Knights of the Inner Rim (Beyond the Outer Rim Book 0)

by Reiter

  Knights of the

  Inner Rim

  To My Questors: Past, Present & Future –

  ... Roll me a D30!

  A

  Novel

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Explaining Rims Time

  Prologue I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Interlude II

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Interlude III

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Interlude IV

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Interlude V

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thrity-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Read more from the Beyond the Outer Rim series

  © Quicksylver Publications, 2017

  Cover Art by: Madolyn Locke

  Story Bonus of the

  Beyond the Outer Rim

  Series

  By Reiter

  For Character List & Glossary of Terms visit:

  www.b-t-o-r.com

  ... dedicated to those who stand the watch.

  Though often presented in the most glorious and pristine condition, the status of the uniform pales in relation to the character of the soldier. Warriors, perpetually seeking peace, are the protectors of countless souls, forever embodying those traits that bring story-tellers to the stage. If one were to engage in a search for a greater courage, a more meaningful testament to dedication and sacrifice... one would only find another soldier.

  We thank you for your service! This story is dedicated to those who dedicate themselves to sustaining our way of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  A powerful, but not necessary, Lead-In to this tale appears in SylverMoon Chronicles, Volume V under the title One Last Errand.

  NOTE: Explaining Rims Time

  With all of the things that can be divisive in this particular sector of space, it is good to know there is a constant upon which all can agree – the concept of marking time. Though the Chrono-Sages are found in Imperial Space, they are not considered citizens of the Empire. In fact, they are universally accepted and supported by every known civilization in The Rims.

  We shall dodge the inclination to delve into more political details and definitions, and simply come to the more factual point – how to tell time in The Rims. One could come across an entry marked as such:

  Rims Time: XI-4805.17

  The Roman Numerals signify the number of centuries that have passed since the last Rim Event. According to the Chrono-Sages, the last major Rim Event was the declaration of the Inner Rim Empire Primus (often referred to as Primuson). The first two digits show the current year of that century. The next two digits show the month, and the numbers after the decimal place indicate the day of the month. So the above listing could be translated to:

  May 17th, 1148

  Each month in the Rims has thirty days. To be of further assistance, here is a listing of the months in a year of Rims Time:

  Janzur

  Februsi

  Lentmonzat

  Aprilis

  May

  Mityar

  Yorjunvis

  Saxtilius

  September

  Octoryn

  Novarsi

  Entyar

  Here’s a word of caution: keep an eye on the Rims Time stated. Not everything in this story happens in what you might consider to be chronological order. Sometimes, in order to more clearly see how to move forward, one must look back.

  Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

  John Quincy Adams

  (I)

  (Rims Time: XI-3703.20)

  The fires still burned in the hall, but there was little need for them. For on this side of the planet, Spring was well underway. It was not too warm, but it certainly was not cold... not that the bodies of many of the partakers would be able to detect a chilling wind. They were overcome with the warmth and mind-swimming delights of too much drink and jubilation. The celebration had lasted for hours and the sun was once again high in the sky.

  Even the servants, who were slowly going about their morning chores, were intoxicated – and most of them had not taken the first sip of wine. But they were the hired help... the servants... untrained in the arts of the Energies. So they were ignorant of the fact a charm had been worked against their minds and bodies. It was the same dweomer worked against all of the other attendants to the grand occasion, having basically the same effect.

  The grand occasion. It was a day which would make the mark of many historians recording the passing of time through the Rims.

  They had returned. Five of the most sacred had returned to the Terran Triangle, and it would be at least a week before the region would begin to lose its jubilance. While the people of the temple slept off their over-indulgence, the people of the countless districts continued the celebration. Eventually, even the working servants succumbed to the charm, falling over in the midst of performing their duties.

  However, not every soul within the temple had been touched in that manner, and two lifted their heads, their minds unaffected by the charm. But then again, such was often the case with a worked spell: the SpellCasteR, and any additionally chosen agent, was often immune to the effects of their own incantations.

  “Kantren, we do not have much time,” Lirtelzi whispered, looking around to see so many people unconscious.

  “No, not much,” Kantren agreed, taking a moment to support the weight of his upper body on his elbows. He smiled brightly looking at the people around him. “But we have enough to savor this moment. Enacranites! Olassi-bred filth and nothing more!” A flick of his hand generated and fired a MannA Bolt, sending it across the chamber. It struck a man in the back, pushing him over the banister he had been draped over. His body fell to the floor below; a small puff of smoke where the energy had burned into clothes and flesh remained.

  “Enough!” the woman barked, the tone of her facial skin beginning to darken. She would not appear like a human much longer. Feeling the alteration spell slowly leaving her body, Lirtelzi stood and started running for the double doors. “Why score one when we can score them all?!”

