The Rhevireon Chronicle: The Ascent of the West Page 8

  ‘Shall we carry on?’ Benn enquired.

  ‘Yes.’She said,‘everybody’s heads high.’ She told them, then proceeded to walk the rows, percussed a sequence of shoulders remissly, and so they consented to her preference of them, meekly. The Matron then bumbled from her left to her right, got her hand on two more; she eventually moved toward the line where Hoyden stood, torpid, lifeless, after what she’d witnessed, had absorbed her unto the bone marrow, the Matron was quickly advancing from behind, drawing even nigher to her, Hoyden endeavoured to wrinkle her lips into that smile when the Marton somehow and fortunately merely threw a sideways squint at her, and Hoyden sighed as she went her past, vaunting,‘okey, after such terrific efforts invested this morning, we’re done here, these are the initial Ostros borough representatives…’ however, before she’d the chance to finish her closing sentence, the eructation seized Hoyden’s tum again, she stifled a belch, and suppressed the eructation, but helplessly she could not hold it any longer, thusly let them out; Madam Arenithe’s smoothie gave vent to the hiccups.

  ‘Sorry.’ Said she, rendered herself subject to mockery, when the Archmatron came back to her, with her open scraggy palm slapped her.

  ‘Look at me.’The Archmatron ordered the young woman, as she plucked at Hoyden’s chin the tips of her gaunt fingers tweaked her flesh, the Matron raised her head when she had with the unbearable sentience of a humiliated soul lowered it; she rubbernecked her, then the instant their eyes met,‘mhm,’ moaned the Matron, ‘there’s nothing really special about you, except for, those eyes; I don’t know but, it’s like we’ve met before!’

  ‘I don’t think so my lady.’ Replied Hoyden, with a quavering throat.

  ‘I like you, I do!’ she confessed to her, and what confession, ‘ah tell me! what’s your name again?’

  ‘Hoyden, my lady.’

  Then,‘you, the brunette in the middle, I’d a change of opinion; so you can have your seat back. Hoyden, why don’t you replace her!’

  X

  DAGGER TO DAGGER MENSUR

  April the 18.

  At the Aletheia’s sports complex, there was a restrained applause, from a dozen spectators, dispersed around the spare low-laid bleachers, girding about the plank floored ring; they wowed, at how resiliently he carried himself dodging his opponent’s blade, not an illusive adversary, but a real man with rough a muscle texture; how dexterous he was in handling his knife, the Bowie knife, as the dagger licked his opponent’s arms and limbs; the variety of curved and straight smites he inflicted on him, they were fresh, though shallow, but pernicious, though not enough for his adversary to recede out the fight, the mensur bout; so he stroke back, with fist and knife.

  ‘That one couldn’t get any slyer, sly and fast, that’s a real top-notch!’ said someone.

  ‘Dusk Ceiseraef,’ returned an other,‘hotshot of the year, back in soph days, we opposed them once, smited as many necks as the bouts he claimed.’

  ‘So not into it anymore?’

  ‘Aren’t know,’ refrained she for a while, before she’d continue, ‘he used to be a sturdy athlete, won the paukantenship, had all eyes on him, in the end seems going pro was his plan B.’

  ‘No matter what, still has a magnetic pull barechested to which I’ve a weakness.’

  ‘Oh, magnetic?!’ replied someone else,‘think I gotcha, tall, ripped, got killer eyes, strong jawline…oh wait, that’s Apollo of the Belvedere!’ they giggled, typical mensur rooters.

  Finally, delivering his opponent a lunge through the ribs, Dusk claimed the bout, the two adversaries exchanged daggers, and cleared the ring; they had their wounds tended to; unaware of what had just taken place, at the main department.

  There was no winner or loser to the mensur bout, neither a sport nor a duel. The mensur was an academic practice, that was believed to exercise the physical condition of a young man, and to develop his personality and harden his character with an emphasis on masculinity just as equal. An export of the Occidental Regnum, a trademark of its universities, colleges, and gymnasiums, it had been a spin-off of the human capital flight from old world Mitteleuropa into the country; drawing growing interest in its ways, the practice spontaneously infiltrated the academic sphere of the Weltzentrumpoleis, with a new code of rules endorsed.

