Epistem- Rise of the Slave King's Heir

by Jani Griot

  I don't believe I can hide you from this devil child anymore. She grows too powerful. Her fury is… Almarine started.

  Her footfalls ceased alongside mine. I stopped and turned to see her leaning against the wall with one arm out to brace herself, and the other pinching the bridge of her nose.

  It’s growing to an insatiable level, Almarine finished.

  Even though her head was cast downward, and her face almost entirely covered by her arm, I felt as if she were still whispering directly into both my ears at once. I couldn't see her lips moving as she spoke, but the flood of soft words still came.

  Just a bit longer, my beautiful boy, just a little bit longer.

  I cocked my head to the side, not knowing what the words meant or why she wore such a peculiar smile. By that point in my life I had only seen such a smile one other place; on the face of the ground’s executioner; before he killed slaves. That smile was the embodiment of malice. I wish I would have known that then. Broken hearts are often twisted things.

  “Where are they?”

  My gaze shot back down the long corridor as Ezra's voice shrieked from the kitchen. I hadn't realized how bone-stiff my body had become in response to my master's voice. I nearly collapsed when Almarine's hands pressed against my back, herding me forward.

  The swish of Ezra's whip sounded against the marble floor.

  Be strong, boy. Survive this and the determination of Ark's will shall soon free us all. A hint of sternness rounded Almarine’s voice.

  She was crying when I looked at her, but still displayed a fierce smile. Her mixture of emotion was indecipherable. I didn’t understand empathy. We walked into the large doorway that led into the kitchen. Almarine wiped her face, looking at me once more. Her lips remained closed.

  May Ark protect your innocence, my little light, Almarine said with soft eyes, silent to all but me.

  The old woman bowed deeply before exiting the room, leaving me with my master. And my work.

  “Father,” Lady Ezra whined. A familiar refrain, for me, and likely the king as well. “You never let me enter my slave into the games!”

  Lord Ochloc focused on the game below, feigning interest in her protest. The stakes were high with the number of bets made, and he didn't want to miss a beat.

  “Ezra, we've talked about this,” Ochloc began. “The Lady Silence birthed that slave from one of the most vicious creatures I've laid eyes on. As I’ve stated before, it is in our best interests to keep the slave broken and subjugated.”

  He gripped the banister in front of his throne-like chair and rose to his feet for a better view. The arena was just below where the king stood. Hollers, cheers, and boos filled the keep’s halls. A scream cut short sent shivers up my spine. Ochloc scoffed at the display below.

  The visage of the terrifying man who stood before me, tall as a giant, held me in complete terror. The light above outlined a tattoo of white lions—running in a roaring herd—decorating the length of his body. It was visible on every inch of his skin not covered by armor. A diamond-encrusted obsidian half-plate draped across his chest and shoulders. A lord’s cape hung heavily at his back, embossed with the new symbol of Vassilious: a stone fist holding the sun in its grasp. Muted rays of light shone through the slight gaps in its curved fingers.

  Ochloc stood as if made of marble himself. Seven-hundred cycles of hardened battle molded his features. His long black hair was soft and flowing—the only feature that differentiated him from his equals. His frozen, middle-aged features were practically untouched by time.

  He pounded a fist against the bannister. “Come on!” I had no clue why he was yelling out there on the balcony.

  “If you want to lose to these half-hearted Oceanborn wretches, that's on you, Father,” Ezra said with venom on her lips.

  He ignored her, too wrapped up in the goings-on below him.

  Hurry to your task, was the final warning I received from Almarine before things changed. I stood directly in the center of the large kitchen. The area was almost in the middle of the manor and was open to many rooms on all sides, including the arena. I watched through the doorway in a daze, awestruck by the king’s power as the others worked around me. The king rounded his seat to stand behind his chair, waving one hand, beckoning for a drink. The artwork from another time found me lost yet again. The sound of Ezra’s aggressive movements as she passed me hovered at the edge of my awareness. Breaking my golden rule twice within rapid succession was likely what prompted Ezra to take her next actions swiftly and remorselessly.

