There it was. After a year of wandering, A year of following unfinished maps and the whims of blind mystics, we’d reached it - The Movin...

There it was. After a year of wandering, A year of following unfinished maps and the whims of blind mystics, we’d reached it - The Moving Castle of Fendor. It was huge, larger than the drawings and so blue it melted into the sky if you stared at it for too long. All we needed to do was climb the mountain range it rested upon, scale the walls it used for its foundations, fight off the undead army sworn to defend it, and find the gold locked away somewhere in a chamber called The Pit, which was supposedly guarded by a warlock who controlled matter. Simple. The real problem was the moving castle lived up to its name. The slabs of stone propping it up were its legs. No euphemism. The moment the castle felt it was under threat, it could break free from its rocky confines and move, either to flee or crush its awe struck opponents.

By this point in our journey we were a band of only 10. We started much larger, but danger and death are old lovers and we lost many good men and women. Captain Jekob, the leader of our troop, and the only member who thought vanilla garments looked good, was hell bent on success. Gossip had it, his family were killed by the castle years before and this entire crusade was about revenge, and not the life changing gold that he’d mentioned to rope in some of the best mercenaries in the eastern sector.

Many of us wanted to stop before tackling the castle, take stock of everything, make our final prayers, piss, you know the important stuff, but the captain wanted to push forward. Night was falling and he didn’t want to wake to find the castle gone or on the verge of attacking us. We knew the plan, every crazy element of it was drummed into us over and over, but we were spent. I tried to speak to the captain but he gave me the look, the look that said this wasn’t up for debate. The stare itself wasn’t particularly memorable, he did nothing unique with his eyes or eyebrows, but what he did do was slowly stroke the hilt of his sword. That was all. It rested above his hip and his fingers ran slow circles around it. You see, it’s whispered across the four sectors, that at Jekob’s birth he was born without a tear, or a hair on his head. The only thing he came into the world with was a sword, which he promptly used to cut his umbilical chord. Yes, this sounds ridiculous, but that’s until you see Jekob use a sword. There aren’t enough superlatives. Once he stroked his sword’s hilt your options were limited, continue or leave. So we marched on. 

Before I say anything further, I must explain why no-one left or stopped listening to the captain’s orders. He wouldn’t have used his sword on anyone who wanted to leave, but no-one did because we trusted him, unequivocally. He was the best man any of us had ever known. He had saved everyone of our lives twice over, treated us as humans, as equals, and was a man completely of his word. We would have followed the captain to our deaths and sadly, on that day, all my friends did. 

Artwork by @sparth
For more of Sparth's work visit - www.sparth.com/