“Do you hear?”
“Yes, truly!”
“Do you hear?”
“Yes, truly!”
“Do you hear?”
“Yes, truly!”
“Do you hear?” Fracaso’s question pumped another beat into the collective pulse of the crowd below her.
“Yes, truly!” They responded in kind. From all corners of the sanctum, massive waves of flesh jolted to life with maddening activity, excitable heads bubbling up and down at the majestic sight of their good leader who stood atop the elevated platform of sleek white marble. Fracaso kept her lips neatly pursed as she walked to and fro. Her churning sea of followers rippled in rhythm to her every step.
“Over a hundred moons today, we had made contact with the Great Visitor as we were so graciously permitted. A hundred moons ago since the Visitor’s great eye beheld our devoted nest as it burns bright in the dark earth, when our family was but a fledgling and our expansive temple a puny skyless cave. For we possess love. Love is the great conquering force that gouges out the eyes of negativity, sets hatred ablaze, and tramples on sadness’ body and the bodies of its frowning family! From our love-heads to our love-toes, we thank Love for having us as its chosen few to spread this Joy across the world. Yes, Love does indeed conquer all…”
Her innumerable audience erupted in applause before she could finish her sentence, for they were greatly anticipating how she could possibly finish it. After the applause subsided, they realized she had indeed finished her sentence and applauded some more.
“Today, we shall compensate the hard-working souls that made it possible for us to Love. Here, our six Love-stricken brothers and sisters had made it their everlasting duty to make contact with the good Visitor from over yonder the Love plains. Let us bask in their glorious purpose!”
Six shining altars, perfectly sculpted of clear reflective glass, each ornamented with a living human splayed on its surface, materialized behind Fracaso after she signaled for the torch-bearers in the catwalk above her to quickly move their lights there. Three men and three women, of relatively similar heights and sizes, were laid bare with smiles of unrelenting enthusiasm. One of the duty-bound was especially proud of his purpose. See how he writhed and wriggled in unrestrained excitement for his impending euphoria. So much so that the appropriate restrictions were tied around his limbs to best contain his explosive energy. Witness how his hands and feet continued to wiggle a tad beyond the edges of the altar, enough for them to broadcast their enlarged distorted reflections upon the sides of the structure itself. From afar, it was an altar submerged in pink flesh and the crowd’s cheers only heightened the beauty of its presence.
“Please! Think about what you are doing!!” He shouted in joy toward the true Love that remains above. He turned his neck upwards to speak to the priest.
“I-I have a family! Let me go!” He graciously reminded her, gleeful that he could be in the presence of such a large loving family that was all here to see his departure. He could not wait another moment.
“Commence!” Fracaso bellowed.
“I-” His heaping praises, loyal as they may be, were eventually given their due conclusion with a swift thrust of a blade as it plunged through his body. Within each altar, akin to a wind-up toy, mechanisms whirred to life and sprung forth a blade tall enough to pierce the heart that rested over its eager metal tip. What followed was a succession of gasps from flooded mouths. An extensive deluge of incantations poured from every mouth. Then all attention was geared toward the sky above where no drifting clouds dared to disrupt the crowd’s total concentration in willing forth their desired outcome. As though the universe had responded in kind, a faint pear-shaped outline was drawn onto the sky, culminating in a fierce materialization of one massive eye; white iris, green pupil, bathed in a hazy glow. A monumental stillness seized the spectators below. Once it had properly drilled its presence into their memories, the eye withdrew, gracefully and tactfully, into the air.
After a pause, Fracaso raised her arms.
“LOVE ABOVE ALL!” she declared.
“LOVE ABOVE ALL!” her people replied.
The morning ceremony concluded when an arranged group of men approached the altars to rid them of their red wet stripes, all flowing toward the marble in one harmonious action. After uttering a few verbal reminders to the men, Fracaso descended the platform and began her well-trodden pilgrimage toward the Door of Visitation,a hulking dokkra structure that is due to be finished by year’s end.
She reached the Door. Its unfinished skeletal parts were paired with a complex network of wooden scaffolding, supporting the workmen and their doting tools as they worked away at giving the door its surface.
“When can we expect the arch to be complete?” Fracaso inquired.
“We are making good time, your Loveship,” one of the workers answered, his head leering from one of the taller scaffolds, “It shall be done soon.”
“What do you mean by ‘soon?’”
