Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ The Burning Time ❯ Advent ( Chapter 19 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Misora 
Do you fall down, O millions?...Are you aware of your Father, world?...Brothers—a mild sentence, from the mouth of the Final Judge!
Anime/Manga: Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Occult / Hentai / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.02.2007 | Pages: 29 | Words: 34.9K | Visits: 957 | Status: Completed
Do you fall down, O millions?...Are you aware of your Father, world?...Brothers—a mild sentence, from the mouth of the Final Judge!
Anime/Manga: Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Occult / Hentai / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 01.02.2007 | Pages: 29 | Words: 34.9K | Visits: 957 | Status: Completed
A/N: Sorry to have kept everyone on edge for so long. I hope it's been worth the wait.
Following this, there will be a short-to-medium-length epilogue. Thank you for reading; thank you so much for reviewing. It's been a pleasure.
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The Burning Time
Chapter 19: Advent
syn·er·gy (sÄn'É™r-jÄ“)
n. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
n. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
"And I will give portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, and the stars of the sky fall to the earth before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes." (Joel 2:30-31)
"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." (Revelation 12:1).
[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power.
— Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
— Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche
when will this loneliness be over?
—“map of the problematique”, muse
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In his cell at the top of the Duomo's tower, Amon trembled and shook uncontrollably as he fought against the narcotics in his blood. The drugs had made him weak, had tried to strip him of his resolve; they conspired insidiously to make him surrender, to accept what seethed underneath his skin and bring about the memories he still tried with every ounce of his strength to bury.
He could not let himself remember that which he had spent nearly his entire life trying to forget.
)O(
The tower clock of il Campo chimed as it struck ten.
Seth watched from the doorway of an abandoned building, as the eighteenth military copter he'd counted in the last six hours made its descent into the edge of the open square, the propeller blades yielding a deafening roar as they served to stir up dust and debris within the center of the walled city. He shielded his eyes with a hand from the onslaught of wind, pressing his lips together tightly as he saw the torches set up along the outer rim of the plaza flicker and die out.
The presence of floodlights on the ground bathed the black chopper in a harsh glare. As it hovered, never actually landing, it quickly divested itself of its cargo of eight paratroopers, fully armed and in military riot gear, before taking off again and lifting into the dark sky. The troopers left behind set off on a jog, barking harsh, clipped commands at one another, locking and reloading semi-automatic weapons. The chopper faded from view and eventually the sound of the whirring blades receded from earshot. The floodlights were switched back off, and il Campo was once again torch-lit, the flames at the edge of the square flickering in the breeze.
All that remained were the guttural sounds of human voices, and the metallic clink of weaponry, as the soldiers headed off in the direction of the Duomo. The black of their armor faded into the darkness as they disappeared from view.
Seth watched after them for several minutes, his eyes far away in serious thought. He finally turned from the scene, his arms folded across his chest as he walked slowly back into the shadows.
He entered through the doorway of an adjacent abandoned drugstore a few doors down. In SOLOMON's haste to vacate the entire city of Siena, many such stores and shops had been completely deserted, sometimes even in the midst of operation. The lights were on, fluorescent and neon Italian signs glowing in the window, advertising liquor and wine.
There was a soft ping as the door opened and he stepped over the threshold. Looking around, he spotted Gideon smoking a cigarette while leafing through a magazine. He looked further down the fluorescently-lit aisle to see Hedya and Noa in the liquor section, each woman busily examining bottles of wine and collecting selected bottles in grocery bags.
Seth's features tightened into a frown. “Ciò che stai facendo?” he asked sharply, and all three Coven members looked up at him in surprise.
Gideon blinked. “Shopping,” he replied around the cigarette, nonplussed. Hedya and Noa met the accusatory look with their own glares.
“You can't take these things,” Seth admonished, his incredulity turning into disapproval. “They don't belong to you, and there's no one to pay for them here.”
Noa snorted in derision, turning back to the wine; Hedya regarded him with irony. “That's never stopped you before, signore,” she said, flatly. “To what do we owe this sudden attack of conscience?”
He responded with an acerbic look, refusing to dignify her question with an answer. Instead, he focused on the dark-haired female Witch. “Noa, a word with you, in private,” he instructed briskly.
Noa ignored him, continuing to bank the wine as though she hadn't heard a word he'd said. He strode impatiently and purposefully down the aisle towards her, as Hedya watched, and spoke louder. “Noa,” he warned sternly, now standing at her side.
She finally whirled to face him, eyeing him contemptuously. “Che palle,” she shot back. “Don't suddenly pretend that you have a backbone.”
His expression morphing from surprise into livid irritation, Seth seized her arm firmly. “Taci,” he growled, in a threatening tone.
“You can't order me around,” Noa snarled back, just as ferociously. “Budiulo.” She shrugged herself out of his grasp, to his surprise, and stormed off with a grocery bag full of wine, heading out of the store. She called out for Gideon over her shoulder and the raven-haired Italian dropped his cigarette, grinding it out on the floor with his boot, and shot a glare at Seth as he followed her out.
“What in the hell was that about?” Seth muttered, still watching the door as Hedya came to stand next to him.
“Chanan told us about your reservations concerning the auto de fe tonight,” she informed him haughtily, speaking close to his ear. Without turning to face her, his posture tightened. “It's not like you to hold back in regard to anything. Is it weakness, after all this time, Seth? And for her; not even one of your comrades?”
Hedya's tone was biting, hovering between amused and dripping with venom as she circled behind him to speak lowly into his other ear. “I must say we're all quite disappointed in you. If you do not have the stomach to take care of this little problem, perhaps we need to inform Archbishop Vasile that he should find someone who has a better appetite for it.” She pushed past him to exit the store in the direction the others had gone, leaving Seth standing alone looking after her.
He stood still for several long moments, his head bowed among the liquor and cigarettes, bathed in the gaudy fluorescent drugstore lighting.
)O(
The clouded, moonless sky above the square of Siena glowed dark red.
Thirty minutes after the arrival of the last military helicopter from Rome, approaching one hour before midnight, the organizers of the auto de fe began to set up the stake in the center of il Campo. Clergymen and laymen alike contributed to the organization for the ceremony, from the construction of the stake itself to the symbolically religious artifacts—the pulpit from where the pronouncement would come, the ceremonial daggers laid out on each side of it, the crucifix decorating the pulpit itself. The stake, a wooden beam ten feet high, was surrounded on all sides by kindling and firewood. There was a short, stepped wooden platform that allowed access to the stake from one side; firewood covered it above and below.
Vasile, in his opulent white clerical robes, was directing the construction of the stake's foundation. “The pyre must face east, in the direction of the Duomo,” he instructed the paratroopers who were assisting, his outstretched arms emphasizing the direction; beside him, two priests dressed in full regalia nodded solemnly at his words. “It is important that God sees and witnesses this testimony we lay before Him; that what goes on tonight does not escape His vision. He would be most pleased to know that we have isolated and arrested His true enemy.”
Seth approached the group directing the construction, his gait somewhat reluctant. As he neared, he overheard the brief snippet of a conversation between two military paratroopers as they passed him.
“I'm not even getting hazard or overtime pay for this. What's the fuckin' point?” one muttered, just within earshot. “Would just be easier to shoot her in the head, than to deal with all of this crap.”
Seth straightened his spine as the other soldier reined his companion in, reminding him that it was a teenaged girl they were discussing. Seth thought briefly of Sela, and felt an acute pang of something that tasted vaguely of regret.
He was closer to the group when he spotted a robed priest, nervously wringing his hands, speaking confidentially into the Archbishop's ear. Vasile nodded, as if to console, and spoke just loud enough so that he could hear. “Si. She will burn, even if she has the ability to control fire; I have it on assurance that she will not be aware of herself enough to use it.” He patted the priest on the shoulder. “Do not fear, mio amico. Justice is to be done, this night.” He seemed almost giddy with excitement, and it made Seth's stomach turn.
Justice. Seth felt at war with himself.
Vasile finally turned and saw his approach. “Seth,” the older man entreated, waving, “mio figlio, come here.” The blond Witch came obediently to stand before him, his expression remote. “We are almost done with the construction of the stake,” Vasile explained, “and with little time left over. The hour approaches.” He eyed his companion shrewdly. “Is she prepared for the ceremony?”
The blond man leaned in to speak into the Archbishop's ear. “That is exactly what I wish to talk to you about, signore,” he said quietly. Vasile cocked his head patiently, waiting; Seth drew him away gently by the arm to a more remote spot, to discourage the priests and monks hovering close nearby as though they hoped to eavesdrop. Once there, the Archbishop faced him again, blithely oblivious.
“I had hoped you would be an active participant in this ritual, Seth,” he said, still earnest and hopeful. “You were instrumental in her capture—it only seems right that you should be an integral part of this momentous event, one that has its roots in our very foundation. First the Testament will be read aloud, as the Succubus is bound at the stake; then we will perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual, followed by the pulsa d'nura.” He looked at the younger man with paternal expectation, pressing his hand to his heart. “It was my hope that your involvement in this would be a turning point; your first step in taking your place among the upper echelons of the organization.” Seth eyed him warily.
Vasile's face began to register concern. “Tell me, what is on your mind, my son?”
“It must have been difficult, issuing the order to murder a fellow man of the cloth, such as Padre Juliano,” Seth offered experimentally. “It's a shame that Amon showed up when he did; if he hadn't, we may not have had to murder the priest—we could have held his life over Robin's head, instead of Amon's.” Vasile frowned, and Seth's suspicions were confirmed.
“Juliano's punishment was completely warranted.” The Archbishop seethed with a quiet firmness. “He betrayed us. He had strayed from the faith.”
“Did Sela deserve what she received, as well?” Seth asked sharply, ice-blue eyes narrowed. He waited a beat, and then continued in a lower tone, “There was more of Hiroshi Toudou's video that was recovered from the Factory, wasn't there, signore? Parts that were not shown to us.”
The older man wisely kept his mouth shut, but looked upon him with scorn. The look told Seth all he needed to know. It was the look he'd received for years upon questioning some of the organization's activities. You are not privy to such information.
Now Vasile's expression settled into something resembling calm, stony disappointment. “What exactly is this about, my son?”
Seth resigned himself to having his last two questions unanswered, although he feared he already knew the response. He schooled his features once more.
“It's regarding her,” he answered Vasile firmly, “Robin.” Again the old, wizened eyes blazed; he continued in the face of it, nevertheless. “I see no reason to have to kill her.”
The Archbishop recoiled at the suggestion as if he'd been struck. He looked as though he were struggling with his attempt to formulate an answer.
“We have her in our possession, she's not a danger to us at the moment,” Seth went on in a desperate, persistent whisper. “Is it really necessary to behave so barbarously? If we could somehow harness her power…get her to do our bidding, by holding Amon's life over her. We have him; perhaps as long as he is alive, she will—”
“Lilith is servant to no one.” Vasile nearly spat the words, his face now contorted with anger. “She will not obey you, I, or anyone else—not even the Devil himself can completely govern her actions. There is no restraint, or cage, or stake that can hold her alive. She did not even obey Adam, her designated husband, in Scripture—what makes you think that anyone can control her?!”
His countenance calm and composed, Seth answered, “If it's possible that she is not Lilith, she can be controlled, her power tempered.” They stared at one another for a long, terse moment, and finally Vasile turned away.
“Capisco,” the Archbishop said, nodding succinctly, but with a tone of contempt. “You believe she is the Goddess depicted in that mythology you're so fond of.” He met the younger Witch's eyes again disapprovingly, his lowered voice taking on a fierce edge. “Well I'll have you know that your precious Diana is none other than the Devil's Bride, the Abomination, the very Whore of Babylon herself. She and Lilith are one and the same!”
Seth flinched. It was as he'd suspected, that the Goddess lore was the source of SOLOMON's demoness mythology; but he was not willing to concede his stance. “If she is anything like Diana, she will not be as evil or destructive as you believe her to be—”
“You are lost in foolish Witch lore, my son!” the Archbishop countered angrily, shouting as he stabbed the air before Seth with a finger. He stepped up close enough to growl menacingly into the young man's face. “And you are in no place to be dictating in what manner SOLOMON conducts an auto de fe! You are already being carefully scrutinized for your actions, thanks to your last maneuver. You should think before you speak from now on, Seth!”
Seth's lips pressed together firmly as he bore the brunt of Vasile's anger, and bit his lip against the words he wanted to unleash. He'd obviously driven the Archbishop to his breaking point. “Signore,” he said tightly, after a lengthened pause, his eyes never leaving the older man's. “Mi perdoni. I did not intend to offend you.”
Vasile watched him with blatant suspicion. Around them the bustle of the activity in il Campo continued, paratroopers and priests alike, oblivious to their exchange. Seth resisted the insatiable urge to crack his knuckles.
