One day death will have a knight, and the Lion will have a son. But before the Seven Word Name there was just a boy. There was just Garnet Eyes.
The Boy With Garnet Eyes (Exalted)
- Thread starter Kymme
- Start date
- Fantasy
-
- Tags
- exalted (white wolf)
- Created
- Status
- Complete
- Watchers
- 17
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 4
-
Statistics (4 threadmarks, 3.5k words)
User Total Kymme 4
Verse One: Youth
- Location
- The North
On the tenth day of First Rains in the Year of Sixteen Moons, a child was born to the Creek Wanderer tribe of the Black Lion peoples with eyes like garnets and a full head of black hair. The child was his mother's smallest and quietest, but his skin was tough to the touch like warm steel.
Some of the hunter women and bronze-blade men mused that he might have been born with stones for bones - that would explain his heaviness, and how he never moved. Another inauspicious sign concerned the boy's weight - his mother and father together could scarcely hold him, and so the bright garnet-eyed infant, still tiny, sat in a travois behind his family's only horse and watched the great sands retreat across the horizon.
As First Rains became Plentiful Water and his people began the first of their wet-season hunts, the Boy was visited by three miracles.
The first came in the late dusk, when the hunter women were exhausted from their day's kill and the tribe's swordsmen were out past dark, carving their tribe's boundary warding notches into the hardy trees about camp, when a clever wild dog slipped through the perimeter and darted into the nursery tent. The midwives tried to head it off, cursing themselves for their lapse in attention, but the beast was too clever and reached the tent before them.
The midwives leaped into the tent, fearing the worst, and were struck by the sight of the garnet-eyed Boy, standing on his own two feet, his tiny fist driven through the dog's eye. The Boy looked at the stricken, fearful faces of the midwives, and for the first time in his life began to wail.
The second miracle was the Boy's movement. Nearly a whole winter before his nursery mates would take their first steps the Boy waddled through his tribe's camp with the empty-headed blithe of an infant. This habit unsettled his parents, and was the cause of more rumors among the rest of his tribe. Stories abounded that the Boy was a demon in disguise, that he was born beneath queer stars, that his mother had ingested a magical stone and he was that stone come to life.
The Boy cared not for these rumors. He was less than a year old.
One day on his blithe wanderings about the camp he came upon the third miracle of his young life. The bronze-blade men had carried a thick log into camp, intent on splitting it into beams to be the struts of a new tent or travois. They were stymied by the tree's strange shape and the hard texture of its bark. They had managed to cut it down, but no matter what they did they could force their splitting-wedge any deeper in. The log would not cut.
When the Boy wandered up to them the bronze-blade men laughed. Oh, here is that stone-heavy child, they said. Here to grin at us in the thoughtless way babies do. Some were less amused, and made signs of protection against the inauspicious youth. None considered touching him, or trying to shoo him off.
They were content to watch, in mixtures of confusion and amusement, as the Boy's wanderings brought him to the log and the splitting wedge. The Boy's hand brushed across the splitting wedge, a heavy river stone knapped to a razor edge, and something about the texture fascinated him. Perhaps it was the way the stone seemed cold to his touch. Perhaps it was simply a new sensation, that of idle nature formed into a tool by the work of human hands.
Regardless, he set his infant grip about a thick part of the wedge and tugged it from the tree in a single pull of his hand.
One of the bronze-blade men swore, distracting the child for a moment. He had stepped forward, worried the child might hurt themself, but something about the look in the Boy's garnet eyes gave him pause.
Then, guided by some instinct, the Boy pressed the sharp edge back into the wood with such force that the log was forced to admit it - too heavy to slide, it was cut without the prior assistance of saw or blade. The Boy, intrigued, pushed further.
A crack shot through the log ahead of the wedge and there was a loud bang, as though the fallen tree had been struck by lightning. Happening upon some invisible facet of the dried wood, the Boy split the whole log with a single perfunctory motion.
Then he set the wedge down and wandered off, garnet eyes fixed on a brightly colored grass snake.
