Chapter Ninety-Four. The End.
Ninety-Four
The End.
I close my eyes. And I remember once again what Merc himself told me, even as I never want to think of him again.
Not all is what it seems.
“You’re a liar,” I yell at my father. “He’s not here, that is not him, he’s not here, that is not—”
The hoarse moan that rises up behind me goes in my ears and through my body.
I tell myself this is an illusion created for my benefit only, nothing but a manipulation, a chimera created by dark magic and chosen with deliberation as the only way to get me to stop.
And because my father thinks he can dupe me, my vengeance strengthens even more, and for this, I’m glad the Dark King has tried to play to a weakness I no longer have—
The screaming behind me shifts something deep inside my heart—or mind; it cannot be my soul, for I have lost mine, if ever I had one. Though I tell myself not to, though I order myself not to turn around, this is my little pebble, my compulsion. The thing I cannot not look at.
My head pivots.
Merc is strung between four black flames, as if he’s drawn and quartered.
He’s naked, twisting against the holds, his wide, pain-crazed eyes focused on the murky gray sky overhead, his muscles in stark clench, his neck veins pumping, his mouth cranked wide so that the insides of his teeth are all showing.
The black flames are tearing him apart while he’s alive.
Except he’s dead.
So the consumption is perpetual. Even as his flesh is rendered apart, it regenerates on the spot, the stasis of torture unchanging such that he’s trapped in the agony. Still, I tell myself this is a lie, an apparition meant to appeal to a side of me I no longer have, if I ever possessed it at all—
The evil laughter that first greeted me as I stepped through the Fulcrum repeats, weaving in and around me like a gust of wind.
I’m reminded of my true purpose.
I turn to resume my assault against the Dark King, but when I put forward my palms, what comes out is nothing like what was before. My father easily casts the energy aside as he straightens from his tuck. Replants his hooved feet. Rises to his full, towering height.
Behind him, the fissure begins to close.
Recalling all the reasons I mustn’t be distracted, I redouble my efforts—
Merc’s screaming, even if it is an illusion, is not something I can ignore. My focus is no longer complete, and the trap I fall into invisible, but better than iron bars: I don’t know whether the torture is real, and if it is, I just cannot bear it.
Even though I hate him, my love is … complex.
And that makes the emotion real even though I strive to deny it, the smallest crack in my resolve becoming a fault line that destroys me completely—
“Hear him suffer, and know that it is real, daughter mine. No image thus, but rather a servant who tried to double-cross his master and for what? Love?” My father laughs bitterly and starts coming forward.
“That castrating force is far, far more destructive than anything I have ever done, a weakening, killing, insidious fissure that sucks us in and holds us captive. I had love—for your mother. And what did she do to me? Stole my child, seduced me into this hell, and imprisoned me here for a millennium!”
Black flames explode into the fetid air at his rage.
And then he puts his own palm out such that it faces me. “You know, Sorrel, I do not think he suffers enough. Let us remedy this, shall we.”
Just as a wave of dark energy flows from my father, I do what makes no sense, what I shouldn’t, what I can’t.
I leap in front of the stream.
The agony is greater than the universe, everything that is cold and hard, that feeds off the suffering and misfortune of others, that sickly rejoices in the deaths of children and animals, in the leveling of houses and families. It is war. It is famine. It is pestilence. It is torture.
It is cruelty.
And now it is me.
The stream lasts forever, and when it relents, I slump down, landing beside Merc, who has been released from the flames that held him and also crumpled into the red dirt.
As I roll over to retch out a black, viscous stream from my stomach, our eyes meet.
He is real.
I don’t know how I know this, but I can sense his essence.
And though he is a demon, the tears that fall from his eyes are also real and they are not for himself. They are for … me, and they come from a place of love, even though he is what he is.
Even though I am what I am.
I loved you even though I knew your whole story because who you are is so much more than the curse you carry.
I make a decision before I’m aware of coming to any conclusion, and my body moves not from my mind, but from my heart: I reach out my hand weakly toward Merc. And he meets my palm with his own.
As the connection is made, I am reminded of my other truth, the quieter one.
