Chapter Twenty-One: Anger Management
The last echoes of the dual horn blasts were still lingering among the deep nooks and crannies of the White Keep.
I started heading for the stairs, but Theo put a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. "What the hell do you want to use the stairs for, bro?" my best friend chuckled. The air seemed to hum slightly, and Theo levitated a few inches up off the floor. "You ain't the only one who can fly."
"Right, sorry…still getting used to your whole immortal Airbender thing…"
Theo, being a fully realized Thane of Breath, was able to fly through manipulation of the air. I, on the other hand, could fly because I was my dream self at the moment. We both climbed the ladder to the top of Cruz's dream turret and launched ourselves into the sky, soaring up around the White Keep. There was a light, warm breeze today, and it felt good against my face as I flew alongside my best friend.
After we made a circuit around the White Keep, Theo dipped down, heading towards one of the massive gates built into the outer castle walls. I swooped down after him. We both came to a landing on top of the gatehouse. The Royal Guardsmen stationed on the walls to either side of the gatehouse didn't seem to notice our arrival. And if they did notice, they still didn't react in any way. Man, these guys could give the Buckingham Palace guards a run for their money…
Then I saw the…the… The giant, towering…thing that was approaching the castle gates. It was easily over twenty feet tall, and...
"What the fuck is that thing?" I asked, my voice small and quiet. I'm not even gonna describe what the fuck it looked like; it made my brain hurt just to look at it. It looked like a supersized Prospitian who'd rolled around in nuclear waste and got mutated…and not in the awesome superhero way. Finding the proper adjectives to describe it to you…it just can't be done. I mean, it had wings, faint smoke trailing from its nostrils, a massive drill for a left hand, a huge broadsword in its right hand, and… I don't even…
"He's the White King, bro," Theo gave me a sidelong glance. "What were you expecting?"
"I dunno…" all I could do was shrug. "Definitely not a massive conglomeration of fuck…"
That got a laugh from Theo. "That's probably the best description of the big guy I've ever heard. The White Queen doesn't look anything like that?"
I shook my head. "No, she looks like a normal Prospitian. I mean, taller and thinner, and her eyes are different… But nothing like…that."
"She must not wear her ring very much…" Theo murmured.
The two of us watched the White King lumber towards the gates. I wondered how the hell he was going to fit through the castle entrance without banging his head. That was when the broadsword in the White King's hand morphed suddenly into a white scepter capped by a bright, blue-white globe that looked a lot like Skaia. He slipped the scepter into a sheath on his hip…and suddenly, the King transformed. Shrank…shrank down to a normal size, and also to a normal shape. Maybe six feet tall. He now looked like a stout, broad-shouldered Prospitian. No drill-hand, no fire breath, no wings, none of the other insane body parts...
Okay, that had been weird. Like, really fuckin' weird.
Hundreds of Prospitians had gathered in the street to welcome the White King back. As the King and his entourage—a couple dozen heavily armed and armored elite guards, just like the guards under the command of the White Guardian—entered the gates, all of the gathered Prospitians sank to a knee, their heads bowed in reverence to their monarch.
"Must be quite a guy," I remarked, watching the display of loyalty to the King.
"Well, obedience to the King and Queen is imprinted in the carapacians' genes when they're created," Theo explained. "It's kinda natural to them."
That didn't exactly click with me. "So they have no choice but to obey?"
"No, obedience is just instinctive for them," Theo clarified. "They can disobey whenever they want, but the White King has given them no reason to. The monarchs have something even stronger; theirs is a compulsion to follow the rules of the game, though, not obedience. That'd be pretty pointless, being instinctively obedient to yourself! But there's a logic to it—the Kings and Queens instinctively follow the game rules, and the pawns instinctively obey the Kings and Queens!"
"If the compulsion on the Kings and Queens is so strong, then why is the Black Queen fucking up everyone's shit on Derse?" I asked.
Theo blinked. "Like I said, the compulsions are strong, but they aren't ironclad… C'mon, let's head over to the Keep and meet the big guy."
"What was the point of coming all the way out here if we're just gonna fly right on back?"
Theo gave me a look. "I enjoy being there for the grand entrance. And honestly, I just like flying."
Well, that a more than good enough reason for me. I happened to love flying as well. We didn't zoom straight back to the White Keep, though; we followed the White King's progress as he made his way through the castle-city towards the Keep's entrance. The Prospitian residents of the castle remained bowed until the White King passed them by, at which point they would rise back to their feet and return to their duties.
Theo and I landed at the top of the steps that led up to the White Keep's entrance gate just before the White King arrived. As he ascended the steps toward us, the King glanced over his shoulder and gave his entourage a single nod. The two dozen or so elite guards relaxed and filed past the King, jogging in two perfect lines through the entrance gates and into the White Keep.
