“Seems like they look upon us kindly,” the armored one said. “Who is he?” Gheta hissed as she looked at the man—no, beast
kin—beside him. He let out a snort and smoke appeared around his nose. His staff whirled around. The arrows and the javelins were knocked to the side as he descended, calmly, but there was a fire in his eyes. Gheta and the others with a higher evolved bloodline could feel the energy in those eyes—the boundless desire to fight, to prove his strength.
The man with the hammer spun and he let out a snarl. His ar- mor started to contort as if something were trying to get out.
He swung his hammer, extending it with one hand. He smacked weapons away. A few arrows and bolts struck him, but he didn’t seem to care.
The two landed in the middle courtyard.
The beast kin clan spirit walked out of the dust. He held his pole in one hand as he smacked away the arrows and weapons be- fore the beast kin realized that they were shooting at a clan spirit.
They halted their fire, not sure what to do as a monstrosity came out beside the beast kin.
“Werewolf,” one of the commanders said.
The man’s armor had purple veining and his hammer now looked more regular sized in his hands. His body was covered in ar- mor but the
werewolf shape was easy to see. He stood nearly four meters tall. He put his hammer on his shoulder and reached out with his other.
His voice was deep and powerful, rolling through everyone’s feet and stomach, making them grip their weapons tighter. “I, Damien All- Hammer, of the werewolf clan, ask the Guardians of Dena to judge those here.”
People felt the hairs on their scalps rise.
Wasn’t the werewolf clan wiped out as people didn’t know if they were on the sides of the humans or the beast kin? This clan spirit—it must be some kind of mistake!
Purple threads of power wove together around his hand into the shape of a smaller hammer. He struck it on the air and behind him, a purple courtroom started to appear.
I need to kill them before they kill my people! Gheta let out a yell as she used her own clan spirit to take over control over her body. She slammed through a wall, drawing her twin sabers as she dropped down in front of the clan spirit.
“Remus.” The clan spirit spoke in a dark tone.
Gheta felt as though her world were collapsing and her legs were weak as she charged forward.
Others followed with her, charging the spirit.
“That is enough!” He smacked the base of his staff into the ground. The noise seemed to resonate within the entire hold and everyone froze.
Behind him, the courtroom resolved and chains shot out to those nearest.
“Tell us, what crimes have you committed and what crimes do you think others have committed?” the beast kin, a werewolf clan spirit, said as he stood there.
Gheta couldn’t move as the clan spirit walked closer.
“Remus.” He said that name again and Gheta felt her clan spirit su- per-impose over her body.
“Bruce, what do you mean by this?” Remus said, standing above Gheta.
“You attack a Guardian doing their duty?” Bruce asked, his voice firm.
“Guardians? I see a half...”
Three different werewolves super-imposed over Damien—one green, one black, one red. They looked at Remus before they re- solved into familiars that stepped around Damien, all of them five meters tall. Their colors traveled to their eyes.
“Kin slayer,” the red-eyed werewolf said.
“I wondered how the beast kin got dragged into this war. Why they were also evicting people who were not beast kin? After all, aren’t we a race of many? A group of all, yet we are banning people? I thought I had heard wrong when I awoke.”
“To your humans’ slave master,” Remus growled, balling his fists as he glared at Bruce.
“Though when the trial of the Drafeng in the Church of Light was going on, I found out that there was a secret deal. See, there are many different spirits within the beast kin. There are different kinds and fac- tions. There are the factions that want to build, oth- ers that want to wage war, those that want to have peace and others that want to make sure we don’t forget the old ways. There were a great number of spirits that came from those that wanted to wage war. After the last war, they wanted to have peace. The leaders of the war faction didn’t like this, did you, Remus?”
A chain wrapped around Gheta and super-imposed upon Re- mus as he was dragged forward in front of the courtroom.
There were several judges talking already to others who they had picked up, making notes. A spell from the elf quieted them and made it so that everyone could hear Remus and Bruce.
“We didn’t,” Remus said. “What did the war faction do?”
“We made a deal with some people. We didn’t know who they truly were or where they came from. War makes our race stronger. If we are not fighting, then we are growing weak. We could increase our strength and become the alphas of Dena. They had a way to limit the strength of the different clan spirits and divert their strength. We took their offerings as our own, reduced the power that they had so that they couldn’t leave their grounds to pick out new inheritors. At that time, the Church of Light was on un- steady footing so we started to attack them. They were saying that we were defilers. We crushed their forces and then they created their saints to counteract our champions. We did this for the peo- ple—the greater our strength, the greater our people’s abilities!” Remus’s eyes shone with a crazed light.
A purple light shot through the chain. Gheta felt a pressure
being removed from her mind as Remus screamed out. He turned black but there was a flickering of another power within him, hid- ing in his depths. The purple flames searched through him and burned it out.
