Page 200 of Eternal Ruin

Susenyos gritted his teeth to stop himself from shaking but it was no use. His body quaked like a child’s. The air was thick with bloodthirst. Unimaginable hunger for destruction.

“Wh-what do you want?”

The cloaked creature took a long stride forward and Susenyos shot to his feet, wondering which direction yielded the shortest path to the castle.

“My vampire army will descend upon your country very soon. They will butcher any soul and your earth will decay from the inside out.”

Terror slammed into his chest, and he could no longer breathe, only wheeze.

Susenyos clutched at his chest, fighting the sudden tightness.

“Pitiful,” the creature intoned.

Susenyos doubled over and hurled. Tortured air burst through his throat at the image of beautiful Talaa dead with the skin of ash.

“I will kill you.” Susenyos spoke to the ground, staring at his vomit.

He felt a horrible yank at his hair, and groaned. His vision became of the sky. The stench of fermented yeast and wet earth filled his nostrils as the creature towered behind him.

“Let me show you your death.”

Black rot climbed into Susenyos’s mouth with a sickening, violating thrust. He writhed and tried to expel the torrent gouging inside him, filling every orifice and the whites of his eyes. He felt himself go limp and had the sensation of being thrown off a high cliff.

The vision wasn’t of death but of life. His life.

He watched himself with Talaa, Iniko, Taj, Samson. Their lives ahead of them, bickering and teasing and falling in love. He saw a beautiful face, his future wife, and their hands adorned with rings, and the cry of a child somewhere. His child. He would never be a father, gentler and kinder than his own, never experience the next autumn or winter, or hold his friends tighter. This day that began so like the others would be his last.

It was terror like he’d never known.

Please! Please.

Susenyos didn’t want to die. He’d seen men die in battle crying for their mothers and he did too.

He’d do anything to live. He was too young. All he could think about were the things he’d never get to do. They burned him from the inside out and a deep rage filled him for the years he’d wasted. It was all a waste trying to please his father and he’d die like this, never knowing his approval.

One more day, he pleaded with the universe and all deities.One more day.

What beauty there was in one more day.

Susenyos Sagad, to Whom the Angels Bow, dead in a forest.

His entire body went numb with how history would remember him.

Please, God. One more day.

His mother came to him then, her touch sunlight itself, and he wept. Was he in heaven?

“Open your eyes.” Her voice soothed every welt and bruise, a salve of nature.

“I don’t want to die,” he whispered, eyes still squeezed shut.

“Open your eyes and live, Susenyos.”

Susenyos.

His mother never called him that.

Slowly, his lashes fluttered, the dark smoke clearing like haze.