by Cody W Urban
“This is my point!” Kenalfon replied shouting, not really in anger, more to raise his voice above the howl of the wind. “You run—always run! It is why you broke the heart of your uncle. Why when you could finally be with Nysa, you took to Roman legions. It is why you failed her!”
This spark finally released the eruption of his inner volcano once again, and Nicholas sprang to his feet and met Kenalfon blade for blade, stroke for stroke, and blow for blow. It was the best he’d ever done.
“You see, Nicholas!” Kenalfon told him. “It’s within you. You hear the voice, nay, the whisper of your innermost self trying to persuade you and it’s from him you’re really running!”
“You drag me to the top of a mountain, beat me into bruises, to tell me that?”
“So that you will listen! Now that you have that focus, use it! On your guard!” Kenalfon shouted and the two collided in combat once again. If it wasn’t for the snot running down his nose, the tears in his eyes, his every inch of skin screaming from chill, or his burning frustration with his silver-haired Elf, he would have been greatly proud with the way he brandished his blade.
“Keep your focus! Draw up that inner strength! You hear that voice, now get to know it. It is your spiritual persona, the way you are seen in heaven. And once you align your physical personality with it and let the rest fall away like chaff in the wind, you will be the man you were made to be, a man of valor, strength, and a man with the ability to right not only the wrongs in your life, but the wrongs in others.”
“I care only to see Flavius get what’s rightly deserved!”
Still fighting, exchanging strikes again in new and stylish ways, Kenalfon replied, “Don’t be so hasty to serve out judgment, for then you shall be found guilty!”
“I would see justice served!”
“You fight me now,” Kenalfon reminded him, “and one day you will see the war to save mankind from despair will not be won by the sword, but through love!”
Nicholas stayed his blade. This was an axiom he wanted to believe in, but even with his faith suspended and his world upside down, it would take every fiber of his being to believe it the way he once had. “I am going home Kenalfon, you’re only delaying me.”
“There is a spring, a fountain of insight, you must partake of. It is why I brought you up here. I only figured in your moment of weakness the surprise skirmish would toughen you up and make you ready…” Kenalfon hesitated. Nicholas noticed this and quirked his eyebrow, curious what would stay this blunt spoken philosopher. “Ready for what the spring will show you.”
Kenalfon sheathed his sword into his robe and walked into the snowy haze toward the center of the platform. Nicholas wanted to stay and make a fire and warm up, he wanted to turn and run away, but it was in his severe physical disadvantage that his innermost voice finally shouted a compelling command to move onward and follow the sage to the end of their expedition.
3
Now welcome, ever-blessed guest,
To sinful souls with guilt oppressed.
Nicholas limped along following Kenalfon toward a pool several yards in toward the center. “What will you show me?” Nicholas asked, not expecting a sip of water to reveal to him anything but refreshment to parched lips.
Kenalfon remained silent. It was not an answer he wanted to bother emphasizing. When they arrived, Nicholas found the crystal formed into stairs down into a large bowl and at the very bottom, a pedestal where the water bubbled forth ever so slowly. Nicholas arrived, looked for a cup, found none, and then glanced toward Kenalfon. He returned a permissive and encouraging nod. Then Nicholas took the plunge, his face into the warm water and took in a deep draught of it. As the liquid poured down his throat, it soothed him thoroughly, refreshing his body, mind, and soul. In a moment’s notice, he found he was no longer on the peak, or anywhere for that matter. All had become shadows in an ambiguous dim haze.
He looked about for his companion and discovered he was alone. Then he searched about, growing mildly panicked but tried to implement a wise focus and a positive perspective on whatever was about to befall him. Then he heard, as though echoing its way through an unending tunnel, Kenalfon’s voice say, “Dream. Dream deep. For that elixir will draw your mind yonder to behold that which your heart desires—past, present, and future.”
The world faded and moved like smoke in a draft until it formed the scene where Vasilis had told Nicholas he was to depart immediately up north. There, Nicholas found himself in an incorporeal form, as though he was the ghost haunting the living past. He even watched himself from outside himself as his memory unfolded. “Aye, fear not,” Vasilis said as he took Nysa’s hand in an all too tender manner. “We shall watch over Nysa in your stead. She, I guarantee, will be in good hands.”
