Austin Lively, trapped between Hollywood’s rot and the Eleven Lands’ chaos, uncovers Solomon Vine’s empire of abuse after finding Jane Jane away’s bloodied corpse—only to watch corrupt cops arrest her while reporters swarm. A hidden locket from Lady Bethyray reveals his role as a portal between worlds, forcing him to confront his family’s complicity in framing Jane for murder. Clutching Elinda Evermore’s legacy, he battles Yetis in a blizzard, realizing the fantasy realm’s corruption mirrors his own life—until a colossal beast drags him toward an unknown fate at "center base." The episode collapses illusion and reality into one desperate choice: escape or fight the monsters in both worlds. [Automatically generated summary]
The following contains strong language and adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.
There you are.
Isn't it time we got to work?
Sometimes an artist's work is sitting still and contemplating the eternal truths.
Oh, is that what you were doing?
No, I was goofing off.
Should I remind you the fate of the world depends on your finishing this?
Has anyone ever told you you're beautiful when you're annoying?
Only you.
Come on, I can take dictation out here.
All right.
Where were we?
Let's see.
The foolish but strangely lovable Austin Lively had just learned that the glamorous world of Solomon Vine centered on a corrupt core of sexual abuse when the lovely but also lovely Jane Jane away called him for help.
Austin rushed, rather gallantly, I think, to her side to find her covered in the blood of her murdered movie star boss, Alexis Merriwether.
Jane was then arrested for murder by Arozco's corrupt coppers, Graciano and Lord.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember every minute of that day.
It was long after midnight when I made it back to my apartment.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Episode 4, Into the Storm.
It was long after midnight when I made it back to my apartment.
I went to the police station first to try to see Jane, to try to help her, but there was no chance of it.
By the time I got there, the station house was surrounded by reporters, besieged by a giant, pulsing mass of them, like some kind of immense single-cell organism with cameras and microphones instead of pods.
They blocked the doors.
I couldn't get around them.
And as I retreated, the veil between me and my memory finally began to shred and dissipate like mist at morning.
I began to understand dimly what was happening, to sense how bad this was.
How bad it was, I mean, for Jane.
They're all in on it, Auss.
Heads of TV stations and newspapers.
They make movies and write articles.
Into the Shredding Veil00:15:41
Yes.
Put upon underling cracks and stabs down spiraling movie star.
That would be the way they told it.
In the news, in books, in movies, documentaries, TV shows, everywhere, for years.
And people would believe them, too.
Who wouldn't?
When every reporter, every movie maker, every professor and writer and sage is saying the same thing, only a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist would doubt them.
Only a kook, like my sister Riley.
But now I was beginning to remember.
Riley was right.
I couldn't quite call up the reason I knew it, but I did know it, down deep.
Crazy Riley was right, and all the sane world was wrong.
They were all in on it.
And I was in on it too.
You were never here.
That was what Graciano had said to me.
Because the detectives hadn't expected to find me there with Jane, had they?
I was supposed to be at Solomon Vine's party.
And when they did find me there, they just assumed I would be willing to disappear without making trouble, without leaving a trace.
This also I began to dimly comprehend.
They thought I was one of them now.
They were sure of it.
I offered you your life, more than your life.
I offered you the life you always wanted.
You didn't say no.
And now you belong to me.
Yes.
Yes.
I was beginning to remember.
I was beginning to understand.
Finally, with a leaden burden on my heart, I went home, drove home in my sweet, soft, comfortable Mercedes.
With the leather seats like a pool of velvet and the heated steering wheel warm against my hands and the sweet music on the state-of-the-art sound system.
I went home to my luxurious apartment high above Wilshire.
I walked through my apartment door and headed straight to the bar in the corner.
I poured myself a single wall.
Very expensive whiskey.
Very smooth.
Very fine.
I could afford that now.
I could afford just about anything I wanted.
I was a major, major talent.
Celebrities spoke to me under oak trees decked with fairy lights.
Beautiful women touched my arm.
You're really charming, aren't you?
I so was.
I was going to be a star.
I sat on the sofa and sipped my whiskey.
I looked through the bedroom door into the shadows.
There was a box in there.
I remembered now.
There was a box hidden in the bottom drawer of the bureau.
If I opened that box, if I took out what was inside, there would be no going back, no returning to my wonderful new life.
If I opened that box, I would remember everything.
After a while, I looked down at my glass.
It was empty.
The malt was gone.
There was still time, I thought.
I could go to bed.
Go to sleep.
Forget.
Forget what I did not want to remember.
I stood up, still undecided.
I stood still, leaning neither left nor right.
I tried to think of nothing.
I thought, Jane, Jane, Jane.
I need you, Austin.
Help me.
