Chronicles of the Apocalypse: Revenge, Everything is Nothing

by Zachery Richardson

  “What’s the matter, Dorigan?” he asked. “Have I touched a nerve?”

  Roaring with the full fury of Hell itself, Dorigan turned around and slammed Mordechai back-first into the ground with so much force that the floor beneath him cracked. Yet despite the pain he was now in, Mordechai only laughed.

  “Such rage,” he said, rolling over and forcing himself to his feet. “Yet it’s only a mask for your fear. Fear that I am right.”

  Mordechai locked eyes with Dorigan, and he noticed that Dorigan’s eyes, previously a bright, cold blue, had shifted into a violent, vicious, and primal blood red.

  And Mordechai stared into those demonic eyes with only stone cold defiance.

  “Fear that no matter how far you fly or how fast you run, that no matter where you go or what you do, Jin Sakai will still kill you.”

  A roar of rage, the song of steel, and Dorigan plunged his sword through Mordechai’s stomach.

  Mordechai took his deathblow with only a grunt, and then grabbed Dorigan’s collar in one hand, and the hilt of his sword in the other. Open fear then played over Dorigan’s face and eyes, and Mordechai shoved himself forward so that he was only an inch from Dorigan’s face. Another grunt escaped him as Dorigan’s sword was thrust through him to the hilt, and a trickle of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. Yet through all of this, Mordechai’s cold, defiant eyes never left Dorigan’s.

  “You take my life,” Mordechai said, choking slightly on his own blood, “in the hope, the vain hope, that it will purge your fear. But your fear will always be with you. It will haunt you until the day you die. Because we both know that I’m right. We both know that in the end, Jin Sakai will kill you.”

  A strangled sigh, the gurgle of blood, and Mordechai Krueger died.

  Dorigan could only stand, staring blankly ahead. Even as Mordechai’s dead body slid down off of his sword, Dorigan could still only stand and stare. Mordechai’s words rang through his head endlessly, bouncing off the walls of his brain. They grew in volume until Dorigan was consumed by an all-powerful desire to run, screaming, out of his own life.

  But because he is who he is, Dorigan silenced Mordechai’s words with a brutal twist of his will and locked his secret fear into the iron box in the bottom of his heart, where it belonged. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped Mordechai’s blood from his sword. Irregular footsteps echoed behind him, and Mark Donovan’s voice slid through his ears.

  “Master Dorigan, your orders?”

  When Dorigan responded, his voice was soft, quiet, and yet filled with a murderous rage that made it shake.

  “Call Victor and Jessie, tell them to come here. It is time to end this meaningless charade!”

  Chronicles of the Apocalypse

  --<(0)>--

  Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing

  Chapter 18: Pyre

  Dorigan stood perfectly still before the window that dominated the back wall of the meeting hall. Out on the grounds, he could see his men gathering the bodies of all the guards Mordechai and his men had killed. Rage still burned white-hot within the core of his heart, yet Dorigan had now come into possession of a remarkably calm and even disposition. It was as if his rage burned so hot that it burned cold. The massive oak doors creaked open behind him, and Dorigan knew at once who was there.

  “Leave us, Mark,” he said. “Go home. You’ve done all you can for tonight.”

  Even though he could not see or hear it, Dorigan knew that Mark had bowed before the sound of his shoes against the floor signaled his departure.

  “Jessie, Victor, come here,” Dorigan said, indicating the floor next to him.

  Footsteps echoed in the hall as Jessie Wise and Victor Malakai approached their master. They spoke no words, and when they reached Dorigan, they merely waited. For they could feel the white-hot rage emanating from their master, and they had no desire to have it directed at them. After a long while, Dorigan sighed, and then spoke.

  “Jin Sakai has been a thorn in my side for longer than I wish to remember. He has caused me no end of misery and anguish. If he wishes to twist my arm behind my back, I will break his clean off.”

  “Master?” Jessie asked tentatively.

