Misadventures of Malachi, Part 1: When You Look Upon A Star

Malachi groaned. He had decided he was most certainly not a fan of mountains, and he very specifically disliked walking on them. He resolved to find an alternative as soon as possible. “Ugh.” He noted involuntarily.

“Shut up, Malachi.” Iago reminded him.

“I didn’t even complain that time!” Malachi protested.

“Perhaps we had best set up camp.” Resmi ventured, “Sundown will come before we know it among these mountain peaks.”

“She makes an excellent point.” Malachi told the group.

“I’d like to reach Steelhold before the next Red Star, if it’s all the same to you.” May said.

“I’d like a camel.” Eptol opined.

“I wouldn’t mind a camel.” Malachi agreed.

May sighed, “One more hour, then we can set up camp.” She threw a glance at Malachi, “And you aren’t allowed to talk until sunrise. And also you take first watch.”

He saluted to show agreement, and then when she turned her attention back to the path in front of her, did a different gesture.


Mal poked at the fire with a stick. He considered complaining, then glanced at May’s sleeping form, remembered what she had said, and thought better of it.

Consumed by boredom, he flopped onto his back and stared up at the night’s sky. He counted off the constellations; The Great Owlbear, Iomedae’s Belt... he paused. That was odd. There wasn’t normally a star there. A bright, red star.

His brain caught up with his eyes, and started to panic. He furrowed his gaze at the star and started running possibilities through in his head. Could a second Red Star have been sent in the same year? It was unheard of. Some remains of the previous one? Malachi was just about to wake the party around him when he got the strangest sense that the Star had caught him looking at it. He wanted to turn his gaze away.

Instead, he looked harder. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. The star grew bigger in his sight, until all he could see was red.

Then he blacked out.


When Malachi awoke, it was past dawn. He wasn’t in his bedroll, he noticed. He must have fallen asleep on the watch again. He looked around. He saw no remnant of a fire, and nobody’s bags were left in the camp. In fact, there did not appear to have been a camp at all. It began to dawn on Malachi that perhaps his party had abandoned him.

“Halt!” The voice was unfamiliar. Malachi took some exception to the command, as he did not consider himself to be doing anything that could be halted. “To which protectorate do you owe fealty?”

Malachi looked up from the ground at a female figure, wearing a hooded robe in a familiar shade of blue with shining pauldrons, and holding a quarterstaff. Her words stumbled through his head like a drunken terrier. “What?” He answered eventually.

“Maybe he really is walking unprotected. I don’t see any guards, and if they were hiding they’d have taken us out by now.” Malachi noticed the woman’s companion, nearly identical save for being taller, and of straighter posture.

“Nobody walks without protection.” The shorter woman cast a wary look into the foliage beside the mountain path, then threw her gaze back down to Malachi, “Who protects you?”

“Nobody.” Malachi answered after a second, “I mean, usually there’s Eptol in front of the sharp things, and Resmi heals me when I need it, but, um...” He looked around again, as if expecting it to be some elaborate trick, “They don’t seem to be here.”

The two hooded figures looked at each other. The taller one rolled her shoulders uncomfortably.

“Do you think..?” She began.

“Either way,” The shorter one turned her attention back to Malachi, “The Queen will want to see him herself.”

Malachi pushed himself to his feet, “Is there breakfast where you’re taking me?”


He really was going to have to do something about mountains and the walking on thereof. The way the cloaked figures led him wasn’t even a path, but straight up the mountainside by way of crags and outcrops, many times involving leaps that Malachi didn’t appreciate having to make.

At last, they seemed to reach their destination. The shorter woman looked around in all directions, then, satisfied, lodged the point of her staff under what Malachi had taken to be part of the mountain, but was in fact a separate boulder. It shifted to the side, and behind it there was a tunnel going down.

“After you.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured you’d say that.” Malachi stepped resignedly into the dark. He could barely hear the footsteps of the women as they walked behind him in the pitch blackness. He decided they must be able to see down here, because he never heard them bump into the cavern walls, as he was wont to do.

Finally he saw torchlight ahead. The tunnel suddenly ended, and Malachi stepped into a cavernous room filled with people. Most were human, but those that weren’t were varied, and mingled happily.

“What is this place?” Malachi asked, as the two robed women took positions either side of him and led him through the brown cavern.

“The Court of the Dragon Queen.” The taller one answered, an air of pride in her voice.

They crossed the room into another tunnel, this one level, and more like a hallway than the more natural one they had entered by. The hallway led off to two more rooms such as the previous one, and branched twice more before they came before a great wooden door, carved with the icon of a rising dragon.

