[Lamento] Etemmu, Part 1
Title: Etemmu
Fandom: Lamento - Beyond the Void
Parts: 1/3
Pairing: Razel/Verg
Rating: R
Warnings: sex, violence, swearing
Disclaimer: Lamento belongs to Nitro+Chiral.
Notes: Many thanks to sexual_ennui, whom I might as well call my muse, and to akuma_no_kage for looking this over.
Part I | Part II | Part III
Etemmu
Part I
Dying was not what he had expected.
Dying was... not the spirit leaving the flesh. Not ascendance, and not transcendence, because all of these implied awareness, implied movement. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it was that dying... was not.
Dying was a moment of utter fury, the space between closing his eyes and drawing a breath, feeling the viper's poison rage in his body, and reopening his eyes to darkness. No transition, no loss of awareness. Only complete darkness and utter agony.
It was more pain than any sword, any spear or arrow had ever brought him. It felt like his body was being torn to shreds from the inside out, like something was being ripped out of him and what remained was twisting, coiling, being compressed into something else, something other, while at the same time, outwardly, nothing was happening at all.
Or so it seemed to him at that time.
Later, of course, after the pain and the screaming and the fire, the fire that was more than the flames of the ceremonial torches, more than the burning of the snake venom in his veins, he came to realize that this observation-however broad the term might be, since he had by no means been in a state to observe at the time-was quite false.
In retrospect, he was not sure how he could have missed it for so long, did, in fact, not discover the outward changes until he had recovered enough to pull himself up into a sitting position, and, in a habitual manner bred from a lifetime of being surrounded by courtiers, reached up to fix his hair.
The horns were vaguely crescent-shaped, blunted at the tips, their texture more like smoothed obsidian than animal horn, and-as he would later discover, when there was light to illuminate and water to mirror-black like the stone, too.
The tail was sleek and cool, the skin foreign to the touch, neither furred nor scaled, and as black as cold lava.
In his land, there had been tales of children born with tails, seen as ill omens, spoken of as demons and slaughtered before they could bring misfortune. He himself had been called the devil-king by his enemies, a merciless tyrant.
Neither of those, he supposed, could be used to explain what had happened to him. Nor where he was.
Razel had always been too much of a scholar, too much of a skepticist, to truly believe in the realm of anything divine, be it good or evil. And although he had not experienced death in the traditional sense, he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that he was no longer human, no longer alive.
For in his chest, right in the place where his heartbeat should be, had begun a slow, steady pulse of fire.
-----
It did not take long for him to discover that this place, wherever it was, whatever it was, was not like ordinary space.
Underneath his bare feet, the ground did not feel like ground-neither like gravel nor like stone, neither dry nor wet, neither smooth nor rough. It felt like darkness would feel if one could give it shape and form. Likewise, the air was neither cold nor warm, neither stale nor fresh, though the fact that he could feel it curling over his naked skin like a soft breeze first misled him into thinking that this place had an opening, an exit, to allow the air to circulate.
But after stumbling along in the darkness for who knew how long, blind and weak like a newborn animal, undignified, all he was able to conclude was that the space seemed vaguely cavernous, like a vast hall with no exits, no niches or windows. No walls, even, which was paradoxical in itself, since he could definitely feel a certain kind of spatial limitation.
No sounds, either, save for the soft noise of water, lapping on the invisible shore of a great lake.
At first, Razel thought he could reach the lake if he kept following the sound, much like he had assumed that trying to discern the direction of the breeze would lead him to an exit. He had believed that, even if he could not see it, he would at least be able to feel his feet sinking into water. However long he walked, though, nothing happened, no matter if he walked towards the center of the cavern or away from it.
He did not encounter water, just like he did not encounter walls.
After a while, he was beginning to wonder if there even was a center.
Likewise, there were no hidden traps, no trials he had to pass, no sudden appearance of any sort of entity to judge the weight of his soul. It was not like he had ever really bought into the concepts of reward and punishment after death, but he had expected there to be... something. Not just this dark nothingness, which seemed to defy all laws of existence.
Eventually, Razel stopped his aimless wandering. He could not shake the feeling that although his body, drained from the transformation into whatever he had become, was telling him that he had walked a great distance, he had not really changed position at all. Sitting down, he drew one leg up to his chest-a childish position unfit for a king, though he was king no longer-and stared ahead into the darkness.
He felt tired, exhausted, his mind balking at the space around him, the situation, no matter how much he forced it to comprehend, to accept, to analyze. How shameful, that the intellect he had always prided himself on should fail him so, that it could not even provide him with words to describe this fatigue, a great, foreign weariness that seemed to originate less from his body than from his-no, not his heart, it was a heart no more. Its pulse was coming slower, minute bursts of something indefinable.
Razel closed his eyes, listening to its silent flickering. It was no longer burning like it had been at first, but it still felt warm, like the residual heat of ash. And while he was perusing the strangeness of that inner pulse, his mind began to drift, to slip little by little.
If he had been aware of it, he might have tried to stop it, to stay focused and attempt to solve the puzzle he had been presented with, but as it was, he did not even feel it when his body was engulfed in a red flare, and, in a second, was gone.
----
When Razel opened his eyes again, he was surprised to find himself not on the floor of that dark place, but staring into colorful brightness.
He could not say for how long he had rested, except that he felt much better.
Blinking to banish the haze of sleep, the light seemed not quite as strong, and he was able to make out that it was filtering through fine, transparent veils of cloth hanging above his head and to his sides, long, thin draperies of gold and purple. The subtle scent of incense was hanging in the air.
He frowned.
It reminded him of something, though he could not immediately say what it was. He sat up, pushing back the sheets... and paused, thunderstruck.
He was lying on an elaborate bed, its posts carved into the shape of the sun disk at the top, and beyond the veils, he could make out the very familiar shapes of other furniture-chests, a heavy desk overflowing with scrolls, large pillows and low chairs grouped around a spindly-legged table.
