Austin Lively survives Richard’s assassin—the "priest of death"—after decapitating his hand with Elinda’s sword, burying the body to evade suspicion and stealing the truck to warn Riley at Orozgo. Haunted by visions of hell and his fractured identity, he realizes this world is Curtin’s puppet realm, a cycle of evil where his Hollywood past is erased forever. Driven by grim resolve, he returns to the queen’s quest, embracing violence as the only path forward in a system designed to crush him. [Automatically generated summary]
The following contains strong language and adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.
Are you ready to do the next installment?
Yes.
No, tell me.
Tell you what?
The truth, Austin.
Were they there, at your speech?
Was who there?
Austin.
You worry too much.
Where were we?
You went to hell.
Richard's assassin, the priest of death, ran you off the road, so you went back to Iona and fell into the sea and went to hell.
And you made your way back to L.A. and then...
And then, the assassin knocked me out.
Then, the assassin knocked me out.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Episode 12.
The Shallow Grave.
Well, this was a big disappointment, I don't mind telling you.
Here, I had crossed the fires of hell.
I had outwitted the serpent of cosmic destruction.
I had solved the riddle of life and fought my way back from the very heart of deathly death.
And what did I get for it?
The next thing I knew, I woke up stuffed onto the floor of the black truck's cab, with my knees jammed up under my chin and my wrists bound tightly behind me.
The pain in my head was like a shrieking madwoman trapped behind my eyes.
Plus, the priest of death, that little shit, was sitting above me, behind the Ford's wheel, driving along jaunty jolly without a care in the world, even humming a happy tune beneath his breath.
Every so often, the bastard would sneer down at me, his eyes invisible behind his round black glasses.
So all in all, yes, this whole thing was a tremendous anti-climax.
If I was a lesser man, I would have felt sorry for myself.
And I was.
And I did.
I groaned at the pain in my head.
Shut up.
I'm tired of listening to you.
My head.
I said, shut up.
It won't last long.
I'll put you out of your misery soon enough.
I glared at him balefully, and I really hoped it hurt his feelings too.
What are you going to do if I don't shut up, asshole?
Kill me?
The effort of talking made my head throb all the more.
I groaned again.
He grinned his skullish grin.
If you don't shut up, I'm going to bury you in an unmarked grave.
If you do shut up, I'll do you a favor and blow your brains out first.
He had amused himself with this, apparently.
He laughed a quiet laugh.
Heh, heh.
His head bobbing up and down.
The truck went over a bump in the road.
I cried out as the jolt made the ache in my head flare through my entire body.
That amused the assassin, too.
He laughed again.
The whole situation was incredibly aggravating.
And that's an understatement, believe me.
I mean, really, you'd think after you conquered death itself, you'd level up somehow, you know?
Like in a video game, you'd get some new superpower or something.
The ability to move objects with your mind, something like that.
As it was, I couldn't even string two thoughts together because the ache in my head was reverberating like a gong.
So there I lay on the floor of the truck, uncomfortable, undignified.
The whole event just one massive humiliation.
And it probably wasn't going to end well either.
More death.
And this time, I had the feeling it would stick.
Death was not always death in the 11 lands.
But here in LA, you couldn't even come back from a flop picture, let alone a bullet to the head.
The car jounced again.
I cried out again.
Shut up.
If you're going to shoot me, why don't you just shoot me?
What do we have to drive around for?
He grinned down at me.
I always prefer it when people disappear.
You know, once there's a body, it's a murder.
Anyone might investigate.
The police, the press.
We own a lot of those bastards, but there's plenty of rogues out there still.
One of them might go off the reservation and look around and come up with something.
But when a guy just goes missing, who the hell knows what it is?
Right?
Maybe he ran off.
Maybe he has amnesia.
Maybe he faked his death for insurance purposes.
If there's no body, even if someone does investigate, he'll just be making up stories, that's all.
Conspiracy theories and whatnot.
I shuddered.
Obviously, he'd given this a lot of thought.
And why shouldn't he?
It was his profession.
Executions like this were a regular occurrence to him.
How many people had Orozgo sent to their deaths this way?
How many people had Richard sent to their deaths this way?
And with our mom and dad's approval?
If they'd done it my way the last time, there wouldn't be all this hoo-ha.
Now, all this hoo-ha.
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying, but then I did.
Alexis, you mean.
You mean if they'd done it your way with Alexis Meriwether?
If they'd just made her disappear like you're going to do to me?
He glanced at me, as if surprised I had heard him.
Then he turned back to the road.
Now there's all this hoo-ha.
You're the one then.
You killed her.
You're the black figure Jane saw in the doorway.
You drugged her and killed Alexis, and then had the cops set Jane up for it.
