Kings of Ghumai- The Complete series Box Set

by D N Meinster

  The Sinful Three were circling Amelia, cackling and taunting her as they went. The Grand Mage had been splayed out before them in a most grotesque way. Her arms and legs had been separated from her torso, and she laid helplessly still in the sand next to them. Not a drop of blood leaked from the dismembered limbs or from her body. They had been removed cleanly by magic, and her opponents made sure she would not be able to piece herself back together.

  One of the Sinful Three held two staffs, the silver one bedecked with wings belonging to Amelia. "You're so arrogant, you didn't believe you needed protection," he said. "Will today change that?"

  "Not a chance," the one with the mighty beard answered.

  Zeniri tried to think of their names as he observed them. But as his recollections failed him, the voices revealed their identities.

  Kas was the Faun holding two staffs. Urto was the one with too much facial hair. And Rayla was the woman who would notice them first.

  Zeniri shuddered but didn't warn Azzer, as speaking might be what gave them away.

  "I wonder why Neanthal is so afraid of you," Kas went on. "If we can take you, there's no doubt that he can."

  "He won't have to worry about her after today," Rayla remarked.

  "I almost feel bad for her," Urto mumbled.

  His partners gawked at him.

  "I said almost."

  As Zeniri and Azzer continued to observe, Rayla cautiously eyed the tree line that was hiding them. "We should finish this," she urged.

  "She knows," Zeniri whispered into Azzer's ear.

  That was enough to compel Azzer onward. He marched through to the other side of the trees and let loose three blue lightning bolts from his staff, each striking the chest of their targets.

  The Sinful Three flew away from Amelia and onto their backs, Urto's beard catching fire at the point of impact.

  "Didn't anyone warn you about the spontaneous lightning that afflicts these islands?" Azzer said while holding back a laugh.

  Zeniri rushed past Azzer and punched Rayla in the eye as she tried to get back up. "I wouldn't."

  Urto was distracted by the growing inferno that was eating away his beard. He kept trying to swat it out, but his attempts were ineffective.

  Kas raised both staffs above him, and they appeared to pull him back up onto his feet. "Didn't anyone warn you what happens when you try to take on the Sinful Three?" Slicing through the air with both staffs, he unleashed a powerful burst that sent Azzer and Zeniri tumbling into the sand.

  Subsequently, he sent a stream of water from his staff that quelled the fire on Urto's beard.

  "Don't do it," one of the voices in Zeniri's head cautioned him.

  "If he doesn't, Azzer dies," another voice responded.

  Zeniri hopped up and charged at Kas while he was targeting Azzer.

  Kas was taken aback by the brazen soldier, who latched his hands onto both staffs before he could finish off the blue mage.

  Both of them tugged at the staffs until Kas finally had enough and propelled Zeniri into the sky with his magic.

  Zeniri screamed as he watched Amelia's home and the trees surrounding it shrink while he was sent higher and higher.

  "I told you," one of the voices said.

  M'dalla let go of Slythe as soon as she noticed Yuurei racing down the shore. Her boyfriend looked aghast as she pushed off his chest and started swimming back to land. Whatever the motives behind Yuurei's haste, she knew it wouldn't be good.

  M'dalla had been trained by Rantiford and was on her way to becoming a guardian when she met Slythe. Though she was slightly older than the Prince, she was taken with him right away. His piercing eyes and flowing silver hair captured her heart in an instant. It took a bit longer for her to win his.

  The devastating loss of his father had caused Slythe to close himself off from any sort of emotional attachment. She hadn't known the extent of his pain until she started following him around and trying to bump into him "accidently." It was Yuurei that noticed what she was up to, but instead of trying to keep her away, he helped arrange a meeting between them.

  It was harder getting Slythe to open up than it was training as a guardian. As far as M'dalla knew, he didn't speak to anyone besides his mother and brother until she came around. Apparently, he'd been holding a lot back, for as soon as she got him to be honest with her, Slythe let loose a barrage of grievances. He hated how everyone said he looked like his father. Being reminded of Aergo when he looked in the mirror caused him pain. He was glad he had an older brother because he never wanted to be king. His mother was sad all the time and she made him feel worse when he tried to cheer her up.

