Chapter VII: The two pilgrims

He lay in the cold stone among dreams of unfathomable darkness, the goddess blood left no trace of burnt flesh nor decay. The shadows dance around him until torches fall from the ceiling and burst a green flame, the shadows flee the light and shapes of robes slowly walk towards the altar.

He awakes as the figure approaches carrying two books, a thin black one and a tome as heavy as the ones he had written. The robed figure lays the books down and the hood point at him, two green lights stare and the silence is broken by a slow dragging voice that cools the blood in all the living- “I am one of the shadows that keep this place from the taint of the void, the goddess has commanded for me to be your guide if you ever lose the way.” - the shadow retreated to the darkness and let the robe fell - “Wear my husk and we will manifest the goddess’s will once more”.

Malcolm noticed as he tried to cross his fingers between his hair that he had none, his fingers had a blackened tone and so did his feet. He wore the robe before more could surprise him and from the utter blackness a gate opened, showing a purple sky over a gray soil, a barren field with stone ruins of what once were empires.

From the darkness of the stone door behind a hulking frame emerged, a wolf with green fur and a silver gaze and two jaws led the way for Malcolm across the barren land. The wolf broke the silence with a shivering voice “Mirna has shown you pitty, you have not know a greater luck in your life. A goddess of knowledge knows better than pitty. But that’s just an old hound talking” - he kept walking as lost soul in hell - “ Look I’m her ears and eyes but you don’t need to fear me, I’m debt with her but I’m not one of her ‘children’ or whatever the hell they think they are. I was born in the same place as you in that little planet your metal lord has.”.

Malcolm stopped and stared at the talking wolf - “Metal lord?” - he opened hastily the books he carried - “I’ve been having visions of this place for years and there is no metal lord”- the shivering voice of the wolf showed fangs in seconds - “You two legged apes are puzzling and useless without it. He is the only one putting a fight to those things that want your homes and to eat your pups. I’ve seen him, I owe him more than to Mirna” - Malcolm seemed perplexed by the conversation - “I am not having conversations with an imaginary two mouthed wolf, way to go Malcolm”- “Hey monkey, the name’s Silenius”.

Miles to walk and nothing to do but talk Silenius keep talking as Malcolm just listened, he apologized at the middle of the walk to say that he wasn’t used to listen a wolf talk, Silenius answered with “I have a human friend that would call u a bloody twat”. His story claimed that Mirna had taken him when he was the leader of his pack, they were the first and only wolf pack trained during the roman empire conquest of Britannia, his master whom they all called “Deimos” for reasons he never understood, she experimented on them giving him his fearsome aspect.

The man called Deimos joined the machine and in an exploration mission he recognized Silenus and took him home, “he was as surprised as you when I started talking out of my second jaw” said Silenus - “That means you learned to speak English from a Roman centurion?” - Malcolm kept scratching his head as if looking for his missing hair.

“He wasn’t the same ape, he is an ape no more, he sure looked as you but he couldn’t  be alive. I tried reaching him the day Mirna took us but the silver spider was there, all I could see was him behind a shield wall, his wife dead on his arms” - Silenius described the scene with the same spiders and arachnids as  Malcolm had fled from but no trace of the cultist and their vanishing mist - “I saw him in black , silver and yellow, his smell just wasn’t there anymore. He talked to me as he did when I was a pup and I just knew him, he even carried me like a had 3 months old again.”

“But that kind of technology is surpasses by centuries whatever we have now Sil ” - “Don’t call me Sil” said Silenius showing teeth for second - “Mirna grants all it’s favorites with eternal life, you and I cannot die in servitude.  The Centurion told me when he was teaching me to speak that he missed wolves since he hadn’t seen one in five centuries”. Malcolm was loosing the edge of the conversation, immortal centurions,  metal lord and an immortal talking battle wolf are ties that cannot bind.

Days went by with Silenius hunting critters to feed them both, the main topic of conversation was about the roman army in the republic days, how he met Julius Cesar and that Deimos could tear a tree with  shark stone on a stick. From time to time the wolf would talk about the metal lord and the silver spiders, his voice shivered when the silver spiders came into the conversation always jumping to old stories of rabbit hunting or the metal lord gadgets for wolves.

He spoke of the metal lord as a powerful man, vast armies of unmeasured power that made the ground tremble and keep the abominations of the void at bay with gun and blade in hand. He described machines beyond belief and men wielding the sun against their foes, the Centurion tearing the spiders in half with bare hands.

Walking to the entrance of a tomb Silenus spoke with shivers running down his spine – “Mirna wants you to seek these tombs, you need to see what lies beyond the entrance, within the veil of darkness. You need to see that any place can be a cradle” – Silenus agreed to wait for him and to keep patrol in case something decided to enter the tomb he would run to warn Malcolm. As he made his way into the darkness only whispers moved the air within the walls, at a distance the red light of embers lead the way.