1076

Arthur Godwin

  Arthur Godwin was a scholar. His education was granted to him from the highest tier of schooling available in all of the grand city of Ordensaugh. He was used to books, logic puzzles, mathematics, sciences, magic, enchantments, culinary arts, and even some basic swordplay, which was quite the source of pride.

  He was not, however, used to having his nose broken. By a burning fist. From a stranger. Who was on fire. And naked.

Arthur grunted heavily and ducked his head away, covering his nose as it spewed blood. “Dammit,” he hissed, backing away from the burning boy, pulling Alice along with him.

  “Can’t you– you–” Alice rambled frantically.

  “Can’t I what?” Arthur yelled, whipping his head around. Some of his blood sprayed onto the bottom of her dress, and she squealed and pulled back.

  “Can’t you lightning him or something?!” she asked. “There was lightning– or–”

  “It stays in my hands,” Arthur griped, wiping his nose and wincing with each wipe. “Dammit, dammit, dammit–”

  “He’s coming!”

  “Damnit!” He turned swiftly and raised his hands for the next strike. His vision was blurry with tears– not because he was crying, mind you, it was just a side effect of the broken nose– but the fiery mass before him was hard to miss. As the burning boy rocketed towards him, Arthur stepped to the side and struck the back of his head with an open palm. Upon contact, Arthur sent a shockwave of electricity through the boy, and he stumbled and fell forward. Arthur nodded. “He’s clumsy.”

  “He broke your nose,” Alice said as she cleared herself from the way of battle.

  “Thank you for reminding me, Alice.” Arthur frowned, voice dripping with sarcasm. “He’s clumsy, but he’s strong as the Devil. Better?”

  There was no answer. The tears were finally beginning to clear, and Arthur wasted no time. He walked towards the burning boy, who was still gathering his senses. He would’ve run, but even the feeling of air upon his once-intact nose sent a fresh wave of hot tears into his vision. Walking would have to do. He stood overtop of the boy, or as close to the boy as he could without quite literally catching his robes on fire. “We can talk.” Arthur’s voice sounded nasally to his own ears.

The burning boy heaved heavy breaths. He began to look up, and as the whites of his eyes came into view, Arthur’s facade of confidence waned. He took two hefty steps backwards and made a sound similar to that of an owl. A scared owl, needless to say. Focus, Arthur, focus! He grimaced. Think. Logically. He’s expending too much energy. He must be at his limit. Distract him for a little longer, and surely–

  The boy collapsed, and the fire dwindled. “Oh.” Arthur loosened a little, and readjusted his coat. He took a step forward. Another. One more, and the boy’s fist reignited brilliantly and rocketed upward with the momentum of the uprising of his entire body.

  Arthur caught the fist with ease, and grinned a bloody, slightly insane grin. He met the burning boy’s eyes. They were human. The pupils were faint in the sea of white, but by The Old One, they were there. He counteracted the heat in his palm with electrical discharges, creating a harmonic barrier of energy, nullifying the effect of either source of power. “I know how that one works,” Arthur said. “Nobody falls for that. Especially not me.” The boy growled and forced upward, the muscles of his legs starting to force Arthur backwards.

  “You’re… weak…” the boy groaned. His voice was dwindling.

  “And you are at your end, my friend,” Arthur said gently. It was a simple equation from here, a classic lesson in anatomy. First, he brought his left knee up quickly and drove it into the boy’s right side, just below the ribcage. He howled, and Arthur winced at the sound. The blow connected directly with his liver, and he slumped forward, but the fire kept burning, albeit less intensely. Arthur then cupped his hands and clapped gently but quickly into the boy’s ears. It was not enough pressure to blow his eardrums, but enough of a shock to force his body back upright. Perfect. He wrapped his arm around the boy’s neck– the flames had dwindled to a point of harmlessness– and constricted his airflow.

  It was obvious. His energy was too low- once the boy was dropped unconscious, regardless of the lack of lasting damage from the particular chokehold, he would not reawaken for some time. To expend Beastly energy for any period of time was difficult, but based on the nature of the burning boy, he had been enveloped by flame for hours- perhaps days. His body required rest.