Finally the Archbishop bowed his head and turned away for a brief moment. “I have a task for you,” he spoke, turning back to face his companion resolutely. “And it would be in your best interests to do exactly as you are instructed, this time.” The veiled threat in the older man's tone was unmistakable. Seth waited.
“It is important to ensure that she does not awaken from the effects of the tranquilizer during the burning.” Vasile's stare was penetrating. “Therefore you are to prepare her for the ceremony, immediately.”
Seth's eyebrows lifted. “Prepare her…?” he asked. The Archbishop held his gaze.
“You must strangle her.”
A pause. “…What?”
“She must not awaken, so you are to strangle her in her cell before the ceremony is to commence.”
The blond Witch shook his head in disbelief, certain that he hadn't heard correctly. “N-non capisco. You want me to kill her before the actual ceremony?” His voice was unsteady and uncertain. “But the auto de fe—”
“The auto de fe has its own merit outside of taking the life of the Succubus,” Vasile insisted calmly. “The ritual and the burning are to protect SOLOMON, to ensure that the soul's cycle will end; that Lilith will not be reborn into another form. For not only was she created with Lilith's genes, she also has Lilith's willful spirit. The pulsa d'nura at the stake will make certain that her soul never returns to this plane of existence.” His fists clenched at his sides in emphasis.
Seth was wordless, stupefied. He'd thought it was possible that they might do this to her before the stake, to prevent her awakening—he hadn't anticipated being given the duty himself. He felt perspiration break on his brow despite the cool night air surrounding them.
“You must take care, while doing it, not to spill one drop of her unholy blood in the process.” Vasile's voice remained firm, and Seth looked away as he tried his best to disguise his combined horror and fear.
The Archbishop saw it. “Do this for us, mio figlio,” Vasile coaxed, his eyes still stern and unforgiving, “and any record of your past transgression will be immediately eradicated. You will be on your way towards becoming one of the most highly respected members of the organization.” He laid a hand on the young man's shoulder in what was meant to be an encouraging gesture, ignoring the sudden flinch in response.
“You will do this. God wills it to be so.”
Seth raised his eyes at the words, at length pulling himself to his full height and giving a reluctant and curt nod. He turned on his heel to go, feeling Vasile's eyes on his back.
He was ten feet away from the Archbishop when he finally spoke to himself under his breath.
“If God wills anything, signore,” he answered bitterly, his throat tight, “it is that misery is to become a permanent fixture in my life.”
)O(
The white cathedral was a stark and intimidating figure against the dark backdrop of the shorter and more humble Siennese buildings. Even the nighttime shadows did little to veil the Duomo's gothic grandeur, its ornate craftsmanship. It stood out proudly in the muted reddish glow of the sky's evening light; a holy beacon amidst the disgraceful multitudes.
Beneath the Church, below the mosaic-tiled flooring several stories down, was a dimly lit cellblock made of gray stone. Cold, dark, unforgiving—it was nothing like the benevolent structure that towered over it. There was no ornate craftsmanship, no sacred formation; it was comprised entirely of hidden, dirty prison chambers. At the end of the block row was the only occupied cell, barely illuminated by the scant light from a low hallway lantern.
The cell's single inhabitant lay on the stone floor, blindfolded and bound. The once-brilliant chestnut-blonde hair was caked with dirt in some places; her black pilgrim's dress now a dingy dark gray from dust, powdered with specks of white from the chalk drawn out on the ground around her.
The black strip of cloth over her eyes that served to blindfold her had been soaked wet with her tears. In her sleep she had dreamt, and in her dreams she had cried. By the time she fully regained awareness—whether because of the dwindling effects of the drug, or her own will—she had wept for many things.
She had wept for her grandfather. Taken so soon…I didn't have time to tell you what I wished I had.
She had wept out of fear. I don't want to die.
She had wept for the loneliness, the unwanted solitude that had dominated her life until she had come to Japan.
She had wept for him, for his captivity. He was alive, she'd granted him that—but he wasn't free. She'd cried for the multitude of memories she was witness to; lifetimes upon lifetimes of recognition, of glimpsing one another over years and eons…the joy of reunion, and the pain of having the other suddenly, brutally ripped out of her grasp.
But when she was done, when she had no tears left to shed and could feel her mind and senses clearing and sharpening out of the fog of the narcotic given to her, Robin decided she was going to do more, much more, than just weep.
The knowing, feminine voice was still hovering in her thoughts, offering its unsolicited wisdom…you are both guided by the symbols handed down to us by the ages…the runes, the letters of power that for thousands of years have granted insight and foreknowledge. You have used them to warn yourself, to caution, to respond to questions for which you could not find answers. You can make use of them now to determine your fates—yours and Amon's. Your symbol is Hagalaz. This is his.
In her mind Robin could see the shimmering form of two bisecting lines, forming the letter x. Nauthiz. The rune of need; of delays, of restriction.
The situation has stagnated, the voice beckoned; patience is needed. Do not lose hope, but stay the course…let your God come to you, in all of his glory and light. Trust that he has not given up on you.
No. Robin was insistent in her response. God will not assist us. He has forsaken me; He won't come to me. I have been abandoned. Because of this, I alone must free myself; I must free Amon. I have made a mistake, believing that his life with SOLOMON was preferable to his life with me. I have condemned him…now I must undo what I have done.
For so long, I have done everything as others instructed me, and believed their promises. For so long, I have been alone. I had always felt halved, incomplete, as though a part of me was missing. Now I realize that throughout time, I have known him; a thousand times, for hundreds of years, we returned, he and I, looking for one another. We both sacrificed for each other over and over, each instance believing the authority that told us that it was the only solution. And as a result, we have been repeating this self-denying cycle for eternity.
The voice was strangely quiet. Robin felt her convictions strengthening.
How could I have even thought it possible to leave him behind, and take separate paths? she asked herself now, introspectively. All I have ever wanted was to be with him. I do not know what Toudou's mentor had planned; I do not know if his design as a crafted Witch has malicious intent; I do not know whether he is in fact the manifestation of Satan.
What I do know, she realized with conviction, is that I am in love with him.
Even if he chooses to remain a Seed, there has to be another solution for us, beyond one or both of us forfeiting our lives. Whatever that solution is, it will not come from our separation.
She was surfacing, slowly coming to awareness as the thoughts skipped across her perception, her own inner voice sounding stronger in her head than she'd heard it before. I am through with seeing him slip through my fingers. I am tired of doing what I have been told by others is right.
I have waited so long…I am tired of waiting. I want to go to him, now.
Her body shuddered. She opened her eyes in the darkness. The cloth blindfold covering her face, suddenly dry, disintegrated in a short burst of heat and flame; and she blinked, gasping slightly as she tried to adjust her eyes.
She turned her head as much as she could manage, attempting to assess her surroundings. Her vision was blurry, her eyesight weakened by hours of sleep and the scant light of the dark prison. She saw only haze and shadows as she turned her head on the stone floor.
But it hadn't been a dream. She was alive.
Robin tried to move the rest of her body experimentally. She was on her side in her cell, her wrists bound securely behind her in metal cuffs. Around her on the cement she could make out the rough outline of an Ogham's Wheel in white chalk, drawn with Eihwaz in merkstave. Confusion; weakness.
She stilled abruptly as she heard voices. Not in her head this time; she heard them in the hallway—three males, speaking casual Italian as they approached her cell. Robin struggled to clear her eyesight, panting for breath, the beginnings of panic seeping into her chest.
Do not underestimate your nose and ears, Juliano had told her once, during routine field training. The memory of his spoken voice calmed her. A good hunter waits for scent, and listens for sound, when he cannot depend upon his sight.
Their casual conversation betrayed them; the acoustic resonance of the men's voices bounced off stone and cement as they approached. They were near, perhaps only fifteen feet or so from the door, perhaps only twenty-five feet from her in total.
Robin listened and estimated. She did not have an accurate measurement this time; but hopefully she would not need it.
She set the hallway aflame.
The voices were alive in a sudden cacophony of alarm, the men screaming out in fear at the sudden explosion of flames in the dark corridor, one of them in pain. She heard sharp commands barked in Italian. Robin fought against the manacles at her wrists; she briefly contemplated setting fire to the metal cuffs, but realized it would burn her, causing her significant pain and perhaps even rendering her hands useless. Still too weak to sit herself upright, she looked again to the door of her cell and listened for movement. She tensed as she heard the sudden and abrupt fire of gunshots right outside her door.
The heavy metal door to her cell was hastily unlocked, and swung open. Robin, prepared to incinerate the person upon their entry, stopped and gasped as her vision cleared enough to reveal a shock of raven-black hair, a dark trenchcoat, concerned steel-gray eyes.
She mouthed his name, her voice rusty in her throat. Amon.
He came toward her quickly, stopping as he reached her side. “Robin,” he said gruffly, and she could see the concern shimmering in his dark eyes. She felt her own filling with tears at the sight of him and again tried to whisper his name, her voice raspy with disuse.
He was holding something in his hand, slightly masked by his fingers. “I've got the key—I'm going to get you out of here. Just hold on.” He knelt down next to her and reached with his other hand to turn her slightly on her side as she lay on the ground, to reach her manacled wrists. He's here, he escaped somehow…and now we will be free, she thought, her heart soaring with hope.
“I'm so glad,” she whispered hoarsely, her breath choking with emotion, “I had almost given up hoping…” Turned away from him momentarily, facing the stone wall, she couldn't see his face. “I have so much to tell you…”
“I know,” he responded firmly. “Just stay still.”
She then realized she had noticed something as he had entered her cell, something that her eyes had always been drawn to when looking at him. “Amon,” she said, after a beat, “where is your gun?”
“My gun?” he asked, still focused on his task.
“I heard gunshots,” she said slowly, “and you're not wearing your holster.” He never goes without it. There was a pregnant pause, as Amon did not answer.
She craned her neck to look him in the eye, coming to a horrifying understanding just as she felt him push up her sleeve and insert a needle. Her eyes went wide before her face crumpled in an expression of hurt and anger.
Amon's sleeve erupted in flames. His hands were on fire. He screamed, and it was not Amon's scream; it was a higher-pitched whining sound, the tone of a male at least five years younger. The man who wore Amon's hair and eyes and face howled in pain, tucking his arms into his jacket in an attempt to douse the flames.
She turned herself over clumsily, still on the ground, prepared to incinerate her target; instead she heard the hiss of air, felt an unseen razor-sharp blade ghost past her upper arm, barely tearing the delicate skin. She gasped and curled inwards to protect her body from the attack.
Figures were crowding into her cell, three, maybe four…she found her vision was once again becoming intermittently hazy, her movements and reflexes dulled; whatever she had been injected with had already begun to go to work. One of the blurry figures ran toward her, stopping at a safe enough distance. “Smettila, Gideon!” he shouted back to an unseen figure in the doorway. “Not one drop of her blood spilled! I gave the Archbishop my word!”
Robin recognized the voice. Seth. She strained her eyes to focus on him; she struggled to sit upright, so that she could incinerate the obscure apparitions before her, but she felt herself already weakening. The narcotic they'd injected couldn't have been working that fast—was it the Ring of Ogham in conjunction with Eihwaz, working to subdue her flame? In her confusion her witchfire ignited at the far side of the room, the sudden sparks of fire splaying harmlessly against the stone wall.
Looking back towards the corner she saw Amon's clone change before her blurring eyes, even as he still tucked his burnt arms into his jacket and cursed her. The gray eyes were fading, the dark hair on his head falling away, replaced by blue and a shock of auburn; his features melting and morphing into those of a young man of Irish descent. Ethan—an Earth-craft user.
“Fookin' shite,” he cried, “th' stupid bint burnt me hands!” One of the other figures in the room went to tend to him, as well as to possibly restrain him from returning to where she lay on the ground to exact his revenge. He remained in the corner, his muttered groaning and curses unrelenting.
She was able to distinguish the form of Seth standing over her now, as the blackness on the edge of her perception threatened to totally consume her. He looked down at her dispassionately as she panted and gasped for breath to stay awake, now unable to move as she lay inside the chalk-drawn Ogham ring. Don't sleep, she pleaded with herself, don't sleep…you have to get up…you have to find a way to get to Amon and free him…
“Leave us, everyone,” she heard him say lowly, solemnly.
“Signore…” Chanan began plaintively, but Seth roared in response.
“Leave us!”
Robin barely heard the sound of the Coven members gradually filing out, leaving the two of them—she and Seth—alone in the dim light of the prison cell. Her eyes could no longer stay open, rolling back into her head; her breathing had become tedious and painful in her chest as the drug took its effect. She heard Seth speak, but his voice was disembodied, floating all around her. She felt herself drifting, against her will; she felt weightless.