The bronze-blade men stared, slack-jawed, at the black-mopped baby waddling away from them. One wonders if it was then, or later, that the people of the Boy's tribe considered what a mighty swordsman he might become.
Some of the hunter women and bronze-blade men mused that he might have been born with stones for bones - that would explain his heaviness, and how he never moved. Another inauspicious sign concerned the boy's weight - his mother and father together could scarcely hold him, and so the bright garnet-eyed infant, still tiny, sat in a travois behind his family's only horse and watched the great sands retreat across the horizon.
As First Rains became Plentiful Water and his people began the first of their wet-season hunts, the Boy was visited by three miracles.
The first came in the late dusk, when the hunter women were exhausted from their day's kill and the tribe's swordsmen were out past dark, carving their tribe's boundary warding notches into the hardy trees about camp, when a clever wild dog slipped through the perimeter and darted into the nursery tent. The midwives tried to head it off, cursing themselves for their lapse in attention, but the beast was too clever and reached the tent before them.
The midwives leaped into the tent, fearing the worst, and were struck by the sight of the garnet-eyed Boy, standing on his own two feet, his tiny fist driven through the dog's eye. The Boy looked at the stricken, fearful faces of the midwives, and for the first time in his life began to wail.
The second miracle was the Boy's movement. Nearly a whole winter before his nursery mates would take their first steps the Boy waddled through his tribe's camp with the empty-headed blithe of an infant. This habit unsettled his parents, and was the cause of more rumors among the rest of his tribe. Stories abounded that the Boy was a demon in disguise, that he was born beneath queer stars, that his mother had ingested a magical stone and he was that stone come to life.
The Boy cared not for these rumors. He was less than a year old.
One day on his blithe wanderings about the camp he came upon the third miracle of his young life. The bronze-blade men had carried a thick log into camp, intent on splitting it into beams to be the struts of a new tent or travois. They were stymied by the tree's strange shape and the hard texture of its bark. They had managed to cut it down, but no matter what they did they could force their splitting-wedge any deeper in. The log would not cut.
When the Boy wandered up to them the bronze-blade men laughed. Oh, here is that stone-heavy child, they said. Here to grin at us in the thoughtless way babies do. Some were less amused, and made signs of protection against the inauspicious youth. None considered touching him, or trying to shoo him off.
They were content to watch, in mixtures of confusion and amusement, as the Boy's wanderings brought him to the log and the splitting wedge. The Boy's hand brushed across the splitting wedge, a heavy river stone knapped to a razor edge, and something about the texture fascinated him. Perhaps it was the way the stone seemed cold to his touch. Perhaps it was simply a new sensation, that of idle nature formed into a tool by the work of human hands.
Regardless, he set his infant grip about a thick part of the wedge and tugged it from the tree in a single pull of his hand.
One of the bronze-blade men swore, distracting the child for a moment. He had stepped forward, worried the child might hurt themself, but something about the look in the Boy's garnet eyes gave him pause.
Then, guided by some instinct, the Boy pressed the sharp edge back into the wood with such force that the log was forced to admit it - too heavy to slide, it was cut without the prior assistance of saw or blade. The Boy, intrigued, pushed further.
A crack shot through the log ahead of the wedge and there was a loud bang, as though the fallen tree had been struck by lightning. Happening upon some invisible facet of the dried wood, the Boy split the whole log with a single perfunctory motion.
Then he set the wedge down and wandered off, garnet eyes fixed on a brightly colored grass snake.
The bronze-blade men stared, slack-jawed, at the black-mopped baby waddling away from them. One wonders if it was then, or later, that the people of the Boy's tribe considered what a mighty swordsman he might become.
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Verse Two: Adolescence
- Location
- The North
When he was four years old the bronze-blade men introduced him to their knives, to see if he had any talent for blade-wielding. The Boy minded himself with the sharp edges, having cut himself before in accidents, and mimicked the movements of his uncles and brothers well. They minded his queer strength, however, which far exceeded his diminutive stature.
