The Final Battle

Richard surveyed the field of battle with his piercing raptor-like gaze, the wind ruffled his cloth-of-gold cape that made up part of his war wizard outfit. The bodies of the fallen were everywhere, men of both sides. The final battle with the Imperial Order had taken its toll, both armies had been forced to retreat and regroup. Richard was pleased to see that Kahlan’s special Galean forces were ready. Naked and painted white, waiting for the cover of darkness to strike like white shadows, white fangs of death, vengeful white spirits. Richard was impressed at how all their things were standing proud and erect, like white fangs of vengeance.

A commotion at the front lines grabbed Richard’s attention like an overly emotional gar. Whatever happened to Gratch, Richard pondered, it had been so long. He missed his massive ape like friend. How he longed to be held in one of Gratch’s bone-crunching hugs, to look into his tender glowing green eyes, to smell the rancid odor of a fresh kill smeared across his pink belly. Was Gratch out there somewhere with his gar army, waiting for the last minute to come and help him destroy the Order, or had they all succumbed to the magic draining effects of the chimes? Richard returned his piercing raptor-like gaze to the scene in front of him. A large party had detached from the ranks of the Imperial Order and was heading their way bearing a flag of truce. Even at this distance Richard could make out the form of Emperor Jagang.

Kahlan came to join him at the front when she saw what was going on. She, like her men, was painted white and completely naked. Wearing her Confessor’s face she looked just like a vengeful good spirit. A beautiful white one. As Jagang approached, Richard could see the twin nightmares that were his eyes. They were black, inky and shifting. The black cloudiness of his eyes were constantly shifting, moving, twisting, dancing, jumping, and forever twirling, twirling in an evil dance of the Dreamwalker’s twisted evil.

“It’s good to see your face once again Lord Rahl for the last time.” Jagang sneered “It’s as good as over Lord Rahl.” Jagang growled menacingly. “You have one final chance to save your people. Surrender now and I will grant them all a quick death. Refuse, and they will be slowly tortured to death.” He said with his twisted smirk.

Richard smiled. “You’re too late for that Jagang. Mord-Sith are already torturing the people to death all over the Midlands and D’Hara. No matter how experienced at torture you think your people are, they can never match the Mord-Sith. I will never let you torture people with your evil, if they are to be tortured, it will be done by those with right and morality on their side”
Jagang had a perplexed look in his nightmare eyes. “Well played, Lord Rahl. But if you think torture is all I have up my sleeve then think again. Once we destroy you all your women will be sent to my camps to be repeatedly gang-raped until they die.” Jagang’s nightmare eyes glimmered at the prospect, his bestial lust oozing from his pores, like a miasma of licentiousness.
“Wrong again Jagang!” Kahlan said with triumph ringing in her voice, a Confessor’s voice, wielding authority. “Our auxiliary forces have already spread throughout our lands, gang-raping every woman they find. We see the truth in our raping, that it is for the best cause. Life. Our women will never be prey to your dark lusts and immoral ignorant ways.”

Kahlan had never looked so beautiful to Richard. Standing proud and tall, like a vision of a good spirit. Her head held high, her breasts buoyant in the smoky air that surrounded the area. He also noticed that Jagang’s men were having a difficult time keeping their lecherous eyes off her naked flesh. Richard felt his thing rise but pushed it down with a will. Soon enough he would let his rage run free. Unfettered wrath would be let loose among those so blinded by their lack of moral clarity. Jagang was taken aback by her statement. “Your children…” he raged.

“I took care of them myself.” Richard said, taking satisfaction both in interrupting Jagang, and by the look of shock in his twin nightmare eyes. “I killed them with my bare hands. I couldn’t allow them to fall to such as you. I have right on my side and our children are all now with the good spirits. This was the only moral course of action, but that is something you could never understand, isn’t that right Jagang? You rape and torture and murder, all for what you call the higher purpose of mankind and the creator, but what you don’t understand is that life is worth living and fighting for….”
“But you just killed your own people…” Jagang raged.

“…and nothing is greater than an individual’s liberty. Your Imperial Order…”

“You’re raping all your women! How the hell is that a defense of...” Jagang screeched.

“…is a pack of mean little men, ruling through brute force…”

“You’re torturing your own people to death!!” Jagang railed.
“…and terror to keep your own people in abject squalor, destroying the life within them all.”

“Shut the fuck up Richard!!!” Jagang shouted in his menacing howl. “I know your tricks and I’m not about to stand here and listen to one of your fucking speeches designed to make us all reconsider our choices in life and finally fall to our knees weeping now that we know the truth. They are so fucking boring, I would have given up this war ages ago, but the thought of you continuing on, speaking for hours on end about your fucking philosophy just makes me sick! You think this is a war of conquest?!?!?! This is a war to make you SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! Don’t you get it? You talk too fucking much!!"

Richard smiled again. “Don’t tell me anything that you don’t want used against you Jagang. Once I know it, it is mine. I know your weakness now.” Richard’s righteous anger caused his thing to rise, his war wizard magic caused his voice to amplify, to be heard for miles, to the end of Jagang’s immense force. All ears turned toward the sound of clarity.

“You have traded freedom not even for a bowl of soup, but worse, for the spoken empty feelings of others who say that you deserve to have a full bowl of soup provided by someone else…”

“STOP IT!!!” Jagang screamed. Kahlan noticed beads of sweat running down Jagang’s face.

“…Happiness, joy, accomplishment, achievement…are not finite commodities, to be divided up. Is a child’s laughter to be divided up and allotted? No! Simply make more laughter!”

Laughter could be heard, little by little coming from the camp of the Order. A trickle at first, quickly becoming a flood. Another flood was coming from Jagang. What Kahlan first thought was sweat, was something else. Sweat that was not sweat. It began bursting from his flesh in great rivers of evil, the same color as his nightmare eyes. Jagang was melting.

“Quickly Richard,” Kahlan shouted. “Tell them how every person’s life is theirs by right.”

Jagang collapsed to the ground in a puddle of his own evil, ever shrinking. Richard kept talking and Jagang kept shrinking until he was nothing more than a disgusting puddle of evil goo. A pasty stickiness, like black vomit, the dark cloudiness of which kept swirling and shifting.

The soldiers of the Imperial Order began to come forward one by one, and then in their thousands and millions. Tears streamed freely from their eyes. They discarded the testicles they had been eating and fell to their faces. “Master Rahl guide us, master Rahl teach us, master Rahl protect us, in your light we thrive, in your mercy we are sheltered, in your wisdom we are humbled, we live only to serve, our lives are yours.”

Zedd came shuffling up beside Richard and Kahlan in his rumpled robes and hair jutting out of his head in every direction. “Bags Richard! You stopped the war with one speech, I’m proud of you my boy, its about time you figured it out. But wasn’t that the same one you gave in Faith of the Fal…I mean Altur’Rang?”
Richard looked at his grandfather. “Yes it is, it was a good one, so I saved it.”

Kahlan suddenly had a thought. “Richard, now that the war is over, what about the Mord-Sith, and the rape gangs? Surely they have to be stopped now that it isn’t necessary for their missions to be completed?”

“It’s been a long fight, and we’ve all been through a great deal lately.” Richard answered. “Let them have their fun. It’s still for a good cause as far as they all know, so that’s not a bad thing. In fact, somehow, it’s the only moral thing to do. Besides, tomorrow begins a new day.”

“Bags, Richard. You got it right.”

Richard laughed, Kahlan laughed, Zedd laughed, the naked men began patting the Imperial soldiers on the back and laughed. Both armies laughed.
- The Mad Moose