman, as he should be. Was he so appallingly selfish? Still, Chester’d considered Norton's case at his request. The youngster would henceforth live in the apothecary, under the aegis of Efrain becoming his tutor and trainer. All under the endorsement of Norton's own father who’d made the trip at the injunction of Chester.

The thunderous rolls filled the skies with their wrath. In the intimate bubble of the dispensary, even the sporadic furious rays of electricity didn’t tear the veil of almost cathartic appeasement that’d settled in the treatment-room that’d become a reception-room.

Just like one evening when he’d received such beautiful gifts from the librarian, it seemed as if the world was falling apart in an absolute reassuring and purificator heap; a strange sense of deconstruction and reconstruction in a flight of scattered pieces interlocking perfectly into each other. Where the impossible became possible in hesitant and barely articulated hopes.

He questioned his 'desert' in search of a tiny trace that would open up fields of possibilities, just as the men’d done that evening, happy for the young adult whose future was taking on a completely different aspect.

He knew this famous arid steppe well on the surface, but when he knew how to take the trouble, he could scrape the strata in depth and find an oasis from which to drink without remorse. It took next to nothing to push things into the light. After all, before that he’d nothing.

While he was trying, bit by bit, to unstick this fine tulle of his melancholy, in order to extract the precious moments of happiness, his broad forehead bathed and practically covered with the rebellious lock, a specter elongated its diffuse shape on the walls.

As unobtrusive and silent as his friend, the furtive slid aside so that his gaze focused on the presence without jumping. Trevor barely lifted his face from his cup where the beverage was cooling. The newcomer held out his hand, helped himself to a goblet from the alambic, and settled down in front of the Belmont, immured in his pensive mutism.

Not a word was spoken. Just a hand reaching out for his, to clasp it in a fist of honor knight to knight. A highly symbolic acknowledgment, because a simple "thank you" wouldn’t be enough to reward the one who’d tipped an existence into happiness.

Trevor won't sleep at night, too nervous inside about the sequence of events. And would drink countless mixed cups of anointing and sage wine that would stupefy him in the early morning. Too bad if he finally succumbed in the arms of Morpheus, he knew Somnus’d myriads of cryptic dreams in store for him that would haunt his nights for a long time to come.

For this night, he was no longer alone in ruminating on an incomprehensible melancholy that resented the insertion of a little happiness. Acthéean'd come back from there with a strange neurasthenia that didn't belong to him, and seemed to have contaminated those who lived under this roof. Trevor'd to deal with occasional lypemania, an overflow of positive emotions often had the opposite effect. Efrain struggled in an uncharacteristic gloom, but he knew the man could bounce back in no time.

Small, almost alienating black butterflies'd taken over the place, sweeping away the dust of yesteryear, the ashes of interior fires consuming bodies and minds. A dereliction that wouldn't be permanent, he knew. It was strangely a double-edged sword of a situation settling, while the spirits so accustomed to negative situations, digested the confrontation of a serenity finally found. The time that the psyches model themselves delicately in the new medium of good Fortune having decided to give them naughty winks.

Happy to die for, maybe that was it. An incredible contradiction of the mind drowning in endorphins, but reveling in the sorrow of the fleeting moment, instead of sipping from it all the nectar the gods would've to offer. Anxieties in capricious crises, mixed with the sudden euphoria, that one would like to die not to see the end of it. The incongruous desire of Death to erase the superannuated of a hope that we've waited for a lifetime.

Just like this desire to create life after attending a funeral, in an eternal fight against the irrevocable. Life in exchange for Mourning, whether material or human. A certain abnegation in the face of this Syndrome which belongs to the Recumbent that we all carry within ourselves.

Trevor thought strongly of his friend sleeping in the bedroom, relaxed and carefree in Somnus' arms. At least he hoped so, otherwise his friend might tell him his daring and flamboyant dreams of obscenity that he would enjoy painting, nestled in the safety of their bubble of intimacy. Sleep was almost twin brother to Death. Balanced uncertainly on the wire separating the two states, it didn't take much to switch to one side or the other. In sleep, the Psyche lives a new existence; in awakening, the Consciousness recounts what it remembers. And the Recumbent confesses the unsaid, the whispers of forbidden Shadows, the brazen deviations that set fire to awakened flesh.

He poured himself another cup, as well as that of his companion, as taciturn as he was, who’d kept his fist in his for a long time, by way of a long speech. He’d also learned to appreciate this lost and neglected soul, whose childhood’d also been devoured by dictates and decisions that left him no free will. It was out of place in those dark ages: the son never questioned the orders of the patriarch, and went off to a stupid war where he might leave his young existence; the girl would shut herself up for life in a monastery of solitude where she would even be buried among strangers, in the same irrevocably sacrificed destiny.

