by Noah Layton
He looked out at his fallen kingdom. Bodies scattered the land like remnants of a war long finished, frozen in time.
His land was still intact, his slaves, his possessions.
But they could no longer be called his kingdom. They didn’t fall under his fearsome banner any longer.
The bitter expression on his face told me that he knew it.
They say loss goes through stages until it reaches a final moment of acceptance, but it didn’t occur to me how quickly Garrison would reach it.
Because as he surveyed his fallen tribe, his angry, contorted face made way for a hysterical smile.
He’s gone insane.
He chuckled to himself, not with his usual self-contended narcissism, but with a strange, superior awareness.
‘It means…’ He finally replied with a breathless laugh. ‘… It doesn’t matter. You’ll see soon enough. Come.’
‘Where?’
‘You may be the man to vanquish me, but you are still a guest upon these lands. I know what you think of me, tribe master. I see it in those righteous eyes of yours. But just because you have some presupposed notion of who I am, does not mean that I do not still obey the old ways of tradition. Join me in my home.’
Garrison started up the steps, taking them at a casual pace, as if he was returning home after a long day’s work.
Not only was the power of the sword in my possession, but the power of the people on my side.
I could feel the presence of my allies in their hundreds behind me, watching from afar.
This battle wasn’t over. They had not yet even had time to mourn their dead, no less count them.
Every eye was trained upon me and the leader of our fallen enemies.
‘Wait,’ I called sharply.
Garrison halted and turned.
‘What now, tribe master?’
‘You want me to join you in your home? This is a battle.’
‘This is the end of a battle,’ Garrison corrected. ‘My forces have been laid waste to. My men murdered. My possessions…’ Garrison looked out to the slaves that had been freed from their cages, and disgust crossed his face. He spat hard into the dirt, the façade of sophistication vanishing, and the hint of the real monster beneath peeking out. ‘My possessions pillaged and taken from me.’
‘Pillaged and taken from you? Just like you did to their tribes. And for what? Nothing but profit.’
‘Don’t patronize me,’ he hissed.
‘Fuck you. What’s to stop me from turning you into fairy dust right now?’
I reaffirmed my grip on the sword. Its blue light caught Garrison’s eye. He admired it with a mix of fear and want for a moment before dragging his gaze back to me.
‘Nothing, other than your morals.’
‘My morals didn’t stop me from cutting down Kali and your guards at the temple ruins. Or Morok, that deceitful little shit…’
Garrison smiled again, then spoke:
‘The Cage Breaker cometh.’
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
It was the same name that I had heard whispered on the air in the ruins where I had found the agrarium sword.
‘How… How do you know that name?’
‘I am a master. It is my job to know things. And, apparently, I know all about you… Much more than you know even about yourself. But if you kill me, then you shall never know.
‘So ask yourself now, in this moment, what is stopping you from killing me? The loss of knowledge that you greatly desire, or your morals?’
Garrison spat again into the dirt and glared into my eyes.
I glared back, but felt my expression involuntarily soften.
I lowered my sword slowly, its tip sparking as it touched the earth, the grass around it swaying as if to get away, despite no breeze hanging on the air.
‘That’s what I thought.’ Garrison continued. ‘Join me – and leave that weapon. Confront me like a man, if that is what you truly believe yourself to be.’
I gritted my teeth.
Garrison knew how to get under a man’s skin – he hadn’t risen to a position like this without knowing how to manipulate people, and right now he was doing just that.
I knew it.
And yet, even though I knew exactly what he was doing, I still had half a mind to race up those steps and slam the blade into his chest, to strike at the ashes until there wasn’t a shred of a semblance that he had ever even existed.
‘I’m not going to be told whether I’m a man or not by you, you piece of shit,’ I remarked. ‘I know who I am.’
I pushed the tip of the sword into the dirt, its blade descending effortlessly into the tough, frozen earth before quickly beginning to melt the surrounding snow.
‘If you truly knew that, you wouldn’t have done what you just did.’
Before I could retort, Garrison retreated into his treehouse home, leaving the door open but shifting out of sight.
I could feel the eyes of my people behind me, both a lifeline and a weight.
They were here for me, ready to have my back at a moment’s notice.
But they also looked to me to lead.
I couldn’t look to them for guidance to the path that lay before me.
It was a path that I had to walk myself.
I stared into the doorway up the steps and watched.
A multitude of threats could have awaited me; traps, bombs, a whole litany of hidden dangers.
But Garrison knew something about me, of that I had no doubt.
I moved forwards to the steps and ascended them as my people moved closer in their steady droves, numbering now in the hundreds.
The Orakin Tribe and the Sun-Elves of Morelia had vanquished the warriors of a violent enemy land, and we were now in full control.
All that remained was their master.
Chapter Nineteen
I took the steps slowly and stopped on the platform before the open doorway.
