“Imagination
is only intelligence having fun. A healthy mind knows how to switch between
worlds, and which one you need to eat and sleep in”.
TERRY
PRATCHETT
Othercide:
The worlds were like broken glass,
shattered and blurry, but forming a perfect mirror during the night. It was
then when sneaking between them was feasible and when heroes hunted down
fearsome monsters, beasts and demons, crossing beyond the boundaries of
reality.
The night was the door and magic was
the key.
“You shouldn’t be here”, Alma stated,
clambering over the battlements with her eight spider legs, adjusting those
belts on her leather armour.
Tilman
a chubby thirteen years old human child was hugging his knees, downcast,
surrounded by papers full of doodles and written lines. He looked at her,
trying to keep his tears.
She
swifty covered the distance between them and hugged him tightly.
“Cry,
Til, your tears mean your granny was important and we need to honour her memory
letting your pain flow from your heart.”
She
also let herself drop her burden off and some minutes later, when both of them
were wiping away their tears, she told him:
“Do
you want to show me what you have written?
He
let an embarrassed smile slip away amid his blush and commented, a bit on the
defensive, that he didn’t know yet what genre the story was going to be, nor
what was he going to write about exactly, how would that all of that have any
connection with his granny or even what aspects of her should he pay homage to,
so they began speaking about life and death about memories and imagination.
Markus
went on, exhausted, his back started aching some minutes ago and he had started
panting some seconds ago.
“Do you want to take a break?”,
Hilda asked, leaning her weight on her staff, not trying to hide her own
fatigue. She was ay younger than him but she was also a person accustomed to
use spells to organise her desk or tying her shoelaces.
“Yes”,
he said while dropping his heavy backpack on the floor, “I’m still trying to
understand how a spider woman has been terrorising that village when there’s
been no harm or damage done.”
“They’re
dangerous”, Hilda said, squinting at him. “You know it very well, mages are
dangerous too.”
“Yes,
but the war is over, we won and we have most of those monsters confined in
camps” Markus reasoned, “it makes no sense…”
“It
is our duty to save and purify their souls”, Victor said, his voice made people
shiver as much as the voice of any archon even when he was as young as Hilda,
”we must help them, put them away from that degenerate path and make them come
closer to the path of the just. Our gods know an infinite compassion.
Markus
didn’t miss that the purity of the path of the just was paved with the bodies
of all of those whose salvation consisted on, basically, being dead.
“During
the last year, she wasn’t even herself”, Tilman said, “or…was she…?”, he went
on, pensively and bewildered, “but… often she wasn’t her, she didn’t who
anybody else was and I wonder whether… did she know who she was?”
“You
used a lot of pronouns there, Til, I got lost a bit”, Alma confessed, “I
believe she did know who she was and even though she didn’t recognise us in the
end, even when she didn’t know what our names were o who we were, she knew we
were a safe place, that she could trust us, that she had not forgotten. She was
never afraid when we were by her side. Plus, we can remember her for all those
years of her stories making us laugh all night long.”
“Maybe
this tale could consist of her traveling to a special place, where we all are,
when she feels good… But I guess some action would be needed: maybe she could
not remember which place was and everything is turned into stone, covered by
fog and she has to speak with strange creatures, solving riddles and beating
enemies by using her intelligence and wit. Do you think it’s a good idea?”, he
wanted to know.
“Any
idea is a good one if well developed”, she nodded—. Everybody says teenagers
are too confident in whatever we say and, look, I don’t think so, and maybe I’m
wrong because it seems that only because I lack experience, I am not allowed to
pontificate anything, totally absurd, a lot of categorical statements were said
by people who wasn’t even sober, I don’t know, but I do believe any idea is
good for a tale provided it’s well developed”, the spider girl answered.
“Oh,
yeah? What do you think about evil underwear as a concept?”, Tilman defied her.
“Forget
what I’ve just said”
“The
only bad point is, to write truly intelligent stuff, no tricks, one must be as
intelligent as their characters and that would force me to train my imagination
by writing, it’s a vicious circle, Alma.
“Train
your imagination?”, she was curious.
“They
say you learn better when you’re having fun and creativity makes your
intelligence have fun. I’ve read it”, he firmly affirmed.
“Good
point.”
“Is
it here?”, Markus enquired.
The
stopped before the overgrown ruins of a lonely tower upon a hill.
“There’s
a portal here”, Hilda said, “it totally covers the watchtower and I can
activate it.”
Some
almost demolished spiral stairs in a very poor condition clang to the present
as tight as they could, trying to climb the three stores the tower was divided
in.
“Do
you believe”, Hilda started to say, “we can cover more ground if each one of us
goes to a different floor?”
“And
how would the inquisitor defend himself, with his firm moral sense?”
“I
took part in Kerala’s war.” Victor pointed out, “War uncovers and takes of that
mask we have to wear in society. It frees us.
“Which
is interesting because there’s who claim Kerala, far from being a war, was a
massacre”, Markus commented.
“Only
a good man is able to sacrifice who he is, what he believes in, in order to do
what’s right”, the inquisitor answered.
“Justice
is nothing else than a tale disguised as moral”, Markus replied in turn.
“That’s
why what’s right must be one step ahead justice” Victor resolved.
“I’m
concerned about them being able to escape” said the mage hunter, in an attempt
to go back to the main topic.
