Few would have ever made the mistake of accusing General Stantych of being a man overflowing with the milk of human patience. No, if patience were milk, Stantych’s would be the kind that turned sour at the mere hint of delay. Unless it came to the matter of young ladies from conquered lands—a major benefit to being a conqueror—he had shown a level of restraint that would have left even the most seasoned ‘long game’ Cassanovas of the Trunian Empire scratching their heads in disbelief.
Or at least that’s what the General thought, reality would have begged to differ but he had threatened it with his sword.
It certainly wasn’t the General’s good looks and endless patience that won him so many bed mates. No, it was his power, and the small matter of him exercising it in a brutal fashion should you disagree.
As he entered the village, he slowed to allow the populace to part like a sea before him. Not out of any particular fondness for them—Stantych would have found some grim amusement in crushing them all under his boots—but because doing that would upset Gella, and spooking the prey before the hunt was not his style.
To call him ‘predatory’ would be doing him a disservice, as that would imply he was like the wolves from previous chapters. No, he made them look like cuddly dogs compared to the depths of his depravity.
So when he received a message to make the final village of the Andronians a Trunian outpost instead of crushing it, he was most rankled. The sort of rankled that needs to be taken out on an appealing target.
Speaking of which, he noticed that the gunsmith’s son was absent from the village. This realization brought a faint, almost imperceptible sense of relief. Denor’s fierce green eyes and bizarre words often lingered in Stantych's thoughts simply because they stood out. Here was a mere child, yet his spirit was not crushed like his fellow kin. There was some intangible quality about that boy that unsettled him, and it frustrated the General that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.
Discarding these unimportant thoughts, he spotted Gella approaching. He sauntered over, wearing a smile that had probably won awards in categories like ‘Most Smug Expression’.
“Good day, my sweet,” he declared, his voice positively dripping with honey, though more like the kind that sticks to your fingers in the worst way possible, leaving that feeling that something is on your hand even after you’ve washed them. You go to type on the keyboard but you worry to yourself ‘did I just get honey all over those keys?’ You just don’t know, and it haunts you the rest of the night because you’re too afraid to check the keys and find out.
Now, where were we? Oh yes, Gella was about to respond with something that was no doubt profound but would push the story along nonetheless.
“Hello,” Gella replied profoundly, eyes fixed firmly on the ground, as if she was hoping it might swallow her up.
Stantych, who had once thought the previous (now unfortunately deceased) Andronian girl was the pinnacle of his desires, now looked at Gella with the same enthusiasm. She was young—achingly so—and untouched by the world’s rough edges. But time, that unrelenting thief, was nibbling at her heels, and he could feel her slipping away from the pristine ideal he so jealously guarded.
The General had a type, and a complete lack of shame, and could have anyone who gainsaid him killed. This unfortunate combination meant that he could do whatever he wanted, and swan about the place being an unrepentant villain.
"We’ve waited too long, my darling," he said with the urgency of someone whose incredible patience thus far was now being sorely tested. "Come away with me now."
Gella shook her head, her gaze still anchored to the earth. "I can't. I don't want to. I belong here."
Stantych’s smile wavered, then solidified into something colder. "That was not a requrest," he muttered, with the sort of menace that suggested complying would be an excellent choice for her general well-being in the future to come.
Anger surged through Stantych like an Andronian snow drift when encountering Denor, creeping up on him beyond his vision, then pouncing with a sudden and devastating wall and encasing him. The idea that she might have been leading him on gnawed at him, and the thought made his blood boil, the metaphor completely at odds with the previous snowy analogy. "You belong to me," he growled, a man who believed the galaxy was a marketplace and he had infinite credits in his account.
But Gella, remembering the inspiring words of Ledo that the author omitted, and with the spirit of every Andronian worth their salt, lifted her chin, defiance sparking in her eyes. "No. I belong to myself and no one else," she declared.
For a moment, it seemed as if the entire populace of the village within earshot was about to fall to their knees and scream at the sky ‘stupid girl, you’ve doomed us all!’.
General Stantych, never one for subtlety, certainly wasn’t going to start now. "By the holiest Martos, holy of holies, you are mine!" he roared, reaching down and yanking her to his side.
