Short Story Series: Story 15 – The Destiny of Despair

A Whole Year

Hello! Is there anybody out there {insert Pink Floyd music here.} How are you?! Can you believe it has been an entire year since I’ve published anything to the blog? As many of you know, 2019 was not a banner year personally for me. I did continue to create content because after all bills need to be paid, the family needs to eat, etc. And I even continued writing short stories. I just didn’t have the will to publish them. Or I kept putting it off until it was easier not to take the time to upload them and save that time for the daunting personal stuff I was contending with.

Timing

As time ticked on, as it inevitably does, my guilt grew. I felt remorse over not taking care of the blog. I teemed with regret over not treating you, my faithful followers, with the respect you desire, by not sharing my struggles. And torturing myself over not nurturing my dreams the way I should. In fact, I was shoulding all over myself. And that is not pretty, friends. Thus, it came to a head, and I scheduled myself time to publish a new story. Ironically, it is about time!

Story Idea

This story came about through a request for a writing sample. As a ghostwriter, I’m often asked to present examples of my work. Usually in a specific genre, with one or two criteria. It’s a test of sorts by the hiring manager to see how well I work unsupervised and my grasp of the subject matter. Recently, there have been quite a few requests for Sci-Fi ghostwriters. I don’t know why other than there must be a market for them. Fiction writing is all about marketability and what is popular among readers.

Comments Please

So the specific request was for 2500 words or less Sci-Fi story that had elements of romance, the main character an assassin, and the topic of destiny. Here’s what I came up with! Enjoy and be sure to leave me a comment. I need to know if you are still out there! 😉

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The Destiny of Despair

The monster has many names: Serendipity, Future, Fate, and more. I call it Destiny, and once I have its power in my possession, it will cease to be known at all. I will destroy the creature controlled by King Epoch so that only Past and Present exist, for they are more angelic than fiendish. My mate insists Destiny is something that cannot be hunted down like an animal, that elimination is impossible.

“I am the deadliest and most skilled assassin in all the realms,” I roar. “Why else would the Minister have hired me for the task?!”

She cowers, covering her ears as the frequency of my voice vibrates in her head, sending waves of pain into her jaw, teeth, and temples.

“Without Destiny,

Hope is lost,” she cries. “And Hope is the favorite child of the Queen, of us all in the Realm of Belief.”

“Hope is the reason for all of this! If the Minister of Propaganda didn’t want her for his mate, I would hunt her down too.”

“But she is promised to another.”

“See how clever the Minister is? Without Destiny, they are free to be together.”

“I think you are the monster! I’ve supported you in many of your endeavors, even when I felt at odds with your intent. I draw the line now. I refuse to support you, refuse to let you continue with this madness!”

“You don’t have a choice, mate. You are mine to control, my apprentice and aide.”

I watch her

as the comment made its intended mark. Her face contorts as if I slapped her. She doesn’t know I recognize her need for retribution as she squares her shoulders and turns to look out the barred window of our modest dwelling. The sky in its ever-twisting colors of purples and pinks seems to shift with her mood. She also doesn’t know that her one flaw is to never act upon that need.

“I have to travel to the Realm of Time,” I sigh. “Let’s not part this way.” I open my arms expecting her to turn and melt into me the way she often does at my command.

“I hope Time and her minions waste you before you even get past the Custodians,” she hisses and storms from the room, her grand skirts rustling with her swift movement.

Determined not to let this small

setback bleed into what needs to be accomplished, I set about packing my satchel. I don’t know how long it will take me to reach the Realm of Time, but my plan includes extreme risk-taking, ignoring all the laws of the Three Realms, and making as many sacrifices as necessary to achieve my objective. I’ve already shut out the world around me, refusing to sleep or eat since the Minister told me of his plan. That’s why I’m called Despair. My mate playfully calls me Rash, when she is in a better mood than now. I don’t care what name anyone uses, as long as I succeed in my endgame.

As I head for the exit, I catch sight of myself in a prism. My eyes look feverish, over-bright. My hair curls in awkward angles from pulling it by the fistfuls in frustration while I planned my latest quest. I grin maniacally and blow myself a kiss. A sense of madness threatens to swallow me whole as the assassin’s euphoria swells to a frenzy within my veins.

