Just as a wave of dark energy flows from my father, I do what makes no sense, what I shouldn’t, what I can’t.
I leap in front of the stream.
The agony is greater than the universe, everything that is cold and hard, that feeds off the suffering and misfortune of others, that sickly rejoices in the deaths of children and animals, in the leveling of houses and families. It is war. It is famine. It is pestilence. It is torture.
It is cruelty.
And now it is me.
The stream lasts forever, and when it relents, I slump down, landing besideMerc, who has been released from the flames that held him and also crumpled into the red dirt.
As I roll over to retch out a black, viscous stream from my stomach, our eyes meet.
He is real.
I don’t know how I know this, but I can sense his essence.
And though he is a demon, the tears that fall from his eyes are also real and they are not for himself. They are for… me, and they come from a place of love, even though he is what he is.
Even though I am what I am.
I loved you even though I knew your whole story because who you are is so much more than the curse you carry.
I make a decision before I’m aware of coming to any conclusion, and my body moves not from my mind, but from my heart: I reach out my hand weakly toward Merc. And he meets my palm with his own.
As the connection is made, I am reminded of my other truth, the quieter one.
I am half my father… but so am I half my mother, too. And whatever she did to me, she was not evil. In fact, she attempted to save all of Anathos.
The Savior. The Dark King.
My history. My origins.
Me.
A tear forms and slips free from my eye. Two sides of the same coin, the good and the evil, and shouldn’t it be up to me if I land on heads… or tails?
I shift my stare back to the Dark King, who comes over to us with a resonant satisfaction.
The horned monster’s smile is one of triumph as he stands over me, his cape waving in the wind. “You came here with such arrogance, my daughter. So sure and certain of your own power, though your mother kept it hidden from you all these centuries, so ready to destroy me. I would be furious at her if I were you, but then perhaps we are not the same, after all. What a pity. And now I’m afraid thatIwill have to destroyyou.”
He brings his palm up. “But first, look around and see your failure. Regard the destruction of your mother’s creation, the Fulcrum, no more.”
The Dark King is right. The barrier, which I briefly stopped in order to enter, has collapsed, the sands nothing more than a modest circular hill that surrounds us.
“Remember, daughter, we could have ruled together, united within me forever. Instead, you will go where your mother is. For eternity.”
Squeezing Merc’s hand, I brace for what’s going to hit me. I know that theinstant the black energy leaves the palm of the Dark King once again, I am over. There’s not much left in me now, and no chance of survival with this final onslaught.
The end has arrived, my story culminating here, the fate doled out to me at my creation sealed—
The first of the ghostly forms steps forward from a mystical aperture in the air, as if it is appearing from some other plane of existence altogether. Iridescent and beautiful, the entity is instantly recognizable to me, even before I see the face.
Mare. It is… Mare, only she is not old and upon her deathbed. She is young and lovely, elegant and regal of bearing. And she smiles at me before stepping in front of my sprawled, wretched body to face the Dark King—
The aperture in time and space opens again. Ellyne steps out… dear Elly, the farrier’s second wife, who I attended upon her birthing bed, and in her arms is the infant she lost, his perfect hand pinwheeling in a ghostly arc as she smiles at me.
Before she too turns to my father.
