Adalai shifted back and forth, trying to look around the legs of the kid standing on his shoulders. “Use a sleeve to brush -” A fit of coughing interrupted him. “Use a sleeve to brush the glass off the side of the frame and grab onto that.”
A series of oddly musical sounds accompanied a shower of uncomfortable glass slivers raining down on him. Adalai flinched away from them but kept his balance. The weight of the twelve year old kid shifted back and forth, briefly pushed down extra hard then vanished. Adalai craned his neck back and reached up to push the kid until he could plant his feet on the jacket covering the jagged lip of the broken widow.
The kid was right about the jacket being slippery. His feet shot out from under him almost immediately and the main reason he didn’t take a nasty fall was because he still had that grip on the window’s edges.
“Careful,” Adalai yelled, choking on another cough. “Is the ground clear?”
After a quick, panicky look down over one shoulder he answered, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Then turn around and drop yourself down.”
“It’s kinda far, mister,” the kid said, his nerves clearly getting worse. “Can’t I wait until the firemen can come and help?”
Adalai glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom door, where smoke was already creeping around the edges in frightening quantities. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, buddy. Besides, how am I gonna get up to the widow if you’re still in it?”
“Oh, right.” Suitably admonished the kid carefully twisted himself around in the frame, took a deep breath then dropped with a loud scream. Probably unnecessary but hopefully cathartic. It ended with a hard thump then the kid called, “I’m okay! You can come out, mister!”
And that brought Adalai to the elephant in the room. If he reached up to full extension he could get a grip on the lower edge of the windowsill but he wasn’t any good in gym class so the odds he could pull himself up and out that way were pretty slim even if he hadn’t thrown his windbreaker over it. With the slick fabric there he could forget it entirely. So instead he grabbed the wooden push broom they’d used to break the window in the first place.
His first idea, to wedge the head of the broom in the corner on the window, didn’t work. The angles weren’t quite right and he couldn’t make it catch. So instead he hooked it over the sill and tried to pull himself up that way. That did work.
For about eight seconds, until the head broke off the handle and sent Adalai crashing back to the floor. He tried to catch himself but there was nothing to grab onto and he rolled backwards and crashed head first into a sink.
For a moment his vision swam.
Then Adalai found himself sitting on one side of a large, square glass table in a domed room about the size of a three car garage. Confused, he looked around. Then he froze in place, realizing there was a twelve foot tall man made of deep blue light standing there.
A panicked thought that he’d been abducted by aliens flitted through his mind.
“Not abducted.” The voice was unusually deep and echoed in the room a little more than you’d expect but otherwise didn’t seem a good fit for the creature that stood next to him. “What kind of voice were you expecting?”
Adalai shifted uncomfortably as he realized the thing had read his mind. Probably shouldn’t have surprised him. “I guess -“
A deep, rasping cough cut him off. At first he expected things to clear out right away but, after the third rib shaking explosion tore out of him, Adalai started to worry they would never stop. A hand touched his shoulder and his muscles froze up. Something in his chest shifted and a stream of damp ash trickled out of his lips. That probably only took a second or two, though it felt like an hour, and once it was done the cold vanished and he could breath again. Adalai straightened up and realized the blue presence was what had touched him. Furthermore, the silhouette had small points of light glistening deep within it, like it was a living field of stars.
“Next time make sure he’s ready to speak before bantering with him.” This was a new voice and Adalai quickly concluded that this voice belonged to the starfield, not the first one. The first had been sharp and precise. This one was strong yet unhurried, like a lazy river that concealed surprising depths. The silhouette turned is attention fully towards him. “Welcome, Adalai Carpathea.”
“Thanks,” he rasped. “Where am I?”
“The Corners of Eternity,” the first voice replied. Adalai took a harder look at his surroundings, which included very little beyond the table where he sat. The smooth dome overhead looked like it was made of marble or some other light colored stone that had four doorways in it equidistant from each other. He presumed these were the corners the voice mentioned as the dome itself was round. A figure wrapped in green light stood in front of one of the doors and Adalai had the clear impression it was the source of the first voice.
“That’s right, Adalai.” The verdant figure gestured to itself. “I am the King of Dreams. You were brought here by the King of Stars, who now stands beside you. This is the King of Scars.”
As if speaking the name caused it to appear a third silhouette snapped into existence in front of the door to his left. This one radiated a soft, brown light that reminded Adalai of an autumn afternoon. “We’re all here,” the new figure said, its voice a rich, rolling sound. “Is this the one?”
“He is,” Stars replied, drawing itself up to it’s full height. “I suppose it is time to propose the question, Adalai Carpathea. Do you wish to live?”
Up until that point the bizarreness of the situation had distracted Adalai from the fact that it was also quite terrifying. “W-what do you mean?”
The King of Stars left his side and moved to the door in front of him. “You stand on the doorstep of Eternity, Adalai,” it said. “If you wish to cross the threshold to that blessed place you may do so and we would not hold it against you.”
“In many ways your death would be a noble one,” the King of Scars added. “Not everyone would have the presence of mind save another when confronted with the end of their own life. If you live longer who knows if the rest of your life will be as worthwhile? “
Adalai rubbed nervously at his throat, remembering the acidic taste of smoke. “Sorry, I’m a little lost. I know I was in the museum bathroom and the building was on fire… does that make one of you Charon? Because this doesn’t look like the Styx.”
“That’s something I’ve been called,” the King of Dreams replied. “The River is close, and you will see it when the time is right, but first you must make your choice.”
“That doesn’t make things much clearer,” Adalai admitted. “What am I choosing?” The King of Stars raised up its hand and a constellation formed there from the light of it’s body. “We are the keepers of Eternity’s rolls. Today Eternity called out to you but you are offered a rare gift – you may choose how you answer. You may pass through these doors and into the timeless realm or you may cross the gulf between mortal realms and face the trials and cares of human life once more.”
“Eternity?” He stared at the door behind Stars. “What is that like?”
A rumbling sound shook the room and it took Adalai a moment to realize it was the King of Scars laughing. The creature’s silhouette rippled as the sound echoed. “It may sound odd,” it said when it’s amusement subsided, “but we haven’t been there. Our duties are on this side of the River. If you choose to remain in the mortal realm then your duties will be there as well.”
His eyes narrowed. “My duties? What are those?”
“The same as they were before,” Dreams replied, “only of greater significance.”
“That sounds awfully vague,” Adalai said. “If you are who you say then you’re supposed to be the Ferryman who conveys souls to the afterlife. There has to be some reason you’re not doing that with me. People don’t just come back from the dead at random, if they did everyone would be talking about it.”
The laughter of the King of Dreams sounded like a rushing wind, battering the dome overhead. “Didn’t you know one of my names when you first got here?”
Adalai’s mouth hung open for a long moment as he tried to think of a good response but, in truth, he didn’t have one. “Okay. I either cross into Eternity or I cross to a… what, another world?”
“You will cross the horizon,” Dreams replied. “The world is your own, but given to a different people with different ways.”
“But can I go back to my own world? Or, I guess can I go back across the horizon?”
“Such a thing is possible,” the King of Scars said. “It does not even require power beyond what a human being can acquire in the realm you’re going to. However it requires a great deal of time and effort, Adalai. I can’t guarantee you’d accomplish it, even if you spent your whole life.”
He could. The voice boomed out from behind him like a thunderclap. If his duties are fulfilled, he could.
Terrified, Adalai spun in his chair, trying to find the source of the voice. Before he could turn a quarter of the way the King of Stars was beside him, holding him in place. “Show some restraint, Karoushi. His mind won’t survive seeing you like that.”
Now that he knows this he will not look upon me. Is it not so, Adalai Carpathea?
He fixed his full attention on the table in front of him. “Yes.”
It is well. Now that he was a little calmer he realized the voice had a slight feminine lilt to it.You must know further things than these, Adalai Carpathea. These Kings of the Doors have only the authority to judge a man’s death. However I am Karoushi, Who Knows the End. My purpose is to uphold the path, from the first step to the last, for all who tread the mortal coils. I can see that if you uphold your purpose in the place you are sent one day my sister, Who Spans the Horizon, will return you to the place you began.
Then Adalai felt there was really only one choice to make. “In that case I want to live. Send me to whatever this place beyond the horizon is.”
He must have a Gift.
“A what?”
The King of Scars shifted as if folding its arms. “We don’t give Gifts, Karoushi, unless you consider turning people back from Eternity a gift.”
Do you not take them from those who depart? My sister, Who Brings the Harvest, takes them from you and plants them in new lives. This once you must offer them yourselves.
Some kind of communication passed between the three Kings. It wasn’t words or motions but Adalai could still sense that they were skeptical enough about this idea they were debating it. Then the three doors behind them opened.
Adalai caught a brief glimpse of a man choking on blood as he lay on a muddy battlefield, a child lost and starving in a forrest and a man crushed under the wall of a house he was building. Then the doors slammed shut.
The King of Scars held a dim bronze colored spark of light. “The Gift of Impulse,” it said. “With it you may move whatever you last held whether you are touching it or not.”
The King of Stars held a smudge of silver mist. “The Gift of Clouds. With it all mist or fog that you touch will be as a part of yourself.”
The King of Dreams held a box of bright white light. “The Gift of Arms. With it you will discover the purpose imbued into whatever you touch.”
You must choose one. However, once you do the decision is made know that you cannot go back. You must suffer through the fates of mortals until Eternity calls you once more.
For a long moment Adalai hesitated. There was something tempting about the great unknown that Eternity represented. On the other hand there was all the friends he’d left behind, to say nothing of his parents and little brother. It getting back to them meant doing something over some horizon he’d do that.
“Wait.” He pause in the process of pushing his chair away from the table. “How do I know my purpose in this new place?”
The same way you knew it when you saved that child. That is all mankind has ever needed to know their purpose.
He could see the truth in that but it couldn’t hurt to have something to help him work things out. Adalai got up, approached the King of Dreams and took the Gift from his hands.
There was a flash of light and he found himself standing just inside a massive stone gate, surrounded by a bustling crowd of people babbling in a strange language he’d never heard in his life.
That was how Adalai Carpathea first came to Citadel Fionni.
This work also appears on Substack and Royal Road under the user name HorizonTalker
Aelfred and Gwendolyn return for another glimpse into the dangerous life of a Neronan bravo.
Cool mist rolled down off the southern mountains of Isenlund into Selene Valley, covering the trees and road in shadows and secrets. The Valley ran right down the heart of the country to the Gulf of Lum but this far north it was anyone’s guess whether they were in the lands of the Isenkoenig or the territories of Nerona. By Aelfred’s reckoning the only point north of where they were that was in Neronan hands was Casa Verdemonde. But the green mountain was a safe and prosperous land. In contrast the northern Valley was wild and full of danger from man and nature.
It was hardly the first time Aelfred had passed through the Valley with his wife and hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. However he’d never once passed through without incident. So when their caravan wound down out of the mountains and stumbled on a company of men at arms Aelfred regarded them with some trepidation. The troops were led by a flag with a green mountain on a red field. Verdemonde’s colors. Which didn’t necessarily mean Verdemonde’s men.
It wouldn’t be the first time villains had hidden themselves in trustworthy heraldry. After a quick discussion with the caravan leader Aelfred went to speak with the company’s captain. Gwendolyn came along with him, both because a man and wife were less threatening than a man alone and because she would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t.
To Aelfred’s surprise the captain also had a woman beside him as he approached. Where Gwendolyn was dressed simply, in clothes tailored to hide the armor underneath, this woman was dressed in rich brocade with velvet gloves and long, layered skirts. The only practical thing she wore was her sword belt. That and the long, deadly montante buckled to it hinted that there was more to the woman than fine clothes and good manners.
“Good morning, Captain,” Aelfred said. “What brings you on the road to Lome on this fine day? Are there brigands about we should be aware of?”
The captain lightly spurred his horse and it stepped forward. “None I know of, unless you count yourself among them. We ride to Lome, and from there to Torrence on the business of the Marquis de Verdemonde.”
“How fortunate! Lome is our destination as well.” Aelfred gestured back towards the caravan behind them. “Your servants are a small band of traders from Isenlund and their escorts, seeking to trade our humble wares in Lome. Perhaps we may join with you on our shared journey. Or if you prefer we will clear the road that you may be on your way, for you will doubtless outpace our lumbering wagons.”
He felt the hair of his beard prickling as he waited for the captain to answer. Either option he had just suggested would be fine with him, since a merchant’s wagon train was safer with an armed group than without. If the troops were bandits in disguise it would be easy to tell after marching with them for a few minutes. If they chose to march on ahead then at least it was a sign they had no ill intent, since you didn’t rob wagons by walking away from them. On the other hand, bandits would ask them to stay ahead of them, in their line of sight. What a bandit leader wouldn’t typically do is lean down and whisper with the well dressed woman on foot beside him.
“What do you think?” Gwendolyn whispered, pressing close to him as well.
“There’s a carriage in the back,” he replied, “perhaps they’re taking some emissary or personage to Lome.”
“I was wondering if they were married.”
Aelfred snorted. “Then she’d be on the horse with him, not walking beside him.”
“Do you have your pass from the Southern Keep in Isenlund?” The captain called. The head merchant had given it to him before they came to parlay so Aelfred just had to hold it up, with the seal of der Isenkoenig clearly displayed on the wooden block. “Very well, let us march with you. Our business is not pressing and we will be safer together.”
The well dressed woman was already making her way back through the body of troops as the captain spoke. Aelfred watched her go, only vaguely acknowledging the captain’s words. As he and his wife returned to report their successful negotiation to their employer he wondered who she was. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter. But in a place like the Selene Valley you could never know.
“What was it this time? Woodcutters? A wagon with a broken axle? Or has Captain Enrico finally found an assassin after all this time?”
Noemi sighed as she slung her sword back on top of the carriage and strapped it down. “None of the above, Bi. It was just a group of traders down from Isenlund on their way to Lome.”
“Oh? Do you think they brought any of their griffon feather cloaks with them? It would be nice to have something to help keep warm in the winter and they say griffon feathers are just the thing for it.”
The carriage creaked as Noemi folded herself down inside it, sliding past her charge and onto the bench facing her. “Bi, you’re most likely going to be living in Torrence from now on. They don’t have winter there. It’s not just the fact that you’re out of the mountains, you’re going to be down by the Adriatic Ocean. It doesn’t get cold there.”
Bianca de la Torrence sighed and looked out the window, watching as the soldiers started forming up again. “That’s what they say, Emi. My brother will certainly want to keep me in his court even though neither one of us have ever met or even lived in Torrence before.”
Noemi straightened her skirts and arranged her heavy, booted feet so they didn’t rest on Bianca’s daintier velvet shoes. The lady was better dressed than her guardian but the loose skirt, tightly laced corset and flowing collar and sleeves also made her look ephemeral. Noemi was constantly worried a light jostling would send her floating away in the wind. “Who wouldn’t want you around, Bi? Your sunny personality endears you to everyone you meet!”
Her friend gave her a sideways look, annoyance simmering in the dark blue irises of her eyes. “Don’t you start, too. No one in Verdemonde cared about me until it turned out the last Prince of Torrence died without an heir and all the cousins, step children and bastard lines had to bicker over who would inherit. No one in Torrence will care about me unless they hope to marry their way onto the throne.”
“Bi.” Noemi took Bianca’s hands in her own. “I will always be there for you, no matter what. No one in Verdemonde wants to marry into the Marquis’ branch family that watches the vineyards, after all, much less marry a handmaid born with the Bladebearer’s Gift.”
For the first time in a long time Bianca favored her with a wan smile. “Very well. Stay with me no matter what, then.”