Gella screamed, and in return, Stantych slapped her—harder and harder, as if trying to silence the very air she breathed. Or making a point that he was most certainly a villain that comeuppance needed to happen to swiftly.
The door to Gella’s home thundered open and Charan, who had been trying his best to ignore the whole situation in the hopes it would go away, was suddenly transformed from harmless spectator into the first line of a very desperate defense. Forced into being brave beyond his years or just too foolish to know better, he ignited a bolt in his hand and launched it at Stantych.
It bounced off the Trunian’s armor like an ill-placed pebble against a castle wall.
Instead of going ‘oh’ and giving up, or possibly relinquishing his betrothed with a ‘I see, you can have her then’, Charan, seizing a sword from within, charged at the General. But Stantych’s own blade was out in a flash, its glowing arc slicing through the air with deadly precision. The boy tried to parry, but he might as well have been trying to stop a river with a sieve. The blade bit deep, and Charan crumpled, life spilling out of him faster than the blood that followed.
“Charan!” Gella cried, showing astute observational skills but poor emotional control.
The boy was distinctly uncommunicative, on account of being dead at the time.
“Anyone else?” the General roared, and the village responded! If you could call being deathly still a response, which it technically was.
With Gella firmly in his grasp, he marched out of the midst of the cowering populace, leaving behind only the echoes of his cruelty and Charan’s bloodied corpse lying in the street, which still could not be reached for comment.
***
Meanwhile, Denor was doing what any sensible person would do—tending sheep, far away from the madness of villages and Generals who didn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer. Sheep were straightforward, a bit like white, fluffy clouds that occasionally needed a push in the right direction. When they weren’t being hauled off by giant monsters, that is.
The village had been desperate to find an activity that would make Denor useful, but would primarily keep him away from them. Having already successfully delegated this task to Hevath to stop him from endlessly chatting to people until they wanted to claw their ears off, it seemed that the next logical step was to hoodwink him into taking Denor under his supervision.
Up on a ridge, the world was a different place—clean air, the scent of meadows, and the ever-present watchfulness of the forest. The stench of the village was just a distant memory, like a bad dream that fades with the morning light. A slow, satisfied smile crept across Denor’s face. If this wasn’t the good life, then the good life probably had a poor marketing department.
So long as the portable heater stayed on and so long as he ignored the terrible nagging feeling that he should be training, or the unfortunate reality that his people were enslaved by violent oppressors who had conquered his home planet. So long as he managed that, this was the good life, which was an awful lot of qualifiers, but then sometimes life works that way.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Leaning back on the grass, hands clasped behind his head like Hevath had taught, Denor tried his best to bask in the sunlight filtering through the mist. It was the sort of day that made a man think about taking a nap, but Denor knew better—a napping shepherd was just a wolf’s idea of fast food.
He might well have dozed off, leading to various comedically calamitous situations involving wildlife stealing sheep or attempting to gnaw his foot off, but a sudden, piercing scream shattered the peace like a molten hammer through a pair of hands. It was the kind of scream that made a man drop whatever he was doing and run, and Denor did just that, snatching up his blaster as he bolted towards the forest, the sheep now left to their own devices.
Well, almost. In truth, Foggle was technically in attendance, but it wasn’t the sheep he was interested in. Goats rarely are.
Another scream followed, sharper and more desperate, fully shattering the silence of the woods. Denor resisted the urge to shout back, knowing that doing so kind of defeated the purpose of the whole stealth thing. If there was a human threat—and something told him there was—making noise would be as foolish as waving a flag in front of a charging Aurox with a distaste for flags and poor analogies. Moving with the grace and speed that only desperation can lend, Denor raced through the undergrowth, every step propelled by the urgency of the cries.
If Ledo could have seen him now, he would have been legitimately impressed. The boy might not have been good for much, but he was getting very accustomed to hiding from others.
He stopped dead in his tracks, holding his breath so he wasn’t panting like a man who’d just realized he was running a race but had forgotten where the finish line was. He tilted his head, listening intently. He was close now, and the last thing he wanted was to sail past his destination like a freighter missing a station and colliding with an asteroid. Something that definitely wouldn’t happen later in this story of Denor’s illustrious and cataclysmic career.
