Austin flees Orozgo’s Oregon Woods mansion after escaping torture, memorizing names like Charles Lively and Gerald Hannity from the banquet hall plaques, then vanishes into Curtin’s maze in Ejemon—where he slays a dragon of devoured souls with a stolen dagger before dawn forces his exit through a drain. Collapsing in the mud, he rides his stallion toward Menaria, only to glimpse Anastasius’s talisman revealing a red-glowing white city, the emperor’s domain, now haunted by animated statues. The vision shatters into Slick’s modern interrogation room, blurring reality as the episode ends with unanswered threats and broken pottery. [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 received a phone call from his sister Riley, who said Orozgo's men were coming after her to kill her.
Austin then watched the film Horror Mansion, hoping to find a way out of Curtin's maze in Ejemon.
He saw a horrific scene in which a young woman is sacrificed by witches in a cellar.
He then went on to another mansion, the house in the Oregon Woods, where Orozgo holds his 730 Club meetings.
There, Slick and Moses found him, and Slick struck him down.
And now, Another Kingdom, Episode 8, performed by Michael Knowles.
The blow took me by surprise.
A left-fisted punch to the side of the head, quick and casual.
One second I was standing there with the guy grinning in my face, and the next I was sitting on my ass with the stars circling around me like in an old cartoon.
Slick stooped down and grabbed me by the front of my sweatshirt.
Up C-Daisy, punk, he said in a friendly tone.
He hauled me to my feet.
My legs were wobbly under me.
I felt cross-eyed.
Slick's slick face swam in front of me, out of focus.
I got him, Moe, he called.
And Moses called back from upstairs somewhere.
All right, Chief, on my way.
Still gripping my sweatshirt in his fist, Slick dragged me along the landing, back the way I'd come, my rubbery legs dancing under me, my head swimming.
He slung me through a door.
I stumbled over an open space until I banged into something, the edge of a table.
I reached out to grab whatever I could.
It turned out to be a chair.
I managed to sit down on it, my butt landing hard on the seat.
Toss me your backpack, said Slick, gesturing with his gun.
I was still dazed from being punched.
It took me a second to understand what he was saying.
During that second, Slick pulled the trigger.
The air exploded with the sound of the shot.
The room seemed to quake with it.
I fell to the carpet, uselessly covering my face with my two hands, screaming at him, Holy shit, holy shit, what are you doing?
Are you crazy?
I thought I must be wounded, but I didn't feel anything.
I looked down over myself, searching for holes, for blood.
There were no holes, no blood.
I wasn't in pain.
The next one goes in your kneecap, said Slick.
Now toss me the backpack, funny face.
In a panic, I fought to strip the backpack off my shoulders.
It took me two tries before I could control my hands well enough to throw it to him.
Still holding one arm in front of my face protectively, I peeked over it to see the mighty Moses strolling into the room.
Slick lifted the backpack off the carpet and tossed it to him.
Check that out, buddy, would you? he said.
Sure thing, Chief, Moses rumbled.
Still panting with fear, I grabbed hold of the chair seat and scrambled back onto it.
Instinctively, I was looking around me to see where the bullet had gone.
Scattered as my senses were, I began to get an idea of the room we were in.
It was a big room, a banquet hall, with round tables set out on geometric carpeting and chairs set around the tables.
There was a dais up front with a speaker's podium in the middle.
The wall on my left seemed to be a sort of tribute wall with the words 730 Club in enormous black letters at the top and wooden plaques with names on them in columns underneath.
That was all I saw at first.
Most of my attention was focused on Slick, Slick and his gun.
The dirty cop stood in a casual pose, still pointing the weapon at me.
He was waiting for Moses to finish rummaging through my pack.
When the black man was done, he tossed the pack to the carpet and held my phone out to his boss.
It's a burner, he said.
Nothing in it.
Slick took the phone and examined it.
Keeping one eye on me, he poked in a number, held the phone to his ear, and waited.
My temple was beginning to throb where the bastard had punched me.
I flinched and rubbed the sore spot, my gaze wandering back to the wall with the plaques on it.
My eyes went idly over the names.
A lot of names, a couple of hundred at least.
They were in alphabetical order, the plaques fitted into metal slots so they could be moved and rearranged.
I recognized some of the people, or sort of recognized them anyway.
They were names I'd heard of, but couldn't quite place.
Chester Candy, Ron K. Pierce, Jonathan Broughton.
Names like that, the sort of people you know are important, but you don't know exactly what they do.
Businessmen or something, I guessed.
I heard Slick speak into the phone.
Yeah, it's me, he said.
We got him.
What do you want us to do?
It came to me with a sickening shock that he was talking to Orozgo, the man himself.
I began to turn back to him, but my eyes stopped on one of the names on the plaques.
Charles Lively, my father.
Yeah, said Slick into the phone.
Sure.
Seeing my father's name on the wall made my gaze linger on the plaques one more second.
Something struck me about them now, something wrong, but with my head throbbing and my mind on my predicament, I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
Then I heard Slick say, You got it, boss.
Boss, Orozgo.
I was in big trouble here.
Now out of the corner of my eye, I saw Slick hand the phone back to Moses.
I didn't have time to think about the plaques anymore.
I faced the dirty cop.
He was slipping his gun into the shoulder holster inside his jacket.
He was coming toward me.
He was smiling again.
I did not think this was a good sign.
Hold on, I said, putting my hands out in front of me to keep him away.
Listen.
But he didn't hold on.
He didn't listen.
He just grabbed my sweatshirt in his two fists, hauled me up out of the chair, and kneaded me in the balls.
