Death Flag

  “It started in the Outlands first, of course, at the farthest reaches of the old empire, but it eventually made its way to the cities and eventually the capital. The thing is, though, no one ever knew who was responsible. Scared the lords shitless. But since they already blamed each other for everything anyway, it didn’t make much of a difference in the scheme of things. They were already well beyond the point of distrusting everyone, so there wasn’t anything else they could do at that point.

  “Well, anyway, it didn’t take long for people to start to figure things out. They quickly learned that they’d make it out of this world on their own if they just minded their own business and treated everyone fairly. A new round of nobles began taking the place of the old, councils replaced kings, and everyone learned to work together again—for the most part, anyway. Things started to get better in a way. By that point, however, things would never go back to how they were before. The races had withdrawn from one another, and decades of distrust and slaughter wouldn’t bring them back together. They formed alliances with one another, sometimes over religion and sometimes over region, but that was as far as it went. Most times, even today, they still don’t stray too far out of their own territories unless they’re looking to start trouble. Oh, there’s some trade again, sure, don’t get me wrong, but that’s about as far as it goes.”

  “So, what does any of that have to do with this place?” Madison asked. He understood the history lesson, but there were so many holes in it that it created more questions than it answered. It was certainly more thorough than what Davion had told me, but how does any of that tie together or explain anything?

  Before Warren could answer him, Madison became aware of someone else approaching. The sound of scuffling feet being scrapped along the stone path prompted him to look back, and he saw that Erin was making her way down the hill and through the strange, little trees. She was clearly moving as quickly as she could while carrying an oversized basket in both arms, which was so large that he was curious how she could actually see where she was going at all. Suddenly afraid that she was going to drop it altogether, he hopped to his feet and rushed over to her.

  “Stop, stop,” he said, as he approached, afraid that she couldn’t see him. “Let me help. I can take it from here.” He reached up and hoisted the basket out of her arms before she could even come to a full stop, and he was immediately surprised at how heavy it actually was. “Wow,” he remarked, looking down at it curiously. “Did you have them put rocks in here?”

  “Hmph!” Erin stamped her foot and looked up at him angrily, clenching her fists at her sides.

  “What? I was . . . Oh, you’re upset that I didn’t think you could handle it?” Madison guessed. “Or you’re upset that I didn’t let you finish the job completely? Well, you clearly managed to get it here, so you’re good there, and I technically came to meet you, so you made it to us. Good work!” He wasn’t normally one to play into these little games, and his reasoning and praise were both as sarcastic as they were serious, but she looked appeased nonetheless. She blinked a few times, as if initially confused by his reaction or unsure how she should take it, but then simply fell in line behind him with a happy smile on her face as he finished carrying the basket to where Warren was waiting.

  Madison was greeted by a wonderful aroma as soon as the basket was opened and Warren began dragging out the food. The last thing he had eaten had been a piece of bread that was so dried and hard that he had to let it soak up his saliva before he could even chew it. And that had been a week ago. He silently marveled at that thought.

  He wasn’t used to eating three square meals every day by any means, but he made it a habit to eat well whenever he could. His job in the warehouse and his time in the gym had taught him the importance of eating properly and at regular intervals. He knew all too well how quickly his energy would be depleted and how much his concentration suffered if he hadn’t eaten anything for too long. That’s why he was all the more amazed. If repairing his broken body in record time hadn’t been enough to convince him that magic was real, and even if he had somehow convinced himself that he had hallucinated everything that happened as he fought an undead wraith, the fact that he was still functioning properly after not having eaten or drunk anything in so long was irrefutable proof. It was easy enough to write off everything else as extraordinary and unbelievable—to simply push it to the back of the brain and refuse to think about it. When you attacked something as fundamental as eating, however, it was hard to ignore.

  “Ah, good,” Warren observed softly. “It looks like you made it in time. Did you have any trouble with getting everything?”

  Erin quietly shook her head and stuck out her hand, holding out the ring he had given her earlier.

  “Thanks,” Warren said, taking it from her and slipping it back onto a finger. “Looks like we really missed a feast tonight.”

  And with that, he began pulling out an assortment of food. He set out two entire loaves of a thick and rich-looking brown bread, a huge container of what looked and smelled exactly like fried chicken, and several smaller bowls that proved to contain a various array of different side items. There were at least three different types of potatoes, a soft green vegetable that looked like boiled cabbage, some type of multi-colored stir-fry, a giant bowl of white rice, and some type of brown bean that was cooked with pork in it. There was a small tub of butter, probably for the bread, and a small tub of what turned out to be a white gravy. He pulled out three thermoses last, passing one to Erin and one to Madison while keeping the third for himself.

  Madison watched the food appear out of the basket with a growing hunger. He hadn’t even truly been aware of the fact that he hadn’t eaten until he smelled the fried chicken. Once the rest started appearing, however, his hunger began to grow by leaps and bounds. It started as a small itch in his stomach, a subtle reminder that food was a real thing and that it was a good thing, and by the time Warren had finished arranging everything, his stomach was in a full-blown feed-me-now panic mode.