“Something’s wrong, Aelfred,” Erasmus said, falling into step beside the bravo and his wife.
The couple shared an amused look. The tall, wire thin man found three things out of place before breakfast every morning. It was part of what made him such an excellent guard. He’d signed on with the caravan on the trip north from Nerona, long before Aelfred and Gwendolyn did, and the merchants put a lot of weight on his hunches.
“I don’t suppose you know what it is?” Gwendolyn asked. “We can hardly go and tell Signor Gerardo that there is a wrong without an idea to right it, can we?”
“I don’t know yet.” His head hadn’t stopped swinging about on the end of his neck like a fishing bobber the whole time they spoke. His eyes were studying the line of the forest with a brooding expression. “I just wanted you to be aware. You Herakleians are the only other bravos in this troupe worth swearing by and if you’re on your toes as well we might be able to do something before we’re all dead.”
It took an effort of supreme will on Aelfred’s part not to roll his eyes. Gwendolyn babied Erasmus like a frightened child but he found the constant worrying grating. The fact that Aelfred was sharing those nerves with him this time made it worse, not better.
“Good omens!” Erasmus called, his attention now behind them on the newcomers, one hand raised in greeting. The couple beside him followed his gaze to see who he addressed.
Approaching from the Verdemond company was a man who didn’t wear green and red but rather a rich brown robes with muted orange hems and a similarly colored cloth wrapped around his head and tied in the rear. A white tabard with a pattern of red slashes on it protected his front and announced his profession. He was a Herald for the King of Scars.
“Dawn greets us,” the Herald said, replying to Erasmus.
“It does indeed.” Erasmus made some kind of hand gesture to go along with it which told Aelfred it was some kind of ritual exchange. Neronans couldn’t be sensible and just worship the sun so their religion got complicated quickly. Gwendolyn had picked up a lot of it but he only picked up enough to recognize the four Kings of Eternity and their Heralds so he wasn’t sure what the gesture meant.
“Our friend is nervous about our prospects, Omen Reader,” Aelfred called. “I have few pleasant memories of the Selene Valley myself. What say you? Have any portents made themselves known?”
“The King of Scars does not show us the future in the way the King of Dreams might,” the Herald replied, falling in next to Erasmus. Now that he was closer Aelfred could see the Herald was larger than he first appeared. He was only an inch or two shorter than Aelfred himself and just as broad through the shoulders with a strength in the chest and arm mostly hidden by his loose robes. If Aelfred’s scrutiny bothered the Herald it wasn’t enough to make him stop speaking. “We do not receive visions of the future or dreams of our impending death but rather have an understanding of who will die of what wounds and which crops will grow until harvest. Powerful portents, to be sure, but not as useful in predicting the future as some omens.”
“We still appreciate your presence on behalf of He Who Takes the Souls of the Slain,” Erasmus replied. “Let’s hope you do not see his hand stretched out for any of us today.”
A brief shadow passed over the Herald’s expression. It cleared as Gwendolyn said, “Do you Heralds have names or should we simply call you Omen Reader?”
“Ignacio Scarbearer,” he replied with a gracious smile. Like most Neronan men he turned charming whenever addressing a woman. It didn’t distract Aelfred from his name. Scarbearer wasn’t a name taken from his role as a Herald but rather a name derived from his Gift, as most Neronan names were. It explained his robust appearance and presence with the Verdemonde troops. “May I ask yours, Dame…?”
“Gwendolyn of Vernon, although my husband and I are called the Herakleians in Nerona for reasons that are strange to me.”
Ignacio glanced at Aelfred before turning his attention back to his wife. “I can see the resemblance. It’s not an entirely flattering comparison but… I could tell the story when we’re camped, if you really want to know.”
“I suppose it’s not that important,” Gwendolyn mused.
“Good omens!” One of the merchant apprentices hustled past on some errand waving to the Herald in greeting.
He raised his hand to wave in response, his mouth open to reply, when his eyes widened slightly and he stumbled before catching himself. He let his hand fall to his side, his words unspoken. Erasmus, who hadn’t once stopped scanning the horizon as they spoke to the Herald, finally turned his gaze to Ignacio and said, “Something is wrong.”
“Yes.” Ignacio met his gaze. “That man will be killed today unless something changes. So will half of our company. I came to take your measure, see if you were villains in disguise, but you don’t have the look of it. Death hangs over just as many of you.”
Aelfred drew himself up, his own gaze going to the tree line now. “Erasmus, go and tell the lead wagon to stop. If there’s danger afoot we’d better dig in and make ready for it rather than get caught running with our guard down. Propose to your captain he do the same, Omen Reader.”
“I will suggest it but I doubt he’ll agree.” His words weren’t encouraging but the Herald still turned and hurried back towards his company.
There was a banging on the carriage door and Noemi pulled the curtains aside to find Captain Enrico cantering alongside them. “Forgive me, Your Highness.” He gestured to a tall, broad man in the heraldry of Scars. “Omen Ignacio tells me he sees death pursuing us as well as the caravan we met. He proposes we circle up and prepare for an attack and I can see the wisdom in this. However I think it could be better for us to try and outpace the danger, instead. Wagons are poor fortifications and their owners will be underfoot.”
“And I am most likely the reason we will be attacked in the first place.” Bianca added, the implications of the situation not lost on her. She sucked in a deep breath then let it out slowly, a stricken look on her face.
Noemi could tell her friend was at a loss so she spoke up. “Do you know what the nature of the threat is, Omen Reader?”
“My liege’s portents do not work that way,” Ignacio replied. “I only know many here will perish in fire or of being pierced through today. Respectfully, Your Highness, there is no way to know they will perish on your account, either, but there may be something we can do to prevent it happening at all. I don’t believe running is the thing to help us or the caravan.”
“We don’t have an obligation to them,” the captain hastened to add. “On the other hand I have an obligation to see you safely to Torrence and your brother wouldn’t wish for you to die before you have the chance to meet.”
“He wouldn’t want to look weak before he takes the throne, you mean,” Bianca snapped, acid on her tongue. Her voice deepened a step and her Gift pushed at the men. “Find a source of water and circle the wagons there; you decided to travel with this group, Captain Enrico, we’re not going to abandoned them now.”
The two men bowed slightly to Bianca and split away from the carriage to carry out her Command. Noemi doubted it would have much effect on either one. Although powerful in the moment her friend’s Gift of Command rarely lasted more than a breath or two and Enrico, in particular, would be resistant to it as he had the same Gift. But he was a loyal man, as well, and would carry out the order regardless. Bianca’s mood, on the other hand, had quickly shifted from haughty and demanding to glum once again. “I shouldn’t have done that.”’
“Why not?”
“With the exception of you, Emi, no one in your family thinks of me when they say to keep me safe. They worry about offending the Prince of Torrence, whoever that is at the time.” Bianca sighed and sank back into the carriage cushions. “That only goes so far, though. I’m sure if I get an entire company of men killed over some foreign merchants even your father will run out of patience.”
“He may,” Noemi said gently, “but I won’t. The Marquis always sent me away, to learn medicine, to learn the sword, to watch the foster girl. What have you always said?”
A wan smile touched her lips. “Stay with me, Noemi.”
Looking back on it, the Verdemonde troops being bandits in disguise would have been so much simpler than the actual danger lurking in the Valley. Or rather, just above it.
Erasmus brought word that the Verdemonde were planning to find a river or lake to camp beside about ten minutes after the Herald left to talk to his captain. One of their scouts had the Gift of Leaping and started hopping up over the treeline to see what was out there. He’d made three jumps when a blast of fire came out of the sky and struck him. The scout tumbled out of the sky, screaming, but never made it all the way to the ground as the dragon swooped past overhead and snatched him up. Just like that, everything went out the window.
“Abandon the wagons!” Aelfred bellowed, reaching up and dragging one of the merchants off his seat then shoving him towards the treeline. “Get under cover, quickly!”
There were generally two reasons dragons strayed into human lands – hunger and greed. The mountains were full of goats, rocs and other animals that could easily sate the hunger of even the largest dragons which meant the dragon most likely sought gold and gems. Perhaps it caught the scent of coins from the wagons. It was the only thing that made sense, unless it had somehow concluded it could ransom a bunch of soldiers back to Marquis Verdemonde.
In spite of his order the chief merchant whipped up his wagon and started down the road. “Where are you going?” Aelfred demanded, waving frantically to him. “Get down from there!”
“All the coins and talismans are here!” He yelled back. “It will chase me first! Keep my son with you!”
Cursing under his breath Aelfred cast his eyes about until he saw the younger man, scrambling to unhitch a horse from a wagon to chase after his father. He pointed and snapped, “Gwendolyn, bring him!”
“Randolf!” She snapped, because of course she knew his name. “Come here!”
The Command latched into the boy and he took three steps away from the wagon before he could make himself stop. It was enough that Reinaldo Grip, one of the other guards, got hold of the boy and dragged him towards cover. Immediate concerns dealt with, Aelfred took stock.
The Verdemonde were breaking apart their formation so it couldn’t be wiped out with a single exhalation and they were abandoning the carriage so they could take cover under the trees. That was when Aelfred felt his heart drop. A young girl, perhaps sixteen years old, was climbing down with the help of the well dressed swordswoman from earlier. He didn’t recognize her but he knew the type. With her light and airy appearance and the utter deference from the swordswoman, captain and Herald all showed her in spite of the circumstances it was obvious this girl was important. Someone, somewhere would pay a fortune to have her back. That had to be what the dragon wanted.
A burst of light, a whoosh of flame and a short, abrupt scream came from the opposite direction, where the caravan leader had gone, and Aelfred’s attention was dragged back that way. He backpedaled towards the treeline himself, trying to work out the best defense now. Abandoning the wagons to the dragon made sense when they were the only thing that the creature might want. But if it wanted to take the girl then it wasn’t going to help them that much.
Flashes and screams flickered out of the woods. The dragon was hunting down anyone who ran, herding them back into a single location to ensure its prey would not escape.
Erasmus appeared by his elbow. “What now? It’s in the trees and if we fall back we’ll just make a larger target grouped together with the soldiers.”
“Fall back,” Gwendolyn said. “It’s not impossible to kill a dragon with a company of men and it doesn’t look like we’re going to escape it.”
“Agreed,” Aelfred said. His stomach rumbled, even though breakfast was only a few hours behind them. “On the double, it’s getting close again.”
“Clayhearts forward!” Captain Enrico ordered, spurring his horse along the rapidly forming skirmish line. Six men marched forward, shields in hand, as their bodies transformed into living earth. Noemi found herself musing that if anyone was going to survive this battle it was them. The ground did no burn, after all. “We can buy you time to escape, Highness. Lady Verdemonde knows this road and can see you safely back to the mountain. The Marquis can send you home at a later time.”
“No, captain,” Bianca replied, drawing herself up to her full five feet of height. “Dragons are meticulous. It will hunt you down and devour you all to cut us off from help and sow fear. Ultimately any noblewoman of Nerona knows they cannot escape when a dragon sets its sight on them. I must either surrender to it or make a stand. You are men of Verdemonde, not Torrence. I can’t ask you to die for me but I don’t wish to be set on a pile of treasure in some dragon’s cave and wait to see if a distant brother I have never met will ransom me. If you wish to run, please leave me your dagger.”
“Not necessary, Your Highness,” Enrico replied. “If you wish to make a stand then Verdemonde is proud to stand with you.” He glanced at Noemi. “Is it not so?”
“I cannot speak for my father or the Prince of Torrence,” she replied. “But I will always stand with you Bi, dragon or no.”
Enrico nodded and looked back to his men. “Conjurers! Begin fortifying.” Two men in lighter armor began summoning foot high stones from thin air, allowing them to fall in place and make a low wall. Noemi wasn’t sure it would do much against a dragon but it kept the men busy. The captain’s stomach growled fiercely and he scowled. “Can’t imagine what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s the dragon,” Noemi replied. “They are hunger incarnate and their power far overshadows any human Gift. As it draws near it’s nature will corrupt our own.”
“Wonderful.” He looked back to his men. “Impulse line, spread out!”
Aelfred took the time to free the horses and ensure the merchants were out of the wagons, running back and forth to check each of the five remaining wagons while Gwendolyn encouraged the stragglers on to shelter in the woods or behind Verdemonde’s lines. Erasmus and Reinaldo remained at the edge of the caravan on the lookout. They had just finished with the wagons when Aelfred saw Erasmus’ eyes widen and Gwendolyn screamed, “Run, Aelfred!”
He knew better than to look so he just took off in a dead sprint. Even with the power of his wife’s Command spurring him onward he still felt the heat of the flames that burst over the wagons licking at his heels. An invisible force grabbed him as Reinaldo’s Gift pulled him forward, off his feet and out of the blast zone. Erasmus caught him and kept him on his feet then the four of them took off at full tilt towards the Verdemonde company, the flames casting long shadows before them. A shield wall of living earth marched out to meet them, brandishing spears. A second wave of fire chased them but the transformed Clayhearts intercepted the attack without flinching, the flames washing harmlessly over their steel shields. Aelfred skidded to a stop behind them and spun, raising his ax up for a throw, hoping to at least briefly delay the monster that pursued them.
The heat of the dragon’s breath had burned off the mist but now a thick smoke took its place. It hung over the remains of their caravan like a thundercloud, a huge form looming over it. A crown of horns rested on a head shaped like a spade with a hooked beak and glaring reptilian eyes. It’s scales were the color of coal and it’s teeth shone like silver. It braced its serpentine body upright on two long legs that were as thick or thicker than its chest and its throat shone with a dull, red light. Gossamer insect wings as wide as the sky sprouted from its back lazily beating the smokey air.
Aelfred had seen many horrifying creatures in his life and even he felt his heart quail at the sight. Practice and discipline drove his arm forward and his hand to release his ax but his mind was distracted. His Gift lost it’s hold on the weapon. He could not use it to tap the weapon onto the best course or add its extra Impulse of power. So his trusty ax drifted off course and bounced of the scales of the dragon’s arm, causing no visible damage but provoking it to an enraged roar. Aelfred saw the men in front of him cringe and his own heart wavered.
Then the dragon charged.
The skirmishing line was brushed aside like paper by the heaving bulk of the wyrm’s body that coiled and writhed like a whip. From the glimpse Aelfred got of it, the creature had only two legs. The rest of its body was free to churn and strike all about and it used its serpentine coils to throw the men of earth about, their weapons flying from their hands. Aelfred scrambled, grabbing a dropped spear in each hand then immediately throwing one at the dragon.
This time he kept his Gift trained on it and guided it towards the dragon’s head. The wily serpent opened its mouth and belched a stream of fire that turned the weapon to ash. The wave of heat hit him like a slap. Then Erasmus shoved him out of the way just before the torrent of flame washed over them both. The other bravo’s body disappeared.
A titanic clap of thunder shook the ground. The dragon’s fire turned from bright red to shocking blue as a bolt of lightning ran up the fire and into the dragon’s head. It jerked upwards, shrieking in pain. The crackling electricity pulled back together into Erasmus, who perched precariously atop the dragon’s head for a moment. He scrambled to try and gain purchase on the creature’s horns. Then the dragon bent like a bow and launched itself into the sky again, sending Erasmus tumbling to the ground. Reinaldo caught him before the landing smashed all the bones in his body.
