Aid

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 31: Communion

             “He is right,” Tarsus thought bitterly.  “I have sealed his doom, and in so doing, sealed Cecily’s…Finnian’s…mine.  It is over.”

            Tarsus’s glare did not waver from the smirking eyes of the demigod that lay in his lap.  That was all that was left to the Sunsword now: defiance.  He had lost to Cassius, in the end, but he would not give this childish fool the satisfaction of seeing him broken.  He had to be strong now: resolute.  Soon enough, Cassius would pass from this world, and then he could grieve; but not now.

            Tarsus opened his mouth to speak.  He did not know what he would say, but he felt he had to say something.  Cassius’s expression came to life with an impish glee, and Tarsus knew that he had given himself away.  However silent it was, there was no masking the demigod’s delight in the Sunsword trying to cover up his own weakness.

            But then, something changed.  Cassius’s body began to tremble, and the focus left his eyes.  He gasped shallowly, letting his head roll from Tarsus’s face to the alleyway. 

Immediately, Cassius let out a gasp.  It did not sound to Tarsus like a cry of pain, but rather one of shock.  Tarsus saw terror inform the half-man’s countenance; he watched as the horror slowly spread to consume the dying, disregarded prince of Malthanon.  Yet there was nothing in the alley to spark such fear.  The two of them were alone.  Thus, what the half-man saw there, Tarsus surmised, was not the simple, crumbling street leading to a ruined city.  What Cassius saw must have been a different road: a darker road.

            “Is that you?” Cassius called out, his voice thick with dread.  “Amelia?”

            “Amelia,” Tarsus mused as he was suddenly struck with an idea.  His lips curled up into an involuntary smile that he quickly reversed as the fullness of what he had to do occurred to him.  “Curse you Cassius!  You expose yourself.  And you leave me no other choice.”

            Tarsus bent his head low, bringing his lips close enough to Cassius’s ear so that the dying man could feel the warm breath of life dance past his lobe. 

Cassius became more frantic with each passing moment.  His body shivered with the awe of what he was seeing, and his eyes darted hither and thither, chasing the shade of Amelia deeper into the world beyond; a world that he himself would soon enter.

“Wait…” Cassius cried out.  “Don’t leave!  Please…”

“Why should she wait?” Tarsus whispered into Cassius’s ear, grimacing as the words left his lips.  “You killed her.”

“No!” Cassius pleaded.  “It was Adulatio!  Adulatio!”

“But how did she come to be worthy of the old god’s wrath?” Tarsus continued.  “Who was it that led her on that perilous quest to reclaim a sword?  Who quelled her spirit, that she should serve: docile and dutiful?”

“No…” Cassius whimpered amidst shallow breaths. 

Tarsus paused, marveling at how easy it was for him to manipulate this man whom he had considered a master of the art.  It was so effortless, not only deciding on what to say, but how to say it. 

Tarsus spat, disgusted at the simple revelation that came to him, “I suppose, Cassius, I have learned more from you than I ever imagined or desired to.  And by the gods…it is useful.”

“My birthright,” Cassius cried.  “All I did, I did for what I was owed.  And she would have benefitted.  I would have exalted her…her, and no one else.”

“Empty words,” Tarsus decreed.  “You defiled her.  Enslaved her.  Do you think she can ever forgive you that?”

“I…” Cassius was interrupted by a sudden heave.  His body was turning against him: the mortal half slowly overcoming the divine half.

Tarsus raised his head reflexively.  He loomed over Cassius, looking down on a pathetic creature struggling through a fit of coughs and gags.  “Which half of him is it that is fighting so hard to keep him alive?” Tarsus wondered.  “The human half?  Or the divine?”  That’s when Tarsus noticed something else amidst the human suffering that was enveloping Cassius: he saw tears, streaming down the demigod’s face.

“This is not the way,” Tarsus decided.  “It cannot be.”  He grabbed Cassius by the scruff of the neck, and propped the demigod’s head up so that the two of them could look each other squarely.  “There is still hope, Cassius.  Do not die having lived only for yourself.  Help me now, and when you find Amelia in the world beyond…she may think better of you for it.”

Cassius could only sputter and cough for some time, his body lightly shaking.  Yet his eyes found Tarsus’s again, and even through the death pangs that rocked him, he was searching the Sunsword’s countenance. 

For what, Tarsus did not know.  Yet the Sunsword suddenly felt the great shame of how he had behaved descend upon him.  He put on a forthright demeanor, meeting Cassius’s waking eyes with a show of steadfastness.  “I am a fraud,” he thought as he felt his face fall into the mask of what he wished to portray.  “And no better than he.  Cecily, forgive me for this.”  

“You…were well chosen,” Cassius stammered through short breaths and quick grins.  “Promise me something”

“What?” Tarsus asked dismissively.

“That man…no…that thing….in the cloak…” Cassius seethed as fresh drops of blood flew from his mouth.  “…kill him!”

 “I don’t know how…”

“Swear!” Cassius demanded, lifting his head from Tarsus’s supportive hand. 

