13. END

I listened to the ocean crash far bellow on the rocks. The sky was heavy with clouds and the sunlight came down in golden rays. I watched the light gleaming on the marble.

The shaking had never started again once I exited the fortress. I gave Sabore the scepter and I left. I just started walking, and I didn’t give a damn to where. This place was hell every where, so it didn’t seem to matter much where I ended up in it.

Eventually, I collapsed from exhaustion, right on a mountain path. A goblin tribe found me and dragged me to their cave home. They did me no harm, however. As a matter of fact they were extremely hospitable. I stayed there for about a week, during which they let me rest, fed me and even attended to my many wounds. It was something that really did change my perception of them as a race.

After I left them, for I felt I had to even though I had no where to go, I traveled north out of the mountains. It wasn’t much of a choice to go north, for there was only ocean south and I had no boat. Once I got to the plains the going was smooth and I had much more energy. I found myself in Sae Noklu after some time, so I paid a visit to Taesmi and Groki.

It was some time before I left them. I’m not sure how long, exactly, though I’d wager it to be a year. I left them because of that strange urge to just walk away from there in any direction. I left one day without a word. I went out side to get some water from the stream and I just kept walking. It wasn’t until I’d reached the Kurok River that I had really even noticed it myself.

I traveled east along the river, on the south side. When the river curved north, I veered south into the heart of the desert. I traveled along the dunes in the midday sun until I came to a run down shack of crumbling brick.

It seemed it was the house of the Guardian Dokkdan. For the next to years I lived there with him, doing odd jobs for him until a messenger arrived for me.

“King Sabore has been trying to reach you for some time,” the messenger told me. “You’re hard to keep track of.”

“Thanks, I try.”

The centaur stared at me for a moment before continuing. “He wishes to bestow upon you the highest rank a human can hold. Castle’s Resident Warrior.”

“I don’t want to be the castle’s anything,” I said defiantly.

“Pike, you shouldn’t be so hasty,” Dokkdan said from a shadowy corner. I’d known he was there but the messenger hadn’t. The centaur jumped and turned quickly to face the guardian. “That really is a great honor…”

“It’s one I don’t want,” I said and leaned against the wall, adding. “I didn’t do anything to deserve it anyway…”

“You saved Zylx, didn’t you?” the messenger said. “By recovering the scepter?”

“…Saving Zylx was an unintended side effect of justice,” I muttered.

“Well, it happened regardless of whether you meant to or not,” the guardian said from his corner. “It wouldn’t do you any harm to be honored by the king, anyway.”

“You don’t know that. What if I get killed on my way there? It’d be a lot of harm…”

Without another word Dokkdan stepped over next to me and pushed me right through the shadows on the wall. I fell out of the shadow of a tree beside the castle.

She really wasn’t the welcome I had expected.

“Rhodon!” I exclaimed as I looked around and saw that she had been waiting for me there.

It’d been three years since last I’d seen the princess. She’d aged terribly.

Her once silky blonde hair was now dull and tied back in a rather sloppy manner. Her eyes lacked the innocence and love they’d had before and her skin no longer glowed. Her equine stomach sagged slightly, as did her breasts. She smiled an empty smile.

“Hello Pike.”

“What’re you doing here…?”

“I can tell you…but first…,” she paused and stared vacantly towards the castle. Like a candle flame, she swayed a little. “But first would you like to see his grave?”

“Grave…?”

“Archer’s grave…come on,” she turned and started slowly towards the castle. “It’s around back in the Soldier’s Cemetery.”

I followed her towards the graveyard.

And now I stood here, among the many graves, marked with marble crosses or small statues. Archer’s was a statue in his likeness. There were many flowers laid at the base, under an inscription that read ‘I WILL PROTECT YOU ALWAYS’. Around the statue’s neck some one had laid a wreath of red and black roses.

Rhodon ran a finger along one of the roses and sighed.

“So,” I said after a while. “Why are you here?”

“I went back to Zyrx. I went back to tell my father what had happened,” she answered after a long silence had passed between us. “I told him I was pregnant by a fallen soldier and he…he said he no longer cared to have me in his family. He disowned me and I came back here because I had no knowledge of my own land, but I had traveled this one and I had a good idea what it was like.

“I was lost, though, when I arrived back on Zylxian shores. Lost mentally, lost emotionally I mean. I knew where I was standing…I had no idea where to go from there, though. Of course, you were always so focused. So sure of what you were doing…I went to find you, Pike. I knew you were headed to this castle when you left us in at Noa Lokul.

“When I got here, the guards told me that they’d never met any Pike. They also said that the king had committed suicide,” here she turned to me and dropped her voice. “But he didn’t commit suicide, did he Pike? No…you accomplished your goal and you set every thing right…”

“I didn’t set anything right,” I snapped looking at Rhodon and then back at the statue. “I can’t help but think, every night when I try to sleep, that this isn’t justice that Archer would’ve…”

My voice trailed off and I cast my eyes towards the ground. She stood there, waiting for me to continue and finally I did.

