A Warrior's Legacy

by Guy Stanton III

  While on the other hand I had seen that same overzealousness be the key in some amazing occurrences of God’s miraculous plan.

  “I’m not trying to limit Gavin’s faith or what the Creator wants to do with him or his willingness to serve, but rather I want to see him protected while in service to God so that he can be as effective as he can possibly be!”

  “That’s where I come in I guess?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked back up at him, “If I leave and he leaves who will be here for you in case it should go wrong for us and we can’t return?”

  Father looked thoughtful as he got up out of his chair and came around his desk to sit on the front of it, “All this.”

  He gestured to everything around him, “Is going to be your older brothers someday.”

  I made as if to speak, but he held up a hand stopping me. “I have faith that one day I don’t know how or even when, but I believe your brother will return to us. And not only return, but return a better man than when he left. A man worthy of all this legacy just as you already are. Going on this mission to protect your brother is only one of the reasons why I want you to go. I saw the way your eyes lit up when I told you about this new land. I want you to go to this land with the purpose of not only sharing the words of the Creator, but also to carve out your own destiny there. Start a new legacy. When our grand sire Tadias Ta’lont came here there was nothing before he started it. With his own hands he laid the foundation of this fortress and by the principles he lived by and the grace of the Creator here we too are living out the dream that he started so long ago. You can do that to Zevin! Go to this new land and be the man I’ve taught you to be. Seize whatever opportunity you find there and above all else be faithful and humble before your Creator as He will never fail you. Create a new legacy with new traditions just like the man whose blood still courses through your veins did. Find the girl that’s like your mother and cherish and care for her all your days, even as the Son of the Creator cherishes and cares for our souls and daily needs and desires. Have dominion over your world. May you have victory in war and joy in the peace that follows. May you never think more highly of yourself than you should and may the Creator bless you with all His loving mercies. May the Creator multiply and secure the borders of your people and may your house last until the stars fall from the skies and we’re all called home to our everlasting abode with our Creator. This is my wish and blessing as a father for you Zevin and all those who follow after you.”

  Tears ran down my face at both his words over me, which I felt the power of wash over me like a warm wave of promise, and the realization that this place which I had called home for so long was no longer.

  I stood shakily to my feet feeling as if the weight of the world was on my shoulders, when in reality it was the burden of my own life. My father’s arms closed around me and I felt mine encircle him.

  “I’ll do my best to make you proud father!”

  Father drew back until he was just holding my shoulders. “You’ve already made me more proud than words could ever express! I know the future seems scary and uncertain to you right now, but have not one doubt that you with the Creator’s help can accomplish everything I’ve set out before you!”

  Feeling weak kneed I asked, “Where do I even start?”

  “One step at a time Zevin and a lot of prayer will see you through to the completed goal. A couple more things Zevin and I’ll let you go get some food and rest.”

  I looked at him expectantly to see what else he had to say.

  “I want you to focus on having fun!”

  I blinked.

  Fun?

  I looked at him incredulously.

  “Your too serious Zevin you need to relax a little more and enjoy what’s happening around you more often. Finding the right girl will help that, but there’s no reason not to start the ball rolling a little earlier. Okay?”

  I nodded not really sure of how I was going to do that, but I’d take a stab at it.

  “What else?” I asked uncertain of what I would hear next.

  “Promise me that you will come back to visit your mother and I as often as possible. You may need to drag Gavin along occasionally as well as he’s not big on that kind of stuff typically.”

  “You have my word on it.” I said softly and then after a brief hug I left and walked down the familiar halls that already felt alien to me somehow.

  I paused by an open window to breathe in some of the refreshing night air before I reached my tower room. I was about to turn away from the window when I heard a metallic clanging noise the traveled clearly on the night air.

  I forsook the warm food and rest my body was coveting and left the hall and went back out into the night and down towards the lower castle buildings. As I drew closer to the blacksmith shop evidence of sound in the night grew more apparent.

  I slipped inside noiselessly, but Gavin picked his head up right away and spotted me. Dropping his hammer and whatever he had been working on he came straight for me and enfolded me in a bear hug. It has been an evening of hugging it seemed, but all of them had been welcome ones.

  Gavin’s sweat soaked shirt and the smells of cast metal were like a home all of their own to me. It was nice to be with my partner in my mother’s womb again. Gavin always had a reassuring effect on me, except for maybe tonight.

  Drawing back from me I noticed that Gavin looked like he’d been having a rough time of it lately as well. Gavin drew back a little and rested against the table looking at me expectantly. I took in his weary looking eyes and I couldn’t resist.

  “So I hear you’ve been dreaming about girls a lot lately.”

  Gavin’s face flushed red and he picked up a hammer beside him and made one menacing step forward for me.

  I held my hands up and shouted, “Correction I was wrong! My statement was inexact, you’ve been dreaming about a girl.”

  I ducked and kept moving as he threw the hammer. It clanged off the wall behind me, but not before I had a table between me and Gavin.

