Hunter of Legends (Fate of Legends Series Book 1)

by Clayton Wood

  “I wish we’d never done this,” she muttered bitterly. “I wish we’d never tried to become Seekers.”

  “Don’t say that,” Gammon snapped, his tone suddenly sharp. Sukri flinched, staring at him wordlessly. He’d never talked to her like that. Never talked to anyone like that. “It’s an honor to be accepted into the guild,” he continued. “Many people tried to do what we did,” he added. “They failed, and we didn’t.”

  She just stared at him, feeling numb. In that moment, she hardly recognized him. She glanced down at the Seeker medallion resting on his chest, feeling the weight of her own medallion on hers. She had the sudden urge to take it off. To throw it as far away as possible.

  What is it doing to us?

  Gammon’s shoulders slumped, and he reached out, touching her shoulder. She felt a familiar calmness come over her, settling her mind. But there was something new there, a sadness. A sense of resignation that had never been there before.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  She felt a sudden affection for him then, and pulled away from his touch.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “When you touch me, I feel…” she replied, trying to find the right words. “I feel love for you. But it isn’t my feeling, it’s yours.”

  “I can’t help the way I feel,” Gammon stated.

  “Neither can I,” she countered. “That’s the problem, Gammon. Sometimes I can’t tell which feelings are mine and which aren’t.”

  “I’m not touching you now,” he reasoned. “How do you feel about me now?”

  Sukri hesitated, focusing inward. She did feel affection toward him. That was nothing new; she loved him as a friend, her gentle giant. But she’d never thought of him as a lover. And right now, she didn’t want to contemplate such a thing.

  “I just want to go to bed,” she muttered. Gammon sighed, lowering his gaze. Then he offered a hand.

  “Let me help you into bed.”

  “It’s okay,” she replied. “I can do it myself.”

  “All right,” Gammon stated. He hesitated, then gave her a weak smile. “See you later?”

  “Yeah.”

  He stood there for a moment longer, then left her room, closing the door behind him. Sukri lifted herself from her wheelchair, transferring over to her bed. She laid down, pulling the covers over her, then turned onto her side, closing her eyes.

  And then she wept.

  Chapter 31

  Dominus leaned against the balcony railing, watching as Conlan paced before him. The sun overhead hid behind a few clouds, casting a shadow over the inner courtyard. He studied Conlan silently, noting how disheveled he looked…far worse than before. His son appeared as if he hadn’t bathed in days, or shaved for that matter. He was more agitated as well, his pacing more frantic.

  “I can feel him,” Conlan complained, continuing to pace. “Even out here. He shouldn’t be here,” he added. “This is supposed to be my break!”

  Dominus said nothing, putting most of his weight on his left foot. His right foot hurt even more than before. When he’d looked at it this morning, he’d been dismayed to find black spots forming further up on his instep, the rot spreading despite sleeping with his Ossae that night. It was either worthless, or his disease was too advanced to be slowed, much less stopped. He suspected the latter; the redness had spread from the edges of his wound to the entire foot, and even the ankle, tendrils of infection crawling slowly up his leg. He’d woken to soaked sheets this morning, evidence of having broken a fever last night. He’d hoped for more time…needed more time.

  And now Vi – and that Ironclad’s remarkable ability – were his only chance at getting it.

  Conlan stopped pacing suddenly, turning to Dominus.

  “Do you know what it’s like?” he asked. Before Dominus could answer, Conlan tapped his own temple with one finger. “He’s in here,” he stated. “Wherever I go now, he’s here. I can feel him father,” he added, tapping his head viciously. “Eating away at my brain.”

  “Conlan…” Dominus began.

  “You have no idea how powerful he is,” Conlan interrupted, resuming his pacing. “I thought I could fight him. I thought I was strong. I am strong,” he added. “But he’s so much stronger, father.”

  “He is,” Dominus agreed. There was no “I told you so” in his tone, no pleasure in being proven right. As much as he disliked his son, he still loved him. Watching him suffer like this – dying slowly but surely, losing himself to Tykus – was torture for both of them.

