Unstirring Battle Cry

Year 38: Sitting over coffee, the other three watched Morgan mechanically reach for the cognac. He loosened the cap and stops midway to pouring. He placed it on the table. “I do not need it.”

Michael's morose expression stirred with some life. “You're passing on a drink?”

“I very much want it. More than I expected, but I no longer need it. I thought it liberation; it was just another leash.” Morgan sipped his coffee black.

The deposed queen of the mages and the Prime of the gemen sat with them. Valerie and Georg sat watching impassively. Michael lapsed back into his melancholia. “Why didn't I say that to you so much earlier?”

“Because you believed in his spirit, believed in him,” Valerie answered gently. “We didn't see the wheel turning, or that we were all just cogs. Morgan had to be neutral or he would have been driven totally gone by his own existence or been unfathomably evil. But we're all minions here, anyway.”

Georg asked again, “So, they said you were Horseman Famine?”

“I think they were mocking my generosity.”

“You think?” Morgan answered, almost managing sarcasm. “They were not mocking; they were brutalizing your humanity. I have faced that council myself.”

“So, we're fated to be the Horseman? It's not the end...” Georg bit his tongue.

“How are we to do this?,” Morgan asked.

“You're awfully steady,” Georg noted.

“I kill a hundred one by one, or thousands in one stroke. I do not see much of a difference. Death is death. If I'm going to execute people though, I would like it to be the proper people.”

“I don't know.” Michael's voice was strained. “They did not say much more than I told you.”

“Are we agreed then that no matter how crapsack the humans see this world, that humanity itself is not worthy of the wrath of end times?”

Michael made a keening noise. “I can't fault humanity for the messed up state of its forebears. They've done a lot better than we have.”

Georg nodded. “Hysper is underwater. The Underworld is blasted by wind. The Scafir'ii was cracked apart. And the Th'epf world was razed by lava. Some of us have rebuilt our numbers better than others but the humans will probably do well, even after ninety percent or more are decimated by fire.”

“Ninety percent or more is not decimated.”

“Morgan that point is not important,” Valerie interjected. “We'll do what they want.”

The other three looked at her in surprise. She elaborated, “But not what they intended. The four of us shall be what the humans fear, but the humans primarily will need not fear us. We will cut down all who wield magic in abusive forms. We will eliminate those who would use power, money, influence as means of tyranny over others. We will destroy this world in the name of humanity and what is left will be inherited by the meek, because the strong and the able will no longer exist.”

Valerie lifted hear hand above her and the Horseman bent to her will and rode.