Dralos had done his job well. The city was a chaotic mess of fire and screams where violence reigned supreme.
Though we had only just crossed the Colosseum area into the city proper, I could already hear and smell the beckoning of death. Monstrous shrieks rang out from all directions, spread throughout Sealrite. Even the protective walls embedded in the city stone gates flickered weakly, their enchantments strained to the breaking point. It was a scene of utter devastation, at least in the sections closest to the Colosseum.
Buildings with thatched roofs were collapsing in showers of sparks as enormous monsters of all shapes rampaged through them, chasing the screaming residents from their homes and to death. The streets I imagined were once filled with the sounds of everyday life were now choked with smoke and the acrid stench of burning wood and flesh. Despite my distance, I spotted a large bell tower looming over the broken city. Where the clock had been hung was an enormous brown creature with eight legs and a large, bulbous body. Two pincers clicked at the side of its head, centered by hundreds of tiny little eyes that darted in every direction.
The bell itself was twisted from the heat, drooping at an ugly angle that was a beacon of the city’s peril.
I stopped, gazing at the city now engulfed in a hellish inferno. Dralos had done his job a little too well. I had wanted chaos, but if the city was destroyed, there wouldn’t be much financial gain from having a business there. How could I run a Colosseum in a city filled with nothing but ash, blood, and corpses?
“Is this what you had in mind?” Romeo asked in a small whisper. Although his skin had returned to its normal shade, I could see a renewed sense of horror in his expression.
I didn’t answer as we tread the path into a residential district. A grand fountain sat in our path at the plaza’s center. But, where I would have expected crystal-colored water to spray from it, it now ran only red with blood from the corpses that lay strewn haphazardly among it.
Everywhere we went, the flickering light of the fires cast a ghastly glare on the destruction, turning the denizens’ previously peaceful night into a scene cast right from a nightmare. All around, shadows danced malevolently along the walls as if chasing us, distorting our shadows into an illusion of moving ghosts of the city’s dead banished to darkness and silence as their homes and families burned to nothing or were devoured by the creatures they’d cheered for during Colosseum fights.
Despite the overwhelming destruction under the bright moon, there was clear resistance. Soldiers and civilian defenders alike streaked past us shouting warnings and directions to safe havens. Their faces were all the same, smeared with soot and blood, yet the look in their eyes was one I recognized to be a resolute determination to save and protect.
Heart energy and magics radiated and crackled all around us as city soldiers fought against the innumerable monsters Dralos had released, unwilling to yield to their despair.
At first, I simply continued to walk in silence, taking in the excessive carnage and heading toward the western gate where I could sense the enormous power of Duke Alistar and his men approaching the city.
“Okay,” I said, finally, turning toward those who had remained with me. About half had left, leaving me with a little over fifty, only fifteen of which were Paragons. The others, eager to begin their paths of vengeance, had left with my blessings. “We will fight off creatures and head toward the West Gate over there.” I pointed ahead of us down a winding stone path and residential homes. “Do your best not to interact with any of the guards—no reason to inform them of our… situation. Once we meet up with the Duke, it should be a straight shot from there.”
“How will he get in?” Gronch asked, his face red and covered with beads of sweat while his fingers gripped the hilt of his twin axes with a desperate focus. “Something must have been keeping him from attacking this city.”
I nodded. “I had the same thought at first, but according to Chella, it was simply a political restraint. Cael and Lysoria have avoided a full-scale war for decades, though I’m not entirely sure why. I can imagine it being some political maneuvering.” Gronch coughed as my thoughts trailed off into possible reasons. I nodded in acknowledgment and resumed. I needed to sleep soon. My focus was slipping. “In any case, the Duke’s hands were tied. There was nothing to justify Lysoria declaring war on Cael. At least, no reason with enough pull of morality and justice to force the Lysorian King’s hand.”
Gronch shot me a quick grin, wiping away at some sweat with his forearm. “And now there is.”
I nodded. “Now there is. And the city guards are all busy fending off the monster infestation. Whatever guards are still posted on the city walls won’t last long, if at all.”
“Is that why he had Chella in the Colosseum?” Julius thought out loud abruptly, his face similarly wet with sweat under the heat of the flames around us. “To come up with a reason.”
“That is what I suspect,” I responded. “I imagine Chella agreed to place me in the Colosseum to give the Duke a reason to invade.”
“To save you?” Romeo followed up with a confused expression. “But he didn’t even try.”
