Aid

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 30: Dead End

             SLASH

            Cassius let loose a savage horizontal arc with the half-blade Malthir, swiping at Tarsus’s exposed face.

            The Sunsword recoiled quickly, successfully avoiding the strike but losing his footing in the process.  In that moment of ill balance, Cassius tackled him to the ground. 

            The huddled crowd of newly homeless citizens; all of whom had lost their homes the night before in the wake of the palace’s fall; began quickly rising to their feet.  The night before, Tarsus and Finnian slept among them, using this alley behind the White Light Tavern for some meager shelter.  Now, even that was denied them.  The legacy of Malthus had found its way here, and it yearned for Tarsus’s blood.  The townspeople sped out of the alley as quickly as they could.  They would leave Tarsus to finish this alone.

            Cassius got to his knees quickly, pinning a dazed Tarsus Cole to the ground with his body weight.  Without pause, the demigod swung his gauntleted fist down at his enemy, landing a blow across Tarsus’s face.

            On instinct, Tarsus brought his own fist up to meet the side of Cassius’s head.  The demigod was knocked off, rolling away from Tarsus.  The Sunsword managed to get on his feet, shaking his head, hurriedly trying to overcome the daze.

            “What are you thinking Tarsus Cole?” the voice of Cassius sounded in the mortal’s ears from everywhere at once.  “Right now?  In this moment?  Are you wondering how it came to this?  How you could be standing here, disoriented and alone?  How, at any moment, you will die by the blade you sacrificed so much to retrieve?”

            STRIKE

            Tarsus heard the swing, but had not the wherewithal to move in time.  Instead, he brought up his own blade in an attempt to block, but the power of the attack only pushed the flat of Tarsus’s own sword in on him.  The blade smacked him in the back of the head, and the broken edge of Malthir pierced his skin at the back of the neck.

            Lucky for him, his feeble defense stopped the demigod’s slice from inflicting more than a flesh wound.  Nevertheless, the attack felled the larger, human warrior, bringing him to his knees.  Tarsus dove forward immediately, putting distance between himself and Cassius.

“Come on Tarsus,” he admonished, “you are better than this.  He’s

working with half a sword, and likely hasn’t ever bothered to train to fight.” 

Tarsus stood as these thoughts raced in his mind.  He opened his eyes to a bleary alleyway, with no sign of Cassius anywhere.  He brought his sword up to the front guard position and bent at the knees.  As his vision cleared, he listened as intently as he could.  His training was coming back to him, and his body began to relax.

WHOOSH

Tarsus heard the cut through the air, coming at him from the right.  Without thinking, he stepped left, bringing his blade up over his right shoulder and angling it downward.

BLOCK

Tarsus pushed Malthir off his own sword, then spun on the balls of his feet to meet his attacker face to face.  Cassius was purple with rage.

LUNGE

The severed edge of Malthir flew at Tarsus’s throat.  Tarsus managed to sidestep the strike, but only barely.  “Half a sword does have one advantage,” he thought.  “Cassius is faster on the attack than I am, and his rage fuels his speed.  But anger is no substitute for training.  Time to show him some skill.”

OVERHEAD STRIKE

Tarsus brought his own sword down in an overhead arc, which Cassius was able to parry with relative ease.  Yet the demigod was left unprepared for the elbow that Tarsus followed through with.  It connected with Cassius’s face, forcing the half-god backward. 

Tarsus did not relent; he hurled his own body into Cassius’s, taking advantage of the demigod’s disorientation.  Cassius flew backward, slamming into the brick wall opposite the tavern.

The Sunsword advanced slowly in the long point pose, his sword held before him completely parallel to the ground as he threatened Cassius with its tip.  The half-man could only swat the enemy sword away madly with his own stunted weapon.

“Toying with me, eh?” Cassius smirked.  “I expected no less of you.  After all, I’ve done the same, when I was in your place.”

“You know nothing of my place, half-god,” Tarsus growled.

“Do I not?” Cassius offered through a bloodied, blood-curdling smile.

“Is that why you chose me Cassius?” Tarsus asked pointedly.  “Because in your insanity, you think that we are somehow alike?”

“Insanity?” the demigod said with a laugh.  “It is so easy for you mortals to explain away what you don’t like about yourselves, isn’t it?  To ignore your own shadows and pretend they do not exist?”  Cassius turned his head and spat out a mouthful of blood.  Tarsus watched as it sailed through the air, but kept his eyes on Cassius.  When the blood landed, Tarsus heard the rattle of teeth.  The demigod turned back to him, with an incomplete smile and unyielding eyes, “I did not choose you because we are alike.  I chose you because we are the same!”

Tarsus let his sword dip.  “No.  Don’t listen to him.  It is not swords you have to worry about with this one.  Manipulation is his real weapon of choice.  Run him through.  End this…right now.”

Tarsus brought his sword back up in readiness for the attack he told himself over and over to perform.  He looked at this being before him who had taken his friend away; who had threatened to destroy him a number of times and had earnestly tried to follow through; who had sought nothing but command and domination from the moment the two of them had met.  Killing him would be a well-deserved punishment, earned many times over.

Yet Tarsus did not attack.  He held his sword firmly, readily…but he did not attack.  “We are not the same.”

