The Once King

by Rachel Aaron

  “That doesn’t make sense, though,” Tina said stubbornly. “I don’t know diddly about magic, but if all those souls haven’t burned up yet, I don’t see how they’re going to suddenly poof the moment you stop feeding new fuel into the flames. That’s not how fires work. Stuff either burns or it doesn’t.”

  “She’s right,” James said, grinning. “There’s clearly something enduring about the soul, or it wouldn’t be able to survive passing through the Lightless Realm over and over again. The Sun said it put its essence in all of you so that you could pass through death without fear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that gift had other benefits as well. I mean, it would make sense that sunfire wouldn’t burn.”

  The Once King covered his face with his hands. “It is true,” he whispered in a small voice. “It seems even in my greatest heresy, the Sun never abandoned us. But if I haven’t been actually burning the souls, what have I been burning?”

  “You already answered that yourself,” James said, his eyes going wide as it all came together. “It’s hate. Your drive for revenge, the fury of the original Celestial Elves, all the sorrow and rage of the people whose lives were cut short by your undead, those emotions are what fan the flames. That’s why the ghostfire always felt so angry and out of control even though you were calm. And that’s why it needs constant feeding to stay going. It’s a literal fire of hate.”

  “Then we should put it out,” Tina said.

  “It’ll do that all on its own,” James assured her, turning back to Ar’Kan. “You built the ghostfire out of death and anger, but it’s still a fire, and that belongs to the Sun. You told me the original spark for the ghostfire came from one of the Sun’s own embers after the Conflagration, but you fought that fire alongside the Wind and the Water. You know how hard it is to put out! The fact that the ghostfire requires constant tending proves that it’s not as strong as the spark of the Sun that helped create it. The only reason it’s still here is because you’ve been feeding it with your resentment and hatred all these years. But if you just stop, the ghostfire will burn out all on its own, and all the souls trapped inside will be free.”

  His eyes flicked to Ar’Bati as he spoke. The circumstances were entirely different, but those were almost the exact same words James had said to his brother in the gnolls’ wagon back in the Savanna. He was worried Fangs would take offense at the implicit comparison, but the warrior was nodding in agreement. The Once King was nodding, too, though he did not look nearly as confident.

  “I believe you,” he said. “But I am still afraid. I have been the master of this fire for so long that my name has become synonymous with it. It is the center of everything I’ve built. If I let it die, what will I have left?”

  “You have an entire world,” James said. “You’re the king of a race of born explorers, but you haven’t even been outside of this fortress in a thousand years! Don’t you want to see what your people have built over their many lives? Aren’t you curious?”

  The king looked down, so James stepped forward, putting himself directly in the towering monarch’s vision. “Remember what the Sun said,” he whispered. “The ghostfire was your prison, too. If you let it go, you won’t just be freeing the souls trapped inside. You’ll be free as well. You’re the only Celestial Elf left who still has his wings. Don’t you want to fly?”

  “More than you can ever know,” the elf replied. Then he took a deep breath. “I have come to a decision,” he announced. “I have many sins to atone for. Wrongs done to my people and to you.” He nodded down at the players. “This isn’t even your world, but I still found a way to hurt you, and for that I am deeply sorry. As an act of repentance, I will use the last of the ghostfire’s power to send back to Earth any who wish to go. When it is done, the fire’s power will be consumed. It will burn out, and those trapped inside will be free to be reborn, as will I.”

  The finality in his voice as he said that made James panic. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “You’re not going to—”

  “Take my own life?” The Once King shook his head. “No. My god bade me live, and it is long past time I listened. But my immortality came from the Eternal Sky, and that is forever lost to me. Though I still have my wings and my nature, I am trapped by the Moon’s pull same as everything else. The only reason I have lived on as long as I have is because I, too, burned in the ghostfire. Without it, my eternal life will end. Not instantly, but time will wear me down the same as any other, and that is fine. I am no longer afraid of death, nor do I long for it. I have been obsessed with endings for far, far too long. I am eager to try actually being alive.”

