The Cursed Inheritance

Darkness fell over Alaric.

He hung, in a nothing where time had been erased. The battlefield, the warrior, Seraphine—nothing. He did not know if his flesh still breathed, only that something very ancient was looking at him, looking with an unseen but unyielding presence.

The air around him was heavy, not of cloud or mist but of crushing strength that pressed upon his own self, seeking to rend him asunder.

And then, in a tearing spasmodic convulsion, the world lived. He drew air, his scorched lungs as he stumbled out onto splintered earth. The cave beneath him collapsed.

No walls, no ceiling, but endless black smog twisting through shattered ground under a red sky. Black spires thrust themselves up out of the distance, splintered and shattered, reaching up into an unimaginable, unearthly blackness that went on forever.

A grinding, distorted voice thundered out into the void, echoing more in his head than his ears.

"You shouldn't be here."

Alaric whirled, his hand clenched on the hilt of the sword in reflex. There stood the man of yesterday's battle—but altered now. From his head the black cowl had vanished; in its place was a countenance. From its head it had fallen onto the earth at its feet, and on top of its cranium a countenance that brought the hairs upon Alaric's body bristling. 

It was his own.

The specter sneered, his eyes gleaming with knowledge. "I this where your journey ends, if you fail. The power you seek is a cycle. You fight, you win, you die. and you end up becoming the very thing you swore to destroy."

Alaric staggered back, his mind reeling. "I this an illusion. An illusion."

Laughter rang out, jarring, overlaid, with many voices mingled in laughter. "Is it? Or is this to your dying strife? Power you wield, choices you make—all propel you on. You knew, didn't you? Fighting high, hungering for more. When will it consume you whole?"

Alaric's jaw snapped shut, spasm-grips around the hilt of his sword. "I won't be like you."

"Will not you?" The specter lifted its hand, and the mist between them writhed, black whorls of vapor curling and uncurling like serpents. "Then show it."

The earth shook. From the void, deformed limbs burst forth. Dry corpses with empty sockets where eyes once were and shattered bones, their bodies covered by the same black clothed the warrior. They marched stiffly, their voices vomiting out in hundreds of tongues, each sentence a dagger to Alaric's mind.

He blinked only before the first horror struck.

He shattered his sword, metal on black. The impact sent out a shockwave in the air, and for a moment the creature stumbled backwards. But as it disappeared, the cloud formed again and returned to attack him. Another joined him, then another, till he was engulfed.

A blade cut across his shoulder, impacting one of the beasts in its mid-mass. Seraphine remained beside him, gasping for breath but unbroken, her gaze aflame with resolve.

"You're not alone in this," she said, her daggers flashing as she spun about, slicing into the beasts with ghastly precision.

Alaric grimaced, forced air escaping. "Then let us be done."

They fought side by side, cutting down the monsters as fast as they reformed. Alaric's blade flashed with strength, cutting through darkness with killing accuracy. Seraphine was a ghost, cutting through in sawing curves. But no matter how many of them they killed, more came from the darkness, as if the darkness was limitless.

"No end to them!" Seraphine cried, leaping aside from a swipe of claws, her knife cutting into the monster's throat, to re-shape itself at once.

Alaric understood that she was correct. This was not a fight they could do with swords. He needed to sever the root.

His eyes refocused on the ghost, still struggling, watching.

*If this is my destiny… then I will forge a new one.*

Alaric departed the fight, dashing toward the ghost. The horrors cluttered his path, but he would not give up. His sword burned white, slicing through darkness as he sprinted headlong. Seraphine watched his back, pushing aside the tide just far enough to enable him to reach where he was going.

The ghost did not react, or move in any way. It simply gazed as Alaric approached.

And then, as Alaric's sword hovered over its heart ready to pierce it, the ghost smiled.

The tear was horribly rent asunder.

There came out a flood of power like an earthquake that flung Alaric and Seraphine off their feet. The objects were broken in the process of a fraction of a second, and the rending earth was sundered in two at their feet. Alaric was barely able to save himself in time before he fell into the bottomless gulf beneath.

The ghost was on the perimeter, impassive to destruction. Its faceless visage gazed down at Alaric as if untouched by specific feeling.

"You fight against fate, but the destiny is not negotiable. You can rage as much as you want, but sooner or later."

The vacuum reached out a hand, and Alaric was drawn towards it. It wasn't any pull he'd ever known—nor magic, nor gravity, but something deeper, something that would rend him into unhealthy fragments.

Seraphine bolted forward, jaws closing over his wrist. She tugged with every ounce of strength she possessed. "I came all the way not to watch you die!"

Alaric's head reeled. He had seconds. He could not surpass this power, perhaps, but rebounded.

He dove into himself, below the fear, below the doubt. The burst of light in that moment before, the force that had thrown the darkened assailant aside—this was in him still. And now he summoned it with all his might.

A burst of power from him, to resist the pull of the void. The face of the specter shook—surprise? Grinning? Unpossible to tell. But the power stumbled, and Alaric took advantage of that.

He rotated himself around with his bulk, resisting the pull. Rather than being drawn down, he thrust forward—toward the specter.

His sword, now burning with golden light, bit deep.

The scream of nothingness as the blade slit the demon. The nothingness shook, and the shadow retreated. The world outside them distorted, shattered like shattered glass.

And then it was over.

Alaric stood inside the cave, panting for air. The throne was gone. The universe on the walls of runes was gone. The air hung heavy with unfulfilled, paused.

Seraphine gasped beside him. "What. just happened?"

Alaric gazed at his shaking hands. "I don't know."

But he knew in himself. Something was changed. The road ahead was dark, the war only half-won.

But he had made the first move against fate.

And fate, for the very first time, had tripped.