“Even a good man has his limits,” Anthony said. A part of his nonexistent gut twisted hearing the story. “Where is he now?”
“He is probably at home,” Tommie said.
“Okay, let’s go and talk to Wemtic.”
Tommie nodded and led the way. “So, are you some kind of roaming knight?”
“I’m a Guardian.” Anthony saw Tommie’s frown. He felt a pang of loss but covered it over with a light tone. “I guess we’re not as widespread now. We have an oath, not to one race or to one god, but to all of the people who call Dena home, no matter the race. We look to protect and safeguard the people of Dena, allow them to seek justice, to be protected in their times of need. We all have different positions. There are fighting Guardians, governing Guardians, and so on. We walk the world without a country but with our oath and support of other Guardians.”
“So you don’t fight for humans?” Tommie asked.
“I fight for Dena. If there is a human, gnome, goblin or any sentient creature who is in danger, they can seek a Guardian’s protection. That does not say that someone under the Guardian’s protection is above the law. If they are charged with a crime, they will have a trial accordingly.”
They walked in silence for some time.
“You’re a strange human,” Tommie finally said.
“Thank you,” Anthony said in a happy voice.
Tommie smiled and shook his head. “So what are you doing going into the Deepwood?”
“Need to see an elf about a letter,” Anthony said.
“An elf about a letter?”
“You know—an adventure, a quest, an all-important journey, to find oneself and to find the meaning of the world, and set injustices right and seek the answers to elusive, barely veiled mysteries!”
“You make it sound like we’re in some kind of adventuring story.”
Anthony sneezed abruptly, making Tommie jump.
“Ah, sorry about that,” Anthony said as Tommie calmed himself down.
“That’s Wemtic’s place,” he said.
Anthony looked at the house. The garden was overgrown, pushing up against the small stone wall that was broken in places. The tiles on the roof had fallen down and different parts of the house showed scorch marks.
It looked uninhabitable.
“He tried repairing it in the beginning but then guards would undo his work when passing by. Turned into something of a game for them as they were bored on patrol,” Tommie said.
He pushed the gate that was hanging off its hinges. The stone on either side showed signs of being broken and repaired so many times that there was nothing to repair anymore because it had been worn away completely.
Tommie knocked on the door and waited but there was nothing. “Wemtic, it’s Tommie, Todd’s boy!”
Still, there was nothing.
Tommie opened the door. “The guards might have been around again.” He entered the house.
“Wemtic, are you there? It’s Tommie!” Tommie kept calling out as they entered the house. Only silence met them.
Anthony looked into the kitchen. A small fire was going and on the wall, there was a painting. It had been defaced repeatedly.
Anthony ground his teeth together and clenched his fist. Wemtic had painstakingly cleaned the painting again and again. His own features were lost, but his smiling wife had her arm linked into his and their daughter looked like a bouncing bundle of energy as she sat on her mother and father’s knee.
Among the destruction, their smudged portrait stood out.
Anthony went over to the painting, looking at them. A heavy feeling fell over him.
“Step away from them.” A cold voice that had long since stopped caring came from behind Anthony.
“Wemtic!” Tommie looked at the hunched gnome, who was leaning on a simple wooden cane.
“I didn’t think you’d fall this far, Tommie—betraying your own kind.” Wemtic held out a device in his hand. “One more step and I’ll take you and this house down with me!” Wemtic warned, shaking the device.
What have you been through? Anthony wasn’t scared of the explosives. Although others would see the angry anarchist who was willing to do anything, Anthony saw a man in incredible pain, pain that hadn’t been allowed to heal, that had been turned into anger.
“Mister Wemtic, I am sorry for your loss,” Anthony said.
“I don’t need your backhanded platitudes, human. It was your kind that raised up a human emperor. Only destruction can come of that!”
I thought that they might have had it as a kingdom, but calling himself emperor.... Emperors are war-wagers. People who call upon the entire human race to work together to take over the world. It seems that people never do learn.
“Do you mind if Tommie and I sit?” Anthony asked. Tommie was rooted to the ground, looking at the device in Wemtic’s hand.
Wemtic seemed at a loss of what to say.
“Thank you.” Anthony took out a seat and sat down, waving for Tommie to join him. Tommie shakily followed suit, sitting down.
“Now, we know that you blew up the Brilliant Tower of Dark Clouds. The explosive device in your hand kind of gave away that part. What I want to ask is, why?” Anthony leaned forward, resting one arm on the table and holding the chin of his helmet with the other.
“Why! Because of humans!” The man screwed up his face to spit but didn’t in the end.
“What humans?” Anthony pressed more.
“The emperor, the lords and their guards! The army, the system!”
“What is wrong with the system?”