  And so, it rested. The no-longer-burning boy slumped to the ground in front of Arthur, unconscious. Aside from a gentle breathing rhythm, there was no movement. Arthur nodded, then his eyes widened. “Sweet Havenlands!” he roared, doubling over.

  Alice’s voice came from behind him, close, but out of harm’s way. “Are you okay?”

  “I feel like I just waged war and my nose took the entire brunt of the battle,” he whimpered. The adrenaline was gone. Now, there was pain. Heaps of it.

  Each bump the carriage made sent a sharp wave through Arthur’s face. Alice watched wordlessly out the back window as her home city disappeared from view. She had never had the chance to say goodbye to her loved ones. After recuperating himself to the best of his ability, Arthur had carried the naked stranger upon his back and pulled Alice along with him just outside of the city walls. There were damages, and people would recover from shock and be quick to demand payment. Payment that he did not have. Alice had probably protested, but Arthur had lowered himself into a state of total focus, and could only think of one thing: getting outside of that damn city.

  Now, he watched her guiltily as her life as she knew it disappeared behind her. She was accompanied only by a bloody-nosed stranger and a naked threat. Arthur had placed his robes over the boy for the sake of decency, but it seemed that that was quite simply the least pressing matter present. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m… sorry, Alice,” he tried.

  “For?” She asked with a shrug. She did not make eye contact with him. “Most kidnappers don’t apologize, Arthur.”

  Arthur blinked. Somehow, despite all of his summers of planning, it had never occurred to him that perhaps Alice might presume him a kidnapper. What was worse, he didn’t have a plan to oppose such claims. Looking at the unconscious naked body beside him, the singular girl anywhere near the carriage, and the general distaste most smaller cities had towards his home, Ordensaugh, well… “That is a very good point,” he said.

  “So you are a kidnapper.”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s more like-”

  “That’s exactly what you just said.”

  “It’s what I implied,” Arthur corrected. “I meant that you make a very strong case that I would seem like a kidnapper. But I’m not.”

  “You have magic, and yet, you just tussled with some other magic boy without using any. And you won. You knew how to strike him in every way that would work.” Alice knit her eyebrows, but Arthur saw her lip trembling slightly. She was afraid. Afraid of him, which made it all the worse. “You’ve been trained either as an assassin or a thief or-”

  “What?” Arthur held his hands up in submission. “No, no, that’s not what–”

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  “You completely changed character in battle, Arthur.” Words were getting shaky. Arthur swallowed nervously. He was utterly, completely, hopelessly useless when dealing with the emotions of others. Even he could admit that. “You went from playing the timid, helpless role to suddenly taking control of everything. Like it was nothing. You can’t just go back to the scared little gentleman now.”

  Arthur frowned. “I wasn’t that scared,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “Alice, it was just…” he sought out the words, piecing them together mentally before he spoke next.

  “It all just clicked. Once our burning friend here played fake dead, there was really only one other option from his end- a surprise ambush. It’s an old trick, and his energy supply had cut off too suddenly to be authentic. After that it was purely anatomical, knowing the placement of the liver, how much pressure to apply to the eardrums, how to safely restrict airflow… basic human sciences, you know?” He stared at her with a cocked head, certain that she would understand his explanation and, as a result, retract all claims of Arthur being a kidnapper.

  “You’re definitely an assassin,” she whispered, fear in her eyes.

  Arthur’s jaw fell open slightly. I got rid of the kidnapper accusation, at least, he thought numbly. “How exactly can I prove to you that–”

  “Take me back to my parents.”

  Arthur scratched his head. “That is… that’s not exactly...”

  “Parents or I’ll scream bloody murder and you’ll…” She continued the threat, but Arthur found it hard to focus presently as he debated whether screaming bloody murder would do much good while alone in the woods on a infrequently traveled trail. He thought it best to not ask. It certainly wouldn’t benefit his not-an-assassin claims, no matter how true they were.

