Vice

content:

The Tallest Tree in Habitica stands in a pit in Taskwood forest.

In that pit, you may find the bodies of four young men in brigandry outfits. They are a contingent of the Christmas Killers who sailed west on a ship of the line to the Colonial Lands.

Among them is Firsk Willingham, leader of the Killers and orchestrator of the Destruction of Thindburg.

Atro sipped his mug of coffee, breathing in the bitter fumes to distract him from the woes in his head. The yellow awning was hung low, keeping the steam from billowing away. At this time of day, the cafe placed tables on the street to prepare for the influx of customers. The tranquil morning atmosphere was broken at intervals by the armourer’s noisy din next door, hammering weapons and Confounded Craft into shape. Aside from the noise, this cafe in Habit Square was one of the finest in terms of all things liquid, from Quintolassian tea to hard northern liquor. But Atro stuck with coffee – it had a lingering sensation even hours after drinking, like a potion without magic.

He would’ve tried the liquor at least once, but Habitica’s drinking laws for ‘young ones’ were stringent.

The sun inched over the stone-laid architecture of Habit City. Atro had taken the train from the tiny cottage he’d bought last year. It was a nice place, if not cramped, and the owner was happy to sell it at a cheap price to a young orphan like himself.

It was a lot smaller and more dreary than his old family cottage. Atro could still see his old home’s thatched roofing refracting the light in the morn, smell the old embers from last night’s fireplace, hear the crackling flames as the walls burned to the ground.

No, no, no – forget that. Forget that.

Another thing that coffee did – it kept his mind abuzz, making it do everything except remember. Drinking coffee put his mind on high alert; what room could memories find if his head was filled with the fluff of adrenaline? But over time he started to need more and more coffee to bring about the same effect.

Atro lifted the mug to sip, coaxing more steam off the surface. It coalesced at a pinch in the awning, seeping through a crack and out of sight.

Like cigarette smoke, Atro thought to himself, cigarette smoke pouring out of Firsk’s mouth.

He clutched the mug and gritted his teeth.

“Hullo! Mind if I take a seat?” Atro jumped. A woman with a massive sunflower hat plumped down at Atro’s table. “All the other seats are filled. Well, besides that one. And that one.” Weathered hands removed the hat with much pomp, revealing a shockingly yellow tumbleweed of curly hair.

She placed the hat on the table. A feather tucked through the top almost covered her whole face, but her kindly smile shone through the tufts.

The woman waved down a waiter and ordered a cup of tea, then turned to the boy whose quiet morning she’d just interrupted. “What’s your name, young one?”

Atro put the mug down and placed his hands underneath the table. “Atro.” He wasn’t afraid to use his real name here. No one in Habitica seemed to care about what went on across the Sundering Seas.

“Atro – never heard that one before. Not from here, I presume. Laquea? Cornerfield? Quinto Lands, maybe?” She turned away to watch the rising sun and wait for the fumbling reply.

“Orrient,” Atro muttered.

“Oh! Should’ve known. Sorry, can’t recognise Orriental for the life of me.”

Atro wondered if he could finish his coffee quick and take the train back home. He didn’t like talking to people here. Only the train engineer was nice. The last time he’d had a deep conversation with anyone at all was with Michael Bradbury, and that had brought him to a weeping mess.

Forget that. Forget.

Atro gulped down coffee as the woman turned those glittering blue eyes back to him. “I’m Ami!” She raised a hand to shake – it was not reciprocated. “How are ya? Where do you live? I was only wondering what someone so young is doing out here in the city so early in the morning. Why, Habit City’s barely half-woken up!” With every end of a sentence she laughed a bit to herself, as if everything she said was to illicit an equal and opposite laugh in reply.

Atro didn’t laugh. “I’m fifteen. I have a cottage.”

Ami rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course you do. You’re fifteen! And they expect you to mortgage property? I remember my first house in Habitica, fresh out of the Sutherian Desert. I was only 20 and even I found it tough. Had to work for that armourer right over there, in fact, to pay it all off. And they expect young ones half my age to hold a home? What, the Masterclassers in charge of this dump couldn’t think of funding an orphanage?”

