i wrote this a few days ago and forgot to post it. i don't post most of what i write.
Aleksei rode his horse through the open flower-filled plains on the river bank. He had awhile to go yet to reach his destination, but he took a moment at the height of the rolling plain to look out over the landscape before him. As ever, a new spring made him feel strangely bittersweet. The coming of the heat made him think of the summer all those years past, and the way that new life came from the old made him question his own existence now as a relic of the past.
As he looks over the plain, his eyes were drawn to the sun. No man should ever be able to look directly at the setting sun without discomfort, but he felt none when he stared into the essence of his God. He dismounted, considered, and then took the pack from his horse as he took its bridle out and spoke to it.
“Have a wander, horse.” He never named his horses. Not the ones he rode to war especially. “The flowers are sweet to you, aren’t they?”
The horse gave him no acknowledgement but to bow its head and begin eating. He paid no mind to it then, as he left it to walk down the ridge and toward the river’s edge, holding his pack. It gave him some comfort to be alone out here, roughing it. If he had any of his followers here, it wouldn’t do to let them see their leader engaged in anything outside of leading. He would have one of the squires carry his pack, a quartermaster prepare grain for the horse to supplement its natural diet of grass, a groom to brush it down and feed it, and he would even have to tolerate a cook preparing his meal. Then the petitioners would come, and people delivering reports.
The thought of it all made Aleksei sigh, as he kneeled by the riverside and began skinning a rabbit he had caught earlier in the day and cleaning its carcass in the gently flowing water. He felt it was natural to live life as he was now. It was in his nature to be out here in the rough, living on his own with just his sword by his side and… well, he had no sword by his side actually.
He glances at the still unfamiliar absence of its weight by his hip. He had no reason to wear a sword now, when God let him conjure one to his hand. Aleksei had no more need to intimidate people by its necessary place on his person, it was more fitting to not wear one and surprise them with its appearance. The commons put a lot of stock in someone who had such ease and power that they could summon a weapon of war to their hand instead of have to wear it as they would.
Still, he did not like it. As the spring heat began to wane more and more and the sun disappeared evermore beneath the horizon, Aleksei felt a faint relief. He was obedient to God, he observed all the proper motions, and he truly believed. Well and truly. There is no alternative for a safe society than God, faith, and what he was doing now.
And yet, some small part of him resented it all the same. It was in his nature, as it was in the nature of all men to live a quiet existence punctuated by moments of extreme brutality. He was a man who killed rabbits and let his horses die beneath him. He was a man who had seen the life leave countless men’s eyes. He was a killer. Not a kingdom builder. Sometimes, he didn’t even feel like a priest. Even less often did he feel like a true noble, or a proper knight.
He took the carcass of the rabbit, and he laid it out on what used to be its skin while he took a moment to array his camping supplies. Firewood he had gathered earlier in the day before leaving the woods, a bedroll, and so on. He did not need to light the fire, he could simply conjure it even more easily than his sword. Aleksei kept his gloves on while he took out his mess kit. He looked over the small but fragrant array of spices that he brought with himself and the frying pan he would sometimes use as the fire crackled beside himself. Taken by a flight of fancy, he decided to ignore them as he just roughly quartered the rabbit instead and then began to sharpen a stick. While his mind began to wander once more, he noted at the edge of his awareness the return of his horse as the sun began to wane below the horizon until it was just a red smear on the sky and his campfire was the brightest light for miles around.
Is it back because it feels safe beside me? he wondered. Aleksei enjoyed the company of horses near as much as he enjoyed the company of dogs. It had been a long time since he anthromorphized them as he did in his youth, ascribing them qualities like honor and so on, but he still thought of them as loyal. They were loyal. Nothing was more loyal in this life than a dog, or a well-trained horse. Yet he had seen dogs torn apart during a hunt on more than one occasion, a hunt orchestrated just for the amusement of the huntsmen. He had put down three horses by his own hand when they grew too old, or had grown lame, or were too injured to rise again.
A broken leg to a horse was as detrimental as an arrow to the throat of a man. He mused idly on the correlation as he laid the spit with the rabbit chunks over the fire, and he considered the viscera that remained before deciding to lay it into the embers as he murmured a prayer to God. He saw the flames that licked the viscera glow white, as though in answer. He knew not if God was truly listening, or if it was that he had unconsciously evoked some of the power of God into the flames with his prayer. It didn’t matter.