Even without pushing aside the draperies to see clearly, Razel knew where he was. He recognized the shapes, the colors, the smell, knew that if he should reach over his head and underneath the pillow, he would find the hilt of his dagger in its sheath of gold and jewels. He had spent the last twenty-two years in this room, from the time that he had barely been tall enough to fit the ornamentations symbolizing his power, not to mention the bed.
For a moment, he almost thought that everything had been a nightmare, that he had dreamt the void, the agony, the ministers and healers keeping vigil at his bed during his week-long fever, the poisonous snake fangs piercing his flesh.
For a moment, he almost expected everything to resume its normal course, for a knock at the door to signal the arrival of his morning tea, for the shy call of a maid to inform him that his bath was ready.
Then, the pulse flared hotly in his chest, shattering the illusion of normalcy.
Wherever this was, it was not home.
Razel was quite certain that this should, if not worry, then at the very least unsettle him. That someone or something should know enough about him to craft such a mirage, for an unknown purpose. He thought he ought to feel, if not sadness, then at least a certain sense of loss for what he had left behind. Had been forced to leave behind.
However, the predominant emotion-no, the only emotion-he could summon was a slow-roiling anger, anger at the ones responsible for his death, forever out of the reach of his wrath, coupled with a vague sense of irritation at the fact that this place would not even begin to make sense to him.
----
For some reason, the strangest thing his mind was able to focus on was the absence of the maids.
Normally, there would have been at least a pair of them, flitting nervously about his chambers to fetch his robes and jewelry, while a third one would gently (and no less nervously) smudge khol under his eyes with near surgical precision. They had always annoyed him, as he had deemed their assistance mostly useless, but after a while, he had given up on ordering them out. It was hardly the girls' fault that his advisors refused to take the hint, and he much preferred their skin unmarred by the marks of punishment.
Now, their absence only served to drive home the point that everything here, from the pins he used to fix his hair to the light streaming in from between the columns on the far side of the room, was part of an illusory world.
It annoyed him that his mind chose to flee from the problems at hand like that, a proof that, no matter how much his people had revered him as the god-king, he was-or at least had been-still human. And the human mind, it seemed, did not deal well with paradoxes.
Razel did not know what to expect beyond the doors to his chambers, was half uncertain whether they would even allow themselves to be opened, but they gave under the slightest push, revealing the long corridor lined with pillars on the outside. He found, with a certain amount of surprise, that he was thus able to travel the entire palace, his footsteps echoing in the great halls paved with marble, making crunching sounds on the garden paths as he walked between the yellow chrysanthemums.
He could not shake the feeling, though, that he was not getting anywhere, was not truly moving despite exploring even places he had rarely gone to, such as the kitchens.
Naturally, he did not meet a single soul, neither watchman nor servant, not that he had expected to see anyone. It felt strange, almost eerie, to see this vast palace silenced, to spend an indefinite amount of time walking without being pestered by an advisor or messenger, to hear no sound save the tapping of his own feet.
Here and there, however, he did manage to glimpse strange inconsistencies in the illusion-little things that were not as they should be. The most blatant one was the ancient almond tree in the east wing gardens, in whose shade he had often dwelt in his scarce free time, and which had fallen victim to the great drought during the fifth year after his coronation. And yet, here it stood, its gnarled branches laden with soft pink blossoms.
And there were other things, too, such as the great mural in front of the third tower, which had been damaged during the last siege on the city, but did not bear a single mark here, or the inexplicable disappearance of a horribly tacky statue of his person, which he had never liked.
These changes did not make any sense, Razel thought, for why should they have been made? It was almost as if the illusion... was trying to appease him.
Abruptly, he stopped.
Illusions obeyed the will of the illusionist, no matter if they were of the magical kind or a simple self-deception. A person dying of thirst in the desert would see what they desired to see the most, and the changes that had occurred in this very obvious illusion had all affected objects he had either never wished to be damaged or had wanted to see gone. The illusion was bending to his own liking.
Razel could not help the laugh that escaped him upon this realization. What wonderful irony, to be fooled by his own mind!
Closing his eyes, he focused his attention on a single thought.
I wish to leave this place.
Without warning, the left side of his chest flared hotly, startling him into opening his eyes. In front of him, a red flame had appeared, burning as tall as him, a strange crest with the sun disk at its center seemingly glowing from within like a shadow.
Razel stretched out his hand to touch it, and although the flame enveloped his arm, it did not singe him.
He smiled thinly. This would not be the first time he had walked through fire.
The flame consumed him.
----
Finding himself back in the black nothingness with the flame still flickering steadily behind him, its red glow almost immediately swallowed up by the darkness, poked holes into his theory.
The illusion had not broken like he had expected it to, the presence of the flame proof enough. It remained behind him, wavering gently, beckoning, almost like a portal.
And for some reason, he felt a strange sense of possession from it-or towards it?-almost as if it belonged to him. Frowning, Razel decided to test a new theory.
I want to return, he thought, and stepped into the flame again.
There was a brief sense of displacement, and he found himself back in the palace gardens. How curious.
The flame was burning brightly.
I wish to leave.
Another moment of strangeness, and Razel found himself surrounded by darkness again. Behind him the flame flickered a little, but did not wane. He walked around it, but there was nothing hiding behind it. The flame and its crest were the same from the other side, not three-dimensional but flat, like a mirror surface without a reflection.
I want you to close, he thought.
The portal closed, the flame consuming itself until there was only darkness left.
I want you to open.
Once more, Razel felt the rush of heat in his chest, but this time, he kept his eyes open, saw the flame expanding like a hole opening in thin air.
He smiled. The power was his to command.
----
With some modicum of control over his fate restored, Razel found his curiosity piqued.
He spent a great deal of time exploring his new capabilities, and soon discovered that the portal was far from the only thing he could do. Concentrating on the source of power hidden in his chest brought about a variety of results, such as being able to levitate, to spontaneously combust objects or to call forth true fire.