  Once she and Slythe were officially in a relationship, she had to give up her goal of being a guardian. It was a potential conflict, Rantiford had told her. So she sacrificed that life and devoted herself to love.

  Being with the Prince had numerous advantages. But there were also days when having experience in combat training also had its benefits.

  M'dalla emerged from the waters, her violet garments dripping seawater, and ran up to Yuurei. "What's happened?" she asked. She feared Neanthal had invaded the Islands before they'd even had the chance to invade Kytheras.

  "Amelia's life is in danger," Yuurei informed her. "Will you risk yours for hers?" He pulled a flail from his belt and held it out to her.

  "You'd put the Prince in harm's way?" M'dalla gazed back at Slythe, who was still swimming toward them.

  "If the Grand Mage dies, there is no hope for Kytheras," Yuurei stated.

  M'dalla stared at the flail. She was inclined to help, but they couldn't rush into battle impulsively. They had to know their odds of survival. The Prince's life could not be forfeited for a futile cause.

  Slythe finally made it back to them, his white robes soaked through so that his skin was visible underneath. "You could tell me to head back," he whined.

  "Amelia's in trouble," M'dalla replied.

  "So get the mages," Slythe advised.

  Yuurei shook his head. "Azzer's on his way to her, but there's no time to get word back to Noon. It's up to us."

  "What sort of situation is she in?" Slythe inquired.

  "The Sinful Three have her," Yuurei informed them.

  M'dalla took a step back. "The Sinful Three?" Was Yuurei intending to get them killed? Without magic, there was no chance they could defeat them.

  "Who else could pose such a threat to the Grand Mage?" Yuurei professed.

  "High risk of death?" Slythe said. "Low odds of victory?" He stuck out his hand. "Let's do this."

  Yuurei placed a sword with a hilt twice as long as its blade in Slythe's hand.

  "You only brought one?"

  "There wasn't room," Yuurei said, and he waved the flail at M'dalla, who had yet to take it.

  M'dalla shook her head at Slythe. This wasn't a wise move. The Sinful Three not only had a reputation for exercising their vile and violent urges, but their magic was considered to be second only to Neanthal himself. Rumors of their atrocities on the mainland had reached Twilight Islands, and she did not want to become victim to their whims.

  "You can stay behind," Slythe said. "Lead the way."

  M'dalla reluctantly snatched the flail and followed Yuurei as she escorted them away from the beach.

  "I didn't realize you were still suicidal," M'dalla grumbled.

  "My responsibilities as prince aren't solely to survive."

  "They're gonna blame me for this," M'dalla alerted him before she stopped speaking. But she knew Yuurei was truly guilty for whatever was about to happen. He should've gone with Azzer if he was truly worried, rather than recruit the Prince for this task.

  M'dalla ran her fingers through her damp hair. She wanted to share some last words with the Prince, but she was as furious with him as she was with Yuurei. They continued in silence with only the bugs and birds filling the vacuous atmosphere.

  It didn't take long for them to reach Amelia's home, whose stone architecture clashed with Grac
e's adjacent wooden one.

  Yuurei had his sword in hand but gestured for Slythe and M'dalla to stay back. Neither listened to him, and they took their place at his side.

  Through the trees, M'dalla could see Azzer on his knees, his blue garb riddled with holes. But even from that position, the blue mage continued to fight, flinging ice and ball lightning at his adversaries.

  "Valiant effort," Kas commented. "But you get to die with her now."

  They weren't about to let that happen. Yuurei, Slythe, and M'dalla emerged from the brush and took aim at the Sinful Three.

  Kas was caught off guard as Slythe lobbed his blade at the Sinful Three's leader. His lime cloak was soon stained red, as blood seeped from the sword embedded in his chest.

  M'dalla took a swing at Rayla, but the mage deflected the flail with her staff.

  Yuurei lunged at Urto, who held up his staff to block the attack. Urto's staff split in two as Yuurei's sword sliced through it.

