"To Be Chosen"

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 28: Sovereign

             Tarsus could not take his eyes off of the tip of the dagger that protruded through Cecily’s breastplate.  For some minutes, her blood was oozing out of the stab wound, cascading over her body and onto the stone floor below; a vibrant crimson wash staining the sea of faded grey and brown.

            “So much blood…” Tarsus thought in horror.  “It seems endless.”

            “Tarsus…” Cecily forced out, calling him back to her tortured face.  “…it hurts.”

            “Of course it does, my dear,” a rich baritone voice confirmed. 

A tall, regal figure stepped into Cecily’s upturned line of sight.  For a moment, the stranger seemed a shadow to her, surrounded entirely in a halo of golden light.  The dark shape of a man bent toward her, and the closer it came, the clearer this menacing shade came into view. 

“You are a full goddess now,” Adulatio said, stopping just short of his nose touching hers.  He smiled down at Cecily with a gleeful contempt, “and that divine power you possess will keep you alive.  But it will not, cannot, ease your pain.”

The old god rose then, regaining his full height, and as he did so, Tarsus saw that he had picked up Malthir and held the sword by the flat of the blade.  Adulatio raised the weapon up, offering its hilt to the dark stranger sitting upon Malthus’s throne.

“The sword of Malthus,” the god said reverently, taking a knee and bowing his head before this new player.  “As promised, my lord.”

“My lord?” Tarsus was struck by such deference coming from a god, let alone one of the oldest of them.  “Who is this man to command such homage?  What power does he hold over the gods?”

The stranger rose from the throne.  Though his eyes remained hidden: tucked away under the hood of the dark cloak he wore: Tarsus felt a tingling chill run up his spine.  This man was weighing them all in his gaze.

In an instant, the stranger stood before the supplicant Adulatio.  Tarsus watched as the darkness that swirled around the stranger, as though it were part of his cloak, diminished the light that emanated from Adulatio.  It was as though the old god’s divinity was giving way to the force of this mysterious man. 

“Divinity!” Tarsus realized.  “I have not felt Adulatio’s divinity since he appeared.  I am not compelled to serve as I usually am.  Why?”

Tarsus began searching the room frantically to see if he was the only one to keep his wits.  A few paces behind him, on the path leading up to the dais, he found Cassius.  The demigod was helplessly circling the charred remains of what was clearly a human corpse: Amelia. 

When Tarsus and Finnian had burst from their hiding places in the antechamber outside Malthus’s throne room, they ran in to find a scene of chaos.  First, an explosion of light had temporarily blinded everyone in the throne room, and when they had regained their sight they found Adulatio standing poised with a hand filled with fire.  Cecily, ready to strike down a decrepit man at her feet, rose and unleashed Malthir upon her target.  Cassius screamed an order for Cecily to be killed, and Amelia rushed forward to obey.

Then, Tarsus and Finnian stood rooted by horror as Adulatio struck Amelia down in a plume of heavenly flame.  Cassius rushed to her, cradling her remains in his arms even as she charred to ash in his embrace.  Cecily, with a cry of desperate focus, saw her strike through, and buried Malthir into the head of the pitiful old man.  Then, out of a shadow, this stranger appeared behind Cecily and buried something into her back.  She did not flinch; she did not even react.  As the stranger disappeared, Tarsus saw the hilt of a dagger nestled into his friend.  Tarsus remembered letting out a cry, but then being silenced and struck dumb by the sight of the old man’s body transforming into divine light and fire.  He watched as that light infused Cecily with its essence, and for that brief moment he had forgotten about the dagger.  Cecily transformed, before his very eyes, into a goddess.  Divinity emanated from her as the full power of Malthus burrowed itself into her.  Surely, no such trivial strike could harm her.

But then the light faded, and Cecily fell to her knees.  The stranger reappeared sitting on the throne of Malthus, watching her suffering from on high.  No one was helping Cecily.  They were all just standing there, watching. 

Tarsus did not remember running to her.  He only remembered arriving at her side, kneeling, and taking her head in his lap.  He had nothing to offer her; no comfort save for a pained smile and quivering, “I’m here.”

Tarsus had not moved from that spot.  He still knelt on the dais, with Cecily’s head in his lap, now searching beyond a grief stricken Cassius to the open doorway that led into this throne room from the antechamber.  He found Finnian, still waiting there, looking on Adulatio and the dark overlord with the same awe that Tarsus felt at reliving the enormity of the last few moments of both of their lives. 

Finnian, likely sensing he was being watched, turned his head to look back at Tarsus.  Tarsus shot his friend a questioning look, and Finnian answered with a weak smile and a shrug of the shoulders. 

“He’s alright!” Tarsus smiled in relief.  “More than that.  He’s awake.  He doesn’t feel Adulatio’s divinity either.”

Tarsus looked back then to the old god who was undeniably quivering in the presence of the dark man stooping over him.  The sword was shaking in Adulatio’s hand.  Then, the stranger reached out and closed a free hand around the grip of Malthir, stilling the pulsing blade.  Adulatio released the weapon then, and quickly pulled his hand away as though the touch of this stranger had turned the sword hot with a burning intensity.

“NO!” the voice of Cassius rang clear. 

“Silence you foolish whelp!” Adulatio spat in uncharacteristic scorn.  “You know not what you do!”

“That sword was made by my father,” Cassius continued, ignoring Adulatio’s warning as he stepped in closer to the dark stranger who now wielded Malthir.  “By rights, it passes to me.”

“Right?” the stranger asked in a cold placidity.

