Chapter Thirty-Three

‘Overseer Krossis was the first politician to mention the Wardens on a political front. Surprisingly, no ill befell him for his revelation. A rift formed between those who believed and those who thought the story a fancy.’ 

Creft put the book down, pressing on the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He had lost himself in reading and had no idea how long he had been at it. He placed the book on the floor beside him and stood. Bones popped, and he let out an involuntary moan as he stretched the fatigue from his muscles.  

The book was over a thousand pages long and printed in the smallest text imaginable, which meant Creft had to squint as he read. He had been reading for much of the day and assumed it had to be well into the night by now. Yet, as he looked back toward the open book, he felt like he had barely even made a dent in the tome.  

Creft picked up the glass Alis left for him some hours ago. She had sat down beside him and stared at him silently as he lost himself in the passages of the book. The next thing he noticed; he was alone in the room. Alis was a good-natured child and he could see why Creaton had grown fond of her.  

The tea that had probably been warm when Alis brought it to him was now cold and bitter, but he still took it all in one drink. His belly should have been hungry, he had skipped every meal today. Creft picked a piece of a tea leaf from the tip of his tongue. Alis was great with machines and tinkering, but she still had some work to do with tea making.  

Creft thought about going to find something to eat in one of the tunnel kitchens. He still had trouble navigating the passageways, but Alis had drawn up a cheat sheet for him to use for the main areas that they occupied. She drew arrows showing him the toilet, another for the kitchens, and a final one for the room where they all slept. Creft had scurried off after waking that morning and found a quiet, unused room to read. That was where he had holed up the rest of the day. He wondered if Alis had added his location to her cheat sheet, because he wasn’t completely positive he could make it back without her help.  

Creft looked down at the book again before making up his mind about the food. He felt guilty leaving it for even a little while¾he felt like he should spend every moment of every day trying to find out what Taluva and Pryce had been trying to accomplish during that ceremony. So far, he had found nothing about that. He had found some interesting tidbits that he had not known, but he was still in the dark on what the seer and the scholar wanted.  

By all accounts, it would seem no one wanted anything to do with the Judge of the Nine Wardens. Even the Nine Wardens had cast him aside, taking up their post as the watchers of the afterlife, if what the book said was true. He sighed again as he wasn’t hungry, but couldn’t imagine he shouldn’t be eating. He wouldn’t comprehend the book if he was too weak, so he compromised, deciding to grab a quick meal and eat while he read.  

Creft reached down and hefted the heavy book into the nook of his underarm. Then he went to the door and upon sliding it open, a smile cracked across his face. Alis had indeed added to her cheat sheet. An arrow pointed to his left and said, This way to food! 

*** 

The last place in all Maralay Creaton wanted to be was on the streets of Parian in such a volatile time. It had changed dramatically since his time here as head envoy; although technically, his time as envoy had never ended, it was just his time in Parian that had.  

The distinct smell of burning meat lingered on the evening air and Creaton wondered what type of meat it was, though he tried not to let his imagination guess at it too much. He lifted the toe of his boot to sift through the ash of what used to be Creft’s crowning jewel. The waterwheels in the city fountains were now tattered remains, their skeletons scattered about the streets. The pinwheels Creft had promised as the new day of electricity were broken and kids used them to roll down the streets. Creaton wondered where their parents were, but he refused to explore that question too far.  

“You are all being judged by the Nine Wardens,” the deep slurring voice was just vaguely understandable.  

Creaton pushed the drunk back from him. He could understand why the man had swilled a few bottles; hell, it was probably only the taverns that would survive this mess. The taverns and those seers who decided to hunker down and wait it all out to see whose side won and then claim to have been on their side all along. If they weren’t believed they’d just push coin at the winners until they were accepted.  

Creaton stepped over the body of a dog and was smacked in the face with the stench of death. He never signed up to be a solider, he never even wanted to learn the sword, it had been mere happenstance that he ended up in this life, and death made him just as sick as any other man who had a lick of sense.  

Holding back his nausea from erupting and adding to the defilement of the district, he turned to his right and rounded a cluster of buildings. Here, Creft had implemented his clean water plan for all the citizens of Parian and then the entire city. His thoughts seemed like pipe dreams now, his idea another wisp to add to the smoke surrounding the district. No one wanted clean water projects anymore, they just wanted to wake up and not be killed, robbed, raped, or whatever the flavor of the day seemed to be.  

Creaton tapped the cold hard steel wall of the building closest to him. It was solid, and the denizens would have a difficult time knocking it from its foundation. Unlike the wooden water wheels and pinwheels, the steel refused to burn at common temperatures. The overall structures of Parian would be saved from the vandals and arsonists, but that wouldn’t save the district from dying, just like the others. It was people who kept the world going, and people were merely flesh and bone, mortal and weak.  