  “He thinks I am unaware of his presence in Pine Lake. He thinks I do not know that he sleeps soundly tonight in his Hatchling’s living room. He thinks wrong. I know exactly where he is, I know exactly what he is doing, and I know exactly how and when to strike.”

  “How, Master?” Victor asked.

  “Jin Sakai travels with a woman and her son, we know this. We also know that they are very dear to him, and that he will go to any lengths to protect them. When we capture them, he will come to us, and then we will kill them right before his eyes. After which, I will take great pleasure sheathing my sword in his skull.”

  “And the when?” Jessie pressed.

  “Jin’s arm is broken, and we will wait for it to heal. Lull him into a false sense of security, get him to lower his guard, and then we will strike at his very heart!”

  --<(0)>--

  Back in Mark’s living room, Jin Sakai paced back and forth behind the couch.

  Mordechai should have been back by now, he thought.

  Leah and Will tried to watch TV, but Jin’s fevered pacing and anxiousness was infectious, and they found themselves worried as well.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the door that led into the living room opened, and Mark limped inside.

  Jin snapped his head up and instantly took stock of his friend. In relatively good shape considering what happened, and he was limping due to what appeared to be a bullet wound to his left thigh.

  “Where’s Mordechai?” Jin asked quickly.

  Mark looked up, locked eyes with Jin, and sadly shook his head.

  “Damn it!” Jin bellowed, stomping his foot angrily into the floor.

  Mark sighed and slumped against the doorframe.

  “And the operation?” Jin pressed. “Did he do it? Did he succeed?”

  Mark nodded. “I’ve never seen Dorigan that mad.”

  Jin sighed, curling his hands into fists and relaxing them.

  “I didn’t want it to happen like this,” Jin said, pacing once again.

  “None of us did, Jin,” Mark said, trying to console his friend. “We all wanted him to come back.”

  “But you weren’t the one who promised his son that his father would come back home!” Jin roared.

  Mark, Leah, and Will all jumped in surprise.

  There was a half moment of silence, and Jin heaved a massive sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, pressing his hand to his forehead. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  Slowly, Jin walked over to Mark’s dinner table and fumbled for a chair. When he found one, he collapsed into it. Suddenly, Mark and Leah saw Jin as he had been during all those years he’d spent locked away in his cabin. Every worry and every care, all the pain, all the suffering, all the horrors Jin had experienced in his life, they could see it all etched into every corner of his face. The fire, passion, and boyish joy that had so enthralled Leah upon meeting him were gone. The fire had gone out completely. Jin Sakai was once again the weak, beaten, and broken man he’d been only two weeks ago, before Dorigan had sent his men to kill him.

  Slowly, Leah rose from the couch and walked over to Jin. Right as she was about to kneel down beside him, Jin stood up and walked toward the doorway Mark was leaning in. As he approached, Mark moved out of his way and fixed him with a curious gaze.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  Jin didn’t answer, instead he walked down the staircase that led to the top floor of Mark’s shop. Mark repeated his question, but Jin continued to ignore him. Jin ignored him until he walked out of the front door and Mark’s voice could no longer be heard.

  Jin’s mind checked out. He paid no attention to where his feet were guiding him. In truth, he did not care. All that mattered to him was Mordechai, the fact that he was dead, and the f
act that he had left a family behind. Guilt chewed through Jin’s heart and mind. He couldn’t face it, but neither could he ignore it. It stared him straight in the face and told him that everything was his fault. It was his fault that Mordechai was dead, that Leah and Will had been sucked into a world they did not belong in, that his son and daughter had not lived to see their ninth birthdays.

  His anger did not come, it could not come. Guilt had drained him of all power, both physical and mental.

  --<(0)>--

  When Jin finally looked up and his mind checked back in, he found himself standing right in front of his cabin. Almost immediately, his nose was assaulted by one of the most putrid stenches he had ever had the misfortune of smelling. Jin briefly wondered what in the hell could be causing it, and then he remembered the group of dead Grunts he hadn’t bothered to clean up.