No…
“I didn't want to do this,” she heard him softly admit. “Not to you. But they have ways…don't they, mia cara.”
Open, she willed her closed eyes. Please, open…please stay awake. She twitched, gasping and trembling against the narcotic. Seth was still talking, presumably as he was walking around her, circling the white chalk of the Ogham's wheel.
“They break your will, with guilt…and fear. No one can stand against them alone. If you are not a Hunter, then you are the hunted.” He paused briefly, as if he were considering his words with care.
“But I have not lied to you, Robin. I kept things from you, I concealed my ties to the organization as well as I could; but I did not lie. I know God curses me. I have lived with that knowledge, for years.”
His speaking voice was low, calm and soft, as he would speak to a treasured friend, a confidante. Robin panted for breath, idly wondering if he considered her dark and dingy prison cell to be something of a confessional.
“Even the rituals we showed you weren't lies,” he went on, in an assured tone. “Although my comrades would say differently, Diana, the protectress of Witches, does exist. Long before I joined SOLOMON and hunted my own shadows, I believed in her, in the Goddess. I believed, as did others, that she would live again, as was the myth of ages past. I believed that she would lead us—Witches, her children—out of the wretched darkness of our curses and into the light of the world. And I believed she would show herself to those she deems worthy. I still believe so, even now.
“When I was young my mother used to tell me story after story about the Fata Regina, Queen of the Fae, la Dea Matrona; a beautiful, magical woman who lived hundreds of years ago. She had so many legends of Diana, my mother did, passed on to her from her own family…and I knew all of them by heart. `How Diana made the Stars and the Rain', `Tana and Endymion', `How the Fairies were Born', `The House of the Wind'.”
Robin's mind stirred; she imperceptibly flinched as she lay on the ground before him. The title of the story that Jana had read flashed in her thoughts: La Pellegrina della Casa al Vento.
Seth expelled a soft sigh. “I believed all of them, of course. I was a boy; what choice did I have?” He laughed lightly. “At night she would sing to me all the old folk songs, songs of the witches and fairies and the forest. I still remember all of the melodies, the lyrics of each of them. But I suppose that what I remember the most was the incident in my childhood, when I was just seven years old.
“I was tending my family's garden, outside wandering with the dogs and the chickens…we had an enormous backyard, with several acres of land. I was far beyond the house, and as I rounded a corner, standing amidst the sunflowers and the apple trees, was a young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty years old. She was so beautiful, with long reddish-blonde hair and intense green eyes, like shimmering jewels. She turned to look at me as I was standing there watching her, and she had the strangest expression on her face…almost a serene sort of melancholy, as though she were thinking of something that made her very sad.
“I couldn't tear my eyes away. I thought she was an angel…or perhaps of the Fae, of whom my mother had told me stories. And as I looked on her, gazing at her in wonder, she moved her lips as though she desired to speak to me—but no words came forth. I moved closer, thinking she was speaking and I could not hear it.
“Just then my father appeared at the edge of the garden, calling out sternly to me, demanding that I come in at once. She looked past me to where he stood, and I saw her face change, becoming angry. And then suddenly from the edge of the garden near where my father was standing, there was a brilliant eruption of flame. It nearly burnt him, but he stepped back in time and was able to avoid it. I remember seeing his horrified expression, the fear in his eyes, through the burning inferno.
“Just then my father appeared at the edge of the garden, calling out sternly to me, demanding that I come in at once. She looked past me to where he stood, and I saw her face change, becoming angry. And then suddenly from the edge of the garden near where my father was standing, there was a brilliant eruption of flame. It nearly burnt him, but he stepped back in time and was able to avoid it. I remember seeing his horrified expression, the fear in his eyes, through the burning inferno.
“I turned back to the young woman once more…but she had vanished, without a trace. It was almost as though she hadn't been there in the first place…and even though my father had been witness to it also, he tried to assure me that what we had seen was simply a will o' the wisp, fuoco fatuo. He forbade me to tell my mother, who would have certainly insisted it was a visit from Diana herself.
“A year later,” he continued, his voice quiet and subdued, “my father would betray my mother to SOLOMON, denouncing her as a dangerous Witch…while I stood by and did nothing.”
He paused for long moments, after which Robin heard him sigh again quietly. “When I think back on that episode in the garden, now, I think that perhaps she was trying to warn me…either that, or protect me. Which is why when I first saw you that day with Amon in Siena, Robin, I was completely taken aback by your appearance—something photographs couldn't do justice to. You see, I have never forgotten her face, the strange maiden in the garden, la madonna del fuoco.”
She barely felt his hand caressing her cheek. “You look exactly like her.”
Although she was slipping beneath the waves of consciousness from the effect of the drug injected into her vein, Robin was able to ascertain that he was now kneeling over her form as she lay on the ground, touching her face. Despite his proximity his voice sounded warbled to her ears, muted, as though he were far away. She strained to listen.
“The Archbishop, Vasile, spoke of Lilith and Diana as though they are one and the same,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to whether or not she was actually aware enough to listen to him. “I had suspected as such, and only recently have I come to accept this belief as my own as well. I don't believe as he does, that Lilith is `whore of the Devil' and a Succubus and a killer of human children…but I do believe that SOLOMON fears her. Because of this they seek to slander her, to tarnish her. They cannot under any circumstances allow her to live.” His voice dropped to a whisper in the near-empty cell. “That was why I could not turn you over to them so soon. I had to know.
“I believed that it was you, that you were Diana,” he asserted quietly, “and that was why they insisted upon destroying you.”
And in her head, in the fragmented moments of stillness that followed, Robin replayed the evidence over and over again through her mind: her blood ties through Jana to Aradia, the gentle and loving worship of the Sovanan townspeople, Toudou's ultimate purpose for her as the Eve—to restore the legacy of the ancient gods. The vivid memories she'd experienced, searing her heart with the strength of pure conviction, were not coincidence. The knowledge descended upon her and felt as solid and real as nothing else she had felt before in her life, and she accepted it as truth.
I am the Goddess, their protectress. The truth has two sides… I am both Diana to the Witches, and Lilith to SOLOMON. Protectress of ancient gods; nemesis to humans and those who fear the more powerful.
He went on, his voice lowering with disillusion. “But now…I think that they were wrong, that you cannot be; for Diana is omnipotent, and would not be subdued so easily. No one can overpower her. If Toudou had designed you to be the true Goddess, then your Craft should not have weakened as it has.” Seth paused. “I wish it were not so, tesoro.”
He's wrong, she insisted in her head, staunch in her new belief and understanding; if only I could prove it to him…
But how can I? If I am also Lilith, how can I reconcile them, how can I save both Witches and humans? Seth is right—how can I do anything, when I am as powerless as this?
He sighed. “No one wishes it more than I. We are trained to believe that our powers are evil, that we are genetic abominations under God; that we can never hope to achieve any sort of greatness, with these abilities.” Here he paused again. “But…even I, haven't been able to believe that is the only truth. Despite the fact that it took away my humanity, some part of me…sometimes…enjoys having this power, summoning lightning and storms, feeling the rush of excitement when I call it forth. I feel strong, when I do. I feel alive. This is how I know that I can never be forgiven for my sin of being a Witch, because I am not as wholly repentant as most other Craft-users are. As much trouble as it has caused me since the day I awakened into power, as much as I know that this ability is evil…I would not choose to give it up. I do not wish to be cursed, but neither do I wish to be human.
“So I do what I must to validate my own existence in SOLOMON's eyes; and that is to hunt those others like myself, with the Craft—Hunters that defy the organization or seek to escape it. What these Hunters fail to realize is that there is no escape. Sela knew this; your partner, Amon, knows this. Nevertheless…they still choose to try.”
A note of disdain in his voice…or regret?
“Maybe we do not have a purpose, for being what we are; maybe we are simply genetic anomalies, biological mistakes, as we've been taught all of our lives. But…I have seen something in you, Robin, in the way you interact with both Witches and humans,” Seth's voice softened once more, “that makes me wonder sometimes…if I am on the correct side of this war.”
He was silent for a long moment, during which she wondered if he'd left her there on the floor, if he was even still in the room. Her consciousness was fading quickly.
The calm, composed male voice started again beside her, and she drowsily realized he had been at her side the entire time. “That is why it is extremely difficult for me to do this…but I must, because I have no choice. I do not have the luxury of falling for another fuoco fatuo; hope is a fragile thing that I cannot afford. I cannot save you.” And she felt his hands carefully positioning themselves to encircle her throat.
“You must believe me,” he said sadly, “I am sorry…” She was suddenly possessed with an overwhelming urge to scream, to cry out, but could do neither—
“…but it was not meant to be, tesoro.” He whispered. “Mi perdoni.”
He squeezed.
)O(
Seth noticed she was not struggling, and deduced she had fallen completely unconscious. She would not even fight him, during this. The realization lent him a momentary additional gust of will; it would be nearly effortless. The better to be done with it quickly.
His hands tightened around her thin white throat, marking seconds in his head. One…two…three….
He abruptly released her, his hands shaking slightly. He'd sworn he had just felt something brush his arm, heard a whisper…
Sela. His neck and arms broke out in gooseflesh, his blood suddenly running cold in his veins.
It was impossible. He was hallucinating. Seth shook his head briefly to clear it and placed his hands again, this time timidly, on the chestnut-haired girl's throat. He pressed with his thumbs. One…two…three…fourfive—
The operatives you targeted for death, for disobeying the Cabal…
…because she was in love with me? And for no other reason?...
He gasped, tearing his hands away again as he panted for breath. The excerpt from Amon's interrogation had inexplicably materialized in his mind. It was one of the many things the girl's warden had said that had made him truly uncomfortable when thinking about it at length.
Was it the truth?...
It couldn't have been. Sela was going to disobey him and eventually betray the entire Coven. The organization had gotten wind of it, knew of it; it had nothing to do with her feelings for him. They would not destroy a valuable Hunter for such a petty reason; neither would they Hunt simply because two operatives were lovers.
Amon was delusional. Seth calmed himself, taking a deep breath. It did nothing to relieve the tightness in his chest. Robin's own breast rose and fell on the floor beside him, still breathing.
What had Sela said, once? It had been after a particularly difficult Hunt; two very high-profile rogue agents, a man and a woman who had escaped from SOLOMON years earlier, having somehow evaded the organization's radar. They had started a family. There had been young children, whom of course had been taken into custody—too young to have developed a Craft, but as Seeds they had potential as Hunters.
Sela had cried bitterly upon witnessing the daughter's traumatized reaction as she crawled on hands and knees to her slain parents to touch them one last time, their bodies broken and bleeding on the ground. We are far more wretched for doing this than for simply being Witches, she had declared tearfully. Look at their eyes. We have killed their hope.
Which was what he was doing now—killing, murdering hope, strangling the breath out of it with his bare hands.
I have no choice. I must do as they will me to.
Seth placed his hands over Robin's neck once more, his thumbs pressing against her windpipe. He shut out the thoughts threatening to invade his mind. Witches…Sela…Hunting…godsToudou…DianawitchesSela Robinmother—
“One…two…” he counted aloud, pressing his lips together between counts with the effort, “…three…four….five…
“Six…
“Seven…
“Eight…
“Nine…”
)O(
Ten minutes later he emerged from the cell, shutting the metal door securely behind him. Leor and Gideon looked up at him from where they leaned against the hallway corridor. Seth attempted to school his pained, darkened features into a semblance of detachment; though he was certain the members of his Coven knew him well enough to see through any façade he tried to put up. He rubbed his hands together as though they were sore from overuse.
“Andiamo,” he said to them brusquely, not even sparing the men a glance as he moved past them on his way out. “It is done.” Wordlessly they fell into step behind him.
)O(
The group, led by a subdued Seth, made their way upstairs to the Duomo's ground level. From there, they headed towards the small stone tower. Upon ascending the Duomo's tower steps and making their way up to Amon's cell, all three men discovered Chanan holding the door open and waving them forward excitedly from inside, apprehension in his features.
“He remains awake, despite multiple injections over the last few hours,” the Spaniard informed them with unease, as the three brushed past him to enter the cell. “I don't know what to do. He seems to be fighting off the drug. He's not talking, but he's definitely not asleep.”
Without a word Seth approached Amon, still shackled and bound and seated upright on the floor, and knelt so he was eye-level with him. The dark-haired Hunter barely seemed to respond to his presence with a slight turn of his head, his movements shaky and erratic; his eyes were open, half-lidded, almost hidden by his mussed and disheveled hair. His breathing came in ragged pants. Seth cautiously reached to brush a lock of dark hair away from the steel-gray irises staring blankly ahead of him; Amon's eyes did not shift. His pupils were dilated.
“He's unseeing,” Seth reported neutrally, sitting back on his heels and looking up to the other members of the Coven in the room. “I don't think he's truly awake. He seems to be in some sort of half-conscious state.”
