The Wandering Inn_Volume 1

by Pirateaba

  This is it. I’ve gone insane. Or this is real. I reach out and my hand is suddenly grasping a knife.

  Darkness. It can’t be a coincidence. In a castle where the light is supposed to be on all the time? I feel a presence. And I know.

  “This is it, isn’t it? You’re here. You’re messing with me. It isn’t just me. Is it?”

  No response. I take a step forwards, hesitate. Every instinct tells me I should back away from the darkness. But why? I have nothing to lose. And if I turn away, I’ll always wonder if I was going crazy or not.

  If I die, at least I’ll know. I walk forwards, knife at the ready.

  “I won’t run. Not this time. I’m coming for you, do you hear me?”

  My voice is loud, but still sucked up by some kind of unnatural silence. I walk forwards. Now I can barely see anything. But I can hear…something.

  Whispering. Footfalls. I turn my head. Nothing’s there. The voice in my head is gone.

  I feel something is nearby.

  “I know you’re there. Come on.”

  A movement. I spin. Just the darkness. I really am losing it.

  It’s in my head. It’s right here. I’m going insane. This is reality. The darkness closes in, and then I think I see a light. I feel my way down a corridor. Yes, there’s something ahead of me.

  Is this it? Suddenly, I see a bright light and realize I’m an idiot. One of the mage lights just went out! And I thought…I thought…

  I’m losing it. But then I walk forwards a bit more and realize it’s not a mage light ahead. Instead, I see advancing ghostly blue flame. A…lantern’s light. Yes, ahead of me. Moving.

  Dark. A flicker of movement. My heart races. There is something here. Something—

  Him. Me.

  Then I step closer, and see what’s holding the light. The figure turns, and the lantern swings. I see a face like leather, two horns curving downwards, bright green eyes—

  A Demon soldier stands with lantern in hand, a bloody sword in the other. I stop, staring. He stares back. And behind him, I see a man with his back against the wall, next to an ornate door. He sees me at the same time I see him.

  “Fool?”

  He half turns towards me and I see his eyes widening. He shouts.

  “Get away, Tom! Warn the others! There are Demons—”

  The Demon soldier whirls around. He raises his sword with a snarl and the Fool raises his hands. The Demon strikes low.

  He slashes the Fool’s belly open, pulling out a chunk of his insides. The Fool gasps, grips onto the Demon as if to hold him there. The masked Demon lowers him almost gently to the floor, and turns towards me. His horns flash in the light of the lantern he’s holding.

  I back away. This is a nightmare. Only, it’s not one I thought would be here. My hand raises, it shakes as I hold the knife in front of me. And now I hear the voice.

  Kill him. You know you want to.

  “Stay back!”

  The Demon advances on me. Then he stops. A hand grasps his cloven feet. The Fool. He whispers something up at the Demon. The soldier turns and kicks the Fool in the face. I hear a crack and the Fool goes still.

  The Demon turns back towards me, sword in hand. I back up again. The voice is whispering, shouting.

  Kill him! Slash him, leap at him and take his sword! You’re too afraid to do it? Let me out! Give in! LET ME OUT AND I’LL DEAL WITH ALL OF IT.

  No, no! I shake my head, trembling. I can’t—I won’t! But the Demon is approaching, sword bloody. It drips to the ground. I back up again.

  I have to run. I have to fight. I have to—

  GIVE IN.

  Madness. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to scream—the Demon looks at me, and whirls. He runs towards the door the Fool was standing in front of and picks something up. A key. Only now do I see another body, next to the Fool’s. A man in armor, gutted. There’s blood on the ground. And the key—

  The Demon turns it in the lock. He throws the door open and rushes inside. I freeze. Then I hear a high-pitched scream. It’s a voice I recognize.

  Erille’s. I don’t recall running to the door, but now I stand inside it. The Demon is inside, and so is Erille. The room is huge, beautiful. She’s sitting in a four-poster bed, eyes wide. The Demon towers over her, one clawed hand reaching for her, grabbing.

  Her eyes are wide. The Demon’s pulling at her, the bloody sword in his hands. He’ll kill her.

