The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  “Look left,” Tarlak said after half an hour. Sweat covered his brow and red veins marked his eyes. “Now right.”

  Qurrah did as he was told. He felt weirdly large and bloated. His every movement was clumsy. Despite looking like his brother, he certainly felt no stronger.

  “All good?” Qurrah asked, and hearing the voice of his brother come out of his mouth instilled him with a sense of vertigo.

  “All good,” Tarlak said. “But you’ll need to talk and act like Harruq to make this work. And whatever you do, don’t get into any sort of real fight. Besides having exactly zero training, all that muscle I packed onto you is very much for show. Thank goodness we’re doing this at night. I don’t know if you’d hold up to close scrutiny during the day.”

  “We need only fool the fallen angel for a moment,” Qurrah said. He grunted, then grinned at his brother. “Now get naked, dumb-ass, I need to look like ya.”

  Harruq started undoing the buckles of his leather armor. “I feel like I should be insulted.”

  “I feel like I should be insulted,” Qurrah imitated, doing his best to match the inflections. Weird as it was, it did feel nice having his voice deep and baritone compared to his usual rasp.

  Harruq stripped down to his underclothes, and Qurrah did likewise. Aurelia helped them both, tweaking the buckles and shifting armor about to better hide the subtle differences between their bodies. The elf had remained oddly quiet during the entire process. Qurrah knew his brother’s opinion on the matter, but what of hers? The same went for Jerico, who had been even quitter. His attention, however, was far from the matter at hand. The events at the Citadel had broken him, of that Qurrah was certain. The man’s gaze was locked on the roaring campfire that gave them light, and they rarely left its flicker.

  “Last, but not least,” Aurelia said, taking Harruq’s sword belt with Salvation and Condemnation still sheathed and holding it before her. “Whatever you do, don’t draw them. Azariah’s clever enough to notice the difference between a master wielding a blade and a novice.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Qurrah said.

  “Be gruffer,” she continued as she tightened the buckle. “Especially right now. You’re stressed and angry. Act like ripping Azariah’s head off is the only thing you want to do, and everything else is a maddening compromise.”

  “Not much of an act,” Harruq grumbled, and Qurrah grumbled likewise.

  When the sword was fully buckled, he expected Aurelia to pull away, but instead she leaned in, her face shockingly close. Her walnut-colored eyes bored into his, unblinking, unflinching. He felt the raw force of her personality, so similar to Tessanna’s in that regard. It made her seem all that more beautiful, and all that more terrifying.

  “The life of my daughter is in your hands,” she said. “I give you my heart for this sacrifice, but do not falter, and do not lose confidence. This is your plan. Make it work.”

  Qurrah curled his lips into that very familiar, cocky grin of his brother.

  “I got this,” he said.

  Aurelia wrapped her arms about him for one final embrace.

  “I pray you do,” she whispered.

  There would be no goodbye hugs from Tarlak, not that Qurrah blamed him. Guilt for Delysia’s death hung fresh in Qurrah’s mind, and it wouldn’t surprise him if the wizard held onto that bitterness forever. That was fine, and well-deserved. He had killed the man’s sister, after all. Qurrah could only even so many different scales. If he tried to make up the grand weight of his sins upon the entire world, there would never be an end. He could spend an eternity performing good deeds and sacrifices and hardly make a dent compared to the destruction he helped unleash by bringing the war god Thulos into the land of Dezrel.

  Instead, Qurrah turned his attention to Harruq and accepted the hug he knew would be coming.

  “This is so damn weird,” Harruq said. He laughed despite a fresh wave of tears beginning to flow. “Thank you, Qurrah, thanks a million. Now go get my daughter back.”

  They separated. Aurelia closed her eyes a moment to locate the angel Ezekai, then created rip a blue portal out of thin air. Jerico adjusted his sword and shield and stepped through, for they would not perform any trade until they knew for certain the fallen king would keep his word.

  “Will Tessanna not come to say goodbye?” Aurelia asked as they waited.

  Qurrah shook his head. “She’s with me even now.”

  Jerico returned from the portal and crooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  “The bastard is telling the truth,” he said. “Harruq in exchange for the children.”

