The First Champion by Sandell Wall

Author:Sandell Wall [Wall, Sandell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2021-02-24T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

MAZAREEM WAS ON EDGE. His carefully cultivated internal control had been cast into chaos. It had been several days since arriving in Orcassus and confronting Morricant, and since then, he had been confined to his quarters. His suite was richly appointed, but no effort was made to disguise that he was a prisoner. He had nothing but time at his disposal, and this was proving to be his undoing.

Morricant defied Mazareem’s expectations. She had considered him only briefly and then discarded him as one might set aside a trifling annoyance. Of all the possible outcomes, Mazareem had never anticipated being banished to insignificance. This alone would have been enough to set him at odds against himself, but there were greater forces at work in the turmoil consuming his twisted soul.

For many long years, Mazareem had craved the return of the memories that Morricant’s curse stole from him. He had spent almost a millennium trying to recreate her face in his paintings. A thousand different women had taken form beneath his brush, but never her. And now that her flawless face burned in his mind once again, Mazareem knew he had been a fool to ever try to capture it on his crude canvas. Reclaiming the past should bring clarity. He never expected to discover the opposite. Now that he could walk down those once dark halls of his memory, he found only madness.

Eternal service to Abimelech had wrought a strange sort of contentment in Mazareem. That complacency gave him the steadfastness to endure. When his master called, Mazareem obeyed, and at all other times, he was left to his own devices. For a thousand years, that had been enough.

But no longer. Mazareem cursed himself for a fool. Had Morricant known that her invasive magic would rob him of his ambition to rule, would strip him of his desire to be free? Because with his memories restored, Mazareem saw that both were inexorably intertwined with Morricant in the innermost parts of his being. By erasing herself from his past, she had sundered every part of him that had been connected to her. She had neutered his pride.

Perhaps, with time and a great deal of introspection, Mazareem could separate his misguided love for Morricant from his own personal identity, but he had never been given that opportunity. In Mazareem’s confused heart, his betrayal of Morricant had transpired only recently. He was trying to process a thousand years of festering, unresolved pain in the span of two days.

Anger made this impossible. Like the piercing goad of a beast tamer, rage stabbed at Mazareem when he least expected it, denying him rest and eroding rational thought. Fury over what Morricant had stolen from him consumed every waking moment. Desperate to regain control, Mazareem tried to master this growing obsession, but he was not up to the task.

The cracks in Mazareem’s soul had been revealed, and no matter how frantically he tried to claw them closed, they were only widening. Forced to face his weakness, Mazareem saw his flaws magnified tenfold.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.