Escape from Celestial

by Tony Johnson

  At that moment the entire edge of the cliff broke off. Sabertooth and Grizz fell amidst the pieces of broken rock. Steve watched from the bottom of the slope. For a second, Grizz had been there, and in an instant, he was gone. He lowered his head in sadness, knowing the fall was too great to survive until he heard Kari yelling from the tree.

  “Steve! Steve! Get up here! Grizz is still clinging to the side!”

  Sprinting up the hill, he looked over the edge of the cliff. Down on the ground were huge chunks of broken rock all surrounding Grizz’s weapon and the fallen Sabertooth.

  Somehow, hanging a couple feet below him was the Dwarf. He had dropped Skullcrusher and found a nook in the cliff’s side to grasp onto. Still, time was of the essence. Grizz was hanging on for dear life. His legs were dangling below him, frantically searching for a foothold that wasn’t there.

  Instantly, Steve was reminded of the siege; of how there had been a similar moment on the drawbridge leading into the castle courtyard, where a helpless Dwarf was about to fall to a perilous death. A Giant was there to save the Dwarf and I from falling, but this time, there is no help, Steve knew. It’s up to me to save him.

  “I can’t pull myself up!” Grizz shouted.

  “Give me your hand!” Steve shouted back.

  Putting his trust in the Human above, Grizz summoned all his strength to continue holding onto the cliffside with one hand while reaching up with his other.

  Steve grabbed Grizz’s gauntlet. He tried to pull upwards, but the Dwarf was too heavy with all his armor. There was nowhere for Steve to dig the toes of his boots into for support on the flat slate of rock. It also didn’t help that his shoulder injury lessened the amount of weight he was able to lift.

  “Kari, help!” Steve shouted, hoping the two of them together might be able to lift the Dwarf.

  “I’m coming down!” she shouted, descending the tree as fast as she could.

  Deep down, the warrior knew she wouldn’t make it in time. He tried once again to pull Grizz up, but it only caused him to be pulled forward. Grizz’s heavier weight pulled the entire upper half of Steve’s body dangerously over the cliff’s edge.

  “Hold on!” Steve yelled. “I can pull you up,” he said, trying to bolster his own fading confidence.

  It was quickly shot down when Grizz calmly said, “You can’t. You have to let me go.”

  “I won’t!” argued Steve.

  Kari made it down out of the tree, but didn’t come to the ledge. With tears forming in her eyes she warned, “Steve, another crack is forming underneath you! The cliff is going to break apart again. If you stay there, you’ll fall too!”

  Steve looked down past Grizz. Forty-feet down. If I drop him, he’s going to die. There’s nothing I can do to save him.

  The Dwarf saw the conflict in the face of the helpless Human. “Let me go,” he said again, even more calmly.

  This time Steve didn’t argue. “I’m sorry,” he managed to squeak out.

  In his final moments where Steve used every last ounce of his strength trying to hold on, Grizz thought back to four nights ago, when he was smiling and laughing with his family as they all sat at the table. The warm memory was fresh in his mind and thinking of it erased his fears of his approaching death.

  “Tell my family I love them,” he commanded as the warrior’s arm began shaking from the inability to hold on any longer.

  “I will,” Steve promised, and then, as if he was ripping off a bandage as quickly as possible to avoid prolonging the pain, Steve released his grip and watched Grizz plummet towards his death.

  Suddenly, time seemed to slow for the Dwarf. Grizz noticed the clouds above seemed to be flying by at a reduced speed and the echoing chirp of the nighttime crickets in the forest seemed to carry on forever. Meanwhile, Steve seemed to be saying the word, “No!” in slow motion. The sound came out in an extended drawl.

  All around Grizz, the world disappeared and everything turned to white. I’m beginning to experience a vision, he could tell.

  Before him, a baby appeared. He felt an aura of evil coming from the newborn. Somehow, Grizz knew who this baby was. Somehow, he knew he was witnessing an event from the past. Somehow, he knew that through some sort of dream-like vision, he was witnessing the life of the Hooded Phantom.

