"He Bought Me" plunges Austin into a nightmare of betrayal as he flees Orozgo’s assassins, only to uncover Jason Broadstreet’s corpse and the 730 Club—a cabal of billionaires dismissing free will—while a burner phone leads him to a Pacific Northwest mansion eerily mirroring Galeana’s Horror Mansion. The narrator, trapped in Curtin’s psychological maze, recognizes the wizard lurking in both worlds before being forced into a Puritan-era loop, where visions of Riley’s suffering and Curtin’s demands for Another Kingdom shatter reality itself. The episode ends with a single, chilling text: "I don’t love you anymore"—and Riley’s desperate plea for help. [Automatically generated summary]
You're about to hear the second season of my fantasy suspense story, Another Kingdom, performed by Michael Knowles.
I think you're going to love it.
Be sure to head over to DailyWire.com to get early access to our episodes.
In our last episode, Austin evaded two of Orozgo's assassins by leaving his parents' house and returning to the mansion in the Edimund woods.
There, Hamarta, the mistress of the house, led him to a great dining hall and then dissolved into a disgusting collection of worms and insects.
In the dining hall, Austin shared a meal with others who had left their quests behind and become trapped in this mansion.
Then, when the sun went down, the dragon from the eunuch cave of female sacrifice returned and horribly devoured everyone in the hall.
Led by the little ghost boy from the cave, Austin escaped, but was told he had to find his way out of the maze-like house by dawn, or else he too would be trapped there forever.
With the dragon hot on his trail, he threw himself into a trapdoor and was transported back to his parents' house in Berkeley, where he rushed to his car and drove away from the assassins who were hunting him.
And now, Another Kingdom, episode six, performed by Michael Knowles.
Did Orozco's goons chase me?
Sound from Below00:15:36
I didn't know.
It didn't matter.
This was my home turf, my childhood neighborhood.
A map of every turn and side street was etched on my nerve endings.
In seconds, I had lost myself in the spaghetti tangle of winding roads, and I didn't stop until I was on the far side of the hills, deep into Cragmont.
There, on a broad stretch of Arlington Road, I found a mini-mall I remembered from my youth, a little line of quaint-looking stores and a gas station.
I pulled into the station, stopped at the pumps.
I knew I was about to crash.
Emotionally crash, I mean.
So I just kept moving, moving like a bot, like a zombie, not thinking, just moving, moving.
I went into the gas station market, paid cash for gas, bought myself a burner, one of those anonymous prepaid phones that can't be traced.
After I gassed up, I drove away to an obscure cul-de-sac, where the few houses were set far back on broad lawns.
I parked there, out of sight of the main road.
I killed the engine.
I fell back against the seat.
Only then did I allow the full trauma of the day to drop down on top of me like an anvil hurled from the sky.
My whole body trembled.
I felt shattered inside, my identity in shards and splinters.
Who the hell was I now?
What was my life?
Just days ago, I was a perfectly happy, miserable Hollywood failure going nowhere in comfortable despair.
And now, death around every corner, my own mother sending assassins after me.
My whole childhood a lie.
Even the cops hunting me.
And at any moment, I might step through a door and find myself back in that dreadful house with a monster horrible beyond imagination poised to rip my head off.
After a while, a long while spent trembling in the driver's seat, I noticed a sensation of pulsing heat on my chest.
Oh good, I thought.
Maybe I'm having a heart attack.
That would be a relief at this point.
But no such luck.
It was Bethere's locket.
I drew it out of my sweatshirt and gripped it in my fist.
For one second, like a flashback in a movie, I was in the past again, on Riley's bed again, propped up against the headboard, reading to her.
Nobody listens, while she peered up at me with her worried, frightened face.
My child self lifted his solemn eyes from the book, looked across the room, and saw something.
Something that startled him.
But before I could see what it was myself, the moment was over.
The locket went cool in my fist.
The flashback ended.
I opened my hand and looked at the locket, pressed the latch and raised the cover.
There was the portrait of Queen Elinda, Queen Elinda, who was also Ellen Evermore, the author of Another Kingdom.
She seemed to be looking directly out at me, strange to say, but her expression of serene majesty calmed me somehow.
I read the inscription for the hundredth time.
Let wisdom reign and each man go his way.
Yes, I thought.
My mother's answer automatic in my head now.
But what is wisdom?
I snapped the locket shut and stuffed it back inside my sweatshirt.
Then I lifted the shirt's hem and drew out the DVD case I had found in the air duct at home.
Horror Mansion.
I opened the case.
There was the phone number scrawled in marker ink on the shiny disc.
Surely it was my crazy kid's sister who had scrawled it there.
I tore the packaging off the burner phone and turned the phone on.
I was about to dial the number on the DVD, but I didn't.
On an impulse, I dialed another number instead, the only number I knew by heart.
I don't know why I did it.
I shouldn't have.
It was the loneliness, I guess.
The days without internet or social media or a phone or any friendly face.
I listened to the ringing on the line, then the click.
Then Jane Janaway's recording.
Her soft, her tender, her sweet, her gentle voice.
Hi, this is Jane.
Leave a message.
Then a tone.
I opened my mouth to speak, but didn't speak.
Couldn't.
My throat closed.
My eyes filled.
I cut the connection and dialed the number written on the DVD.
I fought to get control of myself while the phone was ringing.
It rang three times.
Then a man answered.
Sounded like a youngish man.
He had a sure, strong voice.
Jason Broadstreet, he said.
I hesitated before I spoke.
Jason Broadstreet.
I knew that name.
Some big tech guy, some Silicon Valley muckamuck.
A billionaire who'd made a fortune in some startup or other.
I couldn't remember which.
I had an image of him in my mind, a picture I'd seen in a news story.
I spoke slowly, uncertain of what I would say next.
Then I said the only thing I could think of.
My name is Austin Lively.
Oh, right, said Broadstreet, simple as that.
Your sister told me to expect your call.
I let out a startled laugh.
She did?
You know Riley?
Yeah, sure, of course.
How do you think she got my number?
I could not imagine.
Well, I said.
It seemed worth asking.
Do you happen to know where she is now?
He made a whiffling snort.
Hell no.
I told her to come here, to Wonderly.
I told her I could protect her.
Hell, I've got all the security in the world, but she was too paranoid, too scared.
She said she didn't want anyone to know where she was, not even me.
Not even you.
