Ten Matrical Daemons: Short stories from the Mirror Realm

Ten Matrical Daemons

Ten Matrical Daemons

Short stories from the Mirror Realm

Anna Maddalena

Anamnesis Media

Copyright © 2022 by Anna Maddalena

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, 2022.

To my crew at the CFH,

you know who you are.

To the scorned goddess,

the virgin-harlots,

and of course my dear friends

the matrical daemons.

Contents

Dedication

Preface

I The Chamber of the Ork

II The Doom of Prince Droedd

III A Conference of Matrical Daemons

IV A Giant’s Heartbeat

V Testament of Rouge

VI Hunger of the Gods

VII The Wise One

VIII That Which Takes Itself Too Seriously

IX Tales of Auspicious Beasts

X The Tree

Further Reading

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Preface

This collection of short stories may very well be your introduction to the world of Táre and its compendious storytelling tradition.¹ If so, I’m at a loss to explain it. How do you introduce a newcomer to an entire world, especially when it’s very nature is a matter of debate? Commentators have held it to be such contradictory things as the record of a lost civilization, a mad confabulation, an ill-advised pastiche, a soma-induced metaphor, a proto-science fiction, a post-imperial metafantasy, a conservative doxology, a progressive protest, an undecrypted enigma, a mystical glossolalia, an extraterrestrial transmission, an elaborate hoax, or perhaps a mere tangle of words.²

I would leave it at that if I could, as you don’t become a Tárean scholar without nurturing a taste for the cryptic, but charity demands I give you something to cling to before you are set adrift in these strange oceans. If you are to understand what we know of this world by a few facts, let these suffice:

The world of Táre has two sentient species: the Twdha, ie. humans, and the Mu. The Mu are similar to humans in many respects, being both bipedal and capable of speech. However, on the whole Mu-consciousness is more collective than Human-consciousness³—the boundaries between individuals are more flexible.

The majority of the Tárean literature we have in our possession is from the westernmost continent, a land called Albraka. This continent is the indigenous birthplace of Mu-kind. Humans are relative latecomers.

Nearly all the texts we have received are written in Ten Twdhâr, a language more commonly known as Silfan after the ethnic group which speaks it.

Over time the eastern Silfans grew culturally and linguistically distinct from their western cousins. The eastern people are called Naga—or Naja in later literature. The Silfans and Nagans have been at war for many centuries.

Most of the Silfan literature we possess might be classified as ‘scripture,’ whether canonical, apocryphal, or exegetical. Like Abrahamic or Buddhist scripture, the texts contain everything from history to fables, and biography to metaphysics.

As for the stories that make up this volume, some are near translations, others complete fabrications. Truth be told many of them came to me in a sibylline frenzy I cannot attribute to hard work or anything resembling writerly authority. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so many years myopically scrying into this Mirror Realm that the images and vignettes came more like unasked-for dreams than anything else. All this to say: welcome to the daydream.

—A.M.

Founder,

The Silfan Resurrection Project

Notes:

Publication of the main compendium of Tárean literature, namely the so-called Ennead, will proceed following this collection’s release.

That is to say: whichever belief you form hereafter is as true as any other. Far from being a lament of postmodern relativism, this is simply an observation of the imaginal realm’s practical metaphysics.

Or more accurately: humanity is less aware of its collectivity than the Mu are of theirs.

Here then is the secret of numbers. There is always 1 and never 0, which is to say there is always 0 and never 1, which is to say being and non-being are two of ‘one’ numberless substance.

I

The Chamber of the Ork

A legend from the Silfan exile.

It is said the only generous act of the Overmen was their commandment: that we not enter the lower reaches lest we meet the worst of ends. In every other respect we can only but witness to their cruelty—a cruelty we know better than our own names—but in this at least we whispered their mercy.

Yet the forbidden thing calls out the strongest when you are oppressed. I had heard the call of the lower reaches for some time now. Even with my dim hopes set upon them, it occurs to me they might be a trap for my kind, any slave who likewise rebels.