  The minimum requirements for a paukant, or participant, to engage in a bout, were said to be above all, membership in an academic institute; a sheathed dagger, preferably Bowie knives over the out-fashioned schlagers, or rapiers, for the dagger was unexpected in many respects, baneful; then were the chain mailed gauntlets, and of course, a barechest. Only the man who claimed every single fight he’d undertaken, merited the Mensur Paukantenship.

  Dusk Ceiseraef, was one. A supreme phase of his irretrievable life, the period from which today only scars of the knife were there to mark his body, badges of honor. And he asked, why do the unretrievable times only resplend? But a person’s haecceity never be snapped off that easily, within a phase. It is simply the slates that are wiped clean.

  XI

  THE MAIDENS’ SOJOURN IN THE ABBEY

  April the 19.

  Arenithe at loss, in a candle light, must be her photoallergy the reason why; going back and forth, she was carrying a missive and a letter opener, the envelop she’d just received; embossed with the Larger-Than-Life seal, A.E, the personal signet of the Baron, adjoined by the Grand Seal of the Occidental Regnum & Juneauton Weltzentrumpoleis; an oval framed mirror, with a motto, ought to through the lookingglass be read, in blackletter script.

  We are glad to let you know, that your daughter has met the requirements, in other words, we have chosen her, she now belongs to our community. And so for the wellbeing of your daughter, you shall not see her before a long, so long time; unless you keep your half of the bargain. We appreciate your understanding.

  Yours sincerely.

  A.E

  Ma liberté chérie, vivre, et fay ce que vouldras.

  It felt quite innaposite of a motto, when basically was done on purpose, sort of reverse psychology. when a person is bound to, under subliminal stimuli, to go for the opposite option of which he or she is being induced into.

  03:10 p.m., at the Abbey of Matheraz; Matheraz, the demi-goddess of fertility, health and motherhood in the Occidental myth, idolized but never fully worshiped. While the Abbey, wasn’t geniuenly a place of a religious singularity, merely so named by custom, for the reputation it had gained as a turning point in the lives of many of its yearly visitors; for this cloister building was, the Ordo’s medical examination facility.

  At 03:15, Hoyden found herself confined inside a cubicle, the cubicle No 178, where she was to spend the night; through the fiberglass door, they kept an eye on her, her and the other approved of subjects, incarcerated in the adjacent cells, furnished with little more than a bed.

  The lights were off, apart from the passageway running through the parallel rooms, across which CCTV cameras were nested, exacerbating their guests’ conditions. Hoyden under the sheets had self-harming thoughts, she attempted on her hymen with her own hand; something if they found about, would make her physically unfit, divest her from any possibility of becoming a Maiden, and so after a morbidly long procedure of corrective treatment she’d be sent home, but before it could ever happen, into the bargain it would cost her more than her freedom, her honour.

  Female chasity was highly regarded in the Zentrum; it was deemed a tabu by the mob justice and word of the LEXAUR, considered a felony at the juridical level, women accused of fornication, were punished by hazing, publicly humiliated with their heads razored, paraded throughout the city barefeeted, wearing a coat on the back of which a badge of shame was stuck, and the phrase MUFFINMAID scribbled on their foreheads with tar; because of that sad appearance their shaved heads take, they derogatively were called, muffinmaids.

  A week thereafter.

  Natalya provided her boss with an article, titled;

  TREATED AND SENT BACK HOME, READ THE DISTURBING STO
RY OF THE TWO STUDENTS WHO CONFRONTED THE ARCHMATRON.

  ‘Fabulous,’ Mr. Sean Yang exclaimed, pushing around on a swivel chair, he went on postulating,‘this should be the first in a series of controversial publications, your breakthrough to the mainstream, and from there on to attain your true love, as the greatest film director the Juneautonuan motion picture industry has ever encountered, but then you’ll have to quit this sector first, which I won’t accept, because your success I’ll exploit to boost my own status amongst editors-in-chief of this country, so slowly I will reign, over the Yang empire of print and electronic media, the motor of electoral campaigns, I will inaugurate the next Magistrate, churn up CEOs to resign, and promote the image of Aurvanthilism into a modern-day fad among entertainment personalities and the upper-class of our secular mess; but, how did you?’