He raised his drink in a friendly gesture, and the other mirrored his movement. When he went back to bed, he would squeeze his friend into a brief hug that might wake him up. And he would go back to sleep in silence, as if nothing’d happened, even if Acthéean could consider him curiously to have been awakened and left to the mists of a new dawn.

Like twin reflections between two mirrors, the youngmen drank their Sage-enhanced concoction, a hand sweeping away wisps of night-blue, silky strands of light ashy-blonde. Without consulting each other, the two thought in unison of the fragility of this little bubble of happiness which’d finally chosen to twirl above their beings, and land in their hesitant and incredulous hands. If they blew on the very frail enclosures of this translucent sphere, they feared that perhaps it would fly into wicked shards, into cynical, mocking debris in the stings of disappointment. And that would really hurt...

Outside the elements seemed to be unleashed, toasting the happiness of the youngsters with torrential downpours over the sleeping landscapes. As men won’t be able to cry diamonds of joy, so the rains would serve as the laments of their strangely saddened hearts. The night would still be stiflingly damp and sweaty.

Ooo>><<~~~<<>>ooO

Chapter Text

In each vacant position, he waited for his shadow to appear at the bend of a shore, a corridor, an alley.

In each windy shower, he felt it in his physical integrity: graph of a twin DNA intertwining its helical volute with his troubled essence.

In each step reverberated on the partitions of his Memory, he heard his ephemeral stealth.

In a thousand lamps crowning the dark nestled in the Unknown, he lit him in the hope of contemplating his infinity in the dancing flame.

In the watchful night he sought him, so far in the background of dead stars, firmament asking only for a conscious observation on the chaotic disarray that saw him born.

The Greek philosophers'd discovered that the light that reached us sprung from stars that'd been dead for a long time. And in this darkness haloed with the most unfathomable black, he chose the highest and most scintillating moon, in order to light up his wandering path between the stones which he patiently piled up.

In the clear morning, newly awakened, he dreamed of HIM in an instant, balanced on this undulating parapet whose links took root in the mouths of roaring Dragons.

When the fog dissipated, the horizon which he glimpsed in its tawny and gold obscurations, enabled him to see that the Earth was silent. And that he'd finally found him in this Dawn within himself, but who was he?

Beyond the silver mists haloing this born miracle, he rode the swarms, he stared at the starry vaults, that firmament where the dead stars would soon sparkle again...

Then, in front of a discreet fountain, he was moved until he was more thirsty before the spectacle of a translucent specter, remanences emerging from a past, drinking in the crystalline waters, while the singing mouths poured their diamond nectar on the silvery-ash of a lunar-skin...

Umbrarum Tenebrae, Solus in Tenebris…**Tenebra of Shadows, Alone in the Black**would've crooned the Shadow to him among the wandering shadows between tains so silvery. He heard it. He understood it.

Oooo~~~II=II~~~oooO

Impossible to sleep. His nerves were compressed in a seething magma that threatened to explode with every moment, every gasping breath. From an endless nervousness, frenzied sweats were born, soiling the body tense with anguish. Because of course, with the lack of sleep, the ideas that flitted tirelessly in sky-high planes; the varying degrees of emotions all intertwined in anarchic constructs of thought; a constant flashback to the words spoken and the unexpected gestures; the crises of anguish and dizziness strangling his reasoning.  

Spirit is stronger than matter? No doubt, and he paid for it of an imagination literally in disarray like a furious chariot bumping on the rocks, pulled by horses caught in madness. Everything galloped in all directions, and he lost total control of his reflexes. So, evidently, Somnus, bewildered by so much toxic excitement, had for some time fled from his wet diaper from the sweats resulting from the disorder.

Four days had elapsed since the visit 'caused' by Chester d'Uries to his father. No more, no less his father who’d long since resigned from his role as husband to a semi-disabled spouse of her last catastrophic miscarriage, and was running across the country to escape the patriarchal obligations inherent in his rank. Since the terrible Mourning also of a child of barely nineteen, newly dubbed within the Brotherhood, and having left this world on his first mission. A shock for the couple who’d gone through the disastrous pregnancies of the wife weakening from year to year.

This paternal who'd also resigned from his role as father to his one and only remaining child, given that the family crypt was full of small sepulchres welcoming Recumbents who were born dead or passed away prematurely.

A sad display of tragedies collapsing on the couple's spines, in a line of dominoes shattered in their hazardous falls. And among this battlefield where the flesh'd fallen into dereliction, a boy who barely knew how to walk, had learned to care for a failing mother. Lonely. Wandering in the dark of a life decided in his place.

Norton’d had a hard time accepting the visit of this ghost-father, resentment always tasted bad. So, even though the meeting’d passed under benevolent and intelligent auspices, he couldn’t yet digest the incredible turn of events. Like the sullen Belmont, he too couldn’t dare to hope at last, to pull out this tenuous lace of a Felicity desperately awaited for so many years and barely covering the tremors of a flesh traumatized by the successive events.