  He chuckled, smiling down at James. “You see?” he said quietly. “I am not too old to learn.”

  James nodded, too choked with emotion to answer. All this time, all his pushing for the Once King to let go of the ghostfire, he hadn’t realized he was asking the elf to give up his own life. Knowing that now made him feel horrible, but the king actually looked more relaxed than James had ever seen him. He was even smiling. The expression made his timeless face look young and even more perfect, which scarcely seemed possible.

  “Well, this is great and all,” Tina said, breaking the moment. “But I believe you just said you’d send us home, and I’d like to get on with that. I’ve got a lot of promises to keep and a lot of people who want to get back while they still have bodies to go home to.”

  “Of course,” the Once King said, stepping down off the dais. “Follow me.”

  He led the players back up the spiral stair to the top of the mountain. The peak was warm and sunny when they arrived, the broken terrace looking almost picturesque with its epic three hundred sixty–degree view of the surrounding snowcapped mountains and the Deadlands, which now looked white rather than gray in the full light of the sun.

  “Whoa,” Tina said, looking around in wonder. “I am never gonna get used to that.”

  “It does look very different than it did when we were raiding,” SilentBlayde agreed, leaning in to kiss her.

  James did a double take. “Wait,” he said, rushing over to them. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you guys actually together now?!”

  SB and Tina shared a smirk. “Oh, we’re together all right,” his sister said, trying and failing to hold in her laughter. “We kind of got married.”

  James stared at them, his eyes going wider and wider. “You got married?” he squeaked at last. “H-how? When?!”

  “Garrond did it this morning,” Tina said happily, leaning into SB, who looked like he was going to float away. “It was a bit of a battlefield wedding, but hell if I was dying without…” She trailed off, her brown eyes going wide in horror. “Oh shit, where’s Garrond?! We totally forgot him! He’d better not be dead.”

  “He is not dead,” the Once King said, his booming voice making all three of them jump. When they whirled around, the king looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Even now that I am no longer catching their souls, I can still feel whenever someone dies in my mountain,” he explained. “Commander Garrond survived everything I threw at him. He was still fighting when I bid my armies cease.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Tina cried, grinning widely. “Though I’m not surprised. Dude is the Energizer paladin. He takes a licking and just keeps on ticking. But if he’s alive, why isn’t he here?”

  The Once King’s look of embarrassment deepened. “Garrond is a paladin of the Order of the Golden Sun. He’s devoted his entire life to destroying me. I…did not wish to deal with him just yet, so I locked him in Sanguilar’s chamber.”

  “Holy crap, he’s still in there?” Tina said, blanching. “He’s going to be pissed as shit.”

  “He and his remaining soldiers are currently building a battering ram to bash down the doors I closed,” the Once King confirmed. “He’s a long way from breaking through, but I have no doubt he will make it eventually, which is why we should make haste. I’d like to have all complications with your world settled before I begin the long process of at
onement in this one.”

  James could see how making peace with Garrond was going to be tricky, or impossible, but that was Ar’Kan’s bear to wrestle. He’d done his part. Now it was time to go home.

  So he, Tina, and SB walked up to join the rest of the raiders who were gathered around the Great Pyre. The crowd parted wide to let the Once King through as he walked up to the giant metal brazier. When he reached the fire, he thrust his hands into it. As always, the flames came to him eagerly, but it was clear he no longer delighted in their power. Instead, the king looked sad—horribly, shatteringly sad as he clutched the blue-white fire to his chest.

  “Not much longer, old friends,” he whispered. “One last miracle, and then you shall rest at last. I promise.”

  James looked down at his feet. The magical interaction was fascinating—he could actually see the dark shadows of the death magic wrapping around the ancient king like encircling arms—but watching felt wrong, like he was intruding on something personal and intimate. He stared down at the broken paving instead, distracting himself by wondering how much of the blood that still stained it was Tina’s until, at last, the Once King stepped back.