What Creaton was doing in Parian seemed as foolish as the war. There would be no fight for the city gates, the fight had been in Pryce’s words weeks ago. The war had been in the eyes, faces, and actions of those who threw bricks through the windows, hoping to maim or injure those who could not defend themselves. The war had been those who stormed banks, homes, and storefronts to take what didn’t belonged to them. That had been the war. Everything else was now just a side note, a small piece of the tally. Everything left going was to die for the idea of what one person thought should have happened, but it would never change the fact of what already happened. The city was on fire¾even if the steel couldn’t burn, it was all ash.  

*** 

Creft stretched his legs, putting his feet up on the low tabletop. Alis was lounging across from him in a chair closer to the edge of the table. She was busy sketching, but it was blocked from Creft’s view.  

“So, if it isn’t really crab, why would you call it crab?” Creft asked. He had been stuffing his face with something Alis had called crab but was actually some plant that tasted similar.  

“People are more apt to eat it if we call it by a familiar name. If they think fishermen are pulling it in from the Helios harbor, then they are more likely to accept it. No one wants to think they are eating plants grown in an underground tunnel system.” Alis kept her focus on the drawing.  

Creft started to talk but choked on a piece of food. He coughed and grabbed for the water on the table, his feet dropping to the floor.  

“It is a little dry,” he choked out.  

Alis stopped moving her pencil. “No, you are just stuffing your face like you haven’t ever eaten,” she huffed.  

Creft laughed after regaining his breath. He felt as if that statement were true, like he wasn’t starving, he wanted to get back to the book. The book had consumed him and would have continued consuming him, but Alis had been in the kitchen awaiting him.  

“Okay, but again, the name.” Creft was fascinated that this girl could make her own food. He found a lot of things about Alis very interesting.  

Caid didn’t seem as enthralled. “It would be wonderful if you would shut up about the food. Just eat it or don’t, but we don’t need a narrative on the journey.” Caid laid on his back and stared up at the panels of the ceiling. Until that outburst, he had not said a thing since Creft entered the room.  

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Creft apologized.  

Caid turned onto his elbow and looked just as hard-faced as Creft had ever seen him. He got the intense feeling Caid didn’t like him. If it had been up to Caid, Creft probably would still be wasting away in the cellars of Pryce Manor.  

“If anyone could sleep with your jabbering mouth, I would die of shock. However, I am not sleeping, because if you hadn’t noticed, there is a war going on.” Caid pointed at the ceiling. “Right above us, right through that roof and about ten feet of dirt. People are dying, others are starving; some just wish they were dead. Yet here you are arguing about a damn crab sandwich as if it even matters. Just shut up about it.” Caid flipped back onto his back, not awaiting a rebuttal.  

Creft took another bite and looked at Alis. She stopped writing and shrugged her shoulders. He was probably right. Creft had no right to be sitting here at the table, reclined and relaxing. There was no time to joke and pretend that everything was okay. Nothing was okay, everything was falling around them. Not just the district of Parian but the entire city.  

Creft threw the rest of the sandwich back up onto the plate. Alis looked up at it but said nothing. Creft grabbed his book and gave her a nod before stepping out of the room and heading back to his reading alcove.  

*** 

It was hard to believe that he had just been to these buildings a short time ago. A short time ago, he convinced the envoys, or what was left of them, to come and join his crusade against the evil seers. He sacrificed several good men’s lives; men with families and futures with that crusade. He had believed in the cause more then. Even without the full weight of conviction, hope clung to him like moss to a rock and made it impossible to fully scrape it free.  

The last time he had come here. Tic wouldn’t even entertain the idea of coming out. He knew that was likely still the case, but Creft had asked and so here he was. 

The glass windows on the second floor were boarded up. The stairs had been beaten with hammers or something just as hard. The once flowering bushes had been uprooted and strung across the front lawn. Everything here had to die it seemed, not even the vegetation got a pass.  

Creaton moved up the stairs and banged on the wedged doors. “Tic, you still holed up in there?”  

He wasn’t sure what to expect. Creft and Caid had both convinced him this was a good idea, but he was sure they had been clouded by their own passions. They had forgotten what it would be like for a normal man out here on these streets. Caid had his strength and Creft had his brains, but a normal man had nothing. They were left exposed and scared.  

Creaton pounded on the door again with the side of his hand, letting his frustration pour into the knock. “Dammit, Tic, I know you all haven’t gone and found a vacation spot. This is the end of Parian and you have holed yourself up. You are supposed to be helping these people, not hiding from them like children hiding from the monsters under their beds.” Creaton was not just mad at Tic, he was mad about everything.  

