Chapter Ten: One For Many
His cloak glistened a rich gold under the sheen of rain that fell mercilessly upon the land. Gusts blew harshly, making the end of his cape flutter about his legs. The wind was rising and fading, waxing then waning as the storm clouds gathered in the skies above. The ground on which he stood was shifting gradually, becoming mud as the water mixed with the dirt and creating an entire field of thick mud that sucked on the soles of his shoes. The girl and her guardian moved slowly down the crater's walls, working their way cautiously back and forth across the slippery terrain, coming towards him with efficiency and as much expediency as the weather could allow. The wind buffeted them about, making the drops of water fly horizontally as it howled around the crater. It was growing quickly as they neared his position in the center of his ring of charcoal, becoming a whirlwind of water and air, an impenetrable wall of storm and grit. A hurricane with gale force winds gathering the storm into a spiral of chaos and destruction that circled about this place. It grew in intensity upward and outward from the eye that was forming around the circle, an alien center to this unnatural weather.
Clear black sky, filled with stars and planets overhead, was suddenly visible, the clouds covering it joining quickly with the spinning blackening mass around it. They were inside the crater, though it seemed as if vertical walls of whipping rain and stinging sand had formed a hollow column around them, a prison.
The eye of the storm.
Abruptly his cloak quit its fluttering as the girl, Sera, stepped into the ring, and her Guardian behind her.
“Gabriel, this fight isn't for you. You should wait over there.” The girl pointed to the airplane's body, a rusted hull of a 747 that was missing more than a few vital parts for flight, then dropped her arm, still looking straight at the figure.
Jack undid the clasp holding his cloak together and pulled the hood back from his face, finally revealing his identity. Tiny scars ran down the length of his neck, from his ear to the collar of his plain white cotton tunic. It was of a simple design, with borders of blue surrounding each hem. Plain and coarse, it looked as if he had made it himself, and his leather pants had the same look, albeit without the blue. They were simply tan, most likely some form of cow hide. His nose had been broken several times before, lending it a slight crook in the center. His hair he kept shorn quite close to his scalp, with battle scars interrupting the black hairs' natural growth.
Gabriel made no move to leave from Sera's side, bearing in some way an enmity, distrust toward Jack. Standing his ground in a fierce stance, hands balled into fists at his side, he looked every bit as intimidating as she did. It was almost like a standoff without words, eyes cold and glaring, staring each other down, waiting for the other to blink. Jack didn't even deign to look at Gabriel, his eyes were fixed on Sera, focusing, taking in every detail, every scar, each tiny nuance and lack of gesture she made. Then, in that silent fortress, surrounded on all sides by wind and rain and cliffs of mud and rock, without a breeze stirring, in the eye of the hurricane swirling around and encapsulating them from harm's way, save each other's, Jack spoke.
“Hold onto this, would you?” he held the cloak of gleaming cougar fur out for Gabriel to take, without even glancing at him.
Gabriel reached out to take it, and just as Jack let it go to fall into his hand, he pulled his hand back, grin turning to grimace as he responded, “Fuck you!”
Jack could feel the anger running up his spine, flowing outward from his shoulders and into his hands. These hands, he thought strangely. A billion silver threads extending outward from him, connecting him to every person on the planet, and even some who weren't. Perhaps they connected him to every human who had ever lived, but how could he be sure of something so abstract as that? He couldn't be everywhere at once. He smiled to himself as he could feel the thread he wanted growing stronger, becoming a beam of silver that linked him and the boy.
Gabriel lifted into the air, gasping as the breath from his body was choked out of him, his lungs catching nothing as they tried to pull more air inside.
“I told you to do something, boy. I did not ask. I expect you to do as I instructed. Now pick it up!”
Sera watched in horror as the boy, the man she loved was being held in the air, lungs squeezed so that no breath could enter them, and then dropped to the ground, coughing and sputtering.
“Pick it up, boy, I'll not tell you again.”
Gabriel was on his knees next to the cloak as it lay where it had fallen, catching his breath. He turned his head to Sera and winked. Reaching down with his left hand, he snatched the cloak from the mud and got to his feet, pants covered in caking dirt from the middle of his thigh down to his ankles.
“Good, so you can be taught. Now shake the mud off it.”
Hesitating only a second, he began brushing the caked dirt from the fur, and it came off easily, sliding from the slick golden hairs.
“Ah! Doesn't it feel good to be rewarded for your obedience? Maybe you won't yet join the army I raised against you.” Jack smiled generously, revealing a mouth full of bright white teeth, and dangerous, too, from the glint in his eye.
Gabriel, too, grinned up at him, his rebellion not yet finished. Why should he submit himself to such an unforgiving and inhuman beast as this Jack? “Fuck you.” He pronounced the words slowly, savoring them as they rolled off his tongue, enjoying the way Jack's emotions came uncovered from the ageless features of his face. It was worth it.
