by Dan Brigman
The cheers erupted for a scant moment; even Jaken joined in. But within a scarce few moments, the provincial army’s survivors realized what had been wrought upon the enemy. Three massive craters pocked the earth less than fifty paces ahead of the soldiers. The runic blasts had created craters twenty feet in diameter and nearly as deep, but impossible to discern fully from the vantage point of Jaken’s line. Charred bodies fell apart in the wind, pieces tearing away with even the weakest gust. Arms and legs crumbled like charcoal in the fire, the bodies dissipating into reddish-gray flakes like so many burning leaves.
The sight would have haunted any one of the soldiers, still standing and readying to assault whomever dared to continue. But the sight of a lone man, half covered in blackish-gray armor, helmetless, and wielding the sword known as Lighteater incited forward a cry of utter despair or disbelief from those waiting and watching.
When Stoutheart paced forward, the damage done by Jast’s remaining runes became apparent. The Originator’s left arm and much of his shoulder had been blown off. Enough of his face and hair had been removed to show his skull—unmistakably white—even from Jaken’s distance. Jaken heard himself cry out in shock when the general not only remained standing, but took a hesitant step forward, as if testing the ability of his legs.
Stoutheart limped forward past piles of human ash, paying them no more heed than insects burrowing in a decaying log. His limp worsened with each step until he stopped completely. Jaken, along with the remainder of the Sacclon army, watched in rapt attention, not daring to take their attention away from the creature that continued to stand. Then Stoutheart turned slightly and now what remained of his left leg exposed its damage. A rune had sliced away most of the leg’s flesh, melting the armor’s metal onto his exposed hip and femur. Then what happened, none of them could have expected. Even the myths never offered the full truth of the Ageless’s abilities.
Flickering motes of light sparkled around Jonathon Stoutheart.
They floated in the twilight winds, reflecting light from Einmyria and Azuleus and Sol equally; each of the celestial body’s light offered a different hue. The Originator stared ahead with Lighteater in his hand held low to the ground with no diminishment of strength. The blade still pulsed, twisting light around it in waves, obscuring anything near it. Pieces of soil, ash, and grass floated upward from the ground and picked up velocity as the organic matter closed upon the blade’s length.
The motes of light dancing around Stoutheart seemingly felt no pull toward the blade’s gravity. Instead, the motes suffused into the Ageless himself. Jaken glanced at Jast to gain insight into what the Alterator, who must know what is going on, could be thinking. The confused look upon Jast’s face must be a mirror of my own, Jaken thought. Despondence threatened to tear away his sanity. He could feel his mind shifting, as if pieces of his brain unraveled with each glimpse at the Ageless.
Behind Jaken, Captain Pok shouted, his voice filled with loathing and unmistakable disgust. Jaken suffered one more look at Stoutheart and felt a cry escape his own lips. The light motes floated toward Stoutheart’s open, and what should be mortal, wounds. More and more quickly the motes formed around the general, each pulled in without resistance to knit the ruined flesh back together.
The yelled order, “Cut him down,” startled the entire line, which had formed up closer to the Captain. Some looked askance at each other, wondering how they could possibly kill something that could Alter with just concentration and could stand with such wounds. Drumbeats from along the line began lightly, then erupted with a bone-deep rhythm.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. Thum. Thooom!
“I said cut him down! Jaken Holst lead them!” Pok’s voice bellowed across the open plains, offering no opportunity for wonderment. Jaken nodded, his face set with a grim smile. Death would come quickly today. The vultures and crows wheeled in the sky, gray and black shadows with wings flung wide. Will one feast on my flesh? Will they feast on all of us?
Thum. Thoom. Thum. Thoom. Thooom. Thum!
As he held his long sword up, he cried, “For Sacclon and humanity!” Jaken loped forward, his own sanity not letting him lose face in front of his soldiers—men and women, many of whom he had personally picked—despite the fact he would die at the hand of an Originator.
Jaken stared ahead at his enemy, unknowing if his soldiers followed until the chant, “Sacclon!” ripped through the air. Hundreds of men’s and women’s voices conjoined to create a cacophony of fury and resolute vengeance. The drums continued the dirge, diminished only by the voices.
