Path of the Slayer B3 37. Guards & Gods

“Why are we here, Jeb?” asked Dinky, the half-gob yawning while half asleep.

He hated the morning shift. The darn lieutenant insisted every guard, regardless of their natural sleeping patterns, had to work every shift when needed. Morning shift was Dinky’s enemy.

Still, the little Rank 2 guard trudged up to his spot, dragging his short spear through the recently trimmed yard. The rising sun peeked over the rolling green and idyllic land of his home. Warm orange light glowed across the distant wall and up along the sky ceiling as the shadows shrank and the darkness receded.

Roosters made their morning cries from surrounding farms. Nighttime creatures fled away to their hidden places, though Dinky did his best to monitor the nearest shadowy spots.

There were still little trails of morning mist hanging about, and the stubborn gloom could hold lurking monsters.

Rank 1 rats causing a fuss had been reported. The local adventurers still hadn’t found the source of the infestation.

Having an unchecked Challenge Portal lying about made Dinky nervous. Thankfully, despite his complaints about the moronic lieutenant, being a tower guard was a cushy life.

He didn’t have to risk his life as often clearing out monsters or busting criminals at the major cities like adventurers do. That also meant it was extremely boring.

So, Dinky threw out random words at his taller partner, Jeb, a classic farming human who wanted to break away from forking hay and milking cows. Dinky didn’t blame him. The half-gob wanted to get away from digging deeper into the dirt and rock at the mines.

“Nothing ever comes out of the tower, Jeb,” Dinky said. “Haven’t seen anyone come down before.”

The half-gob propped his little spear on his leather pauldron and looked up. The tower was as wide as multiple large farms put together. It was tall enough to reach the sky ceiling.

Its facade was brown, old, and filled with crumbling cracks, but with no actual holes that revealed what was inside.

The doors were thick slabs of rock covered in god script – the type of runes that only the gods could work. When boredom had struck its hardest, Dinky and some others had fooled around with throwing their Aether at the god script on the doors.

 Nothing lit up. Nothing shifted. Nothing divine and magical appeared.

The heavy stone doors covered in intricate script remained barred to them, and yet here they were, on guard duty. There were two of them always stationed near the doors. Four others waited at the small barracks building behind a crop of old trees that had been around longer than the current guard staff and the guard staff from prior.

“I wonder what’s up there,” Dinky said, tapping the butt of his staff in the old dirt in front of the doorway. “I hear talk that there are more actual gods up there. More than just the ones we worship. Wouldn’t that be a hoot and a half? More gods than just Baldwin and his office? Maybe they even have hot goblin goddesses. I wouldn’t mind seeing one myself.”

“Blasphemy,” Jeb muttered, his mouth filled, his jaw working up and down. The brown-haired, simple farmer’s son turned aside and spat a thick, dark wad on the ground of the so-called sacred tower. “They ain’t nothing more than Baldwin and his office. Don’t speak blasphemy, or you’ll drop back from Rank 2 to Rank 0.”

“Bah, you know that’s not true!” Dinky scoffed.

“Tell that to the Rank 0 heretics,” Jeb growled. “We’re pretty sure a new crop of them will come up this season. They must be devil worshipers for being Rank 0. If we don’t run them out of the province, they might spread more of their Rank 0 funk and get to our children.”

“How did we go from talking about the tower to your hatred for Rank 0s?” Dinky asked.

“Rank 0s who don’t know what’s good for them are scum of the earth. If my child becomes like that, I’ll do what’s proper.” Jeb turned and spat another thick, dark wad onto the ground.

Dinky shook his head. He had nothing against Rank 0 heretics, but at least they were convenient. Better them than actual hatred between different folks. But that was beside Dinky’s actual concerns.

“Seriously, what’s up at the top of the tower?” Dinky asked. “Why do we have to just stand here and guard it every minute of every day? What do we do if the doors open?”

Jeb growled, his lips black, his dark eyes filled with faithful anger. As Dinky shrunk into himself, expecting to hear a mouthful of crazed zealotry, the stone doorways flashed with a bright white light.

Jeb’s anger snuffed out. The farmer’s son dropped his spear, tripped over his own Rank 2 feet, and fell hard on his rump.

