All around Jack, colors and sensations burst to life only to fade into nothingness. They were then reborn from the ashes of the past a moment later. What little he could put to words was breaking his brain.
Colossal storm clouds rippled with slow-moving lightning, and their radiant colors set his retinas on fire. Purple shifted to ultraviolet, which then transformed into a tapestry of leaves. The leaves crumbled away to reveal a singular goose, proud and fierce. The lightning cracked, and the goose swallowed it whole. The goose exploded, and there was a city of starlight, blinding with wisdom.
I’m… I’m losing my mind.
This cycle repeated itself, increasing in speed, becoming a blur of images too difficult to distinguish. Akin to peeling back your hand upon grazing a searing hot stove, Jack pulled his senses inward as best he could. Unfortunately, he had little experience withdrawing his very awareness away from reality itself.
The continuing onslaught of this existential maelstrom sanded away the edges of his sanity. Madness dug its way into his eyes and thoughts, seeking purchase in his mind…
His soul.
With a gasp, he became aware, no longer able to keep out the flood.
Water flowered into metal trees, which burned away to reveal fairies wielding machine guns. The bullets were horses, who galloped through the nothingness, leaving galaxies and oranges in their wake.
It was too much.
Too much…
Too…
Jack’s mind was already swollen with the fresh pain of his injuries. He had no room to host these new and overwhelming impressions.
He was dead.
That much, he was sure of. Nowhere else except the Great Beyond could stomach so many contradictory and overlapping concepts. If this were heaven, he would need to seriously reconsider his Christian leanings.
If this was hell…
Well, it made a certain kind of sense.
Throughout it all, even with his mind beleaguered by bizarre concepts, he couldn’t ignore an acute sense of motion. It wasn’t obvious. Wind didn’t ruffle through his hair. There was no blurring of his surroundings. No great sense of momentum in the barrel of his gut.
But he was moving. Creatures, objects, truth, and chaos were passing by him. Though, in fairness, it could be that they were the ones moving, and he was once again a rock in a river. More dazzling images and impressions swept over him with the delicacy of a tsunami.
Overhead, a pirate ship blazed like a comet through this storm of everything and nothing.
Was that a… dragon?
Before he could be sure, the white chains redoubled their grip on his chest, neck, and wrists, yanking him back with enough force to arch his back. Jack flew through the storm of images and realities, glimpsing the edges of a coalescing black portal behind him.
He flew through it, his inertia slowing only after the portal began to shut. Space reasserted itself. The white chains slunk back into the portal right before its aperture closed. He was left on a sticky floor, breathless and reeling.
When his thoughts and vision stopped their nauseating break dance in his mind, his surroundings came into sharp relief.
Jack’s brow furrowed. There was no way…
No way this was real. There had to be some confusion in his post-mortem destination. This was neither heaven nor hell. This was… a stage?
Or some sort of prop set?
Jack rose to his feet. He was just a yard or two away from the stage, with what should’ve been the audience seating behind him. He spun slowly, taking in the new space from his vantage at its center.
The room was a perfect cube… and it had seen better days. The ceiling was textured in that popcorn-style popular in the American suburbs back in the 70s. Mold and moisture stains blotted the corners of the vaulted roof. The walls appeared to be made of cheap cardboard. Fake cityscape skylines were printed on the walls and were peeling in more than a handful of spots. Odd lengths of duct tape were attempting to cover the damage, but were failing horribly.
Jack peered at a peculiarity at the back of the stage. It was a little difficult to observe, as a lone wooden throne-like chair obstructed his view. But behind the lone standing chair was a wheel that dominated the far wall. Not some modern creation of stainless steel and rubber, but the type of wheel Jack attributed to old wagons. It was, with the exception of perhaps the throne, the strangest object in the room.
It was ancient.
Each spoke of the wheel was etched with runic carvings that glowed a menacing red, like freshly agitated coals. The entire wheel had to be over thirty feet in diameter. It was wrought entirely out of black iron, but that wasn’t the strangest thing about it. Instead, it was the labeled wedges inside its frame that reminded him of a neatly sliced pie. Each piece was different in color, ranging from pale yellow to increasingly gold in a clockwise direction.
