Maurice Broaddus - King Maker

"Give Momma a kiss." Miss Jane's lips pulled back over cruel teeth.

Percy pivoted and then flung her down the stairs into the maw of shadows. All he heard was the sickening crack of splintering bones.

"I'm sorry, Momma," he said into the darkness. Through the window the remaining fiends shambled toward the building. Events tumbled toward an endgame. Turning to return to his room, a cloud swirled at the end of the hallway. Not smoke. The mist seeped from walls and had a knowing quality to it as it slipped to the ground in an intelligent trawl. It worried him more than his errant mother. He rushed back to the room and stuffed clothes at the crack of the door.

"What is it?" Rhianna asked.

"Precaution." Percy slumped onto the couch.

A smoke alarm dangled from the wall, the light from the previous floor fading with each step along the stairs. The next floor's light had long burned out. Wires hung from the ceiling. In the residual light, they could make out a final graffiti pronouncement along the stairwell: "A city of refuge in a time of great tribulation." Though none dared voice it, all were bone weary. Merle hadn't spoken in so long even Wayne missed his spouted gibberish. Wayne trundled on, vowing to exercise more when this ended. The keloid on the back of his neck ached. King walked point, unfazed by the intermittent light and the peculiar dance of shadows. Each ascending stair step, despite the sense of climbing one's own gallows, was a minor victory as their feet became heavier and heavier. Their ragged puffs reverberated louder than they wished in the stairwell echo chamber. King was the first to turn the corner leading to the final floor and thus was the first to spy Green.

An impassive sentry, he stood there with a burnt brown suit over a burnt orange shirt with a matching orange and brown tie and pocket kerchief. A chinchilla coat rested on his shoulders. No expression crossed his face. No recognition, no resignation, only a flat affect of business. King came to an abrupt halt with Merle and Wayne bumping into him.

"Fallen so far?" Merle began. "An exercise to experience what we experience."

"We now, is it? You consider yourselves one of the mortals, do you?" Green said, his voice the sound of rotted bark giving way. "This, at least, was my choice."

"You were always about choices. How is dear old Morgana?"

Green said nothing.

"What's the matter? Winter got your tongue?" Merle pressed. "I heard a story once. Of a man transformed to exist only as the adversary to the court of chosen knights. Some people knew him as Bercilak de Hautdesert, some as the Green Knight. Part man, part vegetation elemental, he challenged any man to strike him with his ax if he would be allowed to return the blow a year and a day later. One knight took the challenge. But when the appointed time came, the Green Knight barely nicked the chosen one, as said knight had passed all of the tests, made the right choices, set before him. What say you?"

Wayne's keloid on the back of his neck flared with the blazing intensity of a sunburn. He rubbed it but found no solace. The hot pain ran to his core and unsettled him with its sudden familiarity.

"There were many knights. As the age changes, so do its players," Green said.

"So we begin anew. The eternal cycle."

"I got this," Wayne said.

"No." King grabbed him by the arm. "It's my responsibility."

Merle put his hand on King's arm. "No, the first assault belongs to the good Sir."

Without another word, Wayne strode into a sprint, taking the stair steps two at a time. Green remained rooted to his spot. Wrapping his arms around him, Wayne ran through the room and slammed him against the wall. A window shattered behind some cheap venetian blinds. Wayne held him aloft with both arms, attempting to squeeze the life out of Green's trunk-like neck. With a baleful glare of calculating malevolence, Green clapped Wayne's ears, breaking his grip and sending the two of them tumbling to the ground. When they got up, the span of two bodies separated them.

"My turn," Green said simply. His first blow knocked Wayne from his feet. His neck jerked forward and suddenly his mouth filled with the taste of his own blood. The keloid on Wayne's neck burned. Green cried out as vegetal shoots sprouted from his mouth. Leaves blossomed from his nostrils and ears. With a huge sweep of his arm, his fingers became branches, bare limbs of hate scourging King and Merle. Weeds erupted through the floorboards, the mildew spoors given new life: first trapping their feet then, kudzu-winding up their bodies, the roots squeezed them. Turning his attention to Wayne, a jutting spear of a branch impaled him in the shoulder.

"Winter is finally upon you," Merle choked out.

"Senile old fool. Age has addled your magics as well as your mind."

"You see how well you handle it if your mind ages one way while your body ages the other." Merle said. "Still, I have enough left for the occasional spark."

Merle raised his hand, his gaze fixed on his palm. At first, a single ember, little more than a gnat of light, circled in a tight orbit. Soon, a swarm gathered, each light following its own path until they coalesced into a comet of flame. Merle blew on the ball and it leapt from his path landing on the trail of growth leading to Green. Unfortunately, the flames also crawled back toward King and Merle. "Hmm, that might not have been in my best interest."

Green reared back in a frozen rictus of terror, his mouth a blackening maw. His form morphed behind the curtain of flames, until the knots and whorls became the screaming mouth of a scorched tree. Once the flames subsided, the grip of the vines slackened to where King could escape and rush to his friend.

"You all right?" King cradled Wayne.

"Hanging in there. I got me a splinter to end all motherfuckin' splinters, though." Wayne's bravado didn't match his concern at the pooling blood.

"Can you do anything, Merle?"

"A little. But time runs short." Merle plucked an unscorched bud from one of the remaining branches. "For all of us. I fear the bloodwyrm will not take well to us daring so deep into his lair."

"Bloodwyrm?" King asked.

Lott banged on the door, constantly scanning each end of the hall, his imagination afire with all manner of possible attacks. As long as no rats came charging down the hall — because it'd be just his luck for there to be rats — he thought they'd be OK. A lone eyeball flitted across the peephole before the door opened a fraction to double-check what it had just seen. Rhianna opened it fully to Lady G rushing her with a hug.

"What the hell?" Rhianna exclaimed.

"Girl, folks done lost their minds out here, for real," Lady G said.

Their voices faded to white noise as the two caught each other up. Lott again checked the hallway before he made his way in and bolted the door behind them. The dull, shit-colored room reeked of benign neglect. Bullet holes circled the window. Ill-fitting Plexiglas lodged in the frame. A mattress was propped up against the sill. Percy sitting on the couch having paused his Nintendo game at the banging.

"How you holding up?" Lott asked.

"I'm her knight in shining armor," Percy said, lowering his head as if embarrassed at the admission. "That's what she said."

"Yes you are," Rhianna reassured him, not with the voice of someone with romantic intent. The tone, however its raspy delivery, was unpracticed and didn't carry easily from her lips. It was gentle, serious, and true. A rare attempt at vulnerability.

"Are you one, too?" Percy asked.

"I'm hers." Lott pointed to Lady G.

She turned with a smile. A pang lodged in his heart at the sight, though he didn't want to admit to such feelings. Regret, jealousy… longing. King would be a lucky man if he was to get with her.