The Irreversible Reckoning

The Irreversible Reckoning

  By: T. Rudacille

  Copyright 2014 T. Rudacille

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  Cover image courtesy of kantapat /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  Cover Design by Alex Piluk.

  I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

  For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

  For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

  But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

  Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

  So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

  Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

  The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

  The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

  Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

  Of death and birth.

  -T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

  BEGIN: YEAR 3

  Part I: We All Fall Down

  Brynna

  “My love… My love… My lo—”

  The gunshot cut off his words, but my scream was louder than the gunshot. To this day, when I look back, I can still hear that scream bounding outwards through the forest. I can feel it expanding through the open space and crashing against the trees. I remember the force with which it came cascading back to us. Only it did not just extend outwards, into the endless expanse of trees; it flew back, to Shadow Village, and within seconds, others had descended upon us. As James collapsed against me first, nearly knocking me to the ground with him, and then crashed into the dirt, convulsing and bleeding and dying right in front of me, I felt that cold gun pressed to the back of my head. My eyes squeezed shut, and tears (goddamn them, goddamn me for not being able to stop them) poured down my cheeks. Sobs choked out of me, because he was not moving anymore, and I knew that if I opened my eyes, they would find his, and with every plea, they would search for some sign of warmth there but would find nothing but ice, but death… He was dead, James was dead, my love was dead… And Adam was roaring, struggling to break the hold of the vines around his wrists, struggling against the grip of the six men who were dropping their substantial weights onto his back to keep him from me, to make him watch as they put a bullet through the back of my head. He would weep. It would break him, to see me, his great love, shot and killed before his eyes, the way that seeing James, my great love, shot and killed before my eyes had broken me. I did not want him to break. Never before had he broken. Never before had he shown them weakness, but he would for me. He would not be able to help it.

  I heard the loud and rapid whirring of the air as six bodies came flying towards us at that superhuman speed only we could achieve. I heard voices shouting, bones breaking, men screaming as they drew their last breaths, but I could not look. I could not bear to open my eyes. Adam’s face was against mine, but I could not hear his words over the sound of my own heavy, deep, rasping breaths. It is true that before we die, we see every moment of our lives, but it is also true that when a loved one dies, one sees every moment spent together, and it hurts; God, it hurts like nothing else.

  My hands were suddenly free, and my body flung itself down onto James. His chest was still; I could feel no beats of his heart and not even the shallowest breath. How many nights had I laid just like that, with my head on his chest and my arms locked around him? How many times had he wrapped his arms around me, and I had closed my eyes and listened to his heartbeat? Nothing could hurt worse than feeling nothing there anymore.

  Until I pulled away, and finally looked into his face, that is. His eyes were open, so I could not just try to tell myself, however childishly, however desperately, that he was asleep; they were not open wide enough that he appeared startled or worse, afraid, but they were not drooped closed enough that he looked sedated. They were open, almost as though he were fully awake, but just like in his chest, there was nothing in his eyes. I grasped his face in both hands, and my sobs ceased as my eyes held fast to his. Whatever was going on around me faded away, and all I could hear was the sound of my heart—so frantic, so alive—hammering inside of my ears, echoing through every corridor of my skull, reminding me that I had survived, for now, but they had killed him… If they had started from the other end of the line, it would have been Janna, Adam, and me, and he would have survived, and I knew how he would have cried; I had heard it. I knew how his heart would have grieved, because I had felt it, when I had been shot, and he had been holding me just as I was holding him right then.

  “Brynna, we must go, my darling.” Adam was saying, and I was shaking my head, lowering it so I could rest my forehead against James’s, so I could hold his face for just a few more minutes, so I could close my eyes and tell him silently how much I loved him, because there was nothing else that I could think to say. There was nothing else that mattered.

  “My love, we have to go.”

  “Come on, darling.” Janna was saying to me, “Come on, sweetheart.”

  “James, please… James, please…” I was whispering, “I love you. Please, James… James, please… I love you so much…”

  I was breathless. So desperate. Never before had I pleaded like that. I had been too proud to ever beg anyone with such desperation, such blind need, such sad longing. But I begged him. I held his face, my thumbs running through the blood that was streaming from his mouth, and through his stubble that had grown so much longer over our imprisonment. I held his face, closed my eyes, and begged him to find his way back to me, as I had found my way back to him. And it is strange, but I knew, by the feeling of hopelessness that was dragging my heart into some dark abyss, that he was not listening. He was not there. The absence of his soul was astoundingly clear, glaringly obvious. I had stayed close by when I had left our realm; he was flung far from it, far from me.

  “Brynna.”

  A different male voice.

  “Leave her!” Adam roared, and he charged Tyre, who had just kneeled in front of me. Tyre reached up, grasped his throat, and flung him to the ground effortlessly, but that did not deter Adam from trying to attack him again.

  I reached out, and with the last of my strength, I commanded Adam to stop. I wanted Tyre dead because I wanted all of them dead, but I did not want to lose Adam in the process, and he was too weak to fight. I was too weak to control him, though I managed to do it. But because I was so weak, I collapsed onto James, every muscle paralyzed by that potent exhaustion, my eyelids barely able to hold themselves open…

  “I am so sorry.” Tyre was whispering, his voice rife with sorrow and regret, “My child, I am so sorry for what they have done. I will see that they pay for it dearly, I promise you. Adam, lift your wife.”

  “No!” I screamed, as Adam lifted me into his arms, “No! James! James!”

  I was flailing about in Adam’s arms when Tyre passed his hand over my head, when he brushed my hair back away from my face. Instantaneously, that exhaustion in my body and mind amplified, and the darkness of the forest began to crumble inwards from the corners of my vision.

  “NO!” I wailed, as Tyre went to pass his hand over my head again. I was still fighting Adam’s surprisingly strong grip, and despite the growing exhaustion, I was winning.

  “NO! I WANT JAMES!”

  “Put her to sleep.” Adam hissed, “Just put her to sleep, Tyre!”

  “NO!” I screamed a
s the tears began to take me again. But Tyre ran his hand backwards over my hair, and the last of the forest’s darkness fell in upon me, entombing me in black.