  “Well what’s it going to be? Are you going or not?” Gavin fumed out loudly as his big hands gripped the table’s edge.

  “Yes.” I said and let his big relieved sigh pass for a moment before I added with a dead serious face, “But you’re not going to like the job relations I’m afraid.” I said shaking my head softly.

  Sudden concern creased his face into worry lines “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Well for the duration of this quest it would be best if you thought of yourself as my slave and I your loving and benevolent master.”

  I ducked Gavin’s wide swing, but what I hadn’t been expecting was his sudden snatch of my shirt front with his other hand. His swing had been a setup!

  He pulled me up and over the table.

  As I was drug over the top of the table I held my hands above my face and said, “Don’t hit me! It’s all fathers’ fault!”

  There was a pause, “How is it father’s fault?”

  “He told me to work at my sense of humor.” I said peaking through my fingers up at Gavin.

  “I wasn’t aware that you had a sense of humor!”

  “See! That’s why I need to work on it.”

  Gavin gave a spurt of laughter and said, “You’re going to need a lot of help!”

  “I made you laugh didn’t I?”

  Gavin just shook his head and helped me up. “So when do we leave Gavin?”

  “That’s for you to say, but I would like it if we could leave soon.”

  I patted him on the back realizing the heavy toll these constant repeated visions each night were having on him, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow after we both get some rest.”

  He nodded and I turned to go with the thought of food and a soft bed calling out my name.

  “Zevin before you go I have something I want to give you. I was going to give it to you for your birthday, but you weren’t here so happy belated birthday brother.”

  He directed me
to a long thin wooden box sitting out on a table. I walked towards it with eagerness. I knew it was a sword. I had begged Gavin for years for a special custom-made sword by him. My hands trembled slightly as I took the lid off the box.

  I forgot about everything else in that moment my sole focus on the incredibility of what lay before me.

  Thickly I muttered, “Gavin..... Gavin.... How?”

  Gavin came up beside me and put a big hand on my back and said, “You said you wanted something special didn’t you?”

  Before me lay a dream come true. I had fought with coveting my father’s sword for years knowing that it would never be mine, but now here lay a sword like his but different and yet the same.

  It lay on the velvet liner of the box in resplendent repose. The double-edged blade was a bluish gray and it did not shine brightly as a newly shined blade would.

  “Father helped me out a lot when I told him several years ago what I wanted to do. I asked him if he knew of a stronger metal than what’s commonly available. He talked with a woman called Abby and she gave him this bluish metal. Hardest stuff I’ve ever worked with let me tell you! The sword is a little shorter than I had wanted it to be because there wasn’t much of the metal to work with. Apparently it is extremely rare and father said it has unique properties to it, but he didn’t go into saying anymore about it.”

  “Did you read the words of the Creator into it?”

  “I did, from front to back. Several times actually.”

  “Does it work like father’s does?”

  “Don’t know haven’t tried it. Wanted you to be the first.”

  The blade ended in an ornate engraved handle and cross guards that featured thin inlays of silver. The most domineering aspect of the handle was the pommel stone. It was a huge multi faceted ruby looking crystal.

  Gavin must have seen me looking at it, “Father supplied that too.”

  A long moment passed.

  Gavin burst out, “Well aren’t you going to pick it up?”

  “I’m scared to.” I replied softly.

  Gavin looked thoughtful and then said, “Zevin the sword isn’t magic, by itself it’s just metal and crystals. It’s the bearer of it that unlocks the unique qualities of the sword. The quality of the individual is what matters and your all quality, except for your sense of humor that is.”

  A brief smile flickered across my lips and I remembered something my father had said, “Start your own legacy.”

  This sword certainly was a weapon to create a legacy with. I reached out for the handle praying that the Creator would help me be worthy of this gift and never misuse it.

  The moment my fingers touched the handle I felt the cold metal grow warm and stranger than that was the pulse of energy that radiated up my arm from where I gripped the sword. I lifted the sword up into the air and watched as tiny bright blue lines traced all along the blade until a scrollwork of unbelievable intricacy was blazed along the entire sword length.

  Gavin swallowed, “I didn’t design the blade to have those patterns!”

  The blue line designs began to pulse of a brighter color flare and I felt tendrils close around my hand. Looking at my hand I watched as silver tendrils of liquid metal fused around my hand and up my arm.

  The silver turned blue and I felt a shock of power radiate throughout me and then it seemed to travel back into the sword. The pommel stone lit up brilliantly, and showered the room with rays of red reflected light and then the sword went dark.

  Had I broken it?

  The silver tendrils were no longer about my hand, but the way my hand felt around the handle made me never want to let go of it. The pommel stone crystal pulsed red and then the silver framework of the handle flashed brilliantly followed by the entire blade which glowed a cool blue while jetting lines of cobalt blue shot up and down the blade in constant geometric scroll like patterns that dazzled the eyes.

  I looked at Gavin and he at me and we both grinned and said at the same time, “Cool!”

