Going home
Warnings: well, this is the final chapter of a long yarn (save a short epilogue). I've been warning right from the beginning that this story won't have a happy ending, so please be prepared for the worst...
Credits: the oath reminding Gerald of his duty as a Knight of the Flame was borrowed from the fabulous movie 'Dragonheart'.
A/N : there's no denying that a part of this chapter bears some resemblance to a particularly marvellous story by my dear fellow author Shadowy Star. Unfortunately, there aren't many different ways for Gerald to say what he needs to say (and for me to say what I want to say without giving too much away at this point, lol), but I at least changed his lines a bit. Hope you don't mind, love.
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Life's a voyage that's homeward bound (Herman Melville)
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As fate had it, the tide of the Church's troops was receding for the time being, allowing Gerald a clear view of the proceedings. Seeing the priest falling off his unhorse, something inside him snapped, and he jumped to his feet and charged down the hill without giving a damn for his cover anymore, his staff hot on his heels. They descended on the enemy like a pack of hungry wolves. Every single man within reach whose armour was emblazoned with the Church's infamous golden interlinking circles was literally hacked to pieces, their pleads for mercy going unheard. Hawthorne-Vryce himself finished off the warrior knight, decapitating him with a vicious blow of his sword.
As soon as the last screams had died down, the adept knelt down at Damien's side. A quick examination proved that he was far beyond any help. Fired at such a close range, the bolt had passed right through him, leaving a ghastly exit wound in his back. Considering that he was still breathing freely, the projectile seemed to have missed the lung itself, but had surely ruptured at least one of the larger blood vessels. The puddle of blood spreading out from under him at an alarming rate left no doubt about it. A Working at the expense of his own life might have still saved him, but Gerald couldn't have this. Not with so much being at stake. As much as he wished otherwise, Vryce was doomed to die.
Nothing, absolutely nothing in all the long years of his existence had ever hurt as much as this simple realization, but going to pieces now was out of the question. He needed to be strong for his husband for one last time.
Ever so slowly the brown eyes which had anchored him to sanity during the worst moments of his ordeal in the cave fluttered open and focussed on him. "I'm so sorry, beloved," Damien croaked hoarsely. "Please forgive me. God certainly won't."
"There's nothing to forgive, Vryce. You saved my life more than once. Without you, I wouldn't be here. And as for the Lord: you'd better keep in mind that the nature of the One God is Mercy, and His Word is forgiveness (WTNF, p. 353). He won't condemn you for acting upon the lies others have planted in your mind for their own benefit."
The former priest winced in pain. "How's Tory?" he gasped forth between clenched teeth.
"He's fine. Growing like a weed, in fact. And so very stubborn already. I wonder from whom he has inherited this particular character trait. It certainly can't be I."
As so very vivid images of a grey-eyed toddler taking his first steps under Father Gabriel's watchful eyes reached his mind via the channel, Damien smiled faintly. But then his brow furrowed, and he closed his hand around Hawthorne-Vryce's slender fingers with a vengeance. "You have to make... an end of this, Gerald. The killing must stop. Now. It's wrong."
"But stopping the killing is exactly what this is all about."
"No. Not like this. Violence begets violence. In the end, nobody will win but death. But love is stronger than death, beloved. Stronger than anybody and... and anything. Use this to your advantage. I know you can."
Not altogether convinced, the adept hesitated. Preaching about God's forgiveness and the power of love was all good and well, but it would neither prevent the blasphemous perversion of the Church he had created from throwing humankind right back into a second dark age nor would it keep Tory save. Certainly Vryce couldn't be naive enough to believe this, could he?
But gazing at the dying man who had gone to hell and back for him, had forgiven him the atrocities he had committed on him in his existence as the Hunter and the betrayal at Karril's temple with a generosity he would never fully comprehend, he simply couldn't bring himself to deny his last request. Only the God of their faith knew how he could ever accomplish stalling a full-blown battle and what would come out of it. But if this was required for allowing his husband to die in peace, so be it. It was the least he could do for him. "It's alright, Damien," he said gently. "I don't know how yet, but I'll give my very best. I promise."
Vryce relaxed visibly. "Thank you," he breathed. "Oh God, Gerald, I love you so..."
The angel of death spread his raven black wings over him in mid-sentence. One moment, those kind hazel eyes had been looking at him, brimming with affection and tenderness, and the next they were staring blankly at a place where the adept couldn't follow him. Not yet, anyway. He still had work to do.