  LET ME OUT.

  “No!”

  I scream the word, and throw. The Demon twists, eyes staring at me, and freezes. Emile shrieks in horror and I hear a sound I’ll remember forever.

  Thunk.

  The blade stops, embedded in the Demon’s forehead. He blinks, reaches up to feel at the piece of metal in his head. He never completes the motion, but slumps onto the bed, half over Emille. She screams again.

  “Are you alright?”

  I run over to her. She screams at me. I pull the Demon off her, and the girl is screaming, pulling the covers over her face. I reach for her, hesitate. There’s someone laughing in my head. But I did that! I—

  “Behind!”

  Her voice makes me whirl. I turn, and there’s a second shape in the doorway. Another Demon, with two knives in his hands. He stares at the fallen Demon on the ground and roars at me.

  GIVE—

  This time I push the voice down. I stare at the Demon and he stares back. Now my blood is on fire. And I know what I have to do.

  I charge the second Demon. He might be tall, but I’m heavy. We crash into each other and I feel him stabbing, quick as lightning. His knife goes into my stomach, one, two, three, four—

  The blade vanishes. I yank it away from him and now it’s in my hands. He stabs towards my face before jerking away, realizing his hand is now empty. I slash at him, but we’re too locked together.

  We roll on the floor as the [Princess] flees her bed. All I can see is the Demon’s face. His eyes are wide, green—he has no whites, just green sclera and yellow pupils shaped like diamonds, locked on me.

  I can hear laughter, I can feel the madness taking over. But I fight it down as I stab back at the Demon. I’m in control! In this eternal moment of death and violence I realize it. It’s just me. I scream it at him.

  “It’s me! I’m in control! Me! This is my choice!”

  I’ll kill. I stab the knife and feel it enter something. The Demon stabs me with his other knife, twisting the blades. I’ve felt pain before. I push mine deeper, deeper.

  He stops moving. The lance of metal tears into me again. It’s just his hands and mine, seeking each other’s lives. I look at the Demon, straight into his eyes, and he looks at me.

  “You and I—are both monsters.”

  His eyes widen. His grip on the dagger loosens. I feel his claws tearing at my belly, and then relax. He stiffens, and I push myself off him.

  The dagger—his dagger—is shoved hilt-deep into his chest, right where his heart would be if he’s like a Human. He’s covered in blood.

  My blood.

  I stagger upright, feeling a gaping…emptiness in my chest. I hear a sound. I turn, and Erille flinches away from me. I look down and see only blood and torn flesh where my chest should be.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I’m scaring her. I look at the Demon at the foot of her bed, and then the one at my feet.

  Two Demons. Both dead. I did that. I did.

  I should be angry, or sad. Or shocked. But I just stare at them. Dead. That’s all.

  I killed them. I did it. But that doesn’t matter. I don’t care. What’s important is—is—

  Blood drips to the floor. I turn to Erille. She huddles in her blankets, eyes wide, staring. But it’s important she knows. There’s no danger anymore. None.

  “Just me. I did it. I’m—”

  I stare down at my bloody hands and feel the deep cuts on my belly bleeding. The pain—I’ve felt worse. I clench my fingers tightly around the dagger still buried in my side. It hurt
s. But I’m me.

  There’s no one else in here. Just Tom. Tom the [Clown].

  Tom the Murderer.

  “You should probably scream for help. Or something.”

  I tell Erille that as I slowly sink to the ground. She looks at me and then turns, grabbing for something on her dresser. I hear her voice—very distant.

  It’s all fading away. I stare towards one wall. Hey, Erille has a dresser like mine. I see the blood spattered room reflected in it, and a young man lying on top of a Demon’s body, covered in blood.

  He’s me, but he’s not me. The other Tom looks up.

  He grins at me. A white devil dancing in a pool of crimson. He stares at me, and I think he winks for a second. His smile is like blood. But it’s just in my head. I turn from the mirror.

  “It’s all in my head. All.”

  Just me. Then throughout the castle I hear a ringing noise, like bells, and hear shouting, bells and shouting and a horn now, like a siren. I listen to the sounds, and hear him whispering in my head.

