“Update successful,” the Voice declared, after which the lights inside the Inner Forge dimmed and the door through which he had entered slid open to reveal the again lit staircase beyond. “Nikomedes Minos will exit this facility and commence with the advancement of accepted directives; ministrations administered intravenously will protect Nikomedes Minos from the sulfuric vapors surrounding the entry to this facility during Nikomedes Minos’ future returns at the scheduled intervals; restrictive respiratory apparatus will no longer be required. Additional overriding directive,” the Voice said, causing the stream of numbers to change to a nearly solid wall of bright red color, “Nikomedes Minos is instructed not to reveal the location of the Forge, or disseminate information received during interface with Us in any fashion. End of line.”
Needing no further encouragement to leave the tomb behind, Nikomedes collected his doffed armor, made his obeisance with a deep, respectful bow, and left the Inner Forge carrying the Minos Sword over his shoulder.
Chapter XXI: The First Cut
Nikomedes emerged onto the temple’s hewn stone floor, with the Six Pillars of Warfare holding up the front face of the temple’s crumbling roof as sunlight came streaming in through the various holes in that roof.
He quickly replaced the pieces of his armor which had survived the encounter with the child-sized demon, and gripped the Minos Sword in his hands as he drew a deep breath of the poisonous fumes which surrounded the floor of the chasm.
He knew that the Voice of Men had granted him the boon he had sought in the form of the Dark Sword of Power he now held in his hands, and it would not have done so only to lie about his being able to survive the noxious vapors of the gorge.
Nikomedes moved forward, passing between the Six Pillars on his way to the slick stones he had traveled to reach the temple. He heard a strange noise from behind him, and the ground began to vibrate just enough that he could feel the reverberations through his boots. Loose stones began to fall from the slopes of the gorge to either side of him, and just as the vibrations reached a dangerous strength there was a brilliant flash of light from the central column of the temple itself—the same column through which he had just climbed in order to exit the hallowed Forge of Men.
A beam of brilliant, blinding green light suddenly shot upward from the temple’s topmost spire and persisted for several seconds before disappearing, along with the worrisome vibrations. The clatter of stones continued along the chasm’s walls—some of those stones being boulders larger than even the temple itself—for several minutes until silence once again took hold of the chasm’s floor.
For a few minutes following the beam of light, the fog seemed to disperse and Nikomedes glimpsed the sky of his world. The message was obvious: his path was now clear, and he should do as he had vowed to do before the god of his people.
Turning with newfound purpose filling every inch of his body, Nikomedes stopped before he had taken his second step as strange, demonic figures emerged from behind the nearby jagged, rocky pillars.
They stood nearly as tall as a well-built woman and slightly shorter than the average man, but their bodies were encased in a formidable-looking, insect-like shell that was not entirely dissimilar to that of the child-sized demon he had slain before entering the temple.
But their vaguely insect-like nature was where the comparisons ended between the creature he had slain with his Spirewood spear and these monstrosities. Their shells were a brownish red color and were covered with razor-sharp spines which ran along each of their limbs—the upper pair of which ended in long claws which truly did resemble those of the crabs he and his brother had eaten years before.
They clacked three sets of claws clacked rhythmically, circling his position and regarding him with inhuman, multi-faceted eyes as they moved to encircle him.
He looked for a path to escape but found that they had already blocked each one he could see. Gripping the Minos Sword, he knew that the battle would be two-fold: first, slaying the creatures; and second, avoiding their deadly vital fluids as he did so.
But he was the Chosen of Men, who had just passed the tests of a god and been granted the greatest treasure imaginable after doing so. He had been given a mission to complete, and the blessing of Men to do as he had intended even before the unexpected face-to-face encounter with his people’s only true god.
He would not allow a handful of overgrown bugs to stand in his way.
Bracing his feet against the slick rocks beneath them, he found purchase and immediately launched an attack against the second-nearest demon with an upward-sweeping arc of the Minos Sword.