  “And this is why the Eromzunn entrust her with missions and not you,” Kantren muttered, clamoring to chase after her.

  With no guard or master to bar their way, the two had easy access to every article of interest and power on the property. It would have been a simple thing for them to have fallen into distraction with so much to choose from. But the woman’s mind was disciplined, and only death could prevent her now.

  Not far outside of the room where most had engaged in the festivities, the fountain circulated water,
shooting columns of it into the air only to be collected, without a splash, in the pool below.

  “How very obvious,” Lirtelzi sighed, splashing across the pool until she reached a place where one of the columns was about to erupt. Kantren had just joined her when it did, and Lirtelzi allowed the water to take the two into a pocket dimension held above the fountain.

  “Now you can strike with impunity,” Lirtelzi hissed, thrusting her hand toward one of the guards of the Enacranite vault. He was in the process of drawing his sword, and though his body had been conditioned to repel some of the most powerful incantations, the same could not be said for his armour or the air immediately around him. Ice formed around his body, imprisoning him in a body-sheath.

  There were only two others stationed here, both casters, and while Kantren might have been reckless and easily distracted, he was gifted with skill and potency. Taking one step toward the closer robed figure, Kantren thrust pure MannA at the young woman, engaging his Combashida to pull on the other robed figure on the far side of the receiving platform. Kantren snickered as the young man was made to fly from his seat and land on the platform, sliding toward him. Lirtelzi had taken on the most powerful of the three... Kantren would be allowed to play with his meal before dining on the delicacies he had been served.

  “I feel you, Centurion,” Lirtelzi said, losing the last of her human disguise. Her skin was now gray, her hair purple, and she glared at the guard through bright yellow eyes. Quickly her hands waved in front of her face, forming a spherical object that manifested over the ice statue she had just created. “You are well-defending, but still poorly fortified.” Lirtelzi cackled seeing her opponent begin to generate large amounts of EnerJa. Before he could apply it in the manner he sought, it was absorbed into the small sphere hovering over him. It collected the energy, converting it and directing even more cold down on the man, making the ice thicker and colder.

  “I wonder if he will realize that he is about to kill himself,” she muttered, turning to see how Kantren was faring.

  “What do they teach these children?” Kantren barked, stepping through a weak attack the young man had sent against him. He had given the young man time to collect himself, stand up, and draw his blade. “Leading with a thrust?!” he sniped, smacking the flat of the blade with his forearm guard. The loud clang signaled a strong hit, but the missing blade was a better measure of the defense. “Try again,” he said, backing away from his opponent, smiling devilishly as he slowly performed a kata that took his hands away from his sides.

  The young man yelled, lunging forward again, this time spinning and swinging his sword. The gray-skinned man moved more quickly to meet his opponent and used his right hand to strike the shoulder of the young man before he could even begin his spin. Kantren’s left hand then clawed across the man’s back. The youth screamed for his life as his body locked in pain and trauma. He lost his blade about the same time he lost his life.

  “I’m going to need this,” Kantren said, as he twirled the sword, spinning around. “Excuse me, your ladyship.”

  “But of course, Kantren,” Lirtelzi said softly, throwing herself into a back-bend. The short sword Kantren had taken from the young caster flew over her chest and into the back of the MannA-burnt woman. She was still in the throes of pain and shock from the MannA bolt. If anything, the blade in the back was a sweet release. “Oh, very well thrown.”

  “It was his skill, not mine,” Kantren said, rubbing his fingers and thumb together.

  Lirtelzi smiled at the Blood Reading her student had performed. “I see... was that one trusted with the location of the stone?”

  Thinking only for a moment – sending his mind through the memories he had just acquired – Kantren smiled and nodded to the affirmative. “Right this way, your ladyship.

  “So many years!” Kantren hissed as he walked briskly. “Too many!”

  “Over five thousand, to be precise, Kantren.”

  “Yes, and this is the day we strike in the name of vengeance!”

  “Observation, young Powerkin,” Lirtelzi warned. “Our enemy was great in number eons ago. They are even greater in number now. Yes, our numbers too have grown, but we would be foolish to think we kept pace with the Vohlterrans and all of their little tribes. It seems they have nothing better to do than crawl in and out of one another!

  “This is not the day we strike. No, my student... this is the day we insert another piece of the puzzle... another thread of the cloak we have been weaving since we were forced from the Rims. Besides, we are too far from the Vohlterran homeworld to strike effectively.”

  “Then why was this placed chosen, milady?! If it is too far away for us to-” Her hand smacked against the side of his face and Kantren was reminded of whom he was addressing.

