by David Beers
Epilogue
The four Ministers sat around a single table.
Three of them had been in their positions over the past year, watching the Black’s rise and the near destruction of the world. Their names were known throughout Earth now, sung as heroes and to be remembered until the last human took their last breath. Those three had defeated the Black; those three had saved humanity.
There was a new Minister, the True Faith having raised someone to the High Priest post.
His head was shaved, his eyebrows missing, and to Yule he looked just as weird as the other two had.
He was just glad he didn’t have to learn a new name. High Priest would suffice.
The Pope understood he was looked at as a hero, but he also understood he didn’t deserve that mantle. He’d agreed to go along with it though, at least inside the other Ministries. There was rebuilding to tend to, and morale to raise. Heroes were needed, and Yule understood the four of them had to shoulder the burden.
He looked around the table at the other three Ministers. Connor, Trinant, and the new High Priest. Each of them had an assistant behind them, taking notes on what was said.
The meeting had already stretched for three days, and they were on their ninth hour of the fourth.
“The Prophet’s followers,” Trinant said. “They’re next on the agenda.”
“The True Faith’s feeling on this is simple. Every one of them dies.”
Yule looked at the High Priest; he’d heard other pronouncements like this over the past few days. The balance of power had shifted, most definitely, but the True Faith seemed to either not understand it, or be doing everything they could to fight against it … At least with how forcefully the man always spoke.
“We’re in agreement,” Connor said, speaking for the Constant.
Trinant looked at Yule.
Much of the past few days had been serious and painstaking work, but the Ministries found general alignment on the items discussed. Yet Yule knew this would be the first major issue viewed differently.
“The Old World will welcome the Black’s followers as lost brothers and sisters. We’re not going to imprison or harm any of them.”
“That--,” the High Priest started, his head shaking and his eyes wide. “That’s ludicrous.”
Yule met his gaze. The man was younger than anyone else at the table, lacking the flab and wrinkles of his predecessors.
“We’re also going to allow conversion for any of the Black’s followers in other Ministries. If you’re going to kill them, then we’re going to house them.”
“No--,” the High Priest said.
“Why?” Trinant interrupted.
Yule paused for a moment, thinking about how he wanted to answer, and the High Priest took the opportunity to jump back in.
“The Black travels through their blood. If they live, if they reproduce, the next time It comes, there will be that many more.”
Yule leaned back in his chair.
“That’s fine,” he said.
“What?” the High Priest asked. “It’s fine if the Black has more followers?”
“It is with me.”
“Why?” Trinant asked again.
“My faith doesn’t rely on the Black, and my God doesn’t serve It.”
“That’s rid--,” the High Priest tried interrupting.
“Hush your mouth, you fool,” Yule snapped, turning his head slowly, his lips thin and his jaw set. “You will tell me nothing about what is ridiculous and what is not. I was in that Globe with these other two, while you were sitting at home hoping that we invented a plan to save the world. Let me tell you, we had no plan. The three of us here? We didn’t know what to do at all.”
Yule looked at the other two, daring them to disagree. He saw only still faces. He turned back to the High Priest, his dreadful calm spilling out with each word.
“The world was lost. You realize that, don’t you? The world was lost, and everyone in it. We had no way to stop the Black or Its Prophet. And yet, everyone is still here. All three of us are sitting at this table talking, and for the most part, our Ministries are intact. We didn’t save anything. We simply allowed something greater than us to take over, allowed it to protect us. So, no, I’m not worried about how many followers the Black has if It ever returns. And no, I won’t murder those that followed it because I’m afraid of something that might happen. They are God’s children, the same as you and I, and I will treat them the same. If they wish to rejoin society, then they are welcome in the Old World.”
Yule finished and the room was silent.
A minute passed, maybe two, and then Trinant spoke.
“The One Path agrees with the Old World.”
Yule looked to Benten.
“It doesn’t seem smart,” he said.
Yule neither nodded nor shook his head.
“You’re right, though,” Benten continued. “We had lost. We did nothing, and could do nothing to stop it from happening.”
Again the two looked at each other.
“The Constant Ministry is in agreement with the Old World and the One Path.”
The three looked to the High Priest.
“You’re all mad,” he said. “… You’re all insane.”
And that was just fine with Yule. The faithful had always been looked at as mad, and he was proud to join their ranks.
Rhett looked at Rebecca’s back.
The moonlight streaked in through the room they shared, and it lay across her bare skin. Blankets covered her from the waist down, but her upper half was naked.
She lay on her stomach, her head turned away from him; she’d been asleep for the past hour, with Rhett lying next to her.
He’d sat up about ten minutes before and simply watched her sleep. The bruises he’d left were healed. The True Faith had fixed her face while they were detained. She looked as if Rhett had never tried to kill her.
