Crown of Vengeance Page 2

  Several individuals had been sent across tremendous distances, undertaking harrowing journeys just to bring their own insights and expertise to the awesome endeavor. A large proportion of these hailed from the exotic lands of the far east, the mysterious places where even the farthest-ranging adventurers rarely tread.

  Also testifying powerfully to the unique nature of the citadel, and the exalted Lord that it was built for, the spectacular creation had not been completed without the involvement of a few contributors of an extremely unusual nature. An enigmatic group had suddenly manifested during the construction of the great palace and citadel, from origins known only to the Unifier. After their arrival they had gone into the depths of the mountain, only to emerge and depart swiftly upon the great palace-citadel’s completion. The hidden individuals were uniformly very tall and lean, and impeccably silent and graceful in their movements. Dark face veils had shrouded their very faces, not entirely unlike the fashion common to many of the fanatical warriors of Andamoor.

  Their presence known by their mere arrival, their separation from the laborers, artisans, and designers afterwards was rigidly maintained by a dedicated, ardent force culled from the elite of the Unifier’s own garrisons. The very few persons who had come within any close proximity to these obscured figures had reported feeling a chilling fear, or an overwhelming sense of anxiety, take firm hold of them. Most, with nervous laughs, related that they had shrugged it off later as just a trick of a fanciful mind, or the result of too much fatigue incurred from overworking.

  In just over ten years, with the efforts of so many thousands of laborers, innumerable oxen and horses, and countless thousands of pounds of gold and silver, the huge edifice sprouted and bloomed to ever greater heights on the mountainside. To the surrounding populace, the grandiose constructs seemed like a living, organic entity, vigorously rising up the side of the lone mountain that stood sentinel over Avalos.

  Great quantities of rock and soil had first been removed from the mountain, as vast platforms were cut out and leveled, prepared for the buildings that were then erected upon their surfaces. Many laborers had kept pieces of the black rock as mementos, as it was of a unique kind, found only upon the mountain itself. Seven terraces were prepared in all, the largest at the base of the mountain, and six others rising in concentric fashion above the first.

  As a whole, the citadel was an unparalleled, triumphant achievement, and a tribute of a magnitude never before seen in any realm of Ave. The end result was a fortress and palace complex unrivaled in its collective design, splendor, size, and strength.

  The mountain citadel had been built for one singular purpose; to honor the eminent being that now stood silently on the high tower, gazing out over the capital city. No other place in Ave was more appropriate for the seat of His worldly power, the place from where the way was being prepared for the One whom He served.

  The august figure did not move for quite some time, senses far beyond those of mortals telling Him that something momentous and profound was about to occur within the world. What it was, He could not yet tell, but He knew that it carried great danger, as much as it did tremendous potential.

  He knew that His most challenging task would involve divining its nature, and turning it to His own purposes. He did not fear it in the slightest. Rather, He saw an opportunity beckoning; to hasten the day when the world itself would be cleansed, and then recreated, ushering in an age that could not arrive a moment too soon.

  Section I

  JANUS

  “Daddy’s gone.”

  The thunderous words hurled Janus Roland into a spinning descent, his chest tightening as his breath froze within him.

  He had just gone to sleep, less than one hour before, after drifting off while reading a novel. The previous evening had been relaxing and uneventful, holding no warning that his entire world was about to be irrevocably shattered.

  A surreal feeling enveloped him as he sat up from bed, as if he was in the midst of some feverish nightmare. Indeed, reality had been turned upside down, and from that moment on it was as if color had been drained out of everything.

  The world was cast in a cold, sickly pallor from that moment of shock onward. If a hell existed, Janus would not have disputed that the immediate aftermath of that horrid night was a sharp taste of its environs.

  In disbelief, snapped awake with heart pounding, he stumbled from his bedroom across the hallway from his parents’ room. Kneeling by the side of the bed, as if in the midst of saying a prayer, was the still form of his father.

  Janus knew the truth of it all from the moment that he set his eyes on the motionless form of his father, his hero and his best friend. Here was the man that Janus felt that he had so far let down by the lack of success in his own life, the one person that Janus so badly wanted to have reason to be proud of him.

  From then on, Janus knew that he would never even have the chance to have his father see him realize any dreams.

  Janus would never forget the cold, clammy feeling as he set his hand down upon his father’s back, nor the discoloration that he noticed instantly in patches on his father’s exposed skin.

  This was not the man who had become his mentor, and who had been a loving and sacrificing father to his family. There was absolutely no presence of the beloved man within that bedroom. Janus’ father was absent. The silent form by the bed was an empty husk.

  Nevertheless, the folded hands up on the bed, in front of his father’s facedown head, had been the very ones that had patted Janus on the back only the night before, as Janus talked of his enduring frustrations and obstacles in his life’s path.

