Ioren stumbled up the spiral staircase that led from the cellar of Riverstop Keep, awkwardly alternating between bounding leaps and half-starts. An immense foreign power coursed through his body, strengthening every muscle like a wound spring threatening to explode at any second. He felt as if he were watching his body move from above, not fully in control of the awkward energy that propelled him faster than he could comprehend with every exertion.
When he reached the top of the stairs, Ioren flung a hand out toward the door and tore it from its hinges as he pulled backward. Frustrated, he crushed the brass knob in his shaking hand and tossed it down the stairs, not caring for the series of loud clinks that resounded through the hall as it fell. The walls felt like they were closing on him as he struggled to control his limbs. Air disappeared from the hall as he gasped within the tight corridor. Escape. He needed to escape to an open area, find some space, and work to understand his body.
Ioren channeled his frustrated anger into his feet and sprinted down the service hall, the walls beside him becoming a gray blur. He burst through the door at the end of the hall with a gasp. Shattered wood exploded outward from the door and went skidding across the marble floor. The evening sun was still up, though it would be nightfall in only a few hours. Camping in Danet at night was only for the most desperate of Finders, for the horrors of the dead world rose again in the darkness.
Cursing his lack of time, Ioren stumbled through the Grand Hall of Riverstop Keep toward the two massive wooden doors at the front of the room. Each step was effortless and light as a feather, while also carrying with it the strength of a warhammer. It took great concentration to find a new rhythm to his movements. By the time Ioren reached the door he had settled into a tolerable cadence.
The chains that wrapped the pulley system for opening the doors were in immaculate condition, though Ioren was hardly surprised at the condition of anything in the keep at this point. It seemed Chernicotl’s attention to detail knew no bounds. Ioren pulled back on the circular pulley system and forced the massive doors open with a low creak. Their heft fought against the chains, but they slowly relented, like a pack animal finally accepting its load and driving onward. The system was likely built for several men to operate together, yet the power of the bond that flooded Ioren’s body gave him the strength of dozens of men, and he easily yanked the handles of the pulley with haste.
Once the doors had pulled apart enough to slip through, Ioren locked the pulley in place and exited into the cool dry air of the Danetian sunset. The open courtyard and calming wind soothed his senses and refreshed his mind, allowing him to set his priorities in line.
Find the others. Escape Riverstop. Warn the world of Vanodel of the threat to Yasha. Avoid Chernicotl at all costs.
Easy enough, Ioren thought as he broke into a jog toward the gates of the Keep that would lead him into the central square of Riverstop.
He felt a spring in his step, as if the binds of gravity had taken a break today and he was now free to leap to his heart’s content. Ioren sprinted and jumped forward as far as he could and sailed through the air, clearing at least forty feet of distance in one hop before landing awkwardly, off-balance, and tumbling into the dirt. He looked around, embarrassed, before remembering he was alone. Everyone in Danet was alone, but perhaps none more than Ioren in this moment, as he bore the weight of the future of the continent on his shoulders.
Ioren stood and brushed the dirt from his trousers when he heard a shout in the distance. It came from the other side of the wooden gate, toward the southern end of town. Another shout, this time from a woman, echoed the desperation in the first from the same direction. A low tremor began to travel through the ground as another shout, much closer and clearer this time, cut through the air: “Dal!”
Lowering his shoulder, Ioren braced himself with gritted teeth and slammed into the wooden gate separating the keep from the central square. A hole the shape of his silhouette exploded outward, sending dust and splintered wood as far as the fountain in the center of the square. Ioren turned to his right in the direction of the shouts and dropped his jaw.
Okay, change of plans.
The largest horde of Greys he had ever seen, easily numbering in the hundreds, chased a group of Finders through the streets toward the central square. Their numbers packed the stone street from end to end as far as the eye could see. Ioren recognized the first Finder as Petra, and quickly identified the rest of the group from their fear-stricken faces.
Ioren waved happily to the group in the distance.
“Hey, long time no see!”
He couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at the incredulous stares he received. Petra and Ysmena were the closest, and their confusion was written in their faces clear as day. Just behind them was Linoor, Onep, and Ardenel, all nearly keeping up with the two girls in front. In the rear was Elune and Violet, who seemed to be pulling Dal - who huffed violently as tears streamed down his plum-red face - along with them.
Ysmena’s eyes flicked to the Ioren-shaped hole in the wooden gate, and she ran to it like a moth to flame, calling for the others behind her to follow. Ioren thought he saw Petra mouth an apology to him as she passed.
