Book 3: The Cheat Code; Chapter 1: The Canvas of Death

 

1. The Canvas of Death

W

hat is worst about death is its mysteries.

Not the ones about when it may happen or how it will come to you, or what it will feel like, no. It’s rather in what conditions someone would leave, what art the death would cause, and what details the art may have. You know the sort of details like how the skin would fade, how the shades of brown will turn worm grey or green, and how prana will leave the body. Like a poof? Like a whoosh? Like a bang? Or like a stealthy slithering snake? Most important: what will you smell like?

“What will I smell like?” Ruem, the Mesmerizer, mutters.

Good people will smell like heavens, they say, like the nectar of roses or mist in a meadow or honey in the ocean. Oceans in heaven are made of honey, no joke. And bad people will smell like rotten roaches. Another law in the universe God coded while creating it all.

In the lounge of Kuhawk, Ruem, the Mesmerizer, doesn’t see any color of death, but he smells it. Death is near. He doesn’t wonder whose death, for now. Instead, he thinks of a question—a random one at that. Why does God promise only food and women in heaven?

Because he is the God of men?

Because men were God’s audience when he sent his books?

Because God is the greatest mesmerizer who knows how to lure?

The Mesmerizer finds no answer; he can’t just know an answer; he is not an intuitionist. However, he knows one thing. That God is one corporate manipulator who knows what his consumers want.

Food. Women. And youthful eternity.

Could be true, could be wrong, could be a delusion created from epics or an old song. But in his mind and soul, Ruem Drohung, the Mesmerizer, knows one real truth, the truth that no one else knows. That he will stop God. He will recode fate—his fate and everyone’s fate. And he will do it using the codes God made the universe with. Nothing can stop him. Not after what God took and termed it fate.

“I do not accept it,” he mutters to his painting—yet-to-be painting. It’s an empty canvas. Someone with evolved senses could smell the handmade paper made by the craftsmen of Kappa, but the Mesmerizer smells more. He smells the forest where the paper was grown. He smells the chemicals in it that repel the pests. He smells the box in which the ream of paper was imported and the ocean air through which the boxes have traveled. It hovers in his easels three feet away from him. Light, not too bright, glows only on the canvas, making the rest of the lounge darker. In that darkness, the Mesmerizer observes it. The paper will soon smell of colors.

What should he paint tonight? Death? Or life?

Maroc Metz, the only butler of Kuhawk, comes to the lounge in his usual attire—tailcoat, polished shoes, gloves, and glasses.

“Master Ruem, it’s time for the ritual, and our guest has arrived. Should I bring her here before it gets discourteous? Or will you continue contemplating?” he asks the Mesmerizer, in a tone he would never dare to use if it were a time ago.

“I am painting.” The Mesmerizer watches the blank canvas.

“The brushes are fresh, the oil still untouched. The painting has not even begun, and you’ve sat like that for four hours. You’re contemplating.” Maroc dares again.

“It’s part of the painting,” the Mesmerizer says.

“And you’re explaining,” Maroc adds with no surprised tone, but a hint of question is there. “You never explain yourself.”

“I can explain a thing or two to the only one I can depend on.” The Mesmerizer doesn’t look at Maroc; he doesn’t need to.

“You mean the only one left for you to depend on,” Maroc says, “after you’ve killed the lot of them.”

“Sometimes, you sound as if I am the villain.”

“And sometimes you sound as if being a villain is bad, Master Ruem.” Maroc curves his lips. His eyes are gleaming, which his master doesn’t see but senses. His tone has devotion, perhaps even grief. “I’m bringing the guest. Here is your suit.” Maroc calls a suit—a three-piece, polished with ionized fiber, conditioned with fragrance, smoothened with the right temperature and humidity. It flies here with a hover-hook. Soundless, no air blows; even the blue macaw in its silver cage doesn’t flinch. The suit hangs in the air from its hook.

The Mesmerizer ignores it. “Am I a villain, Maroc?”