  Chapter 50

  The baby boy took his first breath and opened his eyes. The brown-eyed infant stared up into the teary, green eyes of the woman carrying him. Bundled in a light blue, hooded cloak, the woman hurried through the streets underneath millions of snowflakes falling from the night sky. A white blanket of snow already covered the ground. She tucked the baby deeper into the folds of the black, wool blanket he was covered in while turning her back against a cold gust of wind.

  Walking swiftly down streets and alleys, the cloaked figure kept her head down, purposely avoiding the few people who were out at this late hour on a wintery night in the Celestial City. Upon reaching her intended destination, she bent down and carefully set the baby on the doorstep of the building. She then forcefully pounded on the door until the light of a candle flame shined through one of the windows in the far back of the large establishment.

  As the candlelight began to appear in each window closer and closer to the front door, the woman wiped her eyes and nose, took one last look at the baby, and whispered, “I’m sorry,” before pulling the collar of her cloak tight around her neck and hurrying away. She turned a corner into an alley on the other side of the street and was out of sight when the door to the home opened. Light briefly illuminated the doorway and steps until the candle was snuffed out by the wind.

  A short, potbellied Dwarf with balding hair and an uneven beard grumpily squinted and scanned the street, trying to catch a glimpse of the culprit who interrupted his deep sleep in the middle of the night. After hearing the cries of a baby, he spotted the abandoned infant. He awkwardly picked up the child, holding him at arm’s length to examine him. The Halfman carried the baby inside after scanning the street for a second time. With a violent slam of the door, the heavy snow fell off the swinging sign hanging from the roof, marking the building as an orphanage.

  The boy, who was given the name Malorek, grew up in the poor conditions of the orphanage along with many other children who were also abandoned or orphaned. Rarely was there a night he went to bed with a full stomach, and when it was full, it was with a quality of food on par with that of a pig’s.

  After the overweight foster father and his equally heavy wife ate their fill, they gave the best pickings to their one and only biological son, Cain. Leftovers would then be set out for their eleven adoptees. Every night Malorek had to fight and claw for his food. Typically, the larger boys and girls claimed it before others.

  The foster parents cared nothing at all for the children, except their beloved Cain. They only took in the abandoned kids because of the gold given to them from the kingdom’s orphan fund for each child in their care. The money was supposed to be used for the needs of each child, but they spent it either on alcohol or on paying off the warrior whose job it was to report inhospitable conditions during the annual check-ins.

  Most nights the couple consumed so much alcohol, Malorek doubted they could even name all the orphans under their roof. He wasn’t even sure if they could accomplish that task sober. The scrawny Human would have been happy if all he had to deal with was their mumbling and staggering, but, unfortunately, their intoxication usually included violence. It seemed as if the Dwarven foster father always stumbled around looking for a child to take out his anger on.

  Even worse than the physical bruises the children received from the parents was the mental trauma caused by Cain. Since he received an excess of food and quality care, he was bigger and stronger than the orphans, more so even than those older than him. He was a bully that treated his foster brothers and sisters like his parents treated them, as if they were a lower class of civilians who didn’t deserve to be respected.

&nb
sp; Cain regularly bullied everyone. Malorek was a victim of many of his antics. One involved waking up in a bed filled with sewer rats. In a similar instance, Cain repeated the prank with snakes. Both times Malorek wet himself because he was so scared. Perhaps the worst was when Cain spiked his drink with poison, causing Malorek to hallucinate and wake up on the other side of Celestial. When he couldn’t think of anything creative to pull off, which was usually the case, Cain would take after his father and start pounding away, which was just as funny to him as executing a successful prank.

  Malorek’s days, as well as the rest of the orphans, were spent far away from the orphanage they despised. Most of the children enjoyed going to school because of the escape it offered and the free food served for lunch. Others, who didn’t care to attend school, could obtain food or coins by serving as a squire for anyone who wanted to hire someone under the age of sixteen. If they couldn’t succeed by those methods, they would survive by stealing.

