Beneath the Weisshorn the landscape was alive with a chorus of sounds. The Aletsch Glacier rumbled as it carved its route. The rustling whispers of leaves in the Valais pines. The piercing calls of marmots. The far-off metallic jingle of cowbells drifting from alpine meadows. Following the stillness, atop the summit it felt overwhelming. Alexander moved through it as if resurfacing from a crypt his senses heightened and overwhelmed.
He steered clear of the passes and the watchful gazes of the distant settlements. He drifted like the specter he had turned into tracing the river-etched valleys westward steered only by the fading sun and the profound innate urge to widen the gap between himself and the shrine of his revelation. He gathered berries sipped chilled waters from streams and rested sheltered by stones the river rock a sleek comforting heft against his skin where it hung in a pouch, around his neck.
He had been on this ghost-walk, for three days when he reached the Sanctuary of St. Bernard. Not the known hospice, but a modest timeworn chapel made of dark timber and fieldstone nestled on a remote mountain pass. Its windows stood dark its door partly open, swinging on a hinge with a steady desolate creak… creak… creak…. The noise spoke of neglect of time unfolding.
He forced the door ajar. Inside there was one chamber, covered in dust and motionless. A plain altar supported a crucifix polished smooth by hundreds of years of devotion. The atmosphere was chilly. It was a protective chill unlike the fierce cold found at high altitudes. He collapsed onto a carved pew, fatigue, at last taking hold. He drifted into sleep.
He did not envision angels or voids. The ringing of stone bells.
GONNNGGG—!
The scene was so clear it startled him into waking. The chapel lay in darkness, the final pale glow of twilight vanished from the panes. The door's creaking had ceased. All was utterly silent.
And he was not alone.
In the shadows by the altar, a deeper darkness coalesced. Not with the liquid menace of the phantoms, but with a solid, mournful certainty. Spiked pauldrons resolved from the gloom, then the faceless plane of the helm.
General Clement Duncan kept watch inside the dwelling of a deity.
Alexander remained calm. He experienced a tired acceptance. He had sensed, in some way it was incomplete. The cathedral was a display. This was intimate.
Duncan remained silent. He didn't unsheathe his sword. He just stood firm, a symbol of determination.
"Why?" Alexander inquired, his tone empty within the chapel. "You mentioned your trial was finished. Your Queen said you bore no grudge, against a stone."
The knight's helmet stayed still. Then he made one slow deliberate step ahead. The aged wooden floor creaked beneath his mass. He stepped again.. Once more. No strike. A move closer.
Alexander stood up from the pew his body objecting, his hand instinctively moving to the stone at his chest. He carried no weapons had no strategy. One question.
Duncan halted a distance away. The empty visor looked down upon him. Then deliberately and slowly the General lifted his hand—not clenched, but open. He aimed a armored finger, at Alexander's chest. At the bag containing the stone.
Then he traced that finger in a curve covering the dusty chapel, the wooden Christ, the quiet hills, past the door. The message was evident: This is your decision. This delicate fragile calm.
The plated finger shifted back to aim at Alexander's chest then knocked on the black cuirass covering his own heart.
And this is mine.
Before Alexander had a chance to react to the movement Duncan's other hand shifted. It wasn't, for his sword. Instead he grabbed the rim of his spiked helmet and with a soft hiss of escaping air rotated it and pulled it off.
He cradled the helmet in the bend of his arm. The face shown was the tired, stern one, from the mountain ledge but here under the faint glow it appeared sculpted from deep grief. His shadowed eyes met Alexander's. Within them lay an endless profound torment that rendered the Weeping Gallery trivial.
"This " Duncan stated, his true voice scraping like stone against stone "is the specter, within the helm. The man who selected a responsibility."
He gazed down at the helmet cradled in his hands his face bearing personal sorrow. "I wasn't always the Queens General. There was a time when I was… different. A man who trusted in the possibility of a world. Like you I was presented with a decision. A remnant of order. To use it would have enforced a framework, a exquisite balance, over everything that exists. It would have stopped all strife. It would have erased life as you understand it."
He raised his gaze his eyes drilling into Alexander. "I said yes."
The admission lingered within the chapel.
"I donned the Crown of Symmetry for a day " Duncan went on lowering his voice to a murmur. "I glimpsed the world it would create. A crystal-clear impeccable quiet design. A mathematical utopia.. Within that utopia I realized there was no room for the affection I held for my wife for the awkward happiness of my child, for the harsh essential flavor of failure. It was flawless.. It was lifeless."
He shut his eyes, a twitch, in his jaw. "I removed it. I violated my vow. I escaped the light that had consecrated me. The guilt, the burden of the decision I nearly took… it pushed me toward the refuge willing to hold me: the embrace of those who celebrate the defect the disorder, the clamor. The Abyss did not taint me. It embraced my fracture. It bestowed upon me a mission: to serve as the caution. To be the embodiment of the cost of any absolute."
He opened his eyes. The specter stood before him clearly visible. The quiet torment Alexander had noticed in the glow was his lasting condition. "The Queen's ceaseless war is a calamity. The Angel's flawless peace is a grave. I dwell in the calamity because I've experienced the grave within. I am the phantom of the decision you rejected Alexander. I am the person you might have been had you worn the Ring."
He raised the helmet not to wear it. To look at its blank front. "This conceals the face of that disgrace. This transforms me into the emblem more. The caution."
He set the helmet onto his head again with a concluding click. The kind anguished man disappeared, supplanted again by the nameless knight of the Abyss.. The awareness of what lay beneath had become part of the space as real, as the dust.
"I arrived " the inner voice continued, detached and emotionless again "not to battle, but to reveal. The route you selected has an opposite. You bear your stone. I bear my helmet. We reflect each other. You opted for the breathing realm. I opted to protect the understanding of its price to sustain it by accepting the force that would want to incinerate it forever rather than let it become frozen."
He spun around. Headed for the chapel entrance. At the doorway he stopped briefly.
"They will pursue you now. Not on our behalf.. On behalf of the Angels genuine followers. Those who cannot tolerate a Messenger who abandons his doctrine. They will regard your stone as blasphemy. Your continued existence as danger." The faceless helm glanced behind one time. "The spirit, within the helm comprehends. Refuse to become like us.. Resist their urge to don a crown."
General Clement Duncan exited into the nighttime. Vanished, leaving Alexander solitary in the dim chapel burdened by the overwhelming empathetic heaviness of his admission.
Alexander collapsed onto the pew the river water icy on his skin. He finally grasped it. Duncan was no adversary. He was another survivor of a selection. A living warning story. Their confrontation, in the cathedral wasn't a fight. A form of dialogue. A sorrowful bell marking the price of every road.
He was not liberated. He had merely traded one form of shackles—of command and legacy—for another: the chain of testimony the weight of a truth great, for a single man to bear. Yet he bore it with a stone, not a crown.. Within the dim comprehension chapel that seemed the sole triumph of significance.
He would sleep here tonight, guarded by the ghost of a knight who had shown him his own possible future. Tomorrow, he would descend further, into the lands of men, where a different kind of war awaited.