The room inside was well-lit, offering the opportunity to see any traps that might be awaiting me.
There were none that I could see.
I moved inside and quickly set my eyes on Garrison. He was stood by a chest of drawers in the far-right corner of the room.
He wasn’t a threat – not yet, at least.
I scanned the room sharply, but the moment my mind registered its contents I had a hard time concentrating.
The place was filled with artifacts and wealth – overflowing treasure troves, exotic weapons and jewelry, scrolls, silk gowns, bars of gold and silver, and precious stones, all of which were scattered across every surface.
I had never seen such wealth condensed in one place, not in my old life or in this one.
I repressed a gulp and quickly returned my attention to Garrison.
‘This world is filled with many strange and wonderous things,’ he remarked, observing the contents of the drawer that he was standing over, facing away from me. ‘The nature of things varies in many fashions, though. Some remain still. Some are fragile. Some are tough… Some move, and will do all they can to move away from you.’
He was speaking to me like we were old friends, like we had known each other for years.
‘A man can’t treat the citizens of this world like they’re things,’ I replied. ‘That was your mistake. No man can do that. There are plenty of good people in this world that deserve their freedom.’
‘Any man can do that, and you’re a fool if you think that you cannot think that way,’ he replied calmly. ‘Good and bad… Those are ideas that you need to get out of your head. We are all capable of becoming the villain, just as long as we get a taste of the power that could be ours.’
‘I know that power can corrupt,’ I replied. ‘Believe me. I think about it every day, and I make a point not to let myself go.’
‘It has nothing to do with letting yourself. You don’t understand, do you? You do not have power. Power has you. When you look upon the things that you have created and the prosp
erity that it brings you, that feeling takes you. I can see it in you now.’
‘See what in me?’ I replied. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘The look in your eyes. A man’s eyes tell you plenty. When we first met back at The Market before all of this began, you had the look in your eyes of a leader. A man in control. But now there is something else. Something… Different.’
‘Uh huh,’ I frowned. ‘Listen, I’m not standing here listening to you any longer. I don’t need your fucking definitions. You’ve got two choices; your first is that you stand down and I let my people decide what to do with you. They might kill you – in fact, I think there’s a pretty reasonable chance that one of my warriors would put an arrow between your eyes before you took two steps out the door considering what you did to their kin. But you never know, they might take mercy on you – maybe you can be a slave for them for a day. Wouldn’t that be some handsome irony?’
‘I am not giving myself up…’ He said with a wheezing laugh.
‘If that’s the case, there’s always option number two: come at me with the hidden weapon I’m reasonably confident you have hidden somewhere so that I have an excuse to take your head off… Not that I need an excuse.’
‘We still haven’t got to the best part. Don’t you want to know how I know so much about you?’
‘The best part being the thing that you supposedly know.’
‘I knew you would come here eventually,’ he said. ‘I knew without a shadow of a doubt. I am not yet convinced that a man cannot avoid his own fate. Maybe it is all written and we are just puppets standing in the looming presence of the future. I tried to fight against the future… But it seems not to have gone as I would have desired.’
My patience was wearing thin.
‘I’m sick to death of these riddles,’ I growled. ‘You’re responsible for the deaths of my allies, of my people. You’re right – you can’t fight the future. I don’t know if it’s written one way or another, but I know this; right now, your fate is in my hands.’
‘And who is yours in the hands of?’
‘Me. My choices. I’m responsible for my decisions.’
‘So your decisions brought you to this land, did they?’
Garrison finally turned to me with a knowing smile.
I felt a chill run up my spine.
He did know something.
‘If you knew your future,’ he continued, ‘would you seek to fight against it?’
‘If I knew my future, that would mean that I could change it.’
‘What if your decisions didn’t matter? What if no matter what you did, you would always return to the same path, destined to arrive at this very moment, in this very place… You and I, in each other’s presence?
‘Have you considered the possibility that every choice that you have made in this land up to now has simply been leading you to the place you were destined to go to?’
‘I try not to ask myself those questions. I’m here. That’s all that matters.’
‘Indeed,’ Garrison smiled. ‘That is all that matters.’
He sank his hands into the drawer before him and turned, now holding something.
It was a bizarre object; it took the shape of an urn, blood-red in color, its sides engraved with what appeared to be scratchings, as if some small but feral animal had been attempting to claw at its innards like a cat scratching at a fish tank.
Its top was by far its strangest feature, though. Instead of a simple lid that could be lifted like any other, its edges were clamped to the urn’s form with a series of coils that seemed to grip the two pieces together with impossible tightness.
A series of triggered handles were the only things keeping the coils from being released.
‘Who would have thought that the dwarves would have crafted that pocket of agrarium into a weapon of all things?’ Garrison remarked with a sly smile, lifting the urn onto a nearby table and setting it down heavily.
‘When I reach the afterlife, I’ll make sure to ask them and get back to you with an answer.’