She said she'd find a way to get my number to you, a way they couldn't trace.
She's a bit of a kook, your sister.
I smiled in spite of myself.
A bit, yeah, I said.
But she did get me the number.
How do you know her? I asked, meaning, how did a billionaire get friendly with the loony girl who played the goblin at the Halloween horror walk at Happytown Theme Park?
Look, we shouldn't be talking about this, Broadstreet said.
Not on a cell phone.
I just bought it in a gas station.
It's a burner prepaid anonymous.
Oh, yeah?
Is this the first time you've used it?
My lips parted, then shut.
I swallowed.
Only now did it occur to me what a mistake I'd made.
If Orozco was monitoring Jane's line, looking for me, he might have heard my call to her.
He might know my number now.
He might be tracing me right this second.
He might even be listening in.
You know who you're dealing with, right? Broadstreet said.
You know what he can do.
I nodded numbly at the windshield.
I know.
There was another long pause.
Then Broadstreet spoke again.
I got the feeling he had to.
He had something to tell me, and he felt compelled to tell me, even if he risked being overheard.
I was her source on 730, he said.
Whose source?
Riley's?
Yeah.
And 730, what's that?
She didn't tell you anything.
No.
The 730 Club, he said.
I saw her Ouroboros videos online.
That's why I called her.
That's how we met.
She was the only outsider who knew the truth.
I was silent, startled.
The truth?
My sister?
My nutso sister knew the truth?
You mean there really are aliens trying to take over the world? I said.
No.
He snorted again.
What are you, some kind of idiot?
There are no aliens.
There are just people.
I heard him sigh.
The old man.
You do know who I mean, right?
Yeah, yeah, I know.
He bought me when I was young.
Just a kid, really.
Bought you.
You know.
Made me what I am.
Helped me make my first billion.
Drew me in.
Made me one of them.
730.
I shook my head.
I was worried now.
Worried about the phone, worried Orozco's men were tracing me.
I scanned the outdoors through the windshield, watching for the escalate.
Look, I still don't get this, I told him.
The 730 Club.
I still don't know what it is.
Another sigh.
All right, listen.
We really can't do this on the phone.
Come to Wonderly.
It's safe here.
Like I told your sister, I'm surrounded by enough security to hold off an army.
He gave me the address and cut the connection.
I put the car in gear and drove to the corner.
There was a wastebasket there.
I pulled up beside it, buzzed down the window.
I tossed the phone into the trash.
Then I drove away.
It took me hours to get to him.
I had to buy more maps first.
Just finding maps took me an hour.
Then I had to cross the bay and head for the valley.
I kept to the smallest roads I could find.
It was late afternoon by the time I got close.
By then, I was cruising through a dramatic green wilderness.
Crags of gray rock rose from rolling green hills, hills fringed on their crests with windswept trees.
I drove deeper and deeper into the empty land until I came to Wonderly.
That was the name of his estate.
It was written in iron script on the ornate gate that stood at the entrance, an ornate gate with a guardhouse beside it.
The gate was open.
The guardhouse was empty.
I slowed the car as I approached.
My gut went sour.
I did not like the look of this.
It's safe here, Broadstreet had told me.
I'm surrounded by enough security to hold off an army.
Right.
But where were they?
I drove slowly through the gate, slowly up a narrow dirt road, through a dense orchard of trees with flaming orange leaves.
There was no one in sight here either.
No workers, no gardeners, no guards.
What the hell was going on?
I came out of the flaming trees, came around a wide curve, and saw the house.
It was a stalwart mansion, a modern version of an old plantation house, stately brick and white trim.
It had a lowering, heavy, haunted look.
It seemed very still.
Empty.
Where was all the security?
The dirt road ended in a paved circular driveway.
I parked, stepped out.
A cool wind stirred the orange leaves in the orchard.
I could hear them whish and rattle behind me.
Otherwise, it was quiet.
Very quiet.
I walked up the stone front steps to a grandiose portico.
My footfalls on the stone sounded loud to me.
I reached a large, forbidding green door framed between white columns.
I was reaching out to ring the bell when I noticed the door was ajar.
Not good.
This was not good.
I pushed the door open.
I stepped inside.
Into a large entrance hall, modern, with white walls and columns and wood floors, and a blonde wood balcony up on the landing atop a sweeping flight of stairs.
A chandelier of brass and glass hung above it all, the bulbs on, shining.
I stood in the center of the foyer and listened to the eerie quiet.
Then, a sound.
A creaking sound.
A footstep?
No.
Too slow, too long, too steady.
More like a door with rusty hinges blowing back and forth in a wind.
The source of the noise was on the second floor.
I went to the stairs, climbed them slowly, listening.
The creaking sound grew louder with every step, even louder when I reached the landing.
It was coming from the end of the hall.
I should have run then, gotten out of there, but my sister was missing, hiding, in danger.
She had wanted me to find Broadstreet.
Broadstreet was the only lead I had, to hell with running.
I followed the creaking noise.
I went down the hall.
There was a door at the end, half open.
I heard Broadstreet's words again.
It's safe here.
I'm surrounded by enough security to hold off an army.
Yeah, I thought, maybe.
Or maybe not.
Maybe nothing could protect you from Orozgo in the end.
I reached the door, pushed it open the rest of the way.
I looked inside and saw him.
The magnificent windows of his large home office stood open onto a balcony.
The sweet, cool air was streaming in from the distant hills.
It blew across the figure of Jason Broadstreet, where he was hanging from the rafter above his desk.
His gorged and strangled figure swung slowly back and forth and set the rope creaking.
I cut him down.
It was an awful business.
I probably should have left him for the police, but I couldn't stay in that room another second with him hanging there.
Anyway, what if he was still alive somehow?
He wasn't.
If I wasn't sure before, I was once I got up close.
I found a scissors in his desk drawer, climbed up onto the desk and went to work on the rope.
The whole time I was sawing through, Broadstreet was swinging against me, twisting around to look at me with his purple face and his bulging eyes and his tongue all stuck out.
Yeah, he was dead all right.
If I hadn't just finished watching a creature made of body parts devour an entire dinner party, he might have been the worst thing I had seen all day.
As things were, he hardly made the list.
Swallowing my disgust, I held the body around the waist with one hand while I cut through the final strands of the rope with the other.
Then I lowered Jason Broadstreet to the desk at my feet.
Breathless and queasy, I climbed down to the floor.