Aelfred let himself flop flat on the ground once he saw his friend was safe, at least for the moment. The shock of the dragon’s presence and the impact of the thunderclap had left him rattled and he needed a moment to rally. Perhaps more than a moment. By the time he rolled over to his front and pushed himself up things were quite different. The Verdemonde men were scattered and only a handful were still visible among the smoke and flames, huddled around the wreckage of the carriage. Hands grabbed Aelfred’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “Up with you, Aelfred,” Gwendolyn hissed from her place on his right. “It’s time to make the throw of your life. You saw that old snake’s evil little eyes, didn’t you?”
“What of it?” He gasped, swaying on his feet.
“You have a spear in hand, don’t you?” She was right, he was still holding that spear in his hand. “It’s time to throw it.”
“And don’t pull back your arm,” Erasmus added.
That was when he understood what they were planning. As he shifted the spear into his right hand and pulled it back to throw Gwendolyn backed away, saying, “Your arm is strong and your aim is true, Aelfred, and your body forged to stand against the storm!”
“Loose arrows!” Enrico had dismounted his horse and let it flee, now he worked a crossbow himself as he called commands. Alas, the arrows went wild as the wind from the dragon’s wings battered them. The situation had turned grim very quickly once the captain’s line of skirmishers were knocked aside. The conjured wall did little to stop the dragon’s breath and now a dozen men lay scattered across the road, covered in burns.
The monster swept past them, uncaring, belching fire at a trio of soldiers who fled back into the treeline. They threw bolts of fire and thunder from their hands in retaliation. The fire did little to deter the dragon but the lightning pained it and it crashed to the ground again, spewing flame and smashing trees in its fury as it sought to pry its antagonists out of the forest and devour them. “Steady!” Enrico bellowed. “Reload!”
But half the company was dead or injured at this point and Noemi could see that the survivors were beginning to loose their nerve. The creature’s very presence was horrifying and they had few soldiers with powerful Gifts left. She hefted her montante onto one shoulder and said, “Bi, this isn’t going to work. It’s time you left.”
Her ward gave her a shocked look. “I cannot, Emi. I asked them to make a stand!”
“She’s right, Highness,” Enrico replied. “We’ll hold here as long as we can but it was madness to think a mere fifty men could stand against a dragon of that size. Verdemonde swore you would reach Torrence safely. Don’t let me be a liar as well as a dead man.”
For a moment Bianca looked stricken. Then she slipped a hand through Noemi’s elbow and said, “I won’t allow either, Captain Enrico.” Her voice carried over the battlefield with supernatural clarity. “By trick of birth I am called Torrence but the place where I found my home was not that city in the west or the orchards of the Gulf. The place that called me its own was Verdemonde in the north. The green pines of the mountain sheltered me, the fruit of its vineyards sweetened my life and the red soil of its valleys is still on my shoes! Verdemonde reached out and took my hand once. I’ll not leave its people to die for me now. Show courage, men of Verdemonde! We will win this yet!”
Noemi swallowed once, watching the men rally at her words. This was the true magic of Bianca’s gift. Orders were not her forte, rather the power to stir the hearts of others to rally around her. Her father insisted the push of Bianca’s Gift was like no other Command he’d ever heard. For her part, Noemi couldn’t say if that was true. She’d never once felt any kind of unusual push from her ward. Perhaps that was because of the trust between them, perhaps she’d just been so warped by Bianca’s words over the years she couldn’t imagine life without the force of them in her mind.
Perhaps the fact that the only thing Bianca asked of her was something she was perfectly happy to do had something to do with it. Noemi wasn’t sure. Would she still have taken the hand of that five year old girl by the river if she’d known that eleven years later it would drive her to face death in the Selene Valley under the shadow of a dragon’s wings? She wasn’t sure about that either. It wasn’t exactly the time to work it out.
In the distance the dragon lifted into the air again, blood dripping from its jaws. Enrico watched it and sighed. “If that is how it’s to be, what am I to say? You honor us, Highness.”
“She does more than that,” Ignacio rasped, his voice taught with pain. Noemi spun to see him limping back from the destroyed wall draped over the arms of two soldiers. Four others limped along behind him. A moment ago they had been covered in burns and soot, now their skin looked perfectly healthy in spite of the ash that caked it. In exchange the Herald’s face was a mass of charred flesh, cracked and oozing blood and puss. Foul smelling liquids soak through his robes from wounds beneath. Only his eyes were intact, bright points of wild energy. “She’s showing you the way to victory!”
Bianca sucked in a breath. “Ignacio? How are you alive?!”
“No scar I bear can slay me, de la Torrence!” He spat the words around his pain with a ferocity that frightened even the hardened soldiers that carried him. “Bring that dragon close enough for me to touch and we’ll see if the same is true for him!”
“He’s not wrong but he is clearly mad.” The captain pointed towards the back and the carriage. “Get him to the rear, if we live we can take him to a Mender in Lome to speed his healing process. Archers, ready! The rest of you, make your stand by the princess as you see fit!”
The dragon swooped towards them again.
“Stand strong!” Bianca called. For better or worse this was what they had to do so Noemi took a half step forward in front of her friend and raised her blade over her head, feeling her Gift charge it with the familiar glow of power as she waited for the impact to come.
The arrows from the soldiers had no more effect on the dragon the second time around. It was focused on Bianca, its eyes bright with malice, as its two long, clawed legs reached down towards her greedily. It didn’t breath fire this time. Somehow Noemi could see that it didn’t want to kill its prize. The rest of them were inconsequential in its eyes.
Then a spear crashed into one eye, replacing it with a spray of green blood. The dragon roared and flailed through the air, bucking drunkenly as it writhed in pain. For a brief moment Noemi saw some bravo from the caravan guards, one hand outstretched in a picture perfect throw with another one of the guards bracing a hand on the thrower’s shoulder. Then the second guard turned to a flash of light. The lightning bolt arced through the thrower, setting his hair and beard on end, out of his fingertips, through the air and into the spear.
The dragon’s skull flashed brighter than the noon sun, jerking wildly as it rushed towards them. Noemi stepped forward to meet it and spun her sword around in an overhead flourish, the blade biting into the dragon’s flailing arm, deflecting it fully away from them in a spray of green blood. A strange scent, like cut wheat, filled the air and she was suddenly ravenously hungry.
The dragon spiraled away overhead, screeching in pain, its body pinwheeling through the air as its wings beat the sky furiously. The passage of its enormous body blasted the ground with wind and the humans beneath were blown to the ground in disarray. The dragon snatched up the carriage as it righted itself and threw it in fury. It bounced along the ground, smashing into pieces, and the largest of them careened towards Ignacio and the men who had carried him. Noemi scrambled to her feet but she could already tell that she wasn’t going to make it to them in time.
Bianca did. She threw herself over the Herald just before the wreckage slammed down on top of them. Noemi screamed in wordless panic and ran, her pulse pounding in her ears, reaching the wreckage of the carriage in the blink of an eye. One of the soldiers must have been between Bianca, the Herald and the carriage. His lifeless body lay under the wreckage on top of her and Ignacio. Immediately Noemi grabbed the splintered wood and tried to life it off them but it was too heavy.
The Hearld’s eyes focused on hers and he wheezed out, “Let me touch it. Let me touch the dragon.”
“It’s still too far away.” Noemi wedged her sword under the wreckage and tried to lever it off of them. “Can you take her wounds on you?”
Ignacio flopped one arm over, touched Bi’s forehead and his eyes turned cloudy. There was a sound like snapping bone then Bianca’s eyes snapped open and she whimpered. The Herald’s eyes focused again. “Your leg is healed. Now push, or we’ll die under here.”
Noemi put her shoulder into the pommel of her sword and leaned into it while Bianca got her elbows dug into the ground and pushed. The wreckage surged up for a moment. Then something shifted, the heavy wood slid to a few inches to the side and Noemi’s sword broke under the strain. With no resistance she staggered forward, bounced off the side of the wreckage and slammed onto the ground. With a shake of her head she found herself staring up at the dragon as it shook its head in pain, spraying blood from its wounded eye everywhere. To her shock she found herself drooling.
Smacking herself once, shoving aside the bottomless pit opening in her stomach, she reached for what was left of her sword. Instead she found a hand that grasped her own. She turned to look into Bianca’s eyes. She was smiling as she said, “It’s okay, Emi. Thank you for staying.” Then her eyes turned sad. “Noemi Verdemonde. It is time for you to leave me. Go and be safe.”
For the first time she felt the power of Bianca’s gift as it closed in over her, forcing her to her feet and walking her away from her ward. From her friend. One step, then two steps away from the girl she’d found crying by a river and decided to protect no matter what the cost. Noemi felt the touch of Command now and knew it had never been a part of their friendship. Nor would she allow it to be the end of their friendship.
Noemi felt her own Gift surge within her, the blade she bore in her heart shredding the strings that dragged her away from Bianca and surging forth with dreadful purpose. She spun back to face the dragon and raised her hands to strike once more. A blade of light surged from them and carved downwards, striking the wings from one side of the wyrm’s body, cleaving down through the wreckage of the carriage and into the dirt beneath.
The serpent crashed to the ground, sliding towards them with terrible momentum. As it landed Noemi saw that a wiry man was still clinging to the spear sticking from the dragon’s eye but the impact sent him flying airborne again, flailing. The pieces of the carriage, carved into smaller bits now, bounced and clattered as the ground shook under the dragon’s impact and Bianca quickly scrambled out from under them, dragging Ignacio with her. With a pang Noemi realized she’d cut his left arm off by accident. She grabbed him by the waist and pulled him away as the dragon slid through the wreckage, still howling in pain.
The Herald wrenched himself free from them as they tried to flee, instead staggering forward to slap his body against that of the dragon as it slid by. The result was gruesome. The dragon’s scales cracked and burst, claw marks opened along its flanks and the entire left leg of the beast came away from its body. A moment later Ignacio pushed away from the creature, once again unmarked by the wounds he had carried. Yet it didn’t seem to matter to the dragon.
The creature’s remaining limb slammed into the ground and began to push it upright once more. Noemi tried to call up the blade in her soul again but found that she could not. Then the caravan guard came dropping out of the sky, one hand reaching as his body flashed into lightning once more. The bolt leapt forward and struck the spear again, slamming the dragon’s head back down to the ground. The guard returned to a solid form landing in a heap on the ground beside the lizard.
The wyrm heaved air through its nostrils as if gathering itself for another roar. But the glow had left its throat. It’s body remained at rest. The dragon’s last breath rattled out between its jaws and it came to its final rest. For a long moment the four of them that had survived the final onslaught just sat there and stared at it. Then Noemi raised up a hand and wiped the drool from her chin.
“Gather up anyone left, Reinaldo,” Aelfred rasped, watching the dragon nervously, as if it was about to surge to life again. “Get them on the wagons and get out of here.”
“What about Erasmus?” The other bravo asked. “And we should check to see if any of the Verdemonde men survived?”
“I’ll do it,” Aelfred snapped. “You just get the rest of them out of here. Understand?”
Reinaldo nodded and left. Gwendolyn started to follow him then turned back and grabbed Aelfred’s arm, looking him square in the eye. “Do not taste the body, Aelfred. Do you understand me? Not even a taste.”
He nodded and headed towards the dragon’s corpse. The bodies of Verdemonde’s men were scattered everywhere but Aelfred didn’t have to stop and look to tell they were all dead. As he got closer a scent like freshly baked bread wafted towards him on the breeze. He rubbed at his mouth with the back of his arm. For some reason the wyrm’s body was starting to look like a huge loaf of bread. He was so, so hungry. After a long, hard battle it couldn’t hurt to stop for just a bite to eat.
But he couldn’t. He was just there to check for survivors. The horns of the dragon towered over him as he made his way around the serpent’s head. Strange sounds reached his ears. A sound like crunching stone, moisture squelching and smacking flesh.
On the other side of the head he found four people tearing into the dragon’s body, gnawing on the scales, flesh and horns of the corpse and gulping it down. The sight brought him to a sudden stop. One of them, a girl in a dress caked with blood that plastered the cloth to her body, turned and regarded him with reptilian eyes for just a moment. Then she turned back to tearing into the dragon’s throat, shoving handfuls of flesh into her mouth with reckless speed. For a moment Aelfred watched them eat, his own stomach rumbling in his ears.
Then he turned around without even a taste and trudged back to the wagons. Reinaldo met him. “Did anyone survive?”
For a moment Aelfred stared at him blankly. Then the question made it through the cloud of hunger to his brain and he answered, “No.”
Ten minutes later the caravan’s survivors were gone. An hour later so was the dragon’s corpse. Four bloated, wild eyed figures staggered out of the valley, their enemy devoured.
If you enjoyed that story and want to read more like it, or you just want to support what I do here, check out my weird western anthology Have Spell, Will Travel on Amazon:
This story originally appeared in Anvil Magazine #2, and is the first appearance of Aelfred and Gwendolyn Herakleian, two of the many Bravos of Nerona.
“Down you go,” Aelfred grunted, wrapping his hands around his wife’s waist as he hoisted her over the fence and into the canal. The hard plates of metal hidden under her clothes clanked softly as he adjusted his grip. Gwendolyn rested a hand on his forearm as she swung her feet daintily over the wooden railing and let him carry her down the slope to the bottom of the trench. Her worn leather boots skipped lightly over the muck at the bottom of Saffron Canal as he set her down. Her graceful movements were a stark contrast to the dreary surroundings of the wide channel running through Citadel Fionni. She smoothed the front of her skirt and looked up at him with a critical eye.
“Keep a sharp eye out now, Aelfred,” she said, checking the fit of his helmet and gorget then fluffing out the loose, bushy hair of his beard so it stood out prominently. “You’re fierce and strong so this will be another simple job.”
“Of course it will,” he said, brushing a loose thread of hair back under her brigitta cap. Her swirling dress and loose sleeves flattered her figure but it was the hair that always caught his attention the most, gleaming like spun fire in the late morning sun. “All our work on this wretched peninsula has been simple, straightforward and well paying.”
Gwendolyn’s pale, peach colored lips curved down in a disapproving frown. “Now husband, weren’t you the one who thought coming south would serve us better than remaining in Hessex? And we’ve done well enough in Nerona.”
“Nerona might try doing well enough by us once in a while,” Aelfred grumbled, reaching up and dragging his ax off the lip of the canal then slinging it over his shoulder. He looked out over the canal, taking in the brown water and browner dirt, his vision clear and sharp just as Commanded. In spite of his sour mood he felt his limbs surge with power and a fire stoke itself in his belly as he stomped forward along the muddy banks of the waterway. “Look at this place. Can you believe there was ever saffron growing here?”
His wife tutted at his obvious sour mood. “Fionni is the epitome of the Neronan city, my dear, optimized to cram people together as closely as possible rather than giving each of them their own patch of greenery. It’s what makes them so good at working with each other. And let’s be honest, without such places where would the wealthy merchants who pay us come from?”
Aelfred harrumphed and continued along the canal, although his footsteps grew lighter as his mood grew less dark. At least this wasn’t a sewer channel. The Saffron Canal and many other passages like it crossed the Easter Peninsula between the Gulf of Lum and the Adriatic Ocean, allowing larger ships that couldn’t safely cross the rubble strewed entrance of the Gulf a way back and forth between Nerona’s gulfside and oceanic ports. Those canals, along with the Eastpoint Beacon in the city’s Citadel proper, were a great part of why Fionni was such a wealthy and important city to begin with.
Of course when strange happenings made the locals too scared to use one of those canals something had to be done about it. Those somethings happened to be Aelfred and Gwendolyn.
“What do you think it is?” Aelfred asked, running a hand along the stone wall that held up the embankment along the canal. “Rogue Invoker? A Dwimor of the Fair Folk? Or perhaps someone truly has summoned a demon from the dark beyond?”