I am half my father … but so am I half my mother, too. And whatever she did to me, she was not evil. In fact, she attempted to save all of Anathos.
The Savior. The Dark King.
My history. My origins.
Me.
A tear forms and slips free from my eye. Two sides of the same coin, the good and the evil, and shouldn’t it be up to me if I land on heads … or tails?
I shift my stare back to the Dark King, who comes over to us with a resonant satisfaction.
The horned monster’s smile is one of triumph as he stands over me, his cape waving in the wind.
“You came here with such arrogance, my daughter. So sure and certain of your own power, though your mother kept it hidden from you all these centuries, so ready to destroy me. I would be furious at her if I were you, but then perhaps we are not the same, after all. What a pity. And now I’m afraid that I will have to destroy you. ”
He brings his palm up. “But first, look around and see your failure. Regard the destruction of your mother’s creation, the Fulcrum, no more.”
The Dark King is right. The barrier, which I briefly stopped in order to enter, has collapsed, the sands nothing more than a modest circular hill that surrounds us.
“Remember, daughter, we could have ruled together, united within me forever. Instead, you will go where your mother is. For eternity.”
Squeezing Merc’s hand, I brace for what’s going to hit me. I know that the instant the black energy leaves the palm of the Dark King once again, I am over. There’s not much left in me now, and no chance of survival with this final onslaught.
The end has arrived, my story culminating here, the fate doled out to me at my creation sealed—
The first of the ghostly forms steps forward from a mystical aperture in the air, as if it is appearing from some other plane of existence altogether. Iridescent and beautiful, the entity is instantly recognizable to me, even before I see the face.
Mare. It is … Mare, only she is not old and upon her deathbed. She is young and lovely, elegant and regal of bearing. And she smiles at me before stepping in front of my sprawled, wretched body to face the Dark King—
The aperture in time and space opens again. Ellyne steps out … dear Elly, the farrier’s second wife, who I attended upon her birthing bed, and in her arms is the infant she lost, his perfect hand pinwheeling in a ghostly arc as she smiles at me.
Before she too turns to my father.
After that it is the baker’s wife who appears, along with her daughter, not as the bairn I tried to save twenty years ago, but as the young woman she would have been if she’d survived.
Then it’s the farmer’s daughter who I stepped in to help too late, when she was trampled by the horse.
The twins who died in the river, whom I was brought to after they’d gone cold and gray, but tried anyway—ten years ago?
And now there are more of the ones I did save over the hundreds of years I was in my village, those who went on to live good lives and enjoy the time they should have had before finally dying of old age.
Men and women they are, all those babies over all the years I didn’t know were passing, that I brought back from death.
From the illnesses I cheated out of their victims. From the injuries that should have been mortal.
I remember each and every one of them, including the babies I lost because I came too late—most especially them I recognize, even if their faces show the maturity they would have enjoyed if I’d just gotten there a little sooner.
Though in life they were all not able to thank me, or even acknowledge me, now they bow their heads to me with gratitude and deference before turning to the Dark King.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether I was successful in my revival or not; their gratitude to me seems to be tied not at all to the outcome, but more to the suffering I saw … and what I tried to do about it.
As I stepped in for them then, so they step in for me now.
There are ten, now twenty. Thirty, then a hundred.
Then a thousand.
My father has been collecting souls … but now I see that so have I. And unlike him, I did not want to claim what is not mine to take. I just wanted them to live and be with their families, and love who they chose and have the time upon Anathos that they deserved.
It is the dragon’s miracle coming at the right time once again, except this is so much more. This is the culmination of all my efforts, over all the years, everything that I have given to the world without expecting a return, returned back as it was granted.
With love.
And it is delivered by the family I created with what I did with the time I had.
The Dark King stands now on the other side of a great wall of light. Through the swirling illumination, he seems confused, but with no surprise, he recovers quickly and he is angered beyond measure.
“You think this show stops me?” he growls, his voice warping.
With an unholy roar, he braces his hooved feet and puts both his palms forth, unleashing his black magic upon the chain of souls.
He’s so powerful, it’s like the entire ocean comes in on a single wave.