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    FORTY


    <h2 style="text-transform: uppercase">KAX</h2>


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    The shock and surprise wore off quickly as Kax and the boy emerged on top of the wall. It was quickly replaced by rage.


    “You little shit!” Kax shouted, manifesting one of his short blades and swinging for Reze’s head.


    The boy squeaked and raised an arm, blocking the swing.


    If Kax hadn’t attempted, and failed, to cut off Wyndemir’s arm, he would have been surprised that his attack was deflected. Instead, he continued his assault, striking directly for Reze’s chest. “You weaseled your way in, you rhinn bastard!” His thrust stopped short.


    “I didn’t want to!” Reze shouted, swinging out a small fist. It was a pathetic effort and Kax decided to take the blow, giving him the space to attack again. When he found himself flying through the air then skidding across the stone floor, he looked up at the young boy, dazed, and decided to take the fight seriously.


    All around them, men loosed arrows into a rising tide of monsters. Arrows, stones, and other projectiles soared through the air in retaliation, killing the soldiers by the dozen.


    Kax ignored the chaos.


    <i>Avatar.</i>


    “Shut up!” he shouted. Not now, not when he needed to concentrate the most.


    Reze’s shocked expression when Kax reappeared before him in an instant soothed Kax’s ego, but it did little when his weapons barely hurt the boy.


    <i>You need more.</i>


    Kax sidestepped another swing with ease. “Shut up!”


    “What?” Reze asked. “I didn’t say anything. I don’t want this any more than you do. If I don’t stop you, everything will end.”


    The boy’s voice only served to anger Kax. “Goslin let you live. He took you in, only for you to betray him? I won’t let that stand!”


    <i>Kill the boy.</i>


    Kax’s arms darkened and elongated, the darkness spreading over his manifested blade. His chest rose and fell as the emptiness of the void spread throughout him.


    “I can’t help what I am. I didn’t even know!” Reze shouted. “I grew up on a farm!”


    A boulder the size of a full-grown man crashed into the wall nearby and the boy jumped, screaming in fright.


    “Halvgud,” Kax spat.


    <i>That’s it, my Avatar.</i>


    “Leave me alone!” Kax shouted.


    Reze looked bewildered. “Can’t do that. Maybe you should go? I don’t know how to fight.” His eyes suddenly turned purple. It reminded Kax of the priests and the monsters they controlled. He’d enjoyed watching that light disappear from their eyes in death.


    <i>Embrace it.</i>


    Kax’s arms undulated, like the darkness was excited. Hungry. The two clashed. Reze managed to duck below a blow and strike Kax in the stomach with enough force to double him over. He tore Kax’s tunic to shreds.


    Another swing and another miss. With the purple eyes and his newfound skill, the boy was keeping up with him, if for a moment.


    <i>More.</i>


    Kax let the anger wash over him in a deluge. The next blow from Reze fell into the void, and he stumbled. Both of Kax’s arms came down on top of the boy, digging into him. This time, he cut deeply into the boy, nearly slicing off his hand.


    Reze screamed and pulled back with enough strength to escape the void. The entity inside the darkness screamed in frustration at having lost its prey.


    Reze recovered quickly, his arm healed in an instant. The purple sheen to his eyes bled away, as if Kax had scared it off with his last strike.


    Kax took a step closer, but Reze just stood there frozen, holding his arm as it healed. In mere moments, it was like the blow had never happened. Once Kax drew closer, Reze looked up and then shied back. “Don’t!”


    <i>Don’t stop.</i>


    Kax attacked, swinging both arms to cut through the boy’s neck. Instead, he struck only air.


    Reze blinked away to a spot further down the wall and then began to run.


    Kax followed. On foot, Reze didn’t stand a chance. Catching up to the boy, Kax swung again, then swore and pulled back as he nearly took the head off one of the defenders.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Grabbing at Reze, he tossed the boy off the side of the parapet. The boy screamed as he tumbled toward the ground, then blinked away a mere moment before smashing into the cobblestone.


    He reappeared a few streets over, and Kax jumped off the wall to follow.


    <i>Avatar.</i>


    “What?”


    <i>This one will be delicious.</i>


    Kax licked his lips. He caught up to Reze again, but the boy blinked away.


    “What are you?” he asked the thing in the void.


    <i>Nothing.</i>


    “What does that mean?”


    Again, he caught Reze and sliced into the boy’s leg before he had a chance to escape. The darkness climbed up Kax’s arm and grabbed for Reze, trying to hold him to no avail.


    “Tell me what you really are!” Kax shouted. The anger he felt toward Reze was bleeding away as he jumped from building to building, soaring through the air above the streets of Fyrie. The sights drew his mind to Goslin and the group who’d left Fyrie on a grand quest to find Kax’s childhood friend a wife.


    Lower, with much trepidation, he added another question. “What am I?”


    <i>The end. We are the end, you and I.</i>


    “What do you mean?”


    Reze disappeared and reappeared closer and closer to the main gate, where the fighting looked fierce.


