Ultimatum

[Throkos]

Harth was exactly as Throkos had expected it to be. Busy with vendors and peddlers, swarming with the poor and the rotting. He imagined the smell was quite bad, though his respirator spared him from that.

There were no docks, surprisingly. It turned out that the inhabitants of Kylinstrom had no idea that anything existed aside from their small, unimpressive continent.

At least, that’s what Kogar had said.

“Kill them all.” the two-toned man said, standing by the waterfront with Throkos and Okella.

He nodded. Okella held a hand over her mouth.

“Okella, Rykaedi is on the way with your body. Elven. She’ll be here tomorrow night.”

It’s so sad, taking a body like that… Using someone else’s form…

Preventing them from venturing the deadworld.

She looked away, toward the ocean. There was nothing for it now. Her pact was sworn to The Twelve.

Throkos marched away. Okella turned between the two somber figures — one thorough with rage, one thorough with tears. Both belied by their hues.

"Throkos!" cried Okella once she popped into his beige war tent. It was wide enough to house two squads, filled with beds for a few commanders, and a large wooden table in the center with a rough map of Kylinstrom.

But he would have it all to himself. And he looked up at her, green-eyed, face covered by his mask, his thick dreads of dark hair swaying around his head.

"You can't do this, Falskar, what about—"

"You've mistaken me for someone else, Okella. I am Throkos. Falskar died many years ago."

Her face twisted sadly.

His eyebrows furrowed. He looked away. "You're mistaken."

"I'm not!" Okella stomped her boot. It did not give her much more authority, nor did it give much reprieve. But she stomped her boot. And that made Throkos raise his eyebrows.

"Tell me then; where in me do you see a sober Falskar? Am I not seduced, secluded, hidden away beneath the thick of the rage, the horror of the night, the pollution in my blood that causes my very veins to bulge and bleed...?" His voice trembled with the last of his words. "Am I not this... this monster? Am I greater than the sum of my odds, the preconceived fate of my life, of my mistakes, of my triumphs? I am war. I am blood, bloodier even than the great red Serkukan, darker in soul and mind than the complete holocaust Algirak. I am the numbness that comes in the face of utter annihilation, I am suffocation, I am defeat, I am choking, gasping death."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Okella averted her gaze. Throkos clamped his eyes tightly shut. The bolts of his respirator began to twist out, counterclockwise. Okella whimpered, "Please..."

He released the mask, revealed the rotten flesh, the horrid monster below his skin, the soul beneath the façade. He looked directly to Okella, then. He begged her, in his horrid scowl, the tensing, clenched muscles of his face, to look.

She had no choice. His thoughts polluted her own.

I am hell.

You are not.

I cannot be saved.

You can.

Yet you offer no solution. You offer no fate other than this damnable hell in which I live, you offer no respite from the eradication of these roaches, those who Kogar, Rykaedi, Tartys, and Hemah despise. There is no offer of escape.

Look inside yourself! You know the answer!

Is that what Liara would have you believe? The truth lies within our heart, within the path that seems most obvious? Then the path laid bare to me is the path of the slaughter. Their lives are forfeit between my pale gaze, beneath a black sun and a cold, lifeless moon of pale, vibrant red.

He picked up a spiked war helmet from the war table, placed it atop his head. Falskar, Throkos, Ahkilesti; they stared at her. And without emotion, they said, “All that is left to my hands is endless, crippling violence.”

He turned to the flaps of the tent. His respirator came back up and secured itself again.

"And that is all I will offer the world."

X

Kogar swept down from the sky. He released the ley barrier formed beneath himself, stepped down onto planks of sandy-etched wood with heavy thuds and marched right up to the shattered, crumbling door, now barely anything more than a few shoddy planks stuck together by uneven, rusted nails.

He pushed the door open as carefully as he could muster. There was a voice as soon as he stepped into the dingy, cramped foyer, shoes strewn carelessly in the hall; “Talek?”

He looked up. His face softened, more than most knew it could. There was a woman by the window, wrapped in the blowing curtain. He couldn’t see her features. He could feel her aura, smell her scent. The aroma of… of…

“You’re… killing them…?” she asked, softly. More softly than he could have expected. Perhaps it was that softness indeed that brought the reality of his actions to bear. He could finally feel the quiver of a mortal, the twinge of pain and guilt and horror to let it all happen, to provoke it into action.

He held his arms out to her as he approached, wanted to embrace her. “If I told you a white lie… just to avoid the tears you would shed… would that be forgivable?”

She turned away, avoided his grasp. With a shrill hiss, she whined, “Can you put me back…? Into the Moment?”

He shut his eyes. His bottom lip quivered and shook. “Yes. Yes, I can.”

And she accepted his embrace.

And the Moment took them away…