Nicholas moved to touch Nysa’s fair cheek and she wisped away into a smoke-like obscurity that reformed itself into another scene entirely. Now, he was somewhere he did not recall, but assumed from the sturdy stones beneath his feet and the Roman standards posted along a wall that he was in some sort of fortress. As the scene became clear, he found Vasilis leaning upon a ledge looking forlorn. At this time, Nicholas assumed he occupied the abode of Vasilis, his mighty tower from where he governed all the provinces and peoples of the fertile land of Lycia. Again, Nicholas felt the exhilaration of returning home. He breathed in and smelled the moist Mediterranean air and all at once felt content.
The gladness lasted briefly until he spied Flavius standing beside Vasilis and the two were in the middle of a conversation. Nicholas had not known that this high-ranking Roman official had ever fellowshipped with Governor Vasilis, but this wasn’t important to him. Nicholas drew his sword. “You foul wretch! You betrayer!” he shouted and without thinking struck Flavius with his blade. Only this was a vision made of a smoky matter that twisted its way around the blade and rematerialized as soon as Nicholas withdrew it.
“Not a concubine in all Lycia could satisfy the cravings I have but for one woman,” Vasilis said, licking his lips like a greedy dog. He looked out on the horizon from their high vantage and said, “I beheld her from on high, through an open window, and since I could ponder nothing else.”
Flavius moved to walk on down the stony causeway and replied, “I grow weary, Vasilis. What involvement of mine do you conjure?”
“I offer my faithful vote,” Vasilis replied, behaving austere and benevolent, turning to walk along with Flavius. “My unwavering loyalty, my influence upon other supporters of your cause, a good portion of men and riches to speed you toward your destiny as Emperor of Rome. Your greatest desire, is it not?”
Nicholas slowly processed what took place before his eyes, but had a rough quandary in accepting it. “With every bone in my body,” Flavius returned, clenching his fists, flexing his muscles, gritting his teeth. He then relaxed a bit and faced Vasilis. “Name what it is ye want from me.”
“It is simple for one so pragmatic as yourself,” Vasilis said with his beguiling grin. “The woman is betrothed to a simpleton soldier, a quartermaster. Recruit him in your legion and see to it he dies in battle.”
Knowing entirely what would happen and for the sheer release of seeing Flavius burst into infinite particles, Nicholas slashed his enraged sword through Flavius once more, again and again until the entire episode fell apart. Nicholas went into the emotional zone he was in during his drift in the icy Danube, where his mind raced so fast it turned into nothingness but a frozen emotion of frosted malice.
The world reassembled itself again, this time the haze warped to reveal a warm candle-lit chamber. There were goblets of wine, fine grapes, biscuits, and cheese on silver platters upon silk and linen cloths among billowing drapes, monumental statues, and a fancy crest upon the wall. It was the personal chamber of Vasilis, judging by the seal on the crest. Nicholas turned and sure enough the main character of this drama was there sitting on a bed beside Nysa. She sobbed into her palms, her eyes puffy and red from hours of weeping. Even the top of her blouse w
as darkened from teardrops. And Vasilis tenderly caressed her hand; consoling her of whatever grief she bore.
“I have nowhere to turn,” Nysa wept. “Since news came of Nicholas's… death, I am filled with a void in my soul. Nothing but a black bitterness.”
Vasilis pulled her in for a comforting hug and spoke into the top of her head. “There, there, my sweet fair child,” he said kindly. “Alas for a wilting rose, yet it shall blossom again with tender care.” Nicholas watched and felt as though he could vomit that very moment. He stood on the edge of madness as the world went from sideways to upside down, to sideways again, and though he tried to hold tight through the inertia of the whirlwind there was little even his fingernails could cling to. He had to remain diligent, endure through this vision to the end, and see what light awaited him at the end of this sinister warren.