Ami realised Atro was staring at her in what could only be described as abject terror. “Oh – so sorry, young one, pay me no mind. I get a bit political on early mornings like this. I suppose you don’t even know anything about Habitica, do you?”

Atro blinked profusely, gaining a bit of couragae. “No, no. I’ve been here for a year.”

“Oh!”

“Today is actually my one year anniversary of coming here. February 18 3018. Came here to… Celebrate.” Atro remembered how cold and wet he’d been the day he crossed the border to Habitica, floundering in the river rapids.

He tipped back some more coffee.

Ami seemed to be lost in Atro’s eyes, and for a second her eyes were dim and her lips in a sad little frown. Then she perked up and rubbed her hands together. “Well! No celebration’s a celebration without a good story to go with it, eh? Well, go on. How’d you come to be here, all the way from The Orrient?”

Atro eyed his mug, empty now. No way to forget. But he didn’t dare stand up and leave. This woman at the table was smiling so sweetly, so genuinely… Nice. And yet the coffee in his system was begging him to run, to flee again some more.

What are you going to do, tell her the truth?

Atro thought back to that day he’d talked to Bradbury. He’d fled before Firsk could find him, with Bradbury acting as distraction. Firsk had been angry. It seemed that every day after Atro fled, there was more news of Firsk pillaging another tavern or inn or state jail. He was looking for Atro, and the Estoponite crystals he’d taken from the Christmas Killers.

It was Atro who’d found the crystals in that old elven casket. Brighter than emerald and more valuable than gold. Firsk insisted they sell it on the black market immediately. This pouch of crystals alone would keep them well fed for years on end – enough to buy the emperor’s throne, Firsk kept saying. But Atro had found another use for them; a use that he could never tell the rest of his brigand mates, without the risk of being robbed in his sleep. On one of their many arguments, Firsk said that if Atro ever ran away with the crystals, he would find him. And wherever and whenever that may be, only one would walk away – the other in a grave. So, naturally, Atro ran away with the crystals, and ran away from The Orrient, because there was nothing more for him on that forsaken island.

“I ran from The Orrient, because of- because of the war.”

Ami nodded. “Ah yes, the Durgor War. I’ve heard of that one. Terrible, terrible. I still don’t get why they’d force children to fight their battles. The world is far too modern for that nonsense. Well, how’d you sail? Merchant ship to The Occident? That’s how everyone jumps west.”

Atro had crept past the walls into Bolya’s Beacon, The Orrient’s esteemed port city that had mothered the maiden voyages to the Colonial Lands, centuries and centuries ago. Guards were rife that night – the wounds felt by the attack on Thindburg were still sorely felt across the island. Atro had stowed away on some ship, he didn’t know what kind of ship it was, only that it was bound west, away from The Orrient. For days and days, he hid away in shadowed crevices and stole food for himself when he could. Even though it was a year ago, Atro could still feel the floor pitching and shifting as it had, day and night, with only the rats for company and hard tack for supper, until finally the ship made port in The Occident.

“Merchant ship. Yes.”

“Mm.” Ami was busy receiving her cup of tea and dripping a few drops of fairy tears from the provided jar. “And what did you think of The Occident? Nasty place, isn’t it? Too many politics for even my taste: road tolls this, gladiators that. Alchemy this, smuggling that. There was a reason I came here to live instead of there – the Masterclassers are a bunch of fools, but at least they have the heart in it.”

“Yes. The Occident. Not… Nice.”

Atro had been there only a month or so, but he’d lost count how many times he’d been approached by highwaymen, assailed by wolves or waylaid by corrupt ‘soldiers’, who were really just deserters. The onlly reason he’d survived the bandit attacks was his prestige. Habitica didn’t care about the goings-on of The Orrient, but The Occident surely did. Tales of the Destruction of Thindburg had spread throughout The Occident by then, and when stories jump west they tend to get muddled and legendary. He’d only needed to utter two words: “Christmas Killer” – and most robbers would go running. For anyone who wasn’t a criminal, Atro went by a fake name and covered his head at every city and merchant town. There were no wanted posters here, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

Atro’s fingers danced with his coffee mug. “Not nice at all.”