  Azzer, still in one piece unlike the Grand Mage, rose from his knees and ejected a bolt of lightning from his staff and struck the sword sticking out of Kas.

  Kas let out a final shriek before his charred remains crumpled onto the copper sand.

  With a vicious blow, Rayla shattered M'dalla's flail before eying Urto. They scowled at each other before they began to fade from the island.

  M'dalla dropped her broken flail and ran over to Slythe. She embraced him and then guided him over Azzer's side.

  The blue mage stood over Amelia, inspecting her injuries. Her limbs had been ripped from her body, but she was somehow still breathing.

  "Can you save her?" Yuurei asked as he joined them.

  "You better," Amelia barked.

  All four of them jumped.

  "Restore my arm," Amelia ordered.

  "How?" Azzer asked, staring at the torn appendage.

  "Tap and heal," Amelia instructed. "Tap and heal."

  M'dalla wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but Azzer must've understood, for he lowered his blue staff to one of her arms and nudged it toward her body.

  The arm perked up and reattached itself to Amelia's torso. Amelia fiddled her fingers and let out a relieved smile. "I can do the rest." Her staff soared into her arm, and with a barely noticeable twirl, her detached limbs came alive and slithered back to her body.

  She was whole again in moments, and back on her feet not even a minute later. "Thank you," Amelia said to the assembled group. And then, without prompting, she gazed upward. "Oh, yes." With her staff held high, she guided a freefalling Zeniri from the air and gently restored him to the ground.

  Zeniri curled up into a ball and shivered even as the sand warmed his skin. His senses could not let go of the chilled air or nearly fatal plummet.

  "Five of you," Amelia said, looking them all over. Her attention turned to Azzer. "Remember what I told you?"

  "But Amelia," Azzer spoke. "You can't. The Prince."

  "This is no coincidence," Amelia replied before spreading her arms out. "You've all been volunteered."

  M'dalla was evidently out of the loop, without even a guess as to what the two mages were referring to. She glanced at Slythe before asking, "Volunteered for what?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Prince

  "Amelia believed the Goddess chose us," Slythe told him as he finished explaining the Roamers origins. "I don't know if any of us actually believed that. But because it was Amelia's idea, we all went along with it."

  It had only taken one question for Slythe to convey a slew of revelations. Doren was still trying to digest the details of the story the Roamer had spat out. Though his gaze was on Slythe, who was sitting across from him at the base of an adjoining tree, he was little more than an unfocused blur of black and white. His mind was too busy trying to comprehend what he'd been told to worry about what was physically in front of him.

  Maybe it'd make more sense after Doren got some rest. His legs were sprawled out on the dirt, his back propped up against a tree, and the sun was starting to set. It wouldn't take much for him to fall asleep.

  He should've waited to ask his questions. But he had no idea the answers would be so complicated. The craziest thing he was expecting to hear was that Slythe had been dead and someone had resurrected him.

  "So," Doren began, looking for some clarity. "We're related."

  Slythe let out a sigh. "You are a descendant of my brother. So yes, we are."

  "And your brother was King Shine. And your father was King Aergo." Saying it out loud didn't make it any more believable.

  "Do you want to hear the rest of it?" Slythe asked with mild exasperation.

  It wasn't so odd that Slythe had lived at the same time as Aergo and Shine. Doren had known someone his whole life that had memories of those historic figures. But Hatswick was a four-hundred-year-old mage. Somehow that explanation didn't exactly fit Slythe.

  The only other possibility that crossed Doren's mind was time travel. Rikki had shifted herself back in time. Perhaps Amelia had shifted these Roamers from her time period into the future.

  "I'll take your silence as permission," Slythe stated. "Amelia finalized her plans not long after she brought us together. I suppose you have a sense of what happened next. The invasion of Kytheras. The imprisonment of Neanthal. The Door. All ancient history to you."

  Doren refocused his eyes on Slythe. It was like seeing him for the first time. He looked so much like that portrait of Aergo that hung in Castle Tornis. And to think that this Roamer was actually family.

  "You knew who I was to you," Doren said. "Why did you fight us?"

