SWORN GUARDIAN
©2019 T.L. BRANSON
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.
Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.
Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Appendix
FROM THE PUBLISHER
One
Immense heat crowded in around me, mitigating the pounding in my head. Slowly, my eyes blinked open and took in the blinding light of the flames devouring the throne room.
What happened?
The last thing I remembered before everything went black was the green flash of the supreme commander’s Obliterate magika. I wasn’t even sure how I survived. Claire and I knew a Sovereign’s magic was limitless, but even we weren't prepared for him to use such powerful magika so soon after casting the Solara spell.
I twisted in place but couldn’t move my arms.
Oh gods, he tore my arms off.
However, my fear was misplaced as I immediately realized that they were tied behind my back and strapped to a pillar in the central throne room. I had been left to burn alive, and that prospect didn't suit me any better than being armless. Yet, I guess if I were to die by immolation, doing so with or without arms made little difference.
Looking around, I took quick stock of the situation.
The emperor lay dead just a few feet from my present location. Magic hadn't killed him, despite the significant elemental scarring throughout the throne room, but rather, it was a knife in the back by his second-in-command.
Beside him lay the bodies of my friends: Wren, Bella, and Izaiah.
“No, no, no, no!” I shouted.
They never even had a chance. The supreme commander had struck with a speed I’d never witnessed before. Fortunately for me, I had raised my defenses in time because I was downright paranoid about everything.
Even so, the spell had shredded my shield, and I felt blood trickling down from my mouth. A tuft of hair hung in front of my eyes, but with my hands behind my back, there would be no moving it anytime soon.
Cursed cowlick.
It was bad enough that I had blonde hair when the rest of my family had brown—a cruel reminder that my father had been less than faithful on at least one occasion—but when my hair grew long, it spiked up and out with only a single annoying curl that jutted down the center of my forehead. Now didn’t seem like the time to be thinking about a haircut though.
My sister, Claire, was nowhere to be seen. I counted it as a blessing that her body was not among the dead. But the supreme commander was gone, too, and that didn’t bode well.
Through a broken window, I could see that time was running out. The sun was drawing ever closer—its normally yellow surface cracked with webs of red and white. If we couldn’t reverse the spell before it was too late, we’d all be dead.
And it was already unbelievably hot.
The sheer power of the sun left me in awe. Based on the raging inferno around me, someone would think we’d just finished a fierce battle with Class 5 Fire magic. But the truth was, the Obliterate spell was the first and only offensive magic that had been thrown in the attack. The closer the sun got, every easily flammable material was spontaneously combusting.
By my calculations, I guessed that we had ten minutes tops before the planet’s core exploded and all life ceased to exist.
Where was Claire? I wondered again, panic setting in.
As if in answer to my unspoken question, the wall to my left exploded inward, and stone rained down around me. A lithe figure flew in with it and slammed against the wall on the opposite side of the room. The blue aura around her from her shield flickered and disappeared as her crumpled form lay motionless on the ground.
“Claire!” I called out.
She didn’t move.
“Claire, get up!”
A deep, uproarious laughter filled the room as the supreme commander, wearing his ridiculous black mask, stepped through the throne room’s newly created window—or was it more like a door?
“You’re awake,” he said, looking at me. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined he had on a perfectly malicious smile as he continued to speak. “Good. That makes what I’m about to do infinitely more fun.”
Stones tumbled away as Claire slowly stood. Shaking her head, she launched herself at the supreme commander.
He casually touched the blue magika stone augmented into his chestplate, and an aura of like color appeared around him. As Claire collided with his shield, it deflected her and tossed her back against a pillar similar to the one I was tied to. Her body collapsed once more.
“No!” I shouted.
“Where was I?” the supreme commander said. “Oh, yes. Before I leave you to suffer the same fate as this empire, I’m going to give you a present. I’ll allow you the pleasure of knowing that you survived the longest against me, and the peace of mind knowing that your sister died swiftly at my hands.”
I seethed with anger as I pulled at my restraints. If I could just free my hands, maybe I could get out of these ropes and help Claire.
“Of course, if you’d prefer, I could just kill you now, but then you’d miss out on all the fireworks,” he said with what sounded like mild disappointment beneath his mask.
