9 Absolute Despair

Baltazar came home just before dusk. He was careful not to put too much pressure on Polly, but given the pace with which she spontaneously advanced, it was thought that she also knew her destination and was as impatient as Baltazar to reach it.

Together, they chased the setting sun until they reached the top of the same hill from which Baltazar had taken the last look at his properties before setting out to hunt Magnus, which seemed to have been a lifetime before. The sunset painted the entire valley below golden, and there, in the distance, the rider saw smoke rising from the chimney of his hut.

His humble home looked the same, and yet for Baltazar it had never been so beautiful. He rode with Polly into the valley and crossed the fields that formed his small estate. In its absence, the soil was neither cultivated nor tended; he would have a lot of work to do, and soon, if he wanted to sow any crop in time for the harvest.

He smiled to himself, loving the prospect of sweating from honest work, getting his hands dirty with something other than blood. When Baltazar approached the house, he saw her standing outside. Gwen was taking the freshly washed clothes out of a large wicker basket at her feet and pinning them to the clothesline to dry. He gasped when he saw her; he had almost forgotten how adorable he was. After so many months away, seeing her at that moment was like seeing her again for the first time.

He pulled on Polly's reins and stood there for a moment, admiring Gwen's beauty in the sparkling sunlight. Gwen spotted Baltazar as he turned to pick up a piece from the basket. He did not react instantly. Instead, he bent down to pick up the clean clothes, methodically hanging the last piece on the clothesline before going to the front of the house to find it.

The sun was setting behind Baltazar, making Gwen protect his eyes when he approached.

Baltazar spurred Polly forward. As he got closer, he saw for the first time that the large volume in Gwen's belly that he had become so used to before he left had disappeared. Looking at ovaral behind her. he noticed the small linen shirts that hung next to whole dresses and skirts, floating gently in the breeze.

Baby Baltazar's clothes dismounted, suddenly acutely aware that he felt very insecure. In his fervor to return home, to reach that moment, he did not even bother to imagine what might be waiting for him. Four months earlier, he had departed from his wife, leaving her to bear the burden of birth and her first child without him at her side. He had broken his sacred vow with her, a vow of just over a year, and will choose the worst possible time to do so. She swore, screamed and threw everything that could be thrown at him - she still carried the mark on the forehead of that milk jar - and told her that if she chose to leave, she would not be welcome on her return, if in fact she was still there . At the time, Baltazar had considered that to speak of her, let loose in anger in the heat of the argument and cause for regret, withdrawn shortly after her departure. But when he got to her, he wasn't so sure. He was somewhat relieved to see her there; at least he hadn't fulfilled part of the threat. However, when he looked at her closely, his face impassive and inscrutable, his stomach hurt.

He began to understand that the exultant reunion that he had dreamed of for so long in reality would be something for which he was not prepared. She took a step towards her husband to better see him in the faded light of day, Baltazar controlled himself, too nervous to speak, and in any case not quite sure what to say. It was a strange, unknown feeling, that particular kind of trepidation.

Baltazar was no stranger to fear, no soldier was. She had known him very well and in all the multiplicity of disguises, of the deadly terror on the face of a Southerner

maddened by drugs that had made him lose his fear to the cold dread he felt in the presence of Magnus's abominations. In all cases, he knew how to prepare himself against that fear, dominate it, and thus deal appropriately as an enemy. But that one, the terror but abject in the face of an almost certain death was somehow insignificant compared to how he felt, under Gwen's unfathomable gaze staring at the sudden realization that the thing he loved most in the world might have turned away. beyond your reach, if lost forever, and because of you.

Never before had he felt so extremely unarmed, so desperate, so fearful. Her mind sped up when she considered which approach to take.

Contrition?

Triumph?

Should I have stopped on the way and picked some flowers to offer you?

Bought some elderberry breads that she liked so much at the village baker?

Her heart sank even more when she began to understand that perhaps no words, no excuses or gestures were enough to erase the harm she had done. He was still desperate, looking for the right words, when Gwen broke the silence first.