  Well, that’s what I get I suppose, he thought before walking up to and through the front door.

  Ignoring the smell of the decomposing corpses, Jin walked right past the living room and up into his bedroom. Once there, Jin sat down on his bed and lifted the picture of him and his children off the table it rested on.

  He gazed at the picture for hours, losing himself in all of the memories he had of his two kids. Memories of watching martial arts movies with Alex and sparring with him in the backyard, much to the ire of his wife. Memories of helping Katie with her homework and all the times he’d taken her shopping.

  A sad smile crept onto Jin’s face at the number of times he’d noticed the strange looks he would get from other men as he walked up to the cash register with piles of Barbie dolls and girl’s clothing with his daughter smiling happily and excitedly behind him. He hadn’t cared, Katie was his daughter, and he loved her – anything that made her smile was worth it.

  And it wasn’t like they were hurting for money either.

  Jin chuckled. No, his kids had never really wanted for anything. But he’d taken extreme care not to spoil them. Anything they got, they’d worked for in some small way. But then, Jin acquiesced, he did have a rather bad habit of surprising them with things when they least expected it.

  Ah well, Jin thought. That’ll just be considered my payment to them for traveling so much.

  It suddenly occurred to Jin that he’d been much more of a parent that Rachel had.

  As Jin set the picture back on the table, he became aware of another presence in the room. Even without looking, he knew who it was.

  “How long have you been there?” Jin asked, not taking his eyes off the picture.

  “A few minutes,” Leah said.

  “Liar,” Jin said.

  Leah chuckled.

  “I’ve been here for about an hour,” she admitted. “After driving around almost every inch of Pine Lake, Mark realized that if you went anywhere, and you hadn’t gone after Dorigan, this is where you’d be.”

  Jin gave a single chuckle and finally looked up at Leah.

  “Yeah well, that’s Mark for you. He knows me better than I do.”

  Leah smiled. “Can I come in?”

  Jin nodded, and Leah walked up to sit beside him.

  “Are those your kids?” she asked, nodding at the picture.

  Jin nodded and grabbed it again, this time handing it to Leah.

  “My son, Alex, and my daughter, Katie.”

  “They look like you,” Leah commented.

  Jin smiled. “They’d both be thirteen, if they were still here.”

  “Twins?”

  Jin nodded.

  Leah smiled sadly, looked back at the picture, and then handed it back to him.

  “What do you plan to do when this is over?” she asked.

  Jin looked at her, confused.

  “After what is over?”

  “After you get your revenge. After you kill Dorigan and the others.”

  “I don’t know,” Jin said, shrugging.

  “You don’t even have an idea?” Leah pressed.

  “What are you getting at, Leah?” Jin asked, his gaze hardening as suspicion rose in his heart.

  Leah paused for a moment before speaking.

  “All I’m trying to tell you is that you need a goal beyond just revenge.”

  Jin eyes blazed with sudden fury. How dare she criticize him like that!

  “If you spend your life holding grudges and always seeking revenge,” she continued, “all that negativity will poison you.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” Jin said slowly, with deadly venom, “that I should forgive Dorigan for what he did to me?”

  “No!” Leah said immediately. “No, God no, nothing like that!”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying…” Leah said. “I’m saying that if revenge is the only reason you’re trying to kill him, even if you succeed, you will never be free of him or your past. They will both haunt you for the rest of your life.”

  Jin took a very deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping to siphon off some of the intense anger that was burning in his heart. Upon his sigh, Leah stood up.

  “Look, Jin, I’m not going to stand here and tell you how to live your life. I’m just trying to show you a different path because I’ve walked down the path you’re on, and I know where it leads, and where it ends.”

  “And that is?” Jin asked.

