6. SPAIN 19th Century #8
Yet he occasionally manifested in the material world and was granted powerful pseudo-flesh to pursue his destiny of revenge against the one who had murdered him. He was no longer truly immortal, but the Romani witch remained unaware of this.
The Fates worked in mysterious ways.
Frustratingly held by the Romani witch’s magic, the once-Titan cried out to The Fates for aid, to keep their promise to him that he could enact his revenge against his dark child, Olympius, the upstart god who had slain him thousands of years ago, unencumbered.
However, the enigmatic Weird Sisters remained hauntingly silent.
“Bitch goddesses!” the pseudo-immortal raged. “I do not know you, witch! Why do you do this?!”
“Yes, I do look slightly different,” the Romani witch admitted through clenched teeth. His hatred and fury were palpable. “Look into my eyes, demon, deep into the black pools, and see who I am. See my past!”
Though still in excruciating pain, the blood-drinker managed a brief moment of resolve to gaze into the dark eyes of his tormentor. Inside the ocular abyss, he saw swirls of light that became flashes of memory, and he soon recognized his tormentor.
Fighting against the pain, the partially solid apparition, his jaw tight, snickered.
“I remember you! The fool witch who thought to stand against me in that nothing town in a nothing part of the world all those centuries ago. To save those doomed mortals. Oh, how deliciously you failed. I see you are also cursed, for how else could you be here now in a different body? Reincarnation never allows memory to travel with the soul into new flesh. My sister Mnemosyne taught me that!”
The fiend returned to shrieking in pain as parts of his solidified limbs continued to rot and fall off the bone, plummeting to the ground in wet, bloody chunks.
But then, the wailing transformed into a raucous bellow.
That noise was soon followed by several grunts, and the god’s decaying face filled with determination and rage.
“I will—not—be caged—by a mortal!”
And the furious and determined fiend vanished.
“No!” the Romani witch cried out.
But before he could gather his thoughts or give voice to any more of his feelings, he was struck from behind, the blow so intense it sent him hurtling through the air.
He crashed against the weathered brick wall of the barbershop across the street.
The sound of bricks breaking mingled with the shattering glass of the shop’s window.
If it had not been for his protection spell, the invisible shield around his body, the Romani witch knew he would have been instantly killed by the force of the impact, not just having the breath knocked out of him.
“My will is stronger, witch,” the blood-drinker seethed as he suddenly reappeared a few paces in front of the wrecked shop, solid and showing no signs of necrotic damage. “You will not trap me in that dark magic again.”
As he watched his enemy approach him, laughing mockingly, his feet elevated above the ground, the Romani witch pointed at the floating creature and cried out, “Aer densatur—prohibere movere!”
The air surrounding the god suddenly thickened, holding him in place.
The Romani witch was aware that this spell had not worked well in the past, as it would only hold the blood-drinker for a few moments before he transformed his flesh back into spirit and escaped. But a few moments were all he needed.
Dispelling his protective aura, for its presence would impede the dark magic he planned to use, the Romani witch reached inside his cloak and grabbed the small dagger that was attached to his belt; it was one of two items he carried with him in every lifetime.
This one he made sure to keep hidden and safe until his memories returned and he could reclaim it: Aeneas’ dagger.
It was the very talisman a young Aeneas had used to channel his blood magic, the blade the Romani witch first laid eyes on during their encounter with the spawn of the Erymanthian Boar.
The dagger was more than a magical tool or a weapon to him; it was his only remaining physical tie to Aeneas, to their original life together.
After his abrupt death in Britannia, it had taken him years in his next life to track the dagger down.
He enchanted it after that for quick retrieval going forward.
Without wasting a second, the Romani witch cut himself, one slash on both arms and both legs, even his brow.
Then, he violently stabbed himself in the chest with the dagger, puncturing through his clothing and plunging the blade into his beating heart to the hilt, though no blood appeared from the wound.
“ú?-ma?-tab-ba,” [“Blood Twin,”] the Romani witch whispered.
Suddenly, ropes of crimson ichor shot out of the five bleeding gashes on his body as quick as any arrow toward the immobile and solid immortal; like swords, they stabbed and punctured his magical flesh but did not penetrate all the way through.
