by Jani Griot
The nameless prince chuckled. “They’re over there,” he paused to point across the sand to the walls of the keep and the Honorborn who congregated there. “Talking about Fury, and about whether I will be sufficient compensation for my brother’s debts to the king.”
The blonde turned to look across the sands at Khalif and Ochloc, then returned her attention to the prince. “What? You believe you’re worth more than what’s owed?” She laughed.
“No. I don’t know what my brother considers my value to be. I’m just wondering if he’s going to ask the king about how he will use the flowers,” said the prince.
“Why are the flowers so special anyway?” asked the brunette. The blonde looked at her, confused. The girl had earlier mentioned how much power the plant gave to the wielder, so the blonde assumed her companion must have inquired for different reasons. She was then forced to look back at the prince’s storm-like visage. And suppressed her need to jump. As he spoke, sweat seemed to turn to ice down the seam of her back. The only thing more alarming than his presence was his answer to the brunette’s question.
“The king will use them to open his family’s vault, like a key of sorts. They can open certain doors,” started the prince before he looked up at the leader of the ruse boys.
“Their vault is the Sandmaker’s crypt. Ochloc could use just one flower to crawl into that vault and extract cycles’ worth of uncollected wagers over the search for the flowers. But now…” stated the prince before he trailed off, looking to his brother.
The blonde watched as he stared off, waiting for him to continue, but was far more worried she would learn less by interrupting the prince’s surveillance of the king and his brother.
“I don’t get it. There is far more in a god’s tomb than just gold. Why wouldn’t he use all the relics the Sandmaker had supposedly stolen? Those artifacts from the highest realm are supposed to be more powerful than any god,” remarked the brunette, asking questions as fast as the blonde could think of them.
“Apparently the king’s father was the creator of those objects, and not a thief. More likely it was my father and Avery’s father who stole relics from the Sandmaker, the more that I think of it. But none of that mattered because the vaults of the three gods, whoever created them, also created the Sun Lion Diamond. One flower is required to both open and retrieve one item from the vault,” finished the prince.
“How did he do it?” came from the redhead after what seemed like a cycle’s worth of silence. The blonde looked toward the girl, then past her to the twins who still sat huddled together. She felt hers, and their, freedom slip further from them by the moment. They had come in search of a way to buy their lives, and now may never truly escape the land of slaves.
“We know you know something, and the stupid act won’t work anymore!” The brunette received more glances from the Honorborn but stared down the prince. The blonde had never seen the young girl so furious but knew her relationship to Dara Vivek was far different than the rest of the ruse boys and their owners. She feared the brunette wouldn’t be able to handle being sold off with the wave of a hand and a snap of a finger. The redness blooming across the lines of her face spoke of betrayal and broken trusts.
“Not that I care to relive any of it, but all you need to know is that Fury did, and I doubt any of us could do the same, unless you think you could catch a lightning beast with your bare hands,” said the prince. It was then that the blonde truly took in the sight of the slave the prince called Fury, and the image took her breath away. With her eyes open to univers, she was able to see the aura of the young slave at the king’s feet.
A red cloud sparked with blackened lightning surrounded the slave boy in a large halo that extended beyond the Honorborn who stood over his prone figure. Outside the halo of energy stood four cloaked figures, their bodies built of the same cloud-like material of the Fury’s aura. The figures were unmoving, but their energies physically threatened her senses. As if their presence was powerful enough to reach out and force her to look away.
As if the extraordinary aura wasn’t enough to behold; a serpent like beast seemed to slither through the halo, filling the energy with even more univers.
The final trait of his aura was the most disturbing. Lines of light connected everyone who stood nearby the sleeping slave—the ruse boys included. Larger lines of that light extended to the young prince and the king which the blonde knew couldn’t be a coincidence. She suspected the lines would give her insight into the old blood’s power but couldn’t discern their significance. She wished the brunette could see as she did.
“You should leave,” said the prince.
The blonde looked down on him in his casual state, even more confused than she was before. “There’s no escaping the slave lands, far too much desert. Between all that and the nomadic titans and the beasts that stalk the jungles, no one gets away from the king of Vassilious.”
“You’ll have an opportunity soon enough, knowing my brother. It won’t be long now,” responded the prince as the king and his brother walked away from the old blood. He looked back at her with a smile and a wink.
“As long as you keep those eyes open,” he said before jogging over to his companion, standing as a slightly unassuming guard.
The blonde found herself amid her group, all of whom stared at her. No words were spoken between them. Only grief and terror filled the space, leaving the leader’s thoughts racing.
She took the time to observe the environment, to see it for what it was. She hadn’t brazenly and openly used her sight. Only when those nearby were distracted or wouldn’t take notice. Otherwise, the Honorborn would have her outright killed. She had no doubts that what she saw there must have been what the prince was alluding to.
Large runes lined the walls that surrounded the castle and exterior grounds. Runes floated through the air like falling snowflakes before vanishing and reappearing elsewhere. A mammoth halo circled the keep, protecting a powerful spell that, she assumed, targeted Vassilious.
