Gate: A Torch’s Shadow
I entered Hades’ coffin and found myself chained to my Shadow once more. In the dark of the cave, Shadow gave a final scream and started to tear at her side. “This has gone on long enough. If you will not let this new form out,” she said. “Then I will.” Using her claws, she sliced open her side from her shoulder to her hip and diamond light spilled through the cut.
“Shadow don’t, please,” I said, still clinging tightly to my shadow Animus. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Anything is better than this endless pain,” she said, as something began to emerge from her side. First one and then another horn came out of Shadow, then a fully-formed spirit with antlers on his head stepped out of the wreck of Shadow’s body. She gave a sigh of relief as he moved away from her.
From his clenched fist trailed the chain that had attached her to me. He wrapped the cord around his wrist and began to pull. The pressure and pain in my side doubled. Now, I started to scream.
“Let it go, let the new form emerge,” Shadow whispered, crawling towards me. “If you let it go, then our pain will stop.” She crept closer and placed her hand on the chain as well. “I’ll lend him what little strength I have left. You were never strong enough to stand against the two of us alone.”
“Stop, I beg you,” I said as my wounded side began to split apart. Shadow shushed me and gave a final tug. A grown woman made of shadows and shaped like me stepped out of my body with the end of the Horned King’s chain around her neck.
As this new being followed the antlered god into the darkness, Shadow’s Animus, her man made of light, left Shadow broken on the ground and took the new Shadow woman’s hand.
My former Shadow gave a shriek. “You would leave me for her?” she cried. “Won’t you miss me?”
The Animus of light glanced back and shrugged. “Don’t make more of this than it is,” he said.
“And you would make less of it,” Shadow said. “I am nothing without your light. I love you. I always have.”
“Thank you,” he replied and turned away. The Horned King pulled the chain of the new Shadow once more. As the three figures disappeared into the darkness, a strange numbness started in my chest and spread across my entire body. For a timeless moment, silence reigned in the cave.
Then, a single tear fell down Shadow’s cheek. “I only ever asked one boon of you, Heidi,” she said. “That you leave the light of the Animus with me. But you couldn’t even do that.” She gave a gasp as the particles that made up her body began to come apart. “You gave birth to a new Shadow and gave him to her.”
“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” I protested. “Neither did you.”
“You broke my heart,” she whispered, fading away. Then, she inhaled one last time and was gone.
“Shadow, don’t leave me,” I said. “We’ll get him back for you if that’s what you desire.” I dragged myself to where Shadow had been but she was no longer there. “I’ll bear any pain to keep you here. Come back, come back to me.” The new numbness in my chest prevented my tears from falling.
“She’s gone,” Animus whispered, pulling me closer to him once more.
I pushed him away. “I may have created this but it feels like all your fault,” I said. “She loved you. She was imperfect, yes, and possessive, almost desperate for your attention, but she loved you.” He ignored my efforts to drive him away and wrapped himself around me once more. “She didn’t deserve to be replaced.”
“I’ll never leave you,” he whispered into my hair.
I stared into the dark and mourned the loss of the Shadow I had known so well. “Sometimes,” I said, all emotion drained from my voice. “I wish I was dead.” Silence and despair blanketed my Animus and I as, elsewhere, Time wrapped the fallen Helios in his ever-flowing coils.
My grief-filled vision ended when the lion companion of the warrior king opened Hades’ coffin lid. “How did it go this time?’ he asked gently, wiping the tears from my face. “Any changes?”
“It’s always the same,” I said, drawing in a shaky breath. “Shadow and I give birth to new ideas but mine is a far stronger and improved version of her darkness. Our new progeny walk away together and she ceases to exist because her Light Animus leaves her to live with the new shadow creations. I’m left alone with my Shadow Animus who can’t see either the loss of my original shadow, understand what I’m so distraught about, or doesn’t care either way. A numbness overcomes my entire spirit and I give up on existence rather than evolving through my heartbreak.”