Linoor, Ardenel, and Onep quickly caught up to them at the gate. Ioren noticed a heavy bandage wrapped across Linoor’s forehead, and wondered idly how much trouble the Greys had given them before they were beset by this horde. Ysmena ordered them to begin picking up planks that Ioren had knocked free as she gathered something from her pack. She seemed to have taken up the mantle as de facto leader.
As Dal, Elune, and Violet approached, all heaving from exhaustion, Ioren maneuvered his bladed float from his wrist outward and faced the horde. These were armed, armored, and incensed Greys. He doubted he could take them all on as he had the anaesthetized ones in the cellar, but he could slow them.
Pushing his channeled energy from the bond into the bladed float, Ioren maneuvered the silver disk behind the advancing trio before slashing a broad swath through the shins of the front-most pursuers, causing them to topple forward along with those just behind them. It began a chain reaction of stumbling, eventually bringing the Greys in the rear to a full stop as those in the front struggled to raise themselves beneath the weight of the followers on top of them. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it stalled enough for the other three to reach the gate.
Ioren pulled his float back to his wrist and turned, accidentally swinging his weight too quickly, and fell over backwards into the square.
“Ioren! Are you alright?” Linoor called from the gate.
“Just a bit too much ale, I reckon,” Ioren called back facetiously as he rose to his feet and hurried through the hole into the walls of the keep.
“Now!” Ysmena called out, signalling Onep, Ardenel, and Petra to lay planks across the opening in the gate as she slapped a purple fabric over them. Ioren recognized it as sticker, a rare artifact of Danet that permanently held any two items together with the strength of gods. He was astounded that Ysmena would have - no less use - such a treasure, but she was a noble after all. They lived in a different world.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Are you really joking at a time like this?” An annoyed voice barked at Ioren from behind. He turned to face Linoor who, despite a bandage covering her brow, was clearly vexed. Dried blood stained her white collar beneath her gambeson, and her typically beautiful silver hair was matted in sweat. They had apparently been through an ordeal since he had gone missing.
“Sorry,” Ioren apologized with a smile. “I was just happy to see you is all.”
Linoor crossed her arms at this, but relaxed her angry visage all the same. “I am glad you are not dead,” she said.
Such kind words, Ioren thought sarcastically.
“Hopefully that will hold them off until we can get into the keep,” Ysmena said, finishing her work at the gate with a satisfied clap. “I figure we can hold out for the night at the keep before returning to the Step. That may be safest.”
“In the keep, with the excisor?” Ardenel asked incredulously. The others turned to face him, clearly out of the loop.
“What are you talking about?” Ysmena asked. The answer she awaited was cut off by a pained howl from the keep, as if an animal called out for its pack in the throes of death. A shiver went down the spines of everyone at the gate as the scream echoed through the courtyard of the keep.
“I need everyone to stay behind me,” Ioren said as he began to advance slowly toward the keep. No one questioned his command as they fell in line. Behind them the first Greys had reached the wooden gate and began to pound on it uselessly. Dal choked down a difficult breath through the silence as Elune patted his shoulder.
“Linoor and Onep, I need you two to protect everyone else. Find a defensible position upstairs in the keep and hide. If I do not find you before nightfall, make a break for it across the Ivory Bridge behind the keep. You will not survive if he finds you,” Ioren said in a grim voice to the others as he drilled his eyes into the large oak doors of Riverstop Keep.
“If who finds us?” Ysmena asked. Again she would receive no response, for a pale man whose skin stretched thin across his bones exited the keep at that moment. His black eyes smoldered with rage as he gritted his pointed teeth and stared out at the group.
“TRAITOR!” He shouted, froth spitting from his mouth. Ioren broke to the right away from the group to attract Chernicotl’s attention.
“Sorry, but we Finders only think of ourselves,” Ioren retorted, sending his bladed float up into the air and unsheathing his daggers. He nodded to Linoor who returned the gesture and led the group around left, toward the entrance of the keep. Ioren continued to back up, leading Chernicotl toward him, until the others had disappeared within the massive doors into the Grand Hall. The Greys continued to pound at the gate in rhythm with Ioren’s racing heart.
“Do you know what you’ve done? Those people were the remnants of our great culture! The story keepers of a civilization! You’ve doomed us to an eternity of nothingness! Effaced from the slate of history like bugs!” Chernicotl cried out at Ioren. He unleashed a hail of knives from the sleeves of his black robes without warning.
To Ioren’s greatly enhanced senses, the projectiles seemed to sail slowly through the air. He admired the exquisite purple and red reflections of the setting sun as they passed through the space between the two fighters like floating paint brushes. Ioren easily sidestepped the knives, blocking two with his bladed float when he could not dodge.