And now you're going to kill Jane too and make it look like suicide.
He shook his head bitterly.
Big fancy plan.
That was supposed to take care of it, close the case.
But with all this hoo-ha, anyone might take a closer look.
Anyone might investigate and come up with some crazy conspiracy theory.
The truth, you mean?
I told them, she should just disappear.
They wouldn't listen.
All those big brains.
Too smart for a working stiff like me.
Why did they do it?
Why did Alexis have to die?
What did she know?
The answer occurred to me even as I asked.
She was blackmailing Solomon Vine, wasn't she?
Is that it?
That's how she got him to hire her for the movie.
She knew something and she was threatening to tell.
What was it?
The kids?
The way he uses those children and peddles them around town?
Dragged Out00:03:09
This time Death gave me a longer look before returning his gaze to the windshield.
I went on, talking more to myself than to him.
No one wants to know.
Everyone knows, so no one wants to.
So once Jane dies, the whole story will be forgotten.
Simple as that.
Didn't I tell you to shut up?
So then shut up.
I stared up at his profile, framed and darkened against the bright blue sky at the window.
I tried to focus hard on his head.
I willed his head to explode.
On the off chance, you know, that I really had leveled up after overcoming death in Iona and now had acquired some new power, like making assassins' heads explode.
But no such luck.
His head remained intact.
He just kept driving along, humming to himself.
Not a care in the world.
We traveled on another half hour or so.
I could feel the truck turn.
I could feel it begin to ascend a steep hill.
After a while, we left the paved road.
We traveled over rough dirt, bumpity, bumpity, bumpety.
It was worse than being dragged over the rocks by the Yeti.
Every bumpity was like a kick in my temple with a steel-toed boot.
I started to worry I was going to be sick.
That would be just perfect, I thought.
I had defeated death in the ultimate triumph of knightly courage, and not only did I not level up and get new powers, but I was going to cover myself in vomit and give my assassin a big old laugh before he killed me.
Before that could happen, though, the truck came to rest.
The priest killed the engine.
Last stop, dead meat.
He glanced my way.
Don't bother begging for your life.
It only turns me on.
I'm not begging for my life.
Why not?
Don't you like me?
The last guy Orozgo sent to murder me was a philosopher.
This one was a comedian.
Whatever happened to quiet professionalism.
He pushed the truck's door open and jumped down out of the cab.
He walked around to the back and I heard him rooting around in the bed.
I used the time to struggle against my bonds.
It felt like some sort of plastic tie around my wrist.
I made a few attempts at snapping it.
Each try sent another stab of pain through my head.
None of it got me anywhere.
The passenger door came open then, and there he was, natty and evil in his black suit, black beret, black glasses.
He was holding a shovel in one hand now.
He reached down with the other and grabbed me under the arm.
He was surprisingly strong for such a skinny guy.
Very strong, in fact.
He dragged me over the seat and right out the door.
Then he planted me on the ground.
I had to scramble to get my feet under me before I fell.
By the time I regained my balance, he had shut the door and drawn his gun out from under his jacket.
He stood in front of me with his shovel in one hand and his pistol in the other.
Assassin's Clang00:15:41
Behind him, I saw a dirt road winding down out of sight into nowhere, empty hills in the distance beyond.
He jabbed me in the gut with the gun barrel.
Walk dead meat.
We'll get back to another kingdom in a minute.
But first, if you're enjoying the final season, please make sure you go over to iTunes and like and review the show.
It really does help.
And if you want even more content from like-minded thinkers, check out DailyWire.com, where you can listen to Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and me talk about politics, culture, and pretty much anything else we deem worthy of discussing.
So remember to go give us that five-star review, and while you're at it, tell a friend about us, or two, or ten.
And now, back to another kingdom, the final season.
I started walking.
The scene before me was shockingly beautiful.
We were at the bottom of a slope of green grass.
At the top of the slope was a deep stand of aspen trees.
Their bark was snowy white.
Their leaves were pastel green and yellow.
The spring breeze moved through the branches with a mellow whisper.
A morning dove sang his doleful song.
As we climbed the slope toward the little wood, I felt more sorrow than fear, but it was a deep sorrow.
I didn't want to die.
Not again.
The descent into the hell beneath Aona seemed like a dream to me now, as my journeys to Galeana and the Eleven Lands so often seemed like dreams when I returned.
But I remembered well enough the helpless grief of my body rotting, my substance dissolving.
It made me want to weep with frustration to be marched toward that fate once again, with no hope of escape.
We entered the woods.
Despite my aching head, I could see full well that the light here was lovely, pale, and strangely golden.
The leaves fluttered in the wind like butterfly wings.
Goldfinches fluttered in the branches, cheeping happily like young girls in conversation.