That was the first time I really looked around the place.
It had been searched, just like Riley's room, but not as thoroughly.
The leather cushions were askew on the sofa, but they hadn't been tossed off and gutted like Riley's had.
The papers in the desk drawers had been rifled, but the drawers had been closed up again, though some were still open part way.
There was a painting of a garden on the wall, and it was slightly tilted.
When I looked behind it, I found a wall safe with the door unlocked.
The papers and jewelry and cash were still inside, though they'd clearly been tampered with.
Whoever had done this, they weren't looking for valuables.
But then I already knew that.
They were looking for the manuscript, another kingdom.
I grabbed a handful of cash from myself and shut the safe door.
I glanced over at Jason Broadstreet's body where it lay splayed across the desktop, his arms flung out, his distorted face gaping up at the ceiling.
I wondered if there was any chance he had left a message for me the way Riley had.
It didn't seem likely.
Unlike Riley, he didn't know me well enough to leave me a message in code, something a Roscoe and his goons wouldn't understand, but I would.
Anything else would have tipped his hand.
The searchers would have removed it.
I took a quick look around the place, then decided to let it go.
I went to the desk and picked up the phone.
I figured I ought to call the police, then get out of there before they showed up.
That way I could report the death just as I would have if the whole universe weren't in a conspiracy against me, then run for cover because it was.
I had the handset to my ear and my fingers on the buttons when I paused.
Picking up the phone gave me an idea.
There actually was one possible way Broadstreet might have left a message for me that the goons couldn't find.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember the number written on the Horror Mansion DVD.
It came back to me.
I pressed the phone buttons.
Clever me.
I heard a faint buzzing.
Broadstreet's cell.
The sound was coming from right below me.
I lowered myself to the floor and looked.
Yes, there it was.
Broadstreet had secured his cell phone under the desk, sealing it there, way in the back with a whole bunch of scotch tape.
I crawled under and worked the phone free and slipped it into my pants pocket.
Then I climbed out and called 911 from the desk phone.
I'm at Jason Broadstreet's estate, Wonderly, I said to the woman who answered.
He's here.
He's dead.
I found his body.
You found a body?
Could you tell me your name, sir?
That's what she was saying when I hung up on her.
Phone Under The Desk00:09:57
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The cops showed up fast, really fast, as if they were already on the way before I called.
By the time I slipped behind the wheel of the passad, I could hear the sirens closing in.
I didn't think I'd have time to get off the property before they arrived, so I drove back around the bend of the dirt road to the orchard.
Then I turned off the road and rolled the Volks into the lines of flame-colored trees.
I pulled up close to where two of the trees were bent low and pressed together, like two red-haired girls sharing a secret.
Now my car was hidden by their hanging branches.
I switched off the engine and sat there, waiting for the cops, trying to think the situation through.
My earlier emotional reaction had faded now.
I felt strangely calm.
Not sure why exactly.
Maybe anything was better than being in Curtin's mansion in Egymond with the monster after me.
Or maybe I was just so depressed about my mother and father, I didn't care what happened next.
I don't know.
Anyway, I was calm and I sat there, waiting, thinking about what had just happened.
Here's how I had things figured out so far.
Jason Broadstreet had been part of Serge Orozgo's worldwide Orozgo age conspiracy, whatever it was.
He had been drawn in as a young man after Orozgo helped him get rich.
But then he started to have doubts about the enterprise.
Somehow he saw one of Riley's loony videos online.
He saw past all her craziness, the crap about the aliens and the Illuminati and so forth, and he recognized that Riley was onto something, that she knew about the real conspiracy.
How did she know?
It must have been because she'd heard my parents and my brother discussing it when she was climbing around inside the walls of the house, when she was sitting at that juncture where all the house's voices came together.
The truth about my parents, the truth that I had denied to myself as I escaped into movie-making fantasy, had driven Riley half insane.
But deep down inside her insanity, she still knew the truth.
Broadstreet wanted out of the conspiracy, but he was afraid if he turned against Orozgo, Orozgo would have him killed.
So he began feeding Riley information for her videos, hoping someone would see them and catch on.
He knew he was taking a big risk.
He surrounded himself with security men to keep himself safe.
But surprise, surprise, Orozgo got suspicious.
He bought off the security men.
Now, instead of standing guard over Broad Street, they were watching him on Orozgo's behalf.
I didn't know how it ended.
Maybe they'd overheard him talking to me on the phone, or maybe Orozco just got worried I was getting too close to the truth.
In any case, Orozgo gave the command and the security men transformed into assassins.
They strung Broadstreet up and searched the place, although they didn't have to search much, since they'd been in the house for a while and knew what was there.
Then they took off.
I guess Broadstreet saw his murder coming.
He had left his phone for me under the desk.
I wondered what was on it.
What did he want me to know?
Well, there was no time to find out now.
Here came the cops, sirens blaring.
Through the hanging flame-orange leaves, I could just make out the flashing red lights of three cars racing up the dirt road into the orchard.
There was a gap through the trees right in front of me, and I could see the cars go past, each one moving into view for a second, then passing by, obscured behind the leaves again.
The first car was a local patrol car.
The second was a state police cruiser.
The third car, with a whirling red light on top, was a dark blue Cadillac escalade.
Slick was driving.
My jaws clamped tight when I saw him.
Damn, I thought.
So Slick wasn't just a killer.
He was a cop, too.
Well, sure.
Orozco bought people, didn't he?
If you're going to buy people, you might as well start with the police.
I waited until the three cars went by me, until they disappeared around the long curve that led up to the house.
Then, quickly, while the sirens were still blaring loud enough to drown out the noise of my engine, I started the passat.
I pulled out of the orchard and took off down the road, out of Wonderly.
I drove a long way, a long time, on snaking forest lanes off the main freeway.
I headed for the coast, just because, just to keep things random.
The sun went down into the trees, then behind the hills.
Through gaps in the hills, I saw it sink into the distant water.
It was dark by the time I found a three-story box of a motel not far from Half Moon Bay.
The clerk in the rustic front office was an old man.
He looked like a worn-out hippie from the 1960s.
He had a high forehead and a silver-red ponytail and anesthetized eyes with great big black pupils.
He gave me a little trouble about checking in without a credit card, but I finally talked him into it with some charm and a bit of Broadstreet's cash.
I went up to the second floor, to a soulless room with a view of a weedy back lot.
