Last Bastion

by Rachel Aaron

  "Why are you only doing this now?" he demanded, glaring at the white cat-woman with shaking fury. "I gave you those letters last night. It's already midday. I thought I made it clear that this was an emergency."

  "I've been busy," Lady Siku snarled back, nodding at the sunny window where the troops were still marching out the gates. "In case you haven't noticed, we're dealing with an emergency of our own. The king has been in a war meeting since dawn, strategizing with his generals about how to deal with the player threat in the south of the city. I deemed it politically inadvisable to interrupt him with your crisis, especially since any potential undead invasion couldn't even occur so long as the Bastion remains active."

  "'Politically inadvisable?'" James repeated, voice getting louder. "We're talking about the Once King! Creator of the Ghostfire and the force who wants to destroy all life in this world! One look at those letters was all you needed to know you couldn't read them. Why didn't you ask me to translate last night? I told you yesterday that he has traitors inside this castle, helping him open a backdoor through your defenses. Bastion or no Bastion, those spies are still working." He stabbed his finger at the pile of letters. "Their names are right there. All you have to do is tell the king to arrest them! Why haven't you?"

  "You do not tell me how to conduct my affairs, player," Lady Siku said icily. "Need I remind you that you are only alive through my good graces. I can throw you back to Captain Malakai's men any time I choose, so watch your tongue."

  "Do you want to die?" James yelled at her. "If the king and the players kill each other, there will be no one left to stand against the Once King's armies! You should be banging down the king's door to bring him this information so we can all start working together against the actual threat. Not wasting everyone's time while Malakai fills him with hate!"

  "That's Captain Malakai," Lady Siku snapped. "And his hate is deserved! The stonekin leading the rebellion in the south killed him yesterday, you know. It's a miracle of the Blessed Sun that the Clerics were able to resurrect him in time, but death has only strengthened his resolve. He will crush the players and return order to Bastion. If you don't want to die with the rest of your kind, you will shut your mouth and do as I say."

  Ar'Bati growled low in his throat at that, but James just sighed. "If I translate the letters, will you take them straight to the king?"

  "Of course not," Lady Siku said. "Weren't you listening? I'm not stupid enough to get in Malakai's way. There will be nothing said about the undead until all other operations are complete and the city is retaken. At that point, we can discuss possible traitors. Until then, I'm the only thing keeping you alive, so it's in your best interests to keep me happy. I'd hate for Captain Malakai to put you in his kindling wagons."

  James didn't know what she meant by that, but the way she said it made him shudder. "This is ridiculous," he said through clenched teeth. "We have to--"

  "We don't have to do anything," she said, pointing at the paper and ink on the table. "You need to do as you're told. Translate the letters now, and I'll use them when I judge the moment to be politically advantageous. Meanwhile, you can go ahead and tell me the secrets you promised last night."

  James blinked. "The what?"

  "The secrets," she said, snapping her fingers impatiently. "You said if I got you into the castle, you'd tell me all the palace courtiers' dirty laundry you learned from doing quests. The letters can wait, but I need that information before one of my enemies gets wise and finds a player of their own. I've kept my end of the bargain. Now it's your turn. Speak, and then I'll see about getting you food."

  She sat down on the couch, tail twitching impatiently as she waited for him to start reciting quest details, but James couldn't say a word. Lady Siku's political ruthlessness was the very thing he'd gambled on to get them inside the palace in the first place, but this was insane. How could anyone hear that the Once King was coming and decide that petty gossip was more important?

  He was already opening his mouth to try explaining again--because there was no way a rational person would act like this if she actually understood the threat--when one of her white-furred guards walked over and shoved the quill into his fingers. He was forcing James's hand down to the paper when James finally accepted the truth.

  This wasn't going to work.

  Not only was Lady Siku not going to take his letters to the king as she'd promised, she was actively working against the idea. She didn't care about Bastion. All she cared about was getting more power inside her own little sphere, so what if the rest of the world burned. No matter what James did or how much he gave her, she was never going to hold up her end of things until it was politically advantageous. And in the meanwhile, Tina and the knights would fight, everyone would die, the Bastion would eventually go down, and this whole continent would be consumed by the Once King's Ghostfire.

