A Warrior's Legacy

by Guy Stanton III

  The only way this had been the success that it had been was because the Creator had wanted it so, but the crowd chanted all the louder in praise of me. Their chant came to a screeching halt though at the sound of loud horns blaring in the distance.

  They turned as one to see what the disturbance was, but I already knew.

  I tapped Gavin and Holon on the heads, “Let me down the battle is not yet won.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Crushing Darkness

  Coming down across the plain towards us were the marched ranks of the Sorcerer’s men. We had more soldiers than the force approaching us, but we were battle weary and the soldiers we faced were not ordinary.

  In one night some of their number had assassinated the entire royal family of the Eastern Kingdom except for Zalisha. Those soldiers might have been modified in a hundred different ways just like Raya had been.

  It would be a bloodbath for our side. Storm clouds crawled over the early morning sky approaching our army and the city at our back like a brooding threat of menace. The enemy line halted in the distance and a voice as loud as thunder boomed out from the clouds.

  “So you think you have won have you? You’ve won nothing! All you’ve done is to do my work for me. The West was getting hard to command anyway with all their petty demands, but your act of aggression will not go unrewarded! I’m going to make an example of you the likes of which has never been seen before! You will beg me for death and I……”

  And on and on the voice went in its enumeration of all the many things we would suffer before we were allowed to die. I got Holon’s attention and he looked at me questioningly.

  I pointed at Raya, “I’m going to do something dangerous, which she might object to and I want you to promise me that you’ll keep her from interfering!”

  “I promise. What are you going to do Zevin?”

  “I’m not quite sure yet. I guess we’ll find out together old friend.”

  I turned to Gavin, who was looking at me strangely, “Keep the army together and hold them back and say a prayer for me brother.”

  I left then and walked out from the sea of bloodied warriors towards the advancing storm clouds alone. Raya started to walk out after me like I knew she would. She would probably follow me anywhere.

  “Stay!” I said roughly surprising her with my harshness.

  She stopped and hesitated and then started again, but Holon’s big arms held her back and even as strong as she was she was held virtually immobile.

  “Zevin?” She screamed looking desperate to understand what was going on.

  “Stay Raya! Just stay!”

  I turned back to the presence of the enemy army in the distance, with its dark overshadowing cloud that hadn’t ceased in its jabbering of dire threats and insults. I put another four hundred feet between me and the army under Gavin’s command. That should be enough hopefully.

  I pulled my sword out loving the comforting feel of it in my hand.

  “Creator it was You that crafted my soul and gave my bones flesh. Unto You, Ancient of Days, I commit myself to the fight for Your cause is just. All I ask is that You deliver the peoples of this land from the oppression they have faced for so long, even as I pray that You will deliver the power of the enemy into my hand!”

  I pulled the master of war ring from off my finger that Zalisha had given me and with a slight turn the red crystal came out of it setting and fell into my palm. I picked it up and brought it to the point of the sword and pushed the tip into its center. The crystal gave way folding around the blade securely as it did so.

  The red crystals on both ends of the sword snapped with color and the blade began to emit a high frequency hum. The enormity of what I was about to attempt weighed heavily down upon me. Thora had said that what I was about to do hadn’t been done to her knowledge since Tadias had last done it.

  The experience had nearly killed Tadias. It didn’t matter. The mixed multitude of people at my back made it worth the risk. I brought the pommel stone crystal up to my face and tapped it with my finger.

  The thundering voice calling out threats and insults was interrupted by the amplified tapping of my finger, which matched the thunder of his angered tone.

  “Excuse me I think I speak for all of us down here when I say that we’re tired of hearing you talk. Your time of oppressive tyranny is over! This is your last chance to leave before we come and kill you.”

  “Who do you think you are impudent warrior to threaten me so! I am the great sorcerer! Ruler over all of Assoria! I do as I please when I please. It has amused me up until now to let the East linger on, but now I will crush them! You may have a little technology at your disposal, but it is nothing in terms of the power that I wield! Prepare to die all of you!”

  The voice ended even as the dark storm clouds got expressively darker. I wrapped both of my hands around the handle of the sword and brought it up in front of me. I spoke one word against the crystal formed over the tip of the sword

  “Intercept.”

  The humming of the sword intensified and then began alternating the rhythm of its sound. Strands of red light shot out from the crystals and formed a fast spinning spiral weave around me and then I felt my feet leave the ground as I hovered upward within the weave of colored light.

  It still felt like I was standing on solid ground even though I was hovering some forty feet above the ground. Out of the brooding clouds over the enemy army a bolt of blue energy shot out headed for the city’s center behind me. As it neared the wall however it reared back off course as if it was somehow drawn towards the tangled weave of fast rotating red energy all around me.

  The bolt of icy blue power arced back around from the city and headed directly toward me. I sliced the sword down through it with a speed I had never possessed in terms of natural ability. The streak of blue lightening fractured into shattered particles of its former glory and bounced off the red halo of light around me before plunging into the ground below kicking up heaps of dirt into the air as the energy dissipated back into the ground.

