In Another Kingdom Ep. 6, the narrator flees Yeti camp after refusing Curtain’s demonic bargain, only to realize their silence enabled his rise—now his rust-smogged army marches toward Emperor Anastasius’ funeral in Aona, where Sir Littleman, Sir Goodchild, and Sir Hammer mourn his death amid crystal palaces. Maud’s accusation of complicity forces a desperate escape as the narrator confronts the consequences of their past choices. [Automatically generated summary]
The following contains strong language and adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.
All right, let's do this.
Well, you're full of energy this morning.
I am full of pep, not to mention zip plus vim.
Why is that, I wonder?
Never mind.
It's a mystery.
Where did we leave off?
Maude came to get you from the Yeti camp with your stallion who now had wings.
Right.
My farewell to the Yetis.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Episode 6.
The Quest Is Over.
My farewell to the Yetis was short and more or less sweet.
The stallion settled to the earth, his wings folding so neatly into his flanks they became virtually invisible.
I took hold of the saddle, put my foot in one stirrup, and swung up gracefully into the seat, right behind Maud.
The great Yeti lumbered toward us.
He was so large, he towered over me even when I was mounted.
The other snowmen gathered around us in the morning mist.
They continued to gaze hungrily at the horse and the squirrel girl, their fanged mouths watering.
Goodbye, food, the great Yeti grumbled to me.
I wish we could have eaten you.
I had no idea what the polite response to this was.
I said, well, maybe next time.
The Great One turned to Maude.
Tell the Emperor we let this food live, though he looked tasty.
Maude nodded solemnly.
I'll make sure he knows!
Then she glanced over her rodent shoulder at me with her ever so eerily human face.
Ride!
I nodded.
I lifted my eyes to gaze through the mist at the rock formation with its tiers of caves.
At the entrance to one of the lower caves, the cave where I had slept, I saw Ga.
She was standing and watching me.
Her cubs clutched at her legs.
Neg hulked sullenly in the shadows behind her.
She lifted one paw to me in a wistful farewell, and I saw she was holding her little scrap of a painting, her picture of what a man might be.
I felt a twinge of pity for her.
She would live her whole life here, yearning for humanity in a world of savage beasts.
Poor thing.
It would be just like living in Hollywood.
I snapped the stallion's reins and shouted, Ha!
Then, what a sensation.
The black horse ran, and as he ran, he spread his wings again with another great flutter.
He pressed his nose into the wind and bolted forward with such sudden speed, I rocked back in the saddle and had to hold on hard.
The horse raced beneath the rock formation.
Its wings began to rise and fall in majestic undulations.
And suddenly, the bump and rumble of hoofbeats on stone ceased, and we were airborne.
Ya!
I shouted in wild exhilaration.
The stallion banked to the right, away from the caves.
I gripped the reins tight and leaned forward.
We rose, the mist washing over us with increasing speed until we broke into the clear blue skies where mist and caves and all the many monsters grew small and smaller and then faded away into the fading landscape below us.
Ahead stretched range on jagged range of snow-capped mountains.
They were white up close, then blue in the distance, then little more than the suggestion of shadows against the far horizon.
The horse's wings kept heaving toward the sky and wafting toward the ground in a great, graceful cadence, their loud flutters beating the air with a symphonic rhythm.
On we went and up we rose, the wind in our faces, the sun behind us, and all the wide world before.
Soon the stallion stretched out its wings and left them still.
We glided and there was a mystical stillness around us full of the rushing wind.
The mountains tilted and straightened below.
I gazed at them over Maud's sloped rat shoulders, awestruck.
Could he always fly like this and I just didn't know it?
Don't be an idiot!
I could tell by the dreamy tone of her voice that even she was struck by the breathtaking beauty of the scene around us.
The wings are a gift from Toritanio, but the stallion couldn't receive them until he had earned them in his journeys with you.
I nodded as if I understood.
And I sort of understood, but not really.
The rules of this bizarre kingdom, like the very fact of its existence, remained a strange yet familiar mystery to me.