Three months had passed since that day. They spent the first inside True Faith cells, though there’d been no torture this time. No First Priest trying to extract everything he could from them. For the most part, during that month, they’d been left alone.
Rhett had known he was going to his death. Known it every single day right up until the moment they opened his cell and told him he was free to leave.
There’d been documentation ready for him, and a ten minute conversation in which he was strongly encouraged to convert to the Old World’s Catholic Church.
Apparently, the True Faith really wanted to lose its parishioners--at least those who once followed the Prophet.
It didn’t take a lot of convincing for Rhett. He’d taken the documentation and a day later was flying on a transport to a world he’d only visited before. One he’d never liked. Foreign and primitive. Yet, Rhett would be able to live.
Rebecca had found him a month later.
She’d showed up at his small motel room.
He’d nearly shut the door in her face … but he hadn’t. For some reason, he kept it open and said, “What do you want?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. She looked him directly in the face, not hiding, not ashamed of anything.
The two stared at each other for long seconds, maybe even long minutes.
Finally Rhett said, “Do you want to come in?”
There had been no love in his voice, none in his heart. He’d let her in because …
We’re the lost.
That’s what he’d thought as she walked through his motel door.
We’re the lost and we’re never going to be found.
Rhett had hated her for the first month. Hated her with a fierceness that bordered on insanity, and each night, he’d thought he might kill her.
Eventually, the two of them started talking.
They spoke about Raylyn Brinson and Manor Reinheld. Brinson had reached out to Rebecca briefly. The two were going to give it a go, and Rebecca said she thought that was good. She wished them the best.
Rhett
wasn’t sure how to feel about it. He supposed if someone could find happiness in this world, then they should do what it took to keep it. He wasn’t sure Reinheld would ever find it, though. Not in Brinson, nor anything else.
The conversations between him and Rebecca always came back to that.
To the Prophet. David had been the centerpiece of their life, the only part that truly mattered. And now he was gone.
Rhett told her about how many times he’d put a pistol to the side of his head, nearly killing himself. She told him that she’d thought about doing it countless times. He asked her how that could be possible and she said that she never stopped loving David.
She told him about Rachel Veritros.
He told her he didn’t care.
She said she didn’t either. That it was over.
And eventually, late one night lying in two separate motel beds, they found themselves meeting in one. They made love and when it was over, Rhett lay next to her.
“I don’t know if I can ever stop hating you,” he’d said.
“I know.”
They’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
Now, lying on his side and staring at the curvature of her moonlit back, Rhett’s thoughts crept to David.
He didn’t know what had happened to the Prophet. Rebecca said perhaps he’d gone to the Unformed. Perhaps he was there with Veritros.
Rhett didn’t know. He only knew that David was gone, and that Rhett would never look upon the man again. They had lost--they were the lost--and now each of them were moving listlessly through the world.
Without purpose.
Rhett didn’t know what had happened to Christine. He hoped she was doing well, but he imagined she most likely had pulled a trigger against her own temple.
Rhett had the woman next to him and nothing more.
He was slowly growing comfortable with that.
It was painful, excruciatingly so, but if he was going to keep living, then he had to accept the truth. They had lost. They were lost. And they would be forever.
Rebecca was pregnant. She’d told him yesterday.
The blood of the Prophet still flowed. It would continue to spread. Perhaps one day the Unformed would return, and perhaps David’s blood could still help the Union take place.
Or, perhaps it had all been a ruse.
Perhaps Rebecca was right.
Rhett lay back down on the bed, his face toward the ceiling.
He was going to be a father. Life was continuing.
Maybe that would be enough.
Rhett and Rebecca would always be lost without David. He knew that, and whether she would ever admit it, she did too.
At least they could be lost together.
Daniel Sesam stood just outside of a construction site. It was large, the site, much larger than what would take place for the rebuilding of his own house.
He watched the men working in front of him, his hands in his pockets and the sun shining overhead.
Six months had passed since he spoke with his daughter and this was the first time he’d come to the Vatican.
The Pope had given him an open invite. The Pope had said he could live inside the City’s walls, rent free--forever. After six months, Daniel still didn’t have a home. He was living out of a hotel room close to where his business had once been.
The funds were available to build a house. The Pope’s offer was similarly gracious when it came to rebuilding: he could live anywhere he pleased, and cost was not a concern.
For Daniel, it sort of felt like a drunk person running you down in the road, and then bringing you gifts after.
He hadn’t touched the money, not outside of the necessities needed to live. He didn’t know if he ever would.
Daniel had received a letter from the Pope a week ago, and that’s what finally brought him to this construction site. It’d been handwritten and personally delivered, slipped under the door at his hotel.
Dear Daniel,
I hope this letter finds you well, as well as you can be. There is much I could share with you, and much I want to share with you, but I doubt you would find any of it interesting. As such, I will not waste your time.
