4 years ago

Ander walked down the frigid stone halls that made up his army's barracks. Caedric's room was at the far end of this corridor. It had been month's since Eris's brush with death, but Ander was still scared for her. His men, however, were ready, and nothing unwanted would be getting past them.

Caedric waited outside his room. "Hello Caedric," Ander greeted his longtime friend. "Are you ready for this?" Caedric pulled a wrapped brown cloth out of his pack.

"Ready as I'll ever be," he said. "But this is something I've not done before." Subtlety was generally not a soldier's strong suit, but Ander liked for his soldiers to be well rounded. Ander and Caedric made it look like leaving the barracks at midnight was commonplace.

"Just remember," Ander started. "It is more important that we get out alive than us getting this knife sold for a good price." Caedric nodded. They grabbed the blades at their sides.

The meeting point was a good mile away. As they walked, a black bird tried to rob a bee's nest of it's honey, not realizing that the bees surrounding it were far more than it could handle. It plummeted to the ground before it could successfully escape.

There were ten members of the dark circle waiting at the abandoned church.

"This better be good, Palenus," one said. He was taller than the others and had a small sword at his side.

"It is, Henrick," Ander said. Henrick nearly attempted to stab Ander for saying his name out loud, but another circler stopped him. It seemed the dark circle mage didn't want to be spotted here.

Caedric pulled out the covered knife and unwrapped it. Henrick inspected it.

"I can tell it is Balesian," he said. "But it is very odd."

"Yes," said another. "This knife would be a great addition to our collection."

"We'll take it," Henrick said. "We would take it off your hands for forty marks." Caedric whistled. Forty marks could buy a house in Chraith, or even new equipment for a small army.

"Fine," Ander said. "This deal is acceptable." He took the knife and handed it to Henrick.

"But," Henrick continued. "We wouldn't want the king to know about this, and given your history with the dark circle, we can't give you forty marks. We can't give you any, actually."

Caedric walked over to him. "You can't do tha-"

His complaints were stopped as soon as Henrick cut off his forearm. Caedric screamed.

Ander leapt forward and grabbed a man with his left hand. "You say you know my history with the dark circle," he started. "But do you?" Ander crushed the man's throat in one squeeze, ending the man's miserable life slowly. "I think if you truly did, you would know that what you did was your last mistake. You would know that whoever hurts me and my friends gets found dead among a group of other corpses."

Ander pulled out his blade. He heard a man shout "Forslo," but the fire was blocked by his blade as easily as any arrow. He chopped that man down.

A fire burned in Caedric's eyes. He pulled out his sword and killed the two closest mages, and blocked two different strikes with the same parry. He killed a man next to him right after.

Ander walked over to Henrick, crushing the skull of a man who sought to block his path. The mage who previously held Henrick back threw his hand at Ander, who didn't expect him to strike with his hand instead of a sword.

The world flipped over, and everything became dark. The man looked to Ander. "Do you really want to fight, you of stone."

"It's not that I want to fight," Ander said. "It's more that I couldn't live knowing that you had taken off my friend's arm without payback. I'm not the only one allowed to get revenge."

"In that case," the man said. "Nelar."

Ander was dragged off into a bright world. It mirrored Riftgard, but everything was ... ephemeral. There were no other people there, and if Ander was seeing things right, he was only half there himself.

Ander was pulled back to his own world with the sight of Caedric stabbing a man through his gut.

Ander could see the bodies of nine of the members of the dark circle, but Henrick was nowhere to be found. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Caedric answered. "He cast a spell, and he just disappeared. I couldn't even hear footfall."

"We need to get to the others," Ander said. Caedric nodded and they ran for the barracks. They sprinted only to see people walking in.

"How's your arm doing?" Ander asked.

"Not the best, but I have half of my forearm back," Caedric responded.

"What's the point of slowly regrowing limbs?" Ander asked.

"Even full azials need some time to fully regrow a limb," Caedric said lightly. "And I'm only half one."

