I can give you immortality
I’ve reached 70,000 words into “Nightfighter”. In today’s excerpt, one of Caina’s teachers meets Maglarion.
Maglarion, as regular readers might recall, is not a very nice man.
“Do they not look younger, the years wiped from their faces? Join us. I can do the same for you. I will make you young again. You are a widow, you say? You can find a new husband, one worthy of you, can bear sons and daughters again. All this I will give you if you follow me.”
Julia shivered. “I…I…”
Caina had never seen her so flustered.
“Do your scruples stop you?” said Maglarion. “Cast them aside. They are only chains that hold you back. I can give you immortality. Surely that is worth any price.”
“Immortality?” said Julia. “The nature of man is mortal. His fate is to die. At what price comes your immortality? I have heard that Haeron Icaraeus buys vast quantities of slaves…slaves that always seem to disappear. What use do you find for them, I wonder?”
“It is the natural order of things,” said Maglarion, his smile hardening. “The weak prey upon the strong. And with the aid of arcane science, the strong can use the weak to live forever. So, Lady Julia Morenna? Are you weak, or are you strong?”
“Your definition of strength is flawed,” said Julia, lifting her chin. “To accept one’s fate with courage…that is strength. To slaughter innocents in order to stave off an inevitable death, that is weakness. And cowardice.”
“Or blind folly,” said Maglarion. “I have conquered death itself. What matter the price?”
“No,” said Julia. Her voice remained calm and polite, but her expression had hardened. Caina wondered if she had finally figured out that she was talking to Maglarion himself. “Thank you, sir, for your most generous offer. But I am afraid that I must decline.”
She turned to go.
“I think not,” said Maglarion.
He gestured, green flame crackling around his fingertips…
-JM
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