I felt I understood them in my heart, but I could never quite explain them to myself in words.
As always, when I was in Galeana and the Eleven Lands, I felt I was a character in a story that was already written, but which I had not yet read.
The stallion swooped and banked and flapped his giant wings again, and we rose into the daylight toward the unseen stars.
We passed over the white mountains until smaller, greener hills slanted away beneath us.
With shocking suddenness, the horse dove toward them.
The wind rushed up over us, and soon we were twisting through narrow gaps and banking around elaborate rock formations, past vast and lovely waterfalls that tumbled into rushing rivers and filled the air around us with sparkling haze and rainbows.
After a while, the land beneath us leveled.
I began to become accustomed to the wonder of flying and the majesty of the view.
At the same time, something began to trouble me.
I couldn't place it at first.
It was just a vague sense of foreboding, like that minor chord of music in a movie that alerts you things are about to turn for the worse.
I scanned the horizon, and that's when I noticed it.
A darkness gathering at the furthest edge of the sky.
It was like a line of smog.
It had an unhealthy rust color, like a thing gone rotten.
And now and then, when the wind shifted, I thought I caught a whiff of something sour and unholy.
Bad eggs, burning tires.
Look there.
What is that, do you think?
She turned the woman face on her rodent body and glanced toward the distant murk.
Curtain!
That's his new army!
What do you mean?
She gave me one of her patented Maud looks.
Like, if there were no rocks, you'd be the stupidest thing on earth.
He read the book, too!
It took a moment before I understood this.
Then I did.
I felt a twist of nausea, like a corkscrew in my gut.
Another kingdom?
He read another kingdom?
But how?
She turned away, silent.
I was growing unhappier by the second.
Maud?
She muttered something into the wind.
I couldn't make it out.
Maude, is this my fault somehow?
I already knew the answer.
I could feel the answer.
It was like a lead-heavy toad squatting on my stomach.
Come on.
Tell me.
What happened?
Did the wizard get his hands on the book while I was...
My voice trailed off, but Maud was only too happy to finish the sentence for me.
While you were busy transforming yourself into a depraved, twisted, sick, destructive, soulless, demonic maggot of a human being?
It's possible!
The wind kept washing over me, but my face grew hot and sweaty all the same.
I smelled the sulfur and burning rubber again and tasted it on my tongue.
I had to swallow hard before I could answer her.
Okay, so you saw that.
Oh, we all saw it!
Turitanio opened a portal and we watched the whole show.
Nice vehicle, by the way.
Thanks.
It's a Mercedes.
Lovely!
Look, I sold a screenplay.
I was making a movie.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It was a lifelong dream of mine.
Which part?
Manipulating the women or toadying up to the child molester?
Or was it putting your manhood in a jar so you could stand by doing nothing while that sweet woman you should already be married to was abused right in front of you?
A flare of annoyance went through me.
There is nothing more irritating than a moralistic rodent woman.
It's like talking to Jiminy Cricket only as a rat.
Look, I got wrapped up in what I was doing and I forgot about the book, alright?
I forgot about all of this.
I had some kind of amnesia or something.
Curtin must have put a curse on me somehow.
Somehow, yes.
I flinched as if she'd slapped me.
I knew she was right.
I couldn't lie to myself about this anymore, as much as I would have liked to.
I remembered too much now.
I remembered the mansion in the woods.
That mansion I had seen in my nightmare about the graveyard, if a nightmare is what it was.
I had been lost inside that mansion, caught in the wizard's maze.
I knew if I did not find the exit by sunrise, I would be stuck there forever, trapped forever in a repeating scene of unimaginable horror.
I would be one of hundreds of prisoners devoured by a great beast again and again, day after day, without end, without hope of release.
I was terrified, desperate to get out.
Who wouldn't be, right?
So somehow I fought my way to the heart of the house, to a place of deep darkness and confusion.
And there, I had confronted the wizard himself, face to face.
An arrangement might be made, Curtin had said to me.
I can make it so you never have to return here ever again.
You wouldn't even remember.
