On the edge of dawn or doom, the adventurers made for the Code Keep. Four in all—summoner, ranger, thief and soldier—they ascended the twisting mountain steps to carry toward the half-dark summit a rare and vital hope.

The Summoner was the first into the keep. He was many years in age with a gray, rugged face beneath the hood of a silken cloak. Past battered wooden doors he led his party, crossing roots and rubble to arrive at a large circular dais, where he hastily began assembling an apparatus. Whilst he worked, the Ranger—a light-haired female donned in woodland green—fired from her bow a number of small, cloth-wrapped objects into the three stone archways that led toward the tower’s center, a freezing trap here, a fire trap there. For the Thief, these archways were stepping stones to reach the rotten scaffolding around the inside of the keep. There he swung from a tattered banner to perch upon the stone ledge above the entranceway, his sword whip dangling like a devil’s tail. Beneath him loomed none other than the Soldier, whose singular tactic included standing in plain sight with a hand on the hilt of each sheathed sword, a gleam of forthcoming dawn in his watchful gaze.

They had come for a final battle against evil. High above them all, the tower’s oculus held in it the hues of embattled twilight.

This was it. This was the end.

With a hiss from its base, the Summoner’s apparatus shivered to life. The device had three heavy legs supporting a long neck fitted with a single blue-glowing crystal. The Summoner adjusted a set of dials and the crystal glowed brighter yet, until from its prismatic end came a beam of light that shone up at the back wall of the Code Keep.

“Behold!” the Summoner cried out, his voice struggling against the hum of the enkindled crystal. “The Source!”

In the eye of that beam appeared row after row of symbols up the tower. It was a language that few could understand, but as the Summoner adjusted the crystal further the mysterious runes became more comprehensible. They were commands that gave the wide world its fundamental shape. With a motion of his hand, the Summoner cast white birds from beneath his cloak, which flew up into the code-glowing heights and began to peck at the revealed symbols. Until, as if the letters themselves were as light as cloth, the birds carried the commands from one place to another.

At once, the Code Keep began to change. The serpentine roots retreated back into the stone floor. The rubble rattled to life and tumbled end over end to reform itself into ornate pillars or fit like puzzle pieces into the keep’s stony crevices. Indeed, it was as if the Summoner had unlocked the secrets to the reverse flow of time; though the truth was much simpler: the world around them was as programmed as the songs from a tinkerer’s automatic bells. The Summoner was merely reprogramming the Code Keep to play a new “song”—a song of a world that should have been but never was.

Through the stone-cut windows and out through the tower’s oculus, the dawn—which had been on pause for three days now—began at last to progress. Shadows long-clung to the walls began to move, animated by the resumed functioning of the world. Tossing back his hood, the Summoner called out in victory. The Ranger craned her neck to peer at the sky above the keep, where tendrils of pink, red and orange pushed away the night. The Thief too cast an eye out at that glorious change, to see their long-fought quest come to a close.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The Soldier, however, did none of these things. No, he was focused only on the figure that had just stepped into view of the Code Keep’s entrance.

Adventurers . . . hissed the Knight low and without warmth.

All turned now to see their adversary looming at the entrance, his form half crouched to fit through the doorway. So you’ve elected to bring back the day; yet have you only brought me a second serving of night. With a scrape of obsidian armor against gray stone, the Knight stepped through the shattered doors and beneath the first archway.

The freezing trap was the first to be triggered. In a flash, the gadget exploded to send a wave of cold from its cloth-wrapped body, dousing the Knight in a white haze. The Soldier did not wait around to see what would come of it; unsheathing his twin swords, he growled and rushed forward to meet the enemy. As he neared, he leapt over the frozen floor to arrive inside that ice cloud, the Ranger’s arrows screaming by in accompaniment. There he found the Knight’s gloomy form embellished with ice, though the enemy himself none the worse for wear. With a wallop of his black sword, the Knight parried the Soldier’s initial attack, and in doing so dispelled the icy mist around him like a great wind.

The Soldier was not impressed. Springing forward again, he lashed sparks from the Knight’s armor, and with a deft dodge avoided his adversary’s next blow. This as the two began to pass beneath the second archway, where the Thief leapt from his perch to land atop the Knight’s back, his thorny whip transformed in a flick of his wrist into a glimmering sword.

The poets will sing of your defiance . . . the Knight said, reaching back with his free hand to pluck the Thief from his shoulders, all the while he fought off the Soldier,  once they’ve fished their tongues out from the black pits!

With little effort, he tossed the Thief up between the archways. With similar ease the Summoner summoned a column of blue crystal around which the Thief whipped his transformable sword to swing himself around and back through the arch. Alas, this second attempt was just as ineffective as the first—with a powerful kick the Knight sent both Soldier and Thief rolling away from him, their weapons clanking against the hard floor. The Knight stood eyeing the central dais and the summoner who stood upon it. Wholly unaffected by the arrows bouncing from his armor, the Knight stepped through the next archway.

In a burst of fire, the flames of the second trap turned the gathered ice instantly to steam. The Knight stumbled back from the sudden blow to crash into the first archway. A rumble echoed up the tower as the stone arch toppled to crush the Knight beneath its weight. The adventurers would not get a better chance than this. With all their might, they leapt and fired and slashed and summoned beasts as fiercely as they could muster. They grit their teeth and set upon the Knight their collective strength.

Unfortunately, that effort would have been better spent preparing instead for the final final boss: that pair of shadow dragons that now had the jump on them.

From the top of the Code Keep, a shrill cry of beasts best undiscovered. To the growing hues of dawn, the sibling shadow dragons dove down the length of the tower. Before the adventurers could scarcely act did those two beasts crash into the defenses that awaited them. No sooner could the party send its attack one way did the next dragon draw them to another position, until the four had been divided. All the while the adventurers fought, the Knight pulled himself out from under the rubble, his dark spirit none the worse for wear—for indeed spirit was all that remained inside that obsidian armor of his.

Sure, as the Knight unhurriedly made his way to the dais, there was the adventurer or three who tried to stop him. But there was just too much dragon to contend with, not and stop the Knight too. So, essentially, he strolled uncontested to the Summoner’s apparatus.

Placing a hand upon the device, the Knight received a gift most generous: the complete overhaul of the world. Now he had only to recreate it in the image of what it never was, never was and never should have been.