A moment later, another shriek confirmed that, for once, his luck hadn’t gone fishing. Possibly due to the lakes having frozen over.
He burst into a small clearing, where on the ground, lay a girl—her clothes in tatters, her pale skin glistening like she’d been dipped in moonlight and then dragged through a thorn bush for good measure. Her hands were bound cruelly behind her back by some kind of glowing energy, and one ankle was attached with a glowing line of power to a sapling that looked as unhappy about the situation as she did. Looming over her was a man whose armour clearly marked him as someone of importance to the Trunian Empire. The man looked up, surprise flashing across his face as Denor arrived in the nick of time—or perhaps just a tad past it.
"You!" Denor bellowed, his voice thick with righteous fury. "Die like the beast you are, you filthy Trunian!" He raised his blaster and fired immediately, sending the bolt of energy directly into the other energy binding the tree and the girl, where it was promptly absorbed so that it would cause no further embarrassment.
General Stantych, whose sword was already ignited in a manner that boded ill for people named Denor, bowed with a flourish that suggested he was enjoying this a bit too much. "Ah, The holy Martos smiles upon me today," he sneered, as if he’d been expecting this sort of divine endorsement. "I hadn’t planned on combining two entertainments in one afternoon, but since you’re so obliging as to offer yourself—" He crouched, advancing with all the grace of a predator who thinks lunch has just delivered itself and declared ‘please, eat me, I’m delicious’.
“Run, Denor! Save yourself!” the girl cried out, so desperate with fear that she forgot not to be a stereotype.
"Gella?" Denor looked at her in confusion. “Why are you attached to a tree?”
His eyes helpfully pointed out to his brain that she had a desperate look in her face, and reiterated that her clothes were in a state of disarray that matched her hair.
“Did that tree do something to you?” he snarled, advancing on the sapling with menace. Had the sapling possessed a face or hands, its palm would be meeting its face in response. It didn’t, so it settled for second-hand embarrassment and trying to point its branches at the murderous Trunian General advancing behind the boy.
“Run!” she cried again. Her plea, intended to inspire a hasty retreat, had precisely the opposite effect. Fleeing was now as unthinkable as attacking a full Trunian General with nothing but a blaster and a training sword.
Unfortunately for all concerned and as has well been established at this juncture, Denor was indeed the unthinking sort.
"Denor," called Gella, her voice strained. " If you’re not going to leave then just shoot him!"
Denor raised any eyebrow. “Shoot him what? An angry glare? A strongly-worded complaint?”
“You’ve got a blaster, Denor. Just point and—”
Our hero looked down at his hand, which was helpfully holding the blaster. “Oh yeah, quiet then, otherwise you’ll ruin my concentration!”
He pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Gella sighed. "The safety, Denor."
"The what now?" Denor asked, his hand slipping and flicking the safety off. "Oh, it seems to be working now."
General Stantych looked on with bemusement at Denor fumbling with his weapon. “Ah, the bumbling hero arrives. I’d been meaning to get to you,” Stantych sneered, in the manner of someone who sneered a lot and had probably practiced in front of a mirror.
Denor aimed again. He fired.
A great plume of smoke shot out of the blaster, but no bolt. The blaster buzzed in a way that suggested it had decided to go on vacation at just the wrong moment.
"You missed," Gella said flatly. "And by ‘missed,’ I mean you shot smoke. At the air."
Denor waved the smoke away, coughing. “It’s a...tactical maneuver. Confusion. Cloud cover.”
General Stantych raised an eyebrow. “Impressive.”
“Yes! See? Even the enemy respects my—"
“You are, without a doubt, the most incompetent buffoon I’ve ever met," Stantych interrupted.
Denor brightened. “See, Gella? People are finally noticing me!”
"Just shoot him Denor!" Gella shouted, shaking her bonds, which was made even more frustrating by the fact the sapling was, despite its slender size, actually quite well rooted in the community.
Denor’s readied the blaster again. His thumb slipped, pressing a random button, and suddenly, the blaster began emitting a high-pitched whine, followed by a series of clicks. Denor stared down the barrel of the device as though it had just said something rude and offensive to him.
