Chapter 18: All Dead, All Dead

Chapter 18 - All Dead, All Dead

The man with the disc arrived at a foggy kingdom. He was going around in circles, but then again, aren’t we all?

He had made it through the wilderness, clutching onto the disc like it were a wee young newborn. He softly caressed it from his back as he passed by the entrance gate, so scratched with tally marks into its carved wooden posts. He couldn’t see farther than a penny ahead, so his steps were slow and insecure. He did get to see some people wandering around the streets with his flat, disc-like face, which for once looked about appropriate for the place. The look of sheer distrust and terror on their features and the fact none of them seemed to acknowledge him made him think that something had gone terribly wrong, but hey.

It wasn't like they were all there to begin with.

He stepped on something wet. He wished he could use The Eye on puddles for a moment, and looked down. Blood, alongside what seemed like the upper torso of an agonizing man stuck in a talking position. The man with the disc nearly lost balance of it, and gulped.

He heard a low humming in the distance, and felt a Wrong presence. He could not place it neatly (The man thought of things as stacking discs one on top of the other, moving them from column to column like a pyramid puzzle in order to categorize them. This humming was a bent rod) and it made him furrow his brows. Mostly because it was very energetic.

Oh, when my dearest mother

A voice began singing from somewhere up ahead within the fog. The man with the disc could pinpoint a rough picture of where it came from, and that scared him the most.

Asked me what I’d like to be

He began to hear screams that were in true, agonizing pain to the beat of stabbings. That was his cue to begin running, but he found it hard to move around.

When I’ll be older! When I’ll be better!

Finally, he found it within himself to begin to turn the heavy lumber that made up the disc around, chorused by the screams of many. ‘They aren’t alive, they aren’t alive’ He kept on muttering to himself.

I ripped her head off and said:

As the man ran with disc in tow, the singing guy ran at him on all fours, knife in his mouth and a feral grin bloodbathed. You’d think this is the part where the man would simply use the eye and leave, but not only was it not the right time, but he also just… found himself busy:

He’ll be a butcher! Butcher!

Yes, the man joined in on the singing as he desperately ran from the singing guy. He was blindly moving forward, going deaf from all the singing, and aside from the sheer fright he was pretty damn frustrated.

Cutting meat so ten-derly!

He could barely see a pair of guards just up ahead, standing firmly in front of a gate. Were they his salvation? They stood firmly, rifles at the ready, and… did absolutely nothing. They didn’t even seem to breathe.

Yes! I’ll be a butcher! Butcher!

Time to stack discs once again. He moved “going through the gates” to Novel Ideas, but did he really want to brave the wilderness again in hopes his pursuer wasn’t even better than him? Besides, he was carrying a large stone disc. It was ridiculous that the chase had gone on for this long, if it wasn’t for him being ridiculously yoked.

Killing you so beau-tifully!

He held aloft the mental disc of “fighting him hand-to-hand”, but he held some doubt. Even with all the muscles in the world, knife was a bad matchup. And that guy clearly had some sort of entrancing spell. He threw that disc aside, also tossing his whole body and physical disc into a nearby alleyway. The singing guy kept on running past, not noticing him leaving so casually.

He heard the singing grow thinner and distant, and fiddled with inserting the disc of “Staying” on column “Right The Hell There”. The fog hadn’t reached the alleyway yet, and he could actually see beyond his nose there, so it was actually pleasant somewhat. Just a couple trashcans, what seemed like a vagrant sitting by a wall muttering to himself, and a couple corpses. He could deal with that. He sat down beside the homeless man and began to wait, tapping a drum solo on the floor.

The vagrant didn’t seem to like that. He turned to him, white robes that seemed to be pretty filled out, an emaciated face with chubby cheeks that didn’t seem to match the rest of it.

“Uh…” The man with the disc didn’t really like being touched. “Do you mind?” Forgive him, he lost his social skills a while ago, especially considering he wasn’t considerate of the rest of the world.

“Can you help me?” The vagrant asked, a chirping accompanying the rest of his voice.

“Uh, I don’t think so.” The man with the disc tried to clear distance as subtly as possible. It was really, really hard when you’re taking care of a giant stone disc.