"I heard it was you as soon as I saw you up there on the hill." she said. What did that mean? It was good?

The words sounded good, but not the tone. If you were happy to see him, why did you look at him as something that the cat dragged into the house? Or was it just the way to narrow your eyes to protect them from the sun? Don't stay there like a silly, stupid animal. Say something! Baltazar looked back to the top of the hill, almost five hundred meters away.

"I should consider it a compliment that you recognized me!" he asked, hoping to channel some of the trickster charm that Gwen admitted to making her fall in love. But she seemed undaunted.

"No." It was her dispassionate response. "It was Polly who recognized it, not you. I would know this mare anywhere." She took another step closer, but without giving any clue as to what might be happening inside her.

"What is this thing?" It took Baltazar a moment to realize that she was referring to something on her face. The hand went up to touch the full, curly beard that will grow while he is away.

"Don't you like it?" He asked as he ran his fingers through his beard, embarrassed.

"It looks like a sick animal crawled over his face and died there," she said.

"It has to go, if you want to go back to this house, even more so to my bed. So what will it be?" She put her hands on her hips, expectantly, as if waiting for his answer. But Gwen's cold facade was getting harder to maintain; Baltazar detected the most subtle hint of a smile. I was playing with him - and that realization took five hundred pounds off his shoulders. He managed to breathe. But, just to be sure, he took the knife from his belt, took a shaggy, frayed tuft of beard and started cutting it.

Gwen ran up to him with an increasingly broad smile and pushed the knife away. "Later," she said, and looked into his eyes tenderly. "You can shave later. And she threw her arms around him, tightening her body as tears ran down her cheeks, Baltazar let the knife slide and returned it. the hug, holding her tighter than ever, a single tear rolled down her face and disappeared into the tangled jungle of beard.

"I prayed every night for your safe return," she said, between sobs.

"Every night?"

Gwen looked up and wiped away a tear, and there was again that mischievous look that indicated a smile.

"Well, the first night I prayed that I would fall off my horse and break my neck," she said. "But every night later I said, for your safe return." Baltazar smiled, more out of relief than good humor, and hugged her even more tightly, not wanting to let go.

"I was afraid you would hate me," he said.

"Believe me, I tried. I found that I just hate the things that take you away from me." She looked at him again, this time without any trace of tranquility. "Say that this is enough," I say firmly, almost as a requirement, one that was not open to negotiation. "Say it was the last time. Jure Baltazar" took the woman's perfect face with both hands

"Enough," he said, with sincerity and certainty. "It was the last time. I swear Gwen" melted. They kissed. And then she takes him by the hand and, smiling with affection, started to lead him towards the house.

"Come on," she said. "There's someone I want you to meet". It was dark inside the cabin, lit only by the increasingly dim sunlight that arched through the small window. But Baltazar saw him immediately, the little crib in the corner with a cotton blanket inside, its contours moving smoothly when something beneath him moved. The knight was drawn to him as if hypnotized, his hand sliding from Gwen's when she stood in the doorway, watching him with a smile, He approached little by little, until finally he was over the cradle and looking at the little package that was squirming inside . He looked back at Gwen, his eyes asking for permission.

Smiling, she responded with an encouraging nod. He saw ahead. Hesitantly, he held out his hand to the baby. His hands were rough, from a lifetime dealing with all kinds of tools and weapons, the instruments of life and death. I had never held anything so delicate, so precious. She shivered when her hands closed gently around the moving blanket and carefully lifted it to her chest.

He turned to the light and saw the child's face, no bigger than his fist, his eyes half closed, fresh from sleep, so small and so perfectly formed that it defied his convictions. Baltazar looked in awe as the child stretched and yawned with his mouth wide open, and his heart raced. I had never experienced such joy in my life. And while he stayed there, cherishing his firstborn, he knew.

All the horrors he had witnessed in his life, all the difficulty and pain if that was the road he had to travel to get to that moment, then it was worth ten times and even more Gwen came to the side, smiling tenderly.