  A happy ending, his staff whispered in his mind, its cold voice giddy with anticipation. You should do as she says.

  "No," James said.

  "What was that?" Lady Siku snapped.

  "No," James said again, snapping the quill and throwing it down as he shot to his feet. "I'm not wasting any more time on this nonsense! I didn't betray my sister to sit here and play your games. I came--I fought to get here so that I could warn the king and save Bastion, and that's exactly what I mean to do."

  "You can do nothing if you're dangling from a noose!" Lady Siku hissed, jumping to her feet as well. "Sit back down and do as I say, or I'll throw you all to the--"

  She cut off with a strangled grasp. The moment she'd started talking, James had grabbed a fistful of earth magic and shoved it into the stones at her feet, bending the magic into his Stone Grasp spell but not the usual version. Back in the game, the giant stone hand had been a crowd-control spell meant to keep monsters and hostile players off him for no more than twelve seconds. But Flameboyant had taught him yet again that this wasn't the game. There was no reason Stone Grasp had to be twelve seconds long other than that was the number written in the spell text.

  Now that he was actually looking at the magic he was casting as magic--not a game mechanic--James saw zero actual reason the stone hand couldn't last for as long as he was willing to keep feeding power into it. So that was what he did, channeling the amber flows of power through the castle's stone floor and into a giant hand that grabbed Lady Siku's entire body and squeezed her tight, shutting off her threats like a switch.

  The room rang with the sound of her bodyguards drawing their swords. James snatched up his staff from the floor beside him and used it to send a wave of earth magic forward. The guards barely made it three feet before he'd wrapped every white cat in the room in a collar of living, squeezing stone.

  "What now?" Ar'Bati demanded, stepping up beside them. "They're all level eighty, but if you release them one by one, we might be able to--"

  "Screw fighting," James said, sweat pouring through his fur as he fought to keep so many Stone Grasps in place. "We're going to do what we came here to do. We're going to the king!"

  Fangs's cat eyes turned round. "The king?" he repeated, horrified. "We can't just barge our way in on the king! He's the king!"

  "Normally, yes, but I think we abandoned protocol," James said, nodding at the letters Lady Siku had dumped on the table. "Grab our proof and get it back in the bag. Meanwhile, Flame, I need you to start pumping fire into the window bars. Get them melty just like you did the bathtub."

  "Okay," Flameboyant said nervously, scrambling to get his robes back on over his wet body. "But I don't know if it'll work. Iron is a lot denser than copper."

  "Just do your best," James said as Ar'Bati swept the letters into his bag.

  The temperature in the room rose as Flameboyant began stuffing fire magic into the bars that kept them trapped. James was dying to watch, but he didn't dare take his eyes off the people he was keeping trapped in his Stone Grasps for more than a glance. If his hold slipped, one of them could slip out and attack or raise the alarm.
Either was inevitable eventually, but James was determined not to be caught with a wall at his back. Unfortunately, though the room was getting quite hot, he didn't hear any molten bars falling to the ground.

  "It's no good!" Flameboyant cried after almost a minute. "I've put all the fire I can into them, but they're still not melting!"

  "You got them red hot, though, right?" James said, arms shaking with the strain of holding three level eighties captive. "That means they're weak. Ar'Bati!"

  "On it," his brother said, marching into the bathroom. For a moment, James had no idea why, then he heard the sound of breaking tile and wrenching metal as his brother yanked the copper tub off its foundation. "If we must be criminals to bring warning to the king, then we shall be effective ones!"

  With that, the warrior threw the entire copper tub at the barred window. The heavy glass, already cracked by the heat, shattered completely, and the molten red bars bulged outward, but only one actually snapped. The others took multiple hits, bending further and further as Ar'Bati hammered on them with the rapidly crumpling copper tub. Finally, when the bathtub had been bashed into a malformed copper ball, the last bar gave way, leaving the window open to the castle outside.

