A million thanks to everyone that's reviewed and favorited me since I've been on this site - you really help me through massive writer's block. And you make me feel less unsure about my writings (yeah, I'm extremely unsure sometimes...).
To the forum masters, Fantasy, Amethyst, Shuka, Sandra, Rhia, Death... thanks for really getting me involved on this site. Here's to all of you.
Last of all (though they will never set foot on this site) thanks to Steve and Cheryl for the guidance you've given me over the last few months. My life has a new meaning, a new direction, and I owe it all to you. God bless the both of you.
DISCLAIMER: Don't believe I'm Darren Shan. But he IS one of my MySpace friends... Lol.
--
Gone. The word penetrated me like mental venom, burning me like the rays of the summer sun. He was gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. Larten, gone.
He had been such a wonderful assistance, vampire, friend, to me throughout the many years I had known him. Like the son I had never had, the companion I had always wished for. I watched as he matured, transforming from a fiery boy to a mature man who knew his own way. Never had I ever considered the possiblility of me outliving him. In a perfect world, the younger man would outlive the older man for what seemed to be centuries, and meet the old man in some perfect land of souls.
But this was not a perfect world. There was betrayal and bloodshed and death and heartache and oblivion and knowledge and hurting. How little I had revealed my feelings toward its chaos, but there was no holding it in. My closest friend, my son in blood, was nothing but ash and dust.
No Larten. And no Paris to understand and to sympathise. This was not my world. This world was new and unfamiliar and unnerving. What had I to live for? To keep our legacy, a tale of blood and foolishness, alive? To make it sound like some fantasy, some adventure, when in reality it was merely a war between ourselves and our own desires and needs? What a twisted world I lived in.
Desmond merely watched me in awe when he visited the mountain. "Seba, are you well?" he would ask in mock concern. I turned away from him.
"That is neither your concern nor your interest, Desmond. This twisted world is your fantasy, is it not? Things like morality and fairness do not concern you, nor have they ever so much as caught your attention. Why, then, do you ask me how I feel about such evils?"
"Morality is boring," he scoffed, staring at me as if I were some oddity. Perhaps I was.
"You are like a child, Desmond," I told him. Something between rage and confusion burned in his eyes.
"How so? Because my interests are different from yours? Explain yourself, Seba!"
"I simply mean that your mind is childlike. You refuse to consider any thought, idea or concept that is different from your own, and you go mad if anyone refuses to do what you want them to do. Everything must go Desmond's way. I tell you, one day you will pay for you insolence."
His eyes widened - he was sincerely confounded by my way of speaking to him, by my honesty.
"No man talks to me that way, Seba Nile-"
"Then it is about the time that some man should. Why not I? I do not fear you; what more can you do to me? If you killed me, that would only be merciful. I must say that the fear the others demonstrate sickens me. I beg you to harm me. I want nothing more than your greatest wrath, Desmond..."
A growl came from his throat. I found him inches away from me, fire in his eyes. "You wait. The Shan boy will be gone, too, or Vancha March. Your world will fall apart around you. You'll come to regret this day."
"I think you will more than I, Desmond. The boy is wiser than you think, and Vancha is brilliant in his own way. They have souls and minds combined, Desmond. Any man that could kill his own creation cannot last through times such as these. When you meet your end, I shall have my victory... and then we shall be the keepers of our own destiny..."
--
"Seba!"
Larten stood waiting for me, a smile strected across his face. Every vampire I remembered was there, as well as the humans I knew. Darren, Kurda, Gavner, Hibernius, Paris, Evanna. No Desmond.
"He still lives?" I looked at Evanna.
"No. He never made it. He's in the Lake of Souls. What did you say to him that day you confronted him?"
"Why do you wish to know?"
She frowned. "The night he died, he seemed depressed. The last thing he told me was, 'Seba was right. What is wrong with me?' He stabbed himself."
I sighed. Malice is a powerful things. It creates and destroys empires, imprisons a world of fools, and kills even the best of us. Like wild ivy, it overwhelms and chokes what stands between it and its end. The ultimate venom. But there is something more powerful, more vindictive, more worthy of fear. Love.
There is a war between the two forces until the end of our lives. How does the battle end? The two kill one another, but one grows back in the springtime.
FIN.