Dawn of the Endless

The figure stood atop the battlements silhouetted by a flickering night sky. He leaned heavily against the stone surface, his hands gripping the top of the structure, his shoulders bunched together. The stench of burning wafted from the city below, a smell tinged with more than just the fiery buildings.

“What will you do now?”

The words hung in the air like the smoke over their heads. A simple question, but one that had no simple answer.

Rilkyh, the man whose question lingered, stood some paces behind the figure at the battlements. The wind gusted and billowed, and he felt as if he could be picked up and blown right from where he stood.

He hated these damn heights.

“Does he live?” Alikh asked without moving.

“He has not yet been found, but he is here. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Your bones have been wrong before, old man.”

The faintest shadow of a grin played upon Rilkyh’s face. It had been a long time since he’d heard his friend make anything close to a joke, and it felt good again to hear. And though he would deny it, Rilkyh’s bones had been wrong before, but they had also been right more times than wrong.

Rilkyh approached the battlement slowly, and for the first time looked down from the dizzying height upon the city that burned beneath them. The fires were sporadic, particular sites that had been pre-calculated and necessary. The was sure to spread to other buildings, but that was the price that must be paid.

The distant screams of those caught in the chaos could be heard even from their towering vantage point above the destruction, and his grin faded. This wasn’t the first city that they had seen burn, but he hoped it would be their last.

“Our vengeance is at hand, Rilkyh. His life is mine. It was forsworn and prophesied. Then this can end.” The words came out sharp and clipped and through clenched teeth.

Rilkyh looked at the younger man beside him and wondered at all that could have been had life not played out the way it had. He should be courting and seeking his life partner, apprenticing a trade, and thinking about his future, not looking upon death and destruction. But such thoughts were meaningless, only now mattered. The past was gone.

Or so he told himself.

“I will see that he is found. Our scouts reported his presence here mere days ago, and the Aslolm still fights. He is here, Alikh.”

Alikh nodded absently as he looked down at the fires, his thoughts shrouded by his empty expression. If there was any remorse or guilt that the young man felt, it wasn’t visible upon his features. In recent days, the closer that they come to their goal, the more Alikh closed himself off

“It’s not over then,” Alikyh said. “Unless everything we know is wrong. Then we have walked into the very heart of a trap.”

The thought gave Rilkyh pause, and could not help himself but grin again. It would be a Monument if all of their hard work and strategy had been for naught and instead of victory they stood on the precipice of their own defeat.

“We were right to do this.”

It wasn’t a question from the younger man. The right or the wrong of their actions had never been discussed. They had never had the chance or reason to stop and doubt themselves, or even feel the need to discuss whether their actions had been right.

“Of course we were right. The Time of Sorrow has come to an end tonight. Whether he is found or not, we have won.”

Alikh nodded again, the reflection of the fires below them flickered upon his face. He turned towards Rilkyh, and not for the first time his throat caught as Alikh’s eyes met his own. The pupil of his left eye was completely dilated and black, and the eye itself permanently bloodshot. Black oily veins coiled from Alikh’s eye, down his cheek and neck, and Rilkyh knew that they went all the way down to the tips of the fingers on his left hand.

A price that had been paid.

“What would she think, Rilkyh? She wouldn’t recognize me, I know it. The things I’ve done-”

“Have been justified.” Rilkyh finished. “We cannot second guess ourselves now, Alikh. What is done has been done. We cannot look back. You know this better than most.”

If his words had any effect, they didn’t register on Alikh’s vacant expression. Instead, he turned to look back down at the burning city, and the death and despair that must be running through the streets.