  "Time to go," James said as Ar'Bati hurled what was left of the tub at the guards gawking below.

  "But it's a sheer wall!" Flameboyant cried. "And a thirty-foot drop! How are we going to--"

  He cut off with a yelp as Ar'Bati grabbed him around the waist and swung outside, clambering up the building's rough-hewn stone wall just as fast as he'd climbed trees back in the savanna. Alone in the room now, James walked backward toward the window and climbed onto the ledge, taking great care not to step on any of the molten spikes left from the broken bars. When he was finally in position, he let the earth magic go. The giant stone hands of the Stone Grasp spell crumbled seconds later, giving him one last look at Lady Siku's furious face as she began to scream.

  "Guards! Knights! The players have escaped!"

  There was a lot more than that, but James didn't bother to listen. He'd already stuck his staff into his mouth and started to climb, doing his best to follow Ar'Bati's path up the wall. But whereas the head warrior had made this look easy, James hadn't grown up climbing trees and cliffs in the savanna. Or as a cat, for that matter. The moment he left the relative safety and easy footholds of the chunky window ledge, he froze, completely unsure of where to put his feet or hands on the wall, which now looked as smooth as a marble column.

  "Hurry!" Ar'Bati called down to him.

  Staff stuck in his mouth, James could only glance down at the dizzying drop and the soldiers that were rushing around below.

  "This was your idea!"

  He wanted to tell his brother that he didn't know how. It was not like scaling trees, cliffs, or buildings were things he had any real experiences doing. Instead, he shot a pleading look up at Fangs in the Grass.

  Hanging by one arm from the wall twenty feet above, Ar'Bati looked down to give him a superior scowl. "Don't be shameful! You are jubatus, and a Claw Born at that!" He lifted his free hand to show James the small, sharp claws he was using like crampons to pull himself up the wall. "Your body knows what to do! Stop messing it up with thinking and climb!"

  Shaking, James stopped looking at the sheer wall and the drop below and forced himself to stare at the stone in front of him. As with all rock, he could feel the magic inside it, but that wasn't actually what he used this time. Instead, he followed the flows to the points where his claws could find purchase, giving him a handhold where there seemed to be none.

  After that, he made progress more and more quickly. Sometimes he'd screw himself up by looking down and panicking, but Ar'Bati was right. If he shut his mind up and trusted his body, it knew what to do. It was just like when they'd run across the grasslands. If he tried to control it, nothing worked, but if he surrendered to his instincts, his balance and body took care of themselves, taking him all the way up the castle's white wall to where Ar'Bati was waiting.

  "Good job," the warrior said, grabbing James by the tunic to haul him up the last few feet to the castle's slick golden roof--or rather, one of its slick golden roofs. The royal castle was made up of several buildings surrounding a central keep. Lady Siku's apartments had been in one of the smaller buildings in the back, so though they were high, they were still well below the towering central keep crowned with the circular tower where the activated Bastion was gleaming like a searchlight.

  "So what now?" Ar'Bati demanded as James shielded his eyes against the magical supernova shining above them. "We are free and inside the castle at last, but we do not know where the king is, and the guards are rallying."

  He was right. The paved yard--which had been swarming with soldiers since they'd woken up--was now packed with armed men pointing up at them. A few arrows flew past as James watched, clattering off the stone below them and forcing them farther up the sloped roof.

  "Oh snap, they're shooting at us," Flameboyant said fearfully.

  "Of course they are," Ar'Bati said, his voice grim. "We are fugitives and believed enemies of the crown. But all will be resolved once we speak with the king and become the saviors of Bastion. We just have to reach him."

  "How are we going to do that?" the Sorcerer asked.

  Ar'Bati pointed at James. "My brother is always the one with plans. He has a demon's mind for wiggling out of seemingly hopeless situations. I have seen him turn defeat into victory many times, and I know he would not have sent us out the window if he didn't have a fiendishly good plan."

  "Great!" Flameboyant said, turning to James. "How are we getting out of this?"

