The Land of Broken Roads

Running was easier than he expected, with the armor fitting his form so well he may as well have been wearing cloth. It was heavier than anything he was used to, but not enough to slow him down. Especially not with a little mana burning in his legs to speed him forward.

The monstrosity and Socks danced around each other, seeking blood. The pup snapped and snarled and twisted, his huge body a furry blur. His efforts never got him close enough for a good bite, though, because the creature floated like a leaf on the wind. Each step sent it gliding over the ground, landing only where and when it wished.

Dirt’s footsteps thumped heavily in the bloody soil. He ran right for it, dagger ready, and jumped in with a scream when he got close enough. It spun and caught his head in its long, white fingers. It lifted and squeezed while Dirt kicked his feet in the air to wriggle loose. The wood helm groaned beneath its grasp as it tried to burst his skull, but held. He stabbed its forearm over and over, puncturing it about twenty times. He butchered it so well blood spurted into his helmet, giving him a taste of dusty sourness before it evaporated, and it was quickly forced to drop him.

-I can’t touch it with my mind,- said the pup. ­-Try and get it to stay put so I can hit it with a goblin.-

“Got it!” replied Dirt. He and Socks circled it from different sides. First Socks darted in for a bite, then Dirt, then Socks again, keeping it off-balance. Dirt finally saw his chance when it planted its feet to counterstrike at Socks with its tail. He snuck in and stabbed right through its foot, pinning it to the ground.

The monstrosity struggled for only a moment before it spun with his dagger as a pivot and kicked him with its heel, right under the ribs. The blow knocked him five paces before he hit the ground and bounced. The blow hadn’t done any damage, though, and to Dirt it felt like the force had been distributed through his whole body instead of just his side. The armor stayed perfectly rigid, protecting him until he came to a stop.

It ignored the bloody injury in its foot, which was already healing, and evaded as Socks grabbed living goblins one after the other and slammed them down, trying to crush it.

The Duke and his men burst from the goblin army and into the littered field, immediately taking up position to encircle the creature in a wide arc, which they slowly tightened. They did so silently, now that they were so close, with a somberness that evinced their horror. They communicated with subtle waves and nods, understanding each other almost as well as Dirt and Socks did.

Dirt grit his teeth, wondering if they’d do any good at all or just get slaughtered, but to his relief, they handled themselves admirably. Although it was half again their size, towering over them and raining down blows with its fists, they blocked or redirected with practiced skill. It occurred to Dirt that it was about as tall as a man on horseback, and they must have trained for that.

Socks snarled and jumped in at the same time he threw three more goblins. The creature had nowhere to go but into the human lines where it was met with four blades at once. It kicked upward at a man near the Duke, but he braced his sword with his metal gauntlet and drove the blade’s edge into its shin. It bit deep, nearly severing the foot.

The creature stumbled back, walking unevenly on the stump while its foot dragged behind on a thin flap of flesh. Even then, its mind held no emotion, no thoughts that demonstrated real consciousness. Just biological activity and motion, devoid of reason.

Dirt gathered up as much fear and revulsion as he could muster, filling his own mind with it, feeling it so strongly it made him nauseous. Once he was ready, he redirected it all into the monstrosity’s mind. He could see the mental attack work and watched the intrusive emotions swirl inside it, but they vanished as quickly as they appeared, leaving him feeling as empty as what he was seeing. So where did it go? All that fear had to go somewhere.

The armored men stepped forward, keeping their formation steady. It struck down with hammer fists and crushed right through a man’s defense, breaking one arm severely. The armor held the shattered arm in the wrong shape and his agonized scream was ignored by his fellows, who simply stepped around him to press their attack.

Socks picked up another of the inert living goblins and swiped at the creature sideways, first from one direction and then back again. Dirt took the opportunity to retrieve his dagger while the circle of armored men closed tighter and tighter.

Finally, Socks hammered it across the head and shoulders with a goblin just as a soldier gave it a deep slash in the thigh. The force drove it front-first into the ground and Socks immediately grabbed another one and slammed it down from above so hard the goblin’s bones cracked loudly.

For one breath, it lay unmoving. Two breaths. Longer. All the humans looked at each other, eyes wide through the slots on their faceguards. Socks crept up and sniffed it. Dirt would have suspected it was dead as well, but its mind hadn’t winked out. It was still alive as it ever had been.

The enormous deflated eye hanging in the air, forgotten for a short time, drifted overhead, stopping directly over the monstrosity. The eye skin wriggled, flapping loosely, then suddenly tightened. Its shape morphed and fluctuated. The injured gash in the lens lengthened and the colors of the iris and sclera blended together.