Aleksei’s horse stood behind him, and it brushed its head against the back of his shoulder. It caused the man to look over it at the horse, which huffed at him and tried to rub its face on his own affectionately. Aleksei reached a hand back to scratch at the horse’s neck, feeling the faint amusement that was the most easy emotion to rise in him of late.
“What is it, horse? You should go to bed. The grass is soft.” Then as if in answer, the horse actually laid down, whinnying and trying to thrust the back of its head at Aleksei as if it wanted affection. It made him laugh, and he shifted how he had lay to rest a hand on the horse’s neck. “Be still, bastard. Be still, you’ll hit the fire.”
The horse did not hit the fire, and as Aleksei stroked its mane the horse stilled. He shook his head after the amusement waned, and that same pervasive feeling of contemplative dreariness fell upon him again as he thought of horses past. Why can I not clear my mind of this accursed web? He knew the answer, and his free hand reflexively lifted to touch his black crown.
The thought was upon him now, and he could do naught but think it. He thought of his old horse, the one that bore him from his old life to his new one. It was thirty-two years old when it died. He had called that one beer because it drank beer like a man. He knew that he would end up calling this one bastard after the word slipped off his tongue earlier. Beer had been a good horse. It wasn’t uncommon for a pony to live as long as it had, but Beer was a strong and prodigous destrier. By the time it died, almost all its hair has turned grey-white. It deserved to live out the last years of its life as a teacher for younger horses, to lead by example, but he did not have a big pasture then of many horses. And it was unbecoming of the Inheritor to teach his grooms horsecraft.
No, Beer was a warhorse and a warhorse it remained until it died. Still a warhorse, looking at him with its gentle eyes, too tired even to scream anymore. He was surprised it had lived as long as it had after Callas’s halberd had cleaved into its side. It always amazed him just how much blood a horse had in them.
He glanced at Bastard, a horse he had claimed as a faol and yet was still growing some. Five years old now, by his reckoning, and he knew he wasn’t wrong. Aleksei longed for the days when he did not feel such an overbearing certainty in all things. Bastard was young, and yet he knew Bastard would not live into old age like Beer had.
Aleksei shook his head, not disspelling the memories of his old horse and the horse he had now. He was disspelling their names. Giving a horse a name was like putting value in the life and friendship of a man, it didn’t make the horse feel any better and it just made their loss all the harder to bear. One day the horse would be ridden out into war, and it would stay on that battlefield forever. Its body wouldn’t, but its soul, its memories. It would never ride again. The man might, broken.
Misery threatened to overcome Aleksei for a moment as he intook a sharp breath, weary to the bone of being unable to shake the melancholy thoughts that this crown forced on him. He snatched the spit from the fire, and grabbed a haunch of rabbit even as what little fat there was on it boiled and dripped and burned. Were it not for God, it would physically burn him to tear into it so fresh from the fire. Yet this was the sorry life he lived for the betterment of others, ungrateful others, foolish others, incompetent others, others who did not deserve his concern….
As he ate, the food soothed him somewhat. It always did. He ate until he was full, and then like the viscera he gave the rest to God. What use did God have for a rabbit? He did not know, and he did not care, but greedy God wanted sacrifices and so it could have what he did not want until it came time to give God a real sacrifice. He felt more frustrated than sad when more melancholy memories, now about faith and sacrifice, rose to mind.
He tried his best to push them out as he rose and moved to his bedroll. He dressed down to his underclothes and laid on top of it. Aleksei never had trouble sleeping, even now. The life of a soldier meant a life where you never knew when you could have rest again, and even decades later where his service has won his acclaim, wealth, prestige, he still kept to old habits. His mind drifted off before the accursed crown on his head could conjure more visions from the past.
—
Aleksei awoke in a dream. He knew it was a dream. He felt as though he were in a strange emptiness, but as he looked around and he came more into it, he realized that he was in some sort of closet. There was a door on one side, and he was in a small room. Aleksei opened the door, and looked out into a strange empty vista. The only thing before him on the ground was a barren patch of land.
He stepped onto it, and as he did so he saw the earth beneath his feet stir. Like a tumor, the ground began to grow and swell and morph until a patch of it beside him grew to be the size of a man. A small man, but a man. It began to take shape more and more until it was bipedal. Then it had arms. Finally, the ground began to recolor, reshape, grow, twist, form, until eventually…
it was a man. A headless, surreal man wearing a purple robe. In its right hand, it held a mask of carved ivory and no decoration. The lips of the mask forme words as it spoke to Aleksei in a voice that soft and doubled as though two or three men spoke at once. It was like a whisper, but made louder by being spoken in soft chorus.