  “I need to get out of here,” Conlan muttered. “I need to clear my head. I can’t think in this place.”

  “What place?” Dominus inquired, if only to keep Conlan talking.

  “This damn fortress,” Conlan answered.

  “This is normal,” Dominus stated calmly. “Every king goes through it.”

  “It’s not normal for me,” Conlan retorted. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he continued, shaking his head. “It should’ve been you going through this, not me.”

  “You know why I didn’t do this,” Dominus stated wearily. Conlan sneered.

  “Right,” he muttered. “For the ‘stability of the kingdom,’” he added snidely. “You’re so full of shit father.”

  “Watch your tongue,” Dominus shot back automatically, his tone cold.

  “Or what?” Conlan shot back. “You don’t scare me anymore, father. I’m the king.”

  “Not yet you’re not.”

  “But I will be,” Conlan retorted. “And when I am…” He trailed off then, staring into space. Then he turned to Dominus again. “Will I even remember this?” he asked. “Will I remember anything about me?”

  Dominus grimaced, lowering his gaze.

  “Will I?” Conlan pressed, taking a step toward him. “Or is everything I know going to die along with me?”

  “Son…”

  “Is any part me going to be left?”

  Dominus sighed, shaking his head. Conlan had entered the next phase of the transformation. He knew now that he would not survive, would not live to see whatever grand plans he’d concocted put into action. He had no hope now, only despair. This was the most dangerous part of the transformation…when would-be kings considered the unthinkable.

  Suicide.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, raising his eyes to meet Conlan’s. And it was true; once Tykus took over, there was no interrogating him. Tykus would not suffer such foolishness.

  “I thought you knew everything,” Conlan retorted, glaring at him. Dominus sighed. Conlan’s tone, once able to irritate him to no end, only made him feel sorry for the boy now.

  “I know you’re angry at me, but you know you would’ve had to go through this anyway, when I passed,” Dominus reminded him gently.

  Conlan said nothing, resuming his pacing. Dominus hesitated, then pushed off of the railing, intercepting Conlan. He hesitated, then put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He felt a sudden affection for the boy, something he hadn’t experienced in well over a decade.

  “I wanted to be here for you,” Dominus confessed. “I didn’t want you to have to do this alone.”

  Conlan stopped, turning to stare at his father. His eyes were moist, his expression desperate. In that moment, he reminded Dominus of when he was just a boy…vulnerable, scared. Desperate for his father to tell him that everything was going to be okay. Dominus had been so hopeful then, that his son would grow up to be more like him. To have someone who would understand him implicitly, as only family could.

  Conlan stepped in, leaning his head against Dominus’s chest. Dominus hesitated, then wrapped his arms around his son, taking a deep breath in, then letting it out. As much as Dominus hated to admit it, his son was dying. Tykus was taking over, minute by minute, day by day. The man who was his son would slowly fade away, evicted from his own mind. His body would remain, but his essence – his very soul – would be no more.

  And for the good of the kingdom, Dominus had
to watch his son die, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.

  “I’ll be here for you,” Dominus murmured, embracing his son for the first time since he’d left Wexford…since he’d been a rebellious teenager, rejecting his father’s wisdom, filled with foolish notions of his own.

  “Don’t leave me,” Conlan pleaded.

  “I won’t,” Dominus promised. “I’ll be with you son. To the very end.”

  * * *

  Hunter, Vi, and the two Seekers strode slowly and quietly through the woods near the shore of the stream to their right, their eyes on a large hill ahead. The hill dropped off in a cliff twenty feet high facing the stream, and on its face was the mouth of a cave. A stream of water gushed out of the cave in a waterfall only two feet high, falling to a short, narrow stream that joined the larger stream after a few dozen feet. Vi stopped, hiding behind a tree, and the Seekers did the same. Hunter followed suit, peering through the forest at the hill. He spotted three large, black creatures there, facing away from the mouth of the cave. He felt a chill run down his spine.

  Ironclad.

