His left arm hung limp at his side. Blood dripped down his armor from his wounded chest, and still he forced all of his power into the stone. The fiend walked forward slowly; menace grated from each one of its steps. Sir Roland was able to turn the next three strikes away before the fiend’s blade found its mark. The sword exploded out of his back, forcing a scream from his lungs. His legs went limp, and only the fiend’s unbridled strength and the sword running through him kept him from falling to the ground.
Sir Roland continued his chant as the fiend pulled him closer. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth, but none of that mattered now. He continued to force all of his magic into the stone. It would cost him his life, but it might just be enough to close the portal. Spittle flecked his lips, but the words continued to flow through his gritted teeth.
The fiend moved its face closer now, only inches from Sir Roland’s. “How does it feel to come so close, only to fail at the last possible moment?”
“I haven’t failed.”
The fiend smiled and flapped its wings a few times before removing a dagger from its belt. “The only thing left for you to decide is if you want to live as my plaything or die here.”
The demon lashed out with the dagger, cutting Sir Roland’s left hand off. His scream rang out in the growing darkness. The portal continued to flicker and pull in on itself. The fiend reached to pick up the stone, and a sword blade broke through its chest pinning it to Sir Roland.
“It’s all up to you now, Bristow,” Sir Roland said. He wrapped his one good arm against the struggling fiend and threw himself through the portal. It looked as though they were embracing, if you could ignore the sword sticking out of the fiend’s back. Then they simply disappeared, and the portal flickered a few more times before winking out of existence. A sound of pure joy escaped Bristow’s lips before he realized what else had happened.
Bristow fell to his knees and let out a scream of anguish. Sir Roland was the bravest man he had ever known. He willingly threw himself into hell to save their world. He had to make it back to tell the rest of his order about his bravery. Slowly, on shaky legs, he rose to his feet and turned back toward the forest. Only then did he see what remained of Sir Roland’s hand and the stone that was clutched in it. He picked up the burned limb and tucked it away before sprinting off to find his horse.
The ride back to the castle seemed to take ages. Although, with the portal closed, it seemed that most of the demons had fled out into the world rather than staying united against their forces of their order. Again and again, he passed their abandoned camps as he made his way back to the great northern road.
Being able to take the great road back saved him weeks off his journey, but in the end, he was almost too late.
The gates rattled open as he called out his name. He rode his horse into the square and nearly fell out of the saddle. It had been days since he had eaten, and almost as long since he had a drink. His horse was frothing at the mouth with exhaustion. One of the knights reached out to steady him. “Where have you been, boy?”
“I must see Sir Aldin at once.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. He is taking last rights.”
Last rights? What had happened in his absence? That couldn’t be right. Sir Aldin was the strongest man he knew. If Sir Aldin had fallen, what else had happened while he was gone? The order would only be weaker for losing two such great men. He tried to push forward past the knight, and he was pulled backward from behind.
“You can tell Sir Richard what you know.”
“I am Sir Aldin’s apprentice, and I have words only for my master’s ears. You must let me go to him.”
“Fine, but if your words are untrue, you will face the lash. You will find him in his quarters.”
Bristow took off at a run, calling on reserves of strength that he didn’t know he possessed. Even then, he found himself bouncing off the stone walls to stay upright as he continued his shambling run to find Sir Aldin. He burst through the door, and the priest stopped speaking at once. His heavy glare fell on Bristow, full of wrath at the interruption. Bristow ignored the priest and ran to his master’s side.
“I felt the portal close from here.” Sir Aldin’s voice came out as barely a whisper.
“Sir Roland was amazing; his bravery won the day.”
“And where is he now?”
“He fell in battle with an archfiend.”
“And the stone?”
“I have it here.” Bristow reached down and started to pull the stone from his tunic.
Sir Aldin’s hand grabbed him. The strength he possessed in that moment was immense. There could be no way that he was dying. “Do not reveal it here. I need you to leave with the stone. Only you can keep it safe.”
“Sir Aldin, I don’t understand. Wouldn’t the stone be safer with the order?”
“There are those here that will seek to use the power of the stone for their own ends. That must never happen. Take my chest and go before you are discovered.”
“And what of Sir Roland’s triumph? These men will remember him only as a coward that fled the battle.”
“We will know the truth, and that must be enough.” Sir Aldin’s chest hitched, and he started to cough.
The priest stepped forward, words quickly tumbling from his mouth. He finished the last rights just as the last breath slowly rattled out of Sir Aldin’s chest. The priest patted the boy once on the shoulder and left the room. If he had overheard any of their conversation, it wouldn’t be long before Sir Richard came for him.
Bristow ran to Sir Aldin’s chest and ripped the lid open. Inside, there was more wealth than he could have ever imagined. He rushed to fit as much as he could into several empty saddle bags. There was no way he could take it all, but he had more than enough to last two lifetimes. He found a book written in Sir Aldin’s own hand. He tucked that away before two other items caught his eye. Sir Aldin’s sword and the blade he had taken from the archfiend. He wrapped both of them up in a blanket and ran for the stables.