“Hello,” it spoke in that implacable and bizarre voice.
“Who are you?” Aleksei asked it, in spite of himself. He knew he was in a dream. The higher consciousness that the crown gave him even now as he slept granted him this insight, this obscene awareness that he resented so. He was grateful for it sometimes, like now.
“I am an angel.” The mask seemed to curl and flex as it shifted like a face in expression, taking on a gentle countenance in spite of its blank appearance.
Aleksei was silent for a long time as he considered that, regarding the supposed angel and then looking out over the emptiness. He looked into himself, and he felt no greater connection here. He looked outward, and he saw a vast emptiness, not like the emptiness of an ocean, but nothing. There was nothing around him but for a… a nothing. Not a black nothing. Not a vast nothing. A nothing. Was it an angel? He had no way of knowing if it came from some bizarre hallucination within his mind, or if he were truly being touched by the divine now. The thought of the latter made him shiver. He knew that not all angels were of friendly gods.
He looked back to the angel now, which he thought of as his host. The empty eyes of the blank mask regarded him, and Aleksei imagined the angel - if it were real - felt curious.
“What is your name, then? I am Aleksei Ivanov, an Oracle of God, and I compel you to give me your name, angel.”
The mask curled and writhed and twisted, then with a sound like scrunching leather it compressed and stretched until it resembled a man’s face that felt almost familiar yet who he did not recognize until the angel then spoke. “I am Vladislaw von Walanescu, Oracle.”
“You are not. My friend slew him after he took my eye.” Aleksei felt a tightness in his stomach.
Aleksei realized that the mound which looked like a man and that held the mask did not actually have legs. It was like it grew up from the ground that Aleksei stood on, it was one with the surreal terrain. The mask malformed once more, twisting and warping until it looked like another. “Then perhaps I am that friend.”
“He… he died too, angel.”
“Did he? You don’t remember, Aleksei Ivanov, Oracle, Hand of God, Scourge to Her Enemies.”
The mask did not need to change its voice to clearly be mocking him. It spoke in the same voice of many that it had at the start, and Aleksei wondered if it were somehow every voice of every man at once. For some reason he could not help but feel fear toward the angel. He turned away from it then to look out over the emptiness again, and seeing that too caused him fear. It made him think of the initiation into being a witch. Then realization struck him.
“You are not an angel. You are a figment of my imagination. This is a vision of death.”
“I am the masquerade.” Aleksei felt the voice of the figment like a worm crawling into his ear. He could feel without looking that whatever dread aspect that the figment must have taken on would truly be terrible to behold as it assumed the identity of the masquerade, and he dared not look at it now. Why does this fear persist?
The angel continued without needing him to respond. “I am the everyone. I am the many. I am the audience. I am the actors. I direct. I am the theater. The play. I am every role, as I am every thing. I am everything. I am.”
The final words were spoken in the most absolute way. The way that Aleksei always felt kings and priests should speak, the confidence that he tried to emulate. The confidence that he never felt, but that he could see others - his true followers - respond to when he spoke in it. The confidence of absolute certainty. I am. What does that mean, what does it mean when it says it like that?
“I am,” the angel intoned as if it could hear his thoughts. “And you are.” The subtle emphasis was spoken in a voice that often came to Aleksei’s mind, now more than ever. He turned to see the visage of Peter on the mask.
It was more perfect than any of the other faces it bore, so much so that he did not see the pale ivory. In his imagination, in his mind, on the mask, he saw Peter was he had been in life. In the prime of his life. In the years before and after Breakwater, before he started to wane from the public eye.
“It is not a lie when the Kaiser says it, Aleksei.” And Aleksei was a boy again. All it took was those words. Mere hours after the death of James, honorable James, sweet James, James who deserved it all and had it taken from him. He was a boy, and he had the two princes. The screaming queen. Begging him not to go. He took the sons, the heirs. He left for parts unknown. He left all he knew. He became a… he….
Aleksei closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. No, that wasn’t it. That never actually happened. It almost did. He almost, if they had just… if they had been delayed but for an hour more, a few minutes, then that would have been. It was not so.
