March of Mephisto

On the morning of the ninth moon it smelled like war. Stain, violence, wrath; fear—its stench soaked into everything. The soil was poisoned with fresh sacrifice, seeping into the earth with lost intention. On the field the dead rest cold, but the living rage colder. No love was shown between brothers, between nations, because war is a brutal gentleman’s game. Thinking only in commands, two minds alone casted control over their pieces, foot soldiers and cavalry, and under the brutality, the men played with respect and principle; however, it is easy to obey a match with no rules. By morality alone the commanding Superiors valued each other through the opposing nature of their nationality and birth, still fighting for their intention.

Final screams where heard, and a retreat willingly was followed in the attempt to save the last lives standing for the homeland being invaded. Most of the militia was claimed, and the remaining souls were the broken or dying; the unwounded giving desperate attempts in reviving the fallen. The strong carried the weak into a haven so desperately appreciated, waiting and thanking gloriously.

On the stone streets the children capered with wooden swords and sticks, playing war until it marched across their own and bid favor on the house steps. They scattered and ran like insects, trembling from the visions of death and blood, unable to seize the shallow notion of a hated world outside their own. Under law traveling and wounded troops were able to board in local homes until their needs where met; all where except for one. An ashen white soldier, Harman Freund, became lost is the labyrinth of roads, not bound by fatigue, pleading, crying for the aid of his comrade whom he carried unconscious from bleeding. The other warrior was one of the few golden children, but his fair features where hidden under a coat of scarlet woven by him and another man. His breaths where narrow and few, his weight heavy and lax, beginning break into a blackness unknown.

“Mephistopheles, there, there!” a child’s voice said, piercing through the soldier’s thought. The small boy was found in the middle of the street pointing at the albinic fighter and his scarlet comrade. Patient and wide eyed, the child stood there waiting for the echo of fast paced feet, glancing around every few moments, to shortly be reunited with another. He was a moderately tall man dressed in commoners clothing, and his hair was of raven’s feathers. Experience, which in time shall also cover the younger soldiers’ beings, built and lined every feature the commoner bore. Two cavernous eyes veered into the vicious red pools of the albino’s; though steady and stern they expressed the qualities of comfort and tenderness. With the deepen eyes he looked upon the wounded one with a fright—understanding his pain—saying earnestly: “You seek a sanctuary. Come, welcomed to my home. It is not far away.”

The burden was lifted and became one with the older man. Empathy was the only thing more he could convey; for a misery familiar to his mind charred his ideas with every breath of blood, Mephistopheles, too, in the past, was a soldier, a warrior of a fatherland so beloved, in which he only fancied to encounter through the passage of memory. For even he was not strong enough to be fraught by the sting, from a wound unable to heal from time, of such useless destruction he sees but a pointless matter paid in lives for nothing with return.

His home was humble and able to be discerned as a provisional hospice when needed; it was comfortable, current, and its threshold has seen many lives pass by. Its many empty rooms became frozen in time as each soul passed through—each woe, each joy.

“Will he live? I plead you say aye,” the albino ejaculated in anguish. Indeed, as he desired, the other replied with a ready, shallow “aye” with no other say. He was a man of little words, but of great wisdom of only a broken essence. Instead he fixated himself with the fire glowing in the hearth and marveled its beauty and simplicity. The fire was the only spring of any flesh tones to the two frozen faces, for even the man, Ludwig Mephistopheles, was abnormally pale for a man of black hair, and within the blaze’s shine the frosted, cool natures deceased.

Harman marveled at the beautiful catastrophe laid before him, and questioned how such a stunning, elegant creature became so poisoned; his distress bleeding in subtle manors but frankly evident, became quite a distraction in the soldier’s mind. A war so brutal and shameful, and all the souls within it, plagued the glow, photographs of the many faces rested bare in plain sight; none of them, where the beholder of the man Mephistopheles himself, but where of many like him: soldiers, warriors, some even plebeians. There was one particular picture that contrasted among the others, its appearance not like any other photograph of the time; it was of a young man, no older than one-and-twenty, who was visually divine. His winsome form was of milky skin and rosy, flush lips, the locks of ivory became dizzily tousled in the air with the man’s merrymaking. The costume he wore was peculiarly vibrant and flamboyant: silver frills and trimmings elegantly decorated the lavender array in a rich fashion, and the designs of the violet face power casted the façade of a mask, but what made the picture so peculiar was that all of the various hues where able to be observed.

