Danthan

The title match at the New Year’s Games had been nothing more than a warm-up for Danthan Keir. The real battle lay ahead of him—a battle the likes of which no one in Elorhe had ever seen. At least, not in the last four hundred years.

Danthan sat on a plush seat in the royal linecar cabin, watching the scenery stream by through the window as he traveled southward. In his hands was the sword that had belonged to the first king of Elorhe, Kierfes Talmuir. The king and queen had entrusted it to him—and who better? Danthan glanced at Edardes Halwer out of the corner of his eye. The military man sat up straight in his seat, like he was on guard now, in the linecar. As if he’d never slouched in his life. Danthan wanted to be comfortable before he fought a monster. There was no point in getting too tense before a fight. No point in worrying.

Even if he died, he’d at least had one night with Alzyn Semfrey. She’d looked at Danthan and seen the hero that he always suspected that he was. Although considering that she knew what he was likely to have to face, she might have let him get a little more rest.

Queen Zafrys had fallen asleep. Amazing that she could sleep at a time like this. Danthan had too much adrenaline pumping through his veins to feel the least bit sleepy. He wasn’t scared. Not more than a little bit, anyway—what he felt was anxious anticipation.

Then Queen Zafrys’s eyes opened and she immediately began to speak.

“Captain Halwer. Danthan,” she addressed the two men riding with her. They’d brought along a unit of soldiers, too, but the weapons they carried wouldn’t be able to scratch a construct. They were there to get any citizens out of harm’s way.

Zafrys went on, “The construct is called a dralk. It looks like a winged snake. Somewhere in its body, the construct has a core. So long as that core is undamaged, it will be able to regenerate from any harm you do to it. What you need to do is isolate the core so that I can seal it away again. I’ll need one of your swords to perform the sealing.”

“Somewhere in its body?” Halwer repeated.

“It can move the core around in its body, concealing it from us,” Zafrys said. “It’s not made of ordinary matter. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s almost like it . . . dissolves when it’s hit. That will be key to revealing the core.”

“So we’ve just got to cut it up into little pieces till we find the core,” Danthan said. “Sounds simple enough.”

Halwer raised an eyebrow. “It will be anything but ‘simple.’” He turned to the queen. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Any information may be useful.”

Zafrys told them a bit more about the construct, but Danthan didn’t see how any of it would be of use. He had his mission: hit the construct with the sword until they found the core.

“There won’t be any style points awarded,” Captain Halwer said quietly after Zafrys had finished speaking.

“I don’t do anything without style,” Danthan replied.

“We must protect the queen at all costs.”

“She won’t get a scratch.”

They found the construct’s seal in the middle of a field where sheep were grazing peacefully, unaware of what lay sealed in that circle of black glass. Zafrys dispatched the group of soldiers they’d brought with them to evacuate the area. That meant herding the sheep away as well as any people.

Meanwhile, Danthan surveyed his surroundings. The sheep had shorn the grass short, so he didn’t need to worry about being tripped up by tall grasses. There weren’t many options for gaining elevation, though. A few rolling hills, and a cottage that had been built only about two hundred feet from the seal.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He’d been outfitted with soldier’s armor, which was heavier than he was used to, but it had its advantages. In addition to providing better protection than the armor he wore in the games, it enhanced his abilities, bolstering his stamina and speed. It would have been cheating in a match, where he had to depend on natural vitricity, but here he needed every advantage he could get. Danthan stretched, trying to get used to the way the armor moved, the way energy flowed to him once he initiated the circuits.

Edardes Halwer paced around the circle, then knelt down to examine it more closely.

“Will there be a sign before it breaks?” he asked.

“Esar said it looked like smoke rising out of the circle,” Zafrys said. She stayed back a good distance from the seal.

“So now we just wait?” Danthan said.

“I . . . suppose so,” Zafrys said.

No one said anything for a while, until Danthan broke the awkward silence with a question. “So, what school of swordsmanship do you follow?”

Halwer looked at him quizzically before answering. “The Elgri.”

“Oh. I studied with Volsia.”

Halwer didn’t look surprised that Danthan came out of the rival school to his own.

Time stretched on as they waited for any change in the seal. Danthan yawned.

And there it was - a plume of smoke. They all saw it in the same moment and tensed in anticipation. Danthan couldn’t stop a smile from creeping onto his face. Halwer didn’t approve, judging from his eyebrows, though he only looked at Danthan for a moment before they both focused their attention on the plume of dark particles streaming upward from the seal. The seal itself was vanishing, becoming the construct.

It stretched into the shape of a snake with wings that rocketed upward with an unearthly hissing sound.

Danthan leapt after the manifesting creature, just missing it with the swing of his blade. He landed and cursed the sun in his eyes, making it hard to follow the creature’s movements, then ran to get a better angle on the creature.

The monster spiraled higher, but it couldn’t stay up in the sky forever. It had to come down to attack sometime. And when it did—

The dralk swooped at Halwer first. Danthan was a bit insulted. The dralk opened its jaws and some sort of energy came out, blasting Halwer. The soldier stood his ground, blocking the energy blast with his shield, while Danthan swooped in from behind and slashed through the dralk’s snakelike body.

There was barely any resistance to his sword. The dralk hissed and twisted in the air as Danthan cut it in two. He let out a whoop as the bottom half of the dralk fell. But both halves continued to move—the top flapping into the air again, the bottom flailing on the ground.

“It’s not enough! You have to find the core!” Zafrys cried out. Her shout attracted the shortened dralk’s attention, and it wheeled to fly at her, but Halwer was between Zafrys and the creature in an instant. He was fast, for an old man—he had to be at least thirty-five—but Danthan was faster. While Halwer blocked another energy blast, Danthan attacked. He leapt into the air and brought his sword down on the midline of the dralk, almost bisecting the creature and chopping off a wing.

Somehow, the dralk still flew. Its tail was getting longer—and the piece of tail on the ground was getting shorter.

“It’s rebuilding itself!” Halwer shouted.

“Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious!” Danthan said. The dralk remained aloft with just one wing, flapping awkwardly, slowly gaining altitude. The missing wing seemed to phase into place and then back to its spot on the ground, snapping back and forth several times, distorting and blurring so that it was hard to look at.

Danthan gathered vitricity in his legs, then released it to jump. Soldier’s armor was amazing! He’d never leapt so far with only his vitricity to carry him upward, but with the soldier’s armor augmenting his abilities, it was really like flying. Still, he needed more height. Danthan landed on the top of the cottage just as the dralk turned to face him, then took a flying leap towards the floundering construct. He swung his sword in a crescent-shaped slice that struck something hard with a loud clang.

He’d just knocked something loose from the construct. The core!

The construct turned to black mist when the core came loose, and Danthan plummeted through the mist to land on his feet. Halwer and Zafrys were already running towards where it fell.

Halwer gave his sword to Zafrys, and she pressed the tip of the sword to the core, a glassy black rectangle the size of a fist. The black mist swirled around her, chaotic at first, but settling into patterns that twisted across the sky before being laid down on the ground around the core. It took a couple minutes for her to recreate the seal, but at last all the mist was gone, and the countryside was silent and still.

Danthan broke the silence with a triumphant yell. “All right, we did it!”

Zafrys took a few deep breaths. “That was harrowing,” she said.

“You fought well, Danthan,” Halwer said.

Of course I did, thought Danthan. But what he said aloud was, “Thank you for protecting the queen.”

“I hope that never happens again,” Zafrys said with a shudder. “That was the most unnatural thing I’ve ever seen.”

But Danthan was wondering how another mere swordplay match could ever compare to the thrill of facing a construct.