by Sohan Ahmad
The Saint’s corpse had already begun to rot, but the boy approached as if the foul stench was a fragrant perfume, hauling the cadaver through trampled grass before resting it into the empty grave. Once the body was sealed, Tyr thrust one of the newly purchased swords into the tomb, draping it with a relic from his father’s past, a withered and cracked helmet that Zephyrus had worn as commander of the Gold Talons.
The young apprentice closed his eye and held his head low, speaking as if the Wind could still hear him from within the earth. “I bought two swords with the money you left me, Master. One for me and one for you. I thought you would want one, even in the afterlife.”
He laughed for a moment before opening the lid of his good eye, hoping to see his master’s spirit like the woman they once buried together, but the Wind was silent in death. So instead he made a promise to entice him: “I guess you have no reason to smile, but I swear that when I return, you will . . . and so will Mother.”
Chapter 25: Breaking Chains
Following his first victory within the Pits, Cyrus trained for months against Bale’s most trusted devils. Zenya and Syoza Khan wanted each other dead, but they were of noble dragon’s blood and wanted nothing more than to see Bale fall. They relished the chance to corrupt his pupil against him even if they unwittingly created a new king.
By a year’s end, the Dancing Snake faced many within the Pits. However, none could stand against a disciple of demons who stood an equal amongst even the Devil’s Court. Despite Karda’s lust, the people’s love allowed Cyrus to keep his hands clean of dead man’s blood. However, in the exiled snake’s fifth western winter, Karda and his horde yearned for one match above all others as the conflict between North and West boiled to a bloody bubble.
So, the time’s finally come, Bale lamented. The white season was the harshest it had been in over a decade, and the North had nearly shattered the faltering western front. Word spread like wildfire throughout both armies that Hawk and Bull would conclude their five-year war with one final battle just outside Darak’s eastern borders, so Karda sought the War God’s favor, and only the finest blood would satiate his thirst. Dragon or Snake? That was the only question.
“I won’t do it!” Cyrus protested, “I’ll never point a blade at my brother.”
“A waste of breath,” Bale sighed, chewing on a fig. “This is the limit to our power.” His narrow dead eyes stared out across the training ground of their ludus, burdened with a history of regret that he kept locked within his hands and heart. “Have no regrets Cyrus! If you still seek your childish dream of freedom, then the time’s come. One of us must pay the price for it.” Bale spit out the gnawed fig from his mouth. “However, little Snake, don’t believe for one second that I’ll be an easy meal. Demon King’s still my title!” Without warning, he launched his tethered blade at his disciple’s head.
“You’re right,” Cyrus said, catching the blade without so much as a blink as its tip stared into his eyes. “I won’t waste our last days together worrying about forces I can’t control. It’s been an honor. No matter what happens, I hope I make you proud.” The pair would share one last puff of charred herb, inhaling courage and exhaling doubt, as they prepared to face one another in the Labyrinth for the first and last time.
Not a single drop of blood spilled for four long days. The warm yellow of summer returned with a hazy wave, releasing the desert kingdom from its white prison as furs gave way to cloth and the arena roared like thunder across the clear blue sky. To commemorate the coming clash between scale and sky, a feast of warriors’ flesh was fed to steel fangs. From beginning to end, inspired performances brought the throng of over one hundred thousand to their feet, but it was a thirst for divine demons that kept them standing.
The tension was like a living thing that grew hungrier with each kill. Even the vaunted King of Demons felt his skin tingle and veins pulse as if it were his first battle. Today’s like any other day, so why? Bale inhaled a dragon’s breath, kissing the sand to calm his quiver. The answer escapes me. I’m nothing more than a killer, unworthy of such wisdom.
Finally, it was time, and from the crown of the Labyrinth, the Father arose from his throne. “Children, our enemy thirsts for fear! Give them none. Terrify the pretty northerners with your howls for blood! Give them nightmares of this day as the horde smashes their shiny dresses and shatters their blades. Tomorrow, we ride atop their corpses and take the Timeless City for Raggar!” Never before did Karda speak with such a lengthy tongue. His children responded by baring their savage souls for the War God to see as master and pupil entered the pits.
