I spot the horde of Blood soldiers sitting under the red moonlight, munching on…stuff. From here, it looks like small furry creatures. Poor things, but at least the soldiers aren’t trying to go after one of Alwar’s men. Giants are tasty, so can’t say I’d blame them.
“General Rool,” I call out.
He seems to come from nowhere. “You have returned.”
“Yes.” I step back, startled that he can appear out of thin air. I might need to learn that trick.
“You smell…gods, what is that?” he says.
“Thorn serpent stomach juices,” I reply.
“So it is true. One must ride inside their stomachs to return from the temple.”
“You knew about that?” Why does everyone in this place mention these details after the fact?
“I do not know any Blood People who have made the journey inside. We keep our own records.”
“I actually wanted to talk to you about that,” I say. “You said you’re five hundred years old, right?”
“Approximately.”
“What were you before being turned?” I ask.
“I was one of the First People.”
I’ve never heard of them. “Where did they come from?”
“What do you mean? They have always been here.”
These must be the humans the scholar was talking about. I actually feel excited. I’m finally getting somewhere. “So you were born in Monsterland.”
“Where else?” he asks.
“Are more First People here?”
“I understand there is a handful, leftovers from various tribes. Why do you ask?”
Whoa. “But they’re still here?”
“Did I not just say that?”
Humans are considered a delicacy by many monsters. If any First People are still alive, then they must be exceptionally skilled at avoiding predators. “I’m shocked. No one’s ever mentioned them.”
“Why would they? They are very few in numbers, ruled by no one, and without any land. They are nomads without the protection of a kingdom.”
They’re outsiders. I always wondered how Benicio found a human male to hunt me down. It happened weeks ago when I was Benicio’s prisoner. But Benicio wanted me dead without being directly involved. He found a man to do the job. I escaped death with the help of Uhrn, Benicio’s sister.
“You actually met the very last of the First People who mattered to anyone at the Blood Battle,” he adds.
“You mean the little girl?”
Rool nods. “The last living proxy.”
Holy shit. “You mean the humans, the ones used as proxies, are these First People?” I was made to believe the proxies came from my world, but I could never figure out how the hell all these human families were originally chosen. What were their ties to Monsterland? What made them agree to proxy for a particular kingdom in the Blood Battle?
He nods. “When the Proxy Vow was put into place, there were over sixty First People tribes. The strongest twenty were chosen to proxy. In exchange for agreeing to this, their families were offered shelter and protection by their kingdoms.”
Alwar told me about this. Each kingdom had to select a human bloodline—a family like mine—to represent them in the Blood Battle, which was the only way to challenge the ruler of Monsterland for the throne. Until now, I had no idea how these human families were selected, only that all of the proxy families were gone except two. The Norfolk, me, and the Wesfolk, the little girl who showed up to the Blood Battle the night I was turned into a vampire. I refused to fight her, of course.
“What happened to the other bloodlines?” I ask.
“Their protectors did not do a very good job. Most did not last more than a hundred years. Killing off proxies is a fine way to ensure your enemies never take the throne.”
Killing proxies was prohibited under the Proxy Vow treaty, but there were ways around it. Benicio found one.
“So that little girl is the last of her family’s bloodline,” I conclude.
“Yes. Just as you are the last of yours. Even Alwar could not keep your bloodline safe. He even went as far as to send your family across the bridge.”
My insides twist into a hard knot. “Did you just say that my family is from…here?”
“How did you not know this? Did your elders teach you nothing?” he scoffs.
Oh God. Oh God! “How long ago was this?”
“Two hundred years, give or take. Right about the time Alwar took the throne, which he eventually lost to our glorious Blood King.”
That’s when my family built River Wall Manor. The pieces of all my unanswered questions start falling into place—my family’s connection to Monsterland, the real reason I’m bound to their laws and rules, the reason we Norfolk agreed to proxy for the War People.
“Alwar was trying to protect us,” I mutter. And in return, we vowed to come and fight in the Blood Battles if called.
“His official justification for sending them away was to find a solution for the drought. But we all knew he merely wanted to protect the Norfolk bloodline, while allowing the other kingdoms’ proxies to die off here in Monsterland. As a new king, it was seen as unjust and almost became his downfall. But then the water flowed, like he promised.”
Rain came. Rain Norfolk. That was when my great-grandmother was born, and the drought back home ended. It brought much-needed water into to the Tionesta River that flows through our property. Since then, the War People have seen us Norfolk women as good luck.
