The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  “Thank you for this honor,” Bernard said with a bow. Given all the people depending on him, he had to behave perfectly in this encounter. “The refugees of Mordan have elected me to speak for them. Forgive me if I do so in haste, for black wings approach.”

  “A priest of Ashhur, frightened by angels of Ashhur?” Loreina asked, her tone pleasant but her words biting. “Forgive me for my confusion, priest.”

  Bernard shook his head. “Those who chase us are condemned by Ashhur. He has cast them down, cursed their bodies, and declared them unworthy of his love. In response, they rage against those they were meant to protect. They hate us, and slaughter us. Please, Queen Loreina, grant us succor in Ker’s arms. Allow us safe passage. Whatever demands you make of us, they shall be met. Whatever work is required, we shall perform. I speak for a frightened, desperate people. No task shall be too great if it grants us freedom from those black wings.”

  A trumpet sounded before the Queen could answer. Fallen angels filled the sky above the refugees, just outside reach of any arrows from the soldiers lining the riverbank. One of them flew closer, and he bellowed out a message for all to hear.

  “Citizens of Paradise!” shouted the fallen angel. “I am Phanuel, obedient servant of King Azariah the Wise and Just. I come offering mercy. Whatever escape you think to find in Ker, it will elude you. Your souls are tarnished, but there is still time for things to be made right. Like frightened children you fled, but we are forgiving parents. Return with us to Mordeina. Come hear the words of your king. Adopt his wisdom in your heart, and together we shall recreate Paradise.”

  Bernard turned back to the queen, hoping that such a proclamation would finally convince her of their dire need. Loreina stared at the sky, much of the color drained from her face.

  “Do you hear it?” she asked softly. “That fanaticism? It was always there. We heard it in every speech and every sermon. We saw it in every white feather that conquered the skies. It brought you comfort, once. It has always brought us fear.”

  “Perhaps we were blind, but we see now, and we are equally afraid,” Bernard said, fighting off his panic. “Will you not extend us mercy?”

  “You made your bed,” she said. “Now lie in it.”

  “They will kill us, Queen Loreina. This offer is but a demand for slavery and torment. Please, I beg of you, grant us passage.”

  She pointed to Phanuel high up in the sky.

  “Mordan is the land of angels,” she said. “You asked them to rule over you, so let them rule. I shall watch over my people. You watch over yours. Good day, priest.”

  Bernard swallowed down what felt like an iron rod lodged into his throat.

  “So be it,” he whispered.

  He left the Bloodbrick. Within moments he was surrounded on all sides by refugees demanding answers. He walked for a few moments still, his mind racing, before he stopped to address the growing crowd.

  “No entrance,” Bernard told those who gathered to hear word of the queen’s decision. “I’m sorry. Even now, we are denied.”

  Twenty fallen angels, that was it. Compared to the hundreds of armed soldiers protecting the border, they were no threat. No challenge. Yet the queen still refused entry for the refugees. Even knowing the consequences, she would not relent. There was no possible way to interpret the message her decision sent. It was better these people were dead than living in her lands.

  It seemed in mere moments the entire crowd knew of the queen’s decree. Panic spread faster than an autumn wild fire. People rushed toward the bridge, but were easily held back by the barricades and the wall of shields. Both crowd and soldiers grew violent, and Bernard heard shoving and the rattle of armor. He dared not turn to look. Time was not on his side.

  “What shall be your answer?” Phanuel demanded of the Mordan refugees. “Ker is a land of sin, and will not accept those who have lived among the angels’ light. Come home. It is not too late to bend the knee. It is not too late to return to Paradise.”

  Paradise. The name sickened him. While not his favorite topic, Bernard had given sermons over the almost mystical kingdom of Paradise that had once existed (as a priest for over forty years, he’d given sermons over almost every topic imaginable). When Karak and Ashhur agreed to divide the world, the portion of the continent west of the Rigon had been named Paradise, and Ashhur himself had walked the lands, overseeing the steadily growing human civilization. It was a nation that knew no hunger, no sickness, no war.

