by Derek Barton
“Get to the nearest infirmary. Thank you!”
Taihven bolted away from the wounded soldier and made a direct line for the Castle Proper. Somehow this news had recharged him, adrenaline pumped through him. Upon arriving at the main archway, the three men still posted there saluted him on sight.
He ignored the tradition and snapped, “Have all messengers and scouts report here to me immediately. Send word to my sister, and the surviving sergeants and lieutenants that I have returned and to report to me until further notice. I will coordinate the siege from here.”
The guards remained where they were.
He explained, “Look! I am acting on behalf of Captain Ruessard until further notice. Do you have any idea where my mother or sister is?”
The guard paled and then shot a guilty look over at the other two guards. He coughed and then said, “I am sorry, Your Highness, but there was an… an incident.”
#5
Auste struggled under the weight of the rocks and wooden beams across his chest. The pain and pressure was unlike anything he had ever endured. He heard noises and shouts above him.
“Please! Please, help me! I am trapped in here,” he pleaded. Buried alive and pinned helplessly removed all sense of who he was.
“Hold on, we are getting more help to clear this rubble.” A voice called down to him.
In minutes, he was freed. Some minor cuts and bruising, but nothing too serious. He brushed the dirt from his robe. He thanked the two Wyvernguard and shook their hands warmly.
“You should sit on this pile here and wait for a Mender. Could be injur—”
“—No, no. I am…” His voice trailed off as he looked across the yard and watched a familiar figure come out of the Barrack’s doorway. Auste’s jaw dropped. Dread and utter panic filled him.
It was Prince Taihven. He was alive! He was impossibly back!!
The lad had his back to him as he was assisting another guard as they carried his sister out on a stretcher. Another pair of guards handled a second stretcher as they followed the prince. This stretcher had a body covered in a white shroud. Blood stains formed in the center of the chest. As they carried this body, a third sheet-covered body was brought out on a stretcher from the Guard Barracks.
The prince and princess were openly crying and caught up in their emotion.
Who? Auste wondered. Who was the third? If Princess Letandra had somehow survived his attack and the second body was Sergeant Devin’s…
He could not piece it together. His near death by the Viestrahl assault had already overwhelmed him. He sat in shock upon the pile and watched the three stretchers and the prince trek back toward the Castle Proper.
Auste had no thought of it nor the energy to ambush them, but he could have easily taken them at this weak point. He was certain that at this point, he was the one who had been ambushed.
***
Auste stood stiff and emotionless amongst a rushing crowd of refugees and soldiers. He was near the fallen West Moat Wall. Chaos and strife were everywhere as guards fought off the swarming Viestrahl. Auste was battling against his own indecision.
On one hand, he gambled that he could escape the confines of Wyvernshield and even restore his command of the vile beasts.
However, doubt nagged at him. Nothing of his plans had come to any real fruition. Racked with exhaustion and sore from his injuries, his desire to continue this wrath had waned.
What had the return of the seventeen year old prince brought?
On the other hand, I could escape. I could leave everything… The fleeting whimsy came to him:
Could Auste Cros’seau have a normal life?
Then the albatross of his past came screaming back into his mind.
Little Chroyanne screeching and writhing as the Beleardea priests dragged her by her arms down the pier toward the metal cubes.
His mother begging for them to release her baby girl as her older tortured daughter hung from chains next to her. In his memory, they all laughed endlessly as they dropped her into the box.
The girl had been completely innocent and had no idea why she was being punished. Chroyanne was thrown in head-first, sure to have broken a leg or arm. Auste had had some clue to what his father had done and what sins they were paying for. In truth, his parents were given an easier sentence — a quick death. The boxes then had been sealed and the two of them entombed forever in the black.
This had been the Artadeus form of justice. This was their idea of righteousness. The king had later professed to his loyal populace that he showed mercy by passing only exile upon the noble family.
FRAUDS!
No, Auste had decided. No, the time had come for all to be exposed and for the blood to be spilt! Today was no day for mercy.
He wiped the sweat from his cheek, squared his shoulders and ran along with the other refugees heading toward Steppe One’s Gate.
#6
“We are all alone. Orphans,” Letandra whispered to Taihven.
The prince answered with silence, his face stretched and weary with grief. He had not said but a few words since they brought her here. She looked over at the stretcher set next to her; she still gripped her mother’s hand as the queen laid dead under the sheet.
Nervous guardsmen stood just a few feet outside the impromptu tent that served now as a new hospelle. They were milling around waiting on the prince’s orders to rejoin the battle, but none of them knew what to say to either of them.
Word had reached them that Captain Ruessard had died from the blood loss and injuries he sustained. Now the Wyvernguard had no high-ranking officers to guide them and they relied solely upon the Throne for leadership and guidance.
