Balangor kept them flying for hours. They huddled in close to Gunther, as he shivered, to try and give him more heat. It was warm in this world, it was always warm here, but Gunther had lost a lot of blood.
It wasn’t until the fog was burned away by the late morning sun, that Balangor stiffened, and said, “There! Hold fast. We’re descending to safety.”
Rusty got a look as they went down. It was a high hillock in the swamp, and the trees had been seared away from it. Burning stumps sent smoke into the sky, and it looked like the wood had been turned into spiked barricades that left only a single long path open. White tents clustered on the hill like fungus on a log, stained and soot-smeared, as black-and-white uniformed people moved throughout, and green-faced elves watched the flying platform come in, with arrows readied on curved bows.
It was bigger than the destroyed camp they’d almost died in.
The platform wobbled as it settled down at the peak of the hill, and immediately two uniformed men started up the path, calling to Balangor.
“Shi orem mo gis farel?” the one in the lead asked.
“Shen! Nirrya es,” Balangor responded. “Co tat zan par reofa tellis?”
“Irra worr mon shiza emeerin. Zagga dunica.”
Balangor hissed between his teeth. “Kem orbis mok. Kan espek gisa frelm.”
The two looked at each other and nodded. “Follow me,” Balangor said, waving a hand back to Rusty and the others. “Do not stray. Once you are attuned, you may assense and cast spells as you see fit, but until then, refrain. If you disobey, the wards shall turn against you, and you will die.”
“What about Gunther?” Rusty asked.
Balangor looked back to see them unbundling the still-unconscious boy. “Ah.” he turned around and gestured to the two soldiers, pointed at Gunther. They shouldered him easily between them, and led the way down into the camp.
They’d constructed it in tiers. Something like a layer cake, only the “cake” parts of it were skewed instead of lining up straight. Cut timbers supported each layer where the hill didn’t, making a series of about a dozen balconies, that grew larger as the children descended.
And all around, were banners. Black and white, emblazoned with golden unicorns, and red flaming swords. Rusty started counting as he went. His memory enchantments made it fairly easy. And before Reevian led them into a gold inscribed tent, he marked two-hundred and seventy-three uniformed men and women moving around the camp.
Rusty didn’t need to assense to feel the power of the tent. Inside, a cage made of golden rods that curved and turned into a tripod support held a floating, glowing crystalline structure made of cubes. The cubes shifted and turned independently, leaving afterimages of patterns in the air.
Standing next to it, hands clasped behind his back, was another gray man. Easily as big as the Tower Lord, with green-and-black eyes instead of red-and-black. This one had very little fat on him, and wore heavy gray armor with pauldrons that looked like the hilts of the swords on the banners outside. And he had a pair of golden bat wings with a curving scorpion tail looped around them emblazoned right on the center of his breastplate, that winked in the light of the crystals as he turned to face them.
“Balangor. Sheev Nidus Matrom.”
The wizard launched into a fast tirade, pointing at Gunther and his arm, voice rising with his anger.
Rusty half-expected the officer to bluster back, like the Tower Lord had. But he took it, staring at the wizard with an implacable, unmoved gaze. “Iv marra mil kan irvan. Sowmed baken vir. Sunem foar Illem panos, wirra zon.”
Balangor looked away. Then he spluttered a bit, reached a hand into his pockets, and drew out a small pouch. “Kel. Aggra shem panos kilyem. Sa gis fan zonna erem wasenjal korem.”
The officer took the pouch and poured three small red glittering cubes into his hand. He sighed, and put one between the bars of the cage. The charm snapped into the central cluster, as if drawn by magnets, and the pressure in the tent increased gently.
Rusty heard armor shifting behind him. He glanced back to the two soldiers who were holding Gunther, found them standing straighter, eyes wide and looking into the distance. They had seemed tired a second ago, and weary. Now there was nothing like that in their body language.
“Commander, these are the chosen ones. The boy there needs a medic. With your permission?”
The commander looked to the troops carrying him, nodded and motioned. The soldiers each tapped their foreheads with an index finger in some sort of salute, and hauled Gunther out of the tent.
Rusty looked back to find the Commander gazing down at them. “Welcome to Camp Unyielding, chosen ones. Put your hands to the ward shell,” he said, simply. “Then go and rest. Reevian knows where to take you. In the morning, we shall assault the Dark Lord’s Lair.”
Rusty felt a surge of fear shoot through him. But before he could say anything, Balangor spoke.
“This was not the plan!”
“Plans change. We lost thirty-four today, Balangor. We have been decimated!”