  Many idolized that existence, but Bernard had not. Children, he had called the people living there in that time during his sermon. Denied all responsibility for their own lives, and separated from half the world living in Karak’s nation of Neldar. It was natural to yearn for that ease of life. One could not stumble on a path if one refused to take a single step. But it meant a faith weak and brittle. It meant a conviction as strong as a flower petal.

  Azariah wanted brittle people. The fallen angel sought a populace beaten, broken, and humiliated. His Three Laws existed only so he could prop himself up as the salvation for the hardships he himself inflicted. He would be the savior for the sins he alone defined.

  “Paradise,” Bernard said, stepping out from the frightened crowd surging toward the Bloodbrick. “Ashhur spare us from any such Paradise.”

  Alone, he walked to confront the threat to his people. In what felt like an age past, he had watched Harruq Tun go to do the same. The half-orc had knelt before a coming tide of evil, ready to give up his life in symbolic atonement for his sins that led to that evil’s arrival upon Dezrel in the first place. The sky had split, and angels had come to humanity’s aid in arguably the defining moment of their entire world. Nothing had ever been the same. Now the priest stared at those same angels, wielding spears and swords to threaten the lives they had been sent to save.

  “High Priest Bernard Ulath,” Phanuel said once the distance between them closed, and they could address one another without shouting. “Do you come to speak for the refugees?”

  “I do not,” he said.

  The fallen leader frowned. “Then you speak for yourself?”

  “No. Not myself.” He closed his eyes and felt something stirring in his heart. “I speak for the father.”

  The twenty fallen reacted as if he had threatened them. They drew their swords and lifted their spears. Their group spread out to surround him, ensuring danger lurked on all sides from the sky above. Bernard hardly gave them a thought. He felt tremendous power gathering deep inside his chest. He felt a presence he had known only fleetingly throughout his life, and he heard words that carried such weight it constricted his throat and burdened his heart.

  I give you my power, Ashhur’s voice thundered inside his skull. I give you a sword to craft with your rage. Wield it as you were destined, my child.

  “Your child,” Bernard whispered. He stared up at Phanuel as light began to shimmer across the priest’s hands, face, and robes, as if beneath his flesh and mortal garb he were a burning sun. “Tell me, Ashhur, what shall this child do with this power?”

  Have I not always sought the safety of my children? Have I not always sought their joy through grace and mercy? Slay those who would deny that to my beloved. Bring my fury to bear on the ruiners of life and light.

  “As you wish, my god.”

  He lifted his arms, and the sensation overwhelming him was unlike any he had experienced in his life. He felt no fear, no doubt. The sky itself swirled, and storm clouds blossomed where there had once been clear blue sky. No power, no previous prayer, compared to this presence. Ashhur was with him. The spears and swords of the fallen meant nothing, absolutely nothing. They could not pierce his skin blazing with light. They could not cut a shield woven from the very fabric of the divine. A few even tried, but the spears shattered to dust not even halfway toward reaching Bernard’s body.

  Yet amid this faith he did not feel peace. This was not the comfort he envisioned throughout his youth when he prayed for hi
s god to embrace him. The priest clenched his hands into fists. He felt raw, unbridled rage. Soon, the world would feel it, too.

  “We are all your children,” he said, and he turned to face the Bloodbrick. His words shook the land. “So let my children pass.”

  Bernard dropped his hand, and in doing so, dropped the thunder of the heavens upon Queen Loreina. It manifested in a gleaming bolt of lightning as wide as the Bloodbrick, its length reaching the very heavens. The meager barricades blasted apart like twigs. Soldiers collapsed, charred within their armor. The queen herself was the focal point, and he need not see her body to know she was obliterated to ash and bone. A tremendous boom followed, so deep the ground rattled and a long crack split through the center of the Bloodbrick.

  With the Queen dead, and the defenses on the Bloodbrick destroyed, the remaining forces were shocked into inaction. The Mordan refugees flooded across the bridge, seeming just as shocked and frightened by the display as those from Ker. Bernard turned away from them. He had to hold out hope that the better parts of humanity would win, and the people would be given homes. Perhaps, in the chaos after the queen’s death, they would not. It was out of Bernard’s hands. He could only pray for the best.