There were two thinner wedges at the very top of the wheel, where the color gradient began. One was made out of a radiant gold that glimmered with a pearlescent sheen, while the other was blacker than the iron in which it was framed.
Carved in every wedge were letters his brain took a moment to recognize. They unnerved him. He was certain they weren’t English, but he could read them nonetheless.
Why… Why could he read esoteric runes like he was born to the task?
“...Master of one,” he read aloud. It was one of the wedges that was between the palest yellow option and the brightest gold.
He read a few more, the letters backlit by some unseen white light. “Strength of a star, Weapon-caller, silver-tongued, beast tamer,” he listed off, moving toward the most opulent option. When he reached it, he paused. It was directly next to the pitch-black wedge.
“What’s ‘soul fusion’?” Jack asked, reading the dark slice first in passing curiosity.
But when he read the vibrant gold wedge and the white words carved into it, his mouth went dry.
“Respawn point,” he read aloud, his voice barely louder than a whisper as realization sank in.
Jack’s pulse quickened. He couldn’t explain it. He was skeptical, sure, but he had just been transported across a Rainbow Road of impossibility. If this were real…
He had the sudden urge to walk over and spin the wheel. In fact, he was about to do just that when he noticed the odd nature of the chair nearby. His gaze settled on the wooden structure. It appeared ancient and had the unshakeable sense of malice leaking from it, freezing Jack’s steps. A part of him knew that was ridiculous. Furniture can’t hold grudges.
But this one most certainly did.
Some fundamental part of his human DNA was screaming at him to avoid that chair. It was with the same fervent need as if he were alone in a mausoleum and discovered a dark staircase that led underground. It was primal, and Jack had long since learned to trust his survival instincts, however irrational they might be.
Feeling a good deal more wary about the upholstered items in the room, he studied the chair.
It was a throne. There was no denying that.
Carvings dominated the grooved backrest and armrests, though unlike the runes above, he couldn’t make out what they were of. More prominent, however, were twenty impossibly straight lines gouged into the backrest, interrupting what might’ve been artistic detailing set across the weathered material.
Beneath the grain of the wood, something moved. It danced just at the edges of his awareness, but something was moving inside the wood. It glowed beneath the striated grains and bulged where it slithered just out of view. As he watched, a second, then a third, joined the silent vigil of the wormlike patterns traveling the entirety of the ancient wood.
Jack swallowed. It was dry.
In a daze, he slowly turned around to take in more of his new and alien environment.
The floor was in the worst condition of anything in the room. It was made of cracked linoleum and was nauseatingly green. It might’ve once been a hue that bordered on neon, but those vibrant days were a distant memory to this pukeish color. Anchored at regular intervals were massive cameras that had to be ancient, by technology standards. He was no expert, but it looked like they had actual film receptacles protruding from the top of their lenses. None of them were plugged in.
Opposite the stage were two sets of stairs, complete with yet more of the disgusting linoleum. Each one bisected a section of studio seating with over a dozen rows. If he had to guess, it could comfortably seat about 200 guests.
Except there wasn’t any audience.
Stranger still, their would-be chairs were all clumped into a discordant pile off to one side, a few strips of indeterminate cloth draped over them in some twisted facsimile of a child’s fort. Jack’s eyes were fixed on one detail, however.
Between the fort’s entrance, across where he now stood, and all the way to a high-backed chair in the center of the stage, there was a single streak of dark red. His eyes followed its jagged line as it slowly crawled across the floor. It was darker than maroon, and when Jack moved his feet to step off the suspicious streak, his boots stuck to it with a nauseating squelch.
His… boots?
He hadn’t been wearing any boots while he exercised at the Riviero’s gym…
Jack peered down at his body and did not recognize what he saw.
His wounds were gone. His face felt fine. None of his ribs were broken. He was perfectly healthy. The revelation briefly distracted him, and he peered down to take in the changes. He was in new clothes. Strange clothes. He wore a tunic, paired with brown trousers and surprisingly comfortable boots that came up to his calves.
The tunic’s material was akin to linen but felt more durable. Like his surroundings, it took a moment for him to notice the details behind the details. The tunic was fraying around the sleeves and hems. His trousers were stained. His boots already had nicks in the worn leather.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
That wasn’t what captured his attention.
