The Once King Read online

“Exactly,” James said. “I’ve already seen how there’s a lot going on in this world that we don’t know. Remember what the Bedrock Kings said about the Sun’s betrayal? They claim the Once King tried to warn them because he was a good king, but everything I’ve ever heard or read about the Sun says it is a being of boundless mercy and goodness. The priests certainly seem to think so. And while the Sun wouldn’t be the first god to have a complicated mythology, all the peoples of this world who worship the Sun see it as a wholesome and benevolent being. I find it very odd that such a seemingly universally beloved divinity would be capable of betrayal.”

  “There are many contradictions,” Richard agreed.

  “They’re everywhere,” James said, baring his teeth in frustration. “It’s everywhere!”

  “It what?” Ar’Bati asked.

  “Bad history,” James said, rising to his feet. “We’re on the edge of something big. I can feel it. The Once King’s constantly talking about saving people through death, but other than general nihilistic comments on the pointlessness of existence, he’s never actually said what specifically he wants to save us from. There’s no way the Once King would be going through all this trouble and putting himself in so much danger to make a philosophical point. There’s something missing, some big piece of the puzzle that we don’t know yet. We can’t fix this problem without knowing what started it, but if it’s not in the game lore or the actual history, then the only person we can ask is the Once King himself. He’s the crux of all of this.”

  Fangs in the Grass set his bowl down and stood to clap James on the shoulder. “It is clear you are convinced,” he said. “I am not yet, but I have learned to trust in your wisdom. If you say this is the only way, I believe you.”

  James blinked at him in shock. “Really?”

  Ar’Bati nodded, and James had to blink again hard to hold back the sudden tears. He’d been a screw-up for so long that he didn’t know if he was ever going to be used to people just…trusting him. Believing in him. He still didn’t know if he deserved it, but he was absolutely determined not to let his brother’s faith down.

  “Thank you,” he said, reaching up to squeeze Fangs’s hand.

  “Are you going tonight, then?” Richard asked in his flat, casual way.

  “Yes,” James said, reaching down to grab his Eclipsed Steel Staff. “The assault is tomorrow morning, and there’s no stopping it. If we’re going to talk to the Once King, it has to be tonight.”

  “I wish you luck, then,” Richard said, standing up as well. “I’d love to go with you—the Once King knows more about magic than any being in this world that’s not actually a god—but I’m the Roughnecks’ Sorcerer Officer, and I’m pretty sure I’d be missed. I’ll stay here and delay things to buy you as much time as possible. And if the Once King does agree to stop fighting, please tell him I’m eager to talk with him.”

  “I will,” James promised. “Thank you.”

  The Sorcerer nodded and left, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his staff as he walked away through the circles of the fires. When he was gone, James turned to Ar’Bati. “Can you pack up our stuff and meet me on the Dead Mountain side of camp? I’ve got one more thing I need to take care of before we go.”

  “Certainly,” Fangs said. “But surely it would be better to make haste? You said yourself this is the most important mission, perhaps in the entire world. What is it you need to do that’s worth delaying that?”

  James took a shaky breath. “I gotta tell Tina where I’m going.”

  ***

  James really didn’t want to do this.

  He was standing a few yards from the command tent Tina had ended up taking over, going back and forth with himself about what was best. If he snuck out under cover of night, he’d save himself a lot of time and avoid a potentially disastrous confrontation. He hadn’t forgotten what had happened the last time he’d told Tina his plans. He and Fangs had ended up under NekoBaby’s paw, and he didn’t have time to deal with that again. On the other hand, sneaking out and kicking up huge amounts of trouble Tina might have to save him from later wasn’t being a good brother. The two of them had made huge progress since Bastion, and James didn’t want to jeopardize that by running off without telling her. He also didn’t want to go back to being the sort of person who asked for forgiveness rather than permission. That was just another name for being irresponsible, and James was done running from his problems.

  Not that that made them easier to deal with.

  He was still going back and forth when he realized how much time he was wasting. All around him, the camp was filled with the nervous murmurs of people who knew this might be their last night alive. This whole army could be marching off to die tomorrow. He might be able to stop that, and here he was wasting precious time being afraid of his baby sister.

  Thoroughly ashamed, James steeled his spine and marched up to her tent. The guards didn’t even issue a challenge. They just waved him through, letting James walk right up to the lowered tent flap.

  “Tina?” James called through the thick canvas. “It’s me. I need to talk to you.”

  For a moment, there was only silence, then a muffled groan rose from inside. “Do you know what time it is? I actually need sleep now that I’m fleshy, you know.”

  “I know,” James said, voice shaking. “But this is important.”

  “It’s always important,” she grumbled, but the rustling blankets told him she was getting up. “Come on in.”

  James pushed into the tent to find his sister sitting on her cot in full armor, which was a surprise. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been in a tub, scrubbing dried blood off her skin while Zen asked her math questions to make sure she didn’t have a concussion. But while her frizzy brown hair was still damp and her eyes were bleary, she looked ready for combat at a moment’s notice, which was a pretty wise way to be considering everything that had happened to her that day.