It was a solid, straight-on blow.
It made me feel as if the world had turned to vomit and I was drowning in it.
Slick tossed my body to the geometric carpet.
I lay there, curled up around a pulsing core of pain.
Slick pulled my chair to him, turned it around, and straddled it.
Hovering over me, he smiled down at where I lay groaning.
My boy, he said to me, this is not going to be a good day for you.
I already guessed that, I managed to gasp back.
I was clutching my belly, trying to breathe.
Slick laughed.
Funny man, he said to Moses.
You're a funny man, he said to me.
He's a smart ass if you ask me, Moses said.
Hear that? Slick asked me.
Moses thinks you're a smart ass.
Moses doesn't like smart asses.
He doesn't like smart asses, and he doesn't like dumbasses either, and he's not nice to people he doesn't like.
So that means if you're a smart ass with Moses, you're a dumbass.
You get it?
You're two things he doesn't like rolled into one pueling sack of shit curled up on the floor at my feet.
It's not a good situation for you.
Curled up pueling on the floor at Slick's feet, I looked up at Moses.
Your friend sure talks a lot, doesn't he?
That made Slick laugh out loud.
But it wasn't a pleasant, haha, let's all be friends laugh.
It was more the sort of sound that would have made my balls shrivel and turn to ice if my balls hadn't currently been in the process of swelling up and catching fire.
Slick stopped laughing.
Moses's Rule00:03:05
Here's what's going to happen now, punk, he said.
We're going to torture you and then we're going to kill you, okay?
I rolled my eyes back toward him where he sat smiling down at me.
His long, handsome face with its stylish, sandy coif went in and out of focus.
When I could see him, I could see he wasn't kidding.
He was smiling, yeah, but he wasn't kidding.
He was telling me exactly what he was going to do: torture and kill me.
Okay?
Not really okay, no, I said.
Well, too bad, because that's the story, he went on.
We're going to hurt you, and then we're going to shoot you, and then we're going to bury your body in the woods.
And that'll be the end of you.
No one will ever know what happened to you, and no one will care that much either.
You killed a man back at that motel, remember?
You're wanted by the police.
When you disappear, it'll be a mystery.
But since you're nobody, it won't matter.
A few people will wonder where you went, your friends, if you have any.
Maybe they'll talk about you from time to time.
Maybe not.
But they'll move on, sooner rather than later.
Then they'll have families and lives and forget all about you.
Eventually, they'll die too, and that'll be it.
It'll be as if you never even existed.
He made a little gesture with one hand.
Sad, but true.
Your life will have been brief and meaningless with a very painful and unhappy ending.
Shame, really.
The way I hear, it didn't have to be this way.
You could have had a good life.
Am I wrong?
A career, money, women, maybe a family someday?
But you made your choice, and this is the consequence.
So now you're going to suffer and die and be forgotten, and that's all there is.
Here, he scratched his nose thoughtfully.
You want my advice?
Your best bet is to despair.
I know.
A lot of people think that's a mistake.
You'll hear them say, you know, like, where there's life, there's hope, or never give up, shit like that.
But that doesn't really make any sense in your case, does it?
At this point, your life is really just a technicality.
Your life is going to consist entirely of me and Moses cutting pieces off you with the dull knife until you tell us what we want to know.
Under those circumstances, if you have hope, if you don't give up, you're an idiot, right?
It'll only make the suffering last longer.
I mean, Moses and me, we're not sadists.
Sure, we'll laugh while you scream, but that's only because you'll look funny to us writhing around on the floor and screaming.
But we're not doing it for some kind of squirrely pleasure.
We're not sickos or anything.
It's just our job.
So my advice is: abandon all hope.
Despair and tell us everything.
And then I'll put a bullet in you and we'll be done.
Take my advice, kid.
Despair and die.
It's your best bet, things being what they are.
Abandon All Hope00:06:13
So here's what I was thinking while this chatty psychopath yammered on above me.
Actually, I was thinking two things.
One, I was thinking that Slick was actually giving me pretty good advice here.
I mean, the odds were incredibly high that he was describing my situation perfectly.
Nothing left of my life but suffering and death.
And who knew what after that?
A martyr's crown?
A champagne brunch in heaven?
Well done, thou good and faithful servant?
That didn't seem likely somehow.
Don't get me wrong.
My mother and father had carefully raised me to believe that all religion was a manipulative lie, so it would not have surprised me one bit if this crazy killer put a bullet in my head, and the next thing I knew, I was standing before the throne of Jesus complete with angel choirs.
What struck me as unlikely was the congratulatory champagne brunch afterwards.
I didn't think so.
Not if I got taken out now before I'd had a chance to build that hospital I'd never dreamed about building, or give a beggar a crust of bread, or do any damn thing to demonstrate I had the potential to be more than a polluted Hollywood loser who would have sold his soul for an assistant executive producer credit on a Justice League sequel.
But number two, I was thinking, kiss my rosy ass, you stinking pile of corrupt psycho horse manure.
About Slick, I mean.
Because listen, if there was one thing I'd learned in the past few insane days of dragon fighting and thug dodging and clue hunting and mind-bending revelations, it was this.
My life was full of liars and all the liars lied.
My mom, my dad, my brother, even my kooky little sister in her kooky little way.
My memory, my heart, my sources of daily news, all of them had played me false in one sense or another.
I no longer knew who I was or what was true about me or what was true about anything, or how to find out what was true or how to know it was true when I found it.
But there seemed one thing of which I could be completely certain.
If anyone in any way involved with Serge Orozco told me something, the odds were spectacular that that something was completely false.
