Unsettling silence fell around them for a full minute as Aleksandra awaited the golem’s response. She found moments such as these utterly fascinating, as the minds of mortals worked to arrive at conclusions and actions that were often times impossible to predict. She controlled so much that the unknown was an exciting concept in her enviable life.
Would he genuflect before her? Would he be foolish enough to attack? The chaos within her churned at the thought. Despite his usefulness, she could not suppress the smallest tug of a smile at imagining the one-sided conflict that would occur should he decide to challenge her. Despite his size, she could easily halt one of his meaty limbs as it came barreling at her. A simple twist of her wrist would tear flesh, muscle, and bone asunder. Then, she’d reach up with one soft, delicate hand, grip him by his wide neck, and with naught but a simple clench and tug, rip his throat out and leave the former general to bleed to death upon the floor.
She watched shuddering realization dawn upon the big man’s face. Zouka had clearly envisioned a scenario similar to what she had predicted. He gave one last violent exhale and fell to one knee before Aleksandra.
“What is your bidding, my empress?”
A tight-lipped smile of satisfaction spread along her face. “The time has come to demonstrate our military might.”
Chains clattered against stone at his slightest movement. Struggling had grown more difficult as the months passed. The young man felt restricted by the plethora of heavy bindings that fell down along his broad shoulders and chest. The links of restrictive metal felt cool along his rippling arms, which had lost none of their size despite the length of his incarceration. The tight stabbing edges of the muzzle that constricted his fantastic power grated against the full beard, which had grown along his strong jaw throughout this forced imprisonment. But still, Kayden Burai could feel the pull of darkness.
The whirling gears of a Grassani-made magic nullifying muzzle hindered his ability to call upon the fury of the dark, but in this lightless chamber, Kayden sometimes felt at home. The dank void of the cell’s interior echoed the shadowy depths of his heart.
Save for the castle servants who poured infinitesimal bits of food and water through the grate covering his mouth, Kayden had no visitors. Aleksandra had not graced him with her “holy” presence, nor had Aurax even appeared to taunt him. It was as though he were forgotten, and that, above all else, stung the harshest.
He was meant for greatness. He had no other purpose in this world than to stand atop it. The thought that he could be cast away in some hole and forgotten forever was incomprehensible. Despite the days turning into weeks turning into months, Kayden never lost faith in himself and his destiny. This was not forever. This trinket upon his face could not hold him indefinitely. He would be free. He would once again take his true godly, winged form and soar through the skies of Terra as an ebony dragon.
It was jarring to be rendered so weak when strength ordinarily defined his existence. In his weaker moments, Kayden felt disgust at how human it all felt. Still though, in the back of his mind, like the faintest echo upon the wind, the darkness sang to him. The darkness fed his rage and gave him the strength of will to combat his lack of physical strength. But above all else, the darkness churned weakly through the recesses of his twisted mind and assured him that salvation was forthcoming. Sometimes he could almost hear it softly whisper one word over and over again, filling his head with a solitary promise.
Soon.
He had plenty of time to think as he lay weighted to the uneven stone floor. The events at Kahntran replayed themselves through his head over and over. Kayden had convinced himself that had Aleksandra not interfered, victory was assured. Valentean’s dragon blood spilled by the gallon upon the streets of the desolate city. Their final charge of fury had filled him with a righteous roar of victory, and then, just as destiny was his to claim at long last, Aleksandra had descended upon the battlefield, snatching this well-deserved moment from his grasp.
Of all the injustices committed upon him over the course of his life, this had by far been the most egregious. He loathed Aleksandra for taking something so completely his and tearing it from his grasp. As he lay rotting, Kayden found his mind wandering toward his mistress, his empress, his avowed charge. He would make her pay, slowly and intimately, in horrific, violent demonstrations of his rage and pain. He would show her the fury of the darkness and the empty hole in his heart where his capacity for mercy and compassion should have been.
An unfamiliar sound accompanied a blinding shaft of light that invaded the darkness, causing the young Rosinanti to grunt in pain and slam his eyelids shut. He opened them again slowly, cursing at his weakness once more. He stared intently at the floor, and through his scorched retinas, he could make out immaculately polished black, high-heeled boots. His gaze traveled up to the hem of an ornate red gown trimmed in black. As he inclined his head further and further, his rage bunched together in his chest, knowing exactly what awaited him above.
His blue eyes met the intense red bloodshine of Aleksandra’s glowing irises. He met her gaze unblinking, determined not to look weak in the face of her intense glower. She said nothing but merely stared at him. The flickering flame of her eyes attempted to bully him into submission, to intimidate him in the wake of her awesome power. Kayden would not give her such satisfaction. He strained against his bonds, the heavy chains pressing down upon him. He valiantly tried to plant his boots upon the floor and pushed up with all his might.
He began to slowly rise through the oppressive weight, his limbs shaking with the exertion. He stood not with any magical might granted to him by the grace of his Rosinanti birth but solely with the strength of his iron will. He made it to a low crouch and started to ascend, determined to meet her stare at eye level and rise above her. If she had been impressed with his resolve, it did not show in her stoic eyes. She continued to regard him with cold indifference as he continued to struggle toward a vertical base.