  Traven and Edgar glanced at Vi, who studied the three beasts carefully. They were, to Hunter’s surprise, armed with warhammers, and each of them carried two huge shields in their lower pair of hands. They wore no armor, of course, seeing as they were already covered in the natural equivalent to platemail. Vi studied them for a moment longer, then turned to Traven and Edgar.

  “You stay here,” she ordered. “I’ll take care of them.”

  “Are you crazy?” Traven retorted. “You can’t take on three armed Ironclad by yourself!” But Vi ignored him, striding forward, going from one tree to the next, hiding for a moment, then continuing forward. Hunter smirked at Traven.

  “Watch,” he counseled, “…and learn.”

  Vi stopped behind a tree a few dozen feet from the nearest Ironclad, whose back was turned to her. She withdrew her mace, waiting. The other Ironclad turned to look at something past the stream, and that’s when she made her move, bolting from behind cover and sprinting toward the nearest Ironclad. She leapt into the air, swinging her mace at the back of its head. The mace struck the creature’s skull, snapping its head forward and sending it stumbling to the ground. Before its head could even bounce off the dirt, she’d put the mace back at her hip, withdrawing her longsword and driving its tip right into the back of its shattered skull, impaling it.

  The second-nearest Ironclad turned, spotting her…just as she closed the gap between them. She flipped her sword around, grabbing it by the blade with both hands and swinging the hilt at the thing’s face. The cross-guard smashed into its left eye, dropping the beast like a stone. She flipped the sword around again, grabbing the hilt with both hands and thrusting the point of her blade through its shattered eye socket.

  The third – and last – Ironclad turned to face her, raising its shields and warhammer. She sprinted at it, reaching down to toss dirt at its face. It raised one shield to block the dirt, swinging its warhammer at her. But she dodged the blow easily, sliding underneath the shield it’d raised and swinging her mace into its knee. The beast’s leg buckled, and it fell onto its knee as Vi continued past it, sliding to a stop, then turning around and running up its back, raising her mace and chopping downward at the back of its head.

  The beast fell to the dirt, Vi’s sword impaling its skull from behind moments later.

  She withdrew her sword, sheathing it in one fluid motion, then striding casually back toward Edgar and Traven. The two Seekers stared at her silently, their mouths agape. Vi smirked at them.

  “All right boys,” she stated. “Class is over. Any questions?”

  They just stared at her, then at the bodies of the Ironclad. It hadn’t even been a minute since she’d left to kill them.

  “God damn,” Edgar breathed.

  “Come on Hunter,” Vi prompted, nodding at the cave entrance. She started walking back toward it, and Hunter followed behind her. She glanced back at Traven and Edgar, flashing them a grin. “Stay here and look pretty, boys,” she added. “We’ll be back.”

  * * *

  Icy water soaked into Hunter’s boots as he stepped into the stream pouring from the mouth of the cave, his feet going numb almost instantly. He grimaced, wading into the ice-cold water. It reached up to his knees now, drenching his pants. He trudged forward, his eyes on Vi’s back as they waded up to the cave entrance. The current was powerful here, enough so that he had to struggle to stop himself from being swept off his feet…a feat made even more difficult by the fact that the rocks underfoot were dangerously slippery.

  Vi reached the short waterfall at the mouth of the cave, climbing up onto the leftmost ledge, where the flow of water was the weakest. She pulled herself up into the cave, then extended a hand to Hunter. He waded up to the ledge, grabbing her wrist. She pried his hand loose with her other hand, grabbing his elbow.

  “Grab my elbow too,” she ordered. He did so, and she hauled him up the ledge to the mouth of the cave easily. She let go then, continuing forward into the cave itself. Hunter followed close behind, cleaving to the leftmost wall. The flow was slower there, the water shallower than in the middle of the cave. The cave narrowed slightly as they made their way forward, forming a long tunnel. They passed beyond the beams of sunlight streaming into it, engulfed by relative darkness. It took a moment for Hunter’s eyes to adjust; he peered ahead, seeing the tunnel curving upward and to the right. He couldn’t hear anything over the roar of water gushing through the tunnel. The rocks underfoot, covered with an inch or two of water, made the going treacherous. One slip would send him right onto his butt, and potentially into the deeper part of the stream. He had no doubt that the powerful current would carry him right out of the tunnel.