It seemed to be the only element he had control over, though, since all his efforts of conjuring up wind or water only resulted in rather violent explosions, as if the magic were protesting the impossibility of his will. In the end, it mattered little. Razel had always had an affinity for heat, even though his people had preferred the torrential rains and their bounty.
So he began to hone this new power, which took up the majority of his time. Exactly how long he spent like this, he could not say for certain, as time did not seem to exist in the void, and although day and night seemed to alternate in the palace, the sun rising and setting, the moon waxing and waning, Razel knew better than to use them as indicators of time.
He had quickly discovered, for example, that he no longer felt hungry or thirsty. Although it was possible to summon any type of meal within the alterable space-as he had come to call the location of the palace, since he found the term "illusion" to be insufficient-there had been the question of whether or not it could even provide him with energy. However, Razel soon found out that no matter how long he waited, he never felt the urge to drink or eat, and could not discern any change to his body.
Likewise, he discovered that he did not require sleep. After he had first collapsed in the void and awoken in the palace, he had never felt any sense of fatigue again, the heat in his chest a strong, unfaltering pulse.
Despite these discoveries, Razel felt more comfortable with following the routine he had established in his life as a human, eating when the fancy struck him, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep when he tired of his explorations. He found that it was easier to exist within those patterns, however superficial they were now, to keep himself sane.
As much as his limitations annoyed him, he was well aware of his own origins. His mind was still used to human conditions and human concepts, and Razel had no desire to test the limits of his sanity all at once.
He was all too aware that death had not taken him where the dead usually went. He had been given an immortal body, one that required neither nutrition nor rest, one that did not tire however much energy he expended. The consequences were lurking at the edges of his awareness, but he refused to consider them for the moment.
The human mind did not deal well with solitude, after all.
Or eternity.
----
One thing that bothered him greatly was his apparent lack of purpose.
Razel was convinced that his situation was an unusual one-he deliberately avoided applying the word "unique" to it-but when it came to how he had ended up here, in this timeless space that molded itself to his will, and what he was supposed to do here, he found himself unable to explain anything.
Reward or punishment could not figure into it; the fact aside that these concepts were the imagination of the masses, hope for justice beyond death for no reason other than that it seemed to be so absent in life, there were forces at work here. Forces he could not yet fully comprehend, puzzle pieces that were lacking too many others to allow themselves to be assembled into a complete picture.
There was the pulse, the fire, the crest. His inexhaustible energy, which had to come from a source, but which he was unable to pinpoint. His curiously limited range of emotions-excitement, pleasure, confusion, loss... they were still there, but muted, hazy, as if they were echoing from far away, almost as if they had to cross time to reach him. The only thing that rang clear and true was frustration.
All these things had to have a reason, his existence had to have a reason.
It was bothersome not to have an answer to any of it. And when the answer finally came, it could not have been more mundane.
----
He did not find words for it until some time later.
It was like... not quite a pull, not quite a push. Not a call, because there was no voice, no direction. Not really a command, either, more like an irrefutable need, one that would not be disobeyed by any amount of willpower.
In that moment, though, Razel was only aware of his surroundings suddenly swimming out of focus, and when he blinked, he was no longer where he had been.
He was standing in a small room filled with books and various gadgets-some he recognized as geometric instruments or maps, others he could not even begin to describe-in the middle of what appeared to be a summoning circle. He had seen some of them in his lifetime, mostly from priests conducting rituals during ceremonies, but this one was fundamentally different. The lines were glowing with an unseen fire, and beneath his feet, directly in the center, Razel could make out the unmistakable silhouette of his own crest, the symbol of his power.
A small noise made his head snap back up, and he realized that a man was standing a few feet away, half-wrapped in the shadows cast by the glow of the circle. He seemed to shrink back under Razel's stare, his hands fluttering in apprehension.
Razel quirked an eyebrow. That, at least, was a reaction he was used to.
"Uh," the man wheezed, looking as surprised as Razel felt. "Uh, I-"
Razel's silence seemed to give him confidence, because the man abruptly straightened, taking a few steps forward. When he spoke again, his voice was formal, the nervous tremble tightly controlled, "I, Azelas, have summoned thee, spirit of the underworld. I command thee to do as I say."
Summoned. I have been summoned. To do any fool's bidding.
Suppressing the hot bout of irritation that bubbled up inside him, Razel waited for the man to continue.
"Bestow upon me the secrets of the universe! I wish to know. I wish to know everything!"
Razel frowned at the man, who had grown more and more excited during his speech, eyes gleaming in anticipation. He was not sure what he had been expecting, maybe a request for some kind of assistance, or advice, but not...
And yet, he could feel the pulse answering, knew, with absolute certainty, that he could grant this fool's wish.
"Well, well?" the man demanded eagerly.
Razel tilted his head. "And what makes you think yourself worthy of the secrets of the universe?"
"I..." The man faltered for a moment, before raising himself up to his full height, which was a pitiful endeavor at best. "That's of no concern to you. I summoned you, so you have to obey."
The man's sheer gall was astounding. In his kingdom, Razel had had people beheaded for so much as breathing at him in the wrong way. To think that he should allow this halfwit to speak to him in such a manner...
A thin smirk formed at the corners of his mouth. "Very well. As you command."
The crest flared to life in his outstretched palm, and he could feel the power flow, entirely different from its usual form.
For a moment, nothing happened, the man's gaze remaining fixed on the fiery symbol. Then, his eyes began to widen, the eyeballs bulging almost comically, the blood vessels rupturing from the strain, a horrible awareness flickering and dying in them as his mind was being consumed by information.
Razel looked on dispassionately as the man dropped to his knees, clutching at his head, the veins on his forehead emerging as his brain was struggling to cope with all the knowledge in the world. Thin trickles of blood were starting to dribble out of his ears, and finally, his mouth opened in a shrill, wordless scream.
The last thing Razel saw-one that would provide him with a sense of satisfaction for days to come-was the man's hand twitching to reach for him, a gesture that might have been pleading if he had had the capacity to express something so complicated, before the flames enveloped him, taking him back to the void.