Four days later, he was still in denial that it was all just a dream. Would he finally be able to decide his life? Choose to study what interested him without someone coming to shake everything up to tell him that it was all just a fantasy?

What little sleep he’d, he’d dreamed of his mother, he’d seen Ledorinian. He’d heard the complaints of this deceased brother. He’d shuddered under the pleas of this unjust specter to join in his death.

He’d woken up in tears.

The storms’d returned at full-speed to the landscape. It was pure, wild, primal madness—the kind that’d made the first men cower in the depths of their caves, terrified of the Unknown spreading its rage on their backs. The electric spits and rumbling bearings of these timeless storms grew louder in a torn night, multiplying their screams in echoes reverberating against the angry skies.

A zebra flash, pouring its glare through the stained-glass-windows of the small room he now occupied, behind Efrain's. The tinted glasses were in dark shades glowing like blood, blood-sanguine, green outraged with gray, and persistent remains of spray and dust from the weather; the whole gave mixed shadows of strange aspects of hazardous urination according to the gleams which pierced them. Sometimes repulsive vomit that entities would’ve projected in front of the windows, in their anger at not being able to cross the access to dreaming humans.

The beautiful warm-brown gaze contemplated their twists shimmering in baroque sinuosities on the floor already haloed in orange and gold by the flames of the small fireplace. The hearth was the only place that lit the room in semi-tenebra, the braziers remaining in Acthéean and Trevor's room, usually reserved for the sick. It’d become their bedroom now. He found himself comparing the spectral dilutions on the pavement to the mixtures that’d mysteriously smeared Trevor's drawings during the attack.

Another eccentric anomaly that kept puzzling them. If a superstitious follower caught this kind of phenomenon, the drawings, and Trevor himself, would most certainly risk being dragged before some semblance of a religious court condemning them before the Eternal. Norton’d understood for a long time, that it was playing within the apothecary, existences on the fringes of the narrow functionality imposed by the Brotherhood, and with a silent and unspoken agreement, he knew that he’d to cover all these disconcerting moments in the fresh grave with his most intimate secrets. He owed it to his new friends. His only friends.

He'd also noticed the astonishing similarity between the fates of the three men, and his own. By a curious coincidence, the dispensary was now collecting shattered lives in myriad ways, and connecting individuals in constructive solidarity for the future.

From image to feeling, from curve to angle, from detail to holistic space, his thoughts intertwined, inserting suggestion into an already confused tangle of his complex interpretations, jumping from one subject to another in a cacophony of sensations that electrified his nerves.

Interwoven among his dreams were the obsessive reminiscences of their failed mission at Wygol. Another thing he’d stubbornly suppressed, choosing to forget as well. In vain. If Acthéean’d amnesia, so did he, but by proxy. In a desire to erase the abominations he’d faced. The terrifying moment when the Vampire Knights’d literally sucked Acthéean into their dreadful vortex, dragging him there into the chaotic confines of a monolithic elevation where only the worst nightmares were born. The greatest mystery of a disappearance that the Brotherhood set out to solve. Merely, the only witness to what had happened, had returned almost dead, and amnesiac. Since then, it was total nothingness. Despite the efforts of Trevor, Efrain, and even his own to a lesser extent, because the unfortunate was so traumatized that he persisted in nightmares in cycle. He knew he wasn’t the only one, he’d learned from the other novices in the team, and even Milite Grégoire, that all had been deeply bruised, and kept grimacing sequels that came regularly to torment them since.

…Was it really lucky to come back from there intact? Intact…how ironic. If the flesh no longer wept its sufferings, the spirit, it, was in distress. And for some—the few who survived—wandered forever in the mists of madness. How to imagine that Chester d’Uries returned twice, without his spirit being broken forever…?

A roller more guttural than the others made the stained-glass-windows vibrate with its roar that seemed to spring from the ground itself. Norton straightened up from his couch, and decided to get up, try to take a few steps. Going to cool off, it became mandatory, his shirt was soaked in bad sweat. And doubtful fluid, he noticed, mortified. His nerves were inflamed by the chain of situations, the stress of his meeting with his father, but also this strange little perversion which’d shown the tip of its nose and quite often pushed him to drift into fantasies which set fire to his cheeks, but also in his flesh.

If he’d shared a meager blanket, that night in the library of Wygol Abbey, with Acthéean, in all innocence and platonic friendship, he’d to admit to himself that he’d been oddly exhilarated to fall asleep in the arms of the impassive future Knight. The internal conflict’d sharpened when he’d had the audacity to wait in the dark. Lonely. To listen to the darkness of the Shadows. To surprise a too languid sigh. The friction of damp flesh that would vibrate the atmosphere of suave friezes like a flow of musk bathed in oil in the heights of ecstasy.

