“Raegith…”
“I pushed on, though, Tiberius! Would that have made him proud; that I did not give up after watching my friends being tortured and killed? I pushed on, all the way to the Citadel. I knelt before the Empress of Greimere and handed her that fucking cursed scroll, listened to her read it aloud for me, all the way to the last bit! A lingering amendment, to get rid of me forever in a place where no one would ever find me!”
“Helfrick did no such thing, Raegith! He mourned you! It killed him that he could not memorialize you or even acknowledge that you exist.”
Tiberius dropped to a knee before him. “You are remembering things incorrectly, Raegith. The Empress did something to you, I know it! Raegith, stop all of this madness and come home with me. I swear by my life that I will take you to him and you will see the relief on his face. Leave all of this behind, Raegith and come back to Rellizbix; where you belong.”
“You swear on your life that you will take me to my father?” Raegith asked, leaning down to look him in the eyes. “I swore an oath once. The Empress, she told me to return home; practically begged me to leave the Greimere and live my life among my own people. When my people returned to finish me off, she tricked me into fleeing the Citadel instead of giving me up to save her own life. She had to deceive me to get me to leave, because I loved her… and I would have never left her side had I known what you were capable of.
“When I saw her naked body hanging from the pole you stuck her on, I shed my heritage and cast it at her bloodied feet. You want to bring Helfrick’s son back to him? You’re too late. He isn’t here anymore. Raegith Caelum does not stand before you, General. You kneel before the Grass-haired Demon, come to claim vengeance for Kalystra, Zakk, Onyx and an entire empire!”
Raegith nodded at Helkree and she commanded everyone to back away. The Saban general looked up at him, disappointed.
“You want to protect Rellizbix and I want to destroy it,” Raegith said. “There is no compromise to be found here between us. This Greimere army is under my command; they follow me with absolute faith and loyalty. Slay me and end the threat against Rellizbix from the Greimere… for now. Fail and these Twileens will be carrying your armor back. Your body will stay here and decorate a pole in the abandoned Citadel.”
“I am loyal to your father and the kingdom of Rellizbix,” Tiberius said, taking his sword in hand and rising to his feet. “I would have escorted you through the gates of Thromdale myself and demanded you be granted citizenship through the Passage of Blood. I would have presented you to your father and siblings; family that could give you real love, not some depraved notion this Empress convinced you of. We would have gotten to the bottom of this misunderstanding together, so that you could rejoin a proper society… but I will not permit a threat to my land or lord. If you give me no other choice, Raegith, I will spill your royal blood on this ground and tell your father you died long ago.”
Raegith smiled and pointed at Tiberius. “That’s the right attitude, old man.”
He stretched his arms and popped his neck to the side. “Give us an arena!”
“Broosh!” the Helcats yelled, backing away and raising their weapons.
Raegith’s entire army formed a circle around the two combatants, chanting his name in cadence as they thrust their weapons to the sky and stomped their feet. As Tiberius took his stance, Raegith danced around on the balls of his feet and waved his arms, encouraging the warriors to raise their voices and cheer louder.
“And what barbaric weapon have you taken up in your time among the Greimere?” the general asked.
“I am the weapon, asshole.”
Raegith threw his arms out to the side and they were instantly engulfed in blue flames. The cheering grew even louder and Raegith steadied his breathing, taking his stance.
“A Caelum using magic? Is this how you intend to defeat me?” Tiberius asked. “I’ll not stand for it!”
The general lunged in, swing hard and fast at his midsection. Raegith retreated backwards, out of reach, but unlike Greela and his axe, Tiberius was able to reverse the direction of his swing almost instantaneously.
The blade drew a red line across Raegith’s stomach and he rolled backwards across the ground. His stomach was on fire, but he breathed and quickly put the pain aside. The blow simply grazed muscle; his guts were still inside of him. It was enough to scare him, though, and he instantly lost focus.
Tiberius pushed forward again, swinging mid-range, instead of for his head. Raegith put more distance between them and slipped to the side to make Tiberius have to extend further on his backswing. The trick did not work on the experienced soldier. Instead of using his backswing, Tiberius came full circle, spinning all the way around as Raegith ran into the blade.
