Ander - Part 4: Subchapter 10
10
... the Cora.
She could see Him so clearly... every miraculous detail. For here, in this world, she was no longer blind. In fact, she could see more clearly than any Wolf has ever seen before.
This was a world of colour, energy, and light. So much light... light everywhere! Racing from one end of infinity to the other like golden blades. Arcs of white lightning jumped from clouds of shifting colours, but they did not hurt her eyes at all. Quite the contrary, they seemed to invigorate them, make them even stronger. She was floating inside the colours, and the colours were floating inside of her in return, because without the limitations of a physical body, she was the colours, too. It was as if she were a pair of disembodied eyeballs, seeing the world without shape or form. This is what lies underneath the senses, underneath existence itself.
And among all this splendour, unfathomably huge, stood the Cora. Not the mountain, not the statue, but the God, the real God, living and breathing, looking down at His most faithful servant, His eyes glowing a fiery red unmatched even in this world.
"You already have everything you need to find the path you seek," He said, His voice booming in her ears, so loud and powerful it would echo in this world forever.
"But I do not understand," she said, bowing her head in humility. "I am too weak, I lack the vision to see the things which are so plain to You. Please, guide me, so that Your will can be done through me."
"You are wrong, Shekka. You see more clearly than any other Wolf. You see the Foxes for what they truly are; a blight in my eyes, a curse on my name. You see Kadai as an imposter, and your false son as a twisted perversion, an unholy mix of Wolf and Fox. They are an insult to me and my people, to your people. In this, your rage has pleased me greatly. You wish for vengeance against the betrayers, as do I. You wish to raise our people to the greatest heights, as do I."
"Yes, yes, oh mighty Cora! Yes!"
"Then tell me, Shekka. Who do you want to kill?"
The colours darkened at the thought, turning from the bright, vibrant hues of the rainbow into murky black coils of smoke - spirals of hatred twisting in the ether. "The Fox called Sarah!" she said without hesitation. "The one who corrupted my mate!"
"Who else? Do not stop!"
"The freak called Ander! The one who killed my real son!"
"Yes!" The Cora bent down, and it felt like an entire mountain was about to crash down upon her, and suddenly she was staring directly into His three, blood red eyes, each pupil a long, thin slit of infinite blackness, easily twice as tall as she would have been, had she still possessed a body of flesh and blood. He raised His hands and placed them on either side of her consciousness. With His fingers interlocked, He closed her in completely, the eyes in His palms staring in at her, unblinking, radiating the most wonderful heat, like a warm fire in the middle of a cold winter's night. She felt completely vulnerable, completely naked, completely at the mercy of this divine being, and oh... there was no greater feeling than this...
"Who else, Shekka? Who else do you want to kill? Tell me... please me..."
"The Fox called Kiana!" she replied, her whole being caught in the throes of ecstasy, completely out of control. "The Wolves called Sorrin, Mellah, Danado, Lana, and Renna! The ones who interfered with Your sacred punishment!"
The eyes grew brighter, hotter, the irises more fiery. The Cora's muzzle crinkled beneath her, each fold like a hill by itself, which meant that He was either very happy... or very angry.
"Those were not the only ones who interfered, Shekka," He said, and suddenly she was very, very afraid, because she knew exactly what the Cora was telling her.
"Hezzi... he doesn't know about Ander. To him, he's still a brother, so please, _please_don't -"
"Hezzi is still young and stupid, but he carries much potential. Do not worry, Shekka. He can still make up for his transgressions. He can still be forgiven."
Shekka sighed in relief. "Thank you for your mercy, great Cora, thank you, tha-"
"There is one more who has earned my wrath, the greatest sinner of them all."
Shekka went through the list one more time in her head, but she couldn't think of anyone. Surely, she couldn't have missed something? And then it dawned on her. The one other Wolf who had interfered with Ander's punishment, the one Wolf who stood at the core of every sin committed against her.
The one Wolf she loved more than any other.
"Do you?" the Cora asked of her, His eyes widened so she could see the whites surrounding His hellish wreaths of flame. "Do you really love him, even after everything he's done to you?"
"Of course I do," she replied, desperately hoping that He wouldn't misunderstand her. She wasn't trying to argue, or to disagree. She was just telling the truth. Anything less would be blasphemy.
"You cannot speak the truth until you stop lying to yourself."
"But I'm not! I do love Kadai!"
"But does he love you?"
"He does! I know he does!"
"More than Sarah?"
"He..." This question could not be answered so easily. She had heard his words first-hand, after all.
I loved Sarah. No, I still do. Maybe more than Shekka, even after all these years. I'm ashamed to admit that, but it's the way I feel inside.
He said that. Thirty years of her life were not enough to measure up to the single year he had spent with his Fox.
"He doesn't really love you, Shekka," the Cora said. "If he did, he wouldn't hurt you like this. Don't you want vengeance? Don't you want to hurt him in kind?"
"Yes, but I don't want him dead."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Are you absolutely sure?"
"I... I don't..."
"SHEKKA!!" The Cora's voice exploded all around her, echoing throughout the prison of his hands. It was like being caught inside a thunder blast, and she was sure that, if she had been inside her body at this moment, it would have been shredded into a thousand bloody strips. "DO NOT LIE TO ME, DO NOT LIE TO YOURSELF, AND DO NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR FEELING HATRED TOWARDS ONE WHO DESERVES IT!!"
