Until the End of Time
I don’t know how coherent this is. Some parts won’t make sense, I’m pretty sure, but I’ll do my best to try and take some of the confusion away.
The main thing you need to know is that a K’sha is a ceremonial weapon of the Xeresh race, one which takes five years of one’s life energy to create. They’re linked to the wielder’s life, and when the wielder dies, so too does the sword. It’s the most precious possession in a Xeresh’s life, because they literally put five entire years of their life into the weapon itself.
The characters are taken from an older story of mine called Seven Successors, which I eventually plan on re-writing into a publishable piece in the Vallyran world.
Written with this music playing. I suggest you listen to it while reading.
~~~~
The night was cold, even through the massive pile of blankets heaped on my bed.
Soft rays of starlight filtered through the blue-tinted windows like water turned partially to air, wavering on my uncovered arms as I sat upright, looking around the room where I had lain for weeks. It was all clean white lines, basic amenities, and then the bed. And yet I knew every inch of it all, having memorized it with nothing else to do but rest.
Pain shot through my side, making me moan softly as I tried to force my thoughts away from the wounded surface. It was getting worse now—it had gotten worse from the first day of the healing. That was why they had put me here, in a place where the healers could watch me.
In a place where my family could be close to me.
They were draped across the chairs like coats thrown carelessly aside, utterly indifferent to the discomfort that it caused them. They had been staying here for three days, and hadn’t made one complaint about the cramped space. Especially for the twins, that was saying a lot.
They were boy and girl, both age seven, and the noise never ended if they were awake and together. They had argued almost from their cribs, and I didn’t expect that they would stop any time soon. They had come just over a hundred miles after getting my message, a journey that I was sure had left them tired and annoyed. But now they slept, and I couldn’t help but let out a wondering chuckle as I saw them passed out on each other’s shoulders.
Then there was my wife. She was normally the picture of elegance and wealth, dressed in any number of varying, vibrant colors. But now she was in white as the moonlight washed over her sleeping face, clothed in a simple dress that was more beautiful than anything I had known her to wear before.
Her eyes were closed, but I knew their color well anyway. The blue was so pale that it nearly seemed white, like the polar ice that surrounded the axis line of the planet. She shifted slightly, head moving from hand to headrest, and smiled faintly at something in her dreams.
The wound in my side spasmed again, and I doubled over, growling in an attempt to keep quiet. That was bad. The pain was at entirely new levels, and I knew that it was too close to a vital point to be just nerve reaction. I wasn’t going to last a lot longer. The arrowhead had been poisoned, and for the healers to remove it was risking death. If the concoction hit my bloodstream, everything was over. Xeresh toxins worked against all races, even their own.
“Sirae.”
My wife opened her eyes slowly, easily, as if she had been waiting to answer me for all this time. The carefree smile from her dream remained on her face, and widened when she saw the one on mine.
“Vey’ra, what are you doing up? It’s almost thirty, you should be asleep by now!”
I nodded and almost laughed, beckoning her closer. She rose with only a slight rustle of her dress, walking over and kneeling by my bedside, arms folded as she looked into my face. She wasn’t one to miss anything, and I knew that she saw right through what I was going to say before I even said it.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
I nodded to her and looked out through the window, watching the edge of the nebula pass by as our planet rotated into night. A thousand vivid colors were fading into darkness as the world turned, and I was saddened to think that it might be the last remnant of the day that I would see.
“It’s near a vital point. I couldn’t tell you which, but I know from the pain. I’m not going to be able to hold on long once it really starts.”
She nodded, relaxed and unfazed. Her eyes reflected the starlight as she looked up through the window as well, watching the end of the day, yet contemplating something more. She had seen more than her share of death in her lifetime, and wasn’t about to be troubled by what she knew had been coming.
“What do you need?”
I sat back and laced my arms together, resting on them as well as the pillow that lay up against the backboard. The pain was gone for the moment, leaving me free to talk.
“Stay with me. Right here. Don’t wake the twins, I don’t want them to know.”
She nodded and pulled herself up, then slid onto the bed with ease, dress fluttering lightly around her shoulders. Her arm encircled mine as I brought it down, and she lay against me lightly, a smile still on her face. I had known it would be like this for a long time; she felt nothing for death, even if it was mine.
“Are you scared?”
I nodded, and meant it. Despite the scripture, despite the preachers and the prayers and the good deeds, nothing was certain after death. And the pain wasn’t easy eith—
I doubled over again, hacking a single cough that brought spittle to my lips. I wiped without thinking, only to go cold when I realized it wasn’t saliva that lay against my palm. The faint glow of the power that ran through a Xeresh’s veins was familiar after a lifetime like mine, but never like this. Not ever my own. Never this bad.
“Vey’ra?”
I looked over at Sirae with eyes that shone with tears of pain, only to realize that she was crying tears of her own. The same smile still lay on her face, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Even in her worst moments, she always smiled. But as a tear made its way down her face, the lopsided half-grin I knew so well collapsed into sadness.
“Don’t leave.”
She held me tightly around the middle, above my wound but close enough to sting. I grabbed her hands in mine and squeezed, smiling a little myself as I realized the absurdity of the situation. Sirae never cracked. Ever. That she would do so here was nothing short of a miracle.
“You’ll find me again when you follow. Be it Xereva or Sasilva that takes me, I’ll always wait for you.”
She dug her head into my shoulder and let the tears fall, and I wrapped my arms around her with all the force I could manage, letting my own tears drip to the bed. It hadn’t been a long life, but it had been a good one, and I was going to go down as I thought I would—fighting.
Another spasm made me shudder as Sirae clutched me harder, but I just hugged her back, swallowing the blood and pain as blackness started to take my vision. She cried openly now, and I felt the short breaths that whispered ‘don’t leave’ into my ears as my arms went slack. The poison had hit my blood.
Only a matter of time.
“I’ll wait for you, Sirae. Always will I wait. Don’t ever give up on me.”
She nodded as my vision darkened again, and I pushed back with all my strength, heart energy making my red eyes glow as I willed the pain to retreat. There was one last thing I had to do before I left the world, one last bit of satisfaction.
“Get my K’sha. Quick.”
I said the words with the strength that the power afforded me, and Sirae complied instantly, hearing the change. She placed the sheathed diamond sword in my grasp barely a moment later, crawling up beside me, tears still flowing.
“What… what do you want to do?”
I smiled without a trace of pain, picked up the weapon, and closed my eyes.
“Only this.”
I poured every fragment of my soul into the contours of the blade, strengthening it, changing it, marking it with five characters and making sure that it would endure forever. And with the last of the fire that flowed from within, I removed the spell that would have destroyed it forever.
We both gasped at the same moment—me from pain, Sirae from surprise. I held my weapon up with the last of my wavering strength, and she took it gently, reverently, and read my last gift as I said my last words.
“Until the end of time.”
