The Ruler of Ruin

Havenstone wasn’t the most impressive Castle in Solarias, but it was grand in its own way. Which I guess is what people say about their hometown when they can’t think of anything nice to say, because I couldn’t think of much beyond our Academy and our chapter of the Adventurer’s Guild, where parties officially got their royal charters, trained, picked quests, and paid their tithes and taxes, was the busiest and largest on the western frontier of Solarias. Edgehold once had supposedly been pre-eminent, before the mists had swallowed it, but that happened seven years before I was even born, and no one liked to talk about the destroyed Castles. The unfortunate loss of Edgehold had turned out to be to Havenstone’s gain.

The streets were orderly, the underground sewers kept the streets comparatively clean and semi-stink free, and the Horizon Guardians who staffed the frontier gates also monitored the city guards, so corruption wasn’t as bad out here on the border as it was in the midlands. Warden’s Watch, an old Castle between Havenstone and Crownhaven, was said to be a city where anything could be bought by those with coins, with a thriving black market. At least, that’s what Uncle Remy said. Uncle Remy unceremoniously fell into step with us a few blocks later.

I liked Remy, he was my favorite relative. Like dad, he was a tall man, but he had sandy blonde hair, hazel eyes, and had a thinner build than dad did. Like dad, Remy had been gifted with the affinity for fire, but Remy had a mind for the arcane. A natural genius, he did calculations in a way no one else could understand, not even him, and as a result he could use fire magic in ways few others could or would. He never kept a significant other around for long, he got in trouble with debts and vices, and when he thought no one was looking, he had a propensity to have dark, haunted looks in his eyes. As a kid, I’d adored and worshipped him for how cool he was. These days, I wondered what had put that haunted look in his eyes.

Uncle Remy was a powerful mage. Sometimes he’d spar staff to spear with me. I almost always lost, because even a mage had magically augmented speed and strength far greater than what I did, limited as I was by my baseline human body. My superior technique occasionally let me win, but it was rare, and truthfully only happened because Remy held back to not hurt me.

When the ritual confirmed I was a blank, Remy didn’t care. He still took me out for adventures in Havenstone, but I started to understand that haunted look in his eyes. Shame and guilt burdened him. I never worked up the courage to ask him about it, and as his nephew he probably wasn’t going to tell me anything, but I knew Remy was a good, if troubled, man. Dad and Remy had a relationship that got hot and cold, depending on how much trouble Remy had gotten the family in recently, but when they donned armor and went into the mists, dad said there wasn’t anyone better to have with you than Remy.

“Why the long face, Em?” Remy picked up on my mood.

“Etienne threw a fit this morning. He didn’t think I should get to come.” I tried to push that out of my mind. It didn’t matter, I didn’t care that Etienne hated me so much. If I said it enough, maybe someday I’d believe it.

“Younger brothers be like that,” Remy winked at me and laughed at the face dad made.

“Only because older brothers are like that,” Marius grumbled and glowered at Remy.

“Your gear looks good on you, can tell you wore it every day the last couple years of the Academy. If you had an aura you’d be able to pass off as an apprentice adventurer no problem. Lots of folk start with the spear and buckler.” Remy took in my gear with the practice of someone who’d been adventuring for over twenty years.

I grunted something that might have sounded like thanks. I’m sure Remy meant it as a compliment, but it only reminded me that if I weren’t broken, I’d be in a very different situation.

My spear and buckler were just normal, if high quality, make. New adventurers often couldn’t afford enchantments or would have such minor ones as to barely be noticeable. As the son of a Dustwalker I should have already been equipped with at least a magical weapon and an accessory. Even if they gave me one I couldn’t use the enchantments made by Solarias’ crafters.

In contrast, Uncle Remy wore very light enchanted leather armor, and a cloak that when fed mana would make him hard to see. By combining the enchantment with the heat hazes his magic made Remy could be as good as invisible at will. His staff was probably in an enchanted bag. Senior adventurers often had their own, while newbies lusted after them. They were expensive enough a brand-new party might have only the tiniest of them available to the whole group, and that only because the guild would subsidize it so the parties could bring more materials back. I’d seen Dad and Remy’s bags a few times, but I couldn’t use one. Without mana, you couldn’t open, deposit, or withdraw from spatial storage.

“No young lads or lasses you want to give a good-bye kiss to, Em?” Remy tried to dispel the silence that reigned for the last few blocks. In the early morning pre-dawn, Havenstone felt oppressive in a way I had never experienced before. Who in their right mind got up this early? The way to the Academy from home went past bakers and other early risers, but the path towards the gate seemed like a barren wasteland that made the hour a completely different atmosphere.

“Nope,” I answered truthfully. A few years ago, I thought, maybe, Claire might have liked me, but she was older, I tested as a blank, and then she was gone. No one wanted to waste their time with a blank. To the magically gifted who could be superhumanly strong, fast, smart, and wield magics and elements, being manaless must seem like a disability. It felt like a curse, one without a cure. “If the Gates won’t open until first chime, why do we have to be there early?” We had about twelve more blocks of walking to get through before we arrived at the frontier gate.

“Party leaders meet up the night before and gamble for the departure order. The Knights don’t like keeping the Gate open for very long, so we sort out the order ahead of time. Keep them happy and maybe they open the gate faster when we come running with a train behind us, or cast a healing spell if someone’s bad enough off. They aren’t expected to sally past the gates to help anyone, that’s down to the judgement of the officer on duty. Always keep them happy with you, if you can.” Remy doled out advice as if I was going to be joining the party permanently, and this wasn’t just a one-off glimpse into the world he lived in. A world I never could live in.