I remembered how she had nursed my head wound when I had shown up nearly dead at her house.
I remembered the gentleness of her touch, the tenderness of her voice.
I loved her.
I had always loved her.
I remembered her silent tears falling as Alexis screamed at her, and I stood and did nothing.
And I remembered the rodent with the woman's face.
I remembered the queen in the homeless camp.
Riley in the asylum, and the men at Solomon Vine's party.
The children there.
Their faces, dull, distant, withdrawn from the agony of their abuse.
It was all one story.
Like a marionette moved by some invisible hand on its strings, I walked step by jerky, hesitant step into the bedroom.
I flicked the light on.
There was the bureau against one wall.
I took a brief glance at myself in the mirror on top of it, but the sight of that corrupt asshole was intolerable.
So I knelt down and opened the bottom drawer.
I pushed aside the sweatshirts and t-shirts.
I reached into the drawer's far rear corner.
I wrapped my hand around the little jewelry box I had hidden there.
It had been there since I sold my script, since I'd moved to this apartment.
I took it out now.
I carried it back into the living room.
I set the box on the glass coffee table.
I sat on one of the stuffed chairs.
I sat and looked at the box a long time.
Even then, even then, I did not want to open it.
I did not want to make the choice I had to make.
I opened the box.
I looked down at the locket inside.
A golden locket on a golden chain.
I lifted it out and held it in my hand.
I whispered a name.
Bethere.
It had been her locket once.
Lady Bethyray, that great and beautiful and courageous lady.
I remembered.
She was wearing this very locket when she died in my arms, murdered by her husband, Lord Iron, for trying to restore the wisest queen in all the world to the throne he had stolen from her.
I remembered.
I pressed the button on the locket's side and the locket sprang open.
There was the queen's portrait inside.
Queen Elinda, also known as Ellen Evermore, the author of the book Another Kingdom.
There was no doubt about it.
It was the same woman I had seen outside the tents of the homeless.
She's waiting for you, Auss.
I could hear Riley's voice as if she were sitting beside me.
She's calling you.
She's waiting for you to remember.
We all are.
My eyes shifted from the queen's portrait to the locket's facing side.
There was an emblem engraved there, a sword across an open hand.
Those words again.
Let wisdom reign and each man go his way.
I could hardly read them through the tears in my eyes.
Let wisdom reign.
Wisdom, which is to love the good, the greater good more than the lesser.
But what is the good?
You must find the answer.
My mouth twisted with self-disgust.
I snapped the locket shut.
I raised my damp eyes to the apartment door.
Gritting my teeth, I stood.
I went to the door.
I opened it.
I looked out at the hall.
Just a hall in a luxury apartment building.
My building, where I finally lived, where I was a success, a Hollywood success, just like I'd always wanted.
I sneered.
I nodded.
I lifted the locket chain and slipped it over my head.
And I caught my breath.
With a flash like sheet lightning, the whole contents of Ellen Evermore's book came back to me.
Another kingdom.
That magic volume that I had read sitting in the car next to Riley.
Those mysterious words that somehow shifted the very nature of my consciousness.
I remembered.
I saw.
Galeana.
The Eleven Lands.
The story of that other world and this story.
They were one story.
All one story.
And somehow I had to bring them together again.
I had lost my way in those distant kingdoms.
It was there I would have to find my way again.
It was there I would have to confront the evil that underlay the evil here.
If I did not go back, I would not be able to do what I needed to do to help Jane.
I didn't understand all this, not yet, but I knew it suddenly.
Suddenly, I remembered.
And I remembered something else, too.
The book, reading the book, had given me a new power.
I could control the passageways now from one world into another.
Before, I had had to find a door, but now.
Now I was the door.
My mind was the door.
And I could choose if and when to open it.
I slid the locket inside my shirt.
I shut my eyes.
I bowed my head.
I went down deep into myself.
I called up the power of my will.
I was the door.
And I thought, Yes!
Do it!
Yes!
Instantly, the wild, whirling wind of the blizzard blew into my face so hard I gasped.
I opened my eyes and saw the cyclone of snow where the hallway had been.
I heard the beast growl within the depths of the storm.
I saw the hulking blur of the creature's shape waiting for me, waiting to slaughter me, his red eyes burning.
As I began to move forward, I felt the liquid metal of Elinda's magic armor spring out of my flesh.
I felt her sleek, silver, deadly sword sprouting from my hands.
I felt the heavy fur I had been wearing grow up around me.
I had forgotten how disorienting it was to make the transition, to step from the ordinary world into the 11 lands.
The turbulence and confusion of the storm seemed only a projection of the turbulence and confusion inside me as I confronted once again, after all these months, how real this mad illusion was, how quickly reality faded to a dream as I moved across the threshold.
Oh, I don't know.