Maroc was about to leave, probably to serve the guest of Kuhawk in the manner she deserves, but he looks back. His master still watches the yet-to-be painting. You’re my Master Ruem, Maroc wants to say, but he doesn’t. He knows something is troubling him. He never saw this man troubled with anything, not even when the toughest cyclone of the decade hit Alpha. He was there when the King of Mesmerizers stood firm before the mountain of water when it was approaching their city. He saw him speaking to the raging water, and the water listened. Water always listens to the Mesmerizer’s voice.

“You are the Mesmerizer I would follow to death,” Maroc says and turns to leave, but the voice stops him again, and this time, it’s the voice he always waits to hear.

“Send the guest to the cave,” says the voice. “Tell her we meet where it lies. Tell her to leave if she cannot voice death. Tell her she will be a sacrifice if she bends her will.”

* * *

A spiral tunnel taking deep into the earth.

A man humming a lullaby.

A gold anklet—one of its pair—ringing in his hand.

The man, the Mesmeriser, left the other around an Ungraded girl’s ankle. Perhaps she deserves it; perhaps she doesn’t. That’s something to see later, not now. The anklet, however, is something he needs for the time. It bells in the sweetest sound as some delicately forged gold, the sort of sound that only this anklet can make. In the cave, it creates a special frequency, a distinct ringing. Not always you find a word specifying the sounds of an anklet, not in all languages. But some do have a word or two, like Runujhunu—Bengali from the Old World.

“I didn’t want to come here,” says the symbolist the Mesmerizer has hired, Piuee Pariyeta. Her ginger hair is messier tonight, her face ashen from the dirt the path here has provided. Her analyzers aren’t broken. She appears confident but only on the façade.

The Mesmerizer remains silent, his eyes—fiery red, looking for things in the fungus-covered walls, things that only his eyes would see. It’s not the final destination. It’s not the cave, but it’s the beginning.

“Don’t you want to see the shrine you found?” Maroc Metz speaks on behalf of the Mesmerizer.

Piuee doesn’t reply at first. She was pleased with herself when she found the shrine where the Devil’s Book was forged. All discoverers feel such pleasure when they find something that could hold the truth. Still, who would visit a shrine that asks for a price?

“The shrine wants death,” she speaks her concern.

“You mentioned it,” Maroc Metz answers her, too quickly this time. “Thirty-nine times.” He also sneers, seeing the dirt on her nose. He tried not to do it all these times; his master taught him manners. “Do not use tones unobservant Low Grades use,” he said once, just once, and never again. The Mesmerizer never repeats instructions, but this woman is beyond—what you may call—acceptable. This woman makes people repeat instructions. He walks behind her, keeping distance between them as if he’s saving his valuable tailcoat from the world’s worst sewage. His gaze—scornful and repulsed—doesn’t soften.

Piuee rubs her nose, seeing that gaze. She then runs her fingers through her messy hair as the butler’s gaze is glued to it. She never needed to fix fashion before an excavation. In her forty years of professional excellence, she heard praises about her looks enough; now she forgets that brushing hair before leaving home is something you do even at seventy. That’s what immortality does. Prana may let you live long, youthfully, but it steals your desire to set your hair; it makes you reluctant to worldly wars.

“I’m concerned if I would be a sacrifice tonight,” Piuee speaks. She might be messy in things most people wouldn’t be. However, a little mess means nothing if you have a voice—a clear one in that. Currently, she speaks her mind just as any High Grade would—they speak out loud about whatever they feel, no matter if it’s fear or felicity. No matter if it’s failure or victory. She stares at the Mesmerizer; his back is visible—strong and wide. At other times, she’d have considered ‘dependable’ as an adjective for such back and such shoulders. Tonight, she doesn’t.

