Memories of the Divine

I, Phineas Kalengrad, have been alive for quite a long time, even among the standards of mages. And there are many questions we ask ourselves. Why are we here? Where will the future take us? What do the gods, should they truly exist among us, expect from their mortal progeny? And among those most presumptuous of questions that I myself have asked, is this.

What happens to a god when they die?

Do their worshippers simply continue on, blissfully unawares of a deathly wind blowing through the golden halls of the divine? Or is it the death of the worshippers that may cause the undoing of a gods very divinity? Or, perhaps most sinister of all, do the gods themselves make war upon each other? For what are we if not the children of the gods? And what do children do but watch and learn from their parents, mimicking and recreating their actions and choices. Their virtues and sins.

For is it not said that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children? We have made war upon ourselves for centuries upon centuries. Perhaps we like to view the gods as better. Their supposed perfection, something to strive for.

But I ask you, prospective students of the arcane, this most blasphemous of questions.

What if the gods are no less imperfect, no less lost to their baser instincts, than we?

-Phineas Arcturus Kalengrad

Professor of Arcane Philosophy

Royal Academy of Kadamn

The taste of blood on my lips should be a clear sign that I should have just walked away. But, for better or worse, I don’t have that in me. I never have. Which why I’m in yet another fist fight with another man that I don’t even know. Because I can’t do what everyone else does. I can’t look away when I see something that I don’t like. Something that is objectively wrong.

For instance, watching this piece of shit, berate the unfortunate young girl behind the counter because his coffee wasn’t sweet enough. What the fuck that has to do with her mother or this supposed assumption that she’s a drug addict just because she has a tattoo, I have no idea. But I’ll be god damned if putting a couple holes in his oh so perfect smile and staining his crisp suit with his own blood didn’t feel good.

Unfortunately for me, this guy must be one of those stockbrokers with a weight set in his office, if the sledgehammer blow of a right hook he levies my way is anything to go by. Don’t judge a book by its cover goes both ways, I suppose. I was never very good at taking my own advice.

I spit blood to the side and straighten up, glaring daggers at him as I do so.

“What bitch?! You want another, come fucking get it!” he shouts.

The barista is already on the phone, probably calling the cops as we speak. Everyone else is either watching us like we’re the only show in town or trying to make a swift exit while being noticed as little as possible.

I inwardly sigh. I really don’t want to be arrested again. Then again, that thought would have been a little more useful a few minutes ago. So, fuck it. In for a penny…

“What are the fucking odds? I said that exact same thing to your mother not an hour ago.” I say with the best shit-eating grin I can muster.

He doesn’t say a word. He just lunges forward and before I know it, I’m on the ground getting my teeth knocked in and doing my best to not black out. I’m not the biggest guy, but I’m sure as hell not small either. Having said that, I barely hear the sound of the cops arriving through the sound of my own head being knocked into the floor over and over.

Even through the haze of pain and a possible concussion, I still manage to ask myself how the hell they got here so soon.

A few minutes later, and I’m sitting in the back of a police cruiser with my hands cuffed behind me, once again questioning why the hell I only seem to exist to pick fights on behalf of people who couldn’t give any less of a shit about me and my pseudo-heroic tendencies.

Then I remember that I don’t actually care about them. I mean, I do, but…

I used to be different. I wasn’t always a useless fuck up. Shocker, I know. I had aspirations and dreams like any other. I wanted to be a writer. Write stories to uplift people, show them that they weren’t alone. That I, we, saw them. Really saw them. I was pretty good too, at least according to my professors. And my father.

But then one day, I get a call. My father, the guy that had been there for me through everything; my depression, the suicidal episodes, the clusterfuck of a so-called relationship with my mother and everything that she had put me, us, through, was dead.

He took a razor to his wrists so deep that the coroner likened it to the grand canyon. Everything he had told me, all of the building me up and trying to put his fuck-up of a broken son back together, and I never had the decency to even notice the shadows that had gripped him too.