“Well the last is impossible,” Gwendolyn murmured, carefully keeping pace with him, positioned two steps behind him and one to his right. “All the reports say no one has died. Those from beyond are many things but peaceful creatures who fear bloodshed? Not hardly. I think the Fair Folk are by far the most likely. An Invoker is possible but a distant second. After all, what spirit of nature could they find down here to Invoke? Perhaps they could reach something out in the sea that would answer their call but otherwise these places are built to crush the soul of man and nature alike.”
He was tempted to remind her they were doing well enough in Nerona and maybe she should be kinder to the place. However he knew that she was not talking about the city broadly but rather the canal specifically, with its featureless stone embankment and dreary gray water combining to make a place even a sleepwalker would grow tired of quickly. Besides, he always lost those kinds of word games when he played them with his wife. “A fitting place for a creature calling itself a dark lord.”
“That is the one thing that confuses me,” Gwendolyn said. “The Fair Folk call their heretics and villains Cheats, they don’t associate evil with light or dark, black or white. For them there’s only fair and unfair. So why would one of them describe themselves as a dark lord?”
“That is out of the ordinary for them, true,” Aelfred said, “but remember these are stories from Neronans, not Sextons. The Fair Folk are quite rare in these parts, not like at home. They may have misremembered, misheard or exaggerated what was said since they haven’t heard stories from childhood about the importance of the Folk’s exact words.”
“So true, husband.” In the distance the first bridge after the sea lock grew near. Aelfred shifted his shoulders to keep them perfectly ready and lowered his ax off his shoulder into the ready position. All the stories agreed that the creature terrorizing the canal appeared in shadows. As the sun grew high in the sky the bridges and occasional drainage ditch were the only places where shadows existed in the canal. His wife leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Sharp eyes, Aelfred. Sharp eyes and ready hands.”
Aelfred swept his gaze back and forth across the canal repeatedly, searching for anything out of place in the tall wooden structure. The canal bridge was a marvel of Neronan construction. A dozen wooden support legs reached down into the canal, all linked to the bridge proper by a series of hinges and pulleys that allowed the bridge to be raised and lowered in halves by drawbridge mechanisms on either side. Towering a good eight feet over the water in the canal, the bridge was impressive in complexity and size.
At the moment the bridge was down, which was typical. They passed underneath it without incident and, no matter how he looked, Aelfred saw no sign of anything out of place beneath it. He was briefly tempted to try climbing out of the canal, crossing the thirty foot bridge to the opposite side and climbing back down to take a closer look under that side of things but eventually decided that would be overkill. The stories agreed the self styled dark lord accosted people on either side of the river. If it was under the bridge it should have made itself known by now.
“One bridge down,” he muttered, “one to go.”
“Plus the three drainage ditches and the place where the beacon tower casts a shadow over the canal in the afternoon.”
“Yes, and those.” Although no one had reported encountering the creature in the shadow of the beacon or by a drainage ditch. It was pretty much always under one of the canal’s two bridges.
They trudged down the waterway for another ten minutes, sweating under the noonday sun. Saffron Canal was short for one of Fionni’s waterways but it was still almost a mile and a half of muddy, uneven ground and crossing it took time. The first drainage ditch was just as unremarkable as the first bridge and they paused by it to share a drink of water from their water skin. Aelfred removed his helmet long enough to splash some of that water on his head. Then they proceeded on, Gwendolyn reminding him to be strong and vigilant.
Two minutes later they were approaching the second bridge when Aelfred caught the change, a barely perceptible shift in the brightness of the sun. It was like a thin cloud had passed overhead. He stopped immediately, motioning for his wife to do the same. She raised her voice and called out, “If there is anyone watching us, call out!”
Her voice rang with her Gift, compelling all who heard it to obey. Even for Aelfred, who knew he wasn’t being addressed and was used to hearing his wife’s Commands, there was a brief desire to comply. A true demon would have the will to easily resist. However for mortals, even those as powerful as the Fair Folk, the chances that anyone had the power to resist when they were off guard were very small. That didn’t make it impossible, and Commands could also be up for interpretation by the hearer, but an unprepared mortal resisting an unexpected Command was quite rare.
A high pitched voice with a strange raspiness to it drifted out from the bridge, asking, “What business have you with the Dark Lord Saffron?”
“We come on behalf of the Mayor of Fionni and the Commandant of the Citadel Garrison,” Aelfred replied. “They demand you leave their canal at once.”
“The Mayor and Commandant?” The voice laughed, an odd sound halfway between coughing and choking, clearly intended to convey mirth yet utterly devoid of that emotion. “Do they think this retaliation for sending my servant, the Blacklight, among them? Go back and tell them their suffering will grow a thousand times worse if they continue to displease me.”
Aelfred pivoted on his front foot foot so he could speak to his wife while keeping an eye on the bridge. “Who or what is the Blacklight?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, her voice pitched low enough that it shouldn’t carry to the speaker under the bridge. “But this is Nerona. The Folk are rare here but instead they seem to have a dozen new, strange creatures and petty local legends vying to take their place every day. It could be any one of them.”
He turned back to the bridge. “Before you can torment the august leaders of Fionni you’ll first deal with us, Saffron. Your champion, this Blacklight, is unknown to me but perhaps our reputation is not as strange to you. I am Aelfred, called Herakleian by the people of Renicie and Lome, and this is my wife, Gwendolyn. We have come here from Hessex, far to the north beyond Isenlund. Five years ago we crossed into Nerona during the Griffon Rider’s Invasion and-”
Shadows from the bridge suddenly shifted and leapt forward in defiance of the sun, changing from a dark, slanted reflection of the bridge to reaching, flailing hands that careened drunkenly along the ground towards them. All the stories agreed that was the dark lord’s primary ability. It was still hard to accept it was actually happening now that he was looking at it. Aelfred felt his wife give him a push in the back and he charged forward, brandishing his ax in both hands. Behind him, Gwendolyn called, “Jump, Aelfred, jump!”
Most people distrusted those with the Commander’s Gift, fearing they would be forced to do something they didn’t wish to. That was certainly possible, but not where the Gift truly shone. The real power in the Gift lay in their way their orders pushed those that already trusted them to carry out those orders with a skill beyond what they normally possessed. As soon as he heard Gwendolyn’s order Aelfred leapt forward and across the twenty foot canal. The shadows from the bridge wavered for a moment, at first continuing to reach for his wife then turning to cross towards Aelfred as he continued to charge forward. Still born on by the power of his wife’s command Aelfred jumped again, this time focusing on going up, clearing the fence above and landing outside the canal on the streets of Fionni.
For the brief moment he was out of the canal he saw their yelling was attracting a nervous crowd. The natives were wary of getting too close to the canal and the mysterious creature within but whatever self destructive impulse drove people to stare at danger was slowly wearing down their caution. Aelfred ignored them and dashed along the canal towards the crank to raise the bridge. When they’d originally formulated the plan Aelfred hadn’t liked the roles they took but Gwendolyn insisted she would be safe. It was her belief the creature would ignore her to stop him raising the bridge.
That hope was disappointed. As he dashed along the top of the canal Aelfred could clearly see the shadow limbs turning back towards Gwendolyn, merging together into a single lumbering shadow of a creature with bulging, misshapen limbs and no discernible head. His wife quickly began backpedaling. “Show yourself, Dark Lord Saffron,” she called. “You’ve no business lurking under bridges. Step out into the light!”
“What part of Dark Lord was unclear to you?” The disembodied voice replied. Although defiant there was a rasping edge to Saffron’s tone that suggested whoever or whatever it was strained to resist the order. “Begone, strangers. I’ve no score to settle with you.”
For a moment Aelfred considered sticking to the plan and cranking the bridge up to expose whatever it was that lurked beneath it. But the shadow thing kept lurching towards Gwendolyn and all thought of ignoring that quickly left him. Aelfred leapt back over the fence and slid down the side of the canal to the bottom. His wife was still on the opposite side of the canal and the extra push of her Command was mostly faded but Aelfred figured the struts of the bridge were close enough together he could use them to cross the canal if he had to.
Five long strides took Aelfred beneath the bridge itself and he struck his ax on the nearest strut with a loud thud. “If you missed it we’re here to settle with you, your scores don’t matter to us” he snapped. “Time you showed yourself.”
“The great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron shows himself when he chooses and not before!” The shadow figure on the ground spun and swept back toward the bridge with surprising speed. The shadows under the bridge, which hadn’t been as dark as Aelfred expected, quickly darkened back to normal and then grew even thicker.
Aelfred stepped forward to meet the strange giant, slowly swinging his ax in a looping pattern to build momentum. The toes of one boot slipped into the water of the canal as he spread out and lowered his stance. “Anything you want to see today, dear?”
“I always look forward to seeing you at your best, Aelfred, just don’t let him lay a hand on you.” Although her tone was light he could see concern in the purse of her lips. She had unlooped her sling from her belt but hadn’t loaded it yet, instead addressing the shadows under the bridge again. “Come out from under that bridge, Saffron.”
The darkness on the far side of the canal shifted for a moment and the shadow brute that was lurching back towards the structure wavered like a mirage before it steadied again. Whoever was under this bridge, Aelfred was certain he or she wasn’t actually named Saffron. A correct name made a Command much stronger, as did repeated and insistent Commands, and Gwendolyn was a pretty skilled Commander. Yet Saffron was rejecting her Commands very quickly.
Aelfred figured that meant he’d have to do things his way. As the shadow giant raised a flailing arm and swung it towards him under the bridge Aelfred drew back his arm and threw his ax, the three foot ashwood handle tumbling end over end towards the space where the body casting the shadow would be. However the weapon passed right through the space without slowing. With practiced skill he tapped the ax with his Gift, the Impulse shoving the axhead so it popped up in the air and back towards him in a lazy arc. A second Impulse directed the handle neatly back into his hand. The whole process took barely two heartbeats but it was enough time for the shadow to reach him. Bracing his ax with one hand Aelfred held it down, toward the ground, to block the creature’s attack because he assumed the shadow itself must be the threat if there was no invisible creature casting it.
Instead the shadow reached under the bridge and the world around him turned black. He couldn’t see anything, not even when he held his hand up in front of his face and waved it back and forth a few times. The air wasn’t cold, a few trial swings of his ax told him there wasn’t anything solid nearby. He just couldn’t see.
“Aelfred?” A tinge of worry in his wife’s voice. “Aelfred, are you alright?”
“I feel fine, I just can’t see anything. Can you?”
“Everything but you. I-”
“Enough!” Something like a whine worked its way into Saffron’s voice. “I am the great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron and I will not suffer you presence any longer! Get out of here before I do something lasting to you!”
“Can you see anything here besides shadow?” Aelfred asked, deciding to ignore the creature in the shadows with him.
“No, just the dark.” Gwendolyn’s voice suddenly pitched up a tad and got much louder, the tone of Command in it. “You there! Yes, you! Raise the drawbridge on your side.”
Aelfred reached out with his ax handle until it clunked against a support. Then he stuck the weapon’s handle in his belt. Although the dark hampered him he was able to clamber up one of the beams and go from timber to timber until he felt them begin to move under his hands. Then he just hung on as the bridge raised. The shadows and sunlight underneath shifted as it did and Aelfred found he was beginning to see the world around him again.
“Stop that!” Saffron yelled. The note in his voice was stronger now and Aelfred realized it wasn’t whining – it was desperation. “Stop that, I insist! I am the Dark Lord Saffron, I sent my servant the Blacklight to thwart the Commandant of the Citadel, I have claimed this place and I will not stand for you to meddle any longer. Leave me in peace! I am the great and terrible Dark Lord-”
His wife interrupted, saying, “Come out from there, Saffron!”
This time Saffron didn’t recover quickly. The drawbridge reached it’s raised position with a creaking thud and the shadows quickly dissolved into the noonday sun. Only a few dense patches remained in the furthest recesses under the bridge by the banks of the canal. Aelfred found himself hanging onto one of the struts only a few feet above the ground on Gwendolyn’s side of the waterway. He dropped himself down to the ground and dusted himself off.
“You heard the lady,” Aelfred said as he started towards the densest patch of darkness still present under that side of the bridge. “Come on out!”
For good measure he kicked at a stone with his boot, sending it skipping into the shadows and forming just enough of a connection with it that he could add a second shove with his Gift, causing it to jump up to head height suddenly as it flew into the unnatural darkness. There was a yelp of surprise, rather than pain, then silence. Gwendolyn hurried up behind him, calling out, “Come out, Saffron. We know you’re not a dark lord, let this ridiculous sham rest and stop frightening the townsfolk.”
“I am!” Saffron’s voice was getting more and more unstable, its already high pitch wavering and cracking with the effort of fighting the Command. Aelfred stopped a few feet away from the unnatural darkness and listened. His ears, still sharpened from Gwendolyn’s admonition to be vigilant, caught the sound of a footstep, very light and coming towards them, followed by a strange dragging sound. “I am the dark lord Saffron!”
The voice lacked the resolve to convince a small child. His wife took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, in a tone that broke no refusal from man or child, she barked, “I said come out from there, Saffron!”
“I won’t!” The voice wailed, even as another step told Aelfred it was doing exactly what she’d ordered. Another dragging sound and a lumpy, misshapen outline appeared in the shadows. “I am the terr-”
A hiccup interrupted the word, followed by a cough. “The terrib-
The darkened shape was about three and a half feet tall, twisted backwards, inky blackness surrounding its hands as it clutched at the shadows. Some kind of human Gift, to be sure, but not one Aelfred knew. “The terri-”
The cause of the dragging sound became clear when the figure took another step forward, its left leg bent slightly at an unnatural angle that made it difficult to use. He’d seen many similar things in the past, bones that had broken and healed poorly. With the last step forward whatever power connected the shadows to the person holding them strained to breaking and the darkness leaked out of his hands, vanishing in the light of the noonday sun. Strained beyond endurance, a boy of no more than ten dropped to the ground in a heap and began to sob. “Terrible, terrible,” he wailed, tears cutting paths through a layer of grime and filth on his face. Dark circles lurked under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow with hunger. He threw himself facedown on the ground, sobbing as he babbled. “Terrible, I’m so sorry, please, I’m terrible, so sorry…”
He threw his hands over his head as he cried in a pose anyone who’d seen a beaten dog or tortured child could understand. Gwendolyn rushed past her husband and swooped down to try and cradle the child in her lap. Aelfred’s stomach tied itself into knots watching the way the boy cringed away from her touch, unable to comprehend something as simple as a comforting embrace.
For a moment he let his mind flee from the scene before him, wondering how the boy found enough to eat down there. Perhaps he was catching fish out of the canal. Whatever the Blacklight he mentioned was, if it even existed, the child clearly had no connection to it. There were only a few rags propped on a stick under the bridge to shelter the boy. Why hadn’t he gone to the Heralds of the Kings? They had an orphanage in Fionni. What in the name of Eternity was wrong with the people of Nerona that they hadn’t seen fit to help a boy so badly abused he played at evil to find peace?
Aelfred sat down beside his wife with a grunt. As loath as he was to admit it, that last bit was as true in Hessex as anywhere else. He sighed and shook his head. “Stars and scars, what are we supposed to do now?”
“Please…” the boy coughed again and peeked at Aelfred around his wife’s side. “Just leave me here. Or drag me off to the debtors jail if the Mayor and Commandant want money for the trouble I’ve caused. Just… don’t give me back to my brother.”