“In due time.”
Vague open-ended statements were hardly foreign notions to Fracaso but to be on the receiving end of them certainly was. It was clear to her that none of them had nary a clue as to when their task will be done. Though she sympathized with them on the several last-minute amendments made to the door’s exact size during the planning stage, she nevertheless could not stomach their lack of transparency. She smiled with unfettered hatred.
“Let me know of any concrete developments next time, would you?”
“That reminds me,” the worker continued, “We would like the Doorman to come inspect the gate once it is finished. With your permission, of course.”
“Wh shall see. As a matter of fact, I am on my way there now.”
They traded salutations before resuming their duties. Fracaso made a mental note to have him on the altar for next week’s ritual. She was sure he was ready to pass his work to others of more honest persuasions. She began her trek to the Corridor Disciplinary Accommodation to meet with the Doorman.
Fracaso had ensured that every winding pathway in her temple was constantly occupied with at least a few walking parties. Whether it was a herd of apprehensive recruits being guided around or a squadron of patrolmen keeping its vigil over potential dissidents, she could always rely on them to keep her home in an endless state of cyclical tasks to which no automaton may lift its head to register a single thought beyond its current and only function.
She supposed the only criticism that could be levied, if she must, against the otherwise flawless renovations of her sanctum was the open sky. She permitted its presence merely to accommodate the growing size of the Door, as well as rewarding them with the grand sight of the eye of the Great Visitor looking down upon them whenever a certain number of sacrifices had accumulated. And yet in that wide open space, her subjects would spend their lingering imaginations gazing up at it during slim breaks between their duties, occasionally mistaking a cloud as a sign of things to come and she would always be there to correct them. Above her was indeed a large and vacant lot of air, threatening in its neutral blankness, its lack of anything, which had infiltrated the more impressionable minds within her already impressionable sea of followers, infecting them with basic trains of thought which, while inane and crippled, may prove to be cumbersome in the long term. She certainly had thought about minimizing the view of the sky if not fully bar it altogether but once more the door would have to be resized and the prophecy itself amended to justify the resizing. So on and so forth. Thus, she put her musings aside. She had arrived.
The Corridor of Disciplinary Accommodation, unlike prior areas, was engulfed in perfect darkness. It was the one location that remained unchanged from the renovation, merely a shift in its occupants. What was once a housing area for sick pets had turned to a correctional facility for those lacking in love. Hands and feet belonging to beaten, bloodied and stripped bodies rested in small carved crevices along the rocky walls. These crevice-dwellers were past dissidents and delinquents whose activities had once held sway over a sizable amount of Fracaso’s followers, be it of a legal or familial kind. Minimizing their influences proved to be effective. The crevices were evenly spaced apart so as to avoid potential communication. The warden welcomed her, his lantern illuminating his repugnant features.
“A fine evening, is it not?” Zooard asked.
“It is morning,” Fracaso replied.
“I see.”
“How goes your journey of love, brother Zooard?”
“It is good. It is indeed a good one. I especially like how good it starts. And how good it is going.”
Fracaso, experienced in her expertly-honed perception, could detect that Zooard had not truly acclimated himself to the ongoings of their newfound community at all. His numb, hesitant language jetting from his languid lips was proof enough that he was simply a noted fraud and an unrepentant charlatan, using her resources to further his own incomprehensible motives. To this day, Fracaso struggled to make sense of whatever it was that he chose to verbally spew at her without having his voice fade from her mind as he started talking. By all accounts, she should have him on the altar. It was thus quite aggravating for her to remind herself that he remained their community’s only reliable public face, in good graces with the majority of public figures: village chiefs, tax men, renowned guildsmen and neighboring aristocrats, all purported busybodies rich in sacrificial blood and gold. They would come with unique inquiries about her community that only their favorite veterinarian could answer. And he was ultimately obedient. She decided to let him be for the moment, until that sly tongue of his would find itself be inevitably outweighed one day by something of greater worth to her.
“Has it finally arrived? This crea-Visitor I mean.”
“In time, brother. In good time.”
“You said that many times before.”
“And many times hereafter until the day arrives.”
Zooard frowned.
“I trust you know why I am here.”
“…Follow me,” he said, resigned.