At six years the Boy was still quite small, but he wielded a man's knife with ease and could carry an adult's bronze sword in two hands. The Boy was whip-quick and respected the six sacred cuts, and so the bronze-blade men saw no issue with teaching him further.
At nine years old the Boy could keep easy pace with grown men and fight every other young warrior at once and leave them all exhausted and marked with welts over their hearts. He could lift a grown man over his shoulder and leap twice his height into trees to gain advantageous footing in fight exercises.
At eleven he was taken to receive a bronze blade of his own - years ahead of the other youths in his tribe.
Where once the empire of the Black Lion had stretched from lost Zoatham to Devil's Claw with its well-wrights and nectar makers, in this age the Boy's people held but one city. It was here that the bronze blades were still forged, and to receive one was to become a man.
However, where once the forges of the Final City granted blades to every passing warrior, now bronze blades only went to the winners of twenty-man melees, held yearly in the Scalding Stone season.
There would be three melees this season. Only three new swords. This was ill news to the bronze blade men of the Boy's tribe, for in the previous year there had been eight bronze swords forged in the city. They said their holy words and wished the Boy well.
Beyond the precinct of the holy city men of the Black Lions fought and killed one another when compelled by circumstance, but within violence was forbidden outside of the sacred melees. This did not stop attempts at sabotage, as hopeful youths roughhoused and stole food from one another, hoping to increase their chances of success in the melees.
The garnet-eyed Boy walked among them, but when a larger child went to shove him or snatch the honeycomb he ate freely they found him an edifice of stone. Rumors cloaked the Boy like a conqueror's crown, rumors of his great strength, of his skill with the sword.
These rumors were put to the test in the trials presented by the sword-forgers. Forty hopefuls would need to be weeded out so that the melees could be carried out without incident or insult to He With Honor Unforgotten, and to that end a gauntlet of trials was prepared. Races across the city's outskirts. Tests of bravery against crocodiles and bulls. Tests of poetry, of history, of faith.
The Boy emerged from the gauntlet unscathed, having been tested and found worthy.
He emerged from his melee similarly, having swept through hopefuls five years his senior and twice his size.
He was presented with a bronze sword and returned to the city's edge, where he discovered his kinsmen slaughtered and bloody - word of his victory had preceded him and another envious group had killed the men of the Creek Wanderers, hoping to steal his new bronze sword.
There was a hitch in the child's heart, a burning pain that shot bile into his throat and set his lungs to burning. He could not catch his breath. His sobs whined in his throat, became gasps, became coughs, bloody froth in the corners of his mouth. He spat the blood away and drew in the sweet air of grief, but his lungs refused to fill.
The Boy buried the bodies of his uncles and new brothers there on that ground. Their swords were gone, and so their graves were marked by the ghost-white flowers that sprout where men die dishonorably.
The Boy could not see the flowers, for they bloom on the other side, but he could hear the ghost-bees faintly, taking the pollen from the coward-flowers.
He left that place and returned to his people.
The next year he found his uncle's murderers and slaughtered them to a man, collecting the stolen bronze swords and distributing them to his peers among his tribe. As he did so, the Boy found that his breath was strong and clear - sated with his deeds, grief loosened its hold on his heart.
At twelve years the other tribes of the Black Lion peoples received word that a sword saint beyond compare had risen among the Creek Wanderers.
At six years the Boy was still quite small, but he wielded a man's knife with ease and could carry an adult's bronze sword in two hands. The Boy was whip-quick and respected the six sacred cuts, and so the bronze-blade men saw no issue with teaching him further.
At nine years old the Boy could keep easy pace with grown men and fight every other young warrior at once and leave them all exhausted and marked with welts over their hearts. He could lift a grown man over his shoulder and leap twice his height into trees to gain advantageous footing in fight exercises.
At eleven he was taken to receive a bronze blade of his own - years ahead of the other youths in his tribe.
Where once the empire of the Black Lion had stretched from lost Zoatham to Devil's Claw with its well-wrights and nectar makers, in this age the Boy's people held but one city. It was here that the bronze blades were still forged, and to receive one was to become a man.