“What’s it doing now?” Gella groaned.
“It’s… I don’t know.” Denor conceded, shaking it a little in the hopes that would fix things.
“I am going to die tied to a shrub because your busted old blaster malfunctioned,” Gella muttered.
The sapling was greatly upset at being called a shrub, and one of its branches was definitely caught by the wind and scratched Gella’s cheek.
The blaster gave one final click and—completely of its own accord—fired. The bolt shot straight up into the sky, where it ricocheted off a branch, bounced off a stone, and came hurtling with a vengeance, narrowly missing Stantych’s head by half an inch and sizzling a tree behind him.
Stantych blinked, bewildered, and patted his slightly singed hair.
Denor grinned. “Aha! Nearly had you there!”
“Denor,” Gella said through gritted teeth, “not to rush you, but the General is getting closer.”
He pulled the trigger reflexively, and the blaster’s bolt rocketed backward—into the sapling.
There was a pause, a crackling sound, and Gella was suddenly free of the energy tether.
“Oh, well done, Denor,” Gella said, rubbing her wrists. “You shot the tree.”
The sapling, wounded in the exchange but not fatally, swore an oath of vengeance most foul on Denor Kara.
General Stantych, who had witnessed the entire series of events with increasing disbelief, pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know,” he said, “at this point, I feel like letting you live is punishment enough. Just leave the girl with me.”
“There’s just one problem with that, General…”
Stantych raised an eyebrow, a mocking smile on his lips. “Oh, and what would that be?”
“I don’t know,” Denor replied. “It hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
He spun and emptied his blaster without a second thought at the advancing Stantych, and the bolts that did impact the armour were simply absorbed without any reaction from the man. One moment the energy was there, then it went missing.
“A fine attempt!” Stantych crowed, in no great hurry to dispatch the boy. “Your aim is awful, but the passion is there and you didn’t hit any shrubbery this time.”
The sapling added Stantych to its vengeance list, fuming at a second comparison to mere shrubbery.
Denor didn’t say anything in response this time. He dropped the overloaded weapon and advanced on the man. It was all instinctive, his hands were glowing, and he sent a bolt hurtling toward Stantych’s head with the speed and accuracy of a boy who was reacting instead of thinking.
Stantych, quick and slippery as an eel, ducked with a laugh that made Denor’s teeth grind. “That one would have made some of my bolt throwers jealous! If you were Trunian instead of an Andronian beast we might even consider training you.” He reached up and tapped his temple, gazing at the boy with eyes that had turned fully black.
“One. In a galaxy of decimals, that’s not a bad power level for a youth.”
Denor wasn’t listening, he let loose the second bolt with a vengeance. It rebounded off a rock, ricocheted off a nearby branch, and struck true, hitting Stantych’s hand with a resounding thud and eliciting a howl of pain that was music to Denor’s ears. The sword went flying, landing far enough away that even Stantych’s smug grin wavered.
“You actually hit me!” the General snarled, immediately raising his orb-like shield and searching for his blade in the snow.
Roaring like a wildcat who’s just caught the scent of fresh prey, Denor charged. Stantych, who was still in the process of retrieving his weapon, looked up to find himself on the receiving end of Denor’s wild punches flaring against his shield.
Battering him with his fists like so much bad metal had seemed like a perfectly good plan to our hero’s rage-misted and impulsive mind. Unfortunately, Stantych had a shield, and it was one far more powerful than anything the boy had faced. In what felt like the blink of an eye, Denor was lifted, twisted, and slammed into the ground, his sword taken from him and hurled into the woods beyond.
"I grow weary of this disruption," Stantych intoned, his voice sounding slightly metallic through the shielding. "I am your master. You. Will. Behave." He punctuated this declaration with several kicks to Denor’s ribs that produced a distinct snapping sound and an inability to breathe.
“Denor!” Gella screamed, adding nothing to the conversation.
Denor attempted to grab the offending boot with both hands and yank the General off balance, but his fingers hit shielding instead. Like a particularly stubborn weed, Stantych wasn’t so easily uprooted. He kicked Denor’s arm away with a crunching noise that was even worse than the ribs.
“Time’s up, boy.” Stantych announced, and then stomped on his head.