He guided her wordlessly onward. His lantern was the lone island of light amidst the dark, simultaneously illuminating their horizon and their trail by a few metres. Fracaso followed her guide’s lantern down the spiral staircase leading to the bottom floor, housing one resident. The grimy cuboid steps flowed seamlessly from the central stone pillar, rotating gracefully as they descended.
The bottom floor was smaller in size. It was a storage space for the old veterinarian’s esoteric equipment that he no longer needed. At the far end, behind rows of expired medicine and cleaning products was a holding cell though Fracaso preferred to label it as a temporary guest room. The room in question was sealed off with multiple layers of steel. The sole evidence of there being a space beyond these layers was an impossibly thin slit that cut through each layer until it reached inside. It accommodates only the irises of whoever wishes to view its secluded content. Zooard hung the lantern on its designated hook outside the door before peering inside.
“Hey, you have a visitor.”
Zooard’s irises were displaced with Fracaso’s. The interior was as organized as she hoped it would be. There was the bed, the table, the hole, and the recreational ball. A stout-looking man was seen pacing to and fro the shadowed walls in a rather relaxed and reserved fashion, head tilted high, arms swinging in perpetual opposing directions. Even if she did observe the slight erraticness in his footsteps and his constant clenching and unclenching of his fists, she could not help but smile.
“You may go, Zooard,” Fracaso instructed, “and leave the lantern.”
“What?”
“You have legs and eyes, do you not? Use them well.”
Fracaso remained at the door while Zooard groped his way back to the corner of the floor, missing the staircase by a few feet and succumbing to the totality of the wall that blocked his way which urged him to turn around and retread his steps, missing the staircase again by a couple of feet. Once he was confident that he missed the steps, he turned around and began his journey anew, missing the staircase by several metres as he faced the wall again. He would repeat this process in abject silence in the midst of Fracaso’s conversation with the man on the other side of the door.
“How goes the day, Goor?” Fracaso called out.
Goor turned toward the slit of light. Tiny as it may be, he could not help but be vexed by its presence. The sudden electrifying crackle of her voice only accentuated his annoyance further.
“To hell with days,” he said, “If you are not going to release or kill me, then we have no reason to mingle.”
“Be at peace, child” would be an apt response, befitting that of the priest’s tongue. She weighed the words silently as she peered into his eyes, ascertaining their compounding listlessness, barely restraining the maddening tendencies that would pour forth from his body sooner than he realized.
“I have something of interest to you” was instead her reply.
Goor said nothing but she knew from the slight evasiveness of his shifting nape that she got his attention.
“I acknowledge that the past months were not the most idyllic for you. I trust that this recent accommodation has at least been of some comfort. You must understand that your prior attempts at escape would cost you some portion of comfort from your old quarters. In fact, I have still kept it all pristine for you.”
“I want my tripede.”
“Ah. Your mount? Are you suggesting that that sack of waste over there,” she said, pointing to the man blindly crawling on his hands and knees around the untouched staircase, “has been depriving you of your companion? The nerve of that wretch!”
“What do you need?” Goor asked.
“Nothing. I am here to take you up. Our brothers and sisters are very excited at the thought of seeing you again. On our way to your tripede’s habitation, you will be meeting lots of them. Plenty of faces you have not seen. I trust that if you are indeed loving and accommodating enough of our family, you would have no need to return to this dingy cell ever again.”
Cell. Fracaso regretted the use of the word that was so alienating in its bluntness. She silently prayed that such language would be permanently gone from her vernacular by the time she knew just what to do with this guest of hers.
“What do you say?”
“…Fine. Now let me out.”
—
“Doorman!”
“D-Doorman. It’s the Doorman!”
“Doorman! Doorman! Doorman!”
Goor kept his expression inoffensively bland. He continued to passively make his way through the curious flood of onlookers, gathering around him with their brightened sleepless expressions, complimented by the sun’s own stare piercing its rays into his maladjusted eyes. A small circle formed by Fracaso’s guardsmen, clad in hulking armor emblazoned with diverse sets of faded family crests that he could only assume belonged to the lords and ladies long assimilated into Fracaso’s employ, kept the hordes at a distance. Within that circle, Fracaso and Zooard matched each other’s pace on opposite ends of the sanctum’s newest object of worship.
Sensing an opportune time, Fracaso engaged in an impromptu sermon, loud enough for her eager followers to hear and listen.