A couple of nights ago, this man with dependable-looking shoulders went somewhere carrying his piano in a hover-cargo. Hours later, she saw the news of a fire in the Maze, and people say they heard music while an underground basement burnt. Whispers say it’s a portion of the first War Turf that burnt that night. That Turf is erased from maps; she knows it only because of her age and grade. Now, you don’t connect dots that are too far away from each other unless it’s about the Mesmerizer. Of course, she didn’t have the guts to ask him about it, but remaining in the dark has its limits. She waits for an answer; her feet keep their paces, not stopping. She can’t stop now. Not when the butler is following behind her through the stone-carved paths.

A few Fireflies—inch-sized lights—glow and hover behind them, following their shadows. Few more in the front leading the way. A scanner—tiny and round, lights glowing from it—also hovers, scanning the solid and void everywhere within a kilometer radius. It forms the structural plan of the cave into a 3D hologram. They pick up the living sometimes: snakes and scorpions. Spiders full of poisons that a professional Alchemist would keep in their closet. A hover disc carries the things required for the ritual—the material things mostly. A canvas, some brushes and an easel, candles and oils. No colors, though. Who knows what the Mesmerize will paint with? Hopefully not blood.

The non-material things needed for tonight aren’t on the disc. In the last few weeks, the symbolist has learned about what non-material things are the basics in Dark Alchemy: Prana and Soul.

Prana can be conjured by the performer doing the ritual. Then would remain the soul. Where will the Mesmerizer get the soul he needs? Piuee wonders. Will he get it with voice? If so, how? Is it through painting? Of course, through painting. Why else would he bring canvas and brushes in a cave?

She has heard about a voice that a mesmerizer can conjure. To be specific, a mesmerizer who can paint may conjure. People call it the voice of dark paintings, the will on the canvas of death. Such a painting can kill when the artist’s will is set in it, when thoughts are focused on it. When their will is strong, whatever they paint becomes real. Because painting needs time, and time builds the most focused prana. Sometimes, what shapes reality is your most focused prana.

May the universe bless the one whom the Mesmerizer paints.

May the universe bless the one of whom he thinks.

May his canvas of death remain blank forever.

A drop of fear leaves the symbolist’s heart and runs through her skin. The Mesmerizer perceives it.

“The shrine senses fear,” he speaks after a long time. “Leave it.” His voice drones into a whisper. His hand still holds the anklet. No one noticed that he began beating the anklet long ago, so slightly and rhythmically that it soon becomes a part of their motion, a fragment of their march. It becomes a series of frequencies. It becomes a prayer. A prayer the shrine demands as a starter before it takes its price.

The butler and the symbolist realize it much later as the sound of the anklet, the rhythmic Runujhunu, gets stronger. Louder. More ferocious. They both become quiet. The Mesmerizer didn’t ask them to. His prana spoke long ago when he needed silence.

Silence makes their march rhythmic.

Silence thickens the smells.

Silence creates the mood that’ll conjure death in the canvas.

The Mesmerizer smells it all. The dirt on stones and cobwebs, the path where snakes might have slithered, the drops of water that must have sieved through the cracks in the caves, the darkness that never lets fresh air enter … Only fungus and slime would grow here. Not creatures of life. Not anything green.

A glow appears on the butler’s wrist. In the darkness lit by only Fireflies, the light from the hologram is unavoidable. Someone is trying to contact Kuhawk. Maroc checks his inbox. He doesn’t speak the message aloud, not wanting to soil the silence. However, he frowns, seeing a second message—a formal email to be forwarded to the Mesmerizer. The email is from a Cosplay Con. The butler doesn’t speak of it in the cave. It could be dealt with later.

The Mesmerizer, however, senses the little tension his butler releases. “Anything important?” he asks; his voice so fluent and rhythmic that no one could call it a noise in the middle of a prayer—a prayer of sounds caused by one gold anklet.

“As much important a Cosplay Con can be, Master Ruem,” Maroc answers. “They requested to host some champions’ tours at Kuhawk this year. It seems Lotus Lodge canceled the tour it was supposed to host.” He says ‘Lotus Lodge’ instead of ‘the monk war hero.’ Over the years, he saw that mentioning the Monk makes the air heavy. So, the butler knows what’s better.