  “Then we best not delay,” Aurelia said. She took Qurrah’s hand, squeezed it tightly, and together they walked into the portal. Qurrah felt the now-familiar passage of distance despite seemingly covering only a single step. The world about him changed, and suddenly he stood in a scattered copse of trees. Fallen angels surrounded them, at least fifty in number. Qurrah fought off his initial response, instead hyper-focusing on how his brother might react. Disgust at the angels. Cocky confidence. And rage. So much rage.

  “You fucking wretch,” Qurrah said in Harruq’s voice. “I’m here, now let the children go.”

  The king of the fallen’s face lit up with obvious amusement, implying that Qurrah had nailed the intonation perfectly.

  As the meeting progressed, Qurrah’s confidence in his scheme grew. He endured the humiliations. He endured the scrutiny. When Azariah cast a spell to detect and banish illusions, he had to stop himself from grinning. Azaria relied too much on magic, not enough on common sense. The idea of asking Qurrah questions that only Harruq might know didn’t even occur to him. Granted, given their lifetime spent mostly together, Qurrah expected he was one of very few alive who could manage such a test, hence why he had been adamant he take Harruq’s spot. Still, he felt mild disappointment that he had not the chance to further outwit the arrogant bastard.

  What he was not amused by was the sudden demand to kneel. The idea of dying on his knees, in worship of the fallen king, filled his stomach with bile. He felt confident his brother would act the same.

  “I will not die kneeling,” he said, and he meant it. Azariah’s shock at being denied made it that much easier to stick to that conviction, and thankfully Aurelia backed him up when the fallen resorted to bluster. Qurrah stood tall, enduring the sickness and madness that was Azariah’s mind. He cursed and swore when the fallen demanded Aubrienna watch her father’s death.

  She’ll be fine, he told himself. She’ll go home through that portal, she’ll see her real father, and she’ll be comforted. She’ll recover. She’s strong, just like her parents.

  Even more darkly amusing was when Azariah tried to berate and belittle him. Qurrah held no delusions to his nobility. He was not the real Godslayer, but Azariah’s claim that his act meant nothing, that it represented the failure of his life, only made him pity the wretch that this once noble Warden of humanity had become.

  “The life I go to next is not the one I deserve,” Qurrah softly whispered, and he spoke not with his brother’s tone, nor his brashness; only his own pure honesty. “But of my life, and my many sins, I know this here and now is the one act which atones for it all.”

  He felt Tessanna’s presence lurking like a shadow cast from a bird flying high above. She was watching and listening from afar with her magic. It was the best she could do, and it made him ache that he could not touch her one last time. He wanted to run his fingers along the scars on her arms. He wanted to feel her long dark hair settle across his chest. He wanted to hear her lovely voice sing a random song from her childhood. He wanted to embrace her, love her, convince her of how she was everything to him, and would always be.

  The fallen angel’s sword cut across his throat.

  Qurrah, Tessanna’s alarmed voice echoed in his mind. He felt her subdued panic, the overwhelming sorrow and defeat, and wished yet again he could embrace her. Qurrah, I love you, I love
you, I do, I swear...

  He collapsed to his knees, clutching his neck. Blood spurted between his fingers. His mind flashed to when he had died in such a similar way, his throat cut by Tessanna’s hand, a hand forced into obedience by Karak’s prophet. He’d bled out while his lover watched in horror, but this was different somehow. This wasn’t a waste. It wasn’t an end. Good would come of this, his darkening mind truly believed, and he clung to that thought as an airy lightness pushed away his pain.

  “But a moment,” he told Tess. “I leave...but a moment...”

  It was not the first time Qurrah had felt his life leave him, his blood bleeding out, and his soul depart. He gasped, but air would not come. His hands sought movement, reaching for an image of Tessanna’s face brightening the midnight sky. No movement followed.

  Not the first.

  Darkness now, faded light, but there shone a strange beacon high above. Eternity awaited.

  Not the first.

  But the last.