It wasn't just grief that caused him to lose control and scream up to the indifferent skies above him without giving a damn for his pride and dignity until he had no breath left to spare but a surge of rage so intense that he thought he would explode from the sheer force of it. Blood-lust and cruelty followed in its wake, freed from the deepest abysses of his soul which hadn't been brightened by a single ray of light since his fall from grace. Maybe not even since his appalling childhood. How could they dare to kill his spouse of all people? Regardless of the crimes he had committed during the last year, the real Damien Kilcannon Vryce had almost been too good for this world behind his martial façade, had never ceased striving towards bettering humankind's lot on Erna, just as he himself had done in his early mortal days. The reward for the man who had helped saving the world from Calesta's greedy clutches had been persecution, torture and, finally, a steel bolt through his chest. He hadn't even had time to tell the priest how much he truly cared about him, a shortfall that would haunt him to the reminder of his days, however long that might be.
If Gerald had been capable of a Working this very moment, he would have annihilated every single human being on the battle-field, friend or foe. And this wouldn't have been the end of it. Not by a long shot. Roger Frazer had already died a gruesome death at his hands, but there were many more names on his personal blacklist. But he wasn't, not without paying the ultimate price.
Struggling for at least a semblance of self-control, the adept drew a deep breath. Although adhering to a strict code of honour in order to retain the last vestiges of his humanity wasn't necessary any longer, he still sternly disapproved of reneging on a promise. It simply wasn't in his nature. What's more, Vryce had risked his life - and his immortal soul - for his redemption. Embracing the darkness again after everything they had been through side by side would be tantamount to spitting on the memory of the man who had died while trying to keep him out of harm's way.
Stifling a sigh, he kissed his husband's mouth in a last goodbye and got to his feet. The battle was still raging, and he realized that if his adjutants hadn't shielded him, he would very likely have joined the priest in death quite a while ago. A mere ten feet away from him his standard bearer was going down with a pained scream, an arrow sticking out from his back. Evidently, he needed to come up with just another miracle so very soon, or everything would have been for naught.
Gerald was still racking his for a change rather unproductive brain for a way out of this mess when suddenly a presence he had only felt twice in a millennium so far made itself known. His immediate vicinity wasn't bathed in an unearthly golden glow like on the knees of Mount Shaitan, nor did he hear a voice or had to suffer horrifying visions. It was rather a sensation of - enlightenment. As far as he knew, their forefathers on Earth had believed that the Holy Spirit, one of the three individual aspects of the One God, could come upon His chosen. Perhaps it was just a myth, but if there was a grain of truth in it, it couldn't feel much different from what he was experiencing now.
For the first time since the start of the hostilities, he looked at the mindless slaughter occurring all around him with eyes unclouded by hatred, and his entire perception changed. Raised under the constant threat of being put to the torch, despised by his family and submitted to acts of unspeakable cruelty on a daily base, he had known nothing but the struggle for survival right from the beginning. Fighting was as natural to him as breathing or tapping into the currents, something he had used to maximum advantage when risking his neck for king and country. But Vryce had a point there. Thinking with his big heart instead of his brains, the man had realized that answering violence with violence would only serve to make matters worse. So many had already died that day for the sake of his personal vendetta, ruthlessly expedited under the cover of freeing mankind from religious terror and oppression. It went without saying that the deeply ingrained want to steer the Church of Unification back onto the right track had played an important part in his decision to wage war on the institution which had dared to pervert his teachings, but his motives had been anything but noble. Neither wounded pride nor thirst for revenge had ever made a good advisor.
'A knight is sworn to valour, His heart knows only virtue, His blade defends the helpless, His might upholds the weak, His word speaks only the truth...' Remembering the solemn oath he had once sworn when becoming a Knight of the Flame, Gerald couldn't help but shuddering. Concerning the latter, he hadn't made an altogether bad job of it, but as for the rest, he had undeniably mucked it up on a grand scale. Unfortunately, he couldn't undo the things he had done. But with one truly selfless act of love, the first since times long forgotten, he could grant the priest's last wish and prepare the ground for a better future.
Finally knowing for which purpose his God had spared him, a great calm came over him. Briefly, he considered picking up his banner from the blood-sodden soil before getting down to business, but dismissed the impulse as utterly absurd. Where he was about to go, suchlike outgrowths of human vanity were bearing no meaning whatsoever.
The cue struck a chord with him, stirred a faint flutter of amusement in spite of the dire circumstances. For reasons he'd rather not dwell on too closely, immaculate cleanliness had always been important to him. Very important. But as much as he abhorred being dirty, starving and the worse for wear during his last two years as the Hunter on more occasions than he actually cared to count, he might have very well abstained from wasting his waning strength on a relative trifle sometimes. After all, he was no fool, and a speck of dust on his robes wouldn't have been the end of the world. But watching Vryce's reaction to what the man had been perceiving as just another proof of his companion's vanity had been so highly enjoyable that he hadn't really minded channelling off a constant trickle of power for a Cleansing. And all things considered, annoying the hell out of the priest hadn't been in vain. Their bickering had diverted their minds from the gruelling task lying ahead of them, had allowed them to vent their frustration and keep their sanity while facing one calamity after the other. But this was all water under the bridge now, anyway.
