Epistem- Rise of the Slave King's Heir

by Jani Griot

  A roar unlike any she had heard broke the air and people began to flee as her descendant and the silver haired boy at his side slayed ten men without mercy or remorse.

  PRO watched as her great nephew stood at the center of the dead bodies with a pained look on his face. The girl flew away and the boy pulled her kin along the path leading from the dock. PRO could not escape the look in the young Fury’s eyes; knowing that she could not allow for the potential in the power he displayed to be realized. If it was not already in motion.

  “May the spark of the higher realms live with my actions.”

  Where the Beginning Ends

  Avery spoke with bravado. He held a sword in each hand. His tone and posture the perfect example of valor. His eyes told a different story; his quick but frequent glances upward toward the flaming hole in his ship’s ceiling; the eye contact he made with men over my shoulders; the white-knuckled grip on his blades. His body spoke things to my mind he wasn't conscious of, and that I couldn't help but react to.

  “Why die here, child?” Avery asked. "Does there need be any more bloodshed?” Avery continued as if he were pondering the thought of letting me go. “Really?” He asked after a long moment of silent staring. “All of this and you still have nothing to say for yourself?” Avery questioned, cocking his head to the side.

  Waves of fluid rage burned through my veins, pumping energy into my heart.

  “We don’t have to—” Avery started.

  His words were cut short by the shield attached to my right arm, its face coming to life. A violent lion, roaring at my side, with a mane of lightning and a few demoralizing growls.

  Avery didn’t know, but he was spreading fear in my favor the more he spoke. Betraying his normal assault-first-and-plunder-later routine was having an interesting effect on his men.

  And I could smell it.

  The shield thudded as I swept it behind me in a dazzling arc. It collided with the jaw of a pirate in a flash of sparks and steel. I was already moving toward my next target by the time the previous one’s knees touched the wood below.

  I wove through enemies, slightly unbalanced and slowed by the boat’s subtle sway. Had I had the training to manage the level of intensity I was taking on, this would have been simple disarming and sedation by combat. All before a brave fight to the death with Avery. The sword master of legend.

  If I would have been trained correctly, that is. Things were going to get much worse for me before they got better, regardless of the pure anxiety on the faces of the men around me.

  A few quick glances around the area told me the boy had yet to find me. Surely he’d followed.

  I danced through blows as if I knew where they would come from. Like I had orchestrated the world's most dangerous play, about a sword fighting ghost and casted myself as the lead role. Swords bounced off my shield arm, stunning the assailants.

  My opponents fought as if the battle were set in a perfect scenario. Flat ground, even odds, and the light of day—all factors these men strained to be without. I fought in the current moment, turning every misstep into an advantage. A missed swing to the throat of one woman became a 360-degree spinning cleave that took the leg of another man. His cry of pain was almost entirely blanketed by combat.

  “You can’t expect to live through this, do you, boy?” Avery laughed following his inquiry. The rough echo of it rallied his men.

  I did my best to escape the enclosure of attacking swords and maces that surrounded me.

  The effort of constant dodging grew tiring. It wasn’t easy escaping a bloodthirsty crowd without a scratch to show for it. To escape that crowd, I backed myself a corner. The hesitation that came next couldn’t have been longer than a few breaths, but it was enough for Avery and another to seize the opportunity.

  The two men charged me, trapping me in my corner. With their weapons at the ready, I was entirely defenseless aside from the shield I held.

  I dived, shield first, through the center of two blades. The sharp edges ruffled the cloak as I twisted past two attacks, meant to kill, became harmless as they framed somewhat of a landscape around me. A reverse grip on the sword was required for me to pass without the contact of blades. When I landed, I curled into a crouch and brought up the shield at the cloak’s warning, bracing the back of it with my sword arm.