It went on for a few minutes.
“You allowed corruption into the line of spirits!” Bruce yelled. Gheta dropped to all fours as Bruce’s anger washed over them.
“Come!” he hissed as others with clan spirits dropped to the ground and their spirits came out. Chains wrapped around
them and purple flames burned them from inside as they screamed out.
The screams died down and they looked up weakly at Bruce. “You-you—” He shook with anger. “You attacked your kin!
You at- tacked your people. You took offerings for others that were not your own. Did you not think to check those offerings! See that they were tainted with the power of chaos, you foolish children!”
Bruce stomped his foot, unable to fully vent his rage. “This war will come to an end. Those who were trapped will be released. The Guardians judge all who walk across Dena.”
Gheta felt Remus shiver in fear and for the first time she felt ashamed to have such a clan spirit. Now the pressure was removed from
her mind, she remembered times he had influenced her into de- cisions she wouldn’t have made.
Remus looked down at her. Their link allowed him to feel her emo- tions.
“Not of my clan,” Gheta, under all that pressure, was able to say with a terrifying look on her face.
Remus, a clan spirit of hundreds of years, recoiled as he could see all of her thinking, all of her anger. He could understand her feelings of anger, of despair, sadness and how violated she felt.
“Gheta,” Remus said, taking a stern tone.
“I have ordered the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands. I was in- fluenced but it was my crime. I have sent people to kill civil- ians, the in- nocent, and the unarmed to draw in the enemy for an attack. I have sent people across the line to attack small villages so that I could draw the human army’s attention away. Prisoners would be too much of a prob- lem. I thought it would be easier to kill them there, instead of bringing them back here. Looks bad when we have slaves, and if we have pris- oners, people complain about how much it costs to have them on our soil,” Gheta said, feel- ing a weight lifting from her.
“Seems that the younger generation might have hope,” Bruce s
aid.
There was a cry from above as the three werewolves went back into their host, who returned to his large human form. The phoenix de- scended from the heavens and grabbed Bruce and Damien, heading off to the east.
***
“What is that noise?” Fysher said in the middle of the meeting. He held up his hand and all of the people in the room tilted their heads, trying to hear what he was hearing.
Suddenly, someone pointed out of the castle as someone yelled. There was a black object approaching from the distance. It was us-
ing all fours and looked as though it were made of...metal?
Something passed outside the window.
Fysher backed up in alarm and he looked down, seeing a man with golden wings. Underneath his feet, in the early morning sun, purple flames appeared. He turned and looked up at the tower; his eyes turned from gold to blue.
Fysher had stood on battlefields for most of his life, but now, his heart trembled as he looked at the demon in the middle of this fortress. Several courts appeared around him and chains shot out, grabbing peo- ple.
Chains shot through a window as Fysher and the other gener- als yelled out, trying to activate their familiars but being unable to do so. The command center turned into a scene of panic.
Fysher was brought in front of a courtroom that floated in the mid- dle of the air. Stiff-faced men, women, and creatures looked at them.
A sense of disappointment and anger pervaded the air as they opened their mouths.
“What are your crimes and what are others’ crimes that you know of ?” the human judge said, as if they wished there was any- thing else that they could do. All of those gathered started to talk as one.
General Fysher went through his life, from the time he had been a scared man, fighting to survive, to when he had been part of a slaughter, how excited he had been to get slave money for captur- ing a few. He had risen through the ranks and the joy of coins start- ed to dull compared to the losses that he saw on the battlefields.
He had become older, tired, and wiser. He saw the forces at work behind it all. He would turn his eyes to the side so that he could have more forces to fight the day after tomorrow. Allow the sale of slaves so people could support their families.
“You will lead the United Armies, fighting beside those who had their family members killed by you, or those who you com-
manded. If you ever make it back from that war, you will spend your days working any job that you can find that will assist others. You will build homes,
you will grow crops, you will never own anything in your life again. You will never touch armor or a weapon except in the de- fense of others. You will never stay in one land for more than one year, moving across all of Dena, seeing the world, knowing others,” the gnome judge said.
Fysher was drained. It had taken all day. The metal creature walked over to Fysher and knelt. He looked up, seeing the Guardian symbol on his chest.
“General Fysher. Time to stop this war. Dena’s fight for survival has started.”
General Fysher might have looked down on gnomes his entire life, but looking at this one inside his machine, General Fysher felt as if he were the small, defenseless one.
Fysher lowered his head, feeling sad for himself.
The gnome grabbed General Fysher and picked him up. “Come on, murdering others and sending the orders for a genocide is easy. Why should calling for peace be harder?”
