Katie seemed to digest that information for several minutes before speaking further. When she did finally speak, Caleb winced. “Are you and your mentor the only survivors of Kirakath?”
“No one survived the Massacre of Kirakath. Only people that were not there at the time still live, ,” Caleb answered softly, pushing Gabriel’s image to the back of his mind. “Let’s just get a move on.”
Katie shot her companion a worried look as they made their way through the forest and to the nearby mountains. It was easy to see that she had hit a nerve.
About an hour later, they had reached the mountains. They were walking through the forest, surrounded by mountains on three sides. It was said that the one directly in front of them was where Draesa was built.
“You’re sure that the ruins are built into that mountain, right?” Caleb asked, still a little skeptical of the prospect that a city could be built inside a mountains.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Katie said with a nod of her head. A moment later, her feet came to a stop, stirring up some of the fallen leaves that she had been careful to avoid until then.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed, still focused on her. “What’s wrong?”
“Is that what I think it is?” Katie asked, pointing ahead nervously.
Caleb looked at where she was pointing and immediately cursed. With the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, Caleb could have convinced himself that it was not what Katie thought it was. The eagle-like wings left no doubt though.
A griffin stood about a hundred yards in front of them and its eyes were trained on them.
“Get your knives ready,” Caleb said as the muscles in his legs tensed and his hand went to the hilt of his sword.
Seeing the griffin’s muscles tense, Caleb immediately dashed towards it with his sword drawn.
What- His train of thought came to an abrupt halt when he was halfway to where he had first seen it. It was fast, now being only a few feet away from him. It had closed the distance too quick for him to even see, and its wings were spread out at their full length.
Before he could raise his sword to strike, the griffin’s wing came crashing into his chest, throwing him a dozen feet away. He hit the ground in a roll, throwing his sword from his hands and causing him to hit a tree.
As he hit the tree and winced in pain, his eyes went to Katie. She was standing still, motionless as the griffin approached her.
Why isn’t she moving? The question plagued him as he rolled over to his stomach and pushed himself up into a crouch. She should be able to at least hurt it with those knives of hers.
He glanced from her to the griffin, anger welling up inside of him as it approached her. The thought of it attacking her while she was too stunned to react set a fire within him ablaze.
Without a single thought in mind, Caleb dashed towards the griffin, grabbing his sword from the ground mid-run. Amazingly, he did not lose his balance as he picked up his weapon.
A mere fifteen feet stood between Katie and the griffin, but only ten feet stood between it and Caleb.
Leaping through the air with the sword held in a back-handed grip, Caleb made his move.
Katie and the griffin both turned their attention to Caleb just as he was a foot above the griffin, bringing his longsword down with both hands.
The griffin let out a loud squawk as Caleb’s sword sliced through its back, imbedding the blade all the way to the hilt.
With his sword pinning the deadly beast, Caleb released the hilt and removed the knife from his belt. As he brought the knife from its sheath and swung it towards the griffin’s head, a sickening crunch resounded through the forest.
His sword buried in the griffin’s back and his knife embedded in the griffin’s skull, Caleb blinked. Taking in the sight before him, he jumped off of the creature and backed away. He fell to the ground as he moved backwards, shocked at what he saw before him. There was no doubt about it. The griffin was dead. He did not need the lack of breathing, the blood covered head and back, or the silence of the griffin to know that.
“Caleb, you saved me,” Katie said quietly, shocked by her own words. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Caleb said. He had no intention of admitting that he was doing his best to resist emptying his stomach at that moment.
What happened? His eyes were trained on his hands. Is that what Father was talking about when he told me about bloodlust?
The memories of what he had done were clear in his mind, but he could not remember thinking anything during it. His actions had been mechanical.
No, that wasn’t bloodlust, he thought with a frown. I wasn’t driven by a desire to kill. I remember thinking that I wanted to stop the griffin before it, but then it just went blank.
“I’m sorry that I froze,” Katie said quietly, looking at the dead griffin. “I don’t know what came over me. I just saw it and couldn’t make myself move.”
Caleb knew what he wanted to say to that. He wanted to tell her that it was normal for someone to freeze up when faced by a mythical creature. He wanted to tell her that she reacted perfectly natural. He wanted to tell her that he forgave her.
In all honesty, he could not find it in him to say anything but that last part though. After all, he had not frozen up. He had gone straight in and tried to attack it. His lack of tact had almost gotten Katie killed though.
“Don’t apologize,” Caleb said as he rose to his feet. “Just try not to do it again. That wasn’t exactly easy.”