  "We had our orders," Slythe answered. "The five of us survived the war. Amelia's plans succeeded. But she was not convinced her victory would be everlasting. Someone, someday, would try to gather the Keys. She was sure of it. And she suspected it would be long after her own death. Who would protect the Keys in her absence? How could she rely on people in the future that she didn't know?

  "Seeing as how we weren't among the war's casualties, she was even more convinced that we were meant for this task. That's one thing I never understood. Why did she wait? She could've isolated us before the final battle. Was she testing her theory?"

  Doren didn't know if Slythe was asking rhetorically. He tapped on the shield lying next to him as he waited for his ancestor to go on.

  But Slythe must've been pondering the question he posed, as he remained quiet until Doren finally interrupted.

  "You never asked her?"

  "There wasn't time. The days before the Parting were a mad rush. And there were still concerns that Neanthal could burst out from behind the Door before the lands were separated."

  "It's held up pretty well," Doren noted.

  "No one knew it would," Slythe said. "Not even Amelia."

  Before Slythe could continue, Ji-Ji ran up to the Roamer and hopped into his lap. Slythe stroked the denhare's back with a single finger. "What's this one's story?"

  "Oh no," Doren replied. "You have to finish yours first."

  "Right." Ji-Ji let out a couple whistles before Slythe went on. "You must know Amelia enchanted weapons before the final battle, given that you have one right there. She did the same with armor. It was mainly to make the items indestructible. For us, she enchanted these cloaks. They were to be impenetrable. They would allow us to shift. And they could store our weapons in their sleeves. Of course, she only gave them to us just before."

  "Just before?" Doren asked. This was it. He was finally going to learn if Amelia sent them through time.

  "Before she bound our souls to the Keys and the Door."

  Again, Doren heard something he was not anticipating. Binding souls? That's what Hatswick had done with Leidess and his replica keys. It sounded like sin magic.

  "Why would she do that?"

  "To preserve us through time, Amelia transformed our bodies and put our minds into slumber. We would only wake if the Key she hid was disturbed or if the Door itself opened. Binding our souls t
o those objects was the only way to forge a connection."

  "So if we'd never found Kytheras' Key..."

  "The Roamers would still be asleep."

  "But Hatswick was looking for the Key," Doren recalled. "Why would he do that? Unless – "

  "He didn't know," Slythe finished the thought. "No one besides King Shine and Amelia knew. Everyone else was told we died during the invasion."

  "Did she suspect him?" Doren wondered aloud.

  "I doubt it," Slythe said. "Amelia was simply trying to make her plans as foolproof as possible."

  "You could've stayed asleep forever," Doren observed. It took an enormous amount of courage to undertake such a risk.

  "It was one way to avoid being king," Slythe said with a snort. "And M'dalla was gonna be right at my side. I accepted the possibility. We all did."

  Slythe was barely visible as his tale concluded. The sun had set and the moonlight couldn't penetrate the dense leaves above them.

  As Doren's eyelids became too heavy to keep open, he mumbled, "I'll have more questions for you in the morning." And, finally, he fell asleep.

  When he awoke the next day, Doren first wondered if Slythe's explanation had merely been a dream. It made about as much sense as any dream.

  He rubbed at his eyes and looked to the tree opposite him. There was no Roamer there, nor denhare. Perhaps it had been a dream.

  Doren pushed himself off from the tree and stood back up. His back was sore, and he stretched his arms up and to the side to awaken his stiff muscles.

  He was close to convincing himself he imagined the events of the previous night until he heard a jarring whistle. The nearby high grass swayed and rustled until Ji-Ji dashed out and hopped into the dirt. Chasing after him was Slythe, who had a handful of berries from which he was both eating and tossing at the denhare.

  "Looks who's finally awake," Slythe said, and he flung a berry at Doren.

  Doren opened his mouth wide and caught it in his teeth. "Thanks, Uncle Slythe."

  Slythe was not amused and lobbed the entire pile of berries at Doren.

  Doren caught a couple as the rest smacked into his armor and tumbled to the ground. "Fine. We can pretend we're not related."