“Was it not?” The voice asked. “Do you not claim to be able to predict the future, Aleksei? Can you not foretell what shall come, and are restricted only in what you do and do not know?”
The mask was mocking him again, Aleksei knew. He opened his eyes, but held his tongue.
“I am the masquerade as you imagine it. You are right, I am no true angel. I am. And you are. I know all that you know, and I am everyone as you remembered them.”
“Why can I not remember them dying, self?” Aleksei asked the masquerade, addressing it by its true nature.
“If you do not know, how am I to know?”
“You might speak truths that I know but do not… or, will not… see, or recognize.” Aleksei’s brow furrowed, and he felt his mind muddled. Was that right?
“No, Aleksei. I am, and you are.”
The befuddlement was replaced with a note of anger. “What does that even mean?”
“It means everything, and it means nothing. It means the life you have lived and the life you are yet to live. It means you are, and it means you are not. It means… nothing. It means everything.”
The anger rose even more, as Aleksei curled his hands into fists at his sides. “That makes no sense, why do you not make any sense?”
“I make as much sense as life, and in life you will find the meaning of that.”
“Explain yourself!” Aleksei shouted at the angel now. “If you are me, if you are but a figment of my imagination in the semblance of an imagined angel, then explain! I am your master!”
“You are not a master, and you know it to be so. I am, and you are.”
Rage was upon Aleksei then. He conjured his sword into his hand, and it seemed to burn away the very fabric of the dream such was its white-hot heat. Light poured from it, cascading outward into the darkness. The light burned. Aleksei saw the angel, and saw the blank mask. It gave him no satisfaction. It did not look afraid, or impressed. It looked like he would want to look when he died. Blank, and empty. It looked like how he felt. Blank, and empty. When he cut it apart with his sword, he felt the substance it was truly made of: he felt that it was blank, and empty.
Aleksei startled awake from the dream with a twitch. The sky was grey with pre-dawn light, overcast. He relaxed quietly onto his bedroll, breathing a sigh of relief. He did not want to bask in the warmth of the sun today. He wanted quiet. He poured ashes over his fire, gathered up his belongings, woke his horse, and remounted to carry on his way. He had a long ways to go, and no time to retread old ground.
Aleksei rode his horse through the open flower-filled plains on the river bank. He had awhile to go yet to reach his destination, but he took a moment at the height of the rolling plain to look out over the landscape before him. As ever, a new spring made him feel strangely bittersweet. The coming of the heat made him think of the summer all those years past, and the way that new life came from the old made him question his own existence now as a relic of the past.
As he looks over the plain, his eyes were drawn to the sun. No man should ever be able to look directly at the setting sun without discomfort, but he felt none when he stared into the essence of his God. He dismounted, considered, and then took the pack from his horse as he took its bridle out and spoke to it.
“Have a wander, horse.” He never named his horses. Not the ones he rode to war especially. “The flowers are sweet to you, aren’t they?”
The horse gave him no acknowledgement but to bow its head and begin eating. He paid no mind to it then, as he left it to walk down the ridge and toward the river’s edge, holding his pack. It gave him some comfort to be alone out here, roughing it. If he had any of his followers here, it wouldn’t do to let them see their leader engaged in anything outside of leading. He would have one of the squires carry his pack, a quartermaster prepare grain for the horse to supplement its natural diet of grass, a groom to brush it down and feed it, and he would even have to tolerate a cook preparing his meal. Then the petitioners would come, and people delivering reports.
The thought of it all made Aleksei sigh, as he kneeled by the riverside and began skinning a rabbit he had caught earlier in the day and cleaning its carcass in the gently flowing water. He felt it was natural to live life as he was now. It was in his nature to be out here in the rough, living on his own with just his sword by his side and… well, he had no sword by his side actually.
He glances at the still unfamiliar absence of its weight by his hip. He had no reason to wear a sword now, when God let him conjure one to his hand. Aleksei had no more need to intimidate people by its necessary place on his person, it was more fitting to not wear one and surprise them with its appearance. The commons put a lot of stock in someone who had such ease and power that they could summon a weapon of war to their hand instead of have to wear it as they would.
Still, he did not like it. As the spring heat began to wane more and more and the sun disappeared evermore beneath the horizon, Aleksei felt a faint relief. He was obedient to God, he observed all the proper motions, and he truly believed. Well and truly. There is no alternative for a safe society than God, faith, and what he was doing now.