General Fysher looked the gnome in the eye, squirming. He want- ed to argue it, but he knew it was right. He had just admitted it. His brain was coming up with all kinds of defenses and reasons, but none of them left his lips.
“I’ll do it,” Fysher said.
“That’s the first step. Then you need to get everyone together and stop these doorways from forming completely. The longer you wait, the more people will die.”
Fysher was about to ask which people as he balled his fists, an- gry at himself, angry at his own response that burned more than anyone else’s words.
Chapter: The Stoha Mountains
Aila and Claire reached the barren mountains that marked the north- ern line between Selenus and Radal.
Claire led the way to the mountain. She walked into a cave that was hidden within the mountains. She pressed a hidden mecha- nism. There was a clinking noise but nothing happened.
“Well, how did you get in?” Claire asked.
“Uh, I think the entrance was over that way?” Aila pointed to her right, guessing.
“Magic it is.” Claire cast Stone Shape and the rock wall rolled open. “Let me go first.” Claire went down the hallway with a mana barrier around her. Different traps activated; arrows and darts hit
her barrier
before a swinging axe smashed against her barrier.
There were flamethrowers, ice spears, and a spiked ball that shat- tered on impact.
Claire got to the end of the hallway. Destruction lay behind her and before Aila, who looked at it all with wide eyes.
“All right, that should have got most of it. Just run across now,” Claire said.
Aila took a breath and looked at Ramona and her young ones. They seemed to be giving her an apologetic look. She shook her head and ran forward before she could think about it.
She heard the machines that Claire hadn’t activated go off be- hind her, but she ran too fast for them to get her.
She stopped next to Claire, who had an odd expression on her face. “Something wrong?”
“Well, I didn’t think that there would be quite that many traps left still.” Claire shrugged and led the way down another corridor.
“What?” Aila yelled.
124
Claire didn’t turn the corner into the maze-like area but warped the wall.
70
“Why is there a passage back here?” Aila asked, follow- ing Claire. “’Cause I hate having to walk that far. You know how much caves
can wear out your shoes—plus I left that to the dwarves to make. Who knows what they added in there.”
It wasn’t long until they reached the massive cavern. Aila looked at the tombstones and the faint markings on them. She hadn’t known what they had been before. Now she touched her own Guardian em- blem, looking at the rows upon rows of Guardians who had fallen.
The duo walked through it all and headed toward the temple in the middle.
So much has happened since I was last here. I was running from Church of Light enforcers.
“As much as I hate it, at the end of it all, I was the highest ranked Guardian. With me losing my position, Anthony would have been next, then Tairlyn and Troga Kagan.” Claire led the way into the tem- ple, past the different warriors who stood along the walls with their Guardian symbols.
In the center, a broken tomb lay open and a shattered knight statue stood in front of it all.
Behind him there were two tombs. Claire patted them as she moved past and reached a statue along the wall. She pulled the torch holder next to it. There was a click before the statue swung out, reveal- ing stairs.
The two of them stepped onto the stairs. They circled the tem- ple’s main area and reached the top. From the outside, it looked normal. In- side, it was covered in enchantments that ran across the dome’s ceiling, down the pillars around it, and to a series of magical circles that ap- peared on the floor.
Claire pulled out a circular piece. She lined it up with the en- chant- ment on the ground and dropped it into place.
The enchantments flared to life and power started to flow through them. The entire area was lit up as enchantments across the temple
started to come alive, reaching out and connecting to the tombs of the fallen.
Aila looked out from the temple. She looked around, seeing en- chantments light up around all of the tombstones, outlining where the Guardians had been put to rest.
She couldn’t see through the fog all of the tombstones before; now they were all illuminated with power. The cavern started to shake as
power was drawn in. Aila had never felt such a concentra- tion before. Aila grabbed onto a pillar as the power pulled on her robes.
Claire stood in the eye of the storm, pouring out her own pow- er in- to the enchantment. The glow increased and the dust was cleared from the Guardians’ resting grounds.
Mana started to appear in its different colors, coming together in a whirlpool of color that spiraled down into the central piece that Claire had added.
Aila couldn’t hear or yell hard enough to be heard as she held onto the pillar.
The Guardian eyes on the tombstones flashed and their glow in- creased in power.
“Come on!” Claire yelled as she poured in more power.
Mana crackled; different attribute mana collided with one an- other, fighting for dominance before coming under Claire’s con- trol.
It went on for several minutes. The tombs started to leak mana and a mana fog appeared in the cavern.
The last of the power pouring into the temple dried up and Claire deflated.
Aila looked around, trying to make sense of all that had hap- pened. “Did it work?”
“Does it look like it worked?” Claire snapped viciously as she looked at the enchantments.
Aila stood there awkwardly as Claire inspected all of the upper room and then traced the enchantments through the walls.
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