Blood Oaths - Part Two

Middle east, mists of time

Levi felt an almost excruciating pain tear the peace in which he had sunk, where the cold and a thick black sheet had wrapped him like the arms of his occasional lovers. He felt himself burned by flames that he could not see but only perceive, so he tried to shout, without however obtaining any result. His throat was dry, so that his screams were unvoiced. His trachea was nothing but a dry river, a desert without oasis.

He struggled in that suffering trying to understand what was going on around and inside him, but he could not see anything, only the most absolute black, a curtain impossible to dispel. It seemed to him that he was asleep, his eyelids lowered and glued together, yet he was certain he was not: a suffering similar to the one he was feeling would have raised even the dead.

Was it then that he ended up in the land of the devils? How?

He, who had been a faithful servant, a Jew who had fought not only for his sovereign, but for the only God in which they had forced him to believe, how could have ended up in that hell?

Was it a punishment for the multiple victims he had reaped on the battlefield in his fifteen years of service in the army of King David and then Solomon? He did not understand. He found no explanation that could allay his doubts.

Levi began to touch his body: first his legs, stretched in the spasm of those atrocious sensations and then his chest, where he could feel the flames that were slowly burning him. The skin beneath his fingers seemed to be fragile as an empty shell and he feared that by dint of feeling he could open the flesh, finding the inside without organs.

At that thought he stopped touching and immediately a cold shiver ran down his back, but not even the fear was enough to appease the horrible feeling of the sun on him - even inside! - who with his majesty tried to annihilate him and dry him up like an abandoned corpse in the dunes. Sand to sand, he tought, but in that darkness there was nothing comparable to his beloved desert.

He tried to shout again, calling Solomon and hoping that at least he could hear him, but nothing, only silence echoed in the ears.

Where am I?, He wondered, feeling tears of fear running down his cheeks. They too, who should have given at least a slight relief, looked like hot streams on the already battered skin and, inexorably, the General thought that soon they would have corroded the skin, cutting channels made of living flesh.

Someone help me, he prayed, but without getting results.

Why couldn't he wake up from such a nightmare? That they were ripping him alive in life beyond closed eyelids? Because they had to be closed, there had never been in the world a black as dense as that of sleep, not even at night, cause from the window of his room the sky had always been dotted with stars, so many as to cut the breath even to the most insensitive man - and the tears came even more copious to that thought.

In his last twenty winters, Levi didn't remember ever crying like that. Yes, it had happened when he was still a child, but once martial training had begun, that luxury had been banned from his golden eyes - no soldier had to be seen fragile, least of all a man of his importance could afford it. At that moment, however, it was impossible to restrain himself, the unknown and hell were his greatest fears.

And so he found himself praying that everything would stop, that someone would run to his rescue, but nobody showed up. He would suffer endlessly, struggling like a tiger in a cage and then simply perish in that endless agony. Were there alternatives?

In response to that silent question, the pain seemed to begin to wane. Was the nightmare coming to an end? But no, heck! It could not be a trivial bad dream, what he had experienced was as true as his own existence or the else of the swords he wielded daily. It was a tangible suffering.

He tried to inhale, but did not feel the air enter the lungs, only emptyness. He faltered. What was going on? Was he already dead and awaiting divine judgment?

A light sound made him distracted.

Levi shook his head, touching the space around him while spreading his arms and looking for something he would not have been able to identify well. Another sound, this time closer and clearer, chilled him. It had been a hiss, he was sure of it, and those lines could only be produced by one thing: snakes.

But how could there be reptiles in the afterlife? No, what he was hearing must have been only auditory hallucinations. Maybe the previous evening he had exaggerated with the celebrations, perhaps he had smoked more opium than necessary and confused the mind... yes, it was certainly for that reason that he was having similar visions, there could be no other explanation.

What he was experiencing must have been the result of drugs and nothing of what he was feeling was true, not even the excruciating pain that was finally abandoning him. It was simply self-suggestion.

Or maybe not?

Madness began to make fun of him, mocking the sake. Whenever he became convinced that it was only a dream, his conscience shouted the opposite and vice versa, in a vicious circle of anxiety.

Then suddenly a faint light, a gash above his head, illuminated part of that black. Levi had to tighten his eyelids in order not to be injured and, when after a few moments apparently very short, he opened them again, he began to look around cautiously. His gaze shot from one side to the other of the environment in which he found himself, but even this time he could not see anything. There was still, and only, the thick curtain in which he had been for all that time, but he managed to understand that he was lying on a huge black plate. It was neither cold as stone, nor hot as the desert, but rather something indefinite to which he tried to give a name, looking for something in the memories that could vaguely resemble it. What kind of material could it be?

