Epistem- Rise of the Slave King's Heir

by Jani Griot

  She had to force her fears down and make sure her friends would not pay for her actions. The use of univers by a slave in the boundaries of Vassilious had been akin to blasphemy since the death of the Sandmaker, who was killed by his own slave. Regardless of how fictional she felt the Honorborn histories may be, the threat of their capture was real.

  “I hated this place when I first was sent out,” started the blonde, in the quiet of the burgeoning dark. “Before I met you all. My second cycle in the sands, every night the jungle was full of all these—”

  The slight chatter of the girls went silent as the blonde’s eyes darted left to right. A chill, like that of splashing water, brushed against her spine and the girl looked up too late to change what was to come.

  A man dropped from the tremendous height of the canopy of branches above them. A blue cloak lined with silver flapped in the moonlight as the man landed directly upon the growing fire, snuffing out the flames and submerging them further into darkness. The girls tried their best to scatter, but the man moved so fast that even the battle-trained teenagers were incapacitated, one after another. The blonde felt a hand run smoothly across her chin and had little time to react as her head snapped to the side. Her consciousness was stolen from her before she was even aware just how deeply she was being threatened.

  When the blonde woke; she choked on bits of sand caught in the breeze. Her involuntary jerk upright came with pain and then rage. Her neck and arms were both shackled, with her wrists positioned behind her back. The restriction caused her to choke and flop backwards under the pressure of the restraints.

  She strained her neck as far as she could. First to see the edges of a silver-lined cloak flap to unveil the outer walls of Vassilious Keep. Then to see the line of her allies being dragged through the dunes beside her. The words spoken by the brunette made the blonde want to breathe her last breath. The face of her comrade filled her with a guilt that no magic or secret could save her from. The words echoed in her mind as the keep’s gate grew closer.

  “Even demons don’t deserve this.”

  Ruminations of a King

  Ochloc looked down from the top floor of the keep’s library, watching as Carter’s blue-cloaked bodyguard dragged five squirming captives through the gates of Vassilious. It was uncustomary to capture and return runaways, but Carter—having a shared experience with those he bought and sold—knew the value of slaves trained in the sands.

  Carter had far more faith in the girls being towed back into Vassilious than Ochloc ever would. Yes, Ochloc’s father’s power had relied heavily on the training of slaves and the information brought to him from foreign kingdoms by those same slaves, but the wars that ensued after the Sandmaker’s death crushed every bit of value his father’s system had stood upon.

  The value of slaves was the only thing the current king found to be reliable no matter the cycle, buyer, or the quality of his own wares. Slaves sold. He managed to keep at least one trained ruse boy in all the most powerful kingdoms, excluding Aspire. Not to understand his enemies as his father had, but to remain necessary to the powerful. Cycles felt like moments under the pressure of his plans.

  How long ago was it exactly that he first stepped onto the path of killing kings and ruling kingdoms? Was it when he met Vola as a child? When he watched his mother’s wings ripped from her back? When he stole the throne upon which he rested his ever-expanding arse?

  He left the window and rested his hands on the nearest banister. He looked down at the portrait of Ezra’s mother. He felt as if the woman watched as he walked from the top floor. The eyes in the woman’s portrait were almost as powerful as they had been during her time as the reigning queen of Vassilious, but he knew nothing was comparable. The two scarlet pupils could be as welcoming as summer fruits or as fierce as spilled blood. The man rested his hand on the frame and smiled momentarily before the wall, along with the portrait in front of him dissolved to the floor as if it had turned to dust.

  A rune glimmered in the air. Two pillars, together as large as the palm of his hand, symbolizing a key to the disruption of time and space. Between the pillars was a vortex, though negligible in size, it was monumental in power. This was the gate that would lead him into another space.

  When he walked into the light of the hidden room, he glanced back to make sure the wall had reformed. A fear he couldn’t wipe from his mind, ever since Vola snuck in and nearly scared him to death as a young man.

  He took the stairs slowly, not willing to face her yet. No matter how much the image of her warm eyes made him smile. By the time he reached the landing his heart nearly stopped beating.

  “Hello, my king. Are you well?” asked the scarlet eyed woman. She hadn’t changed at all. Even he, the son of a god, had shown signs of aging after hundreds of cycles. But Ezra’s mother looked as young as she had the day she’d been immortalized by her portrait. She would not age. Not so long as she was inside his father’s throne room.

  “I am as well as the sun’s power permits,” Ochloc answered. The beautiful woman smiled at him and stroked the side of the throne she stood pressed against.

  “How is my daughter?” asked the woman. The king looked away from her, reflexively taking in the room rather than forcing himself to meet her gaze.

  Nothing had changed. The walls were filled with runic designs and scrawled notes. The Sandmaker’s workspace lined the circular room’s exterior, filled with relics and experiments Ochloc would never understand. Everything within the room would be beyond the comprehension of anyone in the realm. He remembered the shame he’d felt when he’d shown minor things to the great minds of foreign kingdoms and had to watch as they grew more advanced after seeing the smallest portions of his father’s ideas.

