Realm guard a slice of l.., p.1
Realm Guard: A Slice of Life Fantasy, page 1
Realm Guard
A Slice of Life Fantasy
Noah Layton
Copyright 2023 Noah Layton
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. All characters in this book are aged 21 or over.
Contents
Chapter 1 – Zyak’s Offer
Chapter 2 – Touchdown
Chapter 3 – Felgarde
Chapter 4 – Men At Arms
Chapter 5 – A Guard’s First Punch-Up
Chapter 6 – The Dragon Roost Inn
Chapter 7 – Blade Magic
Chapter 8 – A Perfect Evening with the Perfect Barmaid
Chapter 9 – The Woman At Crest Mine
Chapter 10 – You Again
Chapter 11 – Early Morning Potions
Chapter 12 – Sunshine and Summer Dresses
Chapter 13 – An Evening With Rosalind
Chapter 14 – The Smug Shadowcat
Chapter 15 – Knight Glacie
Chapter 16 – Tavern Party
Chapter 17 – Retrieving the Goblin
Chapter 18 – The Witch and the Wyvern
Chapter 19 – Cat-Eared Cleric
Chapter 20 – Purging Poison
Chapter 21 – Late Night Alchemy
Chapter 22 – The Missing Ingredient
Chapter 23 – Home of the Moon-Fae
Chapter 24 – Cleaning the Mine
Chapter 25 – A Peaceful Realm
Chapter 1
Zyak’s Offer
‘I ain’t letting you get yourself killed that easily, Leo.’
A few moments after realizing that I had died, those were the first words that came to mind. They had been spoken by Reggie, an old acquaintance from college, right after I asked him about the possibility of getting a job with his team working in the Colorado oil fields.
I was a few years out of college and had just completed my formal training as an accountant. I was just happy that a full-time job awaited me, but paying off the mountain of debt from my studies trashed a lot of that happiness.
People do plenty of things to make their way, and after graduating I was in the market for one of those things, something temporary and/or dangerous to make a quick buck and get me through to the other side.
So, after the two of us had plied ourselves with enough dry whisky, I broached the topic.
Reggie cut me off with a raised hand and the above quip the moment he knocked back the latest glass of smile juice.
But I was persistent. Even after he had sobered up, I went back to Reggie with the intention of swaying his opinion once more. And a third time. And a fourth, fifth and sixth.
Finally, on the seventh, he realized that he wasn’t getting rid of me so easily. Or ever.
At the time I didn’t realize that I was bargaining to secure my own death.
I had always been pretty flexible when it came to changing circumstances seeing as I didn’t have many ties in the way of close family, so when I swapped out the city for Colorado, I adapted pretty fast.
Drilling rigs, pumpjacks and wellheads dotted the horizon like leviathans looming over the mortals below, ready to break free from their moorings and begin their staggering voyages across the world.
I had picked the job up fast, even if it was brutal. Hell, during my time I had even picked up a nickname: Dodger.
It was short for Coffin Dodger because of the sheer number of times I had managed to avoid being obliterated despite pulling some of the hardest tasks during my nine months on the job.
Shoveling down a diet of beef and potatoes for every meal alongside my days of lugging pipe around the fields had covered my body in a thin sheen of lean muscle. Maybe I wasn’t as big as the veterans, but another six months on the job and I would get there, both physically and financially.
Just assuming I didn’t die in the meantime.
Yeah, I forgot to knock on wood.
Nine fateful months into the job, another morning like any other, and I pulled all the short straws at once by getting myself landed on one of the chain-rigs. They were archaic machines, a hair’s-breadth away from being as extinct as a payphone in the city.
No, scratch that – a payphone anywhere. Chain-rigs possessed so many moving parts that even the smallest screw-up meant giving up a limb.
Larger screw-ups didn’t allow for debate or consideration; when one of those happened, men were more preoccupied with reassembling their own bodies than they were with meditating on how they were going to open a can of beer without any thumbs.
It wasn’t that hard once you had the rhythm pinned down. The hard part was the consistency. Like I said: that one, small screw-up.
But I had been watching the masters do this for months, memorizing their patterns, their methods – not because I wanted to do it, but because I was preparing for the day when I landed on the job and held that apparently uncommon desire to keep all of my fingers.
But that day, when my number was finally up, it didn’t matter how prepared I was for the task – because something else was intent on deciding my fate.
The other guys had managed to get clear. But by the time I moved, it was too late. I made it no more than ten yards.
And then-
Boom.
The lights in my head went out before I could even register the pain.
But for some reason, I was still clinging to a semblance of consciousness.
There was only one thing I was sure of: I should have listened to Reggie.
‘I ain’t letting you get yourself killed that easily, Leo.’
I couldn’t say the guy hadn’t warned me.
I couldn’t even be sure what exactly had happened to kill me.
But I wasn’t flying anywhere. I was still, a mind floating on the plane of a dark world, surrounded by a strange mist.
