Forged

by G S Michaelson

  “That’s true.” Derek had considered this, “However, you already know my answer, don’t you?”

  “Fine,” The West avatar had shrugged, Derek was remarkably stubborn, and he could not. “Come back tomorrow at dawn. We’ll start then.”

  “Excellent.” Derek has said in response. He would finally be useful.

  * * *

  “Hey! Hey!” A woman was waving at him from below. She had spotted him on the roof and recognized him. Leaping off the roof, he landed next to her.

  “Hey.” He said, “How do you do?”

  He cringed inwardly. He was still trying to be social, but he was still bad at talking normally. A decade in near isolation would do that you, he decided. She didn’t mind, they began to make small talk. He learned her name was Minerva. She had seen him after he defeated Timothy, and she was grateful to him.

  Taking care so they wouldn’t be mobbed by others, they walked into a bookstore. It had its own little break room in the back where they would have privacy. The store was owned by her long-time friend, Beatrice, and her love for purple extended all the way into the breakroom.

  After she brought them coffee and biscuits, she left them to themselves, not being quite able to look Derek in the eye. He wondered why.

  “I just want to say…thank you.” Minerva finally said. “I was…I was in the Order Squadron. The things they made us do…they were horrible.”

  “Did they?” Derek replied. He wasn’t judging, he was merely probing.

  “Excuse me?” She asked what he meant by that.

  “Did they make you do anything? Did you have to do anything?” He asked, “Why not just resist?”

  “We couldn’t. It was either we joined, or we died. I had no choice. Many of us had no choice.” Tears streamed down her tears as she recalled what happened.

  Derek stopped himself from prying. Even if she had drowned her grandmother and dragged a screaming mother from her baby’s cradle and then returned to strangle the baby like one of the outlandish stories he had read, it would make no difference to ask her to recall it. Instead, he just listened.

  “Don’t worry,” Derek told her as he listened to her story, it was one that many people in Karn shared, he was sure. “They can’t hurt you again. Not anymore.”

  * * *

  Two Years Ago.

  It was the 8th year in Solitaire.

  “You’ve gotten better at using your senses, and deflecting my attacks,” West panted during one of their sparring sessions.

  “Thank you.” Derek had fallen to his knees. “I’m still not good enough, am I?”

  “Nonsense,” West said, “My avatar can be whatever I want it to be in this space, if I was a normal person, I would have fallen an hour ago.”

  “It’s been three hours so far,” Derek complained.

  “And what about it?” West taunted him, “Are you going to tell your enemies to time out? If that’s your plan, then you’d better quit while you’re behind.”

  “Not at all,” Derek accepted his challenge. “I forgot I was fighting with a fossil. Why would I need any time to catch a breath?”

  * * *

  As they left the mass graves and began their long trek back, Simon raised a question with Zeke, one that had been bothering him for a while.

  Zeke’s ears perked up. “Shoot, what is it?”

  “The main reason we stayed was over the purges, where people were carried out and killed right?”

  “Yup.”

  “But these are the graves for those who died in the incident years ago. There aren’t many recent new graves, enough to indicate a mass slaughter on the scale that the Purge would have demanded.”

  “I don’t — what are you getting at Simon? ” Zeke asked as the wheels turned in his head.

  “If there are no graves here, or anywhere then where are the bodies?” Simon asked, “What did they want with the bodies, Zeke?”

  Zeke had no answer.

  * * *

  “Thank you for this.”

  The group were all seated at a table as Derek stood to thank their hosts. It was to be one more feast. The town was hosting a final party to celebrate the departure of their saviours.

  Food and drink flowed, and everyone partied and danced. Simon and Zeke told funny bounty hunter stories. Douglas was talking with Cynthia Nirthi girl, while Rachel exchanged her own ideas with the town’s academics.

  As Sophia stood guard outside. Derek approached her. She turned her head away from him, refusing to look at him. He understood why but didn’t back off. Instead, he just sat beside her, letting the silence coagulate between them until it became nigh unbearable.

  “I owe Douglas a debt.” Sophia finally sighed in surrender, “You, I do not have to speak to.”

  “But you want to?” Derek said. “I’ve had that feeling for a while now. You were following me, weren’t you?”

  “Yes on both counts.” She confirmed. Now she turned to look at him, her fiery red hair framed her face under the moonlight, and he could tell she desperately wanted answers. “What drives you? Why did you do all this, you could have died, when you didn’t have to? Is it because of Douglas’ father? You could have simply abandoned him and left. That path was open to you, to the both of you.”

  She paused. “Why are you throwing your life away for a fairy tale.”

  “I’m not throwing away my life.” Derek grinned, “I’m a big fan of fairy tales — but I know the Arche is real, and it can change everything.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?” Sophia asked.

  “I believe.” Derek replied, “And that’s all that matters.”

  She didn’t ask which part of the sentence he believed in. He didn’t clarify. For a moment, she wanted to believe too. Even if it was just for one night, a dream of freedom within arm’s reach was a wonderful fantasy.