“Your brother?” Confusion vanished and cold certainty took its place. “No, we won’t do that. But, just to be certain we don’t make a mistake, tell me his name…”
Nevio staggered through the front door of his house, leaning on the wall as he finished the bottle and threw it in the general direction of the stove. The clay vessel hit the bricks and shattered but he ignored it. “Zalt, Nico, leaving me a dark house to come home to.”
He pushed off the wall, swaying to keep his balance, then turned to the door to close it behind him. As he reached out the door slammed closed in his face. Stunned, Nevio flopped back on his rear end. After a moment to gather his wits he lurched upwards, leaned against the door and pulled himself up to his feet. Then he shoved the door open and staggered out into the street. No one was there. It wasn’t very windy, either.
Maybe a dog or something was out there, running through the streets, and hit the door. Nodding to himself, Nevio pulled himself back into the house and slammed the door again leaving himself in the dark house. He pulled his cloak off, wadded it up and threw it on the stool by the door then headed towards the stove to find his oil lamp. He was fairly sure he’d left it there.
The house was cluttered and messy, slowly falling apart since their mother had died. For a time Nevio’s brother had tried to keep house but the incompetent fool failed at every turn. Nevio suspected he’d kept going down to the canals to play and fallen in one day, just one more member of his zalted family to die and leave him alone. So Nevio would just have to make do. He reached the stove and started groping around, the shadows of the room swimming past his eyes, when a deep, feminine voice said, “Nevio. Take a seat.”
For some reason he took three long steps across the room to a table he could barely see in the dark, pulled a chair out from it and sat down there. The chair on the other side was pulled far back into the corner by the window. Someone was sitting in it but she was positioned so that the moonlight spilling in the shutters beside her blinded him and made it impossible to see more than the outline of her figure and her hard, baleful green eyes. Nevio felt acid welling up in his throat and swallowed, hard. “Who are you?”
“I?” She laughed, a sound as sharp and beautiful as shards of glass in the air. “No one of importance. I come here on behalf of the Dark Lord Saffron, Nevio. Do you know why?”
“No. Who-” The door opened behind him and Nevio started to turn.
“Look at me, Nevio.” Like an iron hook the words took him by the ears and turned him back around to stare at the woman in the corner. A glint of red swept past her eyes, like a hint of demon’s fire. “You’ve wronged Saffron and we’re here to even the score. Roll up your pant leg, Nevio.”
“My what?” Even as he asked he was doing exactly as instructed, his fingers fumbling but still carrying out the task. Once he finished rough hands grabbed him under the arms, dragged him to his feet and threw him face down on the table.
The woman got up out of the chair and stepped forward, the moonlight behind her ringing her figure in an unearthly halo. She leaned down until her face, hidden behind a black veil, was only inches away. Wisps of red hair burned around her eyes like fire. “You sent Saffron a child maimed in body and mind and expected him to accept that? Shame, Nevio, shame.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Nevio babbled, feeling shame well up in him in bitter waves. “I didn’t know. Nico was always a stupid child but-”
“Silence,” she hissed. “We’re not here for your excuses. Taking full repayment for all you’ve done would take far too long so we’ll just take a tithe of it for the moment. You’d best behave yourself after, Nevio, or we’ll come and collect the rest. Now hold still.”
The woman rose to her full height, her green eyes staring down at him without remorse or pity. He heard whoever or whatever was behind him shifting. There was a grunt and a wet crack then his leg exploded in pain.
Aelfred and Gwendolyn left him screaming in his house, their vengeance done. All they could do now was make sure Nico never needed the Dark Lord Saffron again.
If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more fiction from me, or if you just want to support me in my writing, check out my weird western anthology Have Spell, Will Travel on Amazon:
This is a story that has lived on my hard drive for almost two years. It’s not terribly deep but it was very fun to write and explores some ideas I’ve wanted to play with for a long time. I’m not sure we’re coming back to Jack and Penny any time soon but I hope you enjoy this brief adventure anyways.
The wind whistled by at a high, sour F-sharp its breathy, mocking tone accompanied by the revving percussion of his motorcycle engine. It was all Jack heard as he fell. Chunks of the Syracuse 105 tumbled into the abyss all about him, eerily silent for such heavy things. One minute he’d been driving along, trying to get to his gig at The Wreck on time, the next he was free falling. Jack had always expected he’d die of something fun, like booze or women. It was the way of all great musicians.
On the other hand, falling to his death after a bridge collapsed under him at least had the appeal of novelty. It would’ve been nice to get a little famous before leaving stage. Sample some of that booze, dance with a few of those women, write some swingers about it all. Swing was his genre, after all, not jazz. The high and mighty of Ithaca far preferred jazz, though, and Jack Antixerxes had always prided himself on picking out a tune and running with it.
The shush of falling water filled his ears. For the first time since his bike had tumbled off the end of the collapsing causeway Jack pried his eyes open. It was taking a long time to hit the ocean’s surface and now he could see why. An enormous sinkhole had opened in the bay and the surf, the bridge and all the vehicles once on that bridge were tumbling further down into the belly of the earth. Jack and his bike were already past the usual bottom of Syracuse Bay with no visible endpoint to their drop.
Stranger still, a glance behind told him the hole he’d just tumbled through was getting smaller, not larger in spite of the water rushing in. A dim memory of the news reporting collapsing shorelines and freak mudslides a few times in the last couple of months surfaced in Jack’s mind. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time. Who was playing in what bars or dance halls was far more interesting. Now he wished he’d payed more attention, perhaps there had been some clue to surviving his predicament there. Or not. It was really too late to know for sure.
When Jack realized he could finally see the ground rising up below it banished that train of thought from his mind. He’d always hoped the boys from the band would play his funeral. Turned out his last song was the roar of a motorcycle, the rush of water and the taunting whistle of the wind. Not what he’d hoped for but not terrible, either. Better than some tunes he’d heard.
Still, it was one song he wasn’t ready to vibe with just yet. He’d tucked his knees in a last ditch effort to roll with the impact, fighting the confines of a suit jacket that didn’t have much room to give, when a rumbling arpeggio rose up out of the dark below. Two beats later a sharp, high countermelody answered it. The air around the falling derbies thrummed with power and dissonance then Jack felt his momentum slow. His bike shot past, narrowly missing his skull, then it slowed too and for a brief, stomach turning moment everything hung in the air as if weightless. The ground was only four or five feet below. The motorcycle was practically standing upright on its front tire and, with no clear idea of what in Hades name was going on, Jack decided the best thing to do was unhook the bungee cords holding his case down and pull it off the back of his bike.
He’d just got his arms around it when everything remembered it was supposed to be falling. Jack landed with a heavy thud and rolled to one side to avoid his bike toppling over on top of him. The roll turned into a frantic sprint as he tried to outrun the waves of water, rubble and metal still falling. He saw one sedan crushed between blocks of cement and the cave floor. A double semi truck was its own undoing, crushing the driver’s cab under the weight of whatever cargo it had been hauling. At least one other car landed upside down.
Jack almost didn’t make it himself. Between the ankle deep water already on the ground and the sheets of extra liquid that were still falling it was hard enough to keep his feet. Add in the concrete, cars and rocks and it was a miracle he wasn’t killed outright. He might not have made it if the high harmonies he’d heard a moment ago hadn’t reasserted themselves. Once again his stomach flip-flopped and once again gravity turned strange. His feet nearly pulled clear off the ground as he ran but the rapid descent of the deadly rain turned to a lazy drizzle and Jack managed to get clear of the worst of it before stumbling and loosing all grip on the rock below.
The new melody cut out and he fell flat for the second time in the last minute. At least this time he managed to protect his case with his body. As things stood he worried the previous fall was going to leave a permanent dent in his instrument.
It was a small price to pay. After all, he was alive.
Jack pulled himself up into something like a sitting position and stared out at a football field’s worth of rubble and smashed cars. Far above, the last rays of afternoon light from Syracuse Bay vanished. Suddenly the only light in the cavern came from small burning oil slicks released by wrecked cars, glinting on stray bits of metal and ocean water.
Or was it? Jack dragged himself to his feet, staring into the dark just beyond the debris. It looked like something out there was flickering like a giant bonfire. He whispered, “Charon? That you?”
A hand grabbed his elbow in a vice-like grip. Jack jumped with an inarticulate yell. The hand didn’t let go but instead pulled him down into a crouch then another hand slapped over his mouth, cutting him off. Which was just as well, D-Major wasn’t really his key. Not for singing, anyway.
“Shhh.” As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the dimmer light he made out the shape of a woman who was holding a finger up and making the world’s universally acknowledged ‘be quiet’ gesture. So it wasn’t Charon, at least. When he nodded she moved her hand off his mouth and softly said, “Hesiod.”
“Jack.” She’d let go of his elbow to shush him so he patted his chest to make it clear he meant himself. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head in frustration and pointed out over the wreckage to a faint light approaching them. Jack’s eyes, still adjusting from the bright Syracuse sun, struggled to work out what it was. After a moment he decided it was a torch held overhead of a large, muscular looking man who was picking over the debris. Jack had a moment of vertigo as he tried to work out why that was off. Then he realized the man was in the process of flipping a big SUV up off its side.
The vehicle was about as long as one of the creature’s arms. That made it at least twenty five feet tall. Someone inside was screaming but that stopped once the giant ripped a door off and dragged the man out by the arm. Then it shifted its grip and bashed the man’s skull against the ground and the screaming cut off. Jack felt bile rise in his throat. When the creature raised the corpse up to its mouth and tore a limb off in its teeth Jack retched and ejected the early dinner he’d eaten before leaving his apartment.
“Hesiod mustn’t catch us,” the woman hissed, grabbing his arm again and pulling him away from the puddle of vomit while maintaining a low crouch. “Shhh.”
A last look over his shoulder as she dragged him away confirmed that Hesiod was still searching the wreckage of the cave-in even as he ate. In the flickering light of its massive torch Jack couldn’t be sure but he thought it had just one eye in the middle of its forehead. The grinding sound of its chewing seemed to fill the entire cavern. For once, not even Jack could pick out a tune from the noise. Then the creature let out a bellowing cry, something in a language that sounded vaguely like Athenian but so poorly spoken as to be gibberish.
“He sees us,” the girl snapped. “Just run.”
She suited actions to words and stood up, taking off in a dead sprint, and Jack did his best to keep up. He struggled for a moment until he realized he had to follow directly behind her. Somehow the rough terrain of the cavern didn’t hamper her footing and if he did his best to match her steps he found the path fairly smooth. The voice of the giant rose behind them in an eerie cadence. Now that he could place it Jack knew this creature was the source of the deep, rumbling song he’d heard when falling. The melody was much more monotonous than previous, less a climbing arpeggio and more a simple chord sung in a five note rotation. A low rumble created a percussive backing.
The strange woman slowed her pace a bit and took up another tune, breathier than the high pitched tunes from before but still recognizable as the same voice. The tempo of the rumble slowed, then stopped. She was clearly struggling to keep moving while singing but somehow she managed both. However a few seconds later they were forced to stop when they reached the wall of the cavern. A small opening in the wall, just large enough for Jack to push his head and one arm through, trembled in time with the conflicting songs. One moment it was closing itself off, the next opening wider. A dim light on the other side of the opening showed a tall but narrow tunnel winding off into the earth. Jack frowned. Clearly this was their escape route. Just as clearly the music was manipulating it somehow, just like the earlier song had obviously opened and closed the roof of the cavern earlier.
He had no idea how or why this was happening but Jack could vibe with it. The girl was frantically pushing at the sides of the hole, as if she could tilt the scales in her favor through sheer strength. Jack flipped his case open, took out his mouthpiece and attached it to his trombone. The key was G-Minor and the tempo was three/four time. Not ideal for swing but manageable.
Blow out the spit valve, work the slide, take a deep breath and away he went. First he just matched the girl’s song but dropped an octave. She dropped a bar in shock when the bone’s bright, brassy tone blared out and Jack realized he was playing full blast. Probably nerves. He adjusted down to half strength and added the swing, working the slide a little looser and bobbing the bell of the horn back and forth with the beat. Two bars later the opening in the cavern wall started opening again. As soon as it was wide enough the girl wormed her way through.
It took another fifteen seconds for the tunnel to open enough for Jack to get through with his trombone and, since he still wasn’t sure how this all worked, he wasn’t willing to stop playing it long enough to make his escape. It was a near thing, though. By the time Jack made it through the giant was close enough to clearly see its single glaring eye, matted red hair and wild beard in the flickering light of the torch it held overhead. Jack was expecting Hesiod to be an ugly brute but, except for his receding hairline, he was actually kind of handsome. He wore a ragged tunic made of a patchwork of fabric and a suit of scale armor that looked like it was assembled from scrap metal and car doors.
There was an army of other cyclopes marching along behind him. They were about as tall as Hesiod’s knees, larger than most people but still far smaller than the titanic creature they followed. Hesiod’s eye shifted slightly and Jack instinctively knew he’d been spotted. The giant made a gesture and the army with him burst into full chorus. The opening in the wall started to grind closed again and Jack quickly ducked further back, his shoulders scraping against the stone as it closed in.
The girl grabbed one elbow and pulled him deeper and deeper. She’d stopped singing and as soon as he was clear of the closing stone she pushed the bone’s mouthpiece away from his lips. With their music stopped and Hesiod’s blaring the tunnel mouth collapsed immediately. It didn’t stop there, either. Jack found himself once again running for his life, charging down a dimly lit corridor, trying to match the movements of the strange woman. Behind him the tunnel clamped down like a monstrous throat trying to force him into the belly of Gaia itself.
Jack wasn’t sure how long they ran but eventually the sound of grinding stone behind them stopped. All he could hear was the pounding of footsteps on stone and blood in his ears so he slowed to a stop, gasping for air. “Sorry, beautiful,” he wheezed. “I gotta rest for a few or that big guy will just eat me after my heart bursts.”
The woman didn’t really look like she was in any better shape. As soon as Jack spoke she also stopped and staggered back to him, chest heaving. It was quite distracting. “How…” She gulped down another lungful of air. “How did you know the song of the stone? I didn’t think any of the ancient songs were still known on the surface.”
“It wasn’t hard, the tune was pretty simple.” As his breathing stabilized Jack turned his attention to his bone, trying to figure out the best way to transport it. He’d left the carry strap in his case, which was still back in the big cavern, but the clip for it was still on his instrument. Jack grabbed the knot of his tie and pulled it off. “So simple I can’t believe that was all it took to move stone like magic. If we could do that in Syracuse someone would have figured it out by now.”
The girl pointed to a glowing seam in the rock of the tunnel wall that poured out dim, orangish light. “The Waymaker’s Veins no longer run all the way to the surface, the turn of the earth has cut them off. Without the power they bring the songs lack force.”
“Great.” His tie wasn’t long enough to create a comfortable sling for his trombone on its own but it supported enough of the weight he could hold it in one hand indefinitely. “So, I’m Jack.”
“You said that.”
“I was asking your name.”
“Penelope.” For the first time since he’d met her Jack had enough time to take a solid look at the woman. She wore a long, ragged piece of cloth wrapped around her waist in a loose skirt, tied down with a length of nylon rope. She’d tied pieces of tire rubber to her feet with more rags. The only thing she wore that looked like it was originally meant to be clothing was an oversized jacket with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Underneath it she’d wound more lengths of cloth around and across, using them to hold up a chest that probably would have required custom made support even if she lived on the surface. She was about six inches shorter than he was. In the orange light of the tunnel, her waist length hair looked like it was light brown. She wore it in a loose pony tail tied at the nape of her neck.
The strangest part of her appearance was the skin hugging gray glove that seemed to fit her right arm like a second skin. A strip of similar material covered her eyes. The gray was so neutral he’d mistaken it for shadows in the poor lighting of the cavern and it was still hard to pick out in the somewhat brighter light created by the veins.
