“A small strike team will need to enter the city and engage the empress directly. Once she is removed from the conduit, The Eye can be destroyed, allowing the invasion force to move in via both land and air. I think it is obvious to us all that the Dragon-Lord should lead such a venture.”
Valentean nodded in agreement. “You mean we need to get inside and pick a fight with Aleksandra,” he said, chewing on his lower lip in thought. The chaos in his blood bubbled and churned at such a prospect. The ultimate challenge, the ultimate prey. The opportunity for vengeance was finally here, but the cold edge of fear continued to haunt him. Was he strong enough for such a contest?
You are more than strong enough, my love, Seraphina’s voice breathed through his mind. You can defeat her once and for all, and then there will be nothing standing between us. He took a nervously excited intake of breath, which shook as it entered his lungs. Of course he was strong enough. He had come to define power. He could conquer her; he could finally unseat her. The life of Aleksandra Kackritta was his to take.
With quivering lips, he said, “I agree,” and the emperor smiled at his support.
“And I should accompany you,” McNeil said. “Together, along with General Belladon and Minister Baus, we should be more than enough to overwhelm the sorceress and take back your home.”
“No!” Nevick practically screamed, slamming his fist down upon the table with such force that Valentean could see it bend.
The emperor locked his furious glare upon the big man. “What did you say?” McNeil seethed.
“You’re not going anywhere with him,” Nevick stated, his tone calm but with the unmistakable dominance of an unmovable object. “If anyone is going with him into Aleksandrya, it’s me.”
“And me,” Maura exclaimed leaping to her feet.
“It’s adorable that you all think you have the ability to succeed in this task. But the Dragon-Lord and I are of royal blood. Only together can we vanquish this foe.”
“You’re right,” Nahzarro said, stepping forward and glaring at the emperor. “Royal blood is needed, which is why I’m going too.”
McNeil’s eyes widened, and his lip curled, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of his blade as Belladon tensed in her seat. Nahzarro didn’t flinch. Valentean knew that the emperor was too smart to attack the king of Grassan in the heart of his own castle. Nahzarro had called the bluff, and the look in McNeil’s jade eyes belied the true extent of his frustration and inability to command the situation.
“Well,” McNeil said, turning to Valentean, “this is a decision that should be left to the Dragon-Lord himself, no?” He smiled smugly at Valentean as though he were confident in his odds of success.
Part of him considered bringing everyone, but the team needed to be kept small. McNeil was a great warrior, of that there was no doubt. Even having never seen the man fight, Valentean could tell by the way he carried himself that he was likely at least Nevick’s equal on the field of combat.
He is a valuable ally, Vahn’s voice told him with all the practiced military poise that Valentean had often admired in the old man. But this was not Vahn talking, and Valentean was thinking clearly enough to know that if the chaos wanted him to choose McNeil, there had to be a reason for it.
There was something that bothered the animus warrior concerning the Karminian monarch. Whenever he looked upon him, he could feel it—a burning hunger, a desperate desire. He craved more power. It was his truest ambition. And Valentean could feel a steady, pulsing heat rising around the emperor. It was chaos. Like calling to like. McNeil was a valuable ally, but Valentean did not trust him. His arrogance reminded Valentean of Kayden, who was likely waiting for him in Aleksandrya. Kayden, whom he would kill this time around. The Dragon-Lord shook with rage brought upon by this involuntary comparison as he stood and addressed the room.
“I thank you for your offer, Your Highness,” he said to McNeil, keeping his voice low as he bit back on the chaotic edge of buried fury that always flared within his heart. “However, I believe Nevick, Maura, and Nahzarro should accompany me on this mission.” The emperor’s face fell, and Belladon sneered at the Rosinanti. “We all have experience working together, not to mention they are all experienced in battling this particular foe.” He glanced at Maura and saw her smile at him and nod. Turning to Nevick, the big man simply grunted and looked away, still seemingly harboring a grudge over what had occurred in the throne room.
McNeil had turned a bright scarlet and looked positively insulted at having his aid so callously brushed aside. Belladon seemed to feel the fury of her emperor and glared at Valentean with equal levels of bubbling intensity. Baus, however, continued to stare at Valentean with that same intrigued smile as though he had not heard a word that had been spoken around the table. His thought process remained some dark, unknowable mystery, and Valentean was happy to keep it that way for now.
