tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Tenebrae does not hear when the other man approaches, when he stands behind a tree to watch and remember the other terrible order of monks he has seen before. This Disciple is too lost within his grief and anguish to think much of others around him. Yet it would shame him more to know how he is watched. The revelation will be a painful one, when it comes.
For now that whip cuts the air with a whistle. It cracks across his pale, shadow drenched skin, splitting flesh, yielding blood. It is agony and yet the monk does not relent. The agony of punishment cleanses him. It reminds him, forces him with bistlering pain to aspire to be better.
There is a rhythm to his punishment. The whistling fall of the whip, its startling bite, the monks murmured prayers, they roll over and over. Anticipation, pain, repentance. Again and again. His rhythm does not break, even when the tap of feet on stone rises above the whip’s whistles and cracks. A dark shadow of a man stands, his presence stifling. It imposes itself upon the flagellating monk and awareness sears hot and cold along his side where the man stands.
Their eyes meet across Caligo’s marble breast. They each glow, one with fire, the other with white light. The man’s sigils glow in a line down his forehead. It is a barest glance, fleeting like sunlight over a humming bird’s wing. There and then gone. The monk continues his punishment until through exhaustion he can barely raise the whip. His back is slick, the whiplines a black and garish lattice. He rises and his limbs tremble. Caine has not left. Yes, Tenebrae has heard of him, though they have never met. He has heard of a man as black as obsidian with eyes of fire and sigils that gleam strange and eerie down his brow, his nose.
Caine’s question still hangs over them. It dirties itself with its prying, congealing with the blood upon Tenebrae’s whip wounds. What sins have you committed monk, to mutilate yourself so? The words caress his broken flesh with gentle consideration and curiosity. It is soft as the breeze that blows into the shrine. Its touch is the sting of a wasp. Tenebrae turns and the movement is agony. His skin is alight, the flesh moving, aching, opening and closing. Perfect, blissful agony of repentance.
“My deeds are known between Caligo and myself alone.” Tenebrae says as he retrieves the bloodied whip from where it lies at Caligo’s feet. The floor is slick with sweat and blood and Tenebrae slips upon it, weak, ailing, exhausted. Yet he stumbles, staggers away toward the living pool that glimmers like black ink, its surface as smooth as silk. It is a sacred pool, used for initiations and to wash the sins from the sinful.
The monk does not care if Caine follows him, though he continues to speak to him, “Why would I tell a man I do not know the reasons I flagellate myself before Caligo’s mercy? Would you?” There is no ire in his words, but weariness and dark, deep shame veiled with indifference. He does not close his eyes, he barely blinks, for seared into his mind is the red of Boudika, the gold of Elena. They haunt him, beautiful and dangerous.
Tenebrae staggers up the steps, stumbling, tripping with his leaden legs. He looks down at the black, still pool. His reflection gleams back at him, but for the glow of Caligo’s half moon upon his brow he could have been any man. What would you be if you were not a monk? Boudika’s voice whispers to him yet again. If you were not a monk, I would be your lover.
“Love.” He gives his answer to Caine as he steps into the pool, shattering his reflection into a thousand pieces.
