carl@fire

Percevale was a gatekeeper.

It wasn't a particularly glamorous job. That was sort of the point, in his view. He'd been a young man, seen foreign lands, fought against other countries—other races, too.

Then he'd been one of the officers tasked with suppressing a newly-discovered settlement of the long-eared devils a decade ago, and he'd felt the world he'd known with all its facts and truths lurch and contort in a way that made him sick to the roots of his now-graying hair.

He'd felt his faith crumble away in an instant.

Always, Percevale had been an ardent supporter of the Church of the Dawn. He'd paid his tithe, even given what extra coin he could spare to the Church when they'd needed it to expand the church nearest his home in Charus City. His wife was one of the many who volunteered to help maintain the building, so strong, too, was her faith.

His four children, including his youngest, Rikild, up on the wall behind him as part of her new recruit training, had all gone through the Church's widespread education program, just as he and his wife had when they'd been younger. It was a luxury that was otherwise impossible to obtain without the wealth of the nobles: a genuine, broad-minded education with knowledgeable scholars and tutors—some of the very same ones used by those nobles, in fact! The Church of the Dawn had always prioritized knowledge, and so it was that the faithful reaped the rewards of their piety with the knowledge that was shared with them for simply being respected, regular attendees of the Church's services and sermons.

Percevale waved a familiar old man through, almost before he saw the badge of citizenship that granted him free passage in and out of the city.

Being a gatekeeper was a boring job with no potential for excitement, and that was exactly the reason why Percevale liked it.

Eleven years had passed.

He continued to pay his tithe, attend the services, and smile the same as he always used to any time a discussion turned in the direction of the twin goddesses who held the lion's share of the religious population of the kingdom. The same goddesses whose cause he had rallied to and fought for his entire life.

Percevale called a sickly, old-looking woman to a halt as she tried to sidle past while holding up a badge that seemed forged to his experienced eye. It was, and, given the choice between being turned away, being shot by the gun-toting soldiers atop the wall, or paying the tax on whatever she was attempting to smuggle, she grudgingly waited while one of the soldiers took the stairs down and came around from inside the city for the purpose of escorting her to the assessment office for further processing and a fine.

She wasn't an old woman, of course, or even sickly. Percevale had seen the trick attempted too many times and to far better effect. He'd even deliberately allowed a couple of them to pass when they were convincing enough. He appreciated the occasional amusement, and he knew what drove them to it.

Percevale, a semi-retired captain of Charus Kingdom's army, had lost his faith, but not his faith in people. People he could believe in. People always wanted what would help them. People acted in ways that would give them the greatest gain for the least coin.

People were predictable like that, he'd found. A smuggler was one who was in need of coin. More often than not, it was simply a person who'd fallen on hard times and taken the job in a final attempt to yank themselves back up by their bootstraps. He understood that much.

The problem arose when people believed in the thing that he'd lost faith in. When they could no longer discern between right and wrong because they were blinded by their greed, or their need, or the lies they'd never questioned.

Given the choice between coin and doing right was the one surefire way to take the measure of a soldier. He'd known the general disposition of all who served under him from their first day in his command. It was a simple trick that anyone could have seen through if they considered it enough: a small, mostly-empty coin purse would happen to fall out of his pocket as he walked away from his first meeting in private with a new soldier.

A surprising number had never called out to him to retrieve his "lost" coinage.

He'd considered it a worthwhile expenditure. Any who were unable to, at a minimum, see through such a simple ruse were not people he could trust. He would be their captain, but he would be that much more watchful in his interactions with them.

Sure, there were others who passed his little test that he'd kept his eyes on. He had more than one way to find the rotten eggs. In a business where knowing who would have his back could mean the difference between life and death, it was always important for him to know the difference between those he could rely upon and those he could not. He hadn't survived for so long in the army entirely by luck.

Percevale finished inspecting a cart and waved its owners through—a new family looking for their opportunity within the walls of the largest city in the kingdom. He smiled and wished them luck, chuckling to himself as the country bumpkins halted just past the gate and marveled at the bustle, the thronging of so many people in one place.

At one point, he might have called Charus City the greatest city. He might have referred to the kingdom as being the greatest, too. He had called it that on any number of occasions.

But it had been eleven years now, and he'd never described it in that way in all those years.

Not since the day he went through the portal.

It was supposed to be simple. The long-eared devils were known to be pretending at peace, but they prayed to an evil god that was building up its power to strike against their goddesses.

They had to be stopped.

They had to be destroyed.

They were evil.

And so what if the army interpreted the will of the goddesses to mean that they should take the opportunity to make some extra coin out of it? That was how it was done, how it had always been done ever since the hostility of the long-eared devils was revealed by an oracle so many decades earlier.

Having a purified long-ear was the dream of many in the army, men and women alike since all were encouraged to serve. There was no discrimination in which of the long-eared devils were captured. They were all purified and sold in the capital in order to fill the army's coffers and provide a bonus for the individual soldiers who performed each capture.

Slavery was wrong, obviously. Of course it was wrong; the Church taught that basic knowledge to all its faithful at an early age. But what was being done to the long-eared devils and other types of devils wasn't slavery. No, it was purification, the washing away of the evil wills they'd been born with. It was saving them.

The long-eared devils weren't born as people.

They were born as monsters.