  The priest lifted his arms in prayer. The fallen bristled, fearing another tremendous display of holy magic. They need not be so afraid. Ashhur’s anger and disappointment swept about him. The granted power faded. No, not faded. Revoked. Bernard looked up at the fallen, and seeing their mixture of betrayal and confusion only confirmed to him he had made the right choice.

  “Your time is coming,” he told them. “But it won’t be by my hands. Flee home, fallen ones. Await your reckoning.”

  A few of the fallen discussed with one another, but there was little hope for them to stop the refugees. With the people rushing across the bridge, they were safely amid the army, whose size still vastly outnumbered the fallen. The people of Mordan were beyond their reach, at least for now.

  “Reckoning?” asked Phanuel, and he threw his spear. Its aim was not perfect. The sharpened point tore through Bernard’s robe and cut a gash into his side before burying into the dirt. Blood poured forth. Bernard let loose a fierce shock of pain.

  “I’m sorry, Ashhur,” he said as he dropped to his knees. Another spear sliced through the air, and unlike the first, its aim was true. It plunged into his stomach and exploded out his back. His vision turned white from the pain, and he gasped with lungs that were suddenly filled with blood instead of air. His hands clutched the shaft out of instinct. He lacked any strength to remove it. “This is where I belong.”

  Phanuel landed before him. His armor was bleached bone, his skin sickly gray. His dark hair was tied into a long ponytail that hung down to his waist. At one point it might have borne a healthy luster, but now it seemed permanently stained with flecks of blood.

  “Perhaps we will meet again,” the fallen leader said as he took hold of the spear lodged in Bernard’s chest. “In the lands of eternity, when mortal years have come and gone and the fruits of our labors have been made manifest. Let us see who Ashhur greets with open arms when Paradise is made righteous, and her people free from sin.”

  “Faith through bloodshed,” Bernard said, forcing out the words despite the tremendous pain. A dying smile lit his face. “Karak would be proud.”

  Those words stung exactly as he had hoped.

  “Damn you,” Phanuel said. “Damn you, and damn your people.”

  He ripped out the spear, twirled it above him, and then slammed the sharpened tip straight into Bernard’s forehead. The last thing he saw was the fury in the eyes of an angel, and then the gates of the Golden Eternity opened, and he heard the sound of bells.

  12

  “And you are certain he has not been harmed?” Azariah asked as he and Ezekai flew over Mordeina, the city a gray blur beneath them in the morning fog.

  “I’m capable of following orders,” Ezekai responded gruffly. “Though I wonder if you should wait for a greater offense.”

  “All offenses against the divine are great enough to deserve reciprocation.” He hid a grimace. “And after the humiliation during the reveal of the Three Laws, we must doubly make amends.”

  Their destination neared, a wide crossroads in the southern portion of the city. Undead soldiers formed an outer ring surrounding the people who’d been forced into attendance. A tall signpost marked the crossroad’s center. Two fallen stood guard over a young man tied to the base of the post. He had been stripped naked, as requested by Azariah when he’d been informed of the man’s capture. Azariah looped twice overhead and then landed atop the post so all would be forced to look up at his presence.

  “Kneel before your King!” Ezekai bellowed. The crowd of hundreds quickly dropped to the ground in supplication. That it had to be demanded irked Azariah, but what was he to expect from such rebellious people? If humanity learned easily, and obeyed promptly, then the angels would never have appeared on Dezrel in the first place.

  “Children of Paradise!” Azariah shouted. “Lift your eyes to the heavens. Lift your eyes to me. I would have you listen. I would have you learn.”

  It seemed every other day brought a new teaching moment for the ignorant humans, but Azariah was determined to remain stubbornly hopeful. Perfection would not be easily reached, especially not when starting with so flawed a base as an entire race of beings created by a fractured Ashhur and Karak.

  Speaking of flawed, he turned his attention to the man tied to the post. He had the scrawny yet muscular look of a feral cat. His long red hair was matted to the sides of his face; blood leaked from a cut across his forehead. More blood dripped from his split lip, glistening in his short beard.