“Time, prepare for revolution! I am coming for you!” I shout and step into a cloud of mist that acts as my transport to the Great Wall, the wall that divides the Realm of Belief from the Realms of Being and Time.

The mist moves slowly over the rocky lands, devoid of much life other than the strange creatures that lurk in the cracks. If you strain your hearing, you can decipher their sounds from that of the whoosh of the mist. Their speech sounds like twitters of laughter, something my kind does little of any more.

When Hope was first born,

laughter seemed to bubble up from the ether and infect us all. Pink was added to the skies, and the sharp curves and crevasses of our land seemed to smooth themselves out to become less daunting. The Queen didn’t like that so much. She birthed Jealousy and hid Hope away for herself, turning the laughter into jeers and general ugliness. The land returned to its misshapen harshness, its slopes now more pointed than ever before. It is on one of these points that I stop and step out of the mist, to check the accuracy of my maps and my overall trajectory. It is also on one of these slopes that I face my first of three tests from the Custodians.

The creatures quieted as I carefully balanced on a particularly pointed peak of rock. Their silence made way for a louder, more ominous sound, that of a human heartbeat.

“Show yourself, beast!”

I demand, drawing my light sword from its sheath at my left hip bone.

Instead of a human, however, a knight from the Order of Adoration appears.

“Turn around now, Rash, and I will not report your travels to the Queen.”

“Regard,” I sneer. “What are you doing in these parts?” intoning my question with the same strange accent all the knights speak. I recognize him immediately as the Queen’s most esteemed protector.

“You think the Queen is daft? She knows of your quest. She knows of the Minister of Propaganda’s plots for Hope. Hope is to be MINE!”

“Pardon me,”

a small voice interrupts our posturing. “Whose mist is this?”

Both the knight and I look in the direction of the voice. It is a human child, so small one of us could have easily harmed it by stepping in the pile of debris from whence it popped up.

“It is mine,” I reply, narrowing my eyes in suspicion. These parts have held no reports of humans, let alone human children. It must be a Custodian.

“Like you’ve ventured this far before, assassin. Remind me again how many kills you have?”

Anger flares inside me.

My ego demands a show of strength. I reach into my satchel and retrieve my kill crystal. It is a nonagon that holds each soul of a kill for eternity. With every entry, the crystal becomes a brighter shade of yellow, the color of all soul matter. I balance it carefully on the palm of my hand, showing off its brilliant light with pride.

“Twelve,” I beam. “More than any other assassin in all the realms.”

“Pfft. You wish!” the Custodian mocks. Then, in the blink of my eye, my nonagon and my mist have vanished. “Now you have zero kills and no method of transportation. Whatever shall you do?”

I reach for my sword once again, only to find that it and my satchel have disappeared as well. “What the…?” I look around in confusion. Regard has vanished too. All that remains in my line of sight is the child who has now grown to nearly matching the height of my stature.

“To pass through the three gates on your way to the Wall, you must complete three challenges. Physical, Mental, and Emotional. They are in no particular order, and part of the test is to figure out which one you are being appraised for. Good fortune!”

A sound reverberates

in my core, and the ground begins to shake before opening up into a chasm. I fall for what seems like an eternity, the weightlessness making me dizzy with nausea. There are no sounds, and complete blackness makes assessing my surroundings impossible. I close my eyes not believing that I could fail before even getting to the Wall. I recall the Minister’s impassioned speech about Hope and how King Epoch was using the machine Prophecy to control the monsters of Time. Prophecy foretells that with the help of Destiny, Hope and Regard are bound to produce the child Love because they will be equals, not mates, like the rest of us. Propaganda too wants Hope to be his equal and their child to be Love. And I am tasked with making his desires reality. I cannot nor will not fail!

With my change in emotion, my endless free-fall stops, and I return to balancing on the peaks of the craggy cliffs where I was moments before with Regard and the human child.

“Congratulations!

You have passed the test of Emotion — only two more to go. Remember, the tests appear at random, so there is no way to predict where on your journey you’ll encounter the next. But, know that Mental and Physical are still unaccounted for.” The human child in its small shape, standing in the pile of debris as it was before, informs me. In front of us is my cloud of mist and in a shallow crevice nearby, sits my satchel and light sword. The knight, Regard, is nowhere in sight.