“I mean not to impose,” Harman began to say softy, “but one of your photographs has struck quite a fascination upon me. I have never seen anything like it before tonight; its complexion that captured its true colours crosses me as queer but with an alluring beauty. Such a device that could have composed the picture must be magnificent, and from that the captivation it left me with a yearning for enlightenment about it. Please, do tell about it.”

Mephistopheles idled as if the words of Freund’s speech never passed over him, but after a short pause he came around saying: “Herr Freund, be not afraid, for you are not imposing. For your curiosity, however, it shames me too say that the camera that created such a thing has been long gone and well forgotten. As of what is occurring in the photograph itself, it… is but a mere memory. The man is a dear friend of mine, yes, and I love him with the deep compassion one should express for a rich friendship, and it brings a sadness upon me that in recent years we have become quite disconnected. For it was a much simpler, joyous time—the Carnival in Venice—a moment that I wish not wither and die.”

The words pressed down on the young soldier with mighty strength, for their wistful tone seized him in an awkward way; and after he composed himself the silence faltered again, the boy saying hesitantly, “Might I ask another query, Mr. Mephistopheles?”

“Yes, indeed you may.”

“It was brought to my attention when we introduced ourselves that your name is an extension of Mephisto, is it not?”

“Yes, but he and I are two different persons if that is what you fancied to know. Do you acknowledge him highly? Most of the youth do.”

“A-aye; Brother would tell many magnificent tales of Mephisto. Every one of them made me strive to be more like him, which is why I became a soldier… I have trained very hard for very long, since I was a small child, hoping, that maybe one day that we could encounter, and bring me back to Brother, but”—the boy’s conscience malformed from content to displeasure, almost to an emotion of pain—“now only the Divine shall be able to grant that wish, for Brother died serving on the front lines.”

No longer did the soldier’s barricade hold. Cracks broke the albino; the stress that was enclosed forcing him gracefully downward into a savage pit of loathed creatures. Trembles came and passed over a dividing soul, wafting over him like the fleeting clouds of the sky; and from his pain did he become frail, from his frailty did he become the sight of pity. He is a soldier, a man of skill, loyalty, but noticeably a man of strength. It shamed him to be brought to a low and to be seen so weak, vulnerable. Collapsing back to a meek chair far from the sight of Mephistopheles, he buried his face his palms and began to weep quietly and peacefully.

Harman suffered the state of mind of a child. He wanted to be concealed, a meager shadow in a blackness, afraid and alone, however, Ludwig saw the youth and all his trueness, for they were two of the same engulfed in the scar of hurt and discontent; the burdens of the day overwhelmed and became too strong for the nineteen-year-old, and he was in a dire need to bleed. Hands with a touch as warm as passion unblinded the boy, curling his own into a fist, leaving his tears fully exposed to be seen by the man he cautiously hid from. Crystals were washed away by the flesh of the other, and such action made the soldier become startled. Freund has never experienced the radiation of such care and affection from a being he knew not intimately—it was foreign, but gentle and with good intention.

“Do not fear,” the man whispered, “I understand such horrid emotion you wish to enclose inside, but it is healthy that they are released. The day was very burdening upon you and many others. Take rest, for time has exceeded far into night.”

The thought was taken heavily, and surely he found himself in a guest room drifting between the state of consciousness and dreamscapes; but even in sleep his mind was uneasy and after resting in the deep abyss the albino found himself waking with a jolt in a cold sweat after a plague of night scares. Muffled, shallow voices crossed Harman’s curiosity, and as he crept closer to their origin the words became more distinguishable. The two persons spoke with extraordinary diversity; one expressed a thick German accent while the other a rich and vibrant French appeal, neither of them, however, spoke in Universal vernacular, but the one of their birth culture. It was effortless to distinguish the German speaker to be that of the host, but the smooth sound of the traveler was baffling, France was their adversary and enemy, his presence should not have been welcomed.

Though Freund was not able to understand the banter between the two, he was able to distinguish a title, understandable in all languages, which crossed his importance. The name he knew well, for it was very important to him, being spoken again and again in the voice of the Frenchman: “Chlodovech Mephisto.”