“Well, Lord Burai,” McNeil huffed, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I do,” Valentean replied sharply, making it known to the foreign monarch that he was not to be questioned. The chaos roared in approval at his abruptness. “Besides, your troops will need you there boosting their morale with your royal presence.”
The emperor nodded though he still stewed with fury. “Imperial forces can amass outside of the Aleksandryan walls, out of the reach of The Eye.”
“She will still know you’re there,” Valentean insisted. “There’s no way she doesn’t have lookouts manning that wall at all times.”
“If she chooses to send ground forces against us, all the better. It will make your job easier once a path is cleared.”
“That doesn’t solve the Aurax problem,” Maura remarked.
“The what?” McNeil asked in annoyance.
“Aurax,” Nahzarro said, jumping in to aid the plucky blond. “Aleksandra’s Skirlack cleric. He will teleport right into your midst and summon Skirlack soldiers within your ranks and tear you apart.” McNeil flushed at this previously unknown information.
“Not to worry though,” Maura said smugly. “We’ve got the answer.”
Nahzarro produced a small, bronze vial from within his long, purple coat. Holding it up, Valentean could see through a translucent stripe that ran vertically up the tube that glowed with a pale, white light, similar to that which had consumed King Matias and exterminated the Skirlack within Grassan.
“This is the last of my father’s life essence,” Nahzarro said by way of explanation. “It was recovered by the Royal Mage Smiths. It wounded Aurax during the attack, broke his hold on this realm. If we can get close to him and deploy it, we can take him out of play.”
Valentean breathed deeply at this amazing news. Finally, there was a way to combat the red-skinned annoyance who served as Aleksandra’s most trusted adviser. This was coming together. They could do it. As a team. For a moment, Valentean saw the gathered assemblage of his closest allies as a family, standing tall together to combat this threat. The chaos rejected this idea.
You don’t need them to be your family, Seraphina’s voice rang through his head. You have me. You have us. Use these fools as a means to an end. Use them to return to me, my love. Valentean saw the logic buried within the artificial voice. The flames churned in his heart again, and a flash of crimson splayed briefly over his eyes.
He realized now that whoever accompanied him mattered not. Fancy weapons mattered not. All that mattered was that waiting for him in that city were Kayden, Aleksandra, and Seraphina.
XXV: The Blood Star
The sound of dripping water continued to fill Vahn’s ears, but now it was joined by another, far more unwelcome patter. The droplets of blood that fell from his lacerated chest careened into the stone floor with far more weight and substance than the clear water that dribbled behind him.
He leaned forward as far as the restraints would allow him, gazing down at the floor, watching with mounting horror as the morbid flow of crimson pooled beneath him. Landon stood off to t
he side, cleaning his hands on an old rag. They were soaked in blood. Vahn’s entire torso was a map of burns and oozing gashes. Landon’s never-ceasing torment birthed the greatest agony the Captain Elite had ever known.
He never asked questions, never provided false hope, and never stopped. This was not an interrogation; it was vengeance. This was torture for the sake of torture. He might have bled to death had it not been for Landon’s consistent cauterizing of his more grizzly wounds with a scalding hot poker. Almost worse than the pain was Landon’s constant yammering.
“How the mighty have fallen, eh, Burai?” He tossed the rag off to the side, missing the small table for which he was aiming. The damp, blood-splotched cloth fell to the stone floor with a wet splat. “You’ve gone from the top of the world to being my personal sculpture.” Landon laid a blood-stained finger upon Vahn’s chest, softly tracing a line down toward his navel.
“This patchwork I’ve carved into your skin, it’s a work of art. It’s my greatest creation.” He exhaled deeply, longingly, as though he were gazing upon an exquisite painting. “I have signed my mark upon many such canvases over the years, but none have equaled the beauty of the chaos I’ve inflicted over these last twenty-four hours.” Vahn grimaced weakly as Landon ran his finger up over a cauterized scar along his abdomen, stopping at the very top in an area that had gone untouched by the heat and still dribbled rivulets of blood. Landon cruelly jabbed his finger inside the oozing wound, and Vahn’s body tensed as he threw his head back and howled in agony.