Stepping back into my mist, it resumes its crawl across the landscape. I never did check my data to ensure I was on the correct course, but considering all that has transpired, I am certain I will arrive where I intended.

The thing about certainty? Never actually put any trust in it. Within just a few short minutes of my confident assessment, the mist stops. Stepping out, I observe that I am in the middle of a vast expanse of blackened ground. As far as my eye sees, there is nothingness. Black terrain, purple sky, and my bubble of mist. That is all.

Checking my maps, travel instruments, and meticulously drawn out plans, nothing points to where or when I have arrived.

“This must be

the physical test,” I speak aloud to no one. An answer in the form of a giant grotesque beast with more fangs than stars in the universe, and clawed tentacles that regrow in pairs each time they are sliced off, rises from beneath the surface.

Sparing you many of the details, between that beast, walking endless miles on foot, fighting two separate hordes of beings whose skin and life essence is toxic to the touch, and resisting the sexual temptations of a group of beautiful sirens, I passed test two.

“Psst. Hey you! Yeah, you! Over here,” a gravelly voice calls from behind a petrified tree. It was a xepsodile, a small rodent creature with reddish-brown fur and beady white eyes. The third Custodian, I assume.

“Have you heard?

King Epoch captured the knight, Regard, of the Order of Adoration for breaching the Wall. Regard explained he was only trying to protect the monster Destiny from a well-trained assassin coming from this realm, but Epoch didn’t believe him and threw him in his famous dungeons. You wouldn’t happen to be that assassin, would you?”

“What if I am?”

“Then I’d turn back. If Regard is dead, he won’t be fulfilling any prophecy and your Minister friend is free to pursue his interests.”

“How do you know all of this? Does everyone in the three realms know that I am to assassin Destiny for the Minister?”

The xepsodile nods. “Pretty much.” He purrs in a way that strikes me as laughter.

“I’m moving forward with my quest. If taking out Regard was the only option in getting Hope, then Propaganda would’ve hired me to kill him. Instead, he chose Destiny, and Destiny is who I intend to extinguish.”

The xepsodile shimmers with a strange light. I rub my eyes thinking exhaustion has finally caught up to me. However, it is not exhaustion! The xepsodile is transforming before me. After stretching and straining in impossible ways, a type of alchemy occurs turning the xepsodile into my mate, Peace.

“I warned you

to stop this nonsense. Destiny cannot be hunted. You will be the one who ceases to exist if you continue this insane pursuit.”

I am incensed! “How dare you leave our abode without my authorization! To question my judgment! To interfere with my quest!”

In my fury, I pull out my light sword one final time and strike without consideration of my actions. In one fell swoop, my mate comes to an end at my own hands.

With her life force splattered across my body, I drop the sword and fall to my knees, grasping my head in my hands. “What have I done?” I howl into the dark purple sky. No pink is visible, and darkness I have never experienced seems to fall across the land.

A hissing sound breaks the racket of my sorrow. When I clear my eyes and look towards the noise, I see that the Great Wall has appeared out of nowhere. On the other side hovers a magnificent dragon-like beast.

“It was your fate to kill Peace, I’m afraid. She warned you I cannot simply be hunted down and eliminated.”

It is Destiny.

Not so much a monster, but an elegant demon with a kindness that oozes from its presence. Infuriated I charge towards the wall, leaving my bag of weapons and light sword on the ground with Peace. I try scaling the wall until my fingers bleed and tear to the bone. I pound my fists and throw my body into it, thinking if I can’t get over it, I can break it down. But it is no use.

“This was your final test — the mental. Without being obvious, I’m afraid to say that you failed miserably. Hope will mate with Regard and deliver unto the Realms, Love. But all is not lost dear one, for the opposite of Despair is indeed Love. It was your fate all along.”

And so, the assassin named Despair meets Destiny and discovers Love. All because Propaganda craved Hope. It was serendipitous.

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So?! What did you think? Leave me a comment below and be entered to win a $5 Gift Card to Amazon, sent to your best email address. Also, if you are looking for my romance, check out these stories by me HERE and HERE. Happy Valentine’s Day! — KTG.

© K.T. George 2020 | This post was first seen on ktgeorge.com