Chapter 24

"Dear Celia, such are the ways of things from what I know and what I can gather. I do not expect you to believe me outright but neither should you attribute what I've said to old age or think them to be the sayings of a madman. What I have told you is the truth, the way of things behind the veil that has been put in front of your eyes.

I have seen countless sunsets, I have walked over sand and snow, traversed the mountains and journeyed across the Great Sea. I've loved this world dearly ever since I first walked on it, and I'd give my life freely if that would save it. Alas, that is not possible. The Sleeping Man, the Patriarch as you know him is set on winning this game I've told you about; this sadistic, twisted version of a game that has plagued this world as well as you, your people and your ancestors. Your world has perished nine times already, Celia; scraps of people being spared their lives according to the Sleeping Man's plans and desires.

Each time he would begin anew, trying to win this morbid game, utterly destroying everything and everyone. Then he would go on, to other worlds, ravaging more and more souls as his thirst for blood and torment cannot be sated. I have merely tried to wear him down, perhaps force him to abdicate, but his perseverence proved to be second to none. I fear all that I have done is doom so many more souls than a quick victory of his would have claimed. Perhaps, I am as guilty as he is. No matter, soon everything will be over, I fear.

You may find all that impossible to believe and understandably so, but your father had an inkling. He had known things that were not meant to be known. He had become involved too much in the past. That was perhaps his downfall."

Celia's eyes went cold, her face became stiff and austere suddenly. It had not done so at the impossibly world-shaking revelations that the old man had revealed to her in an earnest fashion; her mood had turned for the worse at the mention of her father. Her child was looking at the world around it with a vague interest, turning its head around to see the world he had been brought in, content from life after his mother had fed him. The boy was looking intently at the face of the wizened old man, when Celia spoke without a trace of warmth in her voice:

"I want to hear nothing of him. His place was among the dead the moment he left me to fend for myself. He was chasing ghosts, hunting stories and tales of old. Dead things he chose to cherish and love instead of the living that were warm to him. Speak of him no more, it insults me gravely. I wish he would die a terrible death."

The old man known as Perconal the Jester, indeed the Waking Man of the game, closed his eyes bitterly, and put a finger to his mouth, evidently concerned about Celia's cold and unfitting attitude towards her father. He tried to turn her mind around, to warm her heart when everything around them would soon grow cold and empty.

"Please, the coldness in your voice does not fit the wholeness I can sense in your heart. Your father was forced to leave you Celia. He was caught up in the schemes of the Patriarch. True, it was his quest of uncovering artifacts of old that led him to such a precarious position to attract the Patriarch's attention in the first place, but he only did it because he believed it mattered. Because he believed such knowledge could change a hard, deceitful, uncaring world that was run by a megalomaniac; a blood-thirsty killer, a ruiner of worlds. I can only say he had no other option than leave, to save your life. You might choose to disbelieve me, or think I'm only trying to soothe you, but that's the truth of things."

Celia's gaze was hard as nails, her voice cold like ice:

"And that somehow makes all the years of cold suppers and beatings better? Is it worth anything at all that my life was spared as you say, while I spent endless sleepless night wishing I had never been born? When time after time my body and soul were ravaged by those beasts that dared to call themselves men? A tool of pleasure in the shadows of the Trofeia, all those tortured souls at the hands of monsters with human faces, never knowing mercy or kindness. What kind of father wishes that for his child? Tell me, sir Perconal, what kind of father would wish a life of torment for his child instead of a merciful death? What kind of person would choose that for his own blood?"

They were both sitting opposite each other on a pair of withered old chairs, remnants of a past gone by when the jester seemed to had enjoyed a certain degree of lavishness. That held true no more, but the man had somehow maintained an air of dignity. He had been after all, as he said so himself, venerated as a God by the people he had raised as sons and daughters. Celia had found that hard to believe, but it did not struck her as impossible. A game that toyed with the lives of every man, woman and child on the world.

She knew life could be unbearably hard and cruel, she had lived in such a world for years. That someone had thought of turning it into a game of sorts suddenly felt almost like reassuring evidence that in the end, the world was not very much unlike she had known. It meant that life was cruel in more than one crippling way. It was a cynical thought, she had admitted to herself, but it was true. Truth was always hard and unforgiving. She noticed that the old man had fallen silent, staring at her compassionately, unable to express a proper answer to her question. Celia asked him then earnestly:

"You wouldn't know such a man, would you? Except maybe for the Patriarch."

Perconal scowled at the mention of the name. His answer sounded somewhat harsh, an edge in his voice that belied his years:

"He's not a man. He's a beast. In the most literal sense. He abandoned his original form untold millenia ago. He has been playing this sick game for what could possibly be eons. He's kind of a myth among the rest of the players and the followers of the game. A sort of unofficial champion; a player of immeasurable victories in the past. I only entered the game hoping to put an end to his career of death, carnage, and destruction. Every one of the games he has played has ended in mass genocide, water turned to blood flowing freely as rivers from a mountain top.

Someone should have stopped him. Someone should have stopped the game. The universe is mad and cruel enough without this madness that some have the nerve to call a game. For a long time I thought I could turn the tables to my advantage. I found a way to cheat, for there was little else one could do against a player of his awesomely vicious talents.

