Well, a fairly dark fic. Don't know what came over me, but it just begged to be written. Will continued as a sequel to Before Night Awakens but can be read separately. Hope you like it.
Prologue
My life was full of promises.
Promises that were given to me, ones that I have foolishly gifted others, and ones that faraway powers eluded from making true.
HE told me, told us, that we were special. That we were living in a new era. Ours. And I believed him. After all, who does not believe his own Creator?
I believed him.
I believed of him, and in him.
I worshipped him. Thought he could protect me. Thought that with him at my side, I am in no need to be scared anymore. From anything.
I was free.
From the moment I was born I knew that sense of indescribable freedom. We could do whatever we wanted. For we were different, my brother and I. We were the new breed of men. Powerful. Stronger.
None could harm us.
We rejoiced. We were careless.
We have paid for that dearly later.
Or more correctly, I have paid. For I have expected too much. I thought equality really existed. I've believed that being HIM makes him perfect, incapable of making mistakes. Loving us, all of us, just the same.
But HE loved my brother more.
Jealousy. Yes, I've experienced that acidic feeling many times in my childhood.
And just like always, I could feel it frothing inside me, filling my veins, throbbing and flowing from the pits of despair, higher and higher . . . My moral descending . . . .
It was strong. Too strong for me to fight.
I had to have what was rightfully mine. No more succumbing to be second. No more being the shadow of my full potential.
No more. No more.
I waited for him, knowing he would come. He always came when I called him.
Such naivety. Who thought that after all this time living in the real world, he would stay innocent?
But then again, he never actually lived in the real world. He lived in his own. Too far for us, the inferior ones, to reach.
There were times in which I wished he would take me with him to whatever place he fled in his mind every time things became too difficult. I wished him to help me with my burden, the one that was dropped on my shoulders even when I cried that I didn't want it. The one that decided without consulting me that I was meant to be eternally good and kind. To be the one they expected me to be, made me promise to be.
That was how I learnt to hate promises.
They are never good for you, they take advantage of you and exploit you in the worst possible way.
They make you feel guilty. They make you care.
And I could no longer live with that.
And indeed, he ran to me.
Stupid of him. He thought I wasn't like the rest of the world, determined to undermine him. To destroy him.
Everyone wanted that from the day he was born. He was nothing but a nuisance in the bigger cosmos. He was never meant to be born.
He was a mistake.
I was not.
Therefore, unlike him, I deserved to live.
I saw his trustful eyes upon me. Oh, this would be fun. Pleasure.
I would enjoy slaying his delicate throat, hearing that hateful voice being torn away, lost in the void that became my existence.
I would love spilling his blood, see it scattered on the ground, morbid, red. Like an animal's blood. Of no one important.
Of the opposite of who he was.
Of what I was.
He sensed that something was wrong. Those damned senses of him would someday bring his downfall. I always told him that.
He never listened.
His nose was too high in the sky to listen to anyone but his own voice.
If he had come to me willingly, I would have cut him neatly, there was no need for him to suffer
Perhaps.
Yet he made everything harder when he flinched away at the sight of my knife.
Yes. He has brought it on himself. He had only himself to blame.
"Come closer" my eyes lured him toward me, challenging, mocking. Not so superior now, are we?
He still didn't understand that he needed to run, to whimper. To beg. To do something else but stand there like a sheep brought to slaughter.
Where's the adrenalin in that?
Then like waking up, he screamed. Pathetic, small, frightened scream.
But I knew the sky wouldn't bring him salvation. It was too far away. And though he was my father's favorite, I knew that HE was busy right now. Taking care of others but his sons.
That was, after all, how he lived his entire life. There is a poetic justice in that, that HE rushed to save anyone but his own son. Don't you agree?
He fought. I would give him that.
After the initial shock, he struggled to maintain his blood inside. But he was only delaying temporarily the inevitable. Even he knew that, I could see it in his eyes.
The death. It was there. It was magnificent in its beauty. That red spot that danced, twinkled in the hour of midday, the sign Satan brands the doomed.
And he was doomed.
We both knew it.
Then, I strake.
Mother always told me to take care of my brother. That in a place in which a man to man is a wolf, we should take care of each other. There would be a time when this is all we would have.
And I mocked her. Not to her face, of course, but inwardly. She still held in those ancient ideals, those rules that we were given and that should have already been expired. It was the way of the old world. We are in the new one.
And then, as I saw the leftovers of my brother lying on the decaying wood, not a breath leaving his mouth, dead, I was angered. She always told ME to take care of him.
Was I my brother's keeper?
"Goodbye, Wyatt" I whispered to his ear, knowing that he could no longer listen. Knowing that my mission was now done.
Then I held my hand to my brow, my fingers tracing the bleeding gash that my dead brother had done. And smiled.
I was Marked.
Extracted from The Lost Kingdom: Autobiography
By Christopher Halliwell
