"Acheiller Boundary" by Panu Karjalainen

Another cycle was beginning. Ten Taker went down the steps into a familiar corridor, a dusty, angular space that ran straight into the darkness without the slightest bend. The stone under his feet, above his head, on both sides, was grey and solemn; so many years had been etched into it that it should have crumbled from touch, but it stood on. The corridor was like the petrified artery of a fossilized titan, and Ten Taker was its sole drop of blood.

He walked briskly, no warmth of recognition in his bearing, only a surety of duty. He went on, arms holding tightly a bundle wrapped in black cloth, eyes fixed ahead. If he was the blood of this place, he was cold blood, conscious only of what he had to do, nothing else. The corridor did not echo his footsteps. Rarely a loose scrap of rock crunched beneath his soles of his boots. Ten Taker did not sing, or hum, or talk to himself.

Without ceremony, the corridor terminated in a heavy stone slab. It had the rough appearance of a door, but had no handle. Ten Taker pushed his frame against it, holding still the cloth-wrapped bundle, and worked with his legs. Slowly the slab moved. It moved quietly in spite of its weight. Everything was bound for silence; and as the door was ajar enough to let Ten Taker in, he slipped through. The corridor behind remained as empty as he had never been there.

Ten Taker closed the door behind him. It melted into the wall until there was no door; just the chamber. A chamber, egg-shaped, finely cut crystal for walls, thin and translucent; and behind them, all around, a wild steady blue, as if the ocean had swallowed the place. Nothing in Ten Taker betrayed that he was affected by this sudden and complete change in surroundings. He held onto the bundle. His eyes glinted.

In the middle of the iridescent chamber sat an indistinct figure. It lay there like a broken marionette, legs crossed, head bowed. Ten Taker observed it closely. If he stared too long, his gaze went right through the being; if he watched from the corner of his eye, he was able to make out a rough imitation of human body, slim and spider-like, constructed of slanting shadows and soft moonbeams. Ten Taker did not brave a closer look. Instead he remained close to the wall and held the bundle, expectant.

Slowly the shadowy figure stirred. Its head rose, a vaguely insectoid shape cast across the sparkling blue. Two amber globes, blinking in and out of sight like mirages, concentrated, first on the crystal chamber, then on Ten Taker. He stepped forward hastily and laid the black bundle at the thing's feet. It examined the bundle, but did not touch. It got up on its feet. Its body undulated. The shadow-play of its arms and legs and torso let the blue light sift through.

”Acheiller Hunter,” Ten Taker said. ”Were you succesful this time?”

The shade turned up its palms.

”Does it so appear, Taker?” it rasped. ”Can you see the Acheiller in these two hands? No, I am not succesful.”

The Acheiller Hunter, as the being was known, swayed like an underwater reed. ”This time they took my body,” he grated. ”My body is gone...”

Ten Taker pressed down his head. ”I have brought your equipment,” he said, indicating the bundle at the Acheiller Hunter's feet.

”My thieving tools,” the Hunter said, familiarity in his voice. He groped at them, but the ghostly fingers went right through the bundle. He sat down. His shoulders, like two broken spindles, slumped. Ten Taker watched the ethereal figure in silence. Like before, he saw resolution return to the broken frame.

”In this time and place,” the Hunter began, ”where do the gods dwell?”

Ten Taker bowed. ”There is a place west of the Land Harth, which now has no name, where you once knew an ocean. A desert lies in place of that ocean now. In the middle of the desert, there are three great sandstone pillars – in the middle of them blazes a light stronger than the sun, to which a million humans are sacrificed every day – that is the entrance to the abode of the gods.”

The Acheiller Hunter nodded. He drew up his arms and formed a spell in the air, magic that would carry him up through the countless layers of earth and fire to the surface of his world. He lingered in the air a moment longer, then was gone. His whispered words hung in the chamber.

”In this cycle, I will steal the Acheiller and return what is mine.”

The earth had changed. The Acheiller Hunter looked around with aching eyes. Everything around him was foreign: the slopes of hills made out of some glittering sand, and the grey-barked trees plunging through the ground, spreading branches clothed in long, sticky leaves that resembled feathers. Everything was overcast with a light too bright, the sky almost deprived of its blue, tinged with such a bright white that it seared the eyes.

The Acheiller Hunter bent his body. The thin air of this world slipped through him in a weak breeze, and the glass-like sand under his feet hardly whispered as he walked. He leapt into the air. The ground became a blur below him. The leap carried him over the hills and the woods, and he landed hundreds of yards from his starting position.