The demon lunged back while its fellows surged forward, but Nikomedes had anticipated that particular response so as soon as his foes committed to the pincer maneuver, he braced his weight against his lead leg and reversed the path of his Dark Sword of Power by straining with every muscle in his arms and torso.
He caught the nearest demon in the midsection with the flat of the blade, eliciting a violent, cracking sound as the legendary weapon struck with enough force to turn a man’s skull into pudding.
The demon’s body went tumbling several meters but its ally pressed forward, and Nikomedes allowed his previous attack’s momentum to carry his body into a long spin which tightened as he drew the Minos Sword near his hip. The spin caused him to move out of the demon’s attack range, and its pair of hideous-looking claws snapped through the air where his unarmored torso had been a moment earlier.
Stepping beside the demon, he brought the blade in as his spin continued and felt the mighty weapon’s edge bite into and out of the demonic insect’s body as it sliced clean through the monstrosity’s torso, taking one of the thing’s pincer-ending-arms with it.
The spray of foul, acidic fluid splashed against his greaves, but thankfully his torso was spared the dying beast’s last attempt to take him to Hades with it. He knew that to use the Minos Sword against these foul creatures was dangerous, but if it was indeed a Dark Sword of Power then it would survive the experience unblemished since the legendary weapons were renowned for the indestructibility.
The demon he had feinted toward was now fully-recovered and, together with its battered ally—which was slow to resume the chase, but did indeed get back up after the crushing blow—moved to flank Nikomedes. The injured demon’s movements were slowed, and Nikomedes knew that if these creatures possessed any kind of intelligence they would attempt to goad him into attacking it first, so he laid a trap of his own as he appeared to oblige them by turning slightly to favor the wounded demon.
He feinted toward the creature but, surprisingly, neither of the demons reacted as he had expected, with each of them merely standing their ground and regarding him with their demonic, calculating eyes instead of biting on the bait of his trap.
Bellowing with rage—rage which he genuinely felt, though not as greatly as his roar would suggest—Nikomedes drove toward the wounded demon before reversing direction in yet another feint. The fresh demon had feinted on its own, jumping in to draw Nikomedes toward it, but he had expected a reaction of that nature, and brought the Minos Sword down before stabbing it backward into the gut of the onrushing demon now standing to his back.
The fresh demon lunged forward as he drew the Minos Sword from the carcass of its ally, and Nikomedes barely got the cumbersome weapon back to a ready position before the foul creature was upon him.
The beast’s fierce mandibles snapped against his pauldron, actually tearing a gash in the finely crafted metal of the shoulder guard, and its pincers snapped down against metal of their own. The first pincer clamped down on the Minos Sword, while the other squeezed the vambrace of his free, right arm. He had fought left-handed with the Minos Sword, since there was little possibility of being observed and he needed to be at his best to defeat these foul creatures.
The pincer which held his right arm began to squeeze on the armor which protected his forearm, causing him to cry in surprised pain at the thing’s unthinkable streng
th as it literally crushed the roughly cylindrical chunk of metal around his flesh.
He knew the Minos Sword would be useless in a grappling exchange, so he released his grip on it so his left hand could reach up to grab the beast’s near mandible—a bony protrusion which was nearly a foot long. Once he gripped it, he felt the razor-sharp inner edge of the wickedly curved structure slice through the leather of his gauntlets.
Nikomedes ignored the pain as he wrenched the beast’s head to the side with enough force to break a warrior’s neck, but the creature’s head simply swiveled as its pincer released its grip on the Minos Sword and snapped up with blinding speed in an obvious attempt to sever his arm at the elbow.
He pulled his weight back just in time to move the creature’s head close to the path of the pincer, and the demon’s pincer froze mid-motion as it clearly had no wish to harm itself with an attack intended for its enemy.
