A Beautiful Day For The End Of The World

It was a beautiful day for the end of the world.

            In a sapphire sky, the sun beat down on Torgo Ebonheart in his armour of black iron, forged from the heart of a fallen star. His helmet bore a crown of wicked spikes. His plate, scarred by the blades of his fallen foes, was ringed with razor-sharp flanges. He held his flamberge, The Blade of Xalphon, upright in front of him, an accusing finger pointed at the heavens.

            Above him, the Trolltooth mountains glowered like a broken smile. Beneath them marched a gloomy expanse of firs, haunted by wolf, kobold and bandit. Behind him stood his army, a hundred thousand men, orcs and dark elves. Infantry. Cavalry astride fell mounts. Howling beasts of war. A decade they had followed Torgo. Down from the Maw of Fate, across plain and field, forest and mountain. Together they had burned the villages and pillaged the towns and raped the cities which lay on the path to this greenswarded vale, to be here, this day, this hour.

            Torgo turned his eyes skyward. The unseen moon climbed towards its appointment with destiny. The sun waited. Their edges met and the army began to chant. A handful of voices, a throng, a horde, a host.

            Ebonheart. Ebonheart. Ebonheart! EBONHEART!

            The horses stirred and bucked. The warbeasts cried. With the sun half-covered, a chill crept into the air.

            EBONHEART! EBONHEART!

            Wisps of greasy green light flickered on the flamberge. They coalesced into flame coruscating up and down the blade, pulsing, building and strengthening until, at the moment of totality, the sun naught but a string of diamonds along the edge of the moon, the blade erupted in jade fire. Torgo hoisted it into the sky and turned to face his army.

            His voice was the hammer on the forge of the Gods.

            “Glory to Xalphon!”

            The chants of his army merged into a single inchoate roar. Torgo turned back. The field ahead lay empty.

            The moon glided serenely on. The sun waxed again, slice to half to full.

            The field stood empty. No foe drew up the slope towards him. No coalition of the great and good. No banner of the sun regnant. No Chosen One upon a white charger, clad in golden armour, no Lance of Glory blazing actinic white.

            Moon and sun drifted apart. The unholy fire on the Blade of Xalphon dwindled and guttered and failed. Torgo lowered it and drove it into the turf.

            “High Priest!”

            The ranks of elites split as a portly figure bustled forward in a dark indigo hooded robe. He puffed and wheezed and fell on his knees before Torgo.

            “My Lord! I…”

            “Silence, worm,” Torgo said. “It was written. In the shadow of the moon. Under the teeth of the troll. The armies of light borne in on the wings of the storm. The Chosen One arrives and the battle begins.”

            “Yes, Dark Lord, except…”

            “Elphas, you disgusting mound of ordure, where by all the demons of all the hells is my Chosen One?”

            Elphas fluttered his pale, wizened hands.

            “My Lord…”

            “Spare me your witterings, vermin, unless you have an answer. How have you failed?”

            Elphas’ hands fluttered again.

            “You summoned me at the Maw of Fate. You bound me in the flesh of the eighth son of an eighth son. You quenched this blade in the blood of a score of virgins.”

            Elphas bowed his head with each confirmation.

            “You had my plate forged and then stolen and slew its smith. I killed king after king. Together we dined on the hearts of princesses. Tell me, oaf, the Chosen One. You took him from his queenly mother? Entrusted him to the care of the humblest farmer? Had his steps guided by the sagest of teachers?”

            “Yes, my Lord.”

            “Then where is he?” Torgo’s voice echoed off the trees and the mountains and the sun and moon.

            Elphas gazed up at Torgo with rheumy eyes, now red-rimmed and teary.

            “The prophecy…” Elphas began.

            Torgo back-handed him and Elphas tumbled away. He hauled himself upright and clawed at Torgo’s breastplate.

            “My Lord!” he whined. “Forgive me.”

            Torgo removed his helmet and tossed it to the grass. He shook his gauntlets free and ran a hand through sweat-soaked hair.

            “Forgiveness?” Torgo sagged. “You’ve no idea of what’s been lost.”