I sat down on the edge of the knobby bedspread and went through Broadstreet's phone.
There was no password to get into the thing.
Of course not.
Broadstreet had wanted me to get in.
He'd left it wide open.
But once I was going through the files, there wasn't much to see.
No recordings, no notes, no messages, nothing.
And then, something.
One thing.
I found it in the address book.
One number, one name.
Ouroboros.
I straightened where I sat.
My mouth opened.
My eyebrows lifted right into my hairline.
I understood.
This, this phone in my hand, the phone Broadstreet had left for me.
This was the phone he'd used to communicate with Riley.
Only with Riley.
I called the Ouroboros number.
It rang three times, then a fourth.
Then I held my breath as the ringing stopped.
There was a click, followed by silence.
I waited.
A moment passed.
Riley, I said.
Your phone is being answered by an automatic voicemail system, said the recorded voice on the other end.
Please leave a message after the tone.
I hung up.
I was afraid to say anything, afraid Orozgo might be listening.
Maybe I was getting paranoid now, but then that'll happen to you when people keep trying to kill you.
I dropped back onto the bed, heavy with weariness.
I closed my eyes.
I just wanted to rest a little, think a little, but sure enough, I fell asleep almost right away.
I had a dream, a nightmare.
I dreamed I was driving through a small New England village hung with heavy fog.
The shadowy figures of men and women watched as I passed.
A building loomed in the distance, just a dim outline in the mist.
Then, as I got close, as the mist parted, the building showed itself to be a looming haunted house.
The house looked familiar.
Finally, with a jarring chord of scary music, the mist blew around in spirals and took the shape of ghostly words.
Horror Mansion.
My eyes came open.
I was suddenly fully awake, my heart pounding.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed my eyes.
The DVD, I thought.
I have to see what's on the DVD.
I checked my watch.
It was still early, not yet nine.
I needed to find a DVD player.
Not easy to do in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere.
Who even watched DVDs anymore?
I got up.
I picked up the DVD case from where I'd left it on the bedside table.
I studied the cover of the box.
Sure enough, there was the picture of the mansion in the fog.
The ghostly words, just like in my dream.
I headed to the door.
I was still looking down at the picture as I pulled the door open.
I almost walked right through without looking.
But then I caught myself.
I stopped on the threshold, wide-eyed.
With a spiraling sensation of fear, I realized I could easily have walked through that portal and suddenly found myself back in Curtin's mansion, jumping through the trapdoor with a monster on my heels.
Luckily, no.
There was nothing through the door but the second floor hallway.
I went out.
I took the stairs back down to the lobby.
The hippie clerk was sitting behind the front desk, tilted back in his swivel chair, feet up on the counter.
He was reading a magazine, a real magazine made of paper and everything.
The glossy cover had pictures of some kind of bacteria.
There was a scary headline about how the bacteria had been manufactured and released by a secret government cabal.
Classic.
People from his generation believed in every conspiracy except the real ones.
I asked the guy if there was a computer for guest use.
He gestured with his stubbly gray chin.
I found the machine down a short hall off the far end of the lobby.
It was a dusty old white box set in a cranny just outside the motel coffee shop.
The coffee shop looked like it had been closed since the clerk was a juvenile delinquent.
The computer didn't look too fresh either.
But at least it was hooked up to the internet, so there was some chance I might make contact with the current century.
The computer didn't have a DVD player, so I couldn't watch Horror Mansion.
I searched the title instead.
There were no clips online, just a Wikipedia entry.
Horror Mansion, British title, The Devil His Due.
A professor who made a pact with Satan must offer the devil a yearly human sacrifice or surrender his soul in payment.
The description didn't sound familiar.
Had I really seen the film at some point?
I tried to remember.
I pictured that scene again.
A scene in the small bedroom, a lantern on a shelf.
A woman?
Yes, a woman in a white blouse and a black dress.
She was holding a dead bird in her hand.
That was all I could come up with.
I would have to wait until I found a DVD player and could watch the whole movie.
So I moved on.
I searched for the 730 Club.
I wasn't expecting to find anything.
The name sounded so super secret and conspiratorial.
But not at all.
There were pages of entries on it.
I even found a feature in the New York Times from a few years back.
730 Club Vision00:07:08
It was an enthusiastic puff piece written by one of the paper's op-ed columnists, Charles Head.
730 Club Billionaires Tried to Imagine a Better World.
According to the article, the 730 Club was a collection of forward-thinking billionaires who got together once a year for a week around July 30th to discuss how to make the world a better place.
I smiled at that.
Smiled ruefully.
It reminded me of my brother Richard.
He worked for Orozgo's think tank, the Orozgo Foundation.
He was always writing books about making the world a better place.
I was beginning to think that make the world a better place was the most dangerous phrase in the English language.
Anyway, the club was made up mostly of techie types, all men.
Every July, they gathered at a secret Faux Macho woodland retreat outside of Bend, Oregon.
They hiked and made campfires and did trust and bonding exercises like jumping off rocks backwards and catching one another, stuff like that.
Then at night, according to the article, They gathered in a rustic dining hall with a moose head mounted on the wall and listened to speeches from various experts while they drank good whiskey and ate good steak.
Who owned the Oregon Retreat?
Who else?
Serge Orozgo.
A large section of the article was Charles Head's interview with the great man himself.
In fact, Charles Head seemed to think Orozgo was a hell of a guy.
Elegant, he called him, sophisticated, with a searching, sensitive intelligence that practically beamed from his gentle features.
Well, maybe Head had never seen one of Orozgo's killers shoot someone to death without a second thought.
Or maybe he had seen it and he just didn't care.
What is holding us back? said Orozgo in the interview.
What besides superstition, tribalism, religion, and the fiction of human rights?
I could practically hear the old man speaking in that faintly romantic Russian accent of his.
I could see his ancient yet lively face with the wrinkles surgically smoothed away.
I remembered his pale blue eyes, perpetually jacked wide so that, for all he was in his 80s, he bore some resemblance to a startled baby.
Where are these human rights?
Orozgo went on.
Show them to me.
Are we endowed with them by our Creator?
Then show me.
Open up our bodies.
Do you see human rights in there?
Of course not.
You see blood and viscera and DNA, that's all.
Our rights are as imaginary as the Creator who endowed us with them.
They're a story we tell ourselves.
If the story is useful to us, if it makes the world a better place, fine, I say.
