Immediately turning his attention away from the reverberating sounds of impact, Tramon fell to one knee, supported himself by planting the point of his sword on the soot-covered pavement, and then tried to approach Alistar. Indignant understanding found its way onto his face as he seemed to accept the fact that he could no longer move.
“Master!”
The swordsman’s aura surrounding Tramon’s scarred, battered body abruptly flickered like a candle’s failing flame before it disappeared altogether, blood spilling from his various wounds as soon as the energy dissipated.
Alistar ran over and cast a basic mending spell on Tramon’s arm, limited to normal magic for whatever reason. At least, he thought anxiously, his energies were slowly returning to him.
Tramon pushed him away. “Go home. Your friends are heading there.” He took a moment to catch his breath. “Your Uncle should be there too.” Hearing an enraged scream from up ahead, his face paled. “This guy’s lost his mind. He won’t stop until he’s dead.” Complaining more to himself than anything, he added in a low, grumbling voice, “Cursed thing. What the hell’s up with those flames? They’re not normal.”
Alistar could sense the Inverted man stirring beneath a distant pile of rubble, his body still in one piece after receiving Tramon’s vicious barrage head on. When just one of Tramon’s strikes could cut the roof clean from a two-storey building, just how strong did a person’s body have to be in order to emerge unscathed after receiving such an attack?
“Master. What’s going on? Why…why is this happening?”
“How should I know?” the man spat. “Go on home and wait for the delegation to arrive. They should have enough people to deal with this—whatever he is.”
Alistar’s expression darkened. “I think they’re the ones that set him upon the town.”
Tramon didn’t ask how he knew, though he clearly took his words as truth. Looking down at his tattered clothing—loose trousers and a spacious tunic in the typical browns and greys that he often wore—the old man let out a tired sigh. “Regardless, you need to leave here. This guy…” he coughed up a mouthful of blood, painting the cobblestones red in front of him. “His attention’s stuck on me. I’ll…I’ll lead him away from the town. Into the forest. That should give everyone enough time—”
Alistar was shoved out of the way as the Inverted man appeared in their midst with a rain of flaming debris, having just leapt through countless mounds of crumbled stone and splintered wood without any regards to his surroundings.
Landing on the ground and tumbling from the force of his master’s shove, he could only watch as the Inverted man allowed a sword strike to his abdomen, grabbed Tramon’s remaining arm with shocking speed, and tore it from his body with a shower of scarlet. Tossing aside the arm and the sword it still held, the mindless daul prepared to deliver the killing blow as Tramon fell to the ground with a hoarse cough, though Alistar hurried to intercept him with a pounding heart and an unyielding desire to save his master.
Tramon rolled over onto his back so that he could look at Alistar while copious amounts of blood leaked from the stumps at his right shoulder and left elbow. “Boy,” he grated through the pain, his tone one of desperation and anger. “Don’t be stupid! This isn’t the time to be willful. You need to leave!”
The man’s arm froze in place the moment he made to issue his final strike, crimson eyes coming in and out of focus as he stumbled backward and grasped at his head with a painful cry.
Alistar remained between Tramon and the Inverted man despite the fear that filled his heart. Too many of the important people in his life had died today, and he would be damned if he stood by and did nothing while the man that had mentored him for nearly five years was killed by some genocidal maniac.
“I told you to leave!”
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
He ignored his master and faced the man, who suddenly looked around in confusion before his gaze settled on Alistar and then Tramon behind him. The toppled buildings and piles rubble, the dozens of ominous plumes of smoke, the stretches of pavement on the various streets where countless people had been evaporated by his unearthly flames; looking at his surroundings as if he were seeing them for the first time, the man began to cry.
Caught off guard by the unexpected development, something about the scene before him kindled the embers of his muddled memories from earlier in the day. This was indeed the man that had appeared in the clearing where Alistar and those dark-haired children had been subjected to tragic, fatal torture. Only, he had been summoned in some way by the tall priest that had presided over the perverse ritual that had killed the other youths.
