Death Flag

  Panting and out of breath, and with the world still slightly tilted on its axis, Madison looked around to find the last man who had given chase to him. He had finally begun to push himself back to his feet, albeit unsteadily, and he seemed to have alternated his time between watching the fight unfold and debating his odds of escaping. Even with Madison eyeing him, he turned and looked back over his shoulder as if weighing his chances of making it out alive if he fled.

  Madison took a quick appraisal of the man and tried to glean an understanding of what had happened that had caused him to take so long on the ground. His dagger was still buried in the man’s shoulder, and blood was pouring out of a vicious cut on the man’s collar bone, just above his armor. The black leather covering his chest was soaked with blood, giving it the appearance of being wet rather than changing color.

  Perhaps I was luckier than I thought with that haphazard throw.

  The man swayed on his feet, wavering back and forth erratically as if he wasn’t able to hold himself upright. From what he could tell from the man’s injuries, it was probably a miracle of willpower and fanaticism that he was able to stand erect at all. That also meant that there was no way he had the energy left to flee. The man took a small, half-step forward, stumbling as much as stepping, and weakly lifted his sword up before him.

  Madison stepped forward, knocking the man’s sword out of his way with his own, and thrust his blade into the warrior’s gut. The blade sank through his soft belly until it was buried halfway to the hilt and then stopped. The man cried out in pain as the sword pierced through him, but his scream was quickly choked off by a gurgling froth of blood that foamed out of his agape mouth. Surprise and shock filled the dead man’s eyes, the dim light remaining there quickly fled. The warrior’s sword fell from his grasp, and he feebly beat a fist against Madison’s chest as he heaved his last breath, finally going limp.

  Madison was afraid to move. He sucked in several ragged breaths and licked his dry lips, tasting the salty sweat that coated his face and clung to his skin. After several heavy moments, he pressed forward and then pulled back on his sword. The dead man’s body slid backward along the blade with a sickening sound and collapsed in a heap in the dirt at his feet.

  He trudged back up the gulley and over the bodies that were strewn out along its length. He had killed all three men without so much as batting an eye or questioning what he was doing. He had done the same thing to the three while escaping, and he had done the same thing to the man before that. Never in his life had he imagined killing anyone, and he had just dropped seven bodies in the course of a day. He knew that the psychological impact of what he had just done was likely going to catch up to him as soon as he slowed down, and the adrenaline wore off. As soon as he was somewhere safe and warm and he had time to think about it, he was going to have to come to grips with the fact that he had killed living human beings. They were violent, wretched, and despicable, but they were human. He stared down at the sword in his fist dumbly as if trying to make sense of it. He was completely covered in other men’s blood, matted with dirt and leaves, and beaten and bruised—but he was alive. For the time being, that was all that mattered.

  He turned and began picking his way out of the small ravine, sliding backward on the wet leaves that lined the steep sides several times as he made his way out. He paused at the top and looked back one last time, making a final sweep for anyone that might still be following him. When he was convinced there was no one there, he turned and headed away, deeper into the forest and away from captivity.

  CHAPTER 4

  Madison struggled to open his eyes. His entire body felt like it had been passed through a washing machine set to spin and then trampled over by a herd of stampeding elephants, and it was almost easier to tell exactly what didn’t hurt rather than trying to identify what did at this point. His thoughts came slowly, and it took him a minute to begin sorting out where he was and what had happened to him. He had been getting off of work and making his way to the gym to meet his friend Brian one minute, and then he was transported to an alien world, almost drowned to death, enslaved, and beaten. It made his head hurt along with everything else just trying to sort out everything that had happened to him and keep up with the changes, however unbelievable they were.

  He smacked his lips together and tasted nothing but the dry cottonmouth that was left behind by a night of heavy drinking. It wasn’t exactly the same—it didn’t exactly taste like a cat had shit in his mouth—but it was the same parched feeling that meant he was severely dehydrated. Despite the warm, humid air that pressed down on him like a thick, wet blanket, he felt a shiver run through him as he tried to roll over and sit up. Even that simple movement made his head spin and threatened to send him back to the ground, retching up an empty stomach. If he had eaten anything substantial in the last few days, it might have come up just then.

  Finally, after several long moments, he sucked in several deep breaths of air and sat up slowly with a massive groan. The first thing he realized was that he definitely wasn’t in the same place he had passed out. Most obviously, the dead bodies were missing. The angry slavers he had escaped from and killed were nowhere to be seen. Madison felt his gut wrench around again as the realization struck him.

  The people I killed. The bodies of the men I killed . . . I did what I had to do. If I didn’t kill them, they were going to kill me. It’s that simple. Yet, no matter how he tried to justify it, he couldn’t make the thought sit right with him. That just wasn’t the way he had been raised or what he believed in. One did not simply go around killing people—even if they had tried to kill him. There were police, courts, and a criminal justice system. He couldn’t even validate his actions as self-defense. He had wanted to kill those men. He had wanted it as much as he had ever felt anything before. Even worse, it had felt right.