Chanan wrung his hands, looking none too convinced that Amon wasn't a threat. “Even so, he could wake up at any time. We won't be leaving for Rome until long after the ceremony.”
Seth nodded and motioned to Gideon, who came forward with an uncapped syringe. “We will take care of it,” he spoke calmly and monotonously, as if to a complaining child. His apathetic blue eyes regarded the prisoner as he took the needle and prepared Amon's arm for injection.
“The girl, she is prepared for the auto de fe?” He heard Chanan asking Leor, and assumed the Italian had nodded in affirmative response, most likely looking in his direction as he did so. Chanan went on to ask further questions regarding preparations.
Seth administered the drug into the prisoner's vein, speaking to him quietly under his breath. “Sleep now, Amon,” he said with empathy. “After all of this is over, it will be easier to forget what you've been through.” Despite Amon's problematic disposition during his brief stint with the Coven, Seth imagined they had recently developed a strange kind of kinship; brothers born from an understanding of mutually shared anguish. Lucky bastard. Take comfort in the fact that at least you won't have to watch her suffer.
He sat back on his heels again afterwards, to regard him. Amon's posture was relaxing slightly, his features less strained, his breathing coming slower as his eyes began to close. Seth rose from his crouched position and sighed quietly.
Leor spoke as he rejoined the group. “Signore, it might be worth posting armed troopers to guard him in the cell during the ceremony, in case he does wake up. We have so many of them here, after all—”
Seth shook his head. “It's not necessary. He is hallucinatory, but not dangerous; he is too far gone to know what's going on right now.” Chanan and Leor looked on disapprovingly, folding their arms. “Station a few of them at the ground floor of the tower entrance. That should be sufficient.” Leor nodded, and Chanan's posture relaxed somewhat.
“He'd be smart not to awaken during the ritual,” Gideon intoned with an ironic smirk, shaking his head, as they began to leave. “He won't like what will be done to the body.” He exited the cell, followed by the two other men.
Seth lingered behind after the three others had left, turning to deliver one last glance at the unconscious prisoner. He held the doorframe with one hand, nearly supporting himself, as he looked back at Amon with something resembling weariness.
“It is probably better that you never awakened to your power, after all,” he said quietly to the shivering, crumpled form on the floor. “Mercy is hard to come by, in this organization.” He closed the cell door slowly behind him.
)O(
He'd heard every word said, but he was unable to move or speak.
To hear their casual conversation around him as he was being drugged further was almost torturous for Amon, particularly when he'd heard a reference made to her, being prepared for the ritual. Seth had mentioned something before during his interrogation about preparation for the ceremony. What had he said? Was it too late?
It was out of his control. Everything was out of his control—he'd never had any control over events governing himself and Robin to begin with. It had all been one big, elaborate lie that he'd tricked himself into believing. The truth had just seemed too damned inconvenient at the time.
He felt himself sinking into relaxation against his will. In a strange way, it was a welcome reprieve from his many hours of mental anguish. His body had begun to feel as though it were eating itself with anger and remorse; he'd struggled, mostly fueled by anxiety and fear, against the narcotics given to him and had succeeded to a large part in remaining semi-awake, not completely giving in to sleep. But the rage, the fear, such soul-crushing emotions—all should have awakened his dormant Craft, if the multitude of other Witches he'd seen while employed with the STN-J had been any indication. Emotional trauma involving adrenaline and the fight-or-flight response had seemed to be the common trigger for eruptions of power in the violent cases they'd seen. Why was it not working for him?
Why?
Another part of him asked—solemnly, with calm acceptance, knowing full well what it was asking—what do I have to do?
Desperation had set in. If it meant he could save her, he wanted to let it completely loose; if it meant she would still live, he would do anything—he would unleash the terror of it on the world, let it spin wildly out of control as he knew was certain to happen. He had decided. For Robin, he would choose damnation. After all, you're halfway there, already. He would sooner see his own soul cast into whatever Hell awaited him than let her burn for her sin of simply being alive.
You must fully evoke your memory of the incident with your mother, in its entirety, to understand.
Part of him still did not want to remember. The pain of that memory had driven him into crazed anger, had molded him into a creature of unyielding vengeance. For years he had turned that righteous wrath towards Witches, judging them as the scourge of the earth, as Zaizen had—all the while fearing his own inevitable turning.
After what he had seen and heard with Robin in Sovana, it was almost impossible to be now as he once was regarding them. He'd been privy to what Witches truly were, what they had the potential to be. But the fury that had shaped him for years still attempted to manifest elsewhere, still simmered beneath his consciousness, as was apparent with his willingness to join the Coven and hunt SOLOMON agents. It hadn't disappeared—it had only sought refuge somewhere else inside of him. His anger, misplaced or not, would be his undoing. As long as it clung to him, he would have no control of his unleashed powers.
I don't know how to be merciful. Whatever part of him that knew how to forgive, had been buried within him for nearly all of his life. He did not know how to resuscitate it. It was hopeless.
Even as he felt himself begin to calm and sink lower into repose, the despair felt as though it would swallow him whole.
)O(
Midnight; the dark sky above il Campo had given way to a deep reddish glow.
Strategically placed torches flickered at a low level, yielding negligible light. Rows upon rows of black-clad SOLOMON paratroopers stood en masse surrounding the edges of the square, protective body armor and weapons intact. They stood silently, not a sound among them, guns at the ready. Three Ariete tanks flanked four of the main entrances, gun turrets directed towards the constructed stake in the center, their pilots standing by. The air was still, quiet. All attention was on the southernmost end of il Campo, as movement there heralded the commencement of the ceremony.
Led by Vasile, bedecked in his long white and gold ritual cleric robes, the procession made its way slowly into the open arena. With a dignified calm, the Archbishop walked purposefully through the square's entrance in slow, measured steps, the edges of his white robe trailing along on the ground. In his arms he held three holy books, a scepter, and the horn of a ram. Behind him walked forty priests and monks at a similar pace; their heads were bowed penitently, the fabric of their heavy black robes whispering in the night.
Beyond them were the Craft-users, the Cabal's Army, numbering at least fifty. They were dressed in the mid-length dark-blue ritual robes of the Coven, their faces hidden by their hoods and hands clasped solemnly before them as they walked. Seth, at the forefront of the group, tried surreptitiously to turn his head underneath his dark blue hood to look over his shoulder, so that he could view the procession behind him.
She was last to emerge into the square, the object of the ritual herself, tied to an upright wooden beam supported on a large wheeled plank and towed by five hooded monks. Her head hung limply over her chest, swaying with the motion of the cart; still in her dirt-smudged pilgrim's dress, her loose chestnut-blonde locks partially shrouding her face. He saw the paratroopers watch with interest as the cart carrying the teenaged girl was brought into the torch-lit arena, the light falling on her dark clothes and illuminating her golden hair—once a fiery reddish-blonde, but the color now muted with dust.
She was completely still, without movement. She looked frail and helpless. He was sure that in their minds they were admiring her youth, her delicate beauty, even in repose; that they were asking themselves, as he had, this is the Witch Lilith, the demoness? This young girl is the unspeakable terror we seek to protect SOLOMON from?
A flash of memory, and suddenly he was again seven years old in the garden behind his house, staring at the strange chestnut-haired maiden. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. Her serene green eyes glinted at him in the fading light of the afternoon sun.
Seth turned his face away from the sight of her, staring pensively at a spot in the distance before turning completely back to the convoy ahead of him. He watched as they now entered the center of il Campo, the priests and Craft-users breaking file to spread out and surround the pyre on all sides, the sheer magnitude of the nighttime ceremonial turnout hitting him full force. This was an execution of epic proportions.
He hoped they knew what they were doing.
He hoped he knew what he was doing.
Upon finally making its arrival at the front of the stake, the cart bearing her was halted. The monks who had led her in moved to undo her bindings, but Seth stepped up quickly, removing the Cabal's hood to reveal his shock of blond hair.
“Wait! Let me,” he insisted, going to her and beginning to loosen the knots of the restraints holding her to the cart's fixture. “I am responsible for her.” The monks stepped away obediently, albeit no less curious as they looked at one another and then at him. From where he stood at the pulpit lighting ceremonial black candles, Vasile turned to watch with interest.
Seth removed the rope that bound her and took Robin carefully in his arms, all loose limbs and flowing locks, her hair draped over his shoulder like a honey-colored curtain. Her head was tipped back, her pink lips slack and half-open. He fought not to hazard a glimpse of her face, for fear he wouldn't be able to carry her to the unlit pyre; instead he looked carefully straight ahead and focused on the ten-foot-tall beam, surrounded on all sides by extremely dry kindling. Out of the corner of his eye he visualized members of his Coven watching him with various measures of suspicion and distaste. He ascended the short wooden plank steps leading up to the platform surrounding the beam, noting the firewood assembled around it, above and below it; at the edges were twigs of what he recognized as fatwood, a soft pine wood naturally saturated with highly flammable pitch. The realization that she would burn relatively quickly did little to alleviate his discomfort.
The beam itself now loomed at the forefront of his vision, reaching up towards the heavens. Attached to it at the appropriate height were cables of thick, sturdy rope. Seth lowered her in his arms, feet first so that they touched the ground; he began to bind her to the stake, leaning her up against the wood, her head bowing loosely forward. As he did he lowered his head to her ear, and he could feel it against his neck—the barest whisper of her slight, shallow breath across his skin.
“I couldn't do it,” he whispered quietly to the chestnut-blonde head, telling her what she in her insentience already knew. Over the microphone he heard Vasile begin to speak to the gathered crowd in Italian, addressing the priests and Craft-users prior to the reading of the Testament of Solomon. “Madre, mi perdoni,” he continued to murmur into her ear, “but I'm a coward. I couldn't kill you with my own bare hands. So I prepare you now at the stake, to hide from them the fact that you still breathe.”
He paused long enough to listen to the thunderous tenor of Vasile's speech over the microphone. “I was waiting for a sign from you,” he went on, “something that would alleviate my doubts about who you were…” His soft voice trailed off. “But I did not see it.”
The Archbishop was now reading a prayer from the Testament: Blessed art thou, O Lord God, who didst give SOLOMON such authority. Glory to thee and might unto the ages. Amen.
“I will not be the one to light the pyre,” Seth continued in a hushed tone towards her ear, “but this must be done. Please understand I cannot sacrifice all that I've worked for, for you.” An image of Sela came to his mind, and he bit his lip as he forcibly suppressed it. He cinched the final knot of the ropes holding her in place, and stepped back. Robin's head hung loosely forward, the remainder of her body strapped securely to the beam of wood.
“Lilith is a wild animal, an evil spirit, commanding eighteen myriads of destroynig angels,” Vasile was saying to the crowd as he read from the text before him at the pulpit. “She is a bird, the screech owl, flitting about alone at night, filling the air with wailing. She is slippery and cunning; she tells Solomon herself, `For I am a fierce spirit, of innumerable names and many shapes.' Lilith goes about attacking newborn children and their mothers. She seduces men in their sleep in her succubus form, stealing their seed. She is the Black Moon, the doorway, the void through which Satan will enter to work his evil upon us. Unless she is destroyed, she will continue to exist and plague mankind for eternity.
“But tonight, we will finally extirpate her uncleanliness and evil from the face of the earth. And so begins the obliteration of Lilith.”
)O(
Vasile looked pointedly at Seth, and bestowed a succinct nod in his direction before continuing.
“I of SOLOMON, having glorified the Lord, order her hair to be bound as she is hung up in front of the Temple of God; so that all of the Lord's children as they pass might see her punishment and glorify the Lord God of Israel, blessed be He, who has granted me this wisdom and authoritative power.”
A monk approached Seth at the edge of the pyre, holding dark lengths of ribbon in his outstretched hand. Seth looked briefly towards Vasile, a flicker of confusion apparent in his features; then as understanding set in, he stiffly accepted the proffered ribbon and returned to the bound girl at the stake, his entire body appearing to protest the action. He used both hands to capture the volume of her reddish-blonde hair; then, remembering her unusual hairstyle, he twisted lengths of it up at the sides of her head, securing them with the ribbons as he had seen her once do, his lips forming a tight line during the entire process. As he did he could not help but be minutely thankful that Vasile hadn't insisted on the grotesque practice of shearing the head of the condemned.
“This is the finery that she uses to seduce mankind, to seduce Adam into copulating with her to produce demon offspring: her hair is long, red like a lily; her face is white and pink; pendants encircling her neck and at her ears; all of the ornaments of Egypt at her wrists. She uses these adornments to beguile; she stands at the corners of streets and highways in order to attract men, using the wiles of the harlot. I of SOLOMON command that she be stripped of her finery, her seductive powers reduced, and objectified before the Lord God, blessed be He.”