I do believe I have one thing that you may enjoy knowing about, though as I age, I find myself knowing less and less what people enjoy (and I find myself caring less, too--but that’s only between you and I, you understand?).
Inside the Vatican, we’ve begun building the first monument in 100 years. It’s to be dedicated to your daughter, Daniel.
To Nicki.
I personally approved all the designs, and I’m including them with this letter. If for any reason you want them changed, please let me know, and I will immediately alter them to fit your prerogative. The only thing I won’t change is that the monument will be built.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the world praising me, as well as the other Ministers. Unfortunately, such things are necessary. However, I know the truth, as do you. Your daughter saved us. She saved humanity, and while I’m fine to let other Ministries use me as a savior, the Old World will know the truth.
That is why the monument must be built. As long as the Catholic Church stands, we will remember Nicki and the sacrifice she made.
The offers I’ve made to you all still stand, and will forever. I doubt you’ll ever take me up on them, and that’s okay. We are, after all, inside the Lord’s Will. I believe that more now than ever before.
I do hope you will come see the monument’s construction, and if you want to be there for the actual dedication, you know I will spare nothing to make it happen.
The world thanks you, Daniel. I thank you. I cannot take away your pain, nor your hate. Remember, though, when you think too poorly of mankind--remember what your daughter did. There is good in us yet, and God has decided that we should survive a little longer. I must believe that’s because He recognizes the good in us as well.
If He chose your daughter to save us, then she must have been the best among us. If God saw enough good, perhaps one day you can too.
Respectfully,
Yule
The Pope had signed nothing else, though the envelope did have the official Vatican Seal.
Daniel read the letter and then put it away. He didn’t look at it again, and for two weeks did nothing.
At the end of those two weeks, he booked a trip to the Vatican. He told no one he was coming. He did take a flight, and perhaps that might flag something inside the Vatican if they were watching his movements.
He didn’t care.
He looked over the monument plans as he flew, the ones that had been included in the letter.
Sitting next to someone on the plane, Daniel cried.
The monument was beautiful.
No one who looked on it could ever be confused about what it meant.
On one side was a massive orb. It would stretch 200 feet into the air, and its circumference would be the same.
The Black. The entity that came to destroy Earth.
And in front of it?
A life-size version of Nicki. Her chin tilted upward, and her eyes staring at the orb. Facing it down.
Now, Daniel stood in front of the construction site.
Even with all his hate for the Church, for the entire world, he couldn’t stare on the endeavor and hold anything but awe.
“Daniel?”
He heard his name and immediately knew the voice.
The sun was high above, but a chill ran down Daniel’s back. It was a voice he never wanted to hear again; though to be fair, he never wanted to hear from anyone associated with his daughter’s death.
Daniel didn’t turn around, but listened as the footsteps walked up to him.
Jackson Carriage, a psychopath, stood beside Daniel.
“I’ve come out here every day since it started,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d come.”
Daniel was quiet.
“They’re supposed to finish in three months. It’s going to be.” H
e paused, as if trying to find the right words. “… The Church has never done anything like it before.”
Daniel nodded. “I guess they didn’t do anything to you for all those murders over all those years?”
“The Pope is a gracious man.”
That was all he said and Daniel needed to know nothing else. The psychopath wasn’t wrong. Daniel knew of the official pronouncements. The Black’s followers were granted clemency. The Church’s stance on those with the sight had been reversed, and the Pope publicly condemned the actions of his predecessors.
The Pope is a gracious man.
Yes, but it changed nothing for Daniel. The Pope could give everything to everyone, but he could never give Nicki back.
“Does he know you’re here?” the psychopath asked.
Daniel shook his head. “No.”
“Are you going to see him?”
“No.”
The two were silent for a while, both simply watching the men in front of them work.
“I had a dream last night,” the psychopath said. “I thought it was just that, a dream, until I saw you standing out here. I thought it was just my head making stuff up.”
Daniel looked over to the thin man. The psychopath didn’t return his stare, but kept looking forward.
“I was out here, in the dream. The sun was above just like now. Everything was the same, except you weren’t standing next to me. I walked to the front of the orb right there, crossing through the barriers in front of us. No one said anything and I just kept walking. I knew where I wanted to go. I … A few months ago I actually was able to get my hands on the monument’s blueprints. So, I know how everything is going to look …”
The psychopath paused for a second. Daniel kept looking at him, understanding immediately that the man felt shame. Because even now, he couldn’t stay away from Daniel’s daughter.
“Nicki is going to stand in front of the orb, and in the dream, I knew that’s where I wanted to go. I wanted to stand where she would. So I walked out across the area there and went right to where she’ll be.” The psychopath gestured with his chin, raising it slightly toward the orb. “Do you see it?”