----
To know that he had been degraded to an entity that could be summoned, a mere servant to mortals, might have irked him more if not for his triumph over the fool. It helped that he was only called on sporadically, of course, and to know that although he was forced to answer a summon, he had control over the manner in which the wish was fulfilled.
Not all humans who had the courage to call on him were quite as stupid as the first one; some seemed to know very well what to ask for and how to ask, treating him with due respect. No matter if they were prudent or foolish, though, all their wishes were essentially the same. Power (to rule, to subjugate, to possess). Wealth (in gold, in jewels, or land). Wisdom (to predict, to control, to prevent). Razel did not distinguish between good and evil wishes, knew somehow that he could not have refused a wish even if he had wanted to, but as it was, he simply did not care.
That world was not really his concern anymore, after all.
----
His most reliable indicator of time, besides the changing attire of his various summoners, turned out to be the library. Razel had discovered, to his immense surprise, that the palace library did not merely contain the scrolls which he had read during his lifetime, although this would have been the logical assumption.
It did, in fact, present him with all the texts that had been stored there during his reign, and not merely empty scrolls and jars. This left him with ample material to peruse, and although he had always delighted in this pastime, he had now become a compulsive reader. It kept his mind occupied and satisfied his thirst for knowledge, although he made little distinction between texts. He was able to appreciate tales and poems for their aesthetic characteristics just as much as the scientific notes on the movement of the stars, although he had been inarguably more interested in non-fictional works during his human life.
After some time, however, Razel noticed that his supply of reading material did not seem to diminish, but rather the opposite- it was ever-growing; whenever he was summoned, the library would present him with new works upon his return, books appearing in foreign shapes, bound in leather, ebony, silk, detailing discoveries no one could have made before or during his reign, describing events that could not possibly have occurred without his knowledge.
Razel soon arrived at the conclusion that his brief contact with these summoners, obnoxious as most of them were, was what allowed these works to appear, a strange connection between his realm and the real world. The books were not really books, he knew, they only appeared in this guise.
As much as it irked him to be so dependent on often foolish mortals, Razel knew that this was the closest way-the only way-to expand his own horizon, since his power did not, paradoxically, allow him to grant his own wishes. Not that he had any desire to force the truth of the universe into his mind and break like a pitiful human, but he thought that given the time, he might discover it.
A monkey writing letters at random for an infinite amount of time stands a chance of producing a literary masterpiece, after all, is that not how the saying goes?
-----
It took longer for him to actually miss the company of people than he had expected. Razel was not sure whether to attribute this to the timelessness of this world, or to the fact that he seldom seemed to experience any emotion at all-not that there was much to be emotional about. On rare occasions, though, he found himself missing the possibility to converse at length.
Summoners, in the odd event that they were worth his time, were few and far between, hardly a compensation for the eternities of silence, which were filled only by his own voice reciting texts aloud, a poor substitute for actual conversation. And he truly did not want to become like the half-mad seers at the temple, who had kept muttering to themselves even when not in a trance, speaking snippets of thoughts fresh from their tattered minds.
The desire to speak with others was something not easily erased from his consciousness, and sometimes his memory would gift him with dreams, washed-out recollections of debates with ministers, conversations with emissaries, even visions of his first wife, the memory tinged with a sentiment that might have been fondness, forever and a century ago. She had been a smart woman, possessed of wit and a strong will, and although he had not loved her, Razel had admired those qualities and enjoyed their exchanges.
These dreams left him restless, and he much preferred to devote his mind to creating new forms of fire magic. It was better not to tempt fate by reflecting too closely on these visions.
That way lay madness.
----
To say that he had lost track of time was not quite true.
He had not been called on for some time, that he knew, and he also knew that he could utilize the ever-expanding library to trace the years back to his own reign, but he simply found it not worth the bother. After so long, he felt hardly connected to his past life anymore-it simply seemed so very far away.
And Razel would never, ever admit to starting a new count from the time the yellow flame first joined his red one in the void.
----
Of course, at first, there was no flame.
There was an earthquake that shook the foundations of his palace, even though there was, for all intents and purposes, no earth to quake, coupled with the unmistakable sense of a presence in the void.
And in the void, a man, writhing and screaming at the top of his lungs, in a language more foul than any he had ever heard.
Razel was still trying to decide whether "surprise" could even begin to describe this situation, when the stranger seemed to become aware of his audience, staggered to his feet, and, with a swiftness belying the toll the transformation must have taken on him, charged.
Indeed, "surprise" could not possibly encompass being attacked by a raving, naked man, Razel decided as he dodged the punch aimed at his gut and unceremoniously summoned a wall of fire.
The stranger howled in pain and outrage, stumbling back a few steps and collapsing on the ground, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air. Terminating the flames, Razel slowly approached the fallen man, who was making no efforts to get up. He seemed to be in a fair amount of pain, staring up at Razel with glassy eyes, but as he watched, the wounds began to close, new skin replacing burnt until there was no sign of any damage left.
Then, the man's eyes rolled back into his skull, and Razel was forced to take a step back as the slack body was consumed by a bright, yellow flame. He had the vague impression of a scythe-shaped crest within the fire, before it abruptly died, as if doused by unseen water.
Razel stood staring at the spot for a long time, before shaking his head and summoning his own portal. Things were bound to become interesting.
-TBC-
----
A/N: This, dear, patient readers, happens when I try to write a short fic. I really enjoyed writing Razel, because he is such a mysterious fellow. The next part will be up shortly, but in the meantime, C&C is very much appreciated. ^^ Now then, it's time for some author babble, feel free to skip it if you're not interested in the particulars:
- Etemmu is a Babylonian term for a dead person's spirit. It is not the same as our concept of a soul, though the definitions spread across the Internet vary greatly. Wikipedia mentions the etemmu in connection with necromancy.
- Razel's a king because I like him that way. Don't care about anything that drama CD says. It was released years after this fic was written, anyway.
