Chapter 298 - Army of the Undead part 10

We gave them the blood, and after they had changed, we sent them out to recruit more warriors. Eris accompanied Usus. He claimed he went to be our emissary, but it was obvious the two were powerfully attracted to one another. That was fine with me. I finally had Zenzele to myself again.

We changed the men they brought back with them. Young men, eager for adventure. We robbed them of the mortal lives they might have led, the children they might have sired, the full experience of life that had, until now, been their right by birth.

My army, at last.

But I was tormented by guilt.

I have never been a violent man. Oh, I have the capacity for violence, just like any living creature. I have killed for food, killed to defend my loved ones, but this was killing on a much grander scale, and the weight of it was crushing my soul.

None of these desert men became Eternals. They would perish eventually. Many of them would fall in the war that was coming, I knew—the war that I myself had declared upon the God King. I sought consolation in the fact that they would die fighting for their own interests, that we were fighting to preserve the world as it was, to prevent the hell it would become if Khronos was allowed to expand his kingdom unchallenged, but it was a small comfort.

I wanted to run away. I wanted to shift the weight of it onto someone else's shoulders, but I couldn't.

For the Tanti, my mortal descendants, I would carry this burden of guilt and horror. For their children, and their children's children, I would be strong. And for the living world, which I had relished when I was a mortal man. And for the noble soul of man.