  ‘Right,’ she paused, then she would speak straight forward,‘credits should be given to Matthias actually, he’s the one who heard about the incident from this junior officer, to whom he used to take free photographs as service requirement; so Matt gave me a call right away, and I with little recco, managed to contact the girls, we’d bit of a convo, and here we are!’

  ‘Marvelous,’ filing his fingernails, Yang responded hiding not a slant of penchant for the fulfilling news, ‘and I underestimated his mental abilities, denigrated him so often as a biological failure; but oh well, never matters, he deserved it at times!’

  They’d been two weeks.

  19:24 p.m., she walked along the street, a trim, nice smelling street, the terraced villas appeared proportioned, constructed according to the eclectic Jeffersonian style, with slated roofs, opulence of the Ulmus Montana county. She crossed the wooden gate, which two leashed watch dogs flanked erect, they bobbed about as she stroked them and caressed them, she then made her way through the wych elm lined flag stone, it’d sprouted its first buds already; there was silence, then, a voice of a low volume kept coming from inside.‘Olé, Vivian the bestiarix fixates the bison to the ground, n’…oh puh-leeze she separates the horns apart and beheads the deranged animal in such way, that’s nicely done slaughter out there sends Vivian the cruel right up the quarter-finaleees…to the goddesses of the Venatio Games!!!’ declared the announcer at coverage of the game.

  Before she got inside, she doffed her spider bites piercing; then inserted the skeleton key, she opened the door, quietly headed through the vestibule and straight off slunk upstairs; she couldn’t avoid him anyhow.

  ‘Who’s there, is that you? show yourself.’ Cried the man; that was Monty, wiping a pair of bifocals, the couch he beared down on, the game broadcasted on a CRT, and a meerschaum pipe he relished.

  ‘Yeez, don’t shoot!!’ she exclaimed,‘who else do you expect?’ as she filtched his drink.

  ‘The cryptids, haply?!’ he said, ‘common visitant these days. Rash of sightings are claimed here and there, all about the southern boroughs, which we’re part of, course.’

  ‘The non-existent cryptid, wasn’t it for that reason they’re called so, cryptids!’ retorted she with remarkable ridicule,‘so, what’s on dinner?’

  ‘Today, is the commencement of our forty day observances, the Forenoon of the Harbinger, which starts with the First Nosh and concludes with Night of the Viragos, it is when—’

  ‘Our hierophant and instaurator of the Organon, Belhavenard the Harbinger, scion to the Belhavenards, restorer of our faith in humankind, was hung from the gibbet unto death on the hands of his own adherents, the dissident peasants, dwellers of the village, who were so blasphemous to his platonic love, that they stabbed him in the back, in what became known as the First Nosh.’ She monotonously recited, what she apparently had been harking to each year, till she learned it by rote.

  ‘The holy First Nosh.’ Monty returned with a murmur, shortly thereafter he carried on,‘and thus, it’s also when we have family meals, the roasted hare is on its way; and give me back that pipe, now.’

  ‘Smoking’s bad for you.’ She told him, heisting the pipe she fled the sitting room, teasing the man she knew as, Father.

  ‘Don’t do it, not in my house, Nesy.’

  ‘Arrest me!’

  Didn’t they notice it? Or was it that same dyed-in-the-wool cliché-ridden superstitious notion, or they scarcely didn’t give a damn? He couldn’t read what’s on their minds. When Dusk Ceiseraef, stood alone, facing that bald old tree, the leaves it’d hardly grown, yestereautumn, now were fallen; as the hurried passersby obtained brief ganders at him with growing curiosity; on a bough of the wizened tree perched a crow, its antsy, persistent caws filled the night, uncanny, that it somehow conjured up into the souls of Dusk, the lines from a ballade well obsolete, well forgotten, from Caledonia; he must be, the slain knight.

  Before the fourth of three heavy knocks on his door, Monty, brawny as he was fitting a tank top, answered to the delivery guy, he’d a little conversation with him.

  ‘So, they overlooked me again!’ she broached the subject, on the dinner table.

  ‘The Matron and her cortege paid you visit?’

  ‘Yes, they’d been four days, and they took her with them.’ The tone of her reaction implied strong revulsion, inhibited antipathy towards them. ‘But they skipped me, thanks to you, and your status among those turds.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Just someone whom I promised, but failed.’ She bitterly clarified.