As they reached the barred window, Ander climbed up, bent the bars, and helped Caedric up.

"Wake up," Ander yelled loudly as possible. Caedric repeated this command, and soon members of the army were running out of their rooms, holding blades.

"Ferris," Ander shouted to the short healer. "I need you leading people out of here through the back way." Ferris ran off gathering people as he went.

"Ander," Henry said. "We can't leave you."

"Me and Caedric can handle ourselves," Ander said. "But these are the king's men, I can't ask you to risk yourselves."

"You don't have to," Henry said loyally.

"Think of your sister," Ander said. "Even if you live, they'll hunt her down after they see you here."

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"I don't have a family other than this one," Balith said. "I've got no one I'd rather help."

"Help the people who don't have the fortune of having a family like this one," Ander responded. "I'll meet you at Lion's Watch." They left, but Balith gave Ander his shield.

"You'll need it," he said. Ander strapped it on. He looked to Caedric.

"Are you not leaving?" Ander asked.

"I can't leave," Caedric answered. "I'm morally unable."

"Then let's show them the full power of an azial," Ander smiled at Caedric.

The intruders broke down the door, but other than Henrick, they didn't look like members of the dark circle. Too hunched, no arrogant atmosphere. If anything, these guys were haunted.

"Not your normal group of thugs Henrick?"

"No," he answered. "These are pyromancers."

"Your group of broken souls?"

There weren't many, at most ten, but they were all known to be wonderfully chaotic mages, made that way through extensive torture. They all ran at Ander, their blades set ablaze. One in the back walked behind the crowd, dragging his hands across the walls.

Ander ran at them and found himself dodging several spouts of flame at once. He threw an ornate blade from the wall into a man's thigh. While the man pulled it out, Ander knocked another down with Balith's shield. He tried to hit the man in front of him with an overhead swing, but the man's blade blocked it, and the metal from Ander's sword started melting, it's liquid steel oozing down.

Ander punched that man's hand and felt the bones break, probably due to old wounds. He then kicked the pyromancer's shin, knocking him to one knee, and kneed him in the face. The man jerked back, but Ander grabbed his hair and slammed his face on the stone floor.

Caedric touched the wall, nearly mimicking the man in the back. Vines punched through the wall and knocked a row of pyromancers down. The man in the back looked up.

The vines Caedric brought started to wither, and Caedric fell down, his newly growing arm charring.

Ander jumped forward, taking the opportunity to stomp hard on a downed pyromancer's brittle back. He slashed at the man, who made nearly no sound, as though the pain were nothing new.

Ander cut into the back pyromancer's shoulder, and the man looked up. Ander reeled back. The man's eyes were gone.

Ander jumped into a hole in the ceiling, and it was just barely in time. Fire shot out under him, and Ander could hear a pyromancer scream as they were roasted alive. He jumped down.

There were two pyromancers left. "Erdkar," Henrick said stonily. The walls starting to push together. Caedric and a pyromancer both fell down. Ander pushed against the closing walls, feeling strained as they pressed closer and closer to his body.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. The walls moved back to their original positions. Henrick looked confused, but Caedric just fell over.

"Stop this!" Ander yelled.

"Why should I?" Henrick asked.

Ander thought for a moment, then answered. "I'll go with you; I just don't want to see my friend dead." The pyromancer next to Caedric lowered his sword.

"Drop the sword and shield," Henrick demanded. Ander complied, leaving his defenses on the ground. "Good."

He turned to an ally and spoke a command loudly. "Go, take Caedric too."

----------------------------------------

As they neared the castle, Ander could feel his loss returning to him. Nine years of fighting to get here, and he didn't even have his sword.

Henrick smirked as they walked through the halls, but the guards grimaced when they saw Ander, who used to guard their lands. To fall so far was something very uncommon for someone like him.

They didn't know that Ander had fallen from grace before he even started fighting for them. The instant he entered his house after a long day of chopping wood he fell, the instant he saw the dark circle, the instant his parents died.

