His heart was still tightening as Anthony felt compelled to go through that hidden entrance.
“Anthony?” Aila asked as Anthony walked forward, as if a puppet with someone else pulling on his strings.
***
Claire was watching Tamarra’s office. When she saw her pass the box to Anthony, she had to look away. She cut off the transmission and sat back in her chair, feeling all of her years.
She felt the pain, deep in her bones.
He’s so close, but if he was to see me in this state... She would have cried out if she could, thrown a tantrum if she released her self-control.
She felt something; she looked up. She heard something being broken in the distance. Alarms were going off.
She got up from her desk and moved to the main hall. She saw Damien in his full armor standing at the entrance, guarding her with his massive aged war hammer.
“Huh? Not again!” Damien complained as he was thrown to the side as if he were a rag doll.
There’s only one person I know who can throw Damien like that!
Claire felt giddy as she saw that familiar armor standing at the entrance to the hall. Behind him, Tamarra and Aila ran up.
Neither of them said anything. The hall was silent, other than Damien falling out of the wall and crashing to the floor.
***
Anthony’s heart moved in all different kinds of ways as he looked at the woman in front of him.
She was a lich: an embodiment of evil, someone who had destroyed their humanity. Though Anthony didn’t feel revulsion. He felt as if he were burning all over; he felt as if he were on needles and wrapped in pillows.
His eyes burned brighter than ever as parts of his memories started to fall into place. It was as if he had been trying to solve a puzzle without a picture, but now it came into focus.
A young knight who had wandered, helping people until he ran into a young mage who was aloof from all of the world. Who seemed untouchable. They didn’t realize that they had fallen for each other as they went to join the Guardian Academy to help others. They had denied their thoughts, their emotions until they graduated and were put on assignment together.
Anthony remembered that mysterious smile on their mentor’s face as they were sent off on their first assignment.
All of those emotions, those beautiful and precious memories, rolled forward into one word.
“Claire,” Anthony said.
“Anthony,” Claire said.
Anthony pulled off his helmet and dropped it on the ground. “I’m home.”
Claire let out a laugh. It was broken and painful to hear from her dried-up body. To Anthony, he was soaring as he walked toward her.
“Do you know why?” Anthony asked as he advanced.
“Why?” Claire cocked her hip and tapped her lip.
He saw a young girl with a playful smile on her face as she seemed to be looking for the answer herself.
Anthony walked up to her and pulled her gently to his armor, being as gentle as possible as some of her clothes and skin flaked off. He leaned down so his mouth was next to hers. Her heart inside his chest beat rapidly, as if a nervous schoolgirl.
“You’re my home.”
Claire shook as she put her arms around Anthony.
She tried to speak out, to tell him her loneliness, to tell him how she had missed him.
Anthony didn’t need to hear it. Holding her, it was as if two parts of a whole connected.
Behind him, Dave appeared. Solomon had a smiling mask and Bruce crossed his arms and nodded.
***
Aila looked at the skeleton and the lich hugging, confused. She still held onto her blades. The knight who had been planted in the wall came over, as dust fell from his armor.
“Protector Damien,” Tamarra said with an awkward look.
“Hey, little T,” Damien said.
“You look different,” Anthony said.
“What does that mean?” Claire pushed back and looked at him.
“Nothing that a little moisturizer wouldn’t fix,” Anthony joked.
“You!” Claire had black flames around her and Anthony started running.
“I was joking!” Anthony said with a little panic, looking at his familiars, who looked around, examining the walls and the ceiling, leaving Anthony to fend for himself as purple and black fire balls shot out at him.
A squeak escaped his face as he dodged it.
“Babe! Honey!” Three more went at his head and he power slid on the floor.
“Clair-ikins!” he yelled as he did cartwheels.
“A little moisturizer! You don’t think I’ve tried!” Claire yelled.
“They’ll be at this for a while.” Damien took off his helmet and revealed his handsome face.
But Aila could feel the necromantic power rolling off him. Is he undead?
“Tea?” Damien offered, waving them over to a side room as Anthony pleaded with Claire.
“I waited for you for five hundred years! Anyone would be haggard after knowing you for just five minutes!” Claire yelled.
“Babe! Babe! Come on, we can talk about this!” Anthony cried out as Claire stopped hurling fireballs. “Your beauty only grows with time! You are a goddess in my eyes.” Anthony piled on the compliments.
Claire let out a terrible laugh as more fireballs filled the air.
“What did I say wrong now?” Anthony whined. He was hit with several fireballs, which launched him backward into a wall, hitting him repeatedly and creating a tunnel in the hall’s side.
“Ah, young love.” Damien smiled.
Aila lowered her daggers in defeat as she followed him into the kitchen.
“Safer to leave them to it, I think, and Damien’s scones are amazing.” Tamarra smiled like a little girl.
How is this my life now? Aila thought to herself, looking up. But no gods answered her.
Book 3
Chapter: A History Between a Lich and a Death Knight
Damien pulled on an apron, humming as he worked in the kitchen, taking care to just use his forefinger and thumb as he injected some mana into the magical stove. A flame appeared underneath the pot.