His fat was gone. There wasn’t too much to miss, but he knew where his progress had been, and this was several years down the long road he’d chosen toward a healthier life. And that was assuming he’d be excruciatingly consistent throughout those long years.
In place of his old body, toned muscles were striated with veins and corded tendons he had only known intellectually that he possessed before this moment. He flexed his right hand. He felt strong. Nothing supernatural, but certainly a marked improvement from just a few minutes ago. Jack couldn’t be sure, but something about his composure made him feel younger.
Had it really just been a few moments since Tony was trying to kill him?
Jack felt a headache coming on.
He studied his hands. Amid a complicated brew of emotions, he noticed his scars remained. He could see the jagged line from when he’d punched the corner of a cement wall in high school, and the thick calluses along his knuckles. He lifted his left bicep up to the light. That scar was still there, too.
“Oh, great. Another one,” a voice from behind him spoke.
He whirled and raised his fists defensively, even while he dropped into a lower and wider stance.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Number Twenty-One,” the voice continued, the words slightly slurred yet laced with judgment.
“Who are you?” Jack demanded. “Why did you call me that?”
When Jack noticed the speaker, he took a single step back.
The man was on the throne, though he had not been there a moment before, nor did Jack hear him approach. And given the state of the ancient wood, it should’ve at least creaked a bit from his lounging position. A small part of his brain waited in grotesque anticipation for one of the worms inside the chair to burst out and attack him, but none did. In fact, the newcomer didn’t seem to notice them at all.
Jack noticed the figure’s clothes first. His feet were covered with narrow leather shoes laced with white strings. He was in a pinstripe suit stained and fraying in several areas, and the right sleeve of his jacket was hanging on by a literal thread.
It was his face that tore through any of Jack’s skepticism that he was in anything but a nightmare. Malignant veins of darkest night crept up the man’s ghostly pale complexion. He had no beard, and cracks and fissures extended just beyond the tips of the veins, as if he were a porcelain doll that had been smashed only to be hastily reconstructed. Each eye was an oily sea of shadows. His pupils were like tiny white islands as they bled light from their centers.
He wasn’t old. In fact, his body—though heavily malnourished—looked to be around Jack’s own age. But those eyes, and the way they followed Jack, hinted at a weariness that only eons could bequeath.
“I am Steward. That is all you need to know,” the creature finally answered.
He lifted a broken glass bottle to his lips, uncaring as its serrated edge tore into his lips as he drank. Dark liquid merged paths with his blood as it crept down his neck. The sickly-sweet smelling liquor’s aroma dominated the cubed-shaped room.
“Okay, Steward,” Jack replied, doing his best to keep his voice level with his fists. “What the hell do you want with me?”
Steward scoffed, wiping his broken lips with a dirty sleeve. “What? No panicky demands about what happened? No, ‘Who are you?’ ‘Can I go home?’ or ‘What is this place?’”
Jack cursed to himself. He had been meaning to ask some of those questions next. Like a sparring match, he’d been thoroughly blocked, so he decided to pivot and try another approach.
“Why ‘Steward? Assuming that word means the same to you as it does to me, a steward is someone who looks after something or someone, right? What are you looking after?” Jack asked.
The creature stared at Jack for a long, long moment. Jack hesitated to breathe.
Bottle sloshing dangerously in his grip, he pointed a finger at Jack’s chest. “You’re… You’re a clever one. It’s been, what, ten Banishers since I got a clever one? Unfortunate, really. It would’ve been better if you weren’t.”
Steward sighed.
“Fiiiine, you want to know so badly? I’m Steward of a wonderful little place called Aethros. It is me. I am it. I’m also supposed to tell you how to save it and yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.” He twisted suddenly in the throne and leaned forward precariously. “But none of that is going to help you now, is it?”
“You’d be surprised how many times unhelpful details come in handy,” Jack answered out of habit. “So, if there’s stuff you need to tell me, like how to get back to my life, that’d be wonderful.”