Ami stared at him expectantly. “Well? Any adventures here in Habitica? Children like you have lots to say – meeting mammoths in the north, sailing to Dilatory, searching for the tallest tree in the Taskwoods-”

“I did that,” Atro blurted, and immediately he regretted ever saying the words. “I found the tree. At the heart of Taskwood forest.”

“Oh, did you now? Was it any good?”

“Well, there was a pit.”

Atro’s stomach churned. The pit.

Ami swirled her tea and gave it a sip, pushing back stray yellow hairs who were having a taste. “I remember when I came to Habitica. It’s astounding how much care they give to immigrants on their first day, only to abandon them after the welcoming ceremony. They give you a toast and free night at the local inn. Then you’re kicked to the streets to make way for the next lot.” She cast Atro a glance. “I hope you fared differently?”

Atro picked at the scar running up his right leg, remembering that blade’s bite. Stumbling away from his attacker, a particularly grisly bandit, as he dodged trees and underbrush. West, west, west, west, his mind screamed. Across the river. To the place where all sins are forgotten and all vices redeemed. To the place they call Habitica. The tavern whispers all said that once you’d crossed that river border you’d come out the other end a clean man. But he hadn’t felt clean as he’d dragged himself and that little girl ashore, exactly one year ago. That bandit had disappeared down the current. The welcoming ceremony, if you could call it that, was nothing but a free entry into the infirmary and a foul-tasting tincture.

Ami watched Atro as he was, lost in thought, and she frowned again.

“Young one.” Ami hesitated for the first time that morning. “My son has just moved out of the home, off to university in Mistiflying, you see. So I have a spare room. I would be more than happy to-”

A violent crash and a tremor in the earth interrupted her. Atro gripped his cup, a little relieved by the interruption in the conversation, while Ami’s tea teetered about and tottered off the table before smashing into wet shards. Atro’s coffee smoke tumbled through a large tear in the awning.

“DEAR-” Ami shrieked. “What in Melior’s name is going on in that armoury?”

But it wasn’t the armoury. Another tremor sent both of them to the floor and darkness fell upon them. The awning had collapsed. Atro clambered through, wincing as he crawled over broken glass. He squeezed past a chair and edged out from underneath the fabric.

It was still dark when he scrambled out. What was this dark new ceiling above him? Had the entire roof collapsed on them? It looked like a hardened tapestry with a puzzling sheen, dozens and dozens of whirling patterns twinkling across it like reptilian scales.

Then with a burst of speed it leapt off the awning, blinding Atro with sunlight and buffeting him to his knees. A shadowy form landed upon the central green of the town square with a whumph. Leathery wings as dark as the night retracted into its body. It examined the old fountain at the centre of the Square with almost intelligent discontent.

“Shadow wyrm!” someone cried, espying the dragon through a second storey window of the cafe. “Shadow wyrm in Habit Square!”

Atro’s eyes could barely focus on the creature’s details. Shadow indeed – shimmering scales twinkled darkly across the creature’s arched back and down its slithery tail, but everything else was coated in a deep, powdery black.

The creature lifted its crested head, sniffed the air. Yellow orbs without pupils swiveled towards the outcrier. It hissed and opened its maw. Instead of fire, crackling blue light sprung from its throat, turning the rosy sunrise into a flickering afterimage. Coils of lightning whizzed their way right back across the Square and the cafe exploded. Atro scrambled for cover, ears ringing, as bricks and glass fell upon him. The putrid, sizzling smell of electricity boiled his nostrils.

When his ears began to hear again, he could hear the sounds of Habitica’s war horns. City guards spilled out of the adjoining streets and alleys to protect their town.

The scaly creature arched its neck and unleashed yet another barrage of lightning. Flash frames of the guards, sizzling and contorting, threw estranged shadows across the ground as they disintegrated. Those not caught in the dragon’s breath tried to flank the beast, but with a single swipe of its tail an entire contingent was sent flying into the rooftops. Another half-dozen were met with sharp claws and sharper jaws.