“Acolytes Hona and Caughtia request audience with the Dragon Queen.” Said the shorter woman. The door swung open at this, and Malachi was pushed into a throne room.

The robed women each fell to one knee and laid their quarterstaves on the ground beside them. More awkwardly, Malachi dropped to his knee also, while the figure on the throne before them rose to her feet.

She wore shining armour. Malachi wasn’t an expert, but he might have said that it was in places highlighted with platinum. The Queen’s helmet emulated the maw of a dragon, and a sharp crown was incorporated into its design. As she stepped forward, Malachi noted something similar in the posture. Almost a stoop to the walk, though the Queen certainly carried herself upright and proud. Just before she spoke, at last Malachi noticed her cloak of dragonwing, and finally recognised her.

“Malachi?” Came Resmi’s voice from within the helmet. Over Malachi’s shoulders, the two Acolytes looked at each other with worry. They had never heard their mistress sound like that. There was an edge of uncertainty to her voice, of sadness. Of remorse. “How... how can you be? I saw... I couldn’t...” She reached out a gauntlet, and touched the spiked fingertips to Malachi’s cheek, as if to confirm that her eyes did not deceive her.

“Resmi, what’s going on?”

“I might ask the same of you, Malachi!” She withdrew her hand and turned sharply, her cloak whipping behind her. She paced a few steps towards her throne, then turned back, “I watched you die!”

Malachi was a little dumbfounded at this notion. After a while, he asked lamely, “When?”

“When at last we reached the Tower. The traitor deceived us, and in the redoubling of his efforts, he stabbed you. Cleanly, through the heart.” She gazed up at the sky she couldn’t see, “Still it unsettles me, the clarity with which he fought through his madness.” From somewhere, she drew her quarterstaff, the points of which, Malachi noted, were cast in iron, and planted it upright beside her as she spoke, “You owe me at least the explanation of how you came to survive.”

“That... that didn’t happen.” Malachi answered. He was finding the questions he was being asked today were much too difficult for this early on a morning, “When Flynn-“

The glare of his escorts snapped to him, and Resmi struck the bottom of her staff against the floor, “We do not speak the traitor’s name in my dominion.”

“When he broke the device, the madness seemed to clear and he helped us. He didn’t attack me. He came quietly when May arrested him.”

The shorter Acolyte lifted her head, “My Queen?”

“He speaks the truth, or else believes that he does.”

“So what’s going on?” Asked the taller of the pair.

“I admit, I know not.”

“I’m working on a theory.” Malachi said, “When Fl- he damaged the machine, it created a wrinkle in history; that’s not how it was meant to go. And so there was, in a manner of speaking, fabric of time going spare. The only way for the universe to iron itself out was to spread out across multiple possibilities. This resulted in multiple timelines, and therefore multiple realities. Somehow, I’ve been transported from my reality to yours.” Suddenly, he remembered what he’d seen just before he’d fallen unconscious, “The red star!”

“What of it?”

“Not the one that fell, the one I saw, last night. It wasn’t supposed to be in the sky. It was the last thing I saw before I woke up here. I think it was in fact a pinprick of temporal energy from that very incident that engulfed me and brought me here.” Malachi felt proud of himself. Then he deflated, “I still don’t know how to get home, though. I suppose I could try looking for that star again.”

“Go outside at night?” The shorter Acolyte asked, incredulous, “Are you insane?”

“What’s wrong with being outside at night?”

“That’s when the Abberations roam. Despite all my efforts, I cannot expunge them from even my own domain.” Resmi shook her head sadly, “If I were you, I should not feel safe to roam the surface in the day.”

Suddenly, a question struck Malachi that he couldn’t believe he had not yet asked, “Resmi, where are the others?”

She sighed heavily. “The lizard roams the forests gathering a motley warband. They often encroach the borders of my lands. Eptol and Iago, I believe, travel together. I have heard on the winds that they have new companions. Aranell fell also at the Tower, and I have not seen Dovos since then.” Then she added, with a small, satisfied nod, “The traitor is dead.”

“But you monopolise my time, Malachi.” She turned and strode back towards her wooden throne, “I must meditate and attend to matters. Like all the peaceful that pass through my mountains, you are welcome my hospitality. Acolyte Hona, Acolyte Caughtia, see that Malachi is as comfortable as any in my Court.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” They chorused.

“I can tell that you do not intend to stay here with me forever, Malachi.” Resmi said as she perched on her throne, “But before you leave, please see me to say goodbye.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” Malachi echoed.

“Please,” She told him, “Just Resmi.”