After only a few heartbeats, the deflated eye had become a mouth with thin, tight lips. The shape was almost human but not quite, and Dirt decided it was because there was no chin. The lips parted and a stream of clear, reddish liquid poured out onto the unmoving monstrosity below. The liquid emptied and its mouth opened wider, revealing a space full of multicolored lights against a white background. The space inside it was not the void—Dirt could feel that—but it wasn’t just another place, either. Something about it felt off to him, like so much else about the monstrosity.

Socks decided he’d had enough and filled the open mouth with sparks. Dirt hastily created a glowing ember and pressed it into the midst of them. He and Socks surged their mana at the same time and Socks’ flames burst into being with a roar and burned hotter than ever before, fueled by the extra heat from Dirt’s ember and all the mana they both could channel.

Dirt felt the heat scorching lines on his face through the faceguard. Socks whimpered as it singed his whiskers and the fur around his nose and mouth. It worked—the flesh of the mouth burned clear away, into black ash that quickly turned gray. It fell apart and drifted on the air like smoke, leaving behind a hole in the sky that was now full of thick smoke.

The monstrosity pushed itself up and rose to its feet, refitting its twisted limbs with popping sounds. Even its nearly-severed foot slid back into place and re-attached.

Frustration filled Dirt and he stomped forward until he was right in front of the creature. He swung his arm and shouted, “Just go away!” Then for emphasis, he screamed it into the thing’s mind. Over and over, with both mind and voice, growing desperate, “Go away!”

Behind him, Socks stood ready to grab him out of harm’s way at the slightest hint of danger, but it didn’t attack. It didn’t even turn its faceless head in his direction. Above, the hole in the sky trembled and gave a low rumbling sound. It shrank, just a little, and coughed out some of the smoke.

A hole opened in the monstrosity’s head and the entire creature deflated like it’d been hollow the entire time. Its skin collapsed in a heap, turned brittle, and began flaking apart.

Overhead, an eyelid closed over the hole in the sky, the same unnatural white as the creature. Once closed, it gained new features, growing eyelashes and wrinkles. It slowly shrank—no, that wasn’t it. It was withdrawing, revealing more of the face. And a face it was, and old man’s face, wrinkled and weary. More of it appeared, a sharp nose, the other eye, a forehead and short hair, a mouth and clean-shaven chin.

Dirt gasped and nearly fell over when he recognized the face. It was himself, as he used to be. He was gazing up into the sky at his own face, the one he lost, sculpted in flesh of sickly white.

The Duke and his men gave a fearful murmur tight lines shifting. Socks saw what Dirt was thinking and looked up and down at the two of them in confusion.

The giant face’s eyes shot open, showing them to be all black and red. It fixed its gaze on Dirt below, its stare penetrating. Its mind showed flickers of awareness now, beyond just the mere senses, which gave Dirt the impression of some great attention drawing near which had been previously distant.

“Please go away,” he said, his voice soft. Then he said again in his mind, “Please go away.”

The face remained unmoving, its expression blank, and Dirt wondered if maybe it was just going to stay there forever, or follow him around from now on watching everything he did. He looked back at Socks, pleading for an idea. The pup had none.

Dirt’s old man face opened its mouth and spoke, its voice sounding like a grinding moan. “Avitus Numitorius Urbanus,” it said. “Avitus Numitorius Urbanus.”

Was he looking at himself? Did he split off and become multiple things? Was this an echo of what he’d done so long ago? Something else entirely? It was himself up there, his own lost face, speaking his own lost name, and it might have broken his heart if it wasn’t so terrifying. It saw him, little Dirt standing there in his wooden armor, and knew him. It recognized him.

No, it wasn’t himself. It wasn’t a part of him. There was something alien in its mind, something inhuman. Not just natural processes, muscles and sight and so on. Whatever mind drove it was there, lurking and knowing as if from behind a veil.

“You found me,” said Dirt, at a loss.

“Avitus Numitorius Urbanus,” it said again, its groaning voice so great the earth trembled beneath him. But what it meant, or what it understood about him, Dirt couldn’t tell.

The face froze again, losing all animation and staring blankly, its eyes still fixed on him. A crack appeared from chin to forehead, then another and another, and the whole thing shattered like glass. Dirt crouched down instinctively, but no pieces of it hit the ground.

The mind behind it withdrew, its light fading as it departed. The last thing Dirt beheld was a word imbued with magical significance. A word of command that manifested into the world. A sage’s word. “Disperse.”

The goblins snapped out of their collective coma and the field erupted in a wild tumult as they scrambled over each other to flee. The Duke and his startled men seemed relieved to have a more reasonable enemy to fight as they roared in fury and resumed killing as many as possible.

-Did you see that at the end?- asked Socks, standing plainly while he thought.

“Yeah. The word ‘disperse’, you mean?”

