In other news, now that Vengeance is nigh the Balance can be mourned. Here's the funeral photo.
Fanwork##1524 Words
Goin' Anywhere
A whistle of wind demarcated a single step, the first of many. It would be without direction or destination, but with none to precede it could not be otherwise. Cobbled stone gave way to the soft mud of a distant locale, opening up the world in every direction.
The smell and taste of freedom was at first disorienting. Sparse foliage marked a savanna at the heart of summer, heat radiant from bare patches of dust and rock. Wildfire had recently devastated the area, but the edge of ash on the breeze could not disguise carrion's stink within. He fell to his knees on the bank of an ankle-deep riverbed, full of life-giving water in a bowl of death and decay.
His eyes watered, but only for a moment. Sluggishly he stood, hazy beneath the glare of a foreign Sun. War and torture had sapped his native strength, leaving only unvarnished physic to carry him forward. Twice more the wind whistled and twice more his vision shifted. Cold tore into his lungs, seizing his will to live and calcifying it. Coughing steam that rippled with each sputtering gasp, his body shuffled forward like a man reanimated, a zombified parody of human life.
The pain did not last. His mind returned quickly; the sensation of bare feet against dust and grass forced his attention to the present. Skin and bone were more stubborn, deep scars and nerve damage heavy despite his efforts to reconcile and accept them.
He lacked for tools, for skills, and for simple human dignity. But he hadn't always. Once he had walked at the head of an army, once he had been champion among champions. But failure had been the theme of those days, and his recollection of it had rotted through with time. His advisors had called it a blessing, saying:
"A lost lover's smile is a death's head grin." To walk down that road was to choose death, and he could not give the Tyrant that satisfaction.
Damned hypocrites, every one of them. The Tyrant would be laughing mad if he knew what they did to him.
His steps felt lighter and lighter, his form not repaired but simply growing stronger. Energy accumulated within his chest, a shadow of the might he commanded a lifetime ago. That man had been mighty indeed if his shade alone could shelter him now.
The Sun began to set, but where the grass refused to bronze a glint of violet played tricks with the shadows. A chitter of insects raised in the distance, layering atop one-another like a wild fugue. With nowhere else to go he followed its tune toward the source. The rushing of water buzzed against his ear from then on, as if a torrential rapid were ever to his side, threatening to overtake him. He found it almost comforting, a constant not rooted in his own regrets.
He saw fine in the dark, a trick he'd learned long ago from his war-brother. It had saved him from ambush and eldritch retort alike, though it had not saved the man himself. A hidden trap had crippled him: only the Tyrant's minions were so precise. It was his first warning of that monster's true power, but in his naivete he had realized nothing.
His brother had sworn to die beside him, and he had.
"To die well is to have lived." A saying his family line had carried all the way to its end. Literally; they were his last words. It bit him like a bear-trap that he'd thought so little of it for so long, content instead to chase his first crush in her inane interests. It bit him like lockjaw to admit he simpered like a dog over its meaning in the weeks following his brother's death.
...No. That was what he'd told his constituents over stiff drinks on cold nights. These were the 'deep regrets' he threw to the dogs, knowing even then that his image was all he had left. There he wallowed in self-pity, humanizing himself before men who had spent much but sacrificed little. Now he was free of them, and he would not return without steel in hand.
Advancing forward through grasses that grew ever-taller, he found himself at the root of a tree without branches. If it had a top, he could not see it. Nestled within its roots was a den, the river's roar seeming to tilt towards and into it. The grasses at his back ceased to sway with the breeze and the chitter of insects went silent in anticipation. He had not come this far to back down.
Crawling through the child-sized entryway, he entered a world of dirt and roots. Some were thick enough to bar passage where others were little more than curtains. Going down into the earthen depths, he slipped past bedrock and aquifer alike. Oxygen was in short supply, but in sheer spite of the dust and gasses his vision never faltered. Inch by inch, he wormed his way forward.
To freedom he crept on bended knee. To vengeance he charged empty-handed. His wife had loved philosophical paradoxes like that. She had taught him to love being wrong, to enjoy surprises despite the fear and the doubt. She was a flower of sunrise, an honor to have known and a hero among heroines.
She had died in front of him, taking his last vestige of the future with her. Unlike every other, he hadn't pretended to regret loving her. It would have been a betrayal, living on time her devotion had bought him while claiming she was somehow wrong for doing so.
It was that which bit him deepest. They had all loved the boy and respected the hero; for this they'd thrown away their lives. Being the hero had made him the King piece, but there are no heroes in chess; only plans and a checkered path, no more and no less.
He had become a paradox, the kind that resolves itself.
Bitter and twisted, he resigned himself. Crawling was autonomous; the river washed his mind blank, leaving only emotion. Exhaustion settled into every muscle and joint, pulling his mind down dark recollections of wounds half-remembered. It wasn't long before Slumber would beckon, monolithic and immaculate.
Eyes drooping and hazy, he slid from the tunnel's exit without fanfare. Tumbling a fraction of an inch, his head hit the floor and drew the attention of its residents. In the phosphorescent glow of the cavern's moss-covered walls, he saw them rise to their full height. They looked like saber-toothed tigers, if the prey they had evolved to hunt were the size of skyscrapers. The cavern stretched further still above their heads, their tails trailing oddly long and whispy into a pit of darkness behind them.
Mortal terror surged and struck him right then as every other sense slid out from below. The weight of their paws, the smell of their breath, and the feeling of being pierced by their teeth assailed him all at once. The horrors of war were no stranger to him, but this was somehow more visceral. This was death in practice, the den of gods enfleshed, a certainty that was both terribly intimate and impersonal. This was an end to his story.
But he refused. Hate bubbled up, the solitary honor bestowed upon him by nameless evil and its Tyrant puppet. It pushed through the screaming meat suit of his body and the chemicals in his brain, denying his sensory organs their right to fail and give way. A scarred spirit called upon half-dead magic to break his earthly shackles, and his will did the rest. The glowing lights that bathed the cavern parted as if cut evenly in two, their severed edges turning to smoke in the naked air.
Thereafter stood only a stock of beasts: large and powerful but otherwise mundane. They looked upon him with cold and intelligent eyes, wariness palpable despite inhuman faces. One by one they turned away, going back to sleep or licking themselves dismissively. Those nearest the center parted in unison, wordlessly requesting his presence beyond.
There was no time to worry about it. He went forward into the cavern's depths, where the reigning monarch lay alone. Age had worn upon her, fur faded and posture slumping, but she held her head high. Her steady gaze fell over him with the clarity of cold, still water. On her forehead a wreath of gold-shelled insects shuffled gently, its constituents still vividly alive and chittering happily.
"
Are you weary, traveler? The swarm's song can only be heard by the lost."
It... talks. It talks.
"
We apologize for the baring of teeth earlier. If you wish, we can spare you a place to sleep."
He affirmed without delay. Safety's sweet promise made every buried pain and weakness flare up at once, as if summoned to wage war upon his spent willpower. The Slumber could be denied for no longer.
"
We need only ask one favor of you first, magician..."
Not for the first time in his life, the hero fell to his knees and cursed the kindness of strangers.
