VIII. Obscurae Mentis Vitalis
When the Mind's Eye Truly Opens...
“Two…two rights, two lefts.” Brennus softly stammered, eyes fluttering, suspended in his lucid dream state. “Then a straight shot. Out. Or down. Anything to get away from…from the blood on the sand.”
Eric hadn’t had to perform hypnotism like this in ages, but given the state of his model student for overcoming the tortures of the Colosseum, he had no choice.
The hunters themselves had never been so worse for wear. The gray’s white-furred lover, Valentina, remained haunted by his maddened state. The red Marcus had only just recovered from the shock of discovering the Guard android on the road.
Eric kept the gray martial artists subdued for as long as he could, trying to get as many answers as he could.
“Did you ever catch a sign?” the withered hound asked, thumbs pressed against Brennus’ forehead. “Any sort of marker? An imperfection of a building structure perhaps.”
The gray could only shake his head. Not frantically, but without any say in the matter it seemed. Back and forth, back and forth, the rolling neck left on autopilot. The mechanic lifted his hand, switched off the hi-fi set that had set the ambience with its gentle electric tones, and snapped his fingers. “Out you come.”
When the gray returned from that strange, ethereal plain, it was as if nothing had happened. He pulled himself up from the cot, buckled his sandals up, and shook it off like an afternoon nap. “How’d I do?” he asked.
“Aremort was a code word for the games among the jailers,” replied Valentina from across the room, blankly. “You killed an awful lot. As we all had. And you took two right turns and two lefts before running straight through Haven ‘til you hit the border.”
Brennus nodded. “Anything to it with the bot?”
“Most we got from jail-breaking were scores and general profiles,” answered Eric. “There are small psychological quirks that mark a hound for inclusion. No single identifier, just a germ of something. Still working that out, but we aren’t quite past some of the baked-in firewalls.”
The gray crossed the garage office to sit down next to his lover. “I’m sorry for the fright.” he whispered, tender as could be.
Valentina turned towards him. She didn’t know what to say. But when she looked up into those brown eyes of his, that alluring gaze as strong now as it was in that patch of Martian desert from so long ago, she fell into his arms, weak with that passion all over again, kissing him all over. It was a display Brennus tried to meet with calmness. “Darling, darling,” he soothed. “Easy, it’s alright now. It’ll all be alright.”
Like the engines of their rides, she seemed content to rev up and go full-on with him then and there, something the gray had to break her of the hard way. “FOR GOD’S SAKE GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF!”
The sting of his voice, the tone, finally did. It also brought on the only other emotion Val had left in her; confused grief. Just as she had given into her impulse to love, she gave into her impulse to cry. The gray consoled her best he could, but it was clear something had come undone beyond his repairing.
Marcus, with Sabina alongside, walked up to Eric, the red couple worried for what was left of their leader on this strange odyssey.
“Is there anything doing?” he asked innocently.
Eric stroked his chin for a second before coming to a realization. A rather pertinent one judging by his exclamation of “OF COURSE!” and “Eric, you nimrod!”
The sudden outburst had even snapped Valentina out of her own tumult.
“What is it then?” Sabina pressed.
“A proper mind-dive.” answered Eric jovially. “Christ almighty, why didn’t I think of it sooner?”
The hunters gathered round as the middle-aged hound explained. “Conventional hypnosis is just one method for reaching the depths of the mind. But there are ways to bore further and cut clear through all the noise. We sit down in a circle, hands clasped, pads of our fingers touching. There will be a pendulum set up within. Once I set it in motion, concentrate on it. Follow it. After a long enough time, you will all be hypnotized, and I can set to work.”
“What for?” came a curious Valentina.
Eric pulled her aside, looking across the small troop of warriors to-be. “Every one of you has been touched by this strange germ of psychosis brought on by the conditioning. We’ve talked about it, come to some conclusions, but we’ve never gotten to the root. All the old attempts to purge it from your minds only suppressed memory, it didn’t erase. I think I can get to the core of each of your traumas using this method. And if we can truly face these, you may find the strength within you to discipline your impulses, and find the answers your minds have locked away. All that feral power, well in hand, and without having to sacrifice a line of memory.”