I can give you your life and more than your life.
A better life.
The life you've always wanted.
A sound escaped me as the flying stallion rose and fell on the gentle thermals.
Yes, said Maud.
I tried to defend myself.
Well, I didn't agree to it, I said.
But it sounded like wheedling even to me.
I mean, he made that offer, but I didn't say yes.
I damned him.
I remember.
I pushed past him, and I escaped the maze and found my sister, and I stopped, overwhelmed by full comprehension and remorse.
Maud said nothing.
She just waited for me to understand it all.
I did understand.
I cried out, oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Tilting my face up at the sky.
Shit!
Oh, shit.
I am such a piece of shit.
I pounded on my forehead with one fist.
I didn't say no.
I didn't tell Curtin no.
That's why he let me out of the mansion.
That's why he let me find Riley.
Why he let me find the book.
He knew if I didn't say no.
Ah.
Oh.
Maud still didn't answer.
It was all about the book.
I was going to burn it.
That was my plan.
I was going to burn it after I finished reading it and then return here and set everything right.
But just as I reached the last page, the phone rang.
Ah.
And it was Solomon Vine.
And he... and I...
Yes?
Well, he offered me this deal, and I got distracted.
That's all.
I got distracted, and then the amnesia, I fell silent.
It was all clear to me now.
It was all one story.
We rode on for a long time without speaking.
Finally, when Maude figured I had wallowed in my own guilt long enough, she said quietly, Curtin is very expert at what he does.
His only power is in the minds of men, and he knows how to use it.
When you didn't say no, he knew you would ultimately belong to him.
No is your whole power, Austin.
No is the one magic that could have defeated him.
Wisdom is to love the good, and to everything lovable that is not good, you must say no.
Again and again.
Every day.
The minute Curtin heard your silence, he only had to bide his time.
He only had to wait until you had the book, then make his move.
What did he offer you?
A little gold.
A few women, a, what did you call it?
Movie.
Nothing, really.
He bought you for nothing, Austin.
When you didn't say no, he knew he could.
I felt something collapse inside me.
It was my ego.
It went down like a house of cards burning.
Each flaming card bore a moving image on it.
Riley in the asylum.
Jane humiliated by Alexis.
The party at Solomon Vines with its perversion and abuse hiding in plain sight.
And me, all the while, with my memory gone and my movie greenlit, and Curtin stealing the book, Another Kingdom, right out from under my nose.
He read the book.
Policygenius.com Solution00:03:58
And now what?
Now he can open doorways too.
He opened the doorway into the dark realm where Anastasius imprisoned his demon army after the rebellion failed.
Crap.
I glanced off toward the ugly red cloud on the far horizon.
And that's them.
He let them out.
the army.
He freed them, and now, now they're heading right where we're heading, toward the camp of the emperor.
The black stallion flapped its wings once to keep us moving forward.
The lovely land raced by beneath us, but all its charms were lost on me.
But how could things have changed like that while I was gone?
Time doesn't pass here when I'm in LA.
I always come back to the exact moment when I left.
Maud's usual tone of sardonic nastiness was gone now.
She just sounded grim.
The dark realm curtain opened doesn't operate on our time any more than your realm does.
His army entered where he had been, just as you entered where you were.
I nodded.
Again, I didn't understand completely, but instinctively I understood.
As I eyed that red darkness on the horizon, As the ashes of my ego smoldered within me, I could feel the needle on my self-esteem meter falling from corrupt asshole to apocalyptic shithead.
How big an army is it?
Can it defeat the forces of the emperor?
I suppose we're going to find out.
As if this were his cue, the black stallion flapped his great wings again and kept them flapping this time.
He stretched his neck out like a racer.
I followed suit and flattened myself in the saddle like a jockey.
We put on speed.
When I looked again, the stinking red haze had grown even fainter, even more distant than before.
The air around us seemed to freshen.
The day seemed to brighten.
Curtain's rebel army fell away behind us.
We can still beat them, I told myself desperately.
It's not too late.
There's still time.