“Still some life in you though,” Landon hissed as he slowly rotated the intrusive appendage. After a few horrific seconds, he pulled his finger away, and Vahn’s screams died as the pain’s pulsating echoes reverberated throughout his body. He moved his swollen lips and glared in hatred at this monster through the purple, oozing bruises around his eyes.
“I…” he started to say.
“Oh?” Landon leaned in close for dramatic effect. “What’s this now?”
“I…will…kill you,” Vahn choked out. Not his most eloquent threat of all time but one that properly carried within its tone the full breadth of his fury.
Landon cackled cruelly at the resolve in his lacerated prisoner. “Kill me, you say?” He placed a hand over his heart in mock surprise. “You had your chance, Burai. You chose to take my eye and leave me alive. That was your last mistake.” Landon gripped Vahn by the hair and pulled his head back, leaning in close to whisper softly into his ear. “You will die tonight before the eyes of your children.”
Vahn jerked his head away, hate giving him a second wind. His stare questioned Landon’s infuriating smirk.
“Your son, the Shogai, will attack. It is only a matter of time. Tonight, you will be publicly executed. The empress will break the rebellion, melting their resolve with the flames that dissolve your bones. With any luck, the Shogai will arrive tonight. And your other son, the monster, will watch as you burn. His loyalties lie with the empress, not with you, you sad, sorry old fool.”
Vahn groaned with the strain of his emotional fury. His children needed him. Kayden had come so close; he was right on the precipice of redemption. But now, pulled away from his influence, Vahn feared that his son would retreat back into the darkness. And when Valentean inevitably arrived, they would clash once more. This time, Vahn knew that one would die. The thought tore his heart to shreds.
“Time to get ready for your big night, Burai. Unfortunately, our time has come to a close.” Landon unlatched the strap securing Vahn to the wooden “X,” and as soon as the limb dropped free, Vahn struck, smashing his fist into the patch that covered the remains of Landon’s left eye.
The former elite screamed in pain and fury, stumbling back and clutching at the mesh of black fabric that concealed what must have been a mess of scar tissue. He had underestimated Vahn, believing his prey to be weak and beaten. But there was far more to Vahn Burai than Landon knew.
The Captain Elite unlatched his other hand and both of his legs as Landon stood once more and advanced on him. Vahn lashed out, smashing the sole of his foot into Landon’s chest, driving the old man back. Landon tried to punch at his newly liberated prisoner, but Vahn blocked him with one arm while driving the rigid fingers of his free hand into his tormentor’s throat.
Landon gasped for air and fell, trying to pull air back down into his lungs. Vahn reached out and grasped the handle of one of the many curved, wicked blades lying on the floor amidst the site of his torture. The dull surface of the metal still dripped with the Captain Elite’s blood.
Vahn tightened his grip on the knife’s handle, ready to fulfill his promise and claim Landon’s life. As he struck down, his body seized in another of the uncontrollable fits that had been overtaking him in recent months. He gasped and silently cursed his aging body’s weakness as he fell to his knees, grasping at his chest where a clenching pain ate at him.
This was all Landon needed to regroup, and the former elite rose to his feet, smashing an elbow into Vahn’s temple. As Vahn collapsed to the floor, a number of Landon’s Champions of The Faithful rushed into the room, weapons drawn as they set upon Vahn, dragging his pain-wracked, seizing body up to a kneeling position as they began to bind his wrists behind his back.
Landon moved off to the left, still rubbing at his neck and raging as he opened a small window to let in the cool evening air, which felt like needles against Vahn’s raw skin. Landon was speaking through the hoarse weakness brought upon his throat by Vahn’s mighty assault, but the elite warrior’s attention was elsewhere. The sun was setting beneath the horizon, and as the blue sky gave way to the curtain of night, Vahn noted the stars shining there as he always had on the eve of battle. Pulsating high in the sky, shining brighter than all the others, was a red star filling the air with its crimson light.
