The Strange Case of Tyr-Nag-Noth (A Tale of Tarot #83, As Written By The Fool)

When Tyr-Nag-Noth opened his eyes, he was looking at the emotionless countenance and white-blind eyes of Justice. He looked around and saw that he was in a massive courtroom, thronged with a silent and grim-faced audience. Standing beside him was a well-dressed man he did not recognize. He was handcuffed.

“What’s going on?” was the first thing he asked.

“Ah, so this is the main personality,” spoke the deep baritone voice of Justice who sat on an imposing podium. “Can you please confirm to the court that you are indeed Tyr-Nag-Noth?”

“Y-yes. I’m Tyr-Nag-Noth. I’m sorry, where am I? Who are you?”

“I am Justice, and you stand in the Callous Courts in the Republic of Numbydia.”

Tyr-Nag-Noth was dread-stricken. The Republic of Numbydia? The Callous Courts?

And Justice himself? The blind Arcana whose voice could command even the other gods to submission? The sightless god of divine law and order?

What did Tyr-Nag-Noth do to deserve an audience with His Righteous? This he asked humbly to the blind god.

“The circumstances of your case are strange and unorthodox, Tyr-Nag-Noth,” spoke Justice. “Before I and your attorney can explain your circumstance, first let me ask of you your last recollections prior to this day.”

“What I remember… I remember heading back to my home.”

“Can you state for the record your home address?”

Home address? thought Tyr-Nag-Noth. Numbly, he gave his address to all present, and a stenographer—which Tyr-Nag-Noth just noticed—typed seamlessly and synchronously with his precise words. “And then…” he continued with his recap. “Then I went back to bed. I must have woken up, maybe in the middle of the night. A sound roused me. I went around my house looking, and…” He locked eyes with Justice’s milky-white gaze. “Then I find myself here.”

“Tyr-Nag-Noth,” Justice boomed. “Between your last memory and your arrival here, five years have passed. In those five years, you abetted in one of the most heinous crimes a mortal such as yourself could commit: you trespassed into Empyrean and murdered one of the High Priestess’ Archangels, Thandael.”

He was seeing black. His legs wobbled and seemed to melt into a liquid. The audience’s murmurs heightened Tyr-Nag-Noth’s panic. Trespass? Murder? Empyrean? An Archangel?

“I did none of these things, Lord Justice!” proclaimed Tyr-Nag-Noth.

“My client, Tyr-Nag-Noth, certainly exhibits no recollection of the events aforementioned, Your Honor,” spoke Tyr-Nag-Noth’s lawyer. “As I have continued to impress upon your person and that of the prosecution, he is innocent based on inculpability. He was an unwilling participant to the crime.”

“Ignorance is in itself a crime,” argued the prosecution. “The convicted should have been aware of his mental state. The evidence, which has already been presented to the court, proves that Tyr-Nag-Noth was aware of his mental instabilities and denied himself any means to counter the dilemma.”

“I do not understand,” moaned Tyr-Nag-Noth.

“Tyr-Nag-Noth,” spoke Justice. “Can you confirm for the record of your awareness of your mental state and the negligence by which you did not act upon a remedy to your issue?”

Mental state? Negligence? Remedy?

“ANSWER,” boomed Justice’s irrefutable voice, neither loud nor boisterous, but rather as unignorable as a thunderclap.

“Yes,” Tyr-Nag-Noth said. “I was aware of my condition…”

“Please verify for the record the nature of your condition.”

“Dissociative identity disorder. DID. I have… two other personalities, the doctors explained.”

“We are acquainted with one of them.”

“You are?”

“Yes. A man named Nag. He is the one who infiltrated the Arcanas’ home in the first place.”

“And killed… killed the Archangel?”

“No. It was Noth, your other personality, who committed the murder on Thandael.”

“What? Both of them…”

“Yes, Tyr-Nag-Noth. Both of your personalities were responsible for illicit affairs in Empyrean. We have heard both of their confessions and admittances. Now we wish to hear yours.”

“Mine?”

“Were you aware and/or active in the crimes committed by both Nag and Noth?”

“No! I swear by the Lord Author!”