But if it gives small-minded troglodytes and bigots the power to vote against humanity's best interests, to vote down the plans and treaties of experts and global statesmen with a hundred times the wisdom of this so-called common man, no, of course not.
Then the story of human rights has become obsolete, an outdated fairy tale.
It's madness to go on believing in such a thing.
Get rid of it, I say.
Orozgo acknowledges that such talk is guaranteed to raise the hackles of constitutional and religious fundamentalists, as well as other extremists who seem ever-ready to defend their 18th century philosophies with 21st century weapons.
So wrote Charles Head.
He chuckles at their increasingly desperate attempts to protect such outmoded superstitions as free will and its corollary, self-determination.
Self-determination, Orozgo exclaimed with a dismissive gesture of his diet soda glass.
Another fiction, isn't it?
Free will.
His science simply doesn't support the notion of its existence.
What we call decisions are made at the quantum level and only then recognized by consciousness.
That means the human body is a complex machine that manufactures the hallucination of self and free will as a survival mechanism.
There's nothing sacred about hallucinations, especially if they become impediments to making the world a better place.
When the so-called individuals' so-called choices cause our society to veer into increasing inequality and injustice, when they threaten to compromise or even destroy the very environment that sustains us, well, then, the hallucinations must yield to reality.
A listener finds himself swept up in the sheer prophetic scope of Orozgo's vision, Charles Head wrote.
When he speaks, it is as if some fog of tradition were finally parting to reveal the gleaming magic city of peace and equality that has lain hidden in that fog for centuries.
Again, I ask, what is holding us back?
Orozgo again asked, gazing into the middle distance, wrote Charles Head, as if into the future itself.
America?
The West?
Christianity?
All stories.
All ideas left over from pre-scientific horse and buggy days.
Are we going to allow centuries-old notions to stop us in our tracks?
I say, push them aside like the rotten timber they are.
Push them aside and march on into a new tomorrow.
In spite of everything, everything I'd been through, everything that might happen yet, I laughed at that, a single laugh out loud.
A new tomorrow, a better place.
The sheer prophetic scope of Orozgo's vision, Orozgo.
A smarmy ex-communist oligarch, a man who'd made his billions pillaging the confiscated wealth of his mother Russia, a man who trained a boy from youth to be his catamite assassin so he could erase anyone who got in his way.
And what was this prophetic vision of his?
No God, no human rights, no individuals, no free will, no freedom.
Just Orozgo.
Orozgo and his billionaires and his experts making the decisions for all of us.
A prophetic vision of a new tomorrow of equality and peace.
A new tomorrow as old as the tyranny of the pharaohs.
No wonder the 730 Club was no secret.
Orozgo's whole conspiracy was right out in the open.
He could explain the whole thing to Charles Head of the New York Times, and Head would nod and murmur admiring exclamations like some teenage girl being seduced by a slick college professor.
So I laughed.
Then I stopped laughing.
Because who was going to stop this madman?
Who was going to stave off his vision of a new tomorrow?
Me, a failed Hollywood nobody trapped in a brain tumor phantasmagoria?
My sister, a crazy, childlike video maker?
Jason Broadstreet was a big shot tech billionaire, and look what happened to him.
Did I think I could do any better?
Oh well, I told my seething stomach, don't let it get to you.
It was just the world, after all.
Who cared who ran it?
If they took my freedom away, would I even notice day by day?
Wouldn't I still be able to watch the movies I wanted to watch, and sleep with whomever I could, and take whatever drugs I wanted and speak my mind, as long as it didn't offend anybody or upset the powers that be?
Why was I responsible for fighting these bastards?
Surprising Surroundings00:15:51
What did any of it even have to do with me when you really thought about it?
Bad enough I was supposed to restore Galeana.
Did I have to save Western civilization too?
I scrolled through the rest of the interview quickly.
It just seemed to be more of the same.
But as I was scrolling, I came upon a full-page photograph.
I took one look at it, and then another look.
And then for a moment, my little motel nook grew very dim and far away.
I felt the blood drain out of my face.
My head went woozy.
I swayed where I sat.
The photograph was taken with a wide-angle lens.
It showed the 730 Club gathered at their retreat, a group of men in jeans and buttoned-down shirts and sports jackets.
Maybe 50 of them, old and young, mostly white, some Asian, a couple of blacks.
They were standing together, but each alone, no one touching, all gazing at the camera.
Orozgo was there, front and center, leading the pack.
His pale, weirdly unwrinkled baby face was fixed in a thin-lipped smile, as if he'd just swallowed one of his enemies whole.
But none of that is what shocked me.
What shocked me was their surroundings, the scene.
A forest typical of the Pacific Northwest, lots of stately evergreens, the sun streaming through their branches in hazy columns, tidy cabins hidden amidst the foliage to the left and right.
And in the middle distance, directly behind them, a large house, the main house where, according to the caption, the club held its nightly gatherings.
I call it a house, but it was more than that.
It was a mansion, brown and white, like the brown and white of the tree trunks around it, wide and broad with peaked roofs and plenty of gables and bay windows.
So help me, God, it was the mansion in the Edgermond woods.
The same mansion, or a close copy of it anyway, close enough to make the hairs on my arm stand up straight.
How was it even possible?
What did it even mean?
I stared at the photograph, unblinking, open-mouthed, looked down at the group of men again, at Orozgo again, smiling blandly as he conspired in plain sight.
Then my eyes were drawn back to the house, and I saw the figure at the upstairs window.
A man standing there, just standing, just looking out.
The shape of him was so dim behind the glass that I had to enlarge the picture on the monitor, then lean in close, squinting, in order to see it clearly.
But then I did see it.
I saw him.
His outline, his shape.
It was the shape of a man in a flowing robe.
His head was covered by a hood of some kind, but I could see his features underneath.
Wizened features crowned with a tuft of hair, decked with a wisp of beard.
Orozgo had told me about a man in a cowl.
The man who had come to his DACA back in Russia after the Soviet Union's fall.
The man who had offered him the chance to remake the world in his own image, to use his riches to create an ideal future of equality for all, the Orozgo age.
But the cowled man had wanted a payment, and now that payment had come due, and the only way to defer the payment was to deliver instead the manuscript the man wanted, the novel Another Kingdom.
And that had to be him, I thought.
The man in the window had to be the man in the cowl from the DACA of Orozgo's youth.