‘You’re funny,’ he smiled. ‘What’s even funnier, though, is that agrarium is not the only thing that is found in the deepest reaches of this world. I have not had the fortune to venture down there myself – I doubt that very few have done so and returned alive to tell the tale.
‘But from those accounts that I have collected in my time in Agraria, I have caught glimpses of the unknowns of this world. And, for enough gold, I have been able to gain more than just a glimpse… I have been able to hold them in my very hands. And believe me, there are other things that exist in the deep reaches of the world.’
I took a step back carefully, looking sharply between Garrison and the urn. He planted his hands on the table either side of it and looked down at the blood-red container. He seemed to be considering something, a decision that he was reluctant to commit to.
‘What is that thing?’ I asked skeptically.
I had my knives, better yet my power stones, but I didn’t know if I could produce them fast enough.
Both of my swords and my shield were outside.
If he saw me bring up my spell-selection wheel, he would only move faster.
‘You know,’ he continued, as if having not heard me, ‘the tribes of this land spend so much time in conflict with each other, yet they know only a shred of the power that truly resides within this world. Perhaps one day they will not fight each other… They will fight the true threats that reside out there.’
‘What are you doing…?’
I moved for my dagger.
‘Let me tell you something; I know what is about to happen. I know what is supposed to happen, according to those who apparently know much better than me. But if you think for one single moment that I will bend the knee to another man who wishes to take my world from me, you are more foolish than I could have possible imagined.’
Garrison sank his fingers into the lid’s triggered locks.
My eyes went wide.
‘No, don’t…!’
The lid snapped open sharply. In the fractional instant in which it sprang open, I caught a snapshot image of the metal with my eyes. The urn practically caved into itself, its sides crumpling like paper.
The lid flew off, vanishing into the reaches of the tree.
That was all I saw in that singular, miniscule instant.
A tenth of a second later, a torrid black smoke suddenly exploded from the urn and filled the room. A dense cacophony of this bizarre substance raced around, as if searching for something that it simply couldn’t find.
Right until it found Garrison.
The smoke began to vanish, and as it did the reason became clear.
Garrison’s form returned to my line of sight. His head was cocked back, his arms outstretched to his sides, palms up and fingers rigid.
His mouth was gaping wide, his eyes looking like they were about to pop out of his skull, as the copious black smoke channeled through his open mouth.
‘What the fuck is this?!’
The last of the chain of black smoke flew through his mouth, and Garrison suddenly lurched forwards, clutching at his torso.
His gasps of pain subsided, reduced to short, sharp breaths.
Then, suddenly, he began to laugh.
‘What the hell was that?’ I asked him, stepping back to the door skeptically.
‘Did you hear me, tribe master?’ Garrison continued, looking up at me to reveal a pair of eyes that had turned the deepest black I had ever seen. ‘I. WILL. NOT. YIELD!!!’
Garrison’s body suddenly began to expand. Within seconds he didn’t resemble the foe I knew in the slightest.
‘Oh, shit…’
I turned and bounded through the open door of the treehouse, leaping from the steps and crashing to the ground.
Garrison hurled himself forwards right at my heels, crashing through the treehouse door. The wooden frame smashed to pieces at the sheer strength that his body now commande
d.
But as I glanced over my shoulder to see my enemy, I realized that this wasn’t Garrison anymore.
The monstrosity pursuing me continued to gain in size, ascending to a height that towered more than five yards over me.
His body tore free from his clothes, his muscles stretching his skin and turning his body into a veiny, reddened mess.
His head contorted into something completely unrecognizable – an animalistic, demonic maw with sharpened fangs and a terrifying, sadistic grin that stretched so wide it looked as if it would split his entire head open.
His body had been taken over by the demon locked up in that urn. It was his last resort, an answer to becoming cornered with no way out.
A way to kill all those in his path.
‘OPEN FIRE!!!’
‘OPEN FIRE!!!’
Mariana and Tobias screamed the commands.
Every one of our allies that could wield a ranged weapon unleashed arrows and bolts upon the gigantic demon as quickly as they could fire and reload them.
Some struck, embedding themselves in its skin, while others simply bounced off his scaly exterior.
The arrows were flies attacking a bear.
The demon ignored them, setting its eyes upon me.
Right then, I saw a whisper of Garrison’s true self peeking out from within this monstrosity.
The same sadistic look I had seen him don the first time we had met.
I was the only one he was interested in right now.
Fuck.
I turned and sprinted towards my sword, bounding across the snowy ground as the demon raced at my footsteps.
He would be on me in seconds.
There was only one possible way of stopping him.
I reached for the sword and yanked it from the ground by its handle, turning promptly to meet my ferocious enemy.
In the fraction of a second in which I turned, a huge, looming shadow cast itself down upon me.
Setting my sights on the demon, I found its huge body towering over me as one of its massive hands moved to slam down onto me.