If Orozgo said he was trying to make the world a better place, I knew he had to be stopped.
If the New York Times said he was amazing, he was garbage.
If my mom and dad said there was no God, we were every one of us in big, big trouble come judgment day.
And if Slick, the corrupt cop, told me to despair and die, well then, kiss my rosy ass seemed the only appropriate response.
So here's the thing, Slick, I said.
You mind if I call you Slick?
My voice sounded like an unoiled hinge.
It took me three tries before I could uncurl my throbbing bot and sit up on the carpet under the chair-straddling Slick's watchful gaze.
I take your point, all right?
I mean, look at me.
Do I look like a hero to you?
I didn't think so.
When you tell me there's nothing but suffering and death in front of me, that I ought to just despair and die.
Hey, that's my philosophy of life on a good day.
So the whole torture thing doesn't work for me, and I'm happy to tell you anything you want to know.
Oh, said Slick mournfully, shaking his head.
I get the feeling you're about to say, but, aren't you?
Something like, but I don't know anything.
But I don't know anything, I insisted.
Wrong answer, punk.
You want to know where my sister is, right?
If I knew where my sister was, would I be here?
You have her phone number.
So do you.
Do you know where she is?
Slick went on smiling, but I got the feeling he wasn't smiling on the inside.
What about the book? He said.
Riley must have it, no?
Isn't that why you're looking for her?
That's why we're both here, right?
If we knew where she was or the book was, we'd be there.
But we're here instead.
Slick shook his head.
He stepped away from me and exchanged a whispered word with Moses.
And I, meanwhile, well, I can say with all modesty that during the small pause in the general conversation, I did something that surprised even myself with its cool-headed alertness, because it should go without saying at this point that I was in an absolute frenzy of panicking terror behind my hopefully snarky exterior.
I was full of silent shrieking at the prospect of having these guys cut pieces off me and preoccupied with frantic imaginings about which of my favorite pieces they'd start with, and so on.
But at the same time, I was using that trick I'd learned in Galeana, thinking past the fear, acting, blank-minded, past the fear.
And so while Slick was exchanging whispered words with Moses, I shifted my own glance up to the name plaques on the wall behind him.
Why?
Because it had occurred to me what was wrong with the names up there, what had been bothering me about them before.
My father had a plaque.
He was one of the 730 Club.
But not my mother, not my brother, which meant there was something special about 730 membership, that not all of Orozgo's minions got in, only some.
And that meant, if I could find the links among the names on that wall, it would tell me something about the club's nature, something I didn't already know.
And that, in turn, made me suspect that maybe this, this wall of names, was the information in plain sight that Jason Broadstreet had promised to send to Riley.
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I couldn't take a photo of the wall to refer to later, assuming there was a later, which by no means seemed certain.
But in the few seconds during which Slick and Moses were murmuring to each other, I did what I could.
I picked out a few names and tried to commit them to memory.
Chester Candy, Ron K. Pierce, Jonathan Broughton, the ones I'd seen before.
And also Susan Roth, Gerald Hannity.
And that was it.
Time was up.
Because Slick was coming toward me again, smiling at me again, and I knew what he was going to say.
Acolytes and Altar Table00:15:35
In fact, I was counting on him saying it.
And he did say it.
He said, sorry, punk, not good enough.
Maybe you're telling the truth and maybe you're not.
But we won't be sure until we butcher you to the point where if you did know where the book was, you'd tell us.
Then, when I'm tossing bits of you over my shoulder, and what's left of you looks like something the average man would barbecue, if you still tell me you don't know anything, well, I promise to shoot you before we bury you.
Which isn't much, I know, but it's the best I can do.
He gestured with his head at Moses.
Take him down to the cellar.
That was the part I was counting on.
The take him down to the cellar part.
I'd figured they'd do something like that before they really got started on me.
It only made sense, right?
They weren't going to cut me up right here and dump a gallon and a half of blood on the geometric carpet of the 730 banquet hall, were they?
Of course not.
They'd have to take me into the cellar or out into the woods, or somewhere, which meant they'd have to take me to the stairs.
Which is what they did.
With a couple of giant steps, Moses was standing over me.
He reached down and grabbed me under the arm with a hand the size of, I don't know, a really big hand.
I'm talking an enormous hand with enormous strength in it.
He hauled me to my feet so easily I might have been a ragdoll or just a rag.
He practically carried me to the door like that, one-handed.
My toes barely touched the floor as I scurried to keep up with him.
Out into the hall we went, and then along the corridor toward the stairs.
But then came the part I was waiting for, because before we got to the stairs, we passed that door again, the door through which I'd seen the portal back into the wizard's house in Edgemont, the stairs to the mansion cellar shimmering behind the veil of transition, that pathway that I knew would lead me down to my own sacrifice, a la horror mansion.
So that was my choice.
Let Moses carry me down to the cellar to be cut to pieces, or try a fast break back into Edimond, where, okay, yes, I would likewise be carried down to the cellar and cut to pieces.
Still, I chose B for obvious reasons.
Obvious to me anyway.
And even so, I wasn't totally sure I was going to be able to yank myself out of this Titan's iron grip.
I only had a second to figure it out, that one second in which he escorted me past the magic door.
The way I figured it was this.
There are small men in this world, and there are big men, and then there are men the size of Moses.
But they all have needs.
I lifted my foot and planted the side of my sneaker into the side of Moses' kneecap with all the force I could muster.
Did he topple over?
Hell no.
It was like kicking the Empire State Building, if the Empire State Building had needs.