And yet, some small part of him resented it all the same. It was in his nature, as it was in the nature of all men to live a quiet existence punctuated by moments of extreme brutality. He was a man who killed rabbits and let his horses die beneath him. He was a man who had seen the life leave countless men’s eyes. He was a killer. Not a kingdom builder. Sometimes, he didn’t even feel like a priest. Even less often did he feel like a true noble, or a proper knight.
He took the carcass of the rabbit, and he laid it out on what used to be its skin while he took a moment to array his camping supplies. Firewood he had gathered earlier in the day before leaving the woods, a bedroll, and so on. He did not need to light the fire, he could simply conjure it even more easily than his sword. Aleksei kept his gloves on while he took out his mess kit. He looked over the small but fragrant array of spices that he brought with himself and the frying pan he would sometimes use as the fire crackled beside himself. Taken by a flight of fancy, he decided to ignore them as he just roughly quartered the rabbit instead and then began to sharpen a stick. While his mind began to wander once more, he noted at the edge of his awareness the return of his horse as the sun began to wane below the horizon until it was just a red smear on the sky and his campfire was the brightest light for miles around.
Is it back because it feels safe beside me? he wondered. Aleksei enjoyed the company of horses near as much as he enjoyed the company of dogs. It had been a long time since he anthromorphized them as he did in his youth, ascribing them qualities like honor and so on, but he still thought of them as loyal. They were loyal. Nothing was more loyal in this life than a dog, or a well-trained horse. Yet he had seen dogs torn apart during a hunt on more than one occasion, a hunt orchestrated just for the amusement of the huntsmen. He had put down three horses by his own hand when they grew too old, or had grown lame, or were too injured to rise again.
A broken leg to a horse was as detrimental as an arrow to the throat of a man. He mused idly on the correlation as he laid the spit with the rabbit chunks over the fire, and he considered the viscera that remained before deciding to lay it into the embers as he murmured a prayer to God. He saw the flames that licked the viscera glow white, as though in answer. He knew not if God was truly listening, or if it was that he had unconsciously evoked some of the power of God into the flames with his prayer. It didn’t matter.
Aleksei’s horse stood behind him, and it brushed its head against the back of his shoulder. It caused the man to look over it at the horse, which huffed at him and tried to rub its face on his own affectionately. Aleksei reached a hand back to scratch at the horse’s neck, feeling the faint amusement that was the most easy emotion to rise in him of late.
“What is it, horse? You should go to bed. The grass is soft.” Then as if in answer, the horse actually laid down, whinnying and trying to thrust the back of its head at Aleksei as if it wanted affection. It made him laugh, and he shifted how he had lay to rest a hand on the horse’s neck. “Be still, bastard. Be still, you’ll hit the fire.”
The horse did not hit the fire, and as Aleksei stroked its mane the horse stilled. He shook his head after the amusement waned, and that same pervasive feeling of contemplative dreariness fell upon him again as he thought of horses past. Why can I not clear my mind of this accursed web? He knew the answer, and his free hand reflexively lifted to touch his black crown.
The thought was upon him now, and he could do naught but think it. He thought of his old horse, the one that bore him from his old life to his new one. It was thirty-two years old when it died. He had called that one beer because it drank beer like a man. He knew that he would end up calling this one bastard after the word slipped off his tongue earlier. Beer had been a good horse. It wasn’t uncommon for a pony to live as long as it had, but Beer was a strong and prodigous destrier. By the time it died, almost all its hair has turned grey-white. It deserved to live out the last years of its life as a teacher for younger horses, to lead by example, but he did not have a big pasture then of many horses. And it was unbecoming of the Inheritor to teach his grooms horsecraft.
No, Beer was a warhorse and a warhorse it remained until it died. Still a warhorse, looking at him with its gentle eyes, too tired even to scream anymore. He was surprised it had lived as long as it had after Callas’s halberd had cleaved into its side. It always amazed him just how much blood a horse had in them.
He glanced at Bastard, a horse he had claimed as a faol and yet was still growing some. Five years old now, by his reckoning, and he knew he wasn’t wrong. Aleksei longed for the days when he did not feel such an overbearing certainty in all things. Bastard was young, and yet he knew Bastard would not live into old age like Beer had.
