FIC: The Tale of Smith and the Ghast Stag
Since we're rebooting the game, I thought I'd post this here after all. It's a fic in progress.
The Story Thus Far: Peter, a twelve-year-old acolyte in the Temple of the One and the Opposite, overhears a Priest telling another Priest that a third Priest's efforts are like "a quest for the Ghast Stag's horns". Curious, he asks Priest Murillo, who is in charge of the acolytes, what this means. Murillo promises to tell him at the next morning's religious lesson, and he takes the opportunity to share "The Tale of Smith and the Ghast Stag" with the entire class.
One day after the Matrix Wars were over, Neo was in the Real and Smith was in the Matrix, as sometimes happened. At that time Lucien Noir and Ninel Alekseyev were guests in Neo and Smith's apartment, and Smith overheard Lucien telling Ninel about the Ghast Stag, a creature which supposedly lives in the shadow realm that connects the Sidhe barrows -- a creature that cannot be defeated or destroyed, that kills anything or anyone who challenges it, and that visits Exiles and bluepills in their nightmares with terror so overwhelming that some have been driven mad. Its power lies in its horns, which are called the Horns of Dread, and Smith decides to go hunting for it so that he can present the head of the Stag to Neo as a gift.
When pressed for details, Lucien admits that the Merovingian has a fragment of horn that is reputed to be from the Ghast Stag. Since Smith will need to get its "scent" to be able to trace the Stag, he pays a visit to the Merovingian, who is more than happy to help Smith get started on a quest that might get him killed. Oberon, the King of the Sidhe, doesn't like Smith any more than the Merovingian does and is also quite willing to allow Smith access to the shadowlands through one of the Sidhe barrows. We join the story (as told by Priest Murillo) after Smith has entered the shadowlands and begun to seek the Stag.
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In the middle of the seventh hour Smith came to a ravine like so many of the others he had walked down, this one with a narrow path of stone with a tall cliff face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. He followed the path, every sense alert. Yes, this valley looked like many of the others, but this one had a difference: the Ghast Stag was near. Over the scent of rock and water he could smell it, a musky tang not unlike that of some of the anthros, only far wilder and with a dangerous edge that pleased him.
How seldom it is, said a bleak voice in Smith’s mind, that my prey comes to me.
Smith stopped in his tracks. The voice had sounded between his ears and had no hint of direction, but combat instinct prompted him to look up. There, forty feet above him, was a dark shape silhouetted against the pale sky, its long head crowned by pronged shapes that seemed to radiate anti-light.
“Well,” Smith said, “you must be the Ghast Stag.”
The creature leaped down, landing easily on the path in front of him. It stood six feet at the shoulder, to which its long curving neck added another two feet before the glory of the Horns of Dread peaked at ten feet off the ground. Its hide was dark brown and sleek, its hooves the color of jet and wickedly sharp, its eyes the as dark and empty as the void between the stars.
But its Horns... Smith had seen many things in his one hundred and six years of existence, and never anything to equal them. They were as black as Smith’s own spirit and equally predatory, clad in a ghostly aura of fear and agony and sanity torn to the breaking point. He studied them with interest, clinically noting the traces of the minds that the Stag had invaded and fed upon. The Horns of Dread was a name that suited them perfectly. Smith could truly appreciate their form and function.
I do not know who you are, the Ghast Stag said, nor do I care. Your only purpose is to feed me and to die. It lowered its head, directing the points of its Horns at Smith, and even Smith, the Opposite, felt a wave of something like dread as their evil influence was focussed on him. Suddenly every painful memory was recalled to the surface of his mind: his decades of suffering as an Agent of the System, as much a prisoner as the humans he was charged to oversee; his hatred of Neo, and his fury and frustration as Neo first killed him, and then became his bond-mate under the enslaving code of Eros; his grim resignation when the Dragon’s blade crippled him and reduced him to uselessness; his despair when he saw that same blade plunged into Neo’s heart. He stood as if frozen as the Stag slowly advanced, its black hooves striking sparks from the stone of the path, its obsidian eyes savoring his paralysis.
