The Kingship

Chapter 9

"You make my spells a waste of time, Llama." Nociv said flippantly. "If I had known you would eventually come back to me, I wouldn't have summoned Rebecca back from the dead in the first place."

I couldn't take it anymore. I drew my sword and tackled my brother with my sword against the skin of his neck. "Have you become so shallow and self-serving that you would call her 'Rebecca' instead of 'Mother?' I know all about the book of Vladwick and how you obtained your powers through it, Nociv. What was the price you had to pay to get a hold of this devilish book?"

A slow sparkle of something began to crawl along Nociv's cheek and over his eye to reveal something that I had never seen before. A massive scar, still bright red, running from his mid-forehead over his right eye and down to his low cheekbone. The skin was infected and I thought I could see some sort of parasite eating away the skin around the scar. "My right eye, for spells that would hide the scar and revive my sight so that no one would be able to tell what I had done to myself."

With another quick, unexpected move on my part, and I had reopened the tissue. From the sparkly explosions of somethings, I knew I had broken that spell and that while perhaps he still had his magical sight, but that scar would always be growing now. He might be able to find magic to help it shrink, but it would eat away at his face just like the evil eating away at his soul.

"Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth as they say." I said in a cold steely voice.

Before I could say more, something that I could only describe as a solid, living silhouette in that moment rammed into me. I could see it more clearly after I stopped seeing star-sicles. It was indeed in the shape of a man, but completely black, without features. And although there were visibly no clothes on him, there were strands of black cloth fluttering in the wind behind him as if he was wearing a cloak or a badly shredded shirt. The only color on him were his eyes. Small, squinty, gleaming red eyes they were without pupils or whites or anything normal about normal eyes. "Dare to touch the master of darkness again and you will die. But suffer now for destroying his magic." The thing said in slithering, creepy voice. He raised his arms and made two fists with his hands which glowed lava red. All of a sudden, I felt a pain throughout my hips just below my stomach, like something was burning up and being crushed on the inside.

"What are you doing?" I gasped.

"Now when you lay with a woman, she will not bear you a child."

I tried to think of a comeback for this silhouette. Something to show him that he didn't scare me. But I could not fight the lump in my throat or the despair in my stomach. I would now most definitely never have children have my own. Not that I had ever wished for them, but no being should ever be deprived of loving a child of their own. What would happen to this prophesy now? What would happen to my kingdom now? The demon drew his cruel twisted dagger and prepared to knife me to death.

"Ting-Git, stand down. He has been punished enough. Brother, this is the general of all of my loyal dark warriors. Ting-Git, this is my dear older brother, Llama the Old. He's a coward."

"Was a coward, brother, was. If I was still a coward why would I bother coming back to face you? Tell me, brother, will you face me or hide behind your magic like the coward that you really are."

"Goodness, gracious, Llama. Must we go over this again? It's not cowardice. Rather it's enlightenment. Power is all there is that is worth living for in this life. You really are stupid if you can never learn that."

"Learn?! And tell me one thing that you learned: You called me Llama the Old. May I ask how that name came about? I have a distinct memory of you calling me Llama the Lazy for all of our past and the last time I looked, sixteen was not very old at all- still a teenager in fact."