For one last time, he thought of his son who was condemned to grow up without his parents. How he would have loved to show Tory all the wonders he had seen, to teach him everything he knew and open his mind to the so very rewarding world of knowledge! But it wasn't to be. The boy would be well taken care of, though. Narilka and Gabriel would see to it. And Karril, the one and only true friend aside from Damien and Gannon he had ever had.
Smiling, Gerald tilted back his head and stretched out his arms as if he wanted to embrace the entire world. He had been living a long life, but now, with hell being out of the picture at long last, it was time to go home. More at peace with himself than he had been in nigh to a thousand years, he opened his mouth and called out the words he had thought never to utter again.
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Although his progenitor had strictly cautioned him against interfering in human affairs again, the God of Pleasure couldn't just stand idly by and twiddle his thumbs while the man he cherished was in mortal peril. Hence, he concentrated his efforts on committing small acts of mischief wherever he could, hoping that the Mother of his kind would let it pass if he didn't do anything that would enable Hawthorne-Vryce to win the battle outright. It was a fine line he was treading. But conjuring up the illusion of reinforcement troops and thus tempting the mortals operating the cannons to waste their ammunition had been so much fun that he simply couldn't resist an encore.
Just when the heavy ordnance went off again with a thunderous blast, he registered that something was amiss. Seriously amiss. Since the start of the battle, he had been reading the adept's mind every now and then from afar, just to make sure that everything was alright. Putting out his metaphorical feelers once again, he encountered a torrent of emotions which strongly suggested that things were in fact far from going smoothly: sorrow, fury, hatred, the burning want to make those responsible for his loss pay no matter what, all wrapped up in one mind-blowing package.
If the Iezu had had marrow and bones, the further would have frozen in the latter. Vryce. Something horrible had happened to the priest, he was sure of it. There was no other explanation for Gerald's state of utmost agitation.
Being confronted with the adept's baser instincts was never a pleasurable experience, to put it mildly, but he would have willingly endured it if he had been spared a development he hadn't expected in the least. All at once, the emotional storm in Hawthorne-Vryce's mind abated, gave way to an unearthly detachment Karril found much more unsettling than the man's previous wrath. Something was in the air and he didn't like it, didn't like it one bit.
Cursing himself for indulging in his little games instead of watching over his friends, he shed his human guise and hurtled through the ether at lightning speed, but he wasn't fast enough. In a cruel twist of fate, he materialized just in time to hear the words that spelled disaster: "I'm Gerald Tarrant, the Prophet of the Law and Knight Premier of the Order of the Golden Flame."
Shell-shocked, the Iezu froze to utter motionlessness and waited for the devastating blow to fall. For a few seconds, nothing happened. But just when he was beginning to hope that his lover had somehow managed to circumvent the rules dictated by his latest compact, the fae reacted to the sacrifice just as it had always done since Ian Casca had blown up the colonists' starship. Even by the adept's already high standard, his Working was magnificently done, surpassed everything Karril had ever witnessed in all the long years since his birth on the slopes of Mount Shaitan. As the ripples of power effortlessly swept through the entire forces, the surviving soldiers stopped fighting one by one and dropped their weapons like hot coals. Dozens of them even went down on their knees and started to pray, their sweaty, filthy faces the very picture of rapture. It was truly a sight to behold, but the God of Pleasure paid no attention whatsoever to what was going on around him. His gaze stayed glued on the man meaning the world to him. Nothing else mattered.
The former Hunter was still on his feet, a faint smile playing around his lips, but there was no spark of life in his eyes anymore. No soul. Ever so slowly, his legs gave way, and he collapsed right beside his fallen husband. Before he even hit the ground, a strange transformation came over him. Slim limbs stretched, suddenly merely shoulder-length hair lightened to a gorgeous shade of golden brown, and his skin wasn't olive any longer but pale ivory. Gerald Tarrant as he had last seen him at his birthplace was laying before him, breathtakingly beautiful as ever but so terribly still. Only the ugly scar the Unnamed had left on his otherwise perfect features was missing. Whether his god had freed him from this mark of evil or there was an altogether different reason for its notable absence the God of Pleasure had no idea.