Jack didn’t see Steward move. He was in the chair, then he wasn’t. In the very same breath, no more than a nanosecond later, Steward was less than an inch away. Curled up as he had been, Jack hadn’t realized just how tall and spindly the creature was. But now, with his bent-buttoned silk shirt so close he could count the threads, Jack knew he had to tread very carefully.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Steward asked, his words more slurred than before. “You’d think that knowledge would… hiccup …save you idiots. But noooo, every DAMN TIME you lot die before you get to the end.”
Steward snatched up some of Jack’s dusty brown hair. He examined it like one might a dead rat by the tail. Jack’s instincts screamed at him to move, to flee, to claw his way out of this man’s grip. He was about to do just that when Steward spoke, his voice eerily tender.
“What did I do to deserve this? They send me children. None of you are ever ready. None of you actually help. Why do you all hate me so much?”
Jack watched as Steward’s eyes shifted from their distant gaze and hardened into something filled with self-pity and flint.
“So no, Jack Thatcher of Earth, I’m not going to answer more of your accursed questions. Best we get you to spin the wheel and send you off to your death, like a good little Banisher.”
With the finality of an executioner’s axe, Jack’s fate was sealed. To his left, the wheel suddenly burst with light and motion. It creaked ominously as it built momentum, spinning faster and faster until he could barely discern the gradient of color, much less the words etched in white across each wedge.
“Gods, I hate this part,” Steward muttered, taking another long pull from his drink. “Please… Please let it be a… hiccup … good one. Just once, give me a good one.”
The wheel flared brighter, though Jack couldn’t tell if it was in response to Steward’s words or just a part of whatever unholy light show was going on. Gripping his shoulder with enough strength to break skin, Steward led Jack past the worm-infested chair and in front of the swirling mass of iron.
“Why a TV set?” Jack had to ask, seeing in his periphery as the cameras quietly followed their movement. The only sound they made was the soft shuffle of film slicing through its various gears and rotors. “And what’s with the fort back there? Is… Is that where you sleep? Please, just tell me what’s going on!”
If he knew what was actually happening to him, then he could solve it. But without the context, he felt he was flailing in the dark.
Steward ignored him.
“Fine, but is there a way for me to get back to my home? What’s going to happen to my sister if I’m gone? She can’t–” Jack tried again, but the creature cut him off by tightening his grip on the mechanic’s shoulder.
“Hush now. Your planet is doomed anyway. We actually did you a favor by pulling you early,” Steward said impatiently. “Void soil and swallow me… If you manage to save us, I’ll even let you stay on Aethros instead of returning to that backwater planet you call home. Better a demigod here than a god of a dead world there, right?”
“...Doomed?” Jack repeated, the question obvious in his tone. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s going to happen to Earth? To my sister?”
Steward either didn’t hear him or just didn’t care.
Jack’s fists clenched tighter by his side, and he twisted out of Steward’s vice grip. It hurt, but he managed to get free. Steward didn’t resist. His beady pupils remained fixated on the wheel.
It took Jack far too long to realize the wheel was slowing down. Turning, he watched as a glowing white arrow flickered to life directly above the rotating device.
“Here goes another one,” Steward muttered. Glancing over his shoulder, Jack thought he saw something like fear pass over the strange entity’s expression.
The iron-wrought wheel slowed further, creaking and groaning under the hidden friction, ending its cyclical journey. The white letters of each option fuzzed back into focus, and Jack watched with baited breath as the pale yellow options whizzed past, slowing further and further toward that remarkable final option.
“Come on, come on,” Jack whispered, watching the words ‘Respawn Point’ inch toward the white arrow. He heard Steward take up his chant.
Respawn Point.
Respawn Point.
Respawn Point.
“Come on. Come on!” Jack didn’t know when the words had shifted from an encouragement to a prayer, but he prayed them with religious fervor. The prayer took on new words.
God, come on. Give me this one break. I’ll do anything. Just give me this one break. If my guess is right and this is all actually happening, I need something that will help me get back to Jane. Come on. COME ON!
The wheel ground to a stop, and the world went silent.
“Well, I guess Twenty-One won’t be here long. Maybe Twenty-Two will have better luck,” Steward said after a long pause.
