Dreams of the Oracle

Chapter 29

Jack Linch stood at the docks watching the sun sink into the distant waters. He felt a strange blend of tingling anticipation and grim reassurance. This was it. This would be the night. The sky before him was stained red with the setting sun. A smile spread across his thin lips. How appropriate.

The Rashakas were taking care of finding him a boat. They had vanished after he had told them they would wait until nightfall. He wasn't completely sure why he had suddenly chosen to postpone his vengeance. Perhaps it was to more fully savor the moment. Perhaps it was to further the poetic justice of destroying the man who had destroyed him. It had been at night that Abdiel had broken him all those years ago. In fact it had been a night preceded by a bloody red sunset like this one.

Jack remembered every detail of that night. A night when he had still been at the height of his power. That was when the thought of the great Jack Linch falling was unthinkable.

He could have had anything he wanted before that night. He could have taken anything he wished from whomever he wanted. Men trembled before him. Everyone believed him invincible. He had believed it himself.

Then in one night it was all gone.

Abdiel had dragged him off his immortal throne and made him nothing. That Abdiel would want to was no real surprise. Of course Abdiel would be jealous of his power. Of course that cursed filth of a man would want to drag him down to his level. The terrible shock was that Abdiel actually succeeded, succeeded where so many others had failed.

That was what Jack Linch hated most. Now even if he regained all his former prestige he would never know that feeling again. That godlike feeling. That feeling of total invincibility. Now he would always know that there was a way to bring him down. Others would know it too. That was the curse Abdiel had thrust upon him. It was the curse of mortality. He had risen above it for a time, he had been a god. Abdiel had taken that from him. STOLEN it from him!

Jack's tingling anticipation suddenly flared into a burning rage. The mongrel had stolen his immortality! And for what? What had the man gained? Nothing! Nothing but the satisfaction of his own envy! All the lesser creatures that had surrounded Jack Linch couldn't stand the fact of their own inferiority. They couldn't stand the fact that someone like him could rise above them.

His patience suddenly gone Jack cursed the slow sunset. He glanced around hoping to see the Rashakas but they wouldn't appear until nightfall as per his instructions. Red magic crackled in his hands and flooded through his body. He had chosen this part of the dock because it had the fewest people. Now he cursed his own decision. What did he care if a few maggots saw him?

He looked out across the water at the various ships sitting at anchor. He had known which one was Abdiel's before the Rashakas had pointed it out. It was small and it was some distance apart from both the other ships and the dock. Jack watched the small ship with glaring intensity. It would be so easy just to do it from where he was standing. He could incinerate the whole bloody boat even from that distance. Yet, it wouldn't be enough. Abdiel wouldn't suffer enough. Moreover Jack Linch wouldn't see the man suffer.

He began pacing back and forth. Energy and rage and red magic pumped and twisted inside begging to be released. His eyes had turned as red as the sunset. His back was straight and his head was turned towards the boat in the distance. He felt like shouting at it. Shouting a challenge to the man he had come to destroy. Shouting out what he would do to that man this night, this glorious night! All at once he suddenly realized that he was shouting,

"I'm coming! I'm coming for you! I'll roast you Abdiel! I'll roast you like a boar! I'll boil the flesh from your bones! DO YOU HEAR ME?!? THEN I'll go after your FILTHY CHILDREN! Oh I wish you'd be alive to see what I'll do to them! THEN I'll go after your self-righteous rat's nest in the Tower! I'll burn anyone who has ever heard your name! You will DISAPPEAR FROM THIS WORLD! Everyone you love will be ASHES! Do you HEAR ME?"