The Angels of Death

An ageless warlock dies at the hand of a party of adventurers and looks back on his life.

A fight, a fire, a waving banner high above my head. These are the things I see from the place where I lay dying.

The Troll-kin I had spent decades training were falling to pieces, literally, and the melancholy chants of that damned minstrel kept them from regenerating. It would all be over soon.

"Look," I hear one of them yell. "Volkaarg's found it!"

I remember, as a child, lying in this same position, arms and legs spread out slightly. Trapped in that iron citadel with no playmates every winter, snow angels had long been my only friends. I hadn't been able to make any that particular winter, however. Warm furs had replaced the chill sensation of snow on my frail skin for months, and my father was despairing more and more each day that my every whispered cry for him might be my last.

There is a man standing above me, an olive-skinned barbarian wearing too many belts instead of clothing or armor, bald and with a wiry black moustache that hangs to his muscled belly. The axe strapped to his back is entirely too large even for him to wield. I know better, though. It's slathered with the indigo ichor of my soldiers.

He bends over, and the worst pain of my life rips through my body. It's like every heart palpitation and shortness of breath are all playing back in the memory of my cells. There's a terrible sound. I know what it is, but I don't want to think about it.

It sounds like my mother, on that last day. She was a beautiful princess, and my father had been chagrined beyond belief to have fallen in love with her. He meant only to hold her for ransom, but those eyes, the slight parting of her full lips whenever he spoke to her in his resonating contrabass, and that moment when I was conceived on the Altar of the Stars had all wiped away his desire for anything in the world but her.

I hear it again, now. It was her clothes, and maybe her skin. Her screams filled my sickbed chamber until they didn't anymore, and then she never made a sound again.

"They've come," said my father, bursting into the room and barricading the door behind him with iron and incantation. "There is nothing I can do."

I was too ill to respond, even if I hadn't already been using all of my energy to weep.

He spun about frantically for a moment, the red glow from his eyes the brightest light in the chamber. With an approving grunt and a flourish of his black great-cloak he snatched something from my bedside.

"This will keep you safe," he said, pulling aside my nightshirt and pushing the cold iron lantern up against the flesh of my stomach. "It is an ancient technique, known as 'phylacterization.' Your mother and I may not always be with you, but with this we can at least make sure you survive today."

The lantern began to smoke, and the crimson fire of his eyes slowly burned out as the lantern itself began to absorb that flaming energy. Soon, it was burning bright, the smoke still hot orange from the stolen fire of my father's life.

I screamed when I saw his face, but his dusty fingers brushed my mouth to keep me safely silent. It was slowly crumbling away into nothing more than a skull with a thin layer of leather stretched tight and dry across it. Somehow, though, he still had the strength to speak. His jaw creaked as it tried to form the words.

"They will always hate you, because you are my son. Your only hope of survival is to stay here in this fortress my ancestors built and raise an army. You must promise me that you will do whatever you must to stay alive, and to keep this sacrifice I make for you from being wasted. Whenever they arrive here, you must know that they mean you only harm, and with that thought in mind you must destroy them all."

The memory of those words came back to me now as my life spilled out on the battlefield, snowy and splotched with crimson like the banners of the Alturians waving even now at my gates. I had done him proud for centuries, the master of his Dark Fortress. The legend spread like wildfire, and all but the surest warriors knew to keep a wide berth when travelling between Jaq'ar and Tinnik. 

My lip quivered with my final breaths, but I doubt the warrior ripping my Father's Light from my chest at that moment noticed.

"We love you, son." His jaw hung loose, no longer moving as he spoke the final words, but I heard them clearly in the voices of both he and my mother. The phrase hung in the air until the lantern stopped smoking and the glow became a dull pulsing candlelight deep within the frosted glass he had embedded in my torso.

I recall how I pushed every last bit of my strength into my arms and legs, making a snow angel in my bed. It seemed almost instinctive, and when the men were finally able to break down the doors of my bedchamber, I continued, stretching every muscle fiber in my body to the breaking point.

They unceremoniously dragged my father's body away, angered that none of them were to be granted the honor of killing him, cursing him for dying like a coward. They took his head as a trophy instead, right there before me, but as long as I continued making the snow angels I somehow knew they could not see me. 

In my fevered efforts, I was blessed to not have to see them, either.

My head fell to the side as the strength required to hold it up slipped away from me. As far as my bleary eyes could see was a field of crisp white flakes, crushed in some areas by the booted footwork of soldiers and stained crimson in others.

That's when I saw her walking across the courtyard toward me, her feet bare and not quite touching the surface of the snow, clad in silver angel's wings.

I smiled, finding enough strength left in me to make one last angel.

Reviews

[David Jae]

Very compelling. I like the emotion and grim reality of this. It's poignant. Good job.