Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  It was only as they left that I realized I was entirely nude, kneeling in the mud with my hands caked in dirt. “Where . . . what happened?” I asked numbly.

  “You spoke out against the King, Lillin, during one of his speeches. He punished you.” The man answered, and it was his voice that brought home who he was. I’d never really looked at him closely before. His skin was pale like most Wardens, streaked with black where his blood had once run red. His eyes might have been green once, but it was hard to tell now, and his hair had little of its original brown remaining.

  I tried to stand up, but it wasn’t easy. My legs were aching and Ghoul had to help me to my feet. Ghoul. “He is wrong.” I said, thinking of the King. “He is going to make things worse.”

  “I know.” Ghoul answered, and then he reached up and took off his tattered cloak, hanging it around my neck. “Most of us know, but he has commanded it done, and there is no resistance. The Iron Will is . . . well, you’ve felt it now. He wasn’t even that hard on you. He went easy because you’ve only been a Warden a short time.” Ghoul scowled.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, confused by this whole turn of events, disoriented, and feeling keenly violated.

  “I heard you at the meeting, but I couldn’t come straight from there to find you. People would have noticed. I came as soon as it began to get dark though. You’ve been here digging for four hours. Come along, we should talk.” He put an arm around me, not in a familiar, lecherous way, but in a guiding manner, and in that moment I let him lead. I didn’t know where we were going, or why, but that was just how things were with Ghoul. At that moment it felt good to be with someone familiar.

  “He is inhuman.” I said after we’d walked a bit, heading further into Forge, far out into the back fields.

  “Yes, he was changed long ago. He is a bit like the Blackened, but not as bad. Yet. He will come back worse, though. Still, you surprised him. You surprised everyone. Being able to say anything while he was giving a speech was an incredible show of Will. I dare say he hasn’t been surprised like that in a very long time.” Ghoul laughed, the sound as unhinged as ever, but somehow less dark than it had once been.

  “Why am I different, Ghoul?” The question bubbled up from inside of me. I’d considered it many, many times, wondered what this all meant, but it was the first time I’d given voice to it out loud. “Why am I like this? Why did I survive the water test?”

  Ghoul’s expression dimmed a bit, the mirth fleeing his eyes. “I don’t really know. I don’t know why you are so incredibly strong, or how I knew you would be, how I knew I had to press you to make you this way. I don’t know why I could make golems and no one else could, why my Will has taken the form that it has. I dream of futures we might never have, and sometimes they hint at things that might really happen, or things that should happen.” He gave a helpless shrug. “Sometimes I think I’ve dreamt something important, but then it turns out to be just a dream. I wish I had answers. I think there are forces at work that have purposes too vast and unknowable for us to fathom.”

  I thought he might stop, but he went on. “There are driving elements that have existed forever. They underpin creation and existence, but they aren’t sentient. They have purpose and drive, but they don’t work like we do. Everburn is such a force. It is a flame that wishes to consume, and this other thing, this darkness that assails us now, it is another force. It exists to twist and madden. Something else drives my dreams, and drives your Will. That, though, is just a theory. It’s the mad ponderings I’ve struggled with for years. It might be no more accurate than the things in our history books, just bits of truth strung together into something desperately wanting to be a whole.”

  I let my shoulders slump. I’d hoped for real answers, but apparently there were none to find, at least not here. “I’d hoped you knew more.”

  “I thought I did for a time, but things change, and the world is far more complicated than any of us could imagine.” He sounded as tired as I felt.

  Something caught my eye and I stopped in my tracks. I’d seen the fire from further away, but we’d drawn nearer now and I could tell what was burning. The metal bodies were piled high, massive beams of wood laid out like some giant campfire beneath them. The flames popped and hissed as the bodies of golems roasted on the pyre and my stomach twisted in horror and revulsion.

  “Is this what I’m here to see?” I asked, my voice a bit thin. I didn’t need such a horror just then. I wasn’t sure I could take it.

  Ghoul looked over at the fire and shook his head. “No, this is just something that is happening. The golems are out of control. They’re killing people in the streets, Wardens too if they can get their hands on them. They have to be destroyed now.” He didn’t sound happy. “I can feel them coming unwound in the flames, the vestiges of used Will slashing out from their bodies and trying to find me again. Some of it makes it back, but more of it is simply destroyed. Each one that dies takes a toll on me. Each one adds to the burden I’ve created for myself. It’s like I’m recovering the clarity I lost while doing this for years.”

  I looked over at Ghoul and then up to his face which had a haunted expression etched upon it. I felt a desire to offer some kind of comfort to the man, but I didn't know what to say. He did terrible things, and this was the result of that, but he did them with no other choice. I wanted to like him, but it was so hard to do when I thought of Ori.

  My eyes snapped back to the fire. “Ori.” I said her name, wondering if she burned there with the others. My heart ached in my chest, but maybe it was for the better. It had to be for the better. At least she wouldn’t suffer anymore.