Before long, all but one remained. A warrior who’d gone undetected the whole battle finally came close enough to thrust his spear into the dragon’s hindleg. A resounding crack as the weapon broke in two, and the dragon turned lazily towards the man. The warrior drew his sword, but at once it was as if a spell had been put upon him. From the proud and strong warrior he had been just moments ago, the man now dropped his weapon and sunk to his knees, quivering in his boots.

“My, my head…” he warbled. “What are you doing to my head?”

The dragon bared its fangs. “Keagan Helm of the Habit City Guard.” The dragon’s voice was harsh and slithery, a whispery rasp, as slow as the rising moon.

“How…” the man spluttered, sweat quivering off his forehead. “How do you know my name?”

Atro edged closer and ducked behind a piece of rubble as the shadow wyrm spoke again.

“Keagan Helm: Pride. Arrogance.”

“What?” The warrior swung his arms in front of his face, as though seeing something that wasn’t there.

“Gambling. Corruption.”

“No, no…” he blinked profusely. “No, it was just that one time! I, I was down on my luck and…” Atro snuck ever nearer as Keagan twitched uncontrollably under the dragon’s withering gaze.

“Power abuse. Substance abuse. Domestic abuse.” The dragon savoured each syllable with a grin.

“No, no, no, I- I can explain, I can…”

The dragon’s rasp rose to a final, growling crescendo: “And Infidelity.”

The words came upon Keagan like a gavel to his disheveled mop of hair. His eyes widened and his head spasmed in denial. But at last he choked and wept at the feet of the dragon. “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault, she made me do it, it wasn’t my-”

The wyrm arched its neck down and gulped down the man whole. Atro heard Keagan’s body go down the dragon’s gullet, saw the bulge in its scaly throat as it squeezed through. The dragon’s neck started convulsing; it took Atro a moment to realise the dragon was laughing, laughing as it swallowed Keagan whole.

The beat of Atro’s heart consumed him. But he could not step down. There was no one left to stop this monster but him. He grabbed the hilt of his sword in its scabbard and steeled himself. He imagined sticking the sword right into its heart, killing it. He imagined saving the city from this night terror. It had to be him.

“Atropon of The Orriental Wheat Fields.”

Atro’s heart stopped, sword halfway out of the sheathe. The dragon had used his full name. Not even the wanted posters had his full name. He didn’t dare look around the piece of rubble shielding him from view. The town square had gone proper silent now; no one could help him.

He never heard the dragon approach. But now he was drenched in its shadow. A black ornate head sunk down to meet his face. Ice cold air steamed from its breath. Its eyes met his, and his head started to feel all fuzzy and itchy. He couldn’t move his body; frozen and weak, weapon forgotten. All he could see were those piercing yellow orbs that stared unblinking into his soul.

“Little Atropon, hiding in the rough: Arrogance. Cowardice.”

Memories rushed through Atro’s head in electrically vivid quality. Falling from a tree that his 8-year-old self thought he could climb. Arguing with Papa about sneaking into the woods to catch a fox. Running from his parents as his cottage burned. Now his heart hammered faster than it had been when he’d been chased by those soldiers just a few years ago.

The dragon’s eyes widened to consume Atro’s entire vision. Nothing but those empty eyes, filling with moments of his past. “Violence. Treachery.”

Letting his parents hang right in front of him at The Hanging Tree. Killing the man who’d pulled the lever. Writing his name in Firsks’ brigandage signatory. Emptying and burning taverns across The Orrient.

Atro put a hand to his forehead. A dull pain in the centre of his brain, growing sharper by the second. He opened his mouth to speak, and only the tiniest of whimpers shivered out.

The dragon’s voice grew in wrath and mirth. “Rage. Remorse. Concealment of wrongdoing.”

Spreading terror as Firsks’ right hand man, to civilians and brigands alike. Weeping at the feet of Michael Bradbury. Hiding every single fact about himself from Ami in the coffee shop. Atro’s eyes wailed and pled before the majesty of the dragon. His entire body was bloated, shaking and squirming as his insides saturated with all these memories.

“Vengeful murder.” And the gavel fell.

“Forget that, forget that!” Atro screamed aloud. But the memories stuck to his vision like sap from the trees of Taskwood forest…

The Tallest Tree in Habitica stands in a pit in Taskwood forest.

