Mortal

“In an age of Chaos the first to walk this earth lived in full abandonment!” he cried. “They embraced the full pleasure of all that was given. They laughed and filled their bellies with the offerings of the land. They danced beneath sun and moon, and celebrated unreserved passion. Do any of you dare say it was not good?”

His challenge rang out with an authority that brought a tremble to Saric’s fingers.

He speaks of life as one who knows it too well…

The wind moaned through the ruins. Above, the dark sky churned. Dark Blood and Mortal alike stared on in silence.

Jonathan walked to his right, tendons taut along his neck beneath bulging veins. Veins flowing with the first blood of life.

“Before there was war, there was peace! Before hate, love. Before selfish ambition, selfless service. There was beauty without end, never meant to fade.”

He was pacing now, hands clenched in the air.

“But those who lived also courted sick ambition and selfish greed. They longed for power. To consume more than they were given. They waged war. Human killed human, enraged, jealous, filled with the need to possess the service of others. Love was crushed by the need to protect what could not be owned. Man ignored the call to embrace the way of a Maker whose banner is love given freely, not controlled by force or demanded by allegiance or loyalty!”

How dare this man stand before his children and speak of love divorced from obedience, loyalty, or possession?

And then, as his rage gathered like the storm overhead, he realized it wasn’t rage at all… but jealousy.

“This was the failing of man!” Jonathan cried. “And so a man named Megas stripped humankind of all sentiment but fear. Jealous for humanity, determined to possess it, zealous for control! Until the day that life was reborn five centuries later in one child. A boy to be raised for his blood to feed all those thirsty to drink!”

Far to Saric’s left, one of the Mortals cried out: “He speaks the truth! Mortals rise with life!”

Jonathan’s finger shot out in the direction of the voice. “No!” he screamed. “I tell you today, true life is not found in blood that wakens only the passions. As in the days of Chaos, only love given freely inhabits the Maker’s design. Those who claim love dependent on allegiance are imposters who know nothing of the Sovereign realm. They will die the same as those who walk without life already!”

A jagged knife of lightning split the sky. Thunder crashed overhead as the wind gained intensity, whipping Jonathan’s braids about his face.

But the heavens were not the only thing on the verge of cracking open.

Saric felt his mind tilt even as he sat tall in his saddle. The boy’s words cut, severing every tether to all that he’d died and lived for. Slowly the world around him began to fade, leaving only the accusing form atop the ruined temple steps. Was it possible? Was Jonathan’s life more true than his own?

Even if it was, he could not bow. Not to this Maker, no matter how much greater his life might be.

He knew one thing now: the boy must die.

One hand on the pommel of his saddle, Saric pushed himself up, eased his right leg over his horse’s hind quarters and slipped to the ground. The true battle wasn’t between Dark Blood and Mortal with sword and ax. It was here, to be decided between two rulers. One would live to rule.

The other would die.

“Jonathan!” The sound of pounding hooves joined the howling wind. Rom Sebastian, desperate, blocked by the line. “Run! Run, Jonathan!” A commotion rose up from the north. The crash of clashing steel; shouts of outrage and bitter curses.

The sounds were distant in Saric’s mind, from a dimension that no longer mattered. He gripped the hilt of his sword and deliberately pulled it from its scabbard with a loud scrape.

“Some would bring a new kingdom that flows with alchemy, intent on ruling the world for their own pleasure and gain,” Jonathan cried, his eyes on Saric as he approached and then mounted the steps.

“Others would rule as Mortals over lesser life.” He lifted his head, pointed in the direction of the Nomadic Prince and his men. “But today a new kingdom is among you. A kingdom where I am Sovereign, where I will reign with those who follow me. The deceiver comes to take what he cannot possess, but I offer my life freely to all who would live.”

Saric glared up at the boy spouting his nonsense.

Terrified by his words.

Uncaring because they meant nothing.

Infuriated by his accusations.

Trembling.

Jonathan seemed to have said his last. He stood in front of the poles from which the remains of a leather bowl hung, watching Saric.

The fighting beyond the line grew to a cacophony, now south as well as north. The Mortals were once again in full attack. A pointless battle of a lesser kind.

Saric stepped onto the raised floor of the ruins and stalked toward the boy, tip of his sword trailing on the stone behind him. Another peel of thunder shook the sky.

“Hello, Saric.” The boy’s voice was soft, for him alone. His eyes were limpid in the oncoming storm. “Do you see nature’s rage?”

Saric shot a quick glance at the black sky. Saw that it was rotating as if to drain the world.

“The Maker’s Hand,” Jonathan said.

Maker’s Hand.

He’d heard the lore. Surely he wasn’t claiming to be more than a man born of blood. The boy had lost his mind.

Or have you lost yours?

“I know you long for life, Saric.” The boy said, too quietly for anyone else to hear in the rising gale. “Your heart is black but you can’t ignore the cry of truth that my blood would bring you something beyond your imagination.”

All of Saric’s fears coalesced into one deafening question: what if it was true? What if the object of his search stood before him now, a pure vessel of beauty, truth, and love?

For a moment the notion drowned his hatred. The body before him became a vessel of unsurpassed, raw life to be consumed, not crushed. To be tasted, not destroyed.

To be worshipped.

Without thinking, Saric lifted a trembling hand. Hesitated. When the boy didn’t move, he touched his fingertips to his cheek. A ripple of power rode up his arm and into his body.

Saric shuddered.

“Look in my eyes,” the boy said.

As though of its own accord, his gaze traveled from the boy’s cheek to his eyes. Light flashed like sunlight through the boy’s storming hazel irises. Saric felt his body go rigid.

But there was more… A great and terrible sadness.

Empathy.

Tears.

“I am the life you long for. My light will imprison you always. I make it so.”

At the boy’s last words Saric’s world flashed with a brilliant light, blinding him to everything but the singular truth: he was dark as the pitch in his veins. The boy was infused with light. He, not the boy, had been deceived. Here was life-not in his veins, but flooding those of the one before him. Life he had never known. Life.

Saric’s legs buckled. He dropped to one knee, a great wail rising up from the pit of his gut, a heavy sob that was horror and grief and outrage all. It stole his breath, washing reason and purpose away.

Somewhere below, the Mortals were making a last, hopeless attempt to break through his lines-he could hear the sound of it far away.

He wept, only distantly aware that his children could see him-their Maker, kneeling before this boy. This Sovereign of a realm he did not-could not-comprehend.

“You spawn only death,” Jonathan said. “I, not you, hold power over life. See and know, dark Lord.”