They remained dangling like monstrous marionette strings.
“You look confused, demon,” the Romani witch scoffed. “Since you cared not for necromancy, I thought Sumerian blood magic may be more to your liking.”
“What is this?! What have y—”
“Silence!” the Romani witch commanded, cutting off the immortal.
And silence he received. “You’ve done enough talking.
I don’t want to hear another fucking word out of your mouth.
You are now linked to me by my blood, monster, and your body is mine to control.
You cannot move, cannot speak, cannot act unless I allow it.
I could order you to kill yourself, and you would without a moment’s hesitation.
Your thoughts are your own, however, for I want you to understand what I’m about to do to you. ”
This mystic act was far more potent and far more sanguine than the Blood Puppet spell the Romani witch had used on Alejandro. This was not even the Egyptian blood magic taught to him by Aeneas and his mother; this was dark, primordial Sumerian thaumaturgy straight from Baba Yaga’s grimoire.
“The dagger is enchanted, so it does not kill me. It does, however, give me access to your heart and soul. Without it, I can only affect you physically, and that simply won’t do. You see, demon, I’m going to unmake you.”
The god twisted his face in confusion, his brows knitting together. “What do you mean by ‘unmake me’?” he demanded to know, a hint of incredulity lacing his angry voice.
“Qlippothic magic, fiend. Entropic energy. Anti-creation. I know how.”
The fiend’s eyes widened in disbelief, and a wave of sheer terror washed over his face, chilling him to his wicked core. “You would not dare!”
“I absolutely would, monster,” the Romani witch grinned sinisterly.
His eyes, though still black as midnight, verily glowed in the darkness, pulsing with malevolent energy.
“This is why I needed to bind your heart and soul to me, not just your flesh and blood.
To unmake your form is not enough; I desire the destruction of your essence.
I intend to uncreate you, to erase you from existence, from all planes of reality.
“I see it in your stony eyes, demon. You enjoy pain, brutality, and killing. Death—you relish it! You’re no god, just another monster who thinks possessing great power grants them the right to control or destroy with abandon and slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately.
“You took my eternal beloved, my home, my friends who became family, and even my own life from me, and you did it for no reason aside from evil, sick pleasure. I couldn’t stop you then, but I can now. Forever.”
The immortal seethed with a cacophonous mix of fury and distress, his voice a storm of curses that echoed through the night.
He vacillated chaotically between wrathful threats and desperate pleas for mercy.
The thought of being uncreated , eternally wiped from the face of reality, had driven him to the brink of madness.
Suddenly, a man-sized portal opened behind the immortal, revealing an infinite expanse of darkness that seemed to consume all light.
Caught off guard, the Romani witch faltered in his incantation. The stillness radiating from the abyssal gate felt utterly alien to him; it was a stark contrast to the vivid, pulsing energy of the doorway of darkness he had once summoned in Baba Yaga’s enchanted hut centuries ago.
There were no thrumming tendrils of living darkness that danced with untamed life, nor was there any resonant energy that filled the air with magic, with power.
Instead, this portal radiated an unsettling sterility, an oppressive silence that whispered of an absence so profound it seemed to suffocate the very notion of space and time.
The Romani witch’s instincts told him that this was not the Shadow Realm he had previously encountered but rather a chilling abyss of nothingness.
Before his eyes, the Romani witch saw his enemy begin his transformation back into an apparition.
Unable to hold on to their target, for the immortal’s body was no longer fully tangible, the five ropes of blood fell to the ground with loud splashes. In seconds, the crimson liquid evaporated, and the Romani witch’s five bloody gashes healed as that part of the spell was broken.
“No, stop! He’s mine! The monster deserves this!”
The harmonious sound of three female voices—one young, one aged, and one stern yet affectionate, almost motherly—echoed resoundingly in the night air, even though there were no physical bodies to be found.
“What you desire is not his fate, witch, and be grateful for that, for the sake of your own immortal soul. His cursed existence is not yet over, and neither you nor the Wheel of Destiny can alter this. Take comfort—pride, even, if you desire that—in the knowledge that you have defeated the once-Titan. And he knows this. The two of you shall never meet again. The Fates have spoken. ”