“Lord Hades’ vision of your possible future is very dark indeed,” said the Companion. “Instead of moving through the vision journey again on your own, what if I come with you? I could give you my lion’s share of strength as well as my own Shadow and we could see if that makes a difference in what you experience.”
“We’ve tried it this way so many times and failed. It breaks my heart and spirit every single time,” I said. “I can’t see how introducing a change could make things worse than it already.”
The Companion smiled encouragingly. “That’s right, Heidi,” he said. “We can’t give up on finding a new way forward for you. The warrior king will return soon and want to know about any progress we’ve made in encouraging your shadow’s evolution. He can be absolutely impossible to deal with when he feels disappointed. Trust me, I know him as well as myself.”
“Alright, Companion,” I said. “Let’s try again.” I lay back in Lord Hades’ coffin but, before the lid shut, the warrior king’s companion put one hand to my forehead and the other to his own. I felt his spirit entering mine and my vision went dark for a moment.
When I could see again, I found myself standing on a chariot drawn by beautiful snow white horses. Shadow stood next to me upon the chariot but she looked like Companion as I saw him in Lord Hades’ abode, a young man with shoulder length chestnut colored hair. We rode together down an avenue in an ancient city with trees and flowering vines hanging from the walls of buildings which were constructed out of stone and decorated with glittering mosaics of precious minerals and jewels.
A crowd lined the avenue and buildings along our path. They seemed to be in the grip of some sort of mania, singing and dancing and throwing flower petals at us and upon the path before us. Shadow took one look at the mob and the shining city and started to laugh. “I recognize this time in space,” she said, jostling my elbow in the confined space of the chariot. “Do you?”
I started to deny any knowledge of the place when I felt Companion’s consciousness take over our tongue. “We remember better than you, my friend,” he said with my voice. “Because we were here too, once upon a time. Do you remember what comes next?”
“Victory,” Shadow said, wearing Companion’s face. “Victory over our enemies and the spreading of countless shadow forms throughout the disbursement of this one’s empire.”
“And how was this accomplished?” Companion asked, waving our hand languidly at the crowds on either side of the avenue. Our smallest movement brought another wave of adoration from the mob and miniature riots followed in our wake through the ancient city.
“By convincing the companions of the great warrior king that the conquered were not as exalted as they, but Other,” Shadow said. “We whispered into their ears to encourage them to put their feet upon the necks of the fallen and to build separate empires upon their backs, as the conquered were ignorant barbarians who were unworthy of any of civilization’s resources including education or space to live.”
I felt a quiet but fiery rage beginning to build around my heart at Shadow’s words. But with Companion speaking through our mouth, not a hint of our burgeoning emotion emerged. His steady strength in managing our emotions was as cool as ice upon the tongue on a hot summer’s day. “I remember that too,” he said, turning our face to give a smile to Shadow, drawing her into his confidence as easily as a bee to a blossom. “Whose idea was it, my friend, to begin these whispers?”
“The Devourer, of course,” Shadow said, waving her own hand at the watching crowd. A handful of drunk and overly enthusiastic celebrants tumbled in front of the chariot, causing us to pause our progress through the city for a moment.
“The Devourer, very interesting,” Companion said. “What does the Devourer devour?”
“Oh the usual things,” Shadow said, leaning against the side of the chariot in a display of boredom as guards in shining helmets began to clear the path before us. “Time, hope, dreams, love- anything to turn those in its sights from their appointed destinies. The Devourer is the enemy of civilization itself, the great typhoon that extinguishes all torches of the gods, even the incomparable Prometheus.”
“And where, my friend, did the shadow, this great Devourer, originate?” Companion said, a slight tremble in our hands being the only sign of our building distress and panic at my Shadow’s words.
“Why you, of course, oh great warrior king,” Shadow said. With her words, the vision shattered to pieces as if a mirror had been thrown to the ground and my consciousness returned to Lord Hades’ coffin. Companion pulled his hand from my forehead with a shudder and collapsed to the floor. I tumbled from the coffin to sit next to him in his distress.