Moses did have them, and his knee did buckle under the blow just enough to make him lose his balance and lose his grip on my arm.
Not entirely, but a little.
That was my moment.
I snatched myself from his hand using all the strength I had.
And even as he spun toward me, even as his hand went into his jacket to draw his gun, I hurled myself through the door, through the veil, through the portal into another kingdom.
And that is how I narrowly avoided certain death in Orozgo's mansion and escaped into certain death in the mansion of the wizard.
Suddenly, I was standing on a descending stone staircase, holding a lantern in my hand.
Behind me was the little bedroom where I'd found the dead bird, just like the blonde in the movie had.
When I looked back over my shoulder, I could see it there, the bedroom, not the 730 house from which I'd just come.
For some reason, I could only see through the portals in one direction, not the way back.
I faced forward, trying to reorient myself, trying to drag my mind out of Orozgo's mansion of horrors and back here into this one.
There was no time to screw around about it.
I could hear the church bell tolling in the misty distance.
Time was speeding up in this crazy house.
Dawn was coming full speed.
Dawn and torment eternal.
I drew a deep breath, focused.
Below me, down the stairs, there was darkness.
Up out of that darkness came the distant sound of chanting, a soul-chilling sound full of cultic evil.
I knew what was waiting for me down there.
I had seen the movie.
Demonic witches and their acolytes were preparing for the victim they would sacrifice on their stone altar table.
Waiting, that is to say, for me.
But there was no going back.
I braced myself.
The light from my lantern was unsteady and weak, a dancing candle flame.
It cast weird shadows on the dripping stone walls.
Just like in the movie, I started down the steps, my heart pounding.
Why had I returned to this place, this place where time was running out, where the penalty for not escaping the mansion maze by dawn was an eternity of suffering, a forever trapped in this house of horror, lost in a dream of sick surrender, devoured by the dragon every nightfall?
Why had I decided to take my chances with Curtin's deadly labyrinth rather than try to escape Slick and Moses back in the Oregon woods?
I'll tell you why.
It was because whatever was going to happen with Slick and Moses hadn't happened yet.
It was the future, unknowable, random, all surprises.
But this, what was happening right here, right now, Curtin had manufactured this out of images he found in my own mind.
Images I had buried there when I had buried my memories of Horror Mansion, when I had made myself forget the movie with which my father had tortured Baby Riley, with which he had taught her to keep her mouth shut, with which he had driven her nearly insane.
But the memory was buried no longer.
I had seen the movie.
I knew what happened next, which gave me at least a chance, some chance, to stop it before it happened again, to stop it and to get away.
So down, down, down I went into the dark, just like in the movie.
Down to the bottom of the stairs and into the long corridor.
The deep, rhythmic, demonic chanting was louder here.
The lantern glow threw its dim and flickering shadows on the floor and walls.
Just like the blonde in the movie, I crept slowly along the dark hall.
Just like in the movie, I passed statues and a gargoyle set in niches along the way.
And just like in the movie, I could feel the cowled acolytes detach themselves from the shadows behind me.
I could feel them creeping after me, ready to grab me and force me to the altar table.
And now, just like the blonde in the movie, I spotted torchlight up ahead.
I knew I was approaching the altar room where my sacrifice would take place.
And just like that idiot movie blonde, that blonde as stupid as any character who ever walked down a dark cellar hall in a cheap horror film, I kept going.
Going slowly, slowly toward the chanting, toward the torchlight, toward the altar table where I would die.
At last it happened, just like in the movie.
The acolytes surged out of the darkness.
Two of them grabbed me, one by each arm.
Even though I was expecting them, they took hold of me with such sudden violence, I dropped the lantern.
It crashed dully on the stone floor and went dark.
Everything now was lit by the torches.
Every face was yellow with their light.
Every eyeball rolled white in the glow of them.
Every shadow spread like a dancing stain, enormous on the walls.
The acolytes carried me through the doorway.
The altar table rose large before me.
The cowled figures surrounding it went on chanting their eldritch chant.
All of it just like in the movie.
Except for what happened next.
When the circle of cowled, enchanting figures parted from around the altar to receive my body, it wasn't the chief witch standing there waiting at the head of the table.
It was the dragon.
I had not been expecting that.
The sudden sight of that hideous creature rising up from the floor like a mushroom cloud sent a hot flood of terror through my core.
The beast reared up, huge and strobic in the flickering flame light.
The corpses that formed its body flailed and pulsed along its flanks.
The faces of the devoured dead, faces that had become its flesh, stared at me open-mouthed.
Its roar, that shrieking roar that was a hundred murdered voices, filled the little chamber, deafening.
The sound paralyzed my mind.
For a full second, I couldn't even struggle.
I could only gape at the thing, helpless, as the chanting acolytes rushed me forward, carried me to the altar table, offered me up to the dragon.
That moment just then, that moment before they lay me helpless on the stone beneath the beast just as they had laid the movie blonde helpless beneath the witch's long dagger.
That moment was a nightmare that had lived secretly inside me forever.
The nightmare of what my father was, of what he had done to my sister, of what my sister knew that I did not want to know.
And now the scene had come to life, just like in the movie.
Except the victim was me.
Except the chief witch was the dragon.
And except for this, I had the dagger.
Oh yes.
Oh yes, I'd seen this movie, remember?
I'd seen where the long dagger was hidden along the corridor, clutched in the gargoyle's claws.
I had taken it for myself as I passed by and quietly slipped it into my waistband.
The witch's acolytes hadn't seemed to notice.