“You think that the humans are so great, think that they’re the race that will rule over Dena! What do you know, you short-lived familiar leeches! You wouldn’t even be a real race if not for you enslaving familiars to do your bidding and carry out your tasks! What did we gnomes do to deserve becoming third-rate citizens in our own cities and towns? We worked with all of the races in the great war. We then built cities and towns with other races, accepted others in, worked and lived with others. But instead of being thankful, what happened? Me and the other gnomes bowed our heads to the humans. They came in with their fake promises and taxes. We knew they were fake.” Wemtic snarled and shook his head. “We thought that they would get better, that you could be more than speciest assholes who persecute others due to them being shorter, taller, or having different features. No, you took, took more than we had; then, in greed and callousness, the lord sold our food, the food we had worked for all summer. He sold it for a profit in the winter to a human city. Starved us, left us to rot. When the gnomes ruled, there were tight winters and bad summers, but our people didn’t starve. We made sure that there was enough food for us before we gave food to our neighbors. Even in your own people’s time of need, you sold them food!” He slammed his free hand down on the table and shook his head, looking up at Anthony with fire in his eyes. “Did Tommie tell you about my invention? My masterpiece?”
“Your winter growing garden.”
“Yes, my winter growing garden,” Wemtic repeated in a sickly sweet voice. “I was going to give the plans to the city for free, work with them to build winter growing gardens around Laisa and in the towns and cities to the north so people were able to have food in the winter and not worry. My wife knew that I was nearly done; she went with my daughter to go and get some food, something to celebrate the completion of a new project. She went to the market. People will say it was a riot, but I know the truth. The lord knew there wasn’t enough food; he needed to make an example to maintain order and stop the black market for food. So he had his people enter the market, had them start acting out, getting people riled up. He had guards waiting, who charged in.
“Under the cover of the riot, they killed off the people who were selling food who weren’t under the lord’s command. What was a few gnomes in a human’s plan?” Wemtic laughed, but tears fell down his broken face.
He sat down, looking at the floor, revisiting that day. “I found their b
roken bodies—the pain in their faces. Tholbe covered little Smubipp with her body, trying to save her. She didn’t let go of the food. She got enough ingredients together for a little pastry, not even a big one, but just one, single, small pastry.” His eyes were filled with, looking at the ceiling, the loss fresh and terrible. His eyes looked for something before they fell on the painting. His body trembled as those tears fell on his chest.
“A single pastry,” he said, the words like his own mantra.
They didn’t have enough for any more, but they wanted to give him that one small pastry as a congratulations.
Wemtic’s face twisted into something horrible and cold as he looked at Anthony with a sneer on his face and tears running down his cheeks.
“Then they waited till I was at the funeral to ransack my house. Never found the plans—nor will they. For their greed, I vowed I would never give them my plans, that I would stand up for gnomes. I learned from the humans’ tricks, from their greed and backstabbing. They built the water treatment center in the middle of the slums, where all of us lesser races live. They didn’t ask anyone, evicting those in the way and building it without consulting others. Us gnomes knew it was badly built, knew that it was prone to overflowing, that the people around it would get sick. Humans didn’t listen; it wasn’t in their areas anyway. I talked to the goblins, made sure that no one was around, snuck in and blew it up. The plant was shut down. The Brilliant Tower of Dark Clouds in the human area now had everyone’s waste. It overflowed. It only took a few of them getting sick for the humans to pay attention. The goblins have been looked down on by others all the time. The humans started to attack them, started to show their nasty side again. One might not know it, but there are more goblins in Laisa than any other race.
“The goblins are tribal: one tribe is affected, they’re all affected.” Wemtic’s tone changed, to one of mocking. “The humans love order, they love justice and doing the right thing, rah-rah. They like their order, and their justice. The humans put down the gnomes to show their power, to become the masters, but now they’ve poked the goblins. I lost my Tholbe and Smubipp. The humans, with their sneaky ways, will try something with the goblins. Though they won’t let it go. An attack against one is an attack against all. They’re willing to go to war with others if they’re attacked without reason. With the humans and the goblins fighting, the gnomes will be the only remaining group. After it all, they can stand up again, can take control over the city and once again make Laisa a place for all races. Even in the end, the humans will benefit.”
“What about you?” Anthony asked.
“Me? Who cares about Wemtic? There will always be a loss and I’m tired.” Wemtic looked at the device in his hand, admiring it.
“If what you say is right, then I should be calling you Wemtic the human,” Anthony said suddenly and sat back in his chair.
“You!” Wemtic’s hand holding onto the device shook in anger.
“You blew up the Brilliant Tower of Dark Clouds. Yes, you took precautions, but do you think that the humans living around the other plant are somehow less than goblins and gnomes?”
“They—”
“Are they the ones who killed your wife and child? Are they the ones who organized the riot? What proof do you have?”
“Proof! You want proof!” Wemtic stood and moved to a floorboard. He hit it, exposing explosives and papers.
He took them out and tossed them on the table in front of Anthony and Tommie. “There’s your proof, your information!”
Anthony picked up a piece of paper and started reading it, before putting it to the side and then moving on to the next piece.
He read the pages slowly and carefully. They were reports and orders from different people. Pieced together, they made a compelling case on the city lord planning the riot.
“Population control and as a lesson to the lower races,” Anthony said aloud as he read a letter from the lord to the count who ruled over the area.
“Seems like it was their plan from the beginning, and also used it to make a hefty profit.” Anthony’s voice was calm and calculating, but there was a restlessness in the air around him, a hidden tension in his words.