Raegith dropped hard, sliding across the dirt as the blade sliced through the air above him and clipped the end of his ear. Tiberius lifted a foot into his side, knocking him into the air and across the ground.
Raegith got to his feet as the man bore down on him with overhead swings. The general hefted the blade as if it were made of parchment, hammering blows around Raegith with incredible speed as he struggled to stay outside of them. The flames on his arms faded as he began to lose his concentration. He had not expected such skill from one of his father’s men. He understood why Greela was so enraged and terrified of him.
“You may be a big shot among the barbarians, boy, but you’ve never faced the glory of Rellizbix before!” Tiberius roared, feigning a blow and connecting with a pommel strike to his head. Raegith staggered back, stunned. “And your father is twice the fighter I am!”
Tiberius closed the gap between them quickly, not allowing him to regain his wits, and the overhead swing was like a bolt of lightning meant to cleave him in half. It was the killing stroke that Hemmil had long ago warned him about.
“The difference between a veteran soldier and some duelist, is the killing stroke,” the grizzled Paladin said to him as they overlooked the Central Plains after a long day of sparring. “It’s not so much a technique as just a lack of hesitation. Every strike has intent. You feint to open up, you cut the hands or knuckles to disarm, you smash the shoulders and ligaments to disable… but the killing stroke is direct and it’s powerful. Everything else is just to set you up for a lethal strike. When your intent for the stroke is death, you place it to the head or heart and you put all of your power into it, or else you won’t get past the skull or the sternum. You have to use everything for the killing stroke, or else you fail.”
Not yet!
The blade of the sword passed by Raegith’s shoulder, shaving through leather and skin, exposing the muscle beneath and then it hit dirt. Raegith had taken hard blows to the head many times over the last decade and his body still knew how to react even if his eyes did not. He glided to the side as the swing came down, knowing that the Saban soldier would put all of his strength into the stroke.
Raegith righted himself, ignoring the wound to his arm and routed his energy to his feet. His shins erupted in blue flame and he kicked down hard on the blade, embedding it deep into the ground. Standing atop the blade, Raegith kicked out with his other leg into the general’s torso.
The plate armor protecting Tiberius’s chest cracked and he soared backwards. Raegith stood atop the buried claymore and it could not cut him. The warriors surrounding him roared and chanted. Tiberius got to his feet and looked down at his armor.
Then Raegith was on him. The general was skilled at hand-to-hand combat and blocked his initial attack, but Raegith used an art form that was completely foreign to him, forged in the depths of the Pit and enhanced by the powers of the Path. Raegith hit and parried, using his elbow to divert a punch and countering with a blow to the ribs.
More cracks formed in the man’s armor. Raegith attacked Tiberius’s legs, flames now growing with his rage to cover most of his body. The man’s greaves splintered under the force of Raegith’s kicks and his knees buckled. Raegith caught his arm in a lock and
slammed an open palm into his elbow with such force that it snapped in half.
Tiberius cried out in agony and tried to retreat, but Raegith was too powerful. He blocked a wide-sweeping hook and reached to grab the general’s collar. With a jerk, Raegith wrenched the armor away from the man and tossed it into the dirt behind him.
Eight punches per heartbeat; that was how many Raegith could throw when he blasted a wooden dummy with his Flurry Strike, before he found the Junrei’sha. He had never bothered to count how many he could throw afterwards. When Raegith used his Flurry Strike against the exposed chest of Tiberius, fueled by a volatile combination of rage, adrenaline and the power of the Path, there was no one in attendance who could have counted for him. The hits sounded more like a hum than a beat and Raegith felt the man’s ribs melt away under the pressure.
It took only a few seconds for Raegith to pulverize Tiberius with the Flurry Strike, but it incapacitated him. Tiberius crumpled to his knees and Raegith reached out and snatched him by the throat to keep him from falling over. His right hand rose high over his head, his rigid fingers curled like a dragon’s claw.
“Know that you will not wait long in the afterlife by yourself, Tiberius,” Raegith said. “Soon, all of Rellizbix will be there to keep you company.”
“Helfrick…” Tiberius whispered.