  Malorek did a little bit of everything. He often went to school, but soon found it more profitable to spend his time teaching himself by reading books in Celestial’s massive library. Here, he learned more quickly and efficiently than he would’ve in class and didn’t have to worry about dealing with the other children who he had trouble having conversations with. He was also able to spend his time studying the subjects he was most interested in. Malorek could often be found pouring through pages of the heroes of legend, accounts of epic battles, stories of old kings, princes, and princesses, tales of Draviakhan’s empire, and the Imperial Dragon’s eventual fall by the sword of King Oliver Zoran. Malorek studied all dialects of monster languages as well as the art of swordfighting.

  Occasionally, he would squire for various tradesman, and count himself lucky on the off chance he could serve as a squire in a warrior watchtower or on a naval ship. Whenever these rare opportunities presented themselves, he thoroughly enjoyed them. He would observe how the warriors trained and the way they dealt with situations that arose during their patrols. Sometimes he would pick up sticks and pretend he was a warrior himself.

  As the individualistic Malorek grew into his teenage years, he became bitter and angry toward everyone around him. He entered a severe depression where everything wrong in his life became magnified. He wondered who his parents were and why they had abandoned him at the orphanage. Not only did he feel unloved by them, he felt even more unloved by his foster parents. In addition to that, he often questioned why he could never make friends and began suspecting that everyone was conspiring to exclude him from everything.

  The teenager hated his living conditions, but there were no alternatives. He constantly had to keep putting up with the beatings, bullying, an empty-belly. He felt powerless to make any change.

  I hate my life, Malorek thought as he stood on his bed and tied a noose around a ceiling beam above him. If this is the way I have to live, then I don’t want to live anymore. He put his neck through the loop and stepped off the bed.

  An orphan female Elf named Emilia, who had recently moved into the orphanage, happened to walk by the room at the moment Malorek hung himself. Seeing what was happening, she immediately ran in, stuck a chair under his feet, and lifted his neck out of the noose. He fell onto the bed, gasping for air.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, horrified. “Killing yourself is the most selfish thing anyone can do.”

  “What does it matter?” Malorek choked out, holding his throat. “No one would care if I was gone. No one would even notice.”

  “Of course people would notice. You’re not invisible, no matter how invisible you feel.”

  “I don’t want to live anymore. I’m not going to stop trying until it’s over and you’re not going to be around every time to prevent me.”

  “Why do you want to do this?” Emilia begged him for an answer, trying her best to understand.

  “Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve never been happy.”

  “Few of us here are happy,” she admitted. “That doesn’t mean committing suicide is the answer. It’s easy to let the darkness swallow you. If you want to be happy you have to work for it. It’s not handed to you. You have to fight to make a better future for yourself. What do you think will make you happy? What are your aspirations?”

  “My aspirations?” Malorek repeated the question in an annoyed tone, as if she should know the problem that all the orphans faced. “My aspirations are that I don’t want to live like this anymore. I hate fighting for food and a bed and constantly getting beaten. We live like we’re monsters here. It’s survival of the fittest.” Thinking more on that last point, Malorek realized, Survival of the fittest means the strongest survive. That’s what my aspiration is.

  “I want to be the strongest,” he told Emilia. “I want to have power so that people are forced to respect me.”

  “It sounds like you want to become a warrior.”

  Watching the warriors and reading about them and other figures of importance is the only thing that excites me in life, Malorek realized for the first time. Why have I never considered this before?

  In the months following their first conversation, Malorek and Emilia talked more often. He learned she was his same age and that she was taken in by the orphanage after both of her parents had been killed in a dragon attack while traveling to visit family in Stonegate.

  A few times every week, when Emilia got ahead in her classwork for school, she would spend the day with him at the library. He would show her books with pictures of his favorite warriors and battles and she would show him paintings of faraway cities and inspiring landscapes.