Maybe they felt the dagger wasn't necessary because they were offering me up to the beast instead of the chief witch.
But in any case, it seemed they hadn't thought about the long dagger at all.
But I had thought about it.
And I hadn't come to this sacrifice a helpless victim like the movie blonde.
I had come armed with a savage blade.
The acolytes had hold of me by the upper arms, their fingers digging hard into my armpits, hoisting me up on my toes.
But my lower arms were free.
I could bend my elbows.
I moved my right hand to my waist.
I gripped the hilt of the long dagger.
The acolytes forced me toward the altar.
But as they did, I drew the blade.
I twisted my arm and jabbed the gleaming point back over my right shoulder.
I felt it sink into soft flesh.
I heard the acolytes' high-pitched scream.
He released his hold on me.
Now, with one arm free, I spun to the left and stabbed again.
This time I saw the knife go in, straight in beneath the witch's cowl to lance the throat of this chanting dickhead who was trying to serve me up as dragon food.
He gagged and reeled away, and I was free.
Startled and confused, the acolytes and witches backed away from me, their torch-lit eyes wide and gleaming beneath their cowls.
I didn't wait for them to recover their senses.
I had only one chance, one second and one chance, and I seized them both.
I faced forward.
The stone altar table stood about waist high to me.
I grabbed the edge of it with my free hand.
Juiced by a spurt of adrenaline and fear, I found the power to step high and lift my whole body up over the side in a single swift motion.
I vaulted up onto the tabletop.
The dragon saw me coming.
The beast filled the room with its hideous roar.
I stood beneath him on the altar table, the long dagger gripped in my fist.
The beast reared up high above me, ready to swoop down and rip me in half between its shark-toothed jaws.
It swooped.
Its open mouth came toward me, already starting to snap shut like a bear trap.
I swung the knife in a furious roundhouse, turning my body to the side as I did.
The dragon's mouth shot past me, missed me.
The dagger blade sank hilt-deep into the creature's enormous eye.
The dragon screamed again, convulsing backwards in his agony.
I felt the hot breath of the beast blow over me, full of death.
I managed to hold on to the dagger hilt, and the blade came free as the wounded beast pulled away.
It swiped at me reflexively with its tremendous bayonet-like claws.
I saw the movement only at the last second and managed to leap back to the very edge of the altar table.
I teetered there about to fall, frantically pinwheeling my arms for balance.
Then I found my balance as the wind of the sweeping claw swept by, and I rushed forward again, stabbing again.
The blade went into a dead man's face, a gaping face that formed part of the dragon's neck.
A flood of green black blood gouted out over me, stinking of human terror.
I wrenched the dagger free and stabbed again, and then again, as the beast screamed and screamed, and its mucus-like blood spewed everywhere, the acolytes in the shadows below me were also screaming, reeling and screaming and grabbing themselves as if I were stabbing them too, not just the beast.
And I, I was wild now, senseless with fear and fury.
I kept stabbing and stabbing at the dragon, the blade chucking deep into its fleshly hide again and again.
I was awash in goo and gore, but I just kept stabbing, and the dragon's shrieks became grunts and growls and agonized mutterings.
The great beast wobbled.
Its titanic form began to sink down toward the floor.
Then it collapsed.
Its head, a head formed of other heads and various body parts, smacked against the altar at my feet.
I stabbed down at it, roaring madly, stabbed and stabbed.
And then, still groaning in a dozen dead voices, the dragon slid off the table and the whole room shook as its body hit the floor.
Gasping and sobbing, I spun around, expecting a dozen witches and cowled madmen to rush forward and launch themselves at me.
But that's not what happened.
What happened was this.
As I stood on the tabletop, dripping and rancid, the dripping, rancid dagger still gripped in my gory hand, I saw the cowled figures around me begin to sink away.
Their faces grew soft and dark and shriveled, and then caved in to the center of their cowls.
Their eyes dripped down over the running flesh of their cheeks, and the robes they'd been wearing fluttered to the floor, empty now, mere cloth.
Nearly senseless, half deranged, I stared around me, then gaped down over the edge of the altar table.
I saw the dragon lying on its side on the floor, breathing huge, hoarse and dying breaths.
It seemed to be deflating as I watched.
The substance of it bleeding out across the floorstones, the shape of it collapsing into its own puddled carnage.
And then, then as the beast liquefied, a gust of shadows blew up out of it, a supernatural wind composed of human shapes.
The tangled smoke of it rose past me, past my eyes so that I saw within the haze the spirits of people that the creature had devoured.
Just shady glimpses of them, the diners from the banquet hall, and the women from the pit, and more.
Rising from the dead creature's final breath, specter-like, dissipating into the torch-lit cellar air to enter what next dimension I just can't tell you.
I just don't know.
The dragon died and shriveled away.
The spirits of its dead rose free.
The witches and the acolytes melted into the cobblestones, all of them connected, I suddenly realized.
All of them part of one half-remembered horror in one miserable mind, my own.
I had defeated them, as I only vaguely understood then, by simple virtue of the fact that I had remembered them at last, confronted them at last, fought them face to face at long last.
I don't know how long I would have stood there on that table, how long I would have stood there staring, wet with slaughter, dripping with death.
Escape Through Fog00:06:09
But now, a new sound vibrated through the fog of my stunned consciousness.
A slow, mellow bell tolling somewhere far away.
It was tolling the time, the passing time, the time till dawn.
I blinked and panned my shock stare across the altar room.
Somehow I had to get out of here before the sun rose.
I had to escape the labyrinth.
And now, at last, I knew how.
Slowly, grimacing at my own stench, I climbed down off the altar table.