And it was Curtin, the wizard.
So help me.
I could only see his shape, not his face, not clearly, but I was sure of it.
It was Curtin.
He was here.
In the real world.
You want to hear something hilarious?
Hilarious, I mean, if you're a sadistic psychopath who glories in the suffering of others.
If you're one of those guys who spent your formative years vivisecting living squirrels with a dull pocket knife, this will give you your big laugh of the day.
I was so unnerved by the photograph of the mansion that looked like the mansion in Edgymond that I stumbled back into the mansion in Edgemond, the real deal.
Here's how it happened.
The photograph of the house and the image of Curtin faintly visible in the upstairs window made my brain short-circuit.
I should have been used to impossibilities by now, but the fact is you don't get used to them.
They always take you by surprise.
And when I saw the photograph, when I realized what it was, my thinking went all haywire.
Notions and images started frizzing and flashing behind my eyes.
Was Curtin here in the real world?
Was that house his house?
Did that mean the dragon was here too?
Was that the dragon's breath I felt on the back of my neck?
Were those the dragon's footsteps I heard coming up behind me?
I only just managed to close the page on the computer before I stumbled back from the cranny, then stumbled down the hall to the motel lobby.
The moribund hippie behind the reception desk glanced up from his magazine and blinked in dull puzzlement as he watched me stagger to the motel's front door.
Air, that's what I needed.
A breath of fresh cold evening air.
I threw the door open and rushed outside without thinking.
And yes, at the very last second, I saw where I was going, saw through the wavery veil of transition that I was about to re-enter the mansion ballroom, about to plunge from the ballroom into the stairwell beneath the trapdoor.
I gave a wail of anguish and tried to pull back, tried to stop myself.
But it was too late.
I was through.
The monster in the ballroom roared, that hideous, screechy roar that was a chorus of murdered voices.
It roared and lunged down at me from above.
But as I dropped through the opening into the stairwell, I snagged the underhandle of the trap door with my fingertips and yanked it down after me.
The door slammed shut above me, and the whole stairwell rumbled and shook as the beast smacked against it.
For a second, I was balanced precariously, one foot on the edge of a step and one in mid-air.
Then I slipped off the end and tumbled down.
The stairwell was dark, but not pitch black.
I caught a glimpse of a banister and grabbed at it wildly.
I held on as the force of my fall swung me around until my butt hit the stairs and my back slammed into the wall.
Oof, I said, as the air was knocked out of me.
I sat where I was, clinging to the banister above me.
The stairwell shuddered again as the beast stomped in a tantrum on the ceiling overhead.
His screaming, multi-voiced roar was muffled and seemed far away, but not half far enough.
The sound of it still made the air vibrate and turned my guts to water.
I sat there, gripping the banister, my eyes squeezed tight as I mentally babbled prayers to God.
After a moment or two, I heard the creature's footsteps retreating.
Boom, boom, boom.
The stairwell shook with every step until the sound grew dimmer and finally faded away.
Then the place was still.
I sagged where I sat.
I was gasping for breath.
I tried to collect my thoughts.
The mansion in the woods, the wizard at the window, the dragon, the maze of corridors, the deadline at dawn.
Time was running out.
I had to clear my mind.
I had to figure out what to do next.
My attention was drawn to something below me, down the stairs.
A glow, a tremulous glow, torchlight.
It danced on the surface of a spider-webbed wall.
I labored to my feet.
At least I was in a new place, I thought, away from the endless labyrinth of hallways and courtyards.
Maybe there was some hope now, some chance I could find an exit out of the mansion before morning came, and I was trapped here forever.
Gripping the banister, I went cautiously down the stairs.
It was a long descent.
The stairs went down and down and down some more.
The light below never seemed to grow closer.
I lost track of time.
I don't know how long it took me to reach the bottom.
Long enough, too long.
At last, the banister ended.
My foot landed on cobblestones.
I saw the torch in a sconce on a stone wall just over my head.
I reached up and lifted the torch free.
I held it in front of me, peering into the surrounding gloom.
For a moment, my heart lifted.
I was outside.
I had done it, so I thought.
I had gotten out of the house before morning came.
Hooray!
Right?
Well, maybe.
I waved the torch back and forth, trying to get a better look at where I was.
I saw a square in a small village.
Torches lit the foggy night.
I could make out the lines of old buildings, attached dwellings in a long row, a tavern with a hanging sign, a church in the distance, its steeple rising against the moon, its graveyard spread beneath the naked branches of an old tree.
I heard a noise and turned.
A horse and buggy emerged from the mist a few yards off to my right.
I heard the animal snort, its hooves clopping on the cobbles.
Then the carriage passed before me and disappeared into the fog again, off to my left.
I noticed other figures moving now.
A woman wearing a bonnet and a long cape carrying a basket.
A man in a jacket and a strange, squarish hat, swinging a cane.
A witchy crone gliding through the mist.
Slow, stately silhouettes, all of them, drifting past like ghosts or dreams.
The fog eddied and rolled around them.
I felt my hopes begin to dim.
I had a bad taste in my mouth.
Something was wrong here.
Another second or two, and I realized what it was.
No wind.
There was no wind at all, not a breath of it.
The fog was moving, swirling, dissipating, gathering, reaching with finger-like tendrils into the branches of trees.
But there was no wind to make it move, not even the sound of wind.
Somehow it did not feel as if I were really outdoors.
And there was something else.
The time, the era, I mean.
It wasn't right.
The dress, the buildings, the horse and buggy.
They didn't have the same medieval feel as the rest of Egemond and Galeana.
This looked more like a village in Puritan America.
What's more, it was a village I had somehow seen before.
How was that possible?
Before I could answer my own question, I heard a sound off to my right and turned.
Another horse and buggy emerged from the fog there.
I felt my throat close when I saw it.
I tried to swallow, but couldn't.
My mouth felt as if it were full of dust.
Because it wasn't another horse and buggy.
It was the same horse and buggy, the same one as before.
It made the same sounds.
It traced exactly the same path, out of the fog to my right and into the fog on my left.
And there were the same figures moving over the same ground on the streets.
The woman in the bonnet, the man with the cane, the witchy crone, and so on.
The house gets into your head.
It is your head.
Maybe I had not escaped Curtin's mansion after all.
Maybe this was just the wizard playing with my mind again, bringing images out of my mind, keeping me lost in the maze of my mind until he trapped me there forever.
