Hungry Heart - Book #3 - Ch. 32

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter Five / Chapter Six / Chapter Seven / Chapter Eight / Chapter Nine / Chapter Ten / Chapter Eleven / Chapter Twelve / Chapter Thirteen / Chapter Fourteen / Chapter Fifteen / Chapter Sixteen / Chapter Seventeen / Chapter Eighteen / Chapter Nineteen / Chapter Twenty / Chapter Twenty-One / Chapter Twenty-Two / Chapter Twenty-Three / Chapter Twenty-Four / Chapter Twenty-Five / Chapter Twenty-Six / Chapter Twenty-Seven / Chapter Twenty-Eight / Chapter Twenty-Nine / Chapter Thirty / Chapter Thirty-One 

Chapter Thirty-Two – And Darkness Came Again

The scent of ashes was the first thing his addled mind recognized, as he was slowly coming back to his senses. His head was pounding, and there was a buzzing in his ears that he didn’t recognize as anything he had heard before. Something about it all felt unnatural, like he was in a strange place where he knew no one and nothing.

Varg tried to push himself up, but there was something heavy on his chest, and he couldn’t move at first. He couldn’t even open his eyes, as his eyelids seemed kept shut by some invisible matter. With a groan that sounded foreign to his own ears, he managed to free one arm and brought his hand to his face. He sputtered as he tried to open his mouth to speak, as some of the same stuff that kept his eyes shut was weighing on his lips, as well.

Using sheer power of will, he straightened up, releasing himself. Using both hands, he pushed away the debris from his eyes, but when he finally opened them, he wished he hadn’t.

Ashes were flowing gently all around him, but they were the only things still moving. Shapes lay on the ground, along with rubble, all covered in whitish soot, like dirty snow.

“No,” Varg croaked when the realization of what he was seeing finally caught up with his mind.

The shapes lying around him were people. Still were, he hoped, as he thrashed to free his body completely from the wreckage. First, he leaned over the one closest to him. He brushed away the debris until he found a face underneath. “Duril,” he called out, his heart in his throat.

There was no answer, and the gentleness that relaxed his friend’s features scared him. Varg continued to brush the soot away with frantic movements. Duril was still holding that small boy in his arm, but the child was as motionless as his protector.

A sound between a growl and a cry emerged from his throat. Like a famished animal bent on finding the smallest trace of food, he began to search through the rubble for the slightest sign of life.

Claw’s large unmoving shape was easy to find, but just like Duril, he no longer seemed to be among the living. Varg let out all the anguish and anger threatening to engulf his mind like a fire until his throat couldn’t take it anymore. How could it be that he was the only one to remain alive? Was it his curse? What gods had he angered to deserve this?

Suddenly, a movement to his right stopped his torrent of wallowing and wailing.

“Master wolf,” a voice called to him. “You’re alive!”

Relief flooded him, but only for a moment. “They’re dead, they’re all dead,” he accused, while a veil of crimson red descended over his eyes.

Moth and Pie hurried to his side and helped him to his feet, which would have been laughable in any other time and under any other sky. He tried to push them away, but his body was weakened beyond any trace of recognition and he swayed on his feet. The two valiant Sakka hurried to hold him steady.

“What happened?” he asked. “Why are they like this? Is everyone--” he choked.

“I’m afraid so,” Moth said quietly. “But you are alive. It is a miracle!”

Varg trembled from the effort of trying to keep himself up on two feet in the face of the feeling of helplessness washing over him at the sight of the destruction surrounding them. “A miracle? To be alive when everyone else is dead?”

“Master wolf,” Moth said soothingly, “life is a miracle. We have yet to hear from our brethren. Toru must still be asleep. Don’t you want to come with us and see him?”

“Face him?” Varg staggered as his vision blurred. “And tell him that… Duril and Claw are no more?”

“Would you have him remain without any of you?” Pie asked. “If he’s still asleep… he might need someone close to help him come back among the living.”

“The living,” Varg spat. Bitter tears fell from his eyes, washing away some of the soot on his cheeks. “Nobody’s alive. Not anymore. And you knew it. You knew it was going to happen and you didn’t stop it.” It didn’t matter that the Sakka didn’t know how to stop that kind of destruction, not to him, not at that very moment.

