Chapter Eighteen

Ambrose knocked on the door of the run-down house. A man opened the door, scratching at his arm, little red dots all over his sickly yellow skin. His hair reminded Ambrose of dirty dishwater, his features were rat-like, and his beard grew in ugly patches along his jaw.

The man widened his fading blue eyes.

“Uhh. Hmm. Who are you?”

Ambrose gave him a cheerful smile before lifting a booted foot and kicking him in the chest, sending the rat-like man crashing into the room beyond the door. Groans of agony followed a moment later.

Ambrose strode into the room, kicking the door closed behind him. He had expected a messy shit hole of a place but instead found it to be relatively neat. A rug, a comfortable couch, and tasteful art hung from the dark walls.

Ambrose lifted his bottom lip upward, nodding a few times as he looked around.

“Nice place, Mark. Would be a shame if someone messed it up.”

Ambrose strode past Mark's prone form as he whimpered and rocked, holding his sides. He went to the fridge, which was also surprisingly cleaned, and began making himself a sandwich out of its contents.

He went back to Mark, took a bite out of the food, and chewed, holding up the sandwich.

“Good food. Glad you didn't buy the cheap bread. You know what that tells me, Mark?”

Mark just whimpered. Ambrose nodded along as if he had replied.

“Exactly right, Mark. It tells me you have money. Otherwise, you'd get the cheap bread, right? Since you can afford the expensive stuff, I think you can afford to pay Eric what you owe, Mark. You listening bud?”

Mark was not listening. He was whimpering. Ambrose nodded again, took another bite of his sandwich, reared his leg back and delivered a vicious kick to Mark's midsection.

The man threw up, and when he was finished spewing rancid fluid on the hardwood, he began to cry.

“Hey now! It's okay. It really is. Just cough up the cash, Mark and I'll be on my merry way.”

Mark raised a shaky finger and pointed at the antique urn that sat on a shelf underneath some art of a rising sun. Ambrose gave Mark a thumbs up and strode to the urn, poking his head into the hole on top.

Golden orange light blasted forth from the urn and suddenly, Ambrose felt it all, and saw it all. It was Mark’s fear, his pain, all caused by Ambrose. More than that, it was his life, the constant abuse he had suffered since he was a child, how it drove him to drugs, which drove him to Eric and led him here, to this day.

Ambrose knew how Mark liked to draw, he wanted to be an artist, and how the drugs were a collar around his neck, chaining him down. It wasn’t just Mark, it was everyone he had ever harmed, everyone he had inflicted violence on. It was every unkind word, every sharp glance, or horrible thought.

A dagger of golden orange light pierced his left eye, burning it out of his socket as if someone had shoved a torch in his eye. The world faded around him, there was nothing but the pain as it burned him, burned away his soul until there was nothing left but the foundation of himself.

Ambrose’s sanity was being clawed at, torn away with the fire of pain.

A voice, gentle, and loving, carried on the winds of memory, brought him back from the brink.

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“My tarnished knight. Stay strong, for me, stay strong.”

Alice? Is that you?

Mental hands wrapped around his face, and Ambrose looked up, his throat tight, burning from the rope wrapped around it. Alice’s face stared back at him, that smile he so loved lighting up her face like the dawn breaking through a storm.

“Stand firm, sweetheart. You must endure.”

It’s so much. It’s too much. Ambrose tried to croak out, but the rope seemed to tighten, and the tide of pain engulfed him in a wave of fire that burned him, scorching the foundation of himself.

“You are stronger than this. What happened to the man I married?”

Ambrose’s jaw tightened; his eyes blazed with green fire that he cast against that blazing tide of pain. His heart surged with a steady, thumping rhythm. Alice’s eyes shown with naked pride.

“There he is. Fight, Ambrose, fight and make it through this. You still have so much to do.”

Ambrose endured. He endured even as the rope bit into his skin like a living thing. He endured even as something flowed into him, mingling with him like different threads being woven together into a cohesive whole. With it came memories.

_________

Ambrose watched as if watching a show on a silver screen, as a dark-haired man with strong, sharp features and eyes the color of dark chocolate, wearing gleaming armor as dark and as shiny as obsidian, rammed a huge sword as black as pitch into the chest of a kneeling man.

Blood fountained as the blade pierced through his chest, ignoring the radiant armor that the kneeling man wore. The man’s blue eyes began to drain of life as blood spurted from his mouth. Ambrose took in his kingly features, the simple crown he wore on his head of hair, wavy and brown like the bark of an ancient oak tree.

“Finally, you are done, father. My vengeance is complete.”

The kneeling man coughs, more sanguine liquid sputtering onto the ground.

“You..are…no son…of…mine. Mordred.”

The dark-haired man, Mordred, twisted his lip upward, his eyes narrowing as he snarled and yanked the sword out of the man’s chest.

“Very well then…Arthur. Let this be a true end between us. With you dead and me…taking everything you have wrought for myself.”

Arthur gave a wheezy, pain-filled laugh as he clutched at his bleeding chest.

“What’s so funny, dead man?” Mordred sneered.

Arthur shook his head weakly,

“You take my life and immediately want to become me? It’s so…pathetic.”

Arthur began to glow, light pouring from him in a halo of blue that began to pulse with ugly red and purples that snaked through the blue light like necrotic, toxic veins. Mordred stepped back, eyeing the light warily as he raised the great sword.

“What is this? What are you doing?”

Arthur stood up, his body quivering, the wound in his chest seeping blood like a thick, dark river that poured out of him, not unlike a personal waterfall.

“You want what I have wrought, Mordred? Very well, I shall give it to you. Let it be a curse to you, sapping your power until there is nothing left of you. I am only sorry for how this will affect Vivienne, but you, boy? It will be worth it to know you will become as an infant in your weakness.”

Mordred bolted, trying to escape the light that now sank into everything, writhing through the ground like roots. The ground began to shift, changing in color to match what Ambrose had first seen upon arrival to the island. Mordred could not outrun the light that engulfed him.

He screamed as his skin began to turn to stone. It wasn’t long before Mordred was a purple, red, and black statue. The statue sank into the ground, its eyes seeming to pulse with sick light.

Arthur closed his eyes, falling bodily to the ground.

“It is done. Forgive me, Vivienne.”

Arthur stopped breathing, and soon after, he stopped living.

Ambrose kept watching as Vivienne appeared, looking no different than when he first saw her. She knelt over Arthur's prone form and laid a hand on his cheek. Crystal, shining with multicolored light, engulfed the fallen man, encasing him and preserving him.

“Rest, now, once and future king. Rest.”

The crystal sank into the ground, taking Arthur with it.

The memory shifted, and Ambrose watched as Vivienne held a hand over the waters of the great cavern lake. The dark water parted, revealing a dark path that led deep underground. As Vivienne descended, the waters closed behind her, but not before Ambrose’s consciousness was brought along. They began to pass rows upon rows of crystals, except that, unlike the mana crystals above, there were things inside of them.

Unlike Arthur, they appeared to be alive. Some were human, others were indescribable monsters, and some were so beautiful they were painful to behold. Each one had thoughts that slithered forth like poisonous snakes, offering forbidden knowledge and power if only they would be set free.

Vivienne ignored them all, heading deeper and deeper below. Finally, they came to a small room carved from the cavern around them. Roots of the great tree above pulsed there with fading light. Vivienne ran a hand over the roots, murmuring to them.

Then her eyes turned and bore into Ambrose’s consciousness. At the same time, the roots lanced forward like deadly spears formed of crystalline rainbows, piercing his body and renewing the pain within him as his world became white once more