I could feel my heart clinging to the beauty of the place, to every last second of life.
I knew this was the end of everything.
Soon, too soon, the forest surrounded us, hid us.
We were alone.
No one would see me die here.
No one would hear my body fall.
The whisper of the wind and the chatter of the goldfinches and the morning dove's haroo hoo-hoo were all the sounds there were.
Then something dropped behind me with a clang.
The shovel.
Here, this is the place.
I stopped.
I looked around me at the golden light and the trembling leaves against the bright blue sky.
I drank it all in.
My burial place.
Would he shoot me now?
Would I hear the bang or just go out like a candle?
But it didn't happen.
Not yet.
Instead, in the next second, I felt a tug at my wrists.
The priest cut my hands free.
Then, before I could react, he shoved his gun into my back, hard, so that I stumbled forward a few paces.
Turn around, dead meat.
Rubbing my wrists to get the blood flowing into my sleeping fingers, I turned to face my assassin.
He swooped down and plucked the shovel up off the ground and tossed it at me.
I caught it in a reflex.
Dig your grave.
He pointed to a spot in the grass.
Right there.
I cursed.
I shook my head.
I was disgusted by the indignity of it.
I, who had fought my way across the lake of fire, forced by this skeevy putz to dig my own grave in the middle of nowhere.
The priest of death read my mind.
This is where you say, what if I refuse?
And I say, if you make me dig the grave myself, I'll cut you to slow pieces.
Then I see you thinking about hitting me with that shovel, and I tell you I'll bury you alive if you try.
Finally, you realize you have no choice and start digging the grave.
Then when you're done, I kill you and bury you in it.
Gee, you could at least give me a spoiler alert before you tell me the ending.
He gestured at me with the gun.
Dig dead meat.
I did it.
I dug my own grave.
How did it feel?
It felt pretty much the same as when I saw my own flesh rotting away in hell.
Miserable.
Helpless.
I was strangling on useless rage and self-pity.
I watched the shovel go chuck into the dirt.
I watched the dirt go shush out of the shovel and pile up by the side of the hole.
I watched the hole get bigger around me, longer, wider, big enough to hold my dead body, all as if someone else were doing it.
It was me, but I could not make it stop.
The breeze whispered in the aspens above me.
The goldfinches cheeped and chattered.
The morning dove sang.
All right, that's enough.
I stopped digging.
I was standing in a shallow grave, my grave, knee-deep.
I was sick with grief and anger.
I looked up at the assassin above me.
He was a dark shape against the green-yellow aspen leaves.
He looked relaxed, almost bored.
He pointed his gun at me.
He sniffed.
Toss up the shovel.
I thought about throwing it at him, but what would have been the use?
There was no way I could climb up out of my grave fast enough to reach him before he killed me.
I threw the shovel out of the grave.
The priest of death took a step closer.
He stood right at the grave's edge.
He pointed the gun directly at my head, the barrel not 12 inches away.
His dark glasses reflected me, looking up at him stupidly.
I wondered if I would see myself die.
So long, dead meat.
I drew my sword and cut his hand off.
I know, it surprised me too.
What the hell, right?
But apparently, I actually had leveled up.
After outwitting the serpent of infinite nothingness, after willing my way out of the endless dark, I actually had acquired a new power.
I just hadn't realized until this moment what that power was.
But now, on a surge of anger, with some new instinct I never had before, I reached across myself for my old weapon.
And suddenly, for the first time ever in this world, right here in LA, Elinda's blade was in my hand.
I sent the edge of it arcing up backhand through the air.
The sword chucked into the priest's wrist with the full force of my terror, rage, and despair.
The priest pulled the trigger as the razor-sharp blade cut straight through flesh and bone without stopping.
The gunshot went awry.
The bullet hit the side of my shoulder and glanced harmlessly off the magic liquid armor that was swiftly flowing out of my core to cover me.
The priest's hand, still gripping the gun, did a little flip and plopped into the shallow grave beside my foot.
Arterial blood started spurting from the priest's stump.
In the quiet wood, I could hear it pattering down onto the flesh of the severed hand in the grave.
The priest stared at the place on his arm where his hand had been.
He was silent at first.
In shock, I guess.
He looked from his stump to me, suddenly a knight in armor climbing out of his own shallow grave.
How was he supposed to make sense of that?
Who could?
Just as I came to stand beside him, he started screaming.
One four-letter word in a high-pitched shriek, again and again.
I killed him.
With deliberate movements, I drew my sword back and then plunged it straight into the center of him with all my strength.
That shut him up, all right.
His scream was cut off mid-syllable by a gurgling gasp.
His body bent over my blade so that I could see the point come out of his back, spitting gore.