Archers loosed arrows as the remainder of the foot soldiers darted forward with swords, long spears, and metal-topped maces at the ready. A cloud of arrows and less than a dozen runes shot ahead over the heads of the charging mass. Jaken fixed upon Stoutheart’s face, his bazen fixing Jaken’s mind wholly. Jaken held the face in mind as if it were the last thing he would see. Envisioning the ruined visage as the target of his wholly inferior blade, as he had practiced since he could walk. The realization that he charged toward an Originator with a simple sword brought forth an unbridled laugh of folly.
Despite the sheer quantity of arrows singularly focused on Stoutheart, less than twenty pierced his flesh. All but one rune struck him. All the other missiles—natural or light-borne—either deflected away from a shimmering field of energy or fell into Lighteater’s embrace. Or pulled into the blade, as Jaken realized the closer he got.
With each pace, long and swift, for Jaken, time seemed to slow incrementally. He noted each arrow strike upon Stoutheart’s energy field, and each strike flashed with less brilliance. The runes eroded away the field’s strength as fifty or more arrows hit simultaneously. Twenty-five paces away Stoutheart’s field popped like a balloon pricked by a pin. Stoutheart’s one good eye and the now-healing eye, ruined by the initial runic blasts, narrowed at the realization.
Jaken screamed, “Sacclon!”
His voice held a rawness which no longer mattered. He could feel blood on his lips, his throat so torn. He noticed through the meditation that his entire platoon sprinted alongside him. All bore their weapons with a single-minded drive…to kill the bastard who had led the enemies of Sacclon throughout this damnable war. A war which Jaken hoped Stoutheart’s death would erase from his mind.
Ten paces.
No more arrows flitted overhead. Runes did not flash overhead, their brilliance streaking liking meteorites entering Solis’s atmosphere. Stoutheart’s wounds knitted together more quickly than Jaken’s battle-hardened mind could have normally rationalized. Jaken knew the soldiers would stop firing overhead to avoid friendly causalities. He wanted to scream out to them: to continue shooting—to weaken this thing…this abomination.
Five paces.
For the first time Stoutheart lifted Lighteater to a guard position. His leg had healed completely leaving a spot where the armor had been runically removed, the motes now working furiously at his head and shoulder. New flesh formed unnoticed by Stoutheart, Lighteater waiting for the onslaught. Then, Jaken’s bazen quaked as a final thought slammed along the bazen’s layers. He shows no fear.
One pace.
Ten soldiers had slipped ahead of Jaken in the intervening paces. Either his age, or their greater desperation, had juxtaposed their positions. All had helmets on, yet Jaken knew each one even from paces behind them. He hoped their deaths came quick.
Lighteater swallowed the first three soldiers, their weapons flying haphazardly and harmlessly past Stoutheart. Jaken could think of no other way to describe their sudden absorption into the blade as the massive general swung the blade horizontally. The other seven ran too quickly to stop, their shoulders hunching at the disappearance of their comrades, and they used the fatal momentum to launch themselves at the towering Originator. One rolled, stabbing upward to catch Stoutheart in the leg before he ripped the private in half. Two others jumped blade-first but cut only air before their heads rolled to the ground torn asunder, as Stoutheart dodge
d to the side, his blade slicing downward. The remaining four slowed enough to surround Stoutheart. They had time enough to swing once before Jaken and the remaining soldiers reached this final enemy.
The four soldiers sliced off armor and chunks of flesh. Ribbons of blood sprayed outward from two well-aimed slices, coating the soldiers with a fine red mist. Any other human would have died then, clutching at any of the wounds. Stoutheart paid them no heed as he seemingly let them strike—and his initial parries and blocks allowed for a swirling riposte to take all four soldiers in a blink. Arms and legs and hands cut loose like grain at the harvest. Jaken let a thought slip through the bazen—they were no longer swallowed by the sword.
