The Perceptions Of An Observer: A Short Story Collection

XX. The Unknown

He was new to the tainted land of the golden.

This world was one of history spanning seventeen years. Seventeen years of blossoming growth and heartbreaking betrayal existing both separately and simultaneously in a twisted vortex of instability and raging emotions.

The Unknown showed up alongside the fifteenth year of the world, a stranger to danger and a young new face on the brink of chaos.

The world he came from before was, admittedly, although it was unknown to him at the time, a better place. However, it had gotten dull after a long while of staying in the same place. The Unknown needed something fresh, somewhere new. New sights to see, new people to know, just something completely fresh and new to him.

And so he set off, not with a heavy heart but with a thirst for new beginnings, an adventure he had never embarked on before.

Along this adventure, The Unknown saw many places, some good, some bad, all not quite right to settle. He just wasn't drawn to any the way he felt he should be.

In fact, he wasn't drawn to any places that he traveled to with intention. It was only when he stumbled across a land by accident that he felt the place he was meant to be.

And of course, by ways of bad luck, this land was none other than The Puppet Master's kingdom, riddled with an isolating pandemic and with a corruption of rulers brewing in the palace.

Because of this wandering into diseased land, The Unknown had no choice but to settle in the world of The Puppet Master.

Even if his circumstances were different, though, he probably would've anyway. There was something in him that felt pulled to this land, something in his heart that told him this was the place he needed to stay.

There was no way for The Unknown to know what this was, as he didn't know a single soul and there was no psychic means for him to learn his reasons. He would just have to figure out the puzzle in his heart on his own terms.

However, he thought this mystery would be one that would be solved with ease. He thought this would be nothing more than finding this one his heart so desired and in that someone finding a peace.

He couldn't be more wrong.

When the world came back to life, it was already far too late for any sort of true peace to be obtained. The golden kingdom was already tainted, the monarchs were already corrupted, and a toxic atmosphere was already spreading.

It was rather brutal for a newcomer such as The Unknown to be thrown into the chaos before he even got the slightest sliver of a chance to meet anyone or make any sort of mark in his newfound home.

This calamity was even more complicated at the fact that The Unknown hadn't known the world when it was genuinely golden and not just a fake coating over rust.

Granted, even the veterans of the kingdom were finding their trust and alliances to be an ever changing thing upon a dangerous ruler, but they still had some sort of basic fundamentals about who they were and who their acquaintances were.

Logically, all that The Unknown could do was follow the preexisting and ever changing social code, go along with the flow when it came to who to trust and who to avoid.

Through this process, he was able to find some people he trusted. None that he would consider full fledged friends, but they were kind enough, and seemed to be on the side of justice for all in the unjust for none.

Although none of them were the one his heart was yearning for. He still had not found the one, despite many days and nights searching for a sign, listening for a voice that would tell him he had found home.

Home in a place that wasn't technically home, what a funny thing to think about, at least to The Unknown. Especially when he was giving up hope of finding this promise every beat of his heart promised to him.

Every turn he made led to a lack of fulfillment to a promise deep within him, a promise to find his reason to stay being broken over and over again.

It was when The Unknown was at the end of his rope that The Old Man stumbled upon him.

The Unknown knew nothing of The Old Man's story. About how he had raised his own ragtag group of youngsters before the world ended, only for them to be sucked into the clutches of The Puppet Master, away from the one that considered them family and leaving their guardian on the outskirts of royalty. How he was traveling for something to fill the hole in his heart left by the ones he loved the most.

But he learned all of this with time as The Old Man took him under his wing as his own, a friend in a cold world that was generally not the most welcoming to newcomers. He found someone to keep him company in the loneliness of dark, dangerous times.

And eventually, The Unknown learned that The Old Man was the one that pulled him to this tainted land, the reason he never left the face of danger.

Both of them were lonely outliers on the outskirts of a poison kingdom, both looking for belonging and for someone to keep them from being alone as everything caved in on itself.

With the appearance of The Unknown, The Old Man had escaped his loneliness and found someone else to nurture and align himself with. Admittedly, he still missed his old dependents and old life from time to time He was still grieving the loss of what he had, but he was slowly putting himself back together with The Unknown by his side.

And The Unknown found a friend and a mentor in The Old Man, someone he could trust in the most untrustworthy environment he had ever encountered, someone to teach him the lore of a broken world from before it had broken.

Someone that could make him stay in this place forever, never make him think about a home long gone again.