  If there was one thing to be grateful of, it was the fact that Janus’ father’s face was set down into the mattress. Janus did not ever want to have the image of his father’s death mask burned into his memory.

  The rest of that night was a hellish blur, filled with dizzying images of blue and red lights circling in the court where Janus’ parents lived. There were the neighbors groggily peering out of their windows and doors nearby, roused by the sudden commotion disturbing the formerly tranquil night.

  The first to arrive had been a crew of firemen, who confirmed what Janus and his mother already knew. Others came, struggling with the removal of the body as Janus’ father was a considerably large man. The sight of the men straining and struggling with the body through the front door was horribly distressful, looking as if they were removing nothing more than a bulky piece of furniture.

  Janus had to remind himself in that moment that his father was not in that bag.

  Janus did not even hear the words of the representatives from the funeral home later that night, as they kindly oversaw the details of the whole horrible process for the family.

  A police officer had gently asked Janus and his mother several questions a little later, though every word spoken was left shrouded in mist.

  The only thing that Janus could remember of the tall, young, light-haired officer was the manifest trace of compassion upon his face and within his tone. There was no mistaking that the officer abhorred having to ask the mandated legal questions required of the grieving wife and son.

  In later days, Janus was grateful that his sister, living in another apartment, had been spared that whole surreal nightmare.

  A part of Janus had died that night, as other parts of him had died before with each and every loss that he had suffered. Death had torn yet another precious life from Janus’ world with pitiless abruptness, and this time it had taken one of the two most momentous individuals in his life. Death had shown once again its true face, the antithesis of life and goodness.

  Janus already knew that the gaze from that malevolent visage spared nothing, manifesting its presence and ugliness under his own roof more than once before. Its malignant touch had withered away his first dog with a wasting disease, the first time that he had beheld its terrible countenance. It had been an ear-shattering thunderclap in the tranquil life of a ten-year-old boy. Death had t
hen visited again, consuming his second dog with a horrid cancer. It had returned only a few years later, bringing another cancer upon his gray tabby cat, as if it were a diabolical encore.

  That last visit of death, ending with an innocent, loving creature’s still body wrapped in a blanket, shaved patches riddling the cat’s emaciated form due to the multitude of desperate treatments to stave off the wicked assault, was still a raw wound when the most terrible visit of them all had come so suddenly upon Janus.

  If there was one truth that had been ground into Janus through all of the previous experiences, it was that there was only life and the absence of life; the former being the purest of goods, and the latter the most corrupt of evils.

  Janus loathed death, plainly, and simply. He regarded it with a burning hatred. It was the fact that death felt entirely out of place, like some terrible aberration, that always struck Janus in a quintessentially strange manner. Each life that death so callously destroyed was a life that was particular, unique, and irreplaceable in all of eternity.

  There really was no comfort to be had. If there was anything on the other side of death, it was hidden from the view of those suffering its aftermath.

  Janus struggled just to get through the days. The passage of time did not bring with it a return to functionality. Instead, a deep and abiding depression had crept in, rendering Janus listless and forlorn.

  He could not see the point of it all, as every embrace of another life lead to a certain end filled with grief. The person that chose to love others in such a world was the greatest of fools. The more that one loved, the more pain that one eventually took upon oneself.

  Janus soon found himself going through the motions of daily routines and work, while sinking into deep abysses when alone. He interacted with his friends, but knew that he was now a shell of his former self.

  He found himself wondering at times just how much longer his friends’ patience would last before they fully abandoned him to his morose new world.

  Janus was encompassed with a dark mist. His spirit was crying out desperately inside for even a single chance to find his way out of the thick, cold murk; a chance to see the sun of life in an azure, timeless sky, and to feel its warm, vibrant rays against his face once again. Yet deep down in his heart, he knew that any such hope was merely wishful thinking.

  Black oblivion was easier to accept.

  MERSHAD

  Mershad Shahab sat quietly and morosely in his assigned room at the university dormitory.

  For Mershad the small space was a veritable sanctuary. Just outside the door to that room was a world growing darker and more unsettling by the day.

  The television monitor in his room remained dark, and Mershad was increasingly reticent to turn it on. To him, it was just a window to the core of the very things that he so badly wanted to escape from.

  The government of the United States had gone through the appearance of a deliberation, but in truth it was little more than a formality. Without much delay, the two chambers of Congress had authorized the president to use force in an ongoing dispute with a much smaller, weaker country far to the east.

  That country, Iraq, just happened to be the birthplace of Mershad’s parents, and was the current residence of nearly all of his blood relatives. Mershad, his two brothers, and his sister were the first in the entire family to be born in the USA.

  Mershad’s ancestral lands were indeed ruled by a heavy-handed dictator, but the strongman was of little threat to anyone beyond the country’s borders. The country’s military and economic power had eroded under withering sanctions in place for well more than a decade. The country could not even sustain electric power in its largest cities anymore, and its most basic infrastructure was crumbling.