“I REALLY need your help…” The vagrant got closer, his buzzing breath hitching and getting stuck on the mental rods the man with the disc was already calculating. He, speaking of which, had stacked a disc of disease on top of a “Bug” rod. ‘He caught a little bug’, he thought, ‘everyone in this town is sick and losing their minds.’

“Listen, I need to leave, so…”

“I’m dying here! That madman is gonna have my hide for this!” His cheeks began to bulge out, stingers pointing out of it as the sounds only got louder and louder. The man with the disc considered leaving, but thought better of it. It was risky everywhere, it seemed like. He missed nuking people in the middle of nowhere.

Cheeks exploded in a fury of rage and noise, a swarm that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. Exposed flesh and blood leaked out of the vagrant’s face as millions of stab wounds seemed to have done a number on him, with plenty of eggs stacked neatly on him. What seemed like an entire hive took hold of the man with the disc and wouldn’t let go. He ran off in a panic with the disc in tow, not caring about any noise or running into the singing spell guy.

The vagrant was laying helplessly on the ground, clutching his face close to himself, when he pushed himself off the ground and tried in vain to peel his face back. ‘It’ll grow back,’ he thought with a mental sigh and a note, as he walked in the opposite direction of the man with the disc. Hands to the sides, barely any passerbys that were close by reacted to his current state. ‘Of course they can’t,’ he thought to himself, ‘they’re all dead.’

He made it to a monk praying on the public plaza, shaved head round like an egg, alongside Ricky tapping his foot. The trees stood proud, the only thing to be proud of here, and the flowers were all in bloom amidst the fog. No one seemed to mind the murderer, or much less join in prayer.

“When is HE going to get here?” Ricky asked gruffly to no one in particular. “Seriously, I thought we’d have much less problems with punctuality…”

“I cannot take care of Heath all the time.” The monk said without stopping his prayer. “I have duties that do not involve the grinding of exp.”

The “vagrant” felt a little offended that they hadn’t even noticed him yet, when he was easily the most noticeable out of all of them. Also, he hoped Heath had died somewhere on a gluetrap himself.

“HIIIIIII RICKY~!” Oh God, speak of the devil. Their only warning was his gaunt figure trailing as he dashed through them to make out with Ricky as a way of saying “hello”. As he finished, he smiled at the man he had surprised. “Sorry for being so late, I got completely lost in the fog.” He told him and him alone. This was Heath, the man who had suggested they split away from Clyde’s faction of Outworlders to form their own small group.

“A bit too forward, methinks.” High Magus Thraina came following right in his heels, skin burned off.

“Of course I move forward!” Heath said, turning around to face Thraina. “Why, do you want me to move backwards?”

“I think this little place is the most backwards thing of them all.” Thraina said, turning her nose up.

“I don’t know about you, but I quite enjoy the blatant murder and debauchery!”

The monk moved a bead through his hand, looking inquisitively at Heath. They exchanged glances for a second, making Thraina take out her rod as if to defend him.

“I could have teleported you, you know.”

“It’s on a need-to-use basis.” Heath stated, waggling his finger. “We don’t want the target to find out about any more spells that are necessary. We only used so many because he’s got the Disc of Armon.”

The vagrant coughed. Heath turned to him with what seemed like quite genuine cheerfulness. It creeped him out. Neither of the other two seemed to regard him with the same feeling. Now that he was used to.

“Yes, Flea?”

“Anything to make up for using my spell?” Flea crossed his arms. “Unlike you guys, mine has a cost.”

“Oh, don’t be a little bitch about it.” Ricky told him before Heath could even open his mouth. Said man opened his eyes wide as he looked at his boyfriend/fling/what the hell are they even? and tried in vain to motion for him to shush. “We all do our part, some more than others.” God, Flea hated his stupid smirk.

“Babe, babe, let me talk to him talk, ok?” Heath told Ricky, rubbing his shoulder. He then regarded Flea as if he was nothing more than an ant he had stepped on. “Mmmyes?”