  “She may be the first one of my children to fly. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if she formed real wings. I’d probably never be able to keep her from the sights of the Sky Kingdom,” said Ochloc as he walked toward the seat at the center of the room. The woman smiled again but shook her head.

  “Aemillious flew as a boy, my king. Has he still not told you?” Her words shook the king, but as he sat, he feigned a nonchalance for the woman who struggled with his son’s very existence.

  Ochloc adjusted his position. “He is his own man and will have his own secrets.”

  No matter the power he gained, knowledge he learned, wealth he’d acquired, or the number of people over which he reigned—the king would never feel comfortable sitting in that chair.

  “You grew to hate your father for all the secrets he kept from you, yet you feel your son should have secrets of his own? He is your spawn, my king, regardless of his mother’s limitations or upbringing. Be wary of the powerful,” commented the woman. Ochloc gripped the armrests of the throne and took a deep breath. He couldn’t show weakness, or their contract would be broken. She would most likely kill his son first, then him, then give his natural born daughter to a being she felt strong enough to raise her child. He wondered if the woman could smell his fear.

  He glanced at her and forced himself to look away again, knowing it was her appearance as an ordinary woman that got him bound by the goddess in the first place. She whispered to him. Her words traveled like chills down his spine.

  I remember a time when you would have laughed at such direct words. Have I lost your devotion, my king? He tried not to tense up, but her voice flowed through his mind as if she were looking through it. She was trapped here until she healed from the wound caused by his daughter’s birth. Yet he had no way to know when her convalescence would end.

  “You could never lose my attention, you are a goddess of your kin, and a beauty to be marveled,” said Ochloc playfully. He wished he didn’t mean what he said to the woman. He loved her more than he’d ever loved the silent lady. A fact that made him miss Vola. Ochloc had murdered his friend because he needed a scapegoat for the killing of the Sandmaker, but he’d also wanted him gone from Lady Silence’s life. Both men had died for Ochloc’s desires.


  He wanted power and killed his father for it. For love as well. He still wanted that love. He refused to surrender to any power, even if it were a power greater than he. What he most needed was more and varying means of power. For the goddess required such things to recognize him as a worthy partner.

  “I’m glad to know my choice in you still shines, godling that you are aside, you are still my favorite plaything. Otherwise, I’d never let you cage me, not even if you brought me all the pretty flowers in existence,” said the woman. She swept her arm out and up, away from the throne and toward the hanging cages of light. Twenty-one cages hung in an hourglass formation above the throne. Some empty, leaving small piles of glimmering sand and diamonds beneath them. The bits of brilliant sand and jewels were part of the natural transition the Sun Lion Diamond made after having every bit of its stored energies used. Would there be enough for him to remain as powerful as the world thought him to be with this goddess slowly draining the power left to him?

  “These flowers are healing you, goddess, wouldn’t you want me to bring as many as I can for you?” asked Ochloc. He let power flow into him as he put on his father’s halo. The scarlet-eyed woman stroked his chin with the back of her fingertips, allowing for colorful flames to dance down the surface of her nails as she did so. The king blushed, something he had not done in cycles.

  The goddess softened her tone. “I will focus on my healing, my king. You focus on the task at hand.”

  Ochloc nodded once and focused. Every wall surrounding them dissolved in the same manner the secret door into the throne room had, revealing to them the whole of Vassilious.

  That dissolution was another mechanic that unnerved the king. Just as he always worried the wall wouldn’t reform before he could be hidden by his wife’s portrait; he also worried he would be seen from outside the castle. After all, if he could see the kingdom, it couldn’t be possible that the kingdom couldn’t also see the walls of the castle. That instead they could see him, sitting high above the sands in a throne surrounded by wealth and a woman who was supposed to be long dead.

  They cannot see, he reassured himself. He rerouted his fear, using it instead to help him concentrate. No one could see him. His father had told him so when Ochloc was a child, but he was still amazed as he made the throne rotate to look out at the surrounding keep. None looked up at him as he waited for the sun to rise. The room filled with light as the sky heated and distorted in a burst of color in motion. It was almost time.

  “What will you be taking this time?” asked the rightful queen of Vassilious. One of the many flowers above her appeared in her hand after vanishing in a puff of explosive flames.

  “It’s a surprise. If my father has what I need, I’ll be convinced he was truly from the highest realm,” said Ochloc as the sun crested the horizon and the throne’s power began to hum. He could only access the vault of his family during sunrise, and the payment for this access was one of the elemental flowers that hung above him.

  His wife handed him the flower and he allowed for the energy of the throne to further sink into him. Ochloc felt the chair call for the power residing within the flower’s petals; he answered that call by directing the powerful energies from the plant into the chair. The seat lifted off the ground and rotated until Ochloc was completely horizontal in the air, chest pointed upward toward the ceiling. He took a deep breath and the scene above him shifted from a roof into a star-filled sky like the allusions he’d set above Ezra’s crib to put her to sleep as an infant, omnipresent flickering lights.

  He glanced to his left as the goddess stepped back from the center of the room. A nameless, red-eyed queen, disguised as a harmless and frail woman, filling Ochloc with dreams of their future even as she stepped away.