Firsk Willingham held a cigarette in his mouth. “I came all this way for you, Atro. I told you: if you ever ran away with the crystals, I’d find you.”

They’d followed Atro. The Christmas Killers had run out of funds, even after pillaging inns and taverns. The rebellion was fading away. Firsk had become obsessed with Atro, the one who got away – and with his precious Estoponite crystals that could make him richer than the Emperor. So mad he had become in his drunken rage that 11 months after Atro had gone, he ordered a contingent of the Killers to steal a ship of the line and sail themselves to the Colonial Lands. Last December they made landfall in Habitica, and at last they trapped Atro on his lone little quest to find the Tallest Tree in Habitica. They met him at the pit, to take the crystals back and maybe have a taste of his blood.

But Atro had a plan. In his hand he held the hewn chunk of rock he had found in that cave long ago, a faded number engraved on its flank: 2. For many nights he’d pondered over it, wondering its purpose. It was only when he brought it into contact with some Estoponite that he realised the magic it could bring out. And that was why he’d stolen the crystals.

“You used me,” Atro said, tripping backwards through the undergrowth as Firsk and 3 of his lackeys closed in. “You never wanted revenge for your parents. You’ve killed hundreds of people, innocent and guilty. You hurt so many people! You used me!”

Firsk growled in an animal rage, sending a volcanic plume of cigarette smoke about his face. “I don’t get you, Atro. YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED! You killed that General. What the f#ck else do you want? I thought you’d want the Emperor’s head on a pike! I could have given you that! If you’d just listened to me, given me those crystals, we could’ve been rulers of The Orrient! But no, you didn’t listen. You never did, since the moment we met each other the day our parents died.”

“Do not speak of my parents.”

“I don’t give a flying f#ck! WHAT DO YOU NEED THOSE CRYSTALS FOR? Medicine for your crippling depression?” In a rage he threw his sword onto the ground. “I don’t get it!! You can’t even sell the bloody things, you don’t know how! I KNOW HOW! Give us the crystals and we can be RICH!”

“You wanna know why I want these crystals?” Atro asked. He unslung his rucksack and dove his hands into it.

He tore open the pouch of Estoponite and the forest was awash with sickly green light. Firsk and his cronies blanched. Atro poured the glowing powdered Estoponite onto the stone in his hand. The crystals shimmered and sank into the stone’s surface and the 2 lit up like a firecracker, showering the scene in a different kind of green – an alien, cosmic green.*

“What are you doing?” Firsk spat. They were his last words.

Atro threw the stone into Firsk’s face and ducked for cover.

BANG!

It was in that moment that Atro recalled a little memory of Firsk on the day they had met. Atro had spent the whole night sobbing and crying at his parents’ deaths, and Firsk had given him a piece of bread he’d stolen. The only food he had left.

Firsk’s smouldering corpse lay at the bottom of the pit in the centre of Taskwoods forest along with his 3 brigands. Still lodged between his fat and broken lips was his final cigarette, smoke gushing out like a volcanic rift through tattered awning.

“HEY! You STAY AWAY from him!”

Atro came to. His clutched hands edged away from his head. The pounding in his head ebbed away and the fuzziness disappeared. All those memories that bloated his insides fled back to their hiding places. But still he could feel them throbbing. The great shadow swung away, and tears at last sprang from his eyes. He could still see the afterimage of the dragon’s hypnotising gaze.

“Yeah, THAT’S it! Listen to me now, reptilian FREAK!”

Atro’s eyes blinked themselves into focus. The shadow wyrm thumped toward a new figure just a stone’s throw away. The yellow tumbleweed of hair was unmistakable.

“Ami Spiker of the Tannery.” The dragon’s grin diminished. “Ami Spiker: Absense of shame-”

“I don’t give a DAMN what you’ve gotta say, slithery scum!” Ami cried, shaking a worn fist at it. “Why don’t you scarper off and rid this town of your mucous breath?! Now one has any time for your emotional sermonin’!”

The monster’s smile disappeared now. “No one in this world speaks ill of me.” Its back rose erect, yellow eyes lasering Ami to the ground. “No one who lives.”