However, where once the forges of the Final City granted blades to every passing warrior, now bronze blades only went to the winners of twenty-man melees, held yearly in the Scalding Stone season.
There would be three melees this season. Only three new swords. This was ill news to the bronze blade men of the Boy's tribe, for in the previous year there had been eight bronze swords forged in the city. They said their holy words and wished the Boy well.
Beyond the precinct of the holy city men of the Black Lions fought and killed one another when compelled by circumstance, but within violence was forbidden outside of the sacred melees. This did not stop attempts at sabotage, as hopeful youths roughhoused and stole food from one another, hoping to increase their chances of success in the melees.
The garnet-eyed Boy walked among them, but when a larger child went to shove him or snatch the honeycomb he ate freely they found him an edifice of stone. Rumors cloaked the Boy like a conqueror's crown, rumors of his great strength, of his skill with the sword.
These rumors were put to the test in the trials presented by the sword-forgers. Forty hopefuls would need to be weeded out so that the melees could be carried out without incident or insult to He With Honor Unforgotten, and to that end a gauntlet of trials was prepared. Races across the city's outskirts. Tests of bravery against crocodiles and bulls. Tests of poetry, of history, of faith.
The Boy emerged from the gauntlet unscathed, having been tested and found worthy.
He emerged from his melee similarly, having swept through hopefuls five years his senior and twice his size.
He was presented with a bronze sword and returned to the city's edge, where he discovered his kinsmen slaughtered and bloody - word of his victory had preceded him and another envious group had killed the men of the Creek Wanderers, hoping to steal his new bronze sword.
There was a hitch in the child's heart, a burning pain that shot bile into his throat and set his lungs to burning. He could not catch his breath. His sobs whined in his throat, became gasps, became coughs, bloody froth in the corners of his mouth. He spat the blood away and drew in the sweet air of grief, but his lungs refused to fill.
The Boy buried the bodies of his uncles and new brothers there on that ground. Their swords were gone, and so their graves were marked by the ghost-white flowers that sprout where men die dishonorably.
The Boy could not see the flowers, for they bloom on the other side, but he could hear the ghost-bees faintly, taking the pollen from the coward-flowers.
He left that place and returned to his people.
The next year he found his uncle's murderers and slaughtered them to a man, collecting the stolen bronze swords and distributing them to his peers among his tribe. As he did so, the Boy found that his breath was strong and clear - sated with his deeds, grief loosened its hold on his heart.
At twelve years the other tribes of the Black Lion peoples received word that a sword saint beyond compare had risen among the Creek Wanderers.
Verse Three: Adulthood
- Location
- The North
A Black Lion flanked by twinning creeks roared rampant upon a woven banner, and in its shadow the Boy began to make his mark. For three years he fought for his tribe, defeating their enemies in the field with his great strength and impossible sword prowess.
The Boy did not enjoy fighting, but he understood it as a tiger understands hunting. Reading the positioning of bodies, the angles of blow and counter-blow, were to him like reading carvings in a tree. This intuitive fighting sense, combined with his preternatural strength, made him deadly. Practicing among the bronze blade men for years refined that deadliness into peerless skill.
In his fourteenth year the Creek Wanderers had become the greatest of the hill lander tribes, and as more tribes flocked to their banner its opposite number arose among the sand dwelling tribes.
The Black Lion atwixt two creeks faced down a Black Lion beneath a pool of oasis water, and under the shadow of these two Lions the Boy With Garnet Eyes met the greatest swordsmen of his time.
A white haired youth, young like the Boy, who carried the swords of his siblings between his fingers and his own blade between his teeth.
A scarred brute grown old and wretched, whose hunched back and draped robes concealed a sword fine and fast enough to cut a man's heart from his chest without spilling a single drop of blood.
And lastly, the almighty, a holy warrior with a blade of iron pulled from his own blood - a living miracle, a piece of the Lion's divinity won through a life of holy war.
