5. Victory - the Afterward

Carlyle is dead. The stranger, Bruce has won. Or has he? There is a strange stirring in the smoke of the bossman's remains...

***

He stood there for a few moments, legs straddled to either side of the heap of Carlyle’s body. Bruce fingered tenderly the holes in his shirt where wounds were preternaturally healing, and winced.  They would heal.  But it would take a few minutes.

Then he uttered an incantation in a deep growling voice.  It was not a demon’s voice, but likened to the voice of ascetic monks who spend lifetimes perfecting to vibrate their vocal chords at multiple frequencies.

The fires around the square settled, and the brightness reduced itself until there was only smoke.  Darkness resumed its hold over the square. 

Bruce un-straddled the body and walked away.

Then the man called Bruce turned to Spec and the other witnesses who stood jaws-slackened, in disbelieving wonder.

“Your old boss won’t be coming back.  By the right of the Devil’s Day challenge, I’m your new master.”

Spec and the others stepped forward until they were before him. They walked hesitantly.  Spec spoke first.  “Is he..  is he really dead?” 

“He is,” answered Bruce. “I just uttered the incantation that will sever the connection between his soul and the Eternal. He sighed, and as an afterthought said, “I guess it’s mine now. And Carlyle will pass on into hell forever.”

They stood there wondering at this man before them. Then they bowed.

“Thanks, mister,” said the man to the left of Spec.

“What do we do now?” said another.

Spec stood looking past Bruce to where Carlyle’s reduced body lay, thinking on his father, and nodded; in his own way it was a silent prayer in memory of his avenged father.

“You’re all free to do whatever you want,” said Bruce.  “I didn’t come here to tell you what to do.”

“You came for vengeance, didn’t you?” said Spec wistfully.  “For your wife and your teacher, right?”

Bruce arched an eyebrow and laughed heartily.  The men surrounding him looked at each other, clearly not getting the joke.

“Yes and no,” he said. “I didn’t come for vengeance. I came for something better.”

 

Suddenly Spec tensed and pointed a wildly trembling finger; he swallowed a suppressed scream and spoke in a horrified whisper. “Look! Look!  Mister, he coming back?! It’s it’s, I can’t believe it!”   

 

Bruce turned to where the man was pointing" to where Carlyle had fallen. Carlyle’s remains had once more burst into flaming plumes of black fire.  Then turned deep red.  Then smoke. Thick smoke, deep and dark, illuminated only by the bloody Devil’s moon overhead.

Without the fire to illuminate the square, all that could be seen was the silhouette of a person in the smoke under the moonlight.

“Relax Spec,” Bruce said, clasping the man’s shoulder jovially. “It’s not what you think,” Bruce continued.  “You see, I made a deal.  And traded Carlyle’s soul which I didn’t care much for anyway, in exchange for two I love.”

Then another figure appeared. Two silhouettes in the smoke. 

There was laughter, smooth and light.  A beautiful melodic sound.  A simple sound like an angel; a woman’s voice.  And the bitter growl of a familiar sage-like voice.

The smoke cleared, and there, two shapes stood illuminated by moonlight.

A young woman with reddish curls and next to her, a man with a long brown beard and sage’s face.  She wore a tiny black shift and no shoes.  He wore a heavy white tunic with red ideograms painted on its front.  The robe of a Manni-Sekvi shaman.

Bruces’s eyes saw only the woman’s.  Jade green eyes met jet black eyes.

“Sonora,” Bruce said, his eyes watering. 

“Bruce,” said Sonora, her eyes watering.  

They rushed each other and embraced in a lover’s embrace.  And kissed and kissed.

“No need to thank me,” said the shaman with the sage’s face grumpily.  “I only sacrificed my life, dug around in the afterlife for Sonora and hung around for twenty years until time caught up with you. Meh, you did good, my son.  Carlyle is  rotting now, right where he belongs.”

But Bruce did not hear him.  He was caught up in kissing his wife, her living lips and body were the sweet fruit of his victory.

Spec and the other men stood around exchanging glances, wearing their slackened jaws for a very long while.  Eventually, the brown sage kicked them away, shooing them like stray cats.  “Don’t hang around here, loafers.  Go find something better to do with your time. Live life.  And live it right.”

Spec and the others left, collecting the straggling members of the club.

Later, they would talk about what they had seen and marvel on it. Had they been sorcerers, or angels and demons, sorcerers or gods? They knew only that they had battled. And their oppressor was dead.  When they told their children the stories, they thanked Bruce the magician who rid them of the evil bossman.  And they wondered if the man called Bruce wandered the lands with his wife Sonora, protecting them all from the next evil that might face what was left of the broken world.

Reviews

[Rana]

Teeming with unexpected twists, this novella was quite entertaining. Though read a couple of days ago, this was striking enough to leave the scenes I imagined while reading it to last. The fight was skilfully depicted with exceptional clarity, the dialogues were flawless. I reckon this kind of stories are challenging to write and you did well. With each succeeding chapter, my admiration for Bruce grew. (Only, I couldn't figure who it was with whom he'd made the deal he mentions in the end here.) I liked how you give your characters and the readers a happy ending!