Stunned, Karril knelt down at his side and felt for his pulse, but of course there was nothing. The absolute lack of brain activity had already told him that his worst fears had come true. Gerald was gone, had left him without so much as a last farewell, and this time his progenitor wasn't around to resurrect him.
As if in a trance, he closed the grey eyes which would never again sparkle with a trace of sardonic humour, brushed a stray strand of hair out of the pale face and lifted the adept's head, just to push his vest under it. Like everything else about his appearance the garment was just smoke and mirrors, but it had to do until they could lay out his friend in a more proper fashion.
Due to his retransformation into his true form, his alter ego's clothes were slightly to small for Tarrant's taller frame, but considering that creating an illusion was far beyond the distressed Iezu for the time being, it couldn't be helped. The only thing he could do for the deceased was unfastening the clasps of the breastplate Gerald didn't need any longer and taking it off. Running purely on instinct, he then folded the slender hands he had seen wielding a sword and a pen with equal skill just as he had observed in Gabriel on the occasions when one of the faithful among their troops had died in combat. Surely this ancient gesture of prayer was appropriate for a man who had saved the belief in the One God from sinking into oblivion and had never ceased being a servant of the Church he had created despite the ghastly crimes he had committed in order to survive.
When everything was to his satisfaction, Karril sat back on his illusory haunches and gazed down on the one and only human being he had ever loved. A blissful smile still gracing his lips as if he had seen something wonderful in the last moments of his life, the adept looked amazingly peaceful, utterly above the trials and tribulations of the mortal plane. More than anything else this convinced the God of Pleasure that his soul, if there was such a thing at all, had truly departed for a better place where no harm could befall her any longer. It should have been a consolation and maybe would be in the time to come, but right now it wasn't. Not in the least.
Having known him for centuries, Gerald had always seemed no less eternal to him than the wind and the waves. Indestructible, as foolish as it might seem in retrospect. Imagining that his friend would never ever shoot him a withering glance, lecture on the fae or moan with pleasure in his arms again was almost more than he could bear. But he had to. Suicide wasn't an option for one of his kind, nor did he have any tears to shed. Even this possibility to vent his sorrow was denied to him.
But beholding the delicate features so very dear to him, the Iezu was well aware that Tarrant wouldn't want him to lament about his demise, let alone throwing in the towel. A pragmatist through and through, he would expect him to pull himself together and get his ass in gear instead. The carnage was over, but this didn't mean that they had landed themselves in an Ernan version of Utopia all of a sudden. For a start, there must have been hundreds of wounded soldiers on the battle field, desperately waiting for help. To make matters worse, something had to be done about the casualties. They couldn't just be left to rot. Gerald wouldn't want this; maybe not so much for humanitarian reasons but in order to prevent an outbreak of a nasty epidemic. Considering that a Healing was next to impossible and medical technology still in its infancy, they'd better not chance their luck.
Karril sighed softly. With both generals and most of their officers dead, there was no one left to shoulder the burden but him, something his origin hadn't exactly prepared him for. The one task he dreaded above everything else was informing those anxiously waiting for their return at Merentha Castle about the deaths of their friends, though. Tory was still way too young to comprehend his bereavement and Ciani and Gabriel would grieve but come to terms with the situation at long last, but bearing the bad tidings to the young Neocountess was an altogether different kettle of fish. He wasn't looking forward to this conversation, to put it mildly.
But he had no choice. In neither case. Someone had to carry on the torch the adept had lit with his altruistic sacrifice until it could be passed on to his son one day. The visions Tarrant had had to endure what felt like a century ago left no doubt that the boy was destined for something great. He would watch over him tirelessly, tell him stories about his fathers and teach him to be proud of them, that was as sure as day followed night. Their determination and unique courage mustn't be forgotten,
His half alien core crying the tears denied to his eyes, the God of Pleasure traced the fine line of Gerald's cheekbones, mapped his still face with his deceptively human fingers as if he wanted to imprint it on his memory for all eternity. Tearing himself away from his corpse after placing a kiss on his lover's forehead was very likely the hardest thing he had ever done, but there was no way around it. The time for mourning would come later, and it wouldn't be pleasant. But up to that point, he would do his best to walk in footsteps which were several sizes too large for him. This last service he owed the man who had enriched his existence for so many years and had somehow freed him from the limitations of his aspect.
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Postscriptum: By now, most of you have surely realized that Shadowy Star's fic I hinted at in my author's notes is the fabulous 'Resurrection', one of my all time favourites. I'm sorry for the similarities (Damien getting killed, Gerald committing suicide by revealing his true identity), but please keep in mind that the story on the whole is entirely different before you contemplate flaming me...