18

Perhaps the oddest part of being a shaman is that when something big is supposed to happen, you can feel it. I don’t mean that to say that those who aren’t shaman don’t feel it — I’m certain they do, to an extent. However, I doubt that they can feel the overwhelming, multilevel magnitude of an event. In many ways, shaman are more animalistic in that we communicate with nature better. As one could spot crows surrounding a battlefield before the war hits it, so can one detect shaman shuffling about, preparing for the onslaught of whatever came their way. And it’s not merely the event itself that we feel, but things related to it. At this point I guess I’m speaking on my own behalf, for I can’t speak of how others understand the urgency of an event. But when something in the newspaper is related to the overarching sense of potency, I can feel it; the same goes for news reported on the television. I experience a tug at my heart and the thought of that event which looms overhead, an insurgence of clouds over a previously sunny shore. So, when I was in my dorm, listening to the international radio report and reading for the next day’s classes, a trifecta of tugs nearly tore my heart in three.

The first occurred as I was moving the mail from that day’s delivery. One of my dorm mates loved the newspaper from Hollowhaven that I got for free, and they would have to pay for it had I not offered to retrieve my free copy on their behalf. Upon touching the paper, a chill shot up my arm and coerced my eyes into looking upon the article on the first page. Though I didn’t identify as Roman Catholic, nor did a large constituency of those residing on Hollowhaven, the news that covered the headline was vital to the existence of everyone who knew the religion. In all capital letters, with a photo of the waving subject of the title beneath it, spread from margin to margin, were the words ‘POPE FOUND MURDERED, INVESTIGATION PENDING.’

I fell backwards and bounced off the wall to regain my footing; my eyes quickly scanned the passage explaining that the Pope had been found in his bedroom the most recent morning, his body gruesomely mangled to the point that — for the sake of decency — all reporters refused to take photographs of the corpse, if it could be called a corpse. They hadn’t the same scruples about the room, however, and so photos were taken and shown of the blood that had been splattered about the place, reaching the ceilings, the walls, and the trail of blood that led to the bathroom, where, according to the words upon the page rather than photographs, they found the Pope’s head sitting in the bathtub, underwater.

The second tremor was from the radio, proclaiming that a school bus filled with nine girls from a Catholic school in the Czech Republic had exploded, killing everyone within. The driver’s chest was found intact, though without the limbs typically attached to it; the heart was pierced by a shard of glass that, the reporter noted, when one looked at the right angle, reflected the wound and the blood leaking from it to form a kind of nine-pointed star.

The third tug was what I saw on the evening news when my dorm mate returned from their job and switched on the television. A nine-point star was spray painted on the wall of a chapel that had collapsed earlier today, killing twenty-seven praying men, bringing the total people killed that day to an even forty.

Forty, the Biblical number of change; in the world of the shaman, there are no coincidences.

Slumber took me under its wing and set me betwixt those of a sparrow; upon this bird I rose above the ebbs of the Zeroth Plane and watched the world fade behind me as I broke through the barriers between worlds and found myself within the Aether, the realm of things non-material, where all dreams were true. The golden sun reflected off the leaves below me, the trees shimmering and swaying in the soft breeze that sent my hair against my ears and from my eyes. I watched as we — the sparrow and I — flew above a sparkling lake, only to descend upon its shore. The sparrow nodded at me to continue, and I thanked it for its aid. There was a forest through which I must venture, I noted, before I arrived where I was meant to go. With a blissful sigh, onwards I travelled, meandering about the path my feet marked into the soft, lush grasses of the wood. The bark of these trees was silver, and their leaves composed of diamonds, though they still resembled leaves in form and structure. The light that flew through these leaves was cast into a billion sparkles that hung about the air as dust does in a room when illuminated by florescence. Though the sky was bright and the air potent, absolute in the energy it carried, the breeze that travelled through the wood was cool, and so the atmosphere was comfortable.

I came to a clearing, then, and looked around, for the clearing allowed one to overlook the lands beyond. Rolling hills lay after the cliff upon which I stood, hills of various growths; wheat, grass, precious stones, and all luscious and beautiful. There was a platform of rock built into the clearing, and I looked upon the circular formation with a tinge of sadness, for I recognised the name inscribed upon it. The breeze ceased, and before me stood a woman in entirely golden-white dress, a crown of narcissus and pansy upon her brow, and the glow of a deity about her.

“Hello again, Lorcán,” said the goddess Rhiannon, whose reappearance in the world was due to the sacrifice my friend of the same name made not so long ago.

“Milady. How fares you?”

