A random opening for a story I wrote. Pay it no heed. In fact just pretend I didn't even post anything.

 

The Eternal Castle

In a world devastated by fear, he came. A hopeful prophet of chaos, harbinger of change, bringer of death to the wicked and despair to the noble.

With blade that shifted in many hues, he came, to sunder pretension and delusion, that bitter, merciless truth might ravish the foolhardy.

And so did this warrior of light, garland, bring chaos to the rich and tainted land, and so did he undermine reality itself.

Chapter 1: Summoned

He sat at the edge of the beach, watching the waves lap away at his armored feet.

How long had he been sitting here?

Glancing up at the skies, he could see that the sun’s ruthless rays beat down mercilessly upon him, his gleaming armor, a polished black that glittered in the sun, weighed heavy in that heat.

Yet this specter, for that’s all he could even be called, felt not the heat, for he did not even have a pulse.

A spirit perhaps, but more likely a summon, brought forth to the world by one who desired salvation from a higher power.

Standing and squinting, for the light was more than his eyes could bear, he took the visor of his helmet and slapped it shut without ceremony, his glowing eyes gazing forth behind that horned helmet of deepest abyssal ebon.

Taking up his sword, the man turned to face a great castle, fully the size of several thousand mount everests, easily swallowing the entire horizon and stretching for miles upon miles without end.

His first thought was to find his summoner, but then he quickly shook the notion away.

“summoner?” he muttered. “where...am I? Who….am I?”

the stranger only knew that light bothered him, and so he made way to the castle seeking refuge.

The journey to the castle alone was a many-days long trip, for though it appeared close to the beach, it was several hundred miles away.

Grunting and shifting uncomfortably in his armor, the spell that brought him hence did wane, and when it did, he felt keenly its weight, felt keenly the heat pouring through him and sorely did he lament his inability to find drinkable water.

Sweat pored over his brow and though his pupils would recoil from the searing hell of light that the midday sun offered him, he knew too the cool kiss of the air would prove a welcome remedy to his current predicament.

His black armor now seeming more a coffin than a protection, he opted to remove it, or made to.

But he found it merged with him, the gauntlets at least, were fused to his hands.

“what is this?” he muttered as he touched them, the metal was sturdy, but bent easily around his fingers, less armor and more metallic flesh.

Inspecting them, they were large and bestial, with claws of iron and a gem studded into the top of each hand, the gem pulsed with a vibrant aqua glow and after a time, he touched it.

“Initiating cooldown sequence.” a voice spoke, and he jumped at its presence.

Almost immediately the armor began expelling steam and he felt a lot cooler.

Then he felt an invasive cold, as if his body was being pumped full of ice, and he wondered if he should touch the gem again to stop the process.

For a mercy, the process stopped on its own before he could reach a decision, with the announcement of “garlean coolant cycle complete.”

he touched the gem on the top of his right palm this time, and a display came up, revealing information about him and his armor.

“looks like a menu from an MMO...” he muttered.

Mmo? What did that mean? He shook his head, trying to remember, but no answers were forthcoming.

The display shifted, as if responding to an inquiry, but it simply said “Data not found.”

“what is my name?” he asked the strange menu. After a few minutes of silence, he touched the gem and it responded. “K-operating system defensive model G-LND1000, first in a line of artificial eidolons created in defense of the empire of garlemald.”

“And what is this...garlemald?”

No response.

Irritated, he tapped the gauntlet again, and the response came.

“Garlean empire, founded after the third world war and the nuclear armageddon, the empire was created by the god king of earth. The imperials, a faction composed of deities and demigods, brought forth magic into the world, summoning the first eidolon, phoenix, and restoring the world by absorbing the radiation from the third world war, transforming the land into a paradise. The emperor, bahamut von garlemald, founded the garlean empire as its god. For many years he ruled all of creation from his great palace before vanishing without a trace.”

he turned to face the vast castle taking up the horizon, even now the sun appeared to be readying to sink behind it.

“is this his castle?” he asked, tapping the gem.