Vasilis gently lifted her chin to see his smiling face and he gave her a soft kiss, which she fought at first with little resistance until her will melted into desire, not a desire for Vasilis, but a desire to replace the pain with anything. As Nicholas’s mind became a whirlpool of anguish, the world around him shifted into a rapid display of images he had little time or mental wherewithal to soak in.
It was a nightmare. First, he saw a glimpse of Nysa wedding Vasilis, and though she wore a forlorn expression, she stood in a luxurious setting adorned in fine twisted linen and golden jewelry. Then in a flash he saw her pregnant, and Nicholas hit that low ebb of hopelessness; yet the nightmare continued. He saw an unknown child, a little boy asleep in his cozy bed, snatched away by the dark hands of a wicked creature.
He heard children screaming.
Mothers wailing.
Fathers sobbing.
He saw people run in fright, fall to their knees in turmoil, and cities burning. He saw Patara in ashes. Myra was ablaze. Shadows covered all the land of Lycia and the once green countryside had turned to a dismal gray. He saw children in rags, covered in soot, working in a massive blacksmith’s furnace sweating beside the sweltering heat of the kilns. He saw them whipped and worked as slaves and their eyes had lost that innocent twinkle of a hopeful boy or girl. Then he beheld Vasilis, watching as lord over the enslaved and oppressed brood, without any visible emotion save for the hint of inappropriate self-esteem. Beside him stood a tall shadowy black cloak-shrouded figure that made Nicholas’s skin crawl upon sight.
His last vision was a little girl forced to drink a blood-red substance by those sinister clawed hands. She coughed, gagged, and then quickly transformed into a small being of nastiness. Her eyes became enflamed, her teeth turned jagged, and her skin twisted into dark and hideous flesh as she lashed at Nicholas.
4
And all this woe hath come to thee
That thou might’st show truth to me.
The attack from the demonized little girl snapped Nicholas out of his trance and all at once he was back beside the pedestal high on the mountain peak, borne upon the crystal stage, beside Kenalfon. The horror that befell his eyes he wanted with all he had to rent from his brain. To uncover that his true villain was not Flavius, although he shared a great portion of Nicholas’s wrath, it was none other than the befriended Governor of his homeland. This betrayal was a knife in his gut, and what turned it ever deeper was that his love thought him now dead and in her grief, his betrayer was taking advantage of her need by courting her.
“What madness has filled my nightmare,” Nicholas whispered in his groggy stupor.
“What you beheld, son,” Kenalfon said gravely, “was truth.”
Nicholas trembled—the cold had little part in it. It was rage, pain, grief—a sickness in his bloodstream polluting his whole body. His only instinct now was denial and anger, and both he could release upon the one who fed him that vile dream. In a snap, he drew his sword and placed the tip to Kenalfon’s throat. “I would slay you for your deception!” Nicholas shouted at him as his release of emotion drew water to his eyes.
Kenalfon didn’t budge and maintained a calm compassionate demeanor. “Would you kill an innocent Elf,” Kenalfon questioned, “who only offers aid and counsel?”
Nicholas pressed forward, the blade pushed upon Kenalfon’s skin just a hair from the breaking point. “Your odious counsel was… it was a shadow of deceit!”
“Believe what you will,” Kenalfon said softly. The wind lessened as the morning light began to pierce the dim horizon. “I have only been your faithful friend. Were I now to deceive you, what gain would I have? I find no pleasure in your torment. I care for you enough to present truth unto you.”
As the sunlight brought warmth to Nicholas’s frostbitten limbs, his rage subsided. Kenalfon had a way of being harsh, but it wasn’t cruelty. He had become a father figure to Nicholas and it was only in the presence of such a stronger person could Nicholas feel the safety to weep. And weep he did as he melted down upon his knees—a shipwreck in turbulent seas of emotion.
This was Nicholas, now: Guilty, ashamed, bitter, and alone. Had he stayed with Nysa, this would not have happened. Vasilis could offer her every richness her heart craved, but nobody would love her as much as Nicholas would. But now she so easily turned from Nicholas’s love to the wealthy arms of that powerful backstabber. She was now gone and Nicholas was left empty. What could he find to fill his emptiness but determination? He had been toying with the notion of revenge and now he found that was truly all that could fill the void of his heart.
