Chapter Ninety-Three. The Dark King.
Ninety-Three
The Dark King.
My father comes out of a fissure in the spoiled ground, rising up from the red dirt, surrounded by an aura of the black fire that spits and hisses like vipers in a pit.
His evilness is breathtaking, his energy so awful that a wave of sickness goes through me, affecting not just my stomach, but my head.
And oh, he is horrific looking. The Dark King is a horned monster who stands upright on two powerful, trunk-like legs, the skin over his musculature red as the landscape, his hideous hands sporting talons sharp as knives, a flowing black mane sweeping out behind him in a wind that seems to blow against only him, for there is not even a breeze around me.
There are no weapons upon his body, nothing holstered or tied; then again, he needs nothing of conventional armaments, does he.
And he’s clothed only by a black cape that billows from his massive shoulders, and a binding to cover his loins.
His eyes are all black, the gaze a void that has a pull to it such that I’m careful not to dwell on his stare, and his smile carries the stinking sweetness of death’s decomposition.
“How I have missed you, daughter mine.”
The voice is utterly captivating, a seductive purr that weaves into the syllables the promise of riches to the greedy, love to the obsessive needy, sex to the ugly and unwanted, power to the pitiful and petty—if only you are willing to give your soul in return.
“She hid you from me, all these years, hundreds of years. But that makes our reunion all the better, does it not.”
Now his smile widens, revealing black fangs like those of the ogres, like what is in the mouths of the black spiders. I see now that those are his creatures, breeding in their prescribed territories, locked into that valley by the dragons that sail high above and keep the populations in check.
As with that contaminated red acreage, those beasts are the remnants of something that once was, just before he was imprisoned.
“Your mother is the evil one, you know. To keep a father from his child. It is unconscionable.”
I’m only half listening to him. I can see it now, the statues outside of the ruins of that city, the woman looking away, the man jealously captivated.
He built that all for my mother, whoever she was, set those temples and the statues as a lovely trap, the center goddess what he worshipped and sought to keep in place.
A pampered cage, for a twisted love.
“She needed to hurt me.” He puts a clawed hand over his broad chest. “And she knew that the two of us together, you and I, are a force unconquerable. But I took care of her. Where she is now is a fitting punishment, worry not. You have been avenged, my daughter, and now we are reunited—and I am free. Thanks to the magic in you.”
I snap to attention. “I am not getting you out of here.”
“Are you sure about that.”
“Very.” As a welling enmity boils up within me, I realize for the first time that love is complex. Hatred is not. “And you can’t kill me for a second time.”
“Oh, I was not the one who did that.” That smile lingers like a curse. “And what if I told you that if you give me what is required to release me, I would give you something in return. A familial exchange, the one thing that you want most for the one thing I need most.”
“I require nothing—”
“You are lying to yourself. What of that man I sent to you.” The words flow through the air toward me like a banner announcing safety, like a heat source in the winter, like a balm for pain. “He was right, you know. Everything he said to you was his truth. He fell in love with you.”
“As if I’m going to trust you about anything—”
“But what if you could believe him again. What if you could go back and have what was lost. Do you mean to tell me that isn’t of value to you.”
For a split second, a yearning claws into my chest. He’s right.
I only want to return to that place I was in, when the only danger that mattered was the physical kind, when I was united in purpose with a man of strength and protection, the other half of my whole by my side with me none the wiser about what is coming.
What did Merc tell me, though … if you enter the Fulcrum, remember that not all is what it seems.
“Love cannot exist in a maze of lies.” I sharpen my tone. “And truth does not need my acceptance to exist—you can take my memories, but my heart will always know what is right.”
“But what if it was all real. What if he loved you, even though he knew what you are.”
I try to control my breathing, try to give nothing away. But fates … if that were only the truth, and not just words honed to turn my emotions into swords used against me.
Except then I shake my head. “That’s why my mother would never have you, isn’t it. She knew exactly who you are … and you disgusted her.”
There is an instantaneous change in the Dark King, the seduction gone, a rank rage changing the aura of flames around him from black to red.
“Fine, I will just take what I require.”
Without warning, my body is grabbed by a great force, an existential sucking extraction making me feel as though I am coming apart, even as I remain intact: The pain is unfathomable, indescribable, inescapable, tears flooding my eyes as I grit all my teeth and strain against the onslaught.
Distantly, I hear the scream that rips from my throat as my arms and legs extend out from my torso and I begin levitating, the center of my chest pulling toward him.
The Dark King’s voice weaves in and out of my head, as if he’s inside my skin.
“Your mother stole a part of me when she conceived you, and if you will not free me yourself, I will require it returned unto me now. The collecting of souls one by one whilst I am trapped in here takes far too long—but the seed of me that’s in you will make me instantly whole.
Oh, Sorrel, your destiny was always coming back home to me, daughter mine—though having refused my generous offer, I will now take back what is mine on my terms.”
I scream again, and then choke as I cough up black grains of sand.
The agony is incandescent, my blood and bones alit with the vicious, drawing pull. I try to fight it, to marshal some magic to send at him, to hold what evil is within me back from him. As he extends a palm to me, however, I feel myself drifting forward—
Not my body, though.
As my physical form falls limp to the ground, my consciousness, my soul, my essential essence, floats toward him.
There’s nothing I can do.
He’s too powerful.
