Chapter Fourteen: Final Preparations
“Please, Senor, please. I have a family. I have . . .” the man's voice pleading out his cries for mercy. Begging, they always did, Jack thought. He had picked up the man from a small house near to his temple, and the time was drawing close where the man with his broken Spanish and English would die, perhaps screaming to God for the injustice being done. He wasn't yet finished, though, and there was still work to be done. Jack pulled roughly on the rope that bound together the man's tanned wrists, and he stumbled, scraping his knees as he was dragged along.
“Quit your begging, and keep moving, we're almost there,” Jack said, uncaring and undisturbed, “It'll all be over soon.”
The man he was dragging along the steep mountain path was short, nearly a head shorter than he was, and his face was streaked with sweat and tears, and stained with dirt and the dust of miles. Jack hadn't stopped for rest in days, and while this didn't bother him in the slightest, the man could not handle much more. It was a strain on his mind more than anything else that he had to do this, that the man had to die. He did, and perhaps that would stop the accursed ringing in his ears as his memories were being torn from his head, laid to rest finally in that tomb of so long ago, a collection of his sins since he had died that would wait for him beyond the grave.
The long sleep, indeed. What a load of shit, he thought. The spirits of his past would not let him sleep through that torment, but the pained haunting would continue, and he would suffer through it as he had the past two millennia. Yet as his mind dissolved, only one thing grew clearer and closer, and that was the girl and her guardian, the boy. Gabriel. Her tie to the humanity that had spurned her, had cursed her existence and his, and he intended to resolve that problem upon their arrival. If he could not win this battle, at least he could see to it that she did not win it happily. Happiness had been denied him, and so he would deprive her of it as well. Who was the girl that haunted him the most frequently, the girl who held his own happiness? Iris. Her face flashed in his mind. At least that isn't lost in the fray, not yet anyway. He had to keep his eyes on the prize, on the ultimate goal. Once, he had thought to end the cycle, to rid humanity of its conflicting nature, of their predilection towards violence, but that lofty goal had been ripped out of its rightful place by a realization that it could never happen. Never, at least, while men still wander the earth.
“Senor, please . . .”
“Shut your mouth, I said we were almost there,” and they were. It was just a few more feet, over the next hill perhaps, that his place would be waiting, where his sword would be waiting, and where he would wait and prepare for the girl.
Ah, yes, my former nobility. It had passed away like all of mankind's greatest achievements, washed clean by the course of time and the winds of change that accompanied each great cataclysm. It had degraded back into the self-serving and hollow instinctual fight for survival, the trait that each species relied so heavily on as evolution took its natural course. Even so, he felt no loss at its passing, only a supreme satisfaction that he had come so far from where he had first learned of his role in history. It was a role, too, for it felt as if no matter what he had said or done, that it had been scripted prior to his time, that everything had been laid out across a large chessboard, and that he was only a pawn. To move forward, or to move diagonally in attack, his only real options. So he had, to be sure, moving ever onward and regardless of his attempts to break free of his fate, he had always been at precisely the right place at exactly the right time to move another piece of history into existence. The plagues, no, his plagues, that had ravaged people across the globe had come at the right time to shift seats of power around, to shuffle history's stacked deck into the perfect order to bring about his second cataclysm. The first had happened without his knowledge, and with much shedding of blood, yet the second had been far worse, and he had felt no guilt in doing it, in committing the most brutal and horrible acts, but neither had he felt nothing. Was he a monster? He had felt undeniable pleasure, had been held in the exquisite rapture of battle and bloodshed as he lead is troops in for the finishing blows against every major city in the world.
New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Tokyo, Istanbul, all had fallen before his siege, and no one was left alive and unchanged in any of them. He had razed, looted, and plundered whatever held his fancy, and without a shred of sorrow at all. He had reveled in every minute of every hour of every day that it took to bring the world to its knees, and he would do it all again if he was given the chance. Then again, maybe that was how he had become one of history's loose ends, a renegade whose thirst for blood and lack of remorse for his sins had changed the land, and he would be remembered, if only by name at Sera's whim.