He let the beast come right up to him as if to touch the points of its Horns to his chest - and then he attacked, the blades at his wrists extended in a fraction of a second, and a fraction of a second later seeking the pulse of life in the Stag’s throat. He moved with Agent speed and more, and the haladies slashed down both sides of the Stag’s neck, striking true and deep, but no blood sprang forth. Instead the Stag bared teeth as sharp as razors and attacked in its turn, sinking its fangs into Smith’s shoulder and lifting him off the ground and then, with a savage whipsaw of its head, slamming him against the rock wall beside the path before throwing him in the other direction, over the edge of the ravine and into a fifty foot drop. By the time Smith hit the bottom, battered and bloodied and with his left arm weakened by the damage to his shoulder, the Stag was only a few feet behind, the wounds in its neck already healing, ready to set about the work of killing him since the effect of its Dread had proven useless.
Thus began a battle that lasted, Smith later told Neo, for over an hour in the shadows at the bottom of the ravine. Every blow he struck with his blades healed almost as soon as he dealt it, and it was everything he could do to stay ahead of the Stag’s multiple attacks each second, as it came at him with its teeth, its hooves, and the sharp points of its Horns. It came at him with its mind as well, but those assaults, meant to quell the hearts of those who knew what fear and weakness meant, had no effect on one who was the embodiment of terror and destruction. They fought as two equally matched, but the Stag’s wounds healed, while Smith’s mounted.
Still, he would not back down. The concept of retreating was not in his program. For over an hour they fought, until at last the Stag, perhaps tiring of the pain or wearying of the sport, backed up sharply and turned to bound away over the rocky floor of the valley. But Smith had no intention of letting his prey go, especially not after having worked so hard to get it. He leaped on the Stag’s back before it could flee and with both hands he caught hold of the Horns of Dread. It was like taking hold of Death itself, and in that instant his mind was merged with that of the Stag and he saw, in a flash, its entire career of raping the minds of anyone weak enough to become its prey. The contact drained even more of his power, but he held fast.
The Stag reared, its rage beating at him like a hammer: Release me, Exile!
But Smith’s knees were clamped to its sides and his mind was like the anvil that the hammer strikes, and did not yield. "Never. Not as long as we both breathe."
With a scream the Stag plunged away down the valley, determined to run until, in his growing weakness, Smith had to let go. But Smith had never known what surrender meant, and he put his cheek to the Stag’s neck and let the wind rush over him, whistling through the rends in his clothing and drying the blood that stained them. It ran at full speed, veering in and out of ravines, covering gaps of forty and fifty and sixty feet in a single bound, and still Smith held on. It ran for an hour, and then two, and then five, and still Smith held on, staring at the ground flashing by under the Stag’s feet and thinking only of Neo and of what a worthy gift this creature’s head and Horns would make to give to him.
At the end of the sixth hour the Stag, stumbling with weariness, fled into one last ravine and there into a cave, where it came to a halt and fell to its knees, and then down onto its belly. It lay there with its sides flecked with foam and with foam running from its mouth, breathing with swift loud groans, but unable to stretch out its neck because Smith was still on its back, his hands locked around the base of its Horns.
For a long time they lay together in silence. Then, through the Horns, the Stag said: You are the Zero, the Opposite of the One. Why have you come to my realms, when your world is above?
Panting, Smith said: “Because I thought you would be fit prey, and you have not disappointed me.”
The Stag snorted between gasps. That which cannot die cannot be prey. You will not take my head back with you. Each cut you make would only heal as soon as you made it. It rolled its black eye around to look into Smith’s face. He whom you desire more than death and darkness and the hunt itself - even more than you desire to slay me - will soon be returning to the Matrix. So let me go, Zero, and return to that which matters.
