This love is about control

“That felt good.” He says over steam rising from a bloody blur of barely visible mounds.

Karl holds his hands tightly over his ears, his tear burdened eyes shut tight, on his knees rocking forward and back, muttering words he thought were lost to him long ago, brought forth from deep within him after what he’d just witnessed. Unsure of what else he could possibly do- torn between what he’d done and what he did to achieve it, and the monster in front of him.

What was left of Ebbe walks over what was left of the mob of Northmen who had come to kill Karl after they’d found out what he had done to their kin. Raw amber eyes flash, new, clear, unwavering against the morning sun that glittered orange-pink hues on the fresh snow around them. “Stop calling me that…” he grumbles, aweing at the same glimmer bouncing off the slowly drying blood on his hand as he overhears the man’s name amidst the monks ramblings. “Though his memories live with me, I am NOT him. I’m not your slave, your burden, or your dog.”

“I pray for his soul, and I have no other name for you but the one you were given by the true God.” Karl shouts.

Uhluru’s eyes slip from adoration of his new skin to Karl, aggravated. “God…hmph” He searches the skies… “The oldest -and most accurate- ‘story’ in all of ‘Midrealm’ and it’s stars tells of two wills, light and dark, life and death… what you think your ‘God’ is and myself… locked in a fierce battle for one breath- for their very existence in a plane of nothingness, their struggle starting and ending in what seemed an eternity and a single moment. Both at the heights and lows of their potential energies, and at the crux of their resolves- subdue one another in a single mighty clash that momentarily brought them together as one in their release…” Uhluru’s eyes drift as he almost seems to remember, his words becoming stronger, more stern the more he reveals.

“The implosion shattered the nothingness that caged them, the shards of which dispersed outwards in waves -reforming and dissolving as they collided and ripped apart, heated and cooled, ignited and exhausted- as they created matter for an ever-expanding physical realm of complexity in which equal but opposite reflecting and refracting shades of grey in the aftermath were left to co-mingle…”

“Determined to save them from what they’d done to themselves and each other in it’s name, breath grasped what was left of the two as they began to unravel from function to form… wishing neither to disappear as it knew them, and not wanting to be alone, breath gave itself to what was left of both, entwining the wills of light, dark and the gift of breath. And so breath conceived a single life form that could walk with and inside each, either, or neither, and birthed it amongst the glittering landscape of their broken domain. Though… in the breath’s act of selfish selflessness, a twin, a companion to life was also born… death.” His voice drops off as a deep sudden wave of emotion comes over him, staggering his step before suddenly turning back to Karl, eyes alive, but cracking.

Karl’s ramblings lower to a simmer, then stop all together as the monk in him is lost in word and thought, hypnotized by a higher, older, darker scripture. Uhluru notices, walks closer, lifts Karl’s chin to meet eyes with him, and continues- slipping off to finish his story full force against the trees of the forest and the man all but alone.

“After she had taken what she needed from us, our broken forms were lost, bound to fight over and over through time as we searched for new meaning... unable to truly join the new domain till…”

He stifles himself from finishing the story as it seemed too painful, Uhluru’s sticky hands fold formally behind his back as he steps into a stride around Karl. “I was envious of the world they created together… light, breath, when I found out what he had done… I swore I’d find a way… to make life mine the way he had for himself for so long. Since before I can remember I have been trying to show breath that all of this is possible with me, too, but it’s been slow. Every time I’ve gotten close to the experience he’s found a way to rip me apart and put me back in the ground, make me almost impossible for breath to find, and impossible for breath to find love with.” He seems to carefully craft with his own twists. “And then… I did, I found a way to overpower him… but at the loss of my form.”

He laughs cruelly after a loose exhale as he unravels from his rant, as he finds himself again in this moment. “Look what thousands of years putting up with humans has done to me, I sound like a prick.”

His audience of one looks half-confused as the other rants, he circles a second time, the distance growing wider as he thinks aloud.

“Let me put it into words you can understand… Life… Karl… Life as you live it is what I wanted, and it’s something I’ve wanted for a LONG, long time… and that’s exactly what you’ve given to me. Using the ‘blood’ of the broken form I lost to Midrealm to infect it, I crafted a millennia’s long puzzle for humans to piece together, all to deliver someone like you, capable, to the opportunity to resurrect me. If you think about it Karl, you are as special as you’d hoped to be. So different from all those that tried before you. You’ve delivered a single, perfectly broken man with a strong body and no resolve, and allowed me breath at his expense… all because you wanted to know if your ‘God’ was real or not.

“You TRICKED ME.” Karl finally bursts. “If I would have known I never would have-”

Uhluru slows to a stop midround at Karl’s back side. “No… Karl, I know you knew… you were curious, you said it yourself, over and over all those nights. You wanted power, to be the new mouth of ‘God’ to your people, to see me, for me to see you, to know I was real, for me to acknowledge you.”

“Not you… him… ‘L-l-light’.” Karl staggers, embarrassed.

“At least be honest… that far pulled into it-” he points behind him to the longhouse “-you didn’t care who woke up in this body, as long as it wasn’t this poor man’s eyes you’d see if he were to wake up under your knife.”

Karl quietly begins to weep in frustration- almost relieved the truth is expelled. Understanding now that his ‘friends’ were the devils mouthpieces themselves, doing anything they could to trick someone into fulfilling Uhluru’s wishes if it meant becoming whole again… Karl settles into this… mistake.

“Too bad you detest me… I’d love for you to be my disciple… out of all the humans thus far YOU thought to put a perfect mixture of my essence directly into the brain of a man. You opened a doorway through the very thing that separates man from animal… what connects the physical body to the unknown, to the ‘spirit’, pitting light’s pure essence against mine yet again, something I couldn’t do as I was… something my err… daemons couldn’t dream of comprehending on their own.”

A third pass, the circle in the snow widening, Karl’s mind opening… feeling that perhaps… Uhluru knew Karl knew he knew… something at least. Something. It felt like… an invitation, but more than the one Uhluru was offering. The way he felt when he accepted the quest that started it all so long ago… excited to spread the word, to shine his light on the lies and forgeries that tried to usurp the awe that was his true God before he was overtaken by Uhluru’s dark will. Was this a new path to righteousness if he could find a way to… he glances at the corpses growing cold in the snow as the devil kept talking. Uhluru is trying to keep me around for something, is there more… is this… a new game?

“Like a wild animal I will kill the offspring of light, and breed with breath itself with this body you’ve given me. If you follow me, help me… I think you will like what I have to offe-UGHNNG!” Uhluru stops suddenly… something in him twists uncomfortably, his body writhes under the rising sun, what’s left of Ebbe’s frame cracks and squirms the way it had the other night. Sweat swells into beads under his orange hair, skin begins to rip along its fresh seams.

Before Uhluru goes any further in step or word, Karl appears behind him. Eyes wide open, red from strain. Broken but sure. Head bowed. “I don’t have much of a choice anyways… do I.”