I looked along the floor and there it was, just as I remembered.
The gutter.
The gutter where the blonde's blood had run out of horror mansion in the movie, run out through the walls into the fog outside.
My gaze traced the gutter's path.
And yes, sure enough, I spotted a round hole in the base of the cellar wall, a drain that would let the blood of sacrifice flow out of the cellar, just like in the movie.
Would the drain get me out of here?
Would it finally get me free of the seemingly endless mazes of this house?
I didn't know, but I was going to find out.
I walked along the gutter to the wall, then lay down upon the stones.
I worked my hand and arm through the opening, and with a tremor of half-admitted hope, I felt rain.
I felt cold air on my palm and the refreshing patter of the misty rain.
I worked my head through the hole and then the other arm.
I was still clutching the long dagger in one hand, so I drove its point down deep into the soft earth.
Using the hilt for a handle, I dragged my torso and my legs out of the drain.
I crawled a few more feet across the sodden ground and then collapsed in the mud.
Was I out?
Was I out of the labyrinth?
I used my last drop of strength to lift my head and look around me.
My vision blurred as my eyes filled with tears.
I could see across the rain-washed lawn to the tree line of the forest, the children's forest where the magician Natani, trapped in the water of the pond, was weeping for his Maud.
The first light of day was seeping through the curtain of the rainfall and causing the autumn trees to emerge from their own silhouettes.
I had done it.
I was free.
Free of Curtin's horror mansion.
The sun had not yet risen, and I had escaped the maze.
I collapsed onto the earth again, weeping with exhaustion, laughing with relief.
I lay there limp, my cheek pressed into the wet dirt.
I let the rain wash the stinking dragon gore off my face, off my body.
I lay there a long time.
The rain slowed, then ceased.
A line of yellow light inched across the land from the east, then swiftly shot out over me, a wedge of warmth.
The touch of dawn seemed to infuse me with new life.
I stirred.
I pushed myself to my knees.
I left the dagger sticking in the ground and climbed to my feet.
My tired body slumped as I stood watching the swaying trees of the forest blooming out of the dark of night.
Their last autumn leaves turned red and yellow and green as the daylight washed over them.
I drew a deep breath of the clean air.
Finally I turned, turned full around to face the mansion.
Like a gladiator who had just won a duel, I wanted to confront the opponent I had defeated.
But to my dull-headed astonishment, the mansion was gone.
There was nothing there at all but the slowly drifting mist, the dissipating mist with the sun shining through it.
Beyond that, I could just make out a great expanse of blue grass on rolling hills.
Where was Horror Mansion?
Had it ever really been there?
Was everything I'd seen a fantasy cooked up by the wizard?
Or was even the wizard, the wizard and Edumond and Galeana and all of it, a massive hallucination projected out of a brain gone bad.
I looked down at myself.
The last of the green dragon gore was still visible on my arms and my tunic, dripping down in globs.
The stench of it was still there on the air around me.
It must have been real, I thought.
It must have been.
I heard a sound, a snort.
I lifted my head.
A sheet of mist blew coldly over me.
It coiled and somersaulted and split apart.
And there stood my black stallion, snorting again, lifting its head as if to greet me.
I smiled weakly.
How the hell do you do that? I asked him.
The horse came toward me in a slow, slouching walk, its head hung down, as if it was abashed at having deserted me this long.
When it reached me, I put my hand on the side of its head, my nose to his nose.
How good it was to see his friendly horse face, to feel his soft hair against me.
I whispered in the stallion's ear.
Let's blow this fun house.
The stallion snorted and nodded.
I gripped his saddle.
I lifted my foot into the stirrup and swung up into the seat in one graceful motion, if I do say so myself.
I snapped the reins and clicked my tongue, and off we rode over the empty land, over the open space where Horror Mansion used to be.
I followed the rising sun.
The mist slowly dissolved and vanished.
The sky turned blue.
I was leaving Edumond.
I could feel it.
I was entering another of the Eleven Lands, a country free of the wizard's influence.
The air was balmy here.
The birds sang merrily in the trees.
My heart grew full as I passed a clutch of farmhands working in an orchard.
They were young men and women, real girls and real boys, nothing pretend about them.
All of them laughing and flirting together, the girls blushing, teasing, the boys braggy and bold.
One particularly pretty young redhead was reaching up into the branches and then bending over her basket in a way that showed off her fine, slim figure.
I watched her as I came near, feeling the sweet warmth of natural desire flowing through me, bringing me back to life after my long imprisonment.
The girl glanced over her shoulder and caught me watching her.
She laughed a taunting laugh.
Life, I thought gladly.
Sexy life.
Excuse me, my friends, I called out to them.
Statues Come Alive00:14:53
What country is this?
Why, it's Menaria, one lad called back.
He seemed surprised I didn't know.
They all seemed surprised.
One of the girls called to me.
Where are you coming from?
Edgemond, I said.
Now all of them gaped.
The first lad shook his head.
No one comes out of Edemond any more, he said.
I smiled.
I did, I told him, and I rode on.
The blue fields stretched out around me.
Thoughts crowded into my mind.
Questions.
What had I learned?
Where was I headed?
Why had I been chosen for this quest?
I reached the banks of a river.
I dismounted.
I let the stallion drink and I drank.
I swam in the water fully clothed.
I washed the last of the gore off me.
I stood in the gentle current and lifted my face to the noon sun.
More questions, so many.
Why had my father terrorized Riley?
What was the meaning of the names on the wall of the banquet hall in the Oregon mansion?