“You sure you don’t want my help?” Tamarra said in a voice tinged with fear. Damien paused as she kept on going, as if fearing he would continue. “Might be better to tell them about Guardian things you know!”
“Well, surely you know about the Guardians?” Damien turned in his massive armor, his hands on his hips. He wore his flower apron with Kiss the Chef on it.
“Why does this keep happening to us?” Tommie asked Aila.
“I—uhh...” Aila simply shrugged and sighed and took a seat.
Tommie nodded in an understanding way as he took a seat as well.
Tamarra got between Damien and the stove.
Damien sat down on a metal chair that supported his weight. “Okay, so there’s a lot to go through, really.” Damien pulled off his helmet.
A shining and scarred bone head with green flames looked at them.
“Dammit!” Tommie yelled, half jumping and leaping before his mind and body took everything in and he sat back in his seat. “Some preamble or warning about being undead! Please!”
“Got a bad memory with an undead?” Damien looked at Tommie in confusion.
The image of Tommie being cradled by Anthony flashed through Aila’s mind as she closed her eyes and shook her head. Ugh, ugh, uhhh—get out of my head! Mental soap!
“Bit skittish? Forget about being dead and all of that now and then, kind of like tattoos, I guess. Forget they’re there—just like, hmm, that’s different.”
“Focus.” Tamarra moved around the kitchen.
Isn’t she like the highest power in Ilsal and she’s relegated to being a cook?
“Stay still!” Claire yelled from the other room as a wave of heat passed the room.
“Oh, got any cookies!” Anthony, who had ducked into the room, now shot out of it as he kept running. “You know how mu
ch I hate cardio!”
“Bag of bones!”
“Armored bag of bones!”
Their fighting returned to background noise as Damien cleared his throat.
“Don’t worry, it’s really hard for them to hurt the other. So, I guess from the beginning then.” Damien held his head with his hand.
“Hmm.” He pulled off his head accidentally and didn’t seem to notice as he held his skull in his hand.
“Well, they first met each other when they were adventurers. He was a kid without a background but he had been able to contract a familiar at a young age. He kind of attracted familiars—they wanted to join him. She was a mage, wasn’t that strong, but stubborn. He fell for her like rock falls for gravity. He went after her; she ignored him—kept him around to adventure. They went and fought stuff, traveled, grew stronger. She got a teacher; he got familiars. They left tales wherever they went—the traveling bard and the princess, they were called.”
“I think I’ve heard those stories. I thought that they were just something to be spoken around the campfire and sing with drinking?” Tommie said.
“Nope, those two.” Damien gestured to the doorway with his head. “The war was picking up—things weren’t going that well. They had become pretty close. She went to the Guardians and he followed. He was much stronger. She vowed to beat him in strength. She became stronger and then found he still followed her around, still wanted to be with her. Seemed like she gave in and they started dating officially. Like, I don’t get that—when are you officially going out, or seeing each other, or dating each other, or just testing the waters? Damn, that is confusing.”
“Think too much and that skull will explode,” Tamarra said as she poured the hot water into cups.
Damien’s flame eyes rolled around in his skull.
“Anyway, the Guardians were created to deal with the lawlessness of Dena. Guardians started appearing all over the place, calming things down when the doors opened. The Agents of Chaos were trying to mess up our rear lines and they did a real good job. The Guardians calmed things down to a certain extent but the doorways led to their world. It allowed them to cross into Dena with impunity. So over they came—corrupting the land, killing people, and trying to take Dena as their own.”
“Watch out. It’s hot.” Tamarra put down the cups. She had added pastries to them as well.
Aila and Tommie muttered their thanks as Tamarra started to clean up.
Their focus returned to Damien.
“Gates to the chaos lands,” Tamarra said, kick-starting him.
“Right! Okay, so they had all of these chaotic beasts come through. The races had to fight them off. Though the races are stronger together rather than apart, the Guardians were used to secure our rear and stop the infighting, used to make sure that there weren’t tensions in the units that were fighting beside one another and then ’cause they got powerful, then they had to fight on the front lines. Of course, Anthony and Claire fought beside each other on the front lines as they were kind of inseparable. They closed down three of the gates by themselves and helped with tens of others.
“They were war heroes. When the last gate was shut, we thought that it was all over. We started to relax. We let our guard down. We didn’t know that the Agents of Chaos had more power than ever and were lying in wait. They infiltrated the different governments, corrupted and changed them from the inside.
“Dena slowly but surely turned on the Guardians, turned from heroes into people who were a police force that was there to suppress the people. Being their own masters with too much power.
“There was fighting and battles. The Guardians seemed to have been killed off. Claire collected them all, including Anthony, and did what she had to. We both did. We hid here. We had to wait. We couldn’t make the Guardians again; they were cursed now. Through Ilsal and Epan, we cleared out the Agents of Chaos slowly and had judges, law and order step up and take over ruling the system. We had to move slowly, in the shadows, making it look as if it were Ilsal and Epan doing it naturally. In the background, we were supporting and guiding them. Now, well, you’re all here—there are signs of the doors opening and it looks like another war will be upon us again.”