“Wasn’t your plan to create bloodshed to give rise to the gnomes’ strength? Yes, you might be dead, a martyr of some kind, but you would have been the cause of so many others’ deaths. What did the goblins do to you to have their loved ones killed, to be embroiled into a war they didn’t have to fight? You think that this is just a lone town?”
“I—” Wemtic tried to speak, only to be cut off.
“It is under the dominion of the human emperor. If there is a fight, then the city lord will ask for help and the army will come and put down the goblins.”
“You—”
“This lord is malicious and greedy. He could kill the goblins, turn them into slaves. You’re giving him the blade he needs to cut off the goblins and the gnomes and you’re patting yourself on the back.”
“It’s—”
“What would your wife think? Would she celebrate this gnome, this gnome who chose to attack others out of hatred, instead of the man who made the winter growing house out of care for his fellow citizen! Destruction brings more destruction, hatred creates hatred, death creates more death. It is only when we have destroyed too much, grown tired of our hatred and killed too many that we turn back in regret. But those actions—those actions cannot be undone!”
Anthony paused but Wemtic didn’t have anything to say. He looked as though he had deflated.
“You stand here—some people’s health has turned for the worse; they might even die. The goblin and human tensions are rising, but they haven’t yet taken actions that couldn’t be undone,” Anthony said.
“What do you know? What do you care?” Wemtic said.
“What do I know? I know that your wife and your daughter wouldn’t want others to die for them, that they wouldn’t want you to die here with hatred in your heart. Why can’t I care? I might be human but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize, that I don’t feel my heart twisting when I hear your story, when I see what they have done to your home.”
“You know nothing.” Wemtic looked to Anthony’s helmet.
“I know nothing: I know nothing of loss, I know nothing of gnomes, I know nothing of life. I haven’t stood beside elves, gnomes, humans, goblins, and beast men. I haven’t put them to rest, said their final rites. Seen their families and have to give them the message that their loved ones aren’t coming back. I haven’t seen that pain in their eyes, that twisting grief that would make the world’s delicacies taste nothing more than gruel and oats. That I haven’t felt it as well, that I haven’t felt responsible for that loss. That I have given orders, or seen my actions lead to the death of others, that I didn’t regret those orders and wished I could have changed them, but they were dead already? Are you talking about those things I don’t know?” Anthony’s voice had become harsher, a sense of desolation and hot loss coming through his words.
“That I lost the woman I loved, that I walk this land, not knowing if she is alive or dead? That I don’t want to see another family be torn apart by other’s machinations, that those just living their lives have to suffer as you have. I am breathing and I want to ask you, Wemtic, when did you stop? When did death become the only solution, only violence? Instead of creating change, peaceful change, you push forward with destruction. You can be saved still, but not for much longer. The city lord, his guards and the count—they will be punished. I will vow that to you—I vow that on my sword, I vow it on my bones and on my familiars.”
Red, black, brown, white, and gold markings showed through his armor, sealing his oath.
“A familiar oath—five familiars?” Wemtic whispered.
Tommie looked at Anthony with new eyes.
“If you know what a familiar oath is, you know what it signifies. Once bound to a familiar, no human can lie to their familiar. An oath with a familiar binds a person completely.�
�
“How?” Wemtic grit his teeth, as if angry for asking the word.
“Now you’re asking the right questions. We have a trial, a Guardian trial. We try the city lord, the guards, and you.”
“You just want to arrest me, hide me away, kill me! You don’t mean it!”
“And you don’t want to kill people. You don’t even want to kill us. You could have just used that device but you talked to us; you’ve answered my questions. You’ve told me your convictions. You aren’t a bad man, just an angry and misguided one,” Anthony said.
Power seeped into the room, gathering around Anthony in a mist, covering the table he was sitting at and the chair he was sitting on.
The mist extended, creating a high backed chair made of shifting mists while the table in front of him turned into a desk. Looking at him, one would feel as though they were looking upward.
Six more chairs appeared beside Anthony.
Mist-formed people sat at their own tables: a gnome, a hobgoblin, a beast man, an elf, an elemental, and a dwarf.
Their features weren’t distinct but each of them wore a shield on their breast. It was purple with purple details. An eye rested in its center, the iris milky as if blind.
A box appeared around Wemtic.
“I’ll use it!” he yelled, holding the device.
The mist swarmed around his hand and the device turned into dust.
A hammer appeared in Anthony’s hand and he struck it on the table. “Wemtic stands accused of terrorism in an attempt to incite anarchy,” Anthony said. “Wemtic, how do you plead?”
“Guilty.” Wemtic then looked at himself, confused as to where the words came from.
“The Guardian’s Judgement was created by all races and made with the powers of all. No one can lie when under a Guardian’s Judgement.”
“This gnome forgot how to build and turned to destruction,” the gnome in the chair said irritably.
Anthony looked at him as the gnome tugged on his beard, irritated but remaining silent.
Tommie looked at it all with wide eyes.
“Since he has pled guilty to the charges, what will his sentence be?” Anthony asked.
Death Knight Box Set Page 7