“I want to get the hell out of dodge before that guy nukes this place with his disc.” Flea demanded. He thought it was quite fair, having so much skin in the game. Frankly, he didn’t know why the man hadn’t done so already. Heath just… closed his eyes and clasped his hands together as if pondering.

“You did get one of your invisible bugs on him, yes?” Heath asked. It was a shame that Ricky hadn’t been able to kill that man, but he did manage to drive him into Flea’s location.

“Uh-huh.” Flea said, feeling where that bee was. “He’s at Hyrugh Avenue.”

“Oh, that’s just perfect!” Heath twirled around on one heel, laughing. “That disc is ours! Now not even… her will be able to stand up to us!”

Ricky snorted through one nostril at the thin man’s behavior. Ruffling his also quite thin hairs, he got on eye level with him.

“I’ll go with you and Eggs Benedict to cover you both.” He said, pointing Heath towards the monk who was already standing up from his prayer.

“Are you sureee?” Heath furrowed his brows, tilting his forehead slightly towards Ricky’s as he drew out each word. “I mean, it won’t get any easier.”

“I know that, silly.” Ricky drew circles in Heath’s sunken cheek with his right thumb. “Believe me, I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t believe in your goal.”

Heath blushed, covering his cheeks and facing away. “Oh, I don’t deserve you…”

“I think you’re a great catch!” Thraina said, reaching out to him.

“SHUT UP!” Heath spat at her. “You’re both just lovebombing me!”

Flea walked away in disgust. He could practically see the strings he was pulling on her. He walked towards the nearest gate out of the town, bent on making sure he’d blow this popsicle stand. Heath sighed, then pointed at the sky.

“Beam us up, Scotty!”

“My name’s Eggs.”

***

The man with the disc finally thought he was safe. His legs were shaky, bent, and he was sick as hell from all the fog getting into his nose. His shoes were wet from stepping into blood pools, and he coulda sworn he had climbed over a few cadavers. He took a faint breath, trembling as he dropped the disc with a THUD!

He looked down and traced the edges of the stone disc. It would soon be time. Maybe, just maybe it would be better to stack a disc about leaving the place. He moved his fingers to the surface of the ground nonchalantly, feeling it out as he thought of how to find a way out. His eyes widened. Was the blood drawn in the shape… of a summoning circle?

“Is that a disc on your back or are you happy to see me?”

The man turned around in suspense. There was Heath, hands in his hips, Eggs Benedict with his hands clasped together, and High Magus Thraina staring silently. The man was completely taken aback by being acknowledged as the owner of the disc.

“Just kidding, just kidding!” Heath simply laughed his concern off, slapping him on the back way too forcefully for someone so skinny (not that his deltoids felt it). He then stared at the man’s feet instead of his eyes, as if deliberately avoiding his glare. “I know you don’t play around with the Disc of Armon.”

“Armon?” The man with the disc raised an eyebrow.

“Ohhh?” Heath hummed, his head perking to a side. “So you don’t know? That’ll make this easier.”

“And what YOU don’t know, sir Heath,” Thraina started, “could fill my entire library.”

“Oh, you shut up!” Heath bonked her on the head, ripping it off her now-revealed burnt stump. She walked off towards it and nonchalantly placed it back over her shoulders, without anybody in the street reacting.

The man lifted the disc over his shoulders. He looked back and forth from the thin man to the monk, who was praying in the middle of the summoning circle. He supposed he had to have teleported within the circles. They had to be magicians. And that strange, silent woman was probably even more dead than the others, if that was even possible. Priority number one was stalling for time.

“What do you know about my disc, anyway?”

“Oh, nothing much.” Heath put his hands behind his back and got too close to him, a grin far-too-wide. Although his eyes were raised, he did not exactly look him in the eyes “Other than the fact I can use it to take over the world, of course.”

“Why would you want a dead world?” All of the man’s inner discs were going haywire. This guy wanted his disc. He knew about the disc. He probably knew about The Eye, too. He wondered just how much he knew, especially to confront him right now.

“Oh, well, you of all people should know.” Heath’s tone darkened, and he stared him right in the eyes. “When your fate was chosen to carry that disc, you were born dead.” His tone lowered harshly.

