A Short Story by: A.B. Timothy

And behold, Elyon spoke, saying, “Thus, when you ask for my mercy, leave none of your disgrace hidden. I am perfect in mercy, but only to those who are true in repentance.” Publo Magister looked from his copy of the holy text to the children who sat in a semicircle around him, listening intently to the story of the repentant killer. Ocis felt his heart swell. Publo continued to read the scripture. He fell to the ground, lying flat upon his stomach, and cried for forgiveness. Lying before Elyon all that he had ever done from childhood. “Please, Lord, I am unworthy to be seen by you, for now you know all my heart.” “Child,” Elyon said, “I have always known your heart, from the beginning. Now you know all your heart and the true, profound wickedness thereof. Arise, go and confess all this that you have to me, to the man of the Temple at Craginth, he has heard from me and will instruct you further.” Ocis arose and did as he was told, pursuing the Lord even until his last days.

One of the children threw up his hand as Publo finished reading. “Yes, James?”

“Bard Magister, is that something everyone must do? Sister Elvera said that we must be ready, and to be ready, we must do what the scripture says. Do we all need to go to Craginth and find the man whom Elyon has spoken to?” James asked.

“Well, James, Craginth was lost many years ago, during the last Burning War,” Publo said.

“Well, maybe I can find it again, so everyone can do what Elyon said to do, again,” James said.

“Perhaps you can,” Publo said.

The man’s back was weighed down with cuts and bruises from a hail of arrows. He and his two brothers had been the only ones to wade through the hail alive. The man still saw, before his eyes, the fading light of his lover’s eyes. Her mouth was frozen agape, eyes wide, and blood trickling from both eyes and mouth. He shook his head to throw away the image. He turned to his shrinking brother on his right and asked, “Brother Burn, how much further?”

“Brother Man,” the shrinking Burron turned to his smaller brother whilst ripping his ax free from the neck of a Burron who had stood in their way, “the star-line says we are only a few hours away.” The Burron aged backward, beginning as a giant and shrinking as they aged.

“Shouldn’t…” The two brothers turned to their lanky third, an elf, and saw the tears running down his face. He pulled his spear from the ineffective shield of a Burron. His tears nearly broke his otherwise stoic speech pattern. “Shouldn’t we rest for the evening? Finish our trek in the morning?”

The man slowly shook his head and looked up at dark clouds that shadowed the valley of the great twin rivers that flowed down toward the faraway ocean. The castle of men that once stood perched next to the rivers along an ocean-side cliff was now half crumbled and smoke, from feed-fires, billowed up, feeding the clouds, along its once great wall. The man looked back to the field of battle and saw again his lover’s eyes now dim. Hadn’t he given enough? Had he not suffered enough for a lifetime, let alone his short twenty years? Apparently, he had not, because the Guide of Elyon knocked on his heart’s door even now; he knew what needed to be done.

“Have you both heard the story of Ocis?” The man asked. He looked from brother to brother, and they both nodded in understanding. “If we truly are approaching the city of darkness… our fathers prepared us well, I think.” The man looked back towards this half-crumbled tower of darkness and felt the weight of the metal plates that hung on his back and chest. Loosening the straps, the plates fell away. The gauntlets soon followed. His hair, matted and muddy with dirt and blood not his own, stuck to his helmet as it was lifted from his ears. He set all these things aside and lowered his head as deeply as he could manage. He still felt the Guide’s knock. He stood and removed his sword, his leg guards, and sabatons, laying them all aside with the rest of his armor. He heard his brothers doing the same. As his, now cloth-covered, legs touched the ground, he felt the knocking stop, and the guide approached him. He felt an overwhelming presence before him just beyond his eyelids. “Open your eyes, child, as you have opened your heart.”

The man opened his eyes and everything was gone, the mountains to either side of the battlefield, the bodies, and the dark castle, were all erased in favor of a void. Not black, no, the presence before the man was too great to call the emptiness black. Speech did not avail our hero, as the presence spoke again, “You come before me, child, seeking what?”

“Mercy, Your Grace, I seek only mercy for me and my brothers as we accomplish your will in this next day of battle.” The man said.

“Henry, my child, have you forgotten your own name?” The presence pulsated and moved with the voice.

“My name, Lord?” Henry said.

“Yes, for when you think of yourself, you have become merely ‘the man.’”

“That is the name the prophets gave, ‘the man.’” Henry said.

“My prophets were not told the name of my chosen, because it was not theirs to give. But they gave you other names, did they not?”

“Yes, L’ordi, Jerki, and Ot’undi,” Henry said.

“But I have called you Henry, since the day you first saw me, have I not?”

“You have.”

“So what is your name?”

“My name is Henry, my lord.”

“Thus, when you ask for my mercy, leave none of your disgrace hidden. I am perfect in mercy, but only to those who are true in repentance…” The whole scene, as if his father was reading it to him out of the holy text. He felt his heart swell, he fell to his stomach, he cried, he confessed, and he was commanded. Henry arose and did as he was told, pursuing the Lord even until his last days.