The Hunter fixed his gaze in the west, and with bounds that swallowed miles he sped forward. The land below became a sparkling torrent, hills undulating like waves, treetops turning into a dark mass. And soon they died out, the hills flattened and forests vanished, and there was just the sand, first silver then getting by degrees first yellow, then flaming orange. The ground was coarser, riddled with blocks and boulders.

The Acheiller Hunter stopped, and the scenery whistling past stopped like it had never moved. The sun here was merciless to the earth, and had stripped it of recognisable life. The landscape undulated slightly with the heat, but there was no wind to stir the sand. The Acheiller Hunter felt none of this. He simply knew that there had been an ocean here, in some long forgotten time, but that now it had been replaced by this blasted land. He did not care about the sun since it was not able to touch his shadowy body.

Dim colossal shapes rose out of the horizon far in the west, and with several flying bounds the Hunter reached them. They grew before his eyes into three sandstone pillars, each the size of a city at the base and all reaching out to the sky too high to comprehend. Their shadows spread outward from them. High in the air amid the pillars there was a mighty globe of burning flame, brighter than the sun.

And in the shade of the pillars, legions of little things crawled on. The Hunter squinted and saw people, naked human beings, being driven toward the pillars in unending masses. Millions and millions of them, in great rivers of flesh, streamed from the desert. Towering muscular creatures drove them on with barbed whips, each many times taller than the humans, yet diminutive in comparison to the pillars in the shade of which they worked.

The Hunter took a prodigious leap which carried him to the base of one of the pillars, in its terrible black shadow. The humans streamed past him. Their faces were drawn with deep lines, and their bodies bent under the heat, the barbed whips, and the lifeless earth. They churned on like an unstoppable machine, a fleshy force of nature. And the Hunter saw where their labour ended: under the blazing ball in the middle of the pillars, a strange force burned them until nothing remained. The ashes spiralled upward in the heat and were sucked into the burning ball.

”A million humans are sacrificed every day,” the Hunter said aloud, but he hardly heard his own words in the thunderous roar of the sacrificial fire. Perhaps the people screamed as they were ushered into the fire, but their screams were drowned in the power of the gods. The muscular giants, blue-skinned things with their cruel whips, were themselves rendered meaningless.

One of them turned around, flabby nostrils flaring. It left its post at herding humans and strode to where the Hunter was standing. With great suspicion, it stooped above him, bulging white eyes looking straight at him. The Hunter watched its colossal, hairless head with open disgust, but the giant did not see him. It sniffed the air, straightened, and turned back to its herd.

Sudden rage overtook the Hunter. He uttered a spell, and a flood of ghostly white snakes gushed forth and tore into the giant's neck. The snakes were gone in an instant, and the titan's body stiffened. It crashed down, dead. The sacrificial procession did not even see the corpse as they ambled past. The Acheiller Hunter shrugged.

He then cast a spell that caused him to float upward. He skimmed round the pillar and onto the bright side, where he faced the blazing globe. When he had reached a suitable height, he attempted to penetrate the ball with his gaze, but its brightness was too great. He cast another spell, and his eyes gained immaculate perception. With the aid of his magic he saw that the ball was in fact a complex wrought-iron ring, crafted in the shape of snake-like people embracing each other. The conflagration poured through this iron ring from a place the Hunter could not see into, but he guessed it would be the entry to the indifferent gods' abode. With haste and daring, the Hunter soared into the fire.

He gripped the edge of the wrough-iron ring. The power of the flame slammed against his ethereal body and threatened to blow him away. He fought against it, and heaving an effort managed to slip his leg through the portal. He pulled with all the power of his invisible muscles, and then was suddenly inside.

The heat seared all around him. He groped along blindly, feeling metal under his feet. His seeking hands hit something hard and concave. Following the upward curve of this, the Hunter climbed out of the fire and onto the rim of a copper basin. The fire roared in the basin, and the blue souls of freshly burnt humans flew out of the flames.

The basin lay in the middle of a chapel carved of chalky black substance, a round hall with a raised platform circling the walls. All around, perched on the platform and peering into the fire, were demons dressed in brown capes, grey faces leering with greed. Every time a blue soul leapt out of the flames, one of the demons caught it and scuttled away; and another replaced it on the platform.

The Hunter huddled on the rim of the basin. One demon in the ring reared its three-horned head and smelled the air. Its eyes rolled dangerously.

”I smell an intruder of the flaming ritual!” it roared, and the others gazed around hungrily.