Cyrus was first to enter, stepping toward the middle of the arena to dazzle the throng with a demonstration of agility, twisting his slender body through the air as if it were a feather dancing in the breeze. The champion met him in the center, cut his hand, and placed his weapon on the sand. He smeared the warm, wet red across his face in the mark of the Demon King and took his stance.
Both death bringers began twirling their steel snakes, stalking one another like predators in the wild. The roar of thousands vanished within the pits until the only sound that remained was the steady breath swimming within their lungs. Air that swirled the sands slowed to a crawl as their heartbeats quickened and their senses sharpened until the signal arrived. “Begin!”
Cyrus hesitated to attack. Childish fool! Bale closed the gap in an instant with a lunging thrust of silver steel as Cyrus stepped back, retreating to safety. Bale persisted, inching forward until he returned within range. The champion swiped at the garden of golden dirt, lifting a cloud of sand into the air. Once vision returned, he stood face to face with Cyrus, their blades pressed flat against each other. “I thought your mother’s hopes meant more to you than this. How can you be free if I kill you now?” Bale asked, breaking his pupil’s shallow guard as if it were paper, sending him crashing to the ground with a boot to the chest. Before Cyrus hit the ground, dragon leaped forward with two fangs aimed to skewer the snake’s heart.
The reapers stood silently in the shadows of darkness, salivating at a chance to claim Cyrus for their own, but impending doom grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him to his senses. He rolled to his left, barely avoiding the blow before jumping into his tutored stance. “Apologies for the poor showing, Master.” He added with ever softening breath, “I can’t allow my dreams to end here.” The air around Cyrus sharpened like the edge of a master’s steel, forged in the flames of his killing intent.
“Those are the eyes I expect to see from one who dares for the impossible,” Bale answered with feet firmly planted, both daggers twirling around his wrists. “I’ve nothing left to teach, my bold comrade. No more words; let our blades speak freely and without regret.”
Cyrus shed his softness, moving gracefully while his blades lashed out from every direction. The younger, quicker challenger swiftly shattered whatever initial advantage the champion had established. He unleashed a flurry of whipping obsidian snake heads that slowly pushed Bale back on his heels until they returned to the center of the pits. The champion jumped back to regain his space before punting sand in the air once more. He dove into the mass of dust, thrusting with both ends of his steel snake, but found his fangs empty of meat.
“I have seen that move twice now,” Cyrus’s voice echoed from just outside of the cloud of sand. “Don’t expect it to fool me again.” He crouched low to the ground, swinging his metal snake even lower, sweeping Bale off his feet. Cyrus whipped one end of his tethered blade, snapping towards Bale’s throat, but the old champion rolled back onto his feet just in time to defend. “Can you still fight on one leg?” Cyrus asked, spinning the hungry black heads of his crimson snake without either a smile or a frown.
“Cocky little brat!” Bale was crippled and trapped, but if he was a caged animal, then he was a dragon that would claw and spit wave after wave of silver steel fire until its last breath. “I’m still the Demon King!”
The hundred thousand gasped as the Dancing
Snake continued forward, deflecting and dodging his way through the champion’s fearsome assault. What felt like minutes to the throng passed as hours to the two warriors, but the reality occurred in mere seconds. Cyrus stalked, ignoring the scratches and grazing steel until he stood over his hobbled prey.
“The Demon King kneels to no man,” Bale said, standing atop his twisted foot as they were once again face to face. He smiled seeing a tear trickle down his pupil’s cheek. “Still too soft,” Bale whispered, thrusting his silver steel blade towards his pupil’s throat, but Cyrus had trained too long and hard for his arms not to react. “Well done, brother,” the champion whispered as a black dagger drilled deep into his chest, dragging his body to the golden dirt.
Obsidian snake swallowed the wine that poured from Bale’s heart like sweet nectar even after Cyrus had relinquished his blades. “No!” he shouted, tears cascading down his cheeks and his hands trembling as his voice drowned within the ocean of Darakan voices.