I wished, not that I could stay in L.A., Not that I could stay and make my movie and screw more starlets and be rich and famous and have people say what a major, major talent I was at fine, high-status parties on the Malibu coast.
Not that exactly.
I just wished, I wished the world were different.
You know?
I wished that Hollywood was different, a place where good things might happen and no harm done.
I wished that Solomon Vine was not depraved.
I wished that Sergi Razgo was not a Roscoe.
I wished my father and mother and brother weren't in league with them.
With all of them.
I wished that men had honor and women had virtue and the powerful didn't want all the power for themselves.
I wished I lived in a golden age of golden people in a golden land.
I wished that wisdom reigned so that each man could go his way.
Well, wish away, dude.
I charged through the door into the blizzard.
With a savage battle cry, I plunged into the swirling snow.
After the familiar and luxurious peace of my apartment, the vortex of white and wind was pure chaos, blinding.
I felt suddenly weighted by the liquid armor flowing beneath the heavy fur I wore.
I felt my face bared under my lifted visor, pelted hard by the wild blizzard.
Confused and afraid, I discovered my sword, clasped in both my mailed hands, was already raised to deliver a slashing strike.
Half insane with the unfathomable transition, I rushed at the beast, my mouth jacked wide on a ragged cry.
My heart was ablaze with fury and with fear.
With his white fur, the creature seemed part of the weather, hard to make out, just a hulking, hungry presence lumbering toward me.
Only its eyes, its ravenous eyes, showed clearly, glowing an unnatural red that burned brightly out of the depths of the maelstrom.
But I could hear the thing well enough.
Even over my own hoarse shout, even through the hoarse and steady roar of the wind, I could hear the Yeti growling low.
It was an unnerving sound.
Not fierce, no.
It sounded to me more like a growl of satisfaction.
The beast could smell me.
That was the thought that ran through my mind in the seconds before we came together.
He could smell me, and he could see me charging at him with his red eyes, and he was growling in anticipation of a fresh kill, a fresh feast, a new pile of bones to add to the others I had seen scattered in the shadows of the cave behind me.
Why, oh why had I ever left LA?
We drew close to one another.
The Yeti loomed out of the blizzard, rearing.
As I drew back my sword for the strike, the creature flexed one massive paw so that his claws sprung out like switchblades with a whispered snap.
The claws were curved and sharp and daggery.
They flashed and vanished and flashed again out of the tempest.
One more split second of swirling white confusion, of shouting and growling in the roaring wind.
Then, long before my mind could adjust to the staggering, supernatural impossibility of the moment, the fight began.
My sword swung down.
The beast's claws slashed swiftly from the side.
I saw the angle of the attack just in time, swiveled my hands and turned my weapon to block it.
My blade and his claws struck each other with a steely sting, lighting the snow with red sparks.
The beast's strength was shocking.
The force of his blow not only threw my blade easily to the side, it sent me myself lurching over the icy ground.
And the Yeti's speed was as awesome as his strength.
Before I could recover my balance, he was on me.
He swung again, a swipe of those long claws that was clearly meant to take my head off.
I ducked.
The claws swept over the top of my helmet.
As the force of the swing turned the beast to the side, I stepped left, lifted my leg, and kicked him as hard as I could in the kidney.
The kick had exactly zero effect on the gigantic creature, but it did send me stumbling off in the opposite direction, away from him.
And good thing too, because now the Yeti let out a gonad chilling shriek of rage and swung a vicious backhand in my face.
But because I'd fallen back, the razor-sharp claws missed my nose by half an inch.
Then, for a second, the beast's center was open to me.
I was leaning away to dodge the backhand, but I changed direction as fast as I could and lunged straight at him, thrusting my blade at his guts.
My sword point never touched him.
The Yeti continued to come around with the force of his last swipe, and before I could plunge the sword into him, he hit me on the shoulder with his other paw.
Luckily, the claws weren't extended, or if they were, they missed me.
But I took a full hard shot with the pad, and the creature was so strong, the blow sent me reeling.
Body Slam into Ground00:07:05
I stumbled to the side, then fell to the ground, then rolled over and over again through clouds of wet whiteness.
For what seemed like forever, the snow swirled and the wind swirled, and I swirled within them.
My fur coat drenched, my face cut raw by the ice covering the frozen earth, my roar of frustration lost in the roar of the wind.
I leapt to my feet, but I was totally disoriented.
I stared wide-eyed, and for a second, too, all I could see was the white cyclone everywhere.
Where was the beast?
From which way would he come at me?
Then, a roar.
Red eyes gleaming.
The creature was still there, just to my right.
I squared up to take him on, my sword held before me in my right hand, my left hand stuck out into the hurricane wind for balance.