I felt a touch of blackness inside me, a black touch of despair.
If the house was my own brain, how could I ever escape it?
Holding the torch up in front of me, I shuffled forward slowly into the center of the square.
The horse and buggy passed by me again.
The same figures drifted in and out of the same places in the fog.
Bonnet woman, cane man, witch.
The fog grew thicker in front of me.
It congealed into a white morass.
I felt the cold damp of it clinging to my skin as it surrounded me.
I could see nothing in front of me now, nothing at all anywhere.
I pushed on through the miasma, step by step.
Finally, I emerged on the other side.
And I was back in the same place, on the edge of the village again, the same edge, watching the same horse and buggy pass right to left again, watching the same people pass through the fog, the fog that stirred and swirled even though there was no wind.
I had become part of the loop.
Of course I had.
I was the maker of the maze.
Every place I went was just another dead end of my own design, another dead end that would keep me here until morning.
That black despair inside me.
It started to spread.
But no, I thought, despair was death.
I knew that.
I knew that.
I fought against it.
I thought to myself, come on.
Come on.
If the prison was in my own mind, then the key must be in there too, right?
If this was a story out of my imagination, then I could write the ending, couldn't I?
Just then, something happened.
Something moved, something new, not part of the loop.
I looked.
Someone was ducking through the door of the tavern across the square.
A boy.
Was it the same boy I had met in the cave and in the dining hall and in the ballroom too?
Maybe.
He had shown me the way before.
Maybe he would help me now.
I went after him, crossed the square again, heading for the tavern this time.
The fog began to gather around me as it had before.
I tried to clear it, to think it away.
This is my mind.
My story, I thought.
I thought.
Fight it.
Think of something to fight for, something you love.
I thought of working at my desk back in the old days, before I became desperate to end the rejections.
I thought of my sister Riley, gazing up at me as I told her stories.
I thought of Jane, sweet Jane, soft, ever-so-womanly Jane.
Dear God, let me live to see her again.
And yes, the mist began to grow thin, then thinner.
I broke through it.
I reached the tavern.
I tossed the torch down onto the cobblestones.
I pushed inside.
The tavern door creaked as it swung shut behind me.
It was gloomy in here, as gloomy as the square.
Instead of fog, it was the darkness itself that swirled and gathered all around me.
Unnatural shadows pooled and separated and seemed to drift and spiral, obscuring the shape of things.
Through that strange and moving darkness, I caught glimpses of the place in patches of dim light from hanging lanterns.
Not a tavern, but an old house.
Rickety stairs leading up into cobwebbed nothingness.
Portraits staring from the wall with living eyes.
Hallways running into crawling black shadow.
All empty.
No people anywhere.
No one at all.
I was alone.
My eyes panned across the space, and I gasped, startled.
Suddenly, there was a man.
He was standing stock still in the center of the room, tall and thin and stately, dressed in black.
He had a long face with solemn features, a widow's peak of dark hair.
Spooky.
The way he just appeared there suddenly.
The way he didn't move or speak at all.
The way the shadows seemed not just to wander over him, but to meld with him, their darkness blending with his darkness, so that his appearance shifted and morphed and then came clear again, a little different than before.
Was he a servant?
Was he a priest?
He had a morbid presence that sent a chill through me.
Welcome, he said.
His tone was low and hollow, eerie to the point of cliché.
He sounded like the guy in the horror movie who whispers something like, No one can hear you scream.
I gave a snort, trying not to show how freaked I was.
Who are you?
Are you even real? I asked him.
That got a small smile out of him.
Or maybe it was just the shadows moving around his mouth.
Everything is real, one way or another.
I made a face.
Deep, I said.
Real deep.
A bell chimed to my left.
I glanced toward the sound.
The shadows shifted and revealed an old grandfather clock against the wall.
The clock was just like the man, tall and thin and very still.
It chimed again, and then again, and then once more.
4 a.m., the man said.
Just a little more than two hours until the sun comes up.
He smiled again.
Twelve hours after that, dinner is served.
Right.
Dinner.
Dark Man's Smile00:10:40
You're trying to frighten me.
Is it working?
Oh yeah.
I could just imagine myself sitting in the grand dining hall with the others, trying to focus on the food, trying not to think about what would happen next, waiting for the dragon, sundown after sundown forever.
I think the dark servant priest man sensed my fear.
He smiled quickly with lots of teeth.
And as if the smile had sent a wind passing through the weird and gloomy room, the shadows swirled and coiled around him and obscured him.
I squinted hard into the darkness and thought I saw him in there, the same man, only changed, smaller, more wizened, red-eyed.
Curtain, I whispered, are you Curtain?
As if in answer, thoughts came into my mind unbidden, like words spoken, the sort of words no one ever wants to hear.
I don't love you anymore.
You aren't forgiven.
You too will die, words like those.
My mind was loud with them, and at the same time, images filled me.
The unspeakable images from the mural on the ballroom ceiling.
They filled all of me, as if they were painted now on the nether surface of my skin.
The words were spoken and the images crawled over my interior until I felt like a sack full of demon tarantulas, all whispers and legs and eyes.
He was some wizard, this curtain.
Some bad, bad guy.
I felt him smiling in the deeper darkness.
I shuddered, but I told myself, wait, don't give in to him.
After all, if he was here in front of me, if he was working on me as hard as this, I must be near the heart of the house.
Sure, if this were my story, the villain wouldn't show himself until the climax, would he?
I looked around at the room, what I could see of it.
I'm close, aren't I?
I said aloud.
That's why you're here.
I'm close to the exit.
You've done very well, I must admit, said the dark horror movie servant priest.
Most of my visitors never get this far.
They get lost in the corridors.
They run around the courtyards again and again, tracing the same path until the sun comes up, and then they're mine.
I bit my lip.
Well, good, I thought.
I'd broken the pattern at least, and if I'd gotten this far, I could get the rest of the way.
I felt so close to escaping.
Oh, you are, said the dark man, answering my thought.
You're very close indeed.
So close that it would really be a shame if the dawn should find you here.
I felt a flash of anger.
He felt what I was feeling.
He smiled again, more thinly this time, fewer molars.
His eyes seemed to catch flame light from somewhere.
Or maybe they just glowed red, the wizard's eyes.
Are you offering to show me the way out? I asked him.
He made the slightest gesture, a little tilt of the head.
It's possible.
