The Shadow of the Accursed Executioner

Chapter 9: Whole of Shadows

A vague memory of the skeleton which had bear half a body to the middle, a split, had etched my mind of swaying cages. For then it reminded me of the shadow from the village, which had revealed to me of an unsettling depiction of another shadow, shoddily smeared across a page of pulp. An image of half a shadow, I thought, for it may have been the imprisoned skeleton's other half, I added.
Perhaps the depiction of the half-shadow were like a warning, as she looks into my eye with her existing-half, along with her shadowed-half. Blank like a voiceless scream, steeped beyond meaning.
For perhaps they, the shadows in the village, had imprisoned the half-bodied shadows out of fear.
-The same people-
For her pure black eye, an orb of steeped horror, had resembled the many countless people I executed for the king, and high justice. All with no reason, but for them to die, I thought.
For they were the Accursed Men and Women.
"Why do you not kneel before our lady?" She asserted with a voice, devoid of emotion. "Even a Tainted One, such as yourself, are forgiven."
"Forgiven..." I spoke mockingly, now wondering-no, pondering, revealing a clear sight of my cursed arm, my black phantom limb to the emotionless woman, yearning for an answer from the mystery of it all. "Then explain this curse! What is this? Why me...?"
The unsettling woman rose from her idolising knees as she turns her hips with a gait. She wore a skirt wrapped of animal furs which dangled down to her lower thighs, along with a thin and sleeveless top, a single garment like a wolf's pelt short enough to reveal her fit stomach.
She naturally swayed her hips with her doll-like body, short and alluring as she dipped her ankles into the ravine to confront me.
"To be of no body, nor shadow." She said, now standing before me as she tilts her head up, to look into my eye with her steeped eye. "You remain, yet... the legacy of creation, you...will leave nothing behind for this world, from this state of your existence."
"What are you talking about?" I gravelled, wobbled by her words.
My existence.
My existence-tainted, I thought, as I reach over to clutch for the hilt of my pointless blade.
"There is someone I love. She's not well. There's...there's some kind of illness...to lose existence, they say. And the last time I held her she was still breathing. But she hasn't woken up since... It's like some kind of never-ending sleep." I spoke stern with a pinch of hope, now demanding answers. "So you better start talking. Tell me everything you know about the curse."
She stepped closer, glaring across my body, then examining my black phantom limb with her half-existing face, as she gazes back into my eye.
"There is nothing more to know." She said. "Now, you will kneel before our lady, Tainted One. For even ones who bear the curse, are forgiven."
"Lies..." I objected.
"..."
"If you refuse to tell me what the curse truly is, then-"
Then I raised my gauntlet-to aim my pointless blade toward her throat.
But she raised her arms with her hands, like fingers spread apart like a black and white spider with missing legs. As she rushed forward-a blink of undeniable finesse to grip the edges of my pointless blade, to lock her hands with her pitch-black shadowed hand and her flesh-existing hand.
For the lock with her bare hands had weighed strong, like two iron slabs stuck beside each face of the blade.
"Tell me, Tainted One." She said implying, her voice as plain as dead.
Then I struggled, reluctant to release the hilt of my pointless blade, attempting to pull it from the clutch of her heavy hands, as her eye pierced through mine.
"Tell me. Why do you burden the one of horns, beside you. The horns of our enemy?"
She pressed her hands into the blade then-slitting her palms-deep, the blood rushed of streaks, deeply red stalks, down her arms. Then she began to stroke the blade as if she were painting with her gushing blood.
"There is only one place for our enemy of the horns, where they must reside. Where they are bound to stay, forever. All, under the good will of our lady."
"He...is not yours to take." I said strictly, touching my teeth with a deathly stare into her eye-a steady gaze of focus, seemingly about to burst into madness from the pressure of her forcing ideals.
"All... in good will..." She repeated, asserting her demands for the worshipping of this 'lady'-the Host of the Curse.
"The Host of the Curse..." I mumbled. Then instead, about to raise my voice-to shout out the name. "The Host of the Curse!!"
She then released her hands from the blade-but surely from the mentioning of that very name.
The Host of the Curse.
And her mouth dropped.
Her expressionless face, now glum, like a sudden realisation-stormed her vague face to change, seemingly, as her first real expression.
Her arms dangled, lifeless beside her hips as she stared down, distraught. But slowly she raised her head back up. And she raised her bleeding hands as she spreads her arms like a loving saint. And raising her arms, she too had portrayed the exact same gesture of the sculptured lady before us, her arms spread wide as well, like that loving saint.