‘What is this?’ I called out. ‘Is this the afterlife?’
‘Of a sort,’ an echoing voice called out. ‘Consider it an in-between.’
‘So limbo?’
‘Not that either. Just follow my voice.’
‘Using what, exactly?’
‘Oh, of course, you need your body back… Just a moment, and… There.’
My form returned so fast that I didn’t know what to do with it. My legs gave out and I staggered to the ground among the mist, thankful that there was a ground at all.
‘How did you do that?’
‘I can explain the complex ways of my powers, or you can just be grateful for my gift and not risk me taking it away from you as easily as I have given it to you. In this realm, I am the master of all, and I am having a terribly trying day. Do not test me – just push through the dark towards the light.’
With no other options or pathways, I followed the voice until the world around me steadily began to brighten, and the strange mist thinned and parted.
Beyond the mist, a huge figure loomed.
It sat upon a gigantic throne, head to toe measuring at least ten yards tall, the height of a two-story house. Upon first glance I thought that I was talking to one of the drilling rigs from back in the fields, but in the shape of a gigantic man, his arms and limbs and torso mechanical, his head covered by a huge, thick hood that shrouded the face in shadow.
Stranger was the throne itself; it was made of huge stacks of papers and folds of parchment, a single piece of which was large enough to carpet the room I had called home for the past nine months on Earth.
Much smaller pieces of parchment floated all around, while many more flitted back and forth on the air, whipping around in circles like flies avoiding the strange figure’s grasp.
But he wasn’t seeking them out. If anything, he looked irritated by the sheer presence of them, a hungover realm keeper slumped in his throne massaging his temples beneath the hood that shrouded his face in darkness.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Zyak,’ the gigantic being spoke in a tired, husky tone.
‘And you’re a… Machine god or something?’
‘Machine god?’ He repeated, the frown on his voice obvious. ‘What a moronic thing to say. No – my true form would be impossible for you to comprehend. I take the form of something familiar to you so as not to scare you.’
‘And a gigantic robot is familiar?’
‘A combination of mechanical parts based around these huge machines you worked with, and the figure of a man. I would have thought that this would be perfectly familiar.’
Not in the slightest, but I don’t want to argue with this thing too much…
‘Well…’ I nodded wryly, ‘I appreciate that.’
‘And today is your lucky day.’
‘My lucky day?’ I frowned. ‘I just died. How exactly is that lucky?’
‘Because you get a second chance – if you would like it, that is.’
‘Are you kidding me? Of course I would.’
‘Good. Now, I can’t send you back to your world because y our body in that realm is destroyed. But I can send you somewhere else. Interested?’
‘Definitely.’
‘I have a few appropriate lifepaths open right now,’ Zyak continued as pieces of parchment whipped by in front of him, each stopping for him to examine before he swept them away.
‘Lifepaths?’ I repeated. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Sometimes people die too soon in their worlds, and realm keepers like me must assign new beings to take over their lifepath. The problem is that beings cannot be returned to their own realm, so they must be placed somewhere else – and you are a perfect candidate to take on a lifepath in another realm.’
‘So you’re saying I’m going to become somebody else?’
‘You’re going to fulfill their duties. Why don’t we just figure out where to put you first before getting into the details?’
‘Fair enough,’ I replied, figuring I couldn’t argue with the prospect of getting to stay alive.
‘Good. Now, any preferences on where you would like to go? How about a land ravaged by war, in need of a brave knight? Or a realm featuring a scattered collection of mages, warlocks and star-seers in need of a great master of magic to unite them against the forces of evil? What about a realm that recently lost its king, desperately caught in dire straits because they need a new heir?’
‘Those all sound great!’
‘Well, that’s unfortunate, because I haven’t got any of those,’ Zyak spoke dryly, slumping back in his throne. ‘But I do have a spot in a charming little realm called Kalthyna. There’s a position for a realm guard out there. You would be protecting a peaceful little realm that hasn’t had a whisper of trouble for decades.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad… So if I’m going to this Kalthyna place, does that mean I would be replacing somebody who died?’
‘Now we’re getting somewhere. There was a realm guard there who was cut down in the most mundane of deaths possible: bitten by a particular variety of poisonous water serpent that quickly ended him in a patch of swampland not far from the town where he lived. Not the brightest bulb of a man to think he could go fishing in such a place, but then again, his demise is your fortune.’
‘So you want me to assume the identity of this man and take over his life?’
‘Not necessarily him – you can still be you, you just have to be a different version of you. Think of it like role-playing. You just have to pretend to be a citizen of the realm willing to take up the mantle of a realm guard, like many other men of valor. Blend in, do your duties, etcetera. Do that, and you can set up a great life for yourself, just assuming that you don’t end up dying to something even duller than the previous gentleman did.’
‘But what about my quest? Don’t you need to bestow one upon me?’