We sped on across the sky.
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And now, back to another kingdom.
We flew like that for hours.
The land continued to grow flatter and greener.
The stallion dropped lower, and soon I could see cottages and small farms, and even a little village nestled in the hills here and there.
What is this country?
CORE!
The 10th of the 11 lands!
She raised one squirrely paw.
But there, look up ahead.
That's where we are headed.
That's Aona.
A City Rising00:10:32
I followed her gesture and caught my breath.
What a sight.
What a wonder.
I stared and went on staring as we grew closer to this last and most marvelous country of all.
I saw, among rocks and above a valley, a city rising.
It was unlike any city I had seen outside of video games and dreams.
Crystal palaces and temples and towers sprung half-formed from the hillsides as if they were growing there organically.
They seemed to be made of mirrors and glass, so that the entire town was bathed in prismatic colors and a nimbus of gold hung over the whole.
Construction engines and workmen moved among the unfinished streets and climbed on scaffolding around the soaring pinnacles and domes.
But as awesome as the city was, it was what I saw beyond that most amazed me.
As the stallion soared over the sprawling mansions of the suburbs and on out over the open valley, I realized, with a fine blast of wonder and satisfaction, this was the country I had seen in my vision.
This was the long, blue-green, grassy plain I had seen in my mind last night when I touched the talisman.
And now, When I lifted my eyes to the far horizon, I could make out the spot where the scenery melted into blue nothingness.
I understood.
We were approaching the cliffs and the sea.
Maud, I said, but so softly that the word was carried off by the wind.
I tried again, louder.
Maude, have we reached?
Yes!
There they are!
My hand went to touch the shape of the talisman beneath my clothes.
My throat grew tight with emotion.
Over a ridge, on the open plain before me, the aqua grass grew dark.
A vast crowd of living creatures spread across the valley to the sea.
The Emperor's army.
Well, this was something at least.
This was something to cool the smoldering remnants of my ego.
I mean, I had done it, hadn't I?
For all the time spent lost in the maze of the wizard, for all the delay and error caused by the corruption of my heart, after the crime and tragedy of Bethyray's murder, after my battle with the forces of Lord Iron and Galeana, the dragon fights in Egymond, the Yeti fights in the White Mountains, after the fights in California with Orazgo's agents and assassins, I had finally made it across the 11 lands.
I had reached the armies of Anastasius.
I was within sight of the Emperor and the end of my quest.
The realization spread over me like the radiance of dawn, like bright water hosing the red cinders of my self-disgust.
The stallion began to descend toward the armies on the plain.
A towering cylinder of rock rose to our left.
The stallion banked and we curled around it.
As we did, I spied far off, at the edge of the army encampment, on an open patch of ground right near the cliffs, an array of gayly colored pavilions.
Large, elaborate tents of rainbow-striped canvas, with crested pennants fluttering on their impressive peaks.
Headquarters, I thought, excited.
The pavilions of the Emperor himself.
We headed toward them, sinking lower and lower, the earth rising up to meet us.
Soon I could make out a small crowd of creatures gathered outside one of the tents.
Other flying horses were circling above them.
No one even noticed us as we joined their ranks.
We continued to descend.
At first, I thought we were going to land in the open grassland right beside the tents.
But in another moment, as the scene below grew clearer, I saw Maud stiffen where she sat on the pommel.
She leaned forward quickly to whisper in the stallion's ear.
At once, the horse veered to the left, toward a large outcropping of white rock a small distance away from the pavilions.
There was a flat patch of dusty ground behind the rocks.
That was where we landed, hidden from the army and the creatures outside the tents.
We reached the earth.
The stallion's hooves clopped swiftly across the dirt as he slowed.
A brown dust cloud flew up around us.
I coughed.
Shh!
Be quiet!
I swallowed the next cough and blew the next one into my fist.
The stallion came to rest.
His wings folded with stately grace until they vanished into his flanks.
What?
I whispered to Maud.
I was breathless from the ride.
What's the matter?
Why are we hiding?
What's happening here?
Shh!
