by Sandell Wall
The First Champion
Shrouded King Book 3
by Sandell Wall
The First Champion © 2021 by Sandell Wall
Published by Sandell Wall
Cover art by Ricky Gunawan
Map by Sandell Wall (Using Wondercraft)
Proofed and edited by Alicia Street
All rights reserved
First Edition
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
For my wife, Holly. Thank you for believing in me.
Prologue
MAZAREEM TASTED BLOOD. THE metallic tang lingered. For three months, he had survived on the blood of his victims. Fortunate for him, the countryside did not lack easy targets, the latest of which lay freshly dead on the cold stone nearby. Mazareem swallowed again. He loathed the aftertaste.
Crouched on the floor of a small cave, Mazareem chiseled at the rock beneath his feet with a knife. The blade was ruined, blunted and chipped by the crude work. Mazareem’s hands moved with a feverish intensity. Strange symbols and arcane runes radiated outward in a small circle under his blade. Circumstance demanded haste, and he did his best to ignore the poor quality of his efforts. The magic would still work, even if the spell was not perfectly inscribed.
Outside, the forest rang with the cries of Mazareem’s hunters. He had been reckless, snatching a man from his field in broad daylight. Apparently, the man’s family had walked into town and filed a formal complaint. After months of mysterious abductions and ghastly deaths, the local villagers had finally found their courage and formed a mob, complete with torches and pitchforks. Not even nightfall had deterred them. Darkness had slowed them down, but they would find this cave soon.
Mazareem intended to be gone before that happened.
At the back of this cave, carved in a section of unnaturally smooth stone, was an ancient portal to Vaul. Mazareem had almost given up his search for the gateway to follow his prey. He had found the doorway between realms only by chance one day when he was forced to use the cave as a hiding spot. He was reluctant to use an untested portal—he had no idea where it would drop him—but he was out of options.
If they had survived, Kaiser, Lacrael, and Sorrell had a long head start on him, and Mazareem certainly could not stay here. He may be desperate, but he was not foolhardy. Muttering to himself, Mazareem put the finishing touches on the spell and then used the tip of the knife to pry a chip of stone from the center of the intricate pattern.
This chip was Mazareem’s way back if the other side of the gateway proved inhospitable. In the event of danger, he could use it to tear himself from another realm and return to this exact spot. Personal portal magic was perilous, but he had survived its rigors many times before. There was no way Mazareem would venture into Vaul without a way to escape.
Mazareem slipped the stone chip into a pocket and got to his feet. He used a foot to push a rock over the spell scratched into the floor. Best to hide it from curious eyes. The magic would still work. Mazareem glanced toward the mouth of the cave. Angry voices rang out from somewhere close by. It was time to go.
At the rear of the cave, Mazareem presented Abimelech’s scale to the portal. The piece of the dragon lord’s dandruff was dwindling dangerously. Without mixing it with the human blood Mazareem consumed, he would die. But even in its reduced state, the magic it contained still worked. The portal responded to the scale.
Pale green light blossomed from the cold stone. It expanded to form a swirling cloud as wide as Mazareem was tall. The gateway spun slowly in front of Mazareem, beckoning him to step into the void it promised. In a thousand years as Abimelech’s servant, Mazareem thought he had forgotten what fear felt like. But he knew now he had only been deluding himself.
Mazareem took a deep breath and stepped into the light.
Chapter 1
LACRAEL CROUCHED ON A plain of blasted sand. A miasma thicker than smoke swirled around her, blotting out the sky and obscuring her vision. It filled the air like soot. She could not see more than thirty feet in any direction. The cloth mask over her mouth and nose prevented her from inhaling the worst of it, but it did not stop the smell. Even after three months, Lacrael found the slightly sweet scent of rot sickening.
Weak sunlight filtered down through the smog. The stuff seemed thicker today, which worried Lacrael. She waited for the churning to dissipate before continuing on. When it did, Lacrael got to her feet and moved toward her goal—an outcropping of rock she knew should be there. She had come this way many times before.
Plants did not survive in this desolate land. That left stone and sand, and whatever creatures were hardy enough to adapt. Very little of the animal life endured in its original form. Over time, the airborne corruption twisted even the most placid creature into a ravenous beast. Monsters stalked the miasma, and Lacrael expected to encounter one every time she ventured out.
Lacrael paused again when the miasma parted to reveal the ridge of jagged rock. It jutted out of the sand like exposed bone, a barren shelf of stone that disappeared out of sight to Lacrael’s left. She eyed the dark crevices in the rocks. From here, her eyes could not penetrate the deep shadows, but she hoped to find her prey lurking within.
She strained her senses, certain something was wrong, but she was unable to identify the source of her unease. Lacrael forced herself forward. If she did not hunt, they would not eat. Everyone back at the camp was depending on her.