Norton suffered the frustration of unrequited attraction, he knew, but was terrified at the same time of his cockiness reveling in the perversion of voyeurism. Since he’d known that he owed his change of situation to the Belmont moved by his story, he was grateful beyond measure. He’d a hard time controlling this raging flood of emotions. This savage with the indomitable mane, with the poisonous charisma of an infernal seduction,--the one who’d welcomed him almost by striking him with anger when they’d brought back the body of Acthéean, drunk with blind rage and terror at the idea that his friend was dead--, stood up for him and begged one of the Brotherhood's greatest Founders to interfere on his behalf.

The impetuous Belmont’d accepted his silence and his clenched fist in his hands as thanks. No words. Not worth it. Just two flamboyant looks of a powerful and inflamed character, mingling in the magnetism of a complicit silence. The fiery Belmont’d agreed to sign this peace pact in a discreet friendship that didn’t need effusions to be sincere.

Before leaving the room, finding his way easily thanks to the constant glow of the hearth which reverberated its brightness widely in shade and light through tenebra which could’ve obscured his sight, he listened for a moment, on the lookout for the slightest noise that would alert him that someone else was up. So it was easily that he wandered quietly when he was sure he was alone in the dark with stagnant tawny mists. He’d mentally recorded the location for the weeks he’d been set up to help, so it was without hesitation that he found one of the large candles in storage, lighting it. It would serve as a relay flame to light the torches in the bathroom.

He grimaced inwardly as he eyed the soiled garment with his fingertips, and prayed there was a shirt in stock for exchange. He knew the impeccable organization of Efrain, always having extra belongings that would solve an unexpected reception problem in his dispensary.

The apothecary'd always had the particularity of having all the chimneys lit constantly, even during the miserly dry summers and rather spreading its screeds of humidity at a very high rate which risked rotting the atmospheres. Especially those that contained valuable inventory in the sanitary. So in the healthy space, in addition to being carefully checked, there was a permanent diffusion of orange and golden half-tenebra, with the most beautiful effect and guiding the gazes misty with sleep in a hazardous and obligatory wandering.

These fascinating chiaroscuros were obscured at regular intervals by threadbare trimmings, tarnished with wear and tear, which clung stubbornly to the ceiling, descending their transparent weaves in places more faded than others, on narrow doorsteps whose tops rounded in a slight ogive, reminiscent of those of the abbey. The apothecary was built during the times of the monastery, and was one of the oldest buildings in Danaşti.

These hangings, heavy with history and dust encrusted in their threads--they were unhooked and cleaned regularly every six months--sometimes allowed wandering shadows to nest there, and curious eyes to peer between their wrinkled meshes. On the lookout. The thickness of their fabric also obscured the sound of shuffling footsteps, muffled the breaths hanging in the effort of discretion.

In the tenebras of the Shadows, he’d often sat, his back leaning against the walls clogged with these draperies complicit in his perverse curiosity. And he’d waited. Without daring to intrude with his afflicted eye. He counted the seconds, the minutes in his vain wait. He would never have been able to say why he was watching like this, and for what? So his mind drifted back to when as a child he drifted the same way. Through the endless corridors of their home far too big for children's steps. Find something. Surprise something? There was a little voice telling him to do that, and he knew it was wrong somewhere. It was deviant behavior, and if he got caught, the punishment would be terrible. But always, he’d wandered like this. Looking for something he didn't understand.

…Perhaps a clue that would sing in his ear the psalms of a desperate rambling on the spectral traces of a sleeping Recumbent in his Shroud of Dead Stars…The drifts of an absurd Syndrome freezing his own existence in a deadly rigor…A desire for death in order to satisfy those around him in a soothing, castrating mutism of a traumatized childhood…All the cynical Departed began a sinister dance around his thin, flavescent corpulence…

When he headed for the washroom, the spark rippled under the rush of air, leaned dangerously in danger of being extinguished, and cast furiously curved shadows on the cool partition of the walls, lengthening the twin of his silhouette in spectral contortions.

Arrived in front of the panel which closed the room, he hesitated to pull the corners, and waited still, on the lookout for some noise. Only silence answered him. So he parted the sides, and entered the place which, too, was constantly bathed in welcome heat which would avoid perverse humidity rotting the walls. Efrain'd also got into the habit of leaving a cauldron of water on the embers, which made it possible to always have a lukewarm or hot liquid for a nocturnal toilet. The herbalist knew how to dose the fires, so that the water didn't evaporate unnecessarily.

And precisely, there was someone in front of the cauldron. Leaning against the ledge of the high chimney, Acthéean waited patiently, his arms crossed on his chest stripped of all clothing. Half-naked, simple light trousers that clung as best they could to the treble of slender hips thrust forward in a curved and static balance. The fabric revealed a beautifully drawn abdominal belt low and hemmed in hollows and valleys. His shoulder showed the zebra of the scar still reddened with offense. Low on the soft knuckle of the groin, criss-crossed the rest of the pockmarked braid drawn by the Specter's sword-thrust, which he’d received in the Library. Norton quickly marveled at the pale pink appearance of the mark fading into the skin underlays, when again, it should’ve displayed a more stigmatized outrageous wilting.