“Master wolf,” Moth called him again while holding his elbow. “Your pain is great. We know it. We’ve lived it time and again, with each fall of Scercendusa. Don’t you think we care for this city?”

“If you do, why have you never done anything to change its destiny?”

That appeared to make both Sakka stop and ponder. “It isn’t in our power to challenge destiny,” Pie said quietly, most probably in unspoken accord with his brother.

“Let me be,” Varg growled. “I cannot face Toru and tell him the people he loves are dead.”

He shook off the Sakka’s touch and began walking. Where to, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t bear to sit there and wallow in misery.

“Maybe Toru can help,” Moth suggested.

He turned on his heel, but too fast, and he staggered again. “How can he help?”

“We don’t know,” Pie admitted. “But he’s not like the other tigers before him. He’s… kinder.”

“Take me to him then.” As much as it pained him even merely to think of how he would go to his close friend and have to tell him about the others… A thought crossed his mind. “We cannot leave them here,” he said, pointing at the shapes on the ground.

“We’ll take them with us,” Pie promised.

Varg was about to ask how they were going to undertake such a feat, but Moth transformed into the butterfly he had seen before. His wings were covered in soot and they moved tiredly as they swung back and forth, but it had to be, indeed, their only way of carrying the bodies of his friends to the place where Toru was still resting.

He just nodded and proceeded to take each of them and load them on Moth’s back, starting with Claw, who was the heaviest. He groaned under the weight, but pushed himself to the limit to finish the task. Was this how humans usually felt? He had counted on his wolf powers all his life, and he couldn’t imagine how it would be without them. Maybe his powers had been taken away from him, and that was also part of his punishment.

Duril had to be taken along with the boy, and Varg thought that the healer wouldn’t have had it any other way. He knelt and wept once his task was over, not from pain or exertion, but because his chest felt so hollow that he could only fill it up with tears. Pie touched his shoulder. “Not all is lost, master wolf,” he said gently. “We must accept that we don’t know everything. Toru gave us hope.”

To him, Pie’s words made little sense, but hope was something he could understand. Yes, hope was the only thing that mattered.

***

Toru was running through the woods. It was so dark, but his eyes were good, they led him where he needed to be. He didn’t know where that place was, but it could only be ahead. Somewhere, morning waited for him, and that single thought kept his hopes up while he ran.

He stopped at the edge of a precipice just in time. He looked down, only to see that below lay an abyss without end. His paws pushed against the crumbling dust and he walked backward, away from it.

It was still night. It was still hopeless. Toru couldn’t remember anything, not before this night or ever, and the thought frightened him. But he knew that morning had to come.

“Toru,” someone called for him.

He knew the voice, but he didn’t know where from. But it was familiar, and all that he needed right now was that friendly voice to guide him out of the darkness. The voice belonged to a man, but Toru couldn’t put a face to it, nor a name.

“I couldn’t save them. I am so sorry,” the voice continued.

“Where are you?” Toru cried out. “I can’t see you!”

Something touched his shoulder and he started. His entire body shook, and he closed his eyes in fear.

When he opened them, he was staring at Varg. Varg, who was a shapeshifter Toru knew. “Why are you crying?” he asked when he saw the distress on his friend’s face.

Varg didn’t say a word and closed his eyes. He looked ashamed, and Toru couldn’t imagine a reason in the entire world why the wolfshifter would ever feel like that or even cry for that matter.

“Where is everybody?” he asked. The words died on his lips. Could it be that Varg was crying… But no, because it just couldn’t be. “Duril,” he whispered. “Claw.”

Varg shook his head without opening his eyes. Toru frowned and tried to get up, but then, like a hook grabbing him from behind, something held him and dragged him down, through the bed on which he was lying.

And darkness came again.

***

“What’s happening?” Varg asked. He grabbed Toru by the shoulders and shook him. For a moment, he had been there, with them, and the next, he had fallen back on the pillows as if an unnatural, unseen hand had cut a string, and he seemed gone.

