Epistem- Rise of the Slave King's Heir

by Jani Griot

  Avery’s anger wasn’t quite the divine rage that built inside me. It was the crumbling foundation of his sanity.

  “I know you broke the Treaty of the Three Gods, Loc.” A wave of gasps and murmurs whipped through the crowd. "Aemillious, is of the land... but this one,” Avery pointed his sword toward Ezra.

  She kneeled behind Avery, her hands clasped behind her back, her wrists shackled in golden manacles. Blue blood seeped from her flesh and spread in a venous pattern throughout the sand. She had reached her limit without her gauntlets, and sparks of magic dripped and crackled as it turned her blood the color of deep oceans. Even if she hadn’t been chained, her magic would have been of no use to her.

  “This one is a half-blood,” Avery revealed this information about Ezra to the slaves of more than half of the royal families.

  It was a secret that could instantly strip Ochloc of all the power he had accumulated in his long life. For those who shared blood with other kingdoms were tainted, and so were all with whom they associated.

  “Just like her mother and father,” Avery spat the words and stretched the his magically infused arms wide. "Now, smite me, all-powerful son of the sand god." Avery spun slowly to face the crowd then turned back to Ochloc. He laughed when his antics were met with the king’s silence. "What's wrong? I have defied you in your kingdom, telling all who could hear the depth of your secrets and lies?” His tentacles and remaining arm all fell to the sides of his massive frame. Avery looked down on my master, pointing his sword at him.

  “I think you fear the consequences of murdering me. Perhaps there is still poison left within your system, and they’ve weakened you. I think killing the son of the God of the Deep brings you fear. Otherwise, should I not already be dead?”

  “Let my daughter go, Avery. I will give you anything you want.” This was Ochloc's simple reply.

  Emotions flooded me, and the intensity matched that of being thrown from one end of a large ship to the other. Everything; I felt it all: Ochloc's fear for his daughter in his moment of weakness, Avery's rising triumph as he saw a way out of death by my master’s hand, Ezra's rage, which mirrored my own.

  “Father. Don’t disgrace my honor. Either I die by his blade or he dies by mine," Ezra spat at Avery's feet.

  “Is that any way to treat your uncle, my dearest?” Avery mused as he lifted his sword to the neck of the princess.

  He had no plans of killing the girl. He wanted to disgrace my master and his kingdom. He wanted a throne of his own, and to be free of his father. A god, and the true king of Atlantis, weren't the qualities that were necessary to be a kind father. The man had almost everything he wanted at his fingertips.

  He would have succeeded in it all, if it were not for the blade he held to the neck of my lady.

  The sound that came from my body shook the earth, conjured waves, and could nearly be seen as it tore through the air. The familiar dark clouds above dispersed in a vortex as the remnants of my lord’s power were wiped away.

  I took one step and leapt into the sky, the space between me and Avery halved in a single bound. A pulse emanated from the shield, pulling the golden handle I wielded right to its face—the two items met with a magnetic clang.

  I took the weapon into my hand as I leapt again. The shield finished forming itself before the lightning beast charged the glass weapon. I swept the sword in a diagonal upward strike as I descended. The wave of lightning that spat forward either sliced through or completely evaporated whatever it touched.

  The bolt slammed into the sand, moving like a shark’s fin through water. The first to be cut was Avery, the center of the wave hitting him at a slant just above his mid-section. He lost one entire leg, the other from the knee down and two of his runes were decimated entirely, washing away nearly all evidence that Avery used the power of his bloodline. His remaining arm was severed from the elbow down.

  The wave continued, past the lord, and into the mob behind, killing dozens of them in seconds. People turned to ash instantly. That feather-light substance was barely distinguishable from the sand as it floated to the ground.

  I smashed into Avery before his torso had time to fall, taking him off his feet before he realized they no longer belonged to him. An explosion of sand covered the rest of my actions, the glass biting into his chest as if I were burying it in the mud at the shore’s edge, pinning him to the ground. He gargled blood. He grew no more limbs. The ends of his appendages burned to smoldering nubs.