I leave my cyclopean taskmaster howling and clutching the bloody socket where had been his only good eye. My companion and I veer at once from rebellion to blasphemy and sprint headlong for the downward-spilling stairs. I’d seen a war-cleric descend there once, morning-star thurible belching a fowl incense that made my head throb, so I know where to go. I drag Kasmin after me into the dark heart of the mountain.

Tôtulmîr was once a holy summit, but now it lies dying, stuck by a thousand mining shafts and festering with a million hungry slaves. We, captured daughters and sons of Silfan-kind, are the foodstuff in the stomach of some thundering Nifel war mammut. We are born of a blood beneath the Masters, and thus far beneath their loathing. Some still pray to Vueno above for succor and salvation, but I put no more hope in god: I can’t bear any more shattered dreams.

Kasmin and I are safe. We hide easily in one of the many stone cabinets that line the onyx halls. He embraces me and I can feel his pulse; mine rises to meet it. We kiss, I celebrate with a fervor unbecoming to a Silfan woman, though perhaps I am not that anymore: my hair is uncovered, my eyes unashamed. I am a paradox of shattered identity and newborn life. For the first time I am awake and feel joy, though I tremble.

I press into him as my mind combs through endless passages. If only there was another way out of the mountain. A hundred or more tunnels break to the surface, yet a city of Nifel guards, taskmasters, soldiers, slave-traders, and overmen hem us in from every side—all but one:

At the north-east face near the headwaters of the Ink River, there is a silent gap of one mile. Sometimes clerics come trembling by and toss herbs and libations into the waters from their sacred stone bridge, but even they fear to so much as skirt the water’s edge, much less approach the river mouth, that ravenous ork visage carved into the rock face. The dark headwaters well from the very mountain roots down the cavernous throat of that stony sea-beast, then spew forth into a shallow pool before the bridge. It is a terrible place, and sacred, abhorred by the overmen. I know for I have witnessed it: I was their palm-bearer one fortuitous night, and I saw the ork-maw for myself under the light of a blue moon. That was one month ago to the day. The timing is not by design, though perhaps the lunar tide lends me some mysterious strength.

Kasmin and I leave our hiding place and press on. The entrance to the lower reaches is not far, just two lefts and a right, down barren corridors. Invitingly simple. If only there was another way.

Here we are. The great chamber is empty of clerics and slaves. Wide, shallow steps and sickly green columns descend to an algal limestone threshold before desert-bleached and worm-carved doors hung on rusty iron hinges. Kasmin’s hand is sweaty as I drag him down the stairway to the landing. Yet even I stop before those gaunt, imposing doors.

Jahara, he says, what if the tales are true?

If it’s the nine hells past these doors, I say, better than the one up here. Yet my voice quivers. We need to hurry.

I gather some resolution and tug at the leftmost door. I heave and heave, but my strength is fading. Kasmin stands behind me and helps. We pull, harder than we ever did to the chorus of whips, and it swings open a crack. The iron frame wrapping the door scrapes against the flagstones, sending up sparks and a great wail. We dart instinctively through the crack and heave it shut before we notice the absolute darkness.

We should have brought a torch, says my lover. He’s always first to announce the obvious.

You have the flint?

Yes.

There were braziers outside between the columns, I say, still breathing heavy. Maybe they keep on down here. I grope along the stone wall, reach out with my hand for one of those hideous charcoal-filled urns. I grasp in the dark for what seems too long, until my hand lands on cold ceramic, then soot.

Here, I say.

He crawls my way; I guide him to the top. I hear his flint strike against stone, see sparks that illumine nothing but themselves, again and again. He curses as he almost drops the flint, then makes a renewed effort. The litany of darkness, sparks, and obscene prayers feels liturgical.

The right spark hits, something in the urn glows. We cradle and breathe life into it until it crackles with embers. Our atrium lights up and we see a dim passage beyond.

I take a stick of charcoal and bear it into the darkness, looking for something to ignite. We light a torch apiece from the leg bones of some sacrificial victim, wrapped in our sooty headbands and dipped in the slick of rancid, pooling oil. In the torchlight the way forward seems clear.