Seth knew the ritual, and its relation to both the Testament and the auto de fe. Strip the Witch of her precious amulets, her stones, her talismans that she might use to enact her magic.
He stepped forward once more and placed his hand on the pendant she wore around her neck, the blood-red stone encased in silver filigree representing the Sacred and Immaculate Heart of Opus Dei, no longer fit for her to wear as an accused Witch. To his knowledge he had never seen her go without wearing it, strung on its leather cord and lying close to her own still-beating heart. Seth yanked abruptly, and the necklace came off in his hand. His gaze moved down to her hands, loose between the binds of rope, to the spiralling-gemstone bracelet on her wrist—yet another artifact she was never without. He wondered who had given it to her as he undid the bracelet's clasp, turning it over in the dim light briefly before pocketing it.
“Now with her body turned to ashes, may we purify ourselves before the Lord God, blessed be He; Deus, Principium et Finis.”
At those words, Seth backed slowly away from the accused, toward the stairs that led to the ground. He heard the crowd begin to recite Pater Noster, and he saw Vasile leave the pulpit and approach the pyre, scepter and ram's horn in hand. The Lesser Banishing Ritual, he realized, which is to be followed by the pulsa d' nura, the lashes of fire—the burning at the stake. Seth glanced discreetly at the priests and monks surrounding the structure and kindling as he re-integrated himself into the multitude of onlookers, noting their serene gazes and vacant expressions as they chanted in Latin and looked upon the girl tied to the pyre. To his untrained eyes, it looked like rapture.
The Archbishop halted his steps before the stake. Scepter in hand, he raised it to touch it to his forehead, chanting, “Atah…” He lowered it along the length of his torso. “Malkuth…” He touched it to his right shoulder. “Ve Geburah…” His left. “Ve Gedulah…” He brought his hands together before him to grasp the scepter. “Le olam, Amen.”
Vasile turned toward the southern end of the square, and using the golden staff slowly drew a pentagram in the air before him. He stabbed the scepter into the center of the invisible design, his voice resonating in the stillness. “Adonai.” The Archbishop moved, turning to the west, facing the unlit pyre before him. He repeated his mid-air design, gracefully and fluidly as if it were a sacred dance. “Elohim.” He repeated the movement facing north, chanting yet another name, “El Shaddai.”
Seth closed his eyes, concentrating, feeling the thrum of the chanted words reverberating in the air around il Campo as Vasile called upon the ineffable names of God. He could feel the tangible emanation of power with the release of the spoken words, knowing it was not from the Archbishop himself, who was not of Witches' blood—but from the Craft-users, the other members of the Cabal's army that surrounded him. The power vibrated and sizzled in the air all around, alive, electrifying. In his mind he envisioned a cone-like protective shield around the entire congregation; a cocoon of electric blue.
Finally the Archbishop turned toward the east, in the direction of the Duomo and the tower of Amon's internment, and delivered the last name. “Yahweh.”
He spread his arms wide on either side of him, both scepter and shofar still in hand, and bellowed into the dark cool air around him: “Before me, Raphael; behind me, Gabriel. On my right hand, Michael; on my left hand, Uriel. Before me flames the pentagram; behind me shines the six-rayed star. As I am protected by your angels, O Lord God, I deliver unto you the whore, Lilith; so that she may not be reborn, that you may smother both her and the specter of her, and cast her into Hell, damning her for all of eternity.”
He then began the formal recitation of the curse, in its native, ancient tongue.
)O(
Robin hung suspended, stilled, a stalled moment in time. She had no concept of where she was; she was so weak that she couldn't will her limbs to move, or her eyes to open. But still she heard Amon's unwavering voice inside her head, rough and low, and thick with restrained emotion: Don't hide from it. Don't pretend it doesn't exist. This is the real world.
Inside she knew what would happen, realized what was happening, despite her oblivion. They will kill me.
This is my trial. This is what Cortion ultimately meant when he first gave me Hagalaz as a rune of power, during my Inquisition. She visualized the form of it clearly in her mind, and recalled the mysterious gravestone the Inquisitor had visited at STN-J. Not the destructive wrath of nature, but pain and hardship; a test, a trial. A wake-up call.
She remembered another symbol that had meant “wake-up call”; a vision revealing a black-armored skeleton bearing a banner on a white steed, bodies falling at the horse's hooves. The card Sela had shown her—Death.
Then a sinking part of her understood, and accepted. I will not try to escape the pain. I will not run from it. I will embrace the end willingly, and without fear. Through death, she would be purified; she would not bear the guilt of her grandfather's death, or Amon's loss, or her inability to fulfill Maria's and Toudou's dreams and expectations as the Eve. She would be gone, be ashes. She would feel nothing, she would know nothing.
The voice spoke to her once more.
All that you are, all that you have, has been stripped away. Your position within the organization, your partner, your ties to Juliano, your entire connection to SOLOMON—severed. Your Craft has been subdued. You are without strength. You are at your basest, most vulnerable form.
But, this is how all great transformations start; by stripping things to the bone, and building fresh upon the bare foundations. It is the only way to be reborn. Death humbles, but it also exults.
Reborn…she thought of Amon, and despaired. Many times she'd found him, and he her; but there were the disappointments, the long unending waits, the separations so laden with grief that they tore at her heart to recollect. And how many near misses had they suffered throughout the ages—how many times had they come so close, perhaps even within arms' reach of one another, and not even known it?
And, yet…
…and yet, there was also elation and delight in their reunion, the happiness she had felt upon finding him again. Even if she hadn't completely recognized him, the feelings of familiarity and calm, and serenity, and coming home had been there; however brief, they could not have been denied. And because it had already occurred, they could be reborn yet again, somewhere in time, and regain what they had lost. It was not impossibility.
I came so close, this time, she lamented. But this is not the end…I'll look for him. I will find him again. I won't rest or stop until I do.
She directed her thoughts to the feminine whisper in her head. When will I be with him again? One hundred years from now? Two hundred? How long must I wait?
There was a long, silent pause before the response. You will be with your God, soon.
The answer given her was not only insufficient but unsettling. Robin was slightly confused. That's not what I meant; I was not referring to the Lord. Who is `my God'?
Even in the darkest night, during your worst nightmares, you cling to your conviction when there is no light to be seen and everything is at its bleakest. This is why you were meant for him…you give him all of your strength, when he assumed he had none for himself; you brought him faith, when he had nothing left to believe in.
This is the definition of hope. This is why you embody it.
Her heart bursting, Robin was desperate with her need to understand. Meant for whom?
He who is Rich in Names, the voice responded knowingly. Breath of Life. The God of Winds. The Lord of Light. The one who is the true inspiration for the Biblical God of the Old Testament.
The God whose approval and love you seek…and Robin felt, rather than envisaged, a flash of memory of her desire to please and assist Amon...whose life you have protected as though it were your own. Sheltering him with her fire, torching alive those who dared harm him. The God whose judgment is the only one you will let determine the course of your own life. She saw herself, as she closed her eyes and tilted her chin, exposed and vulnerable to his trained weapon.
The first true form that humans recognized as divinity. She imagined the cave drawing of the ram that Methuselah had shown her of the horned beast, the Devil. She saw Amon himself, with curving horns.
What is his identity? Who do you think he truly is? To whom have you endlessly prayed for deliverance, for absolution?
Robin gasped to herself. His name was on the edge of her lips, ready to be spoken. Oh, my God.
)O(
The sound of a trumpeting shofar broke the stillness of the night air, following the curse. Its mournful bleating soared above the walls of il Campo, and the echo reverberated throughout the torch-lit square so that it seemed as though a hundred rams' horns sounded at once. Vasile blew the horn six more times, facing east in the direction of the Duomo.
Five hooded monks approached the pulpit where the Archbishop had previously stood. In their hands they carried pewter rods, and with them they snuffed the lit black candles, one by one, dousing the flames. Armed SOLOMON paratroopers began to put out the torches that had still flickered at the edges of il Campo.
Seth surreptitiously raised his eyes, his blond head still bowed. He watched each tiny spark being extinguished; he imagined each was a minute fragment of her soul, disappearing forever into the ether.
The surrounding darkness seemed to encroach upon them all with every candle that went out.
)O(
Robin felt a draining sense of panic beginning to set in. As the candles at the pulpit were snuffed, she felt her Craft—her very breath—being extinguished, smothered. Air…I can't …I can't breathe…
The voice spoke to her yet again.
You think that you are embracing the end; you have been brought low, humbled, but only so that you can go higher than you ever have before. As she heard the words, she saw a bird with brilliant red-gold plumage emerging from a nest of flaming fire, wings outstretched and reaching towards the heavens.
Do not be frightened. A new Sun is rising, and with it comes a moment of great transformation; the power of change directed by an autonomous will.
The square was now completely encased in the gloom of night.
From somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered something about the Death card that Sela had shown to her; barely discernible, there was a glimpse of something shining emerging from the corner, so well hidden that her eyes had nearly skipped over it. It had been a sunrise.
Amon…I am not afraid.
)O(
From the highest point of the Duomo's tower, Amon heard the sound of the shofar in the square, the echo of it louder in his ears than the horn itself. He'd heard scattered whispers between the trumpeting resonances, beckoning him, calling to him, tormenting him with the promise of recollected memories; he fought against them halfheartedly now, his mental strength sapped, his physical strength all but diminished. He knew he was losing her. It didn't matter anymore.
So when he began to have a waking dream, imagining himself free of his bonds and walking slowly down a dark corridor, Amon was not entirely surprised.
The sound of the echoing shofar outside faded away. Ahead of him, the hallway ended in a single door. He heard the faint, muffled noise of a child crying, and felt an overwhelming sense of dread; he was sure that he was walking into a childhood memory, a nightmare. His steps slowed before the door as though he meant to pause, but something made him reach for the knob and turn it.
The child's crying became a baby's contented gurgling as he entered. At the end of the room, on a large wooden-framed bed, lay Robin; chestnut-blonde hair tousled, her face flushed and damp with exertion, a dark-haired baby swathed in a blanket and nestled in her arms. As he approached the bedside he watched as she stared down into its tiny face, her green eyes so full of love, and for a moment he felt himself stop breathing. She turned her gaze upwards to meet his and the naked, undisguised joy he saw expressed in her smile was like the sun rising to him after the longest, darkest night.
She was safe. She was alive, and she was safe, and together they would—
He watched her cradle their child in her arms and felt simultaneously crushing waves of both love and fear, not knowing which of the two was stronger. There was love, because it was so much for him to gain; fear, because it was so much to lose.
But…
This what I could have, a voice inside him whispered. This moment, this sliver of time, could be mine.
He came to this realization, his gaze never wavering from her green eyes, just as the scenery around them began to change like a whirlwind—the room and bed sheets and baby disappearing, and replaced by wood, ropes, and fire. She was tied to a beam at least ten feet high. Robin was burning at the stake.
The flame had been lit underneath her and leapt up around her pilgrim's dress, scorching her legs and singeing her hair. Her face had turned from rapture to agony. She did not cry or scream, simply mouthed his name with tears in her eyes; but would not use her Craft to protect herself. It was as if she were powerless—Why? Why can't she protect herself?!?
Robin!
He heard her name in the form of a scream and realized belatedly it was from his own throat, lost now to hysteria as he watched her skin beginning to burn and her eyes swimming with pain…green, shimmering waves of green upon green until it threatened to consume the breath from his lungs. He threw himself into the fire and tried to grasp her through it; but his fingers couldn't hold her, the flames dancing harmlessly around him—nearly taunting him—as they devoured her, licking at her dress and feet and engulfing her in thick black smoke. And just as he could not touch her, so he knew the answer to his question was just as elusive; simple, and yet out of his reach.
His head in his hands, he fell to his knees with the convulsive force of his emotions, her name still on his lips. In a panicked frenzy he wanted to gouge out his eyes, tear his hair from his head and bury himself alive—anything so that he didn't see her suffering, didn't have to watch her die, knowing that he was cursed a thousand times over to live.
Something inside him broke open, shattered completely; like a raw wound, the agony went straight to the core of him.
I'll do anything…just stop…stop it….
…Okaasan, yamero! …
And in his mind his mother's voice spoke his name, as he had heard it so many times before—but this time, he listened. This time he did not try to shut her memory out. This time he would remember.
Amon.
Matoko, he begged…help me. Show me what to do. He gave himself completely to vivid recollection and his entire body went rigid, every muscle tense.
Behind his eyes he saw brilliant and blinding white light, as though the slates of his memories were being wiped completely clean, and in that shining moment he knew nothing—not pain, or anger, nor fear or doubt. She spoke to him again with the gentle tone that he remembered from his childhood.
Torihanaso.
)O(
He is seven years old. He is just a young boy, with an unruly, rakish mop of cropped black hair and soft grey eyes.
