Outcasts of the Worlds

by Lucas Paynter

“She’s a monster,” was a sentiment echoed by many.

  “You could just let me pass,” the goddess requested, a restrained plea in her voice. She had made her point: She wasn’t going out of her way to kill. But she would.

  “For Lord Renivar!” one of the remaining two soldiers yelled bravely, and they charged together, screaming a victorious cry.

  The goddess brushed the blade of one aside, turning her back and stepping between them to clock the other in the face with her right elbow. Before he could hit the ground, she caught him and twisted him into his last remaining ally, sending them both sprawling. She had no last words for the crowd. She didn’t even spare them another look. What few had dared stand in the path now moved, knowing she was not something they could readily stand against.

  Fixing her hair and replacing the brushes as she went, the goddess walked on alone up the steep path to Borudust Castle to seek an audience with the local god.

  *

  For many in the crowd, it had been the sight of a lifetime. Even for Zaja, watching the goddess who took the Reahv’li apart was uncanny. Vestus stepped away from the crowd and Zaja carefully climbed down off his shoulders. Having suffocated between her legs for the last several minutes, he gasped for a few moments before finally asking, “So … what just happened?”

  “I don’t entirely know,” Zaja admitted. “Someone just beat up on Renivar’s soldiers.”

  “They’re only human,” he protested. Bothered, he asked, “But who? Can’t be the prisoners in the tower … could it be a Mystik? I’ve heard stories of the gods who used to dare challenge Lord Renivar.”

  “I don’t know!” Zaja was flustered. “She looked like a goddess, but she didn’t do anything that—” And then Zaja realized. “They’re gonna be focused on her.”

  “Say what now?”

  “I—I’ve got to go,” she started to turn away. “We’ll catch up later.”

  “Uh, just so you know—”

  Zaja slowed to a stop, looking back. Vestus blushed a darker blue, tapping his index fingers against one another, “… we’re even for the noodles. If you were worried.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Zaja asked, “We are? Why?”

  “Well, when you climbed on my shoulders, your … kinda ended up in my …” Vestus chuckled awkwardly, embarrassed. “Uh, heh … yeah.”

  Zaja, heretofore distracted by the commotion, realized what he meant. After a moment, she shook herself out of her stupor. “I’ve—I have to run.” Turning away, she stopped once to assure Vestus, “But not ‘cause you’re a pervert.”

  Dejected, he asked, “I’m a pervert?”

  “Yes! Yes, you are!” Zaja firmly insisted. “But that’s not why I’m leaving!”

  In the days since their arrival, Zaja had learned how to negotiate the crowd, which was trying desperately and failing to return to some sense of normalcy after what had just happened. Many had gathered to tend the fallen soldiers, sending others to inform the families and comfort those who had not known such violence where they had come from. Zaja, meanwhile, intended to make good with her friends. She didn’t know who brought the diversion, but she would use it to help Jean free the others. In doing so, she could at least vouch for the people of Yeribelt, and if need be, she would defect. She intended to stay.

  Jean was found napping in the shanty home they’d been using, laying on the bed of hay uncovered, snoring loudly. Zaja sat on her stomach, shaking her by the shoulders. “Jean! Jean! Wake up! You need to wake up, now!”

  Choking, snorting, Jean flailed her arms aimlessly, grazing Zaja’s nose and causing her to fall back. “Stop shakin’ me! You ain’t my dad and I ain’t a goddamn toddler!”

  As Zaja rubbed her nose and gave Jean some clearance, the latter sat up, glancing at the sky. “Somethin’ up? I was plannin’ on bein’ out for a few more hours.”

  “Some woman just showed up in Yeribelt and started throwing the Reahv’li down like they were paper dolls!”

  Jean shook her head in disappointment. “… Someone just horned in on my Friday night.”

  Annoyed, Zaja grabbed her companion, pulling her to her feet. “Don’t you get it? This the perfect chance to break in and rescue the others!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Jean shook her head. “Just kinda out of the blue is all.”

  Was she always this witless? “Yes, it is! I’m the one who said it!”

  “No, I mean … who the fuck showed up?” Jean asked, rubbing an eye.