“I had a girl friend when I was a teenager,” I told the centaur. “Her name was Sylvia. She was the only love I ever had…she was smart, funny, beautiful…she was perfect. Literally perfect…

“And then one day some thugs came and attacked us. Her brother owed them money and because of him they killed her. I couldn’t help her any more. I couldn’t do anything. I had tried to fight for her, to save her. I had tried and I had failed…

“She was conscious the whole time. Right up until her heart stopped beating, she was conscious. Do you know what she told me?” I paused to gather up my emotion and found that I was sitting on my knees holding onto Archer’s statue with one hand and running the other through my hair. “We both knew why those guys attacked us. We both knew that, when it all came down to it, it was because of her brother. And do you know what she told me? She told me it wasn’t his fault. She told me not to seek any sort of justice because she didn’t want that her brother should be hurt…”

Rhodon stood silently beside me while I breathed hard, memory aching in my lungs. I clenched my fists and squeezed my eyes shut.

“I’m almost certain,” I whispered. “That that’s the same thing Archer would’ve said. He had served Sythe with all his being and every inch of him was loyal. He wouldn’t have wanted the King to die. He wouldn’t have found any justice in that…”

“Maybe…” Rhodon murmured.

I laid my head against the statue and shivered until she laid a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at her but she wasn’t looking back down at me. She was looking at the statue.

“But maybe he would’ve. Maybe he did,” she said. “Murdered souls all cry out for justice on some level…”

“So, what about you?” I said after another long silence had passed. “Why are you still here?”

“I don’t want you to think any less of me,” she began and she took her hand from my shoulder and cast her own eyes down to the soil. “But…I never knew any life besides that of royalty…

“I came to this castle and they told me of the king’s fate. You weren’t there. It seems you’d been gone from that place months before…you had given the crown to Sythe’s son three months before, around the time that the Armageddon stopped and the center of souls receded to its original boundaries, and then…they lost you. No one knew where you’d gone. No one.

“I asked the new king, Sabore, what had become of you. He didn’t know. Before I could go off on my own to look for you, though, he asked that I marry him…I told him I wasn’t pure, that I was bearing the child of his father’s most trusted soldier. He said he didn’t care…I honestly didn’t know how to live out of royalty so…”

Her voice faded away and she shrugged slightly.

“So you’re the Queen now, then?” I asked indifferently. She nodded.

“He really does love me, though,” she said. “Sabore really does love me. And Arkurius, too.”

“Arkurius?”

“My son…I named him Arkurius…he’s about two now…he’s got his father’s eyes…” she smiled vacantly.

“But…do you love Sabore?”

She didn’t answer for a while. I thought that maybe she hadn’t heard me. Finally she said, “No…But I smile and laugh anyway…”

“You never told him what really happened to his father, did you?” I asked.

“No,” She said. “He loved his father. And he respected you, believing that you had been fighting very bravely to restore the crown…I didn’t want to ruin his reality. He believed it and it made his world right. My world’s not right, and it’s horrible. I don’t want to pull any one into a world like I’m living in…”

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of approaching hooves. I turned slightly to see King Sabore was making his way towards, the crown on his head, the scepter in one hand, Sythe’s sword tucked into his belt.

“Pike, it is very good to see you,” he said with a slight nod of his head. “My father’s old journals say that you volunteered to save our land from collapsing into anarchy.”

“I suppose so…” I answered, getting to my feet.

“And the High Guardian Bregdan has informed me that in doing so you prevented the next end of Zylx.”

“I did,” I acknowledged. I failed to mention how I would have rather had the damned place break apart and every foul creature upon it die a writhing death that was equaled only by the pain I felt in my own heart.

“I’m very glad you are here to become Castle’s Resident Warrior,” Sabore said with a smile. He continued, “Every king is allowed to appoint one Castle’s Resident Warrior, one Castle’s Resident Mage and one Castle’s Resident Shaman…”

“Are you sure you want to waste such an honor on me?” I asked with disinterest and he put an arm around my shoulders and steered me towards the castle’s entrance.

“It’s no waste! There’s not a creature in Zylx, especially a human, more worthy of such a position!” he said as we passed into the castle.

He led me up some stairs and into a room. Sabore opened the door and ushered me inside.

“The ceremony will be tomorrow,” he said. “This’ll be your room.”

“For the night?”

“For the rest of your life,” he answered. “You’ll live at the castle, like all Castle Residents have.”

“Why?”

“Well, should I have need to confer with you,” he waved a hand dismissively. “Things of that nature. You know.”

I turned half way so that I could survey the room. It was large with many medieval weapons upon the walls. There were several doors leading out of it, and a lush bed in the corner. The room had a huge window across one of the walls and a table in the middle of the room. A mirror was hanging next to the door Sabore was standing in.

“…I suppose that’s fine with me,” I said sitting down at the table. “I didn’t actually have any plans for the rest of my life, anyway…”

The king frown with uncertainty and stepped out of the room.

