My mood for the duration of our travels had been effectively sunk. It was finally dawning on me that we were in route to our final objective, and that we were somehow supposed to bring down a damned castle! Yeah, you know, the thing that usually requires sieges that can last weeks or months, and I have to find a way to make it fall in a single day. Anything less than that would probably be considered a failure and be extremely risky for all of us trapped inside with the enemy.
I raced through my thoughts at a breakneck speed, and it was giving me a headache trying to come up with a solution that couldn’t possibly be found while we were miles away from Yol’vastume. There wasn’t much known about what went on inside the walls. Despite the numbers kept there, slaves have never successfully escaped from its confines, and no army has yet to breach it. The occupants of the castle are almost exclusively soldiers and their families, with a few craftsmen sprinkled around here and there just to keep everything from falling apart. The only thing that was even remotely known was just a general description of the types of houses and the layout of the walls, largely useless considering anyone with a half-decent spyglass and a vantage point could see as much.
I tried to distract myself from the inevitability of our arrival by observing the natural world, talking to Kala, or practicing some of my reading and writing skills. Keeping active was a good way to stop my mind from turning traitor on itself with doubt. Our first day of travel across the countryside was rather uneventful, all things considered. It might have been the stress I had experienced the last few days, but I kind of felt on edge about how simply the day could just end with nothing happening. Completely irrational, and I really needed a break.
We set up camp and got a fire started for the night. Some rations were cooked up and everyone enjoyed the preserved meats we had immensely. They talked, joked around a little bit, and generally acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. I couldn’t fathom how they managed to maintain their air of uncaring considering that they would be in the worst situation during this next part.
During my ruminations I was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. Standing slightly to the side and behind me when I looked over was Holdrem. “James, a word please.”
Without explanation or elaboration, I followed him as he walked away from the light of the fire a bit, curious to hear what it was he had to say to me. At the apex of the fire where the dancing shapes melded back into the night, He turned to face me with his arms crossed, and wearing a look that said he was serious about something. He then began talking.
“I wanted to have a talk with you about your flippant attitude regarding the Gods.”
Not what I expected, and frankly I couldn’t help the sigh that escaped me. “If this is going to be a lecture, you can just stop right now because I don’t want to hear it.”
Ignoring my attempt to avoid this controversial topic, he kept talking. “It needs to be said.”
“Does it?” I questioned, with my face slowly contorting further into disgust.
“Yes,” he replied firmly. “I can understand that you don’t have the highest opinion due to the things that happened to you, but your flagrant disrespect towards the Mother when she was not the perpetrator of those acts should cease.”
Is he fucking serious? My gaze sharpened significantly as I leered at him. “You best say you’re joking or some other bullshit to walk that back. I’ll let it go only this once if you do.”
“I will not, because she is not one to needlessly torture, nor would she condone it. Direct your anger towards those more responsible than her.”
“She is fucking responsible! I’m only here because of her!”
“Yet her influence does not allow for her to command others or direct the flow of history with any certainty. All the events in this world come to pass at our hands and no one else.”
“She might not have held the fucking knife but she sure as shit set me up for failure! Dropping me off in the literal middle of a damn war without so much as a fucking word of warning? No, ‘hey, those guys in armor that look like you, yeah, they’re assholes; don’t go with them,’ or ‘you know that wave of creatures that look like they're straight out of your wildest dreams, you should probably talk to them once they’re done trying to murder you.’ Nope, nothing. I get fuck all in terms of a heads up, so naturally I make the poorest choice and end up the plaything to a deranged sociopath and his narcissistic asshat of a king. She took everything and gave me nothing, so fuck her.”
Holdrem sighed a little through his nose. “You say that she gave you nothing, yet you continue to benefit from the powers she bestowed upon you, powers that by no right should be allowed to exist in this world.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, the ability to experience the pain of death more than once, what a wonderful gift.” My voice dripped with sarcasm.
“The power to do things that no one else could possibly risk.” He clarified. “Recently, it was instrumental in the success of our mission. That trapped door would have been impossible for anyone else to open, at least not without paying the ultimate price for such a simple thing. You can fight foes stronger than you or with more talent without fear because you can take a dangerous hit without your life being threatened. And don’t think we haven’t noticed you are strong, stronger than any Thrainian by far, and I'm willing to guess human too. These gifts aren’t just for the sake of power either. She must have a plan in mind, and to spend so much effort on one person must mean that you can do great things with what she has given you.”
“And if I had even the slimmest amount of choice, I would give up all that bullshit in a heartbeat if it meant I didn’t have to go through all that suffering,” I countered.
“You would give up Kala then?”
My back straightened and my brow shot upwards as I stared dumbfounded that he would bring her into this. My eyebrows came crashing back down into a glare. “That’s not fucking fair, and you know it. You can’t just use a relationship that wouldn’t have existed because it benefits your argument.”