“You would forsake the people of Danet and Havan, those who built your civilizations, to an eternity of lost wandering. Those ignoble laborers, made once to suffer the mistakes of the gentry who sought endless power from a cursed bargain, would be made again to suffer from your selfishness. Any civilization who so easily forsakes the common man for his own gain is unfit to carry its legacy into the future,” Ioren said calmly to the excisor.
“I have lived for a thousand years, you fool! I will not be lectured by an infant!” Chernicotl flourished two more blades from his robes and struck forward toward Ioren.
Ioren batted aside the blades with his own as Chernicotl slashed forward in a vicious assault. His blades moved like metallic blurs as Ioren struggled to send the message to his unwieldy limbs in time to block or evade. Just before becoming overwhelmed by the flurry, Ioren leapt backwards to add distance and catch his breath. He had the depth of power now to defeat Chernicotl, but the man was a trained killer with a thousand years’ experience, and Ioren could hardly keep a line of communication up between his mind and his new body.
“Is that all you’ve got? It seems like a thousand years wasted,” Ioren taunted the skull-faced man. He hoped the confident taunts would hide his quaking fear.
“Unlike you, I am not a butcher of my fellow man. I’ve not a river of bonded energy flowing through me, and for that I am proud. Yet you think to stand here and claim my life is wasted?” Chernicotl retorted. Ouch, Ioren thought, disappointed that his provocation had back-fired.
Chernicotl launched forward again and Ioren raised his daggers defensively. Instead, Chernicotl sent a booted foot into Ioren’s chest, sending him flying backward into the dirt. He rolled backwards onto his feet quickly, but before he could catch his breath the man was on him again, slashing with murderous intent.
“I will cut you down and avenge my people by slaying your god, Yasha. You’ve doomed your people, child!” Chernicotl shouted as a toothy grin flashed across his tight lips. A loud crack echoed through the courtyard as the Greys continued to pound at the gate.
The excisor’s blades came down hard against Ioren’s own as he did everything he could to keep up. He caught the flash of a float whizz out of Chernicotl’s robes too late as it gashed open his arm. Ioren slammed his own float into the ground in front of him and pushed as hard as he could, launching him backwards nearly a hundred feet to the other side of the courtyard. His forearm dripped blood down onto the back of his knuckles as he caught his breath.
A silver gleam from Chernicotl’s bladed float flashed forward as it surged at Ioren. He raised his daggers to block it, but it stopped just a few feet in front of him, like hitting an invisible wall. He’s at his max distance!
Ioren pulled hard on his own float, the bladed half stuck in the ground at Chernicotl’s feet, and sent it soaring upwards in an instant, cutting a vertical gash into Chernicotl and sending tatters of his robes into the wind. He leapt backwards away, but Ioren gave chase with his float. The excisor was now on the back foot.
Pushing the pain in his arm out of his mind, Ioren bounded forward with all his strength, kicking up a massive cloud of dirt backwards as his toes clawed for friction with each step. Faster… Faster…
Chernicotl caught Ioren barreling toward him from the corner of his eye as he evaded the float again, but it was too late. Ioren crashed into him with all his weight, sending the two tumbling to the ground in a heap as both lost their blades. They came to a stop with Ioren on top, knees digging into the dirt, hands holding down Chernicotl’s arms.
The excisor opened his mouth to say something, but Ioren shoved his fist into the man’s teeth with a sickening crunch before he could get a word out. His fist came down again and again at the man’s pale face as he futilely tried to block the incoming strikes that fell like hammer blows. The whizz of Chernicotl’s bladed float zipped just past Ioren’s head, missing by inches thanks to his constant flurry of disorienting punches aimed at the excisor’s face. Ioren pulled on his own float as he punched, slowly bringing it closer as he strained his mind to split its attention.
The punching, the knees kicking his back desperately, the enemy’s whizzing float, his mind pulling on his own float, the loud cracks of splintering wood at the gate to the courtyard, Linoor and the others running for safety… his mother awaiting him on the other side of the river. Ioren’s mind pulled in a hundred directions as he pounded at the excisor who clung to life in front of him.
Finally, Ioren leaned backward and stopped punching. Chernicotl spread his hands out away from his eyes, curious as to why the flurry had ended, just in time for the bladed float to puncture his nasal cavity and embed itself into the ground behind him. A thick black smoke oozed from his mouth toward Ioren as Ioren collapsed backward. His hands and arms were thick with blood, though he couldn’t tell where his own began and Chernicotl’s ended. He knew he was cut badly though, and his head swum with pain. He felt his energy recuperate as the black cloud funneled into his nostrils, until a loud thunk echoed through the courtyard. The Greys had broken down one of the planks, and began to climb through the opening from the gate.
Ioren cursed his luck and staggered to his feet, sprinting into the keep through the massive oak doors.
Please be safe, Linoor.