“No,” Julius replied even as I opened my mouth to answer. “No. He was waiting for Lady Lilliana to die.”
I nodded again. “My thoughts exactly.”
Before Romeo could put words to the puzzled expression twisting his normally handsome features into one of confusion, a handful of nightmarish cries reverberated around us. The flames of a nearby residence warred like the waves of an ocean for only a moment.
Then they split, parting with the force of a massive beast who strode our way with a vicious hunger clear in its eyes, twin beads that glowed with an eerie light and pierced the smog with a sickly yellow gleam.
It lumbered slowly into view, its sheer size and presence a terrifying spectacle. Standing nearly twenty feet tall at the shoulder, the beast was a horrific blend of primal ferocity and supernatural menace. Its fur, dark as the sky above us, was matted by blood and singed slightly by the flames around us, and clung tightly to the creature’s hulking frame with muscles that even Ethan would envy.
“Holy Gods,” Romeo muttered, taking a step back. “Is that a fucking body in its mouth?”
Rather than a single body, multiple torsos and appendages remained skewered on the beast's great fangs; two colossal canines that jutted from its lower jaw, each one as long as a sword and looked to be just as fatal. Probably more so. Saliva dripped predatorily from the maw as it snarled, showing off its lined rows of serrated teeth, easily capable of snapping even bones empowered by heart energy and magic.
Compared to the bear-like monster rampaging toward us, the beasts we’d fought in the arena had been appetizers. When it leaned forward to swoop a massive paw the size of a human at our group and four more of its kind followed from the parted flames, I shouted, “Spread out!”
Paragons and freed slaves dashed away from where the monster had gouged deep furrows into the cobblestone, forming a half-circle crescent with me and the bear beast in the center. The edges of my lips arced into a frown as the handful of bear monsters turned their muzzles toward the sky and released a deafening roar that echoed through the burning city, sending a visible shiver down the spine of many freed slaves and even some Paragons. The monstrous bellow was not simply a battle cry. I felt in my bones that this was a creature of territory. That it was declaring to all under its roar that this was its dominion.
The challenge stoked my rage and I relished it for a moment, then I pushed it down. It wasn’t the time to enjoy the frenzy of a chaotic battlefield. When the Duke arrived, he needed to be impressed beyond belief if he was ever going to take a twelve-year-old girl seriously. Even if I now looked more sixteen than twelve, it wouldn’t matter much if he simply disregarded me as the pawn noble girl for his plan.
On Nasq’s command, a small section of the Paragons launched projectile heart energy and magic toward the bear beasts, scorching and even melting the arm of one of them with some type of acid attribute I had never seen before. I momentarily wondered when Nasq had managed to claim a hierarchical position among the Paragons, but I was quickly shaken from those wonderings when the lead bear monster slashed at me with his giant paws.
I released a burst of silver-core heart energy in a ray of power, my energy reserves immediately refilling as my Core absorbed pure moonlight. Under the moonlight, I was renewed and empowered, all the lunar energy in my body thrummed with delight and cackled with increased vitality. My blast of lunar energy tore through the lead bear beast with ease, spraying sinew and gore out the back of the beast, but leaving nothing except burnt flesh in the front.
The one with the melted arm roared in protest but Nida’s spear surged forward like the bolt of lightning it was, sparkling with an iridescent green flash. It buried itself into the beast’s shoulder right before Nida herself followed the weapon, bulldozing her mass into the bear-like thunder to her spear’s lightning. Her body morphed without warning into a long, lithe-looking creature with the same black and white stripes that her hair usually adorned. Her canines sunk into the beast’s flesh and it roared in pain, its neighboring beast reaching over to swat her from its neck.
Before it could, Ethan was upon both of them. He could not physically tower over the beasts, being around the same height, but his sheer aura overwhelmed them as he grabbed their skulls and slammed them together with a roar of his own.
The four creatures scampered away as Ethan bellowed, Nasq’s long-range users following the retreating beasts with a rainbow of energy and magic that even I had trouble distinguishing. I waved Nasq and the rest off from further pursuing the creatures. Our focus needed to be on the Western gate where Duke Alistar approached so I could head him off before any narrative other than mine reached him. The last thing I wanted was for someone to paint the freed slaves as aggressors toward civilians. I knew how righteous nobles such as he prided themselves on concepts like justice and protecting the weak.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
Instantly I started to bark orders, rearranging my force to spread out further into the city proper and begin breaking a path toward the Western gates. We would break up into five groups, each led by me, Ethan, Nasq, Nida, or Gronch. My team would clear a direct line to the Western gate while the rest cleaned up the nearby areas. I knew that Romeo and Julius would want to help the civilians, so I had them join Gronch’s group, which would head into the residential area. I made sure that there were more Paragons in Gronch’s group than the others since I at least knew Nida, Ethan, and Nasq could hold their own against more powerful enemies.