  He didn’t know if there was any type of propriety he should observe around these two, and he didn’t care. He was well aware of the fact that some cultures would probably find it rude to watch someone eat, or if someone ate in front of them, or if someone took a bit before someone else did . . . but he didn’t care. He ripped open a loaf of the bread, practically dumped on a small mountain of butter, and bit into it before anyone could so much as say anything to him that might stop him. It was still slightly warm on the inside, it was hearty, it was rich, it had small, little seeds in it, and it was about the best damn thing he had ever tasted.

  Erin giggled softly beside him, and he twisted around to look at her and found her watching him as wide-eyed and curious as a young girl discovering a kitten. He thought her demeanor now was strange, considering she had been angry or upset for about ninety percent of the short time he had known her.

  “Whad?” he asked around a mouthful of bread, taking another bite before he had even fully swallowed the first.

  Erin giggled again, slightly louder this time, but it was Warren who answered for her. He shook his head and shrugged slightly, laughing a bit as well. “It’s always interesting to see someone after they’ve received healing. I imagine that simple bread probably tastes like heaven to you right now,” he said knowingly. “The healing process really takes it out of you, and your body will be happy to have the nutrients back. This is your body’s way of telling you to keep eating.”

  No one had to tell him twice, and he didn’t need any encouraging. He cracked open the large thermos to find cold water, which was fine by him, and he used it to wash down the mouthful of bread before moving on to the fried chicken. As if by some unspoken rule, they seemed to have agreed to put the conversion on hold until after the food was finished. And, by the time it was over, Madison was happy and sated. He had finished more food than he could ever remember eating in a single sitting, consuming an amount that would have been embarrassing even on C
hristmas day. He rummaged around in the basket when he was finished and fished out an apple, which he began eating slowly while waiting for the other two to finish as well. They all sat and watched the stream roll by in silence as they ate until his curiosity got the better of him.

  “What was that ring?” Madison asked, breaking the silence.

  “Everyone here has one,” Warren began between bites of chicken. He held up his hand, showing off a simple gold band. “It’s basically a sign of rank.”

  “Explain,” Madison said. He finally had someone who was willing to give him some answers, and he wasn’t going to let it get away from him.

  Warren shrugged and licked the juice off of his fingers, popping one finger in his mouth at a time. “It’s pretty simple, actually. There are four ranks amongst the people here in K’yer Utane. The better you are, the harder you train, the higher your rank. The lowest is Novice, or unranked. Basically, no one but the new kids are in this rank. After a couple of years, you’ll more or less graduate to Class automatically.”

  “A few years?” Madison exclaimed. “You’re kidding me. You must be.”

  “No,” Warren said, shaking his head. “Remember: Time, Madison. It doesn’t work the same way here as you’re used to.”

  Ah shit. He cast a furtive glance at Erin, but she seemed to be in her own little world as she listened to the exchange. The mention of time’s passage hadn’t affected her in nearly the same way as it had earlier. “Alright,” he said, wanting to push past it before she started crying again. “What comes next?”

  “Most of the people here are ranked Class, and they probably will be forever. Above the Class rank is the Sworn. There are probably only a few dozen Sworn in the entire compound if that gives you any idea of how hard it is to achieve. It’s basically the culmination of a lifetime of work and dedication unless you’re some type of prodigy. The last and highest rank is Guardian, a level that most will never reach in this lifetime or the next, and as far as I know, there are only five who have ever reached that level.”

  “Davion, for example?” Madison asked, his intuition prickling at the back of his mind. There was no way that inhuman hunk of meat-muscle walked around that confidently without being at the top of the food chain.

  “Yes,” Warren agreed, nodding his affirmation. “The only other Guardian who is here currently is Sherrie Werth. She’s the older lady you met just before your testing.”

  “Ah, yes.” Madison took a bit out of his apple and chewed on it as he thought about the bit he had just learned. He remembered Sherrie Werth well. She was the one who had more or less declared him to be a waste of her time. “So, she’s supposedly really strong? Like, how strong?” He wanted to ask how someone as old as she was could possibly have any strength, but he refrained. If mentioning time hadn’t set off Erin, age surely would.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re probably not wrong. She’s been around for a while, that’s for certain. She’s not the oldest person here, but she’s probably close to it—though no one knows for certain because they won’t ask. Still, she’s more or less unofficially in charge of the young women here, and she’s the most practiced spell caster by a fair margin. She’s a real stickler for the rules most of the time as well, just like Erin here.”

  There’s that age thing again. He turned another sideways glance at Erin to find that she was still staring blankly despite her name being brought into the conversation directly.

  “Tell me about these casters,” Madison asked skeptically. He basically had accepted that magic was real at this point, but there was still a part of him that didn’t want to believe it. It was like learning about dinosaurs your entire life and then finding out that they weren’t all extinct like everyone thought they were—they were just living on the other side of the world.