  “I don’t know!” Zaja was becoming frustrated. “Some redhead with a couple of paintbrushes stuck in her hair! Which, I should add, she was using to kill people!”

  “Wait, Airia?” Jean’s eyes went wide. “That art school dropout?!” Calming, she shook her head, as if in on some private joke. “Gotta say: shocked. Didn’t think she had the stones.” And just like that, Jean grabbed her jacket and pulled back her hair, clasping her barrette in place. “Fuckin’ fine by me. Just means we make the mess a bit early.”

  Jean didn’t pause to consider or think—she just walked out, and for a brief moment, Zaja was alone. It wasn’t an ideal home, but it was now hers. She hoped to be back before nightfall.

  *

  It was the first time Mack really had to sit down and think about it. Aaron, that creep in the woods, had just out and said it: I barely recognized you under that ridiculous guise. Even Zella, the pretty girl with the glowing blue cuts in the nearby cell, had blinked in apparent confusion upon seeing him. There was something wrong with Flynn. He was not the guy they knew.

  So Mack thought about it.

  The “confidence man” who looks like a freak in the world that hates freaks? “I was just that good,” Flynn would probably tell him, and maybe he was. Maybe, if he had to be, he could be. Would be. He seemed to have a knack for lying without trying.

  But it was more. It was how he’d tried to go it alone back in Crescent. How comfy he was on Sechal. It was how he covered for all of them in Cordom. The snake-man they’d heard mentioned in that little port town of Noria Peak. It was the way Airia Rousow had first looked at him.

  Zajers couldn’t get it. Charsy wouldn’t know. Poesy? Forget about it. But me, and Jeannie … we would know. What it was to be half-human, to be hounded and feared. Flynn acted like someone who knew that fear a thousand times. Even Mack—who could pass for normal with the right bandages—knew what it was to hide, and he’d never known a better liar than Flynn. But the truth was bubbling up, and he banged and called out until he caught the other’s attention. “Hey, Flynn-o? Flynn?”

  “Mack?”

  He was just waking from what appeared to have been a very nice nap. Good timing! He might not think too much about what he was being asked. “So, about those eyes, and the pointed ears … those pointy claws too, and the fur—” Mack gestured in circular patterns over his torso, “—all over. Those aren’t you, are they? Before Civilis … before we met?”

  Neither angry nor disappointed nor sad, Flynn looked—Mack realized—almost relieved. Like something he’d been sitting on for a long time could no longer be concealed.

  “You were normal once,” Mack asked, closing the deal, “weren’t you?”

  *

  There had been no trouble climbing back up a hill of rock and withered root, or in knocking out the gap that had been only partially bricked up from a week prior. Jean stepped into the courtyard of Borudust Castle expecting an army, prepared to give them the fight that an army deserved. But there was no one, save the distant commotion that congregated around Airia Rousow. The idea that she, of all people, could be giving them such a fight was beyond Jean’s ken, but she would take what she could get. The door leading back in wasn’t locked, and they returned to halls that Jean found only fleetingly familiar and Zaja even less so. The brick was cold and there was no light but for the torches kindly left at entrance and exit. The castle clearly wasn’t used to unexpected guests.

  Bits of dirt and hay littered the floor. The place was never meant to
look pretty and the wooded doors were splintered and old, the hinges creaking and rusted but not yet fit for replacement. A few wrong turns brought them to the room where their weapons had been stowed, along with a host of ancient armaments. Chari’s rifle had been put away in a cage, the lock of which Zaja easily froze and Jean readily shattered after finding her trusty mace. There were no other guns, and if Jean had to guess, she’d say that Renivar’s people didn’t like using them.

  Jean holstered the rifle, which still felt vile to her, the weapon of a traitorous specialist working with a team of bounty hunters. She remembered how Flynn had freaked over what should have been a guiltless crime. Becca was her name? Jean wasn’t even sure anymore.

  Poe’s sword had been placed on a rack among a dozen others. Jean wouldn’t have recognized it for its design, but she knew it for the sheen it retained amidst so many other weapons, all rusted and dull. She took it in hand, and it felt weird to hold, like the tool of a more sensible age, when folks killed folks in decent and honorable ways. Zaja’s whip had been left coiled on a table. Its owner picked it up, and looked down at it in deep thought.