She wanted to curl into a ball and cower in the face of such overwhelming power, but all she could do was stare, stare back into the eyes all around her, leering, gawking, scrutinizing every inch of her existence.
"You cannot hide from me, Shekka," He said. "I know you. I know your thoughts, your dreams, your desires, your nightmares. Every feeling, every sensation, I am with you. I am you. Do not lie to me."
"I'm sorry, great Cora, please forgive me!"
"I will ask again. Do you love him?"
Shekka went inside herself to look for the truth in her own mind and heart. It was easy in this place, much easier than in the physical world, so she didn't have to search long. "A part of me does love him," she said, fully confident in the truth of her words. "That part will always love him."
The Cora waited in silence, knowing there was more to come.
"But the rest of me..."
The Cora's eyes were coming closer, His face and hands drawing nearer, closing the gaps to the outside world and its swirling clouds of colour, cutting off the light, wrapping her in the darkness of His shadow.
"... hates him."
There. It was out. She hated her mate. She has known it ever since she overheard his poisonous words. She has even thought it as hard as she could, firing her mental accusations like arrows: I hate you, Kadai! I hate you!
But this was the first time she had said it aloud. She knew what she was supposed to feel: ashamed, deceitful, unworthy of her status as mate of the Chieftain. But she didn't. Admitting her hatred for the Wolf she loved made her feel...
... better.
The Cora's eyes pulsed in the darkness, five all-seeing orbs of red light. "Say it again."
"I hate him."
"Again."
"I hate the Chieftain!"
"Again!"
"I hate my mate!"
"AGAIN!!"
"I hate Kadai! I hate his Fox whore! I hate Ander and Kiana and Mellah and Sorrin and Nilia and Renna and Danado and Lana! I hate them all! I hate them! I HATE THEM! I -"
Shekka gasped. His eyes were so close now, they were almost fusing together, encircling her completely in a ring of holy fire. Even though she had no body, she could see her own reflection in the flawless lenses, a pale ghost floating in absolute darkness. She wanted to touch them, she wanted to feel the fire lick at her spirit, she wanted to fall into those slits that consume all light and become one with her God. She reached out for His eye, her fingers shaking, and her ghostly double did the same from the inside, reaching towards herself across an infinite distance that was also no distance at all, a distance as far and as wide or as thin and as close as one end of her mind to the other.
Their fingers touched, separated by only the thinnest of membranes, but then something happened that she could not foresee, and could not understand.
The fires died one by one, and His irises became cloudy. His pitch black fur lightened to the colour of ashes, straggly and balding in patches.
"You have pleased me greatly," the Cora said, but He did not speak with His normal, thunderous voice. He sounded more like an old she-wolf now. His strong, muscular fingers were shrinking, growing thin, allowing light to shine through the gaps in ripples of colour. She could see His pupils growing short and fat, transforming from the long slits of a snake into the perfectly round circles of an ordinary Wolf. As she tried to make sense of this, a small spot of whiteness appeared within each one. They bloomed, spreading out like clouds in the sky, like drips of poison in crystal water. They infected His perfect eyes until they were a pure, creamy white. That was when she realized she was no longer looking at the Cora.
She was looking at herself.
"No!" she screamed. "Not yet! I don't know what to do!"
"Yes... you do. The answer is right in front of you."
"I don't understand!" The world was starting to break up. She could feel herself becoming heavy, more physical. She could even feel the air passing through her real mouth and the pressure of the ground against her real back. Time was running out.
"You did not come here for answers. You already knew what you wanted to do."
This didn't make any sense. "If I didn't come here for answers, then what did I come for?"
"You came to give yourself permission."
The Cora's hands opened and His massive palms moved away, passing through the shifting clouds of colour, which had become pale and blurry. They flickered along the edges, breaking out in craters of darkness like the putrid sores of an unknown disease, and suddenly Shekka was falling, but not falling down, she was falling back, as if she was being pulled by an invisible rope, faster and faster, moving through the endless span of this dying world like the blades of light which were so plentiful when she first arrived, but were now no more than singular, lonely shards of moonlight piercing the thunderclouds.
She could see the Cora, looming in the distance, getting farther and farther away from her, but He was not as He once was. She was looking at herself, lying unconscious on the ground beneath His effigy, gasping for breath, her eyes rolled up in their sockets, with white clouds of foam frothing at the corners of her mouth. This other Shekka, this huge, otherworldly creature, suddenly snapped its neck in her direction and her eyes rolled back down, but instead of the milky whites of her true eyes, she was confronted with eyes of flaming red, and the blackest of vertical slashes for pupils. The eyes of a snake. The eyes of the Cora. They were hers now.
"You know what you want to do," she said, but Shekka didn't know if she had said it herself, or if it was this Other Shekka, or if there was even any difference between them. "You have given yourself the permission to do what you want to do, what you must do." She spoke and she heard. Did it really matter who was speaking and who was hearing? What did any of that matter when they were one? "Now all you have to do is follow the path you have already chosen. The answer is right in front of you."
Shekka fell, and fell... she fell for eternity, and she listened...
"You can have your vengeance. Your path will kill... it will kill... You will kill... Kill them all... Kill them all... KILL...
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