Using the brief window to his advantage, Nikomedes thundered his knee into the creature’s midsection, followed by a sweeping kick with his leg which knocked the beast off-balance just long enough for him to improve his position and hammer a punch into the insect’s head with his left hand.
The demon’s eye received most of the blow, and it chittered with what could only be pain as fluids began to ooze from the ruined mass of glittery facets. The demon snapped its free pincer at his head as it scrambled with its insect-like legs beneath its body, but Nikomedes had unbalanced it and was unwilling to relinquish the hard-won initiative.
He drove the creature toward the nearest boulder—the base of which was covered in sharp protrusions—and drove the beast’s body into that boulder with bone-crushing force.
The demon’s grip on his ruined vambrace was jarred slightly from the impact, but the demon’s free pincer snapped at him again and this time he was forced to block the blow with his other forearm. But just as the creature’s vice-like claw clamped down on his protective bracer, he was able to wiggle his hand so that he could grip the fixed portion of the demon’s claw.
Using pure, brute strength, Nikomedes drove his weight down on his arms, splaying the demon’s pincers wide as he overpowered its surprisingly strong body. It weighed no more than half as much as he did, but its strength was likely greater than his own.
Leverage, however, was on his side and he used that leverage to drive the creature’s arms wide until there was a crunching sound behind the demon and its insect arms went limp.
He looked down and realized that he had dismembered the creature at the midsection joint between what would be an insect’s abdomen and its torso. There was a jagged piece of rock sticking between the two sections of its body, and that rock was now covered in foul, acidic ooze which streamed from the creature’s body.
Nikomedes wrenched his left arm free and hammered blow after blow into the thing’s eyes, causing a series of uncoordinated spasms to open the other, apparently death-clutched pincer which had ruined his vambrace.
Staggering to the Minos Sword, he was glad to see that it appeared utterly unaffected by the foul fluids which now covered its dark, glittery blade. Taking the weapon up, he unceremoniously slammed it into the creature’s head, knocking it from the monstrosity’s neck completely and sending it tumbling into a nearby pool of acid.
He appraised his damaged vambrace and found that his forearm bled beneath it, but not dangerously so. It only took a few minutes to remove that ruined piece of armor, discard it, dress the wound and set off toward the path which would lead him from the deadly chasm.
As he trudged toward the bronze chain which he would use to scale the sheer rocks of the gorge, he realized he was incredibly hungry and would need to find something to eat as soon as he was clear of the barren, blasted landscape surrounding the gorge.
But the hunger was a welcome sensation, rather than an uncomfortable gnawing as was usual, and he proudly carried the Minos Sword past the wrecked bodies of the demons who had sought to end his god-given quest before it had even begun. Now there was nothing that could stop him from fulfilling the destiny of which Felix had once spoken—not rival warriors, not complacent warlords, not scheming soothsayers, and not even demons given life by the hellish, poisonous chasm he now walked through.
Nothing would stand in his way.
Chapter XXII: The Return Home
While he marched back to the citadel, he stopped several times each day to practice with the Minos Sword. He had used it to chop cleanly through the bronze chain which had remained hidden, awaiting his arrival for over a hundred years before performing its last duty and being sent to the ledge below.
But bronze chain links were not the only thing which the mighty blade would carve through as though it was the still-quivering flesh of a cow’s carcass. The sword would cut through trees as thick as his legs like they were not even there, and he had even cleaved boulders the size of his head cleanly in two beneath its razor-sharp edge.
It truly was a weapon from legend, and as he practiced with it he became intimately familiar with its balance, weight, and motion. Within days he had achieved a warrior’s bond with the weapon, and before he had marched halfway back to the Argos citadel he could effectively—though in a predictably limited fashion—wield the blade one-handed.