  “You okay there, Zaj?”

  “I am, I just … it’s the second time I wasn’t expecting to hold this again,” she replied.

  Jean understood what it was like to get sentimental over a weapon. This wasn’t the time or place, though—they had friends waiting to see that they hadn’t been ditched.

  *

  At the end of the tunnels, they came to a throne room—the kingly seats therein were broken and scattered to the corners. Where they once sat, there was a tiny crater in the stone floor, and Zaja guessed it was from when the Mystik of Creation had been humiliated, the stone bowled where he had once stood. Ethereal chains stretched from the floor through the distant ceiling above, shifting with the nuanced movement of their captor. Zaja was too nervous to touch them but Jean was not, and her hands passed through as though they were absent. Zaja paused to study them but Jean wouldn’t wait, and she had to run to catch up.

  Beyond the throne room, they found a hole in the wall, something made by more recent hands. Old stone had been piled aside and a set of stairs climbed to the spire built atop the castle, its brick turning from old gray to pristine white. Climbing the spiral staircase, they were met with candles, placed conservatively to light the way. A pair of doors appeared first, large and looming. Claustrophobically close, they were unremarkable in decoration, yet the gatekeepers to the most earnest of dread. Were it not for the nearby stairwell, Zaja might have felt no other choice but to advance, regardless of what waited at the other side. By instinctive fear or intuitive understanding, Jean chose the stairs, and Zaja followed, though her gaze was dragged back to the door.

  They advanced step by step. Above, a pathway wrapped around and a balcony opened to the right, supported by generous pillars. When Zaja and Jean reached this path, the latter strode boldly on. It was the former who stopped, looked, spoke in whisper. “He’s here.”

  But Jean knew already, instinctively. Both looked down.

  Awash in a fading blue light was Taryl Renivar, bound, kneeling, on a pedestal raised a few steps above the floor. He rested on one knee, the other propped up. His hands hung low, his palms open to the sky. Though he was elderly, his loose-fitting robes draped a powerful frame. On his head was a mane of weathered black, with steaks of gray that struggled to surface along with what wrinkles strained to appear on a man defying fate and time.

  “Fuck … that’s really him.”

  “Taryl Renivar?” Even in seeing him, Zaja could hardly believe it.

  “Like Rousow said.” Jean was also struggling to process the encounter.

  The bonds holding Renivar in place were nearly invisible—they flickered briefly, and only when his wrists moved or some part of him subtly twitched. They wound around his body, then vanished into the floor, down through the throne room and no doubt running deeper still. There was no mistake that he was bound as Airia had said.

  “Come on,” Jean gestured with her arm. “Let’s just get the guys and get outta here.”

  Zaja was reluctant to follow. This old man was what the hundreds of thousands in Yeribelt worshiped? As a man, he was imposing—for a cosmic being, he was small.

  *

  The ways were barely protected beyond the grand chamber, what guards who remained too unimposing for concern. This was not to say that the ascent was quick or easy—unlike the escape from Civilis, Jean found no elevators. Stairs were by design the only way up or down, but Jean had endured worse, and would suffer more for the sake of her friends if needed.

  Finding Poe made Jean pause in her tracks. Draped over a pit leading back to the grand chamber below, he was strung and spread by his arms and legs. Embarrassed though she was to admit it, Jean could see that Guardian Poe was much more than his pale, pretty-boy looks. His arms, legs, and chest all demonstrated a disciplined strength; there was no part of him that was not impressive. Suppose that’s what comes with a lifetime of swinging swords around, she reasoned. Just a shame he’s a murderin’ psychopath.

  “Poe!” Zaja cried out at seeing him.

  He hadn’t noticed them approaching, and was panting in a near-euphoric rhythm.

  Still, Jean conceded, he’s our murderin’ psychopath.

  She didn’t need a key. Zaja froze each of the locks binding Poe in sequence, and Jean shattered them with a mighty swing of her mace. There was little doubt that old man Renivar would notice the chunks of metal raining down on him, but at this point, she didn’t really care.