We split, and my group of mostly freed slaves with a few Paragons charged toward the Western gate. Considering I was the strongest, I figured the other teams would need the extra strength more than I would.
As we ran toward the gate we cut down a variety of different beasts, ranging from four-legged horses with bird beaks to smaller versions of the arachnid I’d spotted on the bell tower. The path to the western gate was fairly straightforward and we followed the cobblestone path toward it. There were often turns or switchbacks that cost us more time, but no one complained. In fact, the red glint in the eyes of my Paragons, whenever we defeated another monster, suggested they were rather enjoying the extra points.
No. What had Gronch called them? Experience points?
Occasionally I’d make a point to stray off the path to rescue or save someone in an attempt to spread word of my “heroics.” The first few times I tried flashing them a smile, but Marisar ended up warning me against it. There was too much gore and blood on me to make a smile anything less than horrific. One woman even screamed, the exact reaction opposite of what I desired. So I stopped smiling and simply saved them, then moved on.
By the time the gate came into view, looming large ahead of us, we'd lost quite a few of the freed slaves and the rest of us were completely drenched in gore. Some of it red, some of it other colors, but all of it smelled of shit.
There was a sudden resounding bang as two things dropped behind us and I spun around to face it, leaping forward to place myself between the newcomers and my group. One was heavy and dense, a massive bell. The other was surprisingly light given its bulbous mass.
The arachnid.
The bell was the giant metallic ball that had been hanging from the tower after something had melted it. Webs cascaded around the bell in a blanket-like wave, edges frayed as if it had been yanked apart by something fierce.
From the distance, I heard the roaring of at least two of the bear creatures from earlier. They were getting closer. Had the beasts been tracking us?
I audibly groaned. Why could nothing ever be easy?
I reached out my senses to get an idea of where the Duke's forces were, but before my senses expanded enough and before I could engage the arachnid creature, a massive tidal wave of heart energy enveloped the entire city. I felt my jaw nearly drop open at the familiar power of a high-tier gold core, all three heart rings around the golden core already formed. I could see the power radiating from the core flickering between gold and platinum, as if the Duke should have already progressed and wasn’t able to.
“I…I can’t move,” one of the freed slaves behind me whimpered, his words echoed by others similarly frozen in place.
“It’s alright,” I answered, letting the silver glow from my core aura fade. I wasn’t sure what exactly Duke Alistar’s capabilities were, or whether he could differentiate between my foundation and his own.
It hardly made any sense for anyone in this world to be that strong. I’d met the Cael royal family. None of them even had a core, yet this man had a high-tier gold core? It couldn’t have been an issue with Cael since the Silverwater baron had also been coreless, strong only compared to powerless mortals. And it couldn’t have been a religious issue either, considering the Red Cardinal had also been coreless. Since all three Pandorians had Cores, perhaps it was due to ties with the Pandorian Empire? I was missing something.
“Citizens of Sealrite,” came a throaty, booming voice from somewhere above us. “By the Decree of King Aizen, Ruler of the Lysorian Kingdom and Master of the Four Seas, war is hereby declared against the Kingdom of Cael. Put down your weapons and allow the Knights of the Alistar Dukedom to free you of your nation’s negligence.”
Without warning, nearly five hundred knights in shining gold and silver armor began to pour from the sky like an Iron Rain. It wasn’t until then that I noticed other creatures were flying above us, winged creatures. I couldn’t tell their length or power at my distance, but there were many of them.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Knight after knight landed in the city. They slammed into the ground causing hundreds of craters to birth in their wake, instantly engaging and slaying the freed monsters with great training and even greater ease. Each knight I spotted radiated an aura of heart energy that bordered on forming a bronze core. It was both awe-inspiring and boggling.
I resolved to research more about this world. I shouldn't rashly jump to conclusions, especially regarding power structures. I had very clearly missed something about the way the nations here dealt with power. The way of creating a core was not lost or unknown; it seemed to simply be held in great confidence.
Or kept secret.
“Ah,” said the same booming voice, no longer with the voice amplification but still somewhere above me. “There you are, Lady Lilliana.”