The Boy With Garnet Eyes met these three in battle with his blade of bronze, beneath the shadow of the Lion, and slaughtered them all. Their movements were not sluggish, like the foes he'd faced before, but they were touched by mortal flaws. The Boy's swordsmanship was a blade of providence, like rain falling upon parched land, his insight finding every perfect step and perfect block and perfect strike with the ease that one's eyes might pick out stars in the sky.
His foes knew it before they died. The people of the Black Lion knew it before the battle ended. There was no finer swordsman in the world than the Boy With Garnet Eyes.
And then the battle ended, and the Boy's mouth filled with blood. No blow had been struck against him, but all the same a cold fist had gripped his heart and now his lungs were shredded cloth in his chest.
He was pulled from the battlefield by retainers beneath both banners and treated by the greatest savants and sages of his people. The result, they discovered, was a sword hanging over the Boy. The weight of his body crushed his lungs from all sides - it had all his life, and now his lungs were dying. Half-breath, they called it, for the Boy's chest only half-rose and half-fell with each of his exhausted wheezes.
He lay like that for days before his lungs finally admitted a sucking, pained gasp. Then another. Then the Boy could breathe enough to speak.
He asked the wisest of his people for what he might do, now that he was… the Boy could not say the word. In other places, they might have told the Boy to take up some coward's sport like administration or rulership, but here the people of the Black Lion knew of only one ritual for warriors with impossible wishes.
To take up the woven lion banner. To travel to the bleak places, across the deserts of bone sand, to the Fortress Thousandfold and its master, He With Honor Unforgotten, The Lion At the End of the World.
To ask him to grant their wish.
The Boy took the banner of his tribe, and the banner of their foes, and with them he bid his people and the war that had divided them goodbye.
And so the Boy ventured south, to the edge of places.
To the End of the World.
And as the holy books wrote, in the Rusty Spear Remembrance:
And the sands became as sun-bleached bone,
And the deserts as cremation ash,
And the heat beat without the comfort of brightness,
And cracked and thin, the boy continued to seek him-
The Lion at the End of the World.
The lion skeletons rose to meet him,
They snapped and yowled,
But they saw that by his banner he was beyond their reach-
The prey of the Lion at the End of the World.
And the mirages that danced with the faces of dead men,
And the villages conquered by the undying lords,
And the ghosts that howled all bowed their heads,
To him, the fool, who would duel him,
The Lion at the End of the World.
And his men did meet him,
Bound in armor as white as bone,
As dark as night,
And as silent as a hero's grave.
They rode with him for a time,
For he was the man who would face him-
The Lion at the End of the World.
When he came at last to his citadel,
Night-black and unlit,
Sitting in a field of bone wider than kingdoms,
The lone power of this dismal land,
The fortress of him-
The Lion at the End of the world.
So he entered and so he met,
So he saw-
Iron clad, giant of frame,
Agile like the lion, cruel like the snake,
A man who man betrayed; yet-
Death dared not claim.
Him, forsaken in his glory,
Black hearted and invincible-
The Lion at the End of the World.
Verse Four: Death
- Location
- The North
The Boy With Garnet Eyes met The Lion With None, and asked him a simple question.
"Will you accept my challenge?"
The Boy took his perfect stance.
The Lion accepted. He took his own stance, still. As is The Lion's nature, his stillness shackled the world around him. The wind-swept dust. The cracking banners. The birds in the red sky. All hung suspended, as if from chains. All awaited The Boy's move.
The Boy's strike was a scorpion. Single minded, only knowing dark and light, prey and open space, it blazed in an unwavering line towards his opponent: a perfect vector from birth to death.
Had The Lion eyes, he would have wept.
Had The Lion breath, it would have ceased.
Had The Lion life, he would no longer.
But The Lion was dead, and invincible, and he held a sword.
So he turned the blow aside.
The Boy's moccasins tore against the stone of the courtyard.
His feet strained like tearing roots. His hands ached, his heart throbbed. His spine was tensing spikes between his shoulder-blades. His empty stomach sucked against his lungs. But his blade never drifted from his foe. His shoulders never weakened. He pressed the attack.
