"To Be Chosen"

OF GODS AND MEN

Chapter 42: ...darkness and silence

           There was a slight rumble beneath Adulatio’s feet, and in the distance, the old god heard a slight booming: the thunderclap that summons forth the lightning storm.  The colors of the sky, the sea, the wood, and the shore of the island suddenly grew sharper…warmer.  A shimmer took shape, surrounding every rock and tree.  In an instant, Adulatio’s sanctuary had become more beautiful and vibrant than he could have ever imagined it. 

Resentment began to well inside of the old god.  This strange visitor was changing what was not his to change.  Perhaps he thought if he could impress Adulatio with this journeyman level control over the power that the elder god would agree to take him on as an apprentice.  Well-intentioned, perhaps, but a poorly executed idea.  And Adulatio had every intention of telling him so.

The shimmer grew more dazzling, and the heat intensified.  Facing the sea, Adulatio could see tendrils of steam rise off the top of the wave-walls that closed is island in.  He smiled.  Here was the amateurish wielding of the power at play.  The effect the strange visitor had intended was growing too much for him to maintain.  Any moment now, this…performance would cease, and Adulatio would send the fool away for his insolent idleness.

Any moment now…

CRACK

Adulatio spun around, his eyes instantly greeted with the source of the deafening reverberation.  High in the sky, the sun had split in two like a cracked egg.  Flowing from it was a stream of red and yellow liquid fire, which leaked all throughout the azure heavens turning a deep red what was once a magnificent blue. 

The broiling heat from the shattered sun instantly set the grass and trees ablaze.  The fire spread, enveloping the land in a roar so mighty that Adulatio only barely heard the death bleats, bellows and squeals of the millions of species he had cultivated.

The old god reached out an arm, redirecting the flow of his power from maintaining his creation, to quelling the flames that were devouring it.  He focused, stretched out his fingers, and released…

SLASH

The momentum of the strike sent Adulatio’s arm sailing forward.  It landed on the sand a mere five steps from where the god stood. 

Adulatio watched it writhe and flail, still unsure of what had just happened, when the pain of his loss finally set in.  He was brought to his knees, his free hand instinctively set over the wet stump now left behind.

In a panic, Adulatio looked to his left and right, scanning the edges of the forest that let out onto the beach for any sign of his attacker.

“Behind you.”

The old god lifted his right leg, then his left, turning on his knees back toward the shoreline.  And as the quickly dissipating wave-walls came into view, so too did his attacker. 

It was a man…a seemingly simple, ordinary man.  He stood tall and lean, and wore light brown boots, tan breeches and a white tunic.  A plain, brown scabbard hung from his brown belt.  Draped over his shoulders was a blue hooded cloak, with the hood up so it covered his eyes.

In his hand, the man held a simple looking broad sword, with no ornamentation on the blade, nor decoration on the hilt.  Yet Adulatio knew that sword, though he could not place it.

“Who are you?” the old god called out.  “Your power feels familiar.  Like that of Malthus, if I had to guess, only…fuller.”

“I am not Malthus,” the stranger said simply, betraying a smile.  “I am a humble friend to mankind.”

“You are more than that,” Adulatio spat.  “Much more.  And dressing like a simple shepherd…”

“I am THE Shepherd,” the stranger corrected.

“Hm, the shepherd,” Adulatio mocked.  “And mortals are your flock, is that it?  Yours to herd?  Yours to fatten?  Yours to sheer when it would most profit you?”

“You confuse me with yourself, I think,” the stranger retorted, “you and the rest of your kind.”

“You are my kind,” the old god asserted with wrathful surety.

“Not quite,” the stranger answered, looking from Adulatio to the burning island that was coming apart at the seams all around them.  “A shepherd does not live in a world apart from his flock.  He does not demand their obedience or adoration.  He simply guides them…protects them.  If they follow, and if he guides them true, then they may follow him again.”
            “You think you are the first to believe that mortals will respond to your benevolence?” Adulatio posed, his patience a candle just about to burn through its wick.  “Others have tried.  And mortals may respond to it for a while.  But ultimately, they will reject you…betray you.  Because compassion, kindness and charity are too complicated for them.  Strength, force…power…these are the simple truths that they can all comprehend.”

“You are wrong.”

“You think so?!” the old god howled.  “Do it then.  Shower them with your benevolence.  See how long you can guide without taking control.  Let them betray you, string you up on a tree and leave you for dead.  Because when they do, I will be the first to remind you how much of a child you are.”

“You won’t be able to remind me of anything Adulatio,” the stranger said with leveled menace.  “You are never leaving this island.”

“Miserable whelp!  You owe me everything.  I am your elder…your better…I AM YOUR GOD!” he screamed as he extended his only hand and focused his power. 

SLASH

Adulatio fell onto his side; the side where his one remaining arm used to be.  “Ah!” he cried out instinctively, as he rolled onto his back.