A bolt of yellow-blue lightning raged downward from one of the winged creatures above, colliding into the arachnid. A bloom of dirt rose from the ground at the decimation and I couldn’t help the surprised intake of air I did when I could no longer sense the arachnid's existence.
Yes, the Duke was, indeed, a threat. I had expected him to be strong, sure. A high-tier gold-level core? That, I had not expected.
“Duke Alistar,” I answered, giving a slight bow toward the now dispersing cloud of dirt and smoke. Even as we spoke more knights surged around us, cutting down monsters that had begun to push back the freed slaves. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Where is Chella?” the Duke grumbled his lack of formality fairly surprising and quite irritating, his rumbling voice a perfect partner to the whirlwind of power around him that caused the smog around him to dissipate in a rush.
His very presence was rather commanding of respect. Though he radiated a calming aura, there was also something close to dogmatism in his eyes that reminded me of a bloodhound. His age, however, was etched as deep lines in his weathered face adorned with a myriad of scars that traced across his face from his collar bone to the top of his left ear. His hair had thin strips of ebony still but was mostly a silvered mane. It reached down to his shoulders in a loose mess, pushed back by his broad forehead. Underneath were ferocious golden-brown eyes that promised both kindness and justice.
“She is freeing other slaves from the Colosseum,” I responded. She was also fetching me the prism to create more slave tattoos. Leaving that out was likely for the best. “There were many more enslaved in the dungeons.” Dralos was also down there, fetching the progenitor’s core before returning to my side.
Duke Alistar nodded and swore, his eyes narrowing. “Cursed Caels and their slavery. Barbaric.” He looked down at my much smaller form as he finally reached where I waited for him, standing to my maximum height. Our postures were oddly similar, a testament to both our lifetimes of disciplined military experience and training. Just like his knights and soldiers, the duke bore a thick silver-golden armor with the symbol of a great golden-maned beast painted brightly on the front of his chest plate. “Is it true that your father, the Baron, has passed away?” he asked, those golden eyes of his glancing down at me with a weight and authority I hadn’t yet experienced in Graedon.
“Yes, Your Grace," I said, forcing my eyes to tear, a small quiver in my voice. "While attempting to protect me, he was slain by the Red Cardinal’s High Pandorian guards.”
The duke’s eyes widened in what I guessed to be either shock or disbelief, but he quickly hid the emotions and went stoic again. Though when he spoke again, his voice was greatly softened. “I see. At the very least, your father died an honorable death in the protection of his daughter. Do not be dispirited at his sacrifice, daughter of the Silverwater.”
I did my best to look pained. By the look on Marisar’s face, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. Still, the duke seemed to accept my words.
“An honorable death,” I repeated, lowering my head in feigned sadness.
The duke gave me a pat on the shoulder. “We must make haste, Young Lady Silverwater. You were lucky in your escape, as was your father. Had the Sealrite city lord not been called away, an undertaking as we have done here today would not have been with such ease. We must fortify the city walls and send word to King Aizen that we were successful." The large man turned toward his soldiers, stroking a beard of white and black with a look of concentration sketched along his wrinkles. He called out to a short woman who had floated down to the ground in his wake, though she had done so with a silent and gentle grace. "Anastasia, contact the Pandorian Empire and the Church of Light. If Lady Silverwater speaks true and there were High Pandorians in Sealrite causing harm to Lysorian nobles, this war will not be between only two nations."
Duke Alistar rose into the air, a giant sphere of golden light erupting from the darkness behind him and bathing us all in a brilliant light. He roared his next words with a shout that I knew everyone could hear over the fire, over the screams, over everything.
I hoped it would reverberate even through time as my first step toward true vengeance.
"It is time we push back against the bastard Caels!” His soldiers and knights cheered back under his banner of command and golden light, thrusting their weapons into the air as their brethren thrust them into monsters. "For Lysoria," he shouted, his words echoed in screams of pride by his men. "For Honor!" It was repeated again. "FOR JUSTICE!" The roar of his golden-silver knights quaked the ground, and I could see monsters attempting to flee the area swathed by Duke Alistar's banner of justice.
I let loose a grin once his back was turned, the blood of beasts still trickling down my face.
It was time for war.
END OF VOLUME 1: SOUL WEAVER
THE CHRONICLES OF LILITH REITER WILL RETURN MONDAY JULY 15TH WITH VOLUME 2: Throne of Ashes