The White King gave Theo a nod and exchanged a brief glance with me before brushing past. I arched an eyebrow at Theo, but my friend just gestured for me to follow. Keeping my thoughts to myself, I followed Theo and the King into the White Keep, ignoring the heavy boom of the gates closing behind me. Oddly enough, one of the first things that occurred to me was that the King was my height. I dunno why this popped into my head—I guess I was expecting him to be taller.
Oooh, fuck, I just realized how cliché that sounded… Sorry about that.
Like the Golden Keep on Prospit, there was a long corridor that ran from the entrance of the White Keep to what could only be the throne room. A pair of royal guards stood watch in front of the throne room doors, but they bowed their heads and stepped to the side when the King approached. The White King pushed open one of the heavy doors and stepped inside, Theo and myself hot on his heels.
One of the royal guards shut the throne room door behind us, leaving the three of us alone in the…throne room?
It looked like a library. The room smelled like cedar. All the walls were lined with fully stocked bookshelves, and there were even more shelves arranged behind and to the sides of the White King's throne… And the White King's throne happened to be a simple oaken chair. It was set behind a mahogany desk, complete with a quill and inkpot, and a reading lamp. It looked exactly like a library desk. With a quill and inkpot, that is.
Once the doors to the throne room were shut, I could see the White King visibly relax. His shoulders slumped slightly, and he let out one of the longest breaths I've ever heard anyone sigh. The King leaned down over his desk, resting on his hands for a few moments. He then reached over to the other side of the desk and opened the top drawer, obviously searching around for some important, Kingly object.
He pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds.
The White King pulled a cigarette from the pack and clamped it between his lips, patting down his garments as he did so. "Shit, where the hell did I…?" he was mumbling as he fumbled through several of his pockets. He then looked up at us, the corners of his mouth curving up in a sheepish grin. "Hate to ask this, boys, but do either of you happen to have a light?"
"Sorry, left mine with my other body," Theo chuckled.
"Ah, pity… How about you?" the King turned to me. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was staring. The White King blinked twice. "You have a light? Lighter? El fuego? I have a zippo somewhere, but I'm always losing things… Come now, is this really the first time someone has asked you for a light?"
"I, uh… No," I rediscovered my voice. "No, I, uh… No, I don't have a light… Sorry, I just didn't really expect…"
"…expect me to be smoking cigarettes?" the White King finished for me. "No one expects me to be smoking cigarettes—the Queen believes that I quit smoking over a century ago. Not a word of this is to reach her, understand? She would stop talking to me for a decade if she found out. Now, where could I have left that zippo…?"
An idea occurred to me, then. Probably one of the best ways to break the ice. "Well, now that you mention it, I guess I kinda do have a light…"
Taking a deep breath and focusing my Aspect, I flicked out an index finger. There was a sparking noise, and a small mote of flame sprang into existence, fluttering weakly above my fingertip. I held the flame out to the White King, and he used it to light his cigarette. The King took a deep drag, exhaling the smoke in a cloudy plume, breathing a sigh of relief as he did so.
"Ah, that hits the spot…" he remarked. "I apologize for rushing into my nicotine before properly introducing myself; I've been having a bit of a bad day. A bit of a bad year, come to think of it… I am the King of Prospit, though I'm quite sure you have deduced that by now. And judging from your Prospitian Hero's garb and your pyrokinesis, you must be the Knight of Force," the White King extended a hand.
I shook it hesitantly, still kind of trying to reconcile the image of the King of Prospit smoking a pack of Cowboy Killers. "Uh… Yeah. Knight of Force, that's me. Ready to fuck some Dersite shit up."
The White King gave a sharp bark of laughter. "I like this one!" he proclaimed to Theo, clapping me somewhat painfully on the shoulder. "I've been waiting to meet you for a long time, and I was afraid you would have no sense of humor! It gladdens me to see that my fears were unfounded… Oh, and this reminds me; there is something I need to do for you!"
"Oh?" I wasn't sure if I should be excited or nervous. "What might that be?"
"Eh…" the White King hesitated for a moment, tapping his chin thoughtfully. The carapace-flesh produced a hard clacking noise when tapped upon, which I—as a soft-skinned creature—found slightly disconcerting. "I can't remember what exactly it was. Don't go anywhere; I wrote it down in my book. Now I just need to remember where I put my book…"
The White King continued to murmur unintelligibly to himself as he vanished amidst the bookshelves that filled the back of the throne room, searching for his book. When he was out of earshot, I turned to Theo and said, "Okay, is he for real?"
"Not what you expected, is he?" Theo chuckled. "Yeah, I know, he's kinda forgetful, and just downright weird at times…but he's a pretty cool dude when you get used to him. Honestly, he's been under a ton of pressure, leading the Prospitian military, and he probably would've gone insane a long time ago if he didn't start acting all eccentric-like."