It was a dumbfounding prospect, one as hard to wrap their minds around as the Colosseum was to hold in their hands. And yet, the willingness to try anything was written on every wolf’s face.
“Begging pardon,” Marcus interjected. “But it all sounds like we’re setting up some kinda strange psycho-séance.”
The mechanic looked at his fellow red wolf, amused. “For simplicity’s sake, consider it magic. In truth it's an extension of extrasensory perception, but the results you will find to be…revealing. Hopefully.”
The “mage” had spoken, and though perplexed, Eric’s sureness convinced them to follow through, though every hound took to the process with some level of trepidation, even a practicing mediator like Brennus. The pendulum was as simple as it got, a polished silver ball suspended via chain from the top point of a pyramid made from stainless steel rods.
All it took was a tap of the sphere, and the pendulum was set in motion. The hunters took their seats, hand in hand, Eric setting the mood with those soft, trance-inducing melodies of his stereo. The music was in perfect harmony with the glistening glowing tone emitted by the swaying orb.
The architect of the whole experience took Brennus and Valentina’s hands in his, completing the circle, and sent the hunters on their way with a few words of encouragement. “Let the sounds wash over you, follow the sphere as it dances, and give your minds up to me. Give up your minds to me.”
Around and around the silver icon spun, each seeing themselves distorted in its reflective surface, each concentrating like their lives depended on it, for at this point, they very well did. Around and around it swung and spun, until the world beyond its sway went to static, and in time, the pendulum itself fell back into the dark of their minds. They were off.
She walked the crimson sands alone, wrapped in a pale shawl. Dry dusty dunes that went on forever. No hills, no plants, just an endless sea of dark red sand. The air tasted of a fog that wasn’t there; humid and yet not a drop of rain to be seen, her muzzle misted by a dew nonexistent.
With each step, each digging of her paw into the dusty earth, a sharp stab of pain rolled up her spine, and behind her, every step of the way, spires pierced the swirling maroon-colored sky.
Beneath the shawl was Valentina, her face vacant in expression. She could only trudge. On and on into the desert dunes with no end.
Then a voice. A familiar voice. But not Eric’s.
It was a voice calling from over the next peak, standing wrapped in all manner of shawls with his flat cowboy hat. It was the voice of the wanderer who had visited Val during her evening drive the night before. Same bulky appearance, same mellifluous British baritone.
“Just round the bend, my child!” he bellowed, echoing across the sands. She was unmoved by the call of his voice, showing neither horror nor joy. It was as if he wasn’t there, though when she reached him, she did, at last, stop.
“Make yourself at home,” the vagabond wolf beckoned, gesturing with all the grace of an orator in the Roman senate. “Close to one as we have I dare say.”
No reply, no thought, she simply sat down. The dark gray wolf, with his stripe of white and light gray muzzle, sat down beside her.
“I suppose you wouldn’t be much for conversation after last night.” he sighed. “I hope the chap is quite alright. I thought an awful lot of him when we first met, all those hazy summer days ago.”
At last those white ears perked up, and a glower ripped across those jade eyes of hers. “The hell you know about him?”
“Only as much as you!” the wanderer snapped back. “Almost drove me into his blasted car with that mind of yours.”
Her glower softened to confusion. “You mean you’re--”
“Who the hell else have you been chatting with since the Old Man died?”
Her waking mind would’ve snapped at the thought of meeting this strange, animating force within her ride. And yet, upon recognizing him, she crawled up and sat in the hound’s lap. Anything for respite from that burning hot world before her. Careful was he to drape the rogue garments from his back about her, cloaking the white wolf in a cover of darkness.