    <i>Oh, I was a pitiful thing before you started feeding me. Barely a whisper. No longer.</i>


    The voice inside Kax spoke clearly now. It’d started as a rasping whisper he’d been unable to pinpoint. When the voices in the weapons fell silent, another voice took their place. A silent theatre of those he killed lined up in his mind to judge without words. Empty shells with all they used to be drained away. Drained away to feed the thing inside him, to feed that which lurked in the void, Kax realized. He himself hadn’t grown stronger from the killing. This creature inside him had siphoned the strength back to Kax, lending him power to gather more for it.


    <i>Now you truly see, my Avatar.</i>


    “No,” Kax whispered, still following Reze, but no longer striking at the boy.


    <i>Yes.</i>


    “I don’t want this.”


    <i>The time for your wants has long since passed, Avatar.</i>


    Rage settled over Kax, and he became pure darkness. He retained control of his body but found his hesitation, confusion, and fear drift away through his fingers as his focus drew to a point.


    The boy. The Halvgud.


    Reze needed to die for his betrayal. All who stood against him needed to pay the ultimate price.


    Terrified, Reze darted across the square, weaving through the fighting soldiers and monsters. A shimmer of purple flashed in an old rhinn’s eyes and then a knife of pure white sliced through him. Kax shuddered in delight. Good. Both humans and monsters fell around him. So many endings.


    Something itched in the back of his mind. A memory of a person, short and surly. A dream, perhaps?


    <i>End.</i>


    The boy fled toward the gate and Kax hunted his prey, faster and faster, the darkness inside him growing, flowing forth and manifesting all around him. Kax expanded his darkness and the void inside it. Borderless nothingness.


    His eyes were only on Reze.


    <i>Harvest the boy.</i>


    “Harvest the boy,” the thing inside him repeated through Kax.


    Reze appeared behind a line of defenders holding off an advance inside the sheared open gate. One of the men turned. He carried a shield of solid gray. The man’s determined expression turned to shock at the boy’s appearance. No, not at the boy. He stared at Kax.


    In the end, it mattered little. This person would end just as assuredly as the boy cowering on the ground.


    Kax landed, wearing the darkness as a shroud. The man called out, but Kax didn’t hear. Leaning forward and down, he reached for Reze with the gaping void, enveloping them both in the eternal nothingness.


    To end a Halvgud, he needed to fight from a place of power, and there was nowhere for him to find more strength than in the vastness of the void.


    Kax floated. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. Serenity. Floating in a place without worries soothed him. Here, no one could hurt him or the ones he loved. In this place, all was well. Forever.


    “Kax!”


    He opened his eyes. There was nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to hear. But he had heard something, hadn’t he?


    Somewhere, a boy wept. He felt at his own cheek but found it dry. There was no need for him to cry. Not here. Never. Still, the sound of someone in pain persisted. Perhaps it was not pain, but sorrow?


    Kax stood without really standing. In the void, he wore no body. Then he walked without walking, heading for the nagging sound that woke him from his endless meditation.


    A boy appeared, huddled in a small ball. He wept. Kax sat before the boy, his attention now fully on the child. Darkness slowly crept up the boy’s clothes.


    Slithering darkness. Hungry darkness. Living Darkness.


    The boy was saddened and in pain, perhaps from being lost. Kax was not lost. He was right where he was meant to be. The boy was not. He should not be here, should not have come to this place.


    The solution came easy to Kax. If the nothingness swallowed the boy, he would no longer feel the sadness. He would have no reason to weep. Kax reached a hand and placed it on the boy’s forehead. A simple task, giving the boy peace.


    “Kax!”


    Kax’s ears twitched. There was that noise again. It wasn’t the same as the boy’s crying. He thought he recognized it but could not be sure. The source of it sounded far away. So faint that he would not have heard if the boy hadn’t stopped crying. In the silence between breaths, he’d caught the hint of a long-forgotten voice.


    “Kax!”


    He frowned and looked down at the boy, who was now looking back up at him.


    <i>Immerse the boy in darkness.</i>


    “Kax!”


    Kax heard it clearly this time. His name. He recognized the voice attached to it.


    <i>Bring about his end as all things must end.</i>


    “No.”


    Kax yanked back from Reze, letting the darkness fall away from the boy. As it left the boy, it crawled up and into Kax. He screamed as it reached his face and choked as it melded with his skin and poured down his throat.


    Once again, the darkness claimed him.


    <i>You should not have done that, Avatar.</i>


    “Get away from me, you monster,” he mumbled, as he emerged on the blood-soaked streets of Fyrie. “Leave me alone.”


    “Kax,” Goslin said. He was on his knees, a hesitant hand reaching out to Kax.


    <i>There is no you and no I. We are the end.</i>


    The entity tried to force its control over Kax, but he drove it back by sheer force of will. When he succeeded, Kax gasped and looked up into his friend’s face, his old familiar smile brightening his face.


    “Goslin. I’m back.”


    Goslin’s smile radiated warmth. “Welcome home, my dear friend. You have been sorely missed.”


    Inside Kax’s darkness, the entity lurked, waiting.