He turned toward the Sakka, who stood all around the bed on which Toru lay, now without showing any sign of being awake. Their stunned silence was enough to make him understand what they weren’t capable of saying. “What is happening?” he bellowed.

“We don’t know,” Beanstalk whispered, speaking for everyone else.

Varg grabbed Toru again and shook him. “How can you people let this happen?” he growled. “Isn’t he here under your protection?”

The Sakka began whispering among themselves. They were shaking their heads, frowning, letting out small cries of distress. Varg wanted to hate them for being so useless, but how was he any better?

Toru was their hope, and the determination in his mind began taking the shape of his heart. “Bring me your books, everything you have. There must be something in them to bring Toru back.”

“Are you a scholar, master wolf?” Beanstalk inquired.

“I don’t need to be one to find what we should all be looking for.”

“What is that?”

“A way to life,” Varg replied, his eyes never leaving Toru’s sleeping face.

***

Toru shifted by instinct. All his paws landed on a cold floor, and he blinked in the new darkness, trying to get his bearings.

“Did you truly think that you could defeat me so easily, tiger?” a voice hissed from the dark.

Toru turned brusquely, hoping to catch a glimpse of his opponent. Shadows rose all around him, closing in like a noose. He growled menacingly. “This time, I will make sure you stay dead,” Toru said.

“And how are you going to do that if you cannot see me?” the voice taunted him again.

“You’re hiding your face because you’re too ugly,” Toru said in return.

“They were right, your parents, you know.”

Toru’s ears twitched at the mention of his family. “About what?” he asked, the curiosity he felt getting the better of him.

“About your being but a child. Without their guidance, you didn’t amount to much, did you?” Hekastfet let out a cavernous laugh that seemed to come from all the shadows surrounding Toru. “You’re still just as wet behind your ears as if you were only a little child.”

Toru didn’t say anything. This creature, whatever Hekastfet was, thought he could rile him up just like that. It was impossible. He remembered everything now about his parents, and while they might not have been by his side for too long, they had taught him the most important thing of all. He wouldn’t give Hekastfet the satisfaction of knowing that. Being silent now was the mature thing to do.

“So, now you are here, in my clutches,” Hekastfet continued, seeing how his ruse didn’t lead to anything.

“Where is here?” Toru asked.

“Do you really have to ask?”

The dark room disappeared, and Toru realized that they were now in a forest, one almost just as dark. But the smells of fresh earth and uprooted plants warned him of the change.

“Do you remember now? It was the night you ran away from me, like a scared child.”

Toru did remember, bits and pieces at first, but then, more and more. He had been so frightened after seeing Torgar getting turned into nothing by the whim of no one else but this creature trying to scare him now, too.

But Hekastfet was wrong. He was no longer that scared child that had run through the forest, without knowing where he was going or even what or whom he was running from.

“Face me,” he growled. “Stop hiding behind phantasms and make-believe.”

“Why should I face you when I can pluck at your mind slowly and enjoy your suffering?”

Toru lay on the ground, under a tree, feigned a yawn and rested his muzzle on his front paws. “At least keep silent while I take a nap.”

He felt the swish of air around him, but he didn’t bother opening his eyes. If Hekastfet’s plan was to scare him, it was for the best not to give that evil being any satisfaction, not even the slightest. Sometimes, during his childhood, it had often been his way of chasing away the bad dreams and the darkness. All he had to do was to close his eyes and keep them like that while thinking of beautiful things, and the nightmares would go away.

This time around, just the same, all he needed was to conjure thoughts of those he loved. Duril, Varg, Claw. And his parents, even though they had been turned into ghosts.

“No one you know is alive anymore,” Hekastfet hissed while circling him, his voice a suite of echoes that poked at Toru’s hearing like a swarm of angry bees.

“You’re lying,” Toru said matter-of-factly. He wasn’t going to let himself be influenced by this ghost or made a fool of.

“The city is destroyed. Your mother and father are long gone since I have no more use for them. And your friends are buried under the rubble. They gave their last breath believing that they were helping you. Where were you while they did that?”

