Ah, so there was a rabbit-man Jesus. I turned to Wunder. “I thought you said I should forget everything about what I was before I died?”
“You should,” he glared lightly at my cloak. “Arol was some sort of priestess and Erzili has already tried and failed to wash away her devotion. Somehow, that is the only thing that refused to die, no matter how ridiculous.”
“Leveretism is not ridiculous!”
“Your people believed sex with rabbits three times daily would grant them the enlightenment of sages. They believed directly sucking the genitals of powerful sorcerers was the key to unlocking one’s magic, and that eating meat would shorten your lifespan.”
“And they were right!”
I tried not to laugh, only vaguely managing to obscure my snort. Of the three things I had heard, arguably, Arol was right about at least one of them, though only when it was done in excess. The other two were on a level I could not even begin to have any reason to believe was true. Correlation did not always imply causation, and it was more likely a cunning sorcerer tricked them into believing it to get a supply of oral sex in exchange for giving them magic than it was that the oral sex gave them magic. Still, I knew too little of Alamir to make a judgment on that, and it was possible to be true.
As Arol and Wunder bickered back and forth, the albino vulture stared straight at me. White pristine feathers and a piercing gaze, I noticed it was not focusing on its meal. No, it was not focusing on its meal or anything but me. Each passing second where it unflinchingly gazed at me became increasingly uncomfortable.
It felt as if it was trying to… communicate.
“…nus.”
“…nus.”
“Janus!”
Wunder obstructed my view, his heavy hand landing on my right shoulder. “We’re leaving Janus. What are you looking at?”
“The – the vulture. I mean, it’s staring at me.”
Wunder looked, skeptic. “Don’t tell me you’ve bought into Arol’s tales.”
“No, I mean, look at it –”
I gestured my hand forward. Except there was nothing there. “Wait… where is it?” The vulture was gone. “It – it was right there. It was right there and looking at me.”
“Right,” Wunder said, dryly. “Of course.”
“I told you those things were cursed!” Arol emerged from my cloak, crossing her arms. “Anything connected to an Anathema is nothing but trouble.”
Anything connected to an Anathema. I was not fully sure what separated an Anathema from regular nightmares, but I could guess. “So, what if, there was a Nightwitch… who was the Avatar of an Anathema, and that Nightwitch named a nightmare. Would that nightmare… technically, be connected to the Anathema?”
Wunder frowned. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“On which Anathema.”
“What if it were… Omega?”
Wunder’s eyes latched on me, his face was devoid of humor. Arol beside me had gone extremely stiff. There was an increasingly mounting pressure I could feel coming from the gaze of both nightmares.
“Janus… is your Nightwitch… the Avatar of Omega?”
The pressure began to increase. I noticed, slowly, how Arol cautiously reached for her macuahuitl, how Wunder’s black quills began to grow ever so slowly, how both of them were tense, coiled, and almost ready to strike.
“No.” I lied. “I’m a skeleton… remember? What are the odds of a skeleton being named by someone like that?”
“What’s her name?”
“Her?”
“The Nightwitch that gave you your name, Janus. What. Is. Her. Name?”
“I never said a Nightwitch gave me my name,” I said, calming myself. Calm. Calm. “I was named by a Nightshaman… a Nightshaman named Mavros Cuvar.”
Arol’s eyes widened. “The Mavros Cuvar? No way!”
“You… you’ve heard of him?”
Wunder’s quills began to shrink to regular size. “Erzili possesses an ancient artifact called the Book of Nightly Ones. Within its self-updating pages are the name of every Nightwitch, Nightshaman and Nightchild to ever live. Arol and I have gone through it.”
“What a rather… useful thing to have.” I kept my voice level.
“It is.” Arol quipped in. “There are very few ways for you to know the name of a Nightly One unless you’ve met them. So we’d have known if you were lying.”
Wunder shook his head. “You have to be careful with tossing around questions like that Janus. I almost thought you were named by the Mad Sage herself.”
“Me?” I tried to laugh it off. “Like I would be that… lucky.”
Wunder patted me on the back. “If you were, every single living being in Alamir that enjoys living would do their best to hunt you down and kill you.”
“…because I was named by the Mad Sage?”
“Because you were named by a being who is the chosen one of the incarnation of the end.”
“The end of… what?”
“Everything.”
There was not much left for me to say. Not much left I could hear. Wunder and Arol discussed something and bickered, but I zoned them out, too busy thinking. Zlosta had always told me from the beginning that her goal was to end suffering. End suffering by ending all those who suffer. Yet, she had been sealed away, locked up for several thousand years, and the minions that willingly followed her had also been cut off from the rest of the world. Now, nightmares were not the same. Nightmares like Wunder and Arol – they did not want to end the world. They wanted to live in it.
My mind was whirling with a thousand thoughts. I can’t let them know. The truth, unfiltered and spoken without care would get me killed. For now, I would keep my goals to myself. More than that, there was no way for me to even think about starting an army as I was. Arol and Wunder were both much stronger than me, and their leader, this Erzili, no doubt was stronger than them.
I had come a long, long way from a worm. Yet, somehow, I had never stopped feeling