  I was shocked to be looking right through the shield’s back yet again, just as Avery swung one of his swords hard and wide as he turned to face me. The vicious attack cut the man standing beside him in half, slicing him through just above the waist. Avery’s sword then smashed powerfully into the shield, as if it lost no momentum from cleaving the other man. The blow he landed was powerful enough to break my posture; my sword arm recoiled, and the tip of the red blade punctured my leg.

  I bled profusely from that wound, but my reverse grip on the sword remained secure, comfortable even. I braced for the pain to come as I pulled the weapon free and I was moving again before I could even register the change in fighting styles. Screaming in pain, I detected his next attack through the shield and dodged it.

  “Quit playing around and kill the boy,” Avery blurted to the still numerous individuals who stood poised to murder me, but whose faces held less passion for the task than they had moments before.

  I may not have been able to make it out alive, but Avery didn’t know that. Men and women dropped like flies, enveloped by flames. Groans came from all over, bodies with too few limbs floated in the pooling water at my feet. Others either lay slumped, stunned by the shield, or stood dazed by battle wounds in need of mending. Frantic men backed away from me so quickly my next couple swings struck nothing but air.

  “This isn't what I signed up for,” a mercenary said clutching his bleeding stomach.

  “When I was hired, they said things would be simple. No invasion constructed over the period of a century could fail. This entire day has been far from simple,” yelled another man. In his arms was his comrade, who was missing a hand and whose mouth filled with blood. He choked on that blood as the life slowly left his eyes.

  “Weren’t there murmurs in the camp of the Lord of Vassilious being guarded by a slave boy with a lion shield?” said the man beside Avery. His arm outstretched, sword aimed at the shield I held.

  Avery’s remaining slaves and mercenaries around me took a unified step back as if ordered to do so.

  He looked at his group of hired hands. “I’ve paid you a king’s fortune for these tasks, how dare you not execute them?” Avery boomed, his voice trembling with fury.

  “Because you’ve lied to us!” a woman yelled. Several people clamored in agreement. “Even now, you’d feed us to monsters,” the woman continued, pointing at me.

  The people who had once supported him slowly backed away. Some inched backward while others climbed up the side of the wall and out through the hole in the cabin’s roof. I think he would have killed his dissidents if his eyes had not been locked on me.

  “I don’t know what you are, child. But you may be the reason I haven't taken the throne.” Avery pointed one of his swords at me. Hatred saturated his voice as he spoke. “I will kill you for undermining my rule. I will kill you for your passive-aggressive silence. When reinforcements arrive to help me, you will be gone. I kill for the Honorborn, slave.”

  When Avery stopped talking, something shifted in his eyes. His tanned skin seemed to darken slightly as his veins filled with univers. He spat as his muscles flexed to an impossible maximum, looking me in the eyes as he filled himself with raw power. The reality that I may not be enough to defeat this man struck me. It hurt my chest. Not the outside, like an arrow or a puncture, but the inside, like whatever composed me was dying. But I wasn’t dying. I was coming to life.

  As the footfalls of men and women charged down the steps and their bodies filled the halls, a shiver ran through me. Every hair stood on its end. Fear. I’d always known fear.

  Where was the boy? He should have been at my side by that point. He always followed
me. But I was alone.

  The crowd surrounded Avery, wielding their weapons at me. These fresh soldiers had not witnessed my fury and were eager to support their master.

  More soldiers and mercenaries dropped from the lines that filled the cove. Pairs of boots landed on the roof in such numbers, it sounded as if we were amid a hailstorm. The boat rocked slightly as more bodies weighed down the sinking ship. I only now realize that the boat was so large that I could have swung the sword I held for an hour and the pirate king would still have more men to pull from; Not only from the far corners of the boat where Avery’s men hadn’t witnessed my dedicated slaughter, but from within Sand Mountain as well.

  As if Avery wasn’t threatening enough with the increased speed and strength that came with his torrential use of magic, he decided to utilize what little knowledge he had of runes.

  And the result was terrifying.