  “The old blood must die,” Avery gargled, emitting bloody sputum, as the dust settled, and I stood. “They will return if we let the mixed bloods survive—"

  His eyes closed as he drifted to sleep. Silence fell upon the land.

  My lord broke the silence first. With uproarious laughter.

  He laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. The sky grew dark once more, and as Ochloc’s laughter wound down, he took a deep breath before turning to the army. The bodies that had not been vaporized by lightning were strewn across the beach, and his eyes lingered upon them before he spoke. "Now to deal with the problem at hand."

  “Everything you have heard today is true,” he admitted to the crowd. He then approached his daughter and stood by her side. The mercenaries and slaves holding her captive released her, quickly running toward the crowd.

  "My daughter and I are mixed bloods."

  Ochloc momentarily shifted his focus to the remains of the pirate king. He lifted Avery's dead body up by the neck. "If only I could have found out where you’d hidden the Lexicon..."

  The symbol of the Three Gods went up in sporadic patches all through the mass of men and women. Ochloc didn’t pay this any mind. He discarded Avery’s mangled corpse and pulled out a pair of gauntlets he had used prior to ascending the throne.

  He unshackled his daughter and handed her the magical braces that had once gifted him the title of “Light Slayer.”

  Ezra glanced at me, then back to her parent in confusion.

  "Father, what is the meaning of this?"

  Ochloc placed his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. "My power hasn't quite returned, so I will need your help for this, daughter.”

  Some people had already began to run, intuiting what would happen to them, but fleeing was a worthless task.

  “I wish things were different, but this is something that man did to you when he revealed my ancestry and lineage. For that, I truly am sorry.”

  It was only after Ochloc said this that I realized I was almost ankle deep in water. I hadn’t even seen the tide shift.

  “You all may run for your lives. Any of you lucky enough to escape.” My lord lifted his hand, and with that action he rose the water level. “Tell them Vassilious is coming for their land, their power, and the lives of any who obstruct our will.”

  "Why would you let any of them escape, Father?” I stared at Ezra as she spoke.

  "Fear is useful. Remember that, daughter. There are many instances where a live body imbued with fear is more useful than a dead one. There are times for life just as there are times for unfettered dominance. You must know when either is required of you to lead. Understood?”

  Ezra nodded in response to her father as the wave behind him lifted higher. People trampled one another as the looming shadow grew to rival the height of Sand Mountain—a wave suspended in time as a threat. Only this was no threat, it was confirmation of war.

  The armada of ships tumbled down the front of the gushing structure the two Elementalists formed at my back, smashing boats and bodies to the shore below.

  They let the wave go. It consumed the beach, as if the land itself had been uprooted and folded over. Runes rippled over Ochloc, Ezra, and me—creating a dome-like barrier to shield us from the forces of annihilation they had conjured.

  I craned my neck up, watching as bodies swept over me, pulled into the depths along with tents, wood, swords and shields, and enough goods to feed an army.

  Vola stood as corpses washed away like muddy footsteps underneath the wav
e. His back was to me and as I watched his hood sweep back and forth; I was filled with a gut-twisting sadness. A flood of emotions I could neither decipher nor use.

  “My decisions have brewed a war, daughter, mark my words. War shall arrive because of what I’ve done. We must prepare.” Ochloc placed his hand back onto the princess’s shoulder. She looked deep in thought, but her father’s next words startled her free of her stupor.

  “End the boy. We must return home and begin planning. An army will be necessary for the first time in the history of Vass—”

  “You want me to kill the boy?” she said, cutting him off. Her voice rose an octave or two. Fear, I thought it was.

  Ochloc pointed at me with his free hand. “This slave is a threat unlike any we have seen in generations, my daughter. He may have saved us, but if we let him grow and flourish, we may one day need to be saved from him.”