I've spent thousands of years trying to find a chink in his armor, but to no avail. All I could ever do was postpone the inevitable. And in the meantime I've watched the people of this world suffer, again and again. But you must understand, I could not forfeit. I had to make a stand. He has to be stopped. Perhaps, there is hope yet. This time is different than the rest. This time he has made a radical shift in his strategy. I know, because I had been close to him for some years in the past, without him suspecting. I masqueraded myself as Perconal the Jester, kept around as a fool. He found out the manner in which I had been cheating and concocted a devious plan to break the deadlock in the game. I'm afraid Amonas too, is part of that plan."

Celia's eyes flamed with anger suddenly and instinctively pulled her baby closer to her. With a sudden jolt she stood upright, the chair behind her falling to the floor with a crash. The child started crying, his little arms and legs trying to reach the safety of his mother's bosom. As she hugged him close to her chest as if protecting him from what she felt were the lies of the man before her, she spoke with the wrath only a woman of her mettle could muster:

"I shall hear naught of this! I owe my life to Amonas and no one else, bless him for eternity! You spoil his name and blemish his honor in front of his wife and child! Have you no shame?"

Perconal tried to appease her, bowing low in apology and motioning her to sit down once again:

"You misunderstand me, dear Celia. I did not say he has done so willingly. He has been deceived and manipulated, as is usually the way of Agrippa, the Patriarch. That's his true name, at least the name with which he enters each game. Even before you met him, Amonas had been a trusted soldier in the army. An officer with a bright career in front of him. As far as I know, he was fearlessly devout and excessively strong of faith.

A fanatic, a zealot who would do anything for the glory of the Pantheon. He was hand-picked by Agrippa, and agreed to have his mind manipulated. I was there, Celia. I saw him enter the Patriarch's quarters on more than one occasion. Beyond the doors I could here his screams and his agony as his mind was being toyed with, so he could be made into a lethal, unsuspected weapon. He was an infiltrator to the kinsfolk's cause.

I had known that when he first came to join, but I could not risk exposing him at the wrong time. Perhaps I was in error. The Patriarch had sought to use him as a tool for a variety of purposes, and it seems he hasn't failed him yet. Amonas was led right into the hands of a young man in possession of a keystone, an artifact that seems to enable its wielder to enter the game's center, where the real Agrippa is located, the place from where he actually plays, controlling his avatar. I believe his mind was somehow programmed to lead this man into the hands of Agrippa. My best guess is he's going to use them both to break the deadlock and leave this world before it is torn asunder, quite literally for the last and final time."

Celia had become flush red from anger, her voice filled with wrathful tremors:

"Lies! The whole lot! I should have never listened to one word of your fantasies! I came here to urge you to action, wake you from a slumber that will be the death of these people and you cover me in wild stories. You marr my husband's name, you insult me and our child. I should have left the moment I heard you utter such vile lies. I shall do so now. Before my wrath overcomes me and urges me to do something my child can never be proud of."

"Listen to me! I know it's almost impossible to believe me, but he could have killed you at a moment's notice from Agrippa. He had become his toy, his faithful puppet. If it's any consolation though, his heart was pure. He believed he was doing the right thing, he believed he was part of the kinsfolk. He believed his future lay in a bright free world, by your loving side. He must have loved you, Celia. For all that matters, he must have loved you."

The boy had stilled its crying, and now switched his gaze to and fro between Perconal and Celia. She squinted her eyes as she directed a gaze that seemed to bore through the old man's wizened face with ease, her accusing voice ringing around the cramped study with the authority of a mythical maiden of wrath:

"What would you know of love? A lonesome old-man, bereft of his sanity, buried in books of fiction and stories that try to put in words the misery that eats away the souls of so many people every day of their waking lives. If you were who you claim to be, you would have done something that mattered a long time ago. If you have failed as you say, what more could there be than take away your own life? If nothing else, it would be the honorable thing to do. But it seems there's none of it in you. So speak not of Amonas and our love. I shall see him still. He has a child waiting for him."

Perconal seemed to understand Celia's harsh judgments. The expression on his face looked as if he had known all those things, and had contemplated them in the past as well. Perhaps, he thought, it would have been better if he had taken away his own life. Perhaps he had no honor in the end. But as these thoughts rang in his head, he saw Celia's brows go narrow and her face draw suddenly pale. He asked her then with worry on his face:

"Celia? What is the matter?"

Celia looked in shock and her baby son started crying once more:

"It's him. I heard him in my head. He's about to do something terrible, I can feel it."

Surprise took over the old man's features and it did not suit him well. He knew what Celia had meant, even though he could not have heard the Patriarch's voice. He sprang into action suddenly, trying to find something among the ruin that constituted his library, in essence various piles of books and so on. He searched for a few moments and picked up a sort of crystal that did not look very much unlike a glass tablet. The ground shook then strangely, as if forces beyond nature were to blame. A deep rythmic shudder went throughout the caves. Perconal's voice carried a calm finality that instantly caught Celia's unwarranted attention:

"It's happening. There's little time if any. Save your child. There's not much I can do now, but save you and your child. I owe so much more to this world and its people, but this where it has come to. Please, don't let the memory of what I've told you fade. And hold on to this pad of crystal: it might seem quite unassuming, but it contains everything that has happened here ever since the game begun. Someone, when they find you, will be able to make use of it."

Celia was trying to comprehend the man, when he suddenly grasped her by one arm and shove something like a needle protruding from a ring of his in her skin. She felt suddenly light and her sight grew somehow faint; all her senses started to grow dim, and she could not move. She was hugging her child as firmly as ever; they looked like they had been turned into stone. Perconal spoke to her one last time, not knowing whether she could still listen to him: