Death Knight Box Set Books 1-5: A humorous power fantasy series

by Michael Chatfield

  “All right.” Anthony nodded.

  “All right?” Tommie asked, looking up at them. “But I used you. I saw you as if you were guards, a way for me to go from place to place to build my machine.”

  “Going on an adventure, leaving the place you’re comfort- able—it’s not easy. It can also be dangerous. You’re not a bad person and you’ve stuck up for us. You don’t have any malicious intent and it is okay to be scared. I’ve been scared plenty of times. I was the weakest person in my village. Looking to build something to help others is a noble cause. Yes, you’re looking to make money off it, but you need money to live and you can use that to buy more supplies and continue building. Also, there is a gnome mechatronics acade- my in Ilsal I believe—at least, there used to be. It might be a good place for you to get leads on your project,” Anthony said.

  Tommie looked stunned and looked at Aila.

  “Hey, I always welcome someone else along. Helps keep me sane. I’d have lost it if it was just Anthony and me this long.” Aila shrugged.

  Tommie let out a mix between a cough and a laugh as Antho- ny’s eyes thinned into lines through his helmet.

  ***

  Su and the loved ones of those who had passed away collected their ashes and they started to hook up the bedar to their carriages and headed down the road toward Skalafell.

  A dark cloud hung over the caravan as they moved.

  The young children, not understanding what had happened and having little concept of death, were running around, playing with Anthony, bugging Aila, and stealing Tommie’s gear.

  Tommie spent most of the time chasing them. Due to their similar height, he had to work hard to get the pieces back from them.

  They would sleep early, with guards patrolling vigilantly. Every- one slept in their clothes and most had weapons with them as they ate different meals, as if someone would poison them again.

  Then, with the crack of dawn, they would pack up and move on. The excited spirit that they had left with had disappeared. Every day wore on them, looking at Skalafell as if it were their savior be- cause they were mentally worn down from everything that had hap- pened.

  ***

  “We’ve been pushing hard. If we push harder, then we can arrive early tomorrow morning,” Gus said.

  “Your people need to rest,” Anthony said, coming up beside Su and Gus on Ramona.

  “You’ve all been through a lot. You understand that with one another, but you haven’t had time to mourn, to think about it and process it. Once you get into the city, there will be so much to do that everyone will just push it down and it will only get worse. The best way to heal a wound is to clean it quickly before it has time to fester. Aila was able to find a nice camp not far away. If we break early for tonight, I can hunt us some meat, have a night to remem- ber those who were lost, have guards on duty. Aila, Tommie, and I will take the night shift. Go have a few drinks, let out the pain. We’ll be close enough to Skalafell that no one will try to do any- thing.” Anthony turned and looked at them.

  Su wanted to argue. He wanted to get his people into the city, if only to get the worry off his mind, but hearing Anthony, he could feel the pain inside. He still didn’t want to face it.

  “If we push on, we’ll be able to get in and rest sooner,” Su said, not willing to face that weakness.

  “Are you so scared and weak that you can’t confront your own pain with the people who suffered with you?” Anthony asked deri- sively.

  “You!” Su said as Gus’s hand reached for his sword dangerously. “And there—what were you going to do? Cut down the person who saved you over some words? How short is your fuse?” An- thony’s voice changed, sounding disappointed as Ramona moved

  faster.

  Su choked on his words, wanting to yell out and punch An- thony to make him take back his words. But he knew violence wouldn’t make him take back his words; it would only prove that Anthony’s words were right.

  It made all of the fight go out of him. He felt defeated; he felt empty and hollow. He was so tired from driving hard the last few days, he had drained himself so that he didn’t have to deal with the emotions that lay below the surface, threatening to make him crumble.

  “Check the place and report back to me,” Su said, making a de- cision.

  “You sure?” Gus asked.

  “He’s right. And if they wanted to do anything, he’s powerful enough to have done it already,” Su said.

  “Yeah.” Gus sighed. It was clear that he was tired from having his guard up all of the time. They were stretched thin.

  ***

  “Are you sure that this is the best idea?” Aila asked as they turned in to the area that she had scouted out earlier.

  “I’m sure it’s what they need,” Anthony said.

  He saw a wall. People stood across it, eyes dull as they looked outside.

  Others sat wherever they could, sleeping or eating, dull and numb to reality. There was dried blood on the walls, where others had once stood.

  The defenders’ armor was scuffed and worn. Many wore ban- dages but they continued fighting.

  Some hid in corners. Their tears fell down, cleaning their dust- and sweat-stained cheeks and cleaning their armor.

  The others looked away, not wanting to see them in pain, not wanting to reveal their own pain that was burning them up from inside.

  Anthony saw it all as he looked over the wall at the vast plains beyond. There was smoke on the horizon. The chaotic war machine was licking their wounds, gaining their strength, and destroying Dena as they went. There were flashes of multicolored lights in the distance. There were floating islands and other creations in the skies as the clouds rained up and down. The laws that governed Dena were turned and mutated, no longer following the same path that they had for generations, altered by the chaos that now walked up- on its surface.

  Anthony returned to seeing the carriages as they circled up and the people started to get down, stretching and preparing for the night. They had been riding early until late, so this was one of the few times that they were setting up camp with more than a few hours before it turned dark.

  Su got them to build one large campfire and even broke out drinks for the traders. Gus and some of the others were stopped from drinking; they wanted to have people alert, after all.

  “If they don’t deal with that inner pain, if they push it aside as if it is nothing, then it will tear them apart and they will turn into the Agents of Chaos that the cultists wanted. Lashing out at others in order to try to feel some kind of control over their lives, turning to violence to control.”

  “How do you know this?” Tommie asked. “I was like them before,” Anthony said.

  Tommie went back to tending Ramona and the cubs.

  “We’re going to have a look around. Yell if there is anything,” Anthony said, indicating for Aila to join him.

  They walked around the outside of the carriages, looking at the orange-tinted sky as the sun started to go down.

  “How do you feel, Aila?” Anthony asked. “Fine.”

  “How do you feel about killing those cultists?”

  “I—well, I’ve killed before: bandits, the people in the moun- tains, others who tried attacking my home.”

  “And?” Anthony said as the silence dragged.

  “Well, they would have hurt me or others I care about. Either I got rid of them or they would have done worse,” Aila said.

  Anthony nodded. “Fighting for others is easier than fighting for yourself. But how do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t like doing it, but I’ve hardened my heart to it. There are plenty of people who die from colds or diseases all of the time. I didn’t want to kill them, but I had to,” Aila said. “I don’t really know how to describe what I feel. It’s as if there is a void inside me, but also it’s all wound up. I’m scared that something will set me off and I’ll fall in a hole. But then, I’ve gone this far and I haven’t had anything happen to me, so I wonder if that
fear is unwarranted. But then I feel it, the void and the tension within playing back and forth. Does it change?”

  “Not really, you just learn how to balance it better and take the time to blow off steam and talk to others when there are signs of trouble. It’s hard for us to know what our issues are. We’re always too close to it, but others can help. It’s not a weakness but a strength to go to others when you think that there might be something wrong,” Anthony assured her.

  “Thank you,” Aila said in a small voice.

  They continued patrolling. They could see through the car- riages that people were starting to prepare food; they were talking to one another, small talk, about what they would do when they were in the city, the way that their carriages were riding, what food they were looking forward to, easing the tensions and divisions that had been created over the last few days.

  “You’re not what I expected,” Aila said. “Hmm?” Anthony looked over to her.

  “Well, you know you are a death knight with the heart of a lich inside you, but you’re much more than that,” Aila said.

  Anthony unconsciously put his hand over the heart beating in- side his chest. “Thank you.” He lowered his hand.

  “I never thought that a skeleton could get themselves into so much trouble but also save so many people and help others.”

  “It doesn’t matter who we are—we can all help one another. My actions might have been big but it is the small ones that are the longest lasting,” Anthony said.

  Aila turned her head to the side. “What do you mean?” Anthony took some time to respond.

  “It is saying hello, it’s smiling at others, playing with kids for those few minutes, the time you take to help someone out in every- day life, holding the door. Small, incredibly small things. But if you do them again and again, and if you mean them, then other people will see what you’re doing and then, feeling good about it, they will do it when they’re greeted by others.

  “We become better people when we’re looking after one anoth- er instead of looking after ourselves.

  “This is a part of our communities that we might lose from time to time. The community is not about trying to look good for one another in big acts. It’s about the small things for your neigh- bor, the greeting you give one another. It’s not a deep connection,

  but it is a connection. When you have a bad day and you want to yell at someone, you start to yell, but then you remember that they might be having a bad day, that your taking it out on them might be making them have a bad day. So you take a step back, change your tone and then start again, let them help you instead of being forced to do your bidding. Sympathy is stronger than anger. Aggressive- ness can ignite other’s anger, but kindness can stick with them in a way that they might not even realize. You can point immediately to the people who made you angry, but it is only at the end of the day that you can reflect on what made you feel better. It isn’t a curren- cy; it isn’t something that can be bartered or given away. You have to give it or take it, but unlike money, it will come back to you.”

  Aila felt that his words were simple but confusing. They also sparked a lot of internal thoughts as she started to think on her own life, on those times that she had been in the situations he had talked about.

  Anthony didn’t say anything as they walked around the car- riages, as people started to get closer around the fire, starting to pull out their food and cook with one another. They were a broken community, but they were still a community, one that had shared the good and the bad, the hard and the easy times.

  Aila looked up at the sky. The faint smoke rose from the fire against the battered carriages and the glowing sky that was a mix of colors. The trees swayed in the breeze. It was cold but refreshing, invigorating her mind.

  She felt that something was wrong and she looked at Anthony. She didn’t as much see something was wrong but she felt like it was, that kind of second sense that one would have being around some- one else for long enough.

  “Is there something wrong?” Aila asked.

  Anthony slowed his footsteps. “It’s about recovering my mem- ories. I want to have them back, but then, every time I get them

  back, more times than not, they’re filled with disasters, remember- ing people only to lose them, seeing battlefields, such loss that it hurts. It feels like it’s tearing me apart on the inside, but there is also something that is keeping me together.” He put his hand on his ar- mor and tapped it. “I don’t know what will happen when I recover my memories.”

  Anthony joked around and he looked after other people, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t affected, that he was numb to every- thing that was happening. It was just he could push it to the side and helped out others instead of falling into that pain.

  “Well, if that time comes, I’ll be here to help you,” Aila said. “Thank you.” Anthony’s voice was just a whisper, but she still

  heard it as he cleared his nonexistent throat.

  “How can you make those noises without a face?”

  “Practice, I guess? How can I talk without a tongue or lips? I just have the body—I don’t know how it works!”

  “How do you not know how it works?” Aila asked as they con- tinued patrolling.

  “Well, do you know all of the functions down to the smallest part of your body?”

  “Well, that’s different!”

  They argued with each other, feeling all the better for it, think- ing on what they had learned that night.

  ***

  Su looked at the people around the fire. He knew all of them; most of them had travelled together for multiple trips. He had come to know their stories, know their families. As he looked around and saw who wasn’t there anymore, his heart twisted.

  It was so easy to think that they were just on guard, that they were just away for a few minutes and that they would be back soon. He smiled, thinking of the antics they had got up to, the times that

  they had joked, sleep deprived from one trading fair, or when they had shared a drink after a long day of work. The times he had seen them showing him pictures of their families, told him the stories of how they got to where they were.

  Among traders, many had broken lives, had something that they were looking to escape, something that they were going to- ward. Or they had simply started trading and loved it. Many joined and many stayed, finding that normal life didn’t suit them anymore. Su stood and cleared his throat. Everyone looked over to him,

  curious what he wanted to keep them here for.

  “We all came here for different reasons. Some of you were look- ing to just get passage to the next city. Some of you have been with me and my group for some time, and we have gone to plenty of cities across Selenus. We lost people a few days ago. We were able to return them to Dena and give them rest. We were able to survive as well, but just as we’ve completed their rites, it does not mean that we are saved. What I want to do tonight is to talk—to talk about those we lost, who were they to you, what is weighing on you.”

  Su looked at them all. There were different looks on their faces, from anger and fear as they remembered the events. Facing one’s own mortality was never an easy thing.

  “I met Carrie years ago, when she was a trader just setting out in the world. She came to my camp all the time, keeping us supplied. She was working as a supply driver so that she could build up the funds that she needed in order to start her own business.

  “She stayed a bit longer and she fell for one of the guys in my cohort. He was like an older uncle to me. His name was Dietrick. We were close, and Carrie and I got along well. When we had time off, we would meet up and wander around, the three of us.

  “Dietrick was killed in an attack and Carrie wasn’t able to deal with it. She had the money, gave me a way to contact her and she disappeared. I didn’t think that I would see her again. When I was

  injured, they had me working to move supplies. When I was in a city collecting food to be moved up to the front lines,
I ran into her again.

  “I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was in a dark place, thinking I was useless with my broken body, unable to fight any- more.” Su rubbed his leg that no longer throbbed in constant pain. “She walked right into the supply barn. They wouldn’t let her past because she was a civilian, so she yelled my name. ‘Su, you use- less goat, get your ass out here!’ I ran out there, all fired up, only to see her there, tapping her foot on the ground. ‘Since you’re a mer- chant, you might as well do it the right way!’ she yelled, not let- ting me get a word in edgeways.” Su laughed, even as his eyes were damp. “I thought that I had nothing left. She showed me that there was more in the world to see. I left the military and started to run convoys. She was my first customer. She would never say if she was coming with us to the next place, but every morning before we left, she would be there sitting on her caravan. She was the real boss of

  the convoy.”

  Others smiled and laughed, nodding their heads, knowing her antics well as they all lived through their own memories.

  “When I first met Tollem, I didn’t know if he was really going to sell me a real Ilsal timepiece or if he was having me on. After three rounds of negotiations and me having to put my head back on, he joined the caravan and I got a bunch of healing pills. We left and headed out. I was starting to get annoyed, feeling scammed. When I confronted him, he was scared, not for himself but for me. He insisted that I take the pills. I didn’t want to and two days later, I got a case of the shivers. He was there, feeding me the pills and looking after me. He was a trained medic and got busted for sell- ing hooch out of his tent. He had a silver tongue but he was always looking out for people. I had been so confused, I didn’t realize that he was trying to help me and had noticed that I had a bad fever and