He went about saddling Sir Aldin’s mount the same way he would have any other day. None of the stable hands paid him any mind. He walked the horse out of the barn and down the cobbled street before mounting it. He spurred the horse forward and out of the open gates. He would follow his master’s last orders even if it meant leaving the brotherhood behind. They would call him a thief and a traitor, but as long as the stone was safe, none of that mattered.
Bristow could still feel the eyes of the order on his back, even now two days after he had fled the castle. He would hide, and when the time was right, he would start to act on Sir Aldin’s final request. The stone would be safe, and only one worthy of wielding it would be able to find it again. On this, he swore his life.
CHAPTER 10
JACKSON
The stone grew warmer in my hand as I approached the portal. Pulling my power back from the stone cooled it somewhat, but every step closer to the portal, the heat continued to grow despite the lack of magic I funneled into it. Once I was close enough to the portal to feel the heat of hell washing out of it, I had no choice left but to try and shield my hand from the heat of the stone. Fire licked at the edges of the stone as I started to push more power into it. There was no way my shield would continue to hold against the stone’s relentless assault.
I flipped the stone over to my left hand, keeping it shielded the entire time. With my right, I pulled out one of my swords. Something didn’t feel right about this building, and I had to be ready. Each step echoed in the empty hallway, putting me further on edge. Despite the sheer level of panic that I felt, the sound of the soles of my boots slapping against the tile floor was my only company.
The stone continued to pull me forward as if it was searching for the portal. There was only one door left at the end of the hallway. It had to be there. All I needed to do was close the portal and get the hell out of this building. The door exploded outward. The frame continued to rattle as the door embed itself
into the concrete wall six feet away. I almost started to laugh. It looked like a piece of modern art gone wrong.
Ryan stepped into the hallway, his immaculate three-piece suit almost shining in the florescent lights. A slow smile spread on his face. “I’ve been looking forward to this since our last meeting.”
Wings burst from his back, and a sword appeared in his hand. All vestiges of humanity slipped away from him. His feet and hands grew claws, and his skin turned red. While his head remained almost human, it seemed as if his mouth grew wider and the teeth that I could see were all pointed for ripping flesh.
He moved forward with a burst of energy, and I managed to deflect his blade away from me, sending it into the wall. I kept the power flowing into the stone, but pulled some into myself. I needed to be faster and stronger if I was going to stand a chance against the fiend. He pulled his sword free and lashed out again. The blows were easy to deflect. In the cramped space of the hallway, he could barely swing his full-sized sword, while mine had room to spare.
All he had to do was keep me away from the portal, and he won regardless of if he killed me or not. I had to find a way to push forward. I tucked the stone inside of the harness for my blades. Using a little bit of magic to secure the stone made me feel better. Everything would be lost if Ryan managed to take it from me now. I pulled my other sword free and continued to pull magic into the stone. It burned against my chest, and I tried to ignore the pain as I ran forward.
Ryan swiped again, and this time, I slapped his blade to the side, keeping it pinned against the wall. With my other sword, I lashed out and almost took off his arm. At the last moment, he dropped his blade and leaped backward. There was no point in waiting. I pressed the advantage by running straight at him. He cast his arms out, and I felt his magic break over me. He looked surprised when my blades sank into his chest. I relished the look of confusion on his face. Then I pulled the blades free and swung them together through his neck.
Stepping over the headless body, I moved into the room with the portal. Next to it stood a man I had only seen in photographs. It was John, or should I call him Dad? What was he doing here? He stepped back into the portal as it closed. He waved to me. His eyes said that he wanted to stay, but he didn’t have a choice. The stone sent a flare of white hot flames burning along my chest as the portal winked closed. I felt the scream rush up from my lungs as I fell to my knees. Was there any chance that he was still alive?
“Jackson, wake up! You’re having a bad dream,” April said while shaking me.
The scream died on my lips as I settled into the warm arms that wrapped around me. April always had a calming effect on me. Something in her almost seemed to curl around my soul and soothe away my fears. No more reading about demons before bed, I thought as I wrapped my arms back around her. It was a whole different feeling when you knew they really existed.
“Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”
“I don’t.” Yeah, I remembered what I had been dreaming about, but it felt too weird to talk about it. How did you tell someone that you found a mythical stone from some Ascended fairytale, killed an archfiend, and then sealed your father in hell? It was quite a mouthful, and almost none of it made any sense to me.
“Want to join me for a workout before we have to meet Britta?” April asked as she climbed out of bed.
A workout might be just the thing I needed to take my mind off of my dreams. Adam had told me that I might be able to see the future in my dreams. I still had no idea most of the time if what I was dreaming was real or if it meant absolutely nothing. For the most part, I assumed the dreams meant almost nothing, but you could never really be sure.
As far as I knew, I had only had one instance where I had been able to see into the past. It took a near-death experience for me to accomplish it, and I wasn’t looking forward to trying to repeat that anytime soon. The visions I had seen that day hadn’t been my own, for the most part. That was something different, something special.