Stepping softly, Lacrael approached the outcropping. She kept low in an effort to remain unnoticed. Her quarry was slow, but it was prone to defend itself if it sensed a predator. At the first cleft in the stone, Lacrael peered inside. Her stealth had been rewarded. Just inside the crevice, a giant rock snail clung to the stone. The thing’s ugly shell was as big as Lacrael’s head, and she knew from experience that it was just as hard as the rock it mimicked.
To Lacrael’s relief, the snail had not detected her. The nasty little beasts spit saliva that burned like acid when they felt threatened. Quick a
nd confident, Lacrael reached a hand into the opening and placed her palm on top of the shell. Heat flowed through her fingers and into the snail. The creature let out a high-pitched scream as it boiled alive in its own juices. In death, the snail released its hold on the rock, and Lacrael caught its weight with her arm.
Prize in hand, Lacrael pulled the cooked mollusk from the crack. One more like this and her hunt would be finished. They would all eat tonight, assuming Niad found similar success. Lacrael wrinkled her nose at the smell of sizzling snail. Snail meat was the only thing keeping them alive, but the stuff tasted foul. And it had the texture of slimy leather.
Lacrael placed the steaming shell in the sand and knelt next to it to rest. Even that pitiful use of her power left her drained. At best, she could summon heat from her hands. She had not been able to conjure a living flame since fleeing through the portal. She hated how weak this made her feel. This power had been her only companion for years, and she now felt defined by it. To be cut off from it made her feel incomplete.
Three months ago, they had escaped from the realm of Praxis only to be deposited in Lacrael’s worst nightmare. Vaul, her home, was a hostile realm, and they had stumbled out of the portal into a world of death. They were somewhere in the heart of the Ravening. A roving, sentient miasma that slowly spread across the earth, leaving nothing but poisoned desert in its wake.
Only Lacrael’s and Niad’s knowledge of the harsh wasteland had allowed them to survive this long. But their numbers were dwindling, and most of those who still lived were sick. The miasma affected some worse than others. Time was running out. They were looking to her for leadership, and Lacrael knew she needed to do more than hunt snails, but she had no idea what else to do.
Tendrils of miasma had formed in the air around her face, questing towards her nose and mouth. Lacrael swatted at them in annoyance, and they vanished beneath her hand. With a weary sigh, Lacrael got back to her feet. She had enough power now to sear another snail.
The second was not as easy to find as the first. Lacrael had to clamber back and forth across the outcropping until she finally spotted another shell camouflaged against the rock. This snail was smaller, and rather than fight, it tried to slither away when it spotted her. Lacrael managed to get a hand on it before it disappeared into the rocks.
A snail in each hand, Lacrael started back towards camp. The only way to navigate the shrouded desert was to follow her own tracks back the way she had come. Every several hundred feet, she had dug a small hole or made a stack of stones to mark her path. Lacrael navigated from marker to marker, careful not to lose her way. To get lost in the miasma was to invite almost certain death.
Lacrael missed walking on solid ground. Traveling across the sand sapped her stamina, and it took twice as long to get anywhere. When she had almost reached the camp, Lacrael spotted Niad’s crouched form waiting for her. Niad stood as she drew near.
“I don’t know how you find them so easily,” Niad said, gesturing to the two snails Lacrael carried. “I’ve only got one, and he almost got away from me.” Niad’s voice sounded muffled behind her mask.
Disappointed, Lacrael traded burdens with Niad, taking the other woman’s single catch. Someone would go hungry today. Lacrael cooked the already dead snail so that it would be ready to eat when they entered the camp.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous of that trick,” Niad said. “These slimy little wretches are damned hard to kill by hand. That one spit at me—almost hit me in the face.”
Niad held up her right hand to show Lacrael. The back of her hand sported an ugly red welt that had started to blister.
“A better trick would be finding a way to get us out of here,” Lacrael said bitterly. “We’re slowly starving on burned snail meat.”
“We both know the sort of monsters that stalk the Ravening,” Niad said. “It’s a miracle that we’ve lasted this long without them finding us. If we start traveling overland, our presence won’t remain unnoticed. And where would we go? How would we pick a direction? As far as anyone knows, we’re weeks from civilization. A civilization that would probably kill us just for existing.”
“You think I don’t know all of that?” Lacrael snapped. “But one thing is certain: if we stay here, we’ll all die.”
“I’m sorry,” Niad said after a moment of hurt silence. “I don’t mean to sound so bleak. I just don’t see how we get out of this. People are sent into the Ravening to die. No one ever comes out. The captain is sick, and he’s getting worse by the day. And he’s not the only one. Even if we continue to avoid detection, I’d give us another week, two at most, before people start to die.”
