The Recruit: Part Five - An Adventure in the World of Draxis

This is the fifth--and final--installment of The Recruit short story, a companion story to my upcoming novel, Draxis (working title). 

This ending was a bit tricky to write in order to avoid major spoilers for the novel, but I will say that 'the recruit' is a major character in the book. As I mentioned before, the setting details and situation were taken directly from the novel, but it's told from a different POV. 

If you'd like to refresh with the last installment, you can see it here:

The Recruit: Part Four

If you would prefer to read the story in it's entirety, you can view it here:

The Recruit (short story)

I hope you enjoy the conclusion of The Recruit. Comments welcome.

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I awoke to pain in Denarri Ranger Station, but the point is—I awoke.

Someone stood over my gurney, and after a fight to focus my eyes, I recognized Gallin’s creased face. My eyes dropped to his side. He didn’t carry a Blade of Duumarr.

“My recruit?”

Gallin huffed and his eyes shifted left. I followed his gaze and found the green eyes of my partner. Yes, partner. He’d earned it.

His back was to the wall, arms folded, his Death Ranger uniform tattered, but without major injury and the notorious sword parked in its scabbard.

I nodded to him—or tried.

“We’ve had a word,” Gallin muttered. “Now the two of you talk.”

I looked to the recruit, confused. “Talk?”

Gallin’s mouth skewed down in a grim frown and he left the room.

My attention moved back to my partner. “You carried me back?”

“Yes.”

I tried again to nod. “You saw what I did?”

“Yes.”

“But still you did not kill me.”

“No.”

“But you are Duumarrakhan.”

He unfolded his arms, moved nearer. I might have been intimidated if he hadn’t been shaking his head. “No.”

“Then who-” I realized my blunder. A Tahila Death Ranger never asks that question of another. That was The Code.

“Just another who defies senseless laws,” he said.

In this realm, such rebellious words are never spoken. Not even here. Laws are absolute, and the punishment for breaking them is final and universal. Death. So I was left pondering the enigma of this man who wielded the blade of the Order, but spoke against its black justice.

When a person came to the Green Death he came knowing that, sooner or later, the great forest would take him…and his past. But I knew that would not be the fate of this one, even if he did not know it himself.

“I was trained by a Duumarrakhan,” he volunteered. “He was the last of his kind…or so we believed.”

I grunted softly. “This explains much.” Although his admission raised many more questions than it answered.

I didn’t learn until much later, after we’d ventured out together on many campaigns into the Green Death, who my partner was and why he was here. Much was revealed when the One the Ancient Legends Speak Of came for him and the recruit left the Green Death at her bidding to resume his former life.

I did live to see my ninth season. And even my tenth. I rose through the ranks to head ranger, and trained more recruits before my time in the Green Death came to an end.

No. I didn’t die.

The recruit summoned me out of hell’s jaws to take my place at his side. Yes, I--a doomed Tahila Death Ranger invited to serve in a place of high esteem. In the thousands of years the rangers had patrolled the Green Death, never before had one been plucked from the ranks in such a way as this.

The age of prophecy was truly upon us.

But that, my friend, is another, much longer, story. My part of this tale, this small thread in the greater legend, ends here.