His legs moved as rain over the dry land. In flowing sheets, ever changing, swaying, settling only in the fancies of the eye as it struggles to capture what it sees. Not one perfect stance, or step, or movement of the blade, but a hurricane of perfect moments.
The Lion's armor shrieked and his sword rang out from every exchange. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
They might have exchanged a hundred blows, a thousand, ten-thousand, this way. The red sky might have turned a million times over their battle. The Lion had no teeth behind his helm, but he grinned. The Boy grinned a red smile, slicked with blood. They might have fought forever.
But the Boy's half-breath hitched in his chest, and his heart screamed into his mouth. Blood shot from his red teeth and black lips.
The Lion knew victory and took it. To hesitate would be to dishonor his foe. So The Lion's sword dipped as a falcon and speared the Boy through the ribs.
At once there was awful noise. The Boy let out all his breath in a fevered cry that became a sob, became a choked whimper of pain as the sword withdrew from his breast and he fell to his knees. Slick black lifeblood ran from his heaving chest, pooling where his loincloth pinched against his waist, and then overflowing in red black streams down his thigh to the dirt.
The Boy felt his body relax and his head slouch back, neck too weak to keep it upright. His arms hung from hollow shoulders, and his bronze sword dribbled out of his hand to lay in the dust.
Above, The Lion loomed, a breathless statue, gazing past his blade at his defeated foe. He said nothing. The dead do not beckon those at the threshold. They simply light a torch, that those on the edge might know that they are welcome beyond it.
If the Boy had any air left in his lungs he might have screamed. He might have begged. He might have cursed his foe, his family, his weakness. But without breath he could only rage inside the cage of his mind.
It isn't fair, he thought, that I should die. That I should die here, knowing my purpose but unable to achieve it. That I should die at the house of death, at the End of the World, against the greatest warrior in the cosmos. Curse my half-breath! Curse my body! What a fine trick this is, what comedy, that my body, the strongest in the world, should falter before my skill. And now I will die, being nothing, achieving nothing. Now I will die.
THIS IS NOT THE END
The chaos of his thoughts ceased. This voice… it spoke in the silence of his mind, from an empty place that was not his own thoughts. It spoke in the creeping darkness at the edges of his vision, in the glister of his black blood.
YOU MIGHT STAND AGAIN
YOU MIGHT FIGHT AGAIN
IF ONLY YOU ACCEPT OUR BARGAIN
The Boy's thoughts were fading. He felt a warmth in his numb limbs, spreading from his hands. The blood flowing from his breast was ice, but his body was warm. He felt the sun on his back.
YOU MIGHT LIVE A THOUSAND LIFETIMES
FIGHT TEN THOUSAND BATTLES
IF ONLY YOU GUIDE THE WORLD TO ITS END
IF ONLY YOU SURRENDER THE WORLD TO DEATH
The Boy's garnet eyes at last found purchase, focusing on a single image. The Lion stood over him, an abyss of darkness silhouetted by the red sky. His lips moved silently. I would let all the world die, if only I could fight this foe once more.
IT IS DONE
And then The Boy breathed in, a sucking, shuddering breath that shot nails of bright burning pain into his limbs and heart. He bled, but the flow was a trickle - from his chest and from his brow, where a stigmata had burst from his sweat-drenched skin. A glistering eight-pointed wheel like the scar of a black sun, a mark of living divinity, of the providence of his bargain.
The Boy met the shadow behind The Lion's dim visor with eyes that were Exalted.
"Will you accept my challenge?"
The Boy took his perfect stance.
The Lion accepted. He took his own stance, still. As is The Lion's nature, his stillness shackled the world around him. The wind-swept dust. The cracking banners. The birds in the red sky. All hung suspended, as if from chains. All awaited The Boy's move.
The Boy's strike was a scorpion. Single minded, only knowing dark and light, prey and open space, it blazed in an unwavering line towards his opponent: a perfect vector from birth to death.
