The old woman (older than Mischa was now, definitely) stood at his bedside when Moses awoke, leaning on what looked like a bamboo cane.
He pulled backwards immediately. She was still, her face unchanged, looking at him.
“Master wishes to see you after you have refreshed yourself.”
She turned and headed for the door.
“Wait!” Moses wanted to know, “Who are you?”
The old woman didn’t turn, but her shoulders dropped a little.
“I had a daughter. Susan. My husband died soon after her birth, along with my dear baby. This was after the Break, so you wouldn’t know about it.” Her voice was full of bitterness. A sob choked her. She hobbled through the door and was gone.
Moses sat on the side of his bed, and put his head between his hands, uncannily resembling Joshua King.
How many characters did I write into these stories? There are some I can barely remember.
Moses sat still on the bedside. He began to run through his creation. Run through his memory of Jesse King, from the beginning.
I need a pen and paper. I need to write down my memories. Maybe then I’ll remember something useful in this crazy situation.
Moses hadn’t moved when the old lady returned, with two bigger than large men, dressed in business suits. They were so similar in appearance they had to be twins.
Samson and Heracles. They were babies, born to Timothy and Bress. Now they stand here, grown without my direction.
“You have not made yourself clean.” The old woman shook her head. “Master will not be happy.”
She tapped her cane, and the two men came forward and stood in front of Moses. Silent. Without compassion, but without anything else either.
They obeyed. That is what I had in store for them. Obedience. But obedience to King, not this.
Moses got up and rubbed his shirt down. He wasn’t too dirty, but he had come across the worlds in a t-shirt he wore to bed and a pair of shorts. The two men flanked him as they moved out through the corridors, which were stone. The only light came from luminescent globes set into the roof, which was stone as well. They walked up two flights of stairs before coming into a small ante-chamber.
Beyond stands the entrance hall we arrived into.
It was true. One of the suited men (Samson or Heracles, Moses didn’t know) opened the doors, and they walked through. The old lady came last, beckoning him forward with her crane. The two men stayed either side of Moses as he walked toward the throne. Joshua King sat there, and the Sarvant at his Right Hand. Nobody spoke as the old woman made her slow way to the left hand chair, and sat, taking her time. Of Mischa White there was no sign.
“Prophet. Your death begins today. A special day, and there is special power in the first blood spilled. Not as much as the last drop, but more than enough to begin the journey. The great journey foretold in all prophesy. That which will lead us to the promised land. The golden lands, lost Albion, ravaged and broken, but risen again as the phoenix. We seek that place. And you are the key.”
Joshua King sat slumped in his throne. He watched the Sarvant speak, and there was intelligence in those eyes, but all he did was watch. He turned those eyes (the eyes of Jesse King for sure) towards Moses, and the song within him that had been so quiet that he’d forgotten about it, burst forth. It’s rapturous melody thundered, through those eyes.
“Tell old old Pharoah ..”
It fit. The song and the old spiritual words. As it clashed and bashed, it fit together in his head.
And then a thought occurred to him, as clear as the song within.
Jesse King is alive.
This could be true. It had to be true. Moses needed to find the sire of this pitiful wreck before him. But right now there were more immediate concerns.
The Sarvant noticed the contact of the eyes, and stepped between them, his own eyes blazing. The song quieted again. Soft, almost unheard, but Moses knew it was not gone.
“Enough. You will not look at the King again, or I will take out your eyes. There will be no more of that, until the appropriate time.”
Moses wondered how much the Sarvant could hear. And he wondered if the Sarvant knew what the song was, what it meant.
Probably.
The Sarvant walked up in front of Moses. He waved a hand at the two large, almost giant, men. He grinned.
“I see you have met Samson and Heracles. They have grown into very handy individuals to have around. And no doubt, given the .. nature of their mother, they will continue to grow, and obey.”
He knows more than I do. He knows I created them with obedience in mind.
Samson and Heracles were born to a mother who was not entirely your standard human. She looked human, and had fallen in love and married a human male, but what pulsed within (Bress) was nothing close. People had been melded with magic long long ago, mutated into something more and less than humanity. They had amazing powers, and were given to long life. They were small in number though, as mutation did not lend itself to procreation.
The general public of Jesse King’s world had labeled them Mutants, and in much the same way as the X-Men comics, prejudice had run it’s bloody course. Thirty years before the Jesse King stories began, a number of battles rocked the lands. The Blood Wars, the Rebellion, the Last Battle of Truth, Gorgon’s War (Gorgon had been a king of the mutants, a tall purple-eyed warrior who carried a claymore on his back). All names given to terrible times.
Lives were taken on both sides, thousands of dead bodies fed the crows. Magic and mutation (and muscle) lay waste to many areas, and neither side won. The mutants retreated as one, in the middle of the last battle, as though given a silent command (as indeed they were). This was good for the human armies, who were being badly beaten after the death of Berek and James, the two cousins who led the fight against the mutants.
Right before they removed themselves, a duel had taken place. Berek Staines stood over the body of James Staines, and battled against Gorgon. Berek himself was a mutant, but held this secret, until it came lose in the duel. All his mighty power was unleashed, and they collapsed in each other’s arms, dead. So a peace of sorts was arrived at, without voiced words, and it held until the time of Jesse King.
In one of his journeys, Jesse King had come across Bress, and she joined his company. Timothy had been smitten from the first, although Bress took her time. After long decades of prejudice, it was hard for her to trust.
But trust she did.
Indeed. They were married, and at the end of the second last Jesse King book Moses had written, Bress gave birth to the twins. One book later the Sarvant had murdered her, along with Timothy.
And that is where I am at.
A surreal feeling had overtaken Moses as the twins led him back into the stone bowels, deep in below the remains of the castle. The Sarvant had the lead, the old came behind him, tapping her cane, the sound echoing loudly.
They arrived at the end of a corridor. The Sarvant put out a hand and the door opened. As he passed through the way, Moses saw they were within a torture chamber. Old instruments lay there, as well as new. The song, though low, was there. It gave him peace. And the strange surreal-ality encompassed him.
Do you worst Sarvant.
Daerin Sarvant turned to him. “The first drop of blood must come now. On this day. Do you remember what marks special this time?”
Moses looked at him. Of course he remembered, he had created this place. But he wouldn’t speak to the Sarvant.
“Perhaps the travel addled your wits. Today, many years past, marks the birth of Jesse King. And, his death.” The Sarvant smiled, wicked and dark. “Of course, that was after the Break, so you wouldn’t know.”
The old woman had uttered the same phrase.
She moved forward, as the twins bodily took hold of Moses and strapped him to a table.
I remember this room now. The place that Wolverine has flashbacks of in the first X-Men movie. Where he was experimented on. I’d forgotten that.
The old woman leant, one arm holding her back, as though supporting her frail bones. She whispered in Moses’ ear. And he remembered.
“I am Sara, the Unloved.”
She grabbed Moses’ wrist, held it high, above her face. A knife appear in her other hand, and quick as shadow, Sara the Unloved slice open his skin, his veins. Only a single drop fell, slowly. The wound healed immediately, skin closing and forming new. Moses watched as the old woman, Sara, opened her mouth and took in the drop of blood.
Sara. You were loved .. What has happened?
