“Amalia Taestros.”
“Eh?” The little boy squinted in the sunlight, scratching his chin. Then he turned his attention to the ground, and caught sight of a little rock a few steps away. It was a splotch of black among reddish-brown sand, a chip off the ruins of city walls sprouting behind the two.
“Taestros. Amalia Taestros and - and Kyriosen Angaelos.”
“Might be, might not…” Unconcerned, he kicked at the pebble – and his foot went right through it. But the boy didn’t appear to be terribly amazed by that fact. If anything, he looked bored. “You just go your own way, will you?” Head snapped toward the traveler for the first time, eyes narrowed. Wide, clear blue eyes the child had, and full lips. Like a cupid. After a moment of staring, the he shrugged. “You look like a nice guy, you know? And what’s in there isn’t nice.”
“This is Kyriosen’s city.”
“Yes, yes – look, I see those guns on you. I see the pointy knives, I really do. I even know that they’re all silver and that you have a good couple of stakes tucked away here and there.” He rolled his eyes. “Wood and silver, and a cross, no less – gods. And really, I’m not taking them not because I’m a poor dead thrall and can’t, but ‘cause they won’t really do you any good.”
There was no reply. Behind the two of them was nothing, a limitless stretch of red sand in every direction but that of the city’s. Grains boiled and scorch marks shone on the black granite of the gate and walls; the air was heavy, horridly heavy with the odor of putrid, rotting flesh. Everything looked oddly out of place in the desert, the walls, the city itself, crumbling even from the outside - and the gate was smashed, crushed, black rubble on red earth, but still impenetrable because of its guard.
The ghost once again tried kicking at the rock, failing miserably. “Eh – you go in, if you so very much want to.”
“My thanks.”
An ugly grimace flitted past the boy’s perfect face. “Nothing to thank me for, nothing at all.” And then his voice changed. No longer nonchalant and blithe, it became small. Like a child’s, and truer to his form. “Just – just don’t turn around when you pass the gate. Don’t look at me, okay?”
“Of course.”
The little cupid stepped aside, perching himself on the ground, watching the traveler toss away an arsenal. Out went knives, blades that were more little swords than daggers, guns of varying size and calibers, two grenades and ammunition. His white hood fell off while he did this, revealing a steal grey hair and beard - wisps on a balding head, and the thick-rimmed glasses on a horribly thin face were askew. For a short while he fiddled with two stakes, frowning before pocketing them again. Then the man inclined his head at the ghost and passed the gate.
Inside, the silence was deafening.
And when that stopped, when it became loud, the wind began to scream her name. Howled, shrieked - hundreds of tiny little needle etched that word into his mind. Sculpted it onto the molt on the ground. Like tears tumbling down a face, past cheeks to chin to chest, leaving trails - the granite was bruised, melting, and her name was seeped into it with scarlet ink. AmaliaAmaliaAmaliaAmalia. AmaliaAmaliaAmalia. AmaliaAmaliaAmalia.
The city was dead and screaming her name. Ashes on the ground. Skeletons. Bones underneath rotting flesh, the foul smell of decay - everything littering the alleys; laying, unmoving, for centuries. Her name of blood smeared on molten black stone, and underneath were corpses.
All had tumbled down, crushed by the sheer menace of the cry. Rolling like thunder through the burnt avenues - with the shriek came fire, igniting a city of stone and all its inhabitants. Buildings looked like giant black blobs, without any defined form, leaking to the streets. Bodies with charred flesh, sliced open, ripped apart to naked crumpled bone, molded into place by what has crushed down on them so many years ago.
And in the horizon - upward, heavenward, placed atop a hill - was a palace, blaring black in the rays from above. Colorless lips slightly apart, the lone traveler took deep breaths that gagged him. This was, he though numbly, the road through which she escaped. Where she ran at noon, sun high in the sky, bleeding, screaming. Where she crawled toward the gate.
The man’s shoulders slumped. In his dry mouth he tasted bile, jarring his throat down to the stomach. Sunken cheeks with only a thin layer of pasty skin and deeply set eyes made him look as he were dead himself. He staggered past them, past the deformed corpses and molt, through the screams - he could not walk, could not keep himself upright. He stumbled as though drunk, eyes peeled on the palace overhead. And while he climbed upward, tears leaked out of his eyes.
“It took you two hundred years to find your mother, Atarian. Do you really think you can do anything for her?”
