Galahad POV

For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again.

I threw them wide.

I was being rushed into a healing hall it seemed.

Part of me wanted to let them go. I felt no pain any more, just a dull ache, and even that was fading. A peace folded me with the promise of forgetting.

“Sir!” A shout went up from one of the men. He was talking to a tall man who had flowing white beard, he had his arms crossed carefully inspecting me.

I heard the clank of armour as the man strode across to see.

“Piece of a leather pouch?” he asked.

“Found it in the mud, the carriage wheel must have pushed it under.” The soldier paused. I heard scraping. “Looks like a silver wing to me . . .”

“A falcon. A falcon on a silver field. It’s High Magi house of Aerie’s colours,” the knight gasped.

High Magi? I had a name. A falcon in a field of silver. The insignia flashed across my eyes, seared deep by the lightning of last night’s storm. I remember the ring that young magus boy was wearing, from the time I had taken the artifact, I noticed it was still nestled in my pocket. A fire lit within me, and the pain from a hundred hooks burned in every limb. A groan escaped me. My lips parted, dry skin tearing.

“He’s saying something!” I heard him curse as the hook-briar found every chink in his armour. “Quickly now! Pull this stuff apart.”

“save me…” I groaned

“he’s alive”

One of the people around me said, I must have been moved. I thought.

“He’s so white.”

I guess the briar near bled me dry. So they fetched a cart and took me to the hall. I didn’t sleep. I watched the sky turn black, and I thought. In the Healing Hall the Friar and his helper, dug the hooks from my flesh. My saviour, a man with shoulder length silver hair, arrived while they had me on the table with their knives out.

“Those are fire-cleaned knives I hope, Friar?” a man said he carried the Leo accent of the upper nobles in the inner city, a tendency to leave half of a word unspoken, as if an intelligent listener should be able to fill in the blanks.

“It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh, Sir,” Friar said. He spared the man a disapproving glance, and returned to his digging.

“Even so, clean the knives, Friar. Holy office will prove scant protection from the Lord Luthor’s ire if the boy dies in your halls.” The man set his book down on the table beside me, rattling a tray of vials at the far end.

“ The thorns of the hook-briar are like to find the bone.’” The friar traced a wrinkled yellow finger down the lines. “‘The points can break off and sour the wound.’”

Friar gave a sharp jab at that, which made me cry out. He set his knife down and turned to face the man. I could see only the friar’s back, the brown cloth straining over his shoulders, dark with sweat over his spine.

“Sire,” he said. “A man in your profession is wont to think all things may be learned from the pages of a book, or the right scroll. Learning has its place, sirrah, but do not think to lecture me on healing on the basis of an evening spent with an old tome!”

Well, Friar won that argument. The sergeant-at-arms had to “help” the man, seemingly a king from the hall.

I guess even at ten I had a serious lack of spiritual purity, for my wounds soured within two days, and for nine weeks I lay in fever, chasing dark dreams along death’s borderlands.

They tell me I raged and howled. That I raved as the pus oozed from slices where the briar had held me. I remember the stink of corruption. It had a kind of sweetness to it, a sweetness that’d make you want to hurl.

The friar’s aide, grew tired of holding me down, though he had the arms of a lumberjack. In the end they tied me to my bed.

I learned from the man, with silver hair that the friar would not attend me after the first week. Friar said a devil was in me. How else could a child speak such horror?

The High Magus of Aerie kept me alive. The promise of his pain crushed my own under its heel. Hate will keep you alive where love fails. And then one day my fever left me. My wounds remained angry and red, but they closed. They fed me chicken in soup, and my strength crept back, a stranger to me. The spring came to paint the leaves back upon the trees. I had my strength, but I felt something else had been taken. Taken so completely I could no longer name it.

The man with the silver hair came to me the day the wounds were completely healed. He sat next to me while I was in bed.

“Boy what is your name ?” he asked, his eyes brimming with sympathy.

I didn't answer him I stared at my hands. A look of lifelessness was on me. I was almost devoid of emotion, I knew the thorns took something from me that night, something irreplaceable, I kept thinking of the words GOD had said to me.

