Oblivion's Peril by M. H. Johnson

Author:M. H. Johnson [Johnson, M. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

26

“Please, help us. Our children are dying!”

Val opened his eyes to gaze upon a desolate plain, leaden light trickling free of brooding dark clouds upon a sea of pox-ridden souls, all gazing at him with desperate eyes. Gazing upon the fruit he held in the palm of his hands, born of desperate inspiration and blood.

Val, knelt down, peering into the haunted eyes of a shivering child, covered in sores. His smile was gentle. “Do you promise to be a good girl?”

The girl solemnly nodded even as her faceless mother sobbed in the gloom. “I swear to serve loyally and faithfully. I will never betray your clan, I will never betray my home.”

Val solemnly put the apple in the trembling girl’s hands, suppressing a wince as he plucked it free of his own flesh, a spark of his own life force infusing the apple with hope’s blessing. “Then be well, daughter of Jordia. May your life be filled with health and joy.”

The little girl’s beaming gaze was filled with hope and love. She took a single bite before dashing away with peals of laughter, healthy and whole once more.

And when the child’s desperate parents knelt before Val with their pleading eyes he blessed them with the same boon in return for the same oath of fealty, every apple containing a tiny drop of himself. The price he paid to bring salvation to every man, woman, and child who called this province home. And even as he felt his vitality wither like a lush vine under winter’s caress, he now blazed as well with the power and potency of the million souls he had saved from Oblivion’s caress, their fates irrevocably influenced by the desperate gamble he had taken, their endless potential now forever tied to his own.

But even so, for all that, he still feared the terrible specter of the Red Death. The horrid price all of Jordia would pay, should even one infected soul have fled Blackenthorp lands before he could save them.

Val fixed his gaze upon Phoebe’s brilliant countenance shining so brightly in the now cloudless sky, somehow certain that even in this dream of growth, advancement, and deeper truths, oaths whispered here were every bit as real as those made in the brightness of day. He knew his sacrifice, his act, had seared most of the taint of Red Death free of Jordia’s lands. Like a raging forest fire squelched to mere embers. Yet he had no greater fear than that those embers might somehow blaze to life once more.

Val gazed at the living moon illuminating his dream so brilliantly and pled for a single boon, having the oddest sense that the goddess above approved.

Val blinked. The sea of a million desperate faces was gone. Only a single cloaked figure remained, her smiling face and beautiful golden eyes illuminated by Jordia’s twin above. She solemnly bowed her head, handing Val a golden apple of her own.

She smiled before Val’s questioning gaze. “You now walk the Mystic’s Path, yet you have no guide.

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