He tilted his head up a little bit. “Fine, let’s say you had your choice that you claim to have wanted. You’re saying that it would have been better if she died?”
“What the fuck are you on about?”
“I’m only saying exactly what you are wishing for, to have never been in this world. Without you, she would have died, probably that very same day that you rescued her. What about Durdan as well? You saved his life from an assassin that no one saw coming. How much chaos and suffering would have come from his death? We might have been able to continue fighting for a time, but his death would have created countless wasted lives in the war and probably would have severely damaged our ability to wage it. It is not a leap to assume that we might have even lost the war after a time without his leadership should someone unsuited have taken up the mantle.”
He continued. “And it’s not just the coalition that benefited from your presence. You showed the whole camp that the way we thought of Thrainians, the way we behaved towards them was just as vile as the worst of their numbers. You might not have seen it, but our attacks into their territory changed. Needless bloodshed all but stopped completely, we didn’t burn homes anymore and only did damage to things that would affect the armies of Alathos. How much suffering have you prevented? How much suffering will you prevent? You’re saying that it would have been better if all that death and destruction was allowed to pass?”
It was hard to come up with an argument against that. I just sneered at him for a moment, becoming progressively angrier while I thought. “You can’t possibly know what would have happened without me.”
“It is a fact that you were instrumental in all those happenings turning out the way they did.”
“And I suffered a fate worse than death with enough pain to last a million lifetimes just so I could teach you guys how not to be assholes? I don’t see why I have to suffer for this world’s shortcomings.”
Holdrem sighed and shook his head. “So, you’re just a coward then who would wish his pain on others to avoid it.”
That was a straw too far. I exploded forward and seized him by the neck, lifting him free of the ground as I started screaming. “FUCK YOU! I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to be in this fucked up world trying to fix its problems for a bitch too lazy to do it herself! This was not supposed to be my life and you don’t get to call me a coward for wanting what was stolen from me!” His legs dangled and kicked out for purchase as I huffed air out between tightly clenched teeth.
Beneath the hammering of blood in my ears, a singular voice broke through. “James?!” My head snapped in the direction of the voice which was back towards the fire. Kala, Jorn, and Otar were all standing and staring at me with shocked expressions, clearly not knowing what to do with the situation they were seeing.
A gagging sound brought my attention back to Holdrem who was trying unsuccessfully to pry my hands away from his throat. He was choking... I was choking him. I loosened my grip and he slid out of my grasp, landing roughly on the ground and falling on his tail. Gasping and coughing filled the air as Holdrem recovered from his lack of oxygen.
I stared down at him while panting, slowly cooling off from my rage-fueled assault. Everyone was staring at me, silently judging my actions. I didn’t think it was fair, when I gave Holdrem an out from the conversation and he refused to take it while continuing to push the matter. They should stare at him; he started this!
In the end I just stomped off away from the camp and into the night. I was fuming. How the hell did Holdrem even have the nerve to question me and my feelings? It was the bitch's fault, all of it. She could solve every problem with a wave of her hand, but she just sits on her ass and makes others do it for her. Why shouldn’t I be mad at her? She stole my life, so she can just rot in her idleness for all I care. There’s no way I'd ever be adherent to her.
Eventually I had wandered far enough away that even the light from the fire wasn’t visible anymore. I walked up a little hill and sat down on some of the medium-sized rocks that were there. It was getting cold, but my frustration drove away any shivers that might have made their way out of me. I began brooding, staring out over the moonlit landscape of wild grasses and the sparse dotting of trees. Once I got bored with that, my gaze turned skyward to stare at the stars.
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The little lights shone from their positions, millions of light-years away from any of the bullshit that was happening here. There were so many of them. I never got to see anything like this back in my world, where light pollution blacked out the sky from all but the brightest stars. The moon here was also a little smaller than mine. It was currently in its waxing gibbous phase and shone with a brilliance unrivaled by the smaller lights surrounding it. It was peaceful like this; I didn’t have to worry about anything, the world wasn’t out to get me, I could just stare at the stars and imagine what it was like where they were.
But reality wasn’t willing to let me go just yet. The grass rustled a bit from the direction I had come. I sighed and turned my head to see who it was, but I already had a good idea. My assumption was correct, and Kala was standing there in the dim light of the moon. I chose to not acknowledge her presence there, as that seemed like an exhausting thing to do at the moment, and turned back towards the stars.
She padded over across the dirt and sat down on the rock next to me. There was a moment where nothing happened, but she eventually tried placing a hand on my shoulder. I pulled it away from her with a grunt. I knew it wasn’t exactly fair to be cold to her when she didn’t do anything, but I was still angry. She was nothing if not persistent though, and this time moved herself towards me until our hips were connected while throwing an arm around my waist, pulling us together.