“Hail the new Demon King!” the hundred thousand shouted in unison as the Labyrinth rumbled with the roar of an angered dragon rock. The chanting lingered a handful of moments until Karda rose from his perch atop the clouds. Though he could not feel it from so high, the ground still trembled long after it should have. Before he could open his lips, his eyes discovered the quake’s source as suddenly, thousands of his warring horde stormed through the city gates.
They fled like frightened hens from their eastern posts as Chronosian forces launched a surprise assault from the southern cliffs under the cover of twilight. Led by General Claudius Rex, the Iron Titan and hero of the Cleansing Crusade from nearly a decade earlier, the northern soldiers cleaved clean through the horde’s scattered lines with calculated brutality.
“Slaughter the North!” Karda roared as the bedlam seduced him away from his gold and ivory throne. Like the crackle of the thunder god’s golden whip, his command spurred his people to stand and defend their capital. However, the madness of battle soon spilled into the Labyrinth as foreigners scrambled in panic, fleeing towards shelter.
This is my chance. Cyrus knew such an opportunity would unlikely find him twice. His feet pushed forward, but his heart pulled him back. I can’t leave his body like this.
As he gazed upon Bale’s lifeless body, he heard a voice echo in his head: Run, you fool! Freedom waits for no man.
The mayhem continued to grow around him like a festering sore. Flaming boulders flew overhead, blazing the sky before rocking the ground with tremors. Forgive me, brother. Cyrus clutched his weapon tight and fled with all the power in his legs toward the eastern gates, but there were too many watchful blades in his path to slip through the oncoming flood of retreating soldiers. He hid in the shadows of an empty alley, waiting and watching for a crack to surface along the wall of bronze and iron.
The city continued to burn and tremble for an hour. Hope began to slip between his grasp like sand until he heard it. Water? From where? Beneath his feet lay a slender entrance to a barren canal, lined with puddles parched from endless bouts with drought. Where does it lead? he wondered as he wedged himself between the gap, landing in a river of muck.
He crawled through the foulest of filth. Freedom will taste sweeter than honey, gritting his teeth even as globs of sludge filled his nose and mouth. Focus on that first bite and nothing else. Trapped within the darkness, he lost track of time, clawing his way through the muck until the stench became a memory. His muscles tightened and his lungs gasped, choking on the brown and yellow water. I won’t let their deaths be for nothing.
Cyrus struggled on even as his legs went numb and his skin grew cold, but just then a tickle of light hissed against his forehead. Which way? Its warm touch ignited him, but the filth masked his vision. He followed the warm trail until it and the tunnel grew wider enough for him to stand. Wider and wider, the tunnel grew until the cool touch of grass returned to his feet and he emerged just outside the capital, draped in a coat of brown, blind to the distracted eyes of fleeing swords and spears.
There was no doubt in his steps. He ran east until the west was at his back and sun became moon, swallowing deep breaths of evening summer air to sooth his burning lungs. Just outside the Chronosian border, the beat of marching made the earth quake beneath his feet. Is it North or West?
“General Rex has the Bulls running scared!” shouted a soldier draped in gold, carrying an ivory flag painted with a golden bird whose wing feathers were made of crimson blades.
I don’t know that crest. The smell of death led Cyrus toward a mound of western corpses, sleeping within the starlight. Better to hide. Burying himself within, he watched through the tiniest slats between folds of dead flesh as the patrol stomped through his second home like it belonged to them.
“But keep your eyes open. Sure to be a few brave bulls we can still hunt,” the voice advised. “General Rex said old man Prime would pay a hundred gold coins for every general’s head. Weapons and armor are yours to keep,” he reminded the band of soldiers trailing closely behind. “Glory to the Blood Wings!” he shouted as his men cheered and jeered with starving sacks across their backs. “Wonder how much he’ll pay us to fight in his next war?”