"Here," she said when she gently adjusted the position of Baltazar's hands, showing how to properly support the baby's head.

"That's better." Baltazar was still so astonished that his words came out hesitantly; he stammered when he spoke.

"What is the baby's name"

"I waited for your return so that we could decide together," said Gwen.

"But I like Lazule. My mother's name." It took Baltazar a moment to understand. Then he pulled back the rolled-up blanket and looked. Gwen watched him, amused, when he understood. Baltazar had not even considered the possibility.

Somewhere, deep down, I was pretty sure it was going to be a boy. In his dreams, he had always been a boy. All the names he fantasized about, who spoke aloud while he and Polly plowed the fields to hear how they sounded, were boy names.

Maybe it was a way to allay some fears about becoming a father, she was the eldest of five siblings and knew at least a little about helping to raise boys. Sometimes, in his dreams, he trained his son at a young age with wooden swords, teaching the boy how to split himself and his home if there was a need - As Baltazar wished he had been able when the Southerners attacked his family. That was the only way to be a father he knew. But a fool was something else entirely.

Girls were much more delicate. What did you know you could teach the only daughter? Daughter. When it ran through Baltazar's mind, even the word seemed more awkward, more complicated.

"Are you disappointed?" Asked Gwen.

"No," said Baltazar, realizing that he really wasn't, that I cared, in fact that made the love for the child even greater. She will need your protection more than a boy - that he knew how to give. Besides, he had no idea how to father a girl. So an uncle had no idea how to be a warrior. Perhaps it was an even greater ordeal, Baltazar suspected, the more he would be able to learn. For now, just being there with her, holding her close to him, was enough. I'm a father! I have a daughter! Yes !, it was more than enough that Baltazar's hut was on the outskirts of a small, close-knit village, the news of his return spread quickly.

When you get there to set up your house, many villagers are suspicious of him. they knew something about their bloody past, despite rumors and tales, Baltazar never belittles them. However, over time they all knew what a good neighbor was like, a friendly man, and a man that many found it hard to believe that he had raised an hand for someone in fury.

It was where he met and fell in love with Gwen. They had been married for a month, and although the date had fallen at the height of the harvest, not a single hand worked in the fields that day.

And together they came again, the town square was bathed in torchlight when the sunset turned to a moonlit night, and Baltazar's friends and neighbors gathered to welcome them and congratulate him on his recent fatherhood. .

Those who knew how to play an instrument were quickly brought together to have music and dance, food and wine were offered in abundance: and after a conversation with Carnal village baker, Baltazar ensured that there were many elderberry rolls. He danced with the woman into the night, fully absorbing the music, the laughter and the love around him. Such were the depths of the melancholy felt for long days and nights hunting Magnus that, suddenly, being happy again was mind-boggling.

Was it such an intense and overwhelming sensation that he almost felt guilty really deserved to be so happy?

What had he done to deserve a good fortune like that?

A lovely woman, so many good friends, such a beautiful child. Somehow, it felt wrong to be rewarded for a life of bloodshed like this. No. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He would not allow himself to spoil that moment. He had never enjoyed the massacres, like many others he knew. He did this only because it was necessary to protect his homeland, and not asking for anything in return was the reward that fate sought to grant him, should not be a reason for guilt.

Finally he deserved it, the life he had dreamed of and he would not give it up. The promise he had made to Gwen had also made to himself: it was enough of blood. of war, it was enough to serve the king. If Alfredo's messengers summon her again, they would return only with a message of polite but firm refusal. That was his life now, until the end of his days. Home. Family. Paz Baltazar did not touch the wine, as he wanted to remember that night clearly, but he still felt drunk and dizzy when the festivities started to cool down, and Gwen took him back to the cabin.

He was sure that, for the first time in many weeks, a good night's sleep was about to happen, but he was wrong. In the darkness of the room, Gwen pressed him against the wall, and his warm breath was close to his chest when she opened his shirt and slid his hands underneath.

