The Circle of Duty

by Owen Elgie

  The laughing dropped down in volume but continued, that same insane twittering and sniggering. It was like they were all in on the joke and we were the cause for their amusement, but the shuffling Tayne continued to approach and the speaking Tayne continued to speak.

  “I’m here to create a new power. I’ve shown the world that The Circle, the once feared and revered Circle, has become fat as they ruled. I have shown the world that the Guardians are no longer the horrors to be feared. I’ve killed you and stolen from you and I’ve done it with only the aid of the weakest members of our world.” The shuffling Tayne stopped and gestured around with his spindly arms to highlight just how weak they were.

  “As for my name. You all know me. I’ve been within your group for years and years and years, building my strength and waiting for the right time to present itself to me to strike back.” It leaned even further forward at the conclusion of the sentence and leered at The Elder, licking its split lips as the laughing returned in earnest.

  It was all that was in the air for a long time and as the words sank into each of us and we all came to the same conclusion. Beneath the tortured body uttering the words, the owner of the voice was clear.

  “Mr. Ward?” Andrea’s voice was high and unsteady. The shock of realization.

  Leatherpants.

  We may all have been thinking the same thing but that didn’t mean that a betrayal of this kind could be taken lightly. I had always thought that the guy had been a first class pain in the ass but it had been drummed into me that everyone in this group had given their lives for the good of the human race. Remembering Wynne in my estate and now Leatherpants here, it was beginning to look like that shared adherence to the central strength of the cause, the foundation bedrock of The Circle, was cracking under the weight of time.

  “How could you? The Circle is your sacred place in this world. We all share the same duty.” Andrea was pleading with him through his many possessed avatars, and then added “Look what you’ve done to all of us. To these poor creatures.”

  The laughing stopped.

  Feet shuffled on the dusty stone floor as we all waited on what was to come next. The removal of the laughter from The Tayne left the chamber hollow and the silence seemed to echo around us, trying to fill the void itself. When Leatherpants Tayne spoke this time there was a new malevolence in what he was saying.

  “I have done something bad? You believe that I have somehow stooped to depths of pain that have never been visited before in my dealings with The Tayne?” Cold. His voice was cold.

  “I have done nothing other than what has been shown to me time and time again within the ranks of The Circle, have I not? I acted in the interests of the greater good.” Creakily, another Tayne heaved itself from its cot and began to inch across the space between us. Mark stepped between me and them and the azure light in his hands grew in intensity. Leatherpants Tayne spat out a contemptuous snort.

  “You still protect that little fool. After all of the loss he has been the overseer of?”

  Silence. Mark just maintained the ready position but I stepped in front of him. If Leatherpants wanted to have a pop at me, I’d be more than happy to let him.

  “Ah, the little boy wants to play with the nasty man,” his voice was razors and they seemed to be slicing through all of my calm and control. My Dragon was climbing.

  “Well then. Come on,” the niceties were over and all of The Tayne creaked upright and shambled forward like the zombies they practically were.

  “Don’t hurt them, please don’t hurt them.” It was the Queen pleading as I set myself for the fight.

  “They’re being controlled by this person. They are not willing.”

  “Fine,” I roared out over my shoulder. I could feel the humanity of what she was saying in the back of my mind but it was being loudly shouted down by my almost free beast.

  “Come on then Leatherpants. Here’s your chance to have a crack at a Guardian. One at a time or all of them at once? What you prefer?” He may have wanted to slap me but I was pretty keen to do the same to him. My smile must have shown perfectly as I felt it spread wider than usual, coupled with a fraction of facial transformation.

  “All at once it is then,” spat from Leatherpants Tayne and the cackling laughter started up again from all of them as step by tortured step, the crippled warriors of The Tayne lurched and stuttered and became an irregular line of formation.

  “Relax everyone,” I snarled, “I’ll look after this,” and I stepped forward, fixed my helmet in place and smashed my armoured fists together, all the while growling my intent.

  “Little boy will attack these poor weak creatures? You won’t hurt me though, just them,” Leatherpants spoke from behind his puppet wall but I didn’t care.

  “I’ll still want to hurt you though. You just won’t be able to hurt me, remember that child.” There was a playful quality to his voice but one that had nothing to do with pleasant actions. He was pondering the best way to cause maximum agony.

  “These creatures have worked wonderfully for me and they should have been rewarded fully for the sacrifices they’ve given. These warriors, if that’s what you can truly call them, deserve to be afforded some level of protection as they act as my fist against you, don’t you think?” Leatherpants Tayne was almost speaking to himself as the others continued to laugh.

  “So I gift them all protection. Enjoy them.”

  The laughter stopped abruptly and all of the Tayne snapped to a rigid form of attention. Previously bent backs now stood rod straight as the screaming started. Each of the bodies which had been left emaciated by whatever had been done to them began to convulse and bulge, to expand and morph as whatever magic Leatherpants had at his disposal surged up in all of them and began a new horror.

  We all took a step back out of sheer surprise.

  The Tayne remained motionless as they screamed their new pain out, just unable to break free of what was happening.