The Viestrahl beasts had suffered many casualties as well, but they had not abated from their attacks as their bloodlust still fueled them.
Taihven knew this as much as she did and he knew they were waiting for his word.
This is too much for him, she thought. Despair was Taihven’s enemy now.
Taihven would become one of the youngest kings to take a throne in history, but all the youth could consider was what war had devoured from their lives.
Letandra faced her mother’s corpse again. War was all consuming, she mused.
Death was final.
***
Taihven waved the annoying soldiers away. In his mind, the war they fought for had been already lost. Their king and queen were dead and their city nearly overtaken. All was pointless and moot.
A whole new world had been unlocked for Taihven. It was just too late to stop him. Too late to prevent his revenge...
All had been revealed to him and to everyone else that he was a victim too. He was not defective or cursed. He was flawed as anyone else, but his “malady” had been exposed. Everyone had misjudged him. They ridiculed him. Took his rightful rule away. Even hated him…
He faced the shape shrouded on the other stretcher. Did she realize what I could offer? Did she regret her judgments of me before the end? Had he done enough for her?
Probably not, he guessed.
He had not been there to stop her death or the vicious attack on Letandra and Sergeant Devin. Was he after all cursed to always be in Aberrisc when he was needed in Tayneva?
“Yeashhta Bres Los!” A grating, gravely voice pierced his thoughts like a dagger tip. Auste was here!
Planes of ebony glass streaked and flashed all around the hospelle tent in immense, lightning-like bolts. Several blood-curdling screams followed as the razor-edged glass cut and skewered patients and menders alike. One bolt had impaled Taihven’s hand to Letandra’s cot and another staked his foot to the ground. The tent collapsed as the bolts writhed everywhere like a nest of deadly vipers.
This was arcane magic, but not sorcery from Tayneva. It originated from the Chaos of Aberrissc
More screams, angry shouts and panic rippled through the patients under the tent.
“Do not move or break the glass or you will learn just how sharp it cuts.” Auste t
aunted from outside. Cries of pain and terror were the only responses.
“I want to speak with the boy alone.” He then demanded.
Taihven answered his challenge, “Auste. Stop this! I will come out, but end this spell! No more death, please!”
Auste ignored him. “I do not know how you escaped to return, but it is of no matter. I am taking everything you stole from us and—”
“—I will rip you to pieces and feed you to those filthy Viestrahl you brought!” Letandra erupted and cursed at him.
Auste only chuckled at her threat. “I want you to know that I had all but given up. I had all but left this rotting carcass of a city. Then, I realized that this was not something either one of us could really walk away from. Your entire life has been to bring about this day of reckoning; I have worked and plotted your every step and mine for seventeen long years!”
Voices could be heard, shouts and boot stomps of soldiers running into the area. The Chaos Mage though was too powerful for them to handle.
“Yet… nothing lives up to your expectations. I decided that I have to finish you and your family in order to stop this endless chain of murder and blood. Fate demands closure. Closure to the doors your mother and father unlocked.”
The cactus-like, black glass continued to spread and extend further into the tent. Fresh wounds were opened.
“This war will cost you everything.” Taihven said bluntly. He stalled their battle as he scoped out what was around him. He had to find a way to end Auste’s spell or more deaths were going to occur. Taihven focused on morphing his body into the worm-form once again to slip free his limbs.
The prince agreed with Auste — the time had come to finish this vendetta against his family. Taihven whispered a quick prayer to Lady Haethraa.
“The only outcome that will save your precious city is for you to surrender.”
“If I do, no one else will die?” Taihven asked in a meek voice. He wanted the mage to not expect anything else and let Auste continue to underestimate him.
“Do not even dare that thought!” screamed the princess from somewhere to the right of him.
“Are you wil—”
Auste’s words were not heard as Taihven released several, constructed Icespikes. The rings of spikes intersected with each other and exploded all around the collapsed tent. The black glass arcs shattered all about them. Taihven and the others suffered more cuts again, but at least they were all freed.
Taihven restored his shape, then rolled and barreled out from under the tent material. He invoked a sigil and levitated straight into the sky. He scoured the surroundings trying to find the albino mage but there were too many peasants and soldiers that ran among the wreckage of the area and around the hospelle tent.
“It is time to finish this, Auste!”
“Ignasa Los!”
A pair of fiery bolts slammed into his chest. Taihven had been spotted first.
The prince’s cloak and hair were on fire. He patted himself down as he continued to frantically scan the courtyards. Movement in the corner of his eye revealed Auste’s hiding spot east of the ruined hospelle amongst stacks of ale barrels. He rotated in the air on purpose, leaving his back exposed.