Rhiannon offered a pleased smile, as if the question was a considerate one that she wasn’t asked too often. “I am well, friend. I have — from here, my domain — been watching you as I recuperate. It’s a difficult thing, coming back after being gone for so long. Much has changed in my people…”

“The Irish, or the Tuatha dé Danann?”

Another lovely smile. “Both, my friend, though the latter I am more shocked to find. We are most nearly gone, save a few.”

“I suppose ‘tis the way of things, when a people are displaced and dissolved of their identity that their gods too fade away,” I remarked.

“It is a sad thing,” spoke the goddess, touching a hand to her breast. “But some survive, I have learnt. Lugh survives, as he always manages. My husband has faded, it seems, unlike our friend Mananan of Llyr, that old man of the sea. He’s replaced his father, I’m told. Either way… to see certain gods remain where others have vanished. It’s a reminder of how changed you mortals have become.”

“Certainly,” I said.

A faint smirk replaced the sorrow that had been overtaking the goddess’ face. “She laughs at you, Lorcán. She says that your reactions to things are still so dull it’s comical.”

I smiled at the thought of Rhiannon’s judgement of my seemingly emotionless reactions to events that should be oppressive in nature. She presumed, once, that were I hit by the bus and to ask what happened after awakening from a coma and finding an apocalypse to have occurred interim, that my reaction would merely be, ‘Ah,’ and then I would move on. I never explained to her that I never felt overwhelmed by an event when speaking of it, mostly because when parleying one has either the option of allowing the words uttered to lay claim to their lives, or to move on and past the event, to keep going with one’s life regardless of what’s thrown at it because one’s life is short compared to those of the gods. Though, from what I’d learned about them of late, even the gods’ lives are shorter than I imagined.

Rhiannon pointed over the edge of the shrine, and I saw a dark haze rising from the east.

“What’s happened there, I wonder?” she whispered in my ear.

Before I could reply, I found myself displaced and suddenly bereft of all gold and glow, surrounded in its stead by gloom and glum. Fog pervaded the forest within which I stood, and I saw that I was alone, except for the cry that emanated from what seemed miles away.

“Help!” he cried with frenzy coating his voice. “Help me, please!” The boy pushed past me, running at full speed from something I could neither see nor hear. I could, however, feel its power cause the quaking of my bones, and the rattling of my skull. The boy kept running, and I after him, seeking too to escape from the grip of that which chased us. Something I picked up from cleansing things in the Aether is that when you have a gut feeling about something, you go with it, regardless of the logic involved. Certainly the leap of faith was fearsome, but it was necessary; your soul and subconscious could tell you a lot more if you listened to it.

The sounds behind me were of crashing, falling trees, splintered beneath something much greater than feet. They were felled without a shudder, offering no resistance to the power that passed them. I took steps away from the powerful creature before committing fully to the concept of dashing off with the boy, whom I caught up to almost immediately. He looked at me with eyes emanating the emptiness of space and grabbed my wrist before shouting words that encouraged one’s fleetness. Onwards we dashed, the void-eyed lad pulling me along a path he seemed to know by heart, guiding me to some great clearing in which there was but an enormous, rectangular rock.

“Where does that lead?” I asked as we neared it.

“Come, sir! We must escape it!” urged the lad, pulling me closer to the rock.

I would have hesitated had my imagination not caused me to envisage some great creature standing ten metres tall, large spear in one hand, bodies of all the millions who opposed him in the other, horns jutting from his forehead and entrails sliding down his disgusting, massive maws, and no eyes from which to hide, but a general sense of existence so that it may observe those around it in their truer forms. I then looked to the boy before me, with sandy blond hair and void-eyes and a worried look about his face, and decided to join him as he left through the rock and into a dark corridor illuminated only by fires as dim as they were old. And these lanterns seemed to carry much age. The air was filled with smoke and electricity, as if someone had taken ozone and lit a match simultaneously, and after twelve steps the boy loosened my hand, allowing me to take in the sight of the main cavern of this cave containing multitudes of passageways leading to places I knew not.

And yet this place seemed so familiar.

“Well done, Theta,” uttered a gravelly, smoky voice, one that reminded me of the power of volcanoes, and the devastation that overrode the permanence of even modern settlements, that hurled images of explosions and smiting in my head, the voice that carried in it the eminence of creativity, of craftsmanship. The man who spoke with such command did so with a twisted torso, one side bulkier than the other — but both still massive in their own right, with paws the size of watermelons — and a mangled leg that was supported by a bronze brace. To observe this brace was to observe the most intricately bound prosthetic I had ever seen; I knew that it would take centuries to catch up to the work this man crafted, if possible for mortals to even strive for it. About the man’s rugged face was a mane of coarse, black hair, eyes ferocious and containing the brightest fire I’d ever witnessed, a crooked nose broken multiple times, and a scar starting from the top of his forehead and trailing alongside his nose and across his chapped lips before dropping off the edge of his jaw.