  “Rise!” the elf ordered, throwing up his hands. The ghostfire obeyed at once, shooting up to the sky in a screaming pillar. When it was so high James could no longer see the top, the Once King clapped his palms together and brought his arms back down.

  “Return!”

  The word echoed over the mountains like thunder. The tower of ghostfire roared in response, collapsing back down into itself to form a swirling vortex in front of the Great Pyre’s brazier. Everyone except the Once King jumped back when it landed, covering their faces against the necromantic fire’s burning cold. When James finally managed to look up again, what he saw was not what he’d expected.

  The Great Pyre was still there, still burning merrily, but it was much smaller, and in front of it was a portal. It actually looked just like the portals from back in the game, except this one was ringed with ghostfire rather than myriad magical colors, and the place he could see shimmering on the other side wasn’t anywhere in FFO. It was a highway. A four-lane American highway complete with green road signs and panicking traffic. Probably somewhere in the southwest given the arid landscape, but James couldn’t actually read the signs through the shimmering magic, so it was impossible to be more specific than that.

  “There,” the king said, his chest heaving with effort as he turned back to the players. “You are free to go.”

  “Holy Toledo!” NekoBaby cried, bounding up to the portal’s edge. “So we just go through this and what? We’re back in our old bodies again?”

  “Those of you who still have bodies will be instantly transported back to them the moment you step through,” the Once King said. “Those of you whose bodies have died will retain the forms you inhabit now.”

  “Wait, really?” ZeroDarkness said, his cat jaw hanging open. “So if I’m dead over there, and I walk through, I stay a jubatus? Like, walking down the highway?”

  The Once King nodded proudly. “It took a great deal of magic and finesse to make that possible, but I wanted no one to be harmed by my actions any more than you already have been.” He smiled. “Think of this as my apology gift.”

  “Fuckin-A!” NekoBaby cried, running back to hug Tina. “Girl, I’m gonna miss you! Those other guilds are shit.”

  “Hold on,” Tina said, clutching Neko to her partially out of friendship but mostly to keep her from running off. “Wait, wait, wait, this is too fast. We’re here, but what about all the other players? This world is full of people who want to go home, but they’re scattered all over. Hell, we left thousands in the Savanna. That’s on another continent! How long does this portal last?”

  “It is tied to the ghostfire,” the Once King said. “It will remain open for as long as the Great Pyre burns.”

  “How long is that?” Tina demanded.

  The elf glanced over his shoulder at the flames. “It is difficult to say. A year, perhaps? Maybe slightly less.”

  Tina sagged in relief. “Thank god. I thought you were going to say fifteen minutes or something. A year we can work with.”

  “Is it one way?” James asked, staring through the portal at the people he could see getting out of their cars on the other side.

  The Once King scoffed. “Of course. I am not a fool.”

  “Well, I guess that’s that,” Neko said, slipping out of Tina’s hold to throw her arms around SB. “Take care of it, guys! I’d love to help, but I’ve got a totes rip, noncat body to get back to. Also, my mom is probably freaking out.”

  Tina snorted. “You still live with your mom?”

  “Damn straight. My mom’s awesome,” Neko said. Then she hugged Tina and SB again. “Take care of yourselves, all right?” she whispered.

  “We will,” Tina said, hugging her hard. “Be good, Neko.”

  “It’s Rashid,” Neko said, whapping Tina with her tail one last time. “And I’m the best.”

  Having had the last word, the cat girl turned and bounded off, running full speed at the portal. It flickered when she reached it, and then NekoBaby’s jubatus body vanished, turning into a spark of fire that shot off toward the horizon, and presumably his real body.

  “I’m gonna miss her,” Frank said, wiping away a tear.

  “Yeah,” Killbox muttered, kicking the ground. Then his head shot up. “Wait, she didn’t leave us any of her stuff! That selfish cat! Her gear was priceless!”

  This kicked off a riot as those who wanted to stay swarmed those who didn’t, filling the mountain with tearful goodbyes and unabashed loot trading. James watched the chaos with a heavy heart, and then he turned to his brother.