“It’s cold out here, so you’re going to give me heat for forcing me to follow you.” She explained in a matter-of-fact way.
“I didn’t force you to do anything.” I grumbled.
“A display like that, storming off into the middle of nowhere in the dead of night clearly upset, and you expect me to do anything else? Yeah, you forced me.”
I just sighed and stopped arguing with her as she continued pulling me closer before resting her head on my shoulder. She let more silence envelop us as we both now stared at the night sky. “The stars are pretty tonight,” she commented plainly, while I just hummed in acknowledgment. She shifted her head a little until she was looking at me from an awkward angle. “What happened back there?” She asked softly.
I didn’t want to answer. But she had a way of dragging things out of me, lowering my guard. I began with a sigh. “He started lecturing me about why my hatred of the goddess wasn’t justified and that I should accept her ‘gifts’ for what they are.”
Now it was her turn to hum a little as she mulled over my terse explanation. “Doesn’t really seem like a tactful decision on his part, but it doesn’t explain why you became so aggressive towards him either.”
“He went too far, tried too hard to pull apart my anger and deny my feelings. He started conflating my desire to not have this curse with wishing that none of the good things I did ever happened, including saving you. He called me a coward who would put my pain on others just to avoid it.”
“That was rude of him,” she muttered sympathetically.
“Yes, but the problem is, I couldn’t come up with a sound argument for what he said, and frankly, I don’t know what I would do if I could just suddenly reverse everything. If I could choose to just go home and take away all the pain I've suffered through, I don’t know if I could do it anymore knowing that you would die, Durdan would die, so many innocent people would continue to suffer raids for a war they had no say in.”
My head dropped into my hands. “I hate this world for what it is, but I can’t abandon it anymore. I feel trapped, like I'm being forced to do all this because there’s no other way out. I admit that I don’t help my situation all that much by getting myself involved, but that again goes back to me having no way out but to act, and now I'm being looked up to like I can perform some miracle in this war that will bring it to an end. I'm just one guy, a nobody who only wanted to do something good and live a normal life. I’ve never even imagined I would be in a situation remotely like this. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Kala took a deep, slow breath before snuggling her head into me again. “Well, I can only think of one thing you can do.”
She was not immediately forthcoming, apparently fishing for a question from me. “And that is?”
“Your best. That’s all there is. As long as you give it everything you could possibly give, then succeed or fail, you’ll know you couldn’t have done any more.”
“You make it sound like it’s so easy.”
“True, it’s not, but effort and work rarely are easy things.”
I sighed, and finally dropped my head onto hers, giving in to the cuddles. “How are you all not panicking, knowing where we are going and what we are supposed to do?”
“Who says I’m not?”
“Then you’re hiding it very well.”
“What would panic accomplish other than stress everyone out? You seem to have more than enough of that already, so I figure I can be brave for you.”
I smiled and wrapped my arm around her. “I don’t think I could ask for a better partner than you.”
She smiled back at me. “Thank you. And for what it’s worth, I'm glad you came to this world. I love you.”
I leaned down a little more and planted a kiss on her lips, the first one I had given her in quite a long while. It felt great to express my feelings for her again in such an intimate way, and I probably had a stupid grin on my face as I disconnected and squeezed her a little closer to me. We enjoyed the time alone together for as long as we could, but staying there all night was out of the question and I had to face what I had done.
“I guess I should probably apologize to Holdrem for attacking him like that.”
“Hmm, probably, and I think he might owe you a few words in turn.”
“Probably... So, shall we head back to the camp?”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
We walked back to camp with Kala still wrapped around me in a way that made it a little awkward to walk but enjoyable, nonetheless. The campsite was a beacon in the middle of the dark landscape, so it wasn’t hard to retrace our steps. The other three were sitting around the fire looking rather contemplative. They looked up from their thoughts as we disturbed the tranquility of the night with our entrance.
Otar was the first one to address me upon entering the camp again. “You work it out of your system? If a fight starts again, I will step in to break it up this time.”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I took a breath, and Kala helped talk me down.” I looked over towards Holdrem who seemed to be avoiding looking me in the eye. I was still feeling a little sour about the things he said, but I was going to be the bigger man on this. Walking up to him, I bowed my head a little and started my apology.
“I’m sorry I choked you. Arguments shouldn’t get physical just because we disagree with one another.” He seemed a little caught off guard by the apology but rallied himself and stood to talk with me on the same level.
“I should apologize as well. Perhaps the things I said were a little provocative and spiteful; I was too invested in the argument. I’m sorry for insulting you like that.”
I offered a hand to him. “Agree to disagree then?”
He huffed a little in an amused fashion. “That’s probably the only compromise we will come to on this.” That was all that needed to be said as he took my hand and gave it a quick shake. “But I still am going to try to convince you that your anger is misplaced.”