Norton didn't know why the curious comparison came to him of a huge predator waiting to pounce on its prey for the killing blow. He stopped under the arch of the curtain, the sides of which fell on his shoulders. Not a sound had come out of the room, suggesting a presence. But the youngman suddenly thought that Acthéean was incredibly discreet and stealthy.

The look that the apprentice fixed on him, made him shudder slightly, and he didn’t understand the strange impression that his astonishing orbs made on him. Having been present for the treatments for a while, he'd also noticed the singular change in the irises covered with this coppery and golden screed, more pregnant and discernible at times, depending on the youngman's moods.

Norton hadn't dared to mention it, suspecting that it was one of the few physical changes that’d taken place since his return. He’d barely sketched out a questioning of it with Efrain, who’d revealed himself to be very perplexed by the phenomenon. Acthéean already had an unusual look, but since he’d come back from there...Even less to Trevor, he hadn’t confided his amazement. He knew that Acthéean was doing his best to cover up his unusual orbs in the eyes of others, and obtuse bangs regularly stitched the forehead and fluffy cheeks of its chocolate-auburn silk veil, strands of which faded to ash-blond. A fringe identical to that of the night-blue of the Belmont, without having the eccentric length.

Acthéean smiled benevolently at his friend who hesitated to come forward, visibly embarrassed to surprise him in his intimacy. He peeled himself off the hearth marquee, leaning over the steaming cauldron. Norton was fascinated by the soft movement of the obliques which undulated gracefully under the gestures, finding there a poisonous attraction which made him blush.

"Having trouble sleeping too?...''asked the apprentice of his hypnotic baritone softly, while he grabbed a large enamel basin and began to fill it with large ladlefuls of hot water.

"I'm…sorry!''Norton belched painfully, finding his throat suddenly dry.“I didn’t hear anything, and I thought I was alone…

He watched, fascinated, the back and forth of the ladle, the slow pouring of water, while Acthéean alternated his gaze towards him and the container. A strange static thickness strangled the confined space, and ambiguous waves flared into the syrupy ether of constant scents of embers and incense evaporating therein. If Norton’d to put a color to this atmosphere, it would’ve been suave and baroque flamboyancy which now stuck to the two contradictory moods. One was swimming in a devious and perverse uneasiness, the other in a sensual relaxation that seemed to be depraved by taking of stimulants. Poppy maybe? Did Acthéean use opiates for any reason?

Something was wrong. Acthéean's body language betrayed a more devious and rogue amphibology. His whole behavior seemed to scream a devouring and aggressive sexuality that emanated from him in a hypnotic magnetism. An unusual disturbing alteration. The youngman was excited. And Norton was mortified to have had the reflex to look lower, under the almost transparent waistband of the pants which slipped a little more on the groin and the inguinal folds sticking out in an arrogant pride of power.

An almost innocuous detail, but which’d taken Norton aback in his friend's dress, progressively quintessential and baroque in its refined transparency, and whose fabrics seemed to be cut from shamefully displayed stupor. A desire for seduction obviously sought. It emanated from Acthéean a gall of cautious surreptitious from which howled the will of debauchery to who knew how to discern this behavioral language. Suddenly, the usual impassive mask crumbled under perfidious impressions of enticement, and the blond no longer recognized his friend in this attitude worthy of the most clever libertines.

Acthéean must’ve sensed that his companion’d tensed with anguish, as he turned an amused eye on his figure who didn’t know what to do with his hands, fingers fiddling with the folds of his shirt. A wry smile appeared through the spiky stubble.

“Efrain's going to set up a signage so that we know when the places're occupied…''almost purred the apprentice who'd finished filling the basin.“For everyone’s well-being…

It was then that Norton saw his friend's eyes, slowly hesitatingly closer. The irises shimmered far too brightly, covered by the orange fires of the hearth that seemed to heighten them even more in their unnatural glow. Norton was sure of it: subtle flakes of gold arched the firmament of gray-hazelnuts absorbed by the extraordinary fire of molten copper. An explosive mix. Never seen! For a bit, he'd think those eyes belonged to someone else, or an Inhuman. And the pupils! God, the pupils were dilated into an ominous chasm, slowly widening, almost obliterating the extraordinary hues of fusion.

He'd to say something! Anything to hide his anguished dismay. But nothing came. And the increasingly suffocating impression that he was in front of something other than Acthéean radiated through his adrenaline-soaked veins. He was certain even that the apprentice must hear the pounding of his heart clenched in gasps.