  “Here,” he said, removing his rings and necklace and handing them to Ar’Bati. “Give those to Gray Fang and tell her thank you. I’d give her my staff, too, but even with the undead gone, I don’t think she’s going to want anything made of Eclipsed Steel. Also, please tell our father that—”

  “You can tell him yourself,” Fangs growled, shoving James’s stuff back at him. “Because you are not leaving!”

  “But I have to,” James argued. “I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt waiting for me. My parents were co-signers on the loans. I can’t leave them with that kind of burden. They just got to retire!”

  “You have family here,” Fangs argued back. “We need you, too! You’re a hero and a prince of the Savanna! You cannot actually want to go back to your old life of debt and labor.”

  “Of course I don’t want to go back,” James snapped. “But I have obligations.” He looked at Tina. “Are you going back?”

  “Nope,” Tina said, smiling at SB. “I’ve got promises to keep here, and a library to start. It’s gonna be awesome.”

  Hearing that filled James with jealousy. He wanted to see Tina’s library. He wanted to stay and see everything, all this world could be when it wasn’t tied down by games or being destroyed by undead. He wanted to keep his magic; he was just starting to get good! But he couldn’t.

  “It’s my fault,” he told Ar’Bati. “I can’t leave them to carry my burdens. It’s not right.”

  Fangs snorted. “If money is your only problem, we have that in plenty.”

  “But I don’t,” James said. “I spent all my gold to get us out of Bastion, remember?”

  His brother gave him a scornful look. “What family do you think you joined? The Claw Born are rich! We will gladly pay your debts if it means you stay with us.”

  James couldn’t believe his ears. “Really?”

  “Of course,” Fangs said, insulted. “We might not have the ‘dollaz’ you players used to brag of, but we have gold in plenty. Surely that has value in your world?”

  “It does, but…” James trailed off, shaking his head. He’d been so sure he was going back—back to his dead-end job, back to being a failure—he didn’t know what to do now that he might have a chance to stay. “Gold would probably work,
” he managed at last. “But how would I get it to them? The Once King just said the portal’s one way.”

  “You’re making this way too complicated,” Tina said. “All we have to do is find someone who is going back and who knows they’ll be keeping their body and send the gold home with them. And probably letters. If we don’t tell Mom and Dad we’re not dead, they’ll freak.”

  “Is there someone who knows they’re going back in an FFO body, though?” James asked, terrified to hope.

  His sister shrugged. “I don’t know about our group, but there’s tens of thousands of people trapped here. There’s gotta be someone who—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Tina and James both whirled around to see ZeroDarkness standing behind them. “I’m going back,” he said. “And I know for a fact that I’ll be keeping this body. I’m actually lining up a bunch of FFO-to-IRL courier jobs right now.”

  “Really?” Tina said, impressed. “Dude, way to hustle. But how do you know your real body’s dead on the other side?”

  The jubatus Assassin flashed them a cat smile. “Because that’s what I told them to do. I got in a car accident last winter. I still have brain function, obviously, but the rest of my body’s been paralyzed from the nose down for the last five months. It fucking sucks, which is why I’ve been playing so much FFO. At least here I could still walk and talk. Anyway, I told my wife to pull the plug if I ever became unresponsive for more than a week. I was holding on for my family, but I know caring for me was bankrupting us. I was still going to go back for my kids, but this is so much better! All I gotta do is hang out in this world for a while until I’m sure the old me is dead, and then I’ll go through the portal and come out the other side in a brand-new body!”

  “A cat body,” Tina said, biting her lip. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “I’ll take cat over vegetable any day,” Zero said with absolute certainty. “Also, have you seen me?” He flexed his arm to show off his lean muscle. “I’m super cut, and I’ve got ninja moves!” He turned to grin at SB. “Even without the Lightless Realm, can you imagine doing the jumps and flips we do here in the real world? Add in the fact that I’m a cat, and I’ll be famous in no time. The internet loves cats.”