"Tainted One." She mourned.
"..."
"You...refuse. Forgiveness... Then this...is where you shall die, then." She confessed. "And the one of horns. For they all must return to their rightful place."
She continued to stare with a pose, dripping long slags of blood from her hands as I rest my pointless blade over my shoulder.
To step forward and raise my blade-as I slash through her body.
But through it went, through her body, I thought, like the shadows as I stumbled from my one-handed swing with a two-handed sword.
Careless, I knew, yet to fight against the unknown, I, had to know. The blade phasing through her body-passing through her seemingly existing-half too. For her whole body were like a ghost, hidden beneath a layer of false skin.
"Such a name... 'Host'..." She grieved. "How dare you carry such a name before the very presence of our lady. To spout such a name."
"..."
"Our lady is everlastingly whole. For our lady has no bearing. For she, has achieved a perfection, Tainted One-"
"I don't care!" I snapped. "All I want is for my daughter to wake up!"
I then held out my cursed arm, my black phantom limb, the little protection I wield to touch and to hurt the shadows.
For Ayu.
For Floria.
But she leaped high with her small and dashing thighs, and as quick as a gust of wind and above Panamex's eyes-above his line of sight and over his cone of light.
Yet regardless of Panamex's beaming light, she hugged my body then squeezed my cursed arm, diverting my hand away from her body as she slammed me into the earthen ground. Pointing with her toes for additional reach, she embraced Panamex's weak light, now kicking him away to lie on his snout as he glared away with his light and soul-white eyes.
Useless.
"...Ghen..." Panamex mourned. Then the woman pierced my chain mail-crushing my stomach with her bare foot.
"AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!" -I screamed with compelling agony-
My stomach ached like a spiralling churn, the pain eating away at me from the inside, I deceived, playing along.
Only, she hadn't known.
As the effect of the vial's pain suppression remained. Yet only a direct blow, a blow through a vital part of the body, will do.
For her blank shadow, her opposing half from her opposing self, a blade too (like Nobody's) protruded from within her blank hand.
"For our lady." She announced.
Then she raised her blade, preparing one final blow-to execute me.
"...!"
A blade from the bounds of nonexistence.
A black phantom limb-now phasing through existence.
Nothing.
Dark.
Black.
".............................."
"Why...?" She questioned, her voice dropped with a shudder, yet a faint wonder. "Why do you refuse this?"
The limb. A black phantom limb, which cannot touch the realities of this world.
Yet, I caught her blade, reaching out for the existence, to contact the shadows like a true touch.
"Panamex!" And I spoke his name.
And there were no response.
"Panameex...!" I repeated, mourning in pain-pushing myself. She dug into the phantom-skin of my cursed palm with her blade. The blade I had caught with my black phantom limb.
A true touch.
"Panamex!!" I repeated once more.
Then she grabbed me by the throat-lifting my whole body before her doll-like stature with my deep wound, a puncture through my tattered chain mail.
"Pana...mex..." I gasped-struggling whilst digging into her shadowed hand with my cursed hand for air.
"The Shadowmen, and the legacy of our lady's creation. It is all linked to our innate existence, Tainted One."
"......"
"To then simply become a Tainted One, such as yourself."
I understood nothing from what she had truly meant-and knowing now, she, knew more than what she claimed, as she released me from her hand, now, as she wrapped her hands around my head.
For she pounded my skull into the stones of the ravine, her hands resuming, to clutch-and squeeze down my throat once more. The stream of the ravine, the fast-flowing water protruding with pebbles and large, sharp stones, were deep enough to drawn my face below the stream.
And once more I emerged from beneath the stream's ravine, suffering, stung with scrapes and cuts across my face from the stones.
"Panamax-" I called out. She then brought my face back down to submerge me beneath the ravine.
For this woman, along with her voiceless half, had taken her time to watch me suffer.
She retained a plain, steeped eye. A tiny woman within a doll, devoid of emotion.
But I had thought, hoping she wouldn't allow me call out for Panamex, yet again.
For deep down, beneath her lifeless mask of skin, she, had begun to take pleasure beyond imagination. Like her heart were to rise from the excitement, from the very human nature of it all as I continue to struggle, buried beneath the reflection of a ravine.
A cold and wet, breathless and hellish reflection.
Then eventually the flow of the world's air returned, along with a wheezing cough. And I coughed and coughed.
"Panamex..." I called out-Panamex, Dragon of the Sun-I called again, and again, once more. And once more.
Again.
Then again.
And again.