#ammoniium

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“We’re almost there! Almost there!”

The chair jolts, and Viktor feels his bones creak, his frail body shift in the seat.

It’s bright, too bright, the sun beating down on them as his cousin steers his wheelchair haphazardly down a dirt road, bumping and jouncing the wheels over rocks and stones. Drawing in a rasping breath, Viktor slumps further in his seat, eyes falling shut.

“Don’t you die on me, old man,” Yura snaps behind him. The chair jolts again, rattling Viktor’s teeth. “Not before you see him one last time!”

Him…?

Viktor’s eyes open to see shadows fall across the trees, the light dimming slowly, gradually, around them.

His aged heart stutters once, before it soars with the rise of darkness, a name escaping unbidden from his trembling lips.

“Yuuri…”

The room is a mess. Despite the bookshelf against the wall, books are strewn about: some closed and tossed to a corner; others left open with dark brown stains. There are notes on the desk, scratches of letters, numbers, numerical signs scattered across crumpled papers. A coat, long and black, drapes over the top of a wooden chair, while a scarf lies on the floor in a pool of red wool, having fallen as soon as it was flung off.

On the couch, Viktor sits up, blinking sleep out of his eyes. His hair is a tangled mess of silver, his clothes rumpled and smelling of his mother’s homemade chicken pot pie. A full-grown adult, and his mother still insists on visiting him once a week to cook and clean and “make sure he was alive”. Sure, he might have a tendency to forget eating sometimes. Or sleeping. Or any of those silly, mundane things that take him away from his work.

Rising to his feet, Viktor shuffles into the kitchen and sets a filled kettle on the stove. Three clicks, and there’s a hot flare of blue as he reaches for the tin of tea leaves on the shelf above.  

He’s close. So, so close.

Just a few more calculations to the time and location of the next solar eclipse.

To the Umbra Regem.

The Shadow King.

Stories of the Umbra Regem vary. His school teachers call it the grim reaper, a Lord of the Underworld that appears among mortals to steal souls when the Sun God is at his weakest. His mother says it is a giant, hairy creature with red eyes, glistening fangs, and a bottomless appetite that drives its urge to devour little children when the moon swallows the sun.  

Little Viktor didn’t believe a single word.

Adult Viktor, now infused with the teachings of philosophy and science and astronomy, still doesn’t believe a single word. 

Doesn’t believe that the Umbra Regem is real.

And he wants now, more than ever, to seek the truth.

A shrill whistle pulls Viktor out of his reverie.

Carefully, he tips the kettle over his mug and carries it, steaming, back to his desk. The scent of tea grounds him, calms his thoughts. People think him mad for devoting his life to studying a myth, but he doesn’t care. Teaching at the academy gave him prestige, yes, but it brought him no life, no joy. It feels nice to finally have a purpose, like plunging down the rabbit hole to find out exactly what lies at the bottom.

Viktor runs a finger across his calculations.

Almost there. Just a little more, and he will find this elusive eclipse.

It’s two in the afternoon, several months later, that Viktor finds himself wandering around the edge of a meadow, waiting, hoping, for the moon to blot out the sun. He swings a bat idly in one hand, brought on the off-chance that the stories were true.

On the surface, he appears composed. Confident. As though he already knows he’s right. (And he’s fairly sure he is.)

But deep inside, Viktor’s stomach roils and boils and his blood pumps through his veins, running on sleeplessness and some sort of muffled adrenaline. Months and months of numbers and calculations and squinting through his telescope at the distant moon, at the far-off sun, have culminated into this one decisive moment. Besides his mother’s weekly visits, he has spoken to no one, written to no one, no matter how many times his family and friends knocked on his door, no matter how many times his mother tells him to write.

If he’s wrong, if he has miscalculated, his dedication would have all been for naught.

As if fate had read his mind, it is in that moment of doubt that darkness starts to fall around him. Envelops the world gently with a black cloak as the leaves rustle in the wind, as the crickets begin to sing, as the afternoon sun vanishes in its depths. In minutes, the moon obscures the light; in minutes, day turns to night.

