The Four Territories

by Stevie Collier

  “Ok, I believe you,” he said, rubbing the spot of his neck where the blade had been. “Now show me how to do that!”

  The Elder was holding his knees and breathing heavy, “Sadly, I am not the best at this kind of stuff. I will have to refer you to another for proper training.”

  “Oh… Well what else can sorcery do?”

  “That’s enough for one sun-cycle on sorcery, lad,” he said, waving the subject off with his hand. “Let’s go have breakfast.”

  The stew was nothing like Esh had ever had before. It had the perfect ratio of liquid and meat, meat that he had never tried before. Stew in the land of Reah was highly sought after, for having enough liquid to make it with was scarce. By the time ten minutes had passed he had successfully devoured four bowls and was on to his fifth. The Elder was barely finishing his one, his mouth and eyes wide as he watched the ravenous child drain the pot like a starving animal.

  “Did they even feed you in that school of yours?”

  “You mean the orphanage?” Esh said with a mouthful of meat. “Ya, but not nearly enough.” He took one last bite before flopping back in his chair and letting out a burp. “And nothing ever that good! What meat is this?”

  “I hunt different types of animals out in the Igneous Plains, and only during moon-cycles. As of now, the land of Reah has been overpopulated with predators so I’m just doing my job as a citizen to even the odds out for the prey… Plus, rektops taste mighty delicious!”

  Esh’s eyes widened. “You’re telling me that that meat was from a rektops?” He knew that rektops were very large aggressive animals that stood on two feet. Their arms had three joints and could spin three hundred and sixty degrees. What made them dangerous, however, was the fact that they used a large spike on their head and two other large spikes that grew out of their arms to maul their prey. They were also faster than any humanoid in Reah and were very smart.

  “How did someone like you take down a rektops?”

  “Well, just like any enemy you have to know how they fight, know their pattern! And… wait, what do you mean someone like me. I’ll have you know-,”

  “Sorry,” Esh interrupted, holding back a laugh. “So, where do you keep the meat?”

  The Elder didn’t seem like he was listening, he was too busy trying to pluck out a flying metal insect from the air. “Well, I do all my hunting on the first sun-cycle of every sixty sun cycles. I then usually have enough for the next sixty sun cycles, so I salt down what I have and hang it up to dry. Turns out that this was the last pot of stew until we get us another batch of rektops meat.” He caught the insect with one fast snatch and looked at it curiously, moving its outer metal shell around with his index finger. He let it loose.

  “You mean you’re gonna go out hunting soon?”

  “Correction,” he said with a crazed smile. “We are going hunting soon.”

  The Elder grabbed his bowl, finished it off, and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand. “So, let’s talk about your parents.”

  Esh forgot about the food in front of him instantly. “Yes… Please.”

  “Where to begin?” the Elder asked, more to himself than anyone. “How about when your mother and father met?”

  Esh nodded his head and gave the Elder his full attention.

  “Your father was the leader of the Order, appointed by his fellow comrades. He started in this association around the age of 14. He had been sentenced to the army in which, shortly after, he was converted to the Order and began his training right afterwords. Your mother, on the other hand, was an enemy of the Order. She despised the way that we handled our affairs, and I am not gonna lie to you, lad. We do kill humanoids.”

  Esh became more and more like an excited little child hearing an adventure story, but this wasn’t a story at all! He was actually a part of this story! He leaned in to the table so he wouldn’t miss any detail.

  11 - Barda the Assassin

  Barda was a very strong male of Reah and he’d always been strong. As a child, he was always bigger than the other males, always out competing them in every way. He grew up with two wealthy parents who owned many of the liquid plantations in Zel. However, the money never spoiled Barda for he was always a kind male and very passionate about whatever it was that he wanted to do. He often helped others before he helped himself.

  Growing up, his parents never paid a lot of attention to him, always busy running their business or enjoying fine and expensive alcoholic drinks. Despite this, he was still raised with utmost care, not by his parents, but by one of their bodyguards. Barda’s parents always needed protection for they were always at risk of being robbed. Barda’s mother always wore the finest jewelry and his dad dressed as if he were the King himself.

  The bodyguard noticed that Barda was given no attention, so he took it upon himself to fill the gap Barda’s parents had created. Upon seeing the bodyguard’s affection for Barda, the parents made him a sort of caretaker for him.

  By the age of 14 years old, Barda had been taught all four languages of the world, along with being able to write and speak the common language with proper grammar. The bodyguard, a master of the martial arts, taught Barda to fight in two different styles. The young adult could even behave properly at a fancy dinners and affairs.

  At the age of fourteen he was sentenced to be trained as an officer in the army. What the soldiers did during their mass murdering raids was no shock to Barda, he knew his Red race all too well and he wanted nothing to do with it. He often voiced his opinion to the other officers in training about the raids and how he believed them to be pointless and abominable. He was never messed with or laughed at in front of his face on account of his size, but Barda knew he was becoming disliked. He was soft in their eyes.