He barely suppressed a frown at that last part. It had been easy. Lying was not something that he liked to do. In fact, his father had always told him that it was wrong. Still, he could not bring himself to explain what had actually happened. It was too strange for even him to fathom.
Caleb took a deep breath as he walked over to the griffin’s corpse. He firmly gripped the hilt of his sword and pulled it from the beast’s back, revealing the blood covered blade.
Once the sword was free, he removed the knife with a little more effort and looked towards Katie. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, I am,” she said with a hint of nervousness in her voice.
Nodding, Caleb pulled a piece of cloth out from the inside of his tunic and wiped both blades clean. Once they were clean and sheathed, he tossed the cloth to the side.
“Let’s go,” he said as he began to walk towards their destination once again.
* * * * *
“This is Draesa?” Caleb asked quietly, his eyes focused on the large stone doorway before them. It was carved straight into the mountainside. Like the two large stone doors that it framed, the doorway was made of faded white stone. Somehow, it did not look nearly as old as Nicolas had said it was.
“Yeah, I think so,” Katie answer, her eyes focused on the massive doors. “The legends say that Draesa was built during the wars between the Calian Empire and Tiberia.”
Caleb glanced at his companion suspiciously. How would she know anything about this place? She was just a pickpocket.
“Why is the city no longer in use?” he asked, genuine curiosity entering his voice.
“Draesa hasn’t been in use since two hundred years before the Arcadian Rebellion, so I’m not entirely for sure,” Katie admitted. “I never heard what happened to the city, but there’s something superstitious about the place.”
“And it doesn’t bother you that there is something superstitious about it?” Caleb asked idly, trying to figure out how to get the large stone doors open.
“I’m not superstitious,” she said as she studied the doors.
“That’s good to hear,” Caleb remarked as he drew his sword from its sheath, immediately catching Katie’s attention.
“What are you doing?” she asked as he began to walk towards the doors.
“Watch and see,” he said as he stopped directly in front of the massive stone doors. And then, he stabbed the sword into the small gap between the doors.
Katie’s eyes widened considerably at the sight of t
he action. “What are you doing?” she asked in shock.
“Just watch,” Caleb said as he grasped the hilt of his sword with two hands turned so that his left side was facing the doors. Before Katie could process what he was about to do, he pulled on the hilt, using the sword to pry the right door open.
Katie was shocked as the door slowly opened. All the while, Caleb’s sword gave no sign of snapping, despite the fact that no sword should have been strong enough to pry such a heavy door open.
“That sword is magic,” Katie said quietly, surprised by the revelation.
“So I’ve been told,” he said as the door opened enough to allow him to slip through it. At that point, he could tell that there was no way to use his sword to pry it open any farther. He would have no leverage if he tried to.
“Help me out here,” Caleb said, motioning towards the door.
Understanding immediately, Katie slipped past him into the ruins. Through the sliver of light that passed through the narrow opening of the door, she could see a stone floor, but her focus was entirely on the door.
“On three,” Caleb said as they both braced against the door, reading to push it open when needed.
“One… two… three,” he counted, throwing all of his weight against the cold stone door as he spoke the final number. With Katie’s assistance, the door completely opened, moving slowly but surely.
His eyes focused on the door as it was fully opened.
That door didn’t open like it had been shut for a hundred years, let alone seven hundred, he thought suspiciously.
He shook his head away from such thoughts. As curious as the observation was, it was unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that mattered at that moment was getting through the ruins and to the throne room where the Sword of Kirakath resided.
Caleb turned his eyes to the room that stood before them. The sight before him was truly surprising.
Is this really a mountain? It did not look like it on the inside. That was for certain. Despite the fact that it was inside a mountain, it seemed more like a giant stone room with an outer appearance of a mountain than anything. In fact, it was as if the mountain was hollow there.
“Let’s go,” he said as he began to walk forward through the large room. With the help of the light that came through the open door, he was able to see that there was nothing in the room between the door that he had come through and the two iron doors that were a quarter mile ahead.
“Why didn’t you tell me that your sword was magic?” Katie asked as she walked alongside him. “Why do you hide so much from me?”
“Now’s not the time to talk about this,” Caleb said quietly.
“And when will the time for that come?” she asked with a sharp glare. “You won’t explain anything.”
“I only explain what matters,” Caleb said without even glancing towards her.
Katie sighed at his words. It seemed that a certain level of distrust would always remain between them.
In silence, they walked through the empty room, reaching the iron doors within a few minutes.
Taking a deep breath, Caleb grabbed the doors by the metal large rings that hung from them at chest height, and pulled them open. They opened up even more smoothly than the outer door of the ruined city.