Toru searched his mind for any signs that what he was hearing was real. He knew Hekastfet was lying, but still, there was a nagging feeling that he was missing an important fact.

“Duril. Varg. Claw. All dead,” Hekastfet recited in a sing-song voice. “Do you remember their names? Or you just don’t care about those you pretend to save, like all the tigers before you?”

“Don’t say their names,” Toru hissed at him. “You don’t have the right.”

Hekastfet laughed haughtily. “The right? You are mistaken, tiger. I have every right to do as I please because I have power. Complete. Absolute.”

“You’re nothing but evil. No wonder no one likes you. It’s because you’re so bad and mean,” Toru replied.

“Why would I need anyone to like me? When I have everything?”

Toru pondered over what to say next. He thought about his friends. What would they tell him to do right now? “Do you really have everything?” he asked, just realizing that there were ways to outwit Hekastfet, who believed himself so clever. “It looks to me like you don’t even have a body. So, you must have very little.”

“Open your eyes and look at me if that’s what you think.”

Toru did so and stared into the face of the old domestikos. “That’s not your real body,” he retorted. “Just pretending to be human doesn’t make you human.”

“Very well.” The semblance of the domestikos faded into the mist of the forest. Then, a flood of dark matter, thick like tar, began pouring toward him.

Toru didn’t flinch as the strange river flew to where he was lying on the ground. But he did get up on all his paws and stared at the thing cautiously. “You’re a stain,” he said.

A shape emerged from the flow of tar, not human, but tall and menacing. “You’re truly trying my patience, Toru.”

“It’s not my fault that you don’t care about facing me and fighting me. You’re afraid to lose.”

“These childish tricks won’t work on me.”

Toru let himself flop back on the ground and yawned. If they didn’t work, how come Hekastfet was starting to sound so impatient? There was something there, a thread he needed to catch and pull at until the veil of deceit woven by this evil being became unraveled.

“Let’s talk about your friends. I suppose that you don’t care about your parents since they abandoned you as a child.”

That last statement caused a sting right to his heart, but Toru ignored it. He wouldn’t be a fool and fall prey to such a ploy. “I won’t talk to you about them, or anyone else. Unless you intend to fight me, let me sleep.” He even risked turning his head and lying with his back to Hekastfet, as if he couldn’t care less what that disgusting thing intended to do.

If Hekastfet could destroy him, he would have done it by now. Varg in his wisdom would tell him that. It was quite evident that it wasn’t in Hekastfet’s power to do so. No, the evil needed something from Toru to achieve its purpose, and Toru didn’t plan on giving it, no matter what it was.

“Don’t you care that they’re dead?”

“They’re not dead. You just want to make me believe that.”

“You don’t have to take my word for it. Look.”

Toru would have to blame his curiosity for turning and opening his eyes again. He frowned as he recognized the room presented in front of his eyes as if it lay behind a glass. It was the room in which he had wakened up what felt like moments ago. With that image, a rush of memories crossed his mind. Varg shaking him, telling him something about…

No, it couldn’t be true. “Varg is right there,” he pointed at the wolfshifter who had just entered the room with his arms full of tomes. “You said he was dead. Are you showing me proof that you’re lying?”

“He won’t be alive for long. You see, Toru, even if you win against me, what kind of world will you sacrifice yourself for? One that doesn’t care about you and has never cared? Must I really remind you how your life was before?”

“Before what?” Toru hoped Hekastfet was well aware of the warning in his voice.

“Before you were given this so-called purpose of taking me down. You know very well that if you ever leave this place, you won’t have a home to return to. No friends. Nothing.”

Toru was about to comment about the misplaced arrogance Hekastfet was displaying, when he noticed some of the Sakka fretting about some people lying on a bed flush against one of the walls. He looked closely, and only then realized that he was looking at the unmoving bodies of Duril and Claw, and that of a small child who rested on top of the healer’s chest. The Sakka were touching them and talking among themselves, but the grim looks on their faces made his assurance falter.

“What did you do to them?” he growled.

“It makes you angry, doesn’t it?” Hekastfet said with delight. “A fire burns inside you, Toru. Why don’t you let it out? Why don’t you live up to it?”