Gabriel flew into the air, streaking towards the fuselage of the plane, silvered thread streaming out of his heart and guiding him straight and true. His head struck the oxidized aluminum of the aircraft, shattering it, then pulling back. Jack wouldn't let his anger die so soon. Gabriel's head bashed again and again into the rusting steel beneath the thin aluminum skin, bleeding from cuts and scrapes and leaving his red, coppery lifeblood as a testament to where he had been.
“Stop! Stop it! You're killing him!” Sera cried, nearly letting the torrent of tears overwhelm her and crack her voice.
Jack raised an eyebrow curiously. What was this girl playing at? Gabriel went limp, the forces pushing him this way and that had stilled. Jack picked his cloak from the muck and shook it once, tossing it into the air and letting it fall on Gabriel's still form. “You really should train your dog before letting him off his leash, perhaps even teach him to obey. A good dog would have heeled when you told it to.”
“He's not a dog! He's a man!” her voice grew strained from exasperation.
“The jury is still out on a verdict for that, child.” He began to whistle a simple tune, Yankee Doodle. Yankee doodle went to town, he thought, singing along to his own whistling. Riding on his pony. “If you wanted to be rid of him that badly, you could have said so from the beginning.”
“What?” a look of sheer horror bloomed on her face. “I want no such thing!”
He made a tsking noise with his tongue, letting it sit in the air before speaking again. “No? Then why didn't you do anything to stop me?” Waiting for a response, and getting none, he continued. “You had plenty of time while I was toying with him. I guess its of no consequence now, though he'll probably ask you about it later.”
“You bastard . . .” Her anger seethed impatiently.
“That may or may not be true. Does it matter if I was conceived before marriage? Or is it just being born outside wedlock? If the latter, then I must contest your accusation, but if the former . . . well, you're right on the money.” He winked at her. Stuck a feather in his hat . . .
“Stop that.”
“Stop what? My banter? Very well, then.”
“No, that singing. It's annoying, and distracting.”
“Ah, I'm afraid I cannot disagree with you on that matter, that tune has been stuck in my head for weeks now.” He smiled pleasantly, letting his white teeth show once more. And called it macaroni. What nonsense.
Sera looked to the plane's corpse, where Gabriel lay in a heap, covered in that cougar-furred cloak obscenely. He hadn't stopped breathing yet, so he was still alive. Barely.
“Barely, yes. The jury is still out on that as well. A single word from you and he shall die as you watch in agony. What do you say?” Again he raised his eyebrow quizzically, waiting for a response. Nothing. “Ah, then you are indifferent! Shall we flip a coin, then? Heads he lives, tails he dies.” Jack reached into his pocket, pulling out a gold coin with some very ancient markings on it. The coin had been minted while the Roman Empire still stood. “My lucky coin . . . it always brings back such fond memories.” Memories of fire and blood, of the innocents that haunted him from beyond their respective graves. Graves he had sent them to prematurely. He nearly shuddered at the thought of what he had done.
“No! I . . .” Sera faltered, her voice falling and failing her, rendering her speechless.
“Yes?” He made a motion with his hands, signifying for her to continue.
“I . . .” again she stumbled on the words she would have said.
“Yes?”
“I . . .” for some strange reason, she couldn't bring the words all the way from her brain to her mouth, getting caught in redundant protection systems, traps for herself that she had created. Allowing herself to become so open with her emotions could have been deadly to a hunter, as she was. What kind of an image was that? Especially for the first female hunter in over fifty years, to show even an ounce of weakness during her training would have been deadly. Could she say it? The hunter's oath bound her soul to her knife, to seek out and destroy the nests of her enemy, her town's enemy, humanity's. To wipe from the face of the planet the creatures known as destrachan, and to eradicate the sickness of shades in any form it took. “I . . .”
“For God's sake, woman! Out with it!” His impatience came through, startling even himself in its severity.
“I love him.” It was a catastrophe inside her brain as training fought with emotion, setting ringing bells, red warning lights and all manner of alarms off in her head. System overload. Rebooting in 5, 4, . . .
“There it is folks! The ringer! The icing on the cake! Not only was she able to say it, but she loves him! His voice flew from the heights of glib mockery to the depths of his grim seriousness. “Is that your final answer?” Imaginary microphone or not, he let his hand fall to his side, putting the coin back in his pocket.