  “I was wondering when you would get back around to asking about that . . . It’s impossibly hard trying to explain everything all at once,” Warren lamented. “I wish Davion would do a better job of it for once without leaving this for us to explain. So, going back to what I was sort of leading up to earlier, K’yer Utane was created at the end of the worst period in our recorded history. The training you receive here is bar none the best in the world. We might be isolated from everyone else and hidden away behind magical barriers, but that doesn’t mean we’re completely cut off from the rest of the world as well. In fact, that would basically defeat our purpose. We’re not here to create some utopia by separating ourselves from everyone, and if we can’t keep an eye on what’s going on and an ear out for trouble, we wouldn’t be very effective.”

  Warren sighed and took a long drink from his thermos before continuing. “You’ve noticed the four towers set at the center of the compound?”

  “What? Giant towers the size of skyscrapers?” Madison asked sarcastically. “Built from material that should never stand up to that type of construction? No. I haven’t. Where are they?”

  Warren looked at him strangely for a moment. “What’s a skyscraper?”

  Oops. Madison sighed. “Forget about that. You were telling me about the towers and how they relate to casters. Are they there for some type of magic ritual or something? Summoning the dead, maybe? They line up with the position of the sun and moon in certain seasons and are used for astrological predictions? They’re really ultra-sophisticated time dials to tell what time of day it is?”

  Warren scowled at him for a moment, twisting his mouth around in displeasure. Finally, he seemed to just let it go. Madison’s sarcasm apparently wasn’t worth bothering with for the moment. “Each tower belongs to a different school: casters, healers, rogues, and warriors.”

  It finally dawned on him what everyone had been skirting around the entire time. “School? So K’yer Utane is really just a giant school? An academy?”

  “Yes and no. It certainly has other purposes, but learning is the main thing you’ll do here. But, don’t be mistaken: It’s closer to a military academy in that regard than it is to any traditional school you might be used to, I think. Most of what you learn here isn’t about literature or the arts, though those things can be explored a fair bit. What you learn here is how to fight. How to use magic. How to protect yourself and—”

  “And how to kill,” Madison uttered, finishing the sentence for him. “So, each tower is a different school? You can just show up and take classes?”

  “Well, yes,” Warren admitted somewhat reluctantly. “Although, it helps if you actually have some degree of aptitude for it beforehand. You’ll never turn a rampaging bull into a thief, and you’ll never teach a rock to cast lightning bolts. That said, the lessons from the other towers can often be useful no matter what your primary school is. Understanding how magic works can lead to an understanding of how to counter it, for example.”

  Madison nodded thoughtfully. If he was going to accept that magic was real, and he basically had at this point, he was going to have to accept it all, not just part and particle. That said, he knew that understanding how something worked meant being able to destroy it. A stack of rocks could be built into a bridge, but if you pulled out the keystone, the entire thing would fall apart. If his analogy and Warren’s explanation were accurate, that knowledge could prove priceless. “So, everyone has a primary school?”

  “Yeah. When someone arrives, they are tested to see if they have any aptitude for any one of the four schools. If they do, there is a chance that they will remain here. If not, they’re . . .”

  “They’re not kindly shown the exit and asked to leave.” Madison sighed. “Can’t let the world know exactly where this place is, after all. That’s why they said I’d be hanging around for a while. I don’t have any choice, do I?”

  “No, not really. And, in your case, I think you really are going to be around for a while. I watched your test, remember? I was there with Rae.”

  Madison shrugged. “You were both there freezing your asses off even though it wasn’t really that cold. I remember that much. Other tha
n that, I was a bit too preoccupied to be keeping tabs on you. What was with that, anyway? Are all the tests done in the middle of the woods where people have to half freeze to death before anything fun starts?”

  At the mention of the testing, Erin finally started showing signs of life again. Sort of. She moved in so far as to slide off of the rock they were sitting on and to lay down in some grass nearby under one of the blue-purple trees. She still seemed to be spaced out, but there was a tiny bit more life in her eyes now than there had been before.

  Warren snorted and shook his head. “No, it really was freezing. It still can’t understand how it didn’t really bother you that much.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother Davion that much, either,” Madison countered. “That big lunk just stood there and watched while I got thrashed around by that wraith. How did you do against it by the way? Is there some trick that I was supposed to figure out? Holy water hidden in the chess board or something?”

  “No,” Warren answered solemnly. “You don’t get it. Davion is a Guardian. There’s not much in the way of hot or cold weather that is really going to bother him. He would probably freeze to death before he’d ever feel the cold, and that would be incredibly hard to achieve. Actually, I think it’s more accurate to say that he’d be frozen alive and still not feel the cold. He’s a trained warrior, through and through. There’s a skill you can learn as a Sworn—a talent or whatever you want to call it—that builds up your natural resistances to the elements, and there’s another that you can learn to disassociate yourself with a particular element as well. I guess you could do it for all of them, although I’ve never heard of anyone managing to do more than one.”

  “Disassociate?” he asked.

  “Pretty much means what it sounds like it does. You’ll never be burned by fire, but you’ll never start one, either. You’ll never be numbed by the cold, but you’ll never cast a freezing spell or freeze water into ice. Once you disassociate yourself with an element, it’s as if you just completely ignore each other.”