  He steadied himself with one hand on the wall of the cave, stepping carefully forward. Vi, as usual, moved much more quickly and surely than he. She might as well have been taking a stroll on a sidewalk.

  When I grow up, he thought, watching her move, I want to be like her.

  They followed the tunnel as it curved rightward and upward, growing steadily darker and steeper as they went. It was just as well that there was a narrow ledge above the water at the leftmost wall ahead; without it, he doubted they would’ve been able to continue. They stepped onto it, clinging to the rock wall as they crab-walked up the incline. Eventually it became so dark that Hunter could barely see at all.

  “I can’t see,” he whispered. “Do you have a light?”

  “I can see,” Vi whispered back, turning to face him. He swore her eyes glowed a little in the darkness, like a cat’s. “No lights. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he muttered. “Guess I’ll die from falling instead.”

  “I’ll guide you,” she countered. She paused then. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a pussy?”

  “Says the only person here who has one,” Hunter shot back.

  “Now I’ve got two,” she replied. And even though he couldn’t really see her, he was sure she was grinning.

  They kept going, Hunter crab-walking one step at a time, ensuring that there was a wide enough ledge to support him as he went. After a few minutes of this, he could swear he saw light ahead. Vi slowed, then stopped, and he barely made out the silhouette of the back of her head.

  “Lantern ahead,” she whispered. “No talking from now on unless I say so.” She turned to face him, her eyes iridescent in the faint light. “You speak, you die.”

  Hunter nodded once, swallowing in a dry throat. He suddenly wished she’d left him with Traven and Edgar, doing this mission herself. After all, he was probably just slowing her down. Not that he could do anything about it now.

  They crept forward silently, the ledge underfoot growing wider as they went, until they didn’t need to crab-walk anymore. The stream took a sharp right turn into a waterfall that fell from a hole in the rightmost wall a few feet up, while the tunnel continued forward, the floor mer
cifully dry. Hunter let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as they left the stream behind. Ahead, he saw a lone lantern bolted to the wall, the flame within flickering slightly, casting a warm orange glow through the tunnel. There were no Ironclad to be seen, to his immense relief.

  “Weird,” Vi whispered, her voice nearly inaudible with the roar of the waterfall. Hunter looked at her questioningly. She pointed at the tunnel ahead. “These walls aren’t natural,” she explained. Hunter studied the walls, realizing she was right; the walls were made of irregular stone blocks that had been mortared together. This was an artificial tunnel, built into the hill. He stepped forward, feeling something crunch underfoot. Looking down, he saw a few bones lying on the tunnel floor.

  Human bones.

  “Don’t do that again,” Vi whispered, glancing down at his foot. He lifted it from the bones – a rib cage – and stepped carefully around it. She continued forward then, one step at a time, her eyes on the tunnel ahead. It curved to the right, still rising in a steady incline. They passed the lantern, and Hunter spotted another one further ahead. The lanterns were crude compared to those in Tykus, but only slightly so. There was no way the Ironclad could have made them, simple beasts that they were; people must have built these tunnels before the Ironclad had arrived. More bones littered the floor, and they stepped around them carefully.

  Onward and upward the tunnel went, until at last it ended abruptly, opening up into a small cavern. Unlike the tunnel, this appeared natural, with rough stone walls. Several more tunnels branched out from the cavern, appearing man-made, like the tunnel they were in. Vi stopped suddenly, and Hunter stopped behind her, peering over her shoulder. His blood went cold; there, standing in the small cavern, were two Ironclad. Unlike the ones outside, these were not armed. One of them raised a hand, moving its fingers rapidly in some sort of sign language. The other nodded, turning down one of the other tunnels and vanishing from sight.