Convergence (The Dragon Within Saga Book 1)

by Roberto Vecchi

  This vow materialized when, after a particularly tremendous fictitious battle organized by the younger of the two boys (who was always the target), the beast removed the privilege of food for this day’s dinner, and all meals the next day stating that they had spent too much time playing and had not completed their daily tasks with the excellence he demanded. And because he was trying to raise them to be productive adults, they needed to be taught a lesson to remind them of their failure and that everything received must be earned.

  When hearing this injustice, the young boy felt well up inside him a pool of confidence and strength he had felt only once before. The nudging was back and bidding him to follow its leading as a blind man follows a trained dog while crossing the street. Just as the dog remains calm through the uncertainty of the blind man, so too did this urge radiate calm in the uncertainty of his decision. He tried to ignore the nudging. He tried to progress with his path toward his room without further incident, yet all the while he could feel it grow and join rhythm with his beating heart. Pulsing in perfect harmony, it spread to his veins and seeped ever closer to his mind. So great was its force that he stumbled into the wall barely catching himself and preventing a humiliating plunge into the floor.

  “Still that scared of me boy that my voice makes you stumble?” said the beast with an audible tone of superiority and humor.

  As if struck through his conscious mind and piercing directly into his subconscious, he was able to right all balance and stand completely still while his back still faced the beast. Something was growing.

  “Well boy? Have I paralyzed you with fear?” again the booming, humored voice issued a direct challenge in front of all of his new friends.

  There was still no change in the young boy’s posture except for a slight raising of his chin to level his head. Something was indeed growing within. There was no longer a pulsing nudge, because in this moment, he yielded to it. He allowed himself to be lead down a path whose end he could not see, let alone possess any knowledge of. He was going to follow the nudging’s current to whatever shore he landed upon. As such, the pulse allowed him to issue one word in response. From his lips emerged a slow, quiet and calm single word, “No.” There was no malice in his voice, or raised emotions of any kind. It was succinct, controlled, and definitive. He was not afraid.

  “Wha…What did you say?” The beast glared hard at his back as if trying to look through him to his eyes. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

  “No.” Again, the pulling led him to this single ending word.

  The beast instantly pounced. In a blinding step much faster than his size would seem to have allowed, the owner was upon him. Yet before contact was made, the boy stepped hard around and spun with one hand extended. At the very last second, the boy whipped his extended hand back allowing the momentum to flourish within his trailing hand aimed directly at the beast’s abdomen. The force of the blow was enough to stop the raging beast in his tracks, but greater yet, it seemed to have stopped time itself. There was an audible and collective gasp from the rest of the children followed by a silence that hung in the air as if a strand of divine rope suspending the world itself was cut and they were all waiting for the inevitable plummet when all things would end.

  Stunned were both combatants, and both for the same reason. Never before had anyone stood up to the beast either verbally or physically, and the boy had managed to do both in the span of a few heartbeats. As if jolted back to reality by the understanding of what he had done, the boy lost his centered direction and felt the link to his inner nudge fade rapidly away. But the beast had no such pause. He unleashed a crushing strike to the boy’s stomach that dropped him like a rock. Gasping for breath, the boy was scooped up by the beast and thrown through the door into the sleeping chambers.

  “No food for you for a week! You get water rations only! All of you other dorshlings had better be in bed before I come back or it will be the same for you!” And he plunged through the front door almost blasting it off its hinges with the force of his exit.

  When he was able to breathe again, he understood his act of defiance had done two things in addition to reducing his food supply. Firstly, it had established a reverential awe from the other children and garnished instant respect; secondly, and infinitely more importantly, he felt the first bonds of the Dark Link. Though he did not understand it at the time, he had taken his first step down a path foretold by the oldest and darkest of powers imbedded in the world.

  During the following days, the beast left him alone, in no small portion to the unwillingly acknowledged respect the beast now had for him. True, this respect extended only so far as The Beast was never directly challenged again, but there was still a portion of respect nonetheless. As such, his friend was able to visit him and secretly deliver food left over from his dinner. Although his friend was hungry, he was willing to sacrifice some of what he had for the one who finally stood up to The Beast. And while the beast’s attention was somewhere else, his friend acted.

  This plan would have worked well had it not been for the prying eyes of one of the young girls in the orphanage who, in an attempt to seek favor from her horrible host, told him everything. But the owner did not erupt at the boys immediately. He waited, he watched and he planned. When the boys had believed they had gotten away with their plot, he launched his attack. And it was vicious.