Justice tilted his head at Tyr-Nag-Noth’s declaration. “You speak true, Tyr-Nag-Noth… or you believe so vehemently in your truth. In which case, there is a lack of evidence from the prosecution to suggest you were actively aware or involved with the murder of Thandael. However, we cannot permit both Nag and Noth, your malign personae, to go free. Therefore, you will be relocated to a special detention center in the Republic of Numbydia to serve for the remainder of your life. Take this as a kind punishment you must endure, Tyr-Nag-Noth. The High Priestess demanded a harsher conviction for the murder of her beloved Archangel.”

Tyr-Nag-Noth voiced his complaints. He demanded restitution and a retrial, stating that the decision to sentence his life to imprisonment was unjust even for Justice. He did nothing wrong! It was his alter-egos, Nag and Noth, who abused his body for their wicked deeds! But his lawyer and Justice explained that it was pointless now to change the sentence, and that the lawyer was hired solely to handle both Nag and Noth and not Tyr-Nag-Noth. Nag’s and Noth’s fates were sealed, and Tyr-Nag-Noth was an accidental and incidental participant to the conviction.

Justice’s gavel banged loud and heavy on Tyr-Nag-Noth’s ears—a sentence was final. Yet Justice assured the condemned man that he would not suffer nor be anxious of his new living.

Indeed, when Tyr-Nag-Noth was relocated to his new home in Numbydia, he had to admit that it was a paradise compared to his original home. Lush prairies and forests; a garden bountiful with fruitful trees and crops; a two-storied house with impeccable rooms and homely decorations. Yet he was all alone in this alienating acreage. When he walked to the limits of his paradisical confines, he was met with an invisible barrier, as unbreakable as the hardiest material though thin and unseeable as air. Tyr-Nag-Noth realized the prison was encased in a dome, for which the only people allowed ingress and egress were the Bushango—the police of Numbydia, the judicial and military arm of Justice. Though they were hospitable and amicable towards him, Tyr-Nag-Noth nevertheless found his paradise a prison.

Regardless, he lived comfortably and contentedly in his contemptible sentence. He toiled in his garden and read many remarkable books. He exercised and performed hobbies that engaged his mind and muscles. He conversed with his Bushango guards whenever they visited and learned of new developments whether in Numbydia or beyond.

He came around to asking the Bushango the one question that had nagged him in his confinement: why did Nag and Noth commit their individual crimes? The Bushango, unlike many unfriendly prison guards, gave Tyr-Nag-Noth a helpful recollection of the backstory. Apparently, it was no accident that the personalities, Nag and Noth, were activated from Tyr-Nag-Noth’s subconscious nor was it natural that they occupied Tyr-Nag-Noth’s body for five years. One of the Arcanas—the Devil, many blamed—had awakened Nag and transformed him into a spy for the purpose of infiltrating Empyrean. An investigation was underway as to who this Arcana was in the first place—not even Nag knew of his master. Nor Noth, who was trained by a different or similar Arcana for the purpose of killing an Archangel. Both Nag and Noth were unaware of each other’s contributions to the role, nor did they know why Thandael was targeted in the first place. Justice vowed to discover the truth.

Tyr-Nag-Noth wondered if truly he was to remain incarcerated in Numbydia for the rest of his life due to the criminal antics of his mind’s stowaways.   

But one evening, he was chopping up carrots and cabbages for his dinner when, in an eyeblink, he was suddenly in a room with Justice standing before him. He was strapped to a chair, and his arms and legs were crisscrossed with bandaged and sutured wounds. His head pounded. His chest burned.

“What…. Where…?”

“Calm yourself, Tyr-Nag-Noth,” uttered Justice’s smooth and deep voice, like an underwater current bearing fish towards home. The sound of it certainly tranquilized Tyr-Nag-Noth. “This will be difficult to explain to you, and you must be patient and steady.”

“Why am I injured? Why am I here?”

“One of your personalities—Nag or Noth, we do not know—seized control and awareness two months ago.”

“Two months? You mean I have been unconscious for two months?”