  Swish… Swish… Swish… Ezra's whip danced along the floor. That's when her words forced their way into my mind.

  I'll show my father I can be a true leader of warriors, just as he is. No one will be able to discredit my actions. Just you watch, waste-for-brains! Your time is coming. I swear it!

  She screamed in my mind with an explosion of power through Synapse. By the time she’d stopped speaking, she had done enough damage to bring me to my knees.

  May Ark have pity on your soul, Ezra said.

  I cringed as the coarsely wound whip wrapped around my neck and wrist. Normally, such a small girl wouldn't be able to drag the weight of someone so much larger than herself. But Ezra was an Elementalist, and female Elementalists—even those as young as she—possessed physical strength and abilities equivalent to those of ten men.

  “Father, watch out, he's gone mad!” Ezra screamed.

  What? I wondered. No, I had tamely allowed her abuse. Well, perhaps I was mad for that.

  She lifted me to my feet like I weighed nothing then drove her heel into my back, thrusting me toward her father. The power of the blow lifted me clean off the floor for a moment, causing me to fall into a stumbling run as I landed. Lord Ochloc turned just in time to duck down. With the instinct and polished agility of an old warrior, he sent me careening through the air over his shoulder into the arena below, his armor tearing free my tattered shirt.

  I think back on this moment often. What would have happened if I had just scrubbed the floor at Almarine's word, instead of looking up at the world?

  My back slapped against the sandstone with a loud smack. My long legs folded back like open shutters. I had always been made of stern stuff, but the fifteen-foot drop easily took the wind out of me.

  The above crowd of Honorborn roared with approval, their cheers rained upon me. My mind did its best to cling to familiarity, homing in on the voices of my masters as I tried to stand.

  “Stop the match!” Ochloc yelled. Ezra rushed to his side.

  Her words shot into my skull like lightning. Her use of Synapse slightly dazed me.

  Die, rat!

  I turned slowly, taking in as much as I could. The activity of the people who sat in the stadium surrounding me was a chaotic, confusing mirror—the embodiment of my mind. Spectators shouted countless violent instigations.

  “Kill the intruder!”

  “To whom does that runt belong?”

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  Ezra appeared pleased. “He won't last a breeze down there.”

  Lord Ochloc stood, arms folded, shaking his head at me. He pointed behind me, snapping once. A master’s signal to act was final.

  “Don't, Father!” Ezra pleaded. “He's useless. Perfect for the Slave Games. Aren't we supposed to be trimming the herd?”

  Until then, I hadn't heard many of her words as I craned my neck only to be met with Ochloc's pointing finger.

  Now, boy! Ochloc bellowed in my thoughts. His tone was powerful and serious.

  He had copious amounts of money on that game. The moment I stepped foot inside that arena, I represented the king of Vassilious. Failure was never an option, but it was even less of one then. Honorborn never bet with physical currency alone. They saw pride and honor as not only priceless, but deeply intertwined with every aspect of life.

  At my master’s command, I weakly stood, barefoot in the hot sand, and turned to face my opponent. There stood another slave with a wo
oden sword clenched in his right hand, and a tattered shield in his left. He placed his right foot on the neck of the slave he had bested before I interrupted. She squirmed beneath his thin sandal. He stared at me, pressing his foot down harder and harder.

  “Ark.” She barely uttered the word before the pressure of the slave’s foot—the quick snap of her bones—stole her breath.

  Yet more slaves rushed to the arena to sweep her body away, only to toss her like one would a chamber pot so that she landed next to five other slaves, many of whom were beaten to the extent that their skin was purple and blue. Some lay in darkening pools, halos of red on the sandstone.

  Something screamed at me to move, but I couldn’t. Her lifeless eyes seared into my mind. I may not have been able to define senseless murder but seeing it up close was a poison for which I had no remedy.

