He called it an Ash Walker. The man, holding a glowing hot sword, called the zombie that was disintegrating an Ash Walker. CJ took a deep breath, but his heart wouldn’t calm down. His arm was bleeding, his eye was too, he was sore all over, and his head was pounding.
CJ put his hands up in surrender. “I have no clue what I’m doing here, thanks for the save and everything but uh, who are you?”
The man took a step closer, pushing the blade nearer to CJ’s forehead. “I’m not answering your questions. I find you here, wrestling with a blasphemous beast in this sacred chamber, and you want me to believe you don’t know where you are?”
“No clue at all,” CJ said, “I was sleep in my bed one moment, fell in here the next. Why would I lie? Do I look like I want to get stabbed?”
There were yellow lines coming off of the gruff man, just like the creatures before, except he had two. They went from his right hand off toward the door out of the flue. Just like with the zombies, they didn’t seem to physically be there, they went through the door itself and didn’t have any weight to it.
The leather in the man’s gauntlet let out an audible noise as he squeezed his sword. His eyebrows wrinkled in anger.
“You liar!” He shouted, then pulled his sword back to swing.
“No no no!” CJ yelled as he pushed back with his feet.
“Sir Byr!” A woman yelled, “stop!”
They both turned toward the door, which screeched as it was pulled open by a woman in armor only slightly less elaborate than the flame sword knight, except hers had two shaved down horns on the helmet.
But it wasn’t her that cried out. As the door was pulled open far enough, a woman with long curly brown hair tied back with a green ribbon came rushing into the room. Her features were youthful but strong, with pronounced green eyes. She looked like she just got out of bed, her clothing a calf length off-white nightgown with a brown coat thrown over it. She didn’t even have shoes.
She ran over to CJ, ignoring the sword, and the fizzing mess that used to be a zombie.
“Lady please,” Sir Byr said as he dropped his sword to a safer position at his side. “I asked for you to stay back, I am charged with your safety.”
The Lady approached until she was right in front of CJ, then she bent down and grabbed him by the chin, pulling his head up.
“Hey, what the hell?” CJ asked through smooshed cheeks.
She turned his head one way, then the other. Her eyes looked him up and down, but he had no clue what she was looking for.
The text in his vision was working again. Something was trying to scroll past his vision, but it was just a mess of letters moving at different speeds. He couldn’t make any sense of it. But while the text was moving the pulses of pain in his head were constant.
She let him go and stood tall again. “Go ahead, stand up and tell us who you are.”
The room, if it could be called that, was quiet. But CJ was standing in front of people armed with swords, and a lady who had the attitude of someone that took down the manager’s name from the front of the restaurant before they were seated. He could read the room, so he stood up and put his hands in the air.
“I’m CJ, Eastman. I was just telling Mr. Paladin here I ain’t got a clue where we are.”
“He claims to have fallen into the chamber,” Sir Byr said.
The woman with the horned helmet was shorter than the other two. Her features were soft, round. Her hair was short enough that he could only just barely make out the black strands peeking out near her eyebrows. She was also about as wide at the shoulder as Sir Byr, which made CJ guess she was just as dangerous as him. But for now she was just standing with an eyebrow raised.
The Lady walked forward and grabbed him again. She checked beneath his chin, then pulled his face down and gripped his head and hair. She put a thumb on his eyelid and tried to open his eye, but an electric pain streaked through his head.
CJ slapped her hand away.
Sir Byr stepped forward.
The Lady gasped.
The woman with the horn-helmet stood with wide eyes.
But the Lady held up a hand to calm everyone. “Is that true?” The Lady asked.
CJ looked over where the zombie once was, then back toward the Lady. “Yeah no, he got it. I was sleep, then I fell in here. Went out to find out where I was, and that thing came crawling in. You called it an Ash Walker? What the-”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know!” Sir Byr snapped while stepping forward. “You brought those creatures down on us, innocent people-”
The Lady held a hand up, and Sir Byr squeezed his mouth shut to silence himself. She looked sad as she turned to look at Sir Byr, but turned back to CJ. She took a deep breath, then let it free.
“I believe him,” She said.
