I am on the road. I follow the road which becomes a rocky river of muck when it rains. It rains oftentimes now. It is of no concern. I fear not mud. I know the way, though I cannot lose my way following the mud.
I am walking along the road to fulfill my quest, my sacred duty. The Abbey is far behind me now. Before I left my brothers shaved me and anointed and blessed me with oils. I am shriven and now I am on the road on my quest in a state of grace. On the road I carry the knife I was given for my quest in a leather satchel I wear over my shoulder.
I am unaccompanied. I ride no animal. I carry all I have, which is hardly a burden for myself. I carry only my satchel that holds the knife I was given for my quest, a bedroll, a small camp shovel, and another robe identical to the one I’m wearing now. Most nights I sleep in fields or orchards beneath trees. I am blessed sometimes with a night in a stable or a kitchen.
I see travelers and pilgrims and brigands along the road on my quest. I do not carry money. It is bad luck to rob one such as me, brothers who carry nothing of value and will give it freely nevertheless. They leave us be for the most part.
One accosts me nevertheless. The sickness must have found him desperate. He asks for all my money, which I say I would gladly give had I any.
“I don’t believe you,” the brigand says. He brandishes a knife. “Maybe we will just have to test your devotion.”
“I do not wish to harm you, but know I’ve been given special dispensation to take life if I must. I am on a quest of vital importance which cannot be interrupted by your greed.”
I do not mention if I must take life, it must not be with the knife with which I shall complete my quest. I must take it some other way.
“Enough damn talk!”
He lurches at me with the knife, and I grab his wrist as I step aside. I use his force to swing him around and pull him back up against me. I take another sidestep and raise my hand. crush his windpipe with one clean strike and deposit him on the ground and resume my quest.
My quest takes me to the cave. There I must go. The cave is a place of deceit. I will see I know not what in the cave. No man knows what the cave holds until he has entered. Perhaps it is someone familiar, someone lost to him. It might be some awful beast. Whatever it is, it is a deception. It is different for every man, except that it is a deception, that is the same. The deception is to make me forget, even for an instant, why I have come. I will not forget why I have come. I have come to strike down this thing with the knife I was given. That is my quest. That is my sacred duty.
I asked the Abbott of the thing in the cave’s nature. He said everything in the Abbey and beyond is like some thing, except the thing in the cave. He said the thing in the cave is its own thing. He says men once invented a word as terrible as the thing in the cave, but its very sound struck dead speaker and audience alike. It can manipulate the seeming world. It eats death and breathes discord. It creates deceptions because it does not have a physical presence. It neither needs nor wants one. It is happier inside of people but cannot get in on its own.
The Abbott told me I can destroy its lies, but the thing in the cave does not know death. Its understanding of life is also different, but it understands it can take ours. The thing in the cave cannot be killed in a way that matters, even by the Abbott. My quest is the destruction of the deception it will show me. If I succeed, I shall emerge from the cave unbound by my oaths to the monastery, and the thing in the cave shall regather itself until one of my brothers follows my footsteps to complete the cycle again in exactly one year.
If I fail and the thing in the cave kills me, it will emerge from the cave and seep into the loam and the water and the meat and the crops. It will creep through the minds of the people and create discord and suspicion. It is called a calamity. But there will not be a calamity, because I will arrive at the cave, and the deception made for me by the thing in the cave will not fool me so easily. I will not forget why I have come. I will remember my quest, remember my training. My quest is of vital importance. I will strike down the deceptions of the thing in the cave. The land shall be delivered and I a free man.
These things I know. I know very little. In the Abbey, my mind was shielded from needless thoughts. Unfettered to burdensome cogitation, your senses and instincts bloom is what I was told by the Abbott. My senses and instincts are of vital importance to my quest. My quest is of vital importance. Needless consideration is of secondary importance. Wondering at the beauty of the sky is useless to me. When I emerge from the cave there shall be time enough to wander the Earth as I please. Until then I know little of the world. All I know was told to me by the Abbott. Little of the world is unknown to the Abbott.
The Abbott knew I would become afraid as I drew nearer to the end of the road to my quest. I had never been afraid before. I asked the Abbott if he knew of magick which quiets fear. He said he could keep much from troubling my mind but not fear. He said fear has been with us far longer than even magick and is far more powerful. Fear is even older than good and bad and is therefore neither. Senses and instincts create fear in my mind from the world around me. He told me handling fear would be difficult, but it would also make me more difficult to deceive.
