The tower

The tower had become so overgrown with heavy, creeping vines that its original shape had become so thoroughly obscured it was a wonder that it could be recognized as a tower at all anymore. Time had not been kind to it, nor the area of its surrounds. There were ghosts of what had once been much loved garden in the gnarled roots and overgrown rose bushes with their thorns that seemed eternally seeking to draw blood, the hedges that were once a menagerie of fine topiary now stood as wild beasts in the growing gloom of nightfall. Unseen eyes, voyeurs hidden in the shadows, their intentions as hidden as their identities were. Even the sound of the wind playing through the leaves seemed to be whispering promises of danger and darkness.

Really, it was the sort of place that anyone would find themselves wondering why it was they ever let themselves wind up there, and Robert was certainly no outlier to these woeful wonderings. In fact, as the knight ran his thumb across the hilt of his sword for the umpteenth time, he could not help but wish he could be quite literally anywhere else in the entire world than the forgotten gardens of the long-forsaken tower. There were just some places that the living never should set foot, and this was one of them and he really did not want to know what the place might resort to in order to keep to this.

It was, as they said, his destiny to set forth and slay the fearsome beast that lay in wait at the top of the tower. However, things like that were all well and good to say when one is not directly involved in the destiny itself, and so while those wise folk in all their jewel encrusted robes and caverns of old tomes were perfectly content to hand out destinies to anyone seeking meaning, it was entirely different for those who found themselves the active player in living out their own destiny.

Of course, it was a little different when he had first set out with little more than a dusty old map, some vague words of advice and a sword at his hip to how it was navigating the shadow of the tower that held the beast that was to tear the world in two. If nothing else, it really did make the whole thing feel a great deal more legitimate in all the ways he really did not want it to.

It was with the thought of the shame that would blacken his name indefinitely if he were to take the far more appealing option of turning and fleeing that drove him forward, in through the heavy, creaky door and past the point where all sense could call him back.

The air outside had been muggy and a little too thick for his liking, but inside the tower it could not have been more different if it tried. A relentless chill clung to the air, and to his bones, crisper than any winter morning he could rightly recall. The shadows had taken on an almost organic sense to them, as if they had existed for so long without the light daring to chase them away that they had formed some unnatural, primordial life. It was as if the very building itself understood that it was tasked with holding something evil within its walls, becoming something wrong and twisted itself.

The staircase, a great stone spiral, curled its way into the darkness waiting above the man, and for a moment he found himself cursing the fact he had chosen to go without a lantern for his task. All the same, there was no use lamenting it with all the privileges of hindsight and so, with gritted teeth, all that there was for him to do was take it one step at a time. No use getting ahead of himself and trip over himself, which was advice he wished he had given himself before agreeing to hunt a monster, but once again, hindsight was wretchedly cruel in its neutrality.

A lone door stood at the very top of the staircase, the light streaming through the gaps managing to be both inviting and more than a little worrying. Robert had spent so long working to get there that actually being there was a little odd. He didn’t want to admit to himself that he had not the faintest clue as to what he was actually going to do once he pushed through the door but, well, the time for such silly little things like formulating plans had well and truly passed him by and so the only thing left for him was to do the actual doing part.

He raised his hand, then realized how silly it would be to knock. One could not just go around knocking on doors and just ‘Hullo, just thought I’d pop in and kill you, that alright with you?’ because that was just frankly ridiculous and just not something that people did.

So instead of knocking, he did what any good knight and any good person that was playing at being a knight would do.

With a flourish he swung the door open. Which was not as difficult as he had been expecting and so he stumbled forward awkwardly trying not to completely fall over and ruin any dramatic impact of his arrival.

He did not know what to expect on the other side of the room, but even then, he knew it was not what he saw.

The doorway opened into a child’s bedroom. Pale purple wallpaper dotted with little pink and white flowers, much loved dolls sitting about as if they were playing some game or another, books with more pictures than words, all detailing charming adventures with fairies and merfolk and princesses dancing in great ballrooms, a stuffed rabbit staring over to him from its perch upon a little rose silk bed in a way that seemed to suggest it knew why he was there and it was judging him for it. It was bizarre and it felt somehow more wrong than the rest of the tower had been. Like he had walked through and found himself somewhere that did not exist anymore.

“Are you here to play with me, mister?”

He was only a little embarrassed to admit the unexpected voice from behind him startled him a little bit. He turned to the speaker only to see a little girl. A perfectly ordinary looking little girl with wild golden curls and sea green eyes that could not have been any older than eleven at the absolute oldest. There was such a hopeful expectation in the way she gazed up at him, eyes wide and shining, that he felt a little put off.

“I hope you are,” the child continued, giving the little plush bear in her arms a little excitable squeeze, “I’m bored and it’s lonely being in here all alone.”

“Who…” Robert began awkwardly, “Who are you?”

“Nunya.” returned she.

“Nunya?”

“Yeah! Nunya business!” This came with a burst of laughter from the little girl, “Did I say it right? In the book, the princess in the castle said that to the wicked witch and it was funny and I liked it!”

It took all the self-restraint that Robert could muster up to not sigh at this. Things were already so bizarre that he could not rightly say he was as surprised as he necessarily should have been. But it did feel especially odd. He had been sent there to slay a monster and yet all there that he found was a child. Now, of course he wondered if perhaps the monster in question was what was keeping the child in captivity in the tower, and yet as he looked about he could find nothing at all to suggest that there were any other living creatures there beyond himself and the child.

The gnawing fact that nobody had so much as hinted at the possibility of a captive refused to leave his mind even as he did not like the implications it held even slightly.

“Are you really here all alone?” Robert asked as conversationally as he could, his gaze landing just a little off from the child, “That sounds terribly lonely if you are.”

“It is,” said she with a pout, “My papa brought me up here ages ago and you’re the first person to come and visit me since.”

“And did your papa,” he paused, his mouth feeling oddly dry all of a sudden, “Tell you why he left you here?”

The child scuffed one slippered foot sulkily against the star-patterned carpet. The extent of her reply came in the form of a hum that sounded enough like she did not know to serve as an appropriate enough answer.

There was nothing about the child that set her apart from any other child, nothing that would have suggested she was better suited to destroying worlds than she would be skipping rocks over ponds with her friends. But there was something not right about the situation. In fact, it was feeling just wrong enough that he was getting stuck second guessing himself.

“And how long have you been up here?” asked he.

While he had not taken the most extensive of looks throughout the tower, he had noticed it seemed just uninhabited enough to suggest she would not have been taking particularly regular trips to a kitchen, assuming the place had one at all. In fact, it seemed as though the bedroom was the only room that had been inhabited for an eternity and a half at that point.

“Dunno,” came the reply, the little girl shrugging noncommittally, “A while.” She paused for just a moment, regarding the man for several clusters of heartbeats. “Did you come here to play with me?”

“Yes, I have come here to play with you.” Robert confirmed with a smile.

With a heart like lead, the knight dropped down to one knee before the child. Even as the little girl giggled and clapped her hands excitedly, almost dropping her toy in her glee, he could feel his resolve harden. As slowly and as subtly as he could, he let his hand drop down to his sword, careful to not make his intention too obvious.

He had, after all, gone all the way out to the tower with the promise of slaying the monster that lay at the very top, and Robert was always good to his word.