I am not particularly proud of the things I have done to secure my immortality, but they were necessary. A means to an end. By the strength of my will, sheer determination and resourcefulness alone, I have defeated death itself through harnessing the immensity of the cosmic unknowable far beyond the grasp of normal men. I have had all the time in the world to repent for my innumerable sins, but I haven’t still. Isn’t it funny how the selfish sacrifices we make rarely come back to bite us? It seems as though mine have, now, in my ‘old age’. The sacrifices to get here were great, many, and they weren’t mine.
That the day would come when eternal youth would become just another triviality was something I never conceived of, and yet here we are; over a thousand years since the daggers first fell. A pact bound in blood is seldom broken. However, that had become my sole mission; the only drive which remained in me after the desolation of a millenia’s worth of living. Death. I found myself seeking it, finally. A task not so easily accomplished, but even Gods grow tired with time. Were I to be blown to pieces, crushed or otherwise obliterated, the job would still be unfinished; my sentience squashed, screaming out in agony within my decimated remains unable to escape forevermore. No, there were only two methods, and I didn’t quite fancy the idea of waiting a stretch until my essence inevitably ran dry. Though the other was merely a theory, it was the only feasible option I had at my disposal to attain the death which I sought and to close out the world for good; a world which had become so dull and gray it almost seemed worth destroying in its entirety.
So, I traveled back to Rome, where it began. The city had changed, needless to say; corrupted by modernity much like everywhere else within the dominion of the civilised world. I knew it would be harder to recreate the ceremony in such an age than when intelligent minds were more open to the esoteric, but I had no choice. Existence, as I knew it then, had nothing left to offer me. I had seen it all. Done it all. So it had to be. Everything I had ever known had grown cold to the touch, the joy of my past victories pale in the face of their far extended time in the sun, and indeed, I was tired. I am tired still.
Gathering the children wasn’t all that difficult. It never was. A few well placed calls and the acquisition was in progress. The scrounging wealth of a thousand years can buy many things. The blades, however, were another story.
After a brief personal investigation and an inquiry with my Vatican contact, I learned they had fallen into the possession of some pompous art collector; an empty headed voyeur of the past who knew little or nothing of their true strength. His grubby hands were now all over the instruments of eternity, of which I saw as rightfully mine. This fly in the ointment was particularly well guarded, and while my power was vast it extended not too much farther than my lingering mortality, quick wit and relatively small fortune, having abandoned much of my passion for political interference decades prior and wearing out my ties with the relevant powers that be as a result. This is where guile came into play. I always was the roguish type, after all. A horde of pilfered gold fit for a dragon would attest to that; the image of which I guessed might very well be quite accurate were I to have had the restraint to amass it all in a single great chamber like some fabled king rather than spending away the spoils almost as fast as I stole.
Under the cover of darkness, I crept onto the sprawling gaudy estate in the hills and bided my time. Patience is a virtue of which I’ve learned to master quite well. As the security staff switched shifts I scrambled over a wall and snuck around through a half-open sliding door on the back patio. It wasn’t difficult to find my target in that appalling neo-modernist monstrosity. Half the damn thing was basically transparent. I entered through the man’s bedroom door as he was engaged in laboured relations with some lady of the night and I ended them both just as quickly, pulling the suppressed pistol from my waistband and putting two in each skull with expert precision; a modern convenience of which I relished. There could be no risk of the alarm being raised. Besides, I couldn’t in good conscience let the man live after touring the inside of his pretentious domicile; to allow such poor taste to go unpunished would be a crime unto itself. The woman, simply collateral damage like many before her; she being one of the the last in a long line of victims who might have lived had the circumstances been more forgiving.
I didn’t need him breathing to find the daggers. I had been through enough extravagant homes in my lifetime to know when a hidden compartment was concealed in a room like that one. Always so predictable. I fiddled with some books on a shelf before feeling around beneath a desk and voilà, my middle digit landed on a miniscule button far to the back. A panel in the wall behind me slid away, revealing what I had been seeking.