And the other seemed to notice his growing uneasiness, and played with his movements which he deliberately slowed down, while now staring at the frozen blond. What was Acthéean having fun with? Was he deluding himself suggested by his mind inflamed by the ambiguous behavior, or was he witnessing a form of malignant seduction that was nothing like the normal attitude of the youngman, usually so reserved and fearless?

He watched the supple hands manipulate tinted bottles, from which heavenly fumes escaped when the cork was removed. The creamy, syrupy liquid dripped sparingly into the hot water, immediately floating in oily puddles shimmering with muffled shards, dancing in the little ripples of wateriness.

“There's water for everyone,”continued Acthéean, quietly, still in his flat voice.‘’You can clean yourself in the bin if you want.

He lifted his face from the hollow vessel whose fragrant vapors bathed all of the hair that fell forward in the movement, and Norton thought his friend's hair'd grown well too.

"How…how is Trevor?"he stammered, trying to turn away from his secret fascination that kept causing strange throbbing throughout his body. If Acthéean'd fun charming those around him, he succeeded in his game with the blond. There was going on, it seemed, a terrible twisted mind game, all the venomous bitterness of which seemed to rise in his aching throat under the nervous contractions.

"Thunderstorms don't do us any good, they bring unhealthy humidity...We all sleep very badly...Trevor isn’t exempt from it...With him, everything's at the extreme: it's either, he doesn't sleep, either he has a dead sleep from which you can only extricate him with enormous difficulty...

Norton decided to get busy, and also prepared a hollow dish for himself in which he poured the water necessary for his ablutions, while Acthéean still observed him with this strange, unfathomable and heavy gaze on his spine.

"You'll find clean shirts over there, in the trunk,"explained Acthéean, gesturing towards the furniture.'Take your time to cool off, the night isn't over, and neither are the storms...

“Tell me, Acthéean, why can't we sleep peacefully? Since the news of my change of situation, I haven't been able to find rest…on the contrary, it seems that it’s eating away at me…

He suspended his movement, suddenly inspired by the need to confide this strange unease which made him gradually dissolve into the Nothingness of his Being, and the Chaos of his reflections. Acthéean didn’t lose his unusual smile, and approached a little closer to the blond, his hand holding out one of the bottles he’d poured into the basin.

"Trevor can't find peace either...In a way, neither do I...Probably it's the constant anguish of those who don't know happiness in their lives, and who welcome it with suspicion when it arrives...

Acthéean swiveled his face and stared at a point that only he seemed to see. The dark pupils seemed to pulsate with a life of their own. He's on opiates. He took too much, certainly.

"From my 'trip' I brought back a deep sadness that wasn't mine, but is part of me, now..."he almost whispered, the vocal timbre deepening a bit more, like a dying rattle.“It seems that I transmitted this nostalgia, this unfathomable melancholy to Trevor who absorbed it like a sponge...Efrain himself isn’t in serene dispositions…We've been changed, Norton…

The extraordinary gaze planted itself again in Norton's warm-brown. The latter’d the impression of looking at a starry vault, nuanced with detonating flashes. The phenomenon should’ve repelled him in an instinctive revulsion, but instead he was mentally startled to see that his body was torn by paradoxical reactions: that of a dull fear which whispered bitter warnings to him, and that of shameful arousal sending him tons of back-to-back chills as the minutes passed. If any danger loomed under the overwhelming presence of Acthéean, he was silenced by an exponential desire that he contained only with difficulty.

“Even you, you came back changed...’’chanted Acthéean, his voice half-hoarse, half-sluggish.‘’You haven't realized it yet, but you're no longer the young Norton who walked into Wygol, and came out at full-speed in an absolute debacle...Everyone suffered something there…and it’s this something that turns our lives upside down, and prevents us from enjoying the rare moments of happiness…because we left a part of our Soul there…

Norton didn't know what to say, frozen in attention to cryptic words. In the vats, the water cooled, shivering with layers of scented oils. The hearth crackled with its impassive fire doing its job of drying up, and the ether, which'd become heavy with unease, was rocked by dry cracklings alternating with sighing hisses in laments of the wood collapsing in the hearth.

"But Trevor wasn't with us, he shouldn't have this change, as you say...

"Trevor's unique, don't you realize that, Norton?''suggested Acthéean.“The Founders bet a lot on him, from his birth. We don't know why, at least we don't anything. Not even him. What I do know is that he isn’t like the others, of that I’m sure...He absorbs things incomprehensible to others...He seems to swallow the invisible universes that surround us...

“From his drawings?''Norton muttered, not quite sure of deciphering his friend's words.

"I'm going...the water's getting colder, and Belmont needs to cool off...He's sleeping badly, he's sweating a lot, he seems like he's having another fever attack...the storms're getting on his nerves...and he has still hurts…his hip continues to make him suffer…

“Yet it heals well…Efrain thinks of phantom pains that persist long after surgery…

"It's beautiful on the surface, but you're never sure what's underneath...He has to manage to be on his feet properly for our summons before the Founders...