My eyes start to tear. We are from here. We’re from Monsterland. How’s that possible? No wonder Grandma Rain hated everyone back home and saw them as weak. She was rude and unkind, too. It was probably how she was raised by her parents. Monsterland culture.
I never would have guessed it. Then again, there was so much about her I didn’t know.
I think of her sitting on her old gray couch in her office, her nose buried in a book about gardening, surrounded by piles of books. How could someone know so much about gardening and still be such a bad gardener? She literally read from sunup to sundown, like it was her job. Her office was stuffed with thousands of gardening books from all around the world—the plains of Africa, the mountains of Japan, the coasts of China. Yet she killed her rose garden by putting some strange fertilizer in the soil. After that, they never grew back. You’d think she’d know how not to kill her own flowers or restart her garden.
I mean, I did see her putter a few times and put some stuff in the soil, but they were mostly rocks and weird crystals. Once she even planted a bunch of charcoal. When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to grow black beans.
I shrugged it off. She was always eccentric.
Actually, that’s what I used to think. Now I know better. She had her reasons for everything. But what would possibly motivate her to read all those books…and then…
Maybe she killed the roses on purpose. Maybe she ruined that soil. Her rose garden was her testing ground.
Is that why she read her books nonstop? Was she was trying to find things that might grow in that toxic dirt. Dirt one might find in a place like here? She could’ve been looking for food for the monsters to live on.
It’s just a theory, but it’s exactly what I’d been planning before my peace plan went to shit. I thought if I could help them create stable food sources, they wouldn’t be a threat to my world anymore.
She very likely could’ve come to the same conclusion. Sadly, she was barking up the wrong tree. I know that now. It’s like Alwar says, the creatures here don’t want to live in peace. They like fighting. They like hunting. Closing those doorways is the only solution.
“Growing up, did you hear any old stories about the First People witnessing a big hole opening in the sky?” I ask Rool.
“No, but there are other stories. The First People were known for their wild tales filled with nonsense.”
“Nonsense, how?”
“They told fantastic tales that glorify their kind. They spoke of a time when these lands were inhabited by billions of humans who constructed grand temples made of steel. They told of mechanical Fliers that could carry entire armies. They even believed there was once an ocean filled with fish. Nonsense.” He laughs. “Do you see any of that here?”
Giant temples made of steel? Mechanical Fliers?
“As if ignorant, weak humans could be capable of producing such things,” he adds.
I frown. “Then how do you explain my world?”
“They have had thousands of years to evolve. The First People have always been very primitive. They are incapable of adapting. It is why I chose to join the Blood People.” He laughs, shaking his head. “Steel temples.”
This conversation sets my mind reeling.
“But didn’t humans build the wall?” It’s an architectural marvel, an entire city inside a stone wall, complete with running water, plumbing, defense systems made with harpoons, and massive stone doors on hinges. It’s not a medieval castle. It’s a jaw-dropping fortress.
“Yes, but they had the help of the War People.”
“But when was it built?”
“I do not know. Perhaps a thousand years ago? Try asking that husband of yours.”
I already have. I once asked Alwar about the wall, and he told me the humans built the first portion but needed more muscle to complete it.
So how did primitive humans know how to build something that’s a thousand times bigger than the Great Wall of China, or hundreds of times taller than any pyramid found back home?
My mind snaps hard and floods with facts, stories, and pieces of puzzles that never fit—monsters having invaded my world long ago, but no record or evidence of it ever happening. Humans running from that invasion to come here, and then turning into giants. Humans back home fighting off the monsters and burning endless bonfires to keep the monsters out, which destroyed these lands. Then there are the stories of humans, my ancestors, building an insane wall. Finally, there’s the story of monsters pouring in one day from a hole in the sky.
Those pieces don’t make sense. Like random events from different stories.
Now Rool is saying that the First People have stories about steel temples and mechanical dragons.
Buildings. Planes. I cover my mouth and gasp. My knees go weak. I stumble back.
“My queen? What is the matter?” Rool says.
Fuck. What if these stories are so old they became distorted over time? What if that hole was just a doorway? One from River Wall Manor.
I feel like I’m going to be sick, because if what I’m thinking is true…
“Get the men ready,” I tell Rool. “We’re returning to the palace.”
“Yes, my queen.”
I turn and walk back to Alwar, who’s arguing with Gabrio about something.
I want to tell them. I need to tell someone.
The First People aren’t the first. They’re the last. And this place is what’s left over of my home.