Gravetower

by Kell Inkston

  Meeo’s expression flattens a bit. “You understand, My Lady, they do call him The Humiliator of Gods for a good, quite serious reason, yes? He is not the sort to pass willing challengers. As such, he has the true personality of an overlord; he won’t back down unless it’s for the good of someone he cares deeply for, and I expect he won’t be taking any accomplices for this one. Order— I know she’s always focused on the mission, so she will do her best to bypass as many of her enemies as possible to get right to us. It’s Chaos that we should worry about. My estimation is that he will announce his entry in a way that all in the keep will take notice of, and then fight with as many who would rise in defense. I know you care for your subjects, but their lives will be to good purpose.”

  Pales gently rests her open hand along her cheek. “I was worried of just that. Do the books mention how many will die by his hand if we should allow him in?”

  Meeo looks away. “The most conservative estimation totals it up to at least three thousand.”

  “…That’s half the house.”

  “It is, of course, your decision to make, My Lady.”

  Pales looks away as well in thought. “To kill him would be… the greatest achievement of any life form.”

  Meeo shrugs in admission. “That it certainly would be.”

  “And to take Order’s blood for my own. I would be… Not even the O.E.L. could stand to my will.”

  “That is certainly true.”

  Pales stands straight with full dignity. “I’ve made my decision.”

  “Yes, Masteress?”

  “By the end of tonight, they will both be under my foot; Chaos’ body will be lunar mud under my hand, and Order will offer her flesh to me. By the end of tonight, Overgoddess would not be too much of a stretch— I should dare say.”

  Meeo bows. “Then so it shall be, Overgoddess.”

  Pales smiles. “I like that…. Now to your duty, my dearest pet. Show me the true path to take.”

  “As you wish it, my faithful owner,” Meeo says with another bow before she exits the room.

  She closes the door behind a gleefully cackling Pales, already pouring herself a long glass of old blood. Just as the latch sets, Meeo smiles again— this time for herself.

  Everything is still going exactly according to plan.

  Chapter Twenty: Setting on the Mantle of Darkness

  Elsewhere at this time, a small squad of security minions pile out their captive humans through one of Towerne’s shockingly high number of space gates.

  “Who does this one look like?” a buff, human-height minion asks a small one with a marker.

  The little one with an artsy beret pushes the marker’s backside against his chin in thought. “Erm… Bitchboy Dongleface!” He exclaims with a peppy stab of the marker.

  The large one nods, arms crossed in approval. “Damn right.”

  “H-how dare you!” Knight Generosity shouts, his sword and shield marked up with embarrassing depictions and inside jokes that only Chaos’ minions would get.

  The small one looks back to the big one with a permissive glance. “Only thing I heard was ‘how dare you not draw more dicks on my stupid faaaace~!’” he exclaims right before scribbling another set of even more charming things on Generosity’s nose.

  “Damn— never knew tossing out prisoner weaklings would be this fun, Insult Minion.”

  “Pretty sure you never knew about anything, ever,” Insult Minion chimes in with a wicked smile.

  Gut-Punch Minion scoffs, halfway charmed and halfway insulted by his little partner. “Whatever, dude.”

  “Alright,” Insult Minion announces, pulling back his marker from Knight Generosity’s face. “He’s good!”

  “Sweet,” Gut-Punch Minion says as he slings up Generosity in a single move and tosses him over to a brand new minion, who still hasn’t been given a name.

  The new minion catches Generosity as if he were a precious babe, someone to be treasured and not handled so roughly.

  “I guess we won’t be catching up over drinks after all— sorry,” the unnamed, human-sized minion says under his breath, just before swinging the knight into the space gate.

  Generosity flinches in confusion a moment, before his eyes widen in realization. “C-…Clar-” is all he can get out before being engulfed in the portal’s aperture, sending him right back through a network of other secure gates. They will, after a minute or so of travel, deliver him via unknown passage to New Reinen’s Royal Knight HQ, with love from The One True Overlord.