He is at school, in the schoolyard at recess; and in the distance he sees a group of boys crowded around something on the ground. When he gets close enough, he realizes it is a young bird, an injured bird—with a brilliant, chestnut-red breast. The boys are taunting it, and one boy in particular has already bloodied its wing with sticks and rocks so that it can't escape. The bird fights hard for self-preservation, to no avail. Finally, no longer able to defend itself, it collapses; exhausted, it lies on the ground bleeding, its red chest rising and falling rapidly, dark beady eyes flickering vulnerably from one abusive human to the next.
His peers are egging the lead tormenter on; but Amon looks at the helpless animal as it struggles to live, and something powerful wells up inside of him.
“Yamero!” he shouts at them as he pushes them aside roughly, and he bends down to tenderly cradle the young bird in his hands. It is too weak to fight him. The boys yell at him and stomp off angrily, grumbling that he's never any fun, and that one day the stick up his ass is going to poke out of his rib cage.
He wraps the bird in tissue and hides it in his desk; after school he brings it home to Matoko.
She is waiting for him at the door when he arrives, as she usually does after his school day. She has made him a snack of gen mai cha, and seaweed with rice crackers. She watches with interest as he unveils the little wounded bird within the tissue; and without another word, but with a mother's sensitivity, she takes it from his hands and goes about tending to its injuries, bandaging the bird's wing gently and painstakingly.
Amon digs up earthworms in their modest backyard. He feeds the bird by hand, and takes pleasure in watching it get progressively stronger and more confident. He finds himself wondering how it was satisfying to torment something so defenseless and vulnerable, and he sees his mother watching him carefully out of the corner of his eye.
Within days the bird has healed, and they let it loose. Matoko is proud of him, calling him her protective, gentle son.
But Amon is angry. Justice must be served.
The following morning at the schoolyard he is stern and tight-lipped. He restrains himself until recess, when he hunts down the ringleader to confront him for his cruelty. The boy is defiant and sarcastic as he approaches, but his bravado is quickly replaced with fear when he sees the fury boiling in the dark grey depths.
Amon corners him as the boy's cohorts scatter, and catches the collar of his shirt as he tries to flee. He wrestles the screaming bully down onto the pavement in seconds, despite being of slightly smaller build. By now the yelling and commotion has brought a crowd of other schoolchildren over to watch. Amon pins him down, his fist poised above the boy's face ready to strike, to show him just how it feels to be wounded and terrorized. But he suddenly stops short, as the boy's shirt has pulled up during the struggle, to reveal horrible bruises—some yellowed, but some still black and blue and fresh—on his stomach and chest.
It takes a moment for what he sees before him to register, and in the pause the boy pulls his shirt down again before the crowd of onlookers and runs off, red-faced and crying in a fit of fear and shame, screaming that he's sorry.
Amon sits back on his heels on the pavement, bewildered and numb. He stares after the boy, and then at his own hands for long moments.
He returns home to his mother at the end of the day, trudging his feet along the path, his eyes downcast and heart heavy. Matoko notices immediately and enfolds him against her apron, ruffling his dark hair and drying the beginnings of his tears with the back of her fingers. She chastises him gently. “My little one. You worry so much. Why is there such sadness in your eyes?”
“I'm no good. I'm weak,” he sighs dejectedly in a choking breath. She asks him to explain, and he tells her about the bully's bruises. “I was going to punish him, for what he did, but…I couldn't do it. Someone had already hurt him…maybe just as badly as he'd wanted to hurt the bird.”
His mother's eyes change as he tells her this, and she kneels to his height and wraps her arms around him. “Amon, you're not weak; you're merciful,” she assures him, releasing him from her hug and looking into his eyes, “and there is a difference between the two. You do not let your anger control you or get the best of you. That is strength, not weakness.”
He still doubts his choice of actions, even as she pulls him to the chair and onto her lap. “But how do people know when to punish, and when to be merciful?” he asks reasonably.
Matoko gives a sage nod. “That is not always easy. But people, like this boy who hurt the bird, are not inherently evil. Sometimes, those who have themselves been terribly hurt, develop the desire to hurt others.” She runs her fingers through his hair. “But when they realize that they are wrong, and that they have made a mistake, it's all right to give them another chance. That is compassion.
“But just as there is a time for compassion, there is also a time for enacting justice; for righting something that is wrong. And someday, Amon, you will know when the right time is to truly unleash your strength; to fight without holding back, to defend what is yours, and to punish someone who attempts to harm you without remorse…” She hugs him against her again, resting her chin atop his dark head, and her voice slows and becomes quiet. “…Or someone who attempts to harm what is precious to you.”
He unconsciously hears the underlying sadness in her words, and he snuggles further into her embrace. “Okaasan, you'll be with me always, won't you?” He tries to peek upwards at her face from her lap, and catches a glimpse of her bittersweet smile.
You are not alone, she whispers into his ear, and it soothes him. Although you might think that you are, you will never be alone.
—The barriers in his mind, the ones that had kept his memories in check, had all but melted away. They came in now like the tide from the ocean, to his consciousness; overflowing with sounds and images and feelings. His mother was kind and gentle. She had been beautiful, benevolent. He had not imagined these things from his childhood.
She had been his anchor. To a young boy, she had been the center of his universe. And she had told him in so many words, that it was his own compassion which would ultimately grant him the ability to become what he was meant to be.
With her encouragement, he had fostered forgiveness. Because of her, he knew how to recognize love.
And again he saw himself; this time as he traipsed through the hallway of Harry's, gin on his breath, his thoughts racing in time to his hammering heartbeat. Just ahead of him she was rounding the corner, the edges of her pilgrim's dress and delicate white hands coming into his view.
Are you ready? His mother's question pierced his thoughts, and he knew what she asked.
When? When will it happen?
Soon. But first, you must see that which was not initially revealed to you. —
The memory fades, and in his mind a new one begins to take shape.
He is in the living room with his toys, quietly absorbed in thoughtful play. Matoko is in the kitchen when the noise at the door sounds; he doesn't even stir from his tasks as she goes to answer it.
At the door she finds five SOLOMON agents, unsmiling and intimidating. She is instantly on guard, her back stiffening and her eyes filling with trepidation.
“What do you want?” she asks them uncertainly. She turns her head to look briefly at her son in the distant living room before facing the agents again—
And as he watched the scene before him unfolding in his adult mind, Amon understood that in this exchange he was privy to not only his own memories, but his mother's—
“We've come for him, Ms. Syunji,” an agent responds, firmly but quietly.
Matoko shakes her head at them, in confused and hesitant denial. “No…you can't; you told me the tests last week were the end of it, that there were no more—you promised me, that—”
“We've had a change of plans.” The reply is terse and short.
She is crestfallen at their betrayal. “It's never going to end, is it?” she asks, her lips trembling slightly as she speaks. “You'll just keep coming for him, more and more, until one day you'll…” she pauses, her eyes hardening as she comes to realization, “…take him from me.”
The agents are unmoved, and in his impatience one of them shows her his semiautomatic weapon, concealed within his coat. “Move aside; or we will enter the premises by force.” In the living room Amon looks up from his play and towards the foyer, unconcerned but slightly curious.
“No,” Matoko tells the men in the doorway in a furious whisper, so that her son cannot overhear. “Go away!” She tries to shut the door in their faces. “There is nothing for you, here!”
She attempts to slam the door, throwing her weight against it; but the men are stronger. They block her efforts and the force of their actions knocks her slightly backwards. Matoko gasps in astonishment.
“Ms. Syunji, this will be much easier if you cease resisting us.”
Now Amon approaches the foyer from the living room, having heard the sounds of hushed arguments, and recognizes the agents standing in their house. Unlike his mother, he is not concerned; he is accustomed to them. He has gone with them many times before, for strange tests and interviews, but they have never harmed him and he does not fear them.
He cannot understand why Matoko is so anxious and apprehensive as she eyes them. “Okaasan?” he asks, his expression troubled as he looks at her.
She sees him now, standing in the foyer with his disheveled hair and curious eyes; and Matoko can't stop herself from going to him. She pulls him towards her, away from the men standing in the entryway of their home, looking back at them with determined ferocity as she holds onto her son by the shoulders. “You're not taking him.”
Amon looks up into her face, questioningly. “Okaasan, it's just for tests.”
But his child's eyes don't see the semi-automatic weaponry that all of the agents are concealing from his view. His mother sees it, all of it—and she is afraid. Her hands dig firmly into his shoulders, and he winces slightly.
— Amon realized, there were no more `tests'; they had come to take me away permanently that day —
There is a momentary standoff as Matoko and the agents eye each other, Amon glancing confusedly between them. Then, one of the men steps forward and calmly takes hold of the boy's forearm. “Amon, it's time to go.”
Matoko clutches his other arm. “No,” she protests, close to tears, but another agent has already placed himself between herself and Amon, pressing her away, pulling her apart from her son. She clings desperately to his wrist. Her face crumples and she begins to cry.
“Please don't take him,” she begs, even as the agent bears down on her menacingly.
“Be silent,” he orders, firmly restraining her by the arm, his voice low and outside of a child's earshot, “or the situation will be forced to escalate into something not to your liking.” She chokes on a sob as he continues. “Keep in mind that we own him—as we do, you—and we will not hesitate to kill him, should the need arise.” He flashes a view of his weapon to make his point. “We'll take care of him just as we took care of your husband.”
Her eyes are filled with pain at that statement, and in her stunned silence her tremulous grip on her son loosens. He is pulled away out of her reach, her hands now grasping the empty air, and the agents begin to bear him away, leaving her to stand alone and bereft.
Seven-year-old Amon does not see his mother's expression, as he's too busy studying the agents who are holding him and leading him towards the door.
— But his adult mind captured Matoko's look of defeat, of saddened resignation…of yielding, of letting go; and from the courtyard, he envisioned Robin's countenance super-imposed on his mother's. She realized she had nothing now to live for. —
At the threshold of the foyer, Amon looks back and catches only a brief flash of his mother's anguished, tear-stained face…and then watches as a sudden, shuddering calm comes over her, like rain. She becomes still; her breathing slows. Her entire body relaxes, almost as though she is entranced. Matoko exhales, slowly and purposefully; and he understands then that something about her has changed, something basic and elemental.
Then, her expression hardens—and in a cold, stern voice, a sudden renewed show of strength, she tells them to stop. “Yamenasai.” Her warning goes unheeded.
And then the memory abruptly speeds up, as all hell breaks loose.
One of the agents pauses before he reaches the door, suddenly holding his head and groaning. The others turn to look at him, fearfully, as the man falls to his knees, and his groans of pain become wails of agony. The agent's flesh begins to melt, liquefying from his bones; and one by one it begins to happen to all of them. They begin to scream, before their vocal chords are choked off by their own dissolving fluids.
Amon himself screams, horrified as it happens to the man holding him, yanking his arm away from the disintegrated skin and blood and gore. He sees Matoko's determined expression as she concentrates her power, and he realizes she is responsible.
Over his own shrieks of terror he hears his mother shouting at him, the words indecipherable as he is surrounded by screaming chaos. She has never raised her voice against him, before. He doesn't understand. She has become someone he does not recognize.
He begs, pleads with her to stop, tears forming in his eyes as he yells at her. “Yamero, `Kaasan! Onegai…yamero!”
—In il Campo, the torches were finally lit with a flash; the fires that would burn Robin at the stake. At the same time, at the table in her darkened kitchen in Sovana, Jana bowed her head remorsefully.
Amon, still bound and chained in the Duomo's tower, now heard what had been hidden from him before. —
She is yelling for him to run as she does battle against the SOLOMON agents—to run away, to get out, to escape them. “I won't have them do this to you,” she cries out to him, amidst the screams of the men. “I won't let you die!”
…you are so precious to me…
Six additional agents have entered the apartment as backup, from outside. They shout commands to one another, and three of them load and lock their rune-shelled rifles.
She tried to free me, he realized. It was just as Jana had said; Matoko had been in control the entire time. She had not gone insane, but had knowingly forfeited her life for his. She had awakened for him, not his father.
Love was what had awakened her, not greed, not lust for control…love had granted her the power to attempt to free him.
In the square below his imprisonment, five hooded members of SOLOMON's Caballic priesthood begin to approach the stake in a circle, each bearing lit torches and surrounding her unconscious form from all five corners.
—you must make your own choice, you cannot do it any other way. It is the lesson of the Hanged Man; only when we give ourselves over to it completely, can we master it and emerge victorious.
In his memory, he could still see out of the corner of his seven-year-old eye as the remaining agents drew their rune weapons. He remembered Vincenzo's words: induce a traumatic event early on in their young lives to make them hate their own kind, and stay loyal to the organization. They had come for him on this day and baited her, purposefully—to frighten him into turning against her.