As the god script flashed brighter, Jeb scrambled away with a pale face, like he’d seen the devil.

Dinky, for some reason, stayed planted on his feet, with his short spear pointed at the opening doors. His long green ears fell lower and lower as the doors opened wider and wider. 

Through that alien gateway, Dinky saw an abyss yawning before him, as if wanting to swallow him whole.

He felt them before he saw them. Otherworldly beings. The sort he couldn’t exactly describe at first other than knowing they were far above him in prominence and power.

Dinky’s legs gave out, placing him on hands and knees. He nearly lowered his gaze, but at the last second, he forced his eyes up so he could behold them.

They came in different shapes and sizes. They wore mystical armor that gleamed so brightly that Dinky’s eyes hurt to look upon such powerful equipment.

When their attention fell upon him, even if briefly, their looks were horrifying, as if he was a little mouse under the gaze of grand predators. At any moment, they could reach out and snuff his life instantly.

He tried to count them, but their overlapping power dizzied him. He couldn’t be sure if there were a hundred of them or two dozen of them.

When they spoke to each other, he couldn’t understand them, nor did he want to. Their words hurt his ears, and try as he might, he felt too weak and pitiful to even prompt the System for its translation.

Consequently, the noise they produced was both the most beautiful and the most horrifying noise he could ever hear.

Then there was one who approached like death incarnate. Big. Heavily armored. Dark. Demonic. A horror among horrors.

No doubt, he was the devil, the enemy of High God Baldwin. Dinky knew it true from one glance at the red metal hand that ended in fine, cruel claws.

By sheer luck or divine happenstance, the little Rank 2 half-gob turned away before the inevitable happened. Otherwise, his mind would’ve split in two from the brush of sheer madness.

Realizing that he was doomed, Dinky discovered a sudden swell of bravery in his heart. He might as well go down fighting evil gods and sacrifice everything for the sake of a glorious ending.

Wouldn’t that be swell for a miner’s son?

He gathered his spear in his hands and stood up. Empowering himself with Rank 2 Vitality, Rank 2 Aether, Dinky used his two special powers: Speed Dash and Power Thrust.

A little yellow light appeared on the tip of his spear as he rushed at the king of fiends. Then in a single blink, the spear was gone, and Dinky found himself on his back.

Blinking the sudden daze out of his eyes, he saw a taller, heavily armored, and scarily beautiful half-gob goddess holding him down with her boot on his chest. The view was glorious and painful, because her entire existence bore down on him like a mountain on top of an ant. And he could hardly breathe.

At the very least, she spoke in a language that was easier for him to understand. “No attack. Relax. We pass through. Good-good?”

“What are? What are?” Dinky chittered hoarsely in return, compelled to speak even when it hurt.

The half-gob goddess smiled, making Dinky feel unworthy to receive such from a divine beauty. “Pathwalkers.”

Then the half-gob goddess glanced warmly at the fiendish devil with the crimson metal claw and demonic presence. “He leads. He good-good. Bow-bow to Elder Arden the Nomad.”

Once the half-gob goddess removed her boot from his chest, Dinky realized he had a few broken ribs that made moving painful. She hadn’t even meant to break him so easily, had she?

Survival instincts kicked in. Dinky understood his place and quickly rotated around from his back to his belly, his face in the dirt. The throbbing pain aggravating his torso went ignored.

“How may this lowly Dinky serve you, oh great gods and goddesses?”

A part of Dinky hoped to appeal to the beautiful half-gob goddess. He didn’t care how casually she’d broken him. A man could only live once!

Then, he quickly banished his sinful hopes, deeply afraid that she’d know. Then she’d toss him to the wilder and fiendish gods – like the one with eight legs, or the one with a serpent’s tail, or the massive half-minotaur woman whose every step shook the world!

The one called Elder Arden the Nomad spoke down upon him with a deep and resounding voice that shook Dinky’s spirit. Regardless of his fear, Dinky did his best to listen, hoping that the monstrous leader would request something reasonable.

Or Dinky might look for a way to take his own life. Better that than suffering a fate worse than death if the fiend requested something too horrid.

“Got a cozy enough barn around here? I wouldn’t mind shacking up on some hay and getting back to the basics. Too much fancy living can make you soft.”