I guess that made sense. I mean, I really didn't have any problem with the White King; he just…wasn't what I expected. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it was probably a good thing.
Now it was my turn to laugh. "You know, he kinda sounds like Steve Carell."
"Fuck!" Theo crowed, startling me enough to make me jump. "Oh sorry 'bout that… It's just I've been thinking the exact same thing for the past week, but I haven't been able to come up with Steve Carell, and it's been driving me crazy!"
Another ridiculous thought occurred to me, just then. "You know what we should do? We should get him to scream WHERE ARE THE TURRRTLES!"
Theo and I were nearly on the ground laughing within seconds. Good thing Theo watched The Office, too, otherwise I'd be laughing all by myself! The White King was visibly confused when he returned to his desk to find us busting a collective gut. "Have you discovered something amusing?" the King asked, sounding genuinely interested in what we were laughing at.
"Naw," I waved the White King off, wiping the tears from my eyes with my other hand. "Don't worry about it. You find what you were looking for?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," the White King grinned, setting a thick tome down onto his desk, inadvertently knocking over the book that was already resting there.
I picked up the fallen book, pausing for a moment to examine it. It had pretty cool cover art, but I couldn't find a blurb anywhere. "Complacency of the Learned, by Rose La-" I started to murmur the title and author, but the White King snatched the book out of my hands, his face blushing an almost imperceptible shade of pink.
"A guilty pleasure of mine, from a foreign instance of your universe," the King explained, filing the book away in one of his bookshelves. "I've accumulated a bit of a collection, as you can see. But we can discuss the wonders of the literary world later…" the White King said as he opened his book and put on a pair of half-moon reading spectacles, flipping through the pages until he came to a not-quite-so-recent entry. As he read quietly to himself, I could see the recollection of forgotten memories flaring in his large, onyx eyes.
"So, uh… Jackpot?" I asked.
"Hm?" the White King glanced up at me, lowering his Dumbledore glasses. "Oh, yes, I just found it here. It was twelve years ago, while I was campaigning with the Alabaster Rifles. Skaia showed me an important vision in one of its clouds. Well, two visions, really—first one, then the other. The second vision showed this very moment, our first meeting. I am afraid I need to wake you up."
"Aw, do you have to?" Theo sighed. "He was just starting to settle in!"
"Oh believe me, if you knew what was about to happen to his waking self, you would wholeheartedly agree with me," the White King declared. He stepped out from around his desk and moved towards me. "This won't hurt a bit, Knight; we just need to put your dream self to sleep so your waking self can regain consciousness."
"Okay, sounds good," I cleared my throat, taking another deep breath. Then, "Wait, what was the first vision you saw in the clouds?"
"Not much point in me telling you," the White King rested a hand on my forehead. "You're about to experience it for yourself! Not to worry, though. You have a knack for worming your way out of even the most impossible of situations. Climbing a sword ladder, for instance! Best of luck!" he wished me cheerfully.
That was the last thing I remembered before losing consciousness.
The rain had lessened. It had gone from a light shower to a misting spray. I only felt it for a few moments, however, before my Aspect kicked back in and started redirecting the precipitation before it got me wet. My body did this reflexively while I was asleep…but not while I was unconscious, it seemed. Wait, unconscious?
That's right, I'd been knocked out by, uh… By that one white-scaled dude, the leader of all those Plains cobra-consorts. Okay, so if they'd decided to knock me into Dreamland, where exactly was I now?
The first thing I felt was the cold, hard, uncomfortable stone that I was lying on. I then realized that my hands and feet were immobilized by what felt like stone manacles. Okay, so having exhausted the use of my touch sense, I decided it was time to upgrade to sight. I opened my eyes…
…just in time to see a dagger plunge down towards my chest.
"Fuck!" I screamed. Now, I really have no idea how I did this, but as I shouted out my favorite obscenity, some fight-or-flight kind of instinct must've fired up in my mind, because the next thing I knew, that dagger was exploding into a few hundred smaller pieces. Did I do that? I must have… Man, when are people gonna learn that threatening my life always causes crazy shit to happen?
Now that I was no longer in danger of coming down with a chronic case of dagger in the chest, I looked around and got my bearings. I was lying on a stone slab at the top of what seemed to be a tall square pyramid, built Aztec style. To one side of me was a temple of sorts, built on the top of the pyramid. To the other side was a really steep flight of stairs that ran to the street below. Standing over me was a rather startled-looking, elderly, slate gray-scaled consort. He'd been the one with the dagger.
There was a substantial crowd of consorts gathered in the street below, obviously here to witness whatever the hell was going on here. There were another four consorts in front of the temple to my left, as well. I recognized the white-scaled consort who'd knocked me out yesterday. There were an additional two consorts armed with black swords, standing guard over the fourth consort—a red-scaled cobra who was obviously a prisoner.