  The young man then rammed the shield into my chest. I was on my back once more. That time was different. Instead of skies above me, the light was blocked by the eyes of an angry soul, but those eyes were far less forgiving than the blue sky above.

  This was not the world art depicted.

  A Taste of Rage

  “Seems you’re going to lose again, Ochloc,” Lord Avery spoke with the rusted tone of decades at sea. Saltwater-roughened words, they emerged raspy and wet no matter the setting. “Your foundation consists of the able-bodied. If they are weak, what does that make you?"

  It was Avery’s slave standing over me. Each Honorborn family put forth a candidate. That candidate would be replaced if they became incapacitated, whether by death or bodily harm.

  “Not to mention, isn't there a penalty for throwing another slave in during a match?” Lord Avery asked.

  Both lords knew the penalty. Lord Ochloc had just doubled down.

  “I’ll pay!” Ochloc snapped to the Oceanborn.

  Avery and his kin were the wealthiest of the families gathered there. Money was trivial to them, or so Ochloc let them think. They regarded money and its power above all else.

  My daughter wants your death. Is that what you will give her, my young Fury?

  The words reverberated inside my head. What had Ochloc said? None of his words made sense.

  Thwack!

  The wooden sword slapped across my face, nearly urging me back to the present. But Ochloc overwhelmed me with images. Memories.

  The shield slammed into my side. I felt something fracture there. I was accustomed to injuries in the training yard. But combined with Ochloc’s mental interference, I had trouble discerning my present pains from the suffering experienced in the king’s projections. They hit me like a barrage of arrows as the shield took my breath away.

  The image of a Royal Guard urinating on me flashed like a signal to the front of my mind, just as a hard punch landed on my nose. A vision of Ezra, hip-tossing me into a tiger’s cage emerged as my head was struck. By what, I couldn’t perceive as the sensations were overwhelming.

  The thunk of the shield bouncing off the brim of my forehead was solid. It blanketed the sound my head made as it ricocheted off the ground.

  My beaten body appeared like a portrait speared into my mind. That was the first time I’d broken my golden rule. The first time I’d been punished to an extent unknown to me before.

  No, you cannot be a Fury. Vola was a real Fury. All you will prove to be by the end of this is another corpse. Ochloc spat the words into my mind in the most disgusted manner anyone could muster in a kingdom built on strength. Was he talking to me? He was. His speech was meaningless. Jumbled. The shape of his words was nebulous. Save one. The low dip of the vowel, the high arch of the second consonant, and the flow of the last letter.

  Fury.

  The pressure of the word built behind my eyes, like the tension of storm clouds. What did it mean? I'd heard it before, but where?

  Thwack!

  The wooden sword collided with the side of my face, knocking one of my back teeth clear of my mouth. The arena of Honorborn rose from their seats and erupted in cheers. My mouth filled with warm blood. Metallic-tasting.

  “Well, Ochloc, how about we just call it here? Save yourself the humiliation?” Avery spoke as if he loved his own voice. Slow and soft, to cover that rusting tone.

  Worthless rat! The blood of Fury is wasted on you! Ochloc screamed in my mind.

  The image of a man, his face almost entirely red with anger, overtook my sight. He stood with a wooden shield in his right hand and a wooden sword in his left. Mouth open, the man was as tall as ten sleeping bodies, and he bellowed rage. The sand at his feet reddened with death. What I saw had happened before; this was the moment the shadows in my mind fled, leaving the potential for light.

  I made noise for the first time in my life.

  I roared.

  I swore that sound was so powerful it shifted the sand at my feet. I looked up at my opponent—the slave Ochloc expected me to best.

  The slave above me paused as I startled him, leaving the shield frozen several feet above my head.

  Don't give in, my little light.

  It may have been Almarine’s voice, but I could no longer clearly hear. It was muddled by a much bloodier hunger urging me forward.

  I thrust my right arm up and grabbed the bottom of the shield. Blood pumping, my white-knuckled grip held the shield in place as I stood. Fear washed over my opponent as I rose. He frantically bashed my left arm with the wooden sword. I did not let go of the shield.