The sun sets and I am afraid like the Abbott said. He said fear would fill my mind, but I do not feel it there. I feel it most in my stomach. A cold and angry toad trying to escape my stomach. Even though it feels cold, the Abbott told me to think of it like a fire that burns fast and hot. Fear will take with it your energy. It is good then I grow so afraid at night and can sleep despite it, but sleep does not refresh me. Terrors fill my sleep but take their memory with them when I wake. At dawn I feel as if these phantoms chased me up a hill through the night.
I was told what I feel at waking and till dusk is called dread, not fear. Dread is older than magick also, but fear is older than dread. The Abbott told me the early humans invented dread to feel at the coming of great terrible things. Fear is a fire burning bright and hot and fast, but dread accumulates like it rolls downhill and smolders in fear’s ashes.
Dread feels as if the muck of the road rises to my neck. The exhaustion from fear burdens me further. I started on the road to the cave some days ago, and I should arrive in a few more, but fear and dread have cut time off from me somehow. I am on a beach watching time go by, asking it to remember me.
I wish to be at the cave. I will foil the trickery of the thing in the cave. I will strike down its dark magick and ward off its calamity another year. These things I know.
I am stunned when I arrive at the cave. The fear and the dread made the cave seem imaginary. I realize I had been on a journey to a cave in my mind, not this cave. The cave I feared and dreaded is the cave in my mind, not this cave. The cave in my mind is gone now, and the fear and dread with it.
I pray briefly at the mouth of the cave. I make no haste now. I am about to fulfill my sacred duty. I am shorn, shriven, anointed with oil and blessed. I am at the end of the road to my quest. I am in a state of grace. I take the knife I was given for my quest from the satchel on my shoulder. I am ready. I will see the deception for what it is. It will not work on me. No calamity shall befall the land. I will emerge from the cave. I will be a man wide open to the world and free within it. I enter the cave. I am ready.
The cave is dark. I have not brought a torch. My eyes adjust quick as any man’s. Once I can see well enough to place my feet safely, I continue. A shaft descends into cold darkness and I follow. I am in the cave now, in a tunnel in the cave, on my way to complete my quest.
There is a light, soft, glowing in the distance from behind a bend in the tunnel. There is no question. This is where I must go. This is my destination. It is not something to fear or dread. There is nothing in my mind or stomach. I am empty now. I follow the light. I hold the dagger. There is nothing else, nothing outside the cave. There is nothing in the cave but me and the light. Behind the corner the thing will attempt to deceive me. It will not work. I round the corner.
The Abbott stands there, smiling sadly at me, next to a brass candelabrum with a blue fire burning, out of place, magick. Magick makes what is not so seem natural, and the candelabrum and its weird flame seem as if they occurred within the cave like any other rock.
“You’ve done well,” the Abbott says, smiling but his eyes near tears.
“You are not what you appear,” I say, brandishing the knife. “You are a deception. You are not the Abbott. You are some other thing and I’ll strike you down.” I advance upon him, but too slowly to truly press my objective.
“There is a deception, but it is not me. I am the one who has deceived you.”
“What do you mean?” I say, wary.
“Come closer,” he says softly. I step towards him and the candelabrum. “Give me the knife,” he says, and I give it to him. “The only way to avoid calamity is if a young warrior sacrifices himself to him with a pure heart. And you shall help us avoid one yet.”
“I do not understand.”
“You were not made to, and yet every year I find myself doing just that.”
“What?”
“Young men willing to give themselves to the beast became harder and harder to come by, so I was forced to make some.”
“Made who?” I say, mystified.
He plunges the knife into my chest. I stagger and fall to a knee. I had never considered dying before, how or when. It feels unlike anything else. Perhaps it is the thing in the cave, accepting my gift. I feel the edges of me become faint. My mind stretches and stretches throughout the cave and the world until it almost doesn’t exist.
The last words I understand are from the Abbott: “Bless you, son.”
— Alex Kies was born and raised in the Twin Cities and lives in the Quad Cities now, specifically in Rock Island IL, but not on Rock Island. He is the oldest of four brothers. He has a fun little zine club he runs out of Patreon.com/akfossil