  Ochloc smiled and looked up once more, taking more deep breaths in preparation of what was to come. The image above blurred as if Ochloc were falling through the starlit sky at speeds even he thought to be impossible.

  A swirling vortex consumed the room in an overwhelming gush of power. Everything within grew cold instantly as the vault opened. The door, like a black hole, opened to welcome its master. Ochloc yelled his request before the chair shot him upward and into the vault. His words stretched as he rocketed through the space.

  He couldn’t breathe as he spun recklessly. All sorts of items smashed into him as he had no control of the vault’s inner workings as his father had. Mountains of gold coins rained down around him as if he were placed in a bag full of his father’s favorite items and then shaken about wildly. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as something smashed into his chest with the impact of a speeding carriage.

  He opened his eyes as he emerged back into the throne room, heaving and taking in deep, wheezing breaths after leaving the airless domain.

  The words he yelled before entering the vault filled the room he now occupied, even though he still gasped for air. The journey through the vault felt as if he’d been gone for more than a dozen breaths but it couldn’t have been but a flash in time.

  He waved the threat of death off. It was present every time he used the gate to the private treasury. When he set out to enter the throne room it was only to pull free something he could trade or sell to settle his newly acquired debts.

  He was surprised his father would possess the thing he called for. But as the sound of the item hitting the floor made his wife gasp; he wondered if he’d made yet another mistake so quickly after losing Ezra’s slave.

  He looked down to see a white-gold set of armored shoulder and neck guards that seemed to extend to cover the bottom of the wearer’s face in fine red cloth. The armor hummed as the king sat frozen, wishing he’d left the item where it had been before he’d opened the vault. The size was off. The size of the armor was wrong. It was made to fit a small frame.

  His earlier words, that he’d spoken before the armor dropped were finally audible. “Give me the power of a Fury!”

  Through the Eye of Omnipotence

  PRO stood in her lab in the same place she’d stood for nearly two days. She used Omnipotent, a machine her brother had long ago created, that harnessed the power of runes to pull together imagery of the world. All viewed through the distortion of a storm. A satellite array of clouds flowed around her as if she were the nexus of that great storm. Images from the kingdom of Vassilious displayed throughout the portions of the clouds she faced. Normally her guardianship over the land required her to watch her brother’s descendants, due to the simple fact that most, if not all, had forbidden traits reviled by the beings of the highest realm.

  The events of the past few days were unlike any string of moments PRO had been needed to follow in quite a long time. Arkanous’s bloodlines were all being threatened. From high to low. Ochloc was surrounded on nearly every side of the large island that was Vassilious. His son was allied with a rebellion set to kill his father, much like Ochloc had been at that age. His daughter was trying to kill off a slave bound to her by more than time and ownership, more even, than univers. All the while, the same slave was untrained and even more unpredictable, having found one of the lost gardens without ever being told how.

  Nothing in Vassilious was hidden from PRO’s sight, as nothing had been hidden from her brother Arkanous Fury. Otherwise known as the Sandmaker. PRO laughed at the name. It was such a trivial name, if one was to consider the man himself. But then again, there was no name, no word or phrase in any language that could sum up the whole of what Arkanous truly was. Any name would be reductive in its essence. So, Sandmaker would do. It would have to do.

  She looked over her shoulder to see her nephew staring into the images with as much intensity as she had been moments prior. The man’s name was Novast, and she had caged him herself two-hundred cycles before. He looked so much like her brother she always had to focus a moment before realizing she wasn’t talking to the god. Only a member of his lineage.

  “What?” asked PRO. The man temporarily glanced away from the image of the slave, w
ho slept amidst the invisible turmoil of the eleventh garden. PRO saw what Novast saw. The boy was surrounded by the light of countless Sun Lion Diamonds.

  “If we don’t do something soon, we may lose the throne and without it, access to higher realms will be lost to all as well,” said Novast. PRO turned to face him, and her long black hair swished at her back. She found it hard to look at the man, facing him for only a moment before turning back to many different scenes.

  Five old-blooded girls being dragged like cattle through the dunes. A sleeping Fury accompanied by an Honorborn sylph from the Sky Kingdom, as evidenced by the stormcloud rune branded into his chest. Multiple armadas encroaching upon the shores of Vassilious from all directions. The king entering one of the city’s magical vaults and taking from it an armament his bloodline couldn’t use. The relic held dangerous amounts of power. The largest threat, however, was the merchant king Carter, who sat seemingly offshore in a single vessel as if he were waiting for something.

  She knew Carter personally from their childhood and couldn’t imagine what he was planning. Other than the entrance to the city of Endless, Vassilious should have no true value left to the king of merchants. He was a raving psychopath and a genius, but he’d been those things at a distance since her brother had died. He couldn’t know where she was. Could he?

  “The king is holding another piece of that armor your brother loved so much, and it looks like that boy found his weapon. Is he of our bloodline?” asked Novast. PRO nodded and continued to observe.

  “What will you do with the slave? He has vast talents, at least from what I’ve witnessed and heard whispers of. Do you believe you could try with him?” asked Novast. His question rang out like a musical progression. Upwards progression. Hope.