  “Is that right?” She replied. “Then I look forward you you changing the world, Derek.”

  “I won’t disappoint.”

  Chapter 33 - Forged in Flames

  “So, did you find what you wanted?” Douglas asked Derek as they prepared to leave Karn County.

  The duo now sat by the river. Douglas had come here to pay his respects to Max’s family after ensuring their bodies had received proper burials. Derek has tagged along just because he had nothing better to do.

  “Me?” Derek said, “I thought we came here for Simon and Zeke.”

  “I think we all came here for our own reasons.”

  “True, but the self-assured and confident person that I am didn’t need any-”

  “Derek,” Douglas stopped him from going on. He just wanted an answer, and he had clearly seen through the attempted filibuster. The earnest look in his eyes and his tone, both of them stopped Derek from pressing on.

  “You’re getting to be just as annoying as he was if you keep this up. You’re not wrong.”

  “So, why are you looking for the Arche, then? It can’t just be because my dad asked you, now is it?”

  “To be honest with you Douglas, I didn’t have a real reason.” He replied. “West’s reasons for finding the Arche and why he did what he did, they were his reasons. They weren’t real to me,” Derek said. “After coming here, it’s no longer about an abstract quest, or whatever assumptions I had years ago. Awful as he was, Timothy had a point. The Nephilim and the Orisha are in charge. If we’re going against them, we’re fighting against the entire world.”

  “You didn’t need to come here to know that.”

  “Someone has to fight back against the Nephilim. It’s easier for me to do that after I’ve seen what they actually do. Everyone everywhere’s just given up and accepted whatever they do as normal, even thinking of them as gods. People are just being ground to death by the Nephilim, and no one has the will to even fight back anymore. West says the Arche can destroy that system, so it’s the best hope we have. I know that’s all we have — hope. We don’t know what it is just yet, we don’t know what it can do, w
e don’t know how it’s going to do that, so it’s just a fanciful fairy tale at best right now. However, if we end up blowing a hole through that system on the way there, that’s kind of a bonus. So it’s now the story of ‘The Guy Who’s Taking On The Unfair World’, or something like that.”

  “Or something like that,” Douglas repeated. “The ‘self-assured and confident person that you are’ shouldn’t be appending that to his statements.”

  “You got me there.”

  “What if you die?” Douglas said.“We’re attracting attention, the whole purpose of the report we had placed in the paper was to attract Jason to us. You think he won’t kill us without a second’s thought?”

  The consequences of the report would be dire for them especially. Jason was not one for disrespect. He would certainly come after Zeke with all his might before he came for Karn. Douglas had pulled in his last favour with Sophia and the Marauders to ensure that some of them would keep watch over Karn for a year or two. Sophia had acted like it was a hassle, but she was pleased to stick a metaphorical finger at the Nephilim while Karn rebuilt itself.

  None of that addressed the issue of how they themselves would survive a full-on assault by ‘The Surgeon’.

  “So what if he comes?” Derek said,“Let him come.”

  Douglas didn’t answer. He just smiled to himself. Derek’s confidence was intoxicating, even if he didn’t know it himself.

  “We should get going in a few hours.”

  “Agreed,” Derek said, “But what about Zeke? Isn’t he coming with us?”

  “You’re the boss, Derek,” He replied, “I’m just your muscle right now, I think you should be making those decisions.”

  “Speaking of decisions, you didn’t tell me your reason yet.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “That’s not fair, I thought I was the boss and you had to listen to me.”

  “Maybe you could say it’s the story of -”

  “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence!”

  The two continued bickering, walking off away from the river. A small cross had been placed there, alongside a small collection of flower themed hats, caked themed hats, and book themed hats.

  * * *

  Zeke stood staring at the house that now replaced his previous home. He remembered the street and everything. No one lived there now, it was just waiting for an owner to come in. Looking at it was staring into a cracked mirror, everything was familiar, but it was all wrong.

  “They say you can’t go home again,” Simon said, “It’s all the same, but different.”

  “I can’t stay here, ” Zeke said, “We don’t belong here. There are too many painful memories for us, and we — me especially — will just serve as reminders of Tyler.”

  “I understand,” Simon said, “I already planned on going with Derek. It just feels right. Douglas is a bastard, don’t get me wrong, but they’re doing something stupid. It’s something I want to get involved in.”

  “The Arche,” Zeke said, “There was a time we would have hunted them down for even saying those words.”

  “Yeah, well this is like hunting the biggest bounty of all,” Simon said. “Everyone in the world’s looking for it.”

  “You offered them the Thunderdome,” Rachel had seemingly materialised out of nowhere as she was often doing, “But you should come pilot it, Zeke. You’re a good driver, and it’s your baby.”

  “You’re just saying that,” He turned away from the house with a sense of finality. Now both saw the duffel bag in front of him. “No worries guys, I already packed. I’ll be coming with you.”

  “That’s good,” Rachel said, “Because I just got a dispatch from the outside world. They’re calling you the Knight of Karn, and there’s talk of a bounty on your head.”