“Yes, I love him.” She reeled at her own realization. She had met Gabriel just days before, in the ruins of her town, amid the corpses of her friends and family. Oh, Henry. Perhaps that was how she had said it, how she was able to admit it aloud. Her town, the place she had taken her oaths, where she had grown and lived her entire life, was gone. She might have cried had she been alone, but she wasn't. Here she stood, face to face with the monster that had set the cougar on its course, to distract her from the army that lay waste to her town, the monster who had single-handedly brought the ancient people of light and science to the ground, their monuments crumbling to dust as they watched. She was facing him, and she would not cry. A million millions of tiny golden threads radiated outward from her, and she could see Jack's tiny silver threads as they matched each connection of her own. A single thread bound them together, silver on one side, gold on the other, melting and shifting together, battling over control of the rest of the thread. True conflict.
“I was wondering when you would notice that, child. Now you understand what I meant when I said we were connected.”
“I understand that you're a monster, a wretched excuse for a human being, and I understand that I loathe every part of you.” Fire leapt in her emerald eyes, her anger and hatred knew no bounds.
“If I were you, I'd hold your tongue. I wasn't lying when I said the jury was still out on that boy you care for.” His voice grew sinister with his own fury at her presumption. How could she possible know or understand what he was?
“His name is Gabriel,” she said through her clenched jaw.
“Really? I don't care one whit what his name is. I think that he might die, while you watch, unable to stop it. You know, its probably best that I knocked him unconscious, this way he can't hear the fool you're making of yourself while you dig yourself deeper into a hole you can't possibly get out of.”
“You bastard . . .”
“We've already had that conversation, Sera, we know where it leads.” All joking had gone from his voice, no glib satisfaction, no humor, just business now. “And now we come to the reason I came, the reason for my little visit when you know you aren't ready for me. I'll tell you what . . .” He leaned closer to her, looking around for invisible trespassers. “I know you aren't ready for me,” he whispered.
“I think you'll find that I'm a lot more ready than you think. I've already wiped out your little army.” She smirked in smug satisfaction.
He tried not to laugh in her face, but failed. “Hahahahaha! You think that was an army? That pitiful excuse for a battalion? My real forces lie with my two generals! The third waits in yonder city, Sallak, New Zion. My armies number in the hundreds of thousands of troops.” He had put a sharp emphasis on the sheer numbers in his force. “My numbers are the reason for my greatest success in this war! I've leveled entire cities in my anger, and I brought the world to its knees! Do you think you could even dent the first hundred thousand? Each time I took a city my numbers on increased, no matter the toll on my force!”
Sera nearly gaped in horror at this revelation. Hundreds of thousands! A hundred times what she had faced at Hill, even she would be consumed by such an army!
“I digress from the reason I met you here. I came to tell you that Seth has betrayed you, and worse, has betrayed me.”
“You told me that before, in the dream,” she interrupted.
“Ah, yes. I had forgotten that. Let me finish, though. More than that, he seeks to unravel the pattern to which all men cling, the pattern you and I weave around us as surely as fate does.”
“Ka . . .” she murmured.
As if he didn't notice, Jack continued. “He has plans set in motion even as we speak, to kill you before your rise to the ultimate power you can wield given the chance. This is the reason I sent the cougar to kill your herds, the reason I sent the destrachan to attack your village. His corruption put everything I seek, everything you now seek in jeopardy. Seth must be stopped, at any cost. He doesn't yet know your full strength, and he will underestimate you.”
“But he knew you sent the cougar. He told me so,” so little she seemed to know, compared to this huge reservoir of knowledge before her, the events of the past few days launching themselves forward through the machinations of both Jack and Seth, it seemed. Fate, too, was playing at this game, unwilling to let it all unravel. Yin or Yang. Whose side was she on? More importantly, whose side was Jack on? Did they really have a common enemy in Seth and could they work together against him even as they sought to end each other?
“Of course he knows,” he snapped, “I told him so. What one does not say, though, is often more important than what he does say.”
Secrets, he was speaking of secrets, though what dark and demented secrets a man such as Jack could keep hidden behind that scarred and stony face was anyone's guess. “What secret do you keep from one of your own?”
“You're wrong, Sera. He was mine, but is no longer. How long has it been this way? From the beginning, perhaps, though only he could say for sure. Yes, I do hold secrets, even from my generals, things I could never tell another human being.” God, he thought, and she looks just like her. She also vehemently despised him, though that was a part of the deal. “I can, however, tell you this: Seth would pull your thread from our pattern before our conflict can resolve itself, that much is evident. I cannot allow that to happen. As I told you before, our conflict is age-old, representative of the nature of man, and as long as we exist, as long as we are necessary, the fate of mankind will be complete and utter annihilation. Even now, as we both stand here, the lives of millions hang in a precarious balance, a knife's edge.”