The girl, it seemed, was in far more control of his ultimate fate than he had originally thought. Could he force her hand, become one of the forgotten fallen? Jack could remember being good and decent at one point in his life, yet that had fallen away, had fallen by the wayside, and his motives now were not the same as they had been. The girl had changed everything, had been rash, and discourteous, and childlike, and now she would suffer as he had suffered, although much, much more. She thinks she knows pain, he thought dimly, but the pain I'll show her will bring her to her knees. Yes, agony and defeat, even in victory, would crush her spirit.
“No, no, no, Senor, please not that place,” the man was speaking again, and with good reason. The spires of Jack's temple were coming into view, with a single golden man with a trumpet raised topping the center one, the highest spire.
“Yes, that place. Always that place,” he muttered, pulling the man forward.
He hadn't built it himself, no, such construction was beneath him, a poor use for such powers as he had. It had been built by the Mormons, who hadn't known at the time that the stones they had used were already marked for his temple. He had marked them with his strange looping language, the language of the damned, the holy tongue, Gan'destra, and now he could feel those stones at each corner of the temple. The corner stones were his, the whole building, with its stuccoed exterior and concrete walls, the ornately carved stones depicting the sun, the moon, and the stars on each facet of the building. The windows with their brass workings holding them together, the twisted iron fence set in cement with sharpened points atop each pole, almost a fortress, and it had only one purpose.
Destra ot Destrayes. The holy of holies.
Had the Mormons known its true purpose, they would have moaned and wept at the sight of this place, held pristine and untouched by any hands since the fall of the world. As Jack looked around, from the hill that so overlooked the once brimming social center of Mexico City, all he could see were the ruins of a civilization since past. The desert had taken this city, and the devastation was familiar in that all cities to have fallen were taken back by the predominant habitat of the area. New York, for example, had grown into a forest once more, with grasses and trees growing up through the cracked asphalt and cement, with creeping vines surrounding and encasing the highest skyscrapers, and cars and elevated trains, and subway stations once more becoming homes for animals like badgers, and wild dogs, and snakes, and all manner of beasts that lurked in the dark. Mexico City was no different, cacti sprouted from rooftops, their needles touching the sky, hawks made their nests in the attics of houses while cats and dogs slept in the beds of their former masters. Rats thrived in the underbelly of the city, coming out at night to find whatever fruits and seeds they could while owls and other birds of prey stalked them as well. Not to mention the coyotes, who were always nearby as well, waiting for the moon to rise before feasting on whatever they could scavenge. He saw all this destruction, and he smiled at it for it was of his own making, and he was proud.
He made his way into the main parking lot, where whatever cars had remained had been overturned, or put onto their sides, forming a funnel to the main gate, which stood open for any who would come. The man was dragging his feet, muttering something in Spanish that made no sense at all, and Jack was angry, pulling the rope along. “Stop that, its almost over, and then you'll thank me for my gift,” he smiled at the man, who was openly weeping at the sight, and he lead him deep into the temple's interior. The doors he left open, for his guests would be arriving soon, and it would not do for them to be detained by a locked door. That wouldn't do at all, he thought madly, what kind of a host would I be then? The dust of several hundred years blanketed the carpets and tapestries, of which there were many of unimportant men who had done nothing at all save one. Ah, Jesus, he thought, how have you been these past years, have the Mormons been treating you well? He answered his own question. These Mormons are crazy, they don't even attempt to live the way I said to, they refuse to enjoy life at all, choosing instead to increase their numbers and collect money to make themselves wealthy. He thought in reply, Ah, that's too bad, and here I thought you'd be proud of your most brainwashed followers.
He snorted in laughter at this, forcing himself himself to end his mental conversation with the painting, that was something only crazy people did, right? Moving swiftly down the hall, now, pulling the man up the stairs that formed a brilliant spiral of tile and brass, all the way to the top, where a door leading to the central altar waited for them. Behind them, the large glass window sparkled in the fading light, illuminating each dust particle that stirred in the air from his passing.
