Destiny Made

“Just know, Oern, that by the time I finish this drink, I will kill you.”

Nuon finished pouring the drink, his left hand soft, and steady in the pour. A fine beer, the amber liquid ran almost transparent in the glass. He set down the bottle with his left, and clasped the beer, taking a long drink.

Oern watched the long draught, blanching as the liquid ran down Nuon’s gullet. His gaze kept flicking between the rapidly disappearing lager, and the hand crossbow in the killer’s right. The weapon never wavered, the loaded bolt pointed straight between Oern’s eyes.

Mercifully, Nuon stopped drinking, and set the glass down. Already a third of the glass was gone.

“That, Oern, is a prophecy. I have stated something, and we hold to it that the future will prove it true. We have taken free choice and will out of the equation, and stated your death, with certitude.”

“Please, Nuon,” Oern begged. “Please, please don’t do this.”

“Do?” Nuon asked. “I’m not doing anything.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Oern asked. “Sorry for what? you’ve never done anything to me.”

He took another drink. “It’s all a matter of fate.”

The dying man at Nuon’s feet started to rise. Nuon raised a boot, and crushed it against the man’s neck. He was one of Oern’s friends, Nuon believed.

“Destiny,” Nuon said. “Because everything in our world, is already written. None of us have agency. The gods play their game, and we move about the board on their whim.

“Take me, for instance,” Nuon said. “I couldn’t have known that you were in this bar. I couldn’t have known you were in this town. We haven’t seen each other in, what, fifteen years?”

“Seventeen,” Oern mumbled.

“Seventeen! And we both look thirty years older for it,” Nuon said. “Though you seem to be approaching old age by the minute, sir.”

Oern did see his life flashing before his eyes.

“I come in for a drink, and who happens to be here, but you and this…I didn’t even catch his name. Complete happenstance.

“Now, of course, when I see you, that’s it. I have to do something, you know that. I have to. It was completely in character for me to pick up a chair, and bash it over the head of noname currently under my heel. I couldn’t not pull out my knife and stab him three times. Because that’s me. That is my character.”

Nuon coughed once, and looked back at the glass. Oern dove to one side. Nuon clicked his tongue, adjusted, and pulled the trigger. The bolt twanged out, and struck Oern in the groin as he tried to roll.

The man howled, and clutched at his abdomen. The bolt had gone through him, and stuck to the floor. Oern scratched at the bolt, knowing he couldn’t move it, knowing that he would die the second it was pulled out.

Nuon took another drink, and frowned. The glass was more than halfway drunk. He walked over, and crouched next to the pinned man.

“Now, see, Oern, that’s your character. You’re a coward. You don’t like violence, never have. You run from town to town, staying just long enough to let that putrescent stench that is your essence settle in, before getting out of town. You wanted to do that today. You did it seventeen years, three months, and four days ago.”

Nuon’s finger drummed against the glass. “But here is what is strange about destiny, Oern. If it always followed our nature, we’d be fooled into thinking that our lives were our own. But destiny doesn’t work like that. It makes the nonsensical seem ordinary. The improbable, matter-of-fact.

“Destiny made me take you on as a hired hand on my lands, Oern. Even though you are absolute scum, and I was establishing myself as a noble of integrity, I thought I could change you. No…more accurately, destiny made me think I could change you. Made me take you into my home, hire you on to work my lands.”

Nuon took another drink. Oern whimpered.

“And as odious as you are, Oern, as despicable as you are, I cannot think your evil would be malicious enough without the help of destiny. It was fate that made you reach out to one of your friends that happened by, and hatch a scheme to steal from the main house. It was fate that my manservant left the main door unlocked that night.”

His hand clenched. “And it was the whims of destiny, that my daughter, woken by the hoot of an owl, had come to wake me before I sent her to the kitchen to disturb you and this slime behind me.”

Oern blinked away the tears in his eyes. “Nuon, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to,” Nuon said. “That’s what you said back then as well. You had heard a noise, and turned, and threw your knife before you could even think. You, who couldn’t have hit the ground without the earth’s help, threw a perfect knife, striking her heart, and killing her instantly.

“It was impossible. And yet, it happened.”

The glass shattered in Nuon’s hand.

He looked down at his hand. The glass shards cut deep, and blood already started to well up. He found it odd. He’d never had that much strength in his hand.

“Seventeen years of searching,” Nuon said. “I lost my lands. Lost my title. And lost you and your friend. I believed that it was the will of the world that you would have that trick upon me. That last indignity I had to endure.”

He laughed. “And yet, fate has been proven wrong, hasn’t it?”

Oern smiled, weak.

“Oh, look,” Nuon said. He pointed down at the bottom of the cup. “There’s still a few drops left.”

He snatched the bolt out of Oern’s side. The man died in instants.

Nuon tossed the shattered cup to the ground.

“Now I’m done.”

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