  “Fuck him and fuck his I’ll have you learn bullshit!” the man shouted. “That asshole doesn’t deserve to lick the balls of a—”

  Ezekai’s fist ended the insult before he could finish. Azariah crossed his arms, holding back a sigh. This man was trying to stir the fallen king’s emotions, but his endeavor was futile. Insults and crude language would never upset Azariah. A man’s inability to lead a life worthy of the eternal soul granted to him, on the other hand, did. Such a waste of a divine gift.

  “Tell me, children, what is the new First Law your king has decreed?” Azariah asked the crowd. The answers came uneven but mostly in unison.

  “Worship Ashhur for his grace and forgiveness, and as messenger for the kindness you are to show others.”

  “Kindness?” the bound man spat through blood-caked teeth. He laughed as if losing his sanity. “Kindness!”

  Azariah hopped from the top of the pole, wings fluttering as he glided to a stand before his prisoner.

  “Children, what is the Second Law?” he asked, his back to them.

  “Worship Karak for his judgment and wisdom, and as a model for the firm hand you need to reach perfection.”

  A grim smile crossed the prisoner’s face. This was the law the man had broken, and they both knew it.

  “What is your name, child?” Azariah asked.

  “Lazu. And I ain’t no child, just like you ain’t no king.”

  This was hardly the first time Azariah had heard this sentiment, but it was one that needed to be eradicated. Humans clung to their old structures with a desperate strength. It was one of the reasons he wished to see Gregory Copernus hung from the city gates. There would be no human kings or princes, not for the rest of eternity. Azariah was king, and he would not age, nor relinquish his rule until the gods and goddess acknowledged his works. The children of Paradise needed to learn and accept this. Doubly so given the trials that might soon follow, with Ahaesarus’s gathered army making its way toward the city.

  “Shall you tell the people your crime, Lazu, or shall I?”

  The man sagged forward as if he wished to whisper to Azariah a secret. The ropes holding him groaned at the strain.

  “You want them all to know?” he asked. “You want them to hear why yo
u’ve stripped me naked, beaten me bloody, and tied me to a post to be mocked and laughed at? Fine. You hear me, you cowards sitting there doing nothing? You hear me? My crime, my unforgivable crime, was to curse Karak’s name when demanded I pray those three damn laws. Fuck Karak, I said, and now I’m tied. And I’ll say it again. Fuck Karak. Fuck Karak, fuck the fucking prick so fucking har – ”

  Another fist shut him up. The crowd grumbled. As Ezekai had mentioned, it was a rather paltry crime given humanity’s great breadth of sins and vices. But these were the Three Laws, the new guiding principles for Paradise. To disregard them so callously, and to a fallen’s face no less, could not be allowed. If this was what the man said publicly, what did he say privately to his friends and family? The health of a crop starts deep in the soil where the sun does not always shine, after all.

  “The brother gods, working in necessary and blessed union, created all of humanity from the clay of the Rigon,” Azariah said, addressing the crowd as much as he did Lazu. “You would curse the name of your creator? You would deny him his rightfully deserved prayer?”

  Lazu spat out another glob of blood. His grin widened, and he lunged against his restraints.

  “Have you lost your damn minds? You fought Karak’s army. How could you force us to pray to that bastard?”

  Now this was a much more serious problem. Azariah saw one of the fallen nearby flinch as if he’d been struck. All of the angels were former Wardens who had served Ashhur in the original days of Paradise, and upon being gifted wings in the Golden Eternity, they had returned to Dezrel hundreds of years later to protect Mordeina from an army led by Karak’s infamous prophet, Velixar. But Velixar had not been alone...

  “We fought against an army from another world!” Azariah shouted. “We fought the war demons of Thulos, to whom Karak’s treacherous prophet had sworn allegiance in his thirst for power. Just as we now fight Ahaesarus and his rogue band, who would seek to keep you locked in sin, forever begging to Ashhur, and Ashhur alone, for mercy and forgiveness. Dezrel is a world split, my children! It is split down the middle by the Rigon, it is split into two great kingdoms, with two brother gods. Reunion must come. Atonement must be made. These divisions, they must end, and the wisdom of both gods must be acknowledged, lest we wander lost in the wilderness for centuries to come.”