Continue to Part II >>
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Fandom: Lamento - Beyond the Void
Parts: 1/3
Pairing: Razel/Verg
Rating: R
Warnings: sex, violence, swearing
Disclaimer: Lamento belongs to Nitro+Chiral.
Notes: Many thanks to sexual_ennui, whom I might as well call my muse, and to akuma_no_kage for looking this over.
Part I | Part II | Part III
Etemmu
Part I
Dying was not what he had expected.
Dying was... not the spirit leaving the flesh. Not ascendance, and not transcendence, because all of these implied awareness, implied movement. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it was that dying... was not.
Dying was a moment of utter fury, the space between closing his eyes and drawing a breath, feeling the viper's poison rage in his body, and reopening his eyes to darkness. No transition, no loss of awareness. Only complete darkness and utter agony.
It was more pain than any sword, any spear or arrow had ever brought him. It felt like his body was being torn to shreds from the inside out, like something was being ripped out of him and what remained was twisting, coiling, being compressed into something else, something other, while at the same time, outwardly, nothing was happening at all.
Or so it seemed to him at that time.
Later, of course, after the pain and the screaming and the fire, the fire that was more than the flames of the ceremonial torches, more than the burning of the snake venom in his veins, he came to realize that this observation-however broad the term might be, since he had by no means been in a state to observe at the time-was quite false.
In retrospect, he was not sure how he could have missed it for so long, did, in fact, not discover the outward changes until he had recovered enough to pull himself up into a sitting position, and, in a habitual manner bred from a lifetime of being surrounded by courtiers, reached up to fix his hair.
The horns were vaguely crescent-shaped, blunted at the tips, their texture more like smoothed obsidian than animal horn, and-as he would later discover, when there was light to illuminate and water to mirror-black like the stone, too.
The tail was sleek and cool, the skin foreign to the touch, neither furred nor scaled, and as black as cold lava.
In his land, there had been tales of children born with tails, seen as ill omens, spoken of as demons and slaughtered before they could bring misfortune. He himself had been called the devil-king by his enemies, a merciless tyrant.
Neither of those, he supposed, could be used to explain what had happened to him. Nor where he was.
Razel had always been too much of a scholar, too much of a skepticist, to truly believe in the realm of anything divine, be it good or evil. And although he had not experienced death in the traditional sense, he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that he was no longer human, no longer alive.
For in his chest, right in the place where his heartbeat should be, had begun a slow, steady pulse of fire.
-----
It did not take long for him to discover that this place, wherever it was, whatever it was, was not like ordinary space.
Underneath his bare feet, the ground did not feel like ground-neither like gravel nor like stone, neither dry nor wet, neither smooth nor rough. It felt like darkness would feel if one could give it shape and form. Likewise, the air was neither cold nor warm, neither stale nor fresh, though the fact that he could feel it curling over his naked skin like a soft breeze first misled him into thinking that this place had an opening, an exit, to allow the air to circulate.
But after stumbling along in the darkness for who knew how long, blind and weak like a newborn animal, undignified, all he was able to conclude was that the space seemed vaguely cavernous, like a vast hall with no exits, no niches or windows. No walls, even, which was paradoxical in itself, since he could definitely feel a certain kind of spatial limitation.
No sounds, either, save for the soft noise of water, lapping on the invisible shore of a great lake.
At first, Razel thought he could reach the lake if he kept following the sound, much like he had assumed that trying to discern the direction of the breeze would lead him to an exit. He had believed that, even if he could not see it, he would at least be able to feel his feet sinking into water. However long he walked, though, nothing happened, no matter if he walked towards the center of the cavern or away from it.
He did not encounter water, just like he did not encounter walls.
After a while, he was beginning to wonder if there even was a center.
Likewise, there were no hidden traps, no trials he had to pass, no sudden appearance of any sort of entity to judge the weight of his soul. It was not like he had ever really bought into the concepts of reward and punishment after death, but he had expected there to be... something. Not just this dark nothingness, which seemed to defy all laws of existence.
Eventually, Razel stopped his aimless wandering. He could not shake the feeling that although his body, drained from the transformation into whatever he had become, was telling him that he had walked a great distance, he had not really changed position at all. Sitting down, he drew one leg up to his chest-a childish position unfit for a king, though he was king no longer-and stared ahead into the darkness.
He felt tired, exhausted, his mind balking at the space around him, the situation, no matter how much he forced it to comprehend, to accept, to analyze. How shameful, that the intellect he had always prided himself on should fail him so, that it could not even provide him with words to describe this fatigue, a great, foreign weariness that seemed to originate less from his body than from his-no, not his heart, it was a heart no more. Its pulse was coming slower, minute bursts of something indefinable.
Razel closed his eyes, listening to its silent flickering. It was no longer burning like it had been at first, but it still felt warm, like the residual heat of ash. And while he was perusing the strangeness of that inner pulse, his mind began to drift, to slip little by little.
If he had been aware of it, he might have tried to stop it, to stay focused and attempt to solve the puzzle he had been presented with, but as it was, he did not even feel it when his body was engulfed in a red flare, and, in a second, was gone.
----
When Razel opened his eyes again, he was surprised to find himself not on the floor of that dark place, but staring into colorful brightness.
He could not say for how long he had rested, except that he felt much better.
Blinking to banish the haze of sleep, the light seemed not quite as strong, and he was able to make out that it was filtering through fine, transparent veils of cloth hanging above his head and to his sides, long, thin draperies of gold and purple. The subtle scent of incense was hanging in the air.
He frowned.
It reminded him of something, though he could not immediately say what it was. He sat up, pushing back the sheets... and paused, thunderstruck.
He was lying on an elaborate bed, its posts carved into the shape of the sun disk at the top, and beyond the veils, he could make out the very familiar shapes of other furniture-chests, a heavy desk overflowing with scrolls, large pillows and low chairs grouped around a spindly-legged table.