Glimmering Scales.
It was hot. Almost uncomfortably hot, and there was also a dry breeze. As I looked out beyond the pyramid, I could see a small city of stone, and beyond that…red sand dunes as far as the eye could see. We were in a desert. There was an entire city built on top of a stone mesa, which rested in the middle of the sands. I guess the Plains consorts weren't exactly Plains consorts… Desert Fires indeed…
My current predicament finally dawned on me, and… Well, to be perfectly honest, I was pissed. I was so done with all this bullshit.
"Sacrifice?" I seethed. "You little fuckers were gonna sacrifice me?"
"You are a tresspasser and a pretender," the white-scaled consort declared. "You invade our landss and claim falssely to be-"
"Shut the fuck up!" I snapped. "This is bullshit! This is such fucking bullshit! You're supposed to be my consorts, you fucking assholes! You're supposed to be helping me! But no, every time—every fucking time—I meet a new bunch of you asshats, you decide to make it your purpose in life to make my life a fucking nightmare! I had to climb a ladder made of swords for the Treefolk before they'd even believe I was the Knight! A ladder of motherfucking swords! And after all the shit I go through to find you guys, what do you do? You knock me out and try. To fucking. SACRIFICE ME! I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!"
Wow, I guess I hadn't really meant to go off like that… But if you'd been in my shoes, you probably would've blown your top, too. I mean… I mean, just… Enough is enough, you know? I haven't survived all this shit only to be offed on this slab like a fucking Thanksgiving turkey. They're my consorts—it was high time they started acting like it.
By the end of my rant, I found that I'd broken free of the sacrificial slab, and there were flames curling up from my clenched fists, growing larger every time I shouted a new obscenity until it looked like I was shooting WWII flamethrowers off my arms. Fuck, I needed to get myself under control. I took a deep breath, allowed the flames to dissipate, waited for the echoes of my last words to vanish.
A silence had settled over the square below. I guess I got their attention.
The slate-scaled consort glared over at the white-scaled cobra, who had a look of extreme irritation on his face. The elderly cobra then turned away from me, facing the crowd gathered below. "There will be no execution today!" he declared. "The Council musst reconvene!"
"Yeah," I murmured in agreement. "Yeah, execution bad. Reconvening good. No need for a snake roast when there's reconvening going on."
There was quite a commotion going on down in the streets as the gathered people processed this rather unexpected turn of events. I guess I couldn't really be mad at all of them—it seemed a few key facts had been withheld from them, concerning my true nature. While the crowd began to disperse, the slate-scaled elder slithered off and began to exchange hushed, angry words with the white-scaled cobra who'd captured me.
I stepped away from the sacrificial slab and retrieved my Roman Bowie from my strife specibus, leveling it threateningly at the two guards who were restraining Scales. "Do me a favor and let my friend go, will you?"
The two guards glanced at one another, then promptly stepped away from Glimmering Scales, allowing my friend to sag to the ground—they probably didn't want to cross the person who'd just nearly gone supernova by having a hissy fit.
I walked over to Scales and crouched down next to him, offering an arm. He grabbed it with his Vis, using it to prop himself up, opening his mouth as wide as he could, working his jaws around, giving quiet moans of relief. "They have you muzzled, or something?" I asked him.
Scales gave a grunt of affirmation. "I very nearly bit the white warrior'ss head off after they turned on uss," the red-scaled consort admitted. "He decided to keep my mouth shut…which conveniently prevented me from sspeaking on your behalf."
"Yeah, uh…it kinda looks like things escalated pretty fast," I observed, gesturing all around us, but primarily at the sacrificial slab.
"I believe you should be thanking yoursself that it wass our landss in which you found yoursself after arriving here, not thosse of the Desert Fires."
"So…what now?"
My question was answered by the slate-scaled elder before Scales ever got a chance to. The elderly cobra cleared his throat, prompting me to turn around. "The Council of the Sands will reconvene in the temple," the elder informed me. "Perhapss we were hassty in ordering your execution without possessing the full factss of the matter. I would have you join uss in the Temple of the Great Sky Flame, where your claimss may be proven true."
I bit back the number of harsh retorts that presented themselves to me. I think I was just automatically irritated by the elder mentioning something about me 'proving myself'. I've done too much of that, and I really wasn't eager to do it again. If they asked me to climb another sword ladder… I don't even want to think of what my reaction would be.
"Okay, but if anyone tries to lay a hand on either me or my friend…we'll have problems."
And with that, Scales and I followed the elder into the temple, where the next leg of our journey would be decided.
Author's Note
So yeah, I accidentally published chapter twenty twice! Sorry about that, to err is human, etc. etc. It's all fixed now!
-TheAmateur