“Something bad is coming, girls, but after everything that’s happened I don’t know if I should be making decisions for us, so I’m going to leave this up to you all,” started the blonde as she looked away from the expansion in front of her. They all still sat staring from their various positions, waiting for her orders, but none would come. She would never again lead by force and those who followed her would be as free as she could fight for them to be.
“Do we stay and try and protect the one who freed us from the king’s hooks?” asked the leader of the ruse girls as she pointed toward the slave in the blood red cloak.
“Or do we run?”
Ochloc's Treasures
“What kind of slave are you?” the boy asked, standing over me. He crouched, getting close enough to poke me repeatedly.
I woke up exactly where I had fallen. Or maybe someone moved me? Something was off. Had the sun set?
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. Still poking me.
The boy chuckled.
The gesture—that incessant poking—somehow felt as though he was doing this for his own amusement, rather than to see if I was in good shape. What was even more odd was my recognition of that.
“Once they found out I was the only one here who could touch you,” I looked at his hand as he continued to talk and poke at me. “Ochloc zeroed out my master's debts to purchase me.”
Powerful Elementalists had lined up to touch a slave and his shield, only to be electrocuted by colorful lightening.
I grabbed his wrist. He continued speaking, regardless.
“I’ve been assigned as your bodyguard. Your lord even clothed me and gave me a sword.” He stood, lines creasing the angles of his face. “I don't really know if this is a good or bad thing.”
He looked me in the eyes. I refocused on my own senses and could feel the direction of his words once more. He pointed to my side.
“He even gave you Royal Guard clothing. He told me to make sure
you get these on, then to get you to the grand hall for the feast.”
He picked up the shirt and tossed it to me. He was quick to realize that I was clueless as to why he’d given me the shirt, then he began pulling at the cloak. After a few minutes of confusion over why I was being touched at all, I punched and flailed at the boy. But he persisted in his mission, and at the end of the ordeal, there I stood, wearing a black shirt, and the cloak swirled around my torso once more. The boy turned around to grab the pants, missing the spectacle.
“What kind of bastard punches a friend in the nose? And the throat? I could see one or the other and on accident, but both? Intentionally? Really?” the boy said.
He pinched his nose as he threw me the trousers. There was no way for him to miss anything this time.
The material was familiar in my hands. As it melted away, spinning around my midsection, and flowing downward, the silk-like material solidified back into pants. They were entirely black except for a two-inch-wide line that ran from top to bottom down the leg. Crimson at the top, seamlessly transitioning into the same gold of the cloak. It was a match.
“Normal people's clothes don't do that, Fury.” The boy looked stunned, though slightly less stunned than usual. It was unusual, though I was a bit irritated that the entire ordeal would have been over much faster had the boy not tried to help me clothe myself in the first place. What didn’t the cloak hold influence over, if it could control something so simple as clothing?
Someone scoffed. The voice was familiar. I felt as if I'd heard it before. It would seem as though, like the sword and the shield, my completed garb came with a side effect.
I hope you’re not my son... look like an Arking girl.
The man speaking—almost a mirror image of myself—stood behind the boy. He wore the same luxurious cloak with a black shirt. The same trousers, with the same gilded haft at his waist. The same shield, and even his yellow eyes, spoke to my soul from underneath his cowled hood.
You have a few pieces it seems. I can't remember how many I had before I began to see my father...
He lifted his hand and removed his hood. He had two long whip scars, one on either side of his face, running the length of his cheeks, forming a design like whiskers. His sword arm was outfitted with a gold and ruby gauntlet, while his shield arm was outfitted with a black gauntlet encrusted with diamonds.
They looked like Elementalist gauntlets, but his slave scars made me assume they were something else. Things like those I had only ever seen worn by Lady Ezra.
You're so small. You'll die in that armor before you're trained and ruin us all.
He put up his hood. Then turned around, disappearing like a puff of smoke in the wind.
“What kind of slave are you?” The boy repeated, still buzzing around me. “I just got these pants. I had to put them on though. There was work involved. Unbuckling, strapping. You just skipped that whole process.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the hanging stage through the eastern gate. It was easy to maneuver through the bustle of the grounds. Everyone moved out of the boy’s way, as if he were violently swinging a sword about. Multiple people fell, trying to escape the direct line of his path.
It wasn't long before I heard voices. Honorborn, by the dozens, drunkenly singing and laughing. Conversations to be had by people who hadn't seen each other since seasons past.
One voice froze me. He spoke with excitement. His cadenced tone evoked the image of a rushing torrent of water. A beautiful thing to listen to, but not to play with. His voice, just below a yell, was deadly even now as he chatted merrily. Of all my tormentors, the young man, two cycles my senior, had done more in his life than I could have ever dreamed of.
“I’ll never understand why you traipse around with those scholars,” Ochloc said. “You learn nothing I couldn't show you myself, Aemillious.”
Ochloc stared down at his son, who stared back, with a grin that showed his smug and defiant nature. He stood up, to look the man who helped create him, in the face.
“You lack finesse, Father. I wish it would end with that fact alone. Too much time with savages has left you unbalanced.”