“Lady,” Byr said in shock. “You can’t believe he is related to…to…”
She hushed him with a hand to his arm. “Not a word. If he is, then he will know, right? If he isn’t, then we take him prisoner.”
CJ looked between them. “Prisoner? Didn’t you all already bring me here? I’m already a prisoner!”
Sir Byr gripped his sword tight, then put it away. “We don’t have time for this, we need to catch up with the others.”
“Then we better hurry, correct?” She said. She turned to the horn-helmeted woman, “Alyss, restrain and gag him. We are taking him with us.”
The woman, Alyss, nodded while reaching into a pack at her side.
This was about where CJ wanted to protest, or try to run. But the situation was overwhelming him. Questions were piling up faster than he could recognize them. The chance he was losing his mind was rocketing higher and higher with every interaction.
But there was another possibility. This place had evil creatures, knights, and they had glowing swords. He didn’t recognize any of the religious symbols, and their armor looked like something out of a game. He was in some kind of fantasy world, transported there by unknown means.
So when Alyss wrapped his hands with a thick strap he looked toward the Lady.
“Wait, what is this place called? Where am I?”
She stopped at the door, turning back to look at him. Her expression went from annoyance, to fear, to concern, in rapid succession. “Do you really not know?”
“Honest to god,” CJ said. “Consider it a favor, where is this?”
It seemed like she was going to answer, but Sir Byr stepped in front of her. “You are trespassing on the sovereign land of the Duchy of Akahi. Consider that your last question, and keep quiet until we ask more of you.”
On cue, Alyss put a gag in CJ’s mouth and then tied it behind his head.
She dragged him behind the group, who funneled out into the main hall of the church.
CJ finally caught a glimpse where the yellow lines from Sir Byr were going. Two more soldiers, both wearing armor mostly made of leather, were standing out in the main room. The yellow lines from Byr went from his hand to their hands. One was a lanky guy, seemingly bald under his helmet. The other was a scar-faced woman, her hair brown and cut short enough that none was peeking beneath her helmet.
He should have asked about the yellow lines. He didn’t know if they were important, or why Sir Byr had them with his soldiers but the Lady and Alyss had no lines at all. He also didn’t have a line, so he hoped it wasn’t related to someone’s fate. If he was transported or reborn in some kind of magical world, the options were limitless.
Though that made the business with his eye more confusing. Another question he could ask, if he survived.
“We’re leaving,” Sir Byr said. “If we take the rear exit, we have a straight path. In the night, we may just make it.”
The door the monsters entered the temple through was wide open now, one of the doors was knocked off its hinges. CJ could make out fires outside, faint but obvious.
“You think they won’t have it blocked off by now?” The scarred woman asked. The scar looked like a seam from her forehead down to her left cheek, and the skin along it was dark enough to make it seem like an intentional artistic choice. It was a striking contrast with the rest of her face, which was well tended to for a soldier in a helmet.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Sir Byr said. “We didn’t find what we came here for, now we should go before those bastards send more of those abominations after us.”
The soldiers raised their blades and barked out, “For The One!”
Alyss joined them, raising her free hand from holding CJ. Though her voice was quiet in comparison to the others.
They headed for the back door that CJ never checked, Sir Byr and his two soldiers in front. Then there was Alyss, her dragging CJ, and the Lady right behind him. The door opened to a dark hallway, and they fed through single file.
The Lady touched his back, making CJ walk straighter. He couldn’t see her, and didn’t want to try turning back to try. But he heard her talking behind him.
“If you really don’t know where we are,” She said, “then we truly gained nothing from all of this. But if you are just confused in the moment, then I will make everything clear if we just live to see the morrow, understand?”
CJ nodded and mumbled a yes.
“Don’t speak,” she said. “The enemy is everywhere. For this next part, being discovered could mean death. We may have need of your expertise.”
His eyes went wide. His expertise? He had no idea what that meant, and that made him even more alarmed.
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The dark hallway in the back of the church was clammy, despite the ambient heat in the building. There were doorways along the hall, but they were either closed tight or led to absolute darkness. They didn’t speak much, it was the clomp of steps on a damp stone floor paired with the occasional barked order from Sir Byr at the front of the pack.