“Yet we still maintain that balance, even as you speak of it. We as a race have survived for thousands of years, why should any of that change, now? Tell me why exactly I should listen to you, Jack. Tell me why I should ally myself with you, even temporarily, when you have destroyed my life. You killed my family, ruined my home, or as good as, and what more, you tried to kill both Gabriel and I at least once already! Why should I listen to anything you say at all? Tell me!” White hot fury burned deep in her soul, and for an instant she was surrounded by an aura of bright white light. Indignation, righteous retribution filled her eyes and her tongue, and her words had a similar effect on Jack.
He was livid, infuriated. His voice he raised in anger, and his own black aura to match her white flared out for a moment, bestowing fear in her eyes and breast. “You are right to fear me, child! You would know why I should tell you these things? You would know why you should join me? We are indebted to the whole of humanity, you foolish, ignorant girl! And they to us, for without one or the other, the whole cannot exist!”
“Indebted? I am indebted to the rest of our kind? What of those in the past? Them as well? They destroyed the world, they let you do it!”
“Even to them! Especially to them! Did they have a snowball's chance in Hades to stop me? I am a God, Sera! You should know that as well as any! We wield power the likes of which has not been seen in two thousand years or more! Why?”
“I grow weary of your sermon. Give me one reason not to kill you where you stand and leave,” she said with a cold indifference.
“In times past, I would have seen you dead by now, if not for the sharp tongue you use against me, then for the threat you pose for me. Yet I haven't murdered you while you slept, though I've had the chance on many occasions. Not the least of which was as you lay dying from the wounds my mountain-cat gave you.”
“You are a disgusting, wretched excuse for a man, Jack. Why should I believe that?”
“I saved you when you would have died. I wrapped your bloody fucking body with bandages so that you wouldn't die before your time. I saved you. Do you think I would have spared you with the threat you carry for me? My fate and yours are inexplicably bound together. We are two peas in the same pod, but I am the stronger of the two of us, then and now I am. If you cross me . . .” He trailed off, for once lacking the words to finish his sentence.
“You'll what, Jack? You'll end me? I think you'll find that I am no pushover. Perhaps you've underestimated me from the beginning.” Defiance seethed inside her, and anger on both sides was bubbling, boiling beneath the skin, but Jack would not strike first, not now. The time was not right.
“Sera,” he said coolly, flatly, all emotion draining from his being, fading and becoming invisible. “I think you'll find that vengeance is poor relief for the grief you now bear. It will not satiate you, nor will it quench the bloodthirst pounding in your breast. Forget this foolishness and listen to reason.”
“You think this is foolishness? You are the fool. You know less than you let on, Jack, because you think you're a final solution, an antidote for the religious fervor which begat all of us back to the beginning. Each generation of gods wrote a portion of history in their images, and they came one step closer to completing the ultimate goal, but only one step, because that is all we are allowed. One step along the path which will lead us to the fullness of our potential. We are links of a chain, you and I make up but one, and I am the only one of us to fully understand that. Without me you are not you, and without you I cannot be me, but through me you will be made full, and through you humanity will ascend from the depths of hell which we have been brought to by your ignorance and your unwillingness to take up the sword." Sera's voice was sure, and rang with truth like a bell, and electricity crackled in the air that swirled about them in the vortex of sand and dirt. Rain pelted the ground outside of the circle, and the wind howled.
"I have taken up the sword!" Jack spat viciously, moisture spraying into the air with the emphasis that only pure emotion can allow.
"You took hold of your sword too late, and it has taken 2200 years to rectify that error. I have come to break your stranglehold on fate, and release the earth from your deathgrip. You are the tyrant, you became the thing you hated most, and now you must pay.”
“You tempt me, child, I'll not let you do this, not yet. You are not ready, you must realize that. I would kill you if you tried!”
“I realize nothing of the sort. You are a fool, and an arrogant one at that, because even though you know I've been sermonized and preached to death about you, me and fate, you still want to talk at great length about God knows what, and you are trying to push me into something. You may be a great salesman, but I don't like the tune you're whistling, and I don't like you. Fate can do as it will, but I will not be its bitch, nor will I be yours. For far too long have I been manipulated, tugged about on a string as if I were some marionette, a mannequin without life of my own. You should know, Jack,” she snorted as she spoke his name with derision, “that I will forge my own path, create my own way, and if you leave me alive today, should I not for some reason brutalize you and leave you dead, mark my words. I will hound you for the rest of your days, even if it means the end of my own. I will hunt you until the last breath of your body tears out of you with the force of my deathblow.”
“You would hear my deathscream, then?”
“I would.”
“Then I hold you to your hunter's oath. On the grave of your grandfather, you are bound to me, and I will wait for you on that day.” He turned as if to leave, having grown tired form her bickering and senseless childishness. “At least, think on my words.”