“We will be one, you and me,” he says in his warped, evil voice. “And then I will cast aside this Fulcrum of hers like the sand it is and be free to claim all the souls that are my due—”
And given your kindness, let me present you with something in return. You will know what it is for and when to use it.
From out of nowhere, I hear the Sooth’s voice.
With the last of my independent will, I order my hand to go into my pocket, and then I refocus on my father.
In a sensory parallel, my awareness registers the feel of the tiny pouch that was given to me, and I surreptitiously draw the thing free of its confinement. My fingers, stiff and clumsy, struggle with the string, but then the pebble, so unremarkable, so unimportant, is in my hand.
“This is as it has always been ordained,” my father is continuing with satisfaction as I get ever closer to him. “My missing piece returned—”
Surely this can’t work. It’s just a little rock.
Yet I’m compelled to toss the—
The moment the irrelevant pebble hits the red dirt, the Dark King hisses and jerks his head in that direction. The drawing suction that connects us is instantly broken as he concentrates on the stone, and I snap back into my floppy body.
Bracing my hands into the red dirt, I push myself up and cough out more black sand. But I haven’t been saved from anything. I’m weak, as if I have suffered from a dire illness, and glance up in defenseless fear.
Except …
For reasons I cannot understand, my father seems to have trouble looking away from the little rock. He tosses his head and stomps like a stallion, kicking up red dust, digging his hooves in. All around him, black fire explodes out of the nearest ground holes as if in response to his frustration.
With a curse, he bares his fangs and then snaps them at me. “You think that will distract me.”
“It’s working, isn’t it,” I wheeze back.
His glower is a promise of eternal torture. “I expected more than parlor tricks from you, daughter—”
“Stop calling me that.” I wobble to my feet. “I will never be a part of you. I came here to destroy you—”
The roar that comes out of him blows me back, but he doesn’t pounce. He cannot follow. He’s stuck looking at me and then back down at the stone, the latter like a precious gem that he’s about to foolishly walk away from.
The idea I’ve bested him on some level, any level, ushers in a bracing flush of courage and energy.
“Pick that up”—he jabs his finger—“and put it back in the bag.”
“No.”
“Pick that infernal rock up and put it—”
“No,” I yell back at him.
On a sudden conviction, I thrust my palms forward, and that’s when the black fire comes out of me, so forceful that the great Dark King stumbles back. He even puts his bulging, veined arms over his head and seems to beat the air as if he’s trying to stop a storm of hornets.
And I know, without consciously knowing, where he must go.
Back into the fissure that was created for him and sealed with the Fulcrum. By my mother. Eons ago. When she collected all of the good, remaining magic from the very soil of Anathos and brought it here to keep us safe by locking him up.
She should have imprisoned me here, too, for I am as dangerous as he. But instead, maybe because she loved me even though I’m a monster, she hid me among the humans, just in case, some time in a future she couldn’t imagine, but knew would come to pass, he rose up once again.
And I was the only one who had a chance of defeating him because I am him, and he is me.
As all of this occurs to my mind, I see the fissure he emerged out of reopen in the contaminated red crust. With even greater strength, I scream again, and the dark energy coming out of me redoubles, battering at him like blows, until he is down on his knees and I’m standing over him.
“Sorrel,” he says in that seductive voice that promises darkest desires granted. “Do not do this. Together … we can have dominion over all of Anathos. Together we can make manifest the destiny I was intended for. Regard now at once my army, ready to do our bidding.”
A wave of distortion undulates through the red landscape, the black fires flaring up in a coordinated explosion that brings heat and cold at the same time—and then, as the optical show recedes, I see the horror I suspected, but never wanted to witness.
Legions of demons stand at the ready in formation, thousands of them. Millions. They stretch out as the horizon does, into a forever because there is no end. These are all the souls my father has taken, has bartered for with lies, has overpowered with unholy strength.
And Merc is among them.
Then again … so am I.
Dearest fate, no human army can defeat this.
The war is lost before it began.
Unless …
Unless, I can do more than just survive this greeting, this handshake of which the Sooth warned me so strongly. If I can finish off my father, with a wrath of my own unleashed, I can save all of Anathos.
Surely that triumph will heal me. And if I die in the process? At least I tried.
I think of the Fulcrum, and the black bands, the black flurries, the black flames that surround me.
Gathering all my strength, I pour the very essence of me into my father, not as a gift, or as something he can take, but as a terrible contamination that will corrode him from the inside out, spoil him to his evil core, rot him until he is no more capable of animation and will than the cold dead carcass of a cow taken down by one of his demons—
Against all comprehension, the Dark King begins to move backward toward the fissure. Even as he fights the momentum, he cannot seem to break out of it, his head making rounds of me, the worthless pebble, and the black hole that I am sending him into.
“Wait! Wait—daughter mine!”
I can barely hear him over the grunting that rumbles out of me.
I feel as though I’m lifting a house from its very foundation, and the strength required is more than I have—yet I am in the throes of the effort, shaking and sweating, straining and groaning, and it’s working.
The evil is being sucked into the ground now.
“Daughter mine!” The Dark King marshals his voice. “I have something of yours you need to see. Look … behind you. Look … at what you are doing to him. Look at the one you love—”
“You lie—”
And that is when I hear the one voice I cannot ignore, even though I should.
Merc’s:
“Help … me…”