“Eyes open,” Byr said in a hushed yet authoritative tone. “The exit is ahead, we rush to the mountains.”
There was another doorway at the end of the hallway. The lanky man rushed a few steps ahead and listened at the door before pushing it open. Past it was a stairwell, spiraling downward. The group didn’t hesitate to head down, and Alyss pulled CJ along to make sure he kept up.
The stairs felt uneven, slanted. The outer wall of the stairwell had a narrow arrowslit pointing out. Everyone else pushed past it, but when CJ passed he heard a rumble outside. The red-orange light of flames was illuminating the night, and CJ stopped to see where they were headed. There was a town out there, buildings made of brick or stone lining a stone pathway. So many were on fire, structures that looked like houses or shops completely engulfed in flames. As he watched, a small building collapsed into rubble. It was distant enough that it was a faint crumbling sound to his ears.
Alyss pulled, and CJ didn’t resist. Wherever Akahi was, this wasn’t a good place. CJ lived a fair life, not cushy but even his worst nightmares didn’t include a city crumbling around him.
In stories or shows, when a person is sent to another world it is so often a fantasy come true. This was a nightmare.
They reached the bottom of the stairs, a wide double door that was currently barred with a large metal rod. The soldiers were pressed against it in preparation, Sir Byr was waiting for the three of them in the back.
“Are you ready?” He asked, looking directly at the Lady.
CJ looked to her. Her eyes were watering, her cheeks slightly flushed. He didn’t watch her as they went down the stairs. He was just a visitor here, what did she see when she looked out over the burning city? These people seemed to be real, no matter how impossible that sounded to him.
The Lady nodded.
Sir Byr turned to his soldiers and gave them a nod.
Alyss put a hand on her sword, and gripped CJ’s bindings tight.
“We have to run,” The Lady whispered behind him. “We have to abandon everyone.”
They threw the doors open and rushed out. They were nearly at street level now. There was a split staircase from the door down to the street, and Byr pointed to one side. Everyone immediately followed his suggestion, running down the flame illuminated steps without a word. When they hit the cobblestone-style road, the whole group rushed down the center. The soldiers stayed a few steps ahead, Byr just behind them with head looking back and forth to the buildings along the street.
The street was dead. Most buildings just had no movement, closed doors and barred windows on lifted cube buildings with slanted rooftops. Others were either on fire, or already a charred mess. But CJ didn’t see any people, not zombies or fleeing civilians. He didn’t know what that meant, maybe the battle was already lost well before he arrived.
Dead didn’t mean quiet though. There was a distant scream off to their side, in some other part of town. The fires roared, and the materials in buildings whined, groaned, cracked and snapped as they collapsed. He could hear the puffing of their group running, but he could swear he heard other running nearby.
Far ahead of them the horizon rose up. The night wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t make out the looming mountain.
It felt like heading back toward the mountains in central Washington. Everything here was relatively flat, no hills to get in the way. But the mountains were always visible well in advance. That was their destination, it had to be better than this.
CJ spotted something up ahead. Yellow lines, arcing up and off to his left, five of them.
His right side scrambled again. Words scrolled in front of him, then it switched back to one he could recognize even while it was a jumble of overlapping letters. He had to survive again. Did that mean it was more of the zombies? So far these people were the only living souls he had met. Unless this whole world was just zombies vs humans, he was going to stick by the humans until he could get more information.
The soldiers saw the zombies, the Ash Walkers, before CJ could physically make them out.
“Three, no five!” Said the woman, “Engaging sir!”
“My Lady, hold back while we take care of these! I won’t be long!” Sir Byr shouted.
He pulled his sword free and it erupted with flame again before cooling into the slick scimitar from before.
“Charge, make this quick!” Sir Byr yelled.
The other two soldiers already had their weapons pulled free, but something changed when Byr shouted his command. CJ saw it flow off of Sir Byr himself, a twinkle of light at his hand that pulsed through the yellow lines to the two soldiers. When the light reached them, their swords rumbled to life. Two pops and a fire danced on their blades.
