CHAPTER 54: A WHISPERED NAME

  THE THRESHOLD

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  The forest was dark.

  What remained of the mist collected around Cameron in a circle, staving off the shadows that looked more and more like the black fire of the sea he’d nearly leapt into. Their tendrils hissed and jibed his hands and feet where he lay on the ground hugging his knees, his eyes sunken and colorless as if he’d been visited by a year’s worth of sleepless nights.

  He didn’t know how he’d been there, only that his lips were dry and cracked, and his throat was raw from screaming. He had screamed for a long while, hoping that he might find something harsher to cling onto, hoping he might strangle the anger that had once guided him in his moments of duress. But when the screams settled, Cameron found that he had nothing to speak of; only a hollowness that made him want to lay on the ground forever.

  Black flame of the Threshold advanced along his body, chewing through his clothes and spreading itself across his skin. Not painful, just wrong—irregular in a way that made him feel like his body was meant to be forfeited to something greater.

  What waited for him once it consumed him promised to be better than the future that the Threshold promised him. If he were to leave this place, he’d create more Cameron Kesslers than he could commit to memory. Every person, every life that he’d end up taking, would only perpetuate that same vicious cycle. It was a future, where, in pursuit of his revenge, he turned into the very thing that made him want it in the first place. Knowing that’s what awaited him hurt more than anything the Threshold had shown him, and that knowledge demanded a choice. And his was the path of least resistance.

  Cameron closed his eyes.

  Closer and closer the black flame travelled, quietly charing Cameron’s skin. It took and it took until there was nothing more to take but a single eye that stared absently into the abyss, his once wolfish gaze tamed by a despondency that colored his iris a ghostly gray. All he needed to do was close it.

  You weak, sniveling child.

  His eye widened. A scarlet miasma bubbled out from his eye, red and waxy like the shedding skin of a candle.

  You’d condemn yourself to an early death, and for what?

  Black and ichorous flame squealed. Cameron was forced up from his fetal position and pressed the palms of his hands into the dirt. The blackness retreated from his face, and both of his eyes began to leak. Red began to flood out from his features, pouring from his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and his ears, pooling in front of him and settling onto the ground. It bubbled angrily, and with each passing moment, grew in size. It swelled and swelled and it became something else entirely.

  A massive flayed torso erupted from the waxen scarlet, and in the absence of skin was bands of muscle-like material, like a swarm of fascia that had begrudgingly agreed to form a singular and cohesive unit. In spite of its size, it was still ropey and wirey—its fullness composed of waxen cords that bubbled and popped, releasing tufts and wisps of a deep red energy. Its head was a mask made of ivory that glistened like steel. Two mismatched horns—sharp, jagged, and beetle-like—rested on its head, and the mask had no other features save for the holes left for the entity’s eyes: two white pupils surrounded by black.

  You disappoint me.

  Cameron stared up at the mask, mouth agape, his eyes trembling in place.

  Stand.

  Cameron remained still, paralyzed by the appearance of what loomed before him.

  Rise, boy! Rise!

  A waxen, scarlet hand wrapped around him and picked him up, dropping him to his feet.

  Where is your anger? Your rage?

  “I…”

  It pushed a finger into his chest, nearly toppling him over. Around them, the mist of the Threshold hissed and wailed, and the dark forest that Cameron had ventured through fell victim to a torrent of wind that made its thousands of interlocked branches cry in ghastly voices.

  I believed you to be stronger than this, boy. It was that belief which swayed me to lend you my power, time and time again. And yet here you stand scared into a stupor by the prophecies of a future that has not yet been set in stone.

  “All futures point to one thing,” Cameron said quietly, averting his gaze from the entity. “I become him. I become him by killing him, and.. and for every person that stands in the way of me doing that, I create more of myself—I’ll strip people of their purpose and give them a new one, like how he did for me.”

  And what was that purpose?

  Cameron glanced up and into the white eyes of the horned ivory mask. “What?”

  Hah! Your purpose! Damn it, child, your purpose! You haven’t the slightest notion of what your purpose was, or is, or what it could be. You stand here with your eyes wide and speak in absolutes. Tell me, what was your purpose before that man gave you one?

  “I… I don’t know. To live, to survive,” Cameron said.

  To live and survive at the discretion of another. First, it was the one you call David. Now it is the one you call Leroy. You have lived your whole life as a stray lying in wait for a master to turn you into a hound, and you put yourself to rest here, in this place, as a hound riddled with the fleas of doubt and guilt and shame.

  “Everything and everyone it showed me, it showed me for a reason, and I don’t… fuck! My mom, Mercedes! First, I wasn’t… I wasn’t there, and my Mom died because of me! Me! Because back then I decided I’d be better off without her, because I decided that she was just some good-for-nothing failure, and that I’d never end up like her, without ever realizing she gave the world for me!”

  Cameron stood up and rushed towards the entity, his brows furrowed, his tears hot on his face, and his voice trembling as an inward rage. He threw his fists into its torso, and with each strike, his hands sank into the scarlet wax of his body, which turned to ivory as it touched to skin, shelling him in the same armor he’d so often called upon.

  “And then I was there! I was there for Mercedes, and I was—damn it! I was too weak, and I let him take her from me! Anyone that’s ever meant anything to me ends up dead, its always my fault, and the one person who's treated me with any decency is the same person who took away the only family I’ve ever fucking known!”

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  The entity looked down at him.

  “Say something, damn it!” Cameron yelled.

  The collar remains tight on your neck. But I now wonder whether you have a master or not.

  Cameron stepped back from it. “What?”

  I know now that the collar you wear, boy, is one that you have put on yourself. You choose to live with it on your neck in the same way that you choose to live your life in response to what has happened to you, because you still do not know your purpose. Because you have not chosen a purpose for yourself.