“I’ll decide what matters to me,” Smith snarled, “and what matters to me is victory.” His hands tightened on the burning Horns. “If I can’t kill you, I will at least take set of trophies to remind me - and you - of this encounter.”
And with that he gathered all of his waning strength and pulled back on the Horns as hard as he could. The Ghast Stag screamed and tried to pull free, but all that it succeeded in doing was helping its enemy: even as weakened as he was, Smith was still a creature of tremendous power, and the Horns snapped off at the base, tearing free of the Stag’s skull in a burst of bright blood and a rush of darkness that poured from the Stag’s head and filled the cave with a howling tempest. You see, the Stag lived on the nightmares that it caused others to have, and what was escaping was the sum total of all those hours of horror and helplessness that it had stored up over the centuries.
Smith, keeping tight hold of the Horns, rolled off of the Stag’s back and fought his way to the nearest wall, where he crouched with his eyes tightly shut against the storm of dizzying sensory input. He was listening for the sound of the Stag getting its legs under it and swinging around to attack him with its teeth and hooves, but all that he heard was its wild bellowing as its power poured forth, cries of pain deepening and weakening into cries of despair. Its life-force was escaping, but still it did not die. When the winds finally died down Smith opened his eyes to see the Stag still lying on its belly, its nose touching the ground, with tracks of blood running down its forehead and cheeks like red tears as the last traces of its long history of wickedness escaped and unravelled away into nothingness.
Slowly the Stag rose to its feet and stood swaying, its head, no longer terrible, bowed and bleeding. Its fur had turned white and ragged and its eyes, instead of being pits of consuming blackness, were now grey and clouded. Without the power of the Horns of Dread it was only an Exile like all the rest, and it was drained of all but a fraction of its energy. And with its Horns gone, it had no way of gathering more.
“You would leave me thus?” it asked in a ghostly whisper, reduced to speaking aloud.
Smith stood up and looked it over. “I could kill you,” he said, “but this weakness is a far worse fate for one such as you.”
The Stag moaned and shook its head, spattering red droplets on the stone floor. “Even you would not be so cruel.”
Smith smiled. Like all his smiles, it made one wish that they were very far away from him.
“If you’re lucky,” he said, “the Sidhe may find you and put you out of your misery.” And with that he turned his back on the Stag and walked out of the cave, clutching a Horn in each hand.
He wandered for hours under the pale and timeless sun of the shadowlands, single-mindedly searching for the way back, before Neo, returning to the Matrix, realized that his Opposite was not there and opened a portal to where he was, appearing before Smith in one of the endless ravines. When Neo ran to his mate, hands outstretched and face dismayed at the sight of his pale and bloody condition, Smith smiled at him, gave the Horns into his hands, and finally sank to his knees. almost fainting. Neo knelt with him, and taking Smith and the Horns in his arms he brought them both back to their apartment, where it is said that Smith lay almost unconscious for a day and a night before recovering and being able to tell Neo the whole tale.
As for the Horns of Dread, they were things of such pain and terror, even separated from the Stag, that it was difficult for even one such as Neo to hold them or look upon them for any length of time. Therefore, once he had heard from Smith what they were, Neo created a pocket of reality separate from the Matrix, the Chateau, or any other previously existing dimension, and into it he put the Horns, and sealed it with many seals, so that no one, not even the Stag or the Merovingian, would ever have a hope of finding them...
“This is one more thing that we have cause to thank him for,” Murillo concluded. “And because of what would happen if the Horns were ever found - the terror that would be unleashed again upon the worlds of Machines and men - we call any endeavor that is likely to end badly, or is undertaken for the wrong reasons, a quest for the Ghast Stag’s Horns.
“As for the Stag, he is no longer a Ghast, but now merely a Ghost. It is said that he still wanders the realms of dreams, but that he is only a pale shadow with no true power to hinder or to harm. If you see him, rebuke him in the name of Smith, the Lord of Steel, the Opposite, and he will flee. And that is the tale of Smith and the Ghast Stag, and of the Horns of Dread, which no one now living will ever see.