Time was ticking, and I needed to find a way to keep him distracted long enough for either Claire to come to and devise a surprise attack or for me to break free of these bonds and take him out myself.
“Just tell me one thing,” I said, knowing how bad guys always loved to gloat. “Why do all of this? What did the empire possibly do to you that they deserve complete annihilation?”
I also had a more pressing question th
at I was biding my time to ask: How had he done it in the first place? But I didn’t think he’d tell me anyway, so my other questions would have to do. Besides, I needed to get his blood boiling a little bit if I wanted to stand a chance at overcoming him. Nothing raises the ire of the enemy more than the implication that their genius plot had been misunderstood as stupidity.
The supreme commander snorted and began to laugh.
Deflection. A common tactic to hide one’s true emotion, but I knew better. I was the master of deflection.
“You, Aren, of all people should understand,” he said, clenching his hands into fists at his sides.
Nope. I didn’t. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Why do this?” he asked himself.
Or maybe he was asking me? Was he asking me? I remained silent and waited to see where this led.
“To prove that I can,” he continued, “and to show them once and for all who is the most powerful person in this pitiful little empire. To make them all feel what I’ve felt. To make them suffer the way I’ve suffered.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I finally said. And truly, I did not. It wasn’t some ploy to keep him talking. Though, in the meantime, I had luckily managed to free one of my hands.
The supreme commander stormed right up to me, his face only inches from mine. “You don’t underst—” He tore off his mask, cutting off his own words.
I averted my gaze and closed my eyes to whatever sight lay beneath.
“Look at me,” he said, but I was too busy freeing my other hand and furthering the delay was to my benefit, so I continued to ignore him.
“Look at me!” he shouted this time, his spittle landing on my face.
The bindings around my wrists came loose, so I finally turned back to him as I opened my eyes. My jaw dropped when I realized that he couldn’t have been much older than I—maybe nineteen or twenty at best. And then I saw: the flesh had long since healed, but the scars from third-degree burns were still evident all over his face. Any normal person would have died from such an injury. We weren’t normal, though—those of us who’d taken the Oath.
“They did this to me!” he yelled, pointing out the window to the flaming city beyond. “I was burning, and they left me for dead. Now, the empire burns with me!”
The timing couldn't have been better. Pulling my arms forward, I placed my right hand on his chest and called forth the Fire spell powered by the magika stone in my gauntlet. A surge of energy welled up within me, ran down my arm, and blasted outward through my palm, sending the supreme commander stumbling backward in a ball of flames.
When the fire cleared, my eyes went wide as I saw that the only evidence of my spell was a black scorch mark on his chestplate—but he was otherwise unharmed.
The supreme commander laughed once more. “Did you really think I could be harmed by a Class 3 attack? You’re even more pitiful than I thought. Perhaps I should kill you first.”
I brought up my stats and glanced at my magic points.
210/530 MP
7,250/53,000 EXP
1 AP AVAILABLE
Apparently, somewhere along the way, I obtained enough experience to gain an augmentation point. Too bad I couldn’t allocate it in the field. It probably wouldn’t make a difference in any case. The supreme commander must have been at least a level 70, and I was only 53.
We knew going into this we’d be sorely outmatched, but we thought perhaps the five of us together could have worn him down, expended his MP, and then taken him out. How wrong we were.
Without another moment’s hesitation, I raised my gauntlet once more and held my finger on the stone. A steady surge of power coursed through my body and accumulated in the palm of my hand, a ball of fire growing larger with each second. When I lifted my finger, a massive blast, at least four feet wide, shot out at the supreme commander.
He dropped into a defensive posture and raised his shield, but the fireball kept right on going, carrying him with it. His body flipped and rolled along the ground even after the magic had dissipated. Smoke rose up all around him like a roast pig on a summer’s day. I held my breath and waited.
When the supreme commander began to rise, I winced and checked my stats again.
90/530 MP
7,490/53,000 EXP
1 AP AVAILABLE
Chet. I was getting dangerously low. Without access to my pack, I couldn’t take a draught of magic to restore my MP.