Guttural cries fading, the man lowered his arms and settled his gaze in the direction of South Street. Mouth opening and closing in disbelief, he eventually spoke up in a shaky voice that was heavily accented by guilt and grief.
“Little Enquin? I…I killed Little Enquin?” He looked up at the sky with an empty expression, as if searching for a source of comfort but finding only an echoing reminder of profound sadness. A moment later and his face contorted in pain, which caused him to stumble on the spot and grasp at his head while letting out heavy, anguished grunts. “The caster…he’s coming…”
As the man continued to visibly lose control of his faculties, his eyes lit up with sudden fire and then he raised his right hand in front of him, sharp, blade-like fingernails aimed inwards as if he wanted to pluck something from his chest. Expression decisive, he pierced his scaly, armour-like flesh with a deft movement and ripped out his heart without so much as a wince. Crushing it within his palm, he retreated about fifty paces away at a stumbling run. Taking one last look at the destruction he’d caused, the man muttered a final, teary-eyed apology before he was abruptly engulfed by the largest pillar of fire yet. When the flames receded, he was nowhere in sight.
Alistar had no time to think about what he’d just witnessed, for Tramon’s life force was rapidly fading. Dropping to his knees, he simultaneously cast two mending spells, one on each of his master’s major injuries. They did nothing to stabilize his dwindling aura.
“There’s no point,” said the old sword master, eyes listless. “Leave here…”
“I won’t!”
“Boy. I never had a son, but…”
Tramon sputtered as a mouthful of blood rushed up his esophagus and dripped through his reddish teeth, more following immediately after to spill down his neck and stain his dusty, soot-covered tunic. Whatever words he’d intended to say died along with him, his hairless head sagging to the side as his body went lax. Not just the hair on his head, but the entirety of his beard had been burned away during the fight, lending him an anguished look that left a lasting impression on Alistar.
The city had quieted some, the slight silence punctuated by the occasional crumbling wall or caving infrastructure. Nearby along the fringes of the plaza, several fires cackled at Alistar as if to mock him for his inability to protect those close to him.
How could this have happened?
He had failed to save another one of the most important people in his life, a reality that echoed throughout his mind like a rock clattering down a canyon as he held Tramon’s body close to his chest. Staring down at the old sword master, a wave of despair washed over him he recalled all that the man had done for him. Ever since he’d lost his family, Caedmon had taken on a parental role in his life and had been exceedingly generous in the care that he’d shown him. Tramon, however, had guided him with a rough hand, had been quicker to strike out with his cane than to pay him a compliment. But Alistar knew that he’d treated him in such a manner in order to prepare him for the real world that his uncle had hoped to shield him from for as long as possible. Tramon had only been trying to protect him.
Thinking of his master’s last words, the sentence that he hadn’t been able to finish, Alistar hugged him tightly and let out a whimpering whisper. “I know Master. I know.” The acrid smell of burning debris filled his nostrils as he wept in the near silence that now dominated the half-destroyed city.
I thought I was strong, he thought through a river of tears, flashbacks of his parents and his uncle Raidon filtering through his mind. All these years, and I still couldn’t do anything when it counted. Not a damned thing!
When Mr. Herst, Alder, and Woods had been caught up in the massacre, where had he been? Deep in the forest, asking inconsequential questions of a disturbed madman. When the pivotal point of Tramon’s battle took place, whose presence had made it so that the man had no other choice but to lay down his life to an attack that he could have easily avoided despite his injured state?
Alistar pressed his forehead against Tramon’s amidst the smoke-filled backdrop, fat tears pattering onto the man’s face as he sobbed his sorrows into the ether. It’s my fault Master’s dead. If I didn’t show up when I did, he wouldn’t have had to push me out of the way just now. He’d have been free to leave as soon as he felt he could no longer keep up with the fight. He would have lived.