-Yes.-

“That’s the thing you’re curious about? Not my old face appearing in the sky and saying my old name?”

-That word was in your language.-

Dirt reconsidered and realized Socks was right. It wasn’t a word of pure thought and magic, like the dryads had taught him to shape wood or call wind. It was a word like a person might say aloud, like a human mind might have in it, but given magical significance. That might have been a more interesting thing to ponder if his mind didn’t keep returning to his own old face, appearing in all his thoughts like a waking nightmare.

Socks leaned down with his tongue out in a licking posture, and Home saw it and got the idea. She withdrew the armor, leaving only a brace around his cracked forearm instead of a staff. The pup licked him furiously, sending him puffs of affection. -It’ll be okay, little Dirt.-

Dirt found himself hard to comfort. That thing had created a new horror right in front of their eyes, fusing living and dead into a murderous abomination. Was that him, somehow? Or was he responsible for it, at least? And the tentacle monster. That frightful thing in the sky that wore his face and knew his name, had it created them all?

It occurred to him that not only had he broken the world, but he might have created or unleashed or allowed in something that was slowly erasing humanity in general, wearing them down bit by bit. Maybe sometimes it used goblins and monsters, and other times, who knew? Bad weather? The guilt grew in him, mixed with the horror still running thick in his blood, and overcame him. His child’s body couldn’t contain it and he wept, hanging his head. His tears mixed with the coating of slaver Socks was giving him.

Socks picked him up with his mind, gently folded him into a fetal position, and held him close against the front of his chest, just under his neck where he could bend his head down to envelop Dirt in fur.

-Whatever happened, you didn’t do it on purpose. Don’t feel bad, little Dirt. Don’t be sad. It was a long time ago.-

“How many humans did I kill, Socks? And how many are still dying because of me? All the humans think they’re about to die out and they’re probably right and it’s my fault.”

-Good thing you came back just in time to save them, then.-

“But I’m just…” thought Dirt, starting to argue. But what stopped him was the honest recognition that he might already be the strongest human alive. If anyone could, he’d have to. And Socks would help, and he was worth an entire kingdom of humans all by himself. Or more. He tried to comfort himself with that thought, cementing it with resolve. “You’re right. I have to figure it out, and then I have to fix it.”

-Good. That’s the right thing to think. It’ll be okay in the end.-

Despite this, Dirt felt only slightly better and it took him a bit longer to get all the tears out. When they were finally drained, Socks put him down and gave him one last lick for good measure. -You’re almost clean again.-

“I guess we’ll have to do something about that. Are those other things still coming from the hills? The big ones?” said Dirt, feigning a total recovery that hadn’t happened yet.

-No, they dispersed too.-

“Okay. Good. I bet I can kill more goblins than you.”

Socks huffed, as close to laughing as he ever got. -You will need more than a dagger for that.-

Together they sprinted into the fleeing goblins and lay them waste alongside the Duke and his men. Dirt fought with vigor sufficient to sweat out all the evil he’d taken in and even through a fresh coating of blood, he felt cleaner somehow. The Duke’s men felt it too, their weariness and fear and hesitation fading as they lost themselves in a task they could understand.

The goblins made little attempt to protect themselves except to scramble over each other in their haste to flee, but they were such a tangled mess that only the ones on the far edge had any hope of escaping. Sometimes they’d turn around at the last second and lash out in desperation, but to no avail.

The work of slaughter continued long after that, until the armored men were being outrun by individual goblins and finally sat to enjoy a well-earned rest. Socks and Dirt considered chasing down more of them, but they were too spread out. They went to sit by the armored men instead.

Dirt had Home make him water and held his forearm brace over his head to let it pour in. Seeing that, the Duke removed his helmet, signaling the true end of the battle. His men followed his lead and looked thirsty, so Dirt went around giving them water to drink, starting with the Duke himself.

They laughed and patted his bottom with their gauntleted hands, or gave exaggerated sighs of refreshment, or some such thing, and Dirt enjoyed himself tremendously and laughed right along with them. Socks stepped along right beside him, and the men patted his legs as he passed, which he allowed.

The Duke watched slyly until Dirt had made it to every last man, ensuring no one was left out, then stood again and announced, “We’d better get out of this armor so our pages can clean it, before the smiths band together to have me beheaded.”

The men laughed and stood. They walked across the wide field, strewn with hundreds of reeking goblin corpses, and made their way back home. Socks and Dirt led the group, happy and tired. Socks picked up the man whose arm was twisted in his armor and straightened it back out with his mind. Despite being careful, the poor soldier passed out from pain. He’d get better, though, and so would all the injured from before.

For now, the town was safe. The battle might be over for the Duke and his men, at least the big one. It wasn't over for Dirt, though. His was just starting.