Baltazar flinched when the woman's fingertips played over his chest and found the rough patch of scarred skin where Magnus had burned the snake pendant. Gwen knew each of Baltazar's battle scars but that was new in history, however, she could wait: for now she simply thanked that her man was back without any worse injuries than that.

"I will be careful," she said.

"What's that for now?" Said Baltazar before kissing her with all the passion of their first night together. Gwen's tongue danced with his as her hands slid down and unbuckled the man's belt.

"What if we wake the baby up," asked Baltazar as his heart beat even faster.

"I'll be disappointed if we don't wake up," she whispered in her husband's ear, and her hand slid into his pants, grabbing him. An hour later, Baltazar and Gwen were lying, naked, clinging to each other, the heat cooling their bodies. But the restorative sleep that Baltazar had waited for so long, and that he was sure to be waiting for after so many sleepless nights hunting for Magnus, never came.

Instead, he was plagued by the most intense, most visceral, most terrifying nightmare they have ever experienced. And Baltazar was not alien to night terrors; many times, in the war, he woke up in the middle of the night, shaken by panic after the memory of some encounter spent in battle plagued him in the form of a horrendous and bloody dream. But that, that was something more distressing, but lived.

In the dream, one of Magnus' abominations was heading for the village of Baltazar in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep. The vile creature went from house to house, slaughtering men, women and children in bed. A woman woke up and saw the creature tearing her husband apart. Then he turned to her and tore her neck.

The screams woke the villagers, who ran from the houses with torches and pitchforks to find the beast appearing in the pale moonlight, drooling and sticky with the blood of its first victims: For a moment they stood, wide-eyed, petrified by pure horror and unbelievable thing. Then they ran to attack it only to be brutally crushed when the beast found them head-on, trampling them, tearing them with teeth and claws in insane fury.

It was unstoppable.

Axes and pitchforks streaked his scaly, armored skin without causing any damage. The fire would do nothing but infuriate her further. When he finished destroying his attackers, the abomination continued to cross the village, hunting for others who had been awakened by panicked screams and cries for help, and who were now running for their lives, to no avail. The beast was too fast for them; he knocked each one down, cutting them out where they were while screaming and desperately trying to escape.

The horror of the nightmare became even greater, since Baltazar experienced it so clearly. Every nauseating moment, every moment of terror happened with greater clarity than any dream I had ever had before. Everything except for the beast itself. Baltazar, too close to see her full form, had only glimpses as she writhed, struggled and murdered. Tweezers. A claw. A tongue divided in two at its tip. Eight oily legs that advanced, click-click-click, while the invisible thing ran from one victim to the next. And always the terrible, high-pitched scream he made every time he killed.

In other nightmares, Baltazar had always been able to wake up alone, escape the horror and return to the real world, telling himself it was just a dream, it was not true. Not this time. As much as he tried, Baltazar was unable to end the nightmare. He was trapped inside him, helpless, unable to roll his eyes, as if they were wide open by an invisible torturer who forced him to witness every moment. And now the beast was moving away from the center of the village, passing through the crushed and crushed bodies that spread out on the bloody ground, sneaking into the vicinity of the village, towards the home where he, his wife and their newborn daughter still slept.

When the creature approached and Baltazar's terror deepened, he tried to focus, invoking every inch of his will to end that torment.

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

He woke up. He experienced a great sense of relief when he realized that he had escaped the iron prison of the dream. But that feeling soon gave way to a disgusting sense of unease that had arisen, even though the nightmare was over - an oppressive, almost suffocating feeling of terror. He rubbed his eyes, then raised his hand to the side of his head with a grunt. The head throbbed a hollow throbbing, as if he had woken from a night of drinking Baltazar did not touch a drop.

The dream had been so powerful, it seemed, so traumatic, that it left behind some residual phantom pain. More than anything, more than ever, Baltazar needed to be close to Gwen, to feel her comforting warmth against him.

Turning to touch her in the dark. But she was not there. Baltazar's hand, healing blindly for the woman, found only a handful of straw. He sat down, and when the vision began to adjust in the dark, he saw that he was naked on a bed of straw. The whole place stank of manure, sulfur and burnt hay.