  He spoke these concerns to the bodyguard and they both came to a decision. He would desert the army, an act punishable by molten rain execution. However, Barda didn’t leave the army just to find work in odd places or live on the streets. The Order had taken a liking to him, his demeanor perfect for their line of work, and hired him immediately. It turned out that the bodyguard had held a very high title in this resistance group of assassins but never wanted to push his views or share his ideals with Barda. He had wanted the young male to make his own choices.

  The bodyguard became Barda’s mentor in the Order. They trained all sun-cycle, only resting to supplement their bodies with nourishment and liquid. By age sixteen, Barda was completely fluent in all four languages, excelled in mathematics and had the killing capabilities of a true assassin. His weaponry technique could have used some work but he was ready for the final test.

  Upon completion of the Order’s training, Barda was given a choice. The first option was that he could assassinate a Reahlic leader of his choosing, one who strongly believed in the corrupt monarchy of Reah. This humanoid had to have been at fault for taking innocent lives and share the ideals of putting the world under the tyranny of Reah. The other option was to be relieved of duty as an agent of the Order. He would then be allowed to choose any career he wanted. The Order would change his identity and rig the system to make it so.

  Barda chose to assassinate a male named Quad Ozerus, a very powerful middle-aged ruler of Zel. Quad only answered to one male, the king.

  At first, the Order denied this assassination plot as it was far too dangerous. Quad was always under complete and total surveillance. Never would there be a time or blind spot that Barda could get in and complete the job.

  Finally, Barda’s mentor was able to convince the higher-ups of the Order of the young one’s abilities. Besides all this, they all knew Barda would do it anyway. They accepted his assassination request and Barda was given all the information that they had on Quad Ozerus.

  Before the moon cycled to its sun side, Barda had shaved his head completely, placed fake eye lenses in, and even used a small pocket dagger to cut small flesh wounds on his own face. He left his home, which was also his place of training, to complete his mission.

/>   He knew, through personal surveillance, that every morning Quad enjoyed a long walk around the city with his twenty or so guards. He pleased himself by sticking the homeless with a long blade that he pulled out of his cane. Some would die from blood loss while others died from later infections. Quad gave no mind to this, he just liked the feel of his blade going inside humanoid flesh.

  Barda turned one of the thousands of corners in the city of Zel to see Quad bending over a sleeping male. Quad was unsheathing the already bloodied cane blade. Barda simply began walking towards him. He wasn’t afraid or nervous, he would save the adrenaline for when he was making his escape.

  So he walked his casual walk, genuinely tired from waking up at the crack of dawn. Some of the guards were yawning from lack of sleep, probably from drinking the moon-cycle before.

  Barda stepped right up beside Quad who didn’t even look up, he was far too busy with his sick little hobby.

  It was over within half a second.

  Barda stuck a dagger right below the ruler’s ear. The blade slid in and out of the male’s head without even the use of a pound of pressure. Quad remained standing while blood poured from the side of his neck, flowing down his shoulders and onto his shiny velvet garbs.

  It was a whole eight seconds before the guards realized what had happened. Some started to yell and draw their swords while others tried to stop the bleeding. If they didn’t save Quad or capture the assassin they would surely be put to execution.

  And so they gave chase.

  Barda was out of half of their sights within the first two corners he turned, and had completely vanished by the fifth.

  The young assassin took out his eye lenses which had begun to irritate him and walked the rest of the way home. His heart was racing from his first blood.

  12 - Sorcery Takes its Toll

  It wasn’t long before the whole city knew about the death of their ruler and were neither sad nor happy. They were indifferent to their ruler for they knew he didn’t make actual important decisions himself. Those decision were saved for the king. The only decisions Quad ever made was what he wanted for dinner.

  Barda was accepted into the Order and quickly rose up in rank. Most brand new agents stopped their training and just focused on taking jobs within the Order. This was not the case for Barda, he thought it was ridiculous that training was no longer mandatory after being accepted. So he kept training and he kept learning.

  He focused on his weapons training in order to get it up to par with the rest of his abilities. He was especially skilled in the art of sorcery, which was unusual for a male with such a large body. Sorcery was more prevalent in the smaller humanoids. The thing about sorcery was that it was an extremely broad and mysterious topic making it difficult to teach. Sorcery was also different for each humanoid, you either had the ability to manipulate its power or you just did not.

  Sorcery was only a myth for many of the humanoids of Reah, but the Order knew it to be very real and very useful. There was a catch, however, for there was only way to see if a Reahlic humanoid held the potential to manipulate. It was a sort of process, a process that took about twenty-eight sun cycles long and completely incapacitated the humanoid. This wasn’t the worst part which was that it killed about half the humanoids that tried.

  The Order, losing more than half of their applicants to these trials, stopped them altogether. Barda wouldn’t have any of this. He was very stubborn and didn’t like to be told no. He did his own research and asked the right humanoids and it wasn’t long before he figured out how the trials of sorcery were completed. It was just a simple injection of rektops blood directly into the heart.

  At this time, he was living by himself in a small hut outside the city of Zel. He hunted his own rektops, which was an extraordinary feat in itself, and prepared himself for the twenty-eight sun-cycle hibernation. He left a letter in front of his mentor’s door telling him of his plan. Someone would have to feed and bathe Barda while he was asleep. He dared not tell his mentor himself because he would only try and stop him.

