Only One Option

For a while after Avii’s question, only the sound of heavy boots thudding to solid ground and brittle grass filled the world. Even the subtle breeze that came from the ocean to the far east held its breath awaiting Ostave’s reply. As for the orc, he struggled to find the words. The look of regret that clung to his face shifted to anxiety in the final moments before he spoke.

“W-We don’t really know,” The knight answered, glancing from Vivat to Avii. “We just know that they’re made of an alloy familiar to neither our smiths nor our alchemists.”

Remaining silent, Avii thought of the brief moment that he made contact with the golem. It’s cold stare. The metal fingers that reached for him. He knew well of the alloy they spoke of. The one found deep in the heart of the mountain. A metal worth a thousand souls per clump of ore. So pure and strong that merely a pebble could strengthen a cart’s worth of iron when applied to the crucible. The very metal that Maldainian foragemasters used to craft the MULE.

But, unless they specifically asked, Avii would not divulge this fact. After all, it was his turn to hold secrets close and theirs to divulge. So, instead, he would continue to listen. Allowing them to answer his questions now that he held their lives in his hands.

“Go on.” Avii continued. “Tell me. If they slaughter Koviks, then why do they pursue us?"

“Because it appears to be their purpose. Reports from Estarian spies revealed that some two years ago the Koviks managed to get one of your Maldainian mineshafts open. Days later, an incident marked the beginning of the golem’s march from the mountain. Since then, they have been pouring outward in every direction, slaughtering everything they encounter.”

“Everything?”

Turning his head away from Ostave, Avii stared forward, recalling the way the creature had looked at him as he lay speared to the ground. How it had extended its hand yet didn’t call for flames. The way it failed to finish him as it had done to Aindes and countless Koviks. Again, he thought of Sebastian’s words. Thought of the hounds he spoke of and wondered what other knowledge the sinister devil had taken with him to the grave.

“You’re sure of that?” Avii continued a moment later, directing his gaze down once more. “That they kill everything they come in contact with…”

“More than sure,” Ostave answered, inspecting Avii’s face closely before adding more to the conversation. “Our scouts have watched entire Kovika Battalions fall to them. Not even wounded were left. And when Estaria Command sent a platoon to make contact and forge an alliance, all present were slaughtered. These golems care not for life, only conquest. The Koviks awakened something within that mine of yours, and now it seeks to destroy us all.”

At this, Ostave hesitated for a moment, his face revealing a hope that Avii would speak. But again, the operator held his tongue, eying the knight expectantly. If Ostave had questions, he would have to ask them of Avii.

“But, that said,” Ostave finally spoke, first clearing his throat before continuing. “I saw the way you looked at the fight along the frontline all those months ago. You don’t know what they are any more than us, do you?”

It suddenly dawned on Avii why Ostave had called him to that hill in the days before they were captured. Why he had been given the spyglass and told to look at the front lines. It was to weigh his knowledge without saying as much. To see if the Maldainian had any clue as to the origin of the constructs. And, without a doubt, to determine if Avii could reason with them.

“No,” Avii replied truthfully. “I’ve never seen them before. But tell me, why not end the war? Why not join forces with Kovika and push them back?”

“Emperor Pirth of Estaria already tried in the first year. The Kovika demons refused to even entertain the idea. Those bloodthirsty savages would rather die than give up claim to that accursed mountain…”

“And if the positions were changed,” Avii asked coldly, looking to Ostave and then over his shoulder to Vivat. “If Estaria owned the mount…what then? Would your emperor have given over a share to Kovika for peace? To end the bloodshed? To stop the conquest?”

At this question, Ostave grew quiet, his eyes looking away from the man. Both he and Avii knew the answer. The whole reason for the bloody war that had raged for over a generation was to control the mountain and the magic it held. Regardless of who controlled it, so long as it was in their hands, they would never give it up. At least, not willingly.