  Poe dangled awkwardly as first one leg and then the other was freed, leaving him hanging by his arms. Wrapping her own arms around his delirious form, Zaja kept him on solid ground while Jean smashed his remaining restraints, keeping her head turned well enough away from the pale flesh pressing against her. The Guardian said nothing.

  Soon freed, Poe staggered forward, most of his weight falling upon Zaja, who could barely keep him up. “Thank you … Jean.”

  Meanwhile, Zaja had slipped loose, leaving Poe on his hands and knees, panting heavily. “Let’s just … find you some clothes,” she decided, running off to seek out Poe’s personal effects.

  Wondering what had weakened Poe so severely, Jean placed her arm in the light he’d been suspended in. It warmed to the touch, and she felt a strange sense of serenity in it. How he looked so awful for it, Jean couldn’t understand.

  Zaja returned with Poe’s clothes, left on some nearby shelf, and turned away while he dressed. Jean stayed and watched. She didn’t care, having seen naked boys before. It took more than just the sight to get her hot and bothered.

  “They just strung you up here and left?”

  “Some word … of a commotion below …” he panted. “Left me here … suffered for days …” His eyes drifted all the while. The Dark Sword had been locked in a metallic cage that for anyone lesser would have been a true obstacle.

  Poe didn’t need to ask. Beneath Jean’s hands, the box warped and bent. It was a struggle to pull the door open, but less so when all the parts associated with it had twisted conveniently out of place. As Poe claimed his own source of power, Jean’s fists tightened. In his dependency, she had learned something about herself: She had seen the signs of people who were given power or had found it. Jean was one of the rare few born with it. If the Guardian was ever a threat to her friends, she would smash him. This extended well and beyond, of course. There was a god waiting below, and maybe it was time he learned what scary really was.

  *

  The sound of their jailers being beaten marked an end to the tumultuous days of imprisonment. The others were coming.

  Flynn didn’t bother rising; they would arrive at their leisure. It wasn’t like before, imprisoned in a tower without hope, trapped with the displeasure of himself. Having the company of friends eased his burdens. Though he was not torn as in his first days in Civilis, his regrets lingered. He hadn’t forgotten who he was or what he had done. Fly
nn still hated part of himself for the man he’d been, but he had resolved to rise above it. Treachery and lies stretched in two directions: hidden things that had sustained Flynn, truths he was not yet ready or safe to share.

  “Are you a half-human?”

  It had been the last question Zella Renivar had asked before falling silent. Mack, on the other hand, had pushed and prodded for explanations that Flynn didn’t know how to give.

  Poe came in first, with a key to open Flynn’s cell. He hardly noticed.

  “How did you ensnare me?” she had asked. “I had been so careful before you. Both of us know Arronel would have never gotten close. He’d have never gained my trust as you did.”

  The lock clicked, the bars creaked. Flynn rose and greeted the Guardian. “You look awful,” Flynn said frankly; little doubt he was bedraggled himself.

  “I’ve been subject to strange indignities,” Poe confessed. He was flush and unsteady as he glanced to his right side, where the Dark Sword lay sheathed. “My blade feels somehow heavier. I don’t understand why or what they did to me.”

  Jean entered next, zipping over to Mack’s cell and slapping the flat of her hand on the lock and working her magic.

  “Jeannie!” Mack threw his arms around her and the two hugged.

  Flynn took the key ring from Poe—who gave pause to at last sit and rest, slumping against the bars—and walked to Chari’s cage.

  She caught him by the sleeve, stopping him short, and whispered intently, “You will divulge the truth to Jean?”

  Looking her right in the eyes, Flynn shook his head. “Not here. Not now.”

  “Then when?” she hissed as he unlocked her cage. “She more than any among us has a right—”

  “I know how she’ll take it,” he said. “Mack understands. When we’re clear, and the time is right, she’ll know.”

  Chari didn’t look happy, but chose not to protest. She walked past him, leaving Flynn to deal with Zella Renivar, who was kneeling in the back of her cell, eyes downcast. He didn’t ask for her input on the matter, just unlocked the door and stood back. They both knew why.