“I
would rather have this mission accomplished with zero casualties”, Markus claimed.
“However,
you cannot disobey me”, Victor rehearsed the sweet smile of who holds the power
and knows he can punish other at his discretion. Hilda and Markus turn towards
him. “We will take separate ways: Markus, go to the third floor. Hilda, go to
the second, when we have our positions secured, open the portal and send us to
the other side.”
Hilda
and Markus went to part their ways on the second floor.
“Do
you truly believe this doesn’t make sense?”, the mage hunter probed.
“I’ve
never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as I see it all those monsters
were expelled to another plane of existence, they were blamed for breaking the
mirror, even when they had no other way to flee, take shelter and seal the way
they escaped from. And even when we have exterminated them here or we send them
to the camps. And if they are still blamed for this world’s evil, but they’re
not an agent of change in it anymore, there’s someone who is guilty but will be
never judged. For sure this is not as simplistic as conflating legality with
justice, for sure everything that happens is due to many causes I am not able
to understand, of which nobody told me.
“You’re
a demon hunter, why don’t you just be it? You’re good at it.”, she said, trying
not to look haughty, she really thought it was a positive comment. But he
didn’t understand it the same way:
“Because
then I could believe I’m intelligent while I’m engaged in killing mages, being
myself a mage, without wondering what will happen with me when all those other
wizards that I have to kill run out.”, he reproached her.
“We
are dismantling an oppressive system of power, perhaps you don’t remember
Norvell pogroms.”
“Have
you ever checked in history books; what kind of people carry out pogroms? You
haven’t been in those concentration camps, right?”, he sharply interrogated, “I
guess the world is much better now”, he cynically answered as he irritated went
upstairs. He lately understood everything less and less and, of course, he
didn’t comprehend anybody ready to ally with a power that ultimately would
destroy them. But what did he know? He knew he was furious and he knew anger
was a love letter to oneself before injustice.
Only
a type of human being could punish another creature in order to win the fight
of good against evil. Markus wondered where the hell that fight was and where
he was within it.
“I’m
in position!”, Markus yelled, unsheathed his sword and raised his shield.
“I’m
opening the portal!”, Hilda responded.
“Fuck”,
Markus mumbled, throwing his sword to the ground, silently shaking his head and
giving up. The portal closed behind his back. Before him there was only a
couple of children, one of them, human.
Alma
had unsheathed her twin sword, with an embarrassed but genuine expression of
defiance, now, however, she doubted.
Hilda
went upstairs, preparing some kind of fire spell.
Nevertheless,
the spell vanished between her hands.
“It
cannot be!” she exclaimed in frustration after a couple of further attempts.
She tried other hexes but there was no magic left within her, and to her
incomprehension arrived and with incomprehension, fear.
A
wave of tranquillity washed her fear away.
“I’m
sorry”, Tilman apologised, while he paid the price for using his power and blood
started flowing from the wound that was opening and crossing his right eye, rendering
him blind as scar tissue began to cover that tearing just afterwards, “I don’t
like entering people’s minds.”
“Will
I recover my magic”, Hilda wanted to know, collapsing on the floor and frightened.
“No,
I am truly sorry”, Tilman sentenced.
“Let’s
get out of here, Hilda”, Markus asked, sheathing his sword after picking it up.
Steps were heard slowly ascending the stone stairs, Alma hurried to cover up
the stair’s opening with her web.
“How
many of you are there?”, the spider girl hastily interrogated.
“There’s
an inquisitor”, Hilda managed to say with a tiny voice about to break. She felt
already broken either way, an important part of who she was, that shaped who
she was, her very essence, her purpose, was gone.
“Take
care of her”, Alma told Markus.
Tilman
activated the portal, which opened again, dividing the tower by half.
“I
don’t think Victor will cross the portal back without killing you first”, he
clarified, helping Hilda to lean on him to go towards the portal.
“Then
we can abandon him here”, Alma concluded, peeking over the battlements. “He probably
has the portal on one side, my cobweb on the other, otherwise he will be
trapped between two portals. By the way… he hasn’t any fire with him, right?”,
she pensively questioned.
As
an answer she heard the sound of some sort of glass jar breaking into pieces
and immediately afterwards her web started burning.
“Markus,
you are well aware of the sentence imposed for treason”, Victor reminded him
with a perfectly calmed voice, “but I can still be magnanimous. We must eradicate
the monster, pull the human out of it”, he shouted.
Two
blades pierced his thorax, Alma had quickly covered the distance separating her
from the inquisitor. She extracted her bloodstained swords off him and tried
not to look that corpse slamming that stone floor turning red.
“Apparently
he knew how to fight against unarmed people”, Markus confirmed casually. “I’m
sorry”, he said after thinking for a moment, vaguely gesturing everything
around him.
Hilda
and Markus traversed the portal.
On
both sides of it only wounded survivors were left.
“They
should start living a bit”, Tilman pointed out. “That would let us live”.
“It
must be terrible overcoming adolescence and still think there are people who
are born in the wrong species or the wrong way, and they must be punished for
that. A bad point about that reasoning is that, of course, if you thoroughly search,
there’s always someone who is different enough from you and who can be hanged
from a tree at the same time.”
Othercide by
Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at
https://martarousselperla.blogspot.com/.