Chapter XIX

“Everything’s in place.”

Malkira stood beside Moloch, overlooking his jidra garden in the foothills. The carnivorous flowers reached out with tendrils into the reeking hills of rotting meat and pulled it into their teeth-filled blossoms. Crunching and slurping noises filled the air as the jidra consumed the meat and spit out the bones in broken shards.

The Demon King turned to face his sworn brother, expecting to see hope on his face. But where he’d expected hope was only deep sorrow expressed in his sunken face.

Moloch closed his eyes and turned his head from the garden. “I knew this path would cost lives. I just… oh, God…”

Malkira placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know this is gruesome, but it’s the only way we’ll see the Shrieking Shrine. Just know, there wasn’t an innocent soul among them.”

Moloch fell to his knees and pressed his palm to his forehead. “Why couldn’t I see this before? I saw nigh everything else…”

“Maybe you didn’t see it because you didn’t want to see it,” said Malkira, gently rubbing the seer’s back. “Sometimes our minds protect us from knowing too much.”

“Why are you showing me this?” Moloch asked, wrestling with the retching at the back of his throat. “Couldn’t you have let me live in ignorant bliss?”

“I wish I could, my dear brother. I really wish I could, but…” Malkira moved his hand to the back of Moloch’s head and gestured with his other hand, “do you see what they’re building there?”

Malkira’s claw pointed to a circular shack on which a number of different demons were still working. They handed to each other boards and hammered them into place. Imps stood on the roof, adding shingles to protect it from the rain.

“That’s where we’ll be living for the next few weeks, my brother. Until the Shrieking Shack finally arrives and we’ve cured your seer sickness, that will be our home.”

Moloch sighed. “A home with a lovely view of the mass grave. Where the garden of bloodthirsty blossoms blooms…”

Malkira stood back from the seer and folded his arms. “Come now, you knew what you were getting into when you offered to work for me. If, somehow, you didn’t know my reputation for ruthlessness you must have seen at least a few visions of the bloodshed I’d bring before the end.” Malkira seized the seer by the chin and forced him to look up into his eyes. “You knew, as I do, that if your goal is noble enough the methods you use to get there are trivial. So, why do you complain now, after all this time?”

Moloch’s eyes averted from the Demon King’s. “Because now I see what I’ve been ignoring the whole time…”

Malkira shoved the seer away and paced back and forth, his every step a stomp, as if he were trying to crush insects. “Oh. So, now you’re the moral authority here? Suddenly, after all these years, you grow a conscience? Do you know how many humans my warriors killed when they took Brook Hold? What am I saying? I know you do! If not from your visions, then from the reports I shared with you. Now, suddenly, this is too much? Now that you have to actually look upon it?”

The Demon King, slipped behind Moloch, seized both sides of his head, and forced him to look at the jidra garden. “Tell me the Third Genesis will be worth this, Moloch! TELL ME!” Malkira’s hands jostled the seer’s head. “Because if it’s not worth this, then you have led me to shame, and I should snap your neck here and now as a traitor. Tell me! Will the Third Genesis be worth all this bloodshed?”

“Yes!” Moloch blurted out. “Yes, it will. An age of peace. An age of hope. An age of freedom. It will be worth all this and more.”

Malkira shoved Moloch away from him. The seer stumbled onto his knees with a groan. Behind him the Demon King paced again. “Then don’t let me ever catch you looking away from that price again. You look upon those sacrificed for your sake. You look. No matter how gruesome it is.”

The seer stared straight ahead at the blood-stained garden. “Where is your son, Mal?”

Malkira tilted his head to one side. “Have you already forgotten? I told you. I banished him and his mother both for defying me.”

Moloch sighed. “Then he is more a threat to you than he has ever been…”

Malkira leaned in closer. “What do you mean?”

The seer turned to face the Demon King, tears forming in his eyes. “Mal, I thought I already warned you about this… but I must have only done that in a vision and it never actually happened…”

Malkira seized the seer by his collar and pulled him in closer. For a moment, his face was contorted in rage, but he took three deep breaths, softened his expression, and rested his hand on Moloch’s cheek. “Tell me what you know, my brother,” he said in a gentle voice.

“I just hope I’m telling you for real this time,” said the seer. He reached up and touched the eye-shaped burn-scar on his forehead. “If Ra-Gadol stays by your side, he will continue his vain quest for your approval, even amidst his rebellion. But if you cast him aside he will wrestle control of your clan from you and come with an army to take your life.”