Was that really curtain I had seen in the mansion's window?
How could I escape the mansion there as I had escaped it here?
I remounted.
I rode on.
I tried to figure out how I had gotten here.
I tried to construct a new narrative of my life, including what I'd learned.
How could I even begin to know myself unless I could understand my own past?
We live in time.
Our lives are like stories, day after day, like page after page, all connected, beginning to end.
How can you make sense of any one moment without all the moments that make it fully what it is?
As I rode, as I tried to think about my past, my hand went reflexively to my throat.
I was trying to touch the locket there, Bethere's locket, to see if it would take me back into my memories again.
But of course, I wasn't wearing the locket now, not here in this other kingdom.
I was wearing the talisman instead, the talisman of Anastasius.
And now, when I touched it, for the first time, it pulsed with warmth too, just as the locket had.
Just like the locket, it seemed to sweep my mind off elsewhere, but not into a memory, into a vision.
I saw a city, a white city turning red in the light of the sinking sun.
I saw it as clearly as if it had actually appeared on the landscape before me.
I remembered Maud's instructions to me.
Follow the rising sun across the eleven lands, and the emperor will call you to him.
That's what this was.
This image coming into my imagination through the living heat of the talisman, this visionary city.
It was the call of Anastasius.
The Emperor was drawing me to him.
Following the vision, I turned my horse to the right.
A high tour blocked my view.
We rode around the edges of it, a long journey.
We emerged on the far side as afternoon began to draw into evening.
I approached the edge of a cliff, reached it, looked over, and I felt a thrill.
There it was, the white city, the very city of my vision, a city of startling stone rising up out of the level grasslands.
Towers and pinnacles, square apartment blocks, and columned temples and great domes, all of it made of white granite and marble, all of it beginning to glow red as the sun went down behind my left shoulder and its yellow light deepened to crimson.
My stallion and I rode along the cliff until we found a switchback passage down.
Then we descended.
There was still some daylight left when I came to the edge of the city.
By then I had grown wary of the place.
Something was wrong here.
Nothing was moving.
Or, that is, the place was so still that everything that did move drew my eye.
Whenever I turned towards some sudden motion, I saw, what?
A squirrel, a bird, a bizarre reptile, an alien creature shaped like a mantis, but furry and mammalian.
All kinds of living things, in other words, but no women, no men.
This was weird, but it soon got weirder.
I approached the city limits.
There were no walls, just a border formed by adjacent buildings.
Where the buildings parted, streets ran into the heart of town.
The city's stone had lost its red glow as dusk grew deeper.
Its walls and columns and spires and domes were all turning gray.
It was getting dark, and it was even darker once I rode away as and the buildings rose around me, blocking the sunset light.
In fact, it was so shadowy here that I traveled a good few yards before I noticed the statues.
The first one really gave me a start.
I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye and gasped aloud and spun in the saddle to look at it.
It was a man carved in marble.
A small, tubby bald man.
A strangely commonplace subject for a sculpture.
It looked as if the artist had caught him in a random motion rather than a pose.
He had one hand resting on his belly, a self-satisfied smile on his round face.
He was dressed like an ancient Roman, in a loose robe that draped his body in elaborate folds.
Even as I recovered from my first surprise, a pigeon-like bird, startled by my passing, shot out of a building loft.
I gasped again and turned toward the movement.
And there was another statue.
No, two more.
No, three.
Three marble women in marble robes standing in the street, their baskets on their shoulders.
Two of them stood face to face as if in conversation, and the third was just turning away from them, as if she'd said goodbye and was heading home.
I went past them down the road.
I turned a corner and approached a marble arch.
Its massive pediment was carved with images of a military triumph, a cavalry parade.
At the center of the march was the figure of a king riding the back of something like a rhinoceros.
The broad and bearded rider wore a crown and held his sword upright like a scepter.
Below, on the frieze, was what must have been a caption, symbols or runes etched into the stone.
Obviously, I couldn't read the words.
And yet, by some strange magic, as I looked up at them, I began to understand their meaning.
The triumph of King Cambitus, the not altogether wise.
Funny title for a king.
Another time, it would have made me laugh.
I did smile a little, but almost at once I noticed the deepening shadows on the pavement, the last daylight fading there.
This city, so silent, so still, and growing so dark, was becoming so eerie now it was oppressive.
I passed under the arch and came out into a paved open square, surrounded by massive, official-looking buildings.
There was a domed and church-like structure to my right, an arcade with a long colonnade to my left.
Straight ahead of me, a tremendous complex of buildings rose against the dusk sky.
There were at least half a dozen columned entrances, just as many zigzagging stairways and tiers of porticoed temples, their pediments surrounded and crowned with monuments to kings.
Below, in the square all around me, there were statues, statues everywhere, statues of men and women both.
Everyday figures, all of them, who seemed to have been carved in a moment of everyday action, talking, walking, buying, selling.
I crossed the square, weaving among the statues, moving toward the complex.
That seemed the center of things.
If there was anyone alive here, I figured that's where he would be.
My stallion's hooves clipped-clopped on the cobblestones.
The sound echoed in the uncanny silence all around me.
I found a trough of water at the base of a flight of steps.
I left the horse there to drink.
I climbed the stairs, a long climb, two long flights, the second zigging right off the first.
There were two guards at the top, or, I mean to say, statues of guards, statues of soldiers standing at attention, holding their spears.
I turned to sidle between them.
Then I went along a high arcade past more statues of more soldiers.
I passed through covered rooms, walled with marble, decorated with frescoes that were hard to see in the purple dusk.
There were statues of noblemen and noble women here.