He walked over and, with a single fingernail, etched a new line into the front of the throne.
“So long, Jack Thatcher. Take my advice. Die quickly. It’ll be better than staying stuck with that shit-deal of a skill. Trust me. Down there, my Champions aren’t… Well… you’ll see soon enough.”
Before Jack could so much as move, the two words beneath the arrow started to flow up the dark iron. They floated in the air, crackling with exorbitant amounts of energy before getting absorbed into the floating indicator. Once inside, the arrow above the wheel started to glow brighter and brighter.
Then, like a comet, the word-filled arrow shot from the top of the wheel and directly into Jack’s chest. Pain exploded across his chest, and it felt like a hot coal was scratching lines across his skin. The light of the arrow burrowed deeper and deeper, until Jack could feel something inside his heart and lungs contort and then burst to life. He doubled over, gasping for air that wouldn’t come.
In a voice that was a good deal more formal than before, Steward addressed him with old words. They were uttered to a rhythm that couldn’t be anything other than an incantation or long-memorized verse. His tongue was laced with power, and it made each syllable sound as if many voices spoke in chorus with his own.
“From one branch to another, you came,
Rebirthed now in light and flame.
A single boon by chance given to thee,
Go now, my Banisher, to save me.
Seven tasks in the voidlands are set.
Complete all, and the door will open as payment of debt.
Destroy the darkness. Kill its king,
Or Aethros and all you love will fall under Death’s merciless wing.”
The words were a bell. They were cold and hollow, yet they resonated into the very marrow of Jack’s bones. Blinking away the worst of the pain, he fought to remember each word, sensing their importance.
Jack felt chains wrap around his chest, forearms, and legs, dragging his feet across the linoleum. He yelled and resisted, pulling against them with all his might. He needed answers! He needed to know what was actually going on! He needed to know what was going to happen to Earth. He needed to know…
Steward met his gaze from where he stood with shoulders slumped in front of the decrepit throne. It was the utter hopelessness in his eyes that finally convinced Jack Thatcher of two horrible truths:
- This was not a hoax.
- He was being dragged to his death.
“I’m going to see you again!” Jack roared. It was more of a threat than a promise. “I’m going to open that door, and I’m coming back here. Do you hear me?!”
No, no, no, NO! Jack thought desperately, but even his newly discovered strength was woefully insufficient against the force pulling him ever backward.
NO!
Steward merely shook his head and looked away, settling back down on his lonesome chair.
“I’M GETTING BAC–”
The chains tugged one final time, and Jack was swept off his feet and into another portal, marking the end of his life as he knew it.
The Steward of Aethros sighed and took another swig of his bottle. His dead eyes observed the black portal swallow number Twenty-One. This was all so useless. Why couldn’t the bastard just come out and kill him so that they could all be done with this farce? Why the games?
He couldn’t control the Wheel of Light any more than he could wield the power gifted to that puny mortal. Yet a tiny part of him held out hope that the bastard who did would finally—finally—throw him a bone. Just once, it would be nice to have a Banisher come through his halls who was competent and lucky. They were always either one or the other.
Twenty-One seemed proficient enough. He didn’t blabber or beg like so many others. In fact, his cool pragmatism was a little refreshing, all things considered.
But it was all so damned useless!
Steward swirled the foul liquid that kept the worst of the necrosis at bay. He brushed a finger along the lines of poison that had spread up his face. He didn’t have long now. Maybe he should’ve told the mortal. Maybe the knowledge that the door he hoped for wouldn’t— Couldn’t—open if he died before the seven tasks were completed might’ve given him the proper motivation. Maybe Twenty-One could’ve managed to fix what Twenty broke.
No.
It would’ve been pointless.
Number Twenty-One was going to die. He knew it with the same certainty that he knew there was no worldly cure for his infection. And though he would never admit it to anyone—much less a mortal such as Twenty-One—everything was riding on his mission. That old desperation clawed up his throat, and he felt another sliver of his power get eaten up by the toxins within. Another thin crack carved itself across his face, and he inched a little closer to death’s patient embrace.
“Prove me wrong, Twenty-One. Maybe you can succeed where all others before you have failed.”
Steward leaned back and waited to die.