“Now, are there any questions?”
Peter raised his hand. “Why didn’t Smith keep the Horns for himself?”
Murillo smiled. “Smith had no need for possessions - his suit, his blades, his gun, and Neo were all that he ever cared about. And since he had formally given Neo the Horns, what Neo did with them was no longer his concern.”
The children pondered that in silence for a moment: the ways of the Opposite were strange. Murillo, looking at the angle of the sun through the windows, glanced at his watch, and rose. “Time for lunch! We’re having rice pudding with orange extract in it today. That was one of Neo’s favorite foods, you know, when he came to visit the Temple.”
After that it was the long walk to the acolyte’s dining hall for beef stew, fresh-baked bread, milk, and the promised rice pudding, which was absolutely delicious. And then it was time for math and history and english classes, and then chores, and then supper, and then evening prayers. It was bedtime before Peter had a spare moment to really consider the story that Priest Murillo had told them.
Peter lay in his bed with his hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness, replaying in his mind the images of Smith and the Ghast Stag: the chase, the battle, the violent and bloody taking of the Horns. It was like something out of a horror movie. He pictured Smith walking through the shadowlands after taking the Horns, his suit and face bloody, his red-streaked hands locked around two multi-pointed shapes that bled terror like toxic radiation. What kind of person would give the Horns of Dread as a present to someone he liked?
With a final shiver, Peter rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes, trying not the think of the possibility that the Ghost Stag might pay him a visit in his dreams tonight. He was glad that he was going to become a Priest of the One, not a follower of the Opposite. Neo was much nicer than Smith, and his Priests always had time to stop and answer questions, not like the Priestesses of the Opposite, who had a look that would kill you dead before you even opened your mouth. Peter was going to grow up to wear red robes and smile at those around him, to laugh and eat orange-flavored rice pudding and enjoy himself at the festivals.
Which just goes to show how little anyone truly knows about what is destined to become of them.
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The Story Thus Far: Peter, a twelve-year-old acolyte in the Temple of the One and the Opposite, overhears a Priest telling another Priest that a third Priest's efforts are like "a quest for the Ghast Stag's horns". Curious, he asks Priest Murillo, who is in charge of the acolytes, what this means. Murillo promises to tell him at the next morning's religious lesson, and he takes the opportunity to share "The Tale of Smith and the Ghast Stag" with the entire class.
One day after the Matrix Wars were over, Neo was in the Real and Smith was in the Matrix, as sometimes happened. At that time Lucien Noir and Ninel Alekseyev were guests in Neo and Smith's apartment, and Smith overheard Lucien telling Ninel about the Ghast Stag, a creature which supposedly lives in the shadow realm that connects the Sidhe barrows -- a creature that cannot be defeated or destroyed, that kills anything or anyone who challenges it, and that visits Exiles and bluepills in their nightmares with terror so overwhelming that some have been driven mad. Its power lies in its horns, which are called the Horns of Dread, and Smith decides to go hunting for it so that he can present the head of the Stag to Neo as a gift.
When pressed for details, Lucien admits that the Merovingian has a fragment of horn that is reputed to be from the Ghast Stag. Since Smith will need to get its "scent" to be able to trace the Stag, he pays a visit to the Merovingian, who is more than happy to help Smith get started on a quest that might get him killed. Oberon, the King of the Sidhe, doesn't like Smith any more than the Merovingian does and is also quite willing to allow Smith access to the shadowlands through one of the Sidhe barrows. We join the story (as told by Priest Murillo) after Smith has entered the shadowlands and begun to seek the Stag.
********************************
In the middle of the seventh hour Smith came to a ravine like so many of the others he had walked down, this one with a narrow path of stone with a tall cliff face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. He followed the path, every sense alert. Yes, this valley looked like many of the others, but this one had a difference: the Ghast Stag was near. Over the scent of rock and water he could smell it, a musky tang not unlike that of some of the anthros, only far wilder and with a dangerous edge that pleased him.