The chamber smelled of many things. A house baptized in second-hand tobacco smoke, the soft subtle lavender of fields long since lost to time. They seemed to cycle, lulling the white wolf from all her cares and worries. And it was in the black of the makeshift womb that he began his prodding.
“They were mostly animatronic.” came his warm, resonant voice. “They looked and bled real, but that was all for the show of it. If anyone is to take the burden of all this supposed death, it ought to be me.”
“You always have.” she whispered. “But if this is–
“If what? I am but a humble tool beyond this space.”
“But you’re,” she broke off. “You’re all I had left. I can’t–”
“Can’t what? I’m tainted now, is that it?”
“No, no, no!” she cried. “It’s not like that–”
He shushed her like a child, something which made her burn with indignity. Until she felt that soft reassuring caress, and those gentle shades of lavender. It was the thing she seemed to pine for the most. She felt the shiver of a childhood memory in it, of being held tight by that simple old goat she called Papa. She felt her first night with Brennus, their passionate lovemaking wrapped in that tender aromatic note. And in the end, she felt the all-encompassing warmth of being behind the wheel of her cherished ride, the towering Humvee.
“Now, tell me all about it,” the wanderer asked from within the void. “Tell me everything you know.”
And so she did…
It was a crystal blue evening for him. Or rather that’s how the light shone down on Brennus where he stood. He couldn’t see anything past that. It was a true void, antiseptic in sight, scent, but not of sound. Brennus could hear the voice of the sensei who had guided him on many a journey.
“No guise this time?” the gray wolf quizzed.
“Call it acclimation,” answered Eric, the mechanic’s disembodied voice gruffer than usual. “We’ve been here many times before, but never like this. You’ve proven your ability to balance all these tensions within you. But it's not the tension I’m interested in.”
“Then what?” Brennus probed.
“The source. If you’re all intent on facing this haunted ground out in the West, vaulting your pain away isn’t enough. Let’s begin.”
From out the black came a thousand eyes, with red irises and pupils crushed against one another like the lumps on a fly’s compound eye. The roar of crowds echoed across the endless chamber to a deafening volume. And for all his peacemaking, all his meditation, the young martial artist could only curl up on himself, eyes shut tight, clutching his ears and folding them down on themselves. Anything to shut it all out.
He felt his fangs grow and his muscles bulge, paws curling in on themselves. It was a metamorphosis that never finished, always rippling and changing, a pain that throbbed with the strength of the invisible crowd and the stinging gaze of the eyes.
Cleaving through it all, Eric’s voice rang out. “Hermits make easy prey. Those who wish to be left alone will not be by those who wish not to leave others be.”
“IS THAT A CRIME!?” roared the hunter, trying to level his voice above the crowd’s distorted, frenzied cries.
“LEAVING OTHERS TO ROT IS!” the disembodied voice roared back, now less familiar. Brennus muttered “who, who” over and over to himself until the voice answered back. “WHOMEVER THAT MAY BE.”
The gray’s eyes opened as he racked his mind for the answer. The thought of a stone unturned, of a job undone. The thought of Valentina coming apart at the seams, from her first advances to her torturous exorcism by his hand.
The thought of himself shredded by the very utterance of the android repeating his match number in the arena. In Aremort.
“Whomever” wasn’t anyone. “Whomever” was simply whomever. The thought of someone always there, always behind the back, always eyeing him. The hound keeping score, the hound who watched his every move, made the notes, kept the tally, and kept watch day and night, night and day. Why, what for, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was knowing someone was there. And not knowing who, that was the rub.
He turned to face the unending sea of eyes who gazed upon him. And in turn, he stared each and every one of them down. Stared past the grainy, tilled fields of the iris, down the barrel of the black pupil. The second he made full eye-contact, off they popped out of existence, like a great sanguinary bubble. He didn’t know how long he could keep up this manic staring contest, how long it would take to dispel them all, but he didn’t care. It was time to cast it all out.