“You can't leave!” she screamed at him. “You can't leave! Face me like a man, and not some little bitch dog whose bark is worse than her bite! Face me!”
He did not respond to this insult, made no move to show that he had even heard her at all, he simply began walking away, leaving footprints in the mud to mark his passing.
“Then I'll make you fight!” She rushed him from behind, attempting in her anger to tackle him, and knock him to the ground. He sidestepped her rush easily, smoothly. This is a dangerous man, she thought, what kind of a hornet's nest have I put my hand into? She tumbled to the ground, to her back, lying in the mud, angry at herself and hating this man who would not fight her. Jack was on her in an instant, lightning fast he was, straddling her with a single vise-like hand gripping her throat.
“Apparently you have no idea what I am capable of,” he hissed, drawing her face closer to his. Suddenly, he could feel a thin trail of cold across his chest, and then it was warm, burning his skin as liquid dripped down from his pecks. He was acutely aware of the surrounding area, everything around him seemed more vibrant, more colorful, full of life in a way that it hadn't been before.
She was grinning up at him, leering at him. “And maybe you don't know what I'm capable of, either.” Her knife danced in front of his eyes, slick with his own blood, and it reflected the moon and starlight with a dark glossy finish.
“Though mine was the first to spill, I'm afraid you'll spill much more than this.” Heat was already flooding his body, coursing in waves over him as he ripped the shirt from his torso. Deep rigid scars ran along the length and breadth of his exposed skin; his muscles rippled in waves of flesh as she watched, tracing those lines back and forth as if he had been spider webbed with wounds in his past. He had been, of course, but she knew hardly anything about that, but finally, the line she herself had put there drew her gaze. The only sign that she had done anything at all was the swiftly scabbing blood beneath a thin white scar, running across his pectorals, flesh had already knitted back on itself.
“What the fuck?” Her startled look said more than her words. Yin or Yang? She asked herself, Good or Evil? Is it our deeds which define the side we are one? Do the ends justify the means?
His skin was tanned well, having seen many seasons beneath the sun, but that wasn't all she could see, for surrounding him in a frightening way was that hum. She could hear it again, though it was more like the buzzing of thousands of bees, or hornets getting ready to strike at an intruder than it was a hum. It resonated, rebounded off the plane's body, off the crater's mud cliffs and the walls of wind and water all around them, reverberating and echoing in her head, shaking her thoughts back to her question, at least, the only question she really cared about any more. Yin or Yang? Were his motives as altruistic as he had said, or were they simpler, more human, like her quest for vengeance? She watched transfixed as he pulled a book of matches from his pants pocket. Curiosity turning, blooming into full horror as he lit one, and tossed it into the trench behind her.
Yin or Yang?
Fire leapt up around them, blistering with their heat, and boiling the water from the mud as the charcoal came ablaze. Thick steam and acrid smoke bubbled up from the ground upon which they stood, well, upon which Jack stood, and she lay. She couldn't help but feel in that moment, that in her anger at being manipulated, she had been pulled along all the same, along that string, and she had danced, and would dance again like a marionette. A mannequin, devoid of her own life. Deception had coiled at every turn, and here she was, with the flames around her burning higher and higher like the lake of fire and brimstone that was Hell itself.
Yin or Yang?
Had the time to choose sides already passed her by, while she was so intent on creating her own path, had the choice been made for her? Yin or Yang? Stop it, she told herself, don't be stupid. Everything can change in an instant. Yet the color of his aura did not change at all, it was black, like the glimmer of the destrachan, and for all she knew, they were one and the same. At once, she caught sight of her own aura, a bright flaring white, hot as the flames surrounding her and fueled by her own emotion. Just as Jack's glimmer as cold and disheartening, so hers was uplifting and purifying, and yet even as she noticed this, she couldn't help but wonder what it looked like to him. In his mind, through his eyes, did hers seem black as sin while his was as bright as the noonday sun?
“Do we choose the sides, Jack? Or are they chosen for us? Do the sides choose us?”
“I know what you are asking, Sera. I recognize your question as one I have often asked myself. Yin or Yang? But there is no time for that now, you saw to that yourself. Now is the time to reap what you have sown. You would fight me, and now I must fight you, repay you for your treachery. It should have been enough that I offered you my trust, yet you struck at my back, and as such have despoiled my honor.”
“Please, Jack, just answer me.”
“No. Will you beg and plead for your own life now, as well as for his?” He motioned to the still body of her boy, Gabriel.
“Bastard!” Once again the fury fanned within her, and her green eyes reflected the flames that encircled them both.
He laughed mockingly, wry sense of humor lost in the abstract, leaving only the anger, and the conflict that boiled inside of him as surely as it did inside every other human being who had ever lived. “We've been over this before, girl. Must a conversation with you always be so cyclical?”