Had The Lion eyes, he would have wept.
Had The Lion breath, it would have ceased.
Had The Lion life, he would no longer.
But The Lion was dead, and invincible, and he held a sword.
So he turned the blow aside.
The Boy's moccasins tore against the stone of the courtyard.
His feet strained like tearing roots. His hands ached, his heart throbbed. His spine was tensing spikes between his shoulder-blades. His empty stomach sucked against his lungs. But his blade never drifted from his foe. His shoulders never weakened. He pressed the attack.
His legs moved as rain over the dry land. In flowing sheets, ever changing, swaying, settling only in the fancies of the eye as it struggles to capture what it sees. Not one perfect stance, or step, or movement of the blade, but a hurricane of perfect moments.
The Lion's armor shrieked and his sword rang out from every exchange. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
They might have exchanged a hundred blows, a thousand, ten-thousand, this way. The red sky might have turned a million times over their battle. The Lion had no teeth behind his helm, but he grinned. The Boy grinned a red smile, slicked with blood. They might have fought forever.
But the Boy's half-breath hitched in his chest, and his heart screamed into his mouth. Blood shot from his red teeth and black lips.
The Lion knew victory and took it. To hesitate would be to dishonor his foe. So The Lion's sword dipped as a falcon and speared the Boy through the ribs.
At once there was awful noise. The Boy let out all his breath in a fevered cry that became a sob, became a choked whimper of pain as the sword withdrew from his breast and he fell to his knees. Slick black lifeblood ran from his heaving chest, pooling where his loincloth pinched against his waist, and then overflowing in red black streams down his thigh to the dirt.
The Boy felt his body relax and his head slouch back, neck too weak to keep it upright. His arms hung from hollow shoulders, and his bronze sword dribbled out of his hand to lay in the dust.
Above, The Lion loomed, a breathless statue, gazing past his blade at his defeated foe. He said nothing. The dead do not beckon those at the threshold. They simply light a torch, that those on the edge might know that they are welcome beyond it.
If the Boy had any air left in his lungs he might have screamed. He might have begged. He might have cursed his foe, his family, his weakness. But without breath he could only rage inside the cage of his mind.
It isn't fair, he thought, that I should die. That I should die here, knowing my purpose but unable to achieve it. That I should die at the house of death, at the End of the World, against the greatest warrior in the cosmos. Curse my half-breath! Curse my body! What a fine trick this is, what comedy, that my body, the strongest in the world, should falter before my skill. And now I will die, being nothing, achieving nothing. Now I will die.
THIS IS NOT THE END
The chaos of his thoughts ceased. This voice… it spoke in the silence of his mind, from an empty place that was not his own thoughts. It spoke in the creeping darkness at the edges of his vision, in the glister of his black blood.
YOU MIGHT STAND AGAIN
YOU MIGHT FIGHT AGAIN
IF ONLY YOU ACCEPT OUR BARGAIN
The Boy's thoughts were fading. He felt a warmth in his numb limbs, spreading from his hands. The blood flowing from his breast was ice, but his body was warm. He felt the sun on his back.
YOU MIGHT LIVE A THOUSAND LIFETIMES
FIGHT TEN THOUSAND BATTLES
IF ONLY YOU GUIDE THE WORLD TO ITS END
IF ONLY YOU SURRENDER THE WORLD TO DEATH
The Boy's garnet eyes at last found purchase, focusing on a single image. The Lion stood over him, an abyss of darkness silhouetted by the red sky. His lips moved silently. I would let all the world die, if only I could fight this foe once more.
IT IS DONE
And then The Boy breathed in, a sucking, shuddering breath that shot nails of bright burning pain into his limbs and heart. He bled, but the flow was a trickle - from his chest and from his brow, where a stigmata had burst from his sweat-drenched skin. A glistering eight-pointed wheel like the scar of a black sun, a mark of living divinity, of the providence of his bargain.
The Boy met the shadow behind The Lion's dim visor with eyes that were Exalted.
The End.