It was in a horse barn, on a tall pile of ashes, which, for some reason, were scattered over the hay. Apparently, he slept huddled in the center of that hay nest.

It was ash that stank of sulfur, and a thin layer of it covered Baltazar from head to toe, staining the skin with the color of charcoal. When he tried to clean it, he only managed to rub it harder. And when he did, he realized there was something wrong. His wedding ring was not there. He hadn't taken it once in the year he was married, but inexplicably she was gone. A single beam of daylight passed through a crack in the barn door.

Naked, Baltazar stood up slowly, shouting when he did. It wasn't just the head every muscle in the body, every bone, every drop of blood was boiling over, it hurt more than the day after any battle they'd ever fought.

Bent by pain, Baltazar staggered to the barn door and opened it wide, narrowing his eyes and raising his hand to protect them from the sunlight that came from outside. Erratic, he took a step forward, into the shadow of a protruding tree, and then saw them. Like in the nightmare.

The bodies of murdered villagers lay around him. Some covered in blood and gutted, or limbs broken and turned in strange, repulsive positions, some open from the throat to the belly, the entrails scattered on the floor. Others, little more than raw meat, trampled on the ground, or in pieces, scattered everywhere. The whole village, butchered. Baltazar stumbled back to the barn.

The mind spun. I was still in the dream; Did it seem like he had woken up just a cruel trick to prolong his torment? No, the maddening, frantic feeling that will define a dream, that desperate paralysis - Out of what he felt when he finished was over. He could move freely, take his eyes off the horror before him, if he wanted to. But it didn't.

Strengthening, regaining control as best he could, Baltazar walked among the dead, absorbing every detail. A stunning realization began to take shape; the body of each friend, each neighbor, lay exactly as it had fallen in his dreaming. There was Leila, Baltazar's closest neighbor, the first to come and shake her hand and welcome her the day before.

He was face down on the ground, a pale, frozen ghost, his body swollen, his entrails scattered on the ground beneath her, sneezed just as the beast in the nightmare had gutted him with his demonic claw. Not far away was Carnal, the baker who will take home buns for the celebration and who, in his dream, had been among the first to attack the creature. She advanced on him and the others at her side with an uproar of revolving claws, sharp as a sickle as if they were fat and stung everyone, member by member Baltazar looked at the man's torn head, eyes wide and staring at the sky, lifeless , a hygiene mask preserving the terror that had taken him at the moment of death.

Just like in the nightmare. Baltazar was in the midst of the carnage, recognizing every horrendous detail, and came to the inconceivable conclusion, although inescapable the nightmare robes that had plagued him in his sleep were not dreams. What was it about, then? Some form of premonition? But for what purpose, if he had arrived too late to prevent it from becoming a reality? What to do. Gwen! The baby !, Baltazar turned towards the hut on the outskirts of the city and ran.

Every bone and muscle complained, as his body still soles from head to toe, but he didn't slow down. The dream - or whatever it was - will end before any harm is done to them, won't it?

As far as I could remember, yes, but, just like a dream, the memory of the vision was already becoming hazy, specific details and moments getting more and more difficult to remember, all that remains is the horrible, unsettling sensation with which Baltazar had awakened . Her hut was farther from the center of the village - perhaps the creature had passed through it when it left, perhaps it had satiated with the massacre of so many others. But maybe not. - Please let them be alive. Please. - Those were the thoughts that still ran through Baltazar's mind when he opened the cabin door. It was as if the entire hut had been painted red, Gwen's remains were strewn across the walls and the residue of violence spilled over the floor beyond imagination.

Even the ceiling dripped. An ear, a finger, a ruffled and tousled tuft of blood-streaked blond hair were the only identifiable parts of it that were left. The barbarism to do something like this was beyond what Baltazar will ever come, even for the most insane and savage of the Northern Demons.