Jack frowned. “Where are you from, Penny?”
“The surface, originally. When I was six I was brought down here in much the same way you were but most of the others on my bus were killed an eaten by Aresians like Hesiod.” She said it in a flat monotone that rushed by faster than they’d run from the cyclopes. “A couple of us were found by the T’ul first and they led us away to T’ultown but I’m the only one that was healthy enough to survive.”
Penny turned and started off down the tunnel again, her posture close and guarded but her pace fitted to their circumstances. With nowhere else to go, Jack tagged along, trying to pick which absurd thing she’d said to ask about first. Finally, he decided on, “Aresians? Like, creatures from Ares? The planet Ares?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if they teach it in kindergarten but Ithaca has landed automatons on Ares and there’s no life there.”
“Not anymore.”
“Sure. Okay, so there’s a bunch of Aresian cyclopes living under Syracuse.” Honestly, Jack wasn’t okay with that but he’d seen them himself so he’d have to go with the flow. “Why do they eat humans? We’re native to the third planet, not the fourth.”
“Because that’s what makes it possible for them to grow so large. Also, they hate us.”
More things he didn’t like to contemplate. He was debating whether to ask about T’uls or the nutritional value of the average person when Penelope abruptly dropped to a crouch and slipped out of the tunnel they’d been in so far. It opened out into another dim cavern, the extent of which was difficult to judge. Like the tunnel, it was lit by a pale, diffuse orange light from Waymaker’s Veins although, unlike in the cavern, the veins Jack could see were wide enough they could be sidewalks. He started to step out beside Penelope but she pulled him down into a crouch as well. “We need to cross open ground now. This is the riskiest part of the trip so try to stay low.”
“More Aresians?”
“And other things.” Satisfied with what she saw she motioned for Jack to follow her out into the new cavern. He was not prepared for what was out there. It was less a cavern and more a chasm, sloping down from the opening into the Stygian abyss far below. More surprising, the slope of the chasm they stood on was carved into terraces, each the depth of a football field, and each terrace was packed with buildings.
In the orange twilight of the veins it was hard to pick out anything particular. The city sprawled over the side of the chasm like a primordial serpent, the tops of the buildings half lit like scales. Wind quietly moaned through the abyss, a mournful, high E.
“Don’t listen to that,” Penelope said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not healthy.” That was all the explanation she offered before scrambling down the slope towards the first terrace.
Jack scuttled after, trying to keep his footing while juggling his instrument. Either marching band was further back than he’d thought or hustling through back halls and side stairs in old stadiums hadn’t actually prepared him to take a bone anywhere on Gaia like he’d once thought. “Pretty big place,” Jack mused. “Your T’ul must’ve been down her a long time.”
“Ever since the Waymakers finished their song,” Penelope replied. “This isn’t T’ultown, though. That’s deeper still, past the terraces, near the base of the chasm. No one lives here anymore.”
Jack stared at the massive city in dubious fashion. “Long way down.”
“I have a base camp I set up here after I picked up on Hesiod’s trail. It’s not far down the terrace in that direction.” She pointed off to the right to a part of the city that, if he squinted, looked like it was a little brighter than the rest. Or maybe that was his imagination.
Penelope set off along the rim of the chasm, picking her way across the rough terrain with her usual nimbleness. Once again, Jack did his best to keep up. “Couldn’t we use the streets? I can’t see in the dark as well as you can and we’d probably make better time on flat ground.”
“Maybe. But we’re better off not getting too close to the Central Gate.”
“Which is what? The way in and out of the city? Who built this place if not your T’ul, anyway?”
“Hard to say. The T’ul don’t know and they don’t like to come here on their own. The foundations could have been laid down by humans before the Waymakers came. Or the city could’ve been built by the Aresians, the Vish or any of the other peoples of the worlds that ring the sun.”
“Wait, there’s more than just Aresians on Earth? Since when?”
“Since as long as anyone down here remembers. Don’t listen.” She stepped into a flattened channel that led deeper into the city. Jack wasn’t sure what she meant until he followed her into the channel and the distant moaning that made up the chasm’s white noise rose to a powerful tone that seemed to fill the world.
Penelope hurried across the channel but Jack paused. Somewhere, deep in his gut, a new thought took root. There was a tune there and he had to play it. Then Penelope grabbed him and dragged him off the path. The urge passed. “What was that?”
“The Gate. It still remembers the last song of the Waymakers. That’s why I avoid it. So do most sane peoples down here, assuming they wish to stay sane.” She started forward again.
Jack stared back at the channel for a long moment. The sound was still drifting up from the city but the power it had a moment ago was gone. The feeling that a tune was there, however…
He hustled to catch up to his guide. “Listen, I know you’re the one who knows her way around down here and I don’t want to get eaten but do you think you could just explain all this to me from the beginning?”
Penelope sighed. “Fine. It would be easier back at camp but the short version goes like this. Sometime before history begins there were Gates between the rings of the sun. Humans, Aresians, Vish and others used these gates to travel from one ring to the next – planets, as we call them now. At first the gates could only be used when the planets were aligned. Then someone figured out how to power the gates so they could be used regardless of where a planet was.”
“Who was that?”
“Everyone says it was someone else. The Vish blame the Aresians, Aresians blame the Jad and so on. The one thing they all agree on is that humans didn’t change the Gates.”
“Why are they sure of that?”
“Because Earth is still a habitable world and humans were originally the weakest children of the Sun.” Penelope pointed towards the chasm. “To power the Gates when the rings were out of step it was necessary to harvest immense power from the heart of a world. But doing that cooled that ring and it slowly became uninhabitable. No one noticed for a time but, once it became clear the other worlds were dying, the peoples of those worlds made plans for survival. Or should I say, they all made the same plan.”
Jack nodded. “They came to Earth because we hadn’t changed our Gate to travel whenever we wanted. So our planet was still habitable. So a bunch of people came here from other planets and tried to take over? It must have been a bloodbath.”
“You’re half right. This one is safe.” Penelope stepped down into another channel then turned to follow it. For a brief second Jack hesitated, the memory of the last time still painfully fresh. However Penelope looked fine and he’d already lived through at least two things that should kill him that day. What could a third hurt?
He stepped into the channel and found that nothing changed. Except the light got a little brighter. One of the wide, orange veins rose up out of the ground in front of them and ran down the center of the channel until it turned into a road. “Nice place.”
“It may have been, when people lived here.” Penelope led him into the heart of the city. “There was a terrible war when the other children of the Sun came here and humanity was losing, badly. Things changed when the Waymakers opened the Gate.”
“More people? Where’d they come from, another solar system?”
“In a sense.” Penelope started rubbing at her left wrist absently, the strange fabric of her glove shining dully in the dim light. “The Waymakers came from Earth, but not the Earth we know. There are worlds in this same place but locked away on the other side of the horizon. Their rules are different but the world is the same. Do you understand?”
“You mean like a parallel reality? Alternate timeline? Something like that?”
“Something like it. The Waymakers sought to unify all of the Earths so that a man might walk the extent of it from the dawn of creation until the end of Eternity. Or so the T’ul say. There has never been a human civilization like them before and there never will be again. They took the Gates and powered them with the might of their will then traveled to all the rings of the Sun. They plundered the other planets to replenish all that Earth had lost and they smote the other children of the Sun until the Waymakers alone were undisputed masters of the rings.” A wan smile played across her lips. “The humans of our Earth believed they had been saved. Maybe they were. But the Waymakers had one inescapable flaw.”
“They flew too close to the sun,” Jack mused.
Penelope looked shocked. Even with her eyes covered by that strange band, which Jack guessed had something to do with her supernaturally good senses, it was still possible to read that expression. “They still tell the story up above?”
“I don’t know if Icarus was inspired by your Waymakers or not although his father certainly had a gift for building things.” Jack shrugged. “Either way, it’s a mistake that lots of people still make. I take it the Waymakers’ project of unifying Earths exposed them to something that brought them low?”
Penelope nodded glumly. “Eventually, although it took ages. The T’ul never told me what it was but eventually their hubris undermined them, their civilization crumbled and their Gates began to sing their last song. It took a century for it to finish but when it did the Gates changed. They’re not doorways to other Earths, or even the other rings anymore. Now, they sing the Waymaker’s last song and all who hear it join in until the Gates drag them away.”
It was a solemn image, made all the more distressing by the constant drone of the Gate in the distance. At some time in the forgotten past humanity had ruled the solar system and brought the people of all nine planets to heel. Now all that power was gone but the hatred that feat had engendered remained. Penelope’s story sounded strange, although no more strange than anything else he’d seen that day. That didn’t mean he bought it. Like any other Ithacan of his generation, Jack had come of age along with the Internet. He knew anyone could tell a story. If enough people believed it that tale would never be forgotten. None of that made it true.
Although the glowing lines of magic power that you could access with music did make it seem like anything was possible.
“So the Aresians use the Wayfinder’s Veins to catch people and eat them so they grow larger, right? They open up a hole and pull people like you and me in. How long have they been doing that?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to keep track of time down here. I’m not even sure how old I am, although the T’ul tell me I’m physiologically an adult.”
He shot her a sideways look. “They taught you some pretty big words, too, unless you went to a kindergarten for the ludicrously gifted. How do they know so much about us?”
“When they decide to trust you, they can explain it to you.”
Jack opened his mouth to complain but a distant, basso profundo voice singing a rhythmic chant drifted over the terrace. His stomach did a flip-flop. It sounded like it was on the side opposite the Gate. “Is that Hesiod?”
“There must have been a speed line I didn’t know about,” Penelope hissed.
“I thought this was your home turf!”
“I’ve only been on this terrace for about a month, there’s a lot I don’t know about it!” She pulled him onto the wide, orange line and pointed to his trombone. “Can you pick up any song on that thing?”
“Anything the human voice can sing.” He moved his horn to the ready position and worked the slide a bit to limber up. “Give me a few bars and I’ll fill in the rest.”
Penelope replied by piping out a series of staccato notes with very little variance to them, a marching anthem turned up to eleven. A pulse of light rose up from the Wayfinder’s Vein and an invisible hand pushed them forward. The tune wasn’t bad but, like anything, Jack felt it could benefit from punching it up with a little swing. He blasted the notes from his bone then added that swing and their speed doubled.
This little tune had unexpected twists to it, though. Turning from one vein to another required changes to the progression of notes and the first time Penelope sang it Jack didn’t see it coming. The resulting twist in their momentum flung him off the vein and he probably would have broken something if Penelope hadn’t grabbed him with her right arm and dragged him back. For a moment he thought he saw muscles like steel cords rippling under that gray glove. The next time they turned, Penelope sang the altered series of notes twice so he heard them coming ahead of time.
At first the thrill of traveling by music banished all other thoughts from Jack’s mind. Every swingin’ musician said they could feel the music move them but at that moment Jack knew none of them had ever felt it like this. But as the initial rush faded he realized Hesiod’s cover of their song wasn’t getting further away. It was getting closer. Louder. Coming from more directions.
They were getting surrounded. Penelope was turning down one vein then another, taking them up and down the terrace. At one point they headed along a vein that eventually sloped down to the next terrace below. However there was a mob of normal sized cyclopes down there, waving torches in time to their marching tune as they shot along a parallel vein.
Penelope quickly turned them back up and towards the tunnel they’d emerged from. The sound of Hesiod’s song echoed off the stone buildings around them, getting closer all the time, but another sound was starting to overpower it. A long, moaning high E.
Penelope abruptly stopped singing. It took a second for Jack to notice and follow suit, a moment more for their momentum to fade and bring them to a stop at a major crossroad where four of the great Waymaker’s Veins met in an intersection. In three directions groups of Aresians approached at the speed of song. The group opposite the empty path was led by the towering bulk of Hesiod the giant, waving a torch the size of a small tree in the air, the torchlight glinting of dozens of sinister eyes clustered around him. He boomed out a word in his garbled Athenian and the songs of the cyclopes faded as well.
For a moment only the Gate could be heard. Then Hesiod boomed out more gibberish that had the sound of a taunting question. “What’d he say?”
“He asked if we’d like to be devoured by him or the Gate.”
Jack licked his lips, trying to think of something witty to say. He came up blank. “You have a preference?”
“I’ve been avoiding Aresians since I came down here, I’m not about to give them what they want now.”
“Gate it is.” He wet his lips one last time then put them to the mouthpiece once more. Penelope piped out the downbeat and he joined in to send them sweeping away from the giant and into the embrace of the Gate’s song. It was hard to keep track of things after that.
The high E overwhelmed every attempt he made at independent thought. As hard as it was to believe, Jack felt like the Gate was truly mourning. He had visions of crowds of humanity teeming down the streets of the terraced chasm to the Gate, pouring through it at all hours of the day. There had been purpose and possibility to their travels and, in turn, purpose and possibility for the Gate. It had looked over endless vistas in those days. Now it saw nothing but darkness. No one saw purpose in it and so its potential faded away. All it could do was sing the last song it knew and wait.
Jack and Penelope found themselves standing in front of a massive oval, partly buried in the ground yet still taller than Hesiod standing upright. The opening was… nothing. The other side did not show through it, it did not glow with the power of the Waymaker’s Veins nor was the opening black with night. When Jack looked away from it, he could not remember anything about the portal. When he looked at it he could not think at all.
“It wants us to go through,” Penelope whispered.
“I think you’re right.”
“Why?”
“Why did you try to keep Hesiod from catching and eating me?”
She was quiet for a moment. “You think it’s lonely?”
“Not quite.” Jack pursed his lips once, then twice, and raised up his trombone. “It’s been a good set, Penny. Think you can follow my lead this time?”
She laughed softly. “I never learned songs quickly but I’ll try.”
He brought the slide in and tested a note or two, looking for that high E. Once he had it he started towards the Gate and matched it’s note, mournful moan to brassy blast, and he started in on his set. The boys had planned a killer show and it was a shame to let all that practice go to waste. If the booze and the women were out of reach then playing his own way out would just have to do.
Every night begins with the dance, an explosion of joy and energy. Jack swung his way towards the gate, Penelope struggling to follow the tune as much as his steps. The Gate was unmoved. He segued into a smoky tune of desire and longing. Penelope slipped an arm through his as the Gate drew them near. Finally Jack dropped the bell of the horn low and played a soft, slow song for family left at home, sung by a soldier as he lay among the dying. The Gate stooped low to catch every note.
The song ended as the sun set on the soldier’s last breath. Jack barely breathed himself, that barest gust of wind playing the same high E he’d started with. He held it as he stepped through the opening. The Gate whisked Jack and Penelope away. For a moment he couldn’t see anything and he felt the Gate’s moaning note fade away as nothingness engulfed him. Jack pulled away from the mouthpiece and took a deep breath. The Gate thought things were over but that was its mistake. For as long as it stood in the middle of that city the song of the Waymakers had never ceased. It didn’t know that a tune could end. It didn’t know the world still turned. It just clung to that last note, wondering why no one was there to sing with it anymore.
What it didn’t realize was that if you never let go of the last note you never had a chance to hear the coda. Jack adjusted the slide and dropped from E to G, from minor to major, and played the next sunrise. The cry of a child, born at dawn of the first day of the year, a promise of life in exchange for death. Of hope after loss. Of a new song to follow the old, if you have the courage to push past the end.
The Gate shuddered. For what felt like an eternity nothing else happened.
Then it showed them a glimpse of other worlds. The red plains of Ares. The roaring storms of Dias. The sweeping oceans of Gaia. But now that the show was over Jack just wanted to hit the green room and talk over the set with his band.