“Subconscious, to be more precise, but yes. They attempted to break free from their prison several times, in fact, but the Bushango were perfectly prepared for it. Both Nag and Noth pretended to be you, which failed since the Bushango were trained to recognize any differences in personalities down to the most subtle of minutiae. They also tried force, which, as you doubtlessly notice, has been less than successful. Whoever suborned Nag and Noth are still out there, sending out signals to activate them. As to the motive, it is rather perplexing. The culprit ought to have you killed by now.”

“And I am still to remain imprisoned?”

“You will.”

“But I did nothing wrong!”

“As the godly judge of all things, I must be candid to tell you that you performed wrongly in the first place, Tyr-Nag-Noth. If you had made sure your personalities did not exist—that you owned full control over your own mind and body—you would not be here. Instead, you neglected your own security and personal authority.”

“I couldn’t have known.”

“An excuse as old as the first wrongdoing, Tyr-Nag-Noth.”

“You are the god of Justice. Can’t you find a more just means of punishment for Nag and Noth without including me?”

“Under more reasonable and justifiable circumstances, I might have separated your tripartite consciousnesses into separate bodies—in that way, Nag and Noth would endure righteous punishment in their respective prisons, and you could go about living as you originally intended. Yet you are inextricably connected to Nag and Noth, and any procedure to separate you from them would cost your life. You do not deserve to die prematurely, Tyr-Nag-Noth. Yours is a unique case. You are the first person with a personality disorder who infiltrated Empyrean and slew an Archangel. Hence, your punishment must be uniquely tailored to your crime. This is the most reasonable and suitable justice to mete out on you.”

Justice offered a comforting hand for Tyr-Nag-Noth. “Cherish this day and your waking days,” said the Lord of the Callous Courts. “That is all you deserve for all that you have done.”

To cope, Tyr-Nag-Noth made it his new life’s goal to fulfil his previous life’s goal. Before the unexpected insanity of his fate, he wanted to be a carpenter. How fair and wise of Justice that there was an abundance of trees to fell for Tyr-Nag-Noth, and sufficient tools to hew and carve and sculpt and chop. For months that became years, Tyr-Nag-Noth gave back to Numbydia with his woodworks. The Bushango returned to their homes and families with sculpted gifts given by Tyr-Nag-Noth. Of course, these gifts were all checked and inspected for any illegal contraband, and the Bushango, being the most incorruptible police force in the world, were not persuaded by any criminal to expose the secrets encircling Tyr-Nag-Noth’s prison.

And yet Tyr-Nag-Noth was far from satisfied. His blackouts and intervals of unconsciousness repeated irregularly per year, with the longest lasting for a month and a half. In those periods, he knew nothing, and he’d often awaken in either a hospital room or safe and secure in his house. He was never quite as accustomed to this puppeteering as he intended. Yet what made it all worse were the nightmares. They lurked and stalked and whispered in the dim corners of nights—fleeting moments, memories, figures and shapes and names at the precipices of awareness. He began to awake each night with scenes of Hell. Of flies and snakes swarming into every pore of his skin. Of him stabbing at every innocent and nameless man he met on a bleeding battlefield. Of winged eyes leering down at him while dagger-sharp feathers hewed his skin with the same cruel mastery as when he would carve angels and paragons out of blocks of wood.

The nightmares grew to more clarity, more severity. In his middle and middling years of life, he seized one of the many blades he used to sculpt masterpieces out of trees and started to open his veins and arteries and let his blood gush out. Yet each time, he blacked out. Not out of fear or anxiety. He awoke every time to the Bushango saying that either Nag or Noth had taken control.

Nag and Noth did not want to die, it seemed to Tyr-Nag-Noth. Even now, they controlled the choice of his death as much as they held mastery over his life.

The situation with Tyr-Nag-Noth’s mentality became so serious that he was ushered to the same hospital ward where he often awakened. There, he met with Justice who gave an honest explanation regarding the man’s nightmares.