She regained her feet slowly, steadily, watching the bare-chested man with the practiced ease of a hunter, appraising. How long since she had been bested in single combat? She had won the respect of her peers by never losing, and she didn't intend to start now. Smoothly, she moved low to the ground, circling about a patch of earth ten feet wide at the widest. Jack strolled along the same circle, intimidating as the fire danced in the beads of sweat lining his chest. The violet eyes were haunted, and reminded her of the singular meeting with Seth, the ravening dog. Yes, this was a dangerous man, but she was a dangerous woman, and she had chosen this fight herself, that is, if it hadn't been chosen for her. Choice or chance, it made no difference now one way or the other.
As the fire danced around them, and the storm swirled about the outer edges of the crater, Sera gave in to her feral side, to that part of her that was more animal than human, the part that thirsted for blood. Wanting, needing to see the blood spilled on the drying earth, to cast its crimson glow over her vision, but all she could see was the deep violet of Jack's eyes, eyes that radiated a power and authority. Not over her, but she could feel it nonetheless, and while she hated him for what he had done, she could not help but respect him.
Feigning a jab, testing his speed and dexterity, had been useless. Jack didn't even flinch, just kept his smooth, even gait, watching and waiting. His fists came at her in a blur, first one, then the other, again and again. Striking her arms, beating at her resolve. She thrust forward with her knife, aiming right where his stomach should have been, but it hit nothing but air, and Jack was suddenly behind her, with his elbow beneath her chin, lifting, raising her feet from the ground.
“Do you really think you can save him, Sera? Do you really think you can save yourself? You are a part of this just as surely as I am, and we might both be fucked,” he whispered into her struggling ear.
Using her own elbow, Sera jammed the knob of her joint into his stomach and as he doubled over in pain, she was released. Snatching Jack's right arm with hers, she twisted it around behind his back, hearing his bones and tendons crack from the force. He yelled out in pain, crying his anger and whipped his right arm free of her grasp, tossing Sera into the air as it came loose. She landed face first less than a foot form the flames that so danced around them, their smoke and ash rising straight up in the still night air. It was hot, burning, scorching her face and lungs with the searing air escaping the blaze. She rolled back from the reddened coals and sprang to her feet. The ground was almost completely dried in their tiny circle, and it was crunching beneath her feet as she began the dance anew.
The heart that beat the same staccato rhythm as hers increased in tempo, speeding the battle into a frenzy. It was a frenzied pace now, but each time she struck, he deflected her knife blow with ease, turning the blade toward her somehow, and scores of little cuts where it had connected with her flesh were now visible in the red-orange light afforded by the fires. Her leathers were in poor shape, dyed red from her own blood and fraying wherever her blade had struck. But they weren't the only thing frayed. Time itself was loosening its grip on the battle, as the stars turned in the heavens, spinning about madly, the sun fled backwards across the sky, and forward again, the moon chasing, then being chased by it.
Battle time was slow time.
In this case, however, it was no time at all. Heat waves danced crazily as nightfall once again took them, heat waves and . . . other waves. Waves of reality and unreality, rippling all around them, asserting and contradicting, a vast unbalance against everything and anything and nothing at the same time. It was a contrast, waves of pure color and emotion rippling outward from each of them as they came together, clashing, golden and silvered threads spinning in their own revolutions in opposite directions around them, and that single thread that tied them together, silver against gold, advancing and retreating in its own malleable dance. Blow after blow, he landed against her body, and she could feel the bruises forming, taking shape as they landed. As each of his hardened knuckles cracked against her muscles, she could feel the blood pounding through her veins and pooling around her wounds. Sore and battered from his fists, and bloodied from her own knife, she could feel time around her. Time that always flowed downhill, like an hourglass losing its sand. Her mind came back to the question, the only one that could possibly matter at all, anymore.
Yin or Yang?
Sera wasn't confined in a fevered prison of heat, but a circle surrounded by flames, and she could feel her own sanity losing its place to madness in her brain. His glimmer, robbing her of her dignity, calling out to her mind with its hopeless cries. Give up, Give in, I have already won. As much as she wanted to give up, to relinquish the part fate had dealt her, to fold her hand before the final betting took place, as much as she wanted to do that, she could not. Through the flames and heated air of Hell surrounding her and Jack, she could glimpse just barely the stilled form of Gabriel, who still lay where he'd been left, covered in a cloak of the greatest could who had ever lived, it's golden sheen reflecting the crimson of the fires of the circle, and gleaming red with the blood—her blood—on the ground.