“I thought so.” Avii finally answered Ostave’s silence. “Regardless, we venture North. Back to the frontlines where I will leave you with your people to—”

“No, mule, we must go back. We must return to the mountain, as Marx ordered us. Our mission—”

“Your mission was an abysmal failure, Sire.” Avii snapped, his mind set and not willing to be swayed. “More than that, it was not Marx but Sebastian that sowed that seed in your minds. He wanted us to get near enough to the second Kovika line to be captured. To gain control of me and my armour. This armour. Whatever machination he had—your Lieutenant had—was doomed from the start.”

“Wrong,” Ostave fought back, turning his head to match Avii’s gaze. “Both sides needed you. Needed your armour. Sure, Sebastian may have needed it for control, but what Marx told me…”

At that, Ostave became quiet as the look of regret returned to his gaze. A gaze that never left Avii’s as he fought to find the words.

“What did Marx tell you?” Avii eventually ordered. “Speak.”

“That we needed you. Needed that armour to get deep into the mountain. To stop the invasion. Command believes that only you can do it—”

“Me? How?”

“I don’t know. He never told me. Or maybe they never told him. He just—”

“The answer is no, Knight Ostave.”

“Please, mule—”

And then something shifted in the way that Avii could not have predicted. Resigned to the fact that he was in no place to make demands, Ostave did his best to appear submissive. It was obviously something the orc had learned in the Kovika camp, and just seeing it made Avii’s stomach knot up. The action alone made him feel as though he now held the chains. That he was in charge. The master.

The thought sickened him, churning his gut as though it were a ball of writhing snakes. Simply thinking of being a man who held the lives of slaves in the palm of his hand ached his soul. But it also made him feel good. Feel powerful.

“Avii,” Ostave spoke softly, mentioning the man’s name for the first time as part of his pitiful pleading. “I beg of you, please.”

“Why?” Avii shot back, heat behind his words at the gall of the man using his name. “Why should I help you—my torturers—more than I already have? Why should I not just drop you with your people and leave to elsewhere in the world to live the remainder of my life in peace? You Estarians have done your fair share of pain to me. Why shouldn’t I leave you all to your fates?”

“Because, if you don’t, there won’t be a world to live in much longer. Not for you. Not for my son. Not for anyone.”

Stifling a gasp at the word, Avii swallowed his anger. He had not known that Ostave was a father. Though the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He was a knight on the frontlines. Of course, he would have a child to carry on his name and a wife to hold down the homestead.

With this, Avii’s mind began to wander. He thought of Aindes, and how even though a hundred and thirty was still young by elven standards, he very well may have had his own family waiting for him at home. Ragart, a dwarf of his years, without a doubt had children. In fact, from what Avii knew of dwarves, by his age he likely had a dozen spanning two generations. And then he thought of the others, Pilla and Marx. How little he knew of them, and who they had waiting at home.

Avii wondered how many children were left without parents thanks to the suicide run they had all taken together to the mountain. How many of them would never get to see their mother or father. Their brother or sister. Son or daughter.

“By the estimates of our best tacticians,” Ostave’s voice pulled Avii from his spiralling thoughts back to the reality of their situation. “In one year's time, the golems will breach the Estaria-Kovika frontlines. In three years, they will lay siege to the capital of Estaria and Kovika another year after that. By their predictions, in ten years' time, not a single thing will be left alive in this world. Not you, or me, or any children or beast of burden. All of them slain by a construct that does not eat, nor drink, nor does it desire coin or require rest.”

At this, Ostave reached a hand up and grabbed at the collar of Avii. It was not aggressive or forceful. In fact, his grasp was weak and trembling. The orc had done so merely to stabilize himself as he locked eyes once more with a man he now addressed by name. Someone whom he owed his life to and needed. Someone who held his life and the fate of the world in their hands.