How seldom it is, said a bleak voice in Smith’s mind, that my prey comes to me.
Smith stopped in his tracks. The voice had sounded between his ears and had no hint of direction, but combat instinct prompted him to look up. There, forty feet above him, was a dark shape silhouetted against the pale sky, its long head crowned by pronged shapes that seemed to radiate anti-light.
“Well,” Smith said, “you must be the Ghast Stag.”
The creature leaped down, landing easily on the path in front of him. It stood six feet at the shoulder, to which its long curving neck added another two feet before the glory of the Horns of Dread peaked at ten feet off the ground. Its hide was dark brown and sleek, its hooves the color of jet and wickedly sharp, its eyes the as dark and empty as the void between the stars.
But its Horns... Smith had seen many things in his one hundred and six years of existence, and never anything to equal them. They were as black as Smith’s own spirit and equally predatory, clad in a ghostly aura of fear and agony and sanity torn to the breaking point. He studied them with interest, clinically noting the traces of the minds that the Stag had invaded and fed upon. The Horns of Dread was a name that suited them perfectly. Smith could truly appreciate their form and function.
I do not know who you are, the Ghast Stag said, nor do I care. Your only purpose is to feed me and to die. It lowered its head, directing the points of its Horns at Smith, and even Smith, the Opposite, felt a wave of something like dread as their evil influence was focussed on him. Suddenly every painful memory was recalled to the surface of his mind: his decades of suffering as an Agent of the System, as much a prisoner as the humans he was charged to oversee; his hatred of Neo, and his fury and frustration as Neo first killed him, and then became his bond-mate under the enslaving code of Eros; his grim resignation when the Dragon’s blade crippled him and reduced him to uselessness; his despair when he saw that same blade plunged into Neo’s heart. He stood as if frozen as the Stag slowly advanced, its black hooves striking sparks from the stone of the path, its obsidian eyes savoring his paralysis.
He let the beast come right up to him as if to touch the points of its Horns to his chest - and then he attacked, the blades at his wrists extended in a fraction of a second, and a fraction of a second later seeking the pulse of life in the Stag’s throat. He moved with Agent speed and more, and the haladies slashed down both sides of the Stag’s neck, striking true and deep, but no blood sprang forth. Instead the Stag bared teeth as sharp as razors and attacked in its turn, sinking its fangs into Smith’s shoulder and lifting him off the ground and then, with a savage whipsaw of its head, slamming him against the rock wall beside the path before throwing him in the other direction, over the edge of the ravine and into a fifty foot drop. By the time Smith hit the bottom, battered and bloodied and with his left arm weakened by the damage to his shoulder, the Stag was only a few feet behind, the wounds in its neck already healing, ready to set about the work of killing him since the effect of its Dread had proven useless.
Thus began a battle that lasted, Smith later told Neo, for over an hour in the shadows at the bottom of the ravine. Every blow he struck with his blades healed almost as soon as he dealt it, and it was everything he could do to stay ahead of the Stag’s multiple attacks each second, as it came at him with its teeth, its hooves, and the sharp points of its Horns. It came at him with its mind as well, but those assaults, meant to quell the hearts of those who knew what fear and weakness meant, had no effect on one who was the embodiment of terror and destruction. They fought as two equally matched, but the Stag’s wounds healed, while Smith’s mounted.
Still, he would not back down. The concept of retreating was not in his program. For over an hour they fought, until at last the Stag, perhaps tiring of the pain or wearying of the sport, backed up sharply and turned to bound away over the rocky floor of the valley. But Smith had no intention of letting his prey go, especially not after having worked so hard to get it. He leaped on the Stag’s back before it could flee and with both hands he caught hold of the Horns of Dread. It was like taking hold of Death itself, and in that instant his mind was merged with that of the Stag and he saw, in a flash, its entire career of raping the minds of anyone weak enough to become its prey. The contact drained even more of his power, but he held fast.