Just as Kayden began to meet Aleksandra’s direct line of sight, he could feel his knees begin to buckle. The strength afforded him by rage and pain was fizzling out, and an all-consuming fatigue began to fall over him. Just as his legs prepared to crumble, the sorceress gave a hardly perceivable wave of her hand, and the muzzle around his jaw fell loose. The darkness exploded back to life within his mind and body with such extreme strength that it became dizzying. Purple light ignited along his eyes, and he harshly thrashed his arms and legs, tearing the chains from the floor, flinging them roughly from his body.
Kayden Burai stood free and empowered once more. The beating of his heart resounded through his chest like a drum, and the world once more looked smaller. He gazed forward at Aleksandra, at the woman he had once sworn an oath on his soul to protect. They spoke not a word to one another. Kayden wracked his mind for something, anything he could say in the face of this tyrant who had imprisoned him. For three months, he had thought of nothing but this moment, and so many words of unwavering bravado had come so easily to his mind. But they all died on the path from his brain to his lips, and Kayden simply stared at her, eyes aglow with dark power.
“We have work to do,” Aleksandra said, her expression unchanged as she turned on her heel and quickly stalked out of the room.
II: The Unwanted Boon
Valentean fell from the sky with the speed and severity of a lightning bolt. As his feet impacted the sandy shore of the beach, his eyes came alight with a familiar white hue, accompanied by a severe gust of powerful wind. The animus warrior whirled his arms around his body, directing the air to spin and kick up the sand until it completely eclipsed him from view.
The seaside sandstorm raged high into the air, and trees from the surrounding forest bent in its wake. The power he now commanded was truly remarkable; it was as though he could see color for the first time after a life of nothing but black, white, and grey. The wind surged in correspondence with his will, billowing the folds of the black pants that served as replacement f
or his tattered destroyed animus robes. He braced his arms at his ribcage, lightly settling his wrists against the skin-tight black and red-trimmed sleeveless shirt that clung to his torso, displaying the lean muscular frame of his body. His newly regrown ebony hair, though not yet the length it had been at the time it was seared from his scalp, had enough volume to fly around his face within the chaotic whirlwind.
He could recall with startling clarity the jolting, burning horror of those clawing bolts of chaos, the heinous chewing of flames upon flesh, and the uneasy remembrance of how close he had come to oblivion. As these unwanted memories tore through his damaged psyche, Valentean could feel the pull of something else invading his thoughts. Burning rage rose up within his franticly beating heart, urging him to lash out, to trust in its power, to embrace the unwanted boon with which it had gifted him. He clenched his teeth and slammed his eyes shut, determined to maintain control in the face of this invasive presence.
The wind instantly died as Valentean opened his eyes once more, a bright blue light erupting along them. As the sand fell on and around him, the Rosinanti gestured toward the ocean, pulling four long, thick streams of salt water from the raging sea. He sent them swirling around his body, each in a different direction and speed, maintaining them all simultaneously.
As the power of order calmed his burgeoning anger like the gentle stream of a tranquil river, his thoughts drifted to her who had gifted him with this incredible ability. Seraphina was alive and well. He could sense it every single day even at this great distance. There were waves of anxiety, perhaps even slight hints of buried fear in the haze of emotions that linked them together, but Valentean knew she was at least physically in no immediate danger. That thought had done little to cool his dread, however.
They had been apart now for nearly three and a half months, and his heart ached and yearned for her touch. The distance between them was perhaps the cruelest injustice the universe had ever unleashed upon him. They had so recently discovered their love, so newly declared their feelings for one another, and yet they were violently snatched apart, seeing one another only in their dreams.
Valentean dreamt of her every single night. Sometimes these visions were pleasant, other times horrifying, but still she was there so close to him. There was no bad they could not overcome together, no injustice they could not diffuse hand in hand. Those blissful moments as Valentean roused from sleep, when consciousness had been so new that he could still believe his dreams to be reality, were the only waking seconds where he truly felt complete.
Thoughts of Seraphina began to have an unwanted effect upon him. A prickling heat spread through the veins of his arms, and that all-consuming rage began to push against the boundaries of order. In response to this inner turmoil, the flowing liquid around his body began to shudder. Valentean could feel the edge of murder creeping into his mind, and he bit back upon it, doubling down upon the dousing cooling water of peace, sending the four bursts of liquid serenity soaring back into the waves from which they were born.
Concentrating once more on calm, soothing thoughts, Valentean summoned six massive tentacles of water up from the sea, looming above him on the beach, weaving in and out of one another seamlessly like the mighty appendages of some ancient sea monster. His arms relaxed and flowed around his body like the very water they controlled.
For a time, this worked. For several minutes, in fact, Valentean found his mind free and clear, unburdened of the damning consistent voice of temptation that had dominated his mental faculties throughout the course of his recovery. But then, there it was again, hiding just beneath the surface, prickling, tingling under his newly healed flesh.
Vile weakness had allowed Aleksandra to thrash him so. Both weakness on his end and from the annoying sycophants who called themselves his allies. So often in recent months, he had envisioned abandoning them, leaving them to wonder behind, to mourn the loss of meaning his absence would bring to their lives. Yes, often times he had dreamt of just leaving them. Other times, less kind thoughts had crossed his mind.