  “So many of our kind thought and fought just as you tend to think and fight, Kantren! Did you happen to notice that we lost?!

  “Power is not enough!” she shouted, beginning to pace. “An abundance of power is not enough! We must outthink our enemy! That is why we have spies in every corner of the Rims... that is why we knew that five of their precious Enacranites would make their return now... that is how we were able to infiltrate this place and find this stone!”

  Kantren was even more confused. It seemed that his mentor had simply thrust her hand into a pile of empowered stones and brought out one. It was a fist-sized garnet stone, cloudy and poorly cut, suggesting that it would need to be cut several times before mounted to anything of worth. Kantren stammered, not wanting to anger his teacher any further.

  The Powerkin already knew he could overwhelm her, power-wise. But her technique would have his thunderous attacks rebounding against him as they had time and time before. In essence, he would work to beat himself and she would be left, not even sweating, picking whatever final stroke she deemed suitable for the moment.

  “Your ladyship... I-”

  “Ah,” she smiled, taking a soft hold of his face. “You don’t know. Good! You’re not supposed to... and neither will the Vohlterrans. You see just what they will see: a simple stone of empowerment. And for the moment, that is all it is. But give it time, Kantren. Give the poor thing time.” The woman chuckled for a moment, allowing her head to tilt to one side. “Time... and a very subdued enchantment. The sort that will take years to manifest! After all, this stone has a long way to travel before its time will come.

  “Prepare yourself, Kantren,” she commanded. “You will need to muster more power than you thought yourself capable, and I will show you how.”

  Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

  Mason Cooley

  (Rims Time: XI-4804.11)

  “Quiet walks are underrated,” Vaiyorl thought, coming to the bend in the path. With his left wrist tucked inside of his right hand, his arms behind him, the man had a slight forward lean to his body. The contemplations of the world seemed to be on his shoulders... and he would give them their just weight... in a moment. For now, they would have to wait until he was done with his constitutional.

  “Not that the silence could deliver me from this,” he concluded, taking in the arrangement of the flowers on the Eastern side of the estate. How his wife, Guysorla, had managed to get three different species to harmoniously mix seed and produce such a bloom was beyond him. “And I’m supposed to be the SorceroR of the family,” he considered, amusing himself.

  “Stop it, Vaiyorl,” he whispered. “No amount of distraction can save you. Like the rising of the sun, this cannot be stopped by any power you possess.”

  “Have you come for the beginning of the end, Your Grace?” a cheerful voice called out, bringing Vaiyorl away from his musings.

  “Wh-What?” the man stammered, looking for the source of the voice. It was not foreign to the Duke, simply unexpected, and it did not take him long to remember who the voice belonged to or locate the speaker. Managing a polite smile, Vaiyorl lifted his hand and waved at Nokeyesh, the Chief Groundskeeper. “The beginning o
f the end?”

  The pleasant man, smiled, turning to point further out on the Eastern Ground. “They’re just about ready to bring it all down!”

  “Oh, yes,” Vaiyorl said softly, allowing his hand to fall slowly back to his side. “The Test Tower. How very appropriate!” Vaiyorl tucked his right thumb into his belt at the hip, and rested his left palm on his chest. His bronze eyes stared at the construct, now a year out of service, and his lungs slowly expanded. He exhaled at the same pace, as the images of the moment began to mix with the memories of many years past. His mind had been trained to focus on more than one thought at a time, and even as he could see machinery approaching the tower to dismantle it, he could still see himself seated in the stands, waiting for the event to begin.

  “Everyone, please take your seats!” Guysorla had directed. It was not customary for a Duchess to be so directly involved with such proceedings, but the occasion had been too near and dear to the woman’s heart. She would have left no detail to another to resolve. “... the contestants are ready and the race is about to begin.”

  Without his wife at his side, it came as no surprise that the Duke’s daughter would take the seat next to his. Many had ribbed that Guysorla had had little to nothing to do with the birth of their second child. She favored her father in nearly every physical regard. The same shiny black hair, the same powerful set of bronze eyes... there was hardly anything of Guysorla to be seen at all.

  “Father,” Shonsatah had smiled up at the Duke. “When you first climbed, how did you fare on the Test Tower?”

  “My sweet daughter, here you are going to learn one of the benefits of power and authority,” Vaiyorl had answered. “... for neither I...” and Vaiyorl had stood up and raised his voice to insure he would be heard. “... nor anyone in my employ or of my affiliation knows how I fared during my turn upon the tower! I do hope that I am clear on that point.” Laughter saw the Duke back to his seat and he smiled, embracing his child.