  Insult Minion looks over to the new minion. “Whoa, did that guy recognize you?”

  The nameless minion shakes his head with a mixed expression. “No— but I recognized him.”

  Gut-Punch Minion and Insult Minion chime together with a knowing coo.

  “Heh, coworker?” Gut-Punch asks.

  “Ex coworker?” Insult corrects.

  The new minion nods. “Yeah….”

  “Knight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who were you?”

  The new minion looks aside, not blind to how incredibly surreal this situation is. “Glory. I was Knight Glory.”

  “Aww shit, one of the big boys. How do you feel?”

  “I…” He looks down at his blacker-than pitch, light-absorbing hands; they are contorted into a lithe, thin frame entirely unlike his true body, yet he feels with it a power, energy, and clarity-of-thought that he has never once enjoyed in his human days. “I don’t know yet.”

  Gut-Punch hums as his thick antennae twitch in consideration. “Maybe you should talk to Bird-Feeding Minion.”

  The nameless minion’s round eyes squint crassly. “And just what good would some minion do for me?”

  “She was a knight too,” Gut-Punch Minion says, “I bet she could acquaint you with the life— ya’ know?”

  “What the hell, dude?” Insult Minion snaps with a sharp glare. “You’re such a freak, knowing what everyone was before they were infused.”

  Gut-Punch Minion’s white jaws stretch to a grin. “Does that make you feel bad, sloth?”

  Insult Minion jolts animatedly onto a nearby street-lamp, holding on as if for safety. “H-how did you know?!”

  “I ask around a lot. Besides, you’re a pretty slow guy and you love holding onto stuff.”

  Insult Minion scoffs. “Th-that’s not tr-…” He takes a quick moment to get off of the street lamp, which he was holding onto not unlike a sloth to a tree. “That’s bullshit, man! You d-” Insult Minion goes on, but the nameless minion tunes out.

  Bird-Feeding Minion? There’s simply no way.

  The nameless minion ditches the arguing duo and goes in search. He passes by directories, uses maps, asks directions, and after nearly an hour finds himself in the dry, flickering lights of General Delegation Minion’s office.

  The nameless minion marvels at the weird tube-shaped lights overhead as he sits down.

  “It’s called electricity,” a short, snooty-toned minion mentions over the counter.

  “I know that,” the new minion rebutts, “It’s just… I’ve never seen it before. It’s… weird.”

  “Hrm, from one of those dimensions I guess,” the minion says as he sorts paperwork about huffily. “Well, out with it. Why are you here?”

  The one once named Glory is taken aback. “Uh… I’m looking for a… bird feed minion?”

  The minion behind the counter asserts his gaze with a sarcastic look. “…Are you?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”

  “And it’s under ‘bird feed minion’?”

  The new minion looks aside. “Uh, something like that.”

  “Yeah….”General Delegation Minion sorts through some papers as he takes the occasional glance at some lists. “Bird-Feeding Minion?”

  “That’s the one!” the new minion spouts.

  General Delegation Minion’s features sharpen as he looks over the minion in question’s file. “Jungle Tower. Looks like she’s in charge of the tropic av
iary at the moment.”

  “Then that’s where I’ll go. Thanks,” the new minion says with a curt nod as he turns to leave. He stops in his tracks. “Eh, where’s-”

  “To your right when you get out about three blocks. Talk to the one with the little Librarium helmet on her head like a hat.”

  “…A hat?”

  General Delegation Minion looks aside, as if in embarrassment. “Like most of us, her head’s a bit… plumper than it used to be.”

  “Oh, yeah, guess they would be… heh.” He waves off the official looking minion, who only sighs.

  The fairly lanky minion follows the directions to a t, until he finds the tall, hat-helmeted minionette beside the communal-use space gate just like he said. He compliments her hat, and she sends him on his way to the Jungle Tower.

  He searches about in the rich, moisture-dense air amidst any number of working minions. From overheard conversations he gleans that Overlord Chaos is about, so everyone’s rushing around at the moment, trying to look as good and as busy as possible.