Propping the elbows to get up and see better, he tried to drag himself through that space, but soon he realized that was no longer able to make any movement. He was paralyzed, glued, melted with that floor of unknown origin.

Again the voice did not come out of the throat; no cursing, shouting or anything else, only silence returned to reign around the body like a tyrant without conscience.

Levi gritted his teeth, cursing against the God he had tried so hard to love, so as to be pardoned with his mercy - a dowry that King David, before and above Solomon, had given him during every public speech from the pulpit that watched over the heads of the people; a mass of humans who now seemed to be full of fearful sheep to that desperate General.

Those people had hung on the lips of a sovereign-prophet believing that there was a better life waiting for them after death and, therefore, would not have feared to fight for a cause for which, perhaps, it was useless to fight - because if that was the much vaunted Paradise, there was little to hope for.

Bastard had been that King to deceive him and any other man who would not feel pain in the crusade for the Lord of Heaven.

Look at me David, called Levi, looking towards the gash above him.

Watch your General get punished for your sins, for a wavering faith.

He was delirious, yet he didn't stop.

Do you think it's right to do this to me? Do you think it's correct to try to kill me in this terrible dream?

For a few moments he waited for an answer, but no voice seemed to appease his anger or explain what he was feeling.

Was it therefore a nightmare, a hallucination, death or something else? What?

A new hiss echoed around him, this time closer and clearer than the previous ones, then a weight, near the navel, made his anger dumb.

The boy widened his eyes and raising the head just enough to be able to see what the feeling was generated from, he felt himself failing. On his tanned skin and marked by small pale scars, a black python was placidly tangled on himself, occasionally making small movements in the direction of a hole that, suddenly, Levi noticed to pierce his right breastplate.

Terror struck him with unimaginable force, blocking the heart in the throat.

The snake began to move, the General felt it slithering creepily on himself, digging his abdomen and then the chest, creating basins along the flesh, muscles and bones. Its pattern was similar to a threatening dance and, for the first time, Levi realized that he hated that creature. Although his best friend had raised dozens of them and walk around wearing their bodies as ornaments, suddenly he felt terrified of them - and the further it went, the more intense that feeling became.

Arriving at the center of his chest, the python raised the head. His forked tongue came out at regular intervals from the parted mouth, giving the impression that he was licking lips before pouncing on his prey.

The young man tried to wriggle, to shake him off his chest, but every attempt was fruitless. He did not move, least of all did the reptile.

Would he have been eaten? Would that be his end?

And as if to answer him, the beast opened its jaws wide enough to create a black hole at the bottom of its throat, the end of which could never have been seen. Levi instinctively tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids did not want to obey him and so, certain of dying first of fear and then because of that monster, he saw him lowering himself into the hole in his chest, piercing him like a blade.

Nakhaš let out a scream, waking with a start from a nightmare that lasted too long. His heart was throbbing wildly in the chest, his body beaded with what looked like sweat and the muscles were tense in the spasm of a still alive fear. He felt exhausted, just as terror still stuck on him like a viscous patina. It had been the worst dream of his twenty-six years, the one that most of all he would pray to forget and, taking his face in the hands, he hoped that it was only a side effect of opium.

Running the jeweled fingers over his forehead and then through the hair, he felt a strange sensation, as if his own sweat had become denser and, moving the palms away to understand the reason, he realized that what he had believed was an innocent perspiration it was actually blood.

Yes, blood.

Levi's eyes widened, unable to understand, then, moved by a horror that he would never have believed could belong to him, he turned the gaze around his body, discovering huge stains on the whole floor. Once again he tried to escape, but to stop him this time, instead of a dark plate, there were Solomon's arms.

Upset he wiggled like a caged animal, struck without logic everything that was within his field of action and, when he finally managed to free himself, he tried to escape. The feet slammed violently on the dirty floor, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the breakdown of that room, but in the end, distracted by the heat, he ended up stumbling into something heavy, warm and soft at the same time. The General stumbled, tumbling to the ground without even realizing it. With his lower body he found himself crushing the same thing that had blocked his run towards the exit of those rooms and, involuntarily, while his chin slammed on the ground, he found himself cursing - but felt no pain. His had been more of an insult to fate than to the injury he should have caused.

Confused, but most of all agitated, he hastened to detach his face from the stone levering on his blood-soaked hands and, as soon as he turned to see what had prevented him from escaping, silently avoiding that it was not the immense black python of a few moments before, he swallowed.

What he saw was far worse than that beast.

Under his bare legs, Tamar's body stood motionless. The throat had been severed like that of an animal and the eyes, blank and milky, were turned in his direction. They stared and mutually accused him of something that even he could not explain.

What the heck had happened during his sleep?