Aleksei shook his head, not disspelling the memories of his old horse and the horse he had now. He was disspelling their names. Giving a horse a name was like putting value in the life and friendship of a man, it didn’t make the horse feel any better and it just made their loss all the harder to bear. One day the horse would be ridden out into war, and it would stay on that battlefield forever. Its body wouldn’t, but its soul, its memories. It would never ride again. The man might, broken.
Misery threatened to overcome Aleksei for a moment as he intook a sharp breath, weary to the bone of being unable to shake the melancholy thoughts that this crown forced on him. He snatched the spit from the fire, and grabbed a haunch of rabbit even as what little fat there was on it boiled and dripped and burned. Were it not for God, it would physically burn him to tear into it so fresh from the fire. Yet this was the sorry life he lived for the betterment of others, ungrateful others, foolish others, incompetent others, others who did not deserve his concern….
As he ate, the food soothed him somewhat. It always did. He ate until he was full, and then like the viscera he gave the rest to God. What use did God have for a rabbit? He did not know, and he did not care, but greedy God wanted sacrifices and so it could have what he did not want until it came time to give God a real sacrifice. He felt more frustrated than sad when more melancholy memories, now about faith and sacrifice, rose to mind.
He tried his best to push them out as he rose and moved to his bedroll. He dressed down to his underclothes and laid on top of it. Aleksei never had trouble sleeping, even now. The life of a soldier meant a life where you never knew when you could have rest again, and even decades later where his service has won his acclaim, wealth, prestige, he still kept to old habits. His mind drifted off before the accursed crown on his head could conjure more visions from the past.
—
Aleksei awoke in a dream. He knew it was a dream. He felt as though he were in a strange emptiness, but as he looked around and he came more into it, he realized that he was in some sort of closet. There was a door on one side, and he was in a small room. Aleksei opened the door, and looked out into a strange empty vista. The only thing before him on the ground was a barren patch of land.
He stepped onto it, and as he did so he saw the earth beneath his feet stir. Like a tumor, the ground began to grow and swell and morph until a patch of it beside him grew to be the size of a man. A small man, but a man. It began to take shape more and more until it was bipedal. Then it had arms. Finally, the ground began to recolor, reshape, grow, twist, form, until eventually…
it was a man. A headless, surreal man wearing a purple robe. In its right hand, it held a mask of carved ivory and no decoration. The lips of the mask forme words as it spoke to Aleksei in a voice that soft and doubled as though two or three men spoke at once. It was like a whisper, but made louder by being spoken in soft chorus.
“Hello,” it spoke in that implacable and bizarre voice.
“Who are you?” Aleksei asked it, in spite of himself. He knew he was in a dream. The higher consciousness that the crown gave him even now as he slept granted him this insight, this obscene awareness that he resented so. He was grateful for it sometimes, like now.
“I am an angel.” The mask seemed to curl and flex as it shifted like a face in expression, taking on a gentle countenance in spite of its blank appearance.
Aleksei was silent for a long time as he considered that, regarding the supposed angel and then looking out over the emptiness. He looked into himself, and he felt no greater connection here. He looked outward, and he saw a vast emptiness, not like the emptiness of an ocean, but nothing. There was nothing around him but for a… a nothing. Not a black nothing. Not a vast nothing. A nothing. Was it an angel? He had no way of knowing if it came from some bizarre hallucination within his mind, or if he were truly being touched by the divine now. The thought of the latter made him shiver. He knew that not all angels were of friendly gods.
He looked back to the angel now, which he thought of as his host. The empty eyes of the blank mask regarded him, and Aleksei imagined the angel - if it were real - felt curious.
“What is your name, then? I am Aleksei Ivanov, an Oracle of God, and I compel you to give me your name, angel.”
The mask curled and writhed and twisted, then with a sound like scrunching leather it compressed and stretched until it resembled a man’s face that felt almost familiar yet who he did not recognize until the angel then spoke. “I am Vladislaw von Walanescu, Oracle.”
“You are not. My friend slew him after he took my eye.” Aleksei felt a tightness in his stomach.
Aleksei realized that the mound which looked like a man and that held the mask did not actually have legs. It was like it grew up from the ground that Aleksei stood on, it was one with the surreal terrain. The mask malformed once more, twisting and warping until it looked like another. “Then perhaps I am that friend.”
“He… he died too, angel.”
“Did he? You don’t remember, Aleksei Ivanov, Oracle, Hand of God, Scourge to Her Enemies.”