  Ezra backed away from the king. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. “But, Father, there is no power like yours in the three kingdoms. We can’t possibly have anything to fear from this slave. I... we... just,” she said as her eyes filled with water and color. The sadness on her face stabbed at my chest.

  She pinned me in place with a single look. Freezing me. Something within me changed. Forever altered.

  For my lady’s eyes had never been so red.

  The king sighed. “Do as I say. There is no place for weak souls in my line, understand?” Ochloc yelled, as tears spilled down the princess's face.

  She turned to me, slowly walking toward me with a hand out. She hesitated, before touching the breastplate I wore. She looked up at me, mouthing something.

  As far as I’ve come, I’m still unsure that I know what she said. I'm certain, to this day, that my guess must be wrong, judging by her next action.

  With her hand still resting on my armor, she conjured forth a rune that forcefully ejecting me out of the underwater dome, directly into the far depths of the ocean. I was pulled into a darkness, spinning end over end, until I could see nothing in the rushing current. I could see nothing with my eyes, but once more, a second sight came into view, borne of my mind. Again, I saw the pillars, and the light that flowed between them.

  Out of the Gallows, into the Wave

  The ruse boys walked through one of the many shifting jungles as it moved imperceptibly across the sands. They had been sent to find the Sun Lion Diamond once again. Only this time, the girls felt more prepared. Unlike before, they were able to bring food and water.

  “It can’t be much farther,” said the blonde, smelling the fresh scent of ocean water nearby. She looked back to see smiles on the faces of her entire group, excluding the brunette. The girl’s forehead was scrunched above her faraway stare. The blonde stopped, giving the girl her full attention.

  “What is it? Did we forget something?” asked the leader of the ruse boys. The brunette pouted slightly before speaking up.

  “It seems strange that we’re near an ocean, but I suppose I’ve never left for this area from anywhere near where we did,” said the brunette with a nervous smile. She picked up her pace, joining the others quickly as they had continued forward without the two. The blonde turned and followed suit, but not without thinking seriously on what the girl had said.

  Now wondering if they had gotten lost in a rotating and moving jungle, she yelled for them to stop before pointing up to the top of one of the massive vine consumed trees and said,” I’m going up, I want to check to see if we have fallen off track and are reading the sun wrong.”

  She quickly grabbed vines and climbed the almost two-hundred-foot tree in a few dozen breaths worth of time. When she emerged to the top of the tree’s dense top layer, she was surprised to see the sun’s location far higher in the sky than it should have been for them to be closing in on the shore. It was not until the sound of rushing water distracted her that she looked around her.

  The massive wave coming toward them was so large the blonde felt she should already feel the force of it from where she was. Its apex was indiscernibly close to the top of the jungle’s tree-line and she did not know if the monstrous wave was rising or falling. She yelled down to the girls below frantic to save them to the best of her ability, “Climb now, Climb, Climb, Climb!”

  The girls quickly did as they were told, climbing faster and faster as the sound of rushing water and even screams grew louder toward the edges of the forest. The blonde looked between the wave and her team, checking the progress of both nearly every second; still yelling as she did so.

  The group closed in toward the top of the same tree as the sounds of cracking wood and muffled screams cascaded around them. The blonde watched horrified as some people in the near distance were crushed between the wave and massive tree trunks, as others running exceptionally fast seemed to be outpacing the wave narrowly. She saw the top of the wave ripple toward them and nearly froze as she glanced toward the brunette.

  The girl was chest-level with the wave and had stopped climbing entirely, mumbling to herself, “Don’t look down, don’t look down.”

  The blonde was moving before she realized it. She dropped between the scattered branches below her in a sudden freefall. She was next to the girl in seconds, grabbing the branch beside her comrade in a death grip.

  With the wave only feet away, she not only grabbed the brunette by the neck but heaved her up and toward the other girls who had not even noticed the blonde fall past them in their own desperate climbs. All that was heard between the rushing waves was a grunt and a small scream before the wave took the leader of ruse boys, wrapping her up in its might.