  “Hell.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, staring straight into each other’s eyes, and then Leah walked out of the room and down the stairs, leaving Jin alone with his thoughts and her words. As she left, Jin grabbed the picture of his kids again and stared at it. As he did so, he fell back into his own mind, trying to discern from his own emotions what the future held for him.

  He saw himself fighting Dorigan, blades flashed and danced and sang as they crashed together. He saw himself with primal hate and bloodlust in his eyes. He saw Dorigan as the enemy, a demon who must be slaughtered at all costs. He then saw that demon lying dead at his feet, dismembered several times over. After that, there was nothing. No feeling, no emotion, nothing. Just a hollow darkness with him sitting in the middle of it.

  But then Jin shifted the picture. He was back fighting Dorigan, but this time it was different. All the memories of all the pain Dorigan had inflicted on everyone, not just Jin himself, flashed through his mind. He thought of Jonah, never knowing why his father hadn’t come home. He thought of Alexandra, tortured by the knowledge she had to hide from her son. He thought of Leah, and Will, and the world they didn’t deserve to be stuck in. He thought of all the people Dorigan would hurt if he were allowed to continue with his plans. Suddenly Jin’s hate for him shifted. It was still there, and it still motivated him to a degree, but it was drastically less powerful. Now it was more of an abstraction, a curiosity, something to be studied and examined.

  Jin took this hate and held it gingerly in his hand. It seemed such a small thing, and he briefly wondered how it had held such power over him – how it had nearly destroyed everything that he held dear. It had been blind and deaf and had resented that fact. But Jin was not blind, and he allowed his hate to look at the world through his own eyes. It saw things as they were, and it realized that even though its existence was at an end, it was a glorious end. It was the end that it had always desired. It would kill Dorigan, and it would kill the others, and when the battle was over, it would crawl happily into the bottom of Jin’s heart and fall into the blissful shadow of its death.

  It would no longer need to power and control Jin’s every action.

  Jin looked again at the picture of himself and his children, and then gently kissed them goodbye.

  --<(0)>--

  Leah was sitting out on the front porch when the front door opened, and Jin backed out, pouring the last of what looked like vodka onto the floor. Leah looked at him curiously, and Jin nodded back to Mark’s truck, telling her silently to walk back to it. She did so and watched him intently as he stood before the open front door.

  He stood there for a long time, his
mind simultaneously buzzing and silent. He knew now what he wanted, he knew now how to get it, and he knew now that his life would once again be his own. He pulled the picture of him, Katie, and Alex out of his pocket and set it down in the middle of the doorway.

  “I never went back for you guys,” he said, looking at the picture. “And for that, I’m sorry. You two deserved a proper burial, at the hands of people who loved you.”

  At that, Jin reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter.

  “I don’t have a lot of freedom, and I don’t know where or even if your bodies were buried, but I loved you two. I loved you more than I ever could have put into words, and this is the best I can do for you.”

  He lit the lighter and held it up to his shoulder.

  “Goodbye, Katie, goodbye, Alex. I love you, and may you always rest in peace.”

  Without another word, Jin tossed the lighter into the house and watched as the pool of vodka it landed in burst into flame.

  As Jin walked off the porch and back to Mark’s truck, flames spread all throughout the cabin. Slowly but surely, the entire cabin was consumed by fire, and Jin watched it burn with a solemn but strangely contented expression on his face. Leah saw this and was about to say something, but Mark put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. They were bystanders, not participants. Together, the three of them stood there and watched Jin’s cabin go up in flames. They stayed for hours, until the last log was little more that a charred bit of carbon. Miraculously, none of the surrounding trees had caught fire, but that didn’t surprise Jin. Katie loved nature, and she’d never let trees burn without cause.

  They stayed a moment longer, and then Jin walked over to the passenger side door of Mark’s truck. Mark and Leah instantly took the hint and piled into the truck as well. Mark then shifted into gear and drove the three of them back to Pine Lake, leaving it all behind.