He practiced with it in both left- and right-hand dominant stances, but he knew that the time for deception was now over. He would use every last shred of his physical gifts, and every second of training to gain victory in the battles which were now before him. By acquiring the Minos Blade he had secured a peerless weapon which could only be compared to other Dark Swords of Power or, possibly, to the Light Swords of Power—often referred to as ‘White Swords’ in common speech but were more accurately referred to as ‘Light Swords’ in the ancient texts.
And he knew that every warrior in Argos would give genuine consideration to challenging him for ownership of the Minos Sword. Most would not have the courage to do so, and fewer still would have the ability to honestly think they could survive the attempt. But he had little doubt that Kapaneus, Kallistos, Zenobios and perhaps even Hypatios Nykator himself would challenge him for the weapon.
The truth, as he came to understand in those days of solitude during his return from the chasm, was that he had trained his entire life for those challenges. That life had been filled with similar contests—contests from which he had emerged victorious in all but the first duel with Kratos on the field where Felix had died—and the battles to come would in no way be unfamiliar experiences to him.
He had already defeated a Protector—two of them, in fact, with both Ektor and Kratos laying claim to the prestigious title at the time of their defeat at his hands—and he had no doubt that his life at Lady Adonia’s side would result in more than a few similar victories in the future.
As he made his way back to Argos, he also came to grips with the fact that the Voice of Men had given him a quest—or ‘directive,’ in the Voice’s own strange verbiage—to rebuild the line of kings as King Lykurgos had been meant to do prior to his defeat by Hold Mistress Adamus and her coalition. He had never wished for such a fate, but one did not refuse the god of his ancestors lightly—especially when that god personally bestowed the responsibility upon him.
Still, he knew Lady Adonia to be a fierce woman and she would bear him many sons who could carry his name forward into his people’s future. He would have to keep his designs secret for the time being as he worked to establish a base of power like the one which Nykator had crafted by consolidating control over the Tegean Host.
But secrets were something which Nikomedes had ample experience keeping from his enemies, and in a very real way there was no greater enemy to a Protector than his Hold Mistress. Kratos’ tale of his father, and his father before that having given their lives to their respective Hold Mistresses, only to be dismissed—with prejudice—when it became advantageous to do so, was never far from his mind. He knew that those men had failed because they had not properly understood the relationship betwe
en Protector and Hold Mistress, whereas a man like Hypatios Nykator clearly understood it perhaps too well.
Nykator would have been the perfect warlord were it not for his flouting of tradition and usurpation of his Hold Mistress’s Men-given authority. But that particular line was one which, once crossed, could not be uncrossed—even the Voice of Men had directed Nikomedes to lay Hypatios Nykator low if the opportunity arose, which was quite literally a mandate from the heavens which required fulfillment once received.
The morning he finally caught sight of Argos’ citadel was one filled with a mixture of emotions. Much as the day where he had stood upon the frigid cliff overlooking the churning waters where his Trial of the Deep had been held, he knew that his old life would come to an end once he stepped through those gates.
He had no doubt that, after he did so, the only way he would emerge from them once again was with all who would call themselves his enemy having fallen to the Minos Blade.
When he was about halfway back to Argos and preparing to bed down in the midst of a particularly rainy night, he saw a strange star moving over the west. He eyed its sluggish, unnatural path warily as it moved against the natural path of other falling stars and moved toward the mountain which served as a physical barrier to the Hold’s western border.
It seemed odd that he could see the star so clearly when nearly all others were blocked out by the dark rainclouds, but what was even odder was when the star seemed to slow down as it approached the mountain itself.
The sickly, green light of that star dimmed as it completed its fall toward the ground near the base of that great mountain, where eventually it disappeared leaving Nikomedes to ponder the meaning of the ominous portent.
He did not sleep at all that night, but continued his march the next morning and saw no further astrological phenomena during the rest of his journey home. As he dreamed each night, his dreams were filled with images he did not recognize or understand. Strange animals, stranger locations, and stranger still objects were featured in his dreams and he pondered these visions deeply as he marched toward his destiny.
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