  ‘I once was told,’ Monty recounted, ‘that what makes life’s perfect, is it’s own imperfection; and just between you and me, since the walls have eyes and ears in our case, I’ve acted by his quote forever, I don’t want any promised utopia, that lacks the savory dis-integrity of the good and bad.’

  ‘And what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘It’s not an act of knavery, when there was absolutely nothing you could’ve done about it! What’s the only thaumaturgy our hierophant came with?’

  ‘It is said, before the first verse on the Lex Aurvanthilis was written,’ as though it took her no effort to elicit exactly what he wanted to hear, from the olden lessons she’d been well thought since infanthood, she cited, ‘The human whose name the Harbinger wrote on the book would die, on those pages that are missing to date.’

  ‘That’s it, there could be no right without wrong, nor there’s wrong without right!’

  ‘Oh, you’re a riddle wrapped up in a mystery father. But yeah, anyways, what kind of adventure your last trip had for you?’

  ‘Quest to the Redoubt.’

  ‘The volcano ?’

  ‘The mountain did it again,’ Monty returned, finished his meal, then he went on rambling about, ‘they needed us there, so we assist in the rehabilitation of some of the locals who got inspirational problems because of the phreatic activity!’

  ‘All that happened and I hadn’t bit of an idea, where were I?’

  ‘How should I know!’

  ‘Oh wait, you’re a man of the cloth, right! I mean where do you do you fit in a search and rescue mission?’ His daughter asked, not without the usual state of

  bewilderment their chatter would often bring her into, to which Nesrin was accustomed; or Nesy, as he pet called her.

  ‘Forget about the humanitarian cries, when it’s a natural disaster, it’s our mandatory assignment to be there.’He averred, ‘those hayseeds are thick with their natal areas even when their lives are in jeopardy; flesh lives on clay and clay lives by flesh, they’d tell you, say they’re admonished against it; therefore, the thing is, we were assigned to spread the word of the godhead there, with some apocalyptic ruse!’ as he wiped his mouth with used tissues, Monty proceeded to invoice an after meal grace; the way any other military chaplain would, a triple Os’ exclusive, whom people often missed for an Aurvanthilist pastor.‘Even a wannabe model should know that!’ he joked.

  That morning, over a fifty young women, were inured to be escorted on a daily basis to the examination capsules, where having had their height and weight measured, their case history checked
into, they were submitted to Intelligence Quotient programmes, and ultimately had their virginity verified; each new day, few of the girls who’d passed the identical tests the day before, now failed, were disapproved of, unfit for procreation; they were either sent back home or for the walk of shame; until their numbers markedly diminished.

  As the days ticked by, by leaps and bounds; the eighteen maidens were finally decided. Each pair was to represent one of the boroughs, Hoyden, to stand for the Ostros; when the poor creature, for one reason or the other, all of her ways to self-injury had dissolved, and with them, her salvation.

  ‘A snake guttling its own tail, alright, I’ve no clue, what’s your trim really is young woman!’ mussitated the medical officer at the operating room where Hoyden was readmitted, laying supine as her back was exposed to ultraviolet light, when they’d gotten a line of her Ouroboros tattoo, Dusk was the artist. ‘It’s going to hurt a little.’ He said, about to undertake that tattoo removal session.

  Outside the Abbey; the Zentrum was off the holiday season, the violet flag of the Weltzentrumpoleis tappered atop the govermental buildings, most prominently, the High Court of Justice, the jack was the same that the autonomous megalopolis shared with the Occidental Regnum, in turn, identical to the flag first used by Territorial Alaska and subsequently the State of Alaska, with the only exception, this one had argent thunderbolts struck its corners against a violet field.

  The High Court of Justice, the art deco structure that strikingly, stood face to face with the sole Aurvanthilist cathedral of the Zentrum, and the line was drawn, the line of liminality separating betwixt the exoteric and the esoteric; the cathedral itself was in conflict with itself, built in the the disturbing severe deco architecture; and the pipe organs resounded, for seven days until the emergence of spring’s last of dawns; concluding the devolutionary pilgrimage, pilgrimage of the Viragos.

  Towards the outskirts of the city, toward the end of a broad long driveway, was an entrance, secured by mounted guards, entrance to the Palace; the official residence of the incumbent.