Hours faded into the pitch as the unknown soldiers and waves of golden hawks, armed with spears for talons, continued to swarm the desert capital. Not long after, the mass of dead limbs came to sooth his fears like his mother’s warm embrace. As he lay unconscious within his corpse cocoon, the tickling of maggots against his sullied skin returned him to life. The glaring glow of morning sun burned the glazed crust from his sleepy eyes that darted back to their vigil. Where are they? With each strained blink, his doubts faded until all he could see were open fields and trees in the distance.
Cyrus climbed out from below the mound of rot, slipping through the barren border gates into the unknown lands of western Chronos. The first taste of fresh, foreign air was like poison in his nostrils, pushing the yellow contents of his stomach onto lush northern grass. His body withered and his muscles drained as his lips starved for one sip of clean water. Once he had no more left to spew, his legs buckled to the earth atop violently quaking legs. This is not the end. I’ve come too far, he reminded himself constantly.
Cyrus dragged his weary feet, crawling on hands and knees until he reached a dense encampment of trees. Water! His ears could hear nothing else, not the chirping of birds or the scamper of squirrels, never believing for a moment that the subtle sound of flowing blue could be anything but. The trampled Snake followed the trail of the current’s whispers, his legs stiff as planks and his hands torn like tattered cloth. Finally, when green gave way to light, he found himself at the edge of a small cliff where he discovered a rustling stream below.
With what little strength remained, he rolled his heavy, exhausted body off the hill, tumbling onto a softened shore of wet soil as loose, rocky debris followed him down, trickling into the bed of blue. Splish, splash, the water danced, slapping against his lean cheeks to announce that the nightmare was over.
A pool of drool dribbled down his thirsty chin, and like a starving babe, he buried himself deep within the stream’s bosom. In one bite, it swallowed him whole, smothering the volume of his smiling shouts that echoed beneath its cool surface. Only the fish could hear it, the contents of his silence floating away in a school of bubbles that burst from the corner of his pressed lips. “I did it, Mother! I’m free, I’m finally free!”
His breath tightened with the lack of air, forcing him to burst from the stream as the ecstasy exhaled from his lungs. Long drenched strands of black blinded him to the reflection that stared back at him. No more masters! No more orders. Once he cleared sight, he saw a face he barely recognized. This is what a free man looks like? For the first time since fleeing the womb, his choices were his alone to make. But as he stared at the vast open world around him, a thousand questions boiled down into one. What would a free man do next? He thought long and hard, basking atop cool grass until the earth began to t
remble once more. Cyrus crawled up the mound just above the stream, peeking through strained eyes to see a golden bird just beyond the trees, flapping wings made of crimson. The same flag from before.
Meanwhile, chaos continued to swarm outside the Labyrinth. The city stone quivered as if the War God lay hammer and divine steel to the capital’s thick iron gate. Most who did not call themselves soldier had managed to return to their homes, but one gladiator strayed from the masses. He stepped with a stutter toward Bale, collapsing atop both knees besides his broken body. “You were the most beautiful killer I ever see,” he said in a coarse, grizzled murmur, caressing the dragon’s pale skin that burned cold to the touch.
Suddenly, the gladiator’s iron face became marred with red as a splatter of blood erupted from Bale’s once lifeless lungs. The faintest sound slipped through the fallen demon’s chest as he gasped for breath. “Cyrus?”
This faceless warrior removed his jester’s mask to reveal the remnants of a smile that had already begun to twist and sour. He laid the mask besides a blackened dire mace, taller than either man, before whispering into his fallen idol’s ear, “Snake unworthy of your throne.” Bale’s eyes blazed like the dying light of a candle before they were engulfed within a gust of black. “Sleep now, Demon King. I bring you his head. He can no run forever.”
Epilogue: The Hereafter
One year gone since the Hawk celebrated its victory over the Bull. From beyond the northern horizon shone the polish of a massive wooden door with two large marble, crossing swords affixed to its surface. Two sculptures of giant stone vultures peered down from above the sturdy round fort as a pair of sentries barred entrance to an approaching young man with the tips of their spears. “Hold it, whelp! Where do you think you’re going?”