As he jerked forward, his sunglasses popped off and dropped to the ground with a plastic clatter.
I held his shoulder with one hand and yanked the sword out of him with the other.
He gasped again and straightened.
His eyes looked right into mine.
I had seen that look before, that dying look, the sudden knowledge that every dream of life is over.
It's a horrible thing to see.
It could make you pity the devil himself.
No one deserves to die.
That's how bad death is.
Worse than the worst of us.
And maybe the time would come when I would pity the priest.
Maybe I'd regret what I'd done and figure I should have let him alone, seeing as he was unarmed.
No joke intended.
Well, a little intended.
Anyway, there might come a time when I felt sorry for him, but this wasn't it.
Right now, all I thought was, you tried to kill me, you piece of shit, and now you're dead.
Too bad.
The priest of death toppled sideways and fell into the shallow grave.
Only his feet and ankles stuck up over the edge of the hole.
His stump spurted blood, then stopped.
He let out a long, rattling breath, his last.
I sheathed my bloody sword and it vanished.
The armor vanished too, the liquid metal seeping back into my body.
Cool new power, I thought.
Almost worth dying for.
I stood still for a moment in the aspen grove, listening to the breeze whisper.
I raised my face to the sweetness of the spring.
I watched the yellow-green leaves tremble and flutter against the so-blue sky.
One of these days, I thought, I really had to learn to appreciate the beauty of every moment without having a gun stuck in my face.
But who had time for that now?
I had to get to Riley.
I sighed.
First, I had to get rid of the body.
I picked the priest's sunglasses out of the dirt and tossed them into the grave next to his corpse.
Then I climbed in after them.
I searched the dead man's clothes to recover my phone and wallet and keys.
That was nasty.
Even nastier, I pried his severed hand off the pistol.
I wanted that pistol, not the hand.
I left that in the grave with the rest of him.
Then, with all that done, I climbed out of the hole and picked up the shovel.
Reader, I buried him.
I borrowed the priest's truck.
I figured he wouldn't mind being dead and all.
I drove back to the road and started to make my way to the Orozgo retreat, to Riley.
I got about 10 miles before the reaction hit me.
All at once, I started shaking so badly I couldn't drive.
I had to pull over.
I killed the engine and sat staring out through the windshield at nothing.
It was like there was a thunderstorm inside me, thunder and lightning, noise and energy making my entire body jump and quiver.
I saw the lake of fire as if it were right there in front of me.
I saw the blackness of death with the serpent of nothingness slithering through it.
I saw the priest standing over me with his gun and saw him again at the moment the sword cut his hand off.
I felt like I was going crazy, sinking away from the steadfast world and into the feral territories of my own consciousness.
I had to do something.
I had to move.
I climbed down out of the cab and walked a little way into the desert.
I bent over with my hands on my knees.
I felt dizzy.
I was gasping for breath.
My chest hurt as if I was going to have a heart attack.
When I finally got control of myself, I slowly straightened up.
I stared out over the desert, red sand and green brush and white rocks to a blue horizon streaked with a scud of gray clouds.
I felt far away from everything, far away even from myself.
Who was I?
I wondered.
Who was I anymore?
Once upon a time, I was just Austin Lively.
Just another guy who had come to Los Angeles to try to make it in the movie business.
Just another guy who had tried and failed.
There had to be a million people like me in Hollywood.
A million wannabes who just don't have what it takes to win the world's approval.
A million little hopeful stars winking out at the dawn of reality.
I was nobody then.
Just another nobody like everybody.
But the wisest queen in all the world had come looking for me.
She'd come looking for someone like me anyway, and I was the one she found.
So who was I now?
What had she made me?
I had traveled between worlds.
I had seen magic.
I had flown above the earth and gone down below it.
I had killed people.
I had killed monsters.
I had been killed myself.
I had died and journeyed into hell and rotted away and become almost nothing.
And I had come back somehow.
And now I had this power and I was not like anyone else on earth.
So who was Austin Lively now?
I drew a deep breath of the desert air.
I realized with complete certainty that the life I had lived till this day was over.
My dreams of Hollywood, over.
Everything I used to value, gone, left behind, so I could pursue the queen's quest in that brain tumor fantasy world that meant more to me at this point than the world itself, this world I'd always known.
Because I saw it now.
This world.
I saw the truth of it, and I would not be able to unsee it, not ever.
This world, our world.
It was all Orozco.
Him and his lies.
And who was Orozgo?
He was Curtin, wasn't he?
He was a servant of that evil wizard whose purpose was to conquer and enslave.
His mind was a door through which Curtin could come from the other kingdom into this.
And when he died, well, then my brother Richard would take over for him, and he would be that door.
And then he would die, and someone else would take his place.