The Brotherhood: Blood (90 page)

“Which is why they need to come down,” Miko nodded, taking a moment to remove, then retie his cape around his waist. “Come on—let’s get started before the day begins to drag on. If another Ohmalyon storm is coming in, it’s bound to repeat its cycle before it moves on to the mainland.”

“What if it doesn’t, sir?”

“Then God have mercy on us, Odin, because if an Ohmalyon storm doesn’t repeat itself at least three times, something’s wrong.”

All things come in three: birth, life, death; beginning, middle, end; preparation, infiltration, infatuation—all exhibit a common cycle necessary to life. Without birth you could not live, and without life you eventually die; without a beginning, there could be no end, nor a story to follow the two; and without preparations, wars could not begin infiltration, then live on into infatuation.

Life is destined to repeat itself.

For most things, that cycle occurs in threes.

When the third storm rolled in that night, once again completing the ever-present and ominous cycle of three, Odin thought nothing of it. Instead, he simply watched the outside world occurring as naturally as ever, knees to his chest and chest to knees. He balanced himself on the balls of his heels whilst rocking himself to the tune of the rain. Occasionally, he’d blink when a flash of lightning lit the sky, but otherwise held no reckoning in regards to what was going on outside.

Tranced beyond his wildest imagination, he counted the raindrops falling into the cave.

One… two… three…

A bloody Ogre stood at the foot of the cave, one arm limply hanging at its side. Clenched within its grasp was a small, human-sized skull.

It took less than a moment for Odin to distinguish white bone from tattered, brown scalp.

“Bafran?” Miko asked, standing. “What are you doing here?”

“It is within my right to eat my young,” the Ogre drawled, hollow eyes bare of even the slightest amount of emotion. “As is my right to kill them.”

When the fifteen-foot tall Ogre stepped into the light, a true visage of a disturbed yet-insightful creature came to life. Hollow not from design, but act, and painted not in color, but darkness, blood caked its face in a beautiful portraiture of horror. Flesh dangling from its mouth, teeth caked in gore, the Ogre ground its jaw and clicked its molars, each sound the hellfire snap of being devoid of a conscious. It fingered wounds at its palms, toying with hanging slices of flesh, and breathed in the humid, dirty air, its black tongue rising and falling between the torn flaws of its lips as nostrils and contracted. Its smile—cruel, deceitful, and evil—lit a fear inside Odin’s heart that, until that moment, he had never felt in his entire life. It was as though he was trapped within a room whose ceiling was slowly lowering upon him. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, nothing he could think, hear or even smell—it was only death that ruled his conscience, and in the face of such agony he could barely even move, much less attempt to make since of it all. It was for that reason, in staring at the Ogre’s face, that he felt something inside him die. Whether it was innocence, frailty, or something else, he did not know.

“Bafran,” Miko repeated, retreating toward the far wall, where his sheathed sword lay hidden in the shadows. “Turn around. You’re not welcome here.”

“Nor was I welcomed… in the village,” the Ogre gasped, raising its hands to claw at its face.
“NOR WAS I WELCOMED IN THE VILLAGE!”

It took one moment for Odin to throw himself to his feet and conjure light at the tip of his fire, then two additional ones to release it into the air and give it life.

When the third and final moment came, white light exploded and shrouded the cave in wonder.

His sword drawn, his arm thick and taught, Miko evaded one of Bafran’s giant fists as it came barreling down over his head. With a flush of his body, he spun, brought his sword around, and sliced a fresh wound in the Ogre’s already-mangled right arm.

Screaming, the bloody creature, now bathed in a more ethereal light, looked to be something unreal, an imaginary thing meant only for a world not supposed to exist. Its eyes seemed to bleed and every exposed vein appeared to be bulging from beneath its skin. There was even a moment Odin thought he could see the blood coursing through the Ogre’s body, pumped by rage and fueled by adrenaline, but no matter what controlled the enraged creature, its sole purpose was to destroy the one thing in its way—Miko.

“NOVA!” Odin screamed.

Swiping the scythe up from the floor, Nova tore the deerskin sheath from its pblade and swung it over his head. The blade came down on the Ogre’s shoulder, skirting its collarbone in a spray of blood until it came completely free.