***

Varg was turning the pages quickly, his eyes red and stinging from the ashes and debris, but with no luxury of time to waste on rest. Pie was by his side and handed him a clean handkerchief so he could wipe his face. When he met Pie’s gesture with a blank stare, the Sakka simply took it upon himself to do it for him, and Varg didn’t push him away.

What he needed to find out had to be among those pages. Without knowing exactly where his determination and assurance of that truth came from, Varg pushed on, going through the tome in front of him until finally, something caught his eye.

“What does it say here?” he asked. It was one of those true legends of tigers who had been in charge of saving the world a long time before Toru. “About madness?”

Pie frowned and turned toward Beanstalk who was standing with his arms full of tomes only a couple of feet away.

“Some said something about seemingly experiencing a loss of self during those fights with Hekastfet,” Beanstalk explained. “We don’t know what it meant. Sometimes, the tigers came from battle, after the city was razed to the ground, and asked us about their loved ones.”

“What did they ask?”

“They seemed convinced that everyone they cared about was dead. As if the entire Olliandran tribe was gone.”

Varg frowned and gestured impatiently for another tome. Was there a pattern he should care about? While helping the mayor of Whitekeep, he had been called to offer his counsel on complicated matters when the truth didn’t appear as set in stone as it should have been to allow those in charge to make life and death decisions.

Now, he knew where to look, so the next tome he grabbed, he just opened to the end and looked over the pages. “You say that it happened sometimes, but it feels to me like too much of a coincidence to have tiger after tiger say the same thing.”

“I don’t see how you believe that they said the same thing.” Beanstalk hovered behind him, eventually climbing on Pie’s back so that he could lean over the pages and see what Varg was talking about.

Varg turned. “Why did the tigers destroy Scercendusa every time? And why in such… bloody fashion?” he asked after a short moment of hesitation.

“We believe it was because it was necessary to destroy Hekastfet for good,” Beanstalk explained.

“That is not what happened. They didn’t destroy him for good. He just came back over and over again.”

Beanstalk remained silent. “I cannot truly argue with you, master wolf,” he admitted. “But it was necessary to destroy Scercendusa so that it can be reborn anew.”

Varg shook his head, more and more convinced that the Sakka had gotten it all wrong. “Did you have to take care of the tigers like you do now with Toru, every time?”

“Yes,” Beanstalk replied.

“And when did the destruction of the city begin? Before or after their slumber?”

“After,” Beanstalk again confirmed Varg’s nagging suspicion.

“They all talked about their loss of self as they called it after the city was nothing but dust, isn’t that true?” Varg continued his inquiry.

“Yes.”

“Did they recall why they destroyed the city?”

“They always said the same thing. That they had to make sure that no trace of the evil was left in the world.”

Varg leaned back into the chair and pondered, while bumping a fist slightly against his chin. “I believe that something else happened.” He got to his feet brusquely and headed over to where Toru was lying, without any other sign of being alive than the barely there but steady rise and fall of his chest. “I need to get to him somehow.”

***

Toru fell prey to agitation, as it became more and more obvious that Duril and Claw weren’t moving at all, just like that small child. Despite his determination not to believe a lying word coming from Hekastfet, he couldn’t remain undisturbed as he witnessed what was happening in that other world, locked away from him by means that escaped his understanding.

“Do you see what I mean, Toru? You will have nothing to return to, even if you defeat me.”

“None of this is real,” he growled.

“You woke up for a moment, do you remember? And the wolf, your friend, told you how he killed the others.”

Toru’s growl turned into a booming roar. He lunged at the shape Hekastfet had assumed, but the dark matter parted before him, and his claws and fangs met nothing but air.

“Not that you can defeat me. Without your parents’ guidance, you grew up to be nothing but a useless tiger,” Hekastfet taunted him mercilessly.

“Fight me!” Toru roared louder. “Fight me, and I will destroy you for good!”

“You’re powerless.” Hekastfet laughed, leaving him enraged at himself.

As he dashed through the air, trying to cut down his enemy, Toru knew that his anger was getting the better of him, and that it had to be another way, but he just couldn’t stop. He wanted nothing else but for Hekastfet to present him with an available neck to sink his fangs in and bite until there was no more life left, no matter of what kind.