“Did you not hear me?” Cassius challenged.  “I am the GodKing’s son!  Cassius Aurus Malthane…”

“Your name and claim are meaningless, little one,” the stranger said.  “They are mortal conventions, only upheld for fear of the power your father once claimed.  You have no such power, and if you did it would hold no sway over me, for I am the channel down which such streams flow.  I am the road through the forest; by way the power comes to those chosen to be your gods.  I am the brush with which the portrait of creation is painted.  You?  You are a mere brushstroke, little one: a means to finding this sword and bringing it here, so that your father’s suffering could finally end.  So that the several diluted channels of his power could be reunited.”

The stranger held up Malthir, resting its tip on Cassius’s breast.  With a flick of his wrist, the dark man tossed the sword into the air.  The weapon spun, and he caught it by the flat of its blade, replacing the threatening tip with the offering of its grip.

“Yet if you desire it so badly, here,” the man said calmly.  “I bequeath it you.”

Slowly, Cassius brought up a free hand and reverently wrapped his fingers around the grip of the sword he had so long yearned to retrieve.  He pulled the blade toward him.  It did not move.  Tarsus watched Cassius try again, pulling harder.  The stranger held the sword firm, with only two fingers gripping the flat of the blade.

Cassius brought his second hand up and grasped the bottom half of the grip.  With both hands, the demigod pulled with all his might.  Still the stranger held the blade in place.  Again and again the demigod struggled to pull the sword free, yet the dark man remained perfectly at ease holding on to it.  Then, the hooded stranger flicked his wrist downward.

SNAP

Cassius fell backward with a crash.  He recovered himself quickly and scrambled to his feet.  He brought his hands up, still grasping Malthir with both of them, only to find the half a sword that remained him.

Before Cassius, the stranger stood leisurely; the other half of the broken blade resting easily between his thumb and forefinger.

“Do you feel better now?” the stranger asked flatly, with no hint of jest or boast, “little one?”

“Who are you?” Cassius asked, his voice thick with fear.

“He is our lord, you stupid boy,” Adulatio answered.  “Our sovereign.  The sovereign.”

“I have many names,” the stranger clarified, “many titles.  But they are all meaningless.  All that matters…is my role.”

“Which is what?” Tarsus called out.  The stranger turned to the sunsword, and once again Tarsus felt the chill of that weighing gaze flood his body.  Yet he did not move; he stayed on the dais, on his knees, cradling Cecily’s head.

“Mine is to make certain that brush strokes begin, and end, where they are supposed to,” the dark man answered.  “So long as it amuses me.  For I am the way that you are all destined to follow…gods and men.”

The stranger tossed the broken blade aside.  It clanked as it settled on the stone floor, filling the throne room with hollow echoes.

“You should leave now.  All of you,” the stranger said as he walked up to the throne, retaking his seat.  “This palace has seen its last days.”

“What happens to Cecily?” Tarsus pressed.

“The power of creation cannot be destroyed,” the stranger explained.  “Save for what little the son of Malthus still possesses, she holds all the power of the GodKing within her.  There it must dwell.  Thus, she will remain here, under the last vestiges of her god, and suffer as she is meant to.”

“Suffer?” Finnian asked as he ran up to Tarsus’s side.  “For how long?”

“Until the end of all creation, little one,” the dark man said.

“Why?” Tarsus asked despite himself.

The stranger sat silent on Malthus’s throne.  An all-too familiar chill ran up Tarsus’s spine once more.

“The ant need not know why the boot crushes it,” the hooded stranger finally said.  “Leave now.  Or stay and die, it matters not.  You have all served your purpose.  Henceforth, the age of Malthus is ended.”

The earth began to shake beneath them all.  The stone that made up the walls and the floor began to rend asunder.  The palace was being pulled apart at the seams.

There was an explosion of light, and as Tarsus looked to where Adulatio knelt he found the god had vanished.  Footsteps echoed behind them, and Tarsus and Finnian turned to see Cassius disappear into the antechamber.  Tarsus felt a hand fall hard on his shoulder, and he looked up into Finnian’s waiting, worried eyes.

“We have to go!” Finnian said.

“I can’t!” Tarsus said.

“Tarsus!  Look at her!” Finnian shouted.

Tarsus looked down at his lap.  Cecily’s eyes had disappeared behind a curtain of milky white.  Even though her gaze was facing him, Tarsus knew that she could not see him anymore.  The pain had taken her.

Gently, Tarsus laid her head to rest on the stone.  He rose quickly as the quaking grew more violent beneath him.  Stone columns came crashing down into the piles of gold, silver and jewels the lined the throne room.  Windowpanes were pulled apart as the walls split and severed.  The enchantment of sunlight was quickly fading to reveal the true night sky outside. 

Finnian grabbed Tarsus’s arm, recalling the sunsword’s attention.  “Come!”  He pointed Tarsus in the direction of the opening that led to the antechamber and pushed. 

The two of them bolted, making for the only way out of a throne room that was quickly collapsing in all around them.

CRACK

The floor came apart before them.  Without hesitation, Finnian pushed Tarsus to the right as he himself leapt over the widening chasm.  Tarsus did not need to jump over such a gap, and it was a good thing to.  He could never match Finnian for pure athleticism.  Instead, the sunsword scrambled over the loose stones strewed in his path, and avoided a hail storm of falling stone. 

The pair of them, their obstacles overcome, found themselves at the entrance to the throne room.  Tarsus began to turn back, but Finnian put a hand to the his vest and pulled.  They barreled into the antechamber and found their way to the staircase they had come up. 

“Tarsus, do you want to die?” Finnian shouted back.

“No,” Tarsus admitted.

“Good!  Then stay behind me, and for the love of me, who is your friend, do not turn back.  Understand?” Finnian scolded as the pair descended the crumbling staircase.  “I’m going to get us out of here.”