The Hunter knelt and quickly drew unseen sigils around his feet. A replica of him, black as night, jumped out of his body and dashed down the hall. Uttering guttural cries, the demons fell on it. As they tore into the magical copy with axe-like talons, the Acheiller Hunter silently slipped out of the chapel.

The Hunter roamed the underhalls aimlessly. The demons crawled about on their menial tasks, carrying twitching and struggling souls around, putting them to machines that stretched or mashed or pierced them, cleaned halls where bloody orgies had been kept, and generally ambled from place to place fetching and growling.

He found himself in a birthing chamber, a long and low hall of rusted iron walls, where tubular machines of throbbing tissue and fleshy fibre sucked in air and spat out a gibbering, shivering ball which rapidly grew into a gluttonous demon tearing its face. On a sudden thought the Hunter wiggled through one of these meaty tubes, and the demon-smell rubbed into him, providing him a disguise against the devious nostrils of the servants.

Shortly after this he discovered a great pillared hallway which led into a bottomless cathedral. Unsupported chains hung from the misty air, rattling their rusty frames in a breeze which blew from the depthless deep. Demons floated in the misty ether, gloating expectantly. The Hunter joined them and his unreal body could not be told separate from the white billowing nothingness.

It appeared he was conveniently in time. High above grew a light, an illuminated disc which soon framed the dim outline of a humanoid, titanic in stature. It thundered down a brief speech, its voice too loud and too overbearing for the Hunter to make sense of it; then gibbets of meat rained down from the light and the demons fought over them, tearing into them with tiny mouse-like teeth. The Hunter silently soared upwards, regarding the feeding with indifference.

The gods fed their slaves. It was not interesting to the Hunter. He knew, as he moved closer to the light above, that only now was he getting closer of the real start of his journey. He left behind the barbaric feast below and entered a higher, more treacherous realm.

But the hole was closing. The Hunter soared with greater speed, and voiced a secret litany for hastening himself. He reached the light, and could no longer see in the brightness, but could only blindly rush toward the closing door. A great gush of air hit him, and he pinched through, his feet hitting solid marble – but then, the doorway snapped close like leviathanic jaws, and his left hand was still on the other side.

It came off cleanly. One moment, he had his hand, and the other, he had not. The shadowy material of his body did not bleed; where the left hand had been now was only a stump, the indistinct length of the forearm ending in pure nothing. The Hunter felt no pain, only slight regret. It could not be helped, though it would only be momentary: the Acheiller would return to him all his lost things and heal all his hurts.

He was now in a marble palace, a whiteness that was perfect in its clarity; a limitless saloon which went everywhere with a sense of distance that was beyond human reason. And doors, arched openings like tiny black stars on a white sky, opened everywhere, lining tier by tier the curved walls. There was no telling the number of the doors, nor the dimension which lay beyond them; the only certain thing was the unlimited clarity of the ether, here.

The Hunter turned around carefully. He was like a fly on the back of a great white whale swimming in the ocean of milk. There was no one around, and still... the Hunter blinked. A stone head, supported by nothing, revolved slowly high above, the size and poise of a gluttonous giant. A hammer-like nose cleaved the air as it turned, and twinkling evil eyes sought intruders.

The Hunter pressed tightly on the marble to avoid the fiery orbs. The head turned inexorably toward him, and he knew that once the eyes would centre on him, an incomprehensible doom would be cast upon him.

This time the Hunter almost forgot his spell in his fear. But just as the eye-globes, two churning orbs of stone, were blinking at him, he managed to draw the sigils on the floor. In an instant mirrors, as many as there were motes in an eternity and multiplied by four, appeared everywhere. They lined the walls, jutting at odd angles like strewn there from a careless hand. They covered the floor in a thick carpet. Even the ceiling, wherever it was, draped itself in reflecting silver.

The head stopped. The eye-orbs rolled in rising alarm. The head began spinning, ponderously at first, as if undecided on its first target, then with surging speed. Faster and faster, until it was a wildly spinning blur of motion. Then, as its petrified brain was overwhelmed, it shattered with a great crack and exploded, raining fragments of rock all around, tinkling on the glass like gentle rain of bells.

The Hunter clapped his right hand on the stump of his left, and the mirrors disappeared. He then uttered a seeking charm, and watched as it wriggled in front of his face, then shot unerringly at one of the archways and slithered through. The Hunter followed it.