Brutality like that was beyond any man's ability. On the other hand, no man could do that. If he had been a man in the past, he had been deformed into something horrible and unrecognizable by Magnus's rotten magic. In the corner was her daughter's crib, her dark wicker with Gwen's blood. Defeated, Baltazar staggered to him, hoping that the little girl had somehow been spared.

But it shouldn't have been. Inside, where Lazule slept, there was a lot of flesh, blood and bones, until there was nothing more to recognize. Even the mere glimpse was more than Baltazar could handle. He stormed out, into the sunlight, and fell to the floor, unable to breathe.

As he struggled to catch his breath, he looked up and saw that not even Polly would survive. The mare's body lay where Baltazar had left her, in the small barn beside the house, the night before, without her head and her stomach open. Finally, Baltazar's horror, confusion and disbelief gave way to the despair that hit him in an absolute wave.

He cried out in agony; the tears began to flow, and he fell into excruciating sobs, so strong that his entire body convulsed. For more than hours he cried, until he couldn't get any more, then he was silent in despair; to anyone who watched it, it was a hollow shell, with no shadow of humanity.

Inside, the mind was racing, trying desperately to understand the truth of what had happened there.

Where were you when all this happened? Why didn't the screams of the other villagers wake you up? And why did he wake up so far from where he had fallen asleep - right in a barn?

Even if I had the answer to all these questions, certainly none of them could explain the nightmare and its horrifying omen. How could he have .. It was then that Baltazar looked at the floor in front of his house, lost in thought, and found his ring. Only it was no longer an alliance. He lifted it and saw that the circle had been broken and bent roughly in a gold twisted ribbon. When he turned it over in his hands, trying to figure out what could have pulled it from his finger in such a destructive way, he suddenly knew.

Immediately, instinctively, he knew. It had not been a dream or premonition. Not a fantasy of any kind. It had all been real.

Every detail of his terrifying vision was even more unsettling because of its unshakable sharpness, and yet the beast itself was the only thing that had never been fully seen by Baltazar. As if he had experienced everything through the eyes of the beast. Because he was the beast. Or somehow it was. His form was human now, but his body, tortured by pain and reeking of sulfur, told him the truth. He realized that he felt as if something had burst inside him, shattered bone and ripped muscle and tendon to break free from the human cage. And, somehow, he left, leaving only the "cage" redone.

Baltazar's hand hovered over his chest, at the snake-shaped burn that Magnus had left him the day before. The memory came at once to Baltazar - the look of fury, maleficent and canny, on the archbishop's face as he murmured that final incantation, each unintelligible word plotted with hatred, and the evil smile even when Baltazar's blade buried itself deeper and deeper life abandoned him.

As if he knew it hadn't ended there; as if he knew he would still have his revenge. It was possible?

To turn a man into a monster like the ones the archbishop had conjured so many times before - and then return him to human form? He was trying to expand his understanding and mastery of the magic he had learned, Cutube had said after studying the dead man's writings.

Develop it to a higher, more advanced level. How it could have been done was beyond his capacity, but Baltazar could not deny the destroyed and lacerated bodies around him, everything his tormented body told him, what his mind was screaming. That's what he did. Not an unknown monster The monster was him. That had been Magnus' revenge - inside Baltazar so that she would take over his body only after his return home, to his loved ones. So he slaughtered them in insane fury only to be restored to their true form, the soul returned to him so that he could witness the complete horror of his crime. So he could be tortured by that sight for the rest of his days. So that Magnus, even from the fire of hell, could watch his anguish and laugh.

Baltazar was still lost in his daze, trying to understand the fullness of what he now knew to be true, when in the distance, beyond the hill, he heard the sound of horses approaching.

He panicked. What would it mean for him to be found there, like that? Would anyone believe your story? Would he be taken as the sole survivor or a lunatic killer? He did not know, nor did he care, such was the depth of his despair. But the little presence of mind that he still maintained told him that this was not the time to let his destiny be decided by others. Upon hearing the sound of the horses approaching, he grabbed a cotton blanket and wrapped himself around it, then fled through the village into the dense forest not far away - and disappeared.

End