The mask did not need to change its voice to clearly be mocking him. It spoke in the same voice of many that it had at the start, and Aleksei wondered if it were somehow every voice of every man at once. For some reason he could not help but feel fear toward the angel. He turned away from it then to look out over the emptiness again, and seeing that too caused him fear. It made him think of the initiation into being a witch. Then realization struck him.
“You are not an angel. You are a figment of my imagination. This is a vision of death.”
“I am the masquerade.” Aleksei felt the voice of the figment like a worm crawling into his ear. He could feel without looking that whatever dread aspect that the figment must have taken on would truly be terrible to behold as it assumed the identity of the masquerade, and he dared not look at it now. Why does this fear persist?
The angel continued without needing him to respond. “I am the everyone. I am the many. I am the audience. I am the actors. I direct. I am the theater. The play. I am every role, as I am every thing. I am everything. I am.”
The final words were spoken in the most absolute way. The way that Aleksei always felt kings and priests should speak, the confidence that he tried to emulate. The confidence that he never felt, but that he could see others - his true followers - respond to when he spoke in it. The confidence of absolute certainty. I am. What does that mean, what does it mean when it says it like that?
“I am,” the angel intoned as if it could hear his thoughts. “And you are.” The subtle emphasis was spoken in a voice that often came to Aleksei’s mind, now more than ever. He turned to see the visage of Peter on the mask.
It was more perfect than any of the other faces it bore, so much so that he did not see the pale ivory. In his imagination, in his mind, on the mask, he saw Peter was he had been in life. In the prime of his life. In the years before and after Breakwater, before he started to wane from the public eye.
“It is not a lie when the Kaiser says it, Aleksei.” And Aleksei was a boy again. All it took was those words. Mere hours after the death of James, honorable James, sweet James, James who deserved it all and had it taken from him. He was a boy, and he had the two princes. The screaming queen. Begging him not to go. He took the sons, the heirs. He left for parts unknown. He left all he knew. He became a… he….
Aleksei closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. No, that wasn’t it. That never actually happened. It almost did. He almost, if they had just… if they had been delayed but for an hour more, a few minutes, then that would have been. It was not so.
“Was it not?” The voice asked. “Do you not claim to be able to predict the future, Aleksei? Can you not foretell what shall come, and are restricted only in what you do and do not know?”
The mask was mocking him again, Aleksei knew. He opened his eyes, but held his tongue.
“I am the masquerade as you imagine it. You are right, I am no true angel. I am. And you are. I know all that you know, and I am everyone as you remembered them.”
“Why can I not remember them dying, self?” Aleksei asked the masquerade, addressing it by its true nature.
“If you do not know, how am I to know?”
“You might speak truths that I know but do not… or, will not… see, or recognize.” Aleksei’s brow furrowed, and he felt his mind muddled. Was that right?
“No, Aleksei. I am, and you are.”
The befuddlement was replaced with a note of anger. “What does that even mean?”
“It means everything, and it means nothing. It means the life you have lived and the life you are yet to live. It means you are, and it means you are not. It means… nothing. It means everything.”
The anger rose even more, as Aleksei curled his hands into fists at his sides. “That makes no sense, why do you not make any sense?”
“I make as much sense as life, and in life you will find the meaning of that.”
“Explain yourself!” Aleksei shouted at the angel now. “If you are me, if you are but a figment of my imagination in the semblance of an imagined angel, then explain! I am your master!”
“You are not a master, and you know it to be so. I am, and you are.”
Rage was upon Aleksei then. He conjured his sword into his hand, and it seemed to burn away the very fabric of the dream such was its white-hot heat. Light poured from it, cascading outward into the darkness. The light burned. Aleksei saw the angel, and saw the blank mask. It gave him no satisfaction. It did not look afraid, or impressed. It looked like he would want to look when he died. Blank, and empty. It looked like how he felt. Blank, and empty. When he cut it apart with his sword, he felt the substance it was truly made of: he felt that it was blank, and empty.
Aleksei startled awake from the dream with a twitch. The sky was grey with pre-dawn light, overcast. He relaxed quietly onto his bedroll, breathing a sigh of relief. He did not want to bask in the warmth of the sun today. He wanted quiet. He poured ashes over his fire, gathered up his belongings, woke his horse, and remounted to carry on his way. He had a long ways to go, and no time to retread old ground.