  Months after the rationing of food, the beast walked quietly into their room while they slept. He carried with him only three objects, rope, a knife, and his hate. He weaved the rope around the bed of the younger boy several times and slowly began tightening it. Once he was satisfied that there was no way the younger boy would escape his bonds, he turned his imposing physical attention toward the older boy. Hanging over the older boy like a snake poised to strike, he spoke softly to the younger boy urging him to wake. As the younger boy’s eyes fluttered signaling his return to consciousness, the beast pierced the left eye of the still sleeping older boy with a precise and measured stab using his small and slender filleting knife. Evoking a deathly hideous cry, the older boy woke up in a mixed state of complete confusion and utter pain. He instinctively gripped his left eye socket, scurried to the head of his bead, and continued the blood-filled, painfully piercing banshee wailing.

  Looking straight at the bound and now crying younger boy, the owner threatened him with the filleting knife. Instructing him that if he did not stop his crying, he was going to repeat on him what he was in the process of doing to the older boy. Still the level of hideous sound produced by the older boy was growing to a fevered pitch where nothing else was noticeable. Clearly the younger boy had not heard the beast because his attention was fully focused upon his friend and the freely flowing stream of blood from under his clenched fingers.

  “Shut up!” said the beast as he turned toward the older boy. “Shut up!”

  Again he turned his attention toward the small frame who was now frantically trying to break free of his bonds, “I said if you don’t stop your crying, I will slice your eyes too!”

  But the horrific sounds produced by both boys, one propelled by the mixed confusion of pain and fear, and the other by strictly fear, were too intense to be pierced by even the bellowing howls of a pack of wolves let alone the rampant screaming of one man. Then, in one motion, the symphony of agony reached is crescendo as the owner spun around and knocked the older boy in the temple with the butt of his knife rendering him completely silent and utterly motionless, “There! That will keep you quiet!”

  What a waste he thought as he momentarily broke from his memory to fully contemplate the wastefulness of the owner. He took a potentially beautiful moment filled with every opportunity to extract a totality of fear, pain, and hopelessness from two young boys and wasted it because he could not control the anger within. It would have been much more effective indeed, if he had exacted his revenge on the two young boys, one of whom was himself, over a prolonged duration of time instead of resulting to
the brutish and ultimately weak display of losing control ending the potential gluttony of fear and pain in one abrupt stroke of animalistic brutality.

  This was the second horrific event that should have crippled the psyche of his young and fragile mind, yet it did not; not even after he was forced to watch the effects of that terrible night unfold upon his friend for months and years to come. Death would have been kinder for both boys, but none came. Instead his friend was fated to live out his days while in bed and unable to get up. Oh sure, his friend tried to sit up in bed; and on one occasion, he tried to rise on his own, but both instances met with the same conclusion. The resulting lack of muscular control from the blow to his temple rendered his opposite side effectively useless, and he tumbled to the ground, thus ending their adventures. There would be no more fantastic, orphanage consuming battles, no more grandiose struggles between Good and Evil, and most tragically, no more evolution from troubled child to thriving boy.

  But where his normal, childhood activities ended, his life truly began. His life of ashes and soot was being built upon the all-consuming fires of hate, anger, blame, and loss. In this instance, much like its predecessor, the result produced from a simple and pure act of selfless kindness was nothing short of damning. How could acts of goodness pull forth such wanton wills for destruction? How could his life and very existence result in nothing but pain for those whose only attempt was to create something good for him?

  There are several moments in our lives when our working understanding of how the mechanics of existence function solidify their develop. These moments work to limit our choices and actions to those fitting within the equation we have constructed. Any other actions or choices that do not fit within its range of possible inclusions, we discard as unsolvable. This was one such moment for him. Constructed with the variables of pain, tears, and hopelessness, his equation was quickly progressing to the revelation of a single and terrible constant – worthlessness. For how can something worth anything result in the tragic conditions of his life and the lives of those around him? Unable to return a solution from his equation except that which included his worthlessness, he devolved into a state of complete isolation as a means to protect himself from the inevitable conclusion of pain resulting from any and every attachment.

  A slight smile appeared upon his lips as he affectionately remembered what he later understood to be the progression of his master’s influence. Much later in life and only after he had given himself over to the complete devotional dark worship, his master revealed to him that all of these things were orchestrated under the ever present baton of his dark conductor. And that was the reason for his smile. Even while he was just a child, his importance to his master was such that his life, every aspect of it, was planned to raise him to his master’s side. All the pain he had undergone as a child which, when compared to the torture of his training directly under his liege, was wrought with flowers and sweets, had been for a reason. How masterfully had the first two of his prominent memories been implemented to prepare him for his third, and final. For upon the third rested the completion of his isolation and resulting dependency upon his lord for all things. As the Dark Link reached the culmination of power from his meditative and motionless dance through time, he faded, once again, into the recesses of his awful, yet beautiful childhood.

  Though in the time after the terrible night he actively sought isolation from all people, he could do so only temporarily, because there exists a condition of humanity dependent upon our interaction with others. We need acceptance. And acceptance can be developed only when isolation is broken. But so strong was his determination to remain solid in his conclusion that he must remain alone, he did not find this acceptance from another person.

