The Doorkeeper

by taolakhoai

Set in the world of Pillar of Eternity. Deep inside The Living Land, overlooking an abandoned town, stand a forgotten fortress said to be guarded by demons. The myths tell of armies marched toward the fortress only to never be heard again. The truth, however, is sometime stranger than fiction.

1. Chapter 1

It had even forgotten its name. It is a skeleton, after all, and name is but a social construct used to identify an individual. There is no society in this empty citadel, and its name had not been said out loud for a very very long time.

It is pretty sure that its name exist in a parchment inside the fourteen chamber, where the roster of the legion lay. There is where its name written alongside its peer, and it had read it for several time before the degradation had threaten the parchment's survival. It now had lock the chamber under several chains and locks, making sure that the parchment will survive. There is a bit of hope that remain inside its bosom, which would be one day where its duty end. A forlorn hope, but there are enough things to be depressed about and it wouldn't want to be emo.

As usual, it monotonously swept the floor of the main hall, scrubbed the tinted glass above the altar, offered a little prayer and collected the many artifacts. All wares inside the citadel are either made of silver or gold, not because its owner were rich, but simply because those are not of metal or stone are prone to be destroyed by the passage of time. The oakwood benches and tables that made up the main hall and the joint chambers are the sole exception to this rule. All personal rooms's funiture had been replaced by iron equivalents after around the fifth time the wood replacement break down and make everything a mess. Iron materials are not lacking here.

Then it feels something from the East side. It has felt this sensations many times before. Intruders from the enemy side. Likely another batch of iron material and cloth it can use, or it final demise. Whatever they may be, they will be helpful.

It couldn't help but feel unhappy that it thinks that dying and forfeiting its duty is a good thing.

It ran to the armory and took all his gears. Number one to seven, those are weapons chained to its existence, and these things grow strong with each passing day, absorbing magical energy from the undirected circuits distributed across the citadel. It mostly love them for that they never rust, and the fact that for the better part of its years it had never seen anything that can even come close. Champions of invading army can put their back into a hammer blow, and that wouldn't even make a dent on the breastplate. Thick reinforced siege engines broke in two with a halfhearted cleave from its sword. Its bow have neither strings nor arrows, yet one loose sends a hail of arrows flying that would tear apart shield formations. It has some doubt that its gear may not be this way at the start, but again, time had made it forgetful.

With a leap, it reached the East wall. Only five targets. Utterly disappointing, but a job is a job.

It dropped on the first intruder and the appearance make it pause. It is quite certain that 'that' is not an enemy. The invader have pale skin and black hair, and there is no trace of horns or hooves or branches anywhere. The appearance is actually reminding it of something, but it wasn't sure.

Let's capture this thing, it decided. It turned the pommel up and struck at the unsuspecting thing. The thing exploded into a shower of gore, the skull practically smashed into the spine. Rats. It looked at the deformed corpse before trying to shrug and turning to the next invader.

Didn't work. Even with something as light as possible, the next invader's neck was snapped with an audible crack. It finally decided to screw the subtle approach, and seized the next one by the collar. This one is a little bit on the brown side with long hair and protrusion on the body. It ignored the thing's wimper and hang the invader on the tallest tree branch he can find. The two other remaining companion didn't fare better, but one at least attempted to fight back once and broke their arm punching him in the chest. The one who did not resist appear to be the leader of the group, another brown thing with weirdly colorful hair that remind it of an ostrich.

When all is done, it attempted to tie all of them up, which ends up nearly choking the hell out of the broken arm one. It ended up grudgingly allow them to tie themselves up to a reasonable degree and walk them back to the fortress. They were murmuring among each other, but it did not care.