And now for the trap, he thought, not the first such trap he had laid, and certainly not the least of them, but it had to be something special, a surprise that might break Sera's will, and send the pattern spiraling downward from her fall. How to do it? He had the tripwire, this man would serve wonderfully for that, and that length of stainless steel cable, and the altar, made of heavy marble, heavy enough that it would take more than a few men to move, Yes, he thought, it would all work out beautifully.
The cable was perhaps the most difficult piece of the trap, a half inch thick, it was necessary to move the altar into position, yet once it was, the metallic substance made it difficult to tie into any semblance of knots, and so he had to use what many had referred to as his unholy strength to bend it around the man's ankles and wrists, clamping it into place in an immovable knot. All the while, of course, the man was weeping as the metal dug into his flesh, letting the blood flow down his arms and onto his shoulders. Not that Jack cared, he was almost beyond caring, but it had to work, he had to make the girl suffer for her prize. The next step had been to pull the altar up high enough to do some damage, and hold it in place somehow, and as he hoisted it up, he thought of the perfect counterbalance.
A single stone, large enough to pull free of the door's knob once it was opened, if placed in the right spot could balance the altar's weight, and strung from the man's legs, it offset the weight perfectly; the man wept openly as the metal tightened around his bones, cutting through muscle and tendon as his fingers went limp.
The man was hanging outside the window, now, whimpering, and the trap was set: all that was left was the waiting, and that was probably the hardest thing of all, because instead of cruelty, Jack would feel nothing. The carpet in the altar room was soaked in blood, and while Jack might have loved to watch the chaos unfold, this was not the place he had prepared for the final battle. He casually walked to a single side-door in the room, the only door beside the trapped one, and began to ascend the steps leading to the uppermost room in the temple: the Holy of Holies. At least the Mormons got one thing right, he chuckled and listened as the tanned man's sputtering died away as consciousness graciously left him. The stairway was dimly lit by a window at the end of the room, a tiny room just twelve by fifteen feet, the only room where a prophet could pray to God alone, and supposedly be answered.
A distinctly plain oaken desk took up most of the room, with a tiny chair behind it. The desk surface was a clutter of dusty papers and books long untouched, and the only piece of furniture that did not look old and decrepit and yellowy was perhaps the eldest of any object in the room.
My gladius.
The shortsword was embedded in the center of the desk, and if one did not look closely, it might appear plain, but it wasn't. Elegant scrolling text had been engraved along the whole of the blade and the pommel, it flowed with the wide straight edge all the way to the blood groove, and though faint, each word meant something.
When he had first received the sword, only one phrase had been etched in the hilt: Qui desiderat pacem praeparat bellum. He who desires peace must prepare for war. The words had moved him, had forced him to change the way he viewed his place in the cycle, and now as he waited, his fingers ran along the edge of the blade. His eyes were closed, yet he could see the words clearly in his mind, as he felt each phrase with his touch.
The second phrase he had etched himself, as well as the rest, and only after a victorious battle had he done so. Sic itur ad astra. Such is the path to the stars. The names of the places where he had battled were gone, as were the faces of those he had slain, as well as those he had kept close to him. God! Why did it have to end this way? Why couldn't he remember? Rolling green hills of grass and hay, and beyond lay the vineyards of Damascus, where the girl, Iris, was waiting for him. He could smell her perfume, and her piercing green eyes. Iris, who was a goddess among mortals and had deigned to sup with the likes of him, a common soldier. Yet he wasn't common, and his violet eyes betrayed his disguise, even so did his comrades, Michael and Daniel. Only the girl's face was plain in his memory, though, and all else was dim and transparent, falling away into the blackness. He was still alive, though, and now he had to see this thing done before he could rejoin his comrades beyond the grave.