—someday you will know when the right time is…to protect what is precious to you.
Amon felt his entire body relax, even as his eyes brimmed with tears, still witness to his mother's final moments as her blood was shed; they spilled over as he took a long, protracted breath. Okaasan, he thought, using the honorific he hadn't called her since childhood. …Sumimasen deshita. I didn't know. He pictured her again in those long moments as she became still, her breathing slowing, yielding…becoming surrender, laying down the last vestiges of resistance.
He closed his eyes. Thank you.
He released his held breath in a slow, shuddering exhale. There was a whisper of fear; then, surprise…bewildered awe…and amazement.
—I have faith in your heart.
And then, joy.
)O(
At the stake, Robin inhaled sharply, the air whistling past her lips in a surprised gasp.
The fire had just been lit, the hooded priests having stepped back after touching their torches to the firewood, and it was steadily approaching the pit underneath her.
At the same time, a spontaneous wind started up in the circle surrounding the stake. The members of SOLOMON raised their heads in mild curiosity at the zephyr, at first only a light breeze ruffling the robes at the priests' ankles; their expressions abruptly changed a moment later to outright fear when the wind strengthened exponentially, whipping the air with increasing ferocity and disrupting their robes and hoods, blowing dirt into their eyes.
They shouted to one another in panicked voices, pointed at the girl still tied to the stake as the culprit—just as the rush of air blew such a gust that it scattered the entire supply of wood from the flames' path out from under the pyre in all directions, effectively dousing it before it could harm her. Members of the Cabal ducked the flying projectiles of lit firewood.
Robin felt her strength returning in a rush of release, her chest heaving with each new breath. Hope swelled within her, filling the emptiness and bare crevices in her heart with its liberating wind. Her skin sang, every nerve alert, her entire being vibrating with the realization of the moment.
Amon. He is here.
And then the voice, again in her head: He is here, now…your God is with you!
In the disarrayed center of il Campo that was quickly becoming a whirling vortex of chaos, Seth futilely attempted to shelter his face from the cyclone's onslaught as well as from dust and debris. He watched as the priests and the Archbishop tried in vain to protect themselves as they ran for cover. Paratroopers barked commands over the wind, several of them manning the Ariete tanks and aiming the turrets at the center of the square.
Seth squinted his eyes as he peered at Robin, still tied at the stake. She was almost untouched by the wind, as though she were in the eye of it; though he could see the rise and fall of her chest, he saw that her eyes were still tightly closed. Something clicked.
This is not her conscious doing.
He swung his panicked and disbelieving gaze across to the Duomo's tower, upwards to the very highest cell window, and his eyes fixed there for several seconds as realization finally sank in.
He reached for his two-way radio, and screamed into it above the roar of the surrounding noise: “It's him! It's not her—it's him!”
)O(
The five paratroopers that had been stationed at the lower part of the Duomo's tower, armed and in full riot gear, rushed up the tower steps two and three at a time. At the sixth floor they reached the summit, flanking one another as they destroyed the deadbolt lock and kicked the door in; only to find Amon's cell empty, the metal shackles previously restraining him now dangling limply from the wall.
In their confusion they went to the window and stood for several seconds facing each dim and empty corner, directing the scopes of their semi-automatic rifles aimlessly. “Where is he?!?”
From somewhere near the center of the room, a harsh gale of wind erupted and knocked them to the floor. They cried out as their guns clattered on the cement ground; fearfully they raised their heads to confront the Witch attacking them—but saw nothing.
One of the soldiers suddenly convulsed, holding his head and writhing on the ground, his weapon all but forgotten. The four others leapt immediately to their feet with their rifles—only to be assailed again by another furious blast of wind, this time sweeping them out of the open sixth-story window and out onto the Duomo's roof below.
On the ground Seth looked up at the Duomo, his confidence shattered; in horror he and the members of the Cabal watched the first squadron sailing helplessly through the air, screaming as they fell. He returned his gaze briefly back to the sixth floor of the tower—
And then in the darkness he saw a partial figure standing near the window's ledge, and strained to look further.
)O(
Amon stood at the threshold of his cell. In the darkness below him, he could see the four SOLOMON paratroopers sprawled out on the roof underneath the tower. He looked further down, beyond the Duomo's roof at the expanse of il Campo, and saw Robin tied to the stake, surrounded by the windstorm of his own creation.
He looked down at his hands, newly re-materialized—as well as the rest of him—after having visibly disappeared moments earlier. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, felt his newly-acquired power nearly leaching from him. Surely he wasn't imagining this, still asleep on the cold stone floor of his prison—he couldn't be; this raw and potent energy was real and pure, willing to do his bidding as he could feel it virtually radiating from him. He felt alive, awakened, as though everything prior had been but a mean sleep.
The movement on the floor caught his eye, and Amon glanced down at the paratrooper who still twitched in and out of consciousness on the ground before him. The other four had been unaffected, and had leapt to their feet; but this one had fallen to his knees, crazed, writhing as if in pain. It brought to his mind the image of Zaizen's Factory soldiers as they held their heads, distraught with the effects of the Orbo pendants they wore at their necks. Humans could not withstand the side effects of the Witch-derived substance—even Zaizen himself had succumbed to it at the end. For Seeds and Craft-users, the Orbo dulled and nullified their abilities; but humans were rendered unconscious, and if exposed to it long enough, it drove them to madness.
They were not meant to wield such power, he realized, and as an afterthought, my power.
This was why it had no effect on him, even when Zaizen had shot him with it in Factory—the purest form yet of this substance ran through his veins, danced along the nerves underneath his skin. It could not harm him—it was from him. Only on Robin it had no effect; she alone was powerful enough to destroy it, as she had demonstrated before the Factory's collapse.
He looked out of the cell's window again at the stake, and his heart lurched. Robin. For so long he had tried to restrain her, to hinder her strength out of his own desperate fears. Now she was as close as she'd ever been to powerlessness.
Suddenly everything was laid before him in clear, sharp focus. She was right, of course; everyone did have some darkness within them. There was no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black. The capacity for kindness and mercy could only exist alongside the willingness to punish, and the knowledge of the difference of the two. She, like his mother, was a blend of both the nurturing and the terrible. To accept her, to love her, he had to embrace her innate duality. He could no longer hold her back—he no longer wanted to. Even now, without her he was nothing.
Her secret, hidden name came to his mind; Amon mouthed it silently to himself, tried it out on his lips.
He stepped onto the open sill, one hand braced on the bare frame. The wind outside tousled his dark hair. For some reason it was Seth's bleak words that he thought of, as he stood at the threshold: there is no forgiveness for us…no salvation, and no forgiveness.
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps they never would see forgiveness for what they were. Perhaps nothing he or Robin could do would ever change that.
But, he thought, there is another truth that has been concealed from us, all this time—and that is, that we don't need forgiveness. That no one has that authority over us. That there is nothing to be saved from, or forgiven for. We have yet to commit these transgressions for which we are judged so harshly. We've committed no sin.
He looked back once more towards the dim corners of his prison cell and for a brief instant he saw her again, as she was before her death; calm, beautiful, at peace. Matoko watched him with gentle sadness in her eyes.
From here on, there will be no regrets.
“I leave them here, in this room, with you, Okaasan,” he whispered to the darkened room, as her vision faded into the shadows.
He looked back out at il Campo below, the wind around him intensifying in strength. He felt it surrounding him, buoying him. He stepped deliberately off the edge.
And Amon fell to earth, like the descent of the morning star.
)O(
The attention of the entire assemblage on the ground was captured by a brilliant, blinding light emanating from the top floor of the tower—so bright, that they had to shield their eyes from its source. The light levitated, rode the air, as it coursed downward into the square of il Campo. Seth gasped to himself as he protected his eyes; it was like looking upon a million suns at midnight.
Floodlights guarded by SOLOMON paratroopers at the edges of the plaza were turned on, and swung in the direction of the radiance in an attempt to blind whomever was the cause of it; but the lamps lost their brilliance in the presence of the blazing light, just as stars did at the rising of the sun or the moon. The harsh winds that still tore at the group surrounding the stake then abruptly changed their course, striking the floodlights and knocking them to the ground, bulbs and lenses shattering amidst the shouts of the Cabal.
The soldiers manning the tanks and weaponry took aim, sighting the luminous vision in their crosshairs as best as they were able—but within moments the human operators of the devices began staggering, convulsing, their weapons falling to the ground only shortly before they did. The Ariete tanks became deathly still and silent.
Seth, rooted to the earth, was agape in the middle of such disarray. He whispered a single word.
“Lucifer.”
Light-bringer.
The other Witches—the members of the Cabal—attempted to use their Crafts against the being approaching them, their collective energies focusing and converging at the light in the sky; but their powers were completely deflected and useless. The gales of wind still encircling them whipped mercilessly, forcing them off-balance and onto their knees in the dirt before the pyre.
Seth watched him approach, stunned and helpless. He realized suddenly that he was witnessing an event over three thousand years old in the making.
Judgment Day.
)O(
The ever-present, soft, feminine voice in Robin's head was hopeful and full of promise. You see? This is your God, in the flesh. He is of you, and you are his. Your God has not abandoned you, he will never abandon you—he will follow you through the endless eons, rebirth after rebirth, waiting for you to awaken him. He will be with you, always.
It was Amon…all of this time, it had been him. All of her life she had gleaned consolation from knowing that she was not alone, that God listened to her, God would not turn from her….that He loved her. Though she could never hear Him, see Him or touch Him, she knew; she knew He existed somewhere when she woke up at night, shivering in the darkness from a nightmare. She knew He would comfort her, if he were at her side. God does not abandon anyone.
It was Amon.
Robin slowly opened her eyes. She pulled her hands and wrists free at her sides from the stake; the rope binding them had somehow turned to ash. Her vision as she looked up was filled with light and splendor, and in the radiant center of all of it, she saw Amon approaching her.
She remembered the Death Card, the sunrise in the corner of it. He is not Nauthiz, he is not stagnation or distress—he is Dagaz. He is the revealer, the rising sun, emerging from twilight. He signals the end of dark times.
He dispels the darkness with his presence. Amon, backlit with an STN-J searchlight. He is the Illuminator, and reveals all that is hidden. Amon interrupting the raid at Raven's Flat, his flash-bang blinding so brightly that she had to avert her eyes. He scatters all falsehoods—like cowardly shadows scurrying into the recesses of night—and establishes truth.
Her face felt wet, and she realized she was crying—but she had never before felt such joy. I know him. I've always known him.
He reached her side, his feet touching down gently on the landing of the pyre's platform, and he immediately swept her up in his fervent embrace, crushing her to him. She felt the strength from his Craft reaching into her, touching something inside, renewing. Robin thought it impossible that her heart could feel any fuller, and yet it continued to feel as though it expanded in her chest.
She threw her arms around him in return, burying her face in the dark hair at his neck, making the nape of it wet with her tears. Her breath came in hiccups, made of half sobs and half laughter.
He found his way back to me. We are together. He was meant for me, he renews me—as I was meant to protect him and awaken him, he is the source of my power.
This was the secret, the Arcanum that no one knew.
He pressed his lips against the shell of her ear and whispered a name into it. Her emerald eyes went wide as she listened, then glazed over; but the feminine voice responded instantly. I know that name well. It is one we both share, you and I.
Then—
Yes, came the answer. I am you. I have always been you; I am that which you were meant to become. I am your inner light.
Now, the voice continued, do you know who you really are?
Still in Amon's arms, his light continuing to shine brightly around them, she opened her eyes to look out over his shoulder at the multitude of people filling the square. She saw a cacophony of expressions on the faces directed towards her; anger, confusion, and awe. The words came to her consciousness like ripples of water.
I am Diana, Robin thought, I am Aradia. I am Bast, I am Lilith. I am them all. I am how they see me—beauty, goodness, terror and destruction. Each sees a different side, but I am all, one and the same.
I am the Mother, as she saw Seth gazing up at her, enraptured. I am the Ancient One. I am blessing, and I am freedom. Soldiers in full uniform—Seeds—lowered their weapons, staring at her with new understanding as her eyes passed over each one. I am peace, and war has come because of me.
She clung tightly to Amon and felt him hold on more securely in response. I am his ruler, and whatever he wills happens to me.
For him, I am gentleness, and I am wrath. With him, I am the creator who awakens, and I am the destroyer who eliminates.
But it was the Cabal's Army, the Craft-users, who now captured her attention. They glared at her sullenly from where they had been forced to kneel in the dirt before the stake, held prisoner by the fierce wind, their thwarted Crafts useless. The revulsion in their eyes gave her pause. She realized then that they did not see Amon—although they could see his light, his form was not visible to them.