This didn’t alarm them at all. In fact, it seemed like they were waiting on it, as the weapons receiving this enchantment was the cue for them to rush the zombies and start their attack.
CJ watched in awe. This really was some kind of magic. He didn’t understand how it worked, but that did explain something about those yellow lines. Byr gave them power through them, or maybe he had to give them permission to use their magic? More questions, terrifying yet exciting questions.
CJ knew how it felt to hit one of those Ash Walkers, so seeing a flaming sword cut through one with ease was shocking even the second time. Maybe any sword could hurt them like that, but Sir Byr did seem to like using fire. He joined his soldiers and sliced a zombies head off clean after a glancing blow.
‘Why are we even running away?’ CJ asked himself as the soldiers worked.
Then he saw the lines. There were five when they started, but more lines were appearing on each side of the road, all heading off into the distance to his left. This was an ambush!
CJ tried to yell out. The waded cloth gag in his mouth muffled him, and all he could do is shout out incomprehensible nonsense.
The three soldiers finished cutting down the zombies in front of them, and Byr pointed further down the street to lead the group on.
CJ tried to lift his hands to his mouth, Alyss yanked him down by his bindings until he almost tripped forward. He yelled, tried to gesture, but the woman just watched him.
“What are you doing?” The Lady asked from next to him. “Time to be quiet again, we’re leaving.”
The yellow lines were moving closer in the darkness. They were going to emerge any moment. CJ didn’t know these people, and he wasn’t a fan of being bound and gagged, but they still saved him. Considering the circumstances, he didn’t want to see them surrounded and attacked, especially while he was with them. He needed to let Sir Byr know.
He yanked his hands away from Alyss, but she beared down and gripped the bindings tight with a grunt.
No time. CJ lowered his shoulder and checked Alyss. Thankfully for him, she clearly wasn’t expecting him to physically attack her. She stumbled back, losing her footing and falling to the ground. That was enough time for CJ to grab the gag in his mouth and pull it free.
The soldiers were pushing ahead, Sir Byr was coming back toward his Lady. The older soldiers eyes were focused on the struggle between Alyss and CJ, even from a distance his rage-filled glare was obvious.
It didn’t matter to CJ. With his mouth full he cleared his throat, took in a breath, then shouted. “AMBUSH!”
Byr stopped in confusion. He turned back toward the two soldiers pushing ahead.
There were 10 Ash Walkers to each side of the street. They came from beneath the lifted buildings, shrouded from the firelight by the structures. They were silent until they went to strike, then they let out a terrible guttural screech that filled the street.
“Regroup!” Byr barked.
The soldiers came rushing back towards him, but the position of the walkers was perfect. CJ assumed they were brainless monsters, but a move like this required enough forethought to move all together and wait for the perfect time to jump. They let Byr get away from his soldiers, they let them drop their guard, it was clever.
They crashed into Byr’s group from both sides, their numbers split Byr from his couple of soldiers. The chaos was immediate, swords flashing, monstrous roars, bodies clashing.
Alyss brandished her sword as she recovered. She shot one glance at CJ for his actions, but didn’t speak a word. Instead she stood between the noble young Lady and the monsters.
One came their way, and CJ took a step back in concern. Alyss stepped forward without fear. Her sword cut into the creature, enough that black sand spilled out of its wounds. But her sword wasn’t on fire like Byr or those connected to him. Her fight was a struggle, and CJ got to watch as she fought the monster to the ground and then pinned it down there with her sword.
The creature still struggled, letting out wheezing cries as it pulled itself up even with the sword impaling it.
The Lady moved back, even hiding behind CJ.
“That ain’t really gonna’ help you.” CJ said to her. “Pretty sure that thing would bowl me over and use me as a speed bump.”
She raised an eyebrow at that, but it didn’t matter.
Alyss pinned it back down with her boot, then dropped it with an overhead slash. With the head separated, the struggling died down.
They all looked back to Sir Byr’s fight. The light of their swords was gone. The zombies were down, and Sir Byr stood triumphant. Blood covered the left side of his head, his ear appeared to be missing. There were chunks ripped out of his armor, dents elsewhere.