  “All right, I’m awake,” she said as James moved her shield aside to make himself a place to sit. “Now tell me what’s so important.”

  “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to lay it out,” James said as he sank down to the ground beside her. “I’m going to the Dead Mountain to talk to the Once King. Tonight.”

  His sister’s eyes widened, and then she closed them, reaching up to rub her temples. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Why would you want to do that?”

  James immediately launched into the explanation he’d rehearsed on the way over. Before he’d gotten through two sentences, though, Tina held up her hand.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, J, but I just realized I don’t actually want to hear it. I’m sure you’ve got a whole list of great reasons for doing this, but if you tell me, we’re going to argue, because at the end of the day, we both know that if you go into the DMF alone there’s a good chance you’re gonna die and be made undead and then I’m gonna have to kill you and I don’t want to do that.”

  “I know,” James said, trying not to sound as upset as he felt. “I knew from the beginning that this might be a one-way trip, but I think it’s worth the risk. If it makes you feel better, though, I promise I’ll return to you alive or not at all.”

  “That’s even worse!” Tina cried, her angry glare changing into desperation, which was much, much worse. “Damn it, James, I just got you back! Why do you have to run off and get killed? I know the world is at stake, but we’ve already got a plan. We go in, we kick the Once King’s butt, make him send home whoever wants to go home, and the ones who stay stomp out the ghostfire. Easy peasy, done and done. We’ve got this, so can you please just back off and let me handle things for once?”

  “No,” James said. “Because I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. There’s so much that we don’t know, things that might change the entire situation! I can’t sit back and let everyone march into a situation that might be much, much worse than we think when there’s a chance to not do that. Going to the Once King
myself is the only way I can get the answers I’m looking for. The moment we show up with an army, the fight is on. But if I go to him alone, I won’t be a threat, which means he might actually talk to me. That’s the best thing I can do for us. The best I can do for you.”

  “I don’t need you to do anything for me!” Tina said angrily. “I’m the tank! I protect you, not the other way around. All you have to do is worry about yourself instead of everyone else. How is that so hard to understand?”

  “Because I already did that, and I’ve regretted it every day since!” James yelled. “I won’t make that mistake again!”

  “Whoa,” Tina said, jerking back in surprise at his explosion. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “We’re not talking about the Once King anymore, are we?”

  James took a deep breath. He hadn’t meant for things to go this direction. Now that they had, though, he found it very fitting. He’d always meant to tell her this someday, and what better time was there than his possibly last night alive?

  “Do you remember the summer I ran home from college?”

  “How could I not?” Tina said, her voice so resentful it hurt. “It was the worst summer of my life.”

  “Mine, too,” he admitted, making her do a double take.

  “Oh,” she said quietly, her expression confused, as if she’d never thought of it that way before. “All right,” she said, scooting forward. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  He knew she was, and that was what made this so hard. “Something happened,” he said, forcing the words out. “At school.”

  “I figured.”

  She didn’t say it in a mean way, but the words still made him flinch. “I knew I’d been slacking,” he said defensively. “Playing too much FFO, letting my grades slide. I was working extra hard on my finals to try to save the semester. You know, get my act together. But then…”

  He trailed off, unable to continue. He didn’t know why. The words were right there on his tongue, but he’d kept this secret for so long now, pulling it out felt like removing a rib. But if anyone deserved to know what had happened, it was Tina. Of everyone he’d hurt—those who were still alive to feel it, anyway—his sister had suffered the most for his actions. He couldn’t risk dying without telling her why.

  “It happened during the last week of finals,” he said, his voice so thin she had to lean in to hear it. “I was up late studying when I got a call from my friend Grayson. He was upset and wanted to talk. I told him I couldn’t, that I was studying. He…he started crying, begging me to come over. I knew something was off, I could hear it in his voice, but I’d put off studying for so long and had so much cramming left to do, so I…”

  He fell silent again. Tina didn’t say anything either. She just sat perfectly still, waiting for him to finish.

  “I brushed him off and hung up,” James choked out at last. “They found him in the river the next morning. He’d thrown himself off the bridge.” He looked down, shoulders hunching in a sob. “I didn’t even pass my test.”

  There was a soft clink as Tina removed her armored glove. Then her small, pale hand appeared on his, squeezing him tight.

  “The cops told me later that I was the last person he’d called,” James whispered, reaching up to rub the wet fur around his eyes. “All he’d wanted was to talk. I could have done that. I could have saved him, but I was too busy thinking of myself.”

  He couldn’t say more. His throat simply wouldn’t work. Even now, years later in another world, he remembered that morning with perfect clarity: the police knocking on his door, how annoyed he’d been that they were making him late, and then the pictures. The reality of what he’d done going off like a bomb. Later, the school counselors had told him over and over that Grayson’s death wasn’t his fault, but they hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen how annoyed he was when he’d hung up, the way he’d rolled his eyes at Grayson’s “drama.” They didn’t know how selfish he was, but James did.

  “It was my fault,” he whispered, turning his hand over to grab Tina’s tight.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “It was,” he said fiercely, head snapping up to look at her at last. “I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t care. I might not have physically pushed him off that bridge, but I couldn’t be bothered to extend my hand when Grayson begged for it. I don’t see how that’s any different.”