  Three runes, each shaped like tridents, floated around Avery’s chest in a triangular formation.

  “Welcome to the sea,” bellowed Avery. The tridents spawned dark, viscous, tentacles three at a time. The sea creature’s appendages lashed out wildly, spraying foul-smelling, ink-like splats throughout the ship. From those blackened puddles arose yet more tentacles that just swayed in place, waving their noxious odor throughout the salty air.

  Some of the runic tentacles coiled about Avery’s belt, slithering around the hilts of his swords. They unsheathed the weapons to both freely attack and defend; while others snapped out to grab anything in range of the limbs’ reach, undiscerning of friend or foe.

  A mercenary screamed as she was grabbed and thrown over my head by the pirate kings magic, crashing into the wall behind me. The floating runes never stopped swirling around their master, making the pirate king’s blurred movements even harder to track.

  Between a master swordsman who wielded many weapons and the mass of bodies that blocked the exits, true fatigue and the darkness of defeat took hold of my mind and bones.

  I braced for what was to come. I drew the shield upward to block Avery's path. The magic of the shield took effect, allowing me to again peer directly through it, right at my rushing enemy. A few men dropped behind me undetected as I focused on Avery. I was then grabbed at the waist by one of the new arrivals, two forceful arms, wrapping around me, trapping my limbs at my sides.

  I screamed, enraged. The threat of suffocation was more imminent than the Honorborn and his grotesque tentacles racing toward me. Every blade of every sword poised to kill.

  “Slave! Have you warmed my bath water?” a voice from above boomed through the cabin.

  Everyone froze, even Avery. The only moving things left were Avery’s barely controlled tentacles. The univers being used far outside Avery’s current limitations and the available stretch of his life force.

  “I will not bathe in cold water. Not a single drop of it. You will suffer if the temperature dips below that of a hot spring."

  Avery and I shared a look when Lady Ezra spoke, and though he was my enemy, I saw my reflection in his eyes—my fear for my own life. Fear I knew. I didn’t know he knew it until then. He feared for his life as well, but not because of me. Because of her.

  “Where am I?” Ezra asked, her words lower and less authoritative than the ones she’d yelled previously. She sounded more sober and less like a child throwing a tantrum.

  The blanket of calm was broken. The boat tilted to one side and then another. Men launched through the air over the gaping hole above me.

  Ezra yelled. “Where is Avery?”

  Everyone in the cabin looked up. The screams above, along with the thrashing of the boat, stopped long enough for all below to hear the lady’s footsteps.

  She approached, and the beating hearts of the men and women around me filled my head with a cascading roll call. Each target more scared than the last. My vision darkened and a familiar sensation overwhelmed me once again.

  “There you are,” said Ezra. She stared through the holes of the floors above us.

  The princess descended and lay her shadow over Avery, looking down on him as if he were small. Taking one step forward, she dropped into the hole. Water splashed up at her landing. Strange symbols alighted the flesh of her arms. This was such an unusual phenomenon that all, including Avery, stared intensely at her. She was impossibly menacing for someone so young and so small.

  At that moment, with all attention on Ezra, for the first time in a long while, no one’s eyes fell upon me.

  “You shackled me,” she said. Her voice maintained the same cold, unforgiving tone for all three words of her sentence. But the shackles of which she spoke dissolved from her wrists as we watched.

  “I—” Avery started before being cut off.

  “You poisoned my family. You bound my powers as I slept drunkenly at my father’s side.”

  Her eyes flicked to the doors that led to the lower deck, and at her glance, they slammed shut. I stood as a captive then, along with the men and women who had tried to kill me, though one of them had captured me. Some nameless man held my arms at my sides, and at that moment, I felt too weak to fight back.

  All I could smell was sweat and fear. All I could hear was racing heartbeats. All I could see was red.

  “Those things, I could have forgiven with time,” she turned from Avery and looked directly into my eyes. “But you have taken it somewhere I can never forgive. You touched my slave.”