A second enraged scream tore through the howl of the wind as the Ogre threw itself at Nova, while a third echoed from its chest as Miko impaled his sword through its one remaining good arm.

Though stunned by the events unfolding before him, Odin thought only of what he could do to help as Miko released hold of his blade and flipped away from the Ogre’s lunging jaw.

Reaching down, he drew his sword from his sheath and prepared to lose his life.

Mine for yours,
he thought, closing his eyes.

His father, their preparation, their journey, his flight, his gift, his imprisonment, his salvation, his friend, his quest, his fear, his trial, his anger, his lesson, his guilt, his fright—in but one moment, when the play was to come for a close and he was to take his final bow, his life came down in an instance.

This is it,
he thought, free-falling, sweat pouring down his face and fear racing through his heart.
This is really it.

Bafran whispered one last, inaudible word before collapsing to the ground, Odin’s sword through his chest and his angel of mercy on his back.

It can take your whole life to learn how to use a sword.

It takes less than a moment to kill someone with it.

Chapter 10

“Odin,” Miko said. “Are you ready to leave?”

Already?

Blinking, Odin lifted his head to find his reflection staring back at him from the stream below. Though no physically different than he was a year ago, something about the person that stared back from the stream begged to question whether or not he had really changed on the inside, or if any time had actually managed to pass from one moment to the next. This lapse of concentration forced him to blink several times, to differentiate from the person in the stream and the person looking into it—whom, at this current point in time, could very well be completely different from the man he considered himself to be.

After a moment of recollection, a brief, if somewhat-disturbing thought struck him.

Was it possible, he wondered, for the mind to blink, then reopen in a different place and time—for someone to close their eyes in sleep, only to open them in wake days, months, maybe even years later?

No,
he thought.
It isn’t.

Though he shook his head, Odin couldn’t help the sigh that followed, immediately opening his words to interpretation and therefore foiling the plot to try and avoid this conversation as much as humanly possible. “It’s,” he began, then stopped. A flicker of movement beneath the water broke his concentration just long enough for him to catch a baby catfish settling down at the bottom of the stream. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

Catching Odin’s gaze in a frightened stare, the creature’s pupils widened, then dilated before it disappeared into the sand—a thrash of fear, anger and adrenaline kicking up bottom soil from the streambed.

“Odin,” Miko said, falling to a knee beside him. “If this is about what happened—”

“I know,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t there anymore.”

“What was left inside that Ogre’s body was nothing but a husk of madness. Any conscience Bafran had was gone the moment he stepped into that cave.”

Unable to reply, Odin took a deep breath, then expelled it. Ripples crossed the water as his breath met and disturbed its surfaces.

Maybe for the same reason you’re dwelling on the things you’ve done,
he thought.
Because you feel guilty.

He chose not to give life to his thought. Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, brushed the dirt off his pants, then sighed again. “Guess I never got to become a man,” he said, “huh?”

Miko shook his head. Closing the distance between them, he took Odins’ face in his hands and closed his eyes. “You’ll always be a man, Odin,” the Elf whispered. “You don’t need hair on your face to prove that.”

Leaning forward, Miko pressed his lips to Odin’s forehead, then walked up.

It wasn’t until Odin reached up that he realized he had stubble.

Upon returning to the cave, Odin found both Miko and Nova stooped over their packs, tying down the last of their essentials and preparing for the final leg in the journey. In the short moment that Nova looked up when Odin stepped into the clearing, a flash of confusion and bewilderment lit his face. Blinking, he wet this lips, then started to say something, but stopped when Odin shook his head and drew up alongside his knight master.

Nodding, Miko bent, lifted the largest of the three packs over his shoulders, then turned to face the cave’s giant door. “This is it,” the Elf said. “Either of you want to say goodbye?”

It took most of the morning and much of the afternoon to cross the forest and enter Sunskin’s domain. Like death swooping down from the heavens to reap the souls of the dead, they pushed on without hesitation, barely pausing when every Ogre in the immediate area turned to look at them. Not a single creature said a thing as they looked upon them with their dull, glasslike eyes, seemingly trying to speak without actually saying anything. A connection made not with words, but feelings, Odin forced himself to look at his knight master’s back, if only to keep himself from breaking into nervous shakes.