Dedicated to my loving wife, our children and to my Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ who gave me eternal life through his precious sacrifice for sin.
“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”
—1 Cor 15:26
PROLOGUE
Thunder echoed across the plain as the Wielder called for lightning from the ominous clouds above the battlefield. A plane of gray earth and barren, black trees stretched to the horizon in every direction. Countless thousands lay dead across the desolate landscape.
Many had been killed in battle by one another. But many more had been killed by the Wielder himself and his powerful opponent. “You will never win, Mortis!” the Wielder crowed defiantly. “I will continue the fight no matter how many must die in order to be victorious!”
“You fool!” Mortis said. “You never had a chance of defeating me. Only when this contest is over will you realize. Only when it is too late to be saved will you finally understand the true nature of this conflict.”
The Wielder screamed furiously, commanding the lightning to strike. Bolts of electricity connected with Mortis, flinging him backwards. He quickly recovered and stood to his feet. Mortis seemed to gain strength as the battle continued. Every attack the Wielder threw at him only made him stronger.
The ground beneath the Wielder erupted. He tumbled through the air, but managed to somersault and land back on his feet. This epic battle had taken its toll on him. He felt himself growing weaker.
The rock, coming forth from the ground, took shape as a giant man. It lurched toward the Wielder. He dodged to the side as it brought down a mighty fist of granite. The ground shook with the force of the blow, nearly knocking him off his feet as he ran. The rock man stood nearly thirty feet tall and the ground rumbled when he took up his pursuit. Another gigantic arm swung toward the Wielder as he ran from the creature. It scooped him up along with a huge divot of gray earth and sent all flying through the air.
The Wielder tumbled across the ground, trying to recover as another powerful fist from the beast tried to hammer him into the ground. He caught the boulder sized fist with renewed vigor, then set his other hand flat against the stone. The Wielder used his power to send a hyper-sonic pulse through the rock man’s body. The creature shattered into pieces before him. Once again, only he and Mortis remained on the battlefield.
Mortis waited. The Wielder only had so much time. He stood there allowing his opponent to recover. Smashing the rock creature had bolstered his confidence.
Mortis shouted to the man fifty feet away from him. “Is that all the fight you have in you, Wielder?”
The Wielder gathered his fierce energies. Mortis had to be stopped. So many had died in this war. His friends lay among those dead on the vast battlefield. The Necrom Void had spread across the entire Living Land despite their best efforts to stop it. How many people lay dead in the wake of this conflict: men, women, and children? The carnage on both sides had been catastrophic. Those who had allied with Mortis from the Land were all dead as well.
A maelstrom of power surged through the air and swirled around the Wielder. He gathered every last ounce of his power, preparing to make a final assault. This is all I’ve got. I must make it count or all will be lost.
The Wielder thought about his dead friends, allies who had fought by his side. They now lay strewn across the landscape around him—all for nothing if he lost now. His anger burned and his hatred for the malevolent presence before him strove to be unleashed.
The vortex of power gathering around him swelled to the breaking point. He had to attack now or be destroyed by his own destructive energies. The Wielder focused upon Mortis. He simply stood there, laughing at the carnage. He doesn’t even have sympathy for those who fought for his cause.
The Wielder thrust his hands, indeed his entire body, toward Mortis, unleashing the power caged within his being. A multicolored surge of energy burst away from the Wielder, pushing him back with such ferocity that he carved a ten foot trench into the gray earth. The full force of the blast slammed into Mortis like the shockwave from an atom bomb.
The explosion hurled Mortis away from where he had been standing along with a six foot divot of soil. The blackened, dead trees of the Necrom Void burst into splinters. The bodies littering the landscape, as far as the eye could see, scattered like autumn leaves blown by the wind. Moreover, the very rocks of the mountains, which lay on either side of Mortis’ fortress burned and shattered. His power unleashed sounded like a hundred tornadoes all vying for supremacy.
As the fury of the moment settled, it became apparent that even more destruction had now come upon the Living Land than had been before. It stood completely devoid of any life at all now—the catastrophe complete. Nothing moved except dust and smoke.
From a trench in the earth, the Wielder climbed out from under a mound of gray soil and debris. He crawled across the ground, trying to survey the devastation. Total destruction surrounded him on all sides. The Wielder sobbed—the scene too terrible to look upon.
Though too weak to stand, he tried anyway. The Wielder found a boulder nearby and used it to climb to his feet. He felt as though the slightest breeze might drive him to his knees again. As he leaned with both hands upon the rock, the Wielder opened his eyes and took a deep breath.
There, upon the stone, was an inscription. It was just like many other cryptic messages from Iam he had seen before. He had never been quite able to understand what they meant. In truth, he had never really cared what they meant. But this one was different than the messages he had seen before. It read, “Because I have called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and you regarded not, but discounted all my counsel and my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh and your destruction comes as a whirlwind.”
The message inscribed upon the stone terrified him in a way he had never experienced before. His life flashed before his eyes and he saw only vanity. He had never accomplished anything of true purpose. He had followed his own way his entire life and now the dread of it ending fell upon him.
The Wielder looked up and saw Mortis approaching from the clouds of dust still trying to settle back to the ground. “No! It can’t be! I defeated you!”
“You fool!” Mortis bellowed. “You never had a chance. You never paid any attention to the truth around you and so you had no way to win. Now your time is over.”
“No, I’m not finished yet!” the Wielder said defiantly. He barely managed to stand.
The Wielder pushed out with his power, but there was nothing—no response on any level from the energies he had commanded for so long. He felt exhausted. Pain threatened to overtake him. Everything had gone wrong.
Mortis moved in and seized the Wielder by the throat. He hoisted him off the ground. “You are mine.”
The Wielder looked into the face of Mortis and saw the face of a fifty-five-year-old man—the hair nearly gone. The eyes were black as night and his face seemed as pale as death itself. The Wielder was looking into a ghastly reflection of his own face.
“No, this can’t be happening. It can’t end this way. I’m a good person. Please, somebody help me! God, help me!” He pleaded through the tears now staining his cheeks.
“The battle has been long, John. But you’ve lost and now you are mine forever,” Mortis crowed. These were the last words he spoke to the Wielder. Mortis reached within the man and pulled the very soul of John Harrogate away from his physical body.
He let the lifeless form fall to the earth. Then, with the essence of the man in his possession, Mortis disappeared within a flash of green and red flame. He left behind a Living Land completely devastated: devoid of
life, devoid hope, and beginning to fade from existence completely.