  “Best gift ever brother, thank you so much!” I said with all my heart.

  “Don’t thank me I’m just glad to have been used to create this... this.”

  Gavin through his hands up at a lack for what to say. “Masterpiece!” I finished for him as I cut the sword through the air leaving a shimmering light trail of silver and blue.

  “Nice!” Said father from the doorway.

  We both looked over at him and he got a big smile on his face as he said to his 22-year-old sons, “It’s time to put the toys down and go to bed. Its way past your bedtime.”

  Chapter Three

  Fire from Heaven

  One month earlier in the land of Assoria.

  Zalisha knelt on the hard floor unmindful of her sore knees on the prayer mat. She had been praying for hours, days really. And all she’d gotten from her dedication was silence, which is all she ever got.

  She’d been the high priestess of the temple for barely two years now. The spiritual leader of her people. They looked to her to tell them how the spirits would move on behalf of them.

  Seeking hope, simply a word of encouragement that things would get better. She had nothing. Nothing to tell them!

  Nothing!

  She could have just blamed herself if it hadn’t been for the previous high priestess’s dying words to her. She had told her with her last breaths that she too had never heard from the spirits of the land, of water, or even of fire. That when it came time to make a decision that she was to lie and say that the spirits had told her such and such in order that the proud traditions and hope of her people could go on.

  At the time she had thought the priestesses last words were the whimsical folly of one near death, but now she wasn’t so sure. It was a daring thing to doubt her people’s traditions, but she did now openly within the confines of her mind.

  If the spirits had been watching out for her people like it was claimed that they did why had they not warned them of the disaster that had befallen her people four days previous?

  Her head lifted slightly and her eyes drifted to her hand and the brand on it. The smooth skin of the top of her hand had the symbol of the sorcerer sliced into it by a knife. She had been held down by the assassin sent to kill her and had watched as he had cut the symbol of the Sorcerer into the top of her hand with the poisoned edge of his dagger.

  He had left her crying on the floor not knowing that he had not been successful in killing her, otherwise he would’ve thrust her through the heart.

  The edges of the cuts oozed a brownish fluid and she had no feeling in her hand at all. Her body was fighting off the poison, but she may yet lose her hand. At least she still had her life unlike every other member of the royal family.

  All of them were dead.

  The king, his wives, children, close relatives, distant relatives, even a newborn baby rumored to be the bastard son of one of the king’s sons. Over four hundred people all killed in one night by a veritable army of assassins in the employ of the sorcerer.

  She alone of all the members of the longest running dynasty of the Eastern Kingdom was alive. The people thought of her survival as a miraculous sign and treated her as if she was some sort of god, but she knew better. From the time when she was a little girl and had been selected as a future high priestess of the temple and sent to live there she had been fed a steady diet of poison in small doses by the other priestesses, until she’d gained a small immunity to it, which is all that could be hoped for.

  So far it was working, but what really was the point? They were dying as a people. Now they were without a leader.

  Forsaken by their gods.

  Everything was hopeless.

  She brushed tears from her eyes with her good hand. She could do one thing!

  She could stop this charade and groveling before inanimate objects!

  She stood up and pushed over the holy serving table with its food offering. Picking up a candle staff she smashed away at tokens and demigods alike. Panting for bre
ath she looked around the room at the mess that she had made of it. Taking her good hand she made a fist of it and shook it violently towards the ceiling.

  “If you were real gods I would be dead right now! But I’m not! I will never serve you nor prostrate myself in front of you ever again!”

  Zalisha stormed out of the small round temple and out into the refreshing air of her garden sanctuary. The moon shone brightly illuminating the city and the great wall that protected it in sharp relief.

  The sky was full of bright shining stars. If her gods were not real how then had all this come to be?

  She sank to her knees and looked up imploringly at the sky, “I don’t know what to do?” She screamed.

  After a moment she screamed out of her very soul a plea for help, “Please!” And then she collapsed onto the ground of the garden sobbing brokenly at a complete loss at what to do.

  She felt a breeze ruffle her long black hair. The wind grew stronger and she looked up from her sorrow. There shouldn’t be wind!

  The night had been a clear one. She looked up and gasped out loud and scooted back in the grass away from the small temple in the garden as currents of air had begun to swirl around the small shrine temple and were picking up speed.

  Terror-stricken she slid back further as she watched the swirling winds become a maelstrom of power. The temple disintegrated into pieces and swirled away out of view until there was nothing that remained. Not even the foundation of stone remained.

  The winds dispersed upward and she saw solid dark clouds form overhead backlit by the moon and out of it came a column of fire that shot down and slammed into the ground where the temple had stood shaking the foundations of the city and the great wall itself.

  Zalisha screamed and hid her face in her arms believing her death would be soon. The citizens of the city, strangers, and night sentries alike rushed from their dwellings or stared from their posts on the wall in stupefied horror at the temple on the hill, where the column of fire that reached into the heavens blazed forth into the night.