  There was a furious scream of rage that rebounded across the plains and then dozens of the blue energy beams shot out from the fake cloud on course for the gathered army and city behind me. But each one of the beams was drawn off course towards me.

  It was an odd feeling smacking down energy blasts. It was also very painful. On and on they just kept coming. I didn’t understand the technology I was using, but I wished it helped me to move even faster than I was.

  I was twisting and swinging at all sides seemingly at once. The sword in my hands was ringing so bad it hurt to hold onto it let alone force myself to smack it into another of the energy bolts. I wasn’t quick enough and one of them slammed into the curtain of red light around me.

  I felt like I had exploded inside. I could hear myself wheezing for breath and my head didn’t seem to reason well. I didn’t want to do this anymore and I almost dropped the sword, but some reason of thought penetrated the splitting pain in my head that I wouldn’t survive another hit.

  I doubted I had survived this one came the responding thought. I realized I was on my knees in the halo of red light and I looked up to see a bolt coming directly at my head.

  Desperation aided me in lifting the heavy sword up one more time. I didn’t swing, but instead let the beam impact itself on the blade. I felt the shock ripple out over me and into me.

  I was going to die.

  If I died though everyone else would die too. My brother would die. Raya would die. Everyone would die.

  I shoved the sword into the bottom of the floating red halo of light and forced myself to my feet screaming with the effort, as it felt like I was tearing myself apart.

  My days of training with Rolf took over then. He had taught me how to fight through the pain. To channel it to some distant corner of the mind and lock it away there until there was a time and place to let it back out and feel its agony. This wasn’t the time or the place.

  I sliced
through a bolt and then another and another and another after that. I was stumbling around the small box of space within the spiral halo trying to keep on my feet, as I readied myself for the next energy bolt strike, but it didn’t come.

  I looked out of the red halo toward the distant clouds, but they had been reduced to just a little puff of smoke almost no thicker than a patch of morning mist. The sorcerer was finished!

  He’d used up the rest of his available power. It was time he got back a little of his own medicine anyway. A red beam of energy shot out from the end of my sword and coursed through the air towards the wispy cloud. It encircled the small cloud faster than the eye could see and began to reduce the size of the cloud even further.

  The sorcerer’s voice no longer sounding thunderous and prideful came through weakly garbled and painful sounding, “Kill them! Kill the warrior and take his sword! Kill….”

  His voice was cut off as the cloud disappeared with a red hued snap of color. The sorcerer’s legions ever obedient started forward like dumb oxen to accomplish their assigned task for they knew nothing else but blind obedience.

  I felt the vibration of their movement on the ground beneath me. There were voices, Raya’s voice. I heard Raya’s voice. I opened my eyes and there she was.

  “Raya.”

  Tears were slipping out from under her face mask, which then slid down her face to dribble onto my chest.

  “Yes Zevin?”

  I looked up at her wishing I could see her eyes that were masked from me, wishing that we had never had to leave the caves of Lanoria.

  “I need you to finish it Raya!”

  My hands moved hers from where she had been holding mine to form around the handle of my sword.

  She tried to resist, but I held her hands to it, “No Zevin I’m not leaving you? I’m going to take care of you! You living is all that matters!”

  I shook my head slightly, “To late for that honey. No one else here needs to die. Raya I need you to save our people! I need you to go on and lead them into peace in my absence, but right now I need you to take my sword, pray to the Creator and save our people and my brother’s too. I know you can do it. You are a stronger warrior than I ever was.”

  She was shaking her head violently her body quivering with barely suppressed emotion, “That’s not true! I can’t do it Zevin! I can’t leave you!” She wailed out at me.

  I pushed her away roughly and she fell backward clutching my sword, “You must! You have to! You will! It is my last wish now go!” I said half pushing up supported by my brother from behind.

  “Zevin!” She screamed out bent over as if in agony.

  “I’m lost without you! I have nothing if you leave me, but an eternity of emptiness! I can’t bear to lose you! I’d rather die than be without you!”

  My tone was gentle, “One day you will die Raya, but not this day. My love for you Raya will never die. Remember that! Now go Raya! Go!”

  She screamed a guttural cry of inexpressible fury and pain and wheeled away and started to run towards the enemy line in the distance. I couldn’t see her!

  “Lift me up Gavin!”

  Gavin lifted me up so I could see her again as she ran.

  “Isn’t she beautiful brother!”

  Gavin responded not really even looking as he held his brother from behind, “Yes she is. You did well for yourself brother.” Gavin said letting his cheek rest against his brother’s head.

  “Zevin?”

  Gavin’s eyes met Talin’s, who was kneeling in front of Zevin. Big tears tracked down Talin’s face as he shook his head side to side slowly.

  “No! Not my brother!” Gavin cried out and then began to sob into Zevin’s neck as he held him with his arms about him.

  Holon looked away from his leader, his friend, the master he would have done anything for. He gripped his sword tighter and started for the enemy, a blood lust for revenge overwhelming any common sense he might have had.