Despite the fact that the street had not yet cleared of fog, the man with the disc could feel about a dozen people close in on him. “People” was a misnomer, anyway, because they didn’t smell like it.

“What…? How are they moving?” He asked.

“All kingdoms are built atop corpses, and this one’s no exception!” Heath enthusiastically said. “My Spell is necromancy. It’s built within my bones that I can control others’ bones.” He gave him an enthusiastic nudge. “Pretty cool, right? Anyways, you’re boned.”

Ricky stood behind an alleyway, ready to activate his Spell in case the situation went south. ‘What will I even sing this time… I don’t even know if I can control it other than activating it.’

It happened in the blink of an eye. The man felt the seconds tick into a new hour, and saw a body’s knee move slightly towards him. He lifted the disc over his shoulders with even less effort than his usual and let it escape his grasp as it levitated into the sky. He could only activate The Eye at 12 AM or PM, and luckily he knew exactly when.

The disc cracked and shifted, growing from its inner core into the bloody Eye as pieces of collapsing rock seemed to just vanish into thin air while they fell. Heath’s features cracked into despair as he looked towards Eggs, who teleported away without him. Even if he killed the currently levitating man, it wouldn’t stop The Eye of Armon, so he was pretty much screwed.

Then, he was thrown to the ground and shielded by someone. His look of confusion was only matched by his lack of air.

And now, the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I'll say it clear

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full

I travelled each and every highway

And more, much more than this

I did it myyyyyy-

***

“Your majesty?”

Whenever he traveled to this kingdom as of late, Duke Dukington felt as if people were late themselves. They stirred and watched him curiously, as if they had never seen a noble before, and the smell (oh, the smell was simply unbearable). Also, wasn’t his brother, the king, dead from what he heard?

“Yesss?” The king drew out the words slowly, tapping his furrowed forehead as he sat on the Core Throne. He played idly with every little bit of wrinkle that sat atop his weary brows. “What is it you neeeed?”

“I’ve come to aid you from an Outworlder attack, but…” Duke Dukington stopped, his finger in the air going to his lip. He turned to his guard, who was firmly grasping his lance looking at Thraina. She stood besides the Core Throne, supposedly famously boneless left arm now intact and holding up a magic rod. “It seems everything is in order?”

“Yesss.” King Dorin laughed, a dry, hoarse laugh. Thraina seemed to do so in turn, both of them slapping their knees in a madness as if puppeted by invisible strings. “Everything’s hunky-dory!”

Duke Dukington proceeded to stumble through his words. Was this a Spell of sorts? Could he even do anything about it? Why did he even bother coming here? His dukedom of Emera was small and feeble, they only survived by trading with Outworlders and giving them “Quests”, they had no business going up against them. He knew he wasn’t a man who could get ambitious in such a world where beasts roamed, and as such he didn’t make many allies or enemies. He was content to make his fielddom stay unnoticed.

“Although…” He managed to muster up for himself. “I did notice that there’s massive amounts of ash where one of your kingdom’s towns should be…”

The laughter ceased immediately, at the exact same time. They both stared at him, making him put his arms up and his guard shield him with his lance. It looked rather like a pair of hyenas about to close in on red-bills.

“…it’s nothing, really.” The king told him simply. “I simply am renovating the place. Leave. Now.”

“Is it not too drastic-?”

“I SAID! Leave.”

Duke Dukington and company marched off, the man looking at his brother nervously over his shoulder before the heavy doors closed behind him. There, hidden behind the left door, was Heath. He marched up to the immobile king.

“Get on your knees and bark like a dog.” He ordered the king, who obeyed numbly. Heath looked at his hand. He had lost sight of the disc, that man, and he had for sure lost Ricky. But, he had protected his bones, and he was grateful for that. He could regenerate completely as long as his bones were intact.

That duke had to be dealt with. The less attention from other kingdoms this early on, the better, he thought as he sat on the Core Throne and reclined his feet on Dorin’s back. He might have been left by the Outworlders he recruited, but he still had this kingdom’s living and unliving army. He would conquer.