“Ah, a wall safe. How original!” I couldn’t help but quip aloud to the corpses bleeding over the plush bedspread, relieved that I had anticipated a bigger challenge than I actually found myself facing. Picking through the mediocre and surprisingly antiquated locking mechanism sent a wave of satisfaction crashing over me as I heard the ‘click’, a familiar feeling which I had long since forgotten.
I swung open the safe door, and there they were; my daggers, swaddled snuggly in a velvet covering. Inspecting each one closely before packing them away, I promised myself that I would never lose them again; that they’d be destroyed along with me, their miraculous gift lost to all potential seekers who would wish to replicate my power. There were three in total; one to bind, one to merge, and one to take. All three had to be used correctly for the process to be successful, so it stood to reason that it might just work in the inverse to bring the process to an end. Pleased, I made my way back out through where I came and began the preparations, doming a security guard with a shot from the pistol on the way out as he turned to face me following my whistle; just for fun.
After a long returning flight to Argentina and many tiresome hoops jumped through in terms of smuggling ancient ceremonial daggers through customs despite my connections, I finally arrived at Ezeiza International Airport; my hub of choice for the skies. The driver was waiting outside. I expected nothing less.
We arrived onto the long dirt road leading up to my estate a few hours later, sequestered deep in the wilderness far beyond the sight of prying eyes and the incessant wagging of questioning tongues. I had more than earned such luxury after so much time alive, but I always made it a point to never forget where I came from amongst the peasantry; although much a faded sentiment towards the end, I will admit. The large stone structure came into full view as we rolled through the foreboding arched gateway. My suit-clad driver hopped out and hustled around to open the door for me. As he did, I gave him a slight nod in acknowledgment. He shuddered and hastily got back in and sped away, apparently more than glad to have now been permanently relieved of his duties as he had previously been informed of.
The tall wooden doors swung open and I was greeted by my faithful man-servant, Ivan. He’d been with me for many, many years, and I paid him in more than just money.
“Are they ready?” I asked, already fully aware of the answer. The help knows better than to keep me waiting around on the fulfillment of orders.
“Yes, Sir. Shall I prepare the daggers?” His familiar sheepish cadence made me feel quite at home.
“Immediately, Ivan. Oh, but do prepare dinner first. One ought not to leave this world on an empty stomach.” I handed him the bundle of velvet containing the blades after removing them carefully from the monogrammed briefcase which hadn’t left my side since they became mine once more, and he trotted off to go about my bidding; his clumsy, hobbling footfalls echoing through the hall hurriedly as he went. Dropping the otherwise empty luggage at my feet, I ascended the staircase leading to the study, where I would finalise my last will and testament.
How does one decide who gets what when it’s all done and over? How do you pick out the liars and the thieves from those truly loyal? I’m glad such questions are beneath me. My ‘will’ was more like a simple letter of instruction. A mere formality, sent out to those in the corners of the world who owed me various favours and who were likely to honor them as my last wishes. There were still old scores to be settled, many of which would be finished off resolutely by thugs with guns and knives and duct tape and power tools in alleyways and bars and dank warehouses where the only sound to be heard is the merciless din of violence and the decrepit dripping ambience of a society long in ruin. Ivan knew of his responsibilities well. The estate was to be set ablaze following the ritual as part of the final liquidation of my assets; all my worldly possessions, burning to ash along with me and serving as the official cause of my death. Fitting. My various bank accounts were to be drained; funds not designated for whatever half-hearted causes I might have once thought important funneling into any number of dead-ends which would never be uncovered and where they would remain and gather imagined dust for all time. Money which would never rot, and yet lay in quiet abandon just the same. I found the idea rather poetic, and so I sent off several million dollars there to the sands of time. The only record of my existence would be the lasting memories in the ones I have hurt and the tales people tell of my exploits vast and bloody in hushed, terrified tones. A legend scorched into them and their descendents for as long as their lineage may carry. My terrible legacy, erased besides the weight of their collective trauma. I was quite fine with that outcome.