Raegith cut the man’s words off with an ear-splitting roar. His flames pooled around his right hand and flared as bright as the sun. The strike tore the general’s head from his body and Raegith shoved the man’s corpse over with a finger.
Raegith let the general fall to the blood-caked dirt and felt no remorse. He did not feel anything, not even relief. All around him his warriors cheered, for the Empire and for the Grass-haired Demon to give them a purpose and commit them to his rule.
“The bald general is dead and the Army is defeated!” Hitomi cried out. “Send men back to the Citadel and get those fires put out before the whole place collapses…”
“Let it burn!” Raegith yelled, halting the group that was about to move out toward the capitol.
“What?” Hitomi asked, along with several other officers in Raegith’s small army.
“I said let it burn… it and everything else from here to the Hell Cliffs. Leave it all in ruin. We’re going into the north, to claim a new, fertile home or to die in glorious battle. We’re never coming back here.”
He was the most adored man in all of the Greimere and his people were going to follow him into the north, to gift him with his ultimate revenge. He should have been happy or felt some modicum of content, but it was not there for him as he had hoped. He could put on the mask of joy and drink and fuck all night in victory; but inside, where no one else could see, there was only rage.
Chapter 54
Helfrick stood outside the entrance of the castle as the guards brought the Twileen hunters forward. They were a ragged group and looked exhausted and mortified. On a stretcher between them, they carried armor that looked as if it had been crushed under a toppled building. All of the hunters looked downward, unable to meet eyes with the king as they approached. Once they were close enough, he realized why.
The armor belonged to Tiberius.
“What has happened?” Helfrick asked. “Raise your fucking heads and look at me! What happened to my friend?!”
“He was murdered, my lord,” one of the hunters replied, on the verge of tears.
“Who? Who did this to him? Who destroyed my Royal Guard and sent you miserable cowards back, alive, when my general… my best friend is dead?”
The hunters looked at each other and back at the guards. The one who first spoke looked up at him. “My lord, perhaps we should go inside first…”
Helfrick stomped down to him and lifted him off the ground by his collar. “I will snap your neck right here, in front of all of these witnesses! That is how little I care about secrecy now, do you understand?”
“Tiberius knew him,” one of the other Twileens said. “He was young and spoke our language. He even talked to us for a spell, asking if any of us knew what he was.”
“What he was? Why would a Rathgar ask you if you knew what he was?”
“Not Rathgar, sir… he was Rung’un.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A Rung’un… a halfbreed. He was half Twileen, half Saban, my lord,” the hunter said. “Lord, we really should retire inside the castle for this.”
Helfrick could not move. He could not even breathe. The entire world was spinning around him and he was sure that he would black out right there in front of everyone. He tried to move his legs, to pull every one of them inside the castle and out of earshot from anyone, but he could not move. In his desperation, the words came out of his mouth before he could pull them back.
“What was his name?”
The hunter clenched his jaw and wringed his hands before him. “The General called him Raegith. He claimed that the man’s name was Raegith Caelum and that he was your son, my lord. The man acknowledged this as true… sort of.”
“What do you mean by that?” Helfrick asked. “Was he or was he not Raegith Caelum?”
“Sir, the man with the green hair; the one who claimed to be Raegith Caelum… he told the General that he had died on the day the Empress of Greimere was killed and that he was no longer your son. Then he forced General Tiberius to fight him and he killed him using his bare hands.”
“Raegith killed Tiberius with nothing but his hands?” Helfrick asked, stunned.
“He was like a monster! His limbs were bathed in blue fire and he could crush armor with his fists. He removed the armor, sent it with us to bring to you, then… then he impaled the General on a spike and made us watch.”
“This is unbelievable,” Helfrick whispered. “Why… why did he send you back with the armor?”
“He wanted us to pass a message to you,” the hunter said. “He wanted us to warn you to prepare for him.”
“That’s not the words he told us to use!” the other hunter said. “He was very specific on how he wanted it worded to the king.”
“What are you getting on about?” Helfrick asked, dropping down to sit on the steps of his entryway as the guards stepped forward to assist him. “What did he tell you to say? What were the words?”
“He said he was coming for you and Pyrrhus and Vi-Sage Falfa,” the hunter answered. “He said to tell you… to prepare for a real war.”
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