  Taking another breath, he forced the thought of his head. It made him sick to think about what he had done, but there was no avoiding it now—no changing the past. He shook his head weakly in an obvious attempt to clear it.

  “You shouldn’t be so quick to move,” a voice cautioned from just beside him.

  “What?” he choked out hoarsely through a parched throat. It was as much in alarm and surprise as it was a legitimate question. He turned toward the source of the voice and found another man sitting a few feet away holding out a leather satchel.

  “Take this,” the man urged, pressing the bag forward. “Drink slowly, and you’ll begin to feel a bit better.”

  Hesitantly, Madison reached out and took the proffered item from the man. He hadn’t been in this world long, but he already had the inclination that he shouldn’t trust anyone. No one had betrayed him, per se. It was just that everyone he had met so far had either tried to abuse him, enslave him, or kill him. He felt the contents shift as soon as he took ahold of the bag and slosh around inside.

  The stranger must have seen how Madison watched him because he said, “If I was going to kill you, I would have done it while you were asleep. There wouldn’t have been any reason for me to move you here or bandage your wounds if I was just going to undo all my hard work.”

  With that, the man gestured toward Madison’s arm and his torso, and Madison realized for the first time that the tightness he felt in his chest was as much from the tightly-wound wrap as it was from the humid air or his injuries.

  He unstopped the cork and greedily pressed the opening to his mouth, letting the warm liquid flow over his lips. The first mouthful felt thick and viscous against the barren desert landscape that was his mouth, and he was only able to choke down a small amount before he began coughing violently. He felt the liquid make its way down his throat and to his stomach, where it sat like a ball of lead, but that didn’t stop him from immediately going back for seconds as soon as he could breathe properly again. It was only after several large gulps that he realized that what he was drinking wasn’t water.

  Spitting up the liquid for the second time, Madison almost drop
ped the container. “What is this?” he demanded, suspicion thick in his voice. But he also noticed that the words came more easily now than before. “What have you done to me?”

  The stranger pushed back the hood on his cloak, allowing Madison his first opportunity to see him clearly. He was a young man, probably somewhere in his early to mid-twenties, with short-cropped brown hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. Madison intuitively studied the man trying to figure out how big he was and how strong he might be if Madison had to fight his way free again, but it was impossible to tell with the way his cloak was draped around him. Though he was crouched down, Madison was certain that he was wearing some type of armor underneath it, and the covering on his arm when he handed him the pouch confirmed it.

  Does everyone in this world just automatically put on a travel cloak along with their pants and shoes in the morning? he wondered cynically.

  “It’s a healing drought,” the man answered with a clearly-amused smile. “They’re a tad expensive for most people, so I’m not surprised that you’ve never tasted one.”

  “A . . . what?” Madison asked. He started at the man like he was speaking gibberish, and it must have shown.

  The stranger must have misunderstood what the look was for because he hastily held up his hands and said, “Don’t worry about it. I don’t expect anything in return for it.”

  “Ah-huh.” Madison slowly nodded once as if that made it all make sense. “So, uh . . . What exactly is a healing drought?” he asked.

  A flicker of surprise flashed over the man’s face, and he stared at Madison like it was the dumbest thing anyone could have asked. “You’re kidding me. You must be. What do you mean, ‘What is a healing drought?’”

  “That’s just what I mean,” Madison insisted. He wasn’t in the mood to play whatever game this man was pushing at, and he was skeptical as to both what the man claimed and what the name implied. Still, he could already feel a warmth growing in his belly that seemed to radiate out toward his extremities.

  He looked shocked for a moment and then grew solemn. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Well, it’s . . . It’s just what its name says it is. It’s a potion. If you drink it, you’ll heal up much faster than you would have without it. It’s not exactly a cure-all panacea, but you’re much more likely to make it through severe injuries like yours with its help. It can’t replace what’s not there, and you can’t regrow what’s been lost, but it makes the process much quicker and less painful. They’re rather hard to come by in most places so . . . Ah, well, enjoy.”

  “So, it’s not poison, and it isn’t going to kill me?” Madison asked. His stomach was downright burning now. It felt like he had turned up a bottle of hundred proof pure grain alcohol and downed half of it without any sort of chaser. He reached out with a shaking hand and passed it back to the stranger. “Thanks,” he said after a moment.

  The man accepted it with a small but curious smile. “I’m Warren,” he said, holding out a hand.

  Madison stared at it for a moment. So at least some things are still the same. This might be a clue as to where I am if there are shared customs with those I know back home. Finally, he reached out and clasped the man’s hand and said, “Madison.”

  “So, what happened to you back there, Madison?” Warren asked. “I only caught the tail end of that fight, but it looked like you had pissed off a couple of . . . Well, let’s call them ‘rough looking guys.’”

  Madison swallowed down the bile that threatened to rise in his throat the moment he thought about the dead slavers. “I just . . .” He trailed off and forced himself to swallow down the burning liquid that threatened to come up. If that healing stuff had been any less thick, he might not have been able to keep it down.

  What should I tell him? Madison wondered. That some crazy lady cursed me, cast a magic spell on me, and sent me to some fantasy world? That I have no idea where I am, how I got here, why I’m here, or how I’m supposed to get home? How much can I actually trust him with before he thinks I’m completely delusional?