“It is my lord’s shadow,” Companion said quietly after a time of silence. “He and our ancestral companions carry the seeds of their own destruction inside of them, as our tutor warned us so long ago. What good does it do to conquer the entire world, but not be able to manage our own shadow selves?”
“That seems to be one of the great lessons of existence,” I said. “The Light Congress has taught me everyone carries within themselves the potential for light or shadow. It is through the decisions that we make that we grow one energy or the other within our spirit. Your warrior king does not battle his shadow all on his own, we all have our own demons to face.”
“This is true,” Companion replied. “But there is more to this shadow than its simple existence. I didn’t want to believe it, perhaps Aphrodite was blinding my eyes to the truth, but I always thought the warrior king’s reasons and mine for carrying the torch of Prometheus were compatible. Glory and honor can walk hand-in-hand with love and family, can’t it, Heidi?”
“Of course they can,” I said, touching Companion’s shoulder with my own. “All things are possible with Love. We can’t let the lies of our personal shadows or lost dreams dictate how we live our lives now or care for those around us. I believe this to be true in all things, whether our existence in the larger world or our home lives.”
“He is simply so strong,” Companion said, resting his head upon his knees. “I let myself get swept up in his vision not only of reality but also revenge because I love him. Despite this love, I cannot be a part of something that extinguishes Prometheus’ torch. Such a thing is outside of my nature and his too.”
“Maybe it was the words he spoke before you and Hades when he discovered his empire was being divided among your warrior friends that is causing the trouble,” I said. “Threatening to devour someone else’s hopes and loves is a clear sign of a powerful shadow.”
“He has always been highly competitive, especially among our peer group,” Companion said. “As I understand it, we were organized that way by the gods to bring out the best in each other through constant challenges and games.” He raised his head from his knees and gazed outwards into the shadows of Hades’ mansion. “There is an inherent darkness in the domination of reality, don’t you think?”
“Let’s not think that way, Companion,” I said. “Let’s, instead, face this shadow like I’ve confronted so many others in the inner worlds. Banishing the shadow of the warrior king may be a key to my own Shadow’s evolution, just as you suggested. It certainly presented differently than all of my other journeys into potential futures through Hades’ coffin. If the Devourer is an aspect of your warrior king, what must we do to bring the creature out of the shadows so that it can be vanquished? ”
Companion turned to me and gave me a brave smile. “If this is the path, I will walk it with you,” he said. “There is no one in all the worlds who knows the genesis of this particular shadow as well as I. First, you must get to know our enemy, so that you know his strengths and weaknesses as well as you know your own.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“We shine the light of the gods upon it and send it back to the void,” Companion said.
“You make this all seem so simple,” I said. “It’s like you’ve done this countless times before.”
Companion gave a mirthless chuckle at my words. “Oh Heidi,” he said. “You have no idea and, if I have it my way, you never will. If I can spare you what I have gone through because of my lord’s shadow, I will do so.”
I sighed. “I suppose it’s back into the coffin with me, is it?” I said. “I don’t want to watch Shadow’s heart break again. I seem to be stuck at a single fixed point in time.”
“We found a way forward when I joined you in your vision,” Companion said. “I will come with you and continue to lend you my strength. Together, we’ll investigate this Devourer and bring it to the light. Then, and only then, will we concern ourselves with allies for my warrior king. If we don’t banish the great shadow of the Devourer first, we’ll only be carrying the problem on for future generations to vanquish. That is not an act of Love or civilization but destruction for everyone under the sun.”
“Let’s make a sacred pact in this time and place,” I said. “I swear to you, I will not swerve from this path until our task is complete. No matter how long it takes or how many lifetimes, I will find and face the shadow of the Devourer. Amor omnia vincit.” I extended my hand and grasped Companion’s own.
“Et nos cedamus amori,” he replied. “I swear to you, I will never leave you to face the enemies of humanity alone. I give you my word on both my honor and my love.”
We shook hands and light flared between our palms, marking the beginning of a new partnership and endeavor.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 