‘Your quest is whatever you want! Make friends, help people – be a guard of the realm.’
The idea seemed pretty cool, and the more I thought about it, the more I warmed to it. Serving a peaceful realm, looking out for people - what wasn’t to love about that?
And what was really waiting for me back on Earth? Financial reports, no close family and a life of honking cars in the city when I moved there.
Second chances were rare, and I had one.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ I said. ‘How exactly did I die, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘In your world?’ Zyak clarified, ushering his hand on the air until an eager piece of parchment landed in it from which he read. ‘Let me see here… Boring, boring… Dear me, you’ve led a boring life…’
‘Yeah, thanks for that…’
‘Here!’ Zyak shouted with sudden excitement, prodding one of his hefty mechanical fingers at the parchment. ‘Some kind of explosion. Your body was…’ Zyak paused and pulled the parchment close to him before wincing. ‘Eugh. Put it this way: if your predecessor’s death was boring, yours was the absolute polar opposite. There would have been parts of you scattered for miles around.’
He abruptly crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder into the mist, taking my old life with it.
‘All you do need to know,’ Zyak continued, ‘is that the doctors don’t have much of a chance of stitching you back together when your form back on that realm is in 22 different places.’
Maybe I should have been torn up about it – no pun intended – but this was just another thing that I had to adapt to.
‘So what else do I need to know-?’
‘Maker, do you ever stop complaining?’ Zyak interrupted with a groan, pressing a hand over his face beneath his hood. ‘Look, do you want to live or not? Because I’ve got a long list of poor, recently-deceased suckers taken before their times who would quite literally kill for the opportunity to be reborn, and if I let the next few people in that queue into here, I might just pit them against you for some afternoon entertainment. So, is it a yay or a nay?’
‘It’s a yay,’ I replied quickly.
‘Excellent,’ Zyak spoke deeply, his voice briefly taking on a deep and slightly sinister tone as another piece of parchment floated into one hand and a quill with ink at the ready landed in the other.
Zyak scrawled his signature on the parchment before it and the quill both floated down to me. I caught both and examined the contractual information detailed upon the parchment.
‘What’s taking so long?’ Zyak sighed with frustration, snatching up a gigantic mechanical pocket watch hanging from his breast pocket. ‘This offer does have an expiration date, you know?’
‘I don’t sign anything without reading it first, especially when that thing has been handed over by a powerful realm keeper who could have some hidden agenda.’
Despite Zyak’s momentarily sinister tone, there was nothing untoward hiding in the contract.
‘There’s nothing on this quill,’ I said, scrawling the quill repeatedly on the dotted line as it failed to work.
‘We enter a pact now, mortal,’ Zyak spoke. ‘The scales of life and death can only be balanced with the spilling of blood. Yours, namely.’
‘I haven’t spilled enough already for one day?’
‘Not in this realm you haven’t.’
Zyak’s rules. At this point I knew not to question it considering the deal that I was getting.
I pricked the tip of my finger with the quill, no stranger to pain after months of long days, freezing mornings and being surrounded by things that wanted to kill me.
I signed my name on the dotted line and the parchment whipped out of my hand, returning loyally to Zyak.
‘Wonderful,’ Zyak chuckled, examining the signature.
‘You sound a lot happier about this than I thought.’
‘I’m happy every time a soul signs itself into my stead. A collector of souls, I suppose you could call me.’
‘Right… So you just sit here all day collecting souls?’
‘Oh, not at all,’ he replied, his menacing tone suddenly vanishing. ‘I just like to sign on more than the other realm keepers at the tavern.’
Zyak stood from the huge throne he sat upon. His form shrank and shrank until he stood around six-feet-tall, the same height as me.
Zyak crossed to my side and offered his arm.
‘Hold on,’ he spoke simply.
I did as I was told, and with a flash of bright light I whipped away to another world, ready to start my new life.
Chapter 2
Touchdown
I landed with a splash. I was stood ankle-deep in a shallow, murky pool measuring around 30 yards in diameter, moss sitting on the surface and hundreds of scattered reeds poking out above.
A forest sparsely scattered with trees as thick as houses surrounded the pool. They loomed with remarkable height, breaking off into weaving branches high overhead. Beyond the luscious green canopy that the tips of the trees offered, a light blue sky scattered with occasional wisps of cloud towered mightily. The air smelled clean and fresh, a far cry from the oil fumes I was used to inhaling.
‘Where are we?’
‘The place that, uhh…’ Zyak pulled out a scroll from his cloak and examined it. ‘Guard Roland died. This is where he ended, so it’s where you start.’
‘Got it. So where to?’
‘His house. Or your house, I guess I should say now. Once I’ve safely delivered you there, I can depart. Now let’s get moving.’
Zyak guided me around the pool, moving south until we came upon an old, wide, cobbled road leading between the vast forest. A nearby signpost gave me a few options.