The Blood Star, Vahn thought. This rare celestial occurrence was often seen as a bad omen, signifying some major catastrophe or battle that would change the course of Terra itself. The last time he had seen the Blood Star shining in the sky, he was setting off alongside Roan and Prince Matias of Grassan to invade the city of Kahntran. Memories of that dark and dreadful day still haunted his nightmares. But the Blood Star shone brighter on this night than it had so many years before. Whatever was coming, it was going to be disastrous.
Kayden sat perched like a gargoyle atop the edge of the battle arena, gazing with a sneering scoff at the Champions of The Faithful as they toiled about in pointless drilling exercises. They were so meek, so tiny in the face of his power, and their existence offended the mighty being of darkness. Kayden tore his attention from their meaningless training, affixing his gaze up at the sky, specifically at the red, pulsating orb that hovered over Aleksandrya as the blackness of night began to claim the heavens.
The Blood Star, he thought to himself, remembering Vahn’s countless tales of this ill omen of death and destruction. The memory of his father’s tale stirred momentary doubt in his heart as he fondly recalled those bonding moments of stories and lessons that dominated the happy times of his childhood. Kayden quickly shook them away, though. Here, in this place, the darkness that fed him was strong and deep.
This place—the sight of his greatest failure, his ultimate humiliation. There was little the ghost of his father’s voice could do to pull him from the void as he gazed down upon the site of his most egregious defeat. His gaze settled on the barren splotch of land where the sparring circle once stood. There in the center was a small remnant of stone. That was where it had happened. Where he had fallen. It was where he would drop Valentean’s lifeless body once he was done with him.
But such a spectacle required an audience. After all, the sting of the crowd’s adulation for his sainted sibling made his own loss that much deeper. So Valentean should also be defeated before the eyes of those who despised him. He smiled wickedly down at the Champions, who continued on, completely unaware of his presence.
Kayden stood upon the arena’s edge and began to gather the dark pow
er of his soul. As the familiar purple light of darkness spread along his irises, he glared down at his hapless victims and savored this single moment of peace before he would pounce.
“You could not possibly be this moronic,” a voice he despised crooned from behind him. Kayden turned and glared at Aurax, who had been watching him upon the arena’s edge. “Then again, perhaps I’ve overestimated you once more, creature.”
Kayden was in no mood for the demon’s taunts. “Leave,” he snarled at the annoyance.
“It must be so simplistic to live life as you. To be such a mindless brute with no semblance of intelligence hidden beneath all of that meaningless bravado you fling about.”
“Get away from me, Aurax.” Kayden turned back toward the site of the humans below, feeling the humming tug of darkness begging him to end their miserable lives.
“You seek to unleash that boorish power of yours upon the true believers of The Faithful, ignoring the edicts of our empress?”
“Precisely.”
Aurax looked taken aback by his momentary truthfulness. “I need not remind you that the empress suffers no fools and no disobedience. She will descend upon you for such an egregious affront to her authority, tear you limb from limb, burn the—”
“The flesh from my bones?” Kayden interjected. As he spoke, a rolling swirl of black clouds began to gather overhead. “Yes, I’ve heard it all before. And honestly, Aurax, I no longer care. I’m done taking orders. I’m done pretending to bow before your meat puppet. I am Kayden Burai, the black dragon of the Rosinanti, the Spirit of Darkness!” At his bellow, a streak of purple lightning erupted from the clouds that now eclipsed the sky save for the red pulsation of the Blood Star still visible through the haze.
“You are nothing more than an unholy mistake,” Aurax spat. “A monster whose very existence is dependent upon that which you despise!” Kayden gritted his teeth at the demon’s taunting words. Another bolt of purple lightning poured from the clouds, now drawing the attention of the Champions below. “You stumble about in search of meaning, but all you know how to do is destroy. You are nothing, a horrifying abomination!” Kayden began to breathe in harsh exhalations, the air washing out through his flared nostrils with forced fury. The lightning echoed his rage. “You pale before the Shogai and his power because, despite the abhorrence of his existence, your brother at least has some semblance of meaning in this world! You are a non-entity, meaningless to the fate of Terra, a shadow of the Shogai, and a disappointment to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to love you!”
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