The vistas vanished and the Gate went still. All Jack could feel was Penelope, still clinging to his arm.
Then a door slammed shut behind him and they were standing under a flickering florescent light, backstage at The Wreck. A battered, threadbare couch sat in the corner to his left and a mirror sat over a counter to his right. Jack felt a smile creeping across his face. Penelope tensed. “Where are we?”
He indulged a full grin. “A dance club in Syracuse City. Hopefully in time for the after party.”
“We’re not dead?”
Jack burst out laughing. “Not yet! Let’s see if we can squeeze in another set or two before they chase us off the stage.”
If you enjoyed this story or just want to support the work I do here consider picking up Have Spell, Will Travel, my short story anthology available on Amazon here:
Well, it’s a new year and that means it’s time for a new project. I had a number of possible projects to work on after the end of The Sidereal Saga, which is the usual way of things as I get ready to write a new tale. It’s pretty rare for authors to lack ideas to develop, although it does happen from time to time, so when it’s time for something new the biggest challenge is deciding on what you want to do. The second biggest challenge is sticking with the idea until it’s fully written.
One of the simplest ways for me to determine what a good idea to focus on is to look through the stuff I’ve written in the last year or so and see how well it matches up to waiting ideas. That is one of the reasons I publish a number of short fiction projects before launching another large one. The short fiction helps clear my mind and determine what I’m really interested in versus what I only have a few hundred or thousand words worth of story for. If I can write two or three short stories about a character or a world I can undoubtedly write a novella or a novel about it.
So no beating around the bush – if you read my previous short stories last year you may have noticed a couple revolving around the world of Nerona, a place based on medieval Italy in the Borgia era. My next project, The Drownway, will be set in that world. To go along with it there will be two Nerona short stories, including The Shadowed Canal, which originally appeared in Issue #2 of Anvil Magazine. There will also be a couple of other stories going up as well, so we will not really get into The Drownway before February. However, before we begin I wanted to take a little time and give a brief overview of what inspired the story.
That’s kind of difficult in this case because the idea behind The Drownway is actually pretty simple. There is a rich and deep history of telling stories about people that go to dangerous places, explore them and make them a little bit safer for anyone who follows in their footsteps. In most cases those stories are just that – history. However history is a great model for the fiction writer and I, for one, find it a very rich one. Yet there are other forms for this story to take.
The great exploration tales of the past involved huge expeditions, ships and provisions, casts of characters to wide and varied to encompass in a single tale. You can, of course, focus in on a handful of characters. I did just that in the Triad World novels. However there is another model.
The pulps often presented explorers as a handful of adventurers who went into the frontier or into ancient places and mapped out the dangers. They fight the monsters, they mark the dangers and they come back to accolades. Now I have my issues with the pulps in both their modern and classic incarnations but the style has endured for good reasons. The real perk of this kind of pulp exploration story is in its focus on pure entertainment. It offers a chance for a larger than life personality to reshape a little part of the world for the amusement of the audience in addition to reminding us the world can be made a better place by courage and vision. That is what I hope to do with The Drownway. I hope you will join me for the ride!
If you’re curious what my writing is like there’s a large archive of it available here. If you’d like to support this endeavor the best way to do so is by picking up a copy of my book, Have Spell, Will Travel. It’s available through this handy, dandy link:
I try to keep my rambling about my favorite manga to a minimum around here. It could very easily be my exclusive focus if I let it and there are so many other topics I want to write about so a certain restraint is called for. Three essays on the topic in one outing is certainly more than I had planned on and two of them on a single series is certainly excessive. Yet there is something in One Piece that I have been contemplating for a while that bears examination.
Eucatastrophe is a literary term coined by JRR Tolkien to describe the moment in a story where things go suddenly and inexplicably right for the protagonist. In short, it is the opposite of a catastrophe. It was Tolkien’s stance that eucatastrophe was the highest form of fairy story just a tragedy was the highest form of drama. They exist to remind the audience of the power of providence. They serve to reward moral behavior. And, let’s face it, when done well they serve to put a smile on our face that will not soon go away. The problem comes about when they are not done well.
The eucatastrophe is a literary device that is often employed by Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece. However it is also one of his most controversial tropes. That’s not surprising to anyone familiar with the Internet’s fascination with both trope talk and pessimism but it does bear examination. However conducting that examination is going to require an examination of several events scattered across several thousand pages of illustrated story. I don’t have time to recap all of it so if you’re not already familiar with One Piece you may feel a little lost. My apologies but it can’t be helped in this case. And, of course:
SPOILER WARNING
Oda has a terrible habit of not killing his characters. By this i don’t mean that he doesn’t put his characters in situations that would kill them. The problem is more that he puts them in situations that should kill them, then they just don’t die for no clear reason.
The most obvious example of this is the character Pell, who takes an explosive device that will supposedly level most of a city, and flies it away so no one is harmed. He is still holding it when it detonates. Yet Pell survives and returns home about a week later with nothing more than a bandage wrapped around his head.
A similar case is the butler Merry, who is stabbed through the chest five times, left on the ground overnight, and is up and walking again just days later. The butlers of One Piece are made of impressive stuff, it would seem.
It has been argued that all people in Oda’s world are of superhuman toughness as practically everyone in his story seems stronger, tougher and cooler than a normal person. However that’s not particularly satisfying either. We do see people die in One Piece. The obvious example is Nami’s adoptive mother Belle-Mere, who is executed by the pirate Arlong, but there are plenty of others. Typically they are the friends and family if main characters. This provides us insight into the nature of our cast and an emotional moment to connect them to. Oda is quite good art creating these moments.
However, after writing his story for nearly thirty years, Oda’s patterns are quite clear to anyone who goes looking for them. Deaths in One Piece exist to create emotional moments. The often cruel and arbitrary nature of death in the real world is absent from the world Oda creates. Instead deaths are clearly and deliberately calculated to evoke the strong emotional response Oda desires from his audience. In theory there is nothing wrong with that. I’ve often stated that I believe one of the goals of an author is to create an emotional response in their readership and, over time, I’ve refined that notion to include a corollary, that the best emotion to create in the audience is one in harmony with the characters in the story.
By creating moments where his characters and the audience are both moved to mourn a death Oda pursues this goal. The problem is when he reveals a death he implied took place did not actually take place it fractures this emotional resonance. The characters in the story feel relief, the weight of grief suddenly vanishing from them. The audience realizes their emotions were being manipulated. This shatters the harmony between audience and character and frequently undoes the investment the audience had in the previous emotional moment. In some cases that investment turns into actual hostility towards the creator or the story.
This brings me to the curious case of Jaguar D. Saul and many of the events surrounding him. Saul was a vital character in the history of Nico Robin, one of the main cast of One Piece. We last saw Saul frozen solid on a burning island. Before he was frozen he gave Robin a goal: to live out her life and find friends who would care for her in the place of the family she lost.
Saul was Robin’s last tie to her childhood hopes and dreams. When the audience learned of his death it contextualized one of One Piece’s most complex main characters, who started as a cold and distant antagonist and had slowly been pulled into the fold to become a beloved member of the crew. The Water Seven Saga, where we learned about Robin’s childhood and her brief but impactful relationship with Saul, is widely considered one of the best stories in One Piece. So when it was revealed that Saul was still alive the audience was disappointed, to say the least. To make matters worse, the reveal that Saul was still alive came coupled with not one but two other characters who appeared to die but, in point of fact, did not. These three case studies in “fake out” deaths are illuminating. You see, the audience had no real issue with two of them but a third has really irritated a lot of people. Most interesting is the fact that the fake death of Saul, which had the biggest emotional impact of these three false deaths, is the one the audience has accepted the most readily.
While Saul’s case is the one which prompted this essay I’m going to briefly discuss all three fake out deaths to make my point. But before that, there is one element present in all three cases that most people have cited but I’m going to dismiss by examining Saul’s case on its own. That is the issue of “justifying” the character’s survival.
Saul was presumed dead because he was “frozen solid” by a character with the power to create ice. This is not the first time we’ve seen this power in use nor is it the first time we’ve seen people survive being frozen solid in this way. In fact, Robin herself survives one such attack. When added to the fact that Saul was on the shores of a burning island it’s not unreasonable for him to thaw out in the heat then take refuge in the ocean and thus survive both freezing and burning. At least, not by the logic of One Piece. Given that Saul was also a wanted man, the fact that he never revealed his survival to the outside world but rather retreated to an isolated island where he could lay low also makes sense.
None of this is discussed when people analyze the impact of Saul’s apparent death and survival. That isn’t because the logic of his survival is flawed but rather because the logic is irrelevant. What people are really trying to grapple with is, as I have already stated, their emotional investment in the story and whether it was misplaced. I believe this is also true in the case of Bartholomew Kuma and Dr. Vegapunk, the other two characters who “died” and survived alongside Saul.
Kuma, like Robin, was introduced as an antagonist. Unlike Robin, Kuma was much harder to pin down as friend or foe (and I’m not saying Robin was easy to work out.) Over time we came to understand that Kuma, who was uniquely strong and robust, even in the One Pieceworld, was being used as part of an experimental program to create cyborgs. The project was headed by Dr. Vegapunk. Kuma submitted to the experiments in exchange for medical treatment for his daughter, Bonney, which Vegapunk also oversaw.
However, Kuma was also a wanted man and Vegapunk worked for the government. This created a certain conflict of interests.
In order to overcome that conflict the government demanded that Kuma surrender his free will and allow his consciousness to be completely eradicated, replaced with machine programming. Kuma agreed to this happily out of his love for Bonney. The scene where Kuma and Vegapunk reflect on Kuma’s life before throwing the switch that transforms him into an unfeeling machine is one of the most tragic scenes in One Piece, a series known for making it’s audience weepy. Less than a year later the audience learned that Vegapunk would probably be able to undo the modifications and restore Kuma’s thinking mind.
Of course he was willing to do this because Vegapunk had made discoveries that put him at odds with the World Government and they had ordered his execution. Eventually that execution was carried out and Vegapunk was dead. Except the most brilliant man in the world had made provisions for that, creating a clone and backing up his memories using technology the audience knew he already had.
On a spectrum of audience reactions, Vegapunk surviving his execution is the most disliked by far. Yes, it was in keeping with his character as a forward planner and an inventor but it wasn’t particularly satisfying. While Vegapunk has only been making appearances “on screen” in the story for two years or so he had quickly won the audience over. He was a sympathetic figure to Kuma and his daughter Bonney and he had a certain kind of integrity to him. His death caused a lot of consternation among the cast and the readership. The offhanded reveal that he had a cloned body ready to go just didn’t sit right, even though all the pieces were in place for it. In fact, most people saw those pieces in place and fumed about the inevitable reversing of Vegapunk’s death long before it was made official.
This is a clear case of a moment intended to create harmony between audience and character emotions instead creating dissonance. Oda has been writing One Piece for nearly thirty years and the audience knows his tricks. When we see them coming it prevents our investing in his story even when the emotional moments are fairly good in and of themselves.
On the other hand, the revivals of Kuma and especially Saul were taken very gracefully by the fanbase. The euchatastrophe that Oda offers lands much better in these two cases and I think it’s vital for anyone who wishes to include such an element to at least try to understand why.
The first factor, in my humble opinion, is time. Robin lived for twenty two years from the moment she sailed away from Saul and the burning island of Ohara to the moment she reunited with him on Elbaf. It was a long and trying time for her, full of danger and sorrow. It also gave her the opportunity to meet her closest friends and allies and revive her passion for her childhood dreams. For the audience who read One Piece, the publication history from Ohara to Elbaf spans a period of nineteen years. Nineteen years.
I read One Piece in real time over that entire nineteen year span. I occasionally wondered if, given everything we knew about how Saul supposedly died, we would ever see him again. I watched Robin and the Straw Hats struggle and suffer through all the many cares of Oda’s world. When I heard of Saul’s survival I was a bit surprised, but not terribly. Then I watched as Robin changed her hairstyle to reflect how she looked as a child and got ready to meet Saul again. And eventually, when they met again, for the first time in decades, I was struck by a sudden and surprising sense of relief, as if something I didn’t even know I had been waiting for had inexplicably come to pass.
The moment had been building so gradually I didn’t even realize I had wanted it until it was already past.
The second factor is connection. Saul was a character with a big impact in spite of very little narrative presence. However Bartholomew Kuma has been a mover and a shaker in One Piece for a very long time, appearing in the story for the first time almost twenty three years ago in mid-2002, and having numerous contacts with the Straw Hats over the course of the story. His daughter Bonney appeared six years later, although we wouldn’t know they were related for another decade. We’ve seen Kuma with free will and without it and he has been an antagonist and surprising ally to the Straw Hats over the years.
While Kuma’s actions were often mysterious and his transformation into a machine with no human will was only fully explained in 2023, more than two decades after his introduction, we already knew all we needed to about him through the way other characters acted towards him. The villains of the tale were never fully comfortable with Kuma, even after replacing his mind with a machine, and the love and devotion of Kuma’s friends and daughter spoke volumes about him. That these factors would eventually merge to overcome mere mechanical forces and restore his humanity just makes sense. We’ve seen the tragedy Kuma’s family and friends suffered when they though he was lost. We also get several small moments where Bonney sits quietly with her father, trusting that the man she loves is still in there somewhere, no matter how machine like he behaves at the moment. These moments of connection to Kuma made it much easier to draw him back into the story. They build the emotional harmony between the characters and the audience and make it clear that what we felt when we saw Kuma “die” is not being undone. Rather, that emotional payoff is now the investment in another, even greater moment of resolution.
The third factor is providence. Eucatastrophe is inherently providential, a reaffirmation of what is good and worthwhile in the human condition as stronger than mere fate or circumstance. That Saul fought an ice man on a burning island and was frozen solid in the one place where circumstance would allow him to survive was providential. That the lonely child Kuma would meet and form a family willing to follow him into the worst places on earth and love him even when all his warmth and kindness were gone is nothing short of providential. That added element, the feeling that you can’t quite earn these moments of grace, is ultimately what makes them work. Sometimes the world is just arbitrary and capricious enough that you lose what you love most. Sometimes its providential enough that you get it all back.
Ultimately, I think it’s these three factors that make the difference between “fake” deaths like Saul and Kuma and “fake out” deaths like Vegapunk’s. Vegapunk had no providence in his revival, just his own scientific prowess, he had little connection to other characters outside his role as the most brilliant man in the world (except Kizaru, a subject way outside of the scope for today’s essay) and he hadn’t been around in the story long enough for the sudden reversals in his fate to feel organic.
However there is one other thing to keep in mind if you set out to write a eucatastrophy. The trope is, in and of itself, an idea that revolves around the concept that the universe is created and maintained by a loving and graceful God that desires to know and be known. It assumes that the universe we live in wants us to feel and reciprocate God’s love. Thus, if you seek to write eucatastrophy you are writing a story that mimics that part of the universe in your story – and that notion about the universe has never been widely accepted. It’s very clear, from his persistence in writing One Piece in the way he does, that Oda has simply made his peace with the way the audience reacts to his eucatastrophies. He wants to write them, so he has poured more time and skill into making them the best they can be. If you or I wish to write euchatastrophy, I suggest we make the same peace with whatever response we may get.
I hope all my readers are enjoying Christmas with their family and friends! As is traditional around these parts I will be taking two weeks off and coming back after the new year. I hope to continue entertaining you in 2025!
Have Spell, Will Travel is now published. (If you’re interested in picking up a copy just scroll down and follow the Amazon link at the end of this post.) So what are my thoughts on finally getting a book out? It’s hard to summarize them but I’ll do my best.