We go hand in hand further into the darkness, through bare chambers with low ceilings. They cross, interconnect, then converge upon a single long hall: twelve dark alcoves on each side, and twelve umber-stained banners hanging lifeless between them.

A thirteenth banner hangs over the remains of a sacred hearth, an altar to some long-forgotten goddess. The embroidery is defaced by hardened tar and impaled by pig-iron, and the hearth is filled with slag.

I remember my own hearth back home, before the overmen came and scattered my coals. I have a sudden urge to flee this desecration. I back away. Whatever it memorializes, within or without me, I do not wish to remember.

We hug the wall and peer down into one of the recesses. I must escape this room. Spiraling stone ends in more darkness. Always more darkness—yet we take it down into the crypt.

Here the walls are slick with dripping algae. Our flames glimmer across the glistening stone beneath us, but the air itself seems to swallow what’s left of the light, and we see nothing beyond where we stand. The stones are worn smooth beneath the many puddles, and I slip. Kasmin grabs me and pulls me into him. I catch the warm glow on his face, though it pulverizes my shattered heart to look at him. His eyes and cheeks are too sunken for the light to reach. We used to be handsome, the two of us. Now we’re at death’s threshold. This place suits us.

We follow where the light doesn’t glint, deeper into the darkness, until a dim glowing tile in the distance grows into a doorway. Past the portal, we see a rocky ledge overlooking a vast chasm, lit by some hidden skylight or cave-in above. Silfan bones sprawl across the threshold; we are acutely numb as we step over them onto the ledge.

A cast-iron altar grips the edge and surveys a sinking drop below. Coarsely hewn steps tumble off to the side like an afterthought, descending in ersatz flights along precipitous slags of basalt. There are no handrails, and we cannot see the bottom beyond a miasmic fog.

Nothing for it, I say, though I begin the descent backwards on hands and knees like a beast crawling down a rotten log. Maybe Vueno still has mercy on me, slave and whore that I am, or some power does—perhaps the scorned hearth-goddess herself—for I stand and walk the crooked tightrope down though it takes more confidence than I have. My uncouth lover follows, just as trembling. That same mercy, not from above, not Vueno’s sweet succor, but something, something forgotten from the deep, rises within him too. We tiptoe across the precipice together, like two billy goat-stags tottering over canyons.

He almost stumbles atop of the steepest of them, and I catch him. It takes everything in us not to quake so hard we throw ourselves off. It would be an easy way to escape, but slaves know only how to survive. If we haven’t killed ourselves by now, we never will.

Still, my racing heart freezes over, and I wonder at my choice to live.

The bottom of the last flight spills out into a craterous brimstone bowl. On each side curving bone-white stone hangs like sunken curtains. One part of the stone is worn flat, the veil parted to one side, and there we see an miraculous thing:

Fighting for space on the claustrophobic memorial, a hundred graffitied names slash across the stone. Some, deeply inlaid in chiseled runes, are Nifel. Others, scrawled in desperate frenzy by the tips of fingers or scraps of rock, are undeniably Silfan. Veónah, Daráq, Míshah, Albéth, Nekár, Éshmar, Mádde—these are the names of my people. We are not the first.

We bind our legacy together with a sharp piece of slate: Jahára–Kasmín. Whether we survive or not, at least our names remain.

The others must have thought the same before they ventured on into the dark. It is as if they sensed a point of no return. A small confession is scrawled below the names, a single word:

MELOHHOTH.

‘I’m so afraid.’

So am I. But there’s nothing for it.

My mind thuds:

No thing.

For it.

It.

For what? What’s left?

We heave on through stone-veiled crevices. The abyssal floor is worn smooth. Have so many walked it before us? Or do we follow in the wake of some long-parched stream? The places left for my feet are awkward and unfriendly: my ankles nearly give between tight pincers of razorine cliff. I do not honor the pain. That’s the way of slaves: a dry creek, rendered meaningless. Pain filled with meaning is a game for desert monks who let the birds and streams fill their emptiness. I cannot permit such luxury.