Restored to form, Eric’s voice cut through the electric crowds as they died away, the eyes dwindling into the black of the ineffable nothing beyond his pupil’s spotlight. “Now, tell me everything you know.”
And so, Brennus did…
It was like she had never left. Same bed where she worked her magic, same trinkets from tricks and Johns gone-by. It felt rather cozy for Sabina, still dressed the part of the bohemian, from the dress and sandals to the cropped red top to the odd assortment of jewelry. Nothing out of order, nothing out of place; the red satin sheets of her bed remade after her latest round with a paying customer, her pill popped to keep her in business. She wished it didn’t have to be this way, but she didn’t mind it all that much either. Sabina could sense that her one true lover was out there, somewhere in the desert, beyond the window. And so she sat, waiting, watching. For whom she couldn’t say.
“Figured you were due for a wellness check.”
When she turned to face the voice, it was none other than the old goat himself, Doc. The scruffy gray gave her the biggest bear hug he had on him.
“Ah, the Big Bossman has his street racer’s cologne on.” Sabina chuckled.
Doc’s grin went boyish at the thought. “Me and the Missus are hitting up a strip later, figure I oughta go out looking and smelling good before the gas and grease get to me.”
“I thought you had the other girls to check on before you left.”
The elder wolf shrugged. “I know what’s gone on through everyone else’s minds, I just want to make sure our desert rose is a-okay. It’s hard a life to live when you got others’ struggles on your plate.”
He could sense her gazing shifting towards the window, looking for something she couldn’t quite make out.
“Little game of I Spy or you got someone out there?” Doc teased.
Sabina turned back to face him. “Whoever it is, I just hope he’s alright. I feel like I can’t ever reach him when I need to.”
“Ain’t treating you–”
“Bad, never!” she snapped. “Oh God! Sorry…just nerves.” She gave herself a chance to calm down before finishing the thought. “I just want him to know I’ll always be there for him, even when it all seems so wrong.”
Doc rested a hand on her shoulder. “He’s a good man, whoever he is. And so long as he knows that and you know that, don’t sweat it.”
“It's taking care of him I guess.” she sighed. “I could spend every day with him, but whenever he comes apart, he can’t always be put back together. I fear that day when nothing can be done.”
Doc held her tight. “I think you got the strength for it though. And you got friends to help y’all along. You got me-n-Belle and Murray for starters, right?”
She giggled in that soft, perky way of hers, her bartender friend guffawing right alongside her.
“Whatever’s keeping you level, keep it up. Keep yourself nice and steady for when the hard times come around. Ain’t a doubt in my mind about it, when you’re together, and you stay with it through thick-n-thin, you two will do fine. I think you told me everything I need to know…”
Chained. Big brutalist chains, the likes of which he had dreamed about. Hooked to the sandy ground, and from somewhere, a flood of raw, rotting meat slashed and snapped at his snout like a bullwhip.
He’d been here before. Every cold sweat, every scream in the black of night, this was it. This was IT!
Marcus stood bare before all. Bare paws, legs, chest. Not even the dignity of a loincloth. He sensed in himself that of an even greater bulge of muscle. Not the feeling of strength, but the sensation of tendons and ligaments thrusting and shuffling in some macabre dance beneath his flesh and fur. And as painful as it was, it wasn’t half as painful as the sight sat before him.
This was it. The Colosseum itself. In as vivid a rendering as his mind could handle. Every arch, every piece of faux stonework, every crowded seat, every grain of sand. The sky was the color of the sand, warm and hazy with the smoke of a wildfire hanging above all. And yet that smoke smelled of that heinous, rotting meat. The smell of bodies burning. Furless, fleshless bodies, somewhere in the distance.