The Founders'd expressed their desire to convoke the young people, this during the day preceding the Vespers ordained by d'Uries. An additional topic that apparently worried Belmont. Efrain didn't say more, but he certainly knew the reason, his eyes'd taken on a light of relief, such as he hadn't had for a long time.

“Do you know why you are summoned?

"No idea...I'm trying to reassure him, but God knows why, he's agonizing over a possible stupidity he may have done...You know him, he's stubborn enough to think he's useless and incapable of good things to others...

“I know…he proved it to me…

Norton lowered his head, smiling. He grabbed a toilet tissue, beginning his cleaning gesture. Acthéean caught the basin in balance, which made its oily banks lap gently on the enamelled edges. Norton still admired the whole of the muscles which gleamed with a light sweat of golden flames, the graceful mountains which made the flesh throb with the effort. The charisma that emanated from his athletic and nervous body seemed to stretch in olfactory and dazzling afterglows of purple and gold tones, Sandalwood and Iris dozing in its opacity.

Before leaving the room, Acthéean turned around, his voice not rising in pitch, still as thin as a sigh drawn in by a delighted throat. The ashy locks fluttered over the shoulders which they largely covered with their beautiful length. Not as long as the midnight-blue ones, far from it, but just as fascinating and brilliantly healthy.

As the face looked at him from a three-quarter angle, Norton'd the unusual reflection of a singular resemblance to the Belmont, in the angles, the fine and acute sharpness of the features, the willful jaw. Not quite twins, but it didn't take much. The others were right when they "made fun" of an extraordinary similarity in their physiques. Yet, even though Acthéean displayed a noble and fascinating beauty, virile and aggressive in certain aspects, it couldn't match that of the Belmont, carved in the features of Obscuro and Light. A purity rarely granted to Mortals, irremediably reminiscent of that of the Seraphim.

"If you need to talk, I'm here...even if I may seem absent to you at times...You know you can talk here, there’re only attentive ears and benevolent attentions to entrust you to us...Even Belmont, who looks more like a wildling, will know how to give you the moments you need...You’ve to think now that we’re all in the same boat with our almost similar experiences...

Norton could only sputter useless thanks, the fabric splashing in the lukewarm water now.

"You can get yourself something to drink, we won't mind if you make a little noise…I think Belmont'll fall asleep after his toilet, and so will I, finally…I think you get it, I chewed a little too much Poppy, my wound was pulling…good night, Norton, try to rest…

“Acthéean…”called Norton, seized with an inspiration. He felt stupid in front of his bowl of water and the cloth he was chopping nervously. The other paused and waited for what he'd to say. A swollen aura of something throbbing furiously in his friend's essence, and he'd bet the thunderstorms had nothing to do with the electric, asphyxiating aspect that emanated from it. The impression of an immeasurable violence that was going to be released, like a haunting on the ghostly hints of this fear that was creeping into his veins.

"I meant...nothing, ever will come out of this place..."he mumbled stupidly.''I want to say…

"I get it..."A mischievous wink underlined the sweet response.

He wanted to assure his friend that he was trustworthy, and that whatever happened, whatever was said in the privacy of confidence, nothing would transpire outside the apothecary. He was certain of this something that'd been established in an exceptional trust, and that nothing, nor anyone should interfere with the tacit agreements.

But apparently, Acthéean'd observed him objectively, and with these two words, he expressed his assent so that he could discreetly insert himself into the closed cocoon of mysteries that'd been woven since their arrival in the dispensary.

The drapery fell back over the beautiful cutout figure of Acthéean, cutting off the bubble of the room from any other confined space in the returned silence slightly altered by receding rumblings. No other noise. The apprentice was truly as stealthy as a ghost.

Norton found that he’d sweated even more under the avalanche of sensations that’d gripped his being banned in front of his friend whose behavior’s confusing, almost incoherent. Seductive, sure. Perhaps under the influence of opiates the reactions’d been overactivated, but Norton’d clearly identified the behavior of a demonic seduction. God, he was possessed! And he, who couldn't contain his shameful reactions. Already exhilarated apparently in his shocked sleep, a sneaky extension that’d almost put him in agony during these long minutes.

And his eyes! What had he brought back from there?...

Without thinking, the soiled shirt fell to his feet, and he pushed it aside carelessly, while he plunged his face, inflamed with unequaled shame, into the lukewarm water. He almost wished the water had been freezing cold, it would've calmed the fire of his flesh quivering with goosebumps under the difference in temperature, and of the excitement he tried to calm with great bursts of perfumed spurts, washing his dermis of stains.