  “Please stop this. I’m begging you, stop hurting them,” the Queen sobbed from behind us but the actions of Leatherpants just continued without showing any sign of ceasing.

  “What’s happening to them Mike?” I couldn’t just stand and watch this.

  “Not sure, but I’d suggest that Mr. Ward is probably going to do something awful to them. I don’t even know what to suggest to stop this.” He was shouting over the agony and soon the awful sound was being joined by an awful smell as all of the Tayne lost control of themselves, expelling whatever meagre sustenance they’d had recently. I shook my head to try and clear my thoughts against that building Dragon but I couldn’t hold it all. My Fire was climbing at the injustice of the pain being given with so little consideration to the consequences.

  My armour began to creak and buckle as I grew. Plates and joints cracked and pinged around the chamber like popping chestnuts in a fire. I didn’t care and for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I let go of all of my mental controls and let the beast take me.

  The red veil descended over my vision and my metal suit was ripped apart as my Guardian Dragon surged up and out until I was stood with my hunched under the slightly too low ceiling of the stone cavern. The horns on my head scrapped against the rough surface above me and I was forced to pull my wings in as close as possible to stop them being damaged in the confines of the room.

  I dropped down onto all fours and roared with all of the joyous release of being my animal self and loomed over the seven Tayne. In that instant they all stopped screaming and for a heartbeat I considered that Leatherpants had stopped whatever he was doing because he’d been confronted by a Guardian but that hope didn’t last long. The Tayne all started laughing again, but this time there was a gleeful chime to it.

  “What’s so funny then Leatherpants?” I needed to keep calling him by that nickname to try to show him that he was nothing more than a joke to me but I was also fed up with that awful laugh.

  All of the Tayne spoke in unison in reply, all in the
same voice.

  “You will learn eventually, fool, that true power isn’t just turning into that Dragon of The Circle. You will learn that I have the true power because I can take that power from you. You will learn respect for me because I have your whole order in the palm of my hand.”

  The laughter broke out again but this time when the Tayne began to contort, there was no pain shown from them. They all began to move and stretch in ways I recognized all too clearly. Their limbs dislocated and grew. Their skin changed colour. It started to turn red. The understanding hit me at the same time as my own pain, plunging directly into the back of my neck akin to a burning scalpel. There was no early warning from my spinning head, just the sensation of a white hot needle being plunged into me, and I was driven to the floor under the weight of it.

  “ANTHONY!” Andrea and Em screamed the same time I fell, just as Mike called out “MY LORD!” I could feel all three rush to my side and prepare to offer some form of defence although none were sure of against what. The light of their prepared magics cast further strange shadows as they crowded to me. The laughter continued from the Tayne but now it was being driven by growls rather than their usual voices. When Leatherpants Tayne spoke again, sneering at me as I lay crumpled against what was pinning me to the floor, I didn’t need to see what had just happened.

  “You see boy? Do all of you see?” Clutching my chest, I forced myself to look up at him, the tiniest act of defiance I could muster. This time, the shattered body of the Tayne warrior had been altered. It was far from being the emaciated husk it had been. Now its body was full rather than sunken. Its muscles rippling and tight rather than withered and its eyes now opened into the deepest abyss of purest hate. The Tayne may have still been the same height as it had been previously but now it was the Tayne version of my own red Dragon, armoured and prepared for the fight. It looked at me and its lips peeled back from the array of sharp teeth into a wicked smile, nothing but crazed contempt leaking out.

  “I told you, didn’t I?” Leatherpants strutted back and forth as he looked down contemptuously at who had just given him the power to transform as he did.

  “This,” he gestured at himself and then to the others who were still stood rigidly to attention but were now all altered to Tayne/Dragons. “This is the truest power. The power to take what you want, what you need. What could you do to stop me?”

  I bit out at him, purely on animal reflex but he was more than able to evade, smoothly sliding back and away from me, and continued to taunt us all.

  “There really isn’t anything that you can do now to stop whatever whim happens to cross my mind. I’ve managed to signal the whole world, on this plain and every other existence, that the once mighty Circle is nothing more than a bloated caricature of its former self. You’ve all grown fat on the comforts of power, slapping out at whoever you chose to deem an enemy.” Leatherpants Tayne abruptly stopped parading himself and swiveled to face all of us.

  “Just consider what I’ve just made happen. I have utilized the weakest of races to over run your defences and kill Guardian after Guardian. I’ve been able to steal from you, from the heart of your own stronghold and I’ve been able to empower the weak with energies from the Guardian here. I haven’t even needed to delve that deeply into you all to take what I wanted. Just small pieces here and there. The occasional twist of what you all see as so mighty.” His voice mocked all of us with each word. “And yet, still not one of you has even attempted to do anything other than stand and stare. I can control you all. I can control everything.”

  His logic was flawless but his grandstanding had snapped everyone out of the fug which was over us all. Everyone around me opened up with a magical blast at either Leatherpants Tayne or the other group, doing their best to subdue rather than destroy. All of the Dragon Tayne, Leatherpants included, blurred into motion and there was a starburst of bodies as they all cleared the blast zone and headed off in different directions. The firing followed after them all, tracking in all directions as the newly energized Tayne responded to the commands of our treacherous former member.