Lacrael did her best to keep her anger in check at the defeat she heard in Niad’s voice. She was not ready to give up and die. And she was not about to sit idly by and watch the people she cared about suffer.
“They’re depending on us,” Lacrael said. “They’re trusting us to come up with a solution.”
Now it was Niad’s turn to be bitter.
“Why doesn’t your ‘high king’ deliver us?” Niad said. “How is it that when we need him the most, he’s nowhere to be found? I followed the captain because I believed in him. I didn’t share his faith and mysticism, but I thought that if a man like him believed, then it must contain some element of truth. Now I can’t shake the fear that I’ve been a fool. Even the strong and intelligent can be ruled by their delusions.”
“You know I can’t answer that,” Lacrael said. “Brant thinks the high king is distant because he’s fighting Abimelech in the spirit realm. He’d come to our aid if he could, but our limited powers are the best he can give us right now.”
“How can you still have faith in him, after all that’s happened?”
“What good is a faith that doesn’t survive hardship? If I only trusted the high king when things are going well, what right do I have to call on his aid in a time of struggle?”
“And? Have you called? Does he answer?”
Lacrael frowned, the expression hidden behind her mask.
“I don’t know,” Lacrael said. “Maybe he’s given us the tools we need, and he expects us to figure it out ourselves. I sometimes wonder if the trials we go through are because we screw things up, not because the high king withholds his help.”
Niad snorted. “There’s a thought. We’re such a mess that not even a god can fix our mistakes.”
Lacrael shook her head. “He’s not a god. At least, I don’t think he is, and I’ve never heard anyone say that he claims to be.”
“Then what is he?”
“High King Rowen stands as the eternal paragon of justice, mercy, and righteousness. He’s the rightful king of the four realms. His throne was stolen by Abimelech’s treachery, and he was banished to the spirit realm. Abimelech couldn’t destroy him, but he could imprison him and erase his name from history. For the last thousand years, he’s been trying to find a way to strike back and deliver his people from the enemy’s tyranny.”
“You and the captain must have read the same book, because that sounds like, word-for-word, what he used to say.”
“My grandfather, Garlang, was a Dragonslayer, like Gustavus. What I know of High King Rowen, I learned from him.”
“I don’t think the captain claims that title anymore.”
Lacrael did not immediately respond. Gustavus’s loss of faith in the high king was a sore point for her. To her great delight, she had found a new ally in Brant, whose belief grew daily. In fact, Brant was starting to challenge Lacrael in ways that strengthened her own faith in the high king.
“I like to think that Gustavus will return to his faith someday,” Lacrael said at last.
“He’s definitely a different man without it,” Niad said. “It’s like he’s trying to sail without a compass now.”
Niad swiped a hand at the talons of dark purple mist that were caressing her face. The two of them had been talking for several minutes now, which was attracting the attention of the
miasma.
“This blasted stuff is thick today,” Niad said.
“Did you feel anything strange while you were hunting?” Lacrael said. “I could have sworn I sensed a different sort of awareness in the miasma. Like it was restless, more alert than usual.”
“Now that you mention it, I did—,” Niad started to say, but she stopped short when a shadow fell over the two of them.
Lacrael leapt to her feet and looked up at where the faint light of the sun had been filtering through the smog. A wall of darkness crept across the sky. Its advance was slow but inexorable.
“A blight star,” Lacrael said, her voice almost a whisper. “I should have known; I should have suspected. We have to get everyone to move, now!”
Cooked snails forgotten, Lacrael sprinted towards the camp with Niad close behind. Lacrael pulled the mask from her face and started shouting well before they reached the others.
“Everyone up!” Lacrael shouted. “We have to get away from here!”
She heard the massive creature now, each thud of its many thousand feet hitting the sand like a felled tree. The ground beneath her feet trembled with its passing. It was close. Too close. Lacrael could not believe she had been so careless. Ahead of her, the miasma thinned, and she burst into their pitiful campsite. It was nothing more than a circle of smoothed sand ringed by a pitiful assortment of rock shelters and lean-tos built from the bleached remains of long-dead trees.
In the center of the cleared area, Kaiser was already on his feet with Sorrell at his side. He wielded a single glowing scimitar, and she held her ice rapier at the ready. Brant stood a little way behind them, his attention on the encroaching darkness. They lowered their weapons when Lacrael appeared but did not dismiss them.
Lacrael waved an arm and pointed in the only direction that was not covered in shadow.
“Leave everything and run!” Lacrael cried.
They did not question her.
Kaiser grabbed Tarathine from where she had been crouching and pushed the girl towards the daylight. Sorrell stayed close at his side, her rapier raised and ready to strike. In three huge strides, Brant moved to stand in front of Lacrael. He gestured towards the shelters on the perimeter of the camp.