I stood outside the hall, looking in. My eyes fell on Ezra, swaying about, barely able to keep her head up. Was she drunk?
“I’m sorry, Father. I didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted to help,” she mumbled to herself, until Ochloc turned on her.
“One child so quick to play the role of the villain, she's reduced herself to idiocy at the mere sight of her own actions.” His eyes shifted back to Aemillious. “The other, so wrapped up in intellectual whims, I find myself wondering the true warmth of his blood.”
He glanced over the large hall, until he saw me standing in the doorway. The room quieted as he spoke.
“All I ever wanted was a child who listens. One is too needing of my love and the other loathes it. I get to experience both sides of the coin. Still, neither listen.”
He stared at me as he lifted his glass to the rest of the room in toast.
“To you, the boy who listens so well. You did the impossible, and won me a fortune, at that!”
Ochloc tilted his glass toward me. The gesture did nothing for me, personally. The entire room looked at me all at once, though. I paused at the entrance. Having that many eyes on me at once made me feel as nauseous as I had in the spinning room. I took a step back before the boy grabbed hold of me and pulled me inside the hall.
The room was so bright that the only place shadows were cast was directly downward. The clothes I wore bathed me in darkness, as if the cloak’s inner folds were resistant to light. The boy’s sandals clicked as he walked me through the now silent expanse.
They all stared, an indecipherable emotion in their eyes, so unfamiliar to me from the Honorborn, it gave me chills. Aemillious's sharp features screamed something so violent, I felt as if I were about to be yelled at.
“You praise a slave over your own children and wonder why we do not listen to you.” Aemillious was barely able to bark out a laugh through his anger. “You treasure slave relics and currency over all else, every single day since my birth. And now, the one time I hear you, the great Mercenary King, lower yourself enough to compliment another, you compliment this idiot.” Aemillious stood abruptly, knocking his chair over.
“Why would I ever want to be like a man as small-minded as you?”
He climbed up onto the table. With a single preternatural jump, he soared upward. All eyes in the room followed his path, mine included.
Looking up, I saw why the room was so bright. Each of the flowers I had given to my lord were now individually caged and surrounded by lanternlight. Seven makeshift chandeliers sent spirals of color across the ceiling. Aemillious swung violently from one of them, near the head of the table.
“Ochloc and his treasures! May beauty supersede all. Right, Father?"
Aemillious yanked the hanging device from the ceiling as if the lion steel supports were made of thread. He slammed the structure down, before landing himself, causing drinks to meet flame and setting the table ablaze.
Aemillious landed facing his father at the head of the table, green and blue flames licking between them. He spit into the flames, then turned around and began walking away, stepping on the guest’s food and knocking over drinks as he went.
“Stop, Millious,” Ochloc uttered the words just above a whisper.
I wondered if his son even heard him. I was standing right next to the king when he said it.
Slam!
The whole table shook. I'm not sure if I blinked, but my master stood over his son, his foot on his chest, pushing his eldest child into the fire.
“Ochloc and his treasures, huh?” Father bent closer to son, his hands never leaving his pockets. A high sign of disrespect for the Honorborn. An opponent you do not need your hands for is not an opponent you respect.
“You do not know what I treasure, so listen when I say this, my son. Do not test a man who can stri
p the air from under the wings of the life you treasure, with no more effort than it would take to crush a cockroach. Understood?”
Aemillious ground his teeth. His father leaned into him, increasing the weight on his son’s chest, until he nodded in agreement. Ochloc walked through flames back to his seat.
“The way people have been talking to me lately, I'm starting to feel that you all may have forgotten who I am.”
Fights between Honorborn were a rare thing. Grand battles, so explosive with power they were spectacular masterwork as opposed to just violence. Some occurrences were so epic they were given names to plot their points throughout history.
“I remember when you said you would never be like Father. How men change with time…” Dara offered, trailing off as she lifted a chicken leg from her plate and dipped a bit of fat into the flames on the table.
“Do you have something to say, dear sister?” Ochloc stared at Dara as she chewed.
“Nothing, brother. Just wondering how you think anyone could forget your actions—”
Avery’s laughter carried across the table, cutting Dara’s words short. “Let the past be the past, my Lady Vivek. Nothing will bring him back.”
Avery and Dara spoke more on the deadly matters of the past, Dara glancing at Aemillious as he charged out the hall’s exit. My lord pulled me closer to his side, the rest of the room filling with chatter when he did.
“They all fall to silence when they don't know how to handle things. Always falling back on a sense of unknowing, or lack of experience, when the stress becomes too much.”
This was the first time my lord whispered to me as if he were confiding in me. Something I think he needed to do more for himself than for anyone else.
“I gave you nothing but a few tattered images, snatched from my memories, and you came back a success. That speaks to me even more than your victories in the arena.”
He looked over his shoulder before pointing to a chair. It seemed like one of the nicer things in the room. Not too far from the table, but obviously meant more for appearance sake than for eating at the table, at least. He scoffed and pointed. “Sit there. I'll call if I need anything.”
