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He was sleeping... he was floating, in his dark womb, with his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He was alive, and he was dead.
He was dead, and he was alive, and his hand was cold. Cold and wet. It sharpened his mind--and his body was encased in earth, he was trapped, but his hand was cold--his hand was cold, and he could claw it into the earth, and he could struggle, and he could fall.
Kronos fell into the water half-dead and half-alive.
He was dead, and he was alive, and his eyes were open under the water, and he saw himself, watching himself. He opened his mouth to ask after his brothers--how long had he been asleep?--and he pulled himself halfway out of the water, hot with steam and caked in rime, and he said to himself, "This is who you are."
Then he saw himself--and he was murdered. He was a nomad, and he had a child and a wife and a family sprawling across the horizon, and he was a killer, and he killed them all, and he died. He saw himself; he felt his victim.
Oh--he was a monster! He was the worst thing he had ever seen, and so it was for the next one, and the next, and the next--he was terror, he was pain, he was death.
He was magnificent.
He felt himself die a thousand times until every inch of his skin sang with pain and every beat of his heart spread the juices of terror--this was what he wrought! He was glorious--he was a god!
He grasped himself, laughing, and his two selves fell back into the water.
Kronos woke with his lungs full of water. He coughed, sputtering, tasting the bitter bite of the fouled pool. He had been underground, entombed in the earth. His brother--he remembered a storm, and his brother watching him, and then death. Then those strange dreams.
Dreams of death and glory. Where were his brothers? He was starving.
He scrambled to his feet and sniffed out the fresh air that would show him the mouth of the cavern. He emerged on the surface wild, nude, emaciated and hungry for blood.
There were roads crossing his beautiful land.
Kronos spat on the packed earth. Roads, where once it had been unmarked as a virgin's arse. But roads meant travelers, and travelers meant warriors he could kill for their gear, so he glanced at the sun, looked up and down the road, and walked east.
He walked barely two hours before his feet bled. He was weak, weaker than he had ever been, even when mortal. He could see the bones beneath his stringy flesh. He did not know how long he had lain in the earth.
And his luck was ill; as he sat waiting for his feet to heal, a cart rounded the bend, heralded by the unmistakable feel of Presence. Kronos watched the driver--who was dressed strangely, in dirty clothes made from fine cloth--and the driver stopped the horse outside easy lunging distance and spoke to him.
Spoke gibberish to him. It had the sound of Latin, but not the meaning. "What foreign tribe are you?" Kronos asked in Latin, then in Gallic for good measure. The driver replied in the same gibberish as before.
"Ah, Methos, I miss you now," Kronos said to himself. Methos was the one who learned these languages; Methos was the traveler, who cared enough to talk to these people.
"Methos?" the driver asked. Kronos snapped his gaze back to the man.
"Methos!" the driver said, amid much gibberish and emphatic hand motions. He pointed east, down the road, several times.
"Methos is alive?" He hadn't thought it possible--surely his brother would dig him out.
The man nodded eagerly and gestured for Kronos to ride in the cart behind him.
Kronos considered killing him and taking the cart and horse--but he would rather see his brother quickly, so he could explain to him what had happened. He would play the civilized man, then, and he and his brother reunited could drink his Quickening together.
The driver gave him food and clothing as well over the five days' travel. He was a very strange man; he carried no sword or other weapon beyond rabbit snares and a dagger.
The horse was large and stupid of face. The clothes were woolen and strange in cut and shape. The cart had rigging of a make he'd never seen. Clearly time had passed--enough time that it was even stranger that his brother had not come back for him.
The driver said something and pointed. They were approaching a city, in a place where only a tiny settlement had been before. Kronos scowled. He knew this land--this road-scarred land, strangely empty of animals--but he did not know and he certainly didn't like all these settlements of men. Was had happened in his absence? Had his brothers gone soft? Would he find them shearing sheep or herding fat goats in the hills?
In that foul mood, he was driven into the confusion of the city.
Smoke, bread, shit and leather. People everywhere, and not one of them looked upon him in fear. Their buildings reached high to the heavens, their markets teemed with crops. They were like deer without wolves--they spread unchecked.
He would change that. As soon as he found his brothers.
The driver stopped at a tall building on a quiet street. He turned to Kronos and grinned, saying "Methos!"
Kronos stepped down from the cart and felt the Presence--not just of one, but of two, three, of many Immortals inside. It felt like the campground when the slave girl Cassandra was among them. Ha! Perhaps they'd recaptured the bitch. He grinned and strode inside.
Five Immortals sat around a fire set into the wall. Two sheathed swords sat on the table at their back, and one leaned on a thick wooden stave. None of them was his brother. "Methos!" the driver repeated, opening his arms.
The man with the stave stood and embraced the driver. He was tall as Silas with the face of an angry bull-bear--he was not Methos. "I came to find Methos. Take me to him," Kronos said in Latin.
The bear-man turned to him. "I am Methos," he replied in the same language.Kronos bared his teeth. "My brother," he said, "not you, stranger."
"All men are brothers. Perhaps you have found what you need to find: peace." He opened his arms to Kronos. The other Immortals looked at Kronos curiously. "We meet to stop the killing and learn to live together," the man said.
Kronos drove the heel of his hand into the bear-man's nose. He clouted the driver on the back of the head, knocking him to the floor, where he stomped on the man's throat hard enough to break the bone within.
"Men of violence die violently!" the bear-man shouted as his hands, clasped to his face, filled with blood.
"Yes! Isn't it glorious?" Kronos grabbed his stave from the floor and clubbed the other four in short order. Not one of them made a move toward the swords on the table. Idiots!
But when he looked over his shoulder seconds later, only the driver--blue and gurgling on the floor--remained. The bear-man knew when to run away. "Coward," Kronos growled.
Kronos took one of the swords from its sheath. It was good steel, long and heavy, just as he liked them. What fools to lay down a weapon like this!
He stood over the five fallen Immortals and beheaded them like a farmer cutting corn. The mist rose around his feet as the sky crackled with thunder overhead.
The Quickenings struck--all five at once, attacking him, battering at his skull. He laughed, embracing the power, alive, aloft with the lightning and winds. He felt their pain, their fear, their lack of understanding--they had laid down their swords so that this would never happen to them, he saw. Through peace they sought life. But life was born of pain, and they were fools.
Life was power.
Kronos slammed back to the floor, still laughing. The walls of the room smoked and burned around him. Outside, wind and rained howled, and he could hear the terror of the horse still strapped to the cart.
His brother... all his brothers were clearly dead. They would never allow the world to be so if they were alive.
So be it. He would ride forth with other men. He would clear the earth of weak Immortals and useless men.
He was Kronos. He was the Devourer. He was the Scourge. He was Death. He was the end of this world.
THE END.
All comments are welcome.