The rage was all-consuming and terrifying as it spread outward, carried invisibly upon the waves of his energy. The watery constructs began to bubble as though boiling. Steam rose into the swirling, incandescent afternoon sky.
These feelings had begun shortly after his encounter with Aleksandra. Even through the burned-out husk that was his body at the time, he could feel it churning within him. These base feelings that called out for destruction had felt different from the animalistic desires often brought about by the force of godly power within him. This was far from that. Whatever bubbled around his soul, urging violence against his friends, felt…alive.
He knew what it was, but he could not allow himself to admit it out loud and certainly not to his allies. Because while the chaos shard that leeched onto his soul came with unwanted emotional side effects, it also came with power. The strength afforded to him by this one tiny shred of Aleksandra’s energy was unlike anything he had ever felt. He worked tirelessly to fight it off, to keep the red haze of flame from his eyes, but in those rare weak moments, when he allowed himself to revel in it, the chaos brought with it unrivaled euphoric energy.
Through the rage and hate it dredged up in his mind, there had come an ecstasy that filled him with purpose and happiness, numbing the waves of hurtful loss that stung him constantly in Seraphina’s absence. When he allowed himself to indulge the flames, they were…wonderful…and intoxicating. While Valentean hated to acknowledge this shameful fact, he loved it, he craved it, and a part of him needed it.
He tried desperately to hold on to the order, to steady and cool the water, to bring it back under his control and with it the calming peace of mind he knew to be his true self. But he couldn’t do it. The chaos tingled his lips, and his tongue snaked out involuntarily against them as though he needed to taste it. His limbs shook as he tried to summon the presence of mind to hold on, to remain Valentean Burai, the Spirit of Light, the conduit of order. But in the end, he couldn’t do it. In the end, his strength of mind failed as tiny red embers flared to life around his body, and though he hated himself for it, Valentean opened his heart to the rushing fury of chaos.
Crimson light swept across his field of vision. The tentacles of water exploded and evaporated into a superheated haze. The rush of power hit him like a fist, electrifying his body, causing the entire world to blur. The rage exploded out through his heart with such rampaging ferocity that it overloaded his mind and supercharged every cell of his powerful body. He screamed as loudly as he could in anger, frustration, fear, exhilaration. All of these emotions converged together and erupted through his lips in one prolonged syllable that resounded through the empty beach and neighboring forest.
His hands rose above his head as though he were reaching for the flaming fury of the sun itself. His fingers curled into powerful fists, and he slammed them down hard into the sand, quaking the ground beneath him. An instant later, the entire shoreline exploded as deep red and orange flames erupted out from beneath the sand, engulfing the entire area in an inferno of his empowering rage. His scream died amongst the heat of the blaze, and Valentean fell to his knees as he let go of the chaos with alarming swiftness. This had been entirely too close.
As the flames died around him, so too faded the blood-colored hue of his eyes. He hated himself for giving up like that, and he chided his weakness internally. This outburst left him with a profound horror, and tears born of frustration squeezed out of his once more human eyes. Why couldn’t he control this? What was wrong with him? But hate the chaos as he might have, Valentean knew he could not let it go. Part of him, the logical side of his brain, begged him to seek help in his allies, to find some way to expunge this foul presence from his spirit. But then he thought of Seraphina, he thought of Aleksandra’s power, and he realized the only way he could ever defeat the mighty empress and be reunited with his love was to trust in the very power he despised.
He looked sadly around the beach, which
lay tens of kilometers away from the ruins of Casid where his friends awaited his return. His flames had devastated it. The sand swooped overhead, frozen in jagged glass fractals like some shining, translucent, nightmarish barren forest. The random swirling angles of crystal could be described as the very definition of chaos. This could not happen again. It would not happen again.
I’m Valentean Burai, he thought forcefully to himself. I am the Spirit of Light. I am The Rosintai. I am better than this, and I will learn to control this. The chaos has no power over me. Though he tried desperately to hang on to this thought, to perhaps even believe it to be true, Valentean could not tear his gaze away from the last dying ember of flame, watching it with an insatiable hunger as it blinked from existence.
Nevick rotated his shoulder up and back, feeling the joint pop as it worked through excess tension and stress. He stood bare chested in the shrouded sunlight of a forest clearing just outside of Casid. The burly strong-man focused on the energy within his rippling muscle-bound body. The power that fountained out into his limbs and broad chest had always come to him naturally like some unnamed reflex that only he possessed. It wasn’t until he had faced off against the monster known as Zouka in the ruins of Kahntran that he finally had a name to associate with his unnatural abilities.
Mana, he thought, the word still strange and foreign to him. Over the ensuing months, he had inquired from his new allies just what exactly this energy is and how he could better control it. He dragged the tingling power of the magic-soaked air in through his nose and immediately put it to work. He focused inward, not pushing the energy out like Valentean or Maura might but instead, storing it within the tissue of his already impressive muscles.
Rosinanti_Rise of the Dragon Lord Page 2