  Mershad could not believe the public campaign that had been unleashed to build up support for an attack. To him, the image created by the media versus the reality that he was well aware of was staggering.

  It was heavily publicized that Iraq possessed weapons of great destructive potential, and would use them if not soon overthrown. Also put forth was the idea that the strongman ruler was in league with shadowy militants bent on holy war.

  That postulation, to Mershad’s amazement, ignored the seemingly obvious fact that those same militant organizations openly deemed the strongman to be one of their prime enemies. He was considered far too secular and worldly in their eyes, and was an opponent of their dreams of outright religious rule.

  The media was filled with stories and images that painted a dark and foreboding picture of the dictator and the power that he wielded in Iraq. The tone of the stories had often taken on a hysterical and frenzied pitch. If one were to believe the reports, the strongman was a dire and immediate existential threat to the USA.

  Underneath all of it, as Mershad well knew, were a couple of great prizes to be claimed. Iraq sat astride one of the world’s largest sources of oil. Even more valuable in a political world, its location offered control of a strategic geography for wielding authority over the entire Middle East.

  Through massive diplomacy, in many instances using outright bribery or coercion, a great coalition of nations was brought together. A huge military force was gradually amassed on the borders of Iraq, and it soon became apparent to all but the most naive that war was imminent.

  The actual war had begun with a massive bombing conducted by hordes of aircraft and missiles. News networks, beamed across satellites, were awash with images of the tremendous, devastating assault. The highly surgical bombing attack was aided by new space-based weapon systems, technological wonders that filled the general public with an eerie sense of awe.

  Shortly after the assault had begun, Mershad had heard an eruption of elated, spirited cheers from other students in the dormitory, as if they were spectators gathered at some sort of sporting event. Whenever he recalled those whoops of exuberance afterwards, he felt a chill seep into him.

  Up and down the halls, students had gathered around the televisions, eating and drinking as if they were observing a sporting event, watching the images of destruction raining down upon Baghdad.

  Mershad’s extended family lived within that very same capital, and each vivid scene of the attack frightened and saddened him. Each massive explosion indicated within the reports, and shown in all their terrible might on the video coverage, could easily have been the last living moment of members of Mershad’s very own family.

  They were simple people, caught up in events far beyond their control. Their jobs as electricians, construction workers, working in restaurants, running small shops and the like were pursuits no different than those of the people of the USA.

  Mershad had never personally been to his ancestral nation before, but he knew that the people of Iraq, such as his relatives, posed no grave threat to the world. Deep pain wracked Mershad’s heart as he imagined the immense fear that must have been gripping his relatives and the millions of people who had been summarily condemned within that country.

  Tallies of the destruction of infrastructure, casualty estimates, and sorties were little more than statistics for some sort of diabolical game. Interviewed military personnel seemed to barely be able to suppress the excitement that they felt towards the thunderous displays of martial prowess.

  Mantras speaking of patriotism and troop support were repeated time and time again in the inundating media coverage. To the public, the whole episode was presented as another chapter in the stark conflict of good versus evil.

  The only thing wrong with the scenario was that the defined enemy included Mershad’s poor, struggling, extended family, and so very many others like them. Mershad wanted to scream out that good, real people were dying or having their lives irrevocably eviscerated.

  The vivid new images pouring across the screens each day became increasingly chilling to Mershad’s soul.

  Resentment had quickly grown within Mershad towards the other students. It absolutely horrified him that most of the students did little to question
or to even think about what was happening, and the underlying motivations. Only a few scattered bands of students bothered to voice any kind of opposition or protest. They were dismissed largely as malcontents, misguided or ignorant at best, unpatriotic to the edge of being treasonous at worst.

  Then there was the way that his fellow citizens and students had begun to treat him. That was by far the most troubling for Mershad, a loyal USA citizen from the first second of his life onward.

  The obvious stares, jostles, and insults had begun, and soon increased with frequency, a great many targeting his ethnicity. It was as if he were some covert sympathizer with the enemy, or a potential terrorist.

  He had read the accounts of people physically assaulting others with his same ethnic background. He had to steel his mind to the relentless mental assault brought on by the harassment that he suffered. He also had to keep his awareness up, lest he find himself becoming a victim to an especially violent assault himself.

  In a torturous silence, he feared and sorrowed for his family, and prayed that they might somehow escape the devastating onslaught. He also feared for the people of the country that he had pledged his allegiance to, many of whom had suddenly become so hostile to him.

  As the days wore on, and the reports of destruction and civilian emergencies mounted ever higher, Mershad’s heart grew unbearably heavier. He could do nothing to immunize or numb himself to the terrible realities.

  Then matters became even worse. Some violent attacks had occurred around the world on interests related to the great economic powers of the United Nations. The attacks on innocent lives served to spiral the paranoia directed towards those of Mershad’s ethnicity.