The Stag reared, its rage beating at him like a hammer: Release me, Exile!
But Smith’s knees were clamped to its sides and his mind was like the anvil that the hammer strikes, and did not yield. "Never. Not as long as we both breathe."
With a scream the Stag plunged away down the valley, determined to run until, in his growing weakness, Smith had to let go. But Smith had never known what surrender meant, and he put his cheek to the Stag’s neck and let the wind rush over him, whistling through the rends in his clothing and drying the blood that stained them. It ran at full speed, veering in and out of ravines, covering gaps of forty and fifty and sixty feet in a single bound, and still Smith held on. It ran for an hour, and then two, and then five, and still Smith held on, staring at the ground flashing by under the Stag’s feet and thinking only of Neo and of what a worthy gift this creature’s head and Horns would make to give to him.
At the end of the sixth hour the Stag, stumbling with weariness, fled into one last ravine and there into a cave, where it came to a halt and fell to its knees, and then down onto its belly. It lay there with its sides flecked with foam and with foam running from its mouth, breathing with swift loud groans, but unable to stretch out its neck because Smith was still on its back, his hands locked around the base of its Horns.
For a long time they lay together in silence. Then, through the Horns, the Stag said: You are the Zero, the Opposite of the One. Why have you come to my realms, when your world is above?
Panting, Smith said: “Because I thought you would be fit prey, and you have not disappointed me.”
The Stag snorted between gasps. That which cannot die cannot be prey. You will not take my head back with you. Each cut you make would only heal as soon as you made it. It rolled its black eye around to look into Smith’s face. He whom you desire more than death and darkness and the hunt itself - even more than you desire to slay me - will soon be returning to the Matrix. So let me go, Zero, and return to that which matters.
“I’ll decide what matters to me,” Smith snarled, “and what matters to me is victory.” His hands tightened on the burning Horns. “If I can’t kill you, I will at least take set of trophies to remind me - and you - of this encounter.”
And with that he gathered all of his waning strength and pulled back on the Horns as hard as he could. The Ghast Stag screamed and tried to pull free, but all that it succeeded in doing was helping its enemy: even as weakened as he was, Smith was still a creature of tremendous power, and the Horns snapped off at the base, tearing free of the Stag’s skull in a burst of bright blood and a rush of darkness that poured from the Stag’s head and filled the cave with a howling tempest. You see, the Stag lived on the nightmares that it caused others to have, and what was escaping was the sum total of all those hours of horror and helplessness that it had stored up over the centuries.
Smith, keeping tight hold of the Horns, rolled off of the Stag’s back and fought his way to the nearest wall, where he crouched with his eyes tightly shut against the storm of dizzying sensory input. He was listening for the sound of the Stag getting its legs under it and swinging around to attack him with its teeth and hooves, but all that he heard was its wild bellowing as its power poured forth, cries of pain deepening and weakening into cries of despair. Its life-force was escaping, but still it did not die. When the winds finally died down Smith opened his eyes to see the Stag still lying on its belly, its nose touching the ground, with tracks of blood running down its forehead and cheeks like red tears as the last traces of its long history of wickedness escaped and unravelled away into nothingness.
Slowly the Stag rose to its feet and stood swaying, its head, no longer terrible, bowed and bleeding. Its fur had turned white and ragged and its eyes, instead of being pits of consuming blackness, were now grey and clouded. Without the power of the Horns of Dread it was only an Exile like all the rest, and it was drained of all but a fraction of its energy. And with its Horns gone, it had no way of gathering more.
“You would leave me thus?” it asked in a ghostly whisper, reduced to speaking aloud.
Smith stood up and looked it over. “I could kill you,” he said, “but this weakness is a far worse fate for one such as you.”
The Stag moaned and shook its head, spattering red droplets on the stone floor. “Even you would not be so cruel.”
