Sun Shadow - Chapter 18 - Ah’at Tomb

Chapter 18 : Ah'at's Tomb
 
Apollo's body shivered.
 
Apollo's body swayed in the wind like a flattened vine.
 
The banana trees raged.
 
Here, on Alltaré, a man walked alone.
 
His gaze froze. Apollo's lips turned blue. His shoulders sank.
 
The slap came.
 
“Fe…ar”
 
Apollo's body rippled.
 
That feeling. It vanished into the depths of his blood then reappeared in his throat.
 
Apollo stepped on something.
 
Apollo's eyes fixed on the stone, the brute.
 
He circled it, for a moment.
 
He hid behind it. He listened.
 
A soft and pressing step. It drew closer.
 
Apollo's hands trembled.
 
Apollo's breath turned hoarse.
 
His lungs tore. A wolverine was born.
 
It leapt far.
 
The hand of death caught it.
 
The wolverine's eyes fixed with horror on that being. Its body wriggled to break free. The wolverine vomited on the ground. Excrement gathered at its feet. The wolverine's body rose into the air by the pull of an arm. The wolverine was devoured, little by little.
 
Apollo did not look.
 
Apollo's legs became a film.
 
In that black and white film, one could see only the darkness of unspeakable shadows. Bodies fell from the sky and crashed around the legs. Red splashed against the black for an instant when the white returned. Apollo lay on the ground. His body was tossed above him, an existence. Apollo's eyes, the cowardly ones, detached. The legs tore themselves from the gate of the end.
 
They fled running just as the eyes had. Yet they did not survive long before a delicate hand settled upon them.
 
Apollo's torso curved from below upward.
 
The torso wanted to observe.
 
Apollo's visūrjā panicked.
 
It activated. Nothing happened, except, the silence.
 
Of that breath which comes from the heavens and shakes the soul.
 
Apollo produced no sound.
 
The mouth closed forever.
 
Apollo's heart stopped beating.
 
The cold sweat on his body multiplied.
 
Apollo's face emptied.
 
He looked into the stone.
 
On it, there was a notch.
 
Apollo raised his trembling fingers. He touched the stone. It was cold like the voice in his head.
 
A creak.
 
Apollo crawled into the opening.
 
Above him, the creature watched. It came no closer than 5 meters to him.
 
When Apollo reached the cavity, the wall closed behind him.
 
The creature looked.
 
It left.
 
Apollo was in the dark.
 
The sweat on his hand flowed like a cascade into the abyss.
 
Complete darkness.
 
He did not know. He feared it.
 
Apollo kept crawling.
 
“Fu…rth…er…”
 
His voice stopped there.
 
Apollo's head was impaled on a sword rising from the ground. Its blade was as though blackened by ash, its mouth closed.
 
It reached Apollo's spirit.
 
The shoulder of Apollo's spirit disappeared.
 
He did not. Apollo's body toppled into a pit.
 
His corpse shattered against the bones of men and women, lost.
 
The skin of Apollo's face expressed silence.
 
He remained.
 
The gods appreciated the spectacle.
 
A hand rested on the head of the best preserved skeleton.
 
Ah’at.
 
A leg placed its foot on the ground.
 
A knee rose downward.
 
A head emerged from the darkness.
 
A chest breathed the vanished air.
 
Eyes fixed in silence.
 
A body rose.
 
The gods no longer smiled.
 
That body climbed the pit.
 
Apollo raised his arm toward his mouth.
 
The mouth fled.
 
He parted his thumb between his lips.
 
Apollo's tongue licked the thumb. Apollo withdrew it.
 
“The…crea…ture…is…gone…”
 
Apollo's body stood above Ah’at's tomb.
 
Fear is the wretched beast that makes one lose reason. But it also allows one to survive.
 
Apollo's leg pierced his spirit like a rope cuts.
 
Apollo brought one knee to the ground.
 
A second blow.
 
The other knee lowered.
 
Apollo's tongue cut itself.
 
It went out into the black sky.
 
The stars live only billions of years.
 
“M…e”
 
The universe observed a man on the ground. A young man without emotion. Lost in contemplation.
 
The hands of that being no longer covered the archipelago of his spirit.
 
The golden threads replaced the banana trees.