Twenty Eight
4 October, 2001, 60 miles West of Chamdo, Tibet
The monastery was exactly as Loki had left it, except that the monks there were in more advanced stages of decay. Most had been picked clean by the numerous small scavengers who had taken up residence.
Loki and Whistler materialized at the top of the high flight of steps, beneath the oriental style overhang. The great doors leading into the monastery were still lying open at crooked angles, the wood splintered and cracked, and now slightly rotten, from Glory’s invasion more than a year ago.
Whistler followed Loki, a few steps behind. It was a grim sight. Loki had never seen a vulture up close before, and he nearly didn’t see the one which had made a nest among the scattered bones, until it rose from the dusty corpses like some dark, terrible phoenix.
Loki made a small cry of surprise and the great beating of the wings was his answer as the scavenger broke for the doorway behind them and disappeared into the daylight.
The startled specter held a hand to his chest to calm his breathing. It was times like these that he missed the Littlest Dagon Sphere – the tiny meditative ball he had left where he was sure it would interfere no more in his free will. The sight of the inside of the hall was anything but calming. A full fourteen months of decomposition, open to mice and rats, beetles and maggots, birds of prey as well as the variety of snakes which lived in these mountains, had left little more than a scattering of sinew-covered bones and moldering fabrics. Spider webs rounded off every corner of the room —some neat and thin; sill in use by their makers— others thick and dust filled, like sheets of old silk; tattered and frayed.
The beams of sunlight that entered the room through the many slitted windows caught the lazily floating motes of dust that were disturbed by a gentle breeze or the beating of the bird’s wings.
Dark and dusty, empty skulls looked up at the pair as they passed. The smell was bearable now, the odors of death diluted with time and mixed with the other scents of feces and fungi. Loki wasn’t sure, but the empty eyes seemed to be glaring at them. Either at Whistler –the booking agent of their fate– or at Loki –the creature who had left them to it.
Loki made his way down the short corridor into the small gathering room leading to the rock garden. The were fewer bodies here than near the main entrance. A gentle breeze was wafting through the great archway that opened onto the terrace. Loki stopped under the arch and Whistler joined him. The sight was infinitely divergent from that of a year and a half ago.
There was no tranquil girl brushing her hand through the pool. There were no tiny birds buzzing from this flower to that. The garden had gone wild. Weeds had sprung up between every rock and pebble, choking off the delicate, transplanted flora. The small tree near the center of the garden was gnarled and its leaves were brown. The fountain had ceased to discharge water.
At first, the fountain interested the conjurer. An artesian well, he knew, released water due to the potentiometric pressure of the aquifer into which it was tapped. There should be nothing to cause it to cease flowing. Then, as he stepped into the garden, his feet squelching through the swampy surface covering the flagstones, he realized the well was still flowing — just not from the stone fountain. The vines that had begun to dismantle the fountain’s surface concealed the great crack in the stone, from which slime now flowed. Algae and moss covered the surface of the reflecting pool and none of the fish could be seen.
Loki swallowed and made his way out of the overgrown garden to where Whistler was still waiting for him under the archway. Now the demon led the way as they passed into the dark passageways, lined with closed doors.
Loki recognized the stair they descended in the darkness as the one leading to the chamber of the Key. He nearly stumbled when, in the darkness, they reached the bottom of the stair. With a brilliant flash of light, Whistler struck a match and set fire to the torch that still rested in its bracket on the wall.
“This is where it started,” Whistler said calmly, pushing open the door. “And where it ended.” Loki followed.
It was only as he crossed the threshold that the impact of the stench struck him. With no ventilation, no abundance of rats of vultures, the corpses this deep in the bowels of the monastery had not decayed like the ones above.
With flesh still clinging to bone, cloth to flesh and blood to cloth, the bodies here were very much as they had died; hideous.
Loki’s throat clenched tight, his breath freezing in his lungs to prevent him from vomiting on the spot. In front of him, just as he had left it, the face of Haargan stared back at him. The conjurer now very much regretted not either cleaning away the bodies or setting fire to the whole place, the last time he was here.
The specter turned away, heading for the door and fresher air, when the demon caught his arm. “Look at them,” Whistler commanded, his tone harsh and unforgiving. Roughly, he twisted Loki around to face the monk’s head again. In the torchlight, his dried, rotting face was set in a twitching leer.
“You could have been among them,” the demon continued, his endearing accent fading. “You could have been so concerned with them, with the Key, that you’d stayed, and been among them.”
“But I wasn’t,” the specter retorted angrily. He now had to draw the foul air into his lungs where it burned away like acidic smoke. “I never am. All these massacres, all this death —it’s never me.” He found here, in these simple words, the release for the rage that all the demon killing of a quarter century couldn’t purge. “The monks here,” Loki went on, his voice cold and hard, “they taught me to deal with it – survivor guilt. To deal with being the one left behind. They said, for any emotion that follows you – which you can’t get rid of: ‘Give it a name, call it friend.’ So I did.” He wrested his arm from Whistler’s grip and in two strides found himself by the stone pedestal, displaying something rather more gruesome than a clay pot. Loki, without thinking, angrily seized Haargan’s head by the hair.
“This is what I am!” He declared, his deep rooted anger venting fully and wholeheartedly. “‘Give it a name.’ I call it Loki,” the conjurer spat, shaking the disembodied head. “Loki– who gets to enjoy shit like this all his life!” He hurled the head as hard as he could against the far wall, where it crunched and rolled to a corpse on the floor.
“Destiny wouldn’t have me killed – no, that would be too easy!” Loki swatted the hanging lamp and it swung in a creaking arc. “Destiny wouldn’t have me kill Spike – of course not! He’s a rat-bastard who deserves to die a hundred times over – so obviously he lives.” There was the greatest variety of hatred, resentment, bitterness and cynicism in the conjurer’s voice as he glared maliciously at the demon holding the torch.
“Loki, I call it, and yes, it’s a friend. It’s Mr. Hyde and Captain Ahab put together. It knows exactly what I want and it knows exactly how Destiny will keep it from me.” Loki paced the chamber, stepped indifferently over the broken bodies. “It’s Logan, not Loki, who cares about the Key — cares about his soul and redemption. Loki knows there nothing left to redeem — knows its only purpose is vengeance.” Loki closed his fist and slammed it down on the stone pedestal. “Yes it’s a friend. My only friend. It’s me—” he spread his arms to encompass the room and all its grizzly contents, “—And I’m this.”
“You are,” Whistler began slowly, his tone soft but unsympathetic, “what you choose. You are your struggle.” He took a step back, over the threshold of the door. “And you are in vain.” The demon turned and left, leaving Loki to himself in the darkness.
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