  The entity’s masked-head jolted in front of Cameron’s face, staring at him with its head slightly tilted to the side.

  And if you cannot choose your purpose, you have no right to know my name.

  Cameron gritted his teeth.

  The entity swiveled around him, its masked-head hovering just behind his shoulder.

  The Rite of the Whispered Name is a privilege. It is only granted to those who have found their purpose, and you are here too early, brought to a place that would rather you succumb to your deepest sorrows before you have been given a chance to find it.

  Cameron pivoted.

  Your revenge need not be the thing that defines you. You can appease your hunger for the ugly justice that you believe must be served and at the same time be better than the monster that created you, boy. When the collar comes off, what does the hound free of a master—free of itself—do? What then becomes its purpose?

  “Ugly justice.” Sorrow faded from Cameron’s features. His gaze tightened and he stepped towards the mask of ivory, brows drawn inward, teeth flared, fists clenched. “To… help the people who have been wronged, and to shoulder their burden so that they don’t become the monster they seek to slay.”

  To what end?

  “To no end!” Cameron declared.“Until I die.”

  You’d rob those who are owed their vengeance, then.

  Cameron narrowed his eyes. “No. I’d save them from it.”

  The entity leaned back, its ivory mask creasing like skin around its white and black eyes. Scarlet wax bubbled around Cameron’s legs, slowly but surely washing over his body until it consumed him completely, leaving only his face untouched. Steadily the wax settled into the white ivory he so often wore, and the entity leaned forward, its large face hovering in the gap between Cameron’s neck and ear.

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  The many-faced mist closed its eyes and turned away from Cameron as he wafted through its veil and stepped onto the precipice overlooking the sea of black. Moira sat on the branch of a dead tree, her heeled feet kicking off the edge swaying back and forth. She tugged on her pinstriped blazer contentedly, smiling her black-lipped smile with piqued interest in her eyes. With a sudden leap, she landed with both feet on the ground, and shifted her hand to rest it on her hip, her spiked bracelet glistening in the strange light of the Threshold.

  “You’re not dead,” she mused.

  “No,” Cameron said. “Moira. How long can you maintain this?”

  She raised a brow. “The Sacrament?"

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What do you think, kid? The longer we’re here, the riskier it becomes, and then? And then I don’t know. ” Moira glanced over her shoulder at the sea of black flames. “Frankly, I’m not keen on finding out either.”

  “I need time,” Cameron said.

  “Don’t we all,” Moira muttered, a chortle leaving her. “Look. I just told you it’s dangerous. You like to push the envelope? Fine, you be my guest, but do it on your own time, and don’t do it here.”

  “How long, Moira?” Cameron asked, his voice stern and decisive.

  Moira’s face twitched with displeasure, and she crossed over to Cameron, staring down at him. “Did you not listen to a word I just fucking said, you little shit?”

  Cameron welcomed her contempt and met it with a steeled gaze of his own. “I need a day. Two, if you can swing it.”

  “Hah!” Moira exclaimed in disbelief. “Un-fucking-believable.”

  “You’re a witch,” Cameron said. “And I don’t know much about witches, but I know that you’re good at it. Good enough to take me here. Good enough to get your arbiter’s license. One day, I’ll have one of those—same as you—and I’ll owe you an arbitration note. You know what that’s worth.”

  Moira let her head hang. “Alright, kid. Quid-pro-quo, fine, great, awesome. I’ll humor you. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I put my soul on the line for your punk ass, and spend two whole days keeping this damn mist and all those black flames away from us. Why the fuck do you want to stay here?”

  Cameron looked at his hand. “Things operate differently here. We’re not here, not really here, not with our physical bodies. Which means we don’t get tired, we don’t get hungry, we don’t need to sleep. Right?”

  Moira exhaled. “Yes.”

  “I did it, Moira. The Rite of the Whispered Name. But you already know that, otherwise I’d be dead, and I wouldn’t be here talking to you. Point is, I don’t know when I’m going to get another chance like this,” Cameron said.

  “A chance to do what?” she asked.

  Cameron clenched his fist. “To see what I can do.”

  Moira brought a palm to her forehead, shook her head, and paced back and forth. She opened her mouth, closed it, and crossed back over to Cameron. “Two days. At the end of this bullshit, I’m dragging us out, no ifs ands or buts, no waits, no hold ons, no weird looks. You got it?”

  Cameron nodded.

  Moira set her jaw, took a few steps back, and closed her eyes only for them to spring open, glazed over in a cloudy white. Black flame emerged from her features, clinging to her frame with a familiar hiss, only to pulse outward as an array of shapes and symbols: a pentagram. It curved and stretched and around as a dome that covered the entire cliffside they stood upon, pulsing with occult energies that staved off the many-faced mist from the dark forest and the ochrous fire of the midnight sea beyond them.

  Power hummed in Cameron’s body, leaking out through his features as a scarlet miasma. White-ivory covered his skin, glistening like steel as it fixed firmly into place over his body.

  An aura of red trailed from his body like the burning wax of a candle. He reached his hand out, and the waxen energy stirred, worming its way around his arm, kneading itself into something else entirely. Not armor; but a tool. A weapon.

  “Armisthor.”

  I made a post-author note last chapter about how I would need to increase the required number of reviews/ratings just to be sure that I could allow myself some more time to get those bonus chapters written prior to their release.

  On that note, remember: you guys are able to suggest characters to appear on the next Ritual poll. If you'd like to see any side stories from previously named characters, just let me know in the comments below!

  CAMERON KESSLER

  MoirA SAUNTER

  ARMISTHOR

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