Balangor’s mouth snapped shut.
“They lost far more, though. And risking their elites against you in an ambush… they are desperate.” The Commander continued, bringing a large, gray hand up, clenching it into a fist. “These are the Chosen Ones.”
“The wounded one won’t be fit to move for quite a while,” Balangor grumbled. “He’s lost too much blood.”
“Then he can reinforce those that remain. Any further discussion should wait.” The Commander’s gaze bored into Rusty, and Rusty swallowed, hard. “You. All of you. You know what is at stake, here?”
“We do,” Rusty whispered.
“The Dark Lord must not leave this world. Else he will take yours, in time. He will reign eternal, immortal, and unchallenged. He must die now, or never.”
“And that’s what we’re here to do,” Ken said. “Do you need us for anything more, sir?”
The man’s smile was dazzling against his ashen skin, tusklike teeth revealed large and sharp. “Simple and to the point. Perhaps you will, at that. I like these, Balangor. Maybe these ones have a—”
“Nirra herm,” Balangor cautioned.
The Commander shut his mouth and nodded. “Put your hands to the ward now. Then you are dismissed.”
Rusty swallowed, and did so. The other two followed suit. A tingle of energy ran up his arm, vibrated through him, followed by warmth and a feeling of something rattling around the places where his runes had stabbed into his flesh. Then it faded, and he drew his arm back, looked at the others.
“Good. This way,” Balangor said, saluting the Commander with a quick forehead tap, and receiving one in return.
The wizard led them down to a tent two platforms down, nestled close against the hill, and well behind two bigger ones. Passing by the open flap of one of them, Rusty saw bedrolls spread out inside, and couple of dozen people in various states of dress, all dirty, sprawled out and sleeping. He averted his eyes hastily, but he was already counting.
But hearing the snores, and seeing so many sleeping, made him ache even more. He was TIRED. He hadn’t gotten good sleep on the flight, and they’d been through a lot already. The bruises Jand had left as a parting gift still ached, and when Balangor opened the flap to their tent, Rusty and the others piled in with no objections, lay down on the soft greenish pelt that served as a rug, and pulled a blanket over themselves. Darkness claimed Rusty, and he slept.
“Get off me, I can walk!”
Rusty startled awake. Gunther? Gunther had said that. He blinked, and saw the blonde-haired boy limping through the tent flap, sweating, as two soldiers hovered behind him.
The soldiers watched him go, tapped their foreheads, then turned and left.
“Rusty?” Gunther eased down, grimacing, as he tried to fold himself to the ground. Rusty got up in time to catch him before he fell, and Gunther panted, clenched his teeth together as Rusty settled him the last few inches.
“I thought you could walk,” Rusty said, sleep still fuzzling his brain.
“Walking? Not too hard. Going from up to down? Shitty.” Gunther said, laying back. “They said I can’t travel for a few days. I didn’t believe them until I tried to get here. It’s like fire in my guts.”
Rustling to his sides told Rusty that the other two were stirring. “Did you see Balangor on the way here?” He looked out of the tent flap as he spoke. The sun was on the other side of the sky, now. They’d slept for hours.
“I asked. They said he would be busy and someone would come around with food for us before he did.” Gunther squeezed his eyes shut. “I want to sleep to make this go faster but I can’t. Schisse, everything hurts.”
Rusty got up, went out, and looked around. There were plenty of troops moving around, but nobody seemed to be watching their tent.
“Hey,” Roz said, popping in next to the closed flap of the tent they’d passed. “No snoring now. Why’s that?”
Rusty went over to the tent, pulled the flap open slightly. Instantly he heard snoring, and someone glared up from their bedroll. “Fella cor wakken, merg!”
“Sorry,” Rusty said, and shut the tent. Instantly the snoring cut off.
“Perfect,” he decided. “It’s time,” he told Roz.
“Okay. Gonna be awkward if Balangor comes back, now.”
Rusty looked up to the sky, and the uncaring march of the sun towards nightfall. “We’ll have to risk it.”
He closed their tent flap when he got back inside, and nodded as the ambient noise from outside shut off. Looking over, he saw that Ken and Alice were next to Gunther, trying to help him settle enough blankets under his back and limbs to get him propped up and comfy. “Hey, uh,” Rusty began, then swallowed. “I have something to tell you. And I need you to listen, because we might be in a whole lot of trouble…”
It took what felt like an eternity, to tell his story. From taking Terathon’s hand, and opening his eyes to this new world. To the grach ambush, and the quest to retrieve the rune in the sunken ruin. Then the troubled journey south, and the dead child in the pool, and the tree strider’s kidnapping, that he only survived thanks to a satyr’s help.