“At the moments when Nag or Noth are awakened, they are treated to the worst forms of torture suitable for their respective crimes,” Justice said in his emotionless timbre. “Nag, being an intruder and a thief, is subjected to a cesspool of flies and snakes and other vile creatures. Noth, the murderer, is murdered regularly and in varying degrees. Much of these punishments are doled out by the High Priestess’ angels, who feel the most justified in meting out justice against Nag and Noth for the loss of Thandael. The memories of both Nag’s and Noth’s experiences appear to be seeping into your own consciousness and subconsciousness.”

“Lord Author…”

“This shall be remedied, of course. You will begin henceforth never to recall the torment those two are undergoing.”

“What? No! I want this to stop! Just kill me and be done with it!”

Justice shook his head with firm finality. “I sympathize with your struggle, Tyr-Nag-Noth, and I pity you for the beginning of your circumstances. But I blame you for the fate you have fallen into. Each of us has our actions and inactions, and you are at fault for inaction.”

“I did nothing wrong! You call yourself Justice? You call yourself the God of the Fair? My imprisonment is unjust! Unfair!”

Justice did not speak in anger, merely consolation. “When you stand before the Halls of Judgement, where my afterlife counterpart, Judgement, presides, you will know for a fact that you did wrong, Tyr-Nag-Noth. You will know your sin and despair.”

Tyr-Nag-Noth returned to his penitentiary home, where he spent many more years whittling away both the time and the woods around him. He began to stop replanting trees to replenish his wood supply. At times, he started to stop eating and drinking and sleeping in defiance. Yet at the instances when he blinked or felt his consciousness going away, he’d reawaken to himself being healthy and fit once again, and his forest regrown anew.

To vent his frustrations, he shouted and raged against the Bushango. Yet rather than retaliate with equal hostility, the Bushango were insufferably patient and sympathetic towards Tyr-Nag-Noth. He could not stay angry with the Bushango for long. Still, his hatred towards Nag and Noth grew.

Now he learned from Justice a few years later that it was the Hanged Man who had suborned Tyr-Nag-Noth’s two personalities into committing the dual crime. Right now, the Hanged Man was in Detention, a special prison for the Arcanas, where he suffered from torments that would make Tyr-Nag-Noth thankful for being imprisoned as he was now.

And yet Tyr-Nag-Noth’s frustrations did not abate at this good news. He was still confined because of crimes two different individuals enacted. He started writing letters to Nag and Noth or whichever one assumed control of his body when he was absent—questions of why they infiltrated Empyrean and slew Thandael. What was the gain? Why do they still attempt a futile escape? Why will they not let Tyr-Nag-Noth die? But in each reawakening, neither Nag nor Noth wrote to Tyr-Nag-Noth back. And though the nightmares and the echoes of trauma no longer lingered in Tyr-Nag-Noth’s mind thanks to Justice’s administrations, Tyr-Nag-Noth was still harrowed by shame and humiliation for a guilty verdict he felt was undeserving.

Years and years and years…

Then on the last year of the last month of the last day, Tyr-Nag-Noth was at last dying. And he was glad for the first time in imprisonment for he was fully aware of his ending up to the final hour.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself on a boat manned by the apparition of Death. The cloaked ferryman rowed the soul-boat towards a black sand shore, where the silhouette of a massive pair of scales glimmered in the dark. Only when he stepped out of the boat and walked towards the three judges of Judgement that he realized he was not alone. Beside him were the spirits of Nag and Noth, both apprehensive as he was for the afterlife.

Judgement’s judges, Hythradarsus, Arushtin, and Selimut, then looked at the past, the present, and future of Tyr-Nag-Noth and his counterparts. He beheld himself without bias or illusion, for the three judges of the afterlife perceived with the most scrutinous of eyes. And in his reviewal of his life, he understood the sin that made him a prisoner to his own mind and body.

It was the sin of complaint. He had dedicated all his remaining life to complaining at Justice. Raving. Raging. Ranting at the unfairness of his circumstance. And rather than look to the goodness and kindness which Justice offered him, he spurned it all and made a mockery and a blasphemy out of it.

Yet it was a small sin compared to the sins committed by Nag and Noth. And because of these greater sins they were cast into Hell. Tyr-Nag-Noth, at last separated from his personal tormentors, was ushered into the pearly gates of Heaven where his true paradise awaited.