  Barda laid himself down on the ashy floor of his hut and stuck a syringe canister filled with the beast’s blood directly into his heart and went to sleep. He was right to entrust his old mentor with the care of his body for he awoke with the male living in the hut with him.

  Barda had survived.

  The lucky humanoids who lived would then have to figure out which abilities they could manipulate. Users of sorcery could usually only manipulate specific abilities such as conjuring, empathy, control, illusion, elemental, capability, telekinesis, and telepathy. Barda, however, was unique in that he could manipulate two types of sorcery; capability and conjuring.

  Through the power of capability, he was able to make himself three times as strong by forcing his muscles to become much more efficient. He could jump higher, run faster, and gained tremendous amounts of stamina. Through his manipulation of conjuring he was able to call forth weapons out of nowhere or even sometimes food and other random objects. Yet, all of these new powers took tremendous amounts of mental energy and he could only do one or the other, never both. If he used too much of this power it could leave him severely weakened and even cause him to black out. Perhaps, even die.

  Barda had an extremely skilled assassin and was well liked by all members of the association. Nevertheless, the Order was shrinking. It was becoming harder and harder to keep up with the amount of soldiers the army was recruiting for raids.

  Barda was soon given his own squadron of assassins to prey upon military raids and that is when his life became pleasantly more complicated.

  13 - Pleasant Complications

  “Three assassins knelt down low on a large tree branch high up in the sky. They used the forest to their advantage to stalk their targets. However, the army was smart and they learned from their mistakes. They began to train many of their soldiers in ways that they could discover members of the Order. Trees became very dangerous places for the assassins and they had to be much more careful. Barda had a plan though and he would use this knowledge to his advantage.

  Barda had always loved this territory. There was a lack of red here and was much more pleasant on the eyes. Once the initial fear of being somewhere so different had faded it was easy to lose yourself in the beauty of this territory. One could traverse just a few miles and find a breath taking river of running liquid. Strange birds flew high above even the tallest of trees while all sorts of animals lived below under the thick vegetation. All things here lived under an unspoken code of harmony. Sure, there was crime here. Sure, other animals ate other animals. That was life. However, all these things happened in a natural cycle under the law of nature. Unlike the Red territory, where all laws were created by a fat king to serve his and his aristocrats’ desires. The opinions of the lower class did not exist. Greed was the code most humanoids lived under in the Red territory.

  “Here they come,” Xep whispered over to Barda, interrupting his thoughts. “From the sound of it there must be around forty, maybe fifty foot soldiers.”

  “Easy pickings,” replied Barda, his hands out in front of him pulling energy out of the air and into his body. His eyes rolled to the back of his head revealing the white. He hadn’t brought any weapons this time, he would rely solely on his sorcery.

  “I’m surprised the Order accepted this plan of yours,” said Drodroh, knocking an arrow into his bow and stretching it back and forth which Barda knew to be his nervous tick.

  “Oh, they don’t know,” Barda said calmly, trying to focus.

  “What?” Drodroh hissed. “Um, Barda, what the hell do you mean ‘They don’t know’?”

  “I mean I did not tell them. Now please, I need to concentrate.”

  Drodroh was a by the books kind of humanoid and was easily flustered. Barda usually wouldn’t have chosen such a humanoid for his team but Drodroh was a master archer and was by far the best in the Order.

  Xep, on the other hand, listened and trusted Barda complet
ely. He was the definition of assassin. Barda could never read him because his face was always solemn and never gave away emotion. Xep was also a highly talented poison alchemist which paired nicely with his exceptional dagger skills.

  Neither Xep nor Drodroh had been through the trials but were still nonetheless exceptional agents.

  “They’re coming into view now,” Xep said.

  Barda’s eyes came back to normal and could see exactly forty-six soldiers marching their way in their large eco-suits that regulated their body temperatures in colder worlds. It wouldn’t be long before they spotted the assassins in the trees. The three of them were also wearing eco-suits which were customized to be smaller and less bulky but they were still very noticeable

  “Everyone ready?” Barda asked, his hands now had a large yellowish glow around them. Xep and Drodroh both nodded.

  “Captain! Up in the trees! Assassins!” yelled one of the soldiers in the distance.

  “Archers!” shouted the captain, “Release at will!”

  Half a second passed before a small volley of arrows flew towards them. All three of the agents dodged them easily with minimal effort. Drodroh sent back two of his own arrows for each one of theirs, killing five of them.

  Just a little further and the soldiers would be right where Barda wanted them to be.

  “We need fire!” commanded the captain. The soldiers began to light small torches and charge towards the tree the agents were perched on.

  “Barda!” Drodroh cried.

  “Not yet,” he replied calmly. “Pick off the closest ones.”

  Drodroh didn’t hesitate and pierced the necks of four soldiers with his arrows. One soldier, before dying, flung his torch at the tree hitting the base of it.

  “Now!” Barda cried as loud as he could. Thirty agents revealed themselves from all directions, exploding out of the bushes and attacking the Reahlic soldiers from the side. Their movement was quiet and efficient, each of them sticking their weapon of choice in their prey’s jugular or temple.