Now Ander was just a fragment of what people saw. No one seemed to understand this. Ander was just a fraction of himself, but still, a near broken man differs from a broken man in that the broken man is too lost to help his fellows, but a near broken man will stop at nothing to make sure that no one else ends as they did.

Still, Ander was piecing himself together. His family of soldiers helped bring Ander out of the chasms his tragedy had thrown him into.

And he had still gotten one of them dragged out with him.

Caedric was marched to Ander's left, his remaining arm tied to his torso. Unlike normal, his arm still wasn't growing back.

They reached the throne room, and Henrick mentioned for the two pyromancers to leave and they did.

The king's eyes bored through Ander. It was odd, Ander expected his throne to be made of the bones of those whose lives he wasted in his decade long campaign to gain lands that wouldn't benefit the dead's families.

"What," he said. "Am I not who you thought I was?" Ander glared at him, the deaths of his friends, family, and brothers of the sword flashing through his mind.

And the king just seemed amused. "The shattered man blames me for the deaths of the men he killed."

"I am not what I was," Ander said, looking down. "I am not the same man you've heard of. You will not see an ounce of honor from me."

"Do you mean a pitiful child who cries at the death of two ants."

"ANTS? What makes you thi-!"

"With how good you are at fighting, I might give you a second chance."

"I'm afraid I only have this one chance; both our fates are decided."

'One chance to kill you.'

"I already know I'll live, but will you?"

"Who are you to threaten your king?" the king yelled, standing from his throne.

"His name's Ander," Henry leapt from the rafters, stabbing Henrick. Before cutting Caedric free, he tossed Henrick's sword to Ander while the king drew his own sword.

King Ralthus swung his sword at Ander twice before he was disarmed.

"I must not be a very good fighter, to be bested so easily."

"It was the grip. You swung in the right spots, but without a grip, well, you know." Ander looked up. "That advice will not help you very much now though." Ander chopped off the man's arm, exactly where Caedric's had been cut.

The king's screams had started to gather attention, which Ander could hear by the movement of healers outside. He stabbed the king to the floor with a sharp plunge of his sword.

"It's time to go, Henry." Henry nodded.

"Are you crazy," the king shouted. "If you let me live, you'll never stop being hunted."

"I'm fine with that," Ander yelled back. "You need this second chance. Try to live with this moment in mind." Ander didn't know why he was doing this, but he did know that his revenge had been his only goal for years. He had been taught better.

"You sure?" Caedric asked. It wasn't a question of judgement, rather Caedric's own wish for revenge shining through.

"I know I'm going to regret this, but trust me, Caedric, this will be more grating."

Henry stabbed his knife into the wooden window frame, making sure to really jam it in there as the rope dangled in his hand.

Ander's stony hand crushed through the glass window at the back of the room and the three of them slid down the length of the castle.

Caedric went ahead, and Ander let him. The poor man needed some time to think and recover.

"Did you get the knife?"

"Yeah," Henry answered. "But was trying to sell it worth it?"

"As long as we're alive, we are fine," Ander said reassuringly. "But I have a feeling that knife isn't just a knife."

"Ranik's beard," Henry said. "Was that not obvious to you. It's got glowing runes on its side. Heck, its humming."

"What?" Ander demanded.

"Yeah," was Henry's answer.

"It didn't do that before," Ander said.

Ander thought about what bothered him when Henry jumped down to help him. "Why did you come to help me?"

"I wanted to stop you from killing more than five people today," he lied.

"Not teaching you mathematics was a mistake," Ander said. "But I taught you how to lie just like me. What was the real reason?"

Henry looked down, his whole form quivering. Tears dropped down as he took shuddering breaths. "You mentioned my sister, right?"

Ander nodded solemnly.

"In truth," Henry said. "I've not seen her for two years." After a long pause he said. "Not since I first saw the dark circle."

Ander felt a cold hand clutch his heart. He turned to Henry, and he held the younger man's shuddering form.