  He skims past the crowds to get to the aviary, which greets him with a dense chatter of birds.

  The-once-Glory finds her sitting alone on a bench, tossing out bread crumbs to a colorful assortment of goofy birds.

  He watches the minion toss out some more from her pouch for a pause, each of them waiting on the other one.

  “It’s been a while,” she says finally with a still-water tone, not looking at him as she flings out another handful.

  “It’s….” the nameless minion's voice falters as he falls to his knees. “All these years.”

  She smiles, her ghastly jaws curling up to the sides cartoonishly— a great contrast to the seriousness of the situation. “I’ve lost count.”

  He stumbles up to a run and embraces her, still braced on the bench. “You’re alive! I'd lost hope!”

  She hugs back. “It’s nice to see you, Clarn, but I hope you don’t expect things to go back to how they were.”

  Clarn Minion scoffs. “No… no I don’t… I just thought… when Chaos kidnapped you with all the rest I-”

  Bird-Feeding Minion looks up to the treetops with calm, bright eyes. “It was the second best day of my life.”

  He draws back. “…You hated it that much, did you?”

  “No, but my eyes were opened— and yours will be now, too. Have you been infused long?”

  “…It’s my first day.”

  She nods. “Things work differently here. You don’t need to sleep, or eat, or anything— but you can if you want to. You can work doing what you love or what you find useful, you can even become a seer and peer in on that young new wife of yours.”

  He flinches and looks away, his moon-white eyes twitching. “I… I guess you would have found out about that.”

  She hugs into him. “You thought I was dead. It was such a long time. I’ve found time to forgive, and I hope you can find time to forgive yourself.”

  “…So my kids, and my… other lovers?”

  “They’ll have to get along without you, just like I did.”

  There’s a quiet moment, where they sit together on the bench, and then she rests her head on his dark shoulder.

  “So… You’re happy here?” he asks.

  She nods, brushing against his shoulder.

  He looks out to the birds, hopping about over the bread. Very gently, he wrests a small handful of crumbs from her pouch, and tosses it.

  “They’ll be okay. No one relies on me anyway. A vacation… might be nice.”

  She nods again. “Would you like to meet him?”

  “Who?”

  “The Overlord.”

  He leans back with an awkward look. “Oooh, I met him.”

  “As a friend?”

  “N-no I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  “After all this time and all those stories, I was really just another ‘sword-glinting idiot’ for him to best in mere seconds. How does something get that fast?” He asks, quoting a popular passage in a well-known poem.

  She presses her shoulder against him gently. “You’ll see it a different way soon enough. Nothing makes us happier than to watch him.”

  The untitled minion scoffs. “Just watch him?”

  “Yeah. It’s like looking at your security— your nation, your society and your values— everything walking in front of you as an invincible, impregnable giant of a person. He makes us feel so safe, Clarn, and you’ll see soon that he does so much more than lord over a bunch of minions; he’s a father, and a friend to all of us.”

  He crosses his arms. “And knowing what he’s done… what he does now, you still feel this way?”

  “He thinks a lot about the people he hurts. He’s very kind, but you just met him on the wrong side of the fence.” She flings out the rest of the crumbs before getting up and brushing herself off. She’s much, much thinner than he remembers—- but he’s certain that’s because she’s a minion now.

  “Come with me, and we can talk to him,” she says, offering her hand.

  He laughs. “What, and he’s just going to spare some time for two random minions out of his tens of thousands?”

  She nods; he wasn’t expecting that.

  After a pause, he takes her hand, and she pulls him up from the bench.

  The two step hand-in-hand through the swirling jungle landscape; creatures and plants that Clarn, the man, had never once dreamed of seeing thrive all around them.

  “Lots of… nature, here.”

  “He likes collecting,” she says simply.

  “Guess I’d be into that too if I could just cross dimensions on a whim.”

