104—Reflections
The low burial mound has stately and ornate doors; they are marked with a series of runes that form a complex pattern. Not a language, Thelbar tells the group, so much as a series of impressions—meant to convey the maker’s psychic state at the time of the writing. It is, he assures them, a communiqué meant only for the rarified few in the multiverse possessed of the native intelligence to decipher it.
“Or,” he adds wryly, “those of us sufficiently magically enhanced.”
“So you can read it?” Taran asks, squinting. “I hate abstract art.”
“It is a warning,” Thelbar says.
“Well f-ck, I could have told you that,” Taran replies.
“Really?” Elgin asks.
“Sure—there’s always a warning on dusty old tombs, especially ones important enough to be guarded by dead paladins. It goes to show how being so damn smart doesn’t make you smart, you know? Like after all we’ve been through, a warning is going to stop us.”
“He has a point,” Thelbar says. “Perhaps it is better if I do not translate this passage. Suffice it to say, it concerns immortality and terror. The two concepts were vitally linked in the scriber’s mind.”
“Heh. I am a terror,” Taran says, drawing his sword. “And there ain’t no such thing as live forever. Open the door, Thel, if you can, and let’s finish this thing.”
“Brother,” Thelbar thinks. “You are named here, as am I. ”
Taran looks up at Thelbar, and they lock eyes for several moments. Finally, Taran shrugs. “F-ck it,” he says. Thelbar nods.
The door swings open at Thelbar’s gentle touch; as if it were made for his hand. The smallish exterior contains a much larger interior space; a long hall, some twenty feet in width and three times that in length. The interior is shockingly mundane—scented torches provide a mellow illumination, and several dozen luxurious carpets cover the floor. Comfortable-looking human-sized furniture is scattered throughout, including bookshelves and a long table filled with all manner of appetizing food and drink. A heavily armored squat and burly human man stands at the table with his back to the adventurers, casually picking through the carcasses of several small birds, pulling the choice morsels from them, and discarding the rest. At the other end of the hall, a well-dressed man reclines against a bookshelf. He is slender and tall, dark-haired and olive-skinned, possessed of delicate features set around a prominent aquiline nose. His eyes are his most striking feature—afterwards, none could agree as to their color or shape, although all admitted being unable to hold their gaze.
As the party steps into the room, the thin man carefully closes the book he was holding and sets it aside. “Brother,” he says mildly.
“Yes, I am aware,” the man at the table replies. He turns toward the party. Despite his formidable size, his features bear a strong resemblance to the other; while squat where this brother is long, they carry the same turn of the mouth, the same nose, and same frown-lines surrounding the mouth and eyes. This one’s face and neck, however, are covered in a tangle of long scars. His armor is elaborately made, and marked with a runic inscription that strikes both Taran and Thelbar as familiar. He swaggers forward, his lone weapon, a bastard sword, slapping against his mailed thigh. He pauses a few steps from Taran.
Finally, he speaks. “Well, I’ve seen better days.”
“What?” Taran opens and closes his mouth, his insult dying before it is fully formed.
“Welcome, finally,” the tall man begins, addressing Thelbar. “You are the last, and I assume you are prepared.” He gestures to Gorquen and Elgin. “I do not know you. Leave now. Your journeys with these two are over.”
“I go as I am guided, stranger,” Elgin says, “not as I am bid.”
“Should I kill him for that, Taran?” the burly man asks with a smirk. “What would you do?”
“F-cking try it,” Taran warns.
“I’m twice the swordsman you are,” the man promises.
“I’ve got twice the friends,” Taran replies.
“You’ve only got half the friends you’d need.”
Thelbar steps toward the thin man and asks, “How can this be?”
“The pasoun has many mysteries,” the tall man says, “and, tragically, few answers. I, however, possess one of them. And you are here to share it.”
“I will not,” Thelbar says. “Not with you. You are no more.”
“Have I grown so insipid? Have I become a milk-fed child, sucking at that goddess’ teat and listening wide-eyed to her cronies and lickspittle priests? Her pasoun is a sham, a siphon, but like all things it serves the will of those able to master it. There are many of us, you fool, but I am the prime. I instigated you; I am the maker and destroyer; I am the hell-prince, the eater of souls! I am the grey, the lost and the chosen. You are a facet of your own self; I am its sum!”
“I think perhaps you are mad,” Elgin says.
The thin man shrugs. “You lack the capacity to judge me,” he sneers. “Show some care with your tone, you address an ascendant.”
“You died,” Thelbar says. “I died. I’ve recalled it all.”
The man shakes his head. “I entered the pasoun. This is a critical distinction.”
The burly man smirks at Taran—he has not taken his eyes from him. “They get like this when they get together,” he says. “Most of us fight, but most of the Thelbars just talk.”
“What do the Gorquens do?” Taran asks.
“The what?” the burly man says, a split second before Gorquen leaps at him.
She smashes into him, and forces him backwards. He draws his sword, knocking Gorquen’s weapon off-line and cutting her twice before she can finalize her attack. Taran, no gentleman, leaps into the fray, but his angle of approach is deftly turned aside with clever footwork and precise parries. The burly man is smiling pleasantly, his former scowl giving way to a sneering delight.
“Brother!” the other-Taran yells. “Disintegrate this bitch and I’ll do the priest!”
But his brother cannot comply. Thelbar points a finger at his predecessor “I wish,” he begins, “that the pain of your folly in the Hells, the crushing truth of your failure comes fully to your mind. Relive the torments of the damned!”
The thin man cries out and stumbles forward, gasping in shock.
“Gorquen!” Thelbar cries, but she is already in motion. She disengages from the burly warrior and flies to the side of the reeling mage. Taran slides into the space she just left, preventing his predecessor from intervening. As the Thelbar-Prime stares drooling at the boots of his spiritual successor, Gorquen leaps upon him, seizing him by the hair. With an apologetic glance, she severs his head from his neck.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“I’m not,” Thelbar whispers back.
-----
In his first life, Taran was considered by many knowledgeable entities to be one of, if not the most skilled swordsman in the multiverse. The gulf between legendary hero and demi-power is vast, but before surrendering his will to debauchery, this man had nearly crossed it.
Presumably, he has had several millennia here inside this artifact to work the love of drink out of his system, waiting for each Taran and Thelbar that was or would be to arrive at this destination; to embrace the destiny penned ages ago by Thelbar-Prime. Waiting to be made complete.
The current Thelbar understood the opportunity, and recognized it for what it is; a power-mad former self’s bid for godhood. Audacious in its scope, certainly, but no less possible for it.
Taran, on the other hand would, require a baker’s dozen headbands of intellect to grasp the magnitude of this meeting. To him, he is simply facing the last in a very short line of fighters that have outclassed him: Mishkal and Hamm on the Marrow Down, Gulthais in Nightfang Spire, Dantrak, the Matron Mother’s First Sword, Hereson Truesliver, godling of Tyr. Gorquen.
And now, himself.
But he smiles as he regards his own murderous demiurge reflected in this ancient face, because like it did with all the rest, Taran knows that four-on-one beats superior bladework any day.
The Taran-Prime takes longer to behead than his brother, and the protracted act is one of a dozen cuts, but its result is just as final, and its leaving even more bloody.
Remembering the rush that accompanied the death of Hereson Truesilver, Taran turns expectantly to Thelbar when his simulacrum falls, but nothing happens.
“Aw, I wanted to get some power,” he whines.
“No, brother,” Thelbar says with a relieved smile. “No you didn’t.”