The Mesmerizer looks buried deep into his thoughts, his hand still beating the anklet, continuing the entrance music for the shrine. The Monk wouldn’t cancel what he said he would do, which means his hands were tied. Could it be the Wildlife Conservation Board? Thirty-seven rare animals going missing overnight could cause hassle even for a war hero.

“I will reject,” Maroc says. “Surely Kuhawk cannot host guests on a week’s notice.”

“Don’t.” The Mesmerizer interrupts, his voice calm as always. “Kuhawk will host,” he adds, surprising Maroc.

Hosting some champions? What could make his master consent to such a lowly, childish thing? He wonders, and soon, he understands at least one reason. Perhaps, the Mesmerizer wants to clean up the mess the Monk has caused? Maybe. A burn erupts on his face. After all these years, after all the disagreements, one of the duo still cleans up the mess the other one causes, especially when it comes to Alpha—the first city of the New World, the one they have built together.

Maroc notices the envy erupting in his veins, and there’s nothing he can do about it. He doesn’t want to break the bond these two war heroes have, but he knows many do. Yet sometimes, he wishes the Mesmerizer were only his Master Ruem, and only his.

“I’ll move the Devil’s Book to somewhere safe then?” he asks, remembering they have displayed the book in Kuhawk’s lounge.

The Mesmerizer doesn’t reply. No objection means ‘Yes’—at least for the ones who know how to say ‘No’ when they disagree.

* * *

It isn’t until ten minutes later that Maroc silently checks about the Cosplay Con. He must settle the security insurance before the guests—outsiders, to be exact—set foot at Kuhawk. That’s when he finds it. His analyzer glasses focus on a particular video as he thinks it; the video was streamed LIVE two nights ago. The timing seems to be shortly after that fire in the Old City.

He watches the video in his mind, making sure the Runujhunu isn’t disturbed. He keeps his heartbeat calm, but the frown and the drop of tension surface in his prana.

The Mesmerizer senses it. His fiery red irises shift to a corner while the prayer continues, but he doesn’t get the chance to ask what has happened. Before he’s about to scold Maroc for losing focus, he notices the subtle changes in their surroundings.

Suddenly the cave, the shrine where the Devil’s Book was forged, seems to be alive. Not in any physical sense, though. No stone moves, not a drop of water stops its echo; no dust seems displaced; every inert thing seems as it has always been. However, the bugs must’ve sensed something. The cobras that can stand with their heads high seem to look somewhere they were not looking. And the prana in the cave feels quieter than before. Everyone feels it.

The Mesmerizer doesn’t stop his runujhunu. Maroc Metz forgets to stop the video. His mind commands nothing to his CRAB; it’s linked with his glasses as always. The video keeps running, and so does the dance in it. But his attention isn’t on the dance anymore. His senses are in the cave. The cave that is now alive. The cave that can feel; the cave that has a mind. It has been in a deep sleep for ages and ages, and it woke up hearing the runujhunu—not just from one anklet, but two. None of them realize it, though, not yet.

Moments later, the Mesmerizer says two words, “It’s awake.”

No one responds to him. No one is supposed to.

Maroc Metz doesn’t pay attention when the two-night-old video stops; chores can be handled when they are meant to be handled. He wonders what price the shrine would ask for, now that it’s awake. His eyes find the Mesmerizer one moment and the empty canvas the next. What will it hold? He doesn’t know yet, but he will soon.

Is he ready for it? Perhaps he is. But he didn’t know it was a mistake to ignore the video. Had he been observant, he’d have noticed that only one anklet didn’t awaken the cave. It couldn’t. It never can, just as one hand cannot clap. You need two anklets to create the right music. You need two anklets to open the shrine. The shrine where the Devil’s Book was forged. None of them know it, yet the lonely music continues. And it will remain lonely until the right anklet arrives. If it doesn’t arrive in time, death will visit the shrine.

Runujhunu … runujhunu …