From one ear, Goor involuntarily heard parts of her impassioned speeches of love, how one must in their lifetime acquire a certain quantity of it to ensure that they had lived a full life and thus, legible to spend it on the celestial estates harbored by the Great Visitor. From his other ear, he could vaguely hear Zooard begin his own impassioned speech about resetting the genetic makeup of the populace for the new world where lineages and lines of evolution will be rendered more optimal.
“Devour my bodily fluids, Doorman!” A voice in the crowd rang out. Goor heard it with both ears.
The trio was ushered to the Door of Visitation. Goor observed the difference in size since he last beheld it. The rune in his skin trembled. It was a Dokkra door still. “As it was foretold,” Fracaso’s voice boomed above the rest, “the Doorman shall greet and welcome the Great Visitor to the great home beyond this very door.” The crowd erupted in joy for they had heard this prophecy fed back to them again and again and so the joy must be experienced again and again on the same equivocal level. Goor observed the foremen on the scaffolds as they observed him. They kept their gazes level-headed, not visibly rabid or euphoric to see him like the rest of the followers but just interested enough to send one of their own down to greet him. The lone representative told him of the Door’s attributes, its height, material, mechanisms.
Though he struggled to keep up with any of it, he was admittedly gladdened that at least one person was willing to have a level of frankness to them.
“Shall we go see your tripede?” Fracaso cooed, in a babyish toddler-treating tone that Goor would deem condescending if not for the fact that he was too tired to take offense. They moved to the Room of Genetic Preservation.
—
The tripede was there in its moderately-sized habitat, a sand pit sealed off with four surrounding panes of thickened glass. In the center of the habitat was its sleeping hole. The creature was seen mulling in the sand, its frontal hand flattening mounds of quickly-scattering grains. Goor could not help but be charmed by the familiar unchanging nothingness in its eyes as it turned its face to meet him with its impartial muzzle, as if their separation had only lasted a mere handful of minutes instead of long arduous months. Several guards were stationed outside its cell. Inside the cell was another figure Goor presumed to be its wrangler with multiple hoof-shaped dents in his head though he was hospitable and comprehensible enough to step outside and relay some words about its health. It was certainly healing and content since it had been brought in if the man was to be believed. At least one creature had benefitted from this entire ordeal, Goor thought to himself.
Here the crowd’s sustained interest in their figure of legend had somewhat waned as several portions of them exited the area to resume their incomplete tasks elsewhere. Nevertheless, Fracaso’s speech was unceasing. On the other end, Zooard had already left the circle to speak with some of his staff operating the other habitations. Sensing a momentary lapse in their alertness, Goor seized his chance.
“You know who it is you are speaking to?” Goor asked.
“Yes, sir. I am truly humbled to be in the presence of the ever-wise Doorman. Our Herald of legend.”
“Then you must surely know the next step in our prophecy.”
“Oh no, my good sir. Only the priest knows our celestial trajectory. I am but a humble keeper of animals. I know not of the future.”
“Since you have done such a fine job of looking after my tripede,” Goor said, trying his best to maintain the heightened octave in his voice, all dignified and rosy, “I shall enlighten you of the future!”
The wrangler was frozen stiff, overwhelmed.
“On this very night, the Doorman and his mount shall leave to make preparations for the Great Visitor that is due to arrive very soon. The task shall be done in secret.”
“But what does the priest have to say?”
“Are you contradicting me?”
“Surely not!”
“Then follow your role. An hour past midnight tonight. Bring down the barriers of its habitat and leave the rest to me. This is a task most sacred that no one, not even the priest, can know. Understand?”
The wrangler nodded.
“The Doorman shall reward you handsomely,” Goor uttered his prophetic words with a slight sweep of his arm, his instinctive embarrassment stripping the gesture of any bombast that he initially intended.
It was then that an imposing sound swallowed the room, all-encompassing. Every occupant sprung their heads high to find the sound leaping forth from the large horn made of hollowed animal bone with a flat and deadened melody, strapped to the top of a nearby pole. A grave message had surely spread like fire among Goor’s surroundings that everyone but him seemed to receive clearly in sullen silence.
“To your stations!” Fracaso commanded. In rehearsed swiftness, all had left the room in seconds, including Zooard.
“Come with me, Doorman,” She continued, “The enemy is upon us. There is actual use for you yet.”
Goor noted the cheery glimmer in her green eyes as he followed her outside the temple.