“It is ready…” Ivan whispered harshly through the heavy chamber door. “Will there be anything else, Sir?”
“No, my dear Ivan. That shall suffice.”
With that last extravagant meal sitting comfortably in my gut, I gazed around the room for the final time. Ornate bookcases laden with priceless, timeless texts; a wine rack stacked with bottles lesser men would perhaps kill for; and a two-hundred-year old desk I had fetched from a withering Bonaparte. All of it, to burn away to rubble. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Return to your quarters… and remember well what I told you. The ritual is not to be disturbed until it is over. You have been warned.”
“Of course, Sir… Thank you.” I heard him spin around on his heels.
“Oh, and one more thing, Ivan.”
“Yes, Sir.” He stammered.
“I remind you again, It all must be destroyed. I will know if your hands fall where they shouldn’t. Regardless of whether I still draw breath.”
He responded in the affirmative, as usual. I didn’t think the snivelling worm would dare, but I couldn’t really blame him if he did. When the cat’s away the mice will play, after all.
I stood up from the smooth leather armchair and took a deep breath as I prepared to face oblivion. Now that it was finally there before me after all that time I felt a deep sense of relief which raptured me and made me, quite ironically, feel alive. Alive because I was now about to die. This would be my final sacrifice of the innocent for my own gain. If there indeed was a God he would at last get his opportunity to cast me down below, denigrating me for the selfishness and cruelty I have wrought upon so many. I awaited his disdain gladly with open arms. Life, after all, has a gnawing quality to it. It grinds you down and bends what you were originally until all that’s left is a laughable shell of what once was. Even I, my youthful countenance never faltering, and yet my mind still aches with the weight of ten lifetimes and of the vicious, uncountable deeds committed therein. The savagery of it all, incalculable; lives taken in such a number as to seem to run off far into that infinite night itself not unlike those souls ripped away into its uncaring embrace from the ones who may have loved them.
The children were unconscious, as I instructed they would be. I deemed their waking attendance unnecessary for this modified version of the ritual. So many young ones, all dead and gone. Snuffed out so that I could keep going like a petulant youth raging indignantly against the forces of Father Time with surgery and cosmetics as if the world would not fade away and end just the same. Every century I would repeat the abominable process, and every time the results would be the same. My face would remain beautiful, my body in prime condition, forever. So long as I kept killing kiddies, that is. So long as I kept feeding whatever malignant darkness eats away at their lifeforce beyond the veil once their souls slip away into its ethereal cosmic web.
I looked down upon the three small sedated bodies as I descended the short flight of stairs into the sacrificial chamber, still wholly quite pitiless. They were secured in a standing position with their heads facing down while their backs arched crookedly, feet pushing into the dirt squares beneath which would soak up the mess and facilitate the feeding of the Beast. Their precise placing held the beginnings of the power which was to be tapped into.
Taking up my spot at the centre of the room, I stabilised my excited breath as I prepared to begin. I spoke the words, three in total, one for each dagger; except now essentially in reverse. Their language of origin was a mystery even to me, but still I always felt the power as the words left me as if I knew it innately and always had. After a total of thirteen repetitions, I slowed, stating only the initial word in the sequence.
I approached the first; a boy, aged six. The dagger plunged deep into him and a third was bound as quickly as it happened.
The second, a girl, also aged six; the same. Two thirds were merged.
I steadied my nerves as I found myself at the final child, another boy, once more aged six, and I hesitated as I reflected upon a thousand year reign of greed and terror, raising the final dagger high up in the air. A smile crept across my face as I spoke.
“I have lived well.”