  And as they did, I began to notice the tiniest of relief from the pain which was pinning me to the ground. It started out as barely more than a hint of lessened weight but soon, that icy agony was falling away at an incredible rate.

  “Hold your fire.” The order came from Em. “They’re not attacking us, they’re trying to rile us.” Her huge swords were back in her hands at the ready as she scanned over me as well as the enemy before us all. The outpouring of magic abruptly stopped and everyone considered the words.

  “Why aren’t they trying to do more damage?” questioned Mike, glowing magical violence still held in each hand, he watched on as the Dragon Tayne all continued to swoop and dive in an aerial ballet designed to avoid any attack that could come their way.

  None of us knew but Em was right. There was no attempt coming from the Dragon Tayne to actually strike against us. They all just seemed content to loop and twist in a bizarre fashion without doing anything to us.

  “Looking at the way that the fight has progressed so far, it would appear that in this instance, they are relying on members of this unit to be the power source of what they’re doing. Mr. Ward even pointed out that no-one had attacked him. It would appear that he was asking us to.” The Elder’s voice was flat, still nothing more than her calm logical assessment of what was playing out before her.

  “Your reasoning is sound my lady,” added Em as she continued to stare on at the Dragon Tayne as they still didn’t attack outright. The pain which had accompanied the metamorphosis of the Tayne was now faded to nothing so I pushed myself up to a standing position and assumed as much of a ready position as I could manage without actually reaching into my Dragon power as preparation for the fight.

  Em turned back to the rest of us as the display continued.

  “My Lord Anthony. You have had your power taken and gifted to these creatures. I believe that you will therefore have the power to cause an error from Mr. Ward. In any coming fight, we will all be fighting against your power. Who of us knows you better than you? I would recommend that our other Guardians refrain from joining the fight in their own Guardian form for fear of them being drained as well.” She looked between Andrea and The Elder but neither gave any kind of indication that they’d even heard her. To be fair though they were standing still rather than attacking so that was something. Em looked back to me and continued. “Use the knowledge of your own struggle against the power to strike against him.”

  She made sense. I began wracking my brain for options and we all readied ourselves for whatever it was I was about to do.

  Finally, the Dragon Tayne seemed to pick up on the fact that we were just watching rather than reacting to what they were doing. With the calm organization which synchronized swimmers train for years to attain, they all dropped from the air and landed in a single line before us, snarling and roaring as they flexed and pulsed. One of their number slowly edged forward but I could recognize Leatherpants behind the features of this monster even before he spoke.

  “What’s the matter Leatherpants?” I couldn’t give him the chance to start on the front foot. “Not strong enough to actually do anything except flap about?” I was back at my diplomatic best, doing my utmost to keep the snarl from my voice but replacing it with as much laughter as I could risk. I could still feel that anger in me, that fire that fuels me, still being twisted by the outside force we now knew was The Elder’s former Head of House, but I did my best to cling onto the human side of my mind. I needed to stay away from my Dragon power and instead rely on my own intellect. If the fire I had was being used by the creatures before me, then that meant that they would have the perceived weaknesses of it as well as the strengths. They may have had the huge physical power but they also had the short fuse to go with it. That had to be my point of attack.

  All of the Dragon Tayne spat out small gobs of fire and screeched their anger behind Leatherpants while he s
pread his wings as far as they could go, intent on intimidation of some kind. His growl was growing as he cast a look of utter hatred at us.

  “You need me to power you don’t you? You’ve told us that we don’t understand real power but I’d say that you’re just taking things that don’t belong to you. You’re just a petty thief who’s done well with the things he’s taken. All in all, not really that powerful.” I stood up as tall as I could muster and gave my own wings just a little stretch just to highlight the differences between us, me the full size Dragon of The Circle, him a corruption of a broken victim.

  Leatherpants just roared. There wasn’t any build up to his outburst. There wasn’t a single word uttered that was human. All he did was bellow and reach out his hands to the other Dragon Tayne stood behind him. They all started to shudder under his control as he forced them to react to his wishes.

  “That didn’t take long. I thought he’d be tougher to push around than that.” Mark spoke loudly and his words were like pouring lighter fluid onto the fire within Leatherpants. My giant general was always economical with his words but that didn’t mean he had nothing to say.

  Leatherpants went mad.

  He was utterly unfamiliar with the power of the Dragon he was manipulating and it was already starting to overwhelm his mind. Leatherpants Tayne reached to the others and began to drag all of the power from their bodies. Their roars turned to screams as their own fragment of the Dragon power was removed by force, leaving them hollowed out and as crushed as they had been when we’d arrived. All of the red energy from the other six members of the Queen’s guard flowed outwards and drifted to Leatherpants, wrapping around him with a crimson vapour trail and sinking into his skin.

  As it finally ended its migration, the bodies of the Tayne fell to the ground and lay still. It was easy to see that they were all now dead as their bodies had all collapsed into wholly unnatural positions, fragile bones breaking and paper thin skin splitting.