It all could have gone a lot faster.
I was nervous about having too many pieces of the process in motion at once, a hesitation I think is perfectly understandable. So I approached launching this book in very piecemeal fashion. I ordered a cover. I got beta readers. I went through the somewhat labor intensive process of running down a program that could make .epub files and creating my own. Then I discovered half the process could have been automated.
In short, I learned a lot that I won’t have to relearn the next time I do this. But the biggest thing I learned is that I really could juggle a lot more of this process at once if I’d put my mind to it. Now, editing and formatting Have Spell, Will Travel was not the only plate I was spinning. This blog was also a part of my creative endeavors and does demand a reasonable chunk of my time, in addition to that thing known as a day job. However the climb to publishing looked a lot more intimidating beforehand. Now that I have crossed the summit I’m not so sure what it was that I was really nervous about.
When I do this again I think I’ll be able to get through it much faster. Commissioning artwork is a fairly painless process, except for the financial aspect of it, and while it does require a good idea of what you want before you start, if you have that most of the work is the artist’s share. Most artists will need a month to six weeks to return you commission, unless something goes off the rails. The artist for Have Spell, Will Travel‘s cover goes by the handle Neutronboar and he works for a reasonable rate. I thoroughly enjoyed working with him.
I think the biggest mistake I made in timing everything was in choosing to wait to begin assembling my revised document until I had the interior art available. That was a process I think I could have done while the artist was at work. Yes, I would have had to go through and add in the interstitial art at a later point but there are ways to make that go much faster than I had originally anticipated.
In order to convert my text document to an .epub file I used a freeware program called Calibre. It is free, which means its UI isn’t the most intuitive and the software itself is not terribly optimized but it does what it needs to do and does it quite well. It can load text files with embedded graphics and turn them into preliminary files with no fuss.
Calibre will also recognize your page breaks and can turn them into a Table of Contents for you. This means that adding page breaks is the easiest way to format your book, something I did not originally appreciate. A few hiccups in the process occurred before I realized that. There is also the option to fill your Table of Contents from the first line of each new block of text, which saves a good deal of time putting that together. Again, I did not discover this option until I had already gone through three or four revisions of the document, filling out the ToC manually. More time lost. Another mistake I hope not to make again.
I think in the future I will put together a list of places where art and page breaks need to go as a separate file. That list will then let me Ctrl+F and search the master document to immediately find the relevant spots. My first formatting pass through Have Spell, Will Travel I just scrolled through the document and added features as needed. It worked well enough but I did miss a few spots on the first pass. And once again, it took up more time than needed.
The real rub to all this is, I’m not sure reading my explanation of the errors I made and how I intend to avoid them will make sense to someone who hasn’t gone through the process yet. The process of putting together an ebook and getting it to market is full of fidgety details. Most of them I never considered until I realized I’d overlooked them. I’ve read several other people discuss their journeys to releasing their first book and I didn’t have enough context from it to understand about 80% of what I’d read. However there was one thing I heard that I did manage to apply.
At some point you have to publish the book. All through this process I continued to find minor tweaks that needed to be made and I received a lot of feedback about story direction, balance, themes and the like. Most of it I implemented as quickly as I could. However some of it, while meaningful and fair, was impossible to make use of without significantly rewriting some chapters. I gave it considerable thought then decided that no, I did not want to make the time commitment needed to revise the chapters to that extent. The time had come to publish.
There is undoubtedly some better version of Have Spell, Will Travel out there, where the pacing is tighter, the dialog is snappier, the balance of exposition and plot advancement reaches Thanos-level perfection. Searching for that version of the book would be foolish. Many would say this is because the book could very well never get published – which is not wrong – but that is ultimately not why I chose to go forward.
Time is it’s own currency and, once spent, it cannot be refunded. While quality is a powerful factor in art it is not the only factor by any stretch of the imagination. Availability is almost as important. Audiences cannot discover what is not available to them. However, even if it is available audiences may take a long time to discover your story and it’s wise of you to give them as much time to find you as you can without sacrificing other factors. Or, at least, sacrificing them as little as possible. Wringing every last drop of quality out of a manuscript is not always worth the sacrifice of time you take away from your audience. Ultimately that is what drove me to press the button and publish the book.
And that is a brief overview of everything I learned while publishing Have Spell, Will Travel. Hopefully it was of interest to you, even if you’re not looking to publish anything on your own any time soon. If you’re interested in picking up your very own copy of Have Spell, Will Travel you can find it over on Amazon by clicking this handy link:
The pulps were once an incredibly popular medium of entertainment known for publishing stories printed on inexpensive, leftover paper at incredibly cheap prices. These could be formatted as books but were just as often magazines collecting short stories or sometimes serializing novels on a monthly basis. Because there were so many magazines with so many stories they tended towards two major characteristics. The stories were experimental and they were short.
By experimental I mean they hit on any and every genre they could imagine and created a couple new ones along the way. By short I mean shorter than a similar story would be today.
Pulps are often considered to be the peak of fast paced storytelling, quickly setting up a character, situation and stakes and resolving the situation in a few thousand words. Pulp novels rarely last longer than 80,000 words and frequently got down to 50,000. By contrast, the modern novel is usually much longer, running around 75,000 words and up. Most acquisition editors today prefer longer manuscripts to shorter ones.
There is a fair argument to be made that the shortest story that says all it needs to say, and no more, is the ideal. From this point of view long novels are not ideal. In point of fact there are a lot of modern writers who admire the pulp era and strive to recapture some of the brevity and verve of that unique time in their own writing. Brevity being the soul of wit, I wish them the best. However, I think that trying to write in a style from a century ago for the modern reader is a bit of a mistake. After all, the ideal length of a story is the length that says all it needs to say.
The question is, how much do we need to say? Does it change from one era to the next?
This is a topic none of the pulp aficionados stop to examine so let us do so for just a moment or two. At the dawn of the twentieth century the world was a much different place. There were no high speed, intercontinental communications, for example, and schools of pedagogy tended to agree on an established set of classic literature and preferred interpretation. In short, cultures were more homogeneous and shared many cultural touchstones. The importance of this cannot be understated.
Let me reframe this using an example from my experience partaking in Japanese entertainment. There is a form of address in Japanese known as “keigo” which creates a structure of social relationships between speakers. There are loose equivalents for some keigo terms in English. The -san suffix could be thought of as a gender neutral version of a respectful “Mr.” or “Mrs.” while the term sensei refers to a person of learning and is often used for a teacher or a doctor.
There are also many keigo terms which don’t translate well. A senpai is someone who has proceeded you. In what have they proceeded you? It could be anything. A senpai could be an upperclassman, a colleague with seniority in the workplace or just another person with the same hobby who’s been involved with it longer.
A kohai is the opposite of a senpai, someone who came after you. The culture of Japan places a lot of importance on the relationship between senpai and kohai, loading implied duties of respect, care and even affection behind these two words. This cultural weight cannot be directly translated into an English word and often results in one of two things. Either the words will be left as-is, with footnotes or endnotes explaining their meaning and implications, or clunky and illfitting equivalents will be forced into the dialog. Neither one fully encapsulates the ideas the words imply.
All this from just two words in the keigo system, which is full of dozens or hundreds of such terms from different time periods and dialects. It’s a lot to take in for new readers. Both methods of adapting keigo come with considerable drawbacks but the concepts cannot be omitted from the story or the characters will not make sense. This is to be expected from a work written in another country.
They say the past is a foreign country as well.
As I mentioned before, the pulp writers were drawing on shared traditions, shared culture and shared education. If they mentioned Achilles, for example, we could be reasonably sure they were all drawing from the same source. The Iliad was still in on most secondary education reading lists. Just as importantly, there were very few other interpretations of the character to muddle the meaning and significance of his name.
Furthermore, pulps were primarily publishing to people in their immediate area. Books rarely went overseas due to the expense of shipping them, just for starters, but also due to frequent language and legal barriers it tended to be impractical. In the modern era, these obstacles no longer exist. Everything from distribution to copyright law is much simpler and that has made media audiences much broader and yet much narrower. Past audiences were quite restricted in what media they could afford and access. By necessity those audiences engaged with a much broader array of media and were much less picky about its genres and quality.
Now, when an audience can easily access media from anywhere in the world, new problems arise. You can no longer be sure what cultural context your audience comes from. If they find themselves unable to parse your prose there is a real possibility they will simply set aside what you have to offer and move on to something else. Dense prose full of allusion that doesn’t make sense or requires research to understand rarely holds attention now. Audiences are looking for something they can relate to what they know and yet anticipating what they know is harder than ever.
Even if your goal is to tell your story in the fewest words possible you must still face the reality that more words are needed to explain yourself now than in the past.
Added to these hurdles is the reality of modern day mediums. Brevity may be the soul of wit but prose is ill suited to the modern conception of brevity. The shortest, most information dense communication mediums in the modern era are all transmitted via the Internet and facilitated by companies like Twitter/X, TikTok and YouTube. They are multimedia and visual as much as verbal. Audiences craving the brief and concise turn to these places for their media fix. Rather than compete along the lines of brevity most successful prose opts for depth, the one angle of communication where it remains unrivaled. By exploring ideas as thoroughly and deeply as possible prose can still compete for audiences when up against these much more concise, information dense mediums.
It’s all well and good to admire punchy, fast paced storytelling. Again, I have no beef with the pulp fans who want to explore that style of writing in their own work and come back to that kind of writing over and over again. However I am not one of those writers who believes we are on the cusp of another golden age of pulp prose. The media and cultural environment just doesn’t suit it. Audiences who want that kind of story can get it many other places in forms that capitalize on the strengths of pulp far better than the written word. I believe we are now in the era of deep prose, and that is the style of writing I strive to achieve. Perhaps your experience is different, and if so please let me know. In the mean time, it’s probably time I started getting ready for my next project…
In the mean time, if you’re interested in supporting my work check out my previous project give a look at Have Spell, Will Travel, my weird western anthology on sale on Amazon! Give it a look using this handy link:
“One Piece Fan Letter” was a special episode of the One Piece anime series, released after episode 1122 but not counted as one of the numbered episodes. It is a fascinating and touching love letter to the series itself, from fans who have worked their way into positions where they can work on the show they love. This could be a disastrous concept. Fans writing themselves into stories they love has such a bad track record that one of the best known examples of bad writing, Mary Sue, was created as a satire of the practice. (Ironically, Mary Sue succeeds in this satire, which makes her story an example of good writing.)
As an artistic achievement “One Piece Fan Letter” is remarkable. The animation is beautiful, the story skillfully weaves a number of narratives from the book Straw Hat Stories and the characters grow to be memorable and lovable in a very brief window of time. However, I’m not here to break down the approaches and techniques used by directors Megumi Ishitani and Nanami Michibata and their teams. I’m not really the best person to tackle that. I’m pretty out of touch with the anime, its production and it’s history. However it does achieve something I find very impressive. The narrative creates several characters that feel like members of the audience who have ascended into the story, while avoiding the many pitfalls satirized by Mary Sue.
It’s difficult to discuss if you haven’t seen the episode and it’s about 25 minutes long so if you have the time, I’d recommend checking it out. It may not make a huge amount of sense if you’re not familiar with One Piece in some form or another, at least up to the Return to Sabaody Archipelago, but many of the broad strokes are clear even if you’re a novice. You can find it for free here:
Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s start with the element I find the most interesting. None of the new characters in “Fan Letter” have names. The closest is the Marine captain called the Benevolent King of the Waves, who is known by a very grandiose epitaph. However the rest of the characters are known by their family or profession. The book seller, the wholesaler’s daughter, the green grocer’s boys. In one sense these people exist to be broad archetypes, entities that don’t even need names, because they represent the normal people in a world of pirates. Most normal people never make a name for themselves in any world. That goes double in a world as chaotic and cutthroat as one in the midst of a Golden Age of Piracy.
At the same time, a forgettable, nameless kind of character with a murky background is typical of a self insert protagonist. It could be a marker of lazy writing. But in practice, in “One Piece Fan Letter,” it is an invitation to the audience. These characters are like us, looking up towards the nearly mythical pirates of One Piece from their mundane, dreary lives and dreaming of adventure.
However the closest they can get is a distant admiration.
That brings me to the second element I find interesting, namely the separation between the protagonists of “Fan Letter” and the protagonists of One Piece as a whole. While all the episode’s new characters, including The Benevolent King of the Waves, catch at least a glimpse of the Straw Hat they admire, there is always a degree of remoteness to it.
The Benevolent King finds the tiny Chopper adorable. Yet the King is also a Marine officer with a duty to arrest pirates so he can’t give too much thought or deference to the Straw Hat’s mascot character. Several characters debate the world’s strongest swordsman, unaware that Zorro, one of the contenders, is in the bar with them. The elder green grocer boy admires Monkey D. Luffy. Not because he’s a pirate or even because Luffy did him a favor once. Rather, we see how Luffy’s desperate struggle to save his brother from execution gave the green grocer’s son the extra measure of inspiration needed to drag his own brother out of danger during the Paramount War. They were in the same place but their paths barely crossed for more than a second.
These are not direct connections. These are characters who see the Straw Hat Pirates from a distance and glean a little relief from mundanity or inspiration for the day by admiring them. There is no one this is more true for than the wholesaler’s daughter. When the Paramount War turned her world upside down she saw it as nothing more than a nuisance. In the years since Gold Rogers called the adventurous to the seas many pirates have sailed through her home, flexing their muscles and pushing people around on their quest for legendary treasure. The Paramount War was a particularly bad brush with the world of piracy but Sabaody Archipelago had seen many similar disruptions before and would doubtless see just as many after. The cynical child clearly believed there was nothing she could do about that.
Except one of the pirates responsible for that brush with piracy was Nami. Navigator for the Straw Hat Pirates, a woman with no particular powers beyond her sense for the weather, Nami held her own on that crew through her wits and charm. Over time, the wholesaler’s daughter convinced herself that if Nami could thrive in a world of power and violence so could she. And in the confines of this one brief story, she does just that.
The wholesaler’s daughter is one of the characters that changed the most from Straw Hat Stories to “One Piece Fan Letter” in that there was no such character in the book. The comparable character in Straw Hat Stories was, in fact, a man who admired Nami for… other reasons. This girl is, in my opinion, what really solidifies “Fan Letter” as a story about a self insert characters.
See, Ishitani and Michibata are two women who have had to make their way through the world of entertainment. It’s a world where the powerful often take advantage of the weak. They’ve had to make their way by wit and charm, and they clearly have a great admiration for Nami, who has done the same in a world much the same. They invite us along on an adventure to try and reach the characters that have inspired us over the years. It turns out those characters were much closer to us than we thought. At the same time, there is a gulf between us and them that cannot ever really be bridged, no matter how sincere our admiration or how meaningful the impact their stories had on us.
Stories are real, in a sense, but we cannot cross into them.
Yet we can look into them. If we are very, very lucky we can ever create a part of them. What Ishitani and Michibata chose to do with that rare, precious opportunity was to create a place for all of us to stand and admire those stories from a point just a little bit closer. Through the eyes of the wholesaler’s daughter. The green grocer’s boys. The book seller and the bar patrons and the Benevolent King of the Waves. Together share that admiration with one another for a few magical minutes. That was their love letter to the fans and I am very grateful for it.
I haven’t been fortunate enough to create a part of a cultural touchstone like One Piece but I have created a few stories of my own! If you’d like to support my work the simplest way to do so is to pick up my book Have Spell, Will Travel, available in ebook from Amazon today!
Nate Chen Publications 