As the remaining four fell, thirty soldiers with Jaken circled Stoutheart. A tableau of bedraggled soldiers stood frozen with palpable hate and fury, opposing a standing corpse holding a blade of legends. The Originator’s face, still half destroyed and with one new gash from ear to throat, focused on Jaken to disregard the others as if they did not exist. Fountains of blood, continuing their arterial timing with each heartbeat, sprayed outward without pause and lessening of strength. The motes of light still worked. Knitting. Pulling together wounds. Grafting into torn and ripped skin. The motes’ pace quickened, and Stoutheart finally broke the silence when more soldiers lined up behind the initial circle.
“Mortals,” he beckoned, as if speaking to a pack of wild dogs. His voice ripped Jaken’s bazen away like a flimsy blanket. The voice, sonorous and commanding, brought everyone to a point of attention, their resolve thinning at the edge of their eyes. They simply wanted to listen. Even Jaken stood waiting for the next words—never had he heard such sheer power. “I have no escape from you.” He paused, a grin upon his face. A grin of helplessness and release. His voice softened, eyes still on Jaken’s face, but his stare was elsewhere. “Time to die, for us all.” Then some of the soldiers glanced at one another. Uncertainty rolled their shoulders. Their blades dropped by inches. A moment later, Stoutheart’s eyes refocused and his smile deepened, one side showing a row of brilliant white teeth through an open cheek.
“Let us dance,” Stoutheart bellowed. His voice ripped through the soldiers’ uncertainty leaving behind the focus of battle. He lunged forward, Lighteater humming through the air. Halfway to its first victim, the blade emblazoned with light, a streaming blur of afterimage following each swing.
Confused shock replaced the initial uncertainty, and dozens of soldiers piled in pieces around the Originator within three breaths.
With each step forward, the blade sliced through the air blindingly fast, the streaks of light remaining behind slowly dissipating, yet just as dangerous. The few who ran through the fixed light thinking it harmless were shredded into bits. Avoiding the lingering light and the onslaught of sword forms created an engine of destruction. For each soldier landing a strike or puncture, however injurious, Stoutheart destroyed ten humans.
On the tenth strike, Stoutheart’s legs toppled. He crashed onto his side, flinging Lighteater outward in a vicious arc, taking off two hapless soldier’s heads. The blade landed unnoticed twenty feet past the circle of remaining soldiers. Perhaps three hundred, Jaken quickly estimated while he paced forward to Stoutheart’s dying body.
Jaken had to step around the prone Originator to study his face. The motes still functioned but they floated lazily, barely working to thread the decimated body back together. Blood darkened the soil under Stoutheart, his breaths alternatively wheezing and rasping. Blood trickled from his nose, mouth, and ears with his head lying upon the ground.
The Sergeant prodded the man’s head with his sword’s tip. An Originator. This Ageless being. He lies helpless, dead but not there yet. Yet, why am I still afraid he’ll get up and kill me? Because I hold my sanity still.
The Originator’s gaze shifted to Jaken. The Sergeant stepped back, the gaze so painful and so tangible as if it could latch onto Jaken’s being. Ancient pain lingered there to answer the Sergeant’s question, as if Stoutheart had read his mind—pain so deep that Jaken’s imagination reeled, his sanity cracked further.
“Do it, mortal. Kill me,” Stoutheart whispered.
A longing disbelief hid between each word. As if even this being, older than Jaken could reckon, would never trust a mortal-fashioned blade could do any lasting damage. “Do it!” Stoutheart rasped. Jaken brought the point of the blade down without thinking.
The point punctured his neck and pierced through his spinal cord. Jaken could feel the blade push through bone before finally stopping inches into the soft ground. The Ageless shivered for a moment, then stared aimlessly ahead, his limbs going limp and the expected odor of evacuated filth matched the battlefield’s onerous scent of waste and blood.
Jaken punctured the neck again and again and again. His effort held such methodical precision to ensure he entered a new spot with every piercing. With each penetration the motes diminished further, until finally after a third puncture into the Originator’s head did the final mote flicker and disappear. With each puncture, the cracks lining his sanity grew outward, fine lines fracturing his mind. Satisfied, he threw his blade to the ground before a scream of defiance ripped out of his throat. Blood trickled at the roof of his mouth. His mind reeled, yet the scream released some of the pent-up pressure.