  “Ori isn’t there.” Ghoul said, and strangely I felt relief.

  “How do you know?” The question slipped past my lips.

  “I know them all by name. They are like children to me, small pieces of myself brought into the world with the help of another.” He shrugged. “I know them all. Come along, there is something I need to show you.” He said, and he reached out and took my hand, leading me on again.

  15.2

  I followed after Ghoul, finding it strange that I was being led naked through the Forge by a man I barely trusted, and had frequently hated in my time as a student here. He was easy enough to hate, but he also seemed possessed of a sense of compassion hidden beneath the madness he’d brought upon himself.

  We reached an area in the very back corner of the Forge and came upon two Wardens standing guard at the entrance to a stone walled area with a large gate. They snapped to attentive positions as we neared.

  “I’ve brought a consultant for my project.” He told them. “Stand aside, we have work to do.”

  The guards simply nodded and moved out of his way as he lead us past them towards a small hut that was stationed against the wall of the Forge, hidden by the shorter stone wall that had been erected around it. “This is where they have me working now. They think I can find a way to fix everything, bring the golem's back under our control. I’ve told them it’s not possible, but they don’t listen, and perhaps they’re right not to. I can bring the golems back.” He laughed at this, as though it were a great joke.

  “You can bring them back?!” I asked, shock evident in my voice. “Ghoul, why aren’t you doing it? You could save lives!” I’d just been considering not hating the man for a moment only to be faced with this.

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Lillin.” We’d reached the hut. “I cannot bring them all back. I’m weakening, and what goes into this process is almost impossibly hard. Then there is the matter of time. Each one takes a very, very long time. I have to put so much work into it, and more . . . “ He gave a half smile. “Without the darkness to fuel their lives, to spark their existence, they need something else. I only have so much of that to give.” He opened the door and stepped inside, and I followed after him, as though unable to stop myself. The last time he’d taken me to see one of his projects had not been pleasant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this new on
e, but I also couldn’t turn back. I was too far into this. I had a way of stumbling into things apparently, a curiosity that drove me at the worst of times.

  This thought lead me to look back on my time with Zarkov. He’d been even more curious than I had, the sweet damned fool. He’d always had to know. Every doorway we’d crossed was another mystery to him, and I knew that not knowing about those other worlds had been hard on him. I missed him very much, and thinking of missing him made me think of Dreea, who I missed in a similar way. My heart felt leaden in my chest.

  The room we walked into looked like Ghoul had been spending a great deal of time there. There were bits and pieces of equipment everywhere, tools I couldn’t recognize, and intricate little mechanisms of unknown origin lined the walls, some tucked away in wood boxes and others just sitting on shelves. All of this was of course secondary to the sight that drew my eyes to the center of the room.

  “Ghoul, what is that?” I asked, tentatively approaching the table that sat at the middle of this chaotic workshop. There was a golem atop it, or something that looked a bit like one. It was very different in many ways. It wasn’t as large or as hulking. It was just a little bigger than a person might be, and the design work was intricate and precise.

  The metal was brightly finished, a polished white that seemed to shimmer blue in the light, and the detail work done in intricate gold offset the white nicely. I gave it a second look and wondered if it wasn’t a golem at all, but maybe just a suit of armor, the kind a guardsmen might wear to protect himself only of much better quality. Wardens didn’t wear this kind of armor. Some of us wore chainmail, but it generally just slowed us down. We relied on our Will to shield us, and if necessary, to heal us.

  “I don’t wear armor.” I said, thinking maybe this was some kind of strange gift he’d made for me. It was touching, but I wasn’t going to learn how to fight in that.

  Ghoul gave a short laugh. “Well, it’s not armor, not for you anyway. It’s something far more interesting. I’m calling it the chrysalis. This is what a golem could be.” He looked over at me, his faintly green eyes meeting mine. “This is Ori, Lillin.” A heavy silence settled over us.

  I was far too shocked to say anything, and he took that moment to go on “I’ve been working on the ideas here for years and years, maybe close to a hundred, but until all of this mess with the golems going out of control began, I’ve never had time to do more than tinker with bits and pieces, but this is the result of that tinkering, and the hard work of a team of very skilled craftsmen. I had a hard time locating and subduing Ori, but I knew it had to be her.”

  A spark of anger burned to life inside me. “How could you do this to her?” I snapped, my voice almost shaking in anger. “Hasn’t she suffered enough for you?”

  He held up his hands. “Wait, Lillin, listen and understand. She is not suffering now.”

  I stopped, about to yell at him, on the cusp of knotting my will into a ball and crushing him with everything I could muster. It might have done no good at all, but I was that furious with him in that moment.

  I took a firm hold of my anger, though it was a monumental task. “She isn't suffering?” I asked between gritted teeth.