  He leveled his gaze on Warren and spoke carefully but honestly. “They wanted to sell me and a bunch of other people off as pieces of property so that they could get rich. They thought they had a ‘prime specimen for market’ that they could make a fortune off of. I proved them wrong.” He sucked in a sharp breath as he finished the last line. He could actually feel energy returning to his muscles. It didn’t hurt to stay sitting upright as much as it had, and he realized that he was able to concentrate a bit better as well.

  “Looks like the healing drought is working,” Warren observed with a smile. Then he turned serious again. “You mean to tell me that a band of slavers was close by? Out here? In these mountains?” he asked, clearly concerned.

  Madison nodded again. “I don’t know where ‘here’ is exactly, since I don’t know where you’ve carried me to while I was unconscious, but if it’s anywhere close to where I was before, then yes.

  That news clearly troubled Warren even more than it had before. “I need to get this information back as quickly as I can so that the regents know about it. They’ll be able to put together a plan and know what to do, but the sooner they know the better.” He stood up and made the flask disappeared. Then, he held out a hand to Madison. “Think you’re fit enough to walk?” he asked. “I really don’t want to have to carry you around like a sack of firewood again.”

  “Yeah, actually, I do.” He definitely didn’t feel like he was back up to one-hundred percent yet, but he didn’t feel like he was knocking on death’s door either. He was still a bit light headed, and he felt like he could sleep for a week, but he didn’t think that he’d topple over after the first step. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Not far,” Warren answered somewhat cryptically and set off down a path that only Warren could see.

  -----

  Madison struggled to keep up at first. Warren proved to be far more experienced at traveling through the woods than he was, and he had to work to keep up with the brisk pace set by the younger man. Despite the medicinal effects of the healing drought, the events of the last few days began to show much sooner than he would have liked. There was a lingering pain somewhere on the left side of his ribcage, and it felt like there was a hitch somewhere in his left leg that threatened to tighten up with every step he took.

  It also turned out that ‘not far’ was much farther than Madison had anticipated. An hour later, Madison was huffing and puffing and beginning to question whether or not he was doing the right thing by following a stranger through the woods to some unknown destination. It was true that he seemed nice enough, but for all he knew, this guy was leading him around like a lamb to the slaughter.

  Maybe playing nice and patching me up was just his way of tricking me into following him . . . What if this is just more effective than chasing me down and beating me like the others did?

  Just when he was about to give up and had begun plotting ways to make his escape, they stepped out of the woods and onto a gravel path. He hadn’t even seen it before it appeared in front of him, and he stumbled on the loose white stones before he realized it was even there.

  “What the hell?” he asked in surprise as he lurched to a halt.

  “Hmm?” Warren finally slowed down and turned around. “Oh!” he exclaimed when he realized what the problem was. “Yeah. It kind of sneaks up on you the first time, doesn’t it? Caught me off guard as well. But you get used to it after a while.”

  Madison definitely heard him but understood as little of this as he had before. Maybe this guy has a bad habit of speaking half-truths. What if he’s really some sort of cultist who can’t ever tell the truth and has to speak in riddles and rhymes? Is that a thing? Could that be a thing if it’s not already?

  “I’m not really supposed to show up with visitors, so I’m not sure what they’re going to do with you,” he said cautiously as he turned and began following the trail.

  “Show up? They?” Madison asked. “Where the
hell are we going, anyway? We’ve been traveling for an hour, and you haven’t said so much as a word.”

  “It’s not far,” Warren answered as he disappeared down behind a dip in the trail.

  “Seriously?” Madison sighed and sped up so as to not lose sight of him. The last thing he wanted was to get lost out here. At the worst, I’d end up dead and alone. No, scratch that. Running into the group of pissed-off slavers would be worse.

  Madison topped the swell in the road that Warren had disappeared behind and stumbled in his tracks, pausing once again. The pathway took a sharp turn down, changing into a series of short switchbacks that wound their way back and forth down the side of an otherwise-steep cliff face. It wasn’t the fact that it was such an aggressive drop down that had him startled or the fact that the cliff seemed to just materialize out of nothingness when it hadn’t been visible five steps in the other direction: it was what came after that left him speechless.

  Below him, in the middle of a large valley, sat a massive structure that looked like a strange combination of a medieval castle and four colossal towers. The castle, which began to look more like a massive fortress the longer he stared at it, was positioned in the middle of each of the towers, one on each corner.

  “Hurry up!” Warren called from below, and Madison was forced to tear his sight away before he could examine it more closely and hurry after him once again.

  He began quickly working his way down the switchbacks, actually eager to get a better look at what he had seen and to learn more about it. He was tired, beaten, and stressed out beyond any capacity he had ever felt before, but the sudden rush of curiosity gave him the energy he needed to hurry forward. He was careful not to stray too close to the edge of the trail, which wasn’t so narrow that he was actually worried about wandering off but demanded focus, and he stole glances at the monolithic structure every time he made a turn.