  “No!” Azariah screamed. He withdrew his hand from the lie that was Harruq Tun’s body. He stood alone in the copse of trees, his every limb shaking. His jagged teeth clenched so tightly together the enamel cracked and blood poured from his mouth. A storm of emotions blasted through him. He’d been fooled. Lied to. Deceived.

  The Godslayer lived.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said to the flames growing in his palms. “It doesn’t matter! The goddess taunts me with deception. This world is mine. The souls of its denizens, they need us, need me. I will save Dezrel. Do you hear me, Karak? Do you hear me, Ashhur? These souls will be saved.”

  He cast fire across the body, burning the manipulated mortal flesh of Qurrah Tun. He charred it to bone, and if he could shatter those bones to powder, he would have. Let nothing remain of the great betrayer. Scatter his every memory to the wind.

  “Come tomorrow, we end this conflict,” he raged. “We end the last war. We fight the last battle. Dezrel shall know peace, even if every last wretched, sinful life must be chained or slain.”

  He spread his wings and took flight, but he took no comfort in his proclamation. It was an empty promise. Nothing could shake the seed of doubt now embedded in his breast. Azariah’s future was still uncertain. His life was once again in danger.

  The Godslayer lived.

  20

  Harruq walked through the quiet forest. He had no sound nor light to guide him, but he found Tessanna easily. Her pain was a torch radiating heat, summoning him.

  She sat on a log, knees curled up to her chest and face buried in her arms. Moonlight shone softly upon her, casting a beautiful reflection off her long dark hair, yet that same moonlight made the many crisscrossing scars upon her arms stand out in stark contrast.

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” he said, and sat down beside her. She seemed tiny compared to him. He was a giant collection of muscle and armor, she a frail, bone-thin woman with pale skin and a doll’s eyes. Yet this was a woman who could break the world if given the chance. He’d seen her wings. He’d felt her anger. And while he’d spent the past hour mourning with his wife, Tessanna had fled to the forest for solitude.

  “Yet I am alone,” she said, not looking at him when she spoke. “I’ll forever be alone. It was my curse from the moment I was born. Even in birth, I slew the human mother who might have raised and loved me. It’s all I’m to have, all Mother will grant me. No children of my own. No life to live. Only abuse, and slaughter, and a brief reprieve of love immediately taken because Qurrah was so damn stupid and foolish and wonderful.”

  “That’s not true,” Harruq said. He wished he was better at these sorts of things. Qurrah was always more…

  Fuck. Harruq fought off a wave of sorrow. Qurrah wasn’t anything anymore. He wasn’t better or worse. So much of Harruq’s identity had been formed in his own mind as a contrast to the faults and strengths of his twin brother. On his own, who was he? Could he be anything?

  “I heard his final words,” she said. “But a moment, he said. I leave but a moment. He knew. He remembered. When Velixar brought him back that first time, when he gave him a rotted, dead body he could safely command, I made Qurrah promise me. Never leave me, I begged him. Never leave me again. And then he…and then he…and then he did anyway. He’s left me, and this time I have no body to bring back. But a moment, he says. But a moment, as if each and every one of these moments isn’t a horrid lifetime.”

  By her words, by her tone, Harruq might have thought her sobbing. Yet she appeared cold and dead, as if she were but a talking statue.

  “I’m sorry,” Harruq said after an uncomfortable pause. “I wish I could offer you something better. We...we obviously didn’t always get along, nor see things the same way, but I never stopped loving him. You’ll never stop loving him either, I know that for sure. If it helps, I want you to know we’re here if you need us. Or if you don’t want to be alone. At the least, I bet Aubrienna would be happy for a visit with her aunt. She’s always had a soft spot for you.”

  Tessanna gently bobbed her head up and down, but still wouldn’t look at him. He couldn’t begin to guess the thoughts running through that jumbled mind of hers. When she’d first entered their lives, she’d described her mind as a broken mirror, full of many jagged pieces, shards of identities. Over the years, she’d seemingly become better, more whole. Would she remain so? She had loved his brother so deeply. Qurrah and Tess had needed each other so much more desperately than he’d ever needed Aurelia.

  The log groaned as Harruq started to stand.

