The Last Hero

The man extended his left hand as if to shake. The thief recoiled from the opened palm, his eyes flashing red, ready to vaporize any incoming attack from the last hero. The man smiled.

“I don’t want it,” he said with a weary sigh. “Take it. You’ve taken everyone else’s.”

The eyes dimmed, and the thief took a step nearer.

“Don’t you want it?” the man asked with a smile. He studied the young thief’s face. “You’ve come this far.”

A tentative hand began reaching forward. Just a touch, he knew, and he’d be the most powerful man in the world.

“What are you playing at?” he asked, his hand hovering a few inches away from the other. “It’s a trick, isn’t it?” he said, drawing back suddenly. “Nobody would just give up their power.”

“Do you know what my gift is?” the last hero asked.

“You’re a mind reader, or something,” the thief growled.

The man laughed. “No.” He shook his head. His left hand was still proffered, the palm open.

“Then what is it?”

“Insight, dear boy,” the man’s tone was cutting. “You can only know it one way.” He lifted his hand an inch. “You’re not going to let me cow you into just giving up? I can’t fight you. You’re invulnerable, faster than sound, can fly—and I don’t want this anymore.”

The young thief, trembling before the tired hero, simply shouted, “Damn it all!” and grabbed the hand. He closed his eyes and concentrated. As he had felt it in the others before, he could feel the alien energy alive in this hero. The gifts given them in that ancient temple were unlike the energies he normally felt in ordinary men. It was not part of them, not originally, and so it could be taken. The power passed from one to the other, and he opened his eyes.

The man was gone, and not gone. He was shaking hands with a charred statue. He pulled away, and the fingers of the other hand broke. Like a chain of dominos, the hand began disintegrating, falling away into black ash. The arm too, and then the body. The whole thing collapsed into a heap of dust.

It was then that he noticed he was not where he was, where he thought he was. The hero’s pavilion had disappeared, its tapestries and smooth, plastered walls replaced by unadorned stone. A vague recognition pinged in his head. It was the same and not the same, the same style at least, in which the ancient temple had been built, but this was much bigger—more desolate. The ancient temple had been overrun by the forest, trees slowly tearing down the walls that prehistoric man had raised. There was no life here, only a howling wind cutting like a knife.

As he gawked, turning his head this way and that, he saw a flight of stairs, hewn with little skill, leading up, and up…

His eyes settled upon a hunched figure seated upon a throne. A cloak was thrown around him; a mantle resting on his head hid his face, and yet, the thief knew, the dark thing there was staring at him.

It seemed worn and weary, half dead. There was motion under the folds of its robe. A hand, boney, skeletal, came free, a solitary finger pointing up.

Look! a voice boomed inside his head.

Seemingly without his will, his neck began craning upwards. He trembled as he tried to fight the force pulling his gaze toward the bright sky. He shut his eyes, but even then, he could feel something pulling his lids back.

Above, the sun of this strange world writhed. Its beams, not straight like our own sun’s, coiled in tendrils of light, radiating outward from a horrible, an utter, darkness.

He was screaming. It felt like he had always been screaming, like he had lived his whole life running away from whatever this unnamed darkness was.

~

The heroes gathered around the frothing thief whose blank eyes stared out into nothing. One by one, they laid hands on him, drawing their powers back into themselves.

The last hero sighed.

“I could leave it in him,” he mused. The others gave no answer. He frowned. “It’s nice, not having to know.” He came over the spasming body of the thief. “But I suppose someone has to.” He waved his hands in front of the young thief’s eyes. “I don’t think he’s going to last much longer.” He grabbed the thief’s wrist and felt the weak pulse. Even with that little bit of contact, he could feel his gift straining to return to him. “Someone must bear it.”

The last hero pulled the horrible knowledge back into himself. The body below him grew still, but the pulse continued, slow and steady.

“He’ll forget,” he said, rising. The last hero shivered.