(post image by Federico Bottos)
Aleks rubbed one callused thumb over the photo in his hand and the other over the polished ax hilt laying across his shoulder blades. Both shed blood in the past as he hoped would be their future. A thought he kept in mind as he stepped over the threshold of the temple.
It’d taken great effort to find the location of said temple, then harder to actually get to it. Especially without any of the town’s people knowing. Which should’ve been easier when none of them paid him much mind in the past. But recent events uprised a whole group of people hellbent on knowing his whereabouts 24/7.
But this was necessary. It was going to get him possibly killed. But necessary.
The temple had no doors, only a tall arch, nothing to keep him out besides a few overgrown silver vines that no one beyond the River cared to trim. Or had the ability to. Aleks easily pushed them aside and stepped in, the blade of his ax slicing delicately through the iced over foliage.
The temple was built to be seen in the nightlight. He couldn’t bring himself to come here during the day, even if he wanted to. A circular so light blue it was almost white room with dark wooden beams curving vertically along the walls to hold up the skylight. The diorite floor was fitted with random patterns of the moon phases, in no such order Aleks could comprehend.
Specks, flecks, and sharp shards of ice were suspended all around him. Touching them no longer brought him ease, only brief pain, but he still couldn’t help but reach up to graze them.
On the walls, words were written in Common in different scripts of handwriting. He ran his palm over the writing and sighed. No understanding came to him and his head hurt to try. Maj would be able to read it, he thought forlornly as he tucked the photo into his vest pocket.
In the midst of the floating shards drifting from the skylight, a lady dressed in blue robes on her back on a futon. Long dark hair fanned out from her head but ringlets still framed a beautiful face. Hands overlapping one another on her abdomen. Eyes closed in a gentle and peaceful rhythm.
Aleks took a step forward, then another, then another. To see her in the flesh for the first time, to see a goddess rest peacefully as if she were a mere mortal, to gaze upon her home of solitude. To see Arinalme was a heart wrenching yet mind conceiving experience.
Was she asleep? Or simply in an everlasting coma of which only her element and followers could wake her from? Aleks was about to find out.
He raised the ax high above Arinalme’s neck and torso, but right before he could move it a centimeter, white blue eyes opened ever so slightly.
“Help! Bror!”
“Maj!”
Swish!
The black metal ax broke ethereal skin and the frosty dead screamed. Icicles shed from the walls as the sound traveled through the temple and out the entrance, down past the forest and into the town the goddess oh so cherished.
But Arinalme stayed silent as liquid poured from her wound. Simply watching Aleks take out the ax and dangle it from his side. He reacted none to the streaming tears of the River, only stared at the death goddess lying dying at his feet.
She opened her mouth and no voice came out. But her lips moved to form one word. “Why?”
Aleks swallowed hard. “I need her back. The other half of my soul. I can’t be without her.” He sank to his knees, gripping the ax as tightly as he could to keep stable. Outside, the graves shook as the dead rose from their depths. “What have I done…”
Arinalme slowly reached up and touched Alek’s face, gently caressing his cheek with all the tenderness of a grandmother to her rambunctious grandson. “Sing to me.”
“Sing what?” he asked breathlessly.
“The song you always play.” Her voice was soft and he could hear the echoes of lost souls in it.
Aleks had not his guitar, but he didn’t hesitate to touch the pads of his fingers to his throat.
“Time came forth and blessed the world,
with the children of the wild,
And a few hundred reasons,
To be beguiled.”
They could hear the playful voices carry from the River; a mix of tearful hellos after years apart and cries of despair. Aleks had sought after Maj’s when he arrived, but heard nothing. Something that granted him both hope and sorrow.
“The land was fruitful,
And the people were wise,
To not reprimand the mindful wake,
Of the beautiful god’s reprise.”
Aleks bit his bottom lip and bowed his head, averting his eyes from the goddess’s knowing gaze. How many times had the ice behind his cabin never wavered to the steady sun? The intricate designs in its snowy resin continuing to shine under the moonlight?
“The children grew to a restless state,
They begged the gods for another way,
To breathe life into their veins.
So time reached down and gave them gifts,
Of the moon, sun, and stars,
The perfect sign of elsker,
And what was in the cards.”
His jagged fingers wrapped almost twice around his ax’s staff. Knuckles turning white from bone and muscle strain. Thin scars covered them in series to match the ones adorning the rest of his body. All the way to the silver crescent tattoo etched into his ribcage.
“But their ways grew away from them,
So they once again prayed,
For purpose and intent,
Before it all began to decay.
Louder and angrier they cried,
And the gods sent their own,
To live amongst them in the cold.”
The creature back home in the town, the one with blade sharp scars criss crossed over his neck, could feel a disturbance. A deeply hurtful disturbance that he could not understand. He had felt the pain before, but recognized the origin not.
“But my lady she said not to fear,
Just keep on praying,
And listen here.
My boy you will never know,
What it means to hurt,
From a restless soul.”
The last syllable gradually drifted off into a toneless stance. Archaic silence finally befell the temple and Arinalme hummed the final note. She knew it, Aleks realize. She’d be listening. She’d always been listening.
“Thank you for singing it, my cleric. One last time.” She closed her eyes and her head became denser in his arms. “Your song for me.”
Tears dripped onto her face and froze up on contact, forming little crystals to forever embody their fate. Eyes stared up at him; dark, now lifeless eyes.
Aleks finally broke and let the sobs escape his throat. He coughed on the lack of air, but that didn’t stop the complete anguish lengthening the cries more and more. The full moon hanging above them, watching her goddess be killed through the skylight, passed by with the help of time.
He screamed once more, his throat vibrating hoarse, before cutting himself off. Using his ax to shakingly stand, he left Arinalme’s final resting place and dragged his feet to the entrance of the temple.
In the warm night air, the dead staggered towards him. Towards the fresh blood pumping through his veins. They were free and the River could hold their souls but their bodies no longer.
Aleks swung his ax in front of him and held it in both hands in both defense and offense. “I’m coming, Maj.”