Finally, when searing pain wracked his throat, Jaken stopped. He glanced around the battlefield, unsure of what he would see. He laid eyes on every soldier close enough to him, and he made out none of his platoon. Disheartened, he scanned again and within a breath later he caught Jast Four-Finger’s smiling face. His wrinkled face had aged five years in the past ten minutes.
“Are you ok, Sergeant?”
22 — Northbound
Four days north and the man still would not talk. Kirian repeated, for what must have been the hundredth time, “Melek, you are going to have to accept your new-found ability one day.”
Kirian kept his focus ahead. Melek sat atop one of the two stallions he had somehow lured in a few hours after departing the ruined village. I’m going to get him to explain how he did that, if he’ll ever talk. Kirian gritted his teeth in consternation at the thought, his back ached more with each passing hour. Riding bareback had rarely ever been a necessity for Kirian.
The horses, Melek’s dappled red and Kirian’s brown, had spent the better part of the first day biting at one another. As Kirian lay resting by a small fire under a mature sycamore, Melek tended to the horses. Kirian heard a few whispers near the horses even over the river’s flow, its flotsam scritching along the shoreline’s rocks. He sat up slightly, his neck tingling, and scanned the darkening area. Twilight had all but passed into full night, and even Azuleus’ gibbous gave little light to complement the fire light. The cool late winter air gave no hint of movement or the smell of any other nearby animals.
He held his breath for a few moments, yet even that did not allow for him to hear anything new. Sighing, Kirian then asked, across the campfire, if Melek had heard anything. The huge man’s head turned, his eyes blazing with glinting firelight for a scant breath before he turned back to the mounts. Kirian’s brow rose, surprise widening his eyes. The firelight danced on Melek’s back and enshrouded the mounts in near-total darkness. Minutes passed. Then whispers floated over the campsite. Melek turned enough for Kirian to see his mouth moving, his lips parting enough to make out where the words originated from.
By the next morning, the two horses knickered and chewed at one another’s backs, relieving the constant itch of fly bites. The flies are out early this year. Their backs still held a dampness, the dew soaking where the night had laid the wetness. Kirian’s woolen blanket felt sodden. He stood and unrolled it near the fire.
“Hope it dries out,” Kirian muttered while he knuckled his back.
“I’m sure it will, but you may want to get up earlier in the coming days. Spring is near,” Melek offered as he stepped into the fire light. The pre-dawn lent the campsite an aura of gloom, making Melek’s fa
ce seem even harder than normal. A few spring peepers near a stream a hundred paces away offered a slight cadence which mixed with the popping fire.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kirian asked. He’s talking. I’ll not question that anyway.
Melek laid a few downed logs near the fire. They were pieces as round as Kirian’s thigh, from the pin oak and sycamore grove they had slept within. He turned his head, his brown eyes upon Kirian.
“Odd. I figured your skills were sharper than that.”
“I’ve spent many a blazing summer day and frigid winter evening in the wilds,” Kirian retorted. Curious patience kept the annoyance contained.
Melek placed two of the logs into the fire, a puff of ash and smoke billowing upward. “No matter,” Melek said, then shrugged. “Breakfast’ll be ready soon. I was able to snare a couple of rabbits while you slept.”
“You didn’t sleep,” Kirian began, then sighed. “Yes, well. How do you expect to make it through the day fatigued?”
“Sleeping in the saddle is my plan.”
“Yes, of course,” Kirian replied. “I’ll get us some water.”
He walked to the stream after picking up their waterskins. Kirian smelled the roasting rabbits and even a few red potatoes on their sole wrought-iron pan. Melek dished half the potatoes into a thin metal plate before handing Kirian one of the red glistening rabbits. He quickly devoured the meal, then cleaned camp while Melek readied the horses. The sun’s first rays peaked over the eastern horizon, emblazoning the skeletal tree canopy. Kirian noted buds on some of the limbs. Spring is here.
With the camp cleaned and any hint of their occupation hidden by Melek’s scrutinizing gaze, the companions continued north. The morning’s outburst by Melek, as Kirian could think of no other descriptor for the deluge of words, did not last as he fell back into his reticent silence. No longer willing to speak to any question or comment from Kirian over the course of their first hour, Kirian settled in for a long day.