  The two quickly established a friendship. It was a friendship evident to all the other children, especially one in particular. Like Malorek and Emilia, Cain was also in his teenage years. The bully grew jealous, seeing that an orphan had something he didn’t have, a companion.

  One night, when the foster father was his usual drunk self, all the kids went into hiding, hoping he wouldn’t find them when he tore apart the house in his rage. Unfortunately, that night he found Emilia. Malorek was about to jump out and take the blow from the raised fist coming down, but Cain beat him to it.

  “What are you doing, son?” the father slurred, about to hit the boy again.

  “Can’t you see?” the foster mother interrupted. “Our Cain has found someone he likes!”

  After that day, Emilia was treated on the same, pampered level as Cain. She was one of the first to be fed and given one of the comfiest beds to sleep in. Her friendship with Malorek slowly disappeared as she spent more and more time with Cain.

  Instead of falling into a depression, Malorek began a new routine. He began running and working out. Emilia was right in what she said a while ago. If I want happiness, I have to earn it, and nothing would make me happier than beating up Cain and proving to myself and everyone else that I am powerful.

  For many months, Malorek grew stronger and stronger. He ate as much food as he could get through stealing and added bulky muscle to his skinny frame.

  On a typical day when Cain was making fun of him, Malorek felt his blood boiling in his veins and his anger rising. In an instant, something in him snapped. He decided he was fed up with the bullying and attacked his foster brother. In the local park, where all the kids where playing, Malorek tackled Cain and hit him as hard as he could in the face. The punch didn’t even faze the Dwarf. Cain stood up, picked Malorek up with both of his hands, and slammed him down onto the hard ground. With all the orphans watching, Cain kicked and punched until his attacker no longer moved.

  Malorek woke up five minutes later and found himself face down in the grass. His entire body was in pain and he could only see out of one eye. The other eye had swollen shut completely. Everyone had gone inside. Only Emilia remained. She was sitting on the ground next to him, waiting for him to wake up.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Get away from me.”

  “I’m trying to he
lp you.”

  “I don’t want your help. I’ve never asked for your help. I wish you would’ve left me to die when I wanted to hang myself.”

  “I would never leave you like that. I care about you, Malorek.”

  “No, you don’t. You abandoned me. You’re valuing a full stomach over friendship. Though, I guess that’s what you do. When you first moved in, you didn’t know anyone and you wanted a friend, so you hung around me; now you realize you’d rather have food, so you befriended Cain even though I can tell you don’t really care for him. All you do is prey on people’s emotions so you can get what you want.”

  “That’s completely untrue!” Emilia yelled, on the verge of tears. “I care for you. You’re my friend!”

  “We are not friends,” Malorek interrupted angrily. “You betrayed me. I can’t trust you anymore. There can’t be a friendship if there’s no trust.”

  With that, Malorek pulled himself up and began limping away, but stopped to warn his former friend, “Don’t come crying to me when things don’t work out.”

  Chapter 51

  After the incident in the yard, Malorek fell into the deepest depression of his life. I worked so hard to become physically strong, but I failed miserably. The only thing I care about is becoming a warrior, but if I can’t beat up a bully, how am I going to combat real criminals or monsters? I don’t even know if I’ll be able to pass the Warriors’ Admittance Exam.

  With his downward spiral getting worse and worse, Malorek no longer had the desire to eat food, and he couldn’t find the motivation to get out of bed. He lost over thirty pounds from his already skinny frame.

  Cain didn’t relent on abusing Malorek through his pranks even though he could tell the orphan teenager was sick. In fact, his bullying seemed to get worse. It was as if Cain knew Malorek had no fight left in him, and he could get away with whatever he wanted.

  The last prank Cain pulled was the final straw. He offered Malorek a brisket sandwich, pretending to care for his well-being. “I know we’ve had our differences, but you need to eat,” Cain said as kindly as he could.