About a certain return

Part 9

A certain upward position, in their relationship, seemed to be held by the staniels. I was told that their privileged position was due to their knowledge to rule over the Dragon. This beast was a huge animal used to dig tunnels. I really was called "Beast" due to its ferocity, and its encounter was almost always fatal. It was believed it liked the human flesh. It hasn't been tamed in any way, as I said, but only contained, tided up so that it couldn't go back but only go towards a precise direction. Its ability to dig tunnels has been therefore put to a good use and in this way a vast network of tunnels was spread inside the ground. Of course he wandered free through this tunnels. The staniels knew to call him. There were great legends, known by the old ones, about heroes that stood up against the Dragon and escaped alive. Hearing these legends, you could understand how their entire civilisation was based on this fight. But above all I was very pleased to see another Dart. What was that "Dart"? A huge, chained, human being, belonging to the lucielian's clan. I got close to him when a little brute hit me with a bat and I was just about to hit him back when a loud murmur spread throughout the whole gathering. They all jumped upon me as in a nightmare in which all my good name was to be lost. I had some sympathy for the little restless monsters, I do not know what inside me was fond of unseen images and forgotten words, of the archetype, if I may say so, the little nice man, well-wisher, the fairy tale... What scoundrels! They punched me on the head, the bloody beasts, until I was unable to move. The luciels, the ones that lighten, were really radiating, as torches... The evil ones! When I saw myself surrounded by angry faces and with my hands tied up, I mumbled something, swearing at them and calling them savages and brutes... finally, right before being rescued by the dariels, one of them confronted me with a mystery: "we might be rough and savage, but we do not practice human sacrifices..." Why was he telling me this? Probably it was a sign of humanity and goodwill, I realized later. Then it seemed to me an unkind gesture and not a warning.

– Why is that man in chains?

– Who, the Lart?

– Call him however you please.

– He is a slave. The luciels beat him and force him to do hard work. We are different.

The night after I had a strange dream and told Diana about it: In a similar room, two women, a young and an old one were mixing a red and gluey broth. I saw the disgusting concoction that just boiled over and I was horrified: filth, chaos, worms, bugs, bacteria, dead bodies, violence, blood, skeletons, monsters, agedness, hatred, poison, rats, sharp blades, cockroaches, disasters, war, ferocity, madness, sadness, misery, murderers, disability, temptation, disdain, suffocation, curse, sin, illness, vanity, despair, fear, plot, poverty, bad luck, nightmare, ugliness, failure, pain, corruption, drugs, sorrow, suffering, rubbish, breakdown, fire, apocalypse, darkness... Hey, you darkness!" That was what women mumbled stirring with some huge bones and from the pot the Death's Ghost was erecting, like a reddish steam, spinning in the air, gaining size, growing bigger and bigger... A red poisoning gas...

I stood up suffocated... Oh!

– You must go and see Defina the witch, edified me Diana. This dream was a premonition.

The witch had her place far away from the village. It was forbidden to get close to that impure woman (mad as far as I was told, living for a long time isolated from the community), unless you have become yourself impure after getting in contact with a source that demanded purification. Until the purification took place, upon the so called "impure" interdictions were enforced but he was also granted with some rights. He was to be isolated in a quarantine place where he could consult wizards, the magi, and the witch that he wasn't otherwise allowed to see. Talking to the Father about my dream, Diana sent me away to a gully where other unclean ones were seeing.