  Talin and Lohan quickly grabbed a hold of him, but Holon was so strong that he would have dragged them along with him if need be, but Talin got through to him.

  “No Holon! Let this last battle be fought the way Zevin wanted it to be! No more dead friends!”

  Breathing hard Holon stopped and nodded as he stared after the girl in the distance that kept running right at the enemy line with no sign of fear.

  Tears still flowing with abandon Raya caught her breath on a half sob gripping the sword in her hands she looked up at the heavens with the enemy column only a couple hundred yards away, “Creator I haven’t known You long. I don’t like You right now, but I know my husband loved You and did anything You asked him to. He asked me to do this, but to do it I need Your help. Please help me! And if You don’t that’s fine to, because I don’t care if I live. So on behalf of my husband give me the strength of pure power to destroy the enemy and deliver the people!”

  A warm presence filled her from within and made her instantly regret her harsh words, but amazingly she felt no judgment levied against her. Her head fell forward and fresh tears fell as she felt the words whispered into her raw soul.

  “I will do more than to just win a battle for a faithful servant and his bride. I Am the God of battles, but I am the One that heals too. I feel your pain and your tears can never equal Mine for the loss you feel I have already felt even more keenly than you ever could. I Am also the One that restores. Have faith even as I build your faith so that you will trust Me and be ready for the next part of your journey. Your husband’s blessing is extended to you. The enemy is given over into your hand. Do not leave one left of them standing!”

  The words ended and Raya lifted her head, even as the sword pulsed alive with color in her hands. Starting at the sword Raya’s hands began to turn an icy blue as the element that she was partially made of crystallized, and within moments she was entirely made of the icy blueness emanating from the sword.

  Her skin was the color of her eyes, while sunlight reflected off of her skin like she was a faceted diamond. The intensity of her eyes shone through the tinted orange of her mask as if they were molten flames of fire.

  The ground shook as Thora and Kregridor touched down a safe distance from her to either side of her. Together the three faced the enemy line that had come to a screeching halt. Silently the three waited, and within a moment a massive shower of small arrows thudded into them.

  Each small cross bolt arrow shaft was dipped in the same poison used to kill the royal family, but it didn’t matter because the arrows uselessly pinged off the hard scales of the tannin and the even harder faceted quality of crystal power that Raya had become.

  Gripping Zevin’s sword with both hands Raya pulled it apart into two identical swords. She gestured with both swords upward and an icy blue veil shot up out of the ground on all four sides of the enemy creating a box.

  A soldier reached out and touched the shimmering veil and there was a loud snap and he fell over clutching at his heart already dead. The enemy seeing the ineffectiveness of their arrows charged the three with weapons held high.

  The ground rumbled and Raya pulsed with cool blue intensity even as naked blue trinial power bolts shot out of the tips of the twin upraised swords in her hands.

  The thin streams of energy sparked and frayed apart into several strands that stretched at least fifty feet high into the air. Raya brought her swords down as if she held the handles of a pair of bull whips.

  The strands of blue snapping fire cut through the onrushing enemy soldiers. Raya killed hundreds with the flick of a wrist even as hundreds more were consumed alive by the unquenchable fire roaring out of the mouths of the tannin that burned with a depth of intensity grown over a century of being cooped up away from their skies.

  The massed attack turned into a riot as the trapped soldiers ran to and fro in hysteria at what they were confronted with, an unreasoning fear that ate through whatever manipulation and programming that had been done to them.

  Many perished by flingi
ng themselves desperately against the shimmering side curtain walls of the box. Many more fell to the quick slashing sting of the trinial power strands or the crushing talons and fire of the tannins. Not one of the enemy was alive within twenty minutes.

  The tight quartered box made of raw power was filled high with the charred remains of those who had fallen. The shimmering walls collapsed and the massive tannins took flight with the ease of a sparrow as the warrioress with now only one sword again walked steadily back across the plain.

  As she came closer the glow of her skin lessened until she was the same as when she had left. Warriors of both the East and of Lanoria drew back away from her in a mixture of awe and fear.

  She paid them no mind, but simply glided past them. Gavin had let Zevin down to the ground and was wrapped in Zalisha’s arms, who had come from the city at the battle’s closing.

  Both watched as well as the crowd of surrounding spectators as Raya dropped to her knees beside Zevin. She took the sword and laid it on his chest closing his cold right hand over its handle.

  Zalisha gave a sharp sob imagining fully what it would have been like to do the same for Gavin. Raya didn’t cry and she surprised many when she lay down beside Zevin on the ground. She lay against his side and laid her hand over top of his on the sword and then she closed her eyes.

  Her body shut down and her breathing stopped. There was no desire left in her to face the long empty years of her life without the joy she had encountered in the arms of this man, who had loved all of her and had made her forget the past and actually see the hope of something better for the future.

  The crowd of spectators drew back even more as the thunderous beat of the tannin’s wings signaled their imminent arrival. They landed surprisingly lightly upon the ground given their great size and folded their massive wings inward. Everyone other than Gavin and Zalisha had drawn back.