Then, without warning, his spine bent against the light of the joyous blaze of the hearth, and the atmosphere was distressed to hear the hiccupping, gasping sobs which mingled with the essences, and which the oily waters tempted to wipe.

~~~Ooooo~~~

It undulated in wild showers, before moving away. Then it came back, each time more intense in angry outbursts. An incredible humidity weighed in the ether, making the spines of the forests bend under the torrents of icy rain and as pungent as needles which would torture the dermis of the living which fled under the interminable crises.

Another period that rotted under the accumulation of inconsolable storms, causing the rivers to swell pulsating under the arches of the village, as well as the streams gorged with acid spray where harmful lives were swarming taking advantage of the downpours.

The skies kept opening their water-laden swarms, as one would slide a zipper on a fabric soaked in liquids. The bearings were permanent, it retreated to better gallop in a momentum that seemed unstoppable. Men and animals couldn’t find sleep fleeing their beds, their stalls, their nests or their burrows soaked with water risking drowning those who’d dug their galleries there.

The bodies were covered with unhealthy sweat, and those who’d the opportunity, got up to refresh themselves several times in this infernal night. Others who couldn’t afford it, wallowed in their dirt embedded in their skin, exhausting themselves in the fatigue of insomnia.

What a strange year of constant bad weather! The country hadn’t collapsed under such stormy showers for a long time. The superstitious persisted in seeing in it an incomprehensible wrath of God, others sly provocations carried out with the wings of a master by a dracolich silhouette immersing the hearts of mortals in the ice of terror.

Somewhere in the apothecary came indistinct noises like sighs of impatience from the side of Efrain's room. The man saw his sleep broken up into small patches of simultaneous awakening and falling asleep, and in the end, got up in the morning just as exhausted as if he hadn't slept at all. Like many, the herbalist didn't tolerate storms well, and his nerves were on edge.

He turned for the umpteenth time in his loose diaper from his struggles with his capricious sleep. His bedroom had just as many utensils sprawled on a table as the reception room. He could quietly prepare something for himself without disturbing the other occupants. Which he did.

As he turned on the water on the hearth; he watched the piles of books piling up on his low bedside table, then reported his attention back to the lightning flashing through the midnight-indigo stained-glass-windows. He too crystallized his eyes withered with fatigue on the sinuous shadows emerging from the fractals of the colored glasses.

He began to let his imagination wander far away from this world upset by the elements. He began to dream, wide awake. As he poured boiled water over plants that immediately released their heavy sweetness like soporific relaxants, formed a subtle smile in anticipation of reactions that were sure to come in the days to come. His heart clenched in joy like it had never done before.

Efrain’d perfect hearing, and would’ve heard the rubbing of a mouse along the walls. So he perceived the slight cautious rustling in the corridor which stretched its shadows in front of his room. He discreetly pushed aside the hanging from his door, casting a curious eye on the one who wandered thus in the furtiveness of darkness. Norton. Apparently the youngman was coming out of the washroom, most likely to cool off from the pesky storms as well. He knew the blonde had a bad sleep too.

He cleared his throat softly, signaling to Norton that he was spotted. When the blond turned to him, his face subtly lit by the spark of the candle, Efrain understood immediately that the youthful features'd been washed with tears. The young adult was in disarray for some reason, which Efrain suspected, but would keep mum, merely motioning for the youngster to join him in the bedroom with a simple nod of his head.

No doubt the youngman needed company. Or to speak. Or to remain silent. Whatever. If either of them needed to talk, they would find the words. Or not. Gestures will suffice. The two in unison sipped their drink for a long time, reassuring their raw nerves, and the little room resounded only with drum rolls, and delicious little slurps on the edge of hot cups. Both knew full well that the night was going to be long, again. Very, very long.

O ~~OoooO~~ O

The curve of the kidneys widened a little more under the beneficial caress of the fabric soaked in perfumed essences, washing away the traces of sticky sweat generated by the humid thickness of the atmosphere, and nervous shivers. The air was invaded by musky odors of all kinds, the ethereal particles of oil and organic anointings paired in an sensory intoxicating ballet.

Acthéean's sense of smell delighted in different notes in inconsistent layers, a sublime olfactory pyramid from which derived the top notes, those of the heart and those of the base, which he managed to distinctly categorize in his Compositional Memory of the Art of Perfume. He was ecstatic about the infinite palette that the languid body before his gaze was able to evaporate in scents inviting to an incomparable bliss of inebriating.

The top note inflamed his senses in a fantasized rapture, swirling in his nose with great slaps of frosted and woody musk like Sandalwood whose deep emanations invited Aphrodisia to flirt with Sensuality.

The base notes were oils for the toilet in the greenness of mint and the solemn sweetness of Iris. Those of the heart quivered subtly in the delicate acidity of citrus-fruits carefully dosed by the opal dermis. An extraordinary palette where all these shades were united in exalted levitation, leading those who breathed them into a unique contemplative veneration. The whole thing became a faithful portrait sublimated in the sporadic coalescences of olfaction and chromatics.