  After a minute-long trek and a quick vine-swinging primer from Dynamic Entry Minion, the two swing along a large creeper across a vast open valley— reaching the other side in just seconds.

  Again, they’re back in the hustle and bustle of the minion traffic at large— some scrambling about, and others looking on in awe all at the same spot.

  “There he is,” she says, both her finger and antennae pointing out slightly.

  It’s The Overlord, surrounded by his loyal minions. Beside him is none other than Aoline, dressed in gear from Chaos’ personal armory that would compete with even the most elite of the Royal Knights. They’ve all gathered up at one of the nearby space gates to see the two off in their great quest.

  “He only has one arm,” the nameless minion observes with a hint of awe to his voice. In no depiction or story has he ever seen or heard of the High Overlord losing a limb or taking any wound of any kind, for that matter.

  “He cares not for his own safety when his charges are in danger. He rushed out to save you and the party from Oa.”

  Ex-Clarn draws back. “Th-… that’s right… there was all this fighting and… and next thing I remember I woke up during a funeral… what happened to everyone?”

  Bird-Feeding Minion’s face is mixed with sadness. “Some dead, another captured. They’re taking their leave to rescue her now.”

  “…Knight Love?”

  “They’re going to find out where the vampires hide, and then he’s going to do what he does best.”

  “And just what does Chaos do best?”

  Her sadness jives only a moment with humor. “Provide examples.”

  The nameless minion can’t disagree with that statement. A matter of fact, his shockingly quick demise at The Overlord’s hand is now more of the humorous punchline of a joke to him than a real memory.

  “I’m… I’m going up to talk to him.”

  “Good luck,” she says with a loose smile.

  The new minion trots up with a quick pace, ready to address his new master straightly— but with every step, it becomes harder. As if approaching a monument to a country, there’s a certain weight and awe and legacy to what he’s looking at. That in all his thousands of years, he should finally lay eyes on Chaos— as a lord, and not as an enemy.

  “H-” He skews his breath, but his volume was loud enough
to draw everyone’s attention.

  Chaos slowly turns his head, and his smile widens.

  Mystically, Clarn, or whatever was Clarn, is no longer frightened by that grin. In fact, it tells him that everything is perfectly alright— that his overlord is on the case.

  “Now just what could it be…” Chaos squints. “Nameless Minion?” He asks this, somehow perceiving Clarn’s lack of a job out of his thousands of minions, and yet unable to remember infesting him just hours ago.

  “You’re going off to save Knight Love?” he asks, suddenly raising a pissed hiss from the surrounding crowd of minions at the utterance of a knight’s name.

  Chaos squint an eye in humor. “If you mean my loyal Friendion, then yes, I must go and save her. I couldn’t learn much from those books, I’m afraid, but I shall do my very best to bring her back unharmed.”

  “…Then may I come with you?” The minion asks, a whole head shorter than the human Clarn and quite a bit slimmer.

  Chaos grins. “I’m afraid this fight is one that would not be helped much with more minions… especially if they cannot keep themselves alive. I would feel you best stay here and tend the land.”

  “But… I…” The minion that was Clarn is stunted for words; his brashness with others means nothing at this moment when in front of Chaos— practically his killer, and yet a killer that has given him a new lease on life.

  Chaos hums in a long, rolling tone as he squats down just a tad and pets the new minion with his only arm. “Now, don’t worry. I understand you’re just scared for me, and I find that very admirable. You know, we could use a good worrier to make sure nothing goes awry.”

  The newly dubbed Worry Minion starts back in shock. “Hey… hold up, you don’t mean to sa-”

  “I do! Isn’t it wonderful!” Chaos looks up to greet his surrounding minions. “Everyone, meet Worry Minion!”

  Clarn can hear the applause— but far more pertinent is the row of snickers and humored jeers.

  “S- My Lord! I don’t want to be Worry Minion!”

  “Well, then stop worrying all the time.” He rubs Worry Minion on the head like a pup before standing back to full height and turning with Aoline for the space gate.