In her ear, Robin heard him whisper again. I am hidden from them within the light. But they can see you…and they will try to kill you if you let them. You must act.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied Hedya lurching unsteadily to her feet, struggling to pull herself upright against the wind. The blonde woman had gained enough strength to stumble from the scene, pushing aside the weak humans curled in fetal position and groaning on the ground, as she made her way towards an Ariete tank. She moved as though she would shove the unconscious pilot out before taking his place. Chanan, Noa and a few others followed her lead with effort and moved to pick up weapons.
Robin watched them carefully as she slowly released her hold on Amon's neck and gently pulled herself from his grasp. Her tears had dried on her face from the synergy of his wind and the rising heat in her blood; her resolve had hardened into steel at witnessing the actions of the Witches before her.
I may have many names, and many purposes, she thought, but above all, I am Robin. She could see the judgment and anger radiating from them in waves.
And I do not forgive them.
The wind noticeably died down within il Campo, and the light faded around her to a dull glow. Though he was hidden to them she could feel him still close at her side, winding his hand in her hair, curling his invisible fingers around her arm. Become his avenger, his retribution, his right eye of justice. Become his destroyer.
She raised her eyes slowly, with sly reproach, to the betrayers who took their aim with semi-automatic rifles. “You would take up arms against me, now, after all you have seen?” she asked them, almost demurely.
Noa stood unflinching at the forefront of the group. “We are fulfilling our duty under God, our obligation to SOLOMON,” she insisted acidly.
“You have no obligation to them,” Robin responded with quiet assurance. She looked beyond Noa at the other soldiers and Craft-users standing before her holding trained weapons, and directed her words to them with a strengthened voice. “Refuse their bidding and enter into a covenant with us,” she instructed. “Refuse to hunt, all of you—and we will have no quarrel.”
“And why should we listen to you?” demanded Chanan, brandishing a rifle as he stood beside the brunette woman. Seth lifted his chin as he watched the exchange, waiting for her reply.
“Because I am she, whom you have been waiting for,” Robin answered, “and as long as you continue to hunt your own kind, I will not stand for it.”
From a short distance away, they heard an angry shout. “Blasphemy!” Vasile was on the ground, weakened by Amon's power—but resisting it as best he could. He trembled and shook with the effort it took to brace his upper body with his forearms to regard Robin, his face twisted in exertion and fury. “No one should have divinity, no one should have the power of `gods'!” he raged on. “You do not have the right to choose the fates of others!”
“Yet we have the right to choose our own,” she reminded him serenely, “as everyone does; it no longer belongs to you. We will not cower and hide under your shadow any longer.”
“What about the Witches who will abuse their powers? They will not spare any that are weaker!”
“Let them come to me,” she instructed. “I will show them, by example, a new world where they can live openly among humankind, without fear. You who inspire jealousy among the gods, let them come to me; and I will demonstrate to them that there is no need for fear or envy.
“But as long as you deny them their futures, drive them into the shadows, make them fear themselves and others like them, they will continue to be destructive.”
Enraged with losing the argument, Vasile began screaming at the top of his lungs. “You have no future and must be destroyed, all like you wiped out. All of you!” Seth looked over at him in surprise, as did many of the Craft-users and paratroopers. “There cannot be any left who can carry on the genes, it is too dangerous! The only way you can be allowed to exist is if you relinquish your will to SOLOMON!”
Again she saw herself in the darkened Church hallway, at the long wooden table opposite Cortion. You know what you must do. Surrender your will. Leave everything to us.
I did not ask for these powers.
Then why do you use them?
She responded now as though she were still facing the Inquisitor, looking at the shadow of Hagalaz on the floor before her. The wake-up call.
I use them, because they are a part of me, a part of who I am…and to deny them would be to deny myself—to deny my own existence.
She thought of the thousands of times she had given in, given up, surrendered both her determination and what was most precious to her; having done exactly as she was instructed. Waiting. Yielding. To defy them, to exercise her own resolve, was to side with Satan.
The Devil is Free Will.
She understood, now. To keep what she loved, she would concede no more.
“No. I will not relinquish it.” Her narrowed eyes sparked green fire.
“My will is mine.”
There was complete darkness. Then she felt Amon's arms encircle her once more, and the light—his light—rematerialized in an instant, completely enveloping her, wrapping her in brilliance as though it were her garment, as though she wore the radiant stars above her head, the moon at her feet, and the halo of the sun illuminating her form.
As the Witches looked on it appeared as though the two figures had become a singular, shining entity—nearly too bright to look at.
Seth tried to make himself move, succeeded in stumbling a few feet backwards. He watched as Robin was backlit by the light, and witnessed the previously-snuffed torches surrounding the square sparking into brilliant gold life around her. What fools we were, he realized, to think that she could be defeated by the very element that she commands to do her bidding. Our protection spells are nothing to her.
As he took a few more steps backwards, he heard Vasile recommence his screaming. “Kill them,” the Archbishop cried from the ground. “Kill them!”
Noa, brandishing her semi-automatic rifle, took aim and fired. The members of the Coven, as well as many more Craft-users and Seeds, took up their arms as well. As feared, the bullets and shells bounced harmlessly as Robin's shield of flame flared up around her shining form.
But it wasn't just a shield, this time.
The fire swelled and then came at them relentlessly; a roiling, crushing tsunami of light and heat that dissolved everything in its path. His wind fed into her as she directed her flame, and it danced and curled as it moved like a living, blazing wall, radiating outward from the circle of the pyre. The Craft-users faced it down fearlessly; some tried to run, but they had no time or place to take cover. Armor and bullets were ineffectual. They screamed only briefly as it devoured them, scorching, burning them away clean…purifying until nothing was left.
Vasile was incinerated as he cowered on the ground, cursing her even with his last breath. The Ariete tanks were no match; the inferno penetrated it, Hedya managing only to gasp aloud before her body was razed by the flames. All of il Campo was on fire.
Only the unconscious humans and penitent Seeds and Craft-users—on the ground, without weapons—were untouched; everyone and everything else were reduced to ashes.
His wind came again in a harsh gale of dark and searing heat, sweeping the debris and dust from the earth, scattering the ash. The last remnants of flame flickered and slowly died as the whirling vortex gained strength, surrounding the stake and creating a windstorm that reached high into the heavens, far above the plaza.
And then, in the blink of an instant, it was gone.
)O(
A hand traveled gently, lovingly down his face.
Amon leaned into it, inhaling as he stirred, gradually becoming aware of his other senses. They were surrounded by trees—a forest somewhere. It was still dark, but the sky was beginning to lighten little by little with the promise of daybreak. His head was in her lap, as it had been once before when he'd been injured; he could feel the soft pilgrim's shift underneath his cheek that smelled of wood and smoke from a clean-burning fire.
Her hand tousled his hair again, softly twining her fingers in it. “You're finally awake,” she whispered. Her voice sounded slightly choked, and against the protest of his aching limbs, he sat up and turned to face her.
Her emerald eyes were saddened, worried as she regarded him; and he felt a sudden mixture of surprise and remorse. “Robin,” he breathed, “what is it?” He cupped her face in his hands, brushed the beginnings of moisture away from her eyes with the tips of his thumbs. “Oshiete.”
“You've given it up,” she whispered, pursing her lips as her chest constricted with emotion, “your humanity…Amon, you've changed, because of me—”
“It was what I wanted,” he assured her, smoothing her chestnut-blonde hair gently from her face.
“Was it?” she asked fearfully, and he knew she was afraid on some level of his answer. “You can never be the way you were before, you can never take it back—”
“I don't want to take it back,” he whispered fervently, as he held her by the shoulders firmly. “Robin, I ran from you once; I'll never do it again.” He cradled her face in his hands again to make her understand. “I'll never leave your side again.”
She laughed then, in understanding and relief, in joy tinged with sadness; her same laughter when he'd reached her on the pyre, bathed in pure light. He pulled her into a tight embrace, overcome with emotion so powerful he could not put it into words.
The only thing he brought himself to say was a slightly unsteady, “It won't be easy.”
He knew that underneath his simple statement, she heard everything he'd left unsaid. We will be forever hunted and pursued. We will have to fight our way through every place we go. I will always assume the worst. I still have so many things I need to work through. I may never be able to tell you what I truly feel.
But I will stay with you…if you'll have me.
He felt her smile against his collarbone, between where his neck met his shoulder; and he decided that part of him would always be hers, and hers alone.
“I know,” she whispered simply in response.
He held her tightly, burying his face in her hair. There was hope, yet. He moved his lips to her ear, casually pressing them against it; at the touch of his mouth to her skin he wanted more, and he pulled back from their embrace and kissed her lips, cupping her face in his hands. She returned it eagerly, her fingers curling into his hair at the back of his neck.
Desire and a dizzying hunger began to swell in him, and before he truly knew what he was doing he was deepening the kiss, his hands and tongue demanding and insistent; and although she at first responded breathlessly, she began to fend him off, pushing him away with gentleness.
“Amon…” She tried to separate her lips from his. “Not here…Amon, not now…later…”
He stopped, resting his forehead against hers, panting with need, outlining the contours of her face with his roaming fingers as he finally began to calm himself.
She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek, holding it in place with her own. “There will be time. But not right now.” She glanced upward at the sky. “Daylight is approaching. They will be looking. We have to be ready.”
She stood fluidly, adjusting her shift, and reached down to him to help him up. “Andiamo.” Her green eyes gleamed at him in the thin darkness.
Iron in velvet.
He gazed up at her for a long moment, before taking her offered hand and allowing her to help him to rise.
Together they stood, hands linked, and headed off into the east; out of the expanse of green surrounding them.
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I will give the secrets you request...and you will be the one to sacrifice. Pray your gods who hold you by your fear, for they are quick and ruthless punishers....or lay upon my altar now your love. Chapter 20 - Epilogue.
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Translations (Italian, unless otherwise stated):
ciò che stai facendo?: what are you doing?
signore: sir
che palle: what a nuisance
taci: hold your tongue, shut up
budiulo: asshole
mio figlio: my son
pulsa d'nura: (Aramaic) “lashes of fire”. From the Zohar, this is a Qabalist (or Kabbalist) cursing ceremony in which God's wrath is invoked against someone who is believed to be a sinner; it can also be construed to be heavenly punishment against a person who does not fulfill their religious obligations. Incidentally, there is no other real translation (into English or any other language) of the actual pulsa d'nura curse, which is why I did not provide one in this fic. Supposedly the subject matter is too powerful. o_O
capisco: I see now
mi perdoni: forgive me
non capisco: I don't understand
smettila: stop it
mia cara: my darling
Fata Regina: Fairy Queen (Diana)
Dea Matrona: Mother Goddess
la madonna del fuoco: lady of fire
fuoco fatuo: will o'the wisp, literally “fool's fire”; a delusive or misleading hope
signore: sir
che palle: what a nuisance
taci: hold your tongue, shut up
budiulo: asshole
mio figlio: my son
pulsa d'nura: (Aramaic) “lashes of fire”. From the Zohar, this is a Qabalist (or Kabbalist) cursing ceremony in which God's wrath is invoked against someone who is believed to be a sinner; it can also be construed to be heavenly punishment against a person who does not fulfill their religious obligations. Incidentally, there is no other real translation (into English or any other language) of the actual pulsa d'nura curse, which is why I did not provide one in this fic. Supposedly the subject matter is too powerful. o_O
capisco: I see now
mi perdoni: forgive me
non capisco: I don't understand
smettila: stop it
mia cara: my darling
Fata Regina: Fairy Queen (Diana)
Dea Matrona: Mother Goddess
la madonna del fuoco: lady of fire
fuoco fatuo: will o'the wisp, literally “fool's fire”; a delusive or misleading hope
madre, mi perdoni: Mother, forgive me
Deus, Principium et Finis: (Latin) God, the beginning and the end
Pater Noster: (Latin) Our Father
Atah…Le Olam, Amen: (Hebrew) Thou art the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever, Amen.
torihanaso: (Japanese) let go
yamero: (Japanese) stop
Okaasan: (Japanese) Mother
yamenasai: (Japanese) stop
onegai: (Japanese) please
Sumimasen deshita: (Japanese) I'm so sorry
oshiete: (Japanese) tell me
Deus, Principium et Finis: (Latin) God, the beginning and the end
Pater Noster: (Latin) Our Father
Atah…Le Olam, Amen: (Hebrew) Thou art the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, forever, Amen.
torihanaso: (Japanese) let go
yamero: (Japanese) stop
Okaasan: (Japanese) Mother
yamenasai: (Japanese) stop
onegai: (Japanese) please
Sumimasen deshita: (Japanese) I'm so sorry
oshiete: (Japanese) tell me
Be sure to check the Hieros Gamos comm on LJ (link in profile) to obtain the soundtrack for these last two chapters. Thank you for reading! <3