Emily's House: Book 1 of the Akasha Chronicles

Chapter 45: Dughall's Revenge

Chapter 45: Dughall’s Revenge

 As he sat at the LHC control center, Dughall’s musing became enjoyable to him. He brightened as he remembered going to his master’s home, intent on revenge. He had the element of surprise as he had always been a dutiful slave, not one to backtalk or show any signs of rebellion. His mother prepared him well for just such a moment.

“Why are you barging in here boy,” the master bellowed as Dughall kicked through the door. “You belong out with the hogs and filth, not in your master’s home.”

“Maybe this will be my home now,” he impertinently responded.

“What?” his Master yelled. His eyes raged at Dughall. “You will leave my sight at once and go back to that hole with your whore mother before I beat you to within an inch of your life.”

“You will take back what you said about my mother just now, you swine of a man, or so help me,” Dughall responded with fire in his eyes.

“You have gone too far slave. You have lost sight of your place in life.” The master reached for his sword lying on the table beside him.

But the old, fat merchant was slow, his reflexes dulled by hours of drinking wine. Dughall knew it was his moment. He leapt for the sword with impressive speed and agility. Before the merchant had risen fully from his chair, Dughall had the sword in his hand.

“Look here boy, you can barely hold that blade, let alone wield it,” the merchant sneered at Dughall. “Lay the weapon down and I may choose to spare your sorry life,” the merchant pled.

Dughall had to admit that it was, in fact, difficult for him to hold the sword. It must have weighed more than twenty pounds. He was strong for his age but being only fourteen, it took all the strength of both his arms to hold up the sword. But Dughall’s desire welled up from his core, a will forged by years of suffering and abuse.

There are some who live such a life and in their suffering, they grow immense compassion and peacefulness with all of existence. In others, the years of torment and observation of ill will among their captors breeds a hatred and anger that is unmatched.

From that place of ultimate despair and sadness over the loss of his only love, from that place of deepest desire to have her revenge, from that place of wholly unchecked anger and hatred, Dughall summoned a strength of body and will that surprised even him. Dughall lunged at the rotund merchant and plunged the man’s sword deep into his belly. The merchant’s dull eyes were filled with surprise as the warm blood that had pumped through his portly body spilled out, great torrents of crimson.

Dughall stepped back a few paces as he watched the merchant fall to the floor. Dughall stood by and watched with a rising feeling of glee as the life force once powerful in the large man spilled across the floor.

The merchant sputtered as he said, “Help me. Help me, boy.”

Dughall laughed heartily at the merchant’s words. “Help you? Help you?” he said incredulously. “Old man, I’m the one who put the blade in you. Why should I bother to take it out until I am assured that the last breath has passed from your rancid lips?”

“But what of your immortal soul, boy? If you kill me, what will come to your immortal soul?”

Dughall bent down so he could look the dying merchant in the eye. He smirked the smirk that would become one of his defining features, born in that moment.

“Well, old man, I suppose your soul, if you have one, awaits the same fate as mine then.”

“But I haven’t killed anyone,” the merchant choked out.

“Ah, but you have. You killed my mother.”

“No, I didn’t,” the merchant pleaded with Dughall. “Please, you have to believe me. I didn’t get anywhere near her. I didn’t kill her. It was someone else then.”

“You may not have been the one who beat her and bloodied her and left her in a heap for me to find, barely recognizable as my own beloved. But you are the one who sent her each night to her real death, the death of her soul. And you are the one who sold her life for a price to the one who did her in. How much did you get for it, huh? How much you filthy rotten pig?” Dughall took the hilt of the sword and twisted it.

The merchant choked out muffled screams of agony as Dughall inflicted pain to his once master. “Please,” the old man pled. “I am sorry,” he whimpered. “Please ... ”

“Too late you fetid scum. You shall die here, alone and broken and suffering, just as she did. And if you do have a soul, it surely will rot in a hell worse than any you can imagine for the horrible crimes you have committed in your life. And while it is indeed a pleasure to watch you die in agony, I must be off.”

With that statement, Dughall gave the sword one last painful twist and turn before he drew it out of the near dead body of the merchant. He took the merchant’s napkin and wiped the blade clean of its owner’s blood.

“A fine sword,” he said aloud. “It shall come in handy on my quest.”

With those words, he turned his back on the merchant and left him to die. Dughall had taken the first steps on his path to becoming a bloodthirsty conqueror. He found killing far too easy and in a way pleasurable. In the years to come, he would find that with each new death, it became easier and easier to end the life of another like one would swat a gnat or a fly. Anyone who stood in the way of all that he desired was to him like a mere insect, of no consequence. In time, he stopped counting the number of human lives he took along his path to conquest.

Sitting at the control panel of the LHC, it was no different. All the humans around him, the team of thousands, they were of no consequence to him. Even those in the nearby towns and villages above, what should he care if they too perished when he implemented his plan?

There was a slight gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling foreign to him for so many years. What is this? He could not place it, but it seemed a bit familiar. Why do I feel this edge in my gut? Perhaps it was something he ate or a human virus trying to bring him down with an illness.

Just then Macha appeared by his side with news. It was upon casting his eyes on her face that he realized what that horrible feeling was in his stomach.

Dughall felt a pang of guilt. He was slightly amused with himself. He didn’t realize he could still feel that. Apparently he had a pang of guilt over the probable loss of Macha.

To be expected, after all, he reassured himself. She entombed herself for over a thousand years just so she could help me to resurrect when the time was right, he thought. She has been a faithful servant.

Of course, if she hadn’t entombed herself and put herself into the deepest pixie sleep, she probably wouldn’t be alive today, he rationalized. Yes, that’s true. She would have gone the way of all the other pixies and faerie folk. Vanished with the rest. Vanquished by humans and stamped once and for all out of existence.

The faerie people were so blind to the nature of their own condition. As times changed and humans left their ways of nature worship and chose the one God, the faeries retreated away from humans to survive, never fully realizing that they needed the interaction with humans to exist.

Macha may, in fact, be the last of her kind, thought Dughall. But his mind could go no further down the road of guilt or sympathy. For Dughall, that road was short indeed and a dead end.

The sacrifice of one pixie, it is no matter if I can achieve my most fervent desire, he thought. In fact, Macha is probably prepared to sacrifice herself for me. With that thought, the pinching feeling in his belly ceased. He sat upright and with a clear purpose.

Nothing would get in his way, not even the death of the world’s last pixie.