“Castle bahamut was created by the god-emperor’s power over the material plane, it is roughly forty thousand miles across, taking up an entire continent. The palace was a bulwark against the irradiated land and a safe haven for most of the former civilization while phoenix was summoned to restore the tainted land. It is for this reason that bahamut is considered the greatest of his kind, though it is said his wife, lady tiamat, was more powerful. The palace was turned into the capitol city of the new world.

“This palace is monstrously large….” he muttered.

“Spirit...what is my purpose here? Why was I at the ocean?” he tapped the gem.

“confirming. Eidolon models were created to defend the empire, they are artificial summons, brought across time and space to serve the behest of whichever summoner needs them. Your function is to locate your summoner, then protect them.”

“How will I know where this summoner can be found?”

“the summoner’s location cannot be found. The summoner is deceased.”

“Fat lot of good you are spirit….” he muttered angrily.

“what then, do I do?”
“Sleep mode is one outcome, however if you are still active, then your focus was not to save the summoner, but to perform your duty to them post-mortem. It is likely that you were summoned with their life force.”

“Do you know my orders?” he asked.

“to serve the summoner.”

“and what did the summoner need of me?”

“to serve the summoner.”

“USELESS SPIRIT!” he snarled before snatching up his weapon and turning toward the castle.

“I’ll just play it by ear then, can’t be too difficult to figure out what’s going on and what to do next.”

his lavender cape billowed in the wind as he continued his long journey toward castle bahamut, determined to make sense of his situation.

What was disturbingly clear to him, was that he was not human, and if he was, he’d been irreversibly altered in some fashion.

“Artificial eidolon...summon..”

these thoughts played out in his mind, and then a name came to him, a name from a story about four heroes fighting an evil knight in a timeloop.

“Garland.” he mused.

“My name will be garland.”

he didn’t know where he’d heard the story, or why it felt so fitting, perhaps it was the model number he was told that reminded him. Regardless, he felt the name eerily fitting, and so opted to claim it.

He would gather information, discover his summoner’s identity, then go from there.

Earth, 2021

He lay on a hospital bed, now in a deep, deep coma, his friends and second family at his side, sobbing as the doctor explained that he had, at most, a few months to live before they ran out of resources to save him with.

The third world war was upon them, and he was doomed to die like so many others.

“I’m very sorry, but we’re running low on beds and there’s no guarantee he’ll live through this ordeal. We need to pull the plug. it’s nothing against him, but….his body showed no signs of infection, yet the K-0S virus got him anyway.”

“why didn’t he turn into one of those monsters?” jack asked, worried.

“His body has a natural defense against it, it’s rare, but some people don’t mutate, their bodies enter shutdown and remain in stasis.” a flash in the distance, that of a nuke going off, caught their attention.

“it….it’s not gonna affect us is it?” jack’s mother asked, terrified.

“it’s pretty far away, so no. but the radiation will carry over eventually.”

the doctor moved to the outlet.

“I’m sorry...really...but we need these beds free. If he managed to come to, we’ll change our assessment, but nobody who catches k-0s survives their coma. None ever wake up.”

“this is bullshit!” jack roared. “he was like a brother to me goddammit!! and now we’re just gonna let him…..” he slammed his fist against the wall and stormed out of the hospital room.

“I’m sorry, really...but….thousands of people are catching k-0s and nobody seems to know how it spreads. By rights...it’s like no infection we’ve ever seen. Between the war and people turning into monsters we’ve not had a single day of rest. Some of our doctors are becoming sick from fatigue. i’m really sorry but…..we have to make room for people who can be saved.”

they left the room, unwilling to even speak to him further.

Had they a home, they’d have taken him there, but the military was seizing houses left and right, violating the constitution and ignoring the rights of the citizens.

War was upon them all, and the end of the world seemed likely with people turning into hellish monsters.

There was no hope.

And so the young man in the hospital bed was taken off life support, like so many before him, another meaningless statistic marked off a board for eventual cremation.

Such was the fate of the weak.

Such was the fate of the poor.

Only the strong could survive in this new, war-torn america.