“Gill! Gill! Stop the bracelet! Have you fought for nothing to reach this far?” Gill heard Ugo’s wailings coming through the shadows.
The fear in Ugo’s voice convinced him he had won the first battle. He knew all too well that the right moment of the second fight would come when he glimpsed the cold darkness in the realm of the dead through the Ijmahal trance, when the tiny possibility of returning among the living would no longer be of any use.
Like all good Antyrans, he had been trained since early childhood on what words he should use, but he found, unsurprised, that the old ritual before Zhan’s coming, unchanged by Bailas’ litanies,94 was the closest to him. Therefore, he decided to invoke it: “Ijmahal! I look at myself in all my nakedness and see my kyi’s wounds! Come to heal me in the muddy water-of-the-border, come to reconcile me with my life!” he muttered, starting the process. The auspicious silence around meant that Laixan was right. Then came the lesson from a distant past:
Ijmahal isn’t meant for anyone—or, better to say, isn’t meant for any time. Many Antyrans went into the wilderness to find their healing in the plight’s aroma, many scattered their bones yellowed by time and elements through the thorn-filled valleys or in the holes of the beasts satiated with their flesh, many searched for Ijmahal, and few found it—when they wanted. In truth, even fewer remained alive to tell. For Ijmahal is the bridge to the realm of the afterlife. It is the moment when—although still alive—we find the answer to all questions, we find the enlightenment that only the being-after-life could offer. The ones who, like me, came back with death’s perfume in their nostrils became the great aromaries of the world, Antyrans with the kyi’s wounds forever healed, Antyrans dressed in the heavy armor of silence, Antyrans eternally reconciled with time’s mercilessness…
Gill allowed the afterlife silence to imbue his every cell, to heal his kyi from the minor troubles that defined him as being alive. He deeply inhaled death’s aroma, convinced he could smell its paths, convinced that the moment had come to find the answer to any question… and immediately he realized that he had no question. He was living the secret of the Ijmahal, but he had no answer to seek… and then came the revelation: that was the mystery of the passage! When there are no more questions, when there can’t be more questions, you’re ready to go!
The avalanche budged forward, the destiny of the worlds reaching a precarious equilibrium on a sarpan’s edge. He felt instinctively that the time had come for the second blow, the one meant to push reality on the desired track. “I’m happy with my life and wouldn’t change a bit, even if I could start all over again!” He whispered the ritual words to seal the Ijmahal transformation, the abandonment of all that was supposed-to-come. But to his great surprise, instead of feeling reconciled with himself, he felt painfully stung by the thorn of the falsity for-the-ritual’s-sake. What an egregious lie! he realized, upset. Why would I be happy with my life if I didn’t get to be really alive, to enjoy the tranquility of a cozy nest together with my kyi-mate, sheltered from the storm?
His thoughts immediately ran to Sandara, and the simple invocation of her name caused him an immense pain, feeling the whole guilt of her absurd death in the useless attempt to save him from the jure’s claws. He’d have given anything to have Sandara by his side, even if only to tell her how much he missed her…
Again, the specter of war grinned hideously in his face, cruelly amused by Sandara’s wasting, by the end of happiness before it even began… Sandara died, and the dead don’t return, do they? All that was left was the memory of a smile, an almost-innocent hug stolen in a lull between two fights. He still felt the touch of her fingers on his cheek when she cuddled on his chest; he could still smell the aroma of her head spikes, making him want to become lost again in her naughtily playful eyes…
Gill gazed into the darkness from beyond life and saw Sandara’s kyi waiting for him on the other shore, feeling it rather than seeing it, as she offered herself without a pretense of shame, without hesitation.
“Sandara, do you love me?” he babbled, his voice strangled by emotion.
“Don’t you get it, silly?” Sandara’s shadow whispered. “Come and take me. I’m all yours!”
The storm bred in the ritual’s crack enveloped him with brutality, shattering his armor of silence. For a moment, he had a vision of them rolling wildly in Orizabia’s foamy waves, their tails coiled together, unconcerned about Belamia’s murderous rage, untouched by the madness of the passing time poised to curb the natural order of things, without it mattering that she was dead and he was still alive. He saw himself growing old alongside her; raising a pack of kids, naughty like their mother; laughing and playing on the discoidal grass of a paradise island floating in Uralia’s skies…
Perhaps in another reality, maybe in another universe, they’d finally tie their destiny. But not here—and especially not now. Here, they were no longer bound to meet again, not even in the dreams of a new god, for he was just killing the god. And along with Ugo, he would kill Sandara. He would kill her again, along with the other shadows archived in the destroyer’s memory…
“Gill, you must not die!” he thought he heard the female’s voice say, coming from beyond life’s boundary. “Save yourself, my dear! Fight for us!”
Her words had the effect of waking him up to reality like a cold shower. The realm of the dead disappeared in an instant—to his great sorrow, for the Ijmahal exaltation made him fervently wish to embrace the tranquility from beyond-life and forget that his trip had a different purpose. He realized that only a moment had passed since the abomination had asked him to stop the explosion, that the trance had frozen the flow of time for him…
“What do you want from me?” the avatar wailed in vain. “I’ll help you with the Sigians; I’ll help you with anything—just stop the bracelet!”
Gill heard Ugo’s voice as if in a dream. He stared at him like he just noticed the presence of the monster. He wasn’t afraid that the jure might lie or deceive him in any way, not after he saw the land of death and returned to the living, following the steps of Azaric and the other mythical aromaries of old. He brought Ugo exactly where he wanted. Now he could ask whatever he pleased, and the avatar wouldn’t dare to refuse it.
“What do you want from me?” Ugo lamented.
“Wake up Sandara,” he asked simply.
The demand fell like a bomb. The horror carved on the abomination’s mug left little doubt that the request hit him hard. For a moment, he didn’t say anything, too stunned to move his lips.
“Die! Die! Blow yourself to pieces!” Ugo yelled defiantly. “Not in a million years!”
Then, after a few seconds, seeing that Gill ignored him again, he calmed down.
“I’ve joked, I’ve joked,” he exclaimed, despairing. “Let’s talk… I’ll wake her. But stop it—stop that noise! I’m losing my smell!”
The shriek doubled in intensity.
“Hurry up! We don’t have much time,” Gill whispered in a faint voice, exhausted by the effort of resisting being sucked into the realm of the afterlife before the ordained time.
An eternity seemed to have passed before Sandara’s happy face brightened the display wall. Excited to see her alive, as if she had never died, he felt his blood rushing frantically to the tip of his head spikes. Despite her poor opinion of the living dead, he couldn’t help but notice a few advantages of immortality. But then he remembered the risks of losing one’s kyi (after all, Ugo was a Kaura offspring, too), so he gazed at her keenly, searching for the slightest sign of change. He found none; she was the same Sandara, the very one he dreamed of lately—a dangerous mélange of innocence and unintentional seduction worn with the ease with which she wore a tunic. He felt instinctively that she wasn’t bit by the metamorphosis that crippled Ugo—or maybe he wanted her so badly that the hope clouded his kyi, preventing him from seeing reality?