  Most of his days were now spent, when not doing the owner’s bidding, by taking long walks through the same path of town and surrounding landscape. On these walks, he would always pass by the shop where he had first met the puppy, and first followed his now crippled friend. As time progressed, though his stature remained small and sickly thin, the puppy had grown into a robust and healthy specimen. On each occasion, he had wanted to stop and engage the puppy, now fully grown, and return to what he had momentarily felt. But that time had ended in the only conclusion possible. And not wanting to create another damaged vessel from the wrath of the beast, he subdued his desire to connect, and walked past. With each passing glance, he felt the blood of hope fueling his heart of desire to become what he was not, slowly leak out from the still open wounds of his past.

  Day after day, week after week, month after month, he would walk past this shop of hope and redemption until there was no hope left. When the air reflected the chill within the substance of his being, he stopped glancing. During this time, The Beast left him largely along, not because of any sentiment emanating from that which no sentiment could, but because he, the boy, did nothing to warrant a response. Hence, The Beast believed him to be broken. And once something was broken, it lost his interest. Like The Beast, but for not the same reasons, the other children left him largely alone as well. But it was not always like this. In the beginning weeks following his momentary but momentous physical defiance, the children, especially those younger than he, actively sought out his inclusion in everything they did. Yet after repeated denials, the children learned not to ask. We do not run toward that which we perceive as negatively inevitable.

  All the while his need for acceptance was mounting, a growing demand of isolation was still held behind the constant in his twisted equation of life. Such as this was, he continued with his down trodden walks reflected by the sinking resignation of both his posture and his lack of surrounding awareness. Jolted out of this malaise by the sound of a distinctly animalistic bark, he veered from his normally declined head and looked up. Standing in front of him, with its head tilted slightly to the side, as if expecting a response in kind, was the dog.

  After a short and involuntary pause, he tried to walk around it, but the dog would not allow him passage. As if it knew which way he was going to attempt his evasive steps, it would step in the same direction; however, it did so not in a guarding fashion as if preventing passage would fulfill the training and subsequent instruction of its owner, rather in a manner suggesting play. This dance of avoidance and its resulting failure continued a few times until the boy spoke (a rarity indeed) in short, hushed tones, “Go on. Get.” To which the dog just stopped and inclined his head slightly to the side, this time accompanied by a slight wagging of its tail.

  “What? Do not look at me like that you stupid dog,” he said in hushed tones. Again, the only response from the persistent animal was the increasingly familiar head tilt and tail wag.

  “Can you just leave me alone?” said the boy with increased exasperation. He tried to bypass the animal again, this time, by faking to the right and spinning to the left. In a grossly inadequate approximation of his terrain during the spinning portion of his planned evasion, the boy failed to see a carriage rut and stepped squarely in its center. The resulting rolling of his ankle combined with his already under developed physicality produced three additional off-balance steps ending in a spread eagle on the ground.

  Though physically unharmed, he was still injured. “Stupid Dog! Why can you not just leave me alone like everyone else?” He shouted in no particular direction. When he found the animal with his stare, it was again mimicking the perplexed expression of a slight head tilt. The boy, pausing for a moment, began to truly look at the dog. Standing quietly, but firmly, the dog possessed both poise and strength. He could see the musculature beneath the short, all black fur. While he was unwillingly seated on the ground, the dog’s head topped his. Its coat of fur possessed a faint sheen to it and was reflecting part of the day’s light. Aside from the physical attributes, it seemed to radiate an inward innocence and peace. As if being what it was, a simple dog, was utterly enough for it to progress through its life without a single complaint regarding its placement within. And quite c
learly, this dog was not to be denied.

  “Fine,” he said as he mounted his feet. “You can come. But I am not doing anything fun. I am only walking around.” And with this invitation, the dog broke its stoic stance and fully wagged its tail.

  That day, they walked, they ran, they played, they bonded, and he began to allow another attachment to form. This sequence of events continued for a short time until the weather broke allowing the days to progress later and later before being forced to return to their respective homes by nightfall. Each time the two met and parted, and in no small portion because of fear, he would try to hide his companionship with the dog. Believing he was successful, he felt a lull set in their actions the way a slow, melodic rhythm from one of the traveling bards might produce a lull in the night’s conversation between two old friends who need not speak to communicate.

  Within his dark meditation, he felt his awe and wonderment at his master’s flawless planning take hold of his focus. How delicious was his progression at the whim and will of his Dark Lord. All things in his childhood had led to this exact moment in time. The memory to end all memories of his time at the orphanage was quickly being recalled to crystal clear remembrance. To fully appreciate what transpired next, he allowed himself to access part of his power in an effort to exponentially increase each and every detail. Once satisfied with the influx of energy, he deepened his trancelike state and became completely consumed.