            Countless aeons had Torgo lived. He’d bathed in the light of galaxies, swum in cold seas of stellar dust. He’d held the hand of a god as it died and pulled open its belly to permit a new pantheon to spill out and begin their own apotheosis. He’d shaped the clays of new worlds, helped nascent minds on the faltering first steps of culture and civilisation.

            When they’d called him out of the void, he’d permitted the diminution of his essence, crammed into this feeble meat cage called a body. The agony, to be torn from his true self. The sense of rupture ever close. The pains of hunger, thirst, lust, exhaustion. Doubt. Here he was, answer to their prayers, culmination of centuries of bloodshed, machinations and suffering, and nobody had dared to look at him. When they had, he saw only fear. Even Elphas, who’d wrapped him in a cloak after Torgo had unwound the flesh of the sacrifice and knitted it into an appropriate form. Fear went before him like lightning before thunder.

            The prophecy was a lie. The peoples of this world had forgotten: Xalphon was not merely the God of Death, but the God of Rebirth too. Torgo knew this but Elphas did not. The world was to end this day, this was true. But the Chosen One would stand victorious over Torgo’s corpse. Was supposed to. Torgo’s fate was to be the god sacrificed so that the fires of rebirth could gush forth over all the realms and all that was evil, all that was wrong, could be undone and remade and put right.

            No Chosen One. No destined death. No blessed release.

            Nausea boiled in his guts. Acid burned the back of his throat. Torgo suffered in his prison of flesh.

            “Do not beg forgiveness from me, Elphas.” Torgo patted Elphas’ cheek and wiped the blood from his mouth.

            “My Lord?”

            “The blood. The death. The cities we burned. The evil we committed. This army, which we dragged across continents. Elphas, what was it for?”

            “The prophecy.”

            “What was promised?”

            Elphas averted his eyes, gulped.

            “The Chosen One would die,” Elphas said. “The world would end, swept clean by the fires of Xalphon, then rebuilt. We would stand, masters over it all.”

            “We burned half the cities of the world for the prophecy.”

            Elphas nodded.

            “Then, Elphas, where is the Chosen One? The cleansing fire? Xalphon?”

            Tears streaked down Elphas’ face.

            “Exactly. Then what was it for?” Torgo faced his army. “Go home. It’s over. Go home and be at peace. I command it.”

            Whispers became murmurs became rumbles.

            “Go home,” Torgo said and turned his back on his army. He shucked his armour free and discarded it on the grass and stood unburdened at last in doublet and chausses.

            He gazed down the field towards a distant town at the confluence of several streams.

            Elphas grabbed his wrist. “Now what? What do we do?”

            “We?” Torgo snorted. “Do what you will. I am going to live.”

            Torgo shook Elphas loose and strode away. He found a stream running away at the end of the field and followed it down the slope, through a forest where the birds still sang. He smelled smoke – aromatic, hearth smoke, not the reek of charred bodies. Through the trees, he espied a clearing, and a house and barn within it. A farm.

            He stopped at the treeline. The house was simple; thatch atop split logs sealed with mud. Chickens strutted between the buildings. A cow lowed within the barn. An elderly man sat in the house’s doorway, tall and spry, with shaggy grey hair. He seemed to be waiting for something, lips downturned, while he chewed on an apple.

            Torgo called out to the man, who rose.

            “Who goes there?” the farmer cried.

            Torgo raised his hands and advanced. “A traveler, looking for a purpose.”

            “You a warrior?”

            “No more.”

            “How goes the battle?”

            “What battle?”

            “What battle? The battle for the fate of the world. The prophesied battle.”

            Torgo shrugged. “No battle.”

            “No end of the world?”         

            “Not today.”

            The farmer frowned and scratched his head.

            “Bollocks,” he spat. “I’m behind on all my work.”

            “I can help,” Torgo said. “In exchange for the apple.”

            The farmer handed the apple to Torgo. Torgo bit into it and savoured the crunch of it, the sourness of the juice.

            “You got a name, stranger?”

            Torgo paused, thought, shook his head. “No more.”

            “Well, I’ve got to feed the animals, milk the cow and muck out the barn. You any good at shovelling shit?”

            Torgo smiled at the farmer. “Show me.”