The crimson-hued world around her regained its meaning, just then, for her. Was it worth living? Yes. Was it worth fighting for? Again, Yes. Was it worth dying for? Hell, Yes! The dirt upon which she knelt was crusted, dried mud, and it crunched beneath her moccasin as she brought herself to one knee. It might have been prayer, or meditation, but its purpose was clear as the night air just above them, as clear as the stars were visible. Her head was bowed, not in supplication, but in feeling. Torrents of emotion roared through her, cascading over waterfalls and gaining velocity as she stood up from her place.
“Admit your defeat, Sera. Look at yourself! Battered and bruised and bloodied!” He cried out to her, begging her to give in.
She smiled, flashing the brilliant white of her teeth and the passionate emerald of her eyes. “Jack, would you sacrifice yourself if it meant the rest of humanity could live on in peach for the rest of their days? If it meant they would no longer have to worry about the engines of siege, of destruction, about war?”
“I cannot give in. Not now, not ever, however much I might wish to.”
“Submit to me, and peace will reign on the land.”
“I cannot do such a thing, for the same reason that you cannot. Now let me ask you a question. Do you think you could submit, and watch as Gabriel was tortured with the chains and the hot irons, do you think you could let him die so that the rest of humanity could live in peace for the remainder of their days?”
“It isn't the same question . . .” she stammered.
“Yes, it is. One for many, Sera. Sacrifice one so that the many remain free. You would allow them to take you as sacrifice, but not him. But what happens after they take you? Suddenly, unexpectedly, they need another, and they take him. And then another, and then another. How many sacrifices for the good of the many? How many are required? Your supposition is flawed.”
But the emotions within her would not allow her to submit, she would either defeat him, or be defeated. The anger, and sadness that tormented her so, the love and hope that grew with each passing day for Gabriel, and for herself, the hate for the destrachan and for their master, who now stood before her. All around, the flames crackled and leaped into the sky, straight up like a second barrier, smoke that was untouched by wind.
Icy tendrils crept down the handle of her blade, her spear-knife, cold that burned as hot as the fires around her, the fires of Hell itself incarnate. The waves rippled and solidified around her, taking form and shape as a single golden thread linked to its silver counterpart and smashed together in a roiling, tumbling tangle of energy that took form at her will.
One for many.
The cougar that she had killed so long ago yet just days before materialized around her, she could feel its darkening strength as light as any feather, yet heavier than any burden she had ever carried. She spun around in flight, a whirlwind of cutting leaves and blades of grass, but it was only one blade, her blade. He danced against her, dodging blows and cutting knife, moving between her emboldened thrusts that were so emblazoned with her emotions, imbued with her strength and speed. Quickly, against the tide of madness that seemed flow within the time that both existed and did not, separated by the power between her and Jack, the power that lay between the layers of the visible spectrum, beyond the physical realm.
The air rippled around them as they fought, creating their own wind with their speed and force, whipping the flames into a spinning, whirling spiral that swirled around and danced with them. She was the cougar, feeling the golden threads pulsing with life, feeding her frenzied attacks and supporting, uplifting her, even as her white aura lifted her upward, onward in the fray, letting her duck and dodge as she spun through his jabbing attacks. She whisked around his fists with skill, thrusting and slicing with her spear-knife. Gold danced in her eyes, she could feel the fur on her back, her tail, whipping in the wind of their dance, felt the singular joy of her claws and teeth, rending his flesh in her anger, and yet the wounds she gave to him, to savor and to kill, that should have been enough to kill any man, if not from the pain alone of having the nerve endings cut, the muscles ripped and torn in their place, the blood lost should have, but he didn't die. His cuts and holes, torn by her teeth and claws, were gone, closed as soon as they opened, leaving nothing but a white line across his skin, the only real mark left from her attacks.
There was no cougar. The thought came along the gold thread connecting Gabriel to her, and it resounded, echoing his words in her brain and cutting the cloth from her eyes. There is no cougar. The fur and tail, claws and teeth, disappeared, leaving her naked without them, and vulnerable, cold and alone.
His fist came at her again, catcher her with the full brunt of his forceful punch, catching her cheek where the cougar's mark was still healing. She flew backwards, losing her feet completely and landing on her ass, sliding across the dirt and sand from the strength behind the blow. Dazed, the world blurred, spinning around her the opposite direction of the storm that circled the crater. She closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath and her balance as she struggled to stand again.
“Submit! Give in!” He called out, moving towards her.
Her mind reeled, subjected to the motion sickness against which she tightly held her eyelids shut. She could feel the strong steady thud of his boots against the earth, spinning clouds of dust as he moved slowly to her position. Thoughts finally converged in her brain, rendering the world around her clearly, and untainted by the swirling winds that raged within her. Jack stopped in his tracks, standing just feet from her as she lifted slowly into the air, hanging suspended with one leg outstretched and arms held out straight from her shoulders. Her eyes were still closed. The ripples around her intensified as some strange interference attempted to wrest control of the environ from her.