An arrangement might be made.
I took a step toward him, hoping to see him more clearly, hoping to confront him face to face.
But I stopped short, my brain filled with words, my heart filled with images.
I couldn't bring myself to get any closer.
I was afraid.
Go on, I said, my voice strained.
What kind of arrangement are we talking about?
You'd have your freedom.
Just the word freedom made my pulse quicken.
My freedom.
I rolled it around on my tongue.
From this house, you mean?
This house, Edgmond, Galliana?
From all of it, Austin.
I can make it so you never have to return here ever again.
You can do that?
Oh, yes.
One corner of my mouth lifted.
It's amazing how tempting temptation is.
Not when you imagine it, but when it's really real, right there in front of you.
What wouldn't I have done to have this nightmare life be over?
This passing in and out of doors, one world into the next?
And what difference would it make if I never found Anastasius?
If Queen Elinda never reclaimed her throne, if Maud was never made whole and never found her lover again, what difference would it make to anything?
They weren't even real.
They couldn't be real.
You wouldn't even remember, said the dark man, still speaking into my thoughts.
You could do that, I said again, and he said again, Oh, yes.
I met his eyes and he met mine.
I tried to gauge the truth of his words.
I remembered the photo in the New York Times, the mansion in the Oregon woods, the shape of him, curtain, at the upstairs window.
Not for the first time it occurred to me.
Galliana, Edgumund, California, the real world.
It was all one story somehow.
What about, you know, Orozgo? I asked him.
What about my real life?
Could you fix that too?
Of course I can.
As I say, Austin, everything's real life, one way or another.
I nodded.
He didn't move, but the shadows passed over him, and they changed the look of him.
I could still feel the mural images crawling inside me like spiders, still hear the voices whispering.
It was awful.
I would have done anything to make it stop.
What do you want? I asked him.
What does it matter?
What do you want? I said, my voice rising.
You already know.
The book.
Another kingdom.
He didn't answer.
And the Eleven Lands, I said.
You won't even remember them.
You won't even know they're gone.
Yes, I thought.
What difference would it make?
This is some old quarrel, isn't it? I said impatiently.
Some old business between you and Anastasius.
Isn't that it?
It's an old conflict, yes, the dark man said.
The shadows pooled around him.
He changed into curtain and changed back again.
I was to Anastasius once what I am to Lord Iron now, his advisor, his friend, the power behind his throne.
Galliana was supposed to be my reward for my labors on his behalf, but he gave it to Elinde instead.
His bride to be.
He always was a fool for a pretty face.
Right.
So you waited for him to go off to war, I said.
Then you found an opening and set up your base here in Edgimond.
Then what?
When Elinda heard reports of what was happening here, she sent Lord Iron to me as her ambassador.
And you turned him against her.
He wanted power.
I gave it to him.
And Orozgo.
He wanted to write his name on a generation.
Was that you too?
The cowled man at the DACA?
He didn't answer.
He only said, You're running out of time, Austin.
Dawn is near.
Do you want your life back or not?
Your life, and more than your life.
A better life.
The life you've always wanted.
You could do that, I said.
It wasn't a question this time.
And he said once more, Oh yes.
The darkness kept swirling, whirling, not just around him, but around me too.
It was creeping in from every corner of the room, drifting toward me in tendrils, spreading in black pools.
It was growing thick and close around me, thick as the fog in the square outside, close as my own skin.
It threatened to swallow me.
It would swallow me if I stayed here, mesmerized like this, another second.
I had to fight it.
I had to move.
Think of what you love, I reminded myself, and I tried.
I thought of working at my computer again, back in the old days, back when I dreamed of success, dreamed of cameras flashing at me on the red carpet, of giving interviews and making millions and having too many women to count.
I shook my mind clear.
The darkness thickened.
I clenched my teeth.
I forced myself to push into it, push through, confront the dark man face to face.
He sank back from me, even deeper into shadow.
Damn you!
I shouted, and I lunged in after him, plunged into the shadows after him.
Deeper and deeper, into the darker and darker dark, I reached the lightless center of the obscurity.
And there was nothing there.
The man was gone.
I forced myself to keep moving, pushing shadows aside with my hands, wading through them.
They were so thick now I was suffocating in them.
I was blind.
Claustrophobia clutched me, squeezed me, but I kept moving, kept moving, and then, then I broke through.
I came out on the far side of the darkness, and I saw a door.
It was right there on the wooden wall in front of me.
I grew breathless with fresh hope.
Was this the way out?
Out of the maze?
Out of the mansion?
It had to be.
It had to.
I stepped toward it, my arm rising, my hand reaching for the iron ring that would pull it open.
The grandfather clock on the wall chimed once, 4:30.
Time was passing so fast, too fast.
It was almost morning.
My hand closed on the cold metal of the iron ring.
I marshaled my will.
I drew the heavy door open.
More darkness, more shadows.
I couldn't see beyond the threshold.
But if there was a chance, any chance that this was the way out, I had to take that chance on faith.
I stepped forward into the dark.
I caught a glimpse, a single glimpse through the shadows, of a small rustic bedroom.
Then I heard the door slam shut behind me.
I spun around at the noise.
I stared at the wall.
The door was gone.
It had vanished.
There was no exit.
I was trapped.
Next time on Another Kingdom.
Something fluttered against my thigh.
The phone in my pocket was buzzing.
I dug into my pocket quickly.
I worked the phone out, rising to my feet.
I answered eagerly.
Hello?
Hello?
No response.
Silence.
I stood in the chill night, listening.
I was afraid to speak, afraid of who might be on the other end of the line.
Then came the broken whisper: Jason?
Riley, I breathed.
Austin, she whispered, I'm in so much trouble.
They're all around me.
They're going to kill me next.
Don't let them get me.
Broken Whisper00:00:50
This has been Another Kingdom by Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
This episode, directed and produced by Jonathan Hay, produced by Mathis Glover.
Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate Producer, Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nicol.
Sound design and mix by Dylan Case.
Audio recorded by Mike Cormina.
Music composed by Adrian Seely.
Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Jessua Alvera.
DIT by Scott Key.
And our production assistant is Colton Haas.
Visual Supervisor, Jake Jackson.
Lead Illustrator, Rebecca Shapiro.
Illustrations by Anthony Clark.
Animations by Cole Holloway, John Dretzka, and Yi-Han Su.
Another Kingdom is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.