“I’ll send some one to fetch you for dinner. You can tell me about your quest to restore my father’s scepter to the throne,” he said closing the door.

I listened as his hooves pattered on down the hall and faded away. Slowly, I walked to the table and sat down there. I stared at the brick walls of my room for some time until I became aware of another presence in the room. I stood up and quickly turned around to see a man with dark purple hair and green markings was standing behind me. He was in his late twenties. Maybe even his early thirties. His ears were long and pointed in the Zylxian manner and he was nude.

Behind him a young centaur, no older than three years, was standing. The toddler (or was it a foal?) had one thumb in his mouth and was staring at me with curious blue eyes. His fur was a deep red and his hair was a musty green. I assumed him to be Arkurius.

“You must be that boy from the Unworld,” the man with the purple hair said watching me.

“Must be,” I agreed and sat back down at the table, turning my chair slightly so that I could watch him.

“You’re the one to be made Castle’s Resident Warrior tomorrow, then?” he asked.

“Mm-hm,” I murmured. He looked at me in a sort of pity that made my cheeks heat up just slightly.

“You ought to reconsider that,” he said to me. “They’re planning a brutal war. As the highest ranking warrior, they’ll expect you to either fight or to lead…”

“I…I don’t care.”

I placed the elbow that had a flesh hand at the end on the table and propped my head up on it. I gazed out the window briefly before my gaze fell to the crimson hand, transparent and semisolid, lying on the table. I clenched it into a fist and then opened it slowly.

“I’m way beyond caring,” I whispered down at that hand.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” the man said. I turned my gaze, my glare, on him. He smiled and gestured with his hand, a movement that was copied by the little centaur. “Is that thing, that appendage, your scar? Does it serve to remind you of all the trouble you went through? All the pain? All the emotional trauma? Is that why you always find your eyes drawn to it? Or do you just like the way it gleams? Oh! Is that it? Is it your badge?”

“Get out of my room,” I said in more of a sigh than an order. I turned from him again.

He laughed. It was a mocking sound which stung my ears and my chest, deep inside.

“The soul always cares,” he said suddenly ending his laughter, a suddenly clarity in his tone. “No matter how bad of shape the body is in—twisted, deformed hunk of flesh it may be—and no matter how bad of shape the mind is in, the soul always cares.”

“Leave me be,” I said as I once again set my gaze to the endless sky out side the window. The golden ribbons of sun were still reaching out through the clouds. I suddenly got the image of the straight edge of my sword reaching out of the horseflesh of Sythe. I clenched my eyes shut, but the image was still there. Once it receded, back into my memories so that it may haunt me some night as I try to sleep, I turned back to the man. “The soul does last longer than the body or the mind but even it cannot care for a lost cause forever.”

“Perhaps,” he answered. “Perhaps.”

We stood in silence for a long while.

“Who are you, anyway?” I asked after some time.

“I am Castle’s Resident Mage Driahda,” he answered indifferently. “Appointed by King Scimitar nearly twenty years ago.”

There was another long silence.

“If there’s a war, I’ll gladly fight in it,” I said. “I’m not trying to help the kingdom in anyway. I won’t fight because I believe in the cause. I’ll fight in hopes I’ll die. In hopes that this pain I’ve carried for years will end with me.”

“Death is all you want?”

“Death is all I want.”

“I should think, then, that you’d have ended yourself,” he said.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “She wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t go down fighting…”

Driahda turned towards the door and walked slowly to it, the little centaur trailing close behind. He paused and made a half turn to look at me.

“I still wish you’d just…run from this place or something,” he cast his eyes to the floor and sighed. “High honors and positions of power are always just more pain.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.

He walked out with out another sound. The child stopped, though, in the middle of the door way. He turned and stared at my back until I turned my own head to meet his gaze. His big blue eyes met me and I stared in to them for a moment. And in that moment, his face changed just slightly. His facial features became tougher and his cubby little face took on a look of courage and righteousness. My chest panged and I turned my head away. Archer’s boy stood there for a moment before trotting after the mage.

I sat there, numbly, for a while. Staring at my deformed hand, I pondered what the strange man, Driahda, had just said. I thought, also, about the little boy, the last thing Archer had left in the world, save for his decomposing skeleton.

My thoughts swam around me, though me, into that blast hand. I clenched my eyes closed, but the thoughts were there as well. Sylvia, Archer, Sythe…I’d killed them all. I killed Sylvia by not being good enough to save her, I killed Archer by not going with him and I killed Sythe…I took Sythe’s life myself.

I stood up and dug my finger nails into the table. God, I felt like screaming. God, I hated this place. Not just this place, but every other place. In all the places I had tread I had found nothing but bitter pain, hate and anger.

Pain swimming in my skull, in my blood, I walked over to the window and clutched the sill. I bit my lip, bit back my tears. And then, suddenly, biting it back was no use.

I cried. For myself, I cried. For Sylvia, I cried.