  Swords rose from the ground and floated untethered into the air.

  “No one touches my slave but me.”

  I smiled at Ezra before I head-butted the man who held me. Re-energized, I reared my upper torso forward, then lashed back against the taller man’s skull. The smile fled my face as rage took me. Even if I hadn't broken the man’s nose in the attempt to free myself from his grip, the sword that entered his chest and pinned him to the wall would have done the trick. He was left clutching the blood-soaked handle as he dangled.

  Ezra fought with a single sword in one hand and controlled the direction of a half-dozen other weapons slicing the air around her. The ownerless blades and blunt weapons blocked and counterattacked as if each were wielded by a master. She was in control of the battle entirely and she was barely using her abilities. The source for her immense power were the Elementalist’s gauntlets she normally wore. But she was without them. And yet she was advanced far beyond the natural level of combat most in the kingdom were accustomed to.

  “Kill the girl or we all die,” yelled Avery, while battling four of Ezra's swords. Ferocious swings whistled as they stretched. Cutlasses, all of which were also under the princess’s control, sliced easily through the grimy tentacles that had sprouted on the boat, leaving barely writhing husks in their place. The smell faded. A little. Not enough.

  There were twenty-one beating hearts, excluding Ezra's and mine. As the numbers dwindled, something took place between my lady and me. The first three we killed took much longer than the rest. Numerous dangerous, moving, writhing things dominated the air of the space. If one included my wild attacks and the number of bodies in the secured section of the ship, one would understand those factors made the tight squeeze into a deadly fit.

  We were surrounded at the ship’s center. I danced through a dome-like area of sentient swords.

  A mercenary at the princess’s back blocked a high blow with one hand while attempting to deliver a haymaker to her back. I slid on my knees toward this target. As I skimmed through the shallow water, I readied the glass sword with a two-handed grip. The red blade flashed in an upward arc through the man’s midsection. His body spun in two opposing directions as it fell apart.

  A girl who stood before us wielded a sword. She looked from Ezra to me while I was performing two attacks. That glance was what proved to be her downfall as one of Ezra’s floating maces struck her on the head, staggering her attacker. I rose, the glass edge of the sword in my hand flashed through her neck. Her head hit the ground before her body fell.

  A spear l
anced through the foot of a woman, pinning her to the floor. She dropped her weapons and grabbed the spear with both hands. The lion-faced shield crushed her sternum before she could tug the large splinter free.

  “Stop attacking her weak points, she’s luring you in for the savage, you idiots,” wailed Avery in protest.

  It was far too late; the lady and I were natural born enemies. But—

  "Slave, we must end this traitor’s existence!” Ezra yelled, still focused on the battle, fourteen beating hearts remained, ticking lightly in my mind.

  The lady and I yelled as we charged, her attacks becoming an extension of my own. We struggled at points. The Oceanborn powers weren’t so familiar to us, especially his odd brand of them. We may have been fierce forces, but she was without the gauntlets that allowed her powers to be used safely. The giant before us had many cycles of combat experience.

  I flipped over charging targets, ramming them in the back with the shield. The more I fought the more the shield spit energy. Deadly pulses bounced between soaked metal-wielding killers.

  Ezra grew frustrated and threw a group of three directly up and out the room, creating an additional hole in the roof. She nearly toppled the tentacled colossus thirsting for our heads. The last of our enemies whipped up with the water at the base of the boat. Ezra’s swords struck their hearts underwater, drowning them in their own blood as much as in the water. I stabbed the last man through the stomach.

  There was only one enemy heart left in the room, and he watched, dismayed. His tentacles had fallen limp at his sides, if only momentarily, as bodies were lifted out of the bloodied water at Ezra's will, clearing the area for whatever was to come. Avery looked down.

  “Your father betrayed me for a slave once. Did you know that?” Avery asked. His voice wasn’t trembling. But it wasn’t as forceful as it had been before.