Even without pushing aside the draperies to see clearly, Razel knew where he was. He recognized the shapes, the colors, the smell, knew that if he should reach over his head and underneath the pillow, he would find the hilt of his dagger in its sheath of gold and jewels. He had spent the last twenty-two years in this room, from the time that he had barely been tall enough to fit the ornamentations symbolizing his power, not to mention the bed.
For a moment, he almost thought that everything had been a nightmare, that he had dreamt the void, the agony, the ministers and healers keeping vigil at his bed during his week-long fever, the poisonous snake fangs piercing his flesh.
For a moment, he almost expected everything to resume its normal course, for a knock at the door to signal the arrival of his morning tea, for the shy call of a maid to inform him that his bath was ready.
Then, the pulse flared hotly in his chest, shattering the illusion of normalcy.
Wherever this was, it was not home.
Razel was quite certain that this should, if not worry, then at the very least unsettle him. That someone or something should know enough about him to craft such a mirage, for an unknown purpose. He thought he ought to feel, if not sadness, then at least a certain sense of loss for what he had left behind. Had been forced to leave behind.
However, the predominant emotion-no, the only emotion-he could summon was a slow-roiling anger, anger at the ones responsible for his death, forever out of the reach of his wrath, coupled with a vague sense of irritation at the fact that this place would not even begin to make sense to him.
----
For some reason, the strangest thing his mind was able to focus on was the absence of the maids.
Normally, there would have been at least a pair of them, flitting nervously about his chambers to fetch his robes and jewelry, while a third one would gently (and no less nervously) smudge khol under his eyes with near surgical precision. They had always annoyed him, as he had deemed their assistance mostly useless, but after a while, he had given up on ordering them out. It was hardly the girls' fault that his advisors refused to take the hint, and he much preferred their skin unmarred by the marks of punishment.
Now, their absence only served to drive home the point that everything here, from the pins he used to fix his hair to the light streaming in from between the columns on the far side of the room, was part of an illusory world.
It annoyed him that his mind chose to flee from the problems at hand like that, a proof that, no matter how much his people had revered him as the god-king, he was-or at least had been-still human. And the human mind, it seemed, did not deal well with paradoxes.
Razel did not know what to expect beyond the doors to his chambers, was half uncertain whether they would even allow themselves to be opened, but they gave under the slightest push, revealing the long corridor lined with pillars on the outside. He found, with a certain amount of surprise, that he was thus able to travel the entire palace, his footsteps echoing in the great halls paved with marble, making crunching sounds on the garden paths as he walked between the yellow chrysanthemums.
He could not shake the feeling, though, that he was not getting anywhere, was not truly moving despite exploring even places he had rarely gone to, such as the kitchens.
Naturally, he did not meet a single soul, neither watchman nor servant, not that he had expected to see anyone. It felt strange, almost eerie, to see this vast palace silenced, to spend an indefinite amount of time walking without being pestered by an advisor or messenger, to hear no sound save the tapping of his own feet.
Here and there, however, he did manage to glimpse strange inconsistencies in the illusion-little things that were not as they should be. The most blatant one was the ancient almond tree in the east wing gardens, in whose shade he had often dwelt in his scarce free time, and which had fallen victim to the great drought during the fifth year after his coronation. And yet, here it stood, its gnarled branches laden with soft pink blossoms.
And there were other things, too, such as the great mural in front of the third tower, which had been damaged during the last siege on the city, but did not bear a single mark here, or the inexplicable disappearance of a horribly tacky statue of his person, which he had never liked.
These changes did not make any sense, Razel thought, for why should they have been made? It was almost as if the illusion... was trying to appease him.
Abruptly, he stopped.
Illusions obeyed the will of the illusionist, no matter if they were of the magical kind or a simple self-deception. A person dying of thirst in the desert would see what they desired to see the most, and the changes that had occurred in this very obvious illusion had all affected objects he had either never wished to be damaged or had wanted to see gone. The illusion was bending to his own liking.
Razel could not help the laugh that escaped him upon this realization. What wonderful irony, to be fooled by his own mind!
Closing his eyes, he focused his attention on a single thought.
I wish to leave this place.
Without warning, the left side of his chest flared hotly, startling him into opening his eyes. In front of him, a red flame had appeared, burning as tall as him, a strange crest with the sun disk at its center seemingly glowing from within like a shadow.
Razel stretched out his hand to touch it, and although the flame enveloped his arm, it did not singe him.
He smiled thinly. This would not be the first time he had walked through fire.
The flame consumed him.
----
Finding himself back in the black nothingness with the flame still flickering steadily behind him, its red glow almost immediately swallowed up by the darkness, poked holes into his theory.
The illusion had not broken like he had expected it to, the presence of the flame proof enough. It remained behind him, wavering gently, beckoning, almost like a portal.
And for some reason, he felt a strange sense of possession from it-or towards it?-almost as if it belonged to him. Frowning, Razel decided to test a new theory.
I want to return, he thought, and stepped into the flame again.
There was a brief sense of displacement, and he found himself back in the palace gardens. How curious.
The flame was burning brightly.
I wish to leave.
Another moment of strangeness, and Razel found himself surrounded by darkness again. Behind him the flame flickered a little, but did not wane. He walked around it, but there was nothing hiding behind it. The flame and its crest were the same from the other side, not three-dimensional but flat, like a mirror surface without a reflection.
I want you to close, he thought.
The portal closed, the flame consuming itself until there was only darkness left.
I want you to open.
Once more, Razel felt the rush of heat in his chest, but this time, he kept his eyes open, saw the flame expanding like a hole opening in thin air.
He smiled. The power was his to command.
----
With some modicum of control over his fate restored, Razel found his curiosity piqued.
He spent a great deal of time exploring his new capabilities, and soon discovered that the portal was far from the only thing he could do. Concentrating on the source of power hidden in his chest brought about a variety of results, such as being able to levitate, to spontaneously combust objects or to call forth true fire.