And more soldiers, more statues of soldiers carved in the act of marching past or standing guard.
I climbed the stairs.
At the top, in the deepening shadows of evening, I found myself in a rose-marble courtyard.
Some of the statues here were different from the rest.
They were larger than life and set on pedestals.
It was hard to make them out in the dark, but I saw a mounted horseman, a muscle man lifting a nude woman into the air, and a mythic half-human beast among some others.
Near the base of these larger statues, there were the usual smaller ones, life-sized, noble men and noble women, and lots of soldiers.
Finally, on the far end of the courtyard, I saw an enormous marble doorway that led into a throne room.
I could see this pretty clearly because there were braziers in there, iron dishes on iron stands, loaded with hot coals that gave off a red glow.
The glow illuminated the marble throne at the center of the place.
A little group of men in togas, statues of men in togas, clustered at the base of the throne.
And on the throne there sat the king, the statue of the king, the same king, it looked to me, as was carved on the arch.
King Cambitis, the not altogether wise, broad-shouldered, barreled-chested, bearded with a great beard.
And there was something strange about his face, strangely familiar.
I approached him, trying to remember where I'd seen those patrician features before.
It was growing darker by the second now.
The coals in the brazier seemed to burn brighter, and still everything, all the statues, the whole city, was absolutely silent, absolutely motionless.
I felt utterly alone.
I walked across the court among the great statues and the smaller ones.
I walked toward the final doorway, toward the glowing braziers, toward the throne.
And here's where things started to get crazy.
As I stepped close to the throne room door, a strange haze appeared, like a white curtain over the archway.
Through the haze, I could see not the throne room, but the mansion in Oregon.
I could make out the side hall I had just flung myself into after kicking Moses in the knee.
I could see the design on the red runner and the vase standing on the tall wooden pedestal to my left.
It was a veil of transition.
For the first time, for some reason, I could see from this world into the other, into real life.
If I stepped through that veil, I would be transported back to Oregon.
Moses would be right behind me, slick too, probably, both men drawing their guns, ready to shoot me down.
I stopped on the threshold, as motionless as the statues.
Looking at the scene through the veil, I thought maybe, maybe there was a way I could fight back against these thugs as I had fought the dragon in the mansion.
It was a long shot, but it might work.
Then I thought, no, there was absolutely no chance I was going to do anything as stupid as walking through that veil.
Then that's what I did.
Here's why.
I glanced behind me, back over the court.
I saw the life-sized statues of soldiers and the larger-than-life statues of mounted men and hybrid beasts all sinking into the shadows of night.
Beyond them, I could see out through the courtyard entrance, out over the stairs, out over the great square below, to the sky above the city.
I could see right out to the horizon where the first faint stars were appearing in the inky blue.
And then a bright spot, a gleam of light, appeared down low, right at the place where the sky touched the ground.
The gleam grew bigger, brighter, and I realized it was the moon, the rising moon, a full moon.
Even as the daylight finally died, the moon's glow spread like a pale silver mist over the city.
Someone coughed.
I stiffened.
I froze.
I thought, what was that?
Someone else cleared his throat.
I saw something move at the corner of my eye.
I turned to see what it was.
And then, suddenly, out of the silent city, someone let out a loud shout.
Intruder!
Assassin!
Get him!
With that, several of the white marble soldiers suddenly flushed with color and lowered their spears at me.
Then several more did the same.
I stared at them, stupid-faced, my mouth hanging open.
I must have looked like the simplest simpleton in Simpletown.
Because now, as the moonlight touched them, the statues began to come to life.
Not the big statues, just the life-sized ones.
The lunar glow seemed to paint their stone with humanity, and motion rose up out of the core of them to touch the suddenly fleshly surface.
The noblemen and noble women blinked into consciousness, turning toward me in surprise.
And the soldiers, so many soldiers with so many spears and so many swords, with bronze helmets on their heads and breastplates on their torsos, and leather greaves on their legs.
And did I mention the spears and swords?
There were an awful lot of spears and swords, and the soldiers began to move into action.
Now one guy, a particularly big and burly centurion, lifted his sword high in the air.
His mouth twisted with warrior rage under his black, burly beard.
His eyes grew hot and wild.
Get him, he shouted again.
He's heading for the throne room.
It took me another stupid second to realize.
He was talking about me.
As one, the soldiers rushed together to form a phalanx.
They lowered their spear points at me.
They lifted their swords.
I was suddenly looking at a wedge of sharp steel, blades flashing moonlit out of the shadows.
The courtyard, shrouded with eerie silence just a second ago, was suddenly ringing with battle cries.
Get him!
Assassin!
Protect the king!
I lifted my hands up in surrender.
Hold on! I shouted.
I'm not an assassin.
I'm a story analyst.
They charged.
There seemed no point reaching for my magic sword.
There were just too many of them.
Nothing less than a blast from a machine gun would even slow them down.
The floor beneath me shook with their thundering footsteps.
My vision filled with their furious faces and their deadly blades.
I knew what I had to do.
Next time on Another Kingdom.
A second later, Slick was there beside him.
He'd come running at the sound of trouble.
He had his own gun drawn in one hand and my backpack dangling from his other.
When he saw me crouched against the wall, surrounded by pottery shards, he bared his teeth in a grin of raw anger.
He tossed the backpack to the floor but held onto his gun.
Stepping forward, he reached down and grabbed the front of my sweatshirt in his fist.
Slick By His Side00:00:51
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 John Dretzka, Cole Holloway, and Yi Han Su.
Another Kingdom is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing Production.