  “If I bring you back to your parents, Alice, will you not return?”

  “Why should I?” Alice asked. Her voice was growing more timid. It seemed the adrenaline of the situation as a whole was wearing off, and her nervous tendencies were settling back into place. “Give me one reason to come back with you.”

  Arthur settled into a stern tone. “Because we need you.”

  “You don’t.”

  “We do. The power of one Titan is said to be just as great as that of eight Beasts. We need you. We need all eight of us.” Arthur ensured their eye contact did not falter as long as Alice permitted. Her gaze darkened.

  “Titan?”

  She hasn’t read the holy texts, Arthur realized. “Titans.” He emphasized the plural. “Most say four of them. Hopefully less, and I pray no more. A Titan is-”

  “Before you tell me about whatever a Titan is,” Alice said, tears being blinked out of her eyes at last, “take me to my parents. Then I’ll listen.”

  Arthur grimaced. “Do I have your word?”

  “Honest word,” Alice nodded.

  Arthur sighed in defeat, and knocked the side of the carriage loudly. “Driver!” he called.

  “Explain.”

  Arthur was now bound to a pole in the front corner of The Pudgy Pelican’s dining room. Alice’s mother and father were staring at him intently. Her mother had a knife; her father had a dead fish. He dreaded the fish. “Ah,” he started cooly. “Which part?”

  “You stole our daughter,” Mr. Odilia growled. “How about we start there?”

  “As in how I stole her?” Arthur asked. “Or why?”

  Both parents’ nostrils flared at the same time. Arthur was notoriously bad at hiding amusement, and sadly, this amused him. He snickered and was met with the wet slap of a fish across his face. “Devil,” he sputtered. “Why. We’ll start with why.”

  A deep breath, a pause, and a moment to think. Arthur began.

  “Like I said, when we were born, somehow– I don’t quite know how, not yet, at least– someone made a link between our own souls and the souls of Beasts that supposedly died ages upon ages ago. We speculate that–”

  “Who is we?” Alice’s father interrupted. “You and these other… Hosts?”

  Arthur fought down a scowl. “With all due respect,” he said disrespectfully, “I’ll get to that. May I speak?”

  Mr. Odilia waved him on silently with a slight gesture. Arthur cleared his throat.

  “Firstly, no. I don’t know of any other Hosts besides Alice and our fiery friend outside. When I say ‘we,’ I refer to only myself and Acer Ashdim, the designated man to nurture and train us as we collect. As of right now, it is only me and him. We have slight ideas where the other Hosts are, but we have not met them. As I was saying, though, we speculate the masked man that did the sealing and gave you the prophecy was quite literally Cyrus Hellreaver. I know–” He held up a hand to counter the clear expressions of shock on the Odilia’s faces as their mouths opened to protest. Good. They have read the holy texts, even if their daughter hasn’t.

  “I know. That sounds like a lot,” he continued. “Cyrus isn’t even supposed to be real. It’s a speculation, but it seems like the most obvious answer. The identity isn’t important, though. What matters is the Beasts were sealed, all eight of them, into eight of us. When something on that scale happens, it happens for a reason.” Arthur paused. “Following me?” he prompted.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Odilia replied slowly. “Sure. Yes. Continue.”

  “Right. We have access to their powers, and to the Beasts, in some capacity. The actual interaction between the Beasts and ourselves is a highly convoluted topic. I’m only one person, I only know how my personal interaction with Umahn works. We doubt that the interactions between each Host and Beast will be remotely similar– this is no common magic. These are entities, they have souls and emotions and personalities of their own. Our goal is to weaponize them- create strength from the Beasts. Work in conjunction with them. A living, breathing source of power. It’s unheard of, and an impossible concept to grasp, as nobody in our known history has faced such a task before. So we will learn from one another. Foster these powers.” He stopped and nodded towards the raised hand of Mr. Odilia.

  “You haven’t told us why, Arthur. There’s a lot to digest here, but no explanation.”