It seemed to be the only element he had control over, though, since all his efforts of conjuring up wind or water only resulted in rather violent explosions, as if the magic were protesting the impossibility of his will. In the end, it mattered little. Razel had always had an affinity for heat, even though his people had preferred the torrential rains and their bounty.
So he began to hone this new power, which took up the majority of his time. Exactly how long he spent like this, he could not say for certain, as time did not seem to exist in the void, and although day and night seemed to alternate in the palace, the sun rising and setting, the moon waxing and waning, Razel knew better than to use them as indicators of time.
He had quickly discovered, for example, that he no longer felt hungry or thirsty. Although it was possible to summon any type of meal within the alterable space-as he had come to call the location of the palace, since he found the term "illusion" to be insufficient-there had been the question of whether or not it could even provide him with energy. However, Razel soon found out that no matter how long he waited, he never felt the urge to drink or eat, and could not discern any change to his body.
Likewise, he discovered that he did not require sleep. After he had first collapsed in the void and awoken in the palace, he had never felt any sense of fatigue again, the heat in his chest a strong, unfaltering pulse.
Despite these discoveries, Razel felt more comfortable with following the routine he had established in his life as a human, eating when the fancy struck him, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep when he tired of his explorations. He found that it was easier to exist within those patterns, however superficial they were now, to keep himself sane.
As much as his limitations annoyed him, he was well aware of his own origins. His mind was still used to human conditions and human concepts, and Razel had no desire to test the limits of his sanity all at once.
He was all too aware that death had not taken him where the dead usually went. He had been given an immortal body, one that required neither nutrition nor rest, one that did not tire however much energy he expended. The consequences were lurking at the edges of his awareness, but he refused to consider them for the moment.
The human mind did not deal well with solitude, after all.
Or eternity.
----
One thing that bothered him greatly was his apparent lack of purpose.
Razel was convinced that his situation was an unusual one-he deliberately avoided applying the word "unique" to it-but when it came to how he had ended up here, in this timeless space that molded itself to his will, and what he was supposed to do here, he found himself unable to explain anything.
Reward or punishment could not figure into it; the fact aside that these concepts were the imagination of the masses, hope for justice beyond death for no reason other than that it seemed to be so absent in life, there were forces at work here. Forces he could not yet fully comprehend, puzzle pieces that were lacking too many others to allow themselves to be assembled into a complete picture.
There was the pulse, the fire, the crest. His inexhaustible energy, which had to come from a source, but which he was unable to pinpoint. His curiously limited range of emotions-excitement, pleasure, confusion, loss... they were still there, but muted, hazy, as if they were echoing from far away, almost as if they had to cross time to reach him. The only thing that rang clear and true was frustration.
All these things had to have a reason, his existence had to have a reason.
It was bothersome not to have an answer to any of it. And when the answer finally came, it could not have been more mundane.
----
He did not find words for it until some time later.
It was like... not quite a pull, not quite a push. Not a call, because there was no voice, no direction. Not really a command, either, more like an irrefutable need, one that would not be disobeyed by any amount of willpower.
In that moment, though, Razel was only aware of his surroundings suddenly swimming out of focus, and when he blinked, he was no longer where he had been.
He was standing in a small room filled with books and various gadgets-some he recognized as geometric instruments or maps, others he could not even begin to describe-in the middle of what appeared to be a summoning circle. He had seen some of them in his lifetime, mostly from priests conducting rituals during ceremonies, but this one was fundamentally different. The lines were glowing with an unseen fire, and beneath his feet, directly in the center, Razel could make out the unmistakable silhouette of his own crest, the symbol of his power.
A small noise made his head snap back up, and he realized that a man was standing a few feet away, half-wrapped in the shadows cast by the glow of the circle. He seemed to shrink back under Razel's stare, his hands fluttering in apprehension.
Razel quirked an eyebrow. That, at least, was a reaction he was used to.
"Uh," the man wheezed, looking as surprised as Razel felt. "Uh, I-"
Razel's silence seemed to give him confidence, because the man abruptly straightened, taking a few steps forward. When he spoke again, his voice was formal, the nervous tremble tightly controlled, "I, Azelas, have summoned thee, spirit of the underworld. I command thee to do as I say."
Summoned. I have been summoned. To do any fool's bidding.
Suppressing the hot bout of irritation that bubbled up inside him, Razel waited for the man to continue.
"Bestow upon me the secrets of the universe! I wish to know. I wish to know everything!"
Razel frowned at the man, who had grown more and more excited during his speech, eyes gleaming in anticipation. He was not sure what he had been expecting, maybe a request for some kind of assistance, or advice, but not...
And yet, he could feel the pulse answering, knew, with absolute certainty, that he could grant this fool's wish.
"Well, well?" the man demanded eagerly.
Razel tilted his head. "And what makes you think yourself worthy of the secrets of the universe?"
"I..." The man faltered for a moment, before raising himself up to his full height, which was a pitiful endeavor at best. "That's of no concern to you. I summoned you, so you have to obey."
The man's sheer gall was astounding. In his kingdom, Razel had had people beheaded for so much as breathing at him in the wrong way. To think that he should allow this halfwit to speak to him in such a manner...
A thin smirk formed at the corners of his mouth. "Very well. As you command."
The crest flared to life in his outstretched palm, and he could feel the power flow, entirely different from its usual form.
For a moment, nothing happened, the man's gaze remaining fixed on the fiery symbol. Then, his eyes began to widen, the eyeballs bulging almost comically, the blood vessels rupturing from the strain, a horrible awareness flickering and dying in them as his mind was being consumed by information.
Razel looked on dispassionately as the man dropped to his knees, clutching at his head, the veins on his forehead emerging as his brain was struggling to cope with all the knowledge in the world. Thin trickles of blood were starting to dribble out of his ears, and finally, his mouth opened in a shrill, wordless scream.
The last thing Razel saw-one that would provide him with a sense of satisfaction for days to come-was the man's hand twitching to reach for him, a gesture that might have been pleading if he had had the capacity to express something so complicated, before the flames enveloped him, taking him back to the void.