  “Why don’t you hate me?” Tessanna asked. Her voice was so perfectly calm. She might as well have been asking why the night was dark or why a man wore a brown shirt instead of gray. “You have every reason, yet you don’t. Why not? Why can’t you?”

  There was a time when he had hated her. A single, horrid moment when he’d lifted Aullienna’s cold body from the stream. That tiny span of seconds, lasting no longer than a single heartbeat, had been permanently etched into his memories, forever defining him. The details still hadn’t faded, and likely never would. He still remembered the sobbing, sputtering words he’d screamed. The sound Aully’s wet hair made as it slapped across her back upon pulling her from the water. The feel of her clammy skin as he brushed her face. The blue of her lips. The lifeless, sightless gaze of her open eyes.

  It took a monumental effort to pull his mind from those dark thoughts. “I can’t be one to judge,” he said. “I murdered children to aid my brother, after all.”

  “You don’t hate me? Not even for Delysia? I demanded he take her life. I forced him to prove he was the monster I sought him to become. Surely that’s enough?”

  Harruq didn’t understand her need for condemnation, but he wasn’t about to give it.

  “Qurrah may have asked me to bring him children, but the guilt was always mine,” he said. “When it all comes tumbling down, we’re responsible for our actions. I’ve always believed that. Qurrah was strong, so strong. His decisions were his own. I’d have had a better chance of convincing the sun to rise in the west and set in the east than make him change his mind once it was set. You and him, together, you were broken then. You were lost. I have to believe you both worked to make amends for your sins, because otherwise…otherwise, what salvation is there for mine?”

  He hoped his words would give her comfort, but it seemed to have done the opposite. Tessanna crumpled in on herself and fresh tears slid down her cheeks. For a brief moment he thought sorrow had overtaken her, but when she spoke, he realized she wasn’t despairing, but drowning in fury.

  “You don’t understand,” Tessanna said. “I need you to hate me. I need you to tell me I’m a terrible person, because right now my only desire is to tear this whole damn world down to its roots. I want to bathe it all in fire. I want to slaughter everything and everyone until I create a land of corpses. If I’m not a horrible person, if what I want isn’t horrible, and evil, and bad, then I should…I sh
ould…I will…”

  Violet flame sprouted from her hands and wreathed her arms. Black light shone from her cavernous eyes. Anguish rolled out of her in waves, and Harruq felt it as if her sorrow was a physical force. Her control was a fraying thread growing ever thinner. Harruq wished he knew what to say, what to do, but he was the dumb idiot who hit things with swords. Where was Lathaar or Jerico with their fancy words? Where was Tarlak to crack a joke, or Haern to whisper a bit of wisdom taught to him in his childhood years?

  But Harruq had to do something, for he truly believed her serious in her desire. So he did what he did best: be himself. Be honest and stupid and serious and nonsensical.

  Harruq risked the fire. He endured the burn. His hands wrapped about her wrists, and he met her terrifying gaze.

  “You’re not evil. And you’re not broken. You’re hurt, and you want to spread that hurt so you don’t feel alone. But you’re not alone. I’m here. I’m no Qurrah, but I can try my best. Would a raspier voice work? Maybe mutter something about how big a buffoon that silly Harruq is? I’m not sure black is my best color, but I could give it a try…”

  Amazingly, an uneven laugh broke through her rage. The fire faded, and though her tears still flowed she leaned into him, allowing her tiny little self to be buried in his muscles.

  “Gods and goddesses above, you’re such an oaf,” she said. “Aurelia is lucky to have you.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m the lucky one. Any sane elf would have looked at the complete disaster that I was and ran the piss away.”

  “The same could be said for all of us. Who among us isn’t a complete wreck?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Jerico?”

  Tessanna nestled into him, her long black hair covering her face like a cocoon. “He has his own scars, I assure you. I even gave him some of them.”

  They fell silent, lost in their own memories. Harruq kept his hand gently on the small of Tessanna’s back, and he let her spend the next few minutes silently weeping into his chest. It was controlled, though, as much control as could be expected. As for himself, he stared into the deep black of the forest, listening to the chirping of insects and remembering a thousand nights spent as children racing about the streets of Veldaren with his brother.