  “James,” Tina sighed, but he held up his hand.

  “I’ve hated everything about myself since that morning,” he went on, desperate to have it all out. “I couldn’t handle college after that. I tried anyway, but I flopped and screwed you over in the process. Everything I did, I failed. The only reason I didn’t kill myself too was because I’d already seen how much that would hurt everyone around me, so I ran instead. Ran from you, ran from college, ran from all my other friends. I ran and hid in FFO because that was the only place where I could be someone who wasn’t me.” He dropped his head with a sigh. “I’m sorry your brother is such a piece of shit.”

  The tent was silent when he finished. Then Tina’s armor clinked again as she rose up on her knees to wrap her arms around him. “I love you, James,” she whispered, hugging him so gently he didn’t know how she managed it in all that plate. “Thanks for telling me.”

  The soft words hit him like a wave. It didn’t seem real that she was acting like this. He’d been so sure she’d be disgusted, that she’d look down on him even more, but Tina did none of that. She just held him tight, petting his head with her hands. It felt so nice—both the petting and the relief of finally having it all out in the open—that he slumped into her, his whole body relaxing in a way he hadn’t in years. A minute later, he became aware of a faint vibration running through his bones. It got louder as he listened, and then, to his shock, Tina began to snicker.

  “Oh my god, dude,” she said, choking on her laughter. “Jubatus purr!”

  “I guess we do,” he said, mortified. “Sorry.”

  “No, no, I’m sorry,” she said, desperately trying to get a hold of herself. “I don’t mean to laugh, it’s just super funny. I wonder if Neko knows.”

  “We can sorta meow, growl, and roar too,” James admitted, allowing himself to grin at the ridiculousness of it all. “I bet if someone put a box down, I’d have an irresistible urge to sit in it.”

  They both lost it after that. Tina laughed so hard she fell over. James went down beside her, clutching his sides as years of tension and fear flowed out of his body. When it was finally over, Tina pushed up on an elbow to grin down at him.

  “Feel better?”

  “I do, yeah,” James said, drying his face with his cloak.

  “Good,” she said, and then she punched him in the arm. Hard.

  “Ow!” James cried, jerking away from the unexpected violence. “What was that for?”

  “For being mean to James,” she said, not appreciating the irony or the contradiction. “You’re not a piece of shit. I couldn’t go five minutes in Windy Lake without someone telling me about how my brother saved the town. Seriously, Rends would not shut up about your selfless heroics, and Gregory told me three times about all the stuff you did to save us in Bastion. Sure, you messed up in the past. So did I. But in the here and now, you’re a hero seventeen times over, so you are not allowed to be mean to yourself. I’d clobber someone if I heard them saying the shit about you that you said to yourself. Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

  “You sound like Ar’Bati,” James grumbled, rubbing his arm sourly.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes Angry Cat gets it right,” Tina said, reaching down to yank him up off the floor. “So we cool now?”

  James nodded meekly, wondering how she’d managed to turn this around on him. “We’re cool. Thanks, T.”

  Tina nodded and sat back down on her bedroll, satisfied. “Okay, so you’re going into the DMF tonight to talk to the Once King,” she said, reminding James that he hadn’t actually come here for a giant confessional. “What do you need f
rom me?”

  “Uh, permission?” James said nervously.

  “Granted,” Tina replied. “Thanks for asking. Anything else?”

  “That’s about it,” he said. “Fangs and I are going to seek an audience to—”

  “Nope, nope,” Tina said, putting up her hands. “Don’t want to hear, remember? If you tell me, I’m going to freak out, so let’s just leave it at you’ve got an idea, and I’m going to trust you to carry it out without turning into a zombie. Deal?”

  “Deal,” James said.

  “Great,” she said, looking relieved. “And if you get stuck, just hide somewhere and wait for us. I’ll find you even if I have to turn over every stone on that damn mountain.”

  “Will do,” James said, and then he smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You can thank me by not dying,” she snapped. “No undeath allowed, either. I’m not above trapping you in some kind of zombie-comedy-movie situation, I’m warning you.”

  James laughed at the idea, but it rang a bit hollow since undeath was a real threat here. There wasn’t much else to say after that, and he was sure Ar’Bati was waiting impatiently for him, so James leaned down to hug her again. “Good-bye, Tina,” he said. “I’ll see you in the fortress.”

  “Bye, James,” she replied, hugging him back. “See you soon.”

  James winked at her and ducked out of the tent. The camp was dark and quiet when he emerged, the fires banked for the night, though he still didn’t think anyone was sleeping. Thankfully, his jubatus eyes worked as well in the Deadlands as they had in the Grasslands. He made it through the whole camp without tripping over a single rope. He spotted Ar’Bati waiting exactly where he’d told him to, standing under a copse of dead trees with two packs slung over his shoulders and his sword on his back, its soft green light illuminating his face like a ghost.

  “How did it go?” he whispered when James got close.

  “Surprisingly well,” James whispered back, reaching up to catch the pack Fangs tossed at him. “We’re not fleeing in the night, if that’s what you’re wondering.”