  She awoke much later in the day, floating at what seemed like the center of a lake. She must have been floating for a long period underneath the eyes of the sun, feeling parched even though she was surrounded by water on all sides. She tried to look around to figure out her location but felt too woozy to do so. The sickly sensation still overcame her even after living most of her life at sea.

  She caught glimpses of treetops after a few disorienting moments of turning her head back and forward. After being turned in circles by the water around her she concluded, “I’m at the center of the jungle.”

  Memories of the wave came back to her and her mind turned to her team. Worry filled her and she tried not to retch as her thirst grew. She tried to start her journey from the center of the jungle, moving slightly through the water feeling stiff and bruised. The wave must have smashed her against any branch or dense tree limb in her path on her way to the center of the jungle, leaving her drifting aimlessly as the pressure of the wave settled.

  She was barely able to make any headway before a noise drove her eyes skyward. A rippling sound built over and over until climaxing with a massive boom. It wasn’t until she saw the flying ship that she grew scared. She’d never seen a flying ship. Its sails sported the insignia of Dara Vivek’s free state.

  The ship was modeled after a massive dragon. Six wings lined its frame. Three to either side. It was as real as any dragon the ruse boy had seen. Every inch of the ship looked to be some type of moving metal that rippled as it shifted.

  The ship’s snake-like tail also moved authentically, working as the ship’s rudder. Bursts of air helped the ship adjust as the tail swished back and forth.

  It wasn’t until the dragon’s head turned toward her on its descent that she closed her eyes. She did not see the dragon’s giant mouth open to reveal Dara Vivek floating within, the area surrounded by runes and twisting univers made visible. She floated above a pedestal with both arms out to her sides, wearing bright blue Elementalist gauntlets on her hands. The woman’s hair was let down and flapped wildly as she smiled down at the girl. Sweat drenched Dara’s face and blood dripped from her nose. Everything behind the woman was blanketed in pure white light.

  Within moments, the blonde was scooped up by one of the ship’s claws and thrown into the dragon’s mouth at Dara’s feet. The woman fell from the air and attendants ran to her aid as she rose
shakily to one knee from the floor. Her pride caused her to swat the woman away as others ran to take over the controls of the ship, but when some of her students refused to step away, she lashed out.

  Dara grabbed the blonde’s leg. “I said back!” The motion of her arm cut through the air and burst outward in an explosive wave of water and excess univers. The ship’s mouth was still closing and some of the more powerless individuals flew clear out of the sky vessel and into the waters of the flooded jungles below. Others around her, who were accustomed to her anger, merely ducked or stepped casually out of the way.

  She sighed and dropped the blonde before pointing at the falling or floating members of her ship’s crew. “Please retrieve the others before we depart.”

  Dara then grabbed the girl by the leg and started toward the room’s entrance. The blonde tried not to move, still wanting to rub the side she’d crash-landed on after being flung into the ship. She settled on cracking an eye open slightly only to see Dara pulling out a training collar popular in other kingdoms across the endless realms. She closed her eyes, knowing the torture device and her would be meeting soon enough, and preferred not to stare her fate down just yet. After she was pulled further inward Dara was joined by another voice,

  “You’re going to have to let me fly this ship sometime, auntie.”

  “You’ve already built a transference system to power a light mechanism that uses the energy drawn in by the plant,” said the boy. The blonde thought he must be the prince of Vassilious. The girl’s mind raced for a moment before she remembered the name of Ochloc’s son. Never having had seen him up close, she attempted to peek once more and had to force her eyes closed. Aemillious looked right at her as she was dragged past more pedestals like the one Dara had floated above moments prior.

  All the short columns held their own Sun Lion Diamonds, levitating inches above their surfaces, drawing in univers like insatiable miniature magic holes. She used her ability to look at the plant up close once more, hoping to see its aura, and was shocked at the powerful storms of energy held within.