He wandered through a long and narrow corridor in which a dreamy dimness lived, hanging overhead like a curtain weighed with dust. There was a ceaseless whispering about as little spirits gossiped about the business of their highers; they smelled the Hunter as one of them, and tried to whisper in his ear, but he swatted them away. They fluttered away and dissolved in the gloom. Without the attention of their betters, they were just ghosts.

The tunnel opened above a chamber filled with chants and boiling. A kettle, reaching seventeen yards across, stood on blue fire, bubbling with firm liquid. A kneeling gathering of immortals, in size and might dwarfing everything in the room, was spread around the kettle, praying. An unceasing torrent of syllables fell from their moving lips, intertwined and snaked around the kettle.

Over the kettle, dragged from another realm of gods, was a captive spirit, great and big-bellied, with long fat whiskers and a sweating bald head, and it blabbered angrily as it was slowly being lowered into the boiling soup. As it sunk, its voice became high-pitched and squeaky, but still it blabbered on, senselessly, until it was completely submerged in the stewing pot.

One of the chanting gods stepped forward and wrapped his arms around the kettle, lifting it up. The Acheiller Hunter took a running jump and dived headlong into the pot just as it was carried under his hiding-place. He swam to the surface of the soup, and listened.

The kettle was brought through a door, and into an amalgam of voices. They were in a dining-room, the tinkle and clink of cutlery, the cheerful prattle, hopping cries and pouring wine, all in all sounding like a great many of the gods were having a good time. The Hunter listened, and felt the pot lurch and sway on the immortal's arms. He peered over the rim of the pot and saw the hall, and a myriad other pots being brought to it from a myriad other doors – except one, at the far end of the hall, a dark door through which no one came or went. The Hunter knew that the Acheiller was near.

The pot was laid to the table, and immediately a greedy god was looming over it, ready to plunge a spoon the size of a mountain into the soup. The Hunter quickly spoke aloud the syllable of sourness. The god turned disgustedly away and passed the pot on. In this wise it travelled to the other end of the long table, when each of the gods in turn plunged a spoon in the soup and was thwarted by the Hunter's magic.

In the far end of the table, a particularly imposing god thrust a spoon into the soup. The Acheiller Hunter knew, instinctively, that it would be dangerous to cast spells against this god, so he dived into the pot, avoiding the spoon, and rammed into the side of the kettle. He pushed with all his power, so hard that his body almost began to unravel from the stump of his left hand. A terrible fear got a hold of him when he noticed this, and caused him to push with even greater might.

The pot fell over. It clattered to the floor and the soup flew across the white tiles. The immortals shouted angrily and fussed over the upset soup.

”A good god-soul!” they cried. ”It has gone to waste! A wasted god-soul! A good soul gone to waste!”

And in the confusion, avoiding trampling feet and glaring eyes, the Acheiller Hunter slipped through a crack in the dark door at the back of the hall, leaving behind the noise and clamour of the dining room.

Again a long quiet way, then a sleeping chamber opened up before the Hunter's eyes. This place was without light, strewn from wall to wall with pillows which spread out like dunes. A jungle of hammocks, gossamer and threadbare gold, spiderwebbed above his head. He stole through this dozing room, and sensed a mighty majesty, god or a slumbering goddess, resting somewhere in the dark.

By chance, he stepped on a pillow that scraped harshly on his foot. The god stirred in its heavy sleep, and with a voice barely summoned from the unconscious, grumbled: ”Trespasser... who is there? Say aloud your name...”

The Hunter froze. A shape, grotesque like a hideous animal, began roaming along the walls, circling him, looking for him. He strained his eyes, and saw the god, half sitting, half sleeping on a mountain of cushions. Its eyes were not open yet and its shining hands barely moved – but on its lap was a thing that drew the Hunter's attention stronger than anything else: a casket, crusted in glittering rust and tiny fist-sized emeralds, with a keyhole large enough for a horse.

The Hunter skimmed forward on the soft desert of pillows, sliding down the side of one and skittering up another, feet and hands light as dream-touch. The watch-creature ebbed back and forth uncertainly, and the god blindly groped its way out of the sleep.

”It is you, Hunter,” it mumbled. ”Is it not? The Hunter of the Acheiller... where are you...? Are you in my sleep, or real? Why do you come again... go away...”

The Hunter mounted the god's toe, vast as a foothill, and climbed across the leg to the hill of its knee. The casket gleamed before him. It nestled safely on the god's lap, like a house in a vale, with the god's chest and drooping head rising above mountainously.

”Are you there?” the god asked, and the power of its breath almost knocked the Hunter off his feet. ”...are you? ...why cannot you leave yourself alone...”