  James began to sweat. He appreciated his brother's vote of confidence, but honestly, this escape had been one of his least thought-out endeavors. He was honestly impressed they'd made it this far. Fortunately, the plan from here was pretty straightforward: get to the king and get the letters in his hands by any means necessary.

  He even had a pretty good idea of where he was. Back in the game, King Gregory had never left his position in the throne room unless he was off getting drunk for the Oktoberfest event. Normally, then, the throne room would be the obvious choice, but Lady Siku had specifically said the king was in a meeting. The throne room was a giant hall meant to hold hundreds, not the sort of place you held planning sessions. But the council chamber--a still-grand but much smaller hall at the top of the War Fortress on the palace's western side--was perfect. It had broad tables and a full map of the city. Not that those had ever been used by anyone during the game, but James was ready to bet they were being put to work now. It also had a giant stained-glass window to let in the sunlight, which solved the next problem of how they were going to get in.

  "All right," James said, reaching out to take the bag of letters from Ar'Bati and tie them to his own belt. "We tried for an audience, and we failed. Now, we're just going to have to crash in on King Gregory and hope for the best."

  "And how will we avoid being executed on the spot?" Ar'Bati asked skeptically.

  "I'm... not entirely sure," James admitted. "But I can't think of another way to get his attention. It's clear no one's going to let us get close to the king. If we're to have a prayer of stopping this stupid war before we do the Once King's work for him, we have to take matters into our own hands. But I think we've got a shot. I talked to King Gregory several times back when this was a game. He's a good person and a kind one. You don't get nicknamed 'the Buffoon King' for ruthlessly executing your enemies on sight, after all. I can't guarantee this won't be a suicide mission, but if anyone in this place will give us the benefit of the doubt, it's him."

  "Very well, brother," Ar'Bati said, his face deathly serious as he clapped a clawed hand on James's shoulder. "Death before dishonor. We will save this continent from the Once King, no matter the cost."

  "No matter the cost," James agreed, patting Fangs's hand before turning to Flameboyant, who was watching all of this in horror. "You don't have to come, Flame," he s
aid quietly. "This is a lot more than you signed up for when you ran with us, and I don't blame you if you want out. If you want, we can tie you up here, and then you can fake-betray us to buy your own safety when the knights come."

  "Absolutely not," the elf said, shaking his head so violently, the water from his still-damp crimson hair flew out in stinging needles. "I owe you my life, remember? I'm going to repay you, and given what you're planning to do, this might be my last chance. No way I'm bailing."

  His determination sent James into a panic. "Dude, I appreciate your dedication, but you really don't have to do this. You've already paid me back more than enough, and I didn't save your life just so you could come with us and..."

  He couldn't finish, but though his face was pale, Flameboyant did not back down. "I'm tired of hiding while other people die," the elf said, voice shaking. "From the moment I woke up in this place, I've done nothing but hide and watch while others killed or got killed or did horrible things. I didn't help anyone, I didn't do anything but try to stay alive, and I hated myself for it. That's why I threw myself at your raid. I wasn't even brave enough to take my own life. I had to make you all do it, but you gave me another chance."

  Flameboyant stopped for a shaking breath, and then he looked James in the eyes. "What do I have to be afraid of? I already died once. And if this does work, we'll save everyone. That's what you keep saying: that this is going to save the world. I don't know if those lives will be enough to balance out all the people I didn't lift a finger to save during my first days here, but at least this time I can go out as a hero instead of a suicide bomber. That's worth a shot, I think. So are we doing this or what?"

  James didn't trust his voice enough to answer. Flameboyant was always so jovial and happy to go along, it was easy to forget that he'd been through hell just like the rest of them. This whole world had been put through the wringer, and it was only going to get worse unless they stopped it, which meant Flameboyant was right: it was worth a shot. Compared to the lives those letters could save in the king's hands, the three of them were nothing. Win or lose, the very act of trying would make the world better. James could think of no worthier cause to spend his life on and no better people to do so with.