“Why do they have to gamble for it?” That didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

“No one wants to be the first or last one out,” Dad answered, but he didn’t elaborate any further. He stared ahead; the gigantic frontier gate came into view when we passed the large courtyard before the Adventurer’s Guild. Between the guild and the wall were the training facilities of the Guild and the barracks and facilities of the Horizon Guardians. In my lifetime, monsters had made it to the Guild square three times. Only the most desperate would live in these last few blocks between the exterior wall and the Guild, so adventurers and the Horizon Guardians were the only one’s brave enough to live in the buffer-zone, and even then, once someone earned enough money to move, it was very common to move further away from the wall.

The wall was forty feet tall and almost a dozen feet thick. Rumors said that thick plates of iron were nestled between the interior and exterior stone layers of the wall. Cold wrought iron could dampen magic and resist the tides of chaos that accompanied the creatures of the mist. That’s what I was taught in the Academy anyway. They didn’t have any equations or even hard and fast rules about how much magic iron could dampen, so I’d assumed it was a folktale embraced to pacify the general population. After all, no adventurers took gear made of cold wrought iron into the wilds, which they would do if it actually did anything against magic. Magics wielded by the creatures of the mists were lethal, a dire threat to the peaceful lives of humankind.

Groups of other adventurers had already gathered ahead of us, and Dad led the way past them to the second from the front group, where ten other Dustwalkers waited. There should have been another spectator going with the Dustwalkers today, but I overheard the other men gossiping about why Claire’s cousin had backed out at the last minute. Adventurers were often driven to seek omens and portents in anything they could, unlike the Horizon Guardians with their stalwart faith in Mithras and knightly creed of honor.

I went over my pack, checked my spear and shield, then took a sip from my canteen. One of the many advantages of the spear, I’d been told, was that I could also use it as a walking stick. Leaning against it did feel comfortable, but it was a disservice to my weapon to consider this an advantage. The Dustwalkers didn’t have an overabundance of any specific weaponry. Bows, daggers, swords, spears, maces, clubs, axes were all represented. By the time I’d gone over my own equipment, the Dustwalkers had formed up into two columns of six, and I ended up positioned between Dad and Remy in the middle of the formation.

“Watch this, kiddo.” Uncle Remy pointed to the four Knights who’d come out of the tower on the south of the gate. Their white enameled armor gleamed, and the golden sun on their chests glowed with the holy power of Mithras. None wore their flowing capes for this, but they were still a majestic sight to behold. The Knights positioned themselves equidistant across the six-inch think iron gate, and then heaved. Unholy screeching left everyone in the area hurrying to cover their ears in discomfort as metal ground on metal with the opening of the interior door.

“Oi, who pissed in the gatekeeper’s tea? They don’t botch that on accident.” A man from the Chimera Slayers, the group ahead of us, grumbled loudly. Loudly enough it left no doubt he meant to be heard by the Knights and the other groups.

“That sound will travel for at least a mile. The first group out of the gates always risks being the group to get ambushed or hunted by monsters, but with a clarion call like that, it’s almost certainly going to get them jumped. That’s why no one likes to be the first party.” Dad explained to me, while I rubbed my ears. Echoes of the nerve-wracking noise refused to go away, and the muscles in my chest and temple ached with pounding anxiety.

“The Chimera Slayers are first today. I’m sure Celestine rebuffing the advances of Horizon Guardian Gaston last night had nothing to do with the ever-exemplary Gaston failing to lift the gate all the way.” Uncle Remy rolled his eyes and spit to the side. I frowned. Horizon Guardians were men of honor, they’d sworn sacred oaths to Mithras, and their highest duty lay in protecting the kingdom and its people. At least, they were supposed to be.

I caught a glimpse of Celestine sharing dark words with one of the Knights, before she called her party to order. Celestine’s beauty was legendary in Havenstone. All the boys at the Academy fawned after her, with her long blonde hair, impressively curvy figure, and highly enchanted scarlet chain mail, she looked like a heroine. Even the crossbow on her back bore enchantments heavy enough to cause visual distortions around it, to say nothing of the flaming longsword in her right hand. I wasn’t enthralled by her beauty like my former classmates, but I could acknowledge she had a pleasing face, but her equipment was far more intriguing than her appearance. Adventurers gathered and hid the secrets of their gear and capabilities under the guise of trade secrets, and it made me want to know what they did all the more.

A full squad, or eight knights, moved into the gate to take up defensive positions, and the four knights from before then advanced to open the exterior iron gate, which was even thicker.

“How heavy is the outer gate, anyway?” I asked without thinking.

“Blaise could pull it open on his own, we wager. They won’t let him try though. He’s stronger than any six Horizon Guardians, except maybe Knight Commander Cedrick,” Uncle Remy bragged up the leader of the Dustwalkers and nodded at the large giant of a man at the head of the column next to Claire’s comparatively diminutive figure.

The screeching of the interior gate had been pleasant in comparison to what Knight Gaston did with the outer gate. When they finished it felt like I might have blood running out my ears. I didn’t, but it really had been unpleasant to hear the screeching of metal on metal.

“Good on them,” Marius grumbled under his breath as the Chimera Slayers marched through the now open gates. The Horizon Guardians, per custom, had all stood at attention and saluted the adventurers who sallied forth out into the wilds. The Chimera Slayers didn’t return any nicety this day, no nods or waves or smiles, but I’m pretty sure I saw Celestine make a rude gesture at the lead knight.

“We’re up now,” Blaise barked at the Dustwalkers, the short exclamation the only orders he gave for them to march after him.