  He shook his head. “Right now she is asleep, in stasis. The old golems required pain to run. They were fueled by torment, the gears of the machine lubricated by suffering, but this is entirely different. This shell will not hurt the one who wears it. It will give them a second chance at existence.”

  I was more than a little confused, but the anger was very slowly trickling away. “What about all the trauma experienced while she was in the other form? How will she react to finding out she’s just a few pieces of meat floating in a metal shell?” Some anger did slip into my voice, but if he was telling the truth and she wasn’t hurting anymore, then at least that was something to be happy about.

  “I can’t erase that, but the state she is in now will help her rejuvenate. When I wake her, she will have had time to heal and recover. I can’t know for certain if she’ll be happy as she is, but she will be better than she was. She won’t hurt any longer. She will have a chance to go on.” Ghoul looked worried and maybe a little excited. I understood then that this was his chance at a partial redemption in his own eyes. He was trying to, in some small way, right the wrongs he’d done in creating the golems. He’d chosen to try this on Ori because she was my friend, and Ghoul felt that we were connected. He thought that we were friends.

  Were we friends? Perhaps in a way we were.

  I looked down at Ori with a soft sigh. This new form was feminine in some ways, though they were subtle. It looked like very beautiful, very well crafted, armor. Could she be happy like this? She wouldn’t be suffering anymore, at least not physically, but would the horror be any less to her? I wasn’t sure if this was better than death. That would, I thought, be up to Ori to decide.

  “What of her free will?” I asked, remembering that Ori had been bound by the Will of the wardens in her other form.

  “Returned to her.” Ghoul gave one of his mad little grins. “The Wardens would be furious if they knew, but I have not bound her in any way.”

  That seemed like trouble. “Won’t they be furious with you when they find out?”

  He shrugged. “Once she is awake it won’t matter how they feel about me. This is to be my last work anyway.”

  “Your last work?” I was surprised to hear that. “Won’t you want to do others? There are a great many golems. I’ve seen the grove.”

  He raised an eyebrow at this. “I didn’t think many knew about that anymore, maybe only one or two who actually cared.” Then he shook his head. “No, this will be the only one. I dreamed it, and I think this dream was true. There are things I’m not certain of, but that part seems set. It feels real to me.”

  I was quiet for a moment as I considered all of this. He could have chosen anyone to bring back. He’d been making golems for a long time, and there had to be others that he’d known. “Why Ori?” I asked, my thoughts stuck on that fact. “There were so many others.”

  Ghoul shrugged. “She was important to you. I wanted to do something for you that didn’t hurt. A part of me, I think, wishes we were friends and not just two people aligned in a goal through some strange happenstance of fate. People are what make time worth having, they give live meaning, make it worth something, and I have had nothing for so very long.”

  These were shocking words coming from him, more shocking because of how sad they sounded. I wasn’t used to hearing such somber, honest words from this strange man. He’d only ever touched on this type of sincerity once before, and that had been when he’d offered to take me away from sights he’d been on the cusp showing me beneath the school. I pulled the cloak he’d lent me more tightly about my naked body, feeling cold and confused. He’d given me the cloak so that I didn’t have to walk through the crowds unclothed, even if I was far past embarrassment with my body any longer. He’d come to help me when no one else had, even knowing that it would not be the King’s desire. Maybe Ghoul was a friend after all. He was certainly a strange one, but still a friend. He was trying.

  I smiled and nodded. “Friends, then, Ghoul. Thank you for trying.” I looked back at Ori, or the body that would be Ori when she woke. I had no idea how she would take to being what she was at this point, or how she would deal with what had happened to her before. “Do you think she’ll be alright?” I asked.

  Ghoul was smiling, a surprisingly restrained version of his normal mad grin. He gave a small nod. “I hope she will. I can’t know for certain, but she was strong. I like to think that she will get better. She will need time, and a friend to help her, but she will be herself again if she can survive the initial shock.”

  My eyes coursed over the armor again. It was incredible craftsmanship, but she would still be confined to a metal shell. That would change a great deal for her. She’d had hopes and dreams, things she wanted in life, things she would never get to have now. I felt conflicted.
I wanted to be happy, but it was difficult seeing the challenges that would lay ahead for Ori.

  “When will you wake her?” I asked, looking back at Ghoul.

  “Soon. There are a few more changes I need to make, things that I need to be certain of. I’ll probably be ready tomorrow.” His tone was unusually calm. “I want to be certain this goes as well as it can. This is my most important work, Lillin. This is nothing like the golems. They weren’t even all my creation, not really. That blackness did most of the work. This is entirely different, and it’s not something that can ever be replicated. It has to be right the first time.” His pale green eyes focused on mine again. “I need you to be careful, though. You can’t keep making yourself a target. The King will be watching you now, and once he comes back from getting Everburn he will be even more dangerous than he is now. Please, don’t draw his ire again.”