No birds.
No bugs.
No animals.
Glancing toward the town, I start walking in that direction.
“Where are you going?” Torin asks. “I didn’t say you could go over there.”
“Why can’t I go over there?” I question as I pick up my pace, expecting he’ll stop me, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even follow me. He just stands back and watches me go, which makes me feel even more uneasy about it. It’s almost like… he’s afraid to go into the town. But if he’s afraid… should I be?
I reach the first building and find that it’s extremely run-down. The thatch roof is buckling and the windows are cracked. Shutters lie on the ground outside of it, and when I try to look through the windows, there’s so much grime on the glass that it’s hard to see anything. The wooden sign for a blacksmith hasfallen from its pole and lies broken and rotting on the ground. After walking a little farther, I stop at the third building since the door is open, and step inside under the sign indicating it’s a general store.
The shelves are full, but everything has either decayed or rotted. The only items still standing are things made of wood or metal. The next store is the same, holding boxes of supplies that are all still there and haven’t been looted, but time appears to have gotten to them.
When I exit the building, I find Torin standing at the entrance to the town, stepping no farther into it as I turn toward him and walk down the cobblestone path that has suffered from the passage of time.
“Are you going to tell me the truth now?” I ask once I meet up with him.
“Didn’t plan on it,” he says. “Do you want your book or not?” His expression is dark, and I question whether I was wrong to go against his wishes.
“Of course I do.”
“Then stop wasting time.” His voice is sharp and I wonder if it’s the first time he’s been short with me. It almost makes me feel guilty.
I follow him back to the palace and into the library, where I sit down in front of the shelf. “Torin, I’m sorry I went into the town without your permission. Could you please tell me what’s going on with this place? Why is no one here? Did they have to move out because of whatever is going on with the land and how barren it is?”
“No.”
“So then… where is everyone? Can you tell me that? Or no?”
“This is everyone.” He sits down facing me and leans against the bookshelf. “They’re all dead.”
“What happened to them?”
Torin takes a deep breath and rubs his face. “A Door opened up… and a man came through, much like the one who has tried to come to your world. He was not alone; he brought these monsters… these… ‘soldiers’ that could inflict death upon any they touched. It was like a disease that would tear through them. While he brought an army of ten thousand, I had an army of thirty thousand. And even though we killed every single one of them, they’d already infected the land. It was like a miasma that spread, ripping through every single one of my people even after the Door was closed. One minute we were celebrating the success of our war and the next we were digging mass graves. My soldiers were dying by the hundreds… and then the thousands. I kept them away from the villagers, but it was as though the miasma ate through the land just to reach them.
“The healers could do nothing. This was unlike anything they’d seen before. We’d closed the Door. I’d killed the god slayer and none of his subjects remained, so how could the sickness still descend upon everyone? I was a god, therefore many assumed I could save them, but I’m a god of war. I had killed every being who had tried to destroy them for hundreds of years, but I couldn’t kill this one because there was no enemy left… just death.”
Torin hangs his head. “I thought they’d give up on me. I thought they’d curse me for not being able to save them, but even in the end, they still loved me. And I loved each and every one of them. It went from hundreds of thousands… to thousands… to hundreds. And still… nothing could be done to stop it. It was only a matter of weeks before everyone who’d lived through the war that’d already taken tens of thousands was gone.”
I stare at him as what he’s saying sinks in. “You’re not just… you’re not just talking about this town, are you? Everyone in thisworldis dead.” The idea of such a tragedy never occurred to me.I never imagined they’dallbe gone. That the only one left in this mystifying realm would be the god who was left behind.
How devastating.
“They are,” he says. “Every single one of them. Human life is really so fragile. All my life, they’ve come and gone in the blink of an eye… but not like this. There were always people to fill the holes that were left behind, but not this time.”
“It killed the animals too?” I ask.
“No… but my world is not like yours, Riley. I found this world when it was nothing but a struggling land run by a god who was devouring it for his own strength. He had driven it to ruin, so I scraped together what I could and slowly gained the trust of the people. My power doesn’t come from me; it comes from the belief my followers have in me. The grass, the trees, and the plants were all brought back to life by my magic which was given to me by those who believed in me. It allowed me to kill the god who had ravished their lands and rebuild it into this. So once they died, I lost all of that. The trees began to die and the grass began to wither. There was nothing left for the animals to eat and they started to die. Some could survive here in my palace with me, but it was like I’d been forsaken because they never had any offspring and died of old age.”
“Is that what happened to your mount?”
“No. My mount is brought to life by my magic, never aging… I used what little magic I had to keep him alive. He stayed with me until recently, when my magic finally began to diminish for good.”
Torin’s fists clench and unclench before he says quietly, “Quill and I spent years roaming the land looking for a single survivor… but nothing remained in this hell except me.”
My chest tightens as I think about how heartbreaking that must have been. To watch everyone you loved and cared for die… and then being forced to live without them… and for how long?The buildings were quite dilapidated. Did the Door do that to them like it did to that building I ended up demolishing, or…