“Why do these chaos people attack us?” Aila asked.
“Well, they’re called the Drafeng. They have a large population and their power corrupts and kills them from inside. They need more land to expand into and different power to consume to grow stronger. We call them Agents of Chaos because they cause chaos. Plus, propaganda is a powerful tool!” Damien waved his own skull around without care.
“So they just seek to destroy and kill?” Tommie asked.
“They seek mana and our sources of energy, want to use it to sustain themselves or find a way to survive longer. Maybe? Never really had a lot of contact with them. They see Dena as some backwater. They’re all like, ‘Wow, those people are totally not using that resource properly. So what if we kill them and use it properly? We can use it better. We could just push them to the side. So what if they live in bad conditions as long as we can get access to their mana resources?’ Not all that different to what people in the south of Radal go through all the time in the jewel mines but we look the other way. We just hate the Drafeng because they’re killing our friends and family and attacking our homes. People are messed up.”
After hearing Damien’s words, Aila could only shrug. She was no different. There were only so many causes she could spend her time on.
“Okay, so, these Guardians just disappeared then?”
“Faded into oblivion. Now there is only Anthony.”
“Aren’t you a Guardian?”
“Me? No, I’m just an acolyte. I was supposed to become a Guardian, but I was never sworn in, didn’t take my oath. Claire found me hiding from the force of chaos. I died and she brought me back. And that was years ago.”
“Sounds...complicated,” Aila said.
“The world is never black and white, just a lot of grays thrown together. Hard to separate out the real from the fake. It’s why the Guardians were so powerful and feared—everything that you have ever done revealed to the entire world.” Damien put his skull back on his spine. “That is a lot of power for just a few people to wield.”
“Hey! Hey! DAVE, help me here!” Anthony yelled. “Come on, aren’t you my familiars!”
“Moisturizer!” Claire screeched again as lightning shot past the door.
“Hmm, looks like they’re making up for missed time.” Damien let out a happy sigh, as if he were watching the greatest love story possible.
Tommie, Aila, and Tamarra all looked at one another and then took a drink from their cups.
“Good tea. What kind is it?” Aila asked, feeling that it might be some time until they could leave the little side kitchen.
Chapter: Tuckered ’Lil Guy
They were talking for some ten or twenty more minutes when there was a strange noise from the other room and the curses and elemental magic stopped creating a light display through the doorway.
Damien got up and went to the doorway, looking out.
Aila and Tommie followed afterward, looking out to see Claire standing over Anthony.
“Oh, come on.” She sighed and kicked the armor.
There was nothing as she grabbed his leg and started to drag him across the floor, scraping up the stones. Sparks came off his armor. Aila stuffed her fingers in her ears as Anthony bumped over rocks and Claire dragged him farther into her lair.
She seemed to feel the eyes on her. She looked back, seeing all four staring at her. “He, uhh, well, he’s just taking a short nap. Got all excited, uhh, well...”
Aila swore she saw a lich blush as Claire left quickly. Her increased speed and the uneven floor made Anthony bounce around, hitting the hallway and the floor as she disappeared from sight.
“Well, guess that we should leave them to it,” Tamarra said awkwardly and then cleared her throat. “I’ll get rooms ready for you both to stay in. We
need to make plans and coordinate our efforts.”
“You’re just saying that to make it sound like you have a plan, instead of waiting for Claire to let us know what the plan is,” Damien said.
“You!” Tamarra said, her authoritative edge falling apart.
“What?” Damien shrugged. “I do it all the time!”
***
Tamarra was true to her word: she got Tommie and Aila rooms to rest in.
Aila took a bath, getting rid of the grime from the road.
She studied the room and the bed laying down, ready for sleep to take over. But she was unable to get any rest. With a frustrated sigh, she got back up and looked out at the moon hanging above.
She stepped into a fighting stance and took out her daggers, moving through fighting stances, stretching and waking up her body.
She focused on her movements, her muscles working together to deliver the strongest blow, how she flowed from one move to the next, stopping and restarting until it was fluid.
For the Guardians to be so strong in their prime—just what happened for them to be wiped out? Anthony is supposed to be the only one, kind of alive? What about those other tombs in Radal? Why is Claire no longer seen as a Guardian? What must one go through to become a Guardian? What would it like to be one? Would I want to be one? Could I be one?
She came to a rest with a confused look on her face.
“Do I want to be a Guardian?” she asked herself.
“Yes,” she replied, feeling the answer was right.
“Why?” She pondered on the question. “Anthony is many things, but he is a good person, someone who looks to help all of Dena. Without him, the people in Laisa might have had a civil war. The people of Skalafell might have all died. The people of the caravan, those on the boat—he has touched and saved many lives or made them better. A few people here and there, but even the little things are powerful. Everyone needs help at some point. I want to be there for them like Anthony was.”
She felt a new purpose. She felt nervous. She wanted to be a Guardian but it didn’t mean she would run in without looking at the terms. She was a princess, after all.
Death Knight Box Set Page 31