He took a step toward CJ and the others. “My Lady… we must…”
Then he collapsed forward in the street.
“Sir Byr!” the Lady shouted. She broke from the group and ran forward. Alyss was a step behind her. It left CJ standing alone there in the darkness.
CJ walked up to join them, avoiding as many zombie bodies as he could.
He spotted the other two soldiers rushing over to Byr’s side as the Lady kneeled in the street to check on him.
There were no more yellow lines in the street. The zombies were dead. But CJ didn’t see any from Sir Byr either.
‘Does that mean he is…’ He didn’t want to jump to anything.
“His breathing is weak,” the Lady said. “Please, Fen was it? Take him, we must move immediately. We have nothing here to help him.”
The male soldier nodded and looked to his female compatriot. Fen grabbed Byr under the shoulders, and the woman grabbed his feet. They lifted and started to head down the street.
“How close are we to help?” CJ asked as the Lady stood from the street.
She was looking at the blood on her nightgown. His words made her look up. “Huh?”
“You have like, healers? Magical, hopefully. Where are they?” CJ asked.
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes scanning for something in his expression.
He didn’t know what she was looking for, but he was too tired to think about it. “What? What is it?”
“The way you talk,” She said. “You sound odd, foreign, but I can’t place where the accent is from.”
“Yeah well,” CJ said as he watched the soldiers and started to follow their path. “I’m not from here. Getting the feeling I’m a long way from home. My question, by the way.”
“You should speak with respect,” Alyss said. Her voice was still quiet, but he could hear the ‘or else’ in her strict tone.
“Hey, I didn’t choose to come here, I’ve got no clue who you people are. I’m figuring it out as I go, okay. Now my question, or is asking questions disrespectful?”
The Lady put a hand on Alyss’s arm. The horn-helmet soldier watched CJ for a moment longer, then walked ahead of the two of them.
“If our allies are where I suspect, we will reach them shortly after we leave the city. But that assumes they made it out of all of this.”
The buildings around them became sparse the further they went down the street. Eventually there was nothing but darkness and mountain ahead of them.
The Lady stopped and turned to look at the city they left. CJ joined her, standing in the dark, watching a city burn.
He felt a drop of rain hit him, then another. It started to sprinkle, and the dark clouds overhead told him there was much more in store for them.
He was still bleeding from his arm, from his head. He felt tired, and more than a little weak. But it was clear to CJ that he wasn’t the only one hurting here. He didn’t understand the situation, not yet.
“Who knows how long we will be gone,” she said. “This place was supposed to last forever, that’s what god promised us.”
CJ looked from her to the skyline of the burning city. The rain started to pour as he realized just how large of a city they were fleeing. He could see the large church they were at, it stood above the city with a domed roof now lit by fading embers. Beyond there were large walls that looked like stone. A castle stood behind the wall, with several towers and a central spire. Two of the towers were on fire.
He had no idea what you said to someone losing their home. Especially when it was by violent overthrow. So instead he just stood there, let her do and say what she would.
The Lady sighed and shook her head. Even in the rain, the tears in her eyes were obvious. “Who am I kidding, we deserved this.” She looked to CJ. “I’m sorry to say, you’ve inherited quite the knot to untie. That is, if you are who I hope.”
CJ turned with her to catch up with the others. Alyss was standing nearby, but the soldiers already carried Sir Byr off into the darkness of night.
The Lady wiped her eyes as they walked, which was futile since they were both being drenched as they walked.
“Yeah, about that,” CJ said. “I don’t know who or what you think I am, and I was happy to play along when it was getting me out of certain death, but I’m afraid any expectations you have might be way too high. Unless you really need a professional napper, or maybe need help with trivia questions.”
As they moved away from the city, a shock of pain traveled up and down his spine, stopping him in his tracks. He held his head in his hands, and bit down a cry of pain.
The Lady stopped and watched him, not saying a word until he stood there panting after the pain subsided.
“We will see,” she said. “For now, what is most important is getting you to safety. Come now, I’ve never made this hike myself but I hear it isn’t exactly easy.”