Oh yes we are,” Cassius hissed.  “I promise you Tarsus Cole, had you the knowledge that I have…the experience.  Had you lived with an echo of the divine power all your life, knew of the ecstasies that it could offer you, and learned that there was more; not merely to possess, but to become.  If you held only a piece of the grand puzzle inside you, and you understood how broken you truly were…tell me…would you not have done exactly as I have done to be fixed?”

Tarsus hesitated a moment, imagining himself in Cassius’s place.  “No.  I know the feel of the divine power.  I held it in my very hands…and I gave it up.”

“A taste,” Cassius cooed.  “That is all you had.  And of power not your own.  Yet still, look at what you did to possess Malthir even for so brief a time.  You risked your life, your very soul, to descend into the UnderIsle and face its perils: friendship, love…loyalty.  You could have had any one of them in abundance.  But you refused.”

“They were not real!” Tarsus justified in a raised voice.

“You know better than that, Tarsus Cole,” Cassius teased, now stepping forward and allowing the tip of Tarsus’s sword to connect with his breastplate.  Suddenly, Cassius’s body began to glow with a faint, ethereal light, and both weapon and wielder were being pushed backward.  “Because they existed on the spiritual plane, does not mean they were not real.  But you are not interested in the spiritual plane.  You want to conquer in this world.”

“I have no desire to rule,” Tarsus countered assuredly.

“No.  You do not,” Cassius agreed.  “But you do desire greatness.  You desire that which could help you push past your mortal limits, and elevate you above others.  Finnian, Cecily, Drake…”

“How do you know of Drake?” Tarsus asked fearfully, lowering his blade.

“I know you, my boy,” Cassius answered in that flamboyant tone that Tarsus had not heard him use since first meeting him on the docks of Malthanon.  “I know your whole life’s story, and that need to be better has always been at the center of it.  I understand that, because I share it with you.  Such vaulting ambition will always drive us in ways that no other being; be they man or god, could ever understand.”

SLASH

Tarsus pulled back his sword hand quickly, covering it with his other hand.  Cassius had struck him on the wrist, drawing blood and forcing him to drop his sword.  As he looked up, recovering from the shock of the surprise attack, he found the severed edge of Malthir screaming toward his heart.

There was no time to think, but Tarsus did not need time to think.  With years of combat training ingrained in him, he deftly pivoted to his right.

With Malthir missing its intended target, the momentum of the attack sent Cassius careening forward.  Tarsus was able to follow the flow of motion to grab Cassius’s wrist with one hand, and pull the sword away from him with the other.

In a continuation of his pivot, Tarsus circled around the back of Cassius, bringing the half-sword Malthir home to rest in the demigod’s abdomen.

STAB

Half of the remaining Malthir was now buried inside the half-god.  Instantly, Cassius fell to his knees, then backward into Tarsus’s waiting arms.  He looked up at the Sunsword with wide eyes.

“You’re right Cassius,” Tarsus said to him tranquilly.  “I do want to be great.  I have wanted that for as long as I can remember.  And you are right, I did turn my back on the bliss of the UnderIsle to return to the waking world.  But do you know what giving up so much…everything I thought I had wanted…do you know what that taught me in the end?”

“What?” the still shocked Cassius asked as the faint light, which had set him aglow only a moment before, faded.

“Greatness cannot be given, or taken, or stolen,” Tarsus declared.  “Greatness can only be earned.  That is what makes me different from you.  We are two villages, you and I…separated by a short road.  But between us…lies all the world.”

Cassius, still shocked at the deathblow dealt him, could only exhale in reply.  Tarsus watched his frightened eyes as they raced to decipher what this meant.

“You’re dying,” Tarsus finally said to him.  “But you don’t have to die as you lived.  You can still find greatness, even now.  Help me free Cecily from her pain.  Tell me how to save her, and you have my word…the echoes of the songs they sing of you in this world will be heard in the darkest depths of next.”

Cassius’s expression melted from wide-eyed terror to rational understanding.  He held there for a moment, and Tarsus offered him a small smile for comfort. 

Then, the corners of the demigod’s mouth pushed upwards, revealing that mischievous, incomplete grin he would wear to his death.  “Ha,” he sputtered amidst dribbles of blood falling from his mouth.  “You think you can appeal to my humanity?  You’ve killed me, mortal.  If silence is the only weapon left to me: my only means of hurting you: then I will be silent.  I care not for your pledges of redemption.”

“You call me and my kind foolish,” Tarsus retorted heatedly, “yet you are the biggest fool I have ever known.  You would rather die with secrets you will have no use for then give them up to me in order to save a life?  You are neither god nor man, but a selfish child.”

“Entreaties.  Insults.  Both routes lead you to a dead end with me,” Cassius spat.  “I would gladly see your Cecily suffer for all eternity from the other side, than help you to take what was meant for me.”

Tarsus Cole wanted to strangle the fool.  He desperately searched Cassius’s face, studying the demigod for the veracity of such a foolish final pledge, only to find all the proof he needed in the half-man’s triumphant eyes.  He bowed his head.  “What do I do now?  How do I get through to him before it’s too late?  I have nothing he wants.”

“You are coming to it, aren’t you?” Cassius asked with cruel, self-satisfaction. 

Tarsus raised his head to look down into the face of the dying half-man he held.  He gritted his teeth, “to what?”

“To the realization that it is over,” Cassius jeered.  “You have come so far, and done so much, but without my help…you have lost.  You have lost.”