“Fat fucking chance of that,” I said with just enough humor. It seemed things had gotten back to the status quo again, though I wasn’t really looking forward to the next time he decides to have a theological discussion with me. Most likely it would just devolve into us going round and round on the same points.
With all the emotionally charged conversations, I had become exceptionally tired, so I chose to turn in for the night and get right into the next day. One night’s rest later, we were all on the road towards our ultimate goal once again. I had gotten a few directions from some local villages we passed by on our travels, and it was a solid two days to Yol’vastume by horse drawn cart. Apparently, the castle and surrounding lands that are under its jurisdiction are substantial, and while not right on the edge of their borders, it is rather close to the wildlands.
And so began the long monotonous journey across the countryside. I had an unfortunately long time to think about what Yol’vastume would be like. My mind covered all the stereotypes. Castle walls lined with gibbets, storm clouds in perpetual presence, cruel slave drivers who were liberal with the whip, and rough and shady characters around every corner. I knew that the place probably wasn’t going to be anything like that at all, but the off chance was still making me worried.
The towns and villages we passed on our way weren’t terribly interesting, not that we stayed for very long even if they did have something that grabbed our attention. It was all largely the same old things we had seen before, only with each place having just a slight quirk to make it unique in the basic sense of the word. A mining town containing a ridiculous number of bars, a textile-rich town pumping out some truly strange articles of clothing in an almost experimental way, and a village whose primary export was hair from an unusually fluffy looking beast of some kind, like an offshoot of a sheep.
Before I even realized it, we had consumed two days and change of travel. This was the day we would finally see Yol’vastume and the nightmare that would await us. We must be getting close, as we had been moving for a good majority of the day already, and I expected we would see the castle any minute now.
Along the path we were interrupted, though. From the bushes emerged a small form that I had not seen in a while. Dart came out from the wilderness, prompting us to stop the cart to see what was up. As soon as we came to a halt, he began to explain the reason for his sudden emergence from the shadows.
“I’ll make this quick. I will be returning to the coalition to inform Durdan of your arrival at Yol’vastume. This will provide him with the opportunity to mobilize the army and get everything prepared should you be successful. It will probably be four to five days before I am able to return to keeping an eye on you. If you plan to pass along any messages, whether they be news of success or failure to find a weakness, you will have to wait until then.”
I nodded. “Okay, I understand. Hopefully all this won’t be for nothing. Good luck Dart.”
“Save the luck for yourself; you’ll need it. May you find success in that dark place.” With those final words he vanished into the wild again to bring the news to Durdan. Now that nothing else was stopping us, we continued onwards towards our destination.
We crested a small hill heading into a valley, and as what lay below came into view, I admit that I was rendered quite stunned for a moment. Fields of golden amber wheat swaying like waves stretched as far as the eye could see. Each stalk of grain practically shimmered in the afternoon light, creating the illusion of a gold ocean, the road parting the sea like a biblical force.
My attention was brought away from the grains when I noticed a tall stone jutting out of the landscape around the edge of the fields. Along its surface was a multitude of intricately-carved runes, and amongst the runes were embedded crystals, glowing slightly with power. The sight might have been interesting, if it wasn’t for the contents of the runes. They were a command prompt that was proximity triggered, and it was designed to activate collars. A fence, a prison, invisible though it may be, was nonetheless effective at keeping people in.
That steeled my mind again as I remembered just what this place was. No matter how beautiful it might appear, it was a slave plantation, a particularly big one. That thought was reinforced even more when we came across slaves working in the fields a little later. There must have been at least a hundred of them, spread about the land and cutting the wheat with handheld sickles. Their slavers rode around on horses, keeping a close eye on them. Whips were on clear display, hanging from the saddles but always in reach. The slaves just stared down at the earth that they were forced to work, sunken gazes of hopelessness making their faces appear gaunter than their already half-starved physiques made them seem.
I could feel the tension in the cart beginning to rise as we were all forced to watch the exploitation of these people. Hopefully, provided we had an enormous amount of luck, we could find a way to free these people. But first, we had to bring down the castle, a castle that we had yet to see. The land the made up Yol’vastume’s property was truly massive. It was over half an hour and a change of crops later before our destination came into view.
Yol’vastume’s stony exterior emerged from the landscape as we continued to climb up a slight incline in the topography. Its tall walls were an imposing sight, even from a distance. Large stone towers spread along the walls at even intervals, each one suspiciously large for a simple fortification. The gatehouse was solid and had a double layer of reinforcements in the form of a drop gate and a regular hinged gate. There were signs of previous attempts to breach the walls of this formidable structure in the form of scorch marks upon its face and a few cracked surfaces. This place had seen, and survived, its fair share of war.
I took a deep breath as we drew closer to this little pit of despair. Once it began, we weren’t leaving until this place was under coalition control, or we were in chains. My waking nightmare was about to begin.