My brother and sisters were distraught, my mother was shattered. And me? The ice-cold void in my chest that had once tempted me to darkness, had turned red-hot. My depression turned to anger, and everyone around me started to slowly dissipate. No one wants to be around, when the rage inside you could burn down a house. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

It’s been three years since then. I’ve been in and out of prison a couple of times now. And now it’s starting to look like there might another all-expenses paid trip to the iron pen in my near future.

To be perfectly honest, the only thing keeping me going now is…fuck, I don’t even know anymore.

Twenty-seven fucking years old, and I haven’t done shit. No career, no savings beyond the $17.23 in my bank account, and definitely no romantic prospects either. Nothing that could really go anywhere anyway.

I’m just throwing punch after metaphorical punch at myself until I notice that the road has gotten a little bumpier than usual. I look up through the window and see cow pastures. I frown.

“Hey, Poncherello, get a little lost or what?” I say to the cop in the front seat.

He doesn’t say anything. My frown deepens.

“Hey, seriously. What the fuck?” I insist, getting right up on the cage separating me from him.

He still doesn’t say anything. After another minute he pulls off on just about the shadiest looking road you’ve ever seen, and then stops the car. He gets out and then opens my door and pulls me out.

“Hey, watch it!” I say as he throws me face first to the ground.

It’s when I turn over and see him aiming his sidearm at me that I start to actually panic.

“I’m sorry.” he says. Then I see tears start to run down his face. “She said that I have to do this. You have to go to her, and then she’ll be safe. She’s my daughter, I need her to be okay.”

I don’t even know how to begin processing everything that he just said. I just slowly hold my hands up in surrender.

“Okay officer, it’s fine. We’re fine, right? I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I can promise you that you have the wrong guy. I’m nobody. There’s no reason-”

“NO!” he says and puts the gun closer to my face but still too far out of reach to even try to get it away from him. I flinch. “She said! I have to do it!” he yells at me.

I may not be good at fighting, or at least not trained in any actual fighting style. But I do have one thing going for me. Something I got from my dad. And the irony of this particular skill isn’t lost on me either. I know how people think, a little too well actually.

And I can put things together with relative ease. Context clues and what not.

I’m the kind of guy that would accidentally figure out the secrets my friends and family wanted to try and keep under wraps, and then feel the need to hide it until they actually told me. I never really knew why or how, but for some reason I was really good at that. It was part of what made me a great writer. Making believable characters do believable things.

So, in this moment, I try to call on that, hoping that maybe I can use it to get out of this situation that I still can’t even believe is really happening to me. Hoping that its more useful now than when it might have helped me save my father.

“What’s your name?” I ask. He hesitates, because of course he does. “I just want to know the name of the guy whose about to kill me. I’ll be taking it to my grave anyway, assuming you plan to even dig a hole that is.” I mentally kick myself. I talk when I’m nervous, and the last thing I need is to say something stupid and piss the guy off.

“…Travis.” he says after a minute that feels like a year.

“Look Travis, I don’t know who told you to kill me, but I doubt that your daughter would want to know that her life was bought with murder. By her own father no less. There has to be some way I can help, man. I’m here to help. Just tell me what I need to do.” I tell him, but the stress in my voice is evident.

He swallows hard, then shakes his head. “No no no. I have to. I have to…”

“No, you don’t. Please Travis. I have family, same as you. Don’t do this. We can-”

The sound of a gun being fired fills the air before I can finish, and I drop to the ground. It’s strange, because I swear that I can feel a breeze skating across my insides. One second I’m looking up at the afternoon sky, and the next I see Travis standing over me. Tears are streaming down his face, and landing on mine. “I’m so sorry. So sorry…” he sobs. I see him slowly raise the gun in his hand and aim it at my head.

And then nothing but the same black void I’ve known for years. I guess it finally got me.