I glanced to the side to check on Claire—she had disappeared.
“That—” the supreme commander said as he paused to wipe a trickle of blood from his lip, “was unwise.”
Before he could take a step toward me, however, a barrage of stones pummeled him from the courtyard, wearing down his shield. I turned to see Claire standing in the hole in the wall with her arms outstretched and chunks of stone flying all around her.
But the supreme commander merely looked in her direction as if they were a minor nuisance. When his blue aura burned out, the stones dropped, and Claire drew her longsword as she tapped on a red magika stone.
“Hondur, God of Death, I summon you!” she shouted, then raised her weapon and slashed it toward the supreme commander.
From the blade, a warrior, adorned head to toe in red and black armor, burst toward the supreme commander with his sword poised to strike. In a flash, quicker than my eye could see, the supreme commander had his own blade at the ready. He ducked beneath the swing of Hondur’s sword with lightning fast reflexes then drove his blade into the God of Death’s chest.
Even from this distance, I could hear the crack of Claire’s magika stone as its power was destroyed. But she was already in motion again, tapping a second red stone on her necklace.
“Ymbris, God of Fire, I summon you!” she yelled.
The body of a great red dragon filled the open space in the wall, reared its head, and unleashed a torrent of flames that enveloped the supreme commander. The fire continued for several seconds until the flames abruptly stopped and were followed by a sickening crunch.
The spot where the supreme commander had been now stood empty, and my gaze turned toward the dragon. There, the supreme commander stood atop its neck with his magnificent blade buried deep into the back of the dragon’s skull. Its body flopped to the ground, and another of Claire’s magika stones cracked.
Swifter than I could have thought possible, the supreme commander was on the ground, slamming the pommel of his sword into Claire’s head and knocking her across the floor in front of me.
With all the strength she could muster, Claire climbed to one knee and glanced over her shoulder as the enemy stalked toward her, blade at the ready. She had to be about out of MP. Despite freeing my hands, I’d been unsuccessful at releasing the ropes around my waist. Nothing short of a blade could cut them, and my sword had long since been taken from me.
As if hearing my thoughts, Claire pulled out a dagger—the dagger given to her by our father. But she didn’t lunge forward to cut the ropes, nor did she hand me the blade. Instead, she knelt there whispering something into the green and white magika stone on its crosspiece as the supreme commander drew closer.
She looked over her shoulder once more and increased the speed of her chanting. As she finished, the stone began to glow brighter and brighter. A moment later, she tossed the dagger to me.
I reached out and caught it.
“Save me!” she yelled as the supreme commander’s sword pierced her back and emerged through her chest.
“No!”
“Save the empire,” she uttered as her eyes closed.
Before I could move, I felt an explosion come from the dagger, saw a flash of green and white, and then everything disappeared.
Two
I gasped as I sat up in an unfamiliar bed.
Where am I?
Placing my head in my palm, I tried to massage the pain away as I rubbed my skull.
A quick glance around the room told me three things: First, I was
in some strange place I’d never seen before in my life. Second, from the gentle rocking and swaying, I guessed I was on a ship. And third, I was not alone.
“You all right?” asked a boy sitting in the bed across from mine. “Looked like you were having a nightmare.”
A nightmare?
If I was, I couldn’t remember any of it—just this feeling of dread like the world was going to end.
“I—I don’t know,” I said, running my hand through my hair.
In that moment, I realized I couldn’t recall anything. Not where I was, nor how I’d gotten here—not even my name.
Just a green and white light and then nothing.
“Who’s Claire?” the boy asked.
The face of a girl surrounded by fire, shouting ‘Save me!’ flashed before my eyes. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.
Claire.
My sister, oh gods, she's in danger.
Where was she now? And how did I get here?
The more I tried to think about it, the worse my headache got.
I winced and hissed with pain.
“Hey, are you sure you’re all right, Aren?” the boy asked.
“Aren?” I asked aloud without meaning to.
“That’s your name, right?”
My name... Aren... Aren Halland.
“Gods, that must have been some nightmare,” the boy said. “Did you hit your head?”
Sworn Guardian: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Forbidden Magic Book 1) Page 1