Ami stood her ground, but her voice faltered. “Are- are you so sure? Worm?” Atro crawled towards Ami, hands grappling blindly for his weapon as he stared at her face as it dissolved into panic. He was too far away.

“Foolish citizen of Habitica, come to stop me.” Then those fish-trap jaws clamped down on Ami and up she went.

“Help me!” she cried, first in shock, then in pain. “HELP me!”

The dragon shook her this way and that, teeth sinking into her body, but her voice never wavered as she screamed, “Help! Help me!” Atro could do nothing but watch.

Ami’s panicked blue eyes shone like gemstones as she shrieked one last time, “HELP ME!” Then her disheveled form disappeared into the monster’s maw.

“No!!” A haggard cry from Atro’s lips as he scrabbled forward. But she was already gone, like Keagan before her.

The dragon looked down on him again. This time, those yellow eyes didn’t stare into his soul to divine his moral crimes – just at the puny, sweaty frame of the boy that struggled to catch his breath.

“Atropon who thinks himself special,” the dragon hissed. “Who believes himself forgiven of murder just because he shed a few tears in its wake. No – you’re just another monster to forget and be forgotten.”

The dragon’s words stung Atro’s ears as he lay crumpled on the floor.

“And yet, the power I feel about you…” the dragon went still. “It cannot be you…? You have… The stone…?”

Was it the dragon meddling with his mind again, or could he feel a tiny twisting in his mind? Like a nugget. A fractured nugget in Atro’s mind. His hand went to his rucksack, within which a little chunk of rock felt hot to the touch.

The silence was interrupted by the oncoming flapping of wings, and something pounced on the dragon. A giant purple feathery creature – a gryphon – appeared almost out of thin air, tackling the beast and clawing at its hide with a flurry of talons. Its magnificent wings like that of an eagle’s beat endlessly upon the dragon’s decorated head. A snaking tail with incandescent tufts swayed this way and that, keeping itself balanced as it clashed with the shadow wyrm.

Melior, the magical protector of Habitica, had arrived.

The dragon clawed its way free at last and slunk a few paces back. Atro was surprised by how small it looked now compared to the massive gryphon, whose fluffy head could tower over the Habit Square roofs if he stood on his hindlegs. Under an avian scowl and furrowed eyebrows, Melior’s beady eyes stared daggers at the intruder.

“Vice the Shadow Wyrm.” His sonorous voice had a touch of surprise.

“Melior of the Inept,” the dragon replied, teeth bared as he smirked. “If have rid your city of many scoundrels. I was on the verge of executing this runt before your insolent intrusion.”

Melior shook his head in disappointment, perhaps in disbelief. “Centures have passed since you dared creep out of your lair; one would marvel that you have not learned your lesson after the withering defense that sent you into hidding in the first place.”

Vice hissed with pleasure, but his next words were sharp and blunt. “Times are changing, Melior of the Inept. These times that approach I have been waiting for millennia, when your mother’s mother was not yet even a hatchling. Do not believe I have been licking the wounds you dealt me for all this time – I have been waiting for the Time that comes.”

“Begone, Vice,” Melior declared, “or receive twice the beating you received when I sent you into the crater of Mt. Habitica.”

Vice deftly crept up the ruins of the cafe, still hissing. “Know that your days as Habitica’s protector will be over. Know that the days of all who withhold their vices are over.” With one last last withering look at Atro, the shadow wyrm flicked his wings and disappeared.

Danger averted – Melior slouched, and he grumbled under his breath about his aching bones and tireless chores. He looked down at Atro as if he was the one behind all this.

“The Masterclassers will hear of this. They will make their decree the following morning. I shall inform the town crier.” Then he, too, took to the air and flew off.

Atro stood, body trembling, and searched the debris for his possessions. At last he found his sword, and the fraying pouch of Estoponite crystals that had tumbled out of his rucksack in the fray – the fuel for his magic stone. He’d like to see how the dragon would like a stone such as this thrown down its gullet.

He found something else amongst the rubble, though. A crushed sunflower hat, its withered feather sticking out the top like a thin, white flag.

This is a revised version of a story from 19 Dec 2023.