A lesser man would have quaked in fear, old myths and superstitions of death and beasts and angry Gods running amok in his ignorant, uneducated brain.

Viktor is so relieved his knees almost give out.

At least his prediction is accurate.

Viktor barely has time to congratulate himself before something—a shadow—flashes past the corner of his eye.

Instantly, instinctively, he ducks behind a tree, hands tightening round the handle of the bat.

As Viktor’s eyes adjust to the gloom, he peeks round, slow and careful. It takes him a moment to process the sight before him, and another to realize that he has somehow chanced upon something unreal and magical. To realize, breath catching, grip loosening on his bat, that:

The Umbra Regem exists.

The Umbra Regem is beautiful.

Missing are the rippling bulk of muscles in his mother’s stories; the patches of fur, the giant fangs dripping with saliva and unsuppressed hunger. Missing, too, are the scythe, the hood, or the bony, leathery wings in his teachers’ tales.

No, the mythical being has a distinctly human form: his hair as dark as night, his eyes as bright and warm as the stars in the ink-coated sky. When he rises from the sea of flowers, stalks of golden sundrops in his arms, his robes flow to the ground like a river coursing through the valley and plains, glowing in the light of the fireflies around him.

Viktor is so lost in the exquisite beauty that he forgets to breathe, his heart clinging to his throat. This one moment has given meaning to his work, made his life worth living. This one moment has made him realize that no mortal will ever satisfy or thrill him the way the Umbra Regem has.

And he only has minutes to savor it.

Inhaling, Viktor shifts, a hand pressed to his pounding heart—

—and steps on a dried branch with a loud crack that echoes through the meadow.

The shadow being whips round, robes flying, sundrops scattering.

“Who’s there?”

Viktor claps a hand over his mouth, swallowing the gasp that almost escapes.

Damn it, Nikiforov, he thinks as the Umbra Regem begins drifting, closer and closer, to his hiding spot.

“I won’t hurt you,” the Umbra says. “I just can’t have you remembering any of this.”

The kindness in the Umbra’s silvery voice is so incongruent with his words that Viktor lets out a huff of laughter.

In seconds, the shadows by Viktor shift, and tendrils of darkness coil and twist and twirl into a human shape – a most enchanting human shape. Up close, beautiful doesn’t begin to describe this being; not the way his eyelashes are a dusky smudge over his cheeks, or the way his eyes sparkle golden-brown in the light of the fireflies.

“Is that a bat?” the Umbra says, blinking.

Viktor hastily flings the bat to the side, heat rising to his cheeks. “No, it’s a, uh, just, ah… a safety precaution? No,” he corrects as the Umbra’s mouth forms a tiny ‘o’, “Not a safety precaution, just um. Uh.” He swallows, breathes, while the Umbra’s gorgeous eyes twinkle at him in puzzlement. “Can we start over? That wasn’t my best introduction.”

“Oh! Um.” The Umbra clasps his hands together in a gesture of nervousness. “This is a first for me too, so… sure?”

Viktor exhales. He’s really not sure why his heart is racing or why it feels so important for him to make a good impression, but it is and it does. “I’m Viktor.” He offers his most winsome smile. “And you are?”

The Umbra Regem hesitates.

Then, shyly, face going soft:

“My friends call me Yuuri.”

They talk, briefly. Viktor shares about his life project, his interest in the moon and the sun and, well. In Yuuri. He takes in Yuuri’s sweet flush, answers Yuuri’s questions about how he made his calculations, why he chose to pursue a silly little myth.

Soon—far too soon—the darkness begins to lift, and light trickles over the meadow, rays of the afternoon sun peeking past the edge of the moon.

Viktor leaves, seconds later, with a stalk of sundrop in one hand and Yuuri’s fading smile—I can, maybe, take your memory next time?—tattooed in his heart. ((To be continued…))