  It’s not over Tom. Not over. Not yet.

  “You’re just…just…”

  Someone’s bent over me. Erille? She has a bottle in her hands and she’s pouring it over my chest. The world goes dark. But I can still hear him.

  I’m real as you are, Tom. I’m waiting for you to let me out. This was only the beginning.

  And the devil laughs, and I smile. Because he’s not real.

  He’s just in my head.

  1.04 C

  There were eight Demons, actually. The other six were waiting outside Isodore’s room. They might have gotten her too, but my raising the alarm with the [Princess] saved her.

  I learn that after I wake. That was still in Erille’s bedroom, the floor and walls still splattered with my blood and that of the Demon soldiers. There is no young [Princess], though. Just a [Healer] tending to me and the Fool, several guards, and the two dead bodies.

  Later, I can remember trying to sit up, feeling the pain which makes me almost scream, and the [Healer] telling me to lie still while the potions do their work. Soon, the pain becomes a memory, but ah, what a memory.

  In this world it’s possible to heal a wound in seconds where it would take months in my world. But the pain means that few people can stand to fight after taking such injuries. All but the best healing potions make you tired, sometimes nauseous—

  And the agony of it can kill some people. The shock of it can stop a heart. I see the Fool convulsing as the [Healer] tends to him, crying out as his severed innards grow together and have to be pushed into his stomach before being healed.

  But he is alive. And so is Erille. She is kept in a safe place, under highest guard while the entire palace and the rest of the city was put on high alert and searched. No other Demons are found, but watchful of more assassins, the Blighted King keeps his guards searching through the night and into the next day.

  I don’t get to see any of it. I sleep after being treated, sleep through the night and late into the day. When I get up later, head spinning, feeling at unbroken skin on my stomach, it’s in a different room. Not mine, nor Erille’s.

  A grand room. And I am lying in a bed, a large king-sized one. One with silk sheets. They’re oddly a refreshing light green color for some reason, and the bed is complete with plush pillows which are also green and embroidered with gold threads.

  That is my bed. The rest of my room holds a large table and chairs to sit around it, a private bathroom, a bookshelf with a few books on it, a side table on which a few bottles of precious-looking tonics or other potions are resting…and a lot more. In short, I wake up in richness.

  I get up, wobbling, and feel my knees trembling like jelly. I pat at my stomach again, feel it whole, and then remember.

  “I did it! I—”

  I laugh, and then shake, feeling hot, cold, and tremble at the memory of cold fear, of seeing the Demon with bloody sword, of fighting—

  But I did it. I killed them. And Erille.

  She’s alive. Right? And the Fool, I remember seeing him. But where are they? Not here, obviously. I need to ask.

  I stumble to the doorway, then realize someone undressed me save for my underwear and pants earlier.

  “Wait. Crap. This isn’t my old underwear! Oh god.”

  Panicked, I have a crisis where the worst thought running through my head is that someone saw my private parts. Then I laugh and find some clothes to wear. After all I’ve just been through, that’s the least of my concerns.

  I just really hope it wasn’t a guy. Or wait—would a girl be worse? An old woman? A young woman? I imagine an old [Butler] having to strip me down and shudder. I really, really hope no one talked about what they saw.

  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  —-

  “You may approach the throne.”

  The voice echoes throughout the hall. It bounces off the black and white marble tiles, from the ceiling where a series of intercrossing stone beams hold up the rest of the palace overhead. I’d look up, but I know that there are guards with bows and arrows and wands standing on the beams overhead. Plus, I have to walk forwards.

  So I do. I cross the distance to the twisted throne ahead of me. It sits on a dais, drawing every eye in the throne room. Those that aren’t fixed on me, that is.

  The Blighted King’s throne. It is made of twisted ivory. The bones of some ancient monsters, carved into a huge seat and enchanted. Or maybe the magic is in the bones? The throne seems to shudder and grow as I walk towards it.

  Just an illusion. But it makes the man sitting in the throne all the more foreboding because of it. I stare up at the Blighted King and remember how afraid of him I was the first time I saw him. Now I see an old man.