They queried, “Know you me, Lorcán Maeve?”

“As Hephaestos, I do,” I replied.

The god of the smith laughed a hearty guffaw that shook the very caverns we stood within before nodding his head and saying, “I think you’re right, kid. Come, come into my study. We’ve things to discuss.”

Hephaestos led the way towards some part of his inner sanctum, a journey that felt like kilometres but had — according to time, rather than space — taken but a few seconds. The depths of his cleverness were revealed here, for within the depths of the planet the god had placed his forge and thus protected it from those who could not venture beneath the earth, including such beings as the gods who birthed him. His study, when I first visited it, blew my mind entirely. In regards to the concept of space as I understood it, that something as massive and cool and peaceful as his study should exist within the confines of his underground home was impossible.

But I was in the Aether, where space and time are fluid in their composition, and thus such warping as that which allowed for Hephaestos’ study to exist in this space was feasible. Hephaestos gestured towards a stool in which I found myself seated; it grew immediately to my liking, sprouting arms and a back made of soft yet sturdy wood, and a cushioned seat that was raised enough for my legs to comfortably dangle off the edge of the seat and have my heels rest upon the bar connecting the legs of the chair. The god took such a seat himself and, leaning his chin upon his first two knuckles, observed me, as if reading the schematics for my existence.

“Theta!” the god called gently. The boy from before appeared suddenly in the room and bowed towards the god.

“Yes, sir?”

“Have your mother make us a drink, lad.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and summon your father for me, please.” The boy smiled, suddenly standing straighter than he had a moment ago.

“Yes, sir!”

“There’s a lad,” smiled the god as Theta jovially pranced off to perform his errands. There was something about Theta’s presence that concerned me, but Hephaestos’ words soothed those ideas. “They’re all automatons. Iota and Kappa are his parents, so to speak. Built them a couple centuries ago; seem to be the hardiest. Also are the most human, I think.”

“I doubt that there’s a coincidence,” I said, which made the smith god laugh again.

“Oh, neither do I! Neither I… oh… Thank you Iota. This is Lorcán, by the way.” Iota faced me, looking nothing of her age. That torches could appear older than she did was momentarily disconcerting, but her politeness and species relegated such passions to an inaudible whisper that succumbed to the pressure of greater and more important thoughts.

She said, “It’s a pleasure to meet your acquaintance, Mr Lorcán.”

“And the same from me to you, Ms Iota,” I replied as she placed in my hand a bronze mug of what appeared to be steaming almond milk blended with a bit of cinnamon, the concoction my mother would make sometimes for film nights.

“Don’t be worried, Lorcán; I’ve not been spying on you or anything. The cup brings to its drinker that which they seek the most. Mine’s a cup of steaming ambrosia. What’s yours?”

“Cinnamon infused almond milk, also steaming.”

Hephaestos raised his mug to me, a huge grin upon his face. “To steaming beverages that make warm our hearts,” he toasted.

“Cheers,” I said, “and that such drinks and the time to consume them never run out.”

“Oho! Cheers to that, m’boy.” Our mugs connected, and we gulped down our respective drinks. I wiped from my lip the remnants of the lovely liquid, but the god allowed his remain atop his, and a twinkle ignited in his already smouldering eyes. “Ah, Kappa! I was beginning to worry about you, old friend.”

“I had a time finding the thing, m’lord, but here it is.”

In the automaton’s hands lay a small cylindrical object, coloured a dull grey, covered in what appeared to be Greek and bits of languages that I didn’t know. Whilst Iota was distinctly humanoid in appearance, save for the veins one could see through her pallid skin, veins that seemed to carry gaseous matter rather than blood, Kappa, obviously the older model, was the remnant of some in-between phase, during which the smithing god had focused more on being able to see the processes and internal furnishings of the automaton rather than the human likeness of it. Except for his face — and the clothed bits of him — Kappa was entirely mechanical muscle and bone and circulatory system, to analogue appropriately. There was upon him no skin, save for his face, which wore a plain expression and occasionally showed the mechanised resemblance of human movements, blinking, smirking, sniffing, et cetera, all on a timed loop that slightly varied when he was gazed upon or spoken with.

“Will that be all, my liege?” Kappa queried.

Hephaestos smiled and replied, “Go and rest, Kappa; you’ve done well.”

“I am glad to hear it, sir,” spoke the tinny, stilted voice of Kappa. “How has my son been doing, sir?”