I thought the beast would charge again, but he stayed where he was, growling low.
That deep, eager growl I could hear even through the storm.
I hesitated too, my lungs pumping, my face cold and dripping, my fur heavy with damp.
My whole body was still vibrating with the force of that blow.
And my mind.
My mind was as wild as the weather.
What the hell was I doing here?
Was this even happening?
I was supposed to be making this film, not starring in it.
I was supposed to be in Hollywood having the time of my life, casting the leads, budgeting the scenes, offering pretty girls bit parts in exchange for sex.
But insanely, I was here instead, lost in a blizzard, in a fight for my life.
My real life.
Because I knew this was no dream.
And if I died here, I'd be just as dead in California.
My heart pounded.
My eyes scanned the whirlwind.
I braced myself, trying to ready my mind for the force of the beast's attack.
But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
For a second, the wind subsided.
The snow stopped whirling and slanted down hard, pummeling my face like hail.
And in that quieter moment, I could hear my own harsh breathing.
And I could hear other sounds.
Sounds that turned my bowels to acid.
There was no longer just one growl rumbling from the creature in front of me.
There was another growl further to my right, and another, and then a roar to the left of me, and another growl in front of me, and more and more on every side.
My eyes flicked this way and that.
I saw a second pair of red eyes shining through the snow, then a third, a fourth, then more and still more pairs of red eyes moving out of the invisible white distances, closing in on every side.
A whole army of abominable snowmen was surrounding me, and there was no way to escape them.
Like a black shroud drifting down over my head, came the realization that, just like that, my life was over.
Any way I played this scene, I was a dead man.
The knowledge made me afraid, yes, but also sad.
Wasn't it just seconds ago that I was 13 snazzy stories above Wilshire Boulevard?
Wasn't the real world, the real, safe, beautiful, modern American world, only a mere few steps behind me, just through the entrance to the cave?
How I wished in my sorrow I were there again, making my picture with Solomon Vine, driving my Mercedes, living my paltry dream, oblivious to this idiot nobility.
The hard snow battered me, and the wind chilled me, and the beasts closed in all around me.
In that final moment, I did not remember the corruption I'd left behind, or Jane, or Orozgo, or anything.
I just remembered the weather.
There are no blizzards in Hollywood, only sunny days.
But wait, I had forgotten something.
The book!
I had read the book.
Another kingdom.
It had changed the structure of my brain somehow.
I was the doorway now.
My mind was the portal in and out of the 11 lands.
All I had to do was reach a threshold.
The cave entrance behind me, for instance.
Then I could will the door to open there.
I could step through and I'd be in my apartment again, my wonderful, luxurious apartment.
I didn't know how I'd ever be able to return.
Time didn't pass here while I was gone.
So the Yeti band would just be waiting for me in this place forever.
But I couldn't think about that now.
I was surrounded.
If I wanted to live, I had to get the hell back to Hollywood.
I spun around to dash back toward the cave entrance.
And there, towering over me like the shadow of death itself, was an abominable snowman so huge, he made the others look like cubs.
He growled.
Growled so loud and deep my whole body vibrated with the sound.
His red eyes flashed down at me like two scarlet klieglights pinning me where I stood.
My jaw dropped in awe at the sheer size of him.
I only saw his enormous paw sweeping toward my head the second before it hit me.
I had a sense then of flying through darkness, tumbling through a darkness studded with colored stars that sprinkled down around me like confetti.
There was silence inside my head, but it was a throbbing silence like phantom bells tolling silently.
I did not lose consciousness.
My consciousness simply went far, far away.
I felt my body slam into the ground as if it were happening to someone else, as if it were someone else's breath being knocked out of him, someone else's bones being jarred and rattled painfully.
Even the blizzards seemed distant.
The snow, the wind, the cold, they had nothing to do with me.
I lay on the iced-over earth staring up helplessly at the broad indigo sky, dimly visible through the downpouring snow.
Only vaguely, and without any real emotion, did I understand that the animals all around me were now going to tear me apart and devour my pieces.
The horror of what was about to happen was present to my imagination, but obscure.
I couldn't do anything to stop it.
I didn't have the will or the strength to move.
It was as if I were present at my own destruction and absent from it at the same time.
The sky went out as the great Yeti came to stand over me.
He looked down at me with those red kleag-like eyes.
Other smaller, smaller but still huge, Yetis also gathered closer, also looking down.
Then the great Yeti's mouth opened and I saw his teeth.
They were the size of scimitars, and the gigantic beast said, Bring this idiot back to center base.
Unfortunately, we're not supposed to eat him.
Main Theme Composer00:00:41
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Klavan.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Voice work for the Secretary, Caitlin Maynard.
Episode 4, Into the Storm, was directed by Jonathan Hay.