Across from where he stood, chained and gnashing in rolling rage, he saw a sight he couldn’t bear. There was Sabina, dressed the part of a peasant girl from the Old World era this charade had so dutifully aped. Chained up and surrounded by the Guards. The black-eyed androids, dressed in the Roman military regalia, with armored chests and sweeping red capes, the leather sandals that had once clothed his bare paws. The mechanical hounds crowded around, with sickening, lustful growls made at the sight of her. And no matter how loudly Marcus roared, how hard he tried to free himself, he couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t stop her screaming, he couldn’t stop them from tearing her to pieces before his eyes. Howling mad, he at last broke free, only to be met with his own face.
When the androids turned to face him, it was the contorted visage of Marcus sat upon the head of each bot. Uncomfortably curled smiles, elongated eyes, that of a goat’s turned on its side. It froze him solid. But then he saw Sabina, his beloved so cruelly violated, and he bolted to her side. Nothing would stop him for nothing could. He brained each metal monster with his bare fists, that stench of decay rocketing out from their heads. He fought through every bastard between him and the love of his life, as valiantly and as hard as he could.
And yet, his reward would be forever denied him. Every wolf vanished before his very eyes, Sabina included, the only remains of the Grand Guignol tableau were his fistfuls of crimson sand, where the tender woman once lay.
There were no words, no thoughts, just a blinding, uncontrollable rage that he sat living in perpetual fear of. Over the loudspeakers, that callous announcer came ringing through. Jabbering on about points and scores and all the other bullshit that went along with the blackened sport. And clear through it all, the word of advice.
“And remember, champion,” he said, the words wrapped in a crystalline broadcaster’s voice. “It’s all in your head. Everything. A whole world, a whole universe. Yours to sort, yours to wield.”
Marcus picked himself up off the ground, the red wolf scowling at everything in sight, hate etched on his eyes and claws. His body and build had taken on a monstrous form, with razor fangs and ever-elongating digits, he found himself walking on the balls of his feet, the heel rising to form a proper set of wolven paws.
And yet, it was at the height of this manic transformation that the request came. “Now, tell me everything you know.”
For a moment, breath heavy as lead, the feral killing machine stood in the bloodsport’s domain and seemed unable to speak.
“TELL ME!” the announcer’s voice commanded.
From out of the deafening silence, the answer came: “I know now what they’ve done to me. All of it…”
The music died and the pendulum stopped, dead center. Eric stood up, and with a snap of his fingers, out they all came, one after the other. Each couple found themselves clinging to one another, a shivering Marcus on the verge of tears as he held his beloved Sabina tight as he could. Val and Brennus did likewise, though both proved remarkably restrained in their emotions.
Eric called up each to the desk in the office. “Alright, write down everything you know.” Valentina began with a rough diagram of the Colosseum as she saw it and a rough path from the gate. She got as far as her fifth turn. Next came, Brennus, jotting down all the lingo he caught from the bots, from “aremort” referring to the games to the “furrure pera” referring to the participants. He too drew a diagram, noting one odd detail: the mile counter added either five or seven miles from when he broke out to the edge of the city, the detail still hazy.
When Marcus took to his blank sheet, he drew up the Colosseum as if he were its designer. The same precision he had taken to his beading and his small crafts he brought to the illustrations. Every bot design he could recall, the layout, where the berths for participants were in the building, the gate. He hadn’t quite unlocked his path from the exit to the edge of the city, but he remembered going out at least a block before hanging his first right.
With all the documents assembled, there was one last acid test: the android. The hope was for it to confirm any or all of the details, everyone pitched in to restore the strange, unruly looking beast. Eric worked with surgical precision, timing his cuts and carefully reworking the wiring. Gently, he set the switch mechanisms to one setting he hadn’t yet. Upon powering the head on, there was a slight buzz followed by the blinking of its black eyes. Every hunter held their breath at the sight of the machine coming to life. There wasn’t a trace of fear, a strand of anxiety, not a twinge of horror to be found. All simply waited for the machine to come back to life.
And sure enough. “Gladi-Model 298 ‘Charon.’” sounded off from the bit-crushed voice-box, followed by a phrase that set everyone back on their heels.
“Ready for Nero Protocol.”
They were in.