Deo favente. God's favor. Once perhaps, he had believed this, but now it seemed as if he had fallen from grace, lost somewhere in the pattern's fray, far from prying eyes and deceptive tongues, and close now to the end. He could feel the thread that linked Sera to him, and as she drew closer to his temple, the silver gave its ground to the gold, soon it would be finished. The sun was beginning to set, its yellowed light turning the sky a deep orange, and then crimson, and the girl would take the temple long before the sun rose again. His death ran on swift feet, flying across the sand without breathing too heavily for discomfort, and yet he was not afraid. Death comes for us all, he thought, it is the only certainty we are granted.
Strange it was that after two millennia he had prepared for his eventual death so little, yet was ready all the same to accept it. With a few minor exceptions, of course. He chuckled at the next inscription. De inimico non loquaris set cogites. Do not wish ill for your enemy, plan it. Wishing accomplished nothing, and as God had commanded Moses: an eye for an eye. The girl had to understand that the cycle meant the eventual destruction of the human race, and it might not be preventable. If it was, though . . .
Tantum eruditisunt liberi. Only the educated are free. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas es. Knowledge is power.
Foolishness. He had been young and optimistic, then, had refused to see the true nature of man's internal conflict, had been blinded by his youthful ideals and had deceived himself, deprived himself of the necessary tasks to prevent this day from ever coming again. Once was never enough, and he had not learned from his first mistakes. He had learned later on, much later, that the fight could not be refused, only postponed, and by that time—by this time—the tables had turned, and he had become a monster. A calculating monster, though, and one who still held all of his former strength.
Jack looked out the window to the ocean, barely visible on the horizon, yet it sparkled in the sunset, diamonds glinting red and orange and blue, the azure of the sea. The sands were white, somewhere, and would still be warm to the touch. Filled with a sense of longing for that beach, for the simpler times that he had left behind, he let his thoughts drift once more to the woman he had loved and left. Iris. Her face was fading quickly from his memory, soon to become a phantom in his mind to haunt him the last few hours of his life. Damn this cursed fate, where I must tread the lonely path without aid or comfort! The hum of his aura filled the air around him, as his silver threads that stretched from here to infinity pulsed with the life of their owners, and brought tiny shreds of tiny hopes that were hoped by tiny lives.
They know nothing, and it is better that way. His feet alone to travel the blasted lands, to descend into the hell of insanity that pulled at him with brutish strength. Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrow. His way, and soon to be the girl's who now came within shouting distance of his place.
Not long now, he thought. Soon it will be over, and I will join the forgotten hordes of a lost time and place.
The final inscription ran along the length of the blood groove, and its meaning made his blood chill in his veins. Such words were dangerous, and lead often to the deaths of those who spoke it. Vade in pace. Go in peace, a final goodbye. His final farewell. Reading it now in the failing light, he was angry at the way he felt. He should feel no sorrow at all, no remorse, yet he did, and he regretted the day he had left Iris behind. Maybe there was still time to . . .
Screaming broke his train of thought. The tanned man would be dead, now, and then the shaking of the stones beneath his feet. He could feel the cable grind against its stone axle, and hear its squeal as it snapped. Too late, too late. Too much to regret, and much too far gone. He was a monster. He had crushed the life from Sera's lover and there was no turning back. She would wreak her vengeance upon him and leave him gasping for breath, dying.
No, that wasn't the way it happened. In flames and hollow pain, as everything was shredded around his bones and nerves, until the only thing left was his heart, and even that became only so much charcoal. Jack touched the familiar smooth wooden handle of his gladius, felt it swell and pulse beneath his grip; it writhed with a life all its own, and begged to drink of the blood of his enemies. In one smooth motion, he pulled it free of its oaken hold, and held it aloft in the setting sun's rays. The blade was sharp, he didn't have to test it to know that, he could tell in the way the edge of it gleamed dully against the bright bronze of the rest of it.
The door below and to his back swung open, and then shut, and without looking, he knew exactly who was waiting for him. Without shifting his eyes from his sword, he spoke evenly, “Hello Sera.”
Copyright 2006