Finally, the watch-creature saw him, noticed his wraith-like silhouette cast against the gleaming light of the casket. A poisonous cloud emerged from its opened jaws and permeated the air with bulbous tendrils. The gas enveloped the Hunter, sliced harmlessly through his body – and tore into the stump of his left arm. His shade-flesh began falling apart. In horror, he clamped his hand on the wound. The tearing would not stop.

In panic the Hunter leapt forward – the god bolted up, crying – and slithered through the key-hole, to safety.

The upper world escaped him; he tumbled through a winding tube. Red sparkled violently around him. He rolled and came to a halt. He was in a maze, clear-cut walls made of thick ruby. The corridors branched before him in sparkling, reflecting red. The ceiling and the floor were mirror-bright, and multiplied the maze till it was nothing but a bemusing construct floating in an endless torrent of crimson.

The Acheiller Hunter sensed it, somewhere, within the folds of this maze, the object that was calling him. The Acheiller was there, forward or backward, up or down, he could not tell, but it was close, now. He took a step, but stopped in mid-step. There was blood on the floor.

It came in a thick trickle, slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity. Blood flowed from the corridors and steadily filled the maze. It rose to the Hunter's knee, then over his hip, wallowing like a living creature. He waited. The blood came to his chest, sought to crush his bones with its syrupy weight, but there was no body in him to be crushed. The blood came up to his nostrils and his flaming eyes, desiring to drown him. But he breathed no air which could be deprived of him. The blood filled the maze in its entirety, from floor to ceiling, and the Hunter floated in it.

The walls could not be told apart from blood anymore. Blood was everywhere, dark as night, yet the Hunter could see through it as if in water. The maze oozed before him and changed shape; now if ever it was impossible to tell which way one was going.

The Hunter cast a spell. He drew sigils in blood, and they vanished in the maze. His arms and hands elongated as if rubber, and multiplied, until he was a monstrous black octopus. The arms shot in every direction and snaked through the corridors of the maze, touching the walls like blind worms. The Hunter touched every part of the maze until he knew it thoroughly. Then he withdrew his manyfold arms, except for the one that had found the way out, and followed it.

He rose out of the blood, onto familiar grey stone. The corridor ran its length and terminated in a black wall. The Hunter approached it carefully. Not an actual wall, this one, but a lightless surface which cut into the corridor; a blackness which had no form. The Hunter examined this, and worry twisted his features.

In spite of all his magic he could not see through the black wall. He could not discern what was beyond it, could not guess whether doom or salvation lay on the other side. He only knew that the Acheiller must be there, so he braced himself and pushed through the darkness.

There was nothing beyond. Eyes could not see. Ears could not hear. Nothing answered the touch of the foot or the hand. Black beyond black. The Acheiller Hunter floated helplessly. He tried to draw his magic symbol, but could not see his fingers, could not feel them. He uttered a magic word, but light refused his call.

Then he felt a tingling where his left hand had been cut off. Terror gnawed his stomach as he realised he was again being torn apart mote by mote. He spoke his magic, quickly and wildly, but it fizzled into nothingness. He trashed his arms in panic, as if swatting away flies, but could not discern whether he was standing still or moving. He could only feel the tingle crawling up his forearm, to his elbow, toward his shoulder... and he knew that where the tingle went, the Hunter was no more.

Suddenly the tingling stopped. The Hunter realised a strange thing was happening – a golden glow blinked out of the black. The Hunter saw a ball, golden, shining thing, emerge from near his elbow. It floated around his arm, illuminated his chest, and bobbed before his eyes. That was it; that was the Acheiller – he had found it! Greedily he wrapped his good hand around the ball.

And his other hand, he saw it in the golden light, it was whole again... restored by the Acheiller's magic.

”Another cycle has come to an end.”

The Hunter gave a start. The Acheiller spoke to him.

”You still come for me, the Acheiller, after whom you've named yourself but of what you nothing know, stealing from those you deem mightier than you. What did you learn from this cycle, Hunter? What have you learned from the previous ones? Why is it that learning seeps out from you like oil slinks off a pane of glass? Or do you simply... forget?”

The Hunter floated in nothingness, clutching tight the golden ball.

”...sleep again, Acheiller Hunter...”

And the Hunter's fingers sunk into the surface of the ball. His arms followed, like water drained through a tiny hole. Then his head, mutely, dove into the ball. Within moments he was gone, and only the little golden ball glimmered in the darkness.