  Ochloc spoke slowly as he strolled across the balcony through the Honorborn families toward Avery. Ochloc took time when choosing his words.

  “Things aren't always that simple, Avery,” Lord Ochloc began. “Today, I was forced to play a card I promised myself I never would.”

  Ochloc looked down on me, making eye contact. I held it. It was the most forbidden act in my lord’s kingdom. Whatever Ochloc was saying to me blinded me to all reasoning.

  The slave before me, growing more desperate by the second, beat at my exposed arm. I caught his sword arm, my grip loosening his hold on the sword. Then, I screamed again.

  Terror filled the slave’s eyes. The surrounding crowd rose to their feet as Ochloc continued speaking.

  “Now you will all have to deal with the repercussions of my failings,” said the lord.

  I wasn't aware of this, but my lord looked at his daughter Ezra in that moment. Shame consumed him, bringing an air of despondence Ochloc would never normally reach.

  “Come now, Ochloc! You can't believe one single slave will mean so much in the tide of battle. That is preposterous!” Avery said. He stood, smoothing his dark purple silk. It was stitched with blackened leather, and it was embroidered with the X that represented Avery and his pirates. His close-cut hair allowed every inch of his youthful appearance to show. His irises were purple, as if his pupils were set within two perfect amethysts. His eyes shone brightly in contrast to his tanned skin. He may not have been the warrior that his rival, Lord Ochloc was, but the three additional swords at his belt—obtained from the Sword Masters he’d defeated—spoke for him.

  Avery spun his knife between his slightly shaking fingers, the jeweled blade dancing in the sunlight of the roofless arena.

  There was a strict edge to his tone. “The boy seems to have more scars than the whipping post itself. He must be beaten nearly every day. What could this runt know of victory?”

  Lord Ochloc barely noticed, as he continued filling my head with the gore of violent combat.

  Avery was correct. I was usually on the receiving end of violence.

  “You must have a lot of faith in this boy, Loc. What aren't you telling us that could make this one slave child so spectacular?”

  Avery was speaking down to Ochloc for a past transgression I was unaware of at the time.

  In the ring, I brought the slave’s sword arm down onto his shield arm. He dropped the sword to the crimson sandstone.

  Who was that man in those visions? What were those things my lord showed me? What he was asking of me
?

  I didn't hesitate. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to.

  “It doesn't matter what I tell you about the boy, it won’t change anything now. I will just have to use the tools I have as I see fit,” Ochloc said, taking back the crowd.

  He spread his arms wide as he spoke to his fellow Honorborn.

  “Send as many as you like, brothers and sisters! None of them will be able to kill that slave. I'd rather you all did me a favor and relieved me of the boy,” Ochloc bellowed. “Send as many slaves as you like, if I lose, I'll pay the equivalent shares to all of you.”

  A hungry murmur flashed through the large crowd.

  “Surely you boast, Ochloc!” someone said.

  Ochloc laughed. A deep, throaty laugh. “You've all been so caught up in my speech you haven't even realized what is happening right before your eyes.”

  He couldn't have chosen a better time to bring the crowd’s attention back to the arena. I tossed the shield straight up in the air. It spun wickedly as it cut upward, peaking at eye level with the audience above. My body moved on pure instinct, catching glimpses of things I'd never done. My physical form reacted to echoes of phantom muscle memory.

  I positioned my previous foe’s wooden sword between my ankles before springing my feet in the air behind me. The jumping twist of my heels launched me skyward, simultaneously sending the sword spiraling in an arc over my left shoulder. I shot my left arm up, wrapping my fingers around the handle of the sword, my body twirling in a complete circle. On my descent, I brought the sword across the slave’s throat as my outstretched right hand caught the shield. It spun into my grip as if it belonged there. I completed the spinning action by bringing the brim of the shield into the same point I had the sword, ramming it right through his neck as I landed.