“So, please, Avii, I beg you. Don’t do it for me, or Estaria. Do it for my son. Please. I knew this mission was a death sentence from the beginning. I resigned myself to that fact long ago. But give this father his final wish. Help him fulfill his desire for his son to live in a world without the fear of war on the horizon. Without the fear that one day a golem could be hunting him through the streets. Please. For him. For all the children and the future of this world. It rests on your shoulders. This decision. This moment. Now.”

Avii stared down at Ostave. At the knight’s stern face and the beginnings of tears that soaked the corners of his eyes. It moved the operator to think on Ostave’s words. Though the truth was that it was only one word that he focused on. The fact that the man had a son. That he had a family he could still return home to. And as he thought about this, about the orc and his family, the necklace tugged at his shoulders. It pulled his neck down as the weight of their memory reached for his heart.

Eventually Avii sighed, glancing over his shoulder at the distant golems.

“South, towards the mountain, is impossible,” Avii confessed, nodding towards the approaching clouds of dust. “Those golems march in line, pushing ever forward, making it impossible to pass. There is no way we could make it through them all.”

“This is why we need you,” Vivat spoke out for the first time in the conversation, her voice just as pleading as Ostave's. “Why Marx trusted you. Believed in you. To him, you were always more than your armour, A-Avii. You survived the Koviks. Survived Estarians. You, the last Maldainian, survived at all odds. And, with you, the knowledge of your land that no one else has. You must know some other way past the enemy front.”

With that, Avii grew quiet. His thoughts raced as he tried to imagine the land around him. The eastern half of Maldain was nothing more than foothills that stretched to the sea. To his left, the west, was the accursed forest where their journey began. Filled with creatures that could easily kill them all by sheer numbers alone, it was ill-advised to try and cut through it. And then, as he looked towards the haunted woods, something else crossed his mind.

A shortcut directly to the mountain. A dangerous one with no guarantee of survival. But it was an option. One that they would have no choice but to take. And as he thought it, seeing the familiar skeletal trees that marked its entrance, he wondered if even the golems would dare to enter the forsaken place.

“I have an idea,” He exhaled a nervous breath. “A terrible idea.”

Shifting the weight on his feet, Avii charged towards the woods, and the trees he knew marked the entrance. He listened as both Vivat and Ostave spoke, asking him what he intended to do, but he ignored it because there was another who spoke to him in that moment.

“Avii, what are you doing?” Harbinger insisted repeatedly. “Avii, danger. I can tell you are about to do something reckless.”

But Avii ignored Harbinger, listening as its voice grew ever more concerned with each footstep he took towards his goal. Then, as he passed the treeline, moving through cursed pines and their sharpened branches, the voice in the back of his mind became demanding.

“Avii, stop!” Harbinger ordered. “Stop this, or I will be forced to intervene. You must survive.”

Only Avii continued to drive himself forward. His mind had become made up, and now nothing would stop him from returning to the mountain. Returning to where it all began. And, despite the commands to halt by the voice in his head, he eventually saw it.

Brittle blades of grass and dead trees marked the edge of a small clearing. There, where once had been a meadow surrounding a monument of stone at its center, now rested a graveyard. With bones from various beasts scattered around the space and a hush on the air, it felt to Avii as though the world knew better than to encroach on this twisted space. As though time itself dared not even near the stones at the centre for fear of the witch within. But still, regardless of how the world felt, the cairn at the centre lay exposed with just enough space for a single figure to enter at a time.

And as he approached at full speed, Avii felt a chill race down his spine. There was no doubt that this was the entrance to her lair. One that Avii had lived his entire life being told to avoid.

“Avii, stop!” Harbinger bellowed in the back of his mind as suddenly he felt his will being overtaken. “You must survive. You have a purpose! Do. Not. Enter. The—”

But it was too late. Avii was moving too quickly for Harbinger to wrest control of his limbs. And as he passed through the entrance of the cave, carrying with him his companions, something happened. In an instant, the voice of Harbinger vanished from his mind and the haze that had enveloped his consciousness since that horrible day dispersed.

For the first time in decades, it felt as though he could think clearly. As though he were alone. As though he were free.