The blade fell furiously into the back of the boy’s neck as I cast my clenched fists downwards and I screamed out in anticipation of the end, but no end came. I stood there, eyes closed tightly, trembling hand still clutching the dagger’s handle as it rattled in the poor child’s spine. What followed can only be described in retelling as wholly divine, and wholly terrible. It broke the silence with a booming proclamation which seemed to shake the very foundations around me; in the worst way conceivable, the boy spoke, and he spoke in a voice far from his own.
‘KLAT’UU ANA SETMAN’U SAH’
A deep menacing rumble begat an invisible explosive force which struck me and sent me soaring through the air crashing into the cold stone wall behind. My back shattered in a crunch which felt universal, as if my very soul had crumbled along with the shattered vertebrae. I writhed like a broken worm, grunting and moaning through a pain unlike any other I had ever experienced before. I writhed there until my sight was drawn slowly from the floor then to the wall and then ultimately back upon the now levitating infernal child before me, freed entirely from the restraints which bound him. My attempts at speech were reduced to disgusting, bloody gurgles, and I was still in part caught in suspenseful hope as to whether the ritual had somehow been a success despite the unexpected ghastly possession I saw then. I wondered if I was in fact bearing witness to the very Reaper of lore Himself; but alas, it was not to be. With a deep otherworldly cry the child fell to the slabs beneath and with his impact so too did I fall, but only briefly; the sensation similar to the way one falls in a dream only to awaken with a reassuring surprise of the certain safety of the reality he has always known and always taken for granted. I was hardly aware of it at the time, until I awoke.
Lately I’ve been mulling over that very moment with a great intensity as I recall the differences in the sensation of ‘dream falls’ to my, I presume, rather literal one; at least as far as my soul is concerned, if one is given to calling it such. For you see, as much as my occult knowledge betrays me on many aspects of this so-called excuse for a dimensional space, I can in fact discern general details about its mechanisms with relative accuracy after much trial and error and misplaced conclusions.
The spatial aspects of it are merely a deception. I found that out quickly enough. Go through a door; pop out where you were a day ago. Jump through a window; same general thing. It is most certainly infinite. A never-ending, sprawling castle. Its interior, barren and mossy; aged by centuries and yet ageless. There is little progress to be made through exploration alone. Neither is there all that much to look at. The gooey greens of mimicked nature and the reproduced grey-blacks of the interior stone and the outer facade; all an intricate lie. A fabrication built to keep me guessing. A prison, one can only posit, devoid of life. My most intensely burning question though, now, as it always has been? Who is the jailer?
I feel an odd sense of intrusion in this place. As if my movements are tracked and intently observed. It, whatever may govern this place, saw fit to restore my corporeal form to its baseline; repairing my broken body. So surely whatever its intent may be, it wishes me to walk and to search for a vain hope not really on offer. A sick joke concocted by a sick jailer. Who knows? I doubt I will ever be allowed closure on imaginings like that. I suppose such beings find it distasteful. Beneath them as I must be, as I saw so much as being beneath me when I still stalked the earth; like Ivan and his pilfering little mits; and the children. Countless sorrows, mercilessly inflicted without a shred of decency or thought or remorse so that I could partake endlessly in the decadency of life at humanity’s expense.
Although I haven’t yet died as I had hoped in the traditional sense, and although I will likely never leave this place, I feel a strange sense of gratitude despite my purgatorial imprisonment within this glorified fishbowl for God. As I stare out over the flat, scarcely detailed and forever-stretching landscape from atop one of the ‘castle’s’ many battlements, I can’t help but be at peace. Whatever awaits, it is mine to be seized. Be it death, or an eternity more of wandering aimlessly the endless halls and the libraries where I record my story in volumes in the pages of empty books layed out in their millions in cases which stretch for miles upon endless miles and the stout courtyards in which I linger tasting the staleness of the air and watching intently for birds which often chirp but are never seen.
“I have lived well…” I spoke aloud to no one, and everyone. Allowing myself to fall forward, tumbling over the edge and feeling no wind on the way down and no thud at all to speak of as I awoke in another nondescript hall of my eternal home, just as expected.