----
To know that he had been degraded to an entity that could be summoned, a mere servant to mortals, might have irked him more if not for his triumph over the fool. It helped that he was only called on sporadically, of course, and to know that although he was forced to answer a summon, he had control over the manner in which the wish was fulfilled.
Not all humans who had the courage to call on him were quite as stupid as the first one; some seemed to know very well what to ask for and how to ask, treating him with due respect. No matter if they were prudent or foolish, though, all their wishes were essentially the same. Power (to rule, to subjugate, to possess). Wealth (in gold, in jewels, or land). Wisdom (to predict, to control, to prevent). Razel did not distinguish between good and evil wishes, knew somehow that he could not have refused a wish even if he had wanted to, but as it was, he simply did not care.
That world was not really his concern anymore, after all.
----
His most reliable indicator of time, besides the changing attire of his various summoners, turned out to be the library. Razel had discovered, to his immense surprise, that the palace library did not merely contain the scrolls which he had read during his lifetime, although this would have been the logical assumption.
It did, in fact, present him with all the texts that had been stored there during his reign, and not merely empty scrolls and jars. This left him with ample material to peruse, and although he had always delighted in this pastime, he had now become a compulsive reader. It kept his mind occupied and satisfied his thirst for knowledge, although he made little distinction between texts. He was able to appreciate tales and poems for their aesthetic characteristics just as much as the scientific notes on the movement of the stars, although he had been inarguably more interested in non-fictional works during his human life.
After some time, however, Razel noticed that his supply of reading material did not seem to diminish, but rather the opposite- it was ever-growing; whenever he was summoned, the library would present him with new works upon his return, books appearing in foreign shapes, bound in leather, ebony, silk, detailing discoveries no one could have made before or during his reign, describing events that could not possibly have occurred without his knowledge.
Razel soon arrived at the conclusion that his brief contact with these summoners, obnoxious as most of them were, was what allowed these works to appear, a strange connection between his realm and the real world. The books were not really books, he knew, they only appeared in this guise.
As much as it irked him to be so dependent on often foolish mortals, Razel knew that this was the closest way-the only way-to expand his own horizon, since his power did not, paradoxically, allow him to grant his own wishes. Not that he had any desire to force the truth of the universe into his mind and break like a pitiful human, but he thought that given the time, he might discover it.
A monkey writing letters at random for an infinite amount of time stands a chance of producing a literary masterpiece, after all, is that not how the saying goes?
-----
It took longer for him to actually miss the company of people than he had expected. Razel was not sure whether to attribute this to the timelessness of this world, or to the fact that he seldom seemed to experience any emotion at all-not that there was much to be emotional about. On rare occasions, though, he found himself missing the possibility to converse at length.
Summoners, in the odd event that they were worth his time, were few and far between, hardly a compensation for the eternities of silence, which were filled only by his own voice reciting texts aloud, a poor substitute for actual conversation. And he truly did not want to become like the half-mad seers at the temple, who had kept muttering to themselves even when not in a trance, speaking snippets of thoughts fresh from their tattered minds.
The desire to speak with others was something not easily erased from his consciousness, and sometimes his memory would gift him with dreams, washed-out recollections of debates with ministers, conversations with emissaries, even visions of his first wife, the memory tinged with a sentiment that might have been fondness, forever and a century ago. She had been a smart woman, possessed of wit and a strong will, and although he had not loved her, Razel had admired those qualities and enjoyed their exchanges.
These dreams left him restless, and he much preferred to devote his mind to creating new forms of fire magic. It was better not to tempt fate by reflecting too closely on these visions.
That way lay madness.
----
To say that he had lost track of time was not quite true.
He had not been called on for some time, that he knew, and he also knew that he could utilize the ever-expanding library to trace the years back to his own reign, but he simply found it not worth the bother. After so long, he felt hardly connected to his past life anymore-it simply seemed so very far away.
And Razel would never, ever admit to starting a new count from the time the yellow flame first joined his red one in the void.
----
Of course, at first, there was no flame.
There was an earthquake that shook the foundations of his palace, even though there was, for all intents and purposes, no earth to quake, coupled with the unmistakable sense of a presence in the void.
And in the void, a man, writhing and screaming at the top of his lungs, in a language more foul than any he had ever heard.
Razel was still trying to decide whether "surprise" could even begin to describe this situation, when the stranger seemed to become aware of his audience, staggered to his feet, and, with a swiftness belying the toll the transformation must have taken on him, charged.
Indeed, "surprise" could not possibly encompass being attacked by a raving, naked man, Razel decided as he dodged the punch aimed at his gut and unceremoniously summoned a wall of fire.
The stranger howled in pain and outrage, stumbling back a few steps and collapsing on the ground, the smell of burnt flesh filling the air. Terminating the flames, Razel slowly approached the fallen man, who was making no efforts to get up. He seemed to be in a fair amount of pain, staring up at Razel with glassy eyes, but as he watched, the wounds began to close, new skin replacing burnt until there was no sign of any damage left.
Then, the man's eyes rolled back into his skull, and Razel was forced to take a step back as the slack body was consumed by a bright, yellow flame. He had the vague impression of a scythe-shaped crest within the fire, before it abruptly died, as if doused by unseen water.
Razel stood staring at the spot for a long time, before shaking his head and summoning his own portal. Things were bound to become interesting.
-TBC-
----
A/N: This, dear, patient readers, happens when I try to write a short fic. I really enjoyed writing Razel, because he is such a mysterious fellow. The next part will be up shortly, but in the meantime, C&C is very much appreciated. ^^ Now then, it's time for some author babble, feel free to skip it if you're not interested in the particulars:
- Etemmu is a Babylonian term for a dead person's spirit. It is not the same as our concept of a soul, though the definitions spread across the Internet vary greatly. Wikipedia mentions the etemmu in connection with necromancy.
- Razel's a king because I like him that way. Don't care about anything that drama CD says. It was released years after this fic was written, anyway.
Continue to Part II >>
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