He pounded harder, and the door shook. Creaton wondered if he could just burst through with the brute force of his body, but he thought better of it. “Open up, or at least stick your head out and talk with me,” he yelled up at the second story windows.  

The windows were boarded to the fourth floor. He wondered if that was a precaution or if people had thrown projectiles through the windows there as well. Creaton waited a few moments, catching his breath, then readied himself to resume his attack on the door when Tic finally stuck his head out of a third story window.  

“It is no use,” he yelled down.  

Creaton stepped back, shielding his eyes so he could see Tic properly. The young man looked to have aged a year, no longer so young and clean. He had growth sprouting sporadically across his face, his eyes drooped as if he had been on a month-long binge, and his hair was so disheveled that Creaton would bet Tic had avoided mirrors.  

“You know what is of no use? Holing up and expecting this to just go away. This is here, and this will stay unless we fix it,” Creaton yelled back.  

Tic shook his head. “Can’t see a reason to leave this building. We have a week’s worth of rations left. Only lost one of us up here, old man Tam took a piece of glass through the stomach on a broken window, he got real infected. I can’t ask these men to come back out. Even let most of the prisoners free. Can’t see the point in letting them starve to death.” Tic sounded sincere.  

Creaton wasn’t a politician. He had no fancy words to bring Tic down. He was barely able to rouse himself in the morning, what could he say to men who had already given up?  

“We have to fight, Tic. We have to at least try, don’t we?” It was weak, but it was all he had.  

Tic shook his head, not convinced. “Not this time, not this time,” he said almost too low to be heard.  

He pulled his head back through the window, pulling the board over the gap, then paused. “I wish you all the luck, though. If you all find a way to win this, remember that I was there at the beginning, just wasn’t strong enough to see it through to the end,” he said with shame in his voice.  

Creaton watched him shut the window and kept the rest of his weak speech to himself. He had known this was a mission that would fail from the start. He looked back over the courtyard and scanned the buildings off in the distance. This was what awaited them all. This was what would happen if Caid and Creft failed. Creaton drew in a deep breath and started down the steps. He would see this through. He refused to hole himself up in a bunker, but that was a far cry from saying he wasn’t scared. He picked up a stone piece of the Parian he used to know from the ground, and shoved it into his pocket. When this was all over, they would rebuild and Creaton would remember.  

*** 

Creft holed himself back in his reading room and settled his mind for what he knew would be another long reading session.  

Ocryttus was said to be The Judge of the people. It was his duty to weigh a person’s deeds and separate them into the nine halls of the afterlife. However, something went terribly wrong with his mind. Instead of judging those who passed through the gates, he devoured them and left nothing of their souls behind. Consuming the souls left him with power that turned his body and thoughts black as the night. The Nine Wardens, who had always been given the task of guarding their realms from the escape of their inhabitants, no longer held to that goal. Without a judge, the people ran freely into the gates of whichever warden they could find first. Those who made it were no longer guarded from escaping. They were guarded from what was trying coming in.   

Creft swallowed a lump in his throat. He had never heard the name Ocryttus, but when had the churches removed the story of his demise? This author seemed to be more a storyteller than an authority. Even having read the story, Creft had no way to tell what Pryce would want with Ocryttus. Just as Creft flipped another page, the doors to the room swung open with a crash.  

“Let’s go,” Caid said as he stepped through the open doors.  

Creft paused with his fingers still hovering over the words.  

“Don’t sit there like a lump,” Caid said, waving him to stand up, “we have figured out where Pryce is in the mines. It is now or never.”  

Creft looked down at the book. He felt there was something in it that may help them, but it seemed as if it was too late for that. Whatever Pryce had set out to do was going to happen now, whether or not Creft and the others were ready.  

Creft kept the book open and turned it face down on the floor beside him. “Do we know what he is doing?”  

Caid shook his head. “He is going to be stopped, and that is all I know. We can’t do that just sitting around with our noses in a book, however. So, if you would kindly strap on a sword and pretend you want to save the city, it would be grand.”  

Creft sighed. Caid had a real way of being an ass.  

“Has Creaton made it back?” Creft asked, getting to his feet.  

“Creaton and Alis are already prepped and ready to go. The envoys still refused to come, but the other former wardens will join us. If Creaton and Alis would have not made it a point so loudly, we could have already been halfway there, but I had to come and find you they said. So, if you would shut up and come on it would be grand.”  

Caid turned and started down the hall. Creft stretched, grabbing his sword belt off the table by the door. This was the now, he supposed, in now or never.