Chapter Thirteen
Wicked Betrayal
CONFUSION WAS TEARING Drewth’s thoughts apart. As he made his way to his own small castle, the upgrade from his once outpost fort, one side of him was arguing with the other. Such that he was with himself that his horse was guiding itself by its memory to it’s Master’s home, with no aide from it’s troubled Master.
His life he dreamed of being a Knight, a dream that evolved into a career, protecting his people, protecting the honor that was his name and Kingdom. And from there he realized with Syndirin that the Kingdom would need to be taken into the future, a higher level that it could be. A better Kingdom.
Betwixt the dreams was his passion for his wife, and for a second he hated her, but only for a second as his ponderings all swallowed up again in his confusion, his indecision.
His horse devotedly carried him home, although in that moment Drewth neither wanted home nor royalty, and indeed cared less where his horse carried him.
But arousing him from his worries were the familiar sounds of battle! He looked up, seeing his four-towered castle nearing him, and atop the ramparts fought viscously several rogue Driadons – the race of dragon-like men – against his soldiers that guarded the castle. He drew out his wicked black sword from his sheath, and whipped his horse’s side with the blade’s flat. The horse cried in pain of the blow but with rousing battle anger like his Master’s, as the many battles they shared before. Drewth took off with his horse at full speed, thundering the final distance to his under-siege castle.
He glared at two of the Driadons climbing up the stony castle’s wall side and changed his direction with a pull of the horse’s reigns that were in one of his gauntleted hands, and ran along side the castle wall with sword drawn. With two bloody swipes of his keen serrated sword blade the two ascending Driadons grunted in instant death as they fell to the ground. “It is I, Drewth!” he roared above as he sped along the castle wall toward the main gates. “Open the gates for me!” he commanded. He edged away from the wall in his speed so that he could have vision of the closed gates he drew near. He heard the obedient clanging of straining chains drawing up the portcullis, and he leant down, urging his horse to move faster, which it did, pounding away the earth below it.
A Driadon raced in front of Drewth’s path, and Drewth saw for an instant into its bright orange, enraged, dragon-like eyes. The Driadon raised with it’s brawny Driadonian arms an axe for which to bring down upon Drewth, but Drewth’s deadly sword was quicker, slicing through the Driadons leather armor and leaving it knocked upon it’s back gasping blood.
Entering his castle he saw up upon the castle ramparts and amongst the grounds before him the confused fray the defense against a sudden onslaught of siege can present. As well, scattered below him the mangled dead of battle – his own soldiers’ bodies as well as Driadonian bodies. Echoes of clashing steel, the yells of his men and the roars of Driadons meant the battle was still on, and Drewth charged on with sword in gauntleted fist.
Hidden in a Shadow’s Cloak spell, with no seeming visibility, Syndirin surveyed the battle. He reflected upon his own cleverness – it was tricky to draw a Driadon raid of this magnitude and effect, tricky indeed. But he did accomplish the trick and well, he thought, and smiled unto himself – an incredibly remorseless grin that could no more be seen than the rest of him during the spell’s effect.
He watched the strong character in black armor with a vicious sword drawn charge past him, the strong character that was Drewth, in his own attempt to defend his castle against the Driadons. He knew he had not to worry about Drewth’s fate in his created siege, for Drewth was a powerful fighter, so he estimated not for his safety in his plot.
However, the baneful screams of Driadons slain under Drewth’s fast, deadly sword drew Syndirin from his content into a state of concern. Drewth was turning the tide of the battle! He invisibly watched irritably as Drewth roared commands and organized an effective defense against the Driadons, summoning archers upon towers, leading his still standing swordsmen, axemen and spearmen.
A Driadon crumbled dead before Syndirin’s feet from two striking arrows. He sneered at the dead Driadon before him, and looked up at the tower Drewth had resided in with his wife.
Drewth’s wife—damn by the Gods that distraction! He looked menacingly up at the tower, a barrier for his success. Who knew that not by a sword or magic but by the sweetened voice of a lady could Drewth’s attention be swayed? He knew—knew that Drewth would not leave her, nor she leave him.
By her blood he would have her taken from him. No more distraction.
His plans repeatedly foiled by the quick actions of Drewth’s honed battle ability, not one Driadon ran into that tower! If those dirty Driadons would not do the job, he would have to do the dirty work on his own, Syndirin decided to himself. And with that he—unnoticed as an apparent shadow upon the ground—proceeded toward the door at the base of the tower.
The door was sturdy, and locked—by a magic lock? Syndirin raised his staff and pressed the end of it against the lock in question. He generated an Energy Blast spell —a common attack spell of any Wizard, only a more concentrated form of it—and the lock was obliterated in the shocking flash of light. Lowering his staff, he continued forth to press the heavyset door upon its hinges, and stepped through the smoke he created from the spell, toward the spiraling stars.
He passed several enchanted endless fire torches, and several doors, which he blasted open the same way he did the first door, and finally approached a door with a polished silver handle.
Ignoring any cautious thoughts that came to warn him as regards silver, one type of metal that naturally and powerfully accepts magic enhancements, he raised his staff against the handle, and shot an Energy Blast spell at it.
It resulted in a backfire as the magic door handle deflected the spell, the deflection narrowly missing Syndirin but instead smashing a hole through the tower wall.
He looked away from the failed spell’s final result, the hole, and back toward the door handle. Thinking through his various spells, he recalled a terrible Curse spell that was meant to destroy weapons and armor, and generated it, the black halo that was the spell emanated from the tip of his staff unto the door handle. The black halo of light glowed threateningly around the door handle, wavered, and disappeared. The door handle, once brilliant silver, now was degraded into a tarnished, cracked, powerless metal. Syndirin clutched the handle and victoriously threw open the door.
The home of Drewth. Now where was the lady? But before Syndirin could search the answer to the question, from the next room over slowly strode the lady he was meant to kill.
With innocent, graceful steps, Arigwhen located herself across the entrance room from Syndirin. Her movement and body were still innocently beautiful, but her eyes did not reflect such innocence to Syndirin; they were beautiful, but cold and knowledgeable upon Syndirin, they peered.
In that moment Syndirin did not breathe or think, caught by wondering surprise. In her eyes there was no fear, but grave observance. His usual victims knowing they were to die, or his underlings or piers knowing his powers, always were in fear of him, which to him was rightful respect. But a lady, unarmed, powerless, defenseless, and about to die, could stand before him and look him in the eye.
He smiled his thin smile. “You must be Arigwhen, Drewth’s lady?” he said, sinisterly but mockingly casually.
She did not likewise respond, but retorted coldly, “Lord Syndirin, I know of your evils, though Drewth did not speak of them in words. Powerless but not hopeless I demand that you release him from your influences!”
Before him was only space, and he would strike her with either his sword or his staff and she would lay dead. But he felt frozen in that instant. Then he smirked and laughed. “Pathetically weak, before me, an unarmed lady, undoing my teachings upon Drewth? I am building his character, paving a broad road of life before him, and you, somehow, lead him on
to a life of fantasized happiness?”
Her only response was gazing back upon him in her own understanding, and then she spoke. “I know what you are here to do to me, and I have no defense against a Wizard as yourself. But my love will live on in Drewth and you shall fail! He will be your death, not your future! So strike, evil one, strike me down in death! But he shall only become perhaps stronger in vengeance. I shall stand here and accept my fate, but my question is, will you be able to accept yours?”
Again with his a thin, wicked smile, Syndirin lent his staff against the wall next to him, clutched his cursed dagger, and, walking toward the prone Arigwhen, he raised it above her. “I and no other am the maker of my own fate.”
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The Knight of Darkened Light Page 14