Tarsus quickly grabbed Cassius’s shoulder with the hand now freed from supporting the demigod’s head.  The Sunsword squeezed gently, altering his disposition to one of stern resolution.  “I will kill him,” he said, with more than the simple words he used.  “I swear it!”

Cassius gave a slight nod in assent.  It took everything he had to keep his head up of his own volition.  “Your friend…must die.”

“How?” Tarsus asked urgently.  “Malthir is broken…useless.  It was the only conduit of Malthus’s power.  Without it, I cannot even offer to take her place.”

“You’ll need…power…of your own,” Cassius struggled to say.

Tarsus was silent, living in what he thought Cassius meant and how such a thing could be achieved.  “Cassius, son of Malthus, I offer myself in your stead, as one still living in this world.  I have drawn your blood, so I offer mine as substitute.  I have broken your body, thus my own shall serve.  I will be a vessel for your divinity, unto the end of my days.”

The demigod raised a hand to Tarsus’s face.  The Sunsword bowed his head to meet his extended finger, which was covered in the half-man’s own blood.  The suffering deity gave a few strokes of his finger, imprinting something on Tarsus’s forehead, then let his hand fall.  “You…are…my…chosen…” he staggered.  “…and now…so marked.”

Tarsus raised his head.  Cassius seemed different to him now, as though this surrender of power meant a surrender of life as well.  Yet the demigod’s eyes betrayed a hint of tranquility.

            “Use this…” Cassius said as he managed to bring a hand onto the hilt of the half-blade that stuck out from its resting place in his side.  He squeezed the grip lightly and tried to pull it out.

            “I can do that,” Tarsus said, gently pulling Cassius’s hand from the grip and taking hold of it himself.  “After.”

            “Tis only a sail…” Cassius said, the clarity fading from his eyes.  “now…you are the wind.”

            “Thank you,” Tarsus said ardently.

            Cassius’s head fell back, one final, peaceful breath escaping his lips.  Instantly, Tarsus felt the demigod’s body go cold.  Yet at the center of the half-man’s chest, a faint light appeared.  Tarsus watched as this small glow set off a ripple of light that extended throughout Cassius’s body.  Once the entire corpse was aglow, the light began drawing back to its origin in the chest, until it all came together in a pulsing sphere. 

            The completed sphere lifted up, out of Cassius’s body, floating upwards.  It halted in midair, hovering before Tarsus’s face, just above his line of sight.

            Tarsus felt the mark on his forehead warm.  He closed his eyes, reveling in the rapture that cascaded through him.  “Such bliss,” he thought.  “I want to live in this warmth forever.” 

            In such perfect contentment, Tarsus Cole remembered.  He remembered the ease of childhood and the delight of meandering into maturity, forming no bonds or ties to anything.  He remembered drinking at the White Light with Drake and Finnian, all three of them vowing to become knights.  He remembered swearing his loyalty to Cecily, his heart fit to burst as he did so, because it felt to him the first real decision he had made in his entire life.

            Cecily stuck in his mind, a phantom from a life that now seemed far away.  She was alone somewhere, underneath a mountain of ruin; she was suffering.

            “I have done what I promised her I would,” he thought, reflecting on that day that he pledged himself to her before Thaddeus Berk and his fellow militiamen.  “’My sword and service,’ I said.  And I gave her both.  But there is more yet to do.”

            Tarsus exhaled, letting that thought resound in his mind.  “I am ready,” he finally whispered.

            He could feel the white warmth of divinity float forward, inching its way toward him.  The heat on his forehead intensified to a cleansing burn.  He felt the power flow down from the top of him to the very bottom, like water cascading down a fountain.  There was a brief moment of pain, where his entire body felt afire.  But the burn passed, and all that was left was warmth. 

            Tarsus opened his eyes.  He looked down at the corpse he now held in his lap and found Cassius, with dead eyes closed, facing him.  Tarsus put a free hand to the demigod’s chest, and with his other already gripping the hilt of Malthir, Tarsus pulled the half-blade free from the body’s side. 

            Tarsus placed Cassius’s body onto the stone street of the alley and stood up.  He could feel the power of divinity coursing through him.  It was not all-consuming, the way Malthir’s power had been before the sword was broken, but he felt as though it lifted him: elevated him.  His senses were sharper, and he could feel the small well of divinity pooling in his stomach: a hidden reservoir that was his alone.

            The sword, by contrast, felt dead in his hand.  He held it aloft, traversing it with his gaze.  The blade was flecked with the blood of viscera of Malthus and his son, and had turned from the gleaming white-silver it had been when Tarsus found it to a faded brownish grey.

            With a thought, Tarsus tapped into just a little of the newfound power that resided within him.  The sword began to glow again, regaining a shade of its former luster and reawakening to the generational power of the god who created it.  Tarsus dismissed his gift, and the blade returned to the dull and broken thing it had become.

            “I’ve lost one friend today,” Tarsus thought.  Inside, he could feel his new power responding to his mounting anger: fueling it, and pushing forth his purpose.  “Now it is time to find another…and say goodbye.”