After a moonday of walking, Aarvo began hearing in the distance the low and rhythmic Toom! Toom! Toom! of the thundering towers beyond the horizon.
As he proceeded toward the far side, the noise became clearer and more insistent, gradually changing into something more complex. To the powerful bass tones that shook the ground like the footsteps of a giant was added an electrostatic scraping noise like raw sand on stone and finally a sharp dragged lament like the scratching of a comet's tail: Toom, Chrr, Schwinn! Toom, Chrr, Schwinn! Toom, Chrr, Schwinn!
At some point, the jagged profiles of the thundering towers appeared in front of him like broken teeth, stretching across the whole line of the horizon like the ravenous smile of a soul-eating monster. Their howl was something that made the magma churn in his veins, but Aarvo knew he had to walk through it if he wanted to reach the far side. He gathered his strength and continued his advance.
TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN! TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!
The thundering call of the towers soon ceased to be a sound and turned into a wall of solid matter through which he struggled.
TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN! TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!
Aarvo came under the towers. He shut his ears, but it was useless. The thunderous boom of the towers went through his hands as if they weren't even there, striking him with deafening blows.
TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN! TOOM, CHRR, SCHWINN!
The din was unbearable! The towers thundered with a howl that turned his bowels upside down and pierced his skull like an earthquake of blades. The ground shook; the dust shook, rippling into waves and dunes; and the ether itself shook, bending and quivering under every booming blow.
Never in his life had Aarvo heard such a shattering uproar. From afar, the voice of the thundering towers seemed to him only a noise, but now that he was in the middle of it, it had turned into a wall, a solid barrier that wanted to crush him under its blows. If it had been created to keep the monsters of the far side at bay, now he fully understood its effectiveness and power: it was like the punch of a gigantic invisible hand, like the punch of the giant he had dreamed of, whose blow could crush souls.
He glanced up to beg for mercy from his tormentors, but the two gigantic towers next to him didn't seem to even notice him. Like the bare fangs of a hungry giant, the two colossal black stone pillars rose to the sky with sharp and hostile peaks. Perfectly smooth and inaccessible, they looked like incorruptible and eternal guardians, monuments to the ingenuity of his ancestors, terrible instruments without mercy or reason. And they were not alone: behind them, countless other torturers, equally dark and zealous, stretched one after the other in a compact and impregnable line to the extreme limits of the horizon.
Aarvo wondered whether these black towers that tortured anything that crossed their paths were actually the real monsters of these lands. He wanted to get away from their deadly presence as soon as possible, but it was hard for him to think under the hammer of their incessant blows; it was hard to put one foot in front of the other; hard to even see where he was going, because his eyes didn't perceive anything in full anymore, but only tremors and indistinct fragments.
Through the booming fog that pressed against him, he suddenly saw an incandescent line in front of him, an endless arc of light bending along the entire horizon.
With a supreme effort, he started running in that direction. It was like running through an earthquake, but an earthquake that ran through sand, blood, the universe itself and everything else. It was as if he himself was the earthquake and his every step pulverized stone, split the stars, and annihilated his own existence. It was like walking through a dream, but a terrible dream that ripped his limbs apart one grain at a time.
So he ran, mindless and numb, for a timeless time, until he realized that the dreadful uproar of the thundering towers no longer struck him. He stopped then, and took some time to gather himself. His ears were pulsating as if they had been stoned and they could only hear a high-pitched whistle that was piercing them with pain.
Aarvo knelt on the ground, trying to stop the shaking that was still churning his magmatic blood. He closed his eyes and tried to lower the volume of the whistle and of the pain that was piercing his ears. After a while, he realized he was beginning to hear the TUUM, TUUM, TUUM of the thundering towers in the distance again. He stood up and looked around: he was near the North Pole. In front of him the blade of day cut the world in two—on the one hand the light and the near side where he still stood, and on the other the night and the far side.
He turned around and in the distance saw the line of sharp black teeth of the thundering towers. He almost couldn't believe he had managed to escape that monstrous torment. The strength of those sounds was inconceivable: even from this distance one could see the concentric dunes around the towers rippling with each booming howl, as if even the sand were trying to escape that senseless violence. Only the thin crescent of Eera in that landscape appeared unaffected by the towers and hovered unmoved above the sharp peaks, low on the horizon. Aarvo stared at her for a while, taking comfort and filling his eyes with her light. He wasn't sure whether she'd accompany him to the far side and in fact feared that as soon as he set foot in those unknown lands, she'd hide below the horizon to never rise again.
With one last glance at all that was familiar to him, he turned around and faced the unknown lands of the far side. Before him, sunk in the darkness of night, an infinite arc of light bent from side to side along the whole horizon. That incandescence reminded him of the fountains of light that sometimes could be seen at the horizon with the coming of day, but this was strange, different, pervaded by a disquieting luminescence.
Aarvo was afraid of going there, afraid of the ghosts and monsters that mysterious land might vomit out without warning, but he had no choice. He bent down, picked up two moonstones to use as projectiles, then set out.
Soon, he crossed the threshold of sharp light that marked the extreme limit of day and the near side, and stepped into the darkness of the far side.
****
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