  I kneel. The cold marble is hard on my knee, but that’s protocol. The Blighted King studies me, and then bids me to rise. Around me, I see the kneeling people getting to their feet.

  The nobility, champions of the king, dignitaries, common people—that is to say, wealthy [Merchants] and servants and powerful individuals who aren’t nobility or sworn to the crown—and my friends look at me. I stare towards the Blighted King and the three people who stand beside him on the throne.

  The Blighted Queen, imperious, stone-faced. Isodore, looking pale, but pretty collected, and Erille, who half hides behind her step-sister, peering at me. She looks sideways, and I see a flash of color out of the corner of my eyes. The Fool stands, healed, watching me.

  “Sir Thomas. The [Clown]. You have done our kingdom a great service this day. You protected our daughter, Princess Erille, when our guards failed us. Against assassins. Demons.”

  The Blighted King’s voice blazes with silent fury. The people around the room shift. I look up at him. I don’t want to be here, but I was spirited to the throne room as soon as I left my room.

  At least I’m not required to really say much unless asked. The people in the throne room watch me as I stand, awkward, gazing at the Blighted King’s navel.

  “You killed two assassins meant for my daughter.”

  He says it like a question. The Blighted King stares at me.

  “How?”

  “I…had a knife, your majesty. I killed one Demon with that. And I took the other one’s dagger.”

  “You disarmed a soldier?”

  “Yes, sire. I can steal things if I’m close enough. I can take a sword out of someone’s hands. It’s…well, a trick.”

  “Show us.”

  There’s a moment of hesitation, and then Nereshal strides forwards. He has a dagger in his hand, the metal of the blade tinted light purple. He holds it, and I gingerly grab it out of his hands. I don’t need to touch his hands or the blade to do it. I hear a quiet susurration, and hand the blade back to Nereshal, hilt-first. He accepts the blade. The Blighted King leans forwards a bit on his throne, eyes narrowing.

  “Intriguing. A trick indeed. We saw it performed before, but it seemed paltry, then. What do you make of it, Nereshal?”
>
  The time mage studies me for a moment, impassive. He doesn’t seem wary of me so much as…intrigued. Everyone’s giving me that look, really. I guess saving Erille makes me important again.

  Crap.

  The [Chronomancer] turns back to the Blighted King. He bows.

  “It appears to be a Skill similar to a bag of holding, my King. The Fool can do the same. I have heard of other classes with similar skills. [Rangers] whose quivers can hold seemingly endless numbers of arrows. Classes like [Thief] who can create secret containers about their person. I suppose these—[Clowns]—are known for the same feats?”

  I think of improbably small clown cars, tricks with coins behind the ears and a surplus of balloons for every occasion.

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “A worthy Skill. Useful in battle. Tell me, Sir Tom. You claim to be no warrior, but you killed two elite Demon soldiers by yourself. Are [Clowns] truly entertainers and not warriors as you claim? Do they not fight?”

  The Blighted King stares at me. I want to laugh in his face. Sir Tom? A warrior? I’m just…no.

  His question’s ridiculous, but he doesn’t know our world. So I take it seriously and think for a moment before replying.

  Do clowns fight? What a question. Are you counting movie clowns who have supernatural abilities and eat kids, or do you mean real life ones? Even then, there are serial killer clowns…

  Rodeo clowns are known for being badasses. Dante told me about it—he’s actually seen them dodging bulls in arenas. But an actual clown who fights for a living? I shake my head.

  “No, your majesty. [Clowns] have tricks suited for combat, but they—aren’t warriors.”

  The Blighted King looks at me, eyes boring into me. I return the gaze. He nods slowly.

  “A pity. We search for Skills that might aid our people, classes that might be worth taking. It is a shame that this [Clown] class is not suited to war. But we understand more of your nature. We give you our thanks, Tom the [Clown].”

  He inclines his head a fraction. I bow, prompted by Nereshal’s whisper. The Blighted King looks at me a moment longer, and then dismisses me from his thoughts again.