What lied on the other side of the doors truly threw him off.
Basking in sunlight, a castle of dark gray stone stood before them. As he looked to see where the sunlight was coming from, he saw a tall tower rising up from the castle. He could not actually see where the sunlight was coming from though. There were no noticeable holes or windows in the mountain, at the very least.
Looking closer to where he was, he saw that a bridge separated them and the castle
As they began to walk across the bridge, Caleb could not help but notice how effectively the mountain hid the castle.
“So that’s Castle Draesa,” Katie said quietly. “I’ve heard stories about it, but I never imagined that it would look quite like that.”
“It’s impressive,” Caleb agreed as he walked alongside her. His eyes occasionally glanced to the tall grass on the ground at each side of the bridge. It was nearly as tall as he was.
He barely heard Katie say, “He doesn’t stop for anything, does he?”
At that moment, he could not find it in him to care about her words though, so he pressed forward regardless.
Chapter 19
Caleb took a deep breath as he looked at the entrance hall of Castle Draesa. It was completely bare, having been emptied sometime in the years since its vacancy. The only thing that broke the monotony of the dark gray walls was the occasional door.
“The great hall should be up ahead,” Katie said as she pointed to the large doors that were at the end of the hallway.
“Where would the throne room be?” he asked after a few seconds.
“Before you spoke with Lance, you had never heard of Draesa,” Katie said thoughtfully. There was no question in her words.
“Is that surprising?” he asked curiously.
“Yes, it is,” Katie said with a heavy sigh. “This is Draesa, the City of Rebellion. The bards tell grand tales of the Lord of Draesa’s short-lived rebellion against the Calian Empire. It’s said that more lives were lost during that incident than any other point in history… on this side of the Shield Mountains, at least.”
That would explain why she said that there was something superstitious about this place then, he thought. But wait…
“Didn’t you say that you didn’t know why this place wasn’t in use anymore and that you didn’t know what happened to this place?” he asked, his voice taking on a hint of accusation to it.
“That’s what I said,” Katie agreed without a hint of guilt in her eyes. Annoyance, however, was brimming below the surface. “The bards don’t tell of Draesa’s fall. In fact, its fall isn’t even detailed in the history tomes. No one knows what happened. It’s one thing that makes it such a superstitious place.”
“And how, pray tell, does that answer my question about the throne room?” Caleb asked with a raised eyebrow. He did not want a history lesson, after all. History was not well known by any but the most well off, and Caleb could not see how it could possibly benefit him.
“A few minutes aren’t going to make that big of a difference. No knowledge is pointless,” Katie said angrily. “But fine, be that way. The throne room is said to be in the bottom floor of the keep. That’s the tall tower we saw a few minutes ago, in case you didn’t know.”
“Actually, I didn’t know,” Caleb said seriously. “Why do you assume that I know anything about castles or history? I was supposed to be a hunter apprentice for almost another year. Then, I’d be a hunter in a small village with no reason to ever go far from home. I shouldn’t be here.” His fists clenched at his words. “But I am here. I’m somewhere I don’t belong because I have to be here. Still, that doesn’t suddenly make me care about history, the design of castles, or magic swords.”
Words failed to come to Katie at that moment. It felt as though the wind had been knocked from her, despite the fact that Caleb remained calm while he spoke.
“Let’s go to this keep of yours,” Caleb said when he saw that his companion had been struck speechless. “I want to get this over with as soon as possible.”
Katie slowly nodded, unsure of what else she could do.
Caleb began to walk forward, not even waiting for Katie to snap out of her momentary confusion. By the time that she finally did, he was already at the doors at the end of the hallway, his hands on the door handles.
As he pulled them open, she reached them.
“This must be the great hall,” she whispered quietly, looking around him through the doorway.
Like the entrance hall, the great hall was completely bare. The great hall, however, was rather large and was originally intended for banquets and such. As a result, it was shorter but a great deal wider.
“This is definitely the great ha
ll,” Katie said, her eyes darting around. “It’s pretty empty, but-”
“I know what it is,” Caleb interrupted. “Even a village boy like me knows what a great hall is. I might not have ever met a bard, but my father did tell me a few stories.”
Though he had expected her to be annoyed at being interrupted, Katie kept an impassive look upon her face. “Your father was a soldier, right?”
That question caught him off guard.
“Yeah, he was,” he said, recovering from the surprise. “How do you know that?”
“The man that held us captive back at his camp said that he served with your father,” Katie said, her eyes focused on the floor. “Did your father ever mention Jon or Correll Staerk?”
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