  “It’s a difficult question. Again, lots of speculation. Not to repeat myself, but it clearly happened for a reason. Nobody accidentally summons and seals the souls of old borderline gods in a bunch of newborn children. We’re grabbing at loose concepts here, but from what we understand, there’s been an uprising in activity from the Titans of Seraph. Subtle things, but more than any other point in history. Or, since Cyrus Hellreaver supposedly put an end to their reigns. You know of Cyrus, so surely you know of the Titans, yes?”

  “Of course,” Mrs. Odilia nodded. “Oberion, and…” she frowned, and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. The holy texts say Cyrus Hellreaver slew all of them. Besides, these are just parables. It’s nothing to reshape an entire life over. Especially not my daughter’s life, scholar,” she said pointedly.

  “The holy texts say Cyrus killed one Titan, and it was unnamed. It wasn’t Oberion. Plus, there are anywhere from three to six more Titans- it’s anyone's guess. All we know is that they exist. Too many records of them. It’s simply impossible for them not to be real. Oberion is the most grounded, but there are countless stories of specific, multifaceted beings circulating. They line up with old legends that haven’t had any significance in literal ages. There haven’t been any externally inflicted deaths– there have been reports of suicides as a result of contact with these beings– but even still, just the notion of their reemergence is something to be concerned with.”

  “If they’re real, you’re damn right,” Mr. Odilia said. Sweat had begun to bead on his forehead. “The holy texts said there was a Titan that took a bite outta the sun, and another that killed an entire kingdom in a single blow. If they’re coming back–”

  “If they’re coming back, you are sure as the Devil himself not taking our daughter with you,” Mrs. Odilia stated with immovable resolve.

  Shit. “That’s- that’s a fair thought to have, Ma’am.” He paused and frowned. “A very fair thought.”

  Mrs. Odilia nodded. “Then it's settled.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far–”

  “I’ll go,” Alice said, standing up from a table she had been seated at across the room.

  Arthur’s mouth dropped open. “With all due respect, Miss Alice, I don’t… exactly… believe you?” He winced. I couldn’t have worded that worse. Awful. Awful awful awful.

  “I don’t believe myself, Arthur. And I still don’t know if I trust you.”

  “So why would you go?” her mother asked. There was panic in her voice.

  “I’m not sure,” Alice said. Arthur frowned in confusion. “There’s the lake-soul in my chest now, though.”

  Lake soul? Arthur thought, biting his lip. Is that what she feels?

  “It’s… I don’t know.” There were tears on her face, but she continued to speak, and her voice shook minimally. “I feel like I’m not allowed to miss it. I kind of want to miss it, I’d rather stay here, honestly… but I don’t think I can. Not in good conscience, anyway. Same thing as when I’d rather sleep than work. Which happens a lot, I mean, but I’m always glad when I do go to work. It’s not always the best but it’s worth the time in the end. This feels like that, just… bigger. A lot bigger. I don’t know. I don’t want to go. I really don’t want to go.” Alice began to repeat the last words, and though her voice shook, she had made her stance clear. Arthur knew, she knew, and her parents knew. Alice Odilia would be leaving Port City Mare soon.

  “Then don’t,” her father whispered, but there was no hope in his voice.

  Arthur sighed, and sent a wave of electric energy to where his hands were bound. After a slight crackle, the ropes slackened, then fell, and he walked forward, standing just before Alice. For a moment he considered lifting her chin, but such actions were beyond him. Instead, he did what he knew how to do well, and took a bow. “Alice,” he spoke softly. “Thank you. Let’s be on our way.” Before you change your mind, he thought hastily.

  “Now?” she asked.

  “Ah,” Arthur scratched his head, his polite demeanor disappearing. “Yes, yes, ideally. Sir firemouth could wake up. It’s best we’re closer to the manse by then, just in case.”

  “Closer to the what?” Alice asked, attempting to dry her tears, but to no avail.

  “The manse. Come now, we have somewhere important to be.”