The Chaos Mage called out his spell again, but Taihven had waited for the perfect timing. Just as the bolts fired at his back, he conjured a Gate Ring between the two of them. The fiery charges went into it and reappeared directly into Auste’s back.
The albino cried out in pain and rage then dove to the ground, rolling to put the flames out. Taihven used this chance to magnify and evoke his Icespike sigil. The spikes caught Auste and impaled one of his legs as it lifted him off the ground. The prince giggled to himself as he was suddenly reminded of the Eulocth’s King.
Auste thrust his hand out at the young prince and took Taihven by surprise with a mental assault. Feeling as if a hot fireplace poker had been thrust into his eyes, the youth screamed as terror and anguish flooded his mind. His thoughts whirled as images showed his sister and mother being ripped to shreds by Viestrahl. Images of their mangled bodies being butchered into parts, their blood splattering over him. He could feel the heat from their blood upon his face and chest.
The prince gagged and scratched at his throat unconsciously. With Taihven’s focus broken, the Levitation Spell failed and he plummeted from the sky to the hard tarmac below him. Both of the mages laid bleeding and breathing heavily from their violent fight.
As the images faded, Taihven’s mind and control were restored to him. He struggled to his hands and knees. Something burned along his side. Laying in the dirt he saw smoldering shards of emerald crystal which had fallen from the pocket of his scorched robe. The Eyes of Cinnelel had shattered in pieces, victim to the flames and the fall.
He could only stare; his connection to Aberrisc gone forever. He felt like he had lost a limb or as if parts of his soul lay in the dirt, dead and powerless.
Auste had pulled free of the spike and was on his feet. “Chariado Pemt Los!”
The spell conjured a massive Dust Devil twister. The ground washed up in waves as the tempest blinded and choked everyone near to it. He wandered blind in the winds hoping he would break free. When he did emerge, he barely could breath and his nose was clogged by sand and dust ringed his eyes.
“Come to me, you bastard, or all you are good at is running and hiding?”
As a reply, Auste bullrushed him from behind and struck him hard across the back and neck. Taihven was sent flying into a stack of empty arrow barrels. He felt his left shoulder pop and his clavicle snap like tinder.
The albino glowered over him, but noise and voices from behind him drew their attention. More Wyvernguard had arrived on the scene and began to encircle the scene.
Princess Letandra and the other victims crawled out from under the blanketing tent. Her face and body were slashed and soaked in blood. She struggled to her knees to see what was happening.
“Auste, you sniveling shit! You are still that little runt-pup!” Letandra taunted, “I remember you — I remember how you whined and cried when you could not get what you wanted. You are still doing it! Throwing a tantrum even at your age?”
“ENOUGH!” Auste thrust his hand out in Letandra’s direction. She screamed and plastered her hands to her head. His mental barrage caused her body to jerk and spasm.
“Kill him!” Auste whispered his new orders. The albino stepped back from Taihven with a devil’s grin.
Letandra’s body went rigid. Her eyes burned into her brother and rage twisted her face. She was under Auste’s complete control now.
“Where were you? Why did you not protect mother? You always hated her!” She screeched, her face twisted in rage.
Letandra ripped the mace from her belt, charged at him with it raised over her head. “You have never been there for us, Taihv—”
The prince resurrected his Levitate Spell, escaping out of her arm’s reach. “Keep Letandra out of this, you coward!”
“Oh you think you are such a clever boy!” Auste spat in disgust. “Fine, you are right. We should keep this between us.”
He pointed again in the Lady Magistrate’s direction. “Sheram Kem Los!”
A cloudy disk appeared under Letandra’s boots; the Lady Magistrate dropped and vanished into the ring!
“NOOO!” Taihven screamed. He floated back to the ground and ran to the spot.
There was nothing but her mace left in the dirt.
“You… you have to bring her back. You can do that, ri-right?”
Auste remained still and only watched the prince. Taihven’s shoulders were slumped and the boy cradled the mace in his arms like a newborn baby. “Where have you taken my sister?” He moaned.
“You know where.” He said with delighted malice.
The youth carefully lay the mace down, stood and walked with his head down toward the Chaos Mage.
Before Auste could speak, he said, “I will obey your orders and swear loyalty to you, Your… Your Majest
y.” With that the prince kneeled before him. “But-But you must return her unharmed.”
“How can you guarantee me that you will not take up arms against me once she is back?”
Taihven looked up at the albino — Auste relished every part of this moment. He had brought down the mighty Artadeus family one and all. The Throne was his and the power behind it was all his to wield. It nearly took Taihven’s breath away.
“I have nothing left. Please, Auste. My-my brother bring her ba— ”
