With the absent rise of the sun in the morning, Henry awoke to a swift kick in the side and curled into a ball from pain once he finally settled on the ground some fifteen feet from the position underneath the floating purple orb in which he had originally slept. The bag was still around him, which made a full fetal position impossible, but he nonetheless approached it as much as he could, some 50-60% of the way there. The bag was wrapped taught around him, and while it had provided insulation through the night was obviously not sufficient to stop or even mitigate the pain of such a blow. It broke a few ribs, he was sure, but that wasn’t the first thing on Henry’s mind. As he tried to breathe, his lungs felt full as though he were drowning. He tried to cough and was met with a wet sound as a thick mixture of blood and mucus flowed out into his mouth and onto his tongue. There was a metallic taste in Henry’s mouth and a sharp smell in the air as though a cloud of rust hung in the air around him.
“Up, worm,” a deep voice resounded from some ten feet away, slowly closing the distance.
Henry didn’t try to rise. There was no point, he would just collapse anyway. He tried to breathe, but mucus and blood mixed thickly on the tongue to block the flow of air. He tried to say something, but only a faint murmur of pain rang out. It wasn’t intelligible anyway, but Henry didn’t even know what he was trying to say. His mind was empty as his body ached in place of thought.
Regulus just stood there, unmoving, as Henry’s chest slowly cleared itself. The small man coughed again, and again, and again, and again, and heaved, and again, until at last he stood from beneath the sleeping bag. Henry had no idea how long this took, nor why he had been kicked, nor why he had not been kicked again. His thoughts were a jumbled mess and his body still burned with every passing second, but the one thing he was certain of was this: hatred. Hatred seethed in his mind and cleared out the cacophony of other thoughts from his brain. He saw nothing but red despite the imposing giant of a man being equally adorned in blue.
And yet Henry knew he could not act. He knew there would be no purpose in “attacking” a man of such imposing stature. His muscles ached to do so anyway, but he only barely restrained them. When he was at last free of visible tension Regulus spoke,
“You were better off in the bag, at least then your appearance betrayed your true form.”
He paused, turned around, and began to leave again, but not before calling back
“You’re late. Report to the training hall immediately” in his trademark even tone, lacking even a hint of the malice which had started Henry’s morning so abruptly.
Henry did not want to follow him.
“What was the point of making a fucking pact with a fucking god if I can’t even resist some soldier?” he thought, unable to bring himself even to mutter this for fear of retaliation. Henry’s legs began to act without thought, action imposed on them by terror despite the pain in his chest that cried out with every step. Soon enough they carried him unwillingly to the end of the great hall in which the orb of darkness floated, surrounded by such bright adornments of ostentatious wealth. Hall after hall of red-felt carpet surrounded by golden walls met him. There was no door to leave the great hall, nor to any of the other rooms. It was as though the entire dome was one large room meant for a single purpose, though Henry could not surmise what it was from the content of the rooms. Each looked as generic as could be, apart from the absurd level of wealth showcased in them. It was the genericness of extreme wealth given to someone with no concept of what it should entail— a kitsch collection of all sorts of things with no sense of order or purpose to them— as though a man with nothing had suddenly come into absolute fortune without any knowledge of the kinds of things a rich man should buy.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Paintings of ordinary grass stood hung over what seemed to be kitchen stoves. Bowls of gems stood on tables in place of fruit. Chairs were ten feet high and intricately carved of gold encrusted with sapphires and rubies and diamonds and emeralds— all of which would stab into anyone who tried to sit down, not to mention the weight of such a chair. One room stood empty, save for a single tub about three feet across, made of gold of course. Another stood entirely filled with crystalline chairs with spiky surfaces. Another was just a window into a room filled with what seemed to be mayonnaise. The glass from which this room was visible was slightly condensated as though the room were chilled. How mayonnaise was in this world or why it was being stored and chilled in a poorly-insulated room with a window was a mystery to him.
After some minutes of walking, Reg disappeared into one of the rooms, and Henry followed some ten or twenty feet behind him. It was a small room maybe five feet across with a faint ritual circle in the middle and shelves filled with vials of red liquid on either side. The circle itself seemed to be made of ash almost painted on the floor, though was slightly tinted with the crimson shade of one of the vials Reg collected from the left wall.
He motioned for Henry to follow him into the center of an empty circle inset in the larger ritual one outside it, then threw the vial down. As it shattered the inset lines between the inner and outer circle began to glow a soft red, slowly growing brighter and brighter until at last they were blinding and Henry had to look away while closing his eyes.
When his eyelids opened Henry did not see walls filled with vials of red liquid, rather, a large open dome of some white-ish and nearly opaque crystal surrounded him on all sides. Quartz, perhaps? Henry was unsure, but to his front stood some thirty men adorned in the same crystal as the dome for armor, clearly subordinates to Regulus. They stood six or seven feet high and seemed just a shade less wide than Regulus himself. All wore helmets that made them seem like they had no face. The only exception were two small dots where the eyes should be, covered in clear crystal instead. Behind them were dead eyes surrounded by what seemed to be black face paint.
The men stood at attention, quartz scabbards on the left side, nothing held in the hands. None moved so much as an inch. Henry was unsure of what to do so decided to look around a bit. Behind them and to the left stood Amanda, so rather than going to join the ranks of these… monsters, he began to walk backwards. Regulus did not stop him, so he assumed this must be if not correct, at least not entirely incorrect of him to do. Amanda said nothing, and continued to hold an empty gaze forward and slightly down toward Regulus, who began to speak only when Henry stood firmly in place to his rear leftward side.
“We march.”
Amanda seemed to focus on casting something after the emission of that phrase, and the air began to thicken and congeal into streams of red mist that flowed in columns to the floor. With this the black-tiled floor began to brighten and Henry noticed that they stood in the center of one very small circle at the center of a much, much larger one that was painted to cover the entire surface of this dome. He realized this must have been a holding area meant to quarantine those who would enter the city, though wasn’t entirely sure how the anti-teleportation measures could select which regions could enter or not. It was, however, now clear to him why this city was constructed in such a way. To be more accurate, he supposed, it would be better to call it an outpost. It was probably fortified beyond normal construction practices to resist magical onslaught. Given the scale of fire he had seen when first encountering this city, Henry began to realize the level of power those capable of wielding magic here could possess, though had no sense of scale to whether that was an impressive feat or not. If Amanda could transport some thirty-three combatants using nothing but the latent energy of the air around them, however, it seemed the magical potential of this world was high, possibly more so than he was ready to admit.
Whatever stood to greet them on the march, Henry had missed the briefing for.
“Why would they bother bringing me if they weren’t going to prepare me for battle?” Henry questioned to himself. It was entirely unclear, but it wasn’t like he had time to think anyway.
With a flash of red light the column of soldiers appeared on the outside of the great diamond dome Henry had entered some days prior. As soon as the sun appeared and a light sensation of heat greeted them on the skin in the dawn of a spring or autumn morning, they began to march.