by Dan O'Brien
“I have.”
“You have been betrayed in the past?”
“I suppose that is something that you can see, can’t you?”
The shadow dismissed the question with a wave of its hand. “What I can and cannot see does not concern you, son of Evan. You stand on the eve of a reckoning. Soon, a human will stand at the right hand of creation and make right what has been taken from you.”
“That is why I continue.”
“Then, you believe that the actions of one man, one human, can alter your fate?”
“I must,” I replied.
“Hope: the most human of qualities.” The tone was inquisitive, but mocking as well.
“Why do you use mind games?” I challenged.
“You are close now, close to an end for which you fought so hard.”
I remained silent. I wanted to hear what more it would say.
“What would you have me say?”
“The truth,” I responded far too quickly.
“Which version? The one that the Fallen fed you for decades? The one that your father told you as you fell asleep each night?”
I was almost angry now, but I could feel that I was close to the answers I sought. “I want the cold truth, the one that hurts.”
“There are many parts to those truths, many versions as well. People write truths, shape them from perspective. The history of your people is a scattered one; yet, had another taken their place it would have been written differently.”
“No games. You wish to surprise me with some ending that I did not see coming. Do so.”
The being could not smile. If it could express emotion, then surprise was what it would have felt at that moment. “I think perhaps we have underestimated you, son of Armen. You are far more perceptive than I would have believed.”
“Tell me my truth,” I replied evenly.
“Your truth. Yes, that is what it is called.”
The being called Culouth hesitated for a moment and then waved its hand. The cave around me disappeared and dissolved into a grand emerald field; the skies overhead were purple and bruised. The grass at my feet was moist. I was mesmerized for a moment by the environment and moved out toward a dark shape in the distance.
I looked around in surprise. The veiled being was no longer at my side as I moved toward a headstone. Bending close, I read the inscription:
HERE LIES THE SON OF ARMEN
THE LINE OF BELIEVERS ENDS WITH HIM
I fell back onto my hands and looked at the grave with wide eyes. I shook my head; the knowledge was heavy, daunting. A figure appeared to my left, but I didn’t pay it any attention. “This is my truth,” I spoke slowly.
“This is the truth of all Armen, son.” I knew the voice.
The world slowed as I looked up and saw the face of a ghost. The shaggy dark blonde hair had two braids on each side intertwined into the rest of the mass. His face was haggard. A jagged scar ran over his left eye; it was the puckered, angry scar that I remembered. His beard was thick and his cold blue eyes were much like my own. They were glossy now.
I used my hands to push myself up. “Father.”
“Your grandfather, Malkai, was a warrior unlike any I had ever seen. He traveled south as none had before, though not before fathering two children, myself and my older brother Dean. He fled the Fallen long before your birth. He traveled far past Duirin and beyond the southern peninsula to the deserts of the past.”
I was transfixed by his words, but I knew it could not be my father.
Looking me in the eyes, he nodded and then stared into the nothingness that surrounded us. “When he came back to the Fallen, he was no longer my father––nor was he much of a man any longer. He was a demi-god, a creation of energy itself. On that day, he fulfilled a prophecy that had been written down centuries after the Falling of Men.”
The visage of my father paused and looked at me.
I felt as if I was a child once more. “The way of Armen is death. This is the truth that you present to me, Culouth.”
The visage shuddered as if struck. A shadow passed over my father’s face; the cloak and dead white eyes returned. The emerald hills faded to darkness and the shadowed skies flashed with lightning and a symphony of thunder. “Death is your truth, Armen.”
I nodded absently and stumbled forward, my strength in this surreal world waning. As I fell to one knee, my chest tightened; my breath was caught in my chest. I gripped at my chest uselessly and fell onto my back, staring back up into the darkness. The world disappeared as quickly as it had come.