  “Imagine that,” Simon laughed.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Rachel said, “All of us have bounties on our heads. It seems Karn’s report went through the meat grinder and turned us into some kind of terrorist. Everyone will be wanting a piece of us, ‘Air Force’ Simon.”

  “Air Force?” Simon groaned. “That’s not what I’d have chosen.”

  The trio continued to talk until they reached the Thunderdome, with Derek and Douglas already waiting.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Hunter himself,” Rachel said as they all conferred in the Thunderdome sitting room. “You’ve joined the epithet group.”

  “That’s nice,” Derek said, “I’m not much of a hunter though.”

  “So, Douglas, where does the map say to go to?” Zeke was straight to the point.

  “That’s just it, the map doesn’t say to go anywhere.” Douglas said, “I never had the direct map to the Arche, I had the map where one could find the map to the Arche. The True Map. Dad was a bit paranoid, so I couldn’t just turn crazy and sell it to the highest bidder.”

  West had thought of everything. it seemed. The Arche was hidden so that no one person could retrieve it. If Douglas had decided to share the information, it would have been useless without Derek. He had told Douglas that and impressed upon Derek the timing they needed. Douglas was sure some members of Sunset had been tortured and forced to give up his secrets before death, which is why West had made it impossible for the Orisha or Nephilim to go after Douglas. Without the unknown second piece of the puzzle, they would be getting nowhere.

  “You mean this quest has a few more stops than we planned?” Simon groaned.

  “Where’s our next destination?” Derek asked.

  “It’s in Fald. A lot of miles from here.”

  “That’s quite a trip,” Rachel said. .

  “We’ll be accosted by bounty hunters.” Simon was thinking of the bounties placed on their heads.

  “The Rune Knights will get in our way.” Zeke this time.

  “Jason will pick us up before them.” Rachel, again.

  “Perfect,” Derek grinned. “Let’s head out.

  * * *

  It was raining when they finally drove out of Karn County for the last time. The people whose lives they had touched stood to see them up, waving at them.

  Rainwater streamed down Derek’s forehead as he waved from the Thunderdome. The little boys of Karn tried to run alongside them, ignoring the burning of their muscles. Derek smiled as he moved back to the Thunderdome. He signalled to Zeke, and the latter increased speed.

  The people of Karn had not felt their own pain for more than a decade, many had given up on hoping that some merciful angel would pick them up and save them from this hell. A hell they did not make.

  The demons were ever-present. But the merciful angels were never too far behind.

  Epilogue

  “I cannot impress upon you the seriousness of this,” Jason spoke, gazing into the eyes of the three men he had assembled.

  Each bounty hunter nodded in assent. It wasn’t very often that they were assembled by one of the Nephilim.

  “Your target is this man, Derek - The Hunter,” he said, holding up a picture captured in the days after Karn County’s liberation. “The former bounty hunters Zeke ‘The Knight of Karn’, and Simon ‘Air Force’ as well. Do not consider them your brethren. You are not allowed to kill ‘The Invincible’ Douglas or ‘Tonner’ Rachel at this point.”

  He gritted his teeth. They had cost him a lieutenant, and he couldn’t even extract his fair pound of flesh. Nevertheless, three dead was more satisfying than none.

  “I want those three dead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Epilogue II

  He was one of the Orisha, a fearsome man, ascribed deity status by the people.

  Like the other Orisha, he had been created by what was now called the Arche centuries ago and had roamed the earth since, amassing power, influence, and immortality.

  Nothing that had happened since then had shaken the balance of power that they had so painstakingly crafted for themselves.

  Nothing, apart from the renegade named West who had rejected them, and looke
d past the new, sanitized history of the world.

  “My Lord!” One of his toadies scrambled into his office. He was excited and out of breath, there were few topics that were of interest to him, either of them would please his ear.

  “Speak,” He commanded.

  “You asked us to let you know when the Marauders’ Douglas made a move?” The man continued, “Well, our sources have indicated that he has. After taking down one of Jason’s Lieutenants with what rumours indicate is a small battalion of his own, he’s moving away from Pesque and has abandoned the Marauders.”

  He paused to let this information sink in. “I think this could be it…”

  “Thank you.” The Orisha dismissed him with a wave, “Let everyone be on the lookout for Douglas and his entourage. Make something up, brand them the number one enemy terrorists or something.”

  He paused for a moment, thinking about his options. “Dead if you must, but alive if you can.”

  So, even from beyond the grave West is still playing this game. Very well. We can do so as well.

  Also by G.S Michaelson

  G.S Michaelson writes fantasy series set in varied worlds. You can catch up on his other series, Sentinel, right now!

  Sentinel Book 1 - Masked

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sentinel-Book-Masked-Gabriel-Michaelson-ebook/dp/B07JNR2PHR

  The hero’s journey has to start somewhere. Tyrone Sy is no hero, not yet. Armed with the mystical force, Industria, he is one of the Sabres, WestScarlet’s crack team of warriors. Together with his teammates Eva, Lionel, and Avery, he is pledged to defend WestScarlet from threats great and small.