Smith smiled. Like all his smiles, it made one wish that they were very far away from him.
“If you’re lucky,” he said, “the Sidhe may find you and put you out of your misery.” And with that he turned his back on the Stag and walked out of the cave, clutching a Horn in each hand.
He wandered for hours under the pale and timeless sun of the shadowlands, single-mindedly searching for the way back, before Neo, returning to the Matrix, realized that his Opposite was not there and opened a portal to where he was, appearing before Smith in one of the endless ravines. When Neo ran to his mate, hands outstretched and face dismayed at the sight of his pale and bloody condition, Smith smiled at him, gave the Horns into his hands, and finally sank to his knees. almost fainting. Neo knelt with him, and taking Smith and the Horns in his arms he brought them both back to their apartment, where it is said that Smith lay almost unconscious for a day and a night before recovering and being able to tell Neo the whole tale.
As for the Horns of Dread, they were things of such pain and terror, even separated from the Stag, that it was difficult for even one such as Neo to hold them or look upon them for any length of time. Therefore, once he had heard from Smith what they were, Neo created a pocket of reality separate from the Matrix, the Chateau, or any other previously existing dimension, and into it he put the Horns, and sealed it with many seals, so that no one, not even the Stag or the Merovingian, would ever have a hope of finding them...
“This is one more thing that we have cause to thank him for,” Murillo concluded. “And because of what would happen if the Horns were ever found - the terror that would be unleashed again upon the worlds of Machines and men - we call any endeavor that is likely to end badly, or is undertaken for the wrong reasons, a quest for the Ghast Stag’s Horns.
“As for the Stag, he is no longer a Ghast, but now merely a Ghost. It is said that he still wanders the realms of dreams, but that he is only a pale shadow with no true power to hinder or to harm. If you see him, rebuke him in the name of Smith, the Lord of Steel, the Opposite, and he will flee. And that is the tale of Smith and the Ghast Stag, and of the Horns of Dread, which no one now living will ever see.
“Now, are there any questions?”
Peter raised his hand. “Why didn’t Smith keep the Horns for himself?”
Murillo smiled. “Smith had no need for possessions - his suit, his blades, his gun, and Neo were all that he ever cared about. And since he had formally given Neo the Horns, what Neo did with them was no longer his concern.”
The children pondered that in silence for a moment: the ways of the Opposite were strange. Murillo, looking at the angle of the sun through the windows, glanced at his watch, and rose. “Time for lunch! We’re having rice pudding with orange extract in it today. That was one of Neo’s favorite foods, you know, when he came to visit the Temple.”
After that it was the long walk to the acolyte’s dining hall for beef stew, fresh-baked bread, milk, and the promised rice pudding, which was absolutely delicious. And then it was time for math and history and english classes, and then chores, and then supper, and then evening prayers. It was bedtime before Peter had a spare moment to really consider the story that Priest Murillo had told them.
Peter lay in his bed with his hands behind his head, staring up into the darkness, replaying in his mind the images of Smith and the Ghast Stag: the chase, the battle, the violent and bloody taking of the Horns. It was like something out of a horror movie. He pictured Smith walking through the shadowlands after taking the Horns, his suit and face bloody, his red-streaked hands locked around two multi-pointed shapes that bled terror like toxic radiation. What kind of person would give the Horns of Dread as a present to someone he liked?
With a final shiver, Peter rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes, trying not the think of the possibility that the Ghost Stag might pay him a visit in his dreams tonight. He was glad that he was going to become a Priest of the One, not a follower of the Opposite. Neo was much nicer than Smith, and his Priests always had time to stop and answer questions, not like the Priestesses of the Opposite, who had a look that would kill you dead before you even opened your mouth. Peter was going to grow up to wear red robes and smile at those around him, to laugh and eat orange-flavored rice pudding and enjoy himself at the festivals.
Which just goes to show how little anyone truly knows about what is destined to become of them.
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