Nicholas felt bitter, unloved, and unlovable. He would fully heal among the Elves, glean every skill and strength he could from them, and await the opportunity the Universe now owed him to exact his vengeance and punish the two wicked men who betrayed him. He would rid the world from these two lewd leaders of power and the world, Nicholas’s world, would be free from henceforth afterward.
“Alas... Why, Kenalfon, why?” Nicholas asked and wiped a tear from his cheek.
Kenalfon had no answer. The age-old question as to why there was strife in the world was not one any tongue could form an answer to. It was an allusive answer that could only be experienced and only then understood. Kenalfon had that understanding and as he knelt down and hugged Nicholas he wished for nothing else than to impart that understanding into his pupil.
Nicholas felt the warmth of the rising sun and of Kenalfon’s body-heat, but his heart was ice. He clenched his fist and said, “I swear it.” He breathed deep, concentrating on his mission, resolving to spur himself on. It went against his upbringing, his faith, and his very nature—to seek revenge, to seek annihilation of another’s life. But with his innermost voice silenced under the thick frost, all he resolved to do, though altruism wasn’t entirely far from him, was to take their lives. He would make the world a better place in doing so, but his motives at this moment were entirely selfish. They had robbed him of everything; he would return the favor. “With all in my being this oath I make, I shall have my revenge. On Flavius. On Vasilis. The world shall I make rid of them.”
Chapter Four
Angels From the Realms of Glory
Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar.
Four years had passed and Nicholas still dwelled among the earthbound angelic folk. Deep within him, his resolve had not faded in the slightest and so he often questioned himself why he hadn’t vacated their borders and ventured on his quest. And every time he was about to depart, he found he couldn’t, for how easy is it for man to exit paradise? He resided in the closest land to Eden man has set foot in since the Expulsion. He dwelled in the abode of natural righteousness, a nation of complete bliss, delight, and serenity. It certainly shaved the frost from his hardened heart, though it was still rather hard, and made him feel right at home.
Over the four years, he had become a citizen of Mid Alfheim. He complied with all the Yule Festival activities, with a certain mimicked pleasure that his mentor, Kenalfon, experienced, though Nicholas didn’t much show it. Anytime his friends would ask him of his past, he transformed into
an introverted warrior bound for a quest of justice and would hide away in his hut until the angelic choir’s melodies soothed his soul and he was convinced he was not ready to leave. So he joined the Elves in their activities and began to excel at archery, remedial herbology, whittling, and physical strength.
Now, he was out on an errand with his companion Tomte to find fresh holly boughs for use in the Yule. They had strayed further from their borders hoping to find an abundance of holly and possibly other decorations to harvest. Tomte climbed a tree to grab some berries as Nicholas plucked and filled his own satchel with green leaves and sticks when as he rose from stooping low, he froze on sight of a wolf in the snow only a couple yards from him. This wasn’t any wolf; it was the one he had healed when she was probably no older than ten months and quickly his trepidation switched from fear of a ferocious animal to worry of scaring her away. She had found him often when he ventured out in the forest, like a guardian angel keeping up a vigil. After four years, the two were progressively bound toward a tight friendship.
Nicholas pulled from his coat a biscuit, broke it, and held it out in front of him as he stepped cautiously toward her. “Here girl,” he beckoned kindly. Previously there had been a few moments where she would let him pet her before her instincts took hold and she would run away. He loved how soft and fuzzy her coat was and really admired her beauty. His hopes were fulfilled this day when she came close, ate the biscuit from his hand, and licked up the crumbs. She then looked into his eyes and begged for another bite. With a smile, Nicholas began to comply when a broken twig sent the wolf scurrying away into the woods.
Tomte came around a tree and watched the gray and white flash dart past bushes. Nicholas turned to him with an expression of blame. “I thought Elves excelled at silence.”
“Nary a time when an Elf should frighten a beast that man could beguile,” Tomte said in amazement. He then remembered his berries, dropped a few into his mouth and tossed a few to Nicholas. He caught them and began to munch.