OVERHEAD STRIKE

The elder god felt a faint bite clamp across his upper thighs, but compared to the agony of losing both his arms, this new sensation was a dull tingling.  Then, inevitably, the tingling gave way to full and complete torture.  The pain he felt in his newly liberated shoulders suddenly struck double in his legs - or at least, where his legs used to be.

“What have you done?!” Adulatio screamed.

“I have reacquainted you with humanity,” the Shepherd said calmly.  “Pain is one of the great unifiers of mortal-kind.  It is inevitable…inescapable…by all those who dwell on Arden.  And now, you can share it with us.”

“Us?!” Adulatio asked as he felt the power inside of him racing to do its work.  And it did.  It kept him awake…aware…but it did not dull the pain.  It could not.  His body had been broken by one of his own kind, and no god could undo what another had done.  So he lay there…awake…and agonizingly aware.

The Shepherd knelt down beside the torso of the elder god.  He fixed his glare on Adulatio’s face, meeting the invalid’s darting blue eyes with his own: his grey intensity burning with self-righteousness. 

“You…are not one of them,” the old god said through pained gasps. 

The Shepherd leaned forward, as if to retort, but he said nothing.  His eyes were still, yet behind them the elder knew his mind was racing.  “I know,” he finally whispered.

Adulatio replied with a grisly smile of victory that quickly morphed into a tortured glare.  “Will you…kill me now?”

It was the Shepherd’s turn to smile.  “No.  I condemn you to the same punishment you conspired for Malthus.  And for the one who took his place.”

With great effort, Adulatio raised his head, pushing his power to focus on the man behind the god that knelt over him.  A newfound rage dulled his suffering as divine realization set in.  “It IS you!  The shepherd from Briarden.  How?  How could you possibly wield the full might of Malthus?  How could you unite a power split and spread, even beyond the very fabric of this world?”

The Shepherd’s eyes crinkled, and a laugh escaped him.  Yet in the span of the same breath; as the laugh faded and realization set in; the young god came to understand the sad truth that eluded his forbear.

“You truly do not know,” the Shepherd affirmed.  “Adulatio…it was you.  You brought us all together.  Set us on the path.  Pointed us toward the sword.  But it was your betrayal that truly unified us.  You see, you were right before; when you said that I owe you everything.  Your betrayal…is what made me.”

Unable to hold up his head any longer, Adulatio let his face fall into the sand, mouth first.  What once had been a pristine white coat, stretching from the forest to the ocean, was now blackened with the silt unearthed by a roiling sea.

The elder god managed to turn his head, spitting out the dark sediment he had taken in.  He breathed in desperately, greedy to take in as much air as he could.  Though he needn’t have.  Those who wielded the power did not need air, nor food, nor water.  He realized in that instant how ingrained it was in him: breathing.  More than that, though, it was something he could do.  It was something he could control.  He had lost so much, so quickly; strange how a simple act - a human act - could give him a bit of solace.

Then he felt a hand grip the back of his neck; and with an anguish that made him wish, for the first time in his millennia-spanning existence, that he was dead; Adulatio was lifted high and made to look on the stoic demeanor of his tormentor.

“You have been blind to all but your own ambition,” the Shepherd judged, “and deaf to those you made suffer for it.”

“Please…” the broken god begged.  “End this.”

“As you wish,” the Shepherd said.  His stony expression seemed etched with a grim doubt.

The young god brought up his sword, Brand, and rested its edge in the crook between Adulatio’s head and right ear.

To Adulatio, the steel felt surprisingly cool to the touch.  It was pleasant.

SLIT

The slight relief was replaced with a rapidly burning, liquid heat.  Adulatio’s eyes followed the Shepherd’s Brand as it moved over to his left side, its now slick edge resting atop his other ear.

SLIT

The elder god felt the loss of his ears instantly.  It was not just the pain, but how this particular pain presented itself; it invaded his head with the thunder of a hundred horses, galloping madly across an open field.  That cacophonous onslaught was all the sound Adulatio could perceive now.

The Shepherd said something; a word or two; but Adulatio could not make them out.  The elder god guessed it was something like “on” or “onward,” but it did not really matter.  It was just something, other than his torment, to focus on. 

An instant later, there was something else to focus on.  Adulatio was faced with the tip of Brand, held steadily only a hair’s length from the middle of his face.  He let his eyes rest on it, crossing as they did so, and turning a singular point into thousands.

POKE

And the spell of the many was suddenly broken.  There was only one again: one tip, and one man.

POKE

The hand that held Adulatio released its grip.  The old god fell back to the soiled sand without a thud or a shake; the pain of the fall swallowed by the infinite suffering he had been made to endure.  And though he could neither hear, nor see, nor sense anything other than this own misery, he knew that the torture had ended.  His persecutor was gone, and he was left there to suffer alone…in darkness and silence.

And so he did…unto the end of days.