“fate will be cruel to you”

The words resounded in my head over and over again. I felt crippling guilt, my body felt similar to being under the weight of a mountain. I wanted nothing, I just wanted revenge. I wanted the High Magus on a stick, I wanted him to suffer, I wanted him to feel the main I felt, I wanted him die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die…

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I turned my head to look at the man, he had a regal appearance, and was wearing numerous rings on his fingers, he had a short tuft of black hair, paired with striking blue eyes eyes. He had an inquisitive look on his face as he questioned me. I recognized that he wasn't the man who had rescued me but there was a strong resemblance between the two men.

I asked him..

“Tell me lord,” I said “is revenge an art or a science…”

Uther Pendragon’s POV:

The boy my father brought back was, bleeding heavily when he arrived at my doorstep. My father with his indifferent look ordered me to save the boy. My father’s word was law. If I could not save this boy he might kill all the healers we have on staff.

The boy’s wounds were beyond severe. The thorns had dug so deep into his body, they were touching the small frail boy’s bones. The Friar took utmost care in healing and I frequently supervised the process. I would often see that the friar had a look of surprise as apparently the body this boy possessed had the regenerative capabilities of a “C” ranked magus warrior. The wounds would elf heal once the hook’s from the briar were taken out. The boy’s body dispelled all the contamination by itself, and spurted pus and disgust from small crevices in his body.

The boy howled and raged, swearing and cursing saying that he would have his revenge. That he would kill, kill and kill some more.

The boy needless to say frightened me, a “A” rank warrior, and the king of the human empire.

The boy recovered in 9 weeks and my father, had waited in the family training dojo outside refusing to see his grandchildren until he knew this child was safe, I was surprised I had never seen him take such care with anyone let alone, a boy who looked to be of common birth.

“is revenge an art or a science…”, he boy asked…

I was taken back, I had not expected that this to be his words. I had noticed that he had quite a resplendent appearance and an appearance that was on par with my cute sons appearance. His golden hair had come undone from its long braid and his silver eyes glowed with rage, and wrath.

The door opened and my father walked in, a jolt went up in my spine, after not seeing him for almost 20 years, he hadn’t aged one bit, so It was true that once reaching “S” rank the body would no longer age, and achieve immortality. My memories with my father only ranged from brutal training sessions to ice cold greetings. I knew from a long time that he held no love for me. But he was my father nonetheless. He had deemed me unworthy of learning his Spear God techniques when I was 16 years old and had left to train in seclusion. He had returned today for the first time in 20 years. I since then trained my hardest and achieved an “A” rank adventurer’s status and became on of the most powerful beings on the human continent but that still didn't warrant any of his love or attention.

“Uther…you may leave now. I need to talk to the boy alone!”

Galahad’s POV

My savior walked into the room his eyes brimming with, curiosity, he dismissed the lord without a care and sat in the chair.

“Boy, what is your name tell me about yourself?”

I didn't want to anger this man, he exuded a far stronger aura than the previous man.

“My name is Galahad Veilantif I am, from the slums and I recently joined the church caravan when I got ambushed by bandits and my whole family was killed.”

I said in a indifferent tone. The man didn't even flinch at this he seemed impenetrable, a mountain he wouldn't be surprised by anything.

“Boy. The world is filled with unfair, unnatural and unforgivable thing. You happened to survive such a fate be thankful. I am more curious about why you have such an unnatural amount of mana. I have not seen anyone with such amount of mana. You seem to have more than 100 times the size of my capacity, which is revered to be one of the largest on the continent. You even have more than that old Wolf War God.”

I looked at him putting up a façade of surprise. I didn't want to explain to him the reason for my powers.

“Boy, my name is Luthor Pendragon and I have taken interest in you.” What do you think abour being my first apprentice.

I was shocked, this man was the legendary Luthor, Luthor Pendragon !!! rumoured to have made and mastered one of the most powerful fighting techniques in the world. This mans legends were told as stories to children. He was one of the most powerful individuals in the world.

“Child, I have never seen such a potential in a noble child nonetheless a child from the slums. You have the potential to become as powerful as the Wolf War God, if not more powerful.” He exclaimed he had a look of madness in his azure blue eyes.

“Child you are now to become my apprentice, my only apprentice…”