I grabbed some workout clothes from the floor in my closet. April shot me a look that said I was gross. I just shrugged back at her. They were clean; they just hadn’t made it onto a hanger. Sue me. I hated hanging up my laundry and folding. Seriously, folding was just out of the question. I slipped out of the shorts I was in and into the new pair. Laced my sneakers, and followed the best view in the country to the gym. Have I mentioned how much I love girls in their workout clothes? Well, really just one girl in particular. Who needs an imagination when they make clothes like that?
The gym was my safe place, a place where I could come when nothing else felt exactly right, and I could just zone out for a few hours. That was what I needed to do now. April shot me a smile as she slipped in her earbuds and hopped onto the elliptical. I jumped up onto the one next to her and set it for an hour. That would be a good start. I hooked my own earbuds into place and turned on some trance music. There was nothing like the gentle beats to help me into the zone.
Have you ever noticed how they do that in the old-school RPG video games? Listen to the music next time you’re playing Final Fantasy. It loops and keeps a consistent melody, for the most part. You’ll be playing along and look up from the screen only to realize it's morning. What happened? Those damn game designers got you in the zone and sucked twelve hours of your life away like it was nothing. Yep, that was what happened.
The hour on the elliptical flew by. When the machine stopped, my first instinct was to set it for another hour, but I was distracted by a bouncing red-headed girl. April was looking up at me and literally bouncing on the balls of her feet. Shit, I knew what that meant. It meant for the next hour I was going to get beaten to a pulp by a girl who weighed about half as much as I did.
This was one of the only things I felt conflicted about in our relationship. I had been raised that it was always wrong to hit girls, except I hit this one a lot. I wouldn’t be half the fighter I was if my spunky little firecracker didn’t enjoy pummeling me as much as she did. Still, now that we were together, it felt weird to step into the ring and try and lay the smackdown on my woman. April would never let me get out of it, though, so I sighed and headed to the ring.
“What’s wrong, Jackson, afraid I’m going to kick the crap out of you again?” She said it with a cocky grin. If that look had been on any of the guys’ faces in here, I would have wiped it off of them with my fist.
I knew she was just screwing with me. She knew hitting her, especially now that we were in a relationship, bothered me, but she wouldn’t let me off the hook. I needed to be the best, and that meant I needed to train against the best. For her, fighting had always been a part of her life, so she didn’t feel the same way about hitting me.
“Is it so weird that I don’t want to hit you now that we’re together?”
“Think about it this way, the harder we work against each other now, the more likely it is that we will survive later. So basically by hitting me, you could be saving my life.”
“Some hero that makes me.”
She stopped and grabbed my head, lowering it down until she could look me in the eyes. She held me there and then said, “Do I strike you as a delicate flower?”
“Not exactly.”
“Are you afraid I’ll break?”
“Highly doubtful.”
“And you saw me keep fighting after getting a sword run through my shoulder, correct?”
“One of the scariest moments of my life.”
“Then get your head in the game.” She pushed my head back and slammed a fist into my chest. “We’ve got work to do.”
Slipping into my fighting gear, I felt a sense of calm wash over me. Stepping in the ring always made me feel better. It was one of the only activities at our base that seemed to take the edge off my emotional roller coaster. I spent my time in the ring split between April and Sarge. You had to use different moves when fighting someone smaller than yourself. So it helped me a lot to step back into the ring with someone my own size every now a
nd again.
April motioned for me to hurry up. I finished slipping on the light gloves and moved to the center of the ring. She didn’t waste any time, jumping into the air and hammering me with a fist. It was a move you’d never use in real combat because it was slow and clunky, but last week, we had watched an episode of Arrow where the guy did it. It sure looked cool when we watched it, and it looked even better as April executed the move to perfection now. That didn’t mean it was effective for anything but looks.
I batted her punch to the side and dove in, taking her to the ground. She wrapped her legs around my waist just like she had last night, except this time, she kept trying to slam her elbow into my head. I pressed my head in tightly against her chest and started trying to lock one of her arms down. If I could do that, then I’d be able to flip her over, and the fight was done. Slightly over-eager, I left myself exposed, and one of the elbows broke through and connected with my temple. I rolled away and got back to my feet.
April came in hard and fast with a series of low kicks and punches aimed to keep me off balance and move me away. I had to find a way to break her rhythm. Right now, she was moving me wherever she wanted, and that was going to end badly. Finally, I said screw it and stepped into one of the kicks, absorbing the blow. I let her punch sail past me on the right and then grabbed her arm. I twisted, pulled her arm down, and popped my hip all at once, sending her flying.
I looked up to see where she landed, getting ready to fight off another attack, when I saw her using her magic to slow down as she fell to the ground ten feet outside of the ring. She managed to land on her feet and turned back to me with a look of pure fury on her face. She ran back into the ring, diving under the ropes, and got right in my face.
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