The Time of the Titans

Chapter 34: The Unmasking

"But o heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead..."

A kind of cold calm had taken over me, as it sometimes did in situations of utmost despair or disgust. I looked at my chosen brother, who held the lamp that made him look even paler than he probably was. His words died, and he chose not to recite the poem any further.

"I see no drops of red", I said to him, ironically referring to the words of the poem. "He's been dead for all these three years. Probably since the day he walked out of your Base."

Roland stared at me and I studied his handsome face with a new kind of keenness, searching for signs for whether I could really trust him or not.

The screaming fact that my previous incarnation had been murdered was undeniable. Had he fallen the stairs or been poisoned – that could still have been taken as an accident or a suicide. But a dagger struck right in the ribcage where the Grand Master's heart, heart, heart had once beaten – that was not debatable.

The Grand Master had been slain. I had seen it in my nightmare, where I had been the man who died. But in the dream, there had been pale snakes, and the Naga had been there with me, up until the moment when the enemy had come out of the shadows and murdered me with the strangely familiar dagger.

This was the 'game over' site of my previous life. In games, corpses evaporated just like slain enemies, and one didn't have to face them upon one's return to the levels past. In real life, however, skeletons remained there for years to come, and secrets only slowly dissolved, with much repulse, until they had turned into myths and mysteries of antiquity. Tombs far enough in the past to be opened and excavated.

Roland was taking steps towards a dark vault that seemed to contain further ascending stairs.

"Don't go!" I exclaimed to him. "Please, stay with me."

He stopped and instantly came back to me. He just stared at me.

"Are you alright, bro?" he asked.

"Of course not", I said. "This man here... Your Grand Master..."

I couldn't get the words out. On the floor, I saw the cracked splinters of the big jar someone had tried to push on us from the upper mezzanine. The jar that had nearly crushed Prince Sen.

"I saw all of this in my dreams", I said. Roland stared at me with scared eyes. "In the dream, there were dangerous snakes, and the enemy was lurking right there." I pointed at the vault which he had been about to check out.

"But it's alright now", he said. "I'm here." He sounded unnatural.

It was not alright, I thought. There was a skeleton of a murdered man in front of us. A man who had been me. A man who had cared for the boys. But I took a deep breath and let the cold calm return.

"We check it out together, alright?" I suggested, and Roland nodded. "Together we have less to fear."

He saw I stared at the skeleton in a state of great agony.

"I can go away", he said, as if he sensed I had a past with the skeleton. "If you want to be alone for a moment." But I realized his departure was the last thing I wanted.

"No, Roland", I said, with the calm. "I'm happy you're here with me. Else this would be... a bit too much."

Roland stared and held the light while I investigated the skeleton. The bony hand wore a ring – just one – with the image of a lion on it. Without thinking much, I took the ring and put it in my pocket. I would later wonder why I did that, but I could not recall a particular reason, and Roland didn't protest.