And then she gestured with her head.
Follow me.
With that, she leapt off the pommel, hit the ground, and scrambled squirrel-like up over the rocks.
I swung out of the saddle behind her.
The rocks were easy to climb, and as Maud leapt nimbly from jag to jag, I went up nimbly after her.
I followed her into a narrow gap between one outcrop and another.
Maud perched on a little shelf there, and I crawled up until I could prop myself just behind her.
From there, through the gap, we could spy on what was happening around the pavilions.
There were about two dozen creatures gathered in a little crowd here at the furthest edge of the great army.
The crowd was standing outside the main tent where a wooden platform had been erected, with stairs leading up to a stage, the sort of thing you might see at a local parade where the mayor was going to give a speech.
The crowd beneath the platform was composed of magical people and fairy tale beasts, many of kinds I had seen before in the court of Toritanio, the king of Shadow Wood.
There were centaurs with the muscular torsos of warlike men and the haunches of battle stallions.
There were pointy-eared elves with round, bright eyes, and there were peak-capped gnomes like lawn decorations.
There were fawns, horned men with the legs and tails of goats, and great hulking ogres with clubs in their hairy mitts and a single eye in the middle of their bouldery foreheads.
There were all these and human men too.
And all of them, I noticed now, were arrayed in black clothing.
Even the ogres wore black loincloths on bodies covered otherwise only by rough hair.
We watched from our hiding place.
The flaps at the entrance of the large tent moved, and three more figures emerged.
One by one, they climbed up the steps of the platform and stood on the stage above the crowd.
These were not fairy creatures, but men.
Noble, knight-like men, all three, though each was very different from the others in appearance.
The first to step onto the stage was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular and virile, with a face so handsome under its loose blonde hair and short blonde beard that he could have been a movie star.
He too was dressed in black, though his black clothes glittered as if they were sprinkled with silver.
That's Sir Littleman!
I couldn't help but smile, if ever a knight were poorly named.
The next man up on stage was very strange looking, small as a boy of ten, but fully adult and not misshapen.
He had white hair and angelic features, sweet and almost feminine in their beauty.
He wore black too.
Sir Goodchild!
I nodded.
A more appropriate name, no question.
And here's Sir Hammer.
These are the Emperor Anastasius' most trusted knights, his closest advisors.
The last guy to step up on stage was the most appropriately named of all.
Sir Hammer looked like a hammer, with a long lean body like a hammer's handle and a narrow head that seemed to stick out bluntly in front and curl back sharply behind.
All the knights wore serious expressions, but Sir Hammer's expression was so serious, it was nearly no expression at all.
The three knights dressed in black stood on stage in a wedge before the gathering.
Sir Littleman was out in front.
Sir Goodchild and Sir Hammer flanked him to his left and right.
The handsome Sir Littleman lifted one hand and pointed to a smaller pavilion off to his left, near the cliffs.
Bearers, come out!
He had a deep, booming voice that seemed intended to reach the entire army where it stretched out over the plain.
I could hear a low murmur among that vast company, as if they were passing Sir Littleman's words from one to another.
The cloth of the side tent rippled and through the flaps emerged two centaurs draped in black.
They carried between them what at first I thought was a stretcher, but then I realized, no, it was a pall.
A coffin draped in a black cloth with a golden insignia on it.
I heard Maud give a low moaning sigh, a sound I'd never heard from her before.
What?
What is it?
But she didn't answer me.
She went on staring through the cleft in the rock at the gathering.
So I stared too.
The centaurs carried the coffin to a spot directly in front of the stage.
And in the same stentorian tones as before, Sir Littleman said, The time has come, the time of sorrow.
According to our rites and customs, the funeral will begin.
He made a ceremonial gesture, unfolding one arm until his hand pointed down at the coffin below him.
It is time for us to lay to rest the body of our emperor, Anastasius.
Wait.
What?
And with that, everyone began weeping.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Voice work for the Secretary, Caitlin Maynard.
Episode 6, The Quest is Over, was directed by Jonathan Hay.