They lived in the forest that they might escape detection while they worked their dark magics, always plotting the downfall of the humans that had destroyed the trees or some other nonsense the old gatekeeper had been told most of his life.

Nonsense he'd believed.

He'd seen a few of them being walked by their owners around the city in his youth, immediately distinguishable by the leashes and pink collars around their necks as if their beauty, long ears, and complete nakedness weren't already enough of a giveaway. He'd fancied himself owning one back then, determined to somehow earn the borderline-ludicrous amount of coin it would cost. His mind had raced in a pink-hued haze for years after he'd watched as a noble dragged his large-breasted, long-legged, long-eared beauty into an alley, the man's personal guards blocking the entrance in broad daylight while her seductive moans and encouragements had drifted out to reach his young, impressionable ears.

Percevale had recognized the lies for what they were immediately upon stepping through the portal. He was no longer a young man then, no longer so impressionable or naive. Three decades in the army—not to mention his wife and four children—had granted him perspective and a deeper penchant for thinking on his own, the very qualities he'd shown in order to be promoted into the ranks of officers.

Why would a race so set on the destruction of humanity have no weapons? At most they had some hunting bows and javelins that might put an eye out, but there were no great numbers of them, no soldiers or armies in wait.

Nor had they appeared to be religious in any fashion.

He'd come to a stop, taking in the scene as the forest around them burned, his own command being the last ones through the breach. Rather than an entrenched people who were plotting to take back what they felt was theirs, they seemed more like a roaming troupe—if a large one—that had happened to settle down for a short while. They had no buildings, no structures, only tents that could be hastily assembled and disassembled as needed.

Percevale had been in the army for nearly three decades, at least one of which was spent away on campaigns. It was a damn miracle that he'd survived as long as he had and with so few injuries, everyone had always told him. All the same, it was safe to say that he knew a fair bit about tents after sleeping in them for so many years.

The tents that the long-eared devils possessed were most certainly made to be set up and disassembled with haste rather than the sort to stand for any extended length of time.

A man and his sad-looking boy were waved through the gate with a smile. Percevale pulled a coin from behind the boy's ear, then ate it and pulled it back out of his own ear for good measure before handing it over as a welcome gift to the now-slightly-smiling boy.

He'd recognized the look in the kid's eye.

It was one that he'd seen on that day.

He'd seen it in the eyes of the young, male long-eared devils when their fathers' necks were wrapped in the noose of the devil-catcher poles and they were dragged away, thrashing and squirming, begging until they went limp from lack of breath.

He'd seen it on their young females as well as they watched their mothers and older sisters dragged away, not by the poles towards the portals but to the tents. Those young ones had had precious little time to be worried for others, however.

Long-eared devils were not people.

Percevale wasn't proud of his actions on that day.

He'd made no attempt to stop the madness he'd witnessed.

He'd put no effort into rescuing or saving even a single one of the beautiful creatures.

He'd simply stood there, shocked and unable to act. His mind could not comprehend what he was seeing, what he was hearing, what he was smelling.

What he was feeling.

None under his command had felt as he had on that day.

He could tell, whether by their attitudes afterwards or—more tellingly—as he watched them scramble around, either to try for the direct potential of coin with one of the devil-catcher poles or to seek out one of the tents with a short queue in order to slake a darker craving.

He'd passed his actions off as having been supervising—ensuring that none escaped—but he'd applied to be discharged from active service a month later. It wouldn't do to have anyone be suspicious of him. That was a quick way to the inquisition, and though he'd feared that his death or torture might not be nearly enough to pay for his sin of inaction, he'd known it wouldn't help anyone, either.

And so Percevale was a gatekeeper for the city. It was not a glamorous job. It was not an easy job, either, having to stand all day and remain vigilant for those who might try to bring harm to the city, but it was about all he could bear to do now. Spending too much time at home led to more time at the church, or talking about the Church, or any number of things he could no longer stomach.

Nobody else wanted to be a gatekeeper, anyway.

Percevale could work as often as he wished, and if he ended up having to work early, or late, and he happened to miss a sermon or ten at the church, then that was just an unfortunate byproduct of wanting to do his best for the city in his own way now that he'd been discharged from active military service.

Plus, there were the people.

Outside the city, he got to meet any number of people who didn't remind him of things he'd rather not think about and didn't cause him to remember scenes he'd been wishing he could stop reliving for the past eleven years.

And he always met a few interesting characters, too, he thought to himself as he ushered an older woman—her age genuine this time—through with an aged mule. The cart her animal pulled along contained bales of hay, just as it always did when she came through around this time of day every couple weeks to sell off the product of the small farm she lived on with her injured, retired husband.

Some of them were regulars, like the woman who had just passed by. He'd known her since he first started his new job, when she'd told him to watch out for troublemakers.

Some of them were looking for opportunity, or just a better place to raise a family than a farm which might be overrun by bandits if they couldn't afford to pay one of the nearby militias to patrol close enough or often enough.

Others, he thought to himself as he looked at the next in line, a pair of men slowly leading a team of horses forward, their carts laden with—

Except suddenly they weren't the next in line, even though he was quite positive that they had been since he'd been actively watching them.

A man stood in front of Percevale. Not just in front of him, either. The man towered over Percevale, standing far too close for his personal comfort.

He'd appeared.