“Just look at them,” Hekastfet continued his cruel taunting. “Lying there, void of life. They’re nothing but corpses, and they are so because the wolf killed them.”

“Varg would never do such a thing,” Toru growled. “He would never hurt them. He would never hurt me.”

“It is in my power to play with anyone’s mind. It is true that he resisted more than expected,” Hekastfet said. “But once he was in my clutches, he saw the others as his enemies.”

“Varg would never fall for your trickery!” Toru stopped to catch his breath. It didn’t matter if it took him an eternity. He was here to fight, and fight he would.

“Even tigers’ minds are easy to play with,” Hekastfet cooed in false assurance. “Your tribe is weak, Toru.”

“They’re not! They’re the strongest in the world!”

“They guided you directly to me. Don’t you recall? Your own mother.”

“No, mother loves me!” Toru bellowed.

***

Varg watched as Toru thrashed in his sleep now. He took him by the shoulders and pulled him close and held him tightly against his chest. “Toru,” he called out gently, “please, wake up. None of what you might imagine now is true. You don’t have to destroy the city. You don’t have to kill anyone.”

“I found something,” Pie announced and hurried to his side with a tome in his arms. “The tigers… some thought they dreamed all that destruction that followed. But here, look.”

Varg held Toru close, reluctant to let go of him and read where Pie was pointing, a paragraph about how one of the tigers’ close ones had entered the dream of destruction and saw it happening before it actually did.

He took Toru’s palm and used his small knife to make a small cut and then he brought it to his lips and drank from it.

For a moment, he thought he was losing his bearings completely, but that wasn’t it. No, he was falling, down and down, without means of seeing where and how.

Then, his feet met solid ground, and he had to struggle to maintain his balance himself so that he didn’t fall flat on his nose. Around him, a dark forest rose. In the middle of it, Toru was fighting an invisible enemy.

***

“Toru! Toru!”

Someone was calling for him, so Toru stopped his futile fight.

“What is he doing here?” Hekastfet bellowed.

Toru felt his heart leaping in his chest with happiness at the sight of his friend. “Varg!” He ran to him, eager to hear him more and touch him.

Varg caught him in his arms. “Toru, I’m here to take you home.”

Toru turned toward the image of that room that was still there. Varg was no longer in it, because he was here. But Duril and Claw and that child looked just as motionless as before. He blinked a few times. Shouldn’t the veil of deceit tear by now?

“Are they…” he began asking.

Varg’s eyes filled with pain. Toru’s confidence wavered. This wasn’t Hekastfet lying to him. It was his close friend and lover, the one he would entrust his whole life to, and Varg didn’t lie. He never lied.

“That can’t be.” He began walking backward, shaking his head. No, it had to be just another phantasm concocted by Hekastfet and nothing else. “You’re not real,” he threw at Varg, who tried to follow him. “Stay away from me. It is all a lie.”

“It’s not a lie,” Varg insisted.

“It really isn’t,” Hekastfet confirmed, only making Toru’s belief in how it was all just a trick to fool him stronger.

“Who is talking?” Varg asked.

“That would be your immortal enemy, wolf,” Hekastfet said. “Your lot thought to better me, but here I am, stronger than ever.”

“I’m here,” Varg said simply. “I shouldn’t be, right? It is a miracle.”

“A miracle?” Hekastfet sputtered. “It matters not. Toru believes you’re just an image I conjured… and he’s right.”

Toru swung his head to and fro. He didn’t know what to believe anymore. He wanted to think Varg was there. He looked like Varg and smelled like Varg, but that didn’t mean that he truly was his friend. But if Hekastfet wasn’t lying about him, what else did he tell the truth about?

His eyes were pulled incessantly to that image with his friends lying unmoving on those linen sheets that only made them look paler. And the agitation all the Sakka seemed to be prey to wasn’t helping him decide what was true and what wasn’t, either.

Believe that morning always comes, Toru.

Those words from long ago resurfaced in his mind like a dry log in front of a drowning man.

TBC

Next chapter