“Theta’s been perfectly well, old friend.” The smile upon Kappa’s face was the most human thing about him, I realised, and even that was slightly gruesome, as if the wilderness of a wolf’s snarl was encapsulated in the arrangement.

“I am glad. I will rest, sir, lest you need me again.”

“I’ll always need you sometime, Kappa, rest assured of that,” swore the smith god with a clap upon the automaton’s back.

“Yes, sir,” spoke happily the automaton as he bowed robotically and vacated the study. Hephaestos held between his enormous, strong, and deft fingers the cylindrical object, twirling it about between two fingers as a drummer does his wand.

“Do you know what’s inside of this, Lorcán?”

“I do not,” I replied.

“I’m glad to hear it. You can’t know; not yet, at least. There are things you need to acquire first. I hear you’re the heir of my cousin’s less volatile masterpiece.”

“Perhaps of the less explicitly disruptive one, yes.” Hephaestos tossed the cylinder in the air and snapped; it vanished from view, only to be revealed in his other hand, a smirk upon the god’s face.

“Well said,” he said. “I assume from the huge favour you did a lot of us a short time ago that you’ve been reading it.”

I replied, “Aye.”

“That is good. Very good.” The smithing god tapped his index fingers together, his eyes focusing on the space between them as they spread apart and joined each other again. When he figured out how to phrase his words, the gods spoke, “I thus may say safely that you know the impending danger of allowing Despair to grow in further power than it has, and that you should be pleased to know that I — despite my appearance in the matter — have been about, sending my eyes here and there in order to glean from the cosmos a way in which to bind Bliss to a weaponised form.”

I asked, “You have found a lead?”

The god smiled a Cheshire grin. “Oh, my friend, I have found quite the lead. First, I must present you with what led me to this realisation. We are trying to purify Bliss and mould it into a tool with which you’ll have a great chance to defeat Despair entirely. The Hunter and I have tried a plethora of metals and dispositions, all of which end in the same explosive result. Through this we realised two things. The first, that Bliss is highly volatile as it galvanises atomic structure so well that the atoms get overexcited and… well, you can imagine the results.

“Second, there must be something of such density and magnitude that Bliss may be sustained within it, bound within it without the threat of unintentional detonation. There are, from the top of my head, three things that hold a power within them that — were one to merely glimpse at the containing agent — should be incapable of leashing such enormous amounts of energy. This brings us back to the cylinder.”

From his beard the cylindrical object came, as did a hammer. An anvil materialised from the floor, and upon its head Hephaestos placed the cylinder. With a swift flash of steel, the hammer smashed upon the cylinder, but it was the hammer that exploded into five pieces, not the mysterious object upon the anvil.

“What material is that?” I asked, astonished.

“Memory. A moment of time compressed upon itself and so absolute in its existence that by attempting to destroy it, it becomes stronger and much denser.”

“The obvious problem is that it isn’t malleable enough to work with,” I said. “Did you figure out how to circumvent this?”

“You think I’d waste your time otherwise, friend? That’s why I called you here. You have a bit of a task set out for you, Lorcán. We’ll need a few deities’ help in the matter, and you’ll have to be our diplomat. The Hunter would, were he alive in a state of action, and I’m worth utter shit with words. You, however, with eloquence so fiercely attached to your lineage… you stand a great chance.”

“I would attempt to capture their alliance regardless of the chances,” I said to his satisfaction.

“Ohoho! See? You’re a magician with words. I shall charge you with victory, then, shaman. The first whose aid you must obtain is that of Wotan’s bird of Memory. He knows well the construct of memory, and we shall need such information if we are to learn what is necessary to sustain and create the hardiness of such. So that you may focus on a single task — there are four you will have to perform in order to make malleable memory — I leave you with this first, for certainly it is one of the difficult ones. The gods of such people as the Norse are, compared to my relatives, much hardier, and infinitely colder. Such is the nature of gods, to reflect well their environmental ties…”

“How should I relay the information to you?” I asked. Hephaestos plucked from behind my ear the cylinder he’d been twirling about previously.

“Merely grip this tightly and think of me. The knowledge you’ve acquired shall flow through this talisman into my mind, and thus be vouchsafed forever. Now, Lorcán, I must warn you. There is a trouble brewing in the cosmos again, something older than even the demon you slew. Should its gaze fall upon you…”

“I understand,” I said after bearing a very uncomfortable silence and before I finished yet another serving of my spiced almond milk. The smithing god patted my shoulder once.

“Good lad, and good luck.” Another pat, and I was back in my dorm room, my alarm urging me to rise for the day.