Jack pulled at the silver threads with his mind, pulling strength, power and energy as he forced his own waves into being. What was she doing? How could she be capable of such things? It was too soon, yet for this, she might destroy herself. Then again, perhaps she knew what she was doing. Still, he fought with her, sending his waves into hers, at perpendicular points of equal amplitude, attempting to quell the burgeoning bubble that surrounded her. Her waves grew larger, stronger, as did his, growing with each strike and gaining frequency rapidly. The air was a jumble of mixing, countering waves. Unreal and impossible it seemed, bouncing around and moving the flames and stirring the dust of the ground into the air. Then something really and wholly unexpected occurred which paralyzed him in fear, freezing him in his boots, terrified.
A rogue wave, created by the confluence and remnants of the shattered waves that moved around, shards of his attacks and hers gathered into one unholy peak of reality, focused and channeled through her, directed by her, coming into being and rushing outward from her. She was the focal point, a pebble in the pond. The air around him seemed still and unsustaining as it moved to him, and rippling outward, ever outward and onward into the cliffs of mud surrounding them. Jack landed on his ass, thrown clear of the fire and out of the circle. Did she know what she was doing? He thought it unlikely. As the wave connected with the muddy heights of the crater, sand and effluence shot into the air, as beneath his feet it rippled again, reflected along some fault in the rock deep underground. The ripple was three dimensional, and longitudinal, extending in a spherical wave and crashing to into the ground. The storm around them broke, clouds scattering across the sky as the wind began again to blow softly. The earth quaked with her hatred for Jack and the destrachan, her anger at being used like a simple garden spade, her sorrow and sense of loss for the Brig and her people, but above all, the earth shook with her desire and love for the boy Gabriel, even as he lay blissfully unaware several yards from her. The valley of rusted metal girders and rivets, of concrete, sand and glass rumbled around them, the ground shaking beneath their feet as if it meant to bury them. The steel groaned under the strain of the whole earth, bending and twisting in the starlight, glass, what little remained, shattered as the wood and aluminum holding it in its place splintered.
The desert was reclaiming the land, swallowing the city whole. Streets covered in sand cracked and collapsed as the wave rippled outward, ever outward. Deep fissures scarred the landscape surrounding the crater, mud poured into these cracks, filling them and then running down even further as the rift widened. Buildings for offices, churches and homes fell alike, imploding as the ground supporting their footings gave way beneath them.
As the wave reached the mountains to the east, the air was thick with dust and rot and balls of mud spraying the granite faces before they too split and broke apart. Sagebrush and sand covered valleys and peaks along the entire range shifted, sending avalanches of rocks and boulders down to the valley floor, raining stones across the foothills. And finally, it reached the mountain of the sleeping woman. Timpanogas. Cracks split the stone and jutting peaks, falling bits of her form crashing into the sandy desert floor, crushing juniper and sage as they rolled to a rest, the earth groaning. All became still as the havoc ended, vibrations slowing to a halt, dust and debris littering the ground, air as silent as death. The madness was finished, the earth's trembling and quaking quit as Sera fell to the ground, kneeling, her face in her hands and weeping, the bitter salt of her tears hitting the dust beneath her, their sounds hard and sorrowful.
Jack was nowhere to be seen, perhaps buried in a slide of mud and rock, but she thought that unlikely as she moved achingly towards her fallen lover. He wasn't dead, but he was badly wounded; blood caked the sides of his face and his breathing came in deep, ragged pants that told of strain and deeply rooted pain. He stirred slightly as she put a single hand to his face, holding it, feeling his warmth. One of his came up to hold hers against his skin, wanting to feel her touch, and she did nothing to stop it. Holding a finger to his lips, she quieted his speech and let her tears run down her face freely. She wept. Battered and bruised, she knelt beside him, not caring that several sets of footsteps behind her gave way before another, and hearing the familiar voice of the Wanderer speaking his instructions.
“Take them.”
She felt weary and violated from the battle that had taken place inside that fiery ring in the depths of Hell. Ashes, flowing in the wind like leaves crossed her vision as she saw the shadow of an arm raised behind her, feeling the breath of it whooshing down on the back of her neck. It wasn't pain that took her then, but exhaustion, though there was plenty of the former in that sap's strike. Warm leather pressing softly against her head at the base of her skull, the weight and force of it bringing her down atop Gabriel's helpless form, and the warm black of oblivion took everything away, losing her sense and awareness as she dropped. Falling, falling into that pit of unconscious that boiled inside her. The wind blew sweetly, sickeningly in the pale starlight, rustling the grass and sagebrush gently, their green aroma filling her nostrils was the last thing she remembered.
Copyright 2006