“...and I couldn’t get the satyr’s words out of my head, that runes that affected the mind were hated and feared. So when they took… when the wizards said Janice was corrupted, I hid that I had the memory rune, too.” Rusty swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to keep it secret from you, but I was worried they’d take me away.”
Ken whistled. “Okay. I see why you did that. Yeah, it would have been shitty to have to go home because you got the wrong kind of rune. But doesn’t this make you vulnerable to the dark lord? I mean, they sent her home because that was the problem. Terathon more or less said as much.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Not exactly,” Rusty said. “He said that her rune opened her up to corruption from the dark lord. But… I don’t know if he was telling the truth about that.” This was the big one. This was hard to say, because he didn’t know how they’d handle it. But he had to pull the bandage off this particular wound, if they stood a chance of surviving this.
Fortunately, he wasn’t as alone in his way of thinking as he’d feared.
“I don’t think they were telling the truth about Janice,” Alice said. “I’m pretty sure on that one.”
Ken and Gunther looked at her, surprised. “What makes you say that?” Rusty asked. “Um, I don’t doubt you, but they’ve been really cagey with their words.”
“The ring I give her,” Alice said. “We traded charms. Not charms like magic charms, but she give me a bracelet, and I give… gave her a ring.” Alice pulled up her robe, to show a little beaded friendship bracelet. Rusty almost laughed, it was such a girly thing to do, but he’d seen his sisters take it very, very seriously. And Alice’s face was drawn with worry, as she continued. “Night we left, I was talking with Balangor, and Jadar come up to have a word with him. And I saw the ring I gave Janice on her finger.”
Ken inhaled sharply. Gunther frowned. And yeah, it looked bad, but there was a possible explanation. And though he’d never heard the term “Devil’s advocate,” he felt he had to examine every possibility, here. “Could she have gotten it from Janice before they sent her home?”
“I didn’t see it on her hands before. Only that one last night we were there,” Alice frowned. “I guess she might could have gotten it before, but why wear it only that one time?”
“Because we might have noticed, before,” Rusty said, slowly. “I’ve noticed a few things, too.”
“Let’s circle back to that dead kid,” Ken said. “That’s… yeah. When you came in, you were wearing army camo. I remember that.”
“I do too,” Alice said. “And that demo knife in your pocket had initials on one blade. N. F. Your name ain’t that, so I know you ain’t lying about that.”
“N.F.? I didn’t check every blade. Thanks. Now I’ve got another clue about that. If I ever get back I might have an easier time tracking down that guy. I know he’s a New Yorker so… well, his parents need to know what happened.” Rusty pinched the bridge of his nose. It still hurt to remember those gooey, damaged memories that he’d pulled from a rotting mind.
“The Commander, when we came in,” Ken said, slowly. “He said something about ‘these ones,’ and Balangor cut him off. They pulled in more kids, and they died.”
“Damn it. Damn it!” Gunther pounded his fist against the rug, and grimaced, clutched at his belly. “Fuck. I knew this was too good to be true.”
“I think parts of it are true,” Rusty said. “I just don’t know which ones. And I don’t know how to sort out the truth from the lies from the parts they just left out.”
“But they’re not our friends. Yeah, I picked up on that when the Tower Lord was screaming at Reevian,” Ken folded his arms. Then his eyes widened. “Maybe that’s it. Russ, man, you figured out a spell to teach that satyr languages, yeah?”
“Yeah, but it’s not great,” Rusty frowned. “She was using all sorts of weird slang.”
“Not great is the best we can do right now. How about you hit us with that spell, to teach us the local lingo?”
Rusty blinked. He looked to his side, found Roz staring back at him.
“Okay, we were going to do that, but we…”
“...forgot,” Rusty cupped his face. “I was going to do that, there was just never a good time. Ah man, I got no excuse. Yeah, uh, let me test it on myself, first.”
“If nothing else,” Gunther said, “It will help. If we’ll be traveling with the army, then understanding what they’re saying could save our lives, yes? Or help us protect them.”
“All right. Give me a second,” Rusty said, closing his eyes. “Give me memories of learning the language the wizards use.”
Grant self an additional language!
Committed chakra: 15/44
Cost: 5 chakra
Remaining free chakra: 24/44
A thousand thousand memories that never happened coursed through Rusty’s mind. A cacophony of words, and he felt the world sway around him, as he felt Ken and Alice scoot forward and grab him, to keep him steady. It wasn’t pleasant, and he felt nausea bubble in his gut as he tried to keep last night’s feast from escaping.
But finally his brain settled. It felt sore, and he understood now why Ran had gotten so angry at his use of the spell on her.
The next thing he felt was horror, as he reviewed memory, after memory. And understood just why the wizards had turned off their translation spells to speak in front of them.
And oh, it was bad. It was so much worse than he’d feared.
*****
“I claim her,” the woman in black stepped forward, and pointed at Janice. “But I have concerns about her rune. It must be judged. It would be better, I think, if she were last.”
Janice looked surprised, but the other wizards looked to each other.
“This had better be good, Jadar,” Zarkimorr growled.
“She’s got a dangerous one. You’ll see. She’s better as charm stock.”
Terathon shook his head, and pointed at Rusty and Ken, and the ancient one nodded, made a 'get on with it gesture.'
*****
Rusty about peed himself as the door to the classroom slammed open, and Reevian burst through. “We’ve got trouble! The Lord is angry with us—”
An explosion rattled through the classroom. Alice and Gunther screamed and dove under their desks. Ken froze. Rusty whipped his head around to see that Terathon was gone.
Another explosion, and Reevian stopped, held up his gauntlets, the sparks on them whirring like fireflies. His eyes went wide.
“Do you come for me, finally?” Terathon said from behind him, resting a hand gently on his shoulder.
“Peace, Terathon. I was hasty, forgive me. I hold no malice for the houseless.”
Terathon grunted. Reevian relaxed, putting his hands down, and stepped away. Rusty caught a flash of metal as Terathon pulled his other hand away from Reevian’s back, and nodded. The two wizards locked eyes for a moment, and Terathon sighed. Then he turned to the students. “I must go and see to a wizardly matter. Remain here and remain practicing until one of us returns.”
*****
They found the source of the noise after a cross-junction. A door on the left-side corridor was open, and some guy was being really angry in that room.
“—year we’ve been stuck on this sodden, bug-infested world, with the royal court breathing down my neck, and our coffers flowing endlessly into this fight. House Manticore charges me a king’s ransom for every slave soldier dead! The grach are poor replacements at best, and the few slaves from them we HAVE managed to break are not enough to recompense our investments! The conquest is stalled, Reevian! We might LOSE our foothold in this world to Gigas, or worse, Hraken! Now how’s that going to impact the other fronts? How much longer until this world is mine?”
And to his relief, Rusty heard Reevian replying.
“We still have the elves. They’re reaping a bonanza from this place. And the first settlers are already here. Ringaldr won’t go after civilians, that would cost him too many of his allies, even if the Lion let it happen. We just have to keep bringing those damned kids in, and eventually ONE of them is going to be the key to the prophecy.”
The kids looked to each other. Ken’s face was full of sorrow. “Aw man,” he whispered, in between the angry noises. “I thought we might be able to get something good out of this.”
*****
Rusty didn’t need to assense to feel the power of the tent. Inside, a cage made of golden rods that curved and turned into a tripod support held a floating, glowing crystalline structure made of cubes. The cubes shifted and turned independently, leaving afterimages of patterns in the air.
Standing next to it, hands clasped behind his back, was another gray man. Easily as big as the Tower Lord, with green-and-black eyes instead of red-and-black. This one had very little fat on him, and wore heavy gray armor with pauldrons that looked like the hilts of the swords on the banners outside. And he had a pair of golden bat wings with a curving scorpion tail looped around them emblazoned right on the center of his breastplate, that winked in the light of the crystals as he turned to face them.
“Balangor. Welcome Camp Unyielding.”
The wizard launched into a fast tirade, pointing at Gunther and his arm, voice rising with his anger. “What are you playing at? You let witchlights fall into enemy hands, and I followed them down like a fool! You know how many arrows we had coming at us? You almost lost House Safinx their slave, not to mention the damages to my own person!”
Rusty half-expected the officer to bluster back, like the Tower Lord had. But he took it, staring at the wizard with an implacable, unmoved gaze. “They struck two hours ago. We did not know when you were coming until right before the attack. Now what’s that tell you?”
Balangor looked away. Then he spluttered a bit, reached a hand into his pockets, and drew out a small pouch. “Treachery. Fine. Here are your loyalty charms. Use them sparingly, we’ll kill the stock if we harvest too quickly.”
The officer took the pouch and poured three small red glittering cubes into his hand. He sighed, and put one between the bars of the cage. The charm snapped into the central cluster, as if drawn by magnets, and the pressure in the tent increased gently.
*****
Rusty translated all of these memories for the others. And by the end of it, Alice’s face was buried in her hands, and she was shaking. Ken was pale, staring off into the distance. And Gunther was laying so still, with his eyes shut, that Rusty could almost think him sleeping, if it weren’t for the blonde boy’s hands clenching and unclenching.
“Shit,” Ken finally summed up. And for once, Rusty couldn’t bring himself to be upset by hearing someone swear.
“They see us as slaves,” Alice whispered, very faintly.
“This can’t be right,” Gunther said, opening his eyes. “I’ve seen what the Lion does. I’ve seen the drained husks.”
“What did you see, exactly?” Rusty asked.
“They were… after I got my rune, we walked back. Reevian showed me a clearing along the way, covered with webbed cocoons. He cut one open, and there were soldiers inside. Children, too. Elves…”
“Cocoons,” Ken said. “Like that tree strider the elves saved you from, Rusty?”
“Yeah. Except…” Rusty bit his lip. “The satyrs are working for the dark lord, right? And Ran almost got eaten by one. What if the tree striders are just animals? What if Reevian just showed you a hatching site and blamed the Lion for it?”
“But there were no grach,” Gunther frowned.
“Yeah, but the Grach don’t seem to go up in the trees,” Ken said. “I don’t know, it’s just a guess. But I’m wondering about Janice. I don’t like the sound of charm stock. Has anyone heard anything about that before?”
Alice stopped shaking. “Maybe. I just… give me a second. Please.”
Rusty felt time ticking by, felt himself getting antsy as the girl collected herself. He knew time was crucial here, that they wouldn’t be left alone forever. But he also knew that they would need everyone working together to stand a chance at surviving this, much less getting home to their families, and out of reach of these evil wizards.
“That’s something to consider, though,” Roz said, from his perch on Gunther’s chest. “Yeah, they’re bad guys. But that doesn’t make the Dark Lord a good guy, right? Cyrus told us that things got real complicated in Korea. This seems a little like that.”
He did, Rusty thought. But Ran’s people tried to kill us, so I don’t know how much of a difference it makes. We need to talk about this. This is too much for just you and me to sort out.
“I don’t know ‘bout charm stock,” Alice said, finally. “But Balangor told me a bit ‘bout charms. He said that they let normal people use magic. We could use’em too, but they ain’t as good as our runes, ain’t flexible. And that they usually don’t have enough chakra to push through magical resistance.”
“Magical resistance?” Ken frowned. “What’s up with that?”
“I’ve hit that a couple of times,” Rusty supplied. “When I cast my language spell on Ran, she had that. But she only had charms, so I don’t know how she got it. Maybe one of her charms? It wasn’t a lot, really. Um… four extra points of chakra was all it took.”
“It’s obvious,” Gunther said. “Janice is the charm stock. They are making charms from her. They are doing something to her that will kill her if they do it too much. They’re hurting her over and over again for charms that they’re sending here.”
Alice buried her face in her hands again, and this time she didn’t bother to keep her sobs quiet.
“What I really want to know is how many?” Ken asked, and his face was full of the coldest anger that Rusty had ever seen. His eyes didn’t blaze, they were voids into pits filled with violence and murder. “How many kids have they killed? Those cocoons had soldiers and children in them, Gunther, AND HOW MANY KIDS HAVE WE SEEN SINCE WE GOT HERE?”
They looked to each other, save for Alice. And the realization struck them.
They hadn’t seen a single child in the Tower. Or among the soldiers. Or even among the elves.
Rusty shut his mouth.
“Oh god,” Gunther breathed. “Some of them were wearing buttoned shirts. One had jeans. The corpses, I mean…”
Silence, again, save for Alice’s sobbing.
“Fuck them,” Rusty decided. In his head, his mother raged at him for swearing, and he felt the phantom impact of her palm against his face, but it just made him angrier. “FUCK them. We can’t… no. We can’t help them. Even if we succeed, they’ll just, I don’t know, melt us down into charm stock or something. Or kill us and take our runes. Or both. They think we’re slaves. And maybe I’m a bad Texan, but I’m still Texas enough that doesn’t sit right with me.”
